RECALLED TO LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 GRANT ALLEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 WHAT S BRED IN THE BONE," " kaLEE'S SHRINE.' 
 
 BRISTOL 
 J. W. Arrowsmith, II Quay Street 
 
 LONDON 
 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilto n, Kent & Co. Limited 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
LV 
 
 rr.H-ooH-. A^if + 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. UNA CALLINGHAM'S FIRST RECOLLECTION ... 5 
 
 II. BEGINNING LIFE AGAIN 12 
 
 III. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 22 
 
 IV. THE STORY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS 36 
 
 V. 1 BECOME A WOMAN 49 
 
 VI. RE-LIVING MY LIFE 62 
 
 VII. THE GRANGE AT WOODBURY 72 
 
 VIII. A VISION OF DEAD YEARS 87 
 
 IX. HATEFUL SUSPICIONS 95 
 
 X. YET ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPH I08 
 
 XI. THE VISION RECURS II9 
 
 XII. THE MOORES OF TORQUAY I26 
 
 XIII. DR. IVOR OF BABBICOMBE I35 
 
 XIV. MY WELCOME TO CANADA I43 
 
 XV. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE I55 
 
 XVI. MY PLANS ALTER I75 
 
 XVII. A STRANGE RECOGNITION 183 
 
 XVIII. MURDER WILL OUT I92 
 
 XIX. THE REAL MURDERER 202 
 
 XX. THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA 2X1 
 
 XXI. THE PLOT UNRAVELS ITSELF 226 
 
 XXII. MY MEMORY RETURNS 234 
 
 XXIII. THE FATAL SHOT 245 
 
 XXIV. all's WELL THAT ENDS WELL 259 
 
 \Oll0$'i' 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE, 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 'dna Callindbam'0 first 'Kccollectfon* 
 
 T may sound odd to say so, but the very 
 earliest fact that impressed itself on my 
 memory was a scene that took place — so 
 I was told — when I was eighteen years old, in 
 my father's house, The Grange, at Woodbury. 
 My babyhood, my childhood, my girlhood, my 
 school-days were all utterly blotted out by that 
 one strangejshock of horror. My past life became 
 exactly as though it had never been. I forgot my 
 own name. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot 
 everything I had ever done or known or thought 
 about. Except for the power to walk and stand 
 and perform simple actions of every-day use, I 
 became a baby in arms again, with a nurse to take 
 care of me. The doctors told me, later, I had 
 fallen into what they were pleased to call " a 
 
6 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Second State." I was examined and reported 
 upon as a Psychological Curiosity. But at the 
 time, I knew nothing of all this. A thunderbolt, as 
 it were, destroyed at one blow every relic, every 
 trace of my previous existence ; and I began life 
 all over again, with that terrible scene of blood as 
 my first birthday and practical starting point. 
 
 I remember it all even now with horrible dis- 
 tinctness. Each item in it photographed itself 
 vividly on my mind's eye. I saw it a? in a 
 picture — just as clearly, just as visually. And 
 the effect, now I look back upon it with a maturer 
 judgment, was precisely like a photograph in 
 another way too. It was wholly unrelated in 
 time and space : it stood alone by itself, lighted 
 up by a single spark, without rational connection 
 before or after it. What led up to it all, I hadn't 
 the very faintest idea. I only knew the Event 
 itself took place ; and I, like a statue, stood rooted 
 in the midst of it. 
 
 And this was the Picture as, for many long 
 months, it presented itself incessantly to my 
 startled brain, by day and by night, awake or 
 asleep, in colours more distinct than words can 
 possibly paint them. 
 
 I saw myself standing in a large, square room— 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 7 
 
 a very handsome old room, filled with bookshelves 
 like a library. On one side stood a table, and on 
 the table a box. A flash of light rendered the 
 whole scene visible. But it wasn't light that came 
 in through the window. It was rather like light- 
 ning, so quick it was, and clear, and short-lived, 
 and terrible. Half-way to the door, I stood and 
 looked in horror at the sight revealed before my 
 eye:3 by that sudden flash. A man lay dead in a 
 little pool of blood that gurgled by short jets from 
 a wound on his left breast. I didn't even know at 
 the moment the man was my father ; though 
 slowly, afterward, by the concurrent testimony of 
 others, I learnt to call him so. But his relation- 
 ship wasn't part of the Picture j me. There, he 
 was only in my eyes a man — a man well past 
 middle age, with a long white beard, now dabbled 
 with the thick blood that kept gurgling so hatefully 
 from the red spot in his waistcoat. He lay on his 
 back, half-curled round toward one arm, exactly 
 as he fell. And the revolver he had been shot 
 with lay on the ground not far from him. 
 
 But that wasn't all the Picture. The murderer 
 was there as well as the victim. Besides the table, 
 and the box, and the wounded man, and the pistol, 
 I saw another figure behind, getting out of the 
 
 
8 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 window. It was the figure of a man, I should say 
 about twenty-five or thirty: he had just raised 
 hims(Jf to the ledge, and was poising to leap ; for 
 the room, as I afterwards learned, though on the 
 ground floor, stood raised on a basement above the 
 garden behind. I couldn't see the man's face, or 
 any part of him, indeed, except his stooping back, 
 and his feet, and his neck, and his elbows. But 
 what Httle I saw was printed indelibly on the very 
 fibre of my nature. I could have recognised that 
 man anywhere if I saw him in the same attitude. 
 I could have sworn to him in any court of justice 
 on the strength of his back alone, so vividly did I 
 picture it. 
 
 He was tall and thin, but he stooped like a 
 hunchback. 
 
 There were other points worth notice in that 
 strange mental photograph. The man was well- 
 dressed, and had the bearing of a gentleman. 
 Looking back upon the scene long after, when I 
 had learned once more what words and things 
 meant, I could feel instinctively this was no 
 common burglar, no vulgar murderer. Whatever 
 might have been the man's object in shooting my 
 father, I was certain from the very first it was not 
 mere robbery. But at the time, I 'm confident, I 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. Q 
 
 never reasoned about his motives or his actions in 
 any way. I merely took in the scene, as it were, 
 passively, in a great access of horror, which ren- 
 dered me incapable of sense or thought or speech 
 or motion. I saw the table, the box, the apparatus 
 by its side, the murdered man on the floor, the 
 pistol lying pointed with its muzzle towards his 
 body, the pool of blood that soaked deep into the 
 Turkey carpet beneath, the ledge of the window, 
 the young man's rounded back as he paused and 
 hesitated. And I also saw, like an instantaneous 
 flash, one hand pushed behind him, waving me 
 off", I almost thought, with the gesture of one 
 warning. 
 
 Why didn't I remember the murderer's face ? 
 That puzzled me long after. I must have seen 
 him before : I must surely have been there when 
 the crime was committed. I must have known at 
 the moment everything about it. But the blank 
 that came over my memory, came over it with the 
 fatal shot. All that went before, was to me as 
 though it were not. I recollect vaguely, as the 
 first point in my life, that my eyes were shut hard, 
 and darkness came over me. While they were so 
 shut, I heard an explosion. Next moment, I be- 
 lieve, I opened them, and saw this Picture. No 
 
lO RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 sensitive-plate could have photographed it more 
 instantaneousl}', as by an electric spark, than did 
 my retina that evening, as for months after I saw- 
 it all. In another moment, I shut my lids again, 
 and all was over. There was darkness once more, 
 and I was alone with my Horror. 
 
 In years then to come, I puzzled my head much 
 as to the meaning of the Picture. Gradually, step 
 by step, I worked some of it out, with the aid of 
 my friends, and of the evidence tendered at the 
 coroner's inquest. But for the moment I knew 
 nothing of all that. I was a newborn baby again. 
 Only with this important difference. They say 
 our minds at birth are like a sheet of white paper, 
 ready to take whatever impressions may fall upon 
 them. Mine was like a sheet all covered and 
 obscured by one hateful picture. It was weeks, I 
 fancy, before I knew or was conscious of anything 
 else but that. The Picture and a great Horror 
 divided my life between them. 
 
 Recollect, I didn't even remember the murdered 
 man w-as my father. I didn't recognise the room 
 as one in our own old house at Woodbury. I 
 didn't know anything at all except what I tell you 
 here. I saw the corpse, the blood, the box on the 
 table, the wires by the side, the bottles and baths 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. II 
 
 and plates of an amateur photographer's kit, 
 without knowing what they all meant. I saw 
 even the books not as books but as visible points 
 of colour. It had somethino; the effect on me that 
 it might have upon anyone else to be dropped 
 suddenly on the stage of a theatre at the very 
 moment when a hideous crime w^as being com- 
 mitted, and to believe it real, or rather, to know 
 it by some vague sense as hateful and actual. 
 
 Here my history began. I date from that 
 Picture. My second babyhood was passed in 
 the shadow of the abiding Horror. 
 
12 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 'HAT happened after is far more vague 
 to me. Compared with the vividness 
 of that one initial Picture, the events 
 of the next few months have only the blurred 
 indistinctness of all childish memories. For I 
 was a child once more, in all save stature, and 
 had to learn to remember things just like other 
 children. 
 
 I will try to tell the whole tale over agam exactly 
 as it then struck me. 
 
 After the Picture, I told you, I shut my eyes in 
 alarm for a second. When I opened them once 
 more there was a, noise, a very great noise, and 
 my recollection is that people had burst wildly 
 into the room, and were lifting the dead body, and 
 bending over it in astonishment, and speaking loud 
 to me, and staring at me. I believe they broke 
 the door open, though that's rather inference than 
 memory ; I learnt it afterwards. Soon some of 
 them rushed to the open window and looked out 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I3 
 
 into the garden. Then, suddenly, a man gave a 
 shout, and leaping on to the sill, jumped down in 
 pursuit, as I thought, of the murderer. As time 
 went on, more people flocked in ; and some of them 
 looked at the body and the pool of blood ; and 
 some of them turned round and spoke to me. But 
 what they said or what they meant I hadn't . the 
 slightest idea. The noise of the pistol-shot still 
 rang loud in my ears : the inefl'able Horror still 
 drowned all my senses. 
 
 After a while, another man came in, with an air 
 of authority, and felt my pulse and my brow, and 
 lifted me on to a sofa. But I didn't even remember 
 there was such a thing as a doctor. I lay there 
 for a while, quite dazed ; and the man, who was 
 kindly-looking and close-shaven and fatherly, gave 
 me something in a glass : after which he turned 
 round and examined the body. He looked hard 
 at the revolver, too, and chalked its place on the 
 ground. Then I saw no more, for two women 
 lifted me in their arms and took me up to bed ; 
 and with that, the first scene of my childhood 
 seemed to end entirely. 
 
 I lay in bed for a day or two, during which time 
 I was dimly aware of much commotion going on 
 here and there in the house ; and the doctor came 
 
14 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 night and morning, and tended me carefully. I 
 suppose I may call him the doctor now, though at 
 the time I didn't call him so — I knew him merely 
 as a visible figure. I don't believe I thought at all 
 during those earliest days, or gave things names 
 in any known language. Th^iy rather passed 
 before me dreamily in long procession, like a vague 
 panorama. When people spoke to me, it was like 
 the sound of a foreign tongue. I attached no 
 more importance to anything they said than to the 
 cawing of the rooks in the trees by the rectory. 
 
 At the end of five days, the doctor came once 
 more, and watched me a great deal, and spoke in 
 a low voice with a woman in a white cap and a 
 clean white apron who waited on me daily. As 
 soon as he was gone, my nurse, as I learned 
 afterwards to call her, — it's so hard not to drop 
 into the language of everyday life when one has 
 to describe things to other people, — my nurse got 
 me up, with much ado and solemnity, and dressed 
 me in a new black frock, very dismal and ugly, 
 and put on me a black hat, with a dreary-looking 
 veil ; and took me downstairs, with the aid of a 
 man who wore a suit of blue clothes and a queer 
 kind of helmet. The man was of the sort I now call 
 a policeman. These pictures are far less definite 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 15 
 
 in my mind than the one that begins my second 
 life ; but still, in a vague kind of way, I pretty 
 well remember them. 
 
 On the ground floor, nurse made me walk ; and 
 I walked out to the door, where a cab was in 
 waiting, drawn slowly by a pair of horses. People 
 were looking on, on either side, between the door 
 and the cab — great crowds of people, peering 
 eagerly forward ; and two more men in blue suits 
 were holding them off by main force from surging 
 against me and incommoding me. I don't think 
 they wanted to hurt me : it was rather curiosity 
 than anger I saw in their faces. But I was afraid, 
 and shrank back. They were eager to see me, 
 however, and pressed forward with loud cries, so 
 that the men in blue suits had hard work to 
 prevent them. 
 
 I know now there were two reasons why they 
 wanted to see me. I was the murdered man's 
 daughter, and I was a Psychological Phenomenon. 
 
 We drove away, through green lanes, in the 
 cab, nurse and I ; and in spite of the Horror, 
 which surrounded me always, and the Picture, 
 which recurred every time I shut my eyes to think, 
 I enjoyed that drive very much, with all the fresh 
 vividness of childish pleasure. Though I learnt 
 
l6 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 later I was eighteen years old at least, I was in my 
 inner self just like a baby of ten months, going 
 ta-ta. At the end of the drive, we drew up sharp 
 at a house, where some more men stood about, with 
 red bands on their caps, and took boxes from the 
 cab and put them into a van, while nurse and I 
 got into a different carriage, drawn quickly by a 
 thing that went puff-puff, puff-puff. I didn't know 
 it was a railway, and yet in a way I did. I half 
 forgot, half remembered it. Things that I 'd seen 
 in my previous state seemed to come back to me, 
 in fact, as soon as I saw them ; or at least to be 
 more familiar to me than things I 'd n^ver seen 
 before. Especially afterwards. But while things 
 were remembered, persons, I found by-and-by, were 
 completely forgotten. Or rather,while I remembered 
 after a while generalities, such as houses and men, 
 recognising them in the abstract as a house, or a 
 man, or a horse, or a baby, I forgot entirely 
 particulars, such as the names of people and the 
 places I had lived in. Words soon came back to 
 me : names and facts were lost : I knew the world 
 as a whole, not my own old part in it. 
 
 Well, not to make my story too long in these 
 early childish stages, we went on the train, as it 
 seemed to me, a long way across fields to Aunt 
 
RFXALLED TO LIFE. 1 7 
 
 Emma's. I didn't know she was Aunt Emma 
 then, for, indeed, I had never seen her before ; but 
 I remember arriving there at her pretty Httle 
 cottage, and seeing a sweet old lady — barely sixty, 
 I should say, but with smooth white hair, — who 
 stood on the steps of the house and cried like a 
 child, and held out her hands to me, and hugged me 
 and kissed me. And it was there that I learned 
 my first word. A great many times over, she spoke 
 about " Una." She said it so often, I caught 
 vaguely at the sound. And nurse, when she 
 answered her, said "Una" also. Then, when 
 Aunt Emma called me, she always said ** Una." 
 So it came to me dimly that Una meant me. But 
 I didn't exactly recollect it had been my name 
 before, though I learned in due time afterwards 
 that I 'd always been called so. However, just 
 at first, I picked up the word as a child might pick 
 it up ; and when, some months later, I began to 
 talk easily, I spoke of myself always in the third 
 person as Una. I can remember with a smile now 
 how I went one day to Aunt Emma — I, a great girl 
 of eighteen — and held up my skirt, that I 'd 
 muddied in the street, and said to her, with great 
 gravity : 
 
 "Una naughty girl: Una got her frock wet. 
 
l8 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Aunt Emma going to scold poor Una for being so 
 naughty ! " 
 
 Not that I often smiled, in those days ; for, in 
 spite of Aunt Emma's kindness, my second girl- 
 hood, like my first, was a very unhappy one. The 
 Horror and the Picture pursued me too close. It 
 was months and months before I could get rid for a 
 moment of that persistent nightmare. And yet I 
 had everything else on earth to make me happy. 
 Aunt Emma lived in a pretty east-coast town, with 
 high bracken-clad downs, and breezy common 
 beyond ; while in front stretched great sands, where 
 I loved to race about and to play cricket and tennis. 
 It was the loveliest town that ever you saw in your 
 life, with a broken chancel to the grand old church, 
 and a lighthouse on a hill, with delicious views to 
 seaward. The doctor had sent me there (I know 
 now) as soon as I was well enough to move, in 
 order to get me away from the terrible associations 
 of The Grange at Woodbury. As long as I lived 
 in the midst of scenes which would remind me of 
 poor father, he said, and of his tragical death, there 
 was no hope of my recovery. The only chance 
 for me to regain what I had lost in that moment 
 of shock was complete change of air, of life, of 
 surroundings. Aunt Emma, for her part, was 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. XQ 
 
 only too glad to take me in : and as poor papa had 
 died intestate, Aunt Emma was now, of course, 
 my legal guardian. 
 
 She was my mother's sister, I learned as time 
 went on ; and there had been feud while he lived 
 between her and my father. Why, I couldn't 
 imagine. She was the sweetest old soul I ever 
 knew, indeed, and what on earth he could have 
 quarrelled with her about I never could fathom. 
 She tended me so carefully that as months went 
 by, the Horror began to decrease and my soul to 
 become calm again. I grew gradually able to 
 remain in a room alone for a few minutes at a 
 time, and to sleep at night in a bed by myself, if 
 only there was a candle, and nurse was in another 
 bed in the same room close by me. 
 
 Yet every now and again a fresh shivering fit 
 came on. At such times I would cover my head 
 with the bedclothes and cower, and see the Picture 
 even so floating visibly in mid-air like a vision 
 before me. 
 
 My second education must have been almost as 
 much of a business as my first had been, only 
 rather less longsome. I had first to relearn the 
 English language, which came back to me by 
 degrees, much quicker, of course, than I had 
 
 2 * 
 
20 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 picked it up in my childhood. Then I had to 
 begin again with reading, writing, and arithmetic 
 — all new to me in a way, and all old in another. 
 Whatever I learned and whatever I read seemed 
 novel while I learned it, but familiar the moment 
 I had thoroughly grasped it. To put it shortly, I 
 could remember nothing of myself, but I could 
 recall many things, after a time, as soon as they 
 were told me clearly. The process was rather a 
 process of reminding than of teaching, properly 
 so called. But it took some years for me to recall 
 things, even when I was reminded of them. 
 
 I spent four years at Aunt Emma's, growing 
 gradually to my own age again. At the end of 
 that time I was counted a girl of twenty-two, much 
 like any other. But I was older than my age ; and 
 the shadow of the Horror pursued me incessantly. 
 
 All that time I knew, too, from what I heard said 
 in the house that my father's murderer had never 
 been caught, and that nobody even knew who he 
 was, or anything definite about him. The police 
 gave him up as an uncaught criminal. He was 
 still at large, and might always be so. I knew this 
 from vague hints and from vague hints alone ; for 
 whenever I tried to ask, I was hushed up at once 
 with an air of authority. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 21 
 
 " Una, dearest," Aunt Emma would say, in her 
 quiet fashion, ♦« you mustn't talk about that night. 
 I have Dr. Wade's strict orders that nothing n^ust 
 be said to you about it, and above all nothing that 
 could in any way excite or arouse you." 
 
 So I was fain to keep my peace ; for though Aunt 
 Emma was kind, she ruled me still in all things 
 like a little girl, as I was when I came to her. 
 
32 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 an inncxpcctcD IDiaitor. 
 
 'I^NE morning, after I'd been four whole 
 
 ^^ years at Aunt Emma's, I heard a ring 
 at the bell, and, looking over the stairs, 
 saw a tall and handsome man in a semi-military 
 coat, who asked in a most audible voice for Miss 
 Callingham. 
 
 Maria, the housemaid, hesitated a moment. 
 
 ** Miss Callingham 's in, sir," she answered in a 
 somewhat dubious tone ; " but I don't know 
 whether I ought to let you see her or not. My 
 mistress is out ; and I 've strict orders that no 
 strangers are to call on Miss Callingham when her 
 aunt 's not here." 
 
 And she held the door ajar in her hand 
 undecidedly. 
 
 The tall man smiled, and seemed to me to slip 
 a coin quietly into Maria's palm. 
 
 '• So much the better," he answered, with un- 
 obtrusive persistence ; "I thought Miss Moore 
 was out. T':at 's just why I 've come. I 'm an 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 2$ 
 
 ofiiccr from Scotland Yard, and I want to see 
 Miss Callingham — alone — most particularly." 
 
 Maria drew herself up and paused. 
 
 My heart stood still within me at this chance of 
 enlightenment. I guessed what he meant ; so I 
 called over the stairs to her, in a tremor of excite- 
 ment : 
 
 " Show the gentleman into the drawing-room, 
 Maria. I '11 come down to him at once." 
 
 For I was dying to know the explanation of the 
 Picture that haunted me so persistently ; and as 
 nobody at home would ever tell me anything 
 worth knowing about it, I thought this was as 
 good an opportunity as I could get for making a 
 beginning towards the solution of the mystery. 
 
 Well, I ran into my own room as quick as 
 quick could be, and set my front hair straight, 
 and slipped on a hat and jacket (for I was in my 
 morning dress), and then went down to the draw- 
 ing-room to see the Inspector. 
 
 He rose as I entered. He was a gentleman, I 
 felt at once. His manner was as deferential, as 
 kmd, and as considerate to my sensitiveness, as 
 anything it 's possible for you to imagine in 
 anyone. 
 
 " I 'm sorry to have to trouble you. Miss 
 
24 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Gallingham," he said, with a very gentle smile ; 
 *' but I daresay you can understand yourself the 
 object of my visit. I could have wished to come 
 in a more authorised way ; but I 've been in corre- 
 spondence with Miss Moore for some time past as 
 to the desirability of reopening the inquiry with 
 regard to your father's unfortunate death ; and I 
 thought the time might now have arrived when it 
 would be possible to put a few questions to you 
 personally upon that unhappy subject. Miss 
 Moore objected to my plan. She thought it would 
 still perhaps be prejudicial to your health — a point 
 in which Dr. Wade, I must say, entirely agrees 
 with her. Nevertheless, in the interests of Justice, 
 as the murderer is still at large, I 've ventured to 
 ask you for this interview ; because what I read 
 in the newspapers about the state of your 
 health ." 
 
 I interrupted him, astonished. 
 
 " What you read in the newspapers about the 
 state of my health ! " I repeated, thunderstruck. 
 " Why, surely they don't put the state of my 
 health in the newspapers 1 " 
 
 For I didn't know then I was a Psychological 
 Phenomenon. 
 
 The Inspector smiled blandly, and pulling out 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 25 
 
 his pocket-book, selected a cutting from a pile 
 that apparently all referred to me. 
 
 "You're mistaken," he said, briefly. "The 
 newspapers, on the contrary, have treated your 
 case at great length. See, here 's the latest report. 
 That 's clipped from last Wednesday's Tclegvaph.'' 
 
 I remembered then that a paragraph of just 
 that size had been carefully cut out of Wednes- 
 day's paper before I was allowed by Aunt Emma 
 to read it. Aunt Emma always glanced over the 
 paper first, indeed, and often cut out such offend- 
 ing paragraphs. But I never attached much 
 importance to their absence before, because I 
 thought it was merely a little fussy result of 
 auntie's good old English sense of maidenly 
 modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare 
 my blushes. I knew girls were often prevented 
 on particular days from reading the papers. 
 
 But now I seized the paragraph he handed me, 
 and read it with deep interest. It was the very 
 first time I had seen my own name in a printed 
 newspaper. I didn't know then how often it had 
 figured there. 
 
 The paragraph was headed, "The Woodbury 
 Murder," and it ran something like this, as well 
 as I can remember it : 
 
26 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " There are still hopes that the miscreant who 
 shot Mr. Vivian Callingham at The Grange, at 
 Woodbury, some four years since, may be 
 tracked down and punished at last for his 
 cowardly crime. It will be fresh in everyone's 
 memory, as one of the most romantic episodes in 
 that extraordinary tragedy, that at the precise 
 moment of her father's death. Miss Callingham, 
 who was present in the room during the attack, 
 and who alone might have been a witness capable 
 of recognising or describing the wretched assailant, 
 lost her reason on the spot, owing to the appalling 
 shock to her nervous system, and remained for 
 some months in an i-ibecile condition. Gradually, 
 as we have informed our readers from time to time. 
 Miss Callingham's intellect has become stronger 
 and stronger ; and though she is still totally unable 
 to remember spontaneously any events that occur- 
 red before her father's death, it is hoped it may be 
 possible, by describing vividly certain trains of 
 previous incidents, to recall them in some small 
 degree to her imperfect memory. Dr. Thornton, 
 of Welbeck Street, who has visited her from time 
 to time on behalf of the Treasury, in conjunction 
 with Dr. Wade, her own medical attendant, went 
 down to Barton -on -the -Sea on Monday, and 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I'] 
 
 once more examined Miss Callingham's intellect. 
 Though the Doctor is judiciously reticent as to 
 the result of his visit, it is generally believed at 
 Barton that he thinks the young lady sufficiently 
 recovered to undergo a regular interrogatory ; and 
 in spite of the fact that Dr. Wade is opposed to 
 any such proceeding at present, as prejudicial to 
 the lady's health, it is not unlikely that the Trea- 
 sury may act upon their own medical official's 
 opinion, and send down an Inspector from Scot- 
 land Yard to make inquiries direct on the subject 
 from Miss Callingham in person." 
 
 My head swam round. It was all like a dream 
 to me. I held my forehead with my hands, and 
 gazed blankly at the Inspector. 
 
 " You understand what all this means ? " he 
 said interrogatively, leaning forward as he spoke. 
 " You remember the murder ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," I answered him, trembling all over. 
 " I remember every detail of it, I could describe 
 to you exactly all the objects in the room. The 
 Picture it left behind has burned itself into my 
 brain like a flash of Hghtning ! " 
 
 The Inspector drew his chair nearer. 
 
 " Now, Miss Callingham," he said in a very 
 serious voice, " that 's a remarkable expression — 
 
28 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ' like a flash of lightning.' Bear in mind, this is 
 a matter of life and death to somebody some- 
 where. Somebody's neck may depend upon your 
 answers. Will you tell me exactly how much you 
 remember ? " 
 
 I told him in a few words precisely how the 
 scene had imprinted itself on my memory. I 
 recalled the room, the box, the green wires, the 
 carpet ; the man who lay dead in his blood on the 
 floor; the man who stood poised ready to leap 
 from the window. He let me go on unchecked 
 till I 'd finished everything I had to say sponta- 
 neously. Then he took a photograph from his 
 pocket, which he didn't show me. Looking at it 
 attentively, he asked me questions, one by one, 
 about the different things in the room at the time 
 in very minute detail : Where exactly waF the box ? 
 How did it stand relatively to the unlighted lamp? 
 What was the position of the pistol or the floor ? 
 In which direction was my father's head lying? 
 Though it brought back the Horror to me in a 
 fuller and more terrible form than ever, I answered 
 all his questions to the very best of my ability. I 
 could picture the whole scene like a photograph to 
 myself; and I didn't doubt the object he held in 
 his hand was a photograph of the room as it 
 
r 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 29 
 
 appeared after the murder. He checked my state- 
 me'its, one by one as I went on, by reference to 
 the photograph, murmuring half to himself now 
 and again: "Yes, yes, exactly so"; "That's 
 right " ; " That was so," at each item I men- 
 tioned. 
 
 At the end of these inquiries, he paused and 
 looked hard at me. 
 
 " Now, Miss Callingham," he said again, peering 
 deep into my eyes, " I want you to concentrate 
 your mind very much, not on this Picture you 
 carry so vividly in your own brain, but on the 
 events that went immediately before and after it. 
 Pause long and think. Tr}^ hard to remember. 
 And first, you say there was a great flash of light. 
 Now, answer me this : was it one flash alone, or 
 had there been several ? " 
 
 I stopped and racked my brain. Blank, blank, 
 as usual. 
 
 " I can't remember," I faltered out, longing 
 terribly to cry. " I can recall just that one scene, 
 and nothing else in the world before it." 
 
 He looked at me fixedly, jotting down a few 
 words in his note-book as he looked. Then he 
 spoke again, still more slowly : 
 
 " Now, try once more," he said, with an encour- 
 
30 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 raging air. ** You saw this man's back as he was 
 getting out of the window. But can't you remem- 
 ber having seen his face before? Had he a beard? 
 a moustache ? what eyes ? what nose ? Did you 
 see the shot fired ? And if so, what sort of person 
 was the man who fired it ? " 
 
 Again I searched the pigeon-holes of my mem- 
 ory in vain, as I had done a hundred times before 
 by myself. 
 
 " It 's no use," I cried helplessly, letting my 
 hands drop by my side. " I can't remember a thing, 
 except the Picture. I don't know whether I saw 
 the shot fired or not. I don't know what the 
 murderer looked like in the face. I 've told you 
 all I know. I can recall nothing else. It 's all a 
 great blank to me." 
 
 The Inspector hesitated a moment, as if in 
 doubt what step to take next. Then he drew him- 
 self up and said, still more gravely : 
 
 **This inability to assist us is really very 
 singular. I had hoped, after Dr. Thornton's 
 report, that we might at last count with some 
 certainty upon arriving at fresh results as to the 
 actual murder. I can see from what you tell 
 me you're a young lady of intelligence — much 
 above the average — and great strength of mind. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 3I 
 
 It 's curious your memory should fail you so 
 pointedly just where we stand most in need of its 
 aid. Recollect, nobody else but you ever saw the 
 murderer's face. Now, I 'm going to presume 
 you're answering me honestly, and try a bold 
 means to arouse your dormant memory. Look 
 hard, and hark back. — Is that the room you recol- 
 lect ? Is that the picture that still haunts and 
 pursues you i " 
 
 He handed me the photograph he held in his 
 fingers. I took it, all on fire. The sight almost 
 made me turn sick with horror. To my awe and 
 amazement, it was indeed the very scene I remem- 
 bered so well. Only, of course, it was taken from 
 another point of view, and represented things in 
 rather different relative positions to those I figured 
 them in. But it showed my father's body lying 
 dead upon the floor; it showed his poor corpse 
 weltering helpless in its blood ; it showed myself, 
 as a girl of eighteen, standing awestruck, gazing 
 on in blank horror at the sight ; and in the back- 
 ground, half blurred by the summer evening light, 
 it showed the vague outline of a man's back, get- 
 ting out of the window. On one side was the 
 door : that formed no part of my mental picture, 
 because it was at my back ; but in the photograph 
 
32 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of being 
 burst open. The details were vague in part — 
 probably the picture had never been properly 
 focussed ; — but the main figures stood out with 
 perfect clearness, and everything in the room was, 
 allowing for the changed point of view, exactly 
 as I remembered it in my persistent mental 
 photograph. 
 
 I drew a deep breath. 
 
 "That's my Picture," I said, slowly. "But 
 it recalls to me nothing new. I — I don't under- 
 stand it." 
 
 The Inspector stared at me hard once more. 
 
 " Do you know," he asked, '* how that photo- 
 graph was produced, and how it came into our 
 possession ? " 
 
 I trembled violently. 
 
 " No, I don't," I answered, reddening. " But — I 
 think it had something to do with the flash like 
 lightning." 
 
 The Inspector jumped at those words like a cat 
 upon a mouse. 
 
 " Quite right," he cried briskly, as one who at 
 last, after long search, finds a hopeful clue where 
 all seemed hopeless. " It had to do with the flash. 
 The flash produced it. This is a photograph 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 taken by your father's process. ... Of course 
 you recollect your father's process? " 
 
 He eyed me close. The words, as he spoke 
 them, seemed to call up dimly some faint memory 
 of my pre-natal days — of my First State, as I had 
 learned from the doctors to call it. But his scru- 
 tiny made me shrink. I shut my eyes and looked 
 back. 
 
 ** I think," I said slowly, rummaging my mem- 
 ory half in vain, " I remember something about it. 
 It had something to do with photography, hadn't 
 it ? . . . No, no, with the electric light. . . . 
 I can't exactl}' remember which. Will you tell 
 me all about it ? " 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, and, eyeing me all 
 the time with that same watchful glance, began to 
 describe to me in some detail an apparatus which 
 he said my father had devised, for taking instan- 
 taneous photographs by the electric light, with a 
 clockwork mechanism. It was an apparatus that 
 let sensitive-plates revolve one after another oppo- 
 site the lens of a camera ; and as each was exposed, 
 the clockwork that moved it produced an electric 
 spark, so as to represent such a series of effects as 
 the successive positions of a horse in trotting. My 
 father, it seemed, was of a scientific turn, and had 
 
34 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 just perfected this new automatic machine before 
 his sudden death. I Hstened with breathless 
 interest ; for up to that time I had never been 
 allowed to hear anything about my father — any- 
 thing about the great tragedy with which my 
 second life began. It was wonderful to me even 
 now to be allowed to speak and ask questions on 
 it with anybody. So hedged about had I been all 
 my days with mystery. 
 
 As I listened, I saw the Inspector could tell by 
 the answering flash in my eye that his words re- 
 called something to me, however vaguely. As he 
 finished, I leant forward, and with a very flushed 
 face, that I could feel myself, I cried, in a burst of 
 recollection : 
 
 ** Yes, yes. I remember. And the box on the 
 table — the box that 's in my mental picture, and is 
 jwt in the photograph — that was the apparatus 
 you 've just been describing." 
 
 The Inspector turned upon me with a rapidity 
 that fairly took my breath away. 
 
 ** Well, where are the other ones ? " he asked, 
 pouncing down upon me quite fiercely. 
 
 «* The other what ? " I repeated, amazed ; for I 
 didn't really understand him. 
 
 ♦' Why, the other photographs ! " he replied, as 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 if trying to surprise me. *' There must have been 
 more, you know. It held six plates. Except for 
 this one, the apparatus, when we found it, was 
 empty." 
 
 His manner seemed to crush out the faint spark 
 of recollection that just flickered within me. I 
 collapsed at once. I couldn't stand such brusque- 
 ness. 
 
 '* I don't know what 3'ou mean," I answered in 
 despair. *' I never saw the plates. I know nothing 
 about them." 
 
36 RECALLED TO LIFF,. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Xlbc Ston? of tbc pbotoflrapbfl. 
 
 M^HE Inspector scanned me close for a few 
 
 ^-> minutes in silence. He seemed doubtful, 
 
 suspicious. At last he made a new move. 
 
 " I believe you, Miss Callinghani," he said, 
 more gently. " I can see this train of thought 
 distresses you too much. But I can see, too, our 
 best chance lies in supplying you with independent 
 clues which you may work out for yourself. You 
 must re-educate your memory. You want to know 
 all about this- murder, of course. Well, now, look 
 over these papers. They'll tell you in brief what 
 little we know about it. And they may succeed 
 in striking afresh some resonant chord in your 
 memory." 
 
 He handed me a book of pasted newspaper 
 paragraphs, interspersed here and there in red ink 
 with little manuscript notes and comments. I 
 began to read it with profound interest. It was 
 so strange for me thus to learn for the first time 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 37 
 
 the history of my own life ; for I was quite ignorant 
 as yet of almost everything about my First State, 
 and my father and mother. 
 
 The paragraphs told me the w lole story of the 
 crime, as far as it was known to the world, from 
 the very beginning. First of all, in the papers, 
 came the bald announcement that a murder had 
 been committed in a country town in Staffordshire ; 
 and that the victim was Mr. Vivian Callingham, a 
 gentleman of means, residing in his own house, 
 The Grange, at Woodbury. Mr. Callingham was 
 the inventor of the acmegraphic process. The 
 servants, said the telegram to the London papers, 
 had heard the sound of a pistol-shot, about half- 
 past eight at night, coming from the direction of 
 Mr. Callingham's library. Aroused by the report, 
 they rushed hastily to the spot, and broke open 
 the door, which was locked from within. As they 
 did so, a horrible sight met their astonished eyes, 
 Mr. Callingham's dead body lay extended on the 
 ground, shot right through the heart, and welt<iring 
 in its life-blood. Miss Callingham stood by his 
 side, transfixed with horror, and mute in her 
 agony. On the floor lay the pistol tha<- had fired 
 the fatal shot. And just as the servants entered, 
 for one second of time, the murderer ho was 
 
38 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 otherwise wholly unknown, was seen to leap from 
 the window into the shrubbery below. The 
 gardener rushed after him, and jumped down at 
 the same spot. But the murderer had dis- 
 appeared as if by magic. It was conjectured 
 he must have darted down the road at full speed, 
 vaulted the gate, which was usually locked, and 
 made off at a rapid run for the open country. Up 
 to date of going to press, the Telegraph said, he 
 was still at large and had not been apprehended. 
 
