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He felt quite convinced that it was the roof from which danger threatened, but there was nothing to be seen, no sign of movement in the branches of the acacia. Still, the miscreant must be near at hand. He might even be watching the solitary occupant of the studio at that moment. Walter made up his mind what to do. He switched off all the lights and shut the door of the studio, at the same time affecting to turn the key in the lock. If Valdo were hiding close at hand, he would take this for an indication that the studio was locked and closed for the night. This being done, Walter crept back again and took up a position at the foot of an acacia. If Valdo entered the studio at all he was bound to come that way. Doubtless he had made his way over the roof, and presently it would be an easy matter to flutter from the dome on to the top of the acacia. Such a plan as this would present no difficulties to the flying man. Therefore, Walter braced himself for the effort which would be required of him presently. He had not much doubt as to the issue. From the point of physical strength he was a match and more than a match for the Italian. There was just the chance that the latter might make use of his knife, but that had to be risked. A quarter of an hour passed slowly, and Walter was beginning to get impatient. What he most feared now was that Lord Ravenspur might return and demand to know why the studio was in darkness. This would probably have the effect of scaring Valdo away, and Walter would have all his trouble for his pains. The minutes passed along, and no one came; but at length Walters patience was rewarded. He heard a slight swish and sway in the branches of the acacia overhead. He could hear deep and regular breathing coming nearer and nearer to him. Then, presently, in the darkness, he discerned the lithe figure of the Italian. A moment later, and the intruder was caught below the elbows in a grip that made him fairly grunt again. He struggled just for a moment, but the steady grip seemed to crush the life out of him, and he desisted. Walter bore him back until his left hand shot out, and the whole studio was bathed in flame once more. Before Valdo could realise what had really happened, Walters hands were all over him in a search for weapons. Nothing more dangerous come to light than a small sheathknife, which Walter swept into his pocket. He was quite calm and selfpossessed now. He coolly indicated a chair, into which Valdo flung himself sullenly. Now I should like to have a little conversation with you, he said. You will recollect that we have met before. I have not forgotten the fact, Luigi Silva said sullenly. It was at the Imperial Palace Theatre. Quite correct, Walter said. I came to see that remarkable performance of yours. I was very much interested, and I must congratulate you warmly. At the same time, it seems to me that yours is a dangerous kind of entertainment. A contemptuous smile flickered over Silvas face. There is no danger whatever, he murmured; anybody could do it if they had arms like mine. I am afraid you dont quite take my meaning, Walter murmured. There are some cigarettes by your elbow. You had better help yourself, especially as I am likely to detain you some time. With a defiant air the Italian took and lighted a cigarette. He did not appear in the least unnerved, though the furtive glances which he occasionally turned in the direction of his captor showed that his mind was not altogether at ease. He would have given much to know what Lance was driving at. He did not like to see the other quite so sure of his ground. My time is my own, he said. Go on. Oh, I beg your pardon, your time is mine. But I dare say you will wonder why I am detaining you like this. To tell you the truth, since your last visit here That is not true, Silva cried. I have never been here before! Why play with me? Walter asked contemptuously. It is some days since you were here last. To refresh your memory, I am alluding to the night when you came here by way of the ventilator in the dome, and made a murderous attack upon my uncle, who owes his life to the fact that I was not very far away. It is no use your denying this, because I am in a position to prove it. I dare say you congratulated yourself upon the fact that you got clear away. You would chuckle to think how mystified we all were. Here is a murderous onslaught made upon a public man in his own studio, from which there is no exit but the door; and on the night of the strange affair the door was locked. No one but a bird could have escaped through the ventilator. You can picture to yourself what a sensation the business would have caused if the police had been called in and the affair made known to the Press. Now I dare say you wonder why the police were not called in at once? Silva pulled at his cigarette savagely, but made no reply. Well, I am going to be more polite than you are, Walter said; and I am going to tell you. I had a fancy to play the detective myself. I looked around for some sort of a clue, and at length I found one. Ah, I see you are interested. Only in my own safety, Silva muttered. Well, that is the same thing. On the floor close by where you are seated I found a shabby yellow playbill, advertising the performance of Valdo, the flying man, at the Imperial Palace Theatre. The bill was neatly folded, and was of recent date. Now I know perfectly well that neither Lord Ravenspur nor any of his friends would be interested in that kind of thing. Therefore, how did the bill get here? Probably left by the flying man himself, and a flying man would be the only kind of human being capable of getting in and out of this studio in that mysterious fashion. Upon this, I made up my mind to come and see you, and I did. I have only to place this information, together with my testimony, in the hands of the police. Indeed, I have only to send for a constable now and give you into custody. After that you would not be likely to give us any cause for anxiety the next seven years. The Italians eyes gleamed as he glanced restlessly about him. There was no reason for Walter to ask himself if his prisoner understood. Silva shrugged his shoulders. That is what you are going to do? he asked. Oh, well come to that presently. In the meantime, I want a little information. You will remember when we were talking to you in the managers room at the Imperial, a lady came in and addressed a few words to you. She was only there for a moment, but she stayed quite long enough for me to recognise her features. I want to know what Mrs. Delahay needed to see you for. A sharp laugh broke from Silvas lips. You are very clever, he sneered. Oh, so clever. So you are interested in Mrs. Delahay? You think, perhaps, that I know a deal about the murder of her husband. I know less about it than you do, and I have no concern with her at all. You had better ask her. She will probably be astonished Ah, I see what you mean, Walter exclaimed. It was stupid of me not to grasp the problem sooner. Of course, it was not Mrs. Delahay at all I saw with you, but her sister, Countess Flavio. Something like an oath broke from Silvas lips. Thank you very much, Walter said. You could not tell me any more if you were ever so candid. And now I know exactly what brings you here. It is not robbery Robbery! Silva broke out vehemently. Sir, your words are a deadly insult. I am an honest man, though I may only be a servant; I would scorn to touch what does not belong to me. In that case you came here for violence, then, Walter said. Yours must be a strangely illogical mind. You would not soil your hands with another mans money, but you would not hesitate to stab him in the back under cover of the darkness. Come, dont let us argue any longer. You came here the other night to murder my uncle. But for a fortunate chance, Lord Ravenspur would be in his grave now. It is useless to deny it. Have I made any attempt to deny it? Silva said, in a voice that was utterly devoid of passion. Have I lied to you in any way? Oh, I see there is no mercy in your face, and doubtless if our positions were reversed, I should act as you are acting tonight. You are going to hand me over to the authorities. I shall be no worse treated if I tell the truth. I did come here to take Lord Ravenspurs life. I am only sorry that I failed. XXVI A Faithful Servant The words were uttered with a grim coldness that caused Walter to shiver. This was worse than any outbreak of fury, worse than homicidal mania in its most acute form. The man was sane enough beyond all doubt, but, at the same time, he was a fanatic, prepared to gratify his vengeance, even if his own life paid the penalty. Well, that is candid, at any rate, Walter said. You came here prepared to take my uncles life. It was the second attempt that you made upon it. Oh, you know what I mean. You mistook a guest who was coming here for Lord Ravenspur. That was a mistake, Silva said coolly. It was a mistake that I realised just in time. I should have greatly regretted any harm happening to an innocent party. I suppose it would have quite upset you, Walter said sarcastically. But we are wandering from the point. What is the grudge you have against my uncle? You have never even seen him till quite lately. He has been an utter stranger to you. A contemptuous smile flickered over Silvas face. I dont suppose I shall be able to make you understand, he said. Your race is different to mine. The blood in your veins flows much slower and colder. You have no traditions in this country which are part of your religion. You cannot comprehend that it is ones duty to avenge insult and outrage, even at the cost of a life. In my part of the world a man would be held a coward who hesitated to retrieve his honour in such a fashion. But in this case it was not my honour, but the honour of the noble house to which I belonged. It would have been bad enough if the thing had been done by one of my own countrymen, but a stranger, like Lord Ravenspur I fail to see the distinction, Walter murmured. Ah, that is because you cannot understand. Look you here, signor. I have a mistress to whom I am devotedly attached. I would lay down my life for her. I would do anything to shield her from pain. Let us say that my mistress is married to a man who outwardly possesses all the graces that Nature can bestow. He has the intellectual gifts, too. He is widely beloved and popular wherever he goes. But at heart he is a fiend. The refined cruelties which he uses towards his wife arouse revengeful feelings in my breast, though I dare not gratify them, in case I perish, and leave my beloved mistress in a worse case than ever. But there are others of my clan also serving the noble house from which my mistress came, and they write the Count the letter. You dont know what that means, and I am not going to tell you. But it is the deathwarrant, and the Count knows it. He cannot appeal against that. All the forces of the Crown cannot save his life. And then, mysteriously, he dies. But he does not die before he has done one last piece of irreparable mischief. He sees a way to strike his wife to the heart from the other side of the grave. There is a child, perhaps the only thing on earth that the Count loves purely and sincerely. He gets his friend, Lord Ravenspur, to kidnap that child. I tell you if his lordship had come amongst us and dishonoured the threshold of the greatest chief in South Italy he could not have unlocked the floodgates of vengeance in a more thorough manner. Think of the degradation, the bitter insult of it all! If the true facts of the case had been known to me at the time, Lord Ravenspur would have been a dead man years ago. But when my mistress vanished from the world, I naturally thought that she had taken the child with her. I did not know until quite recently what had happened. Then when I cast my mind back to the past I had no difficulty in fixing upon Lord Ravenspur as the culprit. The rest you know. The words were quietly and evenly spoken, but the deep ring of sincerity in them was not lost upon Walter Lance. Here was a man who saw his way clearly before him, a man blinded by prejudice and bigotry, who would not hesitate for a single moment, who would laugh contemptuously at the mere suggestion of personal danger. What could you do afterwards? Walter urged. Silva shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. Why go into that? he said. The honour of the house would be avenged. I should have done my duty, and have earned the approbation of my friends. There would be a great outcry, no doubt. The thing would be inquired into, and probably the child I speak of would have been restored to her mother, though, to be sure, I am not quite certain whether the Countess is a proper person So you have your doubts on that score? Walter cried eagerly. Now is it not a fact that the Countess Flavio was notoriously a woman of evil disposition? Everybody said so, Silva replied. Had I chosen, I might have thrown a different light upon it. Mind you, I am not pleased with my late mistress; but there were excuses plausible enough. I cannot forget that it was a horrible thing for a mother to go off and leave her only child all those years. Still, that is no matter. If the time ever came, I could show the world something which would open their eyes as to the doings in his lifetime of Count Flavio. He kept a diary. After his death I found that diary. And you did not produce it at the trial? To what good, signor? Popular prejudice was so strong against us that, beyond doubt, the prosecution would have proved that diary to be a forgery. Then I should have been cast into prison, and my mistress would have been deprived of the one protector whom she so sorely needed. Why, feeling ran so high at the time of the trial that it was dangerous for me to walk the streets alone at night. But why discuss this now? Why continue this unnecessary conversation? You have made up your mind what to do. You have only to ring the bell, and there is an end of me Silva paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly. He rose as if to take another cigarette. The box slipped from his hand, and some of the little white tubes rolled across the polished floor. With an apology for his clumsiness, he stooped to pick them up. Then he rose again, his right hand shot out in the direction of a figure in armour, grasping a huge battleaxe in its hand. With the swiftness of an animal, the battleaxe was snatched away, and before Walter could realise what had happened, the Italian had smashed a couple of the heavy plateglass sheets, thus clearing a way into the garden. Walter yelled at the top of his voice and darted forward, but he was too late. He realised the folly of a search in the darkness. No doubt, by this time the man was far away. He opened the studio door, which closed suddenly behind him, owing to a draught which came streaming through the broken panes. He saw Lord Ravenspur standing before him in the corridor, with a white face and agitated manner. What is it, Walter? the latter asked hoarsely. Ill tell you presently, Walter said. Only you must get the womenkind away first. It is quite imperative that Vera should know nothing, though it doesnt in the least matter in Mrs. Delahays case. She knows all about it. Mrs. Delahay, followed by Vera, was in the corridor by this time. The girls face was pale. There was an inquiring look in her eyes. It is really nothing, Walter said. Just a little accident on the polished floor of the studio. One of the servants will have to sleep in there tonight in case of intruders. It is a great pity we havent got one of the dogs from uncles place in Hampshire. It is terribly late, Mrs. Delahay exclaimed, with a significant glance in Walters direction. Really, I ought to be back at my hotel long ago. I suppose I can find a cab? I will go and find one for you, Walter said. Hadnt you better go to bed, Vera? Dont forget that you are likely to be up very late tomorrow night. Very few words sufficed to tell Mrs. Delahay what had happened. Walter saw her into a cab, after which he returned to the house. He was relieved to find that Vera had already retired. Lord Ravenspur was walking moodily up and down the library. One of the grooms is going to sleep in the studio, he said. We can get the damage repaired tomorrow. And now tell me everything. I am certain that you have something unpleasant to disclose. Walter told his story at some length. Lord Ravenspur followed with every sign of interest. Oh, I can quite understand that mans point of view, he said. You see, I know something about those people. When I was quite a young man I spent a year or two in Corsica, and, to a certain extent, I sympathise with them. I have committed an outrage on the national honour, and I am to pay the penalty with my life. The thing is recognised out there. It is regarded as quite commonplace. And there is no way of clearing yourself? Walter asked. Well, perhaps there is one, Ravenspur said thoughtfully. You see, the head of the family can interfere. Veras mother is in a position to sayBut what am I talking about? My dear boy, my life is in danger, and I am afraid that even if we lay Silva by the heels there will be others. But, come what may, I am going to ask for no clemency. Come what may, Vera shall never pass into the custody of that vile woman whom she has the misfortune to call her mother. Nothing shall induce me to change my mind. Indeed, such a thing would be a violation of my promise to the dead. Your sentiments do you honour, Walter said; but, unhappily, I dont see how you can carry them out. XXVII Flight! It was a long time before Lord Ravenspur replied. He paced up and down the studio immersed in his own gloomy thoughts. Then gradually his face cleared, his eyes flashed with resolution. I begin to see my way, he said. It is not for my sake, but that of the child. I hope you will believe me when I say I am no coward. If it were six months hence I could laugh at the danger, because, whatever happened to me, I should have succeeded in my purpose. In six months time Vera will be of age. At the expiration of that period she can become a naturalized British subject. Then the Crown will look after her interests, and see that the estates which she will some day inherit are properly administered. Six months hence Vera will be her own mistress. She has already been informed what her mother is like, and she will know how to behave towards that woman. It will be a satisfaction for me to know that we have baffled those bloodthirsty wretches after all. And in the meantime? Walter asked. Dont you think we should have Silva arrested, so that at any rate we should be safe as far as he is concerned? We could easily find him. I dont think so, Ravenspur said, thoughtfully. I know my enemy by sight, which you will admit is a very great advantage. If another assassin comes along, he will have a tremendous pull over me. Besides, you made a suggestion just now which gave me a brilliant idea. You said that it was a pity we hadnt got the dogs here. We will have a couple of bloodhounds up the first thing in the morning, and one of them shall sleep in my bedroom, the other in the studio. The hounds are not in the least dangerous to those who know them. But I pity the midnight intruder who comes along and gets introduced to one of them. That will be one way of protecting myself for a time, and it will give the scoundrels something to do to devise fresh means of putting an end to me. I have thought it all out, and the best thing we can do is to disappear. Disappear! Walter cried. What do you mean? I mean exactly what I say. The thing can be done tomorrow night. There is nothing easier. But tomorrow night we are going to Lady Ringmars great reception, Walter urged. I understand that it is to be one of the biggest things of the season, and I know that Vera is looking forward to it with the greatest possible pleasure. Well, we can go, Ravenspur said, a trifle impatiently. Now my scheme is this we go to Lady Ringmars, and stay there till about two oclock in the morning. We take certain wraps with us, and we leave the house, not in one of the carriages, but in a hired fly which will subsequently take us to Waterloo Station. By special train we will go down to Weymouth, and at that point hire a yacht to convey us to Jersey. There we shall be able to stay a few days, and settle our plans. The servants can easily get all we want together early tomorrow morning, and send the bags down to Weymouth as luggage in advance. The next day the papers will contain the information that Lord Ravenspur has suddenly been attacked with a mysterious illness, and that he has been ordered to leave London at once. As perfect rest and quietness are prescribed, he is keeping his address a secret, and has given strict orders that no communication of any kind is to be forwarded. Even the servants in Park Lane will profess not to know where we have gone, which will be nothing less than the truth. How does the idea strike you? Walter murmured something in reply. As a matter of fact, he was not in the least in love with the scheme, though Lord Ravenspur appeared to be so eager and happy about it, that he had not the heart to throw cold water on the programme. From his more youthful point of view, the idea of flight seemed cowardly. He would have placed the matter in the hands of the police. He would not have shrunk from the utmost publicity. But still, there was Vera to be considered. The girls future was of the first importance. Very well, he said, I will give up my time tomorrow to getting ready. I suppose now that you wont want me to telegraph to the Hampshire place for the dogs? Oh, I think you had better, Ravenspur said. One never knows what may turn up. And there is always the chance of the secret being discovered. And now let us go to bed, and try to get some sleep. I havent had a nights rest for a week. I am longing to find myself on board a yacht again. I shall be safe there at all events. Good night, my boy. It was after lunch the following day that Vera came into the billiardroom in search of Walter. The latter had practically finished his preparations. He had done everything that his uncle had entrusted to him, and there was nothing now but to wait the turn of events. In a wellregulated establishment like that of Lord Ravenspurs, everything had proceeded smoothly enough. By luncheon time the whole of the boxes and portmanteaux had been packed, and the luggage despatched. Still, there was a perplexed look in Veras eyes as she came into the billiardroom. I have been looking for you everywhere, Walter, she said. I want to know what is the meaning of all this mystery. I have seen enough baggage leave the house to supply us with all we want for a season in Scotland. When I asked my maid what she was doing, she simply said that she had been instructed by the housekeeper to get my things ready. Of course, I raised no objection, but I should certainly like to know what it all means. Walter looked a trifle embarrassed. He had quite forgotten that Vera might show a natural curiosity. We are going away for a little time, he explained. The fact of the matter is, your guardian has not been at all well lately. But you must have noticed that for yourself. He has had a great deal to try him, too, and he is afraid of a breakdown. We are going to Weymouth direct from Lord Ringmars House, and not a soul is to know anything about it. You see, if we stay and make elaborate preparations, it will take quite a week to make a start. It is far better to let people know afterwards that Lord Ravenspur has been ordered away peremptorily, and that he is to have perfect rest for the next month or so. Only I cant sufficiently impress upon you the necessity of keeping this thing absolutely secret. Even from Lady Ringmar? Vera cried. From everybody, Walter said, somewhat sternly. Vera, your guardian is in great danger. You are in great danger yourself. I dare not tell you more now, but perhaps I shall be permitted to say it later on. Go about your business or pleasure today just as if nothing had happened. Vera asked no further questions. She was perhaps just a little hurt that Walter had refused to take her into his confidence. At the same time, she was young and vigorous, and the thought of a change was not displeasing. She passed out of the house presently with a view to a walk in the park. She stopped before a feeble, blind old man who was dolefully grinding out hymns on a dilapidated organ. A boy of some ten or twelve years was guiding the unfortunate man along the pavement. Vera took out her purse, and placed a shilling in the little tin cup which the boy was carrying. I have not seen you here before, she said kindly. The man murmured something to the effect that this was his first day with the organ. He seemed uneasy and undecided in his manner, and, naturally enough, Vera put this down to the strangeness of his surroundings. Then she hastened on to the park, and the little incident passed from her mind. She had tea subsequently with a friend in Grosvenor Square, and when she came back, barely in time to dress for dinner, she saw that the blind man was still in the Lane, grinding industriously at his melancholy airs. I suppose Walter has told you, Ravenspur said as they sat down to dinner. You know where we are going? He told me part, Vera said. Really, I dont quite understand what all this mystery means. Indeed, it is absolutely necessary, Ravenspur said gravely. It is as necessary for your happiness as it is for mine. I have done my best to safeguard your welfare Oh, yes, yes, Vera cried contritely. I am a most ungrateful girl to speak in that way. After all, I am looking forward to the trip. It is probably the last happy time we shall have together. Yes; I have quite made up my mind to get my own living. But we wont discuss that tonight. Dinner was over at length and the carriage was ordered round. Vera came downstairs presently; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling. She was very alluring and attractive in her white dress. She had made up her mind to be absolutely happy tonight. The dress was a special present from Lord Ravenspur, and Vera had been afraid to ask what the Paris house had charged for it. Still, it was the last extravagance she was going to put Lord Ravenspur to. I declare there is my old blind man still, she said, as she got into the carriage. He must have been here all day. I must make inquiries, and see what I can do for him. The door of the carriage was banged to, and the horses trotted away. As they passed the spot where the blind man was standing he suddenly ceased his doleful airs and whistled softly. A moment later and a shabby figure came shuffling down the Lane. Thats right, Stevens, the blind man said in a quick, clear voice. Now heres the note, and, mind, you are not to deliver it before halfpast twelve. This is most important. If you are successful, come back to me at the appointed spot, and I will see that you get your moneyfifty pounds. XXVIII Veras Warning Amongst her many friends, and in the keen enjoyment of the evening, Vera forgot her fears. She was young enough to appreciate to the full the joys of life. She was strong and vigorous, and most things pleased her. Besides, there was always the reflection that the gates would be closed to her before long. Once she had taken her fate in her own hands, and had gone into the world to get her living, there would be no more of this. A little longer and she would say goodbye to Lord Ravenspur and Walter. Of course, the wrench would be a bitter one, for she was by no means blind to the hardships and privations of the poor. Still, she put that out of her mind now. She was going to have a very pleasant evening, and by this time tomorrow she would be far away from the heat and dust and bustle of London. In her minds eye she could see the yacht sliding over the water. She could see the moon shining on the waves, and turning their crests to molten silver. The big house was crowded to its utmost capacity, for Lady Ringmar was one of the most prominent of society women, and invitations to her entertainments were eagerly sought after. The rooms were filled. At the end of the long corridor Vera caught a peep of the garden, all aglow with points of flame from the electric lights entwined about the trees and shrubs. An hour or so passed pleasantly enough; then, as the heat grew more intense Veras mind turned to the garden. There were huge blocks of ice, looking deliciously cool, behind banks of ferns. The air hummed with the noise of electric fans, and yet the atmosphere was heavy and enervating. Supper was a thing of the past, and Vera stood at the head of a flight of marble steps, which led to the garden. She was quite alone. She was looking for Walter, whom she had not seen for some little time. She turned with a smile as someone murmured her name. She saw that it was Ravenspurs friend, Sir James Seton, who was standing by her side. So you are all alone, he said. What are those young men thinking about? It was very different in my day. Vera smiled somewhat faintly. She had every respect for Sir James. He was kindly disposed enough, but in the eyes of youth he was regarded as something of a bore. There was no help for it when he suggested a turn in the garden. Certainly, Vera murmured; only I dont want to walk far. I have enjoyed my first season in town immensely, but I am beginning to long for the fresh air in the country again. Quite right, Sir James agreed; just the same with me. Why people box themselves up in London during the most beautiful months in the year I cant imagine. They talk about England being a decadent country! A man wants a real stamina to struggle through the three months which we call the season. Some of these men are a perfect marvel to me. Take Ravenspur, for example. That man works as hard as any man in England. He is here, there, and everywhere, and yet he finds plenty of time for this sort of thing, too. If there is anybody I envy, it is Ravenspur. I am sure you have no need to envy anybody, Vera laughed. Besides, in many ways you are very like him. Most people see a strong resemblance between you two. Sir James chuckled as if well pleased with the compliment. Do you really think so? he asked eagerly. Well, I suppose what everybody says is bound to be true. At the same time, these resemblances are not always desirable. For instance, look what happened to me only the other day. And what was that? Vera asked. Dont you know? It was the last time I dined with your guardian. Didnt they tell you about it? It reminded me of the days when I was a soldierquite an adventure, too, I assure you. I was coming up Cheyne Row, more or less in the darkness, when a man darted out of the shadows, and attacked me. I had some difficulty in beating him off. I dont know whether the man was mad or not, but his intentions were quite serious. Really! Vera exclaimed, with widely opened eyes. And what became of the man? Was he locked up? Oh, he got away before I could do anything. Still, it was very unpleasant while it lasted, I assure you. It must have been, Vera said thoughtfully. But, my dear Sir James, I dont quite understand what this adventure has to do with your likeness to Lord Ravenspur. Oh, well, I had almost forgotten that. You see, when the fellow rushed at me, he addressed me as Ravenspur, just as the hero of the melodrama addresses the villain when he is caught in the last act. There is not the slightest doubt that I was mistaken for your guardian. Indeed, as soon as the man realised his mistake, he drew off at once. I am rather surprised they did not tell you. Vera was listening uneasily enough now. In the ordinary course of events she would have heard all about that mysterious occurrence.

Why had they kept the knowledge from her? As she sat there thinking the matter over, she began in her mind to piece events together. So this sudden flight from London was dictated by personal fear on the part of Lord Ravenspur. He wanted to get away from this relentless foe. There was no other way to safeguard himself than by this yachting cruise. And hitherto Vera had never detected in her guardian the slightest sign of nervousness or fear. This foe, then, must be a man of extraordinary determination and tenacity of purpose. Vera could see it all more clearly now. She recollected the disturbance in the conservatory on the night of Sir James Setons visit to Park Lane. She recollected with even more significant force the cries and the shattering of glass in the conservatory the previous evening. And why, for the first time in his life, had Lord Ravenspur caused the bloodhounds to be brought up from Hampshire? All these questions Vera asked herself, but she could think of no reply. In some vague way her womans instinct told her that she was mixed up in the business. If so, it would never do for her to desert Lord Ravenspur at this critical moment. She would have to stay by him until the danger was past. She sat there replying to the chattering remarks of her companion at random, until even he saw how preoccupied she was. I am afraid you are not quite yourself tonight, he said. I am sure I beg your pardon, Vera murmured. I am not quite myself. I wish you would do me a favour, Sir James. Would you mind finding Walter and sending him to me? Sir James trotted off obediently enough, and presently Walter came along. He looked somewhat warm and heated. I am sorry I couldnt find you before, he said. We have been having a bit of fun in the drawingroom. It was rather a nuisance, too. What do you think happened? But you will never guess. One of the dogs got away and actually followed us here. I found three or four ladies held up by one of the brutes in a drawingroom. They were frightened to death, not knowing what a peaceful creature poor Bruno is in the ordinary way. I had to lead him away and tie him up to one of the trees in the shrubbery. Vera smiled as she thought of the terror which the great hound would naturally inspire. No doubt he had managed to get away from Park Lane and had tracked them to Lady Ringmars house. He will be quite quiet where he is, she said, and we can take him with us when we go. I shall be glad to get away. I am longing to leave London behind me now. Walter looked anxiously at his companion. He saw how pale and disturbed she was, how distressed her features were. What is the matter? he asked tenderly. I was going to tell you, Vera replied. I have had a considerable shock tonight. I have learnt something which you tried to conceal from me. Oh, I am not blaming you, because I am sure you only acted for the best, but I have just been having a conversation with Sir James Seton, and he was telling me all about the attack that was made on him the other night when he came to dine with us. I was dreadfully grieved to hear what he had to say. But, my dear girl, Walter protested, really Oh, yes, I know. You are thinking about me now, Vera said. But it is rather too late. That murderous attack was made upon Sir James Seton because the miscreant mistook him for Lord Ravenspur. There can be no doubt about it, because Sir James told me so. And when I heard that, other strange circumstances flashed into my mind. For instance, those two mysterious occurrences in the studio. Now, tell me honestly, Walter, is the danger really great? Walter hesitated a moment before he replied. I am very much afraid it is, he said presently. It is all a question of time. And you must not regard Lord Ravenspur as a coward, because he is nothing of the kind. I am certain that he is acting in your very best interests Ah, I thought I was at the bottom of it somewhere, Vera cried, as Walter bit his lip. I was absolutely convinced of it. Oh, I know I couldnt tell you why, except that my instinct warns me. But am I not to know, Walter? Am I to go on being treated as a child? You have both been very good to me, and the mere suggestion that I am a danger and a burden to you fills me with pain. Wont you take me into your confidence? I am no longer a child. XXIX The Message If the secret were only my own I would not hesitate a moment, Walter said. Be patient a little longer, my dearest girl. I am quite sure that Ravenspur will tell you when the proper time comes. Once we are on board the yacht there will be no occasion for further secrecy. Another hour, and we shall be on our way. I am not a nervous man, but this thing is beginning to worry me. Vera persisted no further. The band had just ceased playing, and there was a sudden rush of guests into the garden, so that there was no opportunity for further privacy. A somewhat imperious dowager pounced down upon Walter, with a request that he would find her daughter, and there was nothing for it but to obey. Just for a moment Vera stood in the midst of a laughing, chattering group of friends, then she managed to slip away unseen. She wanted to be alone and think this matter out. She was just a little hurt that the others had not taken her into their confidence. Still, perhaps Lord Ravenspur had acted in this way to save her pain and annoyance. He had always been kind and considerate to her. She owed him a deep debt of gratitude. And yet, up to a few moments ago, she had been prepared to turn her back upon her best friends and face the world alone. But she could not do that now. She would have to abandon her plans for the future. She would have to stay by Lord Ravenspurs side until this terrible danger was past. She was only a girl, and could not do much. Still, that little she would do cheerfully. Vera was still busy with these painful thoughts when a footman came up and spoke to her. He had a note on a tray, which he handed to Vera, with the intimation that there was no reply. So far as Vera could tell, the handwriting was quite strange to her. Who brought this? she demanded. It was left by some strange man, miss, the servant said. I was to give it to you at once, when you were alone, if possible. The footmans manner was perfectly respectful. He discreetly said nothing of the sovereign which had accompanied the letter. Vera turned away and broke the seal. She was in a somewhat secluded part of the garden now, but she had no difficulty in reading the letter with the aid of the sparkling points of flame which glimmered from the branches of the overhanging trees. My dear child (the letter ran), I want you to read this alone. I want you to promise me that it shall be shown to nobody. I daresay you will wonder why I write like this, after all these years, but I can only plead that circumstances, not myself, are alone to blame. I want you to believe that up till quite recently I was hardly aware of your existence. But all these things I can explain when we meet. Naturally you will ask yourself who I am, and why I should venture to address you in this fashion. You will see presently. For the last eighteen years you have dwelt under the roof of Lord Ravenspur. You have passed as his ward, and I understand that he has taken the greatest care of you. This much goes to his credit. But that he behaved like a scoundrel at the outset I am prepared to prove. Had it not been for him we should not have been parted all these years, and you would have had a better chance of making the acquaintance of your most unhappy mother. There, I have told the truth at length, and now you are aware who it is that thus addresses you. When we meet I shall be able to explain why I did nothing all these yearsbut I am wasting time. I know that you are going away tonight. I know that you may be out of London for some months. At present, circumstances do not permit me to claim my rights, or to interfere with your plans. You will go away this evening just as if nothing had happened, but before you go it is most imperative that I should see you, if only for half an hour. I have had this letter sent you by a trusty friend, who will not fail me. If you will go through the shrubbery at the back, to Lady Ringmars house, you will find a pathway bordered with nut trees, which ends in a green gate, leading to the lane at the back of the house. There you will find another friend, who will bring you to me without delay. I give you my word I will not detain you more than half an hour. Then you can return to your friends as if nothing had happened. They will be none the wiser. Indeed, I will ask you not to mention this letter to them at all. I am not going to anticipate your refusal, for I know that you will come, especially when I sign myself Your unhappy mother, Carlotta Flavio. In a state of mind bordering on absolute bewilderment, Vera read the letter again and again. It filled her with a pain which was closely akin to shame. So far as she could see, there was no mistaking the relationship which at one time had existed between the writer of the letter and Lord Ravenspur. A natural craving and desire to see her mother came over Vera. She knew there was yet time to get away from Lady Ringmars house and back again before the hour fixed for their departure. Vera slipped the letter inside her dress, and with a firm, determined step strode off in the direction of the shrubbery. She came presently to the spot indicated in the letter. She looked eagerly around to see if anybody awaited her. There was the faint suggestion of cigarette smoke lingering in the air, and then, from a turn in the path, the figure of a man emerged. Vera could see that he was exceedingly well turned out in evening dress. The dust coat he was wearing only partially concealed a slim built, athletic figure. For the rest, the man was good looking enough, and Vera judged from his dark eyes and black moustache that he was a foreigner, doubtless some relation of her mother. He lifted his hat with great courtesy, and waited for the girl to speak. I am Vera Rayne, she said quite simply. I am already aware of that, the stranger replied. I suppose you received the Countesss letter? But you must have done so, otherwise you would not be here. You are prepared One moment, Vera said. Caution had suddenly returned to her, and there was something in the eager light in the mans eyes now that warned her to be careful. I shall be glad if you will let me know who you are. What is your name, for instance? The gleam in the strangers eyes deepened in intensity, a quick frown knitted his brows. Can it in the least matter? he demanded. You have received the letter, and it is only for you to obey. There was a peremptory ring in the speech which Vera did not like at all. She realised that she was in a lonely part of the grounds, and that, in case of need, assistance was a long way off. She began to wish that she had been more prudent. After all, the whole thing might be a plot against her happiness, a scheme into which she had fallen without asking herself a single question. These doubts became something like certainties when the stranger strode past her and cut off all means of retreat. You are wasting my time, he said, and time is precious tonight. It is only a matter of half an hour altogether, and then you will be back with your friends once more. If I were not anxious for your welfare do you suppose I would be here at all? The speakers English was good enough, but Vera did not fail to detect the foreign accent behind it. She was becoming afraid now. Her heart was beating faster. She turned to see if assistance might not be at hand. But the thick belts of shrubs cut off all sounds. She could hear absolutely nothing in the direction of the house. And then there was another cause for fear. Surely she could hear something creeping stealthily through the bushes. She listened again, and the footsteps seemed to grow closer. Then the bushes parted, and a great black head and a pair of gleaming eyes emerged, followed by a long, heavy body that crept up to Veras side and rubbed against her dress. A cry of thankfulness escaped her. Bruno! she panted. How did you get here? Then she remembered the dog had followed them from Park Lane. He had been tied up by Walter in the shrubbery, and the broken cord attached to his collar told the rest of the story. The great hound lifted his head. The glittering ambercoloured eyes were turned on the stranger, and a deep growl came from the depths of the dogs throat. The small man in evening dress stepped back. That dog is very dangerous, he stammered. Not while I am here, Vera said coldly, though, perhaps if he met you here alone you might have cause for uneasiness. And now, sir, will you be so good as to tell me your name? Amati, the stranger said sullenly. But what does it matter? You have made up your mind by this time whether you are coming with me or not. You know perfectly well, from the letter in your possession, that I am a messenger from your mother. I have a cab outside the lane, and I can take you to her at once. I pledge you my word that you shall be back in half an hour. Still Vera hesitated. Still her suspicions refused to be lulled. It would be an easy matter for my mother to have come here, she said. There is not the slightest chance of being interrupted. And seeing that time is so short The last words were inaudible, for there was a shrill whistle somewhere in the garden, and the dog by Veras side whined uneasily. As Vera stooped to soothe him she twisted her handkerchief in the hounds collar. She recognised the whistle as Walters. Then she gave a sign and the great beast bounded away. XXX Lost A peculiar grim smile came over the face of the man who called himself Amati. He hesitated no longer, but with a single bound had reached Veras side, his arm was around her neck and his right hand pressed to her lips before she could utter a sound. Be silent, he hissed, and all will be well with you. Believe me, I wish to do you no harm. You are quite safe with me. There was nothing for it but to stand there obedient to the speakers will. Then, from his lips, came the sound like that of a bird startled from its nest in the night. The green door opened, and another man appeared. Almost before Vera knew what was happening she was half led, half carried through the door and deposited in a cab. It seemed to her that her senses were fading away, that there was something peculiarly sweet and faint smelling on the handkerchief which her assailant had pressed to her lips. The cab drove away swiftly, and the lane was left in silence once more. Meanwhile the evening was passing on, and Ravenspur was anxiously waiting for the moment when it would be time to get away. Walter came into the garden presently, wondering what had become of Vera. I have been looking for her, too, Ravenspur said. That is the worst of a great crush in a great house like this. It is so difficult to find anybody. We must be off in a quarter of an hour from now. What is all this I hear about one of the dogs? Oh, that is true enough, Walter laughed. It was old Bruno. I suppose he managed to get away from Park Lane. At any rate, he followed us here and I found him holding up some people in one of the drawingrooms. I thought he might just as well come to the station with us, so I tied him up in the shrubbery. When I went to see if he was all right just now I found the rascal had got away again. He came back when I whistled, but I couldnt get him to come to my side. I suppose he was afraid of getting a thrashing. However, he is lying down quite good in the shrubbery now, so there is no cause for worry. I daresay that it would be rather alarming for some of these women to be suddenly confronted with the dog when they were carrying on a tender flirtation in one of the arbours. But Lord Ravenspur was not listening. He looked anxious and worried and full of trouble. Oh, Bruno will follow the cab right enough, he said impatiently, and I daresay the other dog is at the station by this time. I wish you would go and find Vera for me. It sounds foolish, I know, but I have an absurd idea that something may happen just at the last moment. It is always the way when one is overstrung. Walter went off on his errand cheerfully enough. The moments passed, but he did not return, and the feeling of anxiety on Ravenspurs part deepened. Finally, Walter returned, with a face as anxious as Lord Ravenspurs own. He caught the latters arm almost fiercely. I begin to think you are right, he whispered. I cannot find Vera anywhere. One of her girl friends tells me that she last saw her quite alone going off in the direction of the pathway behind the shrubbery. That was half an hour ago. What she could be doing there I havent the remotest idea. A smothered groan escaped Ravenspurs lips. I had half expected this, he muttered. Something of the kind was bound to happen. She has been lured away, or she has been kidnapped. When you come to think of it, it is quite an easy matter in grounds as large as these. It seems quite hopeless to try and fight against these scoundrels. Depend upon it, they have found out our plans in some mysterious way, and have taken this step to thwart them at the last moment. But how did they manage, how could they have communicated with Vera? And what extraordinary allurement did they hold out to her to induce her to go off with strangers in this way? Oh, the thing is maddening! I dont know, Walter exclaimed. I only know that we are wasting time, and very precious time at that. Now, let me see, what would be the most likely thing to appeal to the sentiments of a young girl like Vera? I should say something to do with her mother. That, you may depend upon ita letter from her mother. We can very soon see whether my suspicions are right or not. Ill go out into the hall at once and interview the footmen. A group of idle, lounging footmen were loafing in the hall. Walter went straight to the point. Which of you gave Miss Rayne a letter just now? he demanded. And who brought it? Come, speak out! The strong, determined voice was not without its effect. One of the footmen came forward and murmured that he had taken the letter and delivered it to Vera. It was about half an hour ago, sir, he explained. No, I dont know the man who brought it. He looked like a small tradesman, or respectable clerk. All he told me was to give the letter to Miss Rayne and see that she had it at once. And you were to give it to her when she was alone? Well, yes, sir, the man admitted. The messenger did say that. You see, there was nothing strange Oh, of course not, Walter said impatiently. You were to give it to Miss Rayne when she was alone, and you had a handsome tip for your pains. Was not that so? The mans face testified to the fact that Walters shot had hit the mark, but the latter did not remain there a single moment longer. He had not lost sight of the fact that a crossexamination of a servant would probably have led to a deal of idle gossip, in which Veras name would have been mixed up; and besides, the footman was obviously an innocent party, and had told everything that he knew in connection with the letter and its delivery. It is just as you feared, Walter said, when he reached Ravenspurs side. A respectablydressed man came here half an hour ago and left a letter for Vera, which was to be delivered to her when she was alone. The thing was done, and that is how the mischief began. I feel quite sure that I am right, and that that letter came, or purported to come, from Veras mother. The poor child would naturally go off, thinking no evil. You may depend upon it that that scoundrel Silva is at the bottom of it all. He cannot strike you in one way, so he has made up his mind to deal the blow in another direction. There is no time to be lost. But how on earth did they find out our plans? Ravenspur groaned. All the servants are to be trusted. Ive got it, Walter said suddenly. Dont you recollect that blind organgrinder that Vera was so interested in? He was hanging about Park Lane all day. Those sort of people have regular beats, and he has never been seen there before. He saw all that baggage going away, and drew his own conclusions. It would be an easy matter to have the stuff followed to Waterloo Station, and find all about the special train from the porters. But what are we going to do? Are we going to raise an alarm? Not yet, Ravenspur said hoarsely. Dont let us have any scandal as long as we can possibly avoid it. Ill go out with you and well make another search of the grounds first. We may find some sort of a clue, and if we do we can follow it up without anybody being any the wiser. Lady Ringmar will simply think that we went off without saying goodbye, and there will be an end of the matter as far as she is concerned. Now come along. The two slipped out into the grounds again and made a rapid search of the garden. In the shrubbery they found the great hound, Bruno, patiently waiting there. Apparently he seemed to think that his time for punishment was past, for he crept up to Walters side and rubbed his great, black muzzle against his knee. Heres an inspiration, Walter exclaimed. If Vera went away at all, she must have gone by the back gate. We will put Bruno on the scent, and ifHallo, whats this? The dainty white cambric, with its fringe of lace, caught Walters eye. He withdrew the fragment from under the dogs collar and held it up to one of the points of electric flame. Here is a clue with a vengeance, he exclaimed. This is Veras handkerchief. Depend upon it, this is a signal to us that the dog must have been with her at the time she went, and she must certainly have gone voluntarily, or the dog would have made short work of the person with whom Vera departed. She took this way of letting us know she had gone, and most assuredly she must have gone by the back gate. What a lucky thing it was that the dog came here tonight. Let us put him on the scent at once. Your suggestion is an inspiration, Ravenspur muttered. But we cant go quite like this, you know. Run back to the house and get our coats and hats. Dont be long. Walter was back in a minute or two with the wraps. Then he laid his hand on the dogs collar and led him down the path at the back of the shrubbery. The great beast appeared to know exactly what was wanted of him, for, after throwing up his head and giving vent to a longdrawn howl, he placed his muzzle on the ground and scratched furiously at the door. When the road was reached, at length, the dog tore along at a furious rate, so that the silk scarf twisted round his collar tired Walters arms terribly. Still, that did not matter, as they were making good progress now. They went on and on, passing street after street, until the dawn came, and they were in a distant suburb. Before an attractivelooking house, the blinds and shutters of which were closely drawn, Bruno paused and threw up his head. This is the place right enough, Walter whispered. Be careful. If we are seen everything is spoilt. XXXI A Missing Link It was practically daylight now, so that the greatest caution was absolutely necessary. It was possible to obtain cover behind a group of thorn bushes and take observations of the house. But even that did not lack risk, all the more so because of the presence of the dog. The great hound had served his purpose, and it was essential that he should be got rid of, for the present at any rate. The house itself was quite a good one. The grounds were neat and trim. The flower boxes in the windows ablaze with bloom. The place spoke for itself as the residence of some prosperous individual who, in all probability, was somebody of importance in the City. It was the last place in the world to associate with crime and violence. In front of the house was a fairly large lawn, shaded by shrubs and trees. A kitchen garden at the back was bounded by a lane, and on the far side of this stretched a wide open common covered with gorse and bracken. Have you any idea where we are? Lord Ravenspur asked. Not the faintest, Walter confessed. I have never been here before. The only thing I am sure of is that Vera is in yonder house. But let us get away from here and talk it over. The further this thing goes, the more sure I am that we have foes to deal with who are clever as they are unscrupulous. But where shall we go? Ravenspur asked. Walter suggested skirting round the back of the house, and so on to the common. Once there, they found shelter enough, for the gorse was high and the bracken was deep. Indeed, a regiment of soldiers might have hidden there with perfect safety. I think I begin to see my way, Walter said. One of us must stay here and the other get back to London without delay. If you dont mind, I should like to consult my friend Venables about this business. He is very clever and courageous, and, besides, he has a decided fondness for detective business. I think you will agree with me that we want another hand? We want half a dozen, Ravenspur murmured. What we really ought to do is to place the matter in the hands of the police and have yonder house searched at once. Yet, I am very loth to do that. I am exceedingly anxious to prevent anything like a scandal, and this is the very sort of thing to appeal to the cheap Press. But what are we going to do about our journey to Weymouth? What would the officials at Waterloo think when we didnt turn up last night? And, again, there are all the servants in Park Lane. If you can only show me some way to stop the mouths of these people I shall be grateful. You know what servants are. I think that can be managed, Walter said after a thoughtful pause. You stay here while I go back to London. I will return as soon as possible. Oh, of course, I will bring a change of clothing with me. It would be madness to hang about a suburb like this in evening dress. We should be spotted in a moment. It seemed to Ravenspur that there was no help for it. Anxious and troubled and worn out as he was, he could not be altogether blind to the absurdity of the situation. The idea of a man in his position hiding himself on a London common, dressed as he was, seemed ridiculous. He had no more than a dust coat over his evening dress; he was wearing the collar of an Order. Still, as he looked about him he took fresh heart of grace. The common appeared to be little frequented. There were deep hollows here and there, full of bracken and brambles, under which it was possible to hide. There was no prospect of Walter getting back within the next three hours. There was nothing for it but to make the best of the situation. Meanwhile, Walter was hurrying back to London. He made a wide detour of the common, so that it was not possible for him to be seen from the house. Then presently he struck a main road on the far side of which ran a railway line. He could see in the distance the buildings and signals that marked a station. At any rate, he would be able to find out where he was without displaying his ignorance by asking questions. It was still quite early, only a little past five oclock, as Walter found on consulting his watch. After all said and done, the station was not much use to him, for probably no train would run within the next couple of hours. Presently there was a clatter of hoofs behind, and an empty hansom came along. The sight of the cab was proof to Walter that he was not very far outside the radius. A happy idea came to him. Are you going back to town? he asked the cabman. Well, yes, sir, the cabman explained. I have been taking a fare out to Cannon Green. Then you are just the man for me, Walter exclaimed. My man has failed to turn up, and I was going to try the station. I suppose that is Cannon Green station just at the end of the road? Thats right, sir, the cabman said civilly. But youll get no train yet. Drive you anywhere you like, sir, for halfasovereign. Walter jumped into the cab without further hesitation. A ride of a little over an hour brought him to Park Lane. A sleepy footman opened the door, and regarded Walter in amazement. He had his story all ready. There had been misunderstanding on the previous evening, and Lord Ravenspur and Miss Rayne had gone on to Weymouth by an early train. There was something very paltry about this deception, but at the same time it seemed to Walter to be absolutely necessary. He roused his own man; together they packed a couple of portmanteaux, which Walter gave directions should be taken to Waterloo Station without delay, and left in the cloakroom. Once he had satisfied the curiosity of the household in Park Lane, he went on promptly to Venables rooms. Over a hasty breakfast he explained everything that had happened to his companion. As he expected, Venables at once threw himself heart and soul into the adventure. I quite understand your point of view, he exclaimed. What you want to do is to hang about all day and take observations. At the same time, it is absolutely necessary that we should arouse no suspicions. I think I can see my way. This is a matter of disguise. We can pick up all we want in this direction in Covent Garden on our way to the station. There is only one thing that worries me, Walter said, and that is Bruno. What shall we do with him? Oh, thats all right, Venables cried. Very welltrained dog, isnt he? So much the better. You see, in the course of my adventures I have come across some pretty shady specimens of humanity, though I am bound to say that I have found many of this class pretty faithful when they are well paid. Now I know a fellow at Cannon Green who will look after the dog for us for a consideration. He is a fancier himself, and always has a few animals for sale. What more natural than that he should have a bloodhound on the premises? Mr. Bill Perks is more than suspected of being a receiver of stolen goods, and on two occasions has been in trouble. Still, he knows me, and will do anything I like, provided I pay him handsomely. Dont let us waste any more time. An hour later and the two adventurers left the train at Cannon Green, bearing a set of instruments such as those used by surveyors when they are planning and laying out new land. Their disguise was slight enough, but quite sufficient for the purpose. Both wore smart looking caps, edged with gold, so that their appearance was sufficiently formal and official. In addition to this Walter carried a bulky bag, which contained a complete change of clothing for Lord Ravenspur. The latter was glad enough to see Walter and Venables. He breathed a little more freely when he found himself clad at length in a Norfolk suit. He rather rebelled against a showy white helmet and a set of long grey whiskers which Venables proceeded to attach dexterously to his face. A few touches of grease paint and pencil, together with a pair of big spectacles, rendered the disguise complete. Walter expressed his admiration. I can hardly believe that it is you, uncle, he said. And you are changed almost out of recognition, Ravenspur said. Really, I must compliment Mr. Venables. And now, I suppose I had better hide the bag in these bushes. We have a very anxious day before us, I am afraid, but that does not prevent one feeling the call of Nature. I dont think I was ever so ravenously hungry in my life. Where can we get some breakfast? Venables, who seemed to have thought of everything, had already solved the problem. There was a very fair hotel not far from the station, and it would be an easy matter to hide the surveying outfit till it was needed. In the first place, they could skirt round the edge of the common, and pay a call on the man Perks, who would look after the dog till his services were needed again. They came at length to Perks house, a rather dilapidated looking place, with a large, untidy garden around it.

There were sheds and huts and kennels at the back, so that the intruders were greeted with a terrible din of barking as they went up the path. Cunning hand, Perks, Venables explained. It is very little he makes out of dogfancying. But see how useful these animals are. Day or night the police can never approach the place with the object of raid without Perks having ample notice. But come along, and you shall see the man for yourselves. Oh, you neednt trouble yourself about your disguise. Perks is not in the least suspicious nor will he ask any questions. He will only think that you are a couple of amateur detectives like myself. XXXI What Does It Mean? Roused by the angry uproar of the dogs, a tall, roundshouldered individual appeared in the doorway. He had a melancholy cast of face which was intensified by the lank black hair which hung upon his shoulders. Indeed, the man looked more like some street preacher than a suspect with a record of crime behind him. But the eyes were shrewd enough, and so was the smile with which Perks greeted Venables when the latter disclosed his identity. Ah, well, you was always one for your little games, sir, he said. Take care of that dog for you? Of course I will. And a rare beauty he is. Is there anything else, gentlemen? No, Venables explained. Mind the dog is for sale if anybody asks questions. You have had him for some time, and you want a big price for him. Maybe we shall be able to find a job for you after dark tonight, but as to that I can say nothing for the present. At any rate, there is a fivepound note for you so long as you are discreet and silent. I suppose I can come into your house and write a letter? Ill get you to post it presently. Perks intimated that his house was at the disposal of the visitors, and they all trooped inside. The place looked cosy and comfortable enough, though it was somewhat untidy. At one end of the table was a china bowl, which was filled with odds and ends of small gold and silver ornaments. Venables winked at Perks, and the latter grinned sheepishly. He snatched up the bowl, and hastily removed it to a side table. Ravenspur held out a detaining hand. One moment, he said, I am rather fond of those kind of things. I dont wish to be inquisitive, or to ask idle questions, but unless I am greatly mistaken you have a Commonwealth porringer amongst those things. I should like to look at it. Perks bowed to the inevitable. He cursed himself slightly under his breath for his folly in not removing everything, but he felt safe in the hands of his visitors. They would not be likely to ask any questions as to whence the plunder came. By the time that Venables had written and stamped his letter, Lord Ravenspur came forward with a small metal disc in his hand. This is a bit of a curio in its way, he said. Intrinsically it is worth very little, only a few shillings at the outside. If you like to take a sovereign for it Perks fell in with the suggestion eagerly enough. There was no reason to stay any longer, and the trio set out for the hotel, feeling now that it was possible to move without the slightest fear of alarming the inhabitants of the cottage on the common. I suppose that was stolen property we caught Perks looking over? Ravenspur asked. Not the slightest doubt of it, Venables said coolly. I daresay if we had been voted suspicious the signal would have been flashed back to the house to hide it at once. But if you thought it was stolen property, Lord Ravenspur, why did you invest in that little disc which you took such a fancy to? I am going to tell you something startling, Ravenspur replied. Walter, you recollect that little ornament which I bought in Rome, and subsequently gave to poor Delahay who took a great fancy to it? I had his initials engraved on the back. He wore it on his watchchain. I recollect it perfectly well, Walter said. Delahay was wearing it the last time I ever saw him. But what has all this got to do with your purchase of this morning? Only that it happens to be the same thing, Ravenspur said quietly. I recognised it in a moment. Oh, there is no mistake. Here is the disc for you to examine for yourself. You will see the initials and the date on the back of it. As soon as we get time, we must ascertain from Inspector Dallas if Delahays watch was missing when his body was found. If so, then this opens quite a new phase of the mystery. On the whole, I am not at all sorry that we came here today. Of course, I kept my knowledge to myself, because I didnt want to arouse Perks suspicions. But if we can contrive to find out from whom he bought this thing we shall be going a long way to clear up the mystery of poor Delahays death. The matter was discussed at some length over the breakfast, to which all of them did ample justice. Once this was finished, they made their way back to the common again, and sat down on the grass to mature their plan of campaign. Now what we want to do, Venables began, is this. We want to be in a position to make a close study of yonder house without arousing the suspicions of the people there. I racked my brain for a long time before I could think of a feasible scheme. And then it came to to me like an inspiration. What could we do better than pass ourselves off as an Ordnance Survey party down here on business? That is why I procured the officiallooking caps, to say nothing of the theodolite and the notebooks. Now you, Lord Ravenspur, have only got to look wise and give us directions. You look exactly like the head of an exploring party. We will pretend to work the theodolite, and make measurements, and all that kind of thing. Inside the grounds? Walter asked. Of course, Venables went on; that is the beauty of the scheme. No spot of ground is sacred to an Ordnance party. I have actually seen them work inside a church. All we have got to do is to go about our business boldly and be quite firm if anybody attempts to molest us. It may be news to you that nobody can be prosecuted for trespass unless specific damage is done. The instruments were recovered presently from the hidingplace, and with the theodolite on his shoulder Venables stepped boldly on to the lawn in front of the house, and gravely went to work. The blinds were all up by this time. The windows were opened, and a glimpse of wellfurnished rooms could be seen in the background. A couple of maids stood in one of the windows, and watched the strangers curiously. It looks respectable enough, Venables muttered, pretending to be exceedingly busy. You may depend upon it, this is a tougher job than we anticipated. These servants are all right. You may be sure that they know nothing of what is going on. However, to make certain, Ill ask them for myself. Venables approached the window and asked civilly for the loan of a small piece of string. He came back presently, after a chat of a minute or two, and once more appeared to be wholly engrossed in his instrument. At the same time, he was telling his companions the information which he had gleaned. I knew I was right, he said. The house has been let furnished to an Italian gentleman called something or another, I didnt quite catch what, and the people only came down yesterday. Those servants go with the freehold, so to speak, and they have all been in their present situation for some considerable time. Their master is a City stockbroker, who, with his family, is on the Continent for the next month or two. If we are lucky we shall probably get a sight of the Italian presently, though I expect we have all got a pretty shrewd notion who the gentleman is. The work proceeded gravely for a quarter of an hour. Levels appeared to be taken, and there was much entering of figures in the notebooks. Presently, as Walter glanced around him, he drew a deep breath, for there was no mistaking the identity of the slim figure that emerged from one of the open French windows and came striding eagerly down the lawn. Silva, Walter said under his breath. Dont pretend to see him till he gets quite close. I think it would be a good thing if we left all the interviewing to Venables. The Italian approached the group and superciliously demanded to know what they were doing there. He looked quite the master of the place in his cool, flannel suit. He had a cigarette between his strong, white teeth. Why are you trespassing here? he demanded. Dont you know that this is private property? Go, or I will call in the police and give you into custody. The police wont help you in this case, Venables said with the air of a military man who is quite sure of his ground. We are here on Government business. I dont know if you understand what I mean, but we are surveying, and nobody has a right to interfere with us, providing we do no damage. We can come into the house if we like. Indeed, I am not quite sure that we shant have to. I see you have got a flat roof, sir, with railings round. If we have occasion to take the theodolite up there I will ring the bell and let you know. The whole thing was so coolly and naturally done that Silva was taken aback for the moment. Evidently he had come out of the house full of suspicion, and with the fixed intention of getting rid of these intruders as soon as possible. There was an uneasy look in his eyes as Venables suggested the roof of the house as the field of action. He deemed it wise to shift his ground altogether. That will be very inconvenient, he said, in quite another voice. I hope you will be able to manage without that if you can. However, if you will give me an hours notice, I daresay But Walter was no longer listening. He was standing up regarding the house with a professional eye. His gaze vaguely took in a dormer window immediately under the roof. There were bars to the window, pointing to the fact that at some time or another the room had been used as a nursery. The window was blank for a moment, then a face appeared and looked out. That instant was enough for Walter. There was no mistaking those features. They were those of Vera Rayne. XXXII The Midnight Message It was with the greatest difficulty that Walter restrained himself. He dared not look round again until Silvas back was turned and the Italian returned to the house. Even then it would have been impolitic to make a sign, for there might be prying, suspicious eyes looking from other windows who would understand, and then the whole of Venables ingenious scheme would be wasted. Turning sideways, Walter glanced up again. It seemed to him that he could still catch the outline of Veras figure. Then a desperate idea occurred to him. He stooped down and went through all the motions of patting and caressing some favourite animal. There was just the outside chance that Vera might take this as an allusion to Bruno, and the knowledge that the dog had put her friends on her track. The girl was sharp and quick enough, and she might easily, in the light of events, guess the identity of the trio on the lawn. Before Walter could speak, Venables glanced in his direction and smiled. Well, did you see it? the former asked. Did you see it, too? Walter exclaimed. I am glad of that because now I know I was not mistaken. See what? Ravenspur asked, apparently busy with his notebook. I didnt notice anything. It was Vera, Walter whispered. Whatever you do, dont look up now. I daresay you happened to notice a dormer window in the roof, with bars in front of it. Well, a moment ago, I saw Veras face there. What a fortunate thing it was that we thought of the dog last night! I knew he would not lead us astray. So far, so good, Venables murmured. And now, dont let us forget what we are here for. The next thing is to go to the back of the house and go through the same pantomime there. What I want to do is to find the easiest way of getting into the place, and to ascertain how many people there are in the house, and where they sleep. For that purpose it is necessary to be as near the back door as possible. I shall want you two to keep up the masquerade while I pump the servants. With any luck we shall have got all we want to know by lunch time. Venables was as good as his word. By two oclock the survey was complete, and the trio were trudging off to their hotel to talk the matter over. It was in a little arbour in the garden, over cigars and coffee, that Venables unbosomed himself. It is like this, he explained. I told you before that those servants were quite innocent of anything going wrong in the house, and so it turns out. The tenant is Silva, and his sister, the countess of something or another, whose name doesnt matter, though it will be necessary to see the lady later on. There is no basement, and, as far as I could see, there would be very little difficulty in obtaining entrance to the house by means of a small window that gives light and air to the larder. On the ground floor are four living rooms, which we need not trouble about. There are four bedrooms on the first floor, and four on the second, to say nothing of the room in the roof. I didnt dare to be too curious about this roof room, but I am told that Silva uses it himself for certain experiments, and that, as his experiments are dangerous, he keeps the key in his pocket. The explanation sounds simple, and quite suffices for the servants; but I think we have got a pretty fair idea of what is going on in that roof room. I have managed to make a rough sort of plan of the bedrooms, so that we shall be fairly safe when we come to break into the house, as we shall have to do, soon after midnight, if you are agreeable. Isnt that rather a dangerous proceeding? Walter asked. I didnt know that you added housebreaking to your other accomplishments. Being amateurs, we are certain to make a noise, and you may be pretty sure that Silva only sleeps on one ear. Oh, that part will be managed for us all right, Venables said coolly. The housebreaking item of the programme will be carried out by Perks. The rascal knows he is quite safe in our hands, and he will do all that is necessary for about a tenpound note. Once his work is accomplished we will send him about his business. The rest we can manage ourselves. It will go hard, indeed, with us if Miss Rayne is not back in our hands again before daylight. Walter could think of no better scheme to offer, so that Venables was allowed to have his own way. There was nothing for it now but to pass the time as best they could till midnight The hours stole slowly on. The darkness deepened and night came at length. Dinner had been a thing of the past for some time, and it was getting near eleven oclock before the trio, accompanied by Perks, made their way in the direction of the common. They lay quietly on the turf there till a distant church clock struck twelve, then Venables jumped to his feet and declared that the time for action had arrived. It was nervous enough work, and Walter was wishing it well over. There was no trouble in getting into the garden, and round to the back of the house, to the point fixed upon by Venables as being the most likely for their purpose. They had all been provided with silent shoes by Perks, though no questions were asked as to whence they came. Now that the pinch had come Perks was by far the most confident of the party. Probably his previous experiences in this line were standing him in good stead. Coolly enough he produced a dark lantern and turned the disc of flame down, so that it shone alone upon the bag of tools which lay upon the grass. He picked out one presently, and proceeded, in perfectly noiseless fashion, to cut out a disc of glass to which he had previously affixed a sheet of brown paper by the aid of the tallow from a candle. Once the instrument had severed the glass, the portion cut away fell noiselessly into Perks hand, so that he had no difficulty in placing his arm inside and pulling back the catch. The window was now open, but it was sufficiently small to make entry into the house a matter of some difficulty. I think you had better try first, Venables whispered to Walter. You are the most agile. Just work your way through and go round to the front door and let us in. I dont think you need stay any longer, Perks. I am not quite so sure about that, sir, Perks grinned. It is a very common practice with people to fasten their scullery and kitchen doors. I think I had better stay here till the gentleman has made sure. A grim, silent moment or two followed. Then, surely enough, Walter came back with the whispered information that the kitchen door was locked. Perks chuckled to himself as he snatched up another instrument and squeezed through the window. He set to work in businesslike fashion, so that the kitchen door was forced at length without the slightest noise, and the way to the hall was clear. In the strange, unfamiliar darkness, Walter stood for a moment until his eyes should become accustomed to the objects all about him. One by one they began to loom out of the blackness. He could make out chairs and tables, the outline of a square hall, and the front door at the end of it. He set his teeth together, now filled with a stern resolution to succeed or lose his life in the attempt. He was not ignorant of the class of man he had to deal with. He knew that Silva would not hesitate to shoot him down like a dog if his presence were detected. But, surely, between the three of them, they would be able to manage? It only needed to find Silvas room, to go in there and overpower him. Once he was helpless, to get up to the roof room and rescue Vera was the work of a moment. With these sanguine thoughts uppermost in his mind, Walter cautiously made his way in the direction of the front door. It was not difficult to draw the bolts or take down the chain. But the trouble lay in the fact that the door was also locked, and the key had vanished. Therefore, any idea of admitting his companions that way had to be definitely abandoned. Still, there were the windows, and French windows at that. But even this scheme was frustrated by the knowledge, gained a moment later, that all the living rooms on the ground floor were locked and the keys taken away. It was a disconcerting moment, and Walter hardly knew how to proceed. There was no help for it but to return by the way he had come and tell the others of his discovery. As to Lord Ravenspur, he was far too big a man to squeeze through the larder window, so that the perilous task would devolve entirely upon Walter and Venables. As Walter stood there he became conscious of the fact that a feeble ray of light was penetrating down the well of the stairs. Acting on the impulse of the moment he crept up a few of the thickly carpeted stairs until he was in a position to command the landing. The light penetrated from one of the rooms, the door of which was slightly open, so that Walter was fain to look in. It was only a nightlight, after all, standing on a small table in the middle of the room. Even from that distance Walter could see that a letter lay by the side of the light, or, rather, a sheet of paper with a message upon it. Powerful curiosity drew him on, and he snatched up the sheet of paper. There were only two or three lines, but Walter recognised, with a thrill, that they were in Veras handwriting. He had no time to read, before a sudden rush of cold air from somewhere extinguished the feeble light. Worse than this, the current slammed the door to with a bang that shook the whole house. It was so utterly unexpected, and the darkness was so intense, that Walter could only stand there utterly lost as to his surroundings. XXXIV A Strange Homecoming Vera opened her eyes at length. Gradually the things that had happened came back to her. She recognised the futility of resistance. All she could do was to wait and hope for the best. But despite the startling rapidity with which events had moved, she was not in the least frightened. Her prevailing feeling was one of indignation that any man should have dared to treat her in this way. Withal, there was a certain vein of curiosity that Vera did not care to suppress. The cab was still moving briskly, and Vera judged by the trees on each side of the road that they were already out in the country. The man sat opposite her, grim and silent. He made no inquiry as to how Vera was getting on. He suggested no apology for his violence. The feeling of languor and the suggestion of headache passed away, leaving Vera strong and vigorous again. It was impossible to sit there without speaking. Do you quite understand what you are doing? she said to the man opposite. Do you realise that you are guilty of a criminal offence? You could be prosecuted for this. I will not contradict you, Silva said politely. Believe me, I deeply regret the necessity for taking this step. Yet it was impossible to satisfy our requirements in any other way. Oh, you are not alone, then? Vera asked. Would it be inquiring too much if I asked who else is in this business? Silva smiled under cover of the darkness. A man of courage himself, he admired that quality in others. So the child that he had known, and been so passionately attached to, eighteen years ago had grown up to be a worthy representative of her race? Vera would have been astonished at that moment if she could have seen into the back of Silvas brain. She did not realise for a moment that here was a man who would have gone through fire and water for her, and yet, at the same time, he was prepared to wreak his insane vengeance upon those whom she loved and admired more than anybody in the world. If Veras happiness had depended upon it, Silva would not have spared Ravenspur, even had Vera gone on her knees and asked for it. Yet he would have given his life if it could have done any good to this proud descendant of the house of Descarti. Surely you can guess who is with me in this business? he said. Did I not bring you a letter from your mother? Vera started. She had forgotten her mother for the moment, and this question of Silvas had opened up a new and painful train of thought. He was taking her to see her mother. But why had her mother so suddenly displayed this tender solicitude, after leaving her absolutely alone all these years? That Veras mother was in possession of her whereabouts, and had been all this time, the girl did not doubt. When part of the story had to be told she had accepted Ravenspurs statement implicitly. Her mother was a vile woman, and the past was too painful for a young girl to hear. Ravenspur had not said so in as many words, but that was distinctly the impression he had conveyed to Vera. She began dimly to comprehend now why this newborn affection of her mothers had not found vent in the conventional way. Doubtless Ravenspur would have forbidden her the house. Doubtless he had a hold that gave him the control of the situationprobably a compact made years ago. And now one of the parties desired to break it. Perhaps it was a question of money, or family property, or something of that kind? Vera had heard of similar cases. At any rate, there must be some reason for this mystery and violence. And no doubt every word that Ravenspur had said about her mothers character was true. Otherwise she could not have consented to an abduction like this. Still, there was comfort in the reflection that Lord Ravenspur and Walter would leave no stone unturned to punish this outrage. The miscreants would be found out sooner or later. Vera congratulated herself now upon the fact that she had left her handkerchief tied to the collar of the dog Bruno. That would be a sufficient clue to put her friends on the trail, and Bruno himself, with his unerring instinct, would lead the pursuers to the right place. After all, the imprisonment could not last long, though Vera boiled with indignation as she thought of the treacherous way in which she had been deceived. And you are going to take me to my mother, then? she asked. That is the programme, Silva said coolly. Unfortunately, you will not be able to see the Countess tonight. You may believe me or not, but I am sorry to have been compelled to take a step like this. But you see, Lord Ravenspurs plans made it quite impossible for me to wait till tomorrow. Vera was silent for a moment. She could see plainly that Ravenspurs clever scheme for getting away to Weymouth had been betrayed by someone to this man. Her chief anxiety for the moment was for her guardian. It was terrible to think that he had been dogged and watched by people so cunning and unscrupulous as these. Vera was still thinking the matter over when the cab stopped and Silva bade her get out. A wild idea of appealing to the cabman for assistance was dismissed as she caught sight of his face. There was a grin upon it, and the driver unmistakably winked at Silva. There was just enough light for Vera to see that the cabman was not wearing a badge. Doubtless he was a conspirator, too. There was nothing for it but to see the thing through to the finish. So Vera followed Silva through the garden till he paused at length on the steps of a house, which appeared to be in total darkness. The servants have gone to bed, Silva explained, as he opened the door with a latchkey. If you will wait a moment, I will turn up the gas. If you desire anything Nothing, Vera said curtly. All I want you to do is to show me to my room. I wish to be alone. Silva bowed politely enough. He turned and locked the door, and Vera saw that he dropped the key in his pocket. Then he took a silver candlestick from the hall table and handed it to Vera, intimating that he would like her to precede him up the stairs. They came at length to a room in the roof of the house which appeared to be comfortably, almost luxuriously furnished, and with every feminine requirement at hand. With absolute amazement Vera saw her own silver toilet set laid out on the dressing table, her handbag was on the floor, and in one corner of the room stood the two dressbaskets which her maid had packed for immediate use on board the yacht. A slight smile of amusement flickered over Silvas face as he noticed Veras amazement. Everything has been done to make you comfortable, he said. It was my own idea to remove your immediate belongings from Waterloo Station and bring them on here. I assure you that it was no difficult job. And now I wish you goodnight, with a thousand pardons for the way in which I have been compelled to treat you. Tomorrow morning Silva paused significantly and bowed himself out of the room. He closed the door gently behind him, and Vera waited till the sound of his footsteps had died away. She tried the door, but, as she had anticipated, it was fastened on the outside. Beyond all question, she was a prisoner. There was nothing but to make the best of it, and wait on the course of events. There were two bolts on the inside of the door, and, having secured these, Vera felt easier in her mind. She undressed slowly, and more for something to occupy her mind than anything else. She would never be able to sleep again. The idea of sleep seemed to be out of the question. Yet, within ten minutes, Vera had fallen into a deep slumber from which she did not wake until the sun was shining high, and the birds were singing in the trees. The girl rose eagerly and looked out. She could see a wide expanse of green lawn, with big shaded trees here and there. On two sides of the house a common stretched away apparently to the confines of space. How far she was from London Vera could not say. Certainly she had never been here before. She was still admiring the beauty of the landscape when there came a quiet knock at the door, and after the bolts were drawn Silva came in. He was, if possible, even more abjectly apologetic than on the previous evening. I am bound to intrude, he said. You see, this house has only been taken for a time, and the servants are absolutely in ignorance of your presence here. I merely came to show you where you could find all the requisites for your breakfast, and as to the rest, they are in this basket. Here is a spirit lamp, so that you can boil your own water. I am in great hopes that before evening I shall be able to give you what is practically the freedom of the house. Do not think too harshly of me. Vera made no reply; she was only pleased to have the room to herself again, so that she could think the matter out. She ate her breakfast slowly, for time was beginning to hang on her hands. Any action was better than sitting there doing nothing. It was some time later when she crossed to the window, and looked out. She saw three men busily engaged in some occupation on the lawn. She saw Silva come out and address them, apparently in tones of expostulation, so far as she could judge from his actions. Then one of the men looked up, and Vera could see that he had noticed her. A moment later the man stooped down, and went through some sort of a pantomime, which, in the circumstances, puzzled Vera extremely. Why should that gravelooking official stoop down and imitate the motions of one who is stroking a dog? XXXV Mother and Child At any other time the trifling incident would have escaped Veras attention. But she had nothing else to occupy her mind now. She wondered what it meant. There was no doubt that the officiallooking person below was pretending to stroke a dog. There was no jest about it, either, because the other two men took no heed. They appeared to be too absorbed in their occupation. Then, all at once, the truth of it flashed into Veras mind with a suddenness that left her pale and trembling. It was plain enough. She could not say for certain who it was patting and caressing an imaginary dog, but she was quite certain that there was a message to her behind it. In the first place the man had seen her at the window, of that she felt certain. And he was telling her as plainly as words could speak that her handkerchief had been found, and that Bruno led her friends to the right spot. No doubt, these willing assistants had assumed the guise of land surveyors with a view to getting a better knowledge of the house. Once the excitement of this discovery passed away, Veras courage came back to her. She now knew that she was safe. She knew that it would not be long before she was restored to her friends again. She deemed it prudent to keep away from the window, and when at length she looked down again, the men were gone. There was nothing for it but to kill the dreary afternoon as best she could. It seemed to her that she knew every inch of her room, every design and pattern on the wallpaper. She would have given much for a book to while away the time, but, apparently, Silva had overlooked that requirement. As she lay back in an armchair, for the first time, a small, wooden trap in the ceiling attracted her attention. It seemed strange to Vera that she had not noticed it before. A sudden resolution possessed her. She balanced a couple of chairs, one on the other, upon the bed, and made an attempt to lift the trap. There was not the slightest trouble. The square of board gave to her touch at once. Vera thrust her head and shoulders through, and saw that she was immediately under the roof. A sliding glass window overhead lighted up the place, so that Vera could see what sort of a place she had discovered. Instantly she made up her mind what to do. She turned a yachting jersey out of one of the baskets and removed the bodice of her dress. A short serge skirt completed the outfit, and a few moments later Vera had squeezed through the trap, and was walking along the boards which covered the whole area of the house under the roof. What she was now anxious to find was a way down. Here was a large tank which supplied the house with water, and by the side of it a short iron ladder, the end of which was lost in the semidarkness. But Vera had discovered enough.

Doubtless the iron ladder was a permanent structure for the use of workmen in case anything went wrong with the big tank. In all probability the bottom of the iron ladder reached down until it joined the servants staircase. Vera had seen arrangements of this kind in small country houses before. At any rate, the knowledge was worth having. Here was a clear avenue of escape. As soon as the house was quiet Vera would be able to steal away, and once outside, she would know exactly what to do. She had no money, but that was a mere detail. The slow hours crept on till dusk began to fall, and there had been no further sign from Silva. The clocks outside were striking eight when someone tapped at the door, and in response to Veras query the voice of Silva spoke We are dining in half an hour, he said. Will you be so good as to come down? I have unfastened the door. Vera was trembling with excitement and apprehension. She hastened to change her dress, and a few moments later was hurrying down the stairs. When she reached the hall she found Silva awaiting her. He looked somewhat anxious. Your mother is in the drawingroom, he said. I hope you wont mind sitting down to a cold dinner. For motives of prudence we have sent the servants to London for an evening at the theatre. To anyone as intelligent as yourself you will see why we adopted such a course. Will you precede me? Vera had nothing to reply. Just for the moment she was incapable of speech. She was wondering whether or not she would awake presently and find it all no more than a dream. The drawingroom was brilliantly lighted. A tall, dark woman stood by the fireplace. Her regular features appeared to be absolutely composed; but agitated though Vera was, she did not fail to notice the restless movements of the hands. Just for a few moments the two looked at one another. Then something like a smile came over the Countess Flavios face. So you are my daughter, she said. I am afraid I should not have recognised you. Come closer, so that I can look at your face. Thank Heaven, you are not in the least like your father. I cannot be sufficiently thankful for that. I have thought about you often, Vera said coldly; but, surely, if you are my mother, you have a strange way of making yourself known to me. What is the meaning of this outrage? Surely you could have come to Park Lane and asked for me in the ordinary way, without sending this creature of yours Vera looked round for Silva, but he had discreetly disappeared. I am glad that man has had the decency to leave us alone, she went on. Oh, I have been thinking about this meeting all day. I do not know what to imagine, or what to believe. You say that you are my mother, but how I am to be certain that I swear it, the Countess said, with a touch of passion in her voice. You are my daughter beyond the shadow of a doubt. Oh, there is a deal in what you say, but I could not come to Lord Ravenspurs house. There are most urgent reasons. You are wondering, perhaps, why I have not been near you all these years; but I can explain. You remember nothing of your father, for which you can thank your Maker. With the solitary exception of yourself, there was not a creature on earth that he cared for. He was the embodiment of refined cruelty. His greatest delight was in the tortured degradation of others. Ah, you little guess what a veritable hell the two years which followed your birth were. I will tell you all about that some day, and you will be sorry for me. If you had only had my experience you would not wonder why I fled and hid myself when my release came. You would not wonder why I refused to see you, for fear you should be like your father, and remind me of him every hour. I was so near the borderland of insanity then that I should have killed you, if by one look or gesture you had reminded me of the man who had ruined my life. And then, when the lapse of years had restored my strength and vigor again, a longing to see you took possession of me. And when at length I had found you, or, rather, my faithful servant, Silva, had found you for me, there were certain circumstances which prevented my seeking you out at once. I was going to wait my time, but the man whom you call your guardian took such steps that I was bound to act at once. That is why I wrote you that letter last night. That is why you were brought here. And as to Lord Ravenspur, if he is lucky The Countess paused and bit her lips. A horrible suspicion flashed into Veras mind. You must say nothing against him, she cried. Lord Ravenspur is one of the best and noblest of men. Lord Ravenspur is a scoundrel, the Countess cried. Yes, and before I have finished I am going to prove it to you. Oh, you may look incredulous, but I am a deeply injured woman, and that man is responsible for all my torture. A crimson wave stained Veras cheeks. Here was the old suspicion back again with redoubled force. She would have asked the direct question which was trembling on her lips, but the door opened, and Silva came in hurriedly. I am loth to intrude, he said, but it is already halfpast eight, and it is imperative that you, madam, should be back in London this evening. There is a train at twenty minutes past nine, which you must not fail to catch. Without argument, the Countess led the way across to the diningroom, where dinner was laid out. Vera noted with some surprise that there were only covers for two. She had half expected that Silva would sit down to table, instead of which he moved from place to place, waiting upon them, as if he had been accustomed to that kind of thing all his life. A few moments ago he had appeared to be the dictator and leader in everything. Now he suddenly lapsed into a perfectly respectful and exceedingly welltrained servant. It was not that Silva was acting a part. The thing was so perfectly done that Vera saw at once that this was the mans proper position in life. She was too excited to eat or drink, so that, altogether, the meal was little more than a mere formality. I am sorry that I cant stay any longer, the Countess said; I am bound to be in London this evening. Then I will come with you, Vera said promptly. No, Silva burst out sternly. The thing is impossible. For the present you stay where you are. In a day or two we will make other arrangements with the servants, and then you can have the freedom of the house. The Countess will tell you that I am right. I am afraid so, the Countess said, unless you will give me your word that you will not communicate with Lord Ravenspur. You must be dead as far as he and his household are concerned. XXXVI In the Dead of Night I cannot do it, Vera said quietly. Forgive me if my words hurt you, but so far I have no evidence to prove that you are anything more than a mere impostor. You claim to be my mother, and perhaps you are. But till tonight I had no mother. For eighteen years Lord Ravenspur has been more than a father to me. If you can give me any satisfactory explanation of this plot against my safety Oh, I can, the Countess cried. Two years ago Be silent! Silva cried furiously. I beg your pardon, madam, but I am forgetting myself. I will venture to remind you that your train will not wait. That is quite sufficient, Vera said, with dignity. I will return to my room again. Perhaps the next time I see you, you will have more time for an explanation. The girl turned and left the room. She walked slowly and sadly up the stairs, and locked herself in. It was not long before she heard the click of the fastening outside. She knew that she was a prisoner once more. It was out of the question to try and realise the meaning of all this extraordinary mystery. There was a certain sense of comfort in the knowledge that she was safe from personal violence. But, beyond this, there was little to light up the dreary prospect. Vera sat there thinking the matter over till the clock struck eleven. Then she glanced up at the ceiling, and stared at the trapdoor long and thoughtfully. She could not hear a sound in the house. Doubtless Silva had retired long ago. Perhaps he was asleep by this time. As to the servants, they were probably not returning till an early hour in the morning. Vera calculated that the house was sufficiently far from London to make a return after the theatre impossible. She was going to risk it. If Silva caught her attempting to escape she could only return to her room again. She changed her dress rapidly. In the pocket of her skirt she placed a box of matches and a nightlight, which she found on the dressingtable. To get through the trap was a matter of a moment. With the aid of a match she found the top of the iron ladder, and when she had let herself down she came at length, as she had expected, to the top of the servants staircase. The house was absolutely quiet, and plunged in darkness. Vera scarcely dared to breathe, till, at length, she found herself in the hall. It was tense and nervous work, and the girl was trembling from head to foot. She hardly dared to touch the bolts. She drew them back a fraction at a time. Then she slid off the chain; the links clicked together with a noise that sounded in the girls ears almost like a pistol shot. She turned the handle hurriedly. One moment more, and she would be in the garden. The disappointment was swift and cruel. The door was locked, and the key was not there. Evidently this was no way of escape. After the first feeling of despair Vera shot the bolts back, and put up the chain once more. It was no use trying the back door, for that would probably be locked, and the key gone. The only possible exit was by way of one of the windows on the ground floor. But here again Vera was doomed to disappointment, for every door was fastened and every key had vanished. Vera blew out her nightlight, and crept softly up the stairs again. She wondered if it were possible to open one of the bedroom windows and leap to the ground. Trembling in every limb she groped her way into one of the rooms, the door of which was open. Once more she ventured to strike a light. The room she was in was furnished like a study. Here was a large table with paper and pens and ink. The walls were lined with books. A strong current of air came in from somewhere; then Vera realised that one of the windows was open. There was a balcony beyond, and on to this she stepped, trying to measure with her eye the distance to the ground. But it was too dark for that. The risk was too great to take. It was like standing on the edge of a precipice. Vera drew back with a shudder. She really had not the courage for such a desperate venture. It would be far better for her to remain where she was until her friends came to her assistance. With this thought uppermost in her mind Vera turned back to the room again. A sudden gust of air from the open window extinguished the nightlight. It was just as well, for almost at the same instant another door opened on the landing, and a shaft of brilliant light shot out. In its rays Vera could see Silva and another man who was a stranger to her. Silva appeared to be in high good spirits. He was chatting gaily to his companion. Now you know exactly what I want, he said. You are to wait by the gate till two oclock if necessary, and when those people come along, you are to give me the signal. If they dont come by two oclock, then we can conclude that something has interfered with their plans, and the thing has been postponed. Oh, Ill do what you want, the other man said hoarsely. Ill see that you do, Silva went on. I suppose those fools thought they deceived me this morning. It was just as well that I followed them. Well, if they like to come here, they will be pretty sure of a welcome. And now I will just come and let you out, and fasten the door behind you. It will be fun to sit here watching till they are overhead, and then I shall have them in a fine trap. I am looking forward to it with the greatest possible pleasure. Then you had better meet me in London tomorrow, and I will give you the money I promised. Ah, my good Stevens, this is the best weeks work you ever did in your life. A few more such jobs and you will be able to retire from your honorable profession. The man addressed as Stevens smiled sourly. Vera made a note of the name; she also made a note of the mans features. Then, as the two of them went down into the hall, she slipped back to her own room again by means of the iron ladder. Her breath was coming thick and fast, but her courage had returned, and she felt braced up and ready to meet any emergency. It was quite clear to her what was happening. As far as she herself was concerned, she was practically a prisoner. She could not get away even if she wished to. And now she had no desire to leave. Her instincts had been quite correct. Beyond all question the men on the lawn in the earlier part of the day had been her own friends. The dog had guided them here, and even at that moment they were probably on their way to effect a rescue. But they had not been quite clever enough for Silva. He had been too suspicious to let an incident like that pass. He had appeared to bow to the inevitable, but, all the same, he had followed his unwelcome visitors, and probably discovered their secret. And the worst of it was, Silva was now quite prepared for the intruders. It was impossible, too, for Vera to warn her friends. She racked her brains for some way of giving them a signal. There was only one desperate step to take, and she decided to risk it. Back once more she went until she came at length to the landing on the first floor. Her idea was to find out where Silva was hiding. There was a strong smell of cigarette smoke in the house, which appeared to come from the ground floor. There was only one thing for it, and that was to descend to the hall. Under the morningroom door there was just a thin slit of light. It was here that the smell of cigarette smoke was the strongest. It was here, no doubt, that Silva was waiting for the fray. So far as Vera could judge the morningroom was on one side of the house, so that in all probability the light would not be seen, or perhaps there were some heavy curtains or drapery over the window. From his own lips Vera knew something of what Silvas plans were. He was going to wait there till he had his enemies trapped overhead. He probably would not move till the critical moment came. It was a desperate idea, but there was nothing else for it. Vera crept up to the little sittingroom, and hastily dashed off a few words of warning which she hoped might fall into Walters hands. She did not doubt for a moment that he would be one of the rescuers. It seemed to her that if she placed the note on the little table with the nightlight behind it, and left the door open, it would be bound to attract Walters attention. Then he would be prepared for the attack from below. There was practically no chance of Silva coming upstairs in the meantime, so that there was no reason why the little plot should fail. It was done at length, and then Vera again crept up the iron ladder to the side of the tank. But she did not return to her room. She knew that she was perfectly safe where she was. And, besides, at any moment her assistance might be of the greatest value. She stood there in the pitchy darkness, the leaden moments creeping on like so many hours. Her ears were strained to catch the slightest sound; even the trickle of a watertap sounded like pistol shots. A mouse behind the wainscot appeared to be making noise enough to wake the dead. Then, above the creeping silence, came a quick snap, which was like the breaking of wood. Veras heart gave a great leap. It seemed to her that the attack was commencing in earnest. A minute or two later and she fancied she could hear footsteps in the hall. But this she dismissed as mere fancy. She could hear the trees rustling outside as they swayed to a sudden breeze. She hoped the wind would not be strong enough to blow out her nightlight. She wished now that she had closed the window. Then she jumped with a nervous start as a door banged like the thud of artillery. She heard a quick, sharp cry, and then the laboured breathing as if two men were locked in a struggle to the death. XXXVII An Unexpected Friend Outside in the garden, under cover of the darkness, Ravenspur and his companion waited anxiously for a sign from Walter. The minutes crept slowly on. Still there was nothing to break the silence. A quarter of an hour passed, and at length Ravenspur began to feel decidedly anxious. I dont like it, he murmured; I dont like it a bit. We have an exceedingly cunning scoundrel to deal with, and a bloodthirsty one into the bargain. That man would not stick at anything. I cant understand how it is that Walter doesnt open the door. Venables made no reply. As a matter of fact, he was not a whit less anxious than Ravenspur. Still the minutes crept on, and still there was no sign from the interior of the house. Then at last came a faint, dull report, which might either have been the closing of a door, or the muffled echo of a pistol shot. Before Venables could reply he felt something damp and cold against his hand. His nerves were now at high tension. He jumped quickly back, and looked down. A great hound stood there waving his long tail from side to side and looking up into Ravenspurs face as if not altogether sure as to his presence being welcome. Call him off, Venables said excitedly. The brute is dangerous. By Jove, what a fool I am! I thought at first that this was one of our friend Valdos bodyguard, but I see now that it is your dog, Lord Ravenspur. I suppose he has managed to get away again. Oh, its Bruno right enough, Ravenspur said. Probably Perks fastened him up insecurely. But he must not be allowed to roam about here. Do you happen to have a dog collar and chain in your pocket, Perks? If so, Ill go and chain him up to one of those trees by the side of the lane. Perks grinned, and produced the necessary collar and lead. In the course of his business he rarely travelled without one of these, though he looked dubiously at the leather strap, and opined that is was not much good for so great a beast as Bruno. I think that will be all right, Lord Ravenspur said. The dog is well trained, and if I tell him to stop there I am sure he will. At any rate, I dont suppose he will move until we have this business finished. Now, come along, sir. The great beast trotted along, more or less dejectedly, by his masters side, and a moment or two later he was lying at the foot of a small tree just by the gate leading to the lane. Ravenspur hurried back to his companions. He had hoped by this time that something had happened. He was seriously alarmed to find the house still in darkness, and no sign of Walter anywhere. This is very disturbing, he said. Dont you think one of you had better go inside and see what has become of my nephew? If that man there has done him any violence I dont think so, Venables interrupted. After all, the man we are looking for is no fool, and he would most assuredly avoid violence if possible. My dear Lord Ravenspur, you surely did not expect to find Miss Rayne by simply opening the door and going through the house? For my part, I regard this business as only just beginning, and I shall be very much surprised if Miss Rayne is in the house at all. Besides, this man Valdo is certain to be prepared for emergencies of this kind. Suppose he found Walter, and asked him what he was doing there? Suppose he insisted upon showing him all over the house? We will assume that he has proved to Lance that Miss Rayne is not there. He would enjoy that immensely. It would give him far more pleasure than any personal violence. And besides, Walter is quite capable of taking care of himself. Really, we must risk it a little longer. Any undue haste now would ruin our plans. Sorely against his convictions Ravenspur allowed the point to pass. A quarter of an hour had elapsed now, and there was no sign of Walter. Ravenspur was about to speak again when suddenly from the lane came something in the way of a diversion. A mans voice was raised in terror, a frightened scream for help rent the air. As the cry died away, a deep growl of the dog was heard. Without a moments hesitation Ravenspur rushed away down the garden and in the direction of the lane. Theres no time to be lost, he cried. Come along. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Bruno has got hold of some unfortunate wayfarer on his way home. It turned out to be exactly as Lord Ravenspur had prophesied. When Perks came up, and turned his lantern on the scene, the outline of a mans body came into view. The unfortunate individual was lying on his back, the great hound was standing over him, his crest erect, his formidable row of teeth glistening in the light. At one word from lord Ravenspur the dog crouched down, and the stranger, trembling with fright in every limb, was dragged to his feet. Something like a chuckle burst from Perks lips. You seem to be enjoying yourself, John, he said. I thought the brute was going to tear the throat out of me, the stranger said. I came down here on business What business? Venables said curtly. Here, Perks, hold that light a bit higher up so that I can see the fellows face. Does he happen to be a friend of yours? Weve done a bit of business together, Perks said significantly. Otherwise, he is not what I would call a friend of mine. He was over at my place early this morning, but I thought he had gone back to town again. What are you looking about here for, John? Thats my business, the other said sullenly. The man who fastened that dog up there so close to the lane ought to have six months. I dont know who he belongs to. He belongs to me, Lord Ravenspur explained. There is one thing I will vouch forif you hadnt been coming into the garden, that dog would never have touched you. It is no business of mine to ask what you are doing here, for I dont suppose you would tell me if I did. However, it seems to me No; but I can tell you, Venables put in. This, Lord Ravenspur, is the man John Stevens who gave evidence at the inquest on Louis Delahay. He was the man who saw Mrs. Delahay with her husband in Fitzjohn Square that morning. He knows Valdo exceedingly well, and no doubt he is down here on the latters business. If you ask him, he will hardly venture to deny it. I dont know what you are talking about, Stevens stammered. Oh, yes, you do, Venables went on. You will say presently that you have never seen me before. You are a treacherous rascal, and evidently you are not in the least to be relied upon. I told you that it would pay you to join me, and I suppose your idea is to get money from both parties. This is no time to waste on incriminations. This man is a spy of Valdos, Lord Ravenspur. Evidently he is here to watch our movements. We cant trust him. We cant let him out of our sight. The question is, what are we going to do with him? You just leave me alone or it will be the worse for you, Stevens blustered. I am not the man Before Stevens could finish his speech he was jerked violently backwards by Perks, and turned over on his face. In less time than it takes to tell, his hands were bound behind his back with a couple of straps, and his feet were fastened together with the aid of some handkerchiefs which Perks borrowed from his companion. The thing was dexterously done, so that Stevens lay there on his back, swearing hotly at Perks, and threatening him with what was likely to happen when his time came. Oh, thats all right, Perks said cheerfully; dont you be a fool, John. It will pay you much better to play the square game with these gentlemen, and as to your threats, why, they dont worry me. You talk about splitting. Why, you dare not go within a mile of a police station. And a nice witness before magistrates you would make. No, my lad; there is no chance of your doing me any harm unless you are prepared to stand in the dock by my side. Now, come along, and well get it over. What are you going to do with him? Ravenspur asked. Oh, that is an easy one, Perks grinned cheerfully. Well just carry him as far as the common, and dump him down on a nice bed of bracken where he can pass the time studying astronomy. I havent any fear that he can get rid of these bandages. When everything is settled, Ill come back and fetch him. Then I can take him home, and give him some breakfast. He wont bear any malice. That is a very good point about John Stevens he never bears malice for long. As a matter of fact, he aint got pluck enough. Stevens was dumped unceremoniously down upon the bracken, and the little party went back to the house. Lord Ravenspur had forgotten all about Walter for the moment. His mind had reverted to the murder in Fitzjohn Square. He was thinking of Delahay and certain fresh facts which had recently come to light. He allowed Venables to precede him. Then he drew Perks aside for a moment. I am going to ask you a question, he said, and I hope you will answer it straightforwardly. I will see that no harm comes to you. And, indeed, in any case it will be to your advantage to be candid. Have you had any dealings lately with this man Stevens? You know what I mean. Have you bought anything from him for which you paid without asking any questions? Only this very morning, sir, Perks admitted cheerfully. To tell you the truth, that little thing what you gave me a sovereign for was amongst the lot. And now I have said it. I am a fool to tell you this, but you gave me your word, sir That is all right, Ravenspur said. I shall keep it. XXXVIII In the House Meanwhile, Walter was standing there in pitch darkness, utterly at a loss what to do next. He had no light to guide him. He had not the remotest idea in which direction the door lay. He took a step or two forward, with outstretched hands, until his fingers touched the wall. There were so many unfamiliar objects here that it was some little time before he felt his way with his fingertips to the door. He found it at length, and the knob yielded to his touch. No sooner was he in the corridor than a dazzling flash confused and mystified him. Before he could realise what had happened the light was gone, and a pair of strong, sinewy arms were about his neck. He was taken utterly at a disadvantage. Walter swayed backwards. He fell with a resounding crash on the floor. A million stars danced before his eyes, and then he remembered no more. When he came to himself again he was lying in an armchair, to which he was fastened by a maze of cords, wound cunningly about him. As his head became clear and less confused, he realised that he was in a kind of library, the walls of which were lined with books. Opposite him Silva was seated, with a placid smile upon his face. I think we have met before, he said. I have had that advantage, Walter said grimly. And now you will, perhaps, be good enough to explain what you mean No, Silva hissed. A sudden anger flamed out of his eyes. On the other hand, the explanation comes from you. For the time being, at any rate, this house is mine. I have paid for it, and I propose to spend my time quietly here for the next month or two. I am hardly settled down here before you come along in this unceremonious fashion and burgle the place. Why? That you know quite as well as I do, Walter retorted. Really, you are a man of amazing audacity. Now dont you know that the law punishes people severely for this kind of thing? And what kind of thing do you allude to? Why should you assume ignorance in that way? You know perfectly well what I mean. To my certain knowledge you have made three attempts on the life of Lord Ravenspur, and even that does not seem to be sufficient. Last night you managed to lure Miss Vera Rayne away from London, and she is in this house at the present moment. That she is detained here against her will I feel certain. Oh, indeed, Silva sneered. Would you like to search the house? If I give you permission to go over the premises, will you be prepared to apologise and go away without further delay? A cold chill crept up Walters spine. The man spoke with such an air of confidence and triumph that Walter began to feel that the mission had failed. Beyond all question, Silva had discovered the plot, and already he had managed to get Vera out of the way. The Italian could not be acting. His air was too assured for that. We need not say anything about apologies, Walter said; but if you can prove to me that Miss Rayne is not in the house, why, then, for the present, at any rate, I will not trouble you. That is very good of you, Silva sneered. He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. You have seen quite enough of me, sir, to give me credit for not being altogether a fool. That was a very pretty scheme which you put up this morning. And, really, your disguises were quite artistic. I will go so far as to say that, in ordinary circumstances, they would have utterly puzzled me; but, then, I am suspicious by nature. I regard it as more than a coincidence that three strangers should come into my garden the very morning after I had Abducted Miss Rayne, Walter said, as Silva hesitated. Why make any bones about it? We know that Miss Rayne came here. We, on our side, are not altogether without intelligence. You are worthy antagonists, Silva said, with a sarcastic bow. We will assume, for the sake of argument, that Miss Rayne was here this morning, though, mark you, I do not admit it. Then, three strangers come and make free with my garden. It is possible, of course, that they are telling the truth, and that they are honest men, devoted to the interests of their country. But, at the same time, I asked myself a question. Then I followed these gentlemen, and by the time I returned home I had a pretty shrewd idea who they were and what they were after. How my suspicions are justified is proved by your presence here this evening. Did you come alone? That you must discover for yourself, Walter said. The Italians features suddenly darkened. He paused so close to Walter that the latter could see the dilation of the pupils of his eyes. He shook with a spasm of fury. I have no quarrel with you, he whispered hoarsely. You are a fine fellow, and I give you all the credit for your courage. But if you persist in bringing yourself within the sphere of danger, then you must take the consequences. Do you suppose for a moment that I am afraid of my own life? Do you suppose that I care what happens when my mission is accomplished? That mission is sacred to me as your good name and religion are sacred to you. A man is to be removed, and when he is out of the way my task is done. There is a proverb amongst you English that it is as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and no man can hang more than once, though he has a dozen murders to his account. Therefore, if you stand in the way, I shall have no hesitation in sweeping you aside. Now go away and trouble me no more. You will never see Miss Rayne again. In a few hours from now she will be in the custody of the proper person to safeguard her interestsher mother. A retort trembled on Walters lips, but he restrained himself. I am going to give you every opportunity, Silva went on. I trust to your honour. See here. He whipped a knife from his pocket, and just for a second Walters courage was tried high; but the Italian meant no harm. He advanced and cut the cords, so that a moment later Walter was free. It was impossible for the latter to know what was going on in the mind of his companion. He did not know that a sudden inspiration had come to Silva, and that the Italian had changed his mind. For the first few minutes Valdo had recognised that he stood in a position of considerable peril. Though he had suspected his visitors of the early morning, he was lying to Walter when he declared that he had discovered their identity.

It was easy to be wise after the fact, and Silva was taking every advantage of it. In his heart of hearts he really had not expected anything quite so prompt as this. He could now see his danger. If Walter was alone, then so far so good; but if there were others outside the house, then Silva was more or less in a trap. The others might rush in at any moment and hand him over to the police. Once in their hands, his fate was certain. He would be charged with those attempts on the life of Lord Ravenspur. In all probability he would be sentenced to a term of imprisonment, which would result in his death within the walls of a gaol. But now, as time was going on, and there was no sign of disturbance outside, Silva began to feel that he had only one man to deal with. It would not be a difficult matter to persuade Walter and to prove to him that Vera was no longer in the house, and the cunning Italian knew perfectly well that his skin was safe until Lord Ravenspur and the others were satisfied that the girl had come to no harm. We are on even terms again now, Silva went on. In fact, the odds are in your favour. I am not armed, and you are a stronger man than myself. If you will wait a few moments I will go and get a candle, and then you shall see for yourself that Miss Rayne is not in the house. I am sorry, Walter said coldly; but I should prefer to accompany you. Your word is hardly sufficient. Silvas eyes flashed, but he said nothing. The silence was getting awkward when, at length, the Italian spoke once more. There is a candle outside on the landing, he said. I will go and fetch it. You will be able to see me all the way there and back. You English are suspicious. Silva threw the door wide open and strode out into the corridor. As he struck a match and lighted the candle, Walter could dimly see up the next flight of stairs. It was only for a moment, but he distinctly saw the outline of a figure there, and a signal made by the waving of a white arm. It was with difficulty that he repressed a cry. He now knew that the Italian had been lying to him, and that Vera was in the house. When he glanced up again the figure had vanished, and Walter dropped into the easy chair again. It seemed to him that there was something in the signal which bade him to be cautious. Otherwise, what was to prevent Vera coming down the stairs and appealing to Walter for his protection? Silva was, apparently, a long time getting the candle to burn to his satisfaction. He seemed to be occupied in his task to the exclusion of everything else. But there was a queer smile upon his face, for he had turned in an unfortunate moment, and his quick eye had detected the figure at the top of the stairs. In those few seconds he had made up his mind what to do. When he came back into the library again there was something like a smile on his face. He placed the candle on the table. And now, sir, he said almost gaily, before I proceed to satisfy you that your suspicions are unfounded, permit me to offer you my hospitality. I dont know how you feel, but you look rather shaken, and I must apologise for the way in which I threw you a little time ago; but you see, the average burglar is by no means a welcome guest, and he has no right to expect to be received with open arms. I must insist upon your accompanying me as far as the diningroom, so that I may give you a glass of wine. Walter hesitated, but only for a moment. He was feeling more shaken and battered than he cared to own. Every now and again things grew misty before his eyes, a feeling of deadly faintness came upon him. It seemed hours since he entered the house, though little more than ten minutes had elapsed. He knew, too, that he had a great fight before him yet with this wily unscrupulous rascal. Silva must have some great card up his sleeve, or he would not have so gaily denied that Vera was in the house, when all the time she was close at hand. On the whole, Walter decided that he would be all the better for accepting Silvas offer. That is very thoughtful of you, he said. I shall be very glad of a stimulant of some kind. Once in the diningroom, Silva took a decanter from the sideboard and poured out a glass of port. Walter took it almost greedily and gulped it down at a draught. The wine seemed to soothe him. He sank down in a chair with his hands over his eyes, and, before he knew where he was, he had sunk into a deep sleep. As Silva bent over the unconscious body a hoarse laugh broke from his lips. Then something seemed to sting and burn his cheek. He started back, to see Vera standing before him. You scoundrel! she cried. You have murdered him! In her anger she cast all fear aside. She caught up a heavy decanter from the sideboard and sent it crashing through the window. The whole house rang with her cries for assistance. XXXIX The Hound Again The clamour ceased. Just for a moment an intense silence followed. Then there came the murmur of voices from without and the crash of splintering wood. Silva cursed himself for his folly. He had been so convinced that Walter had come alone that he had not looked for this. There was no time to be lost. Silva caught Vera as if she had been a featherweight, and ran with her swiftly up the stairs. It was the work of a moment to unlock a door, thrust her inside, and then fasten the door once more. No sooner was this done than Silva was downstairs again, with his hand on the lock of the back entrance of the house. All this time he could hear the steady splintering of wood as an effort was being made to force one of the drawingroom windows. Silva smiled to himself, for here was the delay which was so essential to him. Once the attackers were in the drawingroom, there would yet be another door to force before they were upon him. He wished with all his heart that he had his revolver with him. But, then, he had not expected so swift a vengeance as this, and he had come down from town without any weapon at all. Still, it was idle to waste time in these regrets, seeing that there was other and stern work before him. The back entrance of the house was opened at last, and Silva sped back to the diningroom. He half dragged, half carried Walters unconscious body down the garden path, until he reached a bed of asparagus, where he deposited his burden. Panting with his exertions, he came back again to the house. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his face. He reached eagerly for a glass of wine, but not from the same decanter from which he had helped Walter. Then he sat down coolly enough to smoke a cigarette till the enemy should put in an appearance. A succession of sounds like pistol shots testified to the attack on the drawingroom door, and a moment later the attacking force burst into the diningroom. This is an unexpected pleasure, Silva said, with a smile. But why have you not come in the ordinary way? And now, perhaps, you will be good enough to tell me what you are after? You are wasting our time, Lord Ravenspur said sternly. We are in search of Miss Vera Rayne, as you know perfectly well. There is not the slightest occasion to lie about it, because I heard her voice just now. Take us to her at once. Your lordships hearing is remarkably good, Silva sneered; but the scream of one angry woman is so like that of another that I am not prepared to agree with your statement. However, as I appear to be only one to three of you, I suppose you will have your own way and search the house. That most assuredly, Venables put in. Then I will make no attempt to stop you. I will stay here while you make your search, and perhaps when you have found out that you are mistaken you will apologise to me. The speaker was perfectly cool and self possessed. With a wave of his hand he intimated that the house was quite at the disposal of the intruders. He sat there with his legs crossed, apparently in the enjoyment of a cigarette; but when once the party had scattered his attitude changed entirely. He darted across the hall and out into the garden. His task was not yet finished. There was a deal to do before he could face his enemies again. He was not a bit downcast, though his plot had partially failed, and though he knew now that before long Vera Rayne would be in the hands of her friends again. All he thirsted for now was a weapon by which he could take the vengeance for which he had panted all these years. Slowly he dragged the unconscious body of his victim in the direction of the little gate leading to the lane. Meanwhile, Ravenspur and his companions were scattered over the house. Ravenspur called Vera by name, and, to his great joy and relief, he heard her answering cry from behind one of the bedroom doors. He was not surprised to find the door locked. But that did not much matter now. Ravenspur flung himself against the woodwork, and the door gave way with a crash. Then Vera rushed out and threw herself, sobbing hysterically, into his arms. Never mind me, she cried. Save him! Of whom are you speaking? Ravenspur asked. Why, Walter, of course, Vera went on. I believe that dreadful man poisoned him. He lured Walter into the diningroom and gave him a glass of wine, and when I got there, he Oh, it was too dreadful! Then I broke the window and screamed for assistance, and you came in. Ravenspur listened uneasily. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten all about Walter. Try and calm yourself, he said. So much depends upon you now. Tell me all that happened. I came down with that man last night, Vera said. He brought me a letter from my mother. I wanted to come, and I didnt want to come. I think you will be able to understand my feelings. Then two of them drugged me and carried me down here. It has been a dreadful time. I began to hope this morning, when I saw you in the garden, and Walter gave me a kind of sign. I felt quite sure then that you were not far off, and the knowledge gave me courage. I was locked up in a room at the top of the house, but I managed to escape through a trapdoor, and I was actually on the landing in the darkness when Walter came. He was taken utterly by surprise by this man Silva, and I am sure that he was terribly knocked about and shaken by a fall that he had had. Then I managed to let Walter know that I was in the house. It was a daring thing to do, and Silva must have seen it, though I did not think so at the moment. After that he got Walter downstairs, under pretence of giving him a glass of wine, and then he poisoned him. Oh, I am so distracted that I hardly know what I am speaking about. It is dreadful to think I am quite sure you are mistaken, Ravenspur said. This man Silva has no quarrel with Walter, and when we come to get at the truth you will find that there is no greater mischief than a comparatively harmless drug. But where is Walter? Drugged or not, he certainly was not in the diningroom when we got there just now. But he must be, Vera protested. I saw him lying in an armchair, to all appearances dead. Ravenspur wasted no time in further argument. He went straight back to the diningroom, but no signs of Walter were to be seen. Silva had disappeared also. A strong draught was blowing from the open back door. Ravenspur began to understand pretty well what had taken place. He turned eagerly to Vera. Come along with me, he exclaimed. We are going into the garden. I shall not be in the least surprised to find that Silva has dragged Walter out there. He would have had plenty of time when we were breaking into the house. I understand he is a man of considerable personal strength. Depend upon it, we shall find him somewhere here. Dont be discouraged. Vera was doing her best to keep from breaking down altogether. There was something peculiarly horrible in the suggestion that her lovers body was lying out there stark and stiff in the darkness. The fresh breeze blew gratefully on her face. She began to feel a little more like herself again. We will get Perks here with his lantern presently, Lord Ravenspur said. Keep as near to the path as possible. If that fellow happens to have a knife and sees me here, why It was Lord Ravenspurs turn to shudder now, but he kept bravely on. He opened his mouth to speak again, when, suddenly a snarling roar like that of an angry lion broke out, followed by the shrill scream of a human voice, calling in the last extremity of agony. At the dreadful sound, Vera stood still. It is Bruno, Lord Ravenspur said hoarsely. The dog is utterly out of control. He has got hold of that Italian to a certainty. There may be time to save his life yet. XL Broken Wings The hoarse yell for assistance rose yet again, this time more feeble than before. It was horrible to stand there in the darkness, looking helplessly around and trying to locate the direction from which the call came. It was horrible, too, to listen to the mumbling and snarling of the dog, just as if he were worrying a bone. Vera clung terrified to Lord Ravenspur. It was in vain that the latter whistled and called to the dog. We must have a light here, he said hoarsely. There is no other way of discovering where the trouble lies. Fool that I was not to think of it before. That man, Perks, has a lantern. Ravenspur strode back to the house again, and yelled aloud for Perks and his lantern. What is wrong? Venables demanded. Oh, youll see soon enough, Ravenspur said grimly. For heavens sake, bring Perks here with the lantern. Unless I am greatly mistaken, our troubles are over as far as the Italian is concerned. Bruno has got hold of him. They all raced together down the garden path in the direction of the gate. There was no mistaking where the trouble lay, for that mumbling snarl was close at hand now. It seemed to proceed from the foot of a tree. Even Perks, hardened as he was, shuddered and turned pale as the shining disc of the lantern showed a picture so horrible and revolting that Perks staggered back. Take the young lady away sir, he said. This is no place for her. You go back to the house, and leave Lord Ravenspur to carry this poor chap back again. We cant tackle the dog unless there is someone here who knows him. One glance at the prostrate body, and Venables turned away without further question. Obviously Perks was right, and assuredly it was no place for Vera. Silva lay there on the broad of his back, his arms thrown out, and crouched upon his body was the enormous weight of the dog. The pressure in itself was enough to cause suffocation. But the mischief lay in the terrible gash in the throat where the hounds teeth had met. Bruno crouched there now with evil, bloodshot eyes; a long, deep terrifying growl came steadily and persistently. Perks drew cautiously near. Well, if this doesnt beat everything, he said. Why, there are two bodies. One of them is Mr. Lance. That is the cause of all the mischief, as you will see presently, Ravenspur explained. Never mind about my nephew for a moment. Unless I am greatly mistaken, there is very little the matter with him. But this poor fellow is in a different condition altogether. As he spoke, Ravenspur stepped forward, and gave Bruno a tremendous blow with a stick which he had pulled from the hedgeside. At the same time he uttered a few words in a harsh tone, and immediately the dog slunk away and crossed the road. His tail was between his legs now, his attitude one of deep dejection. I will deal with him presently, Ravenspur went on. You take the head, and Ill take the feet, and well get this poor fellow back to the house again. It is a terrible business altogether, but, mind you, that dog is not very much to blame. As far as I can make out, what has happened is this Silva managed to drug my nephew, and was getting his body out of the way when he accidentally came in contact with the dog. And if there is one human being more than another to whom Bruno is devoted, that person is my nephew. The dog would scent him at once, andwell, the rest you can imagine. They conveyed the unconscious body of Silva upstairs, and laid him on a bed. Once Walter had been brought under cover also, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to send for a doctor without delay. It was obvious enough to Ravenspur and his companions that Silvas wounds were exceedingly critical. The throat seemed to be almost bitten away. The man had lost a deal of blood. He lay there absolutely unconscious. His swarthy features were deadly pale. It was impossible to say whether he breathed or not. You leave the doctor to me, Perks said. I know the neighbourhood. I can be back here well within the hour. The doctor came at length. He shook his head seriously after he had made his examination. Oh, of course, recovery is possible, he said; whilst there is life there is always hope. But if this man pulls round it will be little less than a miracle. How did it happen? There was nothing for it but to explain. After all, it would be more or less impossible to avoid the scandal now. But nothing was said as to the real cause of the accident, nor did Ravenspur deem it prudent to ask the doctors advice as to the best thing to do with Walter. Will the poor fellow recover consciousness? he asked. That is quite possible, the doctor replied. He has a splendid constitution, and possibly may linger on for some days. He can take no direct nourishment, of course. But medical science can do so much nowadays in the way of injections. I shouldnt be at all surprised if my patient were able to give an account of what has happened. But in all human probability, he will be in his grave before the week is out. And now, will you leave it to me to obtain a nurse, or would you like to send one of your own? On the whole, it would be better to leave it to the doctor, Ravenspur thought. An hour or so passed, and the nurse was established in the sickroom. It was now getting towards daylight, but no one thought of rest or sleep. There was nothing for it but to make the best of the extraordinary situation; nothing for it but to remain where they were and explain as well as they could to the servants when they came back in the morning. Vera flung herself down upon a couch in the drawingroom, and closed her eyes. She was tired and worn out, though it seemed to her that sleep was impossible. Nevertheless, when she came to herself again the sunshine was streaming into the room, the birds were singing noisily in the trees outside. On the lawn Ravenspur was walking up and down in grave consultation with Venables. Presently Vera saw Walter join the group. He looked dreadfully white and haggard; his head was bent, and his step was shaky. A thrill of thankfulness passed over her. She had never hoped to see him walk again. As Vera left the drawingroom and crossed the hall, a maidservant looked at her curiously. Vera advanced with a smile. I am afraid we have greatly distressed you, she said. But perhaps you already know exactly what has happened? His lordship explained to me, miss, the girl said timidly. I understand that my new master is a friend of yours. You were coming down to see him, and a great dog attacked him. Yes; that is so, Vera said, relieved to find that she had to make no prevarication. And now, if you will be so good, you might show me to a bedroom where I can wash. The maid seemed to anticipate such a request, for she led the way up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. Vera wondered what the maid would have said could she only have looked into the room at the top of the house under the roof. Feeling much fresher and brighter from the touch of cold water, Vera went down and joined the other two in the garden. I am glad to see you looking none the worse for your adventure, Ravenspur said. I have managed to convince the servants that our appearance here is quite natural. One had to tell a few falsehoods, but in the circumstances it was necessary. Still, servants are suspicious creatures, and I dont want their curiosity to go too far. Already they are wondering where the mistress of the house is, so that there is no help for it, and we must have your mother here without delay. Do you happen to know her London address? No; I dont, Vera replied. I saw her for an hour last night. What, down here? Walter exclaimed. Yes; she came here on purpose to see me. She only stayed a little time, because I understood that it was necessary for her to be back in London again. But I would rather not talk about that if you dont mind. You will quite understand why. Walter murmured something in reply. Then his face brightened. You are quite right, uncle, he said. It is absolutely necessary that the Countess Flavio should be here at once. We can get her address from Mrs. Delahay. If you like I will go up myself. Do you feel equal to it? Vera asked anxiously. Oh, Im all right now, Walter said, with the exception of a certain shakiness and a splitting headache. It must have been a pretty severe dose that our interesting friend gave me last night. But I dont think there is any occasion to worry about me. Then we will have some breakfast, and get up to London at once, Venables said, in his quick, decisive fashion. We can leave Lord Ravenspur and Miss Rayne here till we come back. I dont think that Lord Ravenspur has anything to fear from his enemy now. Breakfast was despatched without delay, and immediately Venables and Walter left for London. The house was now quiet and still, for as yet practically nothing was known as to the cause of Silvas action, and public curiosity still slept. It was some time after luncheon before Vera had a chance of speaking to the nurse, with an inquiry as to how the patient was getting on. The nurse smiled in reply. He is slightly better, she explained; in fact, he is as well as he is likely to be. He has been conscious for the last half hour. He seems to want something, only I cant understand what it is. We may be able to find out when the doctor comes. XLI A Ray of Light It was no difficult matter to find Mrs. Delahay, who, when the late startling developments were laid before her, made no demur in giving her sisters address. Maria Delahay was looking just as pale and haggard as usual. It seemed impossible to rouse her from the state of apathy into which she had fallen. When the two friends were standing on the steps of the hotel they ran against Inspector Dallas. Any fresh news? Walter asked. Well, no, Dallas admitted. I am simply waiting on events at present. If you could only get Mrs. Delahay to be more candid with me it might save her a deal of unpleasantness in the long run. Do you mean that she is in danger? Venables asked. I think you can see that for yourself, sir, Dallas replied. Naturally, I am hesitating as long as possible Then hesitate a little longer, Walter said. Quite by accident Lord Ravenspur has stumbled upon a clue which I think will astonish you when you come to know his story. We are going off now to a place called Cannon Green. We shall probably be back by the last train tonight, and I want you to meet us at Waterloo Station. I think you will be well rewarded for your trouble. Dallas promised, and, like the wise man he was, asked no questions. The two companions proceeded in a cab to Isleworth Road, where they asked to see the mistress of the house. The maid who answered the door was somewhat reticent, but she admitted that her mistress was at home, whereupon Walter and his companion entered without further ceremony. Perhaps their manner impressed the maid, for she came back a moment later saying that her mistress would see the visitors. The Countess entered the drawingroom and glanced with cold displeasure at the intruders. What can you possibly want with me? she demanded. Perhaps I had better explain, Walter began. My name is Lance, and I am a nephew of Lord Ravenspur. Lord Ravenspur has a ward who is called Miss Vera Rayne. In other words, I understand that Miss Rayne is really your daughter. The Countesss cold face flushed slightly. I am not prepared to contradict you, she said. My dear madam, Walter said, this is no time for diplomacy. Rightly or wrongly, my uncle came to Italy eighteen years ago and kidnapped your daughter. You see, I am quite candid, and I hope you will be good enough to be as candid in your replies. My uncle will himself explain why he took this bold step, but I understand that your late husband did not consider you a desirable parent for a child, and he made my uncle promise to remove the child from your influence. Into the morality of that question I am not disposed to go. For nearly eighteen years nothing happened, and my uncle began to regard Vera quite as his own child. Then the truth came out, and some emissary of yours came to England, prepared to go to any length to regain possession of your daughter. I need not say I am alluding to the man called Silva, also known to many people as Valdo, the flying man. This servant of yours made no fewer than three attacks on my uncles life, none of which, fortunately, was successful. And then, I understand, you came on the scene. I believe you were instrumental in luring your daughter from Lady Ringmars the night before last, and getting her imprisoned at a place called Cannon Green. One moment, please. I would not deny it, if I were you I am not going to deny it, the Countess said in a hard, dry voice. There is no occasion to. Ah, well, that being so, we shall get on all the better. Directly we discovered what had happened we set off in pursuit, fortunately aided by a bloodhound of my uncles, who had followed us to Lady Ringmars from Park Lane. To make a long story short, we broke into the house, and Miss Rayne is once more under the protection of Lord Ravenspur. But your man, Silva, does not lack resource, and he managed to drug me and drag me out into the garden. Unfortunately for him, the dog was prowling about, and, knowing me and recognising my peril, he made a furious attack upon Silva, with the result that your friend lies in a critical condition and is not expected to live. After what I have told you, I think you will see the necessity of coming down to Cannon Green with us without delay. During this recital the Countess made no sign. She listened with a calmness and unconcern which moved Walter to anger. After all, whatever Silvas faults might have been, his devotion to his mistress left nothing to be desired. The Countess sat thoughtfully for a few moments before she replied. I think I see what you mean, she said presently. You want as far as possible to avoid a scandal? Well, naturally, Walter said warmly. In your daughters interests it is your duty to assist us. If you fall in line with this idea, the general public will be none the wiser. And when you come to know what manner of man it is that your servant has been attempting to murder in absolutely cold blood Oh, I know what manner of man he is, the Countess cried. He is the same manner of man as my husband. And a more coldblooded scoundrel never drew the breath of life. But make no mistake about one thingI was a party to no violence. All I wanted was to have my child back again, and I hoped that when once this was done, I should be able to induce Silva to forego the vengeance which to him was a part of his religion. You will understand presently why I have appeared to act so strangely. Not but what Lord Ravenspur deserved whatever fate he got at the hands of Silva. Still, we are wasting time in talking like this. I am ready to come with you to Cannon Green at once, more especially because you are right in saying that it is my duty to try and avoid anything in the shape of a scandal. If you will give me five minutes and call a cab, I am absolutely at your service. It was a little before five when this strangely assorted group reached Cannon Green. The doctor was just coming away, and Walter asked eagerly after the patient. Oh, practically he is no better, the medical man explained. I mean, he isnt going to get well. Just for the present he is buoyed up with a strong stimulant, and is in full possession of his faculties. He seems to want something, but I cant make out what it is. We gave him a sheet of paper and a pencil just now, and he scribbled a word or two, which, being Italian, we could not make out. I think I know what he wants, Walter said. May I suggest, Countess, that you go up to the poor mans bedroom at once? Silvas face lighted up as his eyes fell upon his mistress. He pointed to the bandages about his throat. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. I know exactly what has happened, the Countess said. No, pray dont distress yourself. You must not try your strength. You will never get better if you exert yourself. A melancholy smile came over Silvas face. The expression of his eyes told as plainly as possible that he had no delusions on the score of his recovery. Then he went through the motion of writing with an imaginary pencil upon an invisible paper. Countess Flavio turned impulsively to the nurse. Is it quite safe? she asked. I dont think the poor fellow will rest till he makes me understand; and you see, being Italian myself, anything he may write I think it will be a very good thing, the nurse replied. She came to the bedside with a sheet of paper and a pencil, which she placed in Silvas hand. His unsteady fingers began to trace certain signs on the paper. The marks were feeble and straggling enough, but a little care on the part of the Countess enabled her to make out what the characters represented. It is quite plain to me now, she said, looking down into Silvas eager face. You want me to find the diary, do you not? You mean the Counts diary, which was not produced at the trial? Silva nodded feebly. Evidently he was fast lapsing into unconsciousness again. But with an effort he managed to concentrate his mind upon what the Countess was saying. The diary is locked up in a little desk in your bedroom, the Countess went on. I am to find it and give it to Mr. Walter Lance to read. My good Silva, this is most extraordinary! What possible interest could Mr. Lance take in that diary? Are you quite sure that I have not made a mistake? Again Silva opened his eyes and nodded almost vigorously. Very well, the Countess said reluctantly. I see you are in earnest. I will get the diary at once, and Mr. Lance shall have it without delay. If there is anything more It was idle to speak to Silva any longer. Just for an instant a smile flickered over his face, and then he was completely lost to the world and his surroundings. Puzzled and mystified, the Countess crept from the room. Silva had made this request on what was practically his dying bed, and he must be obeyed. What good it would do at this moment the Countess was quite at a loss to see. She found the little desk presently and broke it open. Inside lay a small parchmentcovered volume with gilt lettering on the outside. With this in her hand the Countess Flavio walked out on to the lawn where Walter was strolling up and down and accosted him. This is for you, she said. I dont know why, but Silva told me to deliver it into your hands, and perhaps when you have read it you will have a different opinion of Veras mother. XLII Run to Earth Without waiting for a reply the Countess turned away, and went back into the house again. In the drawingroom Vera was seated, talking earnestly to Lord Ravenspur. There was an awkward pause as the Countess Flavio entered the room. Then Vera rose with a crimson face, and came in the direction of her mother. I suppose there is no occasion, she said, to introduce you to one another, though it is so many years ago I have never seen Lord Ravenspur before in my life, the Countess said coldly, and I am quite sure that he has never seen me, either. We are absolute strangers. But I thought, Vera stammered, that Lord Ravenspur and yourselfOh, I dont know what I thought. The girl paused abruptly, conscious that she was saying too much.

For some time past she had been hugging what appeared to be a shameful secret to her breast. Her face paled with remorse now when she thought how she had misjudged these two people. But the embarrassment was not all Veras, for Ravenspur was looking unhappy and uncomfortable. Only the Countess appeared to retain her cold selfpossession. For some time no one spoke. Sooner or later, I suppose, I shall be entitled to an explanation, the Countess said at length. It is now eighteen years since I was cruelly deprived of my child. It is just possible that Lord Ravenspur can explain his extraordinary conduct. I think I might manage to do that if we were alone, Ravenspur replied. But, after all, you are Veras mother, and what I have to say I could not utter in the childs hearing. Oh, I know that sounds like a cowardly remark, but my conscience tells me that I am only doing what is right. Vera rose as if to go, but Ravenspur stretched out a hand and detained her. There was a determined look in his eyes. Not yet, he said; there will be time for that later on. After dinner, if the Countess will give me the honour of an interview, I may be able to satisfy her that I am not the scoundrel she takes me to be. There are always two sides to a question. Yes, where the man is concerned, the Countess said coldly. Let us hope in this case the same remark will apply to the womanthat is, if you are prepared to admit that I am a woman. Ravenspur murmured something in reply. It seemed to him only right that mother and daughter should be alone. And, besides, he wanted to think the situation over. He had formed his own opinion of the Countess. He had implicitly believed all that his late friend Flavio had told him about his wife. He had anticipated something quite different to this. The woman was cold and selfcontained and haughty, and yet Ravenspur could see nothing in her face to which he could take exception. Flavio had spoken of her as a fiend, a creature who had no title to the name of woman. His pictures had been glowing and full of colour. And now, before a word had been spoken, Ravenspur began to have his doubts. And how like the Countess was to Mrs. Delahay. As Ravenspur paced up and down the lawn, he began to see a little light in dark places. He was still turning the matter over in his mind when Walter and Venables came out of the house. Where are you going now? Ravenspur asked. What is that thing that you have in your hand? It is a new collar and dogchain, Walter explained. It suddenly occurred to Venables just now that we had seen nothing of Bruno all day. I have been whistling for him for half an hour, and though I am almost certain he is hiding somewhere in the bracken on the common, I cant get him to answer the call. Probably afraid of a good thrashing for his work last night, Ravenspur murmured. But you must manage to get hold of him, Walter. It will never do for a big hound like that to be roaming about the common. Those dogs are all right when they are well fed. But if the beast gets really hungry I wouldnt answer for the consequences. Whatever else happens, or whatever is neglected, you must find Bruno, and that at once. Walter and Venables went off in the direction of the common, and for the next couple of hours sought everywhere for the dog. It seemed to them they could hear him every now and then. Presently Venables caught sight of his lean, darkbrown side as he crouched behind a great thicket of gorse. Walter called softly, and held a biscuit out in the direction of the bush. Then slowly, with his body bent to the ground and his head hung down, the great beast came, and Walter slipped the collar round his neck. He had hardly congratulated himself upon his success when a hollow groan close by attracted his attention. He turned eagerly to Venables. Oh, yes, I heard it, the latter said with a smile. Cant you guess who it is? I declare I had absolutely forgotten all about him. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is our friend Stevens whom Perks tied up so neatly and artistically last night. It was precisely as Venables had said. Stevens lay there groaning and shivering, quite helpless and almost unable to move. Even after his bonds were cut away it was some time before he had strength to rise. His teeth were chattering with the cold, although the day was quite a warm one. He was a mass of cramps and aches from head to feet. When once his blood began to stir again, he turned an angry face in the direction of his rescuers. Oh, you need not laugh, he said. It is no laughing matter. Ill have the law against you for this, see if I dont. We will talk about that presently, said Venables coolly. In the meantime, you had better come as far as the house and have something to eat. And you will be wise if you say nothing, or know nothing, of what happened last night. Your accomplice, Silva, lies in bed at the point of death, so you have nothing to fear from him. If you had gone straight with us, you would not have fallen into this sorry plight. Have you got any money? I spent it all in coming down last night, Stevens said. Oh, well, well see you back to town again, Walter replied. Meanwhile, we have other work to do. We will take you to the house and see that you are properly fed, and then you can kill time as best you can for the evening. You can return by the last train. It was dark before Stevens reached the station with the few shillings in his pocket necessary to get him back to London again. As he stepped into a thirdclass carriage he did not realise that Walter and Venables were taking their places at the end of the train. It was just the same at Waterloo Station, where Stevens got out, and a moment later he was being followed by the pair, who had been joined now by Dallas. What is the game, gentlemen? the Inspector asked. Surely that man is the witness Stevens who gave such startling evidence at the Delahay inquest? That is right enough, Walter said. We are going to follow him and see where he goes to. Unless I am greatly mistaken, he can give you a great deal more information than he did at the inquest. And now, perhaps, I had better tell you of the discovery which Lord Ravenspur made last night. But, before doing that, I want to know if you missed anything from Mr. Delahays studio. For instance, did you find a watch on the body? There was no watch, Dallas said, after a moments thought. We found a purse in his trousers pocket with some gold in it, but nothing besides. Was he wearing a watch? I am sure if you ask Mrs. Delahay she will tell you so, Walter replied. He was wearing a watch and chain, and on the chain was an ornament which my uncle had given him. My uncle bought that ornament yesterday from a man who is obviously a receiver of stolen goods, and that ornament was sold to the shady individual in question by John Stevens. In proof of what I say, here it is. Dallas eyes gleamed as he took the trinket in his hand. He said no more as he walked thoughtfully by the side of his companions, till at length Stevens turned into a shady street, where he entered a dingy publichouse. Without the slightest hesitation Dallas followed. He had quite made up his mind what he was going to do. For the time being, at any rate, the publichouse was empty. Stevens was sitting in an armchair behind a partition with a glass in his hand. He started and his face changed colour as his eyes fell upon Dallas. The Inspectors manner was genial enough, but there was a grimness on his face that Stevens did not relish. What can I do for you, gentlemen? he stammered. Well, unless I am greatly mistaken, you can do a great deal, Dallas replied. That matter of the Delahay murder, you know. You remember what you told us at the inquest? Yes, and every word of it was true, Stevens said tremulously. If it is the last word I ever say, it was true. And I believe it, Dallas went on. The only fault I find in your evidence is that you did not tell us enough. Why didnt you finish your story while you were about it? Stevens looked stealthily at his tormentor. He gulped his glass of liquor down hastily, for there was a queer dryness at the back of his throat that almost choked him. Come, Dallas said, with a quick and sudden sternness. Speak out, or it will be all the worse for you. Tell us who it was who murdered Mr. Louis Delahay? XLIII The Whole Truth Stevens stared helplessly at the speaker. He tried to speak, but his jaw dropped. He mumbled something that was quite impossible to understand. But, at the same time, he recognised the peril of his position. There was a ghastly green tinge on his face, his hand trembled. Dallas regarded him pleasantly enough. There was nothing harsh or stern in the detectives manner. His quiet air of assured triumph struck a greater terror into Stevens than any sternness would have done. The shabby little man wriggled about in his seat looking very much like a rat behind the bars of a cage. Take your time, Dallas said quietly. You will find in the long run that it will pay you a great deal better to tell the truth. I have always told the truth, Stevens stammered. Up to a certain point, yes. But you didnt go far enough. For instance, you might have told the coroner that you saw Mr. Delahays lady visitor a second time. You might have gone further, and told the court that Mr. Delahay had other visitors long after his first one had gone. You see, that would have helped the police a good deal, and it would have effectually cleared an innocent lady whom we suspected of having a hand in the murder. Now who was it that called at the studio in the early hours of the morning? How should I know? Stevens said sullenly. That, my good man, is for you to say. But you need not answer unless you like. It so happens that you are waiting here for the individual in question this very moment. The greenish hue crept over Stevens face again. He could only stare at the speaker with openmouthed astonishment. Dallas manner grew a little more stern and curt as he rose from his seat. You will stay where you are, he said, and with these two gentlemen I will go into the next box. I think I can trust you not to betray our presence there. In fact, your safety, to a large extent, depends upon your actions in the next hour or so. I have done nothing, Stevens burst out. I swear I have done nothing. I had no hand in it at all. That I quite believe, Dallas replied. It was afterwards that you began to see your way to make some money out of it. And now let me tell you something. You dont deserve any consideration at my hands, but I am prepared to spare you as far as possible. Oh, I know you will play me false at the first chance. But let me tell you, I know all about your visit to your friend, Perks, of Cannon Green. I know how you disposed of certain stolen goods which, until the night of the murder, were in the possession of Mr. Louis Delahay. After that, I dont think you will deem it prudent to try any of your nonsense with me. Dallas turned away, and, with his two companions, entered the next box. It was gloomy enough there, so that their presence was not likely to be detected by anyone who came in. Walter turned eagerly to Dallas. His curiosity was aroused now. He wanted to know how it was that the inspector knew so much. It was mere conjecture on my part, Dallas said. Of course, what you told me gave me a great deal of assistance; but I did not begin to see my way quite clearly until we followed Stevens here. The landlord of this publichouse has never got into trouble as yet. But we know perfectly well that a good deal of stolen property is disposed of, and when I saw Stevens turn in here, things became plain enough. He was coming to meet his accomplice, and hand over his share of the money which he had obtained from Perks. Before half an hour is over, the real culprit will be here. Please stop talking directly anybody comes in. It will spoil everything if our presence here becomes known. It was precisely as Dallas had said. Some twenty minutes later a man lounged into the bar and called for something to drink. He seemed to suspect nothing, he appeared to be perfectly at his ease. He whistled some musichall air merrily. The man was fairly welldressed. A gaudy cap on the back of his head disclosed a plaster of greasy curls on a peculiarly low and retreating forehead. The stranger might have been a street hawker in his best clothes. Certainly he did not suggest a professional criminal. He swallowed his drink and strolled towards the fireplace without noticing the three occupants in the recesses of the box. Then he caught sight of Stevens, and took a seat by his side. The conversation was conducted in whispers, but it was possible for the listeners to hear most of what was taking place. Well, did you manage it all right? the newcomer asked. Dont trouble about that, Stevens muttered. But I didnt get half as much as you thought I should. Forty pounds was the price my man offered, and he wouldnt give another penny. The newcomer growled something incoherent. Then there was a chink of money stealthily passed, followed by a volley of oaths from Stevens companion. The game isnt worth playing, he muttered. Fancy, twenty quid for a job like that, and the chance of hanging into the bargain. I wish I had never gone there, John. I wish I had never met you that night, when you told me all about the house in Fitzjohn Square. I wake up in the night in a bath of cold sweat when I think of it. Fancy going into what you take to be an empty house, and finding a dead body staring up in your face from the floor! Yes, I took his watch and chain all right, but I dont know where I got the pluck from. Took the risk of being strung up for it, blime! And me ready to get married, and the date fixed and all! Lord, if I could only see my way to get clear of it all! Twenty quid against a mans life! You go and try it yourself, and see what its like, my ancient pal. When I recollect as it was you as told me of the broken catch on the studio window, I could bash your face in, I could. I cant forget it. I have tried drink, but that is no use. You can stave it off for an hour or two, and then it comes back worse than ever. And all for the sake of twenty quid! Stevens made no reply. He sat there quivering from head to foot, sick with suspense and anxiety, wondering in his mind when Dallas was going to strike. At any other time the ghastly colour of his face would have attracted the attention of his companion, but the other man was occupied with his own thoughts. He was staring moodily into the fireplace. Dont talk about it, Stevens managed to say at length. If you had told me about it at the time, I never should have touched that stuff. But I had got it in my pocket, and I had given my word before ever I had heard of the murder. And how was I to know that there was a chance of Mr. Delahay coming back? If anything happens you will say as much for me, wont you? Stevens asked the question with trembling eagerness. He made his request more with a view to impressing Dallas than anything else. But the culprit by his side, apparently, had no idea of the drift of the question, or why it was asked. Oh, you have nothing to fear, he said moodily. At least, it is all right as long as that stuff isnt traced. But what is the use of sitting here jawing like this? Let us go to a musichall or theatre or something of that kindanything to get away from ones thoughts. Every now and again The speaker rose to his feet, and Stevens dragged his trembling limbs from the settee. At the same moment, Dallas appeared upon the scene and touched the stranger lightly on the shoulder. I hope you know who I am, he said. The other man heaved a sigh, which sounded almost like relief. Just for a moment all the blood left his face. Then he recovered himself and looked at Dallas steadily. Dallas, of Scotland Yard, he said. Oh, I know you well enough, sir, and I expect you know me. Name of Cooney, Dallas said briskly. Jim Cooney. I arrest you for burglary at the residence of Mr. Louis Delahay, in Fitzjohn Square. Yes, thats right enough, Cooney said. I am not going to complain. Upon my word, I am glad it is over. If you just let me have a cigarette and another drink Ill tell you all about it; and a nice sort of pal you are, Stevens. Oh, Id give something to have you for five minutes to myself. You sneaking rat! I couldnt help myself, Stevens whined. Upon my word, I couldnt. Besides, what does it matter? Inspector Dallas knows all about it. He even knew you were coming here tonight, though I swear he never had a single hint from me. Isnt that so, Inspector? Am I telling the truth, or am I a liar? It is perfectly true, Cooney, Dallas explained. I followed Stevens here, knowing quite well that he was waiting for you. The assurance seemed to be sufficient, for Cooney asked no further questions. Nor was it for Dallas to explain that, till a few moments ago, he had no idea of the real identity of the man whom Stevens had come to meet. Cooney took a long whiff of his cigarette and pitched the end of it into the fireplace. I am quite ready for you now, he said, and Ill tell you all about it if you like. Oh, I know everything I say will be taken down in evidence against me; but it is little I mind that. I plundered the dead body of Mr. Delahay, all right. He was dead when I got there, and if I didnt tell you so, you overheard enough to jug me half a dozen times. Dont look at me like that Mr. Dallas, sir. Dont think as I had any hand in the murder, sir. May I die if I aint as innocent of that as a kid. Better not say too much, Dallas suggested. Really, I am not curious to hear. And now, come along. You can have a cab if you like. Perhaps you may come out of this better than you expectif you are only candid. Dont be in a hurry, Cooney pleaded. Ill tell you everything, sir, I willstraighteverything from start to finish. Sit down and listen to me; and you need not be afraid that I shall try and escape. I dont want to. XLIV The Story of a Crime Dallas shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Truth to tell he was both annoyed and disappointed. He had looked forward with every assurance to laying his hand on the actual culprit in the person of Cooney. As it was now, the whole thing looked like beginning all over again. A suspicion of the real truth was dawning on his mind. It was like this, Cooney said, in a harsh, strained voice. I have been pretty short of a job for some time, and I promised to pay for a lot of furniture I bought for my house by a given time. I had the stuff on the hirepurchase system, and I knew precious well what would happen if I did not keep the instalments up. I had only a day or two to spare, and I was getting pretty anxious. That same evening I met Stevens in a public house. I hadnt seen him for some time, and, naturally enough, I asked him what he had been doing. Then he told me that on behalf of a party, whose name he didnt mention, he had been shadowing a certain house in Fitzjohn Square. I wasnt particularly interested until he let out that he could tell me a good deal about the houses there, and how some of them would be easy work for the likes of a chap such as me, for instance. Then I asks a few questions, and hears all about Mr. Delahays studio. Thinks I to myself, heres a bit of luck for you, Jim Cooney. I had all the information I wanted. The next night I goes round and has a look at the studio. The thing was as easy as eating your dinner. I waited till it got pretty late, and then I got into the house from the back. When I did get there, I was rather alarmed to see a light in the studio. I crept along to the door, and looked in. You can imagine my surprise when I saw a gentleman painting there. When I looked at him again I had no difficulty in recognising Lord Ravenspur. What he was doing there, I dont know. But seeing it wasnt his own house, I reckoned he wasnt likely to stay long, so I just sat down to wait patiently for such a time as I could have the place to myself. It wasnt more than an hour before I heard the door open, and two other people came in. They were a lady and a gentleman, but who the lady was I dont know from Adam. The gentleman, as you will guess, was Mr. Delahay himself. I suppose the lady was really Mrs. Delahay, too; I mean, the woman who is suspected of the murder. But I am getting a bit away from the point. I had hardly time to hide myself behind a recess with a curtain in front of it before the newcomers came into the hall and began to talk. They were conversing more or less in whispers, so that I could not follow very well, but I could see that they were annoyed to find Lord Ravenspur there, and they were casting about for some means of getting rid of him. Presently the lady said something about the light and the cable, and the gentleman seemed to fall in with her suggestion. Anyway, I saw him take a knife from his pocket, and go down into the basement. A moment later the whole place was plunged in darkness You mean that the cable was cut? Dallas asked. Well, I am glad that mystery is cleared up. I am bound to tell you, gentlemen, that that cut cable has caused me no end of trouble. It started me on a dozen, more or less impossible, theories. I see exactly what happened now. Mr. Delahay and his companion doubtless thought that if they cut off the light, they would get rid of Lord Ravenspur. That is exactly what they did, Cooney resumed. I heard his lordship fussing about, and trying the electric switches, but he gave it up as a bad job, and after a bit left the house. Mr. Delahay appeared presently from somewhere, with a lamp, which he carried into the studio, and the lady followed him. I was close enough at hand to see what took place. The lady had come, evidently for some valuable jewelry, for Mr. Delahay produced a case from a safe, and handed it over to her. My word, but those stones did sparkle! It seemed to me that I was in luck that night. My game obviously was to take no further heed of the studio, but to follow the lady as soon as she left the house. It was nearly two oclock in the morning, and there wasnt a soul about. In my minds eye I saw those stones already in my pocket. But, unfortunately for me, Mr. Delahay walked with his visitor as far as the front gate, and stood looking up the road until the lady was safe in a hansom. It was as much as I could do to get back to the house again without being discovered, but I managed it all right. There were several valuable articles I had marked down, and directly Mr. Delahay was back in the studio I began to gather them together. I dropped one trinket, which tinkled on the floor, and my heart was in my mouth. I thought that the sound didnt reach the ears of Mr. Delahay. But I was mistaken. A minute or two later I heard him coming, and I bolted through the window into the garden. I waited there perhaps for an hour before it seemed safe for me to go back, and then I went. I turned on the light. My heart was fair in my mouth. Then I looked down at the floor. There lay Mr. Delahay as dead as a rabbit. I believe I howled for a moment, I was taken to! But there he lay, and there was his watchchain ashining in the light, and then it comes into my head that, if Id got pluck enough, here was a way to pay for them sticks of furniture of mine. It was hard work, but I managed to screw myself up to it at last. After all said and done, Id only come here to take what I could get, and it wasnt me that knifed the poor gentleman. Besides, he might have died a natural death for all I knew. There was no sign of blood about, and nothing that suggested violence. All the same, I couldnt go through it again if you offered me ten thousand of the best. Cooney paused and shuddered. Great beads of perspiration poured down his face. Then he resumed once more. Well, he was dead, and there was an end of it. Just for the moment I wasnt thinking about much besides my little happy home. I pocketed all the valuables I could lay my hands upon, and carried them away. You may say that that was a mad thing to do, but after I saw Mr. Delahay lying dead at my feet, it seemed to me as if he wasnt likely to miss em. Oh, I know as I stand in what the papers call a serious position. But thats the gospel truth, and I cant tell you any more. It seems to me I have said enough. And now, if you will call a cab, sir, I am ready for you. A cab was called, and Dallas drove off in the direction of Bow Street with his prisoner. He stopped just a moment to exchange a few words with Lance and Venables. There is no reason why Mrs. Delahay should not know this just yet? Walter asked. You may be sure that she feels her position keenly. Would there be any objection to getting her to accompany us as far as Cannon Green tonight? You will understand why. None at all, Dallas said. Ill send a message to the man who is watching outside the Grand Hotel, and let him know that his presence there is needed no longer. All the same, we have still got to find the culprit. It isnt Cooney. He told us the truth, Im certain. The culprit is at Cannon Green! What a fool Ive been! Mrs. Delahay received her visitors in a dull, apathetic way, which had never left her since the night of the tragedy. But her face cleared, and her manner became more soft and gentle as she listened to the story which Walter had to tell. She dropped into a chair, and for some moments the tears ran unrestrainedly down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes presently. There was something like a smile on her lips as she turned to Walter. I believe those tears saved my reason, she said. I have not been able to cry. I have not been able to feel the last few days. The death of my husband was bad enough. The knowledge that I was suspected of his murder was worse, but the feeling that my own sister possibly had a hand in the tragedy was worse than all the rest. There are one or two matters to be explained yet, but the great truth is growing plain, and I feel like a living being once more. Oh, yes; I will come down to Cannon Green with you; I am looking forward to it with something like pleasure. I know that when I have seen my sister everything will be cleared up. It was a different woman who came down from her room half an hour later, ready for the journey. She looked sad and pathetic enough in her deep mourning. The trouble still brooded in her eyes, but the look of stony despair was no longer there. They came at length to the house on the common. The windows were lighted up, the hall looked comfortable and cheery. In the drawingroom were the Countess Flavio and Vera. They rose as Mrs. Delahay entered. I have brought your sister, Walter explained briefly. She has much to say to you. Perhaps I had better leave you alone. XLV Count Flavios Diary It was getting exceedingly late now, but the two sisters Descarti, together with Vera, were still in the drawingroom. Nobody cared to disturb them. It was felt that they would have much to say to one another. And no doubt, all they had to tell would be disclosed when the proper time came. Valdo had not recovered consciousness again. He lay there overhead, with a vigilanteyed nurse watching him. Venables had not come down with Mrs. Delahay and Walter. He had excused himself on the plea of business, and on the understanding that he would visit Cannon Green the following day. In the diningroom for the last hour or two Walter had been seated, deeply engrossed in the slim, parchmentcovered volume which had been sent him by Countess Flavio at the urgent request of her dying servant. Time was going on, and still Walter did not look up from the book. It was long past two before he finished. Then with a firm step and a determined air he went up to the little library where Lord Ravenspur was busy writing letters. The latter looked up, and demanded to know what his nephew wanted. I want you to look at this, Walter said quietly. It is a diary written by your late friend Count Flavio, whose handwriting you will, of course, recognise. The diary came into the hands of Silva after his masters death. Now Silva told me some time agoin fact, during that memorable interview in your studiothat he had in his possession documentary evidence which would prove that his mistress was an injured woman, and his master a scoundrel of the deepest dye. When I asked him why he did not produce this book at the trial, he shrugged his shoulders, and said that it would have been useless. Public opinion against the Countess ran so high that nobody would have believed that it was anything but a forgery. But that will be for you to judge. Before we go any further, I want your assurance that this is your dead friends own handwriting. Lord Ravenspur turned over the leaves of the manuscript, more or less languidly. One leaf after another he fluttered over; then he handed the book back to Walter again. I am not going to contest the point, he said. Beyond question, this is my unfortunate friends handwriting; though the letters are quite plain, the writing could not be easily forged. Indeed, to forge such an amount as that would be the work of half a lifetime. But what do you want me to do? Walter signified that he would like his uncle to read the whole of the volume, but Lord Ravenspur shook his head. I am afraid I cannot, he said. I can speak Italian fairly enough, as you know, but that is merely colloquial, and I had never time really to master the language. But, seeing that you spent three years of your life there, dont you think that you had better read it out to me. I suppose it is interesting? I never read anything that fascinated me more, Walter said. Mind you, this is the secret diary of Count Flavio. He had no idea that anybody would ever read it. I have gone through the volume from start to finish, and I am forced to the conclusion that your friend was the poisonous scoundrel that Silva declares him to be. I tell you, if this book was published, it would cause a great sensation from one end of Europe to the other. It is the work of a brilliant man with a fine style and an imaginative mindthe history of an attempt to deprive a woman of her will, and of her reason. For the three years during which the Count and Countess Flavio lived together the womans life was one long, incessant torture. Mind you, there was no actual violence, but the tortures were exquisite and cruel all the same. And here we have them in the Counts own words. It is absolutely necessary that you should listen to some extracts from this amazing work. Go on, Ravenspur said quietly; I am all attention. Walter bent back the book, and began to read February 17th, 1887. What man is there who has ever succeeded in penetrating the unfathomable depths of a womans mind? What fools we men are to assume a knowledge of the sex until we are married, and have the object lesson before us day by day! There is Carlotta, for example. Carlottas prevailing trouble is that she is jealous of me. She seems to think that because she cut herself off from her family for my sake, I am to be at her beck and call henceforth and forever. This peculiar form of jealousy interests and amuses me. It is a pleasure to study it from a scientific basis. This morning I told her I was going to Florence for a day or two, and she wept because I would not allow her to accompany me. I could see that she does not trust me, wherefore I caused a friend of mine who can imitate a womans writing excellently, to write me a passionate loveletter, which fell quite naturally into Carlottas hands. The scene which followed was exquisitely amusing. I have never seen a woman weep to such an extent before. Positively my charming Carlotta was enchanting. I was quite sorry at length when she assumed a mantle of dignity, and left me. Still, this is only the first of many such scenes if I engineered them properly.

I see that Carlotta is in possession of all the emotions, so that, by studying her alone, I shall be in a position to add some really extraordinary chapters to my great book on women and their ways. March 19th, 1887. Carlotta has afforded me a month of absolute enjoyment. Why do people pay money to sit in stuffy theatres and watch comedies and tragedies when they can see and hear the real, palpitating thing for nothing? Outwardly, Carlotta and myself are at daggers drawn. She thinks I am unrepentant and angry, but, as to myself, I have never been more cheerful and happy in my life. And when Carlotta threatens to leave me, I ask her why she is going, knowing perfectly well that she has not the slightest intention of leaving me. Women are very much like cats in these mattersthey will make many sacrifices for the sake of the domestic hearth. I was talking to Dr. Sacci, the great surgeon, the other day, and he was telling me of the fierce joy that comes through some new discovery which has been the outcome of vivisection. But, then, Sacci is only working in the interests of humanity, whereas my vivisection allows me to see the exquisite suffering of the patient. I can study the nerves, and the palpitating wound, at the very moment when the knife enters. December 21st, 1887. The last chapter in my book is by far the most brilliant and searching which I have yet added to that fascinating volume. Whatever Carlotta suffers in the present, she shall go down to posterity as the martyr of her sex. I will place her on a pinnacle as high as my own. Indeed, I was almost sorry when I had to tell her the story of the loveletter, and how I had been playing on her feelings all these months. At the same time, I looked forward to the explanation, because I knew that it would open up to me a fresh phase of womanly nature. And I confess that it did with a vengeance. Carlotta turned pale. She stood there looking as if she were filled with the greatest physical agony, her eyes filled with tears which did not fall. I dont know how many days it is since she spoke to me last, but certainly it must be upwards of a fortnight. This is not exactly what I expected. It is only when a woman talks that one can judge of how the experiment is progressing. Tomorrow, all being well, I am going to adopt a new scheme which I hope will have the desired effect. December 22nd, 1887. Our little Vera has disappeared. Evidently she has been kidnapped with a view to a reward. The whole neighbourhood is up in arms, and my wife is distracted. It has often been a favourite theory of mine that every man takes a second place in a womans affections as soon as her first child is born. I look back now with a vivid recollection of the early days when I first met Carlotta. I look back to her passionate love scenes, and her declarations that I should be first with her, then and always. Even though I was very much enamoured, I had my doubts when I was alone, and in a position to debate the matter clearly. The time has come to put the question to a test, and thus it became necessary for Vera to disappear. I might say at once that my theory has been vindicated to the letter. I now know that Carlotta cares far more for Vera than she does for me. The reflection is not soothing to ones vanity, but there it is. There is a wildness and intensity in her grief, which she never would have experienced had I been brought home to her in the last stage of dissolution. I must keep this up. I must work this phase as long as it lasts, which will not be an indefinite time, because I must not drive my patient too far. She begins to show signs of collapse already. I think at the end of a week I must have Vera brought back again. By the expiration of that time, I fancy I can add another chapter to my remarkable book. Walter stopped for a moment, his voice was full of loathing and disgust. An honest indignation almost choked him. He saw now that his anger and contempt were reflected on the face of Ravenspur. Do you want me to read any further, he said, or is that sufficient? Shall I tell you, for instance, what happened after this inhuman wretch brought his child home again? Shall I tell you of other tortures and tyrannies, and how this scoundrel rejoices in the fact that his neighbours like him and pity him because he is married to a badtempered woman, who makes his life a burden? That is the note that runs all through this extraordinary diary. The man uses it as a weapon to play upon the feelings of his wife. If you are not yet satisfied I will pick out No, no, Ravenspur cried, as he rose to his feet. I have heard enough and more than enough. Flavio must have been a madman; and yet I regarded him as one of the best and noblest of men. I never dreamt he had an enemy. I never knew anybody say a word against him. And to think that a man of the world like myself should be deceived in this way! Everything is now growing wonderfully clear before my eyes, Walter. I can even understand why the Countess left her daughter behind her. Fancy suffering all that trouble and humiliation to find, later on, that the child you had done so much for was likely to turn out as her father had done! In the last ten minutes you have proved that I was wrong, and the Countess was right; and yet it seemed to me that I was justified in my actions. I dont know what I am going to do. I dont know what steps I can take to convince that unhappy woman that I acted for the best. At any rate, I must make a beginning before I go to bed tonight. Ravenspur took up the volume and went down the stairs. In the drawingroom, the Countess, Mrs. Delahay, and Vera were still seated, talking earnestly together. Ravenspur crossed the room to the Countesss side and held out the book. Do you know what this contains? he asked. I suppose you have read it from cover to cover? Once, said the Countess, with a shudder, but never again. I can quite understand your feelings, Ravenspur said. I have only heard extracts, but they have been quite sufficient for me. And now let me do my best to try and convince you that I acted in what I conceived to be the true interests of your child. I know now how wrong I was. I know that you have been made the victim of a scoundrel and a madman; and if you can forgive me for what I have done, I will be your grateful servant in the future. One moment, the Countess said. There is another, and yet more painful thing to confess. I understand from your nephew that the police think that they have a most important clue to the murder of Louis Delahay. The police are all wrong. It is incredible to me that they have not discovered the truth before; that they have not blundered on it. Surely you can guess who it is who is responsible for the death of my poor sisters husband? I am afraid, Ravenspur murmured, that I cannot Not even after it was known that you were at work in the studio that night? No, unless, perhapsgood heavens, you dont mean to say Silva? Nobody else. The man tracked you to Fitzjohn Square. There was not one of your movements that he did not know. But come this way. I dare say the nurse will not mind us talking to the patient for a few moments alone. You shall hear Silva confirm what I have said to you. Ravenspur stumbled to his feet. He was dazed and numbed with surprise; and yet the more he came to think of it, the more plausible it seemed. No, the nurse had no objection, it would not harm the patient. He was very near to his end now. Weak as he was, his eyes gleamed as he caught sight of Lord Ravenspur, the old wolfish look was on his face. We have been mistaken, my dear Silva, the Countess said. Lord Ravenspur has been one of my best friends if I had only known it. He was deceived by my husband, as hundreds of others were. His lordship was led to believe that the Count was a martyr to a dreadful wife, a woman incapable of looking after a child. The kidnapping of my daughter was part of his vengeance upon me, so that he could reach me from the other side of the grave. Everything has been explained, the diary has been read by Lord Ravenspur; and he has forgiven you, he has come to your bedside to say so before youyou Die, Silva said, with an effort. Curse his forgiveness. If I could stand up now He could say no more, the malignant hate, the fire of madness, still gleamed in his dark eyes. He would hold the same tradition to the end. There was no chance of anything like a reconciliation here. I expected nothing else, the Countess said sadly. Only a Corsican could understand his feelings. It is his blood, his religion. But if you cant forgive, my poor Silva, you can confess. It may be the means of saving an innocent life. It was you who were responsible for the death of Mr. Delahay? Silva nodded quite coolly. There was an upward heave of his shoulders that was very expressive. It was like one who confesses to a mistake. I understand, the Countess resumed. It was a misunderstanding. You had traced Lord Ravenspur to the studio. You were going to kill him there. Only Mr. Delahay and myself interrupted you. You were probably hiding somewhere outside, waiting for your opportunity, when we arrived. You did not see us, you were not aware of anything till the lights were out. I may make errors in details, but in the main I am quite correct. No, dont try and talka nod is sufficient. When Mr. Delahay returned to the studio, after Lord Ravenspur was driven away, and after I had gone, you were in the studio. You mistook Mr. Delahay for Lord Ravenspur, and killed him with a glass Corsican dagger. You did not know till you saw the papers the next day that you had made a mistake? Silva nodded again. He did not appear to feel the least remorse, but his hungry eyes testified how he regretted that he had so signally failed. The old wild spirit was still there, even the approach of death could not quench it. Ravenspur turned away, filled with disgust and sadness. Really, there is nothing more to be said, he murmured. I should like to put the heads of the confession down and get the unhappy man to sign it. Silva affixed a straggling signature to the confession. Then he turned over on his side and refused to listen any more. Evidently he was going to die as he had livedhard, unfeeling, carrying his bitter hatred to the grave. According to his lights, Ravenspur murmured, let us hope that he will not be judged too harshly where he is going so soon. XLVI A Womans Heart The hard, cold face had softened slightly. It seemed to Ravenspur that there was something akin to a smile in Countess Flavios eyes when once more they were alone in the drawingroom together. Let us try and forget that dreadful scene, she said, as I will try and forget what a hard, misunderstood life mine has been. It must have been terrible, Ravenspur exclaimed; and yet there was not a man in Europe for whom I had a higher regard than I had for your husband. To me he was the soul of honour. I always found him generous and liberalminded. I have seen him do the most spontaneous acts of kindness to strangers. It seemed hard to think that he was wholly bad. He was an enigma, the Countess replied. In his brain lay a curious vein of madness, which vented itself upon me. No one else suffered, and, indeed, no one knew that I suffered, with the solitary exception of that poor lost soul who is lying at deaths door upstairs. When I fled from my fathers house, knowing that I had cut myself off entirely from my own flesh and blood, Silva followed me. From the first he began to see how I was suffering. From the first he began to entertain a malignant hatred of my husband. And finally poisoned him, Ravenspur suggested. Ah, there you are wrong, the Countess exclaimed. With all the earnestness in my power I want to impress upon you that my husband poisoned himself. As you have been informed, for generations there had been a feud between the Descartis and my husbands family. After my marriage it would have been an easy matter for my father to summon some of his retainers, and command them to avenge the honour and dignity of the family. My father chose not to do it. He was satisfied with the solemn assurance that only one child of his remained. The summons was sent out by Silva. He did not tell me. I did not know in the least what he was doing till afterwards. But the sign went forth, and my husband received his warning. There was no escape for him, and he knew it. That is why he took his own life. No doubt in doing so he was actuated by some extraordinary motive, for, with all his faults, he was no coward; but even from beyond the grave he persecuted me. His body was found in circumstances that pointed to me as the murderess. Oh, you may start and shrink, but what I tell you is absolutely true. The whole thing was planned, with diabolical ingenuity, by the Count on the night of his death. Had it not been for Silva I should have gone down to my grave execrated by all who knew me. But you were not there, Ravenspur expostulated. It was proved that you were in Florence at the time. That was where Silvas cunning and ingenuity came in. During the few hours that preceded and followed that tragic event I saw nobody. I was utterly worn out and prostrated. I could not drag myself from my bed. But nobody saw me, for I had given strict orders that I was not to be disturbed. I did not know then that my sister was alive. In fact, I had got into such a state that I had no interest in anything. At that time my sister Maria was taking a holiday in Florence, and Silva was aware of the fact. When I ask you to notice the extraordinary likeness between us, you will have no trouble in guessing what happened. Silva was in a position to bring over scores of people from Florence, who swore that I was in that town at the time of the tragedy. It was a bold thing to do, and nobody guessed, nobody doubted the sincerity of the witnesses, and thus my life was saved. It is a most extraordinary story, Ravenspur murmured. But, really, there is no reason for you to justify yourself any further. We know that you are absolutely innocent of any sort of crime. I know now what kind of a life Flavio led you. Had I been aware at the time I should never have interfered. And yet Flavio managed to convey to me the impression that you were the last woman in the world who ought to have the custody of a child. I committed an illegal act at the earnest request of my old friend. I ran a great risk, but it seemed to me that I was justified in what I did. I see you are now, the Countess said thoughtfully. For many, many years no doubt you have rejoiced in the fact that you saved Vera from a life of misery and unhappiness. You never expected to see or hear from me again. You looked upon the child as your own. And now, to a certain extent, I must justify myself. I stand in your eyes as a deeply wronged and injured woman, and yet you might say to yourself that as a mother I have been lacking in my duties. I tell you for a long time after the death of my husband my mind trembled on the borderline between reason and insanity. I was afraid to see my child. I was fearful lest I should find in her some trace of her father; and, if I had done so, I believe that I should have taken her life. But, gradually, as the years went on and I grew older, a longing to see my child came over me that amounted almost to a passion. I left my retreat in the mountains, and came into the world again. It was at this time that I met Silva once more, and for three years he was looking for my child. I need not tell you, Lord Ravenspur, how he got on the track. Lord Ravenspur shivered and nodded in reply. I would have prevented that if I could, the Countess went on quickly. I wanted no violence. But I knew that Silva would go his own way. I knew that nobody could check his fanaticism. In his eyes you were marked down for slaughter. You had violated the dignity and honour of the family, and therefore you must be removed. Let me be quite candidI think I hated you almost as much as Silva did. You had robbed me of my child at the instigation of my cruel husband. Not unnaturally, I regarded you as being little or no better than Count Flavio. All the same, as I said before, I wanted no violence. That was one of the reasons why I did not come to your house and claim my child. I felt sure that you would defy me, and place Vera somewhere beyond my reach. Most undoubtedly I should, Ravenspur said candidly. You see, I did not know then that you were capable Of looking after my daughter, the Countess interrupted. And, from your point of view, your actions would have been justified. As soon as the danger threatened seriously you made arrangements to get away from England until Vera was of age, and capable of acting for herself. But Silva found out One moment, Vera cried eagerly. Was your servant, Silva, in Park Lane disguised as a blind organgrinder? I understand so, the Countess went on. At any rate, Silva managed things, in his usual able manner. He contrived to get Vera away from Lady Ringmars party, and bring here down her. I daresay you will think that this was all very melodramatic and unnecessary, but, as I pointed out to you before, I wanted no violence. I thought when Silvas plan was successful that I should be able to persuade him to forego the rest of his vengeance. I thought that once I had my daughter back in my own hands, I could take her out of the country and get Silva to accompany me. Then you, Lord Ravenspur, would have been safe. But in certain matters Silva is quite as insane as my husband was. It was in vain that I appealed to him. He had made his vow, and he was going to carry it out. It is only fitting that he should have brought so just a punishment upon his own shoulders. And yet there is something magnificent in a vengeance like his, Ravenspur said, thoughtfully. Now that everything is cleared up, how simple it seems. There is only one thing that puzzles me, and that is your connection with my unfortunate friend Louis Delahay. It seems a remarkable thing that both you sisters should have known Delahay. How did it come about? That I have just been explaining at some length, the Countess said. But for your benefit I will go over the ground again. Ravenspur listened with the greatest interest to the story which the Countess had to tell. She told him vividly enough of the eventful night when she had made up her mind to leave her husbands roof, and how her life had been saved at a critical moment by a total stranger, who turned out to be Louis Delahaythe same Delahay who, years afterwards, met Maria Descarti and made her his wife. She told the story of the jewels, and how the time had come when she needed them, to turn into money to aid her in her search for Vera. Then she went on to speak of her meeting with Delahay. One moment, Ravenspur said. When Louis married you, Mrs. Delahay, did he not notice your extraordinary likeness to the Countess, whom he had befriended so many years ago? He couldnt, the Countess exclaimed. Not only was our interview in the dark, but I was wearing a veil. Oh, you may say it was an extraordinary thing to trust my valuables to a perfect stranger, but more amazing things happen every day, and I was beside myself with grief and terror and despair at the time. At any rate, I did it, and I got my jewels back again. I can tell you, if you like, the story of that strange interview. I can describe how I went down to the studio with Mr. Delahay, and how we saw you there. But we are wasting time and it is getting late. There is only one thing to regret now, and that is the death of my sisters husband; but it has always been useless for a Descarti to expect anything like happiness in this world. Never was one of our family yet, who was not born to misery and despair. Still, one can now look forward to a more pleasant time. I am quite sure, after what has happened, that you will not try to stand between Vera and myself any longer, Lord Ravenspur. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you have done. Vera has been very dear to me, Lord Ravenspur said, with some emotion. I daresay we shall be able to explain matters satisfactorily, so that people will not be in a position to talk. And now, as it is getting so very late XLVII The Passing of the Vengeance It was well into the following afternoon when the trained nurse came quietly down the stairs, and announced to Lord Ravenspur that her task was finished. Silva had died in his sleep. The troubled spirit was at rest, the tardy confession had been made, and Lord Ravenspur had no longer any occasion to fear the vengeance that had followed him so long. There would have to be an inquest, of courseas there was. But there was nothing much here to arouse public curiosity. A servant at the house on the common had been severely mauled by a savage dog prowling about, and he had succumbed to the shock. The newspapers had a few paragraphs, but in a day or two the incident was forgotten, nor was there any occasion to worry the owner of the house, seeing that the place had been taken by Silva in the proper name of his mistress. The servants had seen nothing either, so that scandal was entirely checked. It would, perhaps, be a difficult matter later on to explain the unexpected reappearance of Veras mother, but it seemed to Ravenspur that he could see a way to solve that problem. And after the lapse of eighteen years, nobody would identify the Countess Flavio with the Italian scandal that had been a sensation in Europe back in the eighties. Ravenspur and the Countess were good enough friends now, and Mrs. Delahay was beginning to recover her health and strength again. Already the Fitzjohn Square murder had ceased to occupy public attention now that the tragedy had been solved, and there was no chance of the culprit being brought before an earthly tribunal. As to Cooney, he got off quite as lightly as he deserved. And there are always new sensations to follow the old. I think, on the whole, you had better remain here for the present, Ravenspur suggested. You have the house on your hands for two months, and, really, it is a very pleasant place. Everybody is out of town for the present, and very few of my friends will be back in London again before the autumn. This will give us time to invent some plausible story to account for your reappearance. I dont like that kind of thing as a rule, but is is quite essential in this case. What are you going to do yourself? the Countess asked. I am going to have a couple of quiet months on the continent. As you can imagine, my nerves are considerably shaken, and I am not so young as I used to be. I shall miss Vera, of course, but I think it is far better for her to stay here with you, so that you can get to know one another properly. But has it ever occurred to you, Countess, that before long Vera will have another and a closer guardian than either of our two selves? I suppose that is inevitable, the Countess said as she looked thoughtfully across the flowerbeds. Still, the fault is my own. I deliberately wasted eighteen years, and it is hardly to be expected that Verabut dont let us anticipate. I am afraid the mischief is done, Ravenspur smiled. From a remark that Vera let slip the other night, I learnt a great deal that has been going on in her mind. Goodness knows how she got the impression, but she honestly believed that I was something more than her guardian, and that, between you and myselfbut I mustnt pain you by being more definite. Anyway, I now know why Vera appeared to be so unhappy and miserable a few weeks ago, and why she conceived the idea of leaving my house, and going out into the world to get her own living. To make matters quite plain, she and my nephew have fallen in love with one another and she thought that I should oppose the match. As a matter of fact, I did. But not for the reasons that Vera supposed. What I was afraid of was that the vengeance intended for me might have been transferred to Walter, had he married Vera then. Of course, matters are on a totally different footing now, and nobody is more delighted than myself. Walter is a fine fellow. He will be rich some of these days. He will succeed to the title at my death. If I were you, Countess, I would not interfere with that arrangement. I am afraid it would be too late in any case, the Countess said, sadly. I have no right to say a word. And, from what I have seen of your nephew, I should say that he will make a good husband for any girl. Still, it is rather a disappointment to find that I have been supplanted in this way, though I am bound to admit that the fault is entirely my own. Ravenspur was quite content to leave it discreetly at that, and all the more so because Vera herself was at that moment coming down the garden path. The girls face was bright and happy now. The look of trouble had vanished from her eyes. The sun was shining full in her face, and as the Countess regarded her daughter critically she could see no suggestion of her father in her face. As Lord Ravenspur moved away, Vera took her place by her mothers side. What have you two been plotting? she asked gaily. We have been discussing your future, the Countess replied. Lord Ravenspur has been telling me something which, apparently, I ought to have guessed before. I was looking forward to a year or two in your company, but I am told that that is more than I can expect. There is a certain young man You are speaking of Walter, Vera murmured. A little colour crept into her cheeks. Her eyes were bright and smiling. Positively there has been no time to tell you about Walter. Do you know, mother, that Walter and myself have been lovers ever since I was fourteen? There has never been anybody like Walter in my eyes. And then, a few months ago, it seemed to come to me in a different way altogether. I suppose when I came to years of discretion I could see things more plainly. But how could I marry Walter when I had no name of my own? I felt sure that Lord Ravenspur would be sternly opposed to anything of the kind. And that is why I wanted to leave his house and earn my own living. But now that I am a Flavio, that is a different matter. We are quite as well born as the Ravenspurs, and so far as my guardian is concerned The path is smooth enough now, the Countess smiled. Lord Ravenspur told me just now that he was delighted with the turn of events. There is no girl he knows he would rather have for a niece than yourself. But I wasnt going to say that, Vera. What I want to impress upon you is thisI am not going to stand between you and your happiness for a moment. If your lover wants you now, go to him and dont consider me. Take your happiness when you get the opportunity. Let me before I die see one Descarti, at least, who has her hearts desire. And now we wont say any more about it, my child. After all, I am better treated than I deserve. The dusk was beginning to fall at length. The garden was fragrant with the scent of flowers, holding their heads high to reach the dropping dew. It was a warm evening, and the French windows in the diningroom were widely open. Dinner was almost over. The table was littered with fruit. There was just the suggestion of scented tobacco smoke hanging on the air. Ravenspur sat chatting almost gaily with the Countess and her sister. The gloom had lifted from his face now. He appeared to be years younger during the last few days. Vera rose from her chair and stood by the window, drinking in the subtle delights of the evening. Walter crossed over to her side, and placed his arm under hers. Come outside, he said. It is a shame to stay indoors a night like this. Besides, I have something important to say to you. Vera turned and smiled into her lovers face. She had never felt the least shy or awkward with himthey were too good friends for that. They walked in silence together down the path, with the roses rioting on either side. They came at length to a little secluded terrace looking over the common. Behind the bracken and the heather the sun was sinking in a track of golden glory. The afterlight shone in Veras eyes, and rendered them glorious. Walter turned to her eagerly. He had his arm about her waist now, her head bent towards his shoulder. It all seemed the most natural thing in the world, the fitting crown to their romance. How long is it, Walter asked, since you wanted to run away and leave us? I wont ask you why you wanted to go, because my uncle has told me that. My dearest girl, there is no occasion for you to blush and look uncomfortable. I am sure that your motives did you every credit. But we will pass over that. We need never allude to it again. I have spoken to your mother, and what my uncles feelings are you know for yourself. All the dangers and troubles have gone now. Everything lies fair and smooth between us. And now, little Vera, when are we to be married? Vera turned slowly and thoughtfully. She laid her hands upon Walters shoulders, and looked steadily and lovingly into his smiling eyes. Her words were low and sweet. Dear old boy, she said, we have always been friends, and more than friends, and in my heart of hearts I have ever felt that it must come to this, whatever obstacles stood in the way. I am not so brave as I thought I was, Walter, and I dont believe I could have left you when it came to the pinch. Oh, Ill marry you, dear; Ill marry you gladly and willingly, and be the happiest girl in all the world. But not yet; not till our time is up here; not till I have spent the next two months with my mother. And you wont love me any the less because I have thought of her as well as you? Walter kissed the sweet, serious lips. It shall be as you say, sweetheart. And now let us go back, and tell the others all about it. There is only one thing that remains, Walter said, as he and Lord Ravenspur walked up and down after dinner, with their cigars. That photo, uncle. The one that you were so worried about, in the studio on the night when Sir James was attacked by Silva in mistake for you. Where did it come from, and why did it agitate you so? I had almost forgotten that, Ravenspur smiled. Well, that photo was tied, with a small packet of jewels, round Veras neck when I carried her away from Italy. I did not know till lately that it was a photo of her mother. She must have been a lovely woman then. Being an artist, I rather idealised that photographindeed, I painted the picture that Silva stole from it. It was only when the picture was finished that I discovered I had made a very strong likeness to Vera; and then I had my doubts. Here was Veras mother in the flesh again. Had I done wrong? Had Flavio deceived me? The thing has troubled my conscience ever since. A woman with a face like that to be a fiend! Never. And yet Still, it is all over now. There have been faults on all sides, so that we can all afford to forget and forgive. And that, my dear boy, is all I have to say. Colophon The Midnight Guest was published in 1907 by Fred M. White. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Lam Le and is based on a transcription produced in 2018 by Charles Bowen and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The cover page is adapted from A Girls Head II, a painting by Olof SagerNelson. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 856 p.m. and is based on revision ca21dde. The first edition of this ebook was released on December 27, 2023, 506 p.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksfredmwhitethemidnightguest. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements.

Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook. Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. The Midnight Guest By Fred M. White. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint I At Whose Hand? II No. 1 Fitzjohn Square III The Mark of the Beast IV A Womans Face V Vera Rayne VI A Voice in the Dark VII The Yellow Handbill VIII The Mystery Deepens IX The Confidential Agent X Ropes of Sand XI The Express Letter XII A Speaking Likeness XIII A Striking Likness XIV Retrospection XV Dallas Makes a Discovery XVI Strong Measures XVII Looking Backwards XVIII After Many Years XIX Carlottas Story XX Valdo in a New Light XXI To Be in Time XXI The Worth of a Name XXIII The Next Move XXIV A Blood Relation XXV Bred in the Bone XXVI A Faithful Servant XXVII Flight! XXVIII Veras Warning XXIX The Message XXX Lost XXXI A Missing Link XXXI What Does It Mean? XXXII The Midnight Message XXXIV A Strange Homecoming XXXV Mother and Child XXXVI In the Dead of Night XXXVII An Unexpected Friend XXXVIII In the House XXXIX The Hound Again XL Broken Wings XLI A Ray of Light XLII Run to Earth XLIII The Whole Truth XLIV The Story of a Crime XLV Count Flavios Diary XLVI A Womans Heart XLVII The Passing of the Vengeance Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks The Midnight Guest

I Is It the Ghost? It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressingroom of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by halfadozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after dancing Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to run through the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammesthe girl with the tiptilted nose, the forgetmenot eyes, the rosered cheeks and the lilywhite neck and shoulderswho gave the explanation in a trembling voice Its the ghost! And she locked the door. Sorellis dressingroom was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pierglass, a sofa, a dressingtable and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressingrooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hairdressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rum, until the callboys bell rang. Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a silly little fool and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details Have you seen him? As plainly as I see you now! said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair. Thereupon little Girythe girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin stretched over poor little boneslittle Giry added If thats the ghost, hes very ugly! Oh, yes! cried the chorus of balletgirls. And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dressclothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall. Pooh! said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. You see the ghost everywhere! And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dressclothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had anyone met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls, or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost. After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dressclothes at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dresssuit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the balletgirls said. And, of course, it had a deaths head. Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief sceneshifter, who had really seen the ghost. He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to the cellars. He had seen him for a secondfor the ghost had fledand to anyone who cared to listen to him he said He is extraordinarily thin and his dresscoat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead mans skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you cant see it sideface; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears. This chief sceneshifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man in dressclothes with a deaths head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had wind of the story began by saying that Joseph Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy. For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud mother of little Jammes.1 And why? Because he had seen coming toward him, at the level of his head, but without a body attached to it, a head of fire! And, as I said, a fireman is not afraid of fire. The firemans name was Pampin. The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight, this fiery head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquets description of the ghost. But the young ladies soon persuaded themselves that the ghost had several heads, which he changed about as he pleased. And, of course, they at once imagined that they were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not hesitate to faint, leaders and frontrow and backrow girls alike had plenty of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing some dark corner or illlighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horseshoe on the table in front of the stagedoorkeepers box, which everyone who entered the Opera otherwise than as a spectator must touch before setting foot on the first tread of the staircase. This horseshoe was not invented by meany more than any other part of this story, alas!and may still be seen on the table in the passage outside the stagedoorkeepers box, when you enter the Opera through the court known as the Cour de lAdministration. To return to the evening in question. Its the ghost! little Jammes had cried. An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressingroom. Nothing was heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real terror on her face, whispered Listen! Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel. Then it stopped. Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the door and, in a quavering voice, asked Whos there? But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly Is there anyone behind the door? Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is! cried that little dried plum of a Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt. Whatever you do, dont open the door! Oh, Lord, dont open the door! But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key and drew back the door, while the balletgirls retreated to the inner dressingroom and Meg Giry sighed Mother! Mother! Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gasflame, in its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh. No, she said, there is no one there. Still, we saw him! Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps to her place beside Sorelli. He must be somewhere prowling about. I shant go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer together, at once, for the speech, and we will come up again together. And the child reverently touched the little coral fingerring which she wore as a charm against bad luck, while Sorelli, stealthily, with the tip of her pink right thumbnail, made a St. Andrews cross on the wooden ring which adorned the fourth finger of her left hand. She said to the little balletgirls Come, children, pull yourselves together! I dare say no one has ever seen the ghost. Yes, yes, we saw himwe saw him just now! cried the girls. He had his deaths head and his dresscoat, just as when he appeared to Joseph Buquet! And Gabriel saw him too! said Jammes. Only yesterday! Yesterday afternoonin broad daylight Gabriel, the chorusmaster? Why, yes, didnt you know? And he was wearing his dressclothes, in broad daylight? Who? Gabriel? Why, no, the ghost! Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. Thats what he knew him by. Gabriel was in the stagemanagers office. Suddenly the door opened and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye Oh, yes! answered the little balletgirls in chorus, warding off illluck by pointing their forefinger and little finger at the absent Persian, while their second and third fingers were bent on the palm and held down by the thumb. And you know how superstitious Gabriel is, continued Jammes. However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock of the cupboard, so as to touch iron! In doing so, he tore a whole skirt of his overcoat on a nail. Hurrying to get out of the room, he banged his forehead against a hatpeg and gave himself a huge bump; then, suddenly stepping back, he skinned his arm on the screen, near the piano; he tried to lean on the piano, but the lid fell on his hands and crushed his fingers; he rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down the whole of the first flight on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over blood. We were frightened out of our lives, but, all at once, he began to thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, the ghost with the deaths head, just like Joseph Buquets description! Jammes had told her story ever so quickly, as though the ghost were at her heels, and was quite out of breath at the finish. A silence followed, while Sorelli polished her nails in great excitement. It was broken by little Giry, who said Joseph Buquet would do better to hold his tongue. Why should he hold his tongue? asked somebody. Thats mothers opinion, replied Meg, lowering her voice and looking all about her as though fearing lest other ears than those present might overhear. And why is it your mothers opinion? Hush! Mother says the ghost doesnt like being talked about. And why does your mother say so? Becausebecausenothing This reticence exasperated the curiosity of the young ladies, who crowded round little Giry, begging her to explain herself. They were there, side by side, leaning forward simultaneously in one movement of entreaty and fear, communicating their terror to one another, taking a keen pleasure in feeling their blood freeze in their veins. I swore not to tell! gasped Meg. But they left her no peace and promised to keep the secret, until Meg, burning to say all she knew, began, with her eyes fixed on the door Well, its because of the private box. What private box? The ghosts box! Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us! Not so loud! said Meg. Its Box Five, you know, the box on the grand tier, next to the stagebox, on the left. Oh, nonsense! I tell you it is. Mother has charge of it. But you swear you wont say a word? Of course, of course. Well, thats the ghosts box. No one has had it for over a month, except the ghost, and orders have been given at the boxoffice that it must never be sold. And does the ghost really come there? Yes. Then somebody does come? Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there. The little balletgirls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he must be seen, because he wore a dresscoat and a deaths head. This was what they tried to make Meg understand, but she replied Thats just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dresscoat and no head! All that talk about his deaths head and his head of fire is nonsense! Theres nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives him his program. Sorelli interfered. Giry, child, youre getting at us! Thereupon little Giry began to cry. I ought to have held my tongueif mother ever came to know! But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that dont concern himit will bring him bad luckmother was saying so last night There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a breathless voice cried Cecile! Cecile! Are you there? Its mothers voice, said Jammes. Whats the matter? She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressingroom and dropped groaning into a vacant armchair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brickdust colored face. How awful! she said. How awful! What? What? Joseph Buquet What about him? Joseph Buquet is dead! The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries, with scared requests for explanations. Yes, he was found hanging in the thirdfloor cellar! Its the ghost! little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth No, no!I didnt say it!I didnt say it! All around her, her panicstricken companions repeated under their breaths Yesit must be the ghost! Sorelli was very pale. I shall never be able to recite my speech, she said. Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do with it. The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was natural suicide. In his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin, one of the joint managers who succeeded MM. Debienne and Poligny, describes the incident as follows A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the managers office, when Mercier, the actingmanager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a sceneshifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. I shouted Come and cut him down! By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacobs ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope! So this is an event which M. Moncharmin thinks natural. A man hangs at the end of a rope; they go to cut him down; the rope has disappeared. Oh, M. Moncharmin found a very simple explanation! Listen to him It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancinggirls lost no time in taking their precautions against the evil eye. There you are! Picture the corps de ballet scuttling down the Jacobs ladder and dividing the suicides rope among themselves in less time than it takes to write! When, on the other hand, I think of the exact spot where the body was discoveredthe third cellar underneath the stageI imagine that somebody must have been interested in seeing that the rope disappeared after it had effected its purpose; and time will show if I am wrong. The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressingrooms emptied and the balletgirls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made for the foyer through the illlit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs could carry them. II The New Margarita On the first landing, Sorelli ran against the Comte de Chagny, who was coming upstairs. The count, who was generally so calm, seemed greatly excited. I was just going to you, he said, taking off his hat. Oh, Sorelli, what an evening! And Christine Daa what a triumph! Impossible! said Meg Giry. Six months ago, she used to sing like a crock! But do let us get by, my dear count, continues the brat, with a saucy curtsey. We are going to inquire after a poor man who was found hanging by the neck. Just then the actingmanager came fussing past and stopped when he heard this remark. What! he exclaimed roughly. Have you girls heard already? Well, please forget about it for tonightand above all dont let M. Debienne and M. Poligny hear; it would upset them too much on their last day. They all went on to the foyer of the ballet, which was already full of people. The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and, on that evening, Christine Daa had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a Marionnette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Sans, the Danse Macabre and a Rverie Orientale; Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daa, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opra Comique after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daa revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellowsingers and had to be carried to her dressingroom. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daa had played a good Siebel to Carlottas rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed Carlottas incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daa, at a moments warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daa, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practise alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery. The Comte de Chagny, standing up in his box, listened to all this frenzy and took part in it by loudly applauding. Philippe Georges Marie Comte de Chagny was just fortyone years of age. He was a great aristocrat and a goodlooking man, above middle height and with attractive features, in spite of his hard forehead and his rather cold eyes. He was exquisitely polite to the women and a little haughty to the men, who did not always forgive him for his successes in society. He had an excellent heart and an irreproachable conscience. On the death of old Count Philibert, he became the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in France, whose arms dated back to the fourteenth century. The Chagnys owned a great deal of property; and, when the old count, who was a widower, died, it was no easy task for Philippe to accept the management of so large an estate. His two sisters and his brother, Raoul, would not hear of a division and waived their claim to their shares, leaving themselves entirely in Philippes hands, as though the right of primogeniture had never ceased to exist. When the two sisters married, on the same day, they received their portion from their brother, not as a thing rightfully belonging to them, but as a dowry for which they thanked him. The Comtesse de Chagny, ne de Moerogis de La Martyniere, had died in giving birth to Raoul, who was born twenty years after his elder brother. At the time of the old counts death, Raoul was twelve years of age. Philippe busied himself actively with the youngsters education. He was admirably assisted in this work first by his sisters and afterward by an old aunt, the widow of a naval officer, who lived at Brest and gave young Raoul a taste for the sea. The lad entered the Borda trainingship, finished his course with honors and quietly made his trip round the world. Thanks to powerful influence, he had just been appointed a member of the official expedition on board the Requin, which was to be sent to the Arctic Circle in search of the survivors of the DArtois expedition, of whom nothing had been heard for three years. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a long furlough which would not be over for six months; and already the dowagers of the Faubourg SaintGermain were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate stripling for the hard work in store for him. The shyness of the sailorladI was almost saying his innocencewas remarkable. He seemed to have but just left the womens apronstrings. As a matter of fact, petted as he was by his two sisters and his old aunt, he had retained from this purely feminine education manners that were almost candid and stamped with a charm that nothing had yet been able to sully. He was a little over twentyone years of age and looked eighteen. He had a small, fair mustache, beautiful blue eyes and a complexion like a girls. Philippe spoiled Raoul. To begin with, he was very proud of him and pleased to foresee a glorious career for his junior in the navy in which one of their ancestors, the famous Chagny de La Roche, had held the rank of admiral. He took advantage of the young mans leave of absence to show him Paris, with all its luxurious and artistic delights. The count considered that, at Raouls age, it is not good to be too good. Philippe himself had a character that was very wellbalanced in work and pleasure alike; his demeanor was always faultless; and he was incapable of setting his brother a bad example. He took him with him wherever he went. He even introduced him to the foyer of the ballet. I know that the count was said to be on terms with Sorelli. But it could hardly be reckoned as a crime for this nobleman, a bachelor, with plenty of leisure, especially since his sisters were settled, to come and spend an hour or two after dinner in the company of a dancer, who, though not so very, very witty, had the finest eyes that ever were seen! And, besides, there are places where a true Parisian, when he has the rank of the Comte de Chagny, is bound to show himself; and at that time the foyer of the ballet at the Opera was one of those places. Lastly, Philippe would perhaps not have taken his brother behind the scenes of the Opera if Raoul had not been the first to ask him, repeatedly renewing his request with a gentle obstinacy which the count remembered at a later date. On that evening, Philippe, after applauding the Daa, turned to Raoul and saw that he was quite pale. Dont you see, said Raoul, that the womans fainting? You look like fainting yourself, said the count. Whats the matter? But Raoul had recovered himself and was standing up. Lets go and see, he said, she never sang like that before. The count gave his brother a curious smiling glance and seemed quite pleased. They were soon at the door leading from the house to the stage. Numbers of subscribers were slowly making their way through. Raoul tore his gloves without knowing what he was doing and Philippe had much too kind a heart to laugh at him for his impatience. But he now understood why Raoul was absentminded when spoken to and why he always tried to turn every conversation to the subject of the Opera. They reached the stage and pushed through the crowd of gentlemen, sceneshifters, supers and chorusgirls, Raoul leading the way, feeling that his heart no longer belonged to him, his face set with passion, while Count Philippe followed him with difficulty and continued to smile. At the back of the stage, Raoul had to stop before the inrush of the little troop of balletgirls who blocked the passage which he was trying to enter. More than one chaffing phrase darted from little madeup lips, to which he did not reply; and at last he was able to pass, and dived into the semidarkness of a corridor ringing with the name of Daa! Daa! The count was surprised to find that Raoul knew the way. He had never taken him to Christines himself and came to the conclusion that Raoul must have gone there alone while the count stayed talking in the foyer with Sorelli, who often asked him to wait until it was her time to go on and sometimes handed him the little gaiters in which she ran down from her dressingroom to preserve the spotlessness of her satin dancingshoes and her fleshcolored tights. Sorelli had an excuse; she had lost her mother. Postponing his usual visit to Sorelli for a few minutes, the count followed his brother down the passage that led to Daas dressingroom and saw that it had never been so crammed as on that evening, when the whole house seemed excited by her success and also by her fainting fit. For the girl had not yet come to; and the doctor of the theater had just arrived at the moment when Raoul entered at his heels. Christine, therefore, received the first aid of the one, while opening her eyes in the arms of the other. The count and many more remained crowding in the doorway. Dont you think, Doctor, that those gentlemen had better clear the room? asked Raoul coolly. Theres no breathing here. Youre quite right, said the doctor. And he sent everyone away, except Raoul and the maid, who looked at Raoul with eyes of the most undisguised astonishment. She had never seen him before and yet dared not question him; and the doctor imagined that the young man was only acting as he did because he had the right to. The viscount, therefore, remained in the room watching Christine as she slowly returned to life, while even the joint managers, Debienne and Poligny, who had come to offer their sympathy and congratulations, found themselves thrust into the passage among the crowd of dandies. The Comte de Chagny, who was one of those standing outside, laughed Oh, the rogue, the rogue! And he added, under his breath Those youngsters with their schoolgirl airs! So hes a Chagny after all! He turned to go to Sorellis dressingroom, but met her on the way, with her little troop of trembling balletgirls, as we have seen. Meanwhile, Christine Daa uttered a deep sigh, which was answered by a groan. She turned her head, saw Raoul and started. She looked at the doctor, on whom she bestowed a smile, then at her maid, then at Raoul again. Monsieur, she said, in a voice not much above a whisper, who are you? Mademoiselle, replied the young man, kneeling on one knee and pressing a fervent kiss on the divas hand, I am the little boy who went into the sea to rescue your scarf. Christine again looked at the doctor and the maid; and all three began to laugh. Raoul turned very red and stood up. Mademoiselle, he said, since you are pleased not to recognize me, I should like to say something to you in private, something very important. When I am better, do you mind? And her voice shook. You have been very good. Yes, you must go, said the doctor, with his pleasantest smile. Leave me to attend to mademoiselle. I am not ill now, said Christine suddenly, with strange and unexpected energy. She rose and passed her hand over her eyelids. Thank you, Doctor. I should like to be alone. Please go away, all of you. Leave me. I feel very restless this evening. The doctor tried to make a short protest, but, perceiving the girls evident agitation, he thought the best remedy was not to thwart her. And he went away, saying to Raoul, outside She is not herself tonight. She is usually so gentle. Then he said good night and Raoul was left alone. The whole of this part of the theater was now deserted. The farewell ceremony was no doubt taking place in the foyer of the ballet. Raoul thought that Daa might go to it and he waited in the silent solitude, even hiding in the favoring shadow of a doorway. He felt a terrible pain at his heart and it was of this that he wanted to speak to Daa without delay. Suddenly the dressingroom door opened and the maid came out by herself, carrying bundles. He stopped her and asked how her mistress was. The woman laughed and said that she was quite well, but that he must not disturb her, for she wished to be left alone. And she passed on. One idea alone filled Raouls burning brain of course, Daa wished to be left alone for him! Had he not told her that he wanted to speak to her privately? Hardly breathing, he went up to the dressingroom and, with his ear to the door to catch her reply, prepared to knock. But his hand dropped. He had heard a mans voice in the dressingroom, saying, in a curiously masterful tone Christine, you must love me! And Christines voice, infinitely sad and trembling, as though accompanied by tears, replied How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you! Raoul leaned against the panel to ease his pain. His heart, which had seemed gone forever, returned to his breast and was throbbing loudly. The whole passage echoed with its beating and Raouls ears were deafened. Surely, if his heart continued to make such a noise, they would hear it inside, they would open the door and the young man would be turned away in disgrace. What a position for a Chagny! To be caught listening behind a door! He took his heart in his two hands to make it stop. The mans voice spoke again Are you very tired? Oh, tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead! Christine replied. Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, replied the grave mans voice, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. Raoul heard nothing after that. Nevertheless, he did not go away, but, as though he feared lest he should be caught, he returned to his dark corner, determined to wait for the man to leave the room. At one and the same time, he had learned what love meant, and hatred. He knew that he loved. He wanted to know whom he hated. To his great astonishment, the door opened and Christine Daa appeared, wrapped in furs, with her face hidden in a lace veil, alone. She closed the door behind her, but Raoul observed that she did not lock it. She passed him. He did not even follow her with his eyes, for his eyes were fixed on the door, which did not open again. When the passage was once more deserted, he crossed it, opened the door of the dressingroom, went in and shut the door. He found himself in absolute darkness. The gas had been turned out.

There is someone here! said Raoul, with his back against the closed door, in a quivering voice. What are you hiding for? All was darkness and silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct was exceeding all bounds. You shant leave this until I let you! he exclaimed. If you dont answer, you are a coward! But Ill expose you! And he struck a match. The blaze lit up the room. There was no one in the room! Raoul, first turning the key in the door, lit the gasjets. He went into the dressingcloset, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the walls with his moist hands. Nothing! Look here! he said, aloud. Am I going mad? He stood for ten minutes listening to the gas flaring in the silence of the empty room; lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved. He went out, not knowing what he was doing nor where he was going. At a given moment in his wayward progress, an icy draft struck him in the face. He found himself at the bottom of a staircase, down which, behind him, a procession of workmen were carrying a sort of stretcher, covered with a white sheet. Which is the way out, please? he asked of one of the men. Straight in front of you, the door is open. But let us pass. Pointing to the stretcher, he asked mechanically Whats that? The workmen answered That is Joseph Buquet, who was found in the third cellar, hanging between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. He took off his hat, fell back to make room for the procession and went out. III The Mysterious Reason During this time, the farewell ceremony was taking place. I have already said that this magnificent function was being given on the occasion of the retirement of M. Debienne and M. Poligny, who had determined to die game, as we say nowadays. They had been assisted in the realization of their ideal, though melancholy, program by all that counted in the social and artistic world of Paris. All these people met, after the performance, in the foyer of the ballet, where Sorelli waited for the arrival of the retiring managers with a glass of champagne in her hand and a little prepared speech at the tip of her tongue. Behind her, the members of the corps de ballet, young and old, discussed the events of the day in whispers or exchanged discreet signals with their friends, a noisy crowd of whom surrounded the suppertables arranged along the slanting floor. A few of the dancers had already changed into ordinary dress; but most of them wore their skirts of gossamer gauze; and all had thought it the right thing to put on a special face for the occasion all, that is, except little Jammes, whose fifteen summershappy age!seemed already to have forgotten the ghost and the death of Joseph Buquet. She never ceased to laugh and chatter, to hop about and play practical jokes, until MM. Debienne and Poligny appeared on the steps of the foyer, when she was severely called to order by the impatient Sorelli. Everybody remarked that the retiring managers looked cheerful, as is the Paris way. None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom or indifference over his inward joy. You know that one of your friends is in trouble; do not try to console him he will tell you that he is already comforted; but, should he have met with good fortune, be careful how you congratulate him he thinks it so natural that he is surprised that you should speak of it. In Paris, our lives are one masked ball; and the foyer of the ballet is the last place in which two men so knowing as M. Debienne and M. Poligny would have made the mistake of betraying their grief, however genuine it might be. And they were already smiling rather too broadly upon Sorelli, who had begun to recite her speech, when an exclamation from that little madcap of a Jammes broke the smile of the managers so brutally that the expression of distress and dismay that lay beneath it became apparent to all eyes The Opera ghost! Jammes yelled these words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the deaths head in question immediately scored a huge success. The Opera ghost! The Opera ghost! Everybody laughed and pushed his neighbor and wanted to offer the Opera ghost a drink, but he was gone. He had slipped through the crowd; and the others vainly hunted for him, while two old gentlemen tried to calm little Jammes and while little Giry stood screaming like a peacock. Sorelli was furious; she had not been able to finish her speech; the managers had kissed her, thanked her and run away as fast as the ghost himself. No one was surprised at this, for it was known that they were to go through the same ceremony on the floor above, in the foyer of the singers, and that finally they were themselves to receive their personal friends, for the last time, in the great lobby outside the managers office, where a regular supper would be served. Here they found the new managers, M. Armand Moncharmin and M. Firmin Richard, whom they hardly knew; nevertheless, they were lavish in protestations of friendship and received a thousand flattering compliments in reply, so that those of the guests who had feared that they had a rather tedious evening in store for them at once put on brighter faces. The supper was almost gay and a particularly clever speech of the representative of the government, mingling the glories of the past with the successes of the future, caused the greatest cordiality to prevail. The retiring managers had already handed over to their successors the two tiny masterkeys which opened all the doorsthousands of doorsof the Opera house. And those little keys, the object of general curiosity, were being passed from hand to hand, when the attention of some of the guests was diverted by their discovery, at the end of the table, of that strange, wan and fantastic face, with the hollow eyes, which had already appeared in the foyer of the ballet and been greeted by little Jammes exclamation The Opera ghost! There sat the ghost, as natural as could be, except that he neither ate nor drank. Those who began by looking at him with a smile ended by turning away their heads, for the sight of him at once provoked the most funereal thoughts. No one repeated the joke of the foyer, no one exclaimed Theres the Opera ghost! He himself did not speak a word and his very neighbors could not have stated at what precise moment he had sat down between them; but everyone felt that if the dead did ever come and sit at the table of the living, they could not cut a more ghastly figure. The friends of Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin thought that this lean and skinny guest was an acquaintance of Debiennes or Polignys, while Debiennes and Polignys friends believed that the cadaverous individual belonged to Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmins party. The result was that no request was made for an explanation; no unpleasant remark; no joke in bad taste, which might have offended this visitor from the tomb. A few of those present who knew the story of the ghost and the description of him given by the chief sceneshifterthey did not know of Joseph Buquets deaththought, in their own minds, that the man at the end of the table might easily have passed for him; and yet, according to the story, the ghost had no nose and the person in question had. But M. Moncharmin declares, in his Memoirs, that the guests nose was transparent long, thin and transparent are his exact words. I, for my part, will add that this might very well apply to a false nose. M. Moncharmin may have taken for transparency what was only shininess. Everybody knows that orthopaedic science provides beautiful false noses for those who have lost their noses naturally or as the result of an operation. Did the ghost really take a seat at the managers suppertable that night, uninvited? And can we be sure that the figure was that of the Opera ghost himself? Who would venture to assert as much? I mention the incident, not because I wish for a second to make the reader believeor even to try to make him believethat the ghost was capable of such a sublime piece of impudence; but because, after all, the thing is impossible. M. Armand Moncharmin, in chapter eleven of his Memoirs, says When I think of this first evening, I can not separate the secret confided to us by MM. Debienne and Poligny in their office from the presence at our supper of that ghostly person whom none of us knew. What happened was this MM. Debienne and Poligny, sitting at the center of the table, had not seen the man with the deaths head. Suddenly he began to speak. The balletgirls are right, he said. The death of that poor Buquet is perhaps not so natural as people think. Debienne and Poligny gave a start. Is Buquet dead? they cried. Yes, replied the man, or the shadow of a man, quietly. He was found, this evening, hanging in the third cellar, between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. The two managers, or rather exmanagers, at once rose and stared strangely at the speaker. They were more excited than they need have been, that is to say, more excited than anyone need be by the announcement of the suicide of a chief sceneshifter. They looked at each other. They had both turned whiter than the tablecloth. At last, Debienne made a sign to MM. Richard and Moncharmin; Poligny muttered a few words of excuse to the guests; and all four went into the managers office. I leave M. Moncharmin to complete the story. In his Memoirs, he says MM. Debienne and Poligny seemed to grow more and more excited, and they appeared to have something very difficult to tell us. First, they asked us if we knew the man, sitting at the end of the table, who had told them of the death of Joseph Buquet; and, when we answered in the negative, they looked still more concerned. They took the masterkeys from our hands, stared at them for a moment and advised us to have new locks made, with the greatest secrecy, for the rooms, closets and presses that we might wish to have hermetically closed. They said this so funnily that we began to laugh and to ask if there were thieves at the Opera. They replied that there was something worse, which was the ghost. We began to laugh again, feeling sure that they were indulging in some joke that was intended to crown our little entertainment. Then, at their request, we became serious, resolving to humor them and to enter into the spirit of the game. They told us that they never would have spoken to us of the ghost, if they had not received formal orders from the ghost himself to ask us to be pleasant to him and to grant any request that he might make. However, in their relief at leaving a domain where that tyrannical shade held sway, they had hesitated until the last moment to tell us this curious story, which our skeptical minds were certainly not prepared to entertain. But the announcement of the death of Joseph Buquet had served them as a brutal reminder that, whenever they had disregarded the ghosts wishes, some fantastic or disastrous event had brought them to a sense of their dependence. During these unexpected utterances made in a tone of the most secret and important confidence, I looked at Richard. Richard, in his student days, had acquired a great reputation for practical joking, and he seemed to relish the dish which was being served up to him in his turn. He did not miss a morsel of it, though the seasoning was a little gruesome because of the death of Buquet. He nodded his head sadly, while the others spoke, and his features assumed the air of a man who bitterly regretted having taken over the Opera, now that he knew that there was a ghost mixed up in the business. I could think of nothing better than to give him a servile imitation of this attitude of despair. However, in spite of all our efforts, we could not, at the finish, help bursting out laughing in the faces of MM. Debienne and Poligny, who, seeing us pass straight from the gloomiest state of mind to one of the most insolent merriment, acted as though they thought that we had gone mad. The joke became a little tedious; and Richard asked halfseriously and half in jest But, after all, what does this ghost of yours want? M. Poligny went to his desk and returned with a copy of the memorandumbook. The memorandumbook begins with the wellknown words saying that the management of the Opera shall give to the performance of the National Academy of Music the splendor that becomes the first lyric stage in France and ends with Clause 98, which says that the privilege can be withdrawn if the manager infringes the conditions stipulated in the memorandumbook. This is followed by the conditions, which are four in number. The copy produced by M. Poligny was written in black ink and exactly similar to that in our possession, except that, at the end, it contained a paragraph in red ink and in a queer, labored handwriting, as though it had been produced by dipping the heads of matches into the ink, the writing of a child that has never got beyond the downstrokes and has not learned to join its letters. This paragraph ran, word for word, as follows 5. Or if the manager, in any month, delay for more than a fortnight the payment of the allowance which he shall make to the Opera ghost, an allowance of twenty thousand francs a month, say two hundred and forty thousand francs a year. M. Poligny pointed with a hesitating finger to this last clause, which we certainly did not expect. Is this all? Does he not want anything else? asked Richard, with the greatest coolness. Yes, he does, replied Poligny. And he turned over the pages of the memorandumbook until he came to the clause specifying the days on which certain private boxes were to be reserved for the free use of the president of the republic, the ministers and so on. At the end of this clause, a line had been added, also in red ink Box Five on the grand tier shall be placed at the disposal of the Opera ghost for every performance. When we saw this, there was nothing else for us to do but to rise from our chairs, shake our two predecessors warmly by the hand and congratulate them on thinking of this charming little joke, which proved that the old French sense of humor was never likely to become extinct. Richard added that he now understood why MM. Debienne and Poligny were retiring from the management of the National Academy of Music. Business was impossible with so unreasonable a ghost. Certainly, two hundred and forty thousand francs are not to be picked up for the asking, said M. Poligny, without moving a muscle of his face. And have you considered what the loss over Box Five meant to us? We did not sell it once; and not only that, but we had to return the subscription why, its awful! We really cant work to keep ghosts! We prefer to go away! Yes, echoed M. Debienne, we prefer to go away. Let us go. And he stood up. Richard said But, after all, it seems to me that you were much too kind to the ghost. If I had such a troublesome ghost as that, I should not hesitate to have him arrested But how? Where? they cried, in chorus. We have never seen him! But when he comes to his box? We have never seen him in his box. Then sell it. Sell the Opera ghosts box! Well, gentlemen, try it. Thereupon we all four left the office. Richard and I had never laughed so much in our lives. IV Box Five Armand Moncharmin wrote such voluminous Memoirs during the fairly long period of his comanagement that we may well ask if he ever found time to attend to the affairs of the Opera otherwise than by telling what went on there. M. Moncharmin did not know a note of music, but he called the minister of education and fine arts by his Christian name, had dabbled a little in society journalism and enjoyed a considerable private income. Lastly, he was a charming fellow and showed that he was not lacking in intelligence, for, as soon as he made up his mind to be a sleeping partner in the Opera, he selected the best possible active manager and went straight to Firmin Richard. Firmin Richard was a very distinguished composer, who had published a number of successful pieces of all kinds and who liked nearly every form of music and every sort of musician. Clearly, therefore, it was the duty of every sort of musician to like M. Firmin Richard. The only things to be said against him were that he was rather masterful in his ways and endowed with a very hasty temper. The first few days which the partners spent at the Opera were given over to the delight of finding themselves the head of so magnificent an enterprise; and they had forgotten all about that curious, fantastic story of the ghost, when an incident occurred that proved to them that the jokeif joke it werewas not over. M. Firmin Richard reached his office that morning at eleven oclock. His secretary, M. Rmy, showed him half a dozen letters which he had not opened because they were marked private. One of the letters had at once attracted Richards attention not only because the envelope was addressed in red ink, but because he seemed to have seen the writing before. He soon remembered that it was the red handwriting in which the memorandumbook had been so curiously completed. He recognized the clumsy childish hand. He opened the letter and read Dear Mr. Manager I am sorry to have to trouble you at a time when you must be so very busy, renewing important engagements, signing fresh ones and generally displaying your excellent taste. I know what you have done for Carlotta, Sorelli and little Jammes and for a few others whose admirable qualities of talent or genius you have suspected. Of course, when I use these words, I do not mean to apply them to La Carlotta, who sings like a squirt and who ought never to have been allowed to leave the Ambassadeurs and the Caf Jacquin; nor to La Sorelli, who owes her success mainly to the coachbuilders; nor to little Jammes, who dances like a calf in a field. And I am not speaking of Christine Daa either, though her genius is certain, whereas your jealousy prevents her from creating any important part. When all is said, you are free to conduct your little business as you think best, are you not? All the same, I should like to take advantage of the fact that you have not yet turned Christine Daa out of doors by hearing her this evening in the part of Siebel, as that of Margarita has been forbidden her since her triumph of the other evening; and I will ask you not to dispose of my box today nor on the following days, for I can not end this letter without telling you how disagreeably surprised I have been once or twice, to hear, on arriving at the Opera, that my box had been sold, at the boxoffice, by your orders. I did not protest, first, because I dislike scandal, and, second, because I thought that your predecessors, MM. Debienne and Poligny, who were always charming to me, had neglected, before leaving, to mention my little fads to you. I have now received a reply from those gentlemen to my letter asking for an explanation, and this reply proves that you know all about my memorandumbook and, consequently, that you are treating me with outrageous contempt. If you wish to live in peace, you must not begin by taking away my private box. Believe me to be, dear Mr. Manager, without prejudice to these little observations, Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant, Opera Ghost. The letter was accompanied by a cutting from the agonycolumn of the Revue Thtrale, which ran O. G.There is no excuse for R. and M. We told them and left your memorandumbook in their hands. Kind regards. M. Firmin Richard had hardly finished reading this letter when M. Armand Moncharmin entered, carrying one exactly similar. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. They are keeping up the joke, said M. Richard, but I dont call it funny. What does it all mean? asked M. Moncharmin. Do they imagine that, because they have been managers of the Opera, we are going to let them have a box for an indefinite period? I am not in the mood to let myself be laughed at long, said Firmin Richard. Its harmless enough, observed Armand Moncharmin. What is it they really want? A box for tonight? M. Firmin Richard told his secretary to send Box Five on the grand tier to MM. Debienne and Poligny, if it was not sold. It was not. It was sent off to them. Debienne lived at the corner of the Rue Scribe and the Boulevard des Capucines; Poligny, in the Rue Auber. O. Ghosts two letters had been posted at the Boulevard des Capucines postoffice, as Moncharmin remarked after examining the envelopes. You see! said Richard. They shrugged their shoulders and regretted that two men of that age should amuse themselves with such childish tricks. They might have been civil, for all that! said Moncharmin. Did you notice how they treat us with regard to Carlotta, Sorelli and Little Jammes? Why, my dear fellow, these two are mad with jealousy! To think that they went to the expense of an advertisement in the Revue Thtrale! Have they nothing better to do? By the way, said Moncharmin, they seem to be greatly interested in that little Christine Daa! You know as well as I do that she has the reputation of being quite good, said Richard. Reputations are easily obtained, replied Moncharmin. Havent I a reputation for knowing all about music? And I dont know one key from another. Dont be afraid you never had that reputation, Richard declared. Thereupon he ordered the artists to be shown in, who, for the last two hours, had been walking up and down outside the door behind which fame and fortuneor dismissalawaited them. The whole day was spent in discussing, negotiating, signing or cancelling contracts; and the two overworked managers went to bed early, without so much as casting a glance at Box Five to see whether M. Debienne and M. Poligny were enjoying the performance. Next morning, the managers received a card of thanks from the ghost Dear Mr. Manager Thanks. Charming evening. Daa exquisite. Choruses want waking up. Carlotta a splendid commonplace instrument. Will write you soon for the 240,000 francs, or 233,424 fr. 70 c., to be correct. MM. Debienne and Poligny have sent me the 6,575 fr. 30 c. representing the first ten days of my allowance for the current year; their privileges finished on the evening of the tenth inst. Kind regards. O. G. On the other hand, there was a letter from MM. Debienne and Poligny Gentlemen We are much obliged for your kind thought of us, but you will easily understand that the prospect of again hearing Faust, pleasant though it is to exmanagers of the Opera, can not make us forget that we have no right to occupy Box Five on the grand tier, which is the exclusive property of him of whom we spoke to you when we went through the memorandumbook with you for the last time. See Clause 98, final paragraph. Accept, gentlemen, etc. Oh, those fellows are beginning to annoy me! shouted Firmin Richard, snatching up the letter. And that evening Box Five was sold. The next morning, MM. Richard and Moncharmin, on reaching their office, found an inspectors report relating to an incident that had happened, the night before, in Box Five. I give the essential part of the report I was obliged to call in a municipal guard twice, this evening, to clear Box Five on the grand tier, once at the beginning and once in the middle of the second act. The occupants, who arrived as the curtain rose on the second act, created a regular scandal by their laughter and their ridiculous observations. There were cries of Hush! all around them and the whole house was beginning to protest, when the boxkeeper came to fetch me. I entered the box and said what I thought necessary. The people did not seem to me to be in their right mind; and they made stupid remarks. I said that, if the noise was repeated, I should be compelled to clear the box. The moment I left, I heard the laughing again, with fresh protests from the house. I returned with a municipal guard, who turned them out. They protested, still laughing, saying they would not go unless they had their money back. At last, they became quiet and I allowed them to enter the box again. The laughter at once recommenced; and, this time, I had them turned out definitely. Send for the inspector, said Richard to his secretary, who had already read the report and marked it with blue pencil. M. Rmy, the secretary, had foreseen the order and called the inspector at once. Tell us what happened, said Richard bluntly. The inspector began to splutter and referred to the report. Well, but what were those people laughing at? asked Moncharmin. They must have been dining, sir, and seemed more inclined to lark about than to listen to good music. The moment they entered the box, they came out again and called the boxkeeper, who asked them what they wanted. They said, Look in the box theres no one there, is there? No, said the woman. Well, said they, when we went in, we heard a voice saying that the box was taken! M. Moncharmin could not help smiling as he looked at M. Richard; but M. Richard did not smile. He himself had done too much in that way in his time not to recognize, in the inspectors story, all the marks of one of those practical jokes which begin by amusing and end by enraging the victims. The inspector, to curry favor with M. Moncharmin, who was smiling, thought it best to give a smile too. A most unfortunate smile! M. Richard glared at his subordinate, who thenceforth made it his business to display a face of utter consternation. However, when the people arrived, roared Richard, there was no one in the box, was there? Not a soul, sir, not a soul! Nor in the box on the right, nor in the box on the left not a soul, sir, I swear! The boxkeeper told it me often enough, which proves that it was all a joke. Oh, you agree, do you? said Richard. You agree! Its a joke! And you think it funny, no doubt? I think it in very bad taste, sir. And what did the boxkeeper say? Oh, she just said that it was the Opera ghost. Thats all she said! And the inspector grinned. But he soon found that he had made a mistake in grinning, for the words had no sooner left his mouth than M. Richard, from gloomy, became furious. Send for the boxkeeper! he shouted. Send for her! This minute! This minute! And bring her in to me here! And turn all those people out! The inspector tried to protest, but Richard closed his mouth with an angry order to hold his tongue. Then, when the wretched mans lips seemed shut forever, the manager commanded him to open them once more. Who is this Opera ghost? he snarled. But the inspector was by this time incapable of speaking a word. He managed to convey, by a despairing gesture, that he knew nothing about it, or rather that he did not wish to know. Have you ever seen him, have you seen the Opera ghost? The inspector, by means of a vigorous shake of the head, denied ever having seen the ghost in question. Very well! said M. Richard coldly. The inspectors eyes started out of his head, as though to ask why the manager had uttered that ominous Very well! Because Im going to settle the account of anyone who has not seen him! explained the manager. As he seems to be everywhere, I cant have people telling me that they see him nowhere. I like people to work for me when I employ them! Having said this, M. Richard paid no attention to the inspector and discussed various matters of business with his actingmanager, who had entered the room meanwhile. The inspector thought he could go and was gentlyoh, so gently!sidling toward the door, when M. Richard nailed the man to the floor with a thundering Stay where you are! M. Rmy had sent for the boxkeeper to the Rue de Provence, close to the Opera, where she was engaged as a porteress. She soon made her appearance. Whats your name? Mame Giry. You know me well enough, sir; Im the mother of little Giry, little Meg, what! This was said in so rough and solemn a tone that, for a moment, M. Richard was impressed. He looked at Mame Giry, in her faded shawl, her worn shoes, her old taffeta dress and dingy bonnet. It was quite evident from the managers attitude, that he either did not know or could not remember having met Mame Giry, nor even little Giry, nor even little Meg! But Mame Girys pride was so great that the celebrated boxkeeper imagined that everybody knew her. Never heard of her! the manager declared. But thats no reason, Mame Giry, why I shouldnt ask you what happened last night to make you and the inspector call in a municipal guard I was just wanting to see you, sir, and talk to you about it, so that you mightnt have the same unpleasantness as M. Debienne and M. Poligny. They wouldnt listen to me either, at first. Im not asking you about all that. Im asking what happened last night. Mame Giry turned purple with indignation. Never had she been spoken to like that. She rose as though to go, gathering up the folds of her skirt and waving the feathers of her dingy bonnet with dignity, but, changing her mind, she sat down again and said, in a haughty voice Ill tell you what happened. The ghost was annoyed again! Thereupon, as M. Richard was on the point of bursting out, M. Moncharmin interfered and conducted the interrogatory, whence it appeared that Mame Giry thought it quite natural that a voice should be heard to say that a box was taken, when there was nobody in the box. She was unable to explain this phenomenon, which was not new to her, except by the intervention of the ghost. Nobody could see the ghost in his box, but everybody could hear him. She had often heard him; and they could believe her, for she always spoke the truth. They could ask M. Debienne and M. Poligny, and anybody who knew her; and also M. Isidore Saack, who had had a leg broken by the ghost! Indeed! said Moncharmin, interrupting her. Did the ghost break poor Isidore Saacks leg? Mame Giry opened her eyes with astonishment at such ignorance. However, she consented to enlighten those two poor innocents. The thing had happened in M. Debienne and M. Polignys time, also in Box Five and also during a performance of Faust. Mame Giry coughed, cleared her throatit sounded as though she were preparing to sing the whole of Gounods scoreand began It was like this, sir. That night, M. Maniera and his lady, the jewelers in the Rue Mogador, were sitting in the front of the box, with their great friend, M. Isidore Saack, sitting behind Mme. Maniera. Mephistopheles was singingMame Giry here burst into song herself Catarina, while you play at sleeping, and then M. Maniera heard a voice in his right ear (his wife was on his left) saying, Ha, ha! Julies not playing at sleeping! His wife happened to be called Julie. So M. Maniera turns to the right to see who was talking to him like that. Nobody there! He rubs his ear and asks himself if hes dreaming. Then Mephistopheles went on with his serenade. But, perhaps Im boring you gentlemen? No, no, go on. You are too good, gentlemen, with a smirk. Well, then, Mephistopheles went on with his serenadeMame Giry burst into song again Saint, unclose thy portals holy and accord the bliss, to a mortal bending lowly, of a pardonkiss. And then M. Maniera again hears the voice in his right ear, saying, this time, Ha, ha! Julie wouldnt mind according a kiss to Isidore! Then he turns round again, but, this time, to the left; and what do you think he sees? Isidore, who had taken his ladys hand and was covering it with kisses through the little round place in the glovelike this, gentlemenrapturously kissing the bit of palm left bare in the middle of her thread gloves. Then they had a lively time between them! Bang! Bang! M. Maniera, who was big and strong, like you, M. Richard, gave two blows to M.

Isidore Saack, who was small and weak like M. Moncharmin, saving his presence. There was a great uproar. People in the house shouted, That will do! Stop them! Hell kill him! Then, at last, M. Isidore Saack managed to run away. Then the ghost had not broken his leg? asked M. Moncharmin, a little vexed that his figure had made so little impression on Mame Giry. He did break it for him, sir, replied Mame Giry haughtily. He broke it for him on the grand staircase, which he ran down too fast, sir, and it will be long before the poor gentleman will be able to go up it again! Did the ghost tell you what he said in M. Manieras right ear? asked M. Moncharmin, with a gravity which he thought exceedingly humorous. No, sir, it was M. Maniera himself. So But you have spoken to the ghost, my good lady? As Im speaking to you now, my good sir! Mame Giry replied. And, when the ghost speaks to you, what does he say? Well, he tells me to bring him a footstool! This time, Richard burst out laughing, as did Moncharmin and Rmy, the secretary. Only the inspector, warned by experience, was careful not to laugh, while Mame Giry ventured to adopt an attitude that was positively threatening. Instead of laughing, she cried indignantly, youd do better to do as M. Poligny did, who found out for himself. Found out about what? asked Moncharmin, who had never been so much amused in his life. About the ghost, of course! Look here She suddenly calmed herself, feeling that this was a solemn moment in her life Look here, she repeated. They were playing La Juive. M. Poligny thought he would watch the performance from the ghosts box. Well, when Lopold cries, Let us fly!you knowand Elazer stops them and says, Whither go ye? well, M. PolignyI was watching him from the back of the next box, which was emptyM. Poligny got up and walked out quite stiffly, like a statue, and before I had time to ask him, Whither go ye? like Elazer, he was down the staircase, but without breaking his leg. Still, that doesnt let us know how the Opera ghost came to ask you for a footstool, insisted M. Moncharmin. Well, from that evening, no one tried to take the ghosts private box from him. The manager gave orders that he was to have it at each performance. And, whenever he came, he asked me for a footstool. Tut, tut! A ghost asking for a footstool! Then this ghost of yours is a woman? No, the ghost is a man. How do you know? He has a mans voice, oh, such a lovely mans voice! This is what happens When he comes to the opera, its usually in the middle of the first act. He gives three little taps on the door of Box Five. The first time I heard those three taps, when I knew there was no one in the box, you can think how puzzled I was! I opened the door, listened, looked; nobody! And then I heard a voice say, Mame Julesmy poor husbands name was Julesa footstool, please. Saving your presence, gentlemen, it made me feel alloverish like. But the voice went on, Dont be frightened, Mame Jules, Im the Opera ghost! And the voice was so soft and kind that I hardly felt frightened. The voice was sitting in the corner chair, on the right, in the front row. Was there anyone in the box on the right of Box Five? asked Moncharmin. No; Box Seven, and Box Three, the one on the left, were both empty. The curtain had only just gone up. And what did you do? Well, I brought the footstool. Of course, it wasnt for himself he wanted it, but for his lady! But I never heard her nor saw her. Eh? What? So now the ghost is married! The eyes of the two managers traveled from Mame Giry to the inspector, who, standing behind the boxkeeper, was waving his arms to attract their attention. He tapped his forehead with a distressful forefinger, to convey his opinion that the widow Jules Giry was most certainly mad, a piece of pantomime which confirmed M. Richard in his determination to get rid of an inspector who kept a lunatic in his service. Meanwhile, the worthy lady went on about her ghost, now painting his generosity At the end of the performance, he always gives me two francs, sometimes five, sometimes even ten, when he has been many days without coming. Only, since people have begun to annoy him again, he gives me nothing at all. Excuse me, my good woman, said Moncharmin, while Mame Giry tossed the feathers in her dingy hat at this persistent familiarity, excuse me, how does the ghost manage to give you your two francs? Why, he leaves them on the little shelf in the box, of course. I find them with the program, which I always give him. Some evenings, I find flowers in the box, a rose that must have dropped from his ladys bodice for he brings a lady with him sometimes; one day, they left a fan behind them. Oh, the ghost left a fan, did he? And what did you do with it? Well, I brought it back to the box next night. Here the inspectors voice was raised. Youve broken the rules; I shall have to fine you, Mame Giry. Hold your tongue, you fool! muttered M. Firmin Richard. You brought back the fan. And then? Well, then, they took it away with them, sir; it was not there at the end of the performance; and in its place they left me a box of English sweets, which Im very fond of. Thats one of the ghosts pretty thoughts. That will do, Mame Giry. You can go. When Mame Giry had bowed herself out, with the dignity that never deserted her, the manager told the inspector that they had decided to dispense with that old madwomans services; and, when he had gone in his turn, they instructed the actingmanager to make up the inspectors accounts. Left alone, the managers told each other of the idea which they both had in mind, which was that they should look into that little matter of Box Five themselves. V The Enchanted Violin Christine Daa, owing to intrigues to which I will return later, did not immediately continue her triumph at the Opera. After the famous gala night, she sang once at the Duchess de Zurichs; but this was the last occasion on which she was heard in private. She refused, without plausible excuse, to appear at a charity concert to which she had promised her assistance. She acted throughout as though she were no longer the mistress of her own destiny and as though she feared a fresh triumph. She knew that the Comte de Chagny, to please his brother, had done his best on her behalf with M. Richard; and she wrote to thank him and also to ask him to cease speaking in her favor. Her reason for this curious attitude was never known. Some pretended that it was due to overweening pride; others spoke of her heavenly modesty. But people on the stage are not so modest as all that; and I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I ascribe her action simply to fear. Yes, I believe that Christine Daa was frightened by what had happened to her. I have a letter of Christines (it forms part of the Persians collection), relating to this period, which suggests a feeling of absolute dismay I dont know myself when I sing, writes the poor child. She showed herself nowhere; and the Vicomte de Chagny tried in vain to meet her. He wrote to her, asking to call upon her, but despaired of receiving a reply when, one morning, she sent him the following note Monsieur I have not forgotten the little boy who went into the sea to rescue my scarf. I feel that I must write to you today, when I am going to Perros, in fulfilment of a sacred duty. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of my poor father, whom you knew and who was very fond of you. He is buried there, with his violin, in the graveyard of the little church, at the bottom of the slope where we used to play as children, beside the road where, when we were a little bigger, we said goodbye for the last time. The Vicomte de Chagny hurriedly consulted a railway guide, dressed as quickly as he could, wrote a few lines for his valet to take to his brother and jumped into a cab which brought him to the Gare Montparnasse just in time to miss the morning train. He spent a dismal day in town and did not recover his spirits until the evening, when he was seated in his compartment in the Brittany express. He read Christines note over and over again, smelling its perfume, recalling the sweet pictures of his childhood, and spent the rest of that tedious night journey in feverish dreams that began and ended with Christine Daa. Day was breaking when he alighted at Lannion. He hurried to the diligence for PerrosGuirec. He was the only passenger. He questioned the driver and learned that, on the evening of the previous day, a young lady who looked like a Parisian had gone to Perros and put up at the inn known as the Setting Sun. The nearer he drew to her, the more fondly he remembered the story of the little Swedish singer. Most of the details are still unknown to the public. There was once, in a little markettown not far from Upsala, a peasant who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and singing in the choir on Sundays. This peasant had a little daughter to whom he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read. Daas father was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it. Not a fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did. His reputation was widespread and he was always invited to set the couples dancing at weddings and other festivals. His wife died when Christine was entering upon her sixth year. Then the father, who cared only for his daughter and his music, sold his patch of ground and went to Upsala in search of fame and fortune. He found nothing but poverty. He returned to the country, wandering from fair to fair, strumming his Scandinavian melodies, while his child, who never left his side, listened to him in ecstasy or sang to his playing. One day, at Ljimby Fair, Professor Valrius heard them and took them to Gothenburg. He maintained that the father was the first violinist in the world and that the daughter had the making of a great artist. Her education and instruction were provided for. She made rapid progress and charmed everybody with her prettiness, her grace of manner and her genuine eagerness to please. When Valrius and his wife went to settle in France, they took Daa and Christine with them. Mamma Valrius treated Christine as her daughter. As for Daa, he began to pine away with homesickness. He never went out of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he kept up with his violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly. Sometimes Mamma Valrius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go downstairs again on tiptoe, sighing for her Scandinavian skies. Daa seemed not to recover his strength until the summer, when the whole family went to stay at PerrosGuirec, in a faraway corner of Brittany, where the sea was of the same color as in his own country. Often he would play his saddest tunes on the beach and pretend that the sea stopped its roaring to listen to them. And then he induced Mamma Valrius to indulge a queer whim of his. At the time of the pardons, or Breton pilgrimages, the village festival and dances, he went off with his fiddle, as in the old days, and was allowed to take his daughter with him for a week. They gave the smallest hamlets music to last them for a year and slept at night in a barn, refusing a bed at the inn, lying close together on the straw, as when they were so poor in Sweden. At the same time, they were very neatly dressed, made no collection, refused the halfpence offered them; and the people around could not understand the conduct of this rustic fiddler, who tramped the roads with that pretty child who sang like an angel from Heaven. They followed them from village to village. One day, a little boy, who was out with his governess, made her take a longer walk than he intended, for he could not tear himself from the little girl whose pure, sweet voice seemed to bind him to her. They came to the shore of an inlet which is still called Trestraou, but which now, I believe, harbors a casino or something of the sort. At that time, there was nothing but sky and sea and a stretch of golden beach. Only, there was also a high wind, which blew Christines scarf out to sea. Christine gave a cry and put out her arms, but the scarf was already far on the waves. Then she heard a voice say Its all right, Ill go and fetch your scarf out of the sea. And she saw a little boy running fast, in spite of the outcries and the indignant protests of a worthy lady in black. The little boy ran into the sea, dressed as he was, and brought her back her scarf. Boy and scarf were both soaked through. The lady in black made a great fuss, but Christine laughed merrily and kissed the little boy, who was none other than the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, staying at Lannion with his aunt. During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunts request, seconded by Professor Valrius, Daa consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christines childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottagedoors, like beggars Maam or, Kind gentleman have you a little story to tell us, please? And it seldom happened that they did not have one given them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the korrigans dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daa came and sat down by them on the roadside and, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he evoked, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep, still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains And another Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the suns rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music. While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christines blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daas tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men at fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and wont learn their lessons or practise their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad and disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daa shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you! Daddy was beginning to cough at that time. Three years later, Raoul and Christine met again at Perros. Professor Valrius was dead, but his widow remained in France with Daddy Daa and his daughter, who continued to play the violin and sing, wrapping in their dream of harmony their kind patroness, who seemed henceforth to live on music alone. The young man, as he now was, had come to Perros on the chance of finding them and went straight to the house in which they used to stay. He first saw the old man; and then Christine entered, carrying the teatray. She flushed at the sight of Raoul, who went up to her and kissed her. She asked him a few questions, performed her duties as hostess prettily, took up the tray again and left the room. Then she ran into the garden and took refuge on a bench, a prey to feelings that stirred her young heart for the first time. Raoul followed her and they talked till the evening, very shyly. They were quite changed, cautious as two diplomatists, and told each other things that had nothing to do with their budding sentiments. When they took leave of each other by the roadside, Raoul, pressing a kiss on Christines trembling hand, said Mademoiselle, I shall never forget you! And he went away regretting his words, for he knew that Christine could not be the wife of the Vicomte de Chagny. As for Christine, she tried not to think of him and devoted herself wholly to her art. She made wonderful progress and those who heard her prophesied that she would be the greatest singer in the world. Meanwhile, the father died; and, suddenly, she seemed to have lost, with him, her voice, her soul and her genius. She retained just, but only just, enough of this to enter the conservatoire, where she did not distinguish herself at all, attending the classes without enthusiasm and taking a prize only to please old Mamma Valrius, with whom she continued to live. The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by the girls beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacobs ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was shy and dared not confess his love, even to himself. And then came the lightningflash of the gala performance the heavens torn asunder and an angels voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the utter capture of his heart. And then and then there was that mans voice behind the doorYou must love me!and no one in the room. Why did she laugh when he reminded her of the incident of the scarf? Why did she not recognize him? And why had she written to him? Perros was reached at last. Raoul walked into the smoky sittingroom of the Setting Sun and at once saw Christine standing before him, smiling and showing no astonishment. So you have come, she said. I felt that I should find you here, when I came back from mass. Someone told me so, at the church. Who? asked Raoul, taking her little hand in his. Why, my poor father, who is dead. There was a silence; and then Raoul asked Did your father tell you that I love you, Christine, and that I can not live without you? Christine blushed to the eyes and turned away her head. In a trembling voice, she said Me? You are dreaming, my friend! And she burst out laughing, to put herself in countenance. Dont laugh, Christine; I am quite serious, Raoul answered. And she replied gravely I did not make you come to tell me such things as that. You made me come, Christine; you knew that your letter would not leave me indignant and that I should hasten to Perros. How can you have thought that, if you did not think I loved you? I thought you would remember our games here, as children, in which my father so often joined. I really dont know what I thought. Perhaps I was wrong to write to you. This anniversary and your sudden appearance in my room at the Opera, the other evening, reminded me of the time long past and made me write to you as the little girl that I then was. There was something in Christines attitude that seemed to Raoul not natural. He did not feel any hostility in her; far from it the distressed affection shining in her eyes told him that. But why was this affection distressed? That was what he wished to know and what was irritating him. When you saw me in your dressingroom, was that the first time you noticed me, Christine? She was incapable of lying. No, she said, I had seen you several times in your brothers box. And also on the stage. I thought so! said Raoul, compressing his lips. But then why, when you saw me in your room, at your feet, reminding you that I had rescued your scarf from the sea, why did you answer as though you did not know me and also why did you laugh? The tone of these questions was so rough that Christine stared at Raoul without replying. The young man himself was aghast at the sudden quarrel which he had dared to raise at the very moment when he had resolved to speak words of gentleness, love and submission to Christine. A husband, a lover with all rights, would talk no differently to a wife, a mistress who had offended him. But he had gone too far and saw no other way out of the ridiculous position than to behave odiously. You dont answer! he said angrily and unhappily. Well, I will answer for you. It was because there was someone in the room who was in your way, Christine, someone that you did not wish to know that you could be interested in anyone else! If anyone was in my way, my friend, Christine broke in coldly, if anyone was in my way, that evening, it was yourself, since I told you to leave the room! Yes, so that you might remain with the other! What are you saying, monsieur? asked the girl excitedly. And to what other do you refer? To the man to whom you said, I sing only for you! Tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead! Christine seized Raouls arm and clutched it with a strength which no one would have suspected in so frail a creature. Then you were listening behind the door? Yes, because I love you and I heard everything. You heard what? And the young girl, becoming strangely calm, released Raouls arm. He said to you, Christine, you must love me! At these words, a deathly pallor spread over Christines face, dark rings formed round her eyes, she staggered and seemed on the point of swooning. Raoul darted forward, with arms outstretched, but Christine had overcome her passing faintness and said, in a low voice Go on! Go on! Tell me all you heard! At an utter loss to understand, Raoul answered I heard him reply, when you said you had given him your soul, Your soul is a beautiful thing, child, and I thank you. No emperor ever received so fair a gift. The angels wept tonight. Christine carried her hand to her heart, a prey to indescribable emotion. Her eyes stared before her like a madwomans. Raoul was terrorstricken. But suddenly Christines eyes moistened and two great tears trickled, like two pearls, down her ivory cheeks. Christine! Raoul! The young man tried to take her in his arms, but she escaped and fled in great disorder. While Christine remained locked in her room, Raoul was at his wits end what to do. He refused to breakfast. He was terribly concerned and bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past without the presence of the young Swedish girl. Why did she not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in common? He heard that she had had a mass said, that morning, for the repose of her fathers soul and spent a long time praying in the little church and on the fiddlers tomb. Then, as she seemed to have nothing more to do at Perros and, in fact, was doing nothing there, why did she not go back to Paris at once? Raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions; but, when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the dazzling note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground. They were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him. It also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its corpses. Skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible. Dead mens bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built. The door of the sacristy opened in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old Breton churches. Raoul said a prayer for Daa and then, painfully impressed by all those eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea. The wind fell with the evening. Raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the cold. It was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little Christine to see the Korrigans dance at the rising of the moon. He had never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas Christine, who was a little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many. He smiled at the thought and then suddenly gave a start. A voice behind him said Do you think the Korrigans will come this evening? It was Christine. He tried to speak. She put her gloved hand on his mouth. Listen, Raoul. I have decided to tell you something serious, very serious. Do you remember the legend of the Angel of Music? I do indeed, he said. I believe it was here that your father first told it to us. And it was here that he said, When I am in Heaven, my child, I will send him to you. Well, Raoul, my father is in Heaven, and I have been visited by the Angel of Music. I have no doubt of it, replied the young man gravely, for it seemed to him that his friend, in obedience to a pious thought, was connecting the memory of her father with the brilliancy of her last triumph. Christine appeared astonished at the Vicomte de Chagnys coolness How do you understand it? she asked, bringing her pale face so close to his that he might have thought that Christine was going to give him a kiss; but she only wanted to read his eyes in spite of the dark. I understand, he said, that no human being can sing as you sang the other evening without the intervention of some miracle. No professor on earth can teach you such accents as those. You have heard the Angel of Music, Christine. Yes, she said solemnly, in my dressingroom. That is where he comes to give me my lessons daily. In your dressingroom? he echoed stupidly. Yes, that is where I have heard him; and I have not been the only one to hear him. Who else heard him, Christine? You, my friend. I? I heard the Angel of Music? Yes, the other evening, it was he who was talking when you were listening behind the door. It was he who said, You must love me. But I then thought that I was the only one to hear his voice. Imagine my astonishment when you told me, this morning, that you could hear him too. Raoul burst out laughing. The first rays of the moon came and shrouded the two young people in their light. Christine turned on Raoul with a hostile air. Her eyes, usually so gentle, flashed fire. What are you laughing at? You think you heard a mans voice, I suppose? Well! replied the young man, whose ideas began to grow confused in the face of Christines determined attitude. Its you, Raoul, who say that? You, an old playfellow of my own! A friend of my fathers! But you have changed since those days. What are you thinking of? I am an honest girl, M. le Vicomte de Chagny, and I dont lock myself up in my dressingroom with mens voices. If you had opened the door, you would have seen that there was nobody in the room! Thats true! I did open the door, when you were gone, and I found no one in the room. So you see! Well? The viscount summoned up all his courage. Well, Christine, I think that somebody is making game of you. She gave a cry and ran away. He ran after her, but, in a tone of fierce anger, she called out Leave me! Leave me! And she disappeared. Raoul returned to the inn feeling very weary, very lowspirited and very sad. He was told that Christine had gone to her bedroom saying that she would not be down to dinner. Raoul dined alone, in a very gloomy mood. Then he went to his room and tried to read, went to bed and tried to sleep. There was no sound in the next room. The hours passed slowly. It was about halfpast eleven when he distinctly heard someone moving, with a light, stealthy step, in the room next to his. Then Christine had not gone to bed! Without troubling for a reason, Raoul dressed, taking care not to make a sound, and waited. Waited for what? How could he tell? But his heart thumped in his chest when he heard Christines door turn slowly on its hinges. Where could she be going, at this hour, when everyone was fast asleep at Perros? Softly opening the door, he saw Christines white form, in the moonlight, slipping along the passage. She went down the stairs and he leaned over the baluster above her. Suddenly he heard two voices in rapid conversation. He caught one sentence Dont lose the key. It was the landladys voice. The door facing the sea was opened and locked again. Then all was still. Raoul ran back to his room and threw back the window. Christines white form stood on the deserted quay. The first floor of the Setting Sun was at no great height and a tree growing against the wall held out its branches to Raouls impatient arms and enabled him to climb down unknown to the landlady. Her amazement, therefore, was all the greater when, the next morning, the young man was brought back to her half frozen, more dead than alive, and when she learned that he had been found stretched at full length on the steps of the high altar of the little church. She ran at once to tell Christine, who hurried down and, with the help of the landlady, did her best to revive him. He soon opened his eyes and was not long in recovering when he saw his friends charming face leaning over him. A few weeks later, when the tragedy at the Opera compelled the intervention of the public prosecutor, M. Mifroid, the commissary of police, examined the Vicomte de Chagny touching the events of the night at Perros. I quote the questions and answers as given in the official report pp. 150 et seq. Q. Did Mlle. Daa not see you come down from your room by the curious road which you selected? R. No, monsieur, no, although, when walking behind her, I took no pains to deaden the sound of my footsteps. In fact, I was anxious that she should turn round and see me. I realized that I had no excuse for following her and that this way of spying on her was unworthy of me. But she seemed not to hear me and acted exactly as though I were not there. She quietly left the quay and then suddenly walked quickly up the road. The churchclock had struck a quarter to twelve and I thought that this must have made her hurry, for she began almost to run and continued hastening until she came to the church. Q. Was the gate open? R. Yes, monsieur, and this surprised me, but did not seem to surprise Mlle. Daa. Q. Was there no one in the churchyard? R. I did not see anyone; and, if there had been, I must have seen him. The moon was shining on the snow and made the night quite light. Q. Was it possible for anyone to hide behind the tombstones? R. No, monsieur. They were quite small, poor tombstones, partly hidden under the snow, with their crosses just above the level of the ground. The only shadows were those of the crosses and ourselves. The church stood out quite brightly.

I never saw so clear a night. It was very fine and very cold and one could see everything. Q. Are you at all superstitious? R. No, monsieur, I am a practising Catholic. Q. In what condition of mind were you? R. Very healthy and peaceful, I assure you. Mlle. Daas curious action in going out at that hour had worried me at first; but, as soon as I saw her go to the churchyard, I thought that she meant to fulfil some pious duty on her fathers grave and I considered this so natural that I recovered all my calmness. I was only surprised that she had not heard me walking behind her, for my footsteps were quite audible on the hard snow. But she must have been taken up with her intentions and I resolved not to disturb her. She knelt down by her fathers grave, made the sign of the cross and began to pray. At that moment, it struck midnight. At the last stroke, I saw Mlle. Daa lift her eyes to the sky and stretch out her arms as though in ecstasy. I was wondering what the reason could be, when I myself raised my head and everything within me seemed drawn toward the invisible, which was playing the most perfect music! Christine and I knew that music; we had heard it as children. But it had never been executed with such divine art, even by M. Daa. I remembered all that Christine had told me of the Angel of Music. The air was The Resurrection of Lazarus, which old M. Daa used to play to us in his hours of melancholy and of faith. If Christines Angel had existed, he could not have played better, that night, on the late musicians violin. When the music stopped, I seemed to hear a noise from the skulls in the heap of bones; it was as though they were chuckling and I could not help shuddering. Q. Did it not occur to you that the musician might be hiding behind that very heap of bones? R. It was the one thought that did occur to me, monsieur, so much so that I omitted to follow Mlle. Daa, when she stood up and walked slowly to the gate. She was so much absorbed just then that I am not surprised that she did not see me. Q. Then what happened that you were found in the morning lying halfdead on the steps of the high altar? R. First a skull rolled to my feet then another then another. It was as if I were the mark of that ghastly game of bowls. And I had an idea that false step must have destroyed the balance of the structure behind which our musician was concealed. This surmise seemed to be confirmed when I saw a shadow suddenly glide along the sacristy wall. I ran up. The shadow had already pushed open the door and entered the church. But I was quicker than the shadow and caught hold of a corner of its cloak. At that moment, we were just in front of the high altar; and the moonbeams fell straight upon us through the stainedglass windows of the apse. As I did not let go of the cloak, the shadow turned round; and I saw a terrible deaths head, which darted a look at me from a pair of scorching eyes. I felt as if I were face to face with Satan; and, in the presence of this unearthly apparition, my heart gave way, my courage failed me and I remember nothing more until I recovered consciousness at the Setting Sun. VI A Visit to Box Five We left M. Firmin Richard and M. Armand Moncharmin at the moment when they were deciding to look into that little matter of Box Five. Leaving behind them the broad staircase which leads from the lobby outside the managers offices to the stage and its dependencies, they crossed the stage, went out by the subscribers door and entered the house through the first little passage on the left. Then they made their way through the front rows of stalls and looked at Box Five on the grand tier. They could not see it well, because it was half in darkness and because great covers were flung over the red velvet of the ledges of all the boxes. They were almost alone in the huge, gloomy house; and a great silence surrounded them. It was the time when most of the stagehands go out for a drink. The staff had left the boards for the moment, leaving a scene half set. A few rays of light, a wan, sinister light, that seemed to have been stolen from an expiring luminary, fell through some opening or other upon an old tower that raised its pasteboard battlements on the stage; everything, in this deceptive light, adopted a fantastic shape. In the orchestra stalls, the drugget covering them looked like an angry sea, whose glaucous waves had been suddenly rendered stationary by a secret order from the storm phantom, who, as everybody knows, is called Adamastor. MM. Moncharmin and Richard were the shipwrecked mariners amid this motionless turmoil of a calico sea. They made for the left boxes, plowing their way like sailors who leave their ship and try to struggle to the shore. The eight great polished columns stood up in the dusk like so many huge piles supporting the threatening, crumbling, bigbellied cliffs whose layers were represented by the circular, parallel, waving lines of the balconies of the grand, first and second tiers of boxes. At the top, right on top of the cliff, lost in M. Lenepveus copper ceiling, figures grinned and grimaced, laughed and jeered at MM. Richard and Moncharmins distress. And yet these figures were usually very serious. Their names were Isis, Amphitrite, Hebe, Pandora, Psyche, Thetis, Pomona, Daphne, Clytie, Galatea and Arethusa. Yes, Arethusa herself and Pandora, whom we all know by her box, looked down upon the two new managers of the Opera, who ended by clutching at some piece of wreckage and from there stared silently at Box Five on the grand tier. I have said that they were distressed. At least, I presume so. M. Moncharmin, in any case, admits that he was impressed. To quote his own words, in his Memoirs This moonshine about the Opera ghost in which, since we first took over the duties of MM. Poligny and Debienne, we had been so nicely steepedMoncharmins style is not always irreproachablehad no doubt ended by blinding my imaginative and also my visual faculties. It may be that the exceptional surroundings in which we found ourselves, in the midst of an incredible silence, impressed us to an unusual extent. It may be that we were the sport of a kind of hallucination brought about by the semidarkness of the theater and the partial gloom that filled Box Five. At any rate, I saw and Richard also saw a shape in the box. Richard said nothing, nor I either. But we spontaneously seized each others hand. We stood like that for some minutes, without moving, with our eyes fixed on the same point; but the figure had disappeared. Then we went out and, in the lobby, communicated our impressions to each other and talked about the shape. The misfortune was that my shape was not in the least like Richards. I had seen a thing like a deaths head resting on the ledge of the box, whereas Richard saw the shape of an old woman who looked like Mame Giry. We soon discovered that we had really been the victims of an illusion, whereupon, without further delay and laughing like madmen, we ran to Box Five on the grand tier, went inside and found no shape of any kind. Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes. There is nothing to distinguish it from any of the others. M. Moncharmin and M. Richard, ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved the furniture of the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularly examined the armchair in which the mans voice used to sit. But they saw that it was a respectable armchair, with no magic about it. Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with its red hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in red velvet. After feeling the carpet in the most serious manner possible, and discovering nothing more here or anywhere else, they went down to the corresponding box on the pit tier below. In Box Five on the pit tier, which is just inside the first exit from the stalls on the left, they found nothing worth mentioning either. Those people are all making fools of us! Firmin Richard ended by exclaiming. It will be Faust on Saturday let us both see the performance from Box Five on the grand tier! VII Faust and What Followed On the Saturday morning, on reaching their office, the joint managers found a letter from O. G. worded in these terms My Dear Managers So it is to be war between us? If you still care for peace, here is my ultimatum. It consists of the four following conditions You must give me back my private box; and I wish it to be at my free disposal from henceforward. The part of Margarita shall be sung this evening by Christine Daa. Never mind about Carlotta; she will be ill. I absolutely insist upon the good and loyal services of Mme. Giry, my boxkeeper, whom you will reinstate in her functions forthwith. Let me know by a letter handed to Mme. Giry, who will see that it reaches me, that you accept, as your predecessors did, the conditions in my memorandumbook relating to my monthly allowance. I will inform you later how you are to pay it to me. If you refuse, you will give Faust tonight in a house with a curse upon it. Take my advice and be warned in time. O. G. Look here, Im getting sick of him, sick of him! shouted Richard, bringing his fists down on his officetable. Just then, Mercier, the actingmanager, entered. Lachenel would like to see one of you gentlemen, he said. He says that his business is urgent and he seems quite upset. Whos Lachenel? asked Richard. Hes your studgroom. What do you mean? My studgroom? Yes, sir, explained Mercier, there are several grooms at the Opera and M. Lachenel is at the head of them. And what does this groom do? He has the chief management of the stable. What stable? Why, yours, sir, the stable of the Opera. Is there a stable at the Opera? Upon my word, I didnt know. Where is it? In the cellars, on the Rotunda side. Its a very important department; we have twelve horses. Twelve horses! And what for, in Heavens name? Why, we want trained horses for the processions in the Juive, the Profeta and so on; horses used to the boards. It is the grooms business to teach them. M. Lachenel is very clever at it. He used to manage Franconis stables. Very well but what does he want? I dont know; I never saw him in such a state. He can come in. M. Lachenel came in, carrying a ridingwhip, with which he struck his right boot in an irritable manner. Good morning, M. Lachenel, said Richard, somewhat impressed. To what do we owe the honor of your visit? Mr. Manager, I have come to ask you to get rid of the whole stable. What, you want to get rid of our horses? Im not talking of the horses, but of the stablemen. How many stablemen have you, M. Lachenel? Six. Six stablemen! Thats at least two too many. These are places, Mercier interposed, created and forced upon us by the undersecretary for fine arts. They are filled by protges of the government and, if I may venture to I dont care a hang for the government! roared Richard. We dont need more than four stablemen for twelve horses. Eleven, said the head ridingmaster, correcting him. Twelve, repeated Richard. Eleven, repeated Lachenel. Oh, the actingmanager told me that you had twelve horses! I did have twelve, but I have only eleven since Csar was stolen. And M. Lachenel gave himself a great smack on the boot with his whip. Has Csar been stolen? cried the actingmanager. Csar, the white horse in the Profeta? There are not two Csars, said the studgroom dryly. I was ten years at Franconis and I have seen plenty of horses in my time. Well, there are not two Csars. And hes been stolen. How? I dont know. Nobody knows. Thats why I have come to ask you to sack the whole stable. What do your stablemen say? All sorts of nonsense. Some of them accuse the supers. Others pretend that its the actingmanagers doorkeeper My doorkeeper? Ill answer for him as I would for myself! protested Mercier. But, after all, M. Lachenel, cried Richard, you must have some idea. Yes, I have, M. Lachenel declared. I have an idea and Ill tell you what it is. Theres no doubt about it in my mind. He walked up to the two managers and whispered. Its the ghost who did the trick! Richard gave a jump. What, you too! You too! How do you mean, I too? Isnt it natural, after what I saw? What did you see? I saw, as clearly as I now see you, a black shadow riding a white horse that was as like Csar as two peas! And did you run after them? I did and I shouted, but they were too fast for me and disappeared in the darkness of the underground gallery. M. Richard rose. That will do, M. Lachenel. You can go. We will lodge a complaint against the ghost. And sack my stable? Oh, of course! Good morning. M. Lachenel bowed and withdrew. Richard foamed at the mouth. Settle that idiots account at once, please. He is a friend of the government representatives! Mercier ventured to say. And he takes his vermouth at Tortonis with Lagrn, Scholl and Pertuiset, the lionhunter, added Moncharmin. We shall have the whole press against us! Hell tell the story of the ghost; and everybody will be laughing at our expense! We may as well be dead as ridiculous! All right, say no more about it. At that moment the door opened. It must have been deserted by its usual Cerberus, for Mame Giry entered without ceremony, holding a letter in her hand, and said hurriedly I beg your pardon, excuse me, gentlemen, but I had a letter this morning from the Opera ghost. He told me to come to you, that you had something to She did not complete the sentence. She saw Firmin Richards face; and it was a terrible sight. He seemed ready to burst. He said nothing, he could not speak. But suddenly he acted. First, his left arm seized upon the quaint person of Mame Giry and made her describe so unexpected a semicircle that she uttered a despairing cry. Next, his right foot imprinted its sole on the black taffeta of a skirt which certainly had never before undergone a similar outrage in a similar place. The thing happened so quickly that Mame Giry, when in the passage, was still quite bewildered and seemed not to understand. But, suddenly, she understood; and the Opera rang with her indignant yells, her violent protests and threats. About the same time, Carlotta, who had a small house of her own in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honor, rang for her maid, who brought her letters to her bed. Among them was an anonymous missive, written in red ink, in a hesitating, clumsy hand, which ran If you appear tonight, you must be prepared for a great misfortune at the moment when you open your mouth to sing a misfortune worse than death. The letter took away Carlottas appetite for breakfast. She pushed back her chocolate, sat up in bed and thought hard. It was not the first letter of the kind which she had received, but she never had one couched in such threatening terms. She thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn to ruin her. She pretended that a wicked plot was being hatched against her, a cabal which would come to a head one of those days; but she added that she was not the woman to be intimidated. The truth is that, if there was a cabal, it was led by Carlotta herself against poor Christine, who had no suspicion of it. Carlotta had never forgiven Christine for the triumph which she had achieved when taking her place at a moments notice. When Carlotta heard of the astounding reception bestowed upon her understudy, she was at once cured of an incipient attack of bronchitis and a bad fit of sulking against the management and lost the slightest inclination to shirk her duties. From that time, she worked with all her might to smother her rival, enlisting the services of influential friends to persuade the managers not to give Christine an opportunity for a fresh triumph. Certain newspapers which had begun to extol the talent of Christine now interested themselves only in the fame of Carlotta. Lastly, in the theater itself, the celebrated, but heartless and soulless diva made the most scandalous remarks about Christine and tried to cause her endless minor unpleasantnesses. When Carlotta had finished thinking over the threat contained in the strange letter, she got up. We shall see, she said, adding a few oaths in her native Spanish with a very determined air. The first thing she saw, when looking out of her window, was a hearse. She was very superstitious; and the hearse and the letter convinced her that she was running the most serious dangers that evening. She collected all her supporters, told them that she was threatened at that evenings performance with a plot organized by Christine Daa and declared that they must play a trick upon that chit by filling the house with her, Carlottas, admirers. She had no lack of them, had she? She relied upon them to hold themselves prepared for any eventuality and to silence the adversaries, if, as she feared, they created a disturbance. M. Richards private secretary called to ask after the divas health and returned with the assurance that she was perfectly well and that, were she dying, she would sing the part of Margarita that evening. The secretary urged her, in his chiefs name, to commit no imprudence, to stay at home all day and to be careful of drafts; and Carlotta could not help, after he had gone, comparing this unusual and unexpected advice with the threats contained in the letter. It was five oclock when the post brought a second anonymous letter in the same hand as the first. It was short and said simply You have a bad cold. If you are wise, you will see that it is madness to try to sing tonight. Carlotta sneered, shrugged her handsome shoulders and sang two or three notes to reassure herself. Her friends were faithful to their promise. They were all at the Opera that night, but looked round in vain for the fierce conspirators whom they were instructed to suppress. The only unusual thing was the presence of M. Richard and M. Moncharmin in Box Five. Carlottas friends thought that, perhaps, the managers had wind, on their side, of the proposed disturbance and that they had determined to be in the house, so as to stop it then and there; but this was unjustifiable supposition, as the reader knows. M. Richard and M. Moncharmin were thinking of nothing but their ghost. Vain! In vain do I call, through my vigil weary, On creation and its Lord! Never reply will break the silence dreary! No sign! No single word! The famous baritone, Carolus Fonta, had hardly finished Doctor Fausts first appeal to the powers of darkness, when M. Firmin Richard, who was sitting in the ghosts own chair, the front chair on the right, leaned over to his partner and asked him chaffingly Well, has the ghost whispered a word in your ear yet? Wait, dont be in such a hurry, replied M. Armand Moncharmin, in the same gay tone. The performance has only begun and you know that the ghost does not usually come until the middle of the first act. The first act passed without incident, which did not surprise Carlottas friends, because Margarita does not sing in this act. As for the managers, they looked at each other, when the curtain fell. Thats one! said Moncharmin. Yes, the ghost is late, said Firmin Richard. Its not a bad house, said Moncharmin, for a house with a curse on it. M. Richard smiled and pointed to a fat, rather vulgar woman, dressed in black, sitting in a stall in the middle of the auditorium with a man in a broadcloth frockcoat on either side of her. Who on earth are those? asked Moncharmin. Those, my dear fellow, are my concierge, her husband and her brother. Did you give them their tickets? I did. My concierge had never been to the Operathis is the first timeand, as she is now going to come every night, I wanted her to have a good seat, before spending her time showing other people to theirs. Moncharmin asked what he meant and Richard answered that he had persuaded his concierge, in whom he had the greatest confidence, to come and take Mame Girys place. Yes, he would like to see if, with that woman instead of the old lunatic, Box Five would continue to astonish the natives? By the way, said Moncharmin, you know that Mother Giry is going to lodge a complaint against you. With whom? The ghost? The ghost! Moncharmin had almost forgotten him. However, that mysterious person did nothing to bring himself to the memory of the managers; and they were just saying so to each other for the second time, when the door of the box suddenly opened to admit the startled stagemanager. Whats the matter? they both asked, amazed at seeing him there at such a time. It seems theres a plot got up by Christine Daas friends against Carlotta. Carlottas furious. What on earth ? said Richard, knitting his brows. But the curtain rose on the kermess scene and Richard made a sign to the stagemanager to go away. When the two were alone again, Moncharmin leaned over to Richard Then Daa has friends? he asked. Yes, she has. Whom? Richard glanced across at a box on the grand tier containing no one but two men. The Comte de Chagny? Yes, he spoke to me in her favor with such warmth that, if I had not known him to be Sorellis friend Really? Really? said Moncharmin. And who is that pale young man beside him? Thats his brother, the viscount. He ought to be in his bed. He looks ill. The stage rang with gay song Red or white liquor, Coarse or fine! What can it matter, So we have wine? Students, citizens, soldiers, girls and matrons whirled lightheartedly before the inn with the figure of Bacchus for a sign. Siebel made her entrance. Christine Daa looked charming in her boys clothes; and Carlottas partisans expected to hear her greeted with an ovation which would have enlightened them as to the intentions of her friends. But nothing happened. On the other hand, when Margarita crossed the stage and sang the only two lines allotted her in this second act No, my lord, not a lady am I, nor yet a beauty, And do not need an arm to help me on my way, Carlotta was received with enthusiastic applause. It was so unexpected and so uncalled for that those who knew nothing about the rumors looked at one another and asked what was happening. And this act also was finished without incident. Then everybody said Of course, it will be during the next act. Some, who seemed to be better informed than the rest, declared that the row would begin with the ballad of the King of Thule and rushed to the subscribers entrance to warn Carlotta. The managers left the box during the entracte to find out more about the cabal of which the stagemanager had spoken; but they soon returned to their seats, shrugging their shoulders and treating the whole affair as silly. The first thing they saw, on entering the box, was a box of English sweets on the little shelf of the ledge. Who had put it there? They asked the boxkeepers, but none of them knew. Then they went back to the shelf and, next to the box of sweets, found an opera glass. They looked at each other. They had no inclination to laugh. All that Mme. Giry had told them returned to their memory and then and then they seemed to feel a curious sort of draft around them. They sat down in silence. The scene represented Margaritas garden Gentle flowrs in the dew, Be message from me As she sang these first two lines, with her bunch of roses and lilacs in her hand, Christine, raising her head, saw the Vicomte de Chagny in his box; and, from that moment, her voice seemed less sure, less crystalclear than usual. Something seemed to deaden and dull her singing. What a queer girl she is! said one of Carlottas friends in the stalls, almost aloud. The other day she was divine; and tonight shes simply bleating. She has no experience, no training. Gentle flowrs, lie ye there And tell her from me The viscount put his head under his hands and wept. The count, behind him, viciously gnawed his mustache, shrugged his shoulders and frowned. For him, usually so cold and correct, to betray his inner feelings like that, by outward signs, the count must be very angry. He was. He had seen his brother return from a rapid and mysterious journey in an alarming state of health. The explanation that followed was unsatisfactory and the count asked Christine Daa for an appointment. She had the audacity to reply that she could not see either him or his brother. Would she but deign to hear me And with one smile to cheer me The little baggage! growled the count. And he wondered what she wanted. What she was hoping for. She was a virtuous girl, she was said to have no friend, no protector of any sort. That angel from the North must be very artful! Raoul, behind the curtain of his hands that veiled his boyish tears, thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris, where Christine, fleeing from Perros like a thief in the night, had arrived before him My Dear Little Playfellow You must have the courage not to see me again, not to speak of me again. If you love me just a little, do this for me, for me who will never forget you, my dear Raoul. My life depends upon it. Your life depends upon it. Your Little Christine. Thunders of applause. Carlotta made her entrance. I wish I could but know who was he That addressed me, If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is When Margarita had finished singing the ballad of the King of Thule, she was loudly cheered and again when she came to the end of the jewel song Ah, the joy of past compare These jewels bright to wear! Thenceforth, certain of herself, certain of her friends in the house, certain of her voice and her success, fearing nothing, Carlotta flung herself into her part without restraint of modesty. She was no longer Margarita, she was Carmen. She was applauded all the more; and her dbut with Faust seemed about to bring her a new success, when suddenly a terrible thing happened. Faust had knelt on one knee Let me gaze on the form below me, While from yonder ether blue Look how the star of eve, bright and tender, lingers oer me, To love thy beauty too! And Margarita replied Oh, how strange! Like a spell does the evening bind me! And a deep languid charm I feel without alarm With its melody enwind me And all my heart subdue. At that moment, at that identical moment, the terrible thing happened. Carlotta croaked like a toad Coack! There was consternation on Carlottas face and consternation on the faces of all the audience. The two managers in their box could not suppress an exclamation of horror. Everyone felt that the thing was not natural, that there was witchcraft behind it. That toad smelt of brimstone. Poor, wretched, despairing, crushed Carlotta! The uproar in the house was indescribable. If the thing had happened to anyone but Carlotta, she would have been hooted. But everybody knew how perfect an instrument her voice was; and there was no display of anger, but only of horror and dismay, the sort of dismay which men would have felt if they had witnessed the catastrophe that broke the arms of the Venus de Milo. And even then they would have seen and understood But here that toad was incomprehensible! So much so that, after some seconds spent in asking herself if she had really heard that note, that sound, that infernal noise issue from her throat, she tried to persuade herself that it was not so, that she was the victim of an illusion, an illusion of the ear, and not of an act of treachery on the part of her voice. Meanwhile, in Box Five, Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale. This extraordinary and inexplicable incident filled them with a dread which was the more mysterious inasmuch as for some little while, they had fallen within the direct influence of the ghost. They had felt his breath. Moncharmins hair stood on end. Richard wiped the perspiration from his forehead. Yes, the ghost was there, around them, behind them, beside them; they felt his presence without seeing him, they heard his breath, close, close, close to them! They were sure that there were three people in the box. They trembled. They thought of running away. They dared not. They dared not make a movement or exchange a word that would have told the ghost that they knew that he was there! What was going to happen? This happened. Coack! Their joint exclamation of horror was heard all over the house. They felt that they were smarting under the ghosts attacks. Leaning over the ledge of their box, they stared at Carlotta as though they did not recognize her. That infernal girl must have given the signal for some catastrophe. Ah, they were waiting for the catastrophe! The ghost had told them it would come! The house had a curse upon it! The two managers gasped and panted under the weight of the catastrophe. Richards stifled voice was heard calling to Carlotta Well, go on! No, Carlotta did not go on. Bravely, heroically, she started afresh on the fatal line at the end of which the toad had appeared. An awful silence succeeded the uproar. Carlottas voice alone once more filled the resounding house I feel without alarm The audience also felt, but not without alarm I feel without alarm I feel without alarmcoack! With its melody enwind mecoack! And all my heart subcoack! The toad also had started afresh! The house broke into a wild tumult. The two managers collapsed in their chairs and dared not even turn round; they had not the strength; the ghost was chuckling behind their backs! And, at last, they distinctly heard his voice in their right ears, the impossible voice, the mouthless voice, saying She is singing tonight to bring the chandelier down! With one accord, they raised their eyes to the ceiling and uttered a terrible cry. The chandelier, the immense mass of the chandelier was slipping down, coming toward them, at the call of that fiendish voice. Released from its hook, it plunged from the ceiling and came smashing into the middle of the stalls, amid a thousand shouts of terror. A wild rush for the doors followed. The papers of the day state that there were numbers wounded and one killed. The chandelier had crashed down upon the head of the wretched woman who had come to the Opera for the first time in her life, the one whom M. Richard had appointed to succeed Mame Giry, the ghosts boxkeeper, in her functions! She died on the spot and, the next morning, a newspaper appeared with this heading Two Hundred Kilos on the Head of a Concierge That was her sole epitaph! VIII The Mysterious Brougham That tragic evening was bad for everybody. Carlotta fell ill. As for Christine Daa, she disappeared after the performance. A fortnight elapsed during which she was seen neither at the Opera nor outside. Raoul, of course, was the first to be astonished at the prima donnas absence. He wrote to her at Mme. Valrius flat and received no reply. His grief increased and he ended by being seriously alarmed at never seeing her name on the program. Faust was played without her. One afternoon he went to the managers office to ask the reason of Christines disappearance. He found them both looking extremely worried. Their own friends did not recognize them they had lost all their gaiety and spirits. They were seen crossing the stage with hanging heads, careworn brows, pale cheeks, as though pursued by some abominable thought or a prey to some persistent sport of fate. The fall of the chandelier had involved them in no little responsibility; but it was difficult to make them speak about it. The inquest had ended in a verdict of accidental death, caused by the wear and tear of the chains by which the chandelier was hung from the ceiling; but it was the duty of both the old and the new managers to have discovered this wear and tear and to have remedied it in time. And I feel bound to say that MM.

Richard and Moncharmin at this time appeared so changed, so absentminded, so mysterious, so incomprehensible that many of the subscribers thought that some event even more horrible than the fall of the chandelier must have affected their state of mind. In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient, except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. And their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about Christine, was anything but cordial. They merely told him that she was taking a holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for, and they replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daa had requested leave of absence for reasons of health. Then she is ill! he cried. What is the matter with her? We dont know. Didnt you send the doctor of the Opera to see her? No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word. Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved, come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valrius. He remembered the strong phrases in Christines letter, forbidding him to make any attempt to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had heard behind the dressingroom door, his conversation with Christine at the edge of the moor made him suspect some machination which, devilish though it might be, was none the less human. The girls highly strung imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive education which had surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends, the constant brooding over her dead father and, above all, the state of sublime ecstasy into which music threw her from the moment that this art was made manifest to her in certain exceptional conditions, as in the churchyard at Perros; all this seemed to him to constitute a moral ground only too favorable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daa the victim? This was the very reasonable question which Raoul put to himself as he hurried off to Mamma Valrius. He trembled as he rang at a little flat in the Rue NotreDamedesVictoires. The door was opened by the maid whom he had seen coming out of Christines dressingroom one evening. He asked if he could speak to Mme. Valrius. He was told that she was ill in bed and was not receiving visitors. Take in my card, please, he said. The maid soon returned and showed him into a small and scantily furnished drawingroom, in which portraits of Professor Valrius and old Daa hung on opposite walls. Madame begs monsieur le vicomte to excuse her, said the servant. She can only see him in her bedroom, because she can no longer stand on her poor legs. Five minutes later, Raoul was ushered into an illlit room where he at once recognized the good, kind face of Christines benefactress in the semidarkness of an alcove. Mamma Valrius hair was now quite white, but her eyes had grown no older; never, on the contrary, had their expression been so bright, so pure, so childlike. M. de Chagny! she cried gaily, putting out both her hands to her visitor. Ah, its Heaven that sends you here! We can talk of her. This last sentence sounded very gloomily in the young mans ears. He at once asked Madame where is Christine? And the old lady replied calmly She is with her good genius! What good genius? exclaimed poor Raoul. Why, the Angel of Music! The viscount dropped into a chair. Really? Christine was with the Angel of Music? And there lay Mamma Valrius in bed, smiling to him and putting her finger to her lips, to warn him to be silent! And she added You must not tell anybody! You can rely on me, said Raoul. He hardly knew what he was saying, for his ideas about Christine, already greatly confused, were becoming more and more entangled; and it seemed as if everything was beginning to turn around him, around the room, around that extraordinary good lady with the white hair and forgetmenot eyes. I know! I know I can! she said, with a happy laugh. But why dont you come near me, as you used to do when you were a little boy? Give me your hands, as when you brought me the story of little Lotte, which Daddy Daa had told you. I am very fond of you, M. Raoul, you know. And so is Christine too! She is fond of me! sighed the young man. He found a difficulty in collecting his thoughts and bringing them to bear on Mamma Valrius good genius, on the Angel of Music of whom Christine had spoken to him so strangely, on the deaths head which he had seen in a sort of nightmare on the high altar at Perros and also on the Opera ghost, whose fame had come to his ears one evening when he was standing behind the scenes, within hearing of a group of sceneshifters who were repeating the ghastly description which the hanged man, Joseph Buquet, had given of the ghost before his mysterious death. He asked in a low voice What makes you think that Christine is fond of me, madame? She used to speak of you every day. Really? And what did she tell you? She told me that you had made her a proposal! And the good old lady began laughing wholeheartedly. Raoul sprang from his chair, flushing to the temples, suffering agonies. Whats this? Where are you going? Sit down again at once, will you? Do you think I will let you go like that? If youre angry with me for laughing, I beg your pardon. After all, what has happened isnt your fault. Didnt you know? Did you think that Christine was free? Is Christine engaged to be married? the wretched Raoul asked, in a choking voice. Why no! Why no! You know as well as I do that Christine couldnt marry, even if she wanted to! But I dont know anything about it! And why cant Christine marry? Because of the Angel of Music, of course! I dont follow Yes, he forbids her to! He forbids her! The Angel of Music forbids her to marry! Oh, he forbids her without forbidding her. Its like this he tells her that, if she got married, she would never hear him again. Thats all! And that he would go away forever! So, you understand, she cant let the Angel of Music go. Its quite natural. Yes, yes, echoed Raoul submissively, its quite natural. Besides, I thought Christine had told you all that, when she met you at Perros, where she went with her good genius. Oh, she went to Perros with her good genius, did she? That is to say, he arranged to meet her down there, in Perros churchyard, at Daas grave. He promised to play her The Resurrection of Lazarus on her fathers violin! Raoul de Chagny rose and, with a very authoritative air, pronounced these peremptory words Madame, you will have the goodness to tell me where that genius lives. The old lady did not seem surprised at this indiscreet command. She raised her eyes and said In Heaven! Such simplicity baffled him. He did not know what to say in the presence of this candid and perfect faith in a genius who came down nightly from Heaven to haunt the dressingrooms at the Opera. He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he shuddered when he thought of the consequences of it all. Is Christine still a good girl? he asked suddenly, in spite of himself. I swear it, as I hope to be saved! exclaimed the old woman, who, this time, seemed to be incensed. And, if you doubt it, sir, I dont know what you are here for! Raoul tore at his gloves. How long has she known this genius? About three months. Yes, its quite three months since he began to give her lessons. The viscount threw up his arms with a gesture of despair. The genius gives her lessons! And where, pray? Now that she has gone away with him, I cant say; but, up to a fortnight ago, it was in Christines dressingroom. It would be impossible in this little flat. The whole house would hear them. Whereas, at the Opera, at eight oclock in the morning, there is no one about, do you see! Yes, I see! I see! cried the viscount. And he hurriedly took leave of Mme. Valrius, who asked herself if the young nobleman was not a little off his head. He walked home to his brothers house in a pitiful state. He could have struck himself, banged his head against the walls! To think that he had believed in her innocence, in her purity! The Angel of Music! He knew him now! He saw him! It was beyond a doubt some unspeakable tenor, a goodlooking jackanapes, who mouthed and simpered as he sang! He thought himself as absurd and as wretched as could be. Oh, what a miserable, little, insignificant, silly young man was M. le Vicomte de Chagny! thought Raoul furiously. And she, what a bold and damnable sly creature! His brother was waiting for him and Raoul fell into his arms, like a child. The count consoled him, without asking for explanations; and Raoul would certainly have long hesitated before telling him the story of the Angel of Music. His brother suggested taking him out to dinner. Overcome as he was with despair, Raoul would probably have refused any invitation that evening, if the count had not, as an inducement, told him that the lady of his thoughts had been seen, the night before, in company of the other sex in the Bois. At first, the viscount refused to believe; but he received such exact details that he ceased protesting. She had been seen, it appeared, driving in a brougham, with the window down. She seemed to be slowly taking in the icy night air. There was a glorious moon shining. She was recognized beyond a doubt. As for her companion, only his shadowy outline was distinguished leaning back in the dark. The carriage was going at a walking pace in a lonely drive behind the grand stand at Longchamp. Raoul dressed in frantic haste, prepared to forget his distress by flinging himself, as people say, into the vortex of pleasure. Alas, he was a very sorry guest and, leaving his brother early, found himself, by ten oclock in the evening, in a cab, behind the Longchamp racecourse. It was bitterly cold. The road seemed deserted and very bright under the moonlight. He told the driver to wait for him patiently at the corner of a near turning and, hiding himself as well as he could, stood stamping his feet to keep warm. He had been indulging in this healthy exercise for half an hour or so, when a carriage turned the corner of the road and came quietly in his direction, at a walking pace. As it approached, he saw that a woman was leaning her head from the window. And, suddenly, the moon shed a pale gleam over her features. Christine! The sacred name of his love had sprung from his heart and his lips. He could not keep it back. He would have given anything to withdraw it, for that name, proclaimed in the stillness of the night, had acted as though it were the preconcerted signal for a furious rush on the part of the whole turnout, which dashed past him before he could put into execution his plan of leaping at the horses heads. The carriage window had been closed and the girls face had disappeared. And the brougham, behind which he was now running, was no more than a black spot on the white road. He called out again Christine! No reply. And he stopped in the midst of the silence. With a lackluster eye, he stared down that cold, desolate road and into the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder than his heart, nothing half so dead he had loved an angel and now he despised a woman! Raoul, how that little fairy of the North has trifled with you! Was it really, was it really necessary to have so fresh and young a face, a forehead so shy and always ready to cover itself with the pink blush of modesty in order to pass in the lonely night, in a carriage and pair, accompanied by a mysterious lover? Surely there should be some limit to hypocrisy and lying! She had passed without answering his cry. And he was thinking of dying; and he was twenty years old! His valet found him in the morning sitting on his bed. He had not undressed and the servant feared, at the sight of his face, that some disaster had occurred. Raoul snatched his letters from the mans hands. He had recognized Christines paper and handwriting. She said Dear Go to the masked ball at the Opera on the night after tomorrow. At twelve oclock, be in the little room behind the chimneyplace of the big crushroom. Stand near the door that leads to the Rotunda. Dont mention this appointment to anyone on earth. Wear a white domino and be carefully masked. As you love me, do not let yourself be recognized. Christine. IX At the Masked Ball The envelope was covered with mud and unstamped. It bore the words To be handed to M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, with the address in pencil. It must have been flung out in the hope that a passerby would pick up the note and deliver it, which was what happened. The note had been picked up on the pavement of the Place de lOpera. Raoul read it over again with fevered eyes. No more was needed to revive his hope. The somber picture which he had for a moment imagined of a Christine forgetting her duty to herself made way for his original conception of an unfortunate, innocent child, the victim of imprudence and exaggerated sensibility. To what extent, at this time, was she really a victim? Whose prisoner was she? Into what whirlpool had she been dragged? He asked himself these questions with a cruel anguish; but even this pain seemed endurable beside the frenzy into which he was thrown at the thought of a lying and deceitful Christine. What had happened? What influence had she undergone? What monster had carried her off and by what means? By what means indeed but that of music? He knew Christines story. After her fathers death, she acquired a distaste of everything in life, including her art. She went through the conservatoire like a poor soulless singingmachine. And, suddenly, she awoke as though through the intervention of a god. The Angel of Music appeared upon the scene! She sang Margarita in Faust and triumphed! The Angel of Music! For three months the Angel of Music had been giving Christine lessons. Ah, he was a punctual singingmaster! And now he was taking her for drives in the Bois! Raouls fingers clutched at his flesh, above his jealous heart. In his inexperience, he now asked himself with terror what game the girl was playing? Up to what point could an operasinger make a fool of a goodnatured young man, quite new to love? O misery! Thus did Raouls thoughts fly from one extreme to the other. He no longer knew whether to pity Christine or to curse her; and he pitied and cursed her turn and turn about. At all events, he bought a white domino. The hour of the appointment came at last. With his face in a mask trimmed with long, thick lace, looking like a pierrot in his white wrap, the viscount thought himself very ridiculous. Men of the world do not go to the Opera ball in fancydress! It was absurd. One thought, however, consoled the viscount he would certainly never be recognized! This ball was an exceptional affair, given some time before Shrovetide, in honor of the anniversary of the birth of a famous draftsman; and it was expected to be much gayer, noisier, more Bohemian than the ordinary masked ball. Numbers of artists had arranged to go, accompanied by a whole cohort of models and pupils, who, by midnight, began to create a tremendous din. Raoul climbed the grand staircase at five minutes to twelve, did not linger to look at the motley dresses displayed all the way up the marble steps, one of the richest settings in the world, allowed no facetious mask to draw him into a war of wits, replied to no jests and shook off the bold familiarity of a number of couples who had already become a trifle too gay. Crossing the big crushroom and escaping from a mad whirl of dancers in which he was caught for a moment, he at last entered the room mentioned in Christines letter. He found it crammed; for this small space was the point where all those who were going to supper in the Rotunda crossed those who were returning from taking a glass of champagne. The fun, here, waxed fast and furious. Raoul leaned against a doorpost and waited. He did not wait long. A black domino passed and gave a quick squeeze to the tips of his fingers. He understood that it was she and followed her Is that you, Christine? he asked, between his teeth. The black domino turned round promptly and raised her finger to her lips, no doubt to warn him not to mention her name again. Raoul continued to follow her in silence. He was afraid of losing her, after meeting her again in such strange circumstances. His grudge against her was gone. He no longer doubted that she had nothing to reproach herself with, however peculiar and inexplicable her conduct might seem. He was ready to make any display of clemency, forgiveness or cowardice. He was in love. And, no doubt, he would soon receive a very natural explanation of her curious absence. The black domino turned back from time to time to see if the white domino was still following. As Raoul once more passed through the great crushroom, this time in the wake of his guide, he could not help noticing a group crowding round a person whose disguise, eccentric air and gruesome appearance were causing a sensation. It was a man dressed all in scarlet, with a huge hat and feathers on the top of a wonderful deaths head. From his shoulders hung an immense redvelvet cloak, which trailed along the floor like a kings train; and on this cloak was embroidered, in gold letters, which everyone read and repeated aloud, Dont touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad! Then one, greatly daring, did try to touch him but a skeleton hand shot out of a crimson sleeve and violently seized the rash ones wrist; and he, feeling the clutch of the knucklebones, the furious grasp of Death, uttered a cry of pain and terror. When Red Death released him at last, he ran away like a very madman, pursued by the jeers of the bystanders. It was at this moment that Raoul passed in front of the funereal masquerader, who had just happened to turn in his direction. And he nearly exclaimed The deaths head of PerrosGuirec! He had recognized him! He wanted to dart forward, forgetting Christine; but the black domino, who also seemed a prey to some strange excitement, caught him by the arm and dragged him from the crushroom, far from the mad crowd through which Red Death was stalking. The black domino kept on turning back and, apparently, on two occasions saw something that startled her, for she hurried her pace and Raouls as though they were being pursued. They went up two floors. Here, the stairs and corridors were almost deserted. The black domino opened the door of a private box and beckoned to the white domino to follow her. Then Christine, whom he recognized by the sound of her voice, closed the door behind them and warned him, in a whisper, to remain at the back of the box and on no account to show himself. Raoul took off his mask. Christine kept hers on. And, when Raoul was about to ask her to remove it, he was surprised to see her put her ear to the partition and listen eagerly for a sound outside. Then she opened the door ajar, looked out into the corridor and, in a low voice, said He must have gone up higher. Suddenly she exclaimed He is coming down again! She tried to close the door, but Raoul prevented her; for he had seen, on the top step of the staircase that led to the floor above, a red foot, followed by another and slowly, majestically, the whole scarlet dress of Red Death met his eyes. And he once more saw the deaths head of PerrosGuirec. Its he! he exclaimed. This time, he shall not escape me! But Christine had slammed the door at the moment when Raoul was on the point of rushing out. He tried to push her aside. Whom do you mean by he? she asked, in a changed voice. Who shall not escape you? Raoul tried to overcome the girls resistance by force, but she repelled him with a strength which he would not have suspected in her. He understood, or thought he understood, and at once lost his temper. Who? he repeated angrily. Why, he, the man who hides behind that hideous mask of death! The evil genius of the churchyard at Perros! Red Death! In a word, madam, your friend your Angel of Music! But I shall snatch off his mask, as I shall snatch off my own; and, this time, we shall look each other in the face, he and I, with no veil and no lies between us; and I shall know whom you love and who loves you! He burst into a mad laugh, while Christine gave a disconsolate moan behind her velvet mask. With a tragic gesture, she flung out her two arms, which fixed a barrier of white flesh against the door. In the name of our love, Raoul, you shall not pass! He stopped. What had she said? In the name of their love? Never before had she confessed that she loved him. And yet she had had opportunities enough. Pooh, her only object was to gain a few seconds! She wished to give the Red Death time to escape. And, in accents of childish hatred, he said You lie, madam, for you do not love me and you have never loved me! What a poor fellow I must be to let you mock and flout me as you have done! Why did you give me every reason for hope, at Perros for honest hope, madam, for I am an honest man and I believed you to be an honest woman, when your only intention was to deceive me! Alas, you have deceived us all! You have taken a shameful advantage of the candid affection of your benefactress herself, who continues to believe in your sincerity while you go about the Opera ball with Red Death! I despise you! And he burst into tears. She allowed him to insult her. She thought of but one thing, to keep him from leaving the box. You will beg my pardon, one day, for all those ugly words, Raoul, and when you do I shall forgive you! He shook his head. No, no, you have driven me mad! When I think that I had only one object in life to give my name to an opera wench! Raoul! How can you? I shall die of shame! No, dear, live! said Christines grave and changed voice. And goodbye. Goodbye, Raoul The boy stepped forward, staggering as he went. He risked one more sarcasm Oh, you must let me come and applaud you from time to time! I shall never sing again, Raoul! Really? he replied, still more satirically. So he is taking you off the stage I congratulate you! But we shall meet in the Bois, one of these evenings! Not in the Bois nor anywhere, Raoul you shall not see me again May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? For what hell are you leaving, mysterious lady or for what paradise? I came to tell you, dear, but I cant tell you now you would not believe me! You have lost faith in me, Raoul; it is finished! She spoke in such a despairing voice that the lad began to feel remorse for his cruelty. But look here! he cried. Cant you tell me what all this means! You are free, there is no one to interfere with you. You go about Paris. You put on a domino to come to the ball. Why do you not go home? What have you been doing this past fortnight? What is this tale about the Angel of Music, which you have been telling Mamma Valrius? Someone may have taken you in, played upon your innocence. I was a witness of it myself, at Perros but you know what to believe now! You seem to me quite sensible, Christine. You know what you are doing. And meanwhile Mamma Valrius lies waiting for you at home and appealing to your good genius! Explain yourself, Christine, I beg of you! Anyone might have been deceived as I was. What is this farce? Christine simply took off her mask and said Dear, it is a tragedy! Raoul now saw her face and could not restrain an exclamation of surprise and terror. The fresh complexion of former days was gone. A mortal pallor covered those features, which he had known so charming and so gentle, and sorrow had furrowed them with pitiless lines and traced dark and unspeakably sad shadows under her eyes. My dearest! My dearest! he moaned, holding out his arms. You promised to forgive me Perhaps! Some day, perhaps! she said, resuming her mask; and she went away, forbidding him, with a gesture, to follow her. He tried to disobey her; but she turned round and repeated her gesture of farewell with such authority that he dared not move a step. He watched her till she was out of sight. Then he also went down among the crowd, hardly knowing what he was doing, with throbbing temples and an aching heart; and, as he crossed the dancingfloor, he asked if anybody had seen Red Death. Yes, everyone had seen Red Death; but Raoul could not find him; and, at two oclock in the morning, he turned down the passage, behind the scenes, that led to Christine Daas dressingroom. His footsteps took him to that room where he had first known suffering. He tapped at the door. There was no answer. He entered, as he had entered when he looked everywhere for the mans voice. The room was empty. A gasjet was burning, turned down low. He saw some writingpaper on a little desk. He thought of writing to Christine, but he heard steps in the passage. He had only time to hide in the inner room, which was separated from the dressingroom by a curtain. Christine entered, took off her mask with a weary movement and flung it on the table. She sighed and let her pretty head fall into her two hands. What was she thinking of? Of Raoul? No, for Raoul heard her murmur Poor Erik! At first, he thought he must be mistaken. To begin with, he was persuaded that, if anyone was to be pitied, it was he, Raoul. It would have been quite natural if she had said, Poor Raoul, after what had happened between them. But, shaking her head, she repeated Poor Erik! What had this Erik to do with Christines sighs and why was she pitying Erik when Raoul was so unhappy? Christine began to write, deliberately, calmly and so placidly that Raoul, who was still trembling from the effects of the tragedy that separated them, was painfully impressed. What coolness! he said to himself. She wrote on, filling two, three, four sheets. Suddenly, she raised her head and hid the sheets in her bodice. She seemed to be listening. Raoul also listened. Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm? A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing! The song became plainer the words were now distinguishable he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice but, for all its softness, it remained a male voice. The voice came nearer and nearer it came through the wall it approached and now the voice was in the room, in front of Christine. Christine rose and addressed the voice, as though speaking to someone Here I am, Erik, she said. I am ready. But you are late. Raoul, peeping from behind the curtain, could not believe his eyes, which showed him nothing. Christines face lit up. A smile of happiness appeared upon her bloodless lips, a smile like that of sick people when they receive the first hope of recovery. The voice without a body went on singing; and certainly Raoul had never in his life heard anything more absolutely and heroically sweet, more gloriously insidious, more delicate, more powerful, in short, more irresistibly triumphant. He listened to it in a fever and he now began to understand how Christine Daa was able to appear one evening, before the stupefied audience, with accents of a beauty hitherto unknown, of a superhuman exaltation, while doubtless still under the influence of the mysterious and invisible master. The voice was singing the Weddingnight Song from Romeo and Juliet. Raoul saw Christine stretch out her arms to the voice as she had done, in Perros churchyard, to the invisible violin playing The Resurrection of Lazarus. And nothing could describe the passion with which the voice sang Fate links thee to me forever and a day! The strains went through Raouls heart. Struggling against the charm that seemed to deprive him of all his will and all his energy and of almost all his lucidity at the moment when he needed them most, he succeeded in drawing back the curtain that hid him and he walked to where Christine stood. She herself was moving to the back of the room, the whole wall of which was occupied by a great mirror that reflected her image, but not his, for he was just behind her and entirely covered by her. Fate links thee to me forever and a day! Christine walked toward her image in the glass and the image came toward her. The two Christinesthe real one and the reflectionended by touching; and Raoul put out his arms to clasp the two in one embrace. But, by a sort of dazzling miracle that sent him staggering, Raoul was suddenly flung back, while an icy blast swept over his face; he saw, not two, but four, eight, twenty Christines spinning round him, laughing at him and fleeing so swiftly that he could not touch one of them. At last, everything stood still again; and he saw himself in the glass. But Christine had disappeared. He rushed up to the glass. He struck at the walls. Nobody! And meanwhile the room still echoed with a distant passionate singing Fate links thee to me forever and a day! Which way, which way had Christine gone? Which way would she return? Would she return? Alas, had she not declared to him that everything was finished? And was the voice not repeating Fate links thee to me forever and a day! To me? To whom? Then, worn out, beaten, emptybrained, he sat down on the chair which Christine had just left. Like her, he let his head fall into his hands. When he raised it, the tears were streaming down his young cheeks, real, heavy tears like those which jealous children shed, tears that wept for a sorrow which was in no way fanciful, but which is common to all the lovers on earth and which he expressed aloud Who is this Erik? he said. X Forget the Name of the Mans Voice The day after Christine had vanished before his eyes in a sort of dazzlement that still made him doubt the evidence of his senses, M. le Vicomte de Chagny called to inquire at Mamma Valrius. He came upon a charming picture. Christine herself was seated by the bedside of the old lady, who was sitting up against the pillows, knitting. The pink and white had returned to the young girls cheeks. The dark rings round her eyes had disappeared. Raoul no longer recognized the tragic face of the day before. If the veil of melancholy over those adorable features had not still appeared to the young man as the last trace of the weird drama in whose toils that mysterious child was struggling, he could have believed that Christine was not its heroine at all. She rose, without showing any emotion, and offered him her hand. But Raouls stupefaction was so great that he stood there dumbfounded, without a gesture, without a word. Well, M. de Chagny, exclaimed Mamma Valrius, dont you know our Christine? Her good genius has sent her back to us! Mamma! the girl broke in promptly, while a deep blush mantled to her eyes. I thought, mamma, that there was to be no more question of that! You know there is no such thing as the Angel of Music! But, child, he gave you lessons for three months! Mamma, I have promised to explain everything to you one of these days; and I hope to do so but you have promised me, until that day, to be silent and to ask me no more questions whatever! Provided that you promised never to leave me again! But have you promised that, Christine? Mamma, all this can not interest M. de Chagny. On the contrary, mademoiselle, said the young man, in a voice which he tried to make firm and brave, but which still trembled, anything that concerns you interests me to an extent which perhaps you will one day understand. I do not deny that my surprise equals my pleasure at finding you with your adopted mother and that, after what happened between us yesterday, after what you said and what I was able to guess, I hardly expected to see you here so soon. I should be the first to delight at your return, if you were not so bent on preserving a secrecy that may be fatal to you and I have been your friend too long not to be alarmed, with Mme.

Valrius, at a disastrous adventure which will remain dangerous so long as we have not unraveled its threads and of which you will certainly end by being the victim, Christine. At these words, Mamma Valrius tossed about in her bed. What does this mean? she cried. Is Christine in danger? Yes, madame, said Raoul courageously, notwithstanding the signs which Christine made to him. My God! exclaimed the good, simple old woman, gasping for breath. You must tell me everything, Christine! Why did you try to reassure me? And what danger is it, M. de Chagny? An impostor is abusing her good faith. Is the Angel of Music an impostor? She told you herself that there is no Angel of Music. But then what is it, in Heavens name? You will be the death of me! There is a terrible mystery around us, madame, around you, around Christine, a mystery much more to be feared than any number of ghosts or genii! Mamma Valrius turned a terrified face to Christine, who had already run to her adopted mother and was holding her in her arms. Dont believe him, mummy, dont believe him, she repeated. Then tell me that you will never leave me again, implored the widow. Christine was silent and Raoul resumed. That is what you must promise, Christine. It is the only thing that can reassure your mother and me. We will undertake not to ask you a single question about the past, if you promise us to remain under our protection in future. That is an undertaking which I have not asked of you and a promise which I refuse to make you! said the young girl haughtily. I am mistress of my own actions, M. de Chagny you have no right to control them, and I will beg you to desist henceforth. As to what I have done during the last fortnight, there is only one man in the world who has the right to demand an account of me my husband! Well, I have no husband and I never mean to marry! She threw out her hands to emphasize her words and Raoul turned pale, not only because of the words which he had heard, but because he had caught sight of a plain gold ring on Christines finger. You have no husband and yet you wear a weddingring. He tried to seize her hand, but she swiftly drew it back. Thats a present! she said, blushing once more and vainly striving to hide her embarrassment. Christine! As you have no husband, that ring can only have been given by one who hopes to make you his wife! Why deceive us further? Why torture me still more? That ring is a promise; and that promise has been accepted! Thats what I said! exclaimed the old lady. And what did she answer, madame? What I chose, said Christine, driven to exasperation. Dont you think, monsieur, that this crossexamination has lasted long enough? As far as I am concerned Raoul was afraid to let her finish her speech. He interrupted her I beg your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle. You know the good intentions that make me meddle, just now, in matters which, you no doubt think, have nothing to do with me. But allow me to tell you what I have seenand I have seen more than you suspect, Christineor what I thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth, I have sometimes been inclined to doubt the evidence of my eyes. Well, what did you see, sir, or think you saw? I saw your ecstasy at the sound of the voice, Christine the voice that came from the wall or the next room to yours yes, your ecstasy! And that is what makes me alarmed on your behalf. You are under a very dangerous spell. And yet it seems that you are aware of the imposture, because you say today that there is no Angel of Music! In that case, Christine, why did you follow him that time? Why did you stand up, with radiant features, as though you were really hearing angels? Ah, it is a very dangerous voice, Christine, for I myself, when I heard it, was so much fascinated by it that you vanished before my eyes without my seeing which way you passed! Christine, Christine, in the name of Heaven, in the name of your father who is in Heaven now and who loved you so dearly and who loved me too, Christine, tell us, tell your benefactress and me, to whom does that voice belong? If you do, we will save you in spite of yourself. Come, Christine, the name of the man! The name of the man who had the audacity to put a ring on your finger! M. de Chagny, the girl declared coldly, you shall never know! Thereupon, seeing the hostility with which her ward had addressed the viscount, Mamma Valrius suddenly took Christines part. And, if she does love that man, monsieur le vicomte, even then it is no business of yours! Alas, madame, Raoul humbly replied, unable to restrain his tears, alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! But it is not only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is worthy of her love! It is for me to be the judge of that, monsieur! said Christine, looking Raoul angrily in the face. When a man, continued Raoul, adopts such romantic methods to entice a young girls affections The man must be either a villain, or the girl a fool is that it? Christine! Raoul, why do you condemn a man whom you have never seen, whom no one knows and about whom you yourself know nothing? Yes, Christine. Yes. I at least know the name that you thought to keep from me forever. The name of your Angel of Music, mademoiselle, is Erik! Christine at once betrayed herself. She turned as white as a sheet and stammered Who told you? You yourself! How do you mean? By pitying him the other night, the night of the masked ball. When you went to your dressingroom, did you not say, Poor Erik? Well, Christine, there was a poor Raoul who overheard you. This is the second time that you have listened behind the door, M. de Chagny! I was not behind the door I was in the dressingroom, in the inner room, mademoiselle. Oh, unhappy man! moaned the girl, showing every sign of unspeakable terror. Unhappy man! Do you want to be killed? Perhaps. Raoul uttered this perhaps with so much love and despair in his voice that Christine could not keep back a sob. She took his hands and looked at him with all the pure affection of which she was capable Raoul, she said, forget the mans voice and do not even remember its name. You must never try to fathom the mystery of the mans voice. Is the mystery so very terrible? There is no more awful mystery on this earth. Swear to me that you will make no attempt to find out, she insisted. Swear to me that you will never come to my dressingroom, unless I send for you. Then you promise to send for me sometimes, Christine? I promise. When? Tomorrow. Then I swear to do as you ask. He kissed her hands and went away, cursing Erik and resolving to be patient. XI Above the TrapDoors The next day, he saw her at the Opera. She was still wearing the plain gold ring. She was gentle and kind to him. She talked to him of the plans which he was forming, of his future, of his career. He told her that the date of the Polar expedition had been put forward and that he would leave France in three weeks, or a month at latest. She suggested, almost gaily, that he must look upon the voyage with delight, as a stage toward his coming fame. And when he replied that fame without love was no attraction in his eyes, she treated him as a child whose sorrows were only shortlived. How can you speak so lightly of such serious things? he asked. Perhaps we shall never see each other again! I may die during that expedition. Or I, she said simply. She no longer smiled or jested. She seemed to be thinking of some new thing that had entered her mind for the first time. Her eyes were all aglow with it. What are you thinking of, Christine? I am thinking that we shall not see each other again And does that make you so radiant? And that, in a month, we shall have to say goodbye forever! Unless, Christine, we pledge our faith and wait for each other forever. She put her hand on his mouth. Hush, Raoul! You know there is no question of that And we shall never be married that is understood! She seemed suddenly almost unable to contain an overpowering gaiety. She clapped her hands with childish glee. Raoul stared at her in amazement. But but, she continued, holding out her two hands to Raoul, or rather giving them to him, as though she had suddenly resolved to make him a present of them, but if we can not be married, we can we can be engaged! Nobody will know but ourselves, Raoul. There have been plenty of secret marriages why not a secret engagement? We are engaged, dear, for a month! In a month, you will go away, and I can be happy at the thought of that month all my life long! She was enchanted with her inspiration. Then she became serious again. This, she said, is a happiness that will harm no one. Raoul jumped at the idea. He bowed to Christine and said Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand. Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed! Oh, Raoul, how happy we shall be! We must play at being engaged all day long. It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each other and the eternal vows they exchanged! They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them. One day, about a week after the game began, Raouls heart was badly hurt and he stopped playing and uttered these wild words I shant go to the North Pole! Christine, who, in her innocence, had not dreamed of such a possibility, suddenly discovered the danger of the game and reproached herself bitterly. She did not say a word in reply to Raouls remark and went straight home. This happened in the afternoon, in the singers dressingroom, where they met every day and where they amused themselves by dining on three biscuits, two glasses of port and a bunch of violets. In the evening, she did not sing; and he did not receive his usual letter, though they had arranged to write to each other daily during that month. The next morning, he ran off to Mamma Valrius, who told him that Christine had gone away for two days. She had left at five oclock the day before. Raoul was distracted. He hated Mamma Valrius for giving him such news as that with such stupefying calmness. He tried to sound her, but the old lady obviously knew nothing. Christine returned on the following day. She returned in triumph. She renewed her extraordinary success of the gala performance. Since the adventure of the toad, Carlotta had not been able to appear on the stage. The terror of a fresh coack filled her heart and deprived her of all her power of singing; and the theater that had witnessed her incomprehensible disgrace had become odious to her. She contrived to cancel her contract. Daa was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of applause in the Juive. The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young mans ear She is wearing the ring again tonight; and you did not give it to her. She gave her soul again tonight and did not give it to you. If she will not tell you what she has been doing the past two days you must go and ask Erik! He ran behind the scenes and placed himself in her way. She saw him for her eyes were looking for him. She said Quick! Quick! Come! And she dragged him to her dressingroom. Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single hour of the ideal happiness which she had promised him. She let her tears flow. They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent. Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young mans soft and timid embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture, pointed to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words Tomorrow, my dear betrothed! And be happy, Raoul I sang for you tonight! He returned the next day. But those two days of absence had broken the charm of their delightful makebelieve. They looked at each other, in the dressingroom, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous! But she heard him all the same. Then she said Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good. Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls the jailer Erik. But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evenings performance. On another day, she wandered with him, hand in hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorators skilful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theater. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips You, a sailor! And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls dancingschool, where brats between six and ten were practising their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, covered with diamonds. Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets instead. She took him to the wardrobe and propertyrooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the groundfloor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes. There were inhabitants of that country who practised every trade. There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their little hobbies. She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting on some wormeaten property, would listen to the legends of the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales. Those old people remembered nothing outside the Opera. They had lived there for years without number. Past managements had forgotten them; palace revolutions had taken no notice of them; the history of France had run its course unknown to them; and nobody recollected their existence. The precious days sped in this way; and Raoul and Christine, by affecting excessive interest in outside matters, strove awkwardly to hide from each other the one thought of their hearts. One fact was certain, that Christine, who until then had shown herself the stronger of the two, became suddenly inexpressibly nervous. When on their expeditions, she would start running without reason or else suddenly stop; and her hand, turning icecold in a moment, would hold the young man back. Sometimes her eyes seemed to pursue imaginary shadows. She cried, This way, and This way, and This way, laughing a breathless laugh that often ended in tears. Then Raoul tried to speak, to question her, in spite of his promises. But, even before he had worded his question, she answered feverishly Nothing I swear it is nothing. Once, when they were passing before an open trapdoor on the stage, Raoul stopped over the dark cavity. You have shown me over the upper part of your empire, Christine, but there are strange stories told of the lower part. Shall we go down? She caught him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in a trembling voice, whispered Never! I will not have you go there! Besides, its not mine everything that is underground belongs to him! Raoul looked her in the eyes and said roughly So he lives down there, does he? I never said so. Who told you a thing like that? Come away! I sometimes wonder if you are quite sane, Raoul. You always take things in such an impossible way. Come along! Come! And she literally dragged him away, for he was obstinate and wanted to remain by the trapdoor; that hole attracted him. Suddenly, the trapdoor was closed and so quickly that they did not even see the hand that worked it; and they remained quite dazed. Perhaps he was there, Raoul said, at last. She shrugged her shoulders, but did not seem easy. No, no, it was the trapdoorshutters. They must do something, you know. They open and shut the trapdoors without any particular reason. Its like the doorshutters they must spend their time somehow. But suppose it were he, Christine? No, no! He has shut himself up, he is working. Oh, really! Hes working, is he? Yes, he cant open and shut the trapdoors and work at the same time. She shivered. What is he working at? Oh, something terrible! But its all the better for us. When hes working at that, he sees nothing; he does not eat, drink, or breathe for days and nights at a time he becomes a living dead man and has no time to amuse himself with the trapdoors. She shivered again. She was still holding him in her arms. Then she sighed and said, in her turn Suppose it were he! Are you afraid of him? No, no, of course not, she said. For all that, on the next day and the following days, Christine was careful to avoid the trapdoors. Her agitation only increased as the hours passed. At last, one afternoon, she arrived very late, with her face so desperately pale and her eyes so desperately red, that Raoul resolved to go to all lengths, including that which he foreshadowed when he blurted out that he would not go on the North Pole expedition unless she first told him the secret of the mans voice. Hush! Hush, in Heavens name! Suppose he heard you, you unfortunate Raoul! And Christines eyes stared wildly at everything around her. I will remove you from his power, Christine, I swear it. And you shall not think of him any more. Is it possible? She allowed herself this doubt, which was an encouragement, while dragging the young man up to the topmost floor of the theater, far, very far from the trapdoors. I shall hide you in some unknown corner of the world, where he can not come to look for you. You will be safe; and then I shall go away as you have sworn never to marry. Christine seized Raouls hands and squeezed them with incredible rapture. But, suddenly becoming alarmed again, she turned away her head. Higher! was all she said. Higher still! And she dragged him up toward the summit. He had a difficulty in following her. They were soon under the very roof, in the maze of timberwork. They slipped through the buttresses, the rafters, the joists; they ran from beam to beam as they might have run from tree to tree in a forest. And, despite the care which she took to look behind her at every moment, she failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a wellconducted shadow should. As for Raoul, he saw nothing either; for, when he had Christine in front of him, nothing interested him that happened behind. XII Apollos Lyre In this way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as lightly as a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below. She called Raoul to come quite close to her and they walked side by side along the zinc streets, in the leaden avenues; they looked at their twin shapes in the huge tanks, full of stagnant water, where, in the hot weather, the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn to swim and dive. The shadow had followed behind them, clinging to their steps; and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky. It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their gossamer robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted slowly by; and Christine said to Raoul Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with youwell you must carry me off by force! Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine? I dont know, she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion. He is a demon! And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. I am afraid now of going back to live with him in the ground! What compels you to go back, Christine? If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! But I cant do it, I cant do it! I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground. But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his deaths head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eyesockets of the deaths head! I can not see those tears flow again! She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart. No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once! And he tried to drag her away, then and there. But she stopped him. No, no, she said, shaking her head sadly. Not now! It would be too cruel let him hear me sing tomorrow evening and then we will go away. You must come and fetch me in my dressingroom at midnight exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the diningroom by the lake we shall be free and you shall take me away. You must promise me that, Raoul, even if I refuse; for I feel that, if I go back this time, I shall perhaps never return. And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind her, replied. Didnt you hear? Her teeth chattered. No, said Raoul, I heard nothing. It is too terrible, she confessed, to be always trembling like this! And yet we run no danger here; we are at home, in the sky, in the open air, in the light. The sun is flaming; and nightbirds can not bear to look at the sun. I have never seen him by daylight it must be awful! Oh, the first time I saw him! I thought that he was going to die. Why? asked Raoul, really frightened at the aspect which this strange confidence was taking. Because I had seen him! This time, Raoul and Christine turned round at the same time There is someone in pain, said Raoul. Perhaps someone has been hurt. Did you hear? I cant say, Christine confessed. Even when he is not there, my ears are full of his sighs. Still, if you heard They stood up and looked around them. They were quite alone on the immense lead roof. They sat down again and Raoul said Tell me how you saw him first. I had heard him for three months without seeing him. The first time I heard it, I thought, as you did, that that adorable voice was singing in another room. I went out and looked everywhere; but, as you know, Raoul, my dressingroom is very much by itself; and I could not find the voice outside my room, whereas it went on steadily inside. And it not only sang, but it spoke to me and answered my questions, like a real mans voice, with this difference, that it was as beautiful as the voice of an angel. I had never got the Angel of Music whom my poor father had promised to send me as soon as he was dead. I really think that Mamma Valrius was a little bit to blame. I told her about it; and she at once said, It must be the Angel; at any rate, you can do no harm by asking him. I did so; and the mans voice replied that, yes, it was the Angels voice, the voice which I was expecting and which my father had promised me. From that time onward, the voice and I became great friends. It asked leave to give me lessons every day. I agreed and never failed to keep the appointment which it gave me in my dressingroom. You have no idea, though you have heard the voice, of what those lessons were like. No, I have no idea, said Raoul. What was your accompaniment? We were accompanied by a music which I do not know it was behind the wall and wonderfully accurate. The voice seemed to understand mine exactly, to know precisely where my father had left off teaching me. In a few weeks time, I hardly knew myself when I sang. I was even frightened. I seemed to dread a sort of witchcraft behind it; but Mamma Valrius reassured me. She said that she knew I was much too simple a girl to give the devil a hold on me. My progress, by the voices own order, was kept a secret between the voice, Mamma Valrius and myself. It was a curious thing, but, outside the dressingroom, I sang with my ordinary, everyday voice and nobody noticed anything. I did all that the voice asked. It said, Wait and see we shall astonish Paris! And I waited and lived on in a sort of ecstatic dream. It was then that I saw you for the first time one evening, in the house. I was so glad that I never thought of concealing my delight when I reached my dressingroom. Unfortunately, the voice was there before me and soon noticed, by my air, that something had happened. It asked what was the matter and I saw no reason for keeping our story secret or concealing the place which you filled in my heart. Then the voice was silent. I called to it, but it did not reply; I begged and entreated, but in vain. I was terrified lest it had gone for good. I wish to Heaven it had, dear! That night, I went home in a desperate condition. I told Mamma Valrius, who said, Why, of course, the voice is jealous! And that, dear, first revealed to me that I loved you. Christine stopped and laid her head on Raouls shoulder. They sat like that for a moment, in silence, and they did not see, did not perceive the movement, at a few steps from them, of the creeping shadow of two great black wings, a shadow that came along the roof so near, so near them that it could have stifled them by closing over them. The next day, Christine continued, with a sigh, I went back to my dressingroom in a very pensive frame of mind. The voice was there, spoke to me with great sadness and told me plainly that, if I must bestow my heart on earth, there was nothing for the voice to do but to go back to Heaven. And it said this with such an accent of human sorrow that I ought then and there to have suspected and begun to believe that I was the victim of my deluded senses. But my faith in the voice, with which the memory of my father was so closely intermingled, remained undisturbed. I feared nothing so much as that I might never hear it again; I had thought about my love for you and realized all the useless danger of it; and I did not even know if you remembered me. Whatever happened, your position in society forbade me to contemplate the possibility of ever marrying you; and I swore to the voice that you were no more than a brother to me nor ever would be and that my heart was incapable of any earthly love. And that, dear, was why I refused to recognize or see you when I met you on the stage or in the passages. Meanwhile, the hours during which the voice taught me were spent in a divine frenzy, until, at last, the voice said to me, You can now, Christine Daa, give to men a little of the music of Heaven. I dont know how it was that Carlotta did not come to the theater that night nor why I was called upon to sing in her stead; but I sang with a rapture I had never known before and I felt for a moment as if my soul were leaving my body! Oh, Christine, said Raoul, my heart quivered that night at every accent of your voice. I saw the tears stream down your cheeks and I wept with you. How could you sing, sing like that while crying? I felt myself fainting, said Christine, I closed my eyes. When I opened them, you were by my side. But the voice was there also, Raoul! I was afraid for your sake and again I would not recognize you and began to laugh when you reminded me that you had picked up my scarf in the sea! Alas, there is no deceiving the voice! The voice recognized you and the voice was jealous! It said that, if I did not love you, I would not avoid you, but treat you like any other old friend. It made me scene upon scene. At last, I said to the voice, That will do! I am going to Perros tomorrow, to pray on my fathers grave, and I shall ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me. Do as you please, replied the voice, but I shall be at Perros too, for I am wherever you are, Christine; and, if you are still worthy of me, if you have not lied to me, I will play you The Resurrection of Lazarus, on the stroke of midnight, on your fathers tomb and on your fathers violin. That, dear, was how I came to write you the letter that brought you to Perros. How could I have been so beguiled? How was it, when I saw the personal, the selfish point of view of the voice, that I did not suspect some impostor? Alas, I was no longer mistress of myself I had become his thing! But, after all, cried Raoul, you soon came to know the truth! Why did you not at once rid yourself of that abominable nightmare? Know the truth, Raoul? Rid myself of that nightmare? But, my poor boy, I was not caught in the nightmare until the day when I learned the truth! Pity me, Raoul, pity me! You remember the terrible evening when Carlotta thought that she had been turned into a toad on the stage and when the house was suddenly plunged in darkness through the chandelier crashing to the floor? There were killed and wounded that night and the whole theater rang with terrified screams. My first thought was for you and the voice. I was at once easy, where you were concerned, for I had seen you in your brothers box and I knew that you were not in danger. But the voice had told me that it would be at the performance and I was really afraid for it, just as if it had been an ordinary person who was capable of dying. I thought to myself, The chandelier may have come down upon the voice. I was then on the stage and was nearly running into the house, to look for the voice among the killed and wounded, when I thought that, if the voice was safe, it would be sure to be in my dressingroom and I rushed to my room. The voice was not there. I locked my door and, with tears in my eyes, besought it, if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which I knew well. It is the plaint of Lazarus when, at the sound of the Redeemers voice, he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day. It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase, Come! And believe in me! Whoso believes in me shall live! Walk! Whoso hath believed in me shall never die! I can not tell you the effect which that music had upon me. It seemed to command me, personally, to come, to stand up and come to it. It retreated and I followed.

Come! And believe in me! I believed in it, I came. I came andthis was the extraordinary thingmy dressingroom, as I moved, seemed to lengthen out to lengthen out. Evidently, it must have been an effect of mirrors for I had the mirror in front of me And, suddenly, I was outside the room without knowing how! What! Without knowing how? Christine, Christine, you must really stop dreaming! I was not dreaming, dear, I was outside my room without knowing how. You, who saw me disappear from my room one evening, may be able to explain it; but I can not. I can only tell you that, suddenly, there was no mirror before me and no dressingroom. I was in a dark passage, I was frightened and I cried out. It was quite dark, but for a faint red glimmer at a distant corner of the wall. I cried out. My voice was the only sound, for the singing and the violin had stopped. And, suddenly, a hand was laid on mine or rather a stonecold, bony thing that seized my wrist and did not let go. I cried out again. An arm took me round the waist and supported me. I struggled for a little while and then gave up the attempt. I was dragged toward the little red light and then I saw that I was in the hands of a man wrapped in a large cloak and wearing a mask that hid his whole face. I made one last effort; my limbs stiffened, my mouth opened to scream, but a hand closed it, a hand which I felt on my lips, on my skin a hand that smelt of death. Then I fainted away. When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, Who are you? Where is the voice? His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the mans black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, Csar! The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the Profeta, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghosts prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul? Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta? I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces. Well, while Csar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Csar walked on, unled and surefooted. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I dont think so no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Csar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Csar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf! A boat! Yes, but I knew that all that existed and that there was nothing supernatural about that underground lake and boat. But think of the exceptional conditions in which I arrived upon that shore! I dont know whether the effects of the cordial had worn off when the mans shape lifted me into the boat, but my terror began all over again. My gruesome escort must have noticed it, for he sent Csar back and I heard his hoofs trampling up a staircase while the man jumped into the boat, untied the rope that held it and seized the oars. He rowed with a quick, powerful stroke; and his eyes, under the mask, never left me. We slipped across the noiseless water in the bluey light which I told you of; then we were in the dark again and we touched shore. And I was once more taken up in the mans arms. I cried aloud. And then, suddenly, I was silent, dazed by the light. Yes, a dazzling light in the midst of which I had been put down. I sprang to my feet. I was in the middle of a drawingroom that seemed to me to be decorated, adorned and furnished with nothing but flowers, flowers both magnificent and stupid, because of the silk ribbons that tied them to baskets, like those which they sell in the shops on the boulevards. They were much too civilized flowers, like those which I used to find in my dressingroom after a first night. And, in the midst of all these flowers, stood the black shape of the man in the mask, with arms crossed, and he said, Dont be afraid, Christine; you are in no danger. It was the voice! My anger equaled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask. And, taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my courage; and the light restored me to the realities of life. However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have told whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawingroom quite as commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the Opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentric person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the Opera house, five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, was a man! And I began to cry. The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, It is true, Christine! I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost I am Erik! Christines narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her. Erik! What echo? They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine kept him beside her. Dont go, she said. I want you to know everything here! But why here, Christine? I am afraid of your catching cold. We have nothing to fear except the trapdoors, dear, and here we are miles away from the trapdoors and I am not allowed to see you outside the theater. This is not the time to annoy him. We must not arouse his suspicion. Christine! Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till tomorrow evening and that we ought to fly at once. I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain. It is difficult not to cause him pain and yet to escape from him for good. You are right in that, Raoul, for certainly he will die of my flight. And she added in a dull voice, But then it counts both ways for we risk his killing us. Does he love you so much? He would commit murder for me. But one can find out where he lives. One can go in search of him. Now that we know that Erik is not a ghost, one can speak to him and force him to answer! Christine shook her head. No, no! There is nothing to be done with Erik except to run away! Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him? Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I left him. Oh, I hate him! cried Raoul. And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too? No, said Christine simply. No, of course not. Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves, said Raoul bitterly. The kind that gives you a thrill, when you think of it. Picture it a man who lives in a palace underground! And he gave a leer. Then you want me to go back there? said the young girl cruelly. Take care, Raoul; I have told you I should never return! There was an appalling silence between the three of them the two who spoke and the shadow that listened, behind them. Before answering that, said Raoul, at last, speaking very slowly, I should like to know with what feeling he inspires you, since you do not hate him. With horror! she said. That is the terrible thing about it. He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness! He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. He has carried me off for love! He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love! But he respects me he crawls, he moans, he weeps! And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty he offered it he offered to show me the mysterious road Only only he rose too and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice for he sang. And I listened and stayed! That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep. When I woke up, I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply furnished little bedroom, with an ordinary mahogany bedstead, lit by a lamp standing on the marble top of an old LouisPhilippe chest of drawers. I soon discovered that I was a prisoner and that the only outlet from my room led to a very comfortable bathroom. On returning to the bedroom, I saw on the chest of drawers a note, in red ink, which said, My dear Christine, you need have no concern as to your fate. You have no better nor more respectful friend in the world than myself. You are alone, at present, in this home which is yours. I am going out shopping to fetch you all the things that you can need. I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran round my little apartment, looking for a way of escape which I could not find. I upbraided myself for my absurd superstition, which had caused me to fall into the trap. I felt inclined to laugh and to cry at the same time. This was the state of mind in which Erik found me. After giving three taps on the wall, he walked in quietly through a door which I had not noticed and which he left open. He had his arms full of boxes and parcels and arranged them on the bed, in a leisurely fashion, while I overwhelmed him with abuse and called upon him to take off his mask, if it covered the face of an honest man. He replied serenely, You shall never see Eriks face. And he reproached me with not having finished dressing at that time of day he was good enough to tell me that it was two oclock in the afternoon. He said he would give me half an hour and, while he spoke, wound up my watch and set it for me. After which, he asked me to come to the diningroom, where a nice lunch was waiting for us. I was very angry, slammed the door in his face and went to the bathroom. When I came out again, feeling greatly refreshed, Erik said that he loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I allowed him and that the rest of the time would be devoted to music. What do you mean by the rest of the time? I asked. Five days, he said, with decision. I asked him if I should then be free and he said, You will be free, Christine, for, when those five days are past, you will have learned not to see me; and then, from time to time, you will come to see your poor Erik! He pointed to a chair opposite him, at a small table, and I sat down, feeling greatly perturbed. However, I ate a few prawns and the wing of a chicken and drank half a glass of tokay, which he had himself, he told me, brought from the Knigsberg cellars. Erik did not eat or drink. I asked him what his nationality was and if that name of Erik did not point to his Scandinavian origin. He said that he had no name and no country and that he had taken the name of Erik by accident. After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry. What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. Oh, forgive me! he moaned. And he opened a door before me. This is my bedroom, if you care to see it. It is rather curious. His manners, his words, his attitude gave me confidence and I went in without hesitation. I felt as if I were entering the room of a dead person. The walls were all hung with black, but, instead of the white trimmings that usually set off that funereal upholstery, there was an enormous stave of music with the notes of the Dies Irae, many times repeated. In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. That is where I sleep, said Erik. One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity. The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head. Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a musicbook covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it and read, Don Juan Triumphant. Yes, he said, I compose sometimes. I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again. You must work at it as seldom as you can, I said. He replied, I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time. Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant? I asked, thinking to please him. You must never ask me that, he said, in a gloomy voice. I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven. Thereupon we returned to the drawingroom. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano. He said, You see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daa. He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me. What did you do? I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Eriks black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the face of the voice, and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror! Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now thrice moaned the cry Horror! Horror! Horror! Raoul and Christine, clasping each other closely, raised their eyes to the stars that shone in a clear and peaceful sky. Raoul said Strange, Christine, that this calm, soft night should be so full of plaintive sounds. One would think that it was sorrowing with us. When you know the secret, Raoul, your ears, like mine, will be full of lamentations. She took Raouls protecting hands in hers and, with a long shiver, continued Yes, if I lived to be a hundred, I should always hear the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes. Raoul, you have seen deaths heads, when they have been dried and withered by the centuries, and, perhaps, if you were not the victim of a nightmare, you saw his deaths head at Perros. And then you saw Red Death stalking about at the last masked ball. But all those deaths heads were motionless and their dumb horror was not alive. But imagine, if you can, Red Deaths mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon; and not a ray of light from the sockets, for, as I learned later, you can not see his blazing eyes except in the dark. I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth, and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Eriks face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? Im a very goodlooking fellow, eh? When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me forever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know! And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, Look at me! I am Don Juan triumphant! And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair. Enough! Enough! cried Raoul. I will kill him. In Heavens name, Christine, tell me where the diningroom on the lake is! I must kill him! Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know! Yes, I want to know how and why you went back; I must know! But, in any case, I will kill him! Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! He dragged me by my hair and then and then Oh, it is too horrible! Well, what? Out with it! exclaimed Raoul fiercely. Out with it, quick! Then he hissed at me. Ah, I frighten you, do I? I dare say! Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this this my head is a mask? Well, he roared, tear it off as you did the other! Come! Come along! I insist! Your hands! Your hands! Give me your hands! And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, tore his terrible dead flesh with my nails! Know, he shouted, while his throat throbbed and panted like a furnace, know that I am built up of death from head to foot and that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you! Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again! As long as you thought me handsome, you could have come back, I know you would have come back but, now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good. So I shall keep you here! Why did you want to see me? Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me! When my own father never saw me and when my mother, so as not to see me, made me a present of my first mask! He had let go of me at last and was dragging himself about on the floor, uttering terrible sobs. And then he crawled away like a snake, went into his room, closed the door and left me alone to my reflections. Presently I heard the sound of the organ; and then I began to understand Eriks contemptuous phrase when he spoke about Opera music. What I now heard was utterly different from what I had heard up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I had not a doubt but that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, awful, magnificent sob. But, little by little, it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable. It intoxicated me; and I opened the door that separated us. Erik rose, as I entered, but dared not turn in my direction. Erik, I cried, show me your face without fear! I swear that you are the most unhappy and sublime of men; and, if ever again I shiver when I look at you, it will be because I am thinking of the splendor of your genius! Then Erik turned round, for he believed me, and I also had faith in myself. He fell at my feet, with words of love with words of love in his dead mouth and the music had ceased He kissed the hem of my dress and did not see that I closed my eyes. What more can I tell you, dear? You now know the tragedy. It went on for a fortnighta fortnight during which I lied to him. My lies were as hideous as the monster who inspired them; but they were the price of my liberty. I burned his mask; and I managed so well that, even when he was not singing, he tried to catch my eye, like a dog sitting by its master. He was my faithful slave and paid me endless little attentions. Gradually, I gave him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking on the banks of the lake and to row me in the boat on its leaden waters; toward the end of my captivity he let me out through the gates that closed the underground passages in the Rue Scribe. Here a carriage awaited us and took us to the Bois. The night when we met you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away. Then, at last, after a fortnight of that horrible captivity, during which I was filled with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I said, I will come back! And you went back, Christine, groaned Raoul. Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but the harrowing sob which he gave on the threshold of the tomb. That sob attached me to the unfortunate man more than I myself suspected when saying goodbye to him. Poor Erik! Poor Erik! Christine, said Raoul, rising, you tell me that you love me; but you had recovered your liberty hardly a few hours before you returned to Erik! Remember the masked ball! Yes; and do you remember those hours which I passed with you, Raoul to the great danger of both of us? I doubted your love for me, during those hours. Do you doubt it still, Raoul? Then know that each of my visits to Erik increased my horror of him; for each of those visits, instead of calming him, as I hoped, made him mad with love! And I am so frightened, so frightened! You are frightened but do you love me? If Erik were goodlooking, would you love me, Christine? She rose in her turn, put her two trembling arms round the young mans neck and said Oh, my betrothed of a day, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last. He kissed her lips; but the night that surrounded them was rent asunder, they fled as at the approach of a storm and their eyes, filled with dread of Erik, showed them, before they disappeared, high up above them, an immense nightbird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollos lyre. XIII A Masterstroke of the TrapDoor Lover Raoul and Christine ran, eager to escape from the roof and the blazing eyes that showed only in the dark; and they did not stop before they came to the eighth floor on the way down. There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were empty. Suddenly, a queerlooking form stood before them and blocked the road No, not this way! And the form pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form, which wore a sort of long frockcoat and a pointed cap, said Quick! Go away quickly! Christine was already dragging Raoul, compelling him to start running again. But who is he? Who is that man? he asked. Christine replied Its the Persian. Whats he doing here? Nobody knows. He is always in the Opera. You are making me run away, for the first time in my life. If we really saw Erik, what I ought to have done was to nail him to Apollos lyre, just as we nail the owls to the walls of our Breton farms; and there would have been no more question of him. My dear Raoul, you would first have had to climb up to Apollos lyre that is no easy matter. The blazing eyes were there! Oh, you are getting like me now, seeing him everywhere! What I took for blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the strings of the lyre. And Christine went down another floor, with Raoul following her. As you have quite made up your mind to go, Christine, I assure you it would be better to go at once. Why wait for tomorrow? He may have heard us tonight. No, no, he is working, I tell you, at his Don Juan Triumphant and not thinking of us. Youre so sure of that you keep on looking behind you! Come to my dressingroom. Hadnt we better meet outside the Opera? Never, till we go away for good! It would bring us bad luck, if I did not keep my word. I promised him to see you only here. Its a good thing for me that he allowed you even that. Do you know, said Raoul bitterly, that it was very plucky of you to let us play at being engaged? Why, my dear, he knows all about it! He said, I trust you, Christine. M. de Chagny is in love with you and is going abroad. Before he goes, I want him to be as happy as I am. Are people so unhappy when they love? Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved. They came to Christines dressingroom. Why do you think that you are safer in this room than on the stage? asked Raoul. You heard him through the walls here, therefore he can certainly hear us. No. He gave me his word not to be behind the walls of my dressingroom again and I believe Eriks word. This room and my bedroom on the lake are for me, exclusively, and not to be approached by him. How can you have gone from this room into that dark passage, Christine? Suppose we try to repeat your movements; shall we? It is dangerous, dear, for the glass might carry me off again; and, instead of running away, I should be obliged to go to the end of the secret passage to the lake and there call Erik. Would he hear you? Erik will hear me wherever I call him. He told me so. He is a very curious genius. You must not think, Raoul, that he is simply a man who amuses himself by living underground. He does things that no other man could do; he knows things which nobody in the world knows. Take care, Christine, you are making a ghost of him again! No, he is not a ghost; he is a man of Heaven and earth, that is all. A man of Heaven and earth that is all! A nice way to speak of him! And are you still resolved to run away from him? Yes, tomorrow. Tomorrow, you will have no resolve left! Then, Raoul, you must run away with me in spite of myself; is that understood? I shall be here at twelve tomorrow night; I shall keep my promise, whatever happens. You say that, after listening to the performance, he is to wait for you in the diningroom on the lake? Yes. And how are you to reach him, if you dont know how to go out by the glass? Why, by going straight to the edge of the lake. Christine opened a box, took out an enormous key and showed it to Raoul. Whats that? he asked. The key of the gate to the underground passage in the Rue Scribe. I understand, Christine. It leads straight to the lake. Give it to me, Christine, will you? Never! she said. That would be treacherous! Suddenly Christine changed color. A mortal pallor overspread her features. Oh heavens! she cried. Erik! Erik! Have pity on me! Hold your tongue! said Raoul. You told me he could hear you! But the singers attitude became more and more inexplicable. She wrung her fingers, repeating, with a distraught air Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven! But what is it? What is it? Raoul implored. The ring the gold ring he gave me. Oh, so Erik gave you that ring! You know he did, Raoul! But what you dont know is that, when he gave it to me, he said, I give you back your liberty, Christine, on condition that this ring is always on your finger. As long as you keep it, you will be protected against all danger and Erik will remain your friend. But woe to you if you ever part with it, for Erik will have his revenge! My dear, my dear, the ring is gone! Woe to us both! They both looked for the ring, but could not find it. Christine refused to be pacified. It was while I gave you that kiss, up above, under Apollos lyre, she said. The ring must have slipped from my finger and dropped into the street! We can never find it. And what misfortunes are in store for us now! Oh, to run away! Let us run away at once, Raoul insisted, once more. She hesitated. He thought that she was going to say yes. Then her bright pupils became dimmed and she said No! Tomorrow! And she left him hurriedly, still wringing and rubbing her fingers, as though she hoped to bring the ring back like that. Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard. If I dont save her from the hands of that humbug, he said, aloud, as he went to bed, she is lost. But I shall save her. He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted Humbug! Humbug! Humbug! But, suddenly, he raised himself on his elbow. A cold sweat poured from his temples. Two eyes, like blazing coals, had appeared at the foot of his bed. They stared at him fixedly, terribly, in the darkness of the night. Raoul was no coward; and yet he trembled. He put out a groping, hesitating hand toward the table by his bedside. He found the matches and lit his candle. The eyes disappeared. Still uneasy in his mind, he thought to himself She told me that his eyes only showed in the dark. His eyes have disappeared in the light, but he may be there still. And he rose, hunted about, went round the room. He looked under his bed, like a child. Then he thought himself absurd, got into bed again and blew out the candle. The eyes reappeared. He sat up and stared back at them with all the courage he possessed. Then he cried Is that you, Erik? Man, genius, or ghost, is it you? He reflected If its he, hes on the balcony! Then he ran to the chest of drawers and groped for his revolver. He opened the balcony window, looked out, saw nothing and closed the window again. He went back to bed, shivering, for the night was cold, and put the revolver on the table within his reach. The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed. Were they between the bed and the windowpane or behind the pane, that is to say, on the balcony? That was what Raoul wanted to know.

He also wanted to know if those eyes belonged to a human being. He wanted to know everything. Then, patiently, calmly, he seized his revolver and took aim. He aimed a little above the two eyes. Surely, if they were eyes and if above those two eyes there was a forehead and if Raoul was not too clumsy The shot made a terrible din amid the silence of the slumbering house. And, while footsteps came hurrying along the passages, Raoul sat up with outstretched arm, ready to fire again, if need be. This time, the two eyes had disappeared. Servants appeared, carrying lights; Count Philippe, terribly anxious What is it? I think I have been dreaming, replied the young man. I fired at two stars that kept me from sleeping. Youre raving! Are you ill? For Gods sake, tell me, Raoul what happened? And the count seized hold of the revolver. No, no, Im not raving. Besides, we shall soon see He got out of bed, put on a dressinggown and slippers, took a light from the hands of a servant and, opening the window, stepped out on the balcony. The count saw that the window had been pierced by a bullet at a mans height. Raoul was leaning over the balcony with his candle Aha! he said. Blood! Blood! Here, there, more blood! Thats a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous! he grinned. Raoul! Raoul! Raoul! The count was shaking him as though he were trying to waken a sleepwalker. But, my dear brother, Im not asleep! Raoul protested impatiently. You can see the blood for yourself. I thought I had been dreaming and firing at two stars. It was Eriks eyes and here is his blood! After all, perhaps I was wrong to shoot; and Christine is quite capable of never forgiving me. All this would not have happened if I had drawn the curtains before going to bed. Raoul, have you suddenly gone mad? Wake up! What, still? You would do better to help me find Erik for, after all, a ghost who bleeds can always be found. The counts valet said That is so, sir; there is blood on the balcony. The other manservant brought a lamp, by the light of which they examined the balcony carefully. The marks of blood followed the rail till they reached a gutterspout; then they went up the gutterspout. My dear fellow, said Count Philippe, you have fired at a cat. The misfortune is, said Raoul, with a grin, that its quite possible. With Erik, you never know. Is it Erik? Is it the cat? Is it the ghost? No, with Erik, you cant tell! Raoul went on making this strange sort of remarks which corresponded so intimately and logically with the preoccupation of his brain and which, at the same time, tended to persuade many people that his mind was unhinged. The count himself was seized with this idea; and, later, the examining magistrate, on receiving the report of the commissary of police, came to the same conclusion. Who is Erik? asked the count, pressing his brothers hand. He is my rival. And, if hes not dead, its a pity. He dismissed the servants with a wave of the hand and the two Chagnys were left alone. But the men were not out of earshot before the counts valet heard Raoul say, distinctly and emphatically I shall carry off Christine Daa tonight. This phrase was afterward repeated to M. Faure, the examiningmagistrate. But no one ever knew exactly what passed between the two brothers at this interview. The servants declared that this was not their first quarrel. Their voices penetrated the wall; and it was always an actress called Christine Daa that was in question. At breakfastthe early morning breakfast, which the count took in his studyPhilippe sent for his brother. Raoul arrived silent and gloomy. The scene was a very short one. Philippe handed his brother a copy of the Epoque and said Read that! The viscount read The latest news in the Faubourg is that there is a promise of marriage between Mlle. Christine Daa, the operasinger, and M. le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. If the gossips are to be credited, Count Philippe has sworn that, for the first time on record, the Chagnys shall not keep their promise. But, as love is allpowerful, at the Opera asand even more thanelsewhere, we wonder how Count Philippe intends to prevent the viscount, his brother, from leading the new Margarita to the altar. The two brothers are said to adore each other; but the count is curiously mistaken if he imagines that brotherly love will triumph over love pure and simple. You see, Raoul, said the count, you are making us ridiculous! That little girl has turned your head with her ghoststories. The viscount had evidently repeated Christines narrative to his brother, during the night. All that he now said was Goodbye, Philippe. Have you quite made up your mind? You are going tonight? With her? No reply. Surely you will not do anything so foolish? I shall know how to prevent you! Goodbye, Philippe, said the viscount again and left the room. This scene was described to the examiningmagistrate by the count himself, who did not see Raoul again until that evening, at the Opera, a few minutes before Christines disappearance. Raoul, in fact, devoted the whole day to his preparations for the flight. The horses, the carriage, the coachman, the provisions, the luggage, the money required for the journey, the road to be taken (he had resolved not to go by train, so as to throw the ghost off the scent) all this had to be settled and provided for; and it occupied him until nine oclock at night. At nine oclock, a sort of travelingbarouche with the curtains of its windows closedown, took its place in the rank on the Rotunda side. It was drawn by two powerful horses driven by a coachman whose face was almost concealed in the long folds of a muffler. In front of this travelingcarriage were three broughams, belonging respectively to Carlotta, who had suddenly returned to Paris, to Sorelli and, at the head of the rank, to Comte Philippe de Chagny. No one left the barouche. The coachman remained on his box, and the three other coachmen remained on theirs. A shadow in a long black cloak and a soft black felt hat passed along the pavement between the Rotunda and the carriages, examined the barouche carefully, went up to the horses and the coachman and then moved away without saying a word. The magistrate afterward believed that this shadow was that of the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny; but I do not agree, seeing that that evening, as every evening, the Vicomte de Chagny was wearing a tall hat, which hat, besides, was subsequently found. I am more inclined to think that the shadow was that of the ghost, who knew all about the whole affair, as the reader will soon perceive. They were giving Faust, as it happened, before a splendid house. The Faubourg was magnificently represented; and the paragraph in that mornings Epoque had already produced its effect, for all eyes were turned to the box in which Count Philippe sat alone, apparently in a very indifferent and careless frame of mind. The feminine element in the brilliant audience seemed curiously puzzled; and the viscounts absence gave rise to any amount of whispering behind the fans. Christine Daa met with a rather cold reception. That special audience could not forgive her for aiming so high. The singer noticed this unfavorable attitude of a portion of the house and was confused by it. The regular frequenters of the Opera, who pretended to know the truth about the viscounts lovestory, exchanged significant smiles at certain passages in Margaritas part; and they made a show of turning and looking at Philippe de Chagnys box when Christine sang I wish I could but know who was he That addressed me, If he was noble, or, at least, what his name is. The count sat with his chin on his hand and seemed to pay no attention to these manifestations. He kept his eyes fixed on the stage; but his thoughts appeared to be far away. Christine lost her selfassurance more and more. She trembled. She felt on the verge of a breakdown. Carolus Fonta wondered if she was ill, if she could keep the stage until the end of the Garden Act. In the front of the house, people remembered the catastrophe that had befallen Carlotta at the end of that act and the historic coack which had momentarily interrupted her career in Paris. Just then, Carlotta made her entrance in a box facing the stage, a sensational entrance. Poor Christine raised her eyes upon this fresh subject of excitement. She recognized her rival. She thought she saw a sneer on her lips. That saved her. She forgot everything, in order to triumph once more. From that moment the prima donna sang with all her heart and soul. She tried to surpass all that she had done till then; and she succeeded. In the last act when she began the invocation to the angels, she made all the members of the audience feel as though they too had wings. In the center of the amphitheater a man stood up and remained standing, facing the singer. It was Raoul. Holy angel, in Heaven blessed And Christine, her arms outstretched, her throat filled with music, the glory of her hair falling over her bare shoulders, uttered the divine cry My spirit longs with thee to rest! It was at that moment that the stage was suddenly plunged in darkness. It happened so quickly that the spectators hardly had time to utter a sound of stupefaction, for the gas at once lit up the stage again. But Christine Daa was no longer there! What had become of her? What was that miracle? All exchanged glances without understanding, and the excitement at once reached its height. Nor was the tension any less great on the stage itself. Men rushed from the wings to the spot where Christine had been singing that very instant. The performance was interrupted amid the greatest disorder. Where had Christine gone? What witchcraft had snatched her away before the eyes of thousands of enthusiastic onlookers and from the arms of Carolus Fonta himself? It was as though the angels had really carried her up to rest. Raoul, still standing up in the amphitheater, had uttered a cry. Count Philippe had sprung to his feet in his box. People looked at the stage, at the count, at Raoul, and wondered if this curious event was connected in any way with the paragraph in that mornings paper. But Raoul hurriedly left his seat, the count disappeared from his box and, while the curtain was lowered, the subscribers rushed to the door that led behind the scenes. The rest of the audience waited amid an indescribable hubbub. Everyone spoke at once. Everyone tried to suggest an explanation of the extraordinary incident. At last, the curtain rose slowly and Carolus Fonta stepped to the conductors desk and, in a sad and serious voice, said Ladies and gentlemen, an unprecedented event has taken place and thrown us into a state of the greatest alarm. Our sisterartist, Christine Daa, has disappeared before our eyes and nobody can tell us how! XIV The Singular Attitude of a SafetyPin Behind the curtain, there was an indescribable crowd. Artists, sceneshifters, dancers, supers, choristers, subscribers were all asking questions, shouting and hustling one another. What became of her? Shes run away. With the Vicomte de Chagny, of course! No, with the count! Ah, heres Carlotta! Carlotta did the trick! No, it was the ghost! And a few laughed, especially as a careful examination of the trapdoors and boards had put the idea of an accident out of the question. Amid this noisy throng, three men stood talking in a low voice and with despairing gestures. They were Gabriel, the chorusmaster; Mercier, the actingmanager; and Rmy, the secretary. They retired to a corner of the lobby by which the stage communicates with the wide passage leading to the foyer of the ballet. Here they stood and argued behind some enormous properties. I knocked at the door, said Rmy. They did not answer. Perhaps they are not in the office. In any case, its impossible to find out, for they took the keys with them. They were obviously the managers, who had given orders, during the last entracte, that they were not to be disturbed on any pretext whatever. They were not in to anybody. All the same, exclaimed Gabriel, a singer isnt run away with, from the middle of the stage, every day! Did you shout that to them? asked Mercier, impatiently. Ill go back again, said Rmy, and disappeared at a run. Thereupon the stagemanager arrived. Well, M. Mercier, are you coming? What are you two doing here? Youre wanted, Mr. ActingManager. I refuse to know or to do anything before the commissary arrives, declared Mercier. I have sent for Mifroid. We shall see when he comes! And I tell you that you ought to go down to the organ at once. Not before the commissary comes. Ive been down to the organ myself already. Ah! And what did you see? Well, I saw nobody! Do you hearnobody! What do you want me to go down there for? Youre right! said the stagemanager, frantically pushing his hands through his rebellious hair. Youre right! But there might be someone at the organ who could tell us how the stage came to be suddenly darkened. Now Mauclair is nowhere to be found. Do you understand that? Mauclair was the gasman, who dispensed day and night at will on the stage of the Opera. Mauclair is not to be found! repeated Mercier, taken aback. Well, what about his assistants? Theres no Mauclair and no assistants! No one at the lights, I tell you! You can imagine, roared the stagemanager, that that little girl must have been carried off by somebody else she didnt run away by herself! It was a calculated stroke and we have to find out about it. And what are the managers doing all this time? I gave orders that no one was to go down to the lights and I posted a fireman in front of the gasmans box beside the organ. Wasnt that right? Yes, yes, quite right, quite right. And now lets wait for the commissary. The stagemanager walked away, shrugging his shoulders, fuming, muttering insults at those milksops who remained quietly squatting in a corner while the whole theater was topsyturvy. Gabriel and Mercier were not so quiet as all that. Only they had received an order that paralyzed them. The managers were not to be disturbed on any account. Rmy had violated that order and met with no success. At that moment he returned from his new expedition, wearing a curiously startled air. Well, have you seen them? asked Mercier. Moncharmin opened the door at last. His eyes were starting out of his head. I thought he meant to strike me. I could not get a word in; and what do you think he shouted at me? Have you a safetypin? No! Well, then, clear out! I tried to tell him that an unheardof thing had happened on the stage, but he roared, A safetypin! Give me a safetypin at once! A boy heard himhe was bellowing like a bullran up with a safetypin and gave it to him; whereupon Moncharmin slammed the door in my face, and there you are! And couldnt you have said, Christine Daa. I should like to have seen you in my place. He was foaming at the mouth. He thought of nothing but his safetypin. I believe, if they hadnt brought him one on the spot, he would have fallen down in a fit! Oh, all this isnt natural; and our managers are going mad! Besides, it cant go on like this! Im not used to being treated in that fashion! Suddenly Gabriel whispered Its another trick of O. G.s. Rmy gave a grin, Mercier a sigh and seemed about to speak but, meeting Gabriels eye, said nothing. However, Mercier felt his responsibility increased as the minutes passed without the managers appearing; and, at last, he could stand it no longer. Look here, Ill go and hunt them out myself! Gabriel, turning very gloomy and serious, stopped him. Be careful what youre doing, Mercier! If theyre staying in their office, its probably because they have to! O. G. has more than one trick in his bag! But Mercier shook his head. Thats their lookout! Im going! If people had listened to me, the police would have known everything long ago! And he went. Whats everything? asked Rmy. What was there to tell the police? Why dont you answer, Gabriel? Ah, so you know something! Well, you would do better to tell me, too, if you dont want me to shout out that you are all going mad! Yes, thats what you are mad! Gabriel put on a stupid look and pretended not to understand the private secretarys unseemly outburst. What something am I supposed to know? he said. I dont know what you mean. Rmy began to lose his temper. This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics, here, between the acts. I never noticed it, growled Gabriel, very much annoyed. Then youre the only one! Do you think that I didnt see them? And that M. Parabise, the manager of the Crdit Central, noticed nothing? And that M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, has no eyes to see with? Why, all the subscribers were pointing at our managers! But what were our managers doing? asked Gabriel, putting on his most innocent air. What were they doing? You know better than anyone what they were doing! You were there! And you were watching them, you and Mercier! And you were the only two who didnt laugh. I dont understand! Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which gesture was meant to convey that the question did not interest him in the least. Rmy continued What is the sense of this new mania of theirs? Why wont they have anyone come near them now? What? Wont they have anyone come near them? And they wont let anyone touch them! Really? Have you noticed that they wont let anyone touch them? That is certainly odd! Oh, so you admit it! And high time, too! And then, they walk backward! Backward! You have seen our managers walk backward? Why, I thought that only crabs walked backward! Dont laugh, Gabriel; dont laugh! Im not laughing, protested Gabriel, looking as solemn as a judge. Perhaps you can tell me this, Gabriel, as youre an intimate friend of the management When I went up to M. Richard, outside the foyer, during the Garden interval, with my hand out before me, why did M. Moncharmin hurriedly whisper to me, Go away! Go away! Whatever you do, dont touch M. le directeur! Am I supposed to have an infectious disease? Its incredible! And, a little later, when M. de La Borderie went up to M. Richard, didnt you see M. Moncharmin fling himself between them and hear him exclaim, M. lambassadeur, I entreat you not to touch M. le directeur? Its terrible! And what was Richard doing meanwhile? What was he doing? Why, you saw him! He turned about, bowed in front of him, though there was nobody in front of him, and withdrew backward. Backward? And Moncharmin, behind Richard, also turned about; that is, he described a semicircle behind Richard and also walked backward! And they went like that to the staircase leading to the managers office backward, backward, backward! Well, if they are not mad, will you explain what it means? Perhaps they were practising a figure in the ballet, suggested Gabriel, without much conviction in his voice. The secretary was furious at this wretched joke, made at so dramatic a moment. He knit his brows and contracted his lips. Then he put his mouth to Gabriels ear Dont be so sly, Gabriel. There are things going on for which you and Mercier are partly responsible. What do you mean? asked Gabriel. Christine Daa is not the only one who suddenly disappeared tonight. Oh, nonsense! Theres no nonsense about it. Perhaps you can tell me why, when Mother Giry came down to the foyer just now, Mercier took her by the hand and hurried her away with him? Really? said Gabriel, I never saw it. You did see it, Gabriel, for you went with Mercier and Mother Giry to Merciers office. Since then, you and Mercier have been seen, but no one has seen Mother Giry. Do you think weve eaten her? No, but youve locked her up in the office; and anyone passing the office can hear her yelling, Oh, the scoundrels! Oh, the scoundrels! At this point of this singular conversation, Mercier arrived, all out of breath. There! he said, in a gloomy voice. Its worse than ever! I shouted, Its a serious matter! Open the door! Its I, Mercier. I heard footsteps. The door opened and Moncharmin appeared. He was very pale. He said, What do you want? I answered, Someone has run away with Christine Daa. What do you think he said? And a good job, too! And he shut the door, after putting this in my hand. Mercier opened his hand; Rmy and Gabriel looked. The safetypin! cried Rmy. Strange! Strange! muttered Gabriel, who could not help shivering. Suddenly a voice made them all three turn round. I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daa is? In spite of the seriousness of the circumstances, the absurdity of the question would have made them roar with laughter, if they had not caught sight of a face so sorrowstricken that they were at once seized with pity. It was the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. XV Christine! Christine! Raouls first thought, after Christine Daas fantastic disappearance, was to accuse Erik. He no longer doubted the almost supernatural powers of the Angel of Music, in this domain of the Opera in which he had set up his empire. And Raoul rushed on the stage, in a mad fit of love and despair. Christine! Christine! he moaned, calling to her as he felt that she must be calling to him from the depths of that dark pit to which the monster had carried her. Christine! Christine! And he seemed to hear the girls screams through the frail boards that separated him from her. He bent forward, he listened, he wandered over the stage like a madman. Ah, to descend, to descend into that pit of darkness every entrance to which was closed to him, for the stairs that led below the stage were forbidden to one and all that night! Christine! Christine! People pushed him aside, laughing. They made fun of him. They thought the poor lovers brain was gone! By what mad road, through what passages of mystery and darkness known to him alone had Erik dragged that puresouled child to the awful haunt, with the LouisPhilippe room, opening out on the lake? Christine! Christine! Why dont you answer? Are you alive? Hideous thoughts flashed through Raouls congested brain. Of course, Erik must have discovered their secret, must have known that Christine had played him false. What a vengeance would be his! And Raoul thought again of the yellow stars that had come, the night before, and roamed over his balcony. Why had he not put them out for good? There were some mens eyes that dilated in the darkness and shone like stars or like cats eyes. Certainly Albinos, who seemed to have rabbits eyes by day, had cats eyes at night everybody knew that! Yes, yes, he had undoubtedly fired at Erik. Why had he not killed him? The monster had fled up the gutterspout like a cat or a convict whoeverybody knew that alsowould scale the very skies, with the help of a gutterspout. No doubt Erik was at that time contemplating some decisive step against Raoul, but he had been wounded and had escaped to turn against poor Christine instead. Such were the cruel thoughts that haunted Raoul as he ran to the singers dressingroom. Christine! Christine! Bitter tears scorched the boys eyelids as he saw scattered over the furniture the clothes which his beautiful bride was to have worn at the hour of their flight. Oh, why had she refused to leave earlier? Why had she toyed with the threatening catastrophe? Why toyed with the monsters heart? Why, in a final access of pity, had she insisted on flinging, as a last sop to that demons soul, her divine song Holy angel, in Heaven blessed, My spirit longs with thee to rest! Raoul, his throat filled with sobs, oaths and insults, fumbled awkwardly at the great mirror that had opened one night, before his eyes, to let Christine pass to the murky dwelling below. He pushed, pressed, groped about, but the glass apparently obeyed no one but Erik. Perhaps actions were not enough with a glass of the kind? Perhaps he was expected to utter certain words? When he was a little boy, he had heard that there were things that obeyed the spoken word! Suddenly, Raoul remembered something about a gate opening into the Rue Scribe, an underground passage running straight to the Rue Scribe from the lake. Yes, Christine had told him about that. And, when he found that the key was no longer in the box, he nevertheless ran to the Rue Scribe. Outside, in the street, he passed his trembling hands over the huge stones, felt for outlets met with iron bars were those they? Or these? Or could it be that airhole? He plunged his useless eyes through the bars. How dark it was in there! He listened. All was silence! He went round the building and came to bigger bars, immense gates! It was the entrance to the Cour de lAdministration. Raoul rushed into the doorkeepers lodge. I beg your pardon, madame, could you tell me where to find a gate or door, made of bars, iron bars, opening into the Rue Scribe and leading to the lake? You know the lake I mean? Yes, the underground lake under the Opera. Yes, sir, I know there is a lake under the Opera, but I dont know which door leads to it. I have never been there! And the Rue Scribe, madame, the Rue Scribe? Have you never been to the Rue Scribe? The woman laughed, screamed with laughter! Raoul darted away, roaring with anger, ran upstairs, four stairs at a time, downstairs, rushed through the whole of the business side of the operahouse, found himself once more in the light of the stage. He stopped, with his heart thumping in his chest suppose Christine Daa had been found? He saw a group of men and asked I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Could you tell me where Christine Daa is? And somebody laughed. At the same moment the stage buzzed with a new sound and, amid a crowd of men in eveningdress, all talking and gesticulating together, appeared a man who seemed very calm and displayed a pleasant face, all pink and chubbycheeked, crowned with curly hair and lit up by a pair of wonderfully serene blue eyes. Mercier, the actingmanager, called the Vicomte de Chagnys attention to him and said This is the gentleman to whom you should put your question, monsieur. Let me introduce M. Mifroid, the commissary of police. Ah, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! Delighted to meet you, monsieur, said the commissary. Would you mind coming with me? And now where are the managers? Where are the managers? Mercier did not answer, and Rmy, the secretary, volunteered the information that the managers were locked up in their office and that they knew nothing as yet of what had happened. You dont mean to say so! Let us go up to the office! And M. Mifroid, followed by an everincreasing crowd, turned toward the business side of the building. Mercier took advantage of the confusion to slip a key into Gabriels hand This is all going very badly, he whispered. You had better let Mother Giry out. And Gabriel moved away. They soon came to the managers door. Mercier stormed in vain the door remained closed. Open in the name of the law! commanded M. Mifroid, in a loud and rather anxious voice. At last the door was opened. All rushed in to the office, on the commissarys heels. Raoul was the last to enter. As he was about to follow the rest into the room, a hand was laid on his shoulder and he heard these words spoken in his ear Eriks secrets concern no one but himself! He turned around, with a stifled exclamation. The hand that was laid on his shoulder was now placed on the lips of a person with an ebony skin, with eyes of jade and with an astrakhan cap on his head the Persian! The stranger kept up the gesture that recommended discretion and then, at the moment when the astonished viscount was about to ask the reason of his mysterious intervention, bowed and disappeared. XVI Mme. Girys Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost Before following the commissary into the managers office I must describe certain extraordinary occurrences that took place in that office which Rmy and Mercier had vainly tried to enter and into which MM. Richard and Moncharmin had locked themselves with an object which the reader does not yet know, but which it is my duty, as an historian, to reveal without further postponement. I have had occasion to say that the managers mood had undergone a disagreeable change for some time past and to convey the fact that this change was due not only to the fall of the chandelier on the famous night of the gala performance. The reader must know that the ghost had calmly been paid his first twenty thousand francs. Oh, there had been wailing and gnashing of teeth, indeed! And yet the thing had happened as simply as could be. One morning, the managers found on their table an envelope addressed to Monsieur O. G. (private) and accompanied by a note from O. G. himself The time has come to carry out the clause in the memorandumbook. Please put twenty notes of a thousand francs each into this envelope, seal it with your own seal and hand it to Mme. Giry, who will do what is necessary. The managers did not hesitate; without wasting time in asking how these confounded communications came to be delivered in an office which they were careful to keep locked, they seized this opportunity of laying hands on the mysterious blackmailer. And, after telling the whole story, under the promise of secrecy, to Gabriel and Mercier, they put the twenty thousand francs into the envelope and without asking for explanations, handed it to Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. The boxkeeper displayed no astonishment. I need hardly say that she was well watched. She went straight to the ghosts box and placed the precious envelope on the little shelf attached to the ledge. The two managers, as well as Gabriel and Mercier, were hidden in such a way that they did not lose sight of the envelope for a second during the performance and even afterward, for, as the envelope had not moved, those who watched it did not move either; and Mme. Giry went away while the managers, Gabriel and Mercier were still there. At last, they became tired of waiting and opened the envelope, after ascertaining that the seals had not been broken. At first sight, Richard and Moncharmin thought that the notes were still there; but soon they perceived that they were not the same. The twenty real notes were gone and had been replaced by twenty notes of the Bank of St. Farce!2 The managers rage and fright were unmistakable. Moncharmin wanted to send for the commissary of police, but Richard objected. He no doubt had a plan, for he said Dont let us make ourselves ridiculous! All Paris would laugh at us. O. G. has won the first game we will win the second. He was thinking of the next months allowance. Nevertheless, they had been so absolutely tricked that they were bound to suffer a certain dejection. And, upon my word, it was not difficult to understand. We must not forget that the managers had an idea at the back of their minds, all the time, that this strange incident might be an unpleasant practical joke on the part of their predecessors and that it would not do to divulge it prematurely. On the other hand, Moncharmin was sometimes troubled with a suspicion of Richard himself, who occasionally took fanciful whims into his head. And so they were content to await events, while keeping an eye on Mother Giry. Richard would not have her spoken to. If she is a confederate, he said, the notes are gone long ago. But, in my opinion, she is merely an idiot. Shes not the only idiot in this business, said Moncharmin pensively. Well, who could have thought it? moaned Richard. But dont be afraid next time, I shall have taken my precautions. The next time fell on the same day that beheld the disappearance of Christine Daa. In the morning, a note from the ghost reminded them that the money was due. It read Do just as you did last time. It went very well. Put the twenty thousand in the envelope and hand it to our excellent Mme. Giry. And the note was accompanied by the usual envelope. They had only to insert the notes.

