The Woodley Lane Ghost and Other Visitants
Author: Madeline Dahlgren
Date: 1898-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Suspense
Description: Tales about coincidence and destiny, prescience, occult religious practices; stories of the evil that men can do, and the evil they can prevent. ~ ~ ~ ~ These late nineteenth-century stories of the uncanny and the macabre are taken from the collection The Woodley Lane Ghost and Other Stories (1899).
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public Domain worldwide.

THE
WOODLEY LANE GHOST

AND OTHER VISITANTS

MADELEINE DAHLGREN

MobileRead Edition
2021

Tales about coincidence and destiny, prescience, occult religious practices; stories of the evil that men can do, and the evil they can prevent.

These late nineteenth-century stories of the uncanny and the macabre are taken from the collection The Woodley Lane Ghost and Other Stories (1899).

*   *   *

Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (pen names, Corinne and Cornelia; July 13, 1825 – May 28, 1889) was an American writer, translator, and anti-suffragist. She was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, biographies, and poems.

This book is in the public domain worldwide

CONTENTS:

- The Woodley Lane Ghost
- Who Was She?
- The Amulet Ring
- A Reminiscence
- Earth-Bound
- The Fatal Boots
- My First Patient
- A Murder Mystery
- The Judge’s Dream

THE WOODLEY LANE GHOST

It was the afternoon of the longest day of the year, the 21st of June, and jogging along over the splendid sweep of Massachusetts avenue, whose picturesque homes are grouped around the statues of historic men, past Thomas Circle, past Scott Circle, reaching Dupont Circle, then by way of Connecticut Avenue and over the city boundary line, Dr. Rawle’s buggy finally turned into that lovely stretch of circling drive called Woodley Lane. The doctor was a young man, a newly-married man, just starting into a meager practice, and quite disposed, while waiting for more patients, to take life as easily as very limited means would permit. His comely, girlish wife was seated at his side, an embroidered linen lap-robe deftly tucked around her. Such is the inconsequence of youth that these two were as happy, perhaps more so, than another two who whirled past them in a grand equipage. In fact, the foolish doctor was even as content as if he were plodding around town with his hired boy, visiting patients and coining dollars.

“Ah, my Cynthia,” said he, “what an Eden Washington would be were it not so detestably healthy. Why, my sweet moon-flower (a pet name of his, in allusion to hers of Cynthia), with more money, you, too, would bloom forth in a stylish victoria.”

“Pray, dear Rufus,” she laughed, cheerily, “don’t wish it, for in such case you would not be my driver.”

“Wise words fallen from fragrant lips,” was the approving answer. Strange how all men, lover and husband alike, are magnetized by the electric stroke of flattery! At this moment, turning a sharp corner of the winding road, they perceived an oldish man coming toward them with slow and feeble step. Although his scanty locks were white, he gave the impression of one rather bending under the weight of a settled sadness than as if oppressed by years. Notwithstanding his stooping gait, it was evident that he was tall of stature, and his bearing was that of a man concentered upon himself, forced back into a brooding introspection by the strong pressure of a stormy past. As thus be tottered on, with eyes fixed upon the ground, all unobservant, a flashing wheel of glittering steel, noiseless and swift, hurtled past them. There was, as one might hold their breath, a forceful clash, a sudden outcry, a horror-stricken scream from Cynthia, and the doctor with a quick spring stood beside two fallen men. The reckless bicyclist had struck the ground with such jarring whirl as partially to stun him, but the old man who had been thus ruthlessly run over, lay limp, moaning and helpless.

“I trust that you are not much hurt, sir,” said the doctor, stooping over him, as with careful precision he made an examination. “Oh, yes, here it is; a compound fracture of the hip, and, it is to be feared, internal injuries.”

Meantime, Cynthia ran to the little brook near by, and filling her straw hat with water, poured it over the head of the youthful wheelman, who, reviving, did not pause to thank her, but, picking himself up, as best be could, remounted his wheel and was off; doubtless fearing arrest, should he remain and assist.

“An imp of Satan,” groaned the wounded. “By the Highest One, the Spirit of Bad has prevailed.”

The doctor look significantly at his wife, as much as to say, “Poor man, his mind wanders.”

“Can you tell me where to take you, sir?” inquired the doctor, in a compassionate voice. “We will lift you as gently as possible into my buggy, and not leave you. Have courage.”

“Courage,” gasped the old man, “comes of force of will. It is a subtle essence, it penetrates and overcomes, I WILL, to endure – I will point the way.”

Cynthia helped her husband, and together they succeeded in placing the unfortunate, leaning against and supported by her, in the buggy, the doctor leading the horse very slowly. The transfer, the motion, were torture to the hurt man, whose pallid brow was bathed with great beaded drops, such was his agony.

“By Siva!” muttered he, grinding his teeth, “my cycle is closing.”

Cynthia shivered, but she firmly upheld the sufferer amid all his delirious ravings. Yet, incoherent as were his utterances, he retained sufficient consciousness to point out the way exactly. By his direction they had turned off from Woodley Lane into the Tenleytown road, when presently he called out: “Turn in there,” and they entered unkempt grounds through a shackly gate. With what a masterful command over himself, tortured and almost swooning as he was, had he guided their progress. The doctor, who had had a season of training in the hospital wards, understood the force of will this man had exerted, saying, as if to himself: “Most men would lie in the stupor of a dead swoon who had borne this nervous shock and endured his awful pain. This is no common man.”

They were now slowly ascending a hill by a narrow, serpentine and undulating road. The season, as we have said, was leafy June, and these grounds, neglected as they were, gloried in the, majestic growth of a magnificent oak forest. So entirely was the house hidden by their dark and towering branches that one came upon it as a surprise, so unexpectedly, and yet it was a substantial, well-built brick house, of ample proportions. There was no attempt at architectural lines, except, perhaps, in a square tower that was projected from the center of the house, forming a hail of entrance below, and a small room, as if of observation, above. Otherwise, the structure was a plain red-brick dwelling of two spacious rooms, one on each side of a wide hall below, and on the second floor were precisely corresponding rooms, with the addition of the tower apartment. Directly in front of the building was a knoll of horseshoe shape crowned by an immense red Virginia oak. It stood a very sentinel tree, shooting a skyward shaft some seventy feet, its finely-veined oblong leaves of a vivid green, framed in and screened the house in umbrageous beauty. As they passed under its protecting boughs, the hurt man, who seemed to have grown very faint during the hard jolting of the winding ascent, instantly revived, as if through some mysterious accession of strength, and uplifting an ardent gaze of yearning tenderness, he extended wide his arms, upraising them as if to embrace the sighing leaves that bent over him. “I come, I come!” he almost shouted with a fierce eagerness; then, as if his very soul had gone forth in the supreme effort, he sank back in a dead swoon of pain.

There was not a soul to greet them. No, not even yelping cur, or mewing cat, or singing bird. This strange man, then, lived alone, yes, literally all alone. The doctor entered the unlocked door, and ascending to the tower room brought forth a small mattress, upon which he laid the now insensible form. As the doctor’s fair young wife zealously helped him, he said to her caressingly, “My Cynthia, how good and brave you are.” The momentary glance he had given the tower room amazed him. It was evident, as he had said, that his patient was no common man. Here was the den of a natural philosopher, a chemist, an astronomer, in fact, of a wide student of nature. This was his laboratory, his workshop. Here, undoubtedly, he performed various experiments with scientific precision, and through his well-planted telescope that pierced a small opening adjusted to its use, the heavens were nightly read. And what, at that time, was of vital consequence, was the existence of a carefully labeled pharmacy, evidently supplementing extensive investigations in chemistry.

“It is wonderful, simply wonderful!” said the doctor. “Here are all appliances needed for treatment. Have you rubbed Aladdin’s lamp and sent a genii hither, my moon-flower?” queried he.

“’Tis the Pitris,” murmured the patient. They both started. He must have heard and measured the doctor’s words in his seeming syncope. Meantime Dr. Rawle made strenuous and successful efforts to revive his patient, preparatory to the more serious operation that he knew must be attempted. It was not long before the old man spoke again.

“Do not torture me,” he said; “all surgery is useless. I shall soon be dissolved. My work in this transition is at an end. All that now remains is to disintegrate the earth-bound ties. Leave me – go quickly, and bring hither one learned in the law. But hearken. No jugglery, no priestcraft. Do as you are bid. Now hasten.”

The doctor looked inquiringly at his wife. “Do you dare to stay, Cynthia, until I come back?” asked he.

“I dare,” said the brave little woman, “but hasten, Rufus, for the night closes in.” Her words were calmly spoken, but her heart beat violently.

“Daughter of Eve,” said the sick man, looking kindly upon her, “you do well – stay!”

•   •   •   •   •

Some two hours later – it seemed an endless age to Cynthia, as she watched in profound silence, amid the gathering gloom – her husband returned, bringing with him his friend, Mr. Albright, a well-known Washington lawyer. Already the face of the dying man had taken on that ashen hue that precedes approaching dissolution, and the mildew of death had gathered on his humid brow. But now, as if collecting himself for a last effort, his faculties were clear.

“You are two men, and strong,” said he, “lift me to my Edris. Be quick!” and he pointed his gaunt finger upward.

They carried him gently on the mattress and laid it upon the narrow couch in the tower room. The motion, slight as it was, was exhaustive of a fast ebbing life He pointed to a shelf whispering as he did so, “The nameless amphora,” adding, as it was touched, “Open!” The doctor silently obeyed, and the delicious perfume of some aromatic volatile essence filled the air. All felt the subtle and penetrating effect of this exhilarating aroma.

“Write! write!” cried the dying man with a momentary force.

The lawyer wrote as dictated—

“I, the Java Aleim, being of sound disposing mind, do hereby devise, give, and bequeath all that I possess, both of real estate and personal, to—” he paused and looked impatiently at the doctor – “Quick – your name!”

“My name?” muttered the dazed doctor, “my name?”

The lawyer smiled and wrote “to Rufus Rawle, of the city of Washington, D. C.”

“We must have three signatures to this will,” said the lawyer.

The Java Aleim listened intently for a moment, or rather shrank within himself by some inward act of volition, then gasped—

“Two men approach! I hear the footsteps of the Silent Brothers! Hasten to meet them!”

Five minutes later and the doctor, who had left the room in a bewildered way, returned with two men, whom he had met at the gate. They glanced at the Java Aleim, who became so agitated that he drew his breath convulsively; but speedily controlling himself, he took the pen and signed his name. Then the lawyer and the two men appended their signatures, when, without comment, the two latter disappeared. Were these sentient, living forms, or were they merely the astral souls of Silent Brothers’, evoked by one of their number to serve his purpose? Or was it a dream, a mere figment of the imagination? Verily, there were the names, fairly written in good black ink of the “Idra Rabba” and “Adam Ferio.”

The Brahman, for such he was, wearily joined his thin hands above his head, then marking his forehead with the sign sacred to Vishnu, his lips moved as if in prayer. The moribund, fixed and rigid as one in a trance, now spoke rapidly and continuously in a hoarse, cavernous whisper that seemed to issue from his body as from a half-closed vault.

“My soul escapes, oh, Triad! The expiatory hour is at hand. My life has failed in abnegation and the taint of selfishness must be expunged. Gross emanations have passed like a murky cloud over the spirit, shutting out Nirvana. I must traverse eons of cyclic arcs ere I can once again reach the ascending cosmic scale. Oh, woe is me! I must be absorbed in the universal whole!”

He paused and seemed to listen, then seizing the triple cord that girded his loins, the invocations were renewed.

“O, Brahma! O, Vishnu! O, Siva! Triad of Triads! Help my return to nature – when this aching clod, this husk of the outer shell shall be evolved and absorbed into the heart and essence of you far-spreading oak, when my clogged veins shall run along its deep-reaching roots in rivulets of fire, when with heavy lateral pressure, my pent-up thoughts shall scintillate and strike deep the flinty rocks, taking wide and wider range, pressing down into the bowels of Mother Earth; then, with fierce upspringing power, remount in juicy sap, flushing with incarnadine splendor its autumn leaves, or dropping its purifying tears that fill the sacred viscum’s pearly coronals; then, partially released, forming true essence of Virgil’s golden bough, I shall arise a fluidic spectre of transcendent brightness, permeate the opalescent moonlit rays – a glorious astral shape! Ugh! The way is blinding dark – oh, this confusing present – but the end is luminous – I know it – I feel it!” Partially arousing himself, he fixed his burning eyes upon the three. “Mystic Triad – children groping in the outer darkness, heed – this, my last injunction – failing which, beware! Bury with me the seven knotted bamboo rod, the Gurugave – rest my bones, that they may mingle with the roots of the cabalistic oak that shoots its sacred shaft aloft within the triple circle of the horse shoe knoll. Thus shall my essence be infused in it, and the virtue from out the oak be effused to me, and thus I shall be transformed into a dual life. But beware!” and his face grew livid and distorted, “violate not this sacred tree, touch it not, handle it not! Let the holy lustration that shall proceed as we two become one in cosmic scale continue undisturbed.” His bony finger, still fixed and rigid like a note of warning, amid convulsive shudderings terrible to behold, with one long outcry of A. U. M., he gave up the ghost.

Silence and darkness intervened, only broken now and then by the nervous, spasmodic sobs of Cynthia.

“Poor wife,” said the doctor; “the strain was awful.”

The Java Aleim was buried as he had requested. Did the process of a metempsychosis then and there commence!

•   •   •   •   •

Dr. Rawle found himself suddenly a rich man. No need now of troubling himself about the health of Washington. With a pleasant home, that commanded a splendid view, with a goodly store of bonds, securities, and rare coins and curios; and for his wife, gold chains of fine filigree work, filmy taffeties embroidered in silver; tortoise shell combs set with plates of gold, and girdles enriched with pearls, sapphires and diamonds; rings and necklaces of ruby, blue topaz, yellow tourmalins, blood stones, cat’s eyes, and amethyst; etuis of aquamarine and cinnamon stone, and of various devices to charm a woman’s eye. The doctor loved books, and was an enthusiast in his profession. There were various works in chemistry and medical books, but others not a few, filled with hieroglyphics and strangely illuminated, besides rolls of palimpsests covered with secret Arabic symbols bearing evidence of successive ages, and one, most precious of all, steeped in a musky, dankish odor, inscribed in Candian sanskrit and bound in thick, lacquered ivory boards, encrusted with gems, framing the enigmatic abraxas. Happily for the doctor, he was a matter-of-fact man, or he surely would have sworn by the Vedas, yielded to the fascination of his surroundings, and become a Buddhist. As it was he only sighed and said: “What a pity that I am not an Oriental scholar!” But already he was to a degree imbued with the influences pressing upon him, smoking a superb chibouk [pipe] with amber mouthpiece the while, lazily immersed in vague speculations and day-dreams.

Now and then his friend the lawyer came to see him, drawn by curiosity he could not resist to revisit a spot of such weird memories. But Dr. Rawle never left this idlewild of Woodley Lane, nor, strange to say, did Cynthia wish for change. Was the spirit of the old seer and Brahman permeating the atmosphere with an oriental repose at the very outset of their occupancy? Some energy had been displayed in transforming the house into a more cheerful home, and in building a verandah over the front door, whence the superb view could be more fully enjoyed. They had found the two lower rooms unfurnished, and the one nearest the mystic oak-tree was fitted up as a kitchen, while the room across the hall was pleasantly adorned as a drawing-room and dining-room as well. Here Cynthia, presided, spending happy, quiet hours, quite content, as she imagined, and yet not knowing why or wherefore, subdued and gradually toned into a half-drooping melancholy.

“How can gladness and sadness be one, dear Rufus?” asked she puzzled to understand herself.

“’Tis the spirit of the place, pale moon-flower,” he answered, smiling, yet sighing.

It was strange, but various little mishaps, too trifling to notice, attended the building of that part of the verandah nearest the horseshoe knoll. If so much as a chip fell upon that spot it rebounded, inflicting some hurt, and the mechanic, not knowing why, declared it an unlucky thing to work oil that side.

There came to be a tacit understanding between the doctor and his wife to avoid all allusion to that deathbed scene, and after the verandah was finished it began to be unpleasant to sit upon it on a moonlight night, and even the sun’s rays glinted with a sickly glare through the umbrageous screen. At all times there was never a surcease of low, humming, busy sound, a shadowy play of leaves, and when the droning summer faded into autumn, and the coruscant foliage threw out vivid flashes of light, the blood-red veins became swelled and tinged, tracing mystic imagery against the blue of Heaven, and the grand old tree communed with nature, rustling with a sad susurrus.

“Passing strange,” softly said the doctor.

“Uncanny,” whispered Cynthia.

The first positive discomfort was experienced when, one evening in the early winter, the two Irish domestics, a man and woman servant, were seated in the kitchen at dusk, their hands folded at the close of a day’s work, and they resting in that inert way that marks the repose succeeding manual labor. The open-mouthed fireplace was all aglow with the hot coals of oak-wood cinders, when, almost imperceptibly at first, the burning mass became astir. Presently odd and fierce flashes leaped forth from out the incandescent heat, accompanied by the constant popping of exploding fragments, when, as if gaining a rapid aggressive force, a lurid light appeared, out of which sprang forth an impalpable shape that advanced into the room. Scream after scream called Dr. Rawle and his wife to the scene just as the woman fainted, and the man rushing out, hatless and distracted, never stopped until he reached Swampoodle, crossing himself under the shadow of the Jesuit church in Washington, vociferating all the way, “Spooks! spooks!” Nor would the woman stay one hour after she was revived, declaring that “a say of howly wather” was not enough “to clane that fiery divil out.” “It must have been the knotted heart of oak that split and frightened those fools out of their shallow wits,” cried the doctor, much irritated. “Oh, no, Rufus,” said Cynthia, mildly, “It was a dead bough that fell from the oak. Katy told me that she picked it up from off the knoll where it had fallen, and tripped with it in her arms, nearly tumbling into the fire as she threw it on, and then it burned savagely into that dreadful mass of coals.”

“Old women’s tales, forsooth,” muttered the doctor.

But be that as it may, after this incident, with that freemasonry of signals that exists among the Ishmallites, it was understood that the house was haunted, and no one would hire out to live at that place. This event also seemed to mark a distinct epoch, as if that baptism of fire had liberated an astral soul. Henceforth there was a shadowy shade, an indefinable something in that room that took possession. So the door was closed and the doctor took the key thereof.

“Damn it,” said he, “what’s the use of a kitchen, Cynthia, if there’s no cook?”

“Don’t swear, Rufus,” she shudderingly answered. “I love to cook, dear. With our little oil-stove in the drawing-room it’s like playing at housekeeping. Yes, positively, I prefer it, dear. Then, it is so nice for us to be alone; just we two.”

“Moon-flower, how sweetly you expand!” cried the doctor, enfolding her in his arms and kissing her.

