THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 CTTUL^ 
 
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 a.eoY> Vrv. 
 
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 A SECRET OF THE SEA
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA. By BRANDER MAT- 
 THEWS, i vol. 12010 $i 
 
 THE LAST MEETING. By BRANDER MAT- 
 THEWS, i vol. i2mo i 
 
 IN PARTNERSHIP. Studies in Story-Tell- 
 ing. By BRANDER MATTHEWS and H. C. BUN- 
 
 NER. i vol. 121110. Paper 
 
 Cloth i 
 
 THE THEATRES OF PARIS. By BRANDER 
 MATTHEWS, i vol. i2mo i 
 
 FRENCH DRAMATISTS OF THE NINE- 
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 THEWS, i vol. crown 8vo a 
 
 POEMS OF AMERICAN PATRIOTISM. 
 
 Chosen by BRANDER MATTHEWS, i vol. i2mo . i 
 
 SHERIDAN'S COMEDIES. Edited, with a Bi- 
 ographical Sketch of Sheridan, by BRANDER MAT- 
 THEWS, i vol. square 8vo 3
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 BY 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1886
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
 
 ?s 
 
 2572 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 / have been a great Traveller in Fairy-land myself 
 
 STKELH'S Tender Husband, Act i. Scene L 
 
 166913?
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA i 
 
 I. PIRACY ON THE HIGH SEAS .... 3 
 II. A STERN CHASE . . . . .20 
 III. TAKING SOUNDINGS 34 
 
 iv. IN THE PIRATE'S LAIR 50 
 
 'LovE AT FIRST SIGHT' 65 
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 93 
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 127 
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 165 
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL . . . . . . . . 197
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 PIRACY ON THE HIGH SEAS. 
 
 TIME was when the R.M.S. ' Patagonia ' was the 
 greyhound of the Atlantic ; but that time was 
 long past. Newer and larger boats, burning less 
 coal and making more knots, had been built nearly 
 every year since the ' Patagonia ' had beaten the 
 record by crossing the ocean in less than eight 
 days from Browhead Castle to Fire Island Light. 
 Now not only were there other deer-hounds of the 
 deep two days faster than the ' Patagonia ' had ever 
 been, but the ' Patagonia ' herself, like the man who 
 went around the world, had lost a day. Although 
 the ' Patagonia ' had changed owners, and was now 
 no longer a royal mail steam-ship, it had not yet 
 fallen to the low estate of the sea-tramp, a home- 
 less wanderer over the face of the waters, bearing 
 hides from Buenos Ayres on one trip, and on the 
 next carrying coals from Newcastle. She still 
 belonged to a line in good repute, and she still 
 made her regular round trip every five weeks from 
 Liverpool to New York.
 
 4 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 Thus it was that the New York newspapers 
 had to announce one Sunday morning, after the 
 New England spring ' had set in with its usual 
 severity,' that the ' Patagonia' had sailed from Liver- 
 pool the day before, having on board eighty-seven 
 first-cabin passengers and two hundred and eleven 
 in the steerage, and bringing also ioo,ooo/. in 
 gold. In due course the ( Patagonia ' ought to have 
 arrived at Sandy Hook about ten days after she 
 left the Mersey. Except when detained by stress 
 of weather, the ' Patagonia ' was wont to arrive off 
 Quarantine not later than Tuesday afternoon. But 
 on this occasion Tuesday night came, and Wed- 
 nesday night, and yet the ' Patagonia ' came not. It 
 happened that the R.M.S. ' Barataria,' which was 
 then devoting its energies to the lowering of the 
 record, had left Liverpool an hour later than the 
 ' Patagonia,' had waited for the mails at Queenstown, 
 as the ' Patagonia ' had not, and yet had landed its 
 passengers on Sunday morning. Nor did the 
 officers of the ' Barataria ' report any storms which 
 would justify the tardiness of the ' Patagonia.' It 
 was known, however, that the missing ship was 
 perfectly sea-worthy, and, indeed, in excellent con- 
 dition, and her captain was a thorough sailor. So 
 many little mishaps may occur to delay an ocean 
 steamer the bearings may get themselves over- 
 heated, or it may be necessary to stop the engines 
 in mid-ocean to repack the steam-chest that no 
 anxiety was felt by the public. 
 
 Just then, indeed, the public had no attention
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 5 
 
 to spare for so slight a matter as a day's delay of 
 an ocean steamer, when the foundering of a Govern- 
 ment despatch-boat nearly a fortnight before had 
 been followed by the fraudulent failure of a specu- 
 lative banking house, bringing down in its wake a 
 score of smaller concerns, including an insurance 
 company and a savings bank. Day after day Wall 
 Street trembled with the recurring shocks of failure. 
 The market, which before the fall of the specula- 
 tive banking-house had been firm and active, 
 became feverish and weak ; stocks began to fall 
 off three and four points at a drop ; the boom of 
 Saturday gave place to a blizzard by Thursday. 
 While the Street was excited over the sudden col- 
 lapse of the great corner in Transcontinental Tele- 
 graph, the city had no time or emotion to spare on 
 the overdue ' Patagonia.' 
 
 When at last the ' Patagonia ' did arrive, she 
 brought news of a sensation more startling than the 
 foundering of a United States despatch-boat or the 
 fraudulent failure of a firm of speculative bankers. 
 It was noon when the ' Patagonia ' was sighted off 
 Fire Island Light, and it was late in the afternoon 
 before she reached her dock. Yet news flies fast, 
 and the latest editions of the evening papers ap- 
 peared with flaming head-lines over a few brief but 
 double-leaded paragraphs, declaring that the most 
 extraordinary rumours were in circulation through- 
 out the lower part of the city to the effect that the 
 ' Patagonia,' which had just arrived in dock, had 
 been stopped off the Banks of Newfoundland by a
 
 6 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 pirate. The officers of the ' Patagonia ' were reticent 
 At the office of the owners of the line the clerks 
 did not deny the report, but refused to give any 
 information. All efforts to discover the where- 
 abouts of the captain of the ' Patagonia ' had been 
 unsuccessful hitherto, and the reporters had been 
 obliged to forego the pleasure of conducting that 
 illegal mingling of the cross-examination and of 
 the examination-in-chief known as an interview. 
 
 A little before eight that evening the streets 
 were sprinkled with vociferant boys who rushed 
 about violently proclaiming an ' extra ' with shrill 
 but not altogether articulate annunciation of its 
 contents. Those who were beguiled into the pur- 
 chasing of this catchpenny read a circumstantial 
 account, of the attack on the 'Patagonia' by a 
 Chinese dhow. The ingenious writer gave a thril- 
 ling account of the sea-fight an account which 
 seemed somehow familiar to those who had once 
 read ' Hard Cash.' He gave precise details as to 
 the crew and armament of the pirate. He set 
 forth succinctly the piteous appeals of the purser as 
 the heathen Chinee removed the ioo,ooo/. specie 
 from the strong-room of the ' Patagonia ' to their 
 own light little skiffs. He was very dramatic in 
 his description of the death of the captain of the 
 ' Patagonia,' who, so he declared, had been forced 
 to walk the plank a deadly form of pedestrian 
 exercise much in favour among pirates, as every- 
 body knew. This imaginative effort appeared in 
 the ' Comet,' a new evening journal, conducted by
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 7 
 
 Mr. Martin Terwilliger, who was formerly the 
 editor of the New Centreville (California) ' Gazette- 
 Standard,' and who was now trying to introduce 
 into Eastern journalism the push and the go he 
 had found successful in the West. 
 
 The account of the strange adventure which 
 had befallen the ' Patagonia ' printed in the New 
 York papers of Friday morning was more sober 
 than the highly spiced story in Mr. Terwilliger's 
 extra, and the details given were ampler and more 
 exact. It seems that the ' Patagonia ' had had an 
 uneventful trip, and on Saturday afternoon the 
 passengers were looking forward to their arrival 
 early in the week. Among the passengers were 
 many notabilities Judge Gillespie, Mr. Cable J. 
 Dexter, the great Chicago grain operator, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Eliphalet Duncan, Miss Daisy Fostelle, and 
 her enterprising manager, Mr. Z. Kilburn. On 
 Saturday afternoon, when the ' Patagonia ' was in 
 latitude 45 32' and longitude 50 28' a steamer 
 hove in sight off the port bow. It was a long, 
 low, rakish craft, all black. It had evidently been 
 waiting for the ' Patagonia,' for as soon as it had had 
 time to make sure of the ' Patagonia's ' identity, it ran 
 across her course, fired a shot across her bows, and 
 ran up the signal Q. H., which means ' Stop ; I have 
 something to communicate.' The firing of this shot 
 by the strange ship caused the most intense excite- 
 ment and alarm on board of the ' Patagonia,' which 
 was not allayed when the meaning of the signal 
 was made known. While the officers of the ' Pata-
 
 8 A SECRET OF THE^ SEA 
 
 gonia' were in consultation, the stranger fired a 
 second shot across her bows, and ran up a second 
 signal, P. F. ' I want a boat immediately.' The 
 firing of this second shot increased the anxiety 
 and doubt on board the 'Patagonia.' The excited 
 passengers besought the officers to explain what 
 this meant. Experienced passengers, accustomed 
 to cross the ocean twice a year, declared that the 
 firing of a shot was a thing absolutely unheard of 
 except in time of war. There was an immediate 
 discussion as to whether war could have broken 
 out since the ' Patagonia ' left Liverpool. An Irish 
 gentleman on board declared that these were the 
 first shots fired by the new dynamite cruiser of the 
 new navy of the new Irish Republic. While the 
 passengers were thus seeking the truth, the captain 
 of the ' Patagonia ' had ordered her engines slowed 
 down. By this time the strange ship was barely a 
 mile from them, and it was then easy to see many 
 suspicious circumstances. For one thing, not a 
 single member of the crew was visible. To those 
 with any knowledge it was plain at once that the 
 stranger was heavily armed, and that the single 
 huge gun it carried amidships, easily to be seen 
 from the deck of the ' Patagonia,' had range and 
 weight enough to sink the ' Patagonia ' by a single 
 shot. The extreme speed of the stranger was also 
 apparent, as it had turned, and without difficulty it 
 was keeping ahead of the ' Patagonia,' and at the 
 same distance from her. A deputation of the pas- 
 sengers immediately waited on the captain to beg
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 9 
 
 him to send a boat at once, before the stranger 
 fired a third time. The captain had already given 
 orders to stop the engines and to lower a boat. 
 The third officer took his seat in this boat, and the 
 men pulled out straight for the stranger. A move- 
 ment was at once visible on board the armed 
 steamer ; the signal flags were taken in, and a boat 
 was launched on the port side, out of sight from 
 the ' Patagonia.' This boat proved to be a gig, for 
 it shot around the bow of the stranger, and met 
 the cutter from the ' Patagonia ' about a quarter of 
 a mile away. A communication was passed from 
 one boat to the other, and each pulled for its own 
 ship. On reaching the ' Patagonia,' the third officer 
 went at once to the captain's room. He bore a 
 sealed envelope addressed to the captain. This 
 address, like the letter within, was written, or 
 rather printed, on a type-writer. The letter was as 
 follows : 
 
 S. S. 'Dare-Devil,' 
 
 Off the Banks, 
 April ist, 1882. 
 Captain Riding, 
 
 S. S. 'Patagonia,' 
 Sir: 
 
 You have on board in specie 
 100, ooo /. I will accept this as the 
 ransom of your ship. Send it to me, 
 20, ooo/. atatime, on five tripsof your 
 cutter. If I do not receive the first 
 instalment within fifteen minutes
 
 ro A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 after you read this, I shall sink you 
 with a shot from my long gun. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Lafitte, 
 Commanding Free Cruiser 
 
 'Dare-Devil.' 
 
 As the captain finished reading this peremptory 
 letter there was a sudden commotion on deck, and 
 one of the junior officers rushed in to report that 
 the stranger had raised the Black Flag. The cap- 
 tain stepped on deck, and with his glass easily 
 made out the white skull and cross-bones which 
 adorned the black flag flying from the peak of the 
 ' Dare-Devil.' A thrill of horror ran through the 
 excited passengers. Mr. Kilburn headed a depu- 
 tation which begged the captain to surrender any- 
 thing and everything for the sake of saving the 
 lives and liberties of the passengers. Mr. Cable 
 J. Dexter, who had previously taken the affair as a 
 huge joke, read the letter from the ' Dare-Devil,' and 
 asked the captain if a single shot would really sink 
 the ' Patagonia.' The captain answered that a single 
 shot in the compartment amidships might sink 
 the ship, and that two or three shots would do it 
 unfailingly. 'Then,' said Mr. Dexter, 'you had 
 better hand over the gold. I have an engagement 
 in Chicago on Saturday morning, and I shall be 
 late for it if I have to swim ashore from here.' 
 Although Mr. Dexter seemed cool enough to jest, 
 most of the passengers were in a state of intense
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA il 
 
 excitement, and this was much increased by the 
 announcement that the long gun on the upper deck 
 of the ' Dare-Devil ' had just been loaded, and was 
 now trained on the ' Patagonia.' 
 
 By this time ten minutes had elapsed since the 
 boat had returned, and suddenly a third shot from 
 the 'Dare-Devil' ploughed the water just ahead of 
 the ' Patagonia', and a third signal was run up, J. D. 
 'You are standing into danger.' Then the* cap- 
 tain yielded. The purser had already opened the 
 strong room, and the tightly sealed, iron-strapped, 
 hard-wood boxes of specie were at once carried on 
 deck. Each box held 5,ooo/., and weighed about 
 a hundred pounds. Four of them were carefully 
 placed in the bottom of the cutter. Fortunately 
 there was only a light breeze, and there was no 
 sea on at all, only the long swell always to be ex- 
 pected off the Banks. The boat pulled for the 
 ' Dare-Devil,' and, as before, the gig came around 
 the bow. The transfer of the precious boxes was 
 made as quickly and as carefully as possible. 
 When the cutter returned for its second load, the 
 officer reported that the three men in the gig were 
 all masked, but that he took them for Orientals of 
 some sort, as their hands and wrists were dark. 
 Five times the cutter carried away four boxes, con- 
 taining each 5,ooo/., and five times the gig came 
 out to receive the ransom. Before the fifth trip 
 was completed night was falling. When the third 
 officer reached the deck after the delivery of trie 
 final instalment of the ioo,ooo/., he took two
 
 12 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 \ 
 
 sealed communications to the captain. Both voere 
 printed on a type-writer. One was a receipt for 
 the gold, signed ' Lafitte.' The other was an order 
 to the captain of the ' Patagonia ' to turn on her 
 course and to sail back toward Ireland until mid- 
 night, when she might turn and proceed again to 
 New York. Until night made it impossible to see 
 clearly, the passengers of the ' Patagonia ' watched 
 the ' Dare-Devil ' steaming in their wake. At mid- 
 night precisely, Captain Riding changed his course 
 and headed for New York, arriving without further 
 adventure. 
 
 This was, in substance, the story which held 
 the place of honour in eveiy New York newspaper 
 the morning after the arrival of the ' Patagonia.' 
 And this direct statement was supplemented by 
 numberless interviews. In the hands of men en- 
 tirely great, the interview is mightier than the 
 sword, and no more to be avoided than the pesti- 
 lence which walketh in darkness. No paper suc- 
 ceeded in getting anything out of any of the 
 officers, although one enterprising journal laid be- 
 fore its readers the obiter dicta of the chief steward. 
 Several reporters succeeded in capturing Mr. Cable 
 J. Dexter just as that great operator was checking 
 his trunks for Chicago. At one period in his 
 eventful career Mr. Dexter had himself been a 
 reporter, and he surrendered himself to the in- 
 quisitors without false shame. 
 
 ' I'm in a hurry, boys,' he said, ' and I really 
 haven't any pointers to give you. Of course we
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 13 
 
 couldn't expect good luck this trip ; we had four 
 clergymen aboard Holy Joes, the sailors call 'em. 
 That's enough to make a boat snap her shaft off 
 short. At first I thought maybe the actors and 
 actresses on board would be a set-off, but it didn't 
 work. The pirate just broke me. Oh no : he 
 didn't go through me like a road-agent, but it was 
 just as bad. I'd been sitting with mean cards all 
 the afternoon, and just as the pirate fired at us I 
 filled a full hand and it was a jackpot too but 
 when the pirate opened, the game closed. What's 
 worse, I had big money up on the run, and that 
 damned pirate spoiled that too. I wish he'd quit 
 the sea and buck against the market in breadstuffs 
 I'd make it hot for him ! ' 
 
 While certain of the passengers were wary and 
 fought shy of the reporters, none of the gentlemen 
 of the press found any difficulty in gaining ad- 
 mission to the presence of Miss Daisy Fostelle, 
 who had taken her usual spacious apartments at 
 the Apollo Hotel. When they sent up their cards 
 with a request for an interview, Mr. Kilburn, Miss 
 Fostelle's enterprising manager, descended to the 
 office to meet them, greeted them most affection- 
 ately, and introduced them at once with effusive 
 cordiality. 
 
 ' I'm so very glad to be back again in America,' 
 said Miss Daisy Fostelle, ' though perhaps I ought 
 not to say that, for I had such a success in England. 
 I played nearly six weeks at the Royal Frivolity 
 theatre, Of course at first they did not quite
 
 14 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 understand me my style was so original, they 
 said so American, you know and they did not 
 quite know what to make of it. But I soon 
 became a great favourite. They liked my play too ; 
 it's the one I am to appear in here next Monday. 
 It's called " A Pretty Girl." Oh, thank you ! It's 
 so nice of you to say so. I had an offer to play in 
 Paris at the Folies Fantastiques theatre that's the 
 best comedy theatre in Paris, you know and they 
 would have translated my play into French, but I 
 was in a hurry to get back to dear old New York. 
 Yes, the Prince of Wales was very kind indeed. 
 He came three times to see me. Oh dear, no- 
 I'm not going to be married why, I'm not even 
 engaged ! I don't see who could start such absurd 
 rumours. You know I am wedded to my art. No, 
 I didn't see the pirate at all, and I assure you I 
 should not care to play the leading part in the "The 
 Pirate's Bride." I should have hated to have been 
 robbed of my trunks, for I have brought such 
 lovely clothes. There is one dress made for the 
 Empress of Austria ; oh, it's beautiful ! I shall 
 wear "it on Monday night' 
 
 Two or three of the chiefs of the dynamite 
 faction of the Social Anarchists threw themselves 
 in the way of the inquiring reporters, but no de- 
 finite information could be extracted from them, 
 although they were full of vague hints and mys- 
 terious innuendoes, and let fall dark intimations 
 that they knew all about the matter. None of the 
 New York papers made any comment on their
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 15 
 
 doubtful sayings, but the interviews with them were 
 telegraphed to England, and called forth indignant 
 leaders from the London journals. 
 
 The editorials of the morning papers in New 
 York were devoted chiefly to a statement of the 
 strangeness of the robbery. Piracy on the high 
 seas in the nineteenth century, and within a few 
 hours' sail of the United States, seemed like an 
 anachronism. One paper, referring to the sinking 
 of the Government despatch-boat, and the fraudu- 
 lent bankruptcy, ' preceding a piracy as bold as 
 any in the records of the Spanish Main/ called 
 its able editorial 'A Carnival of Carelessness 
 and Crime.' It suggested the immediate forma- 
 tion of an International League for the Patrol 
 of the Ocean. This suggestion was accom- 
 panied by a map, and by a statistical table of 
 the water traffic between Great Britain and the 
 United States. Another paper had a special 
 despatch from Washington declaring that the 
 Secretary of the Navy would wait for further 
 details before sending out the available vessel of 
 the North Atlantic Squadron. A third paper 
 came out with a quadruple sheet devoted to cor- 
 poration advertising, and a series of brief bio- 
 graphies of the eminent pirates of the past, with 
 outline portraits of Captain Kidd, as he sailed, and 
 of Lafitte, the pirate of the Gulf. A stalwart 
 organ remarked that while pirates were at large, 
 ocean travelling could no longer be considered safe, 
 and added that no pirate would have dared to
 
 1 6 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 show his face if the spirited foreign policy of 
 Senator Doolittle had been followed up. This 
 allowed an Independent afternoon paper to retort 
 that as Senator Doolittle had sent a substitute to 
 the war, it might be doubted whether even a one- 
 armed pirate with the gout would be afraid to meet 
 him in single combat. 
 
 But the afternoon papers contained news of 
 more importance than this humorous expression 
 of Independent opinion. They contained the 
 astounding declaration that the ioo,ooo/ in specie 
 which the pirate had taken from the 'Patagonia' 
 had been returned, and was now in the possession 
 of the agents of the line. 
 
 In company with the captain, the chief officer, 
 and the third officer, the purser of the ' Patagonia ' 
 had gone early in the morning to the office of the 
 agents of the line in Bowling Green. Here each 
 of the officers told his story, which was taken down 
 by a stenographer. As the purser was about to 
 return to the dock, one of the clerks said, ' We 
 have received those cases for you.' 
 
 ' What cases ? ' asked the purser. 
 
 ' The cases from Halifax,' answered the clerk. 
 
 ' But I am not expecting any cases from 
 Halifax,' was the purser's hasty reply. 
 
 ' There are two cases here for you, anyhow,' 
 said the clerk. ' They are addressed to you, they 
 arrived this morning, and they are very heavy as 
 though they had machinery in them.' 
 
 The thought flashed into several minds at once
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA \; 
 
 that these cases might contain infernal machines 
 intended to destroy the office of the line, the 
 records of the company, and the chief witnesses 
 against the pirate. The police were notified, and 
 in their presence the cases were opened with the 
 greatest circumspection. The cases were found to 
 be almost empty, except in one corner of each case, 
 where there was a strong compartment With 
 redoubled care these compartments were forced 
 open. They contained the ioo,ooo/ in specie, in 
 the original tightly sealed, iron-strapped, hard-wood 
 boxes, as addressed in England to the American 
 consignees, whose initials and numbers they bore. 
 
 The police of Halifax were at once telegraphed 
 to ; but the only information they could give was 
 that the express charges had been paid by an un- 
 known woman, who had requested that the cases 
 be sent for. The police of New York now became 
 as mysterious as the delegates of the Dynamite 
 faction had been the day before. They consulted 
 together, and allowed it to be believed that they 
 had a clue. And there the matter rested. 
 
 The arrival of the next steamer was now 
 awaited anxiously, to see whether it had been 
 stopped also, or if it had at least seen any sign of 
 the pirate. Within forty-eight hours after the un- 
 expected and inexplicable recovery of the gold, 
 five ocean steamers came into port. They were 
 boarded in the lower bay by authorised reporters, 
 but neither officers nor passengers had any infor- 
 mation to give. They had not seen the pirate, nor 
 
 C
 
 1 8 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 heard of him. Nor has the ' Dare-Devil ' ever been 
 seen again as she appeared to the anxious eyes ot 
 the passengers on the ' Patagonia.' Nor have any 
 more orders, written on a type-writer and signed 
 by Lafitte, been served on any steamer laden with 
 specie. 
 
 The sudden restoration of the gold taken from 
 the ' Patagonia,' while it increased the peculiar 
 mystery of the affair, materially lessened the 
 interest of those whose duty it was to hunt down 
 the pirate. A search for the specie would have 
 been practical, but the discovery of a pirate mag- 
 nanimous enough to give up ioo,ooo/. had only a 
 speculative interest. At best it was little more 
 than the solving of a riddle Who was the pirate ? 
 It was but the answering of a conundrum Why 
 had he taken the money if he meant to return 
 it ? Men in the thick of business have no time to 
 waste in guessing enigmas. Viewed as a whole, 
 the robbery of the ' Patagonia,' only to return the 
 gold, appeared purposeless. It assumed almost the 
 form of a practical joke. To some it seemed even 
 like a freak of insanity. Many vain efforts were 
 made to penetrate the mystery, to guess at the 
 pirate, and to impute a motive for his rash and 
 reckless act ; but in a few days the interest of the 
 public began to wane, and just then it was suddenly 
 diverted to another sensation, of more direct and 
 personal importance to every inhabitant of the 
 Eastern coast. A series of sharp shocks was felt 
 by everybody on three distinct occasions. An
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 19 
 
 earthquake was a novel experience to most New- 
 Yorkers, and the reporters turned their attention 
 at once to picturesque descriptions of effects of the 
 visitation, and to interviews with those who had 
 dwelt long in volcanic lands. So it came to pass 
 that people soon ceased to puzzle themselves 
 further about the secret of the sea.
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 II. 
 
 A STERN CHASE. 
 
 THERE was one person, however, who did not 
 allow his attention to be diverted from the strange 
 adventure of the 'Patagonia' by any gossip about 
 an earthquake. This person was Mr. Robert 
 White. He was a good-looking and keen-witted 
 young American of thirty, with straight features 
 and curly hair. The son of a clergyman established 
 over an Episcopalian church in an. inland city, he 
 had been graduated at a fresh-water college ; but 
 he had always had a thirst for salt-water, and when 
 he came to New York to the Law School of Co- 
 lumbia College, he took to the water with joy. He 
 rowed in the Law School boat at the college 
 regatta on the Harlem in the spring. He did his 
 duty all summer on the yacht of a friend who was 
 fond of sailing Corinthian races. He learned 
 navigation, and at the school he even gave special 
 study to maritime law. Just as he was admitted 
 to the bar, his father died, leaving his little pro- 
 perty unfortunately involved. Robert White saw 
 at once not only that he could no longer hope for 
 the assistance he would need while he was working
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 21 
 
 and waiting at the bar, but also that he must bear 
 part, at least, of the burden of supporting his mother 
 and his sister. He did not hesitate. He had edited 
 one of the two warring college papers ; and after he 
 came to New York he had written a few letters for 
 the chief daily of his native town. His pen was 
 broken to service, and he went at once to the 
 editor of the ' Gotham Gazette,' whom he had met 
 on Joshua Hoffman's yacht, .and asked for work- 
 The editor told the city editor to do what he could 
 for him. The city editor sent him to interview one 
 of the most distinguished men of New England a 
 prize-fighter, then on his first visit to New York. 
 The next day his assignment sent him down to 
 Castle Garden to sift the sensational stories of a lot 
 of Russian emigrants. This was not congenial 
 work ; but within a few weeks there was a regatta, 
 and it fell to him to write it up. Here was his 
 chance. The next morning the 'Gotham Gazette' 
 contained the best account of a yacht race, the 
 most precise and the most picturesque, which had 
 been printed for many a month. It made a hit, 
 as even the work of the anonymous reporter may 
 do if it is done with heart and head. It assured 
 his position on the ' Gotham Gazette,' which sent 
 him to cruise with the yacht squadron, to report 
 the naval review at Newport before the President of 
 the United States, and to give a description of the 
 movements of the United States Fish Commission-. 
 To these letters his initials were attached. One of 
 them, a vigorous account of the showy experiments
 
 22 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 of a torpedo-boat, attracted the notice of a sharp- 
 eyed editor of one of the great magazines, and he 
 wrote, asking if Mr. Robert White would care to 
 contribute three or four articles on the New Eng- 
 land coast, to be called, ' All Along Shore,' and to 
 be illustrated in the highest style of American 
 wood-engraving. To this pleasant task Mr. Robert 
 White devoted the end of summer. When he re- 
 turned to town the editor of the ' Gotham Gazette ' 
 asked him if he would like ' to write brevier, or, in 
 other words, to join the editorial staff. At the 
 time when the ' Patagonia ' met the pirate Mr. 
 Robert White had been writing naval, legal, and 
 social editorials for several years ; his magazine 
 articles had appeared at last, they had been followed 
 by others, and they had been gathered into a hand- 
 some book, which had been well reviewed in the 
 leading English weeklies. A series of sketches of 
 American out-door sports, signed ' Poor Bob White,' 
 had been very successful. His income was not 
 large, but it was ample for his needs, since his 
 mother had died and his sister had married. His 
 position was assured as one of the cleverest and 
 most competent of the young men who drive the 
 double team, journalism and literature. He had 
 begun both to lay money by and to collect notes 
 for a real book, not a mere collection of magazine 
 papers : this was the ' Story of a Ship,' a history 
 of boats from the dug-out of the lake-dweller to 
 the latest device in submerged torpedo launches. 
 And he had done one thing more of greater im-
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 23 
 
 portance to himself than any of these he had 
 fallen in love. 
 
 When the meeting took place between the ' Pata- 
 gonia ' and the ' Dare-Devil,' Mr. Robert White 
 was at his native town settling his father's estate, 
 and he did not return to New York until after the 
 ' Patagonia ' had sailed again. He had read all the 
 newspaper accounts and interviews with great 
 interest. The first day after his return he went to 
 see Mr. Eliphalet Duncan, who had been his class- 
 mate at the law school. The offices of Duncan 
 and Sutton, attorneys and counsellors at law, were 
 in the Bowdoin Building, No. 76 Broadway, next 
 to those of Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer. As 
 White went upstairs he passed a small door on 
 which was painted ' Sargent and Co., Stock De- 
 liveries,' and his heart gave a sudden throb, for it 
 was Miss Dorothy Sargent, the daughter of the 
 great speculator, that he was in love with. 
 
 ' Why, Bob, how are you ? ' said Mr. Eliphalet 
 Duncan, as his friend took a seat beside him. ' I 
 haven't seen you since the last Judge-and-Jury 
 dinner.' 
 
 The Judge-and-Jury was a little club to which 
 both had belonged at the law school, and which 
 now survived only in an annual dinner. 
 
 ' I'm all right, 'Liph ; and you are too, judging 
 by your looks. A hasty run over to Scotland and 
 back seems to suit you. I saw you came back by 
 the " Patagonia," and that's why I've come in to- 
 day.'
 
 24 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 1 Your intention seems to be complimentary, 
 but your logic is incoherent,' remarked the lawyer. 
 
 White laughed, and answered : ' I will make 
 myself clear to the dullest comprehension.' 
 
 ' Of course,' interrupted his friend. 
 
 ' You know my fondness for solving problems. 
 I always delighted in algebra at school, and I 
 worked out the pons for myself. Now this un- 
 necessary taking and giving back of the gold on 
 the " Patagonia " strikes me as a puzzle as interest- 
 ing as a man can find in a week of Sundays.' 
 
 ' I doubt if you would have found it quite as 
 interesting if you had lost a day by it/ said Dun- 
 can, dryly. 
 
 'I expect to give more than one day to it,' 
 answered White. ' In fact, I want to stick to the 
 case until I puzzle out the secret.' 
 
 ' The detectives say they have a clue.' 
 
 'The reporter is the real detective nowadays, 
 and as he is wont to tell all he knows, and as he 
 has said nothing, there is, I take it, nothing known, 
 and that leaves everything to be found out.' 
 
 ' And you are going to try and to out every- 
 thing ? ' 
 
 ' And I am going to try to find out everything 
 with your help.' 
 
 ' For publication in the " Gotham Gazette " ? ' 
 asked the lawyer. 
 
 ' For my own satisfaction first,' answered the 
 journalist ' for the sheer enjoyment of getting at 
 a mystery ; but, of course, in the end, if I find I
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 25 
 
 have a story to tell, I shall tell it. And it seems 
 to me that it ought not to be very hard to track the 
 pirate to his lair.' 
 
 ' I doubt if I can give you much help, but of 
 course you are welcome to all I know.' 
 
 ' The court is with you,' said White. 
 
 ' I was in the main saloon, playing chess with 
 Judge Gillespie as well as I could, while a young 
 lady was at the piano singing " When the Sea gives 
 up its Dead." Just as the judge mated me, we 
 heard a shot. Going on deck, we saw the pirate, 
 barely a mile away. I wondered why the shot had 
 been fired, and it was not until I saw the black 
 flag that I was willing to believe that the strange 
 ship was a corsair. Why, I'd just as soon expected 
 to cruise in the " Flying Dutchman " as to see a 
 pirate except, of course, in Penzance.' 
 
 ' What was the pirate like ? ' 
 
 ' She was a schooner-rigged steamer of perhaps 
 three hundred tons burden, and she was a little 
 more than a hundred feet long. She had two 
 smoke-stacks, painted black with a red band. 
 She rode very high out of the water, as though her 
 bulwarks had been added to.' 
 
 ' From the newspaper reports I infer that she 
 was neither American nor English in build,' said 
 White. 
 
 ' There you are wrong, I think,' Duncan de- 
 clared. ' In spite of a lateen-sail and other details, 
 I am sure that the pirate was launched in American 
 waters.'
 
 26 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 * But what motive could induce an American 
 yachtsman to turn pirate, and then to give up the 
 proceeds of his crime ? ' asked White. ' Piracy on 
 the high seas is rather a violent practical joke.' 
 
 ' As to motives I can say nothing ; I give you 
 my opinion as to the facts only. In my belief the 
 pirate was built in America. What is more, I 
 doubt if she was as fast as the " Patagonia," and I 
 think that we could have run away with little risk.' 
 
 <\Vhy?' 
 
 ' Because we kept gaining on her as soon as we 
 took to our heels.' 
 
 ' But a single shot from the long gun amid- 
 ships would have sunk you.' 
 
 ' Of course,' said Eliphalet Duncan, offering a 
 cigar to his friend. ' I never heard of a Quaker 
 turning pirate, but I think that was a Quaker gun ! ' 
 
 'What!' shouted White, in intense surprise. 
 
 1 The gun fired across our bows was aimed 
 through a port on the main-deck forward. The 
 long gun was never fired at all, and I don't believe 
 it could be fired. I believe it was a dummy. And 
 that's what Judge Gillespie thinks too, and you 
 know he is a West-Pointer.' 
 
 'A Quaker gun on a pirate!' said White, 
 thoughtfully. ' Who ever heard of such a thing ? ' 
 
 ' Who ever heard of a pirate's writing his 
 messages on a type-writer ? ' asked Duncan. 
 
 ' The presence of a type-writer on board is 
 evidence is favour of your view that the piratical 
 craft belongs in our own waters. The pirate of the
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 27 
 
 old school might sign his own name with his own 
 blood, but he had no use for a type-writer.' 
 
 ' The making of a Quaker gun,' said Duncan, 
 ' and the use of a type- writer, both suggest Yankee 
 gumption. If you want to find the pirate, you 
 need not cross the ocean. I do not know where 
 the " Dare-Devil " went after leaving Halifax, but 
 I feel sure that the " Dare-Devil " hailed from an 
 American port.' 
 
 ' But I see one of the accounts mentions that 
 the crew of the gig which came out to receive the 
 gold were Orientals/ objected White. 
 
 ' That's true,' answered Duncan ; ' the third 
 officer told me that they were Lascars, all but the 
 man who sat in the stern-sheets.' 
 
 ' And what was he ? ' 
 
 'As well as the third officer could judge, he was 
 a white man, rather portly, with bright eyes, a 
 large nose, and a long black moustache. Apparently 
 this man's skin was stained, for he was as dark as 
 the Lascars, and he wore a false beard. In spite 
 of this disguise, he impressed the third officer as a 
 man of strong will and quick determination.' 
 
 ' Proper piratical qualities.' 
 
 ' Of course,' assented Duncan. 
 
 ' Do you think this man with the stained face, 
 the long moustache, and the false beard was the 
 pirate chief, the new Lafitte ? ' asked White. 
 
 ' That was my impression,' answered Duncaju 
 * It seems to me very probable that the head which
 
 28 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 had planned the robbery should personally see to 
 the delivery of the treasure.' 
 
 ' That brings up again the chief puzzle why 
 did he take the gold if he meant to give it up, and 
 why did he give it up after running the risk of 
 disgrace and death to get it? This is the main 
 question. It is more important to get an answer 
 to that than to identify the man or the ship, or 
 rather to find a motive of this apparently motive- 
 less act will be to have gone far toward the dis- 
 covery of the man himself.' 
 
 'As for motives,' said Duncan, 'there are a 
 plenty.' 
 
 ' Such as ? ' 
 
 ' I mean that there are possible explanations in 
 plenty of these proceedings. Perhaps the man was 
 mad : there is a simple explanation.' 
 
 ' A little too simple, I fear : marine kleptomania 
 is not an accepted plea as yet,' said White. 
 
