PART IV.

A PICKAXE AND A SPADE.

XV.

THE SMALL, SLIGHT MAN.

TWO months had passed and the first snow was whitening the streets of Hamilton. It was falling thick on Carberry hill, up which Clarke Unwin was plodding early one evening on a visit to the Earle cottage.

His errand was one of importance. A crisis was approaching in his affairs and he was determined to settle, once and for all, whether poor Polly’s money was to be sacrificed to her father’s increasing demands, or whether she could safely be allowed to follow her own wishes and give five thousand dollars of it to the lover whose future fortunes seemed to depend upon his possession of this amount.

Ephraim Earle had told her with something like a curse that he should expect from her this very sum on the first of the month, but if this demand were satisfied then Clarke’s own hopes must go, for his friends in the Cleveland works were fast becoming impatient, and Mr. Wright had written only two days before that if the amount demanded from him was not forthcoming in a fortnight, they would be obliged to listen to the overtures of a certain capitalist who was only waiting for Clarke’s withdrawal to place his own nephew in the desired place.

Clarke Unwin had not visited the Earle cottage since Ephraim took up his abode in it. Polly had refused to go there, and he himself felt no call to intrude upon a man who was personally disagreeable to him, and whom he could not but regard as a tyrant to the sweet girl whose life had been all sunshine till this man came into it with his preposterous demands and insatiable desire for money.

On this day, however, he had received her permission to present her case to her father and see what could be done with him. Perhaps when that father came to know her need he would find that he did not want the money as much as he made out; at all events the attempt was worth trying, and thus it was that Clarke braved the storm on this October night to interview a man he hated.

As he approached the brow of the hill he heard a noise of mingled laughter and singing, and glancing from under his umbrella he perceived that the various windows of the cottage were brilliantly lighted. The sight gave him a shock. “He is having one of his chess and checker orgies,” he commented to himself, and demurred at intruding himself at a time so unfavorable. But the remembrance of his mother and Polly, sitting together in anxious expectation of the good effects of his visit, determined him to proceed; and triumphing over his own disgust, he worked his way as rapidly as possible, and soon stood knee-deep in the snow that was piled up before the cottage door. The wind was blowing from the north and it struck him squarely as he raised his hand to the knocker, but though it bit into his skin, he paused a moment to listen to the final strains of old Cheeseborough’s voice, as he sang with rare sweetness a quaint old English ballad.

When it was over Clarke knocked. A sudden pushing back of chairs over a bare floor announced that his summons had been heard, and presently he had the satisfaction of seeing the door open and the figure of Mr. Earle standing before him. Clarke did not wait to be addressed.

“I am Clarke Unwin,” he announced. “May I be allowed the pleasure of a few minutes’ conversation with you?”

“A _few_ minutes,” emphasized the other, drawing back with almost too free an air of hospitable welcome. “I hope you will not limit yourself to a _few_ minutes, my boy; we have too good company here for that.” And without waiting for any demur on the part of his more than unwilling guest, he flung open a door at the right, and ushered him, greatly against his will, into the large parlor where Clarke had last stood with Polly at his side.

Just now it was filled with the choicest of the convivial spirits in town, most of whom had been playing checkers or chess and smoking till not a face present was fully visible. Yet Clarke, in the one quick glance he threw about him, recognized most if not all of the persons present—Horton by his oaths, which rang out with more or less good-natured emphasis with every play he made, and the three cronies in the corner by various characteristics well known in Hamilton, where these men passed for “the three disgraces.”

One person only was a perfect stranger to Clarke, but him he scarcely noticed, so intent was he on his errand and the desire he had of speaking to Mr. Earle alone.

“Hurrah! Come! Here’s Clarke Unwin!” shouted a voice from the depths of the smoky pall. “Brought your flute with you? Nobody comes here without some means of entertaining the company.”

“Off with your coat; there’s snow sticking to it! Uh! You’ve robbed the room of all the heat there was in it,” grumbled old Cheeseborough, whose fretfulness nobody minded because of the good nature that underlay it.

“Freedom Hall, this!” whispered Earle, still with that over-officious air Clarke had noticed in him at the doorway. “Sit with your coat on, or sit with it off; anything to suit yourself; only one thing we insist on—you must take a good glass-full of this piping hot cider before you speak a word. So much for good fellowship. Afterward you shall do as you please.”

“I have not come for enjoyment, but business,” put in Clarke, waving the glass aside and looking with some intentness into the face of the man upon whose present disposition depended so much of his own happiness and that of the young girl he had taken to his heart.

Earle, who had a secret pride in his own personal appearance which, now that he was in good physical condition, was not without a certain broad handsomeness, strutted back a pace and surveyed Clarke with interest.

“You are looking,” said he, “to see how I compare with that picture over your head. Well, as I take it, that picture, though painted sixteen years ago, does not do me justice. What do you think?”

Clarke, somewhat taken aback, as much by the smile which accompanied these words, as by the words themselves, hesitated for a moment and then boldly said:

“What you have gained in worldly knowledge and intercourse with men you have lost in that set purpose which gives character to the physiognomy and fills all its traits with individuality. In that face on the wall I see the inventor, but in yours, as it now confronts me, the——”

“Well, what?”

“The centre of this very delightful group,” finished Clarke, suavely.

It was said with a bow which included the whole assembly. Earle laughed and one or two about him frowned, but Clarke, heeding nobody, asked if he could not have a moment’s conversation with his host in the hall.

Earle, with a side glance directed, as Clarke thought, toward the one slight man in the corner whose face was unfamiliar to him, shook his head at this suggestion and blurted out: “That’s against the rules. When the Hail-Fellow-Well-Met Society comes together it is as one body. What is whispered in one corner is supposed to be heard in the next. Out with your business then, here. I have no secrets and can scarcely suppose you to have.”

If this was meant to frighten Clarke off it did not succeed. He determined to speak, and speak as he was commanded right there and then.

“Well,” said he, “since you force me to take the town into our confidence, I will. Your daughter——”

“Ah,” quoth Earle, genially, “she has remembered, then, that she has a father. She sends me her love, probably. Dear girl, how kind of her on this wintry night!”

“She sends you her respects,” Clarke corrected, frankly, “and wants to know if you insist upon having the last few dollars that she possesses.”

“Oh, what taste!” broke in the father, somewhat disconcerted. “I did think you would have better judgment than to discuss money matters in a social gathering like this. But since you have introduced the topic you may say to my dutiful little girl that since I have only asked for such sums as she is perfectly able to part with, I shall certainly expect her to recognize my claim upon her without hesitation or demur. Have you anything more to say, Mr. Unwin?”

Clarke, whose eye had wandered to the stranger in the corner, felt no desire to back out of the struggle, unpleasing as this publicity was. He therefore answered with a determined nod, and with a few whispered words which caused a slight decrease in the air of bravado with which his host regarded him.

“You persist,” that individual remarked, “notwithstanding the rules I have had the honor of quoting to you? I should not have expected it of you, Mr. Unwin; but since your time is short, as you say, and the subject must be discussed, what do you advise, gentlemen? Shall I listen to the plea of this outsider—outsider as regards this meeting, I mean, not as regards my feelings toward him as a father—and break our rules by taking him into another room, or shall I risk a blush or two for my charming little daughter’s perversity, and hear him out in your very good company and perhaps, under your equally good and worthy advice?”

“Hear him here!” piped up Cheeseborough, whose wits were somewhat befuddled by something stronger than cider.

“No, no, shame!” shouted Emmons. “Polly is a good girl and we have no business meddling with her affairs. Let them have their talk upstairs. I can find enough here to interest me.”

“Yes, yes, there’s the game! Let’s finish the game! Such interruptions are enough to spoil all nice calculations.”

“You were making for the king row.”

“Checkmate in three moves!”

“Here! fill up my glass first!”

“I declare if my pipe hasn’t gone out!”

Clarke, who heard these various exclamations without heeding them, glanced at Earle for his decision, but Earle’s eye was on the man in the farthest corner.

“Well, we’ll go upstairs!” he announced shortly wheeling about and leading the way into the hall. Clarke followed and was about to close the door behind him when a slim figure intervened between him and the door, and the stranger he had previously noticed glided into the hall.

“Who’s this?” he asked, noticing that this man showed every sign of accompanying them.

“A friend,” retorted Earle, “one of the devoted kind who sticks closer than a brother.”

Clarke, astonished, surveyed the thin young man who waited at the foot of the stairs and remarked nonchalantly, “I do not know him.” Earle, with a shrug of the shoulders, went upstairs.

“You may have the opportunity later,” he dryly remarked; “at present, try and fix your attention on me.” They proceeded to the inventor’s workroom, where they found a light already burning.