 That was the earliest account — bald, simple, 
 unvarnished. Then came mysterious messages 
 from the Central Press about the absence of any 
 clue to identify the stranger. He hadn't entered 
 the house by any regular way, it seemed ; unless, 
 indeed, Mr. Callingham had brought him home 
 himself and let him in with the latchkey. None 
 of the servants had opened the door that evening 
 to any suspicious character ; not a soul had they 
 seen, nor did any of them know a man was with 
 their master in the library. They heard voices, to 
 be sure — voices, loud at times and angry, — but 
 they supposed it was Mr. Callingham talking with 
 his daughter. Till roused by the fatal pistol- shot, the 
 gardener said, they had no cause for alarm. Even 
 the footmarks the stranger might have left as he 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 39 
 
 leaped from the window were obliterated by the 
 prints of the gardener's boots as he jumped hastily 
 after him. The only person who could cast any 
 light upon the mystery at all was clearly Miss 
 Callingham , who was in the room at the moment. But 
 Miss Callingham's mind was completely unhinged 
 for the present by the nervous shock she had 
 received as her father fell dead before her. They 
 must wait a few days till she recovered conscious- 
 ness, and then they might confidently hope that 
 the murderer would be identified, or at least so 
 described that the police could track him. 
 
 After that, I read the report of the coroner's 
 inquest. The facts there elicited added nothing 
 very new to the general view of the case. Only, the 
 servants remarked on examination, there was a 
 strange smell of chemicals in the room when they 
 entered ; and the doctors seemed to suggest that 
 the smell might be that of chloroform, mixed with 
 another very powerful drug known to affect the 
 memory. Miss Callingham's present state, they 
 thought, might thus perhaps in part be accounted 
 for. 
 
 You can't imagine how curious it was for me to 
 see myself thus impersonally discussed at such a 
 distance of time, or to learn so long after that for 
 
40 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ten days or more I had been the central object of 
 interest to all reading England. My name was 
 bandied about without the slightest reserve. I 
 trembled to see how cavalierly the press had 
 treated me. 
 
 As I went on, I began to learn more and more 
 about my father. He had made money in Australia, 
 it was said, and had come to live at Woodbury 
 some fourteen years earlier, where my mother had 
 died when I was a child of four ; and some accounts 
 said she was a widow of fortune. My father had 
 been interested in chemistry and photography, it 
 seemed, and had lately completed a new invention, 
 the acmegraph, for taking successive photographs 
 at measured intervals of so many seconds by 
 electric light. He was a grave, stern man, the 
 papers said, more feared than loved by his servants 
 and neighbours ; but nobody about was known to 
 have a personal grudge against him. On the 
 contrary, he lived at peace with all men. The 
 motive for the murder remained to the end a 
 complete mystery. 
 
 On the second morning of the inquest, however, 
 a curious thing happened. The poHce, it appeared, 
 had sealed up the room where the murder took 
 place, and allowed nobody to enter it till the 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 4I 
 
 inquiry was over. But after the jury came round 
 to view the room, the poHceman in charge found 
 the window at the back of the house had been 
 recently opened, and the box with the photographic 
 apparatus had been stolen from the library. Till 
 that moment nobody had attached any importance 
 to the presence of this camera. It hadn't even been 
 opened and examined by the police, who had care- 
 fully noted everything else in the library. But as 
 soon as the box was missed strange questions 
 began to be asked and conjecturally answered. 
 The police for the first time then observed that 
 though it was half-past eight at night when the 
 murder occurred, and the lamp was not lighted, 
 the witnesses who burst first into the room described 
 all they saw as if they had seen it clearly. They 
 spoke of things as they would be seen in a very 
 bright light, with absolute definiteness. This set 
 up inquiry, and the result of the inquiry was to 
 bring out the fact, which in the excitement of the 
 moment had escaped the notice of all the servants, 
 that as they entered the room and stared about at 
 the murder, the electric flash of the apparatus was 
 actually in operation. But the scene itself had 
 diverted their attention from the minor matter of 
 the light that showed it. 
 
42 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 The Inspector had been watching me narrowly 
 as I read these extracts. When I reached that 
 point, he broke in with a word of explanation. 
 
 *' Well, that put me on the track, you see," he 
 said, leaning forward once more. " I thought to 
 myself, if the light was acting, then the whole 
 apparatus must necessarily have been at work, and 
 the scene as it took place must have been photo- 
 graphed, act by act and step by step, exactly as it 
 happened. At the time the murderer, whoever he 
 was, can't have known the meaning of the flashes. 
 But later, he must have come to learn in some 
 way what the electric light meant, and must have 
 realised, sooner than we did, that there in the box, 
 in the form of six successive negatives of the stages 
 in the crime, was the evidence that would infallibly 
 convict him of this murder." He stroked his 
 moustache thoughtfully. "And to think, too," he 
 went on with a somewhat sheepish air, '* we should 
 have had those photographs there in our power all 
 those days and nights, and have let them in the 
 end slip like that through our fingers ! To think 
 he should have found it out sooner than we ! To 
 think that an amateur like the murderer should 
 have outwitted us ! " 
 
 ♦• But how do you know," I cried, " there was 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 43 
 
 ever more than one photograph ? How do you 
 know this wasn't the only negative?" 
 
 '' Because," the Inspector answered quickly, 
 pointing to a figure in the corner of the proof, 
 "do you see that six? Well, that tells the tale. 
 Each plate of the series was numbered so in the 
 apparatus. Number six could only fall into focus 
 after numbers one, and two, and three, and four, and 
 five, had first been photographed. We 've only got 
 the last — and least useful for our purpose. There 
 must have been five earlier ones, showing every 
 stage of the crime, if only we 'd known it." 
 
 I was worked up now to a strange pitch of 
 excitement. 
 
 "And how did this one come into your posses- 
 sion ? " 1 asked, all breathless. "If you managed to 
 lay your hands on one, why not on all six of them ?" 
 
 The Inspector drew a long breath. 
 
 "Ah, that's the trouble!" he replied, still gazing 
 at me hard. " You see, it was this way. As soon 
 as we found the camera was missing, we came to 
 the conclusion the murderer must have returned 
 to The Grange to fetch it. But it was a large and 
 heavy box, and the only one of its kind as yet 
 manufactured ; so, to carry it away in his hands 
 would no doubt have led to instant detection. 
 
44 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 I concluded, therefore, the man would take off the 
 box entire, so as to prevent the danger of removing 
 the plates on the spot ; and as soon as he reached 
 a place of safety in the shrubbery, he 'd fling away 
 the camera, either destroying the incriminating 
 negatives then and there or carrying them off with 
 him. The details of the invention had already 
 been explained to me by your father's instrument- 
 maker, who set up the clockwork for him from his 
 own designs ; and I knew that the removal of the 
 plates from the box was a delicate, and to some 
 extent a difficult, operation. So I felt sure they 
 could only have been taken out in a place of com- 
 parative safety, not far from the house ; and I 
 searched the shrubbery carefully, to find the 
 camera." 
 
 "And you found it at last ?" I asked, unable to 
 restrain my agitation. 
 
 " I found it at last," he answered, '* near the far 
 end of the grounds, just flung into the deep grass, 
 behind a clump of lilacs. The camera was there 
 intact, but five plates were missing. The sixth, 
 from which the positive you hold in your hand 
 was taken, had got jammed in the mechanism in 
 the effort to remove it. Evidently the murderer 
 had tried to take out the plates in a very great 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 45 
 
 hurry and with trembHng hands, as was not un- 
 natural. He had succeeded with five, when the 
 sixth stuck fast in the groove of the clockwork. 
 Just at that moment, as we judged, either an alarm 
 was raised in the rear, or some panic fear seized 
 on him. Probably the fellow judged right that the 
 most incriminating pictures of all had by that 
 time been removed, and that the last would only 
 show his back, if it included him at all, or if he 
 came into focus. Perhaps he had even been able 
 unconsciously to count the flashes at the moment, 
 and knew that before the sixth flash arrived he 
 was on the ledge of the window. At any rate, he 
 clearly gave up the attempt to remove the sixth, 
 and flung the whole apparatus away from him in 
 a sudden access of horror. We guessed as much 
 both from the appearance of the spot where the 
 grass was trampled down, and the way the angle 
 of the camera was imbedded forcibly in the soft 
 ground of the shrubbery." 
 
 "And he got away with the rest !" I exclaimed, 
 following it up like a story, but a story in which I 
 was myself an unconscious character. 
 
 " No doubt," the Inspector answered, stroking 
 his chin regretfully. '* And what 's most annoying 
 of all, we've every reason to suppose the fellow 
 
-^ 
 
 46 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 stole the things only a few minutes before we 
 actually missed them. For we saw grounds for 
 supposing he jumped away from the spot, and 
 climbed over the wall at the back, cutting his 
 hands as he went with the bottle-glass on the top 
 to prevent intruders. And what makes us think 
 only a very short time must have elapsed between 
 the removal of the plates and the moment we 
 came upon his tracks is this — the blood from his 
 cut hands was still fresh and wet upon the wall 
 when we found it." 
 
 " Then you only just missed him !" I exclaimed. 
 " He got off by the skin of his teeth. It 's won- 
 derful, when you were so near, you shouldn't have 
 managed to overtake him ! One would have 
 thought you must have been able to track him to 
 earth somehow ! " 
 
 "One would have thought so," the Inspector 
 answered, rather crestfallen. ** But policemen, 
 after all, are human like the rest of us. We 
 missed the one chance that might have led to an 
 arrest. And now, what I want to ask you once 
 more is this : Reflecting over what you 've heard 
 and read to-day, do you think you can recollect — 
 a very small matter — whether or not there were 
 several distinct flashes ? " 
 
w 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 47 
 
 I shut my eyes once more, and looked hard into 
 the past. Slowly, as I looked, a sort of dream 
 seemed to come over me. I saw it vaguely now, 
 or thought I saw it. Flash, flash, flash, flash. 
 Then the sound of the pistol. Then the Picture, 
 and the Horror, and the awful blank. I opened 
 my eyes again, and told the Inspector so. 
 
 "And once more," he went on, in a very in- 
 sinuating voice. " Shut your eyes again, and look 
 back upon that day. Can't you remember whether 
 or not, just a moment before, you saw the murderer's 
 face by the light of the flashes ?" 
 
 I shut my eyes and thought. Again the flashes 
 seemed to stand out clear and distinct. But no 
 detail supervened — no face came back to me. I 
 felt it was useless. 
 
 •' Impossible ! " I said shortly. *' It only makes 
 my head swim. I can remember no further." 
 
 ** I see," the Inspector answered. " It 's just as 
 Dr. Wade said. Suggest a fact in your past 
 history, and you may possibly remember it ; but 
 ask you to recall anything not suggested or already 
 known, and all seems a mere blank to you ! You 
 haven't the faintest idea, then, who the murderer 
 was or what he looked like ? " 
 
 I rose up before him solemnly, and stared him 
 
48 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 full in the face. I was wrought up by that time 
 to a perfect pitch of excitement and interest. 
 
 " I haven't the faintest idea," I answered, feeling 
 myself a woman at last, and realising my freedom ; 
 •' I know and remember no more of it than you 
 do. But from this moment forth, I shall not rest 
 until I've found him out and tracked him down, 
 and punished him. I shall never let my head rest 
 in peace on my pillow until I 've discovered my 
 father's murderer!" 
 
 "That's well," the Inspector said sharply, 
 shutting his notes up to go. *' If you persevere 
 in that mind, and do as you say, we shall soon get 
 to the bottom of the Woodbury Mystery ! " 
 
 And even as he spoke a key turned in the front 
 door. I knew it was Aunt Emma, come in from 
 her marketing. 
 
RFXALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 49 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 5 ^Become a Moman. 
 
 UNT EMMA burst into the room, all 
 horror and astonishment. She looked at 
 the Inspector for a few seconds in breatl.- 
 less indignation ; then she broke out in a tone of 
 fiery remonstrance which fairly surprised me : 
 
 ** What do you mean by this intrusion, sir ? 
 How dare you force your way into my house in 
 my absence ? How dare you encourage my ser- 
 vants to disobey my orders ? How dare you 
 imperil this young lady's health by coming here to 
 talk with her ? " 
 
 She turned round to me anxiously. I suppose 
 I was very flushed with excitement and surprise. 
 
 " My darling child," she cried, growing pale all 
 at once, " Maria should never have allowed him to 
 come inside the door ! You should have stopped 
 upstairs ! You should have refused to see him ! 
 I shall have you ill again on my hands, as before, 
 
 4 
 
50 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 after this. He '11 have undone all the good the 
 last four years have done for you ! " 
 
 But I was another woman now. I felt it in a 
 moment. 
 
 " Auntie dearest," I answered, moving across to 
 her, and laying my hand on her shoulder to soothe 
 her poor ruffled nerves, "don't be the least alarmed. 
 It 's I who 'm to blame, and not Maria. I told her 
 to let this gentleman in. He 's done me good, not 
 harm. I 'm so glad to have been allowed at last to 
 speak freely about it ! " 
 
 Aunt Emma shook all over, visibly to the naked 
 eye. 
 
 "You'll have a relapse, my child!" she ex- 
 claimed, half crying, and clinging to me in her 
 terror. " You '11 forget all you 've learned : you '11 
 go back these four years again ! — Leave my 
 house at once, sir ! You should never have 
 entered it ! " 
 
 I stood between them like a statue. 
 
 '* No, stop here a little longer," I said, waving my 
 hand towards him imperiously. " I haven't yet 
 heard all it 's right for me to hear. . . . Auntie, 
 you mistake. I 'm a woman at last. I see what 
 everything means. I 'm beginning to remember 
 again. For four years that hateful Picture has 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 51 
 
 haunted me night and day. I could never shut 
 my eyes for a minute without seeing it. I 've 
 longed to know what it all meant ; but whenever 
 I 've asked, I 've been repressed like a baby. I 'm 
 a baby no longer : I feel myself a woman. What 
 the Inspector here has told me already, half opens 
 my eyes : I must have them opened altogether 
 now. I can't stop at this point. I 'm going back 
 to Woodbury." 
 
 Aunt Emma clung to me still harder in a perfect 
 agony of passionate terror. 
 
 ** To Woodbury, my darling ! " she cried. " Going 
 back! Oh, Una, it '11 kill you ! " 
 
 " I think not," the Inspector answered, with a 
 very quiet smile. " Miss Callingham has recovered, 
 I venture to say, far more profoundly than you 
 imagine. This repression, our medical adviser 
 tells us, has been bad for her. If she 's allowed to 
 visit freely the places connected with her earlier 
 life, it may all return again to her ; and the ends of 
 Justice may thus at last be served for us. I notice 
 already one hopeful symptom : Miss Callingham 
 speaks of going hack to Woodbury." 
 
 Aunt Emma looked up at him, horrified. All 
 her firmness was gone now. 
 
 •* It 's you who 've put this into her head ! " she 
 
 * 
 
52 RECA1LLED TO LIFE. 
 
 exclaimed, in a ferment of horror. "She'd never 
 thought of it herself. You 've made her do it ! " 
 
 " On the contrary, auntie," I answered, feeling 
 my ground grow surer under me every moment as 
 I spoke, " this gentleman has never even by the 
 merest hint suggested such an idea to my mind. 
 It occurred to me quite spontaneously. I must find 
 out now who was my father's murderer ! All the 
 Inspector has told me seems to arouse in my brain 
 some vague, forgotten chords. It brings back to 
 me faint shadows. I feel sure if I went to Wood- 
 bury I should remember much more. And then, 
 you must see for yourself, there's another reason, 
 dear, that ought to make me go. Nobody but I 
 ever saw the murderer's face. It 's a duty im- 
 posed upon me from without, as it were, never to 
 rest again in peace till I 've recognised him." 
 
 Aunt Emma collapsed into an easy-chair. Her 
 face was deadly pale. Her fingers trembled. 
 
 " If you go, Una," she cried, playing nervously 
 with her gloves, "I must go with you too! I must 
 take care of you : I must watch over you ! " 
 
 I took iier quivering hand in mine and stroked 
 it gently. It was a soft and delicate white little 
 hand, all marked inside with curious ragged scars 
 that I 'd known and observed ever since I first 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 53 
 
 knew her. I held it in silence for a minute. Some- 
 how I felt our positions were reversed to-day. 
 This interview had suddenly brought out what I 
 know now to be my own natural and inherent 
 character — self-reliant, active, abounding in initi- 
 ative. For four years I had been as a child in her 
 hands, through mere force of circumstances. My 
 true self came out now and asserted its supremacy. 
 
 •' No, dear," I said, soothing her cheek; " I shall 
 go alone. I shall try what I can discover and 
 remember myself without any suggestion or ex- 
 planation from others. I want to fmd out how 
 things really stand. I shall set to work on my 
 own account to unravel this mystery." 
 
 " But how can you manage things by yourself? " 
 Aunt Emma exclaimed, wringing her hands de- 
 spondentl3^ "A girl of your age ! without even a 
 maid ! and all alone in the world ! I shall be 
 afraid to let you go. Dr. Wade won't allow it." 
 
 I drew myself up very straight, and realised tiie 
 position. 
 
 " Aunt Emma," 1 said plainly, in a decided 
 voice, " I 'm a full-grown woman, over twenty-one 
 years of age, mistress of my own acts, and no 
 longer a ward of yours. I can do as I like, and 
 neither Dr. Wade nor anybody else can prevent 
 
 I 
 
54 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 me. He may advise me not to go: he has no power 
 to order me. I 'm my father's heiress, and a person 
 of independent means. I 've been a cipher too 
 long. From to-day I take my affairs wholly into 
 my own hands. I '11 go round at once and see 
 your lawyer, your banker, your agent, your trades- 
 men, and tell them that henceforth I draw my 
 own rents, I receive my own dividends, I pay my 
 own bills, I keep my own banking account. And 
 to-morrow or the next day I set out for Wood- 
 bury." 
 
 The Inspector turned to Aunt Emma with a 
 demonstrative smile. 
 
 "There, you see for yourself," he said, well 
 pleased, ** what this interview has done for 
 her ! " 
 
 But Aunt Emma only drew back, wrung her 
 hands again in impotent despair, and stared at 
 him blankly like a wounded creature. 
 
 The Inspector took up his hat to leave. I fol- 
 lowed him out to the door, and shook hands with 
 him cordially. The burden felt lighter on my 
 shoulders already. For four long years that 
 mystery had haunted me day and night, as a thing 
 impenetrable, incomprehensible, not even to be 
 inquired about. The mere sense that I might now 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 55 
 
 begin to ask what it meant seemed to make it 
 immediately less awful and less burdensome to 
 
 me. 
 
 When I returned to the drawing-room, Aunt 
 Emma sat there on the sofa, crying silently, the 
 very picture of misery. 
 
 «' Una," she said, without even raising her eyes 
 to mine, " the man may have done as he says : he 
 may have restored you your mind again ; but 
 what 's that to me ? He 's lost me my child, my 
 darling, my daughter! " 
 
 I stooped down and kissed her. Dear, tender- 
 hearted auntie ! she had always been very good to 
 me. But I knew I was right, for all that, in 
 becoming a woman, — in asserting my years, my 
 independence, my freedom, my duty. To have 
 shirked it any longer would have been sheer 
 cowardice. So I just kissed her silently, and went 
 up to my own room — to put on my brown hat, and 
 go out to the banker's. 
 
 From that moment forth, one fierce desire in 
 life alone possessed me. The brooding mystery 
 that enveloped my life ceased to be passive, and 
 became an active goad, as it were, to push me 
 forward incessantly on my search for the runaway 
 I was the creature of a fixed idea. A fiery energy 
 
56 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 spurred me on all my time. I was determined 
 now to find out my father's murderer. I was 
 determined to shake off the atmosphere of doubt 
 and forgetfulness. I was determined to recall 
 those first scenes of my life that so eluded my 
 memory. 
 
 Yet, strange to say, it was rather a burning 
 curiosity and a deep sense of duty that urged me 
 on, than anythmg I could properly call affection — 
 still less, revenge or malice. I didn't remember 
 my father as alive at all : the one thing I could 
 recollect about him was the ghastly look of that 
 dead body, stretched at full length on the library 
 floor, with its white beard all dabbled in the red 
 blood that clotted it. It was abstract zeal for the 
 discovery of the truth that alone pushed me on. 
 This search became to me henceforth an end and 
 aim in itself. It stood out, as it were, visibly in 
 the imperative mood : '• go here ; " " go there ; " "do 
 this;" "try that;" "leave no stone unturned any- 
 where till you 've tracked down the murderer ! " 
 Those were the voices that now incessantly though 
 in audibly pursued me. 
 
 Next day I spent in preparations for my depar- 
 ture. I would hunt up Woodbury now, though 
 fifty Aunt Emma's held their gentle old faces up 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 57 
 
 in solemn warning against me. The day after that 
 again, I set out on my task. The pull was hard. 
 I had taken my own affairs entirely into my own 
 hands by that time, and had provided myself with 
 money for a long stay at Woodbury. But it was 
 the very first railway journey I could ever remem- 
 ber to have made alone ; and I confess, when I 
 found myself seated all by myself in a first-class 
 carriage, with no friend beside me, my resolution 
 for a moment almost broke down again. It was 
 so terrible to feel oneself boxed up there for an 
 hour or two alone, with that awful Picture staring 
 one in the face all the time from every fence and 
 field and wall and hoarding. It obliterated Fry's 
 Cocoa; it fixed itself on the yellow facd of Colman's 
 Mustard. 
 
 I went by Liverpool Street, and drove across to 
 Paddington. I had never, to my knowledge, been 
 in London before : and it was all so new to me. 
 But Liverpool Street was even newer to me than 
 Paddington, I noticed. A faint sense of famih- 
 arity seemed to hang about the Great Western 
 line. And that was not surprising, I thought, as I 
 turned it over; for, of course, in the old days, 
 when we lived at Woodbury, I must often have 
 come down from town that way with my father. 
 
58 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Yet I remembered nothing of it all definitely ; the 
 most I could say was that I seemed dimly to 
 recollect having been there before — though when 
 or where or how, I hadn't the faintest notion. 
 
 I was early at Paddington. The refreshment 
 room somehow failed to attract me. I walked up 
 and down the platform, waiting for my train. As 
 I did so, a boy pasted a poster on a board : it was 
 the contents-sheet of one of the baser little Society 
 papers Something strange in it caught my eye. 
 I looked again in amazement. Oh, great heavens ! 
 what was this in big flaring letters ? 
 
 *' Miss Una Callingham and the Woodbury 
 Mystery! Is She Screening the Murderer? 
 A Possible Explanation ! " 
 
 The words took my breath away. They were 
 too horrible to realise. I positively couldn't speak. 
 I went up to the bookstall, laid down my penny 
 without moving my lips, and took the paper in my 
 hand in tremulous silence. 
 
 I dared not open it there and then, I confess. I 
 waited till I was in the train, and on my way to 
 Woodbury. 
 
 When I did so, it was worse, even worse than 
 my fears. The article was short, but it was very 
 hateful. It said nothing straight out — the writer 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 59 
 
 had evidently the fear of the law of libel before his 
 eyes as he wrote, — but it hinted and insinuated in 
 a detestable undertone the most vile innuendoes. 
 A Treasury Doctor and a Police Inspector, it said, 
 had lately examined Miss Callingham again, and 
 found her intellect in every respect perfectly nor- 
 mal, except that she couldn't remember the face 
 of her father's murderer. Now, this was odd, 
 because, you see. Miss Callingham was in the 
 room at the moment the shot was fired ; and, alone 
 in the world. Miss Callingham had seen the face 
 of the man who fired it. Who was that man ? and 
 why was he there, unknown to the servants, in a 
 room with nobody but Mr. Callingham and his 
 daughter ? A correspondent (who preferred to 
 guard his incognito) had suggested in this matter 
 some very searching questions : Could the young 
 man — for it was allowed he was young — have been 
 there with Miss Callingham when Mr. Callingham 
 entered ? Could he have been on terms of close 
 intimacy with the heroine of The Grange Mystery, 
 who was a young lady — as all the world knew 
 from her photographs — of great personal attrac- 
 tiveness, and who was also the heiress to a con- 
 siderable property ? Could he have been there, 
 then, by appointment, without the father's know- 
 
6o RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ledge ? Was this the common case of a clandes- 
 tine assignation ? Could the father have returned 
 to the house unexpectedly, at an inopportune 
 moment, and found his daughter there, closeted 
 with a stranger — perhaps with a man who had 
 already, for sufficient grounds, been forbidden the 
 premises ? Such things might be, in this world 
 that we live in : he would be a bold man who 
 would deny them categorically. Could an alter- 
 cation have arisen on the father's return, and the 
 fatal shot have been fired in the ensuing scuffle ? 
 And could the young lady then have feigned this 
 curious relapse into that Second State we had all 
 heard so much about, for no other reason than to 
 avoid giving evidence at a trial for murder against 
 her guilty lover ? 
 
 These were suggestions that deserved the 
 closest consideration of the Authorities charged 
 with the repression of crime. Was it not high 
 time that the inquest on Mr. Callingham's body 
 should be formally reopened, and that the young 
 lady, now restored (as we gathered) to her own 
 seven senses, should be closely interrogated by 
 trained legal cross-examiners ? 
 
 I laid down the paper with a burning face. I 
 learned now, for the first time, how closely my 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 6l 
 
 case had been watched, how eagerly my every act 
 and word had been canvassed. It was hateful to 
 think of my photograph having been exposed in 
 every London shop-window, and of anonymous 
 slanderers being permitted to indite such scandal 
 as this about an innocent woman. But, at any 
 rate, it had the effect of sealing my fate. If I 
 meant even before to probe this mystery to the 
 bottom, I felt now no other course was possibly 
 open to me. For the sake of my own credit, for 
 the sake of my own good fame, I must find out 
 and punish my father's murderer. 
 
62 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 TRCsUpfitfl ms Xitc. 
 
 '^FTEN, as you walk down a street, a man 
 or woman passes you by. You look up 
 at them and say to yourself, " I seem to 
 know that face"; but you can put no name to it, 
 attach to it no definite idea, no associations of 
 any sort. That was just how Woodbury struck 
 me when I first came back to it. The houses, the 
 streets, the people, were in a way familiar ; yet I 
 could no more have found my way alone from the 
 station to The Grange than I could find my way 
 alone from here to Kamschatka. 
 
 So I drove up first in search of lodgings. At 
 the station even several people had bowed or 
 shaken hands with me respectfully as I descended 
 from the train. They came up as if they thought 
 I must recognise them at once : there was recog- 
 nition in their eyes ; but when they met my blank 
 stare, they seemed to remember all about it, and 
 merely murmured in strange tones : 
 
 *' Good-morning, miss ! So you 're here : glad 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 63 
 
 to see you 've come back again at last to Wood- 
 bury." 
 
 This reception dazzled me. It was so strange, 
 so uncanny. I was glad to get away in a fly by 
 myself, and to be driven to lodgings in the clean 
 little High Street. For to me, it wasn't really 
 " coming back " at all : it was coming to a strange 
 town, where everyone knew me, and / knew 
 nobody. 
 
 *' You 'd like to go to Jane's, of course," the 
 driver said to me with a friendly nod as he reached 
 the High Street : and not liking to confess my for- 
 getfulness of Jane, I responded with warmth that 
 Jane's would, no doubt, exactly suit me. 
 
 We drew up at the door of a neat little house. 
 The driver rang the bell. 
 
 "Miss Una's here," he said, confidentially; 
 " and she 's looking for lodgings." 
 
 It was inexpressibly strange and weird to me, 
 this one-sided recognition, this unfamiliar famili- 
 arity : it gave me a queer thrill of the supernatural 
 that I can hardly express to you. But I didn't 
 know what to do, when a kindly-faced, middle- 
 aged English upper-class servant rushed out at 
 me, open-armed, and hugging me hard to her 
 breast, exclaimed with many loud kisses : 
 
64 RFXALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " Miss Una, Miss Una ! So it 's you, dear ; so 
 it is ! Then you 've come back at last to us ! " 
 
 I could hardly imagine what to say or do. The 
 utmost I could assert with truth was, Jane's face 
 wasn't exactly and entirely in all ways unfamiliar 
 to me. Yet 1 could see Jane herself was so 
 unfeignedly delighted to see me again, that I 
 hadn't the heart to confess I 'd forgotten her very 
 existence. So I took her two hands in mine — 
 since friendliness begets friendliness — and holding 
 her off a little way, for fear the kisses should be 
 repeated, I said to her very gravely : 
 
 " You see, Jane, since those days I 've had a 
 terrible shock, and you can hardly expect me to 
 remember anything. It 's all like a dream to me. 
 You must forgive me if I don't recall it just at 
 once as I ought to do." 
 
 " Oh ! yes, miss," Jane answered, holding my 
 hands in her delight and weeping volubly. 
 ''We've read about all that, of course, in the 
 London newspapers. But there, I 'm glad any- 
 how you remembered to come and look for my 
 lodgings. I think I should just have sat down and 
 cried if they told me Miss Una 'd come back to 
 Woodbury, and never so much as asked to see 
 me." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 65 
 
 I don't think I ever felt so like a hypocrite in 
 my life before. But I realised at least that even if 
 Jane's lodgings were discomfort embodied, I must 
 take them and stop in them, while I remained 
 there, now. Nothing else was possible. I couldnt 
 go elsewhere. 
 
 Fortunately, however, the rooms turned out to 
 be as neat as a new pin, and as admirably kept as 
 any woman in England could keep them. I 
 gathered from the very first, of course, that Jane 
 had been one of the servants at The Grange in 
 the days of my First State; and while I drank 
 my cup of tea, Jane herself came in and talked 
 volubly to me, disclosing to me, parenthetically, 
 the further fact that she was the parlour-maid at 
 the time of my father's murder. That gave me a 
 clue to her identity. Then she was the witness 
 Greenfield who gave evidence at the inquest ! I 
 made a mental note of that, and determined to 
 look up what she 'd said to the coroner, in the 
 book of extracts the Inspector gave me, as soon as 
 I got alone in my bedroom that evening. 
 
 After dinner, however, Jane came in again, with 
 the freedom of an old servant, and talked to me 
 much about the Woodbury Mystery. Gradually, 
 as time went on that night, though I remembered 
 
66 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 nothing definite of myself about her, the sense of 
 famiharity and fritndhness came home to me more 
 vividly. The appropriate emotion seemed easier 
 to rouse, I observed, than the intellectual memory. 
 I knew Jane and I had been on very good terms, 
 some time, somewhere. I talked with her easily, 
 for I had a consciousness of companionship. 
 
 By-and-by, without revealing to her how little 
 I could recollect about her own personality, I 
 confessed to Jane, by slow degrees, that the whole 
 past was still gone utterly from my shattered 
 memory. I told her I knew nothing except the 
 Picture and the facts it comprised ; and to show 
 her just how small that knowledge really was, I 
 showed her (imprudently enough) the photograph 
 the Inspector had left with me. 
 
 Jane looked at it long and slowly, with tears in 
 her eyes. Then she said at last, after a deep 
 pause, in a very hushed voice : 
 
 " Why, how did you get this ? It wasn't put in 
 the papers." 
 
 '* No," I answered quietly, "it wasn't put in the 
 papers. For reasons of their own, the police kept 
 it unpublished." 
 
 Jane gazed at the proof still closer. 
 
 "They oughtn't to have done that," she said. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 67 
 
 " They ought to have sent it out everywhere 
 broadcast — so tliat anybody who knew the man 
 could tell him by his back." 
 
 That seemed to me such obvious good sense 
 that I wondered to myself the police hadn't 
 thought long since of it ; but I supposed they had 
 some good ground of their own for holding it all 
 this time in their own possession. 
 
 Jane went on talking to me still for many min- 
 utes about the scene: 
 
 " Ah, yes ; that was just liow he lay, poor dear 
 gentleman ! And the book on the chair, too ! Well, 
 did you ever in your life see anything so like ! 
 And to think it was taken all by itself, as one 
 might say, by magic. But there! your poor papa 
 was a wonderful clever man. Such things as he 
 used to invent ! Such ideas and such machines ! 
 We were sorry for h m, though we always thought, 
 to be sure, he was dreadful severe with you, Miss 
 Una. Such a gentleman to have his own way, too 
 — so cold and reserved like. But one mustn't talk 
 nothing but good about the dead, they say. And 
 if he ims a bit hard, he was more than hard 
 treated for it in the end, poor gentleman ! " 
 
 It interested me to get these half side-lights on 
 my father's character. Knowing nothing of him. 
 
68 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 as I did, save the solitary fact that lie was the 
 white-haired pjentleman I saw dead in my Picture, 
 I naturally wanted to learn as much as I could 
 from this old servant of ours as to the family 
 conditions. 
 
 " Then j^ou thought him harsh, in the servants'- 
 hall ? " I said tentatively to Jane. "You thought 
 him hard and unbending ? " 
 
 " Well, there. Miss," Jane ran on, putting a 
 cushion to my hack tenderly — it was strange to 
 be the recipient of so much delicate attention from 
 a perfect stranger, — "not exactly what you 'd call 
 harsh to us ourselves, you know : he was a good 
 master enough, as long as one did what was 
 ordered, though he was a little bit fidgetty. But 
 to you, we all thought he was always rather hard. 
 People said so in Woodbury. And yet, in a way, 
 I don't know how it was, he alwaj^s seemed more 'n 
 half afraid of you. He was careful about your 
 health, and spoiled and petted you for that ; yet 
 he was always pulling you up, 3'ou know, and look- 
 ing after what you did : and for one thing, 1 
 remember, there 's many a time you were sent to 
 bed when you were a good big girl for nothing on 
 earth else but because he heard you talking to us 
 in the hall about Australia." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 69 
 
 " Talking to you about Australia ! " I cried, 
 pricking my ears. " Why, what harm was there 
 in that ? Why on earth didn't he want me to talk 
 about Australia ? " 
 
 "Ah! what harm indeed?" Jane echoed blandly. 
 ** That 's what we often used to say among our- 
 selves downstairs. But Mr. Callingham, he was 
 always that way, miss — so strict and particular. 
 He said he 'd forbidden you to say a word to 
 anybody about that confounded country; and you 
 must do as you were told. He seemed to have a 
 grudge against Australia, though it was there he 
 made his money. And he always would have his 
 own way, your father would." 
 
 While she spoke, I looked hard at the white 
 head in the photograph. Even as 1 did so, a 
 thought occurred to me that had never occurred 
 before. Both in my mental Picture, and in look- 
 ing at the photograph when I saw it first, the 
 feeling that was uppermost in my mind was not 
 sorrow, but horror. I didn't think with affection 
 and regiet and a deep sense of bereavement about 
 my father's murder. The emotional accompani- 
 ment that had stamped itself upon the very fibre of 
 my soul, was not pain but awe. I think my main 
 feeling was a feeling that a foul crime had taken 
 
70 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 place in the house, not a feehng that I had lost a 
 very dear and near relative. Rightly or wrongly, 
 I drew from this the inference, which Jane's gossip 
 confirmed, that I had probably rather feared than 
 loved my father. 
 
 It was strange to be reduced to such in- 
 direct evidence on such a point as that ; but 
 it was all I could get, and I had to be content 
 with it. 
 
 Jane, leaning over my shoulder, looked hard at 
 the photograph too. I could see her eyes were 
 fixed on the back of the man who was seen dis- 
 appearing through the open window. He was 
 dressed like a gentleman, in knickerbockers and 
 jacket, as far as one could judge; for the evening 
 light rather blurred that part of the picture. One 
 hand was just waved, palm open, behind him. 
 Jane regarded it hard. Then she gave an odd 
 little start : 
 
 '• Why, just look at that hand ! " she cried, with 
 a tremor of surprise. *' Don't you see what it is ? 
 Don't you think it 's a woman's ? " 
 
 I gazed back at her incredulously. 
 
 " Impossible," I answered, shaking my head. 
 " It belongs as clear as day to the man you see in 
 the photograph. How on earth could his hand 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 7I 
 
 be a woman's then, I 'd like to know ? I can see 
 the shirt-cuff." 
 
 *' Why, yes," Jane answered, with simple com- 
 mon-sense : " it 's dressed like a man, of course, 
 and it 's a man to look at ; but the hand 's a 
 woman's, as true as I 'm standing here. Why 
 mightn't a woman dress in a man's suit on pur- 
 pose ? And perhaps it was just because they were 
 so sure it was a man as did it, that the police 
 has gone wrong so long in trying to find the 
 murderer." 
 
 I looked hard at the hand myself. Then I shut 
 my eyes, and thought of the corresponding object 
 in my mental Picture. The result fairly staggered 
 me. The impression in each case was exactly the 
 same. It was a soft and delicate hand, very white 
 and womanlike. But was it really a woman's ? I 
 couldn't feel quite sure in my own mind aboul 
 that ; but the very warning Jane gave me seemed 
 to me a most useful one. It would be well, after 
 all, to keep one's mind sedulously open to every 
 possible explanation, and to take nothing for 
 granted as to the murderer's personality. 
 
