m *.... 179 By Brander Matthews. LOVE IN OLD CLOATHES 196 By H. C. Bunner. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. BY BRANDER MATTHEWS AND H. C. BUNNER. PART FIRST. Uocumtnt TSo 1. Paragraph from the ''Illustrated London News" pub- lished under the head of "Obituary of Eminent Persons" in the issue of January ^th, 1879 : SIR WILLIAM BEAUVOIR, BART. Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., whose lamented death has just occurred at Brighton, on December 28th, was the head and representative of the junior branch of the very ancient and honourable family of Beauvoir, and was the only son of the late General Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., by his wife Anne, daughter of Colonel Doyle, of Chelsworth Cottage, Suffolk. He was born in 1805, and was educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was M. P. for Lancashire from 1837 to 1847, and was appointed a Gentleman of the Privy 3 4 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Chamber in 1843. Sir William married, in 1826, Hen- rietta Georgian a, fourth daughter of the Right Honour- able Adolphus Liddell, Q. C., by whom he had two sons, William Beauvoir and Oliver Liddell Beauvoir. The latter was with his lamented parent when he died. Of the former nothing has been heard for nearly thirty years, about which time he left England suddenly for America. It is supposed that he went to California, shortly after the discovery of gold. Much forgotten gossip will now in all probability be revived, for the will of the lamented baronet has been proved, on the 2d inst., and the personalty sworn under 70,000. The two sons are appointed executors. The estate in Lan- cashire is left to the elder, and the rest is divided between the brothers. The doubt as to the career of Sir William's eldest son must now of course be cleared up. This family of Beauvoirs is of Norman descent, and of great antiquity. This is the younger branch, founded in the last century by Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., who was Chief Justice of the Canadas, whence he was granted the punning arms and motto now borne by his descendants a beaver sable rampant on a field gules ; motto, "Damno." THE DOCUMENTS IN TIIE CASE. 5 PART SECOND. Document No. 2. Promises to pay, put forth 5y William Beauvoir, junior, at various times in 1848 : I. O. U. 105. o. o. April loth, 1848. William Beauvoir, junr. Document "No. 3, The same. /. O. U. 250. o. o. April 22d, 1848. William Beauvoir, junr. Document X0. 4, The same. I. O. U. 600. o. o. May loth, 1848. William Beauvoir, junr. 6 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Document Wo, 5. Extract from the "Sunday Satirist" a journal of high- life^ published in London, May 13th, 18^8 : Are not our hereditary lawmakers and the members of our old families the guardians of the honour of this realm? One would not think so to see the reckless gait at which some of them go down the road to ruin. The D e of D m and the E 1 of B n and L d Y g, are not these pretty guardians of a nation's name ? Quis custodiet ? etc. Guardians, forsooth, parce quails se sont donnes la peine de naitre! Some of the gentry make the running as well as their betters. Young W m B r, son of old Sir W m B r, late M. P. for L e, is a truly model young man. He comes of a good old county family his mother was a daughter of the Right Hon- ourable A -s L 1, and he himself is old enough to know better. But we hear of his escapades night after night, and day after day. He bets all day and he plays all night, and poor tired nature has to make the best of it. And his poor worn purse gets the worst of it. He has duns by the score. His I. O. U.'s are held by every Jew in the city. He is not content with a little gentlemanlike game of whist or ecarte, but he must needs revive for his special use and behoof the dangerous and well-nigh forgotten pharaoh. As luck would have it, he had lost as much at this game of brute chance as ever he would at any game of skill. His judgment of horseflesh is no better than his luck at cards. He came a cropper over the " Two Thousand THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. ^ Guineas." The victory of the favourite cost him to the tune of, over six thousand pounds. We learn that he hopes to recoup himself on the Derby, by backing Shylock for nearly nine thousand pounds ; one bet was twelve hundred guineas. And this is the sort of man who may be chosen at any time by force of family interest to make laws for the toiling millions of Great Britain ! IBocument Wo. 6. Extract from "BeWs Life" of May 19th, 1848: THE DEKBY DAY. WEDNESDAY. This day, like its predecessor, opened with a cloudless sky, and the throng which crowded the avenues leading to the grand scene of attraction was, as we have elsewhere remarked, incalculable. THE DERBY. The Derby Stakes of 50 sovs. each, h. ft. for three-year- olds ; colts, 8 st. 7 lb., fillies, 8 st. 2 Ib. ; the second to receive 100 sovs., and the winner to pay 100 sovs. towards police, etc.; mile and a half on the new Derby course ; 215 subs. Lord Clifden's b. c. Surplice, by Touchstone ... 1 Mr. Bowe's b. c. Springy Jack, by Hetman ... 2 Mr. B. Green's br. c. Shylock, by Simoon .... 3 Mr. Payne's b. c. Glendower, by Slane Mr. J. P. Day's b. c. Nil Desperandum, by Venison . 8 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Qocutnent Wo. 7. Paragraph of Shipping Intelligence from the " Liver- pool Courier" of June 21st, 1848: The bark Euterpe, Captain Riding, belonging to the Transatlantic Clipper Line of Messrs. Judkins & Cooke, left the Mersey yesterday afternoon, bound for New York. She took out the usual complement of steerage passengers. The first officer's cabin is occupied by Professor Titus Peebles, M.R.C.S., M.R.G.S., lately instructor in metallurgy at the University of Edin- burgh, and Mr. William Beauvoir. Professor Peebles, we are informed, has an important scientific mission in the States, and will not return for six months. JBoctinwnt Wo. 8. Paragraph from the " N~. Y. Herald" of September 9th, 1848. While we well know that the record of vice and dissipation can never be pleasing to the refined tastes of the cultivated denizens of the only morally pure metropolis on the face of the earth, yet it may be of interest to those who enjoy the fascinating study of human folly and frailty to "point a moral or adorn a tale " from the events transpiring in our very midst. Such as these will view with alarm the sad example afforded the youth of our city by the dissolute career of a young lump of aristocratic affectation and patri- cian profligacy, recently arrived in this city. This young gentleman's (save the mark !) name is Lord THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 9 William F. Beauvoir, the latest scion of a venerable and wealthy English family. We print the full name of this beautiful exemplar of "haughty Albion," al- though he first appeared among our citizens under the alias of Beaver, by which name he is now generally known, although recorded on the books of the Astor House by the name which our enterprise first gives Tto the public. Lord Beauvoir's career since his arrival here has been one of unexampled extravagance and mad immorality. His days and nights have been passed in the gilded palaces of the fickle goddess, Fortune, in Thomas Street and College Place, where he has squandered fabulous sums, by* some stated to amount to over 78,000 sterling. It is satisfactory to know that retribution has at last overtaken him. His enormous income has been exhausted to the ultimate farthing, and at latest accounts he had quit the city, leaving behind him, it is shrewdly suspected, a large hotel bill, though no such admission can be extorted from his last landlord, who is evidently a sycophantic adulator of British " aristocracy." 10 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. JBontment No. 9. Certificate of deposit, vulgarly known as a pawn- ticket^ issued by one Simpson to William Jfeauvoir, December 2d, 1848. John Simpson, Loan Office, 36 Bowery, New York. Dec. 2d, 1848. One Gold Hunting-case Watch and Chain, Dolls. 150 Cts. oo William Beauvoir. Not accountable in case of fire, damage, moth, robbery, breakage. &c. 25,% per ann. Good for 1 year only. JBocttment No. 10. Letter from the late John Phwnix, found among the posthumous papers of the late John P. Squibob, and promptly published in the " San Diego Herald" OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, Jan. 3*1849. MY DEAR SQUIB : I imagine your pathetic inquiry as to my whereabouts pathetic, not to say hypo- thetic for I am now where I cannot hear the dulcet strains of your voice. I am on board ship. I am half seas over. I am bound for California by way of the Isthmus. I am going for the gold, my boy, the gold. In the mean time I am lying around loose on the deck of this magnificent vessel, the Mercy G. Tarbox, of THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. H Nantucket, bred by Noah's ArJc out of Pilot-boat, dam by Mudscow out of Raging CanawL The Mercy G. Tarbox is one of the best boats of Nantucket, and Captain Clearstarch is one of the best captains all along shore although, friend Squibob, I feel sure that you are about to observe that a captain with a name like that would give anyone the blues. But don't do it, Squib ! Spare me this once. But as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the Mercy G. mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my backbone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two English- men on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society just we three, you know to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the cap- tain's liquors is most dangerous, so that we can take the pledge not to touch it. One of them is a chemist or a metallurgist, or something scientific. The other is a gentleman. The chemist or metallurgist or something scientific is Professor Titus Peebles, who is going out to pros- pect for gold. He feels sure that his professional training will give him the inside track in the gulches and gold mines. He is a smart chap. He invented the celebrated "William Riley Baking Powder" bound to rise up every time. , And here I must tell you a little circumstance. As I was coming down to the dock in New York, to go UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 12 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. aboard the Mercy 1858 : HYMENEAL HIGH JINKS. William Beaver, better known ten years ago as " Beaver Bill," is now a quiet and prosperous agricul- turalist in the Steal Valley. He was, however, a pioneer in the 1849 movement, and a vivid memory of this fact at times moves him to quit his bucolic labors and come in town for a real old-fashioned tare. He arrived in New Centreville during Christmas week; and got married suddenly, but not unexpectedly, yes- terday morning. His friends took it upon themselves to celebrate the joyful occasion, rare in the experience of at least one of the parties, by getting very high on Irish Ike's whiskey and serenading the newly-married couple with fish-horns, horse-fiddles, and other impro- vised musical instruments. Six of the participators in this epithalamial serenade, namely, Jose Tanco, Hiram Scuttles, John P. Jones, Hermann Bumgardner, Jean Durant ("Frenchy"), and Bernard McGinnis ("Big Barney"), were taken in tow by the police force, assisted by citizens, and locked up over night, to cool their gen~ erous enthusiasm in the gloomy dungeons of Justice THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 17 Skinner's calaboose. This morning all were discharged with a reprimand, except Big Barney and Jose Tanco, who, being still drunk, were allotted ten days in default of $10. The bridal pair left this noon for the bride- groom's ranch. JBocument No. 14. Mctract from "The New York Herald" for June 23d, 1861 : THE EED SKINS. A BORDER WAR AT LAST! INDIAN INSURRECTION. RED DEVILS RISING! WOMEN AND CHILDREN SEEKING SAFETY IN THE LARGER TOWNS. HORRIBLE HOLOCAUSTS ANTICIPATED. BURYING THE HATCHET IN THE WHITE MAN'S HEAD. [SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.] CHICAGO, June 22, 1861. Great uneasiness exists all along the Indian frontier. Nearly all the regular troops have been withdrawn from the West for service in the South. With the return of the warm weather it seems certain that the red skins will take advantage of the opportunity thus offered, and inaugurate a bitter and vindictive fight against the whites. Rumors come from the agencies that the 18 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Indians are leaving in numbers. A feverish excite- ment among them has been easily to be detected. Their ponies are now in good condition, and forage can soon be had in abundance on the prairie, if it is not already. Everything points toward a sudden and startling outbreak of hostilities. [SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.] ST. PAUL, June 22, 1861. The Sioux near here are all in a ferment. Expe- rienced Indian fighters say the signs of a speedy going on the war-path are not to be mistaken. No one can tell how soon the whole frontier may be in a bloody blaze. The women and children are rapidly coming in from all exposed settlements. Nothing overt as yet has transpired, but that the Indians will collide very soon with the settlers is certain. All the troops have been withdrawn. In our defenceless state there is no knowing how many lives may be lost before the regi- ments of volunteers now organizing can take the field. LATEE. THE WAR BEGUN. FIRST BLOOD FOR THE INDIANS, THE SCALPING KNIFE AND THE TOMAHAWK AT WORK AGAIN. [SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.] BLACK WING AGENCY, June 22, 1861. The Indians made a sudden and unexpected attack on the town of Coyote Hill, forty miles from here, last THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 19 night, and did much damage before the surprised set- tlers rallied and drove them off. The red skins met with heavy losses. Among the whites killed are a man named William Beaver, sometimes called Beaver Bill, and his wife. Their child, a beautiful little girl of two, was carried off by the red rascals. A party has been made up to pursue them. Owing to their taking their wounded with them, the trail is very distinct. IBocumcnt No. 15. Letter from Mrs. Edgar SaviHe, in San Francisco, to Mr. Edgar Samlle, in Chicago. - '""** MONSTER VARIETY AND DRAMATIC