If a wife wishes to make her husband a radiant lover, let her try cooking for him; that is, if she knows how! And thus the winter closed in upon these two, who lived in the old house without other occupants. Dr. Rawle soon became so deeply interested in the occult investigations into which he was led through the books left him by the Java Aleim that he did not feel the weariness of their solitary life; but it was not so with his wife.

She, poor lady, had entered that strange house a gay and laughing bride, in good health and fine spirits. It was not long before she moved about silently, growing each day paler and paler, like some tender plant that requires sunshine and wilts in cheerless shade. She was not unhappy, because she led a life apart from the world, with her husband, for she loved him too fondly to pine for other society, still less did she care for the dissipation of gayety. But her nervous system had received a serious shock. The terrifying accident and harrowing deathbed scene, succeeded by the horror of that spectral fire, phantasmal as it undoubtedly was, had left an impression, not to be shaken off, that the place was haunted. She would constantly repeat to herself that it was a mere hallucination, and yet the feeling wore upon her, and she became exceedingly sensitive to all sounds. A vague distrust and fear took possession of her. Upon the eminence where they lived the winter storms oft and again held wildest revelry. To her morbid imagination the rude blasts had human voices that sighed, moaned, groaned, wailed, howled and shrieked, and during the blackness of the long winter nights all these voices of nature were a thousand-fold intensified to her acute perceptions. Oh, how she dreaded the prolonged swirl of the tempest, with its tumultuous onset, the swift-recurring waves of direful sound of these viewless legions of the air, when her timid soul shrank shriveled and aghast within its shell.

During that dismal winter they slept in the chamber directly above the now-closed room, which she felt sure had a nightly occupant. One thing Cynthia became aware of. Only her ears were opened to these preternatural sounds. She had, it is true, an increasing consciousness that they might be evoked at any time; but she never heard, or thought she heard, the plaintive sighs, the stealthy tread, nor the slamming of a door she knew was closed, or even, oh, hideous feeling, that she was being breathed upon, unless she was alone, or her husband’s spirit locked in sleep. The something, whatever it was, that had access to that house, had not the force to impress itself upon the stronger organization of the doctor. At moments she became overwhelmed with a creeping fear, that if she slept, when her willpower was dormant would it not then oppress her, and could not the ghoul live from her life and gloat upon her vitality? All that she had read about the ravening vampire would then recur to her disturbed fancy and affright her.

And thus, month after month, poor Cynthia, half distraught, communed within herself. At first, whenever she would strive to express her impressions, they were brusquely repelled by her husband as silly dreams, and he thus quite unwittingly condemned this woman, whom he loved, to untold torture.

But at last the dreary winter passed away, and the budding of spring cast a more cheerful atmosphere upon the gloomy spot. Then the doctor aroused himself somewhat from the long hibernation over the books from which he had derived sustenance. Opening his eyes to things around him, he began to notice how wan and thin his wife was. All the while his love had never abated, but in the strange existence he had led, absorbing thoughts had occupied him. Had he been dreaming? He was vexed with himself. He feared, indeed, he felt sure, that be must have neglected his darling while leading this visionary life. Like one who returns from a foreign land, where, deeply interested in the new scenes around him, he, for the moment, forgets loved ones at home, yet rekindles his devotion on his return, so it was with this student of the occult. Once awakened, he again recognizes all that had made a part of his former life, and he was uneasy about his wife. “My pale moon-flower!” he would say tenderly, and Cynthia was revived by this delicate attention, finding relief in tears. Oh, if man could only understand how inexpressibly it comforts the heart of a woman to cry! Tears, consoling tears, are the one special, delicious, feminine luxury. They fertilize and revivify the arid wastes of a woman’s heart. The affectionate care the doctor now bestowed upon his wife was quite oppressive, for he was always thinking what healing influences would be most beneficial. He besought her to live more in the open air, but such was her morbid dread of passing the tree that she would actually stay indoors from the dread of going out. Then he began to think seriously of leaving the place, and reproached himself anew for past obliviousness.

“Better far,” thought he, “to go back to the city. I have been a fool indeed to burrow in the old wizard’s den, immersed in the mystical so-called black arts that occupied him, while the very essence of a being dearer than my own life was fading away. A thousand times rather be the poor man, the struggling young practitioner of a year ago.” With a sigh of regret he pictured to himself the joyousness, the lightheartedness of that time, and in the retrospect, the past months, during a nearly a year, seemed to be in dismal shadow, in unwholesome dreariness, as compared with the sunshine and bright cheeriness of the healthful effort then made. It’s strange that young people never can realize what a bracing, wholesome life those lead who begin with merely a competence, and how much pleasure is involved in the eagerness of pursuit, stimulated by hopes of the future. In youth uncertainty lends a zest to the present, and makes a constant incentive for action. All the little daily plans that grow out of such situations form, as it were, a series of plots and counterplots of a drama, where no one can foresee the ending. “I worried then,” sadly mused the doctor, “because we were poor; I know now that we were very happy.”

Thus the summer days succeeded each other, finding Cynthia more and more prostrated, and her husband more and more irresolute. Was it the enervating atmosphere in which they lived? The omened old oak, had the brunt bravely borne, of the wild, wintry winds, fiercely flinging its bared, brawny arms aloft, as one bereft and bestraught; or, sullenly standing aloof, besprent of the vested beauty of its foliage, an image of statuesque despair. But with the renaissant spring came the mystery of its revivification, when coursing through all its gaunt length of frame mounted the renewing vital sap. Then the sere, crackling branches put on a semblance of youth, and in numerous tiny leaflets that burgeoned from out its frowning wrinkles thrilled with the joy of new-born living, until the hot embrace of June completed its glorious expansion, and the dull splendor of its resurgence. Oh, touching symbols of the mysteries of life and death that nature ever and ever exhibits! Oh, dullard eyes that scan so illy the clear mirror ever held forth to view! Yes, a perpetual pageant is unfolded of birth, growth, maturity, decay, decline to dissolution, out of which the endless circling cycles bring forth fruition. But in the midst of this great joy of living, drinking in this wine of life, so freely offered, we grow riotous of language, and forget to face our facts solemnly.

•   •   •   •   •

To recall a coincidence of time, it will be remembered that the tragic opening of this story occurred on the twenty-first day of June. As this anniversary drew near, Cynthia became really ill. She was in an unceasing state of agitation, so that the doctor grew seriously alarmed. It was the eve of that day that Cynthia, weak and prostrated, retired early. The isolated place was, as usual, very still, and the doctor, wearied with apprehension, also retired and was soon soundly sleeping.

Not so with Cynthia. Insomnia had become a dreaded condition, and she solaced her waking hours wistfully looking at the handsome face of her sleeping spouse, upon which, even in sleep, a certain sadness rested under the closed lips and expressed itself in the drooping lines around the mouth. Then it occurred to her that if she gazed upon him when his will-power was relaxed, it might infuse some mesmeric state not well for him, so she silently arose, and impelled by a vague desire she could not resist, gently opened her window and leaned forward. The young moon, with clear and beaming crescent, lazily drifted on a bed of lightest amber cloudlets, diffusing that faint, mysterious light so grateful to her questioning soul. Before her stood the mystic oak, now so very near, in its far-spreading branches of vivid green, that were softened and exquisitely tinted by the opalescent rays that shone upon it, so that its splendid noon-tide beauty was etherealized.

“Oh, translucent image,” sighed Cynthia, “art thou in very truth, as the Druids would have thee, a sacred form to worship – or” —and as she paused in her unconscious invocation, as if responsive to her call, and effused from out the deep-planted roots of the tree, a mild radiance played with swaying motion, to and fro, over the horseshoe knoll. At one moment swinging slowly, hovering with a phosphorescent glow, rising a little, then sinking again as if about to die out, but all the while steadily gaining force to mount higher.

Eagerly bending toward the witching glimmer, stretching forth her hand in supplication, she adjured the aura, “Oh, elemental, arise; disengage thyself from these painful, earth-bound ties!”

She had scarcely spoken when, as if awaiting the summons to arise, and by it permeated with a force it had hitherto vainly sought, it suddenly streamed upward with a clear and steady flame until it touched the lower sweep of the oak tree branches when, forming instantaneously into definite shape, the aural soul of Java Aleim stood before her.

As Cynthia uttered an agonized cry it extended toward her a skeleton arm, with gestures of pleading entreaty; then slowly sinking downward, as if repelled by want of attractive power, and casting upon her a lowering look of fierce hatred, it disappeared just as the doctor was aroused by the shriek of his wife. In another moment he bore, with tenderest care, her fainting form back to bed. He had not seen the vision, but he knew what it all meant.

“This, this is too dreadful!” he cried, in a transport of rage. “The old demon gave me a true devil’s gift, fair to the seeming, illusory in the holding, and fatal in reality. Tomorrow, the anniversary of this cursed existence here, shall witness my return to the busy scenes of the outer world. I shall have done with this infernal nonsense. I shall end it all.”

“Shall end it all!” slowly re-echoed a phantom voice.

Unnerved and horrified, the doctor hastened to close the window, with averted eyes, and applied himself to the restoration of his poor wife.

“Darling, sweetest, dearest, best!” he implored, “revive, awake! Tomorrow there shall come a new life, for tomorrow shall end it all.”

“Shall end it all,” was the weird warning whispered in his ear.

The doctor started, then collected himself defiantly. “This way lies madness,” he muttered. “The time has come to be up and doing. Tomorrow—”

•   •   •   •   •

The morrow of that predestined day, forewarned by the entombed, now dawned. There are good hours, and there are evil hours, that appear in the horoscope of life, and from the Chaldeans of remote ages to the soothsayers and Buddhists of the present time the starry hosts have been compelled to give up their secrets. Have they found true interpreters?

What happened on this recurring twenty-first day of June – this day of seven times three and three times seven? The day found Cynthia too ill to rise. The doctor saw the danger of brain fever, and tried to calm himself and quiet her.

“Rest today, dearest wife,” he said to her. “You need rest. But tomorrow, when you are stronger, we will leave this lonely place. Forgive me, darling, that I have let you pine away in these dark shadows so long—”

She made no reply other than to mutter: “Too late! too late!”

The doctor sadly turned to the window, from whence the night before he had borne his swooning wife. Through the exquisite screen of the lofty oak, he caught glimpses here and there of a ravishing landscape. The peerless city of liberty stretched out at his feet in graceful repose, then a vista of the rounded dome of the capitol, or of the sinuous line of the meandering Potomac sparkling in the sunlight, beautified by its island oasis, dotted here and there and encrusted by its gem-like environment of undulating verdure-clad hills.

“Oh, paradisaical earth! why, why should the trail of the serpent rest on thy fair bosom! Why should the malign glance of the evil eye empoison thy fairest scenes!” groaned the wretched man. His mind was filled with the rich imagery of that hidden lore, over which he had been listlessly dreaming during this past year. But he had received a rude awakening, as he at last fully realized the critical condition of his beloved wife. Cynthia’s fever rose as the hot June sun heated the air with its vertical rays, and as the day wore slowly on the doctor saw that she was no better.

•   •   •   •   •

Was it a psychic effect that influenced Mr. Albright and attracted him to such a degree that putting aside a mass of papers claiming his careful attention, he yielded to the power that impelled him to revisit his friends? “It is the anniversary,” he thought, “of one of the strangest events I have ever witnessed, and many hidden aspects of life have been laid open to me in the course of the practice of my profession. I have not seen Rawle for months, for both he and his pretty wife are positively buried.” Thus it came to pass that just as the sunset gorgeous cloud masses transfigured into ethereal shapes, the two friends met, and they walked together in the oak forest, not far distant from the house. Cynthia continued very ill, too ill to be moved, and the doctor was in a state of agitation and grief difficult to describe. It was indeed a welcome relief to grasp the friendly hand of Albright thus unexpectedly extended to him, and to unburden his heart. The lawyer listened with that precise and patient attention which was his habit.

The story of the two apparitions, of the dismal winter, filled with its imaginary terrors, and the frantic fright of the previous night, culminating in the present delirium of Cynthia, was all told. When the doctor had finished, his friend said: “Of course, Rawle, the weird part, and it is weird, must be all fustian and fancy. The serious part comes in the effect produced.”

Dr. Rawle was about to reply, “effect produced from a cause” – but he shrank from making the open avowal. The bravest men are apt to be moral cowards in the face of ridicule, so he merely said with an assumed assent he did not feel – “Of course.”

They were silent, but after a moment’s pause the doctor remarked:

“Please excuse me an instant. I wish to see if my wife still sleeps.”

Left alone in this lone forest, as the light of day was rapidly yielding to the gathering twilight, even the incredulous lawyer felt a creeping sensation, a thrill of the nerves, that was, to say the least, uncomfortable; but he resolutely battled against the influence, and retired within his triple armor of incredulity, materialism and logical sequence, thus defying the visionary. For all that, he found the hour that he was thus left alone both tedious and uncomfortable. But at last the doctor came striding forward. Cynthia was awake and raving about a bough of the oak that, she declared, had waved over her, assuming the grinning aspect of a death’s head.

“Albright,” said Rawle, “I must try the effect of heroic treatment. I mean to ascend to that devilish bough and cut it off. I wish I could destroy the whole infernal tree, root and branch. We have lived too long under its deadly upas shade. [poisonous tropical tree] I hope, old fellow, that the sudden revulsion when Cynthia sees it crashing down will help her to overcome these diabolical illusions. Promise me, my dear friend,” he added, with emotion, “that while I am doing this thing you will watch over my darling, so that no harm can befall her in some frenzied mood.”

The obscurity of the early dusk was now giving way to the glimmering pallor of the newly-risen moon as the two friends approached the house.

Suddenly Albright exclaimed, “Look!” A flickering, uncertain, shadowy, lambent light played above the grave that these two men had dug one year ago that very night. Then, as if condensing, casting a sickly sheen around, it hovered here and there, at one moment darting upward fiercely, as a thin pillar of fire, then subsiding, trailing along near the ground, gradually sinking, and finally its flamboyant curving line was lost to sight!

It was a somewhat varied repetition of the phantom flights that had horrified Cynthia, but neither the doctor nor the lawyer had ever before seen a visible shape thus defined from the invisible. They were students and thinkers, not disposed to accept an illusory semblance, and both men declared that it must be an optical illusion. But Dr. Rawle was under a strong and fierce excitement on account of the sickness of his wife. “My God!” groaned he, “what if Cynthia has seen it!”

He hastened past the horseshoe knoll, up to her room. She was still reclining as he had left her, muttering inarticulate sounds – her hands tightly clasped and her eyelids half open. It was evident that she had not stirred. In a few minutes the doctor returned, carrying a saw.

“Go, watch her, Albright,” said he, hoarsely. “The time has come for me to ascend this accursed tree. I will lop off these hellish branches. I will hack and hew—”

He strode fiercely forward, stamping heavily over the horse shoe knoll.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed, strangely moved. “To molest my Cynthia; mine, with its tricksy images, its impish delusions, its uncanny spectacular shows!”

He now commenced to ascend the gnarled trunk of the knotted oak. Climbing and clinging to every inequality. The doctor was a practiced athlete, and this was child’s play for him.

Up! up! and the fated branch is reached! The sharp teeth of the saw had made its first deep, grinding incision, when—

As Albright entered the room Cynthia had risen and stood beside the open window, enveloped in a fleecy flowing robe of some light India stuff; a gray cashmere shawl of richest oriental design was carelessly thrown over her fair shoulders, and her wealth of pale, ashen-colored hair, fell, unheeded, in tangled masses, around her. Albright, wishing to protect, but not to disturb her, approached with noiseless step. She did not see him, or, seeing, heeded not. With the palms of her thin hands closely pressed against the blue-veined temples, the large orbs of her wide-opened eyes gazing fixedly, she stood in speechless affright. Albright could not resist the impulse. He advanced and stood beside her, and he, too, gazed outwardly intently.

The doctor had commenced his work, and with sure and swift motion the pitiless saw ground through the twisted bark. Already the huge branch swayed and rocked to and fro. The air was filled with the sharp clicking resonance of the breaking branches; they moved backward and forward; they crackle; they oscillate; they swing; they sway – when – “Oh God! my God!” shrieked Cynthia, for now the flickering light arose from out the grave, the emanation rapidly gathering force, when sheeted with encircling flames, the fierce phantom arose in might and with an awful swirl enveloped the daring iconoclast in its skeleton ribs of furious fire, bearing downward in one crushing mass the crashing bough and the crushed man.

Cynthia had swooned away, but the horror-stricken Albright heard distinctly, in vibratory sepulchral tones – “Dead! All is at an end!”

And poor Cynthia?

“Dead! All is at an end!”

WHO WAS SHE?

One of the most pleasurable journeys that can be made is to take a leisurely open-air drive through the romantic region of the Virginia Blue Ridge.

No wonder that the Indians, in their expressive phraseology, should have called the chain of the North Mountain, where peaks vie with peaks in giving glorious change of contour, “The Endless Mountains.”

Yes, in the variety of shapes that these summits give, the unceasing, the bewildering kaleidoscopic glimpses of vistas, the sort of mirage-producing atmospheric effect, the splendor of primeval forests filled with the trilling melody of feathered choristers, the curious types of people one meets, such a journey is a triumphal progress through a region of delights.

There Nature, vested in regal beauty, attends her worshippers, as willing handmaid, and unnoted are the fast-flitting hours.

Let the season be budding May, blooming June, languorous July, or voluptuous August, the magic mirror is ever unfolding new charms.

On this special hot June day the fierce sun had hung with a fiery blaze over thousands of toilers in crowded cities, over the wide expanse of rolling prairie, of fertile valley and dusty highway; but in the long defiles of the cool gorges leading to these heights, in the cathedral aisles of their solemn forests, and in the sequestered nooks of rock-shadowed coverts, the tempered solar rays were a refreshment.

Perchance the noonday siesta had been too long prolonged, for the lingering sunset found us still on the brow of a steep hill, from whence the enchanting panorama of outstretching valley lay at our feet.

But now no time must be lost, for the most dangerous descent we had yet encountered was before us. The narrow road was cut out of the hillside at a grade so steep that, to measure the declivity with the eye, it seemed to be a perpendicular descent.

We were not inclined to trust ourselves to the chances of a rolling upset in our high open wagon, but preferred to walk the distance and cross the turbulent, swift torrent, at the bottom of the hill, on a tremulous foot-bridge rudely swung across with that careless indifference as to possible results so distinctively American.

By the time we had picked our way down the rocky road and crossed the stream, the sun had dropped out of sight, leaving us at the door of a dilapidated two-story log house.

We had expected to spend the night at the well-known and not uncomfortable inn of a village some four miles distant; but four miles in these mountain-fastnesses after dark was not to be thought of, with all its certainties of deep ruts, washed-out gullies and stones, or, it might be, even a fallen tree blocking our way.