72 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ebc avauQC at Woo&burs. 
 
 fg STOPPED for three weeks in Jane's lodg- 
 ings ; and before the end of that time, 
 Jane and I had got upon the most intimate 
 footing. It was partly her kindliness that en- 
 deared her to me, and her constant sense of 
 continuity with the earlier days which I had 
 quite forgotten ; but it was partly too, I felt 
 sure, a vague revival within my own breast 
 of a familiarity that had long ago subsisted between 
 us. I was coming to myself again, on one side of 
 my nature. Day by day I grew more certain that 
 while facts had passed away from me, appropriate 
 emotions remained vaguely present. Among the 
 Woodbury people that I met, I recognised none to 
 say that I knew them ; but I knew almohit at first 
 sight that I liked this one and disliked that one. 
 And in every case alike, when I talked the matter 
 over afterwards with Jane, she confirmed my sus- 
 picion that in my First State I had liked or 
 disliked just those persons respectively. My brain 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 73 
 
 was upset, but my heart remained precisely the 
 same as ever. 
 
 On my second morning I went up to The 
 Grange with her. The house was still unlet. 
 Since the day of the murder, nobody cared to live 
 in it. The garden and shrubbery had been sadly 
 neglected : Jane took me out of the way as we 
 walked up the path, to show me the place where 
 the photographic apparatus had been found 
 embedded in the grass, and where the murderer 
 had cut his hands getting over the wall in his 
 frantic agitation. The wall was pretty high and 
 protected with bottle-glass. I guessed he must 
 have been tall to scramble over it. That seemed 
 to tell against Jane's crude idea that a woman 
 might have done it. 
 
 But when I said so to Jane, she met me at once 
 with the crushing reply : " Perhaps it wasn't the 
 same person that came back for the box." I saw 
 she was right again. I had jumped at a conclu- 
 sion. In cases like this, one must leave no 
 hypothesis untried, jump at no conclusions of any 
 sort. Clearly, that woman ought to have been 
 made a detective. 
 
 As I entered the house the weird sense of 
 familiarity that pursued me throughout rose to a 
 
74 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 very high pitch. I couldn't fairly say, indeed, that 
 I remembered the different rooms. All I could say 
 with certainty was that I had seen them before. 
 To this there were three exceptions — the three 
 that belonged to my Second State — the library, 
 my bedroom, and the hall and staircase. The 
 first was indelibly printed on my memory as a 
 component part of the Picture, and I found my 
 recollection of every object in the room almost 
 startling in its correctness. Only, there was an 
 alcove on one side that I'd quite forgotten, and I 
 saw why most clearly. I stood with my back to 
 it as I looked at the Picture. The other two bits 
 I remembered as the room in which I had had my 
 first great illness, and the passage down which I 
 had been carried or helped when I was taken to 
 Aunt Emma's. 
 
 I had begun to recognise now that the emotional 
 impression made upon me by people and things 
 was the only sure guide I still possessed as to 
 their connection or association with my past 
 history. And the rooms at The Grange had each 
 in this way some distmctive characteristic. The 
 library, of course, was the chief home of the 
 Horror which had hung upon my spirit even 
 during the days when I hardly knew in any intelli- 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 75 
 
 gible sense the cause of it. But the drawing-room 
 and dining-room both produced upon my mind a 
 vague consciousness of constraint. I was dimly 
 aware of being ill at ease and uncomfortable in 
 them. My own bedroom, on the contrary, gave 
 me a pleasant feeling of rest and freedom and 
 security : while the scrvants'-hall and the ivitchen 
 seemed perfect paradises of liberty. 
 
 "Ah ! many 's the time, miss," Jane said with a 
 sigh, looking over at the empty grate, "you'd 
 come down here to make cakes or puddings, and 
 laugh and joke like a child with Mary an' me. I 
 often used to say to Emily — her as was cook here 
 before Ellen Smith, — 'Miss Una's never so 
 happy as when she 's down here in the kitchen.' 
 And * That 's true what you say,' says Emily to me, 
 many a time and often." 
 
 That was exactly the impression left upon my own 
 mind. I began to conclude, in a dim, formless wa}^ 
 that my father must have been a somewhat stern and 
 unsympathetic man ; that I had felt constrained 
 and uncomfortable in his presence upstairs, and 
 had often been pleased to get away from his eye 
 to the comparative liberty and ease of m}' own 
 room or of the maid-servants' quarters. 
 
 At last, in the big attic that had once been the 
 
76 RI'XALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 nursery, I paused and looked at Jane. A queer 
 sensation came over me. 
 
 "Jane," I said slowly, hardly liking to frame 
 the words, "there's something strange about this 
 room. He wasn't cruel to me, was he ? " 
 
 " Oh ! no, miss," Jane answered promptly. '* He 
 wasn't never what you might call exactly cruel. 
 He was a very good father, and looked after you 
 well ; but he was sort of stern and moody-like — 
 would have his own way, and didn't pay no atten- 
 tion to fads and fancies, he called 'ern. When 
 you were little, many 's the time he sent you up 
 here for punishment — disobedience and such like." 
 
 I took out the photograph and tried, as it were, 
 to think of my father as alive and with his eyes 
 open. I couldn't remember the eyes. Jane told 
 me they were blue ; but 1 think what she said was 
 the sort of impression the face produced upon me. 
 A man not unjust or harsh in his dealings with 
 myself, but very strong and masterful. A man 
 who would have his own way in spite of anybody. 
 A father who ruled his daughter as a vessel of his 
 making, to be done as he would with, and be 
 moulded to his fashion. 
 
 Still, my visit to The Grange resulted in the end in 
 casting very little light upon the problem before me. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 77 
 
 It pained and distressed me greatly, but it broujijlit 
 no new elements of the case into view: at best, it 
 only familiarised me with the scene of action of 
 the tragedy. The presence of the alcove was the 
 one fresh feature. Nothing recalled to me as yet 
 in any way the murderer's features. I racked my 
 brain in vain ; no fresh image came up in it. I 
 could recollect nothing about the man or his 
 antecedents. 
 
 I almost began to doubt that I would ever suc- 
 ceed in reconstructing my past, when even the 
 sight of the home in which I had spent my childish 
 days suggested so few new thoughts or ideas to 
 me. 
 
 For a day or two after that I rested at Jane's, 
 lest I should disturb my brain too much. Then I 
 called once more on the doctor who had made the 
 post mortem on my father, and given evidence at the 
 inquest, to see if anything he could say might 
 recall my lapsed memory. 
 
 The moment he came into the room — a man 
 about fifty, close-shaven and kindly-looking — I 
 recognised him at once, and held out my hand to 
 him frankly. He surveyed me from head to foot 
 with a good medical stare, and then wrung my 
 hand in return with extraordmary warmth and 
 
78 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 effusion. I could see at once he retained a most 
 pleasing recollection of my First State, and was 
 really glad to see me. 
 
 " What, you remember me then, Una ! " he cried, 
 with quite fatherly delight. " You haven't for- 
 gotten me, m}^ dear, as you 've forgotten all the 
 rest, haven't you ?" 
 
 It was startling to be called by one's Christian 
 name like that, and by a complete stranger, too ; 
 but I was getting quite accustomed now to these 
 little incongruities. 
 
 "Oh, yes; I remember you perfectly," I an- 
 swered, half-grieved to distress him, " though I 
 shouldn't have known your name, and didn't 
 expect to see you. You 're the doctor who attended 
 me in my first great illness — the illness with which 
 my present life began — just after the murder." 
 
 He drew back, a little crestfallen. 
 
 " Then that 's all you recollect, is it ? " he asked. 
 " You don't remember me before, dear ? Not Dr. 
 Marten, who used to take you on his knee when 
 you were a tiny little girl, and bring you lollipops 
 from town, to the great detriment of your digestion, 
 and get into rows with your poor father for 
 indulging you and spoiling you ? You must surely 
 remember me ?" 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 79 
 
 I shook my head slowly. I was sorry to dis- 
 appoint him ; but it was necessary before all things 
 to get at the bare truth. 
 
 *' I 'm afraid not," I answered. " Do please 
 forgive me ! You must have read in the papers, 
 like everybody else, of the very great change that 
 has so long come over me. Bear in mind, I can't 
 remember anything at all that occurred before 
 the murder. That first illness is to me the earliest 
 recollection of childhood." 
 
 He gazed across at me compassionately. 
 
 " My poor child," he said in a low voice, like a 
 very affectionate friend, '* it 's much better so. 
 You have been mercifully spared a great deal of 
 pain. Una, when I first saw you at The Grange 
 after your father's death, I thanked heaven you 
 had been so seized. I thanked heaven the 
 world had become suddenly a blank to you. I 
 prayed hard you might never recover your senses 
 again, or at least your memory. And now that 
 you 're slowly returned to life once more, against 
 all hope or fear, I 'm heartily glad it 's in this 
 peculiar way. I 'm heartily glad all the past 's 
 blotted out for you. You can't understand that, 
 my child ? Ah, no, very likely not. But I think 
 it 's much best for you, all your first life should be 
 
8o RFXALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 wholly forgotten." He paused for a second. Tlien 
 he added slowly : " If you remembered it all, the 
 sense of the tragedy would be far more acute and 
 jooignant even than at present." 
 
 " Perhaps so," I said resolutely ; '* but not the 
 sense of mystery. It 's that that appals me so ! 
 I 'd rather know the truth than be so wrapped up 
 in the incomprehensible." 
 
 He looked at me pityingly once more. 
 
 ** My poor child," he said, in the same gentle 
 and fatherly voice, ** you don't wholly understand. 
 It doesn't all come home to you. I can see clearly, 
 from what Inspector Wolferstan told me, after his 
 visit to you the other day " 
 
 I broke in, in surprise. 
 
 "Inspector Wolferstan!" I cried. " Then he 
 came down here to see 3'ou, did he?" 
 
 It was horrible to find how all my movements 
 were discussed and chronicled. 
 
 ** Yes, he came down here to see me and talk 
 things over," Dr. Marten went on, as calmly as if 
 it were mere matter of course. "And I could see 
 from what he said you were still spared much. 
 For instance, you remember it all only as an event 
 that happened to an old man with a long white 
 beard. You don't fully realise, except intellectually, 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 8l 
 
 that it was your own father. You're saved, as 
 a daughter, the misery and horror of thinking and 
 feehng it was your father who lay dead there." 
 
 " That 's quite true," I answered. ** I admit 
 that I can't feel it all as deeply as I ought. But 
 none the le.^:s, I 've come down here to make a 
 violent effort. Let it cost what it may, I must 
 get at the truth. I wanted to see whether the 
 sight of The Grange and of Woodbury may help 
 me to recall the lost scenes in my memory." 
 
 To my immense surprise, Dr. Marten rose from 
 his seat, and standing up before me in a perfect 
 agony of what seemed like terror, half mixed with 
 affection, exclaimed in a very earnest and resolute 
 voice : 
 
 " Oh, Una, my child, whatever you do— I beg 
 of you— I implore you— don't try to recall the past 
 at all ! Don't attempt it ! Don't dream of it ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " I cried, astonished. " Surely it 's 
 my duty to try and find out my father's murderer ! " 
 
 Instead of answering me, he looked about him 
 for half a minute in suspense, as if doubtful what 
 next to do or to say. Then he walked across with 
 great deliberation to the door of the room, and 
 locked and double-locked it with furtive alarm, as 
 I interpreted his action. 
 
82 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 So terrified did he seem, indeed, that for a 
 moment the idea occurred to me in a very vague 
 way — Was I talking with the murderer? Had 
 the man who himself committed the crime con- 
 ducted the post mortem, and put Justice off the scent ? 
 And was I now practically at the mercy of the 
 criminal I was trying to track down ? The thought 
 for a second or two made me feel terribly uncom- 
 fortable. But I glanced at his back and at his 
 hands, and reassured myself. That broad, short 
 man was not the slim figure of my Picture and of 
 .the photograph. Those large red hands were not 
 the originals of the small and delicate white palm 
 just displayed at the back in both those strange 
 documents of the mysterious murder. 
 
 The doctor came over again, and drew his chair 
 close to mine. 
 
 " Una, my child," he said slowly, '* I love you 
 very much, as if you were my own daughter. I 
 always loved you and admired 3'ou, and was sorry 
 — oh, so sorry ! — for you. You 've quite forgotten 
 who I am ; but I 've not forgotten you. Take what 
 I say as coming from an old friend, from one who 
 loves you and has your interest at heart. For 
 heaven's sake, I implore you, my child, make no 
 more inquiries. Try to forget— not to remember. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 83 
 
 If you do recollect, you '11 be sorry in the end 
 for it." 
 
 " Why so ' " I asked, amazed, yet somehow 
 feeling in my heart I could trust him implicitly. 
 " Why should the knowledge of the true circum- 
 stances of the case make me more unhappy than 
 I am at present ?" 
 
 He gazed harder at me than ever. 
 
 " Because," he replied in slow tones, weighing 
 each word as he spoke, "you may find that the 
 murder was committed by some person or persons 
 you love or once loved very much indeed. You may 
 find it will rend your very heart-strings to see that 
 person or those persons punished. You may find 
 the circumstances were wholly otherwise than you 
 imagine them to be. . . . Let sleeping dogs lie, 
 my dear. Without your aid, nothing more can be 
 done. Don't trouble yourself to put the blood- 
 hounds on the track of some unhappy creature who 
 might otherwise escape. Don't rake it all up 
 afresh. Bury it — bury it — bury it ! " 
 
 He spoke so earnestly that he filled me with 
 vague alarm. 
 
 "Dr. Marten," I said solemnly, "answer me 
 just one question. Do you know who was the 
 murderer ?" 
 
 6- 
 
84 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 "No, no!" he exclaimed, starting once more. 
 " Thank heaven, I can't tell you that ! I don't know. 
 I know nothing. Nobody on earth knows but the 
 two who were present on the night of the murder, 
 I feel sure. And of those two, one's unknown, and 
 the other has forgotten." 
 
 *' But you suspect who he is ?" I put in, probing 
 the secret curiously. 
 
 He trembled visibly. 
 
 " I suspect who he is," he replied, after a 
 moment's hesitation. " But I have never com- 
 municated, and will never communicate, ni}^ 
 suspicions to anybody, not even to you. I will 
 
 only say this : the person whom I suspect is one 
 with whom you may now have forgotten all your 
 past relations, but whom you would be sorry to 
 punish if you recovered your memory. I formed 
 a strong opinion at the time who that person was. 
 I formed it from the nature and disposition of the 
 wound, and the arrangement of the objects in the 
 room when I was called in to see your father's 
 body." 
 
 " And you never said so at the inquest ! " I cried, 
 indignant. 
 
 He looked at me hard again. Then he spoke in 
 a very slow and earnest voice : 
 
RECALLED TO LITE. 85 
 
 " For your sake, Una, and for the sake of your 
 affections, I held my peace," he said. " My dear, 
 the suspicion was but a very slender one : I had 
 nothing to go upon. And why should I have tried 
 to destroy your happiness ? " 
 
 That horrible article in the penny Society paper 
 came back to my mind once more with hideous 
 siiggestiveness. I turned to him almost fiercely. 
 
 *' So far as you know, Dr. Marten," I asked, 
 *' was I ever in love ? Had I ever an admirer ? 
 Was I ever engaged to anyone?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and smiled a sort of 
 smile of relief. 
 
 "How should I know?" he answered. "Admirers? 
 — yes, dozens of them ; I was one myself. Lovers? 
 — who can say ? But I advise you not to push 
 the inquiry further." 
 
 I questioned him some minutes longer, but could 
 get nothing more from him. Then I rose to go. 
 
 " Dr. Marten," I said firmly, " if I remember all, 
 and if it wrings my heart to remember, I tell you 
 I will give up that man to justice all the same ! I 
 think I know myself well enough to know this much 
 at least, that I never, never could stoop either to 
 love or to screen a man who could commit such a 
 foul and dastardly crime as this one.'' 
 
86 RECALLED TO LIKE. 
 
 He took my hand fervently, raised it with warmth 
 to his Hps and kissed it twice over. 
 
 " My dear," he said, with tears dropping down 
 his gentle old cheeks, '* this is a very great mystery 
 — a terrible mystery. But I know you speak the 
 truth . I can see you mean it. Therefore, all the 
 more earnestly do I beg and beseech you, go away 
 from Woodbury at once, and as long as you live 
 think no more about it." 
 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 87 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 B Vision of 2)caD JJcarg. 
 
 HE interview with Dr. Marten left nie 
 very much disquieted. But it wasn't 
 the only disquieting thing that occurred 
 at Woodbury. Before I left the place I hap- 
 pened to go one day into Jane's own little sitting- 
 room. Jane was anxious I should see it — she 
 wanted me to know all her house, she said, for 
 the sake of old times : and for the sake of those 
 old times that I couldn't remember, but when I 
 knew she 'd been kind to me, I went in and looked 
 at it. 
 
 There was nothing very peculiar about Jane's 
 little sitting-room : just the ordinary English land- 
 lady's parlour. You know the type : — square table 
 in the middle ; bright blue vases on the mantelpiece ; 
 chromo-lithograph from the lUustratcd London News 
 on the wall ; rickety whatnot with glass-shaded 
 wax-flowers in the recess by the window. But over 
 in one corner I chanced to observe a framed photo- 
 graph of early execution, which hung faded and 
 
88 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 dim there. Perhaps it was because my father was 
 such a scientific amateur ; but photography, I 
 found out in time, struck the key-note of my history 
 in every chapter. I didn't know why, but this 
 particular picture attracted me strangely. It came 
 from The Grange, Jane told me : she 'd hunted it 
 out in the attic over the front bedroom after the 
 house was shut up. It belonged to a lot of my 
 father's early attempts that were locked in a box 
 there. ** He 'd always been trying experiments 
 and things," she said, "with photography, poor 
 gentleman." 
 
 Faded and dim as it was, the picture riveted my 
 eyes at once by some unknown power of attraction. 
 I gazed at it long and earnestly. It represented a 
 house of colonial aspect, square, wood-built, and 
 verandah-girt, standing alone among strange trees 
 whose very names and aspects were then un- 
 familiar to me, but which I nowadays know to be 
 Austrahan eucalyptuses. On the steps of the 
 verandah sat a lady in deep mourning. A child 
 played by her side, and a collie dog lay curled up 
 still and sleepy in the foreground. The child, 
 indeed, stirred no chord of any sort in my troubled 
 brain; but my heart came up into my mouth 
 so at sight of the lady, that I said to myself 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 89 
 
 all at once in my awe, " That must surely be my 
 mother ! " 
 
 The longer I looked at it, the more was I con- 
 vinced I must have judged aright. Not indeed 
 that in any true sense I could say I remembered 
 her face or figure : I was so young when she died, 
 according to everybody's account, that even if I 'd 
 remained in my First State I could hardly have 
 retained any vivid recollection of her. But both 
 lady and house brought up in me once more to 
 some vague degree that strange consciousness of 
 familiarity I had noticed at The Grange : and what 
 was odder still, the sense of wont seemed even more 
 marked in the Australian cottage than in the case 
 of the house which all probability would have 
 inclined one beforehand to think 1 must have 
 remembered better. If this was indeed my earliest 
 home, then I seemed to recollect it far more 
 readily than my later one. 
 
 I turned trembling to Jane, hardly daring to 
 frame the question that rose first to my lips. 
 
 " Is that — my mother ?" I faltered out slowly. 
 
 But there Jane couldn't help me. She 'd never 
 seen the lady, she said. 
 
 "When first I come to The Grange, miss, you 
 see, your mother 'd been buried a year ; there was 
 
QO Rl'XALLHD TO LllI-:. 
 
 only you and Mr. Callingham in family. And I 
 never saw that photograph, neither, till I picked it 
 out of the box locked up in the attic. The little 
 girl might be you, like enough, when you look at 
 it sideways; and yet again it mightn't. But the 
 lady I don't know. I never saw your mother." 
 
 So I was fain to content myself with pure con- 
 jecture. 
 
 All day long, however, the new picture haunted 
 me almost as persistently as the old one. 
 
 That night I went to sleep fast, and slept for 
 some hours heavily. 1 woke with a start. 1 had 
 been dreaming very hard. And my dream was 
 peculiarly clear and lifelike. Never since the. first 
 night of my new life — the night of the murder — 
 had I dreamed such a dream, or seen dead objects 
 so vividly. It came out in clear colours, like the 
 terrible Picture that had haunted me so long. And 
 it affected me strangely. It was a scene, rather 
 than a dream — a scene, as at the theatre ; but a 
 scene in which I realised and recognised every- 
 thing. 
 
 1 stood on the steps of a house — a white wooden 
 house, with a green-painted verandah — the very 
 house I had seen that afternoon in the faded 
 photograph in Jane's httle sitting-room. But I 
 
RliCALl.ED TO LIFE. 9 1 
 
 didn't think of it at first as the house in the old 
 picture : I tliouglit of it as home — our own place 
 — the cottage. The steps seemed to me very high, 
 as in childish recollection. A lady walked about 
 on the verandah and called to me : a lady in a 
 white gown, like the lady in the photograph, only 
 younger and prettier, and dressed much more 
 daintily. But I didn't think of her as that either: 
 I called her mamma to myself: I looked up into 
 her face, oh, ever so much above me : I must have 
 been very small indeed when that picture first 
 occurred to me. There was a gentleman, too, in 
 a white linen coat, who pinched my mamma's ear, 
 and talked softly and musically. But I didn't 
 think of him quite so : I knew he was my papa : I 
 played about his knees, a little scampering child, 
 and looked up in his face, and teased him and 
 laughed at him. My papa looked down at me, and 
 called me a little kitten, and rolled me over on my 
 back, and fondled me and laughed with me. There 
 were trees growing all about, big trees with long 
 grey leaves : the same sort of trees as the ones in 
 the photograph. But I didn't remember that at 
 first : in my dream, and in the first few minutes of 
 my waking thought, I knew them at once as the 
 big blue-gum-trees. 
 
92 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 I awoke in the midst of it: and the picture 
 persisted. 
 
 Then, with a sudden burst of intuition, the truth 
 flashed upon me all at once. My dream was no 
 mere dream, but a revelation in my sleep. It was 
 my intellect working unconsciously and sponta- 
 neously in an automatic condition. For the very 
 first time in my life, since the night of the murder, 
 I had really nmemhered something that occurred 
 before it. 
 
 This was a scene of my First State. In all proba- 
 bility it was my earhest true childish recollection. 
 
 I sat up in bed, appalled. I dared not call aloud 
 or ring for Jane to come to me. But if I 'd seen a 
 ghost, it could hardly have affected me more pro- 
 foundly than this ghost of my own dead life thus 
 brought suddenly back to me. Gazing away across 
 some illimitable vista of dim years, I remembered 
 this one scene as something that once occurred, 
 long ago, to my very self, in my own experience. 
 Then came a vast gulf, an unbridged abyss : and 
 after that, with a vividness as of yesterday, the 
 murder. 
 
 I held my ears and crouched low, sitting up in 
 my bed in the dark. But the dream seemed to go 
 on still : it remained with me distinctly. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 93 
 
 The more I thought it over, the more certain it 
 appeared as part of my own experience. Putting 
 two and two together, I made sure in my own 
 mind this was a genuine recollection of my life in 
 Australia. I was born there, I knew : that I had 
 learned from everybody. But I could distinctly 
 remember having lived there now. It came back 
 to me as memory. The dream had reinstated it. 
 
 And it was the sight of the photograph that had 
 produced the dream. This was curious, very. A 
 weird idea came across me. Had I begun, in all 
 past efforts to remember, at the wrong end ? 
 Instead of trying to recollect the circumstances 
 that immediately preceded the murder, ought I to 
 have set out by trying to reinstate my First Life, 
 chapter by chapter and verse by verse, from child- 
 hood upward ? Ought I to start by recalling as far 
 as possible my very earliest recollections in my 
 previous existence, and then gradually work up 
 through all my subsequent history to the date of 
 the murder? 
 
 The more I thought of it, the more convinced 
 was I that that was the right procedure. 
 
 It was certainly significant that this vague 
 childish recollection of something which might have 
 happened when I was just about two years old 
 
94 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 should be the very first thing to recur to my 
 my memory. Yet so appalled and alarmed was I 
 by the weirdness of this sudden apparition, loom- 
 ing up, as it were, all by itself in the depths of my 
 consciousness, that I hardly dared bring myself to 
 think of trying to recall any other scenes of that 
 dead and past existence. The picture rose like an 
 exhalation, hanging unrelated in mid-air, a mere 
 mental mirage : and it terrified me so much, that 
 I shrank unutterably from the effort of calling up 
 another of like sort to follow it. 
 
 / 
 
 f 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 95 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 fbntctnl Sudpiciottd. 
 
 ^HE rest of that night I lay awake in 
 my bed, the scene in the verandah by 
 the big blue-gum-trees haunting me all 
 the time, much as in earlier days the Picture 
 of the murder had pursued and haunted me. 
 Early in the morning I rose up, and went down 
 to Jane in her little parlour. I longed for society 
 in my awe. I needed human presence. I couldn't 
 bear to be left alone by myself with all these 
 pressing and encompassing mysteries. 
 
 "Jane," I said after a few minutes' careless talk — 
 for I didn't like to tell her about my wonderful 
 dream, — "where exactly did you find the picture of 
 that house hanging over in the corner there ?" 
 
 " Lor' bless your heart, miss," Jane answered, 
 "there's a whole boxful of them at The Grange. 
 Nobody ever cared for them. They're up in the 
 top attic. They were locked till your papa died, 
 and then they were opened by order of the ex- 
 ecutors. Some of 'em's faded even worse than 
 
^ RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 tHsaft ©roe, and none of 'em 's very good ; out I 
 picflsjwl this one out because it was better worth 
 hstmim^ for my room than most of 'em. The 
 exifenaaitora took no notice when they found what 
 thef WSA, They opened the box to see if it 
 w»s tfk>ekyments." 
 
 ** WeMr Jane," I said, '* I shall go up and bring 
 ttmam «feveiry one away with me. It's possible they 
 waaj Wp me to recollect things a bit." I drew 
 umj BiiamixJ across my forehead. "It all seems so 
 Imzy/^ I went on. ** Yet when I see things 
 a^iiini, 1 sometimes feel as if I almost recognised 
 
 Sfi> thsit very morning we went up together (I 
 wmskWt go alone), and got the rest of the photo- 
 graf>i>foj*— very faded positives from old-fashioned 
 pflaJteSp most of them representing persons and 
 phi£6» I had never seen ; and a few of them 
 ajsipsir&UBfily not taken in England. 
 
 I dififoiii'li look them all over at once just then. I 
 tBMDiH^Dtt it best not to do so. I would give my 
 msmmy every possible chance. Take a few at a 
 toiBiic, aad see what effect they produced on me. 
 Farftjapat — though I shrank from the bare idea with 
 hmrmr — they might rouse in my sleep such another 
 «itray elfoirt of spontaneous reconstruction. Yet 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 97 
 
 the last one had cost me much nervous wear and 
 tear — much mental agony. 
 
 A few days after, I went away from Woodbury. 
 I had learned for the moment, I thought, all that 
 Woodbury could teach me : and I longed to get 
 free again for a while from this pervading atmo- 
 sphere of mystery. At Aunt Emma's, at least, all 
 was plain and aboveboard. I would go back to 
 Barton-on-the-Sea, and rest there for a while, 
 among the heathery hills, before proceeding any 
 further on my voyage of discovery. 
 
 But I took back Jane with me. I was fond of 
 Jane now. In those two short weeks I had learned 
 to cling to her. Though I remembered her, strictly 
 speaking, no more than at first, yet the affection I 
 must have borne her in my First State seemed to 
 revive in me very easily, like all other emotions. I 
 was as much at home with Jane, indeed, as if I 
 had known her for years. And this wasn't strange ; 
 for I had known her for years, in point of fact ; and 
 and though I 'd forgotten most of those years, the 
 sense of familiarity they had inspired still lived on 
 with me unconsciously. I know now that memory 
 resides chiefly in the brain, while the emotions 
 are a wider endowment of the nervous system in 
 general ; so that while a great shock may ob- 
 
98 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 literate whole tracts in the memory, no power on 
 earth can ever alter altogether the sentiments 
 and feelings. 
 
 As for Jane, she was only too glad to come with 
 me. There were no lodgers at present, she said ; 
 and none expected. Her sister Elizabeth would 
 take care of the rooms, and if any stranger came, 
 why, Lizzie 'd telegraph down at once for her. So 
 I wrote to Aunt Emma to expect us both next 
 day. Aunt Emma's, I knew, was a home where I 
 or mine were always welcome. 
 
 Jane had never seen Aunt Emma. There had 
 been feud between the families while my father 
 lived, so she didn't visit The Grange after my 
 mother's death. Aunt Emma had often explained 
 to me in part how all that happened. It was the 
 one point in our family history on which she'd 
 ever been explicit : for she had a grievance there ; 
 and what woman on earth can ever suppress her 
 grievances? It's our feminine way to air them 
 before the world, as it's a man's to bury them 
 deep in his own breast and brood over them. 
 
 My mother, she told me, had been a widow 
 when my father married her — a rich young widow. 
 She had gone away, a mere girl, to Australia with 
 her first husband, a clergyman, who was lost at 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 99 
 
 sea two or three years after, on the voyage home 
 to England without her. She had one little girl 
 by her first husband, but the child died quite 
 young : and then she married my father, who met 
 her first in Australia while she waited for news of 
 the clergyman's safet}'. Her family always dis- 
 approved of the second marriage. My father had 
 no money, it seemed ; and mamma was well off, 
 having means of her own to start with, like Aunt 
 Emma, and having inherited also her first hus- 
 band's property, which was very considerable. 
 He had left it to his little girl, and after her to his 
 wife ; so that first my father, and then I myself, 
 came in, in the end, to both the little estates, 
 though my mother's had been settled on the 
 children of the first marriage. Aunt Emma 
 always thought my father had married for money : 
 and she said he had been hard and unkind to 
 mamma : not indeed cruel ; he wasn't a cruel 
 man ; but severe and wilful. He made her do 
 exactly as he wished about everything, in a 
 masterful sort of way, that no woman could 
 stand against. He crushed her spirit entirely, 
 Aunt Emma told me ; she had no will of her own, 
 poor thing : his individuality was so strong, that 
 it overrode my mother's weak nature rough-shod 
 
 7* 
 
lOO RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Not that he was rough. He never scolded her ; 
 he never illtreated her ; but he said to her plainly, 
 " You are to do so and so ;" and she obeyed like a 
 child. She never dared to question him. 
 
 So Aunt Emma had always said my mother was 
 badly used, especially in money matters — the 
 money being all, when one came to think of it, 
 her own or her first husband's ; — and as a con- 
 sequence, auntie was never invited to The Grange 
 during my father's lifetime. 
 
 When we reached Barton-on-the-Sea, Jane and 
 I, on our way from Woodbury, Aunt Emma was 
 waiting at the station to meet us. To my great 
 disappointment, I could see at first sight she didn't 
 care for Jane : and I could also see at first sight 
 Jane didn't care for her. This was a serious blow 
 to me, for I leaned upon those two more than I 
 leaned upon anyone ; and I had far too few friends 
 in the world of my own, to afford to do without any 
 one of them. 
 
 In the evening, however, when I went up to my 
 own room to bed, Jane came up to help me as she 
 • always did at Woodbury. I began at once to tax 
 her with not liking Aunt Emma. With a little 
 hesitation, Jane admitted that at first sight she 
 hadn't felt by any means disposed to care for her. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 lOl 
 
 I pressed her hard as to why. Jane held ofT and 
 prevaricated. That roused my curiosity: — you 
 see, I 'm a woman. I insisted upon knowing. 
 
 "Oh, miss, 1 can't tell you!" Jane cried, grow- 
 ing red in the face, " I can't bear to say it out. You 
 oughtn't to ask. It '11 hurt you to know 1 even 
 thought such a thing of her ! " 
 
 ♦• You uiiist tell me, Jane," I exclaimed, with a cold 
 shudder of terror, half guessing what she meant. 
 '* Don't keep me in suspense. Let me know what 
 it is. I 'm accustomed to shocks now. I know 1 
 can stand them." 
 
 Jane answered nothing directly. She only held 
 out her coarse red hand and asked me, with a face 
 growing pale as she spoke : 
 
 " Where's that picture of the murder ? " 
 
 I produced it from my box, trembling inwardly 
 all over. 
 
 Jane darted one finger demonstratively at a point 
 in the photograph. 
 
 " Whose hand is that ?" she asked with a strange 
 earnestness, putting her nail on the murderer's. 
 
 The words escaped me in a cry of horror almost 
 before I was aware of them : 
 
 '♦Aunt Emma's!" I said, gasping. ♦♦ I never 
 noticed it before." 
 
102 RECALLIiD TO LIFE. 
 
 Then I drew back and stared at it in speechless 
 awe and consternation. 
 
 It was quite, quite true. No use in denying it. 
 The figure that escaped through the window was 
 dressed in man's clothes, to be sure, and as far as 
 one could judge from the foreshortening and the pe- 
 culiar stoop, had a man's form and stature. But 
 the hand was a woman's — soft, and white, and deli- 
 cate : nay more, the hand, as I said in my haste, 
 was line for line Aunt Emma's. 
 
 In a moment a terrible sinking came over me 
 from head to foot. I trembled like an aspen-leaf. 
 Could this, then, be the meaning of Dr. Marten's 
 warning, that I should let sleeping dogs lie, lest I 
 should be compelled to punish someone whom I 
 loved most dearly ? Had Fate been so cruel tc me, 
 that I had learned to cling most in my Second 
 State to the very criminal whose act had blotted 
 out my First ? Had I grown to treat like a mother 
 my father's murderer? . ^.^ 
 
 Aunt Emma's hand! Aunt Emma's hand! 
 That was Aunt Emma's hand, every touch and 
 every line of it. But no ! where were the marks, 
 those well-known marks on the palm ? I took up 
 the big magnifying-glass with which I had often 
 scanned that photograph close before. Not a sign 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I03 
 
 or a trace of them. I shut my eyes, and called up 
 again the mental Picture of the murder. I looked 
 hard at the phantom-hand in it, that floated like a 
 vision, all distinct before my mind's eye. It was 
 flat and smooth and white. Not a scar — not a sign 
 on it. I turned round to Jane, that too natural 
 detective. 
 
 "No, no!" 1 cried hastily, with a quick tone 
 of triumph. " Aunt Emma's hand is marked 
 on the palm with great gashes and cuts. This 
 one's smooth as smooth can be. And so's the 
 one 1 can see in the Picture within me ! " 
 
 Jane drew back with a startled air, and opened 
 her mouth, all agog, to let in a deep breath. 
 
 *'The wall!" she said slowly. "The bottle- 
 glass, don't you know ! The blood en the top ! 
 Whoever did it, climbed over and tore his hands. 
 Or her hands, if it was a woman ! That would 
 account for the gashes." 
 
 This was more than I could endure. The 
 coincidence was too crushing. I bent down my 
 head on my arms and cried silently, bitterly. I 
 hated Jane in my heart for even suggesting it. Yet 
 I couldn't deny to myself for a moment the strength 
 and suggestiveness of her half-spoken argument. 
 
104 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Not that jV/r a second I believed it true. I 
 could never believe it. Aunt Emma, so gentle, 
 so kindly, so sweet : incapable of hurting any 
 living thing : the tenderest old lady that breathed 
 upon earth : and my own mother's sister, whom 
 I loved as I never before loved anyone! Aunt 
 Emma the murderess ! The bare idea was pre- 
 posterous ! I couldn't entertain it. My whole 
 nature revolted from it. 
 
 And indeed, how very slight, after all, was the 
 mere scrap of evidence on which Jane ventured to 
 suggest so terrible a charge ! A man — in man's 
 clothes — fairly tall and slim, and apparently dark- 
 haired, but stooping so much that he looked almost 
 hump-backed : how different from Aunt Emma, 
 with her womanly figure, and her upright gait, 
 and her sweet old white head ! Why, it was 
 clearly ridiculous. 
 
 And yet, the fact remained that as Jane pointed 
 to the Picture and asked, " Whose hand is that ? " 
 the answer came up all spontaneously to my lips, 
 without hesitation, "Aunt Emma's 1" 
 
 I sat there long in my misery, thinking it over 
 to myself. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't 
 go and confide to Aunt Emma's ear this new and 
 horrible doubt,— which was no doubt after all, for 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I05 
 
 I kneiv it was impossible. I hated Jane for sug- 
 gesting it ; I hated her for telUng me. Yet I 
 couldn't be left alone. I was far too terrified. 
 
 " Oil, Jane ; " I cried, looking up to her, and yet 
 despising myself for saying it, "you must stop 
 here to-night and sleep with me. If I'm left by 
 myself in the room alone, I know I shall go mad — 
 I can feel it — I 'm sure of it ! " 
 
 Jane stopped with me and soothed me. She 
 was certainly very kind. Yet I felt in a dim 
 underhand sort of way it was treason to Aunt 
 Emma to receive her caresses at all after what 
 she had said to me. Though to be sure, it 
 was I, not she, who spoke those hateful words. 
 It was I myself who had said the hand was Aunt 
 Emma's. 
 
 As I lay awake and thought, the idea flashed 
 across me suddenly, could Jane have any grudge 
 of her own against Aunt Emma ? Was this a 
 deliberate plot ? What did she mean by her 
 warnings that I should keep my mind open ? Why 
 had she said from the very first it was a woman's 
 hand ? Did she want to set me against my aunt ? 
 And was Dr. Marten in league with her ? In my 
 tortured frame' of mind, I felt all alone in the 
 world. I covered my head and sobbed in my 
 
Io6 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 misery. I didn't know who were my friends and 
 who were against me. 
 