“Sit down!” commanded Earle, with something of the authority which his years, if not his prospective attitude toward the young man warranted. But he did not sit himself, nor did the friend who had followed him upstairs and who now hovered about somewhere in the background. “It will take Emmons just ten minutes to perfect the ‘mate’ he has threatened,” observed Earle as they faced each other. “Can you finish your talk in as short a time? For I must be down there before they start a fresh game.”

“Five minutes should suffice me,” returned Clarke, “but you may need a longer time for argument. Shall I state just what our situation is as regards this money you want from Polly?”

“If you will be so good!”

“With that man listening in the doorway?”

“With that man listening in the doorway.”

“Polly has no money to spare, Mr. Earle. Of the twenty thousand left her you have already had ten——”

“For my just debts, Mr. Unwin.”

“For your just debts, granted, Mr. Earle, but those debts were not incurred for her benefit, nor have you ever deigned to particularize to her just what they were.”

“I would not burden her young mind.”

“No, it has been enough for you to burden her purse.”

“I should have burdened her conscience had I neglected to ask for her assistance.”

“And will you now, by declining to take away her last hope, allow her the means of retrieving the fortune of which you have so nearly robbed her?”

“Her hopes? Her means? I think you are speaking for yourself, sir.”

“In speaking for myself, I speak for her; our interests are identical.”

“You flatter yourself; Miss Earle is not yet your wife.”

“Would you come between us?”

“God forbid! I am willing that Polly, as you call her, should marry whom she will—when I am dead.”

“Or when you have robbed her of every cent she owns.”

“Oh, what language! I marvel you have not more delicacy of expression, Mr. Unwin. Your father was noted for his refinement.”

“He had not to deal with—” the word was almost out, but Clarke restrained himself—“with a man who could forsake his motherless child in her tender years, only to expect unbounded sacrifices from her when she has attained maturity.”

“I expect no more than she will be glad to grant. Maida has pride—so have you. You would neither of you like to see her father in jail.”

Clarke bounded to his feet.

“We do not imprison men here for debt,” he cried.

“No, but you do for theft.”

The word, so much worse than any he was prepared for, turned Clarke pale. He looked to right and left and shrank as he caught the eye of the slim watcher in the hall beyond.

“You surely are not a criminal,” he whispered. “That man——”

“Never mind that man. Our ten minutes are fast flying by and you do not yet seem to see that I cannot afford to relinquish my hold on Polly.”

“Do you mean that your debts——”

“Were incurred in private? Certainly, and under circumstances which place me in a dilemma of no very pleasing nature. If they are not all paid by the first of next month, I shall have to subject my very conscientious little daughter to the obloquy of visiting her father in prison. It is a shame, but such is the injustice of men.”

“You have stolen then?”

“Too harsh a word, Clarke. I have borrowed money for the purpose of perfecting my experiments. The experiments have failed, and the money—well, the man from whom I borrowed it will have it, that is all. He is strict in his views, notwithstanding his long forbearance.”

“Who is this man? I should like to talk to him. That fellow behind you is surely not he?”

“Oh, no; he is only a detective.”

“A detective!”

“Who likes my table and bed so well he never knows when he has had enough of either.”

“Shameful!” sprang from Clarke’s set lips, as his eyes flew first to the watchful but nonchalant figure in the hall, and then to the tall, commanding form of the man who could accept his degrading situation with such an air of mingled sarcasm and resignation.

“And you are the man to whom the French government sent her badge of honor!”

“The same, Clarke,” tapping his breast.

“And you dare to call Polly your child; dare to return to Hamilton with this disgrace upon you, to make her life a hell and——”

“Maida is my child; and as for this disgrace, as you call it, it will be easy enough for her to elude that; a certain check drawn on her bank and signed by her name will do it.”

“I should like to be sure of that,” returned Clarke, springing back into the hall and confronting the man who stood there. “If you are a detective,” said he, “you are here in the interest of the man whom Mr. Earle has robbed?”

The slight young man, in no wise disconcerted, smiled politely, but with an air of quiet astonishment directed mainly toward Ephraim Earle.

“I am here in the interest of Brown, Shepherd, & Co., certainly,” said he. “But I have uttered no such word as robbed, nor will, unless the first of the month shows Mr. Earle’s indebtedness to them unpaid.”

“I see. In what city does Brown, Shepherd, & Co. do business?”

“In New York, sir.”

“Merchants, lawyers, bankers, or what?”

“Bankers.”

“Oh, I remember; in Nassau street?”

“Just so.”

Mr. Earle, who had taken up a cigar from his table while this short colloquy took place, stepped forward.

“A very strict firm, thorough, and not much given to showing mercy, eh?”

“Not much,” smiled the man.

“You see!” gesticulated Mr. Earle, turning to Clarke with a significant smile.

Clarke, with a sudden heartsick sense of what this all meant to him, assumed a stern air.

“Mr. Earle,” said he, “I must entreat that you come at once and present this matter to Polly. She ought to know particulars, that she may judge whether or not she will sacrifice her fortune to save you from the disgrace you have incurred.”

“What, now, with my house full of guests? Impossible. The affair will keep till to-morrow. I will be down to-morrow and tell her anything you wish.”

“She cannot wait till to-morrow. I must send the letter to-morrow which decides my future.”

“That’s unfortunate; but you can send your letter all the same. I know what her decision will be.”

Clarke felt that he knew too, but would not admit it to himself.

“I have said my say,” he remarked. “Either you will let her know your precise position to-night, or I will take it upon myself to ask her for the money for my own uses. She will not deny me, if I press her, any more than she will probably deny you. So take your choice. I am going back to the friends below.”

Earle, who had not expected such condign treatment from one whom he had hitherto regarded as a boy, glanced at the detective, and, with the characteristic shrug he had picked up in foreign countries, cried out in somewhat smothered tones, in which caution struggled oddly with his natural bravado:

“Well, we’ll compromise. I cannot leave the H. F. W. M.; but I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll write out the situation for my daughter, and you shall carry the paper with you. Won’t that do, considering the circumstances, eh?”

Clarke, to whom this man’s character was a perfect anomaly, murmured a hesitating consent and hurried down into the room below. Earle followed him, and, entering with frank jocularity, in striking contrast with the other’s dejected appearance, he cheerfully called out:

“Well, I’ve convinced the boy, somewhat, against his will, I own, that a few thousands spent on the invention I have now on hand will bring in a much larger fortune to Maida than that I have perhaps rather recklessly expended. It was just so when I was perfecting my first invention, don’t you remember? Every dollar I spent on it was begrudged me, and yet see what an outcome there was to it at last.”

“Yes, yes; but where is all that money now?” queried old Cheeseborough, wagging his iron gray head. “Nobody here ever saw a dollar of it, and I have heard people say they don’t believe you ever got it.”

“Would you bring up the saddest hours of my life?” asked Earle, with a sudden cloud on his brow. “I got the money, but—” he stopped, shook himself and changed his tone for one of cheerful command. “Here, you! Start a fresh game, Emmons. I see that your checkmate is good. I’ve got to write a letter. Who will bet that I won’t get my six pages done before Hale will succeed in getting three men into the king row?”

“I will!”

“Put down your dollar then!”

“There it is.”

“And there’s mine, with a condition to boot. I’ll write the letter _in this room_, and give Cheeseborough another chance at a song, if you say so.”

“Done! Fire away, old man; here goes my first move!”

“And here my first word.”

And, to Clarke’s mingled surprise and disgust, Earle threw himself down before a table, took up a pen and began to write. Cheeseborough piped up with his thin, sweet voice something between a dirge and a chant, and Horton went on with his oaths.

XVI.

THE LETTER.

WHEN Ephraim Earle had taken up his abode in the cottage on the hill, Mrs. Unwin had moved into a small house on a side street in the lower part of the town. In the cozy parlor of this same house, she was now sitting with Polly, waiting for her son’s return.

He had been gone a couple of hours, and both Mrs. Unwin and Polly were listening anxiously for the sound of his step on the porch. Polly, with the impatience of youth, was flitting about the room and pressing her face continually against the icy panes of the window, in a vain endeavor to look out; but Mrs. Unwin, to whom care had become a constant companion during these last months, was satisfied to remain by the fire, gazing into the burning logs and dreaming of one whose face had never vanished from her inner sight since that fatal evening she had seen it smile again upon her as in the days of her early youth. Yes, she was thinking of him while Polly was babbling of Clarke; thinking of the last sentence he had uttered to her, and thinking also of the vague reports that had come to her from day to day, of his increased peculiarities and the marked change to be observed in his appearance. Her heart was pleading for another sight of him, while her ear was ostensibly turned toward Polly, who was alternately complaining of the weather and wondering what they should do if her father insisted upon having the money, right or wrong. Suddenly she felt two arms around her neck, and rousing herself, looked down at Polly, who in her restlessness had fallen on her knees before her and was studying her face with two bright and very inquiring eyes.