COMBINATION. ON THE ROAD. G. W. K. McCULLUM, Treasurer. HI. SAMUELS, Stage Manager. JNO. SHANKS> Advance. No dates filled except with first- class houses. Hall owners will please consider silence a polite negative. SAN FRANCISCO, January 29, 1863. MY DEAR OLD MAN ! Here we are in our second week at Frisco and you will be glad to know playing to steadily increasing biz, having signed for two weeks more, certain. I did n't like to mention it when I wrote you last, but things were very queer after we left Denver, and " Treasury " was a mockery till we got to Bluefoot Springs, which is a mining town, where we showed in the hotel dining-room. Then there was a 20 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. strike just before the curtain went up. The house was mostly miners in red shirts and very exacting. The sinews were forthcoming very quick my dear, and after that the ghost walked quite regular. So now every- thing is bright, and you won't have to worry if Chicago does n't do the right thing by you. I don't find this engagement half as disagreeable as I expected. Of course it ain't so very nice travelling in a combination with variety talent but they keep to themselves and we regular professionals make a happy family that Barnum would not be ashamed of and quite separate and comfortable. We don't associate with any of them only with The Unique Mulligans wife, because he beats her. So when he is on a regular she sleeps with me. And talking of liquor dear old man, if you knew how glad and proud I was to see you writing so straight and steady and beautiful in your three last letters. O, I 'm sure my darling if the boys thought of the little wife out on the road they would n't plague you so with the Enemy. Tell Harry Atkinson this from me, he has a good kind heart but he is the worst of your friends. Every night when I am dressing I think of you at Chicago, and pray you may never again go on the way you did that terrible night at Rochester. Tell me dear, did you look handsome in Horatio ? You ought to have had Laertes instead of that duffing Merivale. And now I have the queerest thing to tell you. Jardine is going in for Indians and has secured six very ugly ones. I mean real Indians, not professional. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 21 They are hostile Comanshies or something who have just laid down their arms. They had an insurrection in the first year of the War, when the troops went East, and they killed all the settlers and ranches and destroyed the canyons somewhere out in Nevada, and when they were brought here they had a wee little kid with them only four or five years old, but so sweet. They stole her and killed her parents and brought her up for their own in the cunningest little moccasins. She could not speak a word of English except her own name which is Nina. She has blue eyes and all her second teeth. The ladies here made a great fuss about her and sent her flowers and worsted afgans, but they did not do anything else for her and left her to us. O dear old man you must let me have her! You never refused me a thing yet and she is so like our Avonia Marie that my heart almost breaks when she puts her arms around my neck she calls me mamma already. I want to have her with us when we get the little farm and it must be near, that little farm of ours we have waited for it so long and something tells me my own old faker will make his hit soon and be great. You can't tell how I have loved it and hoped for it and how real every foot of that farm is to me. And though I can never see my own darling's face among the roses it will make me so happy to see this poor dead mother's pet get red and rosy in the country air. And till the farm comes we shall always have enough for her, without your ever having to black up again as you did for me the winter I was sick my own poor boy ! 22 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Write me yes you will be glad when you see her. And now love and regards to Mrs. Barry and all friends. Tell the Worst of Managers that he knows where to find his leading juvenile for next season. Think how funny it would be for us to play together next year we have n't done it since '57 the third year we were married. That was my first season higher than walk- ing and now I 'm quite an old woman most thirty dear! Write me soon a letter like that last one and send a kiss to Mna our Nina. Your own girl, MAEY. P. S. He has not worried me since. Nina drew this herself she says it is a horse so that you can get here soon. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 23 PART THIRD. JBoctitnent No* 16. Letter from Messrs. Throstlethwaite, Throstlethwaite, and Dick) Solicitors, Lincoln's fan, London, Eng- land, to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 76 Broadway, New York, U. S. A. January 8, 1879. Messrs. HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER : GENTLEMEN: On the death of our late client, Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., and after the reading of the deceased gentleman's will, drawn up nearly forty years ago by our Mr. Dick, we were requested by Oliver Beauvoir, Esq., the second son of the late Sir William, to assist him in discovering and communicating with his elder brother, the present Sir William Beauvoir, of whose domicile we have little or no informa- tion. After a consultation between Mr. Oliver Beauvoir and our Mr. Dick, it was seen that the sole knowledge in our possession amounted substantially to this: Thirty years ago the elder son of the late baronet, after indulging in dissipation in every possible form, much to the sorrow of his respected parent, who fre- quently expressed as much to our Mr. Dick, disappeared, leaving behind him bills and debts of all descriptions, which we, under instructions from Sir William, exam- ined, audited, and paid. Sir William Beauvoir would allow no search to be made for his erring son and would listen to no mention of his name. Current 24 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. gossip declared that he had gone to New York, where he probably arrived about midsummer, 1848. Mr. Oliver Beauvoir thinks that he crossed to the States in company with a distinguished scientific gentleman, Professor Titus Peebles. Within a year after his departure news came that he had gone to California with Professor Peebles ; this was about the time gold was discovered in the States. That the present Sir William Beauvoir did about this time actually arrive on the Pacific Coast in company with the distinguished scientific man above mentioned, we have every reason to believe : we have even direct evidence on the subject. A former junior clerk, who had left us at about the same period as the disappearance of the elder son of our late client, accosted our Mr. Dick when the latter was in Paris last summer, and informed him (our Mr. Dick) that he (the former junior clerk) was now a resident of Nevada and a member of Congress for that county, and in the course of conversation he men- tioned that he had seen Professor Peebles and the son of our late client in San Francisco, nearly thirty years ago. Other information we have none. It ought not to be difficult to discover Professor Peebles, whose scientific attainments have doubtless ere this been duly recognized by the U. S. government. As our late client leaves the valuable family estate in Lancashire to his -elder son and divides the remainder equally between his two sons, you will readily see why we invoke your assistance in discovering the present domi- cile of the late baronet's elder son, or, in default thereof, in placing in our hand such proof of his death as may THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE 25 be necessary to establish that lamentable fact in our probate court. We have the honour to remain, as ever, your most humble and obedient servants, THKOSTLETHWAITE, THBOSTLETHWAITE, & DICK. P. S. Our late client's grandson, Mr. William Beauvoir, the only child of Oliver Beauvoir, Esq., is now in the States, in Chicago or Nebraska or some- where in the West. We shall be pleased if you can keep him informed as to the progress of your investi- gations. Our Mr. Dick has requested Mr. Oliver Beauvoir to give his son your address, and to suggest his calling on you as he passes through New York on his way home. T. T. & D. JBocitment $To. 17. Letter from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Remselaer, New York) to Messrs. Pixley and Button, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 98 California Street, San Francisco, California. Eafo Offices of ^ttcfjcocft & Fan l&ensselaer, 76 33raa0foag, |lefo fforfc. P. .33 01 4076. Jan. 22, 1879. Messrs. PIXLEY AND SUTTON : GENTLEMEN : We have just received from our Lon- don correspondents, Messrs. Throstlethwaite, Throstle- thwaite, and Dick, of Lincoln's Inn, London, the letter, a copy of which is herewith enclosed, to which we invite your attention. We request that you will do 26 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. all in your power to aid us in the search for the miss- ing Englishman. From the letter of Messrs. Throstle- thwaite, Throstlethwaite, and Dick, it seems extremely probable, not to say certain, that Mr. Beauvoir arrived in your city about 1849, in company with a distin- guished English scientist, Professor Titus Peebles, whose professional attainments were such that he is probably well known, if not in California, at least in some other of the mining States. The first thing to be done, therefore, it seems to us, is to ascertain the whereabouts of the professor, and to interview him at once. It may be that he has no knowledge of the present domicile of Mr. William Beauvoir, in which case we shall rely on you to take such steps as, in your judgment, will best conduce to a satisfactoiy solution of the mystery. In any event, please look up Profes- sor Peebles, and interview him at once. Pray keep us fully informed by telegraph of your movements. Yr obt serv'ts, HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER. $B0mmmt "No. 18. Telegram from Messrs. Pixley and Button, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 98 California Street, San Francisco, California, to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 76 Broadway, New York. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30. Tite Peebles well known frisco not professor keeps faro bank. PIXLEY & SUTTON. (D. H. 919.) THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 27 IBocwnent Ko. 19. Telegram from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Eensse- laer to Messrs. Pixley and Button,- in answer to the preceding. NEW YORK, Jan. 30. Must be mistake Titus Peebles distinguished scientist. HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAEK. (Free. Answer to D. H.) IBocument No. 20. Telegram from Messrs. Pixley and Sutton to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer, in reply to the pre- ceding. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30. No mistake distinguished faro banker suspected skin game shall we interview. PIXLEY & STJTTON. (D. H. 919.) document "No. 21. Telegram from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer to Messrs. Pixley and Button, in reply to the preceding. NEW YORK, Jan. 30. Must be mistake interview anyway. HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER. (Free. Answer to D. H.) Jiocummt W0. 22. Telegram from Messrs. Pixley & Sutton to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van JRensselaer, in reply to the pre- ceding. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30. Peebles out of town have written him. PIXLEY & SUTTON. (D. H. 919.) 28 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. JBocutntnt No. 23. Letter from Tite W. Peebles, delegate to the California Constitutional Convention, /Sacramento, to Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, 98 California Street, San Fran- cisco, California. SACRAMENTO, Feb. 2, '79. Messrs. PIXLEY & SUTTON : San Francisco. GENTLEMEN : Your favor of the 31st ult., forwarded me from San Francisco, has been duly rec'd, and con- tents thereof noted. My time is at present so fully occupied by my duties as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that I can only jot down a brief report of my recollections on this head. When I return to S. F., I shall be happy to give you any further information that may be in my possession. The person concerning whom you inquire was my fellow passenger on my first voyage to this State on board the Mercy G. Tarbox, in the latter part of the year. He was then known as Mr. William Beauvoir. I was acquainted with his history, of which the details escape me at this writing. He was a countryman of mine; a member of an important county family Devonian, I believe and had left England on account of large gambling debts, of which he confided to me the exact figure. I believe they totted up something like 14,500. I had at no time a very intimate acquaintance with Mr. Beauvoir ; during our sojourn on the Tarbox he was the chosen associate of a depraved and vicious THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 29 character named Phoenix. I am not averse from saying that I was then a member of a profession rather differ- ent to my present one, being, in fact, professor of metallurgy, and I saw much less, at that period, of Mr. B. than I probably should now. Directly we landed at S. F., the object of your inquiries set out for the gold region, without adequate preparation, like so many others did at that time, and, I heard, fared very ill. I encountered him some six months later; I have forgotten precisely in what locality, though I have a faint impression that his then habitat was some canon or ravine deriving its name from certain osseous deposits. Here he had engaged in the business of gold-mining, without, perhaps, sufficient grounds for any confident hope of ultimate success. I have his I. O. U. for the amount of my fee for assaying several specimens from his claim, said specimens being all iron pyrites. This is all I am able to call to mind at present in the matter of Mr. Beauvoir. I trust his subsequent career was of a nature better calculated to be satisfactory to himself; but his mineralogical knowledge was but superficial ; and his character was sadly deformed by a fatal taste for low associates. I remain, gentlemen, your very humble and obd't servant, TITUS W. PEEBLES. P. S. Private. MY DEAE Pix : If you