 At last, after long watching, I dozed off into an 
 uneasy sleep. Jane had already been snoring long 
 beside me. I woke up again with a start. I was 
 cold and shuddering. I had dreamed once more 
 the same Australian dream. My mamma as before 
 stood gentle beside me. She stooped down and 
 smoothed my hair : I could see her face and her 
 form distinctly. And I noticed now she was like 
 her sister. Aunt Emma, only younger and prettier, 
 and ever so much slighter. And her hand, too, 
 was soft and white like auntie's — very gentle and 
 delicate. 
 
 It was just there that I woke up — with the hand 
 before my eyes. Oh, how vividly I noted it ! Aunt 
 Emma's hand, only younger, and unscarred on the 
 palm. The family hand, no doubt : the hand of 
 the Moores. I remembered, now, that Aunt Emma 
 had spoken more than once of that family pecu- 
 liarity. It ran through the house, she said. But 
 my hand was quite different : not the Moore type 
 at all : I supposed I must have taken it, as was 
 natural, from the Callinghams. 
 
 And then, in my utter horror and loneliness, a 
 still more awful and ghastly thought presented 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. IO7 
 
 itself to me. This was my mother's hand I saw 
 in the picture. Was it my mother, indeed, who 
 wrought the murder ? Was she hving or dead ? 
 Had my father put upon her some grievous wrong ? 
 Had he pretended to get her out of the way ? Had 
 he buried her ahve, so to speak, in some prison or 
 madhou e? Had she returned in disguise from 
 the asylum or the living grave to avenge nerself 
 and murder him ? In my present frame of mind, 
 no idea was too wild or too strange for me to enter- 
 tain. If this strain continued much longer, I 
 should go mad myself with suspense and horror ! 
 
 *aL. 
 
lo8 RECALLED TO LITE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 3j)et Bnotbcr ipbotoflrapb. 
 
 ^EXT morning my head ached. After all 
 I 'd suffered, I could hardly bear to recur 
 to the one subject that now always occu- 
 pied my thoughts. And yet, on the other hand, 
 I couldn't succeed in banishing it. To relieve 
 my mind a little, I took out the photographs I 
 had brought from the box at The Grange, and 
 began to sort them over according to probable 
 date and subject. 
 
 They were of different periods, some old, some 
 newer. I put them together in series, as well as 
 I could, by the nature of the surroundings. The 
 most recent of all were my father's early attempts 
 at instantaneous electric photography — the at- 
 tempts which led up at last to his automatic 
 machine, the acmegraph, that produced all un- 
 consciously the picture of the murder. Some of 
 these comparatively recent proofs represented men 
 running and horses trotting : but the best of all, 
 tied together with a bit of tape, clearly belonged 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. lOQ 
 
 to a single set, and must have been taken at the 
 same time at an athletic meeting. There was one 
 of a flat race, viewed from a little in front, with 
 the limbs of the runners in seemingly ridiculous 
 attitudes, so instantaneous and therefore so gro- 
 tesquely rigid were they. There was another of a 
 high jump, seen from one side at the very moment 
 of clearing the pole, so that the figure poised solid 
 in mid-air as motionless as a statue. And there 
 was a third, equally successful, of a man throwing 
 the hammer, in which the hammer, in the same 
 way, seemed to hang suspended of itself like 
 Mahomet's coffm between earth and heaven. 
 
 But the one that attracted my attention the 
 most was a photograph of an obstacle-race, in 
 which the runners had to mount and climb over 
 a wagon placed obtrusively sideways across the 
 course on purpose to baffle them. This picture 
 was taken from a few yards in the rear ; and the 
 athletes were seen in it in the most varied attitudes. 
 Some of them were just climbing up one side of 
 the wagon : others had mounted to the top ledge 
 of the body : and one, standing on the further 
 edge, was in the very act of leaping down to the 
 ground in front of him. He was bent double, to 
 spring, with a stoop like a hunchback, and 
 
II® RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 hshmced himself with one hand held tightly 
 IrtfeftiiijDd him. 
 
 A* my eye fell on that figure, a cold thrill ran 
 tlli)J(£«5ii<;fh me. For a moment I only knew some- 
 tBuBBS^ important had happened. Next instant I 
 r&dh&d what the thrill portended. I could only 
 m&the man's back, to be sure, but I knew him 
 m Si. second. I had no doubt as to who it was. 
 Tibw was HIM — the murderer ! 
 
 Ycsv yes ! There could be no mistaking that 
 SBTcBixedl round back that had haunted me so long 
 iia my waking dreams. I knew him at sight. It 
 V58$ Itfoe man I had seen on the night of the 
 V!i\mi(&6t getting out of the window ! 
 
 Visshstps I was overwrought. Perhaps my fancy 
 rsm away with me. But I didn't doubt for a 
 »d£ms)d, I rose from my seat, and in a tremulous 
 if(S>ke called Jane into the room. Without one 
 W(OW«S I laid both pictures down before her to- 
 Ij^JtBuer.. Jane glanced first at the one, then 
 tmmtd quickly to the other. A sharp little cry 
 hr<^k& from her lips all unbidden. She saw it as 
 hsA smd as instinctively as I had done. 
 
 **Tlia»t's him!" she exclaimed, aghast, and as 
 pfsSe a» a sheet. •' That 's him, right enough, Miss 
 Uuaa* That's the very same back! That's the 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 very same hand ! That's the man ! That's the 
 murderer !" 
 
 And indeed, this unanimity was sufficiently 
 starthng. For nothing could have been more 
 different than the dress in the two cases. In the 
 murder scene, the man seemed to wear a tweed 
 suit and knickerbockers, — he was indistinct, as 
 I said before, against the blurred light of the 
 window : while in the athletic scene, he wore just 
 a thin jersey and running-drawers, cut short at 
 the knee, with his arms and legs bare, and his 
 muscles contracted. Yet for all that, we both 
 knew him for the same man at once. That stoop- 
 ing back was unmistakable ; that position of the 
 hand was characteristic and unique. We were 
 sure he was the same man. I trembled with 
 agitation. I had a clue to the murderer ! 
 
 Yet, strange to say, that wasn't the first 
 thought that occurred to my mind. In the 
 relief of the moment, I looked up into Jane's 
 eyes, and exclaimed with a sigh of profound 
 relief : 
 
 " Then you see how mistaken you were about 
 the hands and Aunt Emma ! " 
 
 Jane looked close at the hand in the photograph 
 once more. 
 
112 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 •* Well, it 's curious," she said, slowly. ** That 's 
 a man, sure enough : but he'd ought to be a Moore. 
 The palm's your aunt's as clear as ever you could 
 paint it!" 
 
 I glanced over her shoulder. She was perfectly 
 right. It was a man beyond all doubt, the figure 
 on the wagon. Yet the hand was Aunt Emma's, 
 every line and every stroke of it ; except, of 
 course, the scars. Those, I saw at a glance, were 
 wholly wanting. 
 
 And now I had really a clue to the murderer. 
 
 Yet how slight a clue ! Just a photograph of 
 men's backs. What men ? When and where ? 
 It was an athletic meeting. Of what club or 
 society ? That was the next question now I had 
 to answer. Instinctively I made up my mind to 
 answer it myself, without giving any notice to the 
 police of my discovery. 
 
 Perhaps I should never have been able to 
 answer it at all but for one of the photographs 
 which, as I thought, though lying loose by itself, 
 formed part of the same series. It represented 
 the end of a hundred-yard race, with the winners 
 coming in at the tape by a pavilion with a flag- 
 staff. On the staff a big flag was flying loosely 
 in the wind. The folds hid half of the words on 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 "3 
 
 its centre from sight. But this much at least I 
 
 could read : 
 
 "ER . . . OM . . OY . . . LETI . . . UB." 
 
 I gazed at them long and earnestly. After a 
 minute or two of thought, I made out the last two 
 words. The inscription must surely be Something- 
 or-other Athletic Club. 
 
 But what was **Er . . . om . . oy . . . "? 
 That question staggered me. Gazing harder at it 
 than ever, I could come to no conclusion. It was 
 the name of a place, no doubt : but what place, I 
 knew not. 
 
 "Er"? No, "Ber": just a suspicion of a 5 
 came round the corner of a fold. If B was the 
 first letter, I might possibly identify it, 
 
 I took the photograph down to Aunt Emma, 
 without telling her what I meant. She couldn't 
 bear to think I was ever engaged in thinking of 
 my First State at all. 
 
 " Can you read the inscription on that flag, 
 auntie?" I asked. "It's an old photograph I 
 picked up in the attic at The Grange, and I 'd like 
 to know, if I could, at what place it was taken." 
 
 Aunt Emma gazed at it long and earnestly. 
 
 Her colour never changed. Then she shook her 
 
 head quietly. 
 
 8 
 
114 RECALLED TO LIFE, 
 
 " I don't know the place," she said ; " and I 
 don't know the name. I can't quite make it out. 
 That 's E, and R, and 0. You see, the letters in 
 between might be almost anything." 
 
 I wasn't going to be put ofT, however, with the 
 port thus in sight. One fact was almost certain. 
 "Wherever that pavilion might be, the murderer 
 was there on the day unknown when those photo- 
 graphs were taken. And whatever that day might 
 be, my father and the murderer were there together. 
 That brought the two into connection, and brought 
 me one step nearer a solution than ever the police 
 had been ; for hitherto no one had even pretended 
 to have the slightest clue to the personality of the 
 man who jumped out of the window. 
 
 I went into the library and took down the big 
 atlas. Opening the map of England and Wales, 
 I began a hopeless search, county by county, from 
 Northumberland downward, for any town or village 
 that would fit these mysterious letters. It was a 
 wild and foolish idea. In the first place not a 
 quarter of the villages were marked in the map ; 
 and in the second place, my brain soon got 
 muddled and dazed with trying to fit in the 
 names with the letters on the flag. Two hours 
 had passed away, and I'd only got as far down 
 
RFXALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 U5 
 
 as Lancashire and Durham. And, most probably 
 even so, I would never come upon it. 
 
 Then suddenly, a bright idea broke on my brain 
 at once. The Index ! The Index ! Presumably, 
 as no fold seemed to obscure the first words, the 
 name began with what looked like a B. That was 
 always something. 
 
 A man would have thought of that at once, of 
 course : but then, I have the misfortune to be only 
 a woman. 
 
 I turned to the Index in haste, and looked down 
 it with hurried eyes. Almost sooner than I could 
 have hoped, the riddle unread itself. " Ber-, 
 Berb-, Berc-, Berd-," I read out : *' Berkshire : 
 Berham : Berhampore : that won't do : Berlin : 
 Berling : Bernina : Berry — what's that? Oh, 
 great heavens ! " — my brain reeled — ** Berry 
 Pomeroy ! " 
 
 It was as clear as day. How could I have 
 missed it before ? There it seemed to stand out 
 almost legible on the flagstaff. I read it now with 
 ease : " Berry Pomeroy Athletic Club." 
 
 I looked up the map once more, following the 
 lines with my fingers, till I found the very place 
 where the name was printed. A village in Devon- 
 shire, not far from Torquay. Yes ! That 's it ; 
 
 8- 
 
Il6 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Berry Pomeroy. The murderer was there on the 
 day of that athletic meeting ! 
 
 My heart came up into my mouth with mingled 
 horror and triumph. I felt like a bloodhound who 
 gets on the trail of his man. I would track him 
 down now, no doubt — my father's murderer ! 
 
 I had no resentment against him, no desire for 
 vengeance. But I had a burning wish to free 
 myself from this environing mystery. 
 
 I wouldn't tell the police or the inspector, how- 
 ever, what clue I had obtained. I'd find it all out 
 for myself without anyone's help. I remembered 
 what Dr. Marten had said, and determined to be 
 wise. I 'd work on my own lines till all was found 
 out : and then, be it who it might, I sternly 
 resolved I'd let justice be done on him. 
 
 So I said nothing even to Jane about the dis- 
 covery I'd just made. I said nothing to anybody 
 till we sat down at dinner. Then, in the course 
 of conversation, I got on the subject of Devon- 
 shire. 
 
 " Auntie," I ventured to ask at last, in a very 
 casual way, " did I ever, so far as you know, go 
 anywhere near a place called Berry Pomeroy ?" 
 
 Aunt Emma gave a start. 
 
 ** Oh, darling, why do you ask?" she cried. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. II7 
 
 ** You don't mean to say you remember that, do 
 you ? What do you want to know for, Una ? 
 You can't possibly recollect your Torquay visit, 
 surely!" 
 
 I trembled all over. Then I was on the right 
 track ! 
 
 *• Was I ever at Torquay ? " I asked once more, 
 as firmly as I could. "And when I was there, did 
 I go over one day to Berry Pomeroy ?" 
 
 Aunt Emma grew all at once as white as death. 
 
 ••This is wonderful!" she cried in an agitated 
 voice. '• This is wonderful — wonderful ! If you 
 can remember that, my child, you can remember 
 anything." 
 
 •• I don't remember it auntie," I answered, not 
 liking to deceive her. •• To tell you the truth, I 
 simply guessed at it. But when and why was I 
 at Torquay? Please tell me. And did I go to 
 Berry Pomeroy ? " For I stuck to my point, and 
 meant to get it out of her. 
 
 Aunt Emma gazed at me fixedly. 
 
 ••You went to Torquay, dear," she said in a 
 very slow voice, ''in the spring of the same year 
 your poor father was killed : that 's more than four 
 years ago. The Willie Moores live at Torquay, 
 and several more of your cousins. You went to 
 
Il8 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 stop with Willie's wife, and you stayed five weeks. 
 I don't know whether you ever went over to Berry 
 Pomeroy. You may have, and you mayn't : it 's 
 within an easy driving distance. Minnie Moore 
 has often written to ask me whether you could go 
 there again ; Minnie was always fond of you, and 
 thinks you 'd remember her : but I 've been afraid 
 to allow you, for fear it should recall sad scenes. 
 She's about your own age, Minnie is ; and she's a 
 daughter of Willie Moore, who's my own first 
 cousin, and of course your dear mother's." 
 
 I never hesitated a moment. I was strung up 
 too tightly by that time. , 
 
 " Auntie dear," I said quietly, " I go to-morrow 
 to Torquay. I must know all now. I must hunt 
 up these people." 
 
 Auntie knew from my tone it was no use trying 
 to stand in my way any longer. 
 
 '• Very well, dear," she said resignedly. " I 
 don't believe it 's good for you : but you must do 
 as you like. You have your father's will, Una. 
 You were always headstrong." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. IIQ 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Zbc IDfsion IRccurs. 
 
 HATED asking auntie questions, they 
 seemed to worry and distress her so ; but 
 that evening, in view of my projected visit 
 to Torquay, I was obhged to cross - examine 
 her rather closely about many things. I wanted 
 to know about my Torquay relations, and as 
 far as possible about my mother's family. In 
 the end I learned that the Willie Moores 
 were cousins of ours on my mother's side who 
 had never quarrelled with my father, like Aunt 
 Emma, and through whom alone accordingly, in 
 the days of my First State, Aunt Emma was able 
 to learn anything about me. They had a house 
 at Torquay, and connections all around ; for the 
 Moores were Devonshire people. Aunt Emma 
 was very anxious, if I went down there at all, I 
 should stop with Mrs. Moore : for Minnie would 
 be so grieved, she said, if I went to an hotel or 
 took private lodgings. But I wouldn't hear of 
 that myself. I knew nothing of the Moores — in 
 
I20 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 my present condition — and I didn't like to trust 
 myself in the hands of those who to me were 
 perfect strangers. So I decided on going to the 
 Imperial Hotel, and calling on the Moores quietly 
 to pursue my investigation. 
 
 Another question I asked in the course of the 
 evening. I had wondered about it often, and now, 
 in these last straits, curiosity overcame me. 
 
 " Aunt Emma," I said unexpectedly after a 
 pause, without one word of introduction, " how 
 ever did you get those scars on your hand ? 
 You've never told me." 
 
 In a moment, Aunt Emma blushed suddenly 
 crimson like girl of eighteen. 
 
 " Una," she answered very gravely, in a low 
 strange tone, "oh, don't ask me about that, dear. 
 Don't ask me about that. You could never under- 
 stand it. ... I got them ... in climbing 
 over a high stone wall ... a high stone wall, 
 with bits of glass stuck on top of it." 
 
 In spite of her prohibition, I couldn't help 
 asking one virtual question more. I gave a start 
 of horror : 
 
 " Not the wall at The Grange ! " I cried. " Oh, 
 Aunt Emma, how wonderful !" 
 
 She gazed at me, astonished. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 121 
 
 •'Yes, the wall at The Grange," she said simply. 
 " But I don't know how you guessed it. . . . 
 Oh, Una, don't talk to me any more about these 
 things, I implore you. You can't think how they 
 grieve me. They distress me unspeakably." 
 
 Much as I longed to know, I couldn't ask her 
 again after that. She was trembling like an aspen- 
 leaf. For some minutes we sat and looked at the 
 fireplace in silence. 
 
 Then curiosity overcame me again. 
 
 ** Only one question more, auntie," I said. 
 *' When I came to you first, you were at home 
 here at Barton. You didn't come to Woodbury 
 to fetch me after the murder. You didn't attend 
 the inquest. I 've often wondered at that. Why 
 didn't you bring me yourself ? Why didn't you 
 hurry to nurse me as soon as you heard they'd 
 shot my father ?" 
 
 Aunt Emma gazed at me again with a face like 
 a sheet. 
 
 " Darhng," she said, quivering, " I was ill. I 
 was in bed. I was obliged to stay away. I'd 
 hurt myself badly a little before. . . . Oh, 
 Una, leave off"! If you go on like this, you'll 
 drive me mad. Say no more, I implore of you." 
 I couldn't think what this meant ; but as auntie 
 
122 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 wished it, I held my peace, all inwardly trembling 
 with suppressed excitement. 
 
 That night, when I went up to bed, I lay awake 
 long, thinking to myself of the Australian scene. 
 In the silence of the night it came back to me 
 vividly. Rain pattered on the roof, and helped 
 me to remember it. I could see the blue-gum 
 trees waving their long ribbon-like leaves in the 
 wind : I could see the cottage, the verandah, my 
 mother, our dog: nay, even, I remembered now, 
 with a burst of recollection, his name was Carlo. 
 The effort was more truly a recollection than 
 before : it was part of myself: I felt aware it was 
 really I myself, not another, who had seen all this, 
 and lived and moved in it. 
 
 Slowly I fell asleep, and passed from thinking 
 to dreaming. My dream was but i prolongation 
 of the thoughts I had been turni ig over in my 
 waking mind I was still in Australia; still on 
 the verandah of our wooden house ; and my 
 mamma was there, and papa beside her. I knew 
 it was papa ; for I held his hand and played with 
 him. But he was so much altered, so grave and 
 severe ; though he smiled at me good-humouredly. 
 Mamma was sitting behind, with baby on her lap. 
 It seemed to me quite natural she should be there 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I23 
 
 with baby. The scene was so distinct — very vivid 
 and clear. It persisted for many minutes, perhaps 
 even hours. It burnt itself into my brain. At 
 last, it woke me up by its very intensity. 
 
 As I woke, a great many thoughts crowded in 
 upon me all at once. This time I knew instantly 
 it was no mere dream, but a true recollection. 
 Yet what a strange recollection ! how unexpeted ! 
 how incomprehensible ! How much in it to 
 settle ! how much to investigate and hunt up 
 and inquire about ! 
 
 In the first place, though I was still in my 
 dream a little girl, much time must have elapsed 
 since the earlier vision ; for my papa looked far 
 older, and graver, and sterner. He had more hair 
 about his face, too, a long brown beard and heavy 
 moustache ; and when I gazed hard at him men- 
 tally, I could recognise the likeness with the white- 
 bearded man who lay dead on the floor : while in 
 my former recollection, I could scarcely make out 
 any resemblance of the features. This showed that 
 the second scene came long after the first : my father 
 must by that time have begun to resemble his later 
 self. A weird feeling stole over me. Was I going 
 to rehve my previous life, piecemeal ? Was the past 
 going to unroll itself in slow but regular panorama 
 
1^4 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 (to mj sleeping vision ? Was my First State to 
 tsectsmme known like this in successive scenes to my 
 
 BiiiJit that wasn't all. There were strange 
 (flwsaAkms to decide, too, about this new dream 
 <&€ (feul days. What could be the meaning of 
 ihM mysterious baby ? She seemed to be so 
 vflvft^ so natural, so real ; her presence there 
 wss »> much a pure matter of course to me, that 
 I GmMn't for a moment separate her from the rest 
 (^iSm Picture. I remembered the baby, now ; as I re- 
 m&mhesed my mother, and my father, and Australia. 
 Thetre was no room for doubt as to that. The baby 
 was am integral part of my real recollection. 
 ¥kiiMmg across the dim ocean of years, I was 
 Cfstimm that night I had once lived in such a 
 S£&s^f with my mamma, and baby. 
 
 Yet ®fo„ what baby ? I never had a brother or 
 «a«ter©f my own, except the half-sister that died — 
 tSacdfeirgyman's child, Mary Wharton. And Mary, 
 &&m wliat I had learned from Aunt Emma and 
 ©dsttarsy CMiust have died when I was only just five 
 jaafiWBltBBa. oki, immediately before we left Australia. 
 M^w^ Itlhen, could I remember her, even in this 
 exsHsd mental state of trance or dream ? And, 
 ab&ve all, how could I remember a far earlier 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 125 
 
 scene, when my papa was younger, when his face 
 was smooth, and when there was no other baby ? 
 
 This mystery only heightened the other mys- 
 teries which surrounded my hfe. I was surfeited 
 with them now. In very despair and hstlessness, 
 I turned round on my side, and dozed dreamily off 
 again, unable to grapple with it. 
 
 But still that scene haunted me. And still, 
 even in sleep, I asked myself over and over again, 
 " How on earth can this be? What's the mean- 
 ing of the baby ?" 
 
 Perhaps it was a little sister that died young, 
 whom I never had heard of. And perhaps not. 
 In a life such as mine, new surprises are always 
 possible. 
 
126 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Zbc yiRoores ot Q:orquag. 
 
 TRANGE to say, in spite of everything, 
 my sleep refreshed me. I woke up in 
 the morning strong and vigorous — thank 
 goodness, I have physically a magnificent consti- 
 tution—and packed my box, with Jane's help, for 
 my Torquay expedition. 
 
 I went up to London and down to Torquay 
 alone, though Jane offered to accompany me. I 
 was learning to be self-reliant. It suited my plans 
 better. Nobody could bear this burden for me 
 but myself; and the sooner I learnt to bear it my 
 own way, the happier for me. 
 
 At Torquay station, to my great surprise, a 
 fresh-looking girl of my own age rushed up to me 
 suddenly, and kissed me without one word of 
 warning. She was a very pretty girl, pink-cheeked 
 and hazel-eyed : and as she kissed me, she seized 
 both my hands in hers, and cried out to me 
 frankly : 
 
 " Why, there you are, Una dear ! Cousin Emma 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 127 
 
 telegraphed us what train you'd arrive by ; so I 've 
 driven down to meet you. And now, you 're 
 coming up with us this very minute in the pony- 
 carriage." 
 
 "You're Minnie Moore, I suppose?" I said, 
 gazing at her admiringly. Her sweet, frank smile 
 and apple-blossom cheek somehow inspired me 
 with confidence. 
 
 She looked back at me quite distressed. Tears 
 rose at once into her eyes with true Celtic sudden- 
 ness. 
 
 " Oh, Una," she cried, deeply hurt and drawing 
 back into her shell, •' don't tell me you don't know 
 me! Why, I 'm Minnie ! Minnie ! " 
 
 My heart went out to her at once. I took her 
 hand in mine again. 
 
 " Minnie dear," I said softly, quite remorseful 
 for my mistake, " you must remember what has 
 happened to me, and not be angry. I 've forgotten 
 everything, even my own past life. I 've forgotten 
 that I ever before set eyes upon you. But, my 
 dear, there 's one thing I 've not in a way forgotten; 
 and that is, that I loved you and love you dearly. 
 And I '11 give you a proof of it. When I started, 
 I knew none of you ; and I told Aunt Emma I 
 wouldn't go among strangers. The moment I see 
 
128 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 you, I know you 're no stranger, but a very dear 
 cousin. When I 've forgotten myself , how can I 
 remember you ? But I '11 go up with you at once. 
 And I '11 countermand the room I ordered by 
 telegram at the Imperial." 
 
 The tears stood fuller in Minnie's eyes than 
 before. She clasped my hand hard. Her pretty 
 lips trembled. 
 
 "Una darling," she said, **we always were 
 friends, and we always shall be. If you love me, 
 that 's all. You 're a darling. I love you." 
 
 I looked at her sweet face, and knew it was true. 
 And oh, I was so glad to have a new friend — an 
 old friend, already ! For somehow, as always, 
 while the intellectual recollection had faded, the 
 emotion survived. I felt as if I 'd known Minnie 
 Moore for years, though I never remembered to 
 have seen her in my life till that minute. 
 
 Well, I remained at the Moores' for a week, and 
 felt quite at home there. They were all very nice. 
 Cousin Willie, and Aunt Emily (she made me call 
 her aunt; she said I 'd always done so), and Minnie, 
 and all of them. They were really dear people ; 
 and blood, after all, is thicker than water. But I 
 made no haste to push inquiries just at first. I 
 preferred to feel my way. I wanted to find out 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I29 
 
 what they knew, if anything, about Berry 
 Pomeroy. 
 
 The first time I ventured to mention the subject 
 to Minnie, she gave a very queer smile — a smile of 
 maidenly badinage. 
 
 *' Well, you remember that, any way," she said, 
 in a teasing little way, looking down at me and 
 laughing. <• I thought you'd remember that. I 
 must say you enjoyed yourself wonderfully at 
 Berry Pomeroy ! " 
 
 " Remember what ? " I cried, all eagerness ; 
 for I saw she attached some special impor- 
 tance to the recollection. And yet, it was terri- 
 ble she should jest about the clue to my father's 
 murderer ! 
 
 Minnie looked arch. When she looked arch, 
 she was charming. 
 
 *' Why, I never saw you prettier or more engag- 
 ing in your life than you were that day," she said 
 evasively, as if trying to pique me. '* And you 
 flirted so much, too ! And everybody admired you 
 so. Everybody on the grounds . . . especially 
 one person ! " 
 
 I looked up at her in surprise. I was in my own 
 room, seated by the dressing-table, late at night, 
 when we 'd gone up to bed; and Minnie was beside 
 
 9 
 
130 RECALLED TO LIFE, 
 
 me, Standing up, with her bedroom candle in that 
 pretty white Httle hand of hers. 
 
 '•What do you mean?" I exclaimed eagerly. 
 "Was it a dance — or a picnic? " 
 
 •'Oh, you know very well," Minnie went on 
 teasingly, "though you pretend you forget. He 
 was there, don't you know. You must remember 
 him, if you 've forgotten all the rest of 3'our pre- 
 vious life. You say you remember the appropriate 
 emotions. Well, he was an emotion : at least, you 
 thought so. It was an Athletic Club Meeting : 
 and Dr. Ivor was there. He went across on his 
 bicycle." 
 
 I gave a start of surprise. Minnie looked down 
 at me half maliciously. 
 
 •• There, you see," she said archly again, ** at 
 Dr. Ivor you change colour. I told you you 'd 
 remember him ! " 
 
 I grew pale with astonishment. 
 
 *• Minnie dear," I said, holding her hands very 
 tight in my own, •' it wasn't that, I assure you. 
 I 've forgotten him, utterly. If ever I knew a Dr. 
 Ivor, if ever I flirted with him, as you seem to 
 imply, he 's gone clean out of my head. His name 
 stirs no chord — recalls absolutely nothing. But I 
 want to know about that Athletic Meeting. Was 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I3X 
 
 my poor father there that day ? And did he take 
 a set of photographs ? " 
 
 Minnie clapped her hands triumphantly. 
 
 " I knew you remembered ! " she cried. " Of 
 course, Cousin Vivian was there. We drove over 
 in a break. You must remember that. And he 
 took a whole lot of instantaneous photographs." 
 
 My hand trembled violently in my cousin's. I 
 felt I was now on the very eve of a great discovery. 
 
 "Minnie," I said, tentatively, ''do you think 
 your papa would drive us over some day and — 
 and show us the place again ? " 
 
 *' Of course he would, dear," Minnie answered, 
 with a gentle pressure of my hand. •* He 'd be 
 only too delighted. Whatever you choose. You 
 know you were always such a favourite of 
 daddy's." 
 
 I knew nothing of the sort ; but I was glad to 
 learn it. I drew Minnie out a little more about 
 the Athletics and my visit to Berry Pomeroy. 
 She wouldn't tell nie much : she was too illusive 
 and indefinite : she never could get the notion out 
 of her head, somehow, that I remembered all 
 about it, and was only pretending to forgetfulness. 
 But I gathered from what she said, that Dr. Ivor 
 and I must have flirted a great deal ; or, at least, ' 
 
 9* 
 
132 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 that he must have paid me a good lot of attention. 
 My father didn't Hke it, Minnie said ; he thought 
 Dr. Ivor wasn't well enough off to marry me. He 
 was a distant cousin of ours, of course — everything 
 was always " of course " with that dear bright 
 Minnie — what, didn't I know that ? Oh, yes, his 
 mother was one of the Moores of Barnstaple, 
 cousin Edward's people. His name was Courtenay 
 Moore Ivor, you know— though I knew nothing of 
 the sort. And he was awfully clever. And, oh, 
 so handsome ! 
 
 ** Is he at Berry Pomeroy still ? " I asked, 
 trembling, thinking this would be a good person 
 to get information from about the people at the 
 Athletic Sports. 
 
 "Oh dear, no," Minnie answered, looking hard 
 at me, curiously. " He was never at Berry 
 Pomeroy. He had a practice at Babbicombe. 
 He's in Canada now, you know. He went over 
 six months after Cousin Vivian's death. I think, 
 dear," — she hesitated, — "he never quite got over 
 your entirely forgetting him, even if you forgot 
 your whole past history." 
 
 This was a curious romance to me, that Minnie 
 thus sprang on me — a romance of my own past 
 life of which I myself knew nothing. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I33 
 
 We sat late talking, and I could see Minnie was 
 very full indeed of Dr. Ivor. Over and over 
 again she recurred to his name, and always as 
 though she thought it might rouse some latent 
 chord in my memory. But nothing came of it. 
 If ever I had cared for Dr. Ivor at all, that feelinfif 
 had passed away utterly with the rest of my 
 experiences. 
 
 When Minnie rose to go, I took her hand once 
 more in mine. As I did so, I started. Something 
 about it seemed strangely famihar. I looked at 
 it close with a keen glance. Why, this was 
 curious ! It was Aunt Emma's hand : it was my 
 mother's hand : it was the hand in my mental 
 Picture : it was the hand of the murderer ! 
 
 "It's just Hke auntie's," I said with an effort, 
 seeing Minnie noticed my start. 
 
 She looked at it and laughed. 
 
 "The Moore hand," she said gaily. "We all 
 have it, except you. It 's awfully persistent." 
 
 I turned it over in front and examined the palm. 
 At sight of it my brain reeled. This was surely 
 magic ! Minnie Moore's hand, too, was scarred 
 over with cuts, exactly like Aunt Emma's!" 
 
 " Why, how on earth did you do that ? " I cried, 
 thunderstruck at the discovery. 
 
134 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 But Minnie only laughed again, a bright girlish 
 laugh. 
 
 " Climbing over that beastly wall at The Grange," 
 she said with a merry look. "Oh, what fun we 
 did have! We climbed it together. We were 
 dreadful tomboys in those days, dear, you and I : 
 but you were luckier than I was, and didn't cut 
 yourself with the bottle-glass." 
 
 This was too surprising to be passed over 
 unnoticed. When Minnie was gone, I lay awake 
 and pondered about it. Had all the Moores got 
 scars on their hands, I wondered ? And how many 
 people, I asked myself, had cut themselves time 
 and again in climbing over that barricaded garden- 
 wall of my father's ? 
 
 The Moore hand might be hereditary, but not 
 surely the scars. Was the murderer, then, a 
 Moore, and was that the meaning of Dr. Marten's 
 warning ? 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 135 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 2)r. ^vov of JSabbicombc, 
 
 (g^WO days later, Cousin Willie drove us 
 % over to Berry Pomeroy. The lion of 
 the place is the castle, of course; but 
 Minnie had told him beforehand I wanted, for 
 reasons of my own, to visit the cricket - field 
 where the sports were held '* the year Dr. Ivor 
 won the mile race, you remember." So we 
 went there straight. As soon as we entered, I 
 recognised the field at once, and the pavilion, and 
 the woods, as being precisely the same as those 
 presented in the photograph. But I got no further 
 than that. The captain of the cricket-club was 
 on the ground that day, and I managed to get into 
 conversation with him, and strolled off in the 
 grounds. There I showed him the photograph, 
 and asked if he could identify the man climbing 
 over the wagon : but he said he couldn't recognise 
 him. Somebody or other from Torquay, perhaps ; 
 not a regular resident. The figures were so small, 
 and so difficult to make sure about. If I'd leave 
 
 
136 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 him the photograph, perhaps — but at that I drew 
 back, for I didn't want anybody, least of all at 
 Torquay, to know what quest I was engaged 
 upon. 
 
 We drove back, a merry party enough, in spite 
 of my failure. Minnie was always so jolly, and 
 her mirth was contagious. She talked all the 
 way still of Dr. Ivor, half-teasing me. It was all 
 very well my pretending not to remember, she 
 said ; but why did I want to see the cricket-field 
 if it wasn't for that ? Poor Courtenay ! if only he 
 knew, how delighted he 'd be to know he wasn't 
 forgotten ! For he really took it to heart, my ill- 
 ness — she alwa3'S called it my illness, and so I 
 suppose it was. From the day I lost my memory, 
 nothing seemed to go right with him ; and he was 
 never content till he went and buried himself 
 somewhere in the wilds of Canada. 
 
 That evening again, I sat with Minnie in my 
 room. I was depressed and distressed. I didn't 
 want to cry before Minnie, but I could have cried 
 with good heart for sheer vexation. Of course I 
 couldn't bear to go showing the photograph to all 
 the world, and letting everybody see I'd made 
 myself a sort of amateur detective. They would 
 mistake my motives so. And yet I didn't know 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I37 
 
 how I was ever to find out my man any other way. 
 It was that or nothing. I made up my mind I 
 would ask Cousin Willie. 
 
 I took out the photograph, as if unintentionally, 
 when I went to my box, and laid it down with my 
 curling-tongs on the table close by Minnie. Minnie 
 took it up abstractedly and looked at it with an 
 indefinite gaze. 
 
 "Why, this is the cricket-field!" she cried, 
 as soon as she collected her senses. " One of 
 your father's experiments. The earliest acme- 
 graphs. How splendidly they come out ! See, 
 that's Sir Everard at the bottom; and there's 
 little Jack Hillier above; and this on one side's 
 Captain Brooks ; and there, in front of all — well, '^ff 
 
 you know him anyhow, Una. Now, don't pretend 
 you forget ! That's Courtenay Ivor !" 
 
 Her finger was on the man who stood poised 
 ready to jump. With an awful recoil, I drew back 
 and suppressed a scream. It was on the tip of 
 my tongue to cry out, "Why, that's my father's 
 murderer!" 
 
 But, happily, with a great effort of will I 
 restrained myself. 1 saw it all at a glance. 
 That, then, was the meaning of Dr. Marten's 
 warning I No wonder, I thought, the shock had 
 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 (dflSiOT^anised my whole brain. If Minnie was 
 ro^itr I was in love once with that man. And 1 
 mmM. Iiave seen my lover murder my father ! 
 
 F©ir I didn't doubt, from what Minnie said, I 
 hsid really once loved Dr. Ivor. Horrible and 
 ^hsmiy as it might be to realise it, I didn't doubt 
 it wa» the truth. I had once loved the very man 
 1 was now bent on pursuing as 9, criminal and a 
 
 •^YjMi're sure that's him, Minnie?" I cried, 
 to conceal my agitation. "You're sure 
 i% Courtenay Ivor, the man stooping on the 
 wagoDH-top ?" 
 
 Mmmie looked at me, smiling. She thought I 
 wss> asking for a very different reason. 
 
 '^YeSj that's him, right enough, dear," she said. 
 **l(sxmld tell him among a thousand. Why, the 
 M(S®ire hand alone would be quite enough to 
 hmm him by. It's just like my own. We've 
 sM<^ rm got it — except yourself. I always said 
 jms weren't one of us. You're a regular born 
 Cjflfidiigham." 
 
 I gaized at her fixedly. I could hardly speak. 
 
