Chapter 12

Judge Favart de Caumartin and Hepworth Coleman were, by order of the Judge himself, taken to the Judge's mansion, where their wounds were examined by physicians and surgeons quickly summoned.

Mlle. Olympe de Caumartin found herself nursing two almost dying patients at the same time. Although she suspected that this was the result of a duel between her father and the young stranger, she was not told the secret of the affair until long afterward.

Strange to say, although the Judge was much the older man, and was wounded much nearer the heart, he recovered and was walking about in his house before Coleman had even taken a turn for the better. The first thing he did was to order his daughter to cease her nursing of the young man.

"It is not proper," he said, "for a young girl to be the nurse of a man who is a stranger."

Mlle. Olympe blushed scarlet, and was so much confused that she could not find a word to say. It had been a great pleasure to her to wait upon Coleman, who, though for the greater part of the time quite insensible of her presence, seemed to respond better to her care than to the treatment of the doctors. She had been having her sweet dream, was in love with him, indeed, and the command of her father struck her like a blow.

Judge Favart de Caumartin suspected the truth about his daughter, and was not slow in making up his mind in the matter. He gave strict orders that the hall between Coleman's rooms and the rest of the mansion should be kept at all times locked and barred.

Love laughs at such precautions. Hepworth Coleman, during his convalescence, lay on his back and thought of nobody but Mlle. Olympe, and when at last he was able to get up he sent for her. It so chanced that the Judge, having got well in a measure, was gone up to Natchez on business.

Mlle. Olympe did not go to see the young man; but she wrote him a note explaining her father's wishes.

"But he has never forbidden you to come to see me when you are able to walk so far as to the library," she added very frankly, "and I see no reason why you should stay away."

When the Judge returned it was too late to interfere, as he soon discovered, and he had to bow to the inevitable.

The mystery of the adventure with the masked men in that secret _salle_ has never been further explained. Judge Favart de Caumartin would not consent to his daughter's marriage until he had exacted a promise from Coleman that he would never divulge what he knew.

The truth was that Coleman knew very little. He tried to discover the blind alley into which the Judge had led him on that eventful evening, but there was no such alley to discover. The whereabouts of the mysterious hall cannot be pointed out to-day, although from that memorable Tuesday in the spring of 1820 up to the Mardi-Gras of 1891, every anniversary of the Mystic Krewe has been duly celebrated by a fantastic band that at a certain hour of the night parades the streets of New Orleans. I do not refer to the regular carnival societies. These are but playful imitations of mystery. The genuine Krewe, as weirdly, strange and mysterious as ever, may be seen only on Royal Street, a small band headed by a tall, slender, dark man, who wears an invisible mask and a quaint black velvet cap. Where they come from nobody has ever been able to discover. Who they are is not known even to the great Rex, the king of the Carnival.

Hepworth Coleman and Mlle. Olympe de Caumartin were married in due time and lived on Royal Street all their lives. Every year on the evening of Mardi-Gras, they were called upon to give dinner to the Mystic Krewe, thirteen in number, who ate in silence with their masks on. The last of these dinners was in 1860. That year saw the twain, who for forty years had been happy together, laid in their tomb side by side.

Strangely enough there is no record whatever of Judge Favart de Caumartin's death; indeed, there is a tradition to the effect that he it is who still leads the Mystic Krewe.

STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MILLION DOLLARS.

BY INGERSOLL LOCKWOOD.

Old New Yorkers may remember Dingee's famous Club House in lower Greene Street. From 1800 to 1850 it was the most fashionable gambling house in the metropolis, its founder, Alphonse Dingee, having been the first to introduce _roulette_ and _rouge et noir_ into the new world. It was in 1850 or a little later that ill health obliged his son Cyrill to sell the business out. He retired to his country seat at Bricksburg, quite a palatial residence for those days, where he died shortly after, leaving a round million dollars and one child, a daughter, Daisy. Spite of the fact that she was popularly known throughout the country as the "gambler's daughter," there were several respectable young men in the place who would have been only too happy to administer an estate worth a round million with Daisy thrown in for better or worse.

But Daisy Dingee knew what she wanted, and it was nothing more nor less than an alliance with the most aristocratic family in the country, to wit: the Delurys, whose large white mansion at the other end of the town was as tumble-down and shabby looking as Daisy's was neat, fresh, and well kept. Miss Dingee, therefore, proceeded to throw herself at the head of one Monmouth Delury, mentally and physically a colorless sort of an individual, who, for want of sufficient intellect to make an honest living, passed his time going to seed with the thousand or so acres of land belonging to him and his maiden sisters, Hetty, Prudence, and Martha, three women who walked as stiff as they talked, although they never were known to discuss any subject other than the Delury family.

When Daisy's proposition was made known to them they tried to faint, but were too stiff to fall over, and were obliged to content themselves with gasping out:

"What! Daisy Dingee marry our brother, the head of the Delury family!"

But it was the first idea that had ever entered the brother's head, and he clung to it with a parent's affection for his first born. In a few months Mr. and Mrs. Monmouth Delury set out for Paris with that proverbial speed with which Americans betake themselves to the French capital when occasion offers. They found it a much pleasanter place than Bricksburg. Delury improved rapidly and Daisy fell quite in love with him, made her will in his favor, contracted the typhoid fever and died.

Whereupon the really disconsolate widower sent for his three sisters to join him. They had but one objection to going, that was to part company with the dear old homestead, but they overcame it the day after receiving Monmouth's letter, which happened to be a Friday, and took the Saturday's steamer.

To confess the truth, the Delurys had been so land-poor that their spare aristocratic figures were rather the result of necessity than inclination. Six months of Paris life under the benign protection of Dingee's round million made different women of them. It was wonderful what a metamorphosis Parisian dressmakers and restaurateurs effected in their figures. They became round and plump. They stopped talking about Bricksburg, signed themselves the Misses Delury of New York, enrolled themselves as patrons of art, gave elegant dinners, and in a very short time set up pretensions to being the leaders of the American colony.

But remorseless fate was at their heels. _Figaro_ unearthed the secret of old Dingee's million, and the Delurys suddenly found themselves the sensation of Paris, the butt of ridicule in the comic papers. Monmouth had been in poor health for several months, and this killed him.

Dingee's million was now in the eye of the law divided up among his three sisters, but fate willed it otherwise, for the following year Hetty, the eldest, died of Roman fever, and six months later Prudence fell a victim to rat poison in a small hotel at Grasse, City of Delightful Odors, in the south of France, whither she had gone in search of balmy air for her sister Martha, who had suddenly developed symptoms of consumption.

Left thus alone in the world with old Dingee's million and an incurable ailment, Martha's only ambition was to reach Bricksburg and die in the old white Delury mansion. It seemed to her that its great spacious rooms would enable her to breathe more easily and to fight death off for possibly another year.

But it was not to be. She got as far as Paris when old Dingee's million again changed hands, going this time by will to Martha's only relatives, twin brothers, John and William Winkletip, produce dealers in Washington street, New York.

The will was a peculiar one, as was to be expected:

I give, devise, and bequeath all the property popularly known as the "Dingee Million" to my cousins John and William Winkletip, produce dealers of New York, as joint tenants for their lives and the life of each of them, with remainder over to the eldest son of the survivor, his heirs and assigns forever; provided, that said remainder man shall be of full age at the time of his father's decease, and shall thereupon enter the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church and devote his life and the income of this estate to the encouragement of legislative enactment throughout the United States for the suppression of gambling and wager laying.

In default of such male heir, the Dingee million was to be divided up among certain religious and eleemosynary institutions.

When the cablegram from Paris informing them of their extraordinary luck reached the Winkletip Brothers, they were down in the cellar of the old tenement which served as their place of business, with their long jean coats on, busily engaged in sorting onions. As the Winkletips were only a little past fifty, and as strong as hickory knobs, their families were quite satisfied to get only a life estate in the Dingee million, for, barring accidents, the brothers had twenty-five or thirty years to live yet.

True, Brother John had a son, Cyrus, who would soon be of age, but he was a worthless wight, whose normal condition was alcoholic stupor, barely characterized with sufficient lucidity to enable him to distinguish rotten vegetables from sound.

"He will die years before his father," every one remarked, "and then the gambler's money will go where it ought to go."

There had been a fire next door to the Winkletips about the time the good news had arrived from Paris; a huge warehouse had burned down, leaving a brick wall towering sixty feet above the old wooden tenement in which the brothers did business. They had given notice to the authorities; but the inspectors had pronounced the wall perfectly safe. So the two brothers continued to come and go, in their best Sunday clothes, however, for they were only engaged in settling up the old business.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the huge wall fell with a terrific crash upon the wooden tenement, crushing it like an egg-shell. When the two brothers were taken out from the ruins, John was pronounced dead and a coroner's permit was given to remove him to a neighboring undertaker's establishment. William lived six hours, conscious to the last and grateful to an all-wise Providence that his worthless nephew would now be excluded from any control over the Dingee million.

John Winkletip was a grass widower, his wife, an Englishwoman, having abandoned him and returned to England, and for many years he had made his home with his only other child, a widowed daughter, Mrs. Timmins, who was openly opposed to many of her father's peculiar notions, as she termed them, one of which was his strong advocacy of cremation; he being one of the original stockholders and at the time of his death a director of the Long Island Cremation Society.

Consequently Mrs. Timmins gave orders that immediately after the coroner's inquest, her father's body should be removed to her residence in Harlem, but as the officers of the Cremation Society held the solemnly executed direction and authorization of their late friend and associate to incinerate his remains, they were advised by the counsel of their corporation that such an instrument would justify them in taking possession of the remains at the very earliest moment possible and removing it to the crematory.

Warned by the undertakers of Mrs. Timmins' threatened interference, they resolved not to risk even the delay necessary to procure a burial casket; in fact it would be a useless expense, anyway, and consequently John Winkletip began his last ride on earth lying in the cool depths of the undertaker's ice box.

As Mrs. Timmins's cab turned into Washington Street she met a hearse, but not until she had reached the undertaker's establishment was her suspicion transformed into certainty by being told that her father's body was already on its way to the crematory.

Mrs. Timmins was a long-headed woman. She knew the uncertainties of cab transportation through the crowded streets below Canal, and dismissing her cab at the Chambers Street station of the Third Avenue Elevated, she was soon speeding on her way to the Long Island City ferry.

This she reached just as a boat was leaving the slip. Misfortune number one. When she finally reached the Long Island side, she threw herself into the carriage nearest at hand, crying out:

"To the crematory! Five dollars extra if you get me there in time!"

It was not many minutes before Mrs. Timmins became aware of the fact that the horse was next to worthless, and could scarcely be lashed into a respectable trot. Mrs. Timmins was nearly frantic. Every minute her head was thrust out of the window to urge the hackman to greater speed. There was but one consoling thought--the hearse itself might get blocked or might have missed a boat!

As again and again her head was thrust out of the carriage window her hair became disheveled, for she had removed her hat, and the superstitious Hibernian on the box was upon the point of abandoning his post at sight of the wild and crazed look presented by Mrs. Timmins. Was she not some one's ghost, making this wild and mysterious ride?

But the promise of an extra five dollars kept the man at his post.

Suddenly a cry of joy escaped Mrs. Timmins's lips. The hearse was just ahead of them; but its driver had the better horses, and half suspecting that something was wrong, he whipped up vigorously and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Mrs. Timmins's horse was now as wet as if he had been dipped into the river, and she expected every minute to see him give out; but, strange to say, he had warmed up to his work, and now, in response to the driver's urging, broke into a run.

Again Mrs. Timmins caught a glimpse of the black coach of death in the dust clouds ahead of her. The race became every instant more exciting. It was a strange sight, and instinctively the farmers, in their returning vegetable wagons, drew aside to let them pass. Once more the hearse disappeared in the dust clouds. This was the last Mrs. Timmins saw of it until she drew up in front of the crematorium. There it stood, with its black doors thrown wide open. She had come too late! Her father's body had already been thrust into the fiery furnace.

The antagonism of Winkletip's family to his views concerning the cremation of the dead was an open secret with every attaché of the society, and the men in charge were determined that the society should come out the winner. They were on the lookout for the body. Everything, to the minutest detail, was in readiness. The furnace had been pushed to its greatest destroying power, and hence was it that haste overcame dignity when the foam-flecked and panting horses of the undertaker drew up in front of the entrance of the crematory.

The ice-chest was snatched from the hearse, borne hurriedly into the furnace-room, set upon the iron platform, wheeled into the very center of the white flames, whose waving, curling, twisting tongues seemed reaching out to their fullest length, impatient for their prey, and the iron doors slammed shut with a loud, resounding clangor.

At that instant a woman, hatless and breathless, with disheveled hair, burst into the furnace-room.

"Hold! Hold!" she shrieked, and then her hands flew to her face, and staggering backward and striking heavily against the wall, she sank, limp and lifeless, in a heap on the stone floor of the furnace-room.

But the two men in charge had neither eyes nor ears for Mrs. Timmins. As the doors closed they sprang to their posts of observation, in front of the two peep-holes, and stood watching the effect of the flames upon the huge ice-chest.

Its wooden covering parted here and there with a loud crack, laying bare the metal case, from the seams of which burst fitful puffs of steam. Now came a sight so strange and curious that the two men held their breath as they gazed upon it! By the vaporizing of the water from the melted ice the flames were pushed back from the chest, and it lay there for an instant, as if protected by some miraculous aura.

Then happened something which caused the men to reel and stagger as if their limbs were paralyzed by drink, and which painted their faces with as deep a pallor as death's own hand could have laid upon them.

From the furnace depths came forth a dull, muffled cry of "Help! Help!"

Making a desperate effort, the men tore open first the outer and then the inner doors of the fire chamber. As the air rushed in, the lid of the metal chest burst silently open. Again the cry of "Help!" rang out, and two hands quivered for an instant above the edge of the chest, then with a loud and defiant roar the flames closed in upon it, and began to lick it up ravenously. The doors were banged shut, and John Winkletip had his way.

But the Dingee million seemed to draw back instinctively from the touch of the worthless Cy Winkletip.

With loud cries of joy, the various beneficiaries under Martha Delury's will now discovered that Cyrus Winkletip was born on the 11th day of August, and that as his father had departed this life on the 10th day of August, the son was not of full age when his father died. But the law put an end to this short-lived joy by making known one of its curious bits of logic, which so often startle the layman.

It was this: The law takes no note of parts of a day, and therefore as Cyrus Winkletip was of age on the first minute of his twenty-first birthday, he was also of age on the last minute of the day before--consequently on the first minute of the day before he was twenty-one!

This gave the Dingee million to Cy Winkletip!

Under constant and stringent surveillance and tutelage, Cy Winkletip was, after several years of as close application as was deemed safe in view of his weak mental condition, admitted to the ministry in accordance with the provisions of Miss Delury's will.

At last the wicked Dingee million seemed safely launched upon its task of undoing the wrong it had done; but Cy Winkletip's mind ran completely down in five years and he died a wretched slavering, idiot.

Mrs. Timmins was inclined to warn off the Dingee million with a gesture of horror; but, yielding to the solicitation of her friends, she consented to take title in order that she might create a trust with it for some good and noble purpose. To this end, by a last will and testament she created and endowed the American Society for the Suppression of Gambling and Wager-laying, and then died.

The trustees at once began to erect the buildings called for, but before the society had had an opportunity to suppress a single gaming establishment, the lawyers, at the prayer of Mrs. John Winkletip, Mrs. Timmin's mother, fell tooth and nail upon the trust, which was declared too "vague, shadowy, and indefinite to be executed," and the Dingee million, its roundness now sadly shrunken, made its way across the ocean to Mrs. John Winkletip, of Clapham Common, London.