Yet the old log tavern – for such it proved to be – had such a shaky aspect that we hesitated to claim its shelter; and when we did so we found, to our surprise, that they, in their turn, were not quite certain about receiving us; yet it was quite in keeping with a kind of proud dignity that characterizes these country people to receive us as a favor.

A rather stout, middle-aged woman stood in the doorway eyeing us with a tranquil indifference that was not encouraging, and her air of ownership of the shackly building was so entire that we found ourselves insensibly assuming a conciliatory tone, as we asked “the privilege of a night’s lodging.”

Whereupon the calico-clad dame, without otherwise noticing us, shouted out from where she stood, “Car’Iine, can the stranger put up here?”

There was the opening of the kitchen door, with a glimpse of an open fireplace and a savory smell of bacon frying; then a tall mulatto woman stepped forward and answered her mistress in an interrogatory tone:

“I reckon he kin, ef he’ll be saddisfied wid thar Big Lady’s room.”

“‘Big lady’s room’!” said I to myself, with a cynical sneer. “Can this be an enchanted castle, and am I turned into a Quixotic knight-errant in search of adventure?” But I was very careful to keep my misgivings to myself, for I knew these amiable creatures would not hesitate to shut the door in my face in a twinkling, if it so pleased them. So I very humbly “took my place” as it was pointed out to me at the deal table in the kitchen, with my driver a little below the salt, not far off where no hidalgo could have dispensed the honors with an air of more defiant disdain than did my independent landlady. An unpleasant suspicion even flitted across my addled brain, that it would be an awkward thing to ask to pay my reckoning in the morning.

I was hungry enough (for mountain air is a keen appetizer) to heartily enjoy the corn pone and ham and eggs, the chicory bean coffee, sweetened with store brown sugar, and the tumbler of rich cream to “top off” with, nor did I pause for a critical examination of my surroundings until, my not unsatisfactory meal being over, I happened to toy with the teaspoon (innocent amusement!), and, to my astonishment, noticed that it was of sterling silver surmounted by a curious crest, which, with its points round a circlet, looked like a baronet’s coronet.

I had intended to be discreet, but my amazement was too genuine not to betray myself, for, as I raised my eyes from a closer examination of this quaint piece of silverware, I found my landlady’s gaze fixed upon me with a critical glare that seemed to question my honesty of purpose.

“True,” thought I, in some mental confusion, “I might be a burglar in disguise, for all I can prove to the contrary.”

So I asked her, quite deferentially, “Madam, was this interesting relic the property of your grandmother?”

“Thunder!” no, said she, in a stunning voice. “She hain’t left no relict. That thur was the Big Lady’s spoon.”

“The Big Lady!” It was the second time in the space of an hour that this mythical personage had been referred to in this tumble-down tavern, which, without her alleviating presence, was about as matter-of-fact a pile of decaying timbers, rudely plastered together, as I had ever seen.

I could not refrain, so I ventured to inquire, “The Big Lady – pray, who is she?”

“You’re poor shucks, anyhow, ef you hain’t heerd tell on her,” was the sole reply, accompanied by such a withering glance that I instantly felt very tired, and hinted that I would like to go to my room.

“Car’line,” said the mistress, “take that air taller dip and light the stranger ter that air room.”

The woman led me in silence up a flight of shaky stairs, and opened a squeaking door, that hung on rusty hinges, of a room in the small hall above. Then she handed me the light, remarking, as she did so, “Mebbe you’ll need it.”

Then I was left alone.

“And this is the Big Lady’s room,” thought I. “Who is she? The mysterious owner of that quaint and dainty spoon, with its coroneted crest, had then been an inmate of this desolate apartment. When and how did it all come to pass? From whence had she come, and where was she now?”

A faint sigh seemed to answer my mental question. I started, then reassured myself with the reflection that I was very silly to permit my imagination to be disturbed by a mere phrase, connected with so trivial a fact.

Observing the room more carefully, I noticed that it was of considerable size, and had two windows facing the road, while a third casement gave a fine view, as I later on saw, of a meadow back of the house, through which meandered the stream we had just passed.

A large, old-fashioned, high four-poster was set in a corner behind the door; there were no closets and the plain furniture consisted of a chest of drawers, over which hung a looking-glass dimmed with age, a pine table, with basin and ewer, two or three pegs to hang clothes on, a cane-seat chair, an arm-chair and a small locker, and the windows had torn paper shades and no shutters.

The walls were bare and whitewashed, and the floor of wide oaken boards, uncarpeted. There was a wide open fireplace – which pleased me, as likely to ventilate the room – and some stairs that led up into an old-fashioned garret, closed at the top by a small door.

It was a bleak, dismal, comfortless place, and just a trifle musty from lack of due airing.

The sentiment of the spot was cheerless; for places and things, as well as people, have a record that leaves often an indefinable imprint.

There was just a certain something about the apartment that made one feel unpleasantly to trust one’s self to sleep and darkness; so I placed the tallow candle, which at best must soon flicker out, in the chimney thinking to go to sleep more readily while the low light lasted. In fact, I was much fatigued.

It was not very agreeable, the moment I went to bed, to sink into a depth of feathers this warm June night. Yet so it seems the country people will have it; and where geese most abound these high-feathered beds must be endured.

Perhaps it was the discomfort of this warm nest that at first prevented my best efforts to sleep, as I twisted and turned, trying various positions, and every moment getting wider awake.

After an hour or so my candle sputtered itself away, and I began to notice the faint rays of the moon, that now cast an uncertain light around.

The chiaroscuro effect on the walls was gloomy, and, worn out with ineffectual efforts to sleep, I impatiently exclaimed, “The Big Lady is welcome to her room.”

I was answered this time by a distinct sigh; whereat I cried out, “What nonsense to be ill at ease!”

And I encouraged myself with the thought that the air sifted in all directions through this rattle-trap of a tenement.

It is true that a slight wind, such as often marks the midnight hour, had arisen, which, added to the increasing lunar rays, produced a tremulous motion, that threw weird shadows athwart the place, and the small door opening into the garret vibrated, creaked and swung slightly ajar – when, to my surprise, the semblance of a hand, a small, white, jeweled hand, was projected from within the dark loft, to close the door. I could even observe in special distinctness one sparkling ring on the third finger, with a quaint device, set in brilliants, of two opal hands clasped.

“I am beset with hallucinations tonight,” I said. “I will get out of this cursed feather bed, that appears to enervate me and disorder the visual nerve.”

So saying, I arose and dressed myself, determined to doze away the remainder of the night in the arm-chair.

Then, adjusting my pillows as comfortably as possible, with my feet stretched out upon another chair, I began to be very drowsy – when my closing eyes were arrested by the oscillating movement of the rocker near me. It was one of those low chairs which women like to use, and was gently rocking to and fro, to and fro.

Did I see, or was I dreaming that I saw, the shadowy outline of a form seated there? And was there not a subdued sound, as of suppressed weeping?

I would not assent to such vagaries of the imagination, not even if my five senses confirmed the impression; of course not.

There was sufficient reason to explain many things, for the room was close and filled with bad air, I was a worn-out man, and my illusions could be accounted for in the strained state of my nerves; and had not moonbeams, ever since “the stars sang together,” played strange freaks with mortals?

Just as I was on the point of convincing myself, especially as the vaporous outline no longer agitated the chair, a stream of steady moonlight rested on the blear surface of that fading mirror, and, gazing upon the peculiar effect it caused, I started back from the pleading expression of a pair of full-orbed, lustrous dark eyes, with an intelligence in their depths – not a mere painted, soulless surface. There was no setting of fair lineaments, no framing in: they gave me the effect that mouldering decay must have consumed the rest and left the spirit there. An icy terror transfixed my being, and I had no power to move, until the luminous orbits lost their distinctness, vanishing back into space.

Then, freed from the terrible enthralment of their spell, I arose and hastened to open the window, and my head reeled from conflicting emotions.

I dared not look behind me, for I fancied I again heard the monotonous clicking of the rocker, or feared that the old mirror would again give forth its dead.

Ah, what a buried past has traced its processional imagery in our mirrors, over whose burnished expanse has swept so much of the secret history of the human race!

I could breathe more freely as I looked out upon the meadow and the brook. How picturesque! The stream splashed over a rocky bed, which incessantly produced a delicate spray, that now faintly caught the amber tint of opaline beams and diffused a mild radiance.

The air was warm, serene, and clear, and the broad translucent sweep of pale light rested like a jeweled mantle on all things.

A cluster of wild-cherry-trees, reveling in a mass of bloom, stood in the meadow, and the wild dog-wood, with its star-eyed petals, looked meekly at the majestic sweep of the brooding weeping-willow that, Narcissus-like, bent over the gurgling waters. From out the leafy covert of the wild-cherry the clear-throated mockingbird made tuneful answer to the tireless whippoorwill, that gave forth its plaintive cry, as it sang swaying on the willow’s drooping branches. It was so clear and bright that I noticed small objects distinctly.

I would not mar the pleasure, and look back into that blank room, with its whispering sighs, its opening door, hand, its rocking shroud, and its undying eyes.

But presently the moon went behind a cloud, a chill mist curled upward out of the increasing obscurity, and a lull oppressed the dancing wavelets.

And now the ever-increasing mist assumed fantastic shapes, and out of the shadows flitted pallid lights, that played around a mystic, shrouded, vaporous form, that floated with trailing tresses clasped with a coronal of pearls gently moving onward in mid-air with undulating movements, while the soft summer breeze played amid the strands of her golden tresses with aeolian fragmentary sound.

The vision, with an almost imperceptible motion, drifted towards me – nearer, nearer still, now up to the level of my open window, onward, clasping her diaphanous mantle close over an ever-throbbing heart, with that gleaming hand. I could not be afraid of such a transcendent, etherealized being. The fog grew denser, until it seemed to form a huge cloud upon which she rested, and then enwrapped her from my view.

I sank back into my arm-chair, exhausted, and my strained vision, overwrought by so many optical illusions, found relief in sleep; and, notwithstanding my constrained position, I slept heavily until awakened by the broad glare of the newly-risen sun shining upon me.

It was four o’clock when I hastened to leave “The Big Lady’s room,” where I had passed so memorable a night. Happily, both “Car’line” and her doughty mistress were up and doing. It is incredible at what hour of the night country people are pleased to begin the day’s work, usually rising while it is still dark.

After I had settled my little bill with the hostess, which was more reasonable than her conduct or her language, she remarked to me, in a rather mollified tone, and with a grim smile:

“I reckon, stranger, you slept right smart in thar Big Lady’s room.”

“Tell me,” I answered, gaining courage to renew the attack, as I stepped out of the house, “who was she?”

For sole reply she said, “When you git ter town, jist ask the jidge at the court house ter p’iut out her chist.”

Then, by way of giving me a Parthian hit, just as I was climbing into my wagon she bawled out, most sarcastically: .

“You git! you’re ornery cuss, and don’t know nothin’, nohow.”

We reached the pretty little town in time for the seven o’clock breakfast.

“Where did you stay last night?” asked mine host.

With the taunt of my landlady still ringing in my ears, I thought I would try this man and see how much he knew, and so forthwith I answered—

“In the Big Lady’s room.”

“You don’t say so!” said he, in an incredulous way. “And you came out alive! for they say it’s haunted, and if you see Aveline, the White Lady—” Here he stopped suddenly.

“Well,” said I, sharply, “what comes of it?”

“Why,” stammered the man, “it’s a bad thing, and no one cares to risk it.”

“And what of the Big Lady?” I asked.

He smiled. “I see you’ve got the country slang,” he said. “That’s the name they give the poor creature.”

“What is the story?” I asked.

“It is soon told,” answered he. “One dark and stormy night, some years ago, the lumbering stage upset going down that steep hill. The leaving that hill in that condition is a disgrace, anyhow, to Virginia roads.

“Inside the stage were two passengers – a gentleman and a lady.

“The driver said they had been very merry and laughing that afternoon, and loving too, calling each other ‘Andria’ and ‘Aveline.’

“When the vehicle rolled over, the poor gentleman was killed outright, being struck on the head, and the lady was carried in an unconscious state to the room where you slept last night.

“Our best doctors were called in, and after some days she came to, and straightway asked, ‘Where is Andria?’

“Some fool who heard her blurted out, ‘He is dead and buried.’

“Upon hearing this she closed her eyes, and had a long chill, and the doctor said she was dying.

“But she got over it, and lived some months after that. But she never spoke a word, never smiled, never wept – just sat in a little rocking-chair most of the time, with her hands folded, staring at the bare walls. The doctor said it was a clear case of heart-break, and she died because her love of life was gone.

“At last, one day, just at sunset, she had the window that looks out on the meadow open for a breath of air, and she leaned her pretty head forward on her arm, that lay on the window-sill, and ceased to breathe.

“After her death, an open note to the doctor was found on the table, with only these written lines:

“‘Not a drop of my blood runs in the veins of any living creature. Bury me in the same grave with Andria, my beloved, and have engraved on a white marble cross at our heads, Andria and his Aveline.’”

“And her chest?” I asked, ashamed to destroy the pathos of the simple story by such a question, but too curious to resist.

“The small box they had in the stage,” said he, “is in custody of the clerk of the court, waiting claimants as heirs. But as yet no one has ever appeared who has known anything about this ill-fated pair.

“There is not much to be seen, and the money left all went for various expenses.”

I delayed my departure in order to visit the courthouse, where I found an obliging clerk, who consented to show me the contents of that box, which is still there awaiting a legal claimant.

The various little things had a pathetic meaning, and for me almost a personal one.

There were a few pieces of lace-trimmed underwear, now time-yellowed, one or two changes of clothing of fine, soft texture, a necklace of pearls, a curious brooch, a jeweled watch and chain, the mate to that teaspoon and – I grew pale as I saw it – the ring of the phantom hand, evidently a seal ring of the family.

If that sorrowful secret is ever found out, doubtless it will be through the crest on the teaspoon or the device of the ring. For these alone can answer the question of “Who was she?”

THE AMULET RING

It was April 25th, St. Mark’s mysterious eve, and not a score of years ago in Washington. Old Madam Arsinoë, clairvoyant, second-sight seer, fortune-teller; well-known, well advertised, and well-to-do, was dying.

And she knew that her hour had come. She needed no doctor to tell her what the heavy breathing meant, and that the labored heart-beats were numbered. She had deceived others too long, to let death entrap her unawares.

Was she repentant of all the evils of a lifetime of fraud?

Not at all! She was in a rage and defied the near doom that could not be averted.

A very interesting young girl of, perchance, seventeen summers, stood, with hands clasped and lips compressed, beside the bed.

The expression of her pale face was one of patient resignation, settled sadness and weariness, rather than of sorrow. She stood in attendance, as one accustomed to receive and obey orders; passive rather than pliant, subdued rather than emotionless.

“Alida,” gasped the rasping voice, “bolster me up – higher yet, child. Where is Pythia?”

“Gone out for the drug, mother.”

“’Tis well,” muttered she, “one more vision of Heaven, from out of which, let me drop into bottomless Hell.”

Was it the old habit of the ventriloquist laughter, or did the dismal room re-echo the jibe?

Alida stirred not. She had been nourished amid the intoxicating fumes of wonders, and she marveled not, for of such was the daily habit and complexion of her life.

Presently the woman bestirred herself out of a momentary doze, enforced by weakness.

“Alida, the planchette – here, under my chin – confound my weakness; now, the box and die—”

Alida placed the planchette, holding it high up, so that the dying woman could rattle the die on it. Her movements were too measured for the impatience of the sufferer, who cried out:

“Quicker child – hurry up with the die I say – not the loaded one, either; I’ll have no foul throw this time.”

Silently and quickly, without look, word, or gesture of surprise, at this request of the dying fortune-teller, Alida placed the die and box on the little triangular board of planchette.

And now the burning cheeks took on a deeper hue, and the restless eyes glowed with rekindled fires, as she clutched the box and rattled the die.

“My first five throws, and the forfeit – my amulet ring.”

So saying she pulled off of her fore-finger a white, oval, moon-stone ring, in antique silver setting, with cabalistic characters engraved upon it, and placed it on the triangle.

Did planchette quiver?

Then, as with uplifted hand, she was about to throw the die, she, musing, paused:

“It’s the child’s, anyway. He called it the good-luck ring, but it never brought her, the trusting little fool, aught but sorrow. When I lied about her, and he believed me, she returned it to him, the dolt! Then the simpleton gave it to me. Here it goes, merry as a marriage bell, rattle the die! – ace – five – four – six – ahem! – I ought to have the loaded die! Here it is again – six! The fiends fly away with me – I’m burst – by the black cat’s pinching – the ring’s yours, child – take it, and a curse go with it. No – I call back the curse from you – here take the ring;” and she threw it at the dazed girl, who had never, until now, seen it off her mother’s finger.

“Now, child, for a new stake – something every woman likes to know, and man too – a secret. Throw, Alida; if you win, I’ll tell a secret that concerns you.”

The young girl’s hand trembled just a little, yet “secrets” were her mother’s stock in trade. For years she had seen the rich and the poor come and go. The rich rolled up in their carriages and threw down their bank notes, the poor servant girls paid in their half dollars, and all for “secrets;” and now, at last, it had come her turn.

Alida threw – six, four, ace, five – five again.

“Hold!” cried the soothsayer, as she rudely seized the girl’s wrist with momentary force. “A murrain blast you! – just twenty-one. Woe is me – the forfeit’s lost.”

Now, by the tingling of mine ear,

The snarling demon bids me fear.

“Alida, love me once before you hate me forever,” she cried, and with a sudden tenderness, terrible to behold, because so alien from her nature, the dying woman threw herself forward, twining her skinny arms round the fragile form of the fair girl, and her head fell upon her shoulder as she sobbed bitterly.

Alida had had a life-long lesson in self-control, but this was a strange and startling thing.

She had never been treated cruelly, yet never before had she received a proof of affection from this hard, cold, bad woman, whom she called “mother.”

And so this stony heart was human after all, for it craved love in its death struggle, with a passionate yearning.

There was silence, only broken by the woman’s choking sobs.

“At last,” she groaned. “Oh, God, if God there be, the avenger is in this hour. I know I must make haste to tell her;” and she sank back, pale and exhausted, on her pillow.

“Will Pythia never come with the opium?”

Alida raised her mother’s head a little, and gave her a dark green cordial, the aroma of which filled the room.

Then the dying one took courage and whispered:

“Alida, do not hate me! I am not your mother.”

With a sudden great outcry, as if in that moment the death cerements that had bound her down – a living corpse – had burst asunder, Alida sank upon her knees.

Was it a cry of joy or sorrow? Ask the resuscitated one, who steps out of a yawning grave, into renewed light and joy of living.

The face of the moribund woman grew ashen gray, but with a firmer voice she went on, without heeding, or seeming to heed, Alida’s cry.