“How can you sit still,” the young girl asked, “when so much depends upon the message Clarke will bring back?” Mrs. Unwin smiled, but not as youth smiles, either in sorrow or in joy, and Polly, moved by that smile, though she little understood it, exclaimed impetuously:

“Oh, you are so placid, so serene! Were you always so, dear Mrs. Unwin? Have you never felt angry or impatient when you were kept waiting or things did not go to your liking?”

The sweet face that was under Polly’s steady gaze flushed for an instant and the patient eyes grew moist. “I have had my troubles,” admitted Mrs. Unwin, “and sometimes I have not been as patient with them as I should. But we learn forbearance with time, and now——”

“Now you are an angel,” broke in Polly.

“Ah!” was Mrs. Unwin’s short reply, as she stroked the curly head nestling in her lap.

“Clarke says that whatever happens I must be brave,” babbled the forlorn-hearted little girl from under that caressing hand. “That poverty is not so dreadful, and that in time he will win his way without help from any one. But Oh, Mrs. Unwin, to think I might be the means of giving him the very start he needs, and then to be held back by one—Dear Mrs. Unwin, do you think it wicked to hate?”

The question was so sudden, and the vision of the girl’s uplifted head with its flashing eyes and flushed cheeks so startling, that Mrs. Unwin hesitated for a moment, not knowing exactly what to say. But Polly, carried away now by a new emotion, did not wait for any answer.

“Because I am afraid I really hate him. Why has he come into our lives just when we don’t want him; and why does he take from us everything we have? If he loved me I could bear it possibly, but he don’t even love me; and then—and then—he lives in such a way and spends his money so recklessly! Don’t you think it is wrong, Mrs. Unwin, and that I would be almost justified in not giving him everything he asks for?”

“I should not give him this last five thousand, unless he can show you that his need is very great. No one will blame you; you have been only too generous.”

“I know, I know, and I am sure you are right, but notwithstanding that, something assures me that I shall do just what he wishes me to. I cannot refuse him—I do not know why, perhaps because he _is_ my father.”

Mrs. Unwin, whose face had assumed a look of resolution as Polly said this, impulsively stooped and inquired with marked emphasis, “Then you feel—you really feel at last, that he is your father? You have no doubt; no lurking sensation of revolt as if you were sacrificing yourself to an interloper?”

Polly’s head sank on her clasped hands, and she seemed to weigh her answer before replying; then she responded with almost an angry suddenness.

“I wish I could feel he is not what he pretends to be, but the villainous impostor Dr. Izard considers him. But I cannot. No, no, I have no such excuse for my antipathy toward him.”

Mrs. Unwin leaned back, and her countenance resumed its dreamy expression.

“Then I shall not advise you,” said she. “You must follow the dictates of your own conscience.”

Polly rose and ran again to the window, this time with a cry of joy. “He is coming! Clarke is coming! I hear the gate click,” and she bounded impatiently toward the door.

In a few minutes she returned with her lover; he had a letter in his hand and he was contemplating her with saddened eyes.

“You will need courage, dear, to read this,” said he. “It is from your father and it puts his case before you very clearly—too clearly, perhaps. Your estimate of him was not far from correct, Polly. The story of his past life is not one you can read without shame and humiliation.”

“I knew it! I saw it in his face the first time I looked at him. I saw it before. I saw it in his picture. O Clarke, I shrink even from his writing; must I read this letter?”

“I think you should; I think you should know just what threatens us if you refuse him the money.”

Polly took the letter.

“You have read it?” she inquired.

But Clarke shook his head.

“I know the nature of its contents, but I did not wait to read the letter. He wrote it in a roomful of men, under a wager——” Clarke paused; why hurt her with these details? “But what does that matter? It is the facts you want. Come, screw up your courage, dear; or stay, let me read it to you.”

She gave him the letter and he read to her these words:

DEAR MAIDA: You wish to know why I want another five thousand dollars after having received a good ten thousand from you already. Well, I am going to tell you. I have two passions, one for mechanical invention and one—I must be candid or this letter will fail in its object—for wild and unlimited pleasure. When I was young I had not enough money to indulge in but one of these instincts, but on the day I saw twenty thousand dollars in my hand, my other passion, long suppressed, awoke, and notwithstanding the fact that your mother lay dying in the house, I resolved to leave the town where I was known as soon as she was decently buried, for as I said to myself, the possession of twenty thousand dollars means the making of a fortune in Monte Carlo, and a maddening good time of it meanwhile.

But twenty thousand dollars do not always bring a fortune, even in Monte Carlo. I lost as well as won and though I had the good time I had anticipated I was not much richer at the end of five years than I was before my first invention was perfected. And then came a struggle. My good times grew fewer and I was forced to change my name more than once as I drifted from France to Italy and from Italy to Germany, seeking to reinstate myself, but being dreadfully hampered by my taste for the luxuries of life and the companionship of men who were sufficiently good-natured, but not always honest or sincere. At last I awoke to the necessity of action. I had an idea—one that had been floating in my head ever since the perfection of my first invention, and I realized that if I could but develop it practically I was sure to win a greater sum than that I had earned by my first efforts. But to do this it would take money—considerable money, and I had none. Now how could I remedy this defect? I knew but one way—by play. So I began to play for keeps, that is for a capital, denying myself this time and forgetting for once the delights that can be got out of a thousand francs. I saved, actually saved, and becoming strangely prosperous the moment I set a distinct purpose before my eyes, I won and won till I had a decided nest-egg laid up in the leathern bag which I secretly wore tied about my waist. But though this looked well, it did not satisfy me. I wanted thousands and I had but hundreds; so I took a partner who was not above a trick or two and—well, you do not understand these things—but matters went very smoothly with me after this, so smoothly that possibly I might have allowed myself one little glimpse into my old paradise if I had had a little more confidence in my own discretion and had not been afraid of the charms of a spot that swallows a man, neck and crop, if he once plunges his head into it. So for a few months more, I remained firm and grew steadily rich, till the day came when by an enormous streak of luck I became the owner of the very amount I had calculated it would take to put into operation my new invention.

I was in St. Petersburg when this happened, and for five hours I sat in my garret chamber feasting my eyes upon the money I had acquired, and shutting my ears to every sound from without that summoned me to the one short hour of wild enjoyment I had certainly earned. Then I put the money back into my bag, took the frugal supper I had prepared and went to bed with the determination of rising early and devoting the early hours of the morning to drawing my first plans.

But in that sleep _I forgot the essential idea upon which the whole thing rested_. It went from me as utterly as if it had been wiped out. In vain I prodded my memory and called upon all the powers of earth and air to assist me in my dreadful dilemma. I no more knew where to place the lines I had for years seen clearly before me than if I had never conceived the thing or seen it a completed object in my mind’s eye. Success had dampened my wits, or in the long struggle with my second passion I had lost my hold upon the first. The money necessary to elucidate the idea was mine, but I had lost the idea! The situation was maddening.

Fearing the results of this unexpected disappointment upon my already weakened self-control, I fled to my partner, who was a good fellow in the main, and begged him to take and keep for a week my leather bag with its valuable contents, adding that he was not to give it back to me till the seven days were up, even if I entreated him for it on my knees. He promised, and greatly relieved I left him for a stroll through the streets. You see I hoped to regain my idea before the week was out. But alas for the weakness of human nature! Instead of keeping my mind upon work, I spent my time in gorgeous rooms hung with mirrors in which was reflected every lovely thing I worshipped. I heard music, and—but why enlarge the vista further? Not having any goal for my energy, I fell, and when I got my money back, I lived another five years of boundless luxury.

When the last dollar went, I fell sick. I was in New York now, calling myself Harold Deane, and I boarded in a humble boarding-house in Varick street where there was one kind woman who looked after me without asking whether I had any money to pay for my keep. I sent fifty dollars to that woman out of the first money you gave me, my dear. Pardon the digression. I merely wished to show you that I am not without gratitude. When I recovered from my delirium and lifted up my head again in this wicked, fascinating world, my mind was clear as a bell and I saw, all in a minute, the machine again, line for line, whose action was to transform trade and make me a millionaire. Though I was too weak to sit up, I called out for pencil and paper, and at the risk of being thought crazy, scrawled a rude outline of the thing I had lost so long from my consciousness and which I held now by such uncertain tenure that I feared to lose it again, if I let the moment go by. This I put under my pillow. But when I awoke from the sleep which followed, the drawing was gone, destroyed by the good woman who thought it the mad scrawling of a delirious man. But this loss did not trouble me at this time, for the image remained clear in my mind and I was no longer afraid of losing it.

