CHAPTER III.

Nearly a year after Felden's disappearance, I was surprised by the following letter from him:

"Dear old Jamison:

I know you thought and think me a scape grace, but when you read what I shall write, you will forgive me as a simple madcap. To get you into a proper state of mind, I will at once proceed a tale to unfold.

The day of my departure from Cincinnati, I went to the Burnett to discuss a business venture with a guest of the house. He was in the dining-room at 5 o'clock dinner. I sat by his side discussing our business, when I was startled by the tones of a voice near by. I sought it. There just opposite to me the "brown shawl" was being seated. An elderly lady accompanied her.

My vis-a-vis was a young girl, not over eighteen, but in every respect the woman I met in '50, at the flower-show in Regent's Park. There was one difference it is true--in her coiffure; as I took it, the result of change of fashion. So vividly was the photograph of years ago impressed on my memory, and so exactly was it copied, that the incongruity of time and added years never crossed my brain. I was dazed by the sudden apparition of my dream. No thought entered my mind that it was contrary to the laws of nature, that a woman of 18 in '50 was still only 18 now; nor did the idea occur to me that I was laboring under an hallucination, or was the victim of mistaken identity. The woman I had worshipped for long years was there before me, in every feature the same as memory pictured her. She was no older, and was altered only as change of fashion had altered her. I did not reason on the subject.

I overheard that the two ladies were on their way to Boston; and were to leave on the 7:30 train, going East. They examined a time table, and speculated as to their stops for meals before reaching their destination. The elder was addressed as "Auntie," the younger one as "Rita."

In an hour I was at the station with my luggage. I saw them enter the cars, and knew whenever they left it at eating stations. At Boston I made my cab driver follow their carriage and took the number of the dwelling and the name of the street. The next day I watched the house. At noon Rita with a lady, both in calling costume took a carriage at the door, and Rita, for so I already called her in my thoughts threw a kiss to a child who had followed them from the house.

I determined this was her home, and felt no longer any necessity for constant watching. Towards sundown I was walking in the Common, where she and I met face to face. She looked at me, but as one to her an indifferent stranger. A girl, probably of five years was her companion. While the latter sailed a toy boat on the pond, the young lady sat on a seat not far away.

The little girl dropped her hat in the water, and called out, "Oh, Aunt Rita! I've lost my hat." They tried to reach it with her parasol. I ran to a man raking grass, took his rake and rescued the hat. When I put it on the child's head, the aunt thanked me, with a smile that was a ray of sunshine. Her voice, modulated to express thanks, was simply music.

Resolved to take advantage of any and every opportunity to make her acquaintance, I took off my hat saying, "Pardon me, but we have met before. It was in London, in 1850."

She replied, with a smile, "Your memory must be wonderful, for at that time, I was--let me see--" and she counted the years on her fingers, "I was then nine years old, and very small for my age." I was dumbfounded, for as yet I had not thought of the anachronism I had been guilty of. I said, "it is strange"--my voice sounded hollow to myself--"but a young lady, your very image, I met a dozen times, and what is stranger still, she wore the self same brown shawl which covered your shoulders at the Burnett house, a few days since." She did not notice my allusion to the Burnett house but burst out in a hearty laugh and clapped her hands so loudly, that the little girl ran to her.

"I see it all," she cried; "Minnie, my sister, was in London that year, and wore that shawl. Her picture was taken in it about the same time, and when I grew up I was so wonderfully like her, that she gave it to me; when I fix my hair as hers was, and put on that wrap, every one declares the picture to be the very image of myself."

I had broken the ice rather unconventionally, and was determined not to recede. I said "But she was with her father and a little boy." I felt I was treading on thin ice, but if it were not her father, I would manage in some way to get out of my mistake.

"Yes!" she replied. "Yes! my poor dear father and dear little Ralph were with her. I was at school at home. Poor papa--poor Ralph." Her eyes became suffused. "Papa and Minnie went abroad for brother Ralph's health. Poor boy, he did not live to get home, and papa died the next year."