“Your mother was fair to look upon, pure and good, and your foolish father loved her passing well; but he was jealous. I met him at a ball and fancied him. What was the brittle tie of marriage to me? Bah! I brushed it aside like a filmy cobweb – poisoned your father’s mind against your mother – no matter, now, how it was done. But he believed me, sent her from him, took you, a prattling child, for himself as he thought – got a divorce – and I became his legal wife – very legal wasn’t it? Once your mother wore that ring, which your father gave her as an old heirloom in his family, said to bring ‘good luck.’ After a time, your mother sent it, with a broken-hearted note, begging that it might be yours. ‘For her poor baby,’ she said.

“There soon came a time when your father reproached me with his ‘lost happiness,’ he called it; and I – well, at first I thought he ought to die; and then I felt that a lasting revenge was sweetest, and I fled with you, leaving him a lonely man – fled first to one city, then to another, and still other new places, until we began to get poor.

“My mother had been a West India Obi woman – she and her sister both. I sent for Pythia, who knew all the fetich charms, and more, too. Black arts are family secrets. Mankind are mostly fools – sodden fools – and so we prospered.”

Again the woman sank back upon her pillows, and the shadow of the death-hue fell upon her.

After that first outcry of joyful surprise, when Alida sank as in a swoon, overcome by the ecstasy of her new being, she swiftly regained her self-possession and arose, standing, as of old, beside the bed.

“If I do not conquer myself,” she thought, “I shall never know the hideous mystery of my life. Now, while the thread spins out, I must cling to the clue or be forever, in the future, an outcast, as I have been in the dark past.”

Thus she said not a word till the fortune-teller stopped; then she very calmly asked:

“Where is my father? Who is he?”

How her heart throbbed, but her voice gave no sign of agitation.

“Pythia knows,” gasped the woman, as if her tongue refused to give up all its secret. “Of late he lives here, in a certain official position.”

The wrested thread of life was fast spinning out, and Alida felt it. Once more she asked, and this time with tremulous tones:

“And my mother – what of her?”

The response came with a more hurried breathing; a ghastly, glazed look, and a thrilling cry rang forth of:

“Died broken-hearted!”

“And you her foul murderer!” shrieked Alida, no longer able to restrain herself.

At this fearful accusation, hurled against her by the only being for whose love she had ever cared, a vertigo of insanity seemed to seize upon the wretched creature, and her disordered brain became a prey to images engendered by her manner of life.

“Hag of the mist, avaunt!” she screamed. “Squatting toad of the speckled throat, away! Goblins of the grinning skulls, swing open all the doors and windows – Hah! what now?

“Sybil’s soul, black as a coal,

Rides the moon’s face!

Tell, spectre, tell,

Shall we meet in—”

And, with one long, shuddering aspiration, the guilty soul fled forth from out its mortal tenement.

At this supreme moment, Pythia entered, and a strange glance shot athwart her dark face, as she gave a momentary look at the bed.

“Go, Alida,” she said, sedately. “This is my dead, and none of yours. Go rest.”

Alida went to her room, but not to rest; poor, desolate child.

Scarcely had she gone when Pythia locked the door, strode across the chamber to the dead, and burst forth into wild exclamations of mingled hate and exultation.

Presently she pulled the pillow from under the inanimate form, and hastily ripping open an end, plunged her hand into the mass of feathers, and brought forth a small feathery bundle of rags, after which she carefully re-closed the aperture.

Then she took from her pocket a little brazen image of a fiery serpent, placing it upon a small tripod in the center of the room. After this she prostrated herself prone upon the floor, with arms extended in the form of a cross, three different times, each time saying:

“I give Thee thanks, mighty Oub, that Thou hast hearkened to my prayer, and destroyed the oppressor.”

Upon which, she danced in a circle around the brazen image, with uncouth movements of symbolic meaning, all the while muttering fetich incantations.

At last, with lurid eyes aflame, a priestess of Python, she re-approached the dead.

The body was still warm, which seemed to displease her; for, bending over it and forcibly pressing down the chest, she cried out: “Body and soul, separate;” whereupon a thin, blue vapor curled upwards, seemingly from out the nostrils of the corpse, and filled the apartment, as if, perchance, the Obi woman had liberated some subtle essence.

After a time this fiendish malice apparently expended itself, amid mutterings like the roll of distant thunder, succeeding the lightning’s flash.

Seating herself opposite the lifeless form she denounced it in her wrath:

“Child of the Egyptian slave and sorceress, I hate, hate, hate you, and you dared to make a servant of me, the child of a priestess of the mighty Oub, of me, a hierophant of the thirty-three degree! But my charms have vanquished, and you have wasted away, inwardly consumed by the fetich poison. Day by day, I made you drink powdered glass, and you knew it not – now, I am avenged, and I will take your ill-gotten gains, as wages of my long servitude. I will return to my people, from whence your lying promises ensnared me – and sacred honors in the name of Oub – of Python – of Hak – shall be henceforth mine, as their venerated priestess.”

Then rising, she searched the dead, finding in her matted hair a tiny key, with which she quickly opened a carefully adjusted trap door in the floor, concealed under the bed. Here was amassed the treasure of sin.

As the morning dawned, Pythia went for a doctor, to whom she gave notice, that during the night Madame Arsinoë had died.

•   •   •   •   •

The fortune-teller was duly buried.

Alida was too ill to rise all that day, and so Pythia was sole mourner at the funeral!

Alida was seized with a fever, and Pythia patiently waited and watched with the girl, treating her fever skillfully with simple herbs, so that before many days she was convalescent.

Then she said to her:

“Alida, I must leave you, and go to my people, whence I came. May the sun ever shine for you, and no shadow cross your path to molest you. I bear you no ill-will, and if I can be of use to you, speak.”

Now Alida remembered that the soothsayer had told her that Pythia knew who her father was; but she was afraid of the stern dark-haired woman, and had dreaded to ask her. But now she felt encouraged. Pythia had been kind to her in her sickness, and had invited her confidence; so she said, timidly:

“Dear Pythia, when you go I shall be left poor and all alone. Can you tell me who is my father, that may claim his protection?”

“I can,” answered Pythia, with a grim smile.

“God in heaven have mercy!” cried Alida, “I can bear it no longer! Speak!”

“Your father, child,” said Pythia, quietly, “is General Cassilear. He is now in Washington. It is an easy matter for me to take you to him, but not so easy, poor thing! for you to prove to him that you are his child. Your name is not even Alida; it is Marion – Marion Cassilear.”

Then the girl exclaimed:

“Blessed be the Lord, I can prove to him who I am by my amulet ring.”

“Write him what you will,” said Pythia; “seal your note with your good-luck ring, and I will at once take it to him – myself.”

•   •   •   •   •

That very evening, a handsome man, of military bearing, not so very old, but with snow-white hair, prematurely white, it was said, came to the fortune teller’s house.

He had hesitated. “Yes – it is the ring,” he thought; “but the accursed adventuress who has wrecked my life, and through whom my beloved wife sank into an early grave, she must have stolen this ring when she abducted my child. She may be now using it, to lure me to her den; yet – there, I can force from her the story of my child; I will – I must know, what has become of Marion.”

At this moment the door opened, and all doubts were swept away!

“My Marion! image of your blessed mother! my long lost child!”

“My father!”

•   •   •   •   •

Pythia had taken the treasure, and left the country.

No one would live in the house of the old fortune-teller, whose doors would never shut, and which was shunned as haunted.

•   •   •   •   •

General Cassilear was absorbed by his new-found happiness, and never wearied of the society of his gentle daughter.

But a shadow rested over the heart of Marion, and at last she found courage to make her trouble known to her father.

One day when he was tenderly caressing her, she confessed to him:

“My father, pardon me, but I cannot love you as I would, on account of one thing.”

“Well, child!” said he, drawing himself up with a hurt, proud look.

“It is my mother,” sobbed Marion. “Forgive me, father, but you did her an injustice. Do you love her memory? Will you restore the record of her fair fame before the world?”

“My good child,” answered he, the big tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, “I adore your mother’s memory. I was deceived and betrayed, but my punishment has been exceeding great for that sin of jealousy that made the crime against her possible. Long ago, I applied to the courts to reverse their judgment – and death alone now divorces us. She is vindicated.”

“My beloved father, my heart is now yours, without a shadow,” said Marion, as she embraced him fondly.

A REMINISCENCE

It was a cool October evening, and just at the retrospective twilight hour, that we two, my friend and I, sat beside the flickering gleam of a smouldering wood fire.

At times we held a silent communion of thought, and then again there was a subdued current of talk, that, like the momentary flashes given out by the dying embers, mingled the clearer present with the ashes of a consumed past.

We had not met for many years, and thus our conversation was one prolonged reminiscence.

What is it that makes the reminiscent more attractive, I had almost said more sacred, than the present?

Will this psychological trait be a feature in the life of the next world?

Are we thus forever to be mending broken links in the vast-stretching chain of circumstance?

“It is a curious fact,” said my friend, after an interval of silence, “how there are moments in our lives when we seem to be deprived of our usual characteristics, and do things impulsively that we ourselves are almost at once amazed at having done—”

“It is true,” I answered, “there do come to us moments of strange action, so unaccountable as to cause, and yet so replete with sequence, that they make a tangled thread of life.”

“Cases of possession?” suggested my friend.

“That trenches on debatable ground,” I evasively replied, “and yet there may be moments when we stumble, because we are left to walk alone without guidance.”

“That idea recalls,” said my friend, musingly, “a danger I once encountered through the merest heedlessness.”

“How so?” I inquired.

“I will tell you,” was the reply; “although I am ashamed to this day, when I think how foolish I was.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

I had been spending the winter in Cuba, and in the early days of April I left the Havana and crossed the Gulf, going over to New Orleans, where I spent some weeks before returning North, at the St. Charles Hotel.

I had my son with me as sole companion. He was then not more than seven years of age, but owing to his good humor, his ready wit and great intelligence, he was such delightful company, that I was actually often oblivious of the fact that, so far as protection went, I was but a little woman quite unprotected.

There are some dates one does not readily forget, and this adventure occurred on the fifth day of April, 1859:

We had taken a two o’clock dinner, and the day being very pleasant, we walked out for a stroll to the Cathedral, whence we soon emerged, and sauntered along, listlessly gazing at the ever quaint groups one encounters in the open space around this church.

Suddenly, it occurred to me, that it was a trifle warm, and that a drive along the smooth shell road to the lake would be refreshing. And as if to meet this caprice, I noticed a hack standing at a near corner, and at once, without especially observing either vehicle or driver, engaged the man to take us out on the shell road.

My child, pleased at the thought of a drive, quickly jumped into the carriage, and off we rattled merrily enough.

At first, the sprightly youngster kept up such an animated chattering as to quite divert my attention from our surroundings, although I presently became aware that we were passing the cemeteries, which I recognized, having visited them, and watched the festive lizard darting in and out of crannies of their sombre walls.

But soon a vague sense of distrust seized me, as we drove rapidly through a miserable portion of the outskirts of the city quite unknown to me.

The shell road, where I had directed the driver to take us, was the fashionable drive, where one constantly met gay equipages, and I had enjoyed it several times, so that I was measurably familiar with the suburbs of the city leading to it. Certainly we had never before reached this agreeable road through such forlorn environment.

Our carriage was a roomy Clarence, with a circular glass front, and I could readily watch the driver where I sat. And when I began to look at the fellow closely, his aspect was not reassuring. He was a big and burly negro, of the pure Congo type, and his face was dull, lowering, and deeply scarred.

As we passed some wretched negro huts straggling along the roadside, I asked myself afresh where we were, and the situation was uncomfortable. Certainly we were not on the shell road, for we had now turned into a heavy, sandy byway, that dragged its dull length along, by the side of a deep and muddy bayou.

“Driver,” cried I, craning my neck out of the open window so as to make him bear me, “where are you taking us? I told you the shell road.”

For only answer the horrid creature slowly turned his head, without relaxing the speed of his horses, and gave me a grinning leer that sent a shuddering sense of fear through and through me. It was one of those malign expressions that haunt one, such a face as might have arisen to cast its spell of an evil eye from out the gloomy depths of Avernus. It penetrated me like the lightning’s sudden glare amid surrounding darkness, and made me instantly realize the peril of my situation.

Here we were, my little darling and I! Oh, what an agony to feel that by my stupid act I had endangered his precious life. Yes, here we were, being driven over a lonely and an unfrequented road, with night coming on apace, and at the mercy of this villainous looking creature, who, it was to be feared, only waited the swift oncoming of darkness to rob us, murder us, and throw us in the slimy ooze of the turgid bayou.

Oh, how could I have done so senseless a thing as to enter the hack of an utter stranger, at a street corner, quite unnoticed, and without any living being knowing where I was going or who I was? And what an utter blank, to go out of life in this way – disappearing from au hotel and leaving no clue, no trace, whereby our sad fate could ever be learned.

Would we be searched for, or would I go down into a dishonored grave as a suicide?

Who would ever imagine the senseless fatuity of having taken this drive under such circumstances? Always before when I had driven out, an order had been given from the hotel, and a safe driver and suitable carriage procured.

Oh! the thought of such a terrible, such an ignoble blotting out of one’s existence, of all the aspirations that made life worth the living, was torturing!

Yet the knowledge that my rash act imperilled a life far dearer than my own – the life of my gifted and loving child – was agonizing.

Meantime the prattle of the dear boy had ceased, as he with quick intuition divined that something had gone wrong, although I had not spoken.

The soft little hand had clasped mine, while his wistful eyes were fixed upon the dark and muddy bayou. But suddenly his grasp tightened almost convulsively, as he hoarsely whispered:

“Look, mamma! only look!”

“It is nothing,” I whispered, with forced calmness; “nothing, dear, but the face of an alligator. Don’t be afraid; I am here”’

At this moment, as if to watch the effect upon me, the negro slowly bent his head, stooping a little to peer in upon us, and the expression of his face was almost fiendish. The man-eating tiger, when about to spring upon his prey, must have the same lurid glare in his bloodshot eyes, but the hard lines of the stony face, belong alone to bestial man.

My terror was so great, that out of my sheer despair, my courage rose.

I, too, had plainly seen what had so startled my child, the agonized face of a man arise out of that fetid flow, all smeared with the coagula of blood from death wounds not yet staunched. There was the murdered man, as his body rose and fell with an almost imperceptible motion, moved by the slow and sullen sway of the muddy water.

This spot, then, was a chosen one for foul deeds that “cried aloud to heaven for vengeance,” and the heavy air stifled the soul with the weight of an all recent murder.

Great God! and was the morrow to reveal the swaying to and fro of the long matted hair of a murdered woman, entangled in its helpless death throes, with the fair flaxen curls of her child? And I involuntarily pressed my head and stroked my darling’s curls, as if we were already in that death struggle.

Would the morrow look upon this triple deed of hell?

Then, too, came the sudden recollection that I wore in a belt around my person, a store of gold pieces, so as to be ready to meet any unexpected emergency of a traveler, so I knew I would be killed after being robbed. But always, uppermost in my mother’s heart, was the keen anguish about my child, and my self-reproaches.

But in the midst of all this sense of human helplessness, my heart rose to Heaven for aid. Surely this, woe cannot overtake the innocent one, I thought. The dear Lord will find a way.

I whispered: “My darling, pray.” “Yes, mamma,” was the faint response, and the child nestled very close against me, while the rosy, pouting ups, moved pleadingly and silently, as the long lashes fell over the half-closed eyes. “The innocent one speaks to God,” thought I – it rested with me to act.

Thus we drove along, perhaps half an hour longer – it seemed to me an age – and that I could feel my hair withering and bleaching. Could any spot be more desolate? Except this dank dead, all else was a blank. The road became more lonely, narrower, more unused. We were, doubtless, on the remote boundary line of some vast plantation, and this was a sort of byway for rude ox-carts, or for mules, and the open mouthed bayou was at our feet – dull and inky – Acheron – the Styx, and we, the pale shadows! and the classical thought seemed like the gibe of some imp.

On – slowly plodding onward – for now the horses were allowed to walk, as if nearing their journey’s end. Yes, surely, this is the most desolate spot, and the death-doom is at hand.

“Pray, angel, pray,” was again my more urgent appeal. The blue eyes opened wonderingly wide, and closer still the little hand clapped mine, as with a reproachful tone the child said firmly, “Mamma, I do pray.”

Involuntarily I shut my eyes to try the better to compose my soul. Then, looking out in a vacant way upon the dreary road, I saw two men walking together and coming our way. They were sorry looking wretches; but had they been shining angels sent to my relief they could not have been more welcome. Instantly I formed a resolution to accost them as they approached. So I at once signaled them with my handkerchief to come near, and they shouted to the driver to “stop.” My first impulse was to ask their protection and beg them to go with us, but there was something too repellant in their faces, as they stood at the carriage window, to make me put any trust in them. So I only said, very calmly, “Pray, tell me where we are, for this old uncle has lost his way. I am stopping at the St. Charles hotel, and you will be well paid, my good men, if you will go straight there and give them the number of this hack, and tell them that presently we shall return.”

They nodded assent, with a grin.

“And now,” I asked, “how far are we from any public road?”

“’Taint fur frum the shell road,” answered one of the men. “It’s cross the country; and that thar nigger o’rt to be lynched ef he don’t git yer thar in a jiffy.”

“Thanks, thanks,” I cried out, “you’ll be well paid at the St. Charles for your trouble; drive on, Uncle; and be quick about it, now we know the road.”

And the old fiend did drive on, at such rapid pace that he reached the shell road in twenty minutes; and as we bowled smoothly along, and I kissed my little precious in an ecstasy of joy, it seemed as if we had been transported on the road to Paradise.

Just as the dreaded darkness fell over the earth, we were at the door of the brilliantly lighted St. Charles.

An hour later the two men whom we had met sent us word, “that they had come for their money.”

“Let me take them some gold pieces, mamma,” urged the little one, “they were as angels for us.”

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

“That was a narrow escape from a fearful peril,” said I.

“Saved through the prayer of innocence,” answered my friend. Then she added with a shudder—

“This brutal driver was afterwards hung for the murder of the man whom we saw in the bayou.

“The two men whom I stopped saw the corpse when they passed by, and, in connection with meeting us in this strange, out-of-the-way place, thus furnished a clue which, without the Providence of my apparently insane impulse, could never have been given.

“Was I not thus used, without my own volition, as ‘a means to an end’?”

EARTH-BOUND

The audience was a critical one even for New York, and Adela, as she made her first appearance on the stage of a concert room, was received with a silent condescension most depressing for the artist’s temperament.

Like the lovely Malibran, she was the daughter of a musician, who had himself conducted her studies carefully and severely, with a view to her becoming a professional singer.

During the course of this instruction she had developed much unexpected capability both as a vocalist and dramatist, and a brilliant career was confidently predicted by those who knew her talent.

