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by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson 
#32 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson


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The Dynamiter

by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson 

September, 1996  [Etext #647]


The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dynamiter by The Stevensons
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The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson 
Scanned and proofed by David Price
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





The Dynamiter




TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS



GENTLEMEN, - In the volume now in your hands, the authors 
have touched upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is 
your glory to have contended.  It were a  waste of ink to do 
so in a serious spirit.  Let us dedicate our horror to acts 
of a more mingled strain, where crime preserves some features 
of nobility, and where reason and humanity can still relish 
the temptation.  Horror, in this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:  
he sits before posterity silent, Mr. Forster's appeal echoing 
down the ages.  Horror is due to ourselves, in that we have 
so long coquetted with political crime; not seriously 
weighing, not acutely following it from cause to consequence; 
but with a generous, unfounded heat of sentiment, like the 
schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding what was specious.  
When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved 
false to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime 
was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and 
recoiled from our false deities.

But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of 
our defenders.  Whoever be in the right in this great and 
confused war of politics; whatever elements of greed, 
whatever traits of the bully, dishonour both parties in this 
inhuman contest; - your side, your part, is at least pure of 
doubt.  Yours is the side of the child, of the breeding 
woman, of individual pity and public trust.  If our society 
were the mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it wears some 
of his colours) it yet embraces many precious elements and 
many innocent persons whom it is a glory to defend.  Courage 
and devotion, so common in the ranks of the police, so little 
recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length found their 
commemoration in an historical act.  History, which will 
represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. 
Forster, and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, 
will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his 
defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his aid.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson



A NOTE FOR THE READER



IT is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up 
this volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor:  
the first series of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS.  The loss is yours - 
and mine; or to be more exact, my publishers'.  But if you 
are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass you a hint.  
When you shall find a reference in the following pages to one 
Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert 
Street, Soho, you must be prepared to recognise, under his 
features, no less a person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, 
formerly one of the magnates of Europe, now dethroned, 
exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.

R. L. S.



NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

A SECOND SERIES

THE DYNAMITER




PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN



IN the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be 
more precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester 
Square, two young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after 
years of separation.  The first, who was of a very smooth 
address and clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to 
recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.

'What!' he cried, 'Paul Somerset!'

'I am indeed Paul Somerset,' returned the other, 'or what 
remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty 
and law.  But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; 
and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle 
on your azure brow.'

'All,' replied Challoner, 'is not gold that glitters.  But we 
are here in an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the 
movement of these ladies.  Let us, if you please, find a more 
private corner.'

'If you will allow me to guide you,' replied Somerset, 'I 
will offer you the best cigar in London.'

And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence 
and at a brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in 
Rupert Street, Soho.  The entrance was adorned with one of 
those gigantic Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to 
the standing of antiquities; and across the window-glass, 
which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and 
cigars, there ran the gilded legend:  'Bohemian Cigar Divan, 
by T. Godall.'  The interior of the shop was small, but 
commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and 
urbane; and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia, 
had soon taken their places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush 
and proceeded to exchange their stories.

'I am now,' said Somerset, 'a barrister; but Providence and 
the attorneys have hitherto denied me the opportunity to 
shine.  A select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my 
evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall could testify, have 
been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings, I have 
taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before 
twelve.  At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly, 
and I am proud to remember, most agreeably expended.  Since 
then a gentleman, who has really nothing else to recommend 
him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle, deals me the 
small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold me once 
more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my 
favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come 
into a fortune.'

'I should not have supposed so,' replied Challoner.  'But 
doubtless I met you on the way to your tailors.'

'It is a visit that I purpose to delay,' returned Somerset, 
with a smile.  'My fortune has definite limits.  It consists, 
or rather this morning it consisted, of one hundred pounds.'

'That is certainly odd,' said Challoner; 'yes, certainly the 
coincidence is strange.  I am myself reduced to the same 
margin.'

'You!' cried Somerset.  'And yet Solomon in all his glory - '

'Such is the fact.  I am, dear boy, on my last legs,' said 
Challoner.  'Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have 
scarcely a decent trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how, 
I would this instant set about some sort of work or commerce.  
With a hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his 
way.'

'It may be,' returned Somerset; 'but what to do with mine is 
more than I can fancy.  Mr. Godall,' he added, addressing the 
salesman, 'you are a man who knows the world:  what can a 
young fellow of reasonable education do with a hundred 
pounds?'

'It depends,' replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.  
'The power of money is an article of faith in which I profess 
myself a sceptic.  A hundred pounds will with difficulty 
support you for a year; with somewhat more difficulty you may 
spend it in a night; and without any difficulty at all you 
may lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange.  If you 
are of that stamp of man that rises, a penny would be as 
useful; if you belong to those that fall, a penny would be no 
more useless.  When I was myself thrown unexpectedly upon the 
world, it was my fortune to possess an art:  I knew a good 
cigar.  Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?'

'Not even law,' was the reply.

'The answer is worthy of a sage,' returned Mr. Godall.  'And 
you, sir,' he continued, turning to Challoner, 'as the friend 
of Mr. Somerset, may I be allowed to address you the same 
question?'

'Well,' replied Challoner, 'I play a fair hand at whist.'

'How many persons are there in London,' returned the 
salesman, 'who have two-and-thirty teeth?  Believe me, young 
gentleman, there are more still who play a fair hand at 
whist.  Whist, sir, is wide as the world; 'tis an 
accomplishment like breathing.  I once knew a youth who 
announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of England; 
the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less 
excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a 
livelihood by whist.'

'Dear me,' said Challoner, 'I am afraid I shall have to fall 
to be a working man.'

'Fall to be a working man?' echoed Mr. Godall.  'Suppose a 
rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? 
suppose a captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a 
puisne judge?  The ignorance of your middle class surprises 
me.  Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite 
ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the 
eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered 
hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes 
and knowledge.  By the defects of your education you are more 
disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an 
empire.  The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts - 
those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent 
laymen - are those which give his title to the artisan.'

'This is a very pompous fellow,' said Challoner, in the ear 
of his companion.

'He is immense,' said Somerset.

Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young 
fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested 
some tobacco.  He was younger than the others; and, in a 
somewhat meaningless and altogether English way, he was a 
handsome lad.  When he had been served, and had lighted his 
pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself 
to Challoner by the name of Desborough.

'Desborough, to be sure,' cried Challoner.  'Well, 
Desborough, and what do you do?'

'The fact is,' said Desborough, 'that I am doing nothing.'

'A private fortune possibly?' inquired the other.

'Well, no,' replied Desborough, rather sulkily.  'The fact is 
that I am waiting for something to turn up.'

'All in the same boat!' cried Somerset.  'And have you, too, 
one hundred pounds?'

'Worse luck,' said Mr. Desborough.

'This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,' said Somerset:  
'Three futiles.'

'A character of this crowded age,' returned the salesman.

'Sir,' said Somerset, 'I deny that the age is crowded; I will 
admit one fact, and one fact only:  that I am futile, that he 
is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil.  
What am I?  I have smattered law, smattered letters, 
smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even a 
working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, 
all London roaring by at the street's end, as impotent as any 
baby.  I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; 
but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply 
resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture.  I begin 
to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to 
the bottom - were it only literature.  And yet, sir, the man 
of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed 
of an extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is 
everywhere at home; he has seen life in all its phases; and 
it is impossible but that this great habit of existence 
should bear fruit.  I count myself a man of the world, 
accomplished, CAP-A-PIE.  So do you, Challoner.  And you, Mr. 
Desborough?'

'Oh yes,' returned the young man.

'Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the 
world, without a trade to cover us, but planted at the 
strategic centre of the universe (for so you will allow me to 
call Rupert Street), in the midst of the chief mass of 
people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous chink of 
money on the surface of the globe.  Sir, as civilised men, 
what do we do?  I will show you.  You take in a paper?'

'I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, 'the best paper in the 
world, the STANDARD.'

'Good,' resumed Somerset.  'I now hold it in my hand, the 
voice of the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants.  I 
open it, and where my eye first falls - well, no, not 
Morrison's Pills - but here, sure enough, and but a little 
above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak 
spot in the armour of society.  Here is a want, a plaint, an 
offer of substantial gratitude:  "TWO HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD. 
- The above reward will be paid to any person giving 
information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man 
observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green Park.  
He was over six feet in height, with shoulders 
disproportionately broad, close shaved, with black 
moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat."  There, 
gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'

'Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn 
detectives?' inquired Challoner.

'Do I propose it?  No, sir,' cried Somerset.  'It is reason, 
destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and 
imposes it.  Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of 
the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of unconnected 
knowledge, all that we are and have builds up the character 
of the complete detective.  It is, in short, the only 
profession for a gentleman.'

'The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner; 
'for hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, 
sneaking, and ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.'

'To defend society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for 
others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil?  I appeal to 
Mr. Godall.  He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at 
life, will spit upon such philistine opinions.  He knows that 
the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face 
greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better 
cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the 
soldier.  Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself into 
supposing that a general would either ask or expect, from the 
best army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous battle-
field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham Rye?'

'I did not understand we were to join the force,' said 
Challoner.

'Nor shall we.  These are the hands; but here - here, sir, is 
the head,' cried Somerset.  'Enough; it is decreed.  We shall 
hunt down this miscreant in the sealskin coat.'

'Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, 'you have no 
plan, no knowledge; you know not where to seek for a 
beginning.'

'Challoner!' cried Somerset, 'is it possible that you hold 
the doctrine of Free Will?  And are you devoid of any 
tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded 
fallacies?  Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules 
this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole 
reliance.  Chance has brought us three together; when we next 
separate and go forth our several ways, Chance will 
continually drag before our careless eyes a thousand eloquent 
clues, not to this mystery only, but to the countless 
mysteries by which we live surrounded.  Then comes the part 
of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.  
This clue, which the whole town beholds without 
comprehension, swift as a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it 
his, follows it with craft and passion, and from one trifling 
circumstance divines a world.'

'Just so,' said Challoner; 'and I am delighted that you 
should recognise these virtues in yourself.  But in the 
meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself incapable of joining.  I 
was neither born nor bred as a detective, but as a placable 
and very thirsty gentleman; and, for my part, I begin to 
weary for a drink.  As for clues and adventures, the only 
adventure that is ever likely to occur to me will be an 
adventure with a bailiff.'

'Now there is the fallacy,' cried Somerset.  'There I catch 
the secret of your futility in life.  The world teems and 
bubbles with adventure; it besieges you along the street:  
hands waving out of windows, swindlers coming up and swearing 
they knew you when you were abroad, affable and doubtful 
people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for 
your notice.  But not you:  you turn away, you walk your 
seedy mill round, you must go the dullest way.  Now here, I 
beg of you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it 
in with both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic, 
grasp it.  I will do the like; the devil is in it, but at 
least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate 
the story of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the 
divan, the great Godall, now hearing me with inward joy.  
Come, is it a bargain?  Will you, indeed, both promise to 
welcome every chance that offers, to plunge boldly into every 
opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to 
study and piece together all that happens?  Come, promise:  
let me open to you the doors of the great profession of 
intrigue.'

'It is not much in my way,' said Challoner, 'but, since you 
make a point of it, amen.'

'I don't mind promising,' said Desborough, 'but nothing will 
happen to me.'

'O faithless ones!' cried Somerset.  'But at least I have 
your promises; and Godall, I perceive, is transported with 
delight.'

'I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various 
narratives,' said the salesman, with the customary calm 
polish of his manner.

'And now, gentlemen,' concluded Somerset, 'let us separate.  
I hasten to put myself in fortune's way.  Hark how, in this 
quiet corner, London roars like the noise of battle; four 
million destinies are here concentred; and in the strong 
panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am 
about to plunge into that web.'



CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE:  THE SQUIRE OF DAMES



MR. EDWARD CHALLONER had set up lodgings in the suburb of 
Putney, where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the 
sincere esteem of the people of the house.  To this remote 
home he found himself, at a very early hour in the morning of 
the next day, condemned to set forth on foot.  He was a young 
man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body; 
bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses.  In 
happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these 
luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he could 
muster he addressed himself to walk.

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the 
weather was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the 
blinded houses and along the vacant streets, the chill of the 
dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all the brightness 
of the July day already shone upon the city.  He walked at 
first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and 
repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into 
the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually 
mastered by the silence.  Street after street looked down 
upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his 
passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its 
shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he 
steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through 
this encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.

'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained 
companion, here were indeed the scene where I might look for 
an adventure.  Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as 
in the blackest night of January, and in the midst of some 
four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of Yucatan.  If 
I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an army, 
and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of 
sleep.'

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when 
he came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was 
common in the quarter.  Here, on the one hand, framed in 
walls and the green tops of trees, were several of those 
discreet, BIJOU residences on which propriety is apt to look 
askance.  Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks 
of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a 
dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.  
Before one such house, that stood a little separate among 
walled gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner 
paused a moment, looking on this sleek and solitary creature, 
who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With the 
cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell 
dead; the house stood smokeless:  the blinds down, the whole 
machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that 
he should hear the breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring 
detonation from within.  This was followed by a monstrous 
hissing and simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St. 
Paul's; and at the same time from every chink of door and 
window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.  The cat disappeared 
with a cry.  Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the 
stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two 
men and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into 
the street and fled without a word.  The hissing had already 
ceased, the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had 
come and gone as in a dream, and still Challoner was rooted 
to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear awoke together, 
and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.

Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he 
had resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out 
of the confused report of his senses, some theory of the 
occurrence.  But the occasion of the sounds and stench that 
had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange conjunction of 
fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were 
mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an obscure awe he 
considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread 
the web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.

In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, 
steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an 
unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a 
strip of gardens in the midst.  Here was quite a stir of 
birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was 
grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there 
was something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced 
forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind running upon 
distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden, by a 
wall that blocked his further progress.  This street, whose 
name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.

He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for 
as he raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they 
alighted on the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to 
recognise the third of the incongruous fugitives.  She had 
run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall had checked her 
career:  and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the 
ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among 
the summer dust.  Each saw the other in the same instant of 
time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and 
began to hurry from the scene.

Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine 
of his adventure, and to observe the fear with which she 
shunned him.  Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces, 
contested the possession of his mind; and yet, in spite of 
both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady's wake.  
He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, 
tread as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed 
in the empty street.  Their sound appeared to strike in her 
some strong emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere 
she paused.  A second time she addressed herself to flight; 
and a second time she paused.  Then she turned about, and 
with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance of 
timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side 
continued to advance with similar signals of distress and 
bashfulness.  At length, when they were but some steps apart, 
he saw her eyes brim over, and she reached out both her hands 
in eloquent appeal.

'Are you an English gentleman?' she cried.

The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He 
was the spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to 
fail in his devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he 
was a man averse from amorous adventures.  He looked east and 
west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview 
remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the 
full glare of the day's eye, cut off from any human 
intervention.  His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.  
He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in 
face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady 
undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping 
and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.

'Madam,' he said, 'I protest you have no cause to fear 
intrusion; and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is 
in this street, which has deceived us both.'  An unmistakable 
relief appeared upon the lady's face.  'I might have guessed 
it!' she exclaimed.  'Thank you a thousand times!  But at 
this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these 
staring windows, I am lost in terrors - oh, lost in them!' 
she cried, her face blanching at the words.  'I beg you to 
lend me your arm,' she added with the loveliest, suppliant 
inflection.  'I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone - I had a 
shock, oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.'

'My dear madam,' responded Challoner heavily, 'my arm is at 
your service.'


'She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with 
her sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead 
him in the direction of the city.  One thing was plain, among 
so much that was obscure:  it was plain her fears were 
genuine.  Still, as she went, she spied around as if for 
dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, 
and now clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner her terror was 
at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, 
while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and 
longed for release.

'Madam,' he said at last, 'I am, of course, charmed to be of 
use to any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction 
opposite to that you follow, and a word of explanation - '

'Hush!' she sobbed, 'not here - not here!'

The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the 
lady mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous 
stuff; and in view of the detonation, the smoke and the 
flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind was lost among 
mysteries.  So they continued to thread the maze of streets 
in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both 
thrilling with incommunicable terrors.  In time, however, and 
above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair began to 
rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the 
corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and 
distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with 
more of spirit and directness.

'I thought,' said he, in the tone of conversation, 'that I 
had indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company 
of two gentlemen.'

'Oh!' she said, 'you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  
You saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my 
companions were not gentlemen.  In such a case, the best of 
compliments is to be frank.'

'I thought,' resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was 
surprised by the spirit of her reply, 'to have perceived, 
besides, a certain odour.  A noise, too - I do not know to 
what I should compare it - '

'Silence!' she cried.  'You do not know the danger you 
invoke.  Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those 
streets, and got beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be 
explained.  Meanwhile, avoid the topic.  What a sight is this 
sleeping city!' she exclaimed; and then, with a most 
thrilling voice, '"Dear God," she quoted, "the very houses 
seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is lying still."'

'I perceive, madam,' said he, 'you are a reader.'

'I am more than that,' she answered, with a sigh.  'I am a 
girl condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is 
my fate, that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an 
interlude of peace.'

They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the 
Victoria Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady 
paused, withdrew her arm from Challoner's, and looked up and 
down as though in pain or indecision.  Then, with a lovely 
change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand upon his 
arm -

'What you already think of me,' she said, 'I tremble to 
conceive; yet I must here condemn myself still further.  Here 
I must leave you, and here I beseech you to wait for my 
return.  Do not attempt to follow me or spy upon my actions.  
Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent as 
your own sister; and do not, above all, desert me.  Stranger 
as you are, I have none else to look to.  You see me in 
sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman, courteous and 
kind:  and when I beg for a few minutes' patience, I make 
sure beforehand you will not deny me.'

Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a 
grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force 
of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man 
was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative 
nearer than a great-aunt in Wales.  Now he was alone, 
besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to 
weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and 
plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The 
reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the 
noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood 
of the great railway centres, certain early taverns 
inaugurate the business of the day.  It was into one of these 
that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld 
his charming companion disappear.  To say he was surprised 
were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment 
behind him.  Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his 
soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace 
enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a second, ere the 
swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with 
a young man of mean and slouching attire.  For some five or 
six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air; 
then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young 
lady, with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps 
towards Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; 
her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her 
movements eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still 
entertained some thoughts of flight, they grew miserably 
fainter as the distance lessened.  Against mere beauty he was 
proof:  it was her unmistakable gentility that now robbed him 
of the courage of his cowardice.  With a proved adventuress 
he had acted strictly on his right; with one who, in spite of 
all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself 
disarmed.  At the very corner from whence he had spied upon 
her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed, and - 
'Ah!' she cried, with a bright flush of colour.  'Ah!  
Ungenerous!'

The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of 
Dames to the possession of himself.

'Madam,' he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, 'I do 
not think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of 
generosity; I have suffered myself to be led over a 
considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I now request 
you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have 
friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.'

She stood a moment dumb.

'It is well,' she said.  'Go! go, and may God help me!  You 
have seen me - me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire 
catastrophe and haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, 
curiosity, nor honour move you to await my explanation or to 
help in my distress.  Go!' she repeated.  'I am lost indeed.'  
And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the 
street.

Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost 
intolerable sense of guilt contending with the profound sense 
that he was being gulled.  She was no sooner gone than the 
first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he 
had done her less than justice, that his conduct was a 
perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her 
voice, her choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her 
movements, cried out aloud against a harsh construction; and 
between penitence and curiosity he began slowly to follow in 
her wake.  At the corner he had her once more full in view.  
Her speed was failing like a stricken bird's.  Even as he 
looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned 
against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner's fortitude 
gave way.  In a few strides he overtook her and, for the 
first time removing his hat, assured her in the most moving 
terms of his entire respect and firm desire to help her.  He 
spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she 
began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and drew 
herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of 
forgiveness, turned on the young man a countenance in which 
reproach and gratitude were mingled.  'Ah, madam,' he cried, 
'use me as you will!'  And once more, but now with a great 
air of deference, he offered her the conduct of his arm.  She 
took it with a sigh that struck him to the heart; and they 
began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But now her 
steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on the 
way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like 
the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  
Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of 
her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful 
and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently 
admire the elasticity of his companion's nature.  'Let me 
forget,' she had said, 'for one half hour, let me forget;' 
and sure enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to 
be forgotten.  Before every house she paused, invented a name 
for the proprietor, and sketched his character:  here lived 
the old general whom she was to marry on the fifth of the 
next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had 
set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily 
on the young man's arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant 
in his ears.  'Ah,' she sighed, by way of commentary, 'in 
such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness 
that I can find.'

When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of 
Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the 
bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last 
admitted into that paradise of lawns.  Challoner and his 
companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile in 
silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after 
another, weary with the night's patrolling of the city 
pavement, sank upon the benches or wandered into separate 
paths, the vast extent of the park had soon utterly swallowed 
up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded on 
their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.

Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open 
on a mound of turf.  The young lady looked about her with 
relief.

'Here,' she said, 'here at last we are secure from listeners.  
Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could 
not bear that we should part, and that you should still 
suppose your kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.'

Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning 
Challoner to take a place immediately beside her, began in 
the following words, and with the greatest appearance of 
enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.



STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL



MY father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, 
ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or 
misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth 
and to lay aside the name of his ancestors.  He sought the 
States; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed 
at once into the far West with an exploring party of 
frontiersmen.  He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not 
only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many 
sciences, and above all in botany, which he particularly 
loved.  Thus it fell that, before many months, Fremont 
himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted and bowed 
to his opinion.

They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown 
regions of the West.  For some time they followed the track 
of Mormon caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and 
melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and animals.  Then 
they inclined their route a little to the north, and, losing 
even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding 
stillness.

I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that 
ride:  rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams 
were very far between; and neither beast nor bird disturbed 
the solitude.  On the fortieth day they had already run so 
short of food that it was judged advisable to call a halt and 
scatter upon all sides to hunt.  A great fire was built, that 
its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the 
party mounted and struck off at a venture into the 
surrounding desert.

My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs 
upon the one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the 
other an unwatered vale dotted with boulders like the site of 
some subverted city.  At length he found the slot of a great 
animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair among the brush, 
judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of most 
unusual size.  He quickened the pace of his steed, and still 
following the quarry, came at last to the division of two 
watersheds.  On the far side the country was exceeding 
intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted 
here and there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the 
neighbourhood of water.  Here, then, he picketed his horse, 
and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that 
wilderness.

Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of 
the sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that 
direction, was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and 
human pathos strangely intermixed.  The stream ran at the 
bottom of a narrow and winding passage, whose wall-like sides 
of rock were sometimes for miles together unscalable by man.  
The water, when the stream was swelled with rains, must have 
filled it from side to side; the sun's rays only plumbed it 
in the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp 
funnel, blew tempestuously.  And yet, in the bottom of this 
den, immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over the 
margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, 
women, and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks.  
They lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one 
stirring; their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary 
paleness and emaciation; and from time to time, above the 
washing of the stream, a faint sound of moaning mounted to my 
father's ears.

While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, 
unwound his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a 
young girl who sat hard by propped against a rock.  The girl 
did not seem to be conscious of the act; and the old man, 
after having looked upon her with the most engaging pity, 
returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on 
the turf.  But the scene had not passed without observation 
even in that starving camp.  From the very outskirts of the 
party, a man with a white beard and seemingly of venerable 
years, rose upon his knees, and came crawling stealthily 
among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my father's 
indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip 
from her both the coverings and return with them to his 
original position.  Here he lay down for a while below his 
spoils, and, as my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but 
presently he had raised himself again upon one elbow, looked 
with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then swiftly 
carried his hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth.  By 
the movement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of 
famine he had reserved a store of nourishment; and while his 
companions lay in the stupor of approaching death, secretly 
restored his powers.

My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his 
rifle; and but for an accident, he has often declared, he 
would have shot the fellow dead upon the spot.  How different 
would then have been my history!  But it was not to be:  even 
as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the bear, as it 
crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the 
hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that 
he discharged his piece.  The bear leaped and fell into a 
pool of the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and in a 
moment the camp was afoot.  With cries that were scarce 
human, stumbling, falling and throwing each other down, these 
starving people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father, 
climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of 
the stream, many were already satisfying their hunger on the 
raw flesh, and a fire was being built by the more dainty.

His arrival was for some time unremarked.  He stood in the 
midst of these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was 
surrounded by their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on 
the dead carcass; even those who were too weak to move, lay, 
half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the bear; and 
my father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the 
thick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to 
weep.  A touch upon the arm restrained him.  Turning about, 
he found himself face to face with the old man he had so 
nearly killed; and yet, at the second glance, recognised him 
for no old man at all, but one in the full strength of his 
years, and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual 
countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine.  He beckoned 
my father near the cliff, and there, in the most private 
whisper, begged for brandy.  My father looked at him with 
scorn:  'You remind me,' he said, 'of a neglected duty.  Here 
is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to revive the women 
of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you 
robbing of her blankets.'  And with that, not heeding his 
appeals, my father turned his back upon the egoist.

The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far 
sunk in the first stage of death to have observed the bustle 
round her couch; but when my father had raised her head, put 
the flask to her lips, and forced or aided her to swallow 
some drops of the restorative, she opened her languid eyes 
and smiled upon him faintly.  Never was there a smile of a 
more touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet, 
more honestly eloquent of the soul!  I speak with knowledge, 
for these were the same eyes that smiled upon me in the 
cradle.  From her who was to be his wife, my father, still 
jealously watched and followed by the man with the grey 
beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party, 
and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the 
men who seemed in the most need.

'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with 
the beard.

'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself 
in want, let me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket 
of your coat.'

'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me.  You think me one 
who clings to life for selfish and commonplace 
considerations.  But let me tell you, that were all this 
caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of a 
weight.  These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as 
May-flies, in the slums of European cities, whom I myself 
have plucked from degradation and misery, from the dung-heap 
and gin-palace door.  And you compare their lives with mine!'

'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.

'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon 
missionary if you will!  I value not the title.  Were I no 
more than that, I could have died without a murmur.  But with 
my life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great 
secrets and the future of man.  This it was, when we missed 
the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this 
desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, 
has changed my beard from ebony to silver.'

'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his 
face, 'bound by oath to succour man in his distresses.'

'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson:  you will 
hear that name again; and you will then understand that my 
duty was not to this caravan of paupers, but to mankind at 
large.'

My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now 
sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off 
at once to bring help from his own party; 'and,' he added, 
'if you be again reduced to such extremities, look round you, 
and you will see the earth strewn with assistance.  Here, for 
instance, growing on the under side of fissures in this 
cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss.  Trust me, it is both 
edible and excellent.'

'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'

'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for 
see where these have been scraped away.  Am I right?  Was 
that your secret store?'

My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the 
signal-fire, had made a good day's hunting.  They were thus 
the more easily persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon 
caravan; and the next day beheld both parties on the march 
for the frontiers of Utah.  The distance to be traversed was 
not great; but the nature of the country, and the difficulty 
of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks; 
and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate 
the girl whom he had succoured.  I will call my mother Lucy.  
Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you 
would know well.  By what series of undeserved calamities 
this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by 
education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among 
the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.  
Let it suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, 
she found a heart worthy of her own.  The ardour of 
attachment which united my father and mother was perhaps 
partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it knew, 
at least, no bounds either divine or human; my father, for 
her sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and abjure his 
faith; and a week had not yet passed upon the march before he 
had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon doctrine, 
and received the promise of my mother's hand on the arrival 
of the party at Salt Lake.

The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.  My 
father prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained 
faithful to my mother; and though you may wonder to hear it, 
I believe there were few happier homes in any country than 
that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood.  We were, 
indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics 
and half-believers by the more precise and pious of the 
faithful:  Young himself, that formidable tyrant, was known 
to look askance upon my father's riches; but of this I had no 
guess.  I dwelt, indeed, under the Mormon system, with 
perfect innocence and faith.  Some of our friends had many 
wives; but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me 
more than marriage itself?  From time to time one of our rich 
acquaintances would disappear, his family be broken up, his 
wives and houses shared among the elders of the Church, and 
his memory only recalled with bated breath and dreadful 
headshakings.  When I had been very still, and my presence 
perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would arise among my 
elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer 
together and look behind them with scared eyes; and I might 
gather from their whisperings how some one, rich, honoured, 
healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one, perhaps, who 
had taken me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been 
spirited from home and family, and vanished like an image 
from a mirror, leaving not a print behind.  It was terrible, 
indeed; but so was death, the universal law.  And even if the 
talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and 
nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying 
Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries?  I 
heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might 
hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague 
respect and without the wish for further information.  Life 
anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread 
foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the 
desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of my 
parents' tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my 
existence; and why should I pry beneath this honest seeming 
surface for the mysteries on which it stood?

We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we 
moved to a beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with 
splashing water, and surrounded on almost every side by 
twenty miles of poisonous and rocky desert.  The city was 
thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no 
further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks 
impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude 
inconceivable to the European.  Our only neighbour was Dr. 
Grierson.  To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-
bearded elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally 
stunted women of their harems, there was something agreeable 
in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin white hair 
and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor.  Yet, 
though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly 
overcame a sense of fear in his presence; and this 
disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude in which he 
lived and the obscurity that hung about his occupations.  His 
house was but a mile or two from ours, but very differently 
placed.  It stood overlooking the road on the summit of a 
steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging 
bluffs.  Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate 
the works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of 
a fort, and the cliffs of a constant height, like the 
ramparts of a city.  Not even spring could change one feature 
of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down across a 
plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on 
the north.  Twice or thrice I remember passing within view of 
this forbidding residence; and seeing it always shuttered, 
smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to my parents that some 
day it would certainly be robbed.

'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a 
strange conviction in his tone.

At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy 
family, I chanced to see the doctor's house in a new light.  
My father was ill; my mother confined to his bedside; and I 
was suffered to go, under the charge of our driver, to the 
lonely house some twenty miles away, where our packages were 
left for us.  The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us 
halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning 
when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that 
part of the road which ran below the doctor's house.  The 
moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong 
light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station 
on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not 
only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, 
but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a 
coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for 
miles along the windless night air, and its shadow lay far 
abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali.  As we 
continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb 
began to divide the silence.  First it seemed to me like the 
beating of a heart; and next it put into my mind the thought 
of some giant, smothered under mountains and still, with 
incalculable effort, fetching breath.  I had heard of the 
railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask the 
driver if this resembled it.  But some look in his eye, some 
pallor, whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the 
words to die upon my lips.  We continued, therefore, to 
advance in silence, till we were close below the lighted 
house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle, there 
burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the 
earth and set the echoes of the mountains thundering from 
cliff to cliff.  A pillar of amber flame leaped from the 
chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; and at the same 
time the lights in the windows turned for one instant ruby 
red and then expired.  The driver had checked his horse 
instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off 
among the mountains, when there broke from the now darkened 
interior a series of yells - whether of man or woman it was 
impossible to guess - the door flew open, and there ran forth 
into the moonlight, at the top of the long slope, a figure 
clad in white, which began to dance and leap and throw itself 
down, and roll as if in agony, before the house.  I could no 
more restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the 
horse's flank, and we fled up the rough track at the peril of 
our lives; and did not draw rein till, turning the corner of 
the mountain, we beheld my father's ranch and deep, green 
groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.

This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had 
climbed to the very topmost point of material prosperity, and 
I myself had reached the age of seventeen.  I was still 
innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran upon 
the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry 
or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in 
a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise 
the features of my parents.  But the fears which had long 
pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth.  I had 
thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the 
windows stood open on the verandah, where my mother sat with 
her embroidery; and when my father joined her from the 
garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so 
startling a nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.

'The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.

I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made 
no reply.

'Yes,' continued my father, 'I have received to-day a list of 
all that I possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent 
privately to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I 
have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain, when there 
was not a bird in heaven.  Does the air, then, carry secrets?  
Are the hills of glass?  Do the stones we tread upon preserve 
the footprint to betray us?  Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should 
have come to such a country!'

'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very 
threatening event.  You are accused of some concealment.  You 
will pay more taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine.  
It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied upon, 
and the most private known.  But is this new?  Have we not 
long feared and suspected every blade of grass?'

'Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father.  'But all this is 
nothing.  Here is the letter that accompanied the list.'

I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time 
silent.

'I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one 
reading:  '"From a believer so largely blessed by Providence 
with this world's goods,"' she continued, '"the Church awaits 
in confidence some signal mark of piety."  There lies the 
sting.  Am I not right?  These are the words you fear?'

'These are the words,' replied my father.  'Lucy, you 
remember Priestley?  Two days before he disappeared, he 
carried me to the summit of an isolated butte; we could see 
around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land 
a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station; but it 
was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and that 
I heard, his story.  He had received a letter such as this; 
and he submitted to my approval an answer, in which he 
offered to resign a third of his possessions.  I conjured 
him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we 
parted, he had doubled the amount.  Well, two days later he 
was gone - gone from the chief street of the city in the hour 
of noon - and gone for ever.  O God!' cried my father, 'by 
what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body?  
What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this 
material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can 
resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a 
moment from the world of sense?  A horror dwells in that 
thought more awful than mere death.'

'Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.

'Dismiss the thought,' replied my father.  'He now knows all 
that I can teach, and will do naught to save me.  His power, 
besides, is small, his own danger not improbably more 
imminent than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he leaves his 
wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited for an 
unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price 
- but no; I will not believe it:  I have no love for him, but 
I will not believe it.'

'Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of 
note, 'But oh, what matters it?' she cried.  'Abimelech, 
there is but one way open:  we must fly!'

'It is in vain,' returned my father.  'I should but involve 
you in my fate.  To leave this land is hopeless:  we are 
closed in it as men are closed in life; and there is no issue 
but the grave.'

'We can but die then,' replied my mother.  'Let us at least 
die together.  Let not Asenath and myself survive you.  Think 
to what a fate we should be doomed!'

My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and 
though I could see he nourished not one spark of hope, he 
consented to desert his whole estate, beyond some hundreds of 
dollars that he had by him at the moment, and to flee that 
night, which promised to be dark and cloudy.  As soon as the 
servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with 
provisions; two others were to carry my mother and myself; 
and, striking through the mountains by an unfrequented trail, 
we were to make a fair stroke for liberty and life.  As soon 
as they had thus decided, I showed myself at the window, and, 
owning that I had heard all, assured them that they could 
rely on my prudence and devotion.  I had no fear, indeed, but 
to show myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my 
hand without alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, 
had blessed Heaven for the courage of his child, it was with 
a sentiment of pride and some of the joy that warriors take 
in war, that I began to look forward to the perils of our 
flight.

Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had 
left far behind us the plantations of the valley, and were 
mounting a certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered 
with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous 
torrent.  Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its 
flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the 
wet wind of its descent.  The trail was breakneck, and led to 
famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for 
more practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world 
untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of our 
dismay, when turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we 
found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an impending 
rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with 
charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the 
Mormon faith.  We looked upon each other in the firelight; my 
mother broke into a passion of tears; but not a word was 
said.  The mules were turned about; and leaving that great 
eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced our steps in 
silence.  Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at 
home, condemned beyond reprieve.

What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days 
later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking 
man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust.  He 
was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a 
patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, 
that was, in my eyes, very reassuring.  He was, indeed, a 
very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his 
errand, though neither he nor any one in Utah dared to 
disobey; and it was with every mark of diffidence that he had 
had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and entered the room 
where our unhappy family was gathered.  My mother and me, he 
awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with 
my father laid before him a blank signature of President 
Young's, and offered him a choice of services:  either to set 
out as a missionary to the tribes about the White Sea, or to 
join the next day, with a party of Destroying Angels, in the 
massacre of sixty German immigrants.  The last, of course, my 
father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as a 
pretext:  even if he could consent to leave his wife 
defenceless, and to collect fresh victims for the tyranny 
under which he was himself oppressed, he felt sure he would 
never be suffered to return.  He refused both; and Aspinwall, 
he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious, at the 
spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for 
my father and his family.  He besought him to reconsider his 
decision; and at length, finding he could not prevail, gave 
him till the moon rose to settle his affairs, and say 
farewell to wife and daughter.  'For,' said he, 'then, at the 
latest, you must ride with me.'

I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed:  they fled all 
too fast; and presently the moon out-topped the eastern 
range, and my father and Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by 
side, on their nocturnal journey.  My mother, though still 
bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shut herself 
in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the 
dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made 
haste to saddle my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of 
the mountain, and to enjoy one farewell sight of my departing 
father.  The two men had set forth at a deliberate pace; nor 
was I long behind them, when I reached the point of view.  I 
was the more amazed to see no moving creature in the 
landscape.  The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; 
and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a 
growing tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any 
evidence of man, but one.  From the corner where I stood, a 
rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the doctor's 
house; and across the top of that projection the soft night 
wind carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable 
smoke.  What fuel could produce a vapour so sluggish to 
dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace pour it forth so 
copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well enough 
that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enough 
that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of 
reason, I connected in my mind the loss of that dear 
protector with the ribbon of foul smoke that trailed along 
the mountains.

Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for 
news; a week went by, a second followed, but we heard no word 
of the father and husband.  As smoke dissipates, as the image 
glides from the mirror, so in the ten or twenty minutes that 
I had spent in getting my horse and following upon his trail, 
had that strong and brave man vanished out of life.  Hope, if 
any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now 
certain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his 
defenceless family.  Without weakness, with a desperate calm 
at which I marvel when I look back upon it, the widow and the 
orphan awaited the event.  On the last day of the third week 
we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone in the house, 
alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our 
attendants, with one accord, had fled:  and as we knew them 
to be gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations 
from their flight.  The day passed, indeed, without event; 
but in the fall of the evening we were called at last into 
the verandah by the approaching clink of horse's hoofs.

The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, 
dismounted, and saluted us.  He seemed much more bent, and 
his hair more silvery than ever; but his demeanour was 
composed, serious, and not unkind.

'Madam,' said he, 'I am come upon a weighty errand; and I 
would have you recognise it as an effect of kindness in the 
President, that he should send as his ambassador your only 
neighbour and your husband's oldest friend in Utah.'

'Sir,' said my mother, 'I have but one concern, one thought.  
You know well what it is.  Speak:  my husband?'

'Madam,' returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, 
'if you were a silly child, my position would now be 
painfully embarrassing.  You are, on the other hand, a woman 
of great intelligence and fortitude:  you have, by my 
forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own 
conclusions and to accept the inevitable.  Farther words from 
me are, I conceive, superfluous.'

My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I 
gave her my hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress 
and wrung it till I could have cried aloud.  'Then, sir,' 
said she at last, 'you speak to deaf ears.  If this be indeed 
so, what have I to do with errands?  What do I ask of Heaven 
but to die?'

'Come,' said the doctor, 'command yourself.  I bid you 
dismiss all thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear 
mind to bear upon your own future and the fate of that young 
girl.'

'You bid me dismiss - ' began my mother.  'Then you know!' 
she cried.

'I know,' replied the doctor.

'You know?' broke out the poor woman.  'Then it was you who 
did the deed!  I tear off the mask, and with dread and 
loathing see you as you are - you, whom the poor fugitive 
beholds in nightmares, and awakes raving - you, the 
Destroying Angel!'

'Well, madam, and what then?' returned the doctor.  'Have not 
my fate and yours been similar?  Are we not both immured in 
this strong prison of Utah?  Have you not tried to flee, and 
did not the Open Eye confront you in the canyon?  Who can 
escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?  Not I, at 
least.  Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and 
the most ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my 
offices, would that have spared your husband?  You know well 
it would not.  I, too, had perished along with him; nor would 
I have been able to alleviate his last moments, nor could I 
to-day have stood between his family and the hand of Brigham 
Young.'

'Ah!' cried I, 'and could you purchase life by such 
concessions?'

'Young lady,' answered the doctor, 'I both could and did; and 
you will live to thank me for that baseness.  You have a 
spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to recognise.  But we 
waste time.  Mr. Fonblanque's estate reverts, as you 
doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some part of it has 
been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that 
person, I should perhaps tell you without more delay, is no 
other than myself.'

At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and 
clung together like lost souls.

'It is as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same 
measured utterance.  'You recoil from this arrangement.  Do 
you expect me to convince you?  You know very well that I 
have never held the Mormon view of women.  Absorbed in the 
most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they 
call my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me, 
they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the union I 
desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it.  No:  you 
need not, madam, and my old friend' - and here the doctor 
rose and bowed with something of gallantry - 'you need not 
apprehend my importunities.  On the contrary, I am rejoiced 
to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you 
follow me at once, and that in the name, not of my wish, but 
of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a common 
mind.'

So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the 
night had now fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare 
our horses.

'What does it mean? - what will become of us?' I cried.

'Not that, at least,' replied my mother, shuddering.  'So far 
we can trust him.  I seem to read among his words a certain 
tragic promise.  Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will 
not forget your miserable parents?'

Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes:  I beseeching her to 
explain her words; she putting me by, and continuing to 
recommend the doctor for a friend.  'The doctor!' I cried at 
last; 'the man who killed my father?'

'Nay,' said she, 'let us be just.  I do believe before, 
Heaven, he played the friendliest part.  And he alone, 
Asenath, can protect you in this land of death.'

At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when 
we were all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he 
had matter to discuss with Mrs. Fonblanque.  They came at a 
foot's pace, eagerly conversing in a whisper; and presently 
after the moon rose and showed them looking eagerly in each 
other's faces as they went, my mother laying her hand upon 
the doctor's arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual 
custom, making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.

At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the 
mountain to his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.

'Here,' he said, 'we shall dismount; and as your mother 
prefers to be alone, you and I shall walk together to my 
house.'

'Shall I see her again?' I asked.

'I give you my word,' he said, and helped me to alight.  'We 
leave the horses here,' he added.  'There are no thieves in 
this stone wilderness.'

The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.  The 
windows were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited 
smoke; but the most absolute silence reigned, and, but for 
the figure of my mother very slowly following in our wake, I 
felt convinced there was no human soul within a range of 
miles.  At the thought, I looked upon the doctor, gravely 
walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, 
and then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke 
like some industrious factory.  And then my curiosity broke 
forth.  'In Heaven's name,' I cried, 'what do you make in 
this inhuman desert?'

He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an 
evasion -

'This is not the first time,' said he, 'that you have seen my 
furnaces alight.  One morning, in the small hours, I saw you 
driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot 
acquit myself of having startled either your driver or the 
horse that drew you.'

'What!' cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the 
figure, 'could that be you?'

'It was I,' he replied; 'but do not fancy that I was mad.  I 
was in agony.  I had been scalded cruelly.'

We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses 
of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.  
Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background.  Not a 
blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the 
walls, not a flower adorned the windows.  Over the door, by 
way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; 
I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; 
but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new 
significance, and set me shrinking.  The smoke rolled 
voluminously from the chimney top, its edges ruddy with the 
fire; and from the far corner of the building, near the 
ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the moon and 
vanished.

The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.  
'You ask me what I make here,' he observed.  'Two things:  
Life and Death.'  And he motioned me to enter.

'I shall await my mother,' said I.

'Child,' he replied, 'look at me:  am I not old and broken?  
Of us two, which is the stronger, the young maiden or the 
withered man?'

I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, 
lit by a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.  It was 
furnished only with a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden 
benches; and on one of these the doctor motioned me to take a 
seat; and passing by another door into the interior of the 
house, he left me to myself.  Presently I heard the jar of 
iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed 
by the same throbbing noise that had startled me in the 
valley, but now so near at hand as to be menacing by 
loudness, and even to shake the house with every recurrence 
of the stroke.  I had scarce time to master my alarm when the 
doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother 
appeared upon the threshold.  But how am I to describe to you 
the peace and ravishment of that face?  Years seemed to have 
passed over her head during that brief ride, and left her 
younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her smile went to my 
heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel of ecstatic 
tenderness.  I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank 
a little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something 
arch and yet unearthly.  To the doctor, on the contrary, she 
reached out her hand as to a friend and helper; and so 
strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.

'Lucy,' said the doctor, 'all is prepared.  Will you go 
alone, or shall your daughter follow us?'

'Let Asenath come,' she answered, 'dear Asenath!  At this 
hour, when I am purified of fear and sorrow, and already 
survive myself and my affections, it is for your sake, and 
not for mine, that I desire her presence.  Were she shut out, 
dear friend, it is to be feared she might misjudge your 
kindness.'

'Mother,' I cried wildly, 'mother, what is this?'

But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only 'Hush!' as 
though I were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; 
and the doctor bade me be silent and trouble her no more.  
'You have made a choice,' he continued, addressing my mother, 
'that has often strangely tempted me.  The two extremes:  
all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon the clock 
- these have been my incongruous desires.  But to accept the 
middle term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker 
awhile and to burn out - never for an hour, never since I was 
born, has satisfied the appetite of my ambition.'  He looked 
upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch of 
envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led the way 
into the inner room.

It was very long.  From end to end it was lit up by many 
lamps, which by the changeful colour of their light, and by 
the incessant snapping sounds with which they burned, I have 
since divined to be electric.  At the extreme end an open 
door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to 
shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the 
room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-
doors.  The walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the 
tables crowded with the implements of chemical research; 
great glass accumulators glittered in the light; and through 
a hole in the gable near the shed door, a heavy driving-belt 
entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys, 
with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.  
In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, 
and curiously wreathed with wire.  To this my mother advanced 
with a decisive swiftness.

'Is this it?' she asked.

The doctor bowed in silence.

'Asenath,' said my mother, 'in this sad end of my life I have 
found one helper.  Look upon him:  it is Doctor Grierson.  Be 
not, oh my daughter, be not ungrateful to that friend!'

She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes 
that terminated the arms.

'Am I right?' she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such 
a radiancy of face that I trembled for her reason.  Once more 
the doctor bowed, but this time leaning hard against the 
wall.  He must have touched a spring.  The least shock 
agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar 
appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the 
chair like one resigned to weariness.  I was at her knees 
that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp; her 
face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank 
forward on her bosom:  her spirit had for ever fled.

I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a 
moment my tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes.  They rested 
upon mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, 
that even from the freshness of my sorrow, I was startled 
into attention.

'Enough,' he said, 'to lamentation.  Your mother went to 
death as to a bridal, dying where her husband died.  It is 
time, Asenath, to think of the survivors.  Follow me to the 
next room.'

I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by 
the fire, he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the 
stone floor, he thus began to address me -

'You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the 
immediate watch of Brigham Young.  It would be your lot, in 
ordinary circumstances, to become the fiftieth bride of some 
ignoble elder, or by particular fortune, as fortune is 
counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes of the 
President himself.  Such a fate for a girl like you were 
worse than death; better to die as your mother died than to 
sink daily deeper in the mire of this pit of woman's 
degradation.  But is escape conceivable?  Your father tried; 
and you beheld yourself with what security his jailers acted, 
and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted a sufficient 
sentry over the avenues of freedom.  Where your father 
failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, 
helpless in the toils?'

I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I 
believed I understood.

'I see,' I cried; 'you judge me rightly.  I must follow where 
my parents led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!'

'No,' replied the doctor, 'not death for you.  The flawed 
vessel we may break, but not the perfect.  No, your mother 
cherished a different hope, and so do I.  I see,' he cried, 
'the girl develop to the completed woman, the plan reach 
fulfilment, the promise - ay, outdone!  I could not bear to 
arrest so lively, so comely a process.  It was your mother's 
thought,' he added, with a change of tone, 'that I should 
marry you myself.'  I fear I must have shown a perfect horror 
of aversion from this fate, for he made haste to quiet me.  
'Reassure yourself, Asenath,' he resumed.  'Old as I am, I 
have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth.  I have 
passed my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils 
I have not forgotten the tune of a young pulse.  Age asks 
with timidity to be spared intolerable pain; youth, taking 
fortune by the beard, demands joy like a right.  These things 
I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly felt, 
none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed 
them to their day.  See, then:  you stand without support; 
the only friend left to you, this old investigator, old in 
cunning, young in sympathy.  Answer me but one question:  Are 
you free from the entanglement of what the world calls love?  
Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you 
fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?'

I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have 
told him, lay with my dead parents.

'It is enough,' he said.  'It has been my fate to be called 
on often, too often, for those services of which we spoke to-
night; none in Utah could carry them so well to a conclusion; 
hence there has fallen into my hands a certain share of 
influence which I now lay at your service, partly for the 
sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the 
interest I bear you in your own right.  I shall send you to 
England, to the great city of London, there to await the 
bridegroom I have selected.  He shall be a son of mine, a 
young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that 
quality of beauty that your years demand.  Since your heart 
is free, you may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask 
in return for much expense and still more danger:  to await 
the arrival of that bridegroom with the delicacy of a wife.'

I sat awhile stunned.  The doctor's marriages, I remembered 
to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity 
to my distress.  But I was alone, as he had said, alone in 
that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage, 
was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and in 
what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.

He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably 
have looked for.  'You shall see,' he cried; 'you shall judge 
for yourself.'  And hurrying to the next room he returned 
with a small portrait somewhat coarsely done in oils.  It 
showed a man in the dress of nearly forty years before, young 
indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor.  'Do you 
like it?' he asked.  'That is myself when I was young.  My - 
my boy will be like that, like but nobler; with such health 
as angels might condescend to envy; and a man of mind, 
Asenath, of commanding mind.  That should be a man, I think; 
that should be one among ten thousand.  A man like that - one 
to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the 
force, the dignity of age - one to fill all the parts and 
faculties, one to be man's epitome - say, will that not 
satisfy the needs of an ambitious girl?  Say, is not that 
enough?'  And as he held the picture close before my eyes, 
his hands shook.

I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was 
transpierced with this display of fatherly emotion; but even 
as I said the words, the most insolent revolt surged through 
my arteries.  I held him in horror, him, his portrait, and 
his son; and had there been any choice but death or a Mormon 
marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.

'It is well,' he replied, 'and I had rightly counted on your 
spirit.  Eat, then, for you have far to go.'  So saying, he 
set meat before me; and while I was endeavouring to obey, he 
left the room and returned with an armful of coarse raiment.  
'There,' said he, 'is your disguise.  I leave you to your 
toilet.'

The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy 
of fifteen; and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly 
hampered my movements.  But what filled me with 
uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of their origin 
and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged.  I had 
scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, 
opened a back window, helped me out into the narrow space 
between the house and the overhanging bluffs, and showed me a 
ladder of iron footholds mortised in the rock.  'Mount,' he 
said, 'swiftly.  When you are at the summit, walk, so far as 
you are able, in the shadow of the smoke.  The smoke will 
bring you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, 
and you will find a man with two horses.  Him you will 
implicitly obey.  And remember, silence!  That machinery, 
which I now put in motion for your service, may by one word 
be turned against you.  Go; Heaven prosper you!'

The ascent was easy.  Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw 
before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of 
stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains.  
Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and knowing how these 
deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to veil my 
movements under the blowing trail of smoke.  Sometimes it 
swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more 
substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes 
again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no 
higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog.  But, 
one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace 
protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved 
to the canyon.

There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside 
a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, 
we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths 
among the mountains.  A little before the dayspring we took 
refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge; 
lay there all day concealed; and the next night, before the 
glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings.  
About noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, 
where was a screen of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a 
bundle from his pack, bade me change my dress once more.  The 
bundle contained clothing of my own, taken from our house, 
with such necessaries as a comb and soap.  I made my toilet 
by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and 
smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my 
own image, the mountains rang with a scream of far more than 
human piercingness; and while I still stood astonished, there 
sprang up and swiftly increased a storm of the most awful and 
earth-rending sounds.  Shall I own to you, that I fell upon 
my face and shrieked?  And yet this was but the overland 
train winding among the near mountains:  the very means of my 
salvation:  the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!

When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, 
he said, both money and papers; and telling me that I was 
already over the borders in the territory of Wyoming, bade me 
follow the stream until I reached the railway station, half a 
mile below.  'Here,' he added, 'is your ticket as far as 
Council Bluffs.  The East express will pass in a few hours.'  
With that, he took both horses, and, without further words or 
any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.

Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of 
the train as it swept eastward through the gorges and 
thundered in tunnels of the mountain.  The change of scene, 
the sense of escape, the still throbbing terror of pursuit - 
above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance, kept me 
from any logical or melancholy thought.  I had gone to the 
doctor's house two nights before prepared to die, prepared 
for worse than death; what had passed, terrible although it 
was, looked almost bright compared to my anticipations; and 
it was not till I had slept a full night in the flying palace 
car, that I awoke to the sense of my irreparable loss and to 
some reasonable alarm about the future.  In this mood, I 
examined the contents of the bag.  It was well supplied with 
gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my 
journey as far as Liverpool, and a long letter from the 
doctor, supplying me with a fictitious name and story, 
recommending the most guarded silence, and bidding me to 
await faithfully the coming of his son.  All then had been 
arranged beforehand:  he had counted upon my consent, and 
what was tenfold worse, upon my mother's voluntary death.  My 
horror of my only friend, my aversion for this son who was to 
marry me, my revolt against the whole current and conditions 
of my life, were now complete.  I was sitting stupefied by my 
distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant 
lady offered me her conversation.  I clutched at the relief; 
and I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's 
letter:  how I was a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to 
England to an uncle, what money I had, what family, my age, 
and so forth, until I had exhausted my instructions, and, as 
the lady still continued to ply me with questions, began to 
embroider on my own account.  This soon carried one of my 
inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a 
shadow on the lady's face, when a gentleman drew near and 
very civilly addressed me.

'Miss Gould, I believe?' said he; and then, excusing himself 
to the lady by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the 
fore platform of the Pullman car.  'Miss Gould,' he said in 
my ear, 'is it possible that you suppose yourself in safety?  
Let me completely undeceive you.  One more such indiscretion 
and you return to Utah.  And, in the meanwhile, if this woman 
should again address you, you are to reply with these words:  
"Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will 
suffer me to choose my own associates."'

Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already 
felt myself drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I 
dismissed with insult; and thenceforward, through all that 
day, I sat in silence, gazing on the bare plains and 
swallowing my tears.  Let that suffice:  it was the pattern 
of my journey.  Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on 
board the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word 
with any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be 
interrupted.  In every place, on every side, the most 
unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became 
protectors to forward me upon my journey, or spies to observe 
and regulate my conduct.  Thus I crossed the States, thus 
passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still following my 
movements; and when at length a cab had set me down before 
that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this 
morning, I had already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.

The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, 
was expecting my arrival.  A fire was lighted in my room, 
which looked upon the garden; there were books on the table, 
clothes in the drawers; and there (I had almost said with 
contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw month 
follow month over my head.  At times my landlady took me for 
a walk or an excursion, but she would never suffer me to 
leave the house alone; and I, seeing that she also lived 
under the shadow of that widespread Mormon terror, felt too 
much pity to resist.  To the child born on Mormon soil, as to 
the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no 
escape is possible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful 
even for this respite.  Meanwhile, I tried honestly to 
prepare my mind for my approaching nuptials.  The day drew 
near when my bridegroom was to visit me, and gratitude and 
fear alike obliged me to consent.  A son of Doctor 
Grierson's, be he what he pleased, must still be young, and 
it was even probable he should be handsome; on more than 
that, I felt I dared not reckon; and in moulding my mind 
towards consent I dwelt the more carefully on these physical 
attractions which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes 
from moral or intellectual considerations.  We have a great 
power upon our spirits; and as time passed I worked myself 
into a frame of acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow 
impatient for the hour.  At night sleep forsook me; I sat all 
day by the fire, absorbed in dreams, conjuring up the 
features of my husband, and anticipating in fancy the touch 
of his hand and the sound of his voice.  In the dead level 
and solitude of my existence, this was the one eastern window 
and the one door of hope.  At last, I had so cultivated and 
prepared my will, that I began to be besieged with fears upon 
the other side.  How if it was I that did not please?  How if 
this unseen lover should turn from me with disaffection?  And 
now I spent hours before the glass, studying and judging my 
attractions, and was never weary of changing my dress or 
ordering my hair.

When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, 
with a sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could 
do no more, and must now stand or fall by nature.  My 
occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most sickening 
impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling 
rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or 
silence, starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow.  
Love is not to be prepared, I know, without some knowledge of 
the object; and yet, when the cab at last rattled to the door 
and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the tumult 
of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself might have been 
proud to own their parentage.  The door opened, and it was 
Doctor Grierson that appeared.  I believe I must have 
screamed aloud, and I know, at least, that I fell fainting to 
the floor.

When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my 
pulse.  'I have startled you,' he said.  'A difficulty 
unforeseen - the impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in 
its full purity - has forced me to resort to London 
unprepared.  I regret that I should have shown myself once 
more without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, 
to you, but to me are no more considerable than rain that 
falls into the sea.  Youth is but a state, as passing as that 
syncope from which you are but just awakened, and, if there 
be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find, Asenath, 
that I must now take you for my confidant.  Since my first 
years, I have devoted every hour and act of life to one 
ambitious task; and the time of my success is at hand.  In 
these new countries, where I was so long content to stay, I 
collected indispensable ingredients; I have fortified myself 
on every side from the possibility of error; what was a dream 
now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a 
son of mine I did so in a figure.  That son - that husband, 
Asenath, is myself - not as you now behold me, but restored 
to the first energy of youth.  You think me mad?  It is the 
customary attitude of ignorance.  I will not argue; I will 
leave facts to speak.  When you behold me purified, 
invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image - when 
you recognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect 
expression of the powers of mankind - I shall be able to 
laugh with a better grace at your passing and natural 
incredulity.  To what can you aspire - fame, riches, power, 
the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age - that I 
shall not be able to afford you in perfection?  Do not 
deceive yourself.  I already excel you in every human gift 
but one:  when that gift also has been restored to me you 
will recognise your master.'

Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave 
me to myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish 
fancies, he withdrew.  I had not the courage to move; the 
night fell and found me still where he had laid me during my 
faint, my face buried in my hands, my soul drowned in the 
darkest apprehensions.  Late in the evening he returned, 
carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade 
me rise and sup.  'Is it possible,' he added, 'that I have 
been deceived in your courage?  A cowardly girl is no fit 
mate for me.'

I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of 
tears besought him to release me from this engagement, 
assuring him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every 
point of intellect and character I was his hopeless and 
derisible inferior.

'Why, certainly,' he replied.  'I know you better than 
yourself; and I am well enough acquainted with human nature 
to understand this scene.  It is addressed to me,' he added 
with a smile, 'in my character of the still untransformed.  
But do not alarm yourself about the future.  Let me but 
attain my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on 
the face of the earth becomes my willing slave.'

Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to 
table; helped and entertained me with the attentions of a 
fashionable host; and it was not till a late hour, that, 
bidding me courteously good-night, he once more left me alone 
to my misery.

In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his 
youth, I scarce knew from which hypothesis I should the more 
eagerly recoil.  If his hopes reposed on any base of fact, if 
indeed, by some abhorrent miracle, he should discard his age, 
death were my only refuge from that most unnatural, that most 
ungodly union.  If, on the other hand, these dreams were 
merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, 
my pity would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my 
revolt against the marriage.  So passed the night, in 
alternations of rebellion and despair, of hate and pity; and 
with the next morning I was only to comprehend more fully my 
enslaved position.  For though he appeared with a very 
tranquil countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of 
grief upon my brow than an answering darkness gathered on his 
own.  'Asenath.' he said, 'you owe me much already; with one 
finger I still hold you suspended over death; my life is full 
of labour and anxiety; and I choose,' said he, with a 
remarkable accent of command, 'that you shall greet me with a 
pleasant face.'  He never needed to repeat the 
recommendation; from that day forward I was always ready to 
receive him with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me 
with a good deal of his company, and almost more than I could 
bear of his confidence.  He had set up a laboratory in the 
back part of the house, where he toiled day and night at his 
elixir, and he would come thence to visit me in my parlour:  
now with passing humours of discouragement; now, and far more 
often, radiant with hope.  It was impossible to see so much 
of him, and not to recognise that the sands of his life were 
running low; and yet all the time he would be laying out vast 
fields of future, and planning, with all the confidence of 
youth, the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and ambition.  
How I replied I know not; but I found a voice and words to 
answer, even while I wept and raged to hear him.

A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great 
exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness.  
'Asenath,' said he, 'I have now obtained the last ingredient.  
In one week from now the perilous moment of the last 
projection will draw nigh.  You have once before assisted, 
although unconsciously, at the failure of a similar 
experiment.  It was the elixir which so terribly exploded one 
night when you were passing my house; and it is idle to deny 
that the conduct of so delicate a process, among the million 
jars and trepidations of so great a city, presents a certain 
element of danger.  From this point of view, I cannot but 
regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts; 
but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the 
singularly unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment 
of projection, is due rather to the impurity than to the 
nature of the ingredients; and as all are now of an equal and 
exquisite nicety, I have little fear for the result.  In a 
week then from to-day, my dear Asenath, this period of trial 
will be ended.'  And he smiled upon me in a manner unusually 
paternal.

I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the 
blackest and most unbridled terror.  What if he failed?  And 
oh, tenfold worse! what if he succeeded?  What detested and 
unnatural changeling would appear before me to claim my hand?  
And could there, I asked myself with a dreadful sinking, be 
any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over my 
reluctance?  I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my 
life at a sign.  Suppose, then, this experiment to succeed; 
suppose him to return to me, hideously restored, like a 
vampire in a legend; and suppose that, by some devilish 
fascination . . . My head turned; all former fears deserted 
me:  and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference to 
this.

My mind was instantly made up.  The doctor's presence in 
London was justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity.  
Often, in our conversation, he would gloat over the details 
of that great organisation, which he feared even while yet he 
wielded it; and would remind me, that even in the humming 
labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that unsleeping 
eye in Utah.  His visitors, indeed, who were of every sort, 
from the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to 
belong to every rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled 
me with unmixed repulsion and alarm.  I knew that if my 
secret were to reach the ear of any leader my fate were 
sealed beyond redemption; and yet in my present pass of 
horror and despair, it was to these very men that I turned 
for help.  I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon 
missionaries, a man of a low class, but not inaccessible to 
pity; told him I scarce remember what elaborate fable to 
explain my application; and by his intermediacy entered into 
correspondence with my father's family.  They recognised my 
claim for help, and on this very day I was to begin my 
escape.

Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the 
doctor's labours, and prepared against the worst.  The nights 
at this season and in this northern latitude are short; and I 
had soon the company of the returning daylight.  The silence 
in and around the house was only broken by the movements of 
the doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened, watch in 
hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and yet consumed by 
anxiety about the strange experiment that was going forward 
overhead.  Indeed, now that I was conscious of some 
protection for myself, my sympathies had turned more directly 
to the doctor's side; I caught myself even praying for his 
success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cry reached 
my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control my 
impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.

The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his 
hand a large, round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts 
full of a bright amber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture 
of gratitude and joy unspeakable.  As he saw me he raised the 
flask at arm's length.  'Victory!' he cried.  'Victory, 
Asenath!'  And then - whether the flask escaped his trembling 
fingers, or whether the explosion were spontaneous, I cannot 
tell -enough that we were thrown, I against the door-post, 
the doctor into the corner of the room; enough that we were 
shaken to the soul by the same explosion that must have 
startled you upon the street; and that, in the brief space of 
an indistinguishable instant, there remained nothing of the 
labours of the doctor's lifetime but a few shards of broken 
crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that 
pursued me in my flight.



THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (CONCLUDED)



WHAT with the lady's animated manner and dramatic conduct of 
her voice, Challoner had thrilled to every incident with 
genuine emotion.  His fancy, which was not perhaps of a very 
lively character, applauded both the matter and the style; 
but the more judicial functions of his mind refused assent.  
It was an excellent story; and it might be true, but he 
believed it was not.  Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was 
doubtless possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but 
how was a gentleman to tell her so?  His spirits for some 
time had been sinking, but they now fell to zero; and long 
after her voice had died away he still sat with a troubled 
and averted countenance, and could find no form of words to 
thank her for her narrative.  His mind, indeed, was empty of 
everything beyond a dull longing for escape.  From this 
pause, which grew the more embarrassing with every second, he 
was roused by the sudden laughter of the lady.  His vanity 
was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes met; and he 
caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as put him 
instantly at ease.

'You certainly,' he said, 'appear to bear your calamities 
with excellent spirit.'

'Do I not?' she cried, and fell once more into delicious 
laughter.  But from this access she more speedily recovered.  
'This is all very well,' said she, nodding at him gravely, 
'but I am still in a most distressing situation, from which, 
if you deny me your help, I shall find it difficult indeed to 
free myself.'

At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original 
gloom.

'My sympathies are much engaged with you,' he said, 'and I 
should be delighted, I am sure.  But our position is most 
unusual; and circumstances over which I have, I can assure 
you, no control, deprive me of the power - the pleasure - 
Unless, indeed,' he added, somewhat brightening at the 
thought, 'I were to recommend you to the care of the police?'

She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; 
and he saw with wonder that, for the first time since the 
moment of their meeting, every trace of colour had faded from 
her cheek.

'Do so,' she said, 'and - weigh my words well - you kill me 
as certainly as with a knife.'

'God bless me!' exclaimed Challoner.

'Oh,' she cried, 'I can see you disbelieve my story and make 
light of the perils that surround me; but who are you to 
judge?  My family share my apprehensions; they help me in 
secret; and you saw yourself by what an emissary, and in what 
a place, they have chosen to supply me with the funds for my 
escape.  I admit that you are brave and clever and have 
impressed me most favourably; but how are you to prefer your 
opinion before that of my uncle, an ex-minister of state, a 
man with the ear of the Queen, and of a long political 
experience?  If I am mad, is he?  And you must allow me, 
besides, a special claim upon your help.  Strange as you may 
think my story, you know that much of it is true; and if you 
who heard the explosion and saw the Mormon at Victoria, 
refuse to credit and assist me, to whom am I to turn?'

'He gave you money then?' asked Challoner, who had been 
dwelling singly on that fact.

'I begin to interest you,' she cried.  'But, frankly, you are 
condemned to help me.  If the service I had to ask of you 
were serious, were suspicious, were even unusual, I should 
say no more.  But what is it?  To take a pleasure trip (for 
which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay) and to carry 
from one lady to another a sum of money!  What can be more 
simple?'

'Is the sum,' asked Challoner, 'considerable?'

She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she 
had not yet found time to make the count, tore open the cover 
and spread upon her knees a considerable number of Bank of 
England notes.  It took some time to make the reckoning, for 
the notes were of every degree of value; but at last, and 
counting a few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be a 
little under 710 pounds sterling.  The sight of so much money 
worked an immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.

'And you propose, madam,' he cried, 'to intrust that money to 
a perfect stranger?'

'Ah!' said she, with a charming smile, 'but I no longer 
regard you as a stranger.'

'Madam,' said Challoner, 'I perceive I must make you a 
confession.  Although of a very good family - through my 
mother, indeed, a lineal descendant of the patriot Bruce - I 
dare not conceal from you that my affairs are deeply, very 
deeply involved.  I am in debt; my pockets are practically 
empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that state when a 
considerable sum of money would prove to many men an 
irresistible temptation.'

'Do you not see,' returned the young lady, 'that by these 
words you have removed my last hesitation?  Take them.'  And 
she thrust the notes into the young man's hand.

He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that 
Miss Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.

'Pray,' she said, 'hesitate no further; put them in your 
pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of 
embarrassment, tell me by what name I am to address my 
knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the awkwardness 
of the pronoun.'

Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors 
had come lightly to the young man's aid; but upon what 
pretext could he refuse so generous a trust?  Upon none he 
saw, that was not unpardonably wounding; and the bright eyes 
and the high spirits of his companion had already made a 
breach in the rampart of Challoner's caution.  The whole 
thing, he reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it 
were the height of solemn folly to resent.  On the other 
hand, the explosion, the interview at the public-house, and 
the very money in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial 
the existence of some serious danger; and if that were so, 
could he desert her?  There was a choice of risks:  the risk 
of behaving with extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness 
to a lady, and the risk of going on a fool's errand.  The 
story seemed false; but then the money was undeniable.  The 
whole circumstances were questionable and obscure; but the 
lady was charming, and had the speech and manners of society.  
While he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned upon 
his mind with some of the dignity of prophecy.  Had he not 
promised Somerset to break with the traditions of the 
commonplace, and to accept the first adventure offered?  
Well, here was the adventure.

He thrust the money into his pocket.

'My name is Challoner,' said he.

'Mr. Challoner,' she replied, 'you have come very generously 
to my aid when all was against me.  Though I am myself a very 
humble person, my family commands great interest; and I do 
not think you will repent this handsome action.'

Challoner flushed with pleasure.

'I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,' she added, her eyes 
dwelling on him with a judicial admiration, 'a consulship in 
some great town or capital - or else - But we waste time; let 
us set about the work of my delivery.'

She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his 
heart; and once more laying by all serious thoughts, she 
entertained him, as they crossed the park, with her agreeable 
gaiety of mind.  Near the Marble Arch they found a hansom, 
which rapidly conveyed them to the terminus at Euston Square; 
and here, in the hotel, they sat down to an excellent 
breakfast.  The young lady's first step was to call for 
writing materials and write, upon one corner of the table, a 
hasty note; still, as she did so, glancing with smiles at her 
companion.  'Here,' said she, 'here is the letter which will 
introduce you to my cousin.'  She began to fold the paper.  
'My cousin, although I have never seen her, has the character 
of a very charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I 
know nothing, but at least she has been very kind to me; so 
has my lord her father; so have you - kinder than all - 
kinder than I can bear to think of.'  She said this with 
unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed the envelope.  
'Ah!' she cried, 'I have shut my letter!  It is not quite 
courteous; and yet, as between friends, it is perhaps better 
so.  I introduce you, after all, into a family secret; and 
though you and I are already old comrades, you are still 
unknown to my uncle.  You go then to this address, Richard 
Street, Glasgow; go, please, as soon as you arrive; and give 
this letter with your own hands into those of Miss 
Fonblanque, for that is the name by which she is to pass.  
When we next meet, you will tell me what you think of her,' 
she added, with a touch of the provocative.

'Ah,' said Challoner, almost tenderly, 'she can be nothing to 
me.'

'You do not know,' replied the young lady, with a sigh.  'By-
the-bye, I had forgotten - it is very childish, and I am 
almost ashamed to mention it - but when you see Miss 
Fonblanque, you will have to make yourself a little 
ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way suits you.  We 
had agreed upon a watchword.  You will have to address an 
earl's daughter in these words:  "NIGGER, NIGGER, NEVER DIE;" 
but reassure yourself,' she added, laughing, 'for the fair 
patrician will at once finish the quotation.  Come now, say 
your lesson.'

'"Nigger, nigger, never die,"' repeated Challoner, with 
undisguised reluctance.

Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.  'Excellent,' 
said she, 'it will be the most humorous scene.'  And she 
laughed again.

'And what will be the counterword?' asked Challoner stiffly.

'I will not tell you till the last moment,' said she; 'for I 
perceive you are growing too imperious.'

Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the 
platform, bought him the GRAPHIC, the ATHENAEUM, and a paper-
cutter, and stood on the step conversing till the whistle 
sounded.  Then she put her head into the carriage.  'BLACK 
FACE AND SHINING EYE!' she whispered, and instantly leaped 
down upon the platform, with a thrill of gay and musical 
laughter.  As the train steamed out of the great arch of 
glass, the sound of that laughter still rang in the young 
man's ears.

Challoner's position was too unusual to be long welcome to 
his mind.  He found himself projected the whole length of 
England, on a mission beset with obscure and ridiculous 
circumstances, and yet, by the trust he had accepted, 
irrevocably bound to persevere.  How easy it appeared, in the 
retrospect, to have refused the whole proposal, returned the 
money, and gone forth again upon his own affairs, a free and 
happy man!  And it was now impossible:  the enchantress who 
had held him with her eye had now disappeared, taking his 
honour in pledge; and as she had failed to leave him an 
address, he was denied even the inglorious safety of retreat.  
To use the paper-knife, or even to read the periodicals with 
which she had presented him, was to renew the bitterness of 
his remorse; and as he was alone in the compartment, he 
passed the day staring at the landscape in impotent 
repentance, and long before he was landed on the platform of 
St. Enoch's, had fallen to the lowest and coldest zones of 
self-contempt.

As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have 
preferred to dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the 
words of the young lady, and his own impatient eagerness, 
would suffer no delay.  In the late, luminous, and lamp-
starred dusk of the summer evening, he accordingly set 
forward with brisk steps.

The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in 
the character of a row of small suburban villas on a 
hillside; but the extension of the city had long since, and 
on every hand, surrounded it with miles of streets.  From the 
top of the hill a range of very tall buildings, densely 
inhabited by the poorest classes of the population and 
variegated by drying-poles from every second window, 
overplumbed the villas and their little gardens like a sea-
board cliff.  But still, under the grime of years of city 
smoke, these antiquated cottages, with their venetian blinds 
and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat melancholy savour of 
the past.

The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly deserted.  
From hard by, indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls 
filled the ear; but in Richard Street itself there was 
neither light nor sound of human habitation.  The appearance 
of the neighbourhood weighed heavily on the mind of the young 
man; once more, as in the streets of London, he was impressed 
with the sense of city deserts; and as he approached the 
number indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang the bell, his 
heart sank within him.