She died last year and with her the wanderings of the Dingee million came to an end. She willed it to trustees for building and maintaining a Hospital for Stray Dogs and Homeless Cats, and those learned in the law say that the trust will stand.

A LOST DAY.

BY EDGAR FAWCETT.

"My Family," John Dalrymple would say, "have the strange failing (that is, nearly all of them except myself, on the paternal side) of----"

And then somebody would always try to interrupt him. At the Gramercy, the small but charming club of which he had been for years an honored member, they made a point of interrupting him when he began on his family failing. Not a few of them held to the belief that it was a myth of Dalrymple's imagination. Still, others argued, all of the clan except John himself had been a queer lot; there was no real certainty that they had not done extraordinary acts. Meanwhile, apart from his desire to delve among ancestral records and repeat tales which had been told many times before, he was a genuine favorite with his friends. But that series of family anecdotes remained a standing joke.

They all pitied him when it became known that his engagement to the pretty winsome widow, Mrs. Carrington, was definitely broken. He was past forty now, and had not been known to pay serious court to any woman before in at least ten years. Of course Mrs. Carrington was rich. But then her money could not have attracted Dalrymple, for he was rich himself, in spite of his plain way of living there in that small Twenty-second Street basement house.

But the widow's money had doubtless lured to her side the gentleman who had cut poor Dalrymple out. A number of years ago, when this little occurrence which we are chronicling took place, it was not so easy as it is now to make sure of a foreigner's credentials and antecedents. The Count de Pommereul, a reputed French nobleman of high position, had managed to get into the Gramercy as a six-months' member, and had managed also to cross the thresholds of numerous select New York drawing-rooms. At the very period of his introduction to Mrs. Carrington her engagement with Dalrymple had already become publicly announced. Then, in a few weeks, society received a shock. Dalrymple was thrown over, and it transpired that the brilliant young widow was betrothed to the Count.

Dalrymple, calm and self-contained, had nothing to say on the subject of why he had received such shabby treatment, and nobody ventured to interrogate him. Some people believed in the Count, others thought that there was a ring of falsity about him, for all his frame was so elegantly slender and supple, for all his mustache was so glossily dark, and his eyes so richly lustrous. Dalrymple meanwhile hid his wound, met the Count constantly at the Club, though no longer even exchanging bows with him, and--worked at his revenge in secret as a beaver works at the building of his winter ranch. He succeeded, too, in getting superb materials for that revenge. They surprised even himself when a few relatives and friends in Paris mailed him appalling documentary evidence as to what sort of a character this Count really was. There is no doubt that he now held in his hand a thunderbolt, and had only to hurl it when he pleased.

He did not tell a single soul what he had learned. The thought of just how he should act haunted him for several days. One evening he went home from the club a little earlier than usual, and tossed restlessly for a good while after going to bed. When sleep came it found him still irresolute as to what course he should take.

It seemed to him that he had now a succession of dreams, but he could recall none of them on awaking. And he awoke in a peculiar way. There was yet no hint of dawn in the room, and only the light from his gas, turned down to a very dim star. He was sitting bolt upright in bed, and feverish, fatigued sensations oppressed him. "What have I been dreaming?" he asked himself again and again. But as only a confused jumble of memories answered him, he sank back upon the pillows, and was soon buried in slumber.

It was past nine o'clock in the morning when he next awoke. He felt decidedly better. Both the feverishness and the fatigue had left him. He went to the club and breakfasted there. It was almost empty of members, as small clubs are apt to be at that hour of the morning. But in the hall he met his old friend Langworth and bowed to him. Langworth, who was rather near-sighted, gave a sudden start and a stare. "How odd," thought Dalrymple, as he passed on into the reading-room, "I hope there's nothing unexpected about my personal appearance." Just at the doorway of the room he met another old friend, Summerson, a man extremely strict about all matters of propriety. Summerson saw him and then plainly made believe that he had not seen. As they moved by one another Dalrymple said lightly, "Good-morning, old chap. How's your gout?"

Summerson, who was very tall and excessively dignified, gave a comic squirm. Then his eyelids fluttered and with the tips of his lips he murmured, "Better," as he glided along.

"Pooh," said Dalrymple to himself. "Getting touchy, I suppose, in his old age. How longevity disagrees with some of us mortals."

He nearly always took a bottle of seltzer before breakfast, and this morning old Andrew (a servant who had been in the club many years) poured it out for him.

"I hope you're all right again this mornin', sorr," said Andrew with his Celtic accent and in an affable half whisper.

"All right, Andrew," was the reply. "Why, you must be thinking of some one else. I haven't been ill. My health has been excellent for a long time past."

"Yes, sorr," said Andrew, lowering his eyes and respectfully retiring.

That last "Yes, sorr," had a dubious note about its delivery that almost made Dalrymple call the faithful old fellow back and further question him. "All right again?" As if he had ever been all wrong! Oh, well, poor Andrew was ageing; others had remarked that fact months ago.

A different servant came to announce breakfast. There were only about five men in the dining-room as Dalrymple entered it. All of them gazed at him in an unusual way, or had late events led him to think that they did so? At the table nearest him sat Everdell, one of the jolliest men in the club, a person whose face was nearly always wreathed in smiles.

"Good-morning!" said Dalrymple, as he caught Everdell's eye!

"Good-morning!" The tones were replete with mild consternation, and the look that went with them was smileless to the degree of actual gloom. Then Everdell, who had just finished his breakfast, rose and drew near to Dalrymple.

"'Pon my word," he said, "I'm delighted to see you all right again so soon."

"All right again so soon?" was the reply. "What in mercy's name do you mean?"

"Oh, my dear old fellow," began Everdell, fumbling with his watch-chain, "it was pretty bad, you know, yesterday."

"Pretty--bad--yesterday?"

"I saw you in the morning, and for an hour or so in the afternoon. Perhaps no one would have noticed it if you hadn't stayed here all day, and poured those confidences into people's ears about De Pommereul. You didn't appear to have drank a drop in the club; there's the funny part of it. You went out several times, though, and came back again. All that you had to drink (except some wine here at dinner, you remember) you must have got outside. I wasn't here at ten o'clock when De Pommereul came in. I'm glad I wasn't. You must have been dreadful. If Summerson and Joyce hadn't rushed in between you and the Count, heaven knows what would have happened. As it is----"

At this point Dalrymple broke in with cold harshness: "Look here, Everdell, I always disliked practical jokes, and I've known for a number of years that you're given to them. You've never attempted to make me your butt before, however, and you'll have the kindness to discontinue any such proceeding now."

Everdell drew back for a moment, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and then muttering, "Oh, if you're going to put it in that way," strode quickly out of the dining-room.

Dalrymple scarcely ate a morsel of breakfast. After he had gulped down some hot coffee he repaired to the reading-room. As he re-entered it a waiter handed him several letters. One, which he opened first, was marked "immediate," and had been sent him from his own house by an intelligent and devoted woman servant there, who had been for a long period in his employ. This letter made poor Dalrymple's head swim as he read it. Written and signed by Mr. Summerson himself, as chairman of the house committee of the club, it ordered him to appear that same evening before a meeting of the governors and answer to a charge of disorderly conduct on the previous night. Then it went on to state that he (Dalrymple) had been seen throughout the previous day at the club in a state of evident intoxication, and had, finally, between the hours of 10 and 11 P. M., accosted and grossly insulted the Count de Pommereul in the main drawing-room of the Gramercy.

"Disorderly conduct," "evident intoxication," "grossly insulted the Count de Pommereul." These words were trembling on Dalrymple's lips as he presently approached Summerson himself, the very gentleman who had signed the letter, and who stood in the hall, arrayed for the street.

"What--what does it all mean?" gasped Dalrymple. "I--I never was intoxicated in my life, Lawrence Summerson; you ought to know that! I played euchre last night, up in the card-room, from nine o'clock till twelve, with Ogden and Folsom and yourself. If there's any practical joke being got up against me, for God's sake----"

"Wait a minute, please," said Summerson. He went back into the coat-room, disarrayed himself of his street wraps, and finally joined Dalrymple. His first words, low and grave, ran thus: "Can it be possible you don't recollect that our game of euchre was played the night before last and not last night?" Then he went with Dalrymple into a corner of the reading room, and they talked together for a good while.

Dalrymple went back to his home that day in a mental whirl. It still wanted a number of hours before the Governing Committee would meet. He had lost a day out of his life--there could be no doubt of that. If he had moved about the Club at all yesterday with a drunken manner, reviling De Pommereul to everybody who would lend him an ear--if he had afterward met De Pommereul in the Club and directed toward him in loud and furious tones a perfect torrent of accusation--he himself was completely, blankly ignorant.

For a good while he sat quite still and thought. Then he summoned Ann, the elderly and very trustworthy Ann, who had been his dear mother's maid, and was now his housekeeper. He questioned Ann, and after dismissing her he pondered her answers. Three times yesterday she had seen him, and regarding his appearance Ann had her distinct opinions.

Suddenly a light flashed upon Dalrymple while he sat alone and brooded. He sprang up and a cry, half of awe, half of gladness, left his lips. The baffling problem had been solved!

That evening he presented himself before the Governing Committee. All assembled were sorry for him. Of course, punishment must be dealt, but for an old and popular member like Dalrymple it must not be expulsion. The general feeling of the Club had indeed already been gauged, and it was in favor of suspension for six months or a year at the farthest.

Dalrymple, however, was determined that he should be visited with no punishment at all. And he meant to state why.

The judges, as he faced them, all looked politely grim. The President, after a few suave preliminaries, asked Dalrymple if he had anything to say concerning the charges preferred against him. Dalrymple then proceeded to speak with a clear voice and composed demeanor.

His first sentences electrified his hearers. "I have no possible recollection of yesterday," he began, "and it is precisely as much of a lost day to me as though I had lain chloroformed for twenty-four hours. On Wednesday night I returned home from this club and went to rest. I never really woke until Friday, possibly a little while after midnight, and then within my own bed. On Thursday morning I must have risen in a state of somnambulism, hypnotism, mental aberration, whatever you please, and not come to myself until Thursday had passed, and I had once more retired. Of what yesterday occurred I therefore claim to have been the irresponsible agent, and to have become so through no fault of my own. I am completely innocent of the misdemeanors charged against me, and I now solemnly swear this, on my word of honor as a gentleman."

Here Dalrymple paused. The members of the committee interchanged glances amid profound silence. On some faces doubt could be read, but on others its veriest opposite. The intense stillness had become painful when Dalrymple spoke again.

"I had hoped that I should escape throughout my own lifetime all visitations of this distressing kind. My grandfather and two of my uncles not only walked in their sleep to an alarming degree, but were each subject to strange conditions of mind, in which acts were performed by them that they could not possibly remember afterward." Here the speaker paused, soon continuing, however, in a lower and more reflective tone:

"Yes, my family have had the strange failing (that is, nearly all of them except myself, on the paternal side) of----"

But he said no more. The tension was loosened, and a great roar of laughter rose from the whole committee. How often every man there had joked him about that marvelous budget of stories which he infallibly began one way and one way only! And when the familiar formula sounded forth, it was all the funnier to those who heard it because of the solemn, judicial circumstances in which it again met their hearing.

The plaintiff was honorably acquitted. As for De Pommereul, as every word that Dalrymple had said concerning his past life in France happened to be perfectly true, the Count never reappeared at the Gramercy. His engagement with Mrs. Carrington was soon afterward broken off by the lady herself, and for a good while it was rumored that this lady had repentantly made it optional with Dalrymple whether he should once more become her accepted sweetheart.

But Dalrymple remained a bachelor. He is quite an old man now, yet he may be found in the card-room of the Gramercy nearly every evening. He is very willing to tell you the story of his "lost day" if you ask him courteously for it, and not in any strain of fun-poking; but he attempts no more voluntary recitals on the subject of his "family's" maladies or mishaps.

A TRAGEDY OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

BY BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH.

I.

In the course of my work last year I had occasion to go over a file of old Liverpool newspapers, and thus came upon a remarkable paragraph in the ship news. Translated out of the language of commerce, it was to the effect that the good ship _Empress_, just arrived from Australia, reported that while rounding the Cape of Good Hope she had been driven southward far out of her course by a storm; and that away down in the Southern Atlantic had sighted a vessel drifting aimlessly about. The first mate boarded her, and, returning, reported that the derelict was the ship _Albatross_. That she had been abandoned was plain, for all the boats were gone, and so were the log and the ship's instruments. On the deck, close by the companion hatch, lay two bodies, or rather skeletons, clad in weather-rotted garments, that showed them to have been man and woman. These bodies were headless, but the heads were nowhere to be found on the deserted deck. The mate found on the cabin table an open book, with writing on its pages. A pen lay on the table, and a small inkstand, in which the ink had evidently long since dried. The book was evidently a journal or diary, so the mate reported, and he put it in his pocket, meaning to carry it aboard the _Empress_; but when he was getting down into his small boat the book slipped from his pocket, dropped into the water and sunk. The _Albatross_ was badly water-logged, and, he thought, could not have floated much longer. To this report the editor of the paper added a note saying that the readers would all doubtless remember that the _Albatross_ had sailed from Liverpool several years before, bound for Australia, and it was thought to have gone down with all on board, as no news of her had since been received.

That was the substance of the remarkable paragraph. What was almost as remarkable to me, a newspaper man, was that the Liverpool paper had evidently made no effort to learn the owners of the _Albatross_, the name of her captain and crew, or whether or not she carried any passengers. I carefully searched files to see if there was any further reference to the case. There was none. After the manner of his kind, the editor of the paper had, so it seemed, taken it for granted that his intelligent readers "would remember" all the particulars that they wanted to know.

I was much impressed by the paragraph. My professional instinct told me that there was a good newspaper story there, and I was disgusted that any editor could let it go untold. I also experienced more than usual curiosity to know how those headless bodies came there, or rather, why they should lie there on the deck headless. Then there was that journal that had been found lying open on the cabin table, as though the writer had been interrupted in the writing which had never been finished. What light might that little book not throw on the mystery? And now it was lying fathoms deep in the Southern Atlantic. Of what use to speculate over the matter. Thanks to the careless mate and the stupid editor, that mystery would remain forever unsolved. But in spite of reason I did speculate considerably over the matter, and, try as I did, could not banish the story from my mind.

A few weeks after that I went into Northern Vermont to report the Benton murder trial, which was attracting much more than local attention. I was pleased to find that the prosecuting attorney was an old classmate of mine, George Judson. I had known him pretty well as a hard-working and remarkably bright man, with a curious streak in his mental make-up that led him to investigate every new "ism" that appeared. We used to call him a Spiritualist, and, had the word been in use, I am sure would have called him a crank. He was five years older than I, had married immediately after graduating, had prospered as a lawyer, and now had a good home for his wife and two children. He seemed much pleased to renew the acquaintance of college days, and insisted that I should make his house my home during my stay in the town.

One Saturday evening as we sat in his comfortable library smoking after dinner, Judson said, with some apparent hesitation:

"There's going to be a show here this evening that may interest you."

"Yes?"

"Yes. There's a woman living here who does some remarkable things when in a trance. There are a few of us who are curious about such things, and I've asked her and them here to my house this evening."

"What is it?" I asked lightly; "the cabinet act?"

Judson looked a trifle hurt. "Yes," he answered, slowly, "she's a medium, and you newspaper men have said that she's a fraud. But I've seen manifestations that I can't explain on any theory other than that they were the work of higher powers, and I'm going to look into it further."