don't feel inclined to pony up that little sum you are out on the bay gelding, drop 30 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. down to my place when I get back and I '11 give you another chance for your life at the pasteboards. Con- stitution going through. Yours, TITE. PART FOURTH. IBonmunt "No. 24. Extract from the New Centreville [late Dead Horse"] " Gazette and Courier of Civilization" December 20th, 1878: "Miss Nina Saville appeared last night at the Mendocino Grand Opera House, in her unrivalled specialty of Winona, the Child of the Prairies ; supported by Toinpkins and Frobisher's Grand Stellar Constellation. Although Miss Saville has long been known as one of the most promising of California's younger tragediennes, we feel safe in saying that the impression she pro- duced upon the large and cultured audience gathered to greet her last night stamped her as one of the greatest and most phe- nomenal geniuses of our own or other times. Her marvellous beauty of form and feature, added to her wonderful artistic power, and her perfect mastery of the difficult science of clog- dancing, won her an immediate place in the hearts of our citi- zens, and confirmed the belief that California need no longer look to Europe or Chicago for dramatic talent of the highest order. The sylph-like beauty, the harmonious and ever-varying grace, the vivacity and the power of the young artist who made her maiden effort among us last night, prove conclusively that the virgin soil of California teems with yet undiscovered fires of THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 31 genius. The drama of Winona, the Child of the Prairies, is a pure, refined, and thoroughly absorbing entertainment, and has been pronounced by the entire press of the country equal to if not superior to the fascinating Lady of Lyons. It introduces all the favorites of the company in new and original characters, and with its original music, which is a prominent feature, has already received over 200 representations in the principal cities in the country. It abounds in effective situations, striking tab- leaux, and a most quaint and original concert entitled * The Mule Fling,' which alone is worth the price of admission. As this is the first presentation in this city, the theatre will no doubt be crowded, and seats should be secured early in the day. The drama will be preceded by that prince of humorists, Mr. Billy Barker, in his humorous sketches and pictures from life." We quote the above from our esteemed contempo- rary, the Mendocino Gazette, at the request of Mr. Zeke Kilburn, Miss Saville's advance agent, who has still further appealed to us, not only on the ground of our common humanity, but as the only appreciative and thoroughly informed critics on the Pacific Slope to "endorse" this rather vivid expression of opinion. Nothing will give us greater pleasure. Allowing for the habitual enthusiasm of our northern neighbor, and for the well-known chaste aridity of Mendocino in respect of female beauty, we have no doubt that Miss Nina Saville is all that the fancy, peculiarly opulent and active even for an advance agent, of Mr. .Kilburn has painted her, and is quite such a vision of youth, beauty, and artistic phenomenality as will make the stars of Paris and Illinois pale their ineffectual fires. Miss Saville will appear in her "unrivalled specialty" at Hank's New Centreville Opera House, to-morrow 32 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. night, as may be gathered, in a general way, from an advertisement in another column. We should not omit to mention that Mr. Zeke Kil- burn, Miss Saville's advance agent, is a gentleman of imposing presence, elegant manners, and complete knowledge of his business. This information may be relied upon as at least authentic, having been derived from Mr. Kilburn himself, to which we can add, as our own contribution, the statement that Mr. Kilburn is a gentleman of marked liberality in his ideas of spirit- uous refreshments, and of equal originality in his con- ception of the uses, objects and personal susceptibilities of the journalistic profession. JBocumtnt No. 25, Local item from the "New Centreville Standard" December 20th, 1878: Hon. William Beauvoir has registered at the United States Hotel. Mr. Beauvoir is a young English gentle- man of great wealth, now engaged in investigating the gigantic resources of this great country. We welcome him to New Centreville. JBocumcnt No. 26. Programme of the performance given in the Centre- mlle Theatre, Dec. 21st, 1878: THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 33 HANKS' NEW GENTREVILLE OPERA HOUSE. A. JACKSON HANKS Sole Proprietor and Manager. FIRST APPEARANCE IN THIS CITY OP TOMPKINS & FROBISHER'S GRAND STELLAR CONSTELLATION, Supporting California's favorite daughter, the young American Tragedienne, 3UCISS 3STI3ST-A. SEVILLE, Who will appear in Her "Unrivalled Specialty, "WINOHA, THE CHILD OF THE FEMEEE." THIS ETVTENXN-G-, JDECEIMLBER 31st, 1878, Will be presented, with the following phenomenal cast, the accepted American Drama, WINONA, THE CHILD OF THE PRAIRIE. WHSTO3STA. 1 Miss FLORA MACMADISON I BIDDY FLAHERTY MlSS NINA OLD AUNT DINAH (with Song:, " Don't Get Weary ") ! SALLY HOSKINS (with the old-time melody, " Bobbin' Around ") SAVILLE. POOR JOE (with Sons) FRAULINE UNA BOOBENSTEIN (with stammering Song, " I yoost landet") J SIR EDMOND BENNETT (specially engaged) E. C. GRAINGER WALTON TRAVEKS G. W. PARSONS GIPSY JOE M. ISAACS 'ANNABLE 'ORACE 'IGGINS BILLY BARKER. TOMMY TIPPER MISS MAMIE SMITH PETE, the Man on the Dock SI HANCOCK MRS. MALONE, the Old Woman in the Little House MRS. K. Y. BOOTH HOBERT BENNETT (aged 5) LITTLE ANNIE WATSON Act I.- The Old Home. Act II. Alone in the World. Act III. The Frozen Gulf: TUB GKREAT lOEZBEIRCa- SE3STSA.TIOlSr. Act IV. Wedding Bells. "WINONA, THE CHILD OF THE PRAIRIE," WILL BE PRECEDED BY A FAVORITE FARCE, In which the great BILLY BARKER will appear in one of his most out- rageously funny bits. NEW SCENERY by Q. Z. SLOCUM Music by Professor Kiddoo's Silver Bugle Brass Band and Philharmonic Orchestra. Chickway's Grand Piano, lent by Schmidt, 2 Opera House Block. AFTER THE SHOW GO TO HANKS' AND SEE A MAN ! Pop Williams, the only legitimate Bill-Poster in New Centreville. (New Centreville Standard Print.) 34 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. IBocutnmt "No. 27. HJxtract from the New Centreville [late Dead Horse"] "Gazette and Courier of Civilization" Dec. 24t^ 1878. A little while ago, in noting the arrival of Miss Nina Saville of the New Centreville Opera House, we quoted rather extensively from our esteemed contemporary, the Mendocino Times, and commented upon the quo- tation. Shortly afterwards, it may also be remem- bered, we made a very direct and decided apology for the sceptical levity which inspired those remarks, and expressed our hearty sympathy with the honest, if somewhat effusive, enthusiasm with which the dramatic critic of Mendocino greeted the sweet and dainty little girl who threw over the dull, weary old business of the stage " sensation " the charm of a fresh and childlike beauty and originality, as rare and delicate as those strange, unreasonable little glimmers of spring sunsets that now and then light up for a brief moment the dull skies of winter evenings, and seem to have strayed into ungrateful January out of sheer pity for the sad earth. Mendocino noticed the facts that form the basis of the above meteorological simile, and we believe we gave Mendocino full credit for it at the time. WC refer to the matter at this date only because in OIL remarks of a few days ago we had occasion to mention the fact of the existence of Mr. Zeke Kilburn, an ad- vance agent, who called upon us at the time, to endeavor to induce us, by means apparently calculated more THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 35 closely for the latitude of Mendocino, to extend to Miss Saville, before" her appearance, the critical appro- bation which we gladly extended after. This little item of interest we alluded to at the time, and further- more intimated, with some vagueness, that there existed in Mr. Kilburn's character a certain misdirected zeal which, combined with a too keen artistic appreciation, are apt to be rather dangerous stock-in-trade for an advance agent. It was twenty-seven minutes past two o'clock yes- terday afternoon. The chaste white mystery of Shigo Mountain was already taking on a faint, almost imper- ceptible hint of pink, like the warm cheek of a girl who hears a voice and anticipates a blush. Yet the rays of the afternoon sun rested with undiminished radiance on the empty pork-barrel in front of McMul- lin's shebang. A small and vagrant infant, whose associations with empty barrels were doubtless hitherto connected solely with dreams of saccharine dissipation, approached the bunghole with precocious caution, and retired with celerity and a certain acquisition of experi- ence. An unattached goat, a martyr to the radical theory of personal investigation, followed in the foot- steps of infantile humanity, retired with even greater promptitude, and was fain to stay its stomach on a presumably empty rend-rock can, afterward going into seclusion behind McMullin's horse-shed, before the diuretic effect of tin flavored with blasting-powder could be observed by the attentive eye of science. Mr. Kilburn emerged from the hostelry of McMullin. Mr. Kilburn, as we have before stated at his own 36 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. request, is a gentleman of imposing presence. It is well that we made this statement when we did, for it is hard to judge of the imposing quality in a gentle- man's presence when that gentleman is suspended from the arm of another gentleman by the collar of the first gentleman's coat. The gentleman in the rear of Mr. Kilburn was Mr. William Beauvoir, a young Englishman in a check suit. Mr. Beauvoir is not avow- edly a man of imposing presence ; he wears a seal ring, and he is generally a scion of an effete oligarchy, but he has, since his introduction into this community, behaved himself, to use the adjectivial adverb of Mr. McMullin, white, and he has a very remarkable biceps. These qualities may hereafter enhance his popularity in New Centreville. Mr. Beauvoir's movements, at twenty-seven minutes past two yesterday afternoon, were few and simple. He doubled Mr. Kilburn up, after the fashion of an ordinary jack-knife, and placed him in the barrel, wedge- extremity first, remarking, as he did so, " She is, is she?" He then rammed Mr. Kilburn carefully home, and put the cover on. We learn to-day that Mr. Kilburn has resumed his professional duties on the road. IBocutnntt No. 28* Account of the same event from the New Centreville " Standard," December 24th, 1878. It seems strange that even the holy influences which radiate from, this joyous season cannot keep some men THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 37 from getting into unseemly wrangles. It was only yesterday that our local saw a street row here in the quiet avenues of our peaceful city a street row recalling the riotous scenes which took place here before Dead Horse experienced a change of heart and became New Centreville. Our local succeeded in gath- ering all the particulars of the affray, and the following statement is reliable. It seems that Mr. Kilburn, the gentlemanly and affable advance agent of the Nina Saville Dramatic Company, now performing at Andy Hanks' Opera House to big houses, was brutally as- saulted by a ruffianly young Englishman, named Beau- voir, for no cause whatever. We say for.no cause, as it is obvious that Mr. Kilburn, as the agent of the troupe, could have said nothing against Miss Saville which an outsider, not to say a foreigner like Mr. Beauvoir, had any call to resent. Mr. Kilburn is a gentleman unaccustomed to rough-and-tumble encoun- ters, while his adversary has doubtless associated more with pugilists than gentlemen at least anyone would think so from his actions yesterday. Beauvoir hustled Mr. Kilburn out of Mr. Mullin's, where the unprovoked assault began, and violently shook him across the new plank sidewalk. The person by the name of Clark, whom Judge Jones for some reason now permits to edit the moribund but once respectable Gazette, caught the eye of the congenial Beauvoir, and, true to the ungentlemanly instincts of his base nature, pointed to a barrel in the street. The brutal Englishman took the hint and thrust Mr. Kilburn forcibly into the barrel, leaving the vicinity before Mr. Kilburn, emerging from 38 TEE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. his close quarters, had fully recovered. "What the ruf- fianly Beauvoir's motive may have been for this wanton assault it is impossible to say ; but it is obvious to all why this fellow Clark sought to injure Mr. Kilburn, a gentleman whose many good qualities he of course fails to appreciate. Mr. Kilburn, recognizing the acknowl- edged merits of our job-office, had given us the contract for all the printing he needed in New Centreville. document No. 29. Advertisement from the New York " Clipper" Dec. 21st, 1878. WINSTON & MACK'S GRAND INTERNATIONAL MEGATHERIUM VARIETY COMBINATION, COMPANY CALL. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Company will assemble for rehearsal, at Emerson's Opera House, San Francisco, on Wednesday, Dec. 27th, at 12 M. 8 har P . Ba U d a tl.. fe&Hf^K, } Managers. Emerson's Opera House, San Francisco, Dec. 10th, 1878. Protean Artist wanted. Would like to hear from Nina Saville. 