 ""Ofe, Minnie!" I cried once more, *• have you 
 # .. * have you any photograph of him ? " 
 
 **K<!>, we haven't dear," Minnie answered. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I39 
 
 " That was a fad of Courtenay's, you know. 
 Wherever he went, he'd never be photographed. 
 He was annoyed that day that your father should 
 have taken him unawares. He hated being 'done,' 
 he said. He's so handsome and so nice, but he's 
 not a bit conceited. And he was such a splendid 
 bicyclist ! He rode over and back on his bicycle 
 that day, and then ran in all the races as if it were 
 nothing." 
 
 A light burst over me at once. This was circum- 
 stantial evidence. The murderer who disappeared 
 as if by magic the moment his crime was com- 
 mitted must have come and gone all unseen, no 
 doubt, on his bicycle. He must have left it under 
 the window till his vile deed was done, and then 
 leapt out upon it in a second and dashed off 
 whence he came like a flash of hghtning. 
 
 It was a premeditated crime, in that case, not 
 the mere casual result of a sudden quarrel. 
 
 I must find out this man now, were it only to 
 relieve my own sense of mystery. 
 
 " Minnie," I said once more, screwing up my 
 courage to ask, " where 's Dr. Ivor now ? I mean 
 — that is to say — in what part of Canada ? '* 
 
 Minnie looked at me and laughed. 
 
 " There, I told you so ! " she said, merrily. " It 's 
 
140 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 not the least bit of use your pretending you're not 
 in love with him, Una. Why, just look how you 
 tremble ! You're as white as a ghost ! And then 
 you say you don't care for poor Courtenay ! I 
 forget the exact name of the place where he lives, 
 but I 've got it in my desk, and I can tell you 
 to-morrow. — Oh, yes ; it's Palmyra, on the Canada 
 Pacific. I suppose you want to write to him. Or 
 perhaps you mean to go out and offer yourself 
 bodily." 
 
 It was awful having to bottle up the truth in 
 one's own heart, and to laugh and jest like this ; 
 but I endured it somehow. 
 
 "No, it's not that," I said gravely. "I've 
 other reasons of my own for asking his address, 
 Minnie. I want to go out there, it's true; but 
 not because I cherish the faintest pleasing recol- 
 lection of Dr. Ivor in any way." 
 
 Minnie scanned me over in surprise. 
 
 "Well, how you are altered, Una!" she cried. 
 *• I love you, dear, and like you every bit as much 
 as ever. But you've changed so much. I don't 
 think you're at all what you used to be. You're 
 so grave and sombre." 
 
 " No wonder, Minnie," I exclaimed, bursting 
 gladly into tears — the excuse was such a rehef — 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I41 
 
 ** no wonder, when you think how much I 've 
 passed through !" 
 
 Minnie flung her arms around my neck, and 
 kissed me over and over again. 
 
 " Oh, dear !" she cried, melting. " What have I 
 done ? What have I said ? I ought never to have 
 spoken so. It was cruel of me — cruel, Una dear. 
 I shall stop here to-night, and sleep with you." 
 
 "Oh, thank you, darhng ! " I cried. "Minnie, 
 that is good of you. I'm so awfully glad. For 
 to-morrow I must be thinking of getting ready for 
 Canada." 
 
 " Canada ! " Minnie exclaimed, alarmed. " You 're 
 not really going to Canada! Oh, Una, you're 
 joking ! You don't mean to say you 're going out 
 there to find him ! " 
 
 I took her hand in mine, and held it up in the 
 air above her head solemnly. 
 
 " Dear cousin," I said, " I love you. But you 
 must promise me this one thing. Whatever may 
 happen, give me your sacred word of honour 
 you'll never tell anybody what we've said here to- 
 night. You'll kill me if you do. I don't want 
 any living soul on earth to know of it." 
 
 I spoke so seriously, Minnie felt it was im- 
 portant. 
 
142 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 *' I promise you," she answered, growing 
 suddenly far graver than her wont. " Oh, Una, 
 I haven't the faintest idea what you mean, but no 
 torture on earth shall ever wring a word of it from 
 me ! " 
 
 So I went to bed in her arms, and cried myself 
 to sleep, thinking with my latest breath, in a 
 tremor of horror, that I'd found it at last. 
 Courtenay Ivor was the name of my father's 
 murderer ! 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 143 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 /IBs Mclcomc to Cana^a. 
 
 HE V03'age across the Atlantic was long 
 and uneventful. No whales, no icebergs, 
 no excitement of any sort. My fellow- 
 passengers said it was as dull as it was calm. 
 But as for me, I had plenty to occupy my mind 
 meanwhile. Strange things had happened in the 
 interval, and were happening to me on the 
 way. Strange things, in part, of my own internal 
 history. 
 
 For before I left England, as I sat with Aunt 
 Emma in her little drawing-room at Barton-on- 
 the-Sea, discussing my plans and devising routes 
 westward, she made me, quite suddenly, an un- 
 expected confession. 
 
 " Una," she said, after a long pause, " you 
 haven't told me, my dear, why you 're going to 
 Canada. And I don't want to ask you. I know 
 pretty well. We needn't touch upon that. You 're 
 going to hunt up some supposed clue to the 
 murderer." 
 
144 RFXALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ** Perhaps so, Auntie," I said oracularly: "and 
 perhaps not." 
 
 For I didn't want it to get talked about and 
 be put into all the newspapers. And I knew 
 now if I wanted to keep it out, I must first be 
 silent. 
 
 Aunt Emma drew nearer and took my hand in 
 hers. At the same time, she held up the other 
 scarred and lacerated palm. 
 
 " Do you know when I got that, Una ? " she 
 asked with a sudden burst. *' Well, I '11 tell you, 
 my child. ... It was the night of your 
 father's death. And I got it climbing over the 
 wall at The Grange, to escape detection." 
 
 My blood ran cold once more. What on earth 
 
 could this mean ? Had Auntie ? But no. I 
 
 had the evidence of my own senses that it; was 
 Courtenay Ivor. I 'd tracked him down now. 
 There was no room for doubt. The man on the 
 wagon was the man who fired the shot, I could 
 have sworn to that bent back, of my own know- 
 ledge, among a thousand. 
 
 I hadn't long to wait, however. Auntie went on 
 after a short pause. 
 
 *• I was there," she said, "by accident, trying 
 for once to see you." 
 
RRCALLED TO LIFE. I45 
 
 I looked at her fixedly still, and still I said 
 nothing. 
 
 " I was stopping with friends at the time, ten 
 miles off from Woodbury," Aunt Emma went on, 
 smoothing my hand with hers, ** and I longed so 
 to see you. I came over by train that day, and 
 stopped late about the town in hopes I might 
 meet you in the street. But I was disappointed. 
 Towards evening I ventured even to go into the 
 grounds of The Grange, and look about every- 
 where on the chance that I might see you. Per- 
 haps your father might be out. I went round 
 towards the window, which I now know to be the 
 library. As I went, I saw a bicycle leaning up 
 against the wall by the window. I thought that 
 must be some visitor, but still I went on. But 
 just as I reached the window, I saw a flash of 
 electric light ; and by the light, I could make out 
 your father's head and beard. He looked as if he 
 were talking angrily and loudly to somebody. The 
 window was open. I was afraid to stop longer. 
 In a sudden access of fear, I ran across the shrub- 
 bery towards the garden-wall. To tell you the truth, 
 I was horribly frightened. Why, I don't know ; 
 for nothing had happened as yet. I suppose it was 
 
 just the dusk and the mean sense of intrusion." 
 
 10 
 
146 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 She paused and wiped her brov;. I sat still, 
 and listened eagerly. 
 
 " Presently," she went on, very low, -' as I ran 
 and ran, I heard behind me a loud crash — a sound 
 as of a pistol-shot. That terrified mt still more. 
 I thought I was being pursued. Perhaps they 
 took me for a burglar. In the agony of my 
 terror, I rushed at the wall in mad haste, and 
 climbed over it anyhow. In climbing, I tore my 
 hand, as you see, and made myself bleed, oh, 
 terribly ! However, I persevered, and got down 
 on the other side, with my clothes very little the 
 worse for the scramble. And, fortunately, I was 
 carrying a small light dust-cloak : I put it on at 
 once, and it covered up everything. Then I 
 began to walk along the road as fast as I 
 could in the direction of the station. As I 
 did so, a bicycle shot out from the gate in the 
 opposite direction, going as hard as it could 
 spin, simply flying towards Whittingham. Three 
 minutes later, a man came up to me, breath- 
 less. It was the gardener at The Grange, I 
 believe. 
 
 ** * Have you seen anybody go this way ? ' he 
 asked. ' A young man, running hard ? A young 
 man in knickerbockers ? ' 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 147 
 
 *" N — no,' I answered, trembling; for I was 
 afraid to confess. * Not a soul has gone past ! ' 
 
 "Of course, I didn't know of the murder as yet ; 
 and I only wanted to get off unperceived to the 
 station. 
 
 " I 'd bound up my hand in my handkerchief by 
 that time, and held it tight under my cloak. I 
 went back by train unnoticed, and returned to my 
 friends' house. I hadn't even told them I was 
 going to Woodbury at all. I pretended 1 'd been 
 spending the day at Whittingham. Next morn- 
 ing, I read in the paper of your father's murder." 
 
 I stared hard at Aunt Emma. 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me this long ago ? " I 
 cried, in an agony of suspense. " Why didn't you 
 give evidence and say so at the inquest ? " 
 
 '* How could I ? " Aunt Emma answered, look- 
 ing back at me appealingly. *' The circumstances 
 were too suspicious. As it was, everybody was 
 running after the young man in knickerbockers. 
 Nobody took any notice of a little old lady in a 
 long grey dust-cloak. But if once I 'd confessed 
 and shown my wounded hand, who would ever 
 have believed I 'd nothing to do with the murder ? 
 — except you, perhaps, Una. Oh no: I came back 
 here to my own home as fast as ever I could ; for 
 
 10 * 
 
148 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 I was really ill. I took to my bed at once. And 
 as nobody called me to give evidence at the 
 inquest, I said nothing to anybody." 
 
 "But the bicycle!" I cried. "The bicycle! 
 You ought to have mentioned that. You were 
 the only one who saw it. It was a clue to the 
 murderer." 
 
 *' If I 'd told," Aunt Emma answered, " I should 
 never have been allowed to take charge of you at 
 all. I thought my one clear duty was to my 
 sister's child : it was to take care of your health 
 in your shattered condition. And even now, Una, 
 I tell you only for this : if you find out anything 
 new, in Canada or here, try not to drag me into 
 it. I couldn't stand the strain. Cross-examina- 
 tion would kill me." 
 
 " I '11 remember it, auntie," I said, wearied out 
 with excitement. " But I think you did wrong, 
 all the same. In a case like this, it 's everybody's 
 first duty to tell all he knows, in the interests of 
 justice." 
 
 However, this confession of Aunt Emma's ren- 
 dered one thing more certain to me than ever 
 before. I was sure I war. on the right track now, 
 after Courtenay Ivor. The bicycle clinched the 
 proof. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I49 
 
 But I said nothing as yet to the poHce, or to my 
 friendly Inspector. I was determined to hunt the 
 whole thing up on my own account first, and then 
 dehver my criminal, when fully secured, to the 
 laws of my country. 
 
 Not that I was vindictive. Not that I wanted to 
 punish the man. No ; I shrank terribly from the 
 task. But to relieve myself from this persistent 
 sense of surrounding mystery, and to free others 
 from suspicion, I felt compelled to discover him. 
 It seemed to me like a duty laid upon me from 
 without. I dared not shirk it. 
 
 On the way out to Quebec, the sea seemed to 
 revive strange memories. I had never crossed it 
 before, except long, long ago, on my way home 
 from Australia. And now that I sat on deck, in 
 a wicker-chair, and looked at the deep dark 
 waves by myself, I began once more, in vague 
 snatches, to recall that earlier voyage. It came 
 back to me all of itself. And that was quite in 
 keeping with my previous recollections. My past 
 life, 1 felt sure, was unfolding itself slowly to me 
 in regular succession, from childhood onward. 
 
 Sitting there on the quarter-deck, gazing hard 
 at the waves, I remembered how I had played on 
 a similar ship years and years before, a little girl 
 
150 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 in short frocks, with my mamma in a long folding- 
 chair beside me. I could see my mamma, with a 
 sort of frightened smile on her poor pale face ; and 
 she looked so unhappy. My papa was there too, 
 somewhat older and greyer — very unlike the papa 
 of my first Australian picture. His face was so 
 much hairier. Mamma cried a good deal at times, 
 and papa tried to comfort her. Besides, what 
 struck me most, there was no more baby. I 
 wasn't even allowed to speak about baby. That 
 subject was tabooed — perhaps because it always 
 made mamma cry so much, and press me 
 hard to her bosom. At any rate, I remembered 
 how once I spoke of baby to some fellow-passen- 
 ger in the saloon, and papa was very angry, and 
 caught me up in his arms and took me down to my 
 berth ; and there I had to stop all day by myself 
 (though it was rolling hard) and could have no 
 fruit for dinner, because I 'd been naughty. I was 
 strictly enjoined never to mention baby to anyone 
 again, either then or at any time. I was to forget 
 all about her. 
 
 Day after day, as we sailed on, reminiscences 
 of the same sort crowded thicker and thicker upon 
 me. Never reminiscences of my later life, but 
 always early scenes brought up by distinct sugges- 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I5I 
 
 tion of that Australian voyage. When we passed 
 a ship, it burst upon me how we 'd passed such 
 ships before : when there was fire-drill on deck, 
 I remembered having assisted years earlier at just 
 such fire-drill. The whole past came back like a 
 dream, so that I could reconstruct now the first 
 five or six years of my life almost entirely. And 
 yet, even so there was a gap, a puzzle, a difficulty 
 somehow. I couldn't make the chronology of this 
 slow-returning memory fit in as it ought with the 
 chronology of the facts given to me by Aunt 
 Emma and the Moores of Torquay. There was a 
 constant discrepancy. It seemed to me that I 
 must be a year or two older at least than they 
 made me out. I remembered the voyage home 
 far too well for my age. I fancied I went back 
 further in my Australian recollections than would 
 be possible from the dates Aunt Emma assigned 
 me. 
 
 Slowly, as I compared these mental pictures of 
 my first childhood one with the other, a strange 
 fact seemed to loom forth, incomprehensible, in- 
 credible. When first it struck me, all unnerved 
 as I was, my reason staggered before it. But it 
 was true, none the less : quite true, I felt certain. 
 Had I had two papas, then ? — for the pictures 
 
152 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 dMfered so. Was one, clean-shaven, trim, and in 
 a Hmen coat, the same as the other, older, graver, 
 smd sterner, with much hair on his face, and a 
 rowgh sort of look, whom I saw more persistently 
 Ml my later childish memories? I could hardly 
 h&Heve it. One man couldn't alter so greatly in a 
 Ifew short years. Yet I thought of them both alike 
 (^laiBlle unquestioningly as papa : I thought of them 
 to©, I fancied, in a dim sort of way, as one and 
 ihe same person. 
 
 These fresh mysteries occupied my mind for the 
 greater part of that uneventful voyage. To throw 
 them off, I laughed and talked as much as possible 
 WBflii the rest of the passengers. Indeed, I gained 
 tfite reputation of being '* an awfully jolly girl," so 
 Iieartily did I throw myself into all the games and 
 swmiiisements, to escape from the burden of my 
 fvessing thoughts : and I believe many old ladies 
 (SUB board were thoroughly scandalised that a 
 woman whose father had been brutally murdered 
 shMxld ever be able to seem so bright and lively 
 a^ain. How little they knew ! And what a world 
 d mystery seemed to oppress and surround me ! 
 
 At last, early one morning, we reached the Gulf, 
 sssd took in our pilot off the Straits of Belleisle. I 
 wai3 on deck at the time, playing a game called 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I53 
 
 *' Shovelboard." As the pilot reached the ship, 
 he took the captain's hand, and, to my immense 
 surprise, said in an audible voice : 
 
 " So you 've the famous Miss Callingham for a 
 passenger, I hear, this voyage. There 's the latest 
 Quebec papers. You '11 see you 're looked for. 
 Our people are expecting her." 
 
 I rushed forward, fiery hot, and with a trembling 
 hand took one of the papers he was distributing 
 all round, right and left, to the people on deck. It 
 was unendurable that the memory of that one 
 event should thus dog me through life with such 
 ubiquitous persistence. I tore open the sheet. 
 There, with horrified eyes, I read this hateful 
 paragraph, in the atrociously vulgar style of 
 Transatlantic journalism : 
 
 ** The Sarmatiatt, expected off Belleisle to-mor- 
 row morning, brings among her passengers, as we 
 learn by telegram, the famous Una Callingham, 
 whose connection with the so-called Woodbury 
 Mystery is now a matter of historical interest. 
 The mysterious two-souled lady possesses, at 
 present, all her faculties intact, as before the 
 murder, and is indeed, people say, a remarkably 
 spry and intelligent young person ; but she has 
 
154 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 most conveniently forgotten all the events of her 
 past life, and more particularly the circumstances 
 of her father's death, which is commonly conjec- 
 tured to have been due to the pistol of some 
 unknown lovet. Such freaks of memory are com- 
 mon, we all know, in the matter of small debts 
 and of newspaper subscriptions, but they seldom 
 extend quite so far as the violent death of a near 
 relation. However, Una knows her own business 
 best. The Sarmatian is due alongside the Bonse- 
 cours Quay ct lo a.m. on Wednesday, the loth ; 
 and all Quebec will, no doubt, be assembled at 
 the landing-stage to say * Good-morning ' to the 
 two-souled lady." 
 
 The paper dropped from my hand. This was 
 too horrible for anything! How I was ever to go 
 through the ordeal of the landing at Quebec after 
 that, I hadn't the faintest conception. And was I 
 to be dogged and annoyed like this through all my 
 Canadian trip by anonymous scribblers? Had 
 these people no hearts ? no consideration for the 
 sensitiveness of an English lady ? 
 
 I looked over the side of the ship at the dark- 
 blue water. Oh, how I longed to plunge into it and 
 . be released for ever from this abiding nightmare ! 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 B Bcw Bcauaintancc. 
 
 HE moment we reached the quay at 
 Quebec, some two days later, a dozen 
 young men, with Httle notebooks in their 
 hands, jumped on board all at once. 
 
 •* Miss Callingham ! " they cried with one accord, 
 making a dash for the quarter-deck. '* Which is 
 she ? Oh, this ! — If you please, Miss Callingham, 
 I should like to have ten minutes of your time to 
 interview you !" 
 
 I clapped my hands to my ears, and stood back, 
 all horrified. What I should have done, I don't 
 know, but for a very kind man in a big rough over- 
 coat, who had jumped on board at the same time, 
 and made over to me like the reporters. He 
 stepped up to me at once, pushed aside the young 
 men, and said in a mcst friendly tone : 
 
 "Miss Callingham, I think? You'd better 
 come with me, then. These people are all sharks. 
 Everybody in Quebec 's agog to see the Two- 
 souled Lady. Answer no questions at all. Take 
 
156 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 not the least notice of them. Just follow me to 
 the Custom House. Let them rave, but don't 
 speak to them." 
 
 "Who are you ?" I asked blindly, cHnging to 
 his arm in my terror. 
 
 " I 'm a policeman in plain clothes," my new 
 friend answered ; " and I 've been specially detailed 
 by order for this duty. I 'm here to look after you. 
 You 've friends in Canada, though you may have 
 quite forgotten them. They've sent me to help 
 you. Those are two of my chums there, standing 
 aside by the gangway. We '11 walk you off between 
 us. Don't be afraid.— Here, you sir, there ; make 
 way ! — No one shall come near you." 
 
 I was so nervous, and so ashamed that I accepted 
 my strange escort without inquiry or remonstrance. 
 He helped me, with remarkable politeness for a 
 common policeman, across to the Custom House, 
 where I sat waiting for my luggage. Reporters 
 and sightseers, meanwhile, pressed obtrusively 
 around me. My protector held them back. I 
 was half wild with embarrassment. I 'm naturally 
 a reserved and somewhat sensitive girl, and this 
 American publicity made me crimson with bash- 
 fulness. 
 
 As I sat there waiting, however, the two other 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I57 
 
 policemen to whom my champion had beckoned 
 sat one on each side of me, keeping off the idle 
 crowd, while my first friend looked after the 
 luggage and saw it safely through the Customs for 
 me. He must be an Inspector, I fancied, or some 
 other superior officer, the officials were so defer- 
 ential to him. I gave him my keys, and he 
 looked after everything himself. I had nothing, 
 for my part, to do but to sit and wait patiently 
 for him. 
 
 As soon as he had finished, he called a porter to 
 his side. 
 
 " Vite /" he cried, in a tone of authority, to the 
 man. ^^Un fiacre !'' 
 
 And the porter called one. 
 
 I started to find that I knew what he meant. 
 Till that moment, in my Second State, I had learned 
 no French, and didn't know I could speak any. 
 But I recognised the words quite well as soon as 
 he uttered them. My lost knowledge reasserted 
 itself. 
 
 They bundled on my boxes. The crowd still 
 stood around and gaped at me, open-mouthed. I 
 got into the cab, more dead than alive. 
 
 ^^Allez!'' my poHceman cried to the French- 
 Canadian driver, seating himself by my side. 
 
158 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 'M la gave du chemin defer Pacific! Aiissi vite que 
 possible r' 
 
 I understood every word. This was wonderful. 
 My memory was coming back again. 
 
 The man tore along the streets to the Pacific 
 railway station. By the time we reached it we 
 had distanced the sightseers, though some of them 
 gave chase. My policeman got out. 
 
 "The train's just going!" he said sharply. 
 ** Don't take a ticket for Palmyra, if you don't 
 want to be followed and tracked out all the way. 
 They '11 telegraph on your destination. Book to 
 Kingston instead, and then change at Sharbot 
 Lake, and take a second ticket on from there 
 to Palmyra." 
 
 I listened, half dazed. Palmyra was the place 
 where Dr. Ivor lived. Yet, even in the hurry of 
 the moment, I wondered much to myself how the 
 policeman knew ! wanted to go to Palmyra. 
 
 There was no time to ask questions, however, 
 or to deliberate on my plans. I took my ticket as 
 desired, in a turmoil of feelings, and jumped on to 
 the train. I trusted by this time I had eluded 
 detection. I ought to have come, I saw now, 
 under a feigned name. This horrid publicity was 
 more than I could endure. My policeman helped 
 
 , \' 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I59 
 
 me in with his persistent politeness, and saw my 
 boxes checked as far as Sharbot Lake for me. 
 Then he handed me the checks. 
 
 *' Go in the Pullman," he said quietly. *• It 's a 
 long journey, you know : four-and-twenty hours 
 You 've only just caught it. But if you 'd stopped 
 in Quebec, you 'd never have been able to give the 
 sightseers the slip. You 'd have been pestered all 
 through. I think you 're safe now. It was this 
 or nothing." 
 
 " Oh, thank you so much !" I cried, with heart- 
 felt gratitude, leaning out of the window as the 
 train was on the point of starting. I pulled out 
 my purse, and drew timidly forth a sovereign. 
 " I 've only English money," I said, hesitating, for 
 I didn't know whether he 'd be offended or not at 
 the offer of a tip — he seemed such a perfect 
 gentleman. *' But if that 's any use to you " 
 
 He smiled a broad smile and shook his head, 
 much amused. 
 
 " Oh, thank you," he said, half laughing, with 
 a very curious air. *' I 'm a policeman, as I told 
 you. But I don't need tips. I 'm the Chief 
 Constable of Quebec — there's my card; Major 
 Tascherel,— and I 'm glad to be of use, I 'm sure, 
 to any friend of Dr. Ivor's." 
 
l6o RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 He lifted his hat with the inborn grace of a 
 high-born gentleman. I coloured and bowed. The 
 train steamed out of the station. As it went, I 
 fell back, half fainting, in the comfortable armchair 
 of the Pullman car, hardly able to speak with 
 surprise and horror. It was all so strange, so 
 puzzling, so bewildering ! Then I owed my escape 
 from the stenographic myrmidons of the Canadian 
 Press to the polite care and attention of my 
 father's murderer ! 
 
 Major Tascherel was a friend, he said, of Dr. 
 Ivor's ! 
 
 Then Dr. Ivor knew I had come. He knew 
 I was going to Palmyra to find him. And yet 
 he had written to Quebec, apparently, expectmg 
 this crush, and asking his friend the Chief Con- 
 stable to protect and befriend me. Had he 
 murdered my father, and was he in love with me 
 still ? Did he think I 'd come out, not to track 
 him down, but to look for him ? Strange, horrible 
 questions ! My heart stood still within me at this 
 extraordinary revelation. Yet I was so frightened 
 at the moment, alone in a strange land, that 1 felt 
 almost grateful to the murderer himself for his 
 kindness in thinking of m*^ and providing for my 
 reception. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. l6l 
 
 As I settled in my seat and had time to realise 
 what these things meant, it dawned upon me by 
 degrees that all this was less remarkable, after all, 
 than I first thought it. For they had telegraphed 
 from England that I sailed on the Sarmatian ; and 
 Dr. Ivor, like everybody else, must have read the 
 telegram. He might naturally conclude I would 
 be half-mobbed by reporters ; and as it was clear 
 he had once been fond of me — hateful as I felt it 
 even to admit the fact to myself — he might really 
 have desired to save me annoyance and trouble. 
 It was degrading, to be sure, even to think I owed 
 anything of any sort to such a wretch as that 
 murderer ; yet in a certain corner of my heart I 
 couldn't help being thankful to him. But how 
 strange to feel I had come there on purpose to 
 hunt him down ! How horrible that I must so 
 repay good with evil ! 
 
 Then a still more ghastly thought surged up 
 suddenly in my mind. Why on earth did he think 
 I was going to Palmyra ? Was it possible he 
 fancied I loved him still — that I wanted to marry 
 him ? Could he imagine I 'd come out just to 
 fling myself at his feet and ask him to take me ? 
 Could he suppose I 'd forgotten all the rest of my 
 past life, and his vile act as well, and yet remem- 
 
 II 
 
l62 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 bered alone what little love, if any, I ever had borne 
 him ? It was incredible that any man, however 
 wicked, however conceited, should think such folly 
 as that — that a girl would marry her father's 
 murderer ; and yet what might not one expect 
 from a man who, after having shot my father, had 
 still the inconceivable and unbelievable audacity 
 to take deliberate steps for securing my own com- 
 fort and happiness ? From such a wretch as that, 
 one might look for almost anything ! 
 
 For ten minutes or more, as we whirled along 
 the line in the Pullman car, I was too dazed and 
 confused to notice anything around me. My brain 
 swam vaguely, filled full with wild whirling 
 thoughts; the strange drama of my life, always 
 teeming with mysteries, seemed to culminate in 
 this reception in an unknown land by people who 
 appeared almost to know more about my business 
 than I myself did. I gazed out of the window 
 blankly. In some vague dim way I saw we were 
 passing between rocky hills, pine-clad and beauti- 
 ful, with deep glimpses now and then into the 
 riven gorge of a noble river. But I didn't even 
 realise to myself that these were Canadian hills — 
 those were the heights of Abraham — that was the 
 silver St. Lawrence. It all passed by like a living 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 163 
 
 dream. I sat still in my chair, as one stunned and 
 faint ; I gazed out, more dead than alive, on the 
 unfamiliar scene that unrolled itself in exquisite 
 panorama before me. Quebec and the Laurentian 
 hills were to me half unreal : the inner senses alone 
 were awake and conscious. 
 
 Presently a gentle voice at my side broke, not at 
 all unpleasantly, the current of my reflections. It 
 was a lady's voice, very sweet and musical. 
 
 *' I 'm afraid," it said kindly, with an air of 
 tender solicitude, " you only just caught the train, 
 and were hurried and worried and flurried at the 
 last at the station. You look so white and tired. 
 How your breath comes and goes ! And I think 
 you 're new to our Canadian ways. I saw you 
 didn't understand about the checks for the baggage. 
 Let me take away this bag and put it up in the 
 rack for you. Here 's a footstool for your feet ; 
 that '11 make you more comfortable." 
 
 At the first sound of her sweet voice, I turned 
 to look at the speaker. She was a girl, perhaps a 
 year or two younger than myself, very slender and 
 graceful, and with eyes like a mother's. She 
 wasn't exactly pretty, but her face was so full of 
 intelligence and expression that it was worth a 
 
 great deal more than any doll-like prettiness. 
 
 II ^'' 
 
164 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Perhaps it was pleasure at being spoken to kindly 
 at all in this land of strangers ; perhaps it was 
 revulsion from the agony of shame and modesty I 
 had endured at Quebec ; but, at any rate, I felt 
 drawn at first sight to my sweet-voiced fellow- 
 traveller. Besides, she reminded me somewhat 
 of Minnie Moore, and that resemblance alone 
 was enough to attract me. I looked up at her 
 gratefully. 
 
 " Oh, thank you so much !" I cried, putting my 
 bag in her hand. '* I 've only just come out from 
 England; and I 'd hardly time at Quebec to catch 
 the train ; and the people crowded around so, that 
 I was flustered at landing ; and everything some- 
 how seems to be going against me." 
 
 And with that my poor overwrought nerves 
 gave way all at once, and without any more ado 
 I just burst out crying. 
 
 The lady by my side leant over me tenderly. 
 
 *• There — cry, dear," she said, as if she 'd known 
 me for years, stooping down and almost caressing 
 me. " Jack," — and she turned to a tall gentleman 
 at her side, — "quick! you've got my black bag; 
 get me out the sal volatile. She 's quite faint, poor 
 thing ; we must look after her instantly." 
 
 The person to whom she spoke, and who was 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 165 
 
 apparently her husband or her brother, took down 
 the black bag from the rack hastily, and got out the 
 sal volatile, as my friend directed him. He poured a 
 little into a tumbler and held it quietly to my lips. 
 I liked his manner, ac I 'd liked the lady's. He was 
 so very brotherly. Besides, there was something 
 extremely soothing about his quick, noiseless way. 
 He did it all so fast, yet without the faintest sign 
 of agitation. I couldn't help thinking what a good 
 nurse he would make ; he was so rapid and effective, 
 yet so gentle and so quiet. He seemed perfectly 
 accustomed to the ways of nervous women. 
 
 I dried my eyes after a while, and looked up in 
 his face. He was very good-looking, and had a 
 charming soft smile. How lucky I should have 
 tumbled upon such pleasant travelling companions ! 
 In my present mental state, I had need of 
 sympathy. And, indeed, they took as much care 
 of me, and coddled me up as tenderly, as if they 'd 
 known me for years. I was almost tempted to 
 make a clean breast of my personality to them, 
 and tell them why it was I had been so worried and 
 upset by my reception at Quebec : but I shrank 
 from confessing it. I hated my own name, 
 almost, it seemed to bring me such very unpleasant 
 notoriety. 
 
I(^ RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Im a very few minutes, I felt quite at home with 
 uauy BDew friends. I explained to them that when 
 II DauiDcIed I had no intention of going on West by 
 ItffdWm at once, but that news which 1 received on 
 th& way had compelled me to push forward by 
 ihii very first chance ; and that I had to change 
 mf ticket at a place called Sharbot Lake, whose 
 verj position or distance I hadn't had time to 
 («Bfl*(t<«yver, The lady smiled sweetly, and calmed 
 imj fears by telling me we wouldn't reach Sharbot 
 L-aHftfe; till mid-day to-morrow, and that 1 would 
 Baavft; pfcnty of time there to book on to my 
 <^k3Am3ttion. 
 
 TDwaa encouraged, I went on to tell them I had 
 118® Canadian money, having brought out What I 
 ffi«®(^l for travelling expenses and hotels in Bank 
 fitf Eroigland ^20 notes. The lady smiled again, 
 ssod smd in the friendliest way : 
 
 '^(yky my brother '11 get them changed for you 
 M Montreal as we pass, won't you. Jack ? or at 
 Ifea^tl ajs much as you need till you get to" — she 
 dk&dked herself — " the end of your journey.'' 
 
 II tSQticed how she pulled herself up, though at 
 ih^ntmment I attached no particular importance 
 lt(S)0tL 
 
 S(S> he. was her brother, not her husband, then i 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 167 
 
 Well, he was a very nice fellow, either way, and 
 nobody could be kinder or more sympathetic than 
 he 'd been to me so far. 
 
 We fell into conversation, which soon by degrees 
 grew quite intimate. 
 
 '* How far West are you going ?" the man she 
 called Jack asked after a little time, tentatively. 
 
 And I answered, all unsuspiciously : 
 
 " To a place called Palmyra." 
 
 " Why, we live not far from Palmyra," the sister 
 replied, with a smile. " We 're going that way 
 now. Our station's Adolphus Town, the very 
 next village." 
 
 I hadn't yet learned to join the wisdom of the 
 serpent to the innocence of the dove, I 'm afraid. 
 Remember, though in some ways I was a woman 
 full grown, in others I was little more than a four- 
 year-old baby. 
 
 *' Do you know a Dr. Ivor there ? " I asked 
 eagerly, leaning forward. 
 
 "Oil, yes, quite well," the lady answered, ar- 
 ranging my footstool more comfortably as she 
 spoke. " He's got a farm out there now, and 
 hardly practises at all. How queer it is ! One 
 always finds one knows people in common. Is 
 Dr. Ivor a friend of yours ? " 
 
l68 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 I recoiled at the stray question almost as if 1 'd 
 been shot. 
 
 " Oh, no !" I cried, horrified at the bare idea of 
 such treason. *' He 's anything but a friend. . . . 
 I — I only wanted to know about him." 
 
 The lady looked at Jack, and Jack looked at the 
 lady. Were they telegraphing signs ? I fancied 
 somehow they gave one another very meaning 
 glances. Jack was the first to speak, breaking an 
 awkward silence. 
 
 " You can't expect everyone to know your own 
 friends, or to like them either, Elsie," he said 
 slowly, with his eyes fixed hard on her, as if he 
 expected her to flare up. 
 
 My heart misgave me. A hateful idea arose in 
 it. Could my sweet travelling companion be 
 engaged — to my father's murderer ? 
 
 " But he 's a dear good fellow, for all that. Jack," 
 Elsie said stoutly ; and strange as it sounds to say 
 so, I admired her for sticking up for her friend Dr. 
 Ivor, if she really liked him. " I won't hear him 
 run down by anybody, not even by you. If this 
 lady knew him better, I 'm sure she 'd like him, as 
 we all do." 
 
 Jack turned the conversation abruptly. 
 
 ** But if you 're going to Palmyra," he asked. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 169 
 
 ** where do you mean to stop ? Have you thought 
 about lodgings ? You mustn't imagine it 's a place 
 like an English town, with an inn or hotel or good 
 private apartments. There 's nowhere you can put 
 up at in these brand-new villages. Are you going 
 to friends, or did you expect to find quarters as 
 easily as in England ?" 
 
 This was a difficulty which, indeed, had never 
 even occurred to me till that moment. I stammered 
 and hesitated. 
 
 " Well," I said slowly, *' to tell you the truth, 
 I haven't thought about that. The landing at 
 Quebec was such a dreadful surprise to me, and " 
 — tears came into my eyes again — *' I had a great 
 shock there — and I had to come on so quick, I 
 didn't ask about anything but catching the train. 
 I meant to stop a night or two either at Quebec or 
 in Montreal, and to make all inquiries : but circum- 
 stances, you see, have prevented that. So I really 
 don't know what I 'd better do when I get to 
 Palmyra." 
 
 " I do," my new friend answered quickl}^, her 
 soft sweet voice having quite a decisive ring in it. 
 " You 'd better not go on to Palmyra at all. 
 There 's no sort of accommodation there, except a 
 horrid drinking-saloon. You 'd better stop short at 
 
170 RECALLED TO HIE. 
 
 Adolphus Town and spend the night with us ; and 
 then you can look about you next day, if you Hke, 
 and see what chance there may be of finding decent 
 quarters. Old Mrs. Wilkins might take her in, 
 Jack, or the Blacks at the tannery." 
 
 I smiled, and felt touched. 
 
 " Oh, how good of you ! " I cried. " But 1 
 really couldn't think of it. Thank you ever so 
 much, though, for your kind thought, all the same. 
 It's so good and sweet of you. But you don't 
 even know who I am. I have no introduction." 
 
 •' You 're your own best introduction," Elsie 
 said, with a pretty nod : I thought of her some- 
 how from the very first moment I heard her name 
 as Elsie. "And as to your not knowing us, never 
 mind about that. We know you at first sight. It's 
 the Canadian way to entertain Angels unawares. 
 Out here, you know, hospitality 's the rule of the 
 country." 
 
 Well, I demurred for a long time ; I fought off 
 their invitation as well as I could : I couldn't bear 
 thus to quarter myself upon utter strangers. But 
 they both were so pressing, and brought up so 
 many cogent arguments why I couldn't go alone 
 to the one village saloon — a mere whisky-drinking 
 public-house, they said, of very bad character, — ■ 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I7I 
 
 that in the long run I was fain almost to acquiesce 
 in their kind plan for my temporary housing. 
 Besides, after my horrid experience at Quebec, it 
 was such a positive relief to me to meet anybody 
 nice and delicate, that I couldn't find it in my 
 heart to refuse these dear people. And then, 
 perhaps it was best not to go quite on to Palmyra 
 at once, for fear of unexpectedly running against 
 my father's murderer. If I met him in the street, 
 and he recognised me and spoke to me, what on 
 earth could I do ? My head was all in a whirl, 
 indeed, as to what he might intend or expect : for 
 I felt sure he expected me. I made one last 
 despairing effort. 
 