The same old Judson, I thought. He was evidently more in earnest than his assumed indifference indicated. I marveled that the shrewd, successful lawyer could be so easily deluded, for I was sure that he was deluded. I had attended many a séance, and had helped to expose more than one medium, and knew that the whole matter of manifestations was nothing but a more or less clumsy juggle. But I kept my thoughts to myself--experience had taught me that when it was known that there was present at a séance a pronounced unbeliever in that phase of Spiritualism, the "conditions" were usually "unfavorable" for a "manifestation." So I said that I should be glad to see the "show," as he called it. Then I encouraged Judson to talk, and he talked well. From mediums and cabinets, and manifestations and the ways of spirits generally, our conversation drifted to the marvelous and the mysterious, and finally I told the story of the _Albatross_ and the headless skeletons. Judson was much impressed by the story. He joined me in anathematizing the careless mate of the _Empress_ and the stupid editor of the Liverpool paper. His lifelong habit of seeking to know the unknowable, re-enforced by the detective instinct that is developed in every good lawyer as well as newspaper man, made him unnaturally anxious to solve the mystery. The thought came to me just then that if Spiritualism was good for anything it would be in such a case. What I said was, "I have often wondered whether the peculiar power of the trance medium might not be employed in such cases. Now, is it impossible that that journal found on the _Albatross_, and which I believe contains the solution of our mystery, should be materialized for us here?"

Judson jumped at the idea. "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly, "it shall be--it must be. How fortunate!" He spoke with such earnestness and confidence that I showed my surprise in my face. I also voiced it.

"You talk as though the thing were already accomplished. My experience with mediums has led me to consider them a trifle unreliable, but you seem to be sure of this one."

"Not of the medium but of myself. I had better tell you now what but one other living person knows--that I have a very peculiar power. I don't attempt to explain it, but it is no less a fact. I seem to be able, by mere force of will, to control certain persons. This medium is one of them. I have never been able to produce any results unaided, but more than once have I thought into visible form those who had long before died."

The same old story you see. Judson was apparently an out-and-out Spiritualist, ready to be humbugged by the first shrewd trickster that came along. He went on:

"Now, this evening you will see a remarkable woman; I have been able to control her in a remarkable way. I confess that I had never thought of seeking the materialization of an inanimate object. But I believe that it can be done. It shall be done. We shall have that journal this night."

I was almost convinced by my friend's absolute confidence; then saddened by the thought that this usually hard-headed, keen young lawyer had such a weak spot in his brain. He was the last man you would expect to be deluded by the tricks of the medium. At the same time I found myself, in spite of my skepticism, wondering what would come of it all. That evening I was seated in Judson's large parlor, one of about twenty persons of the sort usually seen at such séances; the Spiritualists of the place, I thought. The room had been arranged after the fashion customary. There was an improvised cabinet in one corner, chairs in a semi-circle in front of it, not too near. Judson seemed a sort of master of ceremonies, passing in and out, greeting newcomers, whispering a word here and there. He was pale, I thought, and seemed rather pre-occupied. We waited perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then Judson ushered into the room a tall, slender woman, middle-aged, gray-haired, with rather strongly marked features and dark eyes that had a tired look. She seemed a person of nerves. A trifle above the average medium in appearance of intelligence and refinement, and with rather less of the self-assertive boldness usually displayed by the women who make a business of communing with spirits. There was no preliminary nonsense. She entered the cabinet in a business-like way. Judson turned the gas down low, so that we were in the dimmest sort of a dim religious light--just the light, I have always observed, that seemed most congenial to spirits, or, rather, that aided most effectually in the tricks played by the mediums. Then he sat down by my side and said: "Let us all clasp hands."

I grasped with my left the fat hand of a large woman next to me, and Judson seized my right with his left hand. It was quite cold, and I thought trembled a little. He leaned over me and whispered in my ear: "I am determined to see that journal to-night. If will can do it, it shall be done. Join your will with mine. You are a man of will. Let us force the powers to yield to our combined wills."

I was startled by the intensity of his manner more than by the words. In spite of my half disgust at the whole proceedings, that were such an exact repetition of more than one humbugging séance, I was forced into a respectful attitude of mind, and at once became an interested assistant, where a moment before I had been an unbelieving, critical observer. I nodded my head, and Judson's grasp of my hand became firm.

Then there was complete silence for many moments. I bent all my mind to the one thought that I would see that journal wherever in the large world it might be. At first my thoughts would wander, but then it seemed to me that Judson's grasp tightened and drew the desultory thought back to the one subject of his own thoughts. I have considered this a good deal since and conclude that Judson did, for the time at least, possess some extraordinary power, possibly pure force of will. At all events, I grew more and more determined to have my will done. Then there came a calm voice from behind the curtain of the cabinet.

"What is your wish?"

No one spoke for a moment, and then a weak voice at my left said something about a desire to see a child that had died, and another voice expressed the wish to look upon the form of a departed husband. I was too much occupied with my own thoughts to notice then that this was the same old scene, enacted as at all the other séances. Again there was perfect silence; it seemed interminable. I could hear the breathing of the fat woman on my left. I could hear my watch ticking in my pocket. I thought that I could hear my heart beat, but all the time there was the firm pressure of the cold hand of my friend, and the constant thought, now shaped into words and the words into a sentence, and that sentence continually repeating itself until I seemed to hear that too: "I will see that journal to-night."

And still that strange silence. The air in the room became close. Every door and window had been carefully closed, and the breathing of twenty or more persons had made large drafts on the oxygen. Suddenly a breath fanned my cheek, then a stronger draught, and then a steady current of air set against my face. I felt it move my hair, and it smelled of the sea. It was salty. Yes, undoubtedly a strong, steady sea breeze was in that room, and it brought with it the smell of a ship, tar and oakum and pitch--the odor that arises when the sun beats hotly down upon the unprotected deck and the boards shrink and the great pine masts feel the fierce heat. But there was no heat; only at first that cool sea breeze and then the patter of rain, seemingly on the floor of the room in which we sat.

Then a low moan came from behind the curtains of the cabinet, and then the sound of a heavy fall. At this some of the women shrieked weakly. There was a general letting go of hands, and Judson sprang to the cabinet and disappeared behind its folds. After an instant of silence we heard his voice: "More light." I hastened to turn on the gas. Judson pulled aside the curtains, and we saw that the woman was lying outstretched on the floor.

"She has fainted," said Judson, calmly. "That is all. I believe that she is subject to such attacks. I doubt, my friends, if we shall have any manifestations to-night. May I ask you all to consider the meeting adjourned? I will give our friend here all medical attention."

He spoke so calmly and with such authority that without a word the little company passed out of the room and out of the house. Judson and I raised the woman to a couch, and he brought water and bathed her face. She opened her eyes, sighed deeply, and then sat up. There was a strange scared look on her face.

"Where is it?" she asked faintly.

"Here," said Judson, and he drew from beneath his coat a small book and handed it to her. She turned away with a shudder.

"No, no. Take it away. Take it away."

Judson handed it to me. "Will you kindly take this book to the library," said he; "I will join you in a moment."

I obeyed mechanically. Before going into the library I stepped to the broad piazza and looked out into the night. The snow lay white on the ground, stars twinkled in the frosty sky, it was very cold, and I could hear the snow creak under the feet of passers-by, and yet I had felt that sea breeze and heard the patter of rain. What did it mean? I shivered, entered the warm house, turned the light high in the library, shut the door, and not till then looked at the book in my hand. It was a small blankbook about six inches long and four inches wide, well bound in leather and thoroughly water-soaked. I opened it. The leaves were wet and discolored, and I could see that the pages were covered with writing. I turned to the fly-leaf and there read these words:

"Arthur Hartley's journal. Begun on board the ship _Albatross_, March 7, 1851."

I stood in a daze, glaring at the written words, utterly confounded. The door opened and Judson entered hurriedly. His cheeks were now flushed, his eyes fairly blazed with light, his face was bright with a smile of triumph. "I knew it! I knew it!" he said loudly. "What a victory! What a victory! Even Nature yields to the power of Will!"

He paced back and forth rapidly, showing no desire to see the book that had come to us so strangely. Then he threw himself into a big chair, lighted a cigar, puffed at it vigorously a moment, then became quiet, looked intently at the glowing coals in the grate, and said calmly:

"Well, let's see what Mr. Hartley has to say for himself. Read the journal, please."

I had been standing all this time by the table, with the little damp book in my hand, and watching Judson curiously. I drew up a chair, opened to the first page and began to read.

II.

March 7.--I begin this journal for two reasons. First, my dear mother asked me to keep a record of my voyage and of my life, that she might read it when I got back home. She thinks that I am coming home again. I promised her to do so, but I shall never see England again. I hope the day may come when I can take my dear mother to my Australian home, but I shall never set foot on the island that holds the woman I hate, and that holds so many women like her. In the second place, I want to write down not only my impressions in this new experience, but my thoughts. I have many of them. I want to see them spread out before me. We are now well started on the voyage, five days out from Liverpool. Uncle John is still ill enough, and says that he wants to die. Captain Raymond laughs at him, and says that a little sea-sickness will do him good. I like Captain Raymond. He is big and burly, and has a deep voice, and a heavy brown beard. He's just the typical sea captain, an interesting person to a man who saw the sea for the first time six days ago. I'm glad to find that I'm a good sailor, and can thoroughly enjoy the new experiences that present themselves in the beginning of the long voyage we have started upon. I have written the word "enjoy"; let it stand. I thought I never should have known enjoyment again, but I do. There's enjoyment in the knowledge that each hour puts miles of ocean between me and the woman that has spoiled my life. No, I won't admit that. She shan't have the satisfaction of spoiling my life. She tried hard enough, God knows. She played with my heart, much as though it were a mouse and she a cat. She is a cat. A sleek, soft, purring cat, and with claws. I could eat out my own heart when I think how she played with it. I was fair game for this experienced coquette, and now I suppose she is boasting of another conquest, telling of her victory over the simple country lad. Well, let her enjoy her conquest while she may. The country boy will one day come back with money enough to buy her and her purse-proud heart. Yes, I will go back to England and I'll humble her at my feet. What rot I'm writing. Mother, if you ever see these pages, read these words with sympathy, as the idle ravings of a man well-nigh gone mad over a woman's false beauty. I never told the story, even to you, my dear mother. I dare say you guessed much of it. You know how Helen Rankine came down from London to our quiet country home. You know how beautiful and gracious she was. How kind and loving to you; how apparently frank and friendly with me. She was the first woman I ever saw to whom I gave a second thought, save you, dear mother. We rode and drove and chatted together. She drew my very heart from me. I told her all my plans and hopes and aspirations; of my love of the art to which I had devoted my life; that I hoped to go to London and study, and then to Rome; that I wanted to become a great painter. She was so full of hearty sympathy, so kind, so womanly, that before I knew it she had me enslaved. For all the graciousness and frankness and sympathy were but the means she used in her heartlessness to enslave me. Then came a day, a day to be remembered; a day like that when, beguiled by another beautiful fiend in woman form, our first father, poor, foolish man, ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so lost his paradise. I told Helen of my love; and how I did love that woman! And she put on an appearance of surprise, and squeezed a cold tear or two from her beautiful eyes, and said that she thought I knew and understood. And when half dazed I asked her what she meant, what it was that I was thought to have known, she had to blush, and said that she had long been engaged to her cousin, John Bruce, who was now with his regiment in India, and that when he came home they were to be married. And then she said something about my being so young and having a great career before me, and that she should always be my friend and pray for my success. And she stretched out her hand toward me. I think she must have seen the hate in my face, for my great love turned to great hate even while she spoke, and all the wholesome currents of my being seemed poisoned by the supreme passion, and she turned pale, and her hand dropped, and I cursed her.

March 10.--A call from Uncle John interrupted me the other day, and I have had no heart to write since. My moods shame me. I wrote those words with burning cheek and throbbing heart. I have just read them without an emotion. Why can't I be a man, and not a silly, raving boy? Not that the hate that burns in my heart is abating. It can never abate. It will grow and grow, and keep me true to my purpose. No more mooning over art and the hope of a great name; but hard work and money-making. Uncle John promises us both fortunes. He feels confident that his explosive will work such wonders in Australian mines that within ten years we can go back to England rich beyond the dreams of avarice. But I shall never see England again. No matter what I may have written here. Never shall I set foot on the land that rears such women as the one I hate. Captain Raymond was almost angry when he learned that in Uncle John's innocent-looking boxes was a compound powerful enough to blow us all out of the water. But he was somewhat reassured when uncle insisted that as long as the _Albatross_ floated she and we were safe; for he says that the explosive is only an explosive when wet. Captain Raymond said that he'd try and keep it dry then, and he sent men into the hole where the boxes were stored, and had them placed carefully in an unused cabin. We are the only passengers. I made sure that no woman was to be on board during the long voyage. I came near being disappointed in this, for Captain Raymond tells me that his wife was to sail with him, and had made all preparations, even to sending some boxes of clothing aboard, when the sudden death of her father prevented her from going. I'm sure I'm sorry that Mrs. Raymond's father is dead, but I'm very glad that Mrs. Raymond is not on this ship. I don't want to look on woman's face, nor hear woman's voice. There's but one woman to me in the wide world, and, dear mother, forgive me if sometimes I cannot thank her for bringing me into the world. You understand me, mother. You know what I have suffered. You can sympathize with me when I say that I exult at the thought that leagues of ocean lie between me and that other woman, who----

March 12.--A strange thing has happened since I last wrote in this book. As I was writing I heard quite a commotion on deck--cries of the sailors, sharp orders from officers, and the tramping of feet. I rushed on deck. Uncle John and the captain were standing on the poop, looking intently across the water; the first mate was shouting orders that I couldn't understand, and the crew were lowering the long boat.

"What's the matter?" I asked, joining uncle and the captain.

"There's a little boat adrift out yonder," answered Uncle John pointing, "and the lookout says that there are a couple of bodies lying in it. There, do you see it, on the top of that wave!"

I saw it; a mere shell it seemed, poised for a moment on the top of a swell, and then sliding down into the trough of the sea, quite out of sight. The long boat was soon lowered, and, guided by the cries of the lookout, made straight for the little boat. It seemed very long before it was reached, and then we saw the sailors make it fast to the long boat and begin to pull slowly back toward the _Albatross_. It was slow and hard work towing that boat, small as it seemed, through the rather heavy sea. There was no sign of life in her. What was behind those low gunwales? What were the men bringing to us? At length they came alongside, and then we saw that there were two bodies lying there.

"A man and a woman, sir," called up the mate. "There's life in 'em both, but precious little."

It was nice work getting the two boats alongside and the bodies out of them and up to the deck; but it was done by the aid of slings, the woman being brought up first. Uncle John, by virtue of his profession, gave directions as to placing her on the deck, and then knelt by her side. I stood aloof. Why had that woman come to us in mid-ocean! Why was it? Fate?

"She is alive," cried Uncle John. "Captain, we must get her below at once."

I glanced at the woman. Thick locks of matted black hair lay around a face on which the sun and wind and the salt sea-water had done fearful work. And yet those blackened and blistered features somehow had a familiar look. Where had I seen them? I could not tell. Four sailors carried her below and I turned to look at her companion, who had been laid on the deck. Uncle John just took time to grasp his wrist and said, "He's alive, too"; then he dropped the limp hand and hurried below. Always the way. Women first. This dying man might get what attention he could. The woman must be nursed back to life to deceive the first fool that takes her fancy. I turned to the man, a common sailor evidently, brawny and bearded. The mate was by his side, and together we did what we could to nourish the spark of life that kept the pulse feebly fluttering in the big brown wrist. It was afternoon when these two waifs were found, and all night we fought with death. Now Uncle John says that he thinks that they will live. Neither of them has spoken, but each has taken a little nourishment and the pulse shows gaining strength. Captain Raymond has turned his cabin over to the woman, and as I write uncle is sitting by her side. For the time he has forgotten his wonderful explosive. The old professional air has come back, and he is like the Dr. Hartley of the days before he gave up medicine for chemical investigation. The question continually repeats itself to me, What has brought this woman here? Reason as I may, I feel, I know, that she has come to me; to me who was happy in the thought of not seeing her kind for months. Another question asks itself, Has she come for good or ill? There can be but one answer to that question.