The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and 
garrulous note; and it was some time before it ceased to 
sound from the rear quarters of the building.  Following upon 
this an inner door was stealthily opened, and careful and 
catlike steps drew near along the hall.  Challoner, supposing 
he was to be instantly admitted, produced his letter, and, as 
well as he was able, prepared a smiling face.  To his 
indescribable surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and 
then, after a pause and with the like stealthiness, withdrew 
once more, and died away in the interior of the house.  A 
second time the young man rang violently at the bell; a 
second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle of 
discreet footing moved upon the hollow boards of the old 
villa; and again the fainthearted garrison only drew near to 
retreat.  The cup of the visitor's endurance was now full to 
overflowing; and, committing the whole family of Fonblanque 
to every mood and shade of condemnation, he turned upon his 
heel and redescended the steps.  Perhaps the mover in the 
house was watching from a window, and plucked up courage at 
the sight of this desistance; or perhaps, where he lurked 
trembling in the back parts of the villa, reason in its own 
right had conquered his alarms.  Challoner, at least, had 
scarce set foot upon the pavement when he was arrested by the 
sound of the withdrawal of an inner bolt; one followed 
another, rattling in their sockets; the key turned harshly in 
the lock; the door opened; and there appeared upon the 
threshold a man of a very stalwart figure in his shirt 
sleeves.  He was a person neither of great manly beauty nor 
of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary moods, 
to attract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in 
the doorway, he was marked so legibly with the extreme 
passion of terror that Challoner stood wonder-struck.  For a 
fraction of a minute they gazed upon each other in silence; 
and then the man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping 
voice, inquired the business of his visitor.  Challoner 
replied, in tones from which he strove to banish his 
surprise, that he was the bearer of a letter to a certain 
Miss Fonblanque.  At this name, as at a talisman, the man 
fell back and impatiently invited him to enter; and no sooner 
had the adventurer crossed the threshold, than the door was 
closed behind him and his retreat cut off.

It was already long past eight at night; and though the late 
twilight of the north still lingered in the streets, in the 
passage it was already groping dark.  The man led Challoner 
directly to a parlour looking on the garden to the back.  
Here he had apparently been supping; for by the light of a 
tallow dip the table was seen to be covered with a napkin, 
and set out with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a 
Gouda cheese.  The room, on the other hand, was furnished 
with faded solidity, and the walls were lined with scholarly 
and costly volumes in glazed cases.  The house must have been 
taken furnished; for it had no congruity with this man of the 
shirt sleeves and the mean supper.  As for the earl's 
daughter, the earl and the visionary consulships in foreign 
cities, they had long ago begun to fade in Challoner's 
imagination.  Like Doctor Grierson and the Mormon angels, 
they were plainly woven of the stuff of dreams.  Not an 
illusion remained to the knight-errant; not a hope was left 
him, but to be speedily relieved from this disreputable 
business.

The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised 
anxiety, and began once more to press him for his errand.

'I am here,' said Challoner, 'simply to do a service between 
two ladies; and I must ask you, without further delay, to 
summon Miss Fonblanque, into whose hands alone I am 
authorised to deliver the letter that I bear.'

A growing wonder began to mingle on the man's face with the 
lines of solicitude.  'I am Miss Fonblanque,' he said; and 
then, perceiving the effect of this communication, 'Good 
God!' he cried, 'what are you staring at?  I tell you, I am 
Miss Fonblanque.'

Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, 
and the remainder of his face was blue with shaving, 
Challoner could only suppose himself the subject of a jest.  
He was no longer under the spell of the young lady's 
presence; and with men, and above all with his inferiors, he 
was capable of some display of spirit.

'Sir,' said he, pretty roundly, 'I have put myself to great 
inconvenience for persons of whom I know too little, and I 
begin to be weary of the business.  Either you shall 
immediately summon Miss Fonblanque, or I leave this house and 
put myself under the direction of the police.'

'This is horrible!' exclaimed the man.  'I declare before 
Heaven I am the person meant, but how shall I convince you?  
It must have been Clara, I perceive, that sent you on this 
errand - a madwoman, who jests with the most deadly 
interests; and here we are incapable, perhaps, of an 
agreement, and Heaven knows what may depend on our delay!'

He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same 
time there flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous 
jingle which was to serve as password.  'This may, perhaps, 
assist you,' he said, and then, with some embarrassment, 
'"Nigger, nigger, never die."'

A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the 
man with the chin-beard.  '"Black face and shining eye" - 
give me the letter,' he panted, in one gasp.

'Well,' said Challoner, though still with some reluctance, 'I 
suppose I must regard you as the proper recipient; and though 
I may justly complain of the spirit in which I have been 
treated, I am only too glad to be done with all 
responsibility.  Here it is,' and he produced the envelope.

The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that 
trembled in a manner painful to behold, tore it open and 
unfolded the letter.  As he read, terror seemed to mount upon 
him to the pitch of nightmare.  He struck one hand upon his 
brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously, he crumpled 
the paper to a ball.  'My gracious powers!' he cried; and 
then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden, 
he clapped forth his head and shoulders, and whistled long 
and shrill.  Challoner fell back into a corner, and 
resolutely grasping his staff, prepared for the most 
desperate events; but the thoughts of the man with the chin-
beard were far removed from violence.  Turning again into the 
room, and once more beholding his visitor, whom he appeared 
to have forgotten, he fairly danced with trepidation.  
'Impossible!' he cried.  'Oh, quite impossible!  O Lord, I 
have lost my head.'  And then, once more striking his hand 
upon his brow, 'The money!' he exclaimed.  'Give me the 
money.'

'My good friend,' replied Challoner, 'this is a very painful 
exhibition; and until I see you reasonably master of 
yourself, I decline to proceed with any business.'

'You are quite right,' said the man.  'I am of a very nervous 
habit; a long course of the dumb ague has undermined my 
constitution.  But I know you have money; it may be still the 
saving of me; and oh, dear young gentleman, in pity's name be 
expeditious!'  Challoner, sincerely uneasy as he was, could 
scarce refrain from laughter; but he was himself in a hurry 
to be gone, and without more delay produced the money.  'You 
will find the sum, I trust, correct,' he observed 'and let me 
ask you to give me a receipt.'

But the man heeded him not.  He seized the money, and 
disregarding the sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, 
thrust the bundle of notes into his pocket.

'A receipt,' repeated Challoner, with some asperity.  'I 
insist on a receipt.'

'Receipt?' repeated the man, a little wildly.  'A receipt?  
Immediately!  Await me here.'

Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no 
unnecessary time, as he was himself desirous of catching a 
particular train.

'Ah, by God, and so am I!' exclaimed the man with the chin-
beard; and with that he was gone out of the room, and had 
rattled upstairs, four at a time, to the upper story of the 
villa.

'This is certainly a most amazing business,' thought 
Challoner; 'certainly a most disquieting affair; and I cannot 
conceal from myself that I have become mixed up with either 
lunatics or malefactors.  I may truly thank my stars that I 
am so nearly and so creditably done with it.'  Thus thinking, 
and perhaps remembering the episode of the whistle, he turned 
to the open window.  The garden was still faintly clear; he 
could distinguish the stairs and terraces with which the 
small domain had been adorned by former owners, and the 
blackened bushes and dead trees that had once afforded 
shelter to the country birds; beyond these he saw the strong 
retaining wall, some thirty feet in height, which enclosed 
the garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of 
dingy buildings rearing its frontage high into the night.  A 
peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time 
baffled his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be 
a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he 
was still wondering of what service so great an instrument 
could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to 
himself by the noise of some one running violently down the 
stairs.  This was followed by the sudden, clamorous banging 
of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating 
footsteps in the street.

Challoner sprang into the passage.  He ran from room to room, 
upstairs and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten 
house, he found himself alone.  Only in one apartment, 
looking to the front, were there any traces of the late 
inhabitant:  a bed that had been recently slept in and not 
made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search, and on 
the floor a roll of crumpled paper.  This he picked up.  The 
light in this upper story looking to the front was 
considerably brighter than in the parlour; and he was able to 
make out that the paper bore the mark of the hotel at Euston, 
and even, by peering closely, to decipher the following lines 
in a very elegant and careful female hand:


'DEAR M'GUIRE, - It is certain your retreat is known.  We 
have just had another failure, clockwork thirty hours too 
soon, with the usual humiliating result.  Zero is quite 
disheartened.  We are all scattered, and I could find no one 
but the SOLEMN ASS who brings you this and the money.  I 
would love to see your meeting. - Ever yours,

SHINING EYE.'


Challoner was stricken to the heart.  He perceived by what 
facility, by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been 
brought down to be the gull of this intriguer; and his wrath 
flowed forth in almost equal measure against himself, against 
the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle counsels had 
impelled him to embark on that adventure.  At the same time a 
great and troubled curiosity, and a certain chill of fear, 
possessed his spirit.  The conduct of the man with the chin-
beard, the terms of the letter, and the explosion of the 
early morning, fitted together like parts in some obscure and 
mischievous imbroglio.  Evil was certainly afoot; evil, 
secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions and the 
passions of the people among whom he had begun to move, like 
a blind puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience 
told him, was often doomed to perish as a victim.

From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with 
the letter in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the 
bell.  He glanced from the window; and, conceive his horror 
and surprise when he beheld, clustered on the steps, in the 
front garden and on the pavement of the street, a formidable 
posse of police!  He started to the full possession of his 
powers and courage.  Escape, and escape at any cost, was the 
one idea that possessed him.  Swiftly and silently he 
redescended the creaking stairs; he was already in the 
passage when a second and more imperious summons from the 
door awoke the echoes of the empty house; nor had the bell 
ceased to jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill of 
the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden.  His 
coat was hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he 
hung dependent heels and head below; and then, with the noise 
of rending cloth, and followed by several pots, he dropped 
upon the sod.  Once more the bell was rung, and now with 
furious and repeated peals.  The desperate Challoner turned 
his eyes on every side.  They fell upon the ladder, and he 
ran to it, and with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to 
raise it from the ground.  Suddenly the weight, which was 
thus resisting his whole strength, began to lighten in his 
hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its bulk from 
off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost 
superstitious terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot 
by foot, against the face of the retaining wall.  At the same 
time, two heads were dimly visible above the parapet, and he 
was hailed by a guarded whistle.  Something in its modulation 
recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the man with the chin-
beard,

Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by 
those very miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?  
Was this, indeed, a means of safety, or but the starting-
point of further complication and disaster?  He paused not to 
reflect.  Scarce was the ladder reared to its full length 
than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand over hand, 
swift as an ape, he scaled the tottering stairway.  Strong 
arms received, embraced, and helped him; he was lifted and 
set once more upon the earth; and with the spasm of his alarm 
yet unsubsided, found himself in the company of two rough-
looking men, in the paved back yard of one of the tall houses 
that crowned the summit of the hill.  Meanwhile, from below, 
the note of the bell had been succeeded by the sound of 
vigorous and redoubling blows.

'Are you all out?' asked one of his companions; and, as soon 
as he had babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was 
cut from the top round, and the ladder thrust roughly back 
into the garden, where it fell and broke with clattering 
reverberations.  Its fall was hailed with many broken cries; 
for the whole of Richard Street was now in high emotion, the 
people crowding to the windows or clambering on the garden 
walls.  The same man who had already addressed Challoner 
seized him by the arm; whisked him through the basement of 
the house and across the street upon the other side; and 
before the unfortunate adventurer had time to realise his 
situation, a door was opened, and he was thrust into a low 
and dark compartment.

'Bedad,' observed his guide, 'there was no time to lose.  Is 
M'Guire gone, or was it you that whistled?

'M'Guire is gone,' said Challoner.

The guide now struck a light.  'Ah,' said he, 'this will 
never do.  You dare not go upon the streets in such a figure.  
Wait quietly here and I will bring you something decent.'

With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus 
rudely awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that 
had been worked in his attire.  His hat was gone; his 
trousers were cruelly ripped; and the best part of one tail 
of his very elegant frockcoat had been left hanging from the 
iron crockets of the window.  He had scarce had time to 
measure these disasters when his host re-entered the 
apartment and proceeded, without a word, to envelop the 
refined and urbane Challoner in a long ulster of the cheapest 
material, and of a pattern so gross and vulgar that his 
spirit sickened at the sight.  This calumnious disguise was 
crowned and completed by a soft felt hat of the Tyrolese 
design, and several sizes too small.  At another moment 
Challoner would simply have refused to issue forth upon the 
world thus travestied; but the desire to escape from Glasgow 
was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed upon his 
mind.  With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of his 
new coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement.  
The man assured him that the whole expense was easily met 
from funds in his possession, and begged him, instead of 
wasting time, to make his best speed out of the 
neighbourhood.

The young man was not loath to take the hint.  True to his 
usual courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him 
upon his taste in greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat 
abashed by these remarks and the manner of their delivery, he 
hurried forth into the lamplit city.  The last train was gone 
ere, after many deviations, he had reached the terminus.  
Attired as he was he dared not present himself at any 
reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity 
of his demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps 
mirth and possibly suspicion, in any humbler hostelry.  He 
was thus condemned to pass the solemn and uneventful hours of 
a whole night in pacing the streets of Glasgow; supperless; a 
figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn, with hope 
indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all 
things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and 
weakness of his conduct.  It may be conceived with what 
curses he assailed the memory of the fair narrator of Hyde 
Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all night with 
damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a 
thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to 
expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur 
detective.  With the coming of day, he found in a shy milk-
shop the means to appease his hunger.  There were still many 
hours to wait before the departure of the South express; 
these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in the 
obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped 
quietly into the station and took his place in the darkest 
corner of a third-class carriage.  Here, all day long, he 
jolted on the bare boards, distressed by heat and continually 
reawakened from uneasy slumbers.  By the half return ticket 
in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey on the easy 
cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but 
alas! in his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, 
commingle with his equals; and this small annoyance, coming 
last in such a series of disasters, cut him to the heart.

That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the 
expense, anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he 
beheld the ruins of his last good trousers and his last 
presentable coat; and above all, when his eye by any chance 
alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster, his 
heart would overflow with bitterness, and it was only by a 
serious call on his philosophy that he maintained the dignity 
of his demeanour.



SOMERSET'S ADVENTURE:  THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION



MR. PAUL SOMERSET was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery 
imagination, with very small capacity for action.  He was one 
who lived exclusively in dreams and in the future:  the 
creature of his own theories, and an actor in his own 
romances.  From the cigar divan he proceeded to parade the 
streets, still heated with the fire of his eloquence, and 
scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate 
adventure.  In the continual stream of passers-by, on the 
sealed fronts of houses, on the posters that covered the 
hoardings, and in every lineament and throb of the great 
city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful hieroglyph.  But 
although the elements of adventure were streaming by him as 
thick as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, 
now with a beseeching, now with something of a braggadocio 
air, he courted and provoked the notice of the passengers; in 
vain that, putting fortune to the touch, he even thrust 
himself into the way and came into direct collision with 
those of the more promising demeanour.  Persons brimful of 
secrets, persons pining for affection, persons perishing for 
lack of help or counsel, he was sure he could perceive on 
every side; but by some contrariety of fortune, each passed 
upon his way without remarking the young gentleman, and went 
farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the confidant, 
the friend, or the adviser.  To thousands he must have turned 
an appealing countenance, and yet not one regarded him.

A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous 
aspirations, broke in upon the series of his attempts on 
fortune; and when he returned to the task, the lamps were 
already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd was dense upon the 
pavement.  Before a certain restaurant, whose name will 
readily occur to any student of our Babylon, people were 
already packed so closely that passage had grown difficult; 
and Somerset, standing in the kennel, watched, with a hope 
that was beginning to grow somewhat weary, the faces and the 
manners of the crowd.  Suddenly he was startled by a gentle 
touch upon the shoulder, and facing about, he was aware of a 
very plain and elegant brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful 
horses, and driven by a man in sober livery.  There were no 
arms upon the panel; the window was open, but the interior 
was obscure; the driver yawned behind his palm; and the young 
man was already beginning to suppose himself the dupe of his 
own fancy, when a hand, no larger than a child's and smoothly 
gloved in white, appeared in a corner of the window and 
privily beckoned him to approach.  He did so, and looked in.  
The carriage was occupied by a single small and very dainty 
figure, swathed head and shoulders in impenetrable folds of 
white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery, addressed 
him in these words -

'Open the door and get in.'

'It must be,' thought the young man with an almost unbearable 
thrill, 'it must be that duchess at last!'  Yet, although the 
moment was one to which he had long looked forward, it was 
with a certain share of alarm that he opened the door, and, 
mounting into the brougham, took his seat beside the lady of 
the lace.  Whether or no she had touched a spring, or given 
some other signal, the young man had hardly closed the door 
before the carriage, with considerable swiftness, and with a 
very luxurious and easy movement on its springs, turned and 
began to drive towards the west.

Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long 
been his particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the 
most unlikely situations; and this, among others, of the 
patrician ravisher, was one he had familiarly studied.  
Strange as it may seem, however, he could find no apposite 
remark; and as the lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further 
sign, they continued to drive in silence through the streets.  
Except for alternate flashes from the passing lamps, the 
carriage was plunged in obscurity; and beyond the fact that 
the fittings were luxurious, and that the lady was singularly 
small and slender in person, and, all but one gloved hand, 
still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could 
decipher no detail of an inspiring nature.  The suspense 
began to grow unbearable.  Twice he cleared his throat, and 
twice the whole resources of the language failed him.  In 
similar scenes, when he had forecast them on the theatre of 
fancy, his presence of mind had always been complete, his 
eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity between the 
rehearsal and the performance, he began to be seized with a 
panic of apprehension.  Here, on the very threshold of 
adventure, suppose him ignominiously to fail; suppose that 
after ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still uninterrupted 
silence, the lady should touch the check-string and re-
deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the common street!  
Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he reasoned, would be 
found more equal to the part; could, that very instant, by 
some decisive step, prove the lady's choice to have been well 
inspired, and put a stop to this intolerable silence.

His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.  It was better 
to fall by desperate councils than to continue as he was; and 
with one tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and 
drew them to himself.  One overt step, it had appeared to 
him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, 
he found it otherwise:  he found himself no less incapable of 
speech or further progress; and with the lady's hand in his, 
sat helpless.  But worse was in store.  A peculiar quivering 
began to agitate the form of his companion; the hand that lay 
unresistingly in Somerset's trembled as with ague; and 
presently there broke forth, in the shadow of the carriage, 
the bubbling and musical sound of laughter, resisted but 
triumphant.  The young man dropped his prize; had it been 
possible, he would have bounded from the carriage.  The lady, 
meanwhile, lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill 
to trill of the most heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and 
fairy-sounding merriment.

'You must not be offended,' she said at last, catching an 
opportunity between two paroxysms.  'If you have been 
mistaken in the warmth of your attentions, the fault is 
solely mine; it does not flow from your presumption, but from 
my eccentric manner of recruiting friends; and, believe me, I 
am the last person in the world to think the worse of a young 
man for showing spirit.  As for to-night, it is my intention 
to entertain you to a little supper; and if I shall continue 
to be as much pleased with your manners as I was taken with 
your face, I may perhaps end by making you an advantageous 
offer.'

Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his 
discomfiture had been too recent and complete.

'Come,' returned the lady, 'we must have no display of 
temper; that is for me the one disqualifying fault; and as I 
perceive we are drawing near our destination, I shall ask you 
to descend and offer me your arm.'

Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a 
stately and severe mansion in a spacious square; and 
Somerset, who was possessed of an excellent temper, with the 
best grace in the world assisted the lady to alight.  The 
door was opened by an old woman of a grim appearance, who 
ushered the pair into a dining-room somewhat dimly lighted, 
but already laid for supper, and occupied by a prodigious 
company of large and valuable cats.  Here, as soon as they 
were alone, the lady divested herself of the lace in which 
she was enfolded; and Somerset was relieved to find, that 
although still bearing the traces of great beauty, and still 
distinguished by the fire and colour of her eye, her hair was 
of a silvery whiteness and her face lined with years.

'And now, MON PREUX,' said the old lady, nodding at him with 
a quaint gaiety, 'you perceive that I am no longer in my 
first youth.  You will soon find that I am all the better 
company for that.'

As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light 
but tasteful supper.  They sat down, accordingly, to table, 
the cats with savage pantomime surrounding the old lady's 
chair; and what with the excellence of the meal and the 
gaiety of his entertainer, Somerset was soon completely at 
his ease.  When they had well eaten and drunk, the old lady 
leaned back in her chair, and taking a cat upon her lap, 
subjected her guest to a prolonged but evidently mirthful 
scrutiny.

'I fear, madam,' said Somerset, 'that my manners have not 
risen to the height of your preconceived opinion.'

'My dear young man,' she replied, 'you were never more 
mistaken in your life.  I find you charming, and you may very 
well have lighted on a fairy godmother.  I am not one of 
those who are given to change their opinions, and short of 
substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour 
continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of 
decision, read my fellow men and women with a glance, and 
have acted throughout life on first impressions.  Yours, as I 
tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you are 
a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not 
improbable that we may strike a bargain.'

'Ah, madam,' returned Somerset, 'you have divined my 
situation.  I am a man of birth, parts, and breeding; 
excellent company, or at least so I find myself; but by a 
peculiar iniquity of fate, destitute alike of trade or money.  
I was, indeed, this evening upon the quest of an adventure, 
resolved to close with any offer of interest, emolument, or 
pleasure; and your summons, which I profess I am still at 
some loss to understand, jumped naturally with the 
inclination of my mind.  Call it, if you will, impudence; I 
am here, at least, prepared for any proposition you can find 
it in your heart to make, and resolutely determined to 
accept.'

'You express yourself very well,' replied the old lady, 'and 
are certainly a droll and curious young man.  I should not 
care to affirm that you were sane, for I have never found any 
one entirely so besides myself; but at least the nature of 
your madness entertains me, and I will reward you with some 
description of my character and life.'

Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap, 
proceeded to narrate the following particulars.



NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY



I WAS the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, 
who held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.  
Our family, a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and 
incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where beauty was 
an heirloom.  In Christian grace of character we were 
unhappily deficient.  From my earliest years I saw and 
deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and 
position should have enabled them to conquer my esteem; and 
while I was yet a child, my father married a second wife, in 
whom (strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were exaggerated 
to a monstrous and almost laughable degree.  Whatever may be 
said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern 
daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching 
patience, I submitted to my stepmother's demands; and from 
the hour she entered my father's house, I may say that I met 
with nothing but injustice and ingratitude.

I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my 
disposition; for one other of the family besides myself was 
free from any violence of character.  Before I had reached 
the age of sixteen, this cousin, John by name, had conceived 
for me a sincere but silent passion; and although the poor 
lad was too timid to hint at the nature of his feelings, I 
had soon divined and begun to share them.  For some days I 
pondered on the odd situation created for me by the 
bashfulness of my admirer; and at length, perceiving that he 
began, in his distress, rather to avoid than seek my company, 
I determined to take the matter into my own hands.  Finding 
him alone in a retired part of the rectory garden, I told him 
that I had divined his amiable secret, that I knew with what 
disfavour our union was sure to be regarded; and that, under 
the circumstances, I was prepared to flee with him at once.  
Poor John was literally paralysed with joy; such was the 
force of his emotions, that he could find no words in which 
to thank me; and that I, seeing him thus helpless, was 
obliged to arrange, myself, the details of our flight, and of 
the stolen marriage which was immediately to crown it.  John 
had been at that time projecting a visit to the metropolis.  
In this I bade him persevere, and promised on the following 
day to join him at the Tavistock Hotel.

True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I 
arose, on the day in question, before the servants, packed a 
few necessaries in a bag, took with me the little money I 
possessed, and bade farewell for ever to the rectory.  I 
walked with good spirits to a town some thirty miles from 
home, and was set down the next morning in this great city of 
London.  As I walked from the coach-office to the hotel, I 
could not help exulting in the pleasant change that had 
befallen me; beholding, meanwhile, with innocent delight, the 
traffic of the streets, and depicting, in all the colours of 
fancy, the reception that awaited me from John.  But alas! 
when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there 
was no such gentleman among the guests.  By what channel our 
secret had leaked out, or what pressure had been brought to 
bear on the too facile John, I could never fathom.  Enough 
that my family had triumphed; that I found myself alone in 
London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible 
mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-
respect debarred for ever from my father's house.

I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the 
neighbourhood of Euston Road, where, for the first time in my 
life, I tasted the joys of independence.  Three days 
afterwards, an advertisement in the TIMES directed me to the 
office of a solicitor whom I knew to be in my father's 
confidence.  There I was given the promise of a very moderate 
allowance, and a distinct intimation that I must never look 
to be received at home.  I could not but resent so cruel a 
desertion, and I told the lawyer it was a meeting I desired 
as little as themselves.  He smiled at my courageous spirit, 
paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave me the 
remainder of my personal effects, which had been sent to me, 
under his care, in a couple of rather ponderous boxes.  With 
these I returned in triumph to my lodgings, more content with 
my position than I should have thought possible a week 
before, and fully determined to make the best of the future.

All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own 
fault alone that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of 
life.  I have, I must confess, the fatal trick of spoiling my 
inferiors.  My landlady, to whom I had as usual been 
overkind, impertinently called me in fault for some 
particular too small to mention; and I, annoyed that I had 
allowed her the freedom upon which she thus presumed, ordered 
her to leave my presence.  She stood a moment dumb, and then, 
recalling her self-possession, 'Your bill,' said she, 'shall 
be ready this evening, and to-morrow, madam, you shall leave 
my house.  See,' she added, 'that you are able to pay what 
you owe me; for if I do not receive the uttermost farthing, 
no box of yours shall pass my threshold.'

I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole quarter's 
income was due to me, not otherwise affected by the threat.  
That afternoon, as I left the solicitor's door, carrying in 
one hand, and done up in a paper parcel, the whole amount of 
my fortune, there befell me one of those decisive incidents 
that sometimes shape a life.  The lawyer's office was situate 
in a street that opened at the upper end upon the Strand, and 
was closed at the lower, at the time of which I speak, by a 
row of iron railings looking on the Thames.  Down this 
street, then, I beheld my stepmother advancing to meet me, 
and doubtless bound to the very house I had just left.  She 
was attended by a maid whose face was new to me, but her own 
was too clearly printed on my memory; and the sight of it, 
even from a distance, filled me with generous indignation.  
Flight was impossible.  There was nothing left but to retreat 
against the railing, and with my back turned to the street, 
pretend to be admiring the barges on the river or the 
chimneys of transpontine London.

I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the 
turbulence of my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed 
me with a trivial question.  It was the maid whom my 
stepmother, with characteristic hardness, had left to await 
her on the street, while she transacted her business with the 
family solicitor.  The girl did not know who I was; the 
opportunity too golden to be lost; and I was soon hearing the 
latest news of my father's rectory and parish.  It did not 
surprise me to find that she detested her employers; and yet 
the terms in which she spoke of them were hard to bear, hard 
to let pass unchallenged.  I heard them, however, without 
dissent, for my self-command is wonderful; and we might have 
parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to 
criticise the rector's missing daughter, and with the most 
shocking perversions, to narrate the story of her flight.  My 
nature is so essentially generous that I can never pause to 
reason.  I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as well as I 
remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet 
slipped from my fingers, glanced between the railings, and 
fell and sunk in the river.  I stood a moment petrified, and 
then, struck by the drollery of the incident, gave way to 
peals of laughter.  I was still laughing when my stepmother 
reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless considered me insane, 
ran off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my gravity when 
I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh 
advance.  His answer made me serious enough, for it was a 
flat refusal; and it was not until I had besought him even 
with tears, that he consented to lend me ten pounds from his 
own pocket.  'I am a poor man,' said he, 'and you must look 
for nothing farther at my hands.'

The landlady met me at the door.  'Here, madam,' said she, 
with a curtsey insolently low, 'here is my bill.  Would it 
inconvenience you to settle it at once?'

'You shall be paid, madam,' said I, 'in the morning, in the 
proper course.'  And I took the paper with a very high air, 
but inwardly quaking.

I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be 
lost.  I had been short of money and had allowed my debt to 
mount; and it had now reached the sum, which I shall never 
forget, of twelve pounds thirteen and fourpence halfpenny.  
All evening I sat by the fire considering my situation.  I 
could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to 
remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was 
I to find another lodging?  For three months, unless I could 
invent some remedy, I was condemned to be without a roof and 
without a penny.  It can surprise no one that I decided on 
immediate flight; but even here I was confronted by a 
difficulty, for I had no sooner packed my boxes than I found 
I was not strong enough to move, far less to carry them.

In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a 
shawl and bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I 
betook myself to that great bazaar of dangerous and smiling 
chances, the pavement of the city.  It was already late at 
night, and the weather being wet and windy, there were few 
abroad besides policemen.  These, on my present mission, I 
had wit enough to know for enemies; and wherever I perceived 
their moving lanterns, I made haste to turn aside and choose 
another thoroughfare.  A few miserable women still walked the 
pavement; here and there were young fellows returning drunk, 
or ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the mouths of 
alleys; but of any one to whom I might appeal in my distress, 
I began almost to despair.

At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of 
one who was evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his 
appointments, from his furred great-coat to the fine cigar 
which he was smoking, comfortably breathed of wealth.  Much 
as my face has changed from its original beauty, I still 
retain (or so I tell myself) some traces of the youthful 
lightness of my figure.  Even veiled as I then was, I could 
perceive the gentleman was struck by my appearance:  and this 
emboldened me for my adventure.

'Sir,' said I, with a quickly beating heart, 'sir, are you 
one in whom a lady can confide?'

'Why, my dear,' said he, removing his cigar, 'that depends on 
circumstances.  If you will raise your veil - '

'Sir,' I interrupted, 'let there be no mistake.  I ask you, 
as a gentleman, to serve me, but I offer no reward.'

'That is frank,' said he; 'but hardly tempting.  And what, 
may I inquire, is the nature of the service?'

But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on 
so short an interview.  'If you will accompany me,' said I, 
'to a house not far from here, you can see for yourself.'

He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, 
tossing away his cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, 
'Here goes!' said he, and with perfect politeness offered me 
his arm.  I was wise enough to take it; to prolong our walk 
as far as possible, by more than one excursion from the 
shortest line; and to beguile the way with that sort of 
conversation which should prove to him indubitably from what 
station in society I sprang.  By the time we reached the door 
of my lodging, I felt sure I had confirmed his interest, and 
might venture, before I turned the pass-key, to beseech him 
to moderate his voice and to tread softly.  He promised to 
obey me:  and I admitted him into the passage and thence into 
my sitting-room, which was fortunately next the door.

'And now,' said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted 
a candle, 'what is the meaning of all this?'

'I wish you,' said I, speaking with great difficulty, 'to 
help me out with these boxes - and I wish nobody to know.'

He took up the candle.  'And I wish to see your face,' said 
he.

I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with 
every appearance of resolve that I could summon up.  For some 
time he gazed into my face, still holding up the candle.  
'Well,' said he at last, 'and where do you wish them taken?'

I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor 
in my voice that I replied.  'I had thought we might carry 
them between us to the corner of Euston Road,' said I, 
'where, even at this late hour, we may still find a cab.'

'Very good,' was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the 
heavier of my trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle 
of the second, signed to me to help him at the other end.  In 
this order we made good our retreat from the house, and 
without the least adventure, drew pretty near to the corner 
of Euston Road.  Before a house, where there was a light 
still burning, my companion paused.  'Let us here,' said he, 
'set down our boxes, while we go forward to the end of the 
street in quest of a cab.  By doing so, we can still keep an 
eye upon their safety, and we avoid the very extraordinary 
figure we should otherwise present - a young man, a young 
lady, and a mass of baggage, standing castaway at midnight on 
the streets of London.'  So it was done, and the event proved 
him to be wise; for long before there was any word of a cab, 
a policeman appeared upon the scene, turned upon us the full 
glare of his lantern, and hung suspiciously behind us in a 
doorway.

'There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,' said my 
champion, with affected cheerfulness.  But the constable's 
answer was ungracious; and as for the offer of a cigar, with 
which this rebuff was most unwisely followed up, he refused 
it point-blank, and without the least civility.  The young 
gentleman looked at me with a warning grimace, and there we 
continued to stand, on the edge of the pavement, in the 
beating rain, and with the policeman still silently watching 
our movements from the doorway.

At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-
wheeler appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was 
instantly hailed by my companion.  'Just pull up here, will 
you?' he cried.  'We have some baggage up the street.'

And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the 
policeman, still closely following us, beheld my two boxes 
lying in the rain, he arose from mere suspicion to a kind of 
certitude of something evil.  The light in the house had been 
extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was dark; 
there was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded 
trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, 
detected in such questionable circumstances.

'Where have these things come from?' asked the policeman, 
flashing his light full into my champion's face.

'Why, from that house, of course,' replied the young 
gentleman, hastily shouldering a trunk.

The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark 
windows; he then took a step towards the door, as though to 
knock, a course which had infallibly proved our ruin; but 
seeing us already hurrying down the street under our double 
burthen, thought better or worse of it, and followed in our 
wake.

'For God's sake,' whispered my companion, 'tell me where to 
drive to.'

'Anywhere,' I replied with anguish.  'I have no idea.  
Anywhere you like.'

Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I 
had already entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear 
tones the address of the house in which we are now seated.  
The policeman, I could see, was staggered.  This 
neighbourhood, so retired, so aristocratic, was far from what 
he had expected.  For all that, he took the number of the 
cab, and spoke for a few seconds and with a decided manner in 
the cabman's ear.

'What can he have said?' I gasped, as soon as the cab had 
rolled away.

'I can very well imagine,' replied my champion; 'and I can 
assure you that you are now condemned to go where I have 
said; for, should we attempt to change our destination by the 
way, the jarvey will drive us straight to a police-office.  
Let me compliment you on your nerves,' he added.  'I have 
had, I believe, the most horrible fright of my existence.'

But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange 
a disarray that speech was now become impossible; and we made 
the drive thenceforward in unbroken silence.  When we arrived 
before the door of our destination, the young gentleman 
alighted, opened it with a pass-key like one who was at home, 
bade the driver carry the trunks into the hall, and dismissed 
him with a handsome fee.  He then led me into this dining-
room, looking nearly as you behold it, but with certain marks 
of bachelor occupancy, and hastened to pour out a glass of 
wine, which he insisted on my drinking.  As soon as I could 
find my voice, 'In God's name,' I cried, 'where am I?'

He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and 
had no more urgent business than to rest myself and recover 
my spirits.  As he spoke he offered me another glass of wine, 
of which, indeed, I stood in great want, for I was faint, and 
inclined to be hysterical.  Then he sat down beside the fire, 
lit another cigar, and for some time observed me curiously in 
silence.

'And now,' said he, 'that you have somewhat restored 
yourself, will you be kind enough to tell me in what sort of 
crime I have become a partner?  Are you murderer, smuggler, 
thief, or only the harmless and domestic moonlight flitter?'

I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without 
permission, for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on 
our first meeting; and now, at these explicit insults, I 
resolved at once to reconquer his esteem.  The judgment of 
the world I have consistently despised, but I had already 
begun to set a certain value on the good opinion of my 
entertainer.  Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon 
brightening into my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly 
narrated the circumstances of my birth, my flight, and 
subsequent misfortunes.  He heard me to an end in silence, 
gravely smoking.  'Miss Fanshawe,' said he, when I had done, 
'you are a very comical and most enchanting creature; and I 
can see nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow 
morning and satisfy your landlady's demands.'

'You strangely misinterpret my confidence,' was my reply; 
'and if you had at all appreciated my character, you would 
understand that I can take no money at your hands.'

'Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,' he 
returned; 'nor do I at all despair of persuading even your 
unconquerable self.  I desire you to examine me with critical 
indulgence.  My name is Henry Luxmore, Lord Southwark's 
second son.  I possess nine thousand a year, the house in 
which we are now sitting, and seven others in the best 
neighbourhoods in town.  I do not believe I am repulsive to 
the eye, and as for my character, you have seen me under 
trial.  I think you simply the most original of created 
beings; I need not tell you what you know very well, that you 
are ravishingly pretty; and I have nothing more to add, 
except that, foolish as it may appear, I am already head over 
heels in love with you.'

'Sir,' said I, 'I am prepared to be misjudged; but while I 
continue to accept your hospitality that fact alone should be 
enough to protect me from insult.'

'Pardon me,' said he:  'I offer you marriage.'  And leaning 
back in his chair he replaced his cigar between his lips.

I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, 
but couched in terms so singular.  But he knew very well how 
to obtain his purposes, for he was not only handsome in 
person, but his very coolness had a charm; and to make a long 
story short, a fortnight later I became the wife of the 
Honourable Henry Luxmore.

For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect 
quiet.  My Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to 
flee from his roof, but not for long; for though he was 
easily over-excited, his nature was placable below the 
surface, and with all his faults, I loved him tenderly.  At 
last he was taken from me; and such is the power of self-
deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying, he 
actually assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave 
the violence of my temper!

There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara.  
She had, indeed, inherited a shadow of her father's failing; 
but in all things else, unless my partial eyes deceived me, 
she derived her qualities from me, and might be called my 
moral image.  On my side, whatever else I may have done 
amiss, as a mother I was above reproach.  Here, then, was 
surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a 
relation in which I might hope to taste repose.  But it was 
not to be.  You will hardly credit me when I inform you that 
she ran away from home; yet such was the case.  Some whim 
about oppressed nationalities - Ireland, Poland, and the like 
- has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter 
a young lady (I must say, of remarkable attractions) 
answering to the name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I 
am told she uses these indifferently, as well as many 
others), tell her, from me, that I forgive her cruelty, and 
though I will never more behold her face, I am at any time 
prepared to make her a liberal allowance.