 'A madman may have great cunning and per- 
 sistence,' urged Duncan. ' Or the man may have 
 been sane but fickle, and after the robbery he 
 quietly changed his mind.' 
 
 ' That is rather a strain on our credulity, isn't 
 it ? ' queried White. 
 
 ' It is improbable, but it may be the fact, for all 
 that. Then, again, perhaps the mate of the " Dare- 
 Devil " experienced a change of heart, and repented 
 of his piracies, and converted the rest of the crew, 
 and got them to mutiny, whereupon they made Mr.
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 29 
 
 Lafitte walk the plank, after which they returned 
 the gold, and then they scuttled the ship.' 
 
 White smiled, and said, ' I see Lascars giving 
 up gold and scuttling a ship.' 
 
 ' It would be a pity to think that so pretty a 
 yacht had been sent to the bottom.' 
 
 ' So you think the pirate was a yacht ? ' 
 
 Duncan hesitated a moment, and then an- 
 swered : ' What else could she be ? Plainly 
 enough she was not a Government gun-boat, and 
 as plainly she was not a boat built for freight or 
 passengers ; she had no hold for the one, and no 
 accommodation for the others. What could she be 
 but a pleasure-boat ? ' 
 
 ' But a yacht has not high bulwarks or two 
 smoke-stacks,' objected White. 
 
 ' Of course there had been an attempt to dis- 
 guise her. I think the bulwarks were part of the 
 disguise ; and perhaps the second smoke-stack was 
 too, although that had not struck me before.' 
 
 ' Then,' said White, ' in your opinion, the " Dare- 
 Devil " is an American steam-yacht of perhaps 
 three hundred tons, and about a hundred feet 
 long ? ' 
 
 ' It is unprofessional to give an opinion without 
 a retainer,' answered the lawyer, smiling, ' but you 
 have expressed my private views with precision 
 and point' 
 
 ' The witness may stand down,' said the jour- 
 nalist, rising. ' Having inserted the corkscrew of 
 interrogation, and extracted the pure wine of truth,
 
 30 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 I have no further use for you. Now I must tear 
 myself away.' 
 
 ' Come in and dine with us quietly one night 
 next week. Mrs. Duncan will be glad to see you.' 
 
 ' I'd like to do it, but I have no time. You see, 
 I have been away for a fortnight, and I'm in arrears 
 with my work.' 
 
 ' Make it Tuesday, and you will meet Miss 
 Sargent/ urged Duncan. 
 
 ' Tuesday ? ' said White, as his pulse quickened. 
 ' I think, perhaps, I could manage it on Tuesday.' 
 
 ' Then we shall expect you at half-past six. 
 There'll only be four of us. You know Miss 
 Sargent, I think.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, I know her,' answered White, as 
 lightly as he could. 
 
 ' A charming girl isn't she ? ' asked Duncan. 
 
 ' She is, indeed,' said White, with perhaps more 
 warmth than was absolutely necessary. 
 
 ' She is a great friend of my wife's,' said Duncan 
 and White envied Mrs. Duncan ' and she's 
 always at' our house' and then White envied 
 Duncan. To hear her name was a delight, and to 
 talk about her was a delicious torture. After a 
 moment's silence he said, 
 
 ' I see her father's office is just under you.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, Sam Sargent has his head-quarters 
 here. I don't know whether you like that man, 
 Bob, or not ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know him,' answered White, uneasily. 
 
 ' Well, I know him, and I detest him. When-
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 31 
 
 ever I see him and think of his daughter, then I 
 know his wife must have been an angel from heaven.' 
 
 'You are a little rough on him, 'Liph,' said 
 White, deprecatingly. 
 
 ' No, I am not. She has an air of breeding, 
 and she carries herself like a lady, but her father is 
 not a gentleman at least you know what I mean. 
 The man is coarse-grained, in spite of all his 
 smartness and brilliancy. You have only to look 
 in his face to see that. He took up the right trade 
 when he turned gambler.' 
 
 ' Gambler ? ' 
 
 ' Of course. Stock speculator, if you like that 
 term better. Speculating in stocks is not business ; 
 it is gambling. The money made in speculating is 
 not business earnings, whatever it may pretend to 
 be ; it is winnings, no more and no less. I don't 
 object to a game of poker now and then myself, 
 but when I win thirty or forty dollars I don't put 
 the sum down in my books as earnings. Now it is 
 men like Sam Sargent who have confused and 
 corrupted the public mind in regard to this thing. 
 They are gamblers, but they masquerade in the 
 honourable garb of business men. And he has the 
 impudence to want to go into politics.' 
 
 ' He is no worse than the rest,' ventured White 
 apologetically. 
 
 1 Of course,' retorted Duncan, promptly ; ' and 
 he's no better. And he'll come to grief, like the 
 rest of them. Only a few days ago he had a very 
 tight squeeze, so Mat Hitchcock tells me.'
 
 32 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 'How so?' 
 
 'He was caught in ttie Transcontinental Tele- 
 graph corner, and he would have lost all he had 
 left, and more too, if this brief panic had not come 
 to his rescue, and knocked the bottom out of the 
 market. It was this fraudulent bankruptcy and the 
 failures it caused which saved Sam Sargent.' 
 
 'You do not like him ?' said White, smiling. 
 
 ' But I like his daughter,' answered Duncan. 
 
 ' So do I,' replied White as cheerfully as he could. 
 
 ' Of course,' said Duncan ; ' and we shall expect 
 you on Tuesday.' 
 
 ' You may rely on me ; ' and White shook 
 hands with Eliphalet Duncan and withdrew. As 
 he reached the foot of the stairs, opposite to the 
 office of Sargent and Co. , the door opened, and a 
 customer came out, pausing on the threshold to 
 ask, ' When do you expect Mr. Sargent back ? ' 
 White could not help hearing the answer : ' He'll 
 be here in a week or two. You know he is at 
 Bermuda, on the " Rhadamanthus," with old Joshua 
 Hoffman.' White knew that Joshua Hoffman was 
 one of the most distinguished citizens of New 
 York a man who had made a fortune, which he 
 administered for the public good as though he was 
 not the owner, but only a trustee for the poor and 
 the struggling. 
 
 ' If Sam Sargent is off on a cruise with Joshua 
 Hoffman,' thought the young man who was in love 
 with Sam Sargent's daughter, ' why, he can't be 
 quite as black as 'Liph paints him.'
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 33 
 
 It was on Friday that Robert White had called 
 on Eliphalet Duncan, and he gave most of Satur- 
 day also to the pursuit of the pirate. He had a 
 long talk with Judge Gillespie, who confirmed all 
 that Duncan had said. The so-called ' Dare- Devil' 
 was probably an American steam-yacht of three 
 hundred tons or thereabouts. Now there were five 
 or six yachts on the American register which an- 
 swered fairly enough to the description of the ' Dare- 
 Devil,' after making due allowances for the efforts 
 to disguise her. But all of these except two 
 were easily accounted for, and must be unhesitat- 
 ingly ruled out, as they were not in commission. 
 Of the two American steam-yachts approximately 
 like the ' Dare-Devil,' one, the ' Pretty Polly,' be- 
 longed to a wealthy clergyman, and was then in the 
 Mediterranean, cruising along the Holy Land with 
 a full ship's company of missionaries ; the other 
 was at Bermuda it was the ' Rhadamanthus,' and 
 it belonged to the good Joshua Hoffman. 
 
 When, by a process of exhaustion, as the logi- 
 cians call it, Mr. Robert White had arrived at this 
 useless result, it was late on Saturday afternoon, 
 and he looked back along the week, and he felt 
 that it had been well-nigh wasted. He had not 
 made any progress toward the solution of the 
 problem of the piracy against the ' Patagonia,' and 
 be had not seen Miss Dorothy Sargent.
 
 34 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 III. 
 
 TAKING SOUNDINGS. 
 
 ROBERT WHITE had met Miss Dorothy Sargent 
 for the first time late in the preceding fall. Mrs. 
 Eliphalet Duncan, who was always getting up 
 something new, got up a riding party to go to- 
 gether to Yonkers for a light dinner, and to ride 
 back to the city by the light of the autumn moon. 
 As the merry cavalcade set forth Mrs. Duncan 
 introduced Mr. White to Miss Sargent, by whose 
 air of distinction, as she sat firmly on a high-spirited 
 bay mare, he had been attracted already. Her 
 manner, like her simple habit, which fitted her 
 slight figure to perfection, was quiet and unobtru- 
 sive ; and she had in abundance that indefinable 
 but unmistakable quality called style. Her light 
 golden hair was tied in a neat knot under her tall 
 hat, and a semicircle of veil half hid her face, al- 
 though a bright glance from her frank blue eyes 
 passed without difficulty through the filmy barrier 
 as Mrs. Duncan presented White to her. This 
 glance, the merry smile which occasioned it, the 
 ray of the afternoon sun as it made molten the 
 twisted gold of her hair, the gentle dignity of her
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 35 
 
 attitude these united in a picture which printed 
 itself indelibly in White's memory. 
 
 Before they had passed the reservoir in Central 
 Park White had discovered that Miss Sargent 
 rode well, like one with a strong natural gift of 
 horsemanship, well developed by an intelligent 
 master. As they cantered side by side through the 
 russet bowers and leaf-strewn lanes of the park, he 
 could not but notice how perfectly her exquisite 
 American grace seemed to harmonise with the soft 
 and delicate hues of the fading landscape, as the 
 glory of the American autumn was fast departing. 
 He marked how her colour rose with the Ama- 
 zonian enjoyment, with the honest delight of the 
 genuine horsewoman, and he wondered how she 
 came by her beauty. He was vaguely familiar 
 with the features of her father, one of the best- 
 known men about town, and he knew that Sam 
 Sargent was an operator in stocks and a fellow of 
 bluff joviality, hail-fellow-well-met with most men, 
 getting the utmost possible sensual enjoyment out 
 of life, and having no sympathy at all with plain 
 living and high thinking. 
 
 There was no lack of candidates for the place 
 by Miss Sargent's side as the little party rode 
 forth, or as it rode back again by the full light of a 
 glorious moon ; but White set his wits to work, 
 and managed to monopolise her company the 
 whole of the long blissful afternoon and the happy, 
 evening all too short. Before they reached the 
 park on their return he was on the verge of
 
 36 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 wishing that her lively mare would try to run away 
 or to throw her, or to do anything that would give 
 him a chance to show his devotion. When at last 
 he had helped her to dismount and had said good 
 night, he felt lifted out of himself, and as though 
 intoxicated by some mysterious but delicious elixir. 
 He was in love ; and the thought of his own un- 
 worthiness brought him back to earth, and kept 
 him awake a good part of the night. 
 
 As it began, so it went on all winter. White 
 discovered where she went to church, and he 
 walked home with her on Thanksgiving morning, 
 learning that her father rarely ventured within the 
 sacred edifice except when some famous pulpit 
 orator came to preach a charity sermon. On 
 Christmas Day he sat in a pew where he might 
 gaze his fill upon her, and his heart overflowed 
 with peace and good-will. Mrs. Duncan just 
 before she made her hurried trip to Europe asked 
 a little party to see the old year out and the new 
 year in, and as White kept as close as he could to 
 Dorothy the new year began for him with joy and 
 gladness. Mrs. Duncan's sister-in-law, Mrs. Sutton,' 
 kept Twelfth Night with due celebration of the 
 ancient rites of that honourable feast. Chance 
 crowned White king, and of course he chose 
 Dorothy for his queen. He noticed that her face 
 flushed with pleasure as he took her by the hand. 
 But before the evening was over he began to 
 wonder how he had displeased her, for of course 
 he could not think her capricious. When next
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 37 
 
 they met she was cold toward him, and he sus- 
 pected she had avoided him. On St. Valentine's 
 Day he mustered up courage and sent her a tall 
 screen of growing ivy, in the centre of which 
 clustered a bunch of uncut Jacqueminot roses in 
 the shape of a heart. For this she thanked him in 
 a clever little note, as distant as it was kindly. He 
 wondered whether she guessed that he loved her, 
 and sought to discourage him. 
 
 This was the state of affairs between them when 
 they sat opposite to each other at one of those ex- 
 quisite little dinners for four which Mrs. Duncan 
 was famous for. There was a dim, religious light 
 in the Duncans' dining-room befitting the mystic 
 rites of gastronomy. As White looked up and 
 caught Dorothy's eye he wondered whether the 
 faint flush which spread over cheek and throat in 
 such becoming fashion was really a blush, or 
 whether it was due only to the red silk shades on 
 the tall candles at the corners of the table. 
 
 ' I see the eye of the law upon me, Mr. White,' 
 she said, gaily. 'What will the verdict be ?' 
 
 ' You deserve to be drawn and quartered, Dora,' 
 interjected Mrs. Duncan, ' for keeping us waiting 
 seven minutes. Fortunately I knew your ways, 
 and allowed ten.' 
 
 ' Why is it you are always seven minutes late ? ' 
 asked Duncan. ' You have nothing to do.' 
 
 'Nothing to do? Well, I like that!' began 
 Dorothy. 
 
 ' Of course,' said Duncan, maliciously. ' I
 
 38 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 think I should like having nothing to do myself 
 for a little while.' 
 
 ' That's just like a man ! ' retorted the young 
 lady. ' I'm sure I've done more than you have. 
 I've been to cooking school, and I have had an 
 Italian lesson, and I've practised two hours, and 
 I've been shopping, and I've paid ten visits, besides 
 keeping house, which is work enough for one able- 
 bodied woman.' 
 
 ' Indeed it is,' interrupted Mrs. Duncan, whose 
 household was organised to run like clock-work, 
 and who never heard from it except when it 
 struck. 
 
 ' My father never scolds,' continued Miss Sar- 
 gent, ' but he depends on me to make him com- 
 fortable. I don't know what he'd do without 
 me.' 
 
 ' He has to do without you when you dine out,' 
 said Duncan slyly. 
 
 'Oh, then I send him off to the club and he 
 goes like a lamb ! Why, in the three weeks before 
 Lent he dined at home only once.' 
 
 ' Was he invited out ? ' asked Duncan. 
 
 ' No ; but I was,' she answered frankly. ' He 
 used to meet Mr. Thursby at the club, and they 
 dined together.' 
 
 ' Dick Thursby ? ' asked Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 ' Yes. My father's very fond of him he says 
 he's a man of a thousand.' 
 
 ' He's a man of a good many thousands, if 
 report can be believed,' said White, remembering
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 39 
 
 with a' sudden sinking of the heart that rumour re- 
 ported this Mr. Thursby as very devoted to Miss 
 Sargent. 
 
 ' His wife left him a lot of money,' said 
 Duncan. 
 
 ' And her mother has never forgiven him for 
 taking it/ added Mrs. Duncan. ' She abuses him 
 dreadfully.' 
 
 'No man is a hero to his mother-in-law,' said 
 White, lightly. He was afraid of Thursby, but he 
 was not willing to say anything against him. 
 
 ' That's not because he may not be a hero,' 
 suggested Dorothy, ' but rather because she is a 
 mother-in-law.' 
 
 ' I hear he is beginning to take notice again,' 
 remarked Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 ' He's been flirting outrageously with that 
 Hitchcock girl all winter,' said Dorothy. 
 
 ' Dear me,' said Mrs. Duncan, slyly, ' I thought 
 he had been very attentive to you.' 
 
 ' I never noticed that,' laughed Dorothy, as 
 White moved uneasily. 'The only things I did 
 notice about him were that he had a large mouth, 
 and that only very small talk fell from it.' 
 
 ' Then you are not setting your cap for him ? ' 
 said Duncan, inquisitively. 
 
 ' Do you think I am a young lady with all the 
 modern improvements ready to marry any goose if 
 he has golden eggs ? ' 
 
 ' 1 will not discuss the point with you,' said 
 Duncan. 'I never care to argue at dinner; the
 
 40 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 one who is not hungry always gets the best of 
 it.' 
 
 White breathed more freely when he heard her 
 treat his rival thus scornfully. 
 
 ' I did not think Mr. Thursby was an unintelli- 
 gent man/ said Mrs. Duncan ; ' he was in Con- 
 gress for a year or two.' 
 
 ' Why didn't he serve his full term ? ' asked 
 White, unable to resist the chance. 'Was he 
 pardoned out ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. White ' and Miss Dorothy's voice was 
 very mischievous ' when you speak slightingly of 
 Congress, perhaps you forget that my father has 
 political aspirations.' 
 
 ' I assure you I did not know it,' and poor 
 White blushed scarlet at his blunder. 
 
 ' Mr. Joshua Hoffman has been urging my 
 father to go to Congress for a long while.' 
 
 'Joshua Hoffman's help is worth having,' re- 
 marked Duncan, as he tasted his champagne, ' no 
 matter whether what you want is in this world or 
 the next.' 
 
 ' It is delightful to see how all classes respect 
 and honour Hoffman's goodness,' added White. 
 ' He's one of the few men who belong to the 
 Church and who do not act as though the Church 
 belonged to them.' 
 
 ' He's had a great fancy for my father,' said 
 Dorothy, 'ever since my father gave him Jean- 
 nette J.' 
 
 ' He ought to be grateful for one of the finest
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 41 
 
 and fastest horses on the track,' answered White, 
 ' although he never bets on her or lets her trot for 
 money.' 
 
 ' Isn't your father off with Joshua Hoffman 
 now ?' asked Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 ' Oh yes ! they are at Bermuda. They went 
 on the " Rhadamanthus." ' 
 
 White suddenly remembered that Joshua 
 Hoffman's yacht was the only ship he had been 
 able to find resembling the ' Dare-Devil.' 
 
 'At least my father went on her Mr. Hoffman 
 was delayed at the last moment, and had to wait 
 over for the regular steamer.' 
 
 ' Is he on the " Rhadamanthus " now ? ' queried 
 White. 
 
 ' Oh yes, he is there now. But my father had 
 to go down all alone. He didn't mind that, as the 
 sailing-master of the " Rhadamanthus" is a great 
 friend of his. He'd do anything for my father ; I 
 heard him say so once.' 
 
 ' Perhaps Mr. Sargent got him his berth ? ' sug- 
 gested White, strangely interested in the topic, as 
 he was in anything which might bear, however 
 remotely, on the mysterious pirate. 
 
 ' I believe he did,' replied Dorothy ; ' but 
 Captain Mills owed my father a great deal before 
 that. At least I think so. I suppose I might as 
 well tell the whole story. It's not much, either. 
 But one summer, several years ago, I had been, 
 asleep in a hammock on the piazza, and I waked 
 up just in time to hear Captain Mills say : " I owe
 
 42 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 you more than I can ever pay, Mr. Sargent. You 
 have done more than save my life. Talk is cheap, 
 but I hope some day I may be able to show you 
 that I do not forget." ' 
 
 ' And what did your father say to that ? ' asked 
 Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 ' Well, you know his jocular way. He said, 
 " That's all right, captain ; first time I want a man 
 stabbed in the back, Italian fashion, I'll let you 
 know." And Captain Mills took my father's hand 
 and said, very seriously, " You may joke, Mr. Sar- 
 gent, but I mean what I say, and, short of murder, 
 I don't believe there's anything I'd stick at to do 
 you a good turn." ' 
 
 ' It's lucky your father isn't a bold bad man,' 
 said Duncan, 'or he might get Captain Mills to 
 scuttle the ship, or to splice the main brace, or to 
 do any of the wicked things that sailor-men de- 
 light in.' 
 
 ' Don't you be too sure of my father,' Dorothy 
 answered, gaily. ' He often says that if he wasn't 
 on the Street he'd like to be a pirate ! ' 
 
 ' Indeed ! ' ejaculated White, earnestly. 
 
 * He has a whole library of books about pirates, 
 but he says that the best of them all is a brief 
 biography of Blackbeard, which he found his 
 office-boy reading.' 
 
 ' Of course he took it away from the office-boy, 
 and scolded him,' remarked Duncan, 'and then 
 went into his private office and devoured it 
 himself?'
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 43 
 
 'That's just what he did,' answered Dorothy, 
 ' and he says it is the most expensive book in his 
 library now, for while he was reading it the market 
 went up or down, or something, and he lost a 
 chance of making several thousand dollars.' 
 
 'Piracy is a losing business nowadays,' said 
 White. 
 
 ' Of course,' added Duncan, quickly. ' A brave 
 man can do better now-a-days in Wall Street than 
 on the Spanish Main.' 
 
 ' I have always heard Captain Mills well 
 spoken of,' remarked White. 
 
 ' Oh, he's a fine man ! ' said Dorothy, enthusias- 
 tically. ' And I am so glad he is in charge of the 
 " Rhadamanthus," now that Mr. Hoffman has a crew 
 of Lascars.' 
 
 ' Lascars ? ' said Duncan and White together, 
 looking at each other. 
 
 ' Yes ; he shipped them a few weeks ago, when 
 he was in the Mediterranean.' 
 
 1 Joshua Hoffman does have the oddest notions, 1 
 said Mrs. Duncan. 
 
 ' Of course,' remarked her husband ; ' he has 
 very queer kinks in him. But he is a good man 
 and an honourable man, and the whole country is 
 proud of him and of his work.' 
 
 The conversation thus directed to Joshua 
 Hoffman's characteristically American career was 
 enlivened by many anecdotes of his poverty in., 
 youth, of his shrewdness in business, of his simple 
 and straightforward integrity, and of his thoughtful
 
 44 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 and comprehensive charity. Then the talk turned 
 to other topics as the perfectly served dinner 
 pursued its varied courses. At last came coffee. 
 The two ladies rose and took their tiny cups into 
 the parlour, leaving the two men to smoke their 
 cigars in the dining-room. But Robert White lent 
 little attention to Duncan's shrewd and pleasant 
 chat when Dorothy Sargent followed Mrs. Duncan 
 across the parlour to the piano, and began to sing. 
 She had a light, clear, soprano voice, sufficiently 
 well trained, and she sang without effort, and as 
 though she enjoyed it. 
 
 After she had sung two or three songs Mr. 
 Duncan called out from the dining-room, 'Now 
 Miss Dorothy, by request ' 
 
 ' Oh, I know what you want,' she interrupted, 
 gaily. 
 
 'Of course,' said Duncan, lighting a second 
 cigar. His Scotch ancestors had died for the 
 Stuarts, and he thrilled with hereditary loyalty as 
 Miss Sargent sang 'Here's a health of King 
 Charles,' with a dramatic intensity for which the 
 careless observer would never have given her 
 credit. 
 
 As Robert White rose to join the ladies, the 
 butler told Mr. Duncan that a gentleman wanted 
 to see him. 
 
 4 Close the doors leading into the Japanese 
 room,' said Duncan, ' and show the gentleman in 
 here.' 
 
 The room between the parlour and the dining-
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 45 
 
 room Mrs. Duncan had decorated in the Japanese 
 style. The walls were covered with Japanese 
 paper and hung with plaques of cloisonnJ. The 
 furniture was of bamboo with cushions of Japanese 
 embroidery. Japanese lanterns, dexterously ar- 
 ranged for gas, shed a gentle light. Although the 
 room was probably hopelessly incorrect in the 
 eyes of a Japanese had Mrs. Duncan had one on 
 her visiting list the effect was novel, and exotic 
 and charming. 
 
 White passed through this room, and joined 
 Miss Dorothy at the piano. He turned the leaves 
 for her as she sang ' The Shepherd's Hour.' He 
 thought she had never looked so lovely, and he 
 knew he had never loved her as much. He felt 
 that the time had come when he must put his for- 
 tune to the touch, when he must learn whether life 
 was to be happiness or misery. When she finished 
 the song she left the piano hastily, and begged 
 Mrs. Duncan to play. White seconded her. Mrs. 
 Duncan was an admirable pianist, but she was a 
 match-maker even more accomplished. 
 
 ' I'll play,' she said, ' on one condition only : 
 you two must go into the Japanese room and 
 talk.' 
 
 ' Talk while you are playing ? ' protested 
 Dorothy. 
 
 'Yes,' answered Mrs. Duncan firmly. 'You 
 need not talk loudly, but you must talk : then I 
 shall not feel as though I were giving a concert.' ' 
 
 ' If we must, we must,' said Dorothy ; and she
 
 46 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 took a seat in the Japanese room. White sat 
 himself down on a stool at her feet, as Mrs. Duncan 
 began one of Mendelsshon's ' Lieder ohne Worte.' 
 
 ' How lovely those songs without words are ! ' 
 said Dorothy, after a silence which threatened to 
 become embarrassing. 
 
 ' How lovely it would be,' answered White, 
 ' if we could express ourselves without words, if 
 we could only set forth without speech the secret 
 thoughts and feelings of our souls ! ' 
 
 ' Do you really think so ? ' asked Dorothy. 
 ' Sometimes it would be very awkward, I fear.' 
 
 ' Surely you would not mind letting the whole 
 world read your innocent heart ? ' 
 
 ' Indeed I should,' cried Dorothy. Why, there 
 are things I shouldn't like anybody to know.' 
 
 Robert White noticed the sudden blush which 
 accompanied these words. In his eyes her delight- 
 ful alternations of colour were perhaps her greatest 
 beauty. 
 
 ' I wish you could know without my telling 
 what my heart is full of just now,' he said, control- 
 ling his voice as best he could. 
 
 The colour fled from her cheek, and left it as 
 white as marble. With a little effort, she said, 
 ' How do I know that it would interest me ? ' 
 
 ' Don't you take any interest in me ? ' asked 
 White. 
 
 ' Indeed I do, Mr. White, but ' 
 
 ' Then you must have seen that I love you,' he 
 interrupted, unable to refrain any longer. ' Don't
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 47 
 
 tell me that you have not seen it. Don't tell me 
 that my love is hopeless.' 
 
 The colour came back slowly to her face and 
 neck, and she said, shyly, ' I do not tell you that, 
 because it would not be true.' 
 'Then you do love me?' 
 'Just a little bit.' 
 
 He clasped her in his arms, as Mrs. Duncan 
 turned over her music and played a nocturne of 
 Chopin's. 
 
 They talked on in perfect bliss for a few 
 minutes, then she said, suddenly, ' But you must 
 speak to my father.' 
 
 ' I will ask him five minutes after he sets foot 
 on shore.' 
 
 ' He will never consent,' continued Dorothy. 
 ' He has always said he could never let me go, and 
 I have always promised never to leave him.' 
 
 ' But that was before you gave yourself to me,' 
 said her lover. 
 
 ' I suppose so, but I don't know what he will 
 do without me.' 
 
 'Just think how I have done without you all 
 these years. It's my turn now.' 
 
 ' He has been so good to me always.' 
 
 ' I. will be so good to you always. How could 
 I be anything else ? ' 
 
 She looked at him, and he leaned forward and 
 kissed her softly. 
 
 ' But I will never marry you without his consent,' 
 she said.
 
 48 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 Just then Eliphalet Duncan threw open the 
 folding doors of the dining-room, and announced 
 to Miss Dorothy that her maid and her coupe had 
 come to take her home. As White rose to see her 
 into the carriage, Duncan asked him to come back 
 a minute after Miss Sargent was off, as he had 
 something to tell. White waited in the hall while 
 the maid bundled Dorothy up in her fleecy wraps. 
 Then he helped her into her carriage. The sharp 
 eyes of the maid were on him, and he could say 
 nothing. He gave her hand a precious squeeze as 
 she said ' Good-night.' 
 
 ' May I see you to-morrow ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Yes, to-morrow,' she answered ; and with this 
 word of promise and hope they parted. 
 
 White went up to Duncan's study. 
 
 ' Who do you suppose my visitor was ? ' asked 
 Duncan. 
 
 ' How should I know ? ' asked White. 
 
 ' He's as anxious as you to find out who the 
 pirate was that stopped the " Patagonia." He was 
 one of our passengers. And he came to tell me a 
 curious discovery of his. He is interested in a 
 type- writer manufactory, and he noticed certain 
 peculiarities in the notes which the pirate sent. 
 As soon as he arrived here he set to work inves- 
 tigating. He has found out that the type-writer 
 used by the pirate is one of a new style just put 
 out by the company in which he is a shareholder. 
 This new style was for sale only a month ago. 
 Very few of them were sold before the First of 
 April the day when the pirates made fools of us.'
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 49 
 
 ' Has he a list of the purchasers ? ' asked 
 White, anxiously. 
 
 ' His list is incomplete, but among those who 
 bought this new style of type-writer was Joshua 
 Hoffman.' 
 
 ' The owner of the " Rhadamanthus" ? ' inquired 
 the astonished White. 
 
 .' Of course/ said Duncan.
 
 50 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 IV. 
 
 IN THE PIRATE'S LAIR. 
 
 To any one not accustomed to the sharp contrasts 
 of American life it would have seemed impossible 
 that Miss Dorothy Sargent should be the daughter 
 of Mr. Samuel Sargent. She was slight and 
 graceful, delicate and ethereal, as is the wont of 
 the American girl. He was solid and florid ; he 
 was a high liver and of a full habit. His eye was 
 very quick and sharp, as though it was always on 
 the main chance, but there was generally to be 
 seen a genial smile on his sensual mouth, not 
 altogether hidden by a heavy moustache. He was 
 at once a very smart man and a very good fellow. 
 His friends often referred to the magnetism of his 
 manner. He was kindly, generous, shrewd, and 
 unscrupulous. Moralities differ, and Sam Sargent 
 had the morality of Wall Street, and he knew no 
 other : he would engineer a corner without a 
 thought of mercy ; but he never ' went back ' on his 
 bank, and he never ' lay down ' on his broker ; and 
 these are the cardinal virtues in the Street. Ac- 
 cording to his lights, he was an honest man, but 
 he wore his principles easily, and he had cultivated 
 his senses at the expense of his conscience.
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 51 
 
 His father had skimped and scraped for years 
 that the son might go to college, and was now 
 living in restful happiness on a big farm near 
 his native town a farm bought for him by his 
 successful son. The college allowed its poorer 
 students to pay their way by manual labour, and 
 most of the shelving and other carpenter-v/ork in 
 the college library had been done by Sam Sargent, 
 who had since endowed the library with twenty-five 
 thousand dollars. After he left college he edited a 
 country weekly for two or three months ; then he 
 turned auctioneer ; after that he was advance 
 agent for a small circus ; then the war broke out, 
 and he raised a company, and rose to be colonel of 
 volunteers. Wounded and sent home on a fur- 
 lough, he delayed his return from Washington to his 
 Western home long enough to marry the most beau- 
 tiful daughter of one of the proudest of the first 
 families of Virginia. After helping to convert the 
 steamers on the Upper Mississippi into home-made 
 ironclads, he resigned, and became interested in 
 various Government contracts. He did his duty by 
 the Government, and made money for himself. He 
 put his earnings into the little local railroad of his 
 native place. When the war was over, and the rail- 
 roads of the West began to be consolidated and to 
 push across the plains and the mountains, the little 
 road of which Sam Sargent was president was 
 wanted by two rival systems. Sam Sargent sold 
 to the highest bidder, after judiciously playing one 
 against the other ; and he brought his money and
 
 52 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 his experience to Wall Street. A man cannot run 
 with the hare and hold with the hounds ; on the 
 Street a new-comer is either a wolf or a lamb : Sam 
 Sargent was not a lamb. In the uneasy and rest- 
 less turmoil of the Stock Exchange he was in his 
 element, and there he thrived. Every summer, 
 when stocks were sluggish or stagnant, the spe- 
 culator sought other forms of excitement. One 
 year he hired a fast yacht, and the next he bought 
 a pair of fast trotters. One summer he let his 
 fondness for poker run away with him, and he was 
 a player in the famous game which lasted two days 
 and three nights : at the end of the second day he 
 had lost #150,000, but during the last night he won 
 it all back, and $65,000 besides. No man could 
 deny his quickness, his coolness, or his nerve. Of 
 late he had begun to take an interest in politics, 
 and he was known to be seeking a nomination for 
 Congress from one of the brown-stone districts : 
 the machine of his party was all ready to work in 
 his behalf. To attain to this honour was his one 
 unsatisfied desire, and his heart was set on it. 
 
 About three weeks after the ' Patagonia' had 
 been robbed off the Banks by the ' Dare-Devil,' Mr. 
 Joshua Hoffman's yacht, the ' Rhadamanthus,' re- 
 turned to New York from Bermuda, bringing back 
 Mr. Sam Sargent and Mr. Joshua Hoffman him- 
 self. Among the letters which Sargent found on 
 the table of his handsome private office in the 
 Bowdoin Building, No. 76 Broadway, overlooking 
 a part of Trinity Churchyard, was one from Robert
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 53 
 
 White, requesting an immediate interview on a 
 matter of the highest importance. Sargent knew 
 White's name as a rising young literary man, he 
 had heard his daughter speak of meeting White, 
 and he was aware of White's connection with the 
 ' Gotham Gazette.' He wrote Mr. White a polite 
 note, saying that he should be glad to see him the 
 next day at three. 
 
 Precisely at three the next afternoon, as the 
 bells of Trinity rang the hour over the hurrying 
 heads of the sojourners in Wall Street, Robert 
 White handed his card to the office-boy of Sargent 
 and Company, and was shown at once into the 
 private office of the special partner. Sargent rose 
 to receive him, saying, ' I'm glad to make your 
 acquaintance, Mr. White. There is a comfortable 
 chair. What can I do for you to-day ? ' 
 
 As he said this he gave White a look which 
 took him in through and through. White felt that 
 Sargent had formed at once an opinion of his 
 character, and that this opinion was probably in 
 the main accurate. ' Are we alone,' he asked, ' and 
 secure from interruption ? ' 
 
 Sargent stepped to the door and said to the 
 attending office-boy, ' If anybody calls, just say I 
 have gone.' Then he closed the door and turned 
 the key in the lock. Taking his seat at his desk, 
 he said, ' Now, Mr. White, I am at your service.' 
 
 'As I wrote you, Mr. Sargent, I desire a few x 
 minutes' talk with you on a matter of great im- 
 portance,' began White.
 
 54 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 1 Excuse me a moment,' interrupted Sargent, 
 taking a box of cigars from a drawer in his desk. 
 ' Do you smoke ? ' 
 
 White declined courteously. 
 
 ' I trust you will excuse me if I light up ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said White. 
 
 ' I never smoke during business hours/ ex- 
 plained Sargent, ' but at three I always indulge 
 myself in a little nicotine.' 
 
 White noticed that under cover of the first two 
 or three puffs of smoke the speculator gave him a 
 second penetrating examination. The journalist 
 knew that his task was difficult enough at best, 
 and this little manoeuvre seemed to double the 
 difficulty. But his voice did not reveal this feeling 
 as he said : 
 
 ' The business I have to speak about, Mr. 
 Sargent, is as private as it is important. I am 
 aware that for a moment I may seem to you to be 
 prying, not to say impertinent. I beg to assure 
 you in advance that such is not my intent. If you 
 will bear with me until I am done, I think you 
 will then pardon my apparent intrusion.' 
 
 ' Fire away,' said Sargent, blowing a series of 
 concentric rings of smoke, ' and put the ball as 
 close to the bull's-eye as you can.' 
 
 ' What I desire to talk about is the taking of 
 ioo,ooo/. in specie from the " Patagonia " on the 
 afternoon of the First of April.' 
 
 * Indeed ? ' queried Sargent, sending forth a final 
 ring of smoke as perfect as any of its predecessors.
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 55 
 
 * And pray what have I to do with that little specu- 
 lation in gold ? ' 
 
 ' At the time that money was taken you were 
 short of Transcontinental Telegraph stock, and 
 you stood to lose nearly half a million dollars/ 
 
 ' If you had not warned me that you would be 
 intrusive, I think I should have been able to dis- 
 cover it for myself.' 
 
 ' Hear me out' 
 
 ' I do not see any connection between my 
 private affairs and the " Patagonia " adventure. But 
 go on.' 
 
 White continued in the calm voice he had 
 maintained from the beginning of the interview : 
 
 ' Before that gold could be landed in Nova 
 Scotia there had been a panic here in Wall Street, 
 the bottom had dropped out of Transcontinental 
 Telegraph, your partners had covered your shorts, 
 and you were in a fair way to make a good profit.' 
 