It was not right, but I could not resist it. I knew that grief admits a friend more readily than gaiety, so I said: "Yes! Ralph looked very frail, but your father was the picture of health. I was abroad after that for several years and lost sight of them."

She paused a while, and then continued, "dear papa was never sick, but his troubles broke his heart and killed him. You know it was a terrible thing to be cheated of all he possessed by the man he thought his best friend."

I saw she had an idea, I had known her father and of his affairs. I was villain enough not to undeceive her. What is more, I felt I had a right to be free with this girl. I had worshipped her sister for years, and in every land. She and her sister were now become as one, and that one was designed by nature for me.

The child ran up and pulled her hand. "Lets go home, aunt Rita, I am hungry."

She arose, and nodding me a polite good evening, said:

"I suppose you will come to see Minnie. Her house is No. ----. My aunt and I are visiting her."

I promised to do so, and passed a sleepless night, racking my brain to discover some way of getting into No. ---- without taking advantage of this sweet girl's unconventional innocence. Could I tell a lie? Would it be a lie to excuse myself on the plea of having a slight acquaintance with the dead father? I lived a lie; was indeed a living lie, but I had as yet to my recollection never uttered a direct one.

On the next day I called, asking for the ladies. I sent in a card with an assumed name and wrote under it, "An acquaintance of years ago." Rita and Mrs. Wilton, her sister, came in together. I stood for several minutes speechless. There were the two sisters. Apparently there was ten years difference in their ages, and the disparity was patent. Yet I looked from one to the other, and for a while was hardly able to determine that it was the elder I had previously met. I hid my confusion. They seemed never to question my having been a friend of their father. Neither evinced the slightest emotion when our eyes met. I had while abroad, the entre of many noble houses. I used this fact as a sort of credential and succeeded so well that Mr. Wilton called at my hotel and invited me to dine with his family.

The visit was repeated; and I was well received. I honored the wife--but loved the young sister. It seemed to me it was she I had been carrying all of these years in my heart; and I did not stop to think what all this might lead to. When I changed my skin in India I became the man I pretended to be. I was the homeless Jack Felden. I was madly infatuated, and what may seem strange, while I trembled when I looked at or touched the younger sister, I felt not a single tremor, when the elder walked to a concert at night with her hand on my arm; not an emotion, when she looked me in the face. I loved her years ago, I loved her sister now because she and her sister had become one, and that one was the younger.

I watched Rita and could not find that I aroused one single feeling of reciprocation in her breast. I grew mad at the thought, and at night cried aloud in agony. Was it true--could it be true, that after all, I was nothing to this woman who, I believed, was made for me?

I spoke one day of the episode at the flower show, intimating nothing which could connect them with it. Minnie told how she, too, once had fallen in love the same way; suddenly she started and fixed her eyes on my black hair and olive hue. The look seemed to recall her; she had no suspicion.

I pondered on the thing. Years ago my glance sent the blood crimson to her brow. The sister now affected me as she had formerly done, but I seemed to be nothing to her. I spent sleepless nights trying to account for this. I reached the conclusion at last that love--passionate love, was a physical as well as a spiritual emotion; that I was wearing a mask covering my true self, and to win Rita I must unmask.

I have told you I could remove and replace my scar in a day, but to change the color of my hair or complexion requires from four to six months. I learned that Rita, with her aunt, whom I did not meet, would return to their home in Tennessee within a month, and she would then be a village fixture for perhaps a year. I grew madly jealous lest some one should love and win her before I could appear properly before her.

I swore to have her, and when won, I felt sure she would never change, but would wait and wait until she could be mine. I bade the sisters goodbye with a heavy heart--all the heavier, because on their part leave-taking was only kindly.

I hurried to Cincinnati; avoided places where I could meet you; gathered together my guns and fishing-tackle, my cosmetics and wardrobe sufficient for several months absence; arranged my bank account and went to Chicago, where I thought the Ethiopian might change his skin without observation. Jim being able to read my writing when in plain characters, was directed to pack up all my valuables and to hold himself in readiness to come to me at once on receipt of a letter.