12 It*. JBocumntt No. 30. Letter from Nina Saville to William Beauvoir. NEW CENTREVJLLE, December 26, 1878. MY DEAE ME. BEAUVOIE I was very sorry to re- ceive your letter of yesterday very sorry because there can be only one answer that I can make and THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 39 you might well have spared me the pain of saying the word No. You ask me if I love you. If I did do you think it would be true love in me to tell you so, when I know what it would cost you? Oh indeed you must never marry me! In your own country you would never have heard of me never seen me surely never written me such a letter to tell me that you love me and want to marry me. It is not that I am ashamed of my business or of the folks around me, or ashamed that I am only the charity child of two poor play- ers, who lived and died working for the bread for their mouths and mine. I am proud of them yes, proud of what they, did and suffered for one poorer than themselves a little foundling out of an Indian camp. But I know the difference between you and me. You are a great man at home you have never told me how great but I know your father is a rich lord, and I suppose you are. It is not that I think you care for that, or think less of me because I was born different from you. I know how good how kind how respectful you have always been to me my lord and I shall never forget it for a girl in my posi- tion knows well enough how you might have been otherwise. Oh believe me my true friend I am never going to forget all you have done for me and how good it has been to have you near me a man so different from most others I don't mean only the kind things you have done the books and the thoughts and the ways you have taught me to enjoy and all the trouble you have taken to, make me something bet- ter than the stupid little girl I was when you found me 40 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. but a great deal more than that the consideration you have had for me and for what I hold best in the world. I had never met a gentleman before and now the first one I meet he is my friend. That is a great deal. Only think of it! You have been following me around now for three months, and I have been weak enough to allow it. I am going to do the right thing now. You may think it hard in me if you really mean what you say, but even if everything else were right, I would not marry you because -of your rank. I do not know how things are at your home but some- thing tells me it would be wrong and that your family would have a right to hate you and never forgive you. Professionals cannot go in your society. And that is even if I loved you and I do not love you I do not love you I do not love you now I have written it you will believe it. So now it is ended- I am going back to the line I was first in variety and with a new name. So you can never find me I entreat you I beg of you not to look for me. If you only put your mind to it you will find it so easy to forget me for I will not do you the wrong to think that you did not mean what you wrote in your letter or what you said that night when we sang Annie Laurie together the last time. Your sincere friend, NINA. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 41 Documents "Nas. 31 ano 32, Items from San Francisco "Figaro " of December 29th, 1878: Nina Saville Co. disbanded New Centreville 26th. No particulars received. Winston & Mack's Comb, takes the road December 31st, opening at Tuolumne Hollow. Manager Winston announces the engagement of Anna Laurie, the Protean change artiste, with songs, " Don't Get Weary," " Bob- bin' Around," "I Yoost Landet." Document No. 33. Telegram from Zeke Kilburn, New Centreville, to Winston and Mack, Emersorfs Opera House, San Francisco, Cal. NEW CENTREVILLE, Dec. 28, 1878. Have you vacancy for active and energetic advance agent. Z. KILBURN. (9 words 30 paid.) liocummt No. 34. Telegram from Winston and Mack, San Francisco, to Zeke EJilburn, New Centreville : SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 28, 1878. No. WINSTON & MACK. (Collect 30 cents.) 42 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. Document "No. 35. Sill sent to William JSeauvoir, United States Hotel, Tiiolumne Hollow, Gal.: Tiiolumne Hollow, CaL, Dec. 29, 1878. William Beauvoir, Esq. Bought of HIMMEL & HATCH, Opera House Block, JEWELLERS & DIAMOND MERCHANTS, Dealers in all kinds of Fancy Goods, Stationery, and Umbrellas, Watches, Clocks and Barometers. TERMS CASH. MUSICAL BOXES REPAIRED. Dec. 29, One diamond and enamelled locket $75.00 One gold chain 48.00 $123.00 JRec'd Payt. Himmel & Hatch, per S. PART FIFTH. Document "No. 36. Letter from Cable J. Dexter, Esq., to Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, San Francisco. NEW CENTRE VILLE, CAL., March 3, 1879. Messrs. PIXLEY & SUTTON : GENTS: I am happy to report that I have at last reached the bottom level in the case of William Beaver, alias Beaver Bill, deceased through Indians in 1861. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 43 In accordance with your instructions and check, I proceeded, on the 10th ult., to Shawgum Creek, when I interviewed Blue Horse, chief of the Comanches, who tomahawked subject of your inquiries in the year above mentioned. Found the Horse in the penitentiary, serving out a drunk and disorderly. Though 4 belliger- ent at date aforesaid, Horse is now tame, though in- temperate. Appeared unwilling to converse, and re- quired stimulants to awaken his memory. Please find enclosed memo, of account for whiskey, covering extra demijohn to corrupt jailer. Horse finally stated that he personally let daylight through deceased, and is willing to guarantee thoroughness of decease. Stated further that aforesaid Beaver's family consisted of squaw and kid. Is willing to swear that squaw was killed, the tribe having no use for her. Killing done by Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, personal friend of Horse's. The minor child was taken into camp and kept until December of 1863, when tribe dropped to howling cold winter and went on government reservation. Infant (female) was then turned over to U. S. Government at Fort Kearney. I posted to last-named locality on the 18th ult., and found by the quartermaster's books that, no one appear- ing to claim the kid, she had been duly indentured, together with six Indians, to a man by the name of Guardine or Sardine (probably the latter), in the show business. The Indians were invoiced as Sage Brush Jimmy, Boiling Hurricane, Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, Joe, Hairy Grasshopper and Dead Polecat. Child known as White Kitten. Receipt for Indians was 44 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. signed by Mr. Hi. Samuels, who is still in the circus business, and whom I happen to be selling o"ut at this moment, at suit of JVIcCullum & Montmorency, former partners. Samuels positively identified kid with va- riety specialist by name of Nina Saville, who has been showing all through this region for a year past. I shall soon have the pleasure of laying before you documents to establish the complete chain of evidence, from knifing of original subject of your inquiries right up to date. I have to-day returned from New Centreville, whither I went after Miss Saville. Found she had just skipped the town with a young Englishman by the name of Bovoir, who had been paying her polite attentions for some time, having bowied or otherwise squelched a man for her within a week or two. It appears the young woman had refused to have anything to do with him for a long period; but he seems to have struck pay gravel about two days before my -arrival. At present, therefore, the trail is temporarily lost; but I expect to fetch the couple if they are anywhere this side of the Rockies. Awaiting your further instructions, and cash backing thereto, I am, gents, very resp'y yours, CABLE J. DEXTER. THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 45 Document Ho. 37. Envelope of letter from Sir Oliver Beauvoir, Bart.) to Ids son, William Beauvoir. Sent to Dead Letter Office Mr. William Beauvoir Sherman House Hotel Not here Chicago try Brevoort House N. Y. United States of America JBocttmmt No 38, Letter contained in the envelope above. CHELSWOBTH COTTAGE, March 30, 1879. MY DEAR BOY : In the sudden blow which has come upon us all I cannot find words to write. J"ou do not know what you have done. Your uncle William, after whom you were named, died in America. He left but one child, a daughter, the only grandchild of my father except you. And this daughter is the Miss Nina Saville with whom you have formed so unhappy a con- nection. She is your own cousin. She is a Beauvoir. She is of our blood, as good as any in England. My feelings are overpowering. I am choked by the suddenness of this great grief. I cannot write to you as I would. But I can say this : Do not let me see you or hear from you until this stain be taken from our name. OLIVER BEAUVOIR. 46 THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. "No. 39. Cable dispatch of William Beauvoir, Windsor Hotel, New York, to Sir Oliver Beauvoir, Bart., Chels- worth Cottage, Suffolk, England. NEW YORK, May 1, 1879. Have posted you Herald. WILLIAM BEAUVOIK. Document !tf0. 40. Advertisement under the head of " Marriages" from the New York "Herald," April 30th, 1879. BEAUVOIE BEAUVOIK. On Wednesday, Jan. 1st, 1879, at Steal Valley, California, by the Rev. Mr. Twells, William Beauvoir, only son of Sir Oliver Beauvoir, of Chelsworth Cottage, Surrey, England, to Nina, only child of the late William Beauvoir, of New Centreville, Cal. Bocmnent "No. 41. Extract from the New York "Herald" of May 29th, 1879. Among the passengers on the outgoing Cunard steamer Gallia, which left New York on Wednesday, was the Honorable William Beauvoir, only son of Sir Oliver Beauvoir, Bart., of England. Mr. Beauvoir has been passing his honeymoon in this city, and, with his charming bride, a famous California belle, has been the recipient of many cordial courtesies from members of our best society. Mr. William Beauvoir is a young THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE. 47 man of great promise and brilliant attainments, and is a highly desirable addition to the large and constantly increasing number of aristocratic Britons who seek for wives among the lovely daughters of Columbia. We understand that the bridal pair will take up their resi- dence with the groom's father, at his stately country- seat, Chelsworth Manor, Suffolk. VENETIAN GLASS. BY BKANDEK, MATTHEWS. IN THE OLD WORLD. had been to the Lido for a short swim in -L the slight but bracing surf of the Adriatic. They had had a mid-day breakfast in a queer little restaurant, known only to the initiated, and therefore early dis- covered by Larry, who had a keen scent for a cook learned in the law. They had loitered along the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking at a perambulatory puppet- show, before which a delighted audience sturdily dis- regarded the sharp wind which bravely fluttered the picturesque tatters of the spectators ; and they were moved to congratulate the Venetians on their freedom from the monotonous repertory of the Anglo-American Punch and Judy, which consists solely of a play really unique in the exact sense of that much-abused word. They were getting their fill of the delicious Italian art which is best described by an -American verb to loaf. And yet they were not wont to be idle, and they had both the sharp, quick American manner, on which lazi- ness sits uneasily and infrequently. 48 VENETIAN GLASS. 49 John Manning and Laurence Laughton were both young New Yorkers. Larry for so in youth was he called by everybody pending the arrival of years which should make him a universal uncle, to be known of all men as " Uncle Larry " was as pleasant a travelling companion as one could wish. He was the only son and heir of a father, now no more, but vaguely under- stood when alive and in the flesh to have been " in the China trade;" although whether this meant crockery or Cathay no one was able with precision to declare. Larry Laughton had been graduated from Columbia College with the class of 1860, and the following spring found him here in Venice after a six months' ramble through Europe with his old friend, John Manning, partly on foot and partly in an old carriage of their own, in which they enjoyed the fast-vanishing pleasures of posting. John Manning was a little older than Larry; he had left West Point in 1854 with a commission as second lieutenant in the Old Dragoons. For nearly six years he did hfo duty in that state of life in which it pleased the Secretary of War and' General Scott to call him ; he had crossed the plains one bleak winter to a post in the Rocky Mountains, and he had danced through two summers at Fort Adams at Newport ; he had been stationed for a while in New Mexico, where there was an abundance of the pleasant sport of Indian-fighting, even now he had only to make believe a little to see the tufted head of a Navajo peer around the columns supporting the Lion of Saint Mark, or to mistake the fringe oifacchini on the edge of the Grand Canal for 50 VENETIAN GLASS. a group of the shiftless half-breeds of New Mexico. In time the Old Dragoons had been ordered North, where the work was then less pleasant than on the border ; and, in fact, it was a distinct unwillingness to execute the Fugitive Slave Law which forced John Manning to resign his commission in the army, although it was the hanging of John Brown which drew from him the actual letter of resignation. Before settling down to other work for he was a man who could not and would not be idle he had gratified his long desire of taking a turn through the Old World. Larry Laughton had joined him in Holland, where he had been making researches into the family history, and proving to his own satisfaction at least that the New York Mannings, in spite of their English name, had come from Amster- dam to New Amsterdam. And now, toward the end of April, 1861, John Manning and Laurence Laughton stood on the Rialto, hesitating Fra Marco e Todaro, as the Venetians have it, in uninterested question whether they should go into the Ghetto, among the hideous homes of the chosen people, or out again to Murano for a second visit to the famous factory of Venetian glass. " I say, John," remarked Larry as they lazily debated the question, gazing meanwhile on the steady succession of gondolas coming and going to and from the steps by the side of the bridge, " I 'd as lief, if not liefer, go to Murano again, if they 've any of their patent anti-poison goblets left. You know they say they used to make a glass so fine that it was shattered into shivers whenever poison might be poured into it. Of course I don't be- VENETIAN GLASS. 