But again I had no money, and confident that in this country and in my present condition it would be useless for me to seek it in the old way, I cast about in my mind how to obtain it by work. Reason pointed out but one course. To get into some large business or banking establishment, and after winning the confidence of the moneyed men I would thus meet, to reveal my idea and obtain their backing. But this was no easy matter for a poor wretch like me. My life had left its imprints on my face, and I had neither means nor friends. But I had something else that stood me in good stead. I had audacity and I had wit, together with a sound business instinct as regards figures. And so in time I was successful and was taken into the banking house of Brown, Shepherd, & Co. in Nassau street.

Again I had an incentive toward thrift. For three months I worked for their good-will, and after that for the good of my purse. This latter phrase may not be plain to you, but when you consider the possibilities opened by a banking house to enrich a man accustomed to use his wits,—possibilities so much greater than those afforded by the selfish consideration of a few capitalists with whom one in my position comes in contact,—you can understand me more readily. At the end of that time I had fifteen thousand dollars laid away; and the company did not even know that they had sustained any loss. Well, I meant to repay them when I realized my fortune, but—luck has been against me, you know—the sight of the money was too much for me one night, and I forgot everything in a wild spree which lasted just one week.

When it was over and I came to myself I found that I had again forgotten the essential part of my invention, and that the money, which I always carried in the old bag about my waist and which I had never lost sight of before, was also gone, leaving me destitute of everything but the clothes I wore. I was desperate then and thought of killing myself, but I hated blood and have a horror of poison, so I delayed, expecting to go back to the banking house as soon as my appearance would warrant it. But I never went. I received from some unknown friend a warning that my absence had provoked inquiry, and that my reappearance in Nassau street would be the signal for my arrest, so I not only kept away from that part of the city, but left the town as soon as I had money to do so, wandering as far west as Chicago and sinking lower and lower as the weeks went by, till my old trouble gripped me again and I found myself in a hospital, given up for dead. The name by which I was entered there was Simeon Halleck, but I had worn a dozen during my lifetime.

I was regarded by those around me as a stray and by myself as a lost man, when suddenly one night, no matter how, I learned, my little daughter, that you, whose existence I had almost forgotten, was not only alive and well, but likely to become the inheritor of a pretty fortune. At this I plucked up courage, conquered my disease and came out of the hospital a well man. Having been known as Simeon Halleck, it was necessary for me now, in order to present myself as Ephraim Earle, to lose my old identity before I assumed my new,—or rather, I should say, my real one. How I did this would not interest you, so I will pass on to the day when, with my beard grown a foot, I ventured into this town and began to look around to see whether there was any place left for me in the hearts of my old friends or in the affections of my child. I found, as I thought—was it rightly?—that I would receive a decent welcome if I returned, and so after a proper length of time I re-entered Hamilton, this time shaven and shorn, and boldly announced my claims and relations to yourself.

The results of this action I am reaping to-day, but while I am happy and cared for, I do not find myself in a position to enjoy the full benefits of my position from the facts, now to be explained, that the police of New York are sharper than I thought, and when I went to Boston, after my first trip to this town, I found myself confronted by an agent of Brown, Shepherd, & Co. They had discovered my theft and threatened me with a term in state prison. My dear, I knew that no daughter with a fortune of twenty thousand dollars would wish to see her father suffer from such disgrace, so I made a clean breast of it and told him all my hopes, and promised if the firm I had robbed would give me three months of freedom I would restore them every penny I had taken from them. As they could hope for nothing if they landed me in jail, they readily acceded to my request, and I came to Hamilton followed by a detective, and with the task before me of obtaining fifteen thousand dollars from you in three months. Ten of these you have cheerfully given me, but you cavil at the last five.

Will you cavil any longer when you realize that by denying them to me you will land me in prison and brand your future children with the disgrace of a convict grandfather? I would say more, but the time allotted me for writing this letter is about up. Answer it as you will, but remember that however you may writhe under the yoke, you are blood of my blood and your honor can never be disassociated from mine in this world or the next.

Your loving father,

EPHRAIM EARLE.

P. S. I have Brown, Shepherd, & Co.’s written promise that with the payment of this last five thousand, all proceedings against me shall be entirely stopped, and that neither as a firm nor as individuals will they remember that Ephraim Earle and Simeon Halleck are one.

XVII.

MIDNIGHT AT THE OLD IZARD PLACE.

CLARKE knew when he began to read this letter what effect it was likely to have on his own prospects, but he was little prepared for the change it was destined to make in Polly. She, who at its commencement had been merely an apprehensive child, became a wan and stricken woman before the final words were reached; her girlish face, with its irresistible dimples, altering under her emotions till little of her old expression was left. Her words, when she could speak, showed what the recoil of her whole nature had been from the depths of depravity thus heartlessly revealed to her.

“Oh, what wickedness!” she cried. “I did not know that such things could be! Certainly I never heard anything like it before. Do you wonder that I have always felt stifled in his presence?”

Mrs. Unwin and Clarke tried to comfort her, but she seemed to be possessed of but one idea. “Take me home!” she cried; “let me think it out alone. I am a disgrace to you here; he is a thief and I am the daughter of a thief. Until every cent that he has taken is returned, I am a participator in his crime and not worthy to look you in the face.”

They tried to prove to her the fallacy of this reasoning, but she would not be convinced. “Take me home!” she again repeated; and Clarke out of pure consideration complied with her request. She was still living with the Fishers, but when they reached the humble doorstep which had been witness to many a tender parting and loving embrace, Polly gave her lover a strange look, and hardly lingered long enough to hear his final words of encouragement and hope.

“I will see you to-morrow,” she murmured, “but I can say no more to-night—no, not one word”; and with something of the childish petulance of her earlier years she partially closed the door upon him, and then was half sorry for it, when she heard the deep sigh that escaped him as he plunged back into the snow that lay piled up between the house and the gate.

“I am wicked,” she muttered, half to herself, half to him; “come back!” but the words were lost in the chilly wind, and in another moment he had reached the street and was gone. Had he looked back he would not have disappeared so suddenly, for Polly, as soon as she thought herself alone, suddenly pushed open the door, peered out and, with a momentary hesitation, slipped out again into the street.

The snow had ceased falling, the moon had come out and was lighting up the great trees that lined either side of the road. Polly cast one look down the splendid but deserted vista, and then with the thoughtless daring which had always signalized her, began running down the street towards that end of the town where the road turns up towards the churchyard. She was guided by but one thought, the necessity of seeing Dr. Izard before she slept. The thickness of the snow beneath her feet impeded her steps and made the journey seem long to her panting eagerness. She met nobody, but she thought nothing of that, nor did she note that the lights were out in the various houses she passed. Her mind was so full of her purpose that the only fear of which she was conscious was that she would find the doctor away or deaf to her summons. When the tavern was passed and the shadow of the church reached, she drew a deep breath. Only a few steps more and she would be passing the gateposts in front of the Izard mansion. But how still everything was! She seemed to realize it now, and was struck by the temerity of her action, as the desolate waste of the churchyard opened up before her and she heard, pealing loud above her head, the notes of the great church-clock striking eleven!

But she knew that the doctor never retired before twelve, and the need she felt of an immediate consultation with one who had known her father in his youth, buoyed her up, and dashing on with a shudder, she turned the corner and came abreast with the house she was bound for. But here something which she saw, first dazed, then confounded her. The house was lighted! The Izard house, which had been vacated for years! Had the doctor found a tenant then without her knowledge, or, led by some incomprehensible freak, had he lighted it up himself?

While she was gazing and wondering, almost forgetting her own purpose in her astonishment at this unwonted sight, there rose a sudden wild halloo behind her, followed by the shouts of drunken voices and the sound of advancing footsteps. The visitors at her father’s cottage had reached the main street, and, seeing the lighted mansion, were as much struck by its unwonted appearance as she had been, and were coming down the road for a nearer inspection.

Alarmed now in good earnest, and by a more natural fear than that which had first agitated her, she looked around for a spot to hide in, and, finding none, plunged towards the house itself. What she expected to gain by this move she hardly knew; but once on the porch, and in the shadows of the great pillars supporting it, she felt easier; and, though she knew this laughing, careless crowd would soon be upon her, she felt the nearness of the life within to be a safeguard, and, stretching out her hand toward the front door, she was amazed to find it yield to her touch.