It had come to be a cherished hope and dream of her father that Adela should someday win recognition as a prima donna.

But in the past year the old music master had almost lost courage, as several of his best-paying scholars had gone abroad.

Indeed, at times, increasing poverty made them very uncomfortable, and poor M. Blanquard had his fits of deep depression, when he was quite overcome with a dread of pinching want that might befall them in case of any untoward accident.

A simple ballad had been selected for the first effort of the young cantatrice, and it was admirably adapted to give the best effect to her pleasing and touching voice.

As she came upon the stage, her slight but well-rounded figure, pale and interesting face and dreamy, almost imploring, eyes, that in their sad expression made a pathetic appeal to the indulgence of the public, had their effect in predisposing a kindly judgment in her regard.

But when this timid creature poured forth a flood of pure, fresh, liquid notes, true and of wonderful compass, a magnetic thrill seized her cold critics, and everyone applauded.

It was evident that Adela had scored a success and her aged father was in the seventh heaven of delight.

Among the many who vigorously encored were two men, both captured by the bewitching songstress.

Fèdor de Muris, the captivating young tenor, was enraptured by the exquisite delicacy of intonation, for he knew how to mark and prize all the excellencies displayed.

Presently, when the harmonious cadence of their voices united in the succeeding “duetto,” it was remarked that never before had de Muris sang with such energetic accents or such elevated expression.

What a melodious concord of sound was the pure soprano of the prima, mingling with his own perfectly modulated voice!

These two souls seemed to unite and float away into space in that supreme effort that marked a new era in their lives.

The audience, without knowing why, felt the magnetic influence, and again gave a round of applause.

Here, then, were a pair of lovers, that a lavish nature seemed to have specially formed for each other, only, as things will go by contraries in this perverse world, there already existed a third disturbing force.

An old bachelor, in very fact a dilapidated roué, a man of high fashion, a wealthy idler, opera-goer and well-known clubman, had been irresistibly fascinated by this unexpected vision of fresh, modest, willowy, graceful loveliness.

And inasmuch as this gay rake was no mean dilettante in musical matters, he fully appreciated that Adela was a true artist.

“This woman is a revelation,” he exclaimed, “I must know her. Her musical renditions are true creations.”

“It is just possible,” thought he, with a shrug at himself; “I might be fool enough to be in real earnest this time.”

Where there is wealth and position and elegant leisure, a man may rapidly press his suit, and perchance win over the poor and unbefriended.

So the very much sought-after society beau, Malcolm Malus, drifted into the green-room when the concert was over, and, getting himself introduced to the happy music teacher, begged to be presented to his gifted daughter.

As the gratified parent led Mr. Malus to Adela, it did not escape the practiced eye of this man of the world, that he was evidently interrupting a pleasant conversation with the tenor, who was without doubt offering her some acceptable compliments.

The suspicion that he had a formidable rival, proved the exciting stimulus needed to the jaded perceptions of the old beau, who possessed, among various other amiable weaknesses, a very jealous nature.

Of two things he felt assured, that the charming artiste was quite indifferent to his attentions, but that they pleased her father.

When Malcolm Malus returned home that night, he promised himself many things, among which not the least were to establish himself as a gentleman and a millionaire should – in town house and country seat – to eschew club life and suppers that were making him gouty, and to give to his home a brilliancy and charm that money could not purchase, by placing this bewitching woman to preside over it as his wife.

“And now,” thought he, “is the very time to win her, before her surprising talent becomes more widely known; for once famous, she might be even beyond my reach. At present they are poor, and the father will be dazzled by my offer of marriage.”

As the fatal word “marriage” was uttered in his soliloquy, he was utterly astounded at his own magnanimity, for hitherto he had looked upon this state of life as a stupid surrender of liberty.

“Zounds,” cried the egotist, “but I am brave to ask this hitherto obscure person to share my wealth, my position, my name. What a splendid fellow I am! And yet,” he added, with a cynical laugh, “how foolish to try and trick myself, for don’t I know that I shall get the best of the bargain, and secure a big Kohinoor, that when put in its proper seating will eclipse all around it by its splendor?”

Then came an unpleasant recollection of the presuming tenor, which he dismissed with the reflection, “the fellow must be made to understand his place.”

And meantime the tenor went home to dream of Adela, where she made one of an immortal trio, for Schumann and Schubert were there, crowning her, crowning them both, with laurels.

And Adela, after the glorious success of her début, went home to dream of heavenly refrains that sounded marvelously like echoes of the tenor’s voice. Finally, the lovely girl, worn out with the feverish excitement of the concert, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, which was not disturbed by any premonition of evil.

Alas! while she still rested the cunning Malcolm Malus had sought her father, and the compact was made between them that Adela was to be his wife.

The dazed and poverty-stricken old man at once persuaded himself that the endless advantages to be derived from such an alliance must greatly outweigh the uncertain profits of a professional life.

Adela was amazed that morning on entering the small apartment that served them at once as breakfast and dining-room, as drawing-room and music room, to find it transformed into a bower of roses, and a small table delicately spread for her with dainty confections; while, better than all, the careworn, pallid face of her dear father was wreathed in smiles

“Ah!” thought she, “can it be the dear tenor who has been so foolishly lavish?”

She paused upon the threshold with an inquiring look, at once divined, as her father, clasping her lovingly in his arms said:

“My daughter, all our troubles are now at an end. You are never again to undergo the ordeal of the public gaze as a singer. You are to become a social queen and lead a life of ease and luxury.”

Now the fair little nightingale had been educated with one end in view, and that was to strive to the utmost to become someday a famous prima donna.

She knew that she had a voice of unusual sweetness, flexibility and power, added to which she had the instinct of delicate phrasing and the êlan needed for dramatic success.

Yes, this gentle, winsome being had her own aims and ambitions, and all these were connected with her future career. Then with woman’s quick intuition, she at once understood that the seemingly bright destiny announced to her so suddenly, was not connected with the dear tenor.

It was true that she would hesitate to acknowledge plainly, even to herself, yet she nonetheless felt that no heaven of delight, in which he also was not to shine as a star of the first magnitude, had any charm for her.

Adela turned very pale and gasped, “My Father.”

“I am sorry, child,” he said, looking much hurt, “to have spoken so hastily, but one will soon be here who can, in a better way, explain all.”

“Torture me not,” she replied in a husky voice.

“To torture,” replied he still more pained, “would be impossible for me. I should at once have simply told you, Adela, that the accomplished millionaire, Mr. Malcolm Malus, who asked me last evening to present him to you, has been here and proposed marriage through me to you.”

“And you?” said she in a very low, faint tone.

“I have accepted his proposals. I—”

But Adela had swooned away.

•   •   •   •   •

That future which a short month ago was so radiant with hope, was now a great blank for the pretty vocalist whom society received very graciously as Mrs. Malcolm Malus.

A beautiful country seat on the Hudson was chased, where the best people were pleased to enjoy their hospitality, and the commodious mansion was always filled with gay guests.

The wealth of the generous host, and the winning manners and delightful voice of the hostess made their home very attractive.

It was as Mr. Malus knew it would be. He had secured an exceeding great prize and the world admired the sparkling gem he had placed in its golden setting; for, like the flawless diamond, this superb jewel received all rays, remaining itself colorless and unimpressionable.

Perchance, indeed, the glitter was but the gleam of the fiery ordeal, for who can measure the depths of an aching heart?

But as the summer passed away, and the time came to select a winter home, a town house, Malcolm Malus very unexpectedly found his hitherto docile wife obstinate.

She would not live in New York. In vain he pleaded and almost threatened. Did he suspect that one of the announced stars for the coming opera season was to be the silvery tenor?

When a woman is determined, and especially one who is depended upon as a society leader, it is, to say the least, very awkward to deny her own sweet will and way.

So the mooted point was yielded in Adela’s favor, and a fine Washington residence was purchased.

“After all, it is better,” thought her husband, trying to persuade himself that he was carrying out his own plan, “for in Washington talent finds ready and full recognition, and a clever woman may hold an agreeable salon.

“My wife cannot fail to be appreciated, and I shall be very proud of her.”

The social success in Washington was entire.

Their house was artistic, and their refined and quiet breakfasts, luncheons, dinners and suppers were endless. Only Adela would never make one of a theater party. She seemed to shrink from a painful reminiscence, and Malcolm Malus knew it.

But at their own house there was not only the sparkle of wit and champagne, but the enchantment of a delicious voice.

The pathetic ballads, sung with feeling, the dreamy rendering of the Masters, made an hour under that roof memorable.

Thus, as a year rolled round, Malcolm Malus, satisfied and gratified, found himself in the ultimate heaven of his desires. His intense vanity and absolute worldliness were met. He was never disturbed by the reflection that in making this gifted woman his wife, he had blighted her life. She had plainly told him before their marriage that her heart could never be his, and the base creature knew that this noble woman was alone controlled by a high sense of filial duty, when finally she consented to become his.

Such was his despicable selfishness, that he claimed her hand, knowing that her heart was withheld.

He permitted and accepted the terrible sacrifice. There was indeed one penalty affixed, that he could not escape. He was jealous; in fact, the mere recollection of the handsome tenor almost distracted him, for he very justly suspected that this man had been his rival in Adela’s affections.

And now, when only one year of society’s acclamations, one year of selfish enjoyment had rolled around, and when at the very height of that which he had most coveted, Malcolm Malus fell desperately ill.

From the first the doctors looked grave and gave but little hope, and presently the time came when he was made to understand that he must surrender his firm grip upon this world’s pleasures.

Then were enacted scenes too fearful to describe.

Even the physicians were appalled at that unrelenting struggle, that fierce hold on life, those hoarse shrieks of “I will not yield up my houses, my money, my wife. I cannot, I will not go.” And Adela was compelled to stand for hours at his bedside, and listen in mute terror to his imprecations.

Again and again he threatened her, should she ever dare to marry the hated tenor, that he would come back and haunt her. And when the final moment of doom came, when his reluctant soul must quit its mortal tenement, must be borne forth to meet its fiat on the surging billows of eternity, his last cry was “I cannot go forth. I am earth-bound.”

Then all was still, as the silver cord was rudely snapped asunder. Was he released?

Adela hastened away from the scene of horror, to the peaceful repose of her country home, placing her Washington house in the hands of real estate agents to rent, and determined never to re-enter it herself.

In the country, a real grief awaited her, for during that coming summer, her father expired, he whose only weakness had been a faulty judgment as to her marriage.

But his loving daughter had always spared him the avowal, that for his comfort, her own happiness had been surrendered.

His death was peaceful and Adela was full of consolation, at the thought that in every way she had contributed to his well-being.

Meantime, her city agents annoyed her not a little concerning her Washington house.

No one would consent to remain in it. The residence was handsome and well appointed, but everyone who rented it grew restless, and refused to remain.

Doubtless, thought Adela, there is a sentiment connecting the place with the dismal tragedy of that miserable death.

I will shake off this torpor, and return to it myself.

So the second year of her widowhood, as the autumn faded into winter, she returned to Washington.

“Why should I be such a moral coward, why shrink from the inevitable?” thought she. “I never loved Malcolm Malus and he knew it. Now I am free.”

And with the consciousness of a regained freedom, new hopes of life were re-enkindled.

Adela took off her mourning, renovated her house, and once again prepared to resume her place as a social leader.

It did not suit her quiet taste to give large entertainments, but she was surrounded by a small coterie of selected friends.

Soon after she re-entered her home, and in the early winter, she heard with deep emotion that there was to be a season of Italian opera, and that the popular tenor, de Muris, was to make his first appearance at the Capital of the nation.

So Adela took a box, and invited a party of friends to fill it on the first opera night, when, after the performance, they were to return and take supper with her.

Did Fèdor de Muris notice her presence, that he should on that night have surpassed himself?

However that may be, Adela, yielding to an irresistible impulse, sent him an invitation to make one at the supper.

And now at last the hated rival, the prescience of whose sure coming in the future had added a deeper gloom to the death combat of the despairing Malus, at last the black shadows that loomed athwart his expiring hour, had quickened into definite shape.

Had Adela in the rapture of the meeting, after so much anguish, forgotten the dread warnings?

Oh, what heavenly delight, when once again their voices mingled, the pure soprano and the clear tenor, in rhythmic clearness and force. Did no intercepting cloud darken this sunlit hour?

One by one the guests departed, and these two were left alone.

“One more divine song, Adela, may I say dear Adela,” sighed de Muris.

But more enchanting even than any melody was the expressive silence, the language of the tender eyes, to which her lover responded by clasping the dainty, listless, little hand within his own, when there fell from the wall near them, with a startling crash, the portrait of Malcolm Malus, and there at Adela’s feet lay the upturned fiercely staring eyes, while fragments of the heavily gilded frame were scattered in all directions, striking them both in the rebound.

Was it merely a fanciful impression that the space around them was filled with a dire confusion of discordant, jarring, breaking, broken harp strings, then died away with a muffled subterranean rumbling? Could there have been an earthquake shock?

Suddenly, with overwhelming premonitions of woe, the banished recollections of that deathbed swept over Adela’s soul.

Feebly motioning to her lover, for lover she well knew he was, to leave her, she sat for hours after he had gone, with clasped hands, cold and motionless, and looking so pale and rigid, it was pitiful.

“Ah,” she moaned, “am I doomed forever and forever to be the bride of a ghoul, who claims me from the dark regions where surely he must dwell? Am I never to know the true joy of living? Good God, am I never to be his, whom alone I have ever loved?”

And the chill night wind swept by as she spoke, filling every crevice of the big, desolate house with its responsive, quivering, shaking “never,” for thus did the poetic imagination of the artist interpret nature’s voices.

Fèdor de Muris called on the morrow, but Adela was too ill to see anyone. The opera season never lasts very long in Washington, and the tenor would soon be compelled to leave.

He wrote her imploring, impassioned notes, begging her to see him, and she consented. Why not?

What had she not suffered during those gloomy days and more dismal nights of nervous prostration, when the whole house, to her heated fancy, was one whispering charnel vault.

“But if I die, I must first see my love,” thought she, and better die than never see him. So the time was fixed.

Fèdor de Muris had just closed an exceptionally brilliant engagement. All that there was of social distinction and of prestige, had applauded the masterful power of his interpretations, and he was on each occasion repeatedly recalled.

His feverish exaltation had imparted pathos and meaning to his renderings, and he had excelled himself. It is true that he was ignorant of the painful circumstances that had given such deep significance to what had happened on the evening spent with Adela.

At best he had regarded it as a very unpleasant experience, and especially disagreeable because it had so painfully affected the woman he loved.

“Had it not been for her fright,” thought he , “it was a poetic revenge to see that old villain’s head roll at our feet, and very dramatic – well, it was uncanny.”

That evening Fèdor de Muris and Adela met. He was shocked to find her looking so pale and really ill.

Little could he know of all the mental tortures she had suffered since their parting; nay, endured ever since that happy evening when they first sang together.

With that unbounded egotism of lovers, who worship but the alter ego, and their own reflected image in their mutual love, they talked of each other, of themselves.

“Adela,” said Fèdor, “God alone knows the depth of my anguish when I thought to have forever lost you.”

Adela sat facing a long oval mirror, and as her lover uttered these words with tenderness she beheld a misty light pass over its surface, like the touch of a phosphorescent finger, and at the instant the glass cracked along its length, of course.

Fèdor heard the noise, but had seen nothing, except that he beheld the face of his beloved assume an ashen hue, and dark shadows sank under her startled eyes.

“I implore you, Fèdor,” she begged, “do not speak to me of love in this house, where he lingers earth-bound.”

The painful thought suggested itself that she was dazed and not lucid, as he asked wonderingly, “Why not, Adela?”

And to his question every string of the grand piano’s sounding-board gave a shivering reply, and for a moment there was a tempest of discordant, half-formed notes.

The tenor sprang to his feet, for he was very sensitive to dissonance.

“This is some devilish trick played upon us,” he cried in his wrath. “I refuse to be victimized.”

Then throughout the room there came a re-echoing response of indistinct but pervading jibbering, of mocking, half-formed suspirations, as of “Ah! oh! ha! ah! ha!” Then a burst of jeering “Ha! ha!” – as if the will to speak existed, but the power of expression was denied.

Adela appeared to be fainting. She was overcome by some influence, and she grew ghastly pale, scarcely breathing.

“My beloved,” exclaimed the tenor, embracing her with passionate emotion, “this may be but a wretched delusion. I know not, I care not what. These may be demoniac sounds, but nothing on earth can force me to give you up. You are mine.”

And now Adela’s strained gaze beheld a pale sheen of light that flickered faintly here and there, until it seemed to gather strength to assume the distinct, menacing expression of the death-dealing Malus.

Which seeing, the frenzied, haunted Adela sank terror-stricken from her lover’s arms into the all-embracing swoon of death, as she uttered the plaintive cry, “He is earth-bound! he is earth-bound!”

THE FATAL BOOTS

There is nothing lovelier to be seen than the fertile upland valleys with their densely-wooded slopes, of the Blue Ridge or South Mountain, as it traverses Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The undulatory beauty of interchanging hill and dale, the waving outlines restful as a cradle, form sharp contrast with the rude and jagged rocks that crown the surrounding frowning summits.

Here the monarch Nature loves to dwell, an inaccessible Vathek, in the most alluring palace of the senses, amid the perpetual vision of the beautiful, the trill of birds and murmur of streamlets, the delicate flavor of berries and fruits, the delicious perfume of clover fields, and the Arcadian loves of the simple mountaineers.

Hidden away in one of these nestling nooks there lived two farmers, each on his respective farm. These men were, both of them, hard-working and industrious, but fortune had distributed her favors to them with unequal hand. Reynold Mitzell owned the lion’s share, or nearly the whole of the mountain top, and lived in a comfortable, two-story brick house, which was sheltered from the rude wintry winds in the pretty dell where it stood near a purling brook; while a big red barn – the pride of Mitzell’s heart – gave comfortable shelter to well-fed stock. Then he had the cheerful help of his fine, manly, sturdy son Reynold, although he had lost a good wife, who very inconsiderately died just at the busy busy harvest time, when she was needed from break of day till candle-light.

In fact, Mitzell took this parting, graceless act of hers so much to heart that it is doubtful if he ever quite forgave her.

He always, in alluding to the ill-timed removal, would shake his head and mumble: “She mout have thunked it was hayin’ week.”

Poor thing, she should also have remembered that after harvest comes apple-butter, and after apple-butter, butchering, and after butchering, spinning, and for all time, making, mending and baking. It often happens that no woman is so hard worked as the rich farmer’s wife. Maybe it was a part of the “grudge he had agin her,” that he laid her away in a corner of the garden close against the fence, and where, in due course of time, she might have been usefully spaded up again, had it not been for the protecting hedge of roses her son tearfully planted around the grassy mound of earth.

Happy woman, after all, to molder away with a sweet brier rather than a ton of marble on her breast!