This was done about half an hour before the curtain rose on the first act of Faust. Richard showed the envelope to Moncharmin. Then he counted the twenty thousandfranc notes in front of him and put the notes into the envelope, but without closing it. And now, he said, lets have Mother Giry in. The old woman was sent for. She entered with a sweeping courtesy. She still wore her black taffeta dress, the color of which was rapidly turning to rust and lilac, to say nothing of the dingy bonnet. She seemed in a good temper. She at once said Good evening, gentlemen! Its for the envelope, I suppose? Yes, Mme. Giry, said Richard, most amiably. For the envelope and something else besides. At your service, M. Richard, at your service. And what is the something else, please? First of all, Mme. Giry, I have a little question to put to you. By all means, M. Richard Mme. Giry is here to answer you. Are you still on good terms with the ghost? Couldnt be better, sir; couldnt be better. Ah, we are delighted. Look here, Mme. Giry, said Richard, in the tone of making an important confidence. We may just as well tell you, among ourselves youre no fool! Why, sir, exclaimed the boxkeeper, stopping the pleasant nodding of the black feathers in her dingy bonnet, I assure you no one has ever doubted that! We are quite agreed and we shall soon understand one another. The story of the ghost is all humbug, isnt it? Well, still between ourselves, it has lasted long enough. Mme. Giry looked at the managers as though they were talking Chinese. She walked up to Richards table and asked, rather anxiously What do you mean? I dont understand. Oh, you understand quite well. In any case, youve got to understand. And, first of all, tell us his name. Whose name? The name of the man whose accomplice you are, Mme. Giry! I am the ghosts accomplice? I? His accomplice in what, pray? You do all he wants. Oh! Hes not very troublesome, you know. And does he still tip you? I mustnt complain. How much does he give you for bringing him that envelope? Ten francs. You poor thing! Thats not much, is it? Why? Ill tell you that presently, Mme. Giry. Just now we should like to know for what extraordinary reason you have given yourself body and soul, to this ghost Mme. Girys friendship and devotion are not to be bought for five francs or ten francs. Thats true enough. And I can tell you the reason, sir. Theres no disgrace about it on the contrary. Were quite sure of that, Mme. Giry! Well, its like this only the ghost doesnt like me to talk about his business. Indeed? sneered Richard. But this is a matter that concerns myself alone. Well, it was in Box Five one evening, I found a letter addressed to myself, a sort of note written in red ink. I neednt read the letter to you, sir; I know it by heart, and I shall never forget it if I live to be a hundred! And Mme. Giry, drawing herself up, recited the letter with touching eloquence Madam 1825. Mlle. Mntrier, leader of the ballet, became Marquise de Cussy. 1832. Mlle. Marie Taglioni, a dancer, became Comtesse Gilbert des Voisins. 1846. La Sota, a dancer, married a brother of the King of Spain. 1847. Lola Montes, a dancer, became the morganatic wife of King Louis of Bavaria and was created Countess of Landsfeld. 1848. Mlle. Maria, a dancer, became Baronne dHerneville. 1870. Thrsa Hessier, a dancer, married Dom Fernando, brother to the King of Portugal. Richard and Moncharmin listened to the old woman, who, as she proceeded with the enumeration of these glorious nuptials, swelled out, took courage and, at last, in a voice bursting with pride, flung out the last sentence of the prophetic letter 1885. Meg Giry, Empress! Exhausted by this supreme effort, the boxkeeper fell into a chair, saying Gentlemen, the letter was signed, Opera Ghost. I had heard much of the ghost, but only half believed in him. From the day when he declared that my little Meg, the flesh of my flesh, the fruit of my womb, would be empress, I believed in him altogether. And really it was not necessary to make a long study of Mme. Girys excited features to understand what could be got out of that fine intellect with the two words ghost and empress. But who pulled the strings of that extraordinary puppet? That was the question. You have never seen him; he speaks to you and you believe all he says? asked Moncharmin. Yes. To begin with, I owe it to him that my little Meg was promoted to be the leader of a row. I said to the ghost, If she is to be empress in 1885, there is no time to lose; she must become a leader at once. He said, Look upon it as done. And he had only a word to say to M. Poligny and the thing was done. So you say that M. Poligny saw him! No, not any more than I did; but he heard him. The ghost said a word in his ear, you know, on the evening when he left Box Five, looking so dreadfully pale. Moncharmin heaved a sigh. What a business! he groaned. Ah! said Mme. Giry. I always thought there were secrets between the ghost and M. Poligny. Anything that the ghost asked M. Poligny to do M. Poligny did. M. Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing. You hear, Richard Poligny could refuse the ghost nothing. Yes, yes, I hear! said Richard. M. Poligny is a friend of the ghost; and, as Mme. Giry is a friend of M. Poligny, there we are! But I dont care a hang about M. Poligny, he added roughly. The only person whose fate really interests me is Mme. Giry. Mme. Giry, do you know what is in this envelope? Why, of course not, she said. Well, look. Mme. Giry looked into the envelope with a lackluster eye, which soon recovered its brilliancy. Thousandfranc notes! she cried. Yes, Mme. Giry, thousandfranc notes! And you knew it! I, sir? I? I swear Dont swear, Mme. Giry! And now I will tell you the second reason why I sent for you. Mme. Giry, I am going to have you arrested. The two black feathers on the dingy bonnet, which usually affected the attitude of two notes of interrogation, changed into two notes of exclamation; as for the bonnet itself, it swayed in menace on the old ladys tempestuous chignon. Surprise, indignation, protest and dismay were furthermore displayed by little Megs mother in a sort of extravagant movement of offended virtue, half bound, half slide, that brought her right under the nose of M. Richard, who could not help pushing back his chair. Have me arrested! The mouth that spoke those words seemed to spit the three teeth that were left to it into Richards face. M. Richard behaved like a hero. He retreated no farther. His threatening forefinger seemed already to be pointing out the keeper of Box Five to the absent magistrates. I am going to have you arrested, Mme. Giry, as a thief! Say that again! And Mme. Giry caught Mr. Manager Richard a mighty box on the ear, before Mr. Manager Moncharmin had time to intervene. But it was not the withered hand of the angry old beldame that fell on the managerial ear, but the envelope itself, the cause of all the trouble, the magic envelope that opened with the blow, scattering the banknotes, which escaped in a fantastic whirl of giant butterflies. The two managers gave a shout, and the same thought made them both go on their knees, feverishly picking up and hurriedly examining the precious scraps of paper. Are they still genuine, Moncharmin? Are they still genuine, Richard? Yes, they are still genuine! Above their heads, Mame Girys three teeth were clashing in a noisy contest, full of hideous interjections. But all that could be clearly distinguished was this leitmotif I, a thief! I, a thief, I? She choked with rage. She shouted I never heard of such a thing! And, suddenly, she darted up to Richard again. In any case, she yelped, you, M. Richard, ought to know better than I where the twenty thousand francs went to! I? asked Richard, astounded. And how should I know? Moncharmin, looking severe and dissatisfied, at once insisted that the good lady should explain herself. What does this mean, Mme. Giry? he asked. And why do you say that M. Richard ought to know better than you where the twentythousand francs went to? As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmins eyes, he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and shook it violently. In a voice growling and rolling like thunder, he roared Why should I know better than you where the twentythousand francs went to? Why? Answer me! Because they went into your pocket! gasped the old woman, looking at him as if he were the devil incarnate. Richard would have rushed upon Mme. Giry, if Moncharmin had not stayed his avenging hand and hastened to ask her, more gently How can you suspect my partner, M. Richard, of putting twentythousand francs in his pocket? I never said that, declared Mame Giry, seeing that it was myself who put the twentythousand francs into M. Richards pocket. And she added, under her voice, There! Its out! And may the ghost forgive me! Richard began bellowing anew, but Moncharmin authoritatively ordered him to be silent. Allow me! Allow me! Let the woman explain herself. Let me question her. And he added It is really astonishing that you should take up such a tone! We are on the verge of clearing up the whole mystery. And youre in a rage! Youre wrong to behave like that. Im enjoying myself immensely. Mame Giry, like the martyr that she was, raised her head, her face beaming with faith in her own innocence. You tell me there were twentythousand francs in the envelope which I put into M. Richards pocket; but I tell you again that I knew nothing about it. Nor M. Richard either, for that matter! Aha! said Richard, suddenly assuming a swaggering air which Moncharmin did not like. I knew nothing either! You put twentythousand francs in my pocket and I knew nothing either! I am very glad to hear it, Mme. Giry! Yes, the terrible dame agreed, yes, its true. We neither of us knew anything. But you, you must have ended by finding out! Richard would certainly have swallowed Mame Giry alive, if Moncharmin had not been there! But Moncharmin protected her. He resumed his questions What sort of envelope did you put in M. Richards pocket? It was not the one which we gave you, the one which you took to Box Five before our eyes; and yet that was the one which contained the twentythousand francs. I beg your pardon. The envelope which M. le directeur gave me was the one which I slipped into M. le directeurs pocket, explained Mame Giry. The one which I took to the ghosts box was another envelope, just like it, which the ghost gave me beforehand and which I hid up my sleeve. So saying, Mame Giry took from her sleeve an envelope ready prepared and similarly addressed to that containing the twentythousand francs. The managers took it from her. They examined it and saw that it was fastened with seals stamped with their own managerial seal. They opened it. It contained twenty Bank of St. Farce notes like those which had so much astounded them the month before. How simple! said Richard. How simple! repeated Moncharmin. And he continued with his eyes fixed upon Mame Giry, as though trying to hypnotize her. So it was the ghost who gave you this envelope and told you to substitute it for the one which we gave you? And it was the ghost who told you to put the other into M. Richards pocket? Yes, it was the ghost. Then would you mind giving us a specimen of your little talents? Here is the envelope. Act as though we knew nothing. As you please, gentlemen. Mame Giry took the envelope with the twenty notes inside it and made for the door. She was on the point of going out when the two managers rushed at her Oh, no! Oh, no! Were not going to be done a second time! Once bitten, twice shy! I beg your pardon, gentlemen, said the old woman, in selfexcuse, you told me to act as though you knew nothing. Well, if you knew nothing, I should go away with your envelope! And then how would you slip it into my pocket? argued Richard, whom Moncharmin fixed with his left eye, while keeping his right on Mame Giry a proceeding likely to strain his sight, but Moncharmin was prepared to go to any length to discover the truth. I am to slip it into your pocket when you least expect it, sir. You know that I always take a little turn behind the scenes, in the course of the evening, and I often go with my daughter to the balletfoyer, which I am entitled to do, as her mother; I bring her her shoes, when the ballet is about to begin in fact, I come and go as I please. The subscribers come and go too. So do you, sir. There are lots of people about. I go behind you and slip the envelope into the tailpocket of your dresscoat. Theres no witchcraft about that! No witchcraft! growled Richard, rolling his eyes like Jupiter Tonans. No witchcraft! Why, Ive just caught you in a lie, you old witch! Mame Giry bristled, with her three teeth sticking out of her mouth. And why, may I ask? Because I spent that evening watching Box Five and the sham envelope which you put there. I did not go to the balletfoyer for a second. No, sir, and I did not give you the envelope that evening, but at the next performance on the evening when the undersecretary of state for fine arts At these words, M. Richard suddenly interrupted Mame Giry Yes, thats true, I remember now! The undersecretary went behind the scenes. He asked for me. I went down to the balletfoyer for a moment. I was on the foyer steps. The undersecretary and his chief clerk were in the foyer itself. I suddenly turned around you had passed behind me, Mme. Giry. You seemed to push against me. Oh, I can see you still, I can see you still! Yes, thats it, sir, thats it. I had just finished my little business. That pocket of yours, sir, is very handy! And Mame Giry once more suited the action to the word. She passed behind M. Richard and, so nimbly that Moncharmin himself was impressed by it, slipped the envelope into the pocket of one of the tails of M. Richards dresscoat. Of course! exclaimed Richard, looking a little pale. Its very clever of O. G. The problem which he had to solve was this how to do away with any dangerous intermediary between the man who gives the twentythousand francs and the man who receives it. And by far the best thing he could hit upon was to come and take the money from my pocket without my noticing it, as I myself did not know that it was there. Its wonderful! Oh, wonderful, no doubt! Moncharmin agreed. Only, you forget, Richard, that I provided tenthousand francs of the twenty and that nobody put anything in my pocket! XVII The SafetyPin Again Moncharmins last phrase so clearly expressed the suspicion in which he now held his partner that it was bound to cause a stormy explanation, at the end of which it was agreed that Richard should yield to all Moncharmins wishes, with the object of helping him to discover the miscreant who was victimizing them. This brings us to the interval after the Garden Act, with the strange conduct observed by M. Rmy and those curious lapses from the dignity that might be expected of the managers. It was arranged between Richard and Moncharmin, first, that Richard should repeat the exact movements which he had made on the night of the disappearance of the first twentythousand francs; and, second, that Moncharmin should not for an instant lose sight of Richards coattail pocket, into which Mame Giry was to slip the twentythousand francs. M. Richard went and placed himself at the identical spot where he had stood when he bowed to the undersecretary for fine arts. M. Moncharmin took up his position a few steps behind him. Mame Giry passed, rubbed up against M. Richard, got rid of her twentythousand francs in the managers coattail pocket and disappeared. Or rather she was conjured away. In accordance with the instructions received from Moncharmin a few minutes earlier, Mercier took the good lady to the actingmanagers office and turned the key on her, thus making it impossible for her to communicate with her ghost. Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the undersecretary for fine arts, before him. Only, though these marks of politeness would have created no astonishment if the undersecretary of state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had nobody in front of him. M. Richard bowed to nobody; bent his back before nobody; and walked backward before nobody. And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing, in addition to pushing away M. Rmy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the manager of the Crdit Central not to touch M. le directeur. Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him presently, when the twentythousand francs were gone, and say Perhaps it was the ambassador or the manager of the Crdit Central or Rmy. The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself admitted, Richard had met nobody in that part of the theater after Mame Giry had brushed up against him. Having begun by walking backward in order to bow, Richard continued to do so from prudence, until he reached the passage leading to the offices of the management. In this way, he was constantly watched by Moncharmin from behind and himself kept an eye on anyone approaching from the front. Once more, this novel method of walking behind the scenes, adopted by the managers of our National Academy of Music, attracted attention; but the managers themselves thought of nothing but their twentythousand francs. On reaching the halfdark passage, Richard said to Moncharmin, in a low voice I am sure that nobody has touched me. You had now better keep at some distance from me and watch me till I come to door of the office it is better not to arouse suspicion and we can see anything that happens. But Moncharmin replied. No, Richard, no! You walk ahead and Ill walk immediately behind you! I wont leave you by a step! But, in that case, exclaimed Richard, they will never steal our twentythousand francs! I should hope not, indeed! declared Moncharmin. Then what we are doing is absurd! We are doing exactly what we did last time. Last time, I joined you as you were leaving the stage and followed close behind you down this passage. Thats true! sighed Richard, shaking his head and passively obeying Moncharmin. Two minutes later, the joint managers locked themselves into their office. Moncharmin himself put the key in his pocket We remained locked up like this, last time, he said, until you left the Opera to go home. Thats so. No one came and disturbed us, I suppose? No one. Then, said Richard, who was trying to collect his memory, then I must certainly have been robbed on my way home from the Opera. No, said Moncharmin in a drier tone than ever, no, thats impossible. For I dropped you in my cab. The twentythousand francs disappeared at your place theres not a shadow of a doubt about that. Its incredible! protested Richard. I am sure of my servants and if one of them had done it, he would have disappeared since. Moncharmin shrugged his shoulders, as though to say that he did not wish to enter into details, and Richard began to think that Moncharmin was treating him in a very insupportable fashion. Moncharmin, Ive had enough of this! Richard, Ive had too much of it! Do you dare to suspect me? Yes, of a silly joke. One doesnt joke with twentythousand francs. Thats what I think, declared Moncharmin, unfolding a newspaper and ostentatiously studying its contents. What are you doing? asked Richard. Are you going to read the paper next? Yes, Richard, until I take you home. Like last time? Yes, like last time. Richard snatched the paper from Moncharmins hands. Moncharmin stood up, more irritated than ever, and found himself faced by an exasperated Richard, who, crossing his arms on his chest, said Look here, Im thinking of this, Im thinking of what I might think if, like last time, after my spending the evening alone with you, you brought me home and if, at the moment of parting, I perceived that twentythousand francs had disappeared from my coatpocket like last time. And what might you think? asked Moncharmin, crimson with rage. I might think that, as you hadnt left me by a foots breadth and as, by your own wish, you were the only one to approach me, like last time, I might think that, if that twentythousand francs was no longer in my pocket, it stood a very good chance of being in yours! Moncharmin leaped up at the suggestion. Oh! he shouted. A safetypin! What do you want a safetypin for? To fasten you up with! A safetypin! A safetypin! You want to fasten me with a safetypin? Yes, to fasten you to the twentythousand francs! Then, whether its here, or on the drive from here to your place, or at your place, you will feel the hand that pulls at your pocket and you will see if its mine! Oh, so youre suspecting me now, are you? A safetypin! And that was the moment when Moncharmin opened the door on the passage and shouted A safetypin! Somebody give me a safetypin! And we also know how, at the same moment, Rmy, who had no safetypin, was received by Moncharmin, while a boy procured the pin so eagerly longed for. And what happened was this Moncharmin first locked the door again. Then he knelt down behind Richards back. I hope, he said, that the notes are still there? So do I, said Richard. The real ones? asked Moncharmin, resolved not to be had this time. Look for yourself, said Richard. I refuse to touch them. Moncharmin took the envelope from Richards pocket and drew out the banknotes with a trembling hand, for, this time, in order frequently to make sure of the presence of the notes, he had not sealed the envelope nor even fastened it. He felt reassured on finding that they were all there and quite genuine. He put them back in the tailpocket and pinned them with great care. Then he sat down behind Richards coattails and kept his eyes fixed on them, while Richard, sitting at his writingtable, did not stir. A little patience, Richard, said Moncharmin. We have only a few minutes to wait. The clock will soon strike twelve. Last time, we left at the last stroke of twelve. Oh, I shall have all the patience necessary! The time passed, slow, heavy, mysterious, stifling. Richard tried to laugh. I shall end by believing in the omnipotence of the ghost, he said. Just now, dont you find something uncomfortable, disquieting, alarming in the atmosphere of this room? Youre quite right, said Moncharmin, who was really impressed. The ghost! continued Richard, in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should be overheard by invisible ears. The ghost! Suppose, all the same, it were a ghost who puts the magic envelopes on the table who talks in Box Five who killed Joseph Buquet who unhooked the chandelier and who robs us! For, after all, after all, after all, there is no one here except you and me, and, if the notes disappear and neither you nor I have anything to do with it, well, we shall have to believe in the ghost in the ghost. At that moment, the clock on the mantelpiece gave its warning click and the first stroke of twelve struck. The two managers shuddered. The perspiration streamed from their foreheads. The twelfth stroke sounded strangely in their ears. When the clock stopped, they gave a sigh and rose from their chairs. I think we can go now, said Moncharmin. I think so, Richard agreed. Before we go, do you mind if I look in your pocket? But, of course, Moncharmin, you must! Well? he asked, as Moncharmin was feeling at the pocket. Well, I can feel the pin. Of course, as you said, we cant be robbed without noticing it. But Moncharmin, whose hands were still fumbling, bellowed I can feel the pin, but I cant feel the notes! Come, no joking, Moncharmin! This isnt the time for it. Well, feel for yourself. Richard tore off his coat. The two managers turned the pocket inside out. The pocket was empty. And the curious thing was that the pin remained, stuck in the same place. Richard and Moncharmin turned pale. There was no longer any doubt about the witchcraft. The ghost! muttered Moncharmin. But Richard suddenly sprang upon his partner. No one but you has touched my pocket! Give me back my twentythousand francs! Give me back my twentythousand francs! On my soul, sighed Moncharmin, who was ready to swoon, on my soul, I swear that I havent got it! Then somebody knocked at the door. Moncharmin opened it automatically, seemed hardly to recognize Mercier, his businessmanager, exchanged a few words with him, without knowing what he was saying and, with an unconscious movement, put the safetypin, for which he had no further use, into the hands of his bewildered subordinate. XVIII The Commissary, the Viscount and the Persian The first words of the commissary of police, on entering the managers office, were to ask after the missing prima donna. Is Christine Daa here? Christine Daa here? echoed Richard. No. Why? As for Moncharmin, he had not the strength left to utter a word. Richard repeated, for the commissary and the compact crowd which had followed him into the office observed an impressive silence. Why do you ask if Christine Daa is here, M. le commissaire? Because she has to be found, declared the commissary of police solemnly. What do you mean, she has to be found? Has she disappeared? In the middle of the performance! In the middle of the performance? This is extraordinary! Isnt it? And what is quite as extraordinary is that you should first learn it from me! Yes, said Richard, taking his head in his hands and muttering. What is this new business? Oh, its enough to make a man send in his resignation! And he pulled a few hairs out of his mustache without even knowing what he was doing. So she so she disappeared in the middle of the performance? he repeated. Yes, she was carried off in the Prison Act, at the moment when she was invoking the aid of the angels; but I doubt if she was carried off by an angel. And I am sure that she was! Everybody looked round. A young man, pale and trembling with excitement, repeated I am sure of it! Sure of what? asked Mifroid. That Christine Daa was carried off by an angel, M. le commissaire, and I can tell you his name. Aha, M. le Vicomte de Chagny! So you maintain that Christine Daa was carried off by an angel an angel of the Opera, no doubt? Yes, monsieur, by an angel of the Opera; and I will tell you where he lives when we are alone. You are right, monsieur. And the commissary of police, inviting Raoul to take a chair, cleared the room of all the rest, excepting the managers. Then Raoul spoke M. le commissaire, the angel is called Erik, he lives in the Opera and he is the Angel of Music! The Angel of Music! Really! That is very curious! The Angel of Music! And, turning to the managers, M. Mifroid asked, Have you an Angel of Music on the premises, gentlemen? Richard and Moncharmin shook their heads, without even speaking. Oh, said the viscount, those gentlemen have heard of the Opera ghost. Well, I am in a position to state that the Opera ghost and the Angel of Music are one and the same person; and his real name is Erik. M. Mifroid rose and looked at Raoul attentively. I beg your pardon, monsieur, but is it your intention to make fun of the law? And, if not, what is all this about the Opera ghost? I say that these gentlemen have heard of him. Gentlemen, it appears that you know the Opera ghost? Richard rose, with the remaining hairs of his mustache in his hand. No, M. Commissary, no, we do not know him, but we wish that we did, for this very evening he has robbed us of twentythousand francs! And Richard turned a terrible look on Moncharmin, which seemed to say Give me back the twentythousand francs, or Ill tell the whole story. Moncharmin understood what he meant, for, with a distracted gesture, he said Oh, tell everything and have done with it! As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns and wondered whether he had strayed into a lunatic asylum. He passed his hand through his hair. A ghost, he said, who, on the same evening, carries off an operasinger and steals twentythousand francs is a ghost who must have his hands very full! If you dont mind, we will take the questions in order. The singer first, the twentythousand francs after. Come, M. de Chagny, let us try to talk seriously. You believe that Mlle. Christine Daa has been carried off by an individual called Erik. Do you know this person? Have you seen him? Yes. Where? In a churchyard. M. Mifroid gave a start, began to scrutinize Raoul again and said Of course! Thats where ghosts usually hang out! And what were you doing in that churchyard? Monsieur, said Raoul, I can quite understand how absurd my replies must seem to you. But I beg you to believe that I am in full possession of my faculties. The safety of the person dearest to me in the world is at stake. I should like to convince you in a few words, for time is pressing and every minute is valuable. Unfortunately, if I do not tell you the strangest story that ever was from the beginning, you will not believe me. I will tell you all I know about the Opera ghost, M. Commissary. Alas, I do not know much! Never mind, go on, go on! exclaimed Richard and Moncharmin, suddenly greatly interested. Unfortunately for their hopes of learning some detail that could put them on the track of their hoaxer, they were soon compelled to accept the fact that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head. All that story about PerrosGuirec, deaths heads and enchanted violins, could only have taken birth in the disordered brain of a youth mad with love. It was evident, also, that Mr. Commissary Mifroid shared their view; and the magistrate would certainly have cut short the incoherent narrative if circumstances had not taken it upon themselves to interrupt it. The door opened and a man entered, curiously dressed in an enormous frockcoat and a tall hat, at once shabby and shiny, that came down to his ears. He went up to the commissary and spoke to him in a whisper. It was doubtless a detective come to deliver an important communication. During this conversation, M. Mifroid did not take his eyes off Raoul. At last, addressing him, he said Monsieur, we have talked enough about the ghost. We will now talk about yourself a little, if you have no objection you were to carry off Mlle. Christine Daa tonight? Yes, M. le commissaire. After the performance? Yes, M. le commissaire. All your arrangements were made? Yes, M. le commissaire. The carriage that brought you was to take you both away. There were fresh horses in readiness at every stage. That is true, M. le commissaire. And nevertheless your carriage is still outside the Rotunda awaiting your orders, is it not? Yes, M. le commissaire. Did you know that there were three other carriages there, in addition to yours? I did not pay the least attention. They were the carriages of Mlle. Sorelli, which could not find room in the Cour de lAdministration; of Carlotta; and of your brother, M. le Comte de Chagny. Very likely. What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorellis and Carlottas are still there, by the Rotunda pavement, M. le Comte de Chagnys carriage is gone. This has nothing to say to I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage with Mlle. Daa? That is a matter that only concerns the family. You have answered my question he was opposed to it and that was why you were carrying Christine Daa out of your brothers reach. Well, M. de Chagny, allow me to inform you that your brother has been smarter than you! It is he who has carried off Christine Daa! Oh, impossible! moaned Raoul, pressing his hand to his heart.

Are you sure? Immediately after the artists disappearance, which was procured by means which we have still to ascertain, he flung into his carriage, which drove right across Paris at a furious pace. Across Paris? asked poor Raoul, in a hoarse voice. What do you mean by across Paris? Across Paris and out of Paris by the Brussels road. Oh, cried the young man, I shall catch them! And he rushed out of the office. And bring her back to us! cried the commissary gaily. Ah, thats a trick worth two of the Angel of Musics! And, turning to his audience, M. Mifroid delivered a little lecture on police methods. I dont know for a moment whether M. le Comte de Chagny has really carried Christine Daa off or not but I want to know and I believe that, at this moment, no one is more anxious to inform us than his brother. And now he is flying in pursuit of him! He is my chief auxiliary! This, gentlemen, is the art of the police, which is believed to be so complicated and which, nevertheless, appears so simple as soon as you see that it consists in getting your work done by people who have nothing to do with the police. But M. le Commissaire de Police Mifroid would not have been quite so satisfied with himself if he had known that the rush of his rapid emissary was stopped at the entrance to the very first corridor. A tall figure blocked Raouls way. Where are you going so fast, M. de Chagny? asked a voice. Raoul impatiently raised his eyes and recognized the astrakhan cap of an hour ago. He stopped Its you! he cried, in a feverish voice. You, who know Eriks secrets and dont want me to speak of them. Who are you? You know who I am! I am the Persian! XIX The Viscount and the Persian Raoul now remembered that his brother had once shown him that mysterious person, of whom nothing was known except that he was a Persian and that he lived in a little oldfashioned flat in the Rue de Rivoli. The man with the ebony skin, the eyes of jade and the astrakhan cap bent over Raoul. I hope, M. de Chagny, he said, that you have not betrayed Eriks secret? And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir? Raoul rejoined haughtily, trying to shake off the intruder. Is he your friend, by any chance? I hope that you said nothing about Erik, sir, because Eriks secret is also Christine Daas and to talk about one is to talk about the other! Oh, sir, said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, you seem to know about many things that interest me; and yet I have no time to listen to you! Once more, M. de Chagny, where are you going so fast? Can not you guess? To Christine Daas assistance. Then, sir, stay here, for Christine Daa is here! With Erik? With Erik. How do you know? I was at the performance and no one in the world but Erik could contrive an abduction like that! Oh, he said, with a deep sigh, I recognized the monsters touch! You know him then? The Persian did not reply, but heaved a fresh sigh. Sir, said Raoul, I do not know what your intentions are, but can you do anything to help me? I mean, to help Christine Daa? I think so, M. de Chagny, and that is why I spoke to you. What can you do? Try to take you to her and to him. If you can do me that service, sir, my life is yours! One word more the commissary of police tells me that Christine Daa has been carried off by my brother, Count Philippe. Oh, M. de Chagny, I dont believe a word of it. Its not possible, is it? I dont know if it is possible or not; but there are ways and ways of carrying people off; and M. le Comte Philippe has never, as far as I know, had anything to do with witchcraft. Your arguments are convincing, sir, and I am a fool! Oh, let us make haste! I place myself entirely in your hands! How should I not believe you, when you are the only one to believe me when you are the only one not to smile when Eriks name is mentioned? And the young man impetuously seized the Persians hands. They were icecold. Silence! said the Persian, stopping and listening to the distant sounds of the theater. We must not mention that name here. Let us say he and him; then there will be less danger of attracting his attention. Do you think he is near us? It is quite possible, sir, if he is not, at this moment, with his victim, in the house on the lake. Ah, so you know that house too? If he is not there, he may be here, in this wall, in this floor, in this ceiling! Come! And the Persian, asking Raoul to deaden the sound of his footsteps, led him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even at the time when Christine used to take him for walks through that labyrinth. If only Darius has come! said the Persian. Who is Darius? Darius? My servant. They were now in the center of a real deserted square, an immense apartment illlit by a small lamp. The Persian stopped Raoul and, in the softest of whispers, asked What did you say to the commissary? I said that Christine Daas abductor was the Angel of Music, alias the Opera ghost, and that the real name was Hush! And did he believe you? No. He attached no importance to what you said? No. He took you for a bit of a madman? Yes. So much the better! sighed the Persian. And they continued their road. After going up and down several staircases which Raoul had never seen before, the two men found themselves in front of a door which the Persian opened with a masterkey. The Persian and Raoul were both, of course, in dressclothes; but, whereas Raoul had a tall hat, the Persian wore the astrakhan cap which I have already mentioned. It was an infringement of the rule which insists upon the tall hat behind the scenes; but in France foreigners are allowed every license the Englishman his travelingcap, the Persian his cap of astrakhan. Sir, said the Persian, your tall hat will be in your way you would do well to leave it in the dressingroom. What dressingroom? asked Raoul. Christine Daas. And the Persian, letting Raoul through the door which he had just opened, showed him the actress room opposite. They were at the end of the passage the whole length of which Raoul had been accustomed to traverse before knocking at Christines door. How well you know the Opera, sir! Not so well as he does! said the Persian modestly. And he pushed the young man into Christines dressingroom, which was as Raoul had left it a few minutes earlier. Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that separated the dressingroom from a big lumberroom next to it. He listened and then coughed loudly. There was a sound of someone stirring in the lumberroom; and, a few seconds later, a finger tapped at the door. Come in, said the Persian. A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long overcoat. He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat, put it on the dressingtable, bowed once again and went to the door. Did no one see you come in, Darius? No, master. Let no one see you go out. The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared. The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols. When Christine Daa was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to bring me these pistols. I have had them a long time and they can be relied upon. Do you mean to fight a duel? asked the young man. It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight, said the other, examining the priming of his pistols. And what a duel! Handing one of the pistols to Raoul, he added, In this duel, we shall be two to one; but you must be prepared for everything, for we shall be fighting the most terrible adversary that you can imagine. But you love Christine Daa, do you not? I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love her, tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her! You must certainly hate Erik! No, sir, said the Persian sadly, I do not hate him. If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased doing harm. Has he done you harm? I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me. I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak of his crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same inexplicable pity that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine! The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it against the wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the wallspace opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed to be looking for something. Ah, he said, after a long search, I have it! And, raising his finger above his head, he pressed against a corner in the pattern of the paper. Then he turned round and jumped off the stool In half a minute, he said, we shall be on his road! and crossing the whole length of the dressingroom he felt the great mirror. No, it is not yielding yet, he muttered. Oh, are we going out by the mirror? asked Raoul. Like Christine Daa. So you knew that Christine Daa went out by that mirror? She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of the inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in the glass! And what did you do? I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream. Or some new fancy of the ghosts! chuckled the Persian. Ah, M. de Chagny, he continued, still with his hand on the mirror, would that we had to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols in their case. Put down your hat, please there and now cover your shirtfront as much as you can with your coat as I am doing. Bring the lapels forward turn up the collar. We must make ourselves as invisible as possible. Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on the spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you are behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance. Then the mirror turns at once and is moved with incredible rapidity. What counterbalance? asked Raoul. Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot. You surely dont expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right. It will then be on a pivot and will swing round. Its not turning! said Raoul impatiently. Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isnt working. Unless it is something else, added the Persian anxiously. What? He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus. Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way! I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system. Its not turning! And Christine, sir, Christine? The Persian said coldly We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do! But he may stop us at the first step! He commands the walls, the doors and the trapdoors. In my country, he was known by a name which means the trapdoor lover. But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them! Yes, sir, that is just what he did! Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him to be silent and pointed to the glass. There was a sort of shivering reflection. Their image was troubled as in a rippling sheet of water and then all became stationary again. You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road! Tonight, there is no other! declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice. And now, look out! And be ready to fire. He himself raised his pistol opposite the glass. Raoul imitated his movement. With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man to his chest and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze of crosslights it turned like one of those revolving doors which have lately been fixed to the entrances of most restaurants, it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with it and suddenly hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness. XX In the Cellars of the Opera Your hand high, ready to fire! repeated Raouls companion quickly. The wall, behind them, having completed the circle which it described upon itself, closed again; and the two men stood motionless for a moment, holding their breath. At last, the Persian decided to make a movement; and Raoul heard him slip on his knees and feel for something in the dark with his groping hands. Suddenly, the darkness was made visible by a small dark lantern and Raoul instinctively stepped backward as though to escape the scrutiny of a secret enemy. But he soon perceived that the light belonged to the Persian, whose movements he was closely observing. The little red disk was turned in every direction and Raoul saw that the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all formed of planking. It must have been the ordinary road taken by Erik to reach Christines dressingroom and impose upon her innocence. And Raoul, remembering the Persians remark, thought that it had been mysteriously constructed by the ghost himself. Later, he learned that Erik had found, all prepared for him, a secret passage, long known to himself alone and contrived at the time of the Paris Commune to allow the jailers to convey their prisoners straight to the dungeons that had been constructed for them in the cellars; for the Federates had occupied the operahouse immediately after the eighteenth of March and had made a startingplace right at the top for their Mongolfier balloons, which carried their incendiary proclamations to the departments, and a state prison right at the bottom. The Persian went on his knees and put his lantern on the ground. He seemed to be working at the floor; and suddenly he turned off his light. Then Raoul heard a faint click and saw a very pale luminous square in the floor of the passage. It was as though a window had opened on the Opera cellars, which were still lit. Raoul no longer saw the Persian, but he suddenly felt him by his side and heard him whisper Follow me and do all that I do. Raoul turned to the luminous aperture. Then he saw the Persian, who was still on his knees, hang by his hands from the rim of the opening, with his pistol between his teeth, and slide into the cellar below. Curiously enough, the viscount had absolute confidence in the Persian, though he knew nothing about him. His emotion when speaking of the monster struck him as sincere; and, if the Persian had cherished any sinister designs against him, he would not have armed him with his own hands. Besides, Raoul must reach Christine at all costs. He therefore went on his knees also and hung from the trap with both hands. Let go! said a voice. And he dropped into the arms of the Persian, who told him to lie down flat, closed the trapdoor above him and crouched down beside him. Raoul tried to ask a question, but the Persians hand was on his mouth and he heard a voice which he recognized as that of the commissary of police. Raoul and the Persian were completely hidden behind a wooden partition. Near them, a small staircase led to a little room in which the commissary appeared to be walking up and down, asking questions. The faint light was just enough to enable Raoul to distinguish the shape of things around him. And he could not restrain a dull cry there were three corpses there. The first lay on the narrow landing of the little staircase; the two others had rolled to the bottom of the staircase. Raoul could have touched one of the two poor wretches by passing his fingers through the partition. Silence! whispered the Persian. He too had seen the bodies and he gave one word in explanation He! The commissarys voice was now heard more distinctly. He was asking for information about the system of lighting, which the stagemanager supplied. The commissary therefore must be in the organ or its immediate neighborhood. Contrary to what one might think, especially in connection with an operahouse, the organ is not a musical instrument. At that time, electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas; hydrogen was used to regulate and modify the lighting of a scene; and this was done by means of a special apparatus which, because of the multiplicity of its pipes, was known as the organ. A box beside the prompters box was reserved for the chief gasman, who from there gave his orders to his assistants and saw that they were executed. Mauclair stayed in this box during all the performances. But now Mauclair was not in his box and his assistants not in their places. Mauclair! Mauclair! The stagemanagers voice echoed through the cellars. But Mauclair did not reply. I have said that a door opened on a little staircase that led to the second cellar. The commissary pushed it, but it resisted. I say, he said to the stagemanager, I cant open this door is it always so difficult? The stagemanager forced it open with his shoulder. He saw that, at the same time, he was pushing a human body and he could not keep back an exclamation, for he recognized the body at once Mauclair! Poor devil! He is dead! But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping over that big body. No, he said, he is deaddrunk, which is not quite the same thing. Its the first time, if so, said the stagemanager. Then someone has given him a narcotic. That is quite possible. Mifroid went down a few steps and said Look! By the light of a little red lantern, at the foot of the stairs, they saw two other bodies. The stagemanager recognized Mauclairs assistants. Mifroid went down and listened to their breathing. They are sound asleep, he said. Very curious business! Some person unknown must have interfered with the gasman and his staff and that person unknown was obviously working on behalf of the kidnapper. But what a funny idea to kidnap a performer on the stage! Send for the doctor of the theater, please. And Mifroid repeated, Curious, decidedly curious business! Then he turned to the little room, addressing the people whom Raoul and the Persian were unable to see from where they lay. What do you say to all this, gentlemen? You are the only ones who have not given your views. And yet you must have an opinion of some sort. Thereupon, Raoul and the Persian saw the startled faces of the joint managers appear above the landingand they heard Moncharmins excited voice There are things happening here, Mr. Commissary, which we are unable to explain. And the two faces disappeared. Thank you for the information, gentlemen, said Mifroid, with a jeer. But the stagemanager, holding his chin in the hollow of his right hand, which is the attitude of profound thought, said It is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep in the theater. I remember finding him, one evening, snoring in his little recess, with his snuffbox beside him. Is that long ago? asked M. Mifroid, carefully wiping his eyeglasses. No, not so very long ago. Wait a bit! It was the night of course, yes It was the night when Carlottayou know, Mr. Commissarygave her famous coack! Really? The night when Carlotta gave her famous coack? And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose, fixed the stagemanager with a contemplative stare. So Mauclair takes snuff, does he? he asked carelessly. Yes, Mr. Commissary. Look, there is his snuffbox on that little shelf. Oh, hes a great snufftaker! So am I, said Mifroid and put the snuffbox in his pocket. Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal of the three bodies by a number of sceneshifters, who were followed by the commissary and all the people with him. Their steps were heard for a few minutes on the stage above. When they were alone the Persian made a sign to Raoul to stand up. Raoul did so; but, as he did not lift his hand in front of his eyes, ready to fire, the Persian told him to resume that attitude and to continue it, whatever happened. But it tires the hand unnecessarily, whispered Raoul. If I do fire, I shant be sure of my aim. Then shift your pistol to the other hand, said the Persian. I cant shoot with my left hand. Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly not calculated to throw light into the young mans flurried brain Its not a question of shooting with the right hand or the left; its a question of holding one of your hands as though you were going to pull the trigger of a pistol with your arm bent. As for the pistol itself, when all is said, you can put that in your pocket! And he added, Let this be clearly understood, or I will answer for nothing. It is a matter of life and death. And now, silence and follow me! The cellars of the Opera are enormous and they are five in number. Raoul followed the Persian and wondered what he would have done without his companion in that extraordinary labyrinth. They went down to the third cellar; and their progress was still lit by some distant lamp. The lower they went, the more precautions the Persian seemed to take. He kept on turning to Raoul to see if he was holding his arm properly, showing him how he himself carried his hand as if always ready to fire, though the pistol was in his pocket. Suddenly, a loud voice made them stop. Someone above them shouted All the doorshutters on the stage! The commissary of police wants them! Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above them old men bent by age and the past burden of operascenery. Some could hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies and outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut. They were the doorshutters, the old, wornout sceneshifters, on whom a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job of shutting doors above and below the stage. They went about incessantly, from top to bottom of the building, shutting the doors; and they were also called The draftexpellers, at least at that time, for I have little doubt that by now they are all dead. Drafts are very bad for the voice, wherever they may come from.3 The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them of inconvenient witnesses, for some of those doorshutters, having nothing else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from idleness or necessity, and spent the night there. The two men might have stumbled over them, waking them up and provoking a request for explanations. For the moment, M. Mifroids inquiry saved them from any such unpleasant encounters. But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades now came down by the same way by which the doorshutters had gone up. Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about, above, below and all around, as though looking for something or somebody. Hang it! muttered the Persian. I dont know what they are looking for, but they might easily find us. Let us get away, quick! Your hand up, sir, ready to fire! Bend your arm more thats it! Hand at the level of your eye, as though you were fighting a duel and waiting for the word to fire! Oh, leave your pistol in your pocket. Quick, come along, downstairs. Level of your eye! Question of life or death! Here, this way, these stairs! They reached the fifth cellar. Oh, what a duel, sir, what a duel! Once in the fifth cellar, the Persian drew breath. He seemed to enjoy a rather greater sense of security than he had displayed when they both stopped in the third; but he never altered the attitude of his hand. And Raoul, remembering the Persians observationI know these pistols can be relied uponwas more and more astonished, wondering why anyone should be so gratified at being able to rely upon a pistol which he did not intend to use! But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase which they had just left and then returned. How stupid of us! he whispered. We shall soon have seen the end of those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their rounds.4 The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them. Flat on your stomach! whispered the Persian. The two men lay flat on the floor. They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them. They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat. It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner. Whew! said the Persian. Weve had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers office. Is it someone belonging to the theater police? asked Raoul. Its someone much worse than that! replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.5 Its not he? He? If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard tonight. But he may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front! The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in sight a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes! Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a mans height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame shaped as a mans face. Oh, said the Persian, between his teeth. I have never seen this before! Pampin was not mad, after all he had seen it! What can that flame be? It is not he, but he may have sent it! Take care! Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes, in Heavens name, at the level of your eyes! I know most of his tricks but not this one. Come, let us run it is safer. Hand at the level of your eyes! And they fled down the long passage that opened before them. After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they stopped. He doesnt often come this way, said the Persian. This side has nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the house on the lake. But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in his business again! So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it seemed to be nearer to them. At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the chalk that grates on the blackboard. They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite red, bright red. How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a mans height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with it? The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more intense, swarming, living, numerous sound, for the sound was certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the darkness, under the fiery face. And the fiery face came on with its noise came level with them! And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high tide, little nightwaves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs, climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes their hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full of little legs and nails and claws and teeth. Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries, and spoke to them Dont move! Dont move! Whatever you do, dont come after me! I am the ratcatcher! Let me pass, with my rats! And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the ratcatcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself, lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds. Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling. I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the ratcatcher, said the Persian. But he never told me that he looked like that and its funny that I should never have met him before. Of course, Erik never comes to this part! Are we very far from the lake, sir? asked Raoul. When shall we get there? Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake! When we are at the lake, we will call out! Christine will hear us! And he will hear us, too! And, as you know him, we shall talk to him! Baby! said the Persian. We shall never enter the house on the lake by the lake! I myself have never landed on the other bank the bank on which the house stands. You have to cross the lake first and it is well guarded! I fear that more than one of those menold sceneshifters, old doorshutterswho have never been seen again were simply tempted to cross the lake. It is terrible. I myself would have been nearly killed there if the monster had not recognized me in time! One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake. And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing under the water, the sirens voice! But then, what are we here for? asked Raoul, in a transport of fever, impatience and rage. If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die for her! The Persian tried to calm the young man. We have only one means of saving Christine Daa, believe me, which is to enter the house unperceived by the monster. And is there any hope of that, sir? Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you! And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake? From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away. We will go back there now. I will tell you, said the Persian, with a sudden change in his voice, I will tell you the exact place, sir it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from Roi de Lahore, exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died. Come, sir, take courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes! But where are we? The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous corridors that crossed each other at right angles. We must be, he said, in the part used more particularly for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces. He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he was afraid of meeting some waterman.

Then they had to protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity. In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the tub and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of that part of Paris.6 The Persian touched a partitionwall and said If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house on the lake. He was striking a partitionwall of the tub, and perhaps it would be as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partitionwalls of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the buildingoperations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was obliged to build a double case in every direction. The work of constructing this double case took a whole year. It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake. To anyone understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persians action would seem to indicate that Eriks mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness. At the Persians words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and listened eagerly. But he heard nothing nothing except distant steps sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater. The Persian darkened his lantern again. Look out! he said. Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall try another way of getting in. And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down lately. They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the silence, till they came to the third cellar. Here the Persian motioned to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees and one handfor the other hand was held in the position indicatedthey reached the end wall. Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the Roi de Lahore. Close to this scene was a set piece. Between the scene and the set piece there was just room for a body for a body which one day was found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet. The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward, toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a lantern, through a cranny between two boards. This glimmer seemed to trouble the Persian. At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act. He slipped between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore, with Raoul close upon his heels. With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall. Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed against the wall in Christines dressingroom. Then a stone gave way, leaving a hole in the wall. This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the pistol. And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow him. The hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost at once. Raoul heard him feeling the stones around him. Then the Persian took out his dark lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath him and immediately extinguished his lantern. Raoul heard him say, in a whisper We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise; take off your boots. The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul. Put them outside the wall, he said. We shall find them there when we leave.7 He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round and said I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let myself drop into his house. You must do exactly the same. Do not be afraid. I will catch you in my arms. Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the Persian, and then dropped down. He felt himself clasped in the Persians arms. Hush! said the Persian. And they stood motionless, listening. The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible. Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again, turning the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through which they had come, and failing to find it Oh! he said. The stone has closed of itself! And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor. The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he examined for a second and flung away with horror. The Punjab lasso! he muttered. What is it? asked Raoul. The Persian shivered. It might very well be the rope by which the man was hanged, and which was looked for so long. And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk of his lantern over the walls. In this way, he lit up a curious thing the trunk of a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves; and the branches of that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared in the ceiling. Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to make out the appearance of things they saw a corner of a branch and a leaf and another leaf and, next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray of light that seemed to reflect itself. Raoul passed his hand over that nothing, over that reflection. Hullo! he said. The wall is a lookingglass! Yes, a lookingglass! said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion. And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he added, We have dropped into the torturechamber! What the Persian knew of this torturechamber and what there befell him and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down in a manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy verbatim. XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera The Persians Narrative It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the trapdoor lover, as we used to call Erik in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me. I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voicefor it was now distinctly a voicewas beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now attracted me. Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new invention of Eriks. But this invention was so perfect that, as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost overturned the boat. Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank How imprudent you are! he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water. Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I dont want you there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me? However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself. He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monsterI have seen him at work in Persia, alasis also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and selfconceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind. He laughed and showed me a long reed. Its the silliest trick you ever saw, he said, but its very useful for breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers.8 I spoke to him severely. Its a trick that nearly killed me! I said. And it may have been fatal to others! You know what you promised me, Erik? No more murders! Have I really committed murders? he asked, putting on his most amiable air. Wretched man! I cried. Have you forgotten the rosy hours of Mazenderan? Yes, he replied, in a sadder tone, I prefer to forget them. I used to make the little sultana laugh, though! All that belongs to the past, I declared; but there is the present and you are responsible to me for the present, because, if I had wished, there would have been none at all for you. Remember that, Erik I saved your life! And I took advantage of the turn of conversation to speak to him of something that had long been on my mind Erik, I asked, Erik, swear that What? he retorted. You know I never keep my oaths. Oaths are made to catch gulls with. Tell me you can tell me, at any rate. Well? Well, the chandelier the chandelier, Erik? What about the chandelier? You know what I mean. Oh, he sniggered, I dont mind telling you about the chandelier! It wasnt I! The chandelier was very old and worn. When Erik laughed, he was more terrible than ever. He jumped into the boat, chuckling so horribly that I could not help trembling. Very old and worn, my dear daroga!9 Very old and worn, the chandelier! It fell of itself! It came down with a smash! And now, daroga, take my advice and go and dry yourself, or youll catch a cold in the head! And never get into my boat again. And, whatever you do, dont try to enter my house Im not always there daroga! And I should be sorry to have to dedicate my Requiem Mass to you! So saying, swinging to and fro, like a monkey, and still chuckling, he pushed off and soon disappeared in the darkness of the lake. From that day, I gave up all thought of penetrating into his house by the lake. That entrance was obviously too well guarded, especially since he had learned that I knew about it. But I felt that there must be another entrance, for I had often seen Erik disappear in the third cellar, when I was watching him, though I could not imagine how. Ever since I had discovered Erik installed in the Opera, I lived in a perpetual terror of his horrible fancies, not in so far as I was concerned, but I dreaded everything for others.10 And whenever some accident, some fatal event happened, I always thought to myself, I should not be surprised if that were Erik, even as others used to say, Its the ghost! How often have I not heard people utter that phrase with a smile! Poor devils! If they had known that the ghost existed in the flesh, I swear they would not have laughed! Although Erik announced to me very solemnly that he had changed and that he had become the most virtuous of men since he was loved for himselfa sentence that, at first, perplexed me most terriblyI could not help shuddering when I thought of the monster. His horrible, unparalleled and repulsive ugliness put him without the pale of humanity; and it often seemed to me that, for this reason, he no longer believed that he had any duty toward the human race. The way in which he spoke of his loveaffairs only increased my alarm, for I foresaw the cause of fresh and more hideous tragedies in this event to which he alluded so boastfully. On the other hand, I soon discovered the curious moral traffic established between the monster and Christine Daa. Hiding in the lumberroom next to the young prima donnas dressingroom, I listened to wonderful musical displays that evidently flung Christine into marvelous ecstasy; but, all the same, I would never have thought that Eriks voicewhich was loud as thunder or soft as angels voices, at willcould have made her forget his ugliness. I understood all when I learned that Christine had not yet seen him! I had occasion to go to the dressingroom and, remembering the lessons he had once given me, I had no difficulty in discovering the trick that made the wall with the mirror swing round and I ascertained the meansof hollow bricks and so onby which he made his voice carry to Christine as though she heard it close beside her. In this way also I discovered the road that led to the well and the dungeonthe Communists dungeonand also the trapdoor that enabled Erik to go straight to the cellars below the stage. A few days later, what was not my amazement to learn by my own eyes and ears that Erik and Christine Daa saw each other and to catch the monster stooping over the little well, in the Communists road and sprinkling the forehead of Christine Daa, who had fainted. A white horse, the horse out of the Profeta, which had disappeared from the stables under the Opera, was standing quietly beside them. I showed myself. It was terrible. I saw sparks fly from those yellow eyes and, before I had time to say a word, I received a blow on the head that stunned me. When I came to myself, Erik, Christine and the white horse had disappeared. I felt sure that the poor girl was a prisoner in the house on the lake. Without hesitation, I resolved to return to the bank, notwithstanding the attendant danger. For twentyfour hours, I lay in wait for the monster to appear; for I felt that he must go out, driven by the need of obtaining provisions. And, in this connection, I may say, that, when he went out in the streets or ventured to show himself in public, he wore a pasteboard nose, with a mustache attached to it, instead of his own horrible hole of a nose. This did not quite take away his corpselike air, but it made him almost, I say almost, endurable to look at. I therefore watched on the bank of the lake and, weary of long waiting, was beginning to think that he had gone through the other door, the door in the third cellar, when I heard a slight splashing in the dark, I saw the two yellow eyes shining like candles and soon the boat touched shore. Erik jumped out and walked up to me Youve been here for twentyfour hours, he said, and youre annoying me. I tell you, all this will end very badly. And you will have brought it upon yourself; for I have been extraordinarily patient with you. You think you are following me, you great booby, whereas its I who am following you; and I know all that you know about me, here. I spared you yesterday, in my Communists road; but I warn you, seriously, dont let me catch you there again! Upon my word, you dont seem able to take a hint! He was so furious that I did not think, for the moment, of interrupting him. After puffing and blowing like a walrus, he put his horrible thought into words Yes, you must learn, once and for allonce and for all, I sayto take a hint! I tell you that, with your recklessnessfor you have already been twice arrested by the shade in the felt hat, who did not know what you were doing in the cellars and took you to the managers, who looked upon you as an eccentric Persian interested in stage mechanism and life behind the scenes I know all about it, I was there, in the office; you know I am everywherewell, I tell you that, with your recklessness, they will end by wondering what you are after here and they will end by knowing that you are after Erik and then they will be after Erik themselves and they will discover the house on the lake. If they do, it will be a bad lookout for you, old chap, a bad lookout! I wont answer for anything. Again he puffed and blew like a walrus. I wont answer for anything! If Eriks secrets cease to be Eriks secrets, it will be a bad lookout for a goodly number of the human race! Thats all I have to tell you, and unless you are a great booby, it ought to be enough for you except that you dont know how to take a hint. He had sat down on the stern of his boat and was kicking his heels against the planks, waiting to hear what I had to answer. I simply said Its not Erik that Im after here! Who then? You know as well as I do its Christine Daa, I answered. He retorted I have every right to see her in my own house. I am loved for my own sake. Thats not true, I said. You have carried her off and are keeping her locked up. Listen, he said. Will you promise never to meddle with my affairs again, if I prove to you that I am loved for my own sake? Yes, I promise you, I replied, without hesitation, for I felt convinced that for such a monster the proof was impossible. Well, then, its quite simple. Christine Daa shall leave this as she pleases and come back again! Yes, come back again, because she wishes come back of herself, because she loves me for myself! Oh, I doubt if she will come back! But it is your duty to let her go. My duty, you great booby! It is my wish my wish to let her go; and she will come back again for she loves me! All this will end in a marriage a marriage at the Madeleine, you great booby! Do you believe me now? When I tell you that my nuptial mass is written wait till you hear the Kyrie. He beat time with his heels on the planks of the boat and sang Kyrie! Kyrie! Kyrie eleison! Wait till you hear, wait till you hear that mass. Look here, I said. I shall believe you if I see Christine Daa come out of the house on the lake and go back to it of her own accord. And you wont meddle any more in my affairs? No. Very well, you shall see that tonight. Come to the masked ball. Christine and I will go and have a look round. Then you can hide in the lumberroom and you shall see Christine, who will have gone to her dressingroom, delighted to come back by the Communists road. And, now, be off, for I must go and do some shopping! To my intense astonishment, things happened as he had announced. Christine Daa left the house on the lake and returned to it several times, without, apparently, being forced to do so. It was very difficult for me to clear my mind of Erik. However, I resolved to be extremely prudent, and did not make the mistake of returning to the shore of the lake, or of going by the Communists road. But the idea of the secret entrance in the third cellar haunted me, and I repeatedly went and waited for hours behind a scene from the Roi de Lahore, which had been left there for some reason or other. At last my patience was rewarded. One day, I saw the monster come toward me, on his knees. I was certain that he could not see me. He passed between the scene behind which I stood and a set piece, went to the wall and pressed on a spring that moved a stone and afforded him an ingress. He passed through this, and the stone closed behind him. I waited for at least thirty minutes and then pressed the spring in my turn. Everything happened as with Erik. But I was careful not to go through the hole myself, for I knew that Erik was inside. On the other hand, the idea that I might be caught by Erik suddenly made me think of the death of Joseph Buquet. I did not wish to jeopardize the advantages of so great a discovery which might be useful to many people, to a goodly number of the human race, in Eriks words; and I left the cellars of the Opera after carefully replacing the stone. I continued to be greatly interested in the relations between Erik and Christine Daa, not from any morbid curiosity, but because of the terrible thought which obsessed my mind that Erik was capable of anything, if he once discovered that he was not loved for his own sake, as he imagined. I continued to wander, very cautiously, about the Opera and soon learned the truth about the monsters dreary loveaffair. He filled Christines mind, through the terror with which he inspired her, but the dear childs heart belonged wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. While they played about, like an innocent engaged couple, on the upper floors of the Opera, to avoid the monster, they little suspected that someone was watching over them. I was prepared to do anything to kill the monster, if necessary, and explain to the police afterward. But Erik did not show himself; and I felt none the more comfortable for that. I must explain my whole plan. I thought that the monster, being driven from his house by jealousy, would thus enable me to enter it, without danger, through the passage in the third cellar. It was important, for everybodys sake, that I should know exactly what was inside. One day, tired of waiting for an opportunity, I moved the stone and at once heard an astounding music the monster was working at his Don Juan Triumphant, with every door in his house wide open. I knew that this was the work of his life. I was careful not to stir and remained prudently in my dark hole. He stopped playing, for a moment, and began walking about his place, like a madman. And he said aloud, at the top of his voice It must be finished first! Quite finished! This speech was not calculated to reassure me and, when the music recommenced, I closed the stone very softly. On the day of the abduction of Christine Daa, I did not come to the theater until rather late in the evening, trembling lest I should hear bad news. I had spent a horrible day, for, after reading in a morning paper the announcement of a forthcoming marriage between Christine and the Vicomte de Chagny, I wondered whether, after all, I should not do better to denounce the monster. But reason returned to me, and I was persuaded that this action could only precipitate a possible catastrophe. When my cab set me down before the Opera, I was really almost astonished to see it still standing! But I am something of a fatalist, like all good Orientals, and I entered ready for anything. Christine Daas abduction in the Prison Act, which naturally surprised everybody, found me prepared. I was quite certain that she had been juggled away by Erik, that prince of conjurers. And I thought positively that this was the end of Christine and perhaps of everybody, so much so that I thought of advising all these people who were staying on at the theater to make good their escape. I felt, however, that they would be sure to look upon me as mad and I refrained. On the other hand, I resolved to act without further delay, as far as I was concerned. The chances were in my favor that Erik, at that moment, was thinking only of his captive. This was the moment to enter his house through the third cellar; and I resolved to take with me that poor little desperate viscount, who, at the first suggestion, accepted, with an amount of confidence in myself that touched me profoundly. I had sent my servant for my pistols. I gave one to the viscount and advised him to hold himself ready to fire, for, after all, Erik might be waiting for us behind the wall. We were to go by the Communists road and through the trapdoor. Seeing my pistols, the little viscount asked me if we were going to fight a duel. I said Yes; and what a duel! But, of course, I had no time to explain anything to him. The little viscount is a brave fellow, but he knew hardly anything about his adversary; and it was so much the better. My great fear was that he was already somewhere near us, preparing the Punjab lasso. No one knows better than he how to throw the Punjab lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of conjurors. When he had finished making the little sultana laugh, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, she herself used to ask him to amuse her by giving her a thrill. It was then that he introduced the sport of the Punjab lasso. He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of strangulation. He would make them lock him into a courtyard to which they brought a warriorusually, a man condemned to deatharmed with a long pike and broadsword. Erik had only his lasso; and it was always just when the warrior thought that he was going to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air. With a turn of the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversarys neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the little sultana and her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding. The little sultana herself learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of her women and even of the friends who visited her. But I prefer to drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. I have mentioned it only to explain why, on arriving with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my companion against the everthreatening danger of death by strangling. My pistols could serve no purpose, for Erik was not likely to show himself; but Erik could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all this to the viscount; besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating the position. I simply told M. de Chagny to keep his hand at the level of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to fire. With his victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage. It catches you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand. This enables you easily to unloose the lasso, which then becomes harmless. After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of doorshutters and the firemen, after meeting the ratcatcher and passing the man in the felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in the third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore. I worked the stone, and we jumped into the house which Erik had built himself in the double case of the foundationwalls of the Opera. And this was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, because Erik was one of the chief contractors under Philippe Garnier, the architect of the Opera, and continued to work by himself when the works were officially suspended, during the war, the siege of Paris and the Commune. I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trapdoors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon astonishing inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the socalled torturechamber. Except in special cases, when the little sultana amused herself by inflicting suffering upon some unoffending citizen, no one was let into it but wretches condemned to death. And, even then, when these had had enough, they were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use at the foot of an iron tree. My alarm, therefore, was great when I saw that the room into which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I had dropped was an exact copy of the torturechamber of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. At our feet, I found the Punjab lasso which I had been dreading all the evening. I was convinced that this rope had already done duty for Joseph Buquet, who, like myself, must have caught Erik one evening working the stone in the third cellar. He probably tried it in his turn, fell into the torturechamber and only left it hanged. I can well imagine Erik dragging the body, in order to get rid of it, to the scene from the Roi de Lahore, and hanging it there as an example, or to increase the superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to his lair! Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains the disappearance of the rope. And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torturechamber! I am no coward, but a cold sweat covered my forehead as I moved the little red disk of my lantern over the walls. M. de Chagny noticed it and asked What is the matter, sir? I made him a violent sign to be silent. XXII In the Torture Chamber The Persians Narrative Continued We were in the middle of a little sixcornered room, the sides of which were covered with mirrors from top to bottom. In the corners, we could clearly see the joins in the glasses, the segments intended to turn on their gear; yes, I recognized them and I recognized the iron tree in the corner, at the bottom of one of those segments the iron tree, with its iron branch, for the hanged men. I seized my companions arm the Vicomte de Chagny was all aquiver, eager to shout to his betrothed that he was bringing her help. I feared that he would not be able to contain himself. Suddenly, we heard a noise on our left. It sounded at first like a door opening and shutting in the next room; and then there was a dull moan. I clutched M. de Chagnys arm more firmly still; and then we distinctly heard these words You must make your choice! The wedding mass or the requiem mass! I recognized the voice of the monster. There was another moan, followed by a long silence. I was persuaded by now that the monster was unaware of our presence in his house, for otherwise he would certainly have managed not to let us hear him. He would only have had to close the little invisible window through which the torturelovers look down into the torturechamber. Besides, I was certain that, if he had known of our presence, the tortures would have begun at once. The important thing was not to let him know; and I dreaded nothing so much as the impulsiveness of the Vicomte de Chagny, who wanted to rush through the walls to Christine Daa, whose moans we continued to hear at intervals. The requiem mass is not at all gay, Eriks voice resumed, whereas the wedding massyou can take my word for itis magnificent! You must take a resolution and know your own mind! I cant go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women.

And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. Soon the moans that accompanied this sort of loves litany increased and increased. I have never heard anything more despairing; and M. de Chagny and I recognized that this terrible lamentation came from Erik himself. Christine seemed to be standing dumb with horror, without the strength to cry out, while the monster was on his knees before her. Three times over, Erik fiercely bewailed his fate You dont love me! You dont love me! You dont love me! And then, more gently Why do you cry? You know it gives me pain to see you cry! A silence. Each silence gave us fresh hope. We said to ourselves Perhaps he has left Christine behind the wall. And we thought only of the possibility of warning Christine Daa of our presence, unknown to the monster. We were unable to leave the torturechamber now, unless Christine opened the door to us; and it was only on this condition that we could hope to help her, for we did not even know where the door might be. Suddenly, the silence in the next room was disturbed by the ringing of an electric bell. There was a bound on the other side of the wall and Eriks voice of thunder Somebody ringing! Walk in, please! A sinister chuckle. Who has come bothering now? Wait for me here. I am going to tell the siren to open the door. Steps moved away, a door closed. I had no time to think of the fresh horror that was preparing; I forgot that the monster was only going out perhaps to perpetrate a fresh crime; I understood but one thing Christine was alone behind the wall! The Vicomte de Chagny was already calling to her Christine! Christine! As we could hear what was said in the next room, there was no reason why my companion should not be heard in his turn. Nevertheless, the viscount had to repeat his cry time after time. At last, a faint voice reached us. I am dreaming! it said. Christine, Christine, it is I, Raoul! A silence. But answer me, Christine! In Heavens name, if you are alone, answer me! Then Christines voice whispered Raouls name. Yes! Yes! It is I! It is not a dream! Christine, trust me! We are here to save you but be prudent! When you hear the monster, warn us! Then Christine gave way to fear. She trembled lest Erik should discover where Raoul was hidden; she told us in a few hurried words that Erik had gone quite mad with love and that he had decided to kill everybody and himself with everybody if she did not consent to become his wife. He had given her till eleven oclock the next evening for reflection. It was the last respite. She must choose, as he said, between the wedding mass and the requiem. And Erik had then uttered a phrase which Christine did not quite understand Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead and buried! But I understood the sentence perfectly, for it corresponded in a terrible manner with my own dreadful thought. Can you tell us where Erik is? I asked. She replied that he must have left the house. Could you make sure? No. I am fastened. I can not stir a limb. When we heard this, M. de Chagny and I gave a yell of fury. Our safety, the safety of all three of us, depended on the girls liberty of movement. But where are you? asked Christine. There are only two doors in my room, the LouisPhilippe room of which I told you, Raoul; a door through which Erik comes and goes, and another which he has never opened before me and which he has forbidden me ever to go through, because he says it is the most dangerous of the doors, the door of the torturechamber! Christine, that is where we are! You are in the torturechamber? Yes, but we can not see the door. Oh, if I could only drag myself so far! I would knock at the door and that would tell you where it is. Is it a door with a lock to it? I asked. Yes, with a lock. Mademoiselle, I said, it is absolutely necessary that you should open that door to us! But how? asked the poor girl tearfully. We heard her straining, trying to free herself from the bonds that held her. I know where the key is, she said, in a voice that seemed exhausted by the effort she had made. But I am fastened so tight. Oh, the wretch! And she gave a sob. Where is the key? I asked, signing to M. de Chagny not to speak and to leave the business to me, for we had not a moment to lose. In the next room, near the organ, with another little bronze key, which he also forbade me to touch. They are both in a little leather bag which he calls the bag of life and death. Raoul! Raoul! Fly! Everything is mysterious and terrible here, and Erik will soon have gone quite mad, and you are in the torturechamber! Go back by the way you came. There must be a reason why the room is called by that name! Christine, said the young man, we will go from here together or die together! We must keep cool, I whispered. Why has he fastened you, mademoiselle? You cant escape from his house; and he knows it! I tried to commit suicide! The monster went out last night, after carrying me here fainting and half chloroformed. He was going to his banker, so he said! When he returned he found me with my face covered with blood. I had tried to kill myself by striking my forehead against the walls. Christine! groaned Raoul; and he began to sob. Then he bound me. I am not allowed to die until eleven oclock tomorrow evening. Mademoiselle, I declared, the monster bound you and he shall unbind you. You have only to play the necessary part! Remember that he loves you! Alas! we heard. Am I likely to forget it! Remember it and smile to him entreat him tell him that your bonds hurt you. But Christine Daa said Hush! I hear something in the wall on the lake! It is he! Go away! Go away! Go away! We could not go away, even if we wanted to, I said, as impressively as I could. We can not leave this! And we are in the torturechamber! Hush! whispered Christine again. Heavy steps sounded slowly behind the wall, then stopped and made the floor creak once more. Next came a tremendous sigh, followed by a cry of horror from Christine, and we heard Eriks voice I beg your pardon for letting you see a face like this! What a state I am in, am I not? Its the other ones fault! Why did he ring? Do I ask people who pass to tell me the time? He will never ask anybody the time again! It is the sirens fault. Another sigh, deeper, more tremendous still, came from the abysmal depths of a soul. Why did you cry out, Christine? Because I am in pain, Erik. I thought I had frightened you. Erik, unloose my bonds. Am I not your prisoner? You will try to kill yourself again. You have given me till eleven oclock tomorrow evening, Erik. The footsteps dragged along the floor again. After all, as we are to die together and I am just as eager as you yes, I have had enough of this life, you know. Wait, dont move, I will release you. You have only one word to say No! And it will at once be over with everybody! You are right, you are right; why wait till eleven oclock tomorrow evening? True, it would have been grander, finer. But that is childish nonsense. We should only think of ourselves in this life, of our own death the rest doesnt matter. Youre looking at me because I am all wet? Oh, my dear, its raining cats and dogs outside! Apart from that, Christine, I think I am subject to hallucinations. You know, the man who rang at the sirens door just nowgo and look if hes ringing at the bottom of the lakewell, he was rather like. There, turn round are you glad? Youre free now. Oh, my poor Christine, look at your wrists tell me, have I hurt them? That alone deserves death. Talking of death, I must sing his requiem! Hearing these terrible remarks, I received an awful presentiment I too had once rung at the monsters door and, without knowing it, must have set some warning current in motion. And I remembered the two arms that had emerged from the inky waters. What poor wretch had strayed to that shore this time? Who was the other one, the one whose requiem we now heard sung? Erik sang like the god of thunder, sang a Dies Irae that enveloped us as in a storm. The elements seemed to rage around us. Suddenly, the organ and the voice ceased so suddenly that M. de Chagny sprang back, on the other side of the wall, with emotion. And the voice, changed and transformed, distinctly grated out these metallic syllables What have you done with my bag? XXIII The Tortures Begin The Persians Narrative Continued The voice repeated angrily What have you done with my bag? So it was to take my bag that you asked me to release you! We heard hurried steps, Christine running back to the LouisPhilippe room, as though to seek shelter on the other side of our wall. What are you running away for? asked the furious voice, which had followed her. Give me back my bag, will you? Dont you know that it is the bag of life and death? Listen to me, Erik, sighed the girl. As it is settled that we are to live together what difference can it make to you? You know there are only two keys in it, said the monster. What do you want to do? I want to look at this room which I have never seen and which you have always kept from me. Its womans curiosity! she said, in a tone which she tried to render playful. But the trick was too childish for Erik to be taken in by it. I dont like curious women, he retorted, and you had better remember the story of Bluebeard and be careful. Come, give me back my bag! Give me back my bag! Leave the key alone, will you, you inquisitive little thing? And he chuckled, while Christine gave a cry of pain. Erik had evidently recovered the bag from her. At that moment, the viscount could not help uttering an exclamation of impotent rage. Why, whats that? said the monster. Did you hear, Christine? No, no, replied the poor girl. I heard nothing. I thought I heard a cry. A cry! Are you going mad, Erik? Whom do you expect to give a cry, in this house? I cried out, because you hurt me! I heard nothing. I dont like the way you said that! Youre trembling. Youre quite excited. Youre lying! That was a cry, there was a cry! There is someone in the torturechamber! Ah, I understand now! There is no one there, Erik! I understand! No one! The man you want to marry, perhaps! I dont want to marry anybody, you know I dont. Another nasty chuckle. Well, it wont take long to find out. Christine, my love, we need not open the door to see what is happening in the torturechamber. Would you like to see? Would you like to see? Look here! If there is someone, if there is really someone there, you will see the invisible window light up at the top, near the ceiling. We need only draw the black curtain and put out the light in here. There, thats it. Lets put out the light! Youre not afraid of the dark, when youre with your little husband! Then we heard Christines voice of anguish No! Im frightened! I tell you, Im afraid of the dark! I dont care about that room now. Youre always frightening me, like a child, with your torturechamber! And so I became inquisitive. But I dont care about it now not a bit not a bit! And that which I feared above all things began, automatically. We were suddenly flooded with light! Yes, on our side of the wall, everything seemed aglow. The Vicomte de Chagny was so much taken aback that he staggered. And the angry voice roared I told you there was someone! Do you see the window now? The lighted window, right up there? The man behind the wall cant see it! But you shall go up the folding steps that is what they are there for! You have often asked me to tell you; and now you know! They are there to give a peep into the torturechamber you inquisitive little thing! What tortures? Who is being tortured? Erik, Erik, say you are only trying to frighten me! Say it, if you love me, Erik! There are no tortures, are there? Go and look at the little window, dear! I do not know if the viscount heard the girls swooning voice, for he was too much occupied by the astounding spectacle that now appeared before his distracted gaze. As for me, I had seen that sight too often, through the little window, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan; and I cared only for what was being said next door, seeking for a hint how to act, what resolution to take. Go and peep through the little window! Tell me what he looks like! We heard the steps being dragged against the wall. Up with you! No! No, I will go up myself, dear! Oh, very well, I will go up. Let me go! Oh, my darling, my darling! How sweet of you! How nice of you to save me the exertion at my age! Tell me what he looks like! At that moment, we distinctly heard these words above our heads There is no one there, dear! No one? Are you sure there is no one? Why, of course not no one! Well, thats all right! Whats the matter, Christine? Youre not going to faint, are you as there is no one there? Here come down there! Pull yourself together as there is no one there! But how do you like the landscape? Oh, very much! There, thats better! Youre better now, are you not? Thats all right, youre better! No excitement! And what a funny house, isnt it, with landscapes like that in it? Yes, its like the Muse Grvin. But, I say, Erik there are no tortures in there! What a fright you gave me! Why as there is no one there? Did you design that room? Its very handsome. Youre a great artist, Erik. Yes, a great artist, in my own line. But tell me, Erik, why did you call that room the torturechamber? Oh, its very simple. First of all, what did you see? I saw a forest. And what is in a forest? Trees. And what is in a tree? Birds. Did you see any birds? No, I did not see any birds. Well, what did you see? Think! You saw branches! And what are the branches? asked the terrible voice. Theres a gibbet! That is why I call my wood the torturechamber! You see, its all a joke. I never express myself like other people. But I am very tired of it! Im sick and tired of having a forest and a torturechamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom! Im tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on weekdays. Here, shall I show you some cardtricks? That will help us to pass a few minutes, while waiting for eleven oclock tomorrow evening. My dear little Christine! Are you listening to me? Tell me you love me! No, you dont love me but no matter, you will! Once, you could not look at my mask because you knew what was behind. And now you dont mind looking at it and you forget what is behind! One can get used to everything if one wishes. Plenty of young people who did not care for each other before marriage have adored each other since! Oh, I dont know what I am talking about! But you would have lots of fun with me. For instance, I am the greatest ventriloquist that ever lived, I am the first ventriloquist in the world! Youre laughing. Perhaps you dont believe me? Listen. The wretch, who really was the first ventriloquist in the world, was only trying to divert the childs attention from the torturechamber; but it was a stupid scheme, for Christine thought of nothing but us! She repeatedly besought him, in the gentlest tones which she could assume Put out the light in the little window! Erik, do put out the light in the little window! For she saw that this light, which appeared so suddenly and of which the monster had spoken in so threatening a voice, must mean something terrible. One thing must have pacified her for a moment; and that was seeing the two of us, behind the wall, in the midst of that resplendent light, alive and well. But she would certainly have felt much easier if the light had been put out. Meantime, the other had already begun to play the ventriloquist. He said Here, I raise my mask a little. Oh, only a little! You see my lips, such lips as I have? Theyre not moving! My mouth is closedsuch mouth as I haveand yet you hear my voice. Where will you have it? In your left ear? In your right ear? In the table? In those little ebony boxes on the mantelpiece? Listen, dear, its in the little box on the right of the mantelpiece what does it say? Shall I turn the scorpion? And now, crack! What does it say in the little box on the left? Shall I turn the grasshopper? And now, crack! Here it is in the little leather bag. What does it say? I am the little bag of life and death! And now, crack! It is in Carlottas throat, in Carlottas golden throat, in Carlottas crystal throat, as I live! What does it say? It says, Its I, Mr. Toad, its I singing! I feel without alarmcoackwith its melody enwind mecoack! And now, crack! It is on a chair in the ghosts box and it says, Madame Carlotta is singing tonight to bring the chandelier down! And now, crack! Aha! Where is Eriks voice now? Listen, Christine, darling! Listen! It is behind the door of the torturechamber! Listen! Its myself in the torturechamber! And what do I say? I say, Woe to them that have a nose, a real nose, and come to look round the torturechamber! Aha, aha, aha! Oh, the ventriloquists terrible voice! It was everywhere, everywhere. It passed through the little invisible window, through the walls. It ran around us, between us. Erik was there, speaking to us! We made a movement as though to fling ourselves upon him. But, already, swifter, more fleeting than the voice of the echo, Eriks voice had leaped back behind the wall! Soon we heard nothing more at all, for this is what happened Erik! Erik! said Christines voice. You tire me with your voice. Dont go on, Erik! Isnt it very hot here? Oh, yes, replied Eriks voice, the heat is unendurable! But what does this mean? The wall is really getting quite hot! The wall is burning! Ill tell you, Christine, dear it is because of the forest next door. Well, what has that to do with it? The forest? Why, didnt you see that it was an African forest? And the monster laughed so loudly and hideously that we could no longer distinguish Christines supplicating cries! The Vicomte de Chagny shouted and banged against the walls like a madman. I could not restrain him. But we heard nothing except the monsters laughter, and the monster himself can have heard nothing else. And then there was the sound of a body falling on the floor and being dragged along and a door slammed and then nothing, nothing more around us save the scorching silence of the south in the heart of a tropical forest! XXIV Barrels! Barrels! Any Barrels to Sell? The Persians Narrative Continued I have said that the room in which M. le Vicomte de Chagny and I were imprisoned was a regular hexagon, lined entirely with mirrors. Plenty of these rooms have been seen since, mainly at exhibitions they are called palaces of illusion, or some such name. But the invention belongs entirely to Erik, who built the first room of this kind under my eyes, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. A decorative object, such as a column, for instance, was placed in one of the corners and immediately produced a hall of a thousand columns; for, thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in its turn, was multiplied indefinitely. But the little sultana soon tired of this infantile illusion, whereupon Erik altered his invention into a torturechamber. For the architectural motive placed in one corner, he substituted an iron tree. This tree, with its painted leaves, was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the patient who was locked into the torturechamber. We shall see how the scene thus obtained was twice altered instantaneously into two successive other scenes, by means of the automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners. These were divided into three sections, fitting into the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved upon its axis. The walls of this strange room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors, thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the victim, who was flung into the chamber emptyhanded and barefoot. There was no furniture. The ceiling was capable of being lit up. An ingenious system of electric heating, which has since been imitated, allowed the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will. I am giving all these details of a perfectly natural invention, producing, with a few painted branches, the supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest blazing under the tropical sun, so that no one may doubt the present balance of my brain or feel entitled to say that I am mad or lying or that I take him for a fool.11 I now return to the facts where I left them. When the ceiling lit up and the forest became visible around us, the viscounts stupefaction was immense. That impenetrable forest, with its innumerable trunks and branches, threw him into a terrible state of consternation. He passed his hands over his forehead, as though to drive away a dream; his eyes blinked; and, for a moment, he forgot to listen. I have already said that the sight of the forest did not surprise me at all; and therefore I listened for the two of us to what was happening next door. Lastly, my attention was especially attracted, not so much to the scene, as to the mirrors that produced it. These mirrors were broken in parts. Yes, they were marked and scratched; they had been starred, in spite of their solidity; and this proved to me that the torturechamber in which we now were had already served a purpose. Yes, some wretch, whose feet were not bare like those of the victims of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had certainly fallen into this mortal illusion and, mad with rage, had kicked against those mirrors which, nevertheless, continued to reflect his agony. And the branch of the tree on which he had put an end to his own sufferings was arranged in such a way that, before dying, he had seen, for his last consolation, a thousand men writhing in his company. Yes, Joseph Buquet had undoubtedly been through all this! Were we to die as he had done? I did not think so, for I knew that we had a few hours before us and that I could employ them to better purpose than Joseph Buquet was able to do. After all, I was thoroughly acquainted with most of Eriks tricks; and now or never was the time to turn my knowledge to account. To begin with, I gave up every idea of returning to the passage that had brought us to that accursed chamber. I did not trouble about the possibility of working the inside stone that closed the passage; and this for the simple reason that to do so was out of the question. We had dropped from too great a height into the torturechamber; there was no furniture to help us reach that passage; not even the branch of the iron tree, not even each others shoulders were of any avail. There was only one possible outlet, that opening into the LouisPhilippe room in which Erik and Christine Daa were. But, though this outlet looked like an ordinary door on Christines side, it was absolutely invisible to us. We must therefore try to open it without even knowing where it was. When I was quite sure that there was no hope for us from Christine Daas side, when I had heard the monster dragging the poor girl from the LouisPhilippe room lest she should interfere with our tortures, I resolved to set to work without delay. But I had first to calm M. de Chagny, who was already walking about like a madman, uttering incoherent cries. The snatches of conversation which he had caught between Christine and the monster had contributed not a little to drive him beside himself add to that the shock of the magic forest and the scorching heat which was beginning to make the perspiration stream down his temples and you will have no difficulty in understanding his state of mind. He shouted Christines name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead against the glass in his endeavors to run down the glades of the illusive forest. In short, the torture was beginning to work its spell upon a brain unprepared for it. I did my best to induce the poor viscount to listen to reason. I made him touch the mirrors and the iron tree and the branches and explained to him, by optical laws, all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims, like ordinary, ignorant people. We are in a room, a little room; that is what you must keep saying to yourself. And we shall leave the room as soon as we have found the door. And I promised him that, if he let me act, without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, I would discover the trick of the door in less than an hours time. Then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until I found the door of the forest, as there was nothing better to do! And he added that, from where he was, the view was splendid! The torture was working, in spite of all that I had said. Myself, forgetting the forest, I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Eriks system of pivots. This weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pea, under which the spring lay hidden. I hunted and hunted. I felt as high as my hands could reach. Erik was about the same height as myself and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature. While groping over the successive panels with the greatest care, I endeavored not to lose a minute, for I was feeling more and more overcome with the heat and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest. I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as illluck would have it, I turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the viscount. I am stifling, he said. All those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat! Do you think you will find that spring soon? If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive! I was not sorry to hear him talk like this. He had not said a word of the forest and I hoped that my companions reason would hold out some time longer against the torture. But he added What consoles me is that the monster has given Christine until eleven tomorrow evening. If we cant get out of here and go to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her! Then Eriks mass can serve for all of us! And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint. As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random, feeling, fumbling, groping. Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn for I found nothing, absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid or if I did not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right above our heads, an African forest. M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite gone. He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daa! From time to time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last Oh, how thirsty I am! he cried, in delirious accents. I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the invisible door especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly night falls quickly in tropical countries suddenly, with hardly any twilight. Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that we had only images of branches to do with. The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount to hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went on looking for my spring. Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away. Oh, whispered the viscount, he is quite close! Dont you see him? There through the trees in that thicket! If he roars again, I will fire! And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come upon the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find. I was quite surprisedand I said so to the viscountthat we had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night. Usually, after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or timbrel, with an asss skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly. The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torturechamber. I called him Erik! Erik! I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no answer to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude? We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis! Yes, far in the distance was an oasis an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees! Tush, it was the scene of the mirage. I recognized it at once the worst of the three! No one had been able to fight against it no one.

I did my utmost to keep my head and not to hope for water, because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do to hang himself on the iron tree! So I cried to M. de Chagny Its the mirage! Its the mirage! Dont believe in the water! Its another trick of the mirrors! Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water! And the desert was real! And so was the forest! And it was no use trying to take him in he was an old, experienced traveler he had been all over the place! And he dragged himself along, saying Water! Water! And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking. And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking. For we not only saw the water, but we heard it! We heard it flow, we heard it ripple! Do you understand that word ripple? It is a sound which you hear with your tongue! You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better! Lastlyand this was the most pitiless torture of allwe heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention. Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm. Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling riverbank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn! When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it and I also licked the glass. It was burning hot! Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene! The iron tree was waiting for me! But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen. I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a blackheaded nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail. I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny. The blackheaded nail yielded to my pressure. And then. And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellarflap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trapdoor. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink? I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone a staircase a dark staircase leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monsters, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first. The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake could not be far away. We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us circular shapes on which I turned the light of my lantern. Barrels! We were in Eriks cellar it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinkingwater. I knew that Erik was a great lover of good wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here! M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels! Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake. We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the barrels were hermetically closed. Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bunghole. At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it in the streets of Paris Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell? My hand desisted from its work. M. de Chagny had also heard. He said Thats funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing! The song was renewed, farther away Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell? Oh, I swear, said the viscount, that the tune dies away in the barrel! We stood up and went to look behind the barrel. Its inside, said M. de Chagny, its inside! But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses. And we returned to the bunghole. M. de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung. Whats this? cried the viscount. This isnt water! The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern. I stooped to look and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness. What I had seen in M. de Chagnys hands was gunpowder! XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper Which? The Persians Narrative Concluded The discovery flung us into a state of alarm that made us forget all our past and present sufferings. We now knew all that the monster meant to convey when he said to Christine Daa Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead and buried! Yes, buried under the ruins of the Paris Grand Opera! The monster had given her until eleven oclock in the evening. He had chosen his time well. There would be many people, many members of the human race, up there, in the resplendent theater. What finer retinue could be expected for his funeral? He would go down to the tomb escorted by the whitest shoulders in the world, decked with the richest jewels. Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! We were all to be blown up in the middle of the performance if Christine Daa said no! Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! And what else could Christine say but no? Would she not prefer to espouse death itself rather than that living corpse? She did not know that on her acceptance or refusal depended the awful fate of many members of the human race! Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! And we dragged ourselves through the darkness, feeling our way to the stone steps, for the light in the trapdoor overhead that led to the room of mirrors was now extinguished; and we repeated to ourselves Eleven oclock tomorrow evening! At last, I found the staircase. But, suddenly I drew myself up on the first step, for a terrible thought had come to my mind What is the time? Ah, what was the time? For, after all, eleven oclock tomorrow evening might be now, might be this very moment! Who could tell us the time? We seemed to have been imprisoned in that hell for days and days for years since the beginning of the world. Perhaps we should be blown up then and there! Ah, a sound! A crack! Did you hear that? There, in the corner good heavens! Like a sound of machinery! Again! Oh, for a light! Perhaps its the machinery that is to blow everything up! I tell you, a cracking sound are you deaf? M. de Chagny and I began to yell like madmen. Fear spurred us on. We rushed up the treads of the staircase, stumbling as we went, anything to escape the dark, to return to the mortal light of the room of mirrors! We found the trapdoor still open, but it was now as dark in the room of mirrors as in the cellar which we had left. We dragged ourselves along the floor of the torturechamber, the floor that separated us from the powdermagazine. What was the time? We shouted, we called M. de Chagny to Christine, I to Erik. I reminded him that I had saved his life. But no answer, save that of our despair, of our madness what was the time? We argued, we tried to calculate the time which we had spent there, but we were incapable of reasoning. If only we could see the face of a watch! Mine had stopped, but M. de Chagnys was still going. He told me that he had wound it up before dressing for the Opera. We had not a match upon us. And yet we must know. M. de Chagny broke the glass of his watch and felt the two hands. He questioned the hands of the watch with his fingertips, going by the position of the ring of the watch. Judging by the space between the hands, he thought it might be just eleven oclock! But perhaps it was not the eleven oclock of which we stood in dread. Perhaps we had still twelve hours before us! Suddenly, I exclaimed Hush! I seemed to hear footsteps in the next room. Someone tapped against the wall. Christine Daas voice said Raoul! Raoul! We were now all talking at once, on either side of the wall. Christine sobbed; she was not sure that she would find M. de Chagny alive. The monster had been terrible, it seemed, had done nothing but rave, waiting for her to give him the yes which she refused. And yet she had promised him that yes, if he would take her to the torturechamber. But he had obstinately declined, and had uttered hideous threats against all the members of the human race! At last, after hours and hours of that hell, he had that moment gone out, leaving her alone to reflect for the last time. Hours and hours? What is the time now? What is the time, Christine? It is eleven oclock! Eleven oclock, all but five minutes! But which eleven oclock? The eleven oclock that is to decide life or death! He told me so just before he went. He is terrible. He is quite mad he tore off his mask and his yellow eyes shot flames! He did nothing but laugh! He said, I give you five minutes to spare your blushes! Here, he said, taking a key from the little bag of life and death, here is the little bronze key that opens the two ebony caskets on the mantelpiece in the LouisPhilippe room. In one of the caskets, you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return, that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no. And he laughed like a drunken demon. I did nothing but beg and entreat him to give me the key of the torturechamber, promising to be his wife if he granted me that request. But he told me that there was no future need for that key and that he was going to throw it into the lake! And he again laughed like a drunken demon and left me. Oh, his last words were, The grasshopper! Be careful of the grasshopper! A grasshopper does not only turn it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high! The five minutes had nearly elapsed and the scorpion and the grasshopper were scratching at my brain. Nevertheless, I had sufficient lucidity left to understand that, if the grasshopper were turned, it would hop and with it many members of the human race! There was no doubt but that the grasshopper controlled an electric current intended to blow up the powdermagazine! M. de Chagny, who seemed to have recovered all his moral force from hearing Christines voice, explained to her, in a few hurried words, the situation in which we and all the Opera were. He told her to turn the scorpion at once. There was a pause. Christine, I cried, where are you? By the scorpion. Dont touch it! The idea had come to mefor I knew my Erikthat the monster had perhaps deceived the girl once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion that would blow everything up. After all, why wasnt he there? The five minutes were long past and he was not back. Perhaps he had taken shelter and was waiting for the explosion! Why had he not returned? He could not really expect Christine ever to consent to become his voluntary prey! Why had he not returned? Dont touch the scorpion! I said. Here he comes! cried Christine. I hear him! Here he is! We heard his steps approaching the LouisPhilippe room. He came up to Christine, but did not speak. Then I raised my voice Erik! It is I! Do you know me? With extraordinary calmness, he at once replied So you are not dead in there? Well, then, see that you keep quiet. I tried to speak, but he said coldly Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up. And he added, The honor rests with mademoiselle. Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpionhow deliberately he spoke!mademoiselle has not touched the grasshopperwith that composure!but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trapdoor lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Arent they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gunpowder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeers you shall make them a present of their lives. For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion. And merrily, merrily, we will be married! A pause; and then If, in two minutes, mademoiselle, you have not turned the scorpion, I shall turn the grasshopper and the grasshopper, I tell you, hops jolly high! The terrible silence began anew. The Vicomte de Chagny, realizing that there was nothing left to do but pray, went down on his knees and prayed. As for me, my blood beat so fiercely that I had to take my heart in both hands, lest it should burst. At last, we heard Eriks voice The two minutes are past. Goodbye, mademoiselle. Hop, grasshopper! Erik, cried Christine, do you swear to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn? Yes, to hop at our wedding. Ah, you see! You said, to hop! At our wedding, ingenuous child! The scorpion opens the ball. But that will do! You wont have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper! Erik! Enough! I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying. Erik! I have turned the scorpion! Oh, the second through which we passed! Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar and the ruins! Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trapdoor, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket! It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of water. And now it became a gurgling sound Guggle! Guggle! We rushed to the trapdoor. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water. The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powderbarrelsBarrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell?and we went down to it with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank. We stood on the floor of the cellar and drank. And we went up the stairs again in the dark, step by step, went up with the water. The water came out of the cellar with us and spread over the floor of the room. If this went on, the whole house on the lake would be swamped. The floor of the torturechamber had itself become a regular little lake, in which our feet splashed. Surely there was water enough now! Erik must turn off the tap! Erik! Erik! That is water enough for the gunpowder! Turn off the tap! Turn off the scorpion! But Erik did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising it was halfway to our waists! Christine! cried M. de Chagny. Christine! The water is up to our knees! But Christine did not reply. We heard nothing but the water rising. No one, no one in the next room, no one to turn the tap, no one to turn the scorpion! We were all alone, in the dark, with the dark water that seized us and clasped us and froze us! Erik! Erik! Christine! Christine! By this time, we had lost our foothold and were spinning round in the water, carried away by an irresistible whirl, for the water turned with us and dashed us against the dark mirror, which thrust us back again; and our throats, raised above the whirlpool, roared aloud. Were we to die here, drowned in the torturechamber? I had never seen that. Erik, at the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, had never shown me that, through the little invisible window. Erik! Erik! I cried. I saved your life! Remember! You were sentenced to death! But for me, you would be dead now! Erik! We whirled around in the water like so much wreckage. But, suddenly, my straying hands seized the trunk of the iron tree! I called M. de Chagny, and we both hung to the branch of the iron tree. And the water rose still higher. Oh! Oh! Can you remember? How much space is there between the branch of the tree and the domeshaped ceiling? Do try to remember! After all, the water may stop, it must find its level! There, I think it is stopping! No, no, oh, horrible! Swim! Swim for your life! Our arms became entangled in the effort of swimming; we choked; we fought in the dark water; already we could hardly breathe the dark air above the dark water, the air which escaped, which we could hear escaping through some venthole or other. Oh, let us turn and turn and turn until we find the air hole and then glue our mouths to it! But I lost my strength; I tried to lay hold of the walls! Oh, how those glass walls slipped from under my groping fingers! We whirled round again! We began to sink! One last effort! A last cry Erik! Christine! Guggle, guggle, guggle! in our ears. Guggle! Guggle! At the bottom of the dark water, our ears went, Guggle! Guggle! And, before losing consciousness entirely, I seemed to hear, between two guggles Barrels! Barrels! Any barrels to sell? XXVI The End of the Ghosts Love Story The previous chapter marks the conclusion of the written narrative which the Persian left behind him. Notwithstanding the horrors of a situation which seemed definitely to abandon them to their deaths, M. de Chagny and his companion were saved by the sublime devotion of Christine Daa. And I had the rest of the story from the lips of the daroga himself. When I went to see him, he was still living in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries. He was very ill, and it required all my ardor as an historian pledged to the truth to persuade him to live the incredible tragedy over again for my benefit. His faithful old servant Darius showed me in to him. The daroga received me at a window overlooking the garden of the Tuileries. He still had his magnificent eyes, but his poor face looked very worn. He had shaved the whole of his head, which was usually covered with an astrakhan cap; he was dressed in a long, plain coat and amused himself by unconsciously twisting his thumbs inside the sleeves; but his mind was quite clear, and he told me his story with perfect lucidity. It seems that, when he opened his eyes, the daroga found himself lying on a bed. M. de Chagny was on a sofa, beside the wardrobe. An angel and a devil were watching over them. After the deceptions and illusions of the torturechamber, the precision of the details of that quiet little middleclass room seemed to have been invented for the express purpose of puzzling the mind of the mortal rash enough to stray into that abode of living nightmare. The wooden bedstead, the waxed mahogany chairs, the chest of drawers, those brasses, the little square antimacassars carefully placed on the backs of the chairs, the clock on the mantelpiece and the harmlesslooking ebony caskets at either end, lastly, the whatnot filled with shells, with red pincushions, with motherofpearl boats and an enormous ostrichegg, the whole discreetly lighted by a shaded lamp standing on a small round table this collection of ugly, peaceable, reasonable furniture, at the bottom of the Opera cellars, bewildered the imagination more than all the late fantastic happenings. And the figure of the masked man seemed all the more formidable in this oldfashioned, neat and trim little frame. It bent down over the Persian and said, in his ear Are you better, daroga? You are looking at my furniture? It is all that I have left of my poor unhappy mother. Christine Daa did not say a word she moved about noiselessly, like a sister of charity, who had taken a vow of silence. She brought a cup of cordial, or of hot tea, he did not remember which. The man in the mask took it from her hands and gave it to the Persian. M. de Chagny was still sleeping. Erik poured a drop of rum into the darogas cup and, pointing to the viscount, said He came to himself long before we knew if you were still alive, daroga. He is quite well. He is asleep. We must not wake him. Erik left the room for a moment, and the Persian raised himself on his elbow, looked around him and saw Christine Daa sitting by the fireside. He spoke to her, called her, but he was still very weak and fell back on his pillow. Christine came to him, laid her hand on his forehead and went away again. And the Persian remembered that, as she went, she did not give a glance at M. de Chagny, who, it is true, was sleeping peacefully; and she sat down again in her chair by the chimneycorner, silent as a sister of charity who had taken a vow of silence. Erik returned with some little bottles which he placed on the mantelpiece. And, again in a whisper, so as not to wake M. de Chagny, he said to the Persian, after sitting down and feeling his pulse You are now saved, both of you. And soon I shall take you up to the surface of the earth, to please my wife. Thereupon he rose, without any further explanation, and disappeared once more. The Persian now looked at Christines quiet profile under the lamp. She was reading a tiny book, with gilt edges, like a religious book. There are editions of The Imitation that look like that. The Persian still had in his ears the natural tone in which the other had said, to please my wife. Very gently, he called her again; but Christine was wrapped up in her book and did not hear him. Erik returned, mixed the daroga a draft and advised him not to speak to his wife again nor to anyone, because it might be very dangerous to everybodys health. Eventually, the Persian fell asleep, like M. de Chagny, and did not wake until he was in his own room, nursed by his faithful Darius, who told him that, on the night before, he was found propped against the door of his flat, where he had been brought by a stranger, who rang the bell before going away. As soon as the daroga recovered his strength and his wits, he sent to Count Philippes house to inquire after the viscounts health. The answer was that the young man had not been seen and that Count Philippe was dead. His body was found on the bank of the Opera lake, on the RueScribe side. The Persian remembered the requiem mass which he had heard from behind the wall of the torturechamber, and had no doubt concerning the crime and the criminal. Knowing Erik as he did, he easily reconstructed the tragedy. Thinking that his brother had run away with Christine Daa, Philippe had dashed in pursuit of him along the Brussels Road, where he knew that everything was prepared for the elopement. Failing to find the pair, he hurried back to the Opera, remembered Raouls strange confidence about his fantastic rival and learned that the viscount had made every effort to enter the cellars of the theater and that he had disappeared, leaving his hat in the prima donnas dressingroom beside an empty pistolcase. And the count, who no longer entertained any doubt of his brothers madness, in his turn darted into that infernal underground maze. This was enough, in the Persians eyes, to explain the discovery of the Comte de Chagnys corpse on the shore of the lake, where the siren, Eriks siren, kept watch. The Persian did not hesitate. He determined to inform the police. Now the case was in the hands of an examiningmagistrate called Faure, an incredulous, commonplace, superficial sort of person, (I write as I think), with a mind utterly unprepared to receive a confidence of this kind. M. Faure took down the darogas depositions and proceeded to treat him as a madman. Despairing of ever obtaining a hearing, the Persian sat down to write. As the police did not want his evidence, perhaps the press would be glad of it; and he had just written the last line of the narrative I have quoted in the preceding chapters, when Darius announced the visit of a stranger who refused his name, who would not show his face and declared simply that he did not intend to leave the place until he had spoken to the daroga. The Persian at once felt who his singular visitor was and ordered him to be shown in. The daroga was right. It was the ghost, it was Erik! He looked extremely weak and leaned against the wall, as though he were afraid of falling. Taking off his hat, he revealed a forehead white as wax. The rest of the horrible face was hidden by the mask. The Persian rose to his feet as Erik entered. Murderer of Count Philippe, what have you done with his brother and Christine Daa? Erik staggered under this direct attack, kept silent for a moment, dragged himself to a chair and heaved a deep sigh. Then, speaking in short phrases and gasping for breath between the words Daroga, dont talk to me about Count Philippe. He was dead by the time I left my house he was dead when the siren sang. It was an accident a sad a very sad accident. He fell very awkwardly but simply and naturally into the lake! You lie! shouted the Persian. Erik bowed his head and said I have not come here to talk about Count Philippe but to tell you that I am going to die. Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daa? I am going to die. Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daa? Of love daroga I am dying of love. That is how it is. I loved her so! And I love her still daroga and I am dying of love for her, I I tell you! If you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her alive. It was the first time, daroga, the first time I ever kissed a woman. Yes, alive. I kissed her alive and she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead! The Persian shook Erik by the arm Will you tell me if she is alive or dead. Why do you shake me like that? asked Erik, making an effort to speak more connectedly. I tell you that I am going to die. Yes, I kissed her alive. And now she is dead? I tell you I kissed her just like that, on her forehead and she did not draw back her forehead from my lips! Oh, she is a good girl! As to her being dead, I dont think so; but it has nothing to do with me. No, no, she is not dead! And no one shall touch a hair of her head! She is a good, honest girl, and she saved your life, daroga, at a moment when I would not have given twopence for your Persian skin. As a matter of fact, nobody bothered about you. Why were you there with that little chap? You would have died as well as he! My word, how she entreated me for her little chap! But I told her that, as she had turned the scorpion, she had, through that very fact, and of her own free will, become engaged to me and that she did not need to have two men engaged to her, which was true enough. As for you, you did not exist, you had ceased to exist, I tell you, and you were going to die with the other! Only, mark me, daroga, when you were yelling like the devil, because of the water, Christine came to me with her beautiful blue eyes wide open, and swore to me, as she hoped to be saved, that she consented to be my living wife! Until then, in the depths of her eyes, daroga, I had always seen my dead wife; it was the first time I saw my living wife there. She was sincere, as she hoped to be saved. She would not kill herself. It was a bargain. Half a minute later, all the water was back in the lake; and I had a hard job with you, daroga, for, upon my honor, I thought you were done for! However! There you were! It was understood that I was to take you both up to the surface of the earth. When, at last, I cleared the LouisPhilippe room of you, I came back alone. What have you done with the Vicomte de Chagny? asked the Persian, interrupting him. Ah, you see, daroga, I couldnt carry him up like that, at once. He was a hostage. But I could not keep him in the house on the lake either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up nicelya whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a ragin the Communists dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, and where no one ever hears you. Then I came back to Christine. She was waiting for me. Erik here rose solemnly. Then he continued, but, as he spoke, he was overcome by all his former emotion and began to tremble like a leaf Yes, she was waiting for me waiting for me erect and alive, a real, living bride as she hoped to be saved. And, when I came forward, more timid than a little child, she did not run away no, no she stayed she waited for me. I even believe daroga that she put out her forehead a little oh, not much just a little like a living bride. And and I kissed her! I! I! I! And she did not die! Oh, how good it is, daroga, to kiss somebody on the forehead! You cant tell! But I! I! My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never let me kiss her. She used to run away and throw me my mask! Nor any other woman ever, ever! Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And I fell at her feet, crying and I kissed her feet her little feet crying. Youre crying, too, daroga and she cried also the angel cried! Erik sobbed aloud and the Persian himself could not retain his tears in the presence of that masked man, who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands clutched at his chest, was moaning with pain and love by turns. Yes, daroga I felt her tears flow on my forehead on mine, mine! They were soft they were sweet! They trickled under my mask they mingled with my tears in my eyes they flowed between my lips. Listen, daroga, listen to what I did. I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears and she did not run away! And she did not die! She remained alive, weeping over me, with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer! And Erik fell into a chair, choking for breath Ah, I am not going to die yet presently I shall but let me cry! Listen, daroga listen to this. While I was at her feet I heard her say, Poor, unhappy Erik! And she took my hand! I had become no more, you know, than a poor dog ready to die for her. I mean it, daroga! I held in my hand a ring, a plain gold ring which I had given her which she had lost and which I had found again a weddingring, you know. I slipped it into her little hand and said, There! Take it! Take it for you and him! It shall be my weddingpresent a present from your poor, unhappy Erik. I know you love the boy dont cry any more! She asked me, in a very soft voice, what I meant.

Then I made her understand that, where she was concerned, I was only a poor dog, ready to die for her but that she could marry the young man when she pleased, because she had cried with me and mingled her tears with mine! Eriks emotion was so great that he had to tell the Persian not to look at him, for he was choking and must take off his mask. The daroga went to the window and opened it. His heart was full of pity, but he took care to keep his eyes fixed on the trees in the Tuileries gardens, lest he should see the monsters face. I went and released the young man, Erik continued, and told him to come with me to Christine. They kissed before me in the LouisPhilippe room. Christine had my ring. I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the RueScribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it. Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the foreheaddont look, daroga!here, on the forehead on my forehead, minedont look, daroga!and they went off together. Christine had stopped crying. I alone cried. Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon! The Persian asked him no questions. He was quite reassured as to the fate of Raoul Chagny and Christine Daa; no one could have doubted the word of the weeping Erik that night. The monster resumed his mask and collected his strength to leave the daroga. He told him that, when he felt his end to be very near at hand, he would send him, in gratitude for the kindness which the Persian had once shown him, that which he held dearest in the world all Christine Daas papers, which she had written for Raouls benefit and left with Erik, together with a few objects belonging to her, such as a pair of gloves, a shoebuckle and two pockethandkerchiefs. In reply to the Persians questions, Erik told him that the two young people, as soon as they found themselves free, had resolved to go and look for a priest in some lonely spot where they could hide their happiness and that, with this object in view, they had started from the northern railway station of the world. Lastly, Erik relied on the Persian, as soon as he received the promised relics and papers, to inform the young couple of his death and to advertise it in the Epoque. That was all. The Persian saw Erik to the door of his flat, and Darius helped him down to the street. A cab was waiting for him. Erik stepped in; and the Persian, who had gone back to the window, heard him say to the driver Go to the Opera. And the cab drove off into the night. The Persian had seen the poor, unfortunate Erik for the last time. Three weeks later, the Epoque published this advertisement Erik is dead. Colophon The Phantom of the Opera was published in 1910 by Gaston Leroux. It was translated from French in 1911 by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Jason Bell, and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The cover page is adapted from Siskuva Suomalaisesta Oopperasta, a painting completed in 1919 by Magnus Enckell. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 856 p.m. and is based on revision 82b3af6. The first edition of this ebook was released on January 29, 2020, 459 a.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksgastonlerouxthephantomoftheoperaalexanderteixeirademattos. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Endnotes I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard himself, the late manager of the Opera. Flash notes drawn on the Bank of St. Farce in France correspond with those drawn on the Bank of Engraving in England. Translators note M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few additional posts as doorshutters for old stagecarpenters whom he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera. In those days, it was still part of the firemens duty to watch over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances; but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the reason, and he replied It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building! Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, It is someone much worse than that! The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honor, I can say no more. All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera. To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard of the Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake. These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persians papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered. They must have been taken by some stagecarpenter or doorshutter. An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds. Daroga is Persian for chief of police. The Persian might easily have admitted that Eriks fate also interested himself, for he was well aware that, if the government of Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all up with the modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair, however, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart; and I do not doubt for a moment that the catastrophes which he feared for others greatly occupied his mind. His conduct, throughout this business, proves it and is above all praise. It is very natural that, at the time when the Persian was writing, he should take so many precautions against any spirit of incredulity on the part of those who were likely to read his narrative. Nowadays, when we have all seen this sort of room, his precautions would be superfluous. Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do. I was speaking about it to M. DujardinBeaumetz, the undersecretary for fine arts, only fortyeight hours before the publication of this book. Who knows but that the score of Don Juan Triumphant might yet be discovered in the house on the lake? See the interview of the special correspondent of the Matin, with MohammedAli Bey, on the day after the entry of the Salonika troops into Constantinople. Epilogue I have now told the singular, but veracious story of the Opera ghost. As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possible to deny that Erik really lived. There are today so many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Eriks actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Chagnys. There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital. The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de Chagny under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gasman at the Opera and of his two assistants what tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the idyll of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine! What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again? She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe. They took the train one day from the northern railway station of the world. Possibly, I too shall take the train at that station, one day, and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, O silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valrius, who disappeared at the same time! Possibly, some day, I shall hear the lonely echoes of the North repeat the singing of her who knew the Angel of Music! Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge dInstruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost. And even that was written by way of irony. The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs, which came to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost. It fell to my lot to complete those proofs with the aid of the daroga himself. Day by day, I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries; and he directed them. He had not been to the Opera for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses. He also told me where to gather further information, whom to ask; and he sent me to call on M. Poligny, at a moment when the poor man was nearly drawing his last breath. I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questions about the ghost produced upon him. He looked at me as if I were the devil and answered only in a few incoherent sentences, which showed, howeverand that was the main thingthe extent of the perturbation which O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restless life (for M. Poligny was what people call a man of pleasure). When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M. Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik humbugged him.The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the lowPoligny was superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public and private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny heard a mysterious voice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spend his time and abuse his partners confidence, he did not wait to hear any more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from Heaven, he believed himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask for money, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to whom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already tired of management for various reasons, went away without trying to investigate further into the personality of that curious O. G., who had forced such a singular memorandumbook upon them. They bequeathed the whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they were rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them in the least. I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, in his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin should describe the Opera ghosts behavior at such length in the first part of the book and hardly mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian, who knew the Memoirs as thoroughly as if he had written them himself, observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I would just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the ghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these lines, which are particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner in which the famous incident of the twentythousand francs was closed As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the first part of my Memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneous fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and partner and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that there are limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when the commissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we had made an appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the whole story, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daa, we found, on Richards table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, With O. G.s compliments. It contained the large sum of money which he had succeeded in playfully extracting, for the time being, from the treasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content with that and drop the business. I agreed with Richard. Alls well that ends well. What do you say, O. G.? Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt of Richards sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affair of the Opera ghost, in order to revenge himself for a few jokes. I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had taken twentythousand francs from Richards pocket in spite of the safetypin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trapdoor lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost. The Persians manuscript, Christine Daas papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to work under MM. Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is no more) and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which I propose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud. I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik having blocked up all the secret entrances.12 On the other hand, I have discovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trapdoor through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the operahouse. In the Communists dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it; and among these were an R and a C. R. C. Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to this day. If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column that separates this from the stagebox. He will find that the column sounds hollow. After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of the ghost there is room inside the column for two men. If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist. The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptors chisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghosts mysterious correspondence with Mame Giry and of his generosity. However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the presence of the actingmanager, in the managers office, within a couple of inches from the deskchair, and which consisted of a trapdoor, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a mans forearm and no longer; a trapdoor that falls back like the lid of a box; a trapdoor through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallowtail coat. That is the way the fortythousand francs went! And that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned. Speaking about this to the Persian, I said So we may take it, as the fortythousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandumbook of his? Dont you believe it! he replied. Erik wanted money. Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness, to prey upon his fellowmen. His reason for restoring the fortythousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted it. He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daa. He had relinquished everything above the surface of the earth. According to the Persians account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a mastermason. He ran away at an early age from his fathers house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the living corpse. He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountainhead of art and magic, among the Gipsies. A period of Eriks life remained quite obscure. He was seen at the fair of NijniNovgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the ShahinShah, was boring herself to death. A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from NijniNovgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Eriks tent. The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to question him. Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some months Eriks will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The Shah took a liking to him. This was the time of the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the darogas narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror contrives a trickcasket. The Shah ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the tricks being discovered. When the ShahinShah found himself the possessor of this gem, he ordered Eriks yellow eyes to be put out. But he reflected that, even when blind, Erik would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign; and also that, as long as Erik was alive, someone would know the secret of the wonderful palace. Eriks death was decided upon, together with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders. The execution of this abominable decree devolved upon the daroga of Mazenderan. Erik had shown him some slight services and procured him many a hearty laugh. He saved Erik by providing him with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his generous indulgence. Fortunately for the daroga, a corpse, halfeaten by the birds of prey, was found on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and was taken for Eriks body, because the darogas friends had dressed the remains in clothing that belonged to Erik. The daroga was let off with the loss of the imperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order of perpetual banishment. As a member of the Royal House, however, he continued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury; and on this he came to live in Paris. As for Erik, he went to Asia Minor and thence to Constantinople, where he entered the Sultans employment. In explanation of the services which he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors, I need only say that it was Erik who constructed all the famous trapdoors and secret chambers and mysterious strongboxes which were found at YildizKiosk after the last Turkish revolution. He also invented those automata, dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects,13 which made people believe that the Commander of the Faithful was awake at one place, when, in reality, he was asleep elsewhere. Of course, he had to leave the Sultans service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia he knew too much. Then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be someone like everybody else. And he became a contractor, like any ordinary contractor, building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks. He tendered for part of the foundations in the Opera. His estimate was accepted. When he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse, his artistic, fantastic, wizard nature resumed the upper hand. Besides, was he not as ugly as ever? He dreamed of creating for his own use a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from mens eyes for all time. The reader knows and guesses the rest. It is all in keeping with this incredible and yet veracious story. Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be someone, like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera ghost. I have prayed over his mortal remains, that God might show him mercy notwithstanding his crimes. Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body, the other day, when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records. It was his skeleton. I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head, for all men are ugly when they have been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Daa had certainly slipped on his finger, when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise. The skeleton was lying near the little well, in the place where the Angel of Music first held Christine Daa fainting in his trembling arms, on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the operahouse. And, now, what do they mean to do with that skeleton? Surely they will not bury it in the common grave! I say that the place of the skeleton of the Opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music. It is no ordinary skeleton. Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook. Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. Prologue In which the author of this singular work informs the reader how he acquired the certainty that the Opera Ghost really existed. The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the boxkeepers, the cloakroom attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade. When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the ghost and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question. The events do not date more than thirty years back; and it would not be difficult to find at the present day, in the foyer of the ballet, old men of the highest respectability, men upon whose word one could absolutely rely, who would remember as though they happened yesterday the mysterious and dramatic conditions that attended the kidnapping of Christine Daa, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe, whose body was found on the bank of the lake that exists in the lower cellars of the Opera on the RueScribe side. But none of those witnesses had until that day thought that there was any reason for connecting the more or less legendary figure of the Opera ghost with that terrible story. The truth was slow to enter my mind, puzzled by an inquiry that at every moment was complicated by events which, at first sight, might be looked upon as superhuman; and more than once I was within an ace of abandoning a task in which I was exhausting myself in the hopeless pursuit of a vain image. At last, I received the proof that my presentiments had not deceived me, and I was rewarded for all my efforts on the day when I acquired the certainty that the Opera ghost was more than a mere shade. On that day, I had spent long hours over The Memoirs of a Manager, the light and frivolous work of the tooskeptical Moncharmin, who, during his term at the Opera, understood nothing of the mysterious behavior of the ghost and who was making all the fun of it that he could at the very moment when he became the first victim of the curious financial operation that went on inside the magic envelope. I had just left the library in despair, when I met the delightful actingmanager of our National Academy, who stood chatting on a landing with a lively and wellgroomed little old man, to whom he introduced me gaily. The actingmanager knew all about my investigations and how eagerly and unsuccessfully I had been trying to discover the whereabouts of the examining magistrate in the famous Chagny case, M. Faure. Nobody knew what had become of him, alive or dead; and here he was back from Canada, where he had spent fifteen years, and the first thing he had done, on his return to Paris, was to come to the secretarial offices at the Opera and ask for a free seat. The little old man was M. Faure himself. We spent a good part of the evening together and he told me the whole Chagny case as he had understood it at the time. He was bound to conclude in favor of the madness of the viscount and the accidental death of the elder brother, for lack of evidence to the contrary; but he was nevertheless persuaded that a terrible tragedy had taken place between the two brothers in connection with Christine Daa. He could not tell me what became of Christine or the viscount. When I mentioned the ghost, he only laughed. He, too, had been told of the curious manifestations that seemed to point to the existence of an abnormal being, residing in one of the most mysterious corners of the Opera, and he knew the story of the envelope; but he had never seen anything in it worthy of his attention as magistrate in charge of the Chagny case, and it was as much as he had done to listen to the evidence of a witness who appeared of his own accord and declared that he had often met the ghost. This witness was none other than the man whom all Paris called the Persian and who was wellknown to every subscriber to the Opera. The magistrate took him for a visionary. I was immensely interested by this story of the Persian. I wanted, if there were still time, to find this valuable and eccentric witness. My luck began to improve and I discovered him in his little flat in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had lived ever since and where he died five months after my visit. I was at first inclined to be suspicious; but when the Persian had told me, with childlike candor, all that he knew about the ghost and had handed me the proofs of the ghosts existenceincluding the strange correspondence of Christine Daato do as I pleased with, I was no longer able to doubt. No, the ghost was not a myth! I have, I know, been told that this correspondence may have been forged from first to last by a man whose imagination had certainly been fed on the most seductive tales; but fortunately I discovered some of Christines writing outside the famous bundle of letters and, on a comparison between the two, all my doubts were removed. I also went into the past history of the Persian and found that he was an upright man, incapable of inventing a story that might have defeated the ends of justice. This, moreover, was the opinion of the more serious people who, at one time or other, were mixed up in the Chagny case, who were friends of the Chagny family, to whom I showed all my documents and set forth all my inferences. In this connection, I should like to print a few lines which I received from General D Sir I can not urge you too strongly to publish the results of your inquiry. I remember perfectly that, a few weeks before the disappearance of that great singer, Christine Daa, and the tragedy which threw the whole of the Faubourg SaintGermain into mourning, there was a great deal of talk, in the foyer of the ballet, on the subject of the ghost; and I believe that it only ceased to be discussed in consequence of the later affair that excited us all so greatly.

But, if it be possibleas, after hearing you, I believeto explain the tragedy through the ghost, then I beg you, sir, to talk to us about the ghost again. Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives. Believe me, etc. Lastly, with my bundle of papers in hand, I once more went over the ghosts vast domain, the huge building which he had made his kingdom. All that my eyes saw, all that my mind perceived, corroborated the Persians documents precisely; and a wonderful discovery crowned my labors in a very definite fashion. It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opera, before burying the phonographic records of the artists voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse. Well, I was at once able to prove that this corpse was that of the Opera ghost. I made the actingmanager put this proof to the test with his own hand; and it is now a matter of supreme indifference to me if the papers pretend that the body was that of a victim of the Commune. The wretches who were massacred, under the Commune, in the cellars of the Opera, were not buried on this side; I will tell where their skeletons can be found in a spot not very far from that immense crypt which was stocked during the siege with all sorts of provisions. I came upon this track just when I was looking for the remains of the Opera ghost, which I should never have discovered but for the unheardof chance described above. But we will return to the corpse and what ought to be done with it. For the present, I must conclude this very necessary introduction by thanking M. Mifroid (who was the commissary of police called in for the first investigations after the disappearance of Christine Daa), M. Rmy, the late secretary, M. Mercier, the late actingmanager, M. Gabriel, the late chorusmaster, and more particularly Mme. la Baronne de CastelotBarbezac, who was once the little Meg of the story (and who is not ashamed of it), the most charming star of our admirable corps de ballet, the eldest daughter of the worthy Mme. Giry, now deceased, who had charge of the ghosts private box. All these were of the greatest assistance to me; and, thanks to them, I shall be able to reproduce those hours of sheer love and terror, in their smallest details, before the readers eyes. And I should be ungrateful indeed if I omitted, while standing on the threshold of this dreadful and veracious story, to thank the present management of the Opera, which has so kindly assisted me in all my inquiries, and M. Messager in particular, together with M. Gabion, the actingmanager, and that most amiable of men, the architect entrusted with the preservation of the building, who did not hesitate to lend me the works of Charles Garnier, although he was almost sure that I would never return them to him. Lastly, I must pay a public tribute to the generosity of my friend and former collaborator, M. J. Le Croze, who allowed me to dip into his splendid theatrical library and to borrow the rarest editions of books by which he set great store. Gaston Leroux The Phantom of the Opera By Gaston Leroux. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Prologue I Is It the Ghost? II The New Margarita III The Mysterious Reason IV Box Five V The Enchanted Violin VI A Visit to Box Five VII Faust and What Followed VIII The Mysterious Brougham IX At the Masked Ball X Forget the Name of the Mans Voice XI Above the TrapDoors XII Apollos Lyre XIII A Masterstroke of the TrapDoor Lover XIV The Singular Attitude of a SafetyPin XV Christine! Christine! XVI Mme. Girys Astounding Revelations as to Her Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost XVII The SafetyPin Again XVIII The Commissary, the Viscount and the Persian XIX The Viscount and the Persian XX In the Cellars of the Opera XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera XXII In the Torture Chamber XXIII The Tortures Begin XXIV Barrels! Barrels! Any Barrels to Sell? XXV The Scorpion or the Grasshopper Which? XXVI The End of the Ghosts Love Story Epilogue Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks The Phantom of the Opera Endnotes

I I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad daysfound myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise. I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept little that nightI was too much excited; and this astonished me too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see myself from head to foot, all struck melike the extraordinary charm of my small chargeas so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so gladstout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome womanas to be positively on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, form little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this timiditywhich the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphaels holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine usI felt quite sure she would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Floras presence could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. And the little boydoes he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable? One wouldnt flatter a child. Oh, miss, most remarkable. If you think well of this one!and she stood there with a plate in her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. Yes; if I do? You will be carried away by the little gentleman! Well, that, I think, is what I came forto be carried away. Im afraid, however, I remember feeling the impulse to add, Im rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London! I can still see Mrs. Groses broad face as she took this in. In Harley Street? In Harley Street. Well, miss, youre not the firstand you wont be the last. Oh, Ive no pretension, I could laugh, to being the only one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow? Not tomorrowFriday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage. I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took her manner as a kind of comforting pledgenever falsified, thank heaven!that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was there! What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her outofdoors; I arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasnt it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, halfreplaced and halfutilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! II This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for an incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. The postbag, that eveningit came latecontained a letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself, with a seal still unbroken. This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, and the headmasters an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him; but mind you dont report. Not a word. Im off! I broke the seal with a great effortso great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. What does it mean? The childs dismissed his school. She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. But arent they all? Sent homeyes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back at all. Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. They wont take him? They absolutely decline. At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them fill with good tears. What has he done? I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letterwhich, however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. Such things are not for me, miss. My counselor couldnt read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my pocket. Is he really bad? The tears were still in her eyes. Do the gentlemen say so? They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning. Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on That hes an injury to the others. At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed up. Master Miles! him an injury? There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. To his poor little innocent mates! Its too dreadful, cried Mrs. Grose, to say such cruel things! Why, hes scarce ten years old. Yes, yes; it would be incredible. She was evidently grateful for such a profession. See him, miss, first. Then believe it! I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her, she added the next momentLook at her! I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice round Os, now presented herself to view at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Groses comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. I take what you said to me at noon as a declaration that youve never known him to be bad. She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very honestly, adopted an attitude. Oh, never known himI dont pretend that! I was upset again. Then you have known him? Yes indeed, miss, thank God! On reflection I accepted this. You mean that a boy who never is? Is no boy for me! I held her tighter. You like them with the spirit to be naughty? Then, keeping pace with her answer, So do I! I eagerly brought out. But not to the degree to contaminate To contaminate?my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. To corrupt. She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. Are you afraid hell corrupt you? She put the question with such a fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in another place. What was the lady who was here before? The last governess? She was also young and prettyalmost as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you. Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her! I recollect throwing off. He seems to like us young and pretty! Oh, he did, Mrs. Grose assented it was the way he liked everyone! She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. I mean thats his waythe masters. I was struck. But of whom did you speak first? She looked blank, but she colored. Why, of him. Of the master? Of who else? There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know. Did she see anything in the boy? That wasnt right? She never told me. I had a scruple, but I overcame it. Was she carefulparticular? Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. About some thingsyes. But not about all? Again she considered. Well, missshes gone. I wont tell tales. I quite understand your feeling, I hastened to reply; but I thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue Did she die here? Noshe went off. I dont know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Groses that struck me as ambiguous. Went off to die? Mrs. Grose looked straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. She was taken ill, you mean, and went home? She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We had then a young womana nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and clever; and she took the children altogether for the interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead. I turned this over. But of what? He never told me! But please, miss, said Mrs. Grose, I must get to my work. III Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion so monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to me should be under an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What I then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any childhis indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely bewilderedso far, that is, as I was not outragedby the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was grotesque. She promptly understood me. You mean the cruel charge? It doesnt live an instant. My dear woman, look at him! She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. I assure you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then? she immediately added. In answer to the letter? I had made up my mind. Nothing. And to his uncle? I was incisive. Nothing. And to the boy himself? I was wonderful. Nothing. She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. Then Ill stand by you. Well see it out. Well see it out! I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a vow. She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her detached hand. Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom To kiss me? No! I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. This, at all events, was for the time a time so full that, as I recall the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning. I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, that charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my own. I learned somethingat first, certainlythat had not been one of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was considerationand consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trapnot designed, but deepto my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so little troublethey were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to speculatebut even this with a dim disconnectednessas to how the rough future (for all futures are rough!) would handle them and might bruise them. They had the bloom of health and happiness; and yet, as if I had been in charge of a pair of little grandees, of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be right, would have to be enclosed and protected, the only form that, in my fancy, the afteryears could take for them was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park. It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillnessthat hush in which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a beast. In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final retirement, a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this hour was the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all when, as the light fadedor rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old treesI could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving pleasureif he ever thought of it!to the person to whose pressure I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and directly asked of me, and that I could, after all, do it proved even a greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently gave their first sign. It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts that, as I dont in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didnt ask more than thatI only asked that he should know; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to meby which I mean the face waswhen, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spotand with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed forwas the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of a pairsquare, incongruous, crenelated structuresthat were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I had so often invoked seemed most in place. It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of the mistake of my first the man who met my eyes was not the person I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that I can hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me wasa few more seconds assured meas little anyone else I knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley StreetI had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took inwhat I did take inall the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame. Thats how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants more became intense. The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, this matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the better, that I could see, in there having been in the houseand for how long, above all?a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this visitant, at all eventsand there was a touch of the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hatseemed to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too far apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have been the right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed his placepassed, looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew. IV It was not that I didnt wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a secret at Blya mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement? I cant say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my collision; I only recall that when I reentered the house darkness had quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular part of it, in factsingular as the rest had beenwas the part I became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes back to me in the general trainthe impression, as I received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of my friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldnt then have phrased, achieved an inward resolutionoffered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible to my room. Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day to dayor at least there were moments, snatched even from clear dutieswhen I had to shut myself up to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any game. Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was but one sane inference someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that we should surely see no more of him. This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose of my office.

There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom. I dont mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that except by saying that instead of growing used to themand its a marvel for a governess I call the sisterhood to witness!I made constant fresh discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the boys conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have noted, to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say thatwithout a wordhe himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his innocence he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean school world, and he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the majoritywhich could include even stupid, sordid headmastersturn infallibly to the vindictive. Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it never made Miles a muff) that kept themhow shall I express it?almost impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who hadmorally, at any ratenothing to whack! I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have caught it, and I should have caught it by the reboundI should have found the trace. I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness. There was a Sundayto get onwhen it rained with such force and for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that had received themwith a publicity perhaps not edifyingwhile I sat with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the grownup dining room. The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but to become aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I wont say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the samehe was the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me how intense the former had been. He remained but a few secondslong enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always. Something, however, happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He had come for someone else. The flash of this knowledgefor it was knowledge in the midst of dreadproduced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing nowmy visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of this; but I took in the whole sceneI gave him time to reappear. I call it time, but how long was it? I cant speak to the purpose today of the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left me they couldnt have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not there not there if I didnt see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just my lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But theres only one I take space to mention. I wondered why she should be scared. V Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed again into view. What in the name of goodness is the matter? She was now flushed and out of breath. I said nothing till she came quite near. With me? I must have made a wonderful face. Do I show it? Youre as white as a sheet. You look awful. I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Groses had dropped, without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her surprise. You came for me for church, of course, but I cant go. Has anything happened? Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer? Through this window? Dreadful! Well, I said, Ive been frightened. Mrs. Groses eyes expressed plainly that she had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she must share! Just what you saw from the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What I sawjust beforewas much worse. Her hand tightened. What was it? An extraordinary man. Looking in. What extraordinary man? I havent the least idea. Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. Then where is he gone? I know still less. Have you seen him before? Yesonce. On the old tower. She could only look at me harder. Do you mean hes a stranger? Oh, very much! Yet you didnt tell me? Nofor reasons. But now that youve guessed Mrs. Groses round eyes encountered this charge. Ah, I havent guessed! she said very simply. How can I if you dont imagine? I dont in the very least. Youve seen him nowhere but on the tower? And on this spot just now. Mrs. Grose looked round again. What was he doing on the tower? Only standing there and looking down at me. She thought a minute. Was he a gentleman? I found I had no need to think. No. She gazed in deeper wonder. No. Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village? Nobodynobody. I didnt tell you, but I made sure. She breathed a vague relief this was, oddly, so much to the good. It only went indeed a little way. But if he isnt a gentleman What is he? Hes a horror. A horror? HesGod help me if I know what he is! Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt inconsequence. Its time we should be at church. Oh, Im not fit for church! Wont it do you good? It wont do them! I nodded at the house. The children? I cant leave them now. Youre afraid? I spoke boldly. Im afraid of him. Mrs. Groses large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute I somehow made out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. When was iton the tower? About the middle of the month. At this same hour. Almost at dark, said Mrs. Grose. Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you. Then how did he get in? And how did he get out? I laughed. I had no opportunity to ask him! This evening, you see, I pursued, he has not been able to get in. He only peeps? I hope it will be confined to that! She had now let go my hand; she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch. Slowly she faced me again. Do you fear for them? We met in another long look. Dont you? Instead of answering she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. You see how he could see, I meanwhile went on. She didnt move. How long was he here? Till I came out. I came to meet him. Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. I couldnt have come out. Neither could I! I laughed again. But I did come. I have my duty. So have I mine, she replied; after which she added What is he like? Ive been dying to tell you. But hes like nobody. Nobody? she echoed. He has no hat. Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. He has red hair, very red, closecurling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strangeawfully; but I only know clearly that theyre rather small and very fixed. His mouths wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers hes quite cleanshaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor. An actor! It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. Grose at that moment. Ive never seen one, but so I suppose them. Hes tall, active, erect, I continued, but neverno, never!a gentleman. My companions face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. A gentleman? she gasped, confounded, stupefied a gentleman he? You know him then? She visibly tried to hold herself. But he is handsome? I saw the way to help her. Remarkably! And dressed? In somebodys clothes. Theyre smart, but theyre not his own. She broke into a breathless affirmative groan Theyre the masters! I caught it up. You do know him? She faltered but a second. Quint! she cried. Quint? Peter Quinthis own man, his valet, when he was here! When the master was? Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. He never wore his hat, but he did wearwell, there were waistcoats missed. They were both herelast year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone. I followed, but halting a little. Alone? Alone with us. Then, as from a deeper depth, In charge, she added. And what became of him? She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. He went, too, she brought out at last. Went where? Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. God knows where! He died. Died? I almost shrieked. She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter the wonder of it. Yes. Mr. Quint is dead. VI It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together in presence of what we had now to live with as we couldmy dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my companions knowledge, hencefortha knowledge half consternation and half compassionof that liability. There had been, this evening, after the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostratethere had been, for either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out. The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governesss plight; yet she accepted without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company enoughquite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good fortune, could steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every feature of what I had seen. He was looking for someone else, you saysomeone who was not you? He was looking for little Miles. A portentous clearness now possessed me. Thats whom he was looking for. But how do you know? I know, I know, I know! My exaltation grew. And you know, my dear! She didnt deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate What if he should see him? Little Miles? Thats what he wants! She looked immensely scared again. The child? Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to them. That he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I had already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. His having been here and the time they were with him? The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, in any way. Oh, the little lady doesnt remember. She never heard or knew. The circumstances of his death? I thought with some intensity. Perhaps not. But Miles would rememberMiles would know. Ah, dont try him! broke from Mrs. Grose. I returned her the look she had given me. Dont be afraid. I continued to think. It is rather odd. That he has never spoken of him? Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were great friends? Oh, it wasnt him! Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. It was Quints own fancy. To play with him, I meanto spoil him. She paused a moment; then she added Quint was much too free. This gave me, straight from my vision of his facesuch a face!a sudden sickness of disgust. Too free with my boy? Too free with everyone! I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of the household, of the halfdozen maids and men who were still of our small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, had ever, within anyones memory attached to the kind old place. It had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. I have it from you thenfor its of great importancethat he was definitely and admittedly bad? Oh, not admittedly. I knew itbut the master didnt. And you never told him? Well, he didnt like talebearinghe hated complaints. He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to him He wouldnt be bothered with more? This squared well enough with my impressions of him he was not a troubleloving gentleman, nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company he kept. All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. I promise you I would have told! She felt my discrimination. I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was afraid. Afraid of what? Of things that man could do. Quint was so cleverhe was so deep. I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. You werent afraid of anything else? Not of his effect? His effect? she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I faltered. On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge. No, they were not in mine! she roundly and distressfully returned. The master believed in him and placed him here because he was supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. So he had everything to say. Yesshe let me have iteven about them. Themthat creature? I had to smother a kind of howl. And you could bear it! No. I couldntand I cant now! And the poor woman burst into tears. A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, in the immediate later hours in especialfor it may be imagined whether I sleptstill haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrows sun was high I had restlessly read into the facts before us almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living manthe dead one would keep awhile!and of the months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winters morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village a catastrophe explainedsuperficially at leastby a visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been producedand as, on the final evidence, had beenby a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for muchpractically, in the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his lifestrange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspectedthat would have accounted for a good deal more. I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seenoh, in the right quarter!that I could succeed where many another girl might have failed. It was an immense help to meI confess I rather applaud myself as I look back!that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of ones own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and Iwell, I had them. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screenI was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didnt last as suspenseit was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yesfrom the moment I really took hold. This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrivedit was the charming thing in both childrento let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me this was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked in a world of their inventionthey had no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the worldthe strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of workfor I was something or other that could siton the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I should see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There was an alien object in viewa figure whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, than the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesmans boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was consciousstill even without lookingof its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were not. Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first placeand there is something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relateI was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. This was her attitude when I at last looked at herlooked with the confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyesI faced what I had to face. VII I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms They knowits too monstrous they know, they know! And what on earth? I felt her incredulity as she held me. Why, all that we knowand heaven knows what else besides! Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. Two hours ago, in the gardenI could scarce articulateFlora saw! Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. She has told you? she panted. Not a wordthats the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, that child! Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of it. Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. Then how do you know? I was thereI saw with my eyes saw that she was perfectly aware. Do you mean aware of him? Noof her. I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companions face. Another personthis time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil a woman in black, pale and dreadfulwith such an air also, and such a face!on the other side of the lake. I was there with the childquiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came. Came howfrom where? From where they come from! She just appeared and stood therebut not so near. And without coming nearer? Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you! My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. Was she someone youve never seen? Yes. But someone the child has. Someone you have. Then, to show how I had thought it all out My predecessorthe one who died. Miss Jessel? Miss Jessel. You dont believe me? I pressed. She turned right and left in her distress. How can you be sure? This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. Then ask Florashes sure! But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. No, for Gods sake, dont! Shell say she isntshell lie! Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. Ah, how can you? Because Im clear. Flora doesnt want me to know. Its only then to spare you. No, nothere are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I dont know what I dont seewhat I dont fear! Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. You mean youre afraid of seeing her again? Oh, no; thats nothingnow! Then I explained. Its of not seeing her. But my companion only looked wan. I dont understand you. Why, its that the child may keep it upand that the child assuredly willwithout my knowing it. At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to give way to. Dear, dearwe must keep our heads! And after all, if she doesnt mind it! She even tried a grim joke. Perhaps she likes it! Likes such thingsa scrap of an infant! Isnt it just a proof of her blessed innocence? my friend bravely inquired. She brought me, for the instant, almost round. Oh, we must clutch at thatwe must cling to it! If it isnt a proof of what you say, its a proof ofGod knows what! For the womans a horror of horrors. Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last raising them, Tell me how you know, she said. Then you admit its what she was? I cried. Tell me how you know, my friend simply repeated. Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked. At you, do you meanso wickedly? Dear me, noI could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She only fixed the child. Mrs. Grose tried to see it. Fixed her? Ah, with such awful eyes! She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. Do you mean of dislike? God help us, no.

Of something much worse. Worse than dislike?this left her indeed at a loss. With a determinationindescribable. With a kind of fury of intention. I made her turn pale. Intention? To get hold of her. Mrs. Groseher eyes just lingering on minegave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement. Thats what Flora knows. After a little she turned round. The person was in black, you say? In mourningrather poor, almost shabby. Butyeswith extraordinary beauty. I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed this. Oh, handsomevery, very, I insisted; wonderfully handsome. But infamous. She slowly came back to me. Miss Jesselwas infamous. She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. They were both infamous, she finally said. So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. I appreciate, I said, the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing. She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them. There was everything. In spite of the difference? Oh, of their rank, their conditionshe brought it woefully out. She was a lady. I turned it over; I again saw. Yesshe was a lady. And he so dreadfully below, said Mrs. Grose. I felt that I doubtless neednt press too hard, in such company, on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an acceptance of my companions own measure of my predecessors abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my full visionon the evidenceof our employers late clever, goodlooking own man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. The fellow was a hound. Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense of shades. Ive never seen one like him. He did what he wished. With her? With them all. It was as if now in my friends own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision It must have been also what she wished! Mrs. Groses face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the same time Poor womanshe paid for it! Then you do know what she died of? I asked. NoI know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didnt; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this! Yet you had, then, your idea Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yesas to that. She couldnt have stayed. Fancy it herefor a governess! And afterward I imaginedand I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful. Not so dreadful as what I do, I replied; on which I must have shown heras I was indeed but too consciousa front of miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. I dont do it! I sobbed in despair; I dont save or shield them! Its far worse than I dreamedtheyre lost! VIII What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough there were in the matter I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing elsedifficult indeed as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I had made it up, I came to be able to give, of each of the persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their special marksa portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized and named them. She wished of coursesmall blame to her!to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that with recurrencefor recurrence we took for grantedI should get used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure had suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought a little ease. On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into Floras special society and there become awareit was almost a luxury!that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet speculation and then had accused me to my face of having cried. I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs but I could literallyfor the time, at all eventsrejoice, under this fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of the childs eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldnt abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Groseas I did there, over and over, in the small hoursthat with their voices in the air, their pressure on ones heart, and their fragrant faces against ones cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to reenumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of selfpossession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didnt, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to divert my attentionthe perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to asseverate to my friend that I was certainwhich was so much to the goodthat I at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mindI scarce know what to call itto invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasionfor the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to helpI felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. I dont believe anything so horrible, I recollect saying; no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I dont. But if I did, you know, theres a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit moreoh, not a scrap, come!to get out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didnt pretend for him that he had not literally ever been bad? He has not literally ever, in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him did you refer? It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that she liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station. I pressed again, of course, at this. You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial? As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad. And for another thing? I waited. He repeated your words to Quint? No, not that. Its just what he wouldnt! she could still impress upon me. I was sure, at any rate, she added, that he didnt. But he denied certain occasions. What occasions? When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutorand a very grand oneand Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him. He then prevaricated about ithe said he hadnt? Her assent was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment I see. He lied. Oh! Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didnt matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. You see, after all, Miss Jessel didnt mind. She didnt forbid him. I considered. Did he put that to you as a justification? At this she dropped again. No, he never spoke of it. Never mentioned her in connection with Quint? She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. Well, he didnt show anything. He denied, she repeated; he denied. Lord, how I pressed her now! So that you could see he knew what was between the two wretches? I dont knowI dont know! the poor woman groaned. You do know, you dear thing, I replied; only you havent my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that suggested to you, I continued, that he covered and concealed their relation. Oh, he couldnt prevent Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens, I fell, with vehemence, athinking, what it shows that they must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him! Ah, nothing thats not nice now! Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. I dont wonder you looked queer, I persisted, when I mentioned to you the letter from his school! I doubt if I looked as queer as you! she retorted with homely force. And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now? Yes, indeedand if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well, I said in my torment, you must put it to me again, but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again! I cried in a way that made my friend stare. There are directions in which I must not for the present let myself go. Meanwhile I returned to her first examplethe one to which she had just previously referredof the boys happy capacity for an occasional slip. If Quinton your remonstrance at the time you speak ofwas a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another. Again her admission was so adequate that I continued And you forgave him that? Wouldnt you? Oh, yes! And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on At all events, while he was with the man Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all! It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still, I mused, They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch. It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friends face how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. Surely you dont accuse him Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody. Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, I must just wait, I wound up. IX I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they were so immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only beblameless and foredoomed as they werea reason the more for taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself What will they think of that? Doesnt it betray too much? It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightnt see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations. They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their poor protectress; I meanthough they got their lessons better and better, which was naturally what would please her mostin the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the pieces they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. I should never get to the bottomwere I to let myself go even nowof the prodigious private commentary, all under still more private correction, with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They had shown me from the first a facility for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, I am at a loss for a different explanation I allude to my unnatural composure on the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember is that I was content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parsons daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous incitement. If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been kicked out by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me add that in their company nowand I was careful almost never to be out of itI could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music and love and success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each of the children was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a marvelous knack of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano broke into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going out in the highest spirits in order to come in as something new. I had had brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed everything was that there was a little boy in the world who could have for the inferior age, sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. They were extraordinarily at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or complained is to make the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across traces of little understandings between them by which one of them should keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the most liberal faithfor which I little care; butand this is another matterI renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance. One eveningwith nothing to lead up or to prepare itI felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of old books at Blylastcentury fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand was Fieldings Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further both a general conviction that it was horribly late and a particular objection to looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, in the fashion of those days, the head of Floras little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though I was deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard at the door of my room. There was a moment during which I listened, reminded of the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being something undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of the open casement just move the halfdrawn blind. Then, with all the marks of a deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had there been anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the passage, on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed and locked the door. I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware of three things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this distinction for quite another circumstance the circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that didnt meet and measure him. I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, thank God, no terror. And he knew I had notI found myself at the end of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should ceasefor the time, at leastto have him to reckon with; and during the minute, accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview hideous just because it was human, as human as to have met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me doubt if even I were in life. I cant express what followed it save by saying that the silence itselfwhich was indeed in a manner an attestation of my strengthbecame the element into which I saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which the next bend was lost. X I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Floras little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she addressed me with a reproach. You naughty where have you been?instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back into my chairfeeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. You were looking for me out of the window? I said. You thought I might be walking in the grounds? Well, you know, I thought someone wasshe never blanched as she smiled out that at me. Oh, how I looked at her now! And did you see anyone? Ah, no! she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little drawl of the negative. At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out at her on the spot and have it all over?give it to her straight in her lovely little lighted face? You see, you see, you know that you do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what it means? This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came if I could immediately have succumbed to it I might have spared myselfwell, youll see what. Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me think you were still there? Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile Because I dont like to frighten you! But if I had, by your idea, gone out? She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or ninetimesnine. Oh, but you know, she quite adequately answered, that you might come back, you dear, and that you have! And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I recognized the pertinence of my return. You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didnt know when; I selected moments when my roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body halfbowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentlemanthey were all numbered nowI had an alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till about one oclock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed the picture. The child had again got upthis time blowing out the taper, and had again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now sawas she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous timewas proved to me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sillthe casement opened forwardand gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for some sound from her.

While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her brothers door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to his window?what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter of my boldness? This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the groundsa figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower onethough high above the gardensin the solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able, the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I had appearedlooking, that is, not so much straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. There was clearly another person above methere was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawnI felt sick as I made it outwas poor little Miles himself. XI It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not provokingon the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the childrenany suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely if she hadnt I dont know what would have become of me, for I couldnt have borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of my trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lords mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how, with the development of the conviction thatas time went on without a public accidentour young things could, after all, look out for themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain to find myself anxious about hers. At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superioritymy accomplishments and my functionin her patience under my pain. She offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witchs broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken his hand without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wonderedoh, how I had wondered!if he were groping about in his little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldnt play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce I should. I was confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed into his little chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all and the window, uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no need of striking a matchI remember how I suddenly dropped, sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must know how he really, as they say, had me. He could do what he liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears. He had me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no it was useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to him. You must tell me nowand all the truth. What did you go out for? What were you doing there? I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. If I tell you why, will you understand? My heart, at this, leaped into my mouth. Would he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really going to tell me? Well, he said at last, just exactly in order that you should do this. Do what? Think mefor a changebad! I shall never forget the sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I presently glanced about the room, I could say Then you didnt undress at all? He fairly glittered in the gloom. Not at all. I sat up and read. And when did you go down? At midnight. When Im bad I am bad! I see, I seeits charming. But how could you be sure I would know it? Oh, I arranged that with Flora. His answers rang out with a readiness! She was to get up and look out. Which is what she did do. It was I who fell into the trap! So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also lookedyou saw. While you, I concurred, caught your death in the night air! He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly to assent. How otherwise should I have been bad enough? he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had been able to draw upon. XII The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made before we separated. It all lies in half a dozen words, I said to her, words that really settle the matter. Think, you know, what I might do! He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to the ground what he might do. Thats what he gave them a taste of at school. Lord, you do change! cried my friend. I dont changeI simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with either child, you would clearly have understood. The more Ive watched and waited the more Ive felt that if there were nothing else to make it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. Never, by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale theyre steeped in their vision of the dead restored. Hes not reading to her, I declared; theyre talking of themtheyre talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and its a wonder Im not. What Ive seen would have made you so; but it has only made me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things. My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. Of what other things have you got hold? Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. Its a game, I went on; its a policy and a fraud! On the part of little darlings? As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems! The very act of bringing it out really helped me to trace itfollow it all up and piece it all together. They havent been goodtheyve only been absent. It has been easy to live with them, because theyre simply leading a life of their own. Theyre not minetheyre not ours. Theyre his and theyre hers! Quints and that womans? Quints and that womans. They want to get to them. Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! But for what? For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of demons, is what brings the others back. Laws! said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad timefor there had been a worse even than this!must have occurred. There could have been no such justification for me as the plain assent of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she brought out after a moment They were rascals! But what can they now do? she pursued. Do? I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. Dont they do enough? I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We were held by it a minute; then I answered They can destroy them! At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. They dont know, as yet, quite howbut theyre trying hard. Theyre seen only across, as it were, and beyondin strange places and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further edge of pools; but theres a deep design, on either side, to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is only a question of time. Theyve only to keep to their suggestions of danger. For the children to come? And perish in the attempt! Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I scrupulously added Unless, of course, we can prevent! Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned things over. Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them away. And whos to make him? She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish face. You, miss. By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and niece mad? But if they are, miss? And if I am myself, you mean? Thats charming news to be sent him by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry. Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. Yes, he do hate worry. That was the great reason Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his indifference must have been awful. As Im not a fiend, at any rate, I shouldnt take him in. My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and grasped my arm. Make him at any rate come to you. I stared. To me? I had a sudden fear of what she might do. Him? He ought to be herehe ought to help. I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than ever yet. You see me asking him for a visit? No, with her eyes on my face she evidently couldnt. Instead of it evenas a woman reads anothershe could see what I myself saw his derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and for the fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted charms. She didnt knowno one knewhow proud I had been to serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. If you should so lose your head as to appeal to him for me She was really frightened. Yes, miss? I would leave, on the spot, both him and you. XIII It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strengthoffered, in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere infernal imagination it was absolutely traceable that they were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. I dont mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at each otherfor, like all bangs, it was something louder than we had intendedthe doors we had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead in general and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of the friends little children had lost. There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, said to the other She thinks shell do it this timebut she wont! To do it would have been to indulge for instanceand for once in a wayin some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them; they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation of the old women of our village. There were things enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go round. They pulled with an art of their own the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over my life, my past, and my friends alone that we could take anything like our easea state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invitedwith no visible connectionto repeat afresh Goody Goslings celebrated mot or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the vicarage pony. It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that second night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, that one had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performanceall strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly states of the air, conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable impressions of the kind of ministering moment, that brought back to me, long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him through the window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. I recognized the signs, the portentsI recognized the moment, the spot. But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; if unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Floras by the lakeand had perplexed her by so sayingthat it would from that moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it. I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind the truth that, whether the children really saw or notsince, that is, it was not yet definitely provedI greatly preferred, as a safeguard, the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened. Well, my eyes were sealed, it appeared, at presenta consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty about that I would have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of my pupils. How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might prove greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken out. Theyre here, theyre here, you little wretches, I would have cried, and you cant deny it now! The little wretches denied it with all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths of whichlike the flash of a fish in a streamthe mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest I watched and who had immediately brought in with himhad straightway, there, turned it on methe lovely upward look with which, from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion had scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition of nerves produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They harassed me so that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to rehearseit was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed despairthe manner in which I might come to the point. I approached it from one side and the other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I always broke down in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on my lips, I said to myself that I should indeed help them to represent something infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said to myself They have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak! I felt myself crimson and I covered my face with my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes occurredI can call them nothing elsethe strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. Though they were not angels, they passed, as the French say, causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their addressing to their younger victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image than they had thought good enough for myself. What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw morethings terrible and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each time, almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, through the very same movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to failone or the otherof the precious question that had helped us through many a peril. When do you think he will come? Dont you think we ought to write?there was nothing like that inquiry, we found by experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. He of course was their uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to themthat may have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of my being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among us. It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward than anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I didnt in these days hate them! Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush. XIV Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Groses, well in sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp, made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of thought that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before me, I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all this belongedI mean their magnificent little surrenderjust to the special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday by his uncles tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miless whole title to independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I should have had nothing to say. I was by the strangest of chances wondering how I should meet him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated. Look here, my dear, you know, he charmingly said, when in the world, please, am I going back to school? Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in them that always made one catch, and I caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady always! His my dear was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. And always with the same lady? I returned. He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out between us. Ah, of course, shes a jolly, perfect lady; but, after all, Im a fellow, dont you see? thatswell, getting on. I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. Yes, youre getting on. Oh, but I felt helpless! I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed to know that and to play with it. And you cant say Ive not been awfully good, can you? I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. No, I cant say that, Miles. Except just that one night, you know! That one night? I couldnt look as straight as he. Why, when I went downwent out of the house. Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for. You forget?he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish reproach. Why, it was to show you I could! Oh, yes, you could. And I can again. I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits about me. Certainly. But you wont. No, not that again. It was nothing. It was nothing, I said. But we must go on. He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. Then when am I going back? I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. Were you very happy at school? He just considered.

Oh, Im happy enough anywhere! Well, then, I quavered, if youre just as happy here! Ah, but that isnt everything! Of course you know a lot But you hint that you know almost as much? I risked as he paused. Not half I want to! Miles honestly professed. But it isnt so much that. What is it, then? WellI want to see more life. I see; I see. We had arrived within sight of the church and of various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our step; I wanted to get there before the question between us opened up much further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he would have to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw out I want my own sort! It literally made me bound forward. There are not many of your own sort, Miles! I laughed. Unless perhaps dear little Flora! You really compare me to a baby girl? This found me singularly weak. Dont you, then, love our sweet Flora? If I didntand you, too; if I didnt! he repeated as if retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we were, for the minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. Yes, if you didnt? He looked, while I waited, at the graves. Well, you know what! But he didnt move, and he presently produced something that made me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. Does my uncle think what you think? I markedly rested. How do you know what I think? Ah, well, of course I dont; for it strikes me you never tell me. But I mean does he know? Know what, Miles? Why, the way Im going on. I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. I dont think your uncle much cares. Miles, on this, stood looking at me. Then dont you think he can be made to? In what way? Why, by his coming down. But wholl get him to come down? I will! the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off alone into church. XV The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay. What I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of me and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to me Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you a life thats so unnatural for a boy. What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan. That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I could give the whole thing upturn my back and retreat. It was only a question of hurrying again, for a few preparations, to the house which the attendance at church of so many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. What was it to get away if I got away only till dinner? That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of whichI had the acute previsionmy little pupils would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in their train. What did you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to worry us soand take our thoughts off, too, dont you know?did you desert us at the very door? I couldnt meet such questions nor, as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so exactly what I should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go. I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircasesuddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back upon my resistance. Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands with evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I took this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it waswith the very act of its announcing itselfthat her identity flared up in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing herYou terrible, miserable woman!I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay. XVI I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Groses odd face. I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea I secured five minutes with her in the housekeepers room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her best facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the put awayof drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please themso long as they were thereof course I promised. But what had happened to you? I only went with you for the walk, I said. I had then to come back to meet a friend. She showed her surprise. A friendyou? Oh, yes, I have a couple! I laughed. But did the children give you a reason? For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it better. Do you like it better? My face had made her rueful. No, I like it worse! But after an instant I added Did they say why I should like it better? No; Master Miles only said, We must do nothing but what she likes! I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say? Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, Oh, of course, of course!and I said the same. I thought a moment. You were too sweet, tooI can hear you all. But nonetheless, between Miles and me, its now all out. All out? My companion stared. But what, miss? Everything. It doesnt matter. Ive made up my mind. I came home, my dear, I went on, for a talk with Miss Jessel. I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. A talk! Do you mean she spoke? It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom. And what did she say? I can hear the good woman still, and the candor of her stupefaction. That she suffers the torments! It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. Do you mean, she faltered, of the lost? Of the lost. Of the damned. And thats why, to share them I faltered myself with the horror of it. But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. To share them? She wants Flora. Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to show I was. As Ive told you, however, it doesnt matter. Because youve made up your mind? But to what? To everything. And what do you call everything? Why, sending for their uncle. Oh, miss, in pity do, my friend broke out. Ah, but I will, I will! I see its the only way. Whats out, as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks Im afraid toand has ideas of what he gains by thathe shall see hes mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if Im to be reproached with having done nothing again about more school Yes, miss my companion pressed me. Well, theres that awful reason. There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was excusable for being vague. Butawhich? Why, the letter from his old place. Youll show it to the master? I ought to have done so on the instant. Oh, no! said Mrs. Grose with decision. Ill put it before him, I went on inexorably, that I cant undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled For weve never in the least known what! Mrs. Grose declared. For wickedness. For what elsewhen hes so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he illnatured? Hes exquisiteso it can be only that; and that would open up the whole thing. After all, I said, its their uncles fault. If he left here such people! He didnt really in the least know them. The faults mine. She had turned quite pale. Well, you shant suffer, I answered. The children shant! she emphatically returned. I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. Then what am I to tell him? You neednt tell him anything. Ill tell him. I measured this. Do you mean youll write? Remembering she couldnt, I caught myself up. How do you communicate? I tell the bailiff. He writes. And should you like him to write our story? My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her eyes. Ah, miss, you write! Welltonight, I at last answered; and on this we separated. XVII I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at Miless door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. I say, you therecome in. It was a gaiety in the gloom! I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very much at his ease. Well, what are you up to? he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was out. I stood over him with my candle. How did you know I was there? Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? Youre like a troop of cavalry! he beautifully laughed. Then you werent asleep? Not much! I lie awake and think. I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. What is it, I asked, that you think of? What in the world, my dear, but you? Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesnt insist on that! I had so far rather you slept. Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours. I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. Of what queer business, Miles? Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest! I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. What do you mean by all the rest? Oh, you know, you know! I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. Certainly you shall go back to school, I said, if it be that that troubles you. But not to the old placewe must find another, a better. How could I know it did trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all? His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a childrens hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might help! Do you know youve never said a word to me about your schoolI mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way? He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. Havent I? It wasnt for me to help himit was for the thing I had met! Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. No, neverfrom the hour you came back. Youve never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, little Milesno, neverhave you given me an inkling of anything that may have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much Im in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present. It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older personimposed him almost as an intellectual equal. I thought you wanted to go on as you are. It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. I dontI dont. I want to get away. Youre tired of Bly? Oh, no, I like Bly. Well, then? Oh, you know what a boy wants! I felt that I didnt know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. You want to go to your uncle? Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. Ah, you cant get off with that! I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. My dear, I dont want to get off! You cant, even if you do. You cant, you cant!he lay beautifully staring. My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle things. If we do, I returned with some spirit, you may be sure it will be to take you quite away. Well, dont you understand that thats exactly what Im working for? Youll have to tell himabout the way youve let it all drop youll have to tell him a tremendous lot! The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more. And how much will you, Miles, have to tell him? There are things hell ask you! He turned it over. Very likely. But what things? The things youve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you. He cant send you back Oh, I dont want to go back! he broke in. I want a new field. He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. Dear little Miles, dear little Miles! My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with indulgent good humor. Well, old lady? Is there nothingnothing at all that you want to tell me? He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. Ive told youI told you this morning. Oh, I was sorry for him! That you just want me not to worry you? He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; then ever so gently, To let me alone, he replied. There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. Ive just begun a letter to your uncle, I said. Well, then, finish it! I waited a minute. What happened before? He gazed up at me again. Before what? Before you came back. And before you went away. For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. What happened? It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting consciousnessit made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing him. Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you knew how I want to help you! Its only that, its nothing but that, and Id rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrongId rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Milesoh, I brought it out now even if I should go too farI just want you to help me to save you! But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. Why, the candles out! I then cried. It was I who blew it, dear! said Miles. XVIII The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly Have you written, miss? YesIve written. But I didnt addfor the hourthat my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of my feeble range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil had been opened up to him all the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have flowered into an act. He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I shouldnt like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying outright The true knights we love to read about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now you mean thatto be let alone yourself and not followed upyoull cease to worry and spy upon me, wont keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. Well, I come, you seebut I dont go! Therell be plenty of time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle. It may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played; and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadnt really, in the least, slept I had only done something much worseI had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say Why, my dear, how do I know?breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first given her. Shell be above, she presently saidin one of the rooms you havent searched. No; shes at a distance. I had made up my mind. She has gone out. Mrs. Grose stared. Without a hat? I naturally also looked volumes. Isnt that woman always without one? Shes with her? Shes with her! I declared. We must find them. My hand was on my friends arm, but she failed for the moment, confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. And wheres Master Miles? Oh, hes with Quint. Theyre in the schoolroom. Lord, miss! My view, I was myself awareand therefore I suppose my tonehad never yet reached so calm an assurance. The tricks played, I went on; theyve successfully worked their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off. Divine? Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. Infernal, then! I almost cheerfully rejoined. He has provided for himself as well. But come! She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. You leave him? So long with Quint? YesI dont mind that now. She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, Because of your letter? she eagerly brought out. I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. Luke will take it, I said as I came back. I reached the house door and opened it; I was already on the steps. My companion still demurred the storm of the night and the early morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to the drive while she stood in the doorway. You go with nothing on? What do I care when the child has nothing? I cant wait to dress, I cried, and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, upstairs. With them? Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! XIX We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flatbottomed boat moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs. Groses steps so marked a directiona direction that made her, when she perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified. Youre going to the water, Miss?you think shes in? She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But what I judge most likely is that shes on the spot from which, the other day, we saw together what I told you. When she pretended not to see? With that astounding selfpossession? Ive always been sure she wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her. Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. You suppose they really talk of them? I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard them, would simply appall us. And if she is there Yes? Then Miss Jessel is? Beyond a doubt. You shall see. Oh, thank you! my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the greater part of the water without a sight of the child. There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion of my friends eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake. No, no; wait! She has taken the boat. My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across the lake. Then where is it? Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go over, and then has managed to hide it. All alonethat child? Shes not alone, and at such times shes not a child shes an old, old woman. I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs.

Grose took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to the water. But if the boats there, where on earths she? my colleague anxiously asked. Thats exactly what we must learn. And I started to walk further. By going all the way round? Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but its far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight over. Laws! cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got halfway rounda devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by a path choked with overgrowthI paused to give her breath. I sustained her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. I recognized, as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. Then, There she is! we both exclaimed at once. Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was to stoop straight down and pluckquite as if it were all she was there fora big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to break the spell she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch itwhich I did the more intently when I saw Floras face peep at me over our companions shoulder. It was serious nowthe flicker had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of her relation. Still, all this while, nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept the childs hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank look she launched me. Ill be hanged, it said, if Ill speak! It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. Why, where are your things? Where yours are, my dear! I promptly returned. She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an answer quite sufficient. And wheres Miles? she went on. There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow in a deluge. Ill tell you if youll tell me I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. Well, what? Mrs. Groses suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I brought the thing out handsomely. Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel? XX Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the childs face now received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violencethe shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleagues arm. Shes there, shes there! Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to herwith the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and understand itan inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, during which Mrs. Groses dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at me an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge methis was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. Shes there, you little unhappy thingthere, there, there, and you see her as well as you see me! I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this timeif I can put the whole thing at all togethermore appalled at what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything? I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. You dont see her exactly as we see?you mean to say you dont nownow? Shes as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, look! She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassionthe mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemptiona sense, touching to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I feltI sawmy livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. She isnt there, little lady, and nobodys thereand you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jesselwhen poor Miss Jessels dead and buried? We know, dont we, love?and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. Its all a mere mistake and a worry and a jokeand well go home as fast as we can! Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friends dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished. Ive said it alreadyshe was literally, she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. I dont know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think youre cruel. I dont like you! Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. Take me away, take me awayoh, take me away from her! From me? I panted. From youfrom you! she cried. Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her. If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone. Ive been living with the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course Ive lost you Ive interfered, and youve seenunder her dictationwith which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal witnessthe easy and perfect way to meet it. Ive done my best, but Ive lost you. Goodbye. For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic Go, go! before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Floras extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I sawI can use no other phraseso much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of whichand in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feetthere was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Floras rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom nowhe might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it consistedin part at leastof his coming in at about eight oclock and sitting down with me in silence. On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles and drawn my chair closer I was conscious of a mortal coldness and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as if to look at me; thenas if to share themcame to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. XXI Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had for their subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, governess. It was not against the possible reentrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that she protestedit was conspicuously and passionately against mine. I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of her sense of the childs sincerity as against my own. She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything? My visitors trouble, truly, was great. Ah, miss, it isnt a matter on which I can push her! Yet it isnt either, I must say, as if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old. Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability. Miss Jessel indeedshe! Ah, shes respectable, the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the others. I did put my foot in it! Shell never speak to me again. Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more behind it. I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand manner about it! And that mannerI summed it upis practically whats the matter with her now! Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitors face, and not a little else besides! She asks me every three minutes if I think youre coming in. I seeI see. I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it out. Has she said to you since yesterdayexcept to repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadfula single other word about Miss Jessel? Not one, miss. And of course you know, my friend added, I took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there was nobody. Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still. I dont contradict her. What else can I do? Nothing in the world! Youve the cleverest little person to deal with. Theyve made themtheir two friends, I meanstill cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her grievance, and shell work it to the end. Yes, miss; but to what end? Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. Shell make me out to him the lowest creature! I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Groses face; she looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. And him who thinks so well of you! He has an odd wayit comes over me now, I laughed, of proving it! But that doesnt matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me. My companion bravely concurred. Never again to so much as look at you. So that what youve come to me now for, I asked, is to speed me on my way? Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. Ive a better ideathe result of my reflections. My going would seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that wont do. Its you who must go. You must take Flora. My visitor, at this, did speculate. But where in the world? Away from here. Away from them. Away, even most of all, now, from me. Straight to her uncle. Only to tell on you? No, not only! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy. She was still vague. And what is your remedy? Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miless. She looked at me hard. Do you think he? Wont, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as possible and leave me with him alone. I was amazed, myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, she hesitated. Theres one thing, of course, I went on they mustnt, before she goes, see each other for three seconds. Then it came over me that, in spite of Floras presumable sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be too late. Do you mean, I anxiously asked, that they have met? At this she quite flushed. Ah, miss, Im not such a fool as that! If Ive been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though shes alone, shes locked in safe. And yetand yet! There were too many things. And yet what? Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman? Im not sure of anything but you. But I have, since last evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe thatpoor little exquisite wretch!he wants to speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were just coming. Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. And did it come? No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didnt, and it was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sisters condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the same, I continued, I cant, if her uncle sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boyand most of all because things have got so bada little more time. My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite understand. What do you mean by more time? Well, a day or tworeally to bring it out. Hell then be on my sideof which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible. So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her aid. Unless, indeed, I wound up, you really want not to go. I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to me as a pledge. Ill goIll go. Ill go this morning. I wanted to be very just. If you should wish still to wait, I would engage she shouldnt see me. No, no its the place itself. She must leave it. She held me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. Your ideas the right one. I myself, miss Well? I cant stay. The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. You mean that, since yesterday, you have seen? She shook her head with dignity. Ive heard! Heard? From that childhorrors! There! she sighed with tragic relief. On my honor, miss, she says things! But at this evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it. It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. Oh, thank God! She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. Thank God? It so justifies me! It does that, miss! I couldnt have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. Shes so horrible? I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. Really shocking. And about me? About you, misssince you must have it. Its beyond everything, for a young lady; and I cant think wherever she must have picked up The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then! I broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. Well, perhaps I ought to alsosince Ive heard some of it before! Yet I cant bear it, the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. But I must go back. I kept her, however. Ah, if you cant bear it! How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just for that to get her away. Far from this, she pursued, far from them She may be different? She may be free? I seized her almost with joy. Then, in spite of yesterday, you believe In such doings? Her simple description of them required, in the light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole thing as she had never done. I believe. Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder if I might continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. Theres one thing, of courseit occurs to meto remember. My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you. I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and how weary at last it had made her. Your letter wont have got there. Your letter never went. What then became of it? Goodness knows! Master Miles Do you mean he took it? I gasped. She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. I mean that I saw yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasnt where you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it. We could only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated You see! Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it and destroyed it. And dont you see anything else? I faced her a moment with a sad smile. It strikes me that by this time your eyes are open even wider than mine. They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show it. I make out now what he must have done at school. And she gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. He stole! I turned it overI tried to be more judicial. Wellperhaps. She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. He stole letters! She couldnt know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. I hope then it was to more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday, I pursued, will have given him so scant an advantagefor it contained only the bare demand for an interviewthat he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of confession. I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. Leave us, leave usI was already, at the door, hurrying her off. Ill get it out of him. Hell meet mehell confess. If he confesses, hes saved. And if hes saved Then you are? The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her farewell. Ill save you without him! she cried as she went. XXII Yet it was when she had got offand I missed her on the spotthat the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates. Now I was, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness of my colleagues act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, kept me, in Floras interest, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and I learned below that he had breakfastedin the presence of a couple of the maidswith Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled there was a queer relief, at all eventsI mean for myself in especialin the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afreshfor I had felt it again and againhow my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking nature into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than just this attempt to supply, ones self, all the nature. How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found even nowas he had so often found at lessonsstill some other delicate way to ease me off. Wasnt there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him? Mightnt one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill? Little Flora? Not so bad but that shell presently be better. London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take your mutton. He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, when he was established, went on. Did Bly disagree with her so terribly suddenly? Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on. Then why didnt you get her off before? Before what? Before she became too ill to travel. I found myself prompt. Shes not too ill to travel she only might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The journey will dissipate the influenceoh, I was grand!and carry it off. I see, I seeMiles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to his repast with the charming little table manner that, from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefestmine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to mestood and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up.

We continued silent while the maid was with usas silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us. Wellso were alone! XXIII Oh, more or less. I fancy my smile was pale. Not absolutely. We shouldnt like that! I went on. NoI suppose we shouldnt. Of course we have the others. We have the otherswe have indeed the others, I concurred. Yet even though we have them, he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, they dont much count, do they? I made the best of it, but I felt wan. It depends on what you call much! Yeswith all accommodationeverything depends! On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of work, behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boys embarrassed backnone other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively he who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasnt he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldnt see?and wasnt it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. Well, I think Im glad Bly agrees with me! You would certainly seem to have seen, these twentyfour hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope, I went on bravely, that youve been enjoying yourself. Oh, yes, Ive been ever so far; all round aboutmiles and miles away. Ive never been so free. He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. Well, do you like it? He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two wordsDo you?more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if were alone together now its you that are alone most. But I hope, he threw in, you dont particularly mind! Having to do with you? I asked. My dear child, how can I help minding? Though Ive renounced all claim to your companyyoure so beyond meI at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for? He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. You stay on just for that? Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your while. That neednt surprise you. My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. Dont you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I wouldnt do for you? Yes, yes! He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for you! It was partly to get you to do something, I conceded. But, you know, you didnt do it. Oh, yes, he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, you wanted me to tell you something. Thats it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know. Ah, then, is that what youve stayed over for? He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest little quiver of resentful passion; but I cant begin to express the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. Well, yesI may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for that. He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was Do you mean nowhere? There couldnt be a better place or time. He looked round him uneasily, and I had the rareoh, the queer!impression of the very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if he were suddenly afraid of mewhich struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost grotesque. You want so to go out again? Awfully! He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in any way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasnt it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldnt have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. Ill tell you everything, Miles saidI mean Ill tell you anything you like. Youll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I will tell youI will. But not now. Why not now? My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. I have to see Luke. I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. Well, then, go to Luke, and Ill wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request. He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a little to bargain. Very much smaller? Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell meoh, my work preoccupied me, and I was offhand!if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter. XXIV My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attentiona stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the act. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspirationI can call it by no other namewas that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soulheld out, in the tremor of my hands, at arms lengthhad a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. YesI took it. At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of the childs unconsciousness, that made me go on. What did you take it for? To see what you said about me. You opened the letter? I opened it. My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miless own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again andby my personal triumphthe influence quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get all. And you found nothing!I let my elation out. He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. Nothing. Nothing, nothing! I almost shouted in my joy. Nothing, nothing, he sadly repeated. I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. So what have you done with it? Ive burned it. Burned it? It was now or never. Is that what you did at school? Oh, what this brought up! At school? Did you take letters?or other things? Other things? He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach him. Did I steal? I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. Was it for that you mightnt go back? The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. Did you know I mightnt go back? I know everything. He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. Everything? Everything. Therefore did you? But I couldnt say it again. Miles could, very simply. No. I didnt steal. My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my handsbut it was for pure tendernessshook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. What then did you do? He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. WellI said things. Only that? They thought it was enough! To turn you out for? Never, truly, had a person turned out shown so little to explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless. Well, I suppose I oughtnt. But to whom did you say them? He evidently tried to remember, but it droppedhe had lost it. I dont know! He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But I was infatuatedI was blind with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation. Was it to everyone? I asked. No; it was only to But he gave a sick little headshake. I dont remember their names. Were they then so many? Noonly a few. Those I liked. Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deepdrawn sigh, he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. And did they repeat what you said? I went on after a moment. He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. Oh, yes, he nevertheless repliedthey must have repeated them. To those they liked, he added. There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. And these things came round? To the masters? Oh, yes! he answered very simply. But I didnt know theyd tell. The masters? They didnttheyve never told. Thats why I ask you. He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. Yes, it was too bad. Too bad? What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home. I cant name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself throw off with homely force Stuff and nonsense! But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. What were these things? My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert himself again, and that movement made me, with a single bound and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous author of our woethe white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. No more, no more, no more! I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant. Is she here? Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange she staggered me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel! he with a sudden fury gave me back. I seized, stupefied, his suppositionsome sequel to what we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that. Its not Miss Jessel! But its at the windowstraight before us. Its therethe coward horror, there for the last time! At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled dogs on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. Its he? I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge him. Whom do you mean by he? Peter Quintyou devil! His face gave again, round the room, its convulsed supplication. Where? They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to my devotion. What does he matter now, my own?what will he ever matter? I have you, I launched at the beast, but he has lost you forever! Then, for the demonstration of my work, There, there! I said to Miles. But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held himit may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. Colophon The Turn of the Screw was published in 1898 by Henry James. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Alex Cabal, and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by Judith Boss and David Widger for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The cover page is adapted from A Wintry Moon, a painting completed in 1886 by John Atkinson Grimshaw. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 856 p.m. and is based on revision 94294e4. The first edition of this ebook was released on May 25, 2014, 1200 a.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebookshenryjamestheturnofthescrew. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. 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Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. Prologue The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasionan appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation that drew from Douglasnot immediately, but later in the eveninga reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind. I quite agreein regard to Griffins ghost, or whatever it wasthat its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a particular touch. But its not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children? We say, of course, somebody exclaimed, that they give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them. I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. Its quite too horrible. This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on Its beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it. For sheer terror? I remember asking. He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. For dreadfuldreadfulness! Oh, how delicious! cried one of the women. He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw what he spoke of. For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain. Well then, I said, just sit right down and begin. He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant. Then as he faced us again I cant begin. I shall have to send to town. There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. The storys written. Its in a locked drawerit has not been out for years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it. It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound thisappeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. Oh, thank God, no! And is the record yours? You took the thing down? Nothing but the impression. I took that herehe tapped his heart. Ive never lost it. Then your manuscript? Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand. He hung fire again. A womans. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the pages in question before she died. They were all listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also without irritation. She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my sisters governess, he quietly said. She was the most agreeable woman Ive ever known in her position; she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. I was much there that yearit was a beautiful one; and we had, in her offhours, some strolls and talks in the gardentalks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; dont grin I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadnt she wouldnt have told me. She had never told anyone. It wasnt simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadnt. I was sure; I could see. Youll easily judge why when you hear. Because the thing had been such a scare? He continued to fix me. Youll easily judge, he repeated You will. I fixed him, too. I see. She was in love. He laughed for the first time. You are acute. Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. That came outshe couldnt tell her story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the placethe corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. It wasnt a scene for a shudder; but oh! He quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair. Youll receive the packet Thursday morning? I inquired. Probably not till the second post. Well then; after dinner Youll all meet me here? He looked us round again. Isnt anybody going? It was almost the tone of hope. Everybody will stay! I willand I will! cried the ladies whose departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light. Who was it she was in love with? The story will tell, I took upon myself to reply. Oh, I cant wait for the story! The story wont tell, said Douglas; not in any literal, vulgar way. Mores the pity, then. Thats the only way I ever understand. Wont you tell, Douglas? somebody else inquired. He sprang to his feet again. Yestomorrow. Now I must go to bed. Good night. And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. Well, if I dont know who she was in love with, I know who he was. She was ten years older, said her husband. Raison de plusat that age! But its rather nice, his long reticence. Forty years! Griffin put in. With this outbreak at last. The outbreak, I returned, will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday night; and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook and candlestuck, as somebody said, and went to bed. I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite ofor perhaps just on account ofthe eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his deathwhen it was in sightcommitted to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they would stay didnt, of course, thank heaven, stay they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to a common thrill. The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposingthis prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, offhand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagantsaw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed. He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man in his positiona lone man without the right sort of experience or a grain of patiencevery heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their little establishmentbut below stairs onlyan excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been for a term at schoolyoung as he was to be sent, but what else could be done?and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifullyshe was a most respectable persontill her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question.

And what did the former governess die of?of so much respectability? Our friends answer was prompt. That will come out. I dont anticipate. Excuse meI thought that was just what you are doing. In her successors place, I suggested, I should have wished to learn if the office brought with it Necessary danger to life? Douglas completed my thought. She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous it was a vision of serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She hesitatedtook a couple of days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged. And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw in The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She succumbed to it. He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. She saw him only twice. Yes, but thats just the beauty of her passion. A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. It was the beauty of it. There were others, he went on, who hadnt succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficultythat for several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dullit sounded strange; and all the more so because of his main condition. Which was? That she should never trouble himbut never, never neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded. But was that all her reward? one of the ladies asked. She never saw him again. Oh! said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened the faded red cover of a thin oldfashioned giltedged album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the same lady put another question. What is your title? I havent one. Oh, I have! I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the beauty of his authors hand. The Turn of the Screw By Henry James. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Prologue I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks The Turn of the Screw

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole First published in 1764 This ebook edition was created and published by Global Grey in 2018, and updated on the 23rd June 2023 The artwork for the cover is The Castle seen from the river painted by Zygmunt Ajdukiewicz. You can download this book on the site globalgreyebooks.comcastleofotrantoebook.html GlobalGrey 2023globalgreyebooks.com Contents Introduction Preface To The First Edition Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Introduction Horace Walpole was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the great statesman, who died Earl of Orford. He was born in 1717, the year in which his father resigned office, remaining in opposition for almost three years before his return to a long tenure of power. Horace Walpole was educated at Eton, where he formed a school friendship with Thomas Gray, who was but a few months older. In 1739 Gray was travellingcompanion with Walpole in France and Italy until they differed and parted; but the friendship was afterwards renewed, and remained firm to the end. Horace Walpole went from Eton to Kings College, Cambridge, and entered Parliament in 1741, the year before his fathers final resignation and acceptance of an earldom. His way of life was made easy to him. As Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats in the Exchequer, he received nearly two thousand a year for doing nothing, lived with his father, and amused himself. Horace Walpole idled, and amused himself with the small life of the fashionable world to which he was proud of belonging, though he had a quick eye for its vanities. He had social wit, and liked to put it to small uses. But he was not an empty idler, and there were seasons when he could become a sharp judge of himself. I am sensible, he wrote to his most intimate friend, I am sensible of having more follies and weaknesses and fewer real good qualities than most men. I sometimes reflect on this, though, I own, too seldom. I always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might be if I would. He had deep home affections, and, under many polite affectations, plenty of good sense. Horace Walpoles father died in 1745. The eldest son, who succeeded to the earldom, died in 1751, and left a son, George, who was for a time insane, and lived until 1791. As George left no child, the title and estates passed to Horace Walpole, then seventyfour years old, and the only uncle who survived. Horace Walpole thus became Earl of Orford, during the last six years of his life. As to the title, he said that he felt himself being called names in his old age. He died unmarried, in the year 1797, at the age of eighty. He had turned his house at Strawberry Hill, by the Thames, near Twickenham, into a Gothic villaeighteenthcentury Gothicand amused himself by spending freely upon its adornment with such things as were then fashionable as objects of taste. But he delighted also in his flowers and his trellises of roses, and the quiet Thames. When confined by gout to his London house in Arlington Street, flowers from Strawberry Hill and a bird were necessary consolations. He set up also at Strawberry Hill a private printing press, at which he printed his friend Grays poems, also in 1758 his own Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, and five volumes of Anecdotes of Painting in England, between 1762 and 1771. Horace Walpole produced The Castle of Otranto in 1765, at the mature age of fortyeight. It was suggested by a dream from which he said he waked one morning, and of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head like mine, filled with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. So began the tale which professed to be translated by William Marshal, gentleman, from the Italian of Onuphro Muralto, canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. It was written in two months. Walpoles friend Gray reported to him that at Cambridge the book made some of them cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o nights. The Castle of Otranto was, in its own way, an early sign of the reaction towards romance in the latter part of the last century. This gives it interest. But it has had many followers, and the hardy modern reader, when he reads Grays note from Cambridge, needs to be reminded of its date. H. M. Preface To The First Edition The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first Crusade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards. There is no other circumstance in the work that can lead us to guess at the period in which the scene is laid the names of the actors are evidently fictitious, and probably disguised on purpose yet the Spanish names of the domestics seem to indicate that this work was not composed until the establishment of the Arragonian Kings in Naples had made Spanish appellations familiar in that country. The beauty of the diction, and the zeal of the author (moderated, however, by singular judgment) concur to make me think that the date of the composition was little antecedent to that of the impression. Letters were then in their most flourishing state in Italy, and contributed to dispel the empire of superstition, at that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers. It is not unlikely that an artful priest might endeavour to turn their own arms on the innovators, and might avail himself of his abilities as an author to confirm the populace in their ancient errors and superstitions. If this was his view, he has certainly acted with signal address. Such a work as the following would enslave a hundred vulgar minds beyond half the books of controversy that have been written from the days of Luther to the present hour. This solution of the authors motives is, however, offered as a mere conjecture. Whatever his views were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times, who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them. If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibility of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe. Never is the readers attention relaxed. The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the conduct of the piece. The characters are well drawn, and still better maintained. Terror, the authors principal engine, prevents the story from ever languishing; and it is so often contrasted by pity, that the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude of interesting passions. Some persons may perhaps think the characters of the domestics too little serious for the general cast of the story; but besides their opposition to the principal personages, the art of the author is very observable in his conduct of the subalterns. They discover many passages essential to the story, which could not be well brought to light but by their navet and simplicity. In particular, the womanish terror and foibles of Bianca, in the last chapter, conduce essentially towards advancing the catastrophe. It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my authors defects. I could wish he had grounded his plan on a more useful moral than this that the sins of fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation. I doubt whether, in his time, any more than at present, ambition curbed its appetite of dominion from the dread of so remote a punishment. And yet this moral is weakened by that less direct insinuation, that even such anathema may be diverted by devotion to St. Nicholas. Here the interest of the Monk plainly gets the better of the judgment of the author. However, with all its faults, I have no doubt but the English reader will be pleased with a sight of this performance. The piety that reigns throughout, the lessons of virtue that are inculcated, and the rigid purity of the sentiments, exempt this work from the censure to which romances are but too liable. Should it meet with the success I hope for, I may be encouraged to reprint the original Italian, though it will tend to depreciate my own labour. Our language falls far short of the charms of the Italian, both for variety and harmony. The latter is peculiarly excellent for simple narrative. It is difficult in English to relate without falling too low or rising too high; a fault obviously occasioned by the little care taken to speak pure language in common conversation. Every Italian or Frenchman of any rank piques himself on speaking his own tongue correctly and with choice. I cannot flatter myself with having done justice to my author in this respect his style is as elegant as his conduct of the passions is masterly. It is a pity that he did not apply his talents to what they were evidently proper forthe theatre. I will detain the reader no longer, but to make one short remark. Though the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth. The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle. The author seems frequently, without design, to describe particular parts. The chamber, says he, on the right hand; the door on the left hand; the distance from the chapel to Conrads apartment these and other passages are strong presumptions that the author had some certain building in his eye. Curious persons, who have leisure to employ in such researches, may possibly discover in the Italian writers the foundation on which our author has built. If a catastrophe, at all resembling that which he describes, is believed to have given rise to this work, it will contribute to interest the reader, and will make the Castle of Otranto a still more moving story. SONNET TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY MARY COKE. The gentle maid, whose hapless taleThese melancholy pages speak;Say, gracious lady, shall she failTo draw the tear adown thy cheek? No; never was thy pitying breastInsensible to human woes;Tender, tho firm, it melts distrestFor weaknesses it never knows. Oh! guard the marvels I relateOf fell ambition scourgd by fate,From reasons peevish blame.Blest with thy smile, my dauntless sailI dare expand to Fancys gale,For sure thy smiles are Fame. H. W. Chapter I Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenzas daughter, Isabella; and she had already been delivered by her guardians into the hands of Manfred, that he might celebrate the wedding as soon as Conrads infirm state of health would permit. Manfreds impatience for this ceremonial was remarked by his family and neighbours. The former, indeed, apprehending the severity of their Princes disposition, did not dare to utter their surmises on this precipitation. Hippolita, his wife, an amiable lady, did sometimes venture to represent the danger of marrying their only son so early, considering his great youth, and greater infirmities; but she never received any other answer than reflections on her own sterility, who had given him but one heir. His tenants and subjects were less cautious in their discourses. They attributed this hasty wedding to the Princes dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it. It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; and still less easy to conceive what it had to do with the marriage in question. Yet these mysteries, or contradictions, did not make the populace adhere the less to their opinion. Young Conrads birthday was fixed for his espousals. The company was assembled in the chapel of the Castle, and everything ready for beginning the divine office, when Conrad himself was missing. Manfred, impatient of the least delay, and who had not observed his son retire, despatched one of his attendants to summon the young Prince. The servant, who had not stayed long enough to have crossed the court to Conrads apartment, came running back breathless, in a frantic manner, his eyes staring, and foaming at the mouth. He said nothing, but pointed to the court. The company were struck with terror and amazement. The Princess Hippolita, without knowing what was the matter, but anxious for her son, swooned away. Manfred, less apprehensive than enraged at the procrastination of the nuptials, and at the folly of his domestic, asked imperiously what was the matter? The fellow made no answer, but continued pointing towards the courtyard; and at last, after repeated questions put to him, cried out, Oh! the helmet! the helmet! In the meantime, some of the company had run into the court, from whence was heard a confused noise of shrieks, horror, and surprise. Manfred, who began to be alarmed at not seeing his son, went himself to get information of what occasioned this strange confusion. Matilda remained endeavouring to assist her mother, and Isabella stayed for the same purpose, and to avoid showing any impatience for the bridegroom, for whom, in truth, she had conceived little affection. The first thing that struck Manfreds eyes was a group of his servants endeavouring to raise something that appeared to him a mountain of sable plumes. He gazed without believing his sight. What are ye doing? cried Manfred, wrathfully; where is my son? A volley of voices replied, Oh! my Lord! the Prince! the Prince! the helmet! the helmet! Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily,but what a sight for a fathers eyes!he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers. The horror of the spectacle, the ignorance of all around how this misfortune had happened, and above all, the tremendous phenomenon before him, took away the Princes speech. Yet his silence lasted longer than even grief could occasion. He fixed his eyes on what he wished in vain to believe a vision; and seemed less attentive to his loss, than buried in meditation on the stupendous object that had occasioned it. He touched, he examined the fatal casque; nor could even the bleeding mangled remains of the young Prince divert the eyes of Manfred from the portent before him. All who had known his partial fondness for young Conrad, were as much surprised at their Princes insensibility, as thunderstruck themselves at the miracle of the helmet. They conveyed the disfigured corpse into the hall, without receiving the least direction from Manfred. As little was he attentive to the ladies who remained in the chapel. On the contrary, without mentioning the unhappy princesses, his wife and daughter, the first sounds that dropped from Manfreds lips were, Take care of the Lady Isabella. The domestics, without observing the singularity of this direction, were guided by their affection to their mistress, to consider it as peculiarly addressed to her situation, and flew to her assistance. They conveyed her to her chamber more dead than alive, and indifferent to all the strange circumstances she heard, except the death of her son. Matilda, who doted on her mother, smothered her own grief and amazement, and thought of nothing but assisting and comforting her afflicted parent. Isabella, who had been treated by Hippolita like a daughter, and who returned that tenderness with equal duty and affection, was scarce less assiduous about the Princess; at the same time endeavouring to partake and lessen the weight of sorrow which she saw Matilda strove to suppress, for whom she had conceived the warmest sympathy of friendship. Yet her own situation could not help finding its place in her thoughts. She felt no concern for the death of young Conrad, except commiseration; and she was not sorry to be delivered from a marriage which had promised her little felicity, either from her destined bridegroom, or from the severe temper of Manfred, who, though he had distinguished her by great indulgence, had imprinted her mind with terror, from his causeless rigour to such amiable princesses as Hippolita and Matilda. While the ladies were conveying the wretched mother to her bed, Manfred remained in the court, gazing on the ominous casque, and regardless of the crowd which the strangeness of the event had now assembled around him. The few words he articulated, tended solely to inquiries, whether any man knew from whence it could have come? Nobody could give him the least information. However, as it seemed to be the sole object of his curiosity, it soon became so to the rest of the spectators, whose conjectures were as absurd and improbable, as the catastrophe itself was unprecedented. In the midst of their senseless guesses, a young peasant, whom rumour had drawn thither from a neighbouring village, observed that the miraculous helmet was exactly like that on the figure in black marble of Alfonso the Good, one of their former princes, in the church of St. Nicholas. Villain! What sayest thou? cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar; how darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall pay for it. The spectators, who as little comprehended the cause of the Princes fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to unravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and humility, he disengaged himself from Manfreds grip, and then with an obeisance, which discovered more jealousy of innocence than dismay, he asked, with respect, of what he was guilty? Manfred, more enraged at the vigour, however decently exerted, with which the young man had shaken off his hold, than appeased by his submission, ordered his attendants to seize him, and, if he had not been withheld by his friends whom he had invited to the nuptials, would have poignarded the peasant in their arms. During this altercation, some of the vulgar spectators had run to the great church, which stood near the castle, and came back openmouthed, declaring that the helmet was missing from Alfonsos statue. Manfred, at this news, grew perfectly frantic; and, as if he sought a subject on which to vent the tempest within him, he rushed again on the young peasant, crying Villain! Monster! Sorcerer! tis thou hast done this! tis thou hast slain my son! The mob, who wanted some object within the scope of their capacities, on whom they might discharge their bewildered reasoning, caught the words from the mouth of their lord, and reechoed Ay, ay; tis he, tis he he has stolen the helmet from good Alfonsos tomb, and dashed out the brains of our young Prince with it, never reflecting how enormous the disproportion was between the marble helmet that had been in the church, and that of steel before their eyes; nor how impossible it was for a youth seemingly not twenty, to wield a piece of armour of so prodigious a weight. The folly of these ejaculations brought Manfred to himself yet whether provoked at the peasant having observed the resemblance between the two helmets, and thereby led to the farther discovery of the absence of that in the church, or wishing to bury any such rumour under so impertinent a supposition, he gravely pronounced that the young man was certainly a necromancer, and that till the Church could take cognisance of the affair, he would have the Magician, whom they had thus detected, kept prisoner under the helmet itself, which he ordered his attendants to raise, and place the young man under it; declaring he should be kept there without food, with which his own infernal art might furnish him. It was in vain for the youth to represent against this preposterous sentence in vain did Manfreds friends endeavour to divert him from this savage and illgrounded resolution. The generality were charmed with their lords decision, which, to their apprehensions, carried great appearance of justice, as the Magician was to be punished by the very instrument with which he had offended nor were they struck with the least compunction at the probability of the youth being starved, for they firmly believed that, by his diabolic skill, he could easily supply himself with nutriment. Manfred thus saw his commands even cheerfully obeyed; and appointing a guard with strict orders to prevent any food being conveyed to the prisoner, he dismissed his friends and attendants, and retired to his own chamber, after locking the gates of the castle, in which he suffered none but his domestics to remain. In the meantime, the care and zeal of the young Ladies had brought the Princess Hippolita to herself, who amidst the transports of her own sorrow frequently demanded news of her lord, would have dismissed her attendants to watch over him, and at last enjoined Matilda to leave her, and visit and comfort her father. Matilda, who wanted no affectionate duty to Manfred, though she trembled at his austerity, obeyed the orders of Hippolita, whom she tenderly recommended to Isabella; and inquiring of the domestics for her father, was informed that he was retired to his chamber, and had commanded that nobody should have admittance to him. Concluding that he was immersed in sorrow for the death of her brother, and fearing to renew his tears by the sight of his sole remaining child, she hesitated whether she should break in upon his affliction; yet solicitude for him, backed by the commands of her mother, encouraged her to venture disobeying the orders he had given; a fault she had never been guilty of before. The gentle timidity of her nature made her pause for some minutes at his door. She heard him traverse his chamber backwards, and forwards with disordered steps; a mood which increased her apprehensions. She was, however, just going to beg admittance, when Manfred suddenly opened the door; and as it was now twilight, concurring with the disorder of his mind, he did not distinguish the person, but asked angrily, who it was? Matilda replied, trembling My dearest father, it is I, your daughter. Manfred, stepping back hastily, cried, Begone! I do not want a daughter; and flinging back abruptly, clapped the door against the terrified Matilda. She was too well acquainted with her fathers impetuosity to venture a second intrusion. When she had a little recovered the shock of so bitter a reception, she wiped away her tears to prevent the additional stab that the knowledge of it would give to Hippolita, who questioned her in the most anxious terms on the health of Manfred, and how he bore his loss. Matilda assured her he was well, and supported his misfortune with manly fortitude. But will he not let me see him? said Hippolita mournfully; will he not permit me to blend my tears with his, and shed a mothers sorrows in the bosom of her Lord? Or do you deceive me, Matilda? I know how Manfred doted on his son is not the stroke too heavy for him? has he not sunk under it? You do not answer mealas! I dread the worst!Raise me, my maidens; I will, I will see my Lord. Bear me to him instantly he is dearer to me even than my children. Matilda made signs to Isabella to prevent Hippolitas rising; and both those lovely young women were using their gentle violence to stop and calm the Princess, when a servant, on the part of Manfred, arrived and told Isabella that his Lord demanded to speak with her. With me! cried Isabella. Go, said Hippolita, relieved by a message from her Lord Manfred cannot support the sight of his own family. He thinks you less disordered than we are, and dreads the shock of my grief. Console him, dear Isabella, and tell him I will smother my own anguish rather than add to his. As it was now evening the servant who conducted Isabella bore a torch before her. When they came to Manfred, who was walking impatiently about the gallery, he started, and said hastily Take away that light, and begone. Then shutting the door impetuously, he flung himself upon a bench against the wall, and bade Isabella sit by him. She obeyed trembling. I sent for you, Lady, said heand then stopped under great appearance of confusion. My Lord! Yes, I sent for you on a matter of great moment, resumed he. Dry your tears, young Ladyyou have lost your bridegroom. Yes, cruel fate! and I have lost the hopes of my race! But Conrad was not worthy of your beauty. How, my Lord! said Isabella; sure you do not suspect me of not feeling the concern I ought my duty and affection would have always Think no more of him, interrupted Manfred; he was a sickly, puny child, and Heaven has perhaps taken him away, that I might not trust the honours of my house on so frail a foundation. The line of Manfred calls for numerous supports. My foolish fondness for that boy blinded the eyes of my prudencebut it is better as it is. I hope, in a few years, to have reason to rejoice at the death of Conrad. Words cannot paint the astonishment of Isabella. At first she apprehended that grief had disordered Manfreds understanding. Her next thought suggested that this strange discourse was designed to ensnare her she feared that Manfred had perceived her indifference for his son and in consequence of that idea she replied Good my Lord, do not doubt my tenderness my heart would have accompanied my hand. Conrad would have engrossed all my care; and wherever fate shall dispose of me, I shall always cherish his memory, and regard your Highness and the virtuous Hippolita as my parents. Curse on Hippolita! cried Manfred. Forget her from this moment, as I do. In short, Lady, you have missed a husband undeserving of your charms they shall now be better disposed of. Instead of a sickly boy, you shall have a husband in the prime of his age, who will know how to value your beauties, and who may expect a numerous offspring. Alas, my Lord! said Isabella, my mind is too sadly engrossed by the recent catastrophe in your family to think of another marriage. If ever my father returns, and it shall be his pleasure, I shall obey, as I did when I consented to give my hand to your son but until his return, permit me to remain under your hospitable roof, and employ the melancholy hours in assuaging yours, Hippolitas, and the fair Matildas affliction. I desired you once before, said Manfred angrily, not to name that woman from this hour she must be a stranger to you, as she must be to me. In short, Isabella, since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself. Heavens! cried Isabella, waking from her delusion, what do I hear? You! my Lord! You! My fatherinlaw! the father of Conrad! the husband of the virtuous and tender Hippolita! I tell you, said Manfred imperiously, Hippolita is no longer my wife; I divorce her from this hour. Too long has she cursed me by her unfruitfulness. My fate depends on having sons, and this night I trust will give a new date to my hopes. At those words he seized the cold hand of Isabella, who was half dead with fright and horror. She shrieked, and started from him, Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and rustling sound. Isabella, who gathered courage from her situation, and who dreaded nothing so much as Manfreds pursuit of his declaration, cried Look, my Lord! see, Heaven itself declares against your impious intentions! Heaven nor Hell shall impede my designs, said Manfred, advancing again to seize the Princess. At that instant the portrait of his grandfather, which hung over the bench where they had been sitting, uttered a deep sigh, and heaved its breast. Isabella, whose back was turned to the picture, saw not the motion, nor knew whence the sound came, but started, and said Hark, my Lord! What sound was that? and at the same time made towards the door. Manfred, distracted between the flight of Isabella, who had now reached the stairs, and yet unable to keep his eyes from the picture, which began to move, had, however, advanced some steps after her, still looking backwards on the portrait, when he saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air. Do I dream? cried Manfred, returning; or are the devils themselves in league against me? Speak, internal spectre! Or, if thou art my grandsire, why dost thou too conspire against thy wretched descendant, who too dearly pays for Ere he could finish the sentence, the vision sighed again, and made a sign to Manfred to follow him. Lead on! cried Manfred; I will follow thee to the gulf of perdition. The spectre marched sedately, but dejected, to the end of the gallery, and turned into a chamber on the right hand. Manfred accompanied him at a little distance, full of anxiety and horror, but resolved. As he would have entered the chamber, the door was clapped to with violence by an invisible hand. The Prince, collecting courage from this delay, would have forcibly burst open the door with his foot, but found that it resisted his utmost efforts. Since Hell will not satisfy my curiosity, said Manfred, I will use the human means in my power for preserving my race; Isabella shall not escape me. The lady, whose resolution had given way to terror the moment she had quitted Manfred, continued her flight to the bottom of the principal staircase. There she stopped, not knowing whither to direct her steps, nor how to escape from the impetuosity of the Prince. The gates of the castle, she knew, were locked, and guards placed in the court. Should she, as her heart prompted her, go and prepare Hippolita for the cruel destiny that awaited her, she did not doubt but Manfred would seek her there, and that his violence would incite him to double the injury he meditated, without leaving room for them to avoid the impetuosity of his passions. Delay might give him time to reflect on the horrid measures he had conceived, or produce some circumstance in her favour, if she couldfor that night, at leastavoid his odious purpose.