 ' Well ? ' asked Sargent, quietly. 
 
 ' Well then the gold from the " Patagonia" was 
 restored to its owners.' As he said this, White 
 watched Sargent closely. A second series of 
 vortex rings was in process of construction. Sud- 
 denly Sargent turned slightly, and looked White 
 full in the face. 
 
 ' Mr. White, it is evident that you do not know 
 me. I am a bad man to bluff. I do not choose 
 to understand you insinuendoes, as the darkey 
 called them ' 
 
 ' I made no insinuations.'
 
 56 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 'You have been dropping mysterious hints, 
 said Sargent, firmly. 
 
 ' If you have picked them up, why ' 
 
 'Just let me tell you, Mr. White, that if you 
 pick me up for a fool, you will lay me down again 
 like a red-hot poker. I see you are driving at 
 something. Now just stop this feeling over the 
 surface and cut to the quick. If you have any- 
 thing to say, say it out and be done with it.' 
 
 ' I can put the matter in a nutshell, if you will 
 give me five minutes,' said White, quietly. 
 
 ' Load your nutshell and touch off the fuse,' 
 answered Sargent, settling back comfortably in his 
 chair. 
 
 'My chain is not quite complete, I confess,' 
 began White ; * there are several slight links want- 
 ing. But it is strong enough. Here is my story : 
 When the "Patagonia" sailed from Queenstown 
 with ioo,ooo/. on board, you were in urgent need of 
 about $500,000, Owing to the unexpected de- 
 tention of Mr. Joshua Hoffman in this city, you 
 were the sole passenger on the " Rhadamanthus " 
 when she cleared from New York for Bermuda. 
 The crew of the " Rhadamanthus " were Lascars. 
 The captain was under great obligations to you, 
 and would do anything for you.' 
 
 Here White remarked that Sargent gave him a 
 quick look as who should say, ' How came you to 
 know that ? ' 
 
 ' Instead of going directly to Bermuda, you 
 made for the Banks of Newfoundland. On the
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 57 
 
 voyage up you rigged a false funnel on the " Rha- 
 damanthus," you built false bulwarks, and you 
 mounted a Quaker gun amidships/ 
 
 Again White caught the same quick look, as 
 though Sargent, in spite of his self-control, was 
 surprised at the accuracy of White's information. 
 
 ' You arrived off the Banks just in time to inter- 
 cept the " Patagonia." You fired across her bows 
 with the little gun of the yacht. You pretended 
 to load the Quaker gun. You sent a message to 
 the captain of the " Patagonia " a message written 
 by a type-writer bought by Joshua Hoffman the 
 day before the yacht sailed. You stained your 
 face and put on a false beard, and you yourself sat 
 in the stern-sheets of the gig which was rowed out 
 to receive the gold. When you left the " Patagonia," 
 as night fell, you steamed straight for the little 
 place which Captain Mills owns on the coast of 
 Nova Scotia near Halifax. You landed the gold 
 at his private dock by night : fortunately for you, 
 no custom-house official caught sight of you. 
 Whether you had intended to take the gold and 
 fly, or whether you meant to use it to pay your 
 losses in the Transcontinental Telegraph corner, I 
 do not know. But when you touched land you 
 got the news of the panic here, and of the fall in 
 the price of Transcontinental Telegraph. No longer 
 needing the money, you determined to return it, 
 and to let the affair pass off as a practical joke ap- 
 propriate to the First of April. Mrs. Mills took the 
 cases to Halifax, and saw that they were forwarded
 
 58 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 to New York. Then you took the yacht to Bermuda 
 as fast as she could steam, getting there long 
 before Mr. Joshua Hoffman arrived on the regular 
 steamer. No one in Bermuda connected the " Rha- 
 damanthus " with the " Dare-Devil," because no one 
 knew anything about the temporary robbery of the 
 ' Patagonia ' until the arrival of the mail. There is 
 no telegraph to Bermuda. The gold having been 
 returned to its owners, you thought there would 
 be no motive for pursuit and for prosecution. 
 You believed that the whole matter would blow 
 over, and that long before you got back to New 
 York people would have something else to talk 
 about than the adventure of the " Patagonia." For 
 further safety you have persuaded Mr. Joshua Hoff- 
 man to send the " Rhadamanthus " to Rio Janeiro 
 to bring back the boy-naturalist who has been 
 making collections along the Amazon. She passed 
 Sandy Hook about six hours ago.' 
 
 As White paused here, Sargent swung around in 
 his chair and took another cigar from the box in 
 the drawer of his desk. ' Have you finished ? ' he 
 asked. 
 
 ' I have finished,' answered White. ' As you 
 requested, I have told my tale as briefly as possible. 
 But I have written it out in full, setting down all 
 the facts in order, and giving dates and figures as 
 exactly as I could. Perhaps you would like to 
 glance over it' 
 
 Sargent took the flat little bundle of papers 
 which White held out to him, and dropped it into
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 59 
 
 his pocket He lighted his second cigar from the 
 first Then he said, pleasantly : ' This is a very 
 pretty little ghost story of yours, Mr. White, but 
 do you think you can get anybody to take any 
 stock in it ? ' 
 
 ' I believe the public will take an interest in it 
 if ' 
 
 ' If ? ' asked Sargent, with his cigar in the air. 
 
 ' If I publish it' 
 
 ' Ah, if you publish it.' And Sargent smiled 
 meaningly, and the whole expression of his face 
 changed at once. Very well. How much ? ' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon ? ' said White, interroga- 
 tively. 
 
 ' How much do you want ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. Sargent ! ' and White rose to his feet, in- 
 dignantly. 
 
 ' Sit down again, Mr. White ; we are talking 
 business now. How much do you want to sup- 
 press this story ? ' 
 
 White clinched the back of the chair firmly in 
 his hand, and said, ' I did not expect to be insulted 
 by the offer of a paltry bribe.' 
 
 ' Who said anything about a paltry bribe ? I 
 asked you how much ?' 
 
 By this time White had recovered his temper. 
 He sat down again. ' You do not know me if you 
 think I am to be bought, Mr. Sargent I am 
 hesitating as to the publication of the facts in this 
 case because I am not yet quite clear in my own 
 mind as to my duty in the matter.'
 
 60 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 ' Indeed ? ' there was a covert sneer in Sargent's 
 manner as he dropped this one word. 
 
 ' Perhaps self-interest might resolve my doubts,' 
 continued White. ' Perhaps I could more readily 
 make up my mind to say nothing about your con- 
 nection with the affair of the " Patagonia " if ' 
 
 ' If ? ' repeated Sargent. 
 
 'If I felt jealous of your reputation on my 
 own account in short, if I were a member of your 
 family.' 
 
 ' You don't want me to adopt you, do you ? ' 
 asked Sargent, brusquely. 
 
 ' No, not exactly,' answered White, hesitating, 
 now he had reached the point. ' But I want to 
 marry your daughter.' 
 
 Sargent looked at him in silent astonishment 
 Then he whistled. ' You want to marry my 
 daughter ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Then the main question is not what I think, 
 but what she thinks. Does she want to marry 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' She told me so the last time I saw her,' said 
 White, quietly. 
 
 Sargent stood up in his surprise. But all he 
 said was, ' What ? ' 
 
 ' I asked her to marry me, and she promised to 
 do so if you would consent.' 
 
 ' Ah,' said Sargent ; ' so you are engaged ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' we are engaged,' answered White. 
 
 ' But I have always told Dorothy that I would
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 61 
 
 never consent to her marrying anybody. I want 
 her myself. I do not wish her to leave me.' 
 
 ' That's what she told me.' 
 
 * And yet she has engaged herself to you ? ' 
 
 ' We are engaged yes ; but we shall not be 
 married until you give your consent.' 
 
 ' And you expect me to yield ? ' asked Sargent, 
 harshly. 
 
 ' That's why I came to see you to-day,' an- 
 swered White, gently. 
 
 ' Well, you are the cheekiest ' young fellow I 
 ever saw.' And Sargent sat down again, and 
 struck a match to relight his cigar. 
 
 White asked anxiously, ' Will you consent ? ' 
 
 Sargent took two or three puffs at his cigar, 
 and replied : 'Of course. I have to consent. 
 That girl makes me do what she pleases. I have 
 never refused her anything yet. If she wants you 
 for a husband, she shall have you.' 
 
 'Thank you ' began White. 
 
 ' You needn't thank me,' interrupted Sargent ; 
 ' you had better go and thank her, and tell her you 
 are going to dine with us to-day.' 
 
 As Sargent and White came down the stairs 
 of the Bowdoin Building a begging peddler jostled 
 against the speculator, who cursed him cheerfully, 
 and then gave him a quarter. At the foot of the 
 stairs White met Eliphalet Duncan, who was just 
 going up to his office. He felt so happy that he* 
 stopped Duncan to tell him he was engaged to
 
 62 A SECRET OF THE SEA 
 
 be married, and to ask him if he could guess to 
 whom. 
 
 ' Of course,' answered Duncan ' to Miss Sar- 
 gent.' 
 
 Then Sargent and White walked on, and 
 Duncan went upstairs. As he came to the first 
 landing he saw a flat little bundle of paper. He 
 picked it up, and took it into his office for exa- 
 mination, to see if he might discover its owner. 
 
 In September, at Newport, toward the end of 
 the waning season, and just before those who are 
 always in the thick of gaiety and fashion aban- 
 doned Newport for Lenox, there was a wed- 
 ding. Dorothy Sargent and Robert White were 
 married. 
 
 Sam Sargent, left alone, turned to politics with 
 his wonted energy. On the evening after his 
 interview with White in April he had had a bad 
 quarter of an hour, for he could not find the full 
 and detailed statement of the ' Patagonia ' affair 
 which White had given, and which he could have 
 sworn he put in his pocket. For a while he did 
 not dare give rein to his ambition. If this paper 
 had fallen into the hands of a political enemy, his 
 election to any office became impossible. But as 
 time passed on and he got no news of the missing 
 document, he began to hope that it had been 
 destroyed without examination. A few days after 
 his daughter's wedding he received the nomination 
 for Congress for which he had intrigued un-
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA 63 
 
 ceasingly, and he had made a pungent little speech 
 accepting the honour. 
 
 The next evening the sword of Damocles fell. 
 He received a short, sharp note bidding him find 
 some excuse at once for declining the nomination, 
 or the exact truth would be published concerning 
 his connection with the robbery of the ' Patagonia' 
 on the First of April. As Sam Sargent read this 
 he knew of a certainty that he had a guardian 
 enemy, and that his political career was at an end 
 for ever. He took up the fatal missive to read it 
 again, and for the first time he noticed that it was 
 written on a type-writer, and that it was signed 
 ' Lafitte.'
 
 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT'
 
 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: 
 
 A DOUBTFUL day of mingled snow and rain, 
 such as we often have in New York in February, 
 had been followed, as night fell, by a hard frost ; 
 and as Robert White mounted the broad brown- 
 stone steps of Mrs. Martin's house and, after ringing 
 the bell, looked across Washington Square to the 
 pseudo-picturesque University building, he felt 
 that form of gratitude toward his hostess which has 
 been defined as a lively sense of benefits to come. 
 His ten-minute walk through the hard slush of 
 the pavements had given an edge to his appetite, 
 and he knew of old that the little dinners of the 
 Duchess of Washington Square were everything 
 that little dinners should be. He anticipated con- 
 fidently a warm reception by his hospitable hostess ; 
 an introduction to a pretty girl, probably as clever 
 as she was good-looking ; a dignified procession 
 into the spacious dining-room ; a bountiful dinner, 
 neither too long nor too short ; as well served as 
 it was well cooked ; and at the end a good cup of 
 coffee and a good cigar, and a pleasant quarter of 
 an hour's chat with four or five agreeable men, not 
 the least agreeable of them being Mr. Martin, who
 
 68 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 was known to most people only as Mrs. Martin's 
 husband, but whom White had discovered to be as 
 shrewd and sharp as he was reserved and retiring. 
 
 And so it came to pass, except that the state of 
 the streets had made White a little late, wherefore 
 the Duchess was slightly hurried and peremptory. 
 She took him at once under her wing and led him 
 up to a very pretty girl. ' Phyllis/ she said, ' this 
 is Mr. White, to whom I confide you for the 
 evening.' 
 
 As White bowed before the young lady whom 
 Mrs. Martin had called Phyllis, he wished that the 
 Duchess had kindly added her patronymic, as it is 
 most embarrassing not to know to whom one is 
 talking. But there was no time for inquiry ; the 
 rich velvet curtains which masked the open door- 
 way leading from the parlour into the hall were 
 pushed aside, and the venerable coloured butler an- 
 nounced that dinner was served. White offered 
 his arm to Miss Phyllis, and they filed into the 
 dining-room in the wake of Mr. Martin and Mrs. 
 Sutton ; the Duchess, on the arm of Judge 
 Gillespie, brought up the rear. 
 
 There were fourteen at table, a number too 
 large for general conversation, and therefore con- 
 ducive to confidential talks between any two con- 
 genial spirits who might be sitting side by side. 
 White had at his left Mrs. Sutton, but she was a 
 great favourite with Mr. Martin, and White had 
 scarcely a word with her throughout the dinner. On 
 the other side of Miss Phyllis was a thin, short,
 
 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 69 
 
 dyspeptic little man, Mr. C. Mather Hitchcock, 
 whom White knew slightly, and whom Miss Phyllis 
 evidently did not like, as White saw at a glance. 
 So it happened that White and Miss Phyllis were 
 wholly dependent on each other for entertainment 
 as long as they might sit side by side at the 
 Duchess's table. 
 
 ' A mean day like this makes the comfortable 
 luxury of a house like Mrs. Martin's all the more 
 grateful,' began White, by way of breaking the ice ; 
 ' don't you think so ? ' 
 
 ' It has been a day to make one understand 
 what weather-prophets have in mind when they 
 talk about the average mean temperature of New 
 York,' she answered, smiling. 
 
 ' I hope you do not wish to insinuate that the 
 average temperature of New York is mean. I 
 have lived here only a few years, but I am prepared 
 to defend the climate of New York to the bitter 
 end.' 
 
 ' Then you must defend the weather of to-day, 1 
 she retorted gaily, 'for it had a very bitter end. 
 I felt like the maid in the garden hanging out the 
 clothes, for down came a black wind to bite off my 
 nose.' 
 
 ' Just now you remind me rather of the queen 
 in the parlour eating bread and honey.' 
 
 ' I have an easy retort,' she laughed back. * I 
 can say you are like the king in his chamber' 
 counting out his money : for that is how most New 
 York men seem to spend their days.'
 
 70 ''LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 * But I am not a business man,' explained 
 White, thinking that Miss Phyllis was a ready 
 young lady with her wits about her, and regretting 
 again that he had not learnt her name. 
 
 ' They say that there are only two classes who 
 scorn business and never work the aristocrats 
 and the tramps,' she rejoined mischievously. ' Am 
 I to infer that you are an aristocrat or a tramp ? ' 
 
 ' I regret to say that I am neither the one nor 
 the other. A tramp is often a philosopher of the 
 peripatetic school of course ; and an aristocrat is 
 generally a gentleman, and often a good fellow. 
 No, I am afraid your inference was based on a false 
 premise. I am not a business man, but, all the 
 same, I earn my living by my daily work. I am a 
 journalist, and I am on the staff of the " Gotham 
 Gazette." ' 
 
 ' Oh, you are an editor ? I am so glad. I 
 have always wanted to see an editor,' ejaculated 
 Miss Phyllis with increasing interest. 
 
 ' You may see one now,' he answered. ' I am 
 on exhibition here from seven to nine to-night.' 
 
 * And you are really an editor ? ' she queried, 
 gazing at him curiously. 
 
 * I am a journalist and I write brevier, so I sup- 
 pose I may be considered as a component unit of 
 the editorial plural,' he replied. 
 
 ' And you write editorials ? ' 
 ' I do ; I have written yards of them I might 
 almost say miles of them.' 
 
 ' How odd ! Somehow the editorials of a great
 
 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT^ 71 
 
 paper always remind me of the edicts of the 
 Council of Ten in Venice nobody knows whose 
 they are, and yet all men tremble before them.' 
 As she said this, Miss Phyllis looked at him medi- 
 tatively for a moment, and then she went on, im- 
 pulsively, ' And what puzzles me is how you ever 
 find anything to say ! ' 
 
 A quiet smile played over White's face as he 
 answered gravely, ' We have to write a good deal, 
 but we do not always say anything in particular.' 
 
 ' When I read the telegrams,' continued Miss 
 Phyllis, 'especially the political ones, I never know 
 exactly what it's all about until I've read the edi- 
 torial. Then, of course, it all seems clear enough. 
 T&utyoii have to make all that up out of your own 
 head. It must be very wearing.' 
 
 The young journalist wondered for a second 
 whether this was sarcasm or not ; then he admitted 
 that he had been using up the gray matter of his 
 brain very rapidly of late. 
 
 4 1 know I exhausted myself one election,' she 
 went on, ' when I tried to understand politics. I 
 thought it my duty to hear both sides, so I read 
 two papers. But they contradicted each other so, 
 and they got me so confused, that I had to give it up. 
 Really I hadn't any peace of mind at all until I 
 stopped reading the other paper. Of course I 
 couldn't do without the " Gotham Gazette." ' 
 
 ' Then are all our labours amply rewarded ? ' sard 
 White gallantly, thinking that he had only once 
 met a young lady more charming than Miss Phyllis.
 
 72 'LOVE AT FIRS7 SIGHT 1 
 
 ' Now tell me, Mr. White, what part of the 
 paper do you write ? ' 
 
 ' Tell me what part of the paper you read first 
 but I think I can guess that. You always begin 
 with the deaths and then pass on to the marriages. 
 Don't you ? ' 
 
 Miss Phyllis hesitated a moment, blushed a 
 little, whereat White thought her even prettier 
 than he had at first, and then confessed. ' I do 
 read the deaths first ; and why not ? Our going 
 out of the world is the most important thing we do 
 in it.' 
 
 'Except getting married and that's why you 
 read the marriages next ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' I suppose so. I acknowledge that I read the 
 marriages with delight. Naturally I know very 
 few of the brides, but that is no matter there is 
 all the more room for pleasant speculation. It's 
 like reading only the last chapter of a novel you 
 have to invent for yourself all that went before.' 
 
 ' Then you like the old-fashioned novels, which 
 always ended like the fairy stories, " So they were 
 married and lived happily ever afterward ? " ' he 
 queried. 
 
 ' Indeed I do/ she answered vehemently. ' Unless 
 I have orange-blossoms and wedding-cake given to 
 me at the end of a story, I feel cheated.' 
 
 ' I suppose you insist on a novel's being a love- 
 story ?' White inquired. 
 
 ' If a story isn't a love-story,' she answered 
 energetically, ' it isn't a story at all. Why, when I
 
 <LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT* 73 
 
 was only nine years old, a little chit of a girl, I 
 wouldn't read Sunday-School books, because there 
 was no love in them ! ' 
 
 Robert White laughed gently, and said, ' I 
 spurned the Sunday-school book when I was nine 
 too, but that was because the bad boys had all the 
 fun and the good boys had to take all the medicine, 
 in spite of which, however, they were often cut off 
 in the flower of their youth.' 
 
 ' Do you ever write stories, Mr. White ? ' 
 
 ' I have been guilty of that evil deed,' he an- 
 swered. 'I had a tale in the " Gotham Gazette" one 
 Sunday a few months ago, called " The Parrot that 
 Talked in his Sleep " ; it was a little study in zoo- 
 logic psychology. Did you read it? ' 
 
 ' I don't seem to recall it,' she hesitated. ' I'm 
 afraid I must have missed it.' 
 
 ' Then you missed a great intellectual treat,' 
 said the journalist, with humorous exaggeration. 
 ' Fiction is stranger than truth sometimes, and there 
 were absolutely no facts at all in " The Parrot that 
 Talked in his Sleep."' 
 
 ' It was a fantastic tale, then ? ' 
 
 1 Well, it was rather eccentric.' 
 
 * You must send it to me. I like strange, weird 
 stories if they do not try to be funny. They say 
 I haven't any sense of humour, and I certainly do 
 not like to see anybody trying hard to be funny.' , 
 
 With a distinct recollection that 'The Parrot 
 that Talked in his Sleep ' had been noticed by 
 several friendly editors as ' one of the most amusing
 
 74 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT* 
 
 and comical conceits ever perpetrated in America,' 
 White thought it best not to promise a copy of it 
 to Miss Phyllis. 
 
 ' Perhaps you would prefer another sketch I 
 published in the " Gotham Gazette," ' he ventured. 
 ' It was called " At the End of his Tether," and it 
 described a quaint old man who gave up his life to 
 the collecting of bits of the ropes which had hanged 
 famous murderers.' 
 
 ' How gruesome ! ' she exclaimed, with a little 
 shudder, although the next minute she asked with 
 interest : ' And what did he do with them ? ' 
 
 ' He arranged them with great care, and labelled 
 them exactly, and gloated over them until his mind 
 gave way, and then he spliced them together and 
 hung himself on a gallows of his own inventing.' 
 
 ' How delightfully interesting ! ' 
 
 ' It was a little sketch after Hawthorne along 
 way after,' he added modestly. 
 
 ' I just doat on Hawthorne,' remarked Miss 
 Phyllis critically. ' Pie never explains things, and 
 so you have more room for guessing. I do hate 
 to see everything spelt out plain at the end of a 
 book. I'm satisfied to know that they got married 
 and were happy, and I don't care to be told just 
 how old their children were when they had the 
 whooping-cough ! ' 
 
 ' A hint is as good as a table of statistics to a 
 sharp reader,' said the journalist. ' I think the 
 times are ripe for an application to fiction of the 
 methods Corot used in painting pictures. Father
 
 LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT* 75 
 
 Corot, as the artists call him, gave us a firm and 
 vigorous conception veiled by a haze of artistic 
 vagueness.' 
 
 ' That's what I like,' agreed Miss Phyllis. ' I 
 like something left to the imagination.' 
 
 ' Your approbation encourages me to persevere. 
 I had planned half-a-dozen other unconventional 
 tales, mere trifles, of course, as slight as possible 
 in themselves, but enough with " The Parrot that 
 Talked in his Sleep," and "At the End of his 
 Tether," to make a little book, and I was going to 
 call it " Nightmare's Nests." ' 
 
 ' What an appetising title ! ' declared the young 
 lady. ' I'm so sorry it is not published now I 
 couldn't rest till I'd read it.' 
 
 ' Then I am sure of selling at least one copy.' 
 
 ' Oh, I should expect you to send me a copy 
 yourself,' said Miss Phyllis archly, ' and to write 
 " with the compliments of the author " on the first 
 page.' 
 
 Robert White looked up with a smile, and he 
 caught Miss Phyllis's eye. He noted her bright 
 and animated expression. He thought that only 
 once before had he ever met a prettier or a livelier 
 girl. 
 
 ' You shall have an early copy,' he said, ' a set 
 of " advance sheets," as the phrase is.' 
 
 Here his attention and hers was distracted by 
 the passing of a wonderful preparation of lobster 
 served in sherry, and cooked as though it were 
 terrapin ; this was a speciality of the Duchess's
 
 76 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 1 
 
 Virginian cook, and was not to be treated lightly 
 When this delicacy had been duly considered, Miss 
 Phyllis turned to him again. 
 
 ' Can't you tell me one of the stories you are 
 going to write ? ' she asked. 
 
 1 Here now at table ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; why not ? ' 
 
 ' Do you play chess ? I mean do you under- 
 stand the game ? ' 
 
 ' I think it is poky ; but I have played it with 
 grandpa.' 
 
 ' There is a tale I thought of writing, to be 
 called "The Queen of the Living Chessmen"; 
 but ' 
 
 ' That's a splendid title. Go on.' 
 
 ' Are you sure it would interest you ? ' asked 
 the author. 
 
 ' I can't be sure until you begin,' she answered 
 airily ; ' and if it doesn't interest me, I'll change the 
 subject.' 
 
 ' And we can talk about the weather.' 
 
 ' Precisely. And now, do go on ! ' 
 
 She gave an imperious nod, which White could 
 not but consider charming. There was no lull in 
 the general conversation around the table. Mr. 
 Martin was monopolising Mrs. Sutton's attention, 
 and Mr. C. Mather Hitchcock had at last got into 
 an animated discussion with the lady on the other 
 side of him. So White began. 
 
 ' This, then, is the tale of " The Queen of the 
 Living Chessmen." Once upon a time '
 
 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT* 77 
 
 ' I do like stories which begin with " Once upon 
 a time," ' interrupted Miss Phyllis. 
 
 ' So far, at least, then, you may like mine. Once 
 upon a time there was a young English surgeon in 
 India. He was a fine, handsome, manly young 
 fellow ' 
 
 ' Light or dark ? ' asked the young lady. ' That's 
 a very important question. I don't take half the 
 interest in a hero if he is dark.' 
 
 'Then my hero shall be as fair as a young 
 Saxon ought to be. Now, on his way out to India 
 this young fellow heard a great deal about a beau- 
 tiful English girl, the daughter of a high official in 
 the service of John Company ' 
 
 ' Is she going to fall in love with him ? ' inter- 
 rupted Miss Phyllis again. 
 
 ' She is.' 
 
 ' Then this is a love-story ? ' 
 
 ' It is indeed,' answered the author, with em- 
 phasis. 
 
 'Then you may go on,' said the young lady ; 
 4 1 think it will interest me.' 
 
 And White continued : 
 
 ' The young doctor had heard so much about 
 her beauty that he was burning with anxiety to 
 behold her. He felt as though the first time he 
 should see her would be an epoch in his life. He 
 was ready to love her at first sight. But when he 
 got to his post he found that she had gone to 
 Calcutta for a long visit, and it might be months 
 before she returned. He possessed his soul in
 
 78 <LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 1 
 
 patience, and made friends with her father, and was 
 permitted to inspect a miniature of her, made by 
 the best artist in India. This portrait more than 
 confirmed the tales of her beauty. The sight of 
 her picture produced a strange but powerful effect 
 upon the doctor, and his desire to see the fair 
 original redoubled. From Calcutta came rumours 
 of the havoc she wrought there among the sus- 
 ceptible hearts of the English exiles, but so far as 
 rumour could tell she herself was still heart-free. 
 She had not yet found the man of her choice ; and 
 it was said that she had romantic notions, and 
 would marry only a man who had proved himself 
 worthy, who had, in short, done some deed of 
 daring or determination on her behalf. The young 
 Englishman listened to these rumours with a sink- 
 ing of the heart, for he had no hope that he could 
 ever do anything to deserve her. At last the news 
 came that she was about to return to her father, 
 and at the same time came an order to the doctor 
 to join an expedition among the hill-tribes. He 
 called on her father before he went, and he got a 
 long look at her miniature, and away he went with 
 a heavy heart for the love he bore a woman he had 
 never seen. No sooner had his party set off than 
 there was trouble with the Hindoos. The British 
 residents and the native princes led a cat-and-dog 
 life, and there began to be great danger of civil 
 war. There were risings in various parts of the 
 country.' 
 
 4 In what year was this ? '
 
 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 1 79 
 
 ' I don't know yet,' answered the journalist. 
 ' You see I have only the general idea of the story. 
 I shall have to read up a good deal to get the his- 
 torical facts and all the little touches of local 
 colour. But I suppose this must have been about 
 a hundred years ago or thereabouts. Will that 
 do?' 
 
 ' If you don't know when your story happened,' 
 said Miss Phyllis, 'of course you can't tell me. 
 But go on, and tell me all you do know.' 
 
 ' Well, the young doctor was captured by a 
 party of natives and taken before a rajah, or what- 
 ever they call him, a native prince, who had re- 
 nounced his semi-allegiance to the British and who 
 had at once revealed his cruelty and rapacity. In 
 fact, the chief into whose hands the young surgeon 
 had fallen was nothing more nor less than a blood- 
 thirsty tyrant. At first he was going to put the 
 doctor to death, but fortunately, just then, one of 
 the lights of the harem fell ill and the doctor 
 cured her. So, instead of being killed, he was 
 made first favourite of the rajah. He had 
 saved his life, although he was no nearer to his 
 liberty.' 
 
 'Why, wouldn't the rajah let him go?' asked 
 Miss Phyllis with interest. 
 
 ' No, he wanted to keep him. He had found it 
 useful to have a physician on the premises, and in 
 future he never meant to be without one. After 
 a few vain appeals, the doctor gave up asking for 
 his liberty. He began to plan an escape without
 
 8o 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 the rajah's leave. One evening the long-sought 
 opportunity arrived, and as a large detachment of 
 English prisoners was brought into town, the doctor 
 slipped out' 
 
 ' Did he get away safely ? ' 
 
 ' You shall be told in due time. Let us not 
 anticipate, as the story-tellers say. Did I tell you 
 that the rajah had found out that the doctor played 
 chess, and that he had three games with him every 
 night ? ' 
 
 ' This is the first I have heard of it,' was the 
 young lady's answer. 
 
 ' Such was the fact. And this it was which led 
 to the doctor's recapture. On the evening of his 
 escape the rajah wanted his chess a little earlier, 
 and the doctor could not be found ; so they scoured 
 the country for him, and brought him before the 
 prince, who bade them load him with chains and 
 cast him into a dungeon cell.' 
 
 ' And how long did he languish there ? ' 
 
 ' Till the next morning only. At high noon he 
 was taken out and the chains were taken off, and 
 he was led into a spacious balcony overlooking a 
 great court-yard. This court-yard was thronged 
 with people and the sides were lined with soldiers. 
 In the" centre was a large vacant space. This 
 vacant space was a square composed of many 
 smaller squares of alternating black and white 
 marble. Unconsciously the doctor counted these 
 smaller squares; there were exactly sixty-four 
 eight in a row and eight rows.'
 
 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 8r 
 
 'Just as though it was a huge chess-board?' 
 inquired Miss Phyllis. 
 
 White was flattered by the visible interest this 
 pretty girl took in his narrative. 
 
 ' It was a huge chess-board, nothing else,' he 
 answered, ' and a game of chess was about to be 
 played on it by living chess-men. Soon after the 
 doctor was brought into the gallery, there was a 
 movement in the outskirts of the throng below, and 
 four elephants came in and took their places at the 
 four corners of the gigantic chess-board. Two of 
 these elephants were draped with white and two 
 with black, and their howdahs were shaped like 
 castles. Then came in four horsemen, two on 
 white steeds and two on black, and they took their 
 places next to the castles.' 
 
 ' They were the knights ! Oh, how romantic ! ' 
 ejaculated the young lady. 
 
 ' Next came four fools or jesters, for in the 
 Oriental game of chess the bishop is replaced by a 
 clown. Two of these were white men and two 
 were Hindoos. They took their places next to the 
 knights. Then there entered two files of eight 
 soldiers, and the eight white men took the second 
 row on one side while the eight Hindoos faced 
 them on the second row opposite.' 
 
 ' They were the pawns, I suppose ? ' 
 
 * They were the pawns. The doctor now began 
 to suspect what was going on, and he saw a white 
 man and a Hindoo, both magnificently caparisoned, 
 and with tiny pages supporting the skirts of their 
 
 G
 
 82 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 robes, enter the square allotted to the kings. 
 Finally in two litters or sedan-chairs the two 
 queens were borne in ; the doctor saw that one 
 was a white woman and the other a Hindoo, but 
 the white pieces were on the side of the court 
 opposite him, and he could not distinguish the 
 features of any of his countrymen for that they 
 were English captives he felt convinced.' 
 
 ' But who was to play the game ? ' asked Miss 
 Phyllis eagerly. 
 
 ' The rajah and the doctor. The rajah came 
 into the balcony and told the doctor that since he 
 wanted to get away he might have a chance for 
 his life. If he could win the game, the rajah would 
 not only spare his life, but he might depart in 
 peace, and even more, he might select from the 
 English captives any one he chose to depart with 
 him.' 
 
 ' But if he lost the game ? ' 
 
 'Then he lost his life. For the doctor that 
 game of chess with the living chessmen meant 
 life or death. But the sturdy young Englishman 
 had a stout heart and a strong head, and he was 
 not frightened. Although he had generally 
 managed to lose when playing with the rajah, he 
 knew that he played a finer game. He knew, 
 moreover, that although the rajah was a despot and 
 a bloody-minded villain, yet he would keep his 
 word, and if he lost the game the doctor would 
 be sent away in safety and honour, as had been 
 promised. So the doctor planned his game with
 
 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 1 83 
 
 care and played with more skill than the rajah had 
 suspected him of having. After half a dozen moves 
 there was an exchange of pawns. The captured 
 men were led to the sides of the court-yard, and 
 there stood an executioner, who whipped off their 
 heads in a second.' 
 
 'What!' almost shouted Miss Phyllis. 'Do 
 you mean to say he killed them ? ' 
 
 ' The living chess-men, white or black, English 
 or Hindoo, were all prisoners and had all been 
 condemned to death. The rajah was using them 
 for his amusement before killing them that was 
 all. As soon as they were taken in the course of 
 the game, they were no longer useful, and the 
 headsman did his work upon them at once.' 
 
 ' You don't call this a love-story, do you ? ' was 
 Miss Phyllis's indignant query. 
 
 ' You shall see. When the doctor saw the fate 
 of the captured pieces he almost lost his self-control. 
 But he was a brave man, and in a little while he 
 regained courage. An attendant explained that 
 these men would die anyhow, and in time the 
 doctor got interested in the game and intent on 
 saving his own life, and he ceased to think about 
 the lives of the hapless human chess-men. And 
 the rajah gave him enough to think about. The 
 rajah, having nothing at stake, and knowing it was 
 the last game with the doctor, played with unusual 
 skill and success. With Oriental irony the rajah 
 had chosen the white pieces, and he kept sending 
 the white queen on predatory excursions among 
 
 G2
 
 84 ' LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT* 
 
 the black chessmen. The doctor saw that if he 
 did not take the white queen he was a dead man ; 
 so he laid a trap for her, and the rajah fell into the 
 trap and sent the white queen close to the black 
 pieces, taking a black pawn. For the first time the 
 doctor got a good look at the white queen. His 
 heart jumped into his mouth and beat so loud that 
 he thought the rajah must hear it. The white queen 
 was. the beautiful English girl of whom he had 
 thought so much and so often, and whom he had 
 never seen. He knew her at a glance, for the min- 
 iature was a good likeness, though it could not do 
 justice to her wonderful beauty ; it was indeed fit 
 that she should be robed as a queen. As soon as 
 the doctor saw her he felt that he loved her with the 
 whole force of his being ; no stroke of love at first 
 sight was ever more sudden or more irresistible. For 
 a moment love, astonishment, and fear made him 
 stand motionless.' 
 
 ' And what did she do ? ' 
 
 ' She could do nothing. And what could he do ? 
 It was a tremendous predicament. If he captured 
 the white queen, she would be killed at once. If 
 he did not capture her, the rajah in all probability 
 would win the game and then both he and she 
 would have to die. He had a double incentive to 
 win the game, to save his own life and to save hers 
 also, by selecting her as the one to accompany him. 
 But the game became doubly difficult to win, 
 because he dare not take the rajah's most powerful 
 piece. To make the situation more hopeless, the
 
 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 85 
 
 rajah, seeing that the doctor let him withdraw the 
 queen from a position the full danger of which he 
 discovered as soon as the move was made, and 
 detecting the signals with which the doctor tried 
 to encourage the woman he loved, and to bid her 
 be of good cheer the rajah began to count on the 
 doctor's unwillingness to take the white queen ; he 
 made rash raids into the doctor's intrenchments and 
 decimated the doctor's slender force. In half an hour 
 the game looked hopeless for the young English- 
 man. Less than half of the thirty- two living chess- 
 men stood upon the marble squares, and of these 
 barely a third belonged to the doctor. The rajah had 
 the advantage in numbers, in value, and in position.' 
 
 ' Then how did the doctor get out of it ? ' 
 
 ' The rajah's success overcame his prudence, 
 and he made a first false move. The doctor saw 
 a slight chance, and he studied it out as though it 
 were an ordinary end game or a problem. Sud- 
 denly the solution burst upon him. In three swift 
 moves he checkmated the astonished rajah.' 
 