March 13.--The sailor whom we rescued gains strength fast. He was able to talk a little to-day. Briefly told, his story, as far as I got it, is that he was one of the crew of the _Vulture_, bound from England to India with army stores and arms, including a large consignment of powder. One day, he can't say how many days ago, the ship caught fire in the hold. There were frantic and unavailing efforts made to get at the flames and extinguish them; and then the order was given to flood the hold, but before it could be executed there was a tremendous roar, and the sailor knew nothing else until he found himself in the water clinging to a fragment of the wreckage that strewed the sea. The ship had been blown up and had sunk at once. Not far from him floated one of the quarter-boats apparently uninjured. He managed to swim to it, and clamber in. There he was able to stand up and look around him. At first he could see no sign of life, but in another moment he heard a faint cry behind him, and, turning, saw a woman clinging to a broken spar. With a bit of broken board he paddled to her and got her into the boat. Like himself, she was unharmed, save by the awful shock and fright. He paddled around and around, but saw no further sign of life. Once a man's body rose near the boat; rose slowly, turned, and sank again, and that was the last they saw of the twoscore men that but a little moment before had been full of life and vigor.

This much I heard the sailor tell, and then stopped him, for he was tired. The woman still sleeps and has showed no signs of consciousness.

March 14.--The sailor, whose name is Richard Jones, was able to crawl out on deck this morning. He completed his story. The young woman, he said, was the only passenger on the _Vulture_. He did not know her name. It had been talked among the crew that she was going out to her lover, an officer in the Indian Army who had been wounded; that she would not wait for the regular East Indiaman, but had managed to secure passage on the _Vulture_. When she realized that she and the sailor, Jones, were the only ones alive of all those that had been on the vanished ship, and that they were quite alone on the ocean, in a small boat, without oars, or sail, or food, or drink, she cried a little and wrung her hands and became very quiet. She took her place in the bow, and there she sat. Jones sat in the stern and paddled clear of the wreckage, and then, using the piece of board for a rudder, kept the boat before the wind. Luckily there was very little sea. He thought that they were in the track of Indiamen, and so kept good hope. He tried to encourage the young woman, but she seemed to prefer silence, and so he kept still. Thus they drifted. The sun beat down upon their unprotected heads. They began to want for water. They did not think so much of food as of water. Jones doesn't know how long they were adrift. He doesn't know when the girl lost consciousness. He remembers that one day she moaned a little, and in the night he thought that he heard her whispering to herself. He thought that she was praying, perhaps. Then he began to lose consciousness. He remembers seeing a beautiful green field, with trees, and a brook running through it. He says that men suffering from thirst on the ocean often have such visions. He remembers nothing else until he opened his eyes and saw me bending over him.

Uncle John reports no change in the condition of the young woman. She lies in a stupor, apparently. The pulse daily grows stronger, he says, and she swallows freely the nourishment administered.

III.

April 2.--It is more than two weeks since I wrote in my journal. I have been ill--a sort of low fever that kept me in my cabin. Nothing serious, Uncle John said, and so it has proved, except that I am very weak. Uncle has been kind, but most of his time has been devoted to that woman. He says that it is a very interesting case. She became conscious a few days ago, and has gained strength since. She will be on deck in a day or two, he thinks. I'm anxious to see her. I want to see if there really is anything familiar in her face. It's fortunate for her that clothing of Mrs. Raymond's is on board. She'd be in a plight, else. I asked Uncle John what her name was. He looked queer, and said that he didn't know. Strange that he hasn't asked her. The sailor, Jones, seems quite recovered and has taken his place among the crew. We were rather short-handed, and the captain was glad enough to have him. He can be of service. But the woman can be nothing but a trouble, to me at least, for I must see her daily, I suppose. And yet I am anxious to see her, too. This fever has left me rather childish as well as weak.

April 3.--Thank God for these pages to which I can talk, else I should go mad, I think. Could you read these words as they flow from my pen, mother, you might well wonder whether I had not indeed gone mad. But I will be quite calm while I tell of what fate, or Satan, or whatever evil power it is, has done for me. I was sitting on the deck this morning, still very weak, when I heard footsteps behind me, and Uncle John's voice saying, "Good-morning, Arthur." I turned and saw him standing near me, and leaning on his arm Helen Rankine! I write these words calmly enough now. Can you imagine what I felt when I saw her? I staggered to my feet, muttered some incoherent words, and would have fallen had not Uncle John sprang to my side and caught me. "Why, what's the matter, Arthur? Calm yourself, my boy. Is it possible that you know this young lady?"

By a supreme effort of will, aided by the memory of that day when we last parted, I drew myself up and bowed, and I said that I had had the great honor of once knowing Miss Helen Rankine, and that I had had no idea that it was she we were fortunate enough to have rescued.

Uncle looked at me in wonder as I said these words with sneering politeness. The girl looked at me questioningly, but there was no shadow of recognition on her face.

"Then your name is Helen Rankine?" said Uncle John kindly, turning toward the girl and speaking as though to a little child.

A troubled look passed over her face, and then she said quietly, "I do not know. I cannot remember."

"Do you know this gentleman, Mr. Arthur Hartley?" he asked in the same kindly way.

Again the troubled look, an apparent effort to seize some elusive thought, and then again the voice I knew so well, but now so unnaturally calm:

"I do not know him."

I stood aghast at what seemed the consummate acting of a heartless and conscienceless woman, and yet on the instant I saw that there was no acting there. Let me stop a moment, mother, and describe her. You remember how beautiful she was, with that rich, dark beauty you once spoke of as "Italian." It was that beauty that enslaved me. You remember that I have written of her appearance as she lay on the deck the day she was saved. The days of illness and quiet in the cabin below had almost obliterated all the ravages done by wind and sun and sea. The olive cheeks were a little darker than of old, and the hands browner. The face was not quite so pure an oval as when you saw it last; the color of lip and cheek not quite so vivid. The large brown eyes had lost the sparkle and the changing light that once pierced my boyish, foolish heart. Clad in a simple gown, belted at the waist and hanging in folds to the deck, her dark hair parted across her broad forehead and confined in a simple knot, and with a strange calm on the face that once expressed her varying moods as they came and went, she seemed to me to be another, a better, an almost unearthly Helen, come to me here to atone for the great wrong that she had done me; and, for the moment, I forgot my hate.

My uncle gave his arm to Helen, and they walked the deck while I watched them. What did it mean, this failure of Helen to recognize me? Was I right in thinking the girl to be Helen Rankine. Yes; I could not be mistaken. That graceful walk, some of its old-time spring and elasticity gone, to be sure, was the walk of Helen; the turn of the lovely neck; the pose of the head were hers. Then the story of the sailor, Jones, the fore-castle gossip that she was going out to India to join her soldier-lover; how well it tallied with what she had told me on that fatal day when she spurned my proffered love. But I would not dwell more on that. I will not now. I must force myself to forget, just for a little time, the past, that I may solve the mystery of the present. My head throbs; my brain is in a whirl.

April 4.--After writing this I threw myself into my berth and tried to think over clearly the strange occurrences of the day. I was aroused by Uncle John asking me if I felt well enough to take a turn with him on deck. I joined him at once, and we paced the deck without speaking. It was a lovely night and the stars filled the heavens. At length Uncle John said, "Arthur, here's a very remarkable case. This poor girl has lost her memory completely, and no wonder, after her terrible sufferings. She cannot remember an event that happened before she opened her eyes in the cabin below. She can talk well, reads readily, shows the breeding of a lady, but as far as the past is concerned, she might as well be a week-old baby. You say that her name is Helen Rankine. Who is Helen Rankine? Where did you meet her?"

Uncle John had never known why I was so ready to give up my dreams of artist life and join him in his Australian scheme. I told him the whole story of my infatuation for Helen and her heartless perfidy. He listened intently. When I had finished, he said:

"My boy, let me say one thing, first of all. On your own evidence, forming my opinion solely from what you have told me, I think you have done a good girl injustice. I don't believe that Helen Rankine coquetted with you. Like many a young fellow before you, you thought that the frank friendliness of a young woman who looked upon you as a boy, though perhaps not your senior in years, was encouragement to make love to her. She thought that you knew of her engagement, so she said, and felt a security that misled you. You are not the first lad that has had such an experience and cursed all women, and vowed that he'd never trust one again. I'll trot your children on my knee yet. Well, so much for the Helen of the past. Now for the Helen of the present, for we might as well call her Helen as anything else."

"But she is Helen; Helen Rankine. I can swear it," I interrupted.

"Well, well. So be it. I confess it looks so. I have taken a physician's liberty, and examined her clothing for marks. I find it marked 'H. R.'"

"Isn't that proof enough?" I asked eagerly.

"Yes. I dare say it is. Still there are other girls whose initials are H. R. You and I have our task. It is to try and lead this poor girl back to the past. The awful experiences and sufferings of those days in the boat have affected her brain. Whether beyond cure or not I know not. Now remember, Arthur," and Uncle John looked at me seriously; "remember, that even if this girl is the girl you think has wronged you, in fact she is not the same girl. She knows no more of you than she knows of me, whom she never saw in her life before. Another thing, if she is Helen Rankine, she is engaged to John Bruce. Perhaps she wears his ring on her finger. You and I as gentlemen are bound to do what we can to deliver her to him as speedily as possible. And I pray God that we may see her meet him in her right mind, the same free-hearted English girl that he is now dreaming of."

I bowed my head, but could not say a word. Is Uncle John right, and have I been a weak, blind fool of a boy, thinking that the girl, who was merely kind, was encouraging me to love her? I feel my face burn at the thought. I can't think clearly yet, but I see my duty.

April 10.--If I lacked proof of the girl's identity, I have it now. Yesterday we sat together on the deck for hours, I trying gently to lead her back to the past. Helen Rankine used to wear several valuable rings. Now she wears but one. "You have a pretty ring," I said, pointing to her hand! How white and dimpled it used to be. How I longed to catch it to my lips, to kiss the pretty rosy-tipped fingers! Her hand! Now brown with wind and sun, but still dimpled and rosy tipped. Like a child she laid it in mine.

"Yes," she said, "it is a pretty ring."

"Where did you get it, Helen?" I asked.

"I don't remember," she said quietly.

"May I look at it?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," and she slipped it from her finger and laid it in my hand.

"What are these letters engraved within?" I asked.

"Are there letters there?" she said. "I didn't know it. So there are. To H. R., from J. B. What does that mean?"

"Don't you know?" I asked. Oh, it was hard to see that calm face, to hear that calm voice. Better the blush and silent avowal of love, even for another, than that blank gaze.

"No. I do not know what those letters mean," she answered.

"Perhaps 'H. R.' stands for your own name," said I.

She smiled like a happy child. "Yes, yes. That must be it. But the 'J. B.,' what do they stand for?"

I hesitated--who would not?

"Perhaps they stand for--for John Bruce," I said slowly, looking her steadily in the eyes. She returned the gaze with the calm confidence of a child.

"Who is John Bruce?" she asked. "I can't remember John Bruce."

My heart gave a great leap, then sank like lead. Am I then such a villain that I rejoice at the thought that Helen Rankine has no memory of her lover? Where is the hate that I boasted of? It has gone. It could not live before the calm eyes of the girl by my side. But I had my duty to do.

"John Bruce is in India, Helen," said I. "Don't you remember? And you were going to him, and when you reached him you were to marry him. He loves you dearly, and you loved him dearly. Can't you remember?"

The troubled look came to the dark eyes and ruffled the calm brow. A faint flush passed across the rich, warm cheeks. Then, like a spoiled child, she shook her head and said:

"No, no, no, no!" with a little pat of the foot and nod at the last "No." "I do not know anything about it at all. I do not know John Bruce, and of course I do not love him. How could I? But I know you, Arthur, and I love you," and she laid her hand in mine, with a pretty smile.

I wonder if I'm the same man that set sail in the _Albatross_ six short weeks ago? The Arthur Hartley then was a mad, foolish boy. The Arthur Hartley now is a grave, serious man. I feel that years and years have passed, instead of weeks. How much I am changed let this prove: I held Helen's hand in mine and answered gently, "I am very glad you love me, Helen. I hope you will ever love me. I certainly love you dearly. I could not love a sister more."

She smiled at this and patted my hand, and then we sat, hand in hand, without speaking, until the shadows deepened on the deck.

May 2.--You have been much in my thoughts of late, dear mother, but you will never know it. You will never see these words. I had thought not to write in this book again, for I feel sure that it will never reach you; but I seem to be urged to keep some record of our eventful voyage. We are lying becalmed far in the Southern Atlantic, so Captain Raymond says. An awful storm that drove us at its will, and before which it seemed possible for no ship to live, has driven us here far out of our course. For six days we have been lying here motionless. The storm that raged with such terrible fury seems to have exhausted all the winds of the heavens. I never knew anything more thoroughly depressing than this calm. Even writing seems a task beyond me. But, indeed, I am not as strong as before the attack of fever. I do not seem to regain my strength. I had in mind to describe the storm. It is beyond my powers. We lost a long boat and a quantity of spars. Two sailors, one of them Richard Jones, saved but to be lost, were washed overboard and never seen again. There is no change in Helen. She is apparently perfectly happy, but it is the happiness of a contented and healthy child. She takes much pleasure in being with me, and sits by the hour with her hand in mine, while I talk of the England that we have left and of the scenes of other days. But nothing awakens the dormant memory. Uncle John has got back to his studies, and talks explosives to any one who will listen.

May 17.--Here we lie, still becalmed. It is horrible! What will come of it all? The sailors are ready to take to the boats and quit the ship, and it requires all of Captain Raymond's firmness and kindness, for he is a kind captain, and all of Mate Robinson's sternness, to deal with the crew. The steward tells me in great confidence that the men say that the _Albatross_ is bewitched, and that Helen is the witch that has done it. I can see that they follow her with black looks, in which is something of fear, as she walks the deck, singing softly to herself and happy as a bird--the only happy soul aboard. Why should she not be happy? She has no past, looks forward to no future. She lives in the present, Nature's own child. The ocean that gave her to us seems to have claimed her as its own. She loves the sea in all its moods. When the storm was at its fiercest and the huge waves swept over us, she insisted on being on deck, and clapped her hands and laughed in glee, as thoughtless of danger as one of Mother Cary's chickens. Now, when this horrible calm is drawing the very life out of us all, she sings and laughs and is merry; or, when not merry, wears a calm, passionless, almost soulless face. I don't wonder that the men think that she is a witch. She has bewitched me more than once.

IV.

May 2l.--I am sitting alone in the cabin writing. It is very late. I hear the steps of the mate as he paces the deck. The calm still holds us in its fearful clasp. Great God! What is to be the end of it all? There has been a break in the monotony of our existence to-day. Uncle John got into a hot discussion with Captain Raymond at the dinner table about the efficacy of the wonderful explosive compound. The captain seemed doubtful. Uncle John was for the instant angry.

"I'll show you, then," he said, and he rushed into the cabin where his boxes are stored, and came out shortly with two tin cans, each holding something less than a pint. He unscrewed the top of one disclosing a brownish powder. "Take care," said the captain, who seemed needlessly cautious, and almost fearful.

"Why, I thought you said it was useless," said Uncle John with a laugh, "and yet you are afraid of it. Look here." He lighted a match and held it close to the powder. A dark smoke arose that instantly extinguished the little flame, and floated off, leaving a queer smell behind. That was all.