Yet where conceal herself? How avoid the pursuit he would infallibly make throughout the castle? As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she recollected a subterraneous passage which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St. Nicholas. Could she reach the altar before she was overtaken, she knew even Manfreds violence would not dare to profane the sacredness of the place; and she determined, if no other means of deliverance offered, to shut herself up for ever among the holy virgins whose convent was contiguous to the cathedral. In this resolution, she seized a lamp that burned at the foot of the staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage. The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several intricate cloisters; and it was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the door that opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were reechoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. Every murmur struck her with new terror; yet more she dreaded to hear the wrathful voice of Manfred urging his domestics to pursue her. She trod as softly as impatience would give her leave, yet frequently stopped and listened to hear if she was followed. In one of those moments she thought she heard a sigh. She shuddered, and recoiled a few paces. In a moment she thought she heard the step of some person. Her blood curdled; she concluded it was Manfred. Every suggestion that horror could inspire rushed into her mind. She condemned her rash flight, which had thus exposed her to his rage in a place where her cries were not likely to draw anybody to her assistance. Yet the sound seemed not to come from behind. If Manfred knew where she was, he must have followed her. She was still in one of the cloisters, and the steps she had heard were too distinct to proceed from the way she had come. Cheered with this reflection, and hoping to find a friend in whoever was not the Prince, she was going to advance, when a door that stood ajar, at some distance to the left, was opened gently but ere her lamp, which she held up, could discover who opened it, the person retreated precipitately on seeing the light. Isabella, whom every incident was sufficient to dismay, hesitated whether she should proceed. Her dread of Manfred soon outweighed every other terror. The very circumstance of the person avoiding her gave her a sort of courage. It could only be, she thought, some domestic belonging to the castle. Her gentleness had never raised her an enemy, and conscious innocence made her hope that, unless sent by the Princes order to seek her, his servants would rather assist than prevent her flight. Fortifying herself with these reflections, and believing by what she could observe that she was near the mouth of the subterraneous cavern, she approached the door that had been opened; but a sudden gust of wind that met her at the door extinguished her lamp, and left her in total darkness. Words cannot paint the horror of the Princesss situation. Alone in so dismal a place, her mind imprinted with all the terrible events of the day, hopeless of escaping, expecting every moment the arrival of Manfred, and far from tranquil on knowing she was within reach of somebody, she knew not whom, who for some cause seemed concealed thereabouts; all these thoughts crowded on her distracted mind, and she was ready to sink under her apprehensions. She addressed herself to every saint in heaven, and inwardly implored their assistance. For a considerable time she remained in an agony of despair. At last, as softly as was possible, she felt for the door, and having found it, entered trembling into the vault from whence she had heard the sigh and steps. It gave her a kind of momentary joy to perceive an imperfect ray of clouded moonshine gleam from the roof of the vault, which seemed to be fallen in, and from whence hung a fragment of earth or building, she could not distinguish which, that appeared to have been crushed inwards. She advanced eagerly towards this chasm, when she discerned a human form standing close against the wall. She shrieked, believing it the ghost of her betrothed Conrad. The figure, advancing, said, in a submissive voice Be not alarmed, Lady; I will not injure you. Isabella, a little encouraged by the words and tone of voice of the stranger, and recollecting that this must be the person who had opened the door, recovered her spirits enough to reply Sir, whoever you are, take pity on a wretched Princess, standing on the brink of destruction. Assist me to escape from this fatal castle, or in a few moments I may be made miserable for ever. Alas! said the stranger, what can I do to assist you? I will die in your defence; but I am unacquainted with the castle, and want Oh! said Isabella, hastily interrupting him; help me but to find a trapdoor that must be hereabout, and it is the greatest service you can do me, for I have not a minute to lose. Saying a these words, she felt about on the pavement, and directed the stranger to search likewise, for a smooth piece of brass enclosed in one of the stones. That, said she, is the lock, which opens with a spring, of which I know the secret. If we can find that, I may escapeif not, alas! courteous stranger, I fear I shall have involved you in my misfortunes Manfred will suspect you for the accomplice of my flight, and you will fall a victim to his resentment. I value not my life, said the stranger, and it will be some comfort to lose it in trying to deliver you from his tyranny. Generous youth, said Isabella, how shall I ever requite As she uttered those words, a ray of moonshine, streaming through a cranny of the ruin above, shone directly on the lock they sought. Oh! transport! said Isabella; here is the trapdoor! and, taking out the key, she touched the spring, which, starting aside, discovered an iron ring. Lift up the door, said the Princess. The stranger obeyed, and beneath appeared some stone steps descending into a vault totally dark. We must go down here, said Isabella. Follow me; dark and dismal as it is, we cannot miss our way; it leads directly to the church of St. Nicholas. But, perhaps, added the Princess modestly, you have no reason to leave the castle, nor have I farther occasion for your service; in a few minutes I shall be safe from Manfreds rageonly let me know to whom I am so much obliged. I will never quit you, said the stranger eagerly, until I have placed you in safetynor think me, Princess, more generous than I am; though you are my principal care The stranger was interrupted by a sudden noise of voices that seemed approaching, and they soon distinguished these words Talk not to me of necromancers; I tell you she must be in the castle; I will find her in spite of enchantment. Oh, heavens! cried Isabella; it is the voice of Manfred! Make haste, or we are ruined! and shut the trapdoor after you. Saying this, she descended the steps precipitately; and as the stranger hastened to follow her, he let the door slip out of his hands it fell, and the spring closed over it. He tried in vain to open it, not having observed Isabellas method of touching the spring; nor had he many moments to make an essay. The noise of the falling door had been heard by Manfred, who, directed by the sound, hastened thither, attended by his servants with torches. It must be Isabella, cried Manfred, before he entered the vault. She is escaping by the subterraneous passage, but she cannot have got far. What was the astonishment of the Prince when, instead of Isabella, the light of the torches discovered to him the young peasant whom he thought confined under the fatal helmet! Traitor! said Manfred; how camest thou here? I thought thee in durance above in the court. I am no traitor, replied the young man boldly, nor am I answerable for your thoughts. Presumptuous villain! cried Manfred; dost thou provoke my wrath? Tell me, how hast thou escaped from above? Thou hast corrupted thy guards, and their lives shall answer it. My poverty, said the peasant calmly, will disculpate them though the ministers of a tyrants wrath, to thee they are faithful, and but too willing to execute the orders which you unjustly imposed upon them. Art thou so hardy as to dare my vengeance? said the Prince; but tortures shall force the truth from thee. Tell me; I will know thy accomplices. There was my accomplice! said the youth, smiling, and pointing to the roof. Manfred ordered the torches to be held up, and perceived that one of the cheeks of the enchanted casque had forced its way through the pavement of the court, as his servants had let it fall over the peasant, and had broken through into the vault, leaving a gap, through which the peasant had pressed himself some minutes before he was found by Isabella. Was that the way by which thou didst descend? said Manfred. It was, said the youth. But what noise was that, said Manfred, which I heard as I entered the cloister? A door clapped, said the peasant; I heard it as well as you. What door? said Manfred hastily. I am not acquainted with your castle, said the peasant; this is the first time I ever entered it, and this vault the only part of it within which I ever was. But I tell thee, said Manfred (wishing to find out if the youth had discovered the trapdoor), it was this way I heard the noise. My servants heard it too. My Lord, interrupted one of them officiously, to be sure it was the trapdoor, and he was going to make his escape. Peace, blockhead! said the Prince angrily; if he was going to escape, how should he come on this side? I will know from his own mouth what noise it was I heard. Tell me truly; thy life depends on thy veracity. My veracity is dearer to me than my life, said the peasant; nor would I purchase the one by forfeiting the other. Indeed, young philosopher! said Manfred contemptuously; tell me, then, what was the noise I heard? Ask me what I can answer, said he, and put me to death instantly if I tell you a lie. Manfred, growing impatient at the steady valour and indifference of the youth, cried Well, then, thou man of truth, answer! Was it the fall of the trapdoor that I heard? It was, said the youth. It was! said the Prince; and how didst thou come to know there was a trapdoor here? I saw the plate of brass by a gleam of moonshine, replied he. But what told thee it was a lock? said Manfred. How didst thou discover the secret of opening it? Providence, that delivered me from the helmet, was able to direct me to the spring of a lock, said he. Providence should have gone a little farther, and have placed thee out of the reach of my resentment, said Manfred. When Providence had taught thee to open the lock, it abandoned thee for a fool, who did not know how to make use of its favours. Why didst thou not pursue the path pointed out for thy escape? Why didst thou shut the trapdoor before thou hadst descended the steps? I might ask you, my Lord, said the peasant, how I, totally unacquainted with your castle, was to know that those steps led to any outlet? but I scorn to evade your questions. Wherever those steps lead to, perhaps I should have explored the wayI could not be in a worse situation than I was. But the truth is, I let the trapdoor fall your immediate arrival followed. I had given the alarmwhat imported it to me whether I was seized a minute sooner or a minute later? Thou art a resolute villain for thy years, said Manfred; yet on reflection I suspect thou dost but trifle with me. Thou hast not yet told me how thou didst open the lock. That I will show you, my Lord, said the peasant; and, taking up a fragment of stone that had fallen from above, he laid himself on the trapdoor, and began to beat on the piece of brass that covered it, meaning to gain time for the escape of the Princess. This presence of mind, joined to the frankness of the youth, staggered Manfred. He even felt a disposition towards pardoning one who had been guilty of no crime. Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did not obscure his reason. While the Prince was in this suspense, a confused noise of voices echoed through the distant vaults. As the sound approached, he distinguished the clamours of some of his domestics, whom he had dispersed through the castle in search of Isabella, calling out Where is my Lord? where is the Prince? Here I am, said Manfred, as they came nearer; have you found the Princess? The first that arrived, replied, Oh, my Lord! I am glad we have found you. Found me! said Manfred; have you found the Princess? We thought we had, my Lord, said the fellow, looking terrified, but But, what? cried the Prince; has she escaped? Jaquez and I, my Lord Yes, I and Diego, interrupted the second, who came up in still greater consternation. Speak one of you at a time, said Manfred; I ask you, where is the Princess? We do not know, said they both together; but we are frightened out of our wits. So I think, blockheads, said Manfred; what is it has scared you thus? Oh! my Lord, said Jaquez, Diego has seen such a sight! your Highness would not believe our eyes. What new absurdity is this? cried Manfred; give me a direct answer, or, by Heaven Why, my Lord, if it please your Highness to hear me, said the poor fellow, Diego and I Yes, I and Jaquez cried his comrade. Did not I forbid you to speak both at a time? said the Prince you, Jaquez, answer; for the other fool seems more distracted than thou art; what is the matter? My gracious Lord, said Jaquez, if it please your Highness to hear me; Diego and I, according to your Highnesss orders, went to search for the young Lady; but being comprehensive that we might meet the ghost of my young Lord, your Highnesss son, God rest his soul, as he has not received Christian burial Sot! cried Manfred in a rage; is it only a ghost, then, that thou hast seen? Oh! worse! worse! my Lord, cried Diego I had rather have seen ten whole ghosts. Grant me patience! said Manfred; these blockheads distract me. Out of my sight, Diego! and thou, Jaquez, tell me in one word, art thou sober? art thou raving? thou wast wont to have some sense has the other sot frightened himself and thee too? Speak; what is it he fancies he has seen? Why, my Lord, replied Jaquez, trembling, I was going to tell your Highness, that since the calamitous misfortune of my young Lord, God rest his precious soul! not one of us your Highnesss faithful servantsindeed we are, my Lord, though poor menI say, not one of us has dared to set a foot about the castle, but two together so Diego and I, thinking that my young Lady might be in the great gallery, went up there to look for her, and tell her your Highness wanted something to impart to her. O blundering fools! cried Manfred; and in the meantime, she has made her escape, because you were afraid of goblins!Why, thou knave! she left me in the gallery; I came from thence myself. For all that, she may be there still for aught I know, said Jaquez; but the devil shall have me before I seek her there againpoor Diego! I do not believe he will ever recover it. Recover what? said Manfred; am I never to learn what it is has terrified these rascals?but I lose my time; follow me, slave; I will see if she is in the gallery. For Heavens sake, my dear, good Lord, cried Jaquez, do not go to the gallery. Satan himself I believe is in the chamber next to the gallery. Manfred, who hitherto had treated the terror of his servants as an idle panic, was struck at this new circumstance. He recollected the apparition of the portrait, and the sudden closing of the door at the end of the gallery. His voice faltered, and he asked with disorder What is in the great chamber? My Lord, said Jaquez, when Diego and I came into the gallery, he went first, for he said he had more courage than I. So when we came into the gallery we found nobody. We looked under every bench and stool; and still we found nobody. Were all the pictures in their places? said Manfred. Yes, my Lord, answered Jaquez; but we did not think of looking behind them. Well, well! said Manfred; proceed. When we came to the door of the great chamber, continued Jaquez, we found it shut. And could not you open it? said Manfred. Oh! yes, my Lord; would to Heaven we had not! replied henay, it was not I neither; it was Diego he was grown foolhardy, and would go on, though I advised him notif ever I open a door that is shut again Trifle not, said Manfred, shuddering, but tell me what you saw in the great chamber on opening the door. I! my Lord! said Jaquez; I was behind Diego; but I heard the noise. Jaquez, said Manfred, in a solemn tone of voice; tell me, I adjure thee by the souls of my ancestors, what was it thou sawest? what was it thou heardest? It was Diego saw it, my Lord, it was not I, replied Jaquez; I only heard the noise. Diego had no sooner opened the door, than he cried out, and ran back. I ran back too, and said, Is it the ghost? The ghost! no, no, said Diego, and his hair stood on endit is a giant, I believe; he is all clad in armour, for I saw his foot and part of his leg, and they are as large as the helmet below in the court. As he said these words, my Lord, we heard a violent motion and the rattling of armour, as if the giant was rising, for Diego has told me since that he believes the giant was lying down, for the foot and leg were stretched at length on the floor. Before we could get to the end of the gallery, we heard the door of the great chamber clap behind us, but we did not dare turn back to see if the giant was following usyet, now I think on it, we must have heard him if he had pursued usbut for Heavens sake, good my Lord, send for the chaplain, and have the castle exorcised, for, for certain, it is enchanted. Ay, pray do, my Lord, cried all the servants at once, or we must leave your Highnesss service. Peace, dotards! said Manfred, and follow me; I will know what all this means. We! my Lord! cried they with one voice; we would not go up to the gallery for your Highnesss revenue. The young peasant, who had stood silent, now spoke. Will your Highness, said he, permit me to try this adventure? My life is of consequence to nobody; I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one. Your behaviour is above your seeming, said Manfred, viewing him with surprise and admirationhereafter I will reward your braverybut now, continued he with a sigh, I am so circumstanced, that I dare trust no eyes but my own. However, I give you leave to accompany me. Manfred, when he first followed Isabella from the gallery, had gone directly to the apartment of his wife, concluding the Princess had retired thither. Hippolita, who knew his step, rose with anxious fondness to meet her Lord, whom she had not seen since the death of their son. She would have flown in a transport mixed of joy and grief to his bosom, but he pushed her rudely off, and said Where is Isabella? Isabella! my Lord! said the astonished Hippolita. Yes, Isabella, cried Manfred imperiously; I want Isabella. My Lord, replied Matilda, who perceived how much his behaviour had shocked her mother, she has not been with us since your Highness summoned her to your apartment. Tell me where she is, said the Prince; I do not want to know where she has been. My good Lord, says Hippolita, your daughter tells you the truth Isabella left us by your command, and has not returned since;but, my good Lord, compose yourself retire to your rest this dismal day has disordered you. Isabella shall wait your orders in the morning. What, then, you know where she is! cried Manfred. Tell me directly, for I will not lose an instantand you, woman, speaking to his wife, order your chaplain to attend me forthwith. Isabella, said Hippolita calmly, is retired, I suppose, to her chamber she is not accustomed to watch at this late hour. Gracious my Lord, continued she, let me know what has disturbed you. Has Isabella offended you? Trouble me not with questions, said Manfred, but tell me where she is. Matilda shall call her, said the Princess. Sit down, my Lord, and resume your wonted fortitude. What, art thou jealous of Isabella? replied he, that you wish to be present at our interview! Good heavens! my Lord, said Hippolita, what is it your Highness means? Thou wilt know ere many minutes are passed, said the cruel Prince. Send your chaplain to me, and wait my pleasure here. At these words he flung out of the room in search of Isabella, leaving the amazed ladies thunderstruck with his words and frantic deportment, and lost in vain conjectures on what he was meditating. Manfred was now returning from the vault, attended by the peasant and a few of his servants whom he had obliged to accompany him. He ascended the staircase without stopping till he arrived at the gallery, at the door of which he met Hippolita and her chaplain. When Diego had been dismissed by Manfred, he had gone directly to the Princesss apartment with the alarm of what he had seen. That excellent Lady, who no more than Manfred doubted of the reality of the vision, yet affected to treat it as a delirium of the servant. Willing, however, to save her Lord from any additional shock, and prepared by a series of griefs not to tremble at any accession to it, she determined to make herself the first sacrifice, if fate had marked the present hour for their destruction. Dismissing the reluctant Matilda to her rest, who in vain sued for leave to accompany her mother, and attended only by her chaplain, Hippolita had visited the gallery and great chamber; and now with more serenity of soul than she had felt for many hours, she met her Lord, and assured him that the vision of the gigantic leg and foot was all a fable; and no doubt an impression made by fear, and the dark and dismal hour of the night, on the minds of his servants. She and the chaplain had examined the chamber, and found everything in the usual order. Manfred, though persuaded, like his wife, that the vision had been no work of fancy, recovered a little from the tempest of mind into which so many strange events had thrown him. Ashamed, too, of his inhuman treatment of a Princess who returned every injury with new marks of tenderness and duty, he felt returning love forcing itself into his eyes; but not less ashamed of feeling remorse towards one against whom he was inwardly meditating a yet more bitter outrage, he curbed the yearnings of his heart, and did not dare to lean even towards pity. The next transition of his soul was to exquisite villainy. Presuming on the unshaken submission of Hippolita, he flattered himself that she would not only acquiesce with patience to a divorce, but would obey, if it was his pleasure, in endeavouring to persuade Isabella to give him her handbut ere he could indulge his horrid hope, he reflected that Isabella was not to be found. Coming to himself, he gave orders that every avenue to the castle should be strictly guarded, and charged his domestics on pain of their lives to suffer nobody to pass out. The young peasant, to whom he spoke favourably, he ordered to remain in a small chamber on the stairs, in which there was a palletbed, and the key of which he took away himself, telling the youth he would talk with him in the morning. Then dismissing his attendants, and bestowing a sullen kind of halfnod on Hippolita, he retired to his own chamber. Chapter II Matilda, who by Hippolitas order had retired to her apartment, was illdisposed to take any rest. The shocking fate of her brother had deeply affected her. She was surprised at not seeing Isabella; but the strange words which had fallen from her father, and his obscure menace to the Princess his wife, accompanied by the most furious behaviour, had filled her gentle mind with terror and alarm. She waited anxiously for the return of Bianca, a young damsel that attended her, whom she had sent to learn what was become of Isabella. Bianca soon appeared, and informed her mistress of what she had gathered from the servants, that Isabella was nowhere to be found. She related the adventure of the young peasant who had been discovered in the vault, though with many simple additions from the incoherent accounts of the domestics; and she dwelt principally on the gigantic leg and foot which had been seen in the gallerychamber. This last circumstance had terrified Bianca so much, that she was rejoiced when Matilda told her that she would not go to rest, but would watch till the Princess should rise. The young Princess wearied herself in conjectures on the flight of Isabella, and on the threats of Manfred to her mother. But what business could he have so urgent with the chaplain? said Matilda, Does he intend to have my brothers body interred privately in the chapel? Oh, Madam! said Bianca, now I guess. As you are become his heiress, he is impatient to have you married he has always been raving for more sons; I warrant he is now impatient for grandsons. As sure as I live, Madam, I shall see you a bride at last.Good madam, you wont cast off your faithful Bianca you wont put Donna Rosara over me now you are a great Princess. My poor Bianca, said Matilda, how fast your thoughts amble! I a great princess! What hast thou seen in Manfreds behaviour since my brothers death that bespeaks any increase of tenderness to me? No, Bianca; his heart was ever a stranger to mebut he is my father, and I must not complain. Nay, if Heaven shuts my fathers heart against me, it overpays my little merit in the tenderness of my motherO that dear mother! yes, Bianca, tis there I feel the rugged temper of Manfred. I can support his harshness to me with patience; but it wounds my soul when I am witness to his causeless severity towards her. Oh! Madam, said Bianca, all men use their wives so, when they are weary of them. And yet you congratulated me but now, said Matilda, when you fancied my father intended to dispose of me! I would have you a great Lady, replied Bianca, come what will. I do not wish to see you moped in a convent, as you would be if you had your will, and if my Lady, your mother, who knows that a bad husband is better than no husband at all, did not hinder you.Bless me! what noise is that! St. Nicholas forgive me! I was but in jest. It is the wind, said Matilda, whistling through the battlements in the tower above you have heard it a thousand times. Nay, said Bianca, there was no harm neither in what I said it is no sin to talk of matrimonyand so, Madam, as I was saying, if my Lord Manfred should offer you a handsome young Prince for a bridegroom, you would drop him a curtsey, and tell him you would rather take the veil? Thank Heaven! I am in no such danger, said Matilda you know how many proposals for me he has rejected And you thank him, like a dutiful daughter, do you, Madam? But come, Madam; suppose, tomorrow morning, he was to send for you to the great council chamber, and there you should find at his elbow a lovely young Prince, with large black eyes, a smooth white forehead, and manly curling locks like jet; in short, Madam, a young hero resembling the picture of the good Alfonso in the gallery, which you sit and gaze at for hours together Do not speak lightly of that picture, interrupted Matilda sighing; I know the adoration with which I look at that picture is uncommonbut I am not in love with a coloured panel. The character of that virtuous Prince, the veneration with which my mother has inspired me for his memory, the orisons which, I know not why, she has enjoined me to pour forth at his tomb, all have concurred to persuade me that somehow or other my destiny is linked with something relating to him. Lord, Madam! how should that be? said Bianca; I have always heard that your family was in no way related to his and I am sure I cannot conceive why my Lady, the Princess, sends you in a cold morning or a damp evening to pray at his tomb he is no saint by the almanack. If you must pray, why does she not bid you address yourself to our great St. Nicholas? I am sure he is the saint I pray to for a husband. Perhaps my mind would be less affected, said Matilda, if my mother would explain her reasons to me but it is the mystery she observes, that inspires me with thisI know not what to call it. As she never acts from caprice, I am sure there is some fatal secret at bottomnay, I know there is in her agony of grief for my brothers death she dropped some words that intimated as much. Oh! dear Madam, cried Bianca, what were they? No, said Matilda, if a parent lets fall a word, and wishes it recalled, it is not for a child to utter it. What! was she sorry for what she had said? asked Bianca; I am sure, Madam, you may trust me With my own little secrets when I have any, I may, said Matilda; but never with my mothers a child ought to have no ears or eyes but as a parent directs. Well! to be sure, Madam, you were born to be a saint, said Bianca, and there is no resisting ones vocation you will end in a convent at last. But there is my Lady Isabella would not be so reserved to me she will let me talk to her of young men and when a handsome cavalier has come to the castle, she has owned to me that she wished your brother Conrad resembled him. Bianca, said the Princess, I do not allow you to mention my friend disrespectfully. Isabella is of a cheerful disposition, but her soul is pure as virtue itself. She knows your idle babbling humour, and perhaps has now and then encouraged it, to divert melancholy, and enliven the solitude in which my father keeps us Blessed Mary! said Bianca, starting, there it is again! Dear Madam, do you hear nothing? this castle is certainly haunted! Peace! said Matilda, and listen! I did think I heard a voicebut it must be fancy your terrors, I suppose, have infected me. Indeed! indeed! Madam, said Bianca, halfweeping with agony, I am sure I heard a voice. Does anybody lie in the chamber beneath? said the Princess. Nobody has dared to lie there, answered Bianca, since the great astrologer, that was your brothers tutor, drowned himself. For certain, Madam, his ghost and the young Princes are now met in the chamber belowfor Heavens sake let us fly to your mothers apartment! I charge you not to stir, said Matilda. If they are spirits in pain, we may ease their sufferings by questioning them. They can mean no hurt to us, for we have not injured themand if they should, shall we be more safe in one chamber than in another? Reach me my beads; we will say a prayer, and then speak to them. Oh! dear Lady, I would not speak to a ghost for the world! cried Bianca. As she said those words they heard the casement of the little chamber below Matildas open. They listened attentively, and in a few minutes thought they heard a person sing, but could not distinguish the words. This can be no evil spirit, said the Princess, in a low voice; it is undoubtedly one of the familyopen the window, and we shall know the voice. I dare not, indeed, Madam, said Bianca. Thou art a very fool, said Matilda, opening the window gently herself. The noise the Princess made was, however, heard by the person beneath, who stopped; and they concluded had heard the casement open. Is anybody below? said the Princess; if there is, speak. Yes, said an unknown voice. Who is it? said Matilda. A stranger, replied the voice. What stranger? said she; and how didst thou come there at this unusual hour, when all the gates of the castle are locked? I am not here willingly, answered the voice. But pardon me, Lady, if I have disturbed your rest; I knew not that I was overheard. Sleep had forsaken me; I left a restless couch, and came to waste the irksome hours with gazing on the fair approach of morning, impatient to be dismissed from this castle.

Thy words and accents, said Matilda, are of melancholy cast; if thou art unhappy, I pity thee. If poverty afflicts thee, let me know it; I will mention thee to the Princess, whose beneficent soul ever melts for the distressed, and she will relieve thee. I am indeed unhappy, said the stranger; and I know not what wealth is. But I do not complain of the lot which Heaven has cast for me; I am young and healthy, and am not ashamed of owing my support to myselfyet think me not proud, or that I disdain your generous offers. I will remember you in my orisons, and will pray for blessings on your gracious self and your noble mistressif I sigh, Lady, it is for others, not for myself. Now I have it, Madam, said Bianca, whispering the Princess; this is certainly the young peasant; and, by my conscience, he is in loveWell! this is a charming adventure!do, Madam, let us sift him. He does not know you, but takes you for one of my Lady Hippolitas women. Art thou not ashamed, Bianca! said the Princess. What right have we to pry into the secrets of this young mans heart? He seems virtuous and frank, and tells us he is unhappy. Are those circumstances that authorise us to make a property of him? How are we entitled to his confidence? Lord, Madam! how little you know of love! replied Bianca; why, lovers have no pleasure equal to talking of their mistress. And would you have me become a peasants confidante? said the Princess. Well, then, let me talk to him, said Bianca; though I have the honour of being your Highnesss maid of honour, I was not always so great. Besides, if love levels ranks, it raises them too; I have a respect for any young man in love. Peace, simpleton! said the Princess. Though he said he was unhappy, it does not follow that he must be in love. Think of all that has happened today, and tell me if there are no misfortunes but what love causes.Stranger, resumed the Princess, if thy misfortunes have not been occasioned by thy own fault, and are within the compass of the Princess Hippolitas power to redress, I will take upon me to answer that she will be thy protectress. When thou art dismissed from this castle, repair to holy father Jerome, at the convent adjoining to the church of St. Nicholas, and make thy story known to him, as far as thou thinkest meet. He will not fail to inform the Princess, who is the mother of all that want her assistance. Farewell; it is not seemly for me to hold farther converse with a man at this unwonted hour. May the saints guard thee, gracious Lady! replied the peasant; but oh! if a poor and worthless stranger might presume to beg a minutes audience farther; am I so happy? the casement is not shut; might I venture to ask Speak quickly, said Matilda; the morning dawns apace should the labourers come into the fields and perceive usWhat wouldst thou ask? I know not how, I know not if I dare, said the Young stranger, faltering; yet the humanity with which you have spoken to me emboldensLady! dare I trust you? Heavens! said Matilda, what dost thou mean? With what wouldst thou trust me? Speak boldly, if thy secret is fit to be entrusted to a virtuous breast. I would ask, said the peasant, recollecting himself, whether what I have heard from the domestics is true, that the Princess is missing from the castle? What imports it to thee to know? replied Matilda. Thy first words bespoke a prudent and becoming gravity. Dost thou come hither to pry into the secrets of Manfred? Adieu. I have been mistaken in thee. Saying these words she shut the casement hastily, without giving the young man time to reply. I had acted more wisely, said the Princess to Bianca, with some sharpness, if I had let thee converse with this peasant; his inquisitiveness seems of a piece with thy own. It is not fit for me to argue with your Highness, replied Bianca; but perhaps the questions I should have put to him would have been more to the purpose than those you have been pleased to ask him. Oh! no doubt, said Matilda; you are a very discreet personage! May I know what you would have asked him? A bystander often sees more of the game than those that play, answered Bianca. Does your Highness think, Madam, that this question about my Lady Isabella was the result of mere curiosity? No, no, Madam, there is more in it than you great folks are aware of. Lopez told me that all the servants believe this young fellow contrived my Lady Isabellas escape; now, pray, Madam, observe you and I both know that my Lady Isabella never much fancied the Prince your brother. Well! he is killed just in a critical minuteI accuse nobody. A helmet falls from the moonso, my Lord, your father says; but Lopez and all the servants say that this young spark is a magician, and stole it from Alfonsos tomb Have done with this rhapsody of impertinence, said Matilda. Nay, Madam, as you please, cried Bianca; yet it is very particular though, that my Lady Isabella should be missing the very same day, and that this young sorcerer should be found at the mouth of the trapdoor. I accuse nobody; but if my young Lord came honestly by his death Dare not on thy duty, said Matilda, to breathe a suspicion on the purity of my dear Isabellas fame. Purity, or not purity, said Bianca, gone she isa stranger is found that nobody knows; you question him yourself; he tells you he is in love, or unhappy, it is the same thingnay, he owned he was unhappy about others; and is anybody unhappy about another, unless they are in love with them? and at the very next word, he asks innocently, pour soul! if my Lady Isabella is missing. To be sure, said Matilda, thy observations are not totally without foundationIsabellas flight amazes me. The curiosity of the stranger is very particular; yet Isabella never concealed a thought from me. So she told you, said Bianca, to fish out your secrets; but who knows, Madam, but this stranger may be some Prince in disguise? Do, Madam, let me open the window, and ask him a few questions. No, replied Matilda, I will ask him myself, if he knows aught of Isabella; he is not worthy I should converse farther with him. She was going to open the casement, when they heard the bell ring at the posterngate of the castle, which is on the right hand of the tower, where Matilda lay. This prevented the Princess from renewing the conversation with the stranger. After continuing silent for some time, I am persuaded, said she to Bianca, that whatever be the cause of Isabellas flight it had no unworthy motive. If this stranger was accessory to it, she must be satisfied with his fidelity and worth. I observed, did not you, Bianca? that his words were tinctured with an uncommon infusion of piety. It was no ruffians speech; his phrases were becoming a man of gentle birth. I told you, Madam, said Bianca, that I was sure he was some Prince in disguise. Yet, said Matilda, if he was privy to her escape, how will you account for his not accompanying her in her flight? why expose himself unnecessarily and rashly to my fathers resentment? As for that, Madam, replied she, if he could get from under the helmet, he will find ways of eluding your fathers anger. I do not doubt but he has some talisman or other about him. You resolve everything into magic, said Matilda; but a man who has any intercourse with infernal spirits, does not dare to make use of those tremendous and holy words which he uttered. Didst thou not observe with what fervour he vowed to remember me to heaven in his prayers? Yes; Isabella was undoubtedly convinced of his piety. Commend me to the piety of a young fellow and a damsel that consult to elope! said Bianca. No, no, Madam, my Lady Isabella is of another guess mould than you take her for. She used indeed to sigh and lift up her eyes in your company, because she knows you are a saint; but when your back was turned You wrong her, said Matilda; Isabella is no hypocrite; she has a due sense of devotion, but never affected a call she has not. On the contrary, she always combated my inclination for the cloister; and though I own the mystery she has made to me of her flight confounds me; though it seems inconsistent with the friendship between us; I cannot forget the disinterested warmth with which she always opposed my taking the veil. She wished to see me married, though my dower would have been a loss to her and my brothers children. For her sake I will believe well of this young peasant. Then you do think there is some liking between them, said Bianca. While she was speaking, a servant came hastily into the chamber and told the Princess that the Lady Isabella was found. Where? said Matilda. She has taken sanctuary in St. Nicholass church, replied the servant; Father Jerome has brought the news himself; he is below with his Highness. Where is my mother? said Matilda. She is in her own chamber, Madam, and has asked for you. Manfred had risen at the first dawn of light, and gone to Hippolitas apartment, to inquire if she knew aught of Isabella. While he was questioning her, word was brought that Jerome demanded to speak with him. Manfred, little suspecting the cause of the Friars arrival, and knowing he was employed by Hippolita in her charities, ordered him to be admitted, intending to leave them together, while he pursued his search after Isabella. Is your business with me or the Princess? said Manfred. With both, replied the holy man. The Lady Isabella What of her? interrupted Manfred, eagerly. Is at St. Nicholass altar, replied Jerome. That is no business of Hippolita, said Manfred with confusion; let us retire to my chamber, Father, and inform me how she came thither. No, my Lord, replied the good man, with an air of firmness and authority, that daunted even the resolute Manfred, who could not help revering the saintlike virtues of Jerome; my commission is to both, and with your Highnesss goodliking, in the presence of both I shall deliver it; but first, my Lord, I must interrogate the Princess, whether she is acquainted with the cause of the Lady Isabellas retirement from your castle. No, on my soul, said Hippolita; does Isabella charge me with being privy to it? Father, interrupted Manfred, I pay due reverence to your holy profession; but I am sovereign here, and will allow no meddling priest to interfere in the affairs of my domestic. If you have aught to say attend me to my chamber; I do not use to let my wife be acquainted with the secret affairs of my state; they are not within a womans province. My Lord, said the holy man, I am no intruder into the secrets of families. My office is to promote peace, to heal divisions, to preach repentance, and teach mankind to curb their headstrong passions. I forgive your Highnesss uncharitable apostrophe; I know my duty, and am the minister of a mightier prince than Manfred. Hearken to him who speaks through my organs. Manfred trembled with rage and shame. Hippolitas countenance declared her astonishment and impatience to know where this would end. Her silence more strongly spoke her observance of Manfred. The Lady Isabella, resumed Jerome, commends herself to both your Highnesses; she thanks both for the kindness with which she has been treated in your castle she deplores the loss of your son, and her own misfortune in not becoming the daughter of such wise and noble Princes, whom she shall always respect as Parents; she prays for uninterrupted union and felicity between you [Manfreds colour changed] but as it is no longer possible for her to be allied to you, she entreats your consent to remain in sanctuary, till she can learn news of her father, or, by the certainty of his death, be at liberty, with the approbation of her guardians, to dispose of herself in suitable marriage. I shall give no such consent, said the Prince, but insist on her return to the castle without delay I am answerable for her person to her guardians, and will not brook her being in any hands but my own. Your Highness will recollect whether that can any longer be proper, replied the Friar. I want no monitor, said Manfred, colouring; Isabellas conduct leaves room for strange suspicionsand that young villain, who was at least the accomplice of her flight, if not the cause of it The cause! interrupted Jerome; was a young man the cause? This is not to be borne! cried Manfred. Am I to be bearded in my own palace by an insolent Monk? Thou art privy, I guess, to their amours. I would pray to heaven to clear up your uncharitable surmises, said Jerome, if your Highness were not satisfied in your conscience how unjustly you accuse me. I do pray to heaven to pardon that uncharitableness and I implore your Highness to leave the Princess at peace in that holy place, where she is not liable to be disturbed by such vain and worldly fantasies as discourses of love from any man. Cant not to me, said Manfred, but return and bring the Princess to her duty. It is my duty to prevent her return hither, said Jerome. She is where orphans and virgins are safest from the snares and wiles of this world; and nothing but a parents authority shall take her thence. I am her parent, cried Manfred, and demand her. She wished to have you for her parent, said the Friar; but Heaven that forbad that connection has for ever dissolved all ties betwixt you and I announce to your Highness Stop! audacious man, said Manfred, and dread my displeasure. Holy Father, said Hippolita, it is your office to be no respecter of persons you must speak as your duty prescribes but it is my duty to hear nothing that it pleases not my Lord I should hear. Attend the Prince to his chamber. I will retire to my oratory, and pray to the blessed Virgin to inspire you with her holy counsels, and to restore the heart of my gracious Lord to its wonted peace and gentleness. Excellent woman! said the Friar. My Lord, I attend your pleasure. Manfred, accompanied by the Friar, passed to his own apartment, where shutting the door, I perceive, Father, said he, that Isabella has acquainted you with my purpose. Now hear my resolve, and obey. Reasons of state, most urgent reasons, my own and the safety of my people, demand that I should have a son. It is in vain to expect an heir from Hippolita. I have made choice of Isabella. You must bring her back; and you must do more. I know the influence you have with Hippolita her conscience is in your hands. She is, I allow, a faultless woman her soul is set on heaven, and scorns the little grandeur of this world you can withdraw her from it entirely. Persuade her to consent to the dissolution of our marriage, and to retire into a monasteryshe shall endow one if she will; and she shall have the means of being as liberal to your order as she or you can wish. Thus you will divert the calamities that are hanging over our heads, and have the merit of saying the principality of Otranto from destruction. You are a prudent man, and though the warmth of my temper betrayed me into some unbecoming expressions, I honour your virtue, and wish to be indebted to you for the repose of my life and the preservation of my family. The will of heaven be done! said the Friar. I am but its worthless instrument. It makes use of my tongue to tell thee, Prince, of thy unwarrantable designs. The injuries of the virtuous Hippolita have mounted to the throne of pity. By me thou art reprimanded for thy adulterous intention of repudiating her by me thou art warned not to pursue the incestuous design on thy contracted daughter. Heaven that delivered her from thy fury, when the judgments so recently fallen on thy house ought to have inspired thee with other thoughts, will continue to watch over her. Even I, a poor and despised Friar, am able to protect her from thy violenceI, sinner as I am, and uncharitably reviled by your Highness as an accomplice of I know not what amours, scorn the allurements with which it has pleased thee to tempt mine honesty. I love my order; I honour devout souls; I respect the piety of thy Princessbut I will not betray the confidence she reposes in me, nor serve even the cause of religion by foul and sinful compliancesbut forsooth! the welfare of the state depends on your Highness having a son! Heaven mocks the shortsighted views of man. But yestermorn, whose house was so great, so flourishing as Manfreds?where is young Conrad now?My Lord, I respect your tearsbut I mean not to check themlet them flow, Prince! They will weigh more with heaven toward the welfare of thy subjects, than a marriage, which, founded on lust or policy, could never prosper. The sceptre, which passed from the race of Alfonso to thine, cannot be preserved by a match which the church will never allow. If it is the will of the Most High that Manfreds name must perish, resign yourself, my Lord, to its decrees; and thus deserve a crown that can never pass away. Come, my Lord; I like this sorrowlet us return to the Princess she is not apprised of your cruel intentions; nor did I mean more than to alarm you. You saw with what gentle patience, with what efforts of love, she heard, she rejected hearing, the extent of your guilt. I know she longs to fold you in her arms, and assure you of her unalterable affection. Father, said the Prince, you mistake my compunction true, I honour Hippolitas virtues; I think her a Saint; and wish it were for my souls health to tie faster the knot that has united usbut alas! Father, you know not the bitterest of my pangs! it is some time that I have had scruples on the legality of our union Hippolita is related to me in the fourth degreeit is true, we had a dispensation but I have been informed that she had also been contracted to another. This it is that sits heavy at my heart to this state of unlawful wedlock I impute the visitation that has fallen on me in the death of Conrad!ease my conscience of this burden dissolve our marriage, and accomplish the work of godlinesswhich your divine exhortations have commenced in my soul. How cutting was the anguish which the good man felt, when he perceived this turn in the wily Prince! He trembled for Hippolita, whose ruin he saw was determined; and he feared if Manfred had no hope of recovering Isabella, that his impatience for a son would direct him to some other object, who might not be equally proof against the temptation of Manfreds rank. For some time the holy man remained absorbed in thought. At length, conceiving some hopes from delay, he thought the wisest conduct would be to prevent the Prince from despairing of recovering Isabella. Her the Friar knew he could dispose, from her affection to Hippolita, and from the aversion she had expressed to him for Manfreds addresses, to second his views, till the censures of the church could be fulminated against a divorce. With this intention, as if struck with the Princes scruples, he at length said My Lord, I have been pondering on what your Highness has said; and if in truth it is delicacy of conscience that is the real motive of your repugnance to your virtuous Lady, far be it from me to endeavour to harden your heart. The church is an indulgent mother unfold your griefs to her she alone can administer comfort to your soul, either by satisfying your conscience, or upon examination of your scruples, by setting you at liberty, and indulging you in the lawful means of continuing your lineage. In the latter case, if the Lady Isabella can be brought to consent Manfred, who concluded that he had either overreached the good man, or that his first warmth had been but a tribute paid to appearance, was overjoyed at this sudden turn, and repeated the most magnificent promises, if he should succeed by the Friars mediation. The wellmeaning priest suffered him to deceive himself, fully determined to traverse his views, instead of seconding them. Since we now understand one another, resumed the Prince, I expect, Father, that you satisfy me in one point. Who is the youth that I found in the vault? He must have been privy to Isabellas flight tell me truly, is he her lover? or is he an agent for anothers passion? I have often suspected Isabellas indifference to my son a thousand circumstances crowd on my mind that confirm that suspicion. She herself was so conscious of it, that while I discoursed her in the gallery, she outran my suspicious, and endeavoured to justify herself from coolness to Conrad. The Friar, who knew nothing of the youth, but what he had learnt occasionally from the Princess, ignorant what was become of him, and not sufficiently reflecting on the impetuosity of Manfreds temper, conceived that it might not be amiss to sow the seeds of jealousy in his mind they might be turned to some use hereafter, either by prejudicing the Prince against Isabella, if he persisted in that union or by diverting his attention to a wrong scent, and employing his thoughts on a visionary intrigue, prevent his engaging in any new pursuit. With this unhappy policy, he answered in a manner to confirm Manfred in the belief of some connection between Isabella and the youth. The Prince, whose passions wanted little fuel to throw them into a blaze, fell into a rage at the idea of what the Friar suggested. I will fathom to the bottom of this intrigue, cried he; and quitting Jerome abruptly, with a command to remain there till his return, he hastened to the great hall of the castle, and ordered the peasant to be brought before him. Thou hardened young impostor! said the Prince, as soon as he saw the youth; what becomes of thy boasted veracity now? it was Providence, was it, and the light of the moon, that discovered the lock of the trapdoor to thee? Tell me, audacious boy, who thou art, and how long thou hast been acquainted with the Princessand take care to answer with less equivocation than thou didst last night, or tortures shall wring the truth from thee. The young man, perceiving that his share in the flight of the Princess was discovered, and concluding that anything he should say could no longer be of any service or detriment to her, replied I am no impostor, my Lord, nor have I deserved opprobrious language. I answered to every question your Highness put to me last night with the same veracity that I shall speak now and that will not be from fear of your tortures, but because my soul abhors a falsehood. Please to repeat your questions, my Lord; I am ready to give you all the satisfaction in my power. You know my questions, replied the Prince, and only want time to prepare an evasion. Speak directly; who art thou? and how long hast thou been known to the Princess? I am a labourer at the next village, said the peasant; my name is Theodore. The Princess found me in the vault last night before that hour I never was in her presence. I may believe as much or as little as I please of this, said Manfred; but I will hear thy own story before I examine into the truth of it. Tell me, what reason did the Princess give thee for making her escape? thy life depends on thy answer. She told me, replied Theodore, that she was on the brink of destruction, and that if she could not escape from the castle, she was in danger in a few moments of being made miserable for ever. And on this slight foundation, on a silly girls report, said Manfred, thou didst hazard my displeasure? I fear no mans displeasure, said Theodore, when a woman in distress puts herself under my protection. During this examination, Matilda was going to the apartment of Hippolita. At the upper end of the hall, where Manfred sat, was a boarded gallery with latticed windows, through which Matilda and Bianca were to pass. Hearing her fathers voice, and seeing the servants assembled round him, she stopped to learn the occasion. The prisoner soon drew her attention the steady and composed manner in which he answered, and the gallantry of his last reply, which were the first words she heard distinctly, interested her in his flavour. His person was noble, handsome, and commanding, even in that situation but his countenance soon engrossed her whole care. Heavens! Bianca, said the Princess softly, do I dream? or is not that youth the exact resemblance of Alfonsos picture in the gallery? She could say no more, for her fathers voice grew louder at every word. This bravado, said he, surpasses all thy former insolence. Thou shalt experience the wrath with which thou darest to trifle. Seize him, continued Manfred, and bind himthe first news the Princess hears of her champion shall be, that he has lost his head for her sake. The injustice of which thou art guilty towards me, said Theodore, convinces me that I have done a good deed in delivering the Princess from thy tyranny. May she be happy, whatever becomes of me! This is a lover! cried Manfred in a rage a peasant within sight of death is not animated by such sentiments. Tell me, tell me, rash boy, who thou art, or the rack shall force thy secret from thee. Thou hast threatened me with death already, said the youth, for the truth I have told thee if that is all the encouragement I am to expect for sincerity, I am not tempted to indulge thy vain curiosity farther. Then thou wilt not speak? said Manfred. I will not, replied he. Bear him away into the courtyard, said Manfred; I will see his head this instant severed from his body. Matilda fainted at hearing those words. Bianca shrieked, and cried Help! help! the Princess is dead! Manfred started at this ejaculation, and demanded what was the matter! The young peasant, who heard it too, was struck with horror, and asked eagerly the same question; but Manfred ordered him to be hurried into the court, and kept there for execution, till he had informed himself of the cause of Biancas shrieks. When he learned the meaning, he treated it as a womanish panic, and ordering Matilda to be carried to her apartment, he rushed into the court, and calling for one of his guards, bade Theodore kneel down, and prepare to receive the fatal blow. The undaunted youth received the bitter sentence with a resignation that touched every heart but Manfreds. He wished earnestly to know the meaning of the words he had heard relating to the Princess; but fearing to exasperate the tyrant more against her, he desisted. The only boon he deigned to ask was, that he might be permitted to have a confessor, and make his peace with heaven. Manfred, who hoped by the confessors means to come at the youths history, readily granted his request; and being convinced that Father Jerome was now in his interest, he ordered him to be called and shrive the prisoner. The holy man, who had little foreseen the catastrophe that his imprudence occasioned, fell on his knees to the Prince, and adjured him in the most solemn manner not to shed innocent blood. He accused himself in the bitterest terms for his indiscretion, endeavoured to disculpate the youth, and left no method untried to soften the tyrants rage. Manfred, more incensed than appeased by Jeromes intercession, whose retraction now made him suspect he had been imposed upon by both, commanded the Friar to do his duty, telling him he would not allow the prisoner many minutes for confession. Nor do I ask many, my Lord, said the unhappy young man. My sins, thank heaven, have not been numerous; nor exceed what might be expected at my years. Dry your tears, good Father, and let us despatch. This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with regret. Oh wretched youth! said Jerome; how canst thou bear the sight of me with patience? I am thy murderer! it is I have brought this dismal hour upon thee! I forgive thee from my soul, said the youth, as I hope heaven will pardon me. Hear my confession, Father; and give me thy blessing. How can I prepare thee for thy passage as I ought? said Jerome. Thou canst not be saved without pardoning thy foesand canst thou forgive that impious man there? I can, said Theodore; I do. And does not this touch thee, cruel Prince? said the Friar. I sent for thee to confess him, said Manfred, sternly; not to plead for him. Thou didst first incense me against himhis blood be upon thy head! It will! it will! said the good man, in an agony of sorrow. Thou and I must never hope to go where this blessed youth is going! Despatch! said Manfred; I am no more to be moved by the whining of priests than by the shrieks of women. What! said the youth; is it possible that my fate could have occasioned what I heard! Is the Princess then again in thy power? Thou dost but remember me of my wrath, said Manfred. Prepare thee, for this moment is thy last. The youth, who felt his indignation rise, and who was touched with the sorrow which he saw he had infused into all the spectators, as well as into the Friar, suppressed his emotions, and putting off his doublet, and unbuttoning, his collar, knelt down to his prayers. As he stooped, his shirt slipped down below his shoulder, and discovered the mark of a bloody arrow. Gracious heaven! cried the holy man, starting; what do I see? It is my child! my Theodore! The passions that ensued must be conceived; they cannot be painted. The tears of the assistants were suspended by wonder, rather than stopped by joy. They seemed to inquire in the eyes of their Lord what they ought to feel. Surprise, doubt, tenderness, respect, succeeded each other in the countenance of the youth. He received with modest submission the effusion of the old mans tears and embraces. Yet afraid of giving a loose to hope, and suspecting from what had passed the inflexibility of Manfreds temper, he cast a glance towards the Prince, as if to say, canst thou be unmoved at such a scene as this? Manfreds heart was capable of being touched. He forgot his anger in his astonishment; yet his pride forbad his owning himself affected. He even doubted whether this discovery was not a contrivance of the Friar to save the youth. What may this mean? said he. How can he be thy son? Is it consistent with thy profession or reputed sanctity to avow a peasants offspring for the fruit of thy irregular amours! Oh, God! said the holy man, dost thou question his being mine? Could I feel the anguish I do if I were not his father? Spare him! good Prince! spare him! and revile me as thou pleasest. Spare him! spare him! cried the attendants; for this good mans sake! Peace! said Manfred, sternly. I must know more ere I am disposed to pardon. A Saints bastard may be no saint himself. Injurious Lord! said Theodore, add not insult to cruelty. If I am this venerable mans son, though no Prince, as thou art, know the blood that flows in my veins Yes, said the Friar, interrupting him, his blood is noble; nor is he that abject thing, my Lord, you speak him. He is my lawful son, and Sicily can boast of few houses more ancient than that of Falconara. But alas! my Lord, what is blood! what is nobility! We are all reptiles, miserable, sinful creatures. It is piety alone that can distinguish us from the dust whence we sprung, and whither we must return. Truce to your sermon, said Manfred; you forget you are no longer Friar Jerome, but the Count of Falconara. Let me know your history; you will have time to moralise hereafter, if you should not happen to obtain the grace of that sturdy criminal there. Mother of God! said the Friar, is it possible my Lord can refuse a father the life of his only, his longlost, child! Trample me, my Lord, scorn, afflict me, accept my life for his, but spare my son! Thou canst feel, then, said Manfred, what it is to lose an only son! A little hour ago thou didst preach up resignation to me my house, if fate so pleased, must perishbut the Count of Falconara Alas! my Lord, said Jerome, I confess I have offended; but aggravate not an old mans sufferings! I boast not of my family, nor think of such vanitiesit is nature, that pleads for this boy; it is the memory of the dear woman that bore him. Is she, Theodore, is she dead? Her soul has long been with the blessed, said Theodore.

Oh! how? cried Jerome, tell menoshe is happy! Thou art all my care now!Most dread Lord! will youwill you grant me my poor boys life? Return to thy convent, answered Manfred; conduct the Princess hither; obey me in what else thou knowest; and I promise thee the life of thy son. Oh! my Lord, said Jerome, is my honesty the price I must pay for this dear youths safety? For me! cried Theodore. Let me die a thousand deaths, rather than stain thy conscience. What is it the tyrant would exact of thee? Is the Princess still safe from his power? Protect her, thou venerable old man; and let all the weight of his wrath fall on me. Jerome endeavoured to check the impetuosity of the youth; and ere Manfred could reply, the trampling of horses was heard, and a brazen trumpet, which hung without the gate of the castle, was suddenly sounded. At the same instant the sable plumes on the enchanted helmet, which still remained at the other end of the court, were tempestuously agitated, and nodded thrice, as if bowed by some invisible wearer. Chapter III Manfreds heart misgave him when he beheld the plumage on the miraculous casque shaken in concert with the sounding of the brazen trumpet. Father! said he to Jerome, whom he now ceased to treat as Count of Falconara, what mean these portents? If I have offended the plumes were shaken with greater violence than before. Unhappy Prince that I am, cried Manfred. Holy Father! will you not assist me with your prayers? My Lord, replied Jerome, heaven is no doubt displeased with your mockery of its servants. Submit yourself to the church; and cease to persecute her ministers. Dismiss this innocent youth; and learn to respect the holy character I wear. Heaven will not be trifled with you see the trumpet sounded again. I acknowledge I have been too hasty, said Manfred. Father, do you go to the wicket, and demand who is at the gate. Do you grant me the life of Theodore? replied the Friar. I do, said Manfred; but inquire who is without! Jerome, falling on the neck of his son, discharged a flood of tears, that spoke the fulness of his soul. You promised to go to the gate, said Manfred. I thought, replied the Friar, your Highness would excuse my thanking you first in this tribute of my heart. Go, dearest Sir, said Theodore; obey the Prince. I do not deserve that you should delay his satisfaction for me. Jerome, inquiring who was without, was answered, A Herald. From whom? said he. From the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre, said the Herald; and I must speak with the usurper of Otranto. Jerome returned to the Prince, and did not fail to repeat the message in the very words it had been uttered. The first sounds struck Manfred with terror; but when he heard himself styled usurper, his rage rekindled, and all his courage revived. Usurper!insolent villain! cried he; who dares to question my title? Retire, Father; this is no business for Monks I will meet this presumptuous man myself. Go to your convent and prepare the Princesss return. Your son shall be a hostage for your fidelity his life depends on your obedience. Good heaven! my Lord, cried Jerome, your Highness did but this instant freely pardon my childhave you so soon forgot the interposition of heaven? Heaven, replied Manfred, does not send Heralds to question the title of a lawful Prince. I doubt whether it even notifies its will through Friarsbut that is your affair, not mine. At present you know my pleasure; and it is not a saucy Herald that shall save your son, if you do not return with the Princess. It was in vain for the holy man to reply. Manfred commanded him to be conducted to the posterngate, and shut out from the castle. And he ordered some of his attendants to carry Theodore to the top of the black tower, and guard him strictly; scarce permitting the father and son to exchange a hasty embrace at parting. He then withdrew to the hall, and seating himself in princely state, ordered the Herald to be admitted to his presence. Well! thou insolent! said the Prince, what wouldst thou with me? I come, replied he, to thee, Manfred, usurper of the principality of Otranto, from the renowned and invincible Knight, the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre in the name of his Lord, Frederic, Marquis of Vicenza, he demands the Lady Isabella, daughter of that Prince, whom thou hast basely and traitorously got into thy power, by bribing her false guardians during his absence; and he requires thee to resign the principality of Otranto, which thou hast usurped from the said Lord Frederic, the nearest of blood to the last rightful Lord, Alfonso the Good. If thou dost not instantly comply with these just demands, he defies thee to single combat to the last extremity. And so saying the Herald cast down his warder. And where is this braggart who sends thee? said Manfred. At the distance of a league, said the Herald he comes to make good his Lords claim against thee, as he is a true knight, and thou an usurper and ravisher. Injurious as this challenge was, Manfred reflected that it was not his interest to provoke the Marquis. He knew how well founded the claim of Frederic was; nor was this the first time he had heard of it. Frederics ancestors had assumed the style of Princes of Otranto, from the death of Alfonso the Good without issue; but Manfred, his father, and grandfather, had been too powerful for the house of Vicenza to dispossess them. Frederic, a martial and amorous young Prince, had married a beautiful young lady, of whom he was enamoured, and who had died in childbed of Isabella. Her death affected him so much that he had taken the cross and gone to the Holy Land, where he was wounded in an engagement against the infidels, made prisoner, and reported to be dead. When the news reached Manfreds ears, he bribed the guardians of the Lady Isabella to deliver her up to him as a bride for his son Conrad, by which alliance he had proposed to unite the claims of the two houses. This motive, on Conrads death, had cooperated to make him so suddenly resolve on espousing her himself; and the same reflection determined him now to endeavour at obtaining the consent of Frederic to this marriage. A like policy inspired him with the thought of inviting Frederics champion into the castle, lest he should be informed of Isabellas flight, which he strictly enjoined his domestics not to disclose to any of the Knights retinue. Herald, said Manfred, as soon as he had digested these reflections, return to thy master, and tell him, ere we liquidate our differences by the sword, Manfred would hold some converse with him. Bid him welcome to my castle, where by my faith, as I am a true Knight, he shall have courteous reception, and full security for himself and followers. If we cannot adjust our quarrel by amicable means, I swear he shall depart in safety, and shall have full satisfaction according to the laws of arms So help me God and His holy Trinity! The Herald made three obeisances and retired. During this interview Jeromes mind was agitated by a thousand contrary passions. He trembled for the life of his son, and his first thought was to persuade Isabella to return to the castle. Yet he was scarce less alarmed at the thought of her union with Manfred. He dreaded Hippolitas unbounded submission to the will of her Lord; and though he did not doubt but he could alarm her piety not to consent to a divorce, if he could get access to her; yet should Manfred discover that the obstruction came from him, it might be equally fatal to Theodore. He was impatient to know whence came the Herald, who with so little management had questioned the title of Manfred yet he did not dare absent himself from the convent, lest Isabella should leave it, and her flight be imputed to him. He returned disconsolately to the monastery, uncertain on what conduct to resolve. A Monk, who met him in the porch and observed his melancholy air, said Alas! brother, is it then true that we have lost our excellent Princess Hippolita? The holy man started, and cried, What meanest thou, brother? I come this instant from the castle, and left her in perfect health. Martelli, replied the other Friar, passed by the convent but a quarter of an hour ago on his way from the castle, and reported that her Highness was dead. All our brethren are gone to the chapel to pray for her happy transit to a better life, and willed me to wait thy arrival. They know thy holy attachment to that good Lady, and are anxious for the affliction it will cause in theeindeed we have all reason to weep; she was a mother to our house. But this life is but a pilgrimage; we must not murmurwe shall all follow her! May our end be like hers! Good brother, thou dreamest, said Jerome. I tell thee I come from the castle, and left the Princess well. Where is the Lady Isabella? Poor Gentlewoman! replied the Friar; I told her the sad news, and offered her spiritual comfort. I reminded her of the transitory condition of mortality, and advised her to take the veil I quoted the example of the holy Princess Sanchia of Arragon. Thy zeal was laudable, said Jerome, impatiently; but at present it was unnecessary Hippolita is wellat least I trust in the Lord she is; I heard nothing to the contraryyet, methinks, the Princes earnestnessWell, brother, but where is the Lady Isabella? I know not, said the Friar; she wept much, and said she would retire to her chamber. Jerome left his comrade abruptly, and hastened to the Princess, but she was not in her chamber. He inquired of the domestics of the convent, but could learn no news of her. He searched in vain throughout the monastery and the church, and despatched messengers round the neighbourhood, to get intelligence if she had been seen; but to no purpose. Nothing could equal the good mans perplexity. He judged that Isabella, suspecting Manfred of having precipitated his wifes death, had taken the alarm, and withdrawn herself to some more secret place of concealment. This new flight would probably carry the Princes fury to the height. The report of Hippolitas death, though it seemed almost incredible, increased his consternation; and though Isabellas escape bespoke her aversion of Manfred for a husband, Jerome could feel no comfort from it, while it endangered the life of his son. He determined to return to the castle, and made several of his brethren accompany him to attest his innocence to Manfred, and, if necessary, join their intercession with his for Theodore. The Prince, in the meantime, had passed into the court, and ordered the gates of the castle to be flung open for the reception of the stranger Knight and his train. In a few minutes the cavalcade arrived. First came two harbingers with wands. Next a herald, followed by two pages and two trumpets. Then a hundred footguards. These were attended by as many horse. After them fifty footmen, clothed in scarlet and black, the colours of the Knight. Then a led horse. Two heralds on each side of a gentleman on horseback bearing a banner with the arms of Vicenza and Otranto quarterlya circumstance that much offended Manfredbut he stifled his resentment. Two more pages. The Knights confessor telling his beads. Fifty more footmen clad as before. Two Knights habited in complete armour, their beavers down, comrades to the principal Knight. The squires of the two Knights, carrying their shields and devices. The Knights own squire. A hundred gentlemen bearing an enormous sword, and seeming to faint under the weight of it. The Knight himself on a chestnut steed, in complete armour, his lance in the rest, his face entirely concealed by his vizor, which was surmounted by a large plume of scarlet and black feathers. Fifty footguards with drums and trumpets closed the procession, which wheeled off to the right and left to make room for the principal Knight. As soon as he approached the gate he stopped; and the herald advancing, read again the words of the challenge. Manfreds eyes were fixed on the gigantic sword, and he scarce seemed to attend to the cartel but his attention was soon diverted by a tempest of wind that rose behind him. He turned and beheld the Plumes of the enchanted helmet agitated in the same extraordinary manner as before. It required intrepidity like Manfreds not to sink under a concurrence of circumstances that seemed to announce his fate. Yet scorning in the presence of strangers to betray the courage he had always manifested, he said boldly Sir Knight, whoever thou art, I bid thee welcome. If thou art of mortal mould, thy valour shall meet its equal and if thou art a true Knight, thou wilt scorn to employ sorcery to carry thy point. Be these omens from heaven or hell, Manfred trusts to the righteousness of his cause and to the aid of St. Nicholas, who has ever protected his house. Alight, Sir Knight, and repose thyself. Tomorrow thou shalt have a fair field, and heaven befriend the juster side! The Knight made no reply, but dismounting, was conducted by Manfred to the great hall of the castle. As they traversed the court, the Knight stopped to gaze on the miraculous casque; and kneeling down, seemed to pray inwardly for some minutes. Rising, he made a sign to the Prince to lead on. As soon as they entered the hall, Manfred proposed to the stranger to disarm, but the Knight shook his head in token of refusal. Sir Knight, said Manfred, this is not courteous, but by my good faith I will not cross thee, nor shalt thou have cause to complain of the Prince of Otranto. No treachery is designed on my part; I hope none is intended on thine; here take my gage (giving him his ring) your friends and you shall enjoy the laws of hospitality. Rest here until refreshments are brought. I will but give orders for the accommodation of your train, and return to you. The three Knights bowed as accepting his courtesy. Manfred directed the strangers retinue to be conducted to an adjacent hospital, founded by the Princess Hippolita for the reception of pilgrims. As they made the circuit of the court to return towards the gate, the gigantic sword burst from the supporters, and falling to the ground opposite to the helmet, remained immovable. Manfred, almost hardened to preternatural appearances, surmounted the shock of this new prodigy; and returning to the hall, where by this time the feast was ready, he invited his silent guests to take their places. Manfred, however ill his heart was at ease, endeavoured to inspire the company with mirth. He put several questions to them, but was answered only by signs. They raised their vizors but sufficiently to feed themselves, and that sparingly. Sirs said the Prince, ye are the first guests I ever treated within these walls who scorned to hold any intercourse with me nor has it oft been customary, I ween, for princes to hazard their state and dignity against strangers and mutes. You say you come in the name of Frederic of Vicenza; I have ever heard that he was a gallant and courteous Knight; nor would he, I am bold to say, think it beneath him to mix in social converse with a Prince that is his equal, and not unknown by deeds in arms. Still ye are silentwell! be it as it mayby the laws of hospitality and chivalry ye are masters under this roof ye shall do your pleasure. But come, give me a goblet of wine; ye will not refuse to pledge me to the healths of your fair mistresses. The principal Knight sighed and crossed himself, and was rising from the board. Sir Knight, said Manfred, what I said was but in sport. I shall constrain you in nothing use your good liking. Since mirth is not your mood, let us be sad. Business may hit your fancies better. Let us withdraw, and hear if what I have to unfold may be better relished than the vain efforts I have made for your pastime. Manfred then conducting the three Knights into an inner chamber, shut the door, and inviting them to be seated, began thus, addressing himself to the chief personage You come, Sir Knight, as I understand, in the name of the Marquis of Vicenza, to redemand the Lady Isabella, his daughter, who has been contracted in the face of Holy Church to my son, by the consent of her legal guardians; and to require me to resign my dominions to your Lord, who gives himself for the nearest of blood to Prince Alfonso, whose soul God rest! I shall speak to the latter article of your demands first. You must know, your Lord knows, that I enjoy the principality of Otranto from my father, Don Manuel, as he received it from his father, Don Ricardo. Alfonso, their predecessor, dying childless in the Holy Land, bequeathed his estates to my grandfather, Don Ricardo, in consideration of his faithful services. The stranger shook his head. Sir Knight, said Manfred, warmly, Ricardo was a valiant and upright man; he was a pious man; witness his munificent foundation of the adjoining church and two convents. He was peculiarly patronised by St. Nicholasmy grandfather was incapableI say, Sir, Don Ricardo was incapableexcuse me, your interruption has disordered me. I venerate the memory of my grandfather. Well, Sirs, he held this estate; he held it by his good sword and by the favour of St. Nicholasso did my father; and so, Sirs, will I, come what come will. But Frederic, your Lord, is nearest in blood. I have consented to put my title to the issue of the sword. Does that imply a vicious title? I might have asked, where is Frederic your Lord? Report speaks him dead in captivity. You say, your actions say, he livesI question it notI might, Sirs, I mightbut I do not. Other Princes would bid Frederic take his inheritance by force, if he can they would not stake their dignity on a single combat they would not submit it to the decision of unknown mutes!pardon me, gentlemen, I am too warm but suppose yourselves in my situation as ye are stout Knights, would it not move your choler to have your own and the honour of your ancestors called in question? But to the point. Ye require me to deliver up the Lady Isabella. Sirs, I must ask if ye are authorised to receive her? The Knight nodded. Receive her, continued Manfred; well, you are authorised to receive her, but, gentle Knight, may I ask if you have full powers? The Knight nodded. Tis well, said Manfred; then hear what I have to offer. Ye see, gentlemen, before you, the most unhappy of men! (he began to weep); afford me your compassion; I am entitled to it, indeed I am. Know, I have lost my only hope, my joy, the support of my houseConrad died yester morning. The Knights discovered signs of surprise. Yes, Sirs, fate has disposed of my son. Isabella is at liberty. Do you then restore her? cried the chief Knight, breaking silence. Afford me your patience, said Manfred. I rejoice to find, by this testimony of your goodwill, that this matter may be adjusted without blood. It is no interest of mine dictates what little I have farther to say. Ye behold in me a man disgusted with the world the loss of my son has weaned me from earthly cares. Power and greatness have no longer any charms in my eyes. I wished to transmit the sceptre I had received from my ancestors with honour to my sonbut that is over! Life itself is so indifferent to me, that I accepted your defiance with joy. A good Knight cannot go to the grave with more satisfaction than when falling in his vocation whatever is the will of heaven, I submit; for alas! Sirs, I am a man of many sorrows. Manfred is no object of envy, but no doubt you are acquainted with my story. The Knight made signs of ignorance, and seemed curious to have Manfred proceed. Is it possible, Sirs, continued the Prince, that my story should be a secret to you? Have you heard nothing relating to me and the Princess Hippolita? They shook their heads. No! Thus, then, Sirs, it is. You think me ambitious ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of conscientious scruples. But I weary your patience I will be brief. Know, then, that I have long been troubled in mind on my union with the Princess Hippolita. Oh! Sirs, if ye were acquainted with that excellent woman! if ye knew that I adore her like a mistress, and cherish her as a friendbut man was not born for perfect happiness! She shares my scruples, and with her consent I have brought this matter before the church, for we are related within the forbidden degrees. I expect every hour the definitive sentence that must separate us for everI am sure you feel for meI see you dopardon these tears! The Knights gazed on each other, wondering where this would end. Manfred continued The death of my son betiding while my soul was under this anxiety, I thought of nothing but resigning my dominions, and retiring for ever from the sight of mankind. My only difficulty was to fix on a successor, who would be tender of my people, and to dispose of the Lady Isabella, who is dear to me as my own blood. I was willing to restore the line of Alfonso, even in his most distant kindred. And though, pardon me, I am satisfied it was his will that Ricardos lineage should take place of his own relations; yet where was I to search for those relations? I knew of none but Frederic, your Lord; he was a captive to the infidels, or dead; and were he living, and at home, would he quit the flourishing State of Vicenza for the inconsiderable principality of Otranto? If he would not, could I bear the thought of seeing a hard, unfeeling, Viceroy set over my poor faithful people? for, Sirs, I love my people, and thank heaven am beloved by them. But ye will ask whither tends this long discourse? Briefly, then, thus, Sirs. Heaven in your arrival seems to point out a remedy for these difficulties and my misfortunes. The Lady Isabella is at liberty; I shall soon be so. I would submit to anything for the good of my people. Were it not the best, the only way to extinguish the feuds between our families, if I was to take the Lady Isabella to wife? You start. But though Hippolitas virtues will ever be dear to me, a Prince must not consider himself; he is born for his people. A servant at that instant entering the chamber apprised Manfred that Jerome and several of his brethren demanded immediate access to him. The Prince, provoked at this interruption, and fearing that the Friar would discover to the strangers that Isabella had taken sanctuary, was going to forbid Jeromes entrance. But recollecting that he was certainly arrived to notify the Princesss return, Manfred began to excuse himself to the Knights for leaving them for a few moments, but was prevented by the arrival of the Friars. Manfred angrily reprimanded them for their intrusion, and would have forced them back from the chamber; but Jerome was too much agitated to be repulsed. He declared aloud the flight of Isabella, with protestations of his own innocence. Manfred, distracted at the news, and not less at its coming to the knowledge of the strangers, uttered nothing but incoherent sentences, now upbraiding the Friar, now apologising to the Knights, earnest to know what was become of Isabella, yet equally afraid of their knowing; impatient to pursue her, yet dreading to have them join in the pursuit. He offered to despatch messengers in quest of her, but the chief Knight, no longer keeping silence, reproached Manfred in bitter terms for his dark and ambiguous dealing, and demanded the cause of Isabellas first absence from the castle. Manfred, casting a stern look at Jerome, implying a command of silence, pretended that on Conrads death he had placed her in sanctuary until he could determine how to dispose of her. Jerome, who trembled for his sons life, did not dare contradict this falsehood, but one of his brethren, not under the same anxiety, declared frankly that she had fled to their church in the preceding night. The Prince in vain endeavoured to stop this discovery, which overwhelmed him with shame and confusion. The principal stranger, amazed at the contradictions he heard, and more than half persuaded that Manfred had secreted the Princess, notwithstanding the concern he expressed at her flight, rushing to the door, said Thou traitor Prince! Isabella shall be found. Manfred endeavoured to hold him, but the other Knights assisting their comrade, he broke from the Prince, and hastened into the court, demanding his attendants. Manfred, finding it vain to divert him from the pursuit, offered to accompany him and summoning his attendants, and taking Jerome and some of the Friars to guide them, they issued from the castle; Manfred privately giving orders to have the Knights company secured, while to the knight he affected to despatch a messenger to require their assistance. The company had no sooner quitted the castle than Matilda, who felt herself deeply interested for the young peasant, since she had seen him condemned to death in the hall, and whose thoughts had been taken up with concerting measures to save him, was informed by some of the female attendants that Manfred had despatched all his men various ways in pursuit of Isabella. He had in his hurry given this order in general terms, not meaning to extend it to the guard he had set upon Theodore, but forgetting it. The domestics, officious to obey so peremptory a Prince, and urged by their own curiosity and love of novelty to join in any precipitate chase, had to a man left the castle. Matilda disengaged herself from her women, stole up to the black tower, and unbolting the door, presented herself to the astonished Theodore. Young man, said she, though filial duty and womanly modesty condemn the step I am taking, yet holy charity, surmounting all other ties, justifies this act. Fly; the doors of thy prison are open my father and his domestics are absent; but they may soon return. Be gone in safety; and may the angels of heaven direct thy course! Thou art surely one of those angels! said the enraptured Theodore none but a blessed saint could speak, could actcould looklike thee. May I not know the name of my divine protectress? Methought thou namedst thy father. Is it possible? Can Manfreds blood feel holy pity! Lovely Lady, thou answerest not. But how art thou here thyself? Why dost thou neglect thy own safety, and waste a thought on a wretch like Theodore? Let us fly together the life thou bestowest shall be dedicated to thy defence. Alas! thou mistakest, said Matilda, signing I am Manfreds daughter, but no dangers await me. Amazement! said Theodore; but last night I blessed myself for yielding thee the service thy gracious compassion so charitably returns me now. Still thou art in an error, said the Princess; but this is no time for explanation. Fly, virtuous youth, while it is in my power to save thee should my father return, thou and I both should indeed have cause to tremble. How! said Theodore; thinkest thou, charming maid, that I will accept of life at the hazard of aught calamitous to thee? Better I endured a thousand deaths. I run no risk, said Matilda, but by thy delay. Depart; it cannot be known that I have assisted thy flight. Swear by the saints above, said Theodore, that thou canst not be suspected; else here I vow to await whatever can befall me. Oh! thou art too generous, said Matilda; but rest assured that no suspicion can alight on me. Give me thy beauteous hand in token that thou dost not deceive me, said Theodore; and let me bathe it with the warm tears of gratitude. Forbear! said the Princess; this must not be. Alas! said Theodore, I have never known but calamity until this hourperhaps shall never know other fortune again suffer the chaste raptures of holy gratitude tis my soul would print its effusions on thy hand. Forbear, and be gone, said Matilda. How would Isabella approve of seeing thee at my feet? Who is Isabella? said the young man with surprise. Ah, me! I fear, said the Princess, I am serving a deceitful one. Hast thou forgot thy curiosity this morning? Thy looks, thy actions, all thy beauteous self seem an emanation of divinity, said Theodore; but thy words are dark and mysterious. Speak, Lady; speak to thy servants comprehension. Thou understandest but too well! said Matilda; but once more I command thee to be gone thy blood, which I may preserve, will be on my head, if I waste the time in vain discourse. I go, Lady, said Theodore, because it is thy will, and because I would not bring the grey hairs of my father with sorrow to the grave. Say but, adored Lady, that I have thy gentle pity. Stay, said Matilda; I will conduct thee to the subterraneous vault by which Isabella escaped; it will lead thee to the church of St. Nicholas, where thou mayst take sanctuary. What! said Theodore, was it another, and not thy lovely self that I assisted to find the subterraneous passage? It was, said Matilda; but ask no more; I tremble to see thee still abide here; fly to the sanctuary. To sanctuary, said Theodore; no, Princess; sanctuaries are for helpless damsels, or for criminals. Theodores soul is free from guilt, nor will wear the appearance of it. Give me a sword, Lady, and thy father shall learn that Theodore scorns an ignominious flight. Rash youth! said Matilda; thou wouldst not dare to lift thy presumptuous arm against the Prince of Otranto? Not against thy father; indeed, I dare not, said Theodore. Excuse me, Lady; I had forgotten. But could I gaze on thee, and remember thou art sprung from the tyrant Manfred! But he is thy father, and from this moment my injuries are buried in oblivion. A deep and hollow groan, which seemed to come from above, startled the Princess and Theodore. Good heaven! we are overheard! said the Princess. They listened; but perceiving no further noise, they both concluded it the effect of pentup vapours. And the Princess, preceding Theodore softly, carried him to her fathers armoury, where, equipping him with a complete suit, he was conducted by Matilda to the posterngate. Avoid the town, said the Princess, and all the western side of the castle. Tis there the search must be making by Manfred and the strangers; but hie thee to the opposite quarter. Yonder behind that forest to the east is a chain of rocks, hollowed into a labyrinth of caverns that reach to the sea coast. There thou mayst lie concealed, till thou canst make signs to some vessel to put on shore, and take thee off. Go! heaven be thy guide!and sometimes in thy prayers rememberMatilda! Theodore flung himself at her feet, and seizing her lily hand, which with struggles she suffered him to kiss, he vowed on the earliest opportunity to get himself knighted, and fervently entreated her permission to swear himself eternally her knight. Ere the Princess could reply, a clap of thunder was suddenly heard that shook the battlements. Theodore, regardless of the tempest, would have urged his suit but the Princess, dismayed, retreated hastily into the castle, and commanded the youth to be gone with an air that would not be disobeyed. He sighed, and retired, but with eyes fixed on the gate, until Matilda, closing it, put an end to an interview, in which the hearts of both had drunk so deeply of a passion, which both now tasted for the first time. Theodore went pensively to the convent, to acquaint his father with his deliverance. There he learned the absence of Jerome, and the pursuit that was making after the Lady Isabella, with some particulars of whose story he now first became acquainted. The generous gallantry of his nature prompted him to wish to assist her; but the Monks could lend him no lights to guess at the route she had taken. He was not tempted to wander far in search of her, for the idea of Matilda had imprinted itself so strongly on his heart, that he could not bear to absent himself at much distance from her abode. The tenderness Jerome had expressed for him concurred to confirm this reluctance; and he even persuaded himself that filial affection was the chief cause of his hovering between the castle and monastery.

Until Jerome should return at night, Theodore at length determined to repair to the forest that Matilda had pointed out to him. Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind. In this mood he roved insensibly to the caves which had formerly served as a retreat to hermits, and were now reported round the country to be haunted by evil spirits. He recollected to have heard this tradition; and being of a brave and adventurous disposition, he willingly indulged his curiosity in exploring the secret recesses of this labyrinth. He had not penetrated far before he thought he heard the steps of some person who seemed to retreat before him. Theodore, though firmly grounded in all our holy faith enjoins to be believed, had no apprehension that good men were abandoned without cause to the malice of the powers of darkness. He thought the place more likely to be infested by robbers than by those infernal agents who are reported to molest and bewilder travellers. He had long burned with impatience to approve his valour. Drawing his sabre, he marched sedately onwards, still directing his steps as the imperfect rustling sound before him led the way. The armour he wore was a like indication to the person who avoided him. Theodore, now convinced that he was not mistaken, redoubled his pace, and evidently gained on the person that fled, whose haste increasing, Theodore came up just as a woman fell breathless before him. He hasted to raise her, but her terror was so great that he apprehended she would faint in his arms. He used every gentle word to dispel her alarms, and assured her that far from injuring, he would defend her at the peril of his life. The Lady recovering her spirits from his courteous demeanour, and gazing on her protector, said Sure, I have heard that voice before! Not to my knowledge, replied Theodore; unless, as I conjecture, thou art the Lady Isabella. Merciful heaven! cried she. Thou art not sent in quest of me, art thou? And saying those words, she threw herself at his feet, and besought him not to deliver her up to Manfred. To Manfred! cried Theodoreno, Lady; I have once already delivered thee from his tyranny, and it shall fare hard with me now, but I will place thee out of the reach of his daring. Is it possible, said she, that thou shouldst be the generous unknown whom I met last night in the vault of the castle? Sure thou art not a mortal, but my guardian angel. On my knees, let me thank Hold! gentle Princess, said Theodore, nor demean thyself before a poor and friendless young man. If heaven has selected me for thy deliverer, it will accomplish its work, and strengthen my arm in thy cause. But come, Lady, we are too near the mouth of the cavern; let us seek its inmost recesses. I can have no tranquillity till I have placed thee beyond the reach of danger. Alas! what mean you, sir? said she. Though all your actions are noble, though your sentiments speak the purity of your soul, is it fitting that I should accompany you alone into these perplexed retreats? Should we be found together, what would a censorious world think of my conduct? I respect your virtuous delicacy, said Theodore; nor do you harbour a suspicion that wounds my honour. I meant to conduct you into the most private cavity of these rocks, and then at the hazard of my life to guard their entrance against every living thing. Besides, Lady, continued he, drawing a deep sigh, beauteous and all perfect as your form is, and though my wishes are not guiltless of aspiring, know, my soul is dedicated to another; and although A sudden noise prevented Theodore from proceeding. They soon distinguished these sounds Isabella! what, ho! Isabella! The trembling Princess relapsed into her former agony of fear. Theodore endeavoured to encourage her, but in vain. He assured her he would die rather than suffer her to return under Manfreds power; and begging her to remain concealed, he went forth to prevent the person in search of her from approaching. At the mouth of the cavern he found an armed Knight, discoursing with a peasant, who assured him he had seen a lady enter the passes of the rock. The Knight was preparing to seek her, when Theodore, placing himself in his way, with his sword drawn, sternly forbad him at his peril to advance. And who art thou, who darest to cross my way? said the Knight, haughtily. One who does not dare more than he will perform, said Theodore. I seek the Lady Isabella, said the Knight, and understand she has taken refuge among these rocks. Impede me not, or thou wilt repent having provoked my resentment. Thy purpose is as odious as thy resentment is contemptible, said Theodore. Return whence thou camest, or we shall soon know whose resentment is most terrible. The stranger, who was the principal Knight that had arrived from the Marquis of Vicenza, had galloped from Manfred as he was busied in getting information of the Princess, and giving various orders to prevent her falling into the power of the three Knights. Their chief had suspected Manfred of being privy to the Princesss absconding, and this insult from a man, who he concluded was stationed by that Prince to secrete her, confirming his suspicions, he made no reply, but discharging a blow with his sabre at Theodore, would soon have removed all obstruction, if Theodore, who took him for one of Manfreds captains, and who had no sooner given the provocation than prepared to support it, had not received the stroke on his shield. The valour that had so long been smothered in his breast broke forth at once; he rushed impetuously on the Knight, whose pride and wrath were not less powerful incentives to hardy deeds. The combat was furious, but not long. Theodore wounded the Knight in three several places, and at last disarmed him as he fainted by the loss of blood. The peasant, who had fled on the first onset, had given the alarm to some of Manfreds domestics, who, by his orders, were dispersed through the forest in pursuit of Isabella. They came up as the Knight fell, whom they soon discovered to be the noble stranger. Theodore, notwithstanding his hatred to Manfred, could not behold the victory he had gained without emotions of pity and generosity. But he was more touched when he learned the quality of his adversary, and was informed that he was no retainer, but an enemy, of Manfred. He assisted the servants of the latter in disarming the Knight, and in endeavouring to stanch the blood that flowed from his wounds. The Knight recovering his speech, said, in a faint and faltering voice Generous foe, we have both been in an error. I took thee for an instrument of the tyrant; I perceive thou hast made the like mistake. It is too late for excuses. I faint. If Isabella is at handcall herI have important secrets to He is dying! said one of the attendants; has nobody a crucifix about them? Andrea, do thou pray over him. Fetch some water, said Theodore, and pour it down his throat, while I hasten to the Princess. Saying this, he flew to Isabella, and in few words told her modestly that he had been so unfortunate by mistake as to wound a gentleman from her fathers court, who wished, ere he died, to impart something of consequence to her. The Princess, who had been transported at hearing the voice of Theodore, as he called to her to come forth, was astonished at what she heard. Suffering herself to be conducted by Theodore, the new proof of whose valour recalled her dispersed spirits, she came where the bleeding Knight lay speechless on the ground. But her fears returned when she beheld the domestics of Manfred. She would again have fled if Theodore had not made her observe that they were unarmed, and had not threatened them with instant death if they should dare to seize the Princess. The stranger, opening his eyes, and beholding a woman, said, Art thoupray tell me trulyart thou Isabella of Vicenza? I am, said she good heaven restore thee! Then thouthen thousaid the Knight, struggling for utteranceseestthy father. Give me one Oh! amazement! horror! what do I hear! what do I see! cried Isabella. My father! You my father! How came you here, Sir? For heavens sake, speak! Oh! run for help, or he will expire! Tis most true, said the wounded Knight, exerting all his force; I am Frederic thy father. Yes, I came to deliver thee. It will not be. Give me a parting kiss, and take Sir, said Theodore, do not exhaust yourself; suffer us to convey you to the castle. To the castle! said Isabella. Is there no help nearer than the castle? Would you expose my father to the tyrant? If he goes thither, I dare not accompany him; and yet, can I leave him! My child, said Frederic, it matters not for me whither I am carried. A few minutes will place me beyond danger; but while I have eyes to dote on thee, forsake me not, dear Isabella! This brave KnightI know not who he iswill protect thy innocence. Sir, you will not abandon my child, will you? Theodore, shedding tears over his victim, and vowing to guard the Princess at the expense of his life, persuaded Frederic to suffer himself to be conducted to the castle. They placed him on a horse belonging to one of the domestics, after binding up his wounds as well as they were able. Theodore marched by his side; and the afflicted Isabella, who could not bear to quit him, followed mournfully behind. Chapter IV The sorrowful troop no sooner arrived at the castle, than they were met by Hippolita and Matilda, whom Isabella had sent one of the domestics before to advertise of their approach. The ladies causing Frederic to be conveyed into the nearest chamber, retired, while the surgeons examined his wounds. Matilda blushed at seeing Theodore and Isabella together; but endeavoured to conceal it by embracing the latter, and condoling with her on her fathers mischance. The surgeons soon came to acquaint Hippolita that none of the Marquiss wounds were dangerous; and that he was desirous of seeing his daughter and the Princesses. Theodore, under pretence of expressing his joy at being freed from his apprehensions of the combat being fatal to Frederic, could not resist the impulse of following Matilda. Her eyes were so often cast down on meeting his, that Isabella, who regarded Theodore as attentively as he gazed on Matilda, soon divined who the object was that he had told her in the cave engaged his affections. While this mute scene passed, Hippolita demanded of Frederic the cause of his having taken that mysterious course for reclaiming his daughter; and threw in various apologies to excuse her Lord for the match contracted between their children. Frederic, however incensed against Manfred, was not insensible to the courtesy and benevolence of Hippolita but he was still more struck with the lovely form of Matilda. Wishing to detain them by his bedside, he informed Hippolita of his story. He told her that, while prisoner to the infidels, he had dreamed that his daughter, of whom he had learned no news since his captivity, was detained in a castle, where she was in danger of the most dreadful misfortunes and that if he obtained his liberty, and repaired to a wood near Joppa, he would learn more. Alarmed at this dream, and incapable of obeying the direction given by it, his chains became more grievous than ever. But while his thoughts were occupied on the means of obtaining his liberty, he received the agreeable news that the confederate Princes who were warring in Palestine had paid his ransom. He instantly set out for the wood that had been marked in his dream. For three days he and his attendants had wandered in the forest without seeing a human form but on the evening of the third they came to a cell, in which they found a venerable hermit in the agonies of death. Applying rich cordials, they brought the fainting man to his speech. My sons, said he, I am bounden to your charitybut it is in vainI am going to my eternal restyet I die with the satisfaction of performing the will of heaven. When first I repaired to this solitude, after seeing my country become a prey to unbelieversit is alas! above fifty years since I was witness to that dreadful scene! St. Nicholas appeared to me, and revealed a secret, which he bade me never disclose to mortal man, but on my deathbed. This is that tremendous hour, and ye are no doubt the chosen warriors to whom I was ordered to reveal my trust. As soon as ye have done the last offices to this wretched corse, dig under the seventh tree on the left hand of this poor cave, and your pains willOh! good heaven receive my soul! With those words the devout man breathed his last. By break of day, continued Frederic, when we had committed the holy relics to earth, we dug according to direction. But what was our astonishment when about the depth of six feet we discovered an enormous sabrethe very weapon yonder in the court. On the blade, which was then partly out of the scabbard, though since closed by our efforts in removing it, were written the following linesno; excuse me, Madam, added the Marquis, turning to Hippolita; if I forbear to repeat them I respect your sex and rank, and would not be guilty of offending your ear with sounds injurious to aught that is dear to you. He paused. Hippolita trembled. She did not doubt but Frederic was destined by heaven to accomplish the fate that seemed to threaten her house. Looking with anxious fondness at Matilda, a silent tear stole down her cheek but recollecting herself, she said Proceed, my Lord; heaven does nothing in vain; mortals must receive its divine behests with lowliness and submission. It is our part to deprecate its wrath, or bow to its decrees. Repeat the sentence, my Lord; we listen resigned. Frederic was grieved that he had proceeded so far. The dignity and patient firmness of Hippolita penetrated him with respect, and the tender silent affection with which the Princess and her daughter regarded each other, melted him almost to tears. Yet apprehensive that his forbearance to obey would be more alarming, he repeated in a faltering and low voice the following lines Whereer a casque that suits this sword is found,With perils is thy daughter compassd round;Alfonsos blood alone can save the maid,And quiet a long restless Princes shade. What is there in these lines, said Theodore impatiently, that affects these Princesses? Why were they to be shocked by a mysterious delicacy, that has so little foundation? Your words are rude, young man, said the Marquis; and though fortune has favoured you once My honoured Lord, said Isabella, who resented Theodores warmth, which she perceived was dictated by his sentiments for Matilda, discompose not yourself for the glosing of a peasants son he forgets the reverence he owes you; but he is not accustomed Hippolita, concerned at the heat that had arisen, checked Theodore for his boldness, but with an air acknowledging his zeal; and changing the conversation, demanded of Frederic where he had left her Lord? As the Marquis was going to reply, they heard a noise without, and rising to inquire the cause, Manfred, Jerome, and part of the troop, who had met an imperfect rumour of what had happened, entered the chamber. Manfred advanced hastily towards Frederics bed to condole with him on his misfortune, and to learn the circumstances of the combat, when starting in an agony of terror and amazement, he cried Ha! what art thou? thou dreadful spectre! is my hour come? My dearest, gracious Lord, cried Hippolita, clasping him in her arms, what is it you see! Why do you fix your eyeballs thus? What! cried Manfred breathless; dost thou see nothing, Hippolita? Is this ghastly phantom sent to me aloneto rue, who did not For mercys sweetest self, my Lord, said Hippolita, resume your soul, command your reason. There is none here, but us, your friends. What, is not that Alfonso? cried Manfred. Dost thou not see him? can it be my brains delirium? This! my Lord, said Hippolita; this is Theodore, the youth who has been so unfortunate. Theodore! said Manfred mournfully, and striking his forehead; Theodore or a phantom, he has unhinged the soul of Manfred. But how comes he here? and how comes he in armour? I believe he went in search of Isabella, said Hippolita. Of Isabella! said Manfred, relapsing into rage; yes, yes, that is not doubtful. But how did he escape from durance in which I left him? Was it Isabella, or this hypocritical old Friar, that procured his enlargement? And would a parent be criminal, my Lord, said Theodore, if he meditated the deliverance of his child? Jerome, amazed to hear himself in a manner accused by his son, and without foundation, knew not what to think. He could not comprehend how Theodore had escaped, how he came to be armed, and to encounter Frederic. Still he would not venture to ask any questions that might tend to inflame Manfreds wrath against his son. Jeromes silence convinced Manfred that he had contrived Theodores release. And is it thus, thou ungrateful old man, said the Prince, addressing himself to the Friar, that thou repayest mine and Hippolitas bounties? And not content with traversing my hearts nearest wishes, thou armest thy bastard, and bringest him into my own castle to insult me! My Lord, said Theodore, you wrong my father neither he nor I are capable of harbouring a thought against your peace. Is it insolence thus to surrender myself to your Highnesss pleasure? added he, laying his sword respectfully at Manfreds feet. Behold my bosom; strike, my Lord, if you suspect that a disloyal thought is lodged there. There is not a sentiment engraven on my heart that does not venerate you and yours. The grace and fervour with which Theodore uttered these words interested every person present in his favour. Even Manfred was touchedyet still possessed with his resemblance to Alfonso, his admiration was dashed with secret horror. Rise, said he; thy life is not my present purpose. But tell me thy history, and how thou camest connected with this old traitor here. My Lord, said Jerome eagerly. Peace! impostor! said Manfred; I will not have him prompted. My Lord, said Theodore, I want no assistance; my story is very brief. I was carried at five years of age to Algiers with my mother, who had been taken by corsairs from the coast of Sicily. She died of grief in less than a twelvemonth; the tears gushed from Jeromes eyes, on whose countenance a thousand anxious passions stood expressed. Before she died, continued Theodore, she bound a writing about my arm under my garments, which told me I was the son of the Count Falconara. It is most true, said Jerome; I am that wretched father. Again I enjoin thee silence, said Manfred proceed. I remained in slavery, said Theodore, until within these two years, when attending on my master in his cruises, I was delivered by a Christian vessel, which overpowered the pirate; and discovering myself to the captain, he generously put me on shore in Sicily; but alas! instead of finding a father, I learned that his estate, which was situated on the coast, had, during his absence, been laid waste by the Rover who had carried my mother and me into captivity that his castle had been burnt to the ground, and that my father on his return had sold what remained, and was retired into religion in the kingdom of Naples, but where no man could inform me. Destitute and friendless, hopeless almost of attaining the transport of a parents embrace, I took the first opportunity of setting sail for Naples, from whence, within these six days, I wandered into this province, still supporting myself by the labour of my hands; nor until yestermorn did I believe that heaven had reserved any lot for me but peace of mind and contented poverty. This, my Lord, is Theodores story. I am blessed beyond my hope in finding a father; I am unfortunate beyond my desert in having incurred your Highnesss displeasure. He ceased. A murmur of approbation gently arose from the audience. This is not all, said Frederic; I am bound in honour to add what he suppresses. Though he is modest, I must be generous; he is one of the bravest youths on Christian ground. He is warm too; and from the short knowledge I have of him, I will pledge myself for his veracity if what he reports of himself were not true, he would not utter itand for me, youth, I honour a frankness which becomes thy birth; but now, and thou didst offend me yet the noble blood which flows in thy veins, may well be allowed to boil out, when it has so recently traced itself to its source. Come, my Lord, (turning to Manfred), if I can pardon him, surely you may; it is not the youths fault, if you took him for a spectre. This bitter taunt galled the soul of Manfred. If beings from another world, replied he haughtily, have power to impress my mind with awe, it is more than living man can do; nor could a striplings arm. My Lord, interrupted Hippolita, your guest has occasion for repose shall we not leave him to his rest? Saying this, and taking Manfred by the hand, she took leave of Frederic, and led the company forth. The Prince, not sorry to quit a conversation which recalled to mind the discovery he had made of his most secret sensations, suffered himself to be conducted to his own apartment, after permitting Theodore, though under engagement to return to the castle on the morrow (a condition the young man gladly accepted), to retire with his father to the convent. Matilda and Isabella were too much occupied with their own reflections, and too little content with each other, to wish for farther converse that night. They separated each to her chamber, with more expressions of ceremony and fewer of affection than had passed between them since their childhood. If they parted with small cordiality, they did but meet with greater impatience, as soon as the sun was risen. Their minds were in a situation that excluded sleep, and each recollected a thousand questions which she wished she had put to the other overnight. Matilda reflected that Isabella had been twice delivered by Theodore in very critical situations, which she could not believe accidental. His eyes, it was true, had been fixed on her in Frederics chamber; but that might have been to disguise his passion for Isabella from the fathers of both. It were better to clear this up. She wished to know the truth, lest she should wrong her friend by entertaining a passion for Isabellas lover. Thus jealousy prompted, and at the same time borrowed an excuse from friendship to justify its curiosity. Isabella, not less restless, had better foundation for her suspicions. Both Theodores tongue and eyes had told her his heart was engaged; it was trueyet, perhaps, Matilda might not correspond to his passion; she had ever appeared insensible to love all her thoughts were set on heaven. Why did I dissuade her? said Isabella to herself; I am punished for my generosity; but when did they meet? where? It cannot be; I have deceived myself; perhaps last night was the first time they ever beheld each other; it must be some other object that has prepossessed his affectionsif it is, I am not so unhappy as I thought; if it is not my friend Matildahow! Can I stoop to wish for the affection of a man, who rudely and unnecessarily acquainted me with his indifference? and that at the very moment in which common courtesy demanded at least expressions of civility. I will go to my dear Matilda, who will confirm me in this becoming pride. Man is falseI will advise with her on taking the veil she will rejoice to find me in this disposition; and I will acquaint her that I no longer oppose her inclination for the cloister. In this frame of mind, and determined to open her heart entirely to Matilda, she went to that Princesss chamber, whom she found already dressed, and leaning pensively on her arm. This attitude, so correspondent to what she felt herself, revived Isabellas suspicions, and destroyed the confidence she had purposed to place in her friend. They blushed at meeting, and were too much novices to disguise their sensations with address. After some unmeaning questions and replies, Matilda demanded of Isabella the cause of her flight? The latter, who had almost forgotten Manfreds passion, so entirely was she occupied by her own, concluding that Matilda referred to her last escape from the convent, which had occasioned the events of the preceding evening, replied Martelli brought word to the convent that your mother was dead. Oh! said Matilda, interrupting her, Bianca has explained that mistake to me on seeing me faint, she cried out, The Princess is dead! and Martelli, who had come for the usual dole to the castle And what made you faint? said Isabella, indifferent to the rest. Matilda blushed and stammered My fatherhe was sitting in judgment on a criminal What criminal? said Isabella eagerly. A young man, said Matilda; I believe I think it was that young man that What, Theodore? said Isabella. Yes, answered she; I never saw him before; I do not know how he had offended my father, but as he has been of service to you, I am glad my Lord has pardoned him. Served me! replied Isabella; do you term it serving me, to wound my father, and almost occasion his death? Though it is but since yesterday that I am blessed with knowing a parent, I hope Matilda does not think I am such a stranger to filial tenderness as not to resent the boldness of that audacious youth, and that it is impossible for me ever to feel any affection for one who dared to lift his arm against the author of my being. No, Matilda, my heart abhors him; and if you still retain the friendship for me that you have vowed from your infancy, you will detest a man who has been on the point of making me miserable for ever. Matilda held down her head and replied I hope my dearest Isabella does not doubt her Matildas friendship I never beheld that youth until yesterday; he is almost a stranger to me but as the surgeons have pronounced your father out of danger, you ought not to harbour uncharitable resentment against one, who I am persuaded did not know the Marquis was related to you. You plead his cause very pathetically, said Isabella, considering he is so much a stranger to you! I am mistaken, or he returns your charity. What mean you? said Matilda. Nothing, said Isabella, repenting that she had given Matilda a hint of Theodores inclination for her. Then changing the discourse, she asked Matilda what occasioned Manfred to take Theodore for a spectre? Bless me, said Matilda, did not you observe his extreme resemblance to the portrait of Alfonso in the gallery? I took notice of it to Bianca even before I saw him in armour; but with the helmet on, he is the very image of that picture. I do not much observe pictures, said Isabella much less have I examined this young man so attentively as you seem to have done. Ah? Matilda, your heart is in danger, but let me warn you as a friend, he has owned to me that he is in love; it cannot be with you, for yesterday was the first time you ever metwas it not? Certainly, replied Matilda; but why does my dearest Isabella conclude from anything I have said, thatshe pausedthen continuing he saw you first, and I am far from having the vanity to think that my little portion of charms could engage a heart devoted to you; may you be happy, Isabella, whatever is the fate of Matilda! My lovely friend, said Isabella, whose heart was too honest to resist a kind expression, it is you that Theodore admires; I saw it; I am persuaded of it; nor shall a thought of my own happiness suffer me to interfere with yours. This frankness drew tears from the gentle Matilda; and jealousy that for a moment had raised a coolness between these amiable maidens soon gave way to the natural sincerity and candour of their souls. Each confessed to the other the impression that Theodore had made on her; and this confidence was followed by a struggle of generosity, each insisting on yielding her claim to her friend. At length the dignity of Isabellas virtue reminding her of the preference which Theodore had almost declared for her rival, made her determine to conquer her passion, and cede the beloved object to her friend. During this contest of amity, Hippolita entered her daughters chamber. Madam, said she to Isabella, you have so much tenderness for Matilda, and interest yourself so kindly in whatever affects our wretched house, that I can have no secrets with my child which are not proper for you to hear. The princesses were all attention and anxiety. Know then, Madam, continued Hippolita, and you my dearest Matilda, that being convinced by all the events of these two last ominous days, that heaven purposes the sceptre of Otranto should pass from Manfreds hands into those of the Marquis Frederic, I have been perhaps inspired with the thought of averting our total destruction by the union of our rival houses. With this view I have been proposing to Manfred, my lord, to tender this dear, dear child to Frederic, your father. Me to Lord Frederic! cried Matilda; good heavens! my gracious motherand have you named it to my father? I have, said Hippolita; he listened benignly to my proposal, and is gone to break it to the Marquis. Ah! wretched princess! cried Isabella; what hast thou done! what ruin has thy inadvertent goodness been preparing for thyself, for me, and for Matilda! Ruin from me to you and to my child! said Hippolita what can this mean? Alas! said Isabella, the purity of your own heart prevents your seeing the depravity of others. Manfred, your lord, that impious man Hold, said Hippolita; you must not in my presence, young lady, mention Manfred with disrespect he is my lord and husband, and Will not long be so, said Isabella, if his wicked purposes can be carried into execution. This language amazes me, said Hippolita. Your feeling, Isabella, is warm; but until this hour I never knew it betray you into intemperance. What deed of Manfred authorises you to treat him as a murderer, an assassin? Thou virtuous, and too credulous Princess! replied Isabella; it is not thy life he aims atit is to separate himself from thee! to divorce thee! to To divorce me! To divorce my mother! cried Hippolita and Matilda at once. Yes, said Isabella; and to complete his crime, he meditatesI cannot speak it! What can surpass what thou hast already uttered? said Matilda. Hippolita was silent. Grief choked her speech; and the recollection of Manfreds late ambiguous discourses confirmed what she heard. Excellent, dear lady! madam! mother! cried Isabella, flinging herself at Hippolitas feet in a transport of passion; trust me, believe me, I will die a thousand deaths sooner than consent to injure you, than yield to so odiousoh! This is too much! cried Hippolita What crimes does one crime suggest! Rise, dear Isabella; I do not doubt your virtue. Oh! Matilda, this stroke is too heavy for thee! weep not, my child; and not a murmur, I charge thee. Remember, he is thy father still! But you are my mother too, said Matilda fervently; and you are virtuous, you are guiltless!Oh! must not I, must not I complain? You must not, said Hippolitacome, all will yet be well. Manfred, in the agony for the loss of thy brother, knew not what he said; perhaps Isabella misunderstood him; his heart is goodand, my child, thou knowest not all! There is a destiny hangs over us; the hand of Providence is stretched out; oh! could I but save thee from the wreck! Yes, continued she in a firmer tone, perhaps the sacrifice of myself may atone for all; I will go and offer myself to this divorceit boots not what becomes of me. I will withdraw into the neighbouring monastery, and waste the remainder of life in prayers and tears for my child andthe Prince! Thou art as much too good for this world, said Isabella, as Manfred is execrable; but think not, lady, that thy weakness shall determine for me.

I swear, hear me all ye angels Stop, I adjure thee, cried Hippolita remember thou dost not depend on thyself; thou hast a father. My father is too pious, too noble, interrupted Isabella, to command an impious deed. But should he command it; can a father enjoin a cursed act? I was contracted to the son, can I wed the father? No, madam, no; force should not drag me to Manfreds hated bed. I loathe him, I abhor him divine and human laws forbidand my friend, my dearest Matilda! would I wound her tender soul by injuring her adored mother? my own motherI never have known another Oh! she is the mother of both! cried Matilda can we, can we, Isabella, adore her too much? My lovely children, said the touched Hippolita, your tenderness overpowers mebut I must not give way to it. It is not ours to make election for ourselves heaven, our fathers, and our husbands must decide for us. Have patience until you hear what Manfred and Frederic have determined. If the Marquis accepts Matildas hand, I know she will readily obey. Heaven may interpose and prevent the rest. What means my child? continued she, seeing Matilda fall at her feet with a flood of speechless tearsBut no; answer me not, my daughter I must not hear a word against the pleasure of thy father. Oh! doubt not my obedience, my dreadful obedience to him and to you! said Matilda. But can I, most respected of women, can I experience all this tenderness, this world of goodness, and conceal a thought from the best of mothers? What art thou going to utter? said Isabella trembling. Recollect thyself, Matilda. No, Isabella, said the Princess, I should not deserve this incomparable parent, if the inmost recesses of my soul harboured a thought without her permissionnay, I have offended her; I have suffered a passion to enter my heart without her avowalbut here I disclaim it; here I vow to heaven and her My child! my child; said Hippolita, what words are these! what new calamities has fate in store for us! Thou, a passion? Thou, in this hour of destruction Oh! I see all my guilt! said Matilda. I abhor myself, if I cost my mother a pang. She is the dearest thing I have on earthOh! I will never, never behold him more! Isabella, said Hippolita, thou art conscious to this unhappy secret, whatever it is. Speak! What! cried Matilda, have I so forfeited my mothers love, that she will not permit me even to speak my own guilt? oh! wretched, wretched Matilda! Thou art too cruel, said Isabella to Hippolita canst thou behold this anguish of a virtuous mind, and not commiserate it? Not pity my child! said Hippolita, catching Matilda in her armsOh! I know she is good, she is all virtue, all tenderness, and duty. I do forgive thee, my excellent, my only hope! The princesses then revealed to Hippolita their mutual inclination for Theodore, and the purpose of Isabella to resign him to Matilda. Hippolita blamed their imprudence, and showed them the improbability that either father would consent to bestow his heiress on so poor a man, though nobly born. Some comfort it gave her to find their passion of so recent a date, and that Theodore had had but little cause to suspect it in either. She strictly enjoined them to avoid all correspondence with him. This Matilda fervently promised but Isabella, who flattered herself that she meant no more than to promote his union with her friend, could not determine to avoid him; and made no reply. I will go to the convent, said Hippolita, and order new masses to be said for a deliverance from these calamities. Oh! my mother, said Matilda, you mean to quit us you mean to take sanctuary, and to give my father an opportunity of pursuing his fatal intention. Alas! on my knees I supplicate you to forbear; will you leave me a prey to Frederic? I will follow you to the convent. Be at peace, my child, said Hippolita I will return instantly. I will never abandon thee, until I know it is the will of heaven, and for thy benefit. Do not deceive me, said Matilda. I will not marry Frederic until thou commandest it. Alas! what will become of me? Why that exclamation? said Hippolita. I have promised thee to return Ah! my mother, replied Matilda, stay and save me from myself. A frown from thee can do more than all my fathers severity. I have given away my heart, and you alone can make me recall it. No more, said Hippolita; thou must not relapse, Matilda. I can quit Theodore, said she, but must I wed another? let me attend thee to the altar, and shut myself from the world for ever. Thy fate depends on thy father, said Hippolita; I have illbestowed my tenderness, if it has taught thee to revere aught beyond him. Adieu! my child I go to pray for thee. Hippolitas real purpose was to demand of Jerome, whether in conscience she might not consent to the divorce. She had oft urged Manfred to resign the principality, which the delicacy of her conscience rendered an hourly burthen to her. These scruples concurred to make the separation from her husband appear less dreadful to her than it would have seemed in any other situation. Jerome, at quitting the castle overnight, had questioned Theodore severely why he had accused him to Manfred of being privy to his escape. Theodore owned it had been with design to prevent Manfreds suspicion from alighting on Matilda; and added, the holiness of Jeromes life and character secured him from the tyrants wrath. Jerome was heartily grieved to discover his sons inclination for that princess; and leaving him to his rest, promised in the morning to acquaint him with important reasons for conquering his passion. Theodore, like Isabella, was too recently acquainted with parental authority to submit to its decisions against the impulse of his heart. He had little curiosity to learn the Friars reasons, and less disposition to obey them. The lovely Matilda had made stronger impressions on him than filial affection. All night he pleased himself with visions of love; and it was not till late after the morningoffice, that he recollected the Friars commands to attend him at Alfonsos tomb. Young man, said Jerome, when he saw him, this tardiness does not please me. Have a fathers commands already so little weight? Theodore made awkward excuses, and attributed his delay to having overslept himself. And on whom were thy dreams employed? said the Friar sternly. His son blushed. Come, come, resumed the Friar, inconsiderate youth, this must not be; eradicate this guilty passion from thy breast Guilty passion! cried Theodore Can guilt dwell with innocent beauty and virtuous modesty? It is sinful, replied the Friar, to cherish those whom heaven has doomed to destruction. A tyrants race must be swept from the earth to the third and fourth generation. Will heaven visit the innocent for the crimes of the guilty? said Theodore. The fair Matilda has virtues enough To undo thee interrupted Jerome. Hast thou so soon forgotten that twice the savage Manfred has pronounced thy sentence? Nor have I forgotten, sir, said Theodore, that the charity of his daughter delivered me from his power. I can forget injuries, but never benefits. The injuries thou hast received from Manfreds race, said the Friar, are beyond what thou canst conceive. Reply not, but view this holy image! Beneath this marble monument rest the ashes of the good Alfonso; a prince adorned with every virtue the father of his people! the delight of mankind! Kneel, headstrong boy, and list, while a father unfolds a tale of horror that will expel every sentiment from thy soul, but sensations of sacred vengeanceAlfonso! much injured prince! let thy unsatisfied shade sit awful on the troubled air, while these trembling lipsHa! who comes there? The most wretched of women! said Hippolita, entering the choir. Good Father, art thou at leisure?but why this kneeling youth? what means the horror imprinted on each countenance? why at this venerable tombalas! hast thou seen aught? We were pouring forth our orisons to heaven, replied the Friar, with some confusion, to put an end to the woes of this deplorable province. Join with us, Lady! thy spotless soul may obtain an exemption from the judgments which the portents of these days but too speakingly denounce against thy house. I pray fervently to heaven to divert them, said the pious Princess. Thou knowest it has been the occupation of my life to wrest a blessing for my Lord and my harmless children.One alas! is taken from me! would heaven but hear me for my poor Matilda! Father! intercede for her! Every heart will bless her, cried Theodore with rapture. Be dumb, rash youth! said Jerome. And thou, fond Princess, contend not with the Powers above! the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away bless His holy name, and submit to his decrees. I do most devoutly, said Hippolita; but will He not spare my only comfort? must Matilda perish too?ah! Father, I camebut dismiss thy son. No ear but thine must hear what I have to utter. May heaven grant thy every wish, most excellent Princess! said Theodore retiring. Jerome frowned. Hippolita then acquainted the Friar with the proposal she had suggested to Manfred, his approbation of it, and the tender of Matilda that he was gone to make to Frederic. Jerome could not conceal his dislike of the notion, which he covered under pretence of the improbability that Frederic, the nearest of blood to Alfonso, and who was come to claim his succession, would yield to an alliance with the usurper of his right. But nothing could equal the perplexity of the Friar, when Hippolita confessed her readiness not to oppose the separation, and demanded his opinion on the legality of her acquiescence. The Friar caught eagerly at her request of his advice, and without explaining his aversion to the proposed marriage of Manfred and Isabella, he painted to Hippolita in the most alarming colours the sinfulness of her consent, denounced judgments against her if she complied, and enjoined her in the severest terms to treat any such proposition with every mark of indignation and refusal. Manfred, in the meantime, had broken his purpose to Frederic, and proposed the double marriage. That weak Prince, who had been struck with the charms of Matilda, listened but too eagerly to the offer. He forgot his enmity to Manfred, whom he saw but little hope of dispossessing by force; and flattering himself that no issue might succeed from the union of his daughter with the tyrant, he looked upon his own succession to the principality as facilitated by wedding Matilda. He made faint opposition to the proposal; affecting, for form only, not to acquiesce unless Hippolita should consent to the divorce. Manfred took that upon himself. Transported with his success, and impatient to see himself in a situation to expect sons, he hastened to his wifes apartment, determined to extort her compliance. He learned with indignation that she was absent at the convent. His guilt suggested to him that she had probably been informed by Isabella of his purpose. He doubted whether her retirement to the convent did not import an intention of remaining there, until she could raise obstacles to their divorce; and the suspicions he had already entertained of Jerome, made him apprehend that the Friar would not only traverse his views, but might have inspired Hippolita with the resolution of talking sanctuary. Impatient to unravel this clue, and to defeat its success, Manfred hastened to the convent, and arrived there as the Friar was earnestly exhorting the Princess never to yield to the divorce. Madam, said Manfred, what business drew you hither? why did you not await my return from the Marquis? I came to implore a blessing on your councils, replied Hippolita. My councils do not need a Friars intervention, said Manfred; and of all men living is that hoary traitor the only one whom you delight to confer with? Profane Prince! said Jerome; is it at the altar that thou choosest to insult the servants of the altar?but, Manfred, thy impious schemes are known. Heaven and this virtuous lady know themnay, frown not, Prince. The Church despises thy menaces. Her thunders will be heard above thy wrath. Dare to proceed in thy cursed purpose of a divorce, until her sentence be known, and here I lance her anathema at thy head. Audacious rebel! said Manfred, endeavouring to conceal the awe with which the Friars words inspired him. Dost thou presume to threaten thy lawful Prince? Thou art no lawful Prince, said Jerome; thou art no Princego, discuss thy claim with Frederic; and when that is done It is done, replied Manfred; Frederic accepts Matildas hand, and is content to waive his claim, unless I have no male issueas he spoke those words three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alfonsos statue. Manfred turned pale, and the Princess sank on her knees. Behold! said the Friar; mark this miraculous indication that the blood of Alfonso will never mix with that of Manfred! My gracious Lord, said Hippolita, let us submit ourselves to heaven. Think not thy ever obedient wife rebels against thy authority. I have no will but that of my Lord and the Church. To that revered tribunal let us appeal. It does not depend on us to burst the bonds that unite us. If the Church shall approve the dissolution of our marriage, be it soI have but few years, and those of sorrow, to pass. Where can they be worn away so well as at the foot of this altar, in prayers for thine and Matildas safety? But thou shalt not remain here until then, said Manfred. Repair with me to the castle, and there I will advise on the proper measures for a divorce;but this meddling Friar comes not thither; my hospitable roof shall never more harbour a traitorand for thy Reverences offspring, continued he, I banish him from my dominions. He, I ween, is no sacred personage, nor under the protection of the Church. Whoever weds Isabella, it shall not be Father Falconaras startedup son. They start up, said the Friar, who are suddenly beheld in the seat of lawful Princes; but they wither away like the grass, and their place knows them no more. Manfred, casting a look of scorn at the Friar, led Hippolita forth; but at the door of the church whispered one of his attendants to remain concealed about the convent, and bring him instant notice, if any one from the castle should repair thither. Chapter V Every reflection which Manfred made on the Friars behaviour, conspired to persuade him that Jerome was privy to an amour between Isabella and Theodore. But Jeromes new presumption, so dissonant from his former meekness, suggested still deeper apprehensions. The Prince even suspected that the Friar depended on some secret support from Frederic, whose arrival, coinciding with the novel appearance of Theodore, seemed to bespeak a correspondence. Still more was he troubled with the resemblance of Theodore to Alfonsos portrait. The latter he knew had unquestionably died without issue. Frederic had consented to bestow Isabella on him. These contradictions agitated his mind with numberless pangs. He saw but two methods of extricating himself from his difficulties. The one was to resign his dominions to the Marquispride, ambition, and his reliance on ancient prophecies, which had pointed out a possibility of his preserving them to his posterity, combated that thought. The other was to press his marriage with Isabella. After long ruminating on these anxious thoughts, as he marched silently with Hippolita to the castle, he at last discoursed with that Princess on the subject of his disquiet, and used every insinuating and plausible argument to extract her consent to, even her promise of promoting the divorce. Hippolita needed little persuasions to bend her to his pleasure. She endeavoured to win him over to the measure of resigning his dominions; but finding her exhortations fruitless, she assured him, that as far as her conscience would allow, she would raise no opposition to a separation, though without better founded scruples than what he yet alleged, she would not engage to be active in demanding it. This compliance, though inadequate, was sufficient to raise Manfreds hopes. He trusted that his power and wealth would easily advance his suit at the court of Rome, whither he resolved to engage Frederic to take a journey on purpose. That Prince had discovered so much passion for Matilda, that Manfred hoped to obtain all he wished by holding out or withdrawing his daughters charms, according as the Marquis should appear more or less disposed to cooperate in his views. Even the absence of Frederic would be a material point gained, until he could take further measures for his security. Dismissing Hippolita to her apartment, he repaired to that of the Marquis; but crossing the great hall through which he was to pass he met Bianca. The damsel he knew was in the confidence of both the young ladies. It immediately occurred to him to sift her on the subject of Isabella and Theodore. Calling her aside into the recess of the oriel window of the hall, and soothing her with many fair words and promises, he demanded of her whether she knew aught of the state of Isabellas affections. I! my Lord! no my Lordyes my Lordpoor Lady! she is wonderfully alarmed about her fathers wounds; but I tell her he will do well; dont your Highness think so? I do not ask you, replied Manfred, what she thinks about her father; but you are in her secrets. Come, be a good girl and tell me; is there any young manha!you understand me. Lord bless me! understand your Highness? no, not I. I told her a few vulnerary herbs and repose I am not talking, replied the Prince, impatiently, about her father; I know he will do well. Bless me, I rejoice to hear your Highness say so; for though I thought it not right to let my young Lady despond, methought his greatness had a wan look, and a somethingI remember when young Ferdinand was wounded by the Venetian Thou answerest from the point, interrupted Manfred; but here, take this jewel, perhaps that may fix thy attentionnay, no reverences; my favour shall not stop herecome, tell me truly; how stands Isabellas heart? Well! your Highness has such a way! said Bianca, to be surebut can your Highness keep a secret? if it should ever come out of your lips It shall not, it shall not, cried Manfred. Nay, but swear, your Highness. By my halidame, if it should ever be known that I said it Why, truth is truth, I do not think my Lady Isabella ever much affectioned my young Lord your son; yet he was a sweet youth as one should see; I am sure, if I had been a Princessbut bless me! I must attend my Lady Matilda; she will marvel what is become of me. Stay, cried Manfred; thou hast not satisfied my question. Hast thou ever carried any message, any letter? I! good gracious! cried Bianca; I carry a letter? I would not to be a Queen. I hope your Highness thinks, though I am poor, I am honest. Did your Highness never hear what Count Marsigli offered me, when he came a wooing to my Lady Matilda? I have not leisure, said Manfred, to listen to thy tale. I do not question thy honesty. But it is thy duty to conceal nothing from me. How long has Isabella been acquainted with Theodore? Nay, there is nothing can escape your Highness! said Bianca; not that I know any thing of the matter. Theodore, to be sure, is a proper young man, and, as my Lady Matilda says, the very image of good Alfonso. Has not your Highness remarked it? Yes, yes,Nothou torturest me, said Manfred. Where did they meet? when? Who! my Lady Matilda? said Bianca. No, no, not Matilda Isabella; when did Isabella first become acquainted with this Theodore! Virgin Mary! said Bianca, how should I know? Thou dost know, said Manfred; and I must know; I will Lord! your Highness is not jealous of young Theodore! said Bianca. Jealous! no, no. Why should I be jealous? perhaps I mean to unite themIf I were sure Isabella would have no repugnance. Repugnance! no, Ill warrant her, said Bianca; he is as comely a youth as ever trod on Christian ground. We are all in love with him; there is not a soul in the castle but would be rejoiced to have him for our PrinceI mean, when it shall please heaven to call your Highness to itself. Indeed! said Manfred, has it gone so far! oh! this cursed Friar!but I must not lose timego, Bianca, attend Isabella; but I charge thee, not a word of what has passed. Find out how she is affected towards Theodore; bring me good news, and that ring has a companion. Wait at the foot of the winding staircase I am going to visit the Marquis, and will talk further with thee at my return. Manfred, after some general conversation, desired Frederic to dismiss the two Knights, his companions, having to talk with him on urgent affairs. As soon as they were alone, he began in artful guise to sound the Marquis on the subject of Matilda; and finding him disposed to his wish, he let drop hints on the difficulties that would attend the celebration of their marriage, unlessAt that instant Bianca burst into the room with a wildness in her look and gestures that spoke the utmost terror. Oh! my Lord, my Lord! cried she; we are all undone! it is come again! it is come again! What is come again? cried Manfred amazed. Oh! the hand! the Giant! the hand!support me! I am terrified out of my senses, cried Bianca. I will not sleep in the castle tonight. Where shall I go? my things may come after me tomorrowwould I had been content to wed Francesco! this comes of ambition! What has terrified thee thus, young woman? said the Marquis. Thou art safe here; be not alarmed. Oh! your Greatness is wonderfully good, said Bianca, but I dare notno, pray let me goI had rather leave everything behind me, than stay another hour under this roof. Go to, thou hast lost thy senses, said Manfred. Interrupt us not; we were communing on important mattersMy Lord, this wench is subject to fitsCome with me, Bianca. Oh! the Saints! No, said Bianca, for certain it comes to warn your Highness; why should it appear to me else? I say my prayers morning and eveningoh! if your Highness had believed Diego! Tis the same hand that he saw the foot to in the gallerychamberFather Jerome has often told us the prophecy would be out one of these daysBianca, said he, mark my words Thou ravest, said Manfred, in a rage; be gone, and keep these fooleries to frighten thy companions. What! my Lord, cried Bianca, do you think I have seen nothing? go to the foot of the great stairs yourselfas I live I saw it. Saw what? tell us, fair maid, what thou hast seen, said Frederic. Can your Highness listen, said Manfred, to the delirium of a silly wench, who has heard stories of apparitions until she believes them? This is more than fancy, said the Marquis; her terror is too natural and too strongly impressed to be the work of imagination. Tell us, fair maiden, what it is has moved thee thus? Yes, my Lord, thank your Greatness, said Bianca; I believe I look very pale; I shall be better when I have recovered myselfI was going to my Lady Isabellas chamber, by his Highnesss order We do not want the circumstances, interrupted Manfred. Since his Highness will have it so, proceed; but be brief. Lord! your Highness thwarts one so! replied Bianca; I fear my hairI am sure I never in my lifewell! as I was telling your Greatness, I was going by his Highnesss order to my Lady Isabellas chamber; she lies in the watchetcoloured chamber, on the right hand, one pair of stairs so when I came to the great stairsI was looking on his Highnesss present here Grant me patience! said Manfred, will this wench never come to the point? what imports it to the Marquis, that I gave thee a bauble for thy faithful attendance on my daughter? we want to know what thou sawest. I was going to tell your Highness, said Bianca, if you would permit me. So as I was rubbing the ringI am sure I had not gone up three steps, but I heard the rattling of armour; for all the world such a clatter as Diego says he heard when the Giant turned him about in the gallerychamber. What Giant is this, my Lord? said the Marquis; is your castle haunted by giants and goblins? Lord! what, has not your Greatness heard the story of the Giant in the gallerychamber? cried Bianca. I marvel his Highness has not told you; mayhap you do not know there is a prophecy This trifling is intolerable, interrupted Manfred. Let us dismiss this silly wench, my Lord! we have more important affairs to discuss. By your favour, said Frederic, these are no trifles. The enormous sabre I was directed to in the wood, yon casque, its felloware these visions of this poor maidens brain? So Jaquez thinks, may it please your Greatness, said Bianca. He says this moon will not be out without our seeing some strange revolution. For my part, I should not be surprised if it was to happen tomorrow; for, as I was saying, when I heard the clattering of armour, I was all in a cold sweat. I looked up, and, if your Greatness will believe me, I saw upon the uppermost banister of the great stairs a hand in armour as big as big. I thought I should have swooned. I never stopped until I came hitherwould I were well out of this castle. My Lady Matilda told me but yestermorning that her Highness Hippolita knows something. Thou art an insolent! cried Manfred. Lord Marquis, it much misgives me that this scene is concerted to affront me. Are my own domestics suborned to spread tales injurious to my honour? Pursue your claim by manly daring; or let us bury our feuds, as was proposed, by the intermarriage of our children. But trust me, it ill becomes a Prince of your bearing to practise on mercenary wenches. I scorn your imputation, said Frederic. Until this hour I never set eyes on this damsel I have given her no jewel. My Lord, my Lord, your conscience, your guilt accuses you, and would throw the suspicion on me; but keep your daughter, and think no more of Isabella. The judgments already fallen on your house forbid me matching into it. Manfred, alarmed at the resolute tone in which Frederic delivered these words, endeavoured to pacify him. Dismissing Bianca, he made such submissions to the Marquis, and threw in such artful encomiums on Matilda, that Frederic was once more staggered. However, as his passion was of so recent a date, it could not at once surmount the scruples he had conceived. He had gathered enough from Biancas discourse to persuade him that heaven declared itself against Manfred. The proposed marriages too removed his claim to a distance; and the principality of Otranto was a stronger temptation than the contingent reversion of it with Matilda. Still he would not absolutely recede from his engagements; but purposing to gain time, he demanded of Manfred if it was true in fact that Hippolita consented to the divorce. The Prince, transported to find no other obstacle, and depending on his influence over his wife, assured the Marquis it was so, and that he might satisfy himself of the truth from her own mouth. As they were thus discoursing, word was brought that the banquet was prepared. Manfred conducted Frederic to the great hall, where they were received by Hippolita and the young Princesses. Manfred placed the Marquis next to Matilda, and seated himself between his wife and Isabella. Hippolita comported herself with an easy gravity; but the young ladies were silent and melancholy. Manfred, who was determined to pursue his point with the Marquis in the remainder of the evening, pushed on the feast until it waxed late; affecting unrestrained gaiety, and plying Frederic with repeated goblets of wine. The latter, more upon his guard than Manfred wished, declined his frequent challenges, on pretence of his late loss of blood; while the Prince, to raise his own disordered spirits, and to counterfeit unconcern, indulged himself in plentiful draughts, though not to the intoxication of his senses. The evening being far advanced, the banquet concluded. Manfred would have withdrawn with Frederic; but the latter pleading weakness and want of repose, retired to his chamber, gallantly telling the Prince that his daughter should amuse his Highness until himself could attend him. Manfred accepted the party, and to the no small grief of Isabella, accompanied her to her apartment. Matilda waited on her mother to enjoy the freshness of the evening on the ramparts of the castle. Soon as the company were dispersed their several ways, Frederic, quitting his chamber, inquired if Hippolita was alone, and was told by one of her attendants, who had not noticed her going forth, that at that hour she generally withdrew to her oratory, where he probably would find her. The Marquis, during the repast, had beheld Matilda with increase of passion. He now wished to find Hippolita in the disposition her Lord had promised. The portents that had alarmed him were forgotten in his desires. Stealing softly and unobserved to the apartment of Hippolita, he entered it with a resolution to encourage her acquiescence to the divorce, having perceived that Manfred was resolved to make the possession of Isabella an unalterable condition, before he would grant Matilda to his wishes. The Marquis was not surprised at the silence that reigned in the Princesss apartment. Concluding her, as he had been advertised, in her oratory, he passed on. The door was ajar; the evening gloomy and overcast. Pushing open the door gently, he saw a person kneeling before the altar. As he approached nearer, it seemed not a woman, but one in a long woollen weed, whose back was towards him. The person seemed absorbed in prayer. The Marquis was about to return, when the figure, rising, stood some moments fixed in meditation, without regarding him. The Marquis, expecting the holy person to come forth, and meaning to excuse his uncivil interruption, said, Reverend Father, I sought the Lady Hippolita. Hippolita! replied a hollow voice; camest thou to this castle to seek Hippolita? and then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermits cowl. Angels of grace protect me! cried Frederic, recoiling. Deserve their protection! said the Spectre. Frederic, falling on his knees, adjured the phantom to take pity on him. Dost thou not remember me? said the apparition. Remember the wood of Joppa! Art thou that holy hermit? cried Frederic, trembling. Can I do aught for thy eternal peace? Wast thou delivered from bondage, said the spectre, to pursue carnal delights? Hast thou forgotten the buried sabre, and the behest of Heaven engraven on it? I have not, I have not, said Frederic; but say, blest spirit, what is thy errand to me? What remains to be done? To forget Matilda! said the apparition; and vanished. Frederics blood froze in his veins. For some minutes he remained motionless. Then falling prostrate on his face before the altar, he besought the intercession of every saint for pardon. A flood of tears succeeded to this transport; and the image of the beauteous Matilda rushing in spite of him on his thoughts, he lay on the ground in a conflict of penitence and passion. Ere he could recover from this agony of his spirits, the Princess Hippolita with a taper in her hand entered the oratory alone. Seeing a man without motion on the floor, she gave a shriek, concluding him dead. Her fright brought Frederic to himself. Rising suddenly, his face bedewed with tears, he would have rushed from her presence; but Hippolita stopping him, conjured him in the most plaintive accents to explain the cause of his disorder, and by what strange chance she had found him there in that posture. Ah, virtuous Princess! said the Marquis, penetrated with grief, and stopped. For the love of Heaven, my Lord, said Hippolita, disclose the cause of this transport! What mean these doleful sounds, this alarming exclamation on my name? What woes has heaven still in store for the wretched Hippolita? Yet silent! By every pitying angel, I adjure thee, noble Prince, continued she, falling at his feet, to disclose the purport of what lies at thy heart.

I see thou feelest for me; thou feelest the sharp pangs that thou inflictestspeak, for pity! Does aught thou knowest concern my child? I cannot speak, cried Frederic, bursting from her. Oh, Matilda! Quitting the Princess thus abruptly, he hastened to his own apartment. At the door of it he was accosted by Manfred, who flushed by wine and love had come to seek him, and to propose to waste some hours of the night in music and revelling. Frederic, offended at an invitation so dissonant from the mood of his soul, pushed him rudely aside, and entering his chamber, flung the door intemperately against Manfred, and bolted it inwards. The haughty Prince, enraged at this unaccountable behaviour, withdrew in a frame of mind capable of the most fatal excesses. As he crossed the court, he was met by the domestic whom he had planted at the convent as a spy on Jerome and Theodore. This man, almost breathless with the haste he had made, informed his Lord that Theodore, and some lady from the castle were, at that instant, in private conference at the tomb of Alfonso in St. Nicholass church. He had dogged Theodore thither, but the gloominess of the night had prevented his discovering who the woman was. Manfred, whose spirits were inflamed, and whom Isabella had driven from her on his urging his passion with too little reserve, did not doubt but the inquietude she had expressed had been occasioned by her impatience to meet Theodore. Provoked by this conjecture, and enraged at her father, he hastened secretly to the great church. Gliding softly between the aisles, and guided by an imperfect gleam of moonshine that shone faintly through the illuminated windows, he stole towards the tomb of Alfonso, to which he was directed by indistinct whispers of the persons he sought. The first sounds he could distinguish were Does it, alas! depend on me? Manfred will never permit our union. No, this shall prevent it! cried the tyrant, drawing his dagger, and plunging it over her shoulder into the bosom of the person that spoke. Ah, me, I am slain! cried Matilda, sinking. Good heaven, receive my soul! Savage, inhuman monster, what hast thou done! cried Theodore, rushing on him, and wrenching his dagger from him. Stop, stop thy impious hand! cried Matilda; it is my father! Manfred, waking as from a trance, beat his breast, twisted his hands in his locks, and endeavoured to recover his dagger from Theodore to despatch himself. Theodore, scarce less distracted, and only mastering the transports of his grief to assist Matilda, had now by his cries drawn some of the monks to his aid. While part of them endeavoured, in concert with the afflicted Theodore, to stop the blood of the dying Princess, the rest prevented Manfred from laying violent hands on himself. Matilda, resigning herself patiently to her fate, acknowledged with looks of grateful love the zeal of Theodore. Yet oft as her faintness would permit her speech its way, she begged the assistants to comfort her father. Jerome, by this time, had learnt the fatal news, and reached the church. His looks seemed to reproach Theodore, but turning to Manfred, he said, Now, tyrant! behold the completion of woe fulfilled on thy impious and devoted head! The blood of Alfonso cried to heaven for vengeance; and heaven has permitted its altar to be polluted by assassination, that thou mightest shed thy own blood at the foot of that Princes sepulchre! Cruel man! cried Matilda, to aggravate the woes of a parent; may heaven bless my father, and forgive him as I do! My Lord, my gracious Sire, dost thou forgive thy child? Indeed, I came not hither to meet Theodore. I found him praying at this tomb, whither my mother sent me to intercede for thee, for herdearest father, bless your child, and say you forgive her. Forgive thee! Murderous monster! cried Manfred, can assassins forgive? I took thee for Isabella; but heaven directed my bloody hand to the heart of my child. Oh, Matilda!I cannot utter itcanst thou forgive the blindness of my rage? I can, I do; and may heaven confirm it! said Matilda; but while I have life to ask itoh! my mother! what will she feel? Will you comfort her, my Lord? Will you not put her away? Indeed she loves you! Oh, I am faint! bear me to the castle. Can I live to have her close my eyes? Theodore and the monks besought her earnestly to suffer herself to be borne into the convent; but her instances were so pressing to be carried to the castle, that placing her on a litter, they conveyed her thither as she requested. Theodore, supporting her head with his arm, and hanging over her in an agony of despairing love, still endeavoured to inspire her with hopes of life. Jerome, on the other side, comforted her with discourses of heaven, and holding a crucifix before her, which she bathed with innocent tears, prepared her for her passage to immortality. Manfred, plunged in the deepest affliction, followed the litter in despair. Ere they reached the castle, Hippolita, informed of the dreadful catastrophe, had flown to meet her murdered child; but when she saw the afflicted procession, the mightiness of her grief deprived her of her senses, and she fell lifeless to the earth in a swoon. Isabella and Frederic, who attended her, were overwhelmed in almost equal sorrow. Matilda alone seemed insensible to her own situation every thought was lost in tenderness for her mother. Ordering the litter to stop, as soon as Hippolita was brought to herself, she asked for her father. He approached, unable to speak. Matilda, seizing his hand and her mothers, locked them in her own, and then clasped them to her heart. Manfred could not support this act of pathetic piety. He dashed himself on the ground, and cursed the day he was born. Isabella, apprehensive that these struggles of passion were more than Matilda could support, took upon herself to order Manfred to be borne to his apartment, while she caused Matilda to be conveyed to the nearest chamber. Hippolita, scarce more alive than her daughter, was regardless of everything but her; but when the tender Isabellas care would have likewise removed her, while the surgeons examined Matildas wound, she cried, Remove me! never, never! I lived but in her, and will expire with her. Matilda raised her eyes at her mothers voice, but closed them again without speaking. Her sinking pulse and the damp coldness of her hand soon dispelled all hopes of recovery. Theodore followed the surgeons into the outer chamber, and heard them pronounce the fatal sentence with a transport equal to frenzy. Since she cannot live mine, cried he, at least she shall be mine in death! Father! Jerome! will you not join our hands? cried he to the Friar, who, with the Marquis, had accompanied the surgeons. What means thy distracted rashness? said Jerome. Is this an hour for marriage? It is, it is, cried Theodore. Alas! there is no other! Young man, thou art too unadvised, said Frederic. Dost thou think we are to listen to thy fond transports in this hour of fate? What pretensions hast thou to the Princess? Those of a Prince, said Theodore; of the sovereign of Otranto. This reverend man, my father, has informed me who I am. Thou ravest, said the Marquis. There is no Prince of Otranto but myself, now Manfred, by murder, by sacrilegious murder, has forfeited all pretensions. My Lord, said Jerome, assuming an air of command, he tells you true. It was not my purpose the secret should have been divulged so soon, but fate presses onward to its work. What his hotheaded passion has revealed, my tongue confirms. Know, Prince, that when Alfonso set sail for the Holy Land Is this a season for explanations? cried Theodore. Father, come and unite me to the Princess; she shall be mine! In every other thing I will dutifully obey you. My life! my adored Matilda! continued Theodore, rushing back into the inner chamber, will you not be mine? Will you not bless your Isabella made signs to him to be silent, apprehending the Princess was near her end. What, is she dead? cried Theodore; is it possible! The violence of his exclamations brought Matilda to herself. Lifting up her eyes, she looked round for her mother. Life of my soul, I am here! cried Hippolita; think not I will quit thee! Oh! you are too good, said Matilda. But weep not for me, my mother! I am going where sorrow never dwellsIsabella, thou hast loved me; wouldst thou not supply my fondness to this dear, dear woman? Indeed I am faint! Oh! my child! my child! said Hippolita in a flood of tears, can I not withhold thee a moment? It will not be, said Matilda; commend me to heavenWhere is my father? forgive him, dearest motherforgive him my death; it was an error. Oh! I had forgottendearest mother, I vowed never to see Theodore moreperhaps that has drawn down this calamitybut it was not intentionalcan you pardon me? Oh! wound not my agonising soul! said Hippolita; thou never couldst offend meAlas! she faints! help! help! I would say something more, said Matilda, struggling, but it cannot beIsabellaTheodorefor my sakeOh! she expired. Isabella and her women tore Hippolita from the corse; but Theodore threatened destruction to all who attempted to remove him from it. He printed a thousand kisses on her claycold hands, and uttered every expression that despairing love could dictate. Isabella, in the meantime, was accompanying the afflicted Hippolita to her apartment; but, in the middle of the court, they were met by Manfred, who, distracted with his own thoughts, and anxious once more to behold his daughter, was advancing to the chamber where she lay. As the moon was now at its height, he read in the countenances of this unhappy company the event he dreaded. What! is she dead? cried he in wild confusion. A clap of thunder at that instant shook the castle to its foundations; the earth rocked, and the clank of more than mortal armour was heard behind. Frederic and Jerome thought the last day was at hand. The latter, forcing Theodore along with them, rushed into the court. The moment Theodore appeared, the walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a mighty force, and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense magnitude, appeared in the centre of the ruins. Behold in Theodore the true heir of Alfonso! said the vision And having pronounced those words, accompanied by a clap of thunder, it ascended solemnly towards heaven, where the clouds parting asunder, the form of St. Nicholas was seen, and receiving Alfonsos shade, they were soon wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory. The beholders fell prostrate on their faces, acknowledging the divine will. The first that broke silence was Hippolita. My Lord, said she to the desponding Manfred, behold the vanity of human greatness! Conrad is gone! Matilda is no more! In Theodore we view the true Prince of Otranto. By what miracle he is so I know notsuffice it to us, our doom is pronounced! shall we not, can we but dedicate the few deplorable hours we have to live, in deprecating the further wrath of heaven? heaven ejects uswhither can we fly, but to yon holy cells that yet offer us a retreat. Thou guiltless but unhappy woman! unhappy by my crimes! replied Manfred, my heart at last is open to thy devout admonitions. Oh! couldbut it cannot beye are lost in wonderlet me at last do justice on myself! To heap shame on my own head is all the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these judgments Let my confession atonebut, ah! what can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? a child murdered in a consecrated place? List, sirs, and may this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants! Alfonso, ye all know, died in the Holy Landye would interrupt me; ye would say he came not fairly to his endit is most truewhy else this bitter cup which Manfred must drink to the dregs. Ricardo, my grandfather, was his chamberlainI would draw a veil over my ancestors crimesbut it is in vain! Alfonso died by poison. A fictitious will declared Ricardo his heir. His crimes pursued himyet he lost no Conrad, no Matilda! I pay the price of usurpation for all! A storm overtook him. Haunted by his guilt he vowed to St. Nicholas to found a church and two convents, if he lived to reach Otranto. The sacrifice was accepted the saint appeared to him in a dream, and promised that Ricardos posterity should reign in Otranto until the rightful owner should be grown too large to inhabit the castle, and as long as issue male from Ricardos loins should remain to enjoy italas! alas! nor male nor female, except myself, remains of all his wretched race! I have donethe woes of these three days speak the rest. How this young man can be Alfonsos heir I know notyet I do not doubt it. His are these dominions; I resign themyet I knew not Alfonso had an heirI question not the will of heavenpoverty and prayer must fill up the woeful space, until Manfred shall be summoned to Ricardo. What remains is my part to declare, said Jerome. When Alfonso set sail for the Holy Land he was driven by a storm to the coast of Sicily. The other vessel, which bore Ricardo and his train, as your Lordship must have heard, was separated from him. It is most true, said Manfred; and the title you give me is more than an outcast can claimwell! be it soproceed. Jerome blushed, and continued. For three months Lord Alfonso was windbound in Sicily. There he became enamoured of a fair virgin named Victoria. He was too pious to tempt her to forbidden pleasures. They were married. Yet deeming this amour incongruous with the holy vow of arms by which he was bound, he determined to conceal their nuptials until his return from the Crusade, when he purposed to seek and acknowledge her for his lawful wife. He left her pregnant. During his absence she was delivered of a daughter. But scarce had she felt a mothers pangs ere she heard the fatal rumour of her Lords death, and the succession of Ricardo. What could a friendless, helpless woman do? Would her testimony avail?yet, my lord, I have an authentic writing It needs not, said Manfred; the horrors of these days, the vision we have but now seen, all corroborate thy evidence beyond a thousand parchments. Matildas death and my expulsion Be composed, my Lord, said Hippolita; this holy man did not mean to recall your griefs. Jerome proceeded. I shall not dwell on what is needless. The daughter of which Victoria was delivered, was at her maturity bestowed in marriage on me. Victoria died; and the secret remained locked in my breast. Theodores narrative has told the rest. The Friar ceased. The disconsolate company retired to the remaining part of the castle. In the morning Manfred signed his abdication of the principality, with the approbation of Hippolita, and each took on them the habit of religion in the neighbouring convents. Frederic offered his daughter to the new Prince, which Hippolitas tenderness for Isabella concurred to promote. But Theodores grief was too fresh to admit the thought of another love; and it was not until after frequent discourses with Isabella of his dear Matilda, that he was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul. THE END I'm Julie, the woman who runs Global Grey the website where this ebook was published. These are my own formatted editions, and I hope you enjoyed reading this particular one. 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Carmilla Prologue Upon a paper attached to the narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates. This mysterious subject, he treats, in that essay, with his usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary mans collected papers. As I publish the case, in these volumes, simply to interest the laity, I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and, after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from presenting any prcis of the learned Doctors reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject which he describes as involving, not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates. I was anxious, on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval. She, probably, could have added little to the narrative which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such a conscientious particularity. I An Early Fright In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvellously cheap, I really dont see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries. My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain. Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of waterlilies. Over all this the schloss shows its manywindowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel. The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right. I have said the nearest inhabited village, because there is, only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General Spielsdorfs schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church, now roofless, in the aisle of which are the mouldering tombs of the proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chteau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town. Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time. I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants of our castle. I dont include servants, or those dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a goodnatured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory. This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner party. There was a fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a finishing governess. She spoke French and German, Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I sometimes returned. These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance visits from neighbours of only five or six leagues distance. My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you. My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything. The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, byandby, why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I cant have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nurserymaid. Neither was my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door creaks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed. I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main. Nurse, nurserymaid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards; and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm. I remember the nurserymaid petting me, and all three examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me. The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant always sat up in the nursery until I was about fourteen. I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face, slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated. The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment. I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me. But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened. I was a little consoled by the nurserymaids assuring me that it was she who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed, and that I must have been halfdreaming not to have known her face. But this, though supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me. I remember, in the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and talking a little to them, and very kindly to me; his face was very sweet and gentle, and he told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired me to say, softly, while they were praying, Lord, hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus sake. I think these were the very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for years to make me say them in my prayers. I remember so well the thoughtful sweet face of that whitehaired old man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room, with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old, about him, and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long time. I forget all my life preceding that event, and for some time after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness. II A Guest I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eyewitness. It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss. General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had hoped, said my father, as we pursued our walk. He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece and ward, Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but whom I had heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had promised myself many happy days. I was more disappointed than a young lady living in a town, or a bustling neighbourhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day dream for many weeks. And how soon does he come? I asked. Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say, he answered. And I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt. And why? I asked, both mortified and curious. Because the poor young lady is dead, he replied. I quite forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the Generals letter this evening. I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger. Here is the Generals letter, he said, handing it to me. I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very nearly in distraction. We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent limetrees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendour behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorfs letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so selfcontradictory, that I read it twice overthe second time aloud to my fatherand was still unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind. It said I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her. During the last days of dear Berthas illness I was not able to write to you. Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn all, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I been! I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my blindness, my obstinacyalltoo late. I cannot write or talk collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, two months hence, or earlier if I live, I will see youthat is, if you permit me; I will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now. Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend. In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never seen Bertha Rheinfeldt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence; I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed. The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned the Generals letter to my father. It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had just been reading. We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the road that passes the schloss in front, and by that time the moon was shining brilliantly. At the drawbridge we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, who had come out, without their bonnets, to enjoy the exquisite moonlight. We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we approached. We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire with them the beautiful scene. The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. At the right the same road crosses the steep and picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower which once guarded that pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivyclustered rocks. Over the sward and low grounds, a thin film of mist was stealing, like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight. No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound serenity, and the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect. My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking in silence over the expanse beneath us. The two good governesses, standing a little way behind us, discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon the moon. Madame Perrodon was fat, middleaged, and romantic, and talked and sighed poetically. Mademoiselle De Lafontainein right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical, and something of a mysticnow declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvellous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that her cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium. The moon, this night, she said, is full of odylic and magnetic influenceand see, when you look behind you at the front of the schloss, how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendour, as if unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests. There are indolent states of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies conversation. I have got into one of my moping moods tonight, said my father, after a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our English, he used to read aloud, he said In truth I know not why I am so sad It wearies me; you say it wearies you; But how I got itcame by it. I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging over us. I suppose the poor Generals afflicted letter has had something to do with it. At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the road, arrested our attention. They seemed to be approaching from the high ground overlooking the bridge, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point. Two horsemen first crossed the bridge, then came a carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind. It seemed to be the travelling carriage of a person of rank; and we were all immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle. It became, in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the carriage had passed the summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders, taking fright, communicated his panic to the rest, and after a plunge or two, the whole team broke into a wild gallop together, and dashing between the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the road towards us with the speed of a hurricane. The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear, longdrawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window. We all advanced in curiosity and horror; my father in silence, the rest with various ejaculations of terror. Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside a magnificent limetree, on the other stands an ancient stone cross, at sight of which the horses, now going at a pace that was perfectly frightful, swerved so as to bring the wheel over the projecting roots of the tree. I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and turned my head away; at the same moment I heard a cry from my ladyfriends, who had gone on a little. Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two of the horses were on the ground, the carriage lay upon its side with two wheels in the air; the men were busy removing the traces, and a lady, with a commanding air and figure had got out, and stood with clasped hands, raising the handkerchief that was in them every now and then to her eyes. Through the carriage door was now lifted a young lady, who appeared to be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the elder lady, with his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the resources of his schloss. The lady did not appear to hear him, or to have eyes for anything but the slender girl who was being placed against the slope of the bank. I approached; the young lady was apparently stunned, but she was certainly not dead. My father, who piqued himself on being something of a physician, had just had his fingers to her wrist and assured the lady, who declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and irregular, was undoubtedly still distinguishable. The lady clasped her hands and looked upward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude; but immediately she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I believe, natural to some people. She was what is called a fine looking woman for her time of life, and must have been handsome; she was tall, but not thin, and dressed in black velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a proud and commanding countenance, though now agitated strangely. Was ever being so born to calamity? I heard her say, with clasped hands, as I came up. Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will not have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how long. I must leave her; I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can you tell, is the nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not see my darling, or even hear of her till my return, three months hence. I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear Oh! papa, pray ask her to let her stay with usit would be so delightful. Do, pray. If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of her good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit her to remain as our guest, under my charge, until her return, it will confer a distinction and an obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and devotion which so sacred a trust deserves. I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and chivalry too cruelly, said the lady, distractedly. It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care it will be her best consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and affords no such inn as you could think of placing your daughter at; you cannot allow her to continue her journey for any considerable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must part with her tonight, and nowhere could you do so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than here. There was something in this ladys air and appearance so distinguished, and even imposing, and in her manner so engaging, as to impress one, quite apart from the dignity of her equipage, with a conviction that she was a person of consequence. By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position, and the horses, quite tractable, in the traces again. The lady threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was not quite so affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the scene; then she beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew two or three steps with him out of hearing; and talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance, not at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken. I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the change, and also unspeakably curious to learn what it could be that she was speaking, almost in his ear, with so much earnestness and rapidity. Two or three minutes at most I think she remained thus employed, then she turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay, supported by Madame Perrodon. She kneeled beside her for a moment and whispered, as Madame supposed, a little benediction in her ear; then hastily kissing her she stepped into her carriage, the door was closed, the footmen in stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred on, the postillions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by the two horsemen in the rear. III We Compare Notes We followed the cortge with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight in the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels died away in the silent night air. Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head, evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly, Where is mamma? Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added some comfortable assurances. I then heard her ask Where am I? What is this place? and after that she said, I dont see the carriage; and Matska, where is she? Madame answered all her questions in so far as she understood them; and gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about, and was glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on, the carriage was hurt; and on learning that her mamma had left her here, till her return in about three months, she wept. I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame Perrodon when Mademoiselle De Lafontaine placed her hand upon my arm, saying Dont approach, one at a time is as much as she can at present converse with; a very little excitement would possibly overpower her now. As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up to her room and see her. My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback for the physician, who lived about two leagues away; and a bedroom was being prepared for the young ladys reception. The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madames arm, walked slowly over the drawbridge and into the castle gate. In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was conducted forthwith to her room. The room we usually sat in as our drawingroom is long, having four windows, that looked over the moat and drawbridge, upon the forest scene I have just described. It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and the chairs are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The walls are covered with tapestry, and surrounded with great gold frames, the figures being as large as life, in ancient and very curious costume, and the subjects represented are hunting, hawking, and generally festive. It is not too stately to be extremely comfortable; and here we had our tea, for with his usual patriotic leanings he insisted that the national beverage should make its appearance regularly with our coffee and chocolate. We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, were talking over the adventure of the evening. Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine were both of our party. The young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she sank into a deep sleep; and those ladies had left her in the care of a servant. How do you like our guest? I asked, as soon as Madame entered. Tell me all about her? I like her extremely, answered Madame, she is, I almost think, the prettiest creature I ever saw; about your age, and so gentle and nice. She is absolutely beautiful, threw in Mademoiselle, who had peeped for a moment into the strangers room. And such a sweet voice! added Madame Perrodon. Did you remark a woman in the carriage, after it was set up again, who did not get out, inquired Mademoiselle, but only looked from the window? No, we had not seen her. Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of coloured turban on her head, who was gazing all the time from the carriage window, nodding and grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white eyeballs, and her teeth set as if in fury. Did you remark what an illlooking pack of men the servants were? asked Madame. Yes, said my father, who had just come in, ugly, hangdog looking fellows, as ever I beheld in my life. I hope they maynt rob the poor lady in the forest. They are clever rogues, however; they got everything to rights in a minute. I dare say they are worn out with too long travelling, said Madame. Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean, and dark, and sullen. I am very curious, I own; but I dare say the young lady will tell us all about it tomorrow, if she is sufficiently recovered. I dont think she will, said my father, with a mysterious smile, and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared to tell us. This made me all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him and the lady in the black velvet, in the brief but earnest interview that had immediately preceded her departure. We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He did not need much pressing. There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She expressed a reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter, saying she was in delicate health and nervous, but not subject to any kind of seizureshe volunteered thatnor to any illusion; being, in fact, perfectly sane. How very odd to say all that! I interpolated. It was so unnecessary. At all events it was said, he laughed, and as you wish to know all that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you. She then said, I am making a long journey of vital importanceshe emphasized the wordrapid and secret; I shall return for my child in three months; in the meantime, she will be silent as to who we are, whence we come, and whither we are travelling. That is all she said. She spoke very pure French. When she said the word secret, she paused for a few seconds, looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she makes a great point of that. You saw how quickly she was gone. I hope I have not done a very foolish thing, in taking charge of the young lady. For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her; and only waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You, who live in towns, can have no idea how great an event the introduction of a new friend is, in such a solitude as surrounded us. The doctor did not arrive till nearly one oclock; but I could no more have gone to my bed and slept, than I could have overtaken, on foot, the carriage in which the princess in black velvet had driven away. When the physician came down to the drawingroom, it was to report very favourably upon his patient. She was now sitting up, her pulse quite regular, apparently perfectly well. She had sustained no injury, and the little shock to her nerves had passed away quite harmlessly. There could be no harm certainly in my seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with this permission, I sent, forthwith, to know whether she would allow me to visit her for a few minutes in her room. The servant returned immediately to say that she desired nothing more. You may be sure I was not long in availing myself of this permission. Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss. It was, perhaps, a little stately. There was a sombre piece of tapestry opposite the foot of the bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom; and other solemn classic scenes were displayed, a little faded, upon the other walls. But there was gold carving, and rich and varied colour enough in the other decorations of the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old tapestry.

There were candles at the bed side. She was sitting up; her slender pretty figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown, embroidered with flowers, and lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown over her feet as she lay upon the ground. What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you. I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking. It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the same melancholy expression. But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of recognition. There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she spoke; I could not. How wonderful! she exclaimed, Twelve years ago, I saw your face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since. Wonderful indeed! I repeated, overcoming with an effort the horror that had for a time suspended my utterances. Twelve years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face. It has remained before my eyes ever since. Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it, was gone, and it and her dimpling cheeks were now delightfully pretty and intelligent. I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospitality indicated, to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much pleasure her accidental arrival had given us all, and especially what a happiness it was to me. I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed, as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again, and blushed. She answered my welcome very prettily. I sat down beside her, still wondering; and she said I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that you and I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream, that each should have seen, I you and you me, looking as we do now, when of course we both were mere children. I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, wainscoted clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room itself without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick, with two branches, which I should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window; but as I got from under the bed, I heard someone crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw youmost assuredly youas I see you now; a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and lipsyour lipsyou, as you are here. Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be misled by mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I then saw. It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which I did, to the undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance. I dont know which should be most afraid of the other, she said, again smilingIf you were less pretty I think I should be very much afraid of you, but being as you are, and you and I both so young, I feel only that I have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our earliest childhood, to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friendshall I find one now? She sighed, and her fine dark eyes gazed passionately on me. Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, drawn towards her, but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging. I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing over her, and hastened to bid her good night. The doctor thinks, I added, that you ought to have a maid to sit up with you tonight; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a very useful and quiet creature. How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an attendant in the room. I shant require any assistanceand, shall I confess my weakness, I am haunted with a terror of robbers. Our house was robbed once, and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It has become a habitand you look so kind I know you will forgive me. I see there is a key in the lock. She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my ear, Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but good night; tomorrow, but not early, I shall see you again. She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again, Good night, dear friend. Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me. I liked the confidence with which she at once received me. She was determined that we should be very near friends. Next day came and we met again. I was delighted with my companion; that is to say, in many respects. Her looks lost nothing in daylightshe was certainly the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and the unpleasant remembrance of the face presented in my early dream, had lost the effect of the first unexpected recognition. She confessed that she had experienced a similar shock on seeing me, and precisely the same faint antipathy that had mingled with my admiration of her. We now laughed together over our momentary horrors. IV Her HabitsA Saunter I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars. There were some that did not please me so well. She was above the middle height of women. I shall begin by describing her. She was slender, and wonderfully graceful. Except that her movements were languidvery languidindeed, there was nothing in her appearance to indicate an invalid. Her complexion was rich and brilliant; her features were small and beautifully formed; her eyes large, dark, and lustrous; her hair was quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently thick and long when it was down about her shoulders; I have often placed my hands under it, and laughed with wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a rich very dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her chair talking, in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with it. Heavens! If I had but known all! I said there were particulars which did not please me. I have told you that her confidence won me the first night I saw her; but I found that she exercised with respect to herself, her mother, her history, everything in fact connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve. I dare say I was unreasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to have respected the solemn injunction laid upon my father by the stately lady in black velvet. But curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another. What harm could it do anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to know? Had she no trust in my good sense or honour? Why would she not believe me when I assured her, so solemnly, that I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing. There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light. I cannot say we quarrelled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very illbred, but I really could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone. What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimationto nothing. It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures First.Her name was Carmilla. Second.Her family was very ancient and noble. Third.Her home lay in the direction of the west. She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their armorial bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that of the country they lived in. You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on these subjects. I watched opportunity, and rather insinuated than urged my inquiries. Once or twice, indeed, I did attack her more directly. But no matter what my tactics, utter failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were all lost upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion was conducted with so pretty a melancholy and deprecation, with so many, and even passionate declarations of her liking for me, and trust in my honour, and with so many promises that I should at last know all, that I could not find it in my heart long to be offended with her. She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall diedie, sweetly dieinto mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit. And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek. Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me. From these foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her arms. In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to explain the feeling. I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main current of my story. But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes, those in which our passions have been most wildly and terribly roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and dimly remembered. Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one forever. Then she has thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling. Are we related, I used to ask; what can you mean by all this? I remind you perhaps of someone whom you love; but you must not, I hate it; I dont know youI dont know myself when you look so and talk so. She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my hand. Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove in vain to form any satisfactory theoryI could not refer them to affectation or trick. It was unmistakably the momentary breaking out of suppressed instinct and emotion. Was she, notwithstanding her mothers volunteered denial, subject to brief visitations of insanity; or was there here a disguise and a romance? I had read in old story books of such things. What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old adventuress. But there were many things against this hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity. I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gallantry delights to offer. Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of commonplace, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during which, except that I detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire, following me, at times I might have been as nothing to her. Except in these brief periods of mysterious excitement her ways were girlish; and there was always a languor about her, quite incompatible with a masculine system in a state of health. In some respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so singular in the opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people. She used to come down very late, generally not till one oclock, she would then take a cup of chocolate, but eat nothing; we then went out for a walk, which was a mere saunter, and she seemed, almost immediately, exhausted, and either returned to the schloss or sat on one of the benches that were placed, here and there, among the trees. This was a bodily languor in which her mind did not sympathise. She was always an animated talker, and very intelligent. She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or mentioned an adventure or situation, or an early recollection, which indicated a people of strange manners, and described customs of which we knew nothing. I gathered from these chance hints that her native country was much more remote than I had at first fancied. As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken. Peasants walking twoandtwo came behind, they were singing a funeral hymn. I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they were very sweetly singing. My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised. She said brusquely, Dont you perceive how discordant that is? I think it very sweet, on the contrary, I answered, vexed at the interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the little procession should observe and resent what was passing. I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted. You pierce my ears, said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her tiny fingers. Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why, you must dieeveryone must die; and all are happier when they do. Come home. My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard. I thought you knew she was to be buried today. She? I dont trouble my head about peasants. I dont know who she is, answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes. She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired. Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shant sleep tonight, if you do. I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like it, I continued. The swineherds young wife died only a week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died before a week. Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and our ears shant be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hardhardharder. We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat. She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. There! That comes of strangling people with hymns! she said at last. Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away. And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the sombre impression which the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and chatty; and so we got home. This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of that delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first time, also, I had seen her exhibit anything like temper. Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once afterwards did I witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. I will tell you how it happened. She and I were looking out of one of the long drawingroom windows, when there entered the courtyard, over the drawbridge, a figure of a wanderer whom I knew very well. He used to visit the schloss generally twice a year. It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp lean features that generally accompany deformity. He wore a pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet, and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all manner of things. Behind, he carried a magiclantern, and two boxes, which I well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These monsters used to make my father laugh. They were compounded of parts of monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the drawbridge, and in a little while began to howl dismally. In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the courtyard, raised his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better. Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air, to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dogs howling. Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took breath, he gabbled a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power, at our bidding, to display. Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire, which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods, he said, dropping his hat on the pavement. They are dying of it right and left, and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may laugh in his face. These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them. Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I. He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him, amused; at least, I can answer for myself. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in our faces, seemed to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity. In an instant he unrolled a leather case, full of all manner of odd little steel instruments. See here, my lady, he said, displaying it, and addressing me, I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. Plague take the dog! he interpolated. Silence, beast! He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word. Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the sharpest toothlong, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle; ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her? The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back from the window. How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cartwhip, and burnt to the bones with the castle brand! She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback and his follies. My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking. All this, said my father, is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbours. But that very circumstance frightens one horribly, said Carmilla. How so? inquired my father. I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as bad as reality. We are in Gods hands; nothing can happen without His permission, and all will end well for those who love Him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us. Creator! Nature! said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All things proceed from Naturedont they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so. The doctor said he would come here today, said my father, after a silence. I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do. Doctors never did me any good, said Carmilla. Then you have been ill? I asked. More ill than ever you were, she answered. Long ago? Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases. You were very young then? I dare say; let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend? She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was busy over some papers near the window. Why does your papa like to frighten us? said the pretty girl, with a sigh and a little shudder. He doesnt, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind. Are you afraid, dearest? I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were. You are afraid to die? Yes, everyone is. But to die as lovers mayto die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, dont you seeeach with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room. Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons? The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either. And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now. V A Wonderful Likeness This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, darkfaced son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was a journey of ten leagues, and whenever a messenger arrived at the schloss from our little capital of Gratz, we used to crowd about him in the hall, to hear the news. This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a sensation. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper. Then with assistants, and armed with hammer, rippingchisel, and turnscrew, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled to witness the unpacking of the cases. Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which were about to be restored to their places, had come to us through her. My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I dont know that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly, very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but obliterated them. There is a picture that I have not seen yet, said my father. In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could read, Marcia Karnstein, and the date 1698; and I am curious to see how it has turned out. I remembered it; it was a small picture, about a foot and a half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so blackened by age that I could not make it out. The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of Carmilla! Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are, living, smiling, ready to speak, in this picture. Isnt it beautiful, papa? And see, even the little mole on her throat. My father laughed, and said Certainly it is a wonderful likeness, but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little struck by it, and went on talking to the picture cleaner, who was also something of an artist, and discoursed with intelligence about the portraits or other works, which his art had just brought into light and colour, while I was more and more lost in wonder the more I looked at the picture. Will you let me hang this picture in my room, papa? I asked. Certainly, dear, said he, smiling, Im very glad you think it so like. It must be prettier even than I thought it, if it is. The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did not seem to hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture. And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is a little coronet over it, and underneath AD 1698. I am descended from the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was. Ah! said the lady, languidly, so am I, I think, a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now? None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the castle are only about three miles away. How interesting! she said, languidly. But see what beautiful moonlight! She glanced through the halldoor, which stood a little open. Suppose you take a little ramble round the court, and look down at the road and river. It is so like the night you came to us, I said. She sighed, smiling. She rose, and each with her arm about the others waist, we walked out upon the pavement. In silence, slowly we walked down to the drawbridge, where the beautiful landscape opened before us. And so you were thinking of the night I came here? she almost whispered. Are you glad I came? Delighted, dear Carmilla, I answered. And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in your room, she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my shoulder. How romantic you are, Carmilla, I said. Whenever you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one great romance. She kissed me silently. I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on. I have been in love with no one, and never shall, she whispered, unless it should be with you. How beautiful she looked in the moonlight! Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled. Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. Darling, darling, she murmured, I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so. I started from her. She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face colourless and apathetic. Is there a chill in the air, dear? she said drowsily. I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in. You look ill, Carmilla; a little faint. You certainly must take some wine, I said. Yes, I will. Im better now. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine, answered Carmilla, as we approached the door. Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you. How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better? I asked. I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded the country about us. Papa would be grieved beyond measure, I added, if he thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know. We have a very skilful doctor near this, the physician who was with papa today. Im sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little weakness. People say I am languid; I am incapable of exertion; I can scarcely walk as far as a child of three years old; and every now and then the little strength I have falters, and I become as you have just seen me. But after all I am very easily set up again; in a moment I am perfectly myself. See how I have recovered.

So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatuations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed, and even frightened me. But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even Carmillas languid nature into momentary energy. VI A Very Strange Agony When we got into the drawingroom, and had sat down to our coffee and chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a little card party, in the course of which papa came in for what he called his dish of tea. When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival. She answered No. He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present. I cannot tell, she answered ambiguously, but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you. But you must not dream of any such thing, exclaimed my father, to my great relief. We cant afford to lose you so, and I wont consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our neighbourhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily. Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality, she answered, smiling bashfully. You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful chteau, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter. So he gallantly, in his oldfashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at her little speech. I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed. Do you think, I said at length, that you will ever confide fully in me? She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me. You wont answer that? I said. You cant answer pleasantly; I ought not to have asked you. You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving meto death; or else hate me and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature. Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again, I said hastily. Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake Ill talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball? No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be. I almost forget, it is years ago. I laughed. You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet. I remember everything about itwith an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here, she touched her breast, and never was the same since. Were you near dying? Yes, verya cruel lovestrange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door? She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher. I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation. I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawingroom to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall. If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so much surprised me. The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Carmillas habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber was ensconced. These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with. Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths. I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony. I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sootyblack animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued toing and froing with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and it passed out. I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten to secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside. I was afraid to open itI was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in the bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till morning. VII Descending It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory terror as a dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition. I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told papa, but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story, and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another, I thought he might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighbourhood. I had myself no misgivings of the kind, and as he had been rather an invalid for some time, I was afraid of alarming him. I was comfortable enough with my goodnatured companions, Madame Paradon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle Lafontaine. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my heart. Mademoiselle laughed, but I fancied that Madame Paradon looked anxious. By the by, said Mademoiselle, laughing, the long limetree walk, behind Carmillas bedroomwindow, is haunted! Nonsense! exclaimed Madame, who probably thought the theme rather inopportune, and who tells that story, my dear? Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yardgate was being repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same female figure walking down the limetree avenue. So he well might, as long as there are cows to milk in the river fields, said Madame. I daresay; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see fool more frightened. You must not say a word about it to Carmilla, because she can see down that walk from her room window, I interposed, and she is, if possible, a greater coward than I. Carmilla came down rather later than usual that day. I was so frightened last night, she said, so soon as we were together, and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful if it had not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called such hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure near the chimneypiece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we heard of. Well, listen to me, I began, and recounted my adventure, at the recital of which she appeared horrified. And had you the charm near you? she asked, earnestly. No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawingroom, but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it. At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand, how I overcame my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I remember distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night. Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless. But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not exceed a degree that was almost luxurious. Well, I told you so, said Carmilla, when I described my quiet sleep, I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil spirits made dreams, but our doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm. And what do you think the charm is? said I. It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote against the malaria, she answered. Then it acts only on the body? Certainly; you dont suppose that evil spirits are frightened by bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggists shop? No, these complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the nerves, and so infect the brain, but before they can seize upon you, the antidote repels them. That I am sure is what the charm has done for us. It is nothing magical, it is simply natural. I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with Carmilla, but I did my best, and the impression was a little losing its force. For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it. I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my papa, or to have the doctor sent for. Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with increasing ardour the more my strength and spirits waned. This always shocked me like a momentary glare of insanity. Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it discoloured and perverted the whole state of my life. The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near the turning point from which began the descent of Avernus. Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The prevailing one was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in bathing, when we move against the current of a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of their action. But they left an awful impression, and a sense of exhaustion, as if I had passed through a long period of great mental exertion and danger. After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a females, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious. It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable state. My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance. My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was quite well. In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination, or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a morbid reserve, very nearly to myself. It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the oupire, for I had now been suffering for three weeks, and they were seldom ill for much more than three days, when death put an end to their miseries. Carmilla complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no means of so alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed. I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd discovery. One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin. At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood. I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla was being murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and my next recollection is that of standing on the lobby, crying for help. Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my terror. I insisted on our knocking at Carmillas door. Our knocking was unanswered. It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was vain. We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in panic, to my room. There we rang the bell long and furiously. If my fathers room had been at that side of the house, we would have called him up at once to our aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an excursion for which we none of us had courage. Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had got on my dressinggown and slippers meanwhile, and my companions were already similarly furnished. Recognising the voices of the servants on the lobby, we sallied out together; and having renewed, as fruitlessly, our summons at Carmillas door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we stood, holding our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared into the room. We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good night. But Carmilla was gone. VIII Search At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our violent entrance, we began to cool a little, and soon recovered our senses sufficiently to dismiss the men. It had struck Mademoiselle that possibly Carmilla had been wakened by the uproar at her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed, and hid herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she could not, of course, emerge until the majordomo and his myrmidons had withdrawn. We now recommenced our search, and began to call her by name again. It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation increased. We examined the windows, but they were secured. I implored of Carmilla, if she had concealed herself, to play this cruel trick no longerto come out, and to end our anxieties. It was all useless. I was by this time convinced that she was not in the room, nor in the dressing room, the door of which was still locked on this side. She could not have passed it. I was utterly puzzled. Had Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said were known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact situation had been lost. A little time would, no doubt, explain allutterly perplexed as, for the present, we were. It was past four oclock, and I preferred passing the remaining hours of darkness in Madames room. Daylight brought no solution of the difficulty. The whole household, with my father at its head, was in a state of agitation next morning. Every part of the chteau was searched. The grounds were explored. Not a trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream was about to be dragged; my father was in distraction; what a tale to have to tell the poor girls mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside myself, though my grief was quite of a different kind. The morning was passed in alarm and excitement. It was now one oclock, and still no tidings. I ran up to Carmillas room, and found her standing at her dressingtable. I was astounded. I could not believe my eyes. She beckoned me to her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face expressed extreme fear. I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and again. I ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to bring others to the spot, who might at once relieve my fathers anxiety. Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in agonies of anxiety about you, I exclaimed. Where have you been? How did you come back? Last night has been a night of wonders, she said. For mercys sake, explain all you can. It was past two last night, she said, when I went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressingroom, and that opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I awoke just now on the sofa in the dressingroom there, and I found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How could all this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened; and how could I have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I whom the slightest stir startles? By this time, Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a number of the servants were in the room. Carmilla was, of course, overwhelmed with inquiries, congratulations, and welcomes. She had but one story to tell, and seemed the least able of all the party to suggest anyway of accounting for what had happened. My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I saw Carmillas eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance. When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle having gone in search of a little bottle of valerian and salvolatile, and there being no one now in the room with Carmilla, except my father, Madame, and myself, he came to her thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her to the sofa, and sat down beside her. Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a question? Who can have a better right? she said. Ask what you please, and I will tell you everything. But my story is simply one of bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please. But you know, of course, the limitations mamma has placed me under. Perfectly, my dear child. I need not approach the topics on which she desires our silence. Now, the marvel of last night consists in your having been removed from your bed and your room, without being wakened, and this removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still secured, and the two doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory, and first ask you a question. Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I were listening breathlessly. Now, my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of walking in your sleep? Never, since I was very young indeed. But you did walk in your sleep when you were young? Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse. My father smiled and nodded. Well, what has happened is this. You got up in your sleep, unlocked the door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock, but taking it out and locking it on the outside; you again took the key out, and carried it away with you to someone of the fiveandtwenty rooms on this floor, or perhaps upstairs or downstairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so much heavy furniture, and such accumulations of lumber, that it would require a week to search this old house thoroughly. Do you see, now, what I mean? I do, but not all, she answered. And how, papa, do you account for her finding herself on the sofa in the dressingroom, which we had searched so carefully? She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep, and at last awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to find herself where she was as anyone else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently explained as yours, Carmilla, he said, laughing. And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners, or witchesnothing that need alarm Carmilla, or anyone else, for our safety. Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than her tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor that was peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her looks with mine, for he said I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself, and he sighed. So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to her friends. IX The Doctor As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my father arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she could not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door. That night passed quietly; and next morning early, the doctor, whom my father had sent for without telling me a word about it, arrived to see me. Madame accompanied me to the library; and there the grave little doctor, with white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned before, was waiting to receive me. I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver. We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows, facing one another. When my statement was over, he leaned with his shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which was a dash of horror. After a minutes reflection, he asked Madame if he could see my father. He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he said I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool for having brought you here; I hope I am. But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned him to him. He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had just conferred with the physician. It seemed an earnest and argumentative conversation. The room is very large, and I and Madame stood together, burning with curiosity, at the further end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father, whose foot, arm, and shoulder only could we see; and the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall and window formed. After a time my fathers face looked into the room; it was pale, thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated. Laura, dear, come here for a moment. Madame, we shant trouble you, the doctor says, at present. Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; for, although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please. My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking at the doctor, and he said It certainly is very odd; I dont understand it quite. Laura, come here, dear; now attend to Doctor Spielsberg, and recollect yourself. You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing the skin, somewhere about your neck, on the night when you experienced your first horrible dream. Is there still any soreness? None at all, I answered. Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think this occurred? Very little below my throathere, I answered. I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to. Now you can satisfy yourself, said the doctor. You wont mind your papas lowering your dress a very little. It is necessary, to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you have been suffering. I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar. God bless me!so it is, exclaimed my father, growing pale. You see it now with your own eyes, said the doctor, with a gloomy triumph. What is it? I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened. Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of the tip of your little finger; and now, he continued, turning to papa, the question is what is best to be done? Is there any danger? I urged, in great trepidation. I trust not, my dear, answered the doctor. I dont see why you should not recover. I dont see why you should not begin immediately to get better. That is the point at which the sense of strangulation begins? Yes, I answered. Andrecollect as well as you canthe same point was a kind of centre of that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a cold stream running against you? It may have been; I think it was. Ay, you see? he added, turning to my father. Shall I say a word to Madame? Certainly, said my father. He called Madame to him, and said I find my young friend here far from well. It wont be of any great consequence, I hope; but it will be necessary that some steps be taken, which I will explain byandby; but in the meantime, Madame, you will be so good as not to let Miss Laura be alone for one moment. That is the only direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable. We may rely upon your kindness, Madame, I know, added my father. Madame satisfied him eagerly. And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctors direction. I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient, whose symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have just been detailed to youvery much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the same sort. She is a young ladyour guest; but as you say you will be passing this way again this evening, you cant do better than take your supper here, and you can then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon. I thank you, said the doctor. I shall be with you, then, at about seven this evening. And then they repeated their directions to me and to Madame, and with this parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor; and I saw them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation. The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his leave, and ride away eastward through the forest. Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfeld with the letters, and dismount and hand the bag to my father. In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my father had concurred in imposing. Madame, as she afterwards told me, was afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt assistance, I might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously hurt. This interpretation did not strike me; and I fancied, perhaps luckily for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion, who would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be prone. About halfanhour after my father came inhe had a letter in his handand said This letter had been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf. He might have been here yesterday, he may not come till tomorrow, or he may be here today.