 •' If I stop at your house, though," I said, half 
 ashamed of myself for venturing to make con- 
 ditions, ** there 's one promise you must make me 
 — that I sha'n't see Dr. Ivor unless you let me know 
 and get my consent beforehand." 
 
 Jack, as I called him to myself, answered gaily 
 back with a rather curious smile : 
 
 " If you like, you need see nobody but our own 
 two selves. We '11 promise not to introduce any- 
 body to you without due leave, and to let you do 
 as you like in that and in everything." 
 
 So I yielded at last. 
 
172 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " Well, I must know your name," I said 
 tentatively. 
 
 And Jack, looking queerly at me with an 
 inquiring air, said : 
 
 "My sister's name's Elsie; mine's John 
 Cheriton." 
 
 "And yours?" Elsie asked, glancing timidly 
 down at me. 
 
 My heart beat hard. I was face to face with a 
 dilemma. These were friends of Courtenay Ivor's, 
 and I had given myself away to them. I was 
 going to their house, to accept their hospitality 
 — and to betray their friend ! Never in my life 
 did I feel so guilty before. Oh ! what on earth 
 was I to do ? I had told them too much ; I had 
 gone to work foolishly. If I said my real name, I 
 should let out my whole secret. I must brazen it 
 out now. With tremulous lips and flushed cheek, 
 I answered quickly, "Julia Marsden." 
 
 Elsie drew back, all abashed. In a moment her 
 cheek grew still redder, I felt sure, than my own. 
 
 "Oh, Marsden!" she cried, eyeing me close. 
 "Why, I thought you were Miss Callingham!" 
 
 "How on earth did you know that?" I ex- 
 claimed, terrified almost out of my life. Was I 
 never for one moment to escape my own personality ? 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I73 
 
 " Why, they put it in the papers that you were 
 coming," Elsie answered, looking tenderly at me, 
 more in sympathy than in anger. "And it's 
 written on your bag, you know, that Jack put up 
 in the rack there. . . . That 's why we were so 
 sorry for you, and so grieved at the way you must 
 have been hustled on the quay. And that 's also 
 why we wanted you to come to us. . . . But 
 don't be a bit afraid. We quite understand you 
 want to travel incognita. After the sort of reception 
 you got at Quebec, no wonder you 're afraid 
 of these hateful sightseers ! . . . Very well, 
 dear," she took my hand with the air of an old 
 friend, "your disguise shall be respected while you 
 stop at our house. Miss Marsden let it be. You 
 can make any inquiries you like about Dr. Ivor. 
 We will be secrecy itself. We '11 say nothing to 
 anyone. And my brother '11 take your ticket at 
 Sharbot Lake for Adolphus Town." 
 
 I broke down once more. I fairly cried at such 
 kindness. 
 
 *' Oh, how good you are ! " I said. " How very, 
 very good. This is more than one could ever have 
 expected from strangers." 
 
 She held my hand and stroked it. 
 
 " We 're not strangers," she answered. '* We 're 
 
'74 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 English ourselves. We sympathise deeply with 
 you in this nevv, strange country. You must treat 
 us exactly like a brother and sister. We liked 
 you at first sight, and we 're sure we '11 get on with 
 you." 
 
 I lifted her hand to my hps and kissed it. 
 
 ''And I liked you also," I said, -and your 
 brother, too. You 're both so good and kind. 
 How can I ever sufficiently thank you?" 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 iJXs^ Iplans alter. 
 
 ¥'HE rest of that day we spent chatting 
 very amicably in our Pulhnan arm-chairs. 
 Icouldn't understand it myself — when I 
 had a moment to think, I was shocked and hor- 
 rified at it. I was so terribly at home with 
 them. These were friends of Dr. Ivor's — friends 
 of my father's murderer ! I had come out to 
 Canada to track him, to deliver him over, if I 
 could, to the strong hand of Justice. And yet, 
 there I was talking away with his neighbours and 
 friends as if I had known them all my life, and 
 loved them dearly. Nay, whrt was more, I couldn't 
 in my heart of hearts help liking them. They 
 were really sweet people — so kind and sympathetic, 
 so perceptive of my sensitiveness. They asked no 
 questions that could hurt me in any way. They 
 showed no curiosity about the object of my visit or 
 my relation to Dr. Ivor. They were kindness and 
 courtesy itself. I could see Mr. Cheriton was a 
 
176 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 gentleman in fibre, and Elsie was as sweet as any 
 woman on earth could be. 
 
 By-and-by, the time came for the Pullman 
 saloon to be transformed for the night into a 
 regular sleeping-car. All this was new to me, 
 and I watched it with interest. As soon as the 
 beds were made up, I crept into my berth, and 
 my new friend Elsie took her place on the sofa 
 below me. I lay awake long and thought over 
 the situation. The more I thought of it, the 
 stranger it all seemed. I tried hard to persuade 
 myself I was running some great danger in accept- 
 ing the Cheritons' invitation. Certainly, I had 
 behaved with consummate imprudence. Canada 
 is a country, I said to myself, where they kidnap 
 and murder well-to-do young Englishmen. How 
 much easier, then, to kidnap and murder a poor 
 weak stray English girl ! I was entirely at the 
 mercy of the Cheritons, that was clear : and the 
 Cheritons were Dr. Ivor's friends. As I thought 
 all the circumstances over, the full folly of my own 
 conduct came home to me more and more. I had 
 let these people suppose I was travelling under an 
 assumed name. 1 had let them know my ticket 
 was not for Palmyra but for Kingston, where 1 
 didn't mean to go. I had told them I meant to 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I77 
 
 change it at Sharbot Lake. So they were aware 
 that no one on earth but themselves had any idea 
 where I had gone. And I had further divulged to 
 them the important fact that I had plenty of ready 
 money in Bank of England notes ! I stood aghast 
 at my own silliness. But still, I did not distrust 
 them. 
 
 No, I did not distrust them. I felt I ought to be 
 distrustful. I felt it might be expected of me. 
 But they were so gentle-mannered and so sweet- 
 natured, that I couldn't distrust them. I tried 
 very hard, but distrust wouldn't come to me. 
 That kind fellow Jack — I thought of him, just 
 so, as Jack already — couldn't hurt a fly, much less 
 kill a woman. It grieved me to think I would 
 have to hurt his feelings. 
 
 For now that I came to look things squarely in 
 the face in my berth by myself, I began to see how 
 utterly impossible it would be for me after all to 
 go and stop with the Cheritons. How I could 
 ever have dreamt it feasible I could hardly con- 
 ceive. I ought to have refused at once. I ought to 
 have been braver. I ought to have said outright, 
 " I '11 have nothing to do or say with anyone 
 who is a friend or an acquaintance of Courtenay 
 
 Ivor's." And yet, to have said so would have 
 
 12 
 
178 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 been to give up the game for lost. It would have 
 been to proclaim that I had come out to Canada 
 as Courtenay Ivor's enemy. 
 
 I wasn't fit, that was the fact, for my self- 
 imposed task of private detective. 
 
 A good part of that night I lay awake in my 
 berth, bitterly reproaching myself for having come 
 on this wild-goose chase without the aid of a man 
 — an experienced officer. Next morning, I rose 
 and breakfasted in the car. The Cheritons break- 
 fasted with me, and, sad to say, seemed more 
 charming than ever. That good fellow Jack was 
 so attentive and kind, I almost felt ashamed to 
 have to refuse his hospitality ; and as for Elsie, she 
 couldn't have treated me more nicely or cordially 
 if she'd been my own sister. It wasn't what they 
 said that touched my heart : it was what they 
 didn't say or do — their sweet, generous reticence. 
 
 After breakfast, I steeled myself for the task, 
 and broke it to them gently that, thinking it over 
 in the night, I 'd come to the conclusion I couldn't 
 consistently accept their proffered welcome, 
 
 " I don't know how to say no to you," I cried, 
 '* after you've been so wonderfully kind and nice ; 
 but reasons which I can't fully explain just now 
 make me feel it would be wrong of mc to think of 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 179 
 
 stopping with you. It would hamper my inde- 
 pendence of action to be in anybody else's house. 
 I must shift for myself, and try if I can't find 
 board and lodging somewhere." 
 
 ** Find it with us then!" Elsie put in eagerly. 
 'If that's all that's the matter, I'm sure we're 
 not proud — are we, Jack ? — not a bit. Sooner than 
 you should go elsewhere and be uncomfortable in 
 your rooms, I 'd take you in myself, and board you 
 and look after you. You could pay what you like; 
 and then j'ou 'd retain your independence, you see, 
 as much as ever you wanted." 
 
 But her brother interrupted her with a somewhat 
 graver air : 
 
 "It goes deeper than that, I'm afraid, Elsie," 
 he said, turning his eye full upon her. " If Miss 
 Callingham feels she couldn't be happy in stopping 
 with us, she 'd better try elsewhere. Though where 
 on earth we can put her, I haven't just now the 
 very slightest idea. But we'll turn it over in our 
 own minds before we reach Adolphus Town." 
 
 There was a sweet reasonableness about Jack 
 
 that attracted me greatly. I could see he entered 
 
 vaguely into the real nature of my fcelmgs. But 
 
 he wouldn't cross-question me : he was too much 
 
 of a gentleman. 
 
 12 * 
 
H^ RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 •^Miss Callingham knows her own motives best," 
 Hftesaiid more than once, when Elsie tried to return 
 tottBie charj^e. " If she feels she can't come to us, 
 Wft- must be content to do the best we can for her 
 wiittBi our neighbours. Perhaps Mrs. Walters would 
 ttafisfe: Bier in : she's our clergyman's wife, Miss 
 CsullDicigham, and you mightn't feel the same 
 saw&wardness with her as with my sister." 
 
 •^Bbes she know — Dr. Ivor?" I faltered out, 
 wmi&ite: to conceal my real reasons entirely. 
 
 *'?fot so intimately as we do," Jack answered, 
 wimHh a quick glance at his sister. " We might 
 ajdls her at any rate. There are so few houses in 
 FsBDraJuyra or the neighbourhood where you could 
 Dijv© as you're accustomed, that we mustn't be 
 g»8iitiic.alar. But at least you'll spend one night 
 us, and then we can arrange all the other 
 ra afterward." 
 
 My mind was made up. 
 
 **' Ko^ not even one night," I said. I couldn't 
 5B(QMipt hospitality from Dr. Ivor's friends. Between 
 Bfliai flaction and mine there could be nothing now 
 h^ the. bitterest enmity. How dare I even parley 
 ^iitlBii people who were friends of my father's 
 naararclerer ? 
 
 Yet I was sorry to disappoint that good fellow, 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. iSl 
 
 Jack, all the same. Did he want me to sleep one 
 night at his house on purpose to rob me and 
 murder me ? Girl as I was, and rendered timorous 
 in some ways by the terrible shocks I had received, 
 I couldn't for one moment believe it. I hnciv he was 
 good : I hneiv he was lionourable, gentle, a gentleman. 
 
 So, journeying on all morning, we reached Shar- 
 bot Lake, still with nothing decided. At the 
 little junction station. Jack got me my ticket. 
 That was the turning point in my career. The 
 die was cast. There I lost my identity. A crowd 
 lounged around the platform, and surged about 
 the Pullman car, calling to see " Una Callingham." 
 But no Una Callingham appeared on the scene. 
 I went on in the same train, without a word to 
 anyone, all unknown save to the two Cheritons, 
 and as an unrecognised unit of common humanity. 
 I had cast that horrid identity clean behind me. 
 
 The afternoon was pleasant. In spite of my 
 uncertainty, it gave me a sense of pleased con- 
 fidence to be in the Cheritons' company. I had 
 taken to them at once : and the more I talked 
 with them, the better I liked them. Especially 
 Jack, that nice brotherly Jack, who seemed almost 
 like an old friend to me. You get to know people 
 so well on a long railway journey. I was quite 
 
J 82 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 sorry to think that by five o'clock that afternoon we 
 should reach Adolphus Town, and so part company. 
 
 About ten minutes to five; we were collecting 
 our scattered things, and putting our front-hair 
 straight by the mirror in the ladies' compartment. 
 
 ** Well, Miss Cheriton," I said warmly, longing 
 to kiss her as I spoke, " I shall never forget how 
 kind you two have been to me. 1 do wish so much 
 I hadn't to leave you like this. But it's quite in- 
 evitable. I don't see really how 1 could ever 
 endure " 
 
 I said no more, for just at that moment, as the 
 words trembled on my lips, a terrible jar thrilled 
 suddenly through the length and breadth of the 
 carriage^ Something in front seemed to rush into 
 us with a deep thud. There was a crash, a fierce 
 grating, a dull hiss, a clatter. Broken glass was 
 flying about. The very earth beneath the wheels 
 seemed to give way under us. Next instant, all 
 was blank. I just knew I was lying, bruised and 
 stunned and bleeding, on a bare dry bank, with 
 my limbs aching painfully. 
 
 I guessed what it all meant. A collision, no 
 doubt. But I lay faint and ill, and knew nothing 
 for the moment as to what had become of my 
 fellow- passengers. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 B Stranoc TRccognitlon. 
 
 RADUALLY I was aware of somebody 
 moistening my temples. A soft palm held 
 my hand. Elsie was leaning over me. 
 I opened my eyes with a start. 
 
 " Oh, Elsie," I cried, '* how kind of you ! " 
 
 It seemed to me quite natural to call her Elsie. 
 
 Even as I spoke, somebody else raised my head 
 and poured something down my throat. I swal- 
 lowed it with a gulp. Then I opened my eyes 
 again. 
 
 " And Jack, too," I murmured. 
 
 It seemed as if he 'd been "Jack" to me for years 
 and years already. 
 
 " She knows us ! " Elsie cried, clasping her 
 hands. "She 's much better— much better. Quick, 
 Jack, more brandy ! And make haste there — a 
 stretcher ! " 
 
 There was a noise close by. Unseen hands 
 lifted me up, and Jack laid me on the stretcher. 
 Half-an-hour at least must have elapsed, I felt 
 
184 RliCALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 sure, since the first shock of the accident. I had 
 been unconscious meanwhile. The actual crash 
 came and went Hke hghtning. And my memory 
 of all else was blotted out for the moment. 
 
 Next, as I lay still, two men took the stretcher 
 and carried me off at a slow pace, under Jack's 
 direction. They walked single-file along the line, 
 and turned down a rough road that led off near a 
 river. I didn't ask where they were going: I was 
 too weak and feeble. At last they came to a 
 house, a small white wooden cottage, very colo- 
 nial and simple, but neat and pretty. There was a 
 garden in front, full of old-fashioned flowering 
 shrubs ; and a verandah ran round the house, 
 about whose posts clambered sweet English 
 creepers. 
 
 They carried me in, and laid me down on a bed, 
 in a sweet little room, very plain but dainty. It 
 was panelled with polished pitchpine, and roses 
 peeped in at the open window. Everything about 
 the cottage bore the impress of native good taste. 
 I knew it was Jack's home. It was just such a 
 room as I should have expected from Elsie. 
 
 The bed on which they placed me was neat and 
 soft. I lay there dozing with pain. Elsie sat by 
 my side, her own arm in a sling. By-and-by, an 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I 85 
 
 Irish maid came in and undressed me carefully 
 under Elsie's direction. Then Elsie said to me, 
 half shrinking: 
 
 " Now you must see the doctor." 
 
 "Not Dr. Ivor!" I cried, waking up to a full 
 sense of this new threatened horror. ** Whatever 
 I do, dear, I ivon't see Dr. Ivor! " 
 
 Jack had come in while she spoke, and was 
 standing by the bed, I saw now. The servant had 
 gone out. He lifted my arm, and held my wrist 
 in his hand. 
 
 " I 'm a doctor myself. Miss Callingham," he 
 said softly, with that quiet, reassuring voice of 
 his. " Don't be alarmed at that ; nobody but my- 
 self and Elsie need come near you in any way." 
 
 I smiled at his words, well pleased. 
 
 '•Oh, I'm so glad you're a doctor!" I cried, 
 much relieved at the news; "for I 'm not the least 
 little bit in the world afraid of you. I don't mind 
 ypur attending me. I like to have you with me." 
 For I had always a great fancy for doctors, 
 somehow. 
 
 " That 's well," he said, smiling at me such a 
 sweet sympathetic smile as he felt my pulse with 
 his finger. " Confidence is the first great requi- 
 site in a patient : it 's half the battle. You 're not 
 
1 86 
 
 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 seriously hurt, I hope, but you're very much 
 shaken. Whether you hke it or not, you '11 have 
 to stop here now for some days at least, till you 're 
 thoroughly recovered." 
 
 I 'm ashamed to write it down ; but I was really 
 pleased to hear it. Nothing would have induced 
 me to go voluntarily to their house with the inten- 
 tion of stopping there— for they were friends of Dr. 
 Ivor's. But when you 're carried on a stretcher 
 to the nearest convenient house, you 'le not re- 
 sponsible for your own actions. And they were 
 both so nice and kind, it was a pleasure to be near 
 them. So I was almost thankful for that horrid 
 accident, which had cut the Gordian knot of my 
 perplexity as to a house to lodge in. 
 
 It was a fortnight before I was well enough to 
 get out of bed and lie comfortably on the sofa. All 
 that time Jack and Elsie tended me with unspar- 
 ing devotion. Elsie had a little bed made up in 
 my room; and Jack came to see me two or three 
 times a day, and sat for whole hours with me. It 
 was so nice he was a doctor ! A doctor, you know, 
 isn't a man— in some ways. And it soothed me 
 so to have him sitting there with Elsie by my 
 bedside. 
 
 They were ** Jack " and " Elsie " to me, to their 
 
 /"■ 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 187 
 
 faces, before three days were out ; and I was 
 plain "Una "to them: it sounded so sweet and 
 sisterly. Elsie slipped it out the second morning 
 as naturally as could be. 
 
 •' Una 'd like a cup of tea, Jack ; " then as red 
 as fire all at once, she corrected herself, and added, 
 " I mean. Miss Callingham." 
 
 " Oh, do call me Una ! " I cried ; " it 's so much 
 nicer and more natural. . . . But how did 
 you come to know my name was Una at all ? " For 
 she slipped it out as glibly as if she'd always 
 called me so. 
 
 •' Why, everybody knows that!'' Elsie answered, 
 amused. *' The whole world speaks of you always 
 as Una Callingham. You forget you 're a celeb- 
 rity. Doctors have read memoirs about you at 
 Medical Congresses. You've been discussed in 
 every paper in Europe and America." 
 
 I paused and sighed. This was very humili- 
 ating. It was unpleasant to rank in the public 
 mind somewhere between Constance Kent and 
 Laura Bridgman. But I had to put up with it. 
 
 "Very well," I said, with a deep breath, "if 
 those I don't care for call me so behind my back, 
 let me at least have the pleasure of hearing myself 
 called so by those I love, Hke you, Elsie." 
 
l88 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 She leant over me and kissed my forehead with 
 a burst of genuine deHght. 
 
 •' Then you love me, Una ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " How can I help it ? " I answered. " I love 
 you dearly already." And I might have added 
 with truth, " And your brother also." 
 
 For Jack was really, without any exception, the 
 most lovable man I ever met in my life — at once 
 so strong and manly, and yet so womanly and so 
 gentle. Every day I stopped there, I liked him 
 better and better. I was glad when he came into 
 my room, and sorry when he went away again to 
 work on the farm : for he worked very hard ; his 
 hand was all horny with common agricultural 
 labour. It was sad to think of such a man havmg 
 to do such work. And yet he was so clever, and 
 such a capital doctor. I wondered he hadn't done 
 well and stayed in England. But Elsie told me 
 he 'd had great disappointments, and failed in his 
 profession through no fault of his own. I could 
 never understand that : he had such a delightful 
 manner. Though, perhaps I was prejudiced ; for, 
 in point of fact, I began to feel I was really in love 
 with Jack Cheriton. 
 
 And Jack was in love with me too. This was a 
 curious result of my voyage to Canada in search 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. l8g 
 
 of Dr. Ivor ! Instead of hunting up the criminal, 
 I had stopped to fall in love with one of his friends 
 and neighbours. And I found it so delicious : I 
 won't pretend to deny it. I was absolutely happy 
 when Jack sat by my bedside and held my hand 
 in his. I didn't know what it would lead to, or 
 whether it would ever lead to anything at all ; but 
 I was happy meanwhile just to love and be loved 
 by him. I think when you 're really in love, that 's 
 quite enough. Jack never proposed to me : he 
 never asked me to marry him. He just sat by my 
 bedside and held my hand ; and once, when Elsie 
 went out to fetch my beef-tea, he stooped hastily 
 down and kissed me, oh, so tenderly ! I don't 
 know why, but I wasn't the least surprised. It 
 seemed to me quite natural that Jack should kiss 
 me. 
 
 So I went idly on for a fortnight, in a sort of 
 lazy lotus-land, never thinking of the future, but 
 as happy and as much at home as if I 'd lived all 
 my life with Jack and Elsie. I hated even to 
 think I would soon be well ; for then I 'd have to 
 go and look out for Courtenay Ivor. 
 
 At last one afternoon I was sufficiently strong 
 to be lifted out of bed, and dressed in a morning 
 robe, and laid out on the sofa in the little drawing- 
 
 \ 
 
igO RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 room. It looked out upon the verandah, which 
 was high above the ground ; and Jack came in 
 and sat with me, alone without Elsie. My heart 
 throbbed high at that : I liked to be alone for half- 
 an-hour with Jack. Perhaps . . . But who 
 knows? Well, at any rate, even if he didn't, it 
 was nice to have the chance of a good long, quiet 
 chat with him. I loved Elsie dearly ; but at a 
 moment like this, why, I liked to have Jack all to 
 myself without even Elsie. 
 
 So I was pleased when Jack told me Elsie was 
 going into Palmyra with the buggy to get the 
 English letters. Then she 'd be gone a good long 
 time ! Oh, how lovely ! How beautiful ! 
 
 •* Is there anything you 'd like from the town ? " 
 he asked, as Elsie drove past the window. " Any- 
 thing Elsie could get for you ? If so, please say 
 so. 
 
 I hesitated a moment. 
 
 " Do you think," I asked at last, for I didn't 
 want to be troublesome, " she could get me a 
 lemon ? " 
 
 ** Oh, certainly," Jack answered; "there she 
 goes in the buggy ! Here, wait a moment, Una ! 
 I '11 run after her to the gate this minute and tell 
 her." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 191 
 
 He sprang lightly on to the parapet of the 
 verandah. Then, with one hand held behind him 
 to poise himself, palm open backward, he leapt 
 with a bound to the road, and darted after her 
 hurriedly. 
 
 My heart stood still within me. That action 
 revealed him. The back, the opc>n hand, the 
 gesture, the bend— I would have known them 
 anywhere. With a horrible revulsion I recog- 
 nised the truth. This was my father's murderer ! 
 This was Courtenay Ivor ! 
 
192 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 /Rur&er will ©ut. 
 
 E was gone but for three minutes. Mean- 
 while, I buried my face in my burning 
 hands, and cried to myself in unspeak- 
 able misery. 
 
 For, horrible as it sounds to say so, I knew 
 perfectly well now that Jack was Dr. Ivor : yet, in 
 spite of that knowledge, I loved him still. He 
 was my father's murderer; and I couldn't help 
 loving him ! 
 
 It was that that filled up the cup of my misery 
 to overflowing. I loved the man well : and I must 
 turn to denounce him. 
 
 He came back, flushed and hot, expecting 
 thanks for his pains. 
 
 "Well, she'll get you the lemon, Una," he 
 said, panting. *< I overtook her by the big 
 tuhp-tree." 
 
 I gazed at him fixedly, taking my hands from 
 my face, with the tears still wet on my burning 
 cheek. 
 
 / 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I93 
 
 " You 've deceived me ! " 1 cried sternly. " Jack, 
 you 've given me a false name. I know who you 
 are, now. You 're no Jack at all. You 're 
 Courtenay Ivor ! " 
 
 He drew back, quite amazed. Yet he didn't 
 seem thunderstruck. Not fear but surprise was 
 the leading note on his features. 
 
 "So you've found that out at last, Una!" he 
 exclaimed, staring hard at me. ''Then you 
 remember me after all, darling ! You know who 
 I am. You haven't quite forgotten me. And you 
 recall what has gone, do you ? " 
 
 I rose from the sofa, ill as I was, in my horror. 
 
 " You dare to speak, to me like that, sir ! " I 
 cried. " You, whom I 've tracked out to your 
 hiding-place and discovered ! You, whom I 've 
 come across the ocean to hunt down ! You, whom 
 I mean to give up this very day to Justice ! Let 
 me go from your house at once ! How dare you 
 ever bring me here ? How dare you stand 
 unabashed before the daughter of the man you 
 so cruelly murdered ? " 
 
 He drew back like one stung. 
 
 " The daughter of the man I murdered ! " he 
 faltered out slowly, as in a turmoil of astonish- 
 ment. " The man I murdered ! Oh, Una, is it 
 
 13 
 
194 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 possible you 've forgotten so much, and yet 
 remember me myself? I can't believe it, darling. 
 Sit down, my child, and think. Surely, surely the 
 rest will come back to you gradually." 
 
 His calmness unnerved me. What could he 
 mean by these words ? No actor on earth could 
 dissemble like this. His whole manner was utterly 
 unlike the manner of a man just detected in a ter- 
 rible crime. He seemed rather to reproach me, 
 indeed, than to crouch ; to be shocked and 
 indignant. 
 
 '* Explain yourself," I said coldly, in a very 
 chilly voice. " Courtenay Ivor, I give you three 
 minutes to explain. At the end of that time, if 
 you can't exonerate yourself, I walk out of this 
 house to give you up, as I ought, to the arm of 
 Justice!" 
 
 He looked at me, all pity, yet inexpressibly 
 reproachful. 
 
 " Oh, Una," he cried, clasping his hands — those 
 small white hands of his — Aunt Emma's hands — 
 the murderer's hands — how had I never before 
 noticed them? — "and I, who have suffered so 
 much for you! I, who have wrecked my whole 
 life for you, ungrudgingly, willingly ! I, who have 
 sacrificed even Elsie's happiness and Elsie's 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. I95 
 
 future for you ! This is too, too hard ! Una, 
 Una, spare me ! " 
 
 A strange trembling seized me. It was in my 
 heart to rush forward and clasp him to my breast. 
 Murderer or no murderer, his look, his voice, cut 
 me sharply to the heart. Words trembled on the 
 tip of my tongue : " Oh, Jack, I love you ! " But 
 with a violent effort, I repressed them sternly. 
 This horrible revulsion seemed to tear me in two. 
 I loved him so much. Though till the moment of 
 the discovery, I never quite realised how deeply I 
 loved him. 
 
 " Courtenay Ivor," I said slowly, steeling my- 
 self once more for a hard effort, " I knew who you 
 were at once when I saw you poise yourself on the 
 parapet. Oince before in my life I saw you like 
 that, and the picture it produced has burned 
 itself into the very fibre and marrow of my being. 
 As long as I live, I can never get rid of it. It was 
 when you leapt from the window at The Grange, 
 at Woodbury, after murdering my father ! " 
 
 He started once more. 
 
 " Una," he said solemnly, in a very clear voice, 
 
 ** there 's some terrible error somewhere. You 're 
 
 utterly mistaken about what took place that night. 
 
 But oh, great heavens ! how am I ever to explain 
 
 13 * 
 
19^ RECALLKD TO LIFE. 
 
 the misconception io yon ? If you still think thus, 
 it would be cruel to undeceive you. I daren't tell 
 you the whole truth. It would kill you ! It would 
 kill you I " 
 
 i drew myself up like a pillar of ice. 
 
 ** Go on," I said, in a hard voice ; for I saw he 
 had something to say. <* Don't mind for my heart. 
 Tell me the truth. I can stand it." 
 
 He hesitated for a minute or two. 
 
 " I can't ! " he cried huskily. *« Dear Una, don't 
 ask me ! Won't you trust me, without ? Won't 
 you believe me when I tell you, I never did it ? " 
 
 ** No, I can't," I answered with sullen resolu- 
 tion, though my eyes belied my words. '* I can't 
 disbelieve the evidence of my own senses. I saw 
 you escape that night. I see you still. I 've seen 
 you for 3'ears. I know it was you, and you only, 
 who did it I " 
 
 He flung himself down in a chair, and let his 
 arms drop listlessly. 
 
 " Oh ! what can I ever do to disillusion you ? " 
 he cried in despair. " Oh ! what can I ever do ? 
 This is too, too terrible ! *' 
 
 I moved towards the .door. 
 
 " I 'm going," I said, with a gulp. " You 've 
 deceived met Jack. You 've lied to me. You 
 
RECALLliD TO LIFE. IQ/ 
 
 have given me feigned names. You have decoyed 
 me to your house under false pretences. And I 
 recognise you now. I know you in all your base- 
 ness. You 're my father's murderer ! Don't hope 
 to escape by playing on my feelings. I 'd deserve 
 to be murdered myself, if I could act like that ! 
 I 'm on my way to the police-oflficej to give you 
 in custody on the charge of murdering Vivian 
 Callingham at Woodbury ! " 
 
 He jumped up again, all anxiety. 
 
 "Oh, no, you mustn't walk !" he cried, laying 
 his hand upon my arm. " Give me up, if you like; 
 but wait till the buggy comes back, and Elsie '11 
 drive you round with me. You 're not fit to go a 
 step as you are at present. . . . Oh ! what shall 
 I ever do, though. You 're so weak and ill. Elsie '11 
 never allow it." 
 
 "Elsie '11 never allow what?'* I asked; though 
 I felt it was rather more grotesque than undigni- 
 fied and inconsistent thus to parley and make 
 terms with my father's murderer. Though, to be 
 sure, it was Jack, and I couldn't bear to refuse 
 him. 
 
 He kept his hand on my arm with an air of 
 authority. 
 
 " Una, my child," he said, thrusting me back — 
 
198 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 and even at that moment of supreme horror, a 
 thrill ran all throuf^jh my body at his touch and 
 his words—" you mustn't go out of this house as 
 you are this minute. I refuse to allow it. I 'm 
 your doctor, and I forbid it. You're under my 
 charge, and I won't let you stir. If I did, I 'd be 
 responsible." 
 
 He pushed me gently into a chair. 
 
 "I gave you but one false name," he said 
 slowly — *'the name of Cheriton. To be sure I, 
 was never christened John, but I 'm Jack to my 
 intimates. It was my nickname from a baby. 
 Jack 's what I 've always been called at home — 
 Jack 's what, in the dear old days at Torquay, you 
 always called me. But I saw if I let you know 
 who I was at once, there 'd be no chance of recall- 
 ing the past, and so saving you from yourself. To 
 save you, I consented to that one mild deception. 
 It succeeded in bringing you here, and in keeping 
 you here till Elsie and I were once more what 
 we 'd always been to you. I meant to tell you all 
 in the end, when the right time came. Now, 
 you've forced my hand, and I don't know how 
 I can any longer refrain from telling you." 
 
 "TeUing me what?'' 1 said icily. "What do 
 you mean by your words? Why all these dark 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. IQQ 
 
 hints ? If you 've anything to say, why not say it 
 like a man ? " 
 
 For I loved him so much that in my heart of 
 hearts, I half hoped there might still be some 
 excuse, some explanation. 
 
 He looked at me solemnly. Then he leant back 
 in his chair and drew his hand across his brow. I 
 could see now why I hadn't recognised that deli- 
 cate hand before : white as it was by nature, hard 
 work on the farm had long bronzed and distorted 
 it. But I saw also, for the first time, that the 
 palm was scarred with cuts and rents — exactly 
 like Minnie Moore's, exactly like Aunt Emma's. 
 
 " Una," he began slowly, in a very puzzled tone, 
 ** if I could, I 'd give myself up and be tried, and 
 be found guilty and executed for your sake, sooner 
 than cause you any further distress, or expose you 
 to the shock of any more disclosures. But I can't 
 do that, on Elsie's account. Even if I decided to 
 put Elsie to that shame and disgrace — which 
 would hardly be just, which would hardly be 
 manly of me — Elsie knows all, and Elsie 'd never 
 consent to it. She 'd never let her brother be 
 hanged for a crime of which (as she knows) he 's 
 entirely innocent. And she 'd tell out all in full 
 court — every fact, every detail — which would be 
 
200 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 worse for you ten thousand times in the end than 
 learning it here quietly." 
 
 " Tell me all," I said, growing stony, yet trem- 
 bling from head to foot. " Oh, Jack," — I seized his 
 hand, — *' I don't know what you mean ! But I 
 somehow trust you. I want to know all. I can 
 bear anything — anything — better than this sus- 
 pense. You must tell me ! You must explain to 
 me!" 
 
 " I will," he said slowly, looking hard into my 
 eyes, and feeling my pulse half unconsciously with 
 his finger as he spoke. '* Una darling, you must 
 make up your mind now for a terrible shock. I 
 won't tell you in words, for you 'd never believe 
 it. I '11 show you who it was that fired the shot at 
 Mr. CaUingham." 
 
 He moved over to the other side of the room, 
 and unlocking drawer after drawer, took a bundle 
 of photographs from the inmost secret cabinet of 
 a desk in the corner. 
 
 '* There, Una," he said, selecting one of them 
 and holding it up before my eyes. " Prepare 
 yourself, darling. That 's the person who pulled 
 the trigger that night in the library! " 
 
 I looked at it and fell back with a deadly shriek 
 of horror. It was an instantaneous photograph. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 20I 
 
 It represented a scene just before the one the 
 Inspector gave me. And there, in its midst, I 
 saw myself as a girl, with a pistol in my hand. 
 The muzzle flashed and smoked. I knew the 
 whole truth. It was I myself who held the pistol 
 and fired at my father ! 
 
202 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 tibc IRcal /iRur^crer. 
 
 ^OR some seconds I sat there, leaning 
 back in my chair and gazing close at 
 that incredible, that accusing document. 
 I knew it couldn't lie : I knew it must be 
 the very handiwork of unerring Nature. Then 
 slowly a recollection began to grow up in my 
 mind. I knew of my own memory it was 
 really true. I remembered it so, now, as in a 
 glass, darkly. I remembered having stood, with 
 the pistol in my hand, pointing it straight at the 
 breast of the man with the long white beard 
 whom they called my father. A new mental 
 picture rose up before me like a vision. I re- 
 membered it all as something that once really 
 occurred to me. 
 
 Yet I remembered it, as I had long remembered 
 the next scene in the series, merely as so much 
 isolated and unrelated fact, without connection of 
 any sort to link it to the events that preceded or 
 followed it. It was / who shot my father ! I 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 203 
 
 realised that now with a horrid gulp. But what 
 on earth did I ever shoot him for ? 
 
 And I had hunted down Jack for the crime I 
 had committed myself ! I had threatened to give 
 him up for my own dreadful parricide 1 
 
 After a minute, I rose, and staggered feebly to 
 the door. I saw the path of duty clear as daylight 
 before me. 
 
 "Where are you going?" Jack faltered out, 
 watching me close with anxious eyes, lest I should 
 stumble or faint. 
 
 And I answered aloud, in a hollow voice : 
 
 *' To the police-station, of course, — to give 
 myself into custody for the murder of my 
 father." 
 
 When I thought it was Jack, though I loved him 
 better than I loved my own hfe, I would have given 
 him up to justice as a sacred duty. Now I knew 
 it was myself, how could I possibly do otherwise ? 
 How could I love my own life better than I loved 
 dear Jack's, who had given up everything to save 
 me and protect me ? 
 
 With a wild bound of horror. Jack sprang upon 
 me at once. He seized me bodily in his arms. 
 He carried me back into the room with irresistible 
 strength. I fought against him in vain. He laid 
 
204 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 me on the sofa. He bent over me like a whirlwind 
 and smothered me with hot kisses. 
 
 " My darling," he cried, *' my darling, then this 
 shock hasn't killed you ! It hasn't stunned you 
 like the last! You're still your own dear self! 
 You 've still strength to think and plan exactly 
 what one would expect from you. Oh ! Una, my 
 Una, you must wait and hear all. When you 've 
 learned how it happened, you won't wish to act so 
 rashly." 
 
 I struggled to free myself, though his arms were 
 hard and close like a strong man's around me. 
 