 ' And saved his own life and hers too ? ' asked 
 the young lady, with great interest. 
 
 ' So they were married and lived happily ever 
 afterwards. You see my love story ends as you 
 like them to end.' 
 
 ' It's all very well,' said Miss Phyllis, ' but the 
 man did everything. I think she ought to have 
 had a chance too.' 
 
 It must not be supposed that there had been 
 any break in the continuous courses of Mrs,
 
 86 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 Martin's delightful dinner while White was telling 
 the tale of ' The Queen of the Living Chess-men.' 
 In fact, he was unable to answer this last remark 
 of Miss Phyllis's as he was helping himself to a 
 delicious mayonnaise of tomatoes, another speciality 
 of the Duchess's, who always served it as a self- 
 respecting mayonnaise should be served in a shal- 
 low glass dish imbedded in the cracked ice which 
 filled a deeper dish of silver. So the young lady 
 had a chance to continue. 
 
 ' I do not object to the bloodshed and murder 
 and horrors in your story, of course. I don't mean 
 that I like horrors, as some girls do, but I am not 
 squeamish about them. What I don't like is your 
 heroine ; she doesn't do anything.' 
 
 ' She is loved,' answered the author ; ' is not 
 that sufficient ? ' 
 
 ' You say she is loved, but how do I know that 
 she loves back ? I have only your word for it ; and 
 you are a man, and so, of course, you may be 
 mistaken in such matters.' 
 
 ' What more could I do to convince you of her 
 affection for her lover ? ' 
 
 ' You needn't do anything, but you ought to 
 have let her do something. I don't know what, 
 but I feel she ought to have done a deed of some 
 sort, something grand, heroic, noble, something 
 to make my blood run cold with the intensity of 
 my admiration ! I'd like to see her sacrifice her 
 life for the man she loves.' 
 
 ' You want a Jeanne d'Arc for a heroine ? '
 
 LOVE AT FJRST SIGHT 1 87 
 
 ' Rather a Mary Queen of Scots, eager to love 
 and to be loved, and ready to do and to die a 
 woman with an active spirit, and not a mere pas- 
 sive doll, like the weak girl your doctor married.' 
 
 Robert White remarked that her slight excite- 
 ment had heightened her colour, and that the flush 
 was very becoming to her. 
 
 'We shall have to go back,' he said, 'to the 
 days of Rebecca and Rowena, if you insist on 
 having lissome maidens and burly warriors, hurt- 
 ling arrows and glinting armour, the flash of 
 scarlet and the blare of the trumpet.' 
 
 ' I don't think so,' she retorted ; ' there is 
 heroism in modern life, and in plenty too, though 
 it goes about gravely and in sad-coloured gar- 
 ments. And besides,' she added, changing the 
 subject with feminine readiness, ' you tell us only 
 about the peril they were in, and nothing at all 
 about their love-making. Now, that's the part I 
 like best. I just delight in a good love-scene. I 
 used to wade through Trollope's interminable 
 serials just for the sake of the proposals.' 
 
 ' It is never too early to mend. I will take 
 your advice, and work up the love interest more. 
 I will show how it was that the young English 
 beauty who was " The Queen of the Living Chess- 
 men" came in time and by slow degrees to confess 
 that the young doctor was the king of her heart.' 
 
 ' Then I will read it with even more pleasure/ 
 
 ' But, do you know,' he continued, dropping his 
 mock-heroic intonation, 'that it is not easy to
 
 88 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 
 
 shoot Cupid on the wing? Indeed, it is very 
 difficult to write about love-making.' 
 
 ' From lack of experience ? ' inquired Miss 
 Phyllis mischievously. 
 
 'Precisely so. Now, how does a man propose?' 
 asked White innocently. 
 
 The flush of excitement had faded before this, 
 but suddenly a rich blush mantled her face and 
 neck. For a second she hesitated ; then she looked 
 up at White frankly, and said, ' Don't you know ? ' 
 
 Under her direct gaze it was his turn to flush 
 up, and he coloured to the roots of his hair. 
 
 ' Pray forgive me if I have seemed personal,' he 
 said, ' but I had supposed a young lady's oppor- 
 tunities for observation were so many more than a 
 man's, that I hoped you might be willing to help 
 me.' 
 
 ' I think that perhaps you are right,' she replied 
 calmly, and that " The Queen of the Living 
 Chess-men " will be interesting enough without any 
 love-passages.' 
 
 ' But I have other stories,' he rejoined eagerly ; 
 ' there is one in particular, it is a love-story, 
 simply a love-story.' 
 
 ' That will be very nice indeed,' she said seri- 
 ously, and as though her mind had been recalled 
 suddenly. 
 
 ' I am going to call it " Love at First Sight." 
 You believe in love at first sight, don't you ? ' 
 
 Again the quick blush crimsoned her face. 
 ' I I don't quite know,' she answered.
 
 ' LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 89 
 
 ' I thought all young ladies maintained as an 
 article of faith, without which there could be no 
 salvation, that love at first sight was the only 
 genuine love ? ' 
 
 ' I do not know what other girls may think,' 
 said Miss Phyllis, with cold dignity, 'but I have no 
 such foolish ideas ! ' 
 
 White was about to continue the conversation, 
 and to ask her for such hints as she might be able 
 to afford him toward the writing of ' Love at First 
 Sight,' when the Duchess gave the signal for the 
 departure of the ladies. As Miss Phyllis rose 
 White fancied that he caught a faint sigh of relief, 
 and as he lifted back her chair he wondered 
 whether he had been in any way intrusive. She 
 bowed to him as she passed, with the brilliant smile 
 which was, perhaps, her greatest charm. As she left 
 the room his eyes followed her with strange interest. 
 The heavy curtain fell behind the portly back of 
 the Duchess, and the gentlemen were left to their 
 coffee and to their cigars; but Mat Hitchcock took 
 the chair next to White's, and began at once to talk 
 about himself in his usual effusive manner. The 
 aroma of the coffee and the flavour of his cigar 
 were thus quite spoilt for White, who seized the 
 first opportunity to escape from Hitchcock and to 
 join the ladies. As he entered the spacious parlour 
 Hitchcock captured him again, and although White 
 was able to mitigate the infliction by including 
 two or three other guests in the conversation, it 
 was not until the party began to break up that he
 
 90 *LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT^ 
 
 could altogether shake off the incubus. Then he 
 saw Miss Phyllis just gliding out of the door, after 
 having bade the Duchess a fond farewell. 
 
 Robert White crossed over to Mrs. Martin at 
 once. ' I have to thank you for a very delightful 
 evening,' he began. 'The dinner was a poem, if 
 you will excuse the brutality of the compliment, 
 and the company were worthy of it with one 
 unworthy exception, of course.' 
 
 'Oh, Mr. White, you flatter me,' said the pleased 
 Duchess. 
 
 ' Indeed, I do not. Very rarely have I heard 
 such clever talk ' 
 
 ' Yes,' interrupted Mrs. Martin. ' I do like the 
 society of intellectual people.' 
 
 ' And,' continued White, ' I quite lost my heart 
 to the very pretty girl I took in to dinner.' 
 
 ' Isn't she charming ? ' asked Mrs. Martin en- 
 thusiastically. ' I think she is the nicest girl in 
 New York.' 
 
 ' By the way do you know, I did not quite 
 catch her name ' 
 
 ' Hadn't you ever met before ? Why, she is 
 the daughter of old Judge Van Rensselaer. You 
 must have heard me talk of Baby Van Rensselaer, 
 as I always call her? She's engaged to Delancey 
 Jones, you know. It's just out. She didn't like 
 him at first, I believe, and she refused him. But 
 he offered himself again just after we all got back 
 from Europe this fall, and now she's desperately in 
 love with him. Dear Jones would have been here
 
 'LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT' 91 
 
 to-night, of course, but he's in Boston building a 
 flat, so I put you in his seat at table. You know 
 Dear Jones, don't you ? ' And the Duchess paused 
 for a reply. 
 
 'Mr. Jones is a cousin of Miss Sargent's, I 
 think ' began White. 
 
 ' Of Miss Dorothy Sargent ? Of course he is. 
 Sam Sargent married his mother's sister. Dorothy's 
 a dear, good girl, isn't she ? Do you know her ? ' 
 
 At last White had his chance. 
 
 1 She is a great friend of mine,' he said, blushing 
 slightly ; ' in fact, although it is not yet announced 
 generally, I do not mind telling you, Mrs. Martin, 
 that she's engaged to be married.' 
 
 ' Dorothy Sargent engaged to be married ? ' 
 cried the Duchess, delighted at a bit of matrimonial 
 news. ' And to whom ? ' 
 
 To me,' said Robert White.
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE
 
 BRIEFAS WOMAN'S LOVE. 
 
 THE imperial will of Napoleon III. decreed, and 
 the ruthless hand of Baron Haussmann traced, a 
 broad street to connect the two great monuments 
 of the histrionic art of France the Comedie Fran- 
 ^aise and the Opera and the resulting Avenue de 
 1'Opera, not finished until long after the Emperor 
 and the Prefect who planned it had fallen from 
 power for ever, is now a full artery of finance and 
 of fashion. On the right hand side of this 
 thoroughfare, as one walks from the home of 
 French comedy to the temple of French music, 
 and not far from the Rue de la Paix, there is a 
 restaurant called the Cafe de Paris ; and here in 
 a private room, one afternoon early in June, were 
 gathered three Americans, just about to begin 
 their lunch. They had fallen into the French habit 
 of getting through the morning with no other 
 nourishment than a roll and a cup of coffee, so that 
 they were wont to find themselves ready for a more 
 ample mid-day breakfast shortly after twelve. The 
 low ceiling of the entresol seemed to make the room 
 in which they sat smaller than it was in reality ; 
 but there was ample space for the fourth member
 
 96 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 of the party, for whom they were then waiting. 
 The melon was on the table, and the sole a la 
 Mornay a speciality of the Cafe de Paris had 
 been ordered, but still Dr. Cheever did not come. 
 
 Mr. Laurence Laughton crossed over to the 
 window by Mrs. Rudolph Vernon. ' I hope you are 
 not very hungry ? ' he said. 
 
 4 But I am,' she answered ; ' I am famished.' 
 
 ' So am I,' added her husband. 
 
 ' Your conduct is unreasonable, and your feel- 
 ings are reprehensible,' retorted Mr. Laughton. 
 ' As a lady, Mrs. Vernon has no right to an 
 appetite ; and as a poet, Mr. Vernon should scorn 
 the gross joys of the table.' 
 
 ' The idea ! ' answered Mrs. Vernon. ' Just as 
 if a woman could live on air ! Why, Uncle Larry, 
 I am hungry enough to eat you.' 
 
 Uncle Larry arose quietly, and slyly put the 
 table between himself and the young lady who had 
 thus proclaimed her cannibalistic capacity. But 
 this movement brought him close to her husband, 
 who seized the opportunity. 
 
 ' I say, Laughton,' he began, ' it is all very well 
 to be a poet, but I am a practical man too, and as 
 a practical man I am simply starving.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Uncle Larry, 'you will enjoy that 
 sole a la Mornay all the more. If it is as good now 
 as it was last year, it is a poem, and it is worthy 
 to be embalmed in verse. I believe that is the 
 phrase they use, isn't it ? ' 
 
 'And it's a disgusting expression too, I say,'
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 97 
 
 interposed Mrs. Vernon. ' I don't like to think of 
 Rudolph as an undertaker. It's bad enough to 
 have a doctor for a brother.' 
 
 ' By the way, my dear,' interrupted her husband, 
 ' are you sure that you told the doctor to meet us 
 here ? ' 
 
 ' Of course I am,' she answered. ' He went to 
 the banker's for letters from home while I was 
 putting on my hat to go out, and he sent back a 
 message to say that he had business, and couldn't 
 go to the Salon with us, and I told the messenger 
 to tell him to meet us here to lunch at one o'clock.' 
 
 ' And it is now nearly half-past,' said Rudolph 
 Vernon, looking at his watch. 
 
 ' Suppose we don't wait for him ? ' suggested 
 Mrs. Vernon. ' You know, Rudolph, that if you 
 go without food it upsets you dreadfully.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Uncle Larry, * I confess I heard 
 the dumb dinner-bell of hunger some time ago.' 
 
 'Dumb dinner-bell of hunger?' repeated the 
 poet, thoughtfully. 'It is a neat figure, but 
 scarcely sufficiently dignified for use except, per- 
 haps, in comic verse.' 
 
 ' I should think you would find the pictures in 
 the Salon very valuable to you,' ventured Uncle 
 Larry. ' And it is a pity that the doctor did not 
 get there this morning. Some of the paintings 
 might have been useful to him as studies in ana- 
 tomy.' 
 
 ' They were very indelicate, I thought,' said 
 Mrs. Vernon.
 
 9 8 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 ' But I get ideas from them,' continued her 
 poet-husband. ' I took notes for two first-rate 
 sonnets.' 
 
 ' I saw one picture which suggested a poem to 
 me/ remarked Uncle Larry, with a quiet smile. 
 
 ' Indeed ? ' queried Mr. Rudolph Vernon. 
 
 * It was one of Henner's, and it was just like all 
 the other Henners I ever saw. It represented a 
 young lady before the bath. And it seemed to 
 me a perfect illustration of the nursery rhyme : 
 
 ' Oh, mother, may I go in and swim ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes, my darling daughter : 
 Just hang your clothes on a hickory limb, 
 
 And do not go near the water.' 
 
 ' How absurd ! ' laughed Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' Well/ said Uncle Larry, ' it may be absurd, 
 but it is singularly exact. Henner's nymphs have 
 always hung their clothes up, but they never are in 
 the water. Now I believe that ' 
 
 But Uncle Larry's artistic creed was cut short 
 by the entrance of Dr. Cheever. 
 
 ' I hope you have not waited for me ? ' he be- 
 gan, in a deep, grave voice befitting a physician of 
 his wisdom and reputation. 
 
 ' But we have ! ' cried his sister. ' Whatever 
 did keep you so long ? ' 
 
 ' I was called out unexpectedly/ he answered 
 quietly, ' and the case proved more important than 
 I had supposed.' Something in his manner 
 warned his sister not to press him further with 
 questions.
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 99 
 
 ' Now you are here,' said Uncle Larry, ' we 
 will proceed with. our breakfast-at-the-fork, as the 
 French call it.' 
 
 ' Do you think melon is wholesome to begin a 
 meal with ? ' asked Vernon. 
 
 'Why not?' answered the doctor. 'The 
 French eat it then, and they are not as dyspeptic 
 as we are.' 
 
 ' The French don't eat pie ! ' said Uncle Larry, 
 laconically. ' We do. In fact, I have sometimes 
 thought that the typical American might be de- 
 fined as a travelling interrogation-mark with the 
 dyspepsia.' 
 
 ' I wonder,' remarked the doctor, as the waiter 
 removed the melon and brought in the sole d la 
 Mornay 'I wonder that nobody has ever at- 
 tempted to explain " Hamlet " by the suggestion 
 that the young Prince Hamlet has acute chronic 
 dyspepsia.' 
 
 ' By the way, Uncle Larry,' asked Mrs. Vernon, 
 ' you never told me how you liked " Hamlet " at 
 the OpeYa last night ? ' 
 
 ' Well,' said Uncle Larry, ' a Hamlet who is a 
 Frenchman and who sings, is to me the abomina- 
 tion of desolation. But it is such a great play that 
 even French singing cannot spoil it.' 
 
 ' The construction of the last act is very feeble,' 
 remarked the professional poet, critically. 
 
 ' Very violent, you mean,' suggested his wife. 
 
 ' In art, violence is feebleness. And the fifth 
 act of " Hamlet " is the acme of turbulent muddle;
 
 TOO BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 Uncle Larry and Dr. Cheever exchanged quick 
 glances as Vernon continued : 
 
 ' I do not deny that it is a great play, a pro- 
 phetic play even, and deeply philosophical. In- 
 deed, nowhere is the Weltschmerz and the Zeitgeist 
 more plainly voiced than in " Hamlet " ; but, for all 
 that, the construction of the last act is grossly in- 
 artistic.' 
 
 ' The idea of Ophelia's singing as she floats 
 down the river is absurd,' said Mrs. Vernon, sup- 
 porting her husband and remembering more accu- 
 rately the opera of M. Ambroise Thomas than the 
 tragedy of William Shakspere. 
 
 ' People talk about Shakspere's greatness,' con- 
 tinued Rudolph Vernon, ' and he was great ; but 
 look at the chance he had. He came in the nick 
 of time, when men and women had passions, and 
 before all the words were worn out. I'd like to 
 see what Shakspere would do now, when men 
 and women have milk in their veins instead 
 of blood, and when nearly all the fine words in the 
 language are second-hand.' 
 
 ' You do not believe in a modern Hamlet, 
 then ? ' asked Dr. Cheever. 
 
 ' No ; nor in a modern Ophelia. Women do 
 not go mad and drown themselves nowadays. If 
 they are jilted by Hamlet they marry Guildenstern 
 or Rosencrantz, or, better yet, young Fortinbras.' 
 
 ' Oh, Rudolph, how can you be so unjust ! ' 
 was his wife's protest. ' I am sure that women 
 love with as much passion and self-sacrifice as
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 101 
 
 ever. Why, at Madame Parlier's Institute for 
 Young Ladies I knew two or three girls quite 
 capable of loving as Juliet did, and of dying like 
 Juliet.' 
 
 'You are fortunate in your acquaintance,' 
 answered her husband, ' more fortunate by far than 
 I, for I do not know any Romeo.' 
 
 ' Man's love to-day has more common-sense,' 
 Dr. Cheever suggested. 
 
 ' Exactly, more common-sense, and therefore 
 less passion, and a smaller possibility of tragedy. 
 Shakspere had the inside track, and it is no use for 
 us modern poets to hope to equal him.' 
 
 ' I like to think about the fatality of love, and 
 I hate to hear you say that there are no Romeos 
 in our time,' said Mrs. Vernon. ' It seems to take 
 the romance out of life.' 
 
 ' But there isn't any romance in life any longer,' 
 rejoined her husband ; ' that's my contention. We 
 have and we can have no Hamlet, no Ophelia, no 
 Juliet especially no Romeo.' 
 
 Uncle Larry laughed, and suggested : 
 
 ' You think a modern lover more likely to take 
 pepsin pills than a deadly poison ? ' 
 
 ' I do indeed,' was the poet's answer. Man 
 now thinks more of his stomach than of his heart, 
 and where is the poetry in indigestion, I'd like to 
 know ? ' 
 
 ' Well, I don't know,' said Uncle Larry, as the 
 smile faded from his face. ' I believe in the fatality 
 of love even in the nineteenth century. I have seen
 
 102 BRIEF-AS WOMAWS LOVE 
 
 one man in love with a passion as profound as any 
 Romeo's, and his end was as tragic.' 
 
 ' Then he was a man born out of time,' urged 
 Rudolph Vernon. 
 
 ' That may be,' answered Uncle Larry. ' He 
 was a man born to sorrow, and yet he had the 
 happiest nature and the largest heart of any man 
 I ever knew.' 
 
 ' Is he dead ? ' asked Mrs. Vernon with a 
 woman's sympathy. ' When did he die ? ' 
 
 ' It is nearly two years since I read the sudden 
 news of his death one summer afternoon. It is 
 two years, and yet he has been in my mind all the 
 morning. It may be because I found his last 
 letter to me yesterday in my portfolio, and I had 
 to read it again. So to-day I seem to see his pale 
 handsome face and his bright dark eyes. He had 
 the nobility of soul which makes the true hero of 
 tragedy.' 
 
 ' But there is no tragedy to-day, as there is no 
 comedy,' argued Rudolph Vernon. ' Instead, we 
 have only la tragedie bourgeoise and la comtdie lar- 
 moyante! 
 
 1 1 do not think you would say that if you 
 knew his story the story of his heart and the 
 cause of its breaking,' replied Laurence Laughton. 
 'To me that is as tragic as anything that ever 
 happened.' 
 
 ' I do not doubt that,' retorted Vernon, hastily. 
 ' The story of your friend's broken heart may be 
 as tragic as anything that ever happened', but in
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 103 
 
 real life little or nothing happens in the way it 
 ought to happen artistically.' 
 
 ' That was Balzac's theory,' said Dr. Cheever, 
 in his deep voice. 
 
 ' You remind one of the French painter Boucher, 
 was it, or Watteau, who complained that nature 
 put him out,' said Uncle Larry. 
 
 ' Balzac's or Boucher's, the theory is sound for 
 all that,' contended the poet. ' In real life we 
 have only the raw material, and it is crude and 
 harsh, and it has no beginning and no end in an 
 artistic sense, I mean. It is wholly lacking in 
 symmetry and proportion. And as modern real 
 life is nearest to us, it is the least artistic and the 
 most unfinished.' 
 
 ' Tell him your story, Mr. Laughton, and con- 
 fute him on the spot,' suggested the doctor. 
 
 1 Yes, do tell us, Uncle Larry,' said Mrs. Vernon ; 
 ' and then, if it really is tragic, you know, why, 
 perhaps Rudolph can use it in a poem after all.' 
 
 ' I'm open to conviction, of course,' admitted 
 Vernon, ' and I'd like to hear about your friend's 
 taking off, but I am free to say that I do not 
 believe it is a rounded and harmonious whole. As 
 I said, in real life we can get of necessity only 
 fragments out of a man's life, and a cross section of 
 a fragment is not art.' 
 
 Laurence Laughton hesitated a moment. The 
 waiter brought in the coffee, and the gentlemen 
 lighted their cigars. 
 
 ' It seems almost like sacrilege to the dead to
 
 104 BRIEF AS WOMAN 1 S LOVE 
 
 tell Ralph De Witt's story merely to prove a 
 point,' Laughton began, taking a sharp pull at his 
 tiny cigar. ' But it will free my mind to tell the 
 tale, and it gives me occasion to speak well of him. 
 He was the son of an old friend who had been 
 very kind to me when I was a boy, and I tried to 
 pay to the son the debt of gratitude due to the 
 father. His mother died when he was born, and 
 as an only child his father gave him a double share 
 of love, for himself and for his mother. But when 
 he was only seven years old the battle of Gettys- 
 burg was fought, and Lieutenant-Colonel De Witt 
 took command of our regiment after Colonel De- 
 lancey Jones had been killed in the first day's 
 fight. As we pressed forward to repel Pickett's 
 charge, De Witt fell from his horse, mortally 
 wounded. He took my hand as I bent over him, 
 and said, " Take care of Ralph." The boy was 
 his last thought, and those were his last words. 
 He had left a will appointing me the boy's 
 guardian, and I do not believe that ever did 
 guardian and ward get on better together than 
 Ralph and I. He was a bright boy, strong, whole- 
 some, manly a true boy, as he was to be a true 
 man. He worshipped the memory of his father, 
 and in remembrance of his father's death he 
 wanted to be a soldier. At a competitive ex- 
 amination he won his appointment to a cadetship 
 at West Point. He enjoyed his four years of 
 hard work there, and he was graduated first in his
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 105 
 
 class, going into the Engineers at once as a second 
 lieutenant. Side by side with his enthusiasm for 
 the soldier's calling lay a strong interest in science, 
 and in getting into the Engineers he had accom- 
 plished the utmost of his hopes. He had been a 
 happy boy ; he had passed four happy years at 
 West Point ; and he began life with the prospect 
 of happiness full before him.' 
 
 As Laughton paused to light his cigar, which 
 he had suffered to go out, Mrs. Vernon interjected, 
 ' Why, you said it was to be a tragedy, but it begins 
 like a comedy. I can almost hear wedding bells 
 in the distance.' 
 
 ' Where is the heroine of your tragedy ? ' asked 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' Well,' said Uncle Larry, inhaling a mouthful 
 of smoke, ' the heroine is at hand.' 
 
 ' I am glad of that,' remarked Mrs. Vernon, 
 soaking a lump of sugar in her coffee-spoon. ' I 
 don't like stories of men only ; I want to hear 
 about a woman.' 
 
 ' I do not think you will like the woman when 
 you hear about her,' answered Laughton. 
 
 ' Why, was she ugly ? ' asked the lady. 
 
 ' No ; she was almost the most beautiful woman 
 I ever saw ; and I have heard you say that she was 
 beautiful.' 
 
 ' Why, Uncle Larry, have I ever seen her ? ' 
 inquired Mrs. Vernon, eagerly. ' When was it ? 
 and where ? '
 
 icS BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 ' You have seen her, but you do not know her,' 
 answered Laughton. 
 
 ' Oh, how mysterious ! Now go on and tell me 
 all about it, and where your friend met her, and 
 what happened.' And Mrs. Vernon lifted her 
 lump of sugar to her lips and settled back on the 
 divan which ran along one wall of the little room. 
 
 ' Ralph De Witt got leave of absence in the 
 latter part of the summer of 1881, and he came 
 East for a change. Some friends were going to 
 Mount Desert, and he joined them in a trip to that 
 fascinating summer school of philosophy. His 
 friends went away after a week, but he stayed on. 
 The Duchess of Washington Square you know 
 Mrs. Martin, of course ? ' And Laughton paused 
 for an answer. 
 
 ' Oh dear, yes,' laughed Mrs. Vernon. ' Every- 
 body knows the Duchess.' 
 
 ' Then you know that she is a born match- 
 maker ? ' 
 
 ' Indeed I do ! Why, it was she who intro- 
 duced Rudolph to me. The dear old soul!' 
 answered Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' Well,' said Uncle Larry, ' then you will not be 
 surprised to be told that she seized on Ralph De 
 Witt as soon as he arrived, and insisted on intro- 
 ducing him to the most beautiful girl in Mount 
 Desert.' 
 
 ' What was her name ? ' asked Mrs. Vernon, 
 innocently. 
 
 ' Her name was Sibylla/
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 107 
 
 1 Sibylla ? That does not help me out. 1 
 never heard of a Sibylla. Did you ? ' asked Mrs. 
 Vernon, turning to Dr. Cheever. 
 
 ' I have met a lady of that name quite re- 
 cently/ answered the doctor, and there seemed to 
 be a certain significance in his tone. 
 
 ' What was she like ? ' queried the poet. 
 
 ' I'm not a good hand at an inventory of a 
 woman's charms, but I'll do it as well as I can. 
 She was a blonde with dark eyes. Her face was 
 absolutely perfect in its Greek purity and regu- 
 larity. Her neck and arms were worthy of the 
 hand of Phidias or Praxiteles ; and, magnificent as 
 she seemed, she had a certain marble statuesque- 
 ness which makes the allusion even more ' exact 
 than it is complimentary. In fact, she was not a 
 woman one could compliment on her looks, for her 
 beauty was of so high an order that all praise 
 seemed inadequate and paltry. I heard Mat 
 Hitchcock once say that she walked like a god- 
 dess and danced like an angel.' 
 
 ' And where did this paragon of perfection come 
 from ? ' asked Mrs. Vernon unenthusiastically. 
 
 ' From a little town in the interior of New York. 
 Her parents were poor, and they had stinted them- 
 selves to send her to a fashionable school in New 
 York. Then she had rich relatives, and it was a 
 wealthy aunt who had taken her to Mount Desert.' 
 
 ' And your friend Ralph De Witt was 'the 
 Pygmalion who sought to warm this cold beauty 
 into life ? ' This was the question of the poet.
 
 io8 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Uncle Larry ; ' he fell in love 
 with her the instant he laid eyes on her, and to 
 him love was no plaything or pastime ; it was a 
 passion to endure till death. After three brief 
 weeks of delight in her presence, Ralph had to go 
 back to his post. He left a throng of other ad- 
 mirers around her, and he had had no chance to 
 tell her of his love. To her their slight intimacy 
 was nothing more than a summer flirtation ; 
 to him it was a matter of life and death. He 
 returned to his work, thinking that she did not 
 care for him, and he toiled hard to see if he could 
 not forget, or at least forego her. But it was no 
 use. At Christmas he gave it up, and ran over to 
 New York to see her. She was away in the country, 
 but she came back the last day of the year, and he 
 went to wish her a happy New Year. Cupid 
 sometimes pays a New- Year's call, although call- 
 ing has gone out of fashion in New York ; and 
 Ralph De Witt came to me after he left her, with 
 a glow in his face and a look in his eyes which told 
 me he had hope. How handsome he was as he 
 stood in my study, with his back to the fire, telling 
 me the desire of his heart ! What a fine, manly 
 fellow he was ! Perhaps she had seen this ; per- 
 haps she had caught from him the contagion of 
 emotion ; perhaps she had really recognised and 
 respected the depth and the nobility of his nature, 
 and the strength of his passion. The next day he 
 saw her again for a few minutes only, but they 
 were enough for him to ask her to be his wife, and
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE log 
 
 for her to accept him as her future husband. They 
 agreed that the engagement should not be an- 
 nounced, for he would not be with her again for 
 months, and as an engaged girl she would not have 
 so good a time.' 
 
 'Well!' interrupted Mrs. Vernon, 'she was 
 frank, at all events.' 
 
 ' She jilted him, I suppose ? ' asked Rudolph 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' She married him,' answered Uncle Larry, 
 calmly. 
 
 Dr. Cheever looked up with a glance of sur- 
 prise and said : ' She married him ? Sibylla mar- 
 ried Ralph ? Are you sure ? ' 
 
 ' I am quite sure.' 
 
 ' I did not know that,' replied the doctor, re- 
 suming his attitude of silent attention. 
 
 ' I didn't know you knew anything at all about 
 it,' said the doctor's sister. 'At least you never 
 told me anything.' 
 
 Dr. Cheever smiled gravely and said nothing. 
 Uncle Larry continued : 
 
 ' Early in the spring Ralph De Witt received an 
 appointment he had long wished. He was de- 
 tailed to take charge of a special survey of the 
 canons of the Colorado River, a task which would 
 take him several summers, while his winters would 
 be employed in working up the observations made 
 during the warm- weather. He wrote to me that 
 the Department would allow him to do this winter 
 work either in Washington or at Newport.'
 
 i io BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 ' I think Newport is just as pleasant in winter 
 as itns in summer,' said Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' Ralph thought so too/ answered Laurence 
 Laughton, 'and he knew that Sibylla was fond 
 of Newport as she was of everything rich and 
 fashionable. Late in the spring he came to New 
 York. He had ten days to make ready for his 
 long summer in the midst of the marvels of the 
 West. He came here with a fixed idea to get 
 her to marry him before he went away to his 
 work. You see, he loved her so much that his 
 heart sank at the fear of losing her. He trusted 
 her, but he wanted to make sure. All he wished 
 was to have her bound to him firmly. How he 
 got her consent I cannot imagine, but I suppose 
 the hot fire of his manly love must have thawed 
 her icy heart. He succeeded somehow or other, 
 and the morning of his last day in New York he 
 came to me and told me that she had promised to 
 slip out with him that afternoon to old Dr. Van 
 Zandt's to be married quietly at the rectory. No 
 one was to know of this. It was, in fact, to be 
 only a legal confirmation or ratification of their 
 engagement. The wedding, to which all the world 
 would be invited, was fixed for the following 
 December.' 
 
 ' And so they were married privately ? ' asked 
 Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' Yes. I was standing on rrl'y doorstep, bask- 
 ing in the pleasant sunshine of a beautiful after- 
 noon in May, as Ralph De Witt came up the steps,
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE in 
 
 as radiantly happy as ever man was. " Uncle 
 Larry," said he, as he wrung my hand with a grip 
 of steel, " I have been married nearly half an hour." 
 " Where's the bride ? " I asked. " She has gone 
 home to dress fora swell dinner to-night. I've said 
 good-bye to her. I sha'n't see her again for nearly 
 six months. But I do not mind the parting now, 
 for she is mine mine by the law and the gospel. 
 Uncle Larry, come to Delmonico's and dine with 
 me ; I'll treat. Let's have a wedding feast." We 
 had our dinner, and I let him talk about her through 
 the long spring evening, as we walked up and down 
 Fifth Avenue. He poured out his heart to me. 
 There never was a man so happy or so miserable. 
 He had married her, but he had to leave her almost 
 at the steps of the altar. The parting was painful, 
 but he was full of hope and heart, and he trusted 
 her. To hear him talk about her would have made 
 you think that there was only one woman in the 
 whole wide world, and that there never had been 
 her equal. Romeo was not more rhapsodic, nor 
 was Juliet more beautiful than she, though the fair 
 maid of Verona had the advantage of a warm 
 heart, which Sibylla lacked. He told me his 
 dreams and his plans. He had a share in a mine 
 in Colorado, and he was perfecting a new process 
 for reducing ore, a patent for which he expected 
 in a few days. These were in the future. For the 
 present he had his pay and allowances and the 
 income of the little property his mother had left, 
 and these together were enough for them to live on.
 
 112 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 He had had an unexpected legacy from an uncle ; 
 and of this he had said nothing to Sibylla, for he 
 wished to surprise her with the tiny little cottage 
 he meant to buy her in the outskirts of Newport. 
 There they would live together and be happy in 
 the winter ; while in the summer, while he was 
 away at his field-work, she was to invite her mother 
 and her sister to bear her company. Now I knew 
 her mother, and I knew she had no heart, but only 
 a hard ambition in the place' where the heart 
 ought to be. I thought the less Sibylla had to do 
 with her mother, the better for Ralph's chance of 
 happiness. But I said nothing. I never had hinted 
 a doubt of the girl, and, in fact, all my doubts had 
 been killed by the wedding. I never even told him 
 he had better make the best showing he could be- 
 fore her. And I have often wondered whether the 
 end would have been different if he had told her 
 of the house at Newport. But I said nothing ; I 
 let him talk, and he talked of her, and of her only, 
 until at last I lost sight of him as he stood on the 
 platform of the sleeping-car of the Pacific express. 
 I watched the train out of the station, and I have 
 never seen Ralph De Witt again from that day to 
 this at least, I think not.' 
 
 At this last remark, added in a lower tone, Dr. 
 Cheever shot a quick glance of interest at the 
 speaker. He took his cigar from his mouth as 
 though he was about to say something, but appa- 
 rently he thought better of it, and he returned the 
 cigar to his lips silently.
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 113 
 
 It was Rudolph Vernon who spoke : ' I can't 
 say that I see anything tragic in your story yet, or 
 even any elements of a possible tragedy. But go 
 on say your say out. I will reserve criticism 
 until you have told the tale.' 
 
 ' Yes, go on, Uncle Larry. What happened ? ' 
 asked Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' For several months nothing happened. I had 
 a letter now and again from Ralph, who was 
 working hard by day and dreaming dreams by 
 night. Private business kept me from spending 
 the summer in Europe. Perhaps it was just as 
 well I was at home, for early in July old Dr. Van 
 Zandt had a stroke and he never left his bed 
 again. When he died, toward the end of August, 
 there was much to be done to get the affairs of 
 the church in order, and most of this work was 
 put on my shoulders as senior warden. I had 
 been down to the Safe Deposit Vaults one hot 
 day, about the first of September, and I bought 
 the first edition of the " Gotham Gazette " to read 
 on my way up-town in the elevated. The first tele- 
 gram which caught my eye announced the death 
 of Ralph De Witt ! ' 
 
 ' Poor fellow ! ' was Mrs. Vernon's involuntary 
 comment. 
 
 ' Was it an accident ? ' asked her brother. 
 