51 lieve it, but a glass like that would be mighty handy in the sample-rooms of New York. I'm afraid a man walking up Broadway could use up a gross of the anti- poison goblets before he got one straight drink of the genuine article, unadulterated and drawn from the wood." "You must not make fun of a poetic legend, Larry. You have to believe everything over here, or you do not get the worth of your money," said John Manning. " Well, I don't know," was Larry's reply ; " I don't know just what to believe. I was talking about it last night at Florian's, while you were writing letters home." " I did not know Mr. Laugh ton had friends in Venice." " Oh, I can make friends anywhere. And this one was lots of fun. He was a priest, an ablate, I think he calls himself. He had read five newspapers in the caffb and paid for one tiny cup of coffee. When I finished the Debats I passed it to him for his sixth and he spoke to me in French, and I wasn't going to let an Italian talk French to me without answering back, so I just sailed in and began to swap stories with him." " No doubt you gave him much valuable information." " Well, I did ; I just exuded information. Why the first thing he said, when I told him I was an American, was to wonder whether I had n't met his brother, who was also in America in Rio Janeiro just as if Rio was the other side of the North River." John Manning smiled at Larry's disgusted expres- sion, and asked, " What has this abbate to do with the fragile Venetian glass ? " 52 VENETIAN GLASS. " Only this," answered Larry. " I told him two or three Northwesters, just as well as I could in French, and then he said that marvellous things were also done here once upon a time. And he told me about the glass which broke when poison was poured into it." "It is a pleasant superstition," said John Manning. " I think Poe makes use of it, and I believe Shake- speare refers to it." "But did either Poe or Shakespeare say anything about the two goblets just alike, made for the twin brothers Manin nearly four hundred years ago ? Did they tell you how one glass was shivered by poison and its owner killed, and how the other brother had to flee for his life ? Did they inform you that the unbroken goblet exists to this day, and is in fact now for sale by an Hebrew Jew who peddles antiquities? Did they tell you that?" " Neither Edgar Allan Poe nor William Shakespeare ever disturbs my slumbers by telling me anything of the sort," laughed Manning. " Well, my abbate told me just that, and he gave me the address of the Shylock who has the surviving goblet for sale." " Suppose we go there and see it," suggested Man- ning, " and you can tell me the whole story of the twin brothers as we go along." "Shall we take a gondola or walk?" was Larry's interrogative acceptance of the suggestion. " It 's in the Ghetto, is n't it ?" "Most of the Jew curiosity dealers have left the Ghetto. Our Shylock has a palace on the Grand Canal. VENETIAN GLASS. 53 I guess we had better take a gondola, though it can't be far." So they sat themselves down in one of the aquatic cabs which ply the water streets of the city in the sea. The gondolier stood to his oar and put his best foot foremost, and as the boat sped forward on its way along the great S of the Grand Canal, Larry told the tale of the twin brothers and the shattered goblet. " Well, it seems that some time in the sixteenth cen- tury, say three hundred years ago or thereabout, there were several branches of the great and powerful Manin family the same family to which the patriotic Daniele Manin belonged, you know. And at the head of one of these branches were the twin brothers Marco Manin and Giovanni Manin. Now, these brothers were de- voted to each other, and they had only one thought, one word, one deed. When one of them happened to think of a thing, it often happened that the other brother did it. So it was not surprising that they both fell in love with the same woman. She was a dan^er- o ous-looking, yellow-haired woman, with steel-gray eyes that is, if her eyes were not really green, as to which there was doubt. But there was no doubt at all that she was powerfully handsome. The abbate said that there was a famous portrait of her in one of these churches as a Saint Mary Magdalen, with her hair down. She was a splendid creature, and lots of men were running after her besides the twin Manins. The two brothers did not quarrel with each other about the woman, but they did quarrel with some of her other lovers, and particularly with a nobleman of the highest 54 VENETIAN GLASS. rank and power, who was supposed to belong not only to the Council of Ten, but to the Three. Between this man and the Manins there was war to the knife and the knife to the hilt. One day Marco Manin expressed a wish for one of these goblets of Venetian glass so fine that poison shatters it, and so Giovanni went out to Murano and ordered two of them, of the very finest quality, and just alike in every particular of color and shape and size. You see the twins always had every- thing in pairs. But the people at Murano somehow misunderstood the order, and although they made both glasses they sent home only one. Marco Manin was at table when it arrived, and he took it in his hand at once, and after admiring its exquisite workmanship you see, all these old Venetians had the art-feeling strongly developed he told a servant to fill it to the brim with Cyprus wine. But as he raised the flowing cup to his lips it shivered in his grasp and the wine was spilt on the marble floor. He drew his sword and slew the servant who had sought to betray him, and rushing into the street he found himself face to face with the enemy whom he knew to have instigated the attempt. They crossed swords at once, but, before Marco Manin could have a fair fight for his life, he was stabbed in the back by a glass stiletto, the hilt of which was broken off short in the wound." " Where was his brother all this time ? " was the first question with which John Manning broke the thread of his friend's story. " He had been to see the yellow-haired beauty, and he came back just in time to meet his brother's lifeless VENETIAN GLASS. 55 body as it was carried into their desolate home. Hold- ing his dead brother's hand, as he had often held it liv- ing, he promised his brother to avenge his death without delay and at any cost. Then he prepared at once for flight. He knew that Venice would be too hot to hold him when the deed was done ; and besides, he felt that without his brother life in Venice would be in- tolerable. So he made ready for flight. Twenty-four hours to a minute after Marco Manin's death the body of the hireling assassin was sinking to the bottom of the Grand Canal, while the man who had paid for the murder lay dead on the same spot with the point of a glass stiletto in his heart ! And when they wanted to send him the other goblet, there was no one to send it to : Giovanni Manin had disappeared." " Where had he gone ? " queried John Manning. " That 's what I asked the abbate, and he said he did n't know for sure, but that in those days Venice had a sizable trade with the Low Countries, and there was a tradition that Giovanni Manin had gone to the Netherlands." " To Holland?" asked John Manning with unwonted interest. ^Yes, to Amsterdam, or to Rotterdam, or to some one of those -dam towns, as we used to call them in our geography class." " It was to Amsterdam," said Manning, speaking as one who had certain information. "How do you know that?" asked Larry. "Even the abbate said it was only a tradition that he had gone to Holland at all." 56 VENETIAN GLASS. "He went to Amsterdam," said Manning; "that I know." Before Larry could ask how it was that his friend knew anything about the place of exile of a man whom he had never heard of ten minutes earlier, the gondola had paused before the door of the palace in which dwelt the dealer in antiquities who had in his possession the famous goblet of Venetian glass. As they ascended to the sequence of rambling rooms cluttered with old furniture, rusty armor, and odds and ends of statuary, in which the modern Jew of Venice sat at the receipt of custom, both Larry Laughton and John Manning had to give their undivided attention to the framing in Italian of their wishes. Shylock himself was a venerable and benevolent person, with a look of won- derful shrewdness and an incomprehensibility of speech, for he spoke the Venetian dialect with a harsh Jewish accent, either of which would have daunted a linguistic veteran. Plainly enough, conversation was impossible, for he could barely understand their American-Italian, and they could not at all understand his Jewish-Vene- tian. But it would not do to let these Inglesi go away without paying tribute. tt Cid ! " said Shylock, smiling graciously at his futile attempts to open communication with the enemy. Then he called Jessica from the deep win- dow where she had been at work on the quaint old account-books of the shop, as great curiosities as any- thing in it, since they were kept in Venetian, but by means of the Hebrew alphabet. She spoke Italian, and to her the young men made known their wants. VENETIAN GLASS. 57 She said a few words to her father, and he brought forth the goblet. It was a marvellous specimen of the most exquisite Venetian workmanship. A pair of green serpents, with eyes that glowed like fire, writhed around the golden stem of a blood-red bowl, and as the white light of the cloudless sky fell on it from the broad window, it burned in the glory of the sunshine and seemed to fill itself full of some mysterious and royal wine. Shylock revolved it slowly in his hand to show the strange waviness of its texture, and as it turned, the serpents clung more closely to the stem and arched their heads and shot a glance of hate at the strangers who came to gaze on them with curious fascination. John Manning looked at the goblet long and eagerly. " How did it come into your possession ? " he asked. And Jessica translated Shylock's declaration that the goblet had been at Murano for hundreds of years ; it was anticho antichissimo, as the signor could see for himself. It was of the best period of the art. That Shylock would guarantee. How came it into his possession? By the greatest good fortune. It was taken from Murano during the troubles after the fall of the Republic in the time of Napoleon. It had gone finally into the hands of a certain count, who, very luckily, was poor. Conte che non conta, non conta niente. So Shylock had been enabled to buy it. It had been the desire of his heart for years to own so fine an object. "How much do you want for it?" asked John Manning. 58 VENETIAN GLASS. Shylock scented from afar the battle of bargaining, dear in Italy to both buyer and seller. He gave a keen look at both the Inglesi, and took up the glass affec- tionately, as though he could not bear to part with it. Jessica interpreted. Shylock had intended that goblet for his own private collection, but the frank and gen- erous manner of their excellencies had overcome him, and he would let them have it for five hundred florins. " Five hundred florins ! Phew ! " whistled Larry, astonished in spite of his initiation into the mysteries of Italian bargaining. " Well, if you were to ask me the Shakespearian conundrum, Hath not a Jew eyes ? I should n't give it up ; I should say he has eyes for the main chance." " Five hundred florins," said John Manning. " Very well. I '11 take it." Shylock's astonishment at getting four times what he would have taken was equalled only by his regret that he had not asked twice as much. " Can you pack it so that I can take it to New York safely?" " Sicuro, signor" and Shylock agreed to have the precious object boxed with all possible care and de- spatch, and delivered at the hotel that afternoon. " Servo suo ! " said Jessica, as they stood at the door. " Bon di, Patron ! " responded Larry, in Venetian fashion ; then as the door closed behind them he said to John Manning, " Seems to me you were in a hurry ! You could have had that glass for half the money." " Perhaps I could," was Manning's quiet reply, " but I was eager to get it back at once." VENETIAN GLASS. 59 " Get it back ? Why, it was n't stolen from you, was it ? I never did suppose he came by it honestly." "It was not stolen from me personally, but it be- longed to my family. It was made for Giovanni Manin, who fled from Venice to Amsterdam three hundred odd years ago. His grandson and namesake left Amsterdam for New Amsterdam half a century later. And when the English changed New Amster- dam into New York, Jan Mannin became John Man- ning and I am his direct descendant, and the first of my blood to return to Venice to get the goblet Gio- vanni Manin ordered and left behind." "Well, I 'm damned! " said Larry, pensively. " And now," continued John Manning as they took their seats in the gondola, " tell the man to go to the church where the picture of Mary Magdalen is. I want a good look at that woman ! " In the evening, as John Manning sat in a little caff& under the arcades of the Piazza San Marco, sipping a tiny cup of black coffee, Larry entered with a rush of righteous indignation. " What 's the matter, Larry ? " was John Manning's calm query. " There 's the devil to pay at home. South Carolina has fired on the flag at Sumter." Three weeks later Colonel Manning was assigned to duty drilling the raw recruits soon to be the Army of the Potomac. 60 VENETIAN GLASS. II. IN THE NEW WORLD. IN the month of February, 1864, a chance newspaper paragraph informed whom it might concern that Major Laurence Laughton, having three weeks' leave of absence from his regiment, was at the Astor House. In consequence of this advertisement of his where- abouts, Major Laughton received many cheerful cir- culars and letters, in most of which his attention was claimed for the artificial limb made by the advertiser. He also received a letter from Colonel John Manning, urgently bidding him to come out for a day at least to his little place on the Hudson, where he was lying sick, and, as he feared, sick unto death. On the receipt of this Larry cut short a promising flirtation with a war- widow who sat next him at table, and took the first train up the river. It was a bleak day, and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground, as hard and as dry as though it had clean forgot that it was made of water. As Larry left the little station, to which the train had slowly struggled at last, an hour behind time, the wind sprang up again and began to moan around his feet and to sting his face with icy shot ; and as he trudged across the desolate path which led to Manning's lonely house he discovered that rude Boreas could be as keen a sharp-shooter as any in the rifle-pits around Richmond. A hard walk up-hill for a quarter of an hour brought him to the brow of the cliff on which VENETIAN GLASS. 