 " Let me go. Jack ! " I cried feebly, trying to 
 tear myself from his grasp. *' I love you better 
 than I love my own life. If I would have given 
 you up, how much more must I give up myself, 
 now I know it was I who really did it ! " 
 
 He held me down by main force. He pinned 
 me to the sofa. I suppose it's because I'm a 
 woman, and weak, and all that — but I liked even 
 then to feel how strong and how big he was, and 
 how feeble I was myself, like a child in his arms. 
 And I resisted on purpose, just to feel him hold 
 me. Somehow, I couldn't reahze, after all, that I 
 was indeed a murderess. It didn't seem possible. 
 I couldn't believe it was in me. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 205 
 
 "Jack," I said slowly, giving way at last, and 
 letting him hold me down with his small strong 
 hands and slender iron wrist, " tell me, if you //ill, 
 how I came to do it. I'll sit here quite still, if 
 only you'll tell me. Am I really a murderess ?" 
 
 Jack recoiled like one shot. 
 
 ** You a murderess, my spotless Una!" he ex- 
 claimed, all aghast. ** If anyone else on earth but 
 you had just asked such a thing in my presence, 
 I 'd have leapt at the fellow's throat, and held him 
 down till I choked him ! " 
 
 " But I did it ! " I cried wildly. •' I remember 
 now, I did it. It all comes back to me at last. I 
 fired at him, just so. I aimed the loaded pistol 
 point-blank at his heart. I can hear the din in 
 my ears. I can see the flash at the muzzle. And 
 then I flung down the pistol — like this — at my 
 feet : and darkness came on ; and I forgot every- 
 thing. Why, Dr. Marten knew that much ! I 
 remember now, he told me he'd formed a very 
 strong impression, from the nature of the wound 
 and the position of the various objects on the floor 
 of the room, who it was that did it ! He must 
 have seen it was / who flung down the pistol." 
 
 Jack gazed at me in suspense. 
 
 "He's a very good friend of yours, then," he 
 
206 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 murmured, " that Dr. Marten. For he never said 
 a word of all that at the inquest." 
 
 '* But I must give myself up!" I cried, in a fever 
 of penitence for what that other woman who once 
 was w^ had done. ** Oh, Jack, do let me! It's 
 hateful to know I'm a murderess and to go un- 
 punished. It's hateful to draw back from the fate 
 I'd have imposed on another. I'd like to be 
 hanged for it. I want to be hanged, it's the only 
 possible way to appease one's conscience." 
 
 And yet, though I said it, I felt all the time it 
 wasn't really I, but that other strange girl who 
 once lived at The Grange and looked exactly like 
 me. I remember it, to be sure ; but it was in my 
 Other State : and, so far as my moral responsi- 
 bility was concerned, my Other State and I were 
 two different people. 
 
 For I knew in my heart I couldn't commit a 
 murder. 
 
 Jack rose without a word, and fetched me in 
 some brandy. 
 
 ** Drink this," he said calmly, in his authorita- 
 tive medical tone ; ** drink this before you say 
 another sentence." 
 
 And, obedient to his order, I took it up and 
 drank it. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 207 
 
 Then he sat down beside me, and took my hand 
 in his, and with very gentle words began to reason 
 and argue with me. 
 
 He was glad I 'd struggled, he said, because that 
 broke the first force of the terrible shock for me. 
 Action was always good for one in any great 
 crisis. It gave an outlet for the pent-up emotions, 
 too suddenly let loose with explosive force, and 
 kept them from turning inward and doing serious 
 harm, as mine had done on that horrible night of 
 the accident. He called it always the accident, 
 I noticed, and never the murder. That gave me 
 fresh hope. Could I really after all have fired 
 unintentionally ? But no ; when I came to look 
 inward, — to look backward on my past state, — I 
 was conscious all the time of some strong and 
 fierce resentment smouldering deep in my heart at 
 the exact moment of firing. However it might 
 have happened, I was angry with the man with 
 the long white beard : I fired at him hastily, it is 
 true, but with malice prepense and dehberate 
 intent to wound and hurt him. 
 
 Jack went on, however, undeterred, in a low 
 and quiet voice, soothing my hand with his as he 
 spoke, and very kind and gentle. My spirit 
 rebelled at the thought that I could ever for one 
 
2o8 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 moment have imagined him a murderer. I said 
 so in one wild burst. Jack held my hand, and 
 still reasoned with me. I like a man's reasoning ; 
 it's so calm and impartial. It seems to overcome 
 one by its mere display of strength. If I'd 
 changed my mind once, Jack said, I might change 
 it again, when further evidence on the point was 
 again forthcoming. I mustn't give myself up to 
 the police till I understood much more. If I did, 
 I would commit a very grave mistake. There were 
 reasons that had led to the firing of the shot. Very 
 grave reasons too. Couldn't I restore and recon- 
 struct them, now I knew the last stage of the 
 terrible history? If possible, he'd rather I 
 should arrive at them by myself than that he 
 should tell me. 
 
 I cast my mind back all in vain. 
 
 '♦ No, Jack," I said trustfully. '* I can't re- 
 member anything one bit like that. I can 
 remember forward, sometimes, but never back- 
 wards. I can remember now how I flung down 
 the pistol, and how the servants burst in. But 
 not a word, not an item, of what went before. 
 That's all a pure blank to me." 
 
 And then I went on to tell him in very brief 
 outline how the first thing I could recollect in all 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 2O9 
 
 my life was the Australian scene with the big blue- 
 gum-trees ; and how that had been recalled to me 
 by the picture at Jane's ; and how one scene in 
 that way had gradually suggested another ; and 
 how I could often think ahead from a given fact 
 but never go back behind it and discover what led 
 up to it. 
 
 Jack drew his hand over his chin and reflected 
 silently. 
 
 "That's odd," he said, after a pause. "Yet 
 very comprehensible. I might almost have thought 
 of that before : might have arrived at it on general 
 principles. Psychologically and physiologically 
 it 's exactly what one would have expected from 
 the nature of memory. And yet it never occurred 
 to me. Set up the train of thought in the order 
 in which it originally presented itself, and the links 
 may readily restore themselves in successive series. 
 Try to trace it backward in the inverse order, and 
 the process is very much more difficult and in- 
 volved. — Well, we'll try things just so with you, 
 Una. We'll begin by reconstructing your first 
 life as far as we can from the very outset, with the 
 aid of these stray hints of yours ; and then we '11 
 see whether we can get you to remember all your 
 past up to the day of the accident more easily." 
 
 H 
 
2IO RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 I gazed up at him with gratitude. 
 
 "Oh, Jack," I said, trembling, ♦' in spite of this 
 shock, I beHeve I can do it now. I believe I can 
 remember. The scales are falling from my eyes. 
 I'm becoming myself again. What you've said 
 and what you 've shown me seems to have broken 
 down a veil. I feel as if I could reconstruct all 
 now, when once the key's suggested to me." 
 
 He smiled at me encouragingly. Oh, how could 
 I ever have doubted him ? 
 
 "That 's right, darling," he answered. " I should 
 have expected as much, indeed. For now for the 
 very first time since the accident you've got really 
 at the other side of the great blank in your 
 memory." 
 
 I felt so happy, though I knew I was a mur- 
 deress. I didn't mind now whether I was hanged 
 or not. To love Jack and be loved by him was 
 quite enough for me. When he called me "darling," 
 I was in the seventh heavens. It sounded so 
 famiHar. I knew he must have called me so, often 
 and often before, in the dim dead past that was 
 just beginning to recur to me. 
 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 2II 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ^be Stranflcr from tbc Sea. 
 
 I HELD his hand tight. It was so pleasant 
 I& to know I could love him now with a clear 
 conscience, even if I had to give myself up 
 to the police to-morrow. And indeed, being a 
 woman, I didn't really much care whether they 
 took me or not, if only I could love Jack, and 
 know Jack loved me. 
 
 " You must tell me everything-this minute- 
 Jack," I said, clinging to him like a child. " I 
 can't bear this suspense. Begin telling me at once. 
 You '11 do me more harm than good if you keep me 
 waiting any longer." 
 
 Jack took instinctively a medical view of the 
 situation. 
 
 " So I think, my child," he said, looking lovingly 
 at me. " Your nerves are on the rack, and will be 
 the better for unstringing. Oh, Una, it 's such a 
 comfort that you know at last who I am ! It 's such 
 a comfort that I 'm able to talk to you to-day just as 
 we two used to talk four years ago in Devonshire ! " 
 
 14 * 
 
212 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ** Did I love you then, Jack ? " I whispered, nest- 
 ling still closer to him, in spite of my horror. Or 
 rather, my very horror made me feel more acutely 
 than ever the need for protection. I was no longer 
 alone in the world. I had a man to support me. 
 
 '* You told me so, darling," he answered^ smooth- 
 ing my hair with his hand. " Have you forgotten 
 all about it ? Doesn't even that come back ? 
 Can't you remember it now, when I 've told you 
 who I am and how it all happened?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 "All cloudy still," I replied, vaguely. "Some 
 dim sense of familiarity, perhaps, — as when people 
 say they have a feeling of having lived all this over 
 somewhere else before, — but nothing more certain, 
 nothing more definite." 
 
 *' Then I must begin at the beginning," Jack 
 answered, bracing himself for his hard task, " and 
 reconstruct your whole life for you, as far as I 
 know it, from your very childhood. I 'm particu- 
 larly anxious you should not merely be told what 
 took place, but should remember the past. There 
 are gaps in my own knowledge I want you to eke 
 out. There are places I want you to help me 
 myself over. And besides, it '11 be more satisfac- 
 tory to yourself to remember than to be told it." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 213 
 
 I leaned back, almost exhausted. Incredible as 
 it may seem to you, in spite of that awful photo- 
 graph, I couldn't really believe even so I had killed 
 my father. And yet I knew very well now that 
 Jack, at least, hadn't done it. That was almost 
 enough. But not quite. My head swam round in 
 terror. I waited and longed for Jack to explain 
 the whole thing to me. 
 
 ** You remember," he said, watching me close, 
 " that when you lived as a very little girl in 
 Australia you had a papa who seems different to 
 you still from the papa in your later childish 
 memories ?" 
 
 •* I remember it very well," I replied. " It came 
 back to me on the Sarmatian. I think of him 
 always now as the papa in the loose white linen 
 coat. The more I dwell on him, the more does he 
 come out to me as a different man from the other 
 one — the father ... I shot at The Grange, at 
 Woodbury. The father that lives with me in that 
 ineffaceable Picture." 
 
 " He ivas a different man," Jack answered, with 
 a sudden burst, as if he knew all my story. " Una, 
 I may as well relieve your mind all at once on 
 that formidable point. You shot that man" — he 
 pointed to the white-bearded person in the photo- 
 
214 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 graph, — ** but it was not parricide : it was not even 
 murder. It was under grave provocation . . . 
 in more than self-defence . . . and he was not 
 your father." 
 
 ** Not my father !" I cried, clasping my hands 
 and leaning forward in my profound suspense. 
 '• But I killed him all the same ! Oh, Jack, how 
 terrible ! " 
 
 " You must quiet yourself, my child," he said, 
 still soothing me automatically. " I want your 
 aid in this matter. You must listen to me calmly, 
 and bring your mind to bear on all I say to you." 
 
 Then he began with a regular history '' my 
 early life, which came back to me as fast as he 
 spoke, scene by scene and year by year, in long 
 and familiar succession. I remembered everything, 
 sometimes only when he suggested it ; but some- 
 times also, before he said the words, my memory 
 outran his tongue, and I put in a recollection or 
 two with my own tongue as they recurred to me 
 under the stimulus of this new birth of my dead 
 nature. I recalled my early days in the far bush 
 in Australia ; my journey home to England on 
 the big steamer with mamma ; the way we 
 travelled about for years from place to place on the 
 Continent. I remembered how I had been strictly 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 21$ 
 
 enjoined, too, never to speak of baby ; and how 
 my father used to watch my mother just as closely 
 as he watched me, always afraid, as it appeared 
 to me, she should make some verbal slip or let out 
 some great secret in an unguarded moment. He 
 seemed relieved, I recollected now, when my poor 
 mother died : he grew less strict with me then, but 
 as far as I could judge, though he was careful of 
 my health, he never really loved me. 
 
 Then Jack reminded me further of other scenes 
 that came much later in my forgotten life. He 
 reminded me of my trip to Torquay, where I first 
 met him : and all at once the whole history of my 
 old visits to the Moores came back like a flood to 
 me. The memory seemed to inundate and over- 
 whelm my brain. They were the happiest time 
 of all life, those delightful visits, when I met Jack 
 and fell in love with him, and half confided my 
 love to my Cousin Minnie. Strange to say, though 
 at Torquay itself I 'd forgotten it all, in that little 
 Canadian house, with Jack by my side to recall it, 
 it rushed back like a wave upon me. I 'd fallen in 
 love with Jack without my father's knowledge or 
 consent ; and I knew very well my father would 
 never allow me to marry him. He had ideas of 
 his own, my father, about the sort of person I 
 
2l6 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 ought to marry : and I half suspected in my heart 
 of hearts he meant if possible always to keep me 
 at home single to take care of him and look 
 after him. I didn't know, as yet, he had sufficient 
 reasons of his own for desiring me to remain for 
 ever unmarried. 
 
 I remembered, too, that I never really loved my 
 father. His nature was hard, cold, reserved, un- 
 sympathetic. I only feared and obeyed him. At 
 times, my own strong character came out, I 
 remembered, and I defied him to his face, defied 
 him openly. Then there were scenes in the 
 house, dreadful scenes, too hateful to dwell upon : 
 and the servants came up to my room at the end 
 and comforted me. 
 
 So, step by step. Jack reminded me of everything 
 in my own past life, up to the very night of the 
 murder, from which my Second State dated. I 'd 
 come back from Torquay a week or two before, 
 very full indeed of Jack, and determined at all 
 costs, sooner or later, to marry him. But though 
 I had kept all quiet, papa had suspected my liking 
 on the day of the Berry Pomeroy athletics, and 
 had forbidden me to see Jack, or to write to him, 
 or to have anything further to say to him. 
 He was determined, he told me, whoever I 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 217 
 
 married, I shouldn't at least marry a beggarly 
 doctor. All that I remembered ; and also how, in 
 spite of the prohibition, I wrote letters to Jack, 
 but could receive none in return — lest my father 
 should see them. 
 
 And still, the central mystery of the murder was 
 no nearer solution. I held my breath in terror. 
 Had I really any sort of justification in killing 
 him? 
 
 Dimly and instinctivelj^ as Jack went on, a faint 
 sense of resentment and righteous indignation 
 against the man with the white beard rose up 
 vaguely in my mind by slow degrees. I knew I 
 had been angry with him, I knew I had defied 
 him, but how or why as yet I knew not. 
 
 Then Jack suddenly paused, and began in a 
 different voice a new part of his tale. It was 
 nothing I remembered or could possibly remember, 
 he said ; but it was necessary to the comprehen- 
 sion of what came after, and would help me to 
 recall it. About a week after I left Torquay, it 
 seemed. Jack was in his consulting-room at Babbi- 
 combe one day, having just returned from a very 
 long bicycle ride — for he was a first-rate cyclist, — 
 when the servant announced a new patient ; and 
 a very worn-out old man came in to visit him. 
 
2l8 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 The man had a ragged grey beard and scanty 
 white hair ; he was clad in poor clothes, and had 
 tramped on foot all the way from London to 
 Babbicombe, where Jack used to practice. But 
 Jack saw at once under this rough exterior he had 
 the voice and address of a cultivated gentleman, 
 though he was so broken down by want and 
 long suffering and exposure and illness that he 
 looked like a beggar just let loose from the 
 workhouse. 
 
 I held my breath as Jack showed me the poor 
 old man's photograph. It was a portrait taken 
 after death — for Jack attended him to the end 
 through a fatal illness ; — and it showed a face thin 
 and worn, and much lined by unspeakable hard- 
 ships. But I burst out crying at once the very 
 moment I looked at it. For a second or two, I 
 couldn't say why : I suppose it was instinct. Blood 
 is thicker than water, they tell us ; and I have the 
 intuition of kindred very strong in me, I believe. 
 But at any rate, I cried silently, with big hot tears, 
 while I looked at that dead face of silent suffering, 
 as I never had cried over the photograph of the 
 respectable-looking man who lay dead on the floor 
 of the library, and whom I was always taught to 
 consider my father. Then it came back to me, 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 2I9 
 
 why .... I gazed at it and grew faint. I 
 clutched Jack's arm for support. I knew what it 
 meant now. The poor worn old man who lay dead 
 on the bed with that look of mute agony on 
 his features — was my first papa : the papa in the 
 loose white linen coat : the one I remembered with 
 childlike love and trustfulness in my earliest babyish 
 Australian recollections ! 
 
 I couldn't mistake the face. It was burnt into 
 my brain now. This was he, though much older 
 and sadder, and more scarred and lined by age and 
 weather. It was my very first papa. My own 
 papa. I cried silently still. I couldn't bear to 
 look at it. Then the real truth broke upon me 
 once more. This, and this alone, was in very 
 deed my one real father ! 
 
 I seized the faded photograph and pressed it 
 to my lips. 
 
 " Oh, I know him ! " I cried wildly. " It 's my 
 father! My father!" 
 
 Some minutes passed before Jack could go on 
 with his story. This rush of emotions was too 
 much for me for a while. I could hardly hear him 
 or attend to him, so deeply did it stir me. 
 
 At last I calmed down, still holding that pathetic 
 photograph on the table before me. 
 
220 RECALLED TO LIFE. i 
 
 ** Tell me all about him," I murmured, sobbing. 
 *• For, Jack, I remember now, he was so good and 
 kind, and I loved him — I loved him." 
 
 Jack went on with his story, trying to soothe me 
 and reassure me. The old man introduced himself 
 by very cautious degrees as a person in want, not 
 so much of money, though of that to be sure he 
 had none, as of kindness and sympathy in a very 
 great sorrow. He was a shipwrecked mariner, in 
 a sense : shipwrecked on the sea of Life and on 
 the open Pacific as well. But once he had been a 
 clergyman, and a man of education, position, 
 reputation, fortune. 
 
 Gradually as he went on Jack began to grasp at 
 the truth of this curious tale. The worn and 
 battered stranger had but lately landed in London 
 from a sailing vessel which had brought him over 
 from a remote Pacific islet : not a tropical islet of 
 the kind with whose palms and parrots we are all so 
 familiar, but a cold and snowy rock, away off far 
 south, among the frosts and icebergs, near the 
 Antarctic continent. There for twenty long years 
 that unhappy man had lived by himself a solitary 
 life. 
 
 I started at the sound. 
 
 " For twenty years !" I exclaimed. " Oh, Jack, 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 221 
 
 you must be wrong ; for how could that be ? I 
 was only eighteen when all this happened. How 
 could my real father have been twenty years away 
 from me, when I was only eighteen, and I remember 
 him so perfectly ?" 
 
 Jack looked at me and shook his head. 
 
 *' You 've much to learn yet, Una," he answered. 
 " The story 's a long one. You were not eighteen 
 but twenty -two at the time. You've been 
 deliberately misled as to your own age all along. 
 You developed late, and were always short for 
 your real years, not tall and precocious as we 
 all of us imagined. But you were four years older 
 than Mr. Callingham pretended. You 're twenty- 
 six now, not twenty-two as you think. Wait, 
 and in time you '11 hear all about it." 
 
 He went on with his story. I listened, spell- 
 bound. The unhappy man explained to Jack how 
 he had been wrecked on the voyage, and escaped 
 on a raft with one other passenger : how they had 
 drifted far south, before waves and current, till they 
 were cast at last on this wretched island : how 
 they remained there for a month or two, picking 
 up a precarious living on roots and berries and 
 eggs of sea-birds: and how at last, one day, he 
 had come back from hunting limpets and sea- 
 
222 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 urchins on the shore of a lonely bay — to find, to his 
 amazement, his companion gone, and himself left 
 alone on that desolate island. His fellow-castaway, 
 he knew then, had deceived and deserted him ! 
 
 There was no room, indeed, to doubt the 
 treachery of the wretched being who had so basely 
 treated him. As he looked, a ship under full sail 
 stood away to northward. In vain the unhappy 
 man made wild signals from the shore with his 
 tattered garments. No notice was taken of them. 
 His companion must deliberately have suppressed 
 the other's existence, and pretended to be alone 
 by himself on the island. 
 
 "And his name ?" Jack asked of the poor old 
 man, horrified. 
 
 The stranger answered without a moment's 
 pause : 
 
 "His name, if you want it — was Vivian 
 CaUingham." 
 
 "And yours?" Jack continued, as soon as he 
 could recover from his first shock of horror. 
 
 "And mine," the poor castaway replied, "is 
 Richard Wharton." 
 
 As Jack told me those words, another strange 
 thrill ran through me. 
 
 " Richard Wharton was the name of mamma's 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 223 
 
 first husband. Then I'm not a Callingham at all !" 
 I cried, unable to take it all in at first in its full 
 complexity. " I 'm really a Wharton ! " 
 
 Jack nodded his head in assent. 
 
 "Yes, you're really a Wharton," he said. 
 ** You 're the baby that died, as we all were told. 
 Your true Christian name 's Mary. But, Una, you 
 were always Una to all of us in England; and 
 though the real Una Callingham died when 
 you were a little girl of three or four years old, 
 you '11 be Una always now to Elsie and me. We 
 can't think of you as other than we 've always 
 called you." 
 
 Then he went on to explain to me how the 
 stranger had landed in London, alone and friend- 
 less, twenty years later, from a passing Australian 
 merchant vessel which had picked him up on the 
 island. All those years he had waited, and fed 
 himself on eggs of penguins. He landed by 
 himself, the crew having given him a suit of old 
 clothes, and subscribed to find him in immediate 
 necessaries. He began to inquire cautiously in 
 London about his wife and family. At first, he 
 could learn little or nothing ; for nobody remem- 
 bered him, and he feared to ask too openly, a sort 
 of Enoch Arden terror restraining him from pro- 
 
224 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 claiming his personality till he knew exactly what 
 had happened in his long absence. But bit by 
 bit, he found out at last that his wife had married 
 again, and was now long dead : and that the man 
 she had married was Vivian CalHngham, his own 
 treacherous companion on the Crozet Islands. As 
 soon as he learned that, the full depth of the man's 
 guilt burst upon him like a thunderbolt. Richard 
 Wharton understood now why Vivian CalHngham 
 had left him alone on those desert rocks, and sailed 
 away in the ship without telling the captain of his 
 fellow-castaway's plight. He saw the whole vile 
 plot the man had concocted at once, and the steps 
 he had taken to carry it into execution. 
 
 Vivian CalHngham, whom I falsely thought my 
 father, had gone back to Australia with pretended 
 news of Richard Wharton's death. He had sought 
 my widowed mother in her own home up country, 
 and told her a lying tale of his devotion to her 
 husband in his dying moments on that remote 
 ocean speck in the far Southern Pacific. By this 
 story he ingratiated himself. He knew she was 
 rich : he knew she was worth marrying : and to 
 marry her, he had left my own real father, Richard 
 Wharton, to starve and languish for twenty years 
 among rocks and sea-fowl on a lonely island ! 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 225 
 
 My blood ran cold at such a tale of deadly 
 treachery. I remembered now to have heard some 
 small part of it before. But much of it, as Jack 
 told it to me, was quite new and unexpected. No 
 wonder I had turned in horror that night from the 
 man I long believed to be my own father, when 
 I learned by what vile and cruelly treacherous 
 means he had succeeded in imposing his supposed 
 relationship upon me ! But still, all this brought 
 me no nearer the real question of questions— why 
 did I shoot him ? 
 
 15 
 
226 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 X:^bc plot IHnravcls 5t0Clf. 
 
 '^S Jack went on unfolding that strange tale 
 of fraud and heartless wrong, my interest 
 every moment grew more and more ab- 
 sorbing. But I can't recall it now exactly as Jack 
 told me it. I can only give you the substance of 
 that terrible story. 
 
 When Richard Wharton first learned of his 
 wife's second marriage during his own lifetime 
 to that wicked wretch who had ousted and sup- 
 planted him, he believed also, on the strength of 
 Vivian Callingham's pretences, that his own 
 daughter had died in her babyhood in AustraHa. 
 He fancied, therefore, that no person of his kin 
 remained alive at all, and that he might proceed 
 to denounce and punish Vivian Callingham. 
 With that object in view, he tramped down all 
 the way from London to Torquay, to make himself 
 known to his wife's relations, the Moores, and to 
 their cousin, Courtenay Ivor of Babbicombe — my 
 Jack, as I called him. For various reasons of his 
 
 I 
 
 x 
 
 :)^.' 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 227 
 
 own, he called first on Jack, and proceeded to 
 detail to him this terrible family story. 
 
 At first hearing, Jack could hardly believe such 
 a tale was true — of his Una's father, as he still 
 thought Vivian Callingham. But a strange chance 
 happened to reveal a still further complication. It 
 came out in this way. I had given Jack a recent 
 photograph of myself in fancy dress, which hung 
 up over his mantelpiece. As the weather-worn 
 visitor's eye fell on the picture, he started and 
 grew pale. 
 
 *' Why, that 's her ! " he cried with a sudden 
 gasp. " That 's my daughter — Mary Wharton! " 
 
 Well, naturally enough Jack thought, to begin 
 with, this was a mere mistake on his strange 
 visitor's part. 
 
 " That 's her half-sister," he said, '* Una Calling- 
 ham — your wife's child by her second marriage. 
 She may be like her, no doubt, as half-sisters often 
 are. But Mary Wharton, I know, died some 
 eighteen years ago or so, when Una was quite a 
 baby, I believe. I 've heard all about it, because, 
 don't you see, I 'm engaged to Una." 
 
 The poor wreck of a clergyman, however, shook 
 his head with profound conviction. He knew 
 better than that. 
 
 '5* 
 
228 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 "Oh no," he said decisively: "that's my 
 child, Mary Wharton. Even after all these years, 
 I couldn't possibly be mistaken. Blood is thicker 
 than water : I 'd know her among ten thousand. 
 She 'd be just that age now, too. I see the 
 creature's vile plot. His daughter died young, 
 and he 's palmed off my Mary as his own child, to 
 keep her money in his hands. But never mind 
 the money. Thank Heaven, she 's alive ! That 's 
 her! That 's my Mary ! " 
 
 The plot seemed too diabolical and too improb- 
 able for anybody to believe. Jack could hardly 
 think it possible when his new friend told him. 
 But the stranger persisted so — it 's hard for me 
 even to think of him as quite really my father — 
 that Jack at last brought out two or three earlier 
 photographs I *d given him some time before ; and 
 his visitor recognised them at once, in all their 
 stages, as his own daughter. This roused Jack's 
 curiosity. He determined to hunt the matter up 
 with his unknown connection. And he hunted it 
 up thenceforward with deliberate care, till he 
 proved every word of it. 
 
 Meanwhile, the poor broken-down man, worn 
 out with his long tramp and his terrible emotions, 
 fell ill almost at once, in Jack's own house, and 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 229 
 
 became rapidly so feeble that Jack dared not 
 question him further. The return to civilisation 
 was more fatal than his long solitary banishment. 
 At the end of a week he died, leaving on Jack's 
 mind a profound conviction that all he had said 
 was true, and that I was really Richard Wharton's 
 daughter, not Vivian Callingham's. 
 
 " For a week or two I made inquiries, Una," 
 Jack said to me as we sat there, — "inquiries 
 which I won't detail to you in full just now, but 
 which gradually showed me the truth of the poor 
 soul's belief. What you yourself told me just 
 now chimes in exactly with what I discovered 
 elsewhere, by inquiry and by letters from Aus- 
 tralia. The baby that died was the real Una 
 CaUingham. Shortly after its death, your step- 
 father and your mother left the colony. All your 
 real father's money had been bequeathed to his 
 child : and your mother's also was settled on you. 
 Mr. CaUingham saw that if your mother died, 
 and you lived and married, he himself would be 
 deprived of the fortune for which he had so 
 wickedly plotted. So he made up another plot 
 even more extraordinary and more diabolical still 
 than the first. He decided to pretend it was Mary 
 Wharton that died, and to palm you off on the 
 
230 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 world as his own child, Una Callingham. For if 
 Mary Wharton died, the property at once became 
 absolutely your mother's, and she could will it 
 away to her husband or anyone else she chose 
 to." 
 
 " But baby was so much younger than I ! " I 
 cried, going back on my recollections once more. 
 *' How could he ever manage to make the dates 
 come right again ? " 
 
 " Quite true," Jack answered ; " the baby was 
 younger than you. But your step-father — I 've no 
 other name by which I can call him — made a clever 
 plan to set that straight. He concealed from the 
 people in Australia which child had been ill, and 
 he entered her death as Mary Wharton. Then, 
 to cover the falsification, he left Melbourne at 
 once, and travelled about for some years on the 
 Continent in out-of-the-way places till all had been 
 forgotten. You went forth upon the world as Una 
 Callingham, with your true personality as Mary 
 Wharton all obscured even in your own memory. 
 Fortunately for your false father's plot, you were 
 small for your age, and developed slowly : he gave 
 out, on the contrary, that you were big for your 
 years and had outgrown yourself, Australian-wise, 
 both in wisdom and stature." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 23I 
 
 ** But my mother ! " I exclaimed, appalled. 
 • How could she ever consent to such a wicked 
 deception?" 
 
 •' Mr. Callingham had your mother completely 
 under his thumb," Jack answered with prompti- 
 tude. ** She couldn't call her soul her own, your 
 poor mother— so I 've heard : he cajoled her and 
 terrified her till she didn't dare to oppose him. 
 Poor shrinking creature, she was afraid of her life 
 to do anything except as he bade her. He must 
 have persuaded her first to acquiesce passively in 
 this hateful plot, and then must have terrified her 
 afterwards into full compliance by threats of 
 exposure." 
 
 *' He was a very unhappy man himself," I put 
 in, casting back. '* His money did him no good. I 
 can remember now how gloomy and moody he 
 was often, at The Grange." 
 
 " Quite true," Jack replied. " He lived in per- 
 petual fear of your real father's return, or of some 
 other breakdown to his complicated system of 
 successive deceptions. He never had a happy 
 minute in his whole life, I believe. Blind terrors 
 surrounded him. He was afraid of everything, 
 and afraid of everybody. Only his scientific work 
 seemed ever to give him any relief. There, he 
 
232 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 became a free man. He threw himself into that, 
 heart and soul, on purpose, I fancy, because it 
 absorbed him while he was at it, and prevented 
 him for the time being from thinking of his 
 position." 
 
 " And how did you find it all out ? " I asked 
 eagerly, anxious to get on to the end. 
 
 " Well, that 's long to tell," Jack replied. ♦' Too 
 long for one sitting. I won't trouble you with it 
 now. Discrepancies in facts and dates, and in- 
 quiries among servants both in England and in 
 Victoria, first put me upon the track. But I said 
 nothing at the time of my suspicions to anyone. 
 I waited till I could appeal to the man's own 
 conscience with success, as I hoped. And then, 
 besides, I hardly knew how to act for the best. I 
 wanted to marry you ; and therefore, as far as was 
 consistent with justice and honour, I wished to 
 spare your supposed father a complete exposure." 
 
 '* But why didn't you tell the police ? " I asked. 
 
 *• Because I had really nothing definite in any 
 way to go upon. Realise the position to yourself, 
 and you '11 see how difficult it was for me. Mr. 
 Callingham suspected I was paying you attentions. 
 Clearly, under those circumstances, it was to my 
 obvious interest th^t you should get possession of 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 233 
 
 all his property. Any claims I might make for 
 you would, therefore, be naturally regarded with 
 suspicion. The shipwrecked man had told no- 
 body but myself. I hadn't even an affidavit, a 
 death-bed statement. All rested upon his word, 
 and upon mine as retailing it. He was dead, and 
 there was nothing but my narrative for what he 
 told me. The story itself was too improbable to 
 be beheved by the poHce on such dubious evidence. 
 I didn't even care to try. I wanted to make your 
 step-father confess: and I waited for that till I 
 could compel confession." 
 
234 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 "i 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 ^B /Rcmorg "Returns. 
 
 T last my chance came," Jack went on. 
 "I'd found out almost everything; not, of 
 course, exactly by way of legal proof, but to 
 my own entire satisfaction : and I determined to lay 
 the matter definitely at once before Mr. Callingham. 
 So I took a holiday for a fortnight, to go bicycling 
 in the Midlands I told my patients ; and I fixed 
 my head - quarters at Wrode, which, as you 
 probably remember, is twenty miles off from 
 Woodbury. 
 
 " It was important for my scheme I should 
 catch Mr. Callingham alone. I had no idea of 
 entrapping him. I wanted to work upon his con- 
 science and induce him to confess. My object 
 was rather to move him to remorse and restitu- 
 tion than to terrify or surprise him. 
 
 ** So on the day of the accident — call it murder, 
 if you will — I rode over on my machine, unan- 
 nounced, to The Grange to see him. You knew 
 where I was staying, you recollect " 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 235 
 
 At the words, a burst of memory came suddenly 
 over me. 
 
 ** Oh yes ! " I cried. " I remember. It was at 
 the Wilsons', at Wrode. I wrote over there to tell 
 you we were going to dine alone at six that even- 
 ing, as papa had got his electric apparatus home 
 from his instrument-maker, and was anxious to 
 try his experiments early. You 'd written to me 
 privately — a boy brought the note — that you 
 wanted to have an hour's talk alone with papa. I 
 thought it was about me, and I was, oh, ever so 
 nervous ! " 
 
 For it all came back to me now, as clear as 
 yesterday. 
 
 Jack looked at me hard. 
 
 " I 'm glad you remember that, dear," he said. 
 " Now, Una, do try to remember all you can as I 
 go along with my story. . . . Well, I rode 
 over alone, never telling anybody at Wrode where 
 I was going, nor giving your step-father any reason 
 of any sort to expect me. I trusted entirely to 
 finding him busy with his new invention. When 
 I reached The Grange, I came up the drive unper- 
 ceived, and looking in at the library window, saw 
 your father alone there. He was pottering over 
 his chemicals. That gave me the clue. I left my 
 
236 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 bicycle under the window, tilted up against the 
 wall, and walked in without ringing, going straight 
 to the library. Nobody saw me come: nobody 
 saw me return, except one old lady on the road, 
 who seemed to have forgotten all about it by the 
 time of the inquest." 
 
 (I nodded and gave a start. I knew that must 
 have been Aunt Emma;) 
 
 " Except yourself, Una, no human soul on earth 
 ever seemed to suspect me. And that wasn't odd; 
 for you and your father, and perhaps Minnie Moore, 
 were the only people in the world who ever knew I 
 was in love with you or cared for you in any way." 
 
 " Go on," I said, breathless. " And you went 
 into the library." 
 
 •* I went into the library," Jack continued, 
 "where I found your father, just returned from 
 enjoying his cigar on the lawn. He was alone in 
 the room " 
 
 "No, no!" I cried eagerly, putting in my share 
 now ; for I had a part in the history. *' He wasn't 
 alone, Jack, though you thought him so at the 
 time. I remember all, at last. It comes back to me 
 like a flash. Oh, heavens, how it comes back to 
 me ! Jack, Jack, I remember to-day every word, 
 every syllable of it ! " 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. lyj 
 
 He gazed at me in surprise. 
 
 "Then tell me yourself, Una!" he exclaimed. 
 " How did you come to be there ? For I knew 
 you were there at last; but till you fired the pistol, 
 I hadn't the faintest idea you had heard or seen 
 anything. Tell me all about it, quick ! There 
 comes in my mystery." 
 
 In one wild rush of thought the whole picture 
 rose up like a vision before me. 
 
 "Why, Jack," I cried, "there was a screen, a 
 little screen in the alcove! You remember the 
 alcove at the west end of the room. It was so 
 small a screen, you 'd hardly have thought it could 
 hide me ; but it did — it did — and all, too, by acci- 
 dent. I 'd gone in there after dinner, not much 
 thinking where I went, and was seated on the 
 floor by the little alcove window, reading a book 
 by the twilight. It was a book papa told me I 
 wasn't to read, and I took it trembling from the 
 shelves, and was afraid he'd scold me — for you 
 know how stern he was. And I never was 
 allowed to go alone into the library. But I got 
 interested in my book, and went on reading. So 
 when he came in, I went on sitting there very 
 still, with the book hidden under my skirt, for fear 
 he should scold me. I thought perhaps before 
 
238 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 long papa'd go out for a second, to get some 
 plates for his photography or something, and then 
 I could sHp away and never be noticed. The big 
 window towards the garden was open, you remem- 
 ber, and I meant to jump out of it — as you did 
 afterwards. It wasn't very high ; and though the 
 book was only The Vicar of Wakefield^ he'd for- 
 bidden me to read it, and I was dreadfully afraid 
 of him." 
 
 "Then you were there all the time?" Jack 
 cried interrogatively. " And you heard our con- 
 versation — our whole conversation ? " 
 
 " I was there all the time, Jack," I cried, in a 
 fever of exaltation : *' and I heard every word of it ! 
 It comes back to me now with a vividness like 
 yesterday. I see the room before my eyes. I 
 remember every syllable : I could repeat every 
 sentence of it." 
 
 Jack drew a deep sigh of intense relief. 
 