 Uncle Larry hesitated a second, and then 
 answered : 'All that the telegram told me was the 
 barren fact of his death. It seems he had insisted 
 on scaling the precipitous side of a canon ; before 
 
 1
 
 ii4 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 he had ascended more than a few feet he slipped, 
 and fell head first into the rushing river below, 
 and in a second the current bore him beyond all 
 reach of help. At first I was stunned by the 
 shock. I could not believe that the brave boy 
 I had known since he was a baby had had the life 
 dashed out of him by the cruel waters of the 
 Colorado. Then I suddenly thought of his wife. 
 No one knew of their marriage, or even of their 
 engagement, except me and I doubted if she 
 were aware of my knowledge. I knew her very 
 slightly ; I had felt the charm of her beauty, but I 
 had always chilled as she came near me. I ques- 
 tioned if it were not my duty to break the news to 
 her gently before the cold brutality of a newspaper 
 paragraph told her of her husband's lonely death. 
 The evening paper would not reach her until the 
 next morning, and if I took the three o'clock train 
 I could be in Newport in time to meet her that 
 night. She was staying at the Sargents', and there 
 was to be a ball that very evening. I was always 
 very fond of Sam Sargent's daughter Dorothy 
 Mrs. Bob White, you know and she had sent me 
 an invitation. I had accepted, although I had been 
 moved afterward to give up the idea of going. 
 With the " Gotham Gazette " in my hand I made 
 up my mind that it was my duty to go to New- 
 port and to break the news of Ralph De Witt's 
 death as best I could to his unsuspecting wife.' 
 
 Laurence Laughton paused in the telling of 
 his tale, and threw his little cigar through the open
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 115 
 
 window. He leaned over the table 'and poured out 
 a tiny glass of brandy. Then he continued : 
 
 ' Before eleven o'clock that night I was in New- 
 port and at Mr. Sargent's. I asked for Sibylla, 
 and I was told she was in the ball-room. As 
 Sargent's house was not large, he had floored over 
 his lawn, and the ball-room was a tent, hung with 
 flowers, and lighted by the electric light hidden 
 behind Japanese umbrellas. As I entered the tent 
 I thought of Ralph De Witt lying dead and alone, 
 after a struggle with the angry current of the 
 Colorado, while his wife, for whom he would have 
 given his soul, was dancing the German with a 
 French attach^. After many vain attempts I got 
 speech of her at last. She took my arm, and I 
 wondered if she could hear the thumping of my 
 heart. We walked up and down a dim piazza, more 
 fit for the confidences of a lover than for the message 
 I bore. But if I was excited, she was as calm as 
 ever. As delicately as I could I broke the fatal 
 news.' 
 
 ' How did she take it?' asked Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 ' She took it coolly. I had thought her cold, 
 but I confess that her placidity astonished me. 
 She never lost command over herself. She 
 showed no feeling whatever. She listened to me 
 quietly, and said : " Dear me ! what a pity ! Such 
 a handsome fellow too ! and so promising ! 
 You were old friends, were you not ? It musf 
 be a sad blow to you." This reception fairly 
 staggered me. Plainly enough she never suspected
 
 Ii6 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 that I knew of her engagement and of her mar- 
 riage. The careless way in which she brushed 
 aside my news and offered her condolence to me 
 was the last thing I had expected. If it was self- 
 control, it was marvellous ; if it was acting there 
 was never better here on the boards of the 
 Comedie Francaise ; if it was hardness of heart, 
 then it was well for Ralph De Witt that his body 
 lay lifeless on the bank of the Colorado. Just 
 then Sam Sargent came out and joined us. I said 
 nothing, but Sibylla began at once, and told him 
 of Ralph's death. Sargent is a good- hearted fellow, 
 coarse at bottom, it may be, but he can be sympa- 
 thetic. He knew I loved Ralph, and he asked me 
 for the details of his death with kindness in his 
 voice. She listened, impassive and stately, as I 
 told Sargent the little I knew. I watched her, 
 but she never even changed colour. When I had 
 ended, she said, " I liked Mr. De Witt very much. 
 I used to see a good deal of him at Mount Desert 
 last summer we went rocking together." Then 
 she took Sargent's arm and went into the house, 
 leaving me speechless. Her indifference was ap- 
 palling, and I did not know what to think.' 
 
 ' A very remarkable young woman, I must say,' 
 declared Rudolph Vernon. 
 
 ' That's just like a man,' said Mrs. Vernon, 
 indignantly. ' Do you suppose she wanted to 
 reveal the secrets of her heart to a stranger? Of 
 course she did not. She kept calm before you 
 and the rest of you men, but when she was alone
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 117 
 
 she dropped the mask of composure and cried all 
 night.' 
 
 ' I might have given her the benefit of the 
 doubt for a little while, at all events, if ' 
 
 ' If what ? ' insisted Mrs. Vernon, with a true 
 woman's instinct of sex defence. 
 
 ' If I had not met Miss Dorothy Sargent, who 
 came to me in great distress. " Oh, Uncle Larry," 
 she said, " what am I to do ? Papa is going to 
 marry again, and he's old enough to be her father 
 too, for she was at school with me, and I was a 
 class ahead of her, and she wasn't clever either. 
 I've no use for a step-mother younger than I am 
 myself, have I ? And don't you think he's big 
 enough to know better ? " I was in no mood to talk 
 of marrying and of giving in marriage, but I did 
 ask her whom it was her father proposed to marry.' 
 
 'It wasn't that Sibylla, was it?' asked Mrs. 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' It was.' 
 
 ' But she had refused him ? ' 
 
 * She had accepted him.' 
 
 ' But she was a married woman ! ' 
 
 ' No one knew that. And at any rate she had 
 accepted Sam Sargent. Now you know what 
 manner of man Sam Sargent is. He is a Wall 
 Street speculator, a man of a coarse nature, 
 covered with a layer of refinement, a man of 
 exceeding shrewdness, a man who worshipped 
 success however attained. He's here in Paris now ; 
 he was in a box opposite us at the Opera last
 
 ii8 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 night. Think of a woman's putting aside Ralph 
 De Witt to take Sam Sargent ! She had found 
 out that she wanted wealth and the luxury it gives, 
 and she turned from Ralph to Sargent. She had 
 no strength of character worse yet, no heart. 
 She was as weak as water, and as treacherous.' 
 
 'You don't mean to tell me that that wo- 
 man actually contemplated bigamy ? ' demanded 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' Well, I don't know what else to call it,' 
 answered Uncle Larry ; ' but she did not look on it 
 that way. She thought that her marriage to Ralph 
 was an idle form, known only to the clergyman 
 and to themselves. Dr. Van Zandt was dead. 
 She knew Ralph would not claim her against her 
 will, and she believed that if she destroyed her 
 marriage certificate the only tangible evidence of 
 her wedding that she could undo the past and 
 be a free woman.' 
 
 ' That's feminine logic with a vengeance,' said 
 Rudolph Vernon. 
 
 'But if the certificate was destroyed why 
 shouldn't she remarry ? ' asked Mrs. Vernon, 
 innocently. 
 
 'When I got back to New York two days 
 later,' pursued Laughton, ' I found on my desk a 
 letter from Ralph De Witt. I was reading it over 
 again last night, after we returned from the Opera. 
 I will read it to you, if you like.' 
 
 ' Yes, do, Uncle Larry,' begged Mrs. Vernon. 
 
 Uncle Larry took the letter from his pocket,
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 119 
 
 and read it as well as he could, for his voice 
 trembled, and more than once he almost broke 
 down. 
 
 ' In Camp on the Colorado : 
 'August 30, 1882. 
 
 ' DEAR UNCLE LARRY, I got back to the 
 camp last night, after a little paseo up in the hills 
 for three weeks, and I found your welcome letter 
 awaiting me. I was pretty tired, for we had been 
 in the saddle thirty-four hours on a stretch, but I 
 read it through before I took off my coat. I had 
 hoped for a letter from Some One Else, but I was 
 disappointed ; there must be a breakdown in the 
 mail route somewhere. So I read over again the 
 paragraph in your letter referring to her ; and then 
 I tumbled into bed and slept eighteen hours on end. 
 It was nearly noon the next day when I awoke, 
 refreshed and a new man. In truth, I am a new 
 man, improved and made over by the patent 
 process of Cupid and Co. I wake up every morn- 
 ing thanking God for my youth and my strength, 
 and, above all, for the joy of my life. I am as 
 happy as any man ever was. My work is a delight 
 to me, and my future is a dream of bliss. It is no 
 wonder that I build castles in the air ; but I re- 
 member what Thoreau says, and I am trying to 
 put solid foundations under them. The mine is 
 doing splendidly ; it is a boom and not a blizzard 
 this year : and with experience and improved 
 machinery we hope for even better luck next 
 season. And I have finer news yet. You are my
 
 120 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 oldest friend, Uncle Larry, and my best friend- 
 except one, and I know you are not jealous of her 
 and so I will tell you first. The patent has been 
 granted for my new process for reducing ores. 
 And what is more, a practical man from Leadville, 
 a regular mining sharp, who saw the working 
 drawings at my patent agent's, has written to offer 
 me fifty thousand dollars for a quarter interest 
 Fifty thousand dollars ! Think of that, old man ! 
 I am a capitalist, a bloated bondholder, and she 
 shall marry a rich man after all. We'll make a 
 raid on Tiffany's when I arrive in New York^in 
 the fall, and you shall help me pick out a pair of 
 solitaires real solitaires, as the lady said which 
 will give her ears a chance to rival her eyes in 
 their sparkle. 
 
 ' Good-bye, Uncle Larry, and for ever. When 
 you read this I shall be dead and out of her 
 way. What use is life to me if she does not love 
 me ? Her letter has come at last, and I know the 
 worst. She dreads poverty, she breaks with me, 
 and I fear she is going to marry another man. 
 This is a damned bad world, isn't it, Uncle Larry ? 
 But I forgive her ; I cannot help it, for I love her 
 as much as ever. Poor girl, how she must have suf- 
 fered before she wrote me that letter ! If she wants 
 money she shall have it she shall have all I hoped 
 to gain. I have no use for it but to make her 
 happy. There's a man in our party here who was 
 a lawyer once, and he is drawing up my will for 
 me. I have made you my executor. You will do
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 121 
 
 this last favour for me, won't you ? I leave 
 everything to her, the little money I have in bank, 
 my share in the mine, my three-quarters of the 
 patent for I have just written to accept the fifty 
 thousand dollars for the quarter. I'd like her to 
 have some money to go on with. You will attend 
 to all these things for me ; you have done so much 
 for me already that I feel I have a right to make 
 this last request. This is a long letter, but I want 
 you to have my last words my last dying speech 
 and confession. Don't think I am going to be 
 hanged ; a man who is born to be drowned can 
 never be hanged ; and I am going to be drowned 
 to-morrow. I don't know how or when, but a fall 
 from the rocks is an easy thing to accomplish, and 
 the river will do the rest. If she wishes to marry, 
 I had best take myself out of the way and leave 
 her free. After all, what does it matter ? Life is 
 little or nothing it is only a prologue, or the posy 
 of a ring. It is brief, my lord as woman's love. 
 I am in haste to be about my business and to put 
 an end to it The prologue has lasted too long ; 
 it is time for the real play to begin, the tragedy of 
 time and eternity, to last until ' the curtain, a 
 funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm.' 
 Poor Poe was right for once, though I need no 
 angels to affirm " that the play is the tragedy, Man, 
 and its hero the conqueror, Worm." We shall 
 meet again, Uncle Larry, and until that meeting, 
 God be with you, and God help me ! 
 
 ' RALPH DE WITT.'
 
 1-2 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 'Did she take the legacy?' asked Rudolph 
 Vernon. 
 
 ' She did indeed,' answered Laughton. ' And 
 Sam Sargent organised a company for working 
 the patent, and floated it in London, and cleared 
 half a million or more out of it. And it was lucky 
 he did, because he got squeezed badly in the Trans- 
 continental Telegraph corner last year, and Ralph 
 De Witt's legacy is all the Sargents have left now.' 
 
 ' So she actually married Sargent ? ' was Mrs. 
 Vernon's doleful remark. 
 
 'Why not?' asked Laughton, in return. 
 ' Ralph's death left her free to marry whom she 
 pleased.' 
 
 ' Now you have told your tale, you have proved 
 my assertion,' said Rudolph Vernon. ' In real life 
 the story is incomplete. There is something 
 lacking.' 
 
 ' She will be punished somehow, never fear,' was 
 Mrs. Vernon's cheerful assertion. 
 
 ' I think the puVnshment has begun already,' 
 said Laughton. ' Indeed, it followed fast upon 
 the wrong-doing. At first I fear that Ralph's 
 death was almost a relief to her, for it gave her 
 the freedom she wanted. But no sooner was she 
 married than she began to tremble at her work. 
 With all her money she could not bribe her own 
 thoughts to let her alone. She could not stab her 
 own conscience, and kill it with a single blow. If a 
 conscience must be murdered, it takes a long course 
 of slow poisoning to do it. Then one day there
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 123 
 
 came a reaction, and she suddenly changed her 
 mind, and refused to believe that Ralph was dead. 
 She thinks that he is alive and near her. She 
 imagines that he watches her, and sends messages 
 to her by one friend and another. She fancies at 
 times that he hovers about her, an impalpable 
 presence. Then, again, he becomes a tangible 
 entity, a living person, and she declares that she 
 has seen him standing before her, with his eyes 
 fixed on her eyes, as though seeking to read the 
 secret of her soul.' 
 
 'That's what the doctor here would call a 
 curious hallucination,' said Mr. Vernon. 
 
 'Well, I don't know,' answered Uncle Larry, 
 doubtfully. 
 
 'Why, the man's dead, isn't he?' asked Mrs. 
 Vernon with interest. 
 
 ' As I said before,' responded Uncle Lariy, ' I 
 don't know.' 
 
 ' But what do you think ? ' 
 
 ' Well, I don't know what to think,' answered 
 Mr. Laughton. ' Of course I thought he was dead. 
 Yet his body was never found, though the sur- 
 veying party searched for it for ten days or more. 
 When I heard how Mrs. Sargent felt and what she 
 fancied, I wondered and I doubted. Now I almost 
 think I have seen him once, or rather twice.' 
 
 'When?' 
 
 ' Last night.' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 ' Here in Paris at the Opera. Once as we
 
 124 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 entered, and then, again, after the third act. The 
 first time was in the lobby ; we stood face to face. 
 If the man who confronted me then was not Ralph 
 De Witt, he was strangely like him. I had a 
 queer, uncanny shiver, but the man looked me in 
 the eye, and did not know me, and passed on, and 
 I lost sight of him.' 
 
 ' And the second time ? ' asked Dr. Cheever, 
 who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation, 
 although he had listened most attentively. 
 
 ' As the curtain fell on the third act, I looked 
 at Mrs. Sargent, who sat by the side of her hus- 
 band in a box to the right of us. I saw in her 
 eyes a look of horror or of fear. I turned my head, 
 and there, on the opposite side of the theatre, 
 stood the same man, Ralph De Witt, or his double. 
 He was gazing intently at Mrs. Sargent. I looked 
 at her again, and I saw her whiten and fall side- 
 ways. Her husband caught her in his arms, and 
 they left the box at once. When I sought my 
 dead friend again he was gone.' 
 
 There was silence after Laughton stopped 
 speaking. Then Rudolph Vernon remarked : 
 ' The romance of real life is better rounded than I 
 had thought, but it is still incomplete artistically. 
 There is more behind these facts, and to evolve 
 this unsubstantial but essential something is the 
 duty of the literary artist.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Dr. Cheever, slowly ' perhaps 
 a physician may complete the tale as well as an 
 author.'
 
 BRIEF AS WOMAN'S LOVE 125 
 
 ' Why, Richard, what do you know about it ? ' 
 asked his sister. 
 
 'Very little indeed, and until this morning I 
 knew even less. If I had heard Mr. Laughton's 
 story yesterday, I could have decided more 
 promptly and more intelligently, it may be, but my 
 decision would have been the same.' 
 
 'Were you called in to attend Mrs. Sargent 
 this morning ? ' asked his sister. ' Oh, why didn't 
 you tell us before ? ' 
 
 ' I should not tell you now if the case were not 
 hopeless. I could not go to the Salon with you 
 this morning because I was suddenly summoned 
 to join two French physicians in an examination 
 of Mrs. Sargent's mental condition. There could 
 be no doubt about it, unfortunately ; we all agreed ; 
 and an hour before I joined you here I signed the 
 order which committed her to an asylum.'
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM. 
 
 MRS. MARTIN, who was known to her lively young 
 friends in New York as the Duchess of Washington 
 Square, had a handsome place on the Hudson, 
 just above West Point. It was called the Eyrie 
 although, as Dear Jones naturally remarked, that 
 road did not take you there. Every fall, when the 
 banks of the river reddened to their ripest glory, 
 and when the maple had donned its coat of many 
 colours, the Duchess was wont to fill the Eyrie 
 with her young friends. From the Eyrie was 
 heard the report of many an engagement which 
 had hung fire at Newport and at Lenox. The 
 Duchess was fond of having pretty girls about her, 
 and she always invited clever young men to amuse 
 them. She was an admirable hostess, and no one 
 ever regretted that he had accepted her invitation. 
 Mr. Martin, who was, of course, relegated to his 
 proper position as merely the husband of the 
 Duchess, was, in fact, a charming old gentleman, 
 as the clever young men soon discovered when 
 they came to know him. Indeed, although Mrs, 
 
 K
 
 130 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 Martin was the dominant partner, Mr. Martin was 
 quite as popular as she. 
 
 On the afternoon of the last Saturday in 
 October, just as the sudden twilight was closing in 
 on the river, the ferry-boat came gently to its place 
 in the dock of the West Shore Station in Jersey 
 City, and two young men in the thick of the throng 
 which pressed forward to the train were thrust 
 sharply against each other. 
 
 ' Hello, Charley ! ' said one of them, recognising 
 his involuntary assailant : ' are you devoting your- 
 self to the popular suburban amusement known as 
 " catching your train " ? ' 
 
 ' Hello yourself ! I'm not a telephone,' Charley 
 Sutton responded, merrily. ' I'm catching a train 
 to-night because I'm going up to the Eyrie to 
 spend Sunday.' 
 
 ' So am I,' answered his friend, Mr. Robert 
 White, who was one of the editors of the ' Gotham 
 Gazette,' and who wrote admirably about all 
 aquatic sports under the alluring pen-name of 
 Poor Bob White.' 
 
 ' My wife is up there now,' continued Sutton. 
 
 * So is mine,' responded White ; ' and Dear 
 Jones and his wife promised to go up on this 
 train.' 
 
 By this time the young men were alongside the 
 train : they boarded the Pullman car, and in one of 
 the forward compartments they found Mr. and 
 Mrs. Delancey Jones and also Mrs. Martin. 
 
 The Duchess greeted them very cordially.
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 131 
 
 Come and sit down by me, both of you,' she said, 
 with her pleasant imperiousness : ' I want somebody 
 to talk to me. Dear Jones is getting perfectly 
 horrid. He is so taken up with his wife and the 
 baby now that he isn't half as entertaining as he 
 used to be.' 
 
 'Why, Mrs. Martin, how can you say so?' 
 interjected Mrs. Delancey Jones. ' I don't mono- 
 polise him at all. I scarcely see anything of him 
 now, he is so busy.' 
 
 ' You ought not to have introduced us to each 
 other if you didn't want us to fall in love and get 
 married,' said Dear Jones. 
 
 ' I decline all responsibility on that score,' the 
 Duchess declared. ' People call me a match-maker. 
 Now, I'm nothing of the sort. I never interfere 
 with Providence ; and you know marriages are 
 made in heaven.' 
 
 'You believe, then, that all weddings are or- 
 dained by Fate ? ' asked Charley Sutton. 
 
 ' Indeed I do,' Mrs. Martin answered. 
 
 ' Well, it is a rather comforting doctrine for 
 us happily-married men to believe that our good 
 luck was predestination and not free-will,' said 
 White. 
 
 ' I wish this predestination was accompanied 
 by a gift of second-sight,' Dear Jones remarked, 
 ' that we might see into the future and know our 
 elective affinity and not be downcast when siie 
 rejects us the first time of asking.' 
 
 Oh, you men would be too conceited to live if
 
 132 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 we didn't take you down now and then,' said his 
 wife, airily. 
 
 ' Of course / knew you didn't mean it,' he went 
 on. 
 
 'The idea!' she cried, indignantly. 'I did 
 mean it ! Why, I couldn't bear you then.' 
 
 ' Still,' White suggested, ' a power to see into 
 the future would simplify courtship, and men would 
 not draw as many blanks in the lottery of matri- 
 mony.' 
 
 ' Second-sight would be a very handy thing to 
 have in the house, anyhow,' Charley Sutton declared. 
 A man who had the gift could make a pocketful 
 of rocks in Wall Street.' 
 
 ' Oh, Delancey,' cried Mrs. Jones, ' wouldn't it 
 be delightful if you could only interpret dreams ! 
 You would make your fortune in a month.' 
 
 * I'd be sure to predict that the world was com- 
 ing to an end every time I ate mince-pie,' replied 
 Dear Jones. ' Nobody has had rich visions on 
 prison-fare since Joseph explained his dream to 
 Pharaoh's chief steward.' 
 
 ' I wonder how the esoteric Buddhists and the 
 psychic-research sharps would explain away that 
 little act of Joseph's,' Charley Sutton remarked, 
 with a fuller admixture than usual of the Califor- 
 nian idiom which he had brought from the home of 
 his boyhood. 
 
 ' They would call it telepathy, or thought- 
 transference, or mind-reading, or some other of the 
 slang phrases of the adept,' White answered.
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 133 
 
 ' I don't know how much there may be in this 
 Spiritualism,' said the Duchess, in her most im- 
 pressive manner ; ' but. somehow, I do not feel any 
 right to doubt it altogether. They do very strange 
 things at times, I must say.' 
 
 Dear Jones caught Charley Button's eye, and 
 they both winked in silent glee at this declaration 
 of principles. 
 
 ' This play that we have been to see this after- 
 noon,' the Duchess continued ' there is something 
 uncanny about it.' 
 
 'The last act is simply thrilling,' added Mrs. 
 Jones : ' I felt as if I must scream out.' 
 
 ' Where did you go ? ' asked White. 
 
 ' Mrs. Martin and I came in this morning,' 
 Mrs. Jones answered, ' to do some shopping, of 
 course ' 
 
 ' Of course,' interjected her husband, sarcasti- 
 cally. 
 
 ' And to go to the matinee at the Manhattan 
 Theatre, to see that English company in the 
 " Bells," ' she continued. 
 
 'It is rather an eerie play,' said Sutton. 'The 
 vision in the last act, where Mathias dreams that 
 he has been mesmerised and must answer the 
 accusing questions in spite of himself, is a very 
 strong bit of acting.' 
 
 ' I can't say I enjoyed it,' Mrs. Martin declared : 
 'it was too vivid. And I couldn't help thinking 
 how awkward it would be if a man was able to 
 read our thoughts and force us to tell our secrets.'
 
 134 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 ' If any man had such a power/ said Dear 
 Jones with imperturbable gravity, ' going out into 
 society would be inconveniently risky.' 
 
 'It would indeed!' the Duchess declared. 
 Whereupon Dear Jones and Charley Sutton ex- 
 changed a wicked wink. 
 
 'I'm not given to the interpretation of signs 
 and wonders,' said Dear Jones, 'and I have not 
 paid any special attention to the inexplicable 
 phenomena of occult philosophy ' 
 
 ' Very good ! ' interrupted White : ' " inexplicable 
 phenomena of occult philosophy " is very good.' 
 
 * Really, I don't think you ought to jest on such 
 a serious subject,' said the Duchess, authoritatively. 
 
 ' I assure you I meant to be very serious 
 indeed,' Mr. Delancey Jones explained : ' I was 
 going on to inform you that once I was told a 
 dream which actually came to pass.' 
 
 ' You mean the man on the " Barataria " ? ' 
 asked his wife, eagerly, and with a feminine dis- 
 regard of strictly grammatical construction. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' Why, that is just what I was going to ask you 
 to tell Mrs. Martin. I think it is the most wonder- 
 ful thing 1 ever heard. Oh, you must tell ! It 
 was only a month or so ago, you know, when we 
 were coming back from London. You tell them 
 the rest, Lance : I get too excited when I think 
 about it' 
 
 ' Spin us the yarn, as Bob White would say,' 
 remarked Charley Sutton.
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 135 
 
 'If you can a tale unfold,' White added, 'just 
 freeze the marrow of our bones ! ' 
 
 ' It isn't anything to laugh at, I assure you/ 
 cried Mrs. Jones, pathetically. ' You think that 
 because Lance is funny sometimes he can't be 
 serious ; but he can ! Just wait, and you shall 
 see ! ' 
 
 ' Is this a joke ? ' asked the Duchess, who was 
 always a little uneasy in the presence of a merry 
 jest. 
 
 ' It is quite serious, Mrs. Martin, I assure you. 
 There are no mystic influences in it, nor any mes- 
 meric nonsense : it is only the story of an extra- 
 ordinary case of foresight into the future, to which 
 I can bear witness in person, although I have abso- 
 lutely no explanation to propose.' 
 
 ' It fs a mystery, then ? ' asked White. 
 
 ' Precisely,' answered Jones ; ' and, with all 
 your detective skill, Bob, I doubt if you can spy 
 out the heart of it.' 
 
 The voice of the conductor was heard crying 
 ' All aboard ! ' a bell rang, a whistle shrieked, and 
 the train glided smoothly out of the station. The 
 little company in the compartment of the Pullman 
 car settled back comfortably to listen to the story 
 Dear Jones was going to tell. 
 
 II. 
 
 ' YOU know,' Mr. Delancey Jones began, ' that 
 I had to go to Paris this summer to get some de-
 
 136 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 corative panels for the parlour of a man whose 
 house I am building. Now, I'm not one of those 
 who think that Paris is short for Paradise, and I 
 wanted to run over and give my order and hurry 
 back. But my wife said she had business in Paris, 
 
 'And so I had,' his wife asserted. ' I hadn't a 
 dress fit to be seen in.' 
 
 ' Consequently,' he continued, disregarding this 
 interruption, ' she went with me ; and she wouldn't 
 go without the baby 
 
 ' I'm not an inhuman wretch, I hope,' declared 
 Mrs. Jones, sharply. ' As if I could leave the child 
 at home ! Besides, she needed clothes as much 
 as I did. But there ! I won't say another word. 
 When he looks at me like that, I know I've just 
 got to hold my tongue for the rest of the day.' 
 
 With unruffled placidity Dear Jones continued, 
 'The man who makes robes didn't come to time, 
 the. lady who sells modes was late, and the conduct 
 of the lingere was unconscionable. I trust,' he 
 asked, turning to his wife, ' that I have applied 
 these technical terms with precision ? ' 
 
 'Oh yes,' she answered ; 'and you know more 
 about them than most men do.' 
 
 ' The result was,' Dear Jones went on, ' that we 
 had to give up our passage on the " Provence." By 
 great good luck I managed to get fair state-rooms 
 on the " Barataria," which sailed from Liverpool a 
 fortnight or so later. We had two days in London 
 and a night in Liverpool, and then we went on
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 137 
 
 board the " Barataria," and waked up the next 
 morning in Queenstown, after a night of storm 
 which proved to us that although the ship rolled 
 very little she pitched tremendously. She had a 
 trick of sliding head-first into a wave, and then 
 shivering, and then wagging her tail up and down, 
 in a way which baffles description.' 
 
 ' You need not attempt to describe it,' said the 
 Duchess, with dignity, raising her handkerchief to 
 her lips. 
 
 Dear Jones was magnanimous. ' Well, I won't/ 
 he said. ' I'll leave it to your imagination. We 
 lay off Queenstown all Sunday morning. Early in 
 the afternoon the tender brought us the mails and 
 a few passengers. I leaned over the side of the 
 boat and watched them come up the gangway. 
 One man I couldn't help looking at : there was 
 something very queer about him. and yet I failed 
 to discover what it was. He seemed commonplace 
 enough in manner and in dress ; he was of medium 
 size ; and at first sight he had no tangible eccen- 
 tricity. And yet there was an oddity about him, 
 a certain something which seemed to set him 
 apart from the average man. Even now I cannot 
 say exactly wherein this personal peculiarity lay, 
 yet I studied him all the way over, and I found 
 that others had also remarked it. The one thing 
 in which he definitely differed from others ^was 
 his paleness ; he was as white as a ghost with the 
 dyspepsia. He was a man of perhaps fifty ; he 
 was clean-shaven ; he had very dark hair, so
 
 138 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 absurdly glossy that I wondered if it were not a 
 wig ; he had sharp black eyes, which were either 
 abnormally restless or else fixed in a preoccupied 
 stare. 
 
 ' The " Barataria " was crowded, and the ship's 
 company was as mixed as a Broadway car on a 
 Saturday afternoon : there was the regular medley 
 of pilgrims and strangers, republicans and sinners. 
 There was an English official, Sir Kensington 
 Gower, K.C.B., and there was a German antiquary, 
 Herr Julius Feuerwasser, the discoverer of the 
 celebrated Von der Schwindel manuscript. There 
 was a funny little fellow we called the Egyptian, 
 because he was born in Constantinople, of Dutch 
 parents, and had been brought up in China : he 
 had worked in the South African diamond-fields, 
 and he was then a salaried interpreter at a Cuban 
 court. In short, we had on board all sorts and 
 conditions of men, as per passenger-list. We 
 steamed out of Queenstown in the teeth of a stiff 
 gale ; and I shall willingly draw a veil over our 
 feelings for the first two days out. We managed 
 to get on deck and to get into our steamer-chairs 
 and to lie there inert until nightfall ; and that was 
 the utmost we could do. But Wednesday was 
 bright : the wind had died away to a fair breeze, just 
 brisk enough to keep our furnaces at their best ; 
 the waves had gone down ; and so our spirits rose. 
 I went to breakfast late and to lunch early. I 
 found that the odd-looking man I had noted when 
 he came aboard at Queenstown was placed opposite
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 139 
 
 to me, between Herr Julius Feuerwasser and Sir 
 Kensington Gower. They had already become 
 acquainted one with another. During lunch the 
 pale stranger had a fierce discussion with the 
 learned German about the Eleusinian mysteries, 
 and he pushed the Teuton hard, abounding in 
 facts and quotations and revealing himself as a 
 keen master of close logic. Herr Julius lost his 
 temper once as his wary adversary broke through 
 his guard and pinned him with an unfortunate 
 admission ; and at dinner we found that the 
 archaeologist had applied to the chief steward to 
 change his seat at table. As he was an over- 
 bearing person, I didn't regret his departure.' 
 
 ' I have seen a German grand duke eat peas 
 with his knife ! ' said the Duchess, as one who 
 produces a fact of the highest sociological im- 
 portance. 
 
 ' Apparently the victor in the debate did not 
 remark the absence of his vanquished foe/ Dear 
 Jones continued, ' for he and the K.C.B. soon got 
 into a most interesting discussion of the Rosicru- 
 cians. Obviously enough, Sir Kensington Gower 
 was a learned man, of deep reading and a wide ex- 
 perience of life, and he had given special attention 
 to the subject ; but the pale man spoke as one 
 having authority as though he were the sole sur- 
 viving repository of the Rosicrucian secret. The 
 talk between him and Sir Kensington was amicable 
 arid courteous, and it did not degenerate into a 
 mere duel of words like that in which he had
 
 140 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 worsted the German. Their conversation was ex- 
 tremely interesting, and I listened intently, having 
 had a chance to slip in a professional allusion 
 when they happened to refer to the connection be- 
 tween Architecture and Masonry. I heard Sir 
 Kensington Gower call the stranger by name Mr. 
 Blackstone. There seemed to me to be a curious fit- 
 ness between this name and its wearer : fancifully 
 enough, I saw in the man a certain dignity and a 
 certain prim decision which made the name singu- 
 larly appropriate. Before dinner was over, the 
 talk turned to lighter topics. As Sir Kensington 
 went below to see after his wife ' 
 
 ' I remember that you didn't come to see after 
 me ! ' interrupted Mrs. Jones, laughing. ' I was 
 left on deck to the tender mercies of the steward. 
 But no matter ; I forgive you.' 
 
 Her husband went on with his story, regardless 
 of this feminine personality : 
 
 c Mr. Blackstone and I left the table together to 
 get our coffee in the smoking-saloon. Our later 
 conversation had been so easy that I ventured to 
 say to him that a name like his could belong by 
 rights only to a lawyer or to a coal-dealer. The 
 remark was perhaps impertinent, but it was inno- 
 cent enough ; yet a sudden flush flitted across his 
 white face, and he gave me a piercing flash from 
 his unfathomable eyes before he answered, shortly, 
 " Yes, I am a lawyer ; and my father owns and 
 works a coal-mine near Newcastle." I did not risk 
 another familiarity. His manner towards me did
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 141 
 
 not change ; he was as polite and as affable as before : 
 I studied him in vain to see what might be the 
 peculiarity I was conscious of but unable to define. 
 We had our coffee, and, encouraged by my dinner, 
 I was emboldened to take the cigar Mr. Blackstone 
 offered me : I have rarely smoked a better. We 
 sat side by side for a few minutes almost in silence, 
 watching the smoke of our cigars as it wreathed 
 upward, forming quaint interrogation-marks in the 
 air and then fading away 'nt > nothing. Then the 
 man we called the Egyptian I knew him, as he 
 had crossed with us in the " City of Constanti- 
 nople " last year came over and asked us to take 
 a hand in a little game of poker.' 
 
 ' He knew the secret wish of your heart, didn't 
 he ? ' asked Robert White. ' I suggest this as an 
 appropriate epitaph for Dear Jones's tombstone : 
 " He played the game." ' 
 
 ' I think I can give you a simpler one,' said the 
 young Californian, ' just this : " Jones' Bones." ' 
 
 ' I wonder what there is so fascinating to you 
 men in a game like poker,' the Duchess remarked. 
 'You all love it. Mr. Martin says that it is the 
 only game a business-man can afford to play.' 
 
 ' Mr. Martin is a man of excellent judgment 
 as we can see,' said Robert White, bowing 
 politely. 
 
 ' Mr. Martin is a man of better manners than to 
 interrupt me when I am telling a story of the 'most 
 recondite psychological interest,' remarked Dear 
 Jones.
 
 i43 PERCHANCE, TO DREAM 
 
 1 Don't mind them, Lance,' his wife urged : 
 1 just hurry up to the surprising part of the story, 
 and they will be glad enough to listen then.' 
 Thus encouraged, Dear Jones proceeded : 
 ' As I said, the Egyptian came over and asked 
 us to join in getting up a game. Mr. Blackstone 
 had been playing with them every afternoon and 
 evening. We crossed over to an empty table in 
 the corner where the other players were awaiting 
 us. There was a change in Blackstone's manner 
 as he sat down before the cards. I thought I saw 
 a hotter fire in his eyes. As soon as he took his 
 seat, he reached out his hand and grasped the 
 pack which was lying on the table. For the first 
 time, I noticed how thin and slender and sinewy 
 his hand was. He gripped the cards like a steel- 
 trap, holding them for a second or two face down- 
 ward on the table. Then he cut hastily and looked 
 at the bottom card. Again the quick flush fied 
 across his face. He cut again and looked at the 
 card, and then again. I noted that he had cut a 
 black court-card three times running. After the 
 last cut he gripped the pack again, as though he 
 wished to try a fourth time, but he seemed to 
 change his mind, for he threw the cards down on 
 the table and said, " I think I had better not play 
 to-night." " Why not ? " asked the Egyptian. 
 Blackstone smiled very queerly, and hesitated 
 again, and then he said, " Because I should win 
 your money." The Egyptian laughed. " I take 
 my chance of that," he answered ; " you play ; you
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 143 
 
 win if you can ; I win if I can." Blackstone 
 smiled again. " You had better not urge me," he 
 replied : " sometimes I can look a little way into 
 the future : I can tell when I am going to be lucky. 
 If I play to-night, I shall win from all of you." 
 The Egyptian laughed again, and then began deal- 
 ing the cards. " I bet you two shillings," he said to 
 Blackstone, " I get a pot before you." The other 
 players pressed Blackstone to play. Finally he 
 yielded, repeating his warning, "If I play to- 
 night, I shall win everything." Then we began 
 the game.' 
 
 ' And did he win ? ' asked Charley Sutton, 
 by his interest confessing his initiation into the 
 freemasonry of poker. 
 