"Perfectly harmless, captain," continued uncle, who had now recovered his usual good nature. "Perfectly harmless unless you wet it. Then look out."

The cook had made a sort of dumpling for dinner, and a great lot of it remained. Uncle John took a mess of this dough, for it was little else, squeezed it until it was quite dry and molded it into a ball. "Come with me," he said, "and, Arthur, bring a plate of that dough with you." He took the cans and we followed him to the deck. There he carefully covered the ball of dough with the powder, and, going to the rail, threw it as far as he could out over the placid sea. As the ball struck the water there was a loud explosion and the spray was thrown high into the air. The crew, who had been hanging over the port rail forward, turned and rushed over to see what was up. Uncle John made another ball and threw it with like result.

"Oh, houly torpeter!" growled one of the men, and they turned back to their former places. Uncle John, now evidently anxious to give us thorough proof of the value of his compound, was for throwing more balls, when the boatswain, rolling aft, touched his hat, and said to the captain:

"Please, sur, there's a big shark as has showed his fin hoff the port bow, and if so be that the doctor'll wait a bit with his torpeters, we'll show 'im some fun a-catchin' of it."

"All right, bo'sun," said the captain, and we all went over to the port rail.

"There he is," said the captain, pointing to a sharp, black thing, that, rising just above the water, was cutting quietly through it. "That is his fin, and there's a big shark under it or I'm much mistaken."

The sailors had got a large hook, and had baited it with a piece of salt beef, and made it fast to a stout line with a chain that the fish couldn't bite off. This tempting morsel was flung overboard, and, as it fell with a splash into the water, we saw the fin cut toward it, and then disappear. The next instant there was a great tug at the rope.

"Hurrah! we've got 'um!" yelled the boatswain. "Walk away with 'im now, my hearties."

A dozen sailors had manned the rope, and now started to drag the big fish out of the water. There was a tremendous pull, a great splashing, and then the men tumbled in a heap on the dock, and the hook was jerked sharply over the rail.

"Cuss the luck," growled the boatswain. "The 'ook didn't 'old."

The taste of salt beef evidently suited the shark, for he was soon right alongside, cruising back and forth, looking for more. We could see him distinctly, and a tremendous fellow he was. Again the men baited the hook and dropped it overboard. We saw the big fish dart forward, turn on his side and grab the bait with a sharp snap of his terrible jaws. Again the hook would not catch, and the shark was waiting for more beef. The men were about to make a third attempt when Uncle John started.

"Wait a bit, men," he said. "I've got a hook that will hold. Give me a piece of the meat."

The men fell back and looked eagerly. The cook handed up a big chunk of meat. "Wipe it as dry as you can," said uncle, "and tie it firmly to the rope." When this was done he sprinkled the powder from the can carefully over the meat; then he carried it cautiously to the rail. The shark was cruising back and forth. Uncle lowered the meat slowly into the water, right in front of the monster. He saw the bait and darted at it, and then there was a tremendous report, and the spray flew into our faces as we leaned over the rail. The next moment we saw the big fish floating motionless on the water.

"Blessed if 'e 'asn't blowed 'is 'ead clean hoff," said the boatswain.

It was so. That terrible compound of Uncle John's had needed only the impact of the shark's teeth to explode it with deadly effect. Uncle looked perfectly happy. The effect on Helen was strange. For the first time since she had been with us she seemed to be angry.

"I think you are very cruel," she said to Uncle John, "to kill that beautiful shark. He had not harmed you. I shall not love you any more." As she said this she stepped to my side and grasped my hand, as though she feared uncle and wanted my protection. The men heard her words and the effect was marked. They had been in high good humor over the death of the shark, the sailors' most dreaded enemy, but at these strange words they shrank away with gloomy faces, and I could hear muttered curses, and the words "witch" and "she-devil." That put an end to the good humor that for the first time in days seemed to pervade the becalmed vessel. Uncle John made one more "torpeter" with the little powder that remained in the open can. The other he carried to his cabin. When I left the deck just before beginning this writing the sailors were huddled together forward and eagerly talking, but very quietly. The sea was like a glass in which the stars of this strange southern sky were all mirrored.

* * * * *

Again, impelled by I know not what power, I come to my journal. For what strange eyes am I writing these words? I doubt whether I shall have strength to put down the record that I feel ought to be put down. Perhaps the power that impels me to write at all will give me the needed strength. I have lost the reckoning of the days, but that matters not. After writing the words with which my last entry closed I went to my little cabin and was soon asleep. I was awakened by stealthy feet without my door, followed by sounds of a struggle on deck, two or three pistol shots, curses and groans and the trampling of feet. I jumped from my bunk, threw on some clothing, and hurried out. The large cabin was in total darkness. I rushed to the companion way. As I stepped upon the deck I saw before me a struggling throng, and then there was a crash, and I knew no more for a time. I know now that I was struck on the head by one of the crew who had been watching for me. When I recovered consciousness I was lying bound hand and foot on the deck. It was early daylight, I struggled to rise, but could not stir. I saw the crew carrying bags and casks and clothing and lowering them over the side. Two or three forms lay on the deck, but I could not see who or what they were. I recognized the boatswain's voice giving orders. He asked if there was water enough and food, if the log and chronometer and compasses had been stowed away. It was all confusion, and my brain seemed on fire; but I knew that the crew were preparing to quit the ship. Where was Uncle John, where was Captain Raymond, and where was Helen? At this I again struggled and strove to rise, and the noise I made attracted the boatswain and he came to me.

"You're fast enough, my lad," said he, smiling grimly. "Best lie quiet and listen. Th' lads 'ave 'ad enough of this bediviled ship and the witch that 'as bediviled 'er. So we're goin' to ship our cable and put hoff. You seem so fond o' the witch that we'll leave you with 'er. She'll care for thee, never fear," and he turned on his heel.

I tried to speak, but must have fainted with the effort. When I again became conscious, I was still lying on the deck, but my bonds had been cut, and I managed to stagger to my feet. I looked all around. Not a living being could I see. Just then the sun came up, and as his glowing disc showed above the quiet water, I caught, far away in the south, a faint sparkle, and then saw two small dark spots, that before my straining gaze disappeared. I doubt not that what I saw were the boats containing the crew of the _Albatross_. I turned and looked around the deck. The forms that I had seen were no longer visible, but just aft of the wheel was a piece of canvas covering something. I walked over feebly, for the blow that I had received had shaken me badly, and lifted the canvas. There lay the dead bodies of my dear uncle and Captain Raymond and big First Mate Robinson. Like a man in a dream I covered them again, and again looked about the deck. Where was Helen? Not on the deck. Had the villains taken her with them? I made my feeble way below and went to Helen's cabin. The door was shut. I tried to open it. It was locked. I examined the lock. The key was in it, and on the outside. They had locked her in. I cautiously turned the key, opened the door, and entered. There lay Helen, her dark hair streaming back over the pillow. One round cheek rested softly on her brown, dimpled hand, the other bore a lovely flush. The half-parted lips were like crimson rose-buds, and over her bosom her white nightrobe rose and fell gently. She was asleep. As I stood there she opened her eyes. When she saw me she smiled happily and said in a sweet, sleepy voice, "Is it time to get up, Arthur? Why, how pale you look. Are you ill?" And she rose on one arm and the smile faded away.

"Yes, Helen," I said, as steadily as I could. "It's time to get up. Come into the cabin as quickly as you can. I am not at all well." And I left the little cabin, still like a man in a dream. Helen soon joined me. I asked her if she had slept well. She had. Had she heard no unusual noises in the night? No; she had not awakened once. So it was. Like a tired, healthy child, Helen had slept through all that awful tragedy. I shan't attempt to try and tell of the task I had in making her comprehend our awful situation. She did not comprehend it. She wept bitterly when I told her of the three dead bodies on the deck. She moaned over my "poor, bruised head," and with gentle hands bathed and bound it up. Then she said that she was hungry. We found the lockers in great confusion, but the crew had left food enough of one sort or another to satisfy our immediate needs. There was an awful task before us, and I explained it to Helen. We must consign those dead bodies to the sea. She shuddered at the thought, but, like an obedient child, tried to help me. How I managed to encase those silent forms in canvas I hardly know, but I did, and got them to the side of the ship. Then I got my prayer book and read the blessed burial service, while Helen looked on in troubled wonder. Then came the hardest task of all, but it was done, and the bodies, one after the other, fell with a great splash into the still sea. I had thought to bind heavy weights to the feet, and they sank at once, and Helen and I were left quite alone. I am writing this with great difficulty, for we are dying--dying of thirst. Why I write I do not know. There is no water on board. The sailors, after filling their casks from the great casks in the hold, left the water running. When we sought to draw there was not a drop left. There is a change coming over Helen. She sometimes looks at me strangely. She seems almost shy. I wonder what it is. Is memory coming back? Or has she learned that she is a woman and I a man? But she is not for me. There is John Bruce, and I vowed to take her safely to him, and I shall----. Mother, good----. I can't write more. I see that the end is....

V.

The writing in the little water-soaked book became entirely illegible. Indeed, the last few lines were very indistinct, and showed the failing of mental and physical strength. I sat staring at the yellow page and then looked up at Judson. He was gazing intently at me.

"Well, go on; go on," he said impatiently.

"That's all," said I.

He seized the book from my hands, and turned the leaves feverishly. "Yes, yes. That is all. Why man, we're not much wiser than we were. We've got something, but we haven't solved the mystery of the headless skeletons."

"No, nor are we likely to," said I.

"Not likely to? We must!" said Judson, in a sharp, strained voice. He seemed to be much excited. I looked at my watch.

"It's Sunday morning," said I, and luckily Sunday, I thought. Judson wouldn't be good for much in a trial after such an evening as this. As for myself, I was tired and hungry, and I said so.

"So am I," said Judson, dropping the excited air, but with an effort. "Sit still a moment." He came back soon with a tray on which were cold meat, and bread and butter, and crackers, and Rochefort cheese, and a bottle of Macon Vieux.

"You evidently know what a hungry newspaper man wants in the middle of the night," said I.

"I know what a hungry lawyer wants," and he drew the cork.

"Now," said he, after we had taken the edge off our appetites and were enjoying the Burgundy, "we must know the rest of that story."

"Easier said than done."

"Why so? Does it seem more difficult to get a message directly from Arthur Hartley than to get that journal from the bottom of the ocean? I do not think so. This night's experience has given me a confidence in the power of will over nature that nothing can shake. There is but one obstacle that stands in the way of our success. The woman whom you call the medium was thoroughly prostrated, as you saw. She seemed badly frightened, too. She said that she had never had such an experience: that she felt that she could not live through another. As she expressed it, she felt that she had been the battle ground where two great forces had met and contended. I soothed her as best I could and sent her home. I did not tell her that I thought that she was right. She was. She was the unconscious medium through which will overcame the forces of nature. This evening she must be the medium through which, in obedience to our will, the Spirit of Arthur Hartley shall speak with us."

"Suppose she refuses."

"She will obey me, or rather my will," said Judson quietly. "It's merely a question of whether it is safe to subject her to the ordeal. But as it will be nothing compared with that she has just been through I shall attempt it, if she is at all able to bear it. I must have that mystery solved."

I slept very late that morning and joined the family at the Sunday afternoon dinner; and then went with Judson to the library to smoke.

"It's all right," he said, as soon as we were seated. "She will come this evening."

"Will all those other persons be here?" I asked.

"Oh, no. You and I and the woman only."

It was ten o'clock that evening when Judson entered the library, where I sat reading before the glowing grate, and said:

"She's here. Come into the parlor."

It was with more than ordinary emotions that I followed him. The medium was the only person in the room. The cabinet still stood where it had stood twenty-four hours before. She looked the picture of ill health. Great hollows were beneath the tired eyes, and she moved feebly. She bowed gravely to me, and entered the cabinet. Judson turned the gas down low.

"If you will remain entirely passive," he said softly, "I think we shall get the communication without trouble." There was a calm confidence in his voice, quite different from the intensity of his manner the night before. We sat quietly for many minutes, until I began to grow uneasy. I tried to think of nothing with very poor success, but while I was making the effort strenuously there came from the cabinet a clear, firm voice. Its tones were something like those in which the woman the night before had said: "What do you wish?" but as the voice proceeded it took on a manlier tone, with that indescribable accent we call "English." These were the words:

"Since you wish it, I will finish the story of my life on earth. Listen. When I ceased writing in my book on the _Albatross_ it was because I had lost control of my pen, and of my mind as well. I managed to crawl to the deck. Helen was lying motionless in the shadow of the companion hatch. I threw myself down by her side. She put out her hand and grasped mine, and a flush crossed her face. I was too weak to speak, and thus hand in hand we lay for I don't know how long. Gradually I lost consciousness, perhaps in sleep. At all events, my spirit was not free. The frail body still had strength enough to retain it. I was aroused by something dropping on my face. As consciousness came back I saw that the sky had become overcast; that a cool breeze was blowing, and that a gentle rain was falling. Helen was sitting erect and with parted lips drinking in the grateful rain-laden air. I tried to rise, but could not. She was much stronger than I, and at my direction went below and brought blankets and clothes, which she spread on the deck that they might catch the falling drops. She seemed quite vigorous, and already I felt my own strength coming back. Soon she was able to squeeze water from a blanket into a small can which stood by the mast. We were in too great agony of thirst to think of small matters of neatness. She offered the can to me.

"'Drink, yourself, Helen,' I said.

"'No,' she answered, with a smile. 'No, you need it most.' And kneeling by my side, she slipped her arm under my head, and with her other hand held the water to my lips.

"I drank eagerly. The draught was life to me. Never had water such strength-giving power. I hardly noticed that it left a queer taste upon my lips. I sat erect. Helen, with her arm still around my neck, drank what remained in the can. Then she looked me full in the face. There was a new expression in the lovely eyes; the old vague, calm look had gone. A deep flush was on her brow as she spoke:

"'Arthur,' she said, and there was a tremor in the rich, deep voice. 'Arthur, my memory has come back. No, do not speak, but hear me. The past all returned the night after that awful day when we buried those dead bodies in the sea. I now remember and understand all that you and the dear doctor said to me. I remember our parting in England; I remember John Bruce; I remember why I set out for India so suddenly. I heard that he was wounded. I thought duty called me. For I did not love him, Arthur. How could I? I had not seen him since we were children, and our fathers betrothed us. But, Arthur, a higher power than hate or love has given us to each other, and I can tell you, dear, that I love you. Oh, I love you! My darling; my noble, faithful darling! Oh, Arthur, Arthur!'

"She threw herself upon my breast with burning face and streaming eyes. The blood leaped through my veins. She raised her sweet face and our lips met for the first time.

"There was an awful crash, and our freed spirits took their happy flight together. We had drank from the can that had contained Uncle John's explosive. A little of the powder had clung to the can, floated on the water, and adhered to our lips when we drank. The impact of that first ecstatic kiss had exploded the compound and our heads were blown from our shoulders. That's all. Good-by."

THE BUSHWHACKER'S GRATITUDE.

BY KIRKE MUNROE.

As we sat over our after-dinner coffee and cigars in the major's cosy library, one evening last winter, I discovered my host to be in a reminiscent mood, and ventured to ask him a question that I had frequently meditated. He smiled and was silent for a moment before answering.

"Yes, I have, as you suggest, experienced a number of what may be termed adventures since entering Uncle Sam's service. Of them all, however, I have no difficulty in recalling one that stands out pre-eminently as the most thrilling experience of my life;" and then he gave this narrative:

"Shortly after the close of the war, I was ordered to a remote section of the South, not far from the Gulf coast, to investigate certain claims against the Government that involved what, for that part of the country, was a large sum of money. As, for several reasons, it was deemed advisable that my real business there should be kept secret, I assumed the rôle of a settler, took possession of a vacant tract of land, built a two-pen log cabin, engaged a negro servant, and proceeded to explore the country with a view to making the acquaintance of my neighbors.