On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details 
of business.  I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, 
besides this, formed part of Mr. Luxmore's property:  I have 
found them seven white elephants.  The greed of tenants, the 
dishonesty of solicitors, and the incapacity that sits upon 
the bench, have combined together to make these houses the 
burthen of my life.  I had no sooner, indeed, begun to look 
into these matters for myself, than I discovered so many 
injustices and met with so much studied incivility, that I 
was plunged into a long series of lawsuits, some of which are 
pending to this day.  You must have heard my name already; I 
am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports:  a strange destiny, 
indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for 
peace!  But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have 
once begun a task, will rather die than leave their duty 
unfulfilled.  I have met with every obstacle:  insolence and 
ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my adversaries, that 
fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most 
distasteful in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed 
- always, I must allow, civility - but never a spark of 
independence, never that knowledge of the law and love of 
justice which we have a right to look for in a judge, the 
most august of human officers.  And still, against all these 
odds, I have undissuadably persevered.

It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a 
subject on which I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to 
make a melancholy pilgrimage to my various houses.  Four were 
at that time tenantless and closed, like pillars of salt, 
commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline of 
private virtue.  Three were occupied by persons who had 
wearied me by every conceivable unjust demand and legal 
subterfuge - persons whom, at that very hour, I was moving 
heaven and earth to turn into the street.  This was perhaps 
the sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot within 
me to behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an 
insolent ostentation, these handsome structures which were as 
much mine as the flesh upon my body.

One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now 
are.  I had let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, 
the life that I have always preferred) to a Colonel 
Geraldine, a gentleman attached to Prince Florizel of 
Bohemia, whom you must certainly have heard of; and I had 
supposed, from the character and position of my tenant, that 
here, at least, I was safe against annoyance.  What was my 
surprise to find this house also shuttered and apparently 
deserted!  I will not deny that I was offended; I conceived 
that a house, like a yacht, was better to be kept in 
commission; and I promised myself to bring the matter before 
my solicitor the following morning.  Meanwhile the sight 
recalled my fancy naturally to the past; and yielding to the 
tender influence of sentiment, I sat down opposite the door 
upon the garden parapet.  It was August, and a sultry 
afternoon, but that spot is sheltered, as you may observe by 
daylight, under the branches of a spreading chestnut; the 
square, too, was deserted; there was a sound of distant music 
in the air; and all combined to plunge me into that most 
agreeable of states, which is neither happiness nor sorrow, 
but shares the poignancy of both.

From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very 
handsomely appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by 
several men of an appearance more than decent, and bearing on 
its panels, instead of a trader's name, a coat-of-arms too 
modest to be deciphered from where I sat.  It drew up before 
my house, the door of which was immediately opened by one of 
the men.  His companions - I counted seven of them in all - 
proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the van 
and carry into the house a variety of hampers, bottle-
baskets, and boxes, such as are designed for plate and 
napery.  The windows of the dining-room were thrown widely 
open, as though to air it; and I saw some of those within 
laying the table for a meal.  Plainly, I concluded, my tenant 
was about to return; and while still determined to submit to 
no aggression on my rights, I was gratified by the number and 
discipline of his attendants, and the quiet profusion that 
appeared to reign in his establishment.  I was still so 
thinking when, to my extreme surprise, the windows and 
shutters of the dining-room were once more closed; the men 
began to reappear from the interior and resume their stations 
on the van; the last closed the door behind his exit; the van 
drove away; and the house was once more left to itself, 
looking blindly on the square with shuttered windows, as 
though the whole affair had been a vision.

It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and 
thus brought my eyes a little nearer to the level of the 
fanlight over the door, I saw that, though the day had still 
some hours to run, the hall lamps had been lighted and left 
burning.  Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not 
expected before night.  For whom, I asked myself with 
indignation, were such secret preparations likely to be made?  
Although no prude, I am a woman of decided views upon 
morality; if my house, to which my husband had brought me, 
was to serve in the character of a PETITE MAISON, I saw 
myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of 
litigation; and, determined to return and know the worst, I 
hastened to my hotel for dinner.

I was at my post by ten.  The night was clear and quiet; the 
moon rode very high and put the lamps to shame; and the 
shadow below the chestnut was black as ink.  Here, then, I 
ensconced myself on the low parapet, with my back against the 
railings, face to face with the moonlit front of my old home, 
and ruminating gently on the past.  Time fled; eleven struck 
on all the city clocks; and presently after I was aware of 
the approach of a gentleman of stately and agreeable 
demeanour.  He was smoking as he walked; his light paletot, 
which was open, did not conceal his evening clothes; and he 
bore himself with a serious grace that immediately awakened 
my attention.  Before the door of this house he took a pass-
key from his pocket, quietly admitted himself, and 
disappeared into the lamplit hall.

He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much 
younger man approaching hastily from the opposite side of the 
square.  Considering the season of the year and the genial 
mildness of the night, he was somewhat closely muffled up; 
and as he came, for all his hurry, he kept looking nervously 
behind him.  Arrived before my door, he halted and set one 
foot upon the step, as though about to enter; then, with a 
sudden change, he turned and began to hurry away; halted a 
second time, as if in painful indecision; and lastly, with a 
violent gesture, wheeled about, returned straight to the 
door, and rapped upon the knocker.  He was almost immediately 
admitted by the first arrival.

My curiosity was now broad awake.  I made myself as small as 
I could in the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the 
sequel.  Nor had I long to wait.  From the same side of the 
square a second young man made his appearance, walking slowly 
and softly, and like the first, muffled to the nose.  Before 
the house he paused, looked all about him with a swift and 
comprehensive glance; and seeing the square lie empty in the 
moon and lamplight, leaned far across the area railings and 
appeared to listen to what was passing in the house.  From 
the dining-room there came the report of a champagne cork, 
and following upon that, the sound of rich and manly 
laughter.  The listener took heart of grace, produced a key, 
unlocked the area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him, and 
descended the stair.  Just when his head had reached the 
level of the pavement, he turned half round and once more 
raked the square with a suspicious eyeshot.  The mufflings 
had fallen lower round his neck; the moon shone full upon 
him; and I was startled to observe the pallor and passionate 
agitation of his face.

I could remain no longer passive.  Persuaded that something 
deadly was afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the 
area railings.  There was no one below; the man must 
therefore have entered the house, with what purpose I dreaded 
to imagine.  I have at no part of my career lacked courage; 
and now, finding the area gate was merely laid to, I pushed 
it gently open and descended the stairs.  The kitchen door of 
the house, like the area gate, was closed but not fastened.  
It flashed upon me that the criminal was thus preparing his 
escape; and the thought, as it confirmed the worst of my 
suspicions, lent me new resolve.  I entered the house; and 
being now quite reckless of my life, I shut and locked the 
door.

From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of 
a voice in easy conversation.  On the ground floor all was 
not only profoundly silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh 
upon my eyes.  Here, then, I stood for some time, having 
thrust myself uncalled into the utmost peril, and being 
destitute of any power to help or interfere.  Nor will I deny 
that fear had begun already to assail me, when I became 
aware, all at once and as though by some immediate but silent 
incandescence, of a certain glimmering of light upon the 
passage floor.  Towards this I groped my way with infinite 
precaution; and having come at length as far as the angle of 
the corridor, beheld the door of the butler's pantry standing 
just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling from the 
chink.  Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture.  
The man sat within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with 
the most rapt attention.  On a table before him he had laid a 
watch, a pair of steel revolvers, and a bull's-eye lantern.  
For one second many contradictory theories and projects 
whirled together in my head; the next, I had slammed the door 
and turned the key upon the malefactor.  Surprised at my own 
decision, I stood and panted, leaning on the wall.  From 
within the pantry not a sound was to be heard; the man, 
whatever he was, had accepted his fate without a struggle, 
and now, as I hugged myself to fancy, sat frozen with terror 
and looking for the worst to follow.  I promised myself that 
he should not be disappointed; and the better to complete my 
task, I turned to ascend the stairs.

The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, 
appealed to me suddenly by my strong sense of humour.  Here 
was I, the owner of the house, burglariously present in its 
walls; and there, in the dining-room, were two gentlemen, 
unknown to me, seated complacently at supper, and only saved 
by my promptitude from some surprising or deadly 
interruption.  It were strange if I could not manage to 
extract the matter of amusement from so unusual a situation.

Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended 
for a library.  It was to this that I cautiously groped my 
way; and you will see how fortune had exactly served me.  The 
weather, I have said, was sultry; in order to ventilate the 
dining-room and yet preserve the uninhabited appearance of 
the mansion to the front, the window of the library had been 
widely opened, and the door of communication between the two 
apartments left ajar.  To this interval I now applied my eye.

Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened 
brightness on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of 
a cold collation of the rarest delicacy.  The two gentlemen 
had finished supper, and were now trifling with cigars and 
maraschino; while in a silver spirit lamp, coffee of the most 
captivating fragrance was preparing in the fashion of the 
East.  The elder of the two, he who had first arrived, was 
placed directly facing me; the other was set on his left 
hand.  Both, like the man in the butler's pantry, seemed to 
be intently listening; and on the face of the second I 
thought I could perceive the marks of fear.  Oddly enough, 
however, when they came to speak, the parts were found to be 
reversed.

'I assure you,' said the elder gentleman, 'I not only heard 
the slamming of a door, but the sound of very guarded 
footsteps.'

'Your highness was certainly deceived,' replied the other.  
'I am endowed with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that 
not a mouse has rustled.'  Yet the pallor and contraction of 
his features were in total discord with the tenor of his 
words.

His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince 
Florizel) looked at his companion for the least fraction of a 
second; and though nothing shook the easy quiet of his 
attitude, I could see that he was far from being duped.  'It 
is well,' said he; 'let us dismiss the topic.  And now, sir, 
that I have very freely explained the sentiments by which I 
am directed, let me ask you, according to your promise, to 
imitate my frankness.'

'I have heard you,' replied the other, 'with great interest.'

'With singular patience,' said the prince politely.

'Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,' returned 
the young man.  'I know not how to tell the change that has 
befallen me.  You have, I must suppose, a charm, to which 
even your enemies are subject.'  He looked at the clock on 
the mantelpiece and visibly blanched.  'So late!' he cried.  
'Your highness - God knows I am now speaking from the heart - 
before it be too late, leave this house!'

The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very 
deliberately shook the ash from his cigar.  'That is a 
strange remark,' said he; 'and A PROPOS DE BOTTES, I never 
continue a cigar when once the ash is fallen; the spell 
breaks, the soul of the flavour flies away, and there remains 
but the dead body of tobacco; and I make it a rule to throw 
away that husk and choose another.'  He suited the action to 
the words.

'Do not trifle with my appeal,' resumed the young man, in 
tones that trembled with emotion.  'It is made at the price 
of my honour and to the peril of my life.  Go - go now! lose 
not a moment; and if you have any kindness for a young man, 
miserably deceived indeed, but not devoid of better 
sentiments, look not behind you as you leave.'

'Sir,' said the prince, 'I am here upon your honour; assure 
you upon mine that I shall continue to rely upon that 
safeguard.  The coffee is ready; I must again trouble you, I 
fear.'  And with a courteous movement of the hand, he seemed 
to invite his companion to pour out the coffee.

The unhappy young man rose from his seat.  'I appeal to you,' 
he cried, 'by every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in 
pity to yourself, begone before it is too late.'

'Sir,' replied the prince, 'I am not readily accessible to 
fear; and if there is one defect to which I must plead 
guilty, it is that of a curious disposition.  You go the 
wrong way about to make me leave this house, in which I play 
the part of your entertainer; and, suffer me to add, young 
man, if any peril threaten us, it was of your contriving, not 
of mine.'

'Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,' cried the 
other.  'But I at least will have no hand in it.'  With these 
words he carried his hand to his pocket, hastily swallowed 
the contents of a phial, and, with the very act, reeled back 
and fell across his chair upon the floor.  The prince left 
his place and came and stood above him, where he lay 
convulsed upon the carpet.  'Poor moth!' I heard his highness 
murmur.  'Alas, poor moth! must we again inquire which is the 
more fatal - weakness or wickedness?  And can a sympathy with 
ideas, surely not ignoble in themselves, conduct a man to 
this dishonourable death?'

By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the 
room.  'Your highness,' said I, 'this is no time for 
moralising; with a little promptness we may save this 
creature's life; and as for the other, he need cause you no 
concern, for I have him safely under lock and key.'

The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me 
certainly with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder 
which almost robbed me of my self-possession.  'My dear 
madam,' he cried at last, 'and who the devil are you?'

I was already on the floor beside the dying man.  I had, of 
course, no idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and 
I was forced to try him with a variety of antidotes.  Here 
were both oil and vinegar, for the prince had done the young 
man the honour of compounding for him one of his celebrated 
salads; and of each of these I administered from a quarter to 
half a pint, with no apparent efficacy.  I next plied him 
with the hot coffee, of which there may have been near upon a 
quart.

'Have you no milk?' I inquired.

'I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,' returned the 
prince.

'Salt, then,' said I; 'salt is a revulsive.  Pass the salt.'

'And possibly the mustard?' asked his highness, as he offered 
me the contents of the various salt-cellars poured together 
on a plate.

'Ah,' cried I, 'the thought is excellent!  Mix me about half 
a pint of mustard, drinkably dilute.'

Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere 
combination of so many subversive agents, as soon as the last 
had been poured over his throat, the young sufferer obtained 
relief.

'There!' I exclaimed, with natural triumph, 'I have saved a 
life!'

'And yet, madam,' returned the prince, 'your mercy may be 
cruelty disguised.  Where the honour is lost, it is, at 
least, superfluous to prolong the life.'

'If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,' 
I replied, 'you would hold a very different opinion.  For my 
part, and after whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, 
I should still count to-morrow worth a trial.'

'You speak as a lady, madam,' said the prince; 'and for such 
you speak the truth.  But to men there is permitted such a 
field of license, and the good behaviour asked of them is at 
once so easy and so little, that to fail in that is to fall 
beyond the reach of pardon.  But will you suffer me to repeat 
a question, put to you at first, I am afraid, with some 
defect of courtesy; and to ask you once more, who you are and 
how I have the honour of your company?'

'I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,' said I.

'And still I am at fault,' returned the prince.

But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to 
strike the hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself 
upon one elbow, with an expression of despair and horror that 
I have never seen excelled, cried lamentably, 'Midnight! oh, 
just God!'  We stood frozen to our places, while the tingling 
hammer of the timepiece measured the remaining strokes; nor 
had we yet stirred, so tragic had been the tones of the young 
man, when the various bells of London began in turn to 
declare the hour.  The timepiece was inaudible beyond the 
walls of the chamber where we stood; but the second pulsation 
of Big Ben had scarcely throbbed into the night, before a 
sharp detonation rang about the house.  The prince sprang for 
the door by which I had entered; but quick as he was, I yet 
contrived to intercept him.

'Are you armed?' I cried.

'No, madam,' replied he.  'You remind me appositely; I will 
take the poker.'

'The man below,' said I, 'has two revolvers.  Would you 
confront him at such odds?'

He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.

'And yet, madam,' said he, 'we cannot continue to remain in 
ignorance of what has passed.'

'No!' cried I.  'And who proposes it?  I am as curious as 
yourself, but let us rather send for the police; or, if your 
highness dreads a scandal, for some of your own servants.'

'Nay, madam,' he replied, smiling, 'for so brave a lady, you 
surprise me.  Would you have me, then, send others where I 
fear to go myself?'

'You are perfectly right,' said I, 'and I was entirely wrong.  
Go, in God's name, and I will hold the candle!'

Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he 
carrying the poker, I the light; and together we approached 
and opened the door of the butler's pantry.  In some sort, I 
believe, I was prepared for the spectacle that met our eyes; 
I was prepared, that is, to find the villain dead, but the 
rude details of such a violent suicide I was unable to 
endure.  The prince, unshaken by horror as he had remained 
unshaken by alarm, assisted me with the most respectful 
gallantry to regain the dining-room.

There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but 
vastly recovered and already seated on a chair.  He held out 
both his hands with a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.

'He is dead,' said the prince.

'Alas!' cried the young man, 'and it should be I!  What do I 
do, thus lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, 
my sure comrade, blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the 
soul of fidelity, has judged and slain himself for an 
involuntary fault?  Ah, sir,' said he, 'and you too, madam, 
without whose cruel help I should be now beyond the reach of 
my accusing conscience, you behold in me the victim equally 
of my own faults and virtues.  I was born a hater of 
injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled against 
heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I 
witnessed the sorrows of the poor; the pauper's crust stuck 
in my throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the 
cripple child has set me weeping.  What was there in that but 
what was noble? and yet observe to what a fall these thoughts 
have led me!  Year after year this passion for the lost 
besieged me closer.  What hope was there in kings? what hope 
in these well-feathered classes that now roll in money?  I 
had observed the course of history; I knew the burgess, our 
ruler of to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, 
in every age, combine to pull down that which was immediately 
above and to prey upon those that were below; his dulness, I 
knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his days 
were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let 
the poor child shiver in the rain?  The better days, indeed, 
were coming, but the child would die before that.  Alas, your 
highness, in surely no ungenerous impatience I enrolled 
myself among the enemies of this unjust and doomed society; 
in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fires of my 
philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an irrevocable oath.

'That oath is all my history.  To give freedom to posterity I 
had forsworn my own.  I must attend upon every signal; and 
soon my father complained of my irregular hours and turned me 
from his house.  I was engaged in betrothal to an honest 
girl; from her also I had to part, for she was too shrewd to 
credit my inventions and too innocent to be entrusted with 
the truth.  Behold me, then, alone with conspirators!  Alas! 
as the years went on, my illusions left me.  Surrounded as I 
was by the fervent disciples and apologists of revolution, I 
beheld them daily advance in confidence and desperation; I 
beheld myself, upon the other hand, and with an almost equal 
regularity, decline in faith.  I had sacrificed all to 
further that cause in which I still believed; and daily I 
began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.  
Horrible was the society with which we warred, but our own 
means were not less horrible.

'I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to 
tell you how, when I beheld young men still free and happy, 
married, fathers of children, cheerfully toiling at their 
work, my heart reproached me with the greatness and vanity of 
my unhappy sacrifice.  I will not describe to you how, worn 
by poverty, poor lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet 
conscience, my health began to fail, and in the long nights, 
as I wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel 
sufferings of the body were added to the tortures of my mind.  
These things are not personal to me; they are common to all 
unfortunates in my position.  An oath, so light a thing to 
swear, so grave a thing to break:  an oath, taken in the heat 
of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, but yet 
in vain repented, as the years go on:  an oath, that was once 
the very utterance of the truth of God, but that falls to be 
the symbol of a meaningless and empty slavery; such is the 
yoke that many young men joyfully assume, and under whose 
dead weight they live to suffer worse than death.

'It is not that I was patient.  I have begged to be released; 
but I knew too much, and I was still refused.  I have fled; 
ay, and for the time successfully.  I reached Paris.  I found 
a lodging in the Rue St. Jacques, almost opposite the Val de 
Grace.  My room was mean and bare, but the sun looked into it 
towards evening; it commanded a peep of a green garden; a 
bird hung by a neighbour's window and made the morning 
beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed and rest 
myself:  I, who was in full revolt against the principles 
that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the 
council, and was no longer charged with shameful and 
revolting tasks.  Oh! what an interval of peace was that!  I 
still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of my 
neighbour's bird.

'My money was running out, and it became necessary that I 
should find employment.  Scarcely had I been three days upon 
the search, ere I thought that I was being followed.  I made 
certain of the features of the man, which were quite strange 
to me, and turned into a small cafe, where I whiled away an 
hour, pretending to read the papers, but inwardly convulsed 
with terror.  When I came forth again into the street, it was 
quite empty, and I breathed again; but alas, I had not turned 
three corners, when I once more observed the human hound 
pursuing me.  Not an hour was to be lost; timely submission 
might yet preserve a life which otherwise was forfeit and 
dishonoured; and I fled, with what speed you may conceive, to 
the Paris agency of the society I served.

'My submission was accepted.  I took up once more the hated 
burthen of that life; once more I was at the call of men whom 
I despised and hated, while yet I envied and admired them.  
They at least were wholehearted in the things they purposed; 
but I, who had once been such as they, had fallen from the 
brightness of my faith, and now laboured, like a hireling, 
for the wages of a loathed existence.  Ay, sir, to that I was 
condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and lived but to 
obey.

'The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has 
to-night so tragically ended.  Boldly telling who I was, I 
was to request from your highness, on behalf of my society, a 
private audience, where it was designed to murder you.  If 
one thing remained to me of my old convictions, it was the 
hate of kings; and when this task was offered me, I took it 
gladly.  Alas, sir, you triumphed.  As we supped, you gained 
upon my heart.  Your character, your talents, your designs 
for our unhappy country, all had been misrepresented.  I 
began to forget you were a prince; I began, all too 
feelingly, to remember that you were a man.  As I saw the 
hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and when, at last, 
we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my 
unwilling ears the arrival of the partner of my crime, you 
will bear me out with what instancy I besought you to depart.  
You would not, alas! and what could I?  Kill you, I could 
not; my heart revolted, my hand turned back from such a deed.  
Yet it was impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for 
when the hour struck and my companion came, true to his 
appointment, and he, at least, true to our design, I could 
neither suffer you to be killed nor yet him to be arrested.  
From such a tragic passage, death, and death alone, could 
save me; and it is no fault of mine if I continue to exist.

'But you, madam,' continued the young man, addressing himself 
more directly to myself, 'were doubtless born to save the 
prince and to confound our purposes.  My life you have 
prolonged; and by turning the key on my companion, you have 
made me the author of his death.  He heard the hour strike; 
he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to 
honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon his highness 
and perish for lack of his support, he has turned his pistol 
on himself.'

'You are right,' said Prince Florizel:  'it was in no 
ungenerous spirit that you brought these burthens on 
yourself; and when I see you so nobly to blame, so tragically 
punished, I stand like one reproved.  For is it not strange, 
madam, that you and I, by practising accepted and 
inconsiderable virtues, and commonplace but still 
unpardonable faults, should stand here, in the sight of God, 
with what we call clean hands and quiet consciences; while 
this poor youth, for an error that I could almost envy him, 
should be sunk beyond the reach of hope?

'Sir,' resumed the prince, turning to the young man, 'I 
cannot help you; my help would but unchain the thunderbolt 
that overhangs you; and I can but leave you free.'

'And, sir,' said I, 'as this house belongs to me, I will ask 
you to have the kindness to remove the body.  You and your 
conspirators, it appears to me, can hardly in civility do 
less.'

'It shall be done,' said the young man, with a dismal accent.

'And you, dear madam,' said the prince, 'you, to whom I owe 
my life, how can I serve you?'

'Your highness,' I said, 'to be very plain, this is my 
favourite house, being not only a valuable property, but 
endeared to me by various associations.  I have endless 
troubles with tenants of the ordinary class:  and at first 
applauded my good fortune when I found one of the station of 
your Master of the Horse.  I now begin to think otherwise:  
dangers set a siege about great personages; and I do not wish 
my tenement to share these risks.  Procure me the resiliation 
of the lease, and I shall feel myself your debtor.'

'I must tell you, madam,' replied his highness, 'that Colonel 
Geraldine is but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry 
indeed to think myself so unacceptable a tenant.'

'Your highness,' said I, 'I have conceived a sincere 
admiration for your character; but on the subject of house 
property, I cannot allow the interference of my feelings.  I 
will, however, to prove to you that there is nothing personal 
in my request, here solemnly engage my word that I will never 
put another tenant in this house.'

'Madam,' said Florizel, 'you plead your cause too charmingly 
to be refused.'

Thereupon we all three withdrew.  The young man, still 
reeling in his walk, departed by himself to seek the 
assistance of his fellow-conspirators; and the prince, with 
the most attentive gallantry, lent me his escort to the door 
of my hotel.  The next day, the lease was cancelled; nor from 
that hour to this, though sometimes regretting my engagement, 
have I suffered a tenant in this house.



THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (CONTINUED).



AS soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset 
made haste to offer her his compliments.

'Madam,' said he, 'your story is not only entertaining but 
instructive; and you have told it with infinite vivacity.  I 
was much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very 
liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret 
society if I had been able to find one.  But the whole tale 
came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for you in 
your various perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat hasty 
temper.'

'I do not understand you,' said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks 
of irritation.  'You must have strangely misinterpreted what 
I have told you.  You fill me with surprise.'

Somerset, alarmed by the old lady's change of tone and 
manner, hurried to recant.

'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'you certainly misconstrue my 
remark.  As a man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience 
repeatedly pricked me when I heard what you had suffered at 
the hands of persons similarly constituted.'

'Oh, very well indeed,' replied the old lady; 'and a very 
proper spirit.  I regret that I have met with it so rarely.'

'But in all this,' resumed the young man, 'I perceive nothing 
that concerns myself.'

'I am about to come to that,' she returned.  'And you have 
already before you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one 
of the elements of the affair.  I am a woman of the nomadic 
sort, and when I have no case before the courts I make it a 
habit to visit continental spas:  not that I have ever been 
ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in 
a crowd.  Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now 
on the wing for Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must 
leave behind and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my hands; 
and I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a 
very good turn into the bargain, by lending you the mansion, 
with all its fittings, as it stands.  The idea was sudden; it 
appealed to me as humorous:  and I am sure it will cause my 
relatives, if they should ever hear of it, the keenest 
possible chagrin.  Here, then, is the key; and when you 
return at two to-morrow afternoon, you will find neither me 
nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession.'

So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; 
but Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to 
protest.

'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'this is a most unusual 
proposal.  You know nothing of me, beyond the fact that I 
displayed both impudence and timidity.  I may be the worst 
kind of scoundrel; I may sell your furniture - '

'You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!' 
cried Mrs. Luxmore.  'It is in vain to reason.  Such is the 
force of my character that, when I have one idea clearly in 
my head, I do not care two straws for any side consideration.  
It amuses me to do it, and let that suffice.  On your side, 
you may do what you please - let apartments, or keep a 
private hotel; on mine, I promise you a full month's warning 
before I return, and I never fail religiously to keep my 
promises.'

The young man was about to renew his protest, when he 
observed a sudden and significant change in the old lady's 
countenance.

'If I thought you capable of disrespect!' she cried.

'Madam,' said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of 
asseveration, 'madam, I accept.  I beg you to understand that 
I accept with joy and gratitude.'

'Ah well,' returned Mrs. Luxmore, 'if I am mistaken, let it 
pass.  And now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you 
a good-night.'

Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she 
hurried Somerset out of the front door, and left him 
standing, key in hand, upon the pavement.

The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found 
his way to the square, which I will here call Golden Square, 
though that was not its name.  What to expect, he knew not; 
for a man may live in dreams, and yet be unprepared for their 
realisation.  It was already with a certain pang of surprise 
that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a 
solid among solids.  The key, upon trial, readily opened the 
front door; he entered that great house, a privileged 
burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly 
reviewed the empty chambers.  Cats, servant, old lady, the 
very marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been 
in these few hours obliterated.  He wandered from floor to 
floor, and found the house of great extent; the kitchen 
offices commodious and well appointed; the rooms many and 
large; and the drawing-room, in particular, an apartment of 
princely size and tasteful decoration.  Although the day 
without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a ruffling wind 
from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of 
suspended animation inhabited the house.  Dust and shadows 
met the eye; and but for the ominous procession of the 
echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden trees, 
the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.

Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by 
the old lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and 
netted cupolas of the kitchen quarters; and on a second 
visit, this room appeared to greet him with a smiling 
countenance.  He might as well, he thought, avoid the expense 
of lodging:  the library, fitted with an iron bedstead which 
he had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve 
his purpose for the night; while in the dining-room, which 
was large, airy, and lightsome, looking on the square and 
garden, he might very agreeably pass his days, cook his 
meals, and study to bring himself to some proficiency in that 
art of painting which he had recently determined to adopt.  
It did not take him long to make the change:  he had soon 
returned to the mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman 
who brought him was readily induced, by the young man's 
pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to assist him in the 
installation of the iron bed.  By six in the evening, when 
Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon 
the mansion with a sense of pride and property.  Four-square 
it stood, of an imposing frontage, and flanked on either side 
by family hatchments.  His eye, from where he stood whistling 
in the key, with his back to the garden railings, reposed on 
every feature of reality; and yet his own possession seemed 
as flimsy as a dream.

In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the 
square began to remark the customs of their neighbour.  The 
sight of a young gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about four 
o'clock of the afternoon, in the drawing-room balcony of so 
discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more, his periodical 
excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his 
unabashed return, nursing the full tankard:  had presently 
raised to a high pitch the interest and indignation of the 
liveried servants of the square.  The disfavour of some of 
these gentlemen at first proceeded to the length of insult; 
but Somerset knew how to be affable with any class of men; 
and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses 
amicably shared, gained for him the right of toleration.

The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a 
notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of 
offices.  He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular 
schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room 
into a studio for the reproduction of still life.  There he 
amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from 
the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there 
spent his days in smiling assiduity.  Meantime, the great 
bulk of empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon his 
imagination.  To hold so great a stake and to do nothing, 
argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to 
act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to 
stick, with wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small 
handbill announcing furnished lodgings.  At half-past six of 
a fine July morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into 
the square to study the result.  It seemed, to his eye, 
promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-
room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty 
problem of how much he was to charge.

Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of 
painting.  Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the 
best part of the day in the front balcony, like the attentive 
angler poring on his float; and the better to support the 
tedium, he would frequently console himself with his clay 
pipe.  On several occasions, passers-by appeared to be 
arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and 
gentlemen drove to the very doorstep by the carriageful; but 
it appeared there was something repulsive in the appearance 
of the house; for with one accord, they would cast but one 
look upward, and hastily resume their onward progress or 
direct the driver to proceed.  Somerset had thus the 
mortification of actually meeting the eye of a large number 
of lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to withdraw his 
pipe, and to compose his features to an air of invitation, he 
was never rewarded by so much as an inquiry.  'Can there,' he 
thought, 'be anything repellent in myself?'  But a candid 
examination in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room 
led him to dismiss the fear.

Something, however, was amiss.  His vast and accurate 
calculations on the fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of 
playbills, appeared to have been an idle sacrifice of time.  
By these, he had variously computed the weekly takings of the 
house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty shillings, up 
to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in 
despite of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was 
making literally nothing.

This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his 
thoughtful leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to 
him that he had detected the error of his method.  'This,' he 
reflected, 'is an age of generous display:  the age of the 
sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears' legendary soap, and of 
Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and 
the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, 
has overlaid that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's 
pyretic saline.  Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; 
Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably vulgar; and 
here have I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of the 
world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a 
few cold words which do not directly address the imagination, 
and the adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red 
wafers!  Am I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with 
Eno?  Am I to adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming 
in a duke? or to take hold of the red facts of life with the 
emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?'

Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets 
of the very largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth 
his paints, proceeded to compose an ensign that might attract 
the eye, and at the same time, in his own phrase, directly 
address the imagination of the passenger.  Something taking 
in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words, and a 
realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect 
to lead within the walls of that palace of delight:  these, 
he perceived, must be the elements of his advertisement.  It 
was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the sober 
pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed 
urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was 
possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his 
muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider 
in its range or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan.  
So long did the artist waver between these two views, that, 
before he arrived at a conclusion, he had finally conceived 
and completed both designs.  With the proverbially tender 
heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice 
either of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose 
them on alternate days.  'In this way,' he thought, 'I shall 
address myself indifferently to all classes of the world.'

The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and 
the more imaginative canvas received the suffrages of 
fortune, and appeared first in the window of the mansion.  It 
was of a high fancy, the legend eloquently writ, the scheme 
of colour taking and bold; and but for the imperfection of 
the artist's drawing, it might have been taken for a model of 
its kind.  As it was, however, when viewed from his favourite 
point against the garden railings, and with some touch of 
distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of the artist's 
heart.  'I have thrown away,' he ejaculated, 'an invaluable 
motive; and this shall be the subject of my first academy 
picture.'

The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.  A 
crowd would certainly, from time to time, collect before the 
area-railings; but they came to jeer and not to speculate; 
and those who pushed their inquiries further, were too 
plainly animated by the spirit of derision.  The racier of 
the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive 
merit; and though it had a certain share of that success 
called scandalous, failed utterly of its effect.  On the day, 
however, of the second appearance of the companion work, a 
real inquirer did actually present himself before the eyes of 
Somerset.

This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent 
merriment, and his voice under inadequate control.

'I beg your pardon,' said he, 'but what is the meaning of 
your extraordinary bill?'

'I beg yours,' returned Somerset hotly.  'Its meaning is 
sufficiently explicit.'  And being now, from dire experience, 
fearful of ridicule, he was preparing to close the door, when 
the gentleman thrust his cane into the aperture.

'Not so fast, I beg of you,' said he.  'If you really let 
apartments, here is a possible tenant at your door; and 
nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see the 
accommodation and to learn your terms.'

His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, 
showed him over the various apartments, and, with some return 
of his persuasive eloquence, expounded their attractions.  
The gentleman was particularly pleased by the elegant 
proportions of the drawing-room.

'This,' he said, 'would suit me very well.  What, may I ask, 
would be your terms a week, for this floor and the one above 
it?'

'I was thinking,' returned Somerset, 'of a hundred pounds.'

'Surely not,' exclaimed the gentleman.

'Well, then,' returned Somerset, 'fifty.'

The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement.  
'You seem to be strangely elastic in your demands,' said he.  
'What if I were to proceed on your own principle of division, 
and offer twenty-five?'

'Done!' cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden 
embarrassment, 'You see,' he added apologetically, 'it is all 
found money for me.'

'Really?' said the stranger, looking at him all the while 
with growing wonder.  'Without extras, then?'

'I - I suppose so,' stammered the keeper of the lodging-
house.

'Service included?' pursued the gentleman.

'Service?' cried Somerset.  'Do you mean that you expect me 
to empty your slops?'

The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest.  
'My dear fellow,' said he, 'if you take my advice, you will 
give up this business.'  And thereupon he resumed his hat and 
took himself away.

This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the 
artist of the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his 
rosier illusions.  First one and then the other of his great 
works was condemned, withdrawn from exhibition, and 
relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration of the 
dining-room.  Their place was taken by a replica of the 
original wafered announcement, to which, in particularly 
large letters, he had added the pithy rubric:  'NO SERVICE.'  
Meanwhile he had fallen into something as nearly bordering on 
low spirits as was consistent with his disposition; 
depressed, at once by the failure of his scheme, the 
laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial 
blindness of the public to the merit of the twin cartoons.

Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the 
note of the knocker.  A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and 
somewhat military air, yet closely shaven and wearing a soft 
hat, desired in the politest terms to visit the apartments.  
He had (he explained) a friend, a gentleman in tender health, 
desirous of a sedate and solitary life, apart from 
interruptions and the noises of the common lodging-house.  
'The unusual clause,' he continued, 'in your announcement, 
particularly struck me.  "This," I said, "is the place for 
Mr. Jones."  You are yourself, sir, a professional 
gentleman?' concluded the visitor, looking keenly in 
Somerset's face.

'I am an artist,' replied the young man lightly.

'And these,' observed the other, taking a side glance through 
the open door of the dining-room, which they were then 
passing, 'these are some of your works.  Very remarkable.'  
And he again and still more sharply peered into the 
countenance of the young man.

Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to 
lead his visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.

'Excellent,' observed the stranger, as he looked from one of 
the back windows.  'Is that a mews behind, sir?  Very good.  
Well, sir:  see here.  My friend will take your drawing-room 
floor; he will sleep in the back drawing-room; his nurse, an 
excellent Irish widow, will attend on all his wants and 
occupy a garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten dollars 
a week; and you, on your part, will engage to receive no 
other lodger?  I think that fair.'

Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude 
and joy.

'Agreed,' said the other; 'and to spare you trouble, my 
friend will bring some men with him to make the changes.  You 
will find him a retiring inmate, sir; receives but few, and 
rarely leaves the house, except at night.'

'Since I have been in this house,' returned Somerset, 'I have 
myself, unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad 
except in the evening.  But a man,' he added, 'must have some 
amusement.'

An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and 
Somerset sat down to compute in English money the value of 
the figure named.  The result of this investigation filled 
him with amazement and disgust; but it was now too late; 
nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited the arrival of 
his tenant, still trying, by various arithmetical expedients, 
to obtain a more favourable quotation for the dollar.  With 
the approach of dusk, however, his impatience drove him once 
more to the front balcony.  The night fell, mild and airless; 
the lamps shone around the central darkness of the garden; 
and through the tall grove of trees that intervened, many 
warmly illuminated windows on the farther side of the square, 
told their tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial 
hospitality.  The stars were already thickening overhead, 
when the young man's eyes alighted on a procession of three 
four-wheelers, coasting round the garden railing and bound 
for the Superfluous Mansion.  They were laden with formidable 
boxes; moved in a military order, one following another; and, 
by the extreme slowness of their advance, inspired Somerset 
with the most serious ideas of his tenant's malady.

By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up 
beside the pavement; and from the two first, there had 
alighted the military gentleman of the morning and two very 
stalwart porters.  These proceeded instantly to take 
possession of the house; with their own hands, and firmly 
rejecting Somerset's assistance, they carried in the various 
crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and 
transferred to the back drawing-room the bed in which the 
tenant was to sleep; and it was not until the bustle of 
arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were complete, 
that there descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a 
gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on 
the shoulder of a woman in a widow's dress, and himself 
covered by a long cloak and muffled in a coloured comforter.

Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon 
shut into the back drawing-room; the other men departed; 
silence redescended on the house; and had not the nurse 
appeared a little before half-past ten, and, with a strong 
brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in the 
neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to 
be alone in the Superfluous Mansion.

Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by 
speech or sight of his mysterious lodger.  The doors of the 
drawing-room flat were never open; and although Somerset 
could hear him moving to and fro, the tall man had never 
quitted the privacy of his apartments.  Visitors, indeed, 
arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous 
hours of night or morning; men, for the most part; some 
meanly attired, some decently; some loud, some cringing; and 
yet all, in the eyes of Somerset, displeasing.  A certain air 
of fear and secrecy was common to them all; they were all 
voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the military 
gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman 
at all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his 
manners were not suggestive of a university career.  The 
nurse, again, was scarcely a desirable house-fellow.  Since 
her arrival, the fall of whisky in the young man's private 
bottle was much accelerated; and though never communicative, 
she was at times unpleasantly familiar.  When asked about the 
patient's health, she would dolorously shake her head, and 
declare that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.

Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion 
that his complaint was other than bodily.  The ill-looking 
birds that gathered to the house, the strange noises that 
sounded from the drawing-room in the dead hours of night, the 
careless attendance and intemperate habits of the nurse, the 
entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. 
Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have 
sworn to in a court of justice - all weighed unpleasantly 
upon the young man's mind.  A sense of something evil, 
irregular and underhand, haunted and depressed him; and this 
uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in his mind, 
when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of 
observing the features of his tenant.  It fell in this way.  
The young landlord was awakened about four in the morning by 
a noise in the hall.  Leaping to his feet, and opening the 
door of the library, he saw the tall man, candle in hand, in 
earnest conversation with the gentleman who had taken the 
rooms.  The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in 
that of his tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks 
of disease, but every sign of health, energy, and resolution.  
While he was still looking, the visitor took his departure; 
and the invalid, having carefully fastened the front door, 
sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude.

That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once 
more into the hot fit of the detective fever; and the next 
morning resumed the practice of his art with careless hand 
and an abstracted mind.  The day was destined to be fertile 
in surprises; nor had he long been seated at the easel ere 
the first of these occurred.  A cab laden with baggage drew 
up before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly 
mounted the steps and began to pound upon the knocker.  
Somerset hastened to attend the summons.

'My dear fellow,' she said, with the utmost gaiety, 'here I 
come dropping from the moon.  I am delighted to find you 
faithful; and I have no doubt you will be equally pleased to 
be restored to liberty.'

Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; 
and the spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on 
the threshold of the dining-room.  The sight that met her 
eyes was one well calculated to inspire astonishment.  The 
mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and empty bottles; on 
the fire some chops were frying; the floor was littered from 
end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the 
materials of the painter's craft; but what far outstripped 
the other wonders of the place was the corner which had been 
arranged for the study of still-life.  This formed a sort of 
rockery; conspicuous upon which, according to the principles 
of the art of composition, a cabbage was relieved against a 
copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail of a boiled 
lobster.

'My gracious goodness!' cried the lady of the house; and 
then, turning in wrath on the young man, 'From what rank in 
life are you sprung?' she demanded.  'You have the exterior 
of a gentleman; but from the astonishing evidences before me, 
I should say you can only be a greengrocer's man.  Pray, 
gather up your vegetables, and let me see no more of you.'

'Madam,' babbled Somerset, 'you promised me a month's 
warning.'

'That was under a misapprehension,' returned the old lady.  
'I now give you warning to leave at once.'

'Madam,' said the young man, 'I wish I could; and indeed, as 
far as I am concerned, it might be done.  But then, my 
lodger!'

'Your lodger?' echoed Mrs. Luxmore.

'My lodger:  why should I deny it?' returned Somerset.  'He 
is only by the week.'

The old lady sat down upon a chair.  'You have a lodger? - 
you?' she cried.  'And pray, how did you get him?'

'By advertisement,' replied the young man. 'O madam, I have 
not lived unobservantly.  I adopted' - his eyes involuntarily 
shifted to the cartoons - 'I adopted every method.'

Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's 
experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as 
the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave 
way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter.

'Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!' she cried.  'I do 
hope you had them in the window.  M'Pherson,' she continued, 
crying to her maid, who had been all this time grimly waiting 
in the hall, 'I lunch with Mr. Somerset.  Take the cellar key 
and bring some wine.'

In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; 
presented Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she 
made M'Pherson bring up from the cellar - 'as a present, my 
dear,' she said, with another burst of tearful merriment, 
'for your charming pictures, which you must be sure to leave 
me when you go;' and finally, protesting that she dared not 
spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of 
London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the 
continent of Europe.

She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the 
corridor the Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a 
prey to singularly strong emotion.  It was made to appear, 
from her account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely 
in his health from Mrs. Luxmore's visit, and that nothing 
short of a full explanation could allay the invalid's 
uneasiness.  Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought 
fit of the affair.

'Is that all?' cried the woman.  'As God sees you, is that 
all?'

'My good woman,' said the young man, 'I have no idea what you 
can be driving at.  Suppose the lady were my friend's wife, 
suppose she were my fairy godmother, suppose she were the 
Queen of Portugal; and how should that affect yourself or Mr. 
Jones?'

'Blessed Mary!' cried the nurse, 'it's he that will be glad 
to hear it!'

And immediately she fled upstairs.

Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with 
a very thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed 
of the remainder of the bottle.  It was port; and port is a 
wine, sole among its equals and superiors, that can in some 
degree support the competition of tobacco.  Sipping, smoking, 
and theorising, Somerset moved on from suspicion to 
suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver and 
rosier as the bottle ebbed.  He was a sceptic, none prouder 
of the name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes 
or vices, but beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral 
approbation, the frequent consequence of youth and health.  
At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt under the 
same roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate 
instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.  The bottle 
had run low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the 
same moment, night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from 
his dreams.

He went forth, and dined in the Criterion:  a dinner in 
consonance, not so much with his purse, as with the admirable 
wine he had discussed.  What with one thing and another, it 
was long past midnight when he returned home.  A cab was at 
the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found himself face 
to face with one of the most regular of the few who visited 
Mr. Jones:  a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and 
a chin-beard in the American fashion.  This person was 
carrying on one shoulder a black portmanteau, seemingly of 
considerable weight.  That he should find a visitor removing 
baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd stories to 
the young man's memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus 
gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the 
very furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; 
and now, in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and 
aping the manner of a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the 
man with the chin-beard and knocked the portmanteau from his 
shoulder to the floor.  With a face struck suddenly as white 
as paper, the man with the chin-beard called lamentably on 
the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat at 
the foot of the stairs.  At the same time, though only for a 
single instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish 
nurse popped out like rabbits over the banisters of the first 
floor; and on both the same scare and pallor were apparent.

The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to 
stone, and he continued speechless, while the man gathered 
himself together, and, with the help of the handrail and 
audibly thanking God, scrambled once more upon his feet.

'What in Heaven's name ails you?' gasped the young man as 
soon as he could find words and utterance.

'Have you a drop of brandy?' returned the other.  'I am 
sick.'

Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the 
man with the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began 
to confound himself in apologies for what he called his 
miserable nervousness, the result, he said, of a long course 
of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a hand that still 
sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and 
departed.

Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.  What, he asked 
himself, had been the contents of the black portmanteau?  
Stolen goods? the carcase of one murdered? or - and at the 
thought he sat upright in bed - an infernal machine?  He took 
a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest; and with 
the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room 
window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await and profit by 
the earliest opportunity.

The hours went heavily by.  Within the house there was no 
circumstance of novelty; unless it might be that the nurse 
more frequently made little journeys round the corner of the 
square, and before afternoon was somewhat loose of speech and 
gait.  A little after six, however, there came round the 
corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly dressed 
young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, 
and with frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the 
Superfluous Mansion.  It was not the first time that she had 
thus stood afar and looked upon it, like our common parents 
at the gates of Eden; and the young man had already had 
occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and 
had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.  He 
hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a 
little nearer to the window to enjoy the sight.  What was his 
surprise, however, when, as if with a sensible effort, she 
drew near, mounted the steps and tapped discreetly at the 
door!  He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who was 
not improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive 
this gracious visitor in person.

She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, 
asked the young man if he were the person of the house (and 
at the words, he thought he could perceive her to be 
smiling), 'because,' she added, 'if you are, I should like to 
see some of the other rooms.'  Somerset told her he was under 
an engagement to receive no other lodgers; but she assured 
him that would be no matter, as these were friends of Mr. 
Jones's.  'And,' she continued, moving suddenly to the 
dining-room door, 'let us begin here.'  Somerset was too late 
to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the courage to 
essay.  'Ah!' she cried, 'how changed it is!'

'Madam,' cried the young man, 'since your entrance, it is I 
who have the right to say so.'

She received this inane compliment with a demure and 
conscious droop of the eyelids, and gracefully steering her 
dress among the mingled litter, now with a smile, now with a 
sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two apartments.  She gazed 
upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a heightened 
colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high 
opinion of their merits.  She praised the effective 
disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which 
Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she 
fairly broke forth in admiration.  'How simple and manly!' 
she cried:  'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so 
detestable in a man!'  Hard upon this, telling him, before he 
had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would 
trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging 
smile, and ascended the staircase alone.

For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with 
Mr. Jones; and at the end of that time, the night being now 
come completely, they left the house in company.  This was 
the first time since the arrival of his lodger, that Somerset 
had found himself alone with the Irish widow; and without the 
loss of any more time than was required by decency, he 
stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.  
She came instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a 
nodding head; and when the young man politely offered to 
introduce her to the treasures of his art, she swore that 
nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for, though she 
had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently observed 
his beautiful pictures through the door.  On entering the 
dining-room, the sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared 
her to be a gentle critic; and as soon as the pictures had 
been viewed and praised, she was easily persuaded to join the 
painter in a single glass.  'Here,' she said, 'are my 
respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to 
see a gentleman like yourself, so affable and free, and a 
very nice painter, I am sure.'  One glass so agreeably 
prefaced, was sure to lead to the acceptance of a second; at 
the third, Somerset was free to cease from the affectation of 
keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she asked it of 
her own accord.  'For indeed,' said she, 'what with all these 
clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life 
would be impossible entirely.  And you seen yourself that 
even M'Guire was glad to beg for it.  And even himself, when 
he is downhearted with all these cruel disappointments, 
though as temperate a man as any child, will be sometimes 
crying for a glass of it.  And I'll thank you for a 
thimbleful to settle what I got.'  Soon after, she began with 
tears to narrate the deathbed dispositions and lament the 
trifling assets of her husband.  Then she declared she heard 
'the master' calling her, rose to her feet, made but one 
lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head 
upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.

Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the 
door of the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by 
several lamps.  It was a great apartment; looking on the 
square with three tall windows, and joined by a pair of ample 
folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion, 
papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, 
and adorned with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted 
marbles.  Such was the room that Somerset remembered; that 
which he now beheld was changed in almost every feature:  the 
furniture covered with a figured chintz; the walls hung with 
a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by the curtained 
recesses for no less than seven windows.  It seemed to 
himself that he must have entered, without observing the 
transition, into the adjoining house.  Presently from these 
more specious changes, his eye condescended to the many 
curious objects with which the floor was littered.  Here were 
the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and clockwork in 
every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some 
reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, 
jars and bottles; a carpenter's bench and a laboratory-table.

The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had 
likewise undergone a change.  It was transformed to the exact 
appearance of a common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with 
green curtains occupied one corner; and the window was 
blocked by the regulation table and mirror.  The door of a 
small closet here attracted the young man's attention; and 
striking a vesta, he opened it and entered.  On a table 
several wigs and beards were lying spread; about the walls 
hung an incongruous display of suits and overcoats; and 
conspicuous among the last the young man observed a large 
overall of the most costly sealskin.  In a flash his mind 
reverted to the advertisement in the STANDARD newspaper.  The 
great height of his lodger, the disproportionate breadth of 
his shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, 
all pointed to the same conclusion.

The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat 
upon his arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted 
drawing-room.  There, with a mixture of fear and admiration, 
he pored upon its goodly proportions and the regularity and 
softness of the pile.  The sight of a large pier-glass put 
another fancy in his head.  He donned the fur-coat; and 
standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a 
Russian prince, he thrust his hands into the ample pockets.  
There his fingers encountered a folded journal.  He drew it 
out, and recognised the type and paper of the STANDARD; and 
at the same instant, his eyes alighted on the offer of two 
hundred pounds.  Plainly then, his lodger, now no longer 
mysterious, had laid aside his coat on the very day of the 
appearance of the advertisement.

He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the 
incriminating paper in his hand, when the door opened and the 
tall lodger, with a firm but somewhat pallid face, stepped 
into the room and closed the door again behind him.  For some 
time, the two looked upon each other in perfect silence; then 
Mr. Jones moved forward to the table, took a seat, and still 
without once changing the direction of his eyes, addressed 
the young man.

'You are right,' he said.  'It is for me the blood money is 
offered.  And now what will you do?'

It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able 
to reply.  Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the 
man's own coat, and surrounded by a whole arsenal of 
diabolical explosives, the keeper of the lodging-house was 
silenced.

'Yes,' resumed the other, 'I am he.  I am that man, whom with 
impotent hate and fear, they still hunt from den to den, from 
disguise to disguise.  Yes, my landlord, you have it in your 
power, if you be poor, to lay the basis of your fortune; if 
you be unknown, to capture honour at one snatch.  You have 
hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here in my 
apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped money, 
searching my wardrobe, and your hand - shame, sir! - your 
hand in my very pocket.  You can now complete the cycle of 
your ignominious acts, by what will be at once the simplest, 
the safest, and the most remunerative.'  The speaker paused 
as if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change 
of tone and manner, thus resumed:  'And yet, sir, when I look 
upon your face, I feel certain that I cannot be deceived:  
certain that in spite of all, I have the honour and pleasure 
of speaking to a gentleman.  Take off my coat, sir - which 
but cumbers you.  Divest yourself of this confusion:  that 
which is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen to 
the conscience; we have all harboured guilty thoughts:  and 
if it flashed into your mind to sell my flesh and blood, my 
anguish in the dock, and the sweat of my death agony - it was 
a thought, dear sir, you were as incapable of acting on, as I 
of any further question of your honour.'  At these words, the 
speaker, with a very open, smiling countenance, like a 
forgiving father, offered Somerset his hand.

It was not in the young man's nature to refuse forgiveness or 
dissect generosity.  He instantly, and almost without 
thought, accepted the proffered grasp.

'And now,' resumed the lodger, 'now that I hold in mine your 
loyal hand, I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I 
go further - by an effort of will, I banish the memory of 
what is past.  How you came here, I care not:  enough that 
you are here - as my guest.  Sit ye down; and let us, with 
your good permission, improve acquaintance over a glass of 
excellent whisky.'

So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle:  and the pair 
pledged each other in silence.

'Confess,' observed the smiling host, 'you were surprised at 
the appearance of the room.'

'I was indeed,' said Somerset; 'nor can I imagine the purpose 
of these changes.'

'These,' replied the conspirator, 'are the devices by which I 
continue to exist.  Conceive me now, accused before one of 
your unjust tribunals; conceive the various witnesses 
appearing, and the singular variety of their reports!  One 
will have visited me in this drawing-room as it originally 
stood; a second finds it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or 
next day, all may have been changed.  If you love romance (as 
artists do), few lives are more romantic than that of the 
obscure individual now addressing you.  Obscure yet famous.  
Mine is an anonymous, infernal glory.  By infamous means, I 
work towards my bright purpose.  I found the liberty and 
peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future 
smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the 
existence of a hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and 
practice hell's dexterities.'

Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic 
before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with 
indescribable bewilderment.  He looked him in the face with 
curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and 
wondered the more profoundly.

'Sir,' he said - 'for I know not whether I should still 
address you as Mr. Jones - '

'Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, 
Henderland, by all or any of these you may address me,' said 
the plotter; 'for all I have at some time borne.  Yet that 
which I most prize, that which is most feared, hated, and 
obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is 
not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed, 
like the celebrated clan M'Gregor, I may justly describe 
myself as being nameless by day.  But,' he continued, rising 
to his feet, 'by night, and among my desperate followers, I 
am the redoubted Zero.'

Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely 
expressed surprise and gratification.  'I am to understand,' 
he continued, 'that, under this alias, you follow the 
profession of a dynamiter?'

The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the 
glasses.

'I do,' he said.  'In this dark period of time, a star - the 
star of dynamite - has risen for the oppressed; and among 
those who practise its use, so thick beset with dangers and 
attended by such incredible difficulties and disappointments, 
few have been more assiduous, and not many - '  He paused, 
and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his face - 'not 
many have been more successful than myself.'

'I can imagine,' observed Somerset, 'that, from the sweeping 
consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of 
interest.  You have, besides, some of the entertainment of 
the game of hide and seek.  But it would still seem to me - I 
speak as a layman - that nothing could be simpler or safer 
than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an adjacent 
county to await the painful consequences.'

'You speak, indeed,' returned the plotter, with some evidence 
of warmth, 'you speak, indeed, most ignorantly.  Do you make 
nothing, then, of such a peril as we share this moment?  Do 
you think it nothing to occupy a house like this one, mined, 
menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering to its fall?'

'Good God!' ejaculated Somerset.

'And when you speak of ease,' pursued Zero, 'in this age of 
scientific studies, you fill me with surprise.  Are you not 
aware that chemicals are proverbially fickle as woman, and 
clockwork as capricious as the very devil?  Do you see upon 
my brow these furrows of anxiety?  Do you observe the silver 
threads that mingle with my hair?  Clockwork, clockwork has 
stamped them on my brow - chemicals have sprinkled them upon 
my locks!  No, Mr. Somerset,' he resumed, after a moment's 
pause, his voice still quivering with sensibility, 'you must 
not suppose the dynamiter's life to be all gold.  On the 
contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the bloodshot vigils 
and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine.  I 
have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; 
my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried 
with white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await 
the fall of England, the massacre of thousands, the yell of 
fear and execration; and lo! a snap like that of a child's 
pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of so much 
time and plant!  If,' he concluded, musingly, 'we had been 
merely able to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a 
touch or two, I could have remedied the peccant engine.  But 
what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable 
scientific difficulties of the task, our friends in France 
are almost ready to desert the chosen medium.  They propose, 
instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep 
off whole populations with the devastating typhoid 
pestilence:  a tempting and a scientific project:  a process, 
indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical simplicity.  I 
recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the 
poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune.  And, 
for my small part, I shall remain devoted to that more 
emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more popular 
method, of the explosive bomb.  Yes,' he cried, with unshaken 
hope, 'I will still continue, and, I feel it in my bosom, I 
shall yet succeed.'

'Two things I remark,' said Somerset.  'The first somewhat 
staggers me.  Have you, then - in all this course of life, 
which you have sketched so vividly - have you not once 
succeeded?'

'Pardon me,' said Zero.  'I have had one success.  You behold 
in me the author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.'

'But if I remember right,' objected Somerset, 'the thing was 
a FIASCO.  A scavenger's barrow and some copies of the WEEKLY 
BUDGET - these were the only victims.'

'You will pardon me again,' returned Zero with positive 
asperity:  'a child was injured.'

'And that fitly brings me to my second point,' said Somerset.  
'For I observed you to employ the word "indiscriminate."  
Now, surely, a scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there 
were) represent the very acme and top pin-point of 
indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.'

'Did I employ the word?' asked Zero.  'Well, I will not 
defend it.  But for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; 
and before entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once 
more to fill our glasses.  Disputation is dry work,' he 
added, with a charming gaiety of manner.

Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a 
stalwart grog; and Zero, leaning back with an air of some 
complacency, proceeded more largely to develop his opinions.

'The indiscriminate?' he began.  'War, my dear sir, is 
indiscriminate.  War spares not the child; it spares not the 
barrow of the harmless scavenger.  No more,' he concluded, 
beaming, 'no more do I.  Whatever may strike fear, whatever 
may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, 
barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is 
welcome to my simple plans.  You are not,' he inquired, with 
a shade of sympathetic interest, 'you are not, I trust, a 
believer?'

'Sir, I believe in nothing,' said the young man.

'You are then,' replied Zero, 'in a position to grasp my 
argument.  We agree that humanity is the object, the glorious 
triumph of humanity; and being pledged to labour for that 
end, and face to face with the banded opposition of kings, 
parliaments, churches, and the members of the force, who am I 
- who are we, dear sir - to affect a nicety about the tools 
employed?  You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the Queen, 
the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous 
Granville; but there you would be in error.  Our appeal is to 
the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and 
interest.  Now, sir, have you observed the English 
housemaid?'

'I should think I had,' cried Somerset.

'From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,' 
returned the conspirator politely.  'A type apart; a very 
charming figure; and thoroughly adapted to our ends.  The 
neat cap, the clean print, the comely person, the engaging 
manner; her position between classes, parents in one, 
employers in another; the probability that she will have at 
least one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall address:  - 
yes, I have a leaning - call it, if you will, a weakness - 
for the housemaid.  Not that I would be understood to despise 
the nurse.  For the child is a very interesting feature:  I 
have long since marked out the child as the sensitive point 
in society.'  He wagged his head, with a wise, pensive smile.  
'And talking, sir, of children and of the perils of our 
trade, let me now narrate to you a little incident of an 
explosive bomb, that fell out some weeks ago under my own 
observation.  It fell out thus.'

And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following 
simple tale.



ZERO'S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB.



I DINED by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, 
in a private chamber at St. James's Hall.  You have seen the 
man:  it was M'Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures, but 
not himself expert in our contrivances.  Hence the necessity 
of our meeting; for I need not remind you what enormous 
issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine.  I set 
our little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being 
hard by; and the better to avert miscarriage, employed a 
device, a recent invention of my own, by which the opening of 
the Gladstone bag in which the bomb was carried, should 
instantly determine the explosion.  M'Guire was somewhat 
dashed by this arrangement, which was new to him:  and 
pointed out, with excellent, clear good sense, that should he 
be arrested, it would probably involve him in the fall of our 
opponents.  But I was not to be moved, made a strong appeal 
to his patriotism, gave him a good glass of whisky, and 
despatched him on his glorious errand.

Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester 
Square:  a spot, I think, admirably chosen; not only for the 
sake of the dramatist, still very foolishly claimed as a 
glory by the English race, in spite of his disgusting 
political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the 
immediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, 
errand-boys, unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and 
infirm old men - all classes making a direct appeal to public 
pity, and therefore suitable with our designs.  As M'Guire 
drew near his heart was inflamed by the most noble sentiment 
of triumph.  Never had he seen the garden so crowded; 
children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth, ran to 
and fro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, 
sick pensioner sat upon the nearest bench, a medal on his 
breast, a stick with which he walked (for he was disabled by 
wounds) reclining on his knee.  Guilty England would thus be 
stabbed in the most delicate quarters; the moment had, 
indeed, been well selected; and M'Guire, with a radiant 
provision of the event, drew merrily nearer.  Suddenly his 
eye alighted on the burly form of a policeman, standing hard 
by the effigy in an attitude of watch.  My bold companion 
paused; he looked about him closely; here and there, at 
different points of the enclosure, other men stood or 
loitered, affecting an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the 
shrubs, feigning to talk, feigning to be weary and to rest 
upon the benches.  M'Guire was no child in these affairs; he 
instantly divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian 
Gladstone.

A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain 
nervousness in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the 
hour of some design draws near, these chicken-souled 
conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion of intent; and 
frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed specific 
denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings.  But for this 
purely accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an 
historical expression.  On the receipt of such a letter, the 
Government lay a trap for their adversaries, and surround the 
threatened spot with hirelings.  My blood sometimes boils in 
my veins, when I consider the case of those who sell 
themselves for money in such a cause.  True, thanks to the 
generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very 
comfortable stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary 
which puts me quite beyond the reach of any peddling, 
mercenary thoughts; M'Guire, again, ere he joined our ranks, 
was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God! receives a 
decent income.  That is as it should be; the patriot must not 
be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the 
distinction between our position and that of the police is 
too obvious to be stated.

Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been 
divulged; the Government had craftily filled the place with 
minions; even the pensioner was not improbably a hireling in 
disguise; and our emissary, without other aid or protection 
than the simple apparatus in his bag, found himself 
confronted by force; brutal force; that strong hand which was 
a character of the ages of oppression.  Should he venture to 
deposit the machine, it was almost certain that he would be 
observed and arrested; a cry would arise; and there was just 
a fear that the police might not be present in sufficient 
force, to protect him from the savagery of the mob.  The 
scheme must be delayed.  He stood with his bag on his arm, 
pretending to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there 
flashed into his mind a thought to appal the bravest.  The 
machine was set; at the appointed hour, it must explode; and 
how, in the interval, was he to be rid of it?

Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot.  
There he was, friendless and helpless; a man in the very 
flower of life, for he is not yet forty; with long years of 
happiness before him; and now condemned, in one moment, to a 
cruel and revolting death by dynamite!  The square, he said, 
went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the Alhambra leap 
into the air like a balloon; and reeled against the railing.  
It is probable he fainted.

When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.

'My God!' he cried.

'You seem to be unwell, sir,' said the hireling.

'I feel better now,' cried poor M'Guire:  and with uneven 
steps, for the pavement of the square seemed to lurch and 
reel under his footing, he fled from the scene of this 
disaster.  Fled?  Alas, from what was he fleeing?  Did he not 
carry that from which he fled along with him? and had he the 
wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean winds, 
could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the 
earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried?  We 
have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; 
the grievance, soberly considered, is no more than 
sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who 
should be linked, like poor M'Guire, to an explosive bomb.

A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his 
liver:  suppose it were the hour already.  He stopped as 
though he had been shot, and plucked his watch out.  There 
was a howling in his ears, as loud as a winter tempest; his 
sight was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by a 
lightning flash, would show him the very dust upon the 
street.  But so brief were these intervals of vision, and so 
violently did the watch vibrate in his hands, that it was 
impossible to distinguish the numbers on the dial.  He 
covered his eyes for a few seconds; and in that space, it 
seemed to him that he had fallen to be a man of ninety.  When 
he looked again, the watch-plate had grown legible:  he had 
twenty minutes.  Twenty minutes, and no plan!

Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now 
observed a little girl of about six drawing near to him, and 
as she came, kicking in front of her, as children will, a 
piece of wood.  She sang, too; and something in her accent 
recalling him to the past, produced a sudden clearness in his 
mind.  Here was a God-sent opportunity!

'My dear,' said he, 'would you like a present of a pretty 
bag?'

The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take 
it.  She had looked first at the bag, like a true child; but 
most unfortunately, before she had yet received the fatal 
gift, her eyes fell directly on M'Guire; and no sooner had 
she seen the poor gentleman's face, than she screamed out and 
leaped backward, as though she had seen the devil.  Almost at 
the same moment a woman appeared upon the threshold of a 
neighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger.  'Come 
here, colleen,' she said, 'and don't be plaguing the poor old 
gentleman!'  With that she re-entered the house, and the 
child followed her, sobbing aloud.

With the loss of this hope M'Guire's reason swooned within 
him.  When next he awoke to consciousness, he was standing 
before St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken 
man; the passers-by regarding him with eyes in which he read, 
as in a glass, an image of the terror and horror that dwelt 
within his own.

'I am afraid you are very ill, sir,' observed a woman, 
stopping and gazing hard in his face.  'Can I do anything to 
help you?'

'Ill?' said M'Guire.  'O God!'  And then, recovering some 
shadow of his self-command, 'Chronic, madam,' said he:  'a 
long course of the dumb ague.  But since you are so 
compassionate - an errand that I lack the strength to carry 
out,' he gasped - 'this bag to Portman Square.  Oh, 
compassionate woman, as you hope to be saved, as you are a 
mother, in the name of your babes that wait to welcome you at 
home, oh, take this bag to Portman Square!  I have a mother, 
too,' he added, with a broken voice.  'Number 19, Portman 
Square.'

I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of 
voice; for the woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of 
him.  'Poor gentleman!' said she.  'If I were you, I would go 
home.'  And she left him standing there in his distress.

'Home!' thought M'Guire, 'what a derision!'  What home was 
there for him, the victim of philanthropy?  He thought of his 
old mother, of his happy youth; of the hideous, rending pang 
of the explosion; of the possibility that he might not be 
killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life, 
condemned to lifelong pains, blinded perhaps, and almost 
surely deafened.  Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's 
peril; but even waiving death, have you realised what it is 
for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten suddenly 
with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from 
the voice of friendship, and love?  How little do we realise 
the sufferings of others!  Even your brutal Government, in 
the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to 
hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to 
bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would 
hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom:  not, I am well 
aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear 
before it of the withering scorn of the good.

But I wander from M'Guire.  From this dread glance into the 
past and future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the 
present.  How had he wandered there? and how long - oh, 
heavens! how long had he been about it?  He pulled out his 
watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed.  It 
seemed too bright a thing to be believed.  He glanced at the 
church clock; and sure enough, it marked an hour four minutes 
faster than the watch.

Of all that he endured, M'Guire declares that pang was the 
most desolate.  Till then, he had had one friend, one 
counsellor, in whom he plenarily trusted; by whose 
advertisement, he numbered the minutes that remained to him 
of life; on whose sure testimony, he could tell when the time 
was come to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away 
from him, and take to flight.  And now in what was he to 
place reliance?  His watch was slow; it might be losing time; 
if so, in what degree?  What limit could he set to its 
derangement? and how much was it possible for a watch to lose 
in thirty minutes?  Five? ten? fifteen?  It might be so; 
already, it seemed years since he had left St. James's Hall 
on this so promising enterprise; at any moment, then, the 
blow was to be looked for.

In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his 
pulses settled down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as 
though he had lived for centuries and for centuries been 
dead.  The buildings and the people in the street became 
incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London sounded in 
his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cab 
that nearly charged him down, was like a sound from Africa.  
Meanwhile, he was conscious of a strange abstraction from 
himself; and heard and felt his footfalls on the ground, as 
those of a very old, small, debile and tragically fortuned 
man, whom he sincerely pitied.

As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a 
medium, it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary 
air, there slipped into his mind the recollection of a 
certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by, where he might 
perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked.  Thither, then, 
he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the 
pavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a 
man in a sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a straw.  He 
passed him by, and twice patrolled the entry, scouting for 
the barest chance; but the man had faced about and continued 
to observe him curiously.

Another hope was gone.  M'Guire reissued from the entry, 
still followed by the wondering eyes of the man in the 
sleeved waistcoat.  He once more consulted his watch:  there 
were but fourteen minutes left to him.  At that, it seemed as 
if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain; for a 
second or two, he saw the world as red as blood; and 
thereafter entered into a complete possession of himself, 
with an incredible cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to 
sing and chuckle as he walked.  And yet this mirth seemed to 
belong to things external; and within, like a black and 
leaden-heavy kernel, he was conscious of the weight upon his 
soul.


I care for nobody, no, not I,
And nobody cares for me,


he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the 
passengers stared upon him on the street.  And still the 
warmth seemed to increase and to become more genial.  What 
was life? he considered, and what he, M'Guire?  What even 
Erin, our green Erin?  All seemed so incalculably little that 
he smiled as he looked down upon it.  He would have given 
years, had he possessed them, for a glass of spirits; but 
time failed, and he must deny himself this last indulgence.

At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a 
hansom cab; jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of 
the Embankment, which he named; and as soon as the vehicle 
was in motion, concealed the bag as completely as he could 
under the vantage of the apron, and once more drew out his 
watch.  So he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart 
in his mouth at every jolt, scarce able to possess his 
terrors, yet fearing to wake the attention of the driver by 
too obvious a change of plan, and willing, if possible, to 
leave him time to forget the Gladstone bag.

At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he 
hailed; the cab was stopped; and he alighted - with how glad 
a heart!  He thrust his hand into his pocket.  All was now 
over; he had saved his life; nor that alone, but he had 
engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what could be more 
pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion of a 
hansom cab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London.  
He felt in one pocket; then in another.  The most crushing 
seizure of despair descended on his soul; and struck into 
abject dumbness, he stared upon the driver.  He had not one 
penny.

'Hillo,' said the driver, 'don't seem well.'

'Lost my money,' said M'Guire, in tones so faint and strange 
that they surprised his hearing.

The man looked through the trap.  'I dessay,' said he:  
'you've left your bag.'

M'Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on 
that black continent at arm's length, withered inwardly and 
felt his features sharpen as with mortal sickness.

'This is not mine,' said he.  'Your last fare must have left 
it.  You had better take it to the station.'

'Now look here,' returned the cabman:  'are you off your 
chump? or am I?'

'Well, then, I'll tell you what,' exclaimed M'Guire; 'you 
take it for your fare!'

'Oh, I dessay,' replied the driver.  'Anything else?  What's 
IN your bag?  Open it, and let me see.'

'No, no,' returned M'Guire.  'Oh no, not that.  It's a 
surprise; it's prepared expressly:  a surprise for honest 
cabmen.'

'No, you don't,' said the man, alighting from his perch, and 
coming very close to the unhappy patriot.  'You're either 
going to pay my fare, or get in again and drive to the 
office.'

It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M'Guire 
spied the stout figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert 
Street, drawing near along the Embankment.  The man was not 
unknown to him; he had bought of his wares, and heard him 
quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was now the 
nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope, he 
clutched with gratitude.

'Thank God!' he cried.  'Here comes a friend of mine.  I'll 
borrow.'  And he dashed to meet the tradesman.  'Sir,' said 
he, 'Mr. Godall, I have dealt with you - you doubtless know 
my face - calamities for which I cannot blame myself have 
overwhelmed me.  Oh, sir, for the love of innocence, for the 
sake of the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at 
the throne of grace, lend me two-and-six!'

'I do not recognise your face,' replied Mr. Godall; 'but I 
remember the cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune 
to dislike.  Here, sir, is a sovereign; which I very 
willingly advance to you, on the single condition that you 
shave your chin.'

M'Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the 
cabman, calling out to him to keep the change; bounded down 
the steps, flung the bag far forth into the river, and fell 
headlong after it.  He was plucked from a watery grave, it is 
believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall.  Even as he was being 
hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion 
shook the solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the 
river a momentary fountain rose and disappeared.



THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (CONTINUED)



SOMERSET in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.  
He had, in the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the 
flagon; the plotter began to melt in twain, and seemed to 
expand and hover on his seat; and with a vague sense of 
nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his feet, and, 
refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour 
was late and he must positively get to bed.

'Dear me,' observed Zero, 'I find you very temperate.  But I 
will not be oppressive.  Suffice it that we are now fast 
friends; and, my dear landlord, AU REVOIR!'

So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the 
politest ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted 
the bewildered young gentleman to the top of the stair.

Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset 
remained in utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a 
blow, he started broad awake, there fell upon his mind a 
perfect hurricane of horror and wonder.  That he should have 
suffered himself to be led into the semblance of intimacy 
with such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the 
cold light of day, a mystery of human weakness.  True, he was 
caught in a situation that might have tested the aplomb of 
Talleyrand.  That was perhaps a palliation; but it was no 
excuse.  For so wholesale a capitulation of principle, for 
such a fall into criminal familiarity, no excuse indeed was 
possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once from the 
relation.

As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on 
a rupture.  Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.

'Come in,' he cried, 'dear Mr. Somerset!  Come in, sit down, 
and, without ceremony, join me at my morning meal.'

'Sir,' said Somerset, 'you must permit me first to disengage 
my honour.  Last night, I was surprised into a certain 
appearance of complicity; but once for all, let me inform you 
that I regard you and your machinations with unmingled horror 
and disgust, and I will leave no stone unturned to crush your 
vile conspiracy.'

'My dear fellow,' replied Zero, with an air of some 
complacency, 'I am well accustomed to these human weaknesses.  
Disgust?  I have felt it myself; it speedily wears off.  I 
think none the worse, I think the more of you, for this 
engaging frankness.  And in the meanwhile, what are you to 
do?  You find yourself, if I interpret rightly, in very much 
the same situation as Charles the Second (possibly the least 
degraded of your British sovereigns) when he was taken into 
the confidence of the thief.  To denounce me, is out of the 
question; and what else can you attempt?  No, dear Mr. 
Somerset, your hands are tied; and you find yourself 
condemned, under pain of behaving like a cad, to be that same 
charming and intellectual companion who delighted me last 
night.'

'At least,' cried Somerset, 'I can, and do, order you to 
leave this house.'

'Ah!' cried the plotter, 'but there I fail to follow you.  
You may, if you please, enact the part of Judas; but if, as I 
suppose, you recoil from that extremity of meanness, I am, on 
my side, far too intelligent to leave these lodgings, in 
which I please myself exceedingly, and from which you lack 
the power to drive me.  No, no, dear sir; here I am, and here 
I propose to stay.'

'I repeat,' cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense of 
his own weakness, 'I repeat that I give you warning.  I am 
the master of this house; and I emphatically give you 
warning.'