He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as he used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was coming. On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge. Papa, darling, will you tell me this? said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face. Perhaps, he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes. Does the doctor think me very ill? No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again, at least, on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day or two, he answered, a little drily. I wish our good friend, the General, had chosen any other time; that is, I wish you had been perfectly well to receive him. But do tell me, papa, I insisted, what does he think is the matter with me? Nothing; you must not plague me with questions, he answered, with more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, You shall know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the meantime you are not to trouble your head about it. He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wondering and puzzling over the oddity of all this; it was merely to say that he was going to Karnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and Madame should accompany him; he was going to see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds, upon business, and as Carmilla had never seen them, she could follow, when she came down, with Mademoiselle, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined castle. At twelve oclock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after, my father, Madame and I set out upon our projected drive. Passing the drawbridge we turn to the right, and follow the road over the steep gothic bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and ruined castle of Karnstein. No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks into gentle hills and hollows, all clothed with beautiful wood, totally destitute of the comparative formality which artificial planting and early culture and pruning impart. The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the steeper sides of the hills, among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible. Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend, the General, riding towards us, attended by a mounted servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wagon, such as we term a cart. The General dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the carriage, and send his horse on with his servant to the schloss. X Bereaved It was about ten months since we had last seen him; but that time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterise his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about. We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to talk, with his usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward; and he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the hellish arts to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell. My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he expressed himself. I should tell you all with pleasure, said the General, but you would not believe me. Why should I not? he asked. Because, he answered testily, you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you, but I have learned better. Try me, said my father; I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed to respect your conclusions. You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a belief in the marvellousfor what I have experienced is marvellousand I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy. Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the Generals penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General, with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity. The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us. You are going to the Ruins of Karnstein? he said. Yes, it is a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel, aint there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family? So there arehighly interesting, said my father. I hope you are thinking of claiming the title and estates? My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friends joke; on the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and horror. Something very different, he said, gruffly. I mean to unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by Gods blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since. My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of suspicionwith an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm. The house of Karnstein, he said, has been long extinct a hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left. Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you; a great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything in the order in which it occurred, said the General. You saw my dear wardmy child, I may call her. No creature could have been more beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming. Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely, said my father. I was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you. He took the Generals hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldiers eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but by Gods mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty! You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it occurred, said my father. Pray do; I assure you that it is not mere curiosity that prompts me. By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall road, by which the General had come, diverges from the road which we were travelling to Karnstein. How far is it to the ruins? inquired the General, looking anxiously forward. About half a league, answered my father. Pray let us hear the story you were so good as to promise. XI The Story With all my heart, said the General, with an effort; and after a short pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest narratives I ever heard. My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter. Here he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. In the meantime we had an invitation to my old friend the Count Carlsfeld, whose schloss is about six leagues to the other side of Karnstein. It was to attend the series of ftes which, you remember, were given by him in honour of his illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles. Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were, said my father. Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has Aladdins lamp. The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with coloured lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed. And such musicmusic, you know, is my weaknesssuch ravishing music! The finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and the finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds, the moonlighted chteau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove, or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early youth. When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight; but so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I never saw before. It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only nobody present. My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but wearing a mask, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had seen her, earlier in the evening, in the great hall, and again, for a few minutes, walking near us, on the terrace under the castle windows, similarly employed. A lady, also masked, richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person of rank, accompanied her as a chaperon. Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could, of course, have been much more certain upon the question whether she was really watching my poor darling. I am now well assured that she was. We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been dancing, and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door; I was standing near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached, and the younger took the chair next my ward; while her companion stood beside me, and for a little time addressed herself, in a low tone, to her charge. Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to me, and in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my name, opened a conversation with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes where she had met meat Court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which, I found, had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at her touch. I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was, every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and in seeing me flounder, in my eager perplexity, from one conjecture to another. In the meantime the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd name of Millarca, when she once or twice addressed her, had, with the same ease and grace, got into conversation with my ward. She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a mask rendered practicable; she talked like a friend; she admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the ballroom, and laughed at my poor childs fun. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a time they had grown very good friends, and the young stranger lowered her mask, displaying a remarkably beautiful face. I had never seen it before, neither had my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were so engaging, as well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully. My poor girl did so. I never saw anyone more taken with another at first sight, unless, indeed, it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her heart to her. In the meantime, availing myself of the licence of a masquerade, I put not a few questions to the elder lady. You have puzzled me utterly, I said, laughing. Is that not enough? wont you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness to remove your mask? Can any request be more unreasonable? she replied. Ask a lady to yield an advantage! Beside, how do you know you should recognise me? Years make changes. As you see, I said, with a bow, and, I suppose, a rather melancholy little laugh. As philosophers tell us, she said; and how do you know that a sight of my face would help you? I should take chance for that, I answered. It is vain trying to make yourself out an old woman; your figure betrays you. Years, nevertheless, have passed since I saw you, rather since you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Millarca, there, is my daughter; I cannot then be young, even in the opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me. You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange. My petition is to your pity, to remove it. And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is, she replied. Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or German; you speak both languages so perfectly. I dont think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack. At all events, you wont deny this, I said, that being honoured by your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I say Madame la Comtesse? She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another evasionif, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every circumstance of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident. As to that, she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no masqueradein the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may interest her? The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence; she then said to me, Keep my place for me, General; I shall return when I have said a few words. And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes. I spent the interval in cudgelling my brains for a conjecture as to the identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my pretty ward and the Countesss daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name, title, chteau, and estates at my fingers ends. But at this moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at the door. He withdrew with a bow. XII A Petition Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few hours, I said, with a low bow. It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me? I assured her I did not. You shall know me, she said, but not at present. We are older and better friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful schloss, about which I have been making enquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and renew a friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant recollections. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I must set out now, and travel by a devious route, nearly a hundred miles, with all the dispatch I can possibly make. My perplexities multiply. I am only deterred by the compulsory reserve I practise as to my name from making a very singular request of you. My poor child has not quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she had ridden out to witness, her nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and our physician says that she must on no account exert herself for some time to come. We came here, in consequence, by very easy stageshardly six leagues a day. I must now travel day and night, on a mission of life and deatha mission the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few weeks, without the necessity of any concealment. She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking a favour. This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite unconsciously. Than the terms in which it was expressed, nothing could be more deprecatory. It was simply that I would consent to take charge of her daughter during her absence. This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and, in an undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her mamma would allow her, she would like it extremely. At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in. The two ladies assailed me together, and I must confess the refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about which there was something extremely engaging, as well as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me; and, quite overpowered, I submitted, and undertook, too easily, the care of the young lady, whom her mother called Millarca. The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with grave attention while she told her, in general terms, how suddenly and peremptorily she had been summoned, and also of the arrangement she had made for her under my care, adding that I was one of her earliest and most valued friends. I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call for, and found myself, on reflection, in a position which I did not half like. The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously conducted the lady from the room. The demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than her modest title alone might have led me to assume. Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more about her than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons. But here, she said, neither I nor my daughter could safely remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently for a moment, about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found that you had seen me, I should have thrown myself on your high sense of honour to keep my secret for some weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if you now suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect, who I am, I commit myself, in like manner, entirely to your honour. My daughter will observe the same secrecy, and I well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should thoughtlessly disclose it. She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hurriedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and disappeared in the crowd. In the next room, said Millarca, there is a window that looks upon the hall door. I should like to see the last of mamma, and to kiss my hand to her. We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked out, and saw a handsome oldfashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw the hood over her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed, and the carriage began to move. She is gone, said Millarca, with a sigh. She is gone, I repeated to myself, for the first timein the hurried moments that had elapsed since my consentreflecting upon the folly of my act. She did not look up, said the young lady, plaintively. The Countess had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not care to show her face, I said; and she could not know that you were in the window. She sighed, and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that I relented. I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hospitality, and I determined to make her amends for the unavowed churlishness of my reception. The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in persuading me to return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We did so, and walked up and down the terrace that lies under the castle windows. Millarca became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more every minute. Her gossip, without being illnatured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I thought what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home. This ball was not over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away, or think of bed. We had just got through a crowded saloon, when my ward asked me what had become of Millarca. I thought she had been by her side, and she fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of a momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Now, in its full force, I recognised a new folly in my having undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name; and fettered as I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could not even point my inquiries by saying that the missing young lady was the daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure a few hours before. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was not till near two oclock next day that we heard anything of my missing charge. At about that time a servant knocked at my nieces door, to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find the General Baron Spielsdorf and the young lady his daughter, in whose charge she had been left by her mother. There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy, that our young friend had turned up; and so she had. Would to Heaven we had lost her! She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had got to the housekeepers bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. That day Millarca came home with us. I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl. XIII The Woodman There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Millarca complained of extreme languorthe weakness that remained after her late illnessand she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring. She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss, in the first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees, in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window? In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened. She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied, by a spectre, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side. Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness. I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on either side of the road as you approach the roofless village which had not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century. You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my fathers chteau. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla! A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle, round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence. In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we had each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors of the castle. And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins! said the old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the village, and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. It was a bad family, and here its bloodstained annals were written, he continued. It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, down there. He pointed down to the grey walls of the gothic building, partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. And I hear the axe of a woodman, he added, busy among the trees that surround it; he possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich and titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct. We have a portrait, at home, of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein; should you like to see it? asked my father. Time enough, dear friend, replied the General. I believe that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now approaching. What! see the Countess Mircalla, exclaimed my father; why, she has been dead more than a century! Not so dead as you fancy, I am told, answered the General. I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly, replied my father, looking at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and detestation, at times, in the old Generals manner, there was nothing flighty. There remains to me, he said, as we passed under the heavy arch of the gothic churchfor its dimensions would have justified its being so styledbut one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm. What vengeance can you mean? asked my father, in increasing amazement. I mean, to decapitate the monster, he answered, with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air. What? exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered. To strike her head off. Cut her head off! Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat. You shall hear, he answered, trembling with rage. And hurrying forward he said That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is fatigued; let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story. The squared block of wood, which lay on the grassgrown pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the General called to the woodman, who had been removing some boughs which leaned upon the old walls; and, axe in hand, the hardy old fellow stood before us. He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there was an old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present sojourning in the house of the priest, about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old Karnstein family; and, for a trifle, he undertook to bring him back with him, if we would lend him one of our horses, in little more than halfanhour. Have you been long employed about this forest? asked my father of the old man. I have been a woodman here, he answered in his patois, under the forester, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up.

I could show you the very house in the village here, in which my ancestors lived. How came the village to be deserted? asked the General. It was troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers were killed. But after all these proceedings according to law, he continuedso many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animationthe village was not relieved. But a Moravian nobleman, who happened to be travelling this way, heard how matters were, and being skilledas many people are in his countryin such affairs, he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him; you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its inhabitants. The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them. This Moravian nobleman had authority from the then head of the family to remove the tomb of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, which he did effectually, so that in a little while its site was quite forgotten. Can you point out where it stood? asked the General, eagerly. The forester shook his head and smiled. Not a soul living could tell you that now, he said; besides, they say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that either. Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and departed, leaving us to hear the remainder of the Generals strange story. XIV The Meeting My beloved child, he resumed, was now growing rapidly worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression upon her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm, and suggested a consultation. I called in an abler physician, from Gratz. Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and pious, as well as a learned man. Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my library to confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these two gentlemens voices raised in something sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from Gratz maintaining his theory. His rival was combatting it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly manifestation subsided and the altercation ended on my entrance. Sir, said my first physician, my learned brother seems to think that you want a conjuror, and not a doctor. Pardon me, said the old physician from Gratz, looking displeased, I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another time. I grieve, Monsieur le Gnral, that by my skill and science I can be of no use. Before I go I shall do myself the honour to suggest something to you. He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write. Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and then, with a shrug, significantly touched his forehead. This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Gratz, in ten or fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apologised for having followed me, but said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told me that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease exhibited the same symptoms; and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day, or possibly two, of life. If the fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die. And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of? I entreated. I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open my letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with you; you would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death. Should the priest fail you, then, indeed, you may read it. He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there; and so took his leave. The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake? Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned mans letter. It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire! The punctures which she described as having occurred near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires; and there could be no doubt, he added, as to the welldefined presence of the small livid mark which all concurred in describing as that induced by the demons lips, and every symptom described by the sufferer was in exact conformity with those recorded in every case of a similar visitation. Being myself wholly sceptical as to the existence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter. I concealed myself in the dark dressingroom, that opened upon the poor patients room, in which a candle was burning, and watched there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very illdefined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girls throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted toward the foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my sword; but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified, I pursued, and struck again. She was gone; and my sword flew to shivers against the door. I cant describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The spectre Millarca was gone. But her victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died. The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; and thus occupied, he strolled into the door of a sidechapel to prosecute his researches. The General leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died away. In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected, as it was, with the great and titled dead, whose monuments were mouldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious casein this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless wallsa horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene. The old Generals eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his hand upon the basement of a shattered monument. Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel. I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in answer to her peculiarly engaging smile; when with a cry, the old man by my side caught up the woodmans hatchet, and started forward. On seeing him a brutalised change came over her features. It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under his blow, and unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. He struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to the ground, and the girl was gone. He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his head, and a moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the point of death. The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I recollect after, is Madame standing before me, and impatiently repeating again and again, the question, Where is Mademoiselle Carmilla? I answered at length, I dont knowI cant tellshe went there, and I pointed to the door through which Madame had just entered; only a minute or two since. But I have been standing there, in the passage, ever since Mademoiselle Carmilla entered; and she did not return. She then began to call Carmilla, through every door and passage and from the windows, but no answer came. She called herself Carmilla? asked the General, still agitated. Carmilla, yes, I answered. Aye, he said; that is Millarca. That is the same person who long ago was called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergymans house, and stay there till we come. Begone! May you never behold Carmilla more; you will not find her here. XV Ordeal and Execution As he spoke one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld, entered the chapel at the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and her exit. He was tall, narrowchested, stooping, with high shoulders, and dressed in black. His face was brown and dried in with deep furrows; he wore an oddlyshaped hat with a broad leaf. His hair, long and grizzled, hung on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles, and walked slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes turned up to the sky, and sometimes bowed down toward the ground, seemed to wear a perpetual smile; his long thin arms were swinging, and his lank hands, in old black gloves ever so much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating in utter abstraction. The very man! exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest delight. My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of meeting you so soon. He signed to my father, who had by this time returned, and leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he called the Baron, to meet him. He introduced him formally, and they at once entered into earnest conversation. The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket, and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil case in his fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point on the paper, which from their often glancing from it, together, at certain points of the building, I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied, what I may term, his lecture, with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely written over. They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot where I was standing, conversing as they went; then they begun measuring distances by paces, and finally they all stood together, facing a piece of the sidewall, which they began to examine with great minuteness; pulling off the ivy that clung over it, and rapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping here, and knocking there. At length they ascertained the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it. With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental inscription, and carved escutcheon, were disclosed. They proved to be those of the long lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his hands and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some moments. Tomorrow, I heard him say; the commissioner will be here, and the Inquisition will be held according to law. Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have delivered this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked. My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I knew that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them glance often quickly at me, as the discussion proceeded. My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the chapel, said It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to our party the good priest, who lives but a little way from this; and persuade him to accompany us to the schloss. In this quest we were successful and I was glad, being unspeakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tidings of Carmilla. Of the scene that had occurred in the ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present determined to keep from me. The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene more horrible to me. The arrangements for that night were singular. Two servants, and Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my father kept watch in the adjoining dressingroom. The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of which I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep. I saw all clearly a few days later. The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of my nightly sufferings. You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silisia, in Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so we must call it, of the Vampire. If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially, before commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the Vampire. For my part I have heard no theory by which to explain what I myself have witnessed and experienced, other than that supplied by the ancient and wellattested belief of the country. The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of Karnstein. The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the General and my father recognised each his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvellous fact, that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed. Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body, therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head were next placed on a pile of wood, and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory has never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire. My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial Commission, with the signatures of all who were present at these proceedings, attached in verification of the statement. It is from this official paper that I have summarized my account of this last shocking scene. XVI Conclusion I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I cannot think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed, could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to come, and reinduced a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful, and solitude insupportably terrific. Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg, to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mircallas grave. He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvellously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his fingers ends all the great and little works upon the subject. Magia Posthuma, Phlegon de Mirabilibus, Augustinus de Cur Pro Mortuis, Philosophic et Christi Cogitationes de Vampiris, by John Christofer Herenberg; and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to governsome always, and others occasionally onlythe condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved the vampirelife of the longdead Countess Karnstein. How they escape from their graves and return to them for certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the cerements, has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable. The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast. The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a relation, Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her real one, should at least reproduce, without the omission or addition of a single letter, those, as we say, anagrammatically, which compose it. Carmilla did this; so did Millarca. My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the Moravian nobleman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard, and then he asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the longconcealed tomb of the Countess Millarca? The Barons grotesque features puckered up into a mysterious smile; he looked down, still smiling on his worn spectaclecase and fumbled with it. Then looking up, he said I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable man; the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you speak, to Karnstein. The tradition, of course, discolours and distorts a little. He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed his abode to that territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he was, in truth, a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in very early youth he had been a passionate and favoured lover of the beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law. Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That spectre visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in the course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal more. Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious existence, is projected into a far more horrible life; and he resolved to save his once beloved Mircalla from this. He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her remains, and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen upon him, and from the vale of years he looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and a horror took possession of him. He made the tracings and notes which have guided me to the very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that he had practised. If he had intended any further action in this matter, death prevented him; and the hand of a remote descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast. We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the Generals wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from. The following spring my father took me on a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternationssometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawingroom door. Colophon In a Glass Darkly was published in 1872 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Kenneth Williams, and is based on transcriptions produced in 2011 by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell, and Marc DHooghe for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from Google Books. The cover page is adapted from Still Life with Glass and Porcelain Bowl, a painting completed in 1662 by Willem Kalf. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 856 p.m. and is based on revision cadaa20. The first edition of this ebook was released on December 29, 2017, 1246 a.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksjsheridanlefanuinaglassdarkly. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Green Tea Prologue Martin Hesselius, the German Physician Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place. In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term easy circumstances. He was an old man when I first saw him; nearly fiveandthirty years my senior. In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was wellfounded. For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own halldoor, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art, and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration. Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixtyfour years ago. It is related in a series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play. The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader. These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there, I omit some passages, and shorten others and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing. I Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middleaged, and dresses with a natty, oldfashioned, highchurch precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy. I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heydukes. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation. He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Marys, who it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him. The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say, sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary. There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings health does break down in, generally a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestryroom, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis, now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly incapacitated. When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course. We shall see. Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people I think dont remember; or, perhaps, distinctly remark.

But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs only now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as I have said to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the floor there is something both shy and anxious. A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding inquiry. There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly scientific paper. I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death consequently no interruption of the living mans existence, but simply his extrication from the natural bodya process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection in power. The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognised state of facts. In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my cautionI think he perceived itand I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then became thoughtful for a few minutes. After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer. This tall clergyman approached me byandby and in a little time we had got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books and places, having travelled, wish to converse, it is very strange if they cant find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me, and led him into conversation. He knew German, and had read my Essays on Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say. This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the world, but his best beloved friendswas cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me. I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans respecting myself. We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time; but at last he said I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical MedicineI read them in German, ten or twelve years agohave they been translated? No, Im sure they have notI should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think. I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print. So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although, I added, laughing, ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest in it. At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said, guiltily for a moment. I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on, I said Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests another, and often sends me back a wildgoose chase over an interval of twenty years. But if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have still got two or three by meand if you allow me to present one I shall be very much honoured. You are very good indeed, he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment I almost despairedI dont know how to thank you. Pray dont say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty. Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his departure. II The Doctor Questions Lady Mary, and She Answers I like your vicar so much, Lady Mary, said I, so soon as he was gone. He has read, travelled, and thought, and having also suffered, he ought to be an accomplished companion. So he is, and, better still, he is a really good man, said she. His advice is invaluable about my schools, and all my little undertakings at Dawlbridge, and hes so painstaking, he takes so much troubleyou have no ideawherever he thinks he can be of use hes so goodnatured and so sensible. It is pleasant to hear so good an account of his neighbourly virtues. I can only testify to his being an agreeable and gentle companion, and in addition to what you have told me, I think I can tell you two or three things about him, said I. Really! Yes, to begin with, hes unmarried. Yes, thats rightgo on. He has been writing, that is he was, but for two or three years perhaps, he has not gone on with his work, and the book was upon some rather abstract subjectperhaps theology. Well, he was writing a book, as you say; Im not quite sure what it was about, but only that it was nothing that I cared for, very likely you are right, and he certainly did stopyes. And although he only drank a little coffee here tonight, he likes tea, at least, did like it, extravagantly. Yes, thats quite true. He drank green tea, a good deal, didnt he? I pursued. Well, thats very odd! Green tea was a subject on which we used almost to quarrel. But he has quite given that up, said I. So he has. And, now, one more fact. His mother or his father, did you know them? Yes, both; his father is only ten years dead, and their place is near Dawlbridge. We knew them very well, she answered. Well, either his mother or his fatherI should rather think his father, saw a ghost, said I. Well, you really are a conjurer, Dr. Hesselius. Conjurer or no, havent I said right? I answered merrily. You certainly have, and it was his father he was a silent, whimsical man, and he used to bore my father about his dreams, and at last he told him a story about a ghost he had seen and talked with, and a very odd story it was. I remember it particularly, because I was so afraid of him. This story was long before he diedwhen I was quite a childand his ways were so silent and moping, and he used to drop in, sometimes, in the dusk, when I was alone in the drawingroom, and I used to fancy there were ghosts about him. I smiled and nodded. And now having established my character as a conjurer I think I must say good night, said I. But how did you find it out? By the planets of course, as the gipsies do, I answered, and so, gaily, we said good night. Next morning I sent the little book he had been inquiring after, and a note to Mr. Jennings, and on returning late that evening, I found that he had called, at my lodgings, and left his card. He asked whether I was at home, and asked at what hour he would be most likely to find me. Does he intend opening his case, and consulting me professionally, as they say? I hope so. I have already conceived a theory about him. It is supported by Lady Marys answers to my parting questions. I should like much to ascertain from his own lips. But what can I do consistently with good breeding to invite a confession? Nothing. I rather think he meditates one. At all events, my dear Van L., I shant make myself difficult of access; I mean to return his visit tomorrow. It will be only civil in return for his politeness, to ask to see him. Perhaps something may come of it. Whether much, little, or nothing, my dear Van L., you shall hear. III Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books Well, I have called at Blankstreet. On inquiring at the door, the servant told me that Mr. Jennings was engaged very particularly with a gentleman, a clergyman from Kenlis, his parish in the country. Intending to reserve my privilege and to call again, I merely intimated that I should try another time, and had turned to go, when the servant begged my pardon, and asked me, looking at me a little more attentively than wellbred persons of his order usually do, whether I was Dr. Hesselius; and, on learning that I was, he said, Perhaps then, sir, you would allow me to mention it to Mr. Jennings, for I am sure he wishes to see you. The servant returned in a moment, with a message from Mr. Jennings, asking me to go into his study, which was in effect his back drawingroom, promising to be with me in a very few minutes. This was really a studyalmost a library. The room was lofty, with two tall slender windows, and rich dark curtains. It was much larger than I had expected, and stored with books on every side, from the floor to the ceiling. The upper carpetfor to my tread it felt that there were two or threewas a Turkey carpet. My steps fell noiselessly. The bookcases standing out, placed the windows, particularly narrow ones, in deep recesses. The effect of the room was, although extremely comfortable, and even luxurious, decidedly gloomy, and aided by the silence, almost oppressive. Perhaps, however, I ought to have allowed something for association. My mind had connected peculiar ideas with Mr. Jennings. I stepped into this perfectly silent room, of a very silent house, with a peculiar foreboding; and its darkness, and solemn clothing of books, for except where two narrow lookingglasses were set in the wall, they were everywhere, helped this sombre feeling. While awaiting Mr. Jennings arrival, I amused myself by looking into some of the books with which his shelves were laden. Not among these, but immediately under them, with their backs upward, on the floor, I lighted upon a complete set of Swedenborgs Arcana Clestia, in the original Latin, a very fine folio set, bound in the natty livery which theology affects, pure vellum, namely, gold letters, and carmine edges. There were paper markers in several of these volumes, I raised and placed them, one after the other, upon the table, and opening where these papers were placed, I read in the solemn Latin phraseology, a series of sentences indicated by a pencilled line at the margin. Of these I copy here a few, translating them into English. When mans interior sight is opened, which is that of his spirit, then there appear the things of another life, which cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight. By the internal sight it has been granted me to see the things that are in the other life, more clearly than I see those that are in the world. From these considerations, it is evident that external vision exists from interior vision, and this from a vision still more interior, and so on. There are with every man at least two evil spirits. With wicked genii there is also a fluent speech, but harsh and grating. There is also among them a speech which is not fluent, wherein the dissent of the thoughts is perceived as something secretly creeping along within it. The evil spirits associated with man are, indeed, from the hells, but when with man they are not then in hell, but are taken out thence. The place where they then are is in the midst between heaven and hell, and is called the world of spiritswhen the evil spirits who are with man, are in that world, they are not in any infernal torment, but in every thought and affection of the man, and so, in all that the man himself enjoys. But when they are remitted into their hell, they return to their former state. If evil spirits could perceive that they were associated with man, and yet that they were spirits separate from him, and if they could flow in into the things of his body, they would attempt by a thousand means to destroy him; for they hate man with a deadly hatred. Knowing, therefore, that I was a man in the body, they were continually striving to destroy me, not as to the body only, but especially as to the soul; for to destroy any man or spirit is the very delight of the life of all who are in hell; but I have been continually protected by the Lord. Hence it appears how dangerous it is for man to be in a living consort with spirits, unless he be in the good of faith. Nothing is more carefully guarded from the knowledge of associate spirits than their being thus conjoint with a man, for if they knew it they would speak to him, with the intention to destroy him. The delight of hell is to do evil to man, and to hasten his eternal ruin. A long note, written with a very sharp and fine pencil, in Mr. Jennings neat hand, at the foot of the page, caught my eye. Expecting his criticism upon the text, I read a word or two, and stopped, for it was something quite different, and began with these words, Deus misereatur meiMay God compassionate me. Thus warned of its private nature, I averted my eyes, and shut the book, replacing all the volumes as I had found them, except one which interested me, and in which, as men studious and solitary in their habits will do, I grew so absorbed as to take no cognisance of the outer world, nor to remember where I was. I was reading some pages which refer to representatives and correspondents, in the technical language of Swedenborg, and had arrived at a passage, the substance of which is, that evil spirits, when seen by other eyes than those of their infernal associates, present themselves, by correspondence, in the shape of the beast (fera) which represents their particular lust and life, in aspect direful and atrocious. This is a long passage, and particularises a number of those bestial forms. IV Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage I was running the head of my pencilcase along the line as I read it, and something caused me to raise my eyes. Directly before me was one of the mirrors I have mentioned, in which I saw reflected the tall shape of my friend Mr. Jennings leaning over my shoulder, and reading the page at which I was busy, and with a face so dark and wild that I should hardly have known him. I turned and rose. He stood erect also, and with an effort laughed a little, saying I came in and asked you how you did, but without succeeding in awaking you from your book; so I could not restrain my curiosity, and very impertinently, Im afraid, peeped over your shoulder. This is not your first time of looking into those pages. You have looked into Swedenborg, no doubt, long ago? Oh dear, yes! I owe Swedenborg a great deal; you will discover traces of him in the little book on Metaphysical Medicine, which you were so good as to remember. Although my friend affected a gaiety of manner, there was a slight flush in his face, and I could perceive that he was inwardly much perturbed. Im scarcely yet qualified, I know so little of Swedenborg. Ive only had them a fortnight, he answered, and I think they are rather likely to make a solitary man nervousthat is, judging from the very little I have readI dont say that they have made me so, he laughed; and Im so very much obliged for the book. I hope you got my note? I made all proper acknowledgments and modest disclaimers. I never read a book that I go with, so entirely, as that of yours, he continued. I saw at once there is more in it than is quite unfolded. Do you know Dr. Harley? he asked, rather abruptly. In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practised in England. I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England. I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life, said Mr. Jennings. This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me. Really! and in what way? I asked. In his profession, he answered. I smiled. I mean this, he said he seems to me, one half, blindI mean one half of all he looks at is darkpreternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful. I cant get himI mean he wontIve had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead, Ill tell youI know I shall some timeall about it, he said, with a little agitation. You stay some months longer in England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter? I should be only too happy, I assured him. Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley. A little leaning to the materialistic school, I said. A mere materialist, he corrected me; you cant think how that sort of thing worries one who knows better. You wont tell anyoneany of my friends you knowthat I am hippish; now, for instance, no one knowsnot even Lady Marythat I have seen Dr. Harley, or any other doctor. So pray dont mention it; and, if I should have any threatening of an attack, youll kindly let me write, or, should I be in town, have a little talk with you. I was full of conjecture, and unconsciously I found I had fixed my eyes gravely on him, for he lowered his for a moment, and he said I see you think I might as well tell you now, or else you are forming a conjecture; but you may as well give it up. If you were guessing all the rest of your life, you will never hit on it. He shook his head smiling, and over that wintry sunshine a black cloud suddenly came down, and he drew his breath in, through his teeth as men do in pain. Sorry, of course, to learn that you apprehend occasion to consult any of us; but, command me when and how you like, and I need not assure you that your confidence is sacred. He then talked of quite other things, and in a comparatively cheerful way and after a little time, I took my leave. V Doctor Hesselius Is Summoned to Richmond We parted cheerfully, but he was not cheerful, nor was I. There are certain expressions of that powerful organ of spiritthe human facewhich, although I have seen them often, and possess a doctors nerve, yet disturb me profoundly. One look of Mr. Jennings haunted me. It had seized my imagination with so dismal a power that I changed my plans for the evening, and went to the opera, feeling that I wanted a change of ideas. I heard nothing of or from him for two or three days, when a note in his hand reached me. It was cheerful, and full of hope. He said that he had been for some little time so much betterquite well, in factthat he was going to make a little experiment, and run down for a month or so to his parish, to try whether a little work might not quite set him up. There was in it a fervent religious expression of gratitude for his restoration, as he now almost hoped he might call it. A day or two later I saw Lady Mary, who repeated what his note had announced, and told me that he was actually in Warwickshire, having resumed his clerical duties at Kenlis; and she added, I begin to think that he is really perfectly well, and that there never was anything the matter, more than nerves and fancy; we are all nervous, but I fancy there is nothing like a little hard work for that kind of weakness, and he has made up his mind to try it. I should not be surprised if he did not come back for a year. Notwithstanding all this confidence, only two days later I had this note, dated from his house off Piccadilly Dear SirI have returned disappointed. If I should feel at all able to see you, I shall write to ask you kindly to call. At present I am too low, and, in fact, simply unable to say all I wish to say. Pray dont mention my name to my friends. I can see no one. Byandby, please God, you shall hear from me. I mean to take a run into Shropshire, where some of my people are. God bless you! May we, on my return, meet more happily than I can now write. About a week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jennings niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, what a world of suffering is sometimes hidden! Nearly five weeks passed without any further news of Mr. Jennings. At the end of that time I received a note from him. He wrote I have been in the country, and have had change of air, change of scene, change of faces, change of everything and in everythingbut myself. I have made up my mind, so far as the most irresolute creature on earth can do it, to tell my case fully to you. If your engagements will permit, pray come to me today, tomorrow, or the next day; but, pray defer as little as possible. You know not how much I need help. I have a quiet house at Richmond, where I now am. Perhaps you can manage to come to dinner, or to luncheon, or even to tea. You shall have no trouble in finding me out. The servant at Blank street, who takes this note, will have a carriage at your door at any hour you please; and I am always to be found. You will say that I ought not to be alone. I have tried everything. Come and see. I called up the servant, and decided on going out the same evening, which accordingly I did. He would have been much better in a lodginghouse, or hotel, I thought, as I drove up through a short double row of sombre elms to a very oldfashioned brick house, darkened by the foliage of these trees, which overtopped, and nearly surrounded it. It was a perverse choice, for nothing could be imagined more triste and silent. The house, I found, belonged to him. He had stayed for a day or two in town, and, finding it for some cause insupportable, had come out here, probably because being furnished and his own, he was relieved of the thought and delay of selection, by coming here. The sun had already set, and the red reflected light of the western sky illuminated the scene with the peculiar effect with which we are all familiar. The hall seemed very dark, but, getting to the back drawingroom, whose windows command the west, I was again in the same dusky light. I sat down, looking out upon the richlywooded landscape that glowed in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading. The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was sinister. I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place. The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, into the room. We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still light enough to enable us to see each others faces, he sat down beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface began his narrative. VI How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on the stony face of the suffererfor the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changedrested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness. The silence, too, was utter; not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelors house. I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalkens, before its background of darkness. It began, he said, on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two daysI keep very accurate count, for every day is torment. If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me. About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading. It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients. I know, said I; the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship? A wide and very interesting field. Yes; but not good for the mindthe Christian mind, I mean. Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the nemesis sure. God forgive me! I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night. I was always thinking on the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere. It thoroughly infected me. You are to remember that all the material ideas connected with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care. He sighed heavily. I believe that everyone who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on somethingtea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companionat first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so. I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my teagreen teaevery now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven oclock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed. I used to go into town every day. I was not a monk, and, although I spent an hour or two in a library, hunting up authorities and looking out lights upon my theme, I was in no morbid state as far as I can judge. I met my friends pretty much as usual, and enjoyed their society, and, on the whole, existence had never been, I think, so pleasant before. I had met with a man who had some odd old books, German editions in medieval Latin, and I was only too happy to be permitted access to them. This obliging persons books were in the city, a very outoftheway part of it. I had rather outstayed my intended hour, and, on coming out, seeing no cab near, I was tempted to get into the omnibus which used to drive past this house. It was darker than this by the time the bus had reached an old house, you may have remarked, with four poplars at each side of the door, and there the last passenger but myself got out. We drove along rather faster. It was twilight now. I leaned back in my corner next the door ruminating pleasantly. The interior of the omnibus was nearly dark. I had observed in the corner opposite to me at the other side, and at the end next the horses, two small circular reflections, as it seemed to me of a reddish light. They were about two inches apart, and about the size of those small brass buttons that yachting men used to put upon their jackets. I began to speculate, as listless men will, upon this trifle, as it seemed. From what centre did that faint but deep red light come, and from whatglass beads, buttons, toy decorationswas it reflected? We were lumbering along gently, having nearly a mile still to go. I had not solved the puzzle, and it became in another minute more odd, for these two luminous points, with a sudden jerk, descended nearer the floor, keeping still their relative distance and horizontal position, and then, as suddenly, they rose to the level of the seat on which I was sitting, and I saw them no more. My curiosity was now really excited, and, before I had time to think, I saw again these two dull lamps, again together near the floor; again they disappeared, and again in their old corner I saw them. So, keeping my eyes upon them, I edged quietly up my own side, towards the end at which I still saw these tiny discs of red. There was very little light in the bus. It was nearly dark. I leaned forward to aid my endeavour to discover what these little circles really were. They shifted their position a little as I did so. I began now to perceive an outline of something black, and I soon saw with tolerable distinctness the outline of a small black monkey, pushing its face forward in mimicry to meet mine; those were its eyes, and I now dimly saw its teeth grinning at me. I drew back, not knowing whether it might not meditate a spring. I fancied that one of the passengers had forgot this ugly pet, and wishing to ascertain something of its temper, though not caring to trust my fingers to it, I poked my umbrella softly towards it. It remained immovableup to itthrough it! For through it, and back and forward, it passed, without the slightest resistance. I cant, in the least, convey to you the kind of horror that I felt. When I had ascertained that the thing was an illusion, as I then supposed, there came a misgiving about myself and a terror that fascinated me in impotence to remove my gaze from the eyes of the brute for some moments. As I looked, it made a little skip back, quite into the corner, and I, in a panic, found myself at the door, having put my head out, drawing deep breaths of the outer air, and staring at the lights and trees we were passing, too glad to reassure myself of reality. I stopped the bus and got out. I perceived the man look oddly at me as I paid him. I daresay there was something unusual in my looks and manner, for I had never felt so strangely before. VII The Journey First Stage When the omnibus drove on, and I was alone upon the road, I looked carefully round to ascertain whether the monkey had followed me. To my indescribable relief I saw it nowhere.

I cant describe easily what a shock I had received, and my sense of genuine gratitude on finding myself, as I supposed, quite rid of it. I had got out a little before we reached this house, two or three hundred steps. A brick wall runs along the footpath, and inside the wall is a hedge of yew or some dark evergreen of that kind, and within that again the row of fine trees which you may have remarked as you came. This brick wall is about as high as my shoulder, and happening to raise my eyes I saw the monkey, with that stooping gait, on all fours, walking or creeping, close beside me on top of the wall. I stopped looking at it with a feeling of loathing and horror. As I stopped so did it. It sat up on the wall with its long hands on its knees looking at me. There was not light enough to see it much more than in outline, nor was it dark enough to bring the peculiar light of its eyes into strong relief. I still saw, however, that red foggy light plainly enough. It did not show its teeth, nor exhibit any sign of irritation, but seemed jaded and sulky, and was observing me steadily. I drew back into the middle of the road. It was an unconscious recoil, and there I stood, still looking at it, it did not move. With an instinctive determination to try somethinganything, I turned about and walked briskly towards town with askance look, all the time, watching the movements of the beast. It crept swiftly along the wall, at exactly my pace. Where the wall ends, near the turn of the road, it came down and with a wiry spring or two brought itself close to my feet, and continued to keep up with me, as I quickened my pace. It was at my left side, so close to my leg that I felt every moment as if I should tread upon it. The road was quite deserted and silent, and it was darker every moment. I stopped dismayed and bewildered, turning as I did so, the other wayI mean, towards this house, away from which I had been walking. When I stood still, the monkey drew back to a distance of, I suppose, about five or six yards, and remained stationary, watching me. I had been more agitated than I have said. I had read, of course, as everyone has, something about spectral illusions, as you physicians term the phenomena of such cases. I considered my situation, and looked my misfortune in the face. These affections, I had read, are sometimes transitory and sometimes obstinate. I had read of cases in which the appearance, at first harmless, had, step by step, degenerated into something direful and insupportable, and ended by wearing its victim out. Still as I stood there, but for my bestial companion, quite alone, I tried to comfort myself by repeating again and again the assurance, the thing is purely disease, a wellknown physical affection, as distinctly as smallpox or neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it. I must not be a fool. Ive been sitting up too late, and I daresay my digestion is quite wrong, and with Gods help, I shall be all right, and this is but a symptom of nervous dyspepsia. Did I believe all this? Not one word of it, no more than any other miserable being ever did who is once seized and riveted in this satanic captivity. Against my convictions, I might say my knowledge, I was simply bullying myself into a false courage. I now walked homeward. I had only a few hundred yards to go. I had forced myself into a sort of resignation, but I had not got over the sickening shock and the flurry of the first certainty of my misfortune. I made up my mind to pass the night at home. The brute moved close beside me, and I fancied there was the sort of anxious drawing toward the house, which one sees in tired horses or dogs, sometimes as they come toward home. I was afraid to go into town, I was afraid of anyones seeing and recognising me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when the door was opened entered with me. I drank no tea that night. I got cigars and some brandyandwater. My idea was that I should act upon my material system, and by living for a while in sensation apart from thought, send myself forcibly, as it were, into a new groove. I came up here to this drawingroom. I sat just here. The monkey then got upon a small table that then stood there. It looked dazed and languid. An irrepressible uneasiness as to its movements kept my eyes always upon it. Its eyes were half closed, but I could see them glow. It was looking steadily at me. In all situations, at all hours, it is awake and looking at me. That never changes. I shall not continue in detail my narrative of this particular night. I shall describe, rather, the phenomena of the first year, which never varied, essentially. I shall describe the monkey as it appeared in daylight. In the dark, as you shall presently hear, there are peculiarities. It is a small monkey, perfectly black. It had only one peculiaritya character of malignityunfathomable malignity. During the first year it looked sullen and sick. But this character of intense malice and vigilance was always underlying that surly languor. During all that time it acted as if on a plan of giving me as little trouble as was consistent with watching me. Its eyes were never off me, I have never lost sight of it, except in my sleep, light or dark, day or night, since it came here, excepting when it withdraws for some weeks at a time, unaccountably. In total dark it is visible as in daylight. I do not mean merely its eyes. It is all visible distinctly in a halo that resembles a glow of red embers, and which accompanies it in all its movements. When it leaves me for a time, it is always at night, in the dark, and in the same way. It grows at first uneasy, and then furious, and then advances towards me, grinning and shaking its paws clenched, and, at the same time, there comes the appearance of fire in the grate. I never have any fire. I cant sleep in the room where there is any, and it draws nearer and nearer to the chimney, quivering, it seems, with rage, and when its fury rises to the highest pitch, it springs into the grate, and up the chimney, and I see it no more. When first this happened I thought I was released. I was a new man. A day passeda nightand no return, and a blessed weeka weekanother week. I was always on my knees, Dr. Hesselius, always, thanking God and praying. A whole month passed of liberty, but on a sudden, it was with me again. VIII The Second Stage It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen exterior, was now active. It was perfectly unchanged in every other respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and soon in other ways. For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it was always brooding over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me. Is it here now? I asked. No, he replied, it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a dayfifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it last, it may return now at any moment. Is its return, I asked, accompanied by any peculiar manifestation? Nothingno, he said. It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes from a book, or turning my head, I see it as usual, looking at me, and then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so much and so minutely before to anyone. I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the morning, but he said No, if you dont mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real He paused, looking at me with agitated inquiry. We can discuss it byandby, and very fully. I will give you all I think, I answered, after an interval. Wellvery well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing, little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic nerves, he talked of. Ah! wellthere are other nerves of communication. May God Almighty help me! You shall hear. Its power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a way aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so, is this He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance, and sighed often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient, who has given himself up. Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis, my parish. It was with me when I left this place for Dawlbridge. It was my silent travelling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me in the churchin the readingdeskin the pulpitwithin the communion rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to the congregation, it would spring upon the open book and squat there, so that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once. I left Dawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harleys hands. I did everything he told me. He gave my case a great deal of thought. It interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly three months I was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his full assent I returned to Dawlbridge. I travelled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was moreI was happy and grateful. I was returning, as I thought delivered from a dreadful hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful, and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it emerges at the roadside, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner of the chaise was the monkey. For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror. I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the roadside, and prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened. My companion was with me as I reentered the vicarage. The same persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I left the place. I told you, he said, that the beast has before this become in certain ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was thus, whenever I meditated praying; it was always before me, and nearer and nearer. It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the chimneypiece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to dissipate thought, and to contract ones attention to that monotony, till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to nothingand unless I had started up, and shook off the catalepsy I have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself. There are other ways, he sighed heavily; thus, for instance, while I pray with my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known this, you would be acquainted with desperation. IX The Third Stage I see, Dr. Hesselius, that you dont lose one word of my statement. I need not ask you to listen specially to what I am now going to tell you. They talk of the optic nerves, and of spectral illusions, as if the organ of sight was the only point assailable by the influences that have fastened upon meI know better. For two years in my direful case that limitation prevailed. But as food is taken in softly at the lips, and then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has been once caught firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery of hell, until he is as I am. Yes, Doctor, as I am, for while I talk to you, and implore relief, I feel that my prayer is for the impossible, and my pleading with the inexorable. I endeavoured to calm his visibly increasing agitation, and told him that he must not despair. While we talked the night had overtaken us. The filmy moonlight was wide over the scene which the window commanded, and I said Perhaps you would prefer having candles. This light, you know, is odd. I should wish you, as much as possible, under your usual conditions while I make my diagnosis, shall I call itotherwise I dont care. All lights are the same to me, he said except when I read or write, I care not if night were perpetual. I am going to tell you what happened about a year ago. The thing began to speak to me. Speak! How do you meanspeak as a man does, do you mean? Yes; speak in words and consecutive sentences, with perfect coherence and articulation; but there is a peculiarity. It is not like the tone of a human voice. It is not by my ears it reaches meit comes like a singing through my head. This faculty, the power of speaking to me, will be my undoing. It wont let me pray, it interrupts me with dreadful blasphemies. I dare not go on, I could not. Oh! Doctor, can the skill, and thought, and prayers of man avail me nothing! You must promise me, my dear sir, not to trouble yourself with unnecessarily exciting thoughts; confine yourself strictly to the narrative of facts; and recollect, above all, that even if the thing that infests you be as you seem to suppose, a reality with an actual independent life and will, yet it can have no power to hurt you, unless it be given from above its access to your senses depends mainly upon your physical conditionthis is, under God, your comfort and reliance we are all alike environed. It is only that in your case, the paries, the veil of the flesh, the screen, is a little out of repair, and sights and sounds are transmitted. We must enter on a new course, sirbe encouraged. Ill give tonight to the careful consideration of the whole case. You are very good, sir; you think it worth trying, you dont give me quite up; but, sir, you dont know, it is gaining such an influence over me it orders me about, it is such a tyrant, and Im growing so helpless. May God deliver me! It orders you aboutof course you mean by speech? Yes, yes; it is always urging me to crimes, to injure others, or myself. You see, Doctor, the situation is urgent, it is indeed. When I was in Shropshire, a few weeks ago (Mr. Jennings was speaking rapidly and trembling now, holding my arm with one hand, and looking in my face), I went out one day with a party of friends for a walk my persecutor, I tell you, was with me at the time. I lagged behind the rest the country near the Dee, you know, is beautiful. Our path happened to lie near a coal mine, and at the verge of the wood is a perpendicular shaft, they say, a hundred and fifty feet deep. My niece had remained behind with meshe knows, of course, nothing of the nature of my sufferings. She knew, however, that I had been ill, and was low, and she remained to prevent my being quite alone. As we loitered slowly on together the brute that accompanied me was urging me to throw myself down the shaft. I tell you nowoh, sir, think of it!the one consideration that saved me from that hideous death was the fear lest the shock of witnessing the occurrence should be too much for the poor girl. I asked her to go on and take her walk with her friends, saying that I could go no further. She made excuses, and the more I urged her the firmer she became. She looked doubtful and frightened. I suppose there was something in my looks or manner that alarmed her; but she would not go, and that literally saved me. You had no idea, sir, that a living man could be made so abject a slave of Satan, he said, with a ghastly groan and a shudder. There was a pause here, and I said, You were preserved nevertheless. It was the act of God. You are in his hands and in the power of no other being be therefore confident for the future. X Home I made him have candles lighted, and saw the room looking cheery and inhabited before I left him. I told him that he must regard his illness strictly as one dependent on physical, though subtle physical, causes. I told him that he had evidence of Gods care and love in the deliverance which he had just described, and that I had perceived with pain that he seemed to regard its peculiar features as indicating that he had been delivered over to spiritual reprobation. Than such a conclusion nothing could be, I insisted, less warranted; and not only so, but more contrary to facts, as disclosed in his mysterious deliverance from that murderous influence during his Shropshire excursion. First, his niece had been retained by his side without his intending to keep her near him; and, secondly, there had been infused into his mind an irresistible repugnance to execute the dreadful suggestion in her presence. As I reasoned this point with him, Mr. Jennings wept. He seemed comforted. One promise I exacted, which was that should the monkey at any time return, I should be sent for immediately; and, repeating my assurance that I would give neither time nor thought to any other subject until I had thoroughly investigated his case, and that tomorrow he should hear the result, I took my leave. Before getting into the carriage I told the servant that his master was far from well, and that he should make a point of frequently looking into his room. My own arrangements I made with a view to being quite secure from interruption. I merely called at my lodgings, and with a travellingdesk and carpetbag, set off in a hackneycarriage for an inn about two miles out of town, called The Horns, a very quiet and comfortable house, with good thick walls. And there I resolved, without the possibility of intrusion or distraction, to devote some hours of the night, in my comfortable sittingroom, to Mr. Jennings case, and so much of the morning as it might require. (There occurs here a careful note of Dr. Hesselius opinion upon the case and of the habits, dietary, and medicines which he prescribed. It is curioussome persons would say mystical. But on the whole I doubt whether it would sufficiently interest a reader of the kind I am likely to meet with, to warrant its being here reprinted. The whole letter was plainly written at the inn where he had hid himself for the occasion. The next letter is dated from his town lodgings.) I left town for the inn where I slept last night at halfpast nine, and did not arrive at my room in town until one oclock this afternoon. I found a letter in Mr. Jennings hand upon my table. It had not come by post, and, on inquiry, I learned that Mr. Jennings servant had brought it, and on learning that I was not to return until today, and that no one could tell him my address, he seemed very uncomfortable, and said that his orders from his master were that he was not to return without an answer. I opened the letter, and read Dear Dr. Hesselius.It is here. You had not been an hour gone when it returned. It is speaking. It knows all that has happened. It knows everythingit knows you, and is frantic and atrocious. It reviles. I send you this. It knows every word I have writtenI write. This I promised, and I therefore write, but I fear very confused, very incoherently. I am so interrupted, disturbed. Ever yours, sincerely yours, Robert Lynder Jennings. When did this come? I asked. About eleven last night the man was here again, and has been here three times today. The last time is about an hour since. Thus answered, and with the notes I had made upon his case in my pocket, I was in a few minutes driving towards Richmond, to see Mr. Jennings. I by no means, as you perceive, despaired of Mr. Jennings case. He had himself remembered and applied, though quite in a mistaken way, the principle which I lay down in my Metaphysical Medicine, and which governs all such cases. I was about to apply it in earnest. I was profoundly interested, and very anxious to see and examine him while the enemy was actually present. I drove up to the sombre house, and ran up the steps, and knocked. The door, in a little time, was opened by a tall woman in black silk. She looked ill, and as if she had been crying. She curtseyed, and heard my question, but she did not answer. She turned her face away, extending her hand towards two men who were coming downstairs; and thus having, as it were, tacitly made me over to them, she passed through a sidedoor hastily and shut it. The man who was nearest the hall, I at once accosted, but being now close to him, I was shocked to see that both his hands were covered with blood. I drew back a little, and the man passing downstairs merely said in a low tone, Heres the servant, sir. The servant had stopped on the stairs, confounded and dumb at seeing me. He was rubbing his hands in a handkerchief, and it was steeped in blood. Jones, what is it, what has happened? I asked, while a sickening suspicion overpowered me. The man asked me to come up to the lobby. I was beside him in a moment, and frowning and pallid, with contracted eyes, he told me the horror which I already half guessed. His master had made away with himself. I went upstairs with him to the roomwhat I saw there I wont tell you. He had cut his throat with his razor. It was a frightful gash. The two men had laid him on the bed and composed his limbs. It had happened as the immense pool of blood on the floor declared, at some distance between the bed and the window. There was carpet round his bed, and a carpet under his dressingtable, but none on the rest of the floor, for the man said he did not like a carpet on his bedroom. In this sombre, and now terrible room, one of the great elms that darkened the house was slowly moving the shadow of one of its great boughs upon this dreadful floor. I beckoned to the servant and we went downstairs together. I turned off the hall into an oldfashioned pannelled room, and there standing, I heard all the servant had to tell. It was not a great deal. I concluded, sir, from your words, and looks, sir, as you left last night, that you thought my master seriously ill. I thought it might be that you were afraid of a fit, or something. So I attended very close to your directions. He sat up late, till past three oclock. He was not writing or reading. He was talking a great deal to himself, but that was nothing unusual. At about that hour I assisted him to undress, and left him in his slippers and dressinggown. I went back softly in about half an hour. He was in his bed, quite undressed, and a pair of candles lighted on the table beside his bed. He was leaning on his elbow and looking out at the other side of the bed when I came in. I asked him if he wanted anything, and he said no. I dont know whether it was what you said to me, sir, or something a little unusual about him, but I was uneasy, uncommon uneasy about him last night. In another half hour, or it might be a little more, I went up again. I did not hear him talking as before. I opened the door a little. The candles were both out, which was not usual. I had a bedroom candle, and I let the light in, a little bit, looking softly round. I saw him sitting in that chair beside the dressingtable with his clothes on again. He turned round and looked at me. I thought it strange he should get up and dress, and put out the candles to sit in the dark, that way. But I only asked him again if I could do anything for him. He said, no, rather sharp, I thought. I asked if I might light the candles, and he said, Do as you like, Jones, So I lighted them, and I lingered about the room, and he said, Tell me truth, Jones; why did you come againyou did not hear anyone cursing? No, sir, I said, wondering what he could mean. No, said he, after me, of course, no; and I said to him, Wouldnt it be well, sir, you went to bed? Its just five oclock; and he said nothing but, Very likely; good night, Jones. So I went, sir, but in less than hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still fast, and he made no answer, so I did not like to disturb him, and thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him. I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while, supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven oclock I grew really uncomfortable about himfor at the latest he was never, that I could remember, later than halfpast ten. I got no answer. I knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and found him in the shocking way you saw. Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was very much moved. So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and horror. Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange bedfellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance. Conclusion A Word for Those Who Suffer My dear Van L., you have suffered from an affection similar to that which I have just described. You twice complained of a return of it. Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me rather adopt the more emphasised piety of a certain good old French surgeon of three hundred years ago I treated, and God cured you. Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact. I have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fiftyseven cases of this kind of vision, which I term indifferently sublimated, precocious, and interior. There is another class of affections which are truly termedthough commonly confounded with those which I describespectral illusions. These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in the head or a trifling dyspepsia. It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude of thought. Fiftyseven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance. There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the physician. With these simple conditions, I look upon the cure as absolutely certain. You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task, will effect a cure. You know my tract on The Cardinal Functions of the Brain. I there, by the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its mechanism, through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves, returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as I before remarked, light or electricity are so. By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate communication is thus more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eaudecologne. Few cases, however, can be treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness, and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis. I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens, and entirely shut up again when the overaction of the cerebral heart, and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon the body, by a simple process, that this result is producedand inevitably producedI have never yet failed. Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected itself upon that disease which was established. His case was in the distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side of the disease, his cure is certain. Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on transcriptions from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from Google Books.

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Mr. Justice Harbottle Prologue On this case, Doctor Hesselius has inscribed nothing more than the words, Harmans Report, and a simple reference to his own extraordinary essay on The Interior Sense, and the Conditions of the Opening Thereof. The reference is to Vol. I, Section 317, Note Za. The note to which reference is thus made, simply says There are two accounts of the remarkable case of the Honourable Mr. Justice Harbottle, one furnished to me by Mrs. Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells (June, 1805); the other at a much later date, by Anthony Harman, Esq. I much prefer the former; in the first place, because it is minute and detailed, and written, it seems to me, with more caution and knowledge; and in the next, because the letters from Doctor Hedstone, which are embodied in it, furnish matter of the highest value to a right apprehension of the nature of the case. It was one of the best declared cases of an opening of the interior sense, which I have met with. It was affected, too, by the phenomenon, which occurs so frequently as to indicate a law of these eccentric conditions; that is to say, it exhibited, what I may term, the contagious character of this sort of intrusion of the spiritworld upon the proper domain of matter. So soon as the spiritaction has established itself in the case of one patient, its developed energy begins to radiate, more or less effectually, upon others. The interior vision of the child was opened; as was, also, that of its mother, Mrs. Pyneweck; and both the interior vision and hearing of the scullerymaid, were opened on the same occasion. Afterappearances are the result of the law explained in Vol. II. Section 17 to 49. The common centre of association, simultaneously recalled, unites, or reunites, as the case may be, for a period measured, as we see, in Section 37. The maximum will extend to days, the minimum is little more than a second. We see the operation of this principle perfectly displayed, in certain cases of lunacy, of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania, of a peculiar and painful character, though unattended by incapacity of business. The memorandum of the case of Judge Harbottle, which was written by Mrs. Trimmer of Tunbridge Wells, which Doctor Hesselius thought the better of the two, I have been unable to discover among his papers. I found in his escritoire a note to the effect that he had lent the Report of Judge Harbottles case, written by Mrs. Trimmer to Doctor F. Heyne. To that learned and able gentleman accordingly I wrote, and received from him, in his reply, which was full of alarms and regrets on account of the uncertain safety of that valuable MS., a line written long since by Doctor Hesselius, which completely exonerated him, inasmuch as it acknowledged the safe return of the papers. The narrative of Mr. Harman, is, therefore, the only one available for this collection. The late Dr. Hesselius, in another passage of the note that I have cited, says, As to the facts (nonmedical) of the case, the narrative of Mr. Harman exactly tallies with that furnished by Mrs. Trimmer. The strictly scientific view of the case would scarcely interest the popular reader; and, possibly, for the purposes of this selection, I should, even had I both papers to choose between, have preferred that of Mr. Harman, which is given, in full, in the following pages. I The Judges House Thirty years ago, an elderly man, to whom I paid quarterly a small annuity charged on some property of mine, came on the quarterday to receive it. He was a dry, sad, quiet man, who had known better days, and had always maintained an unexceptionable character. No better authority could be imagined for a ghost story. He told me one, though with a manifest reluctance; he was drawn into the narration by his choosing to explain what I should not have remarked, that he had called two days earlier than that week after the strict day of payment, which he had usually allowed to elapse. His reason was a sudden determination to change his lodgings, and the consequent necessity of paying his rent a little before it was due. He lodged in a dark street in Westminster, in a spacious old house, very warm, being wainscoted from top to bottom, and furnished with no undue abundance of windows, and those fitted with thick sashes and small panes. This house was, as the bills upon the windows testified, offered to be sold or let. But no one seemed to care to look at it. A thin matron, in rusty black silk, very taciturn, with large, steady, alarmed eyes, that seemed to look in your face, to read what you might have seen in the dark rooms and passages through which you had passed, was in charge of it, with a solitary maidofallwork under her command. My poor friend had taken lodgings in this house, on account of their extraordinary cheapness. He had occupied them for nearly a year without the slightest disturbance, and was the only tenant, under rent, in the house. He had two rooms; a sittingroom, and a bedroom with a closet opening from it, in which he kept his books and papers locked up. He had gone to his bed, having also locked the outer door. Unable to sleep, he had lighted a candle, and after having read for a time, had laid the book beside him. He heard the old clock at the stairhead strike one; and very shortly after, to his alarm, he saw the closetdoor, which he thought he had locked, open stealthily, and a slight dark man, particularly sinister, and somewhere about fifty, dressed in mourning of a very antique fashion, such a suit as we see in Hogarth, entered the room on tiptoe. He was followed by an elder man, stout, and blotched with scurvy, and whose features, fixed as a corpses, were stamped with dreadful force with a character of sensuality and villany. This old man wore a floweredsilk dressinggown and ruffles, and he remarked a gold ring on his finger, and on his head a cap of velvet, such as, in the days of perukes, gentlemen wore in undress. This direful old man carried in his ringed and ruffled hand a coil of rope; and these two figures crossed the floor diagonally, passing the foot of his bed, from the closetdoor at the farther end of the room, at the left, near the window, to the door opening upon the lobby, close to the beds head, at his right. He did not attempt to describe his sensations as these figures passed so near him. He merely said, that so far from sleeping in that room again, no consideration the world could offer would induce him so much as to enter it again alone, even in the daylight. He found both doors, that of the closet, and that of the room opening upon the lobby, in the morning fast locked, as he had left them before going to bed. In answer to a question of mine, he said that neither appeared the least conscious of his presence. They did not seem to glide, but walked as living men do, but without any sound, and he felt a vibration on the floor as they crossed it. He so obviously suffered from speaking about the apparitions, that I asked him no more questions. There were in his description, however, certain coincidences so very singular, as to induce me, by that very post, to write to a friend much my senior, then living in a remote part of England, for the information which I knew he could give me. He had himself more than once pointed out that old house to my attention, and told me, though very briefly, the strange story which I now asked him to give me in greater detail. His answer satisfied me; and the following pages convey its substance. Your letter (he wrote) tells me you desire some particulars about the closing years of the life of Mr. Justice Harbottle, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. You refer, of course, to the extraordinary occurrences that made that period of his life long after a theme for winter tales and metaphysical speculation. I happen to know perhaps more than any other man living of those mysterious particulars. The old family mansion, when I revisited London, more than thirty years ago, I examined for the last time. During the years that have passed since then, I hear that improvement, with its preliminary demolitions, has been doing wonders for the quarter of Westminster in which it stood. If I were quite certain that the house had been taken down, I should have no difficulty about naming the street in which it stood. As what I have to tell, however, is not likely to improve its letting value, and as I should not care to get into trouble, I prefer being silent on that particular point. How old the house was, I cant tell. People said it was built by Roger Harbottle, a Turkey merchant, in the reign of King James I. I am not a good opinion upon such questions; but having been in it, though in its forlorn and deserted state, I can tell you in a general way what it was like. It was built of darkred brick, and the door and windows were faced with stone that had turned yellow by time. It receded some feet from the line of the other houses in the street; and it had a florid and fanciful rail of iron about the broad steps that invited your ascent to the halldoor, in which were fixed, under a file of lamps, among scrolls and twisted leaves, two immense extinguishers, like the conical caps of fairies, into which, in old times, the footmen used to thrust their flambeaux when their chairs or coaches had set down their great people, in the hall or at the steps, as the case might be. That hall is panelled up to the ceiling, and has a large fireplace. Two or three stately old rooms open from it at each side. The windows of these are tall, with many small panes. Passing through the arch at the back of the hall, you come upon the wide and heavy wellstaircase. There is a back staircase also. The mansion is large, and has not as much light, by any means, in proportion to its extent, as modern houses enjoy. When I saw it, it had long been untenanted, and had the gloomy reputation beside of a haunted house. Cobwebs floated from the ceilings or spanned the corners of the cornices, and dust lay thick over everything. The windows were stained with the dust and rain of fifty years, and darkness had thus grown darker. When I made it my first visit, it was in company with my father, when I was still a boy, in the year 1808. I was about twelve years old, and my imagination impressible, as it always is at that age. I looked about me with great awe. I was here in the very centre and scene of those occurrences which I had heard recounted at the fireside at home, with so delightful a horror. My father was an old bachelor of nearly sixty when he married. He had, when a child, seen Judge Harbottle on the bench in his robes and wig a dozen times at least before his death, which took place in 1748, and his appearance made a powerful and unpleasant impression, not only on his imagination, but upon his nerves. The Judge was at that time a man of some sixtyseven years. He had a great mulberrycoloured face, a big, carbuncled nose, fierce eyes, and a grim and brutal mouth. My father, who was young at the time, thought it the most formidable face he had ever seen; for there were evidences of intellectual power in the formation and lines of the forehead. His voice was loud and harsh, and gave effect to the sarcasm which was his habitual weapon on the bench. This old gentleman had the reputation of being about the wickedest man in England. Even on the bench he now and then showed his scorn of opinion. He had carried cases his own way, it was said, in spite of counsel, authorities, and even of juries, by a sort of cajolery, violence, and bamboozling, that somehow confused and overpowered resistance. He had never actually committed himself; he was too cunning to do that. He had the character of being, however, a dangerous and unscrupulous judge; but his character did not trouble him. The associates he chose for his hours of relaxation cared as little as he did about it. II Mr. Peters One night during the session of 1746 this old Judge went down in his chair to wait in one of the rooms of the House of Lords for the result of a division in which he and his order were interested. This over, he was about to return to his house close by, in his chair; but the night had become so soft and fine that he changed his mind, sent it home empty, and with two footmen, each with a flambeau, set out on foot in preference. Gout had made him rather a slow pedestrian. It took him some time to get through the two or three streets he had to pass before reaching his house. In one of those narrow streets of tall houses, perfectly silent at that hour, he overtook, slowly as he was walking, a very singularlooking old gentleman. He had a bottlegreen coat on, with a cape to it, and large stone buttons, a broadleafed lowcrowned hat, from under which a big powdered wig escaped; he stooped very much, and supported his bending knees with the aid of a crutchhandled cane, and so shuffled and tottered along painfully. I ask your pardon, sir, said this old man in a very quavering voice, as the burly Judge came up with him, and he extended his hand feebly towards his arm. Mr. Justice Harbottle saw that the man was by no means poorly dressed, and his manner that of a gentleman. The Judge stopped short, and said, in his harsh peremptory tones, Well, sir, how can I serve you? Can you direct me to Judge Harbottles house? I have some intelligence of the very last importance to communicate to him. Can you tell it before witnesses? asked the Judge. By no means; it must reach his ear only, quavered the old man earnestly. If that be so, sir, you have only to accompany me a few steps farther to reach my house, and obtain a private audience; for I am Judge Harbottle. With this invitation the infirm gentleman in the white wig complied very readily; and in another minute the stranger stood in what was then termed the front parlour of the Judges house, ttette with that shrewd and dangerous functionary. He had to sit down, being very much exhausted, and unable for a little time to speak; and then he had a fit of coughing, and after that a fit of gasping; and thus two or three minutes passed, during which the Judge dropped his roquelaure on an armchair, and threw his cockedhat over that. The venerable pedestrian in the white wig quickly recovered his voice. With closed doors they remained together for some time. There were guests waiting in the drawingrooms, and the sound of mens voices laughing, and then of a female voice singing to a harpsichord, were heard distinctly in the hall over the stairs; for old Judge Harbottle had arranged one of his dubious jollifications, such as might well make the hair of godly mens heads stand upright, for that night. This old gentleman in the powdered white wig, that rested on his stooped shoulders, must have had something to say that interested the Judge very much; for he would not have parted on easy terms with the ten minutes and upwards which that conference filched from the sort of revelry in which he most delighted, and in which he was the roaring king, and in some sort the tyrant also, of his company. The footman who showed the aged gentleman out observed that the Judges mulberrycoloured face, pimples and all, were bleached to a dingy yellow, and there was the abstraction of agitated thought in his manner, as he bid the stranger good night. The servant saw that the conversation had been of serious import, and that the Judge was frightened. Instead of stumping upstairs forthwith to his scandalous hilarities, his profane company, and his great china bowl of punchthe identical bowl from which a bygone Bishop of London, good easy man, had baptised this Judges grandfather, now clinking round the rim with silver ladles, and hung with scrolls of lemonpeelinstead, I say, of stumping and clambering up the great staircase to the cavern of his Circean enchantment, he stood with his big nose flattened against the windowpane, watching the progress of the feeble old man, who clung stiffly to the iron rail as he got down, step by step, to the pavement. The halldoor had hardly closed, when the old Judge was in the hall bawling hasty orders, with such stimulating expletives as old colonels under excitement sometimes indulge in nowadays, with a stamp or two of his big foot, and a waving of his clenched fist in the air. He commanded the footman to overtake the old gentleman in the white wig, to offer him his protection on his way home, and in no case to show his face again without having ascertained where he lodged, and who he was, and all about him. By , sirrah! if you fail me in this, you doff my livery tonight! Forth bounced the stalwart footman, with his heavy cane under his arm, and skipped down the steps, and looked up and down the street after the singular figure, so easy to recognise. What were his adventures I shall not tell you just now. The old man, in the conference to which he had been admitted in that stately panelled room, had just told the Judge a very strange story. He might be himself a conspirator; he might possibly be crazed; or possibly his whole story was straight and true. The aged gentleman in the bottlegreen coat, on finding himself alone with Mr. Justice Harbottle, had become agitated. He said, There is, perhaps you are not aware, my lord, a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail, charged with having forged a bill of exchange for a hundred and twenty pounds, and his name is Lewis Pyneweck, a grocer of that town. Is there? says the Judge, who knew well that there was. Yes, my lord, says the old man. Then you had better say nothing to affect this case. If you do, by Ill commit you; for Im to try it, says the Judge, with his terrible look and tone. I am not going to do anything of the kind, my lord; of him or his case I know nothing, and care nothing. But a fact has come to my knowledge which it behoves you to well consider. And what may that fact be? inquired the Judge; Im in haste, sir, and beg you will use dispatch. It has come to my knowledge, my lord, that a secret tribunal is in process of formation, the object of which is to take cognisance of the conduct of the judges; and first, of your conduct, my lord it is a wicked conspiracy. Who are of it? demands the Judge. I know not a single name as yet. I know but the fact, my lord; it is most certainly true. Ill have you before the Privy Council, sir, says the Judge. That is what I most desire; but not for a day or two, my lord. And why so? I have not as yet a single name, as I told your lordship; but I expect to have a list of the most forward men in it, and some other papers connected with the plot, in two or three days. You said one or two just now. About that time, my lord. Is this a Jacobite plot? In the main I think it is, my lord. Why, then, it is political. I have tried no State prisoners, nor am like to try any such. How, then, doth it concern me? From what I can gather, my lord, there are those in it who desire private revenges upon certain judges. What do they call their cabal? The High Court of Appeal, my lord. Who are you sir? What is your name? Hugh Peters, my lord. That should be a Whig name? It is, my lord. Where do you lodge, Mr. Peters? In Thamesstreet, my lord, over against the sign of the Three Kings. Three Kings? Take care one be not too many for you, Mr. Peters! How come you, an honest Whig, as you say, to be privy to a Jacobite plot? Answer me that. My lord, a person in whom I take an interest has been seduced to take a part in it; and being frightened at the unexpected wickedness of their plans, he is resolved to become an informer for the Crown. He resolves like a wise man, sir. What does he say of the persons? Who are in the plot? Doth he know them? Only two, my lord; but he will be introduced to the club in a few days, and he will then have a list, and more exact information of their plans, and above all of their oaths, and their hours and places of meeting, with which he wishes to be acquainted before they can have any suspicions of his intentions. And being so informed, to whom, think you, my lord, had he best go then? To the kings attorneygeneral straight. But you say this concerns me, sir, in particular? How about this prisoner, Lewis Pyneweck? Is he one of them? I cant tell, my lord; but for some reason, it is thought your lordship will be well advised if you try him not. For if you do, it is feared twill shorten your days. So far as I can learn, Mr. Peters, this business smells pretty strong of blood and treason. The kings attorneygeneral will know how to deal with it. When shall I see you again, sir? If you give me leave, my lord, either before your lordships court sits, or after it rises, tomorrow. I should like to come and tell your lordship what has passed. Do so, Mr. Peters, at nine oclock tomorrow morning. And see you play me no trick, sir, in this matter; if you do, by , sir, Ill lay you by the heels! You need fear no trick from me, my lord; had I not wished to serve you, and acquit my own conscience, I never would have come all this way to talk with your lordship. Im willing to believe you, Mr. Peters; Im willing to believe you, sir. And upon this they parted. He has either painted his face, or he is consumedly sick, thought the old Judge. The light had shone more effectually upon his features as he turned to leave the room with a low bow, and they looked, he fancied, unnaturally chalky. D him! said the judge ungraciously, as he began to scale the stairs he has halfspoiled my supper. But if he had, no one but the Judge himself perceived it, and the evidence was all, as anyone might perceive, the other way. III Lewis Pyneweck In the meantime, the footman dispatched in pursuit of Mr. Peters speedily overtook that feeble gentleman. The old man stopped when he heard the sound of pursuing steps, but any alarms that may have crossed his mind seemed to disappear on his recognising the livery. He very gratefully accepted the proferred assistance, and placed his tremulous arm within the servants for support. They had not gone far, however, when the old man stopped suddenly, saying, Dear me! as I live, I have dropped it. You heard it fall. My eyes, I fear, wont serve me, and Im unable to stoop low enough; but if you will look, you shall have half the find. It is a guinea; I carried it in my glove. The street was silent and deserted. The footman had hardly descended to what he termed his hunkers, and begun to search the pavement about the spot which the old man indicated, when Mr. Peters, who seemed very much exhausted, and breathed with difficulty, struck him a violent blow, from above, over the back of the head with a heavy instrument, and then another; and leaving him bleeding and senseless in the gutter, ran like a lamplighter down a lane to the right, and was gone. When, an hour later, the watchman brought the man in livery home, still stupid and covered with blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the carts tail, and the hangmans lash. Notwithstanding this demonstration, the Judge was pleased. It was a disguised affidavit man, or footpad, no doubt, who had been employed to frighten him. The trick had fallen through. A court of appeal, such as the false Hugh Peters had indicated, with assassination for its sanction, would be an uncomfortable institution for a hanging judge like the Honourable Justice Harbottle. That sarcastic and ferocious administrator of the criminal code of England, at that time a rather pharisaical, bloody, and heinous system of justice, had reasons of his own for choosing to try that very Lewis Pyneweck, on whose behalf this audacious trick was devised. Try him he would. No man living should take that morsel out of his mouth. Of Lewis Pyneweck of course, so far as the outer world could see, he knew nothing. He would try him after his fashion, without fear, favour, or affection. But did he not remember a certain thin man, dressed in mourning, in whose house, in Shrewsbury, the Judges lodgings used to be, until a scandal of his illtreating his wife came suddenly to light? A grocer with a demure look, a soft step, and a lean face as dark as mahogany, with a nose sharp and long, standing ever so little awry, and a pair of dark steady brown eyes under thinlytraced black browsa man whose thin lips wore always a faint unpleasant smile. Had not that scoundrel an account to settle with the Judge? had he not been troublesome lately? and was not his name Lewis Pyneweck, some time grocer in Shrewsbury, and now prisoner in the jail of that town? The reader may take it, if he pleases, as a sign that Judge Harbottle was a good Christian, that he suffered nothing ever from remorse. That was undoubtedly true. He had nevertheless done this grocer, forger, what you will, some five or six years before, a grievous wrong; but it was not that, but a possible scandal, and possible complications, that troubled the learned Judge now. Did he not, as a lawyer, know, that to bring a man from his shop to the dock, the chances must be at least ninetynine out of a hundred that he is guilty. A weak man like his learned brother Withershins was not a judge to keep the high roads safe, and make crime tremble. Old Judge Harbottle was the man to make the evildisposed quiver, and to refresh the world with showers of wicked blood, and thus save the innocent, to the refrain of the ancient saw he loved to quote Foolish pity Ruins a city. In hanging that fellow he could not be wrong. The eye of a man accustomed to look upon the dock could not fail to read villain written sharp and clear in his plotting face. Of course he would try him, and no one else should. A saucylooking woman, still handsome, in a mobcap gay with blue ribbons, in a saque of flowered silk, with lace and rings on, much too fine for the Judges housekeeper, which nevertheless she was, peeped into his study next morning, and, seeing the Judge alone, stepped in. Heres another letter from him, come by the post this morning. Cant you do nothing for him? she said wheedlingly, with her arm over his neck, and her delicate finger and thumb fiddling with the lobe of his purple ear. Ill try, said Judge Harbottle, not raising his eyes from the paper he was reading. I knew youd do what I asked you, she said. The Judge clapt his gouty claw over his heart, and made her an ironical bow. What, she asked, will you do? Hang him, said the Judge with a chuckle. You dont mean to; no, you dont, my little man, said she, surveying herself in a mirror on the wall. Im dd but I think youre falling in love with your husband at last! said Judge Harbottle. Im blest but I think youre growing jealous of him, replied the lady with a laugh. But no; he was always a bad one to me; Ive done with him long ago. And he with you, by George! When he took your fortune and your spoons and your earrings, he had all he wanted of you. He drove you from his house; and when he discovered you had made yourself comfortable, and found a good situation, hed have taken your guineas and your silver and your earrings over again, and then allowed you halfadozen years more to make a new harvest for his mill. You dont wish him good; if you say you do, you lie. She laughed a wicked saucy laugh, and gave the terrible Rhadamanthus a playful tap on the chops. He wants me to send him money to fee a counsellor, she said, while her eyes wandered over the pictures on the wall, and back again to the lookingglass; and certainly she did not look as if his jeopardy troubled her very much. Confound his impudence, the scoundrel! thundered the old Judge, throwing himself back in his chair, as he used to do in furore on the bench, and the lines of his mouth looked brutal, and his eyes ready to leap from their sockets. If you answer his letter from my house to please yourself, youll write your next from somebody elses to please me. You understand, my pretty witch, Ill not be pestered. Come, no pouting; whimpering wont do. You dont care a brass farthing for the villain, body or soul. You came here but to make a row. You are one of Mother Careys chickens; and where you come, the storm is up. Get you gone, baggage! get you gone! he repeated with a stamp; for a knock at the halldoor made her instantaneous disappearance indispensable. I need hardly say that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again. The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the very first puff, his whitewigged visitor and the conference in the dark front parlour was often in his memory. His shrewd eye told him that allowing for change of tints and such disguises as the playhouse affords every night, the features of this false old man, who had turned out too hard for his tall footman, were identical with those of Lewis Pyneweck. Judge Harbottle made his registrar call upon the crown solicitor, and tell him that there was a man in town who bore a wonderful resemblance to a prisoner in Shrewsbury jail named Lewis Pyneweck, and to make inquiry through the post forthwith whether anyone was personating Pyneweck in prison, and whether he had thus or otherwise made his escape. The prisoner was safe, however, and no question as to his identity. IV Interruption in Court In due time Judge Harbottle went circuit; and in due time the judges were in Shrewsbury. News travelled slowly in those days, and newspapers, like the wagons and stagecoaches, took matters easily. Mrs. Pyneweck, in the Judges house, with a diminished householdthe greater part of the Judges servants having gone with him, for he had given up riding circuit, and travelled in his coach in statekept house rather solitarily at home. In spite of quarrels, in spite of mutual injuriessome of them, inflicted by herself, enormousin spite of a married life of spited bickeringsa life in which there seemed no love or liking or forbearance, for yearsnow that Pyneweck stood in near danger of death, something like remorse came suddenly upon her. She knew that in Shrewsbury were transacting the scenes which were to determine his fate. She knew she did not love him; but she could not have supposed, even a fortnight before, that the hour of suspense could have affected her so powerfully. She knew the day on which the trial was expected to take place. She could not get it out of her head for a minute; she felt faint as it drew towards evening. Two or three days passed; and then she knew that the trial must be over by this time. There were floods between London and Shrewsbury, and news was long delayed. She wished the floods would last forever. It was dreadful waiting to hear; dreadful to know that the event was over, and that she could not hear till selfwilled rivers subsided; dreadful to know that they must subside and the news come at last. She had some vague trust in the Judges goodnature, and much in the resources of chance and accident.

She had contrived to send the money he wanted. He would not be without legal advice and energetic and skilled support. At last the news did comea long arrear all in a gush a letter from a female friend in Shrewsbury; a return of the sentences, sent up for the Judge; and most important, because most easily got at, being told with great aplomb and brevity, the longdeferred intelligence of the Shrewsbury Assizes in the Morning Advertiser. Like an impatient reader of a novel, who reads the last page first, she read with dizzy eyes the list of the executions. Two were respited, seven were hanged; and in that capital catalogue was this line Lewis Pyneweckforgery. She had to read it halfadozen times over before she was sure she understood it. Here was the paragraph Sentence, Death7. Executed accordingly, on Friday the 13th instant, to wit Thomas Primer, alias Duckhighway robbery. Flora Guystealing to the value of 11s. 6d. Arthur Poundenburglary. Matilda Mummeryriot. Lewis Pyneweckforgery, bill of exchange. And when she reached this, she read it over and over, feeling very cold and sick. This buxom housekeeper was known in the house as Mrs. CarwellCarwell being her maiden name, which she had resumed. No one in the house except its master knew her history. Her introduction had been managed craftily. No one suspected that it had been concerted between her and the old reprobate in scarlet and ermine. Flora Carwell ran up the stairs now, and snatched her little girl, hardly seven years of age, whom she met on the lobby, hurriedly up in her arms, and carried her into her bedroom, without well knowing what she was doing, and sat down, placing the child before her. She was not able to speak. She held the child before her, and looked in the little girls wondering face, and burst into tears of horror. She thought, the Judge could have saved him. I daresay he could. For a time she was furious with him; and hugged and kissed her bewildered little girl, who returned her gaze with large round eyes. That little girl had lost her father, and knew nothing of the matter. She had been always told that her father was dead long ago. A woman, coarse, uneducated, vain, and violent, does not reason, or even feel, very distinctly; but in these tears of consternation were mingling a selfupbraiding. She felt afraid of that little child. But Mrs. Carwell was a person who lived not upon sentiment, but upon beef and pudding; she consoled herself with punch; she did not trouble herself long even with resentments; she was a gross and material person, and could not mourn over the irrevocable for more than a limited number of hours, even if she would. Judge Harbottle was soon in London again. Except the gout, this savage old epicurean never knew a days sickness. He laughed and coaxed and bullied away the young womans faint upbraidings, and in a little time Lewis Pyneweck troubled her no more; and the Judge secretly chuckled over the perfectly fair removal of a bore, who might have grown little by little into something very like a tyrant. It was the lot of the Judge whose adventures I am now recounting to try criminal cases at the Old Bailey shortly after his return. He had commenced his charge to the jury in a case of forgery, and was, after his wont, thundering dead against the prisoner, with many a hard aggravation and cynical gibe, when suddenly all died away in silence, and, instead of looking at the jury, the eloquent Judge was gaping at some person in the body of the court. Among the persons of small importance who stand and listen at the sides was one tall enough to show with a little prominence; a slight mean figure, dressed in seedy black, lean and dark of visage. He had just handed a letter to the crier, before he caught the Judges eye. That Judge descried, to his amazement, the features of Lewis Pyneweck. He has the usual faint thinlipped smile; and with his blue chin raised in air, and as it seemed quite unconscious of the distinguished notice he has attracted, he was stretching his low cravat with his crooked fingers, while he slowly turned his head from side to sidea process which enabled the Judge to see distinctly a stripe of swollen blue round his neck, which indicated, he thought, the grip of the rope. This man, with a few others, had got a footing on a step, from which he could better see the court. He now stepped down, and the Judge lost sight of him. His lordship signed energetically with his hand in the direction in which this man had vanished. He turned to the tipstaff. His first effort to speak ended in a gasp. He cleared his throat, and told the astounded official to arrest that man who had interrupted the court. Hes but this moment gone down there. Bring him in custody before me, within ten minutes time, or Ill strip your gown from your shoulders and fine the sheriff! he thundered, while his eyes flashed round the court in search of the functionary. Attorneys, counsellors, idle spectators, gazed in the direction in which Mr. Justice Harbottle had shaken his gnarled old hand. They compared notes. Not one had seen anyone making a disturbance. They asked one another if the Judge was losing his head. Nothing came of the search. His lordship concluded his charge a great deal more tamely; and when the jury retired, he stared round the court with a wandering mind, and looked as if he would not have given sixpence to see the prisoner hanged. V Caleb Searcher The Judge had received the letter; had he known from whom it came, he would no doubt have read it instantaneously. As it was he simply read the direction To the Honourable The Lord Justice Elijah Harbottle, One of his Majestys Justices of the Honourable Court of Common Pleas. It remained forgotten in his pocket till he reached home. When he pulled out that and others from the capacious pocket of his coat, it had its turn, as he sat in his library in his thick silk dressinggown; and then he found its contents to be a closelywritten letter, in a clerks hand, and an enclosure in secretary hand, as I believe the angular scrivinary of lawwritings in those days was termed, engrossed on a bit of parchment about the size of this page. The letter said Mr. Justice HarbottleMy Lord, I am ordered by the High Court of Appeal to acquaint your lordship, in order to your better preparing yourself for your trial, that a true bill hath been sent down, and the indictment lieth against your lordship for the murder of one Lewis Pyneweck of Shrewsbury, citizen, wrongfully executed for the forgery of a bill of exchange, on the th day of last, by reason of the wilful perversion of the evidence, and the undue pressure put upon the jury, together with the illegal admission of evidence by your lordship, well knowing the same to be illegal, by all which the promoter of the prosecution of the said indictment, before the High Court of Appeal, hath lost his life. And the trial of the said indictment, I am farther ordered to acquaint your lordship is fixed for the 10th day of next ensuing, by the right honourable the Lord ChiefJustice Twofold, of the court aforesaid, to wit, the High Court of Appeal, on which day it will most certainly take place. And I am farther to acquaint your lordship, to prevent any surprise or miscarriage, that your case stands first for the said day, and that the said High Court of Appeal sits day and night, and never rises; and herewith, by order of the said court, I furnish your lordship with a copy (extract) of the record in this case, except of the indictment, whereof, notwithstanding, the substance and effect is supplied to your lordship in this Notice. And farther I am to inform you, that in case the jury then to try your lordship should find you guilty, the right honourable the Lord ChiefJustice will, in passing sentence of death upon you, fix the day of execution for the 10th day of , being one calendar month from the day of your trial. It was signed by Caleb Searcher, Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the Kingdom of Life and Death. The Judge glanced through the parchment. Sblood! Do they think a man like me is to be bamboozled by their buffoonery? The Judges coarse features were wrung into one of his sneers; but he was pale. Possibly, after all, there was a conspiracy on foot. It was queer. Did they mean to pistol him in his carriage? or did they only aim at frightening him? Judge Harbottle had more than enough of animal courage. He was not afraid of highwaymen, and he had fought more than his share of duels, being a foulmouthed advocate while he held briefs at the bar. No one questioned his fighting qualities. But with respect to this particular case of Pyneweck, he lived in a house of glass. Was there not his pretty, darkeyed, overdressed housekeeper, Mrs. Flora Carwell? Very easy for people who knew Shrewsbury to identify Mrs. Pyneweck, if once put upon the scent; and had he not stormed and worked hard in that case? Had he not made it hard sailing for the prisoner? Did he not know very well what the bar thought of it? It would be the worst scandal that ever blasted judge. So much there was intimidating in the matter, but nothing more. The Judge was a little bit gloomy for a day or two after, and more testy with everyone than usual. He locked up the papers; and about a week after he asked his housekeeper, one day, in the library Had your husband never a brother? Mrs. Carwell squalled on this sudden introduction of the funereal topic, and cried exemplary piggins full, as the Judge used pleasantly to say. But he was in no mood for trifling now, and he said sternly Come, madam! this wearies me. Do it another time; and give me an answer to my question. So she did. Pyneweck had no brother living. He once had one; but he died in Jamaica. How do you know he is dead? asked the Judge. Because he told me so. Not the dead man? Pyneweck told me so. Is that all? sneered the Judge. He pondered this matter; and time went on. The Judge was growing a little morose, and less enjoying. The subject struck nearer to his thoughts than he fancied it could have done. But so it is with most undivulged vexations, and there was no one to whom he could tell this one. It was now the ninth; and Mr. Justice Harbottle was glad. He knew nothing would come of it. Still it bothered him; and tomorrow would see it well over. [What of the paper I have cited? No one saw it during his life; no one, after his death. He spoke of it to Dr. Hedstone; and what purported to be a copy, in the old Judges handwriting, was found. The original was nowhere. Was it a copy of an illusion, incident to brain disease? Such is my belief.] VI Arrested Judge Harbottle went this night to the play at Drury Lane. He was one of those old fellows who care nothing for late hours, and occasional knocking about in pursuit of pleasure. He had appointed with two cronies of Lincolns Inn to come home in his coach with him to sup after the play. They were not in his box, but were to meet him near the entrance, and to get into his carriage there; and Mr. Justice Harbottle, who hated waiting, was looking a little impatiently from the window. The Judge yawned. He told the footman to watch for Counsellor Thavies and Counsellor Beller, who were coming; and, with another yawn, he laid his cockedhat on his knees, closed his eyes, leaned back in his corner, wrapped his mantle closer about him, and began to think of pretty Mrs. Abington. And being a man who could sleep like a sailor, at a moments notice, he was thinking of taking a nap. Those fellows had no business to keep a judge waiting. He heard their voices now. Those rakehell counsellors were laughing, and bantering, and sparring after their wont. The carriage swayed and jerked, as one got in, and then again as the other followed. The door clapped, and the coach was now jogging and rumbling over the pavement. The Judge was a little bit sulky. He did not care to sit up and open his eyes. Let them suppose he was asleep. He heard them laugh with more malice than goodhumour, he thought, as they observed it. He would give them a dd hard knock or two when they got to his door, and till then he would counterfeit his nap. The clocks were chiming twelve. Beller and Thavies were silent as tombstones. They were generally loquacious and merry rascals. The Judge suddenly felt himself roughly seized and thrust from his corner into the middle of the seat, and opening his eyes, instantly he found himself between his two companions. Before he could blurt out the oath that was at his lips, he saw that they were two strangersevillooking fellows, each with a pistol in his hand, and dressed like Bow Street officers. The Judge clutched at the checkstring. The coach pulled up. He stared about him. They were not among houses; but through the windows, under a broad moonlight, he saw a black moor stretching lifelessly from right to left, with rotting trees, pointing fantastic branches in the air, standing here and there in groups, as if they held up their arms and twigs like fingers, in horrible glee at the Judges coming. A footman came to the window. He knew his long face and sunken eyes. He knew it was Dingly Chuff, fifteen years ago a footman in his service, whom he had turned off at a moments notice, in a burst of jealousy, and indicted for a missing spoon. The man had died in prison of the jailfever. The Judge drew back in utter amazement. His armed companions signed mutely; and they were again gliding over this unknown moor. The bloated and gouty old man, in his horror, considered the question of resistance. But his athletic days were long over. This moor was a desert. There was no help to be had. He was in the hands of strange servants, even if his recognition turned out to be a delusion, and they were under the command of his captors. There was nothing for it but submission, for the present. Suddenly the coach was brought nearly to a standstill, so that the prisoner saw an ominous sight from the window. It was a gigantic gallows beside the road; it stood threesided, and from each of its three broad beams at top depended in chains some eight or ten bodies, from several of which the cereclothes had dropped away, leaving the skeletons swinging lightly by their chains. A tall ladder reached to the summit of the structure, and on the peat beneath lay bones. On top of the dark transverse beam facing the road, from which, as from the other two completing the triangle of death, dangled a row of these unfortunates in chains, a hangman, with a pipe in his mouth, much as we see him in the famous print of the Idle Apprentice, though here his perch was ever so much higher, was reclining at his ease and listlessly shying bones, from a little heap at his elbow, at the skeletons that hung round, bringing down now a rib or two, now a hand, now half a leg. A longsighted man could have discerned that he was a dark fellow, lean; and from continually looking down on the earth from the elevation over which, in another sense, he always hung, his nose, his lips, his chin were pendulous and loose, and drawn down into a monstrous grotesque. This fellow took his pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up, and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering over a gibbet, A rope for Judge Harbottle! The coach was now driving on at its old swift pace. So high a gallows as that, the Judge had never, even in his most hilarious moments, dreamed of. He thought he must be raving. And the dead footman! He shook his ears and strained his eyelids; but if he was dreaming, he was unable to awake himself. There was no good in threatening these scoundrels. A brutum fulmen might bring a real one on his head. Any submission to get out of their hands; and then heaven and earth he would move to unearth and hunt them down. Suddenly they drove round a corner of a vast white building, and under a portecochre. VII Chief Justice Twofold The Judge found himself in a corridor lighted with dingy oillamps, the walls of bare stone; it looked like a passage in a prison. His guards placed him in the hands of other people. Here and there he saw bony and gigantic soldiers passing to and fro, with muskets over their shoulders. They looked straight before them, grinding their teeth, in bleak fury, with no noise but the clank of their shoes. He saw these by glimpses, round corners, and at the ends of passages, but he did not actually pass them by. And now, passing under a narrow doorway, he found himself in the dock, confronting a judge in his scarlet robes, in a large courthouse. There was nothing to elevate this temple of Themis above its vulgar kind elsewhere. Dingy enough it looked, in spite of candles lighted in decent abundance. A case had just closed, and the last jurors back was seen escaping through the door in the wall of the jurybox. There were some dozen barristers, some fiddling with pen and ink, others buried in briefs, some beckoning, with the plumes of their pens, to their attorneys, of whom there were no lack; there were clerks toing and froing, and the officers of the court, and the registrar, who was handing up a paper to the judge; and the tipstaff, who was presenting a note at the end of his wand to a kings counsel over the heads of the crowd between. If this was the High Court of Appeal, which never rose day or night, it might account for the pale and jaded aspect of everybody in it. An air of indescribable gloom hung upon the pallid features of all the people here; no one ever smiled; all looked more or less secretly suffering. The King against Elijah Harbottle! shouted the officer. Is the appellant Lewis Pyneweck in court? asked ChiefJustice Twofold, in a voice of thunder, that shook the woodwork of the Court, and boomed down the corridors. Up stood Pyneweck from his place at the table. Arraign the prisoner! roared the Chief; and Judge Harbottle felt the pannels of the dock round him, and the floor, and the rails quiver in the vibrations of that tremendous voice. The prisoner, in limine, objected to this pretended court, as being a sham, and nonexistent in point of law; and then, that, even if it were a court constituted by law, (the Judge was growing dazed), it had not and could not have any jurisdiction to try him for his conduct on the bench. Whereupon the chiefjustice laughed suddenly, and everyone in court, turning round upon the prisoner, laughed also, till the laugh grew and roared all round like a deafening acclamation; he saw nothing but glittering eyes and teeth, a universal stare and grin; but though all the voices laughed, not a single face of all those that concentrated their gaze upon him looked like a laughing face. The mirth subsided as suddenly as it began. The indictment was read. Judge Harbottle actually pleaded! He pleaded Not guilty. A jury were sworn. The trial proceeded. Judge Harbottle was bewildered. This could not be real. He must be either mad, or going mad, he thought. One thing could not fail to strike even him. This ChiefJustice Twofold, who was knocking him about at every turn with sneer and gibe, and roaring him down with his tremendous voice, was a dilated effigy of himself; an image of Mr. Justice Harbottle, at least double his size, and with all his fierce colouring, and his ferocity of eye and visage, enhanced awfully. Nothing the prisoner could argue, cite, or state was permitted to retard for a moment the march of the case towards its catastrophe. The chiefjustice seemed to feel his power over the jury, and to exult and riot in the display of it. He glared at them, he nodded to them; he seemed to have established an understanding with them. The lights were faint in that part of the court. The jurors were mere shadows, sitting in rows; the prisoner could see a dozen pair of white eyes shining, coldly, out of the darkness; and whenever the judge in his charge, which was contemptuously brief, nodded and grinned and gibed, the prisoner could see, in the obscurity, by the dip of all these rows of eyes together, that the jury nodded in acquiescence. And now the charge was over, the huge chiefjustice leaned back panting and gloating on the prisoner. Everyone in the court turned about, and gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jurybox where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the general stillness like a prolonged hissss! was heard; and then, in answer to the challenge of the officer, How say you, gentlemen of the jury, guilty or not guilty? came in a melancholy voice the finding, Guilty. The place seemed to the eyes of the prisoner to grow gradually darker and darker, till he could discern nothing distinctly but the lumen of the eyes that were turned upon him from every bench and side and corner and gallery of the building. The prisoner doubtless thought that he had quite enough to say, and conclusive, why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him; but the lord chiefjustice puffed it contemptuously away, like so much smoke, and proceeded to pass sentence of death upon the prisoner, having named the 10th of the ensuing month for his execution. Before he had recovered the stun of this ominous farce, in obedience to the mandate, Remove the prisoner, he was led from the dock. The lamps seemed all to have gone out, and there were stoves and charcoalfires here and there, that threw a faint crimson light on the walls of the corridors through which he passed. The stones that composed them looked now enormous, cracked and unhewn. He came into a vaulted smithy, where two men, naked to the waist, with heads like bulls, round shoulders, and the arms of giants, were welding redhot chains together with hammers that pelted like thunderbolts. They looked on the prisoner with fierce red eyes, and rested on their hammers for a minute; and said the elder to his companion, Take out Elijah Harbottles gyves; and with a pincers he plucked the end which lay dazzling in the fire from the furnace. One end locks, said he, taking the cool end of the iron in one hand, while with the grip of a vice he seized the leg of the Judge, and locked the ring round his ankle. The other, he said with a grin, is welded. The iron band that was to form the ring for the other leg lay still redhot upon the stone floor, with brilliant sparks sporting up and down its surface. His companion in his gigantic hands seized the old Judges other leg, and pressed his foot immovably to the stone floor; while his senior in a twinkling, with a masterly application of pincers and hammer, sped the glowing bar round his ankle so tight that the skin and sinews smoked and bubbled again, and old Judge Harbottle uttered a yell that seemed to chill the very stones, and make the iron chains quiver on the wall. Chains, vaults, smiths, and smithy all vanished in a moment; but the pain continued. Mr. Justice Harbottle was suffering torture all round the ankle on which the infernal smiths had just been operating. His friends Thavies and Beller were startled by the Judges roar in the midst of their elegant trifling about a marriage lamode case which was going on. The Judge was in panic as well as pain. The streetlamps and the light of his own halldoor restored him. Im very bad, growled he between his set teeth; my foots blazing. Who was he that hurt my foot? Tis the gouttis the gout! he said, awaking completely. How many hours have we been coming from the playhouse? Sblood, what has happened on the way? Ive slept half the night? There had been no hitch or delay, and they had driven home at a good pace. The Judge, however, was in gout; he was feverish too; and the attack, though very short, was sharp; and when, in about a fortnight, it subsided, his ferocious joviality did not return. He could not get this dream, as he chose to call it, out of his head. VIII Somebody Has Got Into the House People remarked that the Judge was in the vapours. His doctor said he should go for a fortnight to Buxton. Whenever the Judge fell into a brown study, he was always conning over the terms of the sentence pronounced upon him in his visionin one calendar month from the date of this day; and then the usual form, and you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead, etc. That will be the 10thIm not much in the way of being hanged. I know what stuff dreams are, and I laugh at them; but this is continually in my thoughts, as if it forecast misfortune of some sort. I wish the day my dream gave me were passed and over. I wish I were well purged of my gout. I wish I were as I used to be. Tis nothing but vapours, nothing but a maggot. The copy of the parchment and letter which had announced his trial with many a snort and sneer he would read over and over again, and the scenery and people of his dream would rise about him in places the most unlikely, and steal him in a moment from all that surrounded him into a world of shadows. The Judge had lost his iron energy and banter. He was growing taciturn and morose. The Bar remarked the change, as well they might. His friends thought him ill. The doctor said he was troubled with hypochondria, and that his gout was still lurking in his system, and ordered him to that ancient haunt of crutches and chalkstones, Buxton. The Judges spirits were very low; he was frightened about himself; and he described to his housekeeper, having sent for her to his study to drink a dish of tea, his strange dream in his drive home from Drury Lane playhouse. He was sinking into the state of nervous dejection in which men lose their faith in orthodox advice, and in despair consult quacks, astrologers, and nursery storytellers. Could such a dream mean that he was to have a fit, and so die on the 10th? She did not think so. On the contrary, it was certain some good luck must happen on that day. The Judge kindled; and for the first time for many days, he looked for a minute or two like himself, and he tapped her on the cheek with the hand that was not in flannel. Odsbud! odsheart! you dear rogue! I had forgot. There is young Tomyellow Tom, my nephew, you know, lies sick at Harrogate; why shouldnt he go that day as well as another, and if he does, I get an estate by it? Why, lookee, I asked Doctor Hedstone yesterday if I was like to take a fit any time, and he laughed, and swore I was the last man in town to go off that way. The Judge sent most of his servants down to Buxton to make his lodgings and all things comfortable for him. He was to follow in a day or two. It was now the 9th; and the next day well over, he might laugh at his visions and auguries. On the evening of the 9th, Doctor Hedstones footman knocked at the Judges door. The doctor ran up the dusky stairs to the drawingroom. It was a March evening, near the hour of sunset, with an east wind whistling sharply through the chimneystacks. A wood fire blazed cheerily on the hearth. And Judge Harbottle, in what was then called a brigadierwig, with his red roquelaure on, helped the glowing effect of the darkened chamber, which looked red all over like a room on fire. The Judge had his feet on a stool, and his huge grim purple face confronted the fire and seemed to pant and swell, as the blaze alternately spread upward and collapsed. He had fallen again among his blue devils, and was thinking of retiring from the Bench, and of fifty other gloomy things. But the doctor, who was an energetic son of sculapius, would listen to no croaking, told the Judge he was full of gout, and in his present condition no judge even of his own case, but promised him leave to pronounce on all those melancholy questions, a fortnight later. In the meantime the Judge must be very careful. He was overcharged with gout, and he must not provoke an attack, till the waters of Buxton should do that office for him, in their own salutary way. The doctor did not think him perhaps quite so well as he pretended, for he told him he wanted rest, and would be better if he went forthwith to his bed. Mr. Gerningham, his valet, assisted him, and gave him his drops; and the Judge told him to wait in his bedroom till he should go to sleep. Three persons that night had specially odd stories to tell. The housekeeper had got rid of the trouble of amusing her little girl at this anxious time by giving her leave to run about the sittingrooms and look at the pictures and china, on the usual condition of touching nothing. It was not until the last gleam of sunset had for some time faded, and the twilight had so deepened that she could no longer discern the colours on the china figures on the chimneypiece or in the cabinets, that the child returned to the housekeepers room to find her mother. To her she related, after some prattle about the china, and the pictures, and the Judges two grand wigs in the dressingroom off the library, an adventure of an extraordinary kind. In the hall was placed, as was customary in those times, the sedanchair which the master of the house occasionally used, covered with stamped leather, and studded with gilt nails, and with its red silk blinds down. In this case, the doors of this oldfashioned conveyance were locked, the windows up, and, as I said, the blinds down, but not so closely that the curious child could not peep underneath one of them, and see into the interior. A parting beam from the setting sun, admitted through the window of a back room, shot obliquely through the open door, and lighting on the chair, shone with a dull transparency through the crimson blind. To her surprise, the child saw in the shadow a thin man dressed in black seated in it; he had sharp dark features; his nose, she fancied, a little awry, and his brown eyes were looking straight before him; his hand was on his thigh, and he stirred no more than the waxen figure she had seen at Southwark fair. A child is so often lectured for asking questions and on the propriety of silence, and the superior wisdom of its elders, that it accepts most things at last in good faith; and the little girl acquiesced respectfully in the occupation of the chair by this mahoganyfaced person as being all right and proper. It was not until she asked her mother who this man was, and observed her scared face as she questioned her more minutely upon the appearance of the stranger, that she began to understand that she had seen something unaccountable. Mrs. Carwell took the key of the chair from its nail over the footmans shelf, and led the child by the hand up to the hall, having a lighted candle in her other hand. She stopped at a distance from the chair, and placed the candlestick in the childs hand. Peep in, Margery, again, and try if theres anything there, she whispered; hold the candle near the blind so as to throw its light through the curtain. The child peeped, this time with a very solemn face, and intimated at once that he was gone. Look again, and be sure, urged her mother. The little girl was quite certain; and Mrs. Carwell, with her mobcap of lace and cherrycoloured ribbons, and her dark brown hair, not yet powdered, over a very pale face, unlocked the door, looked in, and beheld emptiness. All a mistake, child, you see. There, maam! see there! Hes gone round the corner, said the child. Where? said Mrs. Carwell, stepping backward a step. Into that room. Tut, child! twas the shadow, cried Mrs. Carwell angrily, because she was frightened. I moved the candle. But she clutched one of the poles of the chair, which leant against the wall in the corner, and pounded the floor furiously with one end of it, being afraid to pass the open door the child had pointed to. The cook and two kitchenmaids came running upstairs, not knowing what to make of this unwonted alarm. They all searched the room; but it was still and empty, and no sign of anyones having been there. Some people may suppose that the direction given to her thoughts by this odd little incident will account for a very strange illusion which Mrs.

Carwell herself experienced about two hours later. IX The Judge Leaves His House Mrs. Flora Carwell was going up the great staircase with a posset for the Judge in a china bowl, on a little silver tray. Across the top of the wellstaircase there runs a massive oak rail; and, raising her eyes accidentally, she saw an extremely oddlooking stranger, slim and long, leaning carelessly over with a pipe between his finger and thumb. Nose, lips, and chin seemed all to droop downward into extraordinary length, as he leant his odd peering face over the banister. In his other hand he held a coil of rope, one end of which escaped from under his elbow and hung over the rail. Mrs. Carwell, who had no suspicion at the moment, that he was not a real person, and fancied that he was someone employed in cording the Judges luggage, called to know what he was doing there. Instead of answering, he turned about, and walked across the lobby, at about the same leisurely pace at which she was ascending, and entered a room, into which she followed him. It was an uncarpeted and unfurnished chamber. An open trunk lay upon the floor empty, and beside it the coil of rope; but except herself there was no one in the room. Mrs. Carwell was very much frightened, and now concluded that the child must have seen the same ghost that had just appeared to her. Perhaps, when she was able to think it over, it was a relief to believe so; for the face, figure, and dress described by the child were awfully like Pyneweck; and this certainly was not he. Very much scared and very hysterical, Mrs. Carwell ran down to her room, afraid to look over her shoulder, and got some companions about her, and wept, and talked, and drank more than one cordial, and talked and wept again, and so on, until, in those early days, it was ten oclock, and time to go to bed. A scullerymaid remained up finishing some of her scouring and scalding for some time after the other servantswho, as I said, were few in numberthat night had got to their beds. This was a lowbrowed, broadfaced, intrepid wench with black hair, who did not vally a ghost not a button, and treated the housekeepers hysterics with measureless scorn. The old house was quiet, now. It was near twelve oclock, no sounds were audible except the muffled wailing of the wintry winds, piping high among the roofs and chimneys, or rumbling at intervals, in under gusts, through the narrow channels of the street. The spacious solitudes of the kitchen level were awfully dark, and this sceptical kitchenwench was the only person now up and about, in the house. She hummed tunes to herself, for a time; and then stopped and listened; and then resumed her work again. At last, she was destined to be more terrified than even was the housekeeper. There was a backkitchen in this house, and from this she heard, as if coming from below its foundations, a sound like heavy strokes, that seemed to shake the earth beneath her feet. Sometimes a dozen in sequence, at regular intervals; sometimes fewer. She walked out softly into the passage, and was surprised to see a dusky glow issuing from this room, as if from a charcoal fire. The room seemed thick with smoke. Looking in, she very dimly beheld a monstrous figure, over a furnace, beating with a mighty hammer the rings and rivets of a chain. The strokes, swift and heavy as they looked, sounded hollow and distant. The man stopped, and pointed to something on the floor, that, through the smoky haze, looked, she thought, like a dead body. She remarked no more; but the servants in the room close by, startled from their sleep by a hideous scream, found her in a swoon on the flags, close to the door, where she had just witnessed this ghastly vision. Startled by the girls incoherent asseverations that she had seen the Judges corpse on the floor, two servants having first searched the lower part of the house, went rather frightened upstairs to inquire whether their master was well. They found him, not in his bed, but in his room. He had a table with candles burning at his bedside, and was getting on his clothes again; and he swore and cursed at them roundly in his old style, telling them that he had business, and that he would discharge on the spot any scoundrel who should dare to disturb him again. So the invalid was left to his quietude. In the morning it was rumoured here and there in the street that the Judge was dead. A servant was sent from the house three doors away, by Counsellor Traverse, to inquire at Judge Harbottles halldoor. The servant who opened it was pale and reserved, and would only say that the Judge was ill. He had had a dangerous accident; Doctor Hedstone had been with him at seven oclock in the morning. There were averted looks, short answers, pale and frowning faces, and all the usual signs that there was a secret that sat heavily upon their minds, and the time for disclosing which had not yet come. That time would arrive when the coroner had arrived, and the mortal scandal that had befallen the house could be no longer hidden. For that morning Mr. Justice Harbottle had been found hanging by the neck from the banister at the top of the great staircase, and quite dead. There was not the smallest sign of any struggle or resistance. There had not been heard a cry or any other noise in the slightest degree indicative of violence. There was medical evidence to show that, in his atrabilious state, it was quite on the cards that he might have made away with himself. The jury found accordingly that it was a case of suicide. But to those who were acquainted with the strange story which Judge Harbottle had related to at least two persons, the fact that the catastrophe occurred on the morning of the 10th March seemed a startling coincidence. A few days after, the pomp of a great funeral attended him to the grave; and so, in the language of Scripture, the rich man died, and was buried. The Familiar Prologue Out of about two hundred and thirty cases, more or less nearly akin to that I have entitled Green Tea, I select the following, which I call The Familiar. To this MS., Doctor Hesselius has, after his wont, attached some sheets of letterpaper, on which are written, in his hand nearly as compact as print, his own remarks upon the case. He says In point of conscience, no more unexceptionable narrator, than the venerable Irish Clergyman who has given me this paper, on Mr. Bartons case, could have been chosen. The statement is, however, medically imperfect. The report of an intelligent physician, who had marked its progress, and attended the patient, from its earlier stages to its close, would have supplied what is wanting to enable me to pronounce with confidence. I should have been acquainted with Mr. Bartons probable hereditary predispositions; I should have known, possibly, by very early indications, something of a remoter origin of the disease than can now be ascertained. In a rough way, we may reduce all similar cases to three distinct classes. They are founded on the primary distinction between the subjective and the objective. Of those whose senses are alleged to be subject to supernatural impressionssome are simply visionaries, and propagate the illusions of which they complain, from diseased brain or nerves. Others are, unquestionably, infested by, as we term them, spiritual agencies, exterior to themselves. Others, again, owe their sufferings to a mixed condition. The interior sense, it is true, is opened; but it has been and continues open by the action of disease. This form of disease may, in one sense, be compared to the loss of the scarfskin, and a consequent exposure of surfaces for whose excessive sensitiveness, nature has provided a muffling. The loss of this covering is attended by an habitual impassability, by influences against which we were intended to be guarded. But in the case of the brain, and the nerves immediately connected with its functions and its sensuous impressions, the cerebral circulation undergoes periodically that vibratory disturbance, which, I believe, I have satisfactorily examined and demonstrated, in my MS. essay, A. 17. This vibratory disturbance differs, as I there prove, essentially from the congestive disturbance, the phenomena of which are examined in A. 19. It is, when excessive, invariably accompanied by illusions. Had I seen Mr. Barton, and examined him upon the points, in his case, which need elucidation, I should have without difficulty referred those phenomena to their proper disease. My diagnosis is now, necessarily, conjectural. Thus writes Doctor Hesselius; and adds a great deal which is of interest only to a scientific physician. The narrative of the Rev. Thomas Herbert, which furnishes all that is known of the case, will be found in the chapters that follow. I Footsteps I was a young man at the time, and intimately acquainted with some of the actors in this strange tale; the impression which its incidents made on me, therefore, were deep, and lasting. I shall now endeavour, with precision, to relate them all, combining, of course, in the narrative, whatever I have learned from various sources, tending, however imperfectly, to illuminate the darkness which involves its progress and termination. Somewhere about the year 1794, the younger brother of a certain baronet, whom I shall call Sir James Barton, returned to Dublin. He had served in the navy with some distinction, having commanded one of His Majestys frigates during the greater part of the American war. Captain Barton was apparently some two or threeandforty years of age. He was an intelligent and agreeable companion when he pleased it, though generally reserved, and occasionally even moody. In society, however, he deported himself as a man of the world, and a gentleman. He had not contracted any of the noisy brusqueness sometimes acquired at sea; on the contrary, his manners were remarkably easy, quiet, and even polished. He was in person about the middle size, and somewhat strongly formedhis countenance was marked with the lines of thought, and on the whole wore an expression of gravity and melancholy; being, however, as I have said, a man of perfect breeding, as well as of good family, and in affluent circumstances, he had, of course, ready access to the best society of Dublin, without the necessity of any other credentials. In his personal habits Mr. Barton was unexpensive. He occupied lodgings in one of the then fashionable streets in the south side of the townkept but one horse and one servantand though a reputed freethinker, yet lived an orderly and moral lifeindulging neither in gaming, drinking, nor any other vicious pursuitliving very much to himself, without forming intimacies, or choosing any companions, and appearing to mix in gay society rather for the sake of its bustle and distraction, than for any opportunities it offered of interchanging thought or feeling with its votaries. Barton was therefore pronounced a saving, prudent, unsocial sort of fellow, who bid fair to maintain his celibacy alike against stratagem and assault, and was likely to live to a good old age, die rich, and leave his money to an hospital. It was now apparent, however, that the nature of Mr. Bartons plans had been totally misconceived. A young lady, whom I shall call Miss Montague, was at this time introduced into the gay world, by her aunt, the Dowager Lady L. Miss Montague was decidedly pretty and accomplished, and having some natural cleverness, and a great deal of gaiety, became for a while a reigning toast. Her popularity, however, gained her, for a time, nothing more than that unsubstantial admiration which, however, pleasant as an incense to vanity, is by no means necessarily antecedent to matrimonyfor, unhappily for the young lady in question, it was an understood thing, that beyond her personal attractions, she had no kind of earthly provision. Such being the state of affairs, it will readily be believed that no little surprise was consequent upon the appearance of Captain Barton as the avowed lover of the penniless Miss Montague. His suit prospered, as might have been expected, and in a short time it was communicated by old Lady L to each of her hundredandfifty particular friends in succession, that Captain Barton had actually tendered proposals of marriage, with her approbation, to her niece, Miss Montague, who had, moreover, accepted the offer of his hand, conditionally upon the consent of her father, who was then upon his homeward voyage from India, and expected in two or three weeks at the furthest. About this consent there could be no doubtthe delay, therefore, was one merely of formthey were looked upon as absolutely engaged, and Lady L, with a rigour of oldfashioned decorum with which her niece would, no doubt, gladly have dispensed, withdrew her thenceforward from all further participation in the gaieties of the town. Captain Barton was a constant visitor, as well as a frequent guest at the house, and was permitted all the privileges of intimacy which a betrothed suitor is usually accorded. Such was the relation of parties, when the mysterious circumstances which darken this narrative first begun to unfold themselves. Lady L resided in a handsome mansion at the north side of Dublin, and Captain Bartons lodgings, as we have already said, were situated at the south. The distance intervening was considerable, and it was Captain Bartons habit generally to walk home without an attendant, as often as he passed the evening with the old lady and her fair charge. His shortest way in such nocturnal walks, lay, for a considerable space, through a line of street which had as yet merely been laid out, and little more than the foundations of the houses constructed. One night, shortly after his engagement with Miss Montague had commenced, he happened to remain unusually late, in company with her and Lady L. The conversation had turned upon the evidences of revelation, which he had disputed with the callous scepticism of a confirmed infidel. What were called French principles, had in those days found their way a good deal into fashionable society, especially that portion of it which professed allegiance to Whiggism, and neither the old lady nor her charge were so perfectly free from the taint, as to look upon Mr. Bartons views as any serious objection to the proposed union. The discussion had degenerated into one upon the supernatural and the marvellous, in which he had pursued precisely the same line of argument and ridicule. In all this, it is but truth to state, Captain Barton, was guilty of no affectationthe doctrines upon which he insisted, were, in reality, but, too truly the basis of his own fixed belief, if so it might be called; and perhaps not the least strange of the many strange circumstances connected with my narrative, was the fact, that the subject of the fearful influences I am about to describe, was himself, from the deliberate conviction of years, an utter disbeliever in what are usually termed preternatural agencies. It was considerably past midnight when Mr. Barton took his leave, and set out upon his solitary walk homeward. He had now reached the lonely road, with its unfinished dwarf walls tracing the foundations of the projected row of houses on either sidethe moon was shining mistily, and its imperfect light made the road he trod but additionally drearythat utter silence which has in it something indefinably exciting, reigned there, and made the sound of his steps, which alone broke it, unnaturally loud and distinct. He had proceeded thus some way, when he, on a sudden, heard other footfalls, pattering at a measured pace, and, as it seemed, about two score steps behind him. The suspicion of being dogged is at all times unpleasant; it is, however, especially so in a spot so lonely; and this suspicion became so strong in the mind of Captain Barton, that he abruptly turned about to confront his pursuer, but, though there was quite sufficient moonlight to disclose any object upon the road he had traversed, no form of any kind was visible there. The steps he had heard could not have been the reverberation of his own, for he stamped his foot upon the ground, and walked briskly up and down, in the vain attempt to awake an echo; though by no means a fanciful person, therefore he was at last fain to charge the sounds upon his imagination, and treat them as an illusion. Thus satisfying himself, he resumed his walk, and before he had proceeded a dozen paces, the mysterious footfall was again audible from behind, and this time, as if with the special design of showing that the sounds were not the responses of an echothe steps sometimes slackened nearly to a halt, and sometimes hurried for six or eight strides to a run, and again abated to a walk. Captain Barton, as before, turned suddenly round, and with the same resultno object was visible above the deserted level of the road. He walked back over the same ground, determined that, whatever might have been the cause of the sounds which had so disconcerted him, it should not escape his searchthe endeavour, however, was unrewarded. In spite of all his scepticism, he felt something like a superstitious fear stealing fast upon him, and with these unwonted and uncomfortable sensations, he once more turned and pursued his way. There was no repetition of these haunting sounds, until he had reached the point where he had last stopped to retrace his stepshere they were resumedand with sudden starts of running, which threatened to bring the unseen pursuer up to the alarmed pedestrian. Captain Barton arrested his course as formerlythe unaccountable nature of the occurrence filled him with vague and disagreeable sensationsand yielding to the excitement that was gaining upon him, he shouted sternly, Who goes there? The sound of ones own voice, thus exerted, in utter solitude, and followed by total silence, has in it something unpleasantly dismaying, and he felt a degree of nervousness which, perhaps, from no cause had he ever known before. To the very end of this solitary street the steps pursued himand it required a strong effort of stubborn pride on his part, to resist the impulse that prompted him every moment to run for safety at the top of his speed. It was not until he had reached his lodging, and sat by his own fireside, that he felt sufficiently reassured to rearrange and reconsider in his own mind the occurrences which had so discomposed him. So little a matter, after all, is sufficient to upset the pride of scepticism and vindicate the old simple laws of nature within us. II The Watcher Mr. Barton was next morning sitting at a late breakfast, reflecting upon the incidents of the previous night, with more of inquisitiveness than awe, so speedily do gloomy impressions upon the fancy disappear under the cheerful influence of day, when a letter just delivered by the postman was placed upon the table before him. There was nothing remarkable in the address of this missive, except that it was written in a hand which he did not knowperhaps it was disguisedfor the tall narrow characters were sloped backward; and with the selfinflicted suspense which we often see practised in such cases, he puzzled over the inscription for a full minute before he broke the seal. When he did so, he read the following words, written in the same hand Mr. Barton, late captain of the Dolphin, is warned of danger. He will do wisely to avoid street[here the locality of his last nights adventure was named]if he walks there as usual he will meet with something unluckylet him take warning, once for all, for he has reason to dread The Watcher. Captain Barton read and reread this strange effusion; in every light and in every direction he turned it over and over; he examined the paper on which it was written, and scrutinized the handwriting once more. Defeated here, he turned to the seal; it was nothing but a patch of wax, upon which the accidental impression of a thumb was imperfectly visible. There was not the slightest mark, or clue of any kind, to lead him to even a guess as to its possible origin. The writers object seemed a friendly one, and yet he subscribed himself as one whom he had reason to dread. Altogether the letter, its author, and its real purpose were to him an inexplicable puzzle, and one, moreover, unpleasantly suggestive, in his mind, of other associations connected with his last nights adventure. In obedience to some feelingperhaps of prideMr. Barton did not communicate, even to his intended bride, the occurrences which I have just detailed. Trifling as they might appear, they had in reality most disagreeably affected his imagination, and he cared not to disclose, even to the young lady in question, what she might possibly look upon as evidences of weakness. The letter might very well be but a hoax, and the mysterious footfall but a delusion or a trick. But although he affected to treat the whole affair as unworthy of a thought, it yet haunted him pertinaciously, tormenting him with perplexing doubts, and depressing him with undefined apprehensions. Certain it is, that for a considerable time afterwards he carefully avoided the street indicated in the letter as the scene of danger. It was not until about a week after the receipt of the letter which I have transcribed, that anything further occurred to remind Captain Barton of its contents, or to counteract the gradual disappearance from his mind of the disagreeable impressions then received. He was returning one night, after the interval I have stated, from the theatre, which was then situated in Crowstreet, and having there seen Miss Montague and Lady L into their carriage, he loitered for some time with two or three acquaintances. With these, however, he parted close to the college, and pursued his way alone. It was now fully one oclock, and the streets were quite deserted. During the whole of his walk with the companions from whom he had just parted, he had been at times painfully aware of the sound of steps, as it seemed, dogging them on their way. Once or twice he had looked back, in the uneasy anticipation that he was again about to experience the same mysterious annoyances which had so disconcerted him a week before, and earnestly hoping that he might see some form to account naturally for the sounds. But the street was desertedno one was visible. Proceeding now quite alone upon his homeward way, he grew really nervous and uncomfortable, as he became sensible, with increased distinctness, of the wellknown and now absolutely dreaded sounds. By the side of the dead wall which bounded the college park, the sounds followed, recommencing almost simultaneously with his own steps. The same unequal pacesometimes slow, sometimes for a score yards or so, quickened almost to a runwas audible from behind him. Again and again he turned; quickly and stealthily he glanced over his shoulderalmost at every halfdozen steps; but no one was visible. The irritation of this intangible and unseen pursuit became gradually all but intolerable; and when at last he reached his home, his nerves were strung to such a pitch of excitement that he could not rest, and did not attempt even to lie down until after the daylight had broken. He was awakened by a knock at his chamberdoor, and his servant entering, handed him several letters which had just been received by the penny post. One among them instantly arrested his attentiona single glance at the direction aroused him thoroughly. He at once recognized its character, and read as follows You may as well think, Captain Barton, to escape from your own shadow as from me; do what you may, I will see you as often as I please, and you shall see me, for I do not want to hide myself, as you fancy. Do not let it trouble your rest, Captain Barton; for, with a good conscience, what need you fear from the eye of The Watcher. It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the feelings that accompanied a perusal of this strange communication. Captain Barton was observed to be unusually absent and out of spirits for several days afterwards, but no one divined the cause. Whatever he might think as to the phantom steps which followed him, there could be no possible illusion about the letters he had received; and, to say the least, their immediate sequence upon the mysterious sounds which had haunted him, was an odd coincidence. The whole circumstance was, in his own mind, vaguely and instinctively connected with certain passages in his past life, which, of all others, he hated to remember. It happened, however, that in addition to his own approaching nuptials, Captain Barton had just thenfortunately, perhaps, for himselfsome business of an engrossing kind connected with the adjustment of a large and longlitigated claim upon certain properties. The hurry and excitement of business had its natural effect in gradually dispelling the gloom which had for a time occasionally oppressed him, and in a little while his spirits had entirely recovered their accustomed tone. During all this time, however, he was, now and then, dismayed by indistinct and halfheard repetitions of the same annoyance, and that in lonely places, in the daytime as well as after nightfall. These renewals of the strange impressions from which he had suffered so much, were, however, desultory and faint, insomuch that often he really could not, to his own satisfaction, distinguish between them and the mere suggestions of an excited imagination. One evening he walked down to the House of Commons with a Member, an acquaintance of his and mine. This was one of the few occasions upon which I have been in company with Captain Barton. As we walked down together, I observed that he became absent and silent, and to a degree that seemed to argue the pressure of some urgent and absorbing anxiety. I afterwards learned that during the whole of our walk, he had heard the wellknown footsteps tracking him as we proceeded. This, however, was the last time he suffered from this phase of the persecution, of which he was already the anxious victim. A new and a very different one was about to be presented. III An Advertisement Of the new series of impressions which were afterwards gradually to work out his destiny, I that evening witnessed the first; and but for its relation to the train of events which followed, the incident would scarcely have been now remembered by me. As we were walking in at the passage from CollegeGreen, a man, of whom I remember only that he was short in stature, looked like a foreigner, and wore a kind of fur travellingcap, walked very rapidly, and as if under fierce excitement, directly towards us, muttering to himself, fast and vehemently the while. This oddlooking person walked straight toward Barton, who was foremost of the three, and halted, regarding him for a moment or two with a look of maniacal menace and fury; and then turning about as abruptly, he walked before us at the same agitated pace, and disappeared at a side passage. I do distinctly remember being a good deal shocked at the countenance and bearing of this man, which indeed irresistibly impressed me with an undefined sense of danger, such as I have never felt before or since from the presence of anything human; but these sensations were, on my part, far from amounting to anything so disconcerting as to flurry or excite meI had seen only a singularly evil countenance, agitated, as it seemed, with the excitement of madness. I was absolutely astonished, however, at the effect of this apparition upon Captain Barton. I knew him to be a man of proud courage and coolness in real dangera circumstance which made his conduct upon this occasion the more conspicuously odd. He recoiled a step or two as the stranger advanced, and clutched my arm in silence, with what seemed to be a spasm of agony or terror! and then, as the figure disappeared, shoving me roughly back, he followed it for a few paces, stopped in great disorder, and sat down upon a form. I never beheld a countenance more ghastly and haggard. For Gods sake, Barton, what is the matter? said , our companion, really alarmed at his appearance. Youre not hurt, are you?or unwell? What is it? What did he say?I did not hear itwhat was it? asked Barton, wholly disregarding the question. Nonsense, said , greatly surprised; who cares what the fellow said. You are unwell, Bartondecidedly unwell; let me call a coach. Unwell! Nonot unwell, he said, evidently making an effort to recover his selfpossession; but, to say the truth, I am fatigueda little overworkedand perhaps over anxious. You know I have been in chancery, and the winding up of a suit is always a nervous affair. I have felt uncomfortable all this evening; but I am better now. Come, comeshall we go on? No, no. Take my advice, Barton, and go home; you really do need rest! you are looking quite ill. I really do insist on your allowing me to see you home, replied his friend. I seconded s advice, the more readily as it was obvious that Barton was not himself disinclined to be persuaded. He left us, declining our offered escort. I was not sufficiently intimate with to discuss the scene we had both just witnessed. I was, however, convinced from his manner in the few commonplace comments and regrets we exchanged, that he was just as little satisfied as I with the extempore plea of illness with which he had accounted for the strange exhibition, and that we were both agreed in suspecting some lurking mystery in the matter. I called next day at Bartons lodgings, to enquire for him, and learned from the servant that he had not left his room since his return the night before; but that he was not seriously indisposed, and hoped to be out in a few days. That evening he sent for Dr. R, then in large and fashionable practice in Dublin, and their interview was, it is said, an odd one. He entered into a detail of his own symptoms in an abstracted and desultory way which seemed to argue a strange want of interest in his own cure, and, at all events, made it manifest that there was some topic engaging his mind of more engrossing importance than his present ailment. He complained of occasional palpitations and headache. Doctor R, asked him among other questions, whether there was any irritating circumstance or anxiety then occupying his thoughts. This he denied quickly and almost peevishly; and the physician thereupon declared his opinion, that there was nothing amiss except some slight derangement of the digestion, for which he accordingly wrote a prescription, and was about to withdraw, when Mr. Barton, with the air of a man who recollects a topic which had nearly escaped him, recalled him. I beg your pardon, Doctor, but I really almost forgot; will you permit me to ask you two or three medical questionsrather odd ones, perhaps, but a wager depends upon their solution, you will, I hope, excuse my unreasonableness. The physician readily undertook to satisfy the inquirer. Barton seemed to have some difficulty about opening the proposed interrogatories, for he was silent for a minute, then walked to his bookcase, and returned as he had gone; at last he sat down and said Youll think them very childish questions, but I cant recover my wager without a decision; so I must put them. I want to know first about lockjaw. If a man actually has had that complaint, and appears to have died of itso much so, that a physician of average skill pronounces him actually deadmay he, after all, recover? The physician smiled, and shook his head. Butbut a blunder may be made, resumed Barton. Suppose an ignorant pretender to medical skill; may he be so deceived by any stage of the complaint, as to mistake what is only a part of the progress of the disease, for death itself? No one who had ever seen death, answered he, could mistake it in a case of lockjaw. Barton mused for a few minutes.

I am going to ask you a question, perhaps, still more childish; but first, tell me, are the regulations of foreign hospitals, such as that of, let us say, Naples, very lax and bungling. May not all kinds of blunders and slips occur in their entries of names, and soforth? Doctor R professed his incompetence to answer that query. Well, then, Doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will, probably, laugh at it; but it must out, nevertheless. Is there any disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would have the effect of perceptibly contracting the stature, and the whole framecausing the man to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact resemblance to himself in every particularwith the one exception, his height and bulk; any disease, markno matter how rarehow little believed in, generallywhich could possibly result in producing such an effect? The physician replied with a smile, and a very decided negative. Tell me, then, said Barton, abruptly, if a man be in reasonable fear of assault from a lunatic who is at large, can he not procure a warrant for his arrest and detention? Really that is more a lawyers question than one in my way, replied Dr. R; but I believe, on applying to a magistrate, such a course would be directed. The physician then took his leave; but, just as he reached the halldoor, remembered that he had left his cane upstairs, and returned. His reappearance was awkward, for a piece of paper, which he recognised as his own prescription, was slowly burning upon the fire, and Barton sitting close by with an expression of settled gloom and dismay. Doctor R had too much tact to observe what presented itself; but he had seen quite enough to assure him that the mind, and not the body, of Captain Barton was in reality the seat of suffering. A few days afterwards, the following advertisement appeared in the Dublin newspapers. If Sylvester Yelland, formerly a foremastman on board his Majestys frigate Dolphin, or his nearest of kin, will apply to Mr. Hubert Smith, attorney, at his office, Dame Street, he or they may hear of something greatly to his or their advantage. Admission may be had at any hour up to twelve oclock at night, should parties desire to avoid observation; and the strictest secrecy, as to all communications intended to be confidential, shall be honourably observed. The Dolphin, as I have mentioned, was the vessel which Captain Barton had commanded; and this circumstance, connected with the extraordinary exertions made by the circulation of handbills, etc., as well as by repeated advertisements, to secure for this strange notice the utmost possible publicity, suggested to Dr. R the idea that Captain Bartons extreme uneasiness was somehow connected with the individual to whom the advertisement was addressed, and he himself the author of it. This, however, it is needless to add, was no more than a conjecture. No information whatsoever, as to the real purpose of the advertisement was divulged by the agent, nor yet any hint as to who his employer might be. IV He Talks with a Clergyman Mr. Barton, although he had latterly begun to earn for himself the character of an hypochondriac, was yet very far from deserving it. Though by no means lively, he had yet, naturally, what are termed even spirits, and was not subject to undue depressions. He soon, therefore, began to return to his former habits; and one of the earliest symptoms of this healthier tone of spirits was, his appearing at a grand dinner of the Freemasons, of which worthy fraternity he was himself a brother. Barton, who had been at first gloomy and abstracted, drank much more freely than was his wontpossibly with the purpose of dispelling his own secret anxietiesand under the influence of good wine, and pleasant company, became gradually (unlike himself) talkative, and even noisy. It was under this unwonted excitement that he left his company at about halfpast ten oclock; and, as conviviality is a strong incentive to gallantry, it occurred to him to proceed forthwith to Lady Ls and pass the remainder of the evening with her and his destined bride. Accordingly, he was soon at street, and chatting gaily with the ladies. It is not to be supposed that Captain Barton had exceeded the limits which propriety prescribes to good fellowshiphe had merely taken enough wine to raise his spirits, without, however, in the least degree unsteadying his mind, or affecting his manners. With this undue elevation of spirits had supervened an entire oblivion or contempt of those undefined apprehensions which had for so long weighed upon his mind, and to a certain extent estranged him from society; but as the night wore away, and his artificial gaiety began to flag, these painful feelings gradually intruded themselves again, and he grew abstracted and anxious as heretofore. He took his leave at length, with an unpleasant foreboding of some coming mischief, and with a mind haunted with a thousand mysterious apprehensions, such as, even while he acutely felt their pressure, he, nevertheless, inwardly strove, or affected to contemn. It was this proud defiance of what he regarded as his own weakness, which prompted him upon the present occasion to that course which brought about the adventure I am now about to relate. Mr. Barton might have easily called a coach, but he was conscious that his strong inclination to do so proceeded from no cause other than what he desperately persisted in representing to himself to be his own superstitious tremors. He might also have returned home by a route different from that against which he had been warned by his mysterious correspondent; but for the same reason he dismissed this idea also, and with a dogged and half desperate resolution to force matters to a crisis of some kind, if there were any reality in the causes of his former suffering, and if not, satisfactorily to bring their delusiveness to the proof, he determined to follow precisely the course which he had trodden upon the night so painfully memorable in his own mind as that on which his strange persecution commenced. Though, sooth to say, the pilot who for the first time steers his vessel under the muzzles of a hostile battery, never felt his resolution more severely tasked than did Captain Barton as he breathlessly pursued this solitary patha path which, spite of every effort of scepticism and reason, he felt to be infested by some (as respected him) malignant being. He pursued his way steadily and rapidly, scarcely breathing from intensity of suspense; he, however, was troubled by no renewal of the dreaded footsteps, and was beginning to feel a return of confidence, as more than threefourths of the way being accomplished with impunity, he approached the long line of twinkling oil lamps which indicated the frequented streets. This feeling of selfcongratulation was, however, but momentary. The report of a musket at some hundred yards behind him, and the whistle of a bullet close to his head, disagreeably and startlingly dispelled it. His first impulse was to retrace his steps in pursuit of the assassin; but the road on either side was, as we have said, embarrassed by the foundations of a street, beyond which extended waste fields, full of rubbish and neglected lime and brickkilns, and all now as utterly silent as though no sound had ever disturbed their dark and unsightly solitude. The futility of, singlehanded, attempting, under such circumstances, a search for the murderer, was apparent, especially as no sound, either of retreating steps or any other kind, was audible to direct his pursuit. With the tumultuous sensations of one whose life has just been exposed to a murderous attempt, and whose escape has been the narrowest possible, Captain Barton turned again; and without, however, quickening his pace actually to a run, hurriedly pursued his way. He had turned, as I have said, after a pause of a few seconds, and had just commenced his rapid retreat, when on a sudden he met the wellremembered little man in the fur cap. The encounter was but momentary. The figure was walking at the same exaggerated pace, and with the same strange air of menace as before; and as it passed him, he thought he heard it say, in a furious whisper, Still alivestill alive! The state of Mr. Bartons spirits began now to work a corresponding alteration in his health and looks, and to such a degree that it was impossible that the change should escape general remark. For some reasons, known but to himself, he took no step whatsoever to bring the attempt upon his life, which he had so narrowly escaped, under the notice of the authorities; on the contrary, he kept it jealously to himself; and it was not for many weeks after the occurrence that he mentioned it, and then in strict confidence, to a gentleman, whom the torments of his mind at last compelled him to consult. Spite of his blue devils, however, poor Barton, having no satisfactory reason to render to the public for any undue remissness in the attentions exacted by the relation subsisting between him and Miss Montague was obliged to exert himself, and present to the world a confident and cheerful bearing. The true source of his sufferings, and every circumstance connected with them, he guarded with a reserve so jealous, that it seemed dictated by at least a suspicion that the origin of his strange persecution was known to himself, and that it was of a nature which, upon his own account, he could not or dared not disclose. The mind thus turned in upon itself, and constantly occupied with a haunting anxiety which it dared not reveal or confide to any human breast, became daily more excited, and, of course, more vividly impressible, by a system of attack which operated through the nervous system; and in this state he was destined to sustain, with increasing frequency, the stealthy visitations of that apparition which from the first had seemed to possess so terrible a hold upon his imagination. It was about this time that Captain Barton called upon the then celebrated preacher, Dr. , with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and an extraordinary conversation ensued. The divine was seated in his chambers in college, surrounded with works upon his favourite pursuit, and deep in theology, when Barton was announced. There was something at once embarrassed and excited in his manner, which, along with his wan and haggard countenance, impressed the student with the unpleasant consciousness that his visitor must have recently suffered terribly indeed, to account for an alteration so strikingalmost shocking. After the usual interchange of polite greeting, and a few commonplace remarks, Captain Barton, who obviously perceived the surprise which his visit had excited, and which Doctor was unable wholly to conceal, interrupted a brief pause by remarking This is a strange call, Doctor , perhaps scarcely warranted by an acquaintance so slight as mine with you. I should not under ordinary circumstances have ventured to disturb you; but my visit is neither an idle nor impertinent intrusion. I am sure you will not so account it, when I tell you how afflicted I am. Doctor interrupted him with assurances such as good breeding suggested, and Barton resumed I am come to task your patience by asking your advice. When I say your patience, I might, indeed, say more; I might have said your humanityyour compassion; for I have been and am a great sufferer. My dear sir, replied the churchman, it will, indeed, afford me infinite gratification if I can give you comfort in any distress of mind! butyou know I know what you would say, resumed Barton, quickly; I am an unbeliever, and, therefore, incapable of deriving help from religion; but dont take that for granted. At least you must not assume that, however unsettled my convictions may be, I do not feel a deepa very deepinterest in the subject. Circumstances have lately forced it upon my attention, in such a way as to compel me to review the whole question in a more candid and teachable spirit, I believe, than I ever studied it in before. Your difficulties, I take it for granted, refer to the evidences of revelation, suggested the clergyman. Whynonot altogether; in fact I am ashamed to say I have not considered even my objections sufficiently to state them connectedly; butbut there is one subject on which I feel a peculiar interest. He paused again, and Doctor pressed him to proceed. The fact is, said Barton, whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond this a spiritual worlda system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden from usa system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I am sureI know, continued Barton, with increasing excitement, that there is a Goda dreadful Godand that retribution follows guilt, in ways the most mysterious and stupendousby agencies the most inexplicable and terrific;there is a spiritual systemgreat God, how I have been convinced!a system malignant, and implacable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, suffering the torments of the damned!yes, siryesthe fires and frenzy of hell! As Barton spoke, his agitation became so vehement that the Divine was shocked, and even alarmed. The wild and excited rapidity with which he spoke, and, above all, the indefinable horror that stamped his features, afforded a contrast to his ordinary cool and unimpassioned selfpossession striking and painful in the last degree. V Mr. Barton States His Case My dear sir, said Doctor , after a brief pause, I fear you have been very unhappy, indeed; but I venture to predict that the depression under which you labour will be found to originate in purely physical causes, and that with a change of air, and the aid of a few tonics, your spirits will return, and the tone of your mind be once more cheerful and tranquil as heretofore. There was, after all, more truth than we are quite willing to admit in the classic theories which assigned the undue predominance of any one affection of the mind, to the undue action or torpidity of one or other of our bodily organs. Believe me, that a little attention to diet, exercise, and the other essentials of health, under competent direction, will make you as much yourself as you can wish. Doctor said Barton, with something like a shudder, I cannot delude myself with such a hope. I have no hope to cling to but one, and that is, that by some other spiritual agency more potent than that which tortures me, it may be combated, and I delivered. If this may not be, I am lostnow and forever lost. But, Mr. Barton, you must remember, urged his companion, that others have suffered as you have done, and No, no, no, interrupted he, with irritabilityno, sir, I am not a credulousfar from a superstitious man. I have been, perhaps, too much the reversetoo sceptical, too slow of belief; but unless I were one whom no amount of evidence could convince, unless I were to contemn the repeated, the perpetual evidence of my own senses, I am nownow at last constrained to believeI have no escape from the convictionthe overwhelming certaintythat I am haunted and dogged, go where I may, byby a demon! There was a preternatural energy of horror in Bartons face, as, with its damp and deathlike lineaments turned towards his companion, he thus delivered himself. God help you, my poor friend, said Dr. , much shocked, God help you; for, indeed, you are a sufferer, however your sufferings may have been caused. Ay, ay, God help me, echoed Barton, sternly; but will he help mewill he help me? Pray to himpray in an humble and trusting spirit, said he. Pray, pray, echoed he again; I cant prayI could as easily move a mountain by an effort of my will. I have not belief enough to pray; there is something within me that will not pray. You prescribe impossibilitiesliteral impossibilities. You will not find it so, if you will but try, said Doctor . Try! I have tried, and the attempt only fills me with confusion; and, sometimes, terror; I have tried in vain, and more than in vain. The awful, unutterable idea of eternity and infinity oppresses and maddens my brain whenever my mind approaches the contemplation of the Creator; I recoil from the effort scared. I tell you, Doctor , if I am to be saved, it must be by other means. The idea of an eternal Creator is to me intolerablemy mind cannot support it. Say, then, my dear sir, urged he, say how you would have me serve youwhat you would learn of mewhat I can do or say to relieve you? Listen to me first, replied Captain Barton, with a subdued air, and an effort to suppress his excitement, listen to me while I detail the circumstances of the persecution under which my life has become all but intolerablea persecution which has made me fear death and the world beyond the grave as much as I have grown to hate existence. Barton then proceeded to relate the circumstances which I have already detailed, and then continued This has now become habitualan accustomed thing. I do not mean the actual seeing him in the fleshthank God, that at least is not permitted daily. Thank God, from the ineffable horrors of that visitation I have been mercifully allowed intervals of repose, though none of security; but from the consciousness that a malignant spirit is following and watching me wherever I go, I have never, for a single instant, a temporary respite. I am pursued with blasphemies, cries of despair and appalling hatred. I hear those dreadful sounds called after me as I turn the corners of the streets; they come in the nighttime, while I sit in my chamber alone; they haunt me everywhere, charging me with hideous crimes, andgreat God!threatening me with coming vengeance and eternal misery. Hush! do you hear that? he cried with a horrible smile of triumph; there, there, will that convince you? The clergyman felt a chill of horror steal over him, while, during the wail of a sudden gust of wind, he heard, or fancied he heard, the half articulate sounds of rage and derision mingling in the sough. Well, what do you think of that? at length Barton cried, drawing a long breath through his teeth. I heard the wind, said Doctor . What should I think of itwhat is there remarkable about it? The prince of the powers of the air, muttered Barton, with a shudder. Tut, tut! my dear sir, said the student, with an effort to reassure himself; for though it was broad daylight, there was nevertheless something disagreeably contagious in the nervous excitement under which his visitor so miserably suffered. You must not give way to those wild fancies; you must resist these impulses of the imagination. Ay, ay; resist the devil and he will flee from thee, said Barton, in the same tone; but how resist him? ay, there it isthere is the rub. Whatwhat am I to do? what can I do? My dear sir, this is fancy, said the man of folios; you are your own tormentor. No, no, sirfancy has no part in it, answered Barton, somewhat sternly. Fancy! was it that made you, as well as me, hear, but this moment, those accents of hell? Fancy, indeed! No, no. But you have seen this person frequently, said the ecclesiastic; why have you not accosted or secured him? Is it not a little precipitate, to say no more, to assume, as you have done, the existence of preternatural agency, when, after all, everything may be easily accountable, if only proper means were taken to sift the matter. There are circumstances connected with thisthis appearance, said Barton, which it is needless to disclose, but which to me are proof of its horrible nature. I know that the being that follows me is not humanI say I know this; I could prove it to your own conviction. He paused for a minute, and then added, And as to accosting it, I dare not, I could not; when I see it I am powerless; I stand in the gaze of death, in the triumphant presence of infernal power and malignity. My strength, and faculties, and memory, all forsake me. O God, I fear, sir, you know not what you speak of. Mercy, mercy; heaven have pity on me! He leaned his elbow on the table, and passed his hand across his eyes, as if to exclude some image of horror, muttering the last words of the sentence he had just concluded, again and again. Doctor , he said, abruptly raising himself, and looking full upon the clergyman with an imploring eye, I know you will do for me whatever may be done. You know now fully the circumstances and the nature of my affliction. I tell you I cannot help myself; I cannot hope to escape; I am utterly passive. I conjure you, then, to weigh my case well, and if anything may be done for me by vicarious supplicationby the intercession of the goodor by any aid or influence whatsoever, I implore of you, I adjure you in the name of the Most High, give me the benefit of that influencedeliver me from the body of this death. Strive for me, pity me; I know you will; you cannot refuse this; it is the purpose and object of my visit. Send me away with some hope, however little, some faint hope of ultimate deliverance, and I will nerve myself to endure, from hour to hour, the hideous dream into which my existence has been transformed. Doctor assured him that all he could do was to pray earnestly for him, and that so much he would not fail to do. They parted with a hurried and melancholy valediction. Barton hastened to the carriage that awaited him at the door, drew down the blinds, and drove away, while Doctor returned to his chamber, to ruminate at leisure upon the strange interview which had just interrupted his studies. VI Seen Again It was not to be expected that Captain Bartons changed and eccentric habits should long escape remark and discussion. Various were the theories suggested to account for it. Some attributed the alteration to the pressure of secret pecuniary embarrassments; others to a repugnance to fulfil an engagement into which he was presumed to have too precipitately entered; and others, again, to the supposed incipiency of mental disease, which latter, indeed, was the most plausible as well as the most generally, received, of the hypotheses circulated in the gossip of the day. From the very commencement of this change, at first so gradual in its advances, Miss Montague had of course been aware of it. The intimacy involved in their peculiar relation, as well as the near interest which it inspired afforded, in her case, a like opportunity and motive for the successful exercise of that keen and penetrating observation peculiar to her sex. His visits became, at length, so interrupted, and his manner, while they lasted, so abstracted, strange, and agitated, that Lady L, after hinting her anxiety and her suspicions more than once, at length distinctly stated her anxiety, and pressed for an explanation. The explanation was given, and although its nature at first relieved the worst solicitudes of the old lady and her niece, yet the circumstances which attended it, and the really dreadful consequences which it obviously indicated, as regarded the spirits, and indeed the reason of the now wretched man, who made the strange declaration, were enough, upon little reflection, to fill their minds with perturbation and alarm. General Montague, the young ladys father, at length arrived. He had himself slightly known Barton, some ten or twelve years previously, and being aware of his fortune and connections, was disposed to regard him as an unexceptionable and indeed a most desirable match for his daughter. He laughed at the story of Bartons supernatural visitations, and lost no time in calling upon his intended soninlaw. My dear Barton, he continued, gaily, after a little conversation, my sister tells me that you are a victim to blue devils, in quite a new and original shape. Barton changed countenance, and sighed profoundly. Come, come; I protest this will never do, continued the General; you are more like a man on his way to the gallows than to the altar. These devils have made quite a saint of you. Barton made an effort to change the conversation. No, no, it wont do, said his visitor laughing; I am resolved to say what I have to say upon this magnificent mock mystery of yours. You must not be angry, but really it is too bad to see you at your time of life, absolutely frightened into good behaviour, like a naughty child by a bugaboo, and as far as I can learn, a very contemptible one. Seriously, I have been a good deal annoyed at what they tell me; but at the same time thoroughly convinced that there is nothing in the matter that may not be cleared up, with a little attention and management, within a week at furthest. Ah, General, you do not know he began. Yes, but I do know quite enough to warrant my confidence, interrupted the soldier, dont I know that all your annoyance proceeds from the occasional appearance of a certain little man in a cap and greatcoat, with a red vest and a bad face, who follows you about, and pops upon you at corners of lanes, and throws you into ague fits. Now, my dear fellow, Ill make it my business to catch this mischievous little mountebank, and either beat him to a jelly with my own hands, or have him whipped through the town, at the cartstail, before a month passes. If you knew what I knew, said Barton, with gloomy agitation, you would speak very differently. Dont imagine that I am so weak as to assume, without proof the most overwhelming, the conclusion to which I have been forcedthe proofs are here, locked up here. As he spoke he tapped upon his breast, and with an anxious sigh continued to walk up and down the room. Well, well, Barton, said his visitor, Ill wager a rump and a dozen I collar the ghost, and convince even you before many days are over. He was running on in the same strain when he was suddenly arrested, and not a little shocked, by observing Barton, who had approached the window, stagger slowly back, like one who had received a stunning blow; his arm extended toward the streethis face and his very lips white as asheswhile he muttered, Thereby heaven!therethere! General Montague started mechanically to his feet, and from the window of the drawingroom, saw a figure corresponding as well as his hurry would permit him to discern, with the description of the person, whose appearance so persistently disturbed the repose of his friend. The figure was just turning from the rails of the area upon which it had been leaning, and, without waiting to see more, the old gentleman snatched his cane and hat, and rushed down the stairs and into the street, in the furious hope of securing the person, and punishing the audacity of the mysterious stranger. He looked round him, but in vain, for any trace of the person he had himself distinctly seen. He ran breathlessly to the nearest corner, expecting to see from thence the retiring figure, but no such form was visible. Back and forward, from crossing to crossing, he ran, at fault, and it was not until the curious gaze and laughing countenances of the passersby reminded him of the absurdity of his pursuit, that he checked his hurried pace, lowered his walking cane from the menacing altitude which he had mechanically given it, adjusted his hat, and walked composedly back again, inwardly vexed and flurried. He found Barton pale and trembling in every joint; they both remained silent, though under emotions very different. At last Barton whispered, You saw it? It!himsomeoneyou meanto be sure I did, replied Montague, testily. But where is the good or the harm of seeing him? The fellow runs like a lamplighter. I wanted to catch him, but he had stole away before I could reach the halldoor. However, it is no great matter; next time, I dare say, Ill do better; and egad, if I once come within reach of him, Ill introduce his shoulders to the weight of my cane. Notwithstanding General Montagues undertakings and exhortations, however, Barton continued to suffer from the selfsame unexplained cause; go how, when, or where he would, he was still constantly dogged or confronted by the being who had established over him so horrible an influence. Nowhere and at no time was he secure against the odious appearance which haunted him with such diabolic perseverance. His depression, misery, and excitement became more settled and alarming every day, and the mental agonies that ceaselessly preyed upon him, began at last so sensibly to affect his health, that Lady L and General Montague succeeded, without, indeed, much difficulty, in persuading him to try a short tour on the Continent, in the hope that an entire change of scene would, at all events, have the effect of breaking through the influences of local association, which the more sceptical of his friends assumed to be by no means inoperative in suggesting and perpetuating what they conceived to be a mere form of nervous illusion. General Montague indeed was persuaded that the figure which haunted his intended soninlaw was by no means the creation of his imagination, but, on the contrary, a substantial form of flesh and blood, animated by a resolution, perhaps with some murderous object in perspective, to watch and follow the unfortunate gentleman. Even this hypothesis was not a very pleasant one; yet it was plain that if Barton could ever be convinced that there was nothing preternatural in the phenomenon which he had hitherto regarded in that light, the affair would lose all its terrors in his eyes, and wholly cease to exercise upon his health and spirits the baleful influence which it had hitherto done. He therefore reasoned, that if the annoyance were actually escaped by mere locomotion and change of scene, it obviously could not have originated in any supernatural agency. VII Flight Yielding to their persuasions, Barton left Dublin for England, accompanied by General Montague. They posted rapidly to London, and thence to Dover, whence they took the packet with a fair wind for Calais. The Generals confidence in the result of the expedition on Bartons spirits had risen day by day, since their departure from the shores of Ireland; for to the inexpressible relief and delight of the latter, he had not since then, so much as even once fancied a repetition of those impressions which had, when at home, drawn him gradually down to the very depths of despair. This exemption from what he had begun to regard as the inevitable condition of his existence, and the sense of security which began to pervade his mind, were inexpressibly delightful; and in the exultation of what he considered his deliverance, he indulged in a thousand happy anticipations for a future into which so lately he had hardly dared to look; and in short, both he and his companion secretly congratulated themselves upon the termination of that persecution which had been to its immediate victim a source of such unspeakable agony. It was a beautiful day, and a crowd of idlers stood upon the jetty to receive the packet, and enjoy the bustle of the new arrivals. Montague walked a few paces in advance of his friend, and as he made his way through the crowd, a little man touched his arm, and said to him, in a broad provincial patois Monsieur is walking too fast; he will lose his sick comrade in the throng, for, by my faith, the poor gentleman seems to be fainting. Montague turned quickly, and observed that Barton did indeed look deadly pale. He hastened to his side. My dear fellow, are you ill? he asked anxiously. The question was unheeded and twice, repeated, ere Barton stammered I saw himby, I saw him! Him!the wretchwhowhere now?where is he? cried Montague, looking around him. I saw himbut he is gone, repeated Barton, faintly. But wherewhere? For Gods sake speak, urged Montague, vehemently. It is but this momenthere, said he. But what did he look likewhat had he onwhat did he wearquick, quick, urged his excited companion, ready to dart among the crowd and collar the delinquent on the spot.

He touched your armhe spoke to youhe pointed to me. God be merciful to me, there is no escape, said Barton, in the low, subdued tones of despair. Montague had already bustled away in all the flurry of mingled hope and rage; but though the singular personnel of the stranger who had accosted him was vividly impressed upon his recollection, he failed to discover among the crowd even the slightest resemblance to him. After a fruitless search, in which he enlisted the services of several of the bystanders, who aided all the more zealously, as they believed he had been robbed, he at length, out of breath and baffled, gave over the attempt. Ah, my friend, it wont do, said Barton, with the faint voice and bewildered, ghastly look of one who had been stunned by some mortal shock; there is no use in contending; whatever it is, the dreadful association between me and it, is now establishedI shall never escapenever! Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Barton; dont talk so, said Montague with something at once of irritation and dismay; you must not, I say; well jockey the scoundrel yet; never mind, I saynever mind. It was, however, but labour lost to endeavour henceforward to inspire Barton with one ray of hope; he became desponding. This intangible, and, as it seemed, utterly inadequate influence was fast destroying his energies of intellect, character, and health. His first object was now to return to Ireland, there, as he believed, and now almost hoped, speedily to die. To Ireland accordingly he came and one of the first faces he saw upon the shore, was again that of his implacable and dreaded attendant. Barton seemed at last to have lost not only all enjoyment and every hope in existence, but all independence of will besides. He now submitted himself passively to the management of the friends most nearly interested in his welfare. With the apathy of entire despair, he implicitly assented to whatever measures they suggested and advised; and as a last resource, it was determined to remove him to a house of Lady Ls, in the neighbourhood of Clontarf, where, with the advice of his medical attendant, who persisted in his opinion that the whole train of consequences resulted merely from some nervous derangement, it was resolved that he was to confine himself, strictly to the house, and to make use only of those apartments which commanded a view of an enclosed yard, the gates of which were to be kept jealously locked. Those precautions would certainly secure him against the casual appearance of any living form, that his excited imagination might possibly confound with the spectre which, as it was contended, his fancy recognised in every figure that bore even a distant or general resemblance to the peculiarities with which his fancy had at first invested it. A month or six weeks absolute seclusion under these conditions, it was hoped might, by interrupting the series of these terrible impressions, gradually dispel the predisposing apprehensions, and the associations which had confirmed the supposed disease, and rendered recovery hopeless. Cheerful society and that of his friends was to be constantly supplied, and on the whole, very sanguine expectations were indulged in, that under the treatment thus detailed, the obstinate hypochondria of the patient might at length give way. Accompanied, therefore, by Lady L, General Montague and his daughterhis own affianced bridepoor Bartonhimself never daring to cherish a hope of his ultimate emancipation from the horrors under which his life was literally wasting awaytook possession of the apartments, whose situation protected him against the intrusions, from which he shrank with such unutterable terror. After a little time, a steady persistence in this system began to manifest its results, in a very marked though gradual improvement, alike in the health and spirits of the invalid. Not, indeed, that anything at all approaching complete recovery was yet discernible. On the contrary, to those who had not seen him since the commencement of his strange sufferings, such an alteration would have been apparent as might well have shocked them. The improvement, however, such as it was, was welcomed with gratitude and delight, especially by the young lady, whom her attachment to him, as well as her now singularly painful position, consequent on his protracted illness, rendered an object scarcely one degree less to be commiserated than himself. A week passeda fortnighta monthand yet there had been no recurrence of the hated visitation. The treatment had, so far forth, been followed by complete success. The chain of associations was broken. The constant pressure upon the overtasked spirits had been removed, and, under these comparatively favourable circumstances, the sense of social community with the world about him, and something of human interest, if not of enjoyment, began to reanimate him. It was about this time that Lady L who, like most old ladies of the day, was deep in family receipts, and a great pretender to medical science, dispatched her own maid to the kitchen garden, with a list of herbs, which were there to be carefully culled, and brought back to her housekeeper for the purpose stated. The handmaiden, however, returned with her task scarce half completed, and a good deal flurried and alarmed. Her mode of accounting for her precipitate retreat and evident agitation was odd, and, to the old lady, startling. VIII Softened It appeared that she had repaired to the kitchen garden, pursuant to her mistresss directions, and had there begun to make the specified election among the rank and neglected herbs which crowded one corner of the enclosure, and while engaged in this pleasant labour, she carelessly sang a fragment of an old song, as she said, to keep herself company. She was, however, interrupted by an illnatured laugh; and, looking up, she saw through the old thorn hedge, which surrounded the garden, a singularly illlooking little man, whose countenance wore the stamp of menace and malignity, standing close to her, at the other side of the hawthorn screen. She described herself as utterly unable to move or speak, while he charged her with a message for Captain Barton; the substance of which she distinctly remembered to have been to the effect, that he, Captain Barton, must come abroad as usual, and show himself to his friends, out of doors, or else prepare for a visit in his own chamber. On concluding this brief message, the stranger had, with a threatening air, got down into the outer ditch, and, seizing the hawthorn stems in his hands, seemed on the point of climbing through the fencea feat which might have been accomplished without much difficulty. Without, of course, awaiting this result, the girlthrowing down her treasures of thyme and rosemaryhad turned and run, with the swiftness of terror, to the house. Lady L commanded her, on pain of instant dismissal, to observe an absolute silence respecting all that passed of the incident which related to Captain Barton; and, at the same time, directed instant search to be made by her men, in the garden and the fields adjacent. This measure, however, was as usual, unsuccessful, and, filled with undefinable misgivings, Lady L communicated the incident to her brother. The story, however, until long afterwards, went no further, and, of course, it was jealously guarded from Barton, who continued to amend, though slowly. Barton now began to walk occasionally in the courtyard which I have mentioned, and which being enclosed by a high wall, commanded no view beyond its own extent. Here he, therefore, considered himself perfectly secure and, but for a careless violation of orders by one of the grooms, he might have enjoyed, at least for some time longer, his muchprized immunity. Opening upon the public road, this yard was entered by a wooden gate, with a wicket in it, and was further defended by an iron gate upon the outside. Strict orders had been given to keep both carefully locked; but, spite of these, it had happened that one day, as Barton was slowly pacing this narrow enclosure, in his accustomed walk, and reaching the further extremity, was turning to retrace his steps, he saw the boarded wicket ajar, and the face of his tormentor immovably looking at him through the iron bars. For a few seconds he stood rivetted to the earthbreathless and bloodlessin the fascination of that dreaded gaze, and then fell helplessly insensible, upon the pavement. There he was found a few minutes afterwards, and conveyed to his roomthe apartment which he was never afterwards to leave alive. Henceforward a marked and unaccountable change was observable in the tone of his mind. Captain Barton was now no longer the excited and despairing man he had been before; a strange alteration had passed upon himan unearthly tranquillity reigned in his mindit was the anticipated stillness of the grave. Montague, my friend, this struggle is nearly ended now, he said, tranquilly, but with a look of fixed and fearful awe. I have, at last, some comfort from that world of spirits, from which my punishment has come. I now know that my sufferings will soon be over. Montague pressed him to speak on. Yes, said he, in a softened voice, my punishment is nearly ended. From sorrow, perhaps I shall never, in time or eternity, escape; but my agony is almost over. Comfort has been revealed to me, and what remains of my allotted struggle I will bear with submissioneven with hope. I am glad to hear you speak so tranquilly, my dear Barton, said Montague; peace and cheer of mind are all you need to make you what you were. No, noI never can be that, said he mournfully. I am no longer fit for life. I am soon to die. I am to see him but once again, and then all is ended. He said so, then? suggested Montague. He?No, no good tidings could scarcely come through him; and these were good and welcome; and they came so solemnly and sweetlywith unutterable love and melancholy, such as I could notwithout saying more than is needful, or fitting, of other longpast scenes and personsfully explain to you. As Barton said this he shed tears. Come, come, said Montague, mistaking the source of his emotions, you must not give way. What is it, after all, but a pack of dreams and nonsense; or, at worst, the practices of a scheming rascal that enjoys his power of playing upon your nerves, and loves to exert ita sneaking vagabond that owes you a grudge, and pays it off this way, not daring to try a more manly one. A grudge, indeed, he owes meyou say rightly, said Barton, with a sudden shudder; a grudge as you call it. Oh, my God! when the justice of Heaven permits the Evil one to carry out a scheme of vengeancewhen its execution is committed to the lost and terrible victim of sin, who owes his own ruin to the man, the very man, whom he is commissioned to pursuethen, indeed, the torments and terrors of hell are anticipated on earth. But heaven has dealt mercifully with mehope has opened to me at last; and if death could come without the dreadful sight I am doomed to see, I would gladly close my eyes this moment upon the world. But though death is welcome, I shrink with an agony you cannot understandan actual frenzy of terrorfrom the last encounter with thatthat demon, who has drawn me thus to the verge of the chasm, and who is himself to plunge me down. I am to see him againonce morebut under circumstances unutterably more terrific than ever. As Barton thus spoke, he trembled so violently that Montague was really alarmed at the extremity of his sudden agitation, and hastened to lead him back to the topic which had before seemed to exert so tranquillizing an effect upon his mind. It was not a dream, he said, after a time; I was in a different stateI felt differently and strangely; and yet it was all as real, as clear, and vivid, as what I now see and hearit was a reality. And what did you see and hear? urged his companion. When I wakened from the swoon I fell into on seeing him, said Barton, continuing as if he had not heard the question, it was slowly, very slowlyI was lying by the margin of a broad lake, with misty hills all round, and a soft, melancholy, rosecoloured light illuminated it all. It was unusually sad and lonely, and yet more beautiful than any earthly scene. My head was leaning on the lap of a girl, and she was singing a song, that told, I know not howwhether by words or harmoniesof all my lifeall that is past, and all that is still to come; and with the song the old feelings that I thought had perished within me came back, and tears flowed from my eyespartly for the song and its mysterious beauty, and partly for the unearthly sweetness of her voice; and yet I knew the voiceoh! how well; and I was spellbound as I listened and looked at the solitary scene, without stirring, almost without breathingand, alas! alas! without turning my eyes toward the face that I knew was near me, so sweetly powerful was the enchantment that held me. And so, slowly, the song and scene grew fainter, and fainter, to my senses, till all was dark and still again. And then I awoke to this world, as you saw, comforted, for I knew that I was forgiven much. Barton wept again long and bitterly. From this time, as we have said, the prevailing tone of his mind was one of profound and tranquil melancholy. This, however, was not without its interruptions. He was thoroughly impressed with the conviction that he was to experience another and a final visitation, transcending in horror all he had before experienced. From this anticipated and unknown agony, he often shrank in such paroxysms of abject terror and distraction, as filled the whole household with dismay and superstitious panic. Even those among them who affected to discredit the theory of preternatural agency, were often in their secret souls visited during the silence of night with qualms and apprehensions, which they would not have readily confessed; and none of them attempted to dissuade Barton from the resolution on which he now systematically acted, of shutting himself up in his own apartment. The windowblinds of this room were kept jealously down; and his own man was seldom out of his presence, day or night, his bed being placed in the same chamber. This man was an attached and respectable servant; and his duties, in addition to those ordinarily imposed upon valets, but which Bartons independent habits generally dispensed with, were to attend carefully to the simple precautions by means of which his master hoped to exclude the dreaded intrusion of the Watcher. And, in addition to attending to those arrangements, which amounted merely to guarding against the possibility of his masters being, through any unscreened window or open door, exposed to the dreaded influence, the valet was never to suffer him to be alonetotal solitude, even for a minute, had become to him now almost as intolerable as the idea of going abroad into the public waysit was an instinctive anticipation of what was coming. IX Requiescat It is needless to say, that under these circumstances, no steps were taken toward the fulfilment of that engagement into which he had entered. There was quite disparity enough in point of years, and indeed of habits, between the young lady and Captain Barton, to have precluded anything like very vehement or romantic attachment on her part. Though grieved and anxious, therefore, she was very far from being heartbroken. Miss Montague, however, devoted much of her time to the patient but fruitless attempt to cheer the unhappy invalid. She read for him, and conversed with him; but it was apparent that whatever exertions he made, the endeavour to escape from the one ever waking fear that preyed upon him, was utterly and miserably unavailing. Young ladies are much given to the cultivation of pets; and among those who shared the favour of Miss Montague was a fine old owl, which the gardener, who caught him napping among the ivy of a ruined stable, had dutifully presented to that young lady. The caprice which regulates such preferences was manifested in the extravagant favour with which this grim and illfavoured bird was at once distinguished by his mistress; and, trifling as this whimsical circumstance may seem, I am forced to mention it, inasmuch as it is connected, oddly enough, with the concluding scene of the story. Barton, so far from sharing in this liking for the new favourite, regarded it from the first with an antipathy as violent as it was utterly unaccountable. Its very vicinity was unsupportable to him. He seemed to hate and dread it with a vehemence absolutely laughable, and which to those who have never witnessed the exhibition of antipathies of this kind, would seem all but incredible. With these few words of preliminary explanation, I shall proceed to state the particulars of the last scene in this strange series of incidents. It was almost two oclock one winters night, and Barton was, as usual at that hour, in his bed; the servant we have mentioned occupied a smaller bed in the same room, and a light was burning. The man was on a sudden aroused by his master, who said I cant get it out of my head that that accursed bird has got out somehow, and is lurking in some corner of the room. I have been dreaming about him. Get up, Smith, and look about; search for him. Such hateful dreams! The servant rose, and examined the chamber, and while engaged in so doing, he heard the wellknown sound, more like a longdrawn gasp than a hiss, with which these birds from their secret haunts affright the quiet of the night. This ghostly indication of its proximityfor the sound proceeded from the passage upon which Bartons chamberdoor openeddetermined the search of the servant, who, opening the door, proceeded a step or two forward for the purpose of driving the bird away. He had however, hardly entered the lobby, when the door behind him slowly swung to under the impulse, as it seemed, of some gentle current of air; but as immediately over the door there was a kind of window, intended in the day time to aid in lighting the passage, and through which at present the rays of the candle were issuing, the valet could see quite enough for his purpose. As he advanced he heard his masterwho, lying in a wellcurtained bed, had not, as it seemed, perceived his exit from the roomcall him by name, and direct him to place the candle on the table by his bed. The servant, who was now some way in the long passage, and not liking to raise his voice for the purpose of replying, lest he should startle the sleeping inmates of the house, began to walk hurriedly and softly back again, when, to his amazement, he heard a voice in the interior of the chamber answering calmly, and actually saw, through the window which overtopped the door, that the light was slowly shifting, as if carried across the room in answer to his masters call. Palsied by a feeling akin to terror, yet not unmingled with curiosity, he stood breathless and listening at the threshold, unable to summon resolution to push open the door and enter. Then came a rustling of the curtains, and a sound like that of one who in a low voice hushes a child to rest, in the midst of which he heard Barton say, in a tone of stifled horrorOh, Godoh, my God! and repeat the same exclamation several times. Then ensued a silence, which again was broken by the same strange soothing sound; and at last there burst forth, in one swelling peal, a yell of agony so appalling and hideous, that, under some impulse of ungovernable horror, the man rushed to the door, and with his whole strength strove to force it open. Whether it was that, in his agitation, he had himself but imperfectly turned the handle, or that the door was really secured upon the inside, he failed to effect an entrance; and as he tugged and pushed, yell after yell rang louder and wilder through the chamber, accompanied all the while by the same hushed sounds. Actually freezing with terror, and scarce knowing what he did, the man turned and ran down the passage, wringing his hands in the extremity of horror and irresolution. At the stairhead he was encountered by General Montague, scared and eager, and just as they met the fearful sounds had ceased. What is it? Whowhere is your master? said Montague with the incoherence of extreme agitation. Has anythingfor Gods sake is anything wrong? Lord have mercy on us, its all over, said the man staring wildly towards his masters chamber. Hes dead, sir, Im sure hes dead. Without waiting for inquiry or explanation, Montague, closely followed by the servant, hurried to the chamberdoor, turned the handle, and pushed it open. As the door yielded to his pressure, the illomened bird of which the servant had been in search, uttering its spectral warning, started suddenly from the far side of the bed, and flying through the doorway close over their heads, and extinguishing, in his passage, the candle which Montague carried, crashed through the skylight that overlooked the lobby, and sailed away into the darkness of the outer space. There it is, God bless us, whispered the man, after a breathless pause. Curse that bird, muttered the General, startled by the suddenness of the apparition, and unable to conceal his discomposure. The candle is moved, said the man, after another breathless pause, pointing to the candle that still burned in the room; see, they put it by the bed. Draw the curtains, fellow, and dont stand gaping there, whispered Montague, sternly. The man hesitated. Hold this, then, said Montague, impatiently thrusting the candlestick into the servants hand, and himself advancing to the bedside, he drew the curtains apart. The light of the candle, which was still burning at the bedside, fell upon a figure huddled together, and half upright, at the head of the bed. It seemed as though it had slunk back as far as the solid panelling would allow, and the hands were still clutched in the bedclothes. Barton, Barton, Barton! cried the General, with a strange mixture of awe and vehemence. He took the candle, and held it so that it shone full upon the face. The features were fixed, stern, and white; the jaw was fallen; and the sightless eyes, still open, gazed vacantly forward toward the front of the bed. God Almighty! hes dead, muttered the General, as he looked upon this fearful spectacle. They both continued to gaze upon it in silence for a minute or more. And cold, too, whispered Montague, withdrawing his hand from that of the dead man. And see, seemay I never have life, sir, added the man, after another pause, with a shudder, but there was something else on the bed with him. Look therelook theresee that, sir. As the man thus spoke, he pointed to a deep indenture, as if caused by a heavy pressure, near the foot of the bed. Montague was silent. Come, sir, come away, for Gods sake, whispered the man, drawing close up to him, and holding fast by his arm, while he glanced fearfully round; what good can be done here nowcome away, for Gods sake! At this moment they heard the steps of more than one approaching, and Montague, hastily desiring the servant to arrest their progress, endeavoured to loose the rigid grip with which the fingers of the dead man were clutched in the bedclothes, and drew, as well as he was able, the awful figure into a reclining posture; then closing the curtains carefully upon it, he hastened himself to meet those persons that were approaching. It is needless to follow the personages so slightly connected with this narrative, into the events of their after life; it is enough to say, that no clue to the solution of these mysterious occurrences was ever after discovered; and so long an interval having now passed since the event which I have just described concluded this strange history, it is scarcely to be expected that time can throw any new lights upon its dark and inexplicable outline. Until the secrets of the earth shall be no longer hidden, therefore, these transactions must remain shrouded in their original obscurity. The only occurrence in Captain Bartons former life to which reference was ever made, as having any possible connection with the sufferings with which his existence closed, and which he himself seemed to regard as working out a retribution for some grievous sin of his past life, was a circumstance which not for several years after his death was brought to light. The nature of this disclosure was painful to his relatives, and discreditable to his memory. It appeared that some six years before Captain Bartons final return to Dublin, he had formed, in the town of Plymouth, a guilty attachment, the object of which was the daughter of one of the ships crew under his command. The father had visited the frailty of his unhappy child with extreme harshness, and even brutality, and it was said that she had died heartbroken. Presuming upon Bartons implication in her guilt, this man had conducted himself toward him with marked insolence, and Barton retaliated this, and what he resented with still more exasperated bitternesshis treatment of the unfortunate girlby a systematic exercise of those terrible and arbitrary severities which the regulations of the navy placed at the command of those who are responsible for its discipline. The man had at length made his escape, while the vessel was in port at Naples, but died, as it was said, in an hospital in that town, of the wounds inflicted in one of his recent and sanguinary punishments. Whether these circumstances in reality bear, or not, upon the occurrences of Bartons afterlife, it is, of course, impossible to say. It seems, however more than probable that they were at least, in his own mind, closely associated with them. But however the truth may be, as to the origin and motives of this mysterious persecution, there can be no doubt that, with respect to the agencies by which it was accomplished, absolute and impenetrable mystery is like to prevail until the day of doom. Postscript by the Editor The preceding narrative is given in the ipsissima verba of the good old clergyman, under whose hand it was delivered to Doctor Hesselius. Notwithstanding the occasional stiffness and redundancy of his sentences, I thought it better to reserve to myself the power of assuring the reader, that in handing to the printer, the MS. of a statement so marvellous, the Editor has not altered one letter of the original text.[Ed. Papers of Dr. Hesselius.] The Room in the Dragon Volant Prologue The curious case which I am about to place before you, is referred to, very pointedly, and more than once, in the extraordinary essay upon the drugs of the Dark and the Middle Ages, from the pen of Doctor Hesselius. This essay he entitles Mortis Imago, and he, therein, discusses the Vinum letiferum, the Beatifica, the Somnus Angelorum, the Hypnus Sagarum, the Aqua Thessalli, and about twenty other infusions and distillations, well known to the sages of eight hundred years ago, and two of which are still, he alleges, known to the fraternity of thieves, and, among them, as policeoffice inquiries sometimes disclose to this day, in practical use. The essay, Mortis Imago, will occupy as nearly as I can, at present, calculate, two volumes, the ninth and tenth, of the collected papers of Doctor Martin Hesselius. This essay, I may remark, in conclusion, is very curiously enriched by citations, in great abundance, from medieval verse and prose romance, some of the most valuable of which, strange to say, are Egyptian. I have selected this particular statement from among many cases equally striking, but hardly, I think, so effective as mere narratives, in this irregular form of publication, it is simply as a story that I present it. I On the Road In the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly threeandtwenty, and had just succeeded to a very large sum in consols, and other securities. The first fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and Ithe slight check of the hundred days removed, by the genius of Wellington, on the field of Waterloowas now added to the philosophic throng. I was posting up to Paris from Bruxelles, following, I presume, the route that the allied army had pursued but a few weeks beforemore carriages than you could believe were pursuing the same line. You could not look back or forward, without seeing into far perspective the clouds of dust which marked the line of the long series of vehicles. We were, perpetually, passing relays of returnhorses, on their way, jaded and dusty, to the inns from which they had been taken. They were arduous times for those patient public servants. The whole world seemed posting up to Paris. I ought to have noted it more particularly, but my head was so full of Paris and the future, that I passed the intervening scenery with little patience and less attention; I think, however, that it was about four miles to the frontier side of a rather picturesque little town, the name of which, as of many more important places through which I posted in my hurried journey, I forget, and about two hours before sunset, that we came up with a carriage in distress. It was not quite an upset. But the two leaders were lying flat. The booted postillions had got down, and two servants who seemed very much at sea in such matters, were by way of assisting them. A pretty little bonnet and head were popped out of the window of the carriage in distress. Its tournure, and that of the shoulders that also appeared for a moment, was captivating I resolved to play the part of a good Samaritan; stopped my chaise, jumped out, and with my servant lent a very willing hand in the emergency. Alas! the lady with the pretty bonnet, wore a very thick, black veil. I could see nothing but the pattern of the Bruxelles lace, as she drew back. A lean old gentleman, almost at the same time, stuck his head out of the window. An invalid he seemed, for although the day was hot, he wore a black muffler which came up to his ears and nose, quite covering the lower part of his face, an arrangement which he disturbed by pulling it down for a moment, and poured forth a torrent of French thanks, as he uncovered his black wig, and gesticulated with grateful animation. One of my very few accomplishments besides boxing, which was cultivated by all Englishmen at that time, was French; and I replied, I hope and believe, grammatically. Many bows being exchanged, the old gentlemans head went in again, and the demure, pretty little bonnet once more appeared. The lady must have heard me speak to my servant, for she framed her little speech in such pretty, broken English, and in a voice so sweet, that I more than ever cursed the black veil that baulked my romantic curiosity. The arms that were emblazoned on the panel were peculiar; I remember especially, one device, it was the figure of a stork, painted in carmine, upon what the heralds call a field or. The bird was standing upon one leg, and in the other claw held a stone. This is, I believe, the emblem of vigilance. Its oddity struck me, and remained impressed upon my memory. There were supporters besides, but I forget what they were. The courtly manners of these people, the style of their servants, the elegance of their travelling carriage, and the supporters to their arms, satisfied me that they were noble. The lady, you may be sure, was not the less interesting on that account. What a fascination a title exercises upon the imagination! I do not mean on that of snobs or moral flunkies. Superiority of rank is a powerful and genuine influence in love. The idea of superior refinement is associated with it. The careless notice of the squire tells more upon the heart of the pretty milkmaid, than years of honest Dobbins manly devotion, and so on and up. It is an unjust world! But in this case there was something more. I was conscious of being goodlooking.