Under most circumstances this would have frightened her away, or, at least, would have awakened in her the instinct of alarm; but now the illuminated hall, dimly to be seen through the crack she had made, seemed to offer her a refuge, and she rushed in, closing and locking the door behind her. Instantly the desolation of these long disused rooms settled upon her, and she peered down the hall in terror, dreading and half hoping to see some one, she did not care whom, stalk from some of the several rooms on either side. But no one came, and the seeming lack of life in the spaces about her soon grew more terrifying than any appearance of man or woman would have been. The light which lured her into this desolate structure came from a lamp standing on a small table at the rear of the hall, and presently she found herself insensibly approaching it, having recognized it as one she had often seen in the doctor’s study.

But when she had stepped as far as the circular landing opening under the stairs, and noted the little winding staircase leading down from it into the space below, some faint recognition of the fact that this was the way to the doctor’s study came over her, and, advancing breathlessly on tiptoe to the railing which guarded this spot, she looked down into the well beneath, and was startled at the gust of wind which met her there, with all the chill of the outside air in it. Was the famous green door below open, and did this wind come from the graveyard?

She was conscious that she had no right to advance a step farther, and yet she knew that she must find the doctor, if only to throw herself upon his protection. So, with many a qualm and sinking of the heart, she caught up the lamp from the table near by and descended the short spiral, rightfully thinking that it would be wiser to thus flash upon the doctor in a blaze of light rather than to take him by surprise in the darkness. Finding the green door open, as she had expected, she tried to raise her voice and utter the doctor’s name, but articulation failed her. There was something so weird in her position that her usual recklessness failed to support her, and she had hardly the courage to glance into the room before which she stood, though instinct had already told her it was empty.

The wind which had met her at the top of the staircase increased as she descended, and while she was drawing in her breath before it, the light went out in her hand and she was left standing half in and half out of the doctor’s study in a condition of helplessness and terror. But this misfortune, while it abashed her, was of decided benefit in the end. For no sooner was this light out than she was met with the glimmering rays of a lantern, shining in from the graveyard without, and knowing this to be an indication of the doctor’s whereabouts, she set down the lamp and was advancing with some trepidation toward the door when her ears caught a sound—the most dreadful that could be heard in that place—that of a spade being forced into the icy ground.

Instantly her heart became the prey of a thousand sickening emotions. What was the doctor doing? Digging a grave? Impossible. And yet what else would make a sound like this? Even her usually bold spirit was startled and she shrank at the thought, wishing for Clarke, for her father, for any one to support her and take her out of the horrible, moonlighted spot where homes were being made for the dead in the dark of night.

She could not retreat and she dared not advance, yet she felt that she must settle her doubts by one glimpse of what was going on. Approaching the window she peeped out and saw—Merciful heavens, was that the doctor?—that wild figure clad in a long wool garment which swept to his heels, and digging with such frenzy and purpose that the snow flew from his spade in clouds? She was so absorbed in the sight that it was a moment before she saw that it was her mother’s grave he was unearthing and that he was doing this in his sleep. But when she fully realized the awful fact she uttered a low cry of irrepressible dismay, and no longer fearing anything but this unearthly figure she had chanced upon in the moonlight, she dashed from the spot and fled up the highway, never resting foot or stopping to breathe till she found herself in her own room at home.

Dr. Izard was mad and she alone knew the frightful secret.

XVIII.

A DECISION.

WHEN Dr. Izard rose the next morning it was with a feeling of lassitude and oppression that surprised him. He had received no calls from patients the evening before, nor had he retired any later than usual. Then why this strained and nervous feeling, as if he had not slept? The snow that had fallen so heavily the day before had cleared the air, and the dazzle of sunshine finding its way into his unusually darkened den prepared him for the brilliant scene without. It was not in that direction, however, he first looked, for he was no sooner on his feet than he noticed that the green door which he always kept shut and padlocked was open, and that in the hall beyond a spade was standing, from the lower edge of which a small stream of water had run, staining the floor where it rested.

What did it mean, and what was the explanation of the dark stains like wet mould on the skirt of the long wool garment that he wore? He looked from one to the other, and the hair rose on his forehead. Summoning up all his courage he staggered to the window and drawing the curtain back with icy fingers, glanced out. Some vandal had been in the graveyard; one of the graves had been desecrated and the snow and mould lay scattered about. As he saw it he realized who the vandal had been, and though no cry left his lips, his whole body stiffened till it seemed akin to the one he had so nearly disinterred in the night. When life and feeling again pervaded his frame he sank into a chair near the window and these words fell from his lips: “My doom is upon me. I cannot escape it. The will of God be done.”

The next instant he was on his feet. He dressed himself in haste, shuddering as he bundled up the stained night-robe and thrust it into the blazing fire of the stove. Then he caught up the spade, and opening the outside door stepped into the glittering sunshine. As he did so he noticed two things, equally calculated to daunt and surprise him. The first was the double row of his own footsteps running to and fro between the step and the heap of dirt and snow beside the monument; and the other, an equally plain track of footsteps extending from the place where he stood to the gate on his left. The former were easily explainable, but the latter were a mystery; for if they had been made by some nocturnal visitor, why were they all directed toward the highway? Had not the person making them come as well as gone? Puzzled and no little moved by this mystery, he nevertheless did not pause in the work he had set for himself.

Crossing in haste to the monument, he began throwing back the icy particles of earth he had dug up in the night. Though he shuddered with something more than cold as he did so, he did not desist till he had packed the snow upon the mould and left the grave looking somewhat decent. A sleigh or two shot by on the open thoroughfare without while he was engaged in this work, and each time as he heard the bells he started in painful emotion, though he did not raise his head nor desist from his labor. When all was done he came slowly back, and pausing before the second line of footsteps he examined them more carefully.

It was a woman’s tread or that of a child, and it came from his own door. Greatly troubled he rushed into the track they had made and trampled it fiercely out. When he reached the gate he stepped into the highway. The steps had passed up the street. But what were these he now perceived in the inclosure beyond the picket fence, going straight to the house and stopping before the front door? They came from the street also, and they pointed inward and not outward. Was he the victim of some temporary hallucination, or had a woman entered the house by the never-opened front door and come out through his office? It seemed incredible, impossible, but bounding up the steps he tried the door, not knowing what he might have done in the night. He found it locked as usual and drew back confounded, muttering again with stony lips, “My ways are thickening, and the end is not far off.”

When he returned again to his office it was to replace the spade in the spot from which he had evidently taken it. This was up the spiral staircase, in a small shed adjoining the large rear hall, and as he traversed the path he had unconsciously trodden twice in the night, he tried to recall what he had done under the influence of the horrible nightmare which had left behind it such visible evidences of suffering. But his consciousness was blank regarding those hours, and it was with a crushing sense of secret and overhanging doom that he prepared for his daily work, which happily or unhappily for him promised to be more exacting than usual.

A dozen persons visited his office that morning, and each person as he came glanced over at the monument and its disturbed grave. _Had any whisper of the desecration which had there taken place found way to the village?_ The doctor quailed at the thought, but his manner gave no sign of his inner emotion. He was even more punctilious than usual in his attention to the wants of his visitors, and did not give them by so much as a glance of his eye an opportunity for question or gossip. At eleven o’clock he went out. There was a very sick child at the other end of the town and he could reach it only by passing the Fisher cottage. It had been taken ill at daybreak and word had been brought him by a passing neighbor. He had hopes, though he hardly acknowledged them to himself, that some explanation of the footsteps which disturbed him would be found in the sickness of this child. But when he reached the Fisher house the sight of Polly’s disturbed face, peering from the parlor window, assured him that the cause of his trouble lay deeper than he had hitherto feared. The discovery was a great shock to him, and as he went on his way he asked himself why he had not stopped and talked to the girl and found out whether she had been to his house or not the night before, and if so, what she had seen.

But that he did not dare to do this was apparent even to himself; for after he had prescribed for his little patient he found himself taking another road home, a road which led him through frozen fields of untrodden snow, rather than run the risk of encountering Polly’s face again, with those new marks upon it of aversion and fear. When he re-entered his own gate it was with bowed head and shrunken form. His short walk through the village, with the discovery he had imagined himself to have made, cost him ten years of his youth. On his table there lay a letter. When he saw it a flush crossed his cheek and his form unconsciously assumed its wonted air of dignity and pride. It was from _her_ and the room seemed to lose something of its habitual gloom from its presence. But its tenor made him grow pale again. The letter read as follows:

DEAR FRIEND: Clarke has tried every available means to avoid the result we feared, but as you will see from the inclosed letter from Ephraim Earle, Polly has but one course before her, and that is to give her father what he demands. She has so decided to-day, and if you see no way of interfering, the money will be paid over by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. This means years of struggle for Clarke. You bade us not to apply to you till every other hope failed. We have reached that point. Faithfully yours,

GRACE UNWIN.

XIX.

TO-MORROW.