61 stood the forlorn and wind-swept house where John Manning lay. An unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he had brought in his hand ; and then he followed the ebony hag upstairs to Colonel Manning's room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a sharp knock. A weak voice said, "pome in ! " Laurence Laughton entered the room with a quick step, but the light-hearted words with which he had meant to encourage his friend died on his lips as soon as he saw how grievously that friend had changed. John Manning had faded to a shadow of his former self; the light of his eye was quenched, and the spirit within him seemed broken; the fine, sensitive, noble face lay white against the pillow, looking weary and wan arid hopeless. The effort to greet his friend ex- hausted him and brought on a hard cough, and he pressed his hand to his breast as though some hidden malady were gnawing and burning within. " Well, John," said Larry, as he took a seat by the bedside, " why didn't you let me know before now that you were laid up ? I could have got away a month ago."^ " Time enough yet," said John Manning slowly ; " time enough yet. I shall not die for another week, I fear." " Why, man, you must not talk like that. You are as good as a dozen dead men yet," said Larry, trying to look as cheerful as might be. "I am as good as dead myself," said his friend 62 VENETIAN GLASS. seriously, as befitted a man under the shadow of death ; " and I have no wish to live. The sooner I am out of this pain and powerlessness the better I shall like it." " I say, John, old man, this is no way for you to talk ! Brace up, and you will soon be another man ! " " I shall soon be in another world, I hope," and the helpless misery of the tone in which these few words were said smote Laurence Laugh ton to the heart. "What's the matter with you?" he asked with as lively an air as he could attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast taking hold on him. " I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart." " But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart," was Larry's encouraging response. "I shall." " Why should you more than others ? " " Because there is something else something mys- terious, some unknown malady which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge from the Army of the Living in a very few days now. But I must not waste the little breath I have left in talking about myself. I sent for you to ask a favor." Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it, and seemed to gain strength from the firm clasp. " I knew I could rely on you," he said, " for much or for little. And this is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which belonged to my VENETIAN GLASS. 63 grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there are all I have to leave. I do not know what the house is worth, and I shall be glad when I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place." The sick man's voice sank to a wavering whisper, as if it were borne down by a sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain ; he gave a fearful glance about the room, as though seeking a mystic foe, hidden and unknown. " The very first day we were here the cat lapped its milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign. And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal in- fluence: the trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this house ; and now I should not want to die if I thought hell could be worse ! " " Why don't you leave the hole, since you hate it so ? " asked Larry, with what scant cheeriness he could muster; he was yielding himself slowly to the place, though he fought bravely against his superstitious weakness. " Am. I fit to be moved ? " was Manning's query in reply. " But you will be better soon, and then " "I shall be worse before I am better, and I shall never be better in this life or in this place. No, no, I must die in my hole, like a dog. Like a dog!" and 64 VENETIAN GLASS. John Manning repeated the words with a wistful face. " Do you remember the faithful beast who always welcomed me here when we came up before we went to Europe ? " " Of course I do," said Larry, glad to get the sick man away from his sickness, and to ease his mind by talk on a healthy topic ; " he was a splendid fellow, too. Cassar, that was his name, was n't it ? " "Caesar Borgia I called him," was Manning's sad reply. "I knew you could not have forgotten him. He is dead. Caesar Borgia is dead. He was the last living thing that loved me except you, Larry, I know and he is dead. He died this morning. He came to my bedside as usual, and he licked my hand gently and looked up in my face, and laid him down along- side of me on the carpet here and died. Poor Cassar Borgia he loved me, and he is dead! And you, Larry, you must not stay here. The air is fatal. Every breath may be your last. When you have heard what I want, you must be off at once. If you like, you may come up again to the funeral before your leave is up. I saw you had three weeks." Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with difficulty. "John," he managed to say after an effort, " if you talk to me like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do for you." "I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one born to me after my death." " Your wife ? " repeated Larry, in staring surprise. " You did not know I was married ? I knew it at VENETIAN GLASS. 65 the time, as the boy said," and John Manning smiled bitterly. " Where is she ? " was Larry's second query. "Here." "Here?" "In this house. You shall see her before you go. And after the funeral I want you to get her away from here with what speed you can. Sell this house for what it will bring, and put the money into government bonds. You may find it hard to persuade her to move, for she seems to have a strange liking for this place. She breathes freely in the deadly air that suf- focates me. But you must not let her remain here ; this is no place for her now that a new life and new duties are before her." "How was it I did not know of your marriage?" asked Larry. " I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened," answered John Manning. "You need not look surprised. It is a simple story. I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of July. I lay on the hillside a day and a night before relief came. Then a farmer took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my wounds, but I owed my life to the nursing and care and unceasing attention of a young lady who was staying with the farmer's daughter. She had been doing her duty as a nurse as near to the field as she could go ever since the first Bull Run. She saved my life, and I gave it to her what there was of it. She was a beautiful woman, indeed I never saw a more beautiful and she has a 66 VENETIAN GLASS. strange likeness to but that you shall see for your- self when you see her. She is getting a little rest now, for she has been up all night attending to me. She will wait on me in spite of all I say ; of course I know there is no use wasting effort on me now. She is the most devoted nurse in the world ; and we shall part as we met she taking care of me at the last as she did at the first. Would God our relation had never been other than patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been husband and wife ! " And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a weary sigh ; then he coughed harshly, and raised his hand to his breast as though to stifle the burning within him. " It seems to me, John, that you ought not to talk like that of the woman you loved," said Laurence Laughton, with unusual seriousness. "I never loved her," answered Manning, coldly. Then he turned, and asked hastily, "Do you think I should want to die if I loved her ? " " But she loves you," said Laurence. "She never loved me!" was Manning's impatient retort. " Then why were you married ? " " That 's what I would like to know. It was fate, I suppose. What is to be, is. I never used to believe in predestination, but I know that of my own free will I could never have done what I did." " I confess I do not understand you," said Larry. " I do not understand myself. There is so much in this world that is mysterious I hope the next will be VENETIAN GLASS. 67 different. I was under the charm, I fancy, when I married her. She is a beautiful woman, as I told you, and I was a man, and I was weak, and I had hope. Why she married me that early September evening I do not know. It was not long before we both found out our mistake. And it was too late then. We were man and wife. Don't suppose I blame her I do not. I have no cause of complaint. She is a good wife to me, as I have tried to be a good husband to her. We made a mistake in marrying each other, and we know it that 'sail!" Before Laurence Laughton could answer, the door opened gently and Mrs. Manning entered the room. Laurence rose to greet his friend's wife, but the act was none the less a homage to her resplendent beauty. In spite of the worn look of her face, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had tawny, tigress hair, and hungry, tigress eyes. The eyes, indeed, were fathomless and indescribable, and their fitful glance had something uncanny about it. The hair was nearly of the true Venetian color, and she had the true Venetian sumptuousness of appearance, simple as was her attire. She seemed as though she had just risen from the couch whereon she reclined before Titian or Tintoretto, and, having clothed her- self, had walked forth in this nineteenth century and these United States. She was a strange and striking figure, and Laurence found it impossible to analyze exactly the curious and weird impression she produced on him. Her voice, as she greeted him, gave him a peculiar thrill ; and when he shook hands with her he 68 VENETIAN GLASS. seemed to feel himself face to face with some strange being from another land and another century. She inspired him with a supernatural awe he was not wont to feel in the presence of woman. He had a dim con- sciousness that there lingered in his memory the glim- mering image of some woman seen somewhere, he knew not when, who was like unto the woman before him. As she took her seat by the side of the bed she gave Laurence Laughton a look that seemed to peer into his soul. Laurence felt himself quiver under it. It was a look to make a man fearful. Then John Manning, who had moved uneasily as his wife entered, said, "Laurence, can you see any resemblance in my wife to any one you ever saw before ? " Their eyes met again, and again Laurence had a vague remembrance as though he and she had stood face to face before in some earlier existence. Then his wandering recollections took shape, and he remembered the face and the form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult significance if significance there were of any sort. " I think I do remember," he said at last. " It was in Venice at the Church of Santa Maria Magdalena the picture there that " " You remember aright ! " interrupted John Man- ning. " My wife is the living image of the Venetian woman for whose beauty Marco Manin was one day VENETIAN GLASS. 69 stabbed in the back with a glass stiletto, and Giovanni Manin fled from the place of his birth and never saw it again. It is idle to fight against the stars in their courses. We met here in the New World, she and I, as they met in the Old World so long ago and the end is the same. It was to be it was to be ! " Laurence Laughton gave a swift glance at his friend's wife to see what effect these words might have on her, and he was startled to detect on her face the same enigmatic smile which was the chief memory he had retained of the Venetian picture. Truly the likeness between the painting and the wife of his friend was marvellous ; and Laurence tried to shake off a morbid wonder whether there might be any obscure and in- scrutable survival from one generation to another across the seas and across the years. " If you remember the picture," said John Manning, " perhaps you remember the quaint goblet of Venetian glass I bought the same day?" " Of course I do," said Larry, glad to get Manning started on a topic of talk a little less personal. " Perhaps you know what has become of it ? " asked Manning. "I can answer 'of course' to that, too," replied Larry, "because I have it here." "Here?" " Here in a little square box, in the hall," answered Larry. "I had it in my trunk, you know, when we took passage on the Vanderbilt at Havre that May morning. I forgot to give it to you in the hurry of landing, and I have n't had a chance since. This is the 70 VENETIAN GLASS. first time I have seen yon for nearly three years. I found the box this morning, and I thought you might like to have it again, so I brought it up." John Manning rang the bell at the head of his bed. The black crone answered it, and soon returned with the little square box. Manning impatiently broke the seals and cords that bound its cover and began eagerly to release the goblet from the cotton and tissue paper in which it had been carefully swathed and bandaged. Mrs. Manning, though her moods were subtler and more intense, showed an anxiety to see the goblet quite as feverish as her husband's. In a minute the last wrap- ping was twisted off and the full beauty of the Vene- tian glass was revealed to them. Assuredly no praise was too loud for its delicate and exquisite workmanship. " Does Mrs. Manning know the story of the goblet ? " asked Larry ; "has she been told of the peculiar virtue ascribed to it ? " " She has too great a fondness for the horrible and the fantastic not to have heard the story in its smallest details," said Manning. Mrs. Manning had taken the glass in her fine, thin hands. Evidently it and its mystic legend had a morbid fascination for her. A strange light gleamed in her wondrous eyes, and Laughton was startled again to see the extraordinary resemblance between her and the picture they had looked at on the day the goblet had been bought. " When the poison was poured into it," she said at last, with quick and restless glances at the two men, " the glass broke then the tale was true ? " VENETIAN GLASS. 