I really believe I was; and there could be no mistake about my being nearly six feet high. Why need this lady have thanked me? Had not her husband, for such I assumed him to be, thanked me quite enough, and for both? I was instinctively aware that the lady was looking on me with no unwilling eyes; and, through her veil, I felt the power of her gaze. She was now rolling away, with a train of dust behind her wheels, in the golden sunlight, and a wise young gentleman followed her with ardent eyes, and sighed profoundly as the distance increased. I told the postillions on no account to pass the carriage, but to keep it steadily in view, and to pull up at whatever postinghouse it should stop at. We were soon in the little town, and the carriage we followed drew up at the Belle Etoile, a comfortable old inn. They got out of the carriage and entered the house. At a leisurely pace we followed. I got down, and mounted the steps listlessly, like a man quite apathetic and careless. Audacious as I was, I did not care to inquire in what room I should find them. I peeped into the apartment to my right, and then into that on my left. My people were not there. I ascended the stairs. A drawingroom door stood open. I entered with the most innocent air in the world. It was a spacious room, and, beside myself, contained but one living figurea very pretty and ladylike one. There was the very bonnet with which I had fallen in love. The lady stood with her back toward me. I could not tell whether the envious veil was raised; she was reading a letter. I stood for a minute in fixed attention, gazing upon her, in the vague hope that she might turn about, and give me an opportunity of seeing her features. She did not; but with a step or two she placed herself before a little cabrioletable, which stood against the wall, from which rose a tall mirror, in a tarnished frame. I might, indeed, have mistaken it for a picture; for it now reflected a halflength portrait of a singularly beautiful woman. She was looking down upon a letter which she held in her slender fingers, and in which she seemed absorbed. The face was oval, melancholy, sweet. It had in it, nevertheless, a faint and undefinably sensual quality also. Nothing could exceed the delicacy of its features, or the brilliancy of its tints. The eyes, indeed, were lowered, so that I could not see their colour; nothing but their long lashes, and delicate eyebrows. She continued reading. She must have been deeply interested; I never saw a living form so motionlessI gazed on a tinted statue. Being at that time blessed with long and keen vision, I saw this beautiful face with perfect distinctness. I saw even the blue veins that traced their wanderings on the whiteness of her full throat. I ought to have retreated as noiselessly as I came in, before my presence was detected. But I was too much interested to move from the spot, for a few moments longer; and while they were passing, she raised her eyes. Those eyes were large, and of that hue which modern poets term violet. These splendid melancholy eyes were turned upon me from the glass, with a haughty stare, and hastily the lady lowered her black veil, and turned about. I fancied that she hoped I had not seen her. I was watching every look and movement, the minutest, with an attention as intense as if an ordeal involving my life depended on them. II The InnYard of the Belle Etoile The face was, indeed, one to fall in love with at first sight. Those sentiments that take such sudden possession of young men were now dominating my curiosity. My audacity faltered before her; and I felt that my presence in this room was probably an impertinence. This point she quickly settled, for the same very sweet voice I had heard before, now said coldly, and this time in French, Monsieur cannot be aware that this apartment is not public. I bowed very low, faltered some apologies, and backed to the door. I suppose I looked penitent and embarrassed. I certainly felt so; for the lady said, by way it seemed of softening matters, I am happy, however, to have an opportunity of again thanking Monsieur for the assistance, so prompt and effectual, which he had the goodness to render us today. It was more the altered tone in which it was spoken, than the speech itself that encouraged me. It was also true that she need not have recognized me; and even if she had, she certainly was not obliged to thank me over again. All this was indescribably flattering, and all the more so that it followed so quickly on her slight reproof. The tone in which she spoke had become low and timid, and I observed that she turned her head quickly towards a second door of the room, I fancied that the gentleman in the black wig, a jealous husband, perhaps, might reappear through it. Almost at the same moment, a voice at once reedy and nasal, was heard snarling some directions to a servant, and evidently approaching. It was the voice that had thanked me so profusely, from the carriage windows, about an hour before. Monsieur will have the goodness to retire, said the lady, in a tone that resembled entreaty, at the same time gently waving her hand toward the door through which I had entered. Bowing again very low, I stepped back, and closed the door. I ran down the stairs, very much elated. I saw the host of the Belle Etoile which, as I said, was the sign and designation of my inn. I described the apartment I had just quitted, said I liked it, and asked whether I could have it. He was extremely troubled, but that apartment and two adjoining rooms were engaged By whom? People of distinction. But who are they? They must have names, or titles. Undoubtedly, Monsieur, but such a stream is rolling into Paris, that we have ceased to inquire the names or titles of our guestswe designate them simply by the rooms they occupy. What stay do they make? Even that, Monsieur, I cannot answer. It does not interest us. Our rooms, while this continues, can never be, for a moment, disengaged. I should have liked those rooms so much! Is one of them a sleeping apartment? Yes, sir, and Monsieur will observe that people do not usually engage bedrooms, unless they mean to stay the night. Well, I can, I suppose, have some rooms, any, I dont care in what part of the house? Certainly, Monsieur can have two apartments. They are the last at present disengaged. I took them instantly. It was plain these people meant to make a stay here; at least they would not go till morning. I began to feel that I was all but engaged in an adventure. I took possession of my rooms, and looked out of the window, which I found commanded the innyard. Many horses were being liberated from the traces, hot and weary, and others fresh from the stables, being put to. A great many vehiclessome private carriages, others, like mine, of that public class, which is equivalent to our old English postchaise, were standing on the pavement, waiting their turn for relays. Fussy servants were toing and froing, and idle ones lounging or laughing, and the scene, on the whole, was animated and amusing. Among these objects, I thought I recognized the travelling carriage, and one of the servants of the persons of distinction about whom I was, just then, so profoundly interested. I therefore ran down the stairs, made my way to the back door; and so, behold me, in a moment, upon the uneven pavement, among all these sights and sounds which in such a place attend upon a period of extraordinary crush and traffic. By this time the sun was near its setting, and threw its golden beams on the red brick chimneys of the offices, and made the two barrels, that figured as pigeonhouses, on the tops of poles, look as if they were on fire. Everything in this light becomes picturesque; and things interest us which, in the sober grey of morning, are dull enough. After a little search, I lighted upon the very carriage, of which I was in quest. A servant was locking one of the doors, for it was made with the security of lock and key. I paused near, looking at the panel of the door. A very pretty device that red stork! I observed, pointing to the shield on the door, and no doubt indicates a distinguished family? The servant looked at me, for a moment, as he placed the little key in his pocket, and said with a slightly sarcastic bow and smile, Monsieur is at liberty to conjecture. Nothing daunted, I forthwith administered that laxative which, on occasion, acts so happily upon the tongueI mean a tip. The servant looked at the Napoleon in his hand, and then, in my face, with a sincere expression of surprise. Monsieur is very generous! Not worth mentioningwho are the lady and gentleman who came here, in this carriage, and whom, you may remember, I and my servant assisted today in an emergency, when their horses had come to the ground? They are the Count, and the young lady we call the Countessbut I know not, she may be his daughter. Can you tell me where they live? Upon my honour, Monsieur, I am unableI know not. Not know where your master lives! Surely you know something more about him than his name? Nothing worth relating, Monsieur; in fact, I was hired in Bruxelles, on the very day they started. Monsieur Picard, my fellowservant, Monsieur the Comtes gentleman, he has been years in his service and knows everything; but he never speaks except to communicate an order. From him I have learned nothing. We are going to Paris, however, and there I shall speedily pick up all about them. At present I am as ignorant of all that as Monsieur himself. And where is Monsieur Picard? He has gone to the cutlers to get his razors set. But I do not think he will tell anything. This was a poor harvest for my golden sowing. The man, I think, spoke truth, and would honestly have betrayed the secrets of the family, if he had possessed any. I took my leave politely; and mounting the stairs, again I found myself once more in my room. Forthwith I summoned my servant. Though I had brought him with me from England, he was a native of Francea useful fellow, sharp, bustling, and, of course, quite familiar with the ways and tricks of his countrymen. St. Clair, shut the door; come here. I cant rest till I have made out something about those people of rank who have got the apartments under mine. Here are fifteen francs; make out the servants we assisted today; have them to a petit souper, and come back and tell me their entire history. I have, this moment, seen one of them who knows nothing, and has communicated it. The other, whose name I forget, is the unknown noblemans valet, and knows everything. Him you must pump. It is, of course, the venerable peer, and not the young lady who accompanies him, that interests meyou understand? Begone! fly! and return with all the details I sigh for, and every circumstance that can possibly interest me. It was a commission which admirably suited the tastes and spirits of my worthy St. Clair, to whom, you will have observed, I had accustomed myself to talk with the peculiar familiarity which the old French comedy establishes between master and valet. I am sure he laughed at me in secret; but nothing could be more polite and deferential. With several wise looks, nods and shrugs, he withdrew; and looking down from my window, I saw him, with incredible quickness, enter the yard, where I soon lost sight of him among the carriages. III Death and Love Together Mated When the day drags, when a man is solitary, and in a fever of impatience and suspense; when the minutehand of his watch travels as slowly as the hourhand used to do, and the hourhand has lost all appreciable motion; when he yawns, and beats the devils tattoo, and flattens his handsome nose against the window, and whistles tunes he hates, and, in short, does not know what to do with himself, it is deeply to be regretted that he cannot make a solemn dinner of three courses more than once in a day. The laws of matter, to which we are slaves, deny us that resource. But in the times I speak of, supper was still a substantial meal, and its hour was approaching. This was consolatory. Threequarters of an hour, however, still interposed. How was I to dispose of that interval? I had two or three idle books, it is true, as travellingcompanions; but there are many moods in which one cannot read. My novel lay with my rug and walkingstick on the sofa, and I did not care if the heroine and the hero were both drowned together in the waterbarrel that I saw in the innyard under my window. I took a turn or two up and down my room, and sighed, looking at myself in the glass, adjusted my great white choker, folded and tied after Brummel, the immortal Beau, put on a buff waistcoat and my blue swallowtailed coat with gilt buttons; I deluged my pocket handkerchief with eau de cologne (we had not then the variety of bouquets with which the genius of perfumery has since blessed us); I arranged my hair, on which I piqued myself, and which I loved to groom in those days. That darkbrown chevelure, with a natural curl, is now represented by a few dozen perfectly white hairs, and its placea smooth, bald, pink headknows it no more. But let us forget these mortifications. It was then rich, thick, and darkbrown. I was making a very careful toilet. I took my unexceptionable hat from its case, and placed it lightly on my wise head, as nearly as memory and practice enabled me to do so, at that very slight inclination which the immortal person I have mentioned was wont to give to his. A pair of light French gloves and a rather clublike knotted walkingstick, such as just then came into vogue, for a year or two again in England, in the phraseology of Sir Walter Scotts romances, completed my equipment. All this attention to effect, preparatory to a mere lounge in the yard, or on the steps of the Belle Etoile, was a simple act of devotion to the wonderful eyes which I had that evening beheld for the first time, and never, never could forget! In plain terms, it was all done in the vague, very vague hope that those eyes might behold the unexceptionable getup of a melancholy slave, and retain the image, not altogether without secret approbation. As I completed my preparations the light failed me; the last level streak of sunlight disappeared, and a fading twilight only remained. I sighed in unison with the pensive hour, and threw open the window, intending to look out for a moment before going downstairs. I perceived instantly that the window underneath mine was also open, for I heard two voices in conversation, although I could not distinguish what they were saying. The male voice was peculiar; it was, as I told you, reedy and nasal. I knew it, of course, instantly. The answering voice spoke in those sweet tones which I recognised only too easily. The dialogue was only for a minute; the repulsive male voice laughed, I fancied, with a kind of devilish satire, and retired from the window, so that I almost ceased to hear it. The other voice remained nearer the window, but not so near as at first. It was not an altercation; there was evidently nothing the least exciting in the colloquy. What would I not have given that it had been a quarrela violent oneand I the redresser of wrongs, and the defender of insulted beauty! Alas! so far as I could pronounce upon the character of the tones I heard, they might be as tranquil a pair as any in existence. In a moment more the lady began to sing an odd little chanson. I need not remind you how much farther the voice is heard singing than speaking. I could distinguish the words. The voice was of that exquisitely sweet kind which is called, I believe, a semicontralto; it had something pathetic, and something, I fancied, a little mocking in its tones. I venture a clumsy, but adequate translation of the words Death and Love, together mated, Watch and wait in ambuscade; At early morn, or else belated. They meet and mark the man or maid. Burning sigh, or breath that freezes, Numbs or maddens man or maid; Death or Love the victim seizes, Breathing from their ambuscade. Enough, Madame! said the old voice, with sudden severity. We do not desire, I believe, to amuse the grooms and hostlers in the yard with our music. The ladys voice laughed gaily. You desire to quarrel, Madame! And the old man, I presume, shut down the window. Down it went, at all events, with a rattle that might easily have broken the glass. Of all thin partitions, glass is the most effectual excluder of sound. I heard no more, not even the subdued hum of the colloquy. What a charming voice this Countess had! How it melted, swelled, and trembled! How it moved, and even agitated me! What a pity that a hoarse old jackdaw should have power to crow down such a Philomel! Alas! what a life it is! I moralized, wisely. That beautiful Countess, with the patience of an angel and the beauty of a Venus and the accomplishments of all the Muses, a slave! She knows perfectly who occupies the apartments over hers; she heard me raise my window. One may conjecture pretty well for whom that music was intendeday, old gentleman, and for whom you suspected it to be intended. In a very agreeable flutter I left my room, and descending the stairs, passed the Counts door very much at my leisure. There was just a chance that the beautiful songstress might emerge. I dropped my stick on the lobby, near their door, and you may be sure it took me some little time to pick it up! Fortune, nevertheless, did not favour me. I could not stay on the lobby all night picking up my stick, so I went down to the hall. I consulted the clock, and found that there remained but a quarter of an hour to the moment of supper. Everyone was roughing it now, every inn in confusion; people might do at such a juncture what they never did before. Was it just possible that, for once, the Count and Countess would take their chairs at the tabledhte? IV Monsieur Droqville Full of this exciting hope, I sauntered out, upon the steps of the Belle Etoile. It was now night, and a pleasant moonlight over everything. I had entered more into my romance since my arrival, and this poetic light heightened the sentiment. What a drama, if she turned out to be the Counts daughter, and in love with me! What a delightfultragedy, if she turned out to be the Counts wife! In this luxurious mood, I was accosted by a tall and very elegantlymade gentleman, who appeared to be about fifty. His air was courtly and graceful, and there was in his whole manner and appearance something so distinguished, that it was impossible not to suspect him of being a person of rank. He had been standing upon the steps, looking out, like me, upon the moonlight effects that transformed, as it were, the objects and buildings in the little street. He accosted me, I say, with the politeness, at once easy and lofty, of a French nobleman of the old school. He asked me if I were not Mr. Beckett? I assented; and he immediately introduced himself as the Marquis dHarmonville (this information he gave me in a low tone), and asked leave to present me with a letter from Lord R, who knew my father slightly, and had once done me, also, a trifling kindness. This English peer, I may mention, stood very high in the political world, and was named as the most probable successor to the distinguished post of English Minister at Paris. I received it with a low bow, and read My Dear Beckett, I beg to introduce my very dear friend, the Marquis dHarmonville, who will explain to you the nature of the services it may be in your power to render him and us. He went on to speak of the Marquis as a man whose great wealth, whose intimate relations with the old families, and whose legitimate influence with the court rendered him the fittest possible person for those friendly offices which, at the desire of his own sovereign, and of our government, he has so obligingly undertaken. It added a great deal to my perplexity, when I read, further By the by, Walton was here yesterday, and told me that your seat was likely to be attacked; something, he says, is unquestionably going on at Domwell. You know there is an awkwardness in my meddling ever so cautiously. But I advise, if it is not very officious, your making Haxton look after it, and report immediately. I fear it is serious. I ought to have mentioned that, for reasons that you will see, when you have talked with him for five minutes, the Marquiswith the concurrence of all our friendsdrops his title, for a few weeks, and is at present plain Monsieur Droqville. I am this moment going to town, and can say no more. Yours faithfully, R. I was utterly puzzled. I could scarcely boast of Lord s acquaintance. I knew no one named Haxton, and, except my hatter, no one called Walton; and this peer wrote as if we were intimate friends! I looked at the back of the letter, and the mystery was solved. And now, to my consternationfor I was plain Richard BeckettI read To George Stanhope Beckett, Esq., M.P. I looked with consternation in the face of the Marquis. What apology can I offer to Monsieur the Marto Monsieur Droqville? It is true my name is Beckettit is true I am known, though very slightly to Lord R; but the letter was not intended for me. My name is Richard Beckettthis is to Mr. Stanhope Beckett, the member for Shillingsworth. What can I say, or do, in this unfortunate situation? I can only give you my honour as a gentleman, that, for me, the letter, which I now return, shall remain as unviolated a secret as before I opened it. I am so shocked and grieved that such a mistake should have occurred! I dare say my honest vexation and good faith were pretty legibly written in my countenance; for the look of gloomy embarrassment which had for a moment settled on the face of the Marquis, brightened; he smiled, kindly, and extended his hand. I have not the least doubt that Monsieur Beckett will respect my little secret. As a mistake was destined to occur, I have reason to thank my good stars that it should have been with a gentleman of honour. Monsieur Beckett will permit me, I hope, to place his name among those of my friends? I thanked the Marquis very much for his kind expressions. He went on to say If, Monsieur, I can persuade you to visit me at Claironville, in Normandy, where I hope to see, on the 15th of August, a great many friends, whose acquaintance it might interest you to make, I shall be too happy. I thanked him, of course, very gratefully for his hospitality. He continued I cannot, for the present, see my friends, for reasons which you may surmise, at my house in Paris. But Monsieur will be so good as to let me know the hotel he means to stay at in Paris; and he will find that although the Marquis dHarmonville is not in town, that Monsieur Droqville will not lose sight of him. With many acknowledgments I gave him the information he desired. And in the meantime, he continued, if you think of any way in which Monsieur Droqville can be of use to you, our communication shall not be interrupted, and I shall so manage matters that you can easily let me know. I was very much flattered. The Marquis had, as we say, taken a fancy to me. Such likings at first sight often ripen into lasting friendships. To be sure it was just possible that the Marquis might think it prudent to keep the involuntary depository of a political secret, even so vague a one, in good humour. Very graciously the Marquis took his leave, going up the stairs of the Belle Etoile. I remained upon the steps, for a minute lost in speculation upon this new theme of interest. But the wonderful eyes, the thrilling voice, the exquisite figure of the beautiful lady who had taken possession of my imagination, quickly reasserted their influence. I was again gazing at the sympathetic moon, and descending the steps, I loitered along the pavements among strange objects, and houses that were antique and picturesque, in a dreamy state, thinking. In a little while, I turned into the innyard again. There had come a lull. Instead of the noisy place it was, an hour or two before, the yard was perfectly still and empty, except for the carriages that stood here and there. Perhaps there was a servants tabledhte just then. I was rather pleased to find solitude; and undisturbed I found out my ladyloves carriage, in the moonlight. I mused, I walked round it; I was as utterly foolish and maudlin as very young men, in my situation, usually are. The blinds were down, the doors, I suppose, locked. The brilliant moonlight revealed everything, and cast sharp, black shadows of wheel, and bar, and spring, on the pavement. I stood before the escutcheon painted on the door, which I had examined in the daylight. I wondered how often her eyes had rested on the same object. I pondered in a charming dream. A harsh, loud voice, over my shoulder, said suddenly, A red storkgood! The stork is a bird of prey; it is vigilant, greedy, and catches gudgeons. Red, too!blood red! Ha! ha! the symbol is appropriate. I had turned about, and beheld the palest face I ever saw. It was broad, ugly, and malignant. The figure was that of a French officer, in undress, and was six feet high. Across the nose and eyebrow there was a deep scar, which made the repulsive face grimmer. The officer elevated his chin and his eyebrows, with a scoffing chuckle, and saidI have shot a stork, with a rifle bullet, when he thought himself safe in the clouds, for mere sport! (He shrugged, and laughed malignantly). See, Monsieur; when a man like mea man of energy, you understand, a man with all his wits about him, a man who has made the tour of Europe under canvas, and, parbleu! often without itresolves to discover a secret, expose a crime, catch a thief, spit a robber on the point of his sword, it is odd if he does not succeed. Ha! ha! ha! Adieu, Monsieur! He turned with an angry whisk on his heel, and swaggered with long strides out of the gate. V Supper at the Belle Etoile The French army were in a rather savage temper, just then. The English, especially, had but scant courtesy to expect at their hands. It was plain, however, that the cadaverous gentleman who had just apostrophized the heraldry of the Counts carriage, with such mysterious acrimony, had not intended any of his malevolence for me. He was stung by some old recollection, and had marched off, seething with fury. I had received one of those unacknowledged shocks which startle us, when fancying ourselves perfectly alone, we discover on a sudden, that our antics have been watched by a spectator, almost at our elbow. In this case, the effect was enhanced by the extreme repulsiveness of the face, and, I may add, its proximity, for, as I think, it almost touched mine. The enigmatical harangue of this person, so full of hatred and implied denunciation, was still in my ears. Here at all events was new matter for the industrious fancy of a lover to work upon. It was time now to go to the tabledhte. Who could tell what lights the gossip of the suppertable might throw upon the subject that interested me so powerfully! I stepped into the room, my eyes searching the little assembly, about thirty people, for the persons who specially interested me. It was not easy to induce people, so hurried and overworked as those of the Belle Etoile just now, to send meals up to ones private apartments, in the midst of this unparalleled confusion; and, therefore, many people who did not like it, might find themselves reduced to the alternative of supping at the tabledhte, or starving. The Count was not there, nor his beautiful companion; but the Marquis dHarmonville, whom I hardly expected to see in so public a place, signed, with a significant smile, to a vacant chair beside himself. I secured it, and he seemed pleased, and almost immediately entered into conversation with me. This is, probably, your first visit to France? he said. I told him it was, and he said You must not think me very curious and impertinent; but Paris is about the most dangerous capital a highspirited and generous young gentleman could visit without a Mentor. If you have not an experienced friend as a companion during your visit He paused. I told him I was not so provided, but that I had my wits about me; that I had seen a good deal of life in England, and that, I fancied, human nature was pretty much the same in all parts of the world. The Marquis shook his head, smiling. You will find very marked differences, notwithstanding, he said. Peculiarities of intellect and peculiarities of character, undoubtedly, do pervade different nations; and this results, among the criminal classes, in a style of villainy no less peculiar. In Paris, the class who live by their wits, is three or four times as great as in London; and they live much better; some of them even splendidly. They are more ingenious than the London rogues; they have more animation, and invention, and the dramatic faculty, in which your countrymen are deficient, is everywhere. These invaluable attributes place them upon a totally different level. They can affect the manners and enjoy the luxuries of people of distinction. They live, many of them, by play. So do many of our London rogues. Yes, but in a totally different way. They are the habitus of certain gamingtables, billiardrooms, and other places, including your races, where high play goes on; and by superior knowledge of chances, by masking their play, by means of confederates, by means of bribery, and other artifices, varying with the subject of their imposture, they rob the unwary. But here it is more elaborately done, and with a really exquisite finesse. There are people whose manners, style, conversation, are unexceptionable, living in handsome houses in the best situations, with everything about them in the most refined taste, and exquisitely luxurious, who impose even upon the Parisian bourgeois, who believe them to be, in good faith, people of rank and fashion, because their habits are expensive and refined, and their houses are frequented by foreigners of distinction, and, to a degree, by foolish young Frenchmen of rank. At all these houses play goes on. The ostensible host and hostess seldom join in it; they provide it simply to plunder their guests, by means of their accomplices, and thus wealthy strangers are inveigled and robbed. But I have heard of a young Englishman, a son of Lord Rooksbury, who broke two Parisian gamingtables only last year. I see, he said, laughing, you are come here to do likewise. I, myself, at about your age, undertook the same spirited enterprise. I raised no less a sum than five hundred thousand francs to begin with; I expected to carry all before me by the simple expedient of going on doubling my stakes. I had heard of it, and I fancied that the sharpers, who kept the table, knew nothing of the matter. I found, however, that they not only knew all about it, but had provided against the possibility of any such experiments; and I was pulled up before I had well begun, by a rule which forbids the doubling of an original stake more than four times, consecutively. And is that rule in force still? I inquired, chapfallen. He laughed and shrugged, Of course it is, my young friend. People who live by an art, always understand it better than an amateur. I see you had formed the same plan, and no doubt came provided. I confessed I had prepared for conquest upon a still grander scale. I had arrived with a purse of thirty thousand pounds sterling. Any acquaintance of my very dear friend, Lord R, interests me; and, besides my regard for him, I am charmed with you; so you will pardon all my, perhaps, too officious questions and advice. I thanked him most earnestly for his valuable counsel, and begged that he would have the goodness to give me all the advice in his power. Then if you take my advice, said he, you will leave your money in the bank where it lies. Never risk a Napoleon in a gaminghouse.

The night I went to break the bank, I lost between seven and eight thousand pounds sterling of your English money; and my next adventure, I had obtained an introduction to one of those elegant gaminghouses which affect to be the private mansions of persons of distinction, and was saved from ruin by a gentleman, whom, ever since, I have regarded with increasing respect and friendship. It oddly happens he is in this house at this moment. I recognized his servant, and made him a visit in his apartments here, and found him the same brave, kind, honourable man I always knew him. But that he is living so entirely out of the world, now, I should have made a point of introducing you. Fifteen years ago he would have been the man of all others to consult. The gentleman I speak of is the Comte de St. Alyre. He represents a very old family. He is the very soul of honour, and the most sensible man in the world, except in one particular. And that particular? I hesitated. I was now deeply interested. Is that he has married a charming creature, at least fiveandforty years younger than himself, and is, of course, although I believe absolutely without cause, horribly jealous. And the lady? The Countess is, I believe, in every way worthy of so good a man, he answered, a little drily. I think I heard her sing this evening. Yes, I daresay; she is very accomplished. After a few moments silence he continued. I must not lose sight of you, for I should be sorry, when next you meet my friend Lord R, that you had to tell him you had been pigeoned in Paris. A rich Englishman as you are, with so large a sum at his Paris bankers, young, gay, generous, a thousand ghouls and harpies will be contending who shall be first to seize and devour you. At this moment I received something like a jerk from the elbow of the gentleman at my right. It was an accidental jog, as he turned in his seat. On the honour of a soldier, there is no mans flesh in this company heals so fast as mine. The tone in which this was spoken was harsh and stentorian, and almost made me bounce. I looked round and recognised the officer, whose large white face had half scared me in the innyard, wiping his mouth furiously, and then with a gulp of Maon, he went on No one! Its not blood; it is ichor! its miracle! Set aside stature, thew, bone, and muscleset aside courage, and by all the angels of death, Id fight a lion naked and dash his teeth down his jaws with my fist, and flog him to death with his own tail! Set aside, I say, all those attributes, which I am allowed to possess, and I am worth six men in any campaign; for that one quality of healing as I dorip me up; punch me through, tear me to tatters with bombshells, and nature has me whole again, while your tailor would finedraw an oldcoat. Parbleu! gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would laugh? Look at my hand, a sabrecut across the palm, to the bone, to save my head, taken up with three stitches, and five days afterwards I was playing ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all, in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a sabrecut that carried away a pound of flesh from my chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ha, ha! and all while youd say bah! and in eight days and a half I was making a forced march, without shoes, and only one gaiter, the life and soul of my company, and as sound as a roach! Bravo! Bravissimo! Per Bacco! un gallant uomo! exclaimed, in a martial ecstacy, a fat little Italian, who manufactured toothpicks and wicker cradles on the island of Notre Dame; your exploits shall resound through Europe! and the history of those wars should be written in your blood! Never mind! a trifle! exclaimed the soldier. At Ligny, the other day, where we smashed the Prussians into ten hundred thousand milliards of atoms, a bit of a shell cut me across the leg and opened an artery. It was spouting as high as the chimney, and in half a minute I had lost enough to fill a pitcher. I must have expired in another minute, if I had not whipped off my sash like a flash of lightning, tied it round my leg above the wound, whipt a bayonet out of the back of a dead Prussian, and passing it under, made a tournequet of it with a couple of twists, and so stayed the hemorrhage, and saved my life. But, sacr bleu! gentlemen, I lost so much blood, I have been as pale as the bottom of a plate ever since. No matter. A trifle. Blood well spent, gentlemen. He applied himself now to his bottle of vin ordinaire. The Marquis had closed his eyes, and looked resigned and disgusted, while all this was going on. Garon, said the officer, for the first time, speaking in a low tone over the back of his chair to the waiter; who came in that travelling carriage, dark yellow and black, that stands in the middle of the yard, with arms and supporters emblazoned on the door, and a red stork, as red as my facings? The waiter could not say. The eye of the eccentric officer, who had suddenly grown grim and serious, and seemed to have abandoned the general conversation to other people, lighted, as it were, accidentally, on me. Pardon me, Monsieur, he said. Did I not see you examining the panel of that carriage at the same time that I did so, this evening? Can you tell me who arrived in it? I rather think the Count and Countess de St. Alyre. And are they here, in the Belle Etoile? he asked. They have got apartments upstairs, I answered. He started up, and half pushed his chair from the table. He quickly sat down again, and I could hear him sacring and muttering to himself, and grinning and scowling. I could not tell whether he was alarmed or furious. I turned to say a word or two to the Marquis, but he was gone. Several other people had dropped out also, and the supper party soon broke up. Two or three substantial pieces of wood smouldered on the hearth, for the night had turned out chilly. I sat down by the fire in a great armchair, of carved oak, with a marvellously high back, that looked as old as the days of Henry IV. Garon, said I, do you happen to know who that officer is? That is Colonel Gaillarde, Monsieur. Has he been often here? Once before, Monsieur, for a week; it is a year since. He is the palest man I ever saw. That is true, Monsieur; he has been often taken for a revenant. Can you give me a bottle of really good Burgundy? The best in France, Monsieur. Place it, and a glass by my side, on this table, if you please. I may sit here for half an hour? Certainly, Monsieur. I was very comfortable, the wine excellent, and my thoughts glowing and serene. Beautiful Countess! Beautiful Countess! shall we ever be better acquainted. VI The Naked Sword A man who has been posting all day long, and changing the air he breathes every half hour, who is well pleased with himself, and has nothing on earth to trouble him, and who sits alone by a fire in a comfortable chair after having eaten a hearty supper, may be pardoned if he takes an accidental nap. I had filled my fourth glass when I fell asleep. My head, I daresay, hung uncomfortably; and it is admitted, that a variety of French dishes is not the most favourable precursor to pleasant dreams. I had a dream as I took mine ease in mine inn on this occasion. I fancied myself in a huge cathedral, without light, except from four tapers that stood at the corners of a raised platform hung with black, on which lay, draped also in black, what seemed to me the dead body of the Countess de St. Alyre. The place seemed empty, it was cold, and I could see only (in the halo of the candles) a little way round. The little I saw bore the character of Gothic gloom, and helped my fancy to shape and furnish the black void that yawned all round me. I heard a sound like the slow tread of two persons walking up the flagged aisle. A faint echo told of the vastness of the place. An awful sense of expectation was upon me, and I was horribly frightened when the body that lay on the catafalque said (without stirring), in a whisper that froze me, They come to place me in the grave alive; save me. I found that I could neither speak nor move. I was horribly frightened. The two people who approached now emerged from the darkness. One, the Count de St. Alyre glided to the head of the figure and placed his long thin hands under it. The whitefaced Colonel, with the scar across his face, and a look of infernal triumph, placed his hands under her feet, and they began to raise her. With an indescribable effort I broke the spell that bound me, and started to my feet with a gasp. I was wide awake, but the broad, wicked face of Colonel Gaillarde was staring, white as death, at me, from the other side of the hearth. Where is she? I shuddered. That depends on who she is, Monsieur, replied the Colonel, curtly. Good heavens! I gasped, looking about me. The Colonel, who was eyeing me sarcastically, had had his demitasse of caf noir, and now drank his tasse, diffusing a pleasant perfume of brandy. I fell asleep and was dreaming, I said, least any strong language, founded on the role he played in my dream, should have escaped me. I did not know for some moments where I was. You are the young gentleman who has the apartments over the Count and Countess de St. Alyre? he said, winking one eye, close in meditation, and glaring at me with the other. I believe soyes, I answered. Well, younker, take care you have not worse dreams than that some night, he said, enigmatically, and wagged his head with a chuckle. Worse dreams, he repeated. What does Monsieur the Colonel mean? I inquired. I am trying to find that out myself, said the Colonel; and I think I shall. When I get the first inch of the thread fast between my finger and thumb, it goes hard but I follow it up, bit by bit, little by little, tracing it this way and that, and up and down, and round about, until the whole clue is wound up on my thumb, and the end, and its secret, fast in my fingers. Ingenious! Crafty as five foxes! wide awake as a weasel! Parbleu! if I had descended to that occupation I should have made my fortune as a spy. Good wine here? he glanced interrogatively at my bottle. Very good, said I, Will Monsieur the Colonel try a glass? He took the largest he could find, and filled it, raised it with a bow, and drank it slowly. Ah! ah! Bah! That is not it, he exclaimed, with some disgust, filling it again. You ought to have told me to order your Burgundy, and they would not have brought you that stuff. I got away from this man as soon as I civilly could, and, putting on my hat, I walked out with no other company than my sturdy walking stick. I visited the innyard, and looked up to the windows of the Countesss apartments. They were closed, however, and I had not even the unsubstantial consolation of contemplating the light in which that beautiful lady was at that moment writing, or reading, or sitting and thinking ofanyone you please. I bore this serious privation as well as I could, and took a little saunter through the town. I shant bore you with moonlight effects, nor with the maunderings of a man who has fallen in love at first sight with a beautiful face. My ramble, it is enough to say, occupied about halfanhour, and, returning by a slight detour, I found myself in a little square, with about two high gabled houses on each side, and a rude stone statue, worn by centuries of rain, on a pedestal in the centre of the pavement. Looking at this statue was a slight and rather tall man, whom I instantly recognized as the Marquis dHarmonville he knew me almost as quickly. He walked a step towards me, shrugged and laughed You are surprised to find Monsieur Droqville staring at that old stone figure by moonlight. Anything to pass the time. You, I see, suffer from ennui, as I do. These little provincial towns! Heavens! what an effort it is to live in them! If I could regret having formed in early life a friendship that does me honour, I think its condemning me to a sojourn in such a place would make me do so. You go on towards Paris, I suppose, in the morning? I have ordered horses. As for me I await a letter, or an arrival, either would emancipate me; but I cant say how soon either event will happen. Can I be of any use in this matter? I began. None, Monsieur, I thank you a thousand times. No, this is a piece in which every role is already cast. I am but an amateur, and induced, solely by friendship, to take a part. So he talked on, for a time, as we walked slowly toward the Belle Etoile, and then came a silence, which I broke by asking him if he knew anything of Colonel Gaillarde. Oh! yes, to be sure. He is a little mad; he has had some bad injuries of the head. He used to plague the people in the War Office to death. He has always some delusion. They contrived some employment for himnot regimental, of coursebut in this campaign Napoleon, who could spare nobody, placed him in command of a regiment. He was always a desperate fighter, and such men were more than ever needed. There is, or was, a second inn, in this town, called lEcu de France. At its door the Marquis stopped, bade me a mysterious good night, and disappeared. As I walked slowly toward my inn, I met, in the shadow of a row of poplars, the garon who had brought me my Burgundy a little time ago. I was thinking of Colonel Gaillarde, and I stopped the little waiter as he passed me. You said, I think, that Colonel Gaillarde was at the Belle Etoile for a week at one time. Yes, Monsieur. Is he perfectly in his right mind? The waiter stared. Perfectly, Monsieur. Has he been suspected at any time of being out of his mind? Never, Monsieur; he is a little noisy, but a very shrewd man. What is a fellow to think? I muttered, as I walked on. I was soon within sight of the lights of the Belle Etoile. A carriage, with four horses, stood in the moonlight at the door, and a furious altercation was going on in the hall, in which the yell of Colonel Gaillarde outtopped all other sounds. Most young men like, at least, to witness a row. But, intuitively, I felt that this would interest me in a very special manner. I had only fifty yards to run, when I found myself in the hall of the old inn. The principal actor in this strange drama was, indeed, the Colonel, who stood facing the old Count de St. Alyre, who, in his travelling costume, with his black silk scarf covering the lower part of his face, confronted him; he had evidently been intercepted in an endeavour to reach his carriage. A little in the rear of the Count stood the Countess, also in travelling costume, with her thick black veil down, and holding in her delicate fingers a white rose. You cant conceive a more diabolical effigy of hate and fury than the Colonel; the knotted veins stood out on his forehead, his eyes were leaping from their sockets, he was grinding his teeth, and froth was on his lips. His sword was drawn, in his hand, and he accompanied his yelling denunciations with stamps upon the floor and flourishes of his weapon in the air. The host of the Belle Etoile was talking to the Colonel in soothing terms utterly thrown away. Two waiters, pale with fear, stared uselessly from behind. The Colonel screamed, and thundered, and whirled his sword. I was not sure of your red birds of prey; I could not believe you would have the audacity to travel on high roads, and to stop at honest inns, and lie under the same roof with honest men. You! you! bothvampires, wolves, ghouls. Summon the gendarmes, I say. By St. Peter and all the devils, if either of you try to get out of that door Ill take your heads off. For a moment I had stood aghast. Here was a situation! I walked up to the lady; she laid her hand wildly upon my arm. Oh! Monsieur, she whispered, in great agitation, that dreadful madman! What are we to do? He wont let us pass; he will kill my husband. Fear nothing, Madame, I answered, with romantic devotion, and stepping between the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked his invective, Hold your tongue, and clear the way, you ruffian, you bully, you coward! I roared. A faint cry escaped the lady, which more than repaid the risk I ran, as the sword of the frantic soldier, after a moments astonished pause, flashed in the air to cut me down. VII The White Rose I was too quick for Colonel Gaillarde. As he raised his sword, reckless of all consequences but my condign punishment, and quite resolved to cleave me to the teeth, I struck him across the side of his head, with my heavy stick; and while he staggered back, I struck him another blow, nearly in the same place, that felled him to the floor, where he lay as if dead. I did not care one of his own regimental buttons, whether he was dead or not; I was, at that moment, carried away by such a tumult of delightful and diabolical emotions! I broke his sword under my foot, and flung the pieces across the street. The old Count de St. Alyre skipped nimbly without looking to the right or left, or thanking anybody, over the floor, out of the door, down the steps, and into his carriage. Instantly I was at the side of the beautiful Countess, thus left to shift for herself; I offered her my arm, which she took, and I led her to her carriage. She entered, and I shut the door. All this without a word. I was about to ask if there were any commands with which she would honour memy hand was laid upon the lower edge of the window, which was open. The ladys hand was laid upon mine timidly and excitedly. Her lips almost touched my cheek as she whispered hurriedly. I may never see you more, and, oh! that I could forget you. Gofarewellfor Gods sake, go! I pressed her hand for a moment. She withdrew it, but tremblingly pressed into mine the rose which she had held in her fingers during the agitating scene she had just passed through. All this took place while the Count was commanding, entreating, cursing his servants, tipsy, and out of the way during the crisis, my conscience afterwards insinuated, by my clever contrivance. They now mounted to their places with the agility of alarm. The postillions whips cracked, the horses scrambled into a trot, and away rolled the carriage, with its precious freightage, along the quaint main street, in the moonlight, toward Paris. I stood on the pavement, till it was quite lost to eye and ear in the distance. With a deep sigh, I then turned, my white rose folded in my handkerchiefthe little parting gagethe Favour secret, sweet, and precious; which no mortal eye but hers and mine had seen conveyed to me. The care of the host of the Belle Etoile, and his assistants, had raised the wounded hero of a hundred fights partly against the wall, and propped him at each side with portmanteaus and pillows, and poured a glass of brandy, which was duly placed to his account, into his big mouth, where, for the first time, such a Godsend remained unswallowed. A baldheaded little military surgeon of sixty, with spectacles, who had cut off eightyseven legs and arms to his own share, after the battle of Eylau, having retired with his sword and his saw, his laurels and his stickingplaster to this, his native town, was called in, and rather thought the gallant Colonels skull was fractured, at all events there was concussion of the seat of thought, and quite enough work for his remarkable selfhealing powers, to occupy him for a fortnight. I began to grow a little uneasy. A disagreeable surprise, if my excursion, in which I was to break banks and hearts, and, as you see, heads, should end upon the gallows or the guillotine. I was not clear, in those times of political oscillation, which was the established apparatus. The Colonel was conveyed, snorting apoplectically to his room. I saw my host in the apartment in which we had supped. Wherever you employ a force of any sort, to carry a point of real importance, reject all nice calculations of economy. Better to be a thousand percent over the mark, than the smallest fraction of a unit under it. I instinctively felt this. I ordered a bottle of my landlords very best wine; made him partake with me, in the proportion of two glasses to one; and then told him that he must not decline a trifling souvenir from a guest who had been so charmed with all he had seen of the renowned Belle Etoile. Thus saying, I placed fiveandthirty Napoleons in his hand. At touch of which his countenance, by no means encouraging before, grew sunny, his manners thawed, and it was plain, as he dropped the coins hastily into his pocket, that benevolent relations had been established between us. I immediately placed the Colonels broken head upon the tapis. We both agreed that if I had not given him that rather smart tap of my walkingcane, he would have beheaded half the inmates of the Belle Etoile. There was not a waiter in the house who would not verify that statement on oath. The reader may suppose that I had other motives, beside the desire to escape the tedious inquisition of the law, for desiring to recommence my journey to Paris with the least possible delay. Judge what was my horror then to learn, that for love or money, horses were nowhere to be had that night. The last pair in the town had been obtained from the Ecu de France, by a gentleman who dined and supped at the Belle Etoile, and was obliged to proceed to Paris that night. Who was the gentleman? Had he actually gone? Could he possibly be induced to wait till morning? The gentleman was now upstairs getting his things together, and his name was Monsieur Droqville. I ran upstairs. I found my servant St. Clair in my room. At sight of him, for a moment, my thoughts were turned into a different channel. Well, St. Clair, tell me this moment who the lady is? I demanded. The lady is the daughter or wife, it matters not which, of the Count de St. Alyre;the old gentleman who was so near being sliced like a cucumber tonight, I am informed, by the sword of the general whom Monsieur, by a turn of fortune, has put to bed of an apoplexy. Hold your tongue, fool! The mans beastly drunkhes sulkinghe could talk if he likedwho cares? Pack up my things. Which are Monsieur Droqvilles apartments? He knew, of course; he always knew everything. Half an hour later Monsieur Droqville and I were travelling towards Paris, in my carriage, and with his horses. I ventured to ask the Marquis dHarmonville, in a little while, whether the lady, who accompanied the Count, was certainly the Countess. Has he not a daughter? Yes;I believe a very beautiful and charming young ladyI cannot sayit may have been she, his daughter by an earlier marriage. I saw only the Count himself today. The Marquis was growing a little sleepy and, in a little while, he actually fell asleep in his corner. I dozed and nodded; but the Marquis slept like a top. He awoke only for a minute or two at the next postinghouse, where he had fortunately secured horses by sending on his man, he told me. You will excuse my being so dull a companion, he said, but till tonight I have had but two hours sleep, for more than sixty hours. I shall have a cup of coffee here; I have had my nap. Permit me to recommend you to do likewise. Their coffee is really excellent. He ordered two cups of caf noir, and waited, with his head from the window. We will keep the cups, he said, as he received them from the waiter, and the tray. Thank you. There was a little delay as he paid for these things; and then he took in the little tray, and handed me a cup of coffee. I declined the tray; so he placed it on his own knees, to act as a miniature table. I cant endure being waited for and hurried, he said, I like to sip my coffee at leisure. I agreed. It really was the very perfection of coffee. I, like Monsieur le Marquis, have slept very little for the last two or three nights; and find it difficult to keep awake. This coffee will do wonders for me; it refreshes one so. Before we had half done, the carriage was again in motion. For a time our coffee made us chatty, and our conversation was animated. The Marquis was extremely goodnatured, as well as clever, and gave me a brilliant and amusing account of Parisian life, schemes, and dangers, all put so as to furnish me with practical warnings of the most valuable kind. In spite of the amusing and curious stories which the Marquis related, with so much point and colour, I felt myself again becoming gradually drowsy and dreamy. Perceiving this, no doubt, the Marquis goodnaturedly suffered our conversation to subside into silence. The window next him was open. He threw his cup out of it; and did the same kind office for mine, and finally the little tray flew after, and I heard it clank on the road; a valuable waif, no doubt, for some early wayfarer in wooden shoes. I leaned back in my corner; I had my beloved souvenirmy white roseclose to my heart, folded, now, in white paper. It inspired all manner of romantic dreams. I began to grow more and more sleepy. But actual slumber did not come. I was still viewing, with my halfclosed eyes, from my corner, diagonally, the interior of the carriage. I wished for sleep; but the barrier between waking and sleeping seemed absolutely insurmountable; and instead, I entered into a state of novel and indescribable indolence. The Marquis lifted his despatchbox from the floor, placed it on his knees, unlocked it, and took out what proved to be a lamp, which he hung with two hooks, attached to it, to the window opposite to him. He lighted it with a match, put on his spectacles, and taking out a bundle of letters, began to read them carefully. We were making way very slowly. My impatience had hitherto employed four horses from stage to stage. We were in this emergency, only too happy to have secured two. But the difference in pace was depressing. I grew tired of the monotony of seeing the spectacled Marquis reading, folding, and docketing, letter after letter. I wished to shut out the image which wearied me, but something prevented my being able to shut my eyes. I tried again and again; but, positively, I had lost the power of closing them. I would have rubbed my eyes, but I could not stir my hand, my will no longer acted on my bodyI found that I could not move one joint, or muscle, no more than I could, by an effort of my will, have turned the carriage about. Up to this I had experienced no sense of horror. Whatever it was, simple nightmare was not the cause. I was awfully frightened! Was I in a fit? It was horrible to see my goodnatured companion pursue his occupation so serenely, when he might have dissipated my horrors by a single shake. I made a stupendous exertion to call out but in vain; I repeated the effort again and again, with no result. My companion now tied up his letters, and looked out of the window, humming an air from an opera. He drew back his head, and said, turning to me Yes, I see the lights; we shall be there in two or three minutes. He looked more closely at me, and with a kind smile, and a little shrug, he said, Poor child! how fatigued he must have beenhow profoundly he sleeps! when the carriage stops he will waken. He then replaced his letters in the despatchbox, locked it, put his spectacles in his pocket, and again looked out of the window. We had entered a little town. I suppose it was past two oclock by this time. The carriage drew up, I saw an inndoor open, and a light issuing from it. Here we are! said my companion, turning gaily to me. But I did not awake. Yes, how tired he must have been! he exclaimed, after he had waited for an answer. My servant was at the carriage door, and opened it. Your master sleeps soundly, he is so fatigued! It would be cruel to disturb him. You and I will go in, while they change the horses, and take some refreshment, and choose something that Monsieur Beckett will like to take in the carriage, for when he awakes byandby, he will, I am sure, be hungry. He trimmed his lamp, poured in some oil; and taking care not to disturb me, with another kind smile, and another word of caution to my servant, he got out, and I heard him talking to St. Clair, as they entered the inndoor, and I was left in my corner, in the carriage, in the same state. VIII A Three Minutes Visit I have suffered extreme and protracted bodily pain, at different periods of my life, but anything like that misery, thank God, I never endured before or since. I earnestly hope it may not resemble any type of death, to which we are liable. I was, indeed, a spirit in prison; and unspeakable was my dumb and unmoving agony. The power of thought remained clear and active. Dull terror filled my mind. How would this end? Was it actual death? You will understand that my faculty of observing was unimpaired. I could hear and see anything as distinctly as ever I did in my life. It was simply that my will had, as it were, lost its hold of my body. I told you that the Marquis dHarmonville had not extinguished his carriage lamp on going into this village inn. I was listening intently, longing for his return, which might result, by some lucky accident, in awaking me from my catalepsy. Without any sound of steps approaching, to announce an arrival, the carriagedoor suddenly opened, and a total stranger got in silently, and shut the door. The lamp gave about as strong a light as a waxcandle, so I could see the intruder perfectly. He was a young man, with a dark grey, loose surtout, made with a sort of hood, which was pulled over his head. I thought, as he moved, that I saw the gold band of a military undress cap under it; and I certainly saw the lace and buttons of a uniform, on the cuffs of the coat that were visible under the wide sleeves of his outside wrapper. This young man had thick moustaches, and an imperial, and I observed that he had a red scar running upward from his lip across his cheek. He entered, shut the door softly, and sat down beside me. It was all done in a moment; leaning toward me, and shading his eyes with his gloved hand, he examined my face closely, for a few seconds. This man had come as noiselessly as a ghost; and everything he did was accomplished with the rapidity and decision, that indicated a well defined and prearranged plan. His designs were evidently sinister. I thought he was going to rob, and, perhaps, murder me. I lay, nevertheless, like a corpse under his hands. He inserted his hand in my breast pocket, from which he took my precious white rose and all the letters it contained, among which was a paper of some consequence to me. My letters he glanced at. They were plainly not what he wanted. My precious rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was evidently about the paper I have mentioned, that he was concerned; for the moment he opened it, he began with a pencil, in a small pocketbook, to make rapid notes of its contents. This man seemed to glide through his work with a noiseless and cool celerity which argued, I thought, the training of the policedepartment. He rearranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had found them, replaced them in my breastpocket, and was gone. His visit, I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his disappearance, I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and I saw him look at me, and smile, half envying me, I fancied, my sound repose. If he had but known all! He resumed his reading and docketing, by the light of the little lamp which had just subserved the purposes of a spy. We were now out of the town, pursuing our journey at the same moderate pace.

We had left the scene of my police visit, as I should have termed it, now two leagues behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange throbbing in one ear, and a sensation as if air passed through it into my throat. It seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep in my ear, swelled, and burst there. The indescribable tension of my brain seemed all at once to give way; there was an odd humming in my head, and a sort of vibration through every nerve of my body, such as I have experienced in a limb that has been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I uttered a cry and half rose from my seat, and then fell back trembling, and with a sense of mortal faintness. The Marquis stared at me, took my hand, and earnestly asked if I was ill. I could answer only with a deep groan. Gradually the process of restoration was completed; and I was able, though very faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been; and then to describe the violation of my letters, during the time of his absence from the carriage. Good heaven! he exclaimed, the miscreant did not get at my dispatchbox? I satisfied him, so far as I had observed, on that point. He placed the box on the seat beside him, and opened and examined its contents very minutely. Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank heaven! he murmured. There are halfadozen letters here, that I would not have some people read, for a great deal. He now asked with a very kind anxiety all about the illness I complained of. When he had heard me, he said A friend of mine once had an attack as like yours as possible. It was on boardship, and followed a state of high excitement. He was a brave man like you; and was called on to exert both his strength and his courage suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue overpowered him, and he appeared to fall into a sound sleep. He really sank into a state which he afterwards described so, that I think it must have been precisely the same affection as yours. I am happy to think that my attack was not unique. Did he ever experience a return of it? I knew him for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your unexpected, and gallant handtohand encounter, at such desperate odds, with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons, your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my other friend did, to sleep. I wish, he resumed, one could make out who that coquin was, who examined your letters. It is not worth turning back, however, because we should learn nothing. Those people always manage so adroitly. I am satisfied, however, that he must have been an agent of the police. A rogue of any other kind would have robbed you. I talked very little, being ill and exhausted, but the Marquis talked on agreeably. We grow so intimate, said he, at last, that I must remind you that I am not, for the present, the Marquis dHarmonville, but only Monsieur Droqville; nevertheless, when we get to Paris, although I cannot see you often, I may be of use. I shall ask you to name to me the hotel at which you mean to put up; because the Marquis being, as you are aware, on his travels, the Hotel dHarmonville is, for the present, tenanted only by two or three old servants, who must not even see Monsieur Droqville. That gentleman will, nevertheless, contrive to get you access to the box of Monsieur le Marquis, at the Opera; as well, possibly, as to other places more difficult; and so soon as the diplomatic office of the Marquis dHarmonville is ended, and he at liberty to declare himself, he will not excuse his friend, Monsieur Beckett, from fulfilling his promise to visit him this autumn at the Chteau dHarmonville. You may be sure I thanked the Marquis. The nearer we got to Paris, the more I valued his protection. The countenance of a great man on the spot, just then, taking so kind an interest in the stranger whom he had, as it were, blundered upon, might make my visit ever so many degrees more delightful than I had anticipated. Nothing could be more gracious than the manner and looks of the Marquis; and, as I still thanked him, the carriage suddenly stopped in front of the place where a relay of horses awaited us, and where, as it turned out, we were to part. IX Gossip and Counsel My eventful journey was over, at last. I sat in my hotel window looking out upon brilliant Paris, which had, in a moment, recovered all its gaiety, and more than its accustomed bustle. Everyone has read of the kind of excitement that followed the catastrophe of Napoleon, and the second restoration of the Bourbons. I need not, therefore, even if, at this distance, I could, recall and describe my experiences and impressions of the peculiar aspect of Paris, in those strange times. It was, to be sure, my first visit. But, often as I have seen it since, I dont think I ever saw that delightful capital in a state, pleasurably, so excited and exciting. I had been two days in Paris, and had seen all sorts of sights, and experienced none of that rudeness and insolence of which others complained, from the exasperated officers of the defeated French army. I must say this, also. My romance had taken complete possession of me; and the chance of seeing the object of my dream, gave a secret and delightful interest to my rambles and drives in the streets and environs, and my visits to the galleries and other sights of the metropolis. I had neither seen nor heard of Count or Countess, nor had the Marquis dHarmonville made any sign. I had quite recovered the strange indisposition under which I had suffered during my night journey. It was now evening, and I was beginning to fear that my patrician acquaintance had quite forgotten me, when the waiter presented me the card of Monsieur Droqville; and, with no small elation and hurry, I desired him to show the gentleman up. In came the Marquis dHarmonville, kind and gracious as ever. I am a nightbird at present, said he, so soon as we had exchanged the little speeches which are usual. I keep in the shade, during the daytime, and even now I hardly ventured to come in a close carriage. The friends for whom I have undertaken a rather critical service, have so ordained it. They think all is lost, if I am known to be in Paris. First let me present you with these orders for my box. I am so vexed that I cannot command it oftener during the next fortnight; during my absence, I had directed my secretary to give it for any night to the first of my friends who might apply, and the result is, that I find next to nothing left at my disposal. I thanked him very much. And now, a word, in my office of Mentor. You have not come here, of course, without introductions? I produced halfadozen letters, the addresses of which he looked at. Dont mind these letters, he said. I will introduce you. I will take you myself from house to house. One friend at your side is worth many letters. Make no intimacies, no acquaintances, until then. You young men like best to exhaust the public amusements of a great city, before embarrassing yourself with the engagements of society. Go to all these. It will occupy you, day and night, for at least three weeks. When this is over, I shall be at liberty, and will myself introduce you to the brilliant but comparatively quiet routine of society. Place yourself in my hands; and in Paris remember, when once in society, you are always there. I thanked him very much, and promised to follow his counsels implicitly. He seemed pleased, and said I shall now tell you some of the places you ought to go to. Take your map, and write letters or numbers upon the points I will indicate, and we will make out a little list. All the places that I shall mention to you are worth seeing. In this methodical way, and with a great deal of amusing and scandalous anecdote, he furnished me with a catalogue and a guide, which, to a seeker of novelty and pleasure, was invaluable. In a fortnight, perhaps in a week, he said, I shall be at leisure to be of real use to you. In the meantime, be on your guard. You must not play; you will be robbed if you do. Remember, you are surrounded, here, by plausible swindlers and villains of all kinds, who subsist by devouring strangers. Trust no one but those you know. I thanked him again, and promised to profit by his advice. But my heart was too full of the beautiful lady of the Belle Etoile, to allow our interview to close without an effort to learn something about her. I therefore asked for the Count and Countess de St. Alyre, whom I had had the good fortune to extricate from an extremely unpleasant row in the hall of the inn. Alas! he had not seen them since. He did not know where they were staying. They had a fine old house only a few leagues from Paris; but he thought it probable that they would remain, for a few days at least, in the city, as preparations would, no doubt, be necessary, after so long an absence, for their reception at home. How long have they been away? About eight months, I think. They are poor, I think you said? What you would consider poor. But, Monsieur, the Count has an income which affords them the comforts, and even the elegancies of life, living as they do, in a very quiet and retired way, in this cheap country. Then they are very happy? One would say they ought to be happy. And what prevents? He is jealous. But his wifeshe gives him no cause? I am afraid she does. How, Monsieur? I always thought she was a little tooa great deal too Too what, Monsieur? Too handsome. But although she has remarkably fine eyes, exquisite features, and the most delicate complexion in the world, I believe that she is a woman of probity. You have never seen her? There was a lady, muffled up in a cloak, with a very thick veil on, the other night, in the hall of the Belle Etoile, when I broke that fellows head who was bullying the old Count. But her veil was so thick I could not see a feature through it. My answer was diplomatic, you observe. She may have been the Counts daughter. Do they quarrel? Who, he and his wife? Yes. A little. Oh! and what do they quarrel about? It is a long story; about the ladys diamonds. They are valuablethey are worth, La Perelleuse says, about a million of francs. The Count wishes them sold and turned into revenue, which he offers to settle as she pleases. The Countess, whose they are, resists, and for a reason which, I rather think, she cant disclose to him. And pray what is that? I asked, my curiosity a good deal piqued. She is thinking, I conjecture, how well she will look in them when she marries her second husband. Oh?yes, to be sure. But the Count de St. Alyre is a good man? Admirable, and extremely intelligent. I should wish so much to be presented to the Count you tell me hes so So agreeably married. But they are living quite out of the world. He takes her now and then to the Opera, or to a public entertainment; but that is all. And he must remember so much of the old regime, and so many of the scenes of the revolution! Yes, the very man for a philosopher, like you! And he falls asleep after dinner; and his wife dont. But, seriously, he has retired from the gay and the great world, and has grown apathetic; and so has his wife; and nothing seems to interest her now, not evenher husband! The Marquis stood up to take his leave. Dont risk your money, said he. You will soon have an opportunity of laying out some of it to great advantage. Several collections of really good pictures, belonging to persons who have mixed themselves up in this Bonapartist restoration, must come within a few weeks to the hammer. You can do wonders when these sales commence. There will be startling bargains! Reserve yourself for them. I shall let you know all about it. By the by, he said, stopping short as he approached the door, I was so near forgetting. There is to be, next week, the very thing you would enjoy so much, because you see so little of it in EnglandI mean a bal masqu, conducted, it is said, with more than usual splendour. It takes place at Versaillesall the world will be there; there is such a rush for cards! But I think I may promise you one. Good night! Adieu! X The Black Veil Speaking the language fluently and with unlimited money, there was nothing to prevent my enjoying all that was enjoyable in the French capital. You may easily suppose how two days were passed. At the end of that time, and at about the same hour, Monsieur Droqville called again. Courtly, goodnatured, gay, as usual, he told me that the masquerade ball was fixed for the next Wednesday, and that he had applied for a card for me. How awfully unlucky. I was so afraid I should not be able to go. He stared at me for a moment with a suspicious and menacing look which I did not understand, in silence, and then inquired, rather sharply. And will Monsieur Beckett be good enough to say, why not? I was a little surprised, but answered the simple truth I had made an engagement for that evening with two or three English friends, and did not see how I could. Just so! You English, wherever you are, always look out for your English boors, your beer and bifstek; and when you come here, instead of trying to learn something of the people you visit, and pretend to study, you are guzzling, and swearing, and smoking with one another, and no wiser or more polished at the end of your travels than if you had been all the time carousing in a booth at Greenwich. He laughed sarcastically, and looked as if he could have poisoned me. There it is, said he, throwing the card on the table. Take it or leave it, just as you please. I suppose I shall have my trouble for my pains; but it is not usual when a man, such as I, takes trouble, asks a favour, and secures a privilege for an acquaintance, to treat him so. This was astonishingly impertinent! I was shocked, offended, penitent. I had possibly committed unwittingly a breach of goodbreeding, according to French ideas, which almost justified the brusque severity of the Marquiss undignified rebuke. In a confusion, therefore, of many feelings, I hastened to make my apologies, and to propitiate the chance friend who had showed me so much disinterested kindness. I told him that I would, at any cost, break through the engagement in which I had unluckily entangled myself; that I had spoken with too little reflection, and that I certainly had not thanked him at all in proportion to his kindness and to my real estimate of it. Pray say not a word more; my vexation was entirely on your account; and I expressed it, I am only too conscious, in terms a great deal too strong, which, I am sure, your good nature will pardon. Those who know me a little better are aware that I sometimes say a good deal more than I intend; and am always sorry when I do. Monsieur Beckett will forget that his old friend, Monsieur Droqville, has lost his temper in his cause, for a moment, andwe are as good friends as before. He smiled like the Monsieur Droqville of the Belle Etoile, and extended his hand, which I took very respectfully and cordially. Our momentary quarrel had left us only better friends. The Marquis then told me I had better secure a bed in some hotel at Versailles, as a rush would be made to take them; and advised my going down next morning for the purpose. I ordered horses accordingly for eleven oclock; and, after a little more conversation, the Marquis dHarmonville bid me good night, and ran down the stairs with his handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and, as I saw from my window, jumped into his close carriage again and drove away. Next day I was at Versailles. As I approached the door of the Hotel de France, it was plain that I was not a moment too soon, if, indeed, I were not already too late. A crowd of carriages were drawn up about the entrance, so that I had no chance of approaching except by dismounting and pushing my way among the horses. The hall was full of servants and gentlemen screaming to the proprietor, who, in a state of polite distraction, was assuring them, one and all, that there was not a room or a closet disengaged in his entire house. I slipped out again, leaving the hall to those who were shouting, expostulating, wheedling, in the delusion that the host might, if he pleased, manage something for them. I jumped into my carriage and drove, at my horses best pace, to the Hotel du Reservoir. The blockade about this door was as complete as the other. The result was the same. It was very provoking, but what was to be done? My postillion had, a little officiously, while I was in the hall talking with the hotel authorities, got his horses, bit by bit, as other carriages moved away, to the very steps of the inn door. This arrangement was very convenient so far as getting in again was concerned. But, this accomplished, how were we to get on? There were carriages in front, and carriages behind, and no less than four rows of carriages, of all sorts, outside. I had at this time remarkably long and clear sight, and if I had been impatient before, guess what my feelings were when I saw an open carriage pass along the narrow strip of roadway left open at the other side, a barouche in which I was certain I recognized the veiled Countess and her husband. This carriage had been brought to a walk by a cart which occupied the whole breadth of the narrow way, and was moving with the customary tardiness of such vehicles. I should have done more wisely if I had jumped down on the trottoir, and run round the block of carriages in front of the barouche. But, unfortunately, I was more of a Murat than a Moltke, and preferred a direct charge upon my object to relying on tactique. I dashed across the back seat of a carriage which was next mine, I dont know how; tumbled through a sort of gig, in which an old gentleman and a dog were dozing; stepped with an incoherent apology over the side of an open carriage, in which were four gentlemen engaged in a hot dispute; tripped at the far side in getting out, and fell flat across the backs of a pair of horses, who instantly began plunging and threw me head foremost in the dust. To those who observed my reckless charge without being in the secret of my object I must have appeared demented. Fortunately, the interesting barouche had passed before the catastrophe, and covered as I was with dust, and my hat blocked, you may be sure I did not care to present myself before the object of my quixotic devotion. I stood for a while amid a storm of sacring, tempered disagreeably with laughter; and in the midst of these, while endeavouring to beat the dust from my clothes with my handkerchief, I heard a voice with which I was acquainted call, Monsieur Beckett. I looked and saw the Marquis peeping from a carriagewindow. It was a welcome sight. In a moment I was at his carriage side. You may as well leave Versailles, he said; you have learned, no doubt, that there is not a bed to hire in either of the hotels; and I can add that there is not a room to let in the whole town. But I have managed something for you that will answer just as well. Tell your servant to follow us, and get in here and sit beside me. Fortunately an opening in the closelypacked carriages had just occurred, and mine was approaching. I directed the servant to follow us; and the Marquis having said a word to his driver, we were immediately in motion. I will bring you to a comfortable place, the very existence of which is known to but few Parisians, where, knowing how things were here, I secured a room for you. It is only a mile away, and an old comfortable inn, called Le Dragon Volant. It was fortunate for you that my tiresome business called me to this place so early. I think we had driven about a mileandahalf to the further side of the palace when we found ourselves upon a narrow old road, with the woods of Versailles on one side, and much older trees, of a size seldom seen in France, on the other. We pulled up before an antique and solid inn, built of Caen stone, in a fashion richer and more florid than was ever usual in such houses, and which indicated that it was originally designed for the private mansion of some person of wealth, and probably, as the wall bore many carved shields and supporters, of distinction also. A kind of porch, less ancient than the rest, projected hospitably with a wide and florid arch, over which, cut in high relief in stone, and painted and gilded, was the sign of the inn. This was the Flying Dragon, with wings of brilliant red and gold, expanded, and its tail, pale green and gold, twisted and knotted into ever so many rings, and ending in a burnished point barbed like the dart of death. I shant go inbut you will find it a comfortable place; at all events better than nothing. I would go in with you, but my incognito forbids. You will, I daresay, be all the better pleased to learn that the inn is hauntedI should have been, in my young days, I know. But dont allude to that awful fact in hearing of your host, for I believe it is a sore subject. Adieu. If you want to enjoy yourself at the ball take my advice, and go in a domino. I think I shall look in; and certainly, if I do, in the same costume. How shall we recognize one another? Let me see, something held in the fingersa flower wont do, so many people will have flowers. Suppose you get a red cross a couple of inches longyoure an Englishmanstitched or pinned on the breast of your domino, and I a white one? Yes, that will do very well; and whatever room you go into keep near the door till we meet. I shall look for you at all the doors I pass; and you, in the same way, for me; and we must find each other soon. So that is understood. I cant enjoy a thing of that kind with any but a young person; a man of my age requires the contagion of young spirits and the companionship of someone who enjoys everything spontaneously. Farewell; we meet tonight. By this time I was standing on the road; I shut the carriagedoor; bid him goodbye; and away he drove. XI The Dragon Volant I took one look about me. The building was picturesque; the trees made it more so. The antique and sequestered character of the scene, contrasted strangely with the glare and bustle of the Parisian life, to which my eye and ear had become accustomed. Then I examined the gorgeous old sign for a minute or two. Next I surveyed the exterior of the house more carefully. It was large and solid, and squared more with my ideas of an ancient English hostelrie, such as the Canterbury pilgrims might have put up at, than a French house of entertainment. Except, indeed, for a round turret, that rose at the left flank of the house, and terminated in the extinguishershaped roof that suggests a French chteau. I entered and announced myself as Monsieur Beckett, for whom a room had been taken. I was received with all the consideration due to an English milord, with, of course, an unfathomable purse. My host conducted me to my apartment. It was a large room, a little sombre, panelled with dark wainscoting, and furnished in a stately and sombre style, long out of date. There was a wide hearth, and a heavy mantelpiece, carved with shields, in which I might, had I been curious enough, have discovered a correspondence with the heraldry on the outer walls. There was something interesting, melancholy, and even depressing in all this. I went to the stoneshafted window, and looked out upon a small park, with a thick wood, forming the background of a chteau, which presented a cluster of such conicaltopped turrets as I have just now mentioned. The wood and chteau were melancholy objects. They showed signs of neglect, and almost of decay; and the gloom of fallen grandeur, and a certain air of desertion hung oppressively over the scene. I asked my host the name of the chteau. That, Monsieur, is the Chteau de la Carque, he answered. It is a pity it is so neglected, I observed. I should say, perhaps, a pity that its proprietor is not more wealthy? Perhaps so, Monsieur. Perhaps?I repeated, and looked at him. Then I suppose he is not very popular. Neither one thing nor the other, Monsieur, he answered; I meant only that we could not tell what use he might make of riches. And who is he? I inquired. The Count de St. Alyre. Oh! The Count! You are quite sure? I asked, very eagerly. It was now the innkeepers turn to look at me. Quite sure, Monsieur, the Count de St. Alyre. Do you see much of him in this part of the world? Not a great deal, Monsieur; he is often absent for a considerable time. And is he poor? I inquired. I pay rent to him for this house. It is not much; but I find he cannot wait long for it, he replied, smiling satirically. From what I have heard, however, I should think he cannot be very poor? I continued. They say, Monsieur, he plays. I know not. He certainly is not rich. About seven months ago, a relation of his died in a distant place. His body was sent to the Counts house here, and by him buried in Pre la Chaise, as the poor gentleman had desired. The Count was in profound affliction; although he got a handsome legacy, they say, by that death. But money never seems to do him good for any time. He is old, I believe? Old? we call him the Wandering Jew, except, indeed, that he has not always the five sous in his pocket. Yet, Monsieur, his courage does not fail him. He has taken a young and handsome wife. And, she? I urged Is the Countess de St. Alyre. Yes; but I fancy we may say something more? She has attributes? Three, Monsieur, three, at least most amiable. Ah! And what are they? Youth, beauty, anddiamonds. I laughed. The sly old gentleman was foiling my curiosity. I see, my friend, said I, you are reluctant To quarrel with the Count, he concluded. True. You see, Monsieur, he could vex me in two or three ways; so could I him. But, on the whole, it is better each to mind his business, and to maintain peaceful relations; you understand. It was, therefore, no use trying, at least for the present. Perhaps he had nothing to relate. Should I think differently, byandby, I could try the effect of a few Napoleons. Possibly he meant to extract them. The host of the Dragon Volant was an elderly man, thin, bronzed, intelligent, and with an air of decision, perfectly military. I learned afterwards that he had served under Napoleon in his early Italian campaigns. One question, I think you may answer, I said, without risking a quarrel. Is the Count at home? He has many homes, I conjecture, said the host evasively. Butbut I think I may say, Monsieur, that he is, I believe, at present staying at the Chteau de la Carque. I looked out of the window, more interested than ever, across the undulating grounds to the chteau, with its gloomy background of foliage. I saw him today, in his carriage at Versailles, I said. Very natural. Then his carriage and horses and servants are at the chteau? The carriage he puts up here, Monsieur, and the servants are hired for the occasion. There is but one who sleeps at the chteau. Such a life must be terrifying for Madame the Countess, he replied. The old screw! I thought. By this torture, he hopes to extract her diamonds. What a life! What fiends to contend withjealousy and extortion! The knight having made this speech to himself, cast his eyes once more upon the enchanters castle, and heaved a gentle sigha sigh of longing, of resolution, and of love. What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older? It seems to me, only, that our illusions change as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all the same. Well, St. Clair, said I, as my servant entered, and began to arrange my things. You have got a bed? In the cockloft, Monsieur, among the spiders, and, par ma foi! the cats and the owls. But we agree very well. Vive la bagatelle! I had no idea it was so full. Chiefly the servants, Monsieur, of those persons who were fortunate enough to get apartments at Versailles. And what do you think of the Dragon Volant? The Dragon Volant! Monsieur; the old fiery dragon! The devil himself, if all is true! On the faith of a Christian, Monsieur, they say that diabolical miracles have taken place in this house. What do you mean? Revenants? Not at all, sir; I wish it was no worse. Revenants? No! People who have never returnedwho vanished, before the eyes of halfadozen men, all looking at them. What do you mean, St. Clair? Let us hear the story, or miracle, or whatever it is. It is only this, Monsieur, that an exmasterofthehorse of the late king, who lost his headMonsieur will have the goodness to recollect, in the revolutionbeing permitted by the Emperor to return to France, lived here in this hotel, for a month, and at the end of that time vanished, visibly, as I told you, before the faces of halfadozen credible witnesses! The other was a Russian nobleman, six feet high and upwards, who, standing in the centre of the room, downstairs, describing to seven gentlemen of unquestionable veracity, the last moments of Peter the Great, and having a glass of eaudevie in his left hand, and his tasse de caf, nearly finished, in his right, in like manner vanished. His boots were found on the floor where he had been standing; and the gentleman at his right, found, to his astonishment, his cup of coffee in his fingers, and the gentleman at his left, his glass of eaudevie Which he swallowed in his confusion, I suggested. Which was preserved for three years among the curious articles of this house, and was broken by the cur while conversing with Mademoiselle Fidone in the housekeepers room; but of the Russian nobleman himself, nothing more was ever seen or heard! Parbleu! when we go out of the Dragon Volant, I hope it may be by the door. I heard all this, Monsieur, from the postillion who drove us. Then it must be true! said I, jocularly but I was beginning to feel the gloom of the view, and of the chamber in which I stood; there had stolen over me, I know not how, a presentiment of evil; and my joke was with an effort, and my spirit flagged. XII The Magician No more brilliant spectacle than this masked ball could be imagined. Among other salons and galleries, thrown open, was the enormous perspective of the Grande Galerie des Glaces, lighted up on that occasion with no less than four thousand wax candles, reflected and repeated by all the mirrors, so that the effect was almost dazzling. The grand suite of salons was thronged with masques, in every conceivable costume. There was not a single room deserted. Every place was animated with music, voices, brilliant colours, flashing jewels, the hilarity of extemporized comedy, and all the spirited incidents of a cleverly sustained masquerade. I had never seen before anything, in the least, comparable to this magnificent fte. I moved along, indolently, in my domino and mask, loitering, now and then, to enjoy a clever dialogue, a farcical song, or an amusing monologue, but, at the same time, keeping my eyes about me, lest my friend in the black domino, with the little white cross on his breast, should pass me by. I had delayed and looked about me, specially, at every door I passed, as the Marquis and I had agreed; but he had not yet appeared. While I was thus employed, in the very luxury of lazy amusement, I saw a gilded sedan chair, or, rather, a Chinese palanquin, exhibiting the fantastic exuberance of Celestial decoration, borne forward on gilded poles by four richlydressed Chinese; one with a wand in his hand marched in front, and another behind; and a slight and solemn man, with a long black beard, a tall fez, such as a dervish is represented as wearing, walked close to its side. A strangelyembroidered robe fell over his shoulders, covered with hieroglyphic symbols; the embroidery was in black and gold, upon a variegated ground of brilliant colours.

The robe was bound about his waist with a broad belt of gold, with cabalistic devices traced on it, in dark red and black; red stockings, and shoes embroidered with gold, and pointed and curved upward at the toes, in Oriental fashion, appeared below the skirt of the robe. The mans face was dark, fixed, and solemn, and his eyebrows black, and enormously heavyhe carried a singularlooking book under his arm, a wand of polished black wood in his other hand, and walked with his chin sunk on his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the floor. The man in front waved his wand right and left to clear the way for the advancing palanquin, the curtains of which were closed; and there was something so singular, strange, and solemn about the whole thing, that I felt at once interested. I was very well pleased when I saw the bearers set down their burden within a few yards of the spot on which I stood. The bearers and the men with the gilded wands forthwith clapped their hands, and in silence danced round the palanquin a curious and half frantic dance, which was yet, as to figures and postures, perfectly methodical. This was soon accompanied by a clapping of hands and a hahaing, rhythmically delivered. While the dance was going on a hand was lightly laid on my arm, and, looking round, a black domino with a white cross stood beside me. I am so glad I have found you, said the Marquis; and at this moment. This is the best group in the rooms. You must speak to the wizard. About an hour ago I lighted upon them, in another salon, and consulted the oracle, by putting questions. I never was more amazed. Although his answers were a little disguised it was soon perfectly plain that he knew every detail about the business, which no one on earth had heard of but myself, and two or three other men, about the most cautious persons in France. I shall never forget that shock. I saw other people who consulted him, evidently as much surprised, and more frightened than I. I came with the Count St. Alyre and the Countess. He nodded toward a thin figure, also in a domino. It was the Count. Come, he said to me, Ill introduce you. I followed, you may suppose, readily enough. The Marquis presented me, with a very prettilyturned allusion to my fortunate intervention in his favour at the Belle Etoile; and the Count overwhelmed me with polite speeches, and ended by saying, what pleased me better still The Countess is near us, in the next salon but one, chatting with her old friend the Duchesse dArgensaque; I shall go for her in a few minutes; and when I bring her here, she shall make your acquaintance; and thank you, also, for your assistance, rendered with so much courage when we were so very disagreeably interrupted. You must, positively, speak with the magician, said the Marquis to the Count de St. Alyre, you will be so much amused. I did so; and, I assure you, I could not have anticipated such answers! I dont know what to believe. Really! Then, by all means, let us try, he replied. We three approached, together, the side of the palanquin, at which the blackbearded magician stood. A young man, in a Spanish dress, who, with a friend at his side, had just conferred with the conjuror, was saying, as he passed us by Ingenious mystification! Who is that in the palanquin. He seems to know everybody. The Count, in his mask and domino, moved along, stiffly, with us, toward the palanquin. A clear circle was maintained by the Chinese attendants, and the spectators crowded round in a ring. One of these menhe who with a gilded wand had preceded the processionadvanced, extending his empty hand, palm upward. Money? inquired the Count. Gold, replied the usher. The Count placed a piece of money in his hand; and I and the Marquis were each called on in turn to do likewise as we entered the circle. We paid accordingly. The conjuror stood beside the palanquin, its silk curtain in his hand; his chin sunk, with its long, jetblack beard, on his chest; the outer hand grasping the black wand, on which he leaned; his eyes were lowered, as before, to the ground; his face looked absolutely lifeless. Indeed, I never saw face or figure so moveless, except in death. The first question the Count put, was Am I married, or unmarried? The conjuror drew back the curtain quickly, and placed his ear toward a richlydressed Chinese, who sat in the litter; withdrew his head, and closed the curtain again; and then answered Yes. The same preliminary was observed each time, so that the man with the black wand presented himself, not as a prophet, but as a medium; and answered, as it seemed, in the words of a greater than himself. Two or three questions followed, the answers to which seemed to amuse the Marquis very much; but the point of which I could not see, for I knew next to nothing of the Counts peculiarities and adventures. Does my wife love me? asked he, playfully. As well as you deserve. Whom do I love best in the world? Self. Oh! That I fancy is pretty much the case with everyone. But, putting myself out of the question, do I love anything on earth better than my wife? Her diamonds. Oh! said the Count. The Marquis, I could see, laughed. Is it true, said the Count, changing the conversation peremptorily, that there has been a battle in Naples? No; in France. Indeed, said the Count, satirically, with a glance round. And may I inquire between what powers, and on what particular quarrel? Between the Count and Countess de St. Alyre, and about a document they subscribed on the 25th July, 1811. The Marquis afterwards told me that this was the date of their marriage settlement. The Count stood stockstill for a minute or so; and one could fancy that they saw his face flushing through his mask. Nobody, but we two, knew that the inquirer was the Count de St. Alyre. I thought he was puzzled to find a subject for his next question; and, perhaps, repented having entangled himself in such a colloquy. If so, he was relieved; for the Marquis, touching his arm, whispered Look to your right, and see who is coming. I looked in the direction indicated by the Marquis, and I saw a gaunt figure stalking toward us. It was not a masque. The face was broad, scarred, and white. In a word, it was the ugly face of Colonel Gaillarde, who, in the costume of a corporal of the Imperial Guard, with his left arm so adjusted as to look like a stump, leaving the lower part of the coatsleeve empty, and pinned up to the breast. There were strips of very real stickingplaster across his eyebrow and temple, where my stick had left its mark, to score, hereafter, among the more honourable scars of war. XIII The Oracle Tells Me Wonders I forgot for a moment how impervious my mask and domino were to the hard stare of the old campaigner, and was preparing for an animated scuffle. It was only for a moment, of course; but the Count cautiously drew a little back as the gasconading corporal, in blue uniform, white vest, and white gaitersfor my friend Gaillarde was as loud and swaggering in his assumed character as in his real one of a colonel of dragoonsdrew near. He had already twice all but got himself turned out of doors for vaunting the exploits of Napoleon le Grand, in terrific mockheroics, and had very nearly come to handgrips with a Prussian hussar. In fact, he would have been involved in several sanguinary rows already, had not his discretion reminded him that the object of his coming there at all, namely, to arrange a meeting with an affluent widow, on whom he believed he had made a tender impression, would not have been promoted by his premature removal from the festive scene, of which he was an ornament, in charge of a couple of gendarmes. Money! Gold! Bah! What money can a wounded soldier like your humble servant have amassed, with but his swordhand left, which, being necessarily occupied, places not a finger at his command with which to scrape together the spoils of a routed enemy? No gold from him, said the magician. His scars frank him. Bravo, Monsieur le prophte! Bravissimo! Here I am. Shall I begin, mon sorcier, without further loss of time, to question your Without waiting for an answer, he commenced, in stentorian tones. After halfadozen questions and answers, he asked Whom do I pursue at present? Two persons. Ha! Two? Well, who are they? An Englishman, whom, if you catch, he will kill you; and a French widow, whom if you find, she will spit in your face. Monsieur le magicien calls a spade a spade, and knows that his cloth protects him. No matter! Why do I pursue them? The widow has inflicted a wound on your heart, and the Englishman a wound on your head. They are each separately too strong for you; take care your pursuit does not unite them. Bah! How could that be? The Englishman protects ladies. He has got that fact into your head. The widow, if she sees, will marry him. It takes some time, she will reflect, to become a colonel, and the Englishman is unquestionably young. I will cut his cockscomb for him, he ejaculated with an oath and a grin; and in a softer tone he asked, Where is she? Near enough to be offended if you fail. So she ought, by my faith. You are right, Monsieur le prophte! A hundred thousand thanks! Farewell! And staring about him, and stretching his lank neck as high as he could, he strode away with his scars, and white waistcoat and gaiters, and his bearskin shako. I had been trying to see the person who sat in the palanquin. I had only once an opportunity of a tolerably steady peep. What I saw was singular. The oracle was dressed, as I have said, very richly, in the Chinese fashion. He was a figure altogether on a larger scale than the interpreter, who stood outside. The features seemed to me large and heavy, and the head was carried with a downward inclination! the eyes were closed, and the chin rested on the breast of his embroidered pelisse. The face seemed fixed, and the very image of apathy. Its character and pose seemed an exaggerated repetition of the immobility of the figure who communicated with the noisy outer world. This face looked bloodred; but that was caused, I concluded, by the light entering through the red silk curtains. All this struck me almost at a glance; I had not many seconds in which to make my observation. The ground was now clear, and the Marquis said, Go forward, my friend. I did so. When I reached the magician, as we called the man with the black wand, I glanced over my shoulder to see whether the Count was near. No, he was some yards behind; and he and the Marquis, whose curiosity seemed to be, by this time, satisfied, were now conversing generally upon some subject of course quite different. I was relieved, for the sage seemed to blurt out secrets in an unexpected way; and some of mine might not have amused the Count. I thought for a moment. I wished to test the prophet. A ChurchofEngland man was a rara avis in Paris. What is my religion? I asked. A beautiful heresy, answered the oracle instantly. A heresy?and pray how is it named? Love. Oh! Then I suppose I am a polytheist, and love a great many? One. But, seriously, I asked, intending to turn the course of our colloquy a little out of an embarrassing channel, have I ever learned any words of devotion by heart? Yes. Can you repeat them? Approach. I did, and lowered my ear. The man with the black wand closed the curtains, and whispered, slowly and distinctly, these words, which, I need scarcely tell you, I instantly recognized I may never see you more; and, oh! that I could forget you! gofarewellfor Gods sake, go! I started as I heard them. They were, you know, the last words whispered to me by the Countess. Good Heaven! How miraculous! Words heard, most assuredly, by no ear on earth but my own and the ladys who uttered them, till now! I looked at the impassive face of the spokesman with the wand. There was no trace of meaning, or even of a consciousness that the words he had uttered could possibly interest me. What do I most long for? I asked, scarcely knowing what I said. Paradise. And what prevents my reaching it? A black veil. Stronger and stronger! The answers seemed to me to indicate the minutest acquaintance with every detail of my little romance, of which not even the Marquis knew anything! And I, the questioner, masked and robed so that my own brother could not have known me! You said I loved someone. Am I loved in return? I asked. Try. I was speaking lower than before, and stood near the dark man with the beard, to prevent the necessity of his speaking in a loud key. Does anyone love me? I repeated. Secretly, was the answer. Much or little? I inquired. Too well. How long will that love last? Till the rose casts its leaves. The roseanother allusion! Thendarkness! I sighed. But till then I live in light. The light of violet eyes. Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had just pronounced it, is, at least, a superstition. How it exalts the imagination! How it enervates the reason! How credulous it makes us! All this which, in the case of another, I should have laughed at, most powerfully affected me in my own. It inflamed my ardour, and half crazed my brain, and even influenced my conduct. The spokesman of this wonderful trickif trick it werenow waved me backward with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes still fixed upon the group, by this time encircled with an aura of mystery in my fancy; backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw him raise his hand suddenly, with a gesture of command, as a signal to the usher who carried the golden wand in front. The usher struck his wand on the ground, and, in a shrill voice, proclaimed; The great Confu is silent for an hour. Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort of blind of bamboo, which descended with a sharp clatter, and secured it at the bottom; and then the man in the tall fez, with the black beard and wand, began a sort of dervish dance. In this the men with the gold wands joined, and finally, in an outer ring, the bearers, the palanquin being the centre of the circles described by these solemn dancers, whose pace, little by little, quickened, whose gestures grew sudden, strange, frantic, as the motion became swifter and swifter, until at length the whirl became so rapid that the dancers seemed to fly by with the speed of a millwheel, and amid a general clapping of hands, and universal wonder, these strange performers mingled with the crowd, and the exhibition, for the time at least, ended. The Marquis dHarmonville was standing not far away, looking on the ground, as one could judge by his attitude and musing. I approached, and he said The Count has just gone away to look for his wife. It is a pity she was not here to consult the prophet; it would have been amusing, I daresay, to see how the Count bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have asked him to introduce you. With a beating heart, I accompanied the Marquis dHarmonville. XIV Mademoiselle de la Vallire We wandered through the salons, the Marquis and I. It was no easy matter to find a friend in rooms so crowded. Stay here, said the Marquis, I have thought of a way of finding him. Besides, his jealousy may have warned him that there is no particular advantage to be gained by presenting you to his wife, I had better go and reason with him; as you seem to wish an introduction so very much. This occurred in the room that is now called the Salon dApollon. The paintings remained in my memory, and my adventure of that evening was destined to occur there. I sat down upon a sofa; and looked about me. Three or four persons beside myself were seated on this roomy piece of gilded furniture. They were chatting all very gaily; allexcept the person who sat next me, and she was a lady. Hardly two feet interposed between us. The lady sat apparently in a reverie. Nothing could be more graceful. She wore the costume perpetuated in Collignans fulllength portrait of Mademoiselle de la Vallire. It is, as you know, not only rich, but elegant. Her hair was powdered, but one could perceive that it was naturally a dark brown. One pretty little foot appeared, and could anything be more exquisite than her hand? It was extremely provoking that this lady wore her mask, and did not, as many did, hold it for a time in her hand. I was convinced that she was pretty. Availing myself of the privilege of a masquerade, a microcosm in which it is impossible, except by voice and allusion, to distinguish friend from foe, I spoke It is not easy, Mademoiselle, to deceive me, I began. So much the better for Monsieur, answered the mask, quietly. I mean, I said, determined to tell my fib, that beauty is a gift more difficult to conceal than Mademoiselle supposes. Yet Monsieur has succeeded very well, she said in the same sweet and careless tones. I see the costume of this, the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Vallire, upon a form that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and I behold a mask, and yet I recognise the lady; beauty is like that precious stone in the Arabian Nights, which emits, no matter how concealed, a light that betrays it. I know the story, said the young lady. The light betrayed it, not in the sun, but in darkness. Is there so little light in these rooms, Monsieur, that a poor glowworm can show so brightly. I thought we were in a luminous atmosphere, wherever a certain countess moved? Here was an awkward speech! How was I to answer? This lady might be, as they say some ladies are, a lover of mischief, or an intimate of the Countess de St. Alyre. Cautiously, therefore, I inquired, What countess? If you know me, you must know that she is my dearest friend. Is she not beautiful? How can I answer, there are so many countesses. Everyone who knows me, knows who my best beloved friend is. You dont know me? That is cruel. I can scarcely believe I am mistaken. With whom were you walking, just now? she asked. A gentleman, a friend, I answered. I saw him, of course, a friend; but I think I know him, and should like to be certain. Is he not a certain marquis? Here was another question that was extremely awkward. There are so many people here, and one may walk, at one time, with one, and at another with a different one, that That an unscrupulous person has no difficulty in evading a simple question like mine. Know then, once for all, that nothing disgusts a person of spirit so much as suspicion. You, Monsieur, are a gentleman of discretion. I shall respect you accordingly. Mademoiselle would despise me, were I to violate a confidence. But you dont deceive me. You imitate your friends diplomacy. I hate diplomacy. It means fraud and cowardice. Dont you think I know him. The gentleman with the cross of white ribbon on his breast. I know the Marquis dHarmonville perfectly. You see to what good purpose your ingenuity has been expended. To that conjecture I can answer neither yes nor no. You need not. But what was your motive in mortifying a lady? It is the last thing on earth I should do. You affected to know me, and you dont; through caprice or listlessness or curiosity you wished to converse, not with a lady, but with a costume. You admired, and you pretend to mistake me for another. But who is quite perfect? Is truth any longer to be found on earth? Mademoiselle has formed a mistaken opinion of me. And you also of me; you find me less foolish than you supposed. I know perfectly whom you intend amusing with compliments and melancholy declamation, and whom, with that amiable purpose, you have been seeking. Tell me whom you mean, I entreated. Upon one condition. What is that? That you will confess if I name the lady. You describe my object unfairly. I objected. I cant admit that I proposed speaking to any lady in the tone you describe. Well, I shant insist on that; only if I name the lady, you will promise to admit that I am right. Must I promise? Certainly not, there is no compulsion; but your promise is the only condition on which I will speak to you again. I hesitated for a moment; but how could she possibly tell? The Countess would scarcely have admitted this little romance to anyone; and the mask in the La Vallire costume could not possibly know who the masked domino beside her was. I consent, I said, I promise. You must promise on the honour of a gentleman. Well, I do; on the honour of a gentleman. Then this lady is the Countess de St. Alyre. I was unspeakably surprised; I was disconcerted; but I remembered my promise, and said The Countess de St. Alyre is, unquestionably, the lady to whom I hoped for an introduction tonight; but I beg to assure you also on the honour of a gentleman, that she has not the faintest imaginable suspicion that I was seeking such an honour, nor, in all probability, does she remember that such a person as I exists. I had the honour to render her and the Count a trifling service, too trifling, I fear, to have earned more than an hours recollection. The world is not so ungrateful as you suppose; or if it be, there are, nevertheless, a few hearts that redeem it. I can answer for the Countess de St. Alyre, she never forgets a kindness. She does not show all she feels; for she is unhappy, and cannot. Unhappy! I feared, indeed, that might be. But for all the rest that you are good enough to suppose, it is but a flattering dream. I told you that I am the Countesss friend, and being so I must know something of her character; also, there are confidences between us, and I may know more than you think, of those trifling services of which you suppose the recollection is so transitory. I was becoming more and more interested. I was as wicked as other young men, and the heinousness of such a pursuit was as nothing, now that selflove and all the passions that mingle in such a romance, were roused. The image of the beautiful Countess had now again quite superseded the pretty counterpart of La Vallire, who was before me. I would have given a great deal to hear, in solemn earnest, that she did remember the champion who, for her sake, had thrown himself before the sabre of an enraged dragoon, with only a cudgel in his hand, and conquered. You say the Countess is unhappy, said I. What causes her unhappiness? Many things. Her husband is old, jealous, and tyrannical. Is not that enough? Even when relieved from his society, she is lonely. But you are her friend? I suggested. And you think one friend enough? she answered; she has one alone, to whom she can open her heart. Is there room for another friend? Try. How can I find a way? She will aid you. How? She answered by a question. Have you secured rooms in either of the hotels of Versailles? No, I could not. I am lodged in the Dragon Volant, which stands at the verge of the grounds of the Chteau de la Carque. That is better still. I need not ask if you have courage for an adventure. I need not ask if you are a man of honour. A lady may trust herself to you, and fear nothing. There are few men to whom the interview, such as I shall arrange, could be granted with safety. You shall meet her at two oclock this morning in the Park of the Chteau de la Carque. What room do you occupy in the Dragon Volant? I was amazed at the audacity and decision of this girl. Was she, as we say in England, hoaxing me? I can describe that accurately, said I. As I look from the rear of the house, in which my apartment is, I am at the extreme right, next the angle; and one pair of stairs up, from the hall. Very well; you must have observed, if you looked into the park, two or three clumps of chestnut and limetrees, growing so close together as to form a small grove. You must return to your hotel, change your dress, and, preserving a scrupulous secrecy, as to why or where you go, leave the Dragon Volant, and climb the parkwall, unseen; you will easily recognize the grove I have mentioned; there you will meet the Countess, who will grant you an audience of a few minutes, who will expect the most scrupulous reserve on your part, and who will explain to you, in a few words, a great deal which I could not so well tell you here. I cannot describe the feeling with which I heard these words. I was astounded. Doubt succeeded. I could not believe these agitating words. Mademoiselle will believe that if I only dared assure myself that so great a happiness and honour were really intended for me, my gratitude would be as lasting as my life. But how dare I believe that Mademoiselle does not speak, rather from her own sympathy or goodness, than from a certainty that the Countess de St. Alyre would concede so great an honour? Monsieur believes either that I am not, as I pretend to be, in the secret which he hitherto supposed to be shared by no one but the Countess and himself, or else that I am cruelly mystifying him. That I am in her confidence, I swear by all that is dear in a whispered farewell. By the last companion of this flower! and she took for a moment in her fingers the nodding head of a white rosebud that was nestled in her bouquet. By my own good star, and hersor shall I call it our belle toile? Have I said enough? Enough? I repeated, more than enougha thousand thanks. And being thus in her confidence, I am clearly her friend; and being a friend would it be friendly to use her dear name so; and all for sake of practising a vulgar trick upon youa stranger? Mademoiselle will forgive me. Remember how very precious is the hope of seeing, and speaking to the Countess. Is it wonderful, then, that I should falter in my belief? You have convinced me, however, and will forgive my hesitation. You will be at the place I have described, then, at two oclock? Assuredly, I answered. And Monsieur, I know, will not fail, through fear. No, he need not assure me; his courage is already proved. No danger, in such a case, will be unwelcome to me. Had you not better go now, Monsieur, and rejoin your friend? I promised to wait here for my friends return. The Count de St. Alyre said that he intended to introduce me to the Countess. And Monsieur is so simple as to believe him? Why should I not? Because he is jealous and cunning. You will see. He will never introduce you to his wife. He will come here and say he cannot find her, and promise another time. I think I see him approaching, with my friend. Nothere is no lady with him. I told you so. You will wait a long time for that happiness, if it is never to reach you except through his hands. In the meantime, you had better not let him see you so near me. He will suspect that we have been talking of his wife; and that will whet his jealousy and his vigilance. I thanked my unknown friend in the mask, and withdrawing a few steps, came, by a little circumbendibus, upon the flank of the Count. I smiled under my mask, as he assured me that the Duchesse de la Roqueme had changed her place, and taken the Countess with her; but he hoped, at some very early time, to have an opportunity of enabling her to make my acquaintance. I avoided the Marquis dHarmonville, who was following the Count. I was afraid he might propose accompanying me home, and had no wish to be forced to make an explanation. I lost myself quickly, therefore, in the crowd, and moved, as rapidly as it would allow me, toward the Galerie des Glaces, which lay in the direction opposite to that in which I saw the Count and my friend the Marquis moving. XV Strange Story of the Dragon Volant These ftes were earlier in those days, and in France, than our modern balls are in London. I consulted my watch. It was a little past twelve. It was a still and sultry night; the magnificent suite of rooms, vast as some of them were, could not be kept at a temperature less than oppressive, especially to people with masks on. In some places the crowd was inconvenient, and the profusion of lights added to the heat. I removed my mask, therefore, as I saw some other people do, who were as careless of mystery as I. I had hardly done so, and began to breathe more comfortably, when I heard a friendly English voice call me by my name. It was Tom Whistlewick, of the th Dragoons. He had unmasked, with a very flushed face, as I did. He was one of those Waterloo heroes, new from the mint of glory, whom, as a body, all the world, except France, revered; and the only thing I knew against him, was a habit of allaying his thirst, which was excessive, at balls, ftes, musical parties, and all gatherings, where it was to be had, with champagne; and, as he introduced me to his friend, Monsieur Carmaignac, I observed that he spoke a little thick. Monsieur Carmaignac was little, lean, and as straight as a ramrod. He was bald, took snuff, and wore spectacles; and, as I soon learned, held an official position. Tom was facetious, sly, and rather difficult to understand, in his present pleasant mood. He was elevating his eyebrows and screwing his lips oddly, and fanning himself vaguely with his mask. After some agreeable conversation, I was glad to observe that he preferred silence, and was satisfied with the role of listener, as I and Monsieur Carmaignac chatted; and he seated himself, with extraordinary caution and indecision, upon a bench, beside us, and seemed very soon to find a difficulty in keeping his eyes open. I heard you mention, said the French gentleman, that you had engaged an apartment in the Dragon Volant, about half a league from this. When I was in a different police department, about four years ago, two very strange cases were connected with that house. One was of a wealthy migr, permitted to return to France, by the Emby Napoleon. He vanished. The otherequally strangewas the case of a Russian of rank and wealth. He disappeared just as mysteriously. My servant, I said, gave me a confused account of some occurrences, and, as well as I recollect he described the same personsI mean a returned French nobleman, and a Russian gentleman. But he made the whole story so marvellousI mean in the supernatural sensethat, I confess, I did not believe a word of it. No, there was nothing supernatural; but a great deal inexplicable, said the French gentleman. Of course there may be theories; but the thing was never explained, nor, so far as I know, was a ray of light ever thrown upon it. Pray let me hear the story, I said. I think I have a claim, as it affects my quarters. You dont suspect the people of the house? Oh! it has changed hands since then. But there seemed to be a fatality about a particular room. Could you describe that room? Certainly. It is a spacious, panelled bedroom, up one pair of stairs, in the back of the house, and at the extreme right, as you look from its windows. Ho! Really? Why, then, I have got the very room! I said, beginning to be more interestedperhaps the least bit in the world, disagreeably. Did the people die, or were they actually spirited away? No, they did not diethey disappeared very oddly. Ill tell you the particularsI happen to know them exactly, because I made an official visit, on the first occasion, to the house, to collect evidence; and although I did not go down there, upon the second, the papers came before me, and I dictated the official letter despatched to the relations of the people who had disappeared; they had applied to the government to investigate the affair. We had letters from the same relations more than two years later, from which we learned that the missing men had never turned up. He took a pinch of snuff, and looked steadily at me. Never! I shall relate all that happened, so far as we could discover. The French noble, who was the Chevalier Chteau Blassemare, unlike most migrs, had taken the matter in time, sold a large portion of his property before the revolution had proceeded so far as to render that next to impossible, and retired with a large sum. He brought with him about half a million of francs, the greater part of which he invested in the French funds; a much larger sum remained in Austrian land and securities. You will observe then that this gentleman was rich, and there was no allegation of his having lost money, or being, in any way, embarrassed. You see? I assented.

This gentlemans habits were not expensive in proportion to his means. He had suitable lodgings in Paris; and for a time, society, the theatres, and other reasonable amusements, engrossed him. He did not play. He was a middleaged man, affecting youth, with the vanities which are usual in such persons; but, for the rest, he was a gentle and polite person, who disturbed nobodya person, you see, not likely to provoke an enmity. Certainly not, I agreed. Early in the summer of 1811, he got an order permitting him to copy a picture in one of these salons, and came down here, to Versailles, for the purpose. His work was getting on slowly. After a time he left his hotel, here, and went, by way of change, to the Dragon Volant there he took, by special choice, the bedroom which has fallen to you by chance. From this time, it appeared, he painted little; and seldom visited his apartments in Paris. One night he saw the host of the Dragon Volant, and told him that he was going into Paris, to remain for a day or two, on very particular business; that his servant would accompany him, but that he would retain his apartments at the Dragon Volant, and return in a few days. He left some clothes there, but packed a portmanteau, took his dressingcase, and the rest, and, with his servant behind his carriage, drove into Paris. You observe all this, Monsieur? Most attentively, I answered. Well, Monsieur, as soon as they were approaching his lodgings, he stopped the carriage on a sudden, told his servant that he had changed his mind; that he would sleep elsewhere that night, that he had very particular business in the north of France, not far from Rouen, that he would set out before daylight on his journey, and return in a fortnight. He called a fiacre, took in his hand a leather bag which, the servant said, was just large enough to hold a few shirts and a coat, but that it was enormously heavy, as he could testify, for he held it in his hand, while his master took out his purse to count thirtysix Napoleons, for which the servant was to account when he should return. He then sent him on, in the carriage; and he, with the bag I have mentioned, got into the fiacre. Up to that, you see, the narrative is quite clear. Perfectly, I agreed. Now comes the mystery, said Monsieur Carmaignac. After that, the Count Chteau Blassemare was never more seen, so far as we can make out, by acquaintance or friend. We learned that the day before the Counts stockbroker had, by his direction, sold all his stock in the French funds, and handed him the cash it realized. The reason he gave him for this measure tallied with what he said to his servant. He told him that he was going to the north of France to settle some claims, and did not know exactly how much might be required. The bag, which had puzzled the servant by its weight, contained, no doubt, a large sum in gold. Will Monsieur try my snuff? He politely tendered his open snuffbox, of which I partook, experimentally. A reward was offered, he continued, when the inquiry was instituted, for any information tending to throw a light upon the mystery, which might be afforded by the driver of the fiacre employed on the night of (soandso), at about the hour of halfpast ten, by a gentleman, with a blackleather travellingbag in his hand, who descended from a private carriage, and gave his servant some money, which he counted twice over. About a hundredandfifty drivers applied, but not one of them was the right man. We did, however, elicit a curious and unexpected piece of evidence in quite another quarter. What a racket that plaguey harlequin makes with his sword! Intolerable! I chimed in. The harlequin was soon gone, and he resumed. The evidence I speak of, came from a boy, about twelve years old, who knew the appearance of the Count perfectly, having been often employed by him as a messenger. He stated that about halfpast twelve oclock, on the same nightupon which you are to observe, there was a brilliant moonhe was sent, his mother having been suddenly taken ill, for the sage femme who lived within a stones throw of the Dragon Volant. His fathers house, from which he started, was a mile away, or more, from that inn, in order to reach which he had to pass round the park of the Chteau de la Carque, at the site most remote from the point to which he was going. It passes the old churchyard of St. Aubin, which is separated from the road only by a very low fence, and two or three enormous old trees. The boy was a little nervous as he approached this ancient cemetery; and, under the bright moonlight, he saw a man whom he distinctly recognised as the Count, whom they designated by a soubriquet which means the man of smiles. He was looking rueful enough now, and was seated on the side of a tombstone, on which he had laid a pistol, while he was ramming home the charge of another. The boy got cautiously by, on tiptoe, with his eyes all the time on the Count Chteau Blassemare, or the man he mistook for him; his dress was not what he usually wore, but the witness swore that he could not be mistaken as to his identity. He said his face looked grave and stern; but though he did not smile, it was the same face he knew so well. Nothing would make him swerve from that. If that were he, it was the last time he was seen. He has never been heard of since. Nothing could be heard of him in the neighbourhood of Rouen. There has been no evidence of his death; and there is no sign that he is living. That certainly is a most singular case, I replied; and was about to ask a question or two, when Tom Whistlewick who, without my observing it, had been taking a ramble, returned, a great deal more awake, and a great deal less tipsy. I say, Carmaignac, it is getting late, and I must go; I really must, for the reason I told youand, Beckett, we must soon meet again. I regret very much, Monsieur, my not being able at present to relate to you the other case, that of another tenant of the very same rooma case more mysterious and sinister than the lastand which occurred in the autumn of the same year. Will you both do a very goodnatured thing, and come and dine with me at the Dragon Volant tomorrow? So, as we pursued our way along the Galerie des Glaces, I extracted their promise. By Jove! said Whistlewick, when this was done; look at that pagoda, or sedan chair, or whatever it is, just where those fellows set it down, and not one of them near it! I cant imagine how they tell fortunes so devilish well. Jack NufflesI met him here tonightsays they are gipsieswhere are they, I wonder? Ill go over and have a peep at the prophet. I saw him plucking at the blinds, which were constructed something on the principle of Venetian blinds; the red curtains were inside; but they did not yield, and he could only peep under one that did not come quite down. When he rejoined us, he related I could scarcely see the old fellow, its so dark. He is covered with gold and red, and has an embroidered hat on like a mandarins; hes fast asleep; and, by Jove, he smells like a polecat! Its worth going over only to have it to say. Fiew! pooh! oh! It is a perfume. Faugh! Not caring to accept this tempting invitation, we got along slowly toward the door. I bid them good night, reminding them of their promise. And so found my way at last to my carriage; and was soon rolling slowly toward the Dragon Volant, on the loneliest of roads, under old trees, and the soft moonlight. What a number of things had happened within the last two hours! what a variety of strange and vivid pictures were crowded together in that brief space! What an adventure was before me! The silent, moonlighted, solitary road, how it contrasted with the manyeddied whirl of pleasure from whose roar and music, lights, diamonds and colours, I had just extricated myself. The sight of lonely Nature at such an hour, acts like a sudden sedative. The madness and guilt of my pursuit struck me with a momentary compunction and horror. I wished I had never entered the labyrinth which was leading me, I knew not whither. It was too late to think of that now; but the bitter was already stealing into my cup; and vague anticipations lay, for a few minutes, heavy on my heart. It would not have taken much to make me disclose my unmanly state of mind to my lively friend, Alfred Ogle, nor even to the milder ridicule of the agreeable Tom Whistlewick. XVI The Parc of the Chteau de la Carque There was no danger of the Dragon Volants closing its doors on that occasion till three or four in the morning. There were quartered there many servants of great people, whose masters would not leave the ball till the last moment, and who could not return to their corners in the Dragon Volant, till their last services had been rendered. I knew, therefore, I should have ample time for my mysterious excursion without exciting curiosity by being shut out. And now we pulled up under the canopy of boughs, before the sign of the Dragon Volant, and the light that shone from its halldoor. I dismissed my carriage, ran up the broad staircase, mask in hand, with my domino fluttering about me, and entered the large bedroom. The black wainscoting and stately furniture, with the dark curtains of the very tall bed, made the night there more sombre. An oblique patch of moonlight was thrown upon the floor from the window to which I hastened. I looked out upon the landscape slumbering in those silvery beams. There stood the outline of the Chteau de la Carque, its chimneys, and many turrets with their extinguishershaped roofs black against the soft grey sky. There, also, more in the foreground, about midway between the window where I stood, and the chteau, but a little to the left, I traced the tufted masses of the grove which the lady in the mask had appointed as the trystingplace, where I and the beautiful Countess were to meet that night. I took the bearings of this gloomy bit of wood, whose foliage glimmered softly at top in the light of the moon. You may guess with what a strange interest and swelling of the heart I gazed on the unknown scene of my coming adventure. But time was flying, and the hour already near. I threw my robe upon a sofa; I groped out a pair of boots, which I substituted for those thin heelless shoes, in those days called pumps, without which a gentleman could not attend an evening party. I put on my hat, and lastly, I took a pair of loaded pistols which I had been advised were satisfactory companions in the then unsettled state of French society swarms of disbanded soldiers, some of them alleged to be desperate characters, being everywhere to be met with. These preparations made, I confess I took a lookingglass to the window to see how I looked in the moonlight; and being satisfied, I replaced it, and ran downstairs. In the hall I called for my servant. St. Clair, said I; I mean to take a little moonlight ramble, only ten minutes or so. You must not go to bed until I return. If the night is very beautiful, I may possibly extend my ramble a little. So down the steps I lounged, looking first over my right, and then over my left shoulder, like a man uncertain which direction to take, and I sauntered up the road, gazing now at the moon, and now at the thin white clouds in the opposite direction, whistling, all the time, an air which I had picked up at one of the theatres. When I had got a couple of hundred yards away from the Dragon Volant, my minstrelsy totally ceased; and I turned about, and glanced sharply down the road that looked as white as hoarfrost under the moon, and saw the gable of the old inn, and a window, partly concealed by the foliage, with a dusky light shining from it. No sound of footstep was stirring; no sign of human figure in sight. I consulted my watch, which the light was sufficiently strong to enable me to do. It now wanted but eight minutes of the appointed hour. A thick mantle of ivy at this point covered the wall and rose in a clustering head at top. It afforded me facilities for scaling the wall, and a partial screen for my operations, if any eye should chance to be looking that way. And now it was done. I was in the park of the Chteau de la Carque, as nefarious a poacher as ever trespassed on the grounds of unsuspicious lord! Before me rose the appointed grove, which looked as black as a clump of gigantic hearseplumes. It seemed to tower higher and higher at every step; and cast a broader and blacker shadow toward my feet. On I marched, and was glad when I plunged into the shadow which concealed me. Now I was among the grand old lime and chestnut treesmy heart beat fast with expectation. This grove opened, a little, near the middle; and in the space thus cleared, there stood with a surrounding flight of steps, a small Greek temple or shrine, with a statue in the centre. It was built of white marble with fluted Corinthian columns, and the crevices were tufted with grass; moss had shown itself on pedestal and cornice, and signs of long neglect and decay were apparent in its discoloured and weatherworn marble. A few feet in front of the steps a fountain, fed from the great ponds at the other side of the chteau, was making a constant tinkle and plashing in a wide marble basin, and the jet of water glimmered like a shower of diamonds in the broken moonlight. The very neglect and halfruinous state of all this made it only the prettier, as well as sadder. I was too intently watching for the arrival of the lady, in the direction of the chteau, to study these things; but the halfnoted effect of them was romantic, and suggested somehow the grotto and the fountain, and the apparition of Egeria. As I watched a voice spoke to me, a little behind my left shoulder. I turned, almost with a start, and the masque, in the costume of Mademoiselle de la Vallire stood there. The Countess will be here presently, she said. The lady stood upon the open space, and the moonlight fell unbroken upon her. Nothing could be more becoming; her figure looked more graceful and elegant than ever. In the meantime I shall tell you some peculiarities of her situation. She is unhappy; miserable in an illassorted marriage, with a jealous tyrant who now would constrain her to sell her diamonds, which are Worth thirty thousand pounds sterling. I heard all that from a friend. Can I aid the Countess in her unequal struggle? Say but how, and the greater the danger or the sacrifice, the happier will it make me. Can I aid her? If you despise a dangerwhich, yet, is not a danger; if you despise, as she does, the tyrannical canons of the world; and, if you are chivalrous enough to devote yourself to a ladys cause, with no reward but her poor gratitude; if you can do these things you can aid her, and earn a foremost place, not in her gratitude only, but in her friendship. At those words the lady in the mask turned away, and seemed to weep. I vowed myself the willing slave of the Countess. But, I added, you told me she would soon be here. That is, if nothing unforeseen should happen; but with the eye of the Count de St. Alyre in the house, and open, it is seldom safe to stir. Does she wish to see me? I asked, with a tender hesitation. First, say have you really thought of her, more than once, since the adventure of the Belle Etoile. She never leaves my thoughts; day and night her beautiful eyes haunt me; her sweet voice is always in my ear. Mine is said to resemble hers, said the mask. So it does, I answered. But it is only a resemblance. Oh! then mine is better? Pardon me, Mademoiselle, I did not say that. Yours is a sweet voice, but I fancy a little higher. A little shriller, you would say, answered the De la Vallire, I fancied a good deal vexed. No, not shriller your voice is not shrill, it is beautifully sweet; but not so pathetically sweet as her. That is prejudice, Monsieur; it is not true. I bowed; I could not contradict a lady. I see, Monsieur, you laugh at me; you think me vain, because I claim in some points to be equal to the Countess de St. Alyre. I challenge you to say, my hand, at least, is less beautiful than hers. As she thus spoke, she drew her glove off, and extended her hand, back upward, in the moonlight. The lady seemed really nettled. It was undignified and irritating; for in this uninteresting competition the precious moments were flying, and my interview leading apparently to nothing. You will admit, then, that my hand is as beautiful as hers? I cannot admit it, Mademoiselle, said I, with the honesty of irritation. I will not enter into comparisons, but the Countess de St. Alyre is, in all respects, the most beautiful lady I ever beheld. The masque laughed coldly, and then, more and more softly, said, with a sigh, I will prove all I say. And as she spoke she removed the mask and the Countess de St. Alyre, smiling, confused, bashful, more beautiful than ever, stood before me! Good Heavens! I exclaimed. How monstrously stupid I have been. And it was to Madame la Comtesse that I spoke for so long in the salon! I gazed on her in silence. And with a low sweet laugh of good nature she extended her hand. I took it, and carried it to my lips. No, you must not do that, she said, quietly, we are not old enough friends yet. I find, although you were mistaken, that you do remember the Countess of the Belle Etoile, and that you are a champion true and fearless. Had you yielded to the claims just now pressed upon you by the rivalry of Mademoiselle de la Vallire, in her mask, the Countess de St. Alyre should never have trusted or seen you more. I now am sure that you are true, as well as brave. You now know that I have not forgotten you; and, also, that if you would risk your life for me, I, too, would brave some danger, rather than lose my friend forever. I have but a few moments more. Will you come here again tomorrow night, at a quarter past eleven? I will be here at that moment; you must exercise the most scrupulous care to prevent suspicion that you have come here, Monsieur. You owe that to me. She spoke these last words with the most solemn entreaty. I vowed again and again, that I would die rather than permit the least rashness to endanger the secret which made all the interest and value of my life. She was looking, I thought, more and more beautiful every moment. My enthusiasm expanded in proportion. You must come tomorrow night by a different route, she said; and if you come again, we can change it once more. At the other side of the chteau there is a little churchyard, with a ruined chapel. The neighbours are afraid to pass it by night. The road is deserted there, and a stile opens a way into these grounds. Cross it and you can find a covert of thickets, to within fifty steps of this spot. I promised, of course, to observe her instructions implicitly. I have lived for more than a year in an agony of irresolution. I have decided at last. I have lived a melancholy life; a lonelier life than is passed in the cloister. I have had no one to confide in; no one to advise me; no one to save me from the horrors of my existence. I have found a brave and prompt friend at last. Shall I ever forget the heroic tableau of the hall of the Belle Etoile? Have youhave you really kept the rose I gave you, as we parted? Yesyou swear it. You need not; I trust you. Richard, how often have I in solitude repeated your name, learned from my servant. Richard, my hero! Oh! Richard! Oh, my king! I love you. I would have folded her to my heartthrown myself at her feet. But this beautiful andshall I say itinconsistent woman repelled me. No, we must not waste our moments in extravagances. Understand my case. There is no such thing as indifference in the married state. Not to love ones husband, she continued, is to hate him. The Count, ridiculous in all else, is formidable in his jealousy. In mercy, then, to me, observe caution. Affect to all you speak to, the most complete ignorance of all the people in the Chteau de la Carque; and, if anyone in your presence mentions the Count or Countess de St. Alyre, be sure you say you never saw either. I shall have more to say to you tomorrow night. I have reasons that I cannot now explain, for all I do, and all I postpone. Farewell. Go! Leave me. She waved me back, peremptorily. I echoed her farewell, and obeyed. This interview had not lasted, I think, more than ten minutes. I scaled the parkwall again, and reached the Dragon Volant before its doors were closed. I lay awake in my bed, in a fever of elation. I saw, till the dawn broke, and chased the vision, the beautiful Countess de St. Alyre, always in the dark, before me. XVII The Tenant of the Palanquin The Marquis called on me next day. My late breakfast was still upon the table. He had come, he said, to ask a favour. An accident had happened to his carriage in the crowd on leaving the ball, and he begged, if I were going into Paris, a seat in mineI was going in, and was extremely glad of his company. He came with me to my hotel; we went up to my rooms. I was surprised to see a man seated in an easy chair, with his back towards us, reading a newspaper. He rose. It was the Count de St. Alyre, his gold spectacles on his nose; his black wig, in oily curls, lying close to his narrow head, and showing, like carved ebony over a repulsive visage of boxwood. His black muffler had been pulled down. His right arm was in a sling. I dont know whether there was anything unusual in his countenance that day, or whether it was but the effect of prejudice arising from all I had heard in my mysterious interview in his park, but I thought his countenance was more strikingly forbidding than I had seen it before. I was not callous enough in the ways of sin to meet this man, injured at least in intent, thus suddenly, without a momentary disturbance. He smiled. I called, Monsieur Beckett, in the hope of finding you here, he croaked, and I meditated, I fear, taking a great liberty, but my friend the Marquis dHarmonville, on whom I have perhaps some claim, will perhaps give me the assistance I require so much. With great pleasure, said the Marquis, but not till after six oclock. I must go this moment to a meeting of three or four people, whom I cannot disappoint, and I know, perfectly, we cannot break up earlier. What am I to do? exclaimed the Count, an hour would have done it all. Was ever contretemps so unlucky! Ill give you an hour, with pleasure, said I. How very good of you, Monsieur, I hardly dare to hope it. The business, for so gay and charming a man as Monsieur Beckett, is a little funeste. Pray read this note which reached me this morning. It certainly was not cheerful. It was a note stating that the body of his, the Counts cousin, Monsieur de St. Amand, who had died at his house, the Chteau Clery, had been, in accordance with his written directions, sent for burial at Pre La Chaise, and, with the permission of the Count de St. Alyre, would reach his house (the Chteau de la Carque), at about ten oclock on the night following, to be conveyed thence in a hearse, with any member of the family who might wish to attend the obsequies. I did not see the poor gentleman twice in my life, said the Count, but this office, as he has no other kinsman, disagreeable as it is, I could scarcely decline, and so I want to attend at the office to have the book signed, and the order entered. But here is another misery. By ill luck, I have sprained my thumb, and cant sign my name for a week to come. However, one name answers as well as another. Yours as well as mine. And as you are so good as to come with me, all will go right. Away, we drove. The Count gave me a memorandum of the Christian and surnames of the deceased, his age, the complaint he died of, and the usual particulars; also a note of the exact position in which a grave, the dimensions of which were described, of the ordinary simple kind, was to be dug, between two vaults belonging to the family of St. Amand. The funeral, it was stated, would arrive at halfpast one oclock a.m. (the next night but one); and he handed me the money, with extra fees, for a burial by night. It was a good deal; and I asked him, as he entrusted the whole affair to me, in whose name I should take the receipt. Not in mine, my good friend. They wanted me to become an executor, which I, yesterday, wrote to decline; and I am informed that if the receipt were in my name it would constitute me an executor in the eye of the law, and fix me in that position. Take it, pray, if you have no objection, in your own name. This, accordingly, I did. You will see, byandby, why I am obliged to mention all these particulars. The Count, meanwhile, was leaning back in the carriage, with his black silk muffler up to his nose, and his hat shading his eyes, while he dozed in his corner; in which state I found him on my return. Paris had lost its charm for me. I hurried through the little business I had to do, longed once more for my quiet room in the Dragon Volant, the melancholy woods of the Chteau de la Carque, and the tumultuous and thrilling influence of proximity to the object of my wild but wicked romance. I was delayed some time by my stockbroker. I had a very large sum, as I told you, at my bankers, uninvested. I cared very little for a few days interestvery little for the entire sum, compared with the image that occupied my thoughts, and beckoned me with a white arm, through the dark, toward the spreading limetrees and chestnuts of the Chteau de la Carque. But I had fixed this day to meet him, and was relieved when he told me that I had better let it lie in my bankers hands for a few days longer, as the funds would certainly fall immediately. This accident, too, was not without its immediate bearing on my subsequent adventures. When I reached the Dragon Volant, I found, in my sittingroom, a good deal to my chagrin, my two guests, whom I had quite forgotten. I inwardly cursed my own stupidity for having embarrassed myself with their agreeable society. It could not be helped now, however, and a word to the waiters put all things in train for dinner. Tom Whistlewick was in great force; and he commenced almost immediately with a very odd story. He told me that not only Versailles, but all Paris, was in a ferment, in consequence of a revolting, and all but sacrilegious, practical joke, played off on the night before. The pagoda, as he persisted in calling the palanquin, had been left standing on the spot where we last saw it. Neither conjuror, nor usher, nor bearers had ever returned. When the ball closed, and the company at length retired, the servants who attended to put out the lights, and secure the doors, found it still there. It was determined, however, to let it stand where it was until next morning, by which time, it was conjectured, its owners would send messengers to remove it. None arrived. The servants were then ordered to take it away; and its extraordinary weight, for the first time, reminded them of its forgotten human occupant. Its door was forced; and, judge what was their disgust, when they discovered, not a living man, but a corpse! Three or four days must have passed since the death of the burly man in the Chinese tunic and painted cap. Some people thought it was a trick designed to insult the Allies, in whose honour the ball was got up. Others were of opinion that it was nothing worse than a daring and cynical jocularity which, shocking as it was, might yet be forgiven to the high spirits and irrepressible buffoonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in number, and mystically given, insisted that the corpse was bona fide necessary to the exhibition, and that the disclosures and allusions which had astonished so many people were distinctly due to necromancy. The matter, however, is now in the hands of the police, observed Monsieur Carmaignac, and we are not the body they were two or three months ago, if the offenders against propriety and public feeling are not traced, and convicted, unless, indeed, they have been a great deal more cunning than such fools generally are. I was thinking within myself how utterly inexplicable was my colloquy with the conjuror, so cavalierly dismissed by Monsieur Carmaignac as a fool; and the more I thought the more marvellous it seemed. It certainly was an original joke, though not a very clear one, said Whistlewick. Not even original, said Carmaignac. Very nearly the same thing was done, a hundred years ago or more, at a state ball in Paris; and the rascals who played the trick were never found out. In this Monsieur Carmaignac, as I afterwards discovered, spoke truly; for, among my books of French anecdote and memoirs, the very incident is marked, by my own hand. While we were thus talking, the waiter told us that dinner was served; and we withdrew accordingly; my guests more than making amends for my comparative taciturnity. XVIII The Churchyard Our dinner was really good, so were the wines; better, perhaps, at this outoftheway inn, than at some of the more pretentious hotels in Paris. The moral effect of a really good dinner is immensewe all felt it. The serenity and good nature that follow are more solid and comfortable than the tumultuous benevolences of Bacchus. My friends were happy, therefore, and very chatty; which latter relieved me of the trouble of talking, and prompted them to entertain me and one another incessantly with agreeable stories and conversation, of which, until suddenly a subject emerged, which interested me powerfully, I confess, so much were my thoughts engaged elsewhere, I heard next to nothing. Yes, said Carmaignac, continuing a conversation which had escaped me, there was another case, beside that Russian nobleman, odder still. I remembered it this morning, but cannot recall the name. He was a tenant of the very same room. By the by, Monsieur, might it not be as well, he added, turning to me, with a laugh, half joke whole earnest, as they say, if you were to get into another apartment, now that the house is no longer crowded? that is, if you mean to make any stay here. A thousand thanks! no. Im thinking of changing my hotel; and I can run into town so easily at night; and though I stay here, for this night, at least, I dont expect to vanish like those others. But you say there is another adventure, of the same kind, connected with the same room. Do let us hear it. But take some wine first. The story he told was curious. It happened, said Carmaignac, as well as I recollect, before either of the other cases. A French gentlemanI wish I could remember his namethe son of a merchant, came to this inn (the Dragon Volant), and was put by the landlord into the same room of which we have been speaking. Your apartment, Monsieur. He was by no means youngpast fortyand very far from goodlooking. The people here said that he was the ugliest man, and the most goodnatured, that ever lived. He played on the fiddle, sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were odd and desultory. He would sometimes sit all day in his room writing, singing, and fiddling, and go out at night for a walk. An eccentric man! He was by no means a millionaire, but he had a modicum bonum you understanda trifle more than half a million of francs. He consulted his stockbroker about investing this money in foreign stocks, and drew the entire sum from his banker. You now have the situation of affairs when the catastrophe occurred. Pray fill your glass, I said. Dutch courage, Monsieur, to face the catastrophe! said Whistlewick, filling his own. Now, that was the last that ever was heard of his money, resumed Carmaignac. You shall hear about himself. The night after this financial operation, he was seized with a poetic frenzy; he sent for the then landlord of this house, and told him that he long meditated an epic, and meant to commence that night, and that he was on no account to be disturbed until nine oclock in the morning.

He had two pairs of wax candles, a little cold supper on a sidetable, his desk open, paper enough upon it to contain the entire Henriade, and a proportionate store of pens and ink. Seated at this desk he was seen by the waiter who brought him a cup of coffee at nine oclock, at which time the intruder said he was writing fast enough to set fire to the paperthat was his phrase; he did not look up, he appeared too much engrossed. But, when the waiter came back, half an hour afterwards, the door was locked; and the poet, from within, answered, that he must not be disturbed. Away went the garon; and next morning at nine oclock knocked at his door, and receiving no answer, looked through the keyhole; the lights were still burning, the windowshutters were closed as he had left them; he renewed his knocking, knocked louder, no answer came. He reported this continued and alarming silence to the innkeeper, who, finding that his guest had not left his key in the lock, succeeded in finding another that opened it. The candles were just giving up the ghost in their sockets, but there was light enough to ascertain that the tenant of the room was gone! The bed had not been disturbed; the windowshutter was barred. He must have let himself out, and, locking the door on the outside, put the key in his pocket, and so made his way out of the house. Here, however, was another difficulty, the Dragon Volant shut its doors and made all fast at twelve oclock; after that hour no one could leave the house, except by obtaining the key and letting himself out, and of necessity leaving the door unsecured, or else by collusion and aid of some person in the house. Now it happened that, some time after the doors were secured, at halfpast twelve, a servant who had not been apprized of his order to be left undisturbed, seeing a light shine through the keyhole, knocked at the door to inquire whether the poet wanted anything. He was very little obliged to his disturber, and dismissed him with a renewed charge that he was not to be interrupted again during the night. This incident established the fact that he was in the house after the doors had been locked and barred. The innkeeper himself kept the keys, and swore that he found them hung on the wall above his head, in his bed, in their usual place, in the morning; and that nobody could have taken them away without awakening him. That was all we could discover. The Count de St. Alyre, to whom this house belongs, was very active and very much chagrined. But nothing was discovered. And nothing heard since of the epic poet? I asked. Nothingnot the slightest cluehe never turned up again. I suppose he is dead; if he is not, he must have got into some devilish bad scrape, of which we have heard nothing, that compelled him to abscond with all the secrecy and expedition in his power. All that we know for certain is that, having occupied the room in which you sleep, he vanished, nobody ever knew how, and never was heard of since. You have now mentioned three cases, I said, and all from the same room. Three. Yes, all equally unintelligible. When men are murdered, the great and immediate difficulty the assassins encounter is how to conceal the body. It is very hard to believe that three persons should have been consecutively murdered, in the same room, and their bodies so effectually disposed of that no trace of them was ever discovered. From this we passed to other topics, and the grave Monsieur Carmaignac amused us with a perfectly prodigious collection of scandalous anecdote, which his opportunities in the police department had enabled him to accumulate. My guests happily had engagements in Paris, and left me about ten. I went up to my room, and looked out upon the grounds of the Chteau de la Carque. The moonlight was broken by clouds, and the view of the park in this desultory light, acquired a melancholy and fantastic character. The strange anecdotes recounted of the room in which I stood, by Monsieur Carmaignac, returned vaguely upon my mind, drowning in sudden shadows the gaiety of the more frivolous stories with which he had followed them. I looked round me on the room that lay in ominous gloom, with an almost disagreeable sensation. I took my pistols now with an undefined apprehension that they might be really needed before my return tonight. This feeling, be it understood, in nowise chilled my ardour. Never had my enthusiasm mounted higher. My adventure absorbed and carried me away; but it added a strange and stern excitement to the expedition. I loitered for a time in my room. I had ascertained the exact point at which the little churchyard lay. It was about a mile away; I did not wish to reach it earlier than necessary. I stole quietly out, and sauntered along the road to my left, and thence entered a narrower track, still to my left, which, skirting the park wall, and describing a circuitous route, all the way, under grand old trees, passes the ancient cemetery. That cemetery is embowered in trees, and occupies little more than half an acre of ground, to the left of the road, interposing between it and the park of the Chteau de la Carque. Here, at this haunted spot, I paused and listened. The place was utterly silent. A thick cloud had darkened the moon, so that I could distinguish little more than the outlines of near objects, and that vaguely enough; and sometimes, as it were, floating in black fog, the white surface of a tombstone emerged. Among the forms that met my eye against the irongrey of the horizon, were some of those shrubs or trees that grow like our junipers, some six feet high, in form like a miniature poplar, with the darker foliage of the yew. I do not know the name of the plant, but I have often seen it in such funereal places. Knowing that I was a little too early, I sat down upon the edge of a tombstone to wait, as, for aught I knew, the beautiful Countess might have wise reasons for not caring that I should enter the grounds of the chteau earlier than she had appointed. In the listless state induced by waiting, I sat there, with my eyes on the object straight before me, which chanced to be that faint black outline I have described. It was right before me, about halfadozen steps away. The moon now began to escape from under the skirt of the cloud that had hid her face for so long; and, as the light gradually improved, the tree on which I had been lazily staring began to take a new shape. It was no longer a tree, but a man standing motionless. Brighter and brighter grew the moonlight, clearer and clearer the image became, and at last stood out perfectly distinctly. It was Colonel Gaillarde. Luckily, he was not looking toward me. I could only see him in profile; but there was no mistaking the white moustache, the farouche visage, and the gaunt sixfoot stature. There he was, his shoulder toward me, listening and watching, plainly, for some signal or person expected, straight in front of him. If he were, by chance, to turn his eyes in my direction, I knew that I must reckon upon an instantaneous renewal of the combat only commenced in the hall of the Belle Etoile. In any case, could malignant fortune have posted, at this place and hour, a more dangerous watcher? What ecstasy to him, by a single discovery, to hit me so hard, and blast the Countess de St. Alyre, whom he seemed to hate. He raised his arm; he whistled softly; I heard an answering whistle as low; and, to my relief, the Colonel advanced in the direction of this sound, widening the distance between us at every step; and immediately I heard talking, but in a low and cautious key. I recognized, I thought, even so, the peculiar voice of Gaillarde. I stole softly forward in the direction in which those sounds were audible. In doing so, I had, of course, to use the extremest caution. I thought I saw a hat above a jagged piece of ruined wall, and then a secondyes, I saw two hats conversing; the voices came from under them. They moved off, not in the direction of the park, but of the road, and I lay along the grass, peeping over a grave, as a skirmisher might, observing the enemy. One after the other, the figures emerged full into view as they mounted the stile at the roadside. The Colonel, who was last, stood on the wall for awhile, looking about him, and then jumped down on the road. I heard their steps and talk as they moved away together, with their backs toward me, in the direction which led them farther and farther from the Dragon Volant. I waited until these sounds were quite lost in distance before I entered the park. I followed the instructions I had received from the Countess de St. Alyre, and made my way among brushwood and thickets to the point nearest the ruinous temple, and crossed the short intervening space of open ground rapidly. I was now once more under the gigantic boughs of the old lime and chestnut trees; softly, and with a heart throbbing fast, I approached the little structure. The moon was now shining steadily, pouring down its radiance on the soft foliage, and here and there mottling the verdure under my feet. I reached the steps; I was among its worn marble shafts. She was not there, nor in the inner sanctuary, the arched windows of which were screened almost entirely by masses of ivy. The lady had not yet arrived. XIX The Key I stood now upon the steps, watching and listening. In a minute or two I heard the crackle of withered sticks trod upon, and, looking in the direction, I saw a figure approaching among the trees, wrapped in a mantle. I advanced eagerly. It was the Countess. She did not speak, but gave me her hand, and I led her to the scene of our last interview. She repressed the ardour of my impassioned greeting with a gentle but peremptory firmness. She removed her hood, shook back her beautiful hair, and, gazing on me with sad and glowing eyes, sighed deeply. Some awful thought seemed to weigh upon her. Richard, I must speak plainly. The crisis of my life has come. I am sure you would defend me. I think you pity me; perhaps you even love me. At these words I became eloquent, as young madmen in my plight do. She silenced me, however, with the same melancholy firmness. Listen, dear friend, and then say whether you can aid me. How madly I am trusting you; and yet my heart tells me how wisely! To meet you here as I dowhat insanity it seems! How poorly you must think of me! But when you know all, you will judge me fairly. Without your aid I cannot accomplish my purpose. That purpose unaccomplished, I must die. I am chained to a man whom I despisewhom I abhor. I have resolved to fly. I have jewels, principally diamonds, for which I am offered thirty thousand pounds of your English money. They are my separate property by my marriage settlement; I will take them with me. You are a judge, no doubt, of jewels. I was counting mine when the hour came, and brought this in my hand to show you. Look. It is magnificent! I exclaimed, as a collar of diamonds twinkled and flashed in the moonlight, suspended from her pretty fingers. I thought, even at that tragic moment, that she prolonged the show, with a feminine delight in these brilliant toys. Yes, she said, I shall part with them all. I will turn them into money, and break, forever, the unnatural and wicked bonds that tied me, in the name of a sacrament, to a tyrant. A man young, handsome, generous, brave as you, can hardly be rich. Richard, you say you love me; you shall share all this with me. We will fly together to Switzerland; we will evade pursuit; my powerful friends will intervene and arrange a separation; and I shall, at length, be happy and reward my hero. You may suppose the style, florid and vehement, in which I poured forth my gratitude, vowed the devotion of my life, and placed myself absolutely at her disposal. Tomorrow night, she said, my husband will attend the remains of his cousin, Monsieur de St. Amand, to Pre la Chaise. The hearse, he says, will leave this at halfpast nine. You must be here, where we stand, at nine oclock. I promised punctual obedience. I will not meet you here; but you see a red light in the window of the tower at that angle of the chteau? I assented. I placed it there, that, tomorrow night, when it comes, you may recognize it. So soon as that rosecoloured light appears at that window, it will be a signal to you that the funeral has left the chteau, and that you may approach safely. Come, then, to that window; I will open it, and admit you. Five minutes after a travellingcarriage, with four horses, shall stand ready in the portecochre. I will place my diamonds in your hands; and so soon as we enter the carriage, our flight commences. We shall have at least five hours start; and with energy, stratagem, and resource, I fear nothing. Are you ready to undertake all this for my sake? Again I vowed myself her slave. My only difficulty, she said, is how we shall quickly enough convert my diamonds into money; I dare not remove them while my husband is in the house. Here was the opportunity I wished for. I now told her that I had in my bankers hands no less a sum than thirty thousand pounds, with which, in the shape of gold and notes, I should come furnished, and thus the risk and loss of disposing of her diamonds in too much haste would be avoided. Good heaven! she exclaimed, with a kind of disappointment. You are rich, then? and I have lost the felicity of making my generous friend more happy. Be it so! since so it must be. Let us contribute, each, in equal shares, to our common fund. Bring you, your money; I, my jewels. There is a happiness to me even in mingling my resources with yours. On this there followed a romantic colloquy, all poetry and passion, such as I should, in vain, endeavour to reproduce. Then came a very special instruction. I have come provided, too, with a key, the use of which I must explain. It was a double keya long, slender stem, with a key at each endone about the size which opens an ordinary room door; the other, as small, almost, as the key of a dressingcase. You cannot employ too much caution tomorrow night. An interruption would murder all my hopes. I have learned that you occupy the haunted room in the Dragon Volant. It is the very room I would have wished you in. I will tell you whythere is a story of a man who, having shut himself up in that room one night, disappeared before morning. The truth is, he wanted, I believe, to escape from creditors; and the host of the Dragon Volant, at that time, being a rogue, aided him in absconding. My husband investigated the matter, and discovered how his escape was made. It was by means of this key. Here is a memorandum and a plan describing how they are to be applied. I have taken them from the Counts escritoire. And now, once more I must leave to your ingenuity how to mystify the people at the Dragon Volant. Be sure you try the keys first, to see that the locks turn freely. I will have my jewels ready. You, whatever we divide, had better bring your money, because it may be many months before you can revisit Paris, or disclose our place of residence to anyone; and our passportsarrange all that; in what names, and whither, you please. And now, dear Richard (she leaned her arm fondly on my shoulder, and looked with ineffable passion in my eyes, with her other hand clasped in mine), my very life is in your hands; I have staked all on your fidelity. As she spoke the last word, she, on a sudden, grew deadly pale, and gasped, Good God! who is here? At the same moment she receded through the door in the marble screen, close to which she stood, and behind which was a small roofless chamber, as small as the shrine, the window of which was darkened by a clustering mass of ivy so dense that hardly a gleam of light came through the leaves. I stood upon the threshold which she had just crossed, looking in the direction in which she had thrown that one terrified glance. No wonder she was frightened. Quite close upon us, not twenty yards away, and approaching at a quick step, very distinctly lighted by the moon, Colonel Gaillarde and his companion were coming. The shadow of the cornice and a piece of wall were upon me. Unconscious of this, I was expecting the moment when, with one of his frantic yells, he should spring forward to assail me. I made a step backward, drew one of my pistols from my pocket, and cocked it. It was obvious he had not seen me. I stood, with my finger on the trigger, determined to shoot him dead if he should attempt to enter the place where the Countess was. It would, no doubt, have been a murder; but, in my mind, I had no question or qualm about it. When once we engage in secret and guilty practices we are nearer other and greater crimes than we at all suspect. Theres the statue, said the Colonel, in his brief discordant tones. Thats the figure. Alluded to in the stanzas? inquired his companion. The very thing. We shall see more next time. Forward, Monsieur; let us march. And, much to my relief, the gallant Colonel turned on his heel, and marched through the trees, with his back toward the chteau, striding over the grass, as I quickly saw, to the park wall, which they crossed not far from the gables of the Dragon Volant. I found the Countess trembling in no affected, but a very real terror. She would not hear of my accompanying her toward the chteau. But I told her that I would prevent the return of the mad Colonel; and upon that point, at least, that she need fear nothing. She quickly recovered, again bid me a fond and lingering good night, and left me, gazing after her, with the key in my hand, and such a phantasmagoria floating in my brain as amounted very nearly to madness. There was I, ready to brave all dangers, all right and reason, plunge into murder itself, on the first summons, and entangle myself in consequences inextricable and horrible (what cared I?) for a woman of whom I knew nothing, but that she was beautiful and reckless! I have often thanked heaven for its mercy in conducting me through the labyrinths in which I had all but lost myself. XX A HighCauld Cap I was now upon the road, within two or three hundred yards of the Dragon Volant. I had undertaken an adventure with a vengeance! And by way of prelude, there not improbably awaited me, at my inn, another encounter, perhaps, this time, not so lucky, with the grotesque sabreur. I was glad I had my pistols. I certainly was bound by no law to allow a ruffian to cut me down, unresisting. Stooping boughs from the old park, gigantic poplars on the other side, and the moonlight over all, made the narrow road to the inndoor picturesque. I could not think very clearly just now; events were succeeding one another so rapidly, and I, involved in the action of a drama so extravagant and guilty, hardly knew myself or believed my own story, as I slowly paced towards the still open door of the Flying Dragon. No sign of the Colonel, visible or audible, was there. In the hall I inquired. No gentleman had arrived at the inn for the last half hour. I looked into the public room. It was deserted. The clock struck twelve, and I heard the servant barring the great door. I took my candle. The lights in this rural hostelry were by this time out, and the house had the air of one that had settled to slumber for many hours. The cold moonlight streamed in at the window on the landing, as I ascended the broad staircase; and I paused for a moment to look over the wooded grounds to the turreted chteau, to me, so full of interest. I bethought me, however, that prying eyes might read a meaning in this midnight gazing, and possibly the Count himself might, in his jealous mood, surmise a signal in this unwonted light in the stairwindow of the Dragon Volant. On opening my room door, with a little start, I met an extremely old woman with the longest face I ever saw; she had what used to be termed, a highcauldcap, on, the white border of which contrasted with her brown and yellow skin, and made her wrinkled face more ugly. She raised her curved shoulders, and looked up in my face, with eyes unnaturally black and bright. I have lighted a little wood, Monsieur, because the night is chill. I thanked her, but she did not go. She stood with her candle in her tremulous fingers. Excuse an old woman. Monsieur, she said; but what on earth can a young English milord, with all Paris at his feet, find to amuse him in the Dragon Volant? Had I been at the age of fairy tales, and in daily intercourse with the delightful Countess dAulnois, I should have seen in this withered apparition, the genius loci, the malignant fairy, at the stamp of whose foot, the illfated tenants of this very room had, from time to time, vanished. I was past that, however; but the old womans dark eyes were fixed on mine, with a steady meaning that plainly told me that my secret was known. I was embarrassed and alarmed; I never thought of asking her what business that was of hers. These old eyes saw you in the park of the chteau tonight. I! I began, with all the scornful surprise I could affect. It avails nothing, Monsieur; I know why you stay here; and I tell you to begone. Leave this house tomorrow morning, and never come again. She lifted her disengaged hand, as she looked at me with intense horror in her eyes. There is nothing on earthI dont know what you mean, I answered; and why should you care about me? I dont care about you, MonsieurI care about the honour of an ancient family, whom I served in their happier days, when to be noble, was to be honoured. But my words are thrown away, Monsieur; you are insolent. I will keep my secret, and you, yours; that is all. You will soon find it hard enough to divulge it. The old woman went slowly from the room and shut the door, before I had made up my mind to say anything. I was standing where she had left me, nearly five minutes later. The jealousy of Monsieur the Count, I assumed, appears to this old creature about the most terrible thing in creation. Whatever contempt I might entertain for the dangers which this old lady so darkly intimated, it was by no means pleasant, you may suppose, that a secret so dangerous should be so much as suspected by a stranger, and that stranger a partisan of the Count de St. Alyre. Ought I not, at all risks, to apprize the Countess, who had trusted me so generously, or, as she said herself, so madly, of the fact that our secret was, at least, suspected by another? But was there not greater danger in attempting to communicate? What did the beldame mean by saying, Keep your secret, and Ill keep mine? I had a thousand distracting questions before me. My progress seemed like a journey through the Spessart, where at every step some new goblin or monster starts from the ground or steps from behind a tree. Peremptorily I dismissed these harassing and frightful doubts. I secured my door, sat myself down at my table, and with a candle at each side, placed before me the piece of vellum which contained the drawings and notes on which I was to rely for full instructions as to how to use the key. When I had studied this for awhile, I made my investigation. The angle of the room at the right side of the window was cut off by an oblique turn in the wainscot. I examined this carefully, and, on pressure, a small bit of the frame of the woodwork slid aside, and disclosed a keyhole. On removing my finger, it shot back to its place again, with a spring. So far I had interpreted my instructions successfully. A similar search, next the door, and directly under this, was rewarded by a like discovery. The small end of the key fitted this, as it had the upper keyhole; and now, with two or three hard jerks at the key, a door in the panel opened, showing a strip of the bare wall, and a narrow, arched doorway, piercing the thickness of the wall; and within which I saw a screwstaircase of stone. Candle in hand I stepped in. I do not know whether the quality of air, long undisturbed, is peculiar; to me it has always seemed so, and the damp smell of the old masonry hung in this atmosphere. My candle faintly lighted the bare stone wall that enclosed the stair, the foot of which I could not see. Down I went, and a few turns brought me to the stone floor. Here was another door, of the simple, old, oak kind, deep sunk in the thickness of the wall. The large end of the key fitted this. The lock was stiff; I set the candle down upon the stair, and applied both hands; it turned with difficulty, and as it revolved, uttered a shriek that alarmed me for my secret. For some minutes I did not move. In a little time, however, I took courage, and opened the door. The nightair floating in, puffed out the candle. There was a thicket of holly and underwood, as dense as a jungle, close about the door. I should have been in pitchdarkness, were it not that through the topmost leaves, there twinkled, here and there, a glimmer of moonshine. Softly, lest anyone should have opened his window, at the sound of the rusty bolt, I struggled through this, till I gained a view of the open grounds. Here I found that the brushwood spread a good way up the park, uniting with the wood that approached the little temple I have described. A general could not have chosen a more effectuallycovered approach from the Dragon Volant to the trystingplace where hitherto I had conferred with the idol of my lawless adoration. Looking back upon the old inn, I discovered that the stair I descended was enclosed in one of those slender turrets that decorate such buildings. It was placed at that angle which corresponded with the part of the paneling of my room indicated in the plan I had been studying. Thoroughly satisfied with my experiment, I made my way back to the door, with some little difficulty, remounted to my room, locked my secret door again; kissed the mysterious key that her hand had pressed that night, and placed it under my pillow, upon which, very soon after, my giddy head was laid, not, for some time, to sleep soundly. XXI I See Three Men in a Mirror I awoke very early next morning, and was too excited to sleep again. As soon as I could, without exciting remark, I saw my host. I told him that I was going into town that night, and thence to , where I had to see some people on business, and requested him to mention my being there to any friend who might call. That I expected to be back in about a week, and that in the meantime my servant, St. Clair, would keep the key of my room, and look after my things. Having prepared this mystification for my landlord, I drove into Paris, and there transacted the financial part of the affair. The problem was to reduce my balance, nearly thirty thousand pounds, to a shape in which it would be not only easily portable, but available, wherever I might go, without involving correspondence, or any other incident which would disclose my place of residence, for the time being. All these points were as nearly provided for as they could be. I need not trouble you about my arrangements for passports. It is enough to say that the point I selected for our flight was, in the spirit of romance, one of the most beautiful and sequestered nooks in Switzerland. Luggage, I should start with none. The first considerable town we reached next morning, would supply an extemporized wardrobe. It was now two oclock; only two! How on earth was I to dispose of the remainder of the day? I had not yet seen the cathedral of Notre Dame; and thither I drove. I spent an hour or more there; and then to the Conciergerie, the Palais de Justice, and the beautiful Sainte Chapelle. Still there remained some time to get rid of, and I strolled into the narrow streets adjoining the cathedral. I recollect seeing, in one of them, an old house with a mural inscription stating that it had been the residence of Canon Fulbert, the uncle of Abelards Eloise. I dont know whether these curious old streets, in which I observed fragments of ancient gothic churches fitted up as warehouses, are still extant. I lighted, among other dingy and eccentric shops, upon one that seemed that of a broker of all sorts of old decorations, armour, china, furniture. I entered the shop; it was dark, dusty, and low. The proprietor was busy scouring a piece of inlaid armour, and allowed me to poke about his shop, and examine the curious things accumulated there, just as I pleased. Gradually I made my way to the farther end of it, where there was but one window with many panes, each with a bullseye in it, and in the dirtiest possible state. When I reached this window, I turned about, and in a recess, standing at right angles with the side wall of the shop, was a large mirror in an oldfashioned dingy frame. Reflected in this I saw, what in old houses I have heard termed an alcove, in which, among lumber, and various dusty articles hanging on the wall, there stood a table, at which three persons were seated, as it seemed to me, in earnest conversation. Two of these persons I instantly recognized; one was Colonel Gaillarde, the other was the Marquis dHarmonville. The third, who was fiddling with a pen, was a lean, pale man, pitted with the smallpox, with lank black hair, and about as meanlooking a person as I had ever seen in my life. The Marquis looked up, and his glance was instantaneously followed by his two companions. For a moment I hesitated what to do. But it was plain that I was not recognized, as indeed I could hardly have been, the light from the window being behind me, and the portion of the shop immediately before me, being very dark indeed. Perceiving this, I had presence of mind to affect being entirely engrossed by the objects before me, and strolled slowly down the shop again. I paused for a moment to hear whether I was followed, and was relieved when I heard no step. You may be sure I did not waste more time in that shop, where I had just made a discovery so curious and so unexpected. It was no business of mine to inquire what brought Colonel Gaillarde and the Marquis together, in so shabby, and even dirty a place, or who the mean person, biting the feather end of his pen, might be. Such employments as the Marquis had accepted sometimes make strange bedfellows. I was glad to get away, and just as the sun set, I had reached the steps of the Dragon Volant, and dismissed the vehicle in which I arrived, carrying in my hand a strong box, of marvellously small dimensions considering all it contained, strapped in a leather cover, which disguised its real character. When I got to my room, I summoned St. Clair. I told him nearly the same story I had already told my host. I gave him fifty pounds, with orders to expend whatever was necessary on himself, and in payment for my rooms till my return. I then ate a slight and hasty dinner. My eyes were often upon the solemn old clock over the chimneypiece, which was my sole accomplice in keeping tryst in this iniquitous venture. The sky favoured my design, and darkened all things with a sea of clouds. The innkeeper met me in the hall, to ask whether I should want a vehicle to Paris? I was prepared for this question, and instantly answered that I meant to walk to Versailles, and take a carriage there. I called St. Clair. Go, said I, and drink a bottle of wine with your friends. I shall call you if I should want anything; in the meantime, here is the key of my room; I shall be writing some notes, so dont allow anyone to disturb me, for at least half an hour. At the end of that time you will probably find that I have left this for Versailles; and should you not find me in the room, you may take that for granted; and you take charge of everything, and lock the door, you understand? St. Clair took his leave, wishing me all happiness and no doubt promising himself some little amusement with my money. With my candle in my hand, I hastened upstairs. It wanted now but five minutes to the appointed time.

I do not think there is anything of the coward in my nature; but I confess, as the crisis approached, I felt something of the suspense and awe of a soldier going into action. Would I have receded? Not for all this earth could offer. I bolted my door, put on my great coat, and placed my pistols, one in each pocket. I now applied my key to the secret locks; drew the wainscotdoor a little open, took my strong box under my arm, extinguished my candle, unbolted my door, listened at it for a few moments to be sure that no one was approaching, and then crossed the floor of my room swiftly, entered the secret door, and closed the spring lock after me. I was upon the screwstair in total darkness, the key in my fingers. Thus far the undertaking was successful. XXII Rapture Down the screwstair I went in utter darkness; and having reached the stone floor, I discerned the door and groped out the keyhole. With more caution, and less noise than upon the night before, I opened the door, and stepped out into the thick brushwood. It was almost as dark in this jungle. Having secured the door, I slowly pushed my way through the bushes, which soon became less dense. Then, with more ease, but still under thick cover, I pursued in the track of the wood, keeping near its edge. At length, in the darkened air, about fifty yards away, the shafts of the marble temple rose like phantoms before me, seen through the trunks of the old trees. Everything favoured my enterprise. I had effectually mystified my servant and the people of the Dragon Volant, and so dark was the night, that even had I alarmed the suspicions of all the tenants of the inn, I might safely defy their united curiosity, though posted at every window of the house. Through the trunks, over the roots of the old trees, I reached the appointed place of observation. I laid my treasure, in its leathern case, in the embrasure, and leaning my arms upon it, looked steadily in the direction of the chteau. The outline of the building was scarcely discernible, blending dimly, as it did, with the sky. No light in any window was visible. I was plainly to wait; but for how long? Leaning on my box of treasure, gazing toward the massive shadow that represented the chteau, in the midst of my ardent and elated longings, there came upon me an odd thought, which you will think might well have struck me long before. It seemed on a sudden, as it came, that the darkness deepened, and a chill stole into the air around me. Suppose I were to disappear finally, like those other men whose stories I had listened to! Had I not been at all the pains that mortal could, to obliterate every trace of my real proceedings, and to mislead everyone to whom I spoke as to the direction in which I had gone? This icy, snakelight thought stole through my mind, and was gone. It was with me the fullblooded season of youth, conscious strength, rashness, passion, pursuit, the adventure! Here were a pair of doublebarrelled pistols, four lives in my hands? What could possibly happen? The Countexcept for the sake of my dulcinea, what was it to me whether the old coward whom I had seen, in an ague of terror before the brawling Colonel, interposed or not? I was assuming the worst that could happen. But with an ally so clever and courageous as my beautiful Countess, could any such misadventure befall? Bah! I laughed at all such fancies. As I thus communed with myself, the signal light sprang up. The rosecoloured light, couleur de rose, emblem of sanguine hope, and the dawn of a happy day. Clear, soft, and steady, glowed the light from the window. The stone shafts showed black against it. Murmuring words of passionate love as I gazed upon the signal, I grasped my strong box under my arm, and with rapid strides approached the Chteau de la Carque. No sign of light or life, no human voice, no tread of foot, no bark of dog, indicated a chance of interruption. A blind was down; and as I came close to the tall window, I found that halfadozen steps led up to it, and that a large lattice, answering for a door, lay open. A shadow from within fell upon the blind; it was drawn aside, and as I ascended the steps, a soft voice murmuredRichard, dearest Richard, come, oh! come! how I have longed for this moment? Never did she look so beautiful. My love rose to passionate enthusiasm. I only wished there were some real danger in the adventure worthy of such a creature. When the first tumultuous greeting was over, she made me sit beside her on a sofa. There we talked for a minute or two. She told me that the Count had gone, and was by that time more than a mile on his way, with the funeral, to Pre la Chaise. Here were her diamonds. She exhibited, hastily, an open casket containing a profusion of the largest brilliants. What is this? she asked. A box containing money to the amount of thirty thousand pounds, I answered. What! all that money? she exclaimed. Every sou. Was it not unnecessary to bring so much, seeing all these, she said, touching her diamonds. It would have been kind of you, to allow me to provide for both for a time, at least. It would have made me happier even than I am. Dearest, generous angel! Such was my extravagant declamation. You forget that it may be necessary, for a long time, to observe silence as to where we are, and impossible to communicate safely with anyone. You have then here this great sumare you certain; have you counted it? Yes, certainly; I received it today, I answered, perhaps showing a little surprise in my face, I counted it, of course, on drawing it from my bankers. It makes me feel a little nervous, travelling with so much money; but these jewels make as great a danger; that can add but little to it. Place them side by side; you shall take off your great coat when we are ready to go, and with it manage to conceal these boxes. I should not like the drivers to suspect that we were conveying such a treasure. I must ask you now to close the curtains of that window, and bar the shutters. I had hardly done this when a knock was heard at the roomdoor. I know who this is, she said, in a whisper to me. I saw that she was not alarmed. She went softly to the door, and a whispered conversation for a minute followed. My trusty maid, who is coming with us. She says we cannot safely go sooner than ten minutes. She is bringing some coffee to the next room. She opened the door and looked in. I must tell her not to take too much luggage. She is so odd! Dont followstay where you areit is better that she should not see you. She left the room with a gesture of caution. A change had come over the manner of this beautiful woman. For the last few minutes a shadow had been stealing over her, an air of abstraction, a look bordering on suspicion. Why was she pale? Why had there come that dark look in her eyes? Why had her very voice become changed? Had anything gone suddenly wrong? Did some danger threaten? This doubt, however, speedily quieted itself. If there had been anything of the kind, she would, of course, have told me. It was only natural that, as the crisis approached, she should become more and more nervous. She did not return quite so soon as I had expected. To a man in my situation absolute quietude is next to impossible. I moved restlessly about the room. It was a small one. There was a door at the other end. I opened it, rashly enough. I listened, it was perfectly silent. I was in an excited, eager state, and every faculty engrossed about what was coming, and in so far detached from the immediate present. I cant account, in any other way, for my having done so many foolish things that night, for I was, naturally, by no means deficient in cunning. About the most stupid of those was, that instead of immediately closing that door, which I never ought to have opened, I actually took a candle and walked into the room. There I made, quite unexpectedly, a rather startling discovery. XXIII A Cup of Coffee The room was carpetless. On the floor were a quantity of shavings, and some score of bricks. Beyond these, on a narrow table, lay an object, which I could hardly believe I saw aright. I approached and drew from it a sheet which had very slightly disguised its shape. There was no mistake about it. It was a coffin; and on the lid was a plate, with the inscription in French Pierre de la Roche St. Amand. Age de XXIII ans. I drew back with a double shock. So, then, the funeral after all had not yet left! Here lay the body. I had been deceived. This, no doubt, accounted for the embarrassment so manifest in the Countesss manner. She would have done more wisely had she told me the true state of the case. I drew back from this melancholy room, and closed the door. Her distrust of me was the worst rashness she could have committed. There is nothing more dangerous than misapplied caution. In entire ignorance of the fact I had entered the room, and there I might have lighted upon some of the very persons it was our special anxiety that I should avoid. These reflections were interrupted, almost as soon as begun, by the return of the Countess de St. Alyre. I saw at a glance that she detected in my face some evidence of what had happened, for she threw a hasty look towards the door. Have you seen anythinganything to disturb you, dear Richard? Have you been out of this room? I answered promptly, Yes, and told her frankly what had happened. Well, I did not like to make you more uneasy than necessary. Besides, it is disgusting and horrible. The body is there; but the Count had departed a quarter of an hour before I lighted the coloured lamp, and prepared to receive you. The body did not arrive till eight or ten minutes after he had set out. He was afraid lest the people at Pre la Chaise should suppose that the funeral was postponed. He knew that the remains of poor Pierre would certainly reach this tonight although an unexpected delay has occurred; and there are reasons why he wishes the funeral completed before tomorrow. The hearse with the body must leave this in ten minutes. So soon as it is gone, we shall be free to set out upon our wild and happy journey. The horses are to the carriage in the portecochre. As for this funeste horror (she shuddered very prettily), let us think of it no more. She bolted the door of communication, and when she turned, it was with such a pretty penitence in her face and attitude, that I was ready to throw myself at her feet. It is the last time, she said, in a sweet sad little pleading, I shall ever practise a deception on my brave and beautiful Richardmy hero? Am I forgiven? Here was another scene of passionate effusion, and lovers raptures and declamations, but only murmured, lest the ears of listeners should be busy. At length, on a sudden, she raised her hand, as if to prevent my stirring, her eyes fixed on me, and her ear toward the door of the room in which the coffin was placed, and remained breathless in that attitude for a few moments. Then, with a little nod towards me, she moved on tiptoe to the door, and listened, extending her hand backward as if to warn me against advancing; and, after a little time, she returned, still on tiptoe, and whispered to me, They are removing the coffincome with me. I accompanied her into the room from which her maid, as she told me, had spoken to her. Coffee and some old china cups, which appeared to me quite beautiful, stood on a silver tray; and some liqueur glasses, with a flask, which turned out to be noyau, on a salver beside it. I shall attend you. Im to be your servant here; I am to have my own way; I shall not think myself forgiven by my darling if he refuses to indulge me in anything. She filled a cup with coffee, and handed it to me with her left hand, her right arm she fondly, passed over my shoulder, and with her fingers through my curls caressingly, she whispered, Take this, I shall take some just now. It was excellent; and when I had done she handed me the liqueur, which I also drank. Come back, dearest, to the next room, she said. By this time those terrible people must have gone away, and we shall be safer there, for the present, than here. You shall direct, and I obey; you shall command me, not only now, but always, and in all things, my beautiful queen! I murmured. My heroics were unconsciously, I daresay, founded upon my ideal of the French school of lovemaking. I am, even now, ashamed as I recall the bombast to which I treated the Countess de St. Alyre. There, you shall have another miniature glassa fairy glassof noyau, she said, gaily. In this volatile creature, the funereal gloom of the moment before, and the suspense of an adventure on which all her future was staked, disappeared in a moment. She ran and returned with another tiny glass, which, with an eloquent or tender little speech, I placed to my lips and sipped. I kissed her hand, I kissed her lips, I gazed in her beautiful eyes, and kissed her again unresisting. You call me Richard, by what name am I to call my beautiful divinity? I asked. You call me Eugenie, it is my name. Let us be quite real; that is, if you love as entirely as I do. Eugenie! I exclaimed, and broke into a new rapture upon the name. It ended by my telling her how impatient I was to set out upon our journey; and, as I spoke, suddenly an odd sensation overcame me. It was not in the slightest degree like faintness. I can find no phrase to describe it, but a sudden constraint of the brain; it was as if the membrane in which it lies, if there be such a thing, contracted, and became inflexible. Dear Richard! what is the matter? she exclaimed, with terror in her looks. Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this chair. She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer the least resistance. I recognised but too truly the sensations that supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat without the power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of closing my eyelids, of moving my eyes, of stirring a muscle. I had in a few seconds glided into precisely the state in which I had passed so many appalling hours when approaching Paris, in my nightdrive with the Marquis dHarmonville. Great and loud was the ladys agony. She seemed to have lost all sense of fear. She called me by my name, shook me by the shoulder, raised my arm and let it fall, all the time imploring of me, in distracting sentences, to make the slightest sign of life, and vowing that if I did not, she would make away with herself. These ejaculations, after a minute or two, suddenly subsided. The lady was perfectly silent and cool. In a very businesslike way she took a candle and stood before me, pale indeed, very pale, but with an expression only of intense scrutiny with a dash of horror in it. She moved the candle before my eyes slowly, evidently watching the effect. She then set it down, and rang a handbell two or three times sharply. She placed the two cases (I mean hers containing the jewels) and my strong box, side by side on the table; and I saw her carefully lock the door that gave access to the room in which I had just now sipped my coffee. XXIV Hope She had scarcely set down my heavy box, which she seemed to have considerable difficulty in raising on the table, when the door of the room in which I had seen the coffin, opened, and a sinister and unexpected apparition entered. It was the Count de St. Alyre, who had been, as I have told you, reported to me to be, for some considerable time, on his way to Pre la Chaise. He stood before me for a moment, with the frame of the doorway and a background of darkness enclosing him, like a portrait. His slight, mean figure was draped in the deepest mourning. He had a pair of black gloves in his hand, and his hat with crape round it. When he was not speaking his face showed signs of agitation; his mouth was puckering and working. He looked damnably wicked and frightened. Well, my dear Eugenie? Well, childeh? Well, it all goes admirably? Yes, she answered, in a low, hard tone. But you and Planard should not have left that door open. This she said sternly. He went in there and looked about wherever he liked; it was fortunate he did not move aside the lid of the coffin. Planard should have seen to that, said the Count, sharply. Ma foi! I cant be everywhere! He advanced halfadozen short quick steps into the room toward me, and placed his glasses to his eyes. Monsieur Beckett, he cried sharply, two or three times, Hi! dont you know me? He approached and peered more closely in my face; raised my hand and shook it, calling me again, then let it drop, and saidIt has set in admirably, my pretty mignonne. When did it commence? The Countess came and stood beside him, and looked at me steadily for some seconds. You cant conceive the effect of the silent gaze of those two pairs of evil eyes. The lady glanced to where, I recollected, the mantelpiece stood, and upon it a clock, the regular click of which I sharply heard. Fourfivesix minutes and a half, she said slowly, in a cold hard way. Brava! Bravissima! my beautiful queen! my little Venus! my Joan of Arc! my heroine! my paragon of women! He was gloating on me with an odious curiosity, smiling, as he groped backward with his thin brown fingers to find the ladys hand; but she, not (I dare say) caring for his caresses, drew back a little. Come, ma chre, let us count these things. What is it? Pocketbook? Ororwhat? It is that? said the lady, pointing with a look of disgust to the box, which lay in its leather case on the table. Oh! Let us seelet us countlet us see, he said, as he was unbuckling the straps with his tremulous fingers. We must count themwe must see to it. I have pencil and pocketbookbutwheres the key? See this cursed lock! My ! What is it? Wheres the key? He was standing before the Countess, shuffling his feet, with his hands extended and all his fingers quivering. I have not got it; how could I? It is in his pocket, of course, said the lady. In another instant the fingers of the old miscreant were in my pockets he plucked out everything they contained, and some keys among the rest. I lay in precisely the state in which I had been during my drive with the Marquis to Paris. This wretch I knew was about to rob me. The whole drama, and the Countesss role in it, I could not yet comprehend. I could not be sureso much more presence of mind and histrionic resource have women than fall to the lot of our clumsy sexwhether the return of the Count was not, in truth, a surprise to her; and this scrutiny of the contents of my strong box, an extempore undertaking of the Counts. But it was clearing more and more every moment and I was destined, very soon, to comprehend minutely my appalling situation. I had not the power of turning my eyes this way or that, the smallest fraction of a hairs breadth. But let anyone, placed as I was at the end of a room, ascertain for himself by experiment how wide is the field of sight, without the slightest alteration in the line of vision, he will find that it takes in the entire breadth of a large room, and that up to a very short distance before him; and imperfectly, by a refraction, I believe, in the eye itself, to a point very near indeed. Next to nothing that passed in the room, therefore, was hidden from me. The old man had, by this time, found the key. The leather case was open. The box cramped round with iron was next unlocked. He turned out its contents upon the table. Rouleaux of a hundred Napoleons each. One, two, three. Yes, quick. Write down a thousand Napoleons. One, two; yes, right. Another thousand, write! And so, on and on till the gold was rapidly counted. Then came the notes. Ten thousand francs. Write. Ten thousand francs again is it written? Another ten thousand francs is it down? Smaller notes would have been better. They should have been smaller. These are horribly embarrassing. Bolt that door again; Planard would become unreasonable if he knew the amount. Why did you not tell him to get it in smaller notes? No matter nowgo onit cant be helpedwriteanother ten thousand francsanotheranother. And so on, till my treasure was counted out, before my face, while I saw and heard all that passed with the sharpest distinctness, and my mental perceptions were horribly vivid. But in all other respects I was dead. He had replaced in the box every note and rouleau as he counted it, and now having ascertained the sum total, he locked it, replaced it, very methodically, in its cover, opened a buffet in the wainscoting, and, having placed the Countess jewelcase and my strong box in it, he locked it; and immediately on completing these arrangements he began to complain, with fresh acrimony and maledictions of Planards delay. He unbolted the door, looked in the dark room beyond, and listened. He closed the door again, and returned. The old man was in a fever of suspense. I have kept ten thousand francs for Planard, said the Count, touching his waistcoat pocket. Will that satisfy him? asked the lady. Whycurse him! screamed the Count. Has he no conscience! Ill swear to him its half the entire thing. He and the lady again came and looked at me anxiously for awhile, in silence; and then the old Count began to grumble again about Planard, and to compare his watch with the clock. The lady seemed less impatient; she sat no longer looking at me, but across the room, so that her profile was toward meand strangely changed, dark and witchlike it looked. My last hope died as I beheld that jaded face from which the mask had dropped. I was certain that they intended to crown their robbery by murder. Why did they not despatch me at once? What object could there be in postponing the catastrophe which would expedite their own safety. I cannot recall, even to myself, adequately the horrors unutterable that I underwent. You must suppose a real nightmareI mean a nightmare in which the objects and the danger are real, and the spell of corporal death appears to be protractable at the pleasure of the persons who preside at your unearthly torments. I could have no doubt as to the cause of the state in which I was. In this agony, to which I could not give the slightest expression, I saw the door of the room where the coffin had been, open slowly, and the Marquis dHarmonville entered the room. XXV Despair A moments hope, hope violent and fluctuating, hope that was nearly torture, and then came a dialogue, and with it the terrors of despair. Thank heaven, Planard, you have come at last, said the Count, taking him, with both hands, by the arm and clinging to it, and drawing him toward me. See, look at him. It has all gone sweetly, sweetly, sweetly up to this. Shall I hold the candle for you? My friend dHarmonville, Planard, whatever he was, came to me, pulling off his gloves, which he popped into his pocket. The candle, a little this way, he said, and stooping over me he looked earnestly in my face. He touched my forehead, drew his hand across it, and then looked in my eyes for a time. Well, doctor, what do you think? whispered the Count. How much did you give him? said the Marquis, thus suddenly stunted down to a doctor. Seventy drops, said the lady. In the hot coffee? Yes; sixty in a hot cup of coffee and ten in the liqueur. Her voice, low and hard, seemed to me to tremble a little. It takes a long course of guilt to subjugate nature completely, and prevent those exterior signs of agitation that outlive all good. The doctor, however, was treating me as coolly as he might a subject which he was about to place on the dissectingtable for a lecture. He looked into my eyes again for awhile, took my wrist, and applied his fingers to the pulse. That action suspended, he said to himself. Then again he placed something that, for the moment I saw it, looked like a piece of goldbeaters leaf, to my lips, holding his head so far that his own breathing could not affect it. Yes, he said in soliloquy, very low. Then he plucked my shirtbreast open and applied the stethoscope, shifted it from point to point, listened with his ear to its end, as if for a very far off sound, raised his head, and said, in like manner, softly to himself, All appreciable action of the lungs has subsided. Then turning from the sound, as I conjectured, he said Seventy drops, allowing ten for waste, ought to hold him fast for six hours and a halfthat is ample. The experiment I tried in the carriage was only thirty drops, and showed a highly sensitive brain. It would not do to kill him, you know. You are certain you did not exceed seventy? Perfectly, said the lady. If he were to die the evaporation would be arrested, and foreign matter, some of it poisonous, would be found in the stomach, dont you see? If you are doubtful, it would be well to use the stomachpump. Dearest Eugenie, be frank, be frank, do be frank, urged the Count. I am not doubtful, I am certain, she answered. How long ago, exactly? I told you to observe the time. I did; the minutehand was exactly there, under the point of that Cupids foot. It will last, then, probably for seven hours. He will recover then; the evaporation will be complete, and not one particle of the fluid will remain in the stomach. It was reassuring, at all events, to hear that there was no intention to murder me. No one who has not tried it knows the terror of the approach of death, when the mind is clear, the instincts of life unimpaired, and no excitement to disturb the appreciation of that entirely new horror. The nature and purpose of this tenderness was very, very peculiar, and as yet I had not a suspicion of it. You leave France, I suppose? said the exMarquis. Yes, certainly, tomorrow, answered the Count. And where do you mean to go? That I have not yet settled, he answered quickly. You wont tell a friend, eh? I cant till I know. This has turned out an unprofitable affair. We shall settle that byandby. It is time we should get him lying down, eh? said the Count, indicating me with one finger. Yes, we must proceed rapidly now. Are his nightshirt and nightcapyou understandhere? All ready, said the Count. Now, Madame, said the doctor, turning to the lady, and making her, in spite of the emergency, a bow, it is time you should retire. The lady passed into the room, in which I had taken my cup of treacherous coffee, and I saw her no more. The Count took a candle, and passed through the door at the further end of the room, returning with a roll of linen in his hand. He bolted first one door, then the other. They now, in silence, proceeded to undress me rapidly. They were not many minutes in accomplishing this. What the doctor had termed my nightshirt, a long garment which reached below my feet, was now on, and a cap, that resembled a female nightcap more than anything I had ever seen upon a male head, was fitted upon mine, and tied under my chin. And now, I thought, I shall be laid in a bed, to recover how I can, and, in the meantime, the conspirators will have escaped with their booty, and pursuit be in vain. This was my best hope at the time; but it was soon clear that their plans were very different. The Count and Planard now went, together, into the room that lay straight before me. I heard them talking low, and a sound of shuffling feet; then a long rumble; it suddenly stopped; it recommenced; it continued; side by side they came in at the door, their backs toward me. They were dragging something along the floor that made a continued boom and rumble, but they interposed between me and it, so that I could not see it until they had dragged it almost beside me; and then, merciful heaven! I saw it plainly enough. It was the coffin I had seen in the next room. It lay now flat on the floor, its edge against the chair in which I sat. Planard removed the lid. The coffin was empty. XXVI Catastrophe Those seem to be good horses, and we change on the way, said Planard. You give the men a Napoleon or two; we must do it within three hours and a quarter. Now, come; Ill lift him, upright, so as to place his feet in their proper berth, and you must keep them together, and draw the white shirt well down over them. In another moment I was placed, as he described, sustained in Planards arms, standing at the foot of the coffin, and so lowered backward, gradually, till I lay my length in it. Then the man, whom he called Planard, stretched my arms by my sides, and carefully arranged the frills at my breast, and the folds of the shroud, and after that, taking his stand at the foot of the coffin, made a survey which seemed to satisfy him. The Count, who was very methodical, took my clothes, which had just been removed, folded them rapidly together and locked them up, as I afterwards heard, in one of the three presses which opened by doors in the panel. I now understood their frightful plan. This coffin had been prepared for me; the funeral of St. Amand was a sham to mislead inquiry; I had myself given the order at Pre la Chaise, signed it, and paid the fees for the interment of the fictitious Pierre de St. Amand, whose place I was to take, to lie in his coffin, with his name on the plate above my breast, and with a ton of clay packed down upon me; to waken from this catalepsy, after I had been for hours in the grave, there to perish by a death the most horrible that imagination can conceive. If, hereafter, by any caprice of curiosity or suspicion, the coffin should be exhumed, and the body it enclosed examined, no chemistry could detect a trace of poison, nor the most cautious examination the slightest mark of violence. I had myself been at the utmost pains to mystify inquiry, should my disappearance excite surmises, and had even written to my few correspondents in England to tell them that they were not to look for a letter from me for three weeks at least. In the moment of my guilty elation death had caught me, and there was no escape. I tried to pray to God in my unearthly panic, but only thoughts of terror, judgment, and eternal anguish, crossed the distraction of my immediate doom. I must not try to recall what is indeed indescribablethe multiform horrors of my own thoughts. I will relate, simply, what befell, every detail of which remains sharp in my memory as if cut in steel. The undertakers men are in the hall, said the Count. They must not come till this is fixed, answered Planard. Be good enough to take hold of the lower part while I take this end. I was not left long to conjecture what was coming, for in a few seconds more something slid across, a few inches above my face, and entirely excluded the light, and muffled sound, so that nothing that was not very distinct reached my ears henceforward; but very distinctly came the working of a turnscrew, and the crunching home of screws in succession. Than these vulgar sounds, no doom spoken in thunder could have been more tremendous. The rest I must relate, not as it then reached my ears, which was too imperfectly and interruptedly to supply a connected narrative, but as it was afterwards told me by other people. The coffinlid being screwed down, the two gentlemen arranged the room, and adjusted the coffin so that it lay perfectly straight along the boards, the Count being specially anxious that there should be no appearance of hurry or disorder in the room, which might have suggested remark and conjecture. When this was done, Doctor Planard said he would go to the hall to summon the men who were to carry the coffin out and place it in the hearse. The Count pulled on his black gloves, and held his white handkerchief in his hand, a very impressive chiefmourner. He stood a little behind the head of the coffin, awaiting the arrival of the persons who accompanied Planard, and whose fast steps he soon heard approaching. Planard came first. He entered the room through the apartment in which the coffin had been originally placed. His manner was changed; there was something of a swagger in it. Monsieur le Comte, he said, as he strode through the door, followed by halfadozen persons.