He and his wife finally joined me. I sent him to Tennessee to learn the lay of the land in the town in which Rita's aunt resided. To escape any difficulties a Northern negro might encounter in a small Southern town, he went as a boat hand on a steamer running from St. Louis; managed to get sick when ---- was reached, and was necessarily put ashore. In a month he returned full of the information I desired.

I learned that the father of the two sisters, Mr. Dixon, had been a wealthy merchant in one of the large southern cities. He was an Englishman by birth and had lost his wife, a high-born Spanish lady, when Rita was a small child. They had no relations in America, except the aunt, under whose care the youngest daughter was living and upon whom she was dependent. When the family was in England for Ralph's health in '50, the partner of Mr. Dixon contrived to raise a very large sum of money and decamped. Mr. Dixon reached home to find himself an absolute pauper. The blow prostrated him, and in a few months he was laid beside his wife. Rita had only a village education, but was a great reader and a good musician. Her aunt, Mrs. Allen, had been governess in a nobleman's house in England, was literary and decidedly uppish and withal intensely avaricious.

Mr. Wilton was the Boston correspondent of the ruined firm, and in the course of settling with it met and won Minnie. Rita's aunt, or rather, aunt-in-law, the widow of her father's only brother, took charge of her and made her home an unhappy one, not by direct unkindness, but by her querulous, carping and sarcastic disposition and manner. She would long since have gone to her sister but for a dislike of Wilton, who, though most kind to his wife, was a selfish man, and had given his young sister-in-law some great offense for which the Spanish blood, so hot in her veins, forbade forgiveness.

I do not remember ever to have told you that Jim Madison, the obedient servant and devoted slave of his once master, is a man of great native intellect. When a boy, I taught him to read a little and in Cincinnati spent much time trying to educate him. He was wonderfully apt and occasionally with strangers uses good English, but with me and my intimates prefers to be the negro servant and to use plantation language. He is intensely loving, absolutely honest, and at times startles me by an almost savage dignity inherited through a short line from his African forefathers. Reared among a thousand negroes, for Clifton and Brandon people mingled almost as if of one plantation--jolly and light in his heart, he courted popularity among his kind and became one of the most astute diplomats. I love him as my servant and honor him as a true and honest man; respect, and if he were not my friend, would almost fear him as a shrewd, self poised, ever alert diplomatist. I had known his qualities before, yet the thoroughness of his information brought me from ---- amazed me. He managed to get a job of sawing a load of fire-wood and packing it in the aunt's yard, and from that he became domiciled in a room over the kitchen. With his open but shrewd honesty, he became almost a confident of Miss Rita.

You who have never lived in the South cannot understand how closely drawn together are kind masters and mistresses and humble but faithful servants.

The cunning Hindoo who gave me my raven locks and olive complexion, gave me also ingredients to restore my original appearance more rapidly than nature, unassisted, would do, and at the same time, cosmetics, which would enable me to conceal the change while going on. The effects of the cosmetics were entirely temporary, and easily removable.

When Jim returned, I was ready to reassume my skin. When emerging from my bath one morning, I was no longer Jack Felden, but John ---- of Clifton, ----. Jim and Dinah shed tears of joy, crying together "Bress de Lord! oh bress de Lord--its Mars John--its hisself shuah"; and they hugged me again and again.

Dinah sat down in a rocking chair and said, "Come to Mammy, honey; jes let Mammy nuss her baby boy one more time, and I'se ready to go to glory."

I lay my head on the loving creature's lap, while she combed out my hair and tried to curl it around her fingers. The curls of my youth, however, were gone forever.