71 " It was a coincidence only, I 'm afraid," said her husband, who had rallied and regained strength under the unwonted excitement. Just then the old-fashioned clock on the stairs struck five. Mrs. Manning started up, holding the goblet in her hand. " It is time for your medicine," she said. "As you please," answered her husband wearily, sinking back on his pillow. " My wife insists on giving me every drop of my potions with her own hands. I shall not trouble her much longer, and I doubt if it is any use for her to trouble me now." " I shall give you everything in this glass after this," she said. " In the Venetian glass ? " asked Larry. " Yes," she said, turning on him fiercely ; " why not ? " " Do you think the doctor is trying to poison me ? " asked her husband. " No, I do not think the doctor is trying to poison yon," she repeated mechanically, as she moved toward a little sideboard in a corner of the room. " But I shall give you all your medicines in this hereafter." She stood at the little sideboard, with her back toward them, and she mingled the contents of various phials in the Venetian goblet. Then she turned to cross the room to her husband. As she walked with the glass in her hand there was a rift in the clouds high over the other side of the river, and the rays of the setting sun thrust themselves through the window and lighted up the glory of her hair and showed the strange 72 VENETIAN GLASS. gleam in her staring eyes. Another step, and the red rays fell on the Venetian glass, and it burned and glowed, and the green serpents twined about its ruby stem seemed to twist and crawl with malignant life, while their scorching eyes shot fire. Another step, and she stood by the bedside. As John Manning reached out his hand for the goblet, a tremor passed through her, her fingers clinched the fragile stem, and the glass fell on the floor and was shattered to shivers as its fellow had been shattered three centuries ago and more. She still stared steadily before her; then her lips parted, and she said, " The glass broke the glass broke then the tale is true ! " And with one hysteric shriek she fell forward amid the fragments of the Venetian goblet, unconscious thereafter of all things. THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. BY H. Ct BUNNER. THE yellow afternoon sun came in through the long blank windows of the room wherein the Superior Court of the State of New York, Part II., Gillespie, Judge, was in session. The hour of adjournment was near at hand, a dozen court-loungers slouched on the hard benches in the attitudes of cramped carelessness which mark the familiar of the halls of justice. Be- yond the rail sat a dozen lawyers and lawyers' clerks, and a dozen weary jurymen. Above the drowsy silence rose the nasal voice of the junior counsel for the defence, who in a high monotone, with his faint eyes fixed on the paper in his hand, was making some- thing like a half-a-score of " requests to charge." Nobody paid attention to him. Two lawyers' clerks whispered like mischievous schoolboys, hiding behind a pile of books that towered upon a table. Junior counsel for the plaintiff chewed his pencil and took advantage of his opportunity to familiarize himself with certain neglected passages of the New Code. The crier, like a half-dormant old spider, sat in his place and watched a boy who was fidgetting at the far end of the room, and who looked as though he wanted to whistle. 73 74 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. The jurymen might have been dream-men, vague creations of an autumn afternoon's doze. It was hard to connect them with a world of life and business. Yet, gazing closer, you might have seen that one looked as if he were thinking of his dinner, and another as if he were thinking of the lost love of his youth ; and that the expression on the faces of the others ranged from the vacant to the inscrutable. The oldest juror, at the end of the second row, was sound asleep. Everyone in the court-room, except himself, knew it. No one cared. Gillespie, J., was writing his acceptance of an invi- tation to a dinner set for that evening at Delmonico's. He was doing this in such a way that he appeared to be taking copious and conscientious notes. Long years on the bench had whitened Judge Gillespie's hair, and taught him how to do this. His seeming attentiveness much encouraged the counsel for the defence, whose high-pitched tone rasped the air like the buzzing of a bee that has found its way through the slats of the blind into some darkened room, of a summer noon, and that, as it seeks angrily for egress, raises its shrill scandalized protest against the idleness and the pleasant gloom. " We r'quest y'r Honor t' charge : First, 't forci- ble entry does not const'oot tresp'ss, 'nless intent's proved. Thus, 'f a man rolls down a bank " But the judge's thoughts were in the private supper- room at Delmonico's. He had no interest in the sad fate of the hero of the supposititious case, who had been obliged, by a strange and ingenious combination of accidents, to make violent entrance, incidentally dam- THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 75 aging the persons and property of others, into the lands and tenements of his neighbor. And further away yet the droning lawyer had set ja-travelling the thoughts of Horace Walpole, clerk for Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather ; for the young man sat with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, a sad half-smile on his lips, and his brown eyes looking through vacancy to St. Lawrence County, New York. He saw a great, shabby old house, shabby with the awful shabbiness of a sham grandeur laid bare by time and mocked of the pitiless weather. There was a great sham Grecian portico at one end ; the white paint was well-nigh washed away, and the rain-streaked wooden pillars seemed to be weeping tears of penitence for having lied about themselves and pretended to be marble. The battened walls were cracked and blistered. The Grecian temple on the hillock near looked much like a tomb, and not at all like a summer-house. The flower-garden was so rank and ragged, so overgrown with weed and vine, that it was spared the mortification of revealing its neglected maze, the wonder of the county in 1820. All was sham, save the decay. That was real; and by virtue of its decrepitude the old house seemed to protest against modern contempt, as though it said: "I have had my day. I was built when people thought this sort of thing was the right sort of thing; when we had our own little pseudo- classic renaissance in America. I lie between the towns of Aristotle and Sabine Farms. I am a gen- 76 THE BED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. tleman's residence, and my name is Montevista. I was built by a prominent citizen. You need not laugh through your lattices, you smug new Queen Anne cot- tage, down there in the valley! What will become of you when the falsehood is found out of your imitation bricks and your tiled roof of shingles, and your stained glass that is only a sheet of transparent paper pasted on a pane ? You are a young sham ; I am an old one. Have some respect for age ! " Its age was the crowning glory of the estate of Montevista. There was nothing new on the place except a third mortgage. Yet had Montevista villa put forth a juster claim to respect, it would have said : "I have had my day. Where all is desolate and silent now, there was once light and life. Along these halls and corridors, the arteries of my being, pulsed a hot blood of joyous humanity, fed with delicate fare, kin- dled with generous wine. Every corner under my roof was alive with love and hope and ambition. Great men and dear women were here; and the host was great and the hostess was gracious among them all. The laughter of children thrilled my gaudily decked stucco. To-day an old man walks up and down my lonely drawing-rooms, with bent head, murmuring to himself odds and ends of tawdry old eloquence, wan- dering in a dead land of memory, waiting till Death shall take him by the hand and lead him out of his ruinous house, out of his ruinous life." Death had indeed come between Horace and the creation of his spiritual vision. Never again should the old man walk, as to the boy's eyes he walked now, THE BED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 77 over the creaking floors, from where the Nine Muses simpered on the walls of the south parlor to where Homer and Plutarch, equally simpering, yet simpering with a difference, severely simpering, faced each other across the north room. Horace saw his father stalking on his accustomed round, a sad, familiar figure, tall and bent. The hands were clasped behind the back, the chin was bowed on the black stock ; but every now and then the thin form drew itself straight, the fine, clean-shaven, aquiline face was raised, beaming with the ghost of an old enthusiasm, and the long right arm was lifted high in the air as he began, his sonorous tones a little tremulous in spite of the restraint of old- time pomposity and deliberation, " Mr. Speaker, I rise ; " or, " If your Honor please " The forlorn, helpless earnestness oi this mockery of life touched Horace's heart ; and yet he smiled to think how different were the methods and manners of his father from those of brother Hooper, whose requests still droned up to the reverberating hollows of the roof, and there were lost in a subdued boom and snarl of echoes such as a court-room only can beget. Two generations ago, when the Honorable Horace Kortlandt Walpole was the rising young lawyer of the State ; when he was known as " the Golden-Mouthed Orator of St. Lawrence County," he was in the habit of assuming that he owned whatever court he practised in ; and, as a rule, he was right. The most bullock- brained of country judges deferred to the brilliant young master of law and eloquence, and his " requests " 78 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. were generally accepted as commands and obeyed as such. Of course the great lawyer, for form's sake, threw a veil of humility over his deliverances ; but even that he rent to shreds when the fire of his eloquence once got fairly aglow. "May it please your Honor! Before your Honor exercises the sacred prerogative of your office before your Honor performs the sacred duty which the State has given into your hands before, with that lucid genius to which I bow my head, you direct the minds of these twelve good men and true in the path of strict judicial investigation, I ask your Honor to instruct them that they must bring to their deliberations that im- partial justice which the laws of our beloved country of which no abler exponent than your Honor has ever graced the bench, which the laws of our beloved country guarantee to the lowest as well as to the loftiest of her citizens from the President in the Executive Mansion to the humble artisan at the forge throughout this broad land, from the lagoons of Louisiana to where the snow-clad forests of Maine hurl defiance at the descendants of Tory refugees in the barren wastes of Nova Scotia " Horace remembered every word and every gesture of that speech. He recalled even the quick upward glance from under the shaggy eyebrows with which his father seemed to see again the smirking judge catching at the gross bait of flattery ; he knew the little pause which the speaker's memory had filled with the applause of an audience long since dispersed to various silent country graveyards; and he wondered, THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 79 pityingly, if it were possible that even in his father's prime that wretched allusion to old political hatreds had power to stir the fire of patriotism in the citizen's bosom. " Poor old father ! " said the boy to himself. The voice which had for so many years been but an echo was stilled wholly now. Brief victory and long defeat were nothing now to the golden-mouthed orator. "Shall I fail as he failed?" thought Horace: "No! I can't. Have n't I got her to work for ? " And then he drew out of his breast pocket a red silk handkerchief and turned it over in his hand with a movement that concealed and caressed at the same time. It was a very red handkerchief. It was not ver- milion, nor " cardinal," nor carmine, a strange Ori- ental idealization of blood-red which lay well on the soft, fine, luxurious fabric. But it was an unmistakable, a shameless, a barbaric red. And as he looked at it, young Hitchcock, of Hitch- cock & Van Rensselaer, came up behind him and leaned over his shoulder. " Where did you get the handkerchief, Walpole ? " he whispered; "you ought to hang that out for an auction flag, and sell out your cases." Horace stuffed it back in his pocket. " You 'd be glad enough to buy some of them, if you got the show," he returned ; but the opportunity for a prolonged contest of wit was cut short. The judge was folding his letter, and the nasal counsel, having finished his reading, stood gazing in doubt and trepi- 80 THE BED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. dation at the bench, and asking himself why his Honor had not passed on each point as presented. He found out. "Are you prepared to submit those requests in writing?" demanded Gillespie, J., sharply and sud- denly. He knew well enough that that poor little nasal, nervous junior counsel would never have trusted himself to speak ten consecutive sentences in court without having every word on paper before him. "Ye-yes," the counsel stammered, and handed up his careful manuscript. " I will examine these to-night," said his Honor, and, apparently, he made an endorsement on the papers. He was really writing the address on the envelope of his letter. Then there was a stir, and a conversation between the judge and two or three lawyers, all at once, which was stopped when his Honor gave an Olympian nod to the clerk. The crier arose. " He' ye ! he' ye ! he' ye ! " he shouted with perfunc- tory vigor. "Wall wah wah!" the high ceiling slapped back at him ; and he declaimed, on one note, a brief address to " Awperns han bins " in that court,' of which nothing was comprehensible save the words "Monday next at eleven o'clock." And then the court collectively rose, and individually put on hats for the most part of the sort called queer. All the people were chattering in low voices ; chairs were moved noisily, and the slumbering juror opened his weary eyes and troubled himself with an uncalled- for effort to look as though he had been awake all the THE EED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 81 time and did n't like the way things were going, at all. Horace got from the clerk the papers for which he had been waiting, and was passing out, when his Honor saw him and hailed him with an