"The place in which I was located was remote from railroads or regular routes of travel, and was about as wild and lawless a district as could well be found east of the Mississippi. It was a limestone country, abounding in sink-holes, caverns, and underground rivers, and thickly covered with a primeval growth of timber. A few clearings at long intervals marked the fields and garden patches of its widely scattered inhabitants, who were as primitive a set of people as I had ever encountered. During the war it had been a very hot-bed of bushwhacking, and its men had plundered and killed on both sides, with a slight predilection in favor of Southerners and a bitter hatred of Yankees. Although I carefully concealed my connection with the army, and was most guarded in my remarks whenever forced to allude to the war, I could not hide the fact that I was a Northern man. On that account alone I was from the first an object of suspicion and close scrutiny to my neighbors, by most of whom my friendly overtures were received with a sullen unresponsiveness that was, to say the least, discouraging.

"My nearest neighbor was a giant of a man named Case Haffner, who, as I learned before leaving Washington, was the acknowledged leader of the district and foremost in all its deeds of deviltry. He, better than any other, could furnish me with the information I wished to acquire. For this reason I had taken up my abode as near to him as the unwritten law of the country, which forbade neighbors to live within less than a mile of each other, allowed. In vain did I strive to cultivate his acquaintance. He would have nothing to do with me. Only by stratagem did I succeed in meeting him, when he simply ignored my presence and walked away without a word. He lived alone with his son Abner, a bright, keen-witted lad of about fifteen, the pride of his father's life and the sole object of his ambitions. With this boy I also tried to scrape an acquaintance, hoping to win the father's confidence through him, but to no purpose. He either eluded me or fled like a startled deer if by chance we met. While others of the neighborhood sought my house with a view to satisfy their curiosity, with Case Haffner and his son 'Ab,' I could hold no intercourse.

"So matters stood at the end of a month, when, late one evening, on returning from an all day's ride to a remote corner of the settlement I was overtaken by a terrific thunder storm while still some distance from home. I was accompanied by Cæsar, my negro servant, and we were on horseback. Bewildered by the storm we lost our way, and after a half hour of hopeless wandering, floundering and general discomfort I was more than thankful to discover a feeble light twinkling in the window of a log cabin.

"Receiving no response to my repeated knockings at the door, I pushed it open and entered. I had not recognized the cabin and did not know until I saw Case Haffner sitting on a stool before the great mud-chinked fire-place, that it was his. The man's face was buried in his hands, and he did not look up at my entrance, nor in any way betray a consciousness of my presence. As I glanced about the rudely-furnished room in search of Abner, my eye fell upon a bed on which lay the motionless form of the boy. The light was dim, and fancying him to be asleep, I called him by name.

"At this the man by the fire sprang to his feet, and glaring at me like a wild beast, cried out with a terrible oath that his son was dead, and for me to be gone before he killed me for intruding on his misery. Instead of obeying him I stepped to the bedside. The boy was to all appearance lifeless, but disregarding the father's protest, and making a careful examination of the body, I became convinced that the vital spark had not yet fled. He had been stricken with one of the quick fevers of that country and had apparently succumbed to it. With a slight medical knowledge gained in the army, I saw that there was still a chance of saving him. Cæsar was at once dispatched to fetch my traveling medicine case, while I heated a kettle of water. Case Haffner meantime regarding my movements with an apathetic indifference. To make a long story short, I succeeded before morning in restoring the boy to life and a healthful sleep. At the end of a week, during which I visited him daily, his recovery was assured.

"In all this time, though the father watched my every movement with a catlike intentness, he never spoke to me if he could help it nor did he express the slightest gratitude for the service I had rendered him. Thus, when the boy was so far recovered that I had no longer an excuse for visiting the Haffners' cabin, I was apparently as far from gaining their friendship or confidence as I had been before the night of the storm.

"This state of affairs continued unchanged when at the end of three months from my arrival in that place I found my business there nearly concluded. I had established the validity of the claims I had been sent to investigate, had reported upon them, and had been ordered to settle them with the money that would be forwarded to me for that purpose. At the same time I imagined that all this business had been conducted with such secrecy as to be unsuspected by a human being beside myself and my principals in the matter. Thus thinking, I went alone, and without a feeling of insecurity, to the nearest railway station, where I expected to receive the money. It did not arrive on that day; but instead I found a cipher dispatch stating that it would be sent a week later. Accepting the situation with as good grace as possible, I purchased some provisions, placed them in the canvas bag that I had provided for the money and returned to my temporary forest home.

"Late that night I was awakened from a sound sleep by a knock at the door of my room. In answer to my inquiry of 'Who's there?' came a request in the voice of my negro man, that I would give him some medicine to relieve 'de colic misery dat was like to kill him.' As he had made similar requests, with which I had complied, several times before, I unsuspiciously opened the door.

"The candle that I had just lighted gave me a glimpse of Cæsar, with ashen face and the muzzle of a revolver pressed against his head. At the same moment a pistol was leveled at my own face and I was seized and bound by two masked men. In vain did I demand the meaning of this outrage. No answer was given, and I was led outside, while a hasty but thorough search was made of every portion of the cabin. It was, of course, a fruitless one, and after a while the two men who made it rejoined the one who was guarding me.

"Now one of them spoke, and in a voice which in spite of its disguised tone I at once recognized as that of Case Haffner said, 'You mought as well give us that money, Major, fer we're bound to have it, and the quicker you surrender it the easier we'll let you off.'

"I answered that I had no money; that it had not arrived. They replied that they knew all about my business, and that being closely watched I had been seen to bring that money, which they knew I expected to receive, home from the railway station the evening before.

"Finally their leader said: 'Well, Major, ef you are bound not to own up till we force you to, we'll have to try a dose of the Black Hole, and I reckon that'll fetch you to terms quicker'n most anything.'

"I had heard of the Black Hole, and the suggestion thrilled me with horror. It was a pit in the lime rock reputed to be of fabulous depth and was located at some distance from my cabin in one of the most impenetrable of the forest recesses. From it, so the negroes had told me, issued uncanny moanings and groans which they attributed to the ghosts of those who they declared had been flung into it by the bushwhackers when they wished to effectually remove all traces of some of their numerous deeds of blood.

"I protested and made promises, but to no purpose. My money or the Black Hole was the only answer I received, as I was hurried away through the forest. No other word was spoken, and, left to my own bitter reflections, I took no note of the direction in which we were going, nor of the distance traversed. When we at length halted I became conscious of a hollow moaning sound that seemed to come from the earth at my feet.

"Once more the question was asked, 'Will you give in, Major, and tell us where the money is, or shall we drop you into the back door of hell?'

"I answered, 'For God's sake, gentlemen, believe me when I say that I have received no money. If I had I would gladly give it as the price of my life.'

"A mocking laugh was their only reply. In another moment a slender rope was knotted under my pinioned arms and a sudden push left me swinging helplessly in the mouth of the awful pit beside which we had halted.

"'We'll wait here just one hour, Major,' came to me in Case Haffner's voice, 'and give you a chance to consider the situation. If you decide to let us have the money inside of that time, jest holler, and we'll pull you up. If you decide to go to hell and take the greenbacks with you, why, we'll jest have ter bid you good-by, that's all.'

"Then I was slowly lowered down, down, down, through the blackness. So slow was my descent that I seemed to be suspended for hours and to sink miles into the heart of the earth. The pain of the slender cord cutting into my flesh was well-nigh intolerable, and I bear livid evidences of it to this day; with each moment the moaning, gurgling, and groaning from the unknown depths into which I was sinking became more distinct and horrible.

"Suddenly, those above let go of the rope and with a yell of despair I dropped, I do not know how far, into water that closed above my head. As I rose to the surface, choking and gasping for breath, I felt that I was being swept forward by a powerful current, and as I again sank my feet touched bottom. A moment later I stood in water up to my shoulders and again breathed freely. For some time I was confused beyond the power of thought by the hollow roar of the black waters rushing through those awful caverns. All surrounding space seemed filled with snarling, formless monsters, cautiously advancing and making ready to spring at me. Even now I often awake at night with the horror of that moment strong upon me. It was so unendurable that I resolved to end it. It was with great difficulty that I maintained my footing. I could not do so much longer. Why should I attempt to? There was absolutely no hope of escape. I tried to pray 'Oh, Lord Jesus, receive my soul.' Then my muscles relaxed and I was swept away by the rushing torrent.

"I have no idea how far I was carried before my feet again touched bottom, this time in water that was not above my waist. I had closed my eyes. Now I opened them. A bright light was swinging to and fro not a hundred feet from me. I stared at it blankly and with little interest, only wondering with a languid curiosity what sort of a subterranean _ignis fatuus_ it might be, when suddenly my bewildered senses were startled into renewed activity by the sound of a shout. It was a human voice uttering a long-drawn 'Hello-o-o!' that echoed and reechoed weirdly through the cavernous depths about me. I essayed to answer, but could not. Then I slowly made my way through the shoaling water toward the light.

"In another minute I stood beside a boy, the one whose life I had saved two months before, and as he cut the thongs that bound my arms he said cheerily:

"'It's all right, Major. Paw'lowed you'd be coming along this yere way 'bout this time o' night, en' telled me to shorely be on hand to meet up with yer. Now, ef yo'll foller me, we'll be outen this direckly.'

"The boy was standing in the mouth of a narrow passage, that, free from water, led away almost at right angles to the main channel of the underground river. It ended at a well-like opening in which stood a rude ladder, climbing this, we emerged through a well concealed trap door into the very room where Abner Haffner had laid at the point of death two months before."

"Is that all?" I asked, as the major paused and lighted a fresh cigar.

"Yes, it's all of that story. I could not cause the arrest of the gang, even had I known who composed it, without causing that of their leader, and from the moment that blessed light illumined the black waters of that underground river I would not have harmed Case Haffner for anything the world holds best worth having. No; by daylight I was well out of that section of country, nor have I ever since set foot in it."

"Have you ever heard again from that boy?"

"Who, Abner? Well, I should say I had. I put him through college, and he is in Congress to-day. If I should tell you his real name you would instantly recognize it as that of one of the smartest men ever sent to Washington from the far South."

THE END OF ALL.

BY NYM CRINKLE.

The difficulty that I experience in complying with your request, dear spirit, springs from the terrestrial limitations of thought and expression, from which, as you may well know, I have not been long enough with you to free myself.

I shall, however, give you a plain narrative of the events attending the extinction of life on our planet, asking you only to remember that I am doing it just as I would have done it, were it possible, for a fellow human being while on earth, using the phraseology and the terrestrial time divisions with which I am most familiar.

The circumstance which at our last intercourse I was trying to explain to you was simply this: In the early summer of the year 1892 a sudden interruption of navigation occurred on the Pacific coast, which, curiously enough, attracted very little attention outside of scientific circles. I was living at the house of my wealthy friend, Judge Brisbane, in Gramercy Park. To tell you the truth, I was in love with his beautiful daughter, of whom I shall have to speak more fully to you, for she was intimately associated with me in the appalling scenes which you desire me to describe.

I was sitting in the Judge's library on the night of June 25. His daughter was present, and I had been conversing with her in an undertone while the Judge read the evening papers. He suddenly laid down the paper, took off his spectacles, and, turning round in his chair, said to me: "Did you see the brief dispatch in the morning papers two days ago from San Francisco, saying that all the eastern-bound vessels were overdue on that coast?"

I replied at once that I had not noticed it.

"It is astonishing," he said, "that in our present system of journalism the most important events connected with the welfare of mankind receive the slightest attention from the newspapers, and the trivialities of life are most voluminously treated. A movement in the iron trade that affects millions of homes gets a brief paragraph in small type, and the quarrel of a ballet girl with her paramour receives illuminated attention down whole columns. Here is something taking place in the Pacific Ocean of surpassing interest to the race, and nobody pays the slightest attention to it except, perhaps, the consignees and shipping clerks."

"What is it?" we both asked, with the languid interest that young people, having an overmastering personal affair on hand, would be apt to take in matters of national or universal importance.

The Judge got up, and going to a side table, where he kept his papers piled in chronological order, pulled out a recent issue of a morning journal, and after looking it over searchingly a moment, said:

"Here. I should think you would notice such a paragraph as this." Then he read, as I recollect, a telegraphic dispatch to this effect:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 23.--Considerable anxiety is felt here in commercial circles by the non-arrival of any eastward-bound vessels for a week. The steamship _Cathay_ of the Occidental Line is overdue four days. An unusual easterly wind has been blowing for twenty-four hours. Weather mild.

"That dispatch, you will perceive," said the Judge, "was sent two days ago. Now here, on the 25th, I read in the evening paper another dispatch from San Francisco, hidden away at the bottom of a column of commercial news. Listen to this:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 25.--The entire suspension of travel from the West continues to excite the gravest apprehensions. Nothing but coastwise vessels have come in during the past eight days. The U. S. cruiser _Mobile_ left Honolulu three weeks ago for this coast. There is no official intimation of a storm in the Chinese seas."

The Judge laid the paper down, and regarded us both a moment in silence, as if expecting to hear some remark that indicated our suddenly awakened curiosity.

I don't think we responded with any adequate interest to the occasion. Miss Brisbane did, indeed, stare at her father in her dreamy, abstracted way a moment, and then got up, and, going to the open window, began to arrange the curtains, as if relinquishing whatever problem there was to the superior acumen of the masculine mind.

I think I said that it looked as if there had been a cyclone somewhere, and if there had we should in all probability get the accounts of it soon enough.

"But, young man," replied the Judge, with his majesterial emphasis, "cyclones do not extend from the fiftieth degree of north latitude to the fortieth degree of south latitude, and vessels are due at San Francisco from Melbourne and Japan."

"What, then, other than a storm at sea could have caused a detention of all these vessels?" I asked, and I must have unwittingly betrayed in the tone of my voice, or the expression of my face, that considerate superciliousness with which youth regards the serious notions of mature philosophers, for the Judge, putting his gold spectacles upon his nose, and regarding me over the top of them a moment, said rather severely:

"Other than the known and regular phenomena of this planet do not interest young men. If I could answer your question there would be no special interest in the matter."

I mention these trivial incidents because, insignificant as they may seem, they were the first ripples of that disaster which was soon enough to overwhelm us all, and to show you what were the only premonitions the world had of the events which were to follow.

On June 26, the subject did not occur to me. A hundred other things of far more immediate consequence to me occupied my attention. A young man who is preparing to get married is not apt to take somber views of anything. Nor is he very apt to allow the contumacy of age in his prospective father-in-law to aggravate him. It was a pardonable freak, I thought, in a man who had retired in most respects from the active world, to dogmatize a little about that world now that he judged it through his favorite evening paper. When, therefore, on the night of the 26th, while at the tea-table, the Judge broke out again about the meteorological wave on the Pacific coast, his daughter Kate and I exchanged a rapid but furtive glance which said, in the perfect understanding of lovers, "There comes the old gentleman's new hobby again, and we can well afford to treat it leniently."

The Judge had the damp evening paper in his hand, and he disregarded the steaming cup of tea which his daughter had poured for him.

"Well," he said, with a toss of self-satisfied import. "Now the newspapers are waking up to the significance of the California news." He then read from the paper, as nearly as I can recollect, something like the following:

SAN FRANCISCO, June 26.--There is an intense and growing anxiety on this coast with respect to the non-appearance of any eastward-bound vessels. The breeze from the east continues, and is unprecedented.

"Now, I should like to know," said the Judge, as he laid down the paper and took up his tea-cup, "why a breeze from the east in California should be unprecedented."

"Because," I ventured to remark, "it usually blows from the sea at this season."