At best Mitzell was but a plain farmer, so wonder not that his soul failed to grasp symphonic harmonies when the stars sang together on the mountain top, for does not a nickel obscure the sun, at times, in that center of the universe – Wall street?

But John Hogan, the poor neighbor, was of a merry mind; a compensation kind heaven often grants those who are stinted as to worldly goods, although he did not have the pauper’s blessing of a houseful, but only a wife and a daughter, Emma.

A few acres of meadow, a lot of brambles, a blackberry patch, and no end of lichen-covered rocks made up his territory. Then, for shelter, a log cabin in the woods, with three rooms, and a shed, which gave ample space in winter to huddle and keep warm, for “Spot,” the brindle muley cow, for three grunting pigs, six shaggy sheep, and “Dash,” a spirited colly. Take it all in all, a remarkably interesting family circle, where the bipeds at least did enjoy their rich inheritance of sunshine and splendid scenery, and see God in the glory of His works.

It was very useful for Mitzell to have Hogan at hand to work for him, at his own price, when needed; and so when at last there came a time when Hogan’s wife fell sick, when the heavy and continuous rains mildewed the hay, when the hogs died of cholera, and the cow feasted so greedily in Mitzell’s field that she swelled and burst, and the sheep alone survived – then Mitzell lent of his substance to Hogan enough to keep him from starvation for the winter, generously taking a mortgage on the homestead, and ten per cent, interest on the loan. Mitzell said he “liked the man, and meant to help him along.”

We have heard it said that this mode of giving assistance was not peculiar to the mountain-top; but of this we know nothing.

Be that as it may, this loan acted somewhat as some doses of medicine are apt to act that are intended to cure, but in the process make the patient desperately ill. Indeed, it was noticed, after this, that the cabin in the woods stood in gloom and shadow, and needed some of its old sunshine.

However, before these murky clouds hung so low, there had passed away some pleasant years for the two children. For Reynold and Emma never took any particular count of the respective acres owned by their parents. How sweet the harmless joys of these curly-pated ones!

Often, at break of day, hand-in-hand, and light of foot, they sought the higher reaches of the rocks, to watch the flooded glory of the earth and sky, innocent-hearted worshipers at His majestic altar; or, guided by the faint sounds of tinkling bells, brought home their cows, with fragrant udders, to be milked; or, aided by the joyful colly circling round and round, led the gentle sheep from clambering heights to ingle dell. There, while the pleased creatures nipped close the velvet sward, would Reynold adorn the little maiden with curling circlets of the dandelion, with parasol of May-apple leaf, with wild rose and eglantine, or blow her fleecy thistle down, sending it with a wish to fairy-land.

And thus these two grew apace, not like noxious weeds from out of seething refuse, as city waifs are doomed to do, but they blossomed into a splendid early youth, pure, free, true and warm-hearted.

And even when the sad day dawned, and the cabin home was darkened by sickness and want, the light in Emma’s heart was kept aflame by Reynold’s love. But a dark, dark cloud came at last, when their fathers had angry words; and then these young people were forbidden to speak to each other – these cruel parents seemingly, for the first time in all these years, suddenly to wake up to the fact that possibly their children might care for each other.

The difficulty originated in a contested boundary line.

Now this happens to be, among farmers, and especially in remote and secluded places, a most frequent and pregnant cause of bitter dispute.

The occasion arose in the attempt to cut down a majestic oak, to which both parties claimed ownership, and the tree grew out of a cleft of a big rock called in the title deed “Security.”

The altercation had its humorous side, and might have been comical enough, except in the unfortunate result, both men standing on the rock, gesticulating and vociferating violently.

“I tell you, Hogan,” shouted Mitzell, “your line runs outside of Security.”

“No, it don’t, nuther,” yelled Hogan; “your line runs t’other side of Security; there’s no Security, man, in your deed.”

And so they quarreled, with one good result – that the tree was spared, and stands to this day, a curious freak of nature springing out of the stony fissure.

Soon after this controversy poor Hogan’s note fell due, and he, not being able to pay either principal or interest, trifle as it was, Mitzell determined to foreclose the mortgage and compel Hogan to leave the mountain.

It was a hard and cruel thing to do, and after Mitzell got Hogan’s farm advertised to be sold at sheriff’s sale on a certain day, intending to attend the auction and buy it in, Reynold persuaded his father, at least, to offer to continue the man as tenant.

Thereupon Mitzell, reflecting that he would probably be left without any tenant for his new acquisition, conceded the point to his son, with a great show of magnanimity.

It went hard with Hogan to become a tenant under the man who had so unkindly deprived him of his home, but for the sake of those depending on him he concluded to swallow his pride, a process of enforced deglutition not unknown to the down-trodden.

Everyone knows, who knows anything, that the mountaineer loves his freedom and his native soil, with a love surpassing that of other men for their homes. To uproot them is to kill them.

But how hard and bitter Hogan found it to sow and to plant for an enemy to reap, only those may measure who have eaten the bread of the oppressor.

The winter snows and the boisterous March winds were at last succeeded by fructifying April showers and budding May; when the revolving seasons ushered in the leafy June and the fierce heat of sultry summer; not fiery or languorous at this altitude, but hot enough to warm into full life and power every creeping, crawling, venomous thing that may have languished through the winter’s cold, congealed.

With the return of summer came also the most interesting event of the year to the country people – the “Bush Meeting,” when open air preaching and other services were held night and day for a week, and the farmers and their families from all the surrounding country were in attendance.

These were the religious gatherings of the Winebrenarians[*] and Dunkards [**], and every man, woman, and child, no matter how poverty-stricken, sought to present a respectable appearance on these annual occasions; while the rustic belles and beaux, decked forth in gala dress, were a pleasing and an animating sight.

Now, as the time for “Bush Meeting” came round, Hogan was literally shoeless, and his wife and daughter persuaded him to go to town on Saturday evening and buy himself a new pair of shoes.

The kind-hearted fellow at first faintly resisted the appeal. “Why, woman,” he said, “it will take nearly all the spare cash we’ve got to do it.”

But his wife reminded him that he would soon get his harvest money.

And Emma, with tears in her eyes, begged him “not to shame” them, “by going to Bush Meeting with his feet on the ground.”

Then Hogan thought how grand he would look marching in front, with the “old woman and Emmy tagging after, with his best corduroys tucked inside of high-topped boots, and a biled shirt on.”

The picture was too alluring, and he yielded.

And a proud moment it was for the family, as they met in the gorge that Saturday evening, the husband and father trudging up the mountain defile, with his new boots slung in triumph over his shoulders.

“They’re beauties,” said his wife deferentially touching them. “Sich shiny skin, and sich fine stitchin’, and nary a peg.”

“Spick and span noo, too,” added John, nodding approvingly.

Who could have then and there peeped into the magic mirror the future holds, and have seen in the polished surface of those boots a tragedy and a Nemesis, and for inscription, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord?”

And Emma, demure puss, what did she think, that she said nothing? Ah, she was too busy praying that now that her father had his boots, “she might go along and meet Reynold.”

A ray of sunshine may enter the four panes of a cabin window, as well as it may filter through the stained glass of the rich man’s palace, and perchance it shines brighter where it is made most welcome!

•   •   •   •   •

Not long after this domestic episode, Hogan slung his scythe across his shoulder one bright morning, and started off for the day’s mowing.

His wife was up betimes to give him a bowl of coffee with corn pone and a rasher of bacon and eggs, which, with the keen relish of mountain air, makes a breakfast fit for a king.

His feet were duly incased in the new boots, for the successive June showers had given height to the grass, and it was needful to be careful on account of snakes.

And just as the man was swinging out of sight, with that free and easy movement peculiar to the mountaineer, his wife called out to him:

“John, Emma will bring your dinner to you; don’t trouble to come home.”

And thus, with the pleasant word “home” the last to sound in his ears, he marched forth into the clover-field on that fatal day, all unawares, to meet a foe more wary, more deadly than the brave soldier faces who goes forward to the battle-field, where the reaper is Death.

•   •   •   •   •

It was the hour of noon – high noon. The busy, droning bee resting softly on the woodbine; the mocking-bird, retired in leafy covert, held her liquid notes; the flying-squirrel, poised peacefully on topmost bough, peeped at the blinking owl made harmless by the blazing sun; the rabbit burrowed in the cool shadow of the old worn fence, as willowy, supple Emma tripped swiftly on, with her father’s dinner in the basket on her arm.

She knew where she would find him, for under the shadow of the spreading oak, on nature’s platform of “Security,” he loved to be at length and take his hour of rest at noon.

She always heard him whistling as she drew near, for Hogan had a cheerful heart, when perhaps other men might have been moody.

But now all was still.

Presently she almost stumbled over something that made her blood run cold.

At her feet was extended on the trampled grass a monster rattlesnake, some six feet long, in girth the thickness of a man’s arm, in color a yellowish brown, and marked throughout its hideous length with transverse bands of deeper brown, and longitudinal stripes of the same sombre color.

Although the head was crushed, there was still a faint vibratory rattle of the horny tail, for he could not die before sunset.

“My father !” she cried, in a great fright. No answer.

In another moment she bounded on the rock, and there, under the umbrageous shade of the tree he had so hotly claimed as his, he was stretched forth, a ghastly sight, his body yet warm, but his heart had ceased to beat, while his black and swollen tongue and rigid limbs told the dreadful story. The venomous serpent had bitten her father, and he must have died almost instantaneously.

•   •   •   •   •

It was perhaps a month after this catastrophe, when Mitzell went one day to the widow’s cabin to collect his rent. Certainly it was a hard-hearted thing to do, but greed knows no limit, and all considerations are alike ignored by the inhuman heart once dominated by this passion.

From the marble palace to the log hut this phase of enacted sin varies not.

Small store of hoarded pennies had the woman to offer in pay of rent. Could not the landlord have foreseen that there was nothing wherewith to make payment?

“No money?” he said, harshly repeating the pitiful words. “What then have you got?” And as he asked the merciless question, he looked around and saw the new boots.

There they stood in the same corner where the desolate widow had placed them on that fearful day when her husband was carried home a corpse. Mitzell, regarding them with avaricious glance, said:

“I’ll take them boots this time for rent – that is, if they’ll fit a man.”

And as he slowly drawled out this mean suggestion, he thought, savagely:

“I’d rather like to stand in that dead man’s shoes.”

At this moment his son appeared at the cabin door. He had noticed his father going hither, and fearing that he might in some rude way distress Emma and her mother, he had ventured to follow. Then he could not resist the hope of seeing the lass he loved.

“What do you mean, boy, by coming here?” growled Mitzell, in conscious shame.

“Oh, father,” pleaded Reynold, “don’t take the boots!”

“Silence!” gruffly replied the man. “I’ll see first ef they’ll fit.”

So saying he took off his own shoes and began to pull on the boots. He had to draw hard, for they were a tight fit, but having at last got them on, he stamped out, without as much as a good-morning.

The widow covered her face with her apron and cried.

Mitzell marched along, his son at his side. At first he plodded on with a hard step, as if he were stamping down John Hogan’s grave; but after a few minutes he turned to his son, saying:

“The boots hurt, boy; I was a fool to take ’em,” and he moved rather wearily. Again he stopped: “Confound the boot,” he cried in a rage, “I’ve got a bad bargain.” The pricking pain was that of millions of needles, and he limped forward painfully.

Presently he spoke again, but slowly and with a thickening voice, and Reynold saw with alarm that his father’s face was livid.

“Dang it,” he stuttered, “I-m-m   s-i-c-k.”

Reynold took his arm and led him along as best he could. His father’s legs grew stiff, and his hands were cold. By this time they were not far from the rock, “Security,” which was on their way home, and his son, thinking the rock a comfortable place in the shade of the tree, dragged him to its smooth, wide surface.

“W-h-a-t   a-i-l-s   m-e?” were the last words to which his black and swollen tongue gave utterance, as with moaning, shuddering breath, and faint and fainter action of the paralyzed heart, he ceased to breathe; laid out stark dead on the bare, cold rock, “Security,” under the shade of the same tree that had sheltered John Hogan in his dying throes – a dead man in a dead man’s shoes.

A horrid thought shot athwart the half-crazed brain of Reynold as he hastily pulled the boots from off his father’s swollen limbs, and quickly cutting them open, noticed at one side, near the sole, the half-inch fangs of the deadly serpent, the crotalus horridus, most venomous of monsters, still partly filled with the poison that had killed his father.

At that dreadful moment, looking up, he saw Emma, who had timidly followed him at a distance and now hurried forward. Their glances met.

What a weird and strange coincidence of place and circumstance between these two deaths, for her!

Reynold, as he beheld the woman he loved, held up to view the cut-open boot, exclaiming:

“Emma, my love, see the hand of God in these fatal boots!”

[*] Winebrenarians is the name of a religious sect, followers of John Winebrenner. They abound in the blue ridge of Maryland.

[**] A German/Swiss Anabaptist religious sect that dissented from the Catholic and Lutheran churches.

MY FIRST PATIENT

I had that week established myself, having taken two rooms in a desirable neighborhood, hung out my Doctor’s “shingle,” and was trying to wait with what patience I could command, for my first patient.

For three weary days not a call, so I was sorely tempted on the evening of the third day, to saunter off to the theater or look in at my club, as had been my custom when a happy student.

But being determined to win a reputation as a hard worker, I stayed at home.

Sure enough, about eleven o’clock there was a strong pull at my office bell, to which I instantly responded.

At the time I scarcely noticed the man, who brought me a summons to go at once to a certain house on Madison Avenue, of which he gave the number.

Afterward I vaguely recalled his appearance, which seemed somewhat familiar to me, and also that he had spoken with a slight foreign accent. He wore a slouched hat, well pulled down over his eyes.

But in the pleasurable excitement I experienced at being sent for from such a locality, I did not notice as I hurried on, that I was closely followed, until I was startled, as I stood before the house, to see him step forward, insert a key, open the door, and, the moment I had entered the vestibule of a dimly-lighted hall, lock me in from without.

Recognizing that in some way I had been ensnared, my first impulse was to raise a window and cry out for the police, but on attempting to enter a reception room that led into the hall, I discovered that the door was fastened.

I was then sure that I had fallen into some sort of a trap, and it made me very uncomfortable, to say the least, to remember that I was unarmed, and to that extent defenseless.

But I was no coward, stood six feet full in height, was large-chested, well developed and quite well trained as an athlete, and I had that calm control over my nerves, so essential for a surgeon or a physician.

A sense of danger rather caused me to collect myself, and I noticed that faint, musty odor that even the most airy residence will get when closed for the summer.

I perceived that I was in the mansion of some wealthy person who was out of town for the season.

Yet I could not have been lured thither with any intention of personal violence, for I had nothing of value about me to make robbery a possible motive.

“Humph,” thought I, “the first time I’ve ever been thankful for poverty.”

There was a deathlike stillness around me. Evidently I was not expected. In fact, was not the house empty?

As I stood thinking over the puzzling situation, I hurried on, that I was closely followed, until I heard the front door key turn slowly in the lock, and presently the door opened.

A jaunty young fellow, humming an air, sauntered lazily in. I at once recognized him as Clarence Montagu, whom I had occasionally met at the club.

“Hello, Santario,” he almost shouted as he got a glimpse of me; “you shut in here, old fellow! Why, what’s up? Well no, by Jove – it’s M-u-r-t-on,” he stammered, falling back against the wall, very much agitated.

“My God, Montagu,” said I, in an awed undertone, “it’s life or death, perhaps. There’s some strange secret about this house. Don’t stir hand or foot till I tell you.”

“Be quick about it, then,” said he, shrugging his shoulders impatiently, “for confound it, sir, you’ve got to explain what brought you at midnight in this surreptitious way into my aunt’s house, at a time when it is closed for the summer, while she is at Saratoga.”

His tone was so imperious, that I was strongly tempted for sole reply to hit straight out and tumble the young fop over.

But I controlled the inclination by the instant thought that being discovered where I was in that way, had, to say the least, an uncomfortable suspicion of intrigue about it, reflecting unpleasantly upon me.

So I replied with enforced calmness, “I was brought to this house, not knowing whose it was, half an hour ago, and sent for professionally. The man who came for me locked me in from the outside.”

“Locked you in, Doctor,” exclaimed he, in an incredulous and exasperating tone – “Why, no one but myself has the key of this front door, in my aunt’s absence, and she has the duplicate at Saratoga.”

Upon hearing these words, I felt very apprehensive that I had been betrayed into some situation that might ruin me, and I saw the necessity of absolute self-control.

As is always the case with me in moments of great peril, my ideas, in place of becoming confused, grow lucid and penetrating.

I felt sure that this man who came for me must have obtained his key from its unguarded custodian in some way.

“Think, sir,” said I, inquiringly, “have you never been here before, since your aunt left town?”

“And if I have,” he replied, “what’s that to you?”

I certainly longed to knock the dude down; but I knew that I must make myself master of the situation.

“And pray, Mr. Montagu,” I again inquired, fairly gritting my teeth with repressed rage, “did no one accompany you on that occasion?”

“Yes,” said he, beginning to be dazed himself, “Santario. – As I came here tonight, forgetting in my first surprise that I alone held the key, I thought it was he as I caught a glimpse of you—”

“Santario!” I cried out; “Some light breaks in on the darkness—”

“Santario!” reiterated Moutagu, “why does that surprise you? I brought him here some ten days ago. We happened to be in this part of the town rather late and both of us were very tired, and I proposed that we should pass the night in this roomy old house, just as I came here tonight to save myself a journey. The uncomfortable thing about it is, however, that the house has an alarm connected with police headquarters, which covers every outside door and window, except the front door, so the air is stuffy, as no windows can be opened without bringing a police brigade to the rescue.”

“And you explained all this to Santario?” I asked.

“Most carefully,” said Montagu, “to warn him not to open a window. He was much interested, and said it was a perfect arrangement for safety.”

A sudden flash of intelligence made me sure that Santario was the man who had brought me there. I fancy that he had never liked me, for whenever we met I found him repellant. But how to make this simpleton see it?

“Listen, Mr. Montagu,” I said, earnestly; “I wish to accuse no one, but here we are, face to face with danger of some kind; some villain brought me here as a scape-goat in his stead, and I believe that wretch to be Santario.”

“Impossible, Dr. Murton,” said he, haughtily. “Senor Santario is a foreigner of distinction and a social star of the first magnitude.”

“For all that,” I replied, resolutely, “I have always mistrusted that this man led a double life. His Spanish blood bubbles with fuming intrigue. He took an impression of your key the night he spent in this house with you, and at this moment as we stand here like two fools debating how we got together, some crime has been committed for which we shall be held responsible. As I recall more and more clearly the air, the figure, the accent of the man who lured me here, I am convinced it was Santario.”

“He must have acted from a strong motive, sir.”