expressive grunt. , Gillespie, J., looked over his spectacles at Horace. " Shall you see Judge Weeden at the office ? Yes ? Will you have the kindness to give him this yes? If it 's no trouble to you, of course." Gillespie, J., was not over-careful of the feelings of lawyers' clerks, as a rule ; but he had that decent dis- inclination to act ultra prcescriptum which marks the attitude of the well-bred man toward his inferiors in office. He knew that he had no business to use Wee- den, Snowden & Gilfeather's clerk as a messenger in his private correspondence. Horace understood him, took the letter, and allowed himself a quiet smile when he reached the crowded corridor. What mattered, he thought, as his brisk feet clattered down the wide stairs of the rotunda, the petty inso- lence of office now? He was Gillespie's messenger to-day ; but had not his young powers already received recognition from a greater than Gillespie ? If Judge Gillespie lived long enough he should put his gouty old legs under Judge Walpole's mahogany, and prose over his port yes, he should have port, like the relic of mellow old days that he was of the times "when your father-in-law and I, Walpole, were boys together." Ah, there you have the spell of the Red Silk Hand- kerchief ! It was a wonderful tale to Horace ; for he saw it in 82 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. that wonderful light which shall shine on no man of us more than once in his life on some of us not at all, Heaven help us ! but, in the telling, it is a simple tale: " The Golden-Mouthed Orator of St. Lawrence " was at the height of his fame in that period of storm and stress which had the civil war for its climax. His mis- fortune was to be drawn into a contest for which he was not equipped, and in which he had little interest. His sphere of action was far from the battle-ground of the day. The intense localism that bounded his knowl- edge and his sympathies had but one break he had tasted in his youth the extravagant hospitality of the South, and he held it in grateful remembrance. So it happened that he was a trimmer, a moderationist he called himself, a man who dealt in optimistic gener- alities, and who thought that if everybody the slaves included would only act temperately and reasonably, and view the matter from the standpoint of pure policy, the differences of South and North could be settled as easily as, through his own wise intervention, the old turnip-field feud of Farmer Oliver and Farmer Bunker had been wiped out of existence. His admirers agreed with him, and they sent him to Congress to fill the unexpired short term of their rep- resentative, who had just died in Washington of what we now know as a malarial fever. It was not to be expected, perhaps, that the Honorable Mr. Walpole would succeed in putting a new face on the great political question in the course of his first term ; but they all felt sure that his first speech would startle men THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 83 who had never heard better than what Daniel Webster had had to offer them. But the gods were against the Honorable Mr. Wai- pole. On the day set for his great effort there was what the theatrical people call a counter-attraction. Majah Pike had come up from Mizourah, sah, to cane that demn'd Yankee hound, Chahles Sumnah, sah, yes, sah, to thrash him like a dawg, begad ! And all Wash- ington had turned out to see the performance, which was set down for a certain hour, in front of Mr. Sum- ner's door. There was just a quorum when the golden-mouthed member began his great speech, an inattentive, chat- tering crowd, that paid no attention to his rolling rhet- oric and rococo grandiloquence. He told the empty seats what a great country this was, and how beautiful was a middle policy, and he illustrated this with a quotation from Homer, in the original Greek (a neat novelty : Latin was fashionable for parliamentary use in Webster's time), with, for the benefit of the unedu- cated, the well-known translation by the great Alex- ander Pope, commencing : " To calm their passions with the words of Age, Slow from his seat arose the Pylian sage, Experienced Nestor, in Persuasion skilled, Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled " When Nestor and Mr. Walpole closed, there was no quorum. The member from New Jersey, who had engaged him in debate, was sleeping the sleep of honorable intoxication in his seat. Outside, all Wash- 84 THE BED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. ington was laughing and cursing. Majah Pike had not appeared. It was the end of the golden-mouthed orator. His voice was never heard again in the House. His one speech was noticed only to be laughed at, and the news went home to his constituents. They showed that magnanimity which the poets tell us is an attribute of the bucolic character. They, so to speak, turned over the pieces of their broken idol with their cow-hide boots, and remarked that they had known it was clay, all along, and dern poor clay at that. So the golden-mouthed went home, to try to make a ruined practice repair his ruined fortune ; to give mort- gages on his home to pay the debts his hospitality had incurred ; to discuss with a few feeble old friends ways and means by which the war might have been averted; to beget a son of his old age, and to see the boy grow up in a new generation, with new ideas, new hopes, new ambitions, and a lifetime before him to make memories in. They had little enough in common, but they came to be great friends as the boy grew older, for Horace in- herited all his traits from the old man, except a certain stern energy which came from his silent, strong-hearted mother, and which his father saw with a sad joy. Mr. Walpole sent his son to New York to study law in the office of Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather, who were a pushing young firm in 1850. Horace found it a very quiet and conservative old concern. Snowden and Gilfeather were dead ; Weeden had been on the bench and had gone off the bench at the call of a THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 85 "lucrative practice;" there were two new partners, whose names appeared only on the glass of the office door and in a corner of the letter-heads. Horace read his law to some purpose. He became the managing clerk of Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather. This particular managing clerkship was one of unusual dignity and prospective profit. It meant, as it always does, great responsibility, little honor, and less pay. But the firm was so peculiarly constituted that the place was a fine stepping-stone for a bright and ambitious boy. One of the new partners was a business man, who had put his money into the concern in 1860, and who knew and cared nothing about law. He kept the books and managed the money, and was beyond that only a name on the door and a terror to the office-boys. The other new partner was a young man who made a specialty of collecting debts. He could wring gold out of the stoniest and barrenest debtor ; and there his usefulness ended. The general practice of the firm rested on the shoulders of Judge Weeden, who was old, lazy, and luxury-loving, and who, to tell the honest truth, shirked his duties. Such a state of affairs would have wrecked a younger house ; but Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather had a great name, and the consequences of his negligent feebleness had not yet descended upon Judge Weeden's head. That they would, in a few years, that the Judge knew it, and that he was quite ready to lean on a strong young arm, Horace saw clearly. That his own arm was growing in strength he also saw ; and the Judge knew that, too. He was Judge 86 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. Weeden's pet. All in the office recognized the fact. All, after reflection, concluded that it was a good thing that he was. New blood had to come into the firm sooner or later, and although it was not possible to watch the successful rise of this boy without a little natural envy and heart-burning, yet it was to be con- sidered that Horace was one who would be honorable, just, and generous wherever fortune put him. Horace was a gentleman. They all knew it. Barnes and Haskins, the business man and the champion col- lector, knew it down in the shallows of their vulgar little souls. Judge Weeden, who had some of that mysterious ichor of gentlehood in his wine-fed veins, knew it and rejoiced in it. And Horace I -can say for Horace that he never forgot it. He was such a young prince of managing clerks that no one was surprised when he was sent down to Sand Hills, Long Island, to make preparations for the re- organization of the Great Breeze Hotel Company, and the transfer of the property known as the Breeze Hotel and Park to its new owners. The Breeze Hotel was a huge "Queen Anne" vagary which had, after the fashion of hotels, bankrupted its first owners, and was now going into the hands of new people, who were likely to make their fortunes out of it. The property had been in litigation for a year or so ; the mechanics' liens were numerous, and the mechanics clamorous; and although the business was not particularly com- plicated, it needed careful and patient adjustment. Horace knew the case in every detail. He had drudged over it all the winter, with no especial hope THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 87 of personal advantage, but simply because that was his way of working. He went down in June to the mighty barracks, and lived for a week in what would have been an atmosphere of paint and carpet-dye had it not been for the broad sea wind that blew through the five hundred open windows, and swept rooms and corridors with salty freshness. The summering folk had not arrived yet ; there were only the new manager and his six score of raw recruits of clerks and servants. But Horace felt the warm blood coming back to his cheeks, that the town had somewhat paled, and he was quite content; and every day he went down to the long, lonely beach, and had a solitary swim, although the sharp water whipped his white skin to a biting red. The sea takes a long while to warm up to the summer, and is sullen about it. He was to have returned to New York at the end of the week, and Haskins was to have taken his place ; but it soon became evident to Weeden, Snowden & Gil- feather that the young man would attend to all that was to be done at Sand Hills quite as well as Mr. Has- kins, or quite as well as Judge Weeden himself, for that matter. He had to shoulder no great responsi- bility ; the work was mostly of a purely clerical nature, vexatious enough, but simple. It had to be done on the spot, however ; the original Breeze Hotel and Park Company was composed of Sand Killers, and the builders were Sand Hillers, too, the better part of them. And there were titles to be searched; for the whole scheme was an ambitious splurge of Sand Hills pride and it had been undertaken and carried out in a reck- 88 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. less and foolish way. Horace knew all the wretched little details of the case, and so Horace was entrusted with duties such as do not often devolve upon a man of his years ; and he took up his burden proudly, and with a glowing consciousness of his own strength. Judge Weeden missed his active and intelligent obedience in the daily routine of office business ; but the Judge thought it was just as well that Horace should not know that fact. The young man's time would come soon enough, and he would be none the worse for serving his apprenticeship in modesty and humility. The work entrusted to him was an honor in itself. And then, there was no reason why poor Walpole's boy should n't have a sort of half-holiday out in the country, and enjoy his youth. He was not recalled. The week stretched out. He worked hard, found time to play, hugged his quickened ambitions to his breast, wrote hopeful letters to the mother at Montevista, made a luxury of his loneliness, and felt a bashful resentment when the "guests" of the hotel began to pour in from the outside world. For a day or two he fought shy of them. But these first comers were lonely too, and not so much in love with loneliness as he thought he was, and very soon he became one of them. He had found out all the walks and drives; he knew the times of the tides; he had made friends with the fishermen for a league up and down the coast, and he had amassed a store of valuable hints as to where the first blue-fish might be expected to run. Altogether he was a very desirable companion. THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. 89 Besides, that bright, fresh face of his, and a certain look in it, made you friends with him at once, especially if you happened to be a little older, and to remember a look of the sort, lost, lost forever, in a boy's looking- glass. So he was sought out, and he let himself be found, and the gregarious instinct in him waxed delightfully. And then It came. Perhaps I should say She came ; but it is not the woman we love ; it is our dream of her. Sweet and tender, fair and good, she may be ; but let it be honor enough for her that she has that glory about her face which our love kindles to the halo that lights many a man's life to the grave, though the face beneath it be dead or false. I will not admit that it was only a pretty girl from Philadelphia who came to Sand Hills that first week in July. It was the rosy goddess herself, dove-drawn across the sea, in the warm path of the morning sun although the tremulous, old-fashioned handwriting on the hotel register only showed that the early train had brought " Samuel Rittenhouse, Philadelphia. " Miss JKittenhouse, do" It was the Honorable Samuel Rittenhouse, ex-Chief- Justice of Pennsylvania, the honored head of the Pennsylvania bar, and the legal representative of the Philadelphia contingent of the new Breeze Hotel and Park Company. In the evening Horace called upon him in his rooms with a cumbersome stack of papers, and patiently 90 THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF. waded through explanations and repetitions until Mr. Rittenhouse's testy courtesy he had the nervous manner of age apprehensive of youthful irreverence melted into a complacent and fatherly geniality. Then, when the long task was done and his young guest arose, he picked up the card that lay on the table and trained his glasses on it. "