When I looked into the glass, and saw my changed appearance, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over me. I was John ----: I was the unhappy husband of my cold cousin. A gulf arose between Rita and myself. How dare I think of winning the love of that pure girl! I, who was bound by the law of man to another, even though my reason and my heart told me, I was free. So thoroughly had I identified myself with the character of Jack Felden, while wearing his hair and complexion, that the recollection of my real name and position was blurred. It is true, my unfortunate marriage was never entirely forgotten, but I felt myself a new man, with new lights and different possibilities. The husband of Belle had become an unreal shadow--the figment of a disordered imagination. The life I had been living for years began in the Bengalee village, when the cunning Hindoo made me a stranger to my servant--all before that was a dream. Now having laid aside my mask, I was the dead man come back to life, with all his memories and his hated ties.

I took long walks at night out into the open country. I fought the demon of memory; I fought the commands of conscience. But conscience would not down. The blood spot would not out. Despair filled me.

Aided by my temporary cosmetics, I again became Jack Felden, but the change was only partial. My glass told me I was he, my conscience whispered, I was John ----. Mine was a dual being. The hopes of the masquerader were depressed by the fears of the real man. I decided to send Jim to Clifton to learn something of Belle, resolved if she were still clinging to her pride, to speculate boldly--to win a fortune and give it to Rita as a restitution coming from her father's swindler.

You know something of my success in Cincinnati. Jim had been my lucky stone; his rheumatic limbs were my barometer, telling me what the season would be from week to week, and though I did not believe in it, I had speculated on what his joints foretold and was now the possessor of a fair competency--I would risk my all, court fortune's smile to make or break. If fortune should favor me, all would be Rita's; I would avoid her forever; if the fickle jade failed me, Jim and I could gain a livelihood in new endeavors.

While shedding my skin, I had made several small successful ventures in corn and wheat. Jim and I put our heads together (or rather, I put my head to his shins) and we arrived at conclusions, which should lead to wealth, or to poverty. I put aside a couple of thousands for Jim and Dinah, staking all the rest of my fortune in margins. I won from the first. I pushed my luck with reckless daring, turning my profits into margins and new ventures. At the end of two weeks, my means were doubled.

I was eating my dinner--one of the best Dinah ever prepared--when Akbor and Queen watching me close by my chair, suddenly sprang up, and rushed to the door whining and uttering low barks. Jim entered, to be overthrown by the delighted animals. Gathering himself up quickly, he held out his hand to me, an unusual familiarity, for Jim is my friend, yet my slavish servant, and rarely loses the demeanor of the servant.

"Bress de Lord, Mars Jack; shout glory hallelujer Dineh, you black niggar! We'se free! and created equal as shuah as Tom Jeffersom printed de declaratium!"

I made him sit down and tell his story. He told me all he thought of interest regarding the dear home of my childhood.

I tried to get him to the point on which I most desired information, but he could not be induced to alter the thread of his narration in the least detail. Finally I learned that Belle, who had gone abroad twelve months before, was to be married in a month to an Italian Lord.

"Jess think of it Dineh--git it through yo' wool, ole gal.--over dah dey calls men lords. I don't wonnah dat Sodum and Gomorrah was guv up to fire and brimstone. I specks dar was lords in dem days. The reel Lord will make Miss Belle a piller of salt--shuah! stick dat in yo' craw, Dineh--dar is one Lord, and he tells us in de book, dat he am a jellus God."

Jim then spread before me a newspaper printed in ----. It announced, as a most important event--"That the beautiful and queenly Mrs. Belle ---- whose husband, Mr. John ---- had mysteriously disappeared in 185--, supposed to have died of cholera in India, had become a Catholic and was about to be married to the Marquis of ---- in Rome. Mrs. ---- had with hopeful love for her husband, for all these years refused to credit the report of his death; even now, she was unwilling to act on information she had gained at great expense, from India; information which every one else thought thoroughly reliable. She had therefore applied to the Pope for a dispensation; that as soon as the formalities necessary at the Vatican were completed, she would at once become the Marchionness of ----. The marriage was to occur on the ---- day ----, just one month from the day of the publication of this paper."