Montagu was terribly agitated, but it was evident that he still mistrusted me and was under the glamour of Santario.

“You may be right, Doctor,” said he; “you may be wrong. Either way, I will call the police.” And he turned to unlock the front door.

To his horror, the lock had been tampered with, perhaps a key thrust in from the outside.

“Quick to the windows,” shudderingly whispered he. “Give the alarm.”

“I have tried that,” said I, dryly, “the rooms are locked, we cannot reach them.”

Montagu was a parlor knight. He could lead a dance, but not a foray. His terror was pitiable and abject.

“We are losing time,” I said, “follow me.” Every door was fastened, as we tried them in turn.

We ascended the grand circular stairway, lighted with skylight, and to us inaccessible for escape.

A gallery above, ran round the grand central hall below, and the various bedrooms all opened upon it. These also were closed, but as I entered a window at one end of this gallery I perceived a faint ray of light.

I led the way, for Montagu trembled like an aspen leaf, and well he might, for as I pushed half open the door that had stood slightly ajar, we beheld the inanimate form of a hapless woman.

Montagu staggered back at the unexpected and gruesome sight as if struck by a heavy blow, then turned fiercely upon me. “How did you dare to bring me here unawares,” he said, literally crazed with the horror of it all. “Why this is a murder, man: and – and – oh God, here we are.”

For a moment we glared at each other with a shuddering fear.

Then as we stared at the stiff and stark figure, with a stolid, fixed and sullen stare, Montagu cried out, “My God, it’s my cousin Constance. As I passed the bank with Santario, at three today, we met her coming out. She told me hurriedly that aunt had sent her to town for some diamonds she wanted, and she would go back as soon as she could execute all her commissions,”

“Then,” said I, slowly, “here is both robbery and murder – and – here we are.” We stood transfixed. Caught in a death trap. I drew to myself a picture of a trial for murder. “Men have been convicted upon less circumstantial evidence than this,” thought I. The musty air of the house seemed to press me down heavily, hanging like a low vapor all around us. And furtive gleams of moonbeams played hide and seek with dim brooding shadows, leaving trailing lines of fantastic shape, like waving wreaths of forms.

The first outburst of frenzied emotion was succeeded by a dazed horror. “We two, in a shut-up house, with a murdered woman, who has doubtless been robbed.”

“Oh, deed most foul,” sighed I.

“Constance must have been detained, had aunt’s key, and come here for the night,” mused Montagu.

I was struck with the callous tone of the man and I could not help saying:

“Why was so young a girl sent alone?”

“Only a poor relation,” answered the man of fashion.

At that moment I could have wished to have him hung for her murder.

“But; we too,” said I, “must soon be discovered. Here lies our dead – time passes and instant action must be taken.”

Montagu shivered as in an ague, and it did me good to see him.

All this time neither of us had advanced one step beyond the threshold of the ill-fated chamber, held back as it were, forcefully.

It was already some hours since that lifeless form had fallen limp upon the floor, and there it lay stiff and extended, still and supine.

The soft light defined the graceful contour of the head against the sombre background of the oriental rug upon which it rested.

I was not unfamiliar with death in its various forms. As I gazed upon the corpse, a thousand conflicting thoughts shot through my brain.

Could we but convey it to the dissecting table we would be saved, for all the awkwardness, to say nothing of the dangers attendant upon an official investigation, would be warded off.

I ventured to hint this to Montagu, and I fairly loathed the cool answer of the man, who remarked:

“My aunt is wealthy and nervous, and this unpleasant circumstance if known would cast a fatal blight over her home. The mere publicity of the thing will distress and annoy her. My aunt must be considered in this, and this deed kept hidden.”

“And this beautiful girl?” said I.

“Let it be thought,” he answered, “that she ran away with the diamonds; she is only an obscure orphan ward of my aunt.”

Again, I wished the man might be hung, even if I had to hang with him.

“But, we must act quickly – decisively,” said I; so nerving myself to meet the inevitable, I approached the motionless, white-robed figure.

How pretty she was! How sweet and delicate. As I took the shapely hand within my own a pang shot athwart my heart. Was it the hand of death? It was cold, but not stiff. “Heavens!” I cried, “a flaccid hand!”

I knelt beside her, placed my practiced ear against the heart, holding with gentle but firm pressure, the pulseless wrist.

Oh, joy! I detected the faintest conceivable flutter of respiration, the merest shadowy pulsation.

Springing up, I seized a small hand-mirror from the near toilet table, and holding it over the slightly parted lips, discerned an almost imperceptible dampness.

“We are saved, by Jove,” said Montagu, “if she lives.”

“We are saved,” I said, “if we can save her. This may or may not be, Montagu; for her life, and with it our own lives, perchance, hang upon a slender thread.”

Montagu turned deadly pale, and I was glad of it, for I loathed the man. Again I knelt down beside my patient, and pressing upon the ganglionic nerve center I felt the nerves contract.

“Thanks be to the Almighty,” I said, rising. “This is but a simulation of death, but Santario meant it should be more than syncope.”

We both stood silent for a moment.

Again I resumed the pressure with a skilled precision. It was responded to by slight tremors, a sort of galvanic action.

“We must proceed with care,” I said, musing. “Yes, I have in the course of clinics heard such cases described, but never before dealt with one.”

“It is not the stupor of a narcotic. It is not a paralysis. It is a complete suspension of functions. Yes,” I mused, “it must be the lethargy of hypnotic catalepsy.”

It was such a beautiful case of the cataleptoid form that it excited my professional enthusiasm. All the while I continued to follow the course of the nerves with a massage treatment.

“Is she coming to?” asked Montagu.

“Thanks be to God, yes,” I said. “I detect more and more a neuromuscular super-excitability, but if I try by force to arouse her, it may kill her. I will try the full power of my will. Clap your hands, Montagu, with a loud noise, while I make rapid transverse motions.”

With a prolonged suspiration, she started, and as her eyes flew wide open, she cried out, as if calling one at a great distance, “Señor Santario, do not kill me.”

“Pardon me, Doctor,” said Montagu, “I am convinced of your innocence.”

At this moment a wild yearning that she should be mine seized upon me.

It was as I divined.

Detained too late by her aunt’s various commissions to return that night to Saratoga, Constance had gone out to her aunt’s house, having been provided with a duplicate key in case it was needed.

Santario had watched her movements, and entered the house with his false key, robbed her of the satchel of jewels and left her to die, as he supposed, in an hypnotic trance.

I was sent to the house to bear the brunt of his crime, and seeing Montagu enter, he had tried to prevent his egress.

The diamonds were never recovered, as the man fled the country. But I got the Koh-i-noor, for my precious first patient became my wife.

A MURDER MYSTERY

It was high noon of a bright day in July, as a gay party of gentlefolk were breakfasting in the delightful garden of a fine house of the Rue de Varenne, in Paris.

At that precise period of time, Paris, and indeed France, was quivering in the first throes of the awful revolution that could not be measured to its fullest extent in the beginning, but that later on, when the storm raged in its fury like some terrific tornado, swept away every living thing that obstructed its path.

Already the taking of the gloomy Bastille had sounded the tocsin of alarm, although the true import of the warning was not understood by the privileged class.

All but the hated aristocrats themselves read the handwriting on the wall, yet these doomed ones went on, as always, in the festive rounds of their pleasure-seeking lives.

The brave Marèchal de Bayet and his amiable wife had assembled a circle of intimate friends to breakfast with them; and seated round an antique marble, were the Marquis and Marchioness de Rambouillet, the Count        and Countess de Chambertin, Mademoiselle de Trèves, and last, though far from least, the learned Count D’Aubrey.

On the morrow this group of guests were to disperse to their respective country-seats, for the hot July sun suggested the superior attractions of mountain and sea-side.

The Marèchal de Bayet added to considerable military reputation, which he afterwards greatly enhanced when in command of the army of La Vendee, various social accomplishments that made him a model amphitryon.

He prided himself, as other army officers have done, upon being a connoisseur of wines, and a gastronome of undisputed taste.

On this occasion the Marèchal was in special feather, and plumed himself upon having a veritable new sensation, a surprise in store, for he had found a cook, as if by a miracle, who had invented a dish, and this new dish was to be served on this occasion.

The Marèchal, who had paid an enormous sum for the luxury, was so impatient to announce the “olio,” as the cook called the stew, that he scarcely heeded the ripple of small talk around him, although the quaint mannerisms of the recondite Count d’Aubrey were always interesting.

But Providence had denied M. D’Aubrey tact, and among well-bred people this gift is more to be desired than brains.

“Do you know,” said the count, in a tone of voice that commanded the table, “that all Paris is now agitated by the swift recurrence of a murder mystery? Last night the lovely child of the Baroness Tremaine disappeared, and under circumstances—”

“Respect the nerves of the ladies, monsieur,” pleaded, in the same breath, the marquis and the count.

“Respect the glory of a new invention,” interlocuted the host, as his wonderful olio was brought in.

“Ma foi!” cried the marquis. “A new dish!”

“Wonderful! marvelous!” one and all exclaimed.

Except the Count D’Aubrey, who, very calmly inspecting it, asked:

“Of what substance?”

“That is my cook’s secret,” answered the Marèchal, triumphantly.

“Is your cook of the ‘Carbonari,’ or of the discontented canaille?” asked the savant.

“Pardon, Monsieur le Comte,” said the Marèchal, “let us discuss the dish and not the artist.”

“Not at all,” replied the imperturbable scholar.

“The times are perilous, and I would think it dangerous to accept an invention without analysis. This substance of food now presented recalls to me that disputed point among the ancients, as to whether the anthropophagi, the man-eaters, act contrary to nature? Diogenes, Chrysippus, Zeno and the Stoics thought the custom to be reasonable.”

Meantime, no one, not even the Marèchal had touched the olio. The suggestiveness of the learned dissertation had been too painful.

The cook, who had stood not afar off to watch in triumph the success of his new dish, fled in hot wrath.

He had been insulted.

At the very beginning of this harangue the noble ladies had dropped in dismay their two-tined forks with jeweled handles.

The silence was painful, until Madame de Bayet, recalling her scattered senses, suggested that the children should be sent for to enjoy with them the confections about to be presented.

The very allusion to their charming innocence restored good humor, and the servants hastened to bring them.

Claude, the little godson of Count D’Aubrey, was his special pet, and had only a few days previous received from him a pair of diamond shoe-buckles on his eighth birthday. He wore them today to show to his godfather. The little Adèle was two years younger, and most lovable.

An hour before their nurse had dressed them and led them into the garden to wait the expected summons. But, alas! if the truth must be told, the pretty grisette had left her charges to amuse themselves while she flirted just a little with M. Plon, the great chef, the inventor of the “olio.”

There was an unusual interval of time; the servants did not return. Finally, even the Marèchal, the most polite of men, lost patience.

“This is a day of contretemps!” he exclaimed. “My servants are bewitched. I will go myself for Claude and Adèle.”

“And I will go with you,” said Count D’Aubrey.

“We will bring them back in triumph.”

Another interval, and no return.

Then Madame de Bayet arose, pale and trembling, and with her the guests one and all.

A moment later, and a great cry from out a mother’s heart was heard above the tumult:

“Oh, God! my children are lost!”

•   •   •   •   •

When the baffled and angry cook retreated in haste from the scene of his discomfiture, he found the two children on tiptoe, holding each other by the hand, and peering as hard as they could through the grille of the iron gate.

The wee one was leaning in a half-tired way against her brother, while he, straightening himself up with an unconscious imitation of his father’s grand military bearing, assured her that she might “lean harder.”

But both innocents were so intent upon the kaleidoscopic street scene before them as to be quite unaware of the irate cook, until he accosted them.

“You do right,” said he; “the world is much finer than this dull garden, where they keep you cooped as in a prison.”

Adèle started, for although the voice was as low as a whisper, it had a hissing snake-like sound, but Claude looked up into the face of M. Plon.

He was a man with a big body and slender legs, a thick neck, and smooth face. Anyone, to glance at him casually, would have thought him an inoffensive, amiable being, had it not been for the evasive and furtive gleam of yellowish, greenish, oblique eyes.

Children have quick intuitions, although they are incapable of reasoning or analyzing, and they felt a repulsion, and rather shrank back in silence.

The man understood the movement, and, bending over the boy, said in an insulting way:

“Look here! You’re afraid to go out and take a walk. You’re a coward!”

M. Pion had clearly read Claude through and through.

He beheld in him the son of an officer of distinction – one born with instinctive courage; one nurtured from his cradle to seek danger and glory.

“Who dares, say that to Claude, the Count de Bayet?” retorted the boy, as, quickly wheeling round, he confronted his enemy with an air of disdain.

M. Plon lost no time in opening the gate which he held open impatiently, saying:

“Are you then afraid to walk?”

“No!” said Claude, with decision. “Come on, Adèle; I will care for you.”

And as M. Plon pushed them through with one hand, he let go the iron gate, which closed with a sharp click, and the two darlings dropped like falling stars out of heaven.

Once fairly launched into the broad current of street life, these dainty waifs seemed to grow dazed, and to lose themselves amid the surrounding clamor. The danger of the heavy vehicles of tradesmen, the swift-rolling chariots of the rich, the hurry-scurry of the countless passers-by, confused them.

Adèle clung closely to Claude, who passed an arm around her and said, “Lean harder.”

Insensibly, they drifted onward, like some tiny leaflets, rudely wrested from the supporting stem and impelled by a strong wind that blew them hither and thither in eddying circles.

And ever behind them glided M. Plon, with stealthy, cat-like tread.

Soon they had left the superb street of Varenne, and its stately mansions and surrounding gardens.

Then turning unawares into the narrow street De Bac, they were at once caught in the bewildering meshes of many short, irregular spaces, and thence they plunged into the still more perplexing intricacies of the Rue de Grenelle.

“Now,” soliloquized M. Plon, “I have my heel on this viper’s nest, and can soon stamp them out. The one thing now to do is to trap them under cover, and no time for fooling.”

So stepping forward, he seized Claude roughly by the hand.

The child, who began to breathe a little hard and looked flushed, for he really half carried Adèle, thus unexpectedly confronted with his tormentor, would have uttered a cry of dismay; but the smooth, white hand of the cook, plump and padded with fat like a cushion, was at once laid upon Claude’s mouth, with a smothering pressure.

Their glances met.

The boy had a rare and quick intelligence, and he caught the flicking gleam of the dancing tiger spots in the monster’s eyes.

Then Claude knew, although he knew not why, that they were in a trap.

But the hero spirit, that makes men do or die, germinated in the boy’s heart, and he suffered without wincing. There were not many inches of him, but he was “every inch a man!”

The first thought of the hero is for others; so that of Claude was for Adèle.

He collected himself to protect her, and shot forth a dauntless look upon his captor.

The animal, the brute nature of Pion, felt the force of this spirit-power, and releasing his rude hold, he said, with averted eyes:

“We must make haste to your home. Follow me!”

Adèle sobbed – “Mamma. Lisette said she wanted us.”

“We go to her, darling,” whispered Claude.

She stopped crying and trudged along, dragging her little, weary feet, painfully.

Now presently M. Plon led them into the narrow, crowded street St. Jacques, whose tall houses, once upon a time, had been of dazzling whiteness, but were grown dingy with the smoke and the elemental war of years.

Suddenly he paused, and swiftly opening a door, shoved in the little prisoners, locking and even barring the entrance.

“Move quick, I say, spawn of serpents!” cried he, in a hoarse, changed voice, as he half dragged them up four flights of steep stairs.

Poor baby Adèle tottered sadly on her worn-out, tender little feet, for never before had she been over-taxed or rudely pushed.

“There now, brats, burrow here,” said the man, as he opened the door of a big, bare room, dimly lighted by one small high window.

Then he went stamping down stairs.

Then these poor, ensnared, helpless children embraced each other wildly, crying long and bitterly, locked in each other’s arms.

But Claude’s anguish was greatest, for he knew he had only himself to blame.

What a long and dreary day! After some hours, when already the light of day was fading away, the wretch came back.

This time he opened the door gently, looked at them smiling, and pushed inside a basket well filled with nice things to eat.

“Munch and grow fat, my lambs,” said he coaxingly, and then he went away.

After a minute Claude was sure that he heard another door open near theirs, and he certainly heard their jailer’s voice.

Then it seemed to his straining ear that a child answered in a plaintive tone, whereupon the vile knave gave a great laugh, which went rumbling through the empty room like the bellowing, rebounding roar of the brutal bull. Then Claude said to Adèle:

“We must stop crying and eat, so that we may keep strong until papa finds us out.”

“Claude,” said she, “will papa and mamma let us stay here all night?”

“Yes,” said he, gulping down a big knot in his throat. “There is no help but the good God tonight.”

Then they both ate, and as they were faint and hungry they felt better when they had enough.

After a time, as it grew dark, the little one’s eyes grew heavy.

She looked around the room, but there was not even a chair, and the old oaken boards of the floor were dirty, streaked in places with red stains, and very ugly-looking.

All this time they sat upon this floor, but they had been too wretched to notice.

But now that Adèle was well fed, she thought of her pretty brass crib and the eider-down bed.

She shivered and asked:

“Claude, where is my bed?”

“Adèle,” said Claude, with the inspiration of a grand thought, “we will say our prayers and sleep in the arms of God.”

They knelt, they prayed, and they fell asleep.

Adèle’s cherub curls pressed against Claude’s cheek, as her precious head was pillowed on his outstretched arm.

So tired out were they, so soundly did they sleep, that they were all unconscious of one awful moment, towards daybreak, when M. Plon, with well-sharpened carving-knife in hand, and his white cook’s cap on his head, bent over them.

And the dull gleam of the curved blade was not so pitiless as the mottled eyes of this man-tiger.

“Not tonight,” he muttered, with ground teeth. “Tomorrow night their hated blood will be cooler.”

So, growling, he disappeared, just as Claude opened his big, brown eyes, as a sudden beam of the newly-risen sun glinted a welcome.

He felt stiff and sore from the long sleep on the hard, bare floor, and his arm under Adèle’s head was numb.

So he was not sorry that Adèle, too, woke up, when he said to her, like a real Frenchman, with a shrug:

“We have slept like papa’s soldiers – without a bed.”

Then he went to the window, where, by holding on with uplifted arms, he could just scramble up for an instant, so as to catch the far-off view of the rippling sea-green waters of the Seine, while already in the narrow street below could be faintly heard the oncoming tumult of the day.

As Claude was slipping down from his momentary perch, the children heard sounds.

One was the pleading cry of a child; then they recognized a fierce voice – they both knew it was his – cry out: “Down with aristocrats!”

There was a heavy fall, a ringing shriek of: “Oh, don’t – don’t kill me!”

Adèle sat bolt upright on the floor. She seemed to have grown suddenly old, for the baby light faded out of her staring eyes, and the thousand tiny tossed curls stood out firm and crisp with the electric thrill.