'A week's warning?' said the imperturbable conspirator.  
'Very well:  we will talk of it a week from now.  That is 
arranged; and in the meanwhile, I observe my breakfast 
growing cold.  Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you find yourself 
condemned, for a week at least, to the society of a very 
interesting character, display some of that open favour, some 
of that interest in life's obscurer sides, which stamp the 
character of the true artist.  Hang me, if you will, to-
morrow; but to-day show yourself divested of the scruples of 
the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share my meal.'

'Man!' cried Somerset, 'do you understand my sentiments?'

'Certainly,' replied Zero; 'and I respect them!  Would you be 
outdone in such a contest? will you alone be partial? and in 
this nineteenth century, cannot two gentlemen of education 
agree to differ on a point of politics?  Come, sir:  all your 
hard words have left me smiling; judge then, which of us is 
the philosopher!'

Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and 
by nature easily amenable to sophistry.  He threw up his 
hands with a gesture of despair, and took the seat to which 
the conspirator invited him.  The meal was excellent; the 
host not only affable, but primed with curious information.  
He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the 
torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale 
disclosures.  The interest of what he had to tell was great; 
his character, besides, developed step by step; and Somerset, 
as the time fled, not only outgrew some of the discomfort of 
his false position, but began to regard the conspirator with 
a familiarity that verged upon contempt.  In any 
circumstances, he had a singular inability to leave the 
society in which he found himself; company, even if 
distasteful, held him captive like a limed sparrow; and on 
this occasion, he suffered hour to follow hour, was easily 
persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did not even 
attempt to withdraw till, on the approach of evening, Zero, 
with many apologies, dismissed his guest.  His fellow-
conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely explained, as they 
were unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the young 
man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.

As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour 
of the morning.  He raged at the thought of his facility; he 
paced the dining-room, forming the sternest resolutions for 
the future; he wrung the hand which had been dishonoured by 
the touch of an assassin; and among all these whirling 
thoughts, there flashed in from time to time, and ever with a 
chill of fear, the thought of the confounded ingredients with 
which the house was stored.  A powder magazine seemed a 
secure smoking-room alongside of the Superfluous Mansion.

He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing 
bowl.  As long as the bars were open, he travelled from one 
to another, seeking light, safety, and the companionship of 
human faces; when these resources failed him, he fell back on 
the belated baked-potato man; and at length, still pacing the 
streets, he was goaded to fraternise with the police.  Alas, 
with what a sense of guilt he conversed with these guardians 
of the law; how gladly had he wept upon their ample bosoms; 
and how the secret fluttered to his lips and was still denied 
an exit!  Fatigue began at last to triumph over remorse; and 
about the hour of the first milkman, he returned to the door 
of the mansion; looked at it with a horrid expectation, as 
though it should have burst that instant into flames; drew 
out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps, 
once more lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly 
shelter of a coffee-shop.

It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.  Dismally 
searching in his pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-
crown; and when he had paid the price of his distasteful 
couch, saw himself obliged to return to the Superfluous 
Mansion.  He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to the 
cupboard where he kept his money.  Yet half a minute, he told 
himself, and he would be free for days from his obseding 
lodger, and might decide at leisure on the course he should 
pursue.  But fate had otherwise designed:  there came a tap 
at the door and Zero entered.

'Have I caught you?' he cried, with innocent gaiety.  'Dear 
fellow, I was growing quite impatient.'  And on the speaker's 
somewhat stolid face, there came a glow of genuine affection.  
'I am so long unused to have a friend,' he continued, 'that I 
begin to be afraid I may prove jealous.'  And he wrung the 
hand of his landlord.

Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a 
greeting.  To reject these kind advances was beyond his 
strength.  That he could not return cordiality for 
cordiality, was already almost more than he could carry.  
That inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous 
characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed 
him to the ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.

'That is all right,' cried Zero - 'that is as it should be - 
say no more!  I had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted 
me; but I now own that fear to have been unworthy, and 
apologise.  To doubt of your forgiveness were to repeat my 
sin.  Come, then; dinner waits; join me again and tell me 
your adventures of the night.'

Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered 
himself once more to be set down to table with his innocent 
and criminal acquaintance.  Once more, the plotter plunged up 
to the neck in damaging disclosures:  now it would be the 
name and biography of an individual, now the address of some 
important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his 
lips; and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew 
to his unhappy guest.  Finally, the course of Zero's bland 
monologue led him to the young lady of two days ago:  that 
young lady, who had flashed on Somerset for so brief a while 
but with so conquering a charm; and whose engaging grace, 
communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the sweeping 
skirt, remained imprinted on his memory.

'You saw her?' said Zero.  'Beautiful, is she not?  She, too, 
is one of ours:  a true enthusiast:  nervous, perhaps, in 
presence of the chemicals; but in matters of intrigue, the 
very soul of skill and daring.  Lake, Fonblanque, de Marly, 
Valdevia, such are some of the names that she employs; her 
true name - but there, perhaps, I go too far.  Suffice it, 
that it is to her I owe my present lodging, and, dear 
Somerset, the pleasure of your acquaintance.  It appears she 
knew the house.  You see dear fellow, I make no concealment:  
all that you can care to hear, I tell you openly.'

'For God's sake,' cried the wretched Somerset, 'hold your 
tongue!  You cannot imagine how you torture me!'

A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance 
of Zero.

'There are times,' he said, 'when I begin to fancy that you 
do not like me.  Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of 
cordiality?  I am depressed; the touchstone of my life draws 
near; and if I fail' - he gloomily nodded - 'from all the 
height of my ambitious schemes, I fall, dear boy, into 
contempt.  These are grave thoughts, and you may judge my 
need of your delightful company.  Innocent prattler, you 
relieve the weight of my concerns.  And yet . . . and yet . . 
.'  The speaker pushed away his plate, and rose from table.  
'Follow me,' said he, 'follow me.  My mood is on; I must have 
air, I must behold the plain of battle.'

So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the 
mansion, and thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded 
platform, sheltered at one end by a great stalk of chimneys 
and occupying the actual summit of the roof.  On both sides, 
it bordered, without parapet or rail, on the incline of 
slates; and, northward above all, commanded an extensive view 
of housetops, and rising through the smoke, the distant 
spires of churches.

'Here,' cried Zero, 'you behold this field of city, rich, 
crowded, laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how 
soon, to be laid low!  Some day, some night, from this coign 
of vantage, you shall perhaps be startled by the detonation 
of the judgment gun - not sharp and empty like the crack of 
cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn.  Instantly 
thereafter, you shall behold the flames break forth.  Ay,' he 
cried, stretching forth his hand, 'ay, that will be a day of 
retribution.  Then shall the pallid constable flee side by 
side with the detected thief.  Blaze!' he cried, 'blaze, 
derided city!  Fall, flatulent monarchy, fall like Dagon!'

With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for 
Somerset's quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into 
space.  Pale as a sheet, and limp as a pocket-handkerchief, 
he was dragged from the edge of downfall by one arm; helped, 
or rather carried, down the ladder; and deposited in safety 
on the attic landing.  Here he began to come to himself, 
wiped his brow, and at length, seizing Somerset's hand in 
both of his, began to utter his acknowledgments.

'This seals it,' said he.  'Ours is a life and death 
connection.  You have plucked me from the jaws of death; and 
if I were before attracted by your character, judge now of 
the ardour of my gratitude and love!  But I perceive I am 
still greatly shaken.  Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your 
arm as far as my apartment.'

A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his 
customary self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand 
and genially convalescent, when his eye was attracted by the 
dejection of the unfortunate young man.

'Good heavens, dear Somerset,' he cried, 'what ails you?  Let 
me offer you a touch of spirits.'

But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material 
comfort.

'Let me be,' he said.  'I am lost; you have caught me in the 
toils.  Up to this moment, I have lived all my life in the 
most reckless manner, and done exactly what I pleased, with 
the most perfect innocence.  And now - what am I?  Are you so 
blind and wooden that you do not see the loathing you inspire 
me with?  Is it possible you can suppose me willing to 
continue to exist upon such terms?  To think,' he cried, 
'that a young man, guilty of no fault on earth but 
amiability, should find himself involved in such a damned 
imbroglio!'  And placing his knuckles in his eyes, Somerset 
rolled upon the sofa.

'My God,' said Zero, 'is this possible?  And I so filled with 
tenderness and interest!  Can it be, dear Somerset, that you 
are under the empire of these out-worn scruples? or that you 
judge a patriot by the morality of the religious tract?  I 
thought you were a good agnostic.'

'Mr. Jones,' said Somerset, 'it is in vain to argue.  I boast 
myself a total disbeliever, not only in revealed religion, 
but in the data, method, and conclusions of the whole of 
ethics.  Well! what matters it? what signifies a form of 
words?  I regard you as a reptile, whom I would rejoice, whom 
I long, to stamp under my heel.  You would blow up others?  
Well then, understand:  I want, with every circumstance of 
infamy and agony, to blow up you!'

'Somerset, Somerset!' said Zero, turning very pale, 'this is 
wrong; this is very wrong.  You pain, you wound me, 
Somerset.'

'Give me a match!' cried Somerset wildly.  'Let me set fire 
to this incomparable monster!  Let me perish with him in his 
fall!'

'For God's sake,' cried Zero, clutching hold of the young 
man, 'for God's sake command yourself!  We stand upon the 
brink; death yawns around us; a man - a stranger in this 
foreign land - one whom you have called your friend - '

'Silence!' cried Somerset, 'you are no friend, no friend of 
mine.  I look on you with loathing, like a toad:  my flesh 
creeps with physical repulsion; my soul revolts against the 
sight of you.'

Zero burst into tears.  'Alas!' he sobbed, 'this snaps the 
last link that bound me to humanity.  My friend disowns - he 
insults me.  I am indeed accurst.'

Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change 
of front.  The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he 
fled from the room and from the house.  The first dash of his 
escape carried him hard upon half-way to the next police-
office:  but presently began to droop; and before he reached 
the house of lawful intervention, he fell once more among 
doubtful counsels.  Was he an agnostic? had he a right to 
act?  Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his 
thoughts.  And then again:  had he not promised, had he not 
shaken hands and broken bread? and that with open eyes? and 
if so how could he take action, and not forfeit honour?  But 
honour? what was honour?  A figment, which, in the hot 
pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.  Ay, but crime?  A 
figment, too, which his enfranchised intellect discarded.  
All day, he wandered in the parks, a prey to whirling 
thoughts; all night, patrolled the city; and at the peep of 
day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of 
Peckham and bitterly wept.  His gods had fallen.  He who had 
chosen the broad, daylit, unencumbered paths of universal 
scepticism, found himself still the bondslave of honour.  He 
who had accepted life from a point of view as lofty as the 
predatory eagle's, though with no design to prey; he who had 
clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of 
commercial competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to 
help the escaping murderer or to embrace the impenitent 
thief, found, to the overthrow of all his logic, that he 
objected to the use of dynamite.  The dawn crept among the 
sleeping villas and over the smokeless fields of city; and 
still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed over his fall from 
consistency.

At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.  
'There is no question as to fact,' he cried; 'right and wrong 
are but figments and the shadow of a word; but for all that, 
there are certain things that I cannot do, and there are 
certain others that I will not stand.'  Thereupon he decided 
to return to make one last effort of persuasion, and, if he 
could not prevail on Zero to desist from his infernal trade, 
throw delicacy to the winds, give the plotter an hour's 
start, and denounce him to the police.  Fast as he went, 
being winged by this resolution, it was already well on in 
the morning when he came in sight of the Superfluous Mansion.  
Tripping down the steps, was the young lady of the various 
aliases; and he was surprised to see upon her countenance the 
marks of anger and concern.

'Madam,' he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear 
knowledge of what he was to add.

But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a 
shock of fear or horror; started back; lowered her veil with 
a sudden movement; and fled, without turning, from the 
square.

Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes 
of Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic 
episode of THE BROWN BOX.



DESBOROUGH'S ADVENTURE:  THE BROWN BOX



MR. HARRY DESBOROUGH lodged in the fine and grave old quarter 
of Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides 
of London, but itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city 
peace.  It was in Queen Square that he had pitched his tent, 
next door to the Children's Hospital, on your left hand as 
you go north:  Queen Square, sacred to humane and liberal 
arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor were 
taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where 
groups of patient little ones would hover all day long before 
the hospital, if by chance they might kiss their hand or 
speak a word to their sick brother at the window.  
Desborough's room was on the first floor and fronted to the 
square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he often 
profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which 
looked down upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in 
turn commanded by the windows of an empty room.

On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth 
upon this terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had 
been now some weeks on the vain quest of situations, and 
prepared for melancholy and tobacco.  Here, at least, he told 
himself that he would be alone; for, like most youths, who 
are neither rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather 
shunned than courted the society of other men.  Even as he 
expressed the thought, his eye alighted on the window of the 
room that looked upon the terrace; and to his surprise and 
annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a silken hanging.  It 
was like his luck, he thought; his privacy was gone, he could 
no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer suffer 
his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself 
with sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the 
moment, he struck his pipe upon the rail with unnecessary 
force.  It was an old, sweet, seasoned briar-root, glossy and 
dark with long employment, and justly dear to his fancy.  
What, then, was his chagrin, when the head snapped from the 
stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and disappeared among 
the lilacs of the garden?

He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out 
the story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore 
off a fragment of the last sheet, which contains only the 
answers to correspondents, and set himself to roll a 
cigarette.  He was no master of the art; again and again, the 
paper broke between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon 
the ground; and he was already on the point of angry 
resignation, when the window swung slowly inward, the silken 
curtain was thrust aside, and a lady, somewhat strangely 
attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.

'Senorito,' said she, and there was a rich thrill in her 
voice, like an organ note, 'Senorito, you are in 
difficulties.  Suffer me to come to your assistance.'

With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his 
unresisting hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough's 
eyes, seemed magical, rolled and presented him a cigarette.  
He took it, still seated, still without a word; staring with 
all his eyes upon that apparition.  Her face was warm and 
rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant triangle, so 
innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in our more 
northern climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited 
by changing lights; her hair was partly covered by a lace 
mantilla, through which her arms, bare to the shoulder, 
gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the womanly 
contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of 
life, and slender by grace of some divine proportion.

'You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?' she asked.  'Yet it is 
better made than yours.'  At that she laughed, and her 
laughter trilled in his ear like music; but the next moment 
her face fell.  'I see,' she cried.  'It is my manner that 
repels you.  I am too constrained, too cold.  I am not,' she 
added, with a more engaging air, 'I am not the simple English 
maiden I appear.'

'Oh!' murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.

'In my own dear land,' she pursued, 'things are differently 
ordered.  There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and 
rigorous restrictions; little is permitted her; she learns to 
be distant, she learns to appear forbidding.  But here, in 
free England - oh, glorious liberty!' she cried, and threw up 
her arms with a gesture of inimitable grace - 'here there are 
no fetters; here the woman may dare to be herself entirely, 
and the men, the chivalrous men - is it not written on the 
very shield of your nation, HONI SOIT?  Ah, it is hard for me 
to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself.  You must not 
judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this 
stiffness, I shall end by growing English.  Do I speak the 
language well?'

'Perfectly - oh, perfectly!' said Harry, with a fervency of 
conviction worthy of a graver subject.

'Ah, then,' she said, 'I shall soon learn; English blood ran 
in my father's veins; and I have had the advantage of some 
training in your expressive tongue.  If I speak already 
without accent, with my thorough English appearance, there is 
nothing left to change except my manners.'

'Oh no,' said Desborough.  'Oh pray not!  I - madam - '

'I am,' interrupted the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia.  
The evening air grows chill.  Adios, Senorito.'  And before 
Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared into her 
room.

He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his 
hand.  His thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still 
recalled and beautified the image of his new acquaintance.  
Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her eyes, of which he 
could not tell the colour, haunted his soul.  The clouds had 
risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world.  What 
she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her.  Her age, he 
durst not estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, 
and thinking sacrilege to couple that fair favour with the 
thought of mortal changes.  As for her character, beauty to 
the young is always good.  So the poor lad lingered late upon 
the terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained window, 
sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of 
romance; and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, 
on cold boiled mutton and a pint of ale, he feasted on the 
food of gods.

Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a 
little ajar, and he enjoyed a view of the lady's shoulder, as 
she sat patiently sewing and all unconscious of his presence.  
On the next, he had scarce appeared when the window opened, 
and the Senorita tripped forth into the sunlight, in a 
morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign, 
tropical, and strange.  In one hand she held a packet.

'Will you try,' she said, 'some of my father's tobacco - from 
dear Cuba?  There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies 
as well as gentlemen.  So you need not fear to annoy me.  The 
fragrance will remind me of home.  My home, Senor, was by the 
sea.'  And as she uttered these few words, Desborough, for 
the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the great 
deep.  'Awake or asleep, I dream of it:  dear home, dear 
Cuba!'

'But some day,' said Desborough, with an inward pang, 'some 
day you will return?'

' Never!' she cried; 'ah, never, in Heaven's name!'

'Are you then resident for life in England?' he inquired, 
with a strange lightening of spirit.

'You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,' she 
answered sadly; and then, resuming her gaiety of manner:  
'But you have not tried my Cuban tobacco,' she said.

'Senorita,' said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry 
in her manner, 'whatever comes to me - you - I mean,' he 
concluded, deeply flushing, 'that I have no doubt the tobacco 
is delightful.'

'Ah, Senor,' she said, with almost mournful gravity, 'you 
seemed so simple and good, and already you are trying to pay 
compliments - and besides,' she added, brightening, with a 
quick upward glance, into a smile, 'you do it so badly!  
English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be fast friends, 
respectful, honest friends; could be companions, comforters, 
if the need arose, or champions, and yet never encroach.  Do 
not seek to please me by copying the graces of my countrymen.  
Be yourself:  the frank, kindly, honest English gentleman 
that I have heard of since my childhood and still longed to 
meet.'

Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners 
of the Cuban gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of 
plagiarism.

'Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, 
Senor,' said the lady.  'See!' marking a line with her 
dainty, slippered foot, 'thus far it shall be common ground; 
there, at my window-sill, begins the scientific frontier.  If 
you choose, you may drive me to my forts; but if, on the 
other hand, we are to be real English friends, I may join you 
here when I am not too sad; or, when I am yet more graciously 
inclined, you may draw your chair beside the window and teach 
me English customs, while I work.  You will find me an apt 
scholar, for my heart is in the task.'  She laid her hand 
lightly upon Harry's arm, and looked into his eyes.  'Do you 
know,' said she, 'I am emboldened to believe that I have 
already caught something of your English aplomb?  Do you not 
perceive a change, Senor?  Slight, perhaps, but still a 
change?  Is my deportment not more open, more free, more like 
that of the dear "British Miss" than when you saw me first?'  
She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from Harry's arm; 
and before the young man could formulate in words the 
eloquent emotions that ran riot through his brain - with an 
'Adios, Senor:  good-night, my English friend,' she vanished 
from his sight behind the curtain.

The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon 
the neutral terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, 
and the dinner-hour summoned him at length from the scene of 
disappointment.  On the next it rained; but nothing, neither 
business nor weather, neither prospective poverty nor present 
hardship, could now divert the young man from the service of 
his lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised, 
he took his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, 
the picture of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing 
inwardly with tender and delightful ardours.  Presently the 
window opened, and the fair Cuban, with a smile imperfectly 
dissembled, appeared upon the sill.

'Come here,' she said, 'here, beside my window.  The small 
verandah gives a belt of shelter.'  And she graciously handed 
him a folding-chair.

As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a 
certain bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not 
come empty-handed.

'I have taken the liberty,' said he, 'of bringing you a 
little book.  I thought of you, when I observed it on the 
stall, because I saw it was in Spanish.  The man assured me 
it was by one of the best authors, and quite proper.'  As he 
spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand.  Her eyes 
fell as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again 
upon her cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting.  'You are 
angry,' he cried in agony.  'I have presumed.'

'No, Senor, it is not that,' returned the lady.  'I - ' and a 
flood of colour once more mounted to her brow - 'I am 
confused and ashamed because I have deceived you.  Spanish,' 
she began, and paused - 'Spanish is, of course, my native 
tongue,' she resumed, as though suddenly taking courage; 'and 
this should certainly put the highest value on your 
thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?  
And how shall I confess to you the truth - the humiliating 
truth - that I cannot read?'

As Harry's eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair 
Cuban seemed to shrink before his gaze.  'Read?' repeated 
Harry.  'You!'

She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and 
noble gesture.  'Enter, Senor,' said she.  'The time has come 
to which I have long looked forward, not without alarm; when 
I must either fear to lose your friendship, or tell you 
without disguise the story of my life.'

It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry 
passed the window.  A semi-barbarous delight in form and 
colour had presided over the studied disorder of the room in 
which he found himself.  It was filled with dainty stuffs, 
furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with 
elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an 
antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-
mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels.  
The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit 
masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, 
and sinking herself into another, thus began her history.



STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN



I AM not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one 
hand, from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the 
maternal line, from the patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was 
the descendant of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings 
were African.  She was fair as the day:  fairer than I, for I 
inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my 
European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and 
accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her 
neighbours, and surrounded by the most considerate affection 
and respect, I grew up to adore her, and when the time came, 
received her last sigh upon my lips, still ignorant that she 
was a slave, and alas! my father's mistress.  Her death, 
which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I 
had known:  it left our home bereaved of its attractions, 
cast a shade of melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my 
father a tragic and durable change.  Months went by; with the 
elasticity of my years, I regained some of the simple mirth 
that had before distinguished me; the plantation smiled with 
fresh crops; the negroes on the estate had already forgotten 
my mother and transferred their simple obedience to myself; 
but still the cloud only darkened on the brows of Senor 
Valdevia.  His absences from home had been frequent even in 
the old days, for he did business in precious gems in the 
city of Havana; they now became almost continuous; and when 
he returned, it was but for the night and with the manner of 
a man crushed down by adverse fortune.

The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set 
in the Caribbean Sea, some half-hour's rowing from the coasts 
of Cuba.  It was steep, rugged, and, except for my father's 
family and plantation, uninhabited and left to nature.  The 
house, a low building surrounded by spacious verandahs, stood 
upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea to Cuba.  The 
breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay 
swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and 
flowers of the magnolia.  Behind and to the left, the quarter 
of the negroes and the waving fields of the plantation 
covered an eighth part of the surface of the isle.  On the 
right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast and 
deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, 
dotted with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous 
oysters, man-eating crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly 
fishes.  Into the recesses of that jungle, none could 
penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible, 
unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the 
air was death.

One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my 
ruinous misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in 
that warm climate all are early risers, and found not a 
servant to attend upon my wants.  I made the circuit of the 
house, still calling:  and my surprise had almost changed 
into alarm, when coming at last into a large verandahed 
court, I found it thronged with negroes.  Even then, even 
when I was amongst them, not one turned or paid the least 
regard to my arrival.  They had eyes and ears for but one 
person:  a woman, richly and tastefully attired; of elegant 
carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in years, as 
worn and marred by self-indulgence:  her face, which was 
still attractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her 
eye burning with the greed of evil.  It was not from her 
appearance, I believe, but from some emanation of her soul, 
that I recoiled in a kind of fainting terror; as we hear of 
plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the woman 
shocked and daunted me.  But I was of a brave nature; trod 
the weakness down; and forcing my way through the slaves, who 
fell back before me in embarrassment, as though in the 
presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones:  
'Who is this person?'

A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to 
have a care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was 
new to me.

In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her 
eyes, studied me with insolent particularity from head to 
foot.

'Young woman,' said she, at last, 'I have had a great 
experience in refractory servants, and take a pride in 
breaking them.  You really tempt me; and if I had not other 
affairs, and these of more importance, on my hand, I should 
certainly buy you at your father's sale.'

'Madam - ' I began, but my voice failed me.

'Is it possible that you do not know your position?' she 
returned, with a hateful laugh.  'How comical!  Positively, I 
must buy her.  Accomplishments, I suppose?' she added, 
turning to the servants.

Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought 
up like any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.

'She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,' 
said the Senora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her 
glasses; 'and I should take a pleasure,' she pursued, more 
directly addressing myself, 'in bringing you acquainted with 
a whip.'  And she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty 
upon her face.

At this, I found expression.  Calling by name upon the 
servants, I bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch 
her to the boat, and set her back upon the mainland.  But 
with one voice, they protested that they durst not obey, 
coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be more 
wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and 
speaking of this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, 
they fell back from me as from one who had blasphemed.  A 
superstitious reverence plainly encircled the stranger; I 
could read it in their changed demeanour, and in the paleness 
that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces; and 
their fear perhaps reacted on myself.  I looked again at 
Madam Mendizabal.  She stood perfectly composed, watching my 
face through her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the 
sight of her assured superiority to all my threats, a cry 
broke from my lips, a cry of rage, fear, and despair, and I 
fled from the verandah and the house.

I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.  As I 
went, my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these 
events and insults.  Who was she? what, in Heaven's name, the 
power she wielded over my obedient negroes?  Why had she 
addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father's sale?  To 
all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and in 
the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful 
leering image of the woman.

I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my 
father coming to meet me from the landing-place; and with a 
cry that I thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms 
and broke into a passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom.  
He made me sit down below a tall palmetto that grew not far 
off; comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice; 
and as soon as I regained the least command upon my feelings, 
asked me, not without harshness, what this grief betokened.  
I was surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of 
composure; and in firm tones, though still interrupted by 
sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island, at which 
I thought he started and turned pale; that the servants would 
not obey me; that the stranger's name was Madam Mendizabal, 
and, at that, he seemed to me both troubled and relieved; 
that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave (and here my 
father's brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a 
sale, and questioned my own servants before my face; and 
that, at last, finding myself quite helpless and exposed to 
these intolerable liberties, I had fled from the house in 
terror, indignation, and amazement.

'Teresa,' said my father, with singular gravity of voice, 'I 
must make to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told 
you, there is much that you must do to help me; and my 
daughter must prove herself a woman by her spirit.  As for 
this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to tell you 
what she is?  Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of 
slaves; to-day she is what you see her - prematurely old, 
disgraced by the practice of every vice and every nefarious 
industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some 
reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among 
her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as 
unbounded as its reason is mysterious.  Horrible rites, it is 
supposed, cement her empire:  the rites of Hoodoo.  Be that 
as it may, I would have you dismiss the thought of this 
incomparable witch; it is not from her that danger threatens 
us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you shall 
never fall.'

'Father!' I cried.  'Fall?  Was there any truth, then, in her 
words?  Am I - O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything 
but this suspense.'

'I will tell you,' he replied, with merciful bluntness.  
'Your mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had 
saved a competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, 
where the law would suffer me to marry her:  a design too 
long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment, 
intervened.  You will now understand the heaviness with which 
your mother's memory hangs about my neck.'

I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to 
console the survivor, I forgot myself.

'It matters not,' resumed my father.  'What I have left 
undone can never be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of 
my remorse.  But, Teresa, with so cutting a reminder of the 
evils of delay, I set myself at once to do what was still 
possible:  to liberate yourself.'

I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a 
sombre roughness.

'Your mother's illness,' he resumed, 'had engaged too great a 
portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long 
at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my 
unequalled knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by 
which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a 
sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what quarter of 
the earth a gem was disinterred - all these had been too long 
absent from the conduct of affairs.  Teresa, I was 
insolvent.'

'What matters that?' I cried.  'What matters poverty, if we 
be left together with our love and sacred memories?'

'You do not comprehend,' he said gloomily.  'Slave, as you 
are, young - alas! scarce more than child! - accomplished, 
beautiful with the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel 
- all these qualities that should disarm the very wolves and 
crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom I stand 
indebted, commodities to buy and sell.  You are a chattel; a 
marketable thing; and worth - heavens, that I should say such 
words! - worth money.  Do you begin to see?  If I were to 
give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the 
manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a 
slave, and I a criminal.'

I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for 
myself, in sympathy for my father.

'How I have toiled,' he continued, 'how I have dared and 
striven to repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will 
remember.  Its blessing was denied to my endeavours, or, as I 
please myself by thinking, but delayed to descend upon my 
daughter's head.  At length, all hope was at an end; I was 
ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the 
morrow, which I could not meet; I should be declared a 
bankrupt, and my goods, my lands, my jewels that I so much 
loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and rendered happy, and 
oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be sold 
and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers.  
Too long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great 
crime of slavery; but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied 
daughter, was SHE to pay the price?  I cried out - no! - I 
took Heaven to witness my temptation; I caught up this bag 
and fled.  Close upon my track are the pursuers; perhaps to-
night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon this isle, 
sacred to the memory of the dear soul that bore you, to 
consign your father to an ignominious prison, and yourself to 
slavery and dishonour.  We have not many hours before us.  
Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good fortune, an 
English yacht has for some days been hovering.  It belongs to 
Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I 
have rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to 
help in our escape.  Or if he did, if his gratitude were in 
default, I have the power to force him.  For what does it 
mean, my child - what means this Englishman, who hangs for 
years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns from every trip 
with new and valuable gems?'

'He may have found a mine,' I hazarded.

'So he declares,' returned my father; 'but the strange gift I 
have received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.  He 
brought me diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in 
innocence; at a second glance, I started; for of these 
stones, my child, some had first seen the day in Africa, some 
in Brazil; while others, from their peculiar water and rude 
workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient temples.  
Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries.  Oh, he is 
cunning, but I was cunninger than he.  He visited, I found, 
the shop of every jeweller in town; to one he came with 
rubies, to one with emeralds, to one with precious beryl; to 
all, with this same story of the mine.  But in what mine, 
what rich epitome of the earth's surface, were there 
conjoined the rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, 
and the diamonds of Golconda?  No, child, that man, for all 
his yacht and title, that man must fear and must obey me.  
To-night, then, as soon as it is dark, we must take our way 
through the swamp by the path which I shall presently show 
you; thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is 
blazed, which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and 
close by the yacht is riding.  Should my pursuers come before 
the hour at which I look to see them, they will still arrive 
too late; a trusty man attends on the mainland; as soon as 
they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark, the redness of a 
fire, if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing 
headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put the 
swamp between ourselves and danger.  Meantime, I would 
conceal this bag; I would, before all things, be seen to 
arrive at the house with empty hands; a blabbing slave might 
else undo us.  For see!' he added; and holding up the bag, 
which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap a shower 
of unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size and 
colour, and catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty 
facets, the ardour of the sun.

I could not restrain a cry of admiration.

'Even in your ignorant eyes,' pursued my father, 'they 
command respect.  Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to 
the tool, cold as death?  Ingrate!' he cried.  'Each one of 
these - miracles of nature's patience, conceived out of the 
dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each one is, for 
you and me, a year of life, liberty, and mutual affection.  
How, then, should I cherish them! and why do I delay to place 
them beyond reach!  Teresa, follow me.'

He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great 
jungle, where they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky 
foliage, the declivity of the hill on which my father's house 
stood planted.  For some while he skirted, with attentive 
eyes, the margin of the thicket.  Then, seeming to recognise 
some mark, for his countenance became immediately lightened 
of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me.  'Here,' 
said he, 'is the entrance of the secret path that I have 
mentioned, and here you shall await me.  I but pass some 
hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my poor treasure; as 
soon as that is safe, I will return.'  It was in vain that I 
sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in 
vain that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the 
black blood that I now knew to circulate in my veins:  to all 
my appeals he turned a deaf ear, and, bending back a portion 
of the screen of bushes, disappeared into the pestilential 
silence of the swamp.

At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust 
aside; and my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused 
and almost staggered in the first shock of the blinding 
sunlight.  His face was of a singular dusky red; and yet for 
all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not seem to sweat.

'You are tired,' I cried, springing to meet him.  'You are 
ill.'

'I am tired,' he replied; 'the air in that jungle stifles 
one; my eyes, besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, 
and the strong sunshine pierces them like knives.  A moment, 
Teresa, give me but a moment.  All shall yet be well.  I have 
buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately beyond the 
bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright 
things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them 
there, if needful.  But come, let us to the house; it is time 
to eat against our journey of the night:  to eat and then to 
sleep, my poor Teresa:  then to sleep.'  And he looked upon 
me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as if in pity.

We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been 
gone too long, and that the servants might suspect; passed 
through the airy stretch of the verandah; and came at length 
into the grateful twilight of the shuttered house.  The meal 
was spread; the house servants, already informed by the 
boatmen of the master's return, were all back at their posts, 
and terrified, as I could see, to face me.  My father still 
murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I 
hurried at once to take my place at table; but I had no 
sooner left his arm than he paused and thrust forth both his 
hands with a strange gesture of groping.  'How is this?' he 
cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice.  'Am I blind?'  I ran to 
him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and 
stood stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as 
if in a painful effort after breath.  Then suddenly he raised 
both hands to his temples, cried out, 'My head, my head!' and 
reeled and fell against the wall.

I knew too well what it must be.  I turned and begged the 
servants to relieve him.  But they, with one accord, denied 
the possibility of hope; the master had gone into the swamp, 
they said, the master must die; all help was idle.  Why 
should I dwell upon his sufferings?  I had him carried to a 
bed, and watched beside him.  He lay still, and at times 
ground his teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only 
that one word of hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, 
and telling me that, even in the last struggle with the 
powers of death, his mind was still tortured by his 
daughter's peril.  The sun had gone down, the darkness had 
fallen, when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy 
earth.  What thought had I of flight, of safety, of the 
impending dangers of my situation?  Beside the body of my 
last friend, I had forgotten all except the natural pangs of 
my bereavement.

The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I 
was recalled to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the 
entrance of the slave-girl to whom I have already referred.  
The poor soul was indeed devotedly attached to me; and it was 
with streaming tears that she broke to me the import of her 
coming.  With the first light of dawn a boat had reached our 
landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till now so 
fortunate) a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my 
father's person, and a man of a gross body and low manners, 
who declared the island, the plantation, and all its human 
chattels, to be now his own.  'I think,' said my slave-girl, 
'he must be a politician or some very powerful sorcerer; for 
Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming, than she 
took to the woods.'

'Fool,' said I, 'it was the officers she feared; and at any 
rate why does that beldam still dare to pollute the island 
with her presence?  And O Cora,' I exclaimed, remembering my 
grief, 'what matter all these troubles to an orphan?'

'Mistress,' said she, 'I must remind you of two things.  
Never speak as you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a 
person of colour; for she is the most powerful woman in this 
world, and her real name even, if one durst pronounce it, 
were a spell to raise the dead.  And whatever you do, speak 
no more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it is 
possible she may be afraid of the police (and indeed I think 
that I have heard she is in hiding), and though I know that 
you will laugh and not believe, yet it is true, and proved, 
and known that she hears every word that people utter in this 
whole vast world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough 
in her black books.  She looks at me, mistress, till my blood 
turns ice.  That is the first I had to say; and now for the 
second:  do, pray, for Heaven's sake, bear in mind that you 
are no longer the poor Senor's daughter.  He is gone, dear 
gentleman; and now you are no more than a common slave-girl 
like myself.  The man to whom you belong calls for you; oh, 
my dear mistress, go at once!  With your youth and beauty, 
you may still, if you are winning and obedient, secure 
yourself an easy life.'

For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation 
you may conceive; the next, it was gone:  she did but speak 
after her kind, as the bird sings or cattle bellow.  'Go,' 
said I.  'Go, Cora.  I thank you for your kind intentions.  
Leave me alone one moment with my dead father; and tell this 
man that I will come at once.'

She went:  and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to 
those deaf ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered 
innocence.  'Father,' I said, 'it was your last thought, even 
in the pangs of dissolution, that your daughter should escape 
disgrace.  Here, at your side, I swear to you that purpose 
shall be carried out; by what means, I know not; by crime, if 
need be; and Heaven forgive both you and me and our 
oppressors, and Heaven help my helplessness!'  Thereupon I 
felt strengthened as by long repose; stepped to the mirror, 
ay, even in that chamber of the dead; hastily arranged my 
hair, refreshed my tear-worn eyes, breathed a dumb farewell 
to the originator of my days and sorrows; and composing my 
features to a smile, went forth to meet my master.

He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once 
ours, to which he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, 
sanguine man of middle age, sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, 
if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by nature.  But the 
sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter, 
warned me to expect the worst.

'Is this your late mistress?' he inquired of the slaves; and 
when he had learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them.  
'Now, my dear,' said he, 'I am a plain man:  none of your 
damned Spaniards, but a true blue, hard-working, honest 
Englishman.  My name is Caulder.'

'Thank you, sir,' said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had 
seen the servants.

'Come,' said he, 'this is better than I had expected; and if 
you choose to be dutiful in the station to which it has 
pleased God to call you, you will find me a very kind old 
fellow.  I like your looks,' he added, calling me by my name, 
which he scandalously mispronounced.  'Is your hair all your 
own?' he then inquired with a certain sharpness, and coming 
up to me, as though I were a horse, he grossly satisfied his 
doubts.  I was all one flame from head to foot, but I 
contained my righteous anger and submitted.  'That is very 
well,' he continued, chucking me good humouredly under the 
chin.  'You will have no cause to regret coming to old 
Caulder, eh?  But that is by the way.  What is more to the 
point is this:  your late master was a most dishonest rogue, 
and levanted with some valuable property that belonged of 
rights to me.  Now, considering your relation to him, I 
regard you as the likeliest person to know what has become of 
it; and I warn you, before you answer, that my whole future 
kindness will depend upon your honesty.  I am an honest man 
myself, and expect the same in my servants.'