I am sorry to have to announce to you a most unseasonable interruption. Here is Monsieur Carmaignac, a gentleman holding an office in the police department, who says that information to the effect that large quantities of smuggled English and other goods have been distributed in this neighbourhood, and that a portion of them is concealed in your house. I have ventured to assure him, of my own knowledge, that nothing can be more false than that information, and that you would be only too happy to throw open for his inspection, at a moments notice, every room, closet, and cupboard in your house. Most assuredly, exclaimed the Count, with a stout voice, but a very white face. Thank you, my good friend, for having anticipated me. I will place my house and keys at his disposal, for the purpose of his scrutiny, so soon as he is good enough to inform me, of what specific contraband goods he comes in search. The Count de St. Alyre will pardon me, answered Carmaignac, a little dryly. I am forbidden by my instructions to make that disclosure; and that I am instructed to make a general search, this warrant will sufficiently apprise Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur Carmaignac, may I hope, interposed Planard, that you will permit the Count de St. Alyre to attend the funeral of his kinsman, who lies here, as you see (he pointed to the plate upon the coffin)and to convey whom to Pre la Chaise, a hearse waits at this moment at the door. That, I regret to say, I cannot permit. My instructions are precise; but the delay, I trust, will be but trifling. Monsieur le Comte will not suppose for a moment that I suspect him; but we have a duty to perform, and I must act as if I did. When I am ordered to search, I search; things are sometimes hid in such bizarre places. I cant say, for instance, what that coffin may contain. The body of my kinsman, Monsieur Pierre de St. Amand, answered the Count, loftily. Oh! then youve seen him? Seen him? Often, too often? The Count was evidently a good deal moved. I mean the body? The Count stole a quick glance at Planard. Nno, Monsieurthat is, I mean only for a moment. Another quick glance at Planard. But quite long enough, I fancy, to recognize him? insinuated that gentleman. Of courseof course; instantlyperfectly. What! Pierre de St. Amand? Not know him at a glance? No, no, poor fellow, I know him too well for that. The things I am in search of, said Monsieur Carmaignac, would fit in a narrow compassservants are so ingenious sometimes. Let us raise the lid. Pardon me, Monsieur, said the Count, peremptorily, advancing to the side of the coffin, and extending his arm across it. I cannot permit that indignitythat desecration. There shall be none, sirsimply the raising of the lid; you shall remain in the room. If it should prove as we all hope, you shall have the pleasure of one other look, really the last, upon your beloved kinsman. But, sir, I cant. But, Monsieur, I must. But, besides, the thing, the turnscrew, broke when the last screw was turned; and I give you my sacred honour there is nothing but the body in this coffin. Of course Monsieur le Comte believes all that; but he does not know so well as I the legerdemain in use among servants, who are accustomed to smuggling. Here, Philippe, you must take off the lid of that coffin. The Count protested; but Philippea man with a bald head, and a smirched face, looking like a working blacksmithplaced on the floor a leather bag of tools, from which, having looked at the coffin, and picked with his nail at the screwheads, he selected a turnscrew, and, with a few deft twirls at each of the screws, they stood up like little rows of mushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought I had seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed. As I was reduced to the cataleptic state in a position nearly perpendicular, I continued looking straight before me, and thus my gaze was now fixed upon the ceiling. I saw the face of Carmaignac leaning over me with a curious frown. It seemed to me that there was no recognition in his eyes. Oh, heaven! that I could have uttered were it but one cry! I saw the dark, mean mask of the little Count staring down at me from the other side; the face of the pseudomarquis also peering at me, but not so full in the line of vision; there were other faces also. I see, I see, said Carmaignac, withdrawing. Nothing of the kind there. You will be good enough to direct your man to readjust the lid of the coffin, and to fix the screws, said the Count, taking courage; andandreally the funeral must proceed. It is not fair to the people who have but moderate fees for nightwork, to keep them hour after hour beyond the time. Count de St. Alyre, you shall go in a very few minutes. I will direct, just now, all about the coffin. The Count looked toward the door, and there saw a gendarme; and two or three more grave and stalwart specimens of the same force were also in the room. The Count was very uncomfortably excited; it was growing insupportable. As this gentleman makes a difficulty about my attending the obsequies of my kinsman, I will ask you, Planard, to accompany the funeral in my stead. In a few minutes, answered the incorrigible Carmaignac. I must first trouble you for the key that opens that press. He pointed direct at the press, in which the clothes had just been locked up. II have no objection, said the Countnone, of course; only they have not been used for an age. Ill direct someone to look for the key. If you have not got it about you, it is quite unnecessary. Philippe, try your skeletonkeys with that press. I want it opened. Whose clothes are these? inquired Carmaignac when, the press having been opened, he took out the suit that had been placed there scarcely two minutes since. I cant say, answered the Count. I know nothing of the contents of that press. A roguish servant, named Lablais, whom I dismissed about a year ago, had the key. I have not seen it open for ten years or more. The clothes are probably his. Here are visiting cards, see, and here a marked pockethandkerchiefR. B. upon it. He must have stolen them from a person named BeckettR. Beckett. Mr. Beckett, Berkley Square, the card says; and, my faith! heres a watch and a bunch of seals; one of them with the initials R. B. upon it. That servant, Lablais, must have been a consummate rogue! So he was; you are right, sir. It strikes me that he possibly stole these clothes, continued Carmaignac, from the man in the coffin, who, in that case, would be Monsieur Beckett, and not Monsieur de St. Amand. For, wonderful to relate, Monsieur, the watch is still going! That man in the coffin, I believe, is not dead, but simply drugged. And for having robbed and intended to murder him, I arrest you, Nicolas de la Marque, Count de St. Alyre. In another moment the old villain was a prisoner. I heard his discordant voice break quaveringly into sudden vehemence and volubility; now croakingnow shrieking, as he oscillated between protests, threats, and impious appeals to the God who will judge the secrets of men! And thus lying and raving, he was removed from the room, and placed in the same coach with his beautiful and abandoned accomplice, already arrested; and, with two gendarmes sitting beside them, they were immediately driving at a rapid pace towards the Conciergerie. There were now added to the general chorus two voices, very different in quality; one was that of the gasconading Colonel Gaillarde, who had with difficulty been kept in the background up to this; the other was that of my jolly friend Whistlewick, who had come to identify me. I shall tell you, just now, how this project against my property and life, so ingenious and monstrous, was exploded. I must first say a word about myself. I was placed in a hot bath, under the direction of Planard, as consummate a villain as any of the gang, but now thoroughly in the interests of the prosecution. Thence I was laid in a warm bed, the window of the room being open. These simple measures restored me in about three hours; I should otherwise, probably, have continued under the spell for nearly seven. The practices of these nefarious conspirators had been carried on with consummate skill and secrecy. Their dupes were led, as I was, to be themselves auxiliary to the mystery which made their own destruction both safe and certain. A search was, of course, instituted. Graves were opened in Pre la Chaise. The bodies exhumed had lain there too long, and were too much decomposed to be recognized. One only was identified. The notice for the burial, in this particular case, had been signed, the order given, and the fees paid, by Gabriel Gaillarde, who was known to the official clerk, who had to transact with him this little funereal business. The very trick, that had been arranged for me, had been successfully practised in his case. The person for whom the grave had been ordered, was purely fictitious; and Gabriel Gaillarde himself filled the coffin, on the cover of which that false name was inscribed as well as upon a tombstone over the grave. Possibly, the same honour, under my pseudonym, may have been intended for me. The identification was curious. This Gabriel Gaillarde had had a bad fall from a runaway horse, about five years before his mysterious disappearance. He had lost an eye and some teeth, in this accident, besides sustaining a fracture of the right leg, immediately above the ankle. He had kept the injuries to his face as profound a secret as he could. The result was, that the glass eye which had done duty for the one he had lost, remained in the socket, slightly displaced, of course, but recognizable by the artist who had supplied it. More pointedly recognizable were the teeth, peculiar in workmanship, which one of the ablest dentists in Paris had himself adapted to the chasms, the cast of which, owing to peculiarities in the accident, he happened to have preserved. This cast precisely fitted the gold plate found in the mouth of the skull. The mark, also, above the ankle, in the bone, where it had reunited, corresponded exactly with the place where the fracture had knit in the limb of Gabriel Gaillarde. The Colonel, his younger brother, had been furious about the disappearance of Gabriel, and still more so about that of his money, which he had long regarded as his proper keepsake, whenever death should remove his brother from the vexations of living. He had suspected for a long time, for certain adroitly discovered reasons, that the Count de St. Alyre and the beautiful lady, his companion, countess, or whatever else she was, had pigeoned him. To this suspicion were added some others of a still darker kind; but in their first shape, rather the exaggerated reflections of his fury, ready to believe anything, than welldefined conjectures. At length an accident had placed the Colonel very nearly upon the right scent; a chance, possibly lucky for himself, had apprized the scoundrel Planard that the conspiratorshimself among the numberwere in danger. The result was that he made terms for himself, became an informer, and concerted with the police this visit made to the Chteau de la Carque, at the critical moment when every measure had been completed that was necessary to construct a perfect case against his guilty accomplices. I need not describe the minute industry or forethought with which the police agents collected all the details necessary to support the case. They had brought an able physician, who, even had Planard failed, would have supplied the necessary medical evidence. My trip to Paris, you will believe, had not turned out quite so agreeably as I had anticipated. I was the principal witness for the prosecution in this cause clbre, with all the agrmens that attend that enviable position. Having had an escape, as my friend Whistlewick said, with a squeak for my life, I innocently fancied that I should have been an object of considerable interest to Parisian society; but, a good deal to my mortification, I discovered that I was the object of a goodnatured but contemptuous merriment. I was a balourd, a bent, un ne, and figured even in caricatures. I became a sort of public character, a dignity, Unto which I was not born, and from which I fled as soon as I conveniently could, without even paying my friend the Marquis dHarmonville a visit at his hospitable chteau. The Marquis escaped scotfree. His accomplice, the Count, was executed. The fair Eugenie, under extenuating circumstancesconsisting, so far as I could discover of her good looksgot off for six years imprisonment. Colonel Gaillarde recovered some of his brothers money, out of the not very affluent estate of the Count and soidisant Countess. This, and the execution of the Count, put him in high good humour. So far from insisting on a hostile meeting, he shook me very graciously by the hand, told me that he looked upon the wound on his head, inflicted by the knob of my stick, as having been received in an honourable, though irregular duel, in which he had no disadvantage or unfairness to complain of. I think I have only two additional details to mention. The bricks discovered in the room with the coffin, had been packed in it, in straw, to supply the weight of a dead body, and to prevent the suspicions and contradictions that might have been excited by the arrival of an empty coffin at the chteau. Secondly, the Countesss magnificent brilliants were examined by a lapidary, and pronounced to be worth about five pounds to a tragedyqueen, who happened to be in want of a suite of paste. The Countess had figured some years before as one of the cleverest actresses on the minor stage of Paris, where she had been picked up by the Count and used as his principal accomplice. She it was who, admirably disguised, had rifled my papers in the carriage on my memorable nightjourney to Paris. She also had figured as the interpreting magician of the palanquin at the ball at Versailles. So far as I was affected by that elaborate mystification it was intended to reanimate my interest, which, they feared, might flag in the beautiful Countess. It had its design and action upon other intended victims also; but of them there is, at present, no need to speak. The introduction of a real corpseprocured from a person who supplied the Parisian anatomistsinvolved no real danger, while it heightened the mystery and kept the prophet alive in the gossip of the town and in the thoughts of the noodles with whom he had conferred. I divided the remainder of the summer and autumn between Switzerland and Italy. As the wellworn phrase goes, I was a sadder if not a wiser man. A great deal of the horrible impression left upon my mind was due, of course, to the mere action of nerves and brain. But serious feelings of another and deeper kind remained. My after life was ultimately formed by the shock I had then received. Those impressions led mebut not till after many yearsto happier though not less serious thoughts; and I have deep reason to be thankful to the allmerciful Ruler of events, for an early and terrible lesson in the ways of sin. In a Glass Darkly By J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Green Tea Prologue I Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings II The Doctor Questions Lady Mary, and She Answers III Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books IV Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage V Doctor Hesselius Is Summoned to Richmond VI How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion VII The Journey First Stage VIII The Second Stage IX The Third Stage X Home Conclusion The Familiar Prologue I Footsteps II The Watcher III An Advertisement IV He Talks with a Clergyman V Mr. Barton States His Case VI Seen Again VII Flight VIII Softened IX Requiescat Mr. Justice Harbottle Prologue I The Judges House II Mr. Peters III Lewis Pyneweck IV Interruption in Court V Caleb Searcher VI Arrested VII Chief Justice Twofold VIII Somebody Has Got Into the House IX The Judge Leaves His House The Room in the Dragon Volant Prologue I On the Road II The InnYard of the Belle Etoile III Death and Love Together Mated IV Monsieur Droqville V Supper at the Belle Etoile VI The Naked Sword VII The White Rose VIII A Three Minutes Visit IX Gossip and Counsel X The Black Veil XI The Dragon Volant XII The Magician XIII The Oracle Tells Me Wonders XIV Mademoiselle de la Vallire XV Strange Story of the Dragon Volant XVI The Parc of the Chteau de la Carque XVII The Tenant of the Palanquin XVIII The Churchyard XIX The Key XX A HighCauld Cap XXI I See Three Men in a Mirror XXII Rapture XXIII A Cup of Coffee XXIV Hope XXV Despair XXVI Catastrophe Carmilla Prologue I An Early Fright II A Guest III We Compare Notes IV Her HabitsA Saunter V A Wonderful Likeness VI A Very Strange Agony VII Descending VIII Search IX The Doctor X Bereaved XI The Story XII A Petition XIII The Woodman XIV The Meeting XV Ordeal and Execution XVI Conclusion Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks In a Glass Darkly

I Austin Ruthyn, of Knowl, and His Daughter It was winterthat is, about the second week in Novemberand great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneysa very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the teatable; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawingroom. It was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped. A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark greyeyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the teatable, in a reverie. I was that girl. The only other person in the roomthe only person in the house related to mewas my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in his county, but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and purer of blood than twothirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was said, they had been invited to enter. Of all this family lore I knew but little and vaguely; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of old retainers in the nursery. I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early disappointed in Parliament, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely well. Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a collector; took a part, on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this mimic government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman, but rather of a student, staying sometimes at one of his places and sometimes at another, and living a secluded life. Rather late in life he married, and his beautiful young wife died, leaving me, their only child, to his care. This bereavement, I have been told, changed himmade him more odd and taciturn than ever, and his temper also, except to me, more severe. There was also some disgrace about his younger brothermy uncle Silaswhich he felt bitterly. He was now walking up and down this spacious old room, which, extending round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his wont to walk up and down, thus, without speakingan exercise which used to remind me of Chateaubriands father in the great chamber of the Chteau de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a background of shadow, and then again in silence faded nearly out of view. This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect. I have known my father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very much, I was also much in awe of him. While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and I dont think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned among us. There was not even that mild religious bustle which sometimes besets the wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a Swedenborgian. But he did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the old housekeeper, Mrs. Rusk, and myself to the parish church every Sunday. And my father, in the view of the honest Rector who shook his head over hima cloud without water, carried about of winds, and a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darknesscorresponded with the minister of his church, and was provokingly contented with his own fertility and illumination; and Mrs. Rusk, who was a sound and bitter churchwoman, said he fancied he saw visions and talked with angels like the rest of that rubbitch. I dont know that she had any better foundation than analogy and conjecture for charging my father with supernatural pretensions; and in all points when her orthodoxy was not concerned, she loved her master and was a loyal housekeeper. I found her one morning superintending preparations for the reception of a visitor, in the huntingroom it was called, from the pieces of tapestry that covered its walls, representing scenes, la Wouvermans, of falconry, and the chase, dogs, hawks, ladies, gallants, and pages. In the midst of whom Mrs. Rusk, in black silk, was rummaging drawers, counting linen, and issuing orders. Who is coming, Mrs. Rusk? Well, she only knew his name. It was a Mr. Bryerly. My papa expected him to dinner, and to stay for some days. I guess hes one of those creatures, dear, for I mentioned his name just to Dr. Clay (the Rector), and he says there is a Doctor Bryerly, a great conjurer among the Swedenborg sectand thats him, I do suppose. In my hazy notions of these sectaries there was mingled a suspicion of necromancy, and a weird freemasonry, that inspired something of awe and antipathy. Mr. Bryerly arrived time enough to dress at his leisure, before dinner. He entered the drawingrooma tall, lean man, all in ungainly black, with a white choker, with either a black wig, or black hair dressed in imitation of one, a pair of spectacles, and a dark, sharp, short visage, rubbing his large hands together, and with a short brisk nod to me, whom he plainly regarded merely as a child, he sat down before the fire, crossed his legs, and took up a magazine. This treatment was mortifying, and I remember very well the resentment of which he was quite unconscious. His stay was not very long; not one of us divined the object of his visit, and he did not prepossess us favourably. He seemed restless, as men of busy habits do in country houses, and took walks, and a drive, and read in the library, and wrote half a dozen letters. His bedroom and dressingroom were at the side of the gallery, directly opposite to my fathers, which had a sort of anteroom en suite, in which were some of his theological books. The day after Mr. Bryerlys arrival, I was about to see whether my fathers water caraffe and glass had been duly laid on the table in this anteroom, and in doubt whether he was there, I knocked at the door. I suppose they were too intent on other matters to hear, but receiving no answer, I entered the room. My father was sitting in his chair, with his coat and waistcoat off, Mr. Bryerly kneeling on a stool beside him, rather facing him, his black scratch wig leaning close to my fathers grizzled hair. There was a large tome of their divinity lore, I suppose, open on the table close by. The lank black figure of Mr. Bryerly stood up, and he concealed something quickly in the breast of his coat. My father stood up also, looking paler, I think, than I ever saw him till then, and he pointed grimly to the door, and said, Go. Mr. Bryerly pushed me gently back with his hands to my shoulders, and smiled down from his dark features with an expression quite unintelligible to me. I had recovered myself in a second, and withdrew without a word. The last thing I saw at the door was the tall, slim figure in black, and the dark, significant smile following me and then the door was shut and locked, and the two Swedenborgians were left to their mysteries. I remember so well the kind of shock and disgust I felt in the certainty that I had surprised them at some, perhaps, debasing incantationa suspicion of this Mr. Bryerly, of the illfitting black coat, and white chokerand a sort of fear came upon me, and I fancied he was asserting some kind of mastery over my father, which very much alarmed me. I fancied all sorts of dangers in the enigmatical smile of the lank highpriest. The image of my father, as I had seen him, it might be, confessing to this man in black, who was I knew not what, haunted me with the disagreeable uncertainties of a mind very uninstructed as to the limits of the marvellous. I mentioned it to no one. But I was immensely relieved when the sinister visitor took his departure the morning after, and it was upon this occurrence that my mind was now employed. Someone said that Dr. Johnson resembled a ghost, who must be spoken to before it will speak. But my father, in whatever else he may have resembled a ghost, did not in that particular; for no one but I in his householdand I very seldomdared to address him until first addressed by him. I had no notion how singular this was until I began to go out a little among friends and relations, and found no such rule in force anywhere else. As I leaned back in my chair thinking, this phantasm of my father came, and turned, and vanished with a solemn regularity. It was a peculiar figure, strongly made, thickset, with a face large, and very stern; he wore a loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an elderly rather than an old manthough he was then past seventybut firm, and with no sign of feebleness. I remember the start with which, not suspecting that he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw that large, rugged countenance looking fixedly on me, from less than a yard away. After I saw him, he continued to regard me for a second or two; and then, taking one of the heavy candlesticks in his gnarled hand, he beckoned me to follow him; which, in silence and wondering, I accordingly did. He led me across the hall, where there were lights burning, and into a lobby by the foot of the back stairs, and so into his library. It is a long, narrow room, with two tall, slim windows at the far end, now draped in dark curtains. Dusky it was with but one candle; and he paused near the door, at the lefthand side of which stood, in those days, an oldfashioned press or cabinet of carved oak. In front of this he stopped. He had odd, absent ways, and talked more to himself, I believe, than to all the rest of the world put together. She wont understand, he whispered, looking at me enquiringly. No, she wont. Will she? Then there was a pause, during which he brought forth from his breast pocket a small bunch of some halfdozen keys, on one of which he looked frowningly, every now and then balancing it a little before his eyes, between his finger and thumb, as he deliberated. I knew him too well, of course, to interpose a word. They are easily frighteneday, they are. Id better do it another way. And pausing, he looked in my face as he might upon a picture. They areyesI had better do it another wayanother way; yesand shell not suspectshell not suppose. Then he looked steadfastly upon the key, and from it to me, suddenly lifting it up, and said abruptly, See, child, and, after a second or two, Remember this key. It was oddly shaped, and unlike others. Yes, sir. I always called him sir. It opens that, and he tapped it sharply on the door of the cabinet. In the daytime it is always here, at which word he dropped it into his pocket again. You see?and at night under my pillowyou hear me? Yes, sir. You wont forget this cabinetoaknext the dooron your leftyou wont forget? No, sir. Pity shes a girl, and so youngay, a girl, and so youngno sensegiddy. You say, youll remember? Yes, sir. It behoves you. He turned round and looked full upon me, like a man who has taken a sudden resolution; and I think for a moment he had made up his mind to tell me a great deal more. But if so, he changed it again; and after another pause, he said slowly and sternlyYou will tell nobody what I have said, under pain of my displeasure. Oh! no, sir! Good child! Except, he resumed, under one contingency; that is, in case I should be absent, and Dr. Bryerlyyou recollect the thin gentleman, in spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last monthshould come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my absence. Yes, sir. So he kissed me on the forehead, and said Let us return. Which, accordingly, we did, in silence; the storm outside, like a dirge on a great organ, accompanying our flitting. II Uncle Silas When we reached the drawingroom, I resumed my chair, and my father his slow and regular walk to and fro, in the great room. Perhaps it was the uproar of the wind that disturbed the ordinary tenor of his thoughts; but, whatever was the cause, certainly he was unusually talkative that night. After an interval of nearly half an hour, he drew near again, and sat down in a highbacked armchair, beside the fire, and nearly opposite to me, and looked at me steadfastly for some time, as was his wont, before speaking; and said he This wont doyou must have a governess. In cases of this kind I merely set down my book or work, as it might be, and adjusted myself to listen without speaking. Your French is pretty well, and your Italian; but you have no German. Your music may be pretty goodIm no judgebut your drawing might be betteryesyes. I believe there are accomplished ladiesfinishing governesses, they call themwho undertake more than any one teacher would have professed in my time, and do very well. She can prepare you, and next winter, then, you shall visit France and Italy, where you may be accomplished as highly as you please. Thank you, sir. You shall. It is nearly six months since Miss Ellerton left youtoo long without a teacher. Then followed an interval. Dr. Bryerly will ask you about that key, and what it opens; you show all that to him, and no one else. But, I said, for I had a great terror of disobeying him in ever so minute a matter, you will then be absent, sirhow am I to find the key? He smiled on me suddenlya bright but wintry smileit seldom came, and was very transitory, and kindly though mysterious. True, child; Im glad you are so wise; that, you will find, I have provided for, and you shall know exactly where to look. You have remarked how solitarily I live. You fancy, perhaps, I have not got a friend, and you are nearly rightnearly, but not altogether. I have a very sure friendonea friend whom I once misunderstood, but now appreciate. I wondered silently whether it could be Uncle Silas. Hell make me a call, some day soon; Im not quite sure when. I wont tell you his nameyoull hear that soon enough, and I dont want it talked of; and I must make a little journey with him. Youll not be afraid of being left alone for a time? And have you promised, sir? I answered, with another question, my curiosity and anxiety overcoming my awe. He took my questioning very goodhumouredly. Wellpromise?no, child; but Im under condition; hes not to be denied. I must make the excursion with him the moment he calls. I have no choice; but, on the whole, I rather like itremember, I say, I rather like it. And he smiled again, with the same meaning, that was at once stern and sad. The exact purport of these sentences remained fixed in my mind, so that even at this distance of time I am quite sure of them. A person quite unacquainted with my fathers habitually abrupt and odd way of talking, would have fancied that he was possibly a little disordered in his mind. But no such suspicion for a moment troubled me. I was quite sure that he spoke of a real person who was coming, and that his journey was something momentous; and when the visitor of whom he spoke did come, and he departed with him upon that mysterious excursion, I perfectly understood his language and his reasons for saying so much and yet so little. You are not to suppose that all my hours were passed in the sort of conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and singular and even awful as were sometimes my tteattes with my father, I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary Quince, my somewhat ancient maid; and besides all this, I had now and then a visit of a week or so at the house of someone of our country neighbours, and occasionally a visitorbut this, I must own, very rarelyat Knowl. There had come now a little pause in my fathers revelations, and my fancy wandered away upon a flight of discovery. Who, I again thought, could this intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make my stayathome father forthwith leave his household goodshis books and his childto whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knighterrantry? Who but Uncle Silas, I thoughtthat mysterious relative whom I had never seenwho was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me, unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably viciouswhom I had seldom heard my father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my fathers opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have filled in the character very nearly as I pleased. It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oakroom, I being then about fourteen. She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herselfshe had been stooping over her workand threw her head back, for her neck was weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung before her. It was a fulllength, and represented a singularly handsome young man, dark, slender, elegant, in a costume then quite obsolete, though I believe it was seen at the beginning of this centurywhite leather pantaloons and topboots, a buff waistcoat, and a chocolatecoloured coat, and the hair long and brushed back. There was a remarkable elegance and a delicacy in the features, but also a character of resolution and ability that quite took the portrait out of the category of mere fops or fine men. When people looked at it for the first time, I have so often heard the exclamationWhat a wonderfully handsome man! and then, What a clever face! An Italian greyhound stood by him, and some slender columns and a rich drapery in the background. But though the accessories were of the luxurious sort, and the beauty, as I have said, refined, there was a masculine force in that slender oval face, and a fire in the large, shadowy eyes, which were very peculiar, and quite redeemed it from the suspicion of effeminacy. Is not that Uncle Silas? said I. Yes, dear, answered Mrs. Rusk, looking, with her resolute little face, quietly on the portrait. He must be a very handsome man, Mrs. Rusk. Dont you think so? I continued. He was, my dearyes; but it is forty years since that was paintedthe date is there in the corner, in the shadow that comes from his foot, and forty years, I can tell you, makes a change in most of us; and Mrs. Rusk laughed, in cynical goodhumour. There was a little pause, both still looking on the handsome man in topboots, and I said And why, Mrs. Rusk, is papa always so sad about Uncle Silas? Whats that, child? said my fathers voice, very near. I looked round, with a start, and flushed and faltered, receding a step from him. No harm, dear. You have said nothing wrong, he said gently, observing my alarm. You said I was always sad, I think, about Uncle Silas. Well, I dont know how you gather that; but if I were, I will now tell you, it would not be unnatural. Your uncle is a man of great talents, great faults, and great wrongs. His talents have not availed him; his faults are long ago repented of; and his wrongs I believe he feels less than I do, but they are deep. Did she say any more, madam? he demanded abruptly of Mrs. Rusk. Nothing, sir, with a stiff little courtesy, answered Mrs. Rusk, who stood in awe of him. And there is no need, child, he continued, addressing himself to me, that you should think more of him at present. Clear your head of Uncle Silas. One day, perhaps, you will know himyes, very welland understand how villains have injured him. Then my father retired, and at the door he said Mrs. Rusk, a word, if you please, beckoning to that lady, who trotted after him to the library. I think he then laid some injunction upon the housekeeper, which was transmitted by her to Mary Quince, for from that time forth I could never lead either to talk with me about Uncle Silas. They let me talk on, but were reserved and silent themselves, and seemed embarrassed, and Mrs. Rusk sometimes pettish and angry, when I pressed for information. Thus curiosity was piqued; and round the slender portrait in the leather pantaloons and topboots gathered manycoloured circles of mystery, and the handsome features seemed to smile down upon my baffled curiosity with a provoking significance. Why is it that this form of ambitioncuriositywhich entered into the temptation of our first parent, is so specially hard to resist? Knowledge is powerand power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite. III A New Face I think it was about a fortnight after that conversation in which my father had expressed his opinion, and given me the mysterious charge about the old oak cabinet in his library, as already detailed, that I was one night sitting at the great drawingroom window, lost in the melancholy reveries of night, and in admiration of the moonlighted scene. I was the only occupant of the room; and the lights near the fire, at its farther end, hardly reached to the window at which I sat. The shorn grass sloped gently downward from the windows till it met the broad level on which stood, in clumps, or solitarily scattered, some of the noblest timber in England. Hoar in the moonbeams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass, and in the background crowning the undulations of the distance, in masses, were piled those woods among which lay the solitary tomb where the remains of my beloved mother rested. The air was still. The silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious woods, which formed the background of the picture, my thoughts recurred to my fathers mysterious intimations and the image of the approaching visitor; and the thought of the unknown journey saddened me. In all that concerned his religion, from very early association, there was to me something of the unearthly and spectral. When my dear mamma died I was not nine years old; and I remember, two days before the funeral, there came to Knowl, where she died, a thin little man, with large black eyes, and a very grave, dark face. He was shut up a good deal with my dear father, who was in deep affliction; and Mrs. Rusk used to say, It is rather odd to see him praying with that little scarecrow from London, and good Mr. Clay ready at call, in the village; much good that little black whippersnapper will do him! With that little black man, on the day after the funeral, I was sent out, for some reason, for a walk; my governess was ill, I know, and there was confusion in the house, and I dare say the maids made as much of a holiday as they could. I remember feeling a sort of awe of this little dark man; but I was not afraid of him, for he was gentle, though sadand seemed kind. He led me into the gardenthe Dutch garden, we used to call itwith a balustrade, and statues at the farther front, laid out in a carpetpattern of brilliantlycoloured flowers. We came down the broad flight of Caen stone steps into this, and we walked in silence to the balustrade. The base was too high at the spot where we reached it for me to see over; but holding my hand, he said, Look through that, my child. Well, you cant; but I can see beyond itshall I tell you what? I see ever so much. I see a cottage with a steep roof, that looks like gold in the sunlight; there are tall trees throwing soft shadows round it, and flowering shrubs, I cant say what, only the colours are beautiful, growing by the walls and windows, and two little children are playing among the stems of the trees, and we are on our way there, and in a few minutes shall be under those trees ourselves, and talking to those little children. Yet now to me it is but a picture in my brain, and to you but a story told by me, which you believe. Come, dear; let us be going. So we descended the steps at the right, and side by side walked along the grass lane between tall trim walls of evergreens. The way was in deep shadow, for the sun was near the horizon; but suddenly we turned to the left, and there we stood in rich sunlight, among the many objects he had described. Is this your house, my little men? he asked of the childrenpretty little rosy boyswho assented; and he leaned with his open hand against the stem of one of the trees, and with a grave smile he nodded down to me, saying You see now, and hear, and feel for yourself that both the vision and the story were quite true; but come on, my dear, we have further to go. And relapsing into silence we had a long ramble through the wood, the same on which I was now looking in the distance. Every now and then he made me sit down to rest, and he in a musing solemn sort of way would relate some little story, reflecting, even to my childish mind, a strange suspicion of a spiritual meaning, but different from what honest Mrs. Rusk used to expound to me from the Parables, and, somehow, startling in its very vagueness. Thus entertained, though a little awfully, I accompanied the dark mysterious little whippersnapper through the woodland glades. We came, to me quite unexpectedly, in the deep sylvan shadows, upon the grey, pillared temple, fourfronted, with a slanting pedestal of lichenstained steps, the lonely sepulchre in which I had the morning before seen poor mamma laid. At the sight the fountains of my grief reopened, and I cried bitterly, repeating, Oh! mamma, mamma, little mamma! and so went on weeping and calling wildly on the deaf and the silent. There was a stone bench some ten steps away from the tomb. Sit down beside me, my child, said the grave man with the black eyes, very kindly and gently. Now, what do you see there? he asked, pointing horizontally with his stick towards the centre of the opposite structure. Oh, thatthat place where poor mamma is? Yes, a stone wall with pillars, too high for either you or me to see over. But Here he mentioned a name which I think must have been Swedenborg, from what I afterwards learnt of his tenets and revelations; I only know that it sounded to me like the name of a magician in a fairy tale; I fancied he lived in the wood which surrounded us, and I began to grow frightened as he proceeded. But Swedenborg sees beyond it, over, and through it, and has told me all that concerns us to know. He says your mamma is not there. She is taken away! I cried, starting up, and with streaming eyes, gazing on the building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was afraid to approach. Oh, is mamma taken away? Where is she? Where have they brought her to? I was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which Mary, in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty sepulchre, accosted the figure standing near. Your mamma is alive, but too far away to see or hear us. Swedenborg, standing here, can see and hear her, and tells me all he sees, just as I told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage, and the trees and flowers which you could not see, but believed in when I told you. So I can tell you now as I did then; and as we are both, I hope, walking on to the same place just as we did to the trees and cottage, you will surely see with your own eyes how true the description is which I give you. I was very frightened, for I feared that when he had done his narrative we were to walk on through the wood into that place of wonders and of shadows where the dead were visible. He leaned his elbow on his knee, and his forehead on his hand, which shaded his downcast eyes. In that attitude he described to me a beautiful landscape, radiant with a wondrous light, in which, rejoicing, my mother moved along an airy path, ascending among mountains of fantastic height, and peaks, melting in celestial colouring into the air, and peopled with human beings translated into the same image, beauty, and splendour. And when he had ended his relation, he rose, took my hand, and smiling gently down on my pale, wondering face, he said the same words he had spoken before Come, dear, let us go. Oh! no, no, nonot now, I said, resisting, and very much frightened. Home, I mean, dear. We cannot walk to the place I have described. We can only reach it through the gate of death, to which we are all tending, young and old, with sure steps. And where is the gate of death? I asked in a sort of whisper, as we walked together, holding his hand, and looking stealthily. He smiled sadly and said When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagars eyes were opened in the wilderness, and she beheld the fountain of water, so shall each of us see the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed. For a long time following this walk I was very nervous; more so for the awful manner in which Mrs. Rusk received my statementwith stern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the wood with that limb of darkness. It is a mercy he did not show her the devil, or frighten her out of her senses, in that lonely place! Of these Swedenborgians, indeed, I know no more than I might learn from good Mrs. Rusks very inaccurate talk. Two or three of them crossed in the course of my early life, like magiclantern figures, the disk of my very circumscribed observation. All outside was and is darkness. I once tried to read one of their books upon the future stateheaven and hell; but I grew after a day or two so nervous that I laid it aside. It is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or fancied he saw amazing visions, which, so far from superseding, confirmed and interpreted the language of the Bible; and as dear papa accepted their ideas, I am happy in thinking that they did not conflict with the supreme authority of holy writ. Leaning on my hand, I was now looking upon that solemn wood, white and shadowy in the moonlight, where, for a long time after that ramble with the visionary, I fancied the gate of death, hidden only by a strange glamour, and the dazzling land of ghosts, were situate; and I suppose these earlier associations gave to my reverie about my fathers coming visitor a wilder and a sadder tinge.

IV Madame de la Rougierre On a sudden, on the grass before me, stood an odd figurea very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon, courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically. I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrillyI could not distinctly hear what through the windowand gesticulating oddly with her long hands and arms. As she drew near the window, I flew to the fireplace, and rang the bell frantically, and seeing her still there, and fearing that she might break into the room, I flew out of the door, very much frightened, and met Branston the butler in the lobby. Theres a woman at the window! I gasped; turn her away, please. If I had said a man, I suppose fat Branston would have summoned and sent forward a detachment of footmen. As it was, he bowed gravely, with a Yes mshall, m. And with an air of authority approached the window. I dont think that he was pleasantly impressed himself by the first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short some steps of the window, and demanded rather sternly What ye doin there, woman? To this summons, her answer, which occupied a little time, was inaudible to me. But Branston replied I wasnt aware, maam; I heerd nothin; if youll go round that way, youll see the halldoor steps, and Ill speak to the master, and do as he shall order. The figure said something and pointed. Yes, thats it, and ye cant miss the door. And Mr. Branston returned slowly down the long room, and halted with outturned pumps and a grave inclination before me, and the faintest amount of interrogation in the announcement Please m, she says shes the governess. The governess! What governess? Branston was too wellbred to smile, and he said thoughtfully Praps, m, Id best ask the master? To which I assented, and away strode the flat pumps of the butler to the library. I stood breathless in the hall. Every girl at my age knows how much is involved in such an advent. I also heard Mrs. Rusk, in a minute or two more, emerge I suppose from the study. She walked quickly, and muttered sharply to herselfan evil trick, in which she indulged when much put about. I should have been glad of a word with her; but I fancied she was vexed, and would not have talked satisfactorily. She did not, however, come my way; merely crossing the hall with her quick, energetic step. Was it really the arrival of a governess? Was that apparition which had impressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of meto sit alone with me, and haunt me perpetually with her sinister looks and shrilly gabble? I was just making up my mind to go to Mary Quince, and learn something definite, when I heard my fathers step approaching from the library so I quietly reentered the drawingroom, but with an anxious and throbbing heart. When he came in, as usual, he patted me on the head gently, with a kind of smile, and then began his silent walk up and down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point that just then engrossed me so disagreeably; but the awe in which I stood of him forbade. After a time he stopped at the window, the curtain of which I had drawn, and the shutter partly opened, and he looked out, perhaps with associations of his own, on the scene I had been contemplating. It was not for nearly an hour after, that my father suddenly, after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, and feared her. I had more than an apprehension of her temper and fear of possibly abused authority. The largefeatured, smirking phantom, saluting me so oddly in the moonlight, retained ever after its peculiar and unpleasant hold upon my nerves. Well, Miss Maud, dear, I hope youll like your new governessfor its more than I do, just at present at least, said Mrs. Rusk, sharplyshe was awaiting me in my room. I hate them Frenchwomen; theyre not natural, I think. I gave her her supper in my room. She eats like a wolf, she does, the great rawboned hannimal. I wish you saw her in bed as I did. I put her next the clockroomshell hear the hours betimes, Im thinking. You never saw such a sight. The great long nose and hollow cheeks of her, and oogh! such a mouth! I felt amost like little Red RidingHoodI did, Miss. Here honest Mary Quince, who enjoyed Mrs. Rusks satire, a weapon in which she was not herself strong, laughed outright. Turn down the bed, Mary. Shes very agreeableshe is, just nowall newcomers is; but she did not get many compliments from me, Missno, I rayther think not. I wonder why honest English girls wont answer the gentry for governesses, instead of them gaping, scheming, wicked furriners? Lord forgi me, I think theyre all alike. Next morning I made acquaintance with Madame de la Rougierre. She was tall, masculine, a little ghastly perhaps, and draped in purple silk, with a lace cap, and great bands of black hair, too thick and black, perhaps, to correspond quite naturally with her bleached and sallow skin, her hollow jaws, and the fine but grim wrinkles traced about her brows and eyelids. She smiled, she nodded, and then for a good while she scanned me in silence with a steady cunning eye, and a stern smile. And how is she namedwhat is Mademoiselles name? said the tall stranger. Maud, Madame. Maud!what pretty name! Eh! bien. I am very sure my dear Maud she will be very good little girlis not so?and I am sure I shall love you vary moche. And what av you been learning, Maud, my dear cheailemusic, French, German, eh? Yes, a little; and I had just begun the use of the globes when my governess went away. I nodded towards the globes, which stood near her, as I said this. Oh! yesthe globes; and she spun one of them with her great hand. Je vous expliquerai tout cela fond. Madame de la Rougierre, I found, was always quite ready to explain everything fond; but somehow her explications, as she termed them, were not very intelligible, and when pressed her temper woke up; so that I preferred, after a while, accepting the expositions just as they came. Madame was on an unusually large scale, a circumstance which made some of her traits more startling, and altogether rendered her, in her strange way, more awful in the eyes of a nervous child, I may say, such as I was. She used to look at me for a long time sometimes, with the peculiar smile I have mentioned, and a great finger upon her lip, like the Eleusinian priestess on the vase. She would sit, too, sometimes for an hour together, looking into the fire or out of the window, plainly seeing nothing, and with an odd, fixed look of something like triumphvery nearly a smileon her cunning face. She was by no means a pleasant gouvernante for a nervous girl of my years. Sometimes she had accesses of a sort of hilarity which frightened me still more than her graver moods, and I will describe these byandby. V Sights and Noises There is not an old house in England of which the servants and young people who live in it do not cherish some traditions of the ghostly. Knowl has its shadows, noises, and marvellous records. Rachel Ruthyn, the beauty of Queen Annes time, who died of grief for the handsome Colonel Norbrooke, who was killed in the Low Countries, walks the house by night, in crisp and sounding silks. She is not seen, only heard. The tapping of her highheeled shoes, the sweep and rustle of her brocades, her sighs as she pauses in the galleries, near the bedroom doors; and sometimes, on stormy nights, her sobs. There is, beside, the linkman, a lank, darkfaced, blackhaired man, in a sable suit, with a link or torch in his hand. It usually only smoulders, with a deep red glow, as he visits his beat. The library is one of the rooms he sees to. Unlike Lady Rachel, as the maids called her, he is seen only, never heard. His steps fall noiseless as shadows on floor and carpet. The lurid glow of his smouldering torch imperfectly lights his figure and face, and, except when much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen, and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once or twice in a century. I dont know whether Madame had heard anything of these phenomena; but she did report which very much frightened me and Mary Quince. She asked us who walked in the gallery on which her bedroom opened, making a rustling with her dress, and going down the stairs, and breathing long breaths here and there. Twice, she said, she had stood at her door in the dark, listening to these sounds, and once she called to know who it was. There was no answer, but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it. When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the ignorant intensely. But the special effect, I have found, soon wears out, and the tale simply takes its place with the rest. It was with Madames narrative. About a week after its relation, I had my experience of a similar sort. Mary Quince went downstairs for a nightlight, leaving me in bed, a candle burning in the room, and being tired, I fell asleep before her return. When I awoke the candle had been extinguished. But I heard a step softly approaching. I jumped upquite forgetting the ghost, and thinking only of Mary Quinceand opened the door, expecting to see the light of her candle. Instead, all was dark, and near me I heard the fall of a bare foot on the oak floor. It was as if someone had stumbled. I said, Mary, but no answer came, only a rustling of clothes and a breathing at the other side of the gallery, which passed off towards the upper staircase. I turned into my room, freezing with horror, and clapt my door. The noise wakened Mary Quince, who had returned and gone to her bed half an hour before. About a fortnight after this, Mary Quince, a very veracious spinster, reported to me, that having got up to fix the window, which was rattling, at about four oclock in the morning, she saw a light shining from the library window. She could swear to its being a strong light, streaming through the chinks of the shutter, and moving. No doubt the link was waved about his head by the angry linkman. These strange occurrences helped, I think, just then to make me nervous, and prepared the way for the odd sort of ascendency which, through my sense of the mysterious and supernatural, that repulsive Frenchwoman was gradually, and it seemed without effort, establishing over me. Some dark points of her character speedily emerged from the prismatic mist with which she had enveloped it. Mrs. Rusks observation about the agreeability of newcomers I found to be true; for as Madame began to lose that character, her goodhumour abated very perceptibly, and she began to show gleams of another sort of temper, that was lurid and dangerous. Notwithstanding this, she was in the habit of always having her Bible open by her, and was austerely attentive at morning and evening services, and asked my father, with great humility, to lend her some translations of Swedenborgs books, which she laid much to heart. When we went out for our walk, if the weather were bad we generally made our promenade up and down the broad terrace in front of the windows. Sullen and malign at times she used to look, and as suddenly she would pat me on the shoulder caressingly, and smile with a grotesque benignity, asking tenderly, Are you fatigue, ma chre? or Are you colda, dear Maud? At first these abrupt transitions puzzled me, sometimes half frightened me, savouring, I fancied, of insanity. The key, however, was accidentally supplied, and I found that these accesses of demonstrative affection were sure to supervene whenever my fathers face was visible through the library windows. I did not know well what to make of this woman, whom I feared with a vein of superstitious dread. I hated being alone with her after dusk in the schoolroom. She would sometimes sit for half an hour at a time, with her wide mouth drawn down at the corners, and a scowl, looking into the fire. If she saw me looking at her, she would change all this on the instant, affect a sort of languor, and lean her head upon her hand, and ultimately have recourse to her Bible. But I fancied she did not read, but pursued her own dark ruminations, for I observed that the open book might often lie for half an hour or more under her eyes and yet the leaf never turned. I should have been glad to be assured that she prayed when on her knees, or read when that book was before her; I should have felt that she was more canny and human. As it was, those external pieties made a suspicion of a hollow contrast with realities that helped to scare me; yet it was but a suspicionI could not be certain. Our Rector and the Curate, with whom she was very gracious, and anxious about my collects and catechism, had an exalted opinion of her. In public places her affection for me was always demonstrative. In like manner she contrived conferences with my father. She was always making excuses to consult him about my reading, and to confide in him her sufferings, as I learned, from my contumacy and temper. The fact is, I was altogether quiet and submissive. But I think she had a wish to reduce me to a state of the most abject bondage. She had designs of domination and subversion regarding the entire household, I now believe, worthy of the evil spirit I sometimes fancied her. My father beckoned me into the study one day, and said he You ought not to give poor Madame so much pain. She is one of the few persons who take an interest in you; why should she have so often to complain of your illtemper and disobedience?why should she be compelled to ask my permission to punish you? Dont be afraid, I wont concede that. But in so kind a person it argues much. Affection I cant commandrespect and obedience I mayand I insist on your rendering both to Madame. But sir, I said, roused into courage by the gross injustice of the charge, I have always done exactly as she bid me, and never said one disrespectful word to Madame. I dont think, child, you are the best judge of that. Go, and amend. And with a displeased look he pointed to the door. My heart swelled with the sense of wrong, and as I reached the door I turned to say another word, but I could not, and only burst into tears. Theredont cry, little Maudonly let us do better for the future. Theretherethere has been enough. And he kissed my forehead, and gently put me out and closed the door. In the schoolroom I took courage, and with some warmth upbraided Madame. Wat wicked cheaile! moaned Madame, demurely. Read aloud those threeyes, those three chapters of the Bible, my dear Maud. There was no special fitness in those particular chapters, and when they were ended she said in a sad tone Now, dear, you must commit to memory this pretty priaire for umility of art. It was a long one, and in a state of profound irritation I got through the task. Mrs. Rusk hated her. She said she stole wine and brandy whenever the opportunity offeredthat she was always asking her for such stimulants and pretending pains in her stomach. Here, perhaps, there was exaggeration; but I knew it was true that I had been at different times despatched on that errand and pretext for brandy to Mrs. Rusk, who at last came to her bedside with pills and a mustard blister only, and was hated irrevocably ever after. I felt all this was done to torture me. But a day is a long time to a child, and they forgive quickly. It was always with a sense of danger that I heard Madame say she must go and see Monsieur Ruthyn in the library, and I think a jealousy of her growing influence was an ingredient in the detestation in which honest Mrs. Rusk held her. VI A Walk in the Wood Two little pieces of byplay in which I detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion. From the corner of the gallery I one day saw her, when she thought I was out and all quiet, with her ear at the keyhole of papas study, as we used to call the sittingroom next his bedroom. Her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her eyes absolutely goggled with eagerness. She was devouring all that was passing there. I drew back into the shadow with a kind of disgust and horror. She was transformed into a great gaping reptile. I felt that I could have thrown something at her; but a kind of fear made me recede again toward my room. Indignation, however, quickly returned, and I came back, treading briskly as I did so. When I reached the angle of the gallery again. Madame, I suppose, had heard me, for she was halfway down the stairs. Ah, my dear cheaile, I am so glad to find you, and you are dress to come out. We shall have so pleasant walk. At that moment the door of my fathers study opened, and Mrs. Rusk, with her dark energetic face very much flushed, stepped out in high excitement. The Master says you may have the brandybottle, Madame and Im glad to be rid of itI am. Madame courtesied with a great smirk, that was full of intangible hate and insult. Better your own brandy, if drink you must! exclaimed Mrs. Rusk. You may come to the storeroom now, or the butler can take it. And off whisked Mrs. Rusk for the back staircase. There had been no common skirmish on this occasion, but a pitched battle. Madame had made a sort of pet of Anne Wixted, an underchambermaid, and attached her to her interest economically by persuading me to make her presents of some old dresses and other things. Anne was such an angel! But Mrs. Rusk, whose eyes were about her, detected Anne, with a brandybottle under her apron, stealing upstairs. Anne, in a panic, declared the truth. Madame had commissioned her to buy it in the town, and convey it to her bedroom. Upon this, Mrs. Rusk impounded the flask; and, with Anne beside her, rather precipitately appeared before the Master. He heard and summoned Madame. Madame was cool, frank, and fluent. The brandy was purely medicinal. She produced a document in the form of a note. Doctor Somebody presented his compliments to Madame de la Rougierre, and ordered her a tablespoonful of brandy and some drops of laudanum whenever the pain of stomach returned. The flask would last a whole year, perhaps two. She claimed her medicine. Mans estimate of woman is higher than womans own. Perhaps in their relations to men they are generally more trustworthyperhaps womans is the juster, and the other an appointed illusion. I dont know; but so it is ordained. Mrs. Rusk was recalled, and I saw, as you are aware, Madames procedure during the interview. It was a great battlea great victory. Madame was in high spirits. The air was sweetthe landscape charmingI, so goodeverything so beautiful! Where should we go? this way? I had made a resolution to speak as little as possible to Madame, I was so incensed at the treachery I had witnessed; but such resolutions do not last long with very young people, and by the time we had reached the skirts of the wood we were talking pretty much as usual. I dont wish to go into the wood, Madame. And for what? Poor mamma is buried there. Is there the vault? demanded Madame eagerly. I assented. My faith, curious reason; you say because poor mamma is buried there you will not approach! Why, cheaile, what would good Monsieur Ruthyn say if he heard such thing? You are surely not so unkain, and I am with you. Allons. Let us comeeven a little part of the way. And so I yielded, though still reluctant. There was a grassgrown road, which we easily reached, leading to the sombre building, and we soon arrived before it. Madame de la Rougierre seemed rather curious. She sat down on the little bank opposite, in her most languid poseher head leaned upon the tips of her fingers. How very sadhow solemn! murmured Madame. What noble tomb! How triste, my dear cheaile, your visit ere must it be, remembering a so sweet maman. There is new inscriptionis it not new? And so, indeed, it seemed. I am fatiguemaybe you will read it aloud to me slowly and solemnly, my dearest Maud? As I approached, I happened to look, I cant tell why, suddenly, over my shoulder; I was startled, for Madame was grimacing after me with a vile derisive distortion. She pretended to be seized with a fit of coughing. But it would not do she saw that I had detected her, and she laughed aloud. Come here, dear cheaile. I was just reflecting how foolish is all this thingthe tombthe epitaph. I think I would av noneno, no epitaph. We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what you call haunt, my dear? Why? said I, flushing and growing pale again. I felt quite afraid of Madame, and confounded at the suddenness of all this. Because Anne Wixted she says there is ghost. How dark is this place! and so many of the Ruthyn family they are buried hereis not so? How high and thick are the trees all round! and nobody comes near. And Madame rolled her eyes awfully, as if she expected to see something unearthly, and, indeed, looked very like it herself. Come away, Madame, I said, growing frightened, and feeling that if I were once, by any accident, to give way to the panic that was gathering round me, I should instantaneously lose all control of myself. Oh, come away! do, MadameIm frightened. No, on the contrary, sit here by me. It is very odd, you will think, ma chreun got bizarre, vraiment!but I love very much to be near to the dead peoplein solitary place like this. I am not afraid of the dead people, nor of the ghosts. Av you ever see a ghost, my dear? Do, Madame, pray speak of something else. Wat little fool! But no, you are not afraid. I av seen the ghosts myself. I saw one, for example, last night, shape like a monkey, sitting in the corner, with his arms round his knees; very wicked, old, old man his face was like, and white eyes so large. Come away, Madame! you are trying to frighten me, I said, in the childish anger which accompanies fear. Madame laughed an ugly laugh, and said Eh, bien! little fool!I will not tell the rest if you are really frightened; let us change to something else. Yes, yes! oh, dopray do. Wat good man is your father! Verythe kindest darling. I dont know why it is, Madame, I am so afraid of him, and never could tell him how much I love him. This confidential talking with Madame, strange to say, implied no confidence; it resulted from fearit was deprecatory. I treated her as if she had human sympathies, in the hope that they might be generated somehow. Was there not a doctor from London with him a few months ago? Dr. Bryerly, I think they call him. Yes, a Doctor Bryerly, who remained a few days. Shall we begin to walk towards home, Madame? Do, pray. Immediately, cheaile; and does your father suffer much? NoI think not. And what then is his disease? Disease! he has no disease. Have you heard anything about his health, Madame? I said, anxiously. Oh no, ma foiI have heard nothing; but if the doctor came, it was not because he was quite well. But that doctor is a doctor in theology, I fancy. I know he is a Swedenborgian; and papa is so well he could not have come as a physician. I am very glad, ma chre, to hear; but still you know your father is old man to have so young cheaile as you. Oh, yeshe is old man, and so uncertain life is. As he made his will, my dear? Every man so rich as he, especially so old, aught to av made his will. There is no need of haste, Madame; it is quite time enough when his health begins to fail. But has he really compose no will? I really dont know, Madame. Ah, little rogue! you will not tellbut you are not such fool as you feign yourself. No, no; you know everything. Come, tell me all aboutit is for your advantage, you know. What is in his will, and when he wrote? But, Madame, I really know nothing of it. I cant say whether there is a will or not. Let us talk of something else. But, cheaile, it will not kill Monsieur Ruthyn to make his will; he will not come to lie here a day sooner by cause of that; but if he make no will, you may lose a great deal of the property. Would not that be pity? I really dont know anything of his will. If papa has made one, he has never spoken of it to me. I know he loves methat is enough. Ah! you are not such little gooseyou do know everything, of course. Come tell me, little obstinate, otherwise I will break your little finger. Tell me everything. I know nothing of papas will. You dont know, Madame, how you hurt me. Let us speak of something else. You do know, and you must tell, petite durette, or I will break a your little finger. With which words she seized that joint, and laughing spitefully, she twisted it suddenly back. I screamed while she continued to laugh. Will you tell? Yes, yes! let me go, I shrieked. She did not release it immediately however, but continued her torture and discordant laughter. At last she finally released my finger. So she is going to be good cheaile, and tell everything to her affectionate gouvernante. What do you cry for, little fool? Youve hurt me very muchyou have broken my finger, I sobbed. Rub it and blow it and give it a kiss, little fool! What cross girl! I will never play with you againnever. Let us go home. Madame was silent and morose all the way home. She would not answer my questions, and affected to be very lofty and offended. This did not last very long, however, and she soon resumed her wonted ways. And she returned to the question of the will, but not so directly, and with more art. Why should this dreadful womans thoughts be running so continually upon my fathers will? How could it concern her? VII Church Scarsdale I think all the females of our household, except Mrs. Rusk, who was at open feud with her and had only room for the fiercer emotions, were more or less afraid of this inauspicious foreigner. Mrs. Rusk would say in her confidences in my room Where does she come from?is she a French or a Swiss one, or is she a Canada woman? I remember one of them when I was a girl, and a nice limb she was, too! And who did she live with? Where was her last family? Not one of us knows nothing about her, no more than a child; except, of course, the MasterI do suppose he made enquiry. Shes always at huggermugger with Anne Wixted. Ill pack that one about her business, if she doesnt mind. Tattling and whispering eternally. Its not about her own business shes atalking. Madame de la Rougepot, I call her. She does know how to paint up to the ninetyninesshe does, the old cat. I beg your pardon, Miss, but that she isa devil, and no mistake. I found her out first by her thieving the Masters gin, that the doctor ordered him, and filling the decanter up with waterthe old villain; but shell be found out yet, she will; and all the maids is afraid on her. Shes not right, they thinka witch or a ghostI should not wonder. Catherine Jones found her in her bed asleep in the morning after she sulked with you, you know, Miss, with all her clothes on, whatever was the meaning; and I think she has frightened you, Miss and has you as nervous as anythinkI do, and so forth. It was true. I was nervous, and growing rather more so; and I think this cynical woman perceived and intended it, and was pleased. I was always afraid of her concealing herself in my room, and emerging at night to scare me. She began sometimes to mingle in my dreams, tooalways awfully; and this nourished, of course, the kind of ambiguous fear in which, in waking hours, I held her. I dreamed one night that she led me, all the time whispering something so very fast that I could not understand her, into the library, holding a candle in her other hand above her head. We walked on tiptoe, like criminals at the dead of night, and stopped before that old oak cabinet which my father had indicated in so odd a way to me. I felt that we were about some contraband practice. There was a key in the door, which I experienced a guilty horror at turning, she whispering in the same unintelligible way, all the time, at my ear. I did turn it; the door opened quite softly, and within stood my father, his face white and malignant, and glaring close in mine. He cried in a terrible voice, Death! Out went Madames candle, and at the same moment, with a scream, I waked in the darkstill fancying myself in the library; and for an hour after I continued in a hysterical state. Every little incident about Madame furnished a topic of eager discussion among the maids. More or less covertly, they nearly all hated and feared her. They fancied that she was making good her footing with the Master; and that she would then oust Mrs. Ruskperhaps usurp her placeand so make a clean sweep of them all. I fancy the honest little housekeeper did not discourage that suspicion. About this time I recollect a pedlaran odd, gipsifiedlooking mancalled in at Knowl. I and Catherine Jones were in the court when he came, and set down his pack on the low balustrade beside the door. All sorts of commodities he hadribbons, cottons, silks, stockings, lace, and even some bad jewellery; and just as he began his displayan interesting matter in a quiet country houseMadame came upon the ground. He grinned a recognition, and hoped Madamasel was well, and did not look to see her here. Madamasel thanked him. Yes, vary well, and looked for the first time decidedly put out. Wat a pretty things! she said. Catherine, run and tell Mrs. Rusk. She wants scissors, and lace tooI heard her say. So Catherine, with a lingering look, departed; and Madame said Will you, dear cheaile, be so kind to bring here my purse, I forgot on the table in my room; also, I advise you, bring your. Catherine returned with Mrs. Rusk. Here was a man who could tell them something of the old Frenchwoman, at last! Slyly they dawdled over his wares, until Madame had made her market and departed with me. But when the coveted opportunity came, the pedlar was quite impenetrable. He forgot everything; he did not believe as he ever saw the lady before. He called a Frenchwoman, all the world over, Madamaselthat wor the name on em all. He never seed her in partiklar afore, as he could bring to mind. He liked to see em always, cause they makes the young uns buy. This reserve and oblivion were very provoking, and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Catherine Jones spent sixpence with him;he was a stupid fellow, or worse. Of course Madame had tampered with him. But truth, like murder, will out some day. Tom Williams, the groom, had seen her, when alone with him, and pretending to look at his stock, with her face almost buried in his silks and Welsh linseys, talking as fast as she could all the time, and slipping money, he did suppose, under a piece of stuff in his box. In the meantime, I and Madame were walking over the wide, peaty sheepwalks that lie between Knowl and Church Scarsdale. Since our visit to the mausoleum in the wood, she had not worried me so much as before. She had been, indeed, more than usually thoughtful, very little talkative, and troubled me hardly at all about French and other accomplishments. A walk was a part of our daily routine. I now carried a tiny basket in my hand, with a few sandwiches, which were to furnish our luncheon when we reached the pretty scene, about two miles away, whither we were tending.

We had started a little too late; Madame grew unwontedly fatigued and sat down to rest on a stile before we had got halfway; and there she intoned, with a dismal nasal cadence, a quaint old Bretagne ballad, about a lady with a pigs head This lady was neither pig nor maid, And so she was not of human mould; Not of the living nor the dead. Her left hand and foot were warm to touch; Her right as cold as a corpses flesh! And she would sing like a funeral bell, with a dingdong tune. The pigs were afraid, and viewed her aloof; And women feared her and stood afar. She could do without sleep for a year and a day; She could sleep like a corpse, for a month and more. No one knew how this lady fed On acorns or on flesh. Some say that shes one of the swinepossessed, That swam over the sea of Gennesaret. A mongrel body and demon soul. Some say shes the wife of the Wandering Jew, And broke the law for the sake of pork; And a swinish face for a token doth bear, That her shame is now, and her punishment coming. And so it went on, in a gingling rigmarole. The more anxious I seemed to go on our way, the more likely was she to loiter. I therefore showed no signs of impatience, and I saw her consult her watch in the course of her ugly minstrelsy, and slyly glance, as if expecting something, in the direction of our destination. When she had sung to her hearts content, up rose Madame, and began to walk onward silently. I saw her glance once or twice, as before, toward the village of Trillsworth, which lay in front, a little to our left, and the smoke of which hung in a film over the brow of the hill. I think she observed me, for she enquired Wat is that a smoke there? That is Trillsworth, Madame; there is a railway station there. Oh, le chemin de fer, so near! I did not think. Where it goes? I told her, and silence returned. Church Scarsdale is a very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheepwalk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very cattle had forsaken the place. It was solitude itself. Madame drew a long breath and smiled. Come down, come down, cheailecome down to the churchyard. As we descended the slope which shut out the surrounding world, and the scene grew more sad and lonely. Madames spirits seemed to rise. See ow many gravestonesone, two hundred. Dont you love the dead, cheaile? I will teach you to love them. You shall see me die here today, for half an hour, and be among them. That is what I love. We were by this time at the little brooks side, and the low churchyard wall with a stile, reached by a couple of steppingstones, across the stream, immediately at the other side. Come, now! cried Madame, raising her face, as if to sniff the air; we are close to them. You will like them soon as I. You shall see five of them. Ah, a ira, a ira, a ira! Come cross quickily! I am Madame la MorgueMrs. Deadhouse! I will present you my friends, Monsieur Cadavre and Monsieur Squelette. Come, come, leetle mortal, let us play. Ouaah! And she uttered a horrid yell from her enormous mouth, and pushing her wig and bonnet back, so as to show her great, bald head. She was laughing, and really looked quite mad. No, Madame, I will not go with you, I said, disengaging my hand with a violent effort, receding two or three steps. Not enter the churchyard! Ma foiwat mauvais got! But see, we are already in shade. The sun he is setting soonwhere weel you remain, cheaile? I will not stay long. Ill stay here, I said, a little angrilyfor I was angry as well as nervous; and through my fear was that indignation at her extravagances which mimicked lunacy so unpleasantly, and were, I knew, designed to frighten me. Over the steppingstones, pulling up her dress, she skipped with her long, lank legs, like a witch joining a Walpurgis. Over the stile she strode, and I saw her head wagging, and heard her sing some of her illomened rhymes, as she capered solemnly, with many a grin and courtesy, among the graves and headstones, towards the ruin. VIII The Smoker Three years later I learnedin a way she probably little expected, and then did not much care aboutwhat really occurred there. I learned even phrases and looksfor the story was related by one who had heard it toldand therefore I venture to narrate what at the moment I neither saw nor suspected. While I sat, flushed and nervous, upon a flat stone by the bank of the little stream, Madame looked over her shoulder, and perceiving that I was out of sight, she abated her pace, and turned sharply towards the ruin which lay at her left. It was her first visit, and she was merely exploring; but now, with a perfectly shrewd and businesslike air, turning the corner of the building, she saw, seated upon the edge of a gravestone, a rather fat and flashilyequipped young man, with large, light whiskers, a jerry hat, green cutaway coat with gilt buttons, and waistcoat and trousers rather striking than elegant in pattern. He was smoking a short pipe, and made a nod to Madame, without either removing it from his lips or rising, but with his brown and rather goodlooking face turned up, he eyed her with something of the impudent and sulky expression that was habitual to it. Ha, Deedle, you are there! an look so well. I am here, too, quite alon; but my friend, she wait outside the churchyard, byside the leetle river, for she must not think I know youso I am come alon. Youre a quarter late, and I lost a fight by you, old girl, this morning, said the gay man, and spat on the ground; and I wish you would not call me Diddle. Ill call you Granny if you do. Eh, bien! Dud, then. She is vary nicewat you like. Slim waist, wite teeth, vary nice eyesdarkwat you say is bestand nice leetle foot and ankle. Madame smiled leeringly. Dud smoked on. Go on, said Dud, with a nod of command. I am teach her to sing and playshe has such sweet voice! There was another interval here. Well, that isnt much good. I hate womens screechin about fairies and flowers. Hang her! theres a scarecrow as sings at Curls Divan. Such a caterwauling upon a stage! Id like to put my two barrels into her. By this time Duds pipe was out, and he could afford to converse. You shall see her and decide. You will walk down the river, and pass her by. Thats as may be; howsoever, it would not do, nohow, to buy a pig in a poke, you know. And spose I shouldnt like her, arter all? Madame sneered, with a patois ejaculation of derision. Vary good! Then someone else will not be so ard to pleaseas you will soon find. Someones bin alookin arter her, you mean? said the young man, with a shrewd uneasy glance on the cunning face of the French lady. I mean preciselythat which I mean, replied the lady, with a teasing pause at the break I have marked. Come, old un, none of your d old chaff, if you want me to stay here listening to you. Speak out, cant you? Theres any chap as has bin alookin arter heris there? Eh, bien; I suppose some. Well, you suppose, and I supposewe may all suppose, I guess; but that does not make a thing be, as wasnt before; and you tell me as how the lass is kep private up there, and will be till youre done educating hera precious good un that is! And he laughed a little lazily, with the ivory handle of his cane on his lip, and eyeing Madame with indolent derision. Madame laughed, but looked rather dangerous. Im only chaffin, you know, old girl. Youve bin chaffinwy shouldnt I? But I dont see why she cant wait a bit; and whats all the dd hurry for? Im in no hurry. I dont want a wife on my back for a while. Theres no fellow marries till hes took his bit o fun, and seen lifeis there! And why should I be driving with her to fairs, or to church, or to meeting, by jingo!for they say shes a Quakerwith a babby on each knee, only to please them as will be dead and rotten when Im only beginning? Ah, you are such charming fellow; always the samealways sensible. So I and my friend we will walk home again, and you go see Maggie Hawkes. Goodaby, Dudgoodaby. Quiet, you fool!cant ye? said the young gentleman, with the sort of grin that made his face vicious when a horse vexed him. Who ever said I wouldnt go look at the girl? Why, you know thats just what I come here fordont you? Only when I think a bit, and a notion comes across me, why shouldnt I speak out? Im not one o them shillyshallies. If I like the girl, Ill not be mug in and mug out about it. Only mind ye, Ill judge for myself. Is that her acoming? No; it was a distant sound. Madame peeped round the corner. No one was approaching. Well, you go round that away, and you only look at her, you know, for she is such foolso nairvous. Oh, is that the way with her? said Dud, knocking out the ashes of his pipe on a tombstone, and replacing the Turkish utensil in his pocket. Well, then, old lass, goodbye, and he shook her hand. And, do ye see, dont ye come up till I pass, for Im no hand at playacting; an if you called me sir, or was coming it dignified and distant, you know, Id be sure to laugh, amost, and let all out. So goodbye, dye see, and if you want me again be sharp to time, mind. From habit he looked about for his dogs, but he had not brought one. He had come unostentatiously by rail, travelling in a thirdclass carriage, for the advantage of Jack Briderlys company, and getting a world of useful wrinkles about the steeplechase that was coming off next week. So he strode away, cutting off the heads of the nettles with his cane as he went; and Madame walked forth into the open space among the graves, where I might have seen her, had I stood up, looking with the absorbed gaze of an artist on the ruin. In a little while, along the path, I heard the clank of a step, and the gentleman in the green cutaway coat, sucking his cane, and eyeing me with an offensive familiar sort of stare the while, passed me by, rather hesitating as he did so. I was glad when he turned the corner in the little hollow close by, and disappeared. I stood up at once, and was reassured by a sight of Madame, not very many yards away, looking at the ruin, and apparently restored to her right mind. The last beams of the sun were by this time touching the uplands, and I was longing to recommence our walk home. I was hesitating about calling to Madame, because that lady had a certain spirit of opposition within her, and to disclose a small wish of any sort was generally, if it lay in her power, to prevent its accomplishment. At this moment the gentleman in the green coat returned, approaching me with a slow sort of swagger. I say, Miss, I dropped a glove close by here. May you have seen it? No, sir, I said, drawing back a little, and looking, I dare say, both frightened and offended. I do think I must a dropped it close by your foot, Miss. No, sir, I repeated. No offence, Miss, but youre sure you didnt hide it? I was beginning to grow seriously uncomfortable. Dont be frightened, Miss; its only a bit o chaff. Im not going to search. I called aloud, Madame, Madame! and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, Madame, Madame, and added, Shes as deaf as a tombstone, or shell hear that. Gie her my compliments, and say I said youre a beauty, Miss; and with a laugh and a leer he strode off. Altogether this had not been a very pleasant excursion. Madame gobbled up our sandwiches, commending them every now and then to me. But I had been too much excited to have any appetite left, and very tired I was when we reached home. So, there is lady coming tomorrow? said Madame, who knew everything. Wat is her name? I forget. Lady Knollys, I answered. Lady Knollyswat odd name! She is very youngis she not? Past fifty, I think. Hlas! Shes vary old, then. Is she rich? I dont know. She has a place in Derbyshire. Derbyshirethat is one of your English counties, is it not? Oh yes, Madame, I answered, laughing. I have said it to you twice since you came; and I gabbled through the chief towns and rivers as catalogued in my geography. Bah! to be sureof course, cheaile. And is she your relation? Papas first cousin. Wont you presenta me, pray?I would so like! Madame had fallen into the English way of liking people with titles, as perhaps foreigners would if titles implied the sort of power they do generally with us. Certainly, Madame. You will not forget? Oh no. Madame reminded me twice, in the course of the evening, of my promise. She was very eager on this point. But it is a world of disappointment, influenza, and rheumatics; and next morning Madame was prostrate in her bed, and careless of all things but flannel and Jamess powder. Madame was dsole; but she could not raise her head. She only murmured a question. For ow long time, dear, will Lady Knollys remain? A very few days, I believe. Hlas! ow onlucky! maybe tomorrow I shall be better. Ouah! my ear. The laudanum, dear cheaile! And so our conversation for that time ended, and Madame buried her head in her old red cashmere shawl. IX Monica Knollys Punctually Lady Knollys arrived. She was accompanied by her nephew, Captain Oakley. They arrived a little before dinner; just in time to get to their rooms and dress. But Mary Quince enlivened my toilet with eloquent descriptions of the youthful Captain whom she had met in the gallery, on his way to his room, with the servant, and told me how he stopped to let her pass, and how he smiled so ansom. I was very young then, you know, and more childish even than my years; but this talk of Mary Quinces interested me, I must confess, considerably. I was painting all sort of portraits of this heroic soldier, while affecting, I am afraid, a hypocritical indifference to her narration, and I know I was very nervous and painstaking about my toilet that evening. When I went down to the drawingroom, Lady Knollys was there, talking volubly to my father as I entereda woman not really old, but such as very young people fancy agedenergetic, bright, saucy, dressed handsomely in purple satin, with a good deal of lace, and a rich pointI know not how to call itnot a cap, a sort of headdresslight and simple, but grand withal, over her greyish, silken hair. Rather tall, by no means stout, on the whole a good firm figure, with something kindly in her look. She got up, quite like a young person, and coming quickly to meet me with a smile My young cousin! she cried, and kissed me on both cheeks. You know who I am? Your cousin MonicaMonica Knollysand very glad, dear, to see you, though she has not set eyes on you since you were no longer than that paperknife. Now come here to the lamp, for I must look at you. Who is she like? Let me see. Like your poor mother, I think, my dear; but youve the Aylmer noseyesnot a bad nose either, and, come! very good eyes, upon my lifeyes, certainly something of her poor mothernot a bit like you, Austin. My father gave her a look as near a smile as I had seen there for a long time, shrewd, cynical, but kindly too, and said he So much the better, Monica, eh? It was not for me to saybut you know, Austin, you always were an ugly creature. How shocked and indignant the little girl looks! You must not be vexed, you loyal little woman, with Cousin Monica for telling the truth. Papa was and will be ugly all his days. Come, Austin, dear, tell heris not it so? What! depose against myself! Thats not English law, Monica. Well, maybe not; but if the child wont believe her own eyes, how is she to believe me? She has long, pretty handsyou haveand very nice feet too. How old is she? How old, child? said my father to me, transferring the question. She recurred again to my eyes. That is the true greylarge, deep, softvery peculiar. Yes, dear, very prettylong lashes, and such bright tints! Youll be in the Book of Beauty, my dear, when you come out, and have all the poet people writing verses to the tip of your noseand a very pretty little nose it is! I must mention here how striking was the change in my fathers spirit while talking and listening to his odd and voluble old Cousin Monica. Reflected from bygone associations, there had come a glimmer of something, not gaiety, indeed, but like an appreciation of gaiety. The gloom and inflexibility were gone, and there was an evident encouragement and enjoyment of the incessant sallies of his bustling visitor. How morbid must have been the tendencies of his habitual solitude, I think, appeared from the evident thawing and brightening that accompanied even this transient gleam of human society. I was not a companionmore childish than most girls of my age, and trained in all his whimsical ways, never to interrupt a silence, or force his thoughts by unexpected question or remark out of their monotonous or painful channel. I was as much surprised at the goodhumour with which he submitted to his cousins saucy talk; and, indeed, just then those blackpanelled and pictured walls, and that quaint, misshapen room, seemed to have exchanged their stern and awful character for something wonderfully pleasanter to me, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the personal criticism to which the plainspoken lady chose to subject me. Just at that moment Captain Oakley joined us. He was my first actual vision of that awful and distant world of fashion, of whose splendours I had already read something in the threevolumed gospel of the circulating library. Handsome, elegant, with features almost feminine, and soft, wavy, black hair, whiskers and moustache, he was altogether such a knight as I had never beheld, or even fancied, at Knowla hero of another species, and from the region of the demigods. I did not then perceive that coldness of the eye, and cruel curl of the voluptuous liponly a suspicion, yet enough to indicate the profligate man, and savouring of death unto death. But I was young, and had not yet the direful knowledge of good and evil that comes with years; and he was so very handsome, and talked in a way that was so new to me, and was so much more charming than the wellbred converse of the humdrum county families with whom I had occasionally sojourned for a week at a time. It came out incidentally that his leave of absence was to expire the day after tomorrow. A Lilliputian pang of disappointment followed this announcement. Already I was sorry to lose him. So soon we begin to make a property of what pleases us. I was shy, but not awkward. I was flattered by the attention of this amusing, perhaps rather fascinating, young man of the world; and he plainly addressed himself with diligence to amuse and please me. I dare say there was more effort than I fancied in bringing his talk down to my humble level, and interesting me and making me laugh about people whom I had never heard of before, than I then suspected. Cousin Knollys meanwhile was talking to papa. It was just the conversation that suited a man so silent as habit had made him, for her frolic fluency left him little to supply. It was totally impossible, indeed, even in our taciturn household, that conversation should ever flag while she was among us. Cousin Knollys and I went into the drawingroom together, leaving the gentlemenrather illassorted, I fearto entertain one another for a time. Come here, my dear, and sit near me, said Lady Knollys, dropping into an easy chair with an energetic little plump, and tell me how you and your papa get on. I can remember him quite a cheerful man once, and rather amusingyes, indeedand now you see what a bore he isall by shutting himself up and nursing his whims and fancies. Are those your drawings, dear? Yes, very bad, Im afraid; but there are a few, better, I think in the portfolio in the cabinet in the hall. They are by no means bad, my dear; and you play, of course? Yesthat is, a littlepretty well, I hope. I dare say. I must hear you byandby. And how does your papa amuse you? You look bewildered, dear. Well, I dare say, amusement is not a frequent word in this house. But you must not turn into a nun, or worse, into a puritan. What is he? A FifthMonarchyman, or somethingI forget; tell me the name, my dear. Papa is a Swedenborgian, I believe. Yes, yesI forgot the horrid namea Swedenborgian, that is it. I dont know exactly what they think, but everyone knows they are a sort of pagans, my dear. Hes not making one of you, dearis he? I go to church every Sunday. Well, thats a mercy; Swedenborgian is such an ugly name, and besides, they are all likely to be damned, my dear, and thats a serious consideration. I really wish poor Austin had hit on something else; Id much rather have no religion, and enjoy life while Im in it, than choose one to worry me here and bedevil me hereafter. But some people, my dear, have a taste for being miserable, and provide, like poor Austin, for its gratification in the next world as well as here. Ha, ha, ha! how grave the little woman looks! Dont you think me very wicked? You know you do; and very likely you are right. Who makes your dresses, my dear? You are such a figure of fun! Mrs. Rusk, I think, ordered this dress. I and Mary Quince planned it. I thought it very nice. We all like it very well. There was something, I dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again as it was subsiding. There, you mustnt be vexed with old Cousin Monica, she cried, jumping up, and giving me a little hug, and bestowing a hearty kiss on my forehead, and a jolly little slap on my cheek. Always remember your cousin Monica is an outspoken, wicked old fool, who likes you, and never be offended by her nonsense. A council of threeyou all sat upon itMrs. Rusk, you said, and Mary Quince, and your wise self, the weird sisters; and Austin stepped in, as Macbeth, and said, What ist ye do? you all made answer together, A something or other without a name! Now, seriously, my dear, it is quite unpardonable in Austinyour papa, I meanto hand you over to be robed and bedizened according to the whimsies of these wild old womenarent they old? If they know better, its positively fiendish. Ill blow him upI will indeed, my dear. You know youre an heiress, and ought not to appear like a jackpudding. Papa intends sending me to London with Madame and Mary Quince, and going with me himself, if Doctor Bryerly says he may make the journey, and then I am to have dresses and everything. Well, that is better. And who is Doctor Bryerlyis your papa ill? Ill! oh, no; he always seems just the same. You dont think him illlooking ill, I mean? I asked eagerly and frightened. No, my dear, he looks very well for his time of life; but why is Doctor Whatshisname here; Is he a physician, or a divine, or a horsedoctor? and why is his leave asked? II really dont understand. Is he a what dye callema Swedenborgian? I believe so. Oh, I see; ha, ha, ha! And so poor Austin must ask leave to go up to town. Well, go he shall, whether his doctor likes it or not, for it would not do to send you there in charge of your Frenchwoman, my dear. Whats her name? Madame de la Rougierre. X Lady Knollys Removes a Coverlet Lady Knollys pursued her enquiries. And why does not Madame make your dresses, my dear? I wager a guinea the womans a milliner. Did not she engage to make your dresses? II really dont know; I rather think not. She is my governessa finishing governess, Mrs. Rusk says. Finishing fiddle! Hoitytoity! and my ladys too grand to cut out your dresses and help to sew them? And what does she do? I venture to say shes fit to teach nothing but devilmentnot that she has taught you much, my dearyet at least. Ill see her, my dear; where is she? Come, let us visit Madame. I should so like to talk to her a little. But she is ill, I answered, and all this time I was ready to cry for vexation, thinking of my dress, which must be very absurd to elicit so much unaffected laughter from my experienced relative, and I was only longing to get away and hide myself before that handsome Captain returned. Ill! is she? whats the matter? A coldfeverish and rheumatic, she says. Oh, a cold; is she up or in bed? In her room, but not in bed. I should so like to see her, my dear. It is not mere curiosity, I assure you. In fact, curiosity has nothing on earth to do with it. A governess may be a very useful or a very useless person; but she may also be about the most pernicious inmate imaginable. She may teach you a bad accent, and worse manners, and heaven knows what beside. Send the housekeeper, my dear, to tell her that I am going to see her. I had better go myself, perhaps, I said, fearing a collision between Mrs. Rusk and the bitter Frenchwoman. Very well, dear. And away I ran, not sorry somehow to escape before Captain Oakley returned. As I went along the passage, I was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it, and trying in vain to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy. I could notquite the reverse, indeed. Still I was uncomfortable and feverishgirls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable, under similar circumstances, such a misgiving would make them. It was a long way to Madames room. I met Mrs. Rusk bustling along the passage with a housemaid. How is Madame? I asked. Quite well, I believe, answered the housekeeper, drily. Nothing the matter that I know of. She eat enough for two today. I wish I could sit in my room doing nothing. Madame was sitting, or rather reclining, in a low armchair, when I entered the room, close to the fire, as was her wont, her feet extended near to the bars, and a little coffee equipage beside her. She stuffed a book hastily between her dress and the chair, and received me in a state of langour which, had it not been for Mrs. Rusks comfortable assurances, would have frightened me. I hope you are better, Madame, I said, approaching. Better than I deserve, my dear cheaile, sufficiently well. The people are all so good, trying me with every little thing, like a bird; here is cafMrs. Ruska, poor woman, I try to swallow a little to please her. And your cold, is it better? She shook her head languidly, her elbow resting on the chair, and three fingertips supporting her forehead, and then she made a little sigh, looking down from the corners of her eyes, in an interesting dejection. Je sens des lassitudes in all the membersbut I am quaite appy, and though I suffer I am console and oblige des bonts, ma chre, que vous avez tous pour moi; and with these words she turned a languid glance of gratitude on me which dropped on the ground. Lady Knollys wishes very much to see you, only for a few minutes, if you could admit her. Vous savez les malades see never visitors, she replied with a startled sort of tartness, and a momentary energy. Besides, I cannot converse; je sens de temps en temps des douleurs de tteof head, and of the ear, the right ear, it is parfois agony absolutely, and now it is here. And she winced and moaned, with her eyes closed and her hand pressed to the organ affected. Simple as I was, I felt instinctively that Madame was shamming. She was overacting; her transitions were too violent, and beside she forgot that I knew how well she could speak English, and must perceive that she was heightening the interest of her helplessness by that pretty tessellation of foreign idiom. I therefore said with a kind of courage which sometimes helped me suddenly Oh, Madame, dont you really think you might, without much inconvenience, see Lady Knollys for a very few minutes? Cruel cheaile! you know I have a pain of the ear which makes me orribly suffer at this moment, and you demand me whether I will not converse with strangers. I did not think you would be so unkain, Maud; but it is impossible, you must seequite impossible. I never, you know, refuse to take trouble when I am ablenevernever. And Madame shed some tears, which always came at call, and with her hand pressed to her ear, said very faintly, Be so good to tell your friend how you see me, and how I suffer, and leave me, Maud, for I wish to lie down for a little, since the pain will not allow me to remain longer. So with a few words of comfort which could not well be refused, but I dare say betraying my suspicion that more was made of her sufferings than need be, I returned to the drawingroom. Captain Oakley has been here, my dear, and fancying, I suppose, that you had left us for the evening, has gone to the billiardroom, I think, said Lady Knollys, as I entered. That, then, accounted for the rumble and smack of balls which I had heard as I passed the door. I have been telling Maud how detestably she is got up. Very thoughtful of you, Monica! said my father. Yes, and really, Austin, it is quite clear you ought to marry; you want someone to take this girl out, and look after her, and whos to do it? Shes a dowdydont you see? Such a dust! And it is really such a pity; for shes a very pretty creature, and a clever woman could make her quite charming. My father took Cousin Monicas sallies with the most wonderful goodhumour. She had always, I fancy, been a privileged person, and my father, whom we all feared, received her jolly attacks, as I fancy the grim FrontdeBoeufs of old accepted the humours and personalities of their jesters. Am I to accept this as an overture? said my father to his voluble cousin. Yes, you may, but not for myself, AustinIm not worthy. Do you remember little Kitty Weadon that I wanted you to marry eightandtwenty years ago, or more, with a hundred and twenty thousand pounds? Well, you know, she has got ever so much now, and she is really a most amiable old thing, and though you would not have her then, she has had her second husband since, I can tell you. Im glad I was not the first, said my father. Well, they really say her wealth is absolutely immense. Her last husband, the Russian merchant, left her everything. She has not a human relation, and she is in the best set. You were always a matchmaker, Monica, said my father, stopping, and putting his hand kindly on hers. But it wont do. No, no, Monica; we must take care of little Maud some other way. I was relieved. We women have all an instinctive dread of second marriages, and think that no widower is quite above or below that danger; and I remember, whenever my father, which indeed was but seldom, made a visit to town or anywhere else, it was a saying of Mrs. Rusk I shant wonder, neither need you, my dear, if he brings home a young wife with him. So my father, with a kind look at her, and a very tender one on me, went silently to the library, as he often did about that hour. I could not help resenting my Cousin Knollys officious recommendation of matrimony. Nothing I dreaded more than a stepmother. Good Mrs. Rusk and Mary Quince, in their several ways, used to enhance, by occasional anecdotes and frequent reflections, the terrors of such an intrusion. I suppose they did not wish a revolution and all its consequences at Knowl, and thought it no harm to excite my vigilance. But it was impossible long to be vexed with Cousin Monica. You know, my dear, your father is an oddity, she said. I dont mind himI never did. You must not. Cracky, my dear, crackydecidedly cracky! And she tapped the corner of her forehead, with a look so sly and comical, that I think I should have laughed, if the sentiment had not been so awfully irreverent.

Well, dear, how is our friend the milliner? Madame is suffering so much from pain in her ear, that she says it would be quite impossible to have the honour Honourfiddle! I want to see what the womans like. Pain in her ear, you say? Poor thing! Well, dear, I think I can cure that in five minutes. I have it myself, now and then. Come to my room, and well get the bottles. So she lighted her candle in the lobby, and with a light and agile step she scaled the stairs, I following; and having found the remedies, we approached Madames room together. I think, while we were still at the end of the gallery, Madame heard and divined our approach, for her door suddenly shut, and there was a fumbling at the handle. But the bolt was out of order. Lady Knollys tapped at the door, sayingwell come in, please, and see you. Ive some remedies, which Im sure will do you good. There was no answer; so she opened the door, and we both entered. Madame had rolled herself in the blue coverlet, and was lying on the bed, with her face buried in the pillow, and enveloped in the covering. Perhaps shes asleep? said Lady Knollys, getting round to the side of the bed, and stooping over her. Madame lay still as a mouse. Cousin Monica set down her two little vials on the table, and, stooping again over the bed, began very gently with her fingers to lift the coverlet that covered her face. Madame uttered a slumbering moan, and turned more upon her face, clasping the coverlet faster about her. Madame, it is Maud and Lady Knollys. We have come to relieve your ear. Pray let me see it. She cant be asleep, shes holding the clothes so fast. Do, pray, allow me to see it. XI Lady Knollys Sees the Features Perhaps, if Madame had murmured, It is quite wellpray permit me to sleep, she would have escaped an awkwardness. But having adopted the role of the exhausted slumberer, she could not consistently speak at the moment; neither would it do by main force, to hold the coverlet about her face, and so her presence of mind forsook her. Cousin Monica drew it back and hardly beheld the profile of the sufferer, when her goodhumoured face was lined and shadowed with a dark curiosity and a surprise by no means pleasant. She stood erect beside the bed, with her mouth firmly shut and drawn down at the corners, in a sort of recoil and perturbation, looking down upon the patient. So thats Madame de la Rougierre? at length exclaimed Lady Knollys, with a very stately disdain. I think I never saw anyone look more shocked. Madame sat up, very flushed. No wonder, for she had been wrapped so close in the coverlet. She did not look quite at Lady Knollys, but straight before her, rather downward, and very luridly. I was very much frightened and amazed, and felt on the point of bursting into tears. So, Mademoiselle, you have married, it seems, since I had last the honour of seeing you? I did not recognise Mademoiselle under her new name. YesI am married, Lady Knollys; I thought everyone who knew me had heard of that. Very respectably married, for a person of my rank. I shall not need long the life of a governess. There is no harm, I hope? I hope not, said Lady Knollys, drily, a little pale, and still looking with a dark sort of wonder upon the flushed face and forehead of the governess, who was looking downward, straight before her, very sulkily and disconcerted. I suppose you have explained everything satisfactorily to Mr. Ruthyn, in whose house I find you? said Cousin Monica. Yes, certainly, everything he requiresin effect there is nothing to explain. I am ready to answer to any question. Let him demand me. Very good, Mademoiselle. Madame, if you please. I forgotMadameyes, I shall apprise him of everything. Madame turned upon her a peaked and malign look, smiling askance with a stealthy scorn. For myself, I have nothing to conceal. I have always done my duty. What fine scene about nothing absolutelywhat charming remedies for a sick person! Ma foi! how much oblige I am for these so amiable attentions! So far as I can see, MademoiselleMadame, I meanyou dont stand very much in need of remedies. Your ear and head dont seem to trouble you just now. I fancy these pains may now be dismissed. Lady Knollys was now speaking French. Mi ladi has diverted my attention for a moment, but that does not prevent that I suffer frightfully. I am, of course, only poor governess, and such people perhaps ought not to have painat least to show when they suffer. It is permitted us to die, but not to be sick. Come, Maud, my dear, let us leave the invalid to her repose and to nature. I dont think she needs my chloroform and opium at present. Mi ladi is herself a physic which chases many things, and powerfully affects the ear. I would wish to sleep, notwithstanding, and can but gain that in silence, if it pleases mi ladi. Come, my dear, said Lady Knollys, without again glancing at the scowling, smiling, swarthy face in the bed; let us leave your instructress to her concforto. The room smells all over of brandy, my deardoes she drink? said Lady Knollys, as she closed the door, a little sharply. I am sure I looked as much amazed as I felt, at an imputation which then seemed to me so entirely incredible. Good little simpleton! said Cousin Monica, smiling in my face, and bestowing a little kiss on my cheek; such a thing as a tipsy lady has never been dreamt of in your philosophy. Well, we live and learn. Let us have our tea in my roomthe gentlemen, I dare say, have retired. I assented, of course, and we had tea very cosily by her bedroom fire. How long have you had that woman? she asked suddenly, after, for her, a very long rumination. She came in the beginning of Februarynearly ten months agois not it? And who sent her? I really dont know; papa tells me so littlehe arranged it all himself, I think. Cousin Monica made a sound of acquiescenceher lips closed and a nod, frowning hard at the bars. It is very odd! she said; how people can be such fools! Here there came a little pause. And what sort of person is shedo you like her? Very wellthat is, pretty well. You wont tell?but she rather frightens me. Im sure she does not intend it, but somehow I am very much afraid of her. She does not beat you? said Cousin Monica, with an incipient frenzy in her face that made me love her. Oh no! Nor illuse you in any way? No. Upon your honour and word, Maud? No, upon my honour. You know I wont tell her anything you say to me; and I only want to know, that I may put an end to it, my poor little cousin. Thank you, Cousin Monica very much; but really and truly she does not illuse me. Nor threaten you, child? Well, nono, she does not threaten. And how the plague does she frighten you, child? Well, I reallyIm half ashamed to tell youyoull laugh at meand I dont know that she wishes to frighten me. But there is something, is not there, ghosty, you know, about her? Ghostyis there? well, Im sure I dont know, but I suspect theres something devilishI mean, she seems roguishdoes not she? And I really think she has had neither cold nor pain, but has just been shamming sickness, to keep out of my way. I perceived plainly enough that Cousin Monicas damnatory epithet referred to some retrospective knowledge, which she was not going to disclose to me. You knew Madame before, I said. Who is she? She assures me she is Madame de la Rougierre, and, I suppose, in French phrase she so calls herself, answered Lady Knollys, with a laugh, but uncomfortably, I thought. Oh, dear Cousin Monica, do tell meis sheis she very wicked? I am so afraid of her! How should I know, dear Maud? But I do remember her face, and I dont very much like her, and you may depend on it. I will speak to your father in the morning about her, and dont, darling, ask me any more about her, for I really have not very much to tell that you would care to hear, and the fact is I wont say any more about herthere! And Cousin Monica laughed, and gave me a little slap on the cheek, and then a kiss. Well, just tell me this Well, I wont tell you this, nor anythingnot a word, curious little woman. The fact is, I have little to tell, and I mean to speak to your father, and he, I am sure, will do what is right; so dont ask me any more, and let us talk of something pleasanter. There was something indescribably winning, it seemed to me, in Cousin Monica. Old as she was, she seemed to me so girlish, compared with those slow, unexceptionable young ladies whom I had met in my few visits at the county houses. By this time my shyness was quite gone, and I was on the most intimate terms with her. You know a great deal about her, Cousin Monica, but you wont tell me. Nothing I should like better, if I were at liberty, little rogue; but you know, after all, I dont really say whether I do know anything about her or not, or what sort of knowledge it is. But tell me what you mean by ghosty, and all about it. So I recounted my experiences, to which, so far from laughing at me, she listened with very special gravity. Does she write and receive many letters? I had seen her write letters, and supposed, though I could only recollect one or two, that she received in proportion. Are you Mary Quince? asked my lady cousin. Mary was arranging the windowcurtains, and turned, dropping a courtesy affirmatively toward her. You wait on my little cousin, Miss Ruthyn, dont you? Yes, m, said Mary, in her genteelest way. Does anyone sleep in her room? Yes, m, Iplease, my lady. And no one else? No, mplease, my lady. Not even the governess, sometimes? No, please, my lady. Never, you are quite sure, my dear? said Lady Knollys, transferring the question to me. Oh no, never, I answered. Cousin Monica mused gravely, I fancied even anxiously, into the grate; then stirred her tea and sipped it, still looking into the same point of our cheery fire. I like your face, Mary Quince; Im sure you are a good creature, she said, suddenly turning toward her with a pleasant countenance. Im very glad you have got her, dear. I wonder whether Austin has gone to his bed yet! I think not. I am certain he is either in the library or in his private roompapa often reads or prays alone at night, andand he does not like to be interrupted. No, no; of course notit will do very well in the morning. Lady Knollys was thinking deeply, as it seemed to me. And so you are afraid of goblins, my dear, she said at last, with a faded sort of smile, turning toward me; well, if I were, I know what I should doso soon as I, and good Mary Quince here, had got into my bedchamber for the night, I should stir the fire into a good blaze, and bolt the doordo you see, Mary Quince?bolt the door and keep a candle lighted all night. Youll be very attentive to her, Mary Quince, for II dont think she is very strong, and she must not grow nervous so get to bed early, and dont leave her alonedo you see?andand remember to bolt the door, Mary Quince, and I shall be sending a little Christmasbox to my cousin, and I shant forget you. Good night. And with a pleasant courtesy Mary fluttered out of the room. XII A Curious Conversation We each had another cup of tea, and were silent for awhile. We must not talk of ghosts now. You are a superstitious little woman, you know, and you shant be frightened. And now Cousin Monica grew silent again, and looking briskly around the room, like a lady in search of a subject, her eye rested on a small oval portrait, graceful, brightly tinted, in the French style, representing a pretty little boy, with rich golden hair, large soft eyes, delicate features, and a shy, peculiar expression. It is odd; I think I remember that pretty little sketch, very long ago. I think I was then myself a child, but that is a much older style of dress, and of wearing the hair, too, than I ever saw. I am just fortynine now. Oh dear, yes; that is a good while before I was born. What a strange, pretty little boy! a mysterious little fellow. Is he quite sincere, I wonder? What rich golden hair! It is very clevera French artist, I dare sayand who is that little boy? I never heard. Someone a hundred years ago, I dare say. But there is a picture downstairs I am so anxious to ask you about! Oh! murmured Lady Knollys, still gazing dreamily on the crayon. It is the fulllength picture of Uncle SilasI want to ask you about him. At mention of his name, my cousin gave me a look so sudden and odd as to amount almost to a start. Your uncle Silas, dear? It is very odd, I was just thinking of him; and she laughed a little. Wondering whether that little boy could be he. And up jumped active Cousin Monica, with a candle in her hand, upon a chair, and scrutinised the border of the sketch for a name or a date. Maybe on the back? said she. And so she unhung it, and there, true enough, not on the back of the drawing, but of the frame, which was just as good, in penandink round Italian letters, hardly distinguishable now from the discoloured wood, we traced Silas Aylmer Ruthyn, tate viii. 15 May, 1779. It is very odd I should not have been told or remembered who it was. I think if I had ever been told I should have remembered it. I do recollect this picture, though, I am nearly certain. What a singular childs face! And my cousin leaned over it with a candle on each side, and her hand shading her eyes, as if seeking by aid of these fair and halfformed lineaments to read an enigma. The childish features defied her, I suppose; their secret was unfathomable, for after a good while she raised her head, still looking at the portrait, and sighed. A very singular face, she said, softly, as a person might who was looking into a coffin. Had not we better replace it? So the pretty oval, containing the fair golden hair and large eyes, the pale, unfathomable sphinx, remounted to its nail, and the funeste and beautiful child seemed to smile down oracularly on our conjectures. So is the face in the large portraitvery singularmore, I think, than thathandsomer too. This is a sickly child, I think; but the fulllength is so manly, though so slender, and so handsome too. I always think him a hero and a mystery, and they wont tell me about him, and I can only dream and wonder. He has made more people than you dream and wonder, my dear Maud. I dont know what to make of him. He is a sort of idol, you know, of your fathers, and yet I dont think he helps him much. His abilities were singular; so has been his misfortune; for the rest, my dear, he is neither a hero nor a wonder. So far as I know, there are very few sublime men going about the world. You really must tell me all you know about him, Cousin Monica. Now dont refuse. But why should you care to hear? There is really nothing pleasant to tell. That is just the reason I wish it. If it were at all pleasant, it would be quite commonplace. I like to hear of adventures, dangers, and misfortunes; and above all, I love a mystery. You know, papa will never tell me, and I dare not ask him; not that he is ever unkind, but, somehow, I am afraid; and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Mary Quince will tell me anything, although I suspect they know a good deal. I dont see any good in telling you, dear, nor, to say the truth, any great harm either. Nonow thats quite trueno harm. There cant be, for I must know it all some day, you know, and better now, and from you, than perhaps from a stranger, and in a less favourable way. Upon my word, it is a wise little woman; and really, thats not such bad sense after all. So we poured out another cup of tea each, and sipped it very comfortably by the fire, while Lady Knollys talked on, and her animated face helped the strange story. It is not very much, after all. Your uncle Silas, you know, is living? Oh yes, in Derbyshire. So I see you do know something of him, sly girl! but no matter. You know how very rich your father is; but Silas was the younger brother, and had little more than a thousand a year. If he had not played, and did not care to marry, it would have been quite enoughever so much more than younger sons of dukes often have; but he waswell, a mauvais sujetyou know what that is. I dont want to say any ill of himmore than I really knowbut he was fond of his pleasures, I suppose, like other young men, and he played, and was always losing, and your father for a long time paid great sums for him. I believe he was really a most expensive and vicious young man; and I fancy he does not deny that now, for they say he would change the past if he could. I was looking at the pensive little boy in the oval frameaged eight yearswho was, a few springs later, a most expensive and vicious young man, and was now a suffering and outcast old one, and wondering from what a small seed the hemlock or the wallflower grows, and how microscopic are the beginnings of the kingdom of God or of the mystery of iniquity in a human beings heart. Austinyour papawas very kind to himvery; but then, you know, hes an oddity, dearhe is an oddity, though no one may have told you beforeand he never forgave him for his marriage. Your father, I suppose, knew more about the lady than I didI was young thenbut there were various reports, none of them pleasant, and she was not visited, and for some time there was a complete estrangement between your father and your uncle Silas; and it was made up, rather oddly, on the very occasion which some people said ought to have totally separated them. Did you ever hear anythinganything very remarkableabout your uncle? No, never, they would not tell me, though I am sure they know. Pray go on. Well, Maud, as I have begun, Ill complete the story, though perhaps it might have been better untold. It was something rather shockingindeed, very shocking; in fact, they insisted on suspecting him of having committed a murder. I stared at my cousin for some time, and then at the little boy, so refined, so beautiful, so funeste, in the oval frame. Yes, dear, said she, her eyes following mine; whod have supposed he could ever havehave fallen under so horrible a suspicion? The wretches! Of course, Uncle Silasof course, hes innocent? I said at last. Of course, my dear, said Cousin Monica, with an odd look; but you know there are some things as bad almost to be suspected of as to have done, and the country gentlemen chose to suspect him. They did not like him, you see. His politics vexed them; and he resented their treatment of his wifethough I really think, poor Silas, he did not care a pin about herand he annoyed them whenever he could. Your papa, you know, is very proud of his familyhe never had the slightest suspicion of your uncle. Oh, no! I cried vehemently. Thats right, Maud Ruthyn, said Cousin Monica, with a sad little smile and a nod. And your papa was, you may suppose, very angry. Of course he was, I exclaimed. You have no idea, my dear, how angry. He directed his attorney to prosecute, by wholesale, all who had said a word affecting your uncles character. But the lawyers were against it, and then your uncle tried to fight his way through it, but the men would not meet him. He was quite slurred. Your father went up and saw the Minister. He wanted to have him a DeputyLieutenant, or something, in his county. Your papa, you know, had a very great influence with the government. Beside his county influence, he had two boroughs then. But the Minister was afraid, the feeling was so very strong. They offered him something in the Colonies, but your father would not hear of itthat would have been a banishment, you know. They would have given your father a peerage to make it up, but he would not accept it, and broke with the party. Except in that waywhich, you know, was connected with the reputation of the familyI dont think, considering his great wealth, he has done very much for Silas. To say truth, however, he was very liberal before his marriage. Old Mrs. Aylmer says he made a vow then that Silas should never have more than five hundred a year, which he still allows him, I believe, and he permits him to live in the place. But they say it is in a very wild, neglected state. You live in the same countyhave you seen it lately, Cousin Monica? No, not very lately, said Cousin Monica, and began to hum an air abstractedly. XIII Before and After Breakfast Next morning early I visited my favourite fulllength portrait in the chocolate coat and topboots. Scanty as had been my cousin Monicas notes upon this dark and eccentric biography, they were everything to me. A soul had entered that enchanted form. Truth had passed by with her torch, and a sad light shone for a moment on that enigmatic face. There stood the routhe duellistand, with all his faults, the hero too! In that dark large eye lurked the profound and fiery enthusiasm of his illstarred passion. In the thin but exquisite lip I read the courage of the paladin, who would have fought his way, though singlehanded, against all the magnates of his county, and by ordeal of battle have purged the honour of the Ruthyns. There in that delicate halfsarcastic tracery of the nostril I detected the intellectual defiance which had politically isolated Silas Ruthyn and opposed him to the landed oligarchy of his county, whose retaliation had been a hideous slander. There, too, and on his brows and lip, I traced the patience of a cold disdain. I could now see him as he wasthe prodigal, the hero, and the martyr. I stood gazing on him with a girlish interest and admiration. There was indignation, there was pity, there was hope. Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of that longsuffering, gallant, and romantic prodigal. It was a flicker of the Joan of Arc inspiration, common, I fancy, to many girls. I little then imagined how profoundly and strangely involved my uncles fate would one day become with mine. I was interrupted by Captain Oakleys voice at the window. He was leaning on the windowsill, and looking in with a smilethe window being open, the morning sunny, and his cap lifted in his hand. Good morning, Miss Ruthyn. What a charming old place! quite the setting for a romance; such timber, and this really beautiful house. I do so like these white and black houseswonderful old things. By the by, you treated us very badly last nightyou did, indeed; upon my word, now, it really was too badrunning away, and drinking tea with Lady Knollysso she says. I reallyI should not like to tell you how very savage I felt, particularly considering how very short my time is. I was a shy, but not a giggling country miss. I knew I was an heiress; I knew I was somebody. I was not the least bit in the world conceited, but I think this knowledge helped to give me a certain sense of security and selfpossession, which might have been mistaken for dignity or simplicity. I am sure I looked at him with a fearless enquiry, for he answered my thoughts. I do really assure you, Miss Ruthyn, I am quite serious; you have no idea how very much we have missed you. There was a little pause, and, like a fool, I lowered my eyes, and blushed. II was thinking of leaving today; I am so unfortunatemy leave is just outit is so unlucky; but I dont quite know whether my aunt Knollys will allow me to go. I?certainly, my dear Charlie, I dont want you at all, exclaimed a voiceLady Knollyssbriskly, from an open window close by; what could put that in your head, dear? And in went my cousins head, and the window shut down. She is such an oddity, poor dear Aunt Knollys, murmured the young man, ever so little put out, and he laughed. I never know quite what she wishes, or how to please her; but shes so goodnatured; and when she goes to town for the seasonshe does not always, you knowher house is really very gayyou cant think Here again he was interrupted, for the door opened, and Lady Knollys entered. And you know, Charles, she continued, it would not do to forget your visit to Snodhurst; you wrote, you know, and you have only tonight and tomorrow. You are thinking of nothing but that moor; I heard you talking to the gamekeeper; I know he isis not he, Maud, the brown man with great whiskers, and leggings? Im very sorry, you know, but I really must spoil your shooting, for they do expect you at Snodhurst, Charlie; and do not you think this window a little too much for Miss Ruthyn? Maud, my dear, the air is very sharp; shut it down, Charles, and youd better tell them to get a fly for you from the town after luncheon. Come, dear, she said to me. Was not that the breakfast bell? Why does not your papa get a gong?it is so hard to know one bell from another. I saw that Captain Oakley lingered for a last look, but I did not give it, and went out smiling with Cousin Knollys, and wondering why old ladies are so uniformly disagreeable. In the lobby she said, with an odd, goodnatured look Dont allow any of his lovemaking, my dear. Charles Oakley has not a guinea, and an heiress would be very convenient. Of course he has his eyes about him. Charles is not by any means foolish; and I should not be at all sorry to see him well married, for I dont think he will do much good any other way; but there are degrees, and his ideas are sometimes very impertinent. I was an admiring reader of the Albums, the Souvenirs, the Keepsakes, and all that flood of Christmaspresent lore which yearly irrigated England, with pretty covers and engravings; and floods of elegant twaddlethe milk, not destitute of water, on which the babes of literature were then fed. On this, my genius throve. I had a little album, enriched with many gems of original thought and observation, which I jotted down in suitable language. Lately, turning over these faded leaves of rhyme and prose, I lighted, under this days date, upon the following sage reflection, with my name appended Is there not in the female heart an ineradicable jealousy, which, if it sways the passions of the young, rules also the advice of the aged? Do they not grudge to youth the sentiments (though Heaven knows how shadowed with sorrow) which they can no longer inspire, perhaps even experience; and does not youth, in turn, sigh over the envy which has power to blight? Maud Aylmer Ruthyn. He has not been making love to me, I said rather tartly, and he does not seem to me at all impertinent, and I really dont care the least whether he goes or stays. Cousin Monica looked in my face with her old waggish smile, and laughed. Youll understand those London dandies better some day, dear Maud; they are very well, but they like moneynot to keep, of coursebut still they like it and know its value. At breakfast my father told Captain Oakley where he might have shooting, or if he preferred going to Dilsford, only half an hours ride, he might have his choice of hunters, and find the dogs there that morning. The Captain smiled archly at me, and looked at his aunt. There was a suspense. I hope I did not show how much I was interestedbut it would not do. Cousin Monica was inexorable. Hunting, hawking, fishing, fiddlededee! You know, Charlie, my dear, it is quite out of the question. He is going to Snodhurst this afternoon, and without quite a rudeness, in which I should be involved too, he really cantyou know you cant, Charles! andand he must go and keep his engagement. So papa acquiesced with a polite regret, and hoped another time. Oh, leave all that to me. When you want him, only write me a note, and Ill send him or bring him if you let me. I always know where to find himdont I, Charlie?and we shall be only too happy. Aunt Monicas influence with her nephew was special, for she tipped him handsomely every now and then, and he had formed for himself agreeable expectations, besides, respecting her will. I felt rather angry at his submitting to this sort of tutelage, knowing nothing of its motive; I was also disgusted by Cousin Monicas tyranny. So soon as he had left the room, Lady Knollys, not minding me, said briskly to papa, Never let that young man into your house again. I found him making speeches, this morning, to little Maud here; and he really has not two pence in the worldit is amazing impudenceand you know such absurd things do happen. Come, Maud, what compliments did he pay you? asked my father. I was vexed, and therefore spoke courageously. His compliments were not to me; they were all to the house, I said, drily. Quite as it should bethe house, of course; it is that hes in love with, said Cousin Knollys. Twas on a widows jointure land, The archer, Cupid, took his stand. Hey! I dont quite understand, said my father, slyly. Tut! Austin; you forget Charlie is my nephew. So I did, said my father. Therefore the literal widow in this case can have no interest in view but one, and that is yours and Mauds. I wish him well, but he shant put my little cousin and her expectations into his empty pocketnot a bit of it. And theres another reason, Austin, why you should marryyou have no eye for these things, whereas a clever woman would see at a glance and prevent mischief. So she would, acquiesced my father, in his gloomy, amused way. Maud, you must try to be a clever woman. So she will in her time, but that is not come yet; and I tell you, Austin Ruthyn, if you wont look about and marry somebody, somebody may possibly marry you. You were always an oracle, Monica; but here I am lost in total perplexity, said my father. Yes; sharks sailing round you, with keen eyes and large throats; and you have come to the age precisely when men are swallowed up alive like Jonah. Thank you for the parallel, but you know that was not a happy union, even for the fish, and there was a separation in a few days; not that I mean to trust to that; but theres no one to throw me into the jaws of the monster, and Ive no notion of jumping there; and the fact is, Monica, theres no monster at all. Im not so sure. But Im quite sure, said my father, a little drily. You forget how old I am, and how long Ive lived aloneI and little Maud; and he smiled and smoothed my hair, and, I thought, sighed. No one is ever too old to do a foolish thing, began Lady Knollys. Nor to say a foolish thing, Monica. This has gone on too long. Dont you see that little Maud here is silly enough to be frightened at your fun. So I was, but I could not divine how he guessed it. And well or ill, wisely or madly, Ill never marry; so put that out of your head. This was addressed rather to me, I think, than to Lady Knollys, who smiled a little waggishly on me, and said To be sure, Maud; maybe you are right; a stepdame is a risk, and I ought to have asked you first what you thought of it; and upon my honour, she continued merrily but kindly, observing that my eyes, I know not exactly from what feeling, filled with tears, Ill never again advise your papa to marry, unless you first tell me you wish it. This was a great deal from Lady Knollys, who had a taste for advising her friends and managing their affairs. Ive a great respect for instinct. I believe, Austin, it is truer than reason, and yours and Mauds are both against me, though I know I have reason on my side. My fathers brief wintry smile answered, and Cousin Monica kissed me, and said Ive been so long my own mistress that I sometimes forget there are such things as fear and jealousy; and are you going to your governess, Maud? XIV Angry Words I was going to my governess, as Lady Knollys said; and so I went. The undefinable sense of danger that smote me whenever I beheld that woman had deepened since last nights occurrence, and was taken out of the region of instinct or prepossession by the strange though slight indications of recognition and abhorrence which I had witnessed in Lady Knollys on that occasion. The tone in which Cousin Monica had asked, are you going to your governess? and the curious, grave, and anxious look that accompanied the question, disturbed me; and there was something odd and cold in the tone as if a remembrance had suddenly chilled her.

The accent remained in my ear, and the sharp brooding look was fixed before me as I glided up the broad dark stairs to Madame de la Rougierres chamber. She had not come down to the schoolroom, as the scene of my studies was called. She had decided on having a relapse, and accordingly had not made her appearance downstairs that morning. The gallery leading to her room was dark and lonely, and I grew more nervous as I approached; I paused at the door, making up my mind to knock. But the door opened suddenly, and, like a magiclantern figure, presented with a snap, appeared close before my eyes the great muffled face, with the forbidding smirk, of Madame de la Rougierre. Wat you mean, my dear cheaile? she inquired with a malevolent shrewdness in her eyes, and her hollow smile all the time disconcerting me more even than the suddenness of her appearance; wat for you approach so softly? I do not sleep, you see, but you feared, perhaps, to have the misfortune of wakening me, and so you cameis it not so?to leesten, and looke in very gentily; you want to know how I was. Vous tes bien aimable davoir pens moi. Bah! she cried, suddenly bursting through her irony. Wy could not Lady Knollys come herself and leesten to the keyhole to make her report? Fidon, wat is there to conceal? Nothing. Enter, if you please. Everyone they are welcome! and she flung the door wide, turned her back upon me, and, with an ejaculation which I did not understand, strode into the room. I did not come with any intention, Madame, to pry or to intrudeyou dont think soyou cant think soyou cant possibly mean to insinuate anything so insulting! I was very angry, and my tremors had all vanished now. No, not for you, dear cheaile; I was thinking to miladi Knollys, who, without cause, is my enemy. Everyone has enemy; you will learn all that so soon as you are little older, and without cause she is mine. Come, Maud, speak a the truthwas it not miladi Knollys who sent you here doucement, doucement, so quaite to my dooris it not so, little rogue? Madame had confronted me again, and we were now standing in the middle of her floor. I indignantly repelled the charge, and searching me for a moment with her oddlyshaped, cunning eyes, she said That is good cheaile, you speak a so directI like that, and am glad to hear; but, my dear Maud, that woman Lady Knollys is papas cousin, I interposed a little gravely. She does hate a me so, you av no idea. She as tryed to injure me several times, and would employ the most innocent person, unconsciously you know, my dear, to assist her malice. Here Madame wept a little. I had already discovered that she could shed tears whenever she pleased. I have heard of such persons, but I never met another before or since. Madame was unusually frankno one ever knew better when to be candid. At present I suppose she concluded that Lady Knollys would certainly relate whatever she knew concerning her before she left Knowl; and so Madames reserves, whatever they might be, were dissolving, and she growing childlike and confiding. Et comment va monsieur votre pre aujourdhui? Very well, I thanked her. And how long miladi Knollys her visit is likely to be? I could not say exactly, but for some days. Eh bien, my dear cheaile, I find myself better this morning, and we must return to our lessons. Je veux mhabiller, ma chre Maud; you will wait me in the schoolroom. By this time Madame, who, though lazy, could make an effort, and was capable of getting into a sudden hurry, had placed herself before her dressingtable, and was ogling her discoloured and bony countenance in the glass. Wat horror! I am so pale. Quel ennui! wat bore! Ow weak av I grow in two three days! And she practised some plaintive, invalid glances into the mirror. But on a sudden there came a little sharp inquisitive frown as she looked over the frame of the glass, upon the terrace beneath. It was only a glance, and she sat down languidly in her armchair to prepare, I suppose, for the fatigues of the toilet. My curiosity was sufficiently aroused to induce me to ask But why, Madame, do you fancy that Lady Knollys dislikes you? Tis not fancy, my dear Maud. Ah ha, no! Mais cest toute une histoiretoo tedious to tell nowsome time maybeand you will learn when you are little older, the most violent hatreds often they are the most without cause. But, my dear cheaile, the hours they are running from us, and I must dress. Vite, vite! so you run away to the schoolroom, and I will come after. Madame had her dressingcase and her mysteries, and palpably stood in need of repairs; so away I went to my studies. The room which we called the schoolroom was partly beneath the floor of Madames bedchamber, and commanded the same view; so, remembering my governesss peering glance from her windows, I looked out, and saw Cousin Monica making a brisk promenade up and down the terracewalk. Well, that was quite enough to account for it. I had grown very curious, and I resolved when our lessons were over to join her and make another attempt to discover the mystery. As I sat over my books, I fancied I heard a movement outside the door. I suspected that Madame was listening. I waited for a time, expecting to see the door open, but she did not come; so I opened it suddenly myself, but Madame was not on the threshold nor on the lobby. I heard a rustling, however, and on the staircase over the banister I saw the folds of her silk dress as she descended. She is going, I thought, to seek an interview with Lady Knollys. She intends to propitiate that dangerous lady; so I amused some eight or ten minutes in watching Cousin Monicas quick march and rightabout face upon the paradeground of the terrace. But no one joined her. She is certainly talking to papa, was my next and more probable conjecture. Having the profoundest distrust of Madame, I was naturally extremely jealous of the confidential interviews in which deceit and malice might make their representations plausibly and without answer. Yes, Ill run down and seesee papa; she shant tell lies behind my back, horrid woman! At the studydoor I knocked, and forthwith entered. My father was sitting near the window, his open book before him, Madame standing at the other side of the table, her cunning eyes bathed in tears, and her pockethandkerchief pressed to her mouth. Her eyes glittered stealthily on me for an instant she was sobbingdsole, in factthat grim grenadier lady, and her attitude was exquisitely dejected and timid. But she was, notwithstanding, reading closely and craftily my fathers face. He was not looking at her, but rather upward toward the ceiling, reflectively leaning on his hand, with an expression, not angry, but rather surly and annoyed. I ought to have heard of this before, Madame, my father was saying as I came in; not that it would have made any differencenot the least; mind that. But it was the kind of thing that I ought to have heard, and the omission was not strictly right. Madame, in a shrill and lamentable key, opened her voluble reply, but was arrested by a nod from my father, who asked me if I wanted anything. Onlyonly that I was waiting in the schoolroom for Madame, and did not know where she was. Well, she is here, you see, and will join you upstairs in a few minutes. So back I went again, huffed, angry, and curious, and sat back in my chair with a clouded countenance, thinking very little about lessons. When Madame entered, I did not lift my head or eyes. Good cheaile! reading, said she, as she approached briskly and reassured. No, I answered tartly; not good, nor a child either; Im not reading, Ive been thinking. Trsbien! she said, with an insufferable smile, thinking is very good also; but you look unhappyvery, poor cheaile. Take care you are not grow jealous for poor Madame talking sometime to your papa; you must not, little fool. It is only for a your good, my dear Maud, and I had no objection you should stay. You! Madame! I said loftily. I was very angry, and showed it through my dignity, to Madames evident satisfaction. Noit was your papa, Mr. Ruthyn, who weesh to speak alone; for me I do not care; there was something I weesh to tell him. I dont care who know, but Mr. Ruthyn he is deeferent. I made no remark. Come, leetle Maud, you are not to be so cross; it will be much better you and I to be good friends together. Why should a we quarrel?wat nonsense! Do you imagine I would anywhere undertake a the education of a young person unless I could speak with her parent?wat folly! I would like to be your friend, however, my poor Maud, if you would allowyou and I togetherwat you say? People grow to be friends by liking, Madame, and liking comes of itself, not by bargain; I like everyone who is kind to me. And so I. You are like me in so many things, my dear Maud! Are you quaite well today? I think you look fateague; so I feel, too, vary tire. I think we weel put off the lessons to tomorrow. Eh? and we will come to play la grace in the garden. Madame was plainly in a high state of exultation. Her audience had evidently been satisfactory, and, like other people, when things went well, her soul lighted up into a sulphureous goodhumour, not very genuine nor pleasant, but still it was better than other moods. I was glad when our calisthenics were ended, and Madame had returned to her apartment, so that I had a pleasant little walk with Cousin Monica. We women are persevering when once our curiosity is roused, but she gaily foiled mine, and, I think, had a mischievous pleasure in doing so. As we were going in to dress for dinner, however, she said, quite gravely I am sorry, Maud, I allowed you to see that I have any unpleasant impressions about that governess lady. I shall be at liberty some day to explain all about it, and, indeed, it will be enough to tell your father, whom I have not been able to find all day; but really we are, perhaps, making too much of the matter, and I cannot say that I know anything against Madame that is conclusive, oror, indeed, at all; but that there are reasons, andyou must not ask any moreno, you must not. That evening, while I was playing the overture to Cenerentola, for the entertainment of my cousin, there arose from the teatable, where she and my father were sitting, a spirited and rather angry harangue from Lady Knollys lips; I turned my eyes from the music towards the speakers; the overture swooned away with a little hesitating babble into silence, and I listened. Their conversation had begun under cover of the music which I was making, and now they were too much engrossed to perceive its discontinuance. The first sentence I heard seized my attention; my father had closed the book he was reading, upon his finger, and was leaning back in his chair, as he used to do when at all angry; his face was a little flushed, and I knew the fierce and glassy stare which expressed pride, surprise, and wrath. Yes, Lady Knollys, theres an animus; I know the spirit you speak init does you no honour, said my father. And I know the spirit you speak in, the spirit of madness, retorted Cousin Monica, just as much in earnest. I cant conceive how you can be so demented, Austin. What has perverted you? are you blind? You are, Monica; your own unnatural prejudiceunnatural prejudice, blinds you. What is it all?nothing. Were I to act as you say, I should be a coward and a traitor. I see, I do see, all thats real. Im no Quixote, to draw my sword on illusions. There should be no halting here. How can youdo you ever think? I wonder if you can breathe. I feel as if the evil one were in the house. A stern, momentary frown was my fathers only answer, as he looked fixedly at her. People need not nail up horseshoes and mark their doorstones with charms to keep the evil spirit out, ran on Lady Knollys, who looked pale and angry, in her way, but you open your door in the dark and invoke unknown danger. How can you look at that child thatsshes not playing, said Knollys, abruptly stopping. My father rose, muttering to himself, and cast a lurid glance at me, as he went in high displeasure to the door. Cousin Monica, now flushed a little, glanced also silently at me, biting the tip of her slender gold cross, and doubtful how much I had heard. My father opened the door suddenly, which he had just closed, and looking in, said, in a calmer tone Perhaps, Monica, you would come for a moment to the study; Im sure you have none but kindly feelings towards me and little Maud, there; and I thank you for your goodwill; but you must see other things more reasonably, and I think you will. Cousin Monica got up silently and followed him, only throwing up her eyes and hands as she did so, and I was left alone, wondering and curious more than ever. XV A Warning I sat still, listening and wondering, and wondering and listening; but I ought to have known that no sound could reach me where I was from my fathers study. Five minutes passed and they did not return. Ten, fifteen. I drew near the fire and made myself comfortable in a great armchair, looking on the embers, but not seeing all the scenery and dramatis personae of my past life or future fortunes, in their shifting glow, as people in romances usually do; but fanciful castles and caverns in bloodred and golden glare, suggestive of dreamy fairyland, salamanders, sunsets, and palaces of firekings, and all this partly shaping and partly shaped by my fancy, and leading my closing eyes and drowsy senses off into dreamland. So I nodded and dozed, and sank into a deep slumber, from which I was roused by the voice of my cousin Monica. On opening my eyes, I saw nothing but Lady Knollys face looking steadily into mine, and expanding into a goodnatured laugh as she watched the vacant and lacklustre stare with which I returned her gaze. Come, dear Maud, it is late; you ought to have been in your bed an hour ago. Up I stood, and so soon as I had begun to hear and see aright, it struck me that Cousin Monica was more grave and subdued than I had seen her. Come, let us light our candles and go together. Holding hands, we ascended, I sleepy, she silent; and not a word was spoken until we reached my room. Mary Quince was in waiting, and tea made. Tell her to come back in a few minutes; I wish to say a word to you, said Lady Knollys. The maid accordingly withdrew. Lady Knollys eyes followed her till she closed the door behind her. Im going in the morning. So soon! Yes, dear; I could not stay; in fact, I should have gone tonight, but it was too late, and I leave instead in the morning. I am so sorryso very sorry, I exclaimed, in honest disappointment, and the walls seemed to darken round me, and the monotony of the old routine loomed more terrible in prospect. So am I, dear Maud. But cant you stay a little longer; wont you? No, Maud; Im vexed with Austinvery much vexed with your father; in short, I cant conceive anything so entirely preposterous, and dangerous, and insane as his conduct, now that his eyes are quite opened, and I must say a word to you before I go, and it is just thisyou must cease to be a mere child, you must try and be a woman, Maud now dont be frightened or foolish, but hear me out. That womanwhat does she call herselfRougierre? I have reason to believe isin fact, from circumstances, must be your enemy; you will find her very deep, daring, and unscrupulous, I venture to say, and you cant be too much on your guard. Do you quite understand me, Maud? I do, said I, with a gasp, and my eyes fixed on her with a terrified interest, as if on a warning ghost. You must bridle your tongue, mind, and govern your conduct, and command even your features. It is hard to practise reserve; but you mustyou must be secret and vigilant. Try and be in appearance just as usual; dont quarrel; tell her nothing, if you do happen to know anything, of your fathers business; be always on your guard when with her, and keep your eye upon her everywhere. Observe everything, disclose nothingdo you see? Yes, again I whispered. You have good, honest servants about you, and, thank God, they dont like her. But you must not repeat to them one word I am now saying to you. Servants are fond of dropping hints, and letting things ooze out in that way, and in their quarrels with her would compromise youyou understand me? I do, I sighed, with a wild stare. Andand, Maud, dont let her meddle with your food. Cousin Monica gave me a pale little nod, and looked away. I could only stare at her; and under my breath I uttered an ejaculation of terror. Dont be so frightened; you must not be foolish; I only wish you to be upon your guard. I have my suspicions, but I may be quite wrong; your father thinks I am a fool; perhaps I amperhaps not; maybe he may come to think as I do. But you must not speak to him on the subject; hes an odd man, and never did and never will act wisely, when his passions and prejudices are engaged. Has she ever committed any great crime? I asked, feeling as if I were on the point of fainting. No, dear Maud, I never said anything of the kind; dont be so frightened I only said I have formed, from something I know, an ill opinion of her; and an unprincipled person, under temptation, is capable of a great deal. But no matter how wicked she may be, you may defy her, simply by assuming her to be so, and acting with caution; she is cunning and selfish, and shell do nothing desperate. But I would give her no opportunity. Oh, dear! Oh, Cousin Monica, dont leave me. My dear, I cant stay; your papa and Iweve had a quarrel. I know Im right, and hes wrong, and hell come to see it soon, if hes left to himself, and then all will be right. But just now he misunderstands me, and weve not been civil to one another. I could not think of staying, and he would not allow you to come away with me for a short visit, which I wished. It wont last, though; and I do assure you, my dear Maud, I am quite happy about you now that you are quite on your guard. Just act respecting that person as if she were capable of any treachery, without showing distrust or dislike in your manner, and nothing will remain in her power; and write to me whenever you wish to hear from me, and if I can be of any real use, I dont care, Ill come so theres a wise little woman; do as Ive said, and depend upon it everything will go well, and Ill contrive before long to get that nasty creature away. Except a kiss and a few hurried words in the morning when she was leaving, and a pencilled farewell for papa, there was nothing more from Cousin Monica for some time. Knowl was dark againdarker than ever. My father, gentle always to me, was nowperhaps it was contrast with his fitful return to something like the worlds ways, during Lady Knollys staymore silent, sad, and isolated than before. Of Madame de la Rougierre I had nothing at first particular to remark. Only, reader, if you happen to be a rather nervous and very young girl, I ask you to conceive my fears and imaginings, and the kind of misery which I was suffering. Its intensity I cannot now even myself recall. But it overshadowed me perpetuallya care, an alarm. It lay down with me at night and got up with me in the morning, tinting and disturbing my dreams, and making my daily life terrible. I wonder now that I lived through the ordeal. The torment was secret and incessant, and kept my mind in unintermitting activity. Externally things went on at Knowl for some weeks in the usual routine. Madame was, so far as her unpleasant ways were concerned, less tormenting than before, and constantly reminded me of our leetle vow of friendship, you remember, dearest Maud! and she would stand beside me, and looked from the window with her bony arm round my waist, and my reluctant hand drawn round in hers; and thus she would smile, and talk affectionately and even playfully; for at times she would grow quite girlish, and smile with her great carious teeth, and begin to quiz and babble about the young faylows, and tell bragging tales of her lovers, all of which were dreadful to me. She was perpetually recurring, too, to the charming walk we had had together to Church Scarsdale, and proposing a repetition of that delightful excursion, which, you may be sure, I evaded, having by no means so agreeable a recollection of our visit. One day, as I was dressing to go out for a walk, in came good Mrs. Rusk, the housekeeper, to my room. Miss Maud, dear, is not that too far for you? It is a long walk to Church Scarsdale, and you are not looking very well. To Church Scarsdale? I repeated; Im not going to Church Scarsdale; who said I was going to Church Scarsdale? There is nothing I should so much dislike. Well, I never! exclaimed she. Why, theres old Madames been downstairs with me for fruit and sandwiches, telling me you were longing to go to Church Scarsdale Its quite untrue, I interrupted. She knows I hate it. She does? said Mrs. Rusk, quietly; and you did not tell her nothing about the basket? Wellif there isnt a story! Now what may she be afterwhat is itwhat is she driving at? I cant tell, but I wont go. No, of course, dear, you wont go. But you may be sure theres some scheme in her old head. Tom Fowkes says shes bin two or three times to drink tea at Farmer Graysnow, could it be shes thinking to marry him? And Mrs. Rusk sat down and laughed heartily, ending with a crow of derision. To think of a young fellow like that, and his wife, poor thing, not dead a yearmaybe shes got money? I dont knowI dont careperhaps, Mrs. Rusk, you mistook Madame. I will go down; I am going out. Madame had a basket in her hand. She held it quietly by her capacious skirt, at the far side, and made no allusion to the preparation, neither to the direction in which she proposed walking, and prattling artlessly and affectionately she marched by my side. Thus we reached the stile at the sheepwalk, and then I paused. Now, Madame, have not we gone far enough in this direction?suppose we visit the pigeonhouse in the park? Wat folly! my dear a Maudyou cannot walk so far. Well, towards home, then. And wy not a this way? We ave not walk enough, and Mr. Ruthyn he will not be pleased if you do not take proper exercise. Let us walk on by the path, and stop when you like. Where do you wish to go, Madame? Nowhere particularcome along; dont be fool, Maud. This leads to Church Scarsdale. A yes indeed! wat sweet place! bote we need not a walk all the way to there. Id rather not walk outside the grounds today, Madame. Come, Maud, you shall not be foolwat you mean, Mademoiselle? said the stalworth lady, growing yellow and greenish with an angry mottling, and accosting me very gruffly. I dont care to cross the stile, thank you, Madame. I shall remain at this side. You shall do wat I tell you! exclaimed she. Let go my arm, Madame, you hurt me, I cried. She had gripped my arm very firmly in her great bony hand, and seemed preparing to drag me over by main force. Let me go, I repeated shrilly, for the pain increased. La! she cried with a smile of rage and a laugh, letting me go and shoving me backward at the same time, so that I had a rather dangerous tumble. I stood up, a good deal hurt, and very angry, notwithstanding my fear of her. Ill ask papa if I am to be so illused. Wat av I done? cried Madame, laughing grimly from her hollow jaws; I did all I could to help you overow could I prevent you to pull back and tumble if you would do so? That is the way wen you petites Mademoiselles are naughty and hurt yourself they always try to make blame other people. Tell a wat you likeyou think I care? Very well, Madame. Are a you coming? No. She looked steadily in my face and very wickedly. I gazed at her as with dazzled eyesI suppose as the feathered prey do at the owl that glares on them by night. I neither moved back nor forward, but stared at her quite helplessly. You are nice pupilcharming young person! So polite, so obedient, so amiable! I will walk towards Church Scarsdale, she continued, suddenly breaking through the conventionalism of her irony, and accosting me in savage accents. You weel stay behind if you dare. I tell you to accompanydo you hear? More than ever resolved against following her, I remained where I was, watching her as she marched fiercely away, swinging her basket as though in imagination knocking my head off with it. She soon cooled, however, and looking over her shoulder, and seeing me still at the other side of the stile, she paused, and beckoned me grimly to follow her. Seeing me resolutely maintain my position, she faced about, tossed her head, like an angry beast, and seemed uncertain for a while what course to take with me. She stamped and beckoned furiously again. I stood firm. I was very much frightened, and could not tell to what violence she might resort in her exasperation. She walked towards me with an inflamed countenance, and a slight angry wagging of the head; my heart fluttered, and I awaited the crisis in extreme trepidation. She came close, the stile only separating us, and stopped short, glaring and grinning at me like a French grenadier who has crossed bayonets, but hesitates to close. XVI Doctor Bryerly Looks In What had I done to excite this ungovernable fury? We had often before had such small differences, and she had contented herself with being sarcastic, teasing, and impertinent. So, for future you are gouvernante and I the cheaile for you to commandis not so?and you must direct where we shall walk. Trsbien! we shall see; Monsieur Ruthyn he shall know everything. For me I do not carenot at allI shall be rather pleased, on the contrary. Let him decide. If I shall be responsible for the conduct and the health of Mademoiselle his daughter, it must be that I shall have authority to direct her wat she must doit must be that she or I shall obey. I ask only witch shall command for the futurevoil tout! I was frightened, but resoluteI dare say I looked sullen and uncomfortable. At all events, she seemed to think she might possibly succeed by wheedling; so she tried coaxing and cajoling, and patted my cheek, and predicted that I would be a good cheaile, and not vex poor Madame, but do for the future wat she tell a me. She smiled her wide wet grin, smoothed my hand, and patted my cheek, and would in the excess of her conciliatory paroxysm have kissed me; but I withdrew, and she commented only with a little laugh, and a Foolish little thing! but you will be quite amiable just now. Why, Madame, I asked, suddenly raising my head and looking her straight in the face, do you wish me to walk to Church Scarsdale so particularly today? She answered my steady look with a contracted gaze and an unpleasant frown. Wy do I?I do not understand a you; there is no particular daywat folly! Wy I like Church Scarsdale? Well, it is such pretty place. There is all! Wat leetle fool! I suppose you think I want to keel a you and bury you in the churchyard? And she laughed, and it would not have been a bad laugh for a ghoul. Come, my dearest Maud, you are not a such fool to say, if you tell me go thees a way, I weel go that; and if you say, go that a way, I weel go theesyou are rasonable leetle girlcome alongalons doncwe shall av soche agreeable walkweel a you? But I was immovable. It was neither obstinacy nor caprice, but a profound fear that governed me. I was then afraidyes, afraid. Afraid of what? Well, of going with Madame de la Rougierre to Church Scarsdale that day. That was all. And I believe that instinct was true. She turned a bitter glance toward Church Scarsdale, and bit her lip. She saw that she must give it up. A shadow hung upon her drab features. A little scowla little sneerwide lips compressed with a false smile, and a leaden shadow mottling all. Such was the countenance of the lady who only a minute or two before had been smiling and murmuring over the stile so amiably with her idiomatic blarney, as the Irish call that kind of blandishment. There was no mistaking the malignant disappointment that hooked and warped her featuresmy heart sanka tremendous fear overpowered me. Had she intended poisoning me? What was in that basket? I looked in her dreadful face. I felt for a minute quite frantic. A feeling of rage with my father, with my Cousin Monica, for abandoning me to this dreadful rogue, took possession of me, and I cried, helplessly wringing my hands Oh! it is a shameit is a shameit is a shame! The countenance of the gouvernante relaxed. I think she in turn was frightened at my extreme agitation. It might have worked unfavourably with my father. Come, Maud, it is time you should try to control your temper. You shall not walk to Church Scarsdale if you do not likeI only invite. There! It is quite as you please, where we shall walk then? Here to the peegeonhouse? I think you say. Tout bien! Remember I concede you everything. Let us go. We went, therefore, towards the pigeonhouse, through the forest trees; I not speaking as the children in the wood did with their sinister conductor, but utterly silent and scared; she silent also, meditating, and sometimes with a sharp sideglance gauging my progress towards equanimity. Her own was rapid; for Madame was a philosopher, and speedily accommodated herself to circumstances. We had not walked a quarter of an hour when every trace of gloom had left her face, which had assumed its customary brightness, and she began to sing with a spiteful hilarity as we walked forward, and indeed seemed to be approaching one of her waggish, frolicsome moods. But her fun in these moods was solitary. The joke, whatever it was, remained in her own keeping. When we approached the ruined brick towerin old times a pigeonhouseshe grew quite frisky, and twirled her basket in the air, and capered to her own singing. Under the shadow of the broken wall, and its ivy, she sat down with a frolicsome plump, and opened her basket, inviting me to partake, which I declined. I must do her justice, however, upon the suspicion of poison, which she quite disposed of by gobbling up, to her own share, everything which the basket contained. The reader is not to suppose that Madames cheerful demeanour indicated that I was forgiven. Nothing of the kind. One syllable more, on our walk home, she addressed not to me. And when we reached the terrace, she said You will please, Maud, remain for twothree minutes in the Dutch garden, while I speak with Mr. Ruthyn in the study. This was spoken with a high head and an insufferable smile; and I more haughtily, but quite gravely, turned without disputing, and descended the steps to the quaint little garden she had indicated. I was surprised and very glad to see my father there. I ran to him, and began, Oh! papa! and then stopped short, adding only, may I speak to you now? He smiled kindly and gravely on me. Well, Maud, say your say. Oh, sir, it is only this I entreat that our walks, mine and Madames may be confined to the grounds. And why? IIm afraid to go with her. Afraid! he repeated, looking hard at me. Have you lately had a letter from Lady Knollys? No, papa, not for two months or more. There was a pause. And why afraid, Maud? She brought me one day to Church Scarsdale; you know what a solitary place it is, sir; and she frightened me so that I was afraid to go with her into the churchyard. But she went and left me alone at the other side of the stream, and an impudent man passing by stopped and spoke to me, and seemed inclined to laugh at me, and altogether frightened me very much, and he did not go till Madame happened to return. What kind of manyoung or old? A young man; he looked like a farmers son, but very impudent, and stood there talking to me whether I would or not; and Madame did not care at all, and laughed at me for being frightened; and, indeed, I am very uncomfortable with her. He gave me another shrewd look, and then looked down cloudily and thought. You say you are uncomfortable and frightened.

How is thiswhat causes these feelings? I dont know, sir; she likes frightening me; I am afraid of herwe are all afraid of her, I think. The servants, I mean, as well as I. My father nodded his head contemptuously, twice or thrice, and muttered, A pack of fools! And she was so very angry today with me, because I would not walk again with her to Church Scarsdale. I am very much afraid of her. I and quite unpremeditatedly I burst into tears. There, there, little Maud, you must not cry. She is here only for your good. If you are afraideven foolishly afraidit is enough. Be it as you say; your walks are henceforward confined to the grounds; Ill tell her so. I thanked him through my tears very earnestly. But, Maud, beware of prejudice; women are unjust and violent in their judgments. Your family has suffered in some of its members by such injustice. It behoves us to be careful not to practise it. That evening in the drawingroom my father said, in his usual abrupt way About my departure, Maud Ive had a letter from London this morning, and I think I shall be called away sooner than I at first supposed, and for a little time we must manage apart from one another. Do not be alarmed. You shall not be in Madame de la Rougierres charge, but under the care of a relation; but even so, little Maud will miss her old father, I think. His tone was very tender, so were his looks; he was looking down on me with a smile, and tears were in his eyes. This softening was new to me. I felt a strange thrill of surprise, delight, and love, and springing up, I threw my arms about his neck and wept in silence. He, I think, shed tears also. You said a visitor was coming; someone, you mean, to go away with. Ah, yes, you love him better than me. No, dear, no; but I fear him; and I am sorry to leave you, little Maud. It wont be very long, I pleaded. No, dear, he answered with a sigh. I was tempted almost to question him more closely on the subject, but he seemed to divine what was in my mind, for he said Let us speak no more of it, but only bear in mind, Maud, what I told you about the oak cabinet, the key of which is here, and he held it up as formerly you remember what you are to do in case Doctor Bryerly should come while I am away? Yes, sir. His manner had changed, and I had returned to my accustomed formalities. It was only a few days later that Dr. Bryerly actually did arrive at Knowl, quite unexpectedly, except, I suppose, by my father. He was to stay only one night. He was twice closeted in the little study upstairs with my father, who seemed to me, even for him, unusually dejected, and Mrs. Rusk inveighing against them rubbitch, as she always termed the Swedenborgians, told me they were making him quite shakylike, and he would not last no time, if that lanky, lean ghost of a fellow in black was to keep prowling in and out of his room like a tame cat. I lay awake that night, wondering what the mystery might be that connected my father and Dr. Bryerly. There was something more than the convictions of their strange religion could account for. There was something that profoundly agitated my father. It may not be reasonable, but so it is. The person whose presence, though we know nothing of the cause of that effect, is palpably attended with pain to anyone who is dear to us, grows odious, and I began to detest Doctor Bryerly. It was a grey, dark morning, and in a dark pass in the gallery, near the staircase, I came full upon the ungainly Doctor, in his glossy black suit. I think, if my mind had been less anxiously excited on the subject of his visit, or if I had not disliked him so much, I should not have found courage to accost him as I did. There was something sly, I thought, in his dark, lean face; and he looked so low, so like a Scotch artisan in his Sunday clothes, that I felt a sudden pang of indignation, at the thought that a great gentleman, like my father, should have suffered under his influence, and I stopped suddenly, instead of passing him by with a mere salutation, as he expected, May I ask a question, Doctor Bryerly? Certainly. Are you the friend whom my father expects? I dont quite see. The friend, I mean, with whom he is to make an expedition to some distance, I think, and for some little time? No, said the Doctor, with a shake of his head. And who is he? I really have not a notion, Miss. Why, he said that you knew, I replied. The Doctor looked honestly puzzled. Will he stay long away? pray tell me. The Doctor looked into my troubled face with inquiring and darkened eyes, like one who half reads anothers meaning; and then he said a little briskly, but not sharply Well, I dont know, Im sure, Miss; no, indeed, you must have mistaken; theres nothing that I know. There was a little pause, and he added No. He never mentioned any friend to me. I fancied that he was made uncomfortable by my question, and wanted to hide the truth. Perhaps I was partly right. Oh! Doctor Bryerly, pray, pray who is the friend, and where is he going? I do assure you, he said, with a strange sort of impatience, I dont know; it is all nonsense. And he turned to go, looking, I think, annoyed and disconcerted. A terrific suspicion crossed my brain like lightning. Doctor, one word, I said, I believe, quite wildly. Do youdo you think his mind is at all affected? Insane? he said, looking at me with a sudden, sharp inquisitiveness, that brightened into a smile. Pooh, pooh! Heaven forbid! not a saner man in England. Then with a little nod he walked on, carrying, as I believed, notwithstanding his disclaimer, the secret with him. In the afternoon Doctor Bryerly went away. XVII An Adventure For many days after our quarrel, Madame hardly spoke to me. As for lessons, I was not much troubled with them. It was plain, too, that my father had spoken to her, for she never after that day proposed our extending our walks beyond the precincts of Knowl. Knowl, however, was a very considerable territory, and it was possible for a much better pedestrian than I to tire herself effectually, without passing its limits. So we took occasionally long walks. After some weeks of sullenness, during which for days at a time she hardly spoke to me, and seemed lost in dark and evil abstraction, she once more, and somewhat suddenly, recovered her spirits, and grew quite friendly. Her gaieties and friendliness were not reassuring, and in my mind presaged approaching mischief and treachery. The days were shortening to the wintry span. The edge of the red sun had already touched the horizon as Madame and I, overtaken at the warren by his last beams, were hastening homeward. A narrow carriageroad traverses this wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turnedup nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, with an extrafashionable bonnet on, and also treated us to a stare. Very pink and white cheeks she had, very black glossy hair and bright eyesfat, bold, and rather cross, she lookedand in her bold way she examined us curiously as we passed. I mistook the situation. It had once happened before that an intending visitor at Knowl had entered the place by that parkroad, and lost several hours in a vain search for the house. Ask him, Madame, whether they want to go to the house; I dare say they have missed their way, whispered I. Eh bien, they will find again. I do not choose to talk to postboys; allons! But I asked the man as we passed, Do you want to reach the house? By this time he was at the horses heads, buckling the harness. Noa, he said in a surly tone, smiling oddly on the winkers, but, recollecting his politeness, he added, Noa, thankee, misses, its what they calls a picnic; well be takin the road now. He was smiling now on a little buckle with which he was engaged. Comenonsense! whispered Madame sharply in my ear, and she whisked me by the arm, so we crossed the little stile at the other side. Our path lay across the warren, which undulates in little hillocks. The sun was down by this time, blue shadows were stretching round us, colder in the splendid contrast of the burnished sunset sky. Descending over these hillocks we saw three figures a little in advance of us, not far from the path we were tracing. Two were standing smoking and chatting at intervals one tall and slim, with a high chimneypot, worn a little on one side, and a white greatcoat buttoned up to the chin; the other shorter and stouter, with a darkcoloured wrapper. These gentlemen were facing rather our way as we came over the edge of the eminence, but turned their backs on perceiving our approach. As they did so, I remember so well each lowered his cigar suddenly with the simultaneousness of a drill. The third figure sustained the picnic character of the group, for he was repacking a hamper. He stood suddenly erect as we drew near, and a very illlooking person he was, lowbrowed, squarechinned, and with a broad, broken nose. He wore gaiters, and was a little bandy, very broad, and had a closelycropped bullet head, and deepset little eyes. The moment I saw him, I beheld the living type of the burglars and bruisers whom I had so often beheld with a kind of scepticism in Punch. He stood over his hamper and scowled sharply at us for a moment; then with the point of his foot he jerked a little fur cap that lay on the ground into his hand, drew it tight over his lowering brows, and called to his companions, just as we passed himHallo! mister. Hows this? All right, said the tall person in the white greatcoat, who, as he answered, shook his shorter companion by the arm, I thought angrily. This shorter companion turned about. He had a muffler loose about his neck and chin. I thought he seemed shy and irresolute, and the tall man gave him a great jolt with his elbow, which made him stagger, and I fancied a little angry, for he said, as it seemed, a sulky word or two. The gentleman in the white surtout, however, standing direct in our way, raised his hat with a mock salutation, placing his hand on his breast, and forthwith began to advance with an insolent grin and an air of tipsy frolic. Jist in time, ladies; five minutes more and wed a bin off. Thankee, Mrs. Mouser, maam, for the honour of the meetin, and more particular for the pleasure of making your young ladys acquaintanceniece, maam? daughter, maam? granddaughter, by Jove, is it? Hallo! there, mild n, I say, stop packin. This was to the illfavoured person with the broken nose. Bring us a couple o glasses and a bottle o curaoa; what are you feard on, my dear? this is Lord Lollipop, here, a reglar charmer, wouldnt hurt a fly, hey Lolly? Isnt he pretty, Miss? and Im Sir Simon Sugarstickso called after old Sir Simon, maam; and Im so tall and straight, Miss, and slimaint I? and ever so sweet, my honey, when you come to know me, just like a sugarstick; aint I, Lolly, boy? Im Miss Ruthyn, tell them, Madame, I said, stamping on the ground, and very much frightened. Be quaite, Maud. If you are angry, they will hurt us; leave me to speak, whispered the gouvernante. All this time they were approaching from separate points. I glanced back, and saw the ruffianlylooking man within a yard or two, with his arm raised and one finger up, telegraphing, as it seemed, to the gentlemen in front. Be quaite, Maud, whispered Madame, with an awful adjuration, which I do not care to set down. They are teepsy; dont seem fraid. I was afraidterrified. The circle had now so narrowed that they might have placed their hands on my shoulders. Pray, gentlemen, wat you want? weel a you av the goodness to permit us to go on? I now observed for the first time, with a kind of shock, that the shorter of the two men, who prevented our advance, was the person who had accosted me so offensively at Church Scarsdale. I pulled Madame by the arm, whispering, Let us run. Be quaite, my dear Maud, was her only reply. I tell you what, said the tall man, who had replaced his high hat more jauntily than before on the side of his head, Weve caught you now, fair game, and well let you off on conditions. You must not be frightened, Miss. Upon my honour and soul, I mean no mischief; do I, Lollipop? I call him Lord Lollipop; its only chaff, though; his names Smith. Now, Lolly, I vote we let the prisoners go, when we just introduce them to Mrs. Smith; shes sitting in the carriage, and keeps Mr. S. here in precious good order, I promise you. Theres easy terms for you, eh, and well have a glass o curaoa round, and so part friends. Is it a bargain? Come! Yes, Maud, we must gowat matter? whispered Madame vehemently. You shant, I said, instinctively terrified. Youll go with Maam, young un, wont you? said Mr. Smith, as his companion called him. Madame was holding my arm, but I snatched it from her, and would have run; the tall man, however, placed his arms round me and held me fast with an affectation of playfulness, but his grip was hard enough to hurt me a good deal. Being now thoroughly frightened, after an ineffectual struggle, during which I heard Madame say, You fool, Maud, weel you come with me? see wat you are doing, I began to scream, shriek after shriek, which the man attempted to drown with loud hooting, peals of laughter, forcing his handkerchief against my mouth, while Madame continued to bawl her exhortations to be quaite in my ear. Ill lift her, I say! said a gruff voice behind me. But at this instant, wild with terror, I distinctly heard other voices shouting. The men who surrounded me were instantly silent, and all looked in the direction of the sound, now very near, and I screamed with redoubled energy. The ruffian behind me thrust his great hand over my mouth. It is the gamekeeper, cried Madame. Two gamekeeperswe are safethank Heaven! and she began to call on Dykes by name. I only remember, feeling myself at libertyrunning a few stepsseeing Dykes white furious faceclinging to his arm, with which he was bringing his gun to a level, and saying, Dont firetheyll murder us if you do. Madame, screaming lustily, ran up at the same moment. Run on to the gate and lock itIll be wi ye in a minute, cried he to the other gamekeeper; who started instantly on this mission, for the three ruffians were already in full retreat for the carriage. Giddywildfaintingstill terror carried me on. Now, Madame Rogersspose you take young Misses onI must run and len Bill a hand. No, no; you moste not, cried Madame. I am fainting myself, and more villains they may be near to us. But at this moment we heard a shot, and, muttering to himself and grasping his gun, Dykes ran at his utmost speed in the direction of the sound. With many exhortations to speed, and ejaculations of alarm, Madame hurried me on toward the house, which at length we reached without further adventure. As it happened, my father met us in the hall. He was perfectly transported with fury on hearing from Madame what had happened, and set out at once, with some of the servants, in the hope of intercepting the party at the parkgate. Here was a new agitation; for my father did not return for nearly three hours, and I could not conjecture what might be occurring during the period of his absence. My alarm was greatly increased by the arrival in the interval of poor Bill, the undergamekeeper, very much injured. Seeing that he was determined to intercept their retreat, the three men had set upon him, wrested his gun, which exploded in the struggle, from him, and beat him savagely. I mention these particulars, because they convinced everybody that there was something specially determined and ferocious in the spirit of the party, and that the fracas was no mere frolic, but the result of a predetermined plan. My father had not succeeded in overtaking them. He traced them to the Lugton Station, where they had taken the railway, and no one could tell him in what direction the carriage and posthorses had driven. Madame was, or affected to be, very much shattered by what had occurred. Her recollection and mine, when my father questioned us closely, differed very materially respecting many details of the personnel of the villainous party. She was obstinate and clear; and although the gamekeeper corroborated my description of them, still my father was puzzled. Perhaps he was not sorry that some hesitation was forced upon him, because although at first he would have gone almost any length to detect the persons, on reflection he was pleased that there was not evidence to bring them into a court of justice, the publicity and annoyance of which would have been inconceivably distressing to me. Madame was in a strange statetempestuous in temper, talking incessantlyevery now and then in floods of tears, and perpetually on her knees pouring forth torrents of thanksgiving to Heaven for our joint deliverance from the hands of those villains. Notwithstanding our community of danger and her thankfulness on my behalf, however, she broke forth into wrath and railing whenever we were alone together. Wat fool you were! so disobedient and obstinate; if you ad done wat I say, then we should av been quaite safe; those persons they were tipsy, and there is nothing so dangerous as to quarrel with tipsy persons; I would av brought you quaite safethe lady she seem so nice and quaite, and we should av been safe with herthere would av been nothing absolutely; but instead you would scream and pooshe, and so they grow quite wild, and all the impertinence and violence follow of course; and that a poor Billall his beating and danger to his life it is cause entairely by you. And she spoke with more real virulence than that kind of upbraiding generally exhibits. The beast! exclaimed Mrs. Rusk, when she, I, and Mary Quince were in my room together, with all her crying and praying, Id like to know as much as she does, maybe, about them rascals. There never was sich like about the place, long as I remember it, till she came to Knowl, old witch! with them unmerciful big bones of hers, and her great bald head, grinning here, and crying there, and her nose everywhere. The old French hypocrite! Mary Quince threw in an observation, and I believe Mrs. Rusk rejoined, but I heard neither. For whether the housekeeper spoke with reflection or not, what she said affected me strangely. Through the smallest aperture, for a moment, I had had a peep into Pandemonium. Were not peculiarities of Madames demeanour and advice during the adventure partly accounted for by the suggestion? Could the proposed excursion to Church Scarsdale have had any purpose of the same sort? What was proposed? How was Madame interested in it? Were such immeasurable treason and hypocrisy possible? I could not explain nor quite believe in the shapeless suspicion that with these light and bitter words of the old housekeeper had stolen so horribly into my mind. After Mrs. Rusk was gone I awoke from my dismal abstraction with something like a moan and a shudder, with a dreadful sense of danger. Oh! Mary Quince, I cried, do you think she really knew? Who, Miss Maud? Do you think Madame knew of those dreadful people? Oh, nosay you dontyou dont believe ittell me she did not. Im distracted, Mary Quince, Im frightened out of my life. There now, Miss Maud, dearthere now, dont take on sowhy should she?no sich a thing. Mrs. Rusk, law bless you, shes no more meaning in what she says than the child unborn. But I was really frightened. I was in a horrible state of uncertainty as to Madame de la Rougierres complicity with the party who had beset us at the warren, and afterwards so murderously beat our poor gamekeeper. How was I ever to get rid of that horrible woman? How long was she to enjoy her continual opportunities of affrighting and injuring me? She hates meshe hates me, Mary Quince; and she will never stop until she has done me some dreadful injury. Oh! will no one relieve mewill no one take her away? Oh, papa, papa, papa! you will be sorry when it is too late. I was crying and wringing my hands, and turning from side to side, at my wits ends, and honest Mary Quince in vain endevoured to quiet and comfort me. XVIII A Midnight Visitor The frightful warnings of Lady Knollys haunted me too. Was there no escape from the dreadful companion whom fate had assigned me? I made up my mind again and again to speak to my father and urge her removal. In other things he indulged me; here, however, he met me drily and sternly, and it was plain that he fancied I was under my cousin Monicas influence, and also that he had secret reasons for persisting in an opposite course. Just then I had a gay, odd letter from Lady Knollys, from some country house in Shropshire. Not a word about Captain Oakley. My eye skimmed its pages in search of that charmed name. With a peevish feeling I tossed the sheet upon the table. Inwardly I thought how illnatured and unwomanly it was. After a time, however, I read it, and found the letter very goodnatured. She had received a note from papa. He had had the impudence to forgive her for his impertinence. But for my sake she meant, notwithstanding this aggravation, really to pardon him; and whenever she had a disengaged week, to accept his invitation to Knowl, from whence she was resolved to whisk me off to London, where, though I was too young to be presented at Court and come out, I might yetbesides having the best masters and a good excuse for getting rid of Medusasee a great deal that would amuse and surprise me. Great news, I suppose, from Lady Knollys? said Madame, who always knew who in the house received letters by the post, and by an intuition from whom they came. Two lettersyou and your papa. She is quite well, I hope? Quite well, thank you, Madame. Some fishing questions, dropped from time to time, fared no better. And as usual, when she was foiled even in a trifle, she became sullen and malignant. That night, when my father and I were alone, he suddenly closed the book he had been reading, and said I heard from Monica Knollys today. I always liked poor Monnie; and though shes no witch, and very wrongheaded at times, yet now and then she does say a thing thats worth weighing. Did she ever talk to you of a time, Maud, when you are to be your own mistress? No, I answered, a little puzzled, and looking straight in his rugged, kindly face. Well, I thought she mightshes a rattle, you knowalways was a rattle, and that sort of people say whatever comes uppermost. But thats a subject for me, and more than once, Maud, it has puzzled me. He sighed. Come with me to the study, little Maud. So, he carrying a candle, we crossed the lobby, and marched together through the passage, which at night always seemed a little awesome, darkly wainscoted, uncheered by the crosslight from the hall, which was lost at the turn, leading us away from the frequented parts of the house to that misshapen and lonely room about which the traditions of the nursery and the servants hall had had so many fearful stories to recount. I think my father had intended making some disclosure to me on reaching this room. If so, he changed his mind, or at least postponed his intention. He had paused before the cabinet, respecting the key of which he had given me so strict a charge, and I think he was going to explain himself more fully than he had done. But he went on, instead, to the table where his desk, always jealously locked, was placed, and having lighted the candles which stood by it, he glanced at me, and said You must wait a little, Maud; I shall have something to say to you. Take this candle and amuse yourself with a book meanwhile. I was accustomed to obey in silence. I chose a volume of engravings, and ensconced myself in a favourite nook in which I had often passed a halfhour similarly. This was a deep recess by the fireplace, fenced on the other side by a great old escritoir. Into this I drew a stool, and, with candle and book, I placed myself snugly in the narrow chamber. Every now and then I raised my eyes and saw my father either writing or ruminating, as it seemed to me, very anxiously at his desk. Time wore ona longer time than he had intended, and still he continued absorbed at his desk. Gradually I grew sleepy, and as I nodded, the book and room faded away, and pleasant little dreams began to gather round me, and so I went off into a deep slumber. It must have lasted long, for when I wakened my candle had burnt out; my father, having quite forgotten me, was gone, and the room was dark and deserted. I felt cold and a little stiff, and for some seconds did not know where I was. I had been wakened, I suppose, by a sound which I now distinctly heard, to my great terror, approaching. There was a rustling; there was a breathing. I heard a creaking upon the plank that always creaked when walked upon in the passage. I held my breath and listened, and coiled myself up in the innermost recess of my little chamber. Sudden and sharp, a light shone in from the nearlyclosed study door. It shone angularly on the ceiling like a letter L reversed. There was a pause. Then someone knocked softly at the door, which after another pause was slowly pushed open. I expected, I think, to see the dreaded figure of the linkman. I was scarcely less frightened to see that of Madame de la Rougierre. She was dressed in a sort of grey silk, which she called her Chinese silkprecisely as she had been in the daytime. In fact, I do not think she had undressed. She had no shoes on. Otherwise her toilet was deficient in nothing. Her wide mouth was grimly closed, and she stood scowling into the room with a searching and pallid scrutiny, the candle held high above her head at the full stretch of her arm. Placed as I was in a deep recess, and in a seat hardly raised above the level of the floor, I escaped her, although it seemed to me for some seconds, as I gazed on this spectre, that our eyes actually met. I sat without breathing or winking, staring upon the formidable image which with upstretched arm, and the sharp lights and hard shadows thrown upon her corrugated features, looked like a sorceress watching for the effect of a spell. She was plainly listening intensely. Unconsciously she had drawn her lower lip altogether between her teeth, and I well remember what a deathlike and idiotic look the contortion gave her. My terror lest she should discover me amounted to positive agony. She rolled her eyes stealthily from corner to corner of the room, and listened with her neck awry at the door. Then to my fathers desk she went. To my great relief, her back was towards me. She stooped over it, with the candle close by; I saw her try a keyit could be nothing elseand I heard her blow through the wards to clear them. Then, again, she listened at the door, candle in hand, and then with long tiptoe steps came back, and papas desk in another moment was open, and Madame cautiously turning over the papers it contained. Twice or thrice she paused, glided to the door, and listened again intently with her head near the ground, and then returned and continued her search, peeping into papers one after another, tolerably methodically, and reading some quite through. While this felonious business was going on, I was freezing with fear lest she should accidentally look round and her eyes light on me; for I could not say what she might not do rather than have her crime discovered. Sometimes she would read a paper twice over; sometimes a whisper no louder than the ticking of a watch, sometimes a brief chuckle under her breath, bespoke the interest with which here and there a letter or a memorandum was read. For about half an hour, I think, this went on; but at the time it seemed to me all but interminable. On a sudden she raised her head and listened for a moment, replaced the papers deftly, closed the desk without noise, except for the tiny click of the lock, extinguished the candle, and rustled stealthily out of the room, leaving in the darkness the malign and haglike face on which the candle had just shone still floating filmy in the dark. Why did I remain silent and motionless while such an outrage was being committed? If, instead of being a very nervous girl, preoccupied with an undefinable terror of that wicked woman, I had possessed courage and presence of mind, I dare say I might have given an alarm, and escaped from the room without the slightest risk. But so it was; I could no more stir than the bird who, cowering under its ivy, sees the white owl sailing back and forward under its predatory cruise. Not only during her presence, but for more than an hour after, I remained cowering in my hidingplace, and afraid to stir, lest she might either be lurking in the neighborhood, or return and surprise me. You will not be astonished, that after a night so passed I was ill and feverish in the morning. To my horror, Madame de la Rougierre came to visit me at my bedside. Not a trace of guilty consciousness of what had passed during the night was legible in her face. She had no sign of late watching, and her toilet was exemplary. As she sat smiling by me, full of anxious and affectionate enquiry, and smoothed the coverlet with her great felonious hand, I could quite comprehend the dreadful feeling with which the deceived husband in the Arabian Nights met his ghoul wife, after his nocturnal discovery. Ill as I was, I got up and found my father in that room which adjoined his bedchamber. He perceived, I am sure, by my looks, that something unusual had happened. I shut the door, and came close beside his chair. Oh, papa, I have such a thing to tell you! I forgot to call him Sir. A secret; and you wont say who told you? Will you come down to the study? He looked hard at me, got up, and kissing my forehead, saidDont be frightened, Maud; I venture to say it is a mares nest; at all events, my child, we will take care that no danger reaches you; come, child. And by the hand he led me to the study. When the door was shut, and we had reached the far end of the room next the window, I said, but in a low tone, and holding his arm fast Oh, sir, you dont know what a dreadful person we have living with usMadame de la Rougierre, I mean. Dont let her in if she comes; she would guess what I am telling you, and one way or another I am sure she would kill me. Tut, tut, child. You must know thats nonsense, he said, looking pale and stern. Oh no, papa. I am horribly frightened, and Lady Knollys thinks so too. Ha! I dare say; one fool makes many. We all know what Monica thinks. But I saw it, papa. She stole your key last night, and opened your desk, and read all your papers. Stole my key! said my father, staring at me perplexed, but at the same instant producing it. Stole it! Why here it is! She unlocked your desk; she read your papers for ever so long. Open it now, and see whether they have not been stirred. He looked at me this time in silence, with a puzzled air; but he did unlock the desk, and lifted the papers curiously and suspiciously. As he did so he uttered a few of those inarticulate interjections which are made with closed lips, and not always intelligible; but he made no remark. Then he placed me on a chair beside him, and sitting down himself, told me to recollect myself, and tell him distinctly all I had seen. This accordingly I did, he listening with deep attention. Did she remove any paper? asked my father, at the same time making a little search, I suppose, for that which he fancied might have been stolen. No; I did not see her take anything. Well, you are a good girl, Maud. Act discreetly. Say nothing to anyonenot even to your cousin Monica.

Directions which, coming from another person would have had no great weight, were spoken by my father with an earnest look and a weight of emphasis that made them irresistibly impressive, and I went away with the seal of silence upon my lips. Sit down, Maud, there. You have not been very happy with Madame de la Rougierre. It is time you were relieved. This occurrence decides it. He rang the bell. Tell Madame de la Rougierre that I request the honour of seeing her for a few minutes here. My fathers communications to her were always equally ceremonious. In a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and the same figure, smiling, courtesying, that had scared me on the threshold last night, like the spirit of evil, presented itself. My father rose, and Madame having at his request taken a chair opposite, looking, as usual in his presence, all amiability, he proceeded at once to the point. Madame de la Rougierre, I have to request you that you will give me the key now in your possession, which unlocks this desk of mine. With which termination he tapped his gold pencilcase suddenly on it. Madame, who had expected something very different, became instantly so pale, with a dull purplish hue upon her forehead, that, especially when she had twice essayed with her white lips, in vain, to answer, I expected to see her fall in a fit. She was not looking in his face; her eyes were fixed lower, and her mouth and cheek sucked in, with a strange distortion at one side. She stood up suddenly, and staring straight in his face, she succeeded in saying, after twice clearing her throat I cannot comprehend, Monsieur Ruthyn, unless you intend to insult me. It wont do, Madame; I must have that false key. I give you the opportunity of surrendering it quietly here and now. But who dares to say I possess such thing? demanded Madame, who, having rallied from her momentary paralysis, was now fierce and voluble as I had often seen her before. You know, Madame, that you can rely on what I say, and I tell you that you were seen last night visiting this room, and with a key in your possession, opening this desk, and reading my letters and papers contained in it. Unless you forthwith give me that key, and any other false keys in your possessionin which case I shall rest content with dismissing you summarilyI will take a different course. You know I am a magistrate;and I shall have you, your boxes, and places upstairs, searched forthwith, and I will prosecute you criminally. The thing is clear; you aggravate by denying; you must give me that key, if you please, instantly, otherwise I ring this bell, and you shall see that I mean what I say. There was a little pause. He rose and extended his hand towards the bellrope. Madame glided round the table, extended her hand to arrest his. I will do everything, Monsieur Ruthynwhatever you wish. And with these words Madame de la Rougierre broke down altogether. She sobbed, she wept, she gabbled piteously, all manner of incomprehensible roulades of lamentation and entreaty; coyly, penitently, in a most interesting agitation, she produced the very key from her breast, with a string tied to it. My father was little moved by this piteous tempest. He coolly took the key and tried it in the desk, which it locked and unlocked quite freely, though the wards were complicated. He shook his head and looked her in the face. Pray, who made this key? It is a new one, and made expressly to pick this lock. But Madame was not going to tell any more than she had expressly bargained for; so she only fell once more into her old paroxysm of sorrow, selfreproach, extenuation, and entreaty. Well, said my father, I promised that on surrendering the key you should go. It is enough. I keep my word. You shall have an hour and a half to prepare in. You must then be ready to depart. I will send your money to you by Mrs. Rusk; and if you look for another situation, you had better not refer to me. Now be so good as to leave me. Madame seemed to be in a strange perplexity. She bridled up, dried her eyes fiercely, and dropped a great courtesy, and then sailed away towards the door. Before reaching it she stopped on the way, turning half round, with a peaked, pallid glance at my father, and she bit her lip viciously as she eyed him. At the door the same repulsive pantomime was repeated, as she stood for a moment with her hand upon the handle. But she changed her bearing again with a sniff, and with a look of scorn, almost heightened to a sneer, she made another very low courtesy and a disdainful toss of her head, and so disappeared, shutting the door rather sharply behind her. XIX Au Revoir Mrs. Rusk was fond of assuring me that Madame did not like a bone in my skin. Instinctively I knew that she bore me no goodwill, although I really believe it was her wish to make me think quite the reverse. At all events I had no desire to see Madame again before her departure, especially as she had thrown upon me one momentary glance in the study, which seemed to me charged with very peculiar feelings. You may be very sure, therefore, that I had no desire for a formal leavetaking at her departure. I took my hat and cloak, therefore, and stole out quietly. My ramble was a sequestered one, and well screened, even at this late season, with foliage; the pathway devious among the stems of old trees, and its flooring interlaced and groined with their knotted roots. Though near the house, it was a sylvan solitude; a little brook ran darkling and glimmering through it, wild strawberries and other woodland plants strewed the ground, and the sweet notes and flutter of small birds made the shadow of the boughs cheery. I had been fully an hour in this picturesque solitude when I heard in the distance the ring of carriagewheels, announcing to me that Madame de la Rougierre had fairly set out upon her travels. I thanked heaven; I could have danced and sung with delight; I heaved a great sigh and looked up through the branches to the clear blue sky. But things are oddly timed. Just at this moment I heard Madames voice close at my ear, and her large bony hand was laid on my shoulder. We were instantly face to faceI recoiling, and for a moment speechless with fright. In very early youth we do not appreciate the restraints which act upon malignity, or know how effectually fear protects us where conscience is wanting. Quite alone, in this solitary spot, detected and overtaken with an awful instinct by my enemy, what might not be about to happen to me at that moment? Frightened as usual, Maud, she said quietly, and eyeing me with a sinister smile, and with cause you think, no doubt. Wat av you done to injure poor Madame? Well, I think I know, little girl, and have quite discover the cleverness of my sweet little Maud. Ehis not so? Petite carogneah, ha, ha! I was too much confounded to answer. You see, my dear cheaile, she said, shaking her uplifted finger with a hideous archness at me, you could not hide what you av done from poor Madame. You cannot look so innocent but I can see your pretty little villany quite plainyou dear little diablesse. Wat I av done I av no reproach of myself for it. If I could explain, your papa would say I av done right, and you should thank me on your knees; but I cannot explain yet. She was speaking, as it were, in little paragraphs, with a momentary pause between each, to allow its meaning to impress itself. If I were to choose to explain, your papa he would implore me to remain. But noI would notnotwithstanding your so cheerful house, your charming servants, your papas amusing society, and your affectionate and sincere heart, my sweet little maraude. I am to go to London first, where I av, oh, so good friends! next I will go abroad for some time; but be sure, my sweetest Maud, wherever I may appen to be, I will remember youah, ha! Yes; most certainly, I will remember you. And although I shall not be always near, yet I shall know everything about my charming little Maud; you will not know how, but I shall indeed, everything. And be sure, my dearest cheaile, I will some time be able to give you the sensible proofs of my gratitude and affectionyou understand. The carriage is waiting at the yewtree stile, and I must go on. You did not expect to see mehere; I will appear, perhaps, as suddenly another time. It is great pleasure to us boththis opportunity to make our adieux. Farewell! my dearest little Maud. I will never cease to think of you, and of some way to recompense the kindness you av shown for poor Madame. My hand hung by my side, and she took, not it, but my thumb, and shook it, folded in her broad palm, and looking on me as she held it, as if meditating mischief. Then suddenly she said You will always remember Madame, I think, and I will remind you of me beside; and for the present farewell, and I hope you may be as appy as you deserve. The large sinister face looked on me for a second with its latent sneer, and then, with a sharp nod and a spasmodic shake of my imprisoned thumb, she turned, and holding her dress together, and showing her great bony ankles, she strode rapidly away over the gnarled roots into the perspective of the trees, and I did not awake, as it were, until she had quite disappeared in the distance. Events of this kind made no difference with my father; but every other face in Knowl was gladdened by the removal. My energies had returned, my spirits were come again. The sunlight was happy, the flowers innocent, the songs and flutter of the birds once more gay, and all nature delightful and rejoicing. After the first elation of relief, now and then a filmy shadow of Madame de la Rougierre would glide across the sunlight, and the remembrance of her menace return with an unexpected pang of fear. Well, if there isnt impittens! cried Mrs. Rusk. But never you trouble your head about it, Miss. Them sorts all alikeyou never saw a rogue yet that was found out and didnt threaten the honest folk as he was leaving behind with all sorts; there was Martin the gamekeeper, and Jervis the footman, I mind well how hard they swore all they would not do when they was agoing, and who ever heard of them since? They always threatens that waythem sort always does, and none ever the worsenot but she would if she could, mind ye, but there it is; she cant do nothing but bite her nails and cuss usnot sheha, ha, ha! So I was comforted. But Madames evil smile, nevertheless, from time to time, would sail across my vision with a silent menace, and my spirits sank, and a Fate, draped in black, whose face I could not see, took me by the hand, and led me away, in the spirit, silently, on an awful exploration from which I would rouse myself with a start, and Madame was gone for a while. She had, however, judged her little parting well. She contrived to leave her glamour over me, and in my dreams she troubled me. I was, however, indescribably relieved. I wrote in high spirits to Cousin Monica; and wondered what plans my father might have formed about me, and whether we were to stay at home, or go to London, or go abroad. Of the lastthe pleasantest arrangement, in some respectsI had nevertheless an occult horror. A secret conviction haunted me that were we to go abroad, we should there meet Madame, which to me was like meeting my evil genius. I have said more than once that my father was an odd man; and the reader will, by this time, have seen that there was much about him not easily understood. I often wonder whether, if he had been franker, I should have found him less odd than I supposed, or more odd still. Things that moved me profoundly did not apparently affect him at all. The departure of Madame, under the circumstances which attended it, appeared to my childish mind an event of the vastest importance. No one was indifferent to the occurrence in the house but its master. He never alluded again to Madame de la Rougierre. But whether connected with her exposure and dismissal, I could not say, there did appear to be some new care or trouble now at work in my fathers mind. I have been thinking a great deal about you, Maud. I am anxious. I have not been so troubled for years. Why has not Monica Knollys a little more sense? This oracular sentence he spoke, having stopped me in the hall; and then saying, We shall see, he left me as abruptly as he appeared. Did he apprehend any danger to me from the vindictiveness of Madame? A day or two afterwards, as I was in the Dutch garden, I saw him on the terrace steps. He beckoned to me, and came to meet me as I approached. You must be very solitary, little Maud; it is not good. I have written to Monica in a matter of detail she is competent to advise; perhaps she will come here for a short visit. I was very glad to hear this. You are more interested than for my time I can be, in vindicating his character. Whose character, sir? I ventured to enquire during the pause that followed. One trick which my father had acquired from his habits of solitude and silence was this of assuming that the context of his thoughts was legible to others, forgetting that they had not been spoken. Whose?your uncle Silass. In the course of nature he must survive me. He will then represent the family name. Would you make some sacrifice to clear that name, Maud? I answered briefly; but my face, I believe, showed my enthusiasm. He turned on me such an approving smile as you might fancy lighting up the rugged features of a pale old Rembrandt. I can tell you, Maud; if my life could have done it, it should not have been undoneubi lapsus, quid feci. But I had almost made up my mind to change my plan, and leave all to timeedax rerumto illuminate or to consume. But I think little Maud would like to contribute to the restitution of her family name. It may cost you somethingare you willing to buy it at a sacrifice? Is thereI dont speak of fortune, that is not involvedbut is there any other honourable sacrifice you would shrink from to dispel the disgrace under which our most ancient and honourable name must otherwise continue to languish? Oh, nonenone indeed, sirI am delighted! Again I saw the Rembrandt smile. Well, Maud, I am sure there is no risk; but you are to suppose there is. Are you still willing to accept it? Again I assented. You are worthy of your blood, Maud Ruthyn. It will come soon, and it wont last long. But you must not let people like Monica Knollys frighten you. I was lost in wonder. If you allow them to possess you with their follies, you had better recede in timethey may make the ordeal as terrible as hell itself. You have zealhave you nerve? I thought in such a cause I had nerve for anything. Well, Maud, in the course of a few monthsand it may be soonerthere must be a change. I have had a letter from London this morning that assures me of that. I must then leave you for a time; in my absence be faithful to the duties that will arise. To whom much is committed, of him will much be required. You shall promise me not to mention this conversation to Monica Knollys. If you are a talking girl, and cannot trust yourself, say so, and we will not ask her to come. Also, dont invite her to talk about your uncle SilasI have reasons. Do you quite understand my conditions? Yes, sir. Your uncle Silas, he said, speaking suddenly in loud and fierce tones that sounded from so old a man almost terrible, lies under an intolerable slander. I dont correspond with him; I dont sympathise with him; I never quite did. He has grown religious, and thats well; but there are things in which even religion should not bring a man to acquiesce; and from what I can learn, he, the person primarily affectedthe cause, though the innocent causeof this great calamitybears it with an easy apathy which is mistaken, and liable easily to be mistaken, and such as no Ruthyn, under the circumstances, ought to exhibit. I told him what he ought to do, and offered to open my purse for the purpose; but he would not, or did not; indeed, he never took my advice; he followed his own, and a foul and dismal shoal he has drifted on. It is not for his sakewhy should I?that I have longed and laboured to remove the disgraceful slur under which his illfortune has thrown us. He troubles himself little about it, I believehes meek, meeker than I. He cares less about his children than I about you, Maud; he is selfishly sunk in futuritya feeble visionary. I am not so. I believe it to be a duty to take care of others beside myself. The character and influence of an ancient family is a peculiar heritagesacred but destructible; and woe to him who either destroys or suffers it to perish! This was the longest speech I ever heard my father speak before or after. He abruptly resumed Yes, we will, Maudyou and Iwell leave one proof on record, which, fairly read, will go far to convince the world. He looked round, but we were alone. The garden was nearly always solitary, and few visitors ever approached the house from that side. I have talked too long, I believe; we are children to the last. Leave me, Maud. I think I know you better than I did, and I am pleased with you. Go, childIll sit here. If he had acquired new ideas of me, so had I of him from that interview. I had no idea till then how much passion still burned in that aged frame, nor how full of energy and fire that face, generally so stern and ashen, could appear. As I left him seated on the rustic chair, by the steps, the traces of that storm were still discernible on his features. His gathered brows, glowing eyes, and strangely hectic face, and the grim compression of his mouth, still showed the agitation which, somehow, in grey old age, shocks and alarms the young. XX Austin Ruthyn Sets Out on His Journey The Rev. William Fairfield, Doctor Clays somewhat bald curate, a mild, thin man, with a high and thin nose, who was preparing me for confirmation, came next day; and when our catechetical conference was ended, and before lunch was announced, my father sent for him to the study, where he remained until the bell rang out its summons. We have had some interestingI may say very interestingconversation, your papa and I, Miss Ruthyn, said my reverend visvis, so soon as nature was refreshed, smiling and shining, as he leaned back in his chair, his hand upon the table, and his finger curled gently upon the stem of his wineglass. It never was your privilege, I believe, to see your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, of BartramHaugh? Nonever; he leads so retiredso very retired a life. Oh, noof course, no; but I was going to remark a likenessI mean, of course, a family likenessonly that sort of thingyou understandbetween him and the profile of Lady Margaret in the drawingroomis not it Lady Margaret?which you were so good as to show me on Wednesday last. There certainly is a likeness. I think you would agree with me, if you had the pleasure of seeing your uncle. You know him, then? I have never seen him. Oh dear, yesI am happy to say, I know him very well. I have that privilege. I was for three years curate of Feltram, and I had the honour of being a pretty constant visitor at BartramHaugh during that, I may say, protracted period; and I think it really never has been my privilege and happiness, I may say, to enjoy the acquaintance and society of so very experienced a Christian, as my admirable friend, I may call him, Mr. Ruthyn, of BartramHaugh. I look upon him, I do assure you, quite in the light of a saint; not, of course, in the Popish sense, but in the very highest, you will understand me, which our Church allowsa man built up in faithfull of faithfaith and gracealtogether exemplary; and I often ventured to regret, Miss Ruthyn, that Providence in its mysterious dispensations should have placed him so far apart from his brother, your respected father. His influence and opportunities would, no doubt, we may venture to hope, at least have been blessed; and, perhaps, wemy valued rector and Imight possibly have seen more of him at church, than, I deeply regret, we have done. He shook his head a little, as he smiled with a sad complacency on me through his blue steel spectacles, and then sipped a little meditative sherry. And you saw a good deal of my uncle? Well, a good deal, Miss RuthynI may say a good dealprincipally at his own house. His health is wretchedmiserable healtha sadly afflicted man he has been, as, no doubt, you are aware. But afflictions, my dear Miss Ruthyn, as you remember Doctor Clay so well remarked on Sunday last, though birds of ill omen, yet spiritually resemble the ravens who supplied the prophet; and when they visit the faithful, come charged with nourishment for the soul. He is a good deal embarrassed pecuniarily, I should say, continued the curate, who was rather a good man than a very wellbred one. He found a difficultyin fact it was not in his powerto subscribe generally to our little funds, andand objects, and I used to say to him, and I really felt it, that it was more gratifying, such were his feeling and his power of expression, to be refused by him than assisted by others. Did papa wish you to speak to me about my uncle? I enquired, as a sudden thought struck me; and then I felt half ashamed of my question. He looked surprised. No, Miss Ruthyn, certainly not. Oh dear, no. It was merely a conversation between Mr. Ruthyn and me. He never suggested my opening that, or indeed any other point in my interview with you, Miss Ruthynnot the least. I was not aware before that Uncle Silas was so religious. He smiled tranquilly, not quite up to the ceiling, but gently upward, and shook his head in pity for my previous ignorance, as he lowered his eyes I dont say that there may not be some little matters in a few points of doctrine which we could, perhaps, wish otherwise. But these, you know, are speculative, and in all essentials he is Churchnot in the perverted modern sense; far from itunexceptionably Church, strictly so. Would there were more among us of the same mind that is in him! Ay, Miss Ruthyn, even in the highest places of the Church herself. The Rev. William Fairfield, while fighting against the Dissenters with his right hand, was, with his left, hotly engaged with the Tractarians. A good man I am sure he was, and I dare say sound in doctrine, though naturally, I think, not very wise. This conversation with him gave me new ideas about my uncle Silas. It quite agreed with what my father had said. These principles and his increasing years would necessarily quiet the turbulence of his resistance to injustice, and teach him to acquiesce in his fate. You would have fancied that one so young as I, born to wealth so vast, and living a life of such entire seclusion, would have been exempt from care. But you have seen how troubled my life was with fear and anxiety during the residence of Madame de la Rougierre, and now there rested upon my mind a vague and awful anticipation of the trial which my father had announced, without defining it. An ordeal he called it, requiring not only zeal but nerve, which might possibly, were my courage to fail, become frightful, and even intolerable. What, and of what nature, could it be? Not designed to vindicate the fair fame of the meek and submissive old manwho, it seemed, had ceased to care for his bygone wrongs, and was looking to futuritybut the reputation of our ancient family. Sometimes I repented my temerity in having undertaken it. I distrusted my courage. Had I not better retreat, while it was yet time? But there was shame and even difficulty in the thought. How should I appear before my father? Was it not importanthad I not deliberately undertaken itand was I not bound in conscience? Perhaps he had already taken steps in the matter which committed him. Besides, was I sure that, even were I free again, I would not once more devote myself to the trial, be it what it might? You perceive I had more spirit than courage. I think I had the mental attributes of courage; but then I was but a hysterical girl, and in so far neither more nor less than a coward. No wonder I distrusted myself; no wonder also my will stood out against my timidity. It was a struggle, then; a proud, wild resolve against constitutional cowardice. Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bearthe weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and selfsacrificing in will, and the faltering in nervewill understand the kind of agony which I sometimes endured. But, again, consolation would come, and it seemed to me that I must be exaggerating my risk in the coming crisis; and certain at least, if my father believed it attended with real peril, he would never have wished to see me involved in it. But the silence under which I was bound was terrifyingdouble so when the danger was so shapeless and undivulged. I was soon to understand it allsoon, too, to know all about my fathers impending journey, whither, with what visitor, and why guarded from me with so awful a mystery. That day there came a lively and goodnatured letter from Lady Knollys. She was to arrive at Knowl in two or three days time. I thought my father would have been pleased, but he seemed apathetic and dejected. One does not always feel quite equal to Monica. But for youyes, thank God. I wish she could only stay, Maud, for a month or two; I may be going then, and would be gladprovided she talks about suitable thingsvery glad, Maud, to leave her with you for a week or so. There was something, I thought, agitating my father secretly that day. He had the strange hectic flush I had observed when he grew excited in our interview in the garden about Uncle Silas. There was something painful, perhaps even terrible, in the circumstances of the journey he was about to make, and from my heart I wished the suspense were over, the annoyance past, and he returned. That night my father bid me good night early and went upstairs. After I had been in bed some little time, I heard his handbell ring. This was not usual. Shortly after I heard his man, Ridley, talking with Mrs. Rusk in the gallery. I could not be mistaken in their voices. I knew not why I was startled and excited, and had raised myself to listen on my elbow. But they were talking quietly, like persons giving or taking an ordinary direction, and not in the haste of an unusual emergency. Then I heard the man bid Mrs. Rusk good night and walk down the gallery to the stairs, so that I concluded he was wanted no more, and all must therefore be well. So I laid myself down again, though with a throbbing at my heart, and an ominous feeling of expectation, listening and fancying footsteps. I was going to sleep when I heard the bell ring again; and, in a few minutes, Mrs. Rusks energetic step passed along the gallery; and, listening intently, I heard, or fancied, my fathers voice and hers in dialogue. All this was very unusual, and again I was, with a beating heart, leaning with my elbow on my pillow. Mrs. Rusk came along the gallery in a minute or so after, and stopping at my door, began to open it gently. I was startled, and challenged my visitor with Whos there? Its only Rusk, Miss. Dearie me! and are you awake still? Is papa ill? Ill! not a bit ill, thank God. Only theres a little black book as I took for your prayerbook, and brought in here; ay, here it is, sure enough, and he wants it. And then I must go down to the study, and look out this one, C, 15; but I cant read the name, noways; and I was afraid to ask him again; if you be so kind to read it, MissI suspeck my eyes is agoing. I read the name; and Mrs. Rusk was tolerably expert at finding out books, as she had often been employed in that way before. So she departed. I suppose that this particular volume was hard to find, for she must have been a long time away, and I had actually fallen into a doze when I was roused in an instant by a dreadful crash and a piercing scream from Mrs. Rusk. Scream followed scream, wilder and more terrorstricken. I shrieked to Mary Quince, who was sleeping in the room with meMary, do you hear? what is it? It is something dreadful. The crash was so tremendous that the solid flooring even of my room trembled under it, and to me it seemed as if some heavy man had burst through the top of the window, and shook the whole house with his descent. I found myself standing at my own door, crying, Help, help! murder! murder! and Mary Quince, frightened half out of her wits, by my side. I could not think what was going on. It was plainly something most horrible, for Mrs. Rusks screams pealed one after the other unabated, though with a muffled sound, as if the door was shut upon her; and by this time the bells of my fathers room were ringing madly. They are trying to murder him! I cried, and I ran along the gallery to his door, followed by Mary Quince, whose white face I shall never forget, though her entreaties only sounded like unmeaning noises in my ears. Here! help, help, help! I cried, trying to force open the door. Shove it, shove it, for Gods sake! hes across it, cried Mrs. Rusks voice from within; drive it in. I cant move him. I strained all I could at the door, but ineffectually. We heard steps approaching. The men were running to the spot, and shouting as they did so Never mind; hold on a bit; here we are; all right; and the like. We drew back, as they came up. We were in no condition to be seen. We listened, however, at my open door. Then came the straining and bumping at the door. Mrs. Rusks voice subsided to a sort of wailing; the men were talking all together, and I suppose the door opened, for I heard some of the voices, on a sudden, as if in the room; and then came a strange lull, and talking in very low tones, and not much even of that. What is it, Mary? what can it be? I ejaculated, not knowing what horror to suppose. And now, with a counterpane about my shoulders, I called loudly and imploringly, in my horror, to know what had happened. But I heard only the subdued and eager talk of men engaged in some absorbing task, and the dull sounds of some heavy body being moved. Mrs. Rusk came towards us looking half wild, and pale as a spectre, and putting her thin hands to my shoulders, she saidNow, Miss Maud, darling, you must go back again; tisnt no place for you; youll see all, my darling, time enoughyou will. There now, there, like a dear, do get into your room. What was that dreadful sound? Who had entered my fathers chamber? It was the visitor whom we had so long expected, with whom he was to make the unknown journey, leaving me alone. The intruder was Death! XXI Arrivals My father was deadas suddenly as if he had been murdered. One of those fearful aneurisms that lie close to the heart, showing no outward sign of giving way in a moment, had been detected a good time since by Dr. Bryerly. My father knew what must happen, and that it could not be long deferred. He feared to tell me that he was soon to die. He hinted it only in the allegory of his journey, and left in that sad enigma some words of true consolation that remained with me ever after. Under his rugged ways was hidden a wonderful tenderness. I could not believe that he was actually dead. Most people for a minute or two, in the wild tumult of such a shock, have experienced the same skepticism. I insisted that the doctor should be instantly sent for from the village. Well, Miss Maud, dear, I will send to please you, but it is all to no use. If only you saw him yourself youd know that. Mary Quince, run you down and tell Thomas, Miss Maud desires hell go down this minute to the village for Dr. Elweys. Every minute of the interval seemed to me like an hour. I dont know what I said, but I fancied that if he were not already dead, he would lose his life by the delay. I suppose I was speaking very wildly, for Mrs. Rusk said My dear child, you ought to come in and see him; indeed but you should, Miss Maud. Hes quite dead an hour ago. Youd wonder all the blood thats come from himyou would indeed; its soaked through the bed already.