"Nonsense," exclaimed the Judge with vigor. "A variation for a few days in wind or weather is a common occurrence everywhere. Fancy a message sent all over the world from the West Indies that the trade winds were six days late, or a telegram from Minnesota that the winter frosts had been interfered with for a week by pleasant sunshine. No, sir. The event of importance to the Californian at this moment is the mysterious something that has happened out at sea, and there is no excuse for his associating a summer breeze from the east with it, except that there is something peculiar about that breeze that associates it in the mind with the predominant mystery."

I smiled. "You will pardon me, Judge, but it seems to me," I said, "that you are trying to invest the whole affair with an occult significance that is subjective. I suppose that in a few hours the matter will be explained and forgotten."

In a moment we were in one of those foolish little wrangles in which, so far as argument is concerned, the younger man is at a great disadvantage, when the elder, however unreasonable his claims, enforces them with the advantage of age and position. I remember that the desire to convince Kate on the one hand that I was free from what I conceived to be her father's unreasonableness, and sustain my independence of views on the other hand, led me to say much more than was polite, for I exasperated the old gentleman, and with a curt and not altogether complimentary remark he got up and left the room.

The moment he was gone I turned to the daughter and laughingly said: "Well, my dear, I am afraid I have offended your father without intending it, but you at least understand me, and are free from his superstition."

To my surprise she regarded me with a serious air, and replied: "I do not know what you mean by superstition. My father believes that something has happened, and I feel that he is right."

"You do not mean to tell me," I said, "that you believe anything has happened that can concern us?"

She made no reply. I looked at her with some astonishment, and wondered if I had offended her by opposing her father's childish views.

"Perhaps," I persisted, "you, too, think I am stupidly unreasonable because I will not consent to be dishonestly chimerical."

I well remember the look of sad reproach with which she silently regarded me, and I well remember, too, the thought that came into my mind. I said to myself: "This is the same obduracy that her father has shown. Odd it is that I never noticed the trait in her before." Then I added, with an equal obduracy that I was not conscious of:

"Perhaps you, too, have discovered some peculiarity of good sense in me that is offensive, and you are afraid that something will happen if we----"

Here she interrupted me in her quiet, resolute, and reproachful way.

"Something has happened," she said.

I was amazed. If I had suddenly discovered that the woman I loved was unfaithful to me it could not have produced, in my frame of mind at that moment, a greater shock. It seemed to me then that the wooing of months, the confidence and affection of a year, were to be sacrificed in a moment of infatuated stubbornness. The very thought was so unnatural that it produced a revulsion in my own feelings.

"My darling," I said, as I went toward her impulsively, "we are playing the unworthy part of fools. Nothing can ever happen that will make us love each other less, or prevent you from being my wife."

I put my arm around her in the old familiar way. She was passive and irresponsive. She stood there, limply holding the curtain, with one white arm upraised, her beautiful head bent over and her eyes cast down so that I could not look into her face. This stony obduracy was so new and unlike her that I withdrew my arm and stepped back a little to regard her with astonishment, not unmingled with pique. At that moment she lifted her head slowly, and as she looked at me with a dreamy and far-away pathos I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

"It seems to me," she said, with a voice that sounded as if it was addressed to an invisible phantom way beyond me. "It seems to me that I shall never be your wife!"

I must have stared at her several seconds in silence. Then I said:

"You are ill. You are not yourself. When you have recovered your normal condition I will come back."

I snatched a kiss from her lips, that were strangely cold, and rushed from the house.

It was not till the next morning, when I woke up after a short and disturbed sleep, that my mind reverted to the cause of all this purely sentimental disagreement, and I felt a strong desire to have events prove that the Judge was slightly monomaniacal, and that I was right. I went to Riccadonnas' for my breakfast and got all the morning papers, as usual, but this time with a distinct confidence that the news would be the best vindication of my good sense, and that I should yet have a good laugh at the Judge.

I opened the paper as I sipped my coffee, and the first thing my eyes fell on were the headlines of a dispatch from St. Louis. I read them with an inexplicable sense of something sinking in me. As I recall them they ran as follows:

"Strange news from the West. All communication west of Salt Lake City ceases. Meteorological puzzle. What is the matter with the wires?"

Then followed the dispatch, which I have not forgotten:

ST. LOUIS, June 26, 8 P. M.--A dispatch received here from Yuma on the Texas Pacific announces that no eastern-bound train has come in since morning, and all attempts to open communication by telegraph with points west of that place have failed. It is the opinion of railroad men that a great storm is raging in California. Weather here pleasant, with a steady, dry wind from the east blowing.

Immediately following this was another news item which I can quote from memory:

DENVER, June 26, 9 P. M.--Intelligence from Cheyenne is to the effect that railway travel and telegraphic communication west of Pocatello on the Union Pacific and Ogden and on the Central Pacific have been interrupted by a storm. The telegraph wires are believed to be in good condition, but up to nine o'clock there has been no return current.

I read these paragraphs over three or four times. Ordinarily I should have passed them by and given my attention to other and more congenial news. But now a dull fear that events were conspiring to widen the breach between myself and the Brisbanes focussed my interest on them. There was that easterly wind blowing again; was I, too, growing superstitious? I turned over all the papers. The news was the same in all, but there was not an editorial paragraph of comment in any of the sheets, which, indeed, teamed with all the details of active commercial, political, and social life.

I went down town after eating my breakfast and found that the intelligence had not awakened any public attention that was observable. The two or three persons to whom I spoke with regard to it treated it as one of the passing sensations of the hour that would be explained sooner or later. It was not till the evening papers of the 27th came out that the matter began to be discussed. The dispatches in these papers were of a nature to arouse widespread anxiety. It was very obvious from their construction and import that the feeling west of the Mississippi was more intense than had up to this time been suspected. The columns of the papers were filled with brief but rather startling telegrams from various points. Denver, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, St. Paul, St. Louis, and Chicago sent anxious sentences which had a thrill of trepidation in their broken phrases. And it was easy to see that this feeling of deep concern increased with each dispatch from a point further west.

Telegrams sent to St. Louis, Chicago, and St. Paul represented the condition of anxiety in Ogden and Pocatello to be bordering on excitement. Fears were entertained, the dispatches said, of a "meteorological cataclysm," and thousands who had friends either on the coast or in transit were besieging the telegraph offices in vain.

The hurried comments of the evening papers on the news were singularly unsatisfactory and non-committal. "The unprecedented storm that is now raging on the Pacific slope," I read, "and which has temporarily cut off communications with the far West, will by its magnitude fill the country with the most serious apprehensions." "The earliest news from California, which shall give us the details of the storm," said another paper, "will be looked for with eagerness, and will be promptly and fully furnished to our readers."

As curious as anybody could be to know what kind of a storm it was that had stopped railroad travel from Idaho to Mexico, and remarking with surprise that the Signal Office utterly refused to recognize a great storm anywhere, I dismissed the subject from my mind with the reflection that there would in all probability be explanatory news in the morning, and resolved to make my usual visit to the Brisbane family.

To my surprise, Kate received me cordially, and with no other allusion to the unpleasantness of the night before than a demure remark that she was afraid she had offended me.

"Let us not refer to it at all," I said, "and thus avoid making idiots of ourselves."

"I am glad you came to-night," she remarked, after a moment's silence, "for I wanted to tell you of the change we are going to make."

A little pang darted through me. It was said so seriously.

"What is it, my dear," I asked, trying to be as affectionate as if the conditions had not changed.

"My father and I have determined to go to Europe."

"To Europe!" I repeated, aghast. "You surely do not mean it?"

"Yes," resolutely. "He wanted to consult you about it, but was afraid you would disagree with his plans."

"And when did he make up his mind to take this sudden move?"

"This morning."

"And you intend to go with him?"

"Yes, and I was going to ask you to go, too."

"When do you propose to go?"

"Immediately."

It was evident to my mind now that this old man was a panic-stricken monomaniac, and had infected his daughter with his fears.

"Kate," I said, as I took her by her hands and pulled her to the sofa beside me, "you are running away from something; it is not from me, is it?"

"I want you to go with us," she answered.

"But you knew when you asked me that I could not go so suddenly. You expected me to refuse."

"No," she said, "I expect you to consent."

"Be careful. In a moment of bravado I may take you at your word, at any cost!"

She caught hold of me. "Do," she said, tremulously, and I felt a little shiver in her hand. "Do, do."

"I would rather go with you than lose you," I said at a hazard, "and if you are determined to go, I believe I will accompany you if your father will consent."

"We are determined," she calmly replied.

"But I must put my affairs in order," I suggested.

"How many hours will it take you?"

"Hours?" I repeated. "You would not like to start to-night, surely?"

"Yes," she answered, "I would gladly start to-night."

My patience was giving way very fast at this imperturbable obduracy. "Perhaps," I said, "you will give me some adequate reason for a haste that I cannot comprehend."

She did not answer. She was listening, with her head averted, and she held up her hand for me to listen also, as if that were her answer. Then there came through the open window the hoarse cry of a distant newsboy who was bellowing an "extra."

There was something weird in her attitude and action, connecting, as they did, her motives with that discordant, ominous cry.

"It's an extra," I said, as unconcernedly as possible. "I'll get a copy. There may be some good news for you," and I made a move toward the window.

"Don't," she said, quietly. "We were talking about going to Europe. Pa is not familiar with the business of securing passages, and you are. You could relieve him of a great deal of worry, and if you would go with us----"

"Kate," I said, "do you want me to go?"

"Yes, I do," she replied. "I do not want to leave you here."

"Then," I said, "I will go. I will see your father in the morning and tell him that I will attend to the whole business of securing passages. I will set about arranging my affairs at once."

She then let me plague her a little about her timidity, and after a half hour of playful badinage on my part I came away, with a parting promise on my lips to lose no delay in making the arrangements for our departure.

Such, however, was not my intention. I felt sure that the Judge and his daughter would change their minds if I could only manage to delay matters a few days. To go running off to Europe at a moment's notice would be utter folly for me.

As I left the house I heard the voices of the newsboys in various keys still calling the extras. I bought a paper and read it under the gaslight of the church on Twentieth Street. "Display" headlines announced, "As Silent as the Grave; Nothing Heard from the Pacific. Great Excitement in Chicago and St. Louis." I must have stood there ten minutes poring over the strange news. An expedition in a special train had been sent west from Yuma that day, with railroad men and doctors. It had left at 3 P. M. The train reached Mesquite in less than an hour, and word was sent back from that station, "All right here; track clear; will reach the springs at 9 P. M." A dispatch from Yuma sent at 10 o'clock and received at St. Louis said, "Nothing further heard from the special." News from Chicago, where the excitement appeared to be momentarily growing, reflected intelligence from Denver, St. Paul, and Kansas City, and it was vain to ignore the fact that the entire West was in an alarming condition of anxiety. A special train was fitting out at Cheyenne under Government orders to start in the morning with a corps of Signal Service men, army officers, and electricians. It was to go provided with every scientific appliance, and to carry an insulated cable to be paid out from the car. The accounts said that the people were all on the streets in Cheyenne, and an enormous mob surrounded the station where the preparations were making.

For the first time I felt, as I threw the paper away, what I can only call a sense of misgiving. As I walked up the deserted avenue this feeling grew upon me, and when I reached Twenty-third Street, on my way to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a sudden and entirely new reflection made me stop unconsciously as I turned it over in my mind. "If this strange news has affected Judge Brisbane and his daughter so seriously, why may it not be affecting millions of other people similarly? If there is at this moment a panic in the West, how long will it take the reflex wave to reach New York?"

The next morning events, or at least the publication of them, had reached that condition which arrests public attention everywhere. The news from the West swamped all else in the morning journals. The editors, by their work, now acknowledged that the mysterious silence on the Pacific Slope was by far the most important subject for consideration before the world. The moment I glanced at the sheets I saw that there was but one theme in the journalistic mind.

Two days had passed, and the silence was unbroken. Never before in the history of the world had the absence of news become such important news. Public attention was now mainly centered on the attempt to get a train of observation through from Cheyenne.

There was a hopeful spirit to most of the accounts, as if it was believed that science would unravel the mystery. But there was nothing from any quarter of the globe that as yet afforded the feeblest gleam of comfort. The Government train was to start early on this, the morning of the 28th, and the papers were only able to furnish details of the preparation and reports of the public excitement in Cheyenne and Denver. The officers on the train were to send dispatches from every station west of Pocatello. They were sagacious, experienced men, and the expedition was under the direction of the well-known engineer, General Albert Carrall.

I felt as I read the accounts that these men would probably clear up the mystery, and I resolved to delay engaging the passages on the ocean steamer until the next day. So I wrote a carefully worded note to Judge Brisbane, informing him that I would attend to the matter immediately. Had I then had the slightest knowledge of the cumulative rapidity with which a panic moves I would not have taken this risk. But my whole object was to gain time, with the hope that something would occur to change the minds of my two timid friends.

On the night of the 28th I avoided the Brisbane establishment, although my desire drew me in that direction. I resolved to wait until the morrow, and if nothing happened to change the determination of the Judge to go to Europe, to then make my arrangements to go with him and Kate. That night there was a visible change in the metropolis. The theaters were deserted, men and women were congregated at the corners and were walking in the roadways--a sure indication in a great city of some popular disturbance. The bulletins and news centers were crowded, and the mystery of the great silence was being discussed by everybody. One thing struck everybody with a vague terror, and it was the accounts of the strange wind that was now blowing at Cheyenne and Denver. One special correspondent at Cheyenne said "that it seemed to him that the atmosphere of the earth, influenced by some incomprehensible suction, was all rushing to an unseen vortex. It was not in any sense a disturbance of the atmosphere that we usually call a wind, but a steady, silent draught. And the spectacle of trees bent over and held all day by the pressure, but unfluttered and unrelieved by fluctuant variations, filled them with wonder and dread."

I got up early on the morning of the 29th, for I had slept lightly and fitfully. To my surprise I found that almost everybody else was up. It made me realize, as I had not done before, the feverish tension of public expectation. The news, if news it can be called, was startling. Let me try and repeat it to you just as it was presented to my sense. The special train, upon which the eyes of the whole country were fixed, had been heard from. It had gone west from Cheyenne and passed through Pocatello without interruption. Then followed the dispatches received from it at Cheyenne as it passed the stations beyond Pocatello. They were in this order and to this effect:

MICHANO, 10 A. M.--All right. Instruments working well. Track clear. Inhabitants appear to be moving east. No intelligence of a definite character obtained. Shoshone 108 miles west. Expect to make it in four hours.

BANNOCK, 2:30 P. M.--Conditions unchanged. Passed moving settlers all the way. They are going east with chattels. Wind from the east has the pressure without the violence of a gale. Party in good spirits.

SUNSHINE, 3:15.--Vast herds of wild cattle now impeding progress. Wind increasing. Road otherwise clear.

AMERICAN FALLS, 4:40.--Signs of the exodus decreasing. Country strewn with household goods. Reports here that all the teams that went out on the roads west have not returned. Expect to hear something definite from Minidoka.

MINIDOKA, 6:10.--Electrical and barometrical indications unchanged. Signs of life disappearing. Party in excellent spirits, and eager to reach the facts.

The next dispatch was from Cheyenne, and was sent at eight o'clock. It simply said, "Nothing further heard from Government party. Wire in good order."

Then followed two telegrams of gruesome brevity and significance:

POCATELLO, 9 P. M.--Nothing here.

CHEYENNE, 10 P. M.--Nothing has come over the special wire up to this hour. Microphonic tests at Pocatello indicate that the train is still moving. Electrical tests indicate that the current is unbroken.