 ' Well, he did ! ' Jones answered. ' He emptied 
 my pocket in fifteen minutes. He won on good 
 hands and he won on bad hands. He came in on 
 an ace and got four of a kind. He could fill any- 
 thing. He could draw a tanyard to a shoestring, 
 as they say in Kentucky. He had a draught 
 like a chimney on fire. There never was such 
 luck. At last, when he drew a king of spades to 
 make a royal straight flush, the Egyptain sur- 
 rendered : " I run ! " he cried ; " I run like a leetle 
 rabbit ! " and he dropped his hands on each side of 
 his head, like the falling ears of a frightened rabbit.' 
 
 ' Was it a square game ? ' the young Californian 
 asked, eagerly. 
 
 ' I do not doubt it,' answered Jones : ' I watched 
 very closely, and I have no reason to think there
 
 144 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 was any unfair play. We changed the pack half a 
 dozen times ; and it made no matter who dealt, 
 Blackstone held the highest hand.' 
 
 ' Mr. Blackstone seems to have had a sort of 
 second-sight for his money,' suggested Robert 
 White. 
 
 ' Did his luck continue ?' asked Charley Sutton. 
 
 ' Generally,' Robert White remarked, judicially, 
 1 luck is like milk : no matter how good it is, if you 
 keep it long enough it is sure to turn.' 
 
 ' I didn't go into the smoking- saloon the next 
 day,' Dear Jones explained. ' I ' 
 
 ' I wouldn't let him ! ' interrupted Mrs. Jones. 
 ' I thought he had lost enough for one trip : so I 
 tried to console him by talking over the lovely 
 things I could have bought in Paris with that 
 money.' 
 
 'But on Friday,' her husband continued, 'as 
 we left the lunch-table together, Blackstone said to 
 me, " You did not play yesterday." I told him I 
 had lost all I could afford. " Yesterday the play 
 was dull," he said : " it was anybody's game. But 
 to-day you can have your revenge." I told him I 
 had had enough for one voyage. " But I insist on 
 your playing this afternoon," he persisted : " I am 
 going to lose, and I want you to win your money 
 back ; I do not want those other men to win from 
 me what you have lost : it is enough if they get 
 back what I have gained from them." " But how 
 do you know that you will lose and that I shall 
 win ? " I asked. He smiled a strange, worn smile,
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 145 
 
 and answered, " I have my moods, and I can read 
 them. To-day I shall lose. To-day is Friday, 
 you know hangman's day. Friday is always my 
 unlucky day. I get all my bad news on Friday. 
 A week ago this morning, for example, I had no 
 expectation of being where I am to-day." After 
 saying this, he gave me another of his transfixing 
 looks, as though to mark what effect upon me 
 . this confession might have. Then he urged me 
 again to take a hand in the game, and at last I 
 suffered myself to be persuaded. He had pro- 
 phesied aright, for we all had good luck and he 
 had bad luck. He played well brilliantly, even ; 
 he was not disheartened by his losses ; he held 
 good cards ; he drew to advantage ; but he was 
 beaten unceasingly. If he had a good hand, some 
 one else held a better. If he risked a bluff, he was 
 called with absolute certainty. In less than an 
 hour I had won my money back, and I began to 
 feel ashamed of winning any more. So I was very 
 glad when my wife sent for me to go on deck. But 
 just before dinner I looked into the smoking- 
 saloon for a minute. The five other players sat 
 around the little table in the corner, exactly as I 
 had left them three hours before. When the 
 Egyptian saw me he cried, gleefully, " You made 
 mistake to go away. We all win, all the time. 
 We clean him out soon." I looked at Blackstone. 
 His face was whiter even than before: his eye 
 caught mine, and I saw in it an expression I could 
 not define, but it haunted me all night. As I 
 
 L
 
 146 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 turned to go, he rose and said, " I have had enough 
 for to-day. It is no use to struggle with what is 
 written. Perhaps I may have a more fortunate 
 mood to-morrow." At dinner he sat opposite to 
 me, as usual, but there was no change in his manner. 
 He had lost heavily far more heavily than he 
 could afford, I fancy but there was no trace of 
 chagrin about him. He talked as easily and as 
 lightly as before ; and by the time dinner was half 
 over, he and Sir Kensington Gower were deep in a 
 discussion of the tenets of the Theosophists. Sir 
 Kensington was a scoffer, and he mocked at their 
 marvels ; but Blackstone maintained that, however 
 absurd their pretensions were, they had gained at 
 least a glimpse of the truth. He said that there 
 were those alive now who could work wonders 
 more mysterious than any wrought by the witch of 
 Endor. I remember that he told Sir Kensington 
 that the secret archives of Paris recorded certain 
 sharp doings of Cagliostro which passed all ex- 
 planation.' 
 
 ' If he knew so much,' asked Charley Sutton, 
 ' why didn't he know enough not to buck against 
 his bad luck ? ' 
 
 ' I can understand that/ Robert White re- 
 marked : ' he was like many another man he did 
 not believe what he knew! 
 
 ' Tell them about the dream, Lance,' said Mrs. 
 Jones. 
 
 ' I'm coming to that now,' answered her hus- 
 band. ' I have not yet told you that, in spite of
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 14? 
 
 our bad weather the first two days out, we had 
 made a splendid run almost the best on record. 
 By Friday evening it was evident that, unless there 
 were an accident of some sort, we should get inside of 
 Sandy Hook some time on Saturday night pro- 
 bably a little before midnight. So on Saturday 
 morning we all got up with a sense of relief at our 
 early delivery from our floating gaol. You have 
 heard of the saying that going to sea is as bad as 
 going to prison, with the added chance of drown- 
 ing ? ' 
 
 'I have heard the saying,' answered Bob White, 
 indignantly for he was always quick to praise a 
 seafaring life 'and I think that the man who 
 said it was not born to be drowned.' 
 
 'I believe you are web- footed,' returned Dear 
 Jones : ' most of us are not ; and we were delighted 
 to get within hail of the coast. It was a lovely 
 day, and the sea was as smooth as I ever saw it. 
 We made a run of four hundred and sixty-eight 
 miles at noon ; we took our pilot one hour later ; 
 we sent up our rocket and burned our Roman 
 candles off Fire Island about nine that evening ; 
 and we ran inside Sandy Hook a little after eleven. 
 Shortly before we had crossed the bar, and as the 
 lights of the coast were beginning to get more and 
 more distinct, Mr. Blackstone joined me, while I 
 was standing near the captain's room. The light 
 from the electric lamps on the stairs fell on his 
 head, and I marked the same uncanny smile which 
 had played about his face when he rose from the
 
 148 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 card-table after losing his money the day before. 
 We walked the length of the ship two or three 
 times, exchanging commonplaces about America. 
 I found that he had never been out of England 
 before ; but he had improved his time on the boat, 
 for he had already mastered the topography of 
 Manhattan Island and of New York Bay. He 
 asked me how close we should come to the shore 
 when we entered the Hook, and whether we should 
 anchor at Quarantine in mid-stream or alongside a 
 dock. When I had answered his questions as best I 
 could, he was silent for a little space. Then, sud- 
 denly, as we came to the end of the ship, he stopped, 
 and asked me if I were superstitious. I laughed, 
 and answered that I was like the man who did 
 not believe in ghosts but was afraid of them. " I 
 thought so," he returned. " I thought you were 
 not one of the narrow and self-satisfied souls who 
 believe only what they can prove, and who cannot 
 imagine circumstances under which two and two 
 may not make four. Now, I am superstitious 
 if a belief in omens, dreams, and other manifesta- 
 tions of the unseen can fairly be called a super- 
 stition. I cannot help lending credence to these 
 things, for every event of my life has taught me to 
 rely on the warnings and the promises I receive 
 from the unknown. I do not always understand 
 the message ; but if I disobey it when I do com- 
 prehend, I am sorely punished. I had a dream 
 last night which I cannot interpret. Perhaps you 
 may help me." I confess that I was impressed
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 149 
 
 by his earnestness ; and, not without a share of 
 curiosity, I told him I should be glad to listen. He 
 transfixed me with another rapid glance, and then 
 he said, " This was my dream. I dreamed that it 
 was to-morrow morning, Sunday morning, and 
 that I was in New York. I was reading a news- 
 paper : there is a paper in New York called the 
 'Gotham Gazette'?" I told him that there was 
 such a journal. " Is it published on Sunday ? " he 
 asked. I explained that it sold more copies on 
 Sunday than on any other day of the week.' 
 
 ' One hundred and thirty-seven thousand last 
 Sunday,' interrupted Robert White, smiling, ' ac- 
 cording to the sworn statement of the foreman of 
 the press-room : advertisers will do well, et cetera, 
 et cetera.' 
 
 ' For particulars, see small bills,' added Charley 
 Sutton. 
 
 Dear Jones paid no attention to these unneces- 
 sary remarks. 
 
 ' Blackstone repeated,"' he continued, ' that he 
 dreamt he was in New York on Sunday morning 
 reading the " Gotham Gazette ; " and he told me he 
 had been trying all day to remember exactly what 
 it was he had read in it, but his recollections were 
 vague, and he could recall with precision only four 
 passages from the paper. " You know," he said to 
 me, "how old and solid the house of Blough Brothers 
 and Company is ? " I answered that I knew that 
 they were as safe a bank as could be found in 
 Lombard Street. "The first thing I read in the
 
 ISO PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 ' Gotham Gazette ' of to-morrow," he said, " was a 
 message from London announcing that Blough 
 Brothers and Company had failed the day before 
 that is, to-day, Saturday." I laughed easily, and 
 told him that he ought not to give a second thought 
 to a dream as wild as his, for I supposed that 
 Blough Brothers and Company were as safe as the 
 Bank of England. He shot another sharp glance 
 through me, and answered, after a second's hesita- 
 tion, that stranger things had happened than the 
 failure of Blough Brothers and Company. Then 
 he went on to tell me the second of the things he 
 was able to recall from his vague memory of the 
 " Gotham Gazette " of Sunday morning. You re- 
 member the great steam -yacht race the inter- 
 national match between Joshua Hoffman's " Rha- 
 damanthus " and the English boat the " Skyrocket"? 
 Well, that race was to come off that very Saturday : 
 it had been decided probably only five or six hours 
 before our talk. Blackstone told me that he had 
 read a full account of it in the " Gotham Gazette " 
 of the next day, and that it had been an even race, 
 but that from the start the American yacht had led 
 a little, and that the English boat had been beaten 
 by less than ten minutes. The third thing he had 
 read in the paper was a review of a book. " I 
 think I have heard you refer to Mr. Rudolph 
 Vernon, the poet, as a friend of yours ? " he asked. 
 I said I knew Vernon, and that I expected to read 
 his new poem as soon as it was published. " It is 
 called ' An Epic of Ghosts,' and there was a long
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 151 
 
 criticism of it in the ' Gotham Gazette,' " said 
 Blackstone " a criticism which began by calling 
 it one of the most peculiar of poems and by declar- 
 ing that its effect on the reader was ghastly rather 
 than ghostly." ' 
 
 'And he told you this the night before you 
 arrived?' asked Robert White, very much interested. 
 ' Why ' 
 
 ' Let me tell my tale,' answered Dear Jones : 
 ' you can cross-question me afterwards. I shall 
 not be long now.' 
 
 ' And what was the fourth item he remem- 
 bered ? ' the Duchess inquired. 
 
 ' The fourth item,' Dear Jones responded, ' was 
 a paragraph announcing the arrival in New York 
 of the steamship " Barataria " the boat in the 
 stern of which we were then standing and noting 
 that one of the passengers was mysteriously miss- 
 ing, having apparently committed suicide by jump- 
 ing overboard the night before. With involuntary 
 haste I asked him the name of this passenger. " It 
 was not given in the newspaper," he answered, " or, 
 if it was, I cannot recall it." We stood for a mo- 
 ment silently side by side, gazing at the phospho- 
 rescent wake of the ship. The second officer, Mr. 
 Macdonough, came aft just then, and I walked 
 back with him to return a book I had borrowed. 
 I found my wife had gone to bed ; and in a few 
 minutes I was asleep, having given little heed to 
 Blackstone's dream, vividly as he had recited its 
 unusual circumstances. The next morning we
 
 152 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 were busied with the wearying preliminaries of dis- 
 embarking, and I did not notice the absence of 
 Blackstone from the breakfast table. When we 
 had been warped into dock and had signed our 
 papers before the custom-house officials, we left the 
 boat and went down on the wharf to wait for our 
 trunks, seven of which were at the very bottom of 
 the hold. A newsboy offered me the Sunday 
 papers, and I bought the " Gotham Gazette." The 
 first words that met my eye were the headlines of 
 a cable message : " Heavy Failure in London 
 Sudden Stoppage of Blough Brothers and Com- 
 pany." The. next thing I saw was an account of 
 the great steam-yacht race. As you know, the 
 " Rhadamanthus " had beaten the " Skyrocket " by 
 eight minutes. I could not but recall Blackstone's 
 dream, and I instantly tore the newspaper open, 
 that I might see if there were a review of Rudolph 
 Vernon's " Epic of Ghosts ; " and there it was. 
 The criticism began by calling it the most peculiar 
 of poems and by saying that its effect was ghastly 
 rather than ghostly. Then I searched for the 
 fourth item of the dream. But I could not find it. 
 That one alone of the four things he had told me 
 was not in the paper. There was nothing about 
 the " Barataria " but the formal announcement of 
 our arrival in the column of shipping news. Al- 
 though the fourth item was not to be found, the 
 presence of the other three was startling enough, 
 it seemed to me, and I thought that Blackstone 
 would be interested to see the real " Gotham
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 153 
 
 Gazette " of Sunday morning, that he might com- 
 pare it with the " Gotham Gazette " he had read in 
 his dream. I looked about on the dock, but he 
 was not visible. I went back on the boat, but I 
 could not lay eyes on him. I asked our table- 
 steward and others, but no one had seen him. At 
 last I went to Mr. Macdonough, the second officer, 
 to inquire his whereabouts. Before I had more 
 than mentioned Blackstone's name, Mr. Mac- 
 donough became very serious. " I cannot tell you 
 where Mr. Blackstone is, for I do not know," he 
 said : " in fact, nobody knows. He is missing. 
 It is quite a mystery what has become of him. 
 He has not been seen since we left him last night 
 you and I. So far as I can judge, we were the 
 last to speak to him or to see him. All trace of 
 him is lost since we walked forward last night, 
 leaving him standing in the stern of the ship. He 
 did not sleep in his state-room, so his steward 
 says. We do not wish to think that he has jumped 
 overboard, but I must confess it looks like it. Did 
 he ever say anything to you which makes you 
 think he might commit suicide?" I answered 
 that I could recall nothing pointing towards self- 
 destruction. " He was a queer man," said Mr. 
 Macdonough, "a very queer man, and I fear we 
 shall never see him again." And, so far as I know, 
 nobody has ever seen him again.' 
 
 As Dear Jones came to the end of his story^ the 
 rattling train plunged into a long tunnel.
 
 154 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 III. 
 
 WHEN the train at last shook itself out of the 
 tunnel, Robert White was the first to break the 
 silence. 
 
 ' To sum up,' he said to Dear Jones, ' this man 
 who called himself Blackstone told you on Saturday 
 evening four things which he had dreamt would be 
 in the " Gotham Gazette " of Sunday morning. 
 Three of these things were in the " Gotham Gazette " 
 and, while the fourth item was absent from the 
 newspaper, the suicide it recorded had apparently 
 taken place ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Dear Jones. 
 
 'How do you account for this extraordinary 
 manifestation of the power of second-sight operating 
 during sleep ? ' White asked. 
 
 Dear Jones replied, shortly : 
 
 ' Oh, I do not account for it.' 
 
 ' What have you to suggest ? ' White inquired. 
 
 ' I haven't anything to suggest,' Dear Jones 
 answered. ' I have given you the facts as I know 
 them Every man is free to interpret them to 
 please himself. I tell the tale only : I have not 
 hinted at any explanation, either natural or super- 
 natural.' 
 
 ' Perhaps Mr. White can unravel the mystery,' 
 said Mrs. Jones, with just a tinge of acerbity in her 
 manner. 
 
 ' No,' White returned, thus attacked in the
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 155 
 
 flank 'no, I have no explanation to offer at 
 least, not until I have fuller information.' 
 
 ' I have emptied myself of the facts in the case,' 
 retorted Dear Jones, ' and a cider-press couldn't 
 get any more details out of me.' 
 
 With an amiable desire to pour oil on waters 
 which might be troubled, the Duchess remarked, 
 pleasantly, ' I think Dear Jones has told us a most 
 interesting story, and I'm sure we ought to be 
 obliged to him.' 
 
 Dear Jones arose and bowed his thanks. Just 
 then the train went sharply around a curve, and 
 Dear Jones resumed his seat in the car with awk- 
 ward promptness. As he sat down, Robert White 
 looked up at him musingly. At length he spoke : 
 
 ' You say the man called himself Blackstone ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' He was a peculiar- looking man, you say,' 
 Robert White continued, ' and yet you could not 
 declare wherein his oddity lay. He was of medium 
 size, a little under the average height, and a little 
 inclined to be stout. He was about fifty years old. 
 He wore a black wig. He had a very white face. 
 His dark eyes were restless when they were not 
 fixed in a vague stare 
 
 ' Why,' cried Dear Jones, ' how did you know 
 that?' 
 
 ' He had a long, full beard,' Robert White went 
 on ; when Dear Jones broke in again : 
 
 ' Oh, no : he was clean-shaven.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Robert White, ' perhaps he had
 
 156 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 removed his beard to change his appearance. Did 
 he have the blue chin one sees in a man whose face 
 is naturally hairy ? ' 
 
 ' He had,' answered Dear Jones ; ' and the 
 deadly pallor of his cheeks made this azure of his 
 jaw more obvious.' 
 
 ' I am inclined to think,' Robert White said, 
 slowly ' I am inclined to think that the man who 
 told you his alleged dream, and who called him- 
 self Blackstone, was John Coke, the chief clerk and 
 confidential manager of Blough Brothers and Com- 
 pany - 
 
 ' The firm that failed ? ' the Duchess asked. 
 
 ' Precisely,' was the answer ; ' and he was the 
 cause of the failure he and Braxton Blough, a 
 younger son of the senior partner. They both 
 absconded on the Saturday before the failure the 
 Saturday you sailed : Coke could easily have left 
 London with the mail and joined you at Queens- 
 town. I took a great interest in the case, for my 
 father-in-law lost a lot of money he had sent over 
 to be used in operating in the London Stock Ex- 
 change.' 
 
 ' I shouldn't wonder if you were right in your 
 supposition, Bob,' said Charley Sutton ; ' and of 
 course if the man had cleaned out Blough Brothers 
 and Company he could make a pretty close guess 
 when they were likely to suspend. Besides, Black- 
 stone is just the sort of slantindicular name a man 
 called Coke would take.' 
 
 ' Coke ? ' repeated the Duchess ; ' Coke ? Isn't
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 157 
 
 that the name of the Englishman Mr. Hitchcock 
 used to talk to us about in London ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Mrs. Jones ; ' I think I have 
 heard Mr. Hitchcock speak of a Mr. Coke.' 
 
 ' White looked up quickly with a smile. ' Do 
 you mean Mat Hitchcock ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. C. Mather Hitchcock is the gentleman I 
 mean,' replied Mrs. Martin. 
 
 'Ah !' said White significantly. 
 
 ' I saw a good deal of him last summer in 
 London, and I heard him speak of a Mr. Coke 
 several times. I think he said he was the manager 
 or director or something of Blough Brothers and 
 Company. I know he told me that Mr. Coke was 
 the best judge of sherry and of poetry in all Eng- 
 land. I own I thought the conjunction rather odd.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Martin,' said Robert White, ' you have 
 given us the explanation of another of the predic- 
 tions in the alleged Mr. Blackstone's alleged dream. 
 I happen to know that, owing to a set of curious 
 circumstances, little Mat Hitchcock wrote the 
 review of the " Epic of Ghosts" which appeared in 
 the " Gotham Gazette." ' 
 
 ' And you think he showed what he had written 
 to Coke before he sent it off to the paper ? ' asked 
 Dear Jones. 
 
 ' Isn't it just like him ? ' White returned. 
 
 Dear Jones smiled, and answered that Mat 
 Hitchcock was both leaky and conceited, and that 
 he probably did show his review to everybody 
 within range.
 
 158 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 ' But how did this Mr. Blackstone know that 
 the review would appear on that particular Sunday 
 morning ? ' asked Mrs. Jones, with a slightly ag- 
 gressive scepticism. 
 
 4 He didn't know it,' answered White ; ' he just 
 guessed it ; and it was not so very remarkable a 
 guess either, if he knew when the review was 
 posted in London, as the " Gotham Gazette " prints 
 book-notices only on Sundays.' 
 
 4 Still, it was a most extraordinary dream,' said 
 the Duchess, with dignity, not altogether approving 
 of any attempt to explain away anything purport- 
 ing to be supernatural. 
 
 4 The failure of Blough Brothers and Company 
 was remarkable, if you like,' Robert White con- 
 tinued. * The house was more than a century old ; 
 it held the highest position in Lombard Street ; it 
 was supposed to be conservative and safe ; and yet 
 for the past five years it had been little better than 
 an empty shell. This man Coke was allowed to 
 do pretty much as he pleased ; and he and Braxton 
 Blough, the younger son of old Sir Barwood 
 Blough, the head of the house, were as thick as 
 thieves I use the phrase advisedly.' 
 
 4 Thank you,' said Mrs. Jones, with a chilly 
 smile. 
 
 'They speculated in stocks,' Robert White 
 pursued ; ' they loaded themselves up with cats 
 and dogs ; they took little fliers in such inflam- 
 mable material as Turkish and Egyptian bonds ; 
 and they went on the turf together. They owned
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 159 
 
 race-horses together as " Mr. Littleton ; " and that's 
 another bit of evidence that your Mr. Blackstone 
 was really this man Coke. You see ? Coke 
 Littleton Blackstone ? ' 
 
 ' I see,' answered Dear Jones. 
 
 ' When the game was up, there was a warrant 
 out for Coke, but he had been gone for a week. 
 It was supposed he had run over to Paris ; but 
 that must have been a mere blind of his, since 
 he came over here on the " Barataria " with you.' 
 
 1 He came over with me,' said Dear Jones, 
 quietly, ' but he did not land with me.' 
 
 ' Poor Braxton Blough had been led astray by 
 Coke, who tempted him and got him in his power 
 and kept him under his thumb. When the bubble 
 burst he disappeared too, and it is supposed that 
 he took the Queen's shilling and is now a private 
 at the Cape of Good Hope. He wasn't in England 
 when poor old Sir Barwood Blough died of a 
 broken heart. Braxton had always been his fa- 
 vourite son, and he had spared the rod and spoiled 
 the child.' 
 
 ' Braxton Blough ? ' repeated the Duchess. 
 ' Surely I have met a man of that name ; and I 
 think it was at the dinner Lord Shandygaff gave 
 us at Greenwich.' 
 
 ' I remember him now,' broke in Dear Jones 
 ' a dark, gipsy-looking fellow. I know I remarked 
 on the difference between him and Lord Sharfdy- 
 gaff, who was the very type of an Irish sportsman, 
 with all that the word implies.'
 
 160 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 Robert White whistled. 
 
 ' Oh, I beg your pardon,' he cried, hastily, as 
 Mrs. Martin looked at him with surprise. 'You 
 will forgive me when I explain. Now we have 
 stumbled on something really extraordinary. You 
 know those odd little Japanese puzzles just a lot 
 of curiously-shaped bits which you can fit together 
 into a perfect square ? ' 
 
 ' I have known them from my youth up,' 
 answered Dear Jones, dryly ; ' and I see nothing 
 extraordinary in them.' 
 
 4 1 refer to them only as an illustration,' Robert 
 White returned. ' You tell us a tale of a dream 
 and its fulfilment ; you set forth a puzzle, but there 
 are several little bits wanting ; the square is not 
 perfect ; there is a hole in the centre. Now, as it 
 happens, we here who have heard the tale can com- 
 plete the square. We can fill the hole in the 
 centre, for we chance to have concealed about our 
 persons the little bits which were missing. And 
 Mrs. Martin has just produced one of them. You 
 met Mr. Braxton Blough at a dinner given by 
 Lord Shandygaff; and it was natural that you 
 should, for the two men had many tastes in com- 
 mon, and I have heard that they were very inti- 
 mate. Indeed, next to Coke, Lord Shandygaff was 
 Braxton Blough's closest friend. And this provides 
 us with a possible explanation of another of the 
 alleged predictions in the alleged dream of the 
 alleged Blackstone.' 
 
 ' How so ? ' asked Charley Sutton.
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 161 
 
 * I confess I don't see it,' said Dear Jones. 
 
 'That's because you do not know the secret 
 history of the steam-yacht race,' Robert White 
 answered. ' Lord Shandygaff is the owner of the 
 " Skyrocket " ; he is a betting man ; he was in New 
 York for a fortnight before the race came off ; and 
 yet he did not back his boat as though he believed 
 she would win. Now, I have been told, and I 
 believe, that when the match had been made and 
 the money put up, a rumour of the speed made by 
 the " Rhadamanthus " in a private trial over a 
 measured mile, after Joshua Hoffman had put in 
 those new boilers, reached the ears of the owner of 
 the " Skyrocket." It is said that Lord Shandygaff 
 then had a private trial of his yacht over a mea- 
 sured mile under similar conditions of wind and 
 weather as that of the " Rhadamanthus," and he dis- 
 covered, to his disappointment and disgust, that his 
 boat was going to be beaten. I have understood 
 that he came to the conclusion, then and there, that 
 he was going to lose the race and his twenty-five 
 thousand dollars unless there should be a stiff 
 gale of wind when the match came off, in which 
 case he thought he might have a fair chance of 
 winning.' 
 
 'Well?' asked Charley Sutton, as Robert 
 White paused. 
 
 ' Well,' said White, ' if what I have stated on 
 information and belief is true, if Lord Shandygaff 
 believed that his boat would be beaten, his intimate
 
 1 62 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 friend Braxton Blough would not be kept in the 
 dark ; and whatever light Braxton Blough might 
 have he would share with his intimate friend Coke. 
 Therefore your friend the alleged Blackstone, when 
 he told you his alleged dream on Saturday, the day 
 of the race, knew that there was smooth water and 
 a light breeze only, and that therefore the " Rhada- 
 manthus " had probably beaten the " Skyrocket " 
 from start to finish.' 
 
 ' I see,' said Charley Sutton, meditatively. 
 
 Mrs. Jones looked at Mr. White with not a 
 little dissatisfaction, saying 
 
 'You have tried very hard to explain away this 
 Mr. Blackstone's dream as far as the failure of 
 Blough Brothers and Company is concerned, and 
 the review of Mr. Vernon's book, and the race be- 
 tween the " Rhadamanthus"and the " Skyrocket " ; 
 but how do you account for the suicide ? ' 
 
 ' How do you know there was any suicide ? ' 
 asked Robert White, with a slight smile. 
 
 ' It was in the " Gotham Gazette " your own 
 paper,' she said, with ill-concealed triumph. 
 
 1 It was in the " Gotham Gazette " which Coke 
 said he had seen in a vision,' White returned ; 
 ' but I do not think it was ever in any " Go- 
 tham Gazette " sent out from our office in Park 
 Row.' 
 
 ' But I thought ' began Mrs. Jones, when 
 
 her husband interrupted. 
 
 ' I'm afraid it is no use arguing with White,' he
 
 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 163 
 
 said : c he seems to have all the facts at his fingers' 
 ends.' 
 
 ' Thank you,' White rejoined. ' I wish I had 
 my fingers' ends on Coke's collar.' 
 
 ' That's just what I wanted to ask you,' said 
 Dear Jones. ' Where is he ? ' 
 
 ' How do I know ? ' returned White. 
 
 ' What do you think ? ' Dear Jones asked. 
 
 ' I don't know what to think,' answered Robert 
 White ; ' the facts fail me. Probably the " Bara- 
 taria " was not very far from shore when she an- 
 chored off Quarantine that night, soon after you 
 and Mr. Macdonough left him in the stern of the 
 ship ? ' 
 
 'We were within pistol-shot of the health 
 officer's dock, I suppose,' replied Dear Jones. 
 
 ' Then,' said Robert White, ' perhaps Coke 
 jumped overboard and swam ashore, and so killed 
 the trail by taking water. We have an extradition 
 treaty with Great Britain, and he may have told 
 you his dream so that you could bear witness in 
 case he was tracked by the detectives. Perhaps, 
 however, he told you the truth when he told you 
 his dream.' 
 
 ' I shall always believe that,' Mrs. Jones re- 
 marked. 
 
 ' So shall I,' said Mrs. Martin. ' It is very un- 
 pleasant to destroy one's faith in anything. It is 
 so much better to believe all one can : at least that 
 is my opinion.'
 
 1 64 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 
 
 This opinion was handed down by the Duchess 
 with an air which implied that no appeal could be 
 taken. 
 
 Robert White wisely held his peace. 
 
 Then the train slackened before stopping at the 
 station where Mrs. Martin's carriage was awaiting 
 them.
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHEN it was announced that Mr. Francis Mere- 
 dith had been appointed secretary to the council 
 of the Saint Nicholas Relief Society, the friends of 
 the other candidates for that office were violently 
 indignant, and declared that the appointment was 
 one conspicuously unfit to be made. The friends 
 of Mr. Francis Meredith smiled pleasantly as they 
 protested mildly in his behalf ; they said that he 
 would do very well after he mastered the duties of 
 the post, and that the work was not onerous, even 
 for a man wholly unused to any regular occupa- 
 tion ; but while they were saying with their tongues 
 that Fanny Meredith was a good fellow, in 
 their hearts they were wondering how a round 
 young man would manage in a square hole. From 
 this it may be inferred that the opponents of the 
 appointment were altogether in the right, and that 
 one fortunate man owed the place to a freak of 
 favouritism. 
 
 It may serve to indicate the character of Mr. 
 Francis Meredith to record that to his intimates he 
 was known, not as Frank, but as Fanny. He was
 
 1 68 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 a charming and most ladylike young man, who 
 toiled not neither did he spin. He owed his ex- 
 emption from labour and his social standing to the 
 fact that he was the only son of his mother, and 
 she a widow of large wealth. He had managed, 
 somehow or other, to creep through college in the 
 course of five years. He was a kindly youth, but 
 heedless, careless, scatterbrained, and fixing his 
 mind with ease only on the one object of his exist- 
 ence the conducting of a cotillion. To conduct 
 the cotillion decently and in order seemed to 
 Fanny Meredith to be the crowning glory of a young 
 gentleman's career. Unfortunately his mother's 
 trustee made unwise investments and died, leaving 
 his affairs curiously entangled, and it became ne- 
 cessary for Meredith to do something for himself. 
 He scorned a place under Government ; besides, he 
 could not pass the examination with any hope of 
 appointment. As it happened, Mrs. Meredith's 
 trustee had been the secretary of the council of the 
 Saint Nicholas Relief Society, and his death made 
 it possible to work out a sort of poetic justice by 
 giving the post to Fanny Meredith. 
 
 It is difficult to speak without awe of that 
 august conclave, the council of the Saint Nicholas 
 Relief Society. During the original Dutch owner- 
 ship of Manhattan Island, and before New Amster- 
 dam experienced a change of heart and became 
 New York, certain worthy burghers of the city had 
 combined in a benevolent association which con- 
 tinued its labours even after the English capture of
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 169 
 
 the colony and through the long struggle of the 
 Revolution. When at last New York was firmly 
 established as the Empire City, no one of its 
 institutions was more deeply rooted or more 
 abundantly flourishing than the Saint Nicholas 
 Relief Society. It was rich, for it had received 
 lands and tenements and hereditaments which had 
 multiplied in value and increased in income with 
 the growth of the city. It did much good. It was 
 admirably managed. It had a delightful aroma of 
 antiquity, denied to most American institutions. 
 It was fashionable. It was exclusive. To be a 
 member of the Saint Nicholas Relief Society, was 
 the New York equivalent to the New England 
 ownership of a portrait by Copley it was a certi- 
 ficate of gentle birth. To be elected to the council 
 of the Saint Nicholas Relief Society was indis- 
 putable evidence that a man's family had been held 
 in honour here in New York for two centuries. 
 Just as the court circles of Austria are closed to 
 any one who cannot show sixteen quartering^, so 
 the unwritten law of the Saint Nicholas Relief 
 Society forbade the election to the council of any 
 one whose ancestors had not settled in Manhattan 
 Island before it surrendered to Colonel Nicolls in 
 1664. 
 
 Among the descendants of the scant fifteen 
 hundred inhabitants of New Amsterdam were not 
 a few shrewd men of business. The affairs of -the 
 Saint Nicholas Relief Society were always ably 
 and adroitly managed, and the property of the
 
 170 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 society was well administered. Its annual revenues 
 were greatly increased by a yearly ball given just 
 before Lent allowed the ladies of fashion time to 
 repent of their sins. This public ball for it was 
 public practically, as any man might enter who 
 could pay the high price asked for a ticket being 
 patronised by the most fashionable ladies of New 
 York, was always crushingly attended, to the re- 
 plenishment of the coffers of the charity. To this 
 public ball there succeeded, after the interval of 
 Lent, a private dinner of the council, invariably 
 given on the Tuesday in Easter week, the Tuesday 
 after Paas. The Dutch word still lingers, and per- 
 haps the Paas dinner of the council of the Saint 
 Nicholas Relief Society may have helped to keep it 
 alive and in the mouths of men. 
 
 To attend to the annual ball and to the Paas 
 dinner were the chief duties of the secretary of the 
 council ; it is possible even to assert that these 
 were his sole duties. He had nothing whatever to 
 do with the management of the society ; he was 
 the secretary of the council only ; and it was pre- 
 cisely because the obligations of the office were 
 little more than ornamental that the friends of Mr. 
 Francis Meredith maintained his perfect ability to 
 fulfil them satisfactorily. He had been elected at 
 the January meeting of the council, and he was 
 told to exercise a general supervision over the 
 arrangements of the ball, which was to take place 
 just in the middle of February on Saint Valen- 
 tine's Day, in fact.
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 17 r 
 
 ' I wonder how Fanny Meredith will make out,' 
 said Mr. Delancey Jones, when he heard of the 
 appointment. ' Fanny Meredith is a good-looking 
 fellow, and a good fellow too, and the girls all say 
 he dances divinely ; but he is more different kinds 
 of a fool than any other man I know ! ' 
 
 As it happened, Fanny Meredith had very little 
 to do with the ball, but he did that little wrong. 
 He blundered in every inconceivable manner and 
 with the most imperturbable good humour. He 
 altered the advertisements, for one thing, just as 
 they were going to the newspapers and without 
 consultation with any one ; and the next morning 
 the members of the council were shocked to see 
 that tickets would be for sale at the door until 
 midnight there having been hitherto a pleasing 
 convention that tickets could be had only by those 
 vouched for by members of the society. Then, at 
 the February meeting of the council, he arose with 
 the smile of a man about to impart wisdom, and 
 suggested that as the clergymen of New York 
 were always willing to lend a helping hand to 
 charity, it would be a very clever device if they 
 were to request the rectors of the fashionable 
 churches to make from the altar formal announce- 
 ment of the ball, with full particulars as to the 
 price of tickets and the persons from whom these 
 might be purchased. And when the night of Jthe 
 ball arrived at last, and Fanny Meredith was re- 
 quested to, welcome the journalists who came to 
 'write it up' and to provide for their comfort,
 
 172 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 internal and external, he said something to Harry 
 Brackett, who had been sent up from the ' Gotham 
 Gazette' to provide a picturesque description of 
 the ball, to be supplemented by the more personal 
 notes of the ' society reporter.' Just what it was 
 that Fanny Meredith said to Harry Brackett no 
 one has ever been able to ascertain exactly, but, 
 whatever it was, it took the journalist completely 
 by surprise ; he looked at the secretary of the 
 council for a minute in dazed astonishment, and 
 then, his sense of humour overcoming his indigna- 
 tion, he said slowly, ' Somebody must have left a 
 door open somewhere, and this thing blew in ! ' 
 
 But the petty errors the new secretary com- 
 mitted at the ball were as nothing to the mighty 
 blunder he made at the Paas dinner of the council. 
 The Saint Nicholas Relief Society may have any 
 number of annual subscribers, but it has only two 
 hundred members elected for life. From these two 
 hundred members is chosen a council of twenty- 
 one. Among the members are many ladies, and 
 at least a third of the council are of the sex which 
 wear ear-rings. It is this mingling of sharp men 
 and clever women in the council which gives its 
 strength to the Saint Nicholas Relief Society. In 
 nothing is the skill of the management shown to 
 more advantage than in the choice of members of 
 the council. There are young ladies, there are old 
 bachelors, there are substantial matrons, and there 
 are fathers of families ; and they dwell, together in
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 173 
 
 unity, so far, at least, as the Saint Nicholas Relief 
 Society is concerned. A meeting of the council 
 presents a sight at once heterogeneous and charac- 
 teristic. Possibly it is this variety of persons and 
 of points of view that makes the council of the 
 Saint Nicholas Relief Society so successful as it 
 has been in its task of administering wealth and 
 of ministering to the needy. Certainly the dis- 
 similarity of character and the unity of object help 
 to make the annual Paas dinner a season of refresh- 
 ment Most of the members of the council are 
 busy, but it is very rare indeed for one of them to 
 be absent from his seat or from her seat, as the 
 case may be, at the Paas dinner. 
 