POLLY had spent an unhappy day. Her secret—for so she termed her discovery of the night before—weighed heavily upon her, and yet she felt it was impossible to part with it, even to Clarke. Some instinct of loyalty to the doctor who had been almost a parent to her influenced her to silence, though she was naturally outspoken and given to leaning on those she loved. She was sitting in the parlor, her back to the window. She had seen the doctor pass once that day and she did not want to meet his eye again. Fear had taken the place of reverence, and confidence had given way to distrust.

Suddenly she heard a door open, and rose up startled, for the sound was in the front hall and the family were all in the kitchen. Could it be Clarke returning, or her father, or—she had not time to push her conjectures further, for at this point the door of the room in which she stood swung quickly open and in the gap she saw Dr. Izard, with a face so pale that it reminded her of the glimpse she had caught of him the previous night. But there was purpose instead of the blank look of somnambulism in his eyes, and that purpose was directed toward her.

“Polly,” he said, not advancing, but holding her fascinated in her place by the intensity of his look, “do not allow yourself to be constrained to sign any check to-day. To-morrow you will no longer consider it your duty.” And before she could answer or signify her assent he was gone, and the front door had shut after him. The deep breath which escaped her lips showed what that one moment of terror had been to her. Springing to the window she looked out and started as she saw him take the direction of Carberry hill.

“He is going to see my father,” she murmured, and moved by a new terror she seized her hat and coat, and ran, rather than walked, to Mrs. Unwin’s cottage. “Where is Clarke?” was her breathless demand as she rushed impetuously into the house. “Dr. Izard is on his way to Carberry hill and I am afraid, or rather I know, there is going to be trouble between him and my father.”

“Then Clarke will prevent it. Dr. Izard sent him word an hour ago to meet him there at five o’clock, and he has been gone from the house just five minutes.”

“Oh, what is going to happen? I must see; I must go. They do not know Dr. Izard as well as I do.” And without waiting to explain her somewhat enigmatical sentence she dashed from the house and took her way up Carberry hill.

It was the first time she had been there since she was surprised at her father’s door by that father’s fatal and unexpected return; and had it not been for the excitement under which she was laboring, her limbs would have faltered and her whole soul quailed at the prospect. But love lent her wings, and a certain dogged persistence in duty which underlay the natural effervescence of her spirits kept her to her task, and so before she realized it she was at the top of that haunted hill and on the doorstep of the house which was even more repellent to her now than when the moss hung from the eaves and the seal of desolation lay upon the door.

Hearing from within the voices that she knew, she waited to give no summons, but opened the door and passed in. Three men were in the hall—Dr. Izard, Ephraim Earle, and Clarke—and from the faces they turned toward her she judged that she was not a minute too soon.

“Polly!” leaped simultaneously from the lips of her lover and from those of Dr. Izard. But the one spoke in a sort of tender surprise and the other with a mixture of anger and constraint.

“Do not mind me,” she said. “I saw you coming here, and I felt that I ought to be present.” And the determination in her face startled those who had always regarded her as a petted child. Her father, who was the only person there who seemed at all at his ease, smiled and gave her a sarcastic bow.

“This is the first time you have honored me,” he observed, and pushed a chair slightly forward. “Women are proverbially fond of controversy; why deny this very young girl, the privilege of hearing our little talk?”

The doctor, who perhaps saw more in this intrusion than the others, hesitated for a moment, with his brows lowered over his uneasy eyes, then he waved his hand as if dismissing a subject of no importance, and without saying yea or nay to the appeal which had just been made to him, he cried out in a set and desperate voice:

“I have borne with this impostor long enough. I do not know who you are,” he continued, pointing imperatively at the man before him, “but that you are not Ephraim Earle is certain. Therefore you shall no longer enjoy Ephraim Earle’s rights or profit by the money which was given to Polly for a very different purpose.”

Earle, thus attacked, first raised his brows and then smiled suavely. “You would force an issue then,” he cried. “Very well, I’m ready. Why am I not Ephraim Earle, Dr. Izard? You assert the fact, but that is not proving it. When we were young men together you were not wont to stop at assertion.”

“We were never young men together. You are a stranger to the town, a stranger to me. The letter which you wrote may deceive Polly, may deceive Clarke, may deceive every one else who reads, but it does not deceive me. What is this new invention you failed to project? Tell us on the spot or I will brand you as a wholesale deceiver up and down the town.”

“I——” the man stammered, his bold effrontery failing him for the moment.

“Have you forgotten it _again_?” sneered the doctor, seeming to grow taller and broader as his antagonist dwindled. “I expected you would hide behind that excuse. It is a convenient one. You _have_ forgotten it; well, we will let that pass and you shall tell me instead why your first one failed to operate the first time you tried it.”

“I will not,” shouted Earle, driven apparently to bay. “That it did fail you remember and so do I, but after fourteen years devoted to other subjects I am not going to try and pick up those old threads again and explain to you every step by which I won success at last.”

“But I will wait,” suggested the doctor. “You shall not be hurried; there is nothing more important to be done in town just now.”

“Isn’t there? I think there is, Dr. Izard. You have shown yourself my enemy ever since I came to Hamilton; but for reasons that were satisfactory to me I have let it pass, as you have let my so-called imposture pass. I did not wish to stir up old grievances; but you attack me and must expect to be yourself attacked. Of what complaint did Huldah Earle die? Answer me that! Or I will brand _you_ for a——”

“Hush!” The word sprang from Clarke, who had seen the doctor cower, as if some awful weight were about to be heaved upon him. “Weigh your words, Mr. Earle; for if you utter an untrue one you shall be brought to dearly rue it.”

“I will weigh them,” answered the other, growing taller in his turn as the doctor shrank before him; “weigh them in the balance of this respected man’s innocence. Look at his whitening cheek, his trembling form! If he could mention the complaint which carried my wife away in the flower of her youth, do you think he would hesitate and turn pale before her child? Or perhaps _he_ has forgotten; it is fourteen years ago, and as I have taken refuge in that excuse, why not he?”

“O God!” burst from Polly’s lips; “what horror is this?”

But the doctor, goaded by this last sting, had roused himself. “I have not forgotten,” said he. “I forget nothing; not even the slight discoloration which always disfigured Ephraim Earle’s left eye, and which is absent from yours. But I do not know the exact cause of Mrs. Earle’s death. I never knew. If you were her husband, you would remember that I several times declared I was working in the dark, and even after she was dead acknowledged myself to have failed in my diagnosis, and wished you had called down physicians from Boston.”

“Oh, I remember; but I was not deceived then by your humility, nor am I deceived by it now, I will have her body dug up. I will—”

“Oh, no! no!” shrieked Polly, thrusting out her hands before her eyes. “I—cannot—bear—this. I—I do not think the doctor can bear this. Look at him! He is not sane! He——”

“Hush, Polly! I am sane enough,” came from the doctor with a sternness which was but the result of his overpowering emotion. “If I show agitation it is because dreadful memories have been awakened and because I must yet press hard against this most audacious man. Fellow! where do you think the money came from which you have been expending so freely to keep yourself out of jail?”

“Ah! that is another small mystery with which I have thought it best not to concern myself.”

But even while speaking he drew back, and a change passed over his bold countenance. Looking at the doctor with a strange and lingering gaze, he darted to a small rack at the end of the hall, and, tearing down a cloak and an old slouch hat, he thrust the one upon the doctor’s head and the other about his shrinking shoulders. Then he drew back and surveyed him. Suddenly he struck his forehead, and a triumphant smile, which was not without an evil glare in it, lit up his features.

“Of course!” he cried, “I might have known it! You are the fellow who visited the Chicago hospital that night and who——”

“And you are No. Thirteen!” was the quick response; “the man given over for dead! Oh, I see how you came to be here. Rascal! Villain!”

“Doctor, allow me to return the compliment. Why did you use such subterfuges to transfer a fortune into my daughter’s hands? Was it from a good motive or because you felt yourself guilty of her parent’s death, and so sought to make amends without awakening suspicion?”

“I should have whispered _ten_ thousand dollars into your ear instead of one,” muttered the doctor, lost in contemplation of the other’s duplicity.

“I would have given no more sign for ten than for one,” answered Earle. “Remember, I had just heard of an unknown sum bequeathed to my daughter, and the larger the hush money offered the greater would the fortune have appeared.”

Clarke, to whom these words were well nigh unintelligible, consulted Polly’s countenance, and seemed to question what she thought of them. But she was gazing at the doctor, wonder and repugnance in all her looks.

“Oh, do you mean that even this money is not all my own? That it is not the gift of a stranger, but has come, in some incomprehensible way, from _him_?”

The doctor, stung by her tone, turned toward her, saw the slender finger pointing accusingly at him, and drooped his head with a gesture of despair.