'Do you mean the jewels?' said I, sinking my voice into a 
whisper.

'That is just precisely what I do,' said he, and chuckled.

'Hush!' said I.

'Hush?' he repeated.  'And why hush?  I am on my own place, I 
would have you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful 
servants.'

'Are the officers gone?' I asked; and oh! how my hopes hung 
upon the answer!

'They are,' said he, looking somewhat disconcerted.  'Why do 
you ask?'

'I wish you had kept them,' I answered, solemnly enough, 
although my heart at that same moment leaped with exultation.  
'Master, I must not conceal from you the truth.  The servants 
on this estate are in a dangerous condition, and mutiny has 
long been brewing.'

'Why,' he cried, 'I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers 
in my life.'  But for all that he turned somewhat pale.

'Did they tell you,' I continued, 'that Madam Mendizabal is 
on the island? that, since her coming, they obey none but 
her? that if, this morning, they have received you with even 
decent civility, it was only by her orders - issued with what 
after-thought I leave you to consider?'

'Madam Jezebel?' said he.  'Well, she is a dangerous devil; 
the police are after her, besides, for a whole series of 
murders; but after all, what then?  To be sure, she has a 
great influence with you coloured folk.  But what in 
fortune's name can be her errand here?'

'The jewels,' I replied.  'Ah, sir, had you seen that 
treasure, sapphire and emerald and opal, and the golden 
topaz, and rubies red as the sunset - of what incalculable 
worth, of what unequalled beauty to the eye! - had you seen 
it, as I have, and alas! as SHE has - you would understand 
and tremble at your danger.'

'She has seen them!' he cried, and I could see by his face, 
that my audacity was justified by its success.

I caught his hand in mine.  'My master,' said I, 'I am now 
yours; it is my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend 
your interests and life.  Hear my advice, then; and, I 
conjure you, be guided by my prudence.  Follow me privily; 
let none see where we are going; I will lead you to the place 
where the treasure has been buried; that once disinterred, 
let us make straight for the boat, escape to the mainland, 
and not return to this dangerous isle without the countenance 
of soldiers.'

What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a 
devotion?  But this oppressor, through the very arts and 
sophistries he had abused, to quiet the rebellion of his 
conscience and to convince himself that slavery was natural, 
fell like a child into the trap I laid for him.  He praised 
and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in 
a servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the 
nature and value of the treasure, and I had once more 
artfully inflamed his greed, bade me without delay proceed to 
carry out my plan of action.

From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and 
thence, by devious paths among the magnolias, led my master 
to the entrance of the swamp.  I walked first, carrying, as I 
was now in duty bound, the tools, and glancing continually 
behind me, lest we should be spied upon and followed.  When 
we were come as far as the beginning of the path, it flashed 
into my mind I had forgotten meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in 
the shadow of a tree, I returned alone to the house for a 
basket of provisions.  Were they for him?  I asked myself.  
And a voice within me answered, No. While we were face to 
face, while I still saw before my eyes the man to whom I 
belonged as the hand belongs to the body, my indignation held 
me bravely up.  But now that I was alone, I conceived a 
sickness at myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; 
I longed to throw myself at his feet, avow my intended 
treachery, and warn him from that pestilential swamp, to 
which I was decoying him to die; but my vow to my dead 
father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon these 
scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected 
the horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step 
that I returned to the borders of the swamp, and with smiling 
lips that I bade him rise and follow me.

The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, 
through the living jungle.  On either hand and overhead, the 
mass of foliage was continuously joined; the day sparingly 
filtered through the depth of super-impending wood; and the 
air was hot like steam, and heady with vegetable odours, and 
lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.  Underfoot, a great 
depth of mould received our silent footprints; on each side, 
mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts with 
a continuous hissing rustle; and but for these sentient 
vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless and 
noiseless.

We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized 
with sudden nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.  
My heart yearned, as I beheld him; and I seriously begged the 
doomed mortal to return upon his steps.  What were a few 
jewels in the scales with life? I asked.  But no, he said; 
that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an 
honest man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so 
forth, panting the while, like a sick dog.  Presently he got 
to his feet again, protesting he had conquered his 
uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I saw in his 
changed countenance, the first approaches of death.

'Master,' said I, 'you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor 
fills me with dread.  Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red 
like the rubies that we seek.'

'Wench,' he cried, 'look before you; look at your steps.  I 
declare to Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking 
back, I shall remind you of the change in your position.'

A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, 
in a whisper, that its touch was death.  Presently a great 
green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly 
across the path; and once again I paused and looked back at 
my companion, with a horror in my eyes.  'The coffin snake,' 
said I, 'the snake that dogs its victim like a hound.'

But he was not to be dissuaded.  'I am an old traveller,' 
said he.  'This is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be 
at an end.'

'Ay,' said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, 'what 
end?'

Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; 
and then, perceiving that the path began to widen and grow 
higher, 'There!' said he.  'What did I tell you?  We are past 
the worst.'

Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place 
very narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on 
either hand we could see it broaden out, under a cavern of 
great arms of trees and hanging creepers:  sluggish, putrid, 
of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads 
of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.

'If we fall from that unsteady bridge,' said I, 'see, where 
the caiman lies ready to devour us!  If, by the least 
divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, 
see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border 
of the thicket!  Once helpless, how they would swarm together 
to the assault!  What could man do against a thousand of such 
mailed assailants?  And what a death were that, to perish 
alive under their claws.'

'Are you mad, girl?' he cried.  'I bid you be silent and lead 
on.'

Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he 
raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me 
on the face.  'Lead on!' he cried again.  'Must I be all day, 
catching my death in this vile slough, and all for a prating 
slave-girl?'

I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood 
welled back upon my heart.  Something, I know not what, fell 
at that moment with a dull plunge in the waters of the 
lagoon, and I told myself it was my pity that had fallen.

On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the 
wood was not so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly 
convolved.  It was possible, here and there, to mark a patch 
of somewhat brighter daylight, or to distinguish, through the 
lighter web of parasites, the proportions of some soaring 
tree.  The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth, upon 
the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened 
broadly; and there was a patch of open ground, beset with 
horrible ant-heaps, thick with their artificers.  I laid down 
the tools and basket by the cypress root, where they were 
instantly blackened over with the crawling ants; and looked 
once more in the face of my unconscious victim.  Mosquitoes 
and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his 
features were obscured; and the sound of their flight was 
like the turning of a mighty wheel.

'Here,' I said, 'is the spot.  I cannot dig, for I have not 
learned to use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I 
beseech you to be swift in what you do.'

He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; 
and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had 
mantled on my father's.  'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly 
ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion 
flies confounds me.  Have you not wine?'

I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.  'It is for you to 
think,' said I, 'if you should further persevere.  The swamp 
has an ill name.'  And at the word I ominously nodded.

'Give me the pick,' said he.  'Where are the jewels buried?'

I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, 
and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the 
pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy 
man.  At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, 
that made his face to shine, and in which the greedy insects 
settled thickly.

'To sweat in such a place,' said I.  'O master, is this wise?  
Fever is drunk in through open pores.'

'What do you mean?' he screamed, pausing with the pick buried 
in the soil.  'Do you seek to drive me mad?  Do you think I 
do not understand the danger that I run?'

'That is all I want,' said I:  'I only wish you to be swift.'  
And then, my mind flitting to my father's deathbed, I began 
to murmur, scarce above my breath, the same vain repetition 
of words, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry.'

Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; 
and while he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering 
and uncertain blows, repeated to himself, as it were the 
burthen of a song, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry;' and then again, 
'There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill 
name;' and then back to 'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' with a 
dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as 
a sick man rolls upon his pillow.  The sweat had disappeared; 
he was now dry, but all that I could see of him, of the same 
dull brick red.  Presently his pick unearthed the bag of 
jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at 
the soil.

'Master,' said I, 'there is the treasure.'  He seemed to 
waken from a dream.  'Where?' he cried; and then, seeing it 
before his eyes, 'Can this be possible?' he added.  'I must 
be light-headed.  Girl,' he cried suddenly, with the same 
screaming tone of voice that I had once before observed, 
'what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?'

'It is a grave,' I answered.  'You will not go out alive; and 
as for me, my life is in God's hands.'

He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but 
whether from the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure 
of the malady, I cannot tell.  Pretty soon, he raised his 
head.  'You have brought me here to die,' he said; 'at the 
risk of your own days, you have condemned me.  Why?'

'To save my honour,' I replied.  'Bear me out that I have 
warned you.  Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your 
undoer.'

He took out his revolver and handed it to me.  'You see,' he 
said, 'I could have killed you even yet.  But I am dying, as 
you say; nothing could save me; and my bill is long enough 
already.  Dear me, dear me,' he said, looking in my face with 
a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look, like a dull child at 
school, 'if there be a judgment afterwards, my bill is long 
enough.'

At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his 
feet, kissed his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the 
pistol back into his grasp and besought him to avenge his 
death; for indeed, if with my life I could have bought back 
his, I had not balanced at the cost.  But he was determined, 
the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret my act.

'I have nothing to forgive,' said he.  'Dear heaven, what a 
thing is an old fool!  I thought, upon my word, you had taken 
quite a fancy to me.'

He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming 
dizziness, clung to me like a child, and called upon the name 
of some woman.  Presently this spasm, which I watched with 
choking tears, lessened and died away; and he came again to 
the full possession of his mind.  'I must write my will,' he 
said.  'Get out my pocket-book.'  I did so, and he wrote 
hurriedly on one page with a pencil.  'Do not let my son 
know,' he said; 'he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not 
let him know how you have paid me out;' and then all of a 
sudden, 'God,' he cried, 'I am blind,' and clapped both hands 
before his eyes; and then again, and in a groaning whisper, 
'Don't leave me to the crabs!'  I swore I would be true to 
him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.  I 
sat there and watched him, as I had watched my father, but 
with what different, with what appalling thoughts!  Through 
the long afternoon, he gradually sank.  All that while, I 
fought an uphill battle to shield him from the swarms of ants 
and the clouds of mosquitoes:  the prisoner of my crime.  The 
night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the 
dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he 
had breathed his last.  At length, the flesh of his hand, 
which I yet held in mine, grew chill between my fingers, and 
I knew that I was free.

I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved 
rather to die than to be captured, and laden besides with the 
basket and the bag of gems, set forward towards the north.  
The swamp, at that hour of the night, was filled with a 
continuous din:  animals and insects of all kinds, and all 
inimical to life, contributing their parts.  Yet in the midst 
of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes were 
bandaged, beholding nothing.  The soil sank under my foot, 
with a horrid, slippery consistence, as though I were walking 
among toads; the touch of the thick wall of foliage, by which 
alone I guided myself, affrighted me like the touch of 
serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a gag; 
indeed, I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during 
that nocturnal walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible 
relief than when I found the path beginning to mount and to 
grow firmer under foot, and saw, although still some way in 
front of me, the silver brightness of the moon.

Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come 
forth amongst noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, 
dry dust, the aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been 
baked all day in sunlight, and the expressive silence of the 
night.  My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that 
reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had 
escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was 
alive; and I had now before me the easier portion of my 
enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my arrival at 
the haven and my acceptance on the English yacht.  It was 
impossible by night to follow such a track as my father had 
described; and I was casting about for any landmark, and, in 
my ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, 
when there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the 
sound of many voices hurriedly singing.

I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my 
steps in the direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an 
hour's walking, came unperceived to the margin of an open 
glade.  It was lighted by the strong moon and by the flames 
of a fire.  In the midst, there stood a little low and rude 
building, surmounted by a cross:  a chapel, as I then 
remembered to have heard, long since desecrated and given 
over to the rites of Hoodoo.  Hard by the steps of entrance 
was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and 
fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I presently 
perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds 
and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and 
cruelly tossed one upon another.  Both the fire and the 
chapel were surrounded by a ring of kneeling Africans, both 
men and women.  Now they would raise their palms half-closed 
to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of 
supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their 
hands before them on the ground.  As the double movement 
passed and repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and 
falling, like waves upon the sea; and still, as if in time to 
these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued.  I stood 
spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing 
that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.

Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came 
forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand 
the sacrificial knife.  He was followed by an apparition 
still more strange and shocking:  Madam Mendizabal, naked 
also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the level of 
her face, an open basket of wicker.  It was filled with 
coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the 
uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled 
about her arms.  At the sight of this, the fervour of the 
crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant rose in 
pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent.  Then, at a 
sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and 
smiling, in the moon and firelight, the singing died away, 
and there began the second stage of this barbarous and bloody 
celebration.  From different parts of the ring, one after 
another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst; ducked, with 
that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the priestess 
and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered aloud 
the blackest wishes of the heart.  Death and disease were the 
favours usually invoked:  the death or the disease of enemies 
or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest 
of their own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been never 
less than kind, invoking them upon myself.  At each petition, 
the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some bird or animal 
from the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the knife, 
and tossed its body on the ground.  At length, it seemed, it 
reached the turn of the high-priestess.  She set down the 
basket on the steps, moved into the centre of the ring, 
grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still 
grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, 
and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as 
struck a sort of horror through my blood.

'Power,' she began, 'whose name we do not utter; power that 
is neither good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than 
good, greater than evil - all my life long I have adored and 
served thee.  Who has shed blood upon thine altars? whose 
voice is broken with the singing of thy praises? whose limbs 
are faint before their age with leaping in thy revels?  Who 
has slain the child of her body?  I,' she cried, 'I, 
Metamnbogu!  By my own name, I name myself.  I tear away the 
veil.  I would be served or perish.  Hear me, slime of the 
fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom of the serpent's 
udder - hear or slay me!  I would have two things, O 
shapeless one, O horror of emptiness - two things, or die!  
The blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is 
the enemy of Hoodoo; give me his blood!  And yet another, O 
racer of the blind winds, O germinator in the ruins of the 
dead, O root of life, root of corruption!  I grow old, I grow 
hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life:  let thy 
servant then lay by this outworn body; let thy chief 
priestess turn again to the blossom of her days, and be a 
girl once more, and the desired of all men, even as in the 
past!  And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet 
wrought since we were torn from the old land, have I not 
prepared the sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth - the kid 
without the horns?'

Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of 
joy through all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, 
and rose again; and swelled at last into rapture, when the 
tall negro, who had stepped an instant into the chapel, 
reappeared before the door, carrying in his arms the body of 
the slave-girl, Cora.  I know not if I saw what followed.  
When next my mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was laid 
upon the steps before the serpents; the negro with the knife 
stood over her; the knife rose; and at this I screamed out in 
my great horror, bidding them, in God's name, to pause.

A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.  A moment more, 
and they must have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly 
have perished.  But Heaven had designed to save me.  The 
silence of these wretched men was not yet broken, when there 
arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the roar of 
any European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any 
Eastern wind.  Blackness engulfed the world; blackness, 
stabbed across from every side by intricate and blinding 
lightning.  Almost in the same second, at one world-
swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached the 
clearing.  I heard an agonising crash, and the light of my 
reason was overwhelmed.

When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.  I was 
unhurt; the trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I 
might have thought at first that the tornado was a feature in 
a dream.  It was otherwise indeed; for when I looked abroad, 
I perceived I had escaped destruction by a hand's-breadth.  
Right through the forest, which here covered hill and dale, 
the storm had ploughed a lane of ruin.  On either hand, the 
trees waved uninjured in the air of the morning; but in the 
forthright course of its advance, the hurricane had left no 
trophy standing.  Everything, in that line, tree, man, or 
animal, the desecrated chapel and the votaries of Hoodoo, had 
been subverted and destroyed in that brief spasm of anger of 
the powers of air.  Everything, but a yard or two beyond the 
line of its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor 
vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to heaven, 
awoke unharmed in the crystal purity and peace of the new 
day.

To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to 
man, so wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled 
together by that fugitive convulsion.  I crossed it indeed; 
with such labour and patience, with so many dangerous slips 
and falls, as left me, at the further side, bankrupt alike of 
strength and courage.  There I sat down awhile to recruit my 
forces; and as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness of 
Heaven!) my eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the 
great trees, alighted on a trunk that had been blazed.  Yes, 
by the directing hand of Providence, I had been conducted to 
the very track I was to follow.  With what a light heart I 
now set forth, and walking with how glad a step, traversed 
the uplands of the isle!

It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered 
and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked 
below me on the sea.  About all the coast, the surf, roused 
by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and 
made a fringe of snow.  Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set 
in precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock.  Just 
outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, 
so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every 
feature, that my heart was seized with admiration.  The 
English colours blew from her masthead; and from my high 
station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she 
rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the 
brass of her deck furniture.  There, then, was my ship of 
refuge; and of all my difficulties only one remained:  to get 
on board of her.

Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the 
margin of a cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue 
billows entered, and along whose shores they broke with a 
surprising loudness.  A wooded promontory hid the yacht; and 
I had walked some distance round the beach, in what appeared 
to be a virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat, drawn 
into a natural harbour, where it rocked in safety, but 
deserted.  I looked about for those who should have manned 
her; and presently, in the immediate entrance of the wood, 
spied the red embers of a fire, and, stretched around in 
various attitudes, a party of slumbering mariners.  To these 
I drew near:  most were black, a few white; but all were 
dressed with the conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, 
from his peaked cap and glittering buttons, I rightly divined 
to be an officer.  Him, then, I touched upon the shoulder.  
He started up; the sharpness of his movement woke the rest; 
and they all stared upon me in surprise.

'What do you want?' inquired the officer.

'To go on board the yacht,' I answered.

I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the 
officer, with something of sharpness, asked me who I was.  
Now I had determined to conceal my name until I met Sir 
George; and the first name that rose to my lips was that of 
the Senora Mendizabal.  At the word, there went a shock about 
the little party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with 
indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something 
of a scared surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief 
prompted me to add, 'And if the name is new to your ears, 
call me Metamnbogu.'

I had never seen an effect so wonderful.  The negroes threw 
their hands into the air, with the same gesture I remarked 
the night before about the Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and 
then another, ran forward and kneeled down and kissed the 
skirts of my torn dress; and when the white officer broke out 
swearing and calling to know if they were mad, the coloured 
seamen took him by the shoulders, dragged him on one side 
till they were out of hearing, and surrounded him with open 
mouths and extravagant pantomime.  The officer seemed to 
struggle hard; he laughed aloud, and I saw him make gestures 
of dissent and protest; but in the end, whether overcome by 
reason or simply weary of resistance, he gave in - approached 
me civilly enough, but with something of a sneering manner 
underneath - and touching his cap, 'My lady,' said he, 'if 
that is what you are, the boat is ready.'

My reception on board the NEMOROSA (for so the yacht was 
named) partook of the same mingled nature.  We were scarcely 
within hail of that great and elegant fabric, where she lay 
rolling gunwale under and churning the blue sea to snow, 
before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a great 
crowd of seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the 
few who manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some 
LINGUA FRANCA incomprehensible to me.  All eyes were directed 
on the passenger; and once more I saw the negroes toss up 
their hands to heaven, but now as if with passionate wonder 
and delight.

At the head of the gangway, I was received by another 
officer, a gentlemanly man with blond and bushy whiskers; and 
to him I addressed my demand to see Sir George.

'But this is not - ' he cried, and paused.

'I know it,' returned the other officer, who had brought me 
from the shore.  'But what the devil can we do?  Look at all 
the niggers!'

I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, 
the poor ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their 
hands into the air, as though in the presence of a creature 
half divine.  Apparently the officer with the whiskers had 
instantly come round to the opinion of his subaltern; for he 
now addressed me with every signal of respect.

'Sir George is at the island, my lady,' said he:  'for which, 
with your ladyship's permission, I shall immediately make all 
sail.  The cabins are prepared.  Steward, take Lady Greville 
below.'

Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that 
I could neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a 
spacious and airy cabin, hung about with weapons and 
surrounded by divans.  The steward asked for my commands; but 
I was by this time so wearied, bewildered, and disturbed, 
that I could only wave him to leave me to myself, and sink 
upon a pile of cushions.  Presently, by the changed motion of 
the ship, I knew her to be under way; my thoughts, so far 
from clarifying, grew the more distracted and confused; 
dreams began to mingle and confound them; and at length, by 
insensible transition, I sank into a dreamless slumber.

When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once 
more morning.  The world on which I reopened my eyes swam 
strangely up and down; the jewels in the bag that lay beside 
me chinked together ceaselessly; the clock and the barometer 
wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead, seamen were 
singing out at their work, and coils of rope clattering and 
thumping on the deck.  Yet it was long before I had divined 
that I was at sea; long before I had recalled, one after 
another, the tragical, mysterious, and inexplicable events 
that had brought me where was.

When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was 
surprised to find had been respected, into the bosom of my 
dress; and seeing a silver bell hard by upon a table, rang it 
loudly.  The steward instantly appeared; I asked for food; 
and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while 
with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny.  To relieve 
myself of my embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show 
of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for yachts to 
carry so numerous a crew?

'Madam,' said he, 'I know not who you are, nor what mad fancy 
has induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that 
are not yours.  I warn you from the soul.  No sooner arrived 
at the island - '

At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, 
who had entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand 
upon his shoulder.  The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick 
fear, that was imprinted on the steward's face, formed a 
startling addition to his words.

'Parker!' said the officer, and pointed towards the door.

'Yes, Mr. Kentish,' said the steward.  'For God's sake, Mr. 
Kentish!'  And vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.

Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, 
and join in the meal.  'I fill your ladyship's glass,' said 
he, and handed me a tumbler of neat rum.

'Sir,' cried I, 'do you expect me to drink this?'

He laughed heartily.  'Your ladyship is so much changed,' 
said he, 'that I no longer expect any one thing more than any 
other.'

Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted 
both Mr. Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there 
was a sail in sight, which was bound to pass us very close, 
and that Mr. Harland was in doubt about the colours.

'Being so near the island?' asked Mr. Kentish.

'That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,' returned the sailor, 
with a scrape.

'Better not, I think,' said Mr. Kentish.  'My compliments to 
Mr. Harland; and if she seem a lively boat, give her the 
stars and stripes; but if she be dull, and we can easily 
outsail her, show John Dutchman.  That is always another word 
for incivility at sea; so we can disregard a hail or a flag 
of distress, without attracting notice.'

As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the 
officer in wonder.  'Mr.  Kentish, if that be your name,' 
said I, 'are you ashamed of your own colours?'

'Your ladyship refers to the JOLLY ROGER?' he inquired, with 
perfect gravity; and immediately after, went into peals of 
laughter.  'Pardon me,' said he; 'but here for the first time 
I recognise your ladyship's impetuosity.'  Nor, try as I 
pleased, could I extract from him any explanation of this 
mystery, but only oily and commonplace evasion.

While we were thus occupied, the movement of the NEMOROSA 
gradually became less violent; its speed at the same time 
diminished; and presently after, with a sullen plunge, the 
anchor was discharged into the sea.  Kentish immediately 
rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck; where I 
found we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky 
islets, hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.  
Immediately under our board, a somewhat larger isle was green 
with trees, set with a few low buildings and approached by a 
pier of very crazy workmanship; and a little inshore of us, a 
smaller vessel lay at anchor.

I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat 
was lowered.  I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me, 
and we pulled briskly to the pier.  A crowd of villainous, 
armed loiterers, both black and white, looked on upon our 
landing; and again the word passed about among the negroes, 
and again I was received with prostrations and the same 
gesture of the flung-up hand.  By this, what with the 
appearance of these men, and the lawless, sea-girt spot in 
which I found myself, my courage began a little to decline, 
and clinging to the arm of Mr. Kentish, I begged him to tell 
me what it meant?

'Nay, madam,' he returned, 'YOU know.'  And leading me 
smartly through the crowd, which continued to follow at a 
considerable distance, and at which he still kept looking 
back, I thought, with apprehension, he brought me to a low 
house that stood alone in an encumbered yard, opened the 
door, and begged me to enter.

'But why?' said I.  'I demand to see Sir George.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black as 
thunder, 'to drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you 
are; beyond the fact that you are not the person whose name 
you have assumed.  But be what you please, spy, ghost, devil, 
or most ill-judging jester, if you do not immediately enter 
that house, I will cut you to the earth.'  And even as he 
spoke, he threw an uneasy glance behind him at the following 
crowd of blacks.

I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and 
with a palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was 
locked from the outside and the key withdrawn.  The interior 
was long, low, and quite unfurnished, but filled, almost from 
end to end, with sugar-cane, tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and 
other incongruous and highly inflammable material; and not 
only was the door locked, but the solitary window barred with 
iron.

I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that 
I would have given years of my life to be once more the slave 
of Mr. Caulder.  I still stood, with my hands clasped, the 
image of despair, looking about me on the lumber of the room 
or raising my eyes to heaven; when there appeared outside the 
window bars, the face of a very black negro, who signed to me 
imperiously to draw near.  I did so, and he instantly, and 
with every mark of fervour, addressed me a long speech in 
some unknown and barbarous tongue.

'I declare,' I cried, clasping my brow, 'I do not understand 
one syllable.'

'Not?' he said in Spanish.  'Great, great, are the powers of 
Hoodoo!  Her very mind is changed!  But, O chief priestess, 
why have you suffered yourself to be shut into this cage? why 
did you not call your slaves at once to your defence?  Do you 
not see that all has been prepared to murder you? at a spark, 
this flimsy house will go in flames; and alas! who shall then 
be the chief priestess? and what shall be the profit of the 
miracle?'

'Heavens!' cried I, 'can I not see Sir George?  I must, I 
must, come by speech of him.  Oh, bring me to Sir George!'  
And, my terror fairly mastering my courage, I fell upon my 
knees and began to pray to all the saints.

'Lordy!' cried the negro, 'here they come!'  And his black 
head was instantly withdrawn from the window.

'I never heard such nonsense in my life,' exclaimed a voice.

'Why, so we all say, Sir George,' replied the voice of Mr. 
Kentish.  'But put yourself in our place.  The niggers were 
near two to one.  And upon my word, if you'll excuse me, sir, 
considering the notion they have taken in their heads, I 
regard it as precious fortunate for all of us that the 
mistake occurred.'

'This is no question of fortune, sir,' returned Sir George.  
'It is a question of my orders, and you may take my word for 
it, Kentish, either Harland, or yourself, or Parker - or, by 
George, all three of you! - shall swing for this affair.  
These are my sentiments.  Give me the key and be off.'

Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there 
appeared upon the threshold a gentleman, between forty and 
fifty, with a very open countenance, and of a stout and 
personable figure.

'My dear young lady,' said he, 'who the devil may you be?'

I told him all my story in one rush of words.  He heard me, 
from the first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, 
but when I came to the death of the Senora Mendizabal in the 
tornado, he fairly leaped into the air.

'My dear child,' he cried, clasping me in his arms, 'excuse a 
man who might be your father!  This is the best news I ever 
had since I was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a 
person than my wife.'  He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if 
unmanned by joy.  'Dear me,' said he, 'I declare this tempts 
me to believe in Providence.  And what,' he added, 'can I do 
for you?'

'Sir George,' said I, 'I am already rich:  all that I ask is 
your protection.'

'Understand one thing,' he said, with great energy.  'I will 
never marry.'

'I had not ventured to propose it,' I exclaimed, unable to 
restrain my mirth; 'I only seek to be conveyed to England, 
the natural home of the escaped slave.'

'Well,' returned Sir George, 'frankly I owe you something for 
this exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to 
me.  Now, I have made a small competence in business - a 
jewel mine, a sort of naval agency, et caetera, and I am on 
the point of breaking up my company, and retiring to my place 
in Devonshire to pass a plain old age, unmarried.  One good 
turn deserves another:  if you swear to hold your tongue 
about this island, these little bonfire arrangements, and the 
whole episode of my unfortunate marriage, why, I'll carry you 
home aboard the NEMOROSA.'  I eagerly accepted his 
conditions.

'One thing more,' said he.  'My late wife was some sort of a 
sorceress among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she 
has come alive again in your agreeable person.  Now, you will 
have the goodness to keep up that fancy, if you please; and 
to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his 
name may be, that I am from this moment quite a sacred 
character.'

'I swear it,' said I, 'by my father's memory; and that is a 
vow that I will never break.'

'I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,' 
returned Sir George, with a chuckle; 'for you are not only an 
escaped slave, but have, by your own account, a considerable 
amount of stolen property.'

I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I 
recognised that these jewels were no longer mine; with 
similar quickness, I decided they should be restored, ay, if 
it cost me the liberty that I had just regained.  Forgetful 
of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and watched me 
with a smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder's pocket-book and turned 
to the page on which the dying man had scrawled his 
testament.  How shall I describe the agony of happiness and 
remorse with which I read it! for my victim had not only set 
me free, but bequeathed to me the bag of jewels.

My plain tale draws towards a close.  Sir George and I, in my 
character of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-
in-arm among the negroes, and were cheered and followed to 
the place of embarkation.  There, Sir George, turning about, 
made a speech to his old companions, in which he thanked and 
bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards the 
end of which he fell on some expressions which I still 
remember.  'If any of you gentry lose your money,' he said, 
'take care you do not come to me; for in the first place, I 
shall do my best to have you murdered; and if that fails, I 
hand you over to the law.  Blackmail won't do for me.  I'll 
rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to pieces by 
degrees.  I'll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit 
to one man-jack of you.'  That same night we got under way 
and crossed to the port of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred 
trust, I sent the pocket-book to Mr. Caulder's son.  In a 
week's time, the men were all paid off; new hands were 
shipped; and the NEMOROSA weighed her anchor for Old England.

A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.  Sir George, 
of course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an 
unaffected gaiety of character that naturally endeared him to 
the young; and it was interesting to hear him lay out his 
projects for the future, when he should be returned to 
Parliament, and place at the service of the nation his 
experience of marine affairs.  I asked him, if his notion of 
piracy upon a private yacht were not original.  But he told 
me, no.  'A yacht, Miss Valdevia,' he observed, 'is a 
chartered nuisance.  Who smuggles?  Who robs the salmon 
rivers of the West of Scotland?  Who cruelly beats the 
keepers if they dare to intervene?  The crews and the 
proprietors of yachts.  All I have done is to extend the line 
a trifle, and if you ask me for my unbiassed opinion, I do 
not suppose that I am in the least alone.'

In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father 
and daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, 
that respect which is only due to moral excellence.

We were still some days' sail from England, when Sir George 
obtained, from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; 
and from that fatal hour my misfortunes recommenced.  He sat, 
the same evening, in the cabin, reading the news, and making 
savoury comments on the decline of England and the poor 
condition of the navy, when I suddenly observed him to change 
countenance.

'Hullo!' said he, 'this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss 
Valdevia.  You would not listen to sound sense, you would 
send that pocket-book to that man Caulder's son.'

'Sir George,' said I, 'it was my duty.'

'You are prettily paid for it, at least,' says he; 'and much 
as I regret it, I, for one, am done with you.  This fellow 
Caulder demands your extradition.'

'But a slave,' I returned, 'is safe in England.'

'Yes, by George!' replied the baronet; 'but it's not a slave, 
Miss Valdevia, it's a thief that he demands.  He has quietly 
destroyed the will; and now accuses you of robbing your 
father's bankrupt estate of jewels to the value of a hundred 
thousand pounds.'

I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge 
and concern for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made 
haste to put me more at ease.

'Do not be cast down,' said he.  'Of course, I wash my hands 
of you myself.  A man in my position - baronet, old family, 
and all that - cannot possibly be too particular about the 
company he keeps.  But I am a deuced good-humoured old boy, 
let me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do the best I 
can to put you right.  I will lend you a trifle of ready 
money, give you the address of an excellent lawyer in London, 
and find a way to set you on shore unsuspected.'

He was in every particular as good as his word.  Four days 
later, the NEMOROSA sounded her way, under the cloak of a 
dark night, into a certain haven of the coast of England; and 
a boat, rowing with muffled oars, set me ashore upon the 
beach within a stone's throw of a railway station.  Thither, 
guided by Sir George's directions, I groped a devious way; 
and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped 
in a man's fur great-coat, to await the coming of the day.  
It was still dark when a light was struck behind one of the 
windows of the building; nor had the east begun to kindle to 
the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter carrying a 
lantern, issued from the door and found himself face to face 
with the unfortunate Teresa.  He looked all about him; in the 
grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie 
deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.

'Who are you?' he cried.

'I am a traveller,' said I.

'And where do you come from?' he asked.

'I am going by the first train to London,' I replied.

In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa 
with her bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in 
this silent fashion, without history or name, she took her 
place among the millions of a new country.

Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, 
lying concealed in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of 
Cuba, and not knowing at what hour my liberty and honour may 
be lost.



THE BROWN BOX (CONCLUDED)



THE effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was 
instant and convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the 
loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, 
the most innocent, and the most unhappy of her sex.  He was 
bereft of words to utter what he felt:  what pity, what 
admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and 
adventurous.  'O madam!' he began; and finding no language 
adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it 
in his own.  'Count upon me,' he added, with bewildered 
fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the apartment 
and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found 
himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, 
wondering at dull passers-by, a fallen angel.  She had smiled 
upon him as he left, and with how significant, how beautiful 
a smile!  The memory lingered in his heart; and when he found 
his way to a certain restaurant where music was performed, 
flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal.  The 
strings went to the melody of that parting smile; they 
paraphrased and glossed it in the sense that he desired; and 
for the first time in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he 
perceived himself to have a taste for music.

The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that 
delectable air.  Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw 
her not at all; now saw her and was put by.  The fall of her 
foot upon the stair entranced him; the books that he sought 
out and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her indirectly; 
nay, and in the very landlady's parlour, he found one that 
told of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest 
detail, confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth 
of her recital.  Presently he began to fall into that 
prettiest mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns 
himself for his presumption.  Who was he, the dull one, the 
commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the 
impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of 
fire and air, and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable 
passages of life?  What should he do, to be more worthy? by 
what devotion, call down the notice of these eyes to so 
terrene a being as himself?

He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the 
square, where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had made 
himself a circle of acquaintances among its shy frequenters, 
the half-domestic cats and the visitors that hung before the 
windows of the Children's Hospital.  There he walked, 
considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the 
adored one's super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say 
a pleasant word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, 
with a great heave of breath, remembering the queen of women, 
and the sunshine of his life.

What was he to do?  Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit 
of leaving the house towards afternoon:  she might, 
perchance, run danger from some Cuban emissary, when the 
presence of a friend might turn the balance in her favour:  
how, then, if he should follow her?  To offer his company 
would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were a 
manifest impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more 
stealthy part, which, though in some ways distasteful to his 
mind, he did not doubt that he could practise with the skill 
of a detective.

The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.  At the 
corner of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Senorita 
suddenly turned back, and met him face to face, with every 
mark of pleasure and surprise.

'Ah, Senor, I am sometimes fortunate!' she cried.  'I was 
looking for a messenger;' and with the sweetest of smiles, 
she despatched him to the East End of London, to an address 
which he was unable to find.  This was a bitter pill to the 
knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn out with 
fruitless wandering and dismayed by his FIASCO, the lady 
received him with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was 
for the best, since she had changed her mind and long since 
repented of her message.

Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and 
courage, and determined to protect Teresa with his life.  But 
a painful shock awaited him.  In the narrow and silent Hanway 
Street, she turned suddenly about and addressed him with a 
manner and a light in her eyes that were new to the young 
man's experience.

'Do I understand that you follow me, Senor?' she cried.  'Are 
these the manners of the English gentleman?'

Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and 
prayers to be forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at 
length dismissed, crestfallen and heavy of heart.  The check 
was final; he gave up that road to service; and began once 
more to hang about the square or on the terrace, filled with 
remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit object for the 
scorn and envy of older men.  In these idle hours, while he 
was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out 
naturally that he should observe the manners and appearance 
of such as came about the house.  One person alone was the 
occasional visitor of the young lady:  a man of considerable 
stature, and distinguished only by the doubtful ornament of a 
chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.  Something in 
his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon him 
in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage 
to inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more 
dismayed by her reply.

'That gentleman,' said she, a smile struggling to her face, 
'that gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, 
desires my hand in marriage, and presses me with the most 
respectful ardour.  Alas, what am I to say?  I, the forlorn 
Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such protestations?'

Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy 
transfixed him; and he had scarce the strength of mind to 
take his leave with decency.  In the solitude of his own 
chamber, he gave way to every manifestation of despair.  He 
passionately adored the Senorita; but it was not only the 
thought of her possible union with another that distressed 
his soul, it was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor 
was unworthy.  To a duke, a bishop, a victorious general, or 
any man adorned with obvious qualities, he had resigned her 
with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself follow the wedding 
party from a great way off; he saw himself return to the poor 
house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have wept 
for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly.  But this 
affair looked otherwise.  The man was patently no gentleman; 
he had a startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were 
black, his eyes evasive; his love perhaps was a pretext; he 
was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a Cuban emissary!

Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next 
evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself 
at a spot whence his eye commanded the three issues of the 
square.

Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the 
man with the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and 
was seen by Harry to enter the house with a brown box hoisted 
on his back.  Half an hour later, he came forth again without 
the box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk; and Desborough, 
with the same skill and caution that he had displayed in 
following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer.  
The man began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the 
wares of the small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he 
returned hurriedly upon his former course; and then, as 
though he had suddenly conquered a moment's hesitation, once 
more set forth with resolute and swift steps in the direction 
of Lincoln's Inn.  At length, in a deserted by-street, he 
turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance which 
seemed to have become older and whiter, inquired with some 
severity of speech if he had not had the pleasure of seeing 
the gentleman before.

'You have, sir,' said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a 
good show of stoutness; 'and I will not deny that I was 
following you on purpose.  Doubtless,' he added, for he 
supposed that all men's minds must still be running on 
Teresa, 'you can divine my reason.'

At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a 
palsied tremor.  He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the 
utterance which his fear denied him; and then whipping 
sharply about, he took to his heels at the most furious speed 
of running.

Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to 
pursue; and by the time he had recovered his wits, his best 
expedition was only rewarded by a glimpse of the man with the 
chin-beard mounting into a hansom, which immediately after 
disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.

Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry 
returned to the house in Queen Square, and ventured for the 
first time to knock at the fair Cuban's door.  She bade him 
enter, and he found her kneeling with rather a disconsolate 
air beside a brown wooden trunk.

'Senorita,' he broke out, 'I doubt whether that man's 
character is what he wishes you to believe.  His manner, when 
he found, and indeed when I admitted that I was following 
him, was not the manner of an honest man.'

'Oh!' she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, 
'Don Quixote, Don Quixote, have you again been tilting 
against windmills?'  And then, with a laugh, 'Poor soul!' she 
added, 'how you must have terrified him!  For know that the 
Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may soon be 
hunted down.  Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor's 
office may find himself at any moment the quarry of armed 
spies.'

'A humble clerk!' cried Harry, 'why, you told me yourself 
that he wished to marry you!'

'I thought you English like what you call a joke,' replied 
the lady calmly.  'As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer's 
clerk, and has been here to-night charged with disastrous 
news.  I am in sore straits, Senor Harry.  Will you help me?'

At this most welcome word, the young man's heart exulted; and 
in the hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled with the 
very thought of service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady's 
jest.  'Can you ask?' he cried.  'What is there that I can 
do?  Only tell me that.'

With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the 
fair Cuban laid her hand upon the box.  'This box,' she said, 
'contains my jewels, papers, and clothes; all, in a word, 
that still connects me with Cuba and my dreadful past.  They 
must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the opinion of my 
lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy.  To-morrow, on board the 
Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box:  the problem still 
unsolved, is to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, 
to see it placed on board the steamer, and instantly return 
to town.  Will you be he?  Will you leave to-morrow by the 
first train, punctually obey orders, bear still in mind that 
you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so much as a 
look behind you, or a single movement to betray your 
interest, leave the box where you have put it and come 
straight on shore? Will you do this, and so save your 
friend?'

'I do not clearly understand . . .' began Harry.

'No more do I,' replied the Cuban.  'It is not necessary that 
we should, so long as we obey the lawyer's orders.'

'Senorita,' returned Harry gravely, 'I think this, of course, 
a very little thing to do for you, when I would willingly do 
all.  But suffer me to say one word.  If London is unsafe for 
your treasures, it cannot long be safe for you; and indeed, 
if I at all fathom the plan of your solicitor, I fear I may 
find you already fled on my return.  I am not considered 
clever, and can only speak out plainly what is in my heart:  
that I love you, and that I cannot bear to lose all knowledge 
of you.  I hope no more than to be your servant; I ask no 
more than just that I shall hear of you.  Oh, promise me so 
much!'

'You shall,' she said, after a pause.  'I promise you, you 
shall.'  But though she spoke with earnestness, the marks of 
great embarrassment and a strong conflict of emotions 
appeared upon her face.

'I wish to tell you,' resumed Desborough, 'in case of 
accidents. . . .'

'Accidents!' she cried:  'why do you say that?'

'I do not know,' said he, 'you may be gone before my return, 
and we may not meet again for long.  And so I wished you to 
know this:  That since the day you gave me the cigarette, you 
have never once, not once, been absent from my mind; and if 
it will in any way serve you, you may crumple me up like that 
piece of paper, and throw me on the fire.  I would love to 
die for you.'

'Go!' she said.  'Go now at once.  My brain is in a whirl.  I 
scarce know what we are talking.  Go; and good-night; and oh, 
may you come safe!'

Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young 
man's mind; and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white 
and the broken utterance of her last words, his heart at once 
exulted and misgave him.  Love had indeed looked upon him 
with a tragic mask; and yet what mattered, since at least it 
was love - since at least she was commoved at their division?  
He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed from 
one dream to another all night long, the white face of Teresa 
still haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and in the 
grey of the dawn, leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of 
horror.  It was already time for him to rise.  He dressed, 
made his breakfast on cold food that had been laid for him 
the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for 
the box.  The door was open; a strange disorder reigned 
within; the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the 
room left bare of impediment, as though for the pacing of a 
creature with a tortured mind.  There lay the box, however, 
and upon the lid a paper with these words:  'Harry, I hope to 
be back before you go.  Teresa.'

He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the 
table.  She had called him Harry:  that should be enough, he 
thought, to fill the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the 
sight of that disordered room still poisoned his enjoyment.  
The door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open; and though he 
turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but 
observe the bed had not been slept in.  He was still 
pondering what this should mean, still trying to convince 
himself that all was well, when the moving needle of his 
watch summoned him to set forth without delay.  He was before 
all things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to 
fetch a cab; and taking the box on the front seat, drove off 
towards the terminus.

The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse 
the eye; and the young man's attention centred on the dumb 
companion of his drive.  A card was nailed upon one side, 
bearing the superscription:  'Miss Doolan, passenger to 
Dublin.  Glass.  With care.'  He thought with a sentimental 
shock that the fair idol of his heart was perhaps driven to 
adopt the name of Doolan; and as he still studied the card, 
he was aware of a deadly, black depression settling steadily 
upon his spirits.  It was in vain for him to contend against 
the tide; in vain that he shook himself or tried to whistle:  
the sense of some impending blow was not to be averted.  He 
looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its 
way without a trace of any follower.  He gave ear; and over 
and above the jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was 
conscious of a certain regular and quiet sound that seemed to 
issue from the box.  He put his ear to the cover; at one 
moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate ticking:  the next, 
the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening 
recapture it.  He laughed at himself; but still the gloom 
continued; and it was with more than the common relief of an 
arrival, that he leaped from the cab before the station.

Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some 
thirty minutes earlier than needful; and when Harry had given 
the box into the charge of a porter, who sat it on a truck, 
he proceeded briskly to pace the platform.  Presently the 
bookstall opened; and the young man was looking at the books 
when he was seized by the arm.  He turned, and, though she 
was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.

'Where is it?' she asked; and the sound of her voice 
surprised him.

'It?' he said.  'What?'

'The box.  Have it put on a cab instantly.  I am in fearful 
haste.'

He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not 
daring to trouble her with questions; and when the cab had 
been brought round, and the box mounted on the front, she 
passed a little way off upon the pavement and beckoned him to 
follow.

'Now,' said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones 
that had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead 
alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in 
tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has 
been put off:  if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it 
does not matter.  So, good-bye.'

'Teresa,' said Harry, 'get into your cab, and I will go along 
with you.  You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and 
till I know the whole, not even you can make me leave you.'

'You will not?' she asked.  'O Harry, it were better!'

'I will not,' said Harry stoutly.

She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his 
hand suddenly and sharply, but more as if in fear than 
tenderness; and still holding him, walked to the cab-door.

'Where are we to drive?' asked Harry.

'Home, quickly,' she answered; 'double fare!'  And as soon as 
they had both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily 
trundled from the station.

Teresa leaned back in a corner.  The whole way Harry could 
perceive her tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed 
no explanation.  At the door of the house in Queen Square, 
both alighted; and the cabman lowered the box, which Harry, 
glad to display his strength, received upon his shoulders.

'Let the man take it,' she whispered.  'Let the man take it.'

'I will do no such thing,' said Harry cheerfully; and having 
paid the fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she 
had opened with her key.  The landlady and maid were gone 
upon their morning errands; the house was empty and still; 
and as the rattling of the cab died away down Gloucester 
Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his 
burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint 
and muffled ticking as before.  The lady, still preceding 
him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to lower the 
box tenderly in the corner by the window.

'And now,' said Harry, 'what is wrong?'

'You will not go away?' she cried, with a sudden break in her 
voice and beating her hands together in the very agony of 
impatience.  'O Harry, Harry, go away!  Oh, go, and leave me 
to the fate that I deserve!'

'The fate?' repeated Harry.  'What is this?'

'No fate,' she resumed.  'I do not know what I am saying.  
But I wish to be alone.  You may come back this evening, 
Harry; come again when you like; but leave me now, only leave 
me now!'  And then suddenly, 'I have an errand,' she 
exclaimed; 'you cannot refuse me that!'

'No,' replied Harry, 'you have no errand.  You are in grief 
or danger.  Lift your veil and tell me what it is.'

'Then,' she said, with a sudden composure, 'you leave but one 
course open to me.'  And raising the veil, she showed him a 
countenance from which every trace of colour had fled, eyes 
marred with weeping, and a brow on which resolve had 
conquered fear.  'Harry,' she began, 'I am not what I seem.'

'You have told me that before,' said Harry, 'several times.'

'O Harry, Harry,' she cried, 'how you shame me!  But this is 
the God's truth.  I am a dangerous and wicked girl.  My name 
is Clara Luxmore.  I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance.  
From first to last I have cheated and played with you.  And 
what I am I dare not even name to you in words.  Indeed, 
until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I 
never grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt.'

The young man looked upon her aghast.  Then a generous 
current poured along his veins.  'That is all one,' he said.  
'If you be all you say, you have the greater need of me.'

'Is it possible,' she exclaimed, 'that I have schemed in 
vain?  And will nothing drive you from this house of death?'

'Of death?' he echoed.

'Death!' she cried:  'death!  In that box that you have 
dragged about London and carried on your defenceless 
shoulders, sleep, at the trigger's mercy, the destroying 
energies of dynamite.'

'My God!' cried Harry.

'Ah!' she continued wildly, 'will you flee now?  At any 
moment you may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this 
building.  I was sure M'Guire was wrong; this morning, before 
day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my 
beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own contrivances.  I knew 
then I loved you - Harry, will you go now?  Will you not 
spare me this unwilling crime?'

Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box:  at 
last he turned to her.

'Is it,' he asked hoarsely, 'an infernal machine?'

Her lips formed the word 'Yes,' which her voice refused to 
utter.

With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; 
in that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; 
and at the measured sound, the blood flowed back upon his 
heart.

'For whom?' he asked.

'What matters it,' she cried, seizing him by the arm.  'If 
you may still be saved, what matter questions?'

'God in heaven!' cried Harry.  'And the Children's Hospital!  
At whatever cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!'

'It cannot,' she gasped.  'The power of man cannot avert the 
blow.  But you, Harry - you, my beloved - you may still - '

And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a 
sudden catch was audible, like the catch of a clock before it 
strikes the hour.  For one second the two stared at each 
other with lifted brows and stony eyes.  Then Harry, throwing 
one arm over his face, with the other clutched the girl to 
his breast and staggered against the wall.

A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their 
eyes blinked against the coming horror; and still clinging 
together like drowning people, they fell to the floor.  Then 
followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from the 
indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat; 
the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.

Presently these began a little to disperse:  and when at 
length they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a 
sitting posture, the first object that greeted their vision 
was the box reposing uninjured in its corner, but still 
leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.

'Oh, poor Zero!' cried the girl, with a strange sobbing 
laugh.  'Alas, poor Zero!  This will break his heart!'



THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (CONCLUDED)



SOMERSET ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, 
contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the 
young man found Zero seated on a sofa in an attitude of 
singular dejection.  Close beside him stood an untasted grog, 
the mark of strong preoccupation.  The room besides was in 
confusion:  boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was 
strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of 
this disorder lay a lady's glove.

'I have come,' cried Somerset, 'to make an end of this.  
Either you will instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost 
what it may) I will denounce you to the police.'

'Ah!' replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.  'You are too 
late, dear fellow!  I am already at the end of all my hopes, 
and fallen to be a laughing-stock and mockery.  My reading,' 
he added, with a gentle despondency of manner, 'has not been 
much among romances; yet I recall from one a phrase that 
depicts my present state with critical exactitude; and you 
behold me sitting here "like a burst drum."'

'What has befallen you?' cried Somerset.

'My last batch,' returned the plotter wearily, 'like all the 
others, is a hollow mockery and a fraud.  In vain do I 
combine the elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have 
now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except 
yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face.  
My subordinates themselves have turned upon me.  What 
language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, 
what pungency of expression!  She came once; I could have 
pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned 
to announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was 
very inhumane.  Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; 
the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well, well!  
Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead.  I am 
extinct.  It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my 
life, I should be haunted by quotations from works of an 
inexact and even fanciful description; but here,' he added, 
'is another:  "Othello's occupation's gone."  Yes, dear 
Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I 
ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to 
condescend to a less glorious life?'

'I cannot describe how you relieve me,' returned Somerset, 
sitting down on one of several boxes that had been drawn out 
into the middle of the floor.  'I had conceived a sort of 
maudlin toleration for your character; I have a great 
distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty; and 
upon both grounds, your news delights me.  But I seem to 
perceive,' he added, 'a certain sound of ticking in this 
box.'

'Yes,' replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, 
'I have set several of them going.'

'My God!' cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.

'Machines?'

'Machines!' returned the plotter bitterly.  'Machines indeed!  
I blush to be their author.  Alas!' he said, burying his face 
in his hands, 'that I should live to say it!'

'Madman!' cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm.  'What am I 
to understand?  Have you, indeed, set these diabolical 
contrivances in motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?'

'"Hoist with his own petard?"' returned the plotter musingly.  
'One more quotation:  strange!  But indeed my brain is struck 
with numbness.  Yes, dear boy, I have, as you say, put my 
contrivance in motion.  The one on which you are sitting, I 
have timed for half an hour.  Yon other - '

'Half an hour! - ' echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation.  
'Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?'

'Dear fellow, why so much excitement?' inquired Zero.  'My 
dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only 
child, I would give it him to play with.  You see this 
brick?' he continued, lifting a cake of the infernal compound 
from the laboratory-table.  'At a touch it should explode, 
and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the 
square with ruins.  Well now, behold!  I dash it on the 
floor.'

Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very 
ecstasy of terror, wrested the brick from his possession.  
'Heavens!' he cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care 
than ever mother handled her first-born withal, gingerly 
transported the explosive to the far end of the apartment:  
the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side, 
dispiritedly watching him.

'It was entirely harmless,' he sighed.  'They describe it as 
burning like tobacco.'

'In the name of fortune,' cried Somerset, 'what have I done 
to you, or what have you done to yourself, that you should 
persist in this insane behaviour?  If not for your own sake, 
then for mine, let us depart from this doomed house, where I 
profess I have not the heart to leave you; and then, if you 
will take my advice, and if your determination be sincere, 
you will instantly quit this city, where no further 
occupation can detain you.'

'Such, dear fellow, was my own design,' replied the plotter.  
'I have, as you observe, no further business here; and once I 
have packed a little bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal 
meal, to go with me as far as to the station, and see the 
last of a broken-hearted man.  And yet,' he added, looking on 
the boxes with a lingering regret, 'I should have liked to 
make quite certain.  I cannot but suspect my underlings of 
some mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I cherish that 
idea:  it may be the weakness of a man of science, but yet,' 
he cried, rising into some energy, 'I will never, I cannot if 
I try, believe that my poor dynamite has had fair usage!'

'Five minutes!' said Somerset, glancing with horror at the 
timepiece.  'If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I 
leave you.'

'A few necessaries,' returned Zero, 'only a few necessaries, 
dear Somerset, and you behold me ready.'

He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which 
seemed to draw out into eternity for his unfortunate 
companion, he returned, bearing in his hand an open Gladstone 
bag.  His movements were still horribly deliberate, and his 
eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he moved to 
and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small 
trifles.  Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of 
dynamite.

'Put that down!' cried Somerset.  'If what you say be true, 
you have no call to load yourself with that ungodly 
contraband.'

'Merely a curiosity, dear boy,' he said persuasively, and 
slipped the brick into his bag; 'merely a memento of the past 
- ah, happy past, bright past!  You will not take a touch of 
spirits? no?  I find you very abstemious.  Well,' he added, 
'if you have really no curiosity to await the event - '

'I!' cried Somerset.  'My blood boils to get away.'

'Well, then,' said Zero, 'I am ready; I would I could say, 
willing; but thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours 
- '

Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and 
dragged him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on 
the deserted mansion; and still towing his laggardly 
companion, the young man sped across the square in the Oxford 
Street direction.  They had not yet passed the corner of the 
garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an 
extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by 
a shattering FRACAS.  Somerset turned in time to see the 
mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and 
instantly collapse into its cellars.  At the same moment, he 
was thrown violently to the ground.  His first glance was 
towards Zero.  The plotter had but reeled against the garden 
rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon 
his heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; 
and the young man heard him murmur to himself:  'NUNC 
DIMITTIS, NUNC DIMITTIS!'

The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the 
whole of Golden Square was alive with men, women, and 
children, running wildly to and fro, and like rabbits in a 
warren, dashing in and out of the house doors.  And under 
favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering 
plotter.

'It was grand,' he continued to murmur:  'it was 
indescribably grand.  Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day 
of glory! and oh, my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly 
hast thou prevailed!'

Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle 
of the footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.

'Good God!' he cried, 'how mortifying! seven minutes too 
early!  The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, 
fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me.  Alas, can there 
be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-
letter day be chequered by a shadow?'

'Incomparable ass!' said Somerset, 'what have you done?  
Blown up the house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole 
earthly property of the only person who is fool enough to 
befriend you!'

'You do not understand these matters,' replied Zero, with an 
air of great dignity.  'This will shake England to the heart.  
Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the 
pointing finger of revenge.  And now that my dynamite is 
proved effective - '

'Heavens, you remind me!' ejaculated Somerset.  'That brick 
in your bag must be instantly disposed of.  But how?  If we 
could throw it in the river - '

'A torpedo,' cried Zero, brightening, 'a torpedo in the 
Thames!  Superb, dear fellow!  I recognise in you the marks 
of an accomplished anarch.'

'True!' returned Somerset.  'It cannot so be done; and there 
is no help but you must carry it away with you.  Come on, 
then, and let me at once consign you to a train.'

'Nay, nay, dear boy,' protested Zero.  'There is now no call 
for me to leave.  My character is now reinstated; my fame 
brightens; this is the best thing I have done yet; and I see 
from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden 
Square Atrocity.'

'My young friend,' returned the other, 'I give you your 
choice.  I will either see you safe on board a train or safe 
in gaol.'

'Somerset, this is unlike you!' said the chymist.  'You 
surprise me, Somerset.'

'I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police 
office,' returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage.  
'For on one point my mind is settled:  either I see you 
packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine in 
prison.'

'You have perhaps neglected one point,' returned the 
unoffended Zero:  'for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to 
see what means you can employ to force me.  The will, my dear 
fellow - '

'Now, see here,' interrupted Somerset.  'You are ignorant of 
anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly 
knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform 
you that I have but to raise my hand and voice - here in this 
street - and the mob - '

'Good God in heaven, Somerset,' cried Zero, turning deadly 
white and stopping in his walk, 'great God in heaven, what 
words are these?  Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should 
they be used!  The brutal mob, the savage passions . . . . 
Somerset, for God's sake, a public-house!'

Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.  
'This is very interesting,' said he.  'You recoil from such a 
death?'

'Who would not?' asked the plotter.

'And to be blown up by dynamite,' inquired the young man, 
'doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?'

'Pardon me,' returned Zero:  'I own, and since I have braved 
it daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride:  
it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind of man.'

'One more question,' said Somerset:  'you object to Lynch 
Law? why?'

'It is assassination,' said the plotter calmly, but with 
eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the question.

'Shake hands with me,' cried Somerset.  'Thank God, I have 
now no ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I 
burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly 
assist at your departure.'

'I do not very clearly take your meaning,' said Zero, 'but I 
am sure you mean kindly.  As to my departure, there is 
another point to be considered.  I have neglected to supply 
myself with funds; my little all has perished in what history 
will love to relate under the name of the Golden Square 
Atrocity; and without what is coarsely if vigorously called 
stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to 
pass the ocean.'

'For me,' said Somerset, 'you have now ceased to be a man.  
You have no more claim upon me than a door scraper; but the 
touching confusion of your mind disarms me from extremities.  
Until to-day, I always thought stupidity was funny; I now 
know otherwise; and when I look upon your idiot face, 
laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the 
tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood.  What should 
this portend?  I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in 
scepticism.  Is it possible,' he cried, in a kind of horror 
of himself - 'is it conceivable that I believe in right and 
wrong?  Already I have found myself, with incredulous 
surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.  
And must this change proceed?  Have you robbed me of my 
youth?  Must I fall, at my time of life, into the Common 
Banker?  But why should I address that head of wood?  Let 
this suffice.  I dare not let you stay among women and 
children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any means 
I may avoid it; you have no money:  well then, take mine, and 
go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day 
will be your last.'

'Under the circumstances,' replied Zero, 'I scarce see my way 
to refuse your offer.  Your expressions may pain, they cannot 
surprise me; I am aware our point of view requires a little 
training, a little moral hygiene, if I may so express it; and 
one of the points that has always charmed me in your 
character is this delightful frankness.  As for the small 
advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia.'

'It shall not,' said Somerset.

'Dear fellow, you do not understand,' returned the plotter.  
'I shall now be received with fresh confidence by my 
superiors; and my experiments will be no longer hampered by 
pitiful conditions of the purse.'

'What I am now about, sir, is a crime,' replied Somerset; 
'and were you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should 
scorn to be reimbursed of money I had so scandalously 
misapplied.  Take it, and keep it.  By George, sir, three 
days of you have transformed me to an ancient Roman.'

With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the 
pair were driven rapidly to the railway terminus.  There, an 
oath having been exacted, the money changed hands.

'And now,' said Somerset, 'I have bought back my honour with 
every penny I possess.  And I thank God, though there is 
nothing before me but starvation, I am free from all 
entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel Jones.'

'To starve?' cried Zero.  'Dear fellow, I cannot endure the 
thought.'

'Take your ticket!' returned Somerset.

'I think you display temper,' said Zero.

'Take your ticket,' reiterated the young man.

'Well,' said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, 
'your attitude is so strange and painful, that I scarce know 
if I should ask you to shake hands.'

'As a man, no,' replied Somerset; 'but I have no objection to 
shake hands with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran 
poison or bell-fire.'

'This is a very cold parting,' sighed the dynamiter; and 
still followed by Somerset, he began to descend the platform.  
This was now bustling with passengers; the train for 
Liverpool was just about to start, another had but recently 
arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult.  As the 
pair reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, 
they came into an open space; and here the attention of the 
plotter was attracted by a STANDARD broadside bearing the 
words:  'Second Edition:  Explosion in Golden Square.'  His 
eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he 
sprang forward - his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the 
stall - and instantly, with a formidable report, the dynamite 
exploded.  When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen 
much shattered, and the stall keeper running forth in terror 
from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag 
no adequate remains were to be found.

In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his 
escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, 
his body sick with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.  
Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to 
find in his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great 
content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and the 
kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even 
if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain 
comfort since Zero was expunged.

Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. 
Godall's shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and 
scarce considering what he did, he opened the glass door and 
entered.

'Ha!' said Mr. Godall, 'Mr. Somerset!  Well, have you met 
with an adventure?  Have you the promised story?  Sit down, 
if you please; suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own 
special brand; and reward me with a narrative in your best 
style.'

'I must not take a cigar,' said Somerset.

'Indeed!' said Mr. Godall.  'But now I come to look at you 
more closely, I perceive that you are changed.  My poor boy, 
I hope there is nothing wrong?'

Somerset burst into tears.



EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN



ON a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last 
year, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, 
Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to 
the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street.  It was a place 
he had visited but once before:  the memory of what had 
followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having 
prevented his return.  Even now, he looked in before he 
entered; but the shop was free of customers.

The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a 
penny version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner's 
arrival.  On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that he 
recognised him.

'By Jove,' he thought, 'unquestionably Somerset!'

And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously 
careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of 
custom changed distaste to curiosity.

'"Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,"' said the shopman to 
himself, in the tone of one considering a verse.  'I suppose 
it would be too much to say "orotunda," and yet how noble it 
were!  "Or opulent orotunda strike the sky."  But that is the 
bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and some nonsense 
about sense continually intervenes.'

'Somerset, my dear fellow,' said Challoner, 'is this a 
masquerade?'

'What?  Challoner!' cried the shopman.  'I am delighted to 
see you.  One moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet:  
only the octave.'  And with a friendly waggle of the hand, he 
once more buried himself in the commerce of the Muses.  'I 
say,' he said presently, looking up, 'you seem in wonderful 
preservation:  how about the hundred pounds?'

'I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,' 
replied Challoner modestly.

'Ah,' said Somerset, 'I very much doubt the legitimacy of 
inheritance.  The State, in my view, should collar it.  I am 
now going through a stage of socialism and poetry,' he added 
apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of medicinal 
waters.

'And are you really the person of the - establishment?' 
inquired Challoner, deftly evading the word 'shop.'

'A vendor, sir, a vendor,' returned the other, pocketing his 
poesy.  'I help old Happy and Glorious.  Can I offer you a 
weed?'

'Well, I scarcely like . . . ' began Challoner.

'Nonsense, my dear fellow,' cried the shopman.  'We are very 
proud of the business; and the old man, let me inform you, 
besides being the most egregious of created beings from the 
point of view of ethics, is literally sprung from the loins 
of kings.  "DE GODALL JE SUIS LE FERVENT."  There is only one 
Godall. - By the way,' he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, 
'how did you get on with the detective trade?'

'I did not try,' said Challoner curtly.

'Ah, well, I did,' returned Somerset, 'and made the most 
incomparable mess of it:  lost all my money and fairly 
covered myself with odium and ridicule.  There is more in 
that business, Challoner, than meets the eye; there is more, 
in fact, in all businesses.  You must believe in them, or get 
up the belief that you believe.  Hence,' he added, 'the 
recognised inferiority of the plumber, for no one could 
believe in plumbing.'

'A PROPOS,' asked Challoner, 'do you still paint?'

'Not now,' replied Paul; 'but I think of taking up the 
violin.'

Challoner's eye, which had been somewhat restless since the 
trade of the detective had been named, now rested for a 
moment on the columns of the morning paper, where it lay 
spread upon the counter.

'By Jove,' he cried, 'that's odd!'

'What is odd?' asked Paul.

'Oh, nothing,' returned the other:  'only I once met a person 
called M'Guire.'

'So did I!' cried Somerset.  'Is there anything about him?'

Challoner read as follows:  'MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN STEPNEY.  An 
inquest was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M'Guire, 
described as a carpenter.  Doctor Dovering stated that he had 
for some time treated the deceased as a dispensary patient, 
for sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and nervous depression.  
There was no cause of death to be found.  He would say the 
deceased had sunk.  Deceased was not a temperate man, which 
doubtless accelerated death.  Deceased complained of dumb 
ague, but witness had never been able to detect any positive 
disease.  He did not know that he had any family.  He 
regarded him as a person of unsound intellect, who believed 
himself a member and the victim of some secret society.  If 
he were to hazard an opinion, he would say deceased had died 
of fear.'

'And the doctor would be right,' cried Somerset; 'and my dear 
Challoner, I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I 
will - Well, after all,' he added, 'poor devil, he was well 
served.'

The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon 
the threshold.  He was wrapped in a long waterproof, 
imperfectly supplied with buttons; his boots were full of 
water, his hat greasy with service; and yet he wore the air 
of one exceeding well content with life.  He was hailed by 
the two others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.

'And did you try the detective business?' inquired Paul.

'No,' returned Harry.  'Oh yes, by the way, I did though:  
twice, and got caught out both times.  But I thought I should 
find my - my wife here?' he added, with a kind of proud 
confusion.

'What? are you married?' cried Somerset.

'Oh yes,' said Harry, 'quite a long time:  a month at least.'

'Money?' asked Challoner.

'That's the worst of it,' Desborough admitted.  'We are 
deadly hard up.  But the Pri- Mr. Godall is going to do 
something for us.  That is what brings us here.'

'Who was Mrs. Desborough?' said Challoner, in the tone of a 
man of society.

'She was a Miss Luxmore,' returned Harry.  'You fellows will 
be sure to like her, for she is much cleverer than I.  She 
tells wonderful stories, too; better than a book.'

And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered.  
Somerset cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the 
Superfluous Mansion, and Challoner fell back a step and 
dropped his cigar as he beheld the sorceress of Chelsea.

'What!' cried Harry, 'do you both know my wife?'

'I believe I have seen her,' said Somerset, a little wildly.

'I think I have met the gentleman,' said Mrs. Desborough 
sweetly; 'but I cannot imagine where it was.'

'Oh no,' cried Somerset fervently:  'I have no notion - I 
cannot conceive - where it could have been.  Indeed,' he 
continued, growing in emphasis, 'I think it highly probable 
that it's a mistake.'

'And you, Challoner?' asked Harry, 'you seemed to recognise 
her too.'

'These are both friends of yours, Harry?' said the lady.  
'Delighted, I am sure.  I do not remember to have met Mr. 
Challoner.'

Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having 
groped after his cigar.  'I do not remember to have had the 
pleasure,' he responded huskily.

'Well, and Mr. Godall?' asked Mrs. Desborough.

'Are you the lady that has an appointment with old - ' began 
Somerset, and paused blushing.  'Because if so,' he resumed, 
'I was to announce you at once.'

And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed 
into a small pavilion which had been added to the back of the 
house.  On the roof, the rain resounded musically.  The walls 
were lined with maps and prints and a few works of reference.  
Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, 
and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured pins, 
the progress of the different wars was being followed day by 
day.  A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco 
hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal, but of 
clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver dogs.  
In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a 
morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to 
the rain upon the roof.

'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last 
night adopted any fresh political principle?'

'The lady, sir,' said Somerset, with another blush.

'You have seen her, I believe?' returned Mr. Godall; and on 
Somerset's replying in the affirmative, 'You will excuse me, 
my dear sir,' he resumed, 'if I offer you a hint.  I think it 
not improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the 
past.  From one gentleman to another, no more words are 
necessary.'

A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that 
grave and touching urbanity that so well became him.

'I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,' he 
said; 'and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren 
courtesy and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be 
of serious benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.'

'Your Highness,' replied Clara, 'I must begin with thanks; it 
is like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take 
up the case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is 
worthy of all that you can do.'  She paused.

'But for yourself?' suggested Mr. Godall - 'it was thus you 
were about to continue, I believe.'

'You take the words out of my mouth,' she said.  'For myself, 
it is different.'

'I am not here to be a judge of men,' replied the Prince; 
'still less of women.  I am now a private person like 
yourself and many million others; but I am one who still 
fights upon the side of quiet.  Now, madam, you know better 
than I, and God better than you, what you have done to 
mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the 
future I concern myself, it is for the future I demand 
security.  I would not willingly put arms into the hands of a 
disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of 
the levyers of a private and a barbarous war.  I speak with 
some severity, and yet I pick my terms.  I tell myself 
continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually 
reminds me of the children whose lives and limbs you have 
endangered.  A woman,' he repeated solemnly - 'and children.  
Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a mother, you will 
feel the bite of that antithesis:  possibly when you kneel at 
night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier 
than any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and 
danger of disease, you shall hesitate to kneel before your 
Maker.'

'You look at the fault,' she said, 'and not at the excuse.  
Has your own heart never leaped within you at some story of 
oppression?  But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.'

'I was born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my 
mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.  
This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.  
Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon 
the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops 
manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust of battles on 
shore; and casting anxiously about for what should be the 
cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last, in 
the centre of all, a mother and her babe?  These, madam, are 
my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry 
Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the Bohemian 
tongue.  Yes, these are my politics:  to change what we can, 
to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is 
but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and 
impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no 
cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these 
bonds.'

There was a silence of a moment.

'I fear, madam,' resumed the Prince, 'that I but weary you.  
My views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also 
begin to grow old.  But I must still trouble you for some 
reply.'

'I can say but one thing,' said Mrs. Desborough:  'I love my 
husband.'

'It is a good answer,' returned the Prince; 'and you name a 
good influence, but one that need not be conterminous with 
life.'

'I will not play at pride with such a man as you,' she 
answered.  'What do you ask of me? not protestations, I am 
sure.  What shall I say?  I have done much that I cannot 
defend and that I would not do again.  Can I say more?  Yes:  
I can say this:  I never abused myself with the muddle-headed 
fairy tales of politics.  I was at least prepared to meet 
reprisals.  While I was levying war myself - or levying 
murder, if you choose the plainer term - I never accused my 
adversaries of assassination.  I never felt or feigned a 
righteous horror, when a price was put upon my life by those 
whom I attacked.  I never called the policeman a hireling.  I 
may have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.'

'Enough, madam,' returned the Prince:  'more than enough!  
Your words are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, 
when even the assassin is a sentimentalist, there is no 
virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual clarity.  Suffer 
me, then, to ask you to retire; for by the signal of that 
bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother, to be close at 
hand.  With her I promise you to do my utmost.'

And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, 
opening a door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.

'Madam and my very good friend,' said he, 'is my face so much 
changed that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr. 
Godall?'

'To be sure!' she cried, looking at him through her glasses.  
'I have always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and 
in your altered circumstances, of which I have already heard 
with deep regret, I will beg you to consider my respect 
increased instead of lessened.'

'I have found it so,' returned the Prince, 'with every class 
of my acquaintance.  But, madam, I pray you to be seated.  My 
business is of a delicate order, and regards your daughter.'

'In that case,' said Mrs. Luxmore, 'you may save yourself the 
trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have 
nothing to do with her.  I will not hear one word in her 
defence; but as I value nothing so particularly as the virtue 
of justice, I think it my duty to explain to you the grounds 
of my complaint.  She deserted me, her natural protector; for 
years, she has consorted with the most disreputable persons; 
and to fill the cup of her offence, she has recently married.  
I refuse to see her, or the being to whom she has linked 
herself.  One hundred and twenty pounds a year, I have always 
offered her:  I offer it again.  It is what I had myself when 
I was her age.'

'Very well, madam,' said the Prince; 'and be that so!  But to 
touch upon another matter:  what was the income of the 
Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?'

'My father?' asked the spirited old lady.  'I believe he had 
seven hundred pounds in the year.'

'You were one, I think, of several?' pursued the Prince.

'Of four,' was the reply.  'We were four daughters; and 
painful as the admission is to make, a more detestable family 
could scarce be found in England.'

'Dear me!' said the Prince.  'And you, madam, have an income 
of eight thousand?'

'Not more than five,' returned the old lady; 'but where on 
earth are you conducting me?'

'To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,' replied 
Florizel, smiling.  'For I must not suffer you to take your 
father for a rule.  He was poor, you are rich.  He had many 
calls upon his poverty:  there are none upon your wealth.  
And indeed, madam, if you will let me touch this matter with 
a needle, there is but one point in common to your two 
positions:  that each had a daughter more remarkable for 
liveliness than duty.'

'I have been entrapped into this house,' said the old lady, 
getting to her feet.  'But it shall not avail.  Not all the 
tobacconists in Europe . . .'

'Ah, madam,' interrupted Florizel, 'before what is referred 
to as my fall, you had not used such language!  And since you 
so much object to the simple industry by which I live, let me 
give you a friendly hint.  If you will not consent to support 
your daughter, I shall be constrained to place that lady 
behind my counter, where I doubt not she would prove a great 
attraction; and your son-in-law shall have a livery and run 
the errands.  With such young blood my business might be 
doubled, and I might be bound in common gratitude to place 
the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.'

'Your Highness,' said the old lady, 'I have been very rude, 
and you are very cunning.  I suppose the minx is on the 
premises.  Produce her.'

'Let us rather observe them unperceived,' said the Prince; 
and so saying he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.

Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; 
Somerset and Harry were hanging on her words with 
extraordinary interest; Challoner, alleging some affair, had 
long ago withdrawn from the detested neighbourhood of the 
enchantress.

'At that moment,' Mrs. Desborough was saying, 'Mr Gladstone 
detected the features of his cowardly assailant.  A cry rose 
to his lips:  a cry of mingled triumph . . .'

'That is Mr. Somerset!' interrupted the spirited old lady, in 
the highest note of her register.  'Mr. Somerset, what have 
you done with my house-property?'

'Madam,' said the Prince, 'let it be mine to give the 
explanation; and in the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.'

'Well, Clara, how do you do?' said Mrs. Luxmore.  'It appears 
I am to give you an allowance.  So much the better for you.  
As for Mr. Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation; 
for the whole affair, though costly, was eminently humorous.  
And at any rate,' she added, nodding to Paul, 'he is a young 
gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his pictures 
were the funniest I ever saw.'

'I have ordered a collation,' said the Prince.  'Mr. 
Somerset, as these are all your friends, I propose, if you 
please, that you should join them at table.  I will take the 
shop.'




End of the Project Gutenberg eText The Dynamiter