Oh Jamison, old fellow, that was a happy hour for me. I had that day closed very successful deals. I was almost rich and could win and wear Rita. I did not for a moment doubt she would be mine, for I honestly believed her my mate. All impatience to fly to her, I made an arrangement to travel south for a Chicago firm, to be paid out of commission alone. Jim informed me that Rita's aunt sometimes rented her front parlor and a bed-room attached, to traveling men with samples; that it was a source of much mortification to the niece, for the elderly lady was rich and had no children, renting the room out of pure avarice. I resolved to lease it, for it would bring me close to Rita and would arouse her animosity, out of which I would snatch victory.

I washed every vestige of Jack Felden from my hair and skin, but put a scar on my cheek, which with a full beard and straight hair, I thought would insure me against all recognition, should chance bring me in contact with some one I had known in early manhood. On reaching ----, leaving my luggage and sample boxes at the wharf, I went at once to the home of the aunt; secured the rooms and agreed to pay a large price for my breakfast and supper in the house. Thus the best of treatment was secured, for the avaricious old lady would try to keep me as long as possible.

My first meal in the house, was supper. When Rita came to the table, she scarcely deigned to notice me. She disliked me for taking the parlor.

Mrs. Allen, the aunt, was a screw, but she was an epicure. Her old cook was an artist. Like all genuine gourmets, the old lady was a table talker, and a good one. I resolved to return Miss Rita's disdain, by ignoring her presence, and if possible to arouse her interest in me, against her will.

When the aunt served me with tea, she said:

"Mr. Felden, there is a cup which I am sure you cannot equal in Chicago. New made people can soon become good judges of coffee, but a connoisseur in tea must have blue blood in his veins."

"I do not boast a long line of ancestry," I rejoined, "but my palate must be the heritage of good blood, for I enjoy the Chinese drink greatly, and am very particular as to the brand. There is only one country in the world where good tea is almost universal. A bad cup in Russia, I found the exception."

"Ah," she said, "but it is in England, that it is always above the average."

"Yes," I acknowledged, "as a food, not as a beverage. English tea is good to eat--that is to mix with, and wash down your muffins. In Russia tea is a drink, and is even jealous of a thing so coarse as sugar. I learned there to put into my cup only a soup├žon of sweet."

"You have been in the land of the Czar then, have you?"

"I spent some time within his dominions," I replied.

"You have been a traveler, then I suppose. What other countries have you visited? Pardon my seeming impertinence, but I have found it a good beginning to an acquaintance, to learn where each has been. I have myself, wandered considerably, but only in Europe."

"I have visited nearly every European land;" I said, for I was determined to please her and at the same time to win the attention of the niece, who so far, had only noticed me by casual glances, "have hunted the tiger in Indian jungles and laved my limbs in holy Ganges among its devotees."

"Oh, how charming!" the good lady exclaimed. "I thought I was getting only a liberal lodger and I find I may be entertaining a savant."

"To get myself on the best footing, dear Madam," I rejoined, "I will say I have straddled the equator, and have used the Arctic Circle for a trapeze."

She clapped her hands, saying, "That's capital, is it not, Rita? What else, and where else, Mr. Traveler?"

"In Burmah I have ogled beauties with huge cigars piercing the lobes of their ears, and have worshipped Soudanise ladies closely veiled on the upper Nile, awakening from my dream of adoration to find the Yashmac of my divinities covering ebony coloured features."

"Go on, dear sir, go on, I am wrapt in profound attention," and the old wizened eyes sparkled with pleasure.

"I have been in ----," I glanced at Rita, she was listening with intense interest; I grew ashamed of the game and paused. But knowing how a woman's nature clothes the mysterious man in brightest garments, and is ready to find the prince in beggar's raiment, I resolved to show her a despised drummer, who had been in all lands, and even an actor in wild and dangerous adventures.

"I have crossed the dark teak forests of Siam, where jungle fever kills its victims in a single day, and escaped its venom by swallowing quinine by the handful and by sleeping in the houdah on my elephant's back. A single night on the ground would have been death."