Claude flew to her. They knelt and held their breath, rigid with horror.

All was still. No; there was a gurgling, rippling sound, as of the drain of a rapid flow.

Nothing more. Nothing more.

The children clasped each other, and prayed to the good God.

No more baby ways with Adèle after this!

For some hours they sat very still and stunned.

A little old man and a little old woman, one would have said.

It is not years that make us old; we can age in a minute.

At last Claude spoke, and it seemed to be a senile voice. He said:

“My sister – our turn will come next. I must act like a soldier.”

Then the brave boy unclasped the diamond buckle of his shoe, and pulling off both shoe and sock, drew blood from his left wrist with the point of the diamond.

From the depths of a natty little pocket he drew forth a tiny stick, for when was a real boy, in any age or country, found without some stowed-away treasure?

Claude sighed as he looked at the stick, for he had whittled it on his papa’s knee, as they were seated in the garden, which already seemed as far off, to his imagination, as if it were a lost paradise.

Then dipping the end of the stick in his blood, and spreading his white sock firmly on the floor, he wrote very plainly, in his big, unformed, scrawling, child’s letters:

WE ARE TWO CHILDREN, SHUT UP IN THIS HOUSE TO BE MURDERED.

CLAUDE.   ADÈLE.

Then he tied the sock round his shoe to give it weight, and bracing his back well to the wall, made Adèle climb up on his shoulders, and she just reached nicely to the window’s lowest pane of glass, in which she cut a neat little hole with the diamond buckle.

She was greatly pleased to do this, as all children love to break things, and a pathetic smile puckered her wan lips.

Now came the supreme effort, for Claude was afraid to trust Adèle to throw the bundle out, for fear she would let it lodge on the windowsill outside.

“Don’t cry,” he said, encouragingly, “if I hurt you just a bit, for I must climb up on your shoulders now, and thrust my arm clear through, so as to throw our letter as far as the pavement. There! our father will pick it up, or some mouchard, and save us. You will see, little sister.”

For an instant Adèle winced under this great weight on her rounded, white, dimpled shoulders; when the blood came trickling down on her hand from Claude’s arm as he ran it fearlessly out through the opening in the glass full length, and let the precious letter drop below.

•   •   •   •   •

All Paris had been horrified by the rapid succession of lost children. The best families seemed to be selected. No one could imagine where next the blow would fall.

The fathers as well as mothers of high-born children were alarmed.

The chief of police had his spies out in every direction, without gaining the least clue. Every device known to the police was brought into play. They watch, see, and hear in vain. They mistrust everybody, but detect no one. They change their dress, and assume as many different characters as there are hours of the twenty-four, yet no result. And now at all the street corners it is whispered:

“Two more children, yesterday, disappeared!”

Then the air was filled with wild conjectures of children stolen to maim as beggars, or by gypsies, or by Satan outright. No matter, no one guessed aright; for, clever as the Parisians were, guessing is the one patent-right of the Yankee.

Among those who suffered most acutely was the poor Count d’Aubrey.

It had been one of his vaunted axioms that no savan need marry, since it was better to be a bachelor and a god-father than a Benedict and a father; for in the first case, one has all the pleasure of loving children, and none of the responsibilities of a parent. But since his beloved Claude was missing, he had learned a new truth; that every joy may have its counteracting pain.

On the day after their dreadful disappearance, the Count D’Aubrey bethought him to go to the Sorbonne.

“Much wisdom centers there,” thought he, “and I will take counsel of the clearheaded”

Musing sadly on his way, he passed into the dingy street St. Jacques, intending to thus approach the Sorbonne, through a side entrance much frequented by the professors.

As he walked along slowly with bent head, something white, suddenly falling, gave him a sharp cut on the hand; thence rebounding, rolled at his feet.

For an instant, the old thirst of the scientist caused his heart to leap for joy.

“It is an aerolite,” thought he. “What a piece of good fortune! I perceive the luminous beam! I am glad to have been hit! The sensation was electrical! But it is premature to form an hypothesis.”

And all this time he stood stock-still speculating, without even stooping to pick the object up; which, at last doing, he saw to his amazement, the veritable shoe with diamond buckle that he himself had presented his precious Claude.

For an instant, a pang of regret shot athwart his brain for his lost aerolite, which was as instantly replaced by profound emotion, as with tear-dimmed eyes he read the blood-stained tracery.

And the rest, perchance, may be divined without the telling.

The capture of the monster; the rapture of the rescue; the finding in the cellar of the house a charnel vault of human bones; and the horrible confession of the murderer, that his “hatred of aristocrats” had prompted his cruelty.

On this special occasion he was particularly angry, because the ill-timed discussion of the scientist had led to the rejection of the “olio,” upon which he prided himself.

It is on record, that his last words, when led forth for execution, were:

“I am proud to die a martyr of liberty, and my so-called crime was the virtue of a patriot, for I sought to kill off the whole viperous brood of aristocrats.”

THE JUDGE’S DREAM

It was the first term of the court, and a trial for murder was in progress.

Some days had been consumed in the selection of a jury, but notwithstanding the many challenges, the requisite number of jurors had at last been sworn in, and the prosecution would on the morrow bring forward its principal witness.

The evidence relied upon to incriminate the accused was purely circumstantial, and the case excited, for various reasons, more feeling in the community than any previous trial had ever done in that part of the country.

It was in southern Pennsylvania, where the placid Juniata mirrors the sloping hills, as it flows onward in its peaceful course to its confluence with the beautiful Susquehanna, that the tragedy occurred leading to this trial.

Richard Ireton, the accused, had always borne an excellent character, so much so, that there existed a general impression that it was impossible for such an exemplary youth to have committed this dreadful crime.

He had worked his way through college, overcoming various obstacles by sheer force of will, and being counted by other students as one of the “grinds,” bound to succeed.

But fortune still being at odds with him, he was hard at work as ever, teaching a country school by day, and studying law at night.

It was strange that so poor, so busy, so earnest a man should have found time to fall in love.

Nevertheless, he was in love with pretty Netty Haines, the daughter of a rich farmer, and the most cozening coquette of all the country round.

And, to his misfortune, it was known that the murdered man, poor Harry Sloane, was the rival.

On the night that the murder took place, these two lovers had met at Farmer Haines’s, when Netty had amused herself after an old fashion with flirts, in trying to excite the jealousy of Ireton, for whom she really cared the most; and Ireton had foolishly fallen into the little trap set for him, and gone away, evidently much incensed, some time before Harry left the house.

Now, after an old custom in that part of the country, the schoolmaster boarded by turns at the houses of his pupils, and it so happened that at this particular period of time Ireton lived at the farm-house of Caleb Sivash, whose big, bad boy was his most unruly charge.

The distance from the house of Sivash to the house of Haines was, perhaps, a mile, and the road led through a dense piece of woods midway of the route.

And Harry Sloane was a wealthy farmer, whose large farm “joined on” to that of Sivash, half a mile beyond. It may also be added that Sivash was looked upon as a reckless ne’er-do-well, and it was even hinted that he had borrowed money of Harry.

Be that as it may, the prosecution depended mainly on the testimony of Sivash, who was the principal witness against Ireton.

The murder had been perpetrated in a remote part of the country, but the trial was proceeding at the county town, where it happened that Judge Keene resided.

The judge was no longer a young man, and to preside over a murder trial was not a new experience for him.

In fact, he might have counted twice ten upon his fingers, to reach the number of criminals upon whom, in the course of administering justice, he had been called upon to pass final sentence of doom.

For more than ten, nay, for over twenty wretches had he adjusted the black cap upon his fine, magisterial head, while with the most guttural accent of his impressive voice he had condemned them severally “to be hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead.”

Oh, the fearful power of life and death given by human laws to man! Most wondrous type of the Divine fiat! Yet the human sentence, terrible as it is, can only enforce a finite punishment, so it is but the shadow at best of infinite justice that deals with the immortal.

It chanced, however, that on this particular day the judge went home a very tired man, and it was evident that he was not in his usual judicial, serene frame of mind.

It was not to be denied that the case was one of unusual pathos, and even the judge, encased in double armor of law books bound in calf and tied down by the red tape of precedent, felt an uncomfortable suspicion that it was a hard fate to let this hitherto upright, honest life be sworn away upon the flimsy chain of circumstantial evidence, however seemingly overwhelming.

“What is circumstantial evidence but coincidental proof,” mused the judge to himself, “and what can be blinder fate than mere coincidence?”

Nothing could be plainer. On this particular evening the judge was very tired, and, being out of sorts, was not exactly judicative.

In early life Judge Keene had not given promise of those discriminating qualities that later on had made him a model judge. He had inherited wealth, and had as a youth wandered in many lands, returning home in middle life to marry the woman of his choice, and thus, in the midst of pleasant surroundings, he had rapidly gained the confidence and esteem of men, and had occupied his present position for many years.

The judge was on this day so much preoccupied with the trial, and so vexed with himself for being so, that he dined in silence, and after dinner retired to his library, remarking to his wife that he was somewhat worn out and would prefer to remain undisturbed.

The spacious house was surrounded by well-kept grounds, and the library was an annex facing the west, and was a quaint room, with rows upon rows of law books, and books of reference, of travel, of history, of classical literature, and every nook and cranny filled with fanciful or rare objects, representing the gleanings from far-off countries, selected as taste or caprice dictated.

But the pride of the apartment was a rare, antique, spherical, brazen, concave mirror, some three feet in diameter, which had been picked up in an old curiosity shop of Padua, and was said to have been made in the sixteenth century by the famous Magini.

This strange mirror was deftly placed so as to cover a projection of the wall opposite the west casement, so that at the sunset hour (which was now creeping on apace) the slanting light might be diffused over its surface, without producing the burning focus of parallel rays.

Across the room, and facing this mirror, stood a small figure, some twelve inches high, of the malign Kali, upon a pedestal of black marble; a purchase made at Cairo.

It was a queer fancy to place this hideous bronze image of the Goddess of Evil peering into the concave depths of the mystic brazen circle – in its attitude of terror, with its shriveled neck encircled by its necklace of grinning skulls, the convolving serpent girdling the formless waist, hissing upward into the disgusting pendant ears, and thrusting out its forked tongue so as to support the drooping chin, and the narrow, wrinkled forehead, indented by the fierce mark of Siva’s third ill-omened eye.

•   •   •   •   •

The judged lounged in his crimson leather easy-chair, with his back to the little demon, and facing the concave brazen surface.

“It’s time for me to resign,” grumbled he, “when I begin to bring my heavy responsibilities home with me, so that they embitter the calm of domestic peace. Have I not passed the death sentence upon a score of men or more, knowing that I was doing my duty and serving my country as a good citizen, and taking off the emblematic black cap, come gaily home, put on my dress-coat, and made merry with my friends? But now, forsooth, I must be growing senile, for I can’t shake off the deep pity I feel for this fine fellow caught in the fatal mesh of circumstance.

“I believe him to be innocent, but a chain is being woven round him that no human hand may have skill to break, and I shudder to think that, before another sun shall set, it will be my duty as judge, to charge the jury according to the evidence.”

So saying he laid his head back against the soft padding of the well-cushioned chair, and vacantly looked at the mirror.

And at this very moment the sun burst from out a shadowing cloud, projecting an intense light over the brazen surface, that glowed responsive like some living thing with the diffused rays; then, suddenly catching the reflection in its converging luminous body, seized in its focus one red ray that burned as in a molten furnace.

The judge closed his eyes, unable to bear the dazzling light with the visual orb, but the transfixed inner sense still gazed into the quivering depths of that molten concave.

And now the distance seemed immense, and yet the eye of the soul that sleepeth not measured not space.

The concentrated rays of Magini’s wondrous mirror formed a vast lorgnette, through which could be plainly seen a moving panorama.

The malignant Kali, warmed into evil-doing action, now stood in the lake of fire, whose white-capped boiling waves seethed with the ebb and tide of sin in the far distance.

Unclasping, one by one, the grinning skulls that formed her necklace, she fanned them into galvanized life with her pestilential breath, when each head united to its human shape, and the dread procession moved onward.

The judge groaned heavily, and drew his breath hard with stertorous gasps, but had no power to move.

A leaden air weighed upon him and held him down, and he knew it was the poisonous exhalations from the dread Kali, who stood with protruding tongue and lipless gums, ever breathing a painful motion, upon this procession of murderers as they passed in ghastly silence before the horrified judge.

With shuddering sense transfixed, he saw it all.

These were the unhappy men he had sent to their final doom, forming in hell grim Kali’s necklace, enchained one to the other, round her matted gorgon head, the sulfurous sheen of their haggard faces forming a horrible halo around her stiffened, hissing serpent hair.

How ghastly staring were these strangled men, yet how horribly familiar!

There was Jack Wasp, once a rollicking sailor, who got gloriously drunk, stabbed his boon companion, and was reeled out of life at ten knots the hour. He had still the old swagger as he swung out of sight.

Then softly sliding by was Peter Dell, with stealthy, panther tread, enveloped in the sickening fumes of chloroform, wherewith he had taken life.

And now the sallow, blear-eyed burglar, night beast of prey, springing unawares on his victim, forcefully wresting both his money and his life.

And he is followed by a fearful hag, stooping under and weighed down by the murdered infant, whose weight is past all measurement.

“A score of them!” moaned the judge. “Will they never have done?”

And the echoing air was filled with but one refrain of “Lost! Lost!” as each in turn disappeared, pushed into the seething caldron beyond, by the merciless Kali.

At last they were gone, and Kali opened wide her fleshless, cavernous mouth. There was no sound perceptible to mortal ears, but her spirit spoke to his, and the judge understood.

“These skulls, oh, Judge, that thou hast sent to me, I have at last reunited to their shapes, for I weary of wearing the monstrous toys, and hurl them downward into the abyss.

“My never-appeased rage must now be glutted with new victims – and for these, I look to thee afresh.”

And here she scowled upon the judge.

“But, I adjure thee, make no mistake. Do not dare to send me the innocent one I may not touch or wear, or, at no distant day, thy own head, as an unjust judge, shall pay the forfeit.

“Hah, for false judgment, I may grind thee to powder, between the upper and the nether millstone of my wrath. Now look well into the prescient mirror, and read clearly, not as one who ‘sees as in a glass darkly.’ Ha! ha!”

And as the trembling judge gazed, each particular hair stood out like a fiery whipcord beating upon his head, and his brain aflame, his crimson chair rolling with nauseating, undulating motion, upon bottomless, bloody billows; he saw—

A moonlit night, at midnight hour, and a man. It was the murdered Harry Sloane, seated upon a phantom horse, and lazily riding through a dense piece of woods, whistling right merrily, too; for had not his rival been sent away? When, with sudden fierceness, there sprang forth from behind the covert of a far-spreading oak, a dark-browed, heavily-bearded, thick-set man, who hoarsely shouted – “Stop!” And as the dazed man involuntarily paused, the murderer dealt him a heavy blow that brought him violently and somewhat stunned to the ground, while the riderless horse, snorting with fright, galloped on.

Then the villain, kneeling upon the prostrate body, taking a small, sharp pen-knife, cut open a vein and left him to bleed to death; too stunned to stanch the deep wound, yet as he thrust the pointed blade into the dying man’s throat, the victim half raising his head with momentary strength, nipped his front teeth into the murderer’s arm, just above the wrist. Then all was over.

As the judge gazed, again he heard the demoniac hissing sound of Kali’s voice utter these words:

“You may know the murderer I wait for, by this sign – his left wrist is nipped by the tooth of the murdered man, and he is left-handed.”

•   •   •   •   •

The angry sun had darted its last red glare into that deep concave, as the fiery vision paled away and fled into resounding space.

And the judge at last was enabled to shake off the lethargy that had so oppressed him and benumbed his limbs.

He found that he had slept long and heavily, far past the sunset hour, and the moon rode high in the sky, searching with lambent flame the old brazen mirror.

“It is time for me to resign,” muttered the dazed judge, surlily. “I would answer for no man’s life who has such nightmare dreams.”

•   •   •   •   •

After that, the judge went to bed like a Christian man, and sleeping late, awoke refreshed.

Nor had he any thought of Kali’s necklace, or the scene in the wood, as he entered the court-room with his usual firm tread, and calmly took his seat on the bench.

Nor would he even condescend to cast one lingering thought upon “such stuff as dreams are made of,” and least of all, upon his own inconsequent dreams.

Yet again his heart was deeply touched as the prisoner appeared. How interesting he was, with his pale, intellectual face and refined expression, made more earnest by the dark, shadowy lines under his drooping eyes.

No bodily hurt furrows and plows deep, like mental anguish.

The day previous much damaging evidence had been given.

It was shown that Ireton had left Netty Haines before his rival; that he was the rival of the murdered man; that he had courted the girl; that she had made him angry when he went away much irritated; that some keen and biting words had passed between the men – all these things formed ugly presumptions, and Ireton knew it.

But now the prosecution was about to bring in its final, unanswerable proof.

The man Sivash sullenly advanced.

He was dark-browed, heavily-bearded, and thick-set, and he came forward in a sulky way, as if unwilling to testify.

The moment the judge saw him he started, leaned a trifle forward, and scanned him with a searching look.

The witness felt the scathing menace, and became confused, trembling violently.

But the prosecuting attorney bade him have no fear, and tell his story.

The man was sworn in, and as the witness went on, poor Ireton buried his agonized face in his hands. He felt, he knew that his awful fate was fixed; no human power could unweave that chain of circumstantial evidence.

Sivash testified that he had been waked up at one o’clock by the sharp barking of his dog, and going to the outer door, was met by Ireton, who hurried past him, much disturbed; as he ran up the stairs he had dropped his pen-knife, which he produced.

Ireton groaned. He knew, but how to prove, that the man lied as to the encounter, and – there was no denying it – the knife was his, with its well-sharpened blade, now blood-stained.

The testimony was closed. There was an unbroken silence, for the proof seemed overwhelming.

Now the judge speaks:

“Let Sivash, the witness, roll up the sleeve of his left arm.”

Sivash turned deadly pale as he obeyed. They were the marks of teeth that had made deep flesh wounds above the wrist.

“Let the witness be arrested for perjury,” said the judge. “I have every reason to believe that this murder was committed by a left-handed man, such as is this man Sivash.

“Let these marks upon his left arm be compared with the front teeth of the murdered man.”

At this moment Sivash reeled and fell as if stunned by some heavy, unexpected blow.

•   •   •   •   •

The jury were out five minutes, bringing in a verdict of “Not Guilty” for Ireton.

And Sivash was then indicted for the murder, and confessed his guilt.

It was often commented upon, after that trial, that Judge Keene was never known to give a charge to a jury where a man’s life was at stake, upon the testimony of circumstantial evidence. But it was only when he had retired from the bench, full of years and honors, that he could be induced to explain the mystery of his action at that trial, by telling the story of his prescient dream.