Oh, dont, dont, dont, Mrs. Rusk. Will you come in and see him, just? Oh, no, no, no, no! Well, then, my dear, dont of course, if you dont like; theres no need. Would not you like to lie down, Miss Maud? Mary Quince, attend to her. I must go into the room for a minute or two. I was walking up and down the room in distraction. It was a cool night; but I did not feel it. I could only cryOh, Mary, Mary! what shall I do? Oh, Mary Quince! what shall I do? It seemed to me it must be near daylight by the time the Doctor arrived. I had dressed myself. I dared not go into the room where my beloved father lay. I had gone out of my room to the gallery, where I awaited Dr. Elweys, when I saw him walking briskly after the servant, his coat buttoned up to his chin, his hat in his hand, and his bald head shining. I felt myself grow cold as ice, and colder and colder, and with a sudden sten my heart seemed to stand still. I heard him ask the maid who stood at the door, in that low, decisive, mysterious tone which doctors cultivate In here? And then, with a nod, I saw him enter. Would not you like to see the Doctor, Miss Maud? asked Mary Quince. The question roused me a little. Thank you, Mary; yes, I must see him. And so, in a few minutes, I did. He was very respectful, very sad, semiundertakerlike, in air and countenance, but quite explicit. I heard that my dear father had died palpably from the rupture of some great vessel near the heart. The disease had, no doubt, been long established, and is in its nature incurable. It is consolatory in these cases that in the act of dissolution, which is instantaneous, there can be no suffering. These, and a few more remarks, were all he had to offer; and having had his fee from Mrs. Rusk, he, with a respectful melancholy, vanished. I returned to my room, and broke into paroxysms of grief, and after an hour or more grew more tranquil. From Mrs. Rusk I learned that he had seemed very wellbetter than usual, indeedthat night, and that on her return from the study with the book he required, he was noting down, after his wont, some passages which illustrated the text on which he was employing himself. He took the book, detaining her in the room, and then mounting on a chair to take down another book from a shelf, he had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead upon the floor. He fell across the door, which caused the difficulty in opening it. Mrs. Rusk found she had not strength to force it open. No wonder she had given way to terror. I think I should have almost lost my reason. Everyone knows the reserved aspect and the taciturn mood of the house, one of whose rooms is tenanted by that mysterious guest. I do not know how those awful days, and more awful nights, passed over. The remembrance is repulsive. I hate to think of them. I was soon draped in the conventional black, with its heavy folds of crape. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind. She undertook the direction of all those details which were to me so inexpressibly dreadful. She wrote letters for me beside, and was really most kind and useful, and her society supported me indescribably. She was odd, but her eccentricity was leavened with strong common sense; and I have often thought since with admiration and gratitude of the tact with which she managed my grief. There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it. Cousin Monica talked a great deal of my father. This was easy to her, for her early recollections were full of him. One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we thrown exclusively upon retrospect. From the long look forward they are removed, and every plan, imagination, and hope henceforth a silent and empty perspective. But in the past they are all they ever were. Now let me advise all who would comfort people in a new bereavement to talk to them, very freely, all they can, in this way of the dead. They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, sometimes even laughable. I found it so. It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness; it prevented that monotony of object which is to the mind what it is to the eye, and prepared the faculty for those mesmeric illusions that derange its sense. Cousin Monica, I am sure, cheered me wonderfully. I grow to love her more and more, as I think of all her trouble, care, and kindness. I had not forgotten my promise to dear papa about the key, concerning which he had evinced so great an anxiety. It was found in the pocket where he had desired me to remember he always kept it, except when it was placed, while he slept, under his pillow. And so, my dear, that wicked woman was actually found picking the lock of your poor papas desk. I wonder he did not punish heryou know that is burglary. Well, Lady Knollys, you know she is gone, and so I care no more about herthat is, I mean, I need not fear her. No, my dear, but you must call me Monicado you mindIm your cousin, and you call me Monica, unless you wish to vex me. No, of course, you need not be afraid of her. And shes gone. But Im an old thing, you know, and not so tenderhearted as you; and I confess I should have been very glad to hear that the wicked old witch had been sent to prison and hard labourI should. And what do you suppose she was looking forwhat did she want to steal? I think I can guesswhat do you think? To read the papers; maybe to take banknotesIm not sure, I answered. Well, I think most likely she wanted to get at your poor papas willthats my idea. There is nothing surprising in the supposition, dear, she resumed. Did not you read the curious trial at York, the other day? There is nothing so valuable to steal as a will, when a great deal of property is to be disposed of by it. Why, you would have given her ever so much money to get it back again. Suppose you go down, dearIll go with you, and open the cabinet in the study. I dont think I can, for I promised to give the key to Dr. Bryerly, and the meaning was that he only should open it. Cousin Monica uttered an inarticulate Hm! of surprise or disapprobation. Has he been written to? No, I do not know his address. Not know his address! come, that is curious, said Knollys, a little testily. I could notno one now living in the house could furnish even a conjecture. There was even a dispute as to which train he had gone bynorth or souththey crossed the station at an interval of five minutes. If Dr. Bryerly had been an evil spirit, evoked by a secret incantation, there could not have been more complete darkness as to the immediate process of his approach. And how long do you mean to wait, my dear? No matter; at all events you may open the desk; you may find papers to direct youyou may find Dr. Bryerlys addressyou may find, heaven knows what. So down we wentI assentingand we opened the desk. How dreadful the desecration seemsall privacy abrogatedthe shocking compensation for the silence of death! Henceforward all is circumstantial evidenceall conjecturalexcept the litera scripta, and to this evidence every notebook, and every scrap of paper and private letter, must contributeransacked, bare in the light of daywhat it can. At the top of the desk lay two notes sealed, one to Cousin Monica, the other to me. Mine was a gentle and loving little farewellnothing morewhich opened afresh the fountains of my sorrow, and I cried and sobbed over it bitterly and long. The other was for Lady Knollys. I did not see how she received it, for I was already absorbed in mine. But in awhile she came and kissed me in her girlish, goodnatured way. Her eyes used to fill with tears at sight of my paroxysms of grief. Then she would begin, I remember it was a saying of his, and so she would repeat itsomething maybe wise, maybe playful, at all events consolatoryand the circumstances in which she had heard him say it, and then would follow the recollections suggested by these; and so I was stolen away half by him, and half by Cousin Monica, from my despair and lamentation. Along with these lay a large envelope, inscribed with the words Directions to be complied with immediately on my death. One of which was, Let the event be forthwith published in the county and principal London papers. This step had been already taken. We found no record of Dr. Bryerlys address. We made search everywhere, except in the cabinet, which I would on no account permit to be opened except, according to his direction, by Dr. Bryerlys hand. But nowhere was a will, or any document resembling one, to be found. I had now, therefore, no doubt that his will was placed in the cabinet. In the search among my dear fathers papers we found two sheafs of letters, neatly tied up and labelledthese were from my uncle Silas. My cousin Monica looked down upon these papers with a strange smile; was it satirewas it that indescribable smile with which a mystery which covers a long reach of years is sometimes approached? These were odd letters. If here and there occurred passages that were querulous and even abject, there were also long passages of manly and altogether noble sentiment, and the strangest rodomontade and maunderings about religion. Here and there a letter would gradually transform itself into a prayer, and end with a doxology and no signature; and some of them expressed such wild and disordered views respecting religion, as I imagine he can never have disclosed to good Mr. Fairfield, and which approached more nearly to the Swedenborg visions than to anything in the Church of England. I read these with a solemn interest, but my cousin Monica was not similarly moved. She read them with the same smilefaint, serenely contemptuous, I thoughtwith which she had first looked down upon them. It was the countenance of a person who amusedly traces the working of a character that is well understood. Uncle Silas is very religious? I said, not quite liking Lady Knollys looks. Very, she said, without raising her eyes or abating her old bitter smile, as she glanced over a passage in one of his letters. You dont think he is, Cousin Monica? said I. She raised her head and looked straight at me. Why do you say that, Maud? Because you smile incredulously, I think, over his letters. Do I? said she; I was not thinkingit was quite an accident. The fact is, Maud, your poor papa quite mistook me. I had no prejudice respecting himno theory. I never knew what to think about him. I do not think Silas a product of nature, but a child of the Sphinx, and I never could understand himthats all. I always felt so too; but that was because I was left to speculation, and to glean conjectures as I might from his portrait, or anywhere. Except what you told me, I never heard more than a few sentences; poor papa did not like me to ask questions about him, and I think he ordered the servants to be silent. And much the same injunction this little note lays upon menot quite, but something like it; and I dont know the meaning of it. And she looked enquiringly at me. You are not to be alarmed about your uncle Silas, because your being afraid would unfit you for an important service which you have undertaken for your family, the nature of which I shall soon understand, and which, although it is quite passive, would be made very sad if illusory fears were allowed to steal into your mind. She was looking into the letter in poor papas handwriting, which she had found addressed to her in his desk, and emphasised the words, I suppose, which she quoted from it. Have you any idea, Maud, darling, what this service may be? she enquired, with a grave and anxious curiosity in her countenance. None, Cousin Monica; but I have thought long over my undertaking to do it, or submit to it, be it what it may; and I will keep the promise I voluntarily made, although I know what a coward I am, and often distrust my courage. Well, I am not to frighten you. How could you? Why should I be afraid? Is there anything frightful to be disclosed? Do tell meyou must tell me. No, darling, I did not mean thatI dont mean that;I could, if I would; II dont know exactly what I meant. But your poor papa knew him better than Iin fact, I did not know him at allthat is, ever quite understood himwhich your poor papa, I see, had ample opportunities of doing. And after a little pause, she addedSo you do not know what you are expected to do or to undergo. Oh! Cousin Monica, I know you think he committed that murder, I cried, starting up, I dont know why, and I felt that I grew deadly pale. I dont believe any such thing, you little fool; you must not say such horrible things, Maud, she said, rising also, and looking both pale and angry. Shall we go out for a little walk? Come, lock up these papers, dear, and get your things on; and if that Dr. Bryerly does not turn up tomorrow, you must send for the Rector, good Doctor Clay, and let him make search for the willthere may be directions about many things, you know; and, my dear Maud, you are to remember that Silas is my cousin as well as your uncle. Come, dear, put on your hat. So we went out together for a little cloistered walk. XXII Somebody in the Room with the Coffin When we returned, a young gentleman had arrived. We saw him in the parlour as we passed the window. It was simply a glance, but such a one as suffices to make a photograph, which we can study afterwards, at our leisure. I remember him at this momenta man of sixandthirtydressed in a grey travelling suit, not overwell made; lighthaired, fatfaced, and clumsy; and he looked both dull and cunning, and not at all like a gentleman. Branston met us, announced the arrival, and handed me the strangers credentials. My cousin and I stopped in the passage to read them. Thats your uncle Silass, said Lady Knollys, touching one of the two letters with the tip of her finger. Shall we have lunch, Miss? Certainly. So Branston departed. Read it with me, Cousin Monica, I said. And a very curious letter it was. It spoke as follows How can I thank my beloved niece for remembering her aged and forlorn kinsman at such a moment of anguish? I had written a note of a few, I dare say, incoherent words by the next post after my dear fathers death. It is, however, in the hour of bereavement that we most value the ties that are broken, and yearn for the sympathy of kindred. Here came a little distich of French verse, of which I could only read ciel and lamour. Our quiet household here is clouded with a new sorrow. How inscrutable are the ways of Providence! Ithough a few years youngerhow much the more infirmhow shattered in energy and in mindhow mere a burdenhow entirely de tropam spared to my sad place in a world where I can be no longer useful, where I have but one businessprayer, but one hopethe tomb; and heapparently so robustthe centre of so much goodso necessary to youso necessary, alas! to meis taken! He is gone to his restfor us, what remains but to bow our heads, and murmur, His will be done? I trace these lines with a trembling hand, while tears dim my old eyes. I did not think that any earthly event could have moved me so profoundly. From the world I have long stood aloof. I once led a life of pleasurealas! of wickednessas I now do one of austerity; but as I never was rich, so my worst enemy will allow I never was avaricious. My sins, I thank my Maker, have been of a more reducible kind, and have succumbed to the discipline which Heaven has provided. To earth and its interests, as well as to its pleasures, I have long been dead. For the few remaining years of my life I ask but quietan exemption from the agitations and distractions of struggle and care, and I trust to the Giver of all Good for my deliverancewell knowing, at the same time, that whatever befalls will, under His direction, prove best. Happy shall I be, my dearest niece, if in your most interesting and, in some respects, forlorn situation, I can be of any use to you. My present religious adviserof whom I ventured to ask counsel on your behalfstates that I ought to send someone to represent me at the melancholy ceremony of reading the will which my beloved and now happy brother has, no doubt, left behind; and the idea that the experience and professional knowledge possessed by the gentleman whom I have selected may possibly be of use to you, my dearest niece, determines me to place him at your disposal. He is the junior partner in the firm of Archer and Sleigh, who conduct any little business which I may have from time to time; may I entreat your hospitality for him during a brief stay at Knowl? I write, even for a moment, upon these small matters of business with an efforta painful one, but necessary. Alas! my brother! The cup of bitterness is now full. Few and evil must the remainder of my old days be. Yet, while they last, I remain always for my beloved niece, that which all her wealth and splendour cannot purchasea loving and faithful kinsman and friend, Silas Ruthyn. Is not it a kind letter? I said, while tears stood in my eyes. Yes, answered Lady Knollys, drily. But dont you think it so, really? Oh! kind, very kind, she answered in the same tone, and perhaps a little cunning. Cunning!how? Well, you know Im a peevish old Tabby, and of course I scratch now and then, and see in the dark. I dare say Silas is sorry, but I dont think he is in sackcloth and ashes. He has reason to be sorry and anxious, and I say I think he is both; and you know he pities you very much, and also himself a good deal; and he wants money, and youhis beloved niecehave a great dealand altogether it is an affectionate and prudent letter and he has sent his attorney here to make a note of the will; and you are to give the gentleman his meals and lodging; and Silas, very thoughtfully, invites you to confide your difficulties and troubles to his solicitor. It is very kind, but not imprudent. Oh, Cousin Monica, dont you think at such a moment it is hardly natural that he should form such petty schemes, even were he capable at other times of practising so low? Is it not judging him hardly? and you, you know, so little acquainted with him. I told you, dear, Im a cross old thingand theres an end; and I really dont care two pence about him; and of the two Id much rather he were no relation of ours. Now, was not this prejudice? I dare say in part it was. So, too, was my vehement predisposition in his favour. I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges; and I think the function, if less dignified, is more amiable. I sat alone at the drawingroom window, at nightfall, awaiting my cousin Monicas entrance. Feverish and frightened I felt that night. It was a sympathy, I fancy, with the weather. The sun had set stormily. Though the air was still, the sky looked wild and stormswept. The crowding clouds, slanting in the attitude of flight, reflected their own sacred aspect upon my spirits. My grief darkened with a wild presaging of danger, and a sense of the supernatural fell upon me. It was the saddest and most awful evening that had come since my beloved fathers death. All kinds of shapeless fears environed me in silence. For the first time, dire misgivings about the form of faith affrighted me. Who were these Swedenborgians who had got about himno one could tell howand held him so fast to the close of his life? Who was this bilious, bewigged, blackeyed Doctor Bryerly, whom none of us quite liked and all a little feared; who seemed to rise out of the ground, and came and went, no one knew whence or whither, exercising, as I imagined, a mysterious authority over him? Was it all good and true, or a heresy and a witchcraft? Oh, my beloved father! was it all well with you? When Lady Knollys entered, she found me in floods of tears, walking distractedly up and down the room. She kissed me in silence; she walked back and forward with me, and did her best to console me. I think, Cousin Monica, I would wish to see him once more. Shall we go up? Unless you really wish it very much, I think, darling, you had better not mind it. It is happier to recollect them as they were; theres a change, you know, darling, and there is seldom any comfort in the sight. But I do wish it very much. Oh! wont you come with me? And so I persuaded her, and up we went hand in hand, in the deepening twilight; and we halted at the end of the dark gallery, and I called Mrs. Rusk, growing frightened. Tell her to let us in, Cousin Monica, I whispered. She wishes to see him, my ladydoes she? enquired Mrs. Rusk, in an undertone, and with a mysterious glance at me, as she softly fitted the key to the lock. Are you quite sure, Maud, dear? Yes, yes. But when Mrs. Rusk entered bearing the candle, whose beam mixed dismally with the expiring twilight, disclosing a great black coffin standing upon trestles, near the foot of which she took her stand, gazing sternly into it, I lost heart again altogether and drew back. No, Mrs. Rusk, she wont; and I am very glad, dear, she added to me. Come, Mrs. Rusk, come away. Yes, darling, she continued to me, it is much better for you; and she hurried me away, and downstairs again. But the awful outlines of that large black coffin remained upon my imagination with a new and terrible sense of death. I had no more any wish to see him. I felt a horror even of the room, and for more than an hour after a kind of despair and terror, such as I have never experienced before or since at the idea of death. Cousin Monica had had her bed placed in my room, and Mary Quinces moved to the dressingroom adjoining it. For the first time the superstitious awe that follows death, but not immediately, visited me. The idea of seeing my father enter the room, or open the door and look in, haunted me. After Lady Knollys and I were in bed, I could not sleep. The wind sounded mournfully outside, and the small sounds, the rattlings, and strainings that responded from within, constantly startled me, and simulated the sounds of steps, of doors opening, of knockings, and so forth, rousing me with a palpitating heart as often as I fell into a doze. At length the wind subsided, and these ambiguous noises abated, and I, fatigued, dropped into a quiet sleep. I was awakened by a sound in the gallerywhich I could not define. A considerable time had passed, for the wind was now quite lulled. I sat up in my bed a good deal scared, listening breathlessly for I knew not what. I heard a step moving stealthily along the gallery. I called my cousin Monica softly; and we both heard the door of the room in which my fathers body lay unlocked, someone furtively enter, and the door shut. What can it be? Good Heavens, Cousin Monica, do you hear it? Yes, dear; and it is two oclock. Everyone at Knowl was in bed at eleven. We knew very well that Mrs. Rusk was rather nervous, and would not, for worlds, go alone, and at such an hour, to the room. We called Mary Quince. We all three listened, but we heard no other sound. I set these things down here because they made so terrible an impression upon me at the time. It ended by our peeping out, all three in a body, upon the gallery. Through each window in the perspective came its blue sheet of moonshine; but the door on which our attention was fixed was in the shade, and we thought we could discern the glare of a candle through the keyhole. While in whispers we were debating this point together, the door opened, the dusky light of a candle emerged, the shadow of a figure crossed it within, and in another moment the mysterious Doctor Bryerlyangular, ungainly, in the black cloth coat that fitted little better than a coffinissued from the chamber, candle in hand; murmuring, I suppose, a prayerit sounded like a farewellas he looked back, pallid and grim, into the room; and then stepped cautiously upon the gallery floor, shutting and locking the door upon the dead; and then having listened for a second, the saturnine figure, casting a gigantic and distorted shadow upon the ceiling and sidewall from the lowered candle, strode lightly down the long dark passage, away from us. I can only speak for myself, and I can honestly say that I felt as much frightened as if I had just seen a sorcerer stealing from his unhallowed business. I think Cousin Monica was also affected in the same way, for she turned the key on the inside of the door when we entered. I do not think one of us believed at the moment that what we had seen was a Doctor Bryerly of flesh and blood, and yet the first thing we spoke of in the morning was Doctor Bryerlys arrival. The mind is a different organ by night and by day. XXIII I Talk with Doctor Bryerly Doctor Bryerly had, indeed, arrived at halfpast twelve oclock at night. His summons at the halldoor was little heard at our remote side of the old house of Knowl; and when the sleepy, halfdressed servant opened the door, the lank Doctor, in glossy black clothing, was standing alone, his portmanteau on its end upon the steps, and his vehicle disappearing in the shadows of the old trees. In he came, sterner and sharper of aspect than usual. Ive been expected? Im Doctor Bryerly. Havent I? So, let whoever is in charge of the body be called. I must visit it forthwith. So the Doctor sat in the back drawingroom, with a solitary candle; and Mrs. Rusk was called up, and, grumbling much and very peevish, dressed and went down, her illtemper subsiding in a sort of fear as she approached the visitor. How do you do, Madam? A sad visit this. Is anyone watching in the room where the remains of your late master are laid? No. So much the better; it is a foolish custom. Will you please conduct me to the room? I must pray where he liesno longer he! And be good enough to show me my bedroom, and so no one need wait up, and I shall find my way. Accompanied by the man who carried his valise, Mrs. Rusk showed him to his apartment; but he only looked in, and then glanced rapidly about to take the bearings of the door. Thank youyes. Now well proceed, here, along here? Let me see. A turn to the right and another to the leftyes. He has been dead some days. Is he yet in his coffin? Yes, sir; since yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Rusk was growing more and more afraid of this lean figure sheathed in shining black cloth, whose eyes glittered with a horrible sort of cunning, and whose long brown fingers groped before him, as if indicating the way by guess. But, of course, the lids not on; youve not screwed him down, hey? No, sir. Thats well. I must look on the face as I pray. He is in his place; I here on earth. He in the spirit; I in the flesh. The neutral ground lies there. So are carried the vibrations, and so the light of earth and heaven reflected back and forwardapaugasma, a wonderful though helpless engine, the ladder of Jacob, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Thanks, Ill take the key. Mysteries to those who will live altogether in houses of clay, no mystery to such as will use their eyes and read what is revealed. This candle, it is the longer, please; nono need of a pair, thanks; just this, to hold in my hand. And remember, all depends upon the willing mind. Why do you look frightened? Where is your faith? Dont you know that spirits are about us at all times? Why should you fear to be near the body? The spirit is everything; the flesh profiteth nothing. Yes, sir, said Mrs. Rusk, making him a great courtesy in the threshold. She was frightened by his eerie talk, which grew, she fancied, more voluble and energetic as they approached the corpse. Remember, then, that when you fancy yourself alone and wrapt in darkness, you stand, in fact, in the centre of a theatre, as wide as the starry floor of heaven, with an audience, whom no man can number, beholding you under a flood of light. Therefore, though your body be in solitude and your mortal sense in darkness, remember to walk as being in the light, surrounded with a cloud of witnesses. Thus walk; and when the hour comes, and you pass forth unprisoned from the tabernacle of the flesh, although it still has its relations and its rightsand saying this, as he held the solitary candle aloft in the doorway, he nodded towards the coffin, whose large black form was faintly traceable against the shadows beyondyou will rejoice; and being clothed upon with your house from on high, you will not be found naked. On the other hand, he that loveth corruption shall have enough thereof. Think upon these things. Good night. And the Swedenborgian Doctor stepped into the room, taking the candle with him, and closed the door upon the shadowy stilllife there, and on his own sharp and swarthy visage, leaving Mrs. Rusk in a sort of panic in the dark alone, to find her way to her room the best way she could. Early in the morning Mrs. Rusk came to my room to tell me that Doctor Bryerly was in the parlour, and begged to know whether I had not a message for him. I was already dressed, so, though it was dreadful seeing a stranger in my then mood, taking the key of the cabinet in my hand, I followed Mrs. Rusk downstairs. Opening the parlour door, she stepped in, and with a little courtesy said Please, sir, the young mistressMiss Ruthyn. Draped in black and very pale, tall and slight, the young mistress was; and as I entered I heard a newspaper rustle, and the sound of steps approaching to meet me. Face to face we met, near the door; and, without speaking, I made him a deep courtesy. He took my hand, without the least indication on my part, in his hard lean grasp, and shook it kindly, but familiarly, peering with a stern sort of curiosity into my face as he continued to hold it. His illfitting, glossy black cloth, ungainly presence, and sharp, dark, vulpine features had in them, as I said before, the vulgarity of a Glasgow artisan in his Sabbath suit. I made an instantaneous motion to withdraw my hand, but he held it firmly. Though there was a grim sort of familiarity, there was also decision, shrewdness, and, above all, kindness, in his dark facea gleam on the whole of the masterly and the honestthat along with a certain paleness, betraying, I thought, restrained emotion, indicated sympathy and invited confidence. I hope, Miss, you are pretty well? He pronounced pretty as it is spelt. I have come in consequence of a solemn promise exacted more than a year since by your deceased father, the late Mr. Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, for whom I cherished a warm esteem, being knit besides with him in spiritual bonds. It has been a shock to you, Miss? It has, indeed, sir. Ive a doctors degree, I haveDoctor of Medicine, Miss. Like St. Luke, preacher and doctor. I was in business once, but this is better. As one footing fails, the Lord provides another. The stream of life is black and angry; how so many of us get across without drowning, I often wonder. The best way is not to look too far beforejust from one steppingstone to another; and though you may wet your feet, He wont let you drownHe has not allowed me. And Doctor Bryerly held up his head, and wagged it resolutely. You are born to this worlds wealth; in its way a great blessing, though a great trial, Miss, and a great trust; but dont suppose you are destined to exemption from trouble on that account, any more than poor Emmanuel Bryerly. As the sparks fly upwards, Miss Ruthyn! Your cushioned carriage may overturn on the high road, as I may stumble and fall upon the footpath. There are other troubles than debt and privation.

Who can tell how long health may last, or when an accident may happen the brain; what mortifications may await you in your own high sphere; what unknown enemies may rise up in your path; or what slanders may asperse your nameha, ha! It is a wonderful equilibriuma marvellous dispensationha, ha! and he laughed with a shake of his head, I thought a little sarcastically, as if he was not sorry my money could not avail to buy immunity from the general curse. But what money cant do, prayer canbear that in mind, Miss Ruthyn. We can all pray; and though thorns and snares, and stones of fire lie strewn in our way, we need not fear them. He will give His angels charge over us, and in their hands they will bear us up, for He hears and sees everywhere, and His angels are innumerable. He was now speaking gently and solemnly, and paused. But another vein of thought he had unconsciously opened in my mind, and I said And had my dear papa no other medical adviser? He looked at me sharply, and flushed a little under his dark tint. His medical skill was, perhaps, the point on which his human vanity vaunted itself, and I dare say there was something very disparaging in my tone. And if he had no other, he might have done worse. Ive had many critical cases in my hands, Miss Ruthyn. I cant charge myself with any miscarriage through ignorance. My diagnosis in Mr. Ruthyns case has been verified by the result. But I was not alone; Sir Clayton Barrow saw him, and took my view; a note will reach him in London. But this, excuse me, is not to the present purpose. The late Mr. Ruthyn told me I was to receive a key from you, which would open a cabinet where he had placed his willha! thanksin his study. And, I think, as there may be directions about the funeral, it had better be read forthwith. Is there any gentlemana relative or man of businessnear here, whom you would wish sent for? No, none, thank you; I have confidence in you, sir. I think I spoke and looked frankly, for he smiled very kindly, though with closed lips. And you may be sure, Miss Ruthyn, your confidence shall not be disappointed. Here was a long pause. But you are very young, and you must have someone by in your interest, who has some experience in business. Let me see. Is not the Rector, Dr. Clay, at hand? In the town?very good; and Mr. Danvers, who manages the estate, he must come. And get Grimstonyou see I know all the namesGrimston, the attorney; for though he was not employed about this will, he has been Mr. Ruthyns solicitor a great many years we must have Grimston; for, as I suppose you know, though it is a short will, it is a very strange one. I expostulated, but you know he was very decided when he took a view. He read it to you, eh? No, sir. Oh, but he told you so much as relates to you and your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, of BartramHaugh? No, indeed, sir. Ha! I wish he had. And with these words Doctor Bryerlys countenance darkened. Mr. Silas Ruthyn is a religious man? Oh, very! said I. Youve seen a good deal of him? No, I never saw him, I answered. Hm? Odder and odder! But hes a good man, isnt he? Very good, indeed, sira very religious man. Doctor Bryerly was watching my countenance as I spoke, with a sharp and anxious eye; and then he looked down, and read the pattern of the carpet like bad news, for a while, and looking again in my face, askance, he said He was very near joining uson the point. He got into correspondence with Henry Voerst, one of our best men. They call us Swedenborgians, you know; but I dare say that wont go much further, now. I suppose, Miss Ruthyn, one oclock would be a good hour, and I am sure, under the circumstances, the gentlemen will make a point of attending. Yes, Dr. Bryerly, the notes shall be sent, and my cousin, Lady Knollys, would I am sure attend with me while the will is being readthere would be no objection to her presence? None in the world. I cant be quite sure who are joined with me as executors. Im almost sorry I did not decline; but it is too late regretting. One thing you must believe Miss Ruthyn in framing the provisions of the will I was never consultedalthough I expostulated against the only very unusual one it contains when I heard it. I did so strenuously, but in vain. There was one other against which I protestedhaving a right to do sowith better effect. In no other way does the will in any respect owe anything to my advice or dissuasion. You will please believe this; also that I am your friend. Yes, indeed, it is my duty. The latter words he spoke looking down again, as it were in soliloquy; and thanking him, I withdrew. When I reached the hall, I regretted that I had not asked him to state distinctly what arrangements the will made so nearly affecting, as it seemed, my relations with my uncle Silas, and for a moment I thought of returning and requesting an explanation. But then, I bethought me, it was not very long to wait till one oclockso he, at least, would think. I went upstairs, therefore, to the schoolroom, which we used at present as a sittingroom, and there I found Cousin Monica awaiting me. Are you quite well, dear? asked Lady Knollys, as she came to meet and kiss me. Quite well, Cousin Monica. No nonsense, Maud! youre as white as that handkerchiefwhats the matter? Are you illare you frightened? Yes, youre tremblingyoure terrified, child. I believe I am afraid. There is something in poor papas will about Uncle Silasabout me. I dont knowDoctor Bryerly says, and he seems so uncomfortable and frightened himself, I am sure it is something very bad. I am very much frightenedI amI am. Oh, Cousin Monica! you wont leave me? So I threw my arms about her neck, clasping her very close, and we kissed one another, I crying like a frightened childand indeed in experience of the world I was no more. XXIV The Opening of the Will Perhaps the terror with which I anticipated the hour of one, and the disclosure of the unknown undertaking to which I had bound myself, was irrational and morbid. But, honestly, I doubt it; my tendency has always been that of many other weak characters, to act impetuously, and afterwards to reproach myself for consequences which I have, perhaps, in reality, had little or no share in producing. It was Doctor Bryerlys countenance and manner in alluding to a particular provision in my fathers will that instinctively awed me. I have seen faces in a nightmare that haunted me with an indescribable horror, and yet I could not say wherein lay the fascination. And so it was with hisan omen, a menace, lurked in its sallow and dismal glance. You must not be so frightened, darling, said Cousin Monica. It is foolish; it is, really; they cant cut off your head, you know they cant really harm you in any essential way. If it involved a risk of a little money, you would not mind it; but men are such odd creaturesthey measure all sacrifices by money. Doctor Bryerly would look just as you describe, if you were doomed to lose five hundred pounds, and yet it would not kill you. A companion like Lady Knollys is reassuring; but I could not take her comfort altogether to heart, for I felt that she had no great confidence in it herself. There was a little French clock over the mantelpiece in the schoolroom, which I consulted nearly every minute. It wanted now but ten minutes of one. Shall we go down to the drawingroom, dear? said Cousin Knollys, who was growing restless like me. So downstairs we went, pausing by mutual consent at the great window at the stairhead, which looks out on the avenue. Mr. Danvers was riding his tall, grey horse at a walk, under the wide branches toward the house, and we waited to see him get off at the door. In his turn he loitered there, for the good Rectors gig, driven by the Curate, was approaching at a smart ecclesiastical trot. Doctor Clay got down, and shook hands with Mr. Danvers; and after a word or two, away drove the Curate with that upward glance at the windows from which so few can refrain. I watched the Rector and Mr. Danvers loitering on the steps as a patient might the gathering of surgeons who are to perform some unknown operation. They, too, glanced up at the window as they turned to enter the house, and I drew back. Cousin Monica looked at her watch. Four minutes only. Shall we go to the drawingroom? Waiting for a moment to let the gentlemen get by on the way to the study, we, accordingly, went down, and I heard the Rector talk of the dangerous state of Grindleston bridge, and wondered how he could think of such things at a time of sorrow. Everything about those few minutes of suspense remains fresh in my recollection. I remember how they loitered and came to a halt at the corner of the oak passage leading to the study, and how the Rector patted the marble head and smoothed the inflexible tresses of William Pitt, as he listened to Mr. Danvers details about the presentment; and then, as they went on, I recollect the boisterous noseblowing that suddenly resounded from the passage, and which I then referred, and still refer, intuitively to the Rector. We had not been five minutes in the drawingroom when Branston entered, to say that the gentlemen I had mentioned were all assembled in the study. Come, dear, said Cousin Monica; and leaning on her arm I reached the study door. I entered, followed by her. The gentlemen arrested their talk and stood up, those who were sitting, and the Rector came forward very gravely, and in low tones, and very kindly, greeted me. There was nothing emotional in this salutation, for though my father never quarrelled, yet an immense distance separated him from all his neighbours, and I do not think there lived a human being who knew him at more than perhaps a point or two of his character. Considering how entirely he secluded himself, my father was, as many people living remember, wonderfully popular in his county. He was neighbourly in everything except in seeing company and mixing in society. He had magnificent shooting, of which he was extremely liberal. He kept a pack of hounds at Dollerton, with which all his side of the county hunted through the season. He never refused any claim upon his purse which had the slightest show of reason. He subscribed to every fund, social, charitable, sporting, agricultural, no matter what, provided the honest people of his county took an interest in it, and always with a princely hand; and although he shut himself up, no one could say that he was inaccessible, for he devoted hours daily to answering letters, and his checquebook contributed largely in those replies. He had taken his turn long ago as High Sheriff; so there was an end of that claim before his oddity and shyness had quite secluded him. He refused the LordLieutenancy of his county; he declined every post of personal distinction connected with it. He could write an able as well as a genial letter when he pleased; and his appearances at public meetings, dinners, and so forth were made in this epistolary fashion, and, when occasion presented, by magnificent contributions from his purse. If my father had been less goodnatured in the sporting relations of his vast estates, or less magnificent in dealing with his fortune, or even if he had failed to exhibit the intellectual force which always characterised his letters on public matters, I dare say that his oddities would have condemned him to ridicule, and possibly to dislike. But every one of the principal gentlemen of his county, whose judgment was valuable, has told me that he was a remarkably able man, and that his failure in public life was due to his eccentricities, and in no respect to deficiency in those peculiar mental qualities which make men feared and useful in Parliament. I could not forbear placing on record this testimony to the high mental and the kindly qualities of my beloved father, who might have passed for a misanthrope or a fool. He was a man of generous nature and powerful intellect, but given up to the oddities of a shyness which grew with years and indulgence, and became inflexible with his disappointments and affliction. There was something even in the Rectors kind and ceremonious greeting which oddly enough reflected the mixed feelings in which awe was not without a place, with which his neighbours had regarded my dear father. Having done the honoursI am sure looking woefully paleI had time to glance quietly at the only figure there with which I was not tolerably familiar. This was the junior partner in the firm of Archer and Sleigh who represented my uncle Silasa fat and pallid man of sixandthirty, with a sly and evil countenance, and it has always seemed to me, that ill dispositions show more repulsively in a pale fat face than in any other. Doctor Bryerly, standing near the window, was talking in a low tone to Mr. Grimston, our attorney. I heard good Dr. Clay whisper to Mr. Danvers Is not that Doctor Bryerlythe person with the blackthe blackits a wig, I thinkin the window, talking to Abel Grimston? Yes; thats he. Oddlooking personone of the Swedenborg people, is not he? continued the Rector. So I am told. Yes, said the Rector, quietly; and he crossed one gaitered leg over the other, and, with fingers interlaced, twiddled his thumbs, as he eyed the monstrous sectary under his orthodox old brows with a stern inquisitiveness. I thought he was meditating theologic battle. But Dr. Bryerly and Mr. Grimston, still talking together, began to walk slowly from the window, and the former said in his peculiar grim tones I beg pardon, Miss Ruthyn; perhaps you would be so good as to show us which of the cabinets in this room your late lamented father pointed out as that to which this key belongs. I indicated the oak cabinet. Very good, maamvery good, said Doctor Bryerly, as he fumbled the key into the lock. Cousin Monica could not forbear murmuring Dear! what a brute! The junior partner, with his dumpy hands in his pocket, poked his fat face over Mr. Grimstons shoulder, and peered into the cabinet as the door opened. The search was not long. A handsome white paper enclosure, neatly tied up in pink tape, and sealed with large red seals, was inscribed in my dear fathers handWill of Austin R. Ruthyn, of Knowl. Then, in smaller characters, the date, and in the corner a noteThis will was drawn from my instructions by Gaunt, Hogg, and Hatchett, Solicitors, Great Woburn Street, London, ARR. Let me have a squint at that endorsement, please, gentlemen, half whispered the unpleasant person who represented my uncle Silas. Tisnt an endorsement. There, looka memorandum on an envelope, said Abel Grimston, gruffly. Thanksall rightthat will do, he responded, himself making a pencilnote of it, in a long claspbook which he drew from his coatpocket. The tape was carefully cut, and the envelope removed without tearing the writing, and forth came the will, at sight of which my heart swelled and fluttered up to my lips, and then dropped down dead as it seemed into its place. Mr. Grimston, you will please to read it, said Doctor Bryerly, who took the direction of the process. I will sit beside you, and as we go along you will be good enough to help us to understand technicalities, and give us a lift where we want it. Its a short will, said Mr. Grimston, turning over the sheets veryconsidering. Heres a codicil. I did not see that, said Doctor Bryerly. Dated only a month ago. Oh! said Doctor Bryerly, putting on his spectacles. Uncle Silass ambassador, sitting close behind, had insinuated his face between Doctor Bryerlys and the readers of the will. On behalf of the surviving brother of the testator, interposed the delegate, just as Abel Grimston had cleared his voice to begin, I take leave to apply for a copy of this instrument. It will save a deal of trouble, if the young lady as represents the testator here has no objection. You can have as many copies as you like when the will is proved, said Mr. Grimston. I know that; but supposing as alls right, wheres the objection? Just the objection there always is to acting irregular, replied Mr. Grimston. You dont object to act disobliging, it seems. You can do as I told you, replied Mr. Grimston. Thank you for nothing, murmured Mr. Sleigh. And the reading of the will proceeded, while he made elaborate notes of its contents in his capacious pocketbook. I, Austin Alymer Ruthyn Ruthyn, being, I thank God, of sound mind and perfect recollection, etc., etc.; and then came a bequest of all his estates real, chattels real, copyrights, leases, chattels, money, rights, interests, reversions, powers, plate, pictures, and estates and possessions whatsoever, to four personsLord Ilbury, Mr. Penrose Creswell of Creswell, Sir William Aylmer, Bart., and Hans Emmanuel Bryerly, Doctor of Medicine, to have and to hold, etc., etc. Whereupon my Cousin Monica ejaculated Eh? and Doctor Bryerly interposed Four trustees, maam. We take little but troubleyoull see; go on. Then it came out that all this multifarious splendour was bequeathed in trust for me, subject to a bequest of fifteen thousand pounds to his only brother, Silas Aylmer Ruthyn, and three thousand five hundred pounds each to the two children of his said brother; and lest any doubt should arise by reason of his, the testators decease as to the continuance of the arrangement by way of lease under which he enjoyed his present habitation and farm, he left him the use of the mansionhouse and lands of BartramHaugh, in the county of Derbyshire, and of the lands of soandso and soandso, adjoining thereto, in the said county, for the term of his natural life, on payment of a rent of five shillings per annum, and subject to the like conditions as to waste, etc., as are expressed in the said lease. By your leave, may I ask is them dispositions all the devises to my client, which is his only brother, as it seems to me youve seen the will before? enquired Mr. Sleigh. Nothing more, unless there is something in the codicil, answered Dr. Bryerly. But there was no mention of him in the codicil. Mr. Sleigh threw himself back in his chair, and sneered, with the end of his pencil between his teeth. I hope his disappointment was altogether for his client. Mr. Danvers fancied, he afterwards said, that he had probably expected legacies which might have involved litigation, or, at all events, law costs, and perhaps a stewardship; but this was very barren; and Mr. Danvers also remarked, that the man was a very low practitioner, and wondered how my uncle Silas could have commissioned such a person to represent him. So far the will contained nothing of which my most partial friend could have complained. The codicil, too, devised only legacies to servants, and a sum of 1,000, with a few kind words, to Monica, Lady Knollys, and a further sum of 3,000 to Dr. Bryerly, stating that the legatee had prevailed upon him to erase from the draft of his will a bequest to him to that amount, but that, in consideration of all the trouble devolving upon him as trustee, he made that bequest by his codicil; and with these arrangements the permanent disposition of his property was completed. But that direction to which he and Doctor Bryerly had darkly alluded, was now to come, and certainly it was a strange one. It appointed my uncle Silas my sole guardian, with full parental authority over me until I should have reached the age of twentyone, up to which time I was to reside under his care at BartramHaugh, and it directed the trustees to pay over to him yearly a sum of two thousand pounds during the continuance of the guardianship for my suitable maintenance, education, and expenses. You have now a sufficient outline of my fathers will. The only thing I painfully felt in this arrangement was, the breakupthe dismay that accompanies the disappearance of home. Otherwise, there was something rather pleasurable in the idea. As long as I could remember, I had always cherished the same mysterious curiosity about my uncle, and the same longing to behold him. This was about to be gratified. Then there was my cousin Milicent, about my own age. My life had been so lonely, that I had acquired none of those artificial habits that induce the finelady naturea second, and not always a very amiable one. She had lived a solitary life, like me. What rambles and readings we should have together! what confidences and castlebuildings! and then there was a new country and a fine old place, and the sense of interest and adventure that always accompanies change in our early youth. There were four letters all alike with large, red seals, addressed respectively to each of the trustees named in the will. There was also one addressed to Silas Alymer Ruthyn, Esq., BartramHaugh Manor, etc., etc., which Mr. Sleigh offered to deliver. But Doctor Bryerly thought the postoffice was the more regular channel. Uncle Silass representative was questioning Doctor Bryerly in an undertone. I turned my eyes on my cousin MonicaI felt so inexpressibly relievedexpecting to see a corresponding expression in her countenance. But I was startled. She looked ghastly and angry. I stared in her face, not knowing what to think. Could the will have personally disappointed her? Such doubts, though we fancy in afterlife they belong to maturity and experience only, do sometimes cross our minds in youth. But the suggestion wronged Lady Knollys, who neither expected nor wanted anything, being rich, childless, generous, and frank. It was the unexpected character of her countenance that scared me, and for a moment the shock called up corresponding moral images. Lady Knollys, starting up, raised her head, so as to see over Mr. Sleighs shoulder, and biting her pale lip, she cleared her voice and demanded Doctor Bryerly, pray, sir, is the reading concluded? Concluded? Quite. Yes, nothing more, he answered with a nod, and continued his talk with Mr. Danvers and Abel Grimston. And to whom, said Lady Knollys, with an effort, will the property belong, in casein case my little cousin here should die before she comes of age? Eh? Wellwouldnt it go to the heiratlaw and next of kin? said Doctor Bryerly, turning to Abel Grimston. Ayto be sure, said the attorney, thoughtfully. And who is that? pursued my cousin. Well, her uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn. Hes both heiratlaw and next of kin, pursued Abel Grimston. Thank you, said Lady Knollys. Doctor Clay came forward, bowing very low, in his standing collar and singlebreasted coat, and graciously folded my hand in his soft wrinkled grasp Allow me, my dear Miss Ruthyn, while expressing my regret that we are to lose you from among our little flockthough I trust but for a short, a very short timeto say how I rejoice at the particular arrangement indicated by the will we have just heard read. My curate, William Fairfield, resided for some years in the same spiritual capacity in the neighbourhood of your, I will say, admirable uncle, with occasional intercourse with whom he was favouredmay I not say blessed?a true Christian Churchmana Christian gentleman. Can I say more? A most happy, happy choice. A very low bow here, with eyes nearly closed, and a shake of the head. Mrs. Clay will do herself the honour of waiting upon you, to pay her respects, before you leave Knowl for your temporary sojourn in another sphere. So, with another deep bowfor I had become a great personage all at oncehe let go my hand cautiously and delicately, as if he were setting down a curious china teacup. And I courtesied low to him, not knowing what to say, and then to the assembly generally, who all bowed. And Cousin Monica whispered, briskly, Come away, and took my hand with a very cold and rather damp one, and led me from the room. XXV I Hear from Uncle Silas Without saying a word, Cousin Monica accompanied me to the schoolroom, and on entering she shut the door, not with a spirited clang, but quietly and determinedly. Well, dear, she said, with the same pale, excited countenance, that certainly is a sensible and charitable arrangement. I could not have believed it possible, had I not heard it with my ears. About my going to BartramHaugh? Yes, exactly so, under Silas Ruthyns guardianship, to spend twothreeof the most important years of your education and your life under that roof. Is that, my dear, what was in your mind when you were so alarmed about what you were to be called upon to do, or undergo? No, no, indeed. I had no notion what it might be. I was afraid of something serious, I answered. And, my dear Maud, did not your poor father speak to you as if it was something serious? said she. And so it is, I can tell you, something serious, and very serious; and I think it ought to be prevented, and I certainly will prevent it if I possibly can. I was puzzled utterly by the intensity of Lady Knollys protest. I looked at her, expecting an explanation of her meaning; but she was silent, looking steadfastly on the jewels on her righthand fingers, with which she was drumming a staccato march on the table, very pale, with gleaming eyes, evidently thinking deeply. I began to think she had a prejudice against my uncle Silas. He is not very rich, I commenced. Who? said Lady Knollys. Uncle Silas, I replied. No, certainly; hes in debt, she answered. But then, how very highly Doctor Clay spoke of him! I pursued. Dont talk of Doctor Clay. I do think that man is the greatest goose I ever heard talk. I have no patience with such men, she replied. I tried to remember what particular nonsense Doctor Clay had uttered, and I could recollect nothing, unless his eulogy upon my uncle were to be classed with that sort of declamation. Danvers is a very proper man and a good accountant, I dare say; but he is either a very deep person, or a foolI believe a fool. As for your attorney, I suppose he knows his business, and also his interest, and I have no doubt he will consult it. I begin to think he best man among them, the shrewdest and the most reliable, is that vulgar visionary in the black wig. I saw him look at you, Maud, and I liked his face, though it is abominably ugly and vulgar, and cunning, too; but I think hes a just man, and I dare say with right feelingsIm sure he has. I was quite at a loss to divine the gist of my cousins criticism. Ill have some talk with Dr. Bryerly; I feel convinced he takes my view, and we must really think what had best be done. Is there anything in the will, Cousin Monica, that does not appear? I asked, for I was growing very uneasy. I wish you would tell me. What view do you mean? No view in particular; the view that a desolate old park, and the house of a neglected old man, who is very poor, and has been desperately foolish, is not the right place for you, particularly at your years. It is quite shocking, and I will speak to Doctor Bryerly. May I ring the bell, dear? Certainly; and I rang it. When does he leave Knowl? I could not tell. Mrs. Rusk, however, was sent for, and she could tell us that he had announced his intention of taking the night train from Drackleton, and was to leave Knowl for that station at halfpast six oclock. May Rusk give or send him a message from me, dear? asked Lady Knollys. Of course she might. Then please let him know that I request he will be so good as to allow me a very few minutes, just to say a word before he goes. You kind cousin! I said, placing my two hands on her shoulders, and looking earnestly in her face; you are anxious about me, more than you say. Wont you tell me why? I am much more unhappy, really, in ignorance, than if I understood the cause. Well, dear, havent I told you? The two or three years of your life which are to form you are destined to be passed in utter loneliness, and, I am sure, neglect. You cant estimate the disadvantage of such an arrangement. It is full of disadvantages. How it could have entered the head of poor Austinalthough I should not say that, for I am sure I do understand itbut how he could for any purpose have directed such a measure is quite inconceivable. I never heard of anything so foolish and abominable, and I will prevent it if I can. At that moment Mrs. Rusk announced that Doctor Bryerly would see Lady Knollys at any time she pleased before his departure. It shall be this moment, then, said the energetic lady, and up she stood, and made that hasty general adjustment before the glass, which, no matter under what circumstances, and before what sort of creature ones appearance is to be made, is a duty that every woman owes to herself. And I heard her a moment after, at the stairhead, directing Branston to let Dr. Bryerly know that she awaited him in the drawingroom. And now she was gone, and I began to wonder and speculate. Why should my cousin Monica make all this fuss about, after all, a very natural arrangement? My uncle, whatever he might have been, was now a good mana religious manperhaps a little severe; and with this thought a dark streak fell across my sky. A cruel disciplinarian! had I not read of such characters?lock and key, bread and water, and solitude! To sit locked up all night in a dark outoftheway room, in a great, ghosty, oldfashioned house, with no one nearer than the other wing. What years of horror in one such night! Would not this explain my poor fathers hesitation, and my cousin Monicas apparently disproportioned opposition? When an idea of terror presents itself to a young persons mind, it transfixes and fills the vision, without respect of probabilities or reason. My uncle was now a terrible old martinet, with long Bible lessons, lectures, pages of catechism, sermons to be conned by rote, and an awful catalogue of punishments for idleness, and what would seem to him impiety. I was going, then, to a frightful isolated reformatory, where for the first time in my life I should be subjected to a rigorous and perhaps barbarous discipline. All this was an exhalation of fancy, but it quite overcame me. I threw myself, in my solitude, on the floor, upon my knees, and prayed for deliveranceprayed that Cousin Monica might prevail with Doctor Bryerly, and both on my behalf with the Lord Chancellor, or the High Sheriff, or whoever else my proper deliverer might be; and when my cousin returned, she found me quite in an agony. Why, you little fool! what fancy has taken possession of you now? she cried. And when my new terror came to light, she actually laughed a little to reassure me, and she said My dear child, your uncle Silas will never put you through your duty to your neighbour; all the time you are under his roof youll have idleness and liberty enough, and too much, I fear. It is neglect, my dear, not discipline, that Im afraid of. I think, dear Cousin Monica, you are afraid of something more than neglect, I said, relieved, however. I am afraid of more than neglect, she replied promptly; but I hope my fears may turn out illusory, and that possibly they may be avoided. And now, for a few hours at least, let us think of something else. I rather like that Doctor Bryerly. I could not get him to say what I wanted. I dont think hes Scotch, but he is very cautious, and I am sure, though he would not say so, that he thinks of the matter exactly as I do. He says that those fine people, who are named as his cotrustees, wont take any trouble, and will leave everything to him, and I am sure he is right. So we must not quarrel with him, Maud, nor call him hard names, although he certainly is intolerably vulgar and ugly, and at times very nearly impertinentI suppose without knowing, or indeed very much caring. We had a good deal to think of, and talked incessantly. There were bursts and interruptions of grief, and my kind cousins consolations. I have often since been so lectured for giving way to grief, that I wonder at the patience exercised by her during this irksome visit. Then there was some reading of that book whose claims are always felt in the terrible days of affliction. After that we had a walk in the yew garden, that quaint little cloistered quadranglethe most solemn, sad, and antiquated of gardens.

And now, my dear, I must really leave you for two or three hours. I have ever so many letters to write, and my people must think Im dead by this time. So till teatime I had poor Mary Quince, with her gushes of simple prattle and her long fits of vacant silence, for my companion. And such a one, who can con over by rote the old friendly gossip about the dead, talk about their ways, and looks, and likings, without much psychologic refinement, but with a simple admiration and liking that never measured them critically, but always with faith and love, is in general about as comfortable a companion as one can find for the common moods of grief. It is not easy to recall in calm and happy hours the sensations of an acute sorrow that is past. Nothing, by the merciful ordinance of God, is more difficult to remember than pain. One or two great agonies of that time I do remember, and they remain to testify of the rest, and convince me, though I can see it no more, how terrible all that period was. Next day was the funeral, that appalling necessity; smuggled away in whispers, by black familiars, unresisting, the beloved one leaves home, without a farewell, to darken those doors no more; henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light or warmth, without a voice near. Oh, Death, king of terrors! The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee. It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded. We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith. And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem. I was glad in a sort of agony when it was over. So long as it remained to be done, something of the catastrophe was still suspended. Now it was all over. The house so strangely empty. No ownerno master! I with my strange momentary liberty, bereft of that irreplaceable love, never quite prized until it is lost. Most people have experienced the dismay that underlies sorrow under such circumstances. The apartment of the poor outcast from life is now dismantled. Beds and curtains taken down, and furniture displaced; carpets removed, windows open and doors locked; the bedroom and anteroom were henceforward, for many a day, uninhabited. Every shocking change smote my heart like a reproach. I saw that day that Cousin Monica had been crying for the first time, I think, since her arrival at Knowl; and I loved her more for it, and felt consoled. My tears have often been arrested by the sight of another person weeping, and I never could explain why. But I believe that many persons experience the same odd reaction. The funeral was conducted, in obedience to his brief but peremptory direction, very privately and with little expense. But of course there was an attendance, and the tenants of the Knowl estate also followed the hearse to the mausoleum, as it is called, in the park, where he was laid beside my dear mother. And so the repulsive ceremonial of that dreadful day was over. The grief remained, but there was rest from the fatigue of agitation, and a comparative calm supervened. It was now the stormy equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of autumn, and marches the winter in. I love, and always did, that grand undefinable music, threatening and bewailing, with its strange soul of liberty and desolation. By this nights mail, as we sat listening to the storm, in the drawingroom at Knowl, there reached me a large letter with a great black seal, and a wonderfully deepblack border, like a widows crape. I did not recognise the handwriting; but on opening the funereal missive, it proved to be from my uncle Silas, and was thus expressed. My Dearest NieceThis letter will reach you, probably, on the day which consigns the mortal remains of my beloved brother, Austin, your dear father, to the earth. Sad ceremony, from taking my mournful part in which I am excluded by years, distance, and broken health. It will, I trust, at this season of desolation, be not unwelcome to remember that a substitute, imperfectunworthybut most affectionately zealous, for the honoured parent whom you have just lost, has been appointed, in me, your uncle, by his will. I am aware that you were present during the reading of it, but I think it will be for our mutual satisfaction that our new and more affectionate relations should be forthwith entered upon. My conscience and your safety, and I trust convenience, will thereby be consulted. You will, my dear niece, remain at Knowl, until a few simple arrangements shall have been completed for your reception at this place. I will then settle the details of your little journey to us, which shall be performed as comfortably and easily as possible. I humbly pray that this affliction may be sanctified to us all, and that in our new duties we may be supported, comforted, and directed. I need not remind you that I now stand to you in loco parentis, which means in the relation of father, and you will not forget that you are to remain at Knowl until you hear further from me. I remain, my dear niece, your most affectionate uncle and guardian, Silas Ruthyn. P.S.Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle, is not the most desirable companion for his ward. But upon the express condition that I am not made the subject of your discussionsa distinction which could not conduce to your forming a just and respectful estimate of meI do not interpose my authority to bring your intercourse to an immediate close. As I read this postscript, my cheek tingled as if I had received a box on the ear. Uncle Silas was as yet a stranger. The menace of authority was new and sudden, and I felt with a pang of mortification the full force of the position in which my dear fathers will had placed me. I was silent, and handed the letter to my cousin, who read it with a kind of smile until she came, as I supposed, to the postscript, when her countenance, on which my eyes were fixed, changed, and with flushed cheeks she knocked the hand that held the letter on the table before her, and exclaimed Did I ever hear! Well, if this isnt impertinence! What an old man that is! There was a pause, during which Lady Knollys held her head high with a frown, and sniffed a little. I did not intend to talk about him, but now I will. Ill talk away just whatever I like; and Ill stay here just as long as you let me, Maud, and you need not be one atom afraid of him. Our intercourse to an immediate close, indeed! I only wish he were here. He should hear something! And Cousin Monica drank off her entire cup of tea at one draught, and then she said, more in her own way Im better! and drew a long breath, and then she laughed a little in a waggish defiance. I wish we had him here, Maud, and would not we give him a bit of our minds! And this before the poor will is so much as proved! I am almost glad he wrote that postscript; for although I dont think he has any authority in that matter while I am under my own roof, I said, extemporising a legal opinion, and, therefore, shant obey him, it has somehow opened my eyes to my real situation. I sighed, I believe, very desolately, for Lady Knollys came over and kissed me very gently and affectionately. It really seems, Maud, as if he had a supernatural sense, and heard things through the air over fifty miles of heath and hill. You remember how, just as he was probably writing that very postscript yesterday, I was urging you to come and stay with me, and planning to move Dr. Bryerly in our favour. And so I will, Maud, and to me you shall comemy guest, mindI should be so delighted; and really if Silas is under a cloud, it has been his own doing, and I dont see that it is your business to fight his battle. He cant live very long. The suspicion, whatever it is dies with him, and what could poor dear Austin prove by his will but what everybody knew quite well beforehis own strong belief in Silass innocence? What an awful storm! The room trembles. Dont you like the sound? What they used to call wolving in the old organ at Dorminster! XXVI The Story of Uncle Silas And so it was like the yelling of phantom hounds and hunters, and the thunder of their coursers in the aira furious, grand and supernatural music, which in my fancy made a suitable accompaniment to the discussion of that enigmatical personmartyrangeldemonUncle Silaswith whom my fate was now so strangely linked, and whom I had begun to fear. The storm blows from that point, I said, indicating it with my hand and eye, although the window shutters and curtains were closed. I saw all the trees bend that way this evening. That way stands the great lonely wood, where my darling father and mother lie. Oh, how dreadful on nights like this, to think of thema vault!damp, and dark, and solitaryunder the storm. Cousin Monica looked wistfully in the same direction, and with a short sigh she said We think too much of the poor remains, and too little of the spirit which lives forever. I am sure they are happy. And she sighed again. I wish I dare hope as confidently for myself. Yes, Maud, it is sad. We are such materialists, we cant help feeling so. We forget how well it is for us that our present bodies are not to last always. They are constructed for a time and place of troubleplainly mere temporary machines that wear out, constantly exhibiting failure and decay, and with such tremendous capacity for pain. The body lies alone, and so it ought, for it is plainly its good Creators will; it is only the tabernacle, not the person, who is clothed upon after death, Saint Paul says, with a house which is from heaven. So Maud, darling, although the thought will trouble us again and again, there is nothing in it; and the poor mortal body is only the cold ruin of a habitation which they have forsaken before we do. So this great wind, you say, is blowing toward us from the wood there. If so, Maud, it is blowing from BartramHaugh, too, over the trees and chimneys of that old place, and the mysterious old man, who is quite right in thinking I dont like him; and I can fancy him an old enchanter in his castle, waving his familiar spirits on the wind to fetch and carry tidings of our occupations here. I lifted my head and listened to the storm, dying away in the distance sometimessometimes swelling and pealing around and above usand through the dark and solitude my thoughts sped away to BartramHaugh and Uncle Silas. This letter, I said at last, makes me feel differently. I think he is a stern old manis he? It is twenty years, now, since I saw him, answered Lady Knollys. I did not choose to visit at his house. Was that before the dreadful occurrence at BartramHaugh? Yesbefore, dear. He was not a reformed rake, but only a ruined one then. Austin was very good to him. Mr. Danvers says it is quite unaccountable how Silas can have made away with the immense sums he got from his brother from time to time without benefiting himself in the least. But, my dear, he played; and trying to help a man who plays, and is unluckyand some men are, I believe, habitually unluckyis like trying to fill a vessel that has no bottom. I think, by the by, my hopeful nephew, Charles Oakley, plays. Then Silas went most unjustifiably into all manner of speculations, and your poor father had to pay everything. He lost something quite astounding in that bank that ruined so many country gentlemenpoor Sir Harry Shackleton, in Yorkshire, had to sell half his estate. But your kind father went on helping him, up to his marriageI mean in that extravagant way which was really totally useless. Has my aunt been long dead? Twelve or fifteen yearsmore, indeedshe died before your poor mamma. She was very unhappy, and I am sure would have given her right hand she had never married Silas. Did you like her? No, dear; she was a coarse, vulgar woman. Coarse and vulgar, and Uncle Silass wife! I echoed in extreme surprise, for Uncle Silas was a man of fashiona beau in his dayand might have married women of good birth and fortune, I had no doubt, and so I expressed myself. Yes, dear; so he might, and poor dear Austin was very anxious he should, and would have helped him with a handsome settlement, I dare say, but he chose to marry the daughter of a Denbigh innkeeper. How utterly incredible! I exclaimed. Not the least incredible, deara kind of thing not at all so uncommon as you fancy. What!a gentleman of fashion and refinement marry a person A barmaid!just so, said Lady Knollys. I think I could count half a dozen men of fashion who, to my knowledge, have ruined themselves just in a similar way. Well, at all events, it must be allowed that in this he proved himself altogether unworldly. Not a bit unworldly, but very vicious, replied Cousin Monica, with a careless little laugh. She was very beautiful, curiously beautiful, for a person in her station. She was very like that Lady Hamilton who was Nelsons sorceresselegantly beautiful, but perfectly low and stupid. I believe, to do him justice, he only intended to ruin her; but she was cunning enough to insist upon marriage. Men who have never in all their lives denied themselves the indulgence of a single fancy, cost what it may, will not be baulked even by that condition if the penchant be only violent enough. I did not half understand this piece of worldly psychology, at which Lady Knollys seemed to laugh. Poor Silas, certainly he struggled honestly against the consequences, for he tried after the honeymoon to prove the marriage bad. But the Welsh parson and the innkeeper papa were too strong for him, and the young lady was able to hold her struggling swain fast in that respectable nooseand a pretty prize he proved! And she died, poor thing, brokenhearted, I heard. She died, at all events, about ten years after her marriage; but I really cant say about her heart. She certainly had enough illusage, I believe, to kill her; but I dont know that she had feeling enough to die of it, if it had not been that she drank I am told that Welsh women often do. There was jealousy, of course, and brutal quarrelling, and all sorts of horrid stories. I visited at BartramHaugh for a year or two, though no one else would. But when that sort of thing began, of course I gave it up; it was out of the question. I dont think poor Austin ever knew how bad it was. And then came that odious business about wretched Mr. Charke. You know hehe committed suicide at Bartram. I never heard about that, I said; and we both paused, and she looked sternly at the fire, and the storm roared and hahaed till the old house shook again. But Uncle Silas could not help that, I said at last. No, he could not help it, she acquiesced unpleasantly. And Uncle Silas wasI paused in a sort of fear. He was suspected by some people of having killed himshe completed the sentence. There was another long pause here, during which the storm outside bellowed and hooted like an angry mob roaring at the windows for a victim. An intolerable and sickening sensation overpowered me. But you did not suspect him, Cousin Knollys? I said, trembling very much. No, she answered very sharply. I told you so before. Of course I did not. There was another silence. I wish, Cousin Monica, I said, drawing close to her, you had not said that about Uncle Silas being like a wizard, and sending his spirits on the wind to listen. But Im very glad you never suspected him. I insinuated my cold hand into hers, and looked into her face I know not with what expression. She looked down into mine with a hard, haughty stare, I thought. Of course I never suspected him; and never ask me that question again, Maud Ruthyn. Was it family pride, or what was it, that gleamed so fiercely from her eyes as she said this? I was frightenedI was woundedI burst into tears. What is my darling crying for? I did not mean to be cross. Was I cross? said this momentary phantom of a grim Lady Knollys, in an instant translated again into kind, pleasant Cousin Monica, with her arms about my neck. No, no, indeedonly I thought I had vexed you; and, I believe, thinking of Uncle Silas makes me nervous, and I cant help thinking of him nearly always. Nor can I, although we might both easily find something better to think of. Suppose we try? said Lady Knollys. But, first, I must know a little more about that Mr. Charke, and what circumstances enabled Uncle Silass enemies to found on his death that wicked slander, which has done no one any good, and caused some persons so much misery. There is Uncle Silas, I may say, ruined by it; and we all know how it darkened the life of my dear father. People will talk, my dear. Your uncle Silas had injured himself before that in the opinion of the people of his county. He was a black sheep, in fact. Very bad stories were told and believed of him. His marriage certainly was a disadvantage, you know, and the miserable scenes that went on in his disreputable houseall that predisposed people to believe ill of him. How long is it since it happened? Oh, a long time; I think before you were born, answered she. And the injustice still livesthey have not forgotten it yet? said I, for such a period appeared to me long enough to have consigned anything in its nature perishable to oblivion. Lady Knollys smiled. Tell me, like a darling cousin, the whole story as well as you can recollect it. Who was Mr. Charke? Mr. Charke, my dear, was a gentleman on the turfthat is the phrase, I thinkone of those London men, without birth or breeding, who merely in right of their vices and their money are admitted to associate with young dandies who like hounds and horses, and all that sort of thing. That set knew him very well, but of course no one else. He was at the Matlock races, and your uncle asked him to BartramHaugh; and the creature, Jew or Gentile, whatever he was, fancied there was more honour than, perhaps, there really was in a visit to BartramHaugh. For the kind of person you describe, it was, I think, a rather unusual honour to be invited to stay in the house of a man of Uncle Ruthyns birth. Well, so it was perhaps; for though they knew him very well on the course, and would ask him to their tavern dinners, they would not, of course, admit him to the houses where ladies were. But Silass wife was not much regarded at BartramHaugh. Indeed, she was very little seen, for she was every evening tipsy in her bedroom, poor woman! How miserable! I exclaimed. I dont think it troubled Silas very much, for she drank gin, they said, poor thing, and the expense was not much; and, on the whole, I really think he was glad she drank, for it kept her out of his way, and was likely to kill her. At this time your poor father, who was thoroughly disgusted at his marriage, had stopped the supplies, you know, and Silas was very poor, and as hungry as a hawk, and they said he pounced upon this rich London gamester, intending to win his money. I am telling you now all that was said afterwards. The races lasted I forget how many days, and Mr. Charke stayed at BartramHaugh all this time and for some days after. It was thought that poor Austin would pay all Silass gambling debts, and so this wretched Mr. Charke made heavy wagers with him on the races, and they played very deep, besides, at Bartram. He and Silas used to sit up at night at cards. All these particulars, as I told you, came out afterwards, for there was an inquest, you know, and then Silas published what he called his statement, and there was a great deal of most distressing correspondence in the newspapers. And why did Mr. Charke kill himself? I asked. Well, I will tell you first what all are agreed about. The second night after the races, your uncle and Mr. Charke sat up till between two and three oclock in the morning, quite by themselves, in the parlour. Mr. Charkes servant was at the Stags Head Inn at Feltram, and therefore could throw no light upon what occurred at night at BartramHaugh; but he was there at six oclock in the morning, and very early at his masters door by his direction. He had locked it, as was his habit, upon the inside, and the key was in the lock, which turned out afterwards a very important point. On knocking he found that he could not awaken his master, because, as it appeared when the door was forced open, his master was lying dead at his bedside, not in a pool, but a perfect pond of blood, as they described it, with his throat cut. How horrible! cried I. So it was. Your uncle Silas was called up, and greatly shocked of course, and he did what I believe was best. He had everything left as nearly as possible in the exact state in which it had been found, and he sent his own servant forthwith for the coroner, and, being himself a justice of the peace, he took the depositions of Mr. Charkes servant while all the incidents were still fresh in his memory. Could anything be more straightforward, more right and wise? I said. Oh, nothing of course, answered Lady Knollys, I thought a little drily. XXVII More About Tom Charkes Suicide So the inquest was held, and Mr. Manwaring, of Wail Forest, was the only juryman who seemed to entertain the idea during the inquiry that Mr. Charke had died by any hand but his own. And how could he fancy such a thing? I exclaimed indignantly. Well, you will see the result was quite enough to justify them in saying as they did, that he died by his own hand. The window was found fastened with a screw on the inside, as it had been when the chambermaid had arranged it at nine oclock; no one could have entered through it. Besides, it was on the third story, and the rooms are lofty, so it stood at a great height from the ground, and there was no ladder long enough to reach it. The house is built in the form of a hollow square, and Mr. Charkes room looked into the narrow courtyard within. There is but one door leading into this, and it did not show any sign of having been open for years. The door was locked upon the inside, and the key in the lock, so that nobody could have made an entrance that way either, for it was impossible, you see, to unlock the door from the outside. And how could they affect to question anything so clear? I asked. There did come, nevertheless, a kind of mist over the subject, which gave those who chose to talk unpleasantly an opportunity of insinuating suspicions, though they could not themselves find the clue of the mystery. In the first place, it appeared that he had gone to bed very tipsy, and that he was heard singing and noisy in his room while getting to bednot the mood in which men make away with themselves. Then, although his own razor was found in that dreadful blood (it is shocking to have to hear all this) near his right hand, the fingers of his left were cut to the bone. Then the memorandum book in which his bets were noted was nowhere to be found. That, you know, was very odd. His keys were there attached to a chain. He wore a great deal of gold and trinkets. I saw him, wretched man, on the course. They had got off their horses. He and your uncle were walking on the course. Did he look like a gentleman? I inquired, as I dare say, other young ladies would. He looked like a Jew, my dear. He had a horrid brown coat with a velvet cape, curling black hair over his collar, and great whiskers, very high shoulders, and he was puffing a cigar straight up into the air. I was shocked to see Silas in such company. And did his keys discover anything? I asked. On opening his travelling desk and a small japanned box within it a vast deal less money was found than was expectedin fact, very little. Your uncle said that he had won some of it the night before at play, and that Charke complained to him when tipsy of having had severe losses to counterbalance his gains on the races. Besides, he had been paid but a small part of those gains. About his book it appeared that there were little notes of bets on the backs of letters, and it was said that he sometimes made no other memorandum of his wagersbut this was disputedand among those notes there was not one referring to Silas. But, then, there was an omission of all allusion to his transactions with two other wellknown gentlemen. So that was not singular. No, certainly; that was quite accounted for, said I. And then came the question, continued she, what motive could Mr. Charke possibly have had for making away with himself. But is not that very difficult to make out in many cases? I interposed. It was said that he had some mysterious troubles in London, at which he used to hint. Some people said that he really was in a scrape, but others that there was no such thing, and that when he talked so he was only jesting. There was no suspicion during the inquest that your uncle Silas was involved, except those questions of Mr. Manwarings. What were they? I asked. I really forget; but they greatly offended your uncle, and there was a little scene in the room. Mr. Manwaring seemed to think that someone had somehow got into the room. Through the door it could not be, nor down the chimney, for they found an iron bar across the flue, near the top in the masonry. The window looked into a courtyard no bigger than a ballroom. They went down and examined it, but, though the ground beneath was moist, they could not discover the slightest trace of a footprint. So far as they could make out, Mr. Charke had hermetically sealed himself into his room, and then cut his throat with his own razor. Yes, said I, for it was all securedthat is, the window and the doorupon the inside, and no sign of any attempt to get in. Just so; and when the walls were searched, and, as your uncle Silas directed, the wainscoting removed, some months afterwards, when the scandal grew loudest, then it was evident that there was no concealed access to the room. So the answer to all those calumnies was simply that the crime was impossible, said I. How dreadful that such a slander should have required an answer at all! It was an unpleasant affair even then, although I cannot say that anyone supposed Silas guilty; but you know the whole thing was disreputable, that Mr. Charke was a discreditable inmate, the occurrence was horrible, and there was a glare of publicity which brought into relief the scandals of BartramHaugh. But in a little time it became, all on a sudden, a great deal worse. My cousin paused to recollect exactly. There were very disagreeable whispers among the sporting people in London. This person, Charke, had written two letters. Yestwo. They were published about two months after, by the villain to whom they were written; he wanted to extort money. They were first talked of a great deal among that set in town; but the moment they were published they produced a sensation in the country, and a storm of newspaper commentary. The first of these was of no great consequence, but the second was very startling, embarrassing, and even alarming. What was it, Cousin Monica? I whispered. I can only tell you in a general way, it is so very long since I read it; but both were written in the same kind of slang, and parts as hard to understand as a prize fight. I hope you never read those things. I satisfied this sudden educational alarm, and Lady Knollys proceeded. I am afraid you hardly hear me, the wind makes such an uproar. Well, listen. The letter said distinctly, that he, Mr. Charke, had made a very profitable visit to BartramHaugh, and mentioned in exact figures for how much he held your uncle Silass I.O.U.s, for he could not pay him. I cant say what the sum was. I only remember that it was quite frightful. It took away my breath when I read it. Uncle Silas had lost it? I asked. Yes, and owed it; and had given him those papers called I.O.U.s promising to pay, which, of course, Mr. Charke had locked up with his money; and the insinuation was that Silas had made away with him, to get rid of this debt, and that he had also taken a great deal of his money. I just recollect these points which were exactly what made the impression, continued Lady Knollys, after a short pause; the letter was written in the evening of the last day of the wretched mans life, so that there had not been much time for your uncle Silas to win back his money; and he stoutly alleged that he did not owe Mr. Charke a guinea. It mentioned an enormous sum as being actually owed by Silas; and it cautioned the man, an agent, to whom he wrote, not to mention the circumstance, as Silas could only pay by getting the money from his wealthy brother, who would have the management; and he distinctly said that he had kept the matter very close at Silass request. That, you know, was a very awkward letter, and all the worse that it was written in brutally high spirits, and not at all like a man meditating an exit from the world. You cant imagine what a sensation the publication of these letters produced. In a moment the storm was up, and certainly Silas did meet it bravelyyes, with great courage and ability. What a pity he did not early enter upon some career of ambition! Well, well, it is idle regretting. He suggested that the letters were forgeries. He alleged that Charke was in the habit of boasting, and telling enormous falsehoods about his gambling transactions, especially in his letters. He reminded the world how often men affect high animal spirits at the very moment of meditating suicide. He alluded, in a manly and graceful way, to his family and their character. He took a high and menacing tone with his adversaries, and he insisted that what they dared to insinuate against him was physically impossible. I asked in what form this vindication appeared. It was a letter, printed as a pamphlet; everybody admired its ability, ingenuity, and force, and it was written with immense rapidity. Was it at all in the style of his letters? I innocently asked. My cousin laughed. Oh, dear, no! Ever since he avowed himself a religious character, he had written nothing but the most vapid and nerveless twaddle. Your poor dear father used to send his letters to me to read, and I sometimes really thought that Silas was losing his faculties; but I believe he was only trying to write in character. I suppose the general feeling was in his favour? I said. I dont think it was, anywhere; but in his own county it was certainly unanimously against him. There is no use in asking why; but so it was, and I think it would have been easier for him with his unaided strength to uproot the Peak than to change the convictions of the Derbyshire gentlemen. They were all against him. Of course there were predisposing causes. Your uncle published a very bitter attack upon them, describing himself as the victim of a political conspiracy and I recollect he mentioned that from the hour of the shocking catastrophe in his house, he had forsworn the turf and all pursuits and amusements connected with it. People sneered, and said he might as well go as wait to be kicked out. Were there lawsuits about all this? I asked. Everybody expected that there would, for there were very savage things printed on both sides, and I think, too, that the persons who thought worst of him expected that evidence would yet turn up to convict Silas of the crime they chose to impute; and so years have glided away, and many of the people who remembered the tragedy of BartramHaugh, and took the strongest part in the denunciation, and ostracism that followed, are dead, and no new light had been thrown upon the occurrence, and your uncle Silas remains an outcast. At first he was quite wild with rage, and would have fought the whole county, man by man, if they would have met him. But he had since changed his habits and, as he says, his aspirations altogether. He has become religious. The only occupation remaining to him.

He owes money; he is poor; he is isolated; and he says, sick and religious. Your poor father, who was very decided and inflexible, never helped him beyond the limit he had prescribed, after Silass msalliance. He wanted to get him into Parliament, and would have paid his expenses, and made him an allowance; but either Silas had grown lazy, or he understood his position better than poor Austin, or he distrusted his powers, or possibly he really is in illhealth; but he objected his religious scruples. Your poor papa thought selfassertion possible, where an injured man has right to rely upon, but he had been very long out of the world, and the theory wont do. Nothing is harder than to get a person who has once been effectually slurred, received again. Silas, I think, was right. I dont think it was practicable. Dear child, how late it is! exclaimed Lady Knollys suddenly, looking at the Louis Quatorze clock, that crowned the mantelpiece. It was near one oclock. The storm had a little subsided, and I took a less agitated and more confident view of Uncle Silas than I had at an earlier hour of that evening. And what do you think of him? I asked. Lady Knollys drummed on the table with her finger points as she looked into the fire. I dont understand metaphysics, my dear, nor witchcraft. I sometimes believe in the supernatural, and sometimes I dont. Silas Ruthyn is himself alone, and I cant define him, because I dont understand him. Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in flesh. It is not only about that dreadful occurrence, but nearly always throughout his life; early and late he has puzzled me. I have tried in vain to understand him. But at one time of his life I am sure he was awfully wickedeccentric indeed in his wickednessgay, frivolous, secret, and dangerous. At one time I think he could have made poor Austin do almost anything; but his influence vanished with his marriage, never to return again. No; I dont understand him. He always bewildered me, like a shifting face, sometimes smiling, but always sinister, in an unpleasant dream. XXVIII I Am Persuaded So now at last I had heard the story of Uncle Silass mysterious disgrace. We sat silent for a while, and I, gazing into vacancy, sent him in a chariot of triumph, chapletted, ringed, and robed through the city of imagination, crying after him, Innocent! innocent! martyr and crowned! All the virtues and honesties, reason and conscience, in myriad shapestier above tier of human facesfrom the crowded pavement, crowded windows, crowded roofs, joined in the jubilant acclamation, and trumpeters trumpeted, and drums rolled, and great organs and choirs through open cathedral gates, rolled anthems of praise and thanksgiving, and the bells rang out, and cannons sounded, and the air trembled with the roaring harmony; and Silas Ruthyn, the fulllength portrait, stood in the burnished chariot, with a proud, sad, clouded face, that rejoiced not with the rejoicers, and behind him the slave, thin as a ghost, whitefaced, and sneering something in his ear While I and all the city went on crying Innocent! innocent! martyr and crowned! And now the reverie was ended; and there were only Lady Knollys stern, thoughtful face, with the pale light of sarcasm on it, and the storm outside thundering and lamenting desolately. It was very good of Cousin Monica to stay with me so long. It must have been unspeakably tiresome. And now she began to talk of business at home, and plainly to prepare for immediate flight, and my heart sank. I know that I could not then have defined my feelings and agitations. I am not sure that I even now could. Any misgiving about Uncle Silas was, in my mind, a questioning the foundations of my faith, and in itself an impiety. And yet I am not sure that some such misgiving, faint, perhaps, and intermittent, may not have been at the bottom of my tribulation. I was not very well. Lady Knollys had gone out for a walk. She was not easily tired, and sometimes made a long excursion. The sun was setting now, when Mary Quince brought me a letter which had just arrived by the post. My heart throbbed violently. I was afraid to break the broad black seal. It was from Uncle Silas. I ran over in my mind all the unpleasant mandates which it might contain, to try and prepare myself for a shock. At last I opened the letter. It directed me to hold myself in readiness for the journey to BartramHaugh. It stated that I might bring two maids with me if I wished so many, and that his next letter would give me the details of my route, and the day of my departure for Derbyshire; and he said that I ought to make arrangements about Knowl during my absence, but that he was hardly the person properly to be consulted on that matter. Then came a prayer that he might be enabled to acquit himself of his trust to the full satisfaction of his conscience, and that I might enter upon my new relations in a spirit of prayer. I looked round my room, so long familiar, and now so endeared by the idea of parting and change. The old housedear, dear Knowl, how could I leave you and all your affectionate associations, and kind looks and voices, for a strange land! With a great sigh I took Uncle Silass letter, and went downstairs to the drawingroom. From the lobby window, where I loitered for a few moments, I looked out upon the wellknown foresttrees. The sun was down. It was already twilight, and the white vapours of coming night were already filming their thinned and yellow foliage. Everything looked melancholy. How little did those who envied the young inheritrex of a princely fortune suspect the load that lay at her heart, or, bating the fear of death, how gladly at that moment she would have parted with her life! Lady Knollys had not yet returned, and it was darkening rapidly; a mass of black clouds stood piled in the west, through the chasms of which was still reflected a pale metallic lustre. The drawingroom was already very dark; but some streaks of this cold light fell upon a black figure, which would otherwise have been unseen, leaning beside the curtains against the window frame. It advanced abruptly, with creaking shoes; it was Doctor Bryerly. I was startled and surprised, not knowing how he had got there. I stood staring at him in the dusk rather awkwardly, I am afraid. How do you do, Miss Ruthyn? said he, extending his hand, long, hard, and brown as a mummys, and stooping a little so as to approach more nearly, for it was not easy to see in the imperfect light. Youre surprised, I dare say, to see me here so soon again? I did not know you had arrived. I am glad to see you, Doctor Bryerly. Nothing unpleasant, I hope, has happened? No, nothing unpleasant, Miss. The will has been lodged, and we shall have probate in due course; but there has been something on my mind, and Im come to ask you two or three questions which you had better answer very considerately. Is Miss Knollys still here? Yes, but she is not returned from her walk. I am glad she is here. I think she takes a sound view, and women understand one another better. As for me, it is plainly my duty to put it before you as it strikes me, and to offer all I can do in accomplishing, should you wish it, a different arrangement. You dont know your uncle, you said the other day? No, Ive never seen him. You understand your late fathers intention in making you his ward? I suppose he wished to show his high opinion of my uncles fitness for such a trust. Thats quite true; but the nature of the trust in this instance is extraordinary. I dont understand. Why, if you die before you come to the age of twentyone, the entire of the property will go to himdo you see?and he has the custody of your person in the meantime; you are to live in his house, under his care and authority. You see now, I think, how it is; and I did not like it when your father read the will to me, and I said so. Do you? I hesitated to speak, not sure that I quite comprehended him. And the more I think of it, the less I like it, Miss, said Doctor Bryerly, in a calm, stern tone. Merciful Heaven! Doctor Bryerly, you cant suppose that I should not be as safe in my uncles house as in the Lord Chancellors? I ejaculated, looking full in his face. But dont you see, Miss, it is not a fair position to put your uncle in, replied he, after a little hesitation. But suppose he does not think so. You know, if he does, he may decline it. Well thats truebut he wont. Here is his letterand he produced itannouncing officially that he means to accept the office; but I think he ought to be told it is not delicate, under all circumstances. You know, Miss, that your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, was talked about unpleasantly once. You meanI began. I mean about the death of Mr. Charke, at BartramHaugh. Yes, I have heard that, I said; he was speaking with a shocking aplomb. We assume, of course, unjustly; but there are many who think quite differently. And possibly, Doctor Bryerly, it was for that very reason that my dear papa made him my guardian. There can be no doubt of that, Miss; it was to purge him of that scandal. And when he has acquitted himself honourably of that trust, dont you think such a proof of confidence so honourably fulfilled must go far to silence his traducers? Why, if all goes well, it may do a little; but a great deal less than you fancy. But take it that you happen to die, Miss, during your minority. We are all mortal, and there are three years and some months to go; how will it be then? Dont you see? Just fancy how people will talk. I think you know that my uncle is a religious man? said I. Well, Miss, what of that? he asked again. He ishe has suffered intensely, I continued. He has long retired from the world; he is very religious. Ask our curate, Mr. Fairfield, if you doubt it. But I am not disputing it, Miss; Im only supposing what may happenan accident, well call it smallpox, diphtheria, thats going very much. Three years and three months, you know, is a long time. You proceed to BartramHaugh, thinking you have much goods laid up for many years; but your Creator, you know, may say, Thou fool, this day is thy soul required of thee. You goand what pray is thought of your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, who walks in for the entire inheritance, and who has long been abused like a pickpocket, or worse, in his own county, Im told? You are a religious man, Doctor Bryerly, according to your lights? I said. The Swedenborgian smiled. Well, knowing that he is so too, and having yourself experienced the power of religion, do not you think him deserving of every confidence? Dont you think it well that he should have this opportunity of exhibiting both his own character and the reliance which my dear papa reposed on it, and that we should leave all consequences and contingencies in the hands of Heaven? It appears to have been the will of Heaven hitherto, said Doctor BryerlyI could not see with what expression of face, but he was looking down, and drawing little diagrams with his stick on the dark carpet, and spoke in a very low tonethat your uncle should suffer under this ill report. In countervailing the appointment of Providence, we must employ our reason, with conscientious diligence, as to the means, and if we find that they are as likely to do mischief as good, we have no right to expect a special interposition to turn our experiment into an ordeal. I think you ought to weigh it wellI am sure there are reasons against it. If you make up your mind that you would rather be placed under the care, say of Lady Knollys, I will endeavour all I can to effect it. That could not be done without his consent, could it? said I. No, but I dont despair of getting thaton terms, of course, remarked he. I dont quite understand, I said. I mean, for instance, if he were allowed to keep the allowance for your maintenanceeh? I mistake my uncle Silas very much, I said, if that allowance is any object whatever to him compared with the moral value of the position. If he were deprived of that, I am sure he would decline the other. We might try him at all events, said Doctor Bryerly, on whose dark sinewy features, even in this imperfect light, I thought I detected a smile. Perhaps, said I, I appear very foolish in supposing him actuated by any but sordid motives; but he is my near relation, and I cant help it, sir. That is a very serious thing, Miss Ruthyn, he replied. You are very young, and cannot see it at present, as you will hereafter. He is very religious, you say, and all that, but his house is not a proper place for you. It is a solitudeits master an outcast, and it has been the repeated scene of all sorts of scandals, and of one great crime; and Lady Knollys thinks your having been domesticated there will be an injury to you all the days of your life. So I do, Maud, said Lady Knollys, who had just entered the room unperceivedHow do you do, Doctor Bryerly?a serious injury. You have no idea how entirely that house is condemned and avoided, and the very name of its inmates tabooed. How monstroushow cruel! I exclaimed. Very unpleasant, my dear, but perfectly natural. You are to recollect that quite independently of the story of Mr. Charke, the house was talked about, and the county people had cut your uncle Silas long before that adventure was dreamed of; and as to the circumstance of your being placed in his charge by his brother, who took, from strong family feeling, a totally onesided view of the affair from the first, having the slightest effect in restoring his position in the county, you must quite give that up. Except me, if he will allow me, and the clergyman, not a soul in the country will visit at BartramHaugh. They may pity you, and think the whole thing the climax of folly and cruelty; but they wont visit at Bartram, or know Silas, or have anything to do with his household. They will see, at all events, what my dear papas opinion was. They know that already, answered she, and it has not, and ought not to have, the slightest weight with them. There are people there who think themselves just as great as the Ruthyns, or greater; and your poor fathers idea of carrying it by a demonstration was simply the dream of a man who had forgotten the world, and learned to exaggerate himself in his long seclusion. I know he was beginning himself to hesitate; and I think if he had been spared another year that provision of his will would have been struck out. Doctor Bryerly nodded, and he said And if he had the power to dictate now, would he insist on that direction? It is a mistake every way, injurious to you, his child; and should you happen to die during your sojourn under your uncles care, it would woefully defeat the testators object, and raise such a storm of surmise and inquiry as would awaken all England, and send the old scandal on the wing through the world again. Doctor Bryerly will, I have no doubt, arrange it all. In fact, I do not think it would be very difficult to bring Silas to terms; and if you do not consent to his trying, Maud, mark my words, you will live to repent it. Here were two persons viewing the question from totally different points; both perfectly disinterested; both in their different ways, I believe, shrewd and even wise; and both honourable, urging me against it, and in a way that undefinably alarmed my imagination, as well as moved my reason. I looked from one to the otherthere was a silence. By this time the candles had come, and we could see one another. I only wait your decision, Miss Ruthyn, said the trustee, to see your uncle. If his advantage was the chief object contemplated in this arrangement, he will be the best judge whether his interest is really best consulted by it or no; and I think he will clearly see that it is not so, and will answer accordingly. I cannot answer nowyou must allow me to think it overI will do my best. I am very much obliged, my dear Cousin Monica, you are so very good, and you too, Doctor Bryerly. Doctor Bryerly by this time was looking into his pocketbook, and did not acknowledge my thanks even by a nod. I must be in London the day after tomorrow. BartramHaugh is nearly sixty miles from here, and only twenty of that by rail, I find. Forty miles of posting over those Derbyshire mountains is slow work; but if you say try, Ill see him tomorrow morning. You must say tryyou must, my dear Maud. But how can I decide in a moment? Oh, dear Cousin Monica, I am so distracted! But you need not decide at all; the decision rests with him. Come; he is more competent than you. You must say yes. Again I looked from her to Doctor Bryerly, and from him to her again. I threw my arms about her neck, and hugging her closely to me, I cried Oh, Cousin Monica, dear Cousin Monica, advise me. I am a wretched creature. You must advise me. I did not know till now how irresolute a character was mine. I knew somehow by the tone of her voice that she was smiling as she answered Why, dear, I have advised you; I do advise you; and then she added, impetuously, I entreat and implore, if you really think I love you, that you will follow my advice. It is your duty to leave your uncle Silas, whom you believe to be more competent than you are, to decide, after full conference with Doctor Bryerly, who knows more of your poor fathers views and intentions in making that appointment than either you or I. Shall I say, yes? I cried, drawing her close, and kissing her helplessly. Oh, tell metell me to say, yes. Yes, of course, yes. She agrees, Doctor Bryerly, to your kind proposal. I am to understand so? he asked. Very wellyes, Doctor Bryerly, I replied. You have resolved wisely and well, said he, briskly, like a man who has got a care off his mind. I forgot to say, Doctor Bryerlyit was very rudethat you must stay here tonight. He cant, my dear, interposed Lady Knollys; it is a long way. He will dine. Wont you, Doctor Bryerly? No; he cant. You know you cant, sir, said my cousin, peremptorily. You must not worry him, my dear, with civilities he cant accept. Hell bid us goodbye this moment. Goodbye, Doctor Bryerly. Youll write immediately; dont wait till you reach town. Bid him goodbye, Maud. Ill say a word to you in the hall. And thus she literally hurried him out of the room, leaving me in a state of amazement and confusion, not able to review my decisionunsatisfied, but still unable to recall it. I stood where they had left me, looking after them, I suppose, like a fool. Lady Knollys returned in a few minutes. If I had been a little cooler I was shrewd enough to perceive that she had sent poor Doctor Bryerly away upon his travels, to find board and lodging halfway to Bartram, to remove him forthwith from my presence, and thus to make my decisionif mine it wasirrevocable. I applaud you, my dear, said Cousin Knollys, in her turn embracing me heartily. You are a sensible little darling, and have done exactly what you ought to have done. I hope I have, I faltered. Hope? fiddle! stuff! the things as plain as a pikestaff. And in came Branston to say that dinner was served. XXIX How the Ambassador Fared Lady Knollys, I could plainly see, when we got into the brighter lights at the dinner table, was herself a good deal excited; she was relieved and glad, and was garrulous during our meal, and told me all her early recollections of dear papa. Most of them I had heard before; but they could not be told too often. Notwithstanding my mind sometimes wandered, often indeed, to the conference so unexpected, so suddenly decisive, possibly so momentous; and with a dismayed uncertainly, the questionhad I done right?was always before me. I dare say my cousin understood my character better, perhaps, after all my honest selfstudy, then I do even now. Irresolute, suddenly reversing my own decisions, impetuous in action as she knew me, she feared, I am sure, a revocation of my commission to Doctor Bryerly, and thought of the countermand I might send galloping after him. So, kind creature, she laboured to occupy my thoughts, and when one theme was exhausted found another, and had always her parry prepared as often as I directed a reflection or an enquiry to the reopening of the question which she had taken so much pains to close. That night I was troubled. I was already upbraiding myself. I could not sleep, and at last sat up in bed, and cried. I lamented my weakness in having assented to Doctor Bryerlys and my cousins advice. Was I not departing from my engagement to my dear papa? Was I not consenting that my Uncle Silas should be induced to second my breach of faith by a corresponding perfidy? Lady Knollys had done wisely in despatching Doctor Bryerly so promptly; for, most assuredly, had he been at Knowl next morning when I came down I should have recalled my commission. That day in the study I found four papers which increased my perturbation. They were in dear papas handwriting, and had an endorsement in these wordsCopy of my letter addressed to , one of the trustees named in my will. Here, then, were the contents of those four sealed letters which had excited mine and Lady Knollys curiosity on the agitating day on which the will was read. It contained these words I name my oppressed and unhappy brother, Silas Ruthyn, residing at my house of BartramHaugh, as guardian of the person of my beloved child, to convince the world if possible, and failing that, to satisfy at least all future generations of our family, that his brother, who knew him best, had implicit confidence in him, and that he deserved it. A cowardly and preposterous slander, originating in political malice, and which never have been whispered had he not been poor and imprudent, is best silenced by this ordeal of purification. All I possess goes to him if my child dies under age; and the custody of her person I commit meanwhile to him alone, knowing that she is as safe in his as she could have been under my own care. I rely upon your remembrance of our early friendship to make this known wherever an opportunity occurs, and also to say what your sense of justice may warrant. The other letters were in the same spirit. My heart sank like lead as I read them. I quaked with fear. What had I done? My fathers wise and noble vindication of our dishonoured name I had presumed to frustrate. I had, like a coward, receded from my easy share in the task; and, merciful Heaven, I had broken my faith with the dead! With these letters in my hand, white with fear, I flew like a shadow to the drawingroom where Cousin Monica was, and told her to read them. I saw by her countenance how much alarmed she was by my looks, but she said nothing, only read the letters hurriedly, and then exclaimed Is this all, my dear child? I really fancied you had found a second will, and had lost everything. Why, my dearest Maud, we knew all this before. We quite understood poor dear Austins motive. Why are you so easily disturbed? Oh, Cousin Monica, I think he was right; it all seems quite reasonable now; and Ioh, what a crime!it must be stopped. My dear Maud, listen to reason. Doctor Bryerly has seen your uncle at Bartram at least two hours ago. You cant stop it, and why on earth should you if you could? Dont you think your uncle should be consulted? said she. But he has decided. I have his letter speaking of it as settled; and Doctor Bryerlyoh, Cousin Monica, hes gone to tempt him. Nonsense, girl! Doctor Bryerly is a good and just man, I do believe, and has, beside, no imaginable motive to pervert either his conscience or his judgment. Hes not gone to tempt himstuff!but to unfold the facts and invite his consideration; and I say, considering how thoughtlessly such duties are often undertaken, and how long Silas has been living in lazy solitude, shut out from the world, and unused to discuss anything, I do think it only conscientious and honourable that he should have a fair and distinct view of the matter in all its bearings submitted to him before he indolently incurs what may prove the worst danger he was ever involved in. So Lady Knollys argued, with feminine energy, and I must confess, with a good deal of the repetition which I have sometimes observed in logicians of my own sex, and she puzzled without satisfying me. I dont know why I went to that room, I said, quite frightened; or why I went to that press; how it happened that these papers, which we never saw there before, were the first things to strike my eye today. What do you mean, dear? said Lady Knollys. I mean thisI think I was brought there, and that there is poor papas appeal to me, as plain as if his hand came and wrote it upon the wall. I nearly screamed the conclusion of this wild confession. You are nervous, my darling; your bad nights have worn you out. Let us go out; the air will do you good; and I do assure you that you will very soon see that we are quite right, and rejoice conscientiously that you have acted as you did. But I was not to be satisfied, although my first vehemence was quieted. In my prayers that night my conscience upbraided me. When I lay down in bed my nervousness returned fourfold. Everybody at all nervously excitable has suffered some time or another by the appearance of ghastly features presenting themselves in every variety of contortion, one after another, the moment the eyes are closed. This night my dear fathers face troubled mesometimes white and sharp as ivory, sometimes strangely transparent like glass, sometimes all hanging in cadaverous folds, always with the same unnatural expression of diabolical fury. From this dreadful vision I could only escape by sitting up and staring at the light. At length, worn out, I dropped asleep, and in a dream I distinctly heard papas voice say sharply outside the bedcurtainMaud, we shall be late at BartramHaugh. And I awoke in a horror, the wall, as it seemed, still ringing with the summons, and the speaker, I fancied, standing at the other side of the curtain. A miserable night I passed. In the morning, looking myself like a ghost, I stood in my nightdress by Lady Knollys bed. I have had my warning, I said. Oh, Cousin Monica, papa has been with me, and ordered me to BartramHaugh; and go I will. She stared in my face uncomfortably, and then tried to laugh the matter off; but I know she was troubled at the strange state to which agitation and suspense had reduced me. Youre taking too much for granted, Maud, said she; Silas Ruthyn, most likely, will refuse his consent, and insist on your going to BartramHaugh. Heaven grant! I exclaimed; but if he doesnt, it is all the same to me, go I will. He may turn me out, but Ill go, and try to expiate the breach of faith that I fear is so horribly wicked. We had several hours still to wait for the arrival of the post. For both of us the delay was a suspense; for me an almost agonising one. At length, at an unlookedfor moment, Branston did enter the room with the postbag. There was a large letter, with the Feltram postmark, addressed to Lady Knollysit was Doctor Bryerlys despatch; we read it together. It was dated on the day before, and its purport was thus Respected Madam, I this day saw Mr. Silas Ruthyn at BartramHaugh, and he peremptorily refuses, on any terms, to vacate the guardianship, or to consent to Miss Ruthyns residing anywhere but under his own immediate care. As he bases his refusal, first upon a conscientious difficulty, declaring that he has no right, through fear of personal contingencies, to abdicate an office imposed in so solemn a way, and so naturally devolving on him as only brother to the deceased; and secondly upon the effect such a withdrawal, at the instance of the acting trustee, would have upon his own character, amounting to a public selfcondemnation; and as he refused to discuss these positions with me, I could make no way whatsoever with him. Finding, therefore, that his mind was quite made up, after a short time I took my leave. He mentioned that preparations for his nieces reception are being completed, and that he will send for her in a few days; so that I think it will be advisable that I should go down to Knowl, to assist Miss Ruthyn with any advice she may require before her departure, to discharge servants, get inventories made, and provide for the care of the place and grounds during her minority. I am, respected Madam, yours truly, Hans E. Bryerly. I cant describe to you how chapfallen and angry my cousin looked. She sniffed once or twice, and then said, rather bitterly, in a subdued tone Well, now; I hope you are pleased? No, no, no; you know Im notgrieved to the heart, my only friend, my dear Cousin Monica; but my conscience is at rest; you dont know what a sacrifice it is; I am a most unhappy creature. I feel an indescribable foreboding. I am frightened; but you wont forsake me, Cousin Monica. No, darling, never, she said, sadly. And youll come and see me, wont you, as often as you can? Yes, dear; that is if Silas allows me; and Im sure he will, she added hastily, seeing, I suppose, my terror in my face. All I can do, you may be sure I will, and perhaps he will allow you to come to me, now and then, for a short visit. You know I am only six miles awaylittle more than half an hours drive, and though I hate Bartram, and detest SilasYes, I detest Silas, she repeated in reply to my surprised gazeI will call at Bartramthat is, I say, if he allows me; for, you know, I havent been there for a quarter of a century; and though I never understood Silas, I fancy he forgives no sins, whether of omission or commission. I wondered what old grudge could make my cousin judge Uncle Silas always so hardlyI could not suppose it was justice. I had seen my hero indeed lately so disrespectfully handled before my eyes, that he had, as idols will, lost something of his sacredness. But as an article of faith, I still cultivated my trust in his divinity, and dismissed every intruding doubt with an exorcism, as a suggestion of the evil one. But I wronged Lady Knollys in suspecting her of pique, or malice, or anything more than that tendency to take strong views which some persons attribute to my sex. So, then, the little project of Cousin Monicas guardianship, which, had it been poor papas wish, would have made me so very happy, was quite knocked on the head, to revive no more. I comforted myself, however, with her promise to reopen communications with BartramHaugh, and we grew resigned. I remember, next morning, as we sat at a very late breakfast, Lady Knollys, reading a letter, suddenly made an exclamation and a little laugh, and read on with increased interest for a few minutes, and then, with another little laugh, she looked up, placing her hand, with the open letter in it, beside her teacup. Youll not guess whom Ive been reading about, said she, with her head the least thing on one side, and an arch smile. I felt myself blushingcheeks, forehead, even down to the tips of my fingers. I anticipated the name I was to hear. She looked very much amused. Was it possible that Captain Oakley was married? I really have not the least idea, I replied, with that kind of overdone carelessness which betrays us. No, I see quite plainly you have not; but you cant think how prettily you blush, answered she, very much diverted. I really dont care, I replied, with some little dignity, and blushing deeper and deeper. Will you make a guess? she asked. I cant guess. Well, shall I tell you? Just as you please. Well, I willthat is, Ill read a page of my letter, which tells it all. Do you know Georgina Fanshawe? she asked. Lady Georgina? No. Well, no matter; shes in Paris now, and this letter is from her, and she sayslet me see the placeYesterday, what do you think?quite an apparition!you shall hear. My brother Craven yesterday insisted on my accompanying him to Le Bas shop in that odd little antique street near the Grve; it is a wonderful old curiosity shop. I forget what they call them here.

When we went into this place it was very nearly deserted, and there were so many curious things to look at all about, that for a minute or two I did not observe a tall woman, in a grey silk and a black velvet mantle, and quite a nice new Parisian bonnet. You will be charmed, by the by, with the new shapeit is only out three weeks, and is quite indescribably elegant, I think, at least. They have them, I am sure, by this time at Molnitzs, so I need say no more. And now that I am on this subject of dress, I have got your lace; and I think you will be very ungrateful if you are not charmed with it. Well, I need not read all thathere is the rest; and she read But youll ask about my mysterious dame in the new bonnet and velvet mantle; she was sitting on a stool at the counter, not buying, but evidently selling a quantity of stones and trinkets which she had in a cardbox, and the man was picking them up one by one, and, I suppose, valuing them. I was near enough to see such a darling little pearl cross, with at least half a dozen really good pearls in it, and had begun to covet them for my set, when the lady glanced over my shoulder, and she knew mein fact, we knew one anotherand who do you think she was? Wellyoull not guess in a week, and I cant wait so long; so I may as well tell you at onceshe was that horrid old Mademoiselle Blassemare whom you pointed out to me at Elverston; and I never forgot her face sincenor she, it seems, mine, for she turned away very quickly, and when I next saw her, her veil was down. Did not you tell me, Maud, that you had lost your pearl cross while that dreadful Madame de la Rougierre was here? Yes; but I know; but what has she to do with Mademoiselle de Blassemare, you were going to saythey are one and the same person. Oh, I perceive, answered I, with that dim sense of danger and dismay with which one hears suddenly of an enemy of whom one has lost sight for a time. Ill write and tell Georgie to buy that cross. I wager my life it is yours, said Lady Knollys, firmly. The servants, indeed, made no secret of their opinion of Madame de la Rougierre, and frankly charged her with a long list of larcenies. Even Anne Wixted, who had enjoyed her barren favour while the gouvernante was here, hinted privately that she had bartered a missing piece of lace belonging to me with a gipsy pedlar, for French gloves and an Irish poplin. And so surely as I find it is yours, Ill set the police in pursuit. But you must not bring me into court, said I, half amused and half alarmed. No occasion, my dear; Mary Quince and Mrs. Rusk can prove it perfectly. And why do you dislike her so very much? I asked. Cousin Monica leaned back in her chair, and searched the cornice from corner to corner with upturned eyes for the reason, and at last laughed a little, amused at herself. Well, really, it is not easy to define, and, perhaps, it is not quite charitable; but I know I hate her, and I know, you little hypocrite, you hate her as much as I; and we both laughed a little. But you must tell me all you know of her history. Her history? echoed she. I really know next to nothing about it; only that I used to see her sometimes about the place that Georgina mentions, and there were some unpleasant things said about her; but you know they may be all lies. The worst I know of her is her treatment of you, and her robbing the desk(Cousin Monica always called it her robbery)and I think thats enough to hang her. Suppose we go out for a walk? So together we went, and I resumed about Madame; but no more could I extractperhaps there was not much more to hear. XXX On the Road All at Knowl was indicative of the breakup that was so near at hand. Doctor Bryerly arrived according to promise. He was in a whirl of business all the time. He and Mr. Danvers conferred about the management of the estate. It was agreed that the grounds and gardens should be let, but not the house, of which Mrs. Rusk was to take the care. The gamekeeper remained in office, and some outdoor servants. But the rest were to go, except Mary Quince, who was to accompany me to BartramHaugh as my maid. Dont part with Quince, said Lady Knollys, peremptorily theyll want you, but dont. She kept harping on this point, and recurred to it half a dozen times every day. Theyll say, you know, that she is not fit for a ladys maid, as she certainly is not, if it in the least signified in such a wilderness as BartramHaugh; but she is attached, trustworthy, and honest; and those are qualities valuable everywhere, especially in a solitude. Dont allow them to get you a wicked young French milliner in her stead. Sometimes she said things that jarred unpleasantly on my nerves, and left an undefined sense of danger. Such as I know shes true to you, and a good creature; but is she shrewd enough? Or, with an anxious look I hope Mary Quince is not easily frightened. Or, suddenly Can Mary Quince write, in case you were ill? Or, Can she take a message exactly? Or, Is she a person of any enterprise and resource, and cool in an emergency? Now, these questions did not come all in a string, as I write them down here, but at long intervals, and were followed quickly by ordinary talk; but they generally escaped from my companion after silence and gloomy thought; and though I could extract nothing more defined than these questions, yet they seemed to me to point at some possible danger contemplated in my good cousins dismal ruminations. Another topic that occupied my cousins mind a good deal was obviously the larceny of my pearl cross. She made a note of the description furnished by the recollection, respectively, of Mary Quince, Mrs. Rusk, and myself. I had fancied her little vision of the police was no more than the result of a momentary impulse; but really, to judge by her methodical examinations of us, I should have fancied that she had taken it up in downright earnest. Having learned that my departure from Knowl was to be so very soon, she resolved not to leave me before the day of my journey to BartramHaugh; and as day after day passed by, and the hour of our leavetaking approached, she became more and more kind and affectionate. A feverish and sorrowful interval it was to me. Of Doctor Bryerly, though staying in the house, we saw almost nothing, except for an hour or so at teatime. He breakfasted very early, and dined solitarily, and at uncertain hours, as business permitted. The second evening of his visit, Cousin Monica took occasion to introduce the subject of his visit to BartramHaugh. You saw him, of course? said Lady Knollys. Yes, he saw me; he was not well. On hearing who I was, he asked me to go to his room, where he sat in a silk dressinggown and slippers. About business principally, said Cousin Monica, laconically. That was despatched in very few words; for he was quite resolved, and placed his refusal upon grounds which it was difficult to dispute. But difficult or no, mind you, he intimated that he would hear nothing more on the subjectso that was closed. Well; and what is his religion now? inquired she, irreverently. We had some interesting conversation on the subject. He leans much to what we call the doctrine of correspondents. He is read rather deeply in the writings of Swedenborg, and seemed anxious to discuss some points with one who professes to be his follower. To say truth, I did not expect to find him either so well read or so deeply interested in the subject. Was he angry when it was proposed that he should vacate the guardianship? Not at all. Contrariwise, he said he had at first been so minded himself. His years, his habits, and something of the unfitness of the situation, the remoteness of BartramHaugh from good teachers, and all that, had struck him, and nearly determined him against accepting the office. But then came the views which I stated in my letter, and they governed him; and nothing could shake them, he said, or induce him to reopen the question in his own mind. All the time Doctor Bryerly was relating his conference with the head of the family at BartramHaugh my cousin commented on the narrative with a variety of little pishes and sneers, which I thought showed more of vexation than contempt. I was glad to hear all that Doctor Bryerly related. It gave me a kind of confidence; and I experienced a momentary reaction. After all, could BartramHaugh be more lonely than I had found Knowl? Was I not sure of the society of my Cousin Millicent, who was about my own age? Was it not quite possible that my sojourn in Derbyshire might turn out a happy though very quiet remembrance through all my afterlife? Why should it not? What time or place would be happy if we gave ourselves over to dismal imaginations? So the summons reached me from Uncle Silas. The hours at Knowl were numbered. The evening before I departed I visited the fulllength portrait of Uncle Silas, and studied it for the last time carefully, with deep interest, for many minutes; but with results vaguer than ever. With a brother so generous and so wealthy, always ready to help him forward; with his talents; with his lithe and gorgeous beauty, the shadow of which hung on that canvaswhat might he not have accomplished? whom might he not have captivated? And yet where and what was he? A poor and shunned old man, occupying a lonely house and place that did not belong to him, married to degradation, with a few years of suspected and solitary life before him, and then swift oblivion his best portion. I gazed on the picture, to fix it well and vividly in my remembrance. I might still trace some of its outlines and tints in its living original, whom I was next day to see for the first time in my life. So the morning camemy last for many a day at Knowla day of partings, a day of novelty and regrets. The travelling carriage and post horses were at the door. Cousin Monicas carriage had just carried her away to the railway. We had embraced with tears; and her kind face was still before me, and her words of comfort and promise in my ears. The early sharpness of morning was still in the air; the frosty dew still glistened on the windowpanes. We had made a hasty breakfast, my share of which was a single cup of tea. The aspect of the house how strange! Uncarpeted, uninhabited, doors for the most part locked, all the servants but Mrs. Rusk and Branston departed. The drawingroom door stood open, and a charwoman was washing the bare floor. I was looking my lastfor who could say how long?on the old house, and lingered. The luggage was all up. I made Mary Quince get in first, for every delay was precious; and now the moment was come. I hugged and kissed Mrs. Rusk in the hall. God bless you, Miss Maud, darling. You must not fret; mind, the time wont be long going overno time at all; and youll be bringing back a fine young gentlemanwho knows? as great as the Duke of Wellington, for your husband; and Ill take the best of care of everything, and the birds and the dogs, till you come back; and Ill go and see you and Mary, if youll allow, in Derbyshire; and so forth. I got into the carriage, and bid Branston, who shut the door, goodbye, and kissed hands to Mrs. Rusk, who was smiling and drying her eyes and courtesying on the halldoor steps. The dogs, who had started gleefully with the carriage, were called back by Branston, and driven home, wondering and wistful, looking back with ears oddly cocked and tails dejected. My heart thanked them for their kindness, and I felt like a stranger, and very desolate. It was a bright, clear morning. It had been settled that it was not worth the trouble changing from the carriage to the railway for sake of fiveandtwenty miles, and so the entire journey of sixty miles was to be made by the post roadthe pleasantest travelling, if the mind were free. The grander and more distant features of the landscape we may see well enough from the window of the railwaycarriage; but it is the foreground that interests and instructs us, like a pleasant gossiping history; and that we had, in old days, from the postchaise window. It was more than travelling picquet. Something of all conditions of lifeluxury and miseryhigh spirits and low;all sorts of costume, livery, rags, millinery; faces buxom, faces wrinkled, faces kind, faces wicked;no end of interest and suggestion, passing in a procession silent and vivid, and all in their proper scenery. The golden cornsheafsthe old darkalleyed orchards, and the high streets of antique towns. There were few dreams brighter, few books so pleasant. We drove by the dark woodit always looked dark to mewhere the mausoleum standswhere my dear parents both lay now. I gazed on its sombre masses not with a softened feeling, but a peculiar sense of pain, and was glad when it was quite past. All the morning I had not shed a tear. Good Mary Quince cried at leaving Knowl; Lady Knollys eyes were not dry as she kissed and blessed me, and promised an early visit; and the dark, lean, energetic face of the housekeeper was quivering, and her cheeks wet, as I drove away. But I, whose grief was sorest, never shed a tear. I only looked about from one familiar object to another, pale, excited, not quite apprehending my departure, and wondering at my own composure. But when we reached the old bridge, with the tall osiers standing by the buttress, and looked back at poor Knowlthe places we love and are leaving look so fairylike and so sad in the clear distance, and this is the finest view of the gabled old house, with its slanting meadowlands and noble timber reposing in solemn groupsI gazed at the receding vision, and the tears came at last, and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands. I was relieved, and when we had made our next change of horses, and got into a country that was unknown to me, the new scenery and the sense of progress worked their accustomed effects on a young traveller who had lived a particularly secluded life, and I began to experience, on the whole, a not unpleasurable excitement. Mary Quince and I, with the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began already to speculate about our proximity to BartramHaugh, and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript couriermore like a ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage, and represented my guardians special careat nearly one oclock, that we had still forty miles to go, a considerable portion of which was across the high Derbyshire mountains, before we reached BartramHaugh. The fact was, we had driven at a pace accommodated rather to the convenience of the horses than to our impatience; and finding, at the quaint little inn where we now halted, that we must wait for a nail or two in a loose shoe of one of our relay, we consulted, and being both hungry, agreed to beguile the time with an early dinner, which we enjoyed very sociably in a queer little parlour with a bow window, and commanding, with a little garden for foreground, a very pretty landscape. Good Mary Quince, like myself, had quite dried her tears by this time, and we were both highly interested, and I a little nervous, too, about our arrival and reception at Bartram. Some time, of course, was lost in this pleasant little parlour, before we found ourselves once more pursuing our way. The slowest part of our journey was the pull up the long mountain road, ascending zigzag, as sailors make way against a headwind, by tacking. I forget the name of the pretty little group of housesit did not amount to a villageburied in trees, where we got our four horses and two postilions, for the work was severe. I can only designate it as the place where Mary Quince and I had our tea, very comfortably, and bought some gingerbread, very curious to look upon, but quite uneatable. The greater portion of the ascent, when we were fairly upon the mountain, was accomplished at a walk, and at some particularly steep points we had to get out and go on foot. But this to me was quite delightful. I had never scaled a mountain before, and the ferns and heath, the pure boisterous air, and above all the magnificent view of the rich country we were leaving behind, now gorgeous and misty in sunset tints, stretching in gentle undulations far beneath us, quite enchanted me. We had just reached the summit when the sun went down. The low grounds at the other side were already lying in cold grey shadow, and I got the man who sat behind to point out as well as he could the site of BartramHaugh. But mist was gathering over all by this time. The filmy disk of the moon which was to light us on, so soon as twilight faded into night, hung high in air. I tried to see the sable mass of wood which he described. But it was vain, and to acquire a clear idea of the place, as of its master, I must only wait that nearer view which an hour or two more would afford me. And now we rapidly descended the mountain side. The scenery was wilder and bolder than I was accustomed to. Our road skirted the edge of a great heathy moor. The silvery light of the moon began to glimmer, and we passed a gipsy bivouac with fires alight and cauldrons hanging over them. It was the first I had seen. Two or three low tents; a couple of dark, withered crones, veritable witches; a graceful girl standing behind, gazing after us; and men in oddshaped hats, with gaudy waistcoats and brightcoloured neckhandkerchiefs and gaitered legs, stood lazily in front. They had all a wild tawdry display of colour; and a group of alders in the rear made a background of shade for tents, fires, and figures. I opened a front window of the chariot, and called to the postboys to stop. The groom from behind came to the window. Are not those gipsies? I enquired. Yes, pleasem, thems gipsies, sure, Miss, he answered, glancing with that odd smile, half contemptuous, half superstitious, with which I have since often observed the peasants of Derbyshire eyeing those thievish and uncanny neighbours. XXXI BartramHaugh In a moment a tall, lithe girl, blackhaired, blackeyed, and, as I thought, inexpressibly handsome, was smiling, with such beautiful rings of pearly teeth, at the window; and in her peculiar accent, with a suspicion of something foreign in it, proposing with many courtesies to tell the lady her fortune. I had never seen this wild tribe of the human race beforechildren of mystery and liberty. Such vagabondism and beauty in the figure before me! I looked at their hovels and thought of the night, and wondered at their independence, and felt my inferiority. I could not resist. She held up her slim oriental hand. Yes, Ill hear my fortune, I said, returning the sibyls smile instinctively. Give me some money, Mary Quince. No, not that, I said, rejecting the thrifty sixpence she tendered, for I had heard that the revelations of this weird sisterhood were bright in proportion to the kindness of their clients, and was resolved to approach Bartram with cheerful auguries. That fiveshilling piece, I insisted; and honest Mary reluctantly surrendered the coin. So the feline beauty took it, with courtesies and thankees, smiling still, and hid it away as if she stole it, and looked on my open palm still smiling; and told me, to my surprise, that there was somebody I liked very much, and I was almost afraid she would name Captain Oakley; that he would grow very rich, and that I should marry him; that I should move about from place to place a great deal for a good while to come. That I had some enemies, who should be sometimes so near as to be in the same room with me, and yet they should not be able to hurt me. That I should see blood spilt and yet not my own, and finally be very happy and splendid, like the heroine of a fairy tale. Did this strange, girlish charlatan see in my face some signs of shrinking when she spoke of enemies, and set me down for a coward whose weakness might be profitable? Very likely. At all events she plucked a long brass pin, with a round bead for a head, from some part of her dress, and holding the point in her fingers, and exhibiting the treasure before my eyes, she told me that I must get a charmed pin like that, which her grandmother had given to her, and she ran glibly through a story of all the magic expended on it, and told me she could not part with it; but its virtue was that you were to stick it through the blanket, and while it was there neither rat, nor cat, nor snakeand then came two more terms in the catalogue, which I suppose belonged to the gipsy dialect, and which she explained to mean, as well as I could understand, the first a malevolent spirit, and the second a cove to cut your throat, could approach or hurt you. A charm like that, she gave me to understand, I must by hook or by crook obtain. She had not a second. None of her people in the camp over there possessed one. I am ashamed to confess that I actually paid her a pound for this brass pin! The purchase was partly an indication of my temperament, which could never let an opportunity pass away irrevocably without a struggle, and always apprehended Some day or other Ill reproach myself for having neglected it! and partly a record of the trepidations of that period of my life. At all events I had her pin, and she my pound, and I venture to say I was the gladder of the two. She stood on the roadside bank courtseying and smiling, the first enchantress I had encountered, and I watched the receding picture, with its patches of firelight, its dusky groups and donkey carts, white as skeletons in the moonlight, as we drove rapidly away. They, I suppose, had a wild sneer and a merry laugh over my purchase, as they sat and ate their supper of stolen poultry, about their fire, and were duly proud of belonging to the superior race. Mary Quince, shocked at my prodigality, hinted a remonstrance. It went to my heart, Miss, it did. Theyre such a lot, young and old, all alike thieves and vagabonds, and many a poor body wanting. Tut, Mary, never mind. Everyone has her fortune told some time in her life, and you cant have a good one without paying. I think, Mary, we must be near Bartram now. The road now traversed the side of a steep hill, parallel to which, along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully upon the stream beneath. It seems to be a beautiful country, I said to Mary Quince, who was munching a sandwich in the corner, and thus appealed to, adjusted her bonnet, and made an inspection from her window, which, however, commanded nothing but the heathy slope of the hill whose side we were traversing. Well, Miss, I suppose it is; but theres a deal o mountainsis not there? And so saying, honest Mary leaned back again, and went on with her sandwich. We were now descending at a great pace. I knew we were coming near. I stood up as well as I could in the carriage, to see over the postilions heads. I was eager, but frightened too; agitated as the crisis of the arrival and meeting approached. At last, a long stretch of comparatively level country below us, with masses of wood as well as I could see irregularly overspreading it, became visible as the narrow valley through which we were speeding made a sudden bend. Down we drove, and now I did perceive a change. A great grassgrown parkwall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on and on we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey parkwall flanking us at one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ashtrees, irregularly on the other. At last the postilions began to draw bridle, and at a slight angle, the moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semicircle formed by the receding parkwalls, and halted before a great fantastic iron gate, and a pair of tall fluted piers, of white stone, all grassgrown and ivybound, with great cornices, surmounted with shields and supporters, the Ruthyn bearings washed by the rains of Derbyshire for many a generation of Ruthyns, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal, like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrades, to bar our passage to the enchanted castlethe florid tracery of the iron gate showing like the draperies of white robes hanging from their extended arms to the earth. Our courier got down and shoved the great gate open, and we entered, between sombre files of magnificent forest trees, one of those very broad straight avenues whose width measures the front of the house. This was all built of white stone, resembling that of Caen, which parts of Derbyshire produce in such abundance. So this was Bartram, and here was Uncle Silas. I was almost breathless as I approached. The bright moon shining full on the white front of the old house revealed not only its highly decorated style, its fluted pillars and doorway, rich and florid carving, and balustraded summit, but also its stained and mossgrown front. Two giant trees, overthrown at last by the recent storm, lay with their upturned roots, and their yellow foliage still flickering on the sprays that were to bloom no more, where they had fallen, at the right side of the courtyard, which, like the avenue, was studded with tufted weeds and grass. All this gave to the aspect of Bartram a forlorn character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture. There was a ruddy glow from a broad window in the second row, and I thought I saw someone peep from it and disappear; at the same moment there was a furious barking of dogs, some of whom ran scampering into the courtyard from a halfclosed side door; and amid their uproar, the bawling of the man in the back seat, who jumped down to drive them off, and the crack of the postilions whips, who struck at them, we drew up before the lordly doorsteps of this melancholy mansion. Just as our attendant had his hand on the knocker the door opened, and we saw, by a not very brilliant candlelight, three figuresa shabby little old man, thin, and very much stooped, with a white cravat, and looking as if his black clothes were too large, and made for someone else, stood with his hand upon the door; a young, plump, but very pretty female figure, in unusually short petticoats, with fattish legs, and nice ankles, in boots, stood in the centre; and a dowdy maid, like an old charwoman, behind her. The household paraded for welcome was not certainly very brilliant. Amid the riot the trunks were deliberately put down by our attendant, who kept shouting to the old man at the door, and to the dogs in turn; and the old man was talking and pointing stiffly and tremulously, but I could not hear what he said. Was it possiblecould that meanlooking old man be Uncle Silas? The idea stunned me; but I almost instantly perceived that he was much too small, and I was relieved, and even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before me, myself unseen. Will you tellyes or nois my cousin in the coach? screamed the plump young lady, stamping her stout black boot, in a momentary lull. Yes, I was there, sure. And why the puck dont you let her out, you stupe, you? Run down, Giblets, you never do nout without driving, and let Cousin Maud out. Youre very welcome to Bartram. This greeting was screamed at an amazing pitch, and repeated before I had time to drop the window, and say thank you. Id a let you out myselftheres a good dog, you would na bite Cousin (the parenthesis was to a huge mastiff, who thrust himself beside her, by this time quite pacified)only I darent go down the steps, for the governor said I shouldnt. The venerable person who went by the name of Giblets had by this time opened the carriage door, and our courier, or boots, he looked more like the latter functionary, had lowered the steps, and in greater trepidation than I experienced when in afterdays I was presented to my sovereign, I glided down, to offer myself to the greeting and inspection of the plainspoken young lady who stood at the top of the steps to receive me. She welcomed me with a hug and a hearty buss, as she called that salutation, on each cheek, and pulled me into the hall, and was evidently glad to see me. And youre tired a bit, I warrant; and whos the old un, who? she asked eagerly, in a stage whisper, which made my ear numb for five minutes after. Oh, oh, the maid! and a precious old unha, ha, ha! But lawk! how grand she is, with her black silk, cloak and crape, and I only in twilled cotton, and rotten old Coburg for Sundays. Odds! its a shame; but youll be tired, you will. Its a smartish pull, they do say, from Knowl. I know a spell of it, only so far as the Cat and Fiddle, near the Lunnonroad. Come up, will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit wi the governor? Father, you know, hes a bit silly, he is, this while. I found that the phrase meant only bodily infirmity. He took a pain o Friday, newralgiesomething or other he calls itrheumatics it is when it takes old Giblets there; and hes sitting in his own room; or maybe youd like better to come to your bedroom first, for it is dirty work travelling, they do say. Yes; I preferred the preliminary adjustment. Mary Quince was standing behind me; and as my voluble kinswoman talked on, we had each ample time and opportunity to observe the personnel of the other; and she made no scruple of letting me perceive that she was improving it, for she stared me full in the face, taking in evidently feature after feature; and she felt the material of my mantle pretty carefully between her finger and thumb, and manually examined my chain and trinkets, and picked up my hand as she might a glove, to con over my rings. I cant say, of course, exactly what impression I may have produced on her. But in my cousin Milly I saw a girl who looked younger than her years, plump, but with a slender waist, with light hair, lighter than mine, and very blue eyes, rather round; on the whole very goodlooking. She had an odd swaggering walk, a toss of her head, and a saucy and imperious, but rather goodnatured and honest countenance. She talked rather loud, with a good ringing voice, and a boisterous laugh when it came. If I was behind the fashion, what would Cousin Monica have thought of her? She was arrayed, as she had stated, in black twilled cotton expressive of her affliction; but it was made almost as short in the skirt as that of the prints of the Bavarian broom girls. She had white cotton stockings, and a pair of black leather boots, with leather buttons, and, for a lady, prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so often admired in Punch. I must add that the hands with which she assisted her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were very much sunburnt indeed. And whats her name? she demanded, nodding to Mary Quince, who was gazing on her awfully, with round eyes, as an inland spinster might upon a whale beheld for the first time. Mary courtesied, and I answered. Mary Quince, she repeated. Youre welcome, Quince. What shall I call her? Ive a name for all o them. Old Giles there, is Giblets. He did not like it first, but he answers quick enough now; and Old Lucy Wyat there, nodding toward the old woman, is Lucia de lAmour. A slightly erroneous reading of Lammermoor, for my cousin sometimes made mistakes, and was not much versed in the Italian opera. You know its a play, and I call her LAmour for shortness; and she laughed hilariously, and I could not forbear joining; and, winking at me, she called aloud, LAmour.

To which the crone, with a highcauled cap, resembling Mother Hubbard, responded with a courtesy and Yes, m. Are all the trunks and boxes took up? They were. Well, well come now; and what shall I call you, Quince? Let me see. According to your pleasure, Miss, answered Mary, with dignity, and a dry courtesy. Why, youre as hoarse as a frog, Quince. Well call you Quinzy for the present. Thatll do. Come along, Quinzy. So my Cousin Milly took me under the arm, and pulled me forward; but as we ascended, she let me go, leaning back to make inspection of my attire from a new point of view. Hallo, cousin, she cried, giving my dress a smack with her open hand. What a plague do you want of all that bustle; youll leave it behind, lass, the first bush you jump over. I was a good deal astounded. I was also very near laughing, for there was a sort of importance in her plump countenance, and an indescribable grotesqueness in the fashion of her garments, which heightened the outlandishness of her talk, in a way which I cannot at all describe. What palatial wide stairs those were which we ascended, with their prodigious carved banisters of oak, and each huge pillar on the landingplace crowned with a shield and carved heraldic supporters; florid oak panelling covered the walls. But of the house I could form no estimate, for Uncle Silass housekeeping did not provide light for hall and passages, and we were dependent on the glimmer of a single candle; but there would be quite enough of this kind of exploration in the daylight. So along dark oak flooring we advanced to my room, and I had now an opportunity of admiring, at my leisure, the lordly proportions of the building. Two great windows, with dark and tarnished curtains, rose half as high again as the windows of Knowl; and yet Knowl, in its own style, is a fine house. The doorframes, like the windowframes, were richly carved; the fireplace was in the same massive style, and the mantelpiece projected with a mass of very rich carving. On the whole I was surprised. I had never slept in so noble a room before. The furniture, I must confess, was by no means on a par with the architectural pretensions of the apartment. A French bed, a piece of carpet about three yards square, a small table, two chairs, a toilet tableno wardrobeno chest of drawers. The furniture painted white, and of the light and diminutive kind, was particularly ill adapted to the scale and style of the apartment, one end only of which it occupied, and that but sparsely, leaving the rest of the chamber in the nakedness of a stately desolation. My cousin Milly ran away to report progress to the Governor, as she termed Uncle Silas. Well, Miss Maud, I never did expect to see the like o that! exclaimed honest Mary Quince, Did you ever see such a young lady? Shes no more like one o the family than I am. Law bless us! and whats she dressed like? Well, well, well! And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while I could not forbear laughing. And such a scrap o furniture! Well, well, well! and the same ticking of the tongue followed. But, in a few minutes, back came Cousin Milly, and, with a barbarous sort of curiosity, assisted in unpacking my trunks, and stowing away the treasures, on which she ventured a variety of admiring criticisms, in the presses which, like cupboards, filled recesses in the walls, with great oak doors, the keys of which were in them. As I was making my hurried toilet, she entertained me now and then with more strictly personal criticisms. Your hairs a shade darker than mineits none the better o that thoughis it? Mines said to be the right shade. I dont knowwhat do you say? I conceded the point with a good grace. I wish my hands was as white thoughyou do lick me there; but its all gloves, and I never could abide em. I think Ill try thoughthey are very white, sure. I wonder which is the prettiest, you or me? I dont know, Im surewhich do you think? I laughed outright at this challenge, and she blushed a little, and for the first time seemed for a moment a little shy. Well, you are a half an inch longer than me, I thinkdont you? I was fully an inch taller, so I had no difficulty in making the proposed admission. Well, you do look handsome! doesnt she, Quinzy, lass? but your frock comes down almost to your heelsit does. And she glanced from mine to hers, and made a little kick up with the heel of the navvy boot to assist her in measuring the comparative distance. Maybe mines a thought too short? she suggested. Whos there? Oh! its you, is it? she cried as Mother Hubbard appeared at the door. Come in, LAmourdont you know, lass, youre always welcome? She had come to let us know that Uncle Silas would be happy to see me whenever I was ready; and that my cousin Millicent would conduct me to the room where he awaited me. In an instant all the comic sensations awakened by my singular cousins eccentricities vanished, and I was thrilled with awe. I was about to see in the fleshfaded, broken, aged, but still identicalthat being who had been the vision and the problem of so many years of my short life. XXXII Uncle Silas I thought my odd cousin was also impressed with a kind of awe, though different in degree from mine, for a shade overcast her face, and she was silent as we walked side by side along the gallery, accompanied by the crone who carried the candle which lighted us to the door of that apartment which I may call Uncle Silass presence chamber. Milly whispered to me as we approached Mind how you make a noise; the governors as sharp as a weasel, and nothing vexes him like that. She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and LAmour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles. A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned us to enter. The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle Silas. At the far end of a handsome wainscoted room, near the hearth in which a low fire was burning, beside a small table on which stood four waxlights, in tall silver candlesticks, sat a singularlooking old man. The dark wainscoting behind him, and the vastness of the room, in the remoter parts of which the light which fell strongly upon his face and figure expended itself with hardly any effect, exhibited him with the forcible and strange relief of a finely painted Dutch portrait. For some time I saw nothing but him. A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and, for an old man, singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his shoulders. He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ample black velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat, with loose sleeves, showing his snowy shirt some way up the arm, and a pair of wrist buttons, then quite out of fashion, which glimmered aristocratically with diamonds. I know I cant convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fieryeyed, with its singular look of power, and an expression so bewilderingwas it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience? The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed upon me as he rose; an habitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character of a scowl, did not relax as he advanced toward me with his thinlipped smile. He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, the import of which I was too much agitated to catch, and he took both my hands in his, welcomed me with a courtly grace which belonged to another age, and led me affectionately, with many inquiries which I only half comprehended, to a chair near his own. I need not introduce my daughter; she has saved me that mortification. Youll find her, I believe, goodnatured and affectionate; au reste, I fear a very rustic Miranda, and fitted rather for the society of Caliban than of a sick old Prospero. Is it not so, Millicent? The old man paused sarcastically for an answer, with his eyes fixed severely on my odd cousin, who blushed and looked uneasily to me for a hint. I dont know who they beneither one nor tother. Very good, my dear, he replied, with a little mocking bow. You see, my dear Maud, what a Shakespearean you have got for a cousin. Its plain, however, she has made acquaintance with some of our dramatists she has studied the role of Miss Hoyden so perfectly. It was not a reasonable peculiarity of my uncle that he resented, with a good deal of playful acrimony, my poor cousins want of education, for which, if he were not to blame, certainly neither was she. You see her, poor thing, a result of all the combined disadvantages of want of refined education, refined companionship, and, I fear, naturally, of refined tastes; but a sojourn at a good French conventual school will do wonders, and I hope to manage byandby. In the meantime we jest at our misfortunes, and love one another, I hope, cordially. He extended his thin, white hand with a chilly smile towards Milly, who bounced up, and took it with a frightened look; and he repeated, holding her hand rather slightly I thought, Yes, I hope, very cordially, and then turning again to me, he put it over the arm of his chair, and let it go, as a man might drop something he did not want from a carriage window. Having made this apology for poor Milly, who was plainly bewildered, he passed on, to her and my relief, to other topics, every now and then expressing his fears that I was fatigued, and his anxiety that I should partake of some supper or tea; but these solicitudes somehow seemed to escape his remembrance almost as soon as uttered; and he maintained the conversation, which soon degenerated into a close, and to me a painful examination, respecting my dear fathers illness and its symptoms, upon which I could give no information, and his habits, upon which I could. Perhaps he fancied that there might be some family predisposition to the organic disease of which his brother died, and that his questions were directed rather to the prolonging of his own life than to the better understanding of my dear fathers death. How little was there left to this old man to make life desirable, and yet how keenly, I afterwards found, he clung to it. Have we not all of us seen those to whom life was not only undesirable, but positively painfula mere series of bodily torments, yet hold to it with a desperate and pitiable tenacityold children or young, it is all the same. See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creatures eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. Just so reluctantly we part with consciousness, the picture is, even to the last, so interesting; the bird in the hand, though sick and moulting, so inestimably better than all the brilliant tenants of the bush. We sit up, yawning, and blinking, and stupid, the whole scene swimming before us, and the stories and music humming off into the sound of distant winds and waters. It is not time yet; we are not fatigued; we are good for another hour still, and so protesting against bed, we falter and drop into the dreamless sleep which nature assigns to fatigue and satiety. He then spoke a little eulogy of his brother, very polished, and, indeed, in a kind of way, eloquent. He possessed in a high degree that accomplishment, too little cultivated, I think, by the present generation, of expressing himself with perfect precision and fluency. There was, too, a good deal of slight illustrative quotation, and a sprinkling of French flowers, over his conversation, which gave to it a character at once elegant and artificial. It was all easy, light, and pointed, and being quite new to me, had a wonderful fascination. He then told me that Bartram was the temple of liberty, that the health of a whole life was founded in a few years of youth, air, and exercise, and that accomplishments, at least, if not education, should wait upon health. Therefore, while at Bartram, I should dispose of my time quite as I pleased, and the more I plundered the garden and gipsied in the woodlands, the better. Then he told me what a miserable invalid he was, and how the doctors interfered with his frugal tastes. A glass of beer and a mutton chophis ideal of a dinnerhe dared not touch. They made him drink light wines, which he detested, and live upon those artificial abominations all liking for which vanishes with youth. There stood on a sidetable, in its silver coaster, a longnecked Rhenish bottle, and beside it a thin pink glass, and he quivered his fingers in a peevish way toward them. But unless he found himself better very soon, he would take his case into his own hands, and try the dietary to which nature pointed. He waved his fingers toward his bookcases, and told me his books were altogether at my service during my stay; but this promise ended, I must confess, disappointingly. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose, and kissed me with a solemn tenderness, placed his hand upon what I now perceived to be a large Bible, with two broad silk markers, red and gold, folded in itthe one, I might conjecture, indicating the place in the Old, the other in the New Testament. It stood on the small table that supported the waxlights, with a handsome cut bottle of eaudecologne, his gold and jewelled pencilcase, and his chased repeater, chain, and seals, beside it. There certainly were no indications of poverty in Uncle Silass room; and he said impressively Remember that book; in it your father placed his trust, in it he found his reward, in it lives my only hope; consult it, my beloved niece, day and night, as the oracle of life. Then he laid his thin hand on my head, and blessed me, and then kissed my forehead. Noa! exclaimed Cousin Millys lusty voice. I had quite forgotten her presence, and looked at her with a little start. She was seated on a very high oldfashioned chair; she had palpably been asleep; her round eyes were blinking and staring glassily at us; and her white legs and navvy boots were dangling in the air. Have you anything to remark about Noah? enquired her father, with a polite inclination and an ironical interest. Noa, she repeated in the same blunt accents; I didnt snore; did I? Noa. The old man smiled and shrugged a little at meit was the smile of disgust. Good night, my dear Maud; and turning to her, he said, with a peculiar gentle sharpness, Had not you better wake, my dear, and try whether your cousin would like some supper? So he accompanied us to the door, outside which we found LAmours candle awaiting us. Im awful afraid of the Governor, I am. Did I snore that time? No, dear; at least, I did not hear it, I said, unable to repress a smile. Well, if I didnt, I was awful near it, she said, reflectively. We found poor Mary Quince dozing over the fire; but we soon had tea and other good things, of which Milly partook with a wonderful appetite. I was in a qualm about it, said Milly, who by this time was quite herself again. When he spies me anapping, maybe he dont fetch me a prod with his pencilcase over the head. Odd! girl, it is sore. When I contrasted the refined and fluent old gentleman whom I had just left, with this amazing specimen of young ladyhood, I grew sceptical almost as to the possibility of her being his child. I was to learn, however, how little she had, I wont say of his society, but even of his presencethat she had no domestic companion of the least pretensions to educationthat she ran wild about the placenever, except in church, so much as saw a person of that rank to which she was bornand that the little she knew of reading and writing had been picked up, in desultory halfhours, from a person who did not care a pin about her manners or decorum, and perhaps rather enjoyed her grotesquenessand that no one who was willing to take the least trouble about her was competent to make her a particle more refined than I saw herthe wonder ceased. We dont know how little is heritable, and how much simply training, until we encounter somesuch spectacle as that of my poor cousin Milly. When I lay down in my bed and reviewed the day, it seemed like a month of wonders. Uncle Silas was always before me; the voice so silvery for an old manso preternaturally soft; the manners so sweet, so gentle; the aspect, smiling, suffering, spectral. It was no longer a shadow; I had now seen him in the flesh. But, after all, was he more than a shadow to me? When I closed my eyes I saw him before me still, in necromantic black, ashy with a pallor on which I looked with fear and pain, a face so dazzlingly pale, and those hollow, fiery, awful eyes! It sometimes seemed as if the curtain opened, and I had seen a ghost. I had seen him; but he was still an enigma and a marvel. The living face did not expound the past, any more than the portrait portended the future. He was still a mystery and a vision; and thinking of these things I fell asleep. Mary Quince, who slept in the dressingroom, the door of which was close to my bed, and lay open to secure me against ghosts, called me up; and the moment I knew where I was I jumped up, and peeped eagerly from the window. It commanded the avenue and courtyard; but we were many windows removed from that over the halldoor, and immediately beneath ours lay the two giant lime trees, prostrate and uprooted, which I had observed as we drove up the night before. I saw more clearly in the bright light of morning the signs of neglect and almost of dilapidation which had struck me as I approached. The courtyard was tufted over with grass, seldom from year to year crushed by the carriagewheels, or trodden by the feet of visitors. This melancholy verdure thickened where the area was more remote from the centre; and under the windows, and skirting the walls to the left, was reinforced by a thick grove of nettles. The avenue was all grassgrown, except in the very centre, where a narrow track still showed the roadway. The handsome carved balustrade of the courtyard was discoloured with lichens, and in two places gapped and broken; and the air of decay was heightened by the fallen trees, among whose sprays and yellow leaves the small birds were hopping. Before my toilet was completed, in marched my cousin Milly. We were to breakfast alone that morning, and so much the better, she told me. Sometimes the Governor ordered her to breakfast with him, and never left off chaffing her till his newspaper came, and sometimes he said such things he made her cry, and then he only boshed her more, and packed her away to her room; but she was by chalks nicer than him, talk as he might. Was not she nicer? was not she? was not she? Upon this point she was so strong and urgent that I was obliged to reply by a protest against awarding the palm of elegance between parent and child, and declaring I liked her very much, which I attested by a kiss. I know right well which of us you do thinks the nicest, and no mistake, only youre afraid of him; and he had no business boshing me last night before you. I knew he was at it, though I couldnt twig him altogether; but wasnt he a sneak, now, wasnt he? This was a still more awkward question; so I kissed her again, and said she must never ask me to say of my uncle in his absence anything I could not say to his face. At which speech she stared at me for a while, and then treated me to one of her hearty laughs, after which she seemed happier, and gradually grew into better humour with her father. Sometimes, when the curate calls, he has me upfor hes as religious as six, he isand they read Bible and prays, hodont they? Youll have that, lass, like me, to go through; and maybe I dont hate it; oh, no! We breakfasted in a small room, almost a closet, off the great parlour, which was evidently quite disused. Nothing could be homelier than our equipage, or more shabby than the furniture of the little apartment. Still, somehow, I liked it. It was a total change; but one likes roughing it a little at first. XXXIII The Windmill Wood I had not time to explore this noble old house as my curiosity prompted; for Milly was in such a fuss to set out for the blackberry dell that I saw little more than just so much as I necessarily traversed in making my way to and from my room. The actual decay of the house had been prevented by my dear father; and the roof, windows, masonry, and carpentry had all been kept in repair. But short of indications of actual ruin, there are many manifestations of poverty and neglect which impress with a feeling of desolation. It was plain that not nearly a tithe of this great house was inhabited; long corridors and galleries stretched away in dust and silence, and were crossed by others, whose dark arches inspired me in the distance with an awful sort of sadness. It was plainly one of those great structures in which you might easily lose yourself, and with a pleasing terror it reminded me of that delightful old abbey in Mrs. Radcliffes romance, among whose silent staircases, dim passages, and long suites of lordly, but forsaken chambers, begirt without by the sombre forest, the family of La Mote secured a gloomy asylum. My cousin Milly and I, however, were bent upon an openair ramble, and traversing several passages, she conducted me to a door which led us out upon a terrace overgrown with weeds, and by a broad flight of steps we descended to the level of the grounds beneath. Then on, over the short grass, under the noble trees, we walked; Milly in high goodhumour, and talking away volubly, in her short garment, navvy boots, and a weatherbeaten hat. She carried a stick in her gloveless hand. Her conversation was quite new to me, and resembled very much what I would have fancied the holiday recollections of a schoolboy; and the language in which it was sustained was sometimes so outlandish, that I was forced to laugh outrighta demonstration which she plainly did not like. Her talk was about the great jumps she had madehow she snowballed the chaps in winterhow she could slide twice the length of her stick beyond Briddles, the cowboy. With this and similar conversation she entertained me. The grounds were delightfully wild and neglected. But we had now passed into a vast park beautifully varied with hollows and uplands, and such glorious old timber massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among these, we got at last into a picturesque dingle; the grey rocks peeped from among the ferns and wild flowers, and the steps of soft sward along its sides were dark in the shadows of silverstemmed birch, and russet thorn, and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Erlking and his daughter might glide on their aerial horses. In the lap of this pleasant dell were the finest blackberry bushes, I think, I ever saw, bearing fruit quite fabulous; and plucking these, and chatting, we rambled on very pleasantly. I had first thought of Millys absurdities, to which, in description, I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with suppressed laughter. But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the burlesque. This creature, with no more education than a dairymaid, I gradually discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishmenta very sweet voice, and wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing which quite threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing. Poor Milly, in all her life, had never read three books, and hated to think of them. One, over which she was wont to yawn and sigh, and stare fatiguedly for an hour every Sunday, by command of the Governor, was a stout volume of sermons of the earlier school of George III, and a drier collection you cant fancy. I dont think she read anything else. But she had, notwithstanding, ten times the cleverness of half the circulating library misses one meets with. Besides all this, I had a long sojourn before me at BartramHaugh, and I had learned from Milly, as I had heard before, what a perennial solitude it was, with a ludicrous fear of learning Millys preposterous dialect, and turning at last into something like her. So I resolved to do all I could for herteach her whatever I knew, if she would allow meand gradually, if possible, effect some civilising changes in her language, and, as they term it in boardingschools, her demeanour. But I must pursue at present our first days ramble in what was called Bartram Chase. People cant go on eating blackberries always; so after a while we resumed our walk along this pretty dell, which gradually expanded into a wooded valleylevel beneath and enclosed by irregular uplands, receding, as it were, in mimic bays and harbours at some points, and running out at others into broken promontories, ending in clumps of forest trees. Just where the glen which we had been traversing expanded into this broad, but wooded valley, it was traversed by a high and close paling, which, although it looked decayed, was still very strong. In this there was a wooden gate, rudely but strongly constructed, and at the side we were approaching stood a girl, who was leaning against the post, with one arm resting on the top of the gate. This girl was neither tall nor shorttaller than she looked at a distance; she had not a slight waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low; she had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes, and no other good featureunless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short, and swarthy as a gipsys; observant and sullen too; and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her dark lashes as we drew near. Altogether a not unpicturesque figure, with a dusky, red petticoat of drugget, and tattered jacket of bottlegreen stuff, with short sleeves, which showed her brown arms from the elbow. Thats Pegtops daughter, said Milly. Who is Pegtop? I asked. Hes the millersee, yonder it is, and she pointed to a very pretty feature in the landscape, a windmill, crowning the summit of a hillock which rose suddenly above the level of the treetops, like an island in the centre of the valley. The mill not going today, Beauty? bawled Milly. Noa, Beauty; it baint, replied the girl, loweringly, and without stirring. And whats gone with the stile? demanded Milly, aghast. Its tore away from the paling! Well, so it be, replied the wood nymph in the red petticoat, showing her fine teeth with a lazy grin. Whos a bin and done all that? demanded Milly. Not you nor me, lass, said the girl. Twas old Pegtop, your father, did it, cried Milly, in rising wrath. Appen it wor, she replied. And the gate locked. Thats itthe gate locked, she repeated, sulkily, with a defiant sideglance at Milly. And wheres Pegtop? At tother side, somewhere; how should I know where he be? she replied. Whos got the key? Here it be, lass, she answered, striking her hand on her pocket. And how durst you stay us here? Unlock it, hussy, this minute! cried Milly, with a stamp. Her answer was a sullen smile. Open the gate this instant! bawled Milly. Well, I wont. I expected that Milly would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curiousthe girls unexpected audacity bewildered her. Why, you fool, I could get over the paling as soon as look at you, but I wont. Whats come over you? Open the gate, I say, or Ill make you. Do let her alone, dear, I entreated, fearing a mutual assault. She has been ordered, may be, not to open it. Is it so, my good girl? Well, thourt not the biggest fool o the two, she observed, commendatively, thoust hit it, lass. And who ordered you? exclaimed Milly. Fayther. Old Pegtop. Well, thats summat to laugh at, it isour servant ashutting us out of our own grounds. No servant o yourn! Come, lass, what do you mean? He be old Silass miller, and whats that to thee? With these words the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate. Cant you do that, cousin? whispered Milly to me, with an impatient nudge. I wish youd try. No, dearcome away, Milly, and I began to withdraw. Lookee, lass, twill be an ill days work for thee when I tell the Governor, said Milly, addressing the girl, who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure. Well be over in spite o you, cried Milly. You lie! answered she. And why not, hussy? demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected. All this time I was urging Milly in vain to come away. Yon lass is no wild cat, like theethats why, said the sturdy portress. If I cross, Ill give you a knock, said Milly. And Ill gi thee another, she answered, with a vicious wag of the head. Come, Milly, Ill go if you dont, I said. But we must not be beat, whispered she, vehemently, catching my arm; and ye shall get over, and see what I will gi her! Ill not get over. Then Ill break the door, for ye shall come through, exclaimed Milly, kicking the stout paling with her ponderous boot. Purr it, purr it, purr it! cried the lass in the red petticoat with a grin. Do you know who this lady is? cried Milly, suddenly. She is a prettier lass than thou, answered Beauty. Shes my cousin MaudMiss Ruthyn of Knowland shes a deal richer than the Queen; and the Governors taking care of her; and hell make old Pegtop bring you to reason. The girl eyed me with a sulky listlessness, a little inquisitively, I thought. See if he dont, threatened Milly. You positively must come, I said, drawing her away with me. Well, shall we come in? cried Milly, trying a last summons. Youll not come in that much, she answered, surlily, measuring an infinitesimal distance on her finger with her thumb, which she pinched against it, the gesture ending with a snap of defiance, and a smile that showed her fine teeth. Ive a mind to shy a stone at you, shouted Milly. Faire away; Ill shy wi ye as long as ye like, lass; take heed o yerself; and Beauty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket ball. With difficulty I got Milly away without an exchange of missiles, and much disgusted at my want of zeal and agility. Well, come along, cousin, I know an easy way by the river, when its low, answered Milly. Shes a bruteis not she? As we receded, we saw the girl slowly wending her way towards the old thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged eminence embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its string on the end of her finger the key for which a battle had so nearly been fought. The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of the paling next it quite easy, and so we pursued our way, and Millys equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again. Our path lay by the river bank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller, and, at last, the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a gatehouse on the farther side. Oh, Milly darling! I exclaimed, what a beautiful drawing this would make! I should so like to make a sketch of it. So it would. Make a picturedo!heres a stone thats pure and flat to sit upon, and you look very tired.

Do make it, and Ill sit by you. Yes, Milly, I am tired, a little, and I will sit down; but we must wait for another day to make the picture, for we have neither pencil nor paper. But it is much too pretty to be lost; so let us come again tomorrow. Tomorrow be hanged! youll do it today, burymewick, but you shall; Im wearying to see you make a picture, and Ill fetch your conundrums out o your drawer, for do t you shall. XXXIV Zamiel It was all vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the steppingstones close by she could, by a shortcut, reach the house, and return with my pencils and blockbook in a quarter of an hour. Away then, with many a jump and fling, scampered Millys queer white stockings and navvy boots across the irregular and precarious steppingstones, over which I dared not follow her; so I was fain to return to the stone so pure and flat, on which I sat, enjoying the grand sylvan solitude, the dark background and the grey bridge midway, so tall and slim, across whose ruins a sunbeam glimmered, and the gigantic forest trees that slumbered round, opening here and there in dusky vistas, and breaking in front into detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream of romance. It would have been the very spot in which to read a volume of German folklore, and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves and goblins. As I sat here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wideawake nearly to his shoulders. This forbiddinglooking person came stumping and jerking along toward me, whisking his stick now and then viciously in the air, and giving his fell of hair a short shake, like a wild bull preparing to attack. I stood up involuntarily with a sense of fear and surprise, almost fancying I saw in that woodenlegged old soldier, the forest demon who haunted Der Freischtz. So he approached shouting Hollo! youhow came you here? Dost eer? And he drew near panting, and sometimes tugging angrily in his haste at his wooden leg, which sunk now and then deeper than was convenient in the sod. This exertion helped to anger him, and when he halted before me, his dark face smirched with smoke and dust, and the nostrils of his flat drooping nose expanded and quivered as he panted, like the gills of a fish; an angrier or uglier face it would not be easy to fancy. Yell all come when ye like, will ye? and do nout but what pleases yourselves, wont you? And whort thou? Dost eerwho are ye, I say; and what the deil seek ye in the woods here? Come, bestir thee! If his wide mouth and great tobaccostained teeth, his scowl, and loud discordant tones were intimidating, they were also extremely irritating. The moment my spirit was roused, my courage came. I am Miss Ruthyn of Knowl, and Mr. Silas Ruthyn, your master, is my uncle. Hoo! he exclaimed more gently, an if Silas be thy uncle thoult be come to live wi him, and thourt she as come overnighteh? I made no answer, but I believe I looked both angrily and disdainfully. And what make ye alone here? and how was I to know t, an Milly not wi ye, nor no one? But Maud or no Maud, I wouldnt let the Dooke hisself set foot inside the palin without Silas said let him. And you may tell Silas thems the words o Dickon Hawkes, and Ill stick to mand whats more Ill tell him myselfI will; Ill tell him there be no use o my striving and straining hee, day an night and night and day, watchin again poachers, and thieves, and gipsies, and they robbing lads, if rules wont be kep, and folk do jist as they pleases. Dang it, lass, thourt in luck I didnt heave a brick at thee when I saw thee first. Ill complain of you to my uncle, I replied. So do, and appen thoult find thyself in the wrong box, lass; thou canst na say I set the dogs arter thee, nor caud thee so much as a wry name, nor heave a stone at theedid I? Well? and wheres the complaint then? I simply answered, rather fiercely, Be good enough to leave me. Well, I make no objections, mind. Im takin thy wordthourt Maud Ruthynappen thou best and appen thou baint. Im not aweer ont, but I takes thy word, and all I want to knows just this, did Meg open the gate to thee? I made him no answer, and to my great relief I saw Milly striding and skipping across the unequal steppingstones. Hallo, Pegtop! what are you after now? she cried, as she drew near. This man has been extremely impertinent. You know him, Milly? I said. Why thats Pegtop Dickon. Dirty old Hawkes that never was washed. I tell you, lad, yell see what the Governor thinks otaha! Hell talk to you. I done or said noutnot but I should, and theres the fackshe cant denyt; she hadnt a hard word from I; and I dont care the top o that thistle what no one saysnot I. But I tell thee, Milly, I stopped some o thy pranks, and Ill stop more. Yell be shying no more stones at the cattle. Tell your tales, and welcome, cried Milly. I wish I was here when you jawed cousin. If Winny was here shed catch you by the timber toe and put you on your back. Ay, shell be a good un yet if she takes arter thee, retorted the old man with a fierce sneer. Drop it, and get away wi ye, cried she, or maybe Id call Winny to smash your timber leg for you. Aha! theres more ont. Shes a sweet un. Isnt she? he replied sardonically. You did not like it last Easter, when Winny broke it with a kick. Twas a kick o a horse, he growled with a glance at me. Twas no such thingtwas Winny did itand he laid on his back for a week while carpenter made him a new one. And Milly laughed hilariously. Ill fool no more wi ye, losing my time; I wont; but mind ye, Ill speak wi Silas. And going away he put his hand to his crumpled wideawake, and said to me with a surly difference Good evening, Miss Ruthyngood evening, maamand yell please remember, I did not mean nout to vex thee. And so he swaggered away, jerking and waddling over the sward, and was soon lost in the wood. Its well hes a little bit frightenedI never saw him so angry, I think; he is awful mad. Perhaps he really is not aware how very rude he is, I suggested. I hate him. We were twice as pleasant with poor Tom Driverhe never meddled with anyone, and was always in liquor; Old Gin was the name he went by. But this bruteI do hate himhe comes from Wigan, I think, and hes always spoiling sportand he whops Megthats Beauty, you know, and I dont think shed be half as bad only for him. Listen to him whistlin. I did hear whistling at some distance among the trees. I declare if he isnt callin the dogs! Climb up here, I tell ye, and we climbed up the slanting trunk of a great walnut tree, and strained our eyes in the direction from which we expected the onset of Pegtops vicious pack. But it was a false alarm. Well, I dont think he would do that, after allhardly; but he is a brute, sure! And that dark girl who would not let us through, is his daughter, is she? Yes, thats MegBeauty, I christened her, when I called him Beast; but I call him Pegtop now, and shes Beauty still, and thats the way ot. Come, sit down now, an make your picture, she resumed so soon as we had dismounted from our position of security. Im afraid Im hardly in the vein. I dont think I could draw a straight line. My hand trembles. I wish you could, Maud, said Milly, with a look so wistful and entreating, that considering the excursion she had made for the pencils, I could not bear to disappoint her. Well, Milly, we must only try; and if we fail we cant help it. Sit you down beside me and Ill tell you why I begin with one part and not another, and youll see how I make trees and the river, andyes, that pencil, it is hard and answers for the fine light lines; but we must begin at the beginning, and learn to copy drawings before we attempt real views like this. And if you wish it, Milly, Im resolved to teach you everything I know, which, after all, is not a great deal, and we shall have such fun making sketches of the same landscapes, and then comparing. And so on, Milly, quite delighted, and longing to begin her course of instruction, sat down beside me in a rapture, and hugged and kissed me so heartily that we were very near rolling together off the stone on which we were seated. Her boisterous delight and goodnature helped to restore me, and both laughing heartily together, I commenced my task. Dear me! whos that? I exclaimed suddenly, as looking up from my blockbook I saw the figure of a slight man in the careless morningdress of a gentleman, crossing the ruinous bridge in our direction, with considerable caution, upon the precarious footing of the battlement, which alone offered an unbroken passage. This was a day of apparitions! Milly recognised him instantly. The gentleman was Mr. Carysbroke. He had taken The Grange only for a year. He lived quite to himself, and was very good to the poor, and was the only gentleman, for ever so long, who had visited at Bartram, and oddly enough nowhere else. But he wanted leave to cross through the grounds, and having obtained it, had repeated his visit, partly induced, no doubt, by the fact that Bartram boasted no hospitalities, and that there was no risk of meeting the county folk there. With a stout walkingstick in his hand, and a short shootingcoat, and a wideawake hat in much better trim than Zamiels, he emerged from the copse that covered the bridge, walking at a quick but easy pace. Hell be goin to see old Snoddles, I guess, said Milly, looking a little frightened and curious; for Milly, I need not say, was a bumpkin, and stood in awe of this gentlemans goodbreeding, though she was as brave as a lion, and would have fought the Philistines at any odds, with the jawbone of an ass. Appen he wont see us, whispered Milly, hopefully. But he did, and raising his hat, with a cheerful smile, that showed very white teeth, he paused. Charming day, Miss Ruthyn. I raised my head suddenly as he spoke, from habit appropriating the address; it was so marked that he raised his hat respectfully to me, and then continued to Milly Mr. Ruthyn, I hope, quite well? but I need hardly ask, you seem so happy. Will you kindly tell him, that I expect the book I mentioned in a day or two, and when it comes Ill either send or bring it to him immediately? Milly and I were standing, by this time, but she only stared at him, tonguetied, her cheeks rather flushed, and her eyes very round, and to facilitate the dialogue, as I suppose, he said again Hes quite well, I hope? Still no response from Milly, and I, provoked, though myself a little shy, made answer My uncle, Mr. Ruthyn, is very well, thank you, and I felt that I blushed as I spoke. Ah, pray excuse me, may I take a great liberty? you are Miss Ruthyn, of Knowl? Will you think me very impertinentIm afraid you willif I venture to introduce myself? My name is Carysbroke, and I had the honour of knowing poor Mr. Ruthyn when I was quite a little boy, and he has shown a kindness for me since, and I hope you will pardon the liberty I fear Ive taken. I think my friend, Lady Knollys, too, is a relation of yours; what a charming person she is! Oh, is not she? such a darling! I said, and then blushed at my outspoken affection. But he smiled kindly, as if he liked me for it; and he said You know whatever I think, I dare not quite say that; but frankly I can quite understand it. She preserves her youth so wonderfully, and her fun and her goodnature are so entirely girlish. What a sweet view you have selected, he continued, changing all at once. Ive stood just at this point so often to look back at that exquisite old bridge. Do you observeyoure an artist, I seesomething very peculiar in that tint of the grey, with those odd cross stains of faded red and yellow? I do, indeed; I was just remarking the peculiar beauty of the colouringwas not I, Milly? Milly stared at me, and uttered an alarmed Yes, and looked as if she had been caught in a robbery. Yes, and you have so very peculiar a background, he resumed. It was better before the storm though; but it is very good still. Then a little pause, and Do you know this country at all? rather suddenly. No, not in the leastthat is, Ive only had the drive to this place; but what I did see interested me very much. You will be charmed with it when you know it betterthe very place for an artist. Im a wretched scribbler myself, and I carry this little book in my pocket, and he laughed deprecatingly while he drew forth a thin fishingbook, as it looked. They are mere memoranda, you see. I walk so much and come unexpectedly on such pretty nooks and studies, I just try to make a note of them, but it is really more writing than sketching; my sister says it is a cipher which nobody but myself understands. However, Ill try and explain just twobecause you really ought to go and see the places. Oh, no; not that, he laughed, as accidentally the page blew over, thats the Cat and Fiddle, a curious little pothouse, where they gave me some very good ale one day. Milly at this exhibited some uneasy tokens of being about to speak, but not knowing what might be coming, I hastened to observe on the spirited little sketches to which he meant to draw my attention. I want to show you only the places within easy reacha short ride or drive. So he proceeded to turn over two or three, in addition to the two he had at first proposed, and then another; then a little sketch just tinted, and really quite a charming little gem, of Cousin Monicas pretty gabled old house; and every subject had its little criticism, or its narrative, or adventure. As he was about returning this little sketchbook to his pocket, still chatting to me, he suddenly recollected poor Milly, who was looking rather lowering; but she brightened a good deal as he presented it to her, with a little speech which she palpably misunderstood, for she made one of her odd courtesies, and was about, I thought, to put it into her large pocket, and accept it as a present. Look at the drawings, Milly, and then return it, I whispered. At his request I allowed him to look at my unfinished sketch of the bridge, and while he was measuring distances and proportions with his eye, Milly whispered rather angrily to me. And why should I? Because he wants it back, and only meant to lend it to you, whispered I. Lend it to meand after you! Burymewick if I look at a leaf of it, she retorted in high dudgeon. Take it, lass; give it him yourselfIll not, and she popped it into my hand, and made a sulky step back. My cousin is very much obliged, I said, returning the book, and smiling for her, and he took it smiling also and said I think if I had known how very well you draw, Miss Ruthyn, I should have hesitated about showing you my poor scrawls. But these are not my best, you know; Lady Knollys will tell you that I can really do bettera great deal better, I think. And then with more apologies for what he called his impertinence, he took his leave, and I felt altogether very much pleased and flattered. He could not be more than twentynine or thirty, I thought, and he was decidedly handsomethat is, his eyes and teeth, and clear brown complexion wereand there was something distinguished and graceful in his figure and gesture; and altogether there was the indescribable attraction of intelligence; and I fanciedthough this, of course, was a secretthat from the moment he spoke to us he felt an interest in me. I am not going to be vain. It was a grave interest, but still an interest, for I could see him studying my features while I was turning over his sketches, and he thought I saw nothing else. It was flattering, too, his anxiety that I should think well of his drawing, and referring me to Lady Knollys. Carysbrokehad I ever heard my dear father mention that name? I could not recollect it. But then he was habitually so silent, that his not doing so argued nothing. XXXV We Visit a Room in the Second Storey Mr. Carysbroke amused my fancy sufficiently to prevent my observing Millys silence, till we had begun our return homeward. The Grange must be a pretty house, if that little sketch be true; is it far from this? Twill be two mile. Are you vexed, Milly? I asked, for both her tone and looks were angry. Yes, I am vexed; and why not lass? What has happened? Well, now, that is rich! Why, look at that fellow, Carysbroke he took no more notice to me than a dog, and kep talking to you all the time of his pictures, and his walks, and his people. Why, a pigs better manners than that. But, Milly dear, you forget, he tried to talk to you, and you would not answer him, I expostulated. And is not that just what I sayI cant talk like other folkladies, I mean. Everyone laughs at me; an Im dressed like a show, I am. Its a shame! I saw Polly Shiveswhat a lady she is, my eyes!laughing at me in church last Sunday. I was minded to give her a bit of my mind. An I know Im queer. Its a shame, it is. Why should I be so rum? it is a shame! I dont want to be so, nor it isnt my fault. And poor Milly broke into a flood of tears, and stamped on the ground, and buried her face in her short frock, which she whisked up to her eyes; and an odder figure of grief I never beheld. And I could not make head or tail of what he was saying, cried poor Milly through her buff cotton, with a stamp; and you twigged every word ot. An why am I so? Its a shamea shame! Oh, ho, ho! its a shame! But, my dear Milly, we were talking of drawing, and you have not learned yet, but you shallIll teach you; and then youll understand all about it. An everyone laughs at meeven you; though you try, Maud, you can scarce keep from laughing sometimes. I dont blame you, for I know Im queer; but I cant help it; and its a shame. Well, my dear Milly, listen to me if you allow me, I assure you, Ill teach you all the music and drawing I know. You have lived very much alone; and, as you say, ladies have a way of speaking of their own that is different from the talk of other people. Yes, that they have, an gentlemen toolike the Governor, and that Carysbroke; and a precious lingo it isdang itwhy, the devil himself could not understand it; an Im like a fool among you. I could most drown myself. Its a shame! It isyou know it is.Its a shame! But Ill teach you that lingo too, if you wish it, Milly; and you shall know everything that I know; and Ill manage to have your dresses better made. By this time she was looking very ruefully, but attentively, in my face, her round eyes and nose swelled, and her cheeks all wet. I think if they were a little longeryours is longer, you know; and the sentence was interrupted by a sob. Now, Milly, you must not be crying; if you choose you may be just as the same as any other ladyand you shall; and you will be very much admired, I can tell you, if only you will take the trouble to quite unlearn all your odd words and ways, and dress yourself like other people; and I will take care of that if you let me; and I think you are very clever, Milly; and I know you are very pretty. Poor Millys blubbered face expanded into a smile in spite of herself; but she shook her head, looking down. Noa, noa, Maud, I fear twont be. And indeed it seemed I had proposed to myself a labour of Hercules. But Milly was really a clever creature, could see quickly, and when her ungainly dialect was mastered, describe very pleasantly; and if only she would endure the restraint and possessed the industry requisite, I did not despair, and was resolved at least to do my part. Poor Milly! she was really very grateful, and entered into the project of her education with great zeal, and with a strange mixture of humility and insubordination. Milly was in favour of again attacking Beautys position on her return, and forcing a passage from this side; but I insisted on following the route by which we had arrived, and so we got round the paling by the river, and were treated to a provoking grin of defiance by Beauty, who was talking across the gate to a slim young man, arrayed in fustian, and with an oddlooking cap of rabbitskin on his head, which, on seeing us, he pulled sheepishly to the side of his face next to us, as he lounged, with his arm under his chin, on the top bar of the gate. After our encounter of today, indeed, it was Miss Beautys wont to exhibit a kind of jeering disdain in her countenance whenever we passed. I think Milly would have engaged her again, had I not reminded her of her undertaking, and exerted my new authority. Look at that sneak, Pegtop, there, going up the path to the mill. He makes belief now he does not see us; but he does, though, only hes afraid well tell the Governor, and he thinks Governor wont give him his way with you. I hate that Pegtop he stopped me o riding the cows a year ago, he did. I thought Pegtop might have done worse. Indeed it was plain that a total reformation was needed here; and I was glad to find that poor Milly seemed herself conscious of it; and that her resolution to become more like other people of her station was not a mere spasm of mortification and jealousy, but a genuine and very zealous resolve. I had not half seen this old house of BartramHaugh yet. At first, indeed, I had but an imperfect idea of its extent. There was a range of rooms along one side of the great gallery, with closed windowshutters, and the doors generally locked. Old LAmour grew cross when we went into them, although we could see nothing; and Milly was afraid to open the windowsnot that any Bluebeard revelations were apprehended, but simply because she knew that Uncle Silass order was that things should be left undisturbed; and this boisterous spirit stood in awe of him to a degree which his gentle manners and apparent quietude rendered quite surprising. There were in this house, what certainly did not exist at Knowl, and what I have never observed, thought they may possibly be found in other old housesI mean, here and there, very high hatches, which we could only peep over by jumping in the air. They crossed the long corridors and great galleries; and several of them were turned across and locked, so as to intercept the passage, and interrupt our explorations. Milly, however, knew a queer little, very steep and dark back stair, which reached the upper floor; so she and I mounted, and made a long ramble through rooms much lower and ruder in finish than the lordly chambers we had left below. These commanded various views of the beautiful though neglected grounds; but on crossing a gallery we entered suddenly a chamber, which looked into a small and dismal quadrangle, formed by the inner walls of this great house, and of course designed only by the architect to afford the needful light and air to portions of the structure. I rubbed the windowpane with my handkerchief and looked out. The surrounding roof was steep and high. The walls looked soiled and dark. The windows lined with dust and dirt, and the windowstones were in places tufted with moss, and grass, and groundsel. An arched doorway had opened from the house into this darkened square, but it was soiled and dusty; and the damp weeds that overgrew the quadrangle drooped undisturbed against it. It was plain that human footsteps tracked it little, and I gazed into that blind and sinister area with a strange thrill and sinking. This is the second floorthere is the enclosed courtyardI, as it were, soliloquised. What are you afraid of, Maud? you look as yed seen a ghost, exclaimed Milly, who came to the window and peeped over my shoulder. It reminded me suddenly, Milly, of that frightful business. What business, Maud?what a plague are ye thinking on? demanded Milly, rather amused. It was in one of these roomsmaybe thisyes, it certainly was thisfor see, the panelling has been pulled off the wallthat Mr. Charke killed himself. I was staring ruefully round the dim chamber, in whose corners the shadows of night were already gathering. Charke!what about him?whos Charke? asked Milly. Why, you must have heard of him, said I. Not as Im aware on, answered she. And he killed himself, did he, hanged himself, eh, or blowed his brains out? He cut his throat in one of these roomsthis one, Im surefor your papa had the wainscoting stripped from the wall to ascertain whether there was any second door through which a murderer could have come; and you see these walls are stripped, and bear the marks of the woodwork that has been removed, I answered. Well, that was awful! I dont know how they have pluck to cut their throats; if I was doing it, Id like best to put a pistol to my head and fire, like the young gentleman did, they say, in Deadmans Hollow. But the fellows that cut their throats, they must be awful game lads, Im thinkin, for its a long slice, you know. Dont, dont, Milly dear. Suppose we come away, I said, for the evening was deepening rapidly into night. Hey and burymewick, but heres the blood; dont you see a big black cloud all spread over the floor hereabout, dont ye see? Milly was stooping over the spot, and tracing the outline of this, perhaps, imaginary mapping, in the air with her finger. No, Milly, you could not see it the floor is too dark, and its all in shadow. It must be fancy; and perhaps, after all, this is not the room. WellI think, Im sure it is. Standjust look. Well come in the morning, and if you are right we can see it better then. Come away, I said, growing frightened. And just as we stood up to depart, the white highcauled cap and large sallow features of old LAmour peeped in at the door. Lawk! what brings you here? cried Milly, nearly as much startled as I at the intrusion. What brings you here, miss? whistled LAmour through her gums. Were looking where Charke cut his throat, replied Milly. Charke the devil! said the old woman, with an odd mixture of scorn and fury. Tisnt his room; and come ye out of it, please. Master wont like when he hears how you keep pulling Miss Maud from one room to another, all through the house, up and down. She was gabbling sternly enough, but dropped a low courtesy as I passed her, and with a peaked and nodding stare round the room, the old woman clapped the door sharply, and locked it. And who has been a talking about Charkea pack o lies, I warrant. I spose you want to frighten Miss Maud here (another crippled courtesy) wi ghosts and like nonsense. Youre out there twas she told me; and much about it. Ghosts, indeed! I dont vally them, not I; if I did, I know whod frighten me, and Milly laughed. The old woman stuffed the key in her pocket, and her wrinkled mouth pouted and receded with a grim uneasiness. A harmless brat, and kind she is; but wildwildshe will be wild. So whispered LAmour in my ear, during the silence that followed, nodding shakily toward Milly over the banister, and she courtesied again as we departed, and shuffled off toward Uncle Silass room. The Governor is queerish this evening, said Milly, when we were seated at our tea. You never saw him queerish, did you? You must say what you mean, more plainly, Milly. You dont mean ill, I hope? Well! I dont know what it is; but he does grow very queer sometimesyoud think he was dead amost, maybe two or three days and nights together. He sits all the time like an old woman in a swound. Well, well, it is awful! Is he insensible when in that state? I asked, a good deal alarmed. I dont know; but it never signifies anything. It wont kill him, I do believe; but old LAmour knows all about it. I hardly ever go into the room when hes so, only when Im sent for; and he sometimes wakes up and takes a fancy to call for this one or that. One day he sent for Pegtop all the way to the mill; and when he came, he only stared at him for a minute or two, and ordered him out o the room. Hes like a child amost, when hes in one o them dazes. I always knew when Uncle Silas was queerish, by the injunctions of old LAmour, whistled and spluttered over the banister as we came upstairs, to mind how we made a noise passing masters door; and by the sound of mysterious toings and froings about his room. I saw very little of him. He sometimes took a whim to have us breakfast with him, which lasted perhaps for a week; and then the order of our living would relapse into its old routine. I must not forget two kind letters from Lady Knollys, who was detained away, and delighted to hear that I enjoyed my quiet life; and promised to apply, in person, to Uncle Silas, for permission to visit me. She was to be for the Christmas at Elverston, and that was only six miles away from BartramHaugh, so I had the excitement of a pleasant look forward. She also said that she would include poor Milly in her invitation; and a vision of Captain Oakley rose before me, with his handsome gaze turned in wonder on poor Milly, for whom I had begun to feel myself responsible. I An Arrival at Dead of Night I have sometimes been asked why I wear an odd little turquoise ringwhich to the uninstructed eye appears quite valueless and altogether an unworthy companion of those jewels which flash insultingly beside it. It is a little keepsake, of which I became possessed about this time. Come, lass, what name shall I give you? cried Milly, one morning, bursting into my room in a state of alarming hilarity. My own, Milly. No, but you must have a nickname, like everyone else. Dont mind it, Milly. Yes, but I will. Shall I call you Mrs. Bustle? You shall do no such thing. But you must have a name. I refuse a name. But Ill give you one, lass. And I wont have it. But you cant help me christening you. I can decline answering. But Ill make you, said Milly, growing very red. Perhaps there was something provoking in my tone, for I certainly was very much disgusted at Millys relapse into barbarism. You cant, I retorted quietly. See if I dont, and Ill give ye one twice as ugly. I smiled, I fear, disdainfully. And I think youre a minx, and a slut, and a fool, she broke out, flushing scarlet. I smiled in the same unchristian way. And Id give ye a smack o the cheek as soon as look at you. And she gave her dress a great slap, and drew near me, in her wrath. I really thought she was about tendering the ordeal of single combat. I made her, however, a paralysing courtesy, and, with immense dignity, sailed out of the room, and into Uncle Silass study, where it happened we were to breakfast that morning, and for several subsequent ones. During the meal we maintained the most dignified reserve; and I dont think either so much as looked at the other. We had no walk together that day. I was sitting in the evening, quite alone, when Milly entered the room. Her eyes were red, and she looked very sullen. I want your hand, cousin, she said, at the same time taking it by the wrist, and administering with it a sudden slap on her plump cheek, which made the room ring, and my fingers tingle; and before I had recovered from my surprise, she had vanished. I called after her, but no answer; I pursued, but she was running too; and I quite lost her at the cross galleries. I did not see her at tea, nor before going to bed; but after I had fallen asleep I was awakened by Milly, in floods of tears. Cousin Maud, will ye forgi meyoull never like me again, will ye? NoI know ye wontIm such a bruteI hate itits a shame.

And heres a Banbury cake for youI sent to the town for it, and some taffywont ye eat it? and heres a little ringtisnt as pretty as your own rings; and yell wear it, maybe, for my sakepoor Millys sake, before I was so bad to yeif ye forgi me; and Ill look at breakfast, and if its on your finger Ill know youre friends wi me again; and if ye dont, I wont trouble you no more; and I think Ill just drown myself out o the way, and youll never see wicked Milly no more. And without waiting a moment, leaving me only half awake, and with the sensations of dreaming, she scampered from the room, in her bare feet, with a petticoat about her shoulders. She had left her candle by my bed, and her little offerings on the coverlet by me. If I had stood an atom less in terror of goblins than I did, I should have followed her, but I was afraid. I stood in my bare feet at my bedside, and kissed the poor little ring and put it on my finger, where it has remained ever since and always shall. And when I lay down, longing for morning, the image of her pale, imploring, penitential face was before me for hours; and I repented bitterly of my cool provoking ways, and thought myself, I dare say justly, a thousand times more to blame than Milly. I searched in vain for her before breakfast. At that meal, however, we met, but in the presence of Uncle Silas, who, though silent and apathetic, was formidable; and we, sitting at a table disproportionably large, under the cold, strange gaze of my guardian, talked only what was inevitable, and that in low tones; for whenever Milly for a moment raised her voice, Uncle Silas would wince, place his thin white fingers quickly over his ear, and look as if a pain had pierced his brain, and then shrug and smile piteously into vacancy. When Uncle Silas, therefore, was not in the talking vein himselfand that was not oftenyou may suppose there was very little spoken in his presence. When Milly, across the table, saw the ring upon my finger, she, drawing in her breath, said, Oh! and, with round eyes and mouth, she looked so delighted; and she made a little motion, as if she was on the point of jumping up; and then her poor face quivered, and she bit her lip; and staring imploringly at me, her eyes filled fast with tears, which rolled down her round penitential cheeks. I am sure I felt more penitent than she. I know I was crying and smiling, and longing to kiss her. I suppose we were very absurd; but it is well that small matters can stir the affections so profoundly at a time of life when great troubles seldom approach us. When at length the opportunity did come, never was such a hug out of the wrestling ring as poor Milly bestowed on me, swaying me this way and that, and burying her face in my dress, and blubbering I was so lonely before you came, and you so good to me, and I such a devil; and Ill never call you a name, but Maudmy darling Maud. You must, MillyMrs. Bustle. Ill be Mrs. Bustle, or anything you like. You must. I was blubbering like Milly, and hugging my best; and, indeed, I wonder how we kept our feet. So Milly and I were better friends than ever. Meanwhile, the winter deepened, and we had short days and long nights, and long fireside gossipings at BartramHaugh. I was frightened at the frequency of the strange collapses to which Uncle Silas was subject. I did not at first mind them much, for I naturally fell into Millys way of talking about them. But one day, while in one of his queerish states, he called for me, and I saw him, and was unspeakably scared. In a white wrapper, he lay coiled in a great easy chair. I should have thought him dead, had I not been accompanied by old LAmour, who knew every gradation and symptom of these strange affections. She winked and nodded to me with a ghastly significance, and whispered Dont make no noise, miss, till he talks; hell come to for a bit, anon. Except that there was no sign of convulsions, the countenance was like that of an epileptic arrested in one of his contortions. There was a frown and smirk like that of idiotcy, and a strip of white eyeball was also disclosed. Suddenly, with a kind of chilly shudder, he opened his eyes wide, and screwed his lips together, and blinked and stared on me with a fatuised uncertainty, that gradually broke into a feeble smile. Ah! the girlAustins child. Well, dear, Im hardly ableIll speak tomorrownext dayit is ticneuralgia, or somethingtorturetell her. So, huddling himself together, he lay again in his great chair, with the same inexpressible helplessness in his attitude, and gradually his face resumed its dreadful cast. Come away, miss hes changed his mind; hell not be fit to talk to you noways all day, maybe, said the old woman, again in a whisper. So forth we stole from the room, I unspeakably shocked. In fact, he looked as if he were dying, and so, in my agitation, I told the crone, who, forgetting the ceremony with which she usually treated me, chuckled out derisively, Adying is he? Well, he be like Saint Paulhes bin adying daily this many a day. I looked at her with a chill of horror. She did not care, I suppose, what sort of feelings she might excite, for she went on mumbling sarcastically to herself. I had paused, and overcame my reluctance to speak to her again, for I was really very much frightened. Do you think he is in danger? Shall we send for a doctor? I whispered. Law bless ye, the doctor knows all about it, miss. The old womans face had a gleam of that derision which is so shocking in the features of feebleness and age. But it is a fit, it is paralytic, or something horribleit cant be safe to leave him to chance or nature to get through these terrible attacks. Theres no fear of him, tisnt no fits at all, hes nout the worse ot. Jest silly a bit now and again. Its been the same a dozen year and more; and the doctor knows all about it, answered the old woman sturdily. And yell find hell be as mad as bedlam if ye make any stir about it. That night I talked the matter over with Mary Quince. Theyre very dark, miss; but I think he takes a deal too much laudlum, said Mary. To this hour I cannot say what was the nature of those periodical seizures. I have often spoken to medical men about them, since, but never could learn that excessive use of opium could altogether account for them. It was, I believe, certain, however, that he did use that drug in startling quantities. It was, indeed, sometimes a topic of complaint with him that his neuralgia imposed this sad necessity upon him. The image of Uncle Silas, as I had seen him that day, troubled and affrighted my imagination, as I lay in my bed; I had slept very well since my arrival at Bartram. So much of the day was passed in the open air, and in active exercise, that this was but natural. But that night I was nervous and wakeful, and it was past two oclock when I fancied I heard the sound of horses and carriagewheels on the avenue. Mary Quince was close by, and therefore I was not afraid to get up and peep from the window. My heart beat fast as I saw a postchaise approach the courtyard. A front window was let down, and the postilion pulled up for a few seconds. In consequence of some directions received by him, I fancied he resumed his route at a walk, and so drew up at the halldoor, on the steps of which a figure awaited his arrival. I think it was old LAmour, but I could not be quite certain. There was a lantern on the top of the balustrade, close by the door. The chaiselamps were lighted, for the night was rather dark. A bag and valise, as well as I could see, were pulled from the interior by the postboy, and a box from the top of the vehicle, and these were carried into the hall. I was obliged to keep my cheek against the windowpane to command a view of the point of debarkation, and my breath upon the glass, which dimmed it again almost as fast as I wiped it away, helped to obscure my vision. But I saw a tall figure, in a cloak, get down and swiftly enter the house, but whether male or female I could not discern. My heart beat fast. I jumped at once to a conclusion. My uncle was worsewas, in fact, dying; and this was the physician, too late summoned to his bedside. I listened for the ascent of the doctor, and his entrance at my uncles door, which, in the stillness of the night, I thought I might easily hear, but no sound reached me. I listened so for fully five minutes, but without result. I returned to the window, but the carriage and horses had disappeared. I