Rita changed her seat to become my vis-a-vis and from then never removed her eyes from my face.

I continued: "In Cambodia I lived a week in a grand palace, surrounded by huge temples of fine architectural beauty; temples and palaces covering a mile square; and excepting my servants, I was the only tenant of a magnificent lost city. Trees were rooting on the friezes of noble porticos and splitting their marble members asunder.

"I was once caged in a small cave near old Golconda, and my guard of honor was a huge tiger, who lay across the entrance to the den, and strove to tear down the barricade I had erected to keep him out. His fierce growls as he wildly scratched against the granite wall, curdled the blood in my veins and his breath came hot upon my face, the winding crevices in the barricade permitting this, while not allowing me to shoot through them. I sat rifle in hand, expecting every minute that my protection would give way, and then barely hoping that I might send a bullet into the monster's brain. Finally the wall toppled--he crouched for the fatal spring, when a shell from my faithful gun pierced his heart, and I sank in a swoon from long excitement, and physical exhaustion."

A sweet voice of intense emotion came across the table.

"And--and--please tell me how long did you lie in the swoon?"

Ah, how I did long to press to my bosom that dear, sympathetic heart!

I replied, "I do not know, but when I came to, I felt I was dying from thirst. I crept through the opening and with the tiger's blood not yet cold, moistened my parching tongue. I lapped it in a sort of revenge."

"That was grand! Oh, why am I not a man?" she exclaimed.

I leaned towards her, my heart spoke in tones she did not mistake. "Thank God! thank God! you are not."

She started, her eyes met mine, every drop of blood seemed to leave her cheek, she was so pale; our eyes looked into our eyes. Her face crimsoned, and she rushed out of the room.

Mrs. Allen apolegetically--"do not mind that child, Mr. Felden, she's an idiot," and then, her face became nearly malignant, "Yes, she's an idiot, a plague and a nuisance."

How I hated her! How I gloated over the idea, that I would take the plague from her, resolved never to ask her consent. For several days the young lady's manner was constrained but not haughty. I was differential but reserved. Indeed I felt a sort of timidity when she was present. I avoided every appearance of throwing myself into her company.

I spent some time in the business quarter of town and soon secured some capital orders for my employers. This gave me real pleasure. You, old Jamison, who are so true to your firm, understand this feeling. I made excursions to other towns where I was somewhat successful.

The fourth Sunday was a glorious sunny day, just the one for a long ramble in the country.

At breakfast I asked Rita to join me in a constitutional. The aunt spoke up, "Of course she will, I would go myself, but my lame foot forbids it."

I proposed going to the hotel to get a lunch.

"No! No!" the old lady said. "No! I will put you up a nice basket. In a few days you will take me out for a long promenade a voiture." I consented by a nod.

With basket in hand, we left the house early. My companion wore a charming but plain walking habit; a boy's straw hat sat jauntily on her head. I was sure I had never seen anything half so beautiful, as was this dark, yet fair young girl. Rita was a glorious walker. Hers was not the gliding swimming motion which in America and especially in the South, has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of female grace; but the light springing movement, with which fair Eve tripped over Eden's bloom bespangled glens, when she gathered flowers of every sweet odor and of every native tint to deck her bridal bed; when she tripped over nature's parterres and scarcely brushed away the dews sparkling on their wealth of fragrant bloom.

We walked and gaily chatted. She lost all the reserve, which since I became an inmate of her auntie's home had more or less marked her demeanor. She was the young village maiden, who had in artless innocence, at Boston's old frog pond, laughingly talked with the respectful stranger. But when our eyes met, her soul spoke unconsciously through them, telling me that she read my heart and was full of sympathy.

We reached a high tree-clad bluff, which overlooked a wide river bend. The sun was warm, but sent upon us no burning rays; rather shimmering his light through the leafy shade. Across the stream, a broad bottom lay, waving in grass and grain, and bright here and there with opening cotton bloom. We sat side by side on a fallen tree, and drank in the beauty of a picture painted from colors worked upon nature's pallette.