 The number of the council is twenty-one, and 
 has always been twenty-one. Fanny Meredith 
 forgot all about the Paas dinner until reminded of 
 it less than a week before Easter. Then he rushed 
 off to the old-fashioned restaurant where the 
 dinner was always given, and he spent four hours 
 there in the ordering of a proper series of courses 
 for twenty-one people. He had seized the nearest 
 annual report of the society, and he gave it to a 
 copyist with a score of blank invitation cards, tell- 
 ing her to send them out to the members of the 
 council, in accordance with a list printed at the 
 end of the report. The copyist did as she was 
 bidden, and the invitations went forth by ^the 
 post. 
 
 But when the members of the council assembled
 
 174 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 on the evening of the Tuesday after Easter they 
 were only thirteen in number. They waited nearly 
 an hour for the other eight, and then they sat 
 down ill at ease. While they were yet eating 
 their oysters Mr. Francis Meredith came in to gaze 
 on his handiwork. Mr. Jacob Leisler, jun., asked 
 him if he had sent all the invitations. 
 
 ' Of course I did/ he answered ; ' you don't 
 think I could make a mistake about a little thing 
 like that, do you ? ' 
 
 To this leading question there was no answer ; 
 so Meredith continued, taking a report from his 
 pocket : 
 
 ' I wouldn't trust myself to write them, so I 
 gave this list to a copyist, and I put all the enve- 
 lopes in the post myself.' 
 
 * Let me see that report,' said Mr. Leisler, 
 holding out his hand. Mr. Jacob Leisler, jun., was 
 the chairman of the finance committee, and a man 
 speaking with authority. On the present occasion 
 he was presiding. 
 
 The unsuspecting Fanny gave him the pam- 
 phlet. Mr. Leisler glanced at it, read the list of 
 the council, turned to the date on the title-page, 
 and then inquired calmly : 
 
 ' Mr. Meredith, do you know when this report 
 was printed ? ' 
 
 ' Last fall, of course,' answered the secretary. 
 
 'Just twenty-two years ago last fall,' Mr. Leisler 
 returned ; 'so if you have invited to this dinner 
 here to-night the council whose names appear in
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 175 
 
 this report, you have not asked the eight absent 
 members who are alive, and you have asked eight 
 members who are dead ! And that accounts for 
 the empty chairs here.' 
 
 Fanny Meredith laughed feebly, and then he 
 laughed again faintly. At last he murmured, ' I 
 seem to have made a mistake.' 
 
 As he shrank away towards the door, amid an 
 embarrassed silence, Mr. Leisler whispered harshly 
 to a mature and sharp-featured lady who sat at 
 his right : 
 
 ' And we seem to have made a mistake when 
 we elected him to be secretary to the council.' 
 
 There was a general murmur of assent from 
 the members of the council, in which nearly all 
 joined, excepting a young old maid with frank 
 eyes and cheerful countenance, who was sitting 
 about half-way down the dinner-table, with a 
 vacant seat by her side. She looked at the 
 abashed Fanny Meredith with a compassionate 
 smile of encouragement. 
 
 ' Since you have not attended to your duty,' 
 said Mr. Leisler severely, checking the helpless 
 secretary on the threshold, ' since you have not 
 seen that the other members of the council 
 received invitations, of course they will not come 
 we cannot expect them. We must dine by our- 
 selvesthirteen at table. I cannot speak for 
 the others, but to me it is most unpleasanf to 
 see those eight empty chairs ! ' 
 
 As the crestfallen Fanny Meredith retreated
 
 iy6 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 hastily from the dining-room, he could not help 
 hearing this rebuke heartily approved by the 
 council. 
 
 II. 
 
 ALTHOUGH Mr. Jacob Leisler, jun., and Mrs. 
 Vedder, the energetic lady on his right, and Miss 
 Mary Van Dyne, the pleasant-faced old maid 
 farther down on his left, and Mr. Joshua Hoffman, 
 who sat beside her, and the rest of the thirteen 
 members of the council who were present, saw 
 eight empty chairs, which made awkward gaps in 
 the company about the board although they 
 could count only thirteen at table, it is to be re- 
 corded that in reality these eight chairs were not 
 empty. They were filled by those to whom the 
 cards of invitation had been sent the former 
 members of the council, dead and gone in the 
 score of years and more since the printing of the 
 report which the new" secretary had used. To the 
 eyes of the living the eight seats were vacant. To 
 the eyes of one who had power to see the spiritual 
 and intangible they were occupied by those who had 
 been bidden to the feast. How the invitations had 
 reached their addresses no one might know, but 
 they had been received, and they had been ac- 
 cepted ; and the invited guests sat at the council 
 as they had been wont to sit there twenty-two 
 years before. Perhaps the invitations had gone to 
 the Dead Letter Office, and so had been forwarded 
 to the dead whose names they bore ; perhaps they
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 177 
 
 had been taken but speculation is idle. It 
 matters not how or by whom the invitations had 
 been delivered, there sat the ghostly guests, in 
 their places around the dinner-table of the council. 
 There they sat in the eight chairs, which to the 
 eye of man were empty. 
 
 It was the first time that the dead had been 
 bidden to this feast of the living. It was the first 
 time since they had laid down the burdens of this 
 world that they had been allowed to mingle with 
 their friends on earth. It was the first time and 
 they feared it might be the last, and they were 
 eager to make the most of their good fortune. For 
 a long while they sat silently listening with avidity 
 to all stray fragments of news about those whom 
 they had left behind them in the land of the living. 
 Some of these spectral visitors had only recently 
 quitted this life, and perhaps they were the most 
 anxious to learn the sayings and doings of those 
 they had loved and left. Some of them had 
 been dead for years, and their placid faces wore a 
 pleasant expression of restful and comforting tran- 
 quillity. One of them, a handsome young fellow 
 in a dark blue uniform with faded shoulder-straps, 
 had fallen twenty-two years before in the repulse 
 of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Another had 
 gone down in the ' Ville de Nice ' in the Bay of 
 Biscay in 1872. A third, a venerable man wjth 
 silvery hair and a gentle look in his soft gray eyes, 
 had died of old age only a few months before. 
 Mr. Jacob Leisler, jun., sat at the head of the 
 
 N
 
 1 78 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 table, and at his right hand was Mrs. Vender, a 
 square-faced lady of an uncertain age, with grizzled 
 hair and a masterful mouth. The chair on her 
 right was apparently empty, to her evident dis- 
 satisfaction. Probably her annoyance would have 
 been acutely increased had she been aware that the 
 invisible occupant of this place by her side was 
 Jesse Van Twiller, her first husband, dead these 
 ten years or more, during eight of which she had 
 been another man's wife. 
 
 Jesse Van Twiller had been among the earliest 
 to arrive ; and when he found that his wife was to 
 sit next to him he was delighted. No spook ever 
 wore a broader smile than that which graced his 
 features as Mrs. Vedder took her place at table by 
 his side. But his joy was commingled with a por- 
 tion of apprehension, as though he feared his wife 
 as much as he loved her. He was a little man, of 
 a nervous temperament, with a timid look arid an 
 expression of subdued meekness, as though he was 
 used to be overridden by an overbearing woman. 
 He glanced up as his former wife sat down. He 
 seemed disconcerted when her eyes fell on him 
 with no look of welcome recognition. For a mo- 
 ment he wondered if he had offended her in any 
 way since they had parted. Then, all at once, he 
 knew that she had not seen him : he was invisible 
 to mortal eyes. He chafed against this condition ; 
 he wanted her to see him and to know how glad 
 he was to see her. To be there by her side, to be 
 able to stretch his arm about her waist as he had
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 179 
 
 done in the days of yore, to long to fold her to his 
 heart which beat for her alone, and to be powerless 
 as he was even to communicate to her the fact of 
 his presence this was most painful. The poor 
 ghost felt that fate was hard on him. He would 
 have given years of his spectral existence for two 
 or three hours of human life. 
 
 These were his feelings at first. Then he 
 wondered how she would receive him if she knew 
 he were in her presence. He gazed at her intently 
 as though to read her thoughts. She was older 
 than she was when he had died there was no 
 doubt about that. She had the same commanding 
 mien, the same superb port, the same majestic 
 sweep of the arm. Yet it seemed to the man who 
 had left her a widow that the air of domineering 
 determination he recalled so well was not a little 
 softened as though from want of use. ' She has 
 missed me!' he said to himself. 'How gladly 
 would I have her scold me now as she used to 
 scold me so often, if only she could see me ! She 
 could not rebuke me for being late this time, but 
 she could easily find something else to find fault 
 about. I shouldn't care how much she bullied me, 
 so long as I could tell her I was here. And then,' 
 he concluded cautiously, ' if she made it too hot for 
 me, I could be a ghost again, and she would be so 
 surprised ! ' 
 
 Just then Mr. Leisler spoke to the spouse 6i 
 the spook. 
 
 ' I was beginning to fear that we might be de-
 
 I So PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 prived of your presence too, Mrs. Vedder,' he said. 
 1 Were you not a little late ? ' 
 
 Jesse Van Twiller looked at his old friend 
 Leisler in the greatest surprise. Why had he 
 addressed Mrs. Van Twiller as Mrs. Vedder? The 
 first husband even turned and looked at the chair 
 next to his, on the chance that that was occupied 
 by the lady addressed ; but Mr. Leisler's own wife 
 sat there. His astonishment increased as he heard 
 his wife's answer. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said, ' we were late. But it was not 
 my fault. The doctor is a most unpunctual man.' 
 
 'The doctor?' thought Van Twiller. 'What 
 doctor ? and what had she to do with any doctor ? 
 Had she been ill ? She seemed to be in robust 
 health.' 
 
 ' Dr. Vedder is a busy man/ rejoined Mr. 
 Leisler, ' and perhaps he cannot control his time.' 
 
 So it was Dr. Vedder his wife had been waiting 
 for. Van Twiller looked across the table at Dr. 
 Vedder, whom he knew very well and had never 
 liked. Dr. Vedder was a sarcastic man, with a 
 sharp tongue, and a knack of saying disagreeable 
 things. It was Dr. Vedder who had once asserted 
 that Van Twiller had no more sense of humour 
 than a hand-organ. Suddenly, with a sharp pang 
 of jealousy, Van Twiller recalled a vague, fleeting, 
 and half-forgotten memory of Dr. Vedder's admira- 
 tion for Mrs. Van Twiller. He remembered that 
 the doctor had once declared that he liked a 
 masterful woman, and that Mrs. Van Twiller was
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 181 
 
 a Katharine with a poor Petruchio quite incapable 
 of taming her. 
 
 ' That's no reason he should keep his wife 
 waiting,' said the former Mrs. Van Twiller plain- 
 tively. 
 
 ' His wife ! ' repeated Van Twiller to himself. 
 ' Who is his wife ? ' 
 
 ' I was never treated in that way by my first 
 husband/ continued the lady. 
 
 ' Her first husband ! ' The poor ghost shrank 
 back. At last he saw the change in the situation. 
 His wife was not his wife any more. She was the 
 wife of Dr. Vedder, a man whom he had disliked 
 always, and whom now he hated. He was seized 
 by a burning rage of jealousy, but he was powerless 
 to express his feelings. His condition was hard 
 to bear, for he could see, he could hear, he could 
 suffer, and he could do nothing. 
 
 As Van Twiller was thinking this out hotly, 
 the sharp voice of Dr. Vedder stabbed him suddenly. 
 
 ' I have noticed,' remarked the doctor, who was 
 seated exactly opposite his wife's first husband, 
 ' that a woman always thinks more highly of a man 
 after he is dead and gone. She is ready enough 
 to praise him when it is too late for the commenda- 
 tion to comfort him. I believe a widow doubly 
 cherishes the memory of a hen pecked husband.' 
 
 With the suave smile of a conscious peace- 
 maker, who sees possible offence in a speech, Mr. 
 Leisler said, ' You are hard on the widows, 
 Doctor.'
 
 1 82 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 ' Not at all,' the doctor answered, with a dry 
 little wrinkle at the corners of his mouth, ' not at 
 all. I am a scientific observer, making logical 
 deductions from a multitude of facts. To the man 
 who lives out West, the only good Indian is a dead 
 Indian ; so to the widow, the only good husband is 
 the dead husband ! ' 
 
 * I'm sure/ cried Mrs. Vedder indignantly, 'that 
 Mr. Van Twiller would never have said anything 
 like that.' 
 
 ' Certainly not,' her husband replied. ' Van 
 Twiller couldn't, for Van Twiller wasn't a scientific 
 observer.' 
 
 A covert sneer in Dr. Vedder's tone as he said 
 this cut little Van Twiller to the soul, and again 
 he longed for material hands that he might clutch 
 his rival by the throat. At the thought of his 
 absolute inability to do aught for himself, he 
 shivered with despair. 
 
 It was perhaps some frigid emanation from Van 
 Twiller which affected Mrs. Vedder's nerves, for 
 she shuddered slightly before replying to her hus- 
 band. 
 
 ' It is not for us to bandy words now about 
 Mr. Van Twiller's attainments,' she remarked de- 
 liberately. ' He was truly a gentleman, with all 
 the mildness of a gentleman, quite incapable of 
 giving any one a harsh word or a cross look.' 
 
 ' In fact he had absolutely no faults at all,' 
 said Dr. Vedder sarcastically. But if he could 
 then have seen the expression on the pallid face of
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 183 
 
 his predecessor, he would have been in a position 
 to contradict his wife's last assertion. 
 
 ' He had very few indeed ! ' replied his wife ; 
 ' in my eyes he was perfect ! ' 
 
 She paused for a second, and Van Twiller 
 wished that she had believed in his perfection 
 while he was alive. Then she added bitterly, 
 ' To know him was to love him ! ' 
 
 The dry little wrinkle returned to the corners 
 of Dr. Vedder's mouth as he answered quietly, 
 'Perhaps so I didn't know him well !' 
 
 And again the poor ghost writhed in invisible 
 anguish, utterly helpless to resent the insult. 
 
 'I remember Mr. Van Twiller distinctly,' re- 
 marked Mr. Leisler blandly ; ' he was an easy- 
 going and good-natured man, with a kind word for 
 everybody.' 
 
 ' In fact, he was everybody's friend,' Dr. Vedder 
 returned, ' and nobody's enemy but his own. His 
 best quality in my eyes is that he is not here to- 
 night.' 
 
 The doctor could not know that the little man 
 at whom he was girding was separated from him 
 by the breadth of the table only, and was suffering 
 with his whole being as every sneer reached its 
 mark far more surely than he who shot the chance 
 arrow could guess. 
 
 * You are bitter,' said Mr. Leisler easily ; ' I fear 
 you are a misanthrope.' 
 
 The doctor laughed a little, and answered, 'No, 
 I'm not exactly a misanthrope or even a miso-
 
 184 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 gynist, but I have ceased to be philanthropic since 
 I discovered that man is descended from a 
 monkey.' 
 
 Mrs. Vedder was about to make a hasty reply 
 to this, when she caught the doctor's eye. To the 
 surprise of Van Twiller, she hesitated, checked her- 
 self suddenly, and said nothing. He wondered 
 how it was that his wife had changed ; he knew 
 that she had never quailed before his eye ; and he 
 found himself doubting whether he would not have 
 preferred to see her show her old spirit. He saw 
 that she was sadly tamed now ; and he marvelled 
 why he should regret the quenching of her fiery 
 spirit She did not seem the same to him, and he 
 missed the old mastery to which he was accus- 
 tomed. This blunted the joy of the meeting he 
 had anticipated hopefully ever since he had 
 received the invitation. His wife was no longer 
 his. She was not even the woman he had 
 loved, honoured, and obeyed for years. The poor 
 ghost felt lonelier than he had ever felt before. 
 He began to regret that he had been permitted 
 again to come on earth. 
 
 A waiter had filled Dr. Vedder's glass. He 
 took it in his hand. ' No,' he said, ' I'm not a 
 philanthropist ; I take no stock in the aggressive 
 optimism of the sentimentalists. In fact, I suppose 
 I'm a persistent pessimist. What is my fellow-man 
 to me or my fellow- woman either ? ' 
 
 Mr. Jacob Leisler, jun., was not a man whose 
 perceptions were fine or quick, but he was moved
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 185 
 
 to resent clumsily the offensiveness of these 
 words. 
 
 ' But your wife ' he began. 
 
 ' Oh, my wife ! ' interrupted Dr. Vedder ; ' my 
 wife and I are one, you know.' 
 
 Van Twiller looked at Mrs. Vedder to see how 
 she would take this. She said nothing. She 
 smiled acidly. It was not doubtful that she was 
 greatly changed. 
 
 ' I try to shape my course by the doctrine of 
 enlightened selfishness,' continued the doctor. ' Let 
 us enjoy life while we may. Eat, drink, and be 
 merry, for to-morrow we die. In the struggle for 
 existence the fittest survive and the weakest are 
 weeded out and so much the better ! ' 
 
 Both Mrs. Vedder and Mr. Leisler made ready 
 to reply, when the doctor suddenly went on, 
 sharpening his voice to its keenest edge : 
 
 ' So much the better for him ! Your dead man 
 is your happy man. He has no enemies, and even 
 his widow praises him especially if she has re- 
 married. In fact, he has all the virtues, now he 
 has no use for any of them.' Then the doctor 
 raised his glass. 'The toast of the English in 
 India suggests true wisdom, after all : 
 
 " Ho ! stand to your glasses steady ! 
 
 The world is a world of lies ; 
 A cup to the dead already, 
 
 And hurrah for the next man that dies ! " 
 
 Mr. Leisler drew himself up with dignity and
 
 186 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 addressed the doctor with a stiff severity of 
 manner : 
 
 ' I am surprised, Dr. Vedder, that you should 
 express such views of life on such an occasion as 
 this. I confess I do not hold with you at all. I 
 
 ' You cannot lure me into a debate at dinner,' 
 the doctor answered, as Mr. Leisler paused for fit 
 words to express his complicated feelings. ' I never 
 get into a discussion at table, for the man who 
 isn't hungry always has the best of the argument.' 
 
 The unfortunate spook, forced to listen to this 
 unmannerly talk of the man who had married his 
 widow, sat silent and abashed. He knew not what 
 to think. He did not recognise his wife. When 
 he was alive she had been full of fiery vigour and 
 of undaunted spirit. He would never have dared 
 to address her thus boldly and to brave the wrath 
 which was wont to flame out, at odd moments, like 
 forked lightning. In dumb wonder he waited for 
 her swift protest ; but she said nothing ; whereat 
 he marvelled not a little. 
 
 Mr. Leisler asked himself why Dr. Vedder was 
 unusually disagreeable this evening, for the doctor 
 was a clever man and could make a pleasant im- 
 pression when he chose. With the hope of turning 
 the talk into a more cheerful channel Mr. Leisler 
 addressed Mrs. Vedder. 
 
 * Isn't Miss Van Dyne looking very well to- 
 night ? ' he asked. 
 
 Mrs. Vedder looked down the table at the 
 cheery and young-looking old maid.
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 187 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered, after a moment's hesitation, 
 * she seems almost happy ; but then, she is not 
 married.' 
 
 ' She has been faithful to the memory of her 
 lost love,' said Mr. Leisler. ' Let me see how 
 many years is it now since Captain De Ruyter was 
 killed at Gettysburg ? ' 
 
 ' You don't mean to tell me that you believe 
 that a woman has been in love with a dead man 
 for twenty-two years, do you ? ' Dr. Vedder asked 
 with an incredulous smile. 
 
 'Why not ? ' returned his wife. 
 
 The doctor evaded an answer to this direct 
 question. ' If your diagnosis is right, she has had 
 a dull enough time of it,' he said. ' And she has 
 nothing to show for her devotion.' 
 
 ' Virtue is its own reward,' Mr. Leisler remarked 
 judicially. 
 
 ' But love isn't,' the doctor replied. ' Love is 
 like this champagne,' and he raised his glass ; ' it is 
 very sparkling when it is young, but as it gets 
 older it loses its flavour.' He emptied the glass 
 and set it down. * And if one is all alone with it, 
 there may be a headache the next morning.' 
 
 ' What has made you so sarcastic this evening ? ' 
 asked Mr. Leisler. 
 
 ' I don't know,' Dr. Vedder answered. ' I am 
 in company with evil spirits, I think. If I were a 
 believer in such things, I should say that I was sub- 
 ject to an adverse influence. And I was all right 
 when I came. Perhaps it is this wretched dinner.'
 
 1 88 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 Perhaps it was the dinner, but little Van Twiller 
 was conscious of a throb of ill-natured joy at the 
 thought that it was possibly his presence, all un- 
 known as it was, which had thus disturbed the 
 equanimity of the doctor and revealed his lower 
 nature. He looked at Mrs. Vedder, and he saw 
 she was eating her dinner slowly and in silence, 
 with a stiffening of the muscles of the face a sign 
 he had recognised readily enough. 
 
 ' After all,' continued the doctor, ' these are the 
 two great banes of man's existence dyspepsia and 
 matrimony.' 
 
 ' Come, come,' Mr. Leisler said cheerfully, ' you 
 must not abuse marriage ; it is the chief end of 
 life.' 
 
 ' It was very nearly the end of mine,' returned 
 Dr. Vedder ; ' I caught such a cold in the church 
 that I have not been into one since.' 
 
 Just then one of the waiters came to Mr. 
 Leisler with a request that he should change his 
 place for a little while, and take his seat at the 
 other end of the table, where there was a vacant 
 chair. Glad of an excuse to get away from a 
 man in ill-humour, Mr. Leisler apologised to Mrs. 
 Vedder and withdrew to join his other friends. 
 
 Van Twiller saw a red spot burning brightly on 
 Mrs. Vedder's cheek, and he knew that this was 
 another danger-signal. 
 
 She bent forward towards her husband, and in 
 a low voice, trembling a little with suppressed ire, 
 she hissed across the table, ' I see what you are
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 189 
 
 after ! But you will not succeed. I can keep my 
 temper though I bite my tongue out. It takes two 
 to quarrel, remember ! ' 
 
 ' It takes two to get married,' retorted Dr. 
 Vedder, ' so that proves nothing.' 
 
 For the first time the poor ghost saw his wife's 
 eyes fill with tears. 
 
 ' Mr. Van Twiller never treated me so,' she said 
 hurriedly. ' I wish he were alive now ! ' 
 
 The dry little wrinkle came back to the corners 
 of the doctor's mouth, but he made no reply. 
 
 Little Van Twiller looked from one to the other, 
 as they stared at each other. Then he said to him- 
 self, sighing softly : 
 
 ' Well, well, perhaps it is better as it is I ' 
 
 III. 
 
 Miss MARY VAN DYNE was sitting almost in the 
 centre of one side of the long dinner-table. At her 
 right was Mr. Joshua Hoffman, a man whose heart 
 was as large as his purse was long, and who kept 
 both open to the call of the suffering. At her left 
 was a vacant chair or what seemed so to the eyes 
 of the living men and women at the table. They 
 did not know that it was occupied by Remsen de 
 Ruyter, whose maiden widow Mary Van Dyne had 
 held herself to be ever since a bullet had reached 
 his heart on the heights of Gettysburg. For nearly 
 twenty-two years now she had lived on, alone in 
 the world, but never lonely, for she had given her-
 
 190 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 self up to good works. Her presence was welcome 
 in the children's ward of every hospital, and the 
 love of these little ones nourished her soul and 
 sustained her spirit. Between her and Joshua 
 Hoffman there were bonds of sympathy, and they 
 had many things in common. The good old man 
 was very fond of the brave little woman who had 
 tried to turn her private sorrow to the benefit of 
 the helpless and the innocent. 
 
 They were glad to find themselves side by 
 side at table, and they talked to each other with 
 interest. 
 
 1 You are not really old, Mr. Hoffman,' she was 
 saying ; ' you look very young yet. To-night I 
 wouldn't give you fifty ! ' 
 
 ' My dear young lady, you haven't fifty to give,' 
 he answered with a smile ; ' and if you had, why I 
 should then have a hundred and twenty-five 
 which is more than my share of years.' 
 
 ' You are not really seventy-five ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Really, I am seventy-five. I am a past-due 
 coupon, as I heard one of the boys saying on the 
 street the other day,' returned Joshua Hoffman, 
 with a smile as pleasant as hers. 
 
 ' And how old am I ? ' she inquired. 
 
 'Whatever your age is,' he answered, ' to-night 
 you do not look it ! ' 
 
 ' Shall I arise and curtsey for that ? ' she asked, 
 blushing with pleasure at his courtly compliment. 
 ' You see I like to be flattered still, although I am 
 an old maid of two-score years.'
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 191 
 
 ' Really now, my child,' said the old man, ' you 
 are not forty ? Let me see it does not seem so 
 very long ago since he came and told me how 
 happy he was because you had promised to marry 
 him. Does it pain you to talk of him now ? ' 
 
 ' I think of him always, day and night. Why 
 should I not be glad to talk about him with you 
 whom he loved, and to whom he owed so much ? ' 
 
 ' He was a good boy,' Joshua Hoffman con- 
 tinued in his kindly voice. ' I can recall the day 
 he told me about you ; it was a fine, clear morning 
 in early spring.' 
 
 ' It was the i6th of May, 1863,' she said simply. 
 ' He had asked me to marry him the night before, 
 and he said that you were the first he would 
 tell.' 
 
 ' He was a good boy, and a brave boy, and he 
 died like a man,' said the old man gently. Then 
 he relapsed into silence as his thoughts went back 
 to the dark days of the war. 
 
 Miss Mary Van Dyne was also thinking of the 
 past. Unconsciously she lived again in her youth 
 when she first saw Remsen de Ruyter, a bright 
 handsome boy, scarcely older than she was: he 
 was only twenty-one when he died. They had 
 loved each other from the first, although it was a 
 whole long winter before he had dared to tell her 
 a long winter of delicious doubt and fearful 
 ecstasy. She recalled all the circumstances of his 
 avowal of his love, and her cheeks burned as she 
 thought of the gush of unspeakable joy which had
 
 192 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 filled her heart as he folded her in his arms for the 
 first time. She remembered how, two nights after, 
 before they had told the news to any one but her 
 mother and his benefactor Joshua Hoffman, she 
 sat next to him at this annual dinner of the council 
 of the Saint Nicholas Relief Society ; they were 
 the very youngest members, and it was the first 
 time they had been asked. So strong was the rush 
 of memory of the happy scene, that she gave a 
 quick glance at the place on her left, as though 
 half-expecting to see him seated there still. And 
 there he was by her side, although she could not 
 see him now. 
 
 He was there, but he could not speak to her ; 
 he could not tell her of his presence ; he could not 
 tell her how he loved her still, and more than ever. 
 It was hard. Yet he was glad to be by her side, 
 to see her, to look into her frank face, to gaze on 
 her noble eyes. 
 
 And she felt comforted she knew not why, as 
 though by an invisible presence. Her heart was 
 lifted up. Although the grass had woven a green 
 blanket over his grave for now more than twenty 
 years, he did not seem so far from her. She hoped 
 she would not have so long to wait before she 
 might join him, never again to be parted. Then 
 her thoughts turned to the last time she had seen 
 him, the morning his regiment had left New York 
 for the front. It was a beautiful day early in June 
 when he came to bid her farewell for the last time. 
 They talked all the morning seriously and hope-
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 193 
 
 fully. Then the hour came at last, and all too soon. 
 She bore herself bravely ; without a tear she kissed 
 him and held him in her arms for a minute, and 
 bade him go. She watched him as he walked 
 away. How well she could recall everything 
 which her senses had noted unconsciously during 
 the two minutes before he paused at the corner of 
 the street to wave his hand before he vanished for 
 ever. There were roses beginning to blow in the 
 little bit of green before the house ; there was a 
 hand-organ in the next street from which faint 
 strains of 'John Brown's Body' came over the 
 house-tops ; the noon whistle of a neighbouring fac- 
 tory suddenly broke the silence as he blew her a 
 kiss, and went out of her sight to his death. Then 
 she had been able to get to her room somehow 
 she never knew how and to throw herself on her 
 bed before she broke down. 
 
 The memory was bitter and sweet, but never 
 before had it been as sweet. She turned her eyes 
 on the vacant chair by her side, and involuntarily 
 she reached out her hand. It grasped nothing, it 
 felt nothing, yet her ringers tingled as with a shock 
 of joy. She gazed at the empty chair again in 
 charmed wonder. She could not tell what subtle 
 influence of peace and comfort enveloped her as she 
 mused upon the past with her arm resting on the 
 chair beside her. Then her glance fell on a card 
 beside the plate, and with a sudden suffusion 'of 
 the eyes she read his name. The new secretary of 
 the council had used the list of twenty-two years 
 
 o
 
 194 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 before, and again his place had been set beside 
 hers. The tears which veiled her sight hid the 
 empty chair from her for a minute, and if she 
 turned her head she might almost fancy that he 
 was seated there. It was a fancy only, but it 
 pleased her to indulge in it. It brought back the 
 happy past It brought him back, almost, for a 
 fleeting minute. 
 
 And he, as he sat there, could make no sign. 
 With the keen intuition of love, he read her 
 thoughts in her face. He knew that she was think- 
 ing of him, and that in the thought of him she was 
 happy again. 
 
 And thus the long dinner drew to an end at 
 last. 
 
 When the president gave the signal for the 
 withdrawal into another room that the usual busi- 
 ness meeting of the council might take place, the 
 members rose together. Joshua Hoffman was 
 silent, as though he divined her mood and sympa- 
 thetically respected it. He offered her his arm, 
 and she took it, looking back regretfully, with a 
 longing and lingering gaze, at the place where they 
 had sat side by side. 
 
 IV. 
 
 As the living members of the council left the 
 dining-room, the ghostly guests gathered together 
 to talk over what they had seen and heard. Only 
 Remsen de Ruyter was silent ; his feelings were
 
 PERTURBED SPIRITS 195 
 
 too sacred to find vent in words. He alone wore 
 a smile of consolation and ^comfort. The rest 
 chattered along in tumultuous conversation. 
 
 'It has been a strange experience,' said the 
 very old gentleman ' a very strange experience.' 
 
 ' More painful than pleasant, I think,' little Van 
 Twiller remarked. 
 
 ' I thought we had been invited as a compli- 
 ment/ said another of the ghosts discontentedly, 
 ' but it seems it was all a mistake of the new secre- 
 tary Fanny Meredith, they call him.' 
 
 ' Excellent young man ! ' the old gentleman 
 declared with emphasis ' an excellent young man ; 
 so thoughtful of him ; so considerate of the feel- 
 ings of his elders. I shall accept his invitation 
 next year.' 
 
 ' So shall I ! ' added several voices. 
 
 ' Oh, I'll come too,' said Jesse Van Twiller. ' I 
 want to see what will happen next.' 
 
 Only Remsen de Ruyter said nothing. 
 
 V. 
 
 BUT long before the next annual dinner of the 
 council of the Saint Nicholas Relief Society, the 
 resignation of Mr. Francis Meredith had been re- 
 quested, and in his stead there had been elected a 
 secretary of more trustworthy habits ; and the new 
 secretary was very particular in sending out the 
 invitations to the next annual dinner. 
 
 So the poor ghosts never had another chance
 
 196 PERTURBED SPIRITS 
 
 If they had been asked again, there would have 
 been one more of them, for ten days after the 
 dinner which Fanny Meredith had so miserably 
 mismanaged Dr. Vedder died suddenly. 
 
 The new secretary took great pains also in the 
 ordering of the dinner, and in the arranging of the 
 guests. His efforts were rewarded ; there was 
 general satisfaction expressed by the members of 
 the council ; and he was congratulated on the most 
 successful dinner ever given. Amid the pervading 
 gaiety of the occasion there was only one guest 
 who regretted the dinner of the year before. This 
 was Miss Mary Van Dyne. She said nothing 
 about it to any one ; indeed, she was accustomed 
 to keep her feelings to herself. But she missed 
 an inexplicable something which had made the 
 other dinner the most delightful memory of her 
 later life.
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL. 
 
 ABOUT a mile beyond the straggling outskirts of 
 a New England village once as young and energetic 
 as any in the land, but to-day so old and exhausted 
 that it seems to have sunk into restful sleep, there 
 stands a house built of dull gray stone, and bearing 
 bravely still the onslaught of the New England 
 winters it has withstood for now nearly two cen- 
 turies. This house, beginning at last to bear 
 witness to the wear of time, is one of the oldest in 
 America ; it is one of the few buildings of the 
 seventeenth century which survive to this last 
 quarter of the nineteenth. To us who live in an 
 age of rush and glitter the appearance of the house 
 is in no wise remarkable except for its evident 
 antiquity ; nor should we turn aside now to consider 
 what the contemporaries of the first owner were 
 wont to call the stately nobility of its proportions. 
 But our eyes are not the eyes of the early colonists 
 of New England, and the stone house which Judge 
 Feverel built was long a wonder for miles arouncl. 
 More than one fast-day sermon had been directed 
 against its magnificence, which seemed out of place 
 amid the humble beginnings of the growing colony.
 
 200 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 There yet lingered a tradition that the house had 
 once been called 'The Judge's Folly.' But the 
 nickname had died away long ago as the magni- 
 ficence of the house had faded. And as time, un- 
 hasting and unresting, sped slowly, the house of 
 the stern and fiery Roger Feverel had fallen from 
 grace, and the fortunes of the elder branch of the 
 Feverels were fallen with it. 
 
 As the late November sun sent its declining 
 rays across the low Western hills, and gilded the 
 substantial chimney which rose above the slant 
 roof of the house which Judge Feverel had built, 
 a man on horseback drew rein before the door. 
 He looked at the house like one who had never 
 seen it before ; but his face lighted up at once with 
 a glance of recognition and a smile of satisfaction 
 that he had come to the end of his travels at last, 
 and reached a haven of rest. He sprang from his 
 horse, which he tethered to a post at the edge of 
 the path. He was a handsome young fellow for 
 young he was yet, in spite of his having already 
 accomplished half of a man's allotted span of life. 
 He had dark wavy hair, quick black eyes, and a 
 frank face, on which there might be seen at times 
 a dreamy look. His walk indicated a resolute 
 self-reliance, and he passed up the unfamiliar path 
 as though he had a right to be there. 
 
 As he stood on the low step before the door of 
 the house, after ringing the bell, he turned to look 
 at the little garden which surrounded the house, 
 and at the few scant fields which were attached to
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 201 
 
 it ; then he raised his head with a little touch of 
 pride as he recalled the time when the owner of 
 the house was the owner also of the land for a 
 mile or more on every side of it. One by one 
 these broad acres had slipped from the loose hands 
 of the Feverels, and generation after generation 
 the Feverels had become poorer and poorer, as 
 though there had been a curse on them and on 
 their house. 
 