“Does it lose its value,” he asked, “because it represents the labor and privations of twenty busy years?”

“Does it represent anything else?” she protested. “Why should you give money to me?”

“I cannot answer; not here. To-morrow at your mother’s grave I will. Come yourself, let your neighbors come, only see that one person is kept away. Years ago I loved Grace Hasbrouck, and I would not have her the witness of my shame. Keep her away, Clarke! My task would be too difficult were she there.”

Clarke, to whom this avowal was a revelation, stammered and bowed his head. Mr. Earle softly smiled.

“Then you avow—” he began.

But the doctor turned upon him and thundered, “I avow nothing. I merely wish to prove to this town that you are an impostor, and I will do it to-morrow at seven at Huldah Earle’s grave. You are a bold man and a quick one, and have learned your lesson well. But there is one thing before which you must succumb and that is the presence of the true Ephraim Earle.”

“And you will produce him?”

“I will produce him.”

“And in such haste?”

“Yes, in such haste.”

There was something so astounding in this threat and in the resolve with which it was uttered that not only Clarke Unwin recoiled, but the hardy adventurer himself showed momentary signs of quailing. But he quickly recovered himself, and glancing at Polly, who stood clinging to Clarke, white as a wraith in her terror and amazement, cried aloud: “Now I know you for a madman. Being Ephraim Earle myself, and innocent of any deeper crime than the one I have frankly acknowledged to you, I can afford to meet my double, even at my poor wife’s grave. Doubtless he will be a very good semblance of myself, and my only wonder is that the doctor has not produced him sooner.”

“Laugh, laugh!” repeated the doctor, in a terrible voice, “for to-morrow you will be in prison.” And stalking by them all, he proceeded to the door, where he paused to say in a voice whose solemn tones rang long in their ears, “Remember! to-morrow morning at seven in the churchyard.” And he was gone.

A silence which even the dazed adventurer dared not break followed this startling exit. Then Polly, in a quivering voice, murmured below her breath, “He is mad! I knew it before I came here. Pray Heaven that he has not been made so by crime.”

At these words, so unexpected and so welcome to the man whose position had been thus violently threatened, Earle lifted his head and cast a reassured look about him.

“Stick to that, my daughter,” he muttered, “stick to that; it is the only explanation of his conduct;” and walking down the hall he added in a subdued tone, as he passed the hitherto unnoticed figure of a man standing in the rear passage, “I will still have the five thousand dollars! Nothing that this madman can do will hinder that.”

XX.

DR. IZARD’S LAST DAY IN HAMILTON.

IT was fortunate that there was no serious sickness in Hamilton that night, for the new physician was out of town and Dr. Izard inaccessible. Ever since nightfall there had been a rush of people to the latter’s gate, the news having already spread far and wide that the doctor had lately shown signs of mania, during which he had invited the whole town to come to the cemetery the following morning, there to witness, they scarcely knew what, but something strange, something which would turn the public mind against Ephraim Earle, whom he had once before, as all remembered, accused of being an impostor. But they found the gate padlocked, and so were obliged to content themselves with hanging over the cemetery wall and catching what glimpses they could of the doctor’s light which shone clear but inhospitable from his open window. Not till the great clock struck twelve did the curious crowd separate and straggle away to their respective homes.

Meanwhile what was the doctor doing? We, who have penetrated more than once into his silent room, will do it once again and for the last time. We shall not see much. The doctor, whose face shows change, but not so much as one would expect, sits at his table writing. The name of Grace is at the top of the page over which he bends, and the words are few beneath, but they seem to be written with his heart’s blood; for in signing them he gives vent to one irrepressible sob—he the man whose sternly contained soul had awed his fellow-men for years and held all men and women and children back from him, as if his nature lacked sympathy for anything either weak or small. The night was far advanced when he folded this letter, directed it, and laid it face up on his desk. But though he must have been weary, he cast no glance at the settle in the dim corner of the room, but began to arrange his effects, clear his drawers, and put in order his shelves, as if preparing for the curiosity of other eyes than those which had hitherto rested so carelessly upon them.

There was a fire lighted in the stove, and into this he thrust some papers and one or two insignificant objects which it seemed a strong effort to part from. As the blaze leaped up he cringed and partially turned away his head, but soon he was again amongst his belongings, touching some with a loving hand, others with a careless one, till the church clock, striking two, proclaimed that time was passing hurriedly. At this reminder he dropped the book he had taken up and passed to the green door. It was locked, as usual, but he speedily undid the fastenings, and carrying a lamp with him, stepped through the opening and up the spiral staircase. One of the steps creaked as he pressed it, and he sighed as he heard the familiar sound, possibly because he did not expect to hear it again. When in the hall he set down the lamp, but soon took it up again and began visiting the rooms. They had always been well looked after, and were neither unsightly nor neglected in appearance, but they seemed to have a painful significance for him as he looked, lamp in hand, from the open doorways. In this one his mother had stood as a bride, with her young friends around her, most of whom were laid away in the graveyard, which was never long absent from his thoughts. How he had loved to hear her tell about that night, and the dress which she wore, and the compliments she received, and how it was the happiest night of her life, till he came—her little child—to make every night joyful. Ah, if she could have foreseen—if she had lived! But God was good and took her, and he of all his family was left to meet the doomful hour alone. In the room he now entered he had played as a boy, such merry plays, for he was a restless child and had a voice like a bell rung in the sunshine. Was that golden-haired, jovial little being who ran up and down these floors like mad and shouted till the walls rung again, the earnest of himself as he appeared at this hour shuddering in the midnight darkness through the empty spaces of this great house? And this little nook here, the dearest and most sacred of all in his eyes—could he bear to look at it with this crushing weight upon his heart and the prospect of to-morrow looming up in ghostly proportions before him, darkening every spot at which he gazed?

Yes, yes; for here all that there has ever been of sweetness in his miserable life, all that there is of hope in that great world to come, centres and makes a holy air about him. Here _she_ sat one day, one memorable, glorious day, with the sunshine playing on her hair and that sweet surprise in her look which told him more plainly than the faltering yes on her tongue that his presumptuous love was returned, and that life henceforth promised to be a paradise to him. Ah, ah, and he had not been satisfied! He must needs be a great physician too, greater than any of those about him, greater than the great lights of Boston and New York, and so—But away with such thoughts; it is not morning yet and this night shall be given up to sweeter memories and more sacred farewells.

Stooping he knelt where she had sat, and put his hands together as in childhood’s days and prayed, perhaps for the first time in years; prayed as if his mother was overhearing him. Did he pray alone? Was not she praying too in that shabby little room of hers, so unworthy of her beauty and yet so hallowed by her resignation and her love?

Ah, yes, she was praying there to-night, but what would she be doing there to-morrow? He uttered a cry as the thought stung him, and springing passionately to his feet went on and on, avoiding but one place in the whole house and that was where a little door led down to the cellar, at the side of the spiral staircase. When all was done he paused and said his last farewell. Who would walk these lonely halls after he had vanished from them? Upon whom would these mirrors look and in whose hearts would the mystery of this place next impress itself? There was no prophet present to lift the veil, and dropping his chin on his breast the doctor descended the stairs and betook himself again to his desolate den.

The stars were shining brightly over the graveyard as he reseated himself at his desk. There were no signs of advancing morning yet, and he could dream, dream yet that he was young again and that Grace’s voice was in his ear and her tender touch on his arm, and that life was all innocence and hope, and that yon loud resounding clock, too loud for guilty men, rang with some other sound than that of death, doom, and retribution.

Letting his head fall forward in his hands he sat while the dreary hours moved on, but when the clock struck six he raised his forehead and facing the churchyard waited for the first coming streaks of light. And sitting so and waiting so we get our last glimpse of him before the hubbub and turmoil of the day set in, with the curious gaping crowd on the highway and the group among the graves, asking why the doctor had not come out, and why the sexton was the first to appear on the scene, and why he bore a pickaxe and a spade and looked as solemn as if he were going to dig a grave for the dead.

Seven o’clock had not struck, but Ephraim Earle was there, and Clarke and little Polly, crouching in terror behind her mother’s tomb; and a physician was there too, summoned from Wells by Earle, some said, that there might be a competent person on hand to look after the doctor should he prove to be, as more than one person intimated, the madman he appeared; and Dr. Sunderland was there, the good minister; and Mr. Crouse, who had had Polly’s matters in charge, and every one but the true Ephraim Earle, whom the doctor had promised to produce.

But then it was not yet seven and Dr. Izard had said seven; and when the hour did at last strike then every peering eye and straining ear became instantly aware that his door had opened and that he stood on the doorstep cold and silent, but _alone_.