 '•Thank God for that ! " he exclaimed, with pro- 
 found gratitude. ** Then I 'm saved, and you 're 
 saved. We can both understand one another in 
 that case. We know how it all happened ! " 
 
 "Perfectly," I answered. ** I know all now. As 
 I sat there and cowered, I heard a knock at the 
 door, and before papa could answer, you entered 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 239 
 
 hastily. Papa looked round, I could hear, and 
 saw who it was in a second. 
 
 " ' Oh, it 's you ! ' he said, coldly. ' It 's you. Dr. 
 Ivor. And pray, sir, what do you want here this 
 evening ? " ' 
 
 " Go on !" Jack cried, intensely relieved, I could 
 feel. " Let me see how much more you can 
 remember, Una." 
 
 " So you shut the door softly and said : 
 
 " ' Yes, it 's I, Mr. Calhngham,' " I continued all 
 aglow, and looking into his eyes for confirmation. 
 " 'And I 've come to tell you a fact that may sur- 
 prise you. Prepare for strange news. Richard 
 Wharton has returned to England ! ' 
 
 " I knew Richard Wharton was mamma's first 
 husband, who was dead before I was born, as I 'd 
 always been told : and I sat there aghast at the 
 news : it wa^ so sudden, so crushing. I 'd heard 
 he 'd been wrecked, and I thought he 'd come to 
 life again ; but as yet I didn't suspect what was all 
 the real meaning of it. 
 
 " But papa drew back, I could hear, in a perfect 
 frenzy of rage, astonishment, and terror. 
 
 '* * Richard Wharton ! ' he hissed out between 
 his teeth, springing away hke one stung. * Richard 
 Wharton come back ! You liar ! You sneak ! 
 
240 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 He 's dead this twenty years ! You 're trying to 
 frighten me.' 
 
 " I never meant to overhear your conversation. 
 But at that, it was so strange, I drew back and 
 cowered even closer. I was afraid of papa's voice. 
 I was afraid of his rage. He spoke just Hke a man 
 who was ready to murder you. 
 
 " Then you began to talk with papa about 
 strange things that astonished me — strange things 
 that I only half understood just then, but that by 
 the light of what you 've told me to-day I quite 
 understand now — the history of my real father. 
 
 " ' I 'm no liar,' you answered. * Richard Whar- 
 ton has come back. And by the aid of what he 's 
 disclosed, I know the whole truth. The girl you 
 call your daughter, and whose money you 've 
 stolen, is not yours at all. She 's Richard Whar- 
 ton's daughter Mary ! ' 
 
 '* Papa staggered back a pace or two, and came 
 quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in 
 alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a min- 
 ute or two you talked with him, and urged him to 
 confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered 
 his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny 
 what you said: he saw it was no use: he just 
 sneered and prevaricated. 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 24I 
 
 "As I listened to his words, I saw he admitted it 
 all. A great horror came over me. Then my life 
 was one long lie! He was never my father. He 
 had concocted a vile plot. He had held me in 
 this slavery so many years to suit his own pur- 
 poses. He had crushed my mother to death, and 
 robbed me of my birthright. Even before that 
 night, I never loved him. I thought it very wicked 
 of me, but I never could love him. As he spoke 
 to you and grew cynical, I began to loathe and 
 despise him. I can't tell you how great a comfort 
 it was to me to know — to hear from his own lips 
 I was not that man's daughter. 
 
 *'At last, after many recriminations, he looked 
 across at you, and said, half laughing, for he was 
 quite himself again by that time : 
 
 " ' This is all very fine, Courtenay Ivor — all very 
 fine in its way ; but how are you going to prove 
 it ? that 's the real question. Do you think any 
 jury in England will believe, on your unsupported 
 oath, such a cock-and-bull story ? Do you think, 
 even if Richard Wharton 's come back, and 
 you 've got him on your side, I can't cross-examine 
 all the hfe out of his body ? ' 
 
 *'At that you said gravely — wanting to touch 
 
 his conscience, I suppose : — 
 
 16 
 
242 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " * Richard Wharton 's come back, but you can't 
 cross-examine him. For Richard Wharton died 
 some six or eight weeks since at my cottage at 
 Babbicombe, after reveahng to me all this vile 
 plot against himself and his daughter.' 
 
 " Then papa drew back with a loud laugh — a 
 hateful laugh like a demon's. I can't help calling 
 him papa still, though it pains me even to think 
 of him. That loud laugh rings still m my ears to 
 this day. It was horrible, diabolical, like a wild 
 beast's in triumph. 
 
 " ' You fool ! ' he said, with a sneer. ' And you 
 come here to tell me that ! You infernal idiot ! 
 You come here to put yourself in my power like 
 this ! Courtenay Ivor, I always knew you were 
 an ass, but I didn't ever know you were quite 
 such a born idiot of a fellow as that. Hold back 
 there, you image! ' With a rapid dart, before you 
 could see what he was doing, he passed a wire 
 round your body and thrust two knobs into your 
 hands. * You 're in my power now!' he exclaimed. 
 ' You can't move or stir ! ' 
 
 " I saw at once what he 'd done. He 'd pinned 
 you to the spot with the handles of his powerful 
 electric apparatus. It was so strong that it would 
 hold one riveted to the spot in pain. You couldn't 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 243 
 
 let go. You could hardly even speak or cry aloud 
 for help. He had pinned you down irresistibly. 
 I thought he meant to murder you. 
 
 " Yet I was too terrified, even so, to scream aloud 
 for the servants. I only crouched there, rooted, 
 and wondered what next would happen. 
 
 " He went across to the door and turned the 
 key in it. Then he opened the cabinet and took 
 out some things there. It was growing quite dusk, 
 and I could hardly see them. He returned with 
 them where you stood, struggling in vain to set 
 yourself free. His voice was as hard as adamant 
 now. He spoke slowly and distinctly, in a voice 
 hke a fiend's. Oh, Jack, no wonder that scene 
 took away my reason ! " 
 
 "And you can remember what he said next, 
 Una ? " Jack asked, following me eagerly. 
 
 " Yes, I can remember what he said next," I 
 went on. " He stood over you threateningly. I 
 could see then the thing he held in his right hand 
 was a loaded revolver. In his left was a bottle, a 
 small medical phial. 
 
 " ' If you stir, I '11 shoot you,' he said ; * I'll 
 
 shoot you like a dog! You fool, you've sealed 
 
 your own fate ! What an idiot to let me know 
 
 Richard Wharton 's dead ! Now, hear your fate ! 
 
 i6 * 
 
244 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Nobody saw you come into this house to-night. 
 Nobody shall see you leave. Look here, sir, at 
 this bottle. It 's chloroform : do you understand ? 
 Chloroform — chloroform — chloroform ! I shall 
 hold it to your nose — so. I shall stifle you quietly 
 — no blood, no fuss, no nasty mess of any sort. 
 And when I'm done,— do you see these flasks? 
 — I can reduce your damned carcase to a pound 
 of ashes with chemicals in half-an-hour! You 've 
 found out too much. But you 've mistaken your 
 man ! Courtenay Ivor, say your prayers and com- 
 mend your soul to the devil ! You 've driven me 
 to bay, and I give you no quarter ! ' " 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 245 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Zbc jfatal Sbot. 
 
 HANK GOD, Una," Jack cried, "you 
 remember it now even better than I 
 "do!" 
 
 "Remember it ! " I answered, holding my brow 
 with my hands to keep the flood of thought from 
 bursting it to fragments. " Remember it ! Why, 
 it comes back to me Hke waves of fire and burns 
 me. I remember every word, every act, every 
 gesture. I Hfted my head slowly. Jack, and looked 
 over the screen at him. In the twilight, I saw him 
 there — the man I called my father — holding the 
 bottle to your face, that wicked bottle of chloro- 
 form, with his revolver in one hand, and a calm 
 smile like a fiend's playing hatefully and cruelly 
 round that grave-looking mouth of his. I never 
 saw any man look so ghastly in my life. I was 
 rooted to the spot with awe and terror. I dared 
 hardly cry out or move. Yet I knew this was 
 murder. He would kill you ! He would kill you ! 
 He was trying to poison you before my very eyes. 
 
246 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Oh, heaven, how I hated him ! He was no father 
 of mine. He had never been my father. And he 
 was murdering the man I loved best in the world. 
 For I loved you better than Hfe, Jack ! Oh, the 
 strain of it was terrible ! I see it all now. I live 
 it all over again. With one wild bound I leapt 
 forward, and, hardly knowing what I did, I 
 pressed the button, turned off the current from the 
 battery, and rushed wildly upon him. I suppose 
 the knob I pressed not only released you, but set 
 the photographic machine at work automatically. 
 But I didn't know it then. At any rate, I remember 
 now, in the seconds that followed, flash came fast 
 after flash. There was a sudden illumination. The 
 room was lighter than day. It grew alternately 
 bright as noon and then dark as pitch again by 
 contrast. And by the light of the flashes, I saw 
 you, half-dazed with the chloroform, standing 
 helpless there. 
 
 *' I rushed up and caught the man's arm. He 
 was never my father ! He dropped the bottle and 
 struggled hard for possession of the pistol. First 
 he pointed it at you, then at me, then at you again. 
 He meant to shoot you. I was afraid it would go 
 off. With a terrible effort I twisted his wrist 
 awry, in the mad force of passion, and wrenched 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 247 
 
 the revolver away from him. He jumped at my 
 throat, still silent, but fierce like a tiger at bay. I 
 eluded him, and sprang back. Then I remember 
 no more, except that I stood with the pistol pointed 
 at him. Next, came a flash, a loud roar. And 
 then, in a moment, the Picture. He lay dead on 
 the floor in his blood. And my Second State 
 began. And from that day, for months, I was like 
 a little child again." 
 
 Jack looked at me as I paused. 
 "And then ?" he went on in a very low voice, 
 half prompting me. 
 
 " And then all I can remember," I said, " is how 
 you got out of the window. But I didn't know 
 when I saw you, it was you or anyone else. That 
 was my Second State then. The shot seemed to 
 end all. What comes next is quite different. It 
 belongs to the new world. There, my life stopped 
 dead short and began all over again." 
 
 There was a moment s silence. Jack was the 
 first to break it. 
 
 "And now will you give yourself up to the 
 police, Una?" he asked me quietly. 
 
 The question brought me back to the present 
 again with a bound. 
 
 " Oh ! what ought I to do ? " I cried, wringing 
 
248 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 my hands. " I don't quite know all yet. Jack, why 
 did you run away that last moment and leave 
 me?" 
 
 Jack took my hand very seriously. 
 
 " Una, my child," he said, fixing his eyes on 
 mine, " I hardly know whether I can ever make 
 you understand all that. I must ask you at first 
 at least just simply to believe me. I must ask 
 you to trust me and to accept my account. When 
 you rushed upon me as I stood there, all entangled 
 in that hateful apparatus, and unable to niove, I 
 didn't know where you had been ; I didn't know 
 how you'd come there. But I felt sure you must 
 have heard at least your false father's last words — 
 that he'd stifle me with the chloroform and burn 
 my body up afterwards to ashes with his chemicals. 
 You seized the pistol before I could quite recover 
 from the eflects of the fumes. He lay dead at my 
 feet before I realised what was happening. 
 
 *' x hen, in a moment, as I looked at you, I took 
 it all in, like a flash of lightning. I saw how im- 
 possible it would be ever to convince anybody else 
 of the truth of our story. I saw if we both told 
 the truth, no one would ever believe us. There was 
 no time then to reflect, no time to hesitate. I had 
 to make up my mind at once to a plan of action, 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 249 
 
 and to carry it out without a second's delay. In 
 one burst of inspiration, I saw that to stop would 
 be to seal both our fates. I didn't mind so much 
 for myself; that was nothing, nothing: but for 
 your sake I felt I must dare and risk everything. 
 Then I turned round and looked at you. I saw at 
 one glance the horror of the moment had rendered 
 you speechless and almost senseless. The right 
 plan came to me at once as if by magic. * Una,' 
 I cried, 'stand back! Wait till 'the servants 
 come ! ' For I knew the report of the revolver 
 would soon bring them up to the library. Then 
 I waited myself. As they reached the door, and 
 forced it open, I jumped up to the window. Just 
 outside, my bicycle stood propped against the 
 wall. I let them purposely catch just a glimpse 
 of my back — an unfamiliar figure. They saw the 
 pistol on the floor, — Mr. Callingham dead — you, 
 startled and horrified — a man unknown, escaping 
 in hot haste from the window. I risked my own 
 life, so as to save your name and honour. I let 
 them see me escape, so as to exonerate you from 
 suspicion. If they hanged me, what matter ? 
 Then I leapt down in a hurry, jumped lightly on 
 my machine, and rode off like the wind down the 
 avenue to the high-road. For a second or two 
 
250 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 they waited to look at you and your father. That 
 second or two saved us. By the time they 'd come 
 out to look, I was away down the grounds, past 
 the turn of the avenue, and well on for the high- 
 road. They'd seen a glimpse of the murderer, 
 escaping by the window. They would never 
 suspect you. You were saved, and I was happy." 
 
 " And for the same reason even now," I said, 
 " you wouldn't tell the police ? " 
 
 " Let sleeping dogs lie," Jack answered, in the 
 same words as Dr. Marten. " Why rake up this 
 whole matter? It's finished for ever now, and 
 nobody but yourself is ever likely to reopen it. If 
 we both told our tale, we might run a great risk of 
 being seriously misinterpreted. You know it's 
 true ; so do I : but who else Wvould believe us ? 
 No man's bound to criminate himself. You shot 
 him to save my life, at the very moment when you 
 first learned all his cruelty and his vileness. The 
 rest of the world could never be made to under- 
 stand all that. They'd saj'^ to the end, as it looks 
 on the surface, ' She shot her father to save her 
 lover.' " 
 
 "You're right," I said slowly. " I shall let this 
 thing rest. But the photographs. Jack — the ap- 
 paratus — the affair of the inquest ? " 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 2$! 
 
 " That was all very simple," Jack answered. 
 " For a day or two, of course, I was in a frantic 
 state of mind for fear you should be suspected, or 
 the revolver should betray you. But though I saw 
 the electric sparks, of course, I knew nothing about 
 the photographs. I wasn't even aware that the 
 apparatus took negatives automatically. And I 
 was so full of the terrible reports in the news- 
 papers about your sudden loss of health, that I 
 could think of nothing else — least of all my own 
 safety. As good luck would have it, however, the 
 clergyman at Wrode, who knew the Wilsons, 
 happened to speak to me of the murder — all 
 England called it the murder and talked of nothing 
 else for at least a fortnight, — and in the course of 
 conversation he mentioned this apparatus of Mr. 
 Callingham's construction. ' What a pity,' he said, 
 * there didn't happen to be one of them in the 
 library at the time ! If it was focussed towards 
 the persons, and had been set on by the victim, 
 it would have photographed the whole scene 
 the murder, the murderer.' 
 
 " That hint revealed much to me. As he spoke, I 
 remembered suddenly about those mysterious 
 flashes when you burst all at once'on my sight from 
 behind the screen. Till that moment, I thought 
 
252 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 of them only as some result of your too suddenly 
 turning off the electric current. But then, it came 
 home to me in a second that Mr. Callingham must 
 have set out his apparatus all ready for experiment- 
 ing — that the electric apparatus was there to put 
 it in working order. The button you turned must 
 not only have stopped the current that nailed me 
 writhing to the spot : it must also have set work- 
 ing the automatic photographic camera ! 
 
 "That thought, as you may imagine, filled me 
 with speechless alarm : for I remembered then 
 that one of the flashes broke upon us at the exact 
 moment when you fired the pistol. Such a pos- 
 sibility was horrible to contemplate. The photo- 
 graphs by themselves could give no clue to our 
 conversation or to the events that compelled you, 
 almost against your own will, to fire that fatal 
 shot. If they were found by the police, all would 
 be up with both of us. They might hang vie if 
 they liked : except for Elsie's sake, I didn't mind 
 much about that : but for your safety, come 
 what might, I felt I must manage to get hold of 
 them or to destroy them. 
 
 "Were the negatives already in the hands of 
 the police ? That was now the great question. I 
 read the reports diligently, with all their descrip- 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 253 
 
 tions of the room, and noticed that while the table, 
 the alcove, the screen, the box, the electrical appa- 
 ratus, were all carefully mentioned, not a word 
 was said anywhere about the possession of the 
 negatives. Reasoning further upon the description 
 of the supposed murderer as given by the servants, 
 and placarded broadcast in every town in England, 
 I came to the conclusion that the police couldn't 
 yet have discovered the existence of these nega- 
 tives : for some of them must surely have photo- 
 graphed my face, however little in focus ; while 
 the printed descriptions mentioned only the man's 
 back, as the servants saw him escaping from the 
 window. The papers said the room was being 
 kept closed till the inquest, for inspection in due 
 time by the coroner's jury. I made up my mind 
 at once. When the room was opened for the 
 jurors to view it, I must get in there and carry 
 them off, if they caught me in the attempt. 
 
 *' It was no use trying before the jury had seen 
 • the room. But as soon as that was all over, I 
 judged the strictness of the watch upon the 
 premises would be relaxed, and the windows 
 would probably be opened a little to air the place. 
 So on the morning of the inquest, I told the 
 Wilsons casually I'd met you at Torquay and 
 
254 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 had therefore a sort of interest in learning the 
 result of the coroner's deliberation. Then I took 
 my bicycle, and rode across to Woodbury. Lean- 
 ing up my machine against the garden wall, I 
 walked carelessly in at the gate, and up the walk 
 to the library window, as if the place belonged to 
 me. Oh, how my heart beat as I looked in and 
 wondered ! The folding halves were open, and 
 the box stood on the table, still connected with 
 the wires that conducted the electrical current. I 
 stood and hesitated in alarm. Were the negatives 
 still there, or had the police discovered them ? 
 If they were gone, all was up with you. The game 
 was lost. No jury on earth, I felt sure, would 
 believe my story. 
 
 ** I vaulted up to the sill. Thank heaven, I was 
 athletic. Not a soul was about : but I heard a 
 noise of muffled voices in the other rooms behind. 
 Treading cat-like across the floor, I turned the 
 key in the lock. A chalk mark still showed the 
 position of the pistol on the ground exactly as 
 you flung it. The box was on the table, and I saw 
 at a glance, the wires which connected it with the 
 battery had never been disconnected. I was afraid 
 of receiving a shock if I touched them with my 
 hands, and I had no time to waste in discovering 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 255 
 
 electrical attachments. So I pulled out my knife, 
 and you can fancy with what trembling hands I 
 cut that wire on either side and released the box 
 from its dangerous connections. I knew only too 
 well the force of that current. Then I took the 
 thing under my arm, leaped from the window once 
 more, and ran across the shrubbery towards the 
 spot where I 'd left my bicycle. 
 
 "On the way, the thought struck me that if I 
 carried along the camera, all would be up with me 
 should I happen to be challenged. It was the 
 only one of the sort in existence at the time, and 
 the wires at the side would at once suffice to 
 identify it and to arouse the suspicion even of an 
 English policeman. I paused for a moment behind 
 a thick clump of lilacs and tried to pull out the 
 incriminating negatives. Oh, Una, I did it for 
 your sake; but there, terrified and trembling, in 
 hiding behind the bushes, and in danger of my life, 
 with that still more unspeakable danger for yours 
 haunting me always like a nightmare, can you 
 wonder that for the moment I almost felt myself 
 a murderer ? The very breezes in the trees made 
 my heart give a jump, and then stand still within 
 me. I got out the first two or three plates with 
 some trifling difficulty, for I didn't understand the 
 
•256 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 automatic apparatus then as I understand it now : 
 but the fourth stuck hard for a minute ; the fifth 
 broke in two ; and the sixth — well, the sixth plate 
 baffled me entirely by getting jammed in the clock- 
 work, and refusing to move, either backward or 
 forward. 
 
 ** At that moment, I either heard or fancied I 
 heard a loud noise of pursuit, a hue and cry 
 behind me. Zeal for your safety had made me 
 preternaturally nervous. I looked about me 
 hurriedly, thrust the negatives I'd recovered into 
 my breast-pocket as fast as ever I could, flung the 
 apparatus away from me with the sixth plate 
 jammed hard in the groove, and made off at the 
 top of my speed for the wall behind me. For 
 there, at that critical point, it occurred to me 
 suddenly that the sixth and last flash of the machine 
 had come and gone just as I stood poising myself 
 on the ledge of the window-sill ; and I thought to 
 myself — rightly as it turned out — this additional 
 evidence would only strengthen the belief in the 
 public mind that Mr. Callingham had been mur- 
 dered by the man whom the servants saw escaping 
 from the window. 
 
 " The rest, my child, you know pretty well 
 already. In a panic on your account, I scrambled 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 257 
 
 over the wall, tearing my hands as I went with 
 that nasty-bottle glass, reached my bicycle out- 
 side, and made off, not for the country, but for the 
 inn where they were holding the coroner's inquest. 
 My left hand I had to hold, tied up in my hand- 
 kerchief to stop the bleeding, in the pocket of my 
 jacket : but I thought this the best way, all the 
 same, to escape detection. And, indeed, instead 
 of being, as I feared, the only man there in bicycl- 
 ing dress and knickerbockers, I found the occasion 
 had positively attracted all the cyclists of the 
 neighbourhood. Each man went there to show 
 his own innocence of fear or suspicion. A good 
 dozen or two of bicyclists stood gathered already 
 in the body of the room in the same incriminating 
 costume. So I found safety in numbers. Even 
 the servants who had seen me disappear through 
 the window, though their eyes lighted upon me 
 more than once, never for a moment seemed to 
 suspect me. And I know very well why. When 
 I stand up, I 'm the straightest and most perpen- 
 dicular man that ever walked erect. But when I 
 poise to jump, I bend my spine so much that I 
 produce the impression of being almost hump- 
 backed. It was that attitude you recognised in 
 me when I jumped from the window just now." 
 
 17 
 
258 RECiVLLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " Why, Jack," I cried clinging to him in a 
 perfect whirlwind of wonder, **one can hardly 
 believe it — that was only an hour ago !" 
 
 ♦' That was only an hour ago," Jack answered, 
 smiling. " But as for you, I suppose you've lived 
 half a Hfetime again in it. And now you know 
 the whole secret of the Woodbury Mystery. And 
 you won't want to give yourself up to the police 
 any longer." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 259 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 MIV6 men tbat JBn^e iMcn. 
 
 ,UT why didn't you explain it all to me at 
 the very first?" I exclaimed, all tremulous. 
 " When you met me at Quebec, I mean- 
 why didn't you tell me then ? Did you and Elsie 
 come there on purpose to meet me ?" 
 
 ''Yes, we came there to meet you," Jack 
 answered. " But we were afraid to make ourselves 
 known to you all at once just at first, because, you 
 see, Una, I more than half suspected then, what I 
 know now to be the truth, that you were coming 
 out to Canada on purpose to hunt me up, not as 
 your friend and future husband, but in enmity and 
 suspicion as your father's murderer. And in any 
 case we were uncertain which attitude you might 
 adopt towards me. But I see I must explain a 
 little more even now. I haven't told you yet why 
 I came at all to Canada." 
 
 "Tell me now," I answered. "I must know 
 everything to-day. I can never rest now till I 've 
 heard the whole story." 
 
 17 -■• 
 
26o RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 " Well," Jack went on more calmly, '* after the 
 first excitement wore off in the pubhc mind, there 
 came after a bit a lull of languid interest ; the 
 papers began to forget the supposed facts of the 
 murder, and to dwell far more upon your own new 
 role as a pyschological curiosity. They talked 
 much about your strange new life and its analogies 
 elsewhere. I was anxious to see you, of course, 
 to satisfy myself of your condition ; but the doctors 
 who had charge of you refused to let you mix for 
 a while with anyone you had known in your First 
 State ; and I now think wisely. It was best you 
 should recover your general health and faculties by 
 slow degrees, without being puzzled and distracted 
 by constant upsetting recollections and suggestions 
 of your past history. 
 
 " But for me, of course, at the time, the separa- 
 tion was terrible. Each morning, I read with 
 feverish interest the reports of your health, 
 and longed, day after day, to hear of some 
 distinct improvement. And yet at the same 
 time, I was terrified at every approach to com- 
 plete convalescence : I feared that if you got 
 better at all, you might remember too quick, and 
 that then the sudden rush of recollection might 
 kill you or upset your reason. But by-and-by, it 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 261 
 
 became clear to me you could remember nothing 
 of the actual shot itself. And I saw plainly why. 
 It was the firing of the pistol that obliterated, as 
 it were, every trace of your past life in your 
 disorganised brain. And it obliterated itself too. 
 Your new life began just one moment later, with 
 the Picture of the dead man stretched before you 
 in his blood on the floor, and a figure in the back- 
 ground disappearing through the window." 
 
 How clever he was, to be sure ! I saw in a 
 moment Jack had interpreted my whole frame of 
 mind correctly and wonderfully. 
 
 '* Well, I went back to Babbicombe," Jack con- 
 tinued, •' and, lest my heart should break for want 
 of human sympathy, I confided every word of my 
 terrible story to Elsie. Elsie can trust me ; and 
 Elsie believed me. Gradually, as you began to 
 recover, I realised the soundness of your doctor's 
 idea that you should be allowed to come back to 
 yourself by re-education from the very beginning, 
 without any too early intrusion of reminiscences 
 from your previous life to confuse and disturb you. 
 But I couldn't go on with my profession, all the 
 same, while I waited. I couldn't attend as I ought 
 to my patients' wants and ailments : I was too 
 concentrated upon you : the strain was too great 
 
262 • RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 Upon me. So I threw up my practice, came out 
 to Canada, bought a bit of land, and began farming 
 here, and seeing a few patients now and again 
 locally, just to fill up my time with. I felt con- 
 fident in the end you would recover and remember 
 me. I felt confident you would come to yourself 
 and marry me. But still, it was very long work 
 waiting. Every month, Elsie got news indirectly 
 from Minnie Moore or someone of your state of 
 health ; and I intended to go back and try to see 
 you as soon as ever you were in a condition to bear 
 the shock of re-living your previous life again. 
 
 '♦ Unfortunately, however, the police got hold of 
 you before I could carry my plan into execution. 
 As soon as I heard that, I made up my mind at 
 once to go home by the first mail and break it all 
 gently to you. So Elsie and I started for Quebec, 
 meaning to sail by the Dominion steamer for 
 England. But at the hotel at Quebec we saw the 
 telegrams announcing that you were then on your 
 way out to Canada. Well, of course we didn't 
 feel sure whether you came as a friend or an 
 enemy. We were certain it was to seek me out 
 you were coming to America ; but whether you 
 remembered me still and still loved me, or whether 
 you'd found out some stray clue to the missing 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 263 
 
 man, and were anxious to hunt me down as your 
 father's murderer, we hadn't the sHghtest concep- 
 tion. So under those circumstajices, we thought 
 it best not to meet you ourselves at the steamer, or 
 to reveal our identity too soon, for fear of a 
 catastrophe. I knew it would be better to wait 
 and watch — to gain your confidence, if possible — 
 in any case, to find out how you were affected on 
 first seeing us and talking with us. 
 
 " Well then, as the time came on for the Savmatian 
 to arrive, it began to strike me by degrees that all 
 Quebec was agog with curiosity to see you. I 
 dared not go down to meet you at the quay myself; 
 but the Chief Constable of Quebec, Major Tascherel, 
 was an old friend and fellow-officer, of my father's ; 
 and when I explained to him my fears that you 
 might be mobbed by sightseers on your arrival at 
 the harbour, and told him how afraid I was of the 
 shock it might give you to meet an old friend un- 
 expectedly at the steamer's side, he very kindly 
 consented to go down and see you safe through 
 the Custom House. It was so lucky I knew him. 
 If it hadn't been for that, you might have been 
 horribly inconvenienced. 
 
 "As you may imagine, when we first saw you 
 get into the Pullman car, both Elsie and I felt our 
 
264 RECALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 hearts come up into our months with suspense and 
 anxiety. We'd arranged it all so on purpose, for 
 we felt sure you were on your way to Palmyra to 
 find us : but when it came to the actual crisis, we 
 wondered most nervously what effect the sight of 
 us might have upon your system. But in a 
 moment, I saw you didn't remember us at all, or 
 only vaguely attached to us some faint sense of 
 friendliness. That was well, because it enabled us 
 to gain your confidence easily. As we spoke with 
 you, the sense of friendly interest deepened. I 
 knew that, all unconsciously to yourself, you loved 
 me still, and that in a very short time, if only I 
 could see you and be with you, I might bring all 
 back to you." 
 
 Jack paused and looked at me. As he paused, 
 I felt my old self revive again more completely 
 than ever with a rush. 
 
 '• Oh, Jack," I cried, " so you have done ; so you 
 have brought all back to me ! My Second State 's 
 over : I 'm the same girl you used to know at 
 Torquay once more. I remember everything — 
 everything — such a world — such a lifetime ! I 
 feel as if my head would burst with all the things 
 I remember. I don't know what to do with it. 
 I'm so tired, so weary." 
 
RECALLED TO LIFE. 265 
 
 " Lay it here," Jack said simply. 
 
 And I laid it on his shoulder, just as I used to 
 do years ago, and cried so long in silence, and was 
 ever so much comforted. For I've admitted all 
 along that I 'm only a woman. 
 
 There we sat, hand in hand, for many minutes 
 more, saying never another word, but sympathising 
 silently, till Elsie returned from Palmyra. 
 
 When she burst into the room, she called out 
 lightly as she entered : 
 
 " Well, I've got you 3^our lemon, Una, and I do 
 
 hope " Then she broke short suddenly. •* Oh, 
 
 Jack," she cried, faltering, and half guessing the 
 truth, " what's the meaning of this ? Why, Una's 
 been crying. You bad boy, you've been frightening 
 her. I oughtn't to have left her ten minutes alone 
 with you !" 
 
 Jack rose and held up his hand in warning. 
 
 " Don't talk to her at present, Elsie," he said. 
 ** You needn't be afraid. Una's found out every- 
 thing. She remembers all now. And she knows 
 how everything happened. And she's borne it so 
 bravely, without any more shock to her health and 
 strength than was absolutely inevitable. — Let her 
 sleep if she can. It '11 do her so much good. — But, 
 Elsie, there's one thing I want to say to you both 
 
266 RF.CALLED TO LIFE. 
 
 before I hand her over to you. After all that 's 
 happened, I don't think Una '11 want to hear that 
 hateful name of Callingham any more. It never 
 was really hers, and it never shall be. We'll let 
 bygones be bygones in every other respect, and 
 not rake up any details of that hateful story. But 
 she's been Una to us always, and she shall be Una 
 still. It 's a very good name for her: for there's 
 only one of her. But next week, I propose, she 
 shall be Una Ivor." 
 
 I threw myself on his neck, and cried again like 
 a child. 
 
 "I accept. Jack," I said, sobbing. "Let it be 
 Ivor, if you will. Next week, then, I '11 be your 
 wife at last, my darling ! " 
 
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 "Mr. Anstey is always welcome; some think him 'our only humorist.' Mr. 
 Anstky's talent combines very minute observation, with a taste for the farcically 
 extravagant. His motive is odd in such a kindly and friendly genius, for he always 
 likes to show us a harmless fellow struggling with the direst series of perplexing 
 circumstances. . . . It is easy to imagine what fun Mr. Ansti y gets out of all 
 this, and how ruthlessly he lodges his hero in trouble, while a dilennna is for ever 
 'sounding her dread orns ' at his doors. It is needless to explain how all ends; 
 the reader should not be deprived of the pleasure of his ' bob s vorth,' as Mr. Pick- 
 wick's cabman says." — Daily Nei>js. 
 
 "Only a person who had determined to find faults could discover any in this 
 little volume." — The Glasgow Herald, 
 
 Broad cap, Svo, 14^ pp., cloth, 3/6. 
 
 PRINCE PRIGIO 
 
 AN ORIGINAL FAIRY TALE. 
 
 By ANDREW LANG, 
 
 Author o/"The Mark of Cain," "The Gold op Fairnilee," &c. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE and 26 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 By GORDON BROWNE. 
 
 Large paper edition, price One Guinea, on Iiand-made paper. One liundred 
 copies printed. Twelve only left. 
 
 " A pleasant and humorous web of fantasy." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The whole book has the quaint charm with which Mr. Lang invests all tliat 
 comes from his pen." — The World. 
 
 "A clever and amusing story." — Spectator. 
 
 "This is a dainty little book."— Prt// Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Much food for amusement, as well as an eloquen denunication of cleverness 
 and priggery," — Scots Observer. 
 
 Ihbitol: J. W. AniiowsMiTii, 11 Quay Stri'ct. 
 London-: Si.Ml'KiN, Maiwhai.l, Ha.MILTON, Kent & Co. Liinltod. 
 
Crown Soo, 350 pp. y cloth, 3/6. 
 
 Three Men in a Boat. 
 
 (TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG.) 
 
 By JEROME K. JEROME, 
 
 Author of "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow," "STActELAND," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. FREDERICS. 
 
 " It would be dangerous to read this book in any place — say a full railway 
 compartment — where the reader was not at perfect liberty to laugh as loudly 
 and as long as he choose." — Glasgott) Herald. 
 
 " It is impossible to read any single chapter in the book without ndulging in 
 the heartiest laughter, so quaint are the turns of thought and the manner of 
 expression. . . . Mr. Jerome has been lucky to secure the help of Mr. A. 
 Frederics as illustrator of hii thrice delightful volume, and it is embellished with 
 the most artistic illustrations, which add considerably to the charm of reading." 
 — Whitehall Review. 
 
 " His book is one to buy, read, and laugh at quand vteme." — Land and Water. 
 
 . Croion 8vo, cloth, SSS pp., 3/6. 
 
 The End of a Life. 
 
 By EDEN PHILLPOTTS. 
 
 "This is a work of great interest and power. Readers who like a powerfully- 
 written tale will find their wishes realised in The End of a Life." — Preston Herald. 
 
 " Lovers of sensational fiction will find this book sufficiently exciting for the 
 most jaded palate. ' — The Gentlewoman. 
 
 *' The plot is original, the characters are distinctly pictured and ably grouped, 
 the dialogue is excellent, and there are not a few striking sayings. The End of a 
 Life is well written, well considered, and well planned. The two sisters, Mary 
 anil Rose, are delightful studies of pure and truthful womanhood." — The 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 Bristol: J. W. Auuowsmitu, 11 Quay Street. 
 
 London: St.Ml'KlN, MAKSHA1.L, IIA.MILTU.V, KKNT & CO. Llllllteil. 
 
Crown 4to. Cloth 5/- ^ , 
 
 FAIRY TALE BY ANDREW LANG 
 
 The Gold of Fairnilee. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE by T. SCOTT, and FOURTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 (in colours) by E. A. LEMANN. 
 
 "A Fairy Tale by a Master of the Craft." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The tale is written with admirable simplicity and charm." — Scotsman. 
 
 Croion Svo, parchment back, paper fiides, 3/6. 
 
 A Life's Idylls, and other Poems. 
 
 By Hugh Conway. 
 
 Author of "Called Back," "Dark Days," &c., &c. 
 
 " Marked by a freshness of inspiration which is in itself a rare and welcome 
 merit."— Morniiifi; rest. 
 
 Croxon Svo, 203 pp., doth, S/6. ( Puhlkhed at 5/: J 
 Soap. A Romance. 
 
 By CoNSTANCK MacEwen (Mrs. A. C. Dicker), 
 
 Author of "Miss Beaucham," "A Philistine," &c. 
 
 "Decidedly both clever and amusing." — Literary Worlil. 
 "Teems with original thought and purity of style." — John Bull. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 2/6. 
 
 TwycroSS's Redemption. By Alfred St. Johnston. 
 
 Author of "Camping among Cannibals," 
 "In Quest of Gold," &c., &c. 
 
 Eight Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 
 
 "Rightly calls itself a story of wild adventure." — Athenceum. 
 
 "There are few Christmas books that equal it in interest." — London Figaro. 
 
 Fcap. folio. Price 5/-, published at 10/6. 
 
 Pen and Pencil Notes on the Riviera and 
 
 North Italy. By Mary D. Totuill. 
 
 Forty-seven full-page Pen and Ink Sketches. 
 
 "There is a freshness and directness about the whole book which is very 
 charming, and many of the illustrations show genuine artistic power." — Fiargo. 
 
 Crown Svo, 1/6. Cloth, S/6. 
 
 Lawn-Tennis : its Rise and Progress. 
 
 Including Biographical Sketch and Portrait of Ernest Renshaw, W. Renshaw, 
 H. F. Lawford, W. J. Hamilton, E. W. Lewis, E. de S. H. Browne, H. Grove, 
 C. Lacy Sweet, Miss L. Dod. And a Treatise on the Game. 
 
 By W. METHVEN BROWNLEE. 
 Author of "TnE Biography of W. G. Grace." 
 
 Admitted by all the Champion Players to be the best work on the game that 
 
 has yet appeared. 
 
 Bristol: J. W. Aukowsmitii, 11 Quay Streot. 
 London: SiMi'KiN, Mahsiiall, Hamilton, Kknt & Co. Limited. 
 
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