 ' On this house there may be a curse, and there 
 is reason for it,' thought John Feverel, as he stood 
 for the first time at the door of the home of the 
 Feverels ; ' but the curse, if curse there be, is on 
 this house only, and not on the Feverels at large. 
 It is on them, perhaps, who remain here and keep 
 up the flame of hatred, but it is not on those who 
 have gone forth into the world. There was no 
 curse on my grandfather when he, the younger son, 
 went out from here and prospered, while the elder 
 son remained here and saw his substance shrivel 
 up. There was no curse on my father, who made 
 his way in the world without hindrance from ill 
 fortune. There is no curse on me as yet. Standing 
 here on the threshold of the house of the Feverels, 
 I can look back over my past with pleasure, for I 
 have been happier than most men, and I can look 
 forward to the future with hope.' 
 
 Receiving no answer to his repeated ring, John 
 Feverel rapped sharply on the panel of the door 
 Under the force of the blow, the door opened 
 silently, and disclosed a broad hall, at the farther
 
 202 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 end of which, facing the entrance, there was a 
 large fire-place, where a few sticks of wood were 
 burning brightly. The visitor stood for a moment 
 on the door-step, as though awaiting an invitation 
 to enter. Then he walked into the house and 
 looked about him. The hall was spacious, old- 
 fashioned, quaint. The wood-work had reached a 
 stage of decay when care could no longer conceal 
 the marks of age and use. Everything was clean 
 and worn-out. The tidiness and neatness, the 
 nosegay of fresh flowers in a vase by a window, 
 the little touches of colour elsewhere, revealed a 
 woman's hand. Yet the house seemed to be 
 empty. There was no one to welcome John 
 Feverel to the home of his ancestors. 
 
 ' Uncle Timothy,' he called. ' Cousin Esther ! ' 
 But there came no answer. The house was as 
 deserted as it was desolate. From its stillness it 
 might be a habitation of the dead, where no one 
 dwelt but the ghosts of the past. 
 
 He called again, and again he received no 
 reply. 
 
 Neither of his kinsfolk was at home to greet 
 him. And yet it was to see them almost as much 
 as to take possession of the property that he had 
 cut short his travels and crossed the ocean in 
 haste. 
 
 John Feverel was the grandson of a John 
 Feverel who left this Eastern home of the family 
 to seek his fortune in the West. In this under- 
 taking he had prospered as no Feverel before him
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 203 
 
 had prospered since the fire had first smoked on 
 the hearth of ' The Judge's Folly.' He worked 
 and made money : he married and saw his children 
 grow up about him ; and in his old age he rested 
 in peace before he died happily. His son, John 
 Fever el again, made yet another move to the 
 West, and he prospered as his father had prospered. 
 When he died he left to his only son, the John 
 Feverel who now stood in the hall of the house 
 built by Roger Feverel nearly two hundred years 
 ago, three good things : a brave heart, a keen head, 
 and a modest fortune. To these John Feverel 
 added a quality of his own, an inquiring mind ever 
 athirst for knowledge. He put his wits to work 
 and did not cease from labour until he had doubled 
 the fortune left him by his father. Although he was 
 then barely thirty-five years of age, and although 
 he saw before him the prospect of great riches, he 
 gave up his business and rested satisfied with the 
 comfortable competence he had attained. He felt 
 that he had a more important work in life than the 
 mere making of money. Just what this future 
 work might be he did not know, but he was ready 
 to undertake whatever seemed to him fit and 
 worthy. In the meanwhile he set about im- 
 proving himself by travel. He had more than his 
 share of that mysticism of the West which matches 
 so curiously with the occult temperament of the 
 Orient. Even as a boy he had become an adept 
 in the cabalistic secrets of the Rosicrucians. As a 
 man he travelled throughout the East, seeking to
 
 204 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 sate his desire to gaze on strange things, and to 
 penetrate the obscure mysteries of strange people. 
 He had sought to discover the means whereby 
 the wonder-workers of the East wrought their 
 miracles. He was learned in the lore of the 
 alchemists, and he had traversed Arabia in search of 
 the surviving repositories of their recondite wisdom. 
 To all that he saw he applied his shrewd common- 
 sense. The results of his experiment and investi- 
 gation he kept to himself ; but he walked among 
 men as one who has peered deep into the enigmas 
 of life and pondered upon them long and earnestly. 
 It may be that, for a little space, he stood in 
 danger of sinking into the lethargy of Buddhistic 
 contemplation. He was far up in the Himalayas 
 when he received a letter which suddenly recalled 
 him to a sharp self-consciousness. It was from 
 Esther Feverel, the only daughter of Timothy 
 Feverel, the last survivor of the elder branch 
 of the old Judge's family. It told him in few and 
 simple words that her father's affairs were hope- 
 lessly involved, and that a mortgage on the old 
 house was about to be foreclosed ; and it suggested 
 that perhaps he might like to buy it, so that the 
 house should still be owned by a Feverel. John 
 Feverel had never seen any of his New England 
 relatives, and he had given them little thought ; but 
 with the old house, with the strange story of its 
 building, and with the legends which clustered 
 about its hearth, he was perfectly familiar. He had 
 sat by his grandfather's knee, night after night
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 205 
 
 during the festival reunions which brought together 
 the various members of the Western branch of the 
 family and he had treasured up every word which 
 fell from his grandfather's lips, when he told of 
 ' The Judge's Folly,' and of the fire on its hearth, 
 and of the ill fortune which followed the house and 
 its inmates. To have the house pass into his pos- 
 session was a boon he had not dared to hope for. 
 
 The letter which informed him that its purchase 
 was possible was written in the name of Timothy 
 Feverel, but the hand was the hand of his daughter. 
 John Feverel had studied chirography as he had 
 studied whatever else might serve to increase his 
 knowledge of men. He was wont to read cha- 
 racter by handwriting with a success often startling 
 to himself. The symbols of character he deci- 
 phered in the sincere handwriting of Esther Feverel 
 made him wish to meet her and know more of her. 
 
 He wrote to her at once, venturing to call her 
 cousin, and telling her that he had given orders to 
 have the place bought for him whenever the mort- 
 gagee saw fit to foreclose. Furthermore, assuming 
 the liberty of a kinsman, he begged that she and 
 her father would continue to live in the house as 
 before, taking care of it for him, against the time 
 when he should return to America. 
 
 A few months later, when he had begun to be 
 weary of his years of wandering in search of the 
 unknowable, he had received another letter 'from 
 Esther, letting him know that the sale had taken 
 place, and that the house was his, and thanking
 
 2o6 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 him for the kindness extended to her father and 
 herself a kindness of which they would gladly 
 avail themselves until his return. So gentle was 
 this letter, so sweet in its maidenly modesty, so 
 frank and womanly was it, so charming was the 
 character revealed by its chirography, that it 
 wrought a change in John Feverel's views of life 
 He abandoned a daring trip to the chief temples of 
 China, and made his way back to America. 
 
 Now, as he stood for the first time in the home 
 of the Feverels, he had a sharp feeling of disap- 
 pointment that Esther was not there to bid him 
 welcome. Before he had paced the hall half a 
 dozen times, this feeling gave way, and he began 
 even to be glad that he was alone, and that his 
 first impressions of the old house might be pure of 
 all admixture of the opinions of another, even were 
 that other his cousin Esther. So accurate had been 
 his grandfather's description, and so retentive had 
 been his own memory, that he felt at home in the 
 house as soon as he entered the door. He gazed 
 from the windows, and the view was to him as 
 though he had seen it before in some former exist- 
 ence. The tall clock on the stairs looked down on 
 him as benignantly as it had looked down on the 
 other children of the family in the two centuries 
 since it first began to measure eternity into time. 
 The mirror over the mantel-piece at the end of the 
 hall reflected his image as it had reflected the 
 image of eight generations of Feverels since the old 
 Judge set it against the chimney. The ancient
 
 ESTHER FEVER EL 207 
 
 chair before the fire extended its arms as hospi- 
 tably to him as it had to his great-grandfather, 
 the last of his line who had sat in it. On John 
 Feverel these things had a strange effect ; he felt 
 as though he had come home at last and for the 
 first time. 
 
 As he sat himself down in the chair before the 
 fire and glanced up at the mirror, he saw an ex- 
 pression on his face he had never known there be- 
 fore. He had a strange presentiment that he was 
 at the turning-point of his career. It was as 
 though he were halting at the threshold of a new 
 life, pausing for a moment to look back across the 
 past, and yet regarding the future hopefully. He 
 lowered his eyes, and they fell on the date carven 
 deep into the'heavy timbers of the mantel-piece 
 1692. For nearly two hundred years had the fire 
 been alight on that hearth day and night, winter 
 and summer, year after year. There the flame had 
 burned and smouldered and blazed since the Judge, 
 in his fanaticism and wrath, had brought home a 
 brand from the burning of a poor wretch whom he 
 had sentenced to death for an abhorrent crime of 
 petty treason. On that hearth, beneath the faded 
 tiles, whereon were depicted Cain and Abel, David 
 and Goliath, Sisera and Jael, and other characters 
 in Biblical scenes of bloodshed, the fire had never 
 ceased rising and falling since Roger Feverel had 
 kindled it for the first time with a brand from the 
 burning, that it might be an enduring witness to 
 his righteousness, and that it should be ready at all
 
 208 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 times in the future to fire the torch whenever the 
 same awful vengeance might need to be taken once 
 again. Roger Feverel was dead and buried, and 
 the hatreds and the beliefs and the heresies of his 
 time were dead and buried also, but the fire he 
 kindled was still smoking on his hearth. Roger 
 Feverel's son and his grandson and his great-grand- 
 son had passed away, one after another ; but the fire 
 that the founder of the family had lighted when he 
 built the house lived on, and was as young as ever. 
 Generation followed generation to the grave, but 
 the fire of intolerance still burned on its altar as 
 though Roger Feverel had made a covenant with 
 his descendants that they should feed the flame for 
 ever. So strongly had the traditions of the family 
 seized John Feverel that he bent forward and laid 
 across the embers two pieces from the piles of cut 
 wood ready to his hand on either side of the fire- 
 place. 
 
 As he lay back again in the chair he saw in the 
 mirror the reflection of his smile, for he was half 
 conscious that his humorous scepticism mated ill 
 with the fanatic intolerance of the old Judge who 
 had set light to that fire. He wondered whether 
 Roger Feverel had also looked into the mirror as 
 he heaped fuel upon the flame. No doubt the 
 Judge had seen the look on his own dark face, 
 though he knew not how to read its meaning. The 
 glass had hung there since the fire first flamed. In 
 it had been reflected the life history of the Feverels. 
 Across the surface of that frail glass had passed the
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 209 
 
 image of the pride and the joys and the sorrows 
 of Roger Feverel and of his descendants. It had 
 seen their youth and their old age ; it had seen 
 their sufferings, and it may be their death. It had 
 been a silent witness to their prosperity, and, after 
 many years, to their poverty, but never to their 
 disgrace or their shame, for they always held their 
 heads high, and their poverty was never tarnished 
 with dishonour. 
 
 As John Feverel sat in the chair before the fire 
 and gazed up into the mirror he thought of these 
 things, and he wished that these scenes might be 
 evoked from the past, and shown again in the glass 
 wherein they had been reflected as they happened. 
 He wondered what the Judge would have thought 
 of the magic mirrors of Japan, in which a vanished 
 scene may be made to reappear. Surely the Judge 
 would have seen nothing strange in the tale, but 
 he would have been prompt to punish any man 
 who should make use of such a device of the devil. 
 
 John Feverel recalled the temple on the flanks 
 of Fusiyama wherein the Japanese priests preserved 
 jealously the most potent of these magic mirrors. 
 It was in this temple that by one of those curious 
 reproductions in strange countries of the rites and 
 mysteries of ancient civilisation a perpetual fire 
 was cherished on the altar, guarded night and day, 
 as the virgins of Roma kept up the sacred flame of 
 Vesta. When a certain mysteriously compounded 
 preparation was thrown upon this fire, a dense 
 smoke arose and veiled the magic mirror, which 
 
 p
 
 210 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 hung just above the altar, and it was through the 
 dim haze of this smoke that the pictures of the 
 past became visible in the glass. 
 
 Suddenly John Feverel sprang to his feet. It 
 had struck him that here in ' The Judge's Folly ' 
 in New England there was an ever-burning fire 
 beneath a mirror just as there was in the Japanese 
 temple on the side of Fusiyama. And at the same 
 time he remembered that he had begged and bribed 
 a priest of the temple to give him a portion of the 
 preparation thrown upon the fire beneath the magic 
 mirror. With infinite precaution the priest had 
 confided it to him, incased in a tiny silver ball, the 
 surface of which was curiously wrought with a 
 mystic device. This ball, the contents of which 
 he had intended to submit to chemical analysis 
 whenever occasion served, he had worn ever since 
 attached to his watch-chain as a charm. As he 
 thought of it his fingers closed upon it, and the 
 worn links of the chain parted and left the ball in 
 his hand. It was as though the inanimate thing 
 had whispered to him that the time had come 
 when it could be of use. 
 
 Obeying an impulse which he felt to be well- 
 nigh irresistible, John Feverel drew forward the 
 scattered fragments of the fire which had burned 
 on that hearth for nearly twice a hundred years. 
 Then, with a single turn of his wrist, he twisted 
 apart the silver hemispheres which contained the 
 magical compound of the Japanese temple. A 
 white powder fell from them upon the glowing
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 211 
 
 embers, a pungent aroma filled the air, and a thick 
 smoke arose, veiling the mirror from view. As 
 the cool evening breeze, playing through the open 
 door, caused the cloud of smoke to waver and shift 
 from side to side, John Feverel, reclining in the 
 chair before the fire, felt as one looking through a 
 glass darkly. Figures, dim and indistinct, seemed 
 to be visible in the mirror, into which he peered 
 resolutely, calling up the past with the whole force 
 of his will. He sat motionless, and gave himself 
 up to the spell. His whole being was attuned in 
 harmony with the moment. Whether it was 
 memory, or imagination aided by memory, or 
 whether the charm had veritably some occult 
 potency, mattered little. As he gazed into the 
 mirror through the circling smoke which rose 
 steadily from the fire beneath he saw visions, and 
 in time they took form and colour. Some scenes 
 stood out more vividly than others, to John 
 Feverel's delight, for he soon found that he saw 
 more clearly what he was most familiar with, and 
 what he most wished to see, as though the mirror 
 responded to some secret sympathy of his soul. 
 He beheld the three sons of the house of Feverel, 
 the brothers of Esther, dead before she was born, 
 boys all three of them, but manly and full of spirit ; 
 he saw them come to bid farewell to their mother, 
 as they went forth, clad in dark blue, musket on 
 shoulder, on the long march which should end only 
 with their death, one on the plains of Virginia, and 
 one in the bayous of Louisiana, and one on the hill
 
 212 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 at Gettysburg ; and the shot which killed this last 
 reached the heart of the mother, and was fatal, 
 though she lingered long enough to clasp her little 
 daughter in her arms before she followed her boys 
 across the dark threshold of death. 
 
 Then a thick cloud of smoke rolled across the 
 mirror, as though a volley had been fired over their 
 graves, and as this drifted away, John Feverel, 
 looking fixedly in the glass, saw the open door of 
 the house, and a little maid went forth and gave a 
 glass of water to a courtly old gentleman, who 
 remained uncovered before her while he quenched 
 his thirst. He knew that the little maid was his 
 grandfather's sister, and he recognised the courtly 
 old gentleman as one who had come to bring us 
 help in time of direst need, and who was, many 
 years later, on a visit to America as the guest of 
 the nation. 
 
 As this pleasant vision faded away softly and 
 was resolved into nothing, there fell upon the car 
 of the man who was peering into the mirror, with 
 all his faculties at their utmost tension there fell 
 upon his ear as it had been a rattle of drums, and 
 he saw a company of redcoats drawn up before the 
 house, and on the door-step, confronting them 
 sturdily, whilst she patted the babe at her breast, 
 stood the beautiful Rachel Feverel, wife of Colonel 
 Francis Feverel, parleying with the captain of the 
 British troops, and bandying words with him pertly, 
 that he might delay, all to give the Continentals 
 time to rally and return and cut them off.
 
 ESTHER FEVEkEL 213 
 
 While he looked the scene changed, and the 
 rattle of drums was drowned by shrieks and shrill 
 yells like the cries of wild beasts. The door was 
 closed and barred, and defended by half a score 
 of strong men. The stanch shutters of the windows 
 were firmly fastened, and men were firing through 
 the loop-holes. Fiery-headed arrows fell against 
 the door now and again, and were extinguished just 
 as they were about to fire the house. But though 
 the painted Indians encompassed them on every 
 side, and escape was impossible, and death was 
 waiting for them, and a fate worse than death, the 
 women of the family were not craven ; some of 
 them were loading the muskets, every shot from 
 which hit the living mark it was aimed at ; and 
 some were gathered in a group about the fire, 
 melting lead from the roof and running it into 
 bullet- moulds. A little of the water into which 
 the hot bullets were dropped fell upon the roaring 
 logs on the hearth, and the white steam rushed 
 up and bedimmed the mirror so that John Feverel 
 could see nothing more for a long while. 
 
 At last the steam and the smoke parted again 
 and left the glass clear. The hall was silent and 
 deserted ; and Roger Feverel paced slowly and 
 thoughtfully up and down, from the hearth he had 
 lighted with a brand from the burning he had 
 decreed, to the door which shut out the glory of 
 the summer sun. Judge Feverel was not a# old 
 man even then, though he had aged since the day 
 when he had done his duty at Hadley fight, by the
 
 214 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 side and under the orders of the gray warrior who 
 came forth mysteriously to lead the colonists to 
 victory, and who was recognised as Goffe the 
 regicide. As he strode up and down the hall of 
 'The Judge's Folly' he did not note a light foot- 
 step upon the stair, and he did not see a slight and 
 graceful girlish figure, until his daughter stole her 
 arm in his as he turned on his heel near the door. 
 When Roger Feverel felt her gentle touch his hard 
 face softened, and he gave her a look of deep affec- 
 tion mingled with solicitude. John Feverel re- 
 called the family tradition of the Judge's daughter, 
 who began to sicken and fade as soon as she set 
 foot in the house her father had built ; she was his 
 favourite of all his children, in so far at least as his 
 stern justice allowed him to make any distinction 
 between them. As she leaned on her father's arm 
 she seemed so fragile that a puff of the winter 
 breeze would blow her away, and it was true that 
 she did not live out the first December in the new 
 house. She turned with her father and drew near 
 the fire, and for the first time her face became visible 
 to John Feverel. He looked at her with surprise, 
 for he recognised her at least he had a vague 
 feeling that he had beheld her face before. The 
 beautiful mouth, the tender eyes, the delicate wave 
 of the hair drawn tightly back, were familiar to 
 him, like a face seen in a dream. There came a 
 sudden thickening of the misty vapour which en- 
 wrapped the mirror, and for a moment he seemed 
 to see her image upon this unsubstantial curtain ;
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 215 
 
 and then he remembered where it was that he had 
 first beheld the face of the Judge's daughter, and 
 he knew it was the face of his promised bride. 
 
 A year before, John Feverel had been in Egypt, 
 and one day he had joined a little party who 
 wished to view the Sphinx by night. After the 
 pale green sunset had died away, and the ruddy 
 after-glow had followed it swiftly, and the short 
 twilight had given place to the darkness of night, 
 the party sat around a fire before the house where 
 they were to sleep. While John Feverel was lying 
 on the sand, under the shadow of the Sphinx, 
 musing on the riddle of life, he was suddenly 
 awakened to the emptiness of existence by the 
 arrival of a little band of strolling performers, one 
 of whom, apparently a Hindoo, and a man of 
 unusual skill and presence, performed the cus- 
 tomary wonders of the itinerant magician. A 
 dragoman hinted to one of the party that this 
 Hindoo had great powers, and that he had been 
 known to reveal to a man the portrait of his future 
 bride. John Feverel, who had drawn on one side, 
 took no part in the clamorous outcry of his fellow- 
 travellers for an immediate exhibition of his pecu- 
 liar power, and he was much surprised when the 
 Hindoo turned to him gravely and offered to work 
 the wonder for him, and for him alone. With his 
 keen interest in thaumaturgy, Feverel accepted the 
 offer. The Hindoo made two smaller fires equi- 
 distant from that around which the travellers sat, 
 and at each he stationed one of the two boys who
 
 216 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 served as his assistants. Then the Hindoo looked 
 into John Feverel's hand and studied its lines for a 
 moment. Producing a package of some strange 
 Oriental incense, he bade Feverel cast a handful of 
 it on the fire. As he obeyed, a thick column of 
 smoke shot into the air, and in the centre of this 
 column he saw a woman's face. It was the same 
 face he was to see again in the mirror. 
 
 It was a face he could now never more forget. 
 It had been revealed to him twice in a vision, once 
 in a column of smoke in Egypt, and once again in 
 a mirror here in New England. He wondered if 
 he was never to behold her in more tangible reality, 
 and to meet her face to face in actual life, where 
 he might take her by the hand and bid her mark 
 the beatings of his heart, and ask her to share his 
 life through good fortune and ill. 
 
 He sat silently and long, dreaming and musing. 
 When he aroused himself at last, the rising smoke 
 was now only a thin thread, and the fire had 
 shrivelled to a few scant embers. He had a sus- 
 picion that there was some ingredient in the 
 Japanese preparation he had sprinkled over the 
 flames which had sufficed to quench them finally. 
 For the first time in the two centuries since Roger 
 Feverel had lighted the fire on that hearth it burned 
 low, and although it yet lingered and might be re- 
 suscitated by effort, it was well-nigh dead. Through 
 the open door the slant rays of the setting sun en- 
 tered the hall and bathed it in an immaterial glory.
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 217 
 
 John Feverel raised his eyes again to the mirror 
 to see if haply he might gain another glimpse of 
 the face which had moved him so strangely. The 
 glass was no longer wreathed in vapour, and yet 
 again it reflected the same face, not dimly now, nor 
 indistinct, not as a phantom, intangible and tanta- 
 lizing, but alive, and with the smile of life and 
 health and youth. Then he heard a light footfall, 
 and he sprang to his feet and stood before the 
 woman of his vision. And she stood before him 
 in flesh and blood, this woman whom he had seen 
 only in the mirror of the past. Mouth and eyes 
 and hair, and the beauty of which these were 
 symbols, were to him unmistakable. Even her 
 dress in its simplicity recalled that of Roger 
 Feverel's daughter. The beauty which in the 
 evanescent visions had been vague and fleeting was 
 in life beyond all question. It was the beauty of 
 New England, and it dwelt as much in delicacy 
 of colour as in the regularity of outline. It was 
 beauty not only of face, but also of figure, as firm, 
 in fact, as it seemed fragile. But perhaps the chief 
 charm lay in the eyes, dreamy yet noble, full of 
 frankness and candour. John Feverel stood before 
 her entranced, or rather as one awakened from 
 reverie to a delightful reality. 
 
 As she came toward him, with a brilliant smile 
 of welcome, she held out her hand. 
 
 ' It is Cousin John, I am sure,' she ' said. 
 ' Though we did not expect you until to-morrow, I
 
 2i8 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 know you. We Feverels are a marked race, with 
 our dark eyes and light hair.' 
 
 c And you are Esther ? ' he said. 
 
 ' Yes, I am Esther,' was her answer. 
 
 The voice was the voice of an angel in its 
 sweetness and purity. John Feverel almost hesi- 
 tated to believe that he was not dreaming still, that 
 he was no longer peering into the mirror in which 
 he had beheld her only a few minutes before. 
 
 ' I am sorry that we were not here to welcome 
 you this afternoon, but my father went into town, 
 and I was away in the orchard, and I did not 
 know you were here until I saw your horse.' 
 
 He took the hand she extended to him, and mur- 
 mured inarticulate acknowledgment. He found 
 few words, though he was wont to be ready. His 
 tongue refused its office, but his love spake from 
 his eyes. Her glance fell, under his steady gaze, 
 and a slight blush crimsoned her cheek. It was as 
 though, having seen her once, he did not wish ever 
 again to lose sight of her, and to be compelled to 
 rely on incantation for her reappearance. She 
 hesitated for a little space, and then she continued : 
 'I hope you will be happy here, as I have been. 
 It is a dear old house, and I have spent my life 
 here, and I love it. But I fear you will not be 
 content with what pleased an ignorant girl, after 
 your wanderings all over the world.' 
 
 'What I have seen of the house seems like a 
 glimpse of Paradise,' he said, when at last he found 
 his voice. ' And I should be hard to please if I
 
 ESTHER FEVEREL 219 
 
 were to wish to leave it. I am sure that I shall 
 not want to roam again. I shall be content here 
 now ; ' and to these last words he gave a deep 
 meaning, so that the blush mantled her cheek 
 again. ' I have come home to rest by my own 
 fireside.' 
 
 As he said this she cast an involuntary glance 
 upon the hearth. Then she sprang forward with 
 feverish haste : ' You have let the. fire go out,' she 
 said, reproachfully, and it has been burning here 
 day and night, summer and winter, ever since the 
 house was built.' 
 
 John Feverel said nothing, but watched her 
 as she heaped the wood over the scant embers and 
 sought to fan them into a flame. Perhaps it was 
 the fixity of his glance which disturbed her, for 
 she arose sharply and turned to seek a match. 
 The skirt of her dress rested for a second on one 
 of the dying embers, and as she stooped again the 
 flames sprang up and enveloped her. * 
 
 With the prompt decision of a man used to 
 the facing of emergencies, John Feverel seized the 
 heavy Oriental rug which lay before the hearth. 
 He flung it instantly around the girl, and rolled it 
 tightly, extinguishing the slight flame before it had 
 force even to scorch her fair skin. For a minute 
 he kept her wrapped closely in his arms. 
 
 Then, as he relaxed his hold a little, she re- 
 leased herself. 
 
 ' But you must not let the fire go out,' she said, 
 gently, ' even if it did try to burn me.'
 
 220 ESTHER FEVEREL 
 
 He placed her in the chair before the hearth, 
 and he stepped forward and stamped out the last 
 lingering ember, powerless thereafter for good or 
 evil. She watched him with a woman's acquies- 
 cence in the force of a man's will. When the last 
 spark was quenched, he came to her and took her 
 hand. 
 
 ' Let the old fire of intolerance and hatred go 
 out,'- he said. ' For nearly two hundred years its 
 smoke has cast a shadow over the Feverels. I hope 
 for a new light and a purer flame on our hearth ; ' 
 and he knelt beside her, and her hand rested in 
 his.
 
 NEW DOLLAR NOVELS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 Each One Volume, i2mo Cloth, - - - $1.00 
 
 VALENTINO. 
 
 By WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR. 
 
 Price reduced to One Dollar. 
 
 A romance founded upon the history of the Borgia family in the early pait 
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 and his son Caesar Borgia. It presents a remarkably carefully studied 
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 manner born.' " Boston Post. 
 
 "A clever and thoroughly original tale, full of dramatic situations, and 
 replete with some new and most expressive Americanisms." Literary 
 World. 
 
 WITHIN THE CAPES. 
 
 By HOWARD PYLE, 
 
 Author of "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," etc., etc. 
 
 Mr, Pyle's novel is, first of all, an absorbingly interesting one. As a sea 
 story, pure and simple, it compares well with the best of Cla'k Russell's 
 tales, but it is much more ; the adventures of Tom Granger, the hero, are 
 by no means confined to sea life. Though never sensational, there are 
 plenty of exciting incidents and ever a well-developed mystery. The 
 plot is of the good old-fashioned thrilling sort and the style strong and 
 vigorous. 
 
 "Mr. Pyle proves himself a master of nautical technique and an 
 accurate observer. . . . His style is good and fresh, and in its concise- 
 ness resembles that of Marryatt." N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 
 
 "The style is so quaint, so felicitous, so quietly humorous, that one 
 must smile, wonder and admire." Hartford Post.
 
 SCRIBNER'S NEW DOLLAR NOVELS. 
 
 A WHEEL OF FIRE. 
 
 By ARLO BATES. 
 
 Mr. Bates' novel is so unusually strong in its conception that it make 
 strong impression on this account alone. It is not only a striking sto 
 but is told with remarkable power and intensity. 
 
 "A very powerful performance, not only original in its conception, but 
 full of fine literary art." George Parsons Lathrop. 
 
 " One of the most fascinating stories of the year. " Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 "A carefully written story of much originality and possessing great 
 interest." Albany Argus. 
 
 ' ' The plot is clearly conceived and carefully worked out ; the story is 
 well told with something of humor, and with a skillful management of 
 dialogue and narrative." Art Interchange. 
 
 ROSES OF SHADOW. 
 
 By T. R. SULLll/AN. 
 
 A most pleasant revival of a type of novel that has been growing rare. A 
 story well told, with the charm of a sincere self-respecting '"'e that 
 does not lose itself in a search after effects and oddities, and with a strong 
 and healthy plot, not frittered away by perpetual analysis. 
 
 "The characters of the story have a remarkable vividness and individ- 
 uality every one of them which mark at once Mr. Sullivan's strongest 
 
 promise as a novelist All of Mr. Sullivan's men are excellent. 
 
 John Musgrove, the grimly pathetic old beau, sometimes reminds us of a 
 touch of Thackeray." Cincinnati Times-Star. 
 
 ACROSS THE CHASM. 
 
 /? STORY OF NORTH AND SOUTH. 
 
 A novel full of spirit and wit which takes up a new situation in American life. 
 The cleverness of the sketching, the admirable fairness of the whole, 
 and a capital plot make the novel one of the brightest of recent years. 
 
 "A story which will at once attract readers by its original and striking 
 qjialities. " -Journal of Commerce, N. Y.
 
 SCKIBNEFS NEW DOLLAR NOVELS. 
 
 "Nothing can be more freshly and prettily written than the last few 
 pages, when Louis and Margaret meet and peace is made. It is a little idyl 
 
 of its kind 'Across the Chasm ' not being an impalpable story, 
 
 but having a live young woman and a live man in its pages, deserves hearty 
 commendation." N. Y. Times. 
 
 A DESPERATE CHANCE. 
 
 By Lieut. J. D.J. KELLEY, U.S.N. 
 
 "A Desperate Chance" is as absorbing as only a novel can be when told 
 with the -verve of such a writer as Lieut. Kelley. It is a fresh, stirring story, 
 with sufficient adventure, romance and mystery to keep the reader absorbed. 
 It may safely be said that if the tale is once begun it will be finished in a 
 continuous reading, and we think of it as one of the stories we will always 
 remember distinctly, and which was well worth the reading. 
 
 "A stirring sea story." New York Star. 
 
 " Lieut. J. D. J. Kelley's novel, 'A Desperate Chance,' is of the good 
 old-fashioned, exciting kind. Though it is a sea story, all the action is not 
 on board ship. There is a well-developed mystery, and while it is in no 
 sense sensational readers may be assured that they will not be tired out by 
 analytical descriptions, nor will they find a dull page from first to last." 
 Brooklyn Union. 
 
 " 'A Desperate Chance ' is a sea story of the best sort. It possesses the 
 charm and interest which attach us to sea life, but it does not bewilder the 
 reader by nautical extremes, which none but a professional sailor can under- 
 stand. 'A Desperate Chance' reminds us of Mr. Clark Russell's stories, 
 but Lieut. Kelley avoids the professional fault into which Mr. Russell has 
 fallen so often. The book is extraordinarily interesting, and this nov/adays 
 is the highest commendation a novel can have," Boston Courier. 
 
 COLOR STUDIES. 
 
 By T. A. JANVIER (Ivory Black). 
 
 A series of most delightful pictures of artists' life in New York which first 
 attracted the attention of readers to Mr. Janvier as a writer of very 
 notable short stories. Certainly among stories dealing with artists' sur- 
 roundings there have never been written better tales than these which 
 are collected in this beautiful little volume. 
 " The style is bright, piquant and graphic, and the plots are full of 
 
 humor and originality." Boston Traveler. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 
 745 <& 745 Broadway, New York.
 
 UNIFORM LIBRARY EDITION. 
 
 MRS. FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT'S NOVELS. 
 
 THAT LASS O LOIVRIES. 
 
 One volume, 12mo, extra clotJi, - - $1.25 
 
 "We know of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the 
 English language, not even excepting the best of George Eliot's." Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 <A FAIR BARBARIAN. 
 
 One volume, 12mo, extra, cloth, - - $1.25 
 
 " A particularly sparkling story, the subject being the young heiress of 
 a Pacific silver-mine, thrown amid the very proper petty aristocracy of an 
 English rural town." Springfield Republican. 
 
 THROUGH ONE ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 One volume, 12mo, extra cloth, - - $1.5O 
 
 "The pathetic fervor which Mrs. Burnett showed so fully in 'That 
 Lass o' Lowrie's' is exhibited in many a touching scene in her new story, 
 which is only to be found fault with because it is too touching." London 
 Athenatum. 
 
 LOUISIANA. 
 
 One volume, 12mo, extra cloth, - - $1.25 
 
 "We commend this book as the product of a skillful, talented, well- 
 trained pen. Mrs. Burnett's admirers are already numbered by the thousand, 
 and every new work like this one can only add to their number." Chicago 
 Tiibune. 
 
 HA WORTH'S 
 
 One volume, 12mo, extra cloth, - $1.25 
 
 " It is but faint praise to speak of 'Haworth's' as merely a good novel. 
 It is one of the few great novels." Hartford Courant. 
 
 SURLY TIM, 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES. 
 One volume, 12mo, extra cloth, - $1.25 
 
 "Each of these narratives have a distinct spirit, and can bejprofitably 
 read by all classes of people. They are told not only with true art but with 
 deep pathos." Boston Post. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 74? & 745 'Broadway , New York.
 
 THREE DELIGHTFUL NOVELS. 
 
 THE MIDGE. 
 
 By H. C. BUNNER. 
 One Volume. 12mo. $1.00. 
 
 It warms the heart and touches with brighter colors the cold gray of an uneventful 
 life to read a story of the affections ; not passionate or disordered love which puts the 
 whole world out of focus, but kindly, generous feeling, an unconscious sympathy with 
 humanity in distress. And this is the pleasure in store for those who read Mr. H. C. 
 Bunner's novel, " The Midge." There is not a touch in it of the modern cynicism 
 which cheapens the individual life, none of the subtle class distinctions which Ameri- 
 can snobbery has invented, nor any gilded morality. It is the old-fashioned gospel of 
 humanity which deals gently with the eriing, and holds out a hand to a brother in 
 distress. It makes of a generous action, not a self-denial, but something which adds 
 a pleasure and a richness to him who gives and him who receives. '\ ou close this 
 story feeling that a narrow life on the common level may be filled with a genuine 
 happiness, unknown, perhaps, among the favorites of fortune. Ntw York Life. 
 
 THE LATE MRS. NULL. 
 
 By FRANK R. STOCKTON. 
 One Volume. 12mo. $1.5O. 
 
 The only unfavorable criticism we ever heard pronounced upon the short stories of 
 Mr. Frank R. Stockton was that they were short. It is a pleasuie to take up for the 
 first time a book in which he treats the reader fairly in respect to quantity. "The 
 Late Mrs. Null " lasts long enough "o allow you to make the lady's acquaintance, and 
 to pursue it through many pages with the comfortable feeling that the end is still a 
 good way off. So delightful is tho quality of Mr. Stockton's humor, and so varying 
 are the surprises which his remarkable imagination prepares at every turn, that few 
 readers will be willing to leave Mrs. Null until Mrs. Null herself is ready to become 
 the late Mw. Null. New York Sun. 
 
 FACE TO FACE. 
 
 One Volume. 12mo. $1.25. 
 
 Those who approach it for entertainment will enjoy its satire ; its admirably man- 
 aged plot ; its dramatic impulse and movement. Those who read it for literary 
 quality will not fail to appreciate the art which underlies its construction, and which 
 adds to its fine and mobile style a singular artistic effectiveness ; but no one will lay 
 it down without some freshened anxiety fcr the future and some clearer understand- 
 ing of the struggle into the heat of which civilization is irresistibly moving. It is a 
 story which ought to be read and pondered by all thoughtful people. The New 
 York Christian Union. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 & 745 Broadway, New York.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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