We descended toward the river bank to a pretty little spring which Rita had before oftentimes visited. We partook of the lunch Mrs. Allen had put up for us, or as Rita said, "for her gold paying lodger, who was a traveled savant."

She made the welkin ring with her merry laugh, as she took the wrapping paper from a dusty bottle of claret.

"Oh! my generous aunty! see, here is genuine Chateau Lafitte! I knew she had it, but I have seen a bottle of it but once on her table, and that was when President Polk dined with us, a good while ago. Poor aunty! You have surely bewitched her, Mr. Felden."

The lunch was delicious, and we did it ample justice. "See, Mr. Felden, here is real spring chicken broiled to a "T." Poor aunt; strangely inconsistent aunty. A lavish miser! a generous lover of self! A born epicure."

We wandered among little gorges: she was happy, for she was a joyous young girl, set free in nature's haunts. I was happy because by my side was my own--my Heaven given mate, the rib taken from my long ago progenitor, and now given back to me. Grown somewhat tired, we sat upon the grass covered root of an upturned tree. I said something, I remember not what, my companion started; I noticed and adverted to it.

"Mr. Felden, do you know you frequently startle me. I seem to hear in your voice a tone I have heard before, or have listened to in my dreams." I felt the hour had come.

"Miss Rita. I owe to you a confession. I am not what I am." I spoke with all the pathos practice among wild and dangerous people had made me master of.

"Listen to me, Rita, pardon my familiarity: but you will forgive me when I have finished."

I rapidly gave her the story of my life, and dwelt upon the meeting with her sister at the flower show, and the hold it took upon me. Again she started, and was about to speak, when with a motion, I stilled her tongue. I spoke of my long wanderings, and then of my seeing her at the Burnett and thinking her the lady of the flower show.

I told her of my visit to Boston. The color left her face, and she faltered out--"I knew it--I see it now, you are Mr. Ford," and crimsoned from neck to the roots of her glossy hair.

"Yes, Rita, I am John ----. I am Jack Ford; and now Jack Felden tells you that he loves you--he worships you and would make you his wife and would be happy,--would make you his wife, his Queen--and would, too, make you happy."

I paused and grasped her hand--she did not withdraw it. For a moment she was silent, and then raising her dark confiding eyes to mine, she said in low tones:

"Thank God, Jack, I have not dreamed and prayed in vain. I will be your wife--I will cling to you through life, and will rest by your side in death."

I drew her unresisting form to my heart, I kissed her lips in one long kiss, and saw, within the gates ajar, the paradise awaiting me.

We arose, and hand in hand, silent, but with heart speaking to heart, walked slowly homeward. We scarcely spoke. Speech was unnecessary. There was a silent communion of souls, still, yet eloquent. We were one. We were as Adam, when first created, male and female; our simple reunion was bliss.

We are to start together next week for Boston, to be married in the presence of Minnie. Mrs. Allen is glad to be freed from the expense of Rita's outfit. She regrets that "a great traveler, who ought to be wiser, can tie himself down to a chit of a girl." I go to Chicago to-morrow to close up my affairs, and to bring Jim and his wife here. This climate will suit them better than that of Chicago. We will halt in Cincinnati long enough to see you, old fellow, and when married we will go abroad for a year.

Congratulate me, dear Jamison, for I am the happiest of men. Yours, never again to perpetuate a folly.

JACK."

I, too, was happy, for I loved Felden as I had loved no one since my wife and little ones went to Heaven.

Imagine my astonishment, my terror, when some weeks later, I received a short letter mailed at St. Louis.

"Dear Jamison, my true and honest friend:

Forget me forever! Do not try to look me up; never inquire for me; never again mention my name. Henceforth I am dead to the world.

Your friend, JACK."

I did not try to understand these terrible lines. I honored my friend and felt sure he had good reasons for his request. I complied with his demands, except one, I could not forget.