“Where is the true Ephraim Earle you talked about? You promised to bring him here! Let us see him,” shouted a voice, and the whole crowd that was pushing and elbowing its way into the graveyard echoed as with one voice: “Let us see him! let us see him!”

The doctor, perfectly unmoved, stepped down from the threshold and came toward them quietly, but with a strange command in his manner. “I shall keep my word,” said he, and turned to the sexton. “Dig!” he cried, and pointed to a grave at his feet.

“Wretch! madman!” screamed Earle, “would you desecrate my wife’s grave? What do you mean by such a command?”

“You threatened to do this yourself but yesterday,” the doctor returned, “and why do you hesitate to have it done by me?” And he again cried to the hesitating sexton, “Dig!” and the man, understanding nothing, but driven to his work by the doctor’s fierce eye and unfaltering lip, set himself to the task.

“Oh, what is he going to show us? Do not, do not let him go on,” moaned Polly. “I own this man to be my father; why do you let this terror go on before our eyes?”

“This man whom you are ready to own as your father has called me the murderer of his wife,” retorted the doctor. “I can only refute it by showing him the contents of this grave. Go on!” he commanded, with an imperative gesture to the sexton, “or I will take the spade in my own hands.”

“Ah, he has done that once before!” muttered Polly. “He is mad! Do you not see it in his eyes?”

The doctor, whose face had the aspect of marble, but who otherwise was quite like himself in his best and most imposing mood, turned upon Polly as she said this, and smiled as only the broken-hearted can smile when confronted by a pitiful jest.

“Is there a physician here?” he demanded. “Ah, I see Dr. Brotherton. You are in good time, I assure you, doctor. Feel my pulse and lay your hand on my heart, and answer if you think I have my wits about me and know what I say when I declare that only by investigating this grave can the truth be known.”

“I do not need to do either, doctor. I know a sane man when I see him, and I must acknowledge that there are few saner than you.”

A flush for the first time crept into Ephraim Earle’s hardy cheek; he shifted restlessly on his feet, and his eyes fell with something like secret terror upon the hole that was fast widening at his feet.

“I believe you two are in league,” he cried; “but if Dr. Izard can prove himself innocent of the charges I have made against him, why, he is welcome to do so, even at the cost of my most sacred feelings.”

“When you strike the coffin, let me know,” said the doctor to the sexton. At these words a dreadful hush settled over the whole assemblage, in which nothing could be heard but the sound of the spade. Suddenly the sexton, who was by this time deep in the hole he was making, looked up.

“I have reached it,” he said.

The doctor drew in his breath and turned livid for a moment, then he cast a strange look away from them all across the deserted town, and seeming to gather strength from something he saw there, he motioned the sexton to continue, while he said aloud and with steady emphasis:

“This man who confronts you at my side is not Ephraim Earle, because Ephraim Earle lies buried here!” and scarcely waiting for the anxious cries of astonishment evoked by these words to subside, he went rapidly on to say: “Fourteen years ago he died by my hand on this spot and was buried by me in this grave. God forgive me that I have kept this deed a secret from you so long.”

The tumult which took place at this avowal was appalling. Men and women pushed and struggled till the foremost nearly fell into the grave. Polly shrieked and fell back into the arms of Clarke, while he who had been called Earle shrank all at once together and looked like the impostor he was. Dr. Izard alone retained his self-possession, the self-possession of despair.

“Listen,” he now cried, awing that tumultuous mass into silence by the resonant tones of his voice and the gesture which he made toward the now plainly-to-be-seen coffin. “It was not a predetermined murder. I was young, ambitious, absorbed in my profession and eager to distinguish myself. His wife’s case was a strange one. It baffled me; it baffled others. I could see no reason for the symptoms she showed, nor for the death she died. You know the truth; to sound the difficulty and make myself strong against another such a case was but the natural wish of so young and ambitious a man; but when I asked Ephraim for the privilege of an autopsy he denied it to me with words that stung and inflamed me till what had been a natural instinct became an overmastering passion, and I determined that I would know the truth concerning her complaint if I had to resort to illegal and perhaps unjustifiable means. Her grave—you are standing by it—was made near, very near my office, and when the mound was cleared and the mourners had departed, my way looked so plain before me that I do not think I so much as hesitated at the decision I had formed, dreadful as it may seem to you now. When midnight came,—and it was a dismal night, the blackest of the year,—I stole out into this spot and began my unhallowed work. I had no light, but I needed none, and strange as it may seem, I reached the coffin-lid in an hour, and stooping down began to wrench it open, when suddenly I heard a step, then a murmur and then a short, fierce cry. The husband had suspected me and was there to guard his dead.

“Leaping from the grave, I confronted him and a short, wild struggle ensued. He had thrown himself upon me in anger, and I, with the natural instinct of self-preservation, raised my spade and struck him, how surely I did not know at the moment. But when silence followed the struggle and a heavy fall shook the ground at my feet, I began to realize what I had done, and throwing myself upon the prostrate body, I laid my hand upon the heart and my cheek to the fast-chilling lips. No action in the one, no breath upon the other; Ephraim Earle was dead, and I, his murderer, stood with his body at my feet beside his wife’s wide-opened grave.

“I had never known terror till that hour, but as I rose to my feet, comprehending as it were in an instant all that lay before me if his dead body was found at my door, the subtleness of the criminal entered into me, and springing back into the grave I tore poor Huldah’s corpse from its last resting place, thrust her husband’s scarce cold body into her coffin, and pushed down the lid. Then I shovelled in the earth, and when all was done, I carried her poor remains into the house and buried them beneath the cellar floor, where they are still lying. And now you know my crime and now you know my punishment. Three months ago this man came into town and announced himself as Ephraim Earle, and marking the havoc he has made with the happiness of our innocent Polly, I have felt myself driven step by step to make this dreadful avowal. Now look into this grave for yourselves, and see if all that I have told you is not true.”

And they did look, and though I need not tell you what they saw, there was no more talk in Hamilton of any lack of sanity on Dr. Izard’s part, nor did any man or woman there-after speak again of the adventurer by the name of Ephraim Earle.

When the first horror was over and people could look about them once more, the doctor’s voice was heard for the last time.

“When this man—who, as you see, would like to escape from this place, but cannot—came with his bravado into town, I told Polly that before she accepted his assertions as true, she should exact from him some irrefutable proof of his identity, and mentioned the medal that had been given to her father by the French government. This was because the medal had not been found after his disappearance, and I thought it must have been upon his person when he was thrust into the grave. But to my horror and amazement, this fellow was able to produce it,—where found or how discovered by him I cannot tell. But he has never given evidence of having the money which accompanied the medal. Search, then, my friends, and see if it cannot be found among this dust, and if it can, give it to Polly, whom I have in vain endeavored to recompense for this loss, which was involuntary on my part and which has always been to me the most unendurable feature of my crime.”

A cry of surprise, a shout of almost incredulous joy, followed this suggestion, and Mr. Crouse held up to sight a discolored, almost indistinguishable pocketbook, which some one had the courage to pull out of the coffin. Then another voice, more solemn and methodical than any which had yet spoken, called out: “Let us kneel and give thanks to God, who remembers the fatherless and restores to the orphan her rightful patrimony.”

But another voice, shriller and more imperative still, put a stop to this act of devotion.

“Dr. Izard has confessed his sins, and now let the impostor confess his. Who are you, man, and how happens it that you know all our ways and the whole history of this town?” And Lawyer Crouse shook the would-be Earle by the arm and would not let him go till he answered.

“I am—” the old bravado came back, and the fellow for a moment looked quite reckless and handsome. “Ask Tilly Unwin who I am,” he suddenly shouted, breaking into a great laugh. “Don’t you remember Bill Prescott, all you graybeards? You used to hustle with me once for a chance at her side at singing school and dance; but you won’t hustle any longer, I am ready to swear; the lady’s beauty is not what it was.” And with this unseemly jest he whirled about on one heel and gave his arm to a slim, light-complexion young man whom few had noticed, but who at no time had stepped far away from his side.

The cry of “Phil! It is Phil, the scape-grace who was said to be dead a dozen years ago,” followed him out of the yard; but he heeded nobody, his game was over, and his last card, a black one, had been played.

And Dr. Izard? When they thought of him again, he was gone; whither, no one knew, nor did it enter into the heart of any one there to follow him. One person, a heavily draped woman, who had not entered the graveyard, but who had stood far down the street during all that dreadful hour, thought she saw his slight form pass between her and the dismal banks of the river; but she never rightly knew, for in her mind’s eye he was always before her, and this vision of his bowed head and shrunken form may have been, like the rest, a phantom of her own creation.

● Transcriber’s note:

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.