Finally there was a special message from the New York _Star's_ correspondent at Cheyenne, dated 11 P. M. It was about to this effect:

The current on the Government wire was broken at 10:40. Delicate tests show that the wire is now grounded. The dire conclusion of experts here is that the train ran from some point west of Minidoka from about 6:15 to 10:40 without human control, and then met with an accident. At the rate at which it was moving the train must have reached Shoshone. Terrible excitement here.

My keen sense detected in the newspaper itself certain infallible little signs that the news had disturbed the precision and routine of the office. Lines of type were in the wrong place, and typographical errors made it difficult to get the exact sense. Dispatch after dispatch, all bearing the same import of panic, was huddled into the column. From St. Louis the announcement was:

An unprecedented excitement here over the news from Cheyenne. The authorities appear to have lost their heads, and are unable to preserve order. Eastward-bound trains are carrying away people at a mob rate. We are in the midst of chaos.

From Chicago the intelligence was similarly appalling. "A panic prevails here," said the dispatch. "Impelled by a senseless apprehension of disaster, people have lost their reason. The Mayor has just issued a call upon the best citizens to assist him in preserving order."

It required no news expert to see that all the issues of life were temporarily suspended by the tremendous and growing interest in this stupendous mystery. Channels of news worn smooth by the placid streams of everyday platitudes began to show the roll of this new freshet. A dispatch from Washington was unintentionally significant. It read like this: "The only explanation forwarded by Colonel Sandford of the abandonment of the Pike's Peak signal station by himself and party is that of a coward. He says the wind pressure indicated that the place would speedily become untenable."

I turned over the sheet in which these disheartening facts were presented and looked at the editorial page. There was a double-leaded leader, evidently written late at night, and its conclusions were more gruesome than the facts, for while the facts could be interpreted in various ways according to the reader's condition of mind, there was no mistaking the official tone of the editor whose business it was to weigh and estimate the public value of news. It seemed to me that this umpire to whom we instinctively looked for opinions had thrown up the sponge, so to speak. Let me recall his words as they were impressed upon me that morning:

That a grave crisis has arrived in the conditions of life on this planet, it would be folly and is impossible any longer to deny. It is not our province nor is it within our power to offer any solution of the stupendous mystery that is now enveloping a part of our continent. It is only imperative upon us, as brave agents in the dispensing of truth, to say, with all the candor that we can summon, that the effort of the Government to open communication with the vast region west of what must now be known as the Meridian of Silence has dismally failed, and it is the conviction of the maturest judgment, based upon all the facts of the attempt that are obtainable, that it failed because the explorers themselves ceased to exist when they had passed a certain pretty well-defined line which we now know extends north and south from Helena in Montana to Yuma on the borders of Mexico.

I found myself standing by my breakfast table reading this. I had risen unconsciously. My breakfast was unheeded. An ungovernable impulse to go anywhere seized me. To sit still with this crushing uncertainty was impossible. I found myself in a coupé. Where I got it I do not distinctly remember. But I do remember that it was by means of an extraordinary offer to the driver, who, like all his fellows, was dashing through the streets at a headlong pace. And I also have a very clear recollection of the strange nervous effect produced upon me by seeing the people along the curbs on Broadway watching the flying vehicles with a mute terror, as if the very recklessness of the drivers afforded them a palpable distraction from the unintelligible weight of their own fears. I speedily noticed that the stream of humanity on the streets was tending down town, and almost immediately I understood that it was heading, like myself, for the news centers. I could get no farther than Chambers Street, owing to the block of people and vehicles, and the driver rudely refused to take the risk of a jam. I looked at the City Hall clock. It was only eight. My heart was beating rapidly, and I knew enough of the effect of emotion on the cardiac system to understand that it was caused by suspense. A thousand new terrors were in the air of which the experience and the sagacity of man were ignorant. I forced my way with the greatest difficulty across the park, which was full of restless but strangely mute people, and got near enough to the newspaper bulletins to read the painted lines. They were feverishly indicative of the cross currents of excitement in the country, and were in short, decisive sentences like this: "The President asked to appoint a day of humiliation and prayer immediately. The Governor of Colorado, crazed by the excitement, commits suicide. Mob rule in Chicago. Rioting in Denver. Breakdown of the Alton & Chicago road. Unparalleled scenes at El Paso. Fanaticism in New Orleans. The Christian pastors of this city will meet at Cooper Union at ten o'clock, irrespective of sect. Panic in Milwaukee."

Held by a numbing sort of fascination, I read these sentences over and over. Across Printing House Square, on another bulletin, in big black letters I saw the line, "It baffles the world. Has annihilation set in!" There was something weird in the use of the pronoun IT. It seemed to be man's last effort in language to express a mystery that was specific and yet incomprehensible, and I found that by the common consent of ignorance men were referring to the phenomenon as IT. I looked at the strained, anxious faces of the mob, and a great fear fell upon me. With it came an awful reproach. I would go instantly and redeem my word to Kate by securing passages to Europe. I had to fight my way by inches out of the stolid and frightened crowd to the steamship office on lower Broadway, and there I found another jam. The street was full of private carriages, and it was impossible to get anywhere near the entrance to the office. I saw a policeman who was on the outside of the press, and who was walking up and down in a restless and unofficial manner. "What is the matter here?" I asked him. He looked me all over, as if he suspected that I had fallen out of the clouds. Then he said: "Tryin' to get tickets for Europe! Where d' you come frum?" and then, after a restless turn or two he added as he passed me, "But it ain't no use, 'cause there ain't steamships enough in the world!"

Then it was, I think, that the whole terrible truth first lit my consciousness like the sudden upflaring of a bale fire. The inhabitants were fleeing from the country. They were all affected as had been the Brisbanes. I was the only dolt and idiot and liar who had no instincts of danger, and who had failed to rescue the woman I loved when she had appealed to me.

Then I plunged wildly out into the street with a feeling of desperation and that sinking of the spirits that comes only in the worst crises and when one begins to comprehend how helpless man is. I saw that in the brief time that had elapsed a change had taken place in the aspect of the crowds. When I got to Broadway again it was with the utmost difficulty that I could make my way at all against the surging mass of people that seemed momentarily to swell. It was utterly unlike any crowd in numbers and disposition that I had ever encountered. It was made up of all classes. It had lost that American characteristic of good-humor, which had been swallowed up in a dire personal and selfish instinct of self-preservation. It was animated by a vague terror, and disregarded every consideration but that of personal safety. A horrible conviction seized me that the ordinary restraints of society were breaking down, and that speedily panic would mount to chaos. I saw that this dread was adding to the terror of everybody, aside from the fear of IT. Like an assemblage in a burning building, the fear of each other was more subtile and operative than the fear of the elements. By indefatigable labor I got off the main thoroughfare and reached Hudson Street, and here in the crowd I learned the latest news and discovered the cause of the rapidly increasing excitement. I had run against an intimate friend and associate, by accident. His first words were, as he wiped the perspiration out of his eyes, "Well, this is awful, eh?"

"What's the news?" I asked.

"The latest is that The Death Line has moved. The Thurbers have a private wire, and I just heard that Denver is cut off now! It looks as if it was every man for himself."

So terrible was this announcement, and so engrossed was I with the despairing thoughts that it gave rise to, that I took little heed of what was going on about me until I reached Canal Street. The one dull conviction that it was useless to fight against now was that annihilation had set in; that some destroying wave had started out to encircle the globe and that the race was doomed. Something, God alone knew what, had happened to our planet, and humanity was to be swept away in one of those cataclysms with which soulless Nature prepares for a new order of existence.

I was rudely awakened from this reverie of wretchedness by the crowd which surged against me with a blind, unvindictive violence. My one desire was to get uptown to the woman I loved and had neglected, and I saw that every minute was adding to the difficulty.

How I reached the Brevoort House I do not know. But there I found a number of citizens who had not utterly lost their heads, and who had come together for counsel. There was a private wire in the house, and they were receiving intelligence from several central points in the city. The looks of these men, who were huddled into the parlor, were enough to dismay the most resolute observer. Their pale faces and painfully set mouths indicated the sense of an awful crisis which wisdom did not know how to meet or avoid. A well-known citizen read the dispatches to them as they were received, and torn as I was by impatience, my curiosity held me there to hear. It was now about half-past eleven in the morning. The rapidity with which events had moved since I got up was made startlingly apparent by the information here furnished. The authorities, together with a number of influential citizens, had come together as if by a common instinct at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The Mayor, the Police and Fire Commissioners, several wealthy bankers, and a number of prominent clergymen were holding some kind of council and sending out appeals for co-operation and addresses to the public, which latter were entirely unheeded. As I forced myself into the room I saw and heard a venerable and majestic gentleman, evidently a clergyman, addressing those present in an impassioned manner. There were tears in his eyes and an awful sadness in his voice. "Men and brethren," he said, "it is appointed unto all men once to die. If it be appointed unto us who remain to die together, let us die like Christians who still retain our faith in eternal justice and eternal mercy, and not like wild beasts that devour each other."

A report came that the fatal east wind was blowing. And at this there was a general movement of those present, as if the time were too short to waste in longer listening. I came up Lafayette Place to Astor Place with the intention of reaching Fourth Avenue. Both spaces were choked with people, and on Eighth Street I saw a woman on the steps of a private residence, wildly calling on the mob, which paid no attention to her, to repent, for the day of judgment was at hand. Her white hair was blown over her face and her arms were frantically gesticulating. Into the great hall of the Cooper Union a mass of religious people had flocked, and a number of speakers were making addresses and offering up prayers. When I passed the woman who was exhorting the crowd I had noticed the manner in which her hair, which was of soft, flossy white, streamed out straight in front of her, but it did not occur to me until I reached the square in front of the Cooper Union that this was caused by the peculiar and ominous draft of wind from the east of which I had heard so much, for it was there that I saw a crowd pointing up to the roof of the vast building known as the Bible House, which appeared to be covered with people. Some of them were holding flags and drapery, and the material floated out westward without any of the undulating motion which always marks a flag in a disturbed current. These extemporized pennants stood out as if they were starched. I could see that this sign produced a dumb sort of terror in the crowd. It seemed to me then that all emotion of which I was capable was centered in the one desire to get to the woman I loved and die with her. A crushing and at the same time an animating remorse, as if somehow I had been responsible for her death at least, in disregarding her warnings, and somehow doubly guilty in mistrusting her motives, unmanned me and inflamed me. It was with something of the same disregard of everybody but oneself that I had seen in others that I fought my way to Twenty-first Street. What brutalities I committed need not be recounted. That hour remains with me an acute and jangled memory of frenzy. I reached the steps of Judge Brisbane's house torn and bleeding. The terrible scenes were in my eyes, and the dreadful, monotonous tumult of human desperation--that vast sigh of doomed humanity, pierced here and there by the wails and shrieks of despair and the cries of innocence for help, was in my ears. The celerity with which it had all come on left no chance for cool reason. An invisible phantom was at the heels of the community and we were part of a mighty stampede. After fumbling for an instant at the bell and pushing back several ghastly creatures who were on the steps, I must have applied my shoulder to the door and pushed it in. Some one appeared to be resisting on the other side, but it gave way and I half fell into Judge Brisbane's vestibule. An instant later we were looking into each other's faces, I, bloody and soiled and ragged and wild with the frenzy of fear and impatience; he, pale as death, but resolute, and holding an enormous bar over me.

"Quick!" he said. "Help me fasten this door!"

That sudden call of duty struck something habitual in me, and, without knowing exactly what I was doing, I found myself assisting him in barricading the door. The endeavor somewhat changed the current of my thoughts from the danger that was unseen to the danger that was storming under our windows. I must have muttered some kind of excuse for my conduct to the Judge, for he said: "No time for apologies or recriminations now. The house is full of my neighbors, who have come here for protection. Go upstairs and look after the women. The best and only thing we can do is to preserve a quiet place to die in, and not be trampled to pieces. Are you armed?"

I dashed up the broad staircase, and found the upper rooms occupied by women, some of whom, in morning attire hastily thrown on, were sitting around with their heads in their hands, while others were huddled at the windows, staring with strained looks of terror at the crowds on the street. Walking up and down the room, wringing his hands, a middle-aged man was giving expression to the most terrible irony and cowardice, without reference to his listeners.

I ran my eye over the huddled groups of frightened women. The one I sought was not there. I flew through the groaning figures on the stairway up to her chamber. I knocked loudly, and called her by name passionately. Then I listened. I heard nothing but the dull sounds of the human tumult that came through the open casement, and the sighing tones of the telegraph wires as the steady draft from the east swept through them. I shook the door, and abjured her to come to me. Then in my madness I burst it in. She was on her knees at the bed, with her hands on her ears, and her head buried in the bedclothes. I fell down on my knees beside her, and put my arm around her. "Kate," I said, "we will die together. Look up. Love at least is eternal." She was cold. I caught her head between my hands, and turned her beautiful face toward me. My God, she was dead! Dead, with her staring eyes full of terror, and her beautiful mouth set in hard and ghastly lines. Then it was that I felt rise up within me for the first time the rebellious bitterness of the natural man. Need I tell you that at such moments man is little better than an animal, save in his free agency that enables him to defy? I passed hours there--moaning, cursing, bewailing. When at last the force of the paroxysm had expended itself, I shook my fist in the face of heaven, with the obduracy of Pagan Greek, and said: "Come on now, you envious Fates, and do your worst speedily, or I will be too quick for you!"

Judge Brisbane found me there, raving.

"Do you know?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and I am grateful. She is spared much that we must endure."

"And so," I said, "life, love, and the vaunted future of the race end in mockery."

"It seems so," he replied. "But we cannot be sure. Come with me."

We ascended to the roof. The spectacle that greeted us was indescribable. The tops of all the houses were black with people, who were staring mutely and with childish terror into the West. The steady, subdued organ tone of the rushing atmosphere could now be heard above all else. We stood there in silence a few moments, and then I said, "It's terrible. What do you suppose is taking place?"

"I suppose," replied the Judge, "that we are losing our atmosphere. Reeling it off, so to speak, slowly, as we revolve. Our planet has entered some portion of the ethereal space where the conditions are sucking us dry of oxygen. As it recedes from the earth the water disappears, and we shall be left to revolve like the moon, without air and without liquid, and consequently without life."

He said this meditatively, less as if he were answering my question than if he were formulating his own fears.

"Then," I remarked, "if this takes place gradually, the millions have got to struggle and writhe and fight together in suffocation. We can at least blow our brains out and cheat such a fate."

"I should hate," said the Judge, "to think that the man who was to marry Kate had not the bravery to face his destiny."

That was all that was said. We came down, and some ripples of intelligence reached us during the afternoon from one or two persons who made their way into the house. We learned that in the frenzy of fear the populace were committing the most extraordinary excesses. The shore line of the Atlantic was crowded with people, many of whom plunged into the ocean in the vain attempt to get away. The scenes in the city were too revolting to narrate, for a large class of the community, released from all restraint of moral and civil law, were bent on securing all the lawless pleasures that force could command, during the few hours that was left to them. And the line was steadily coming East. Chicago was cut off at twelve o'clock. And at four intelligence had ceased coming from Buffalo. At this time the sound of the winds was like the roar of the sea. I had torn myself away from the window where I had been staring at the now packed and struggling masses of people, and had locked myself in the room with the dead body of Kate. There was a vial of opium on her table that had been used for neuralgia; I swallowed it, and sat down by the bedside. I know not how long I remained there. But a loud report, as of a discharged cannon, roused me. I remember staggering and panting in the dark, with a semi-consciousness that the end had come, and I now know that report was occasioned by the bursting of the drums of my ears.

I remember nothing more. I have given you a plain statement of my experiences in that crisis, and I dare say they are uneventful enough by the side of the experiences of millions.

SHALL HE MARRY HER?

BY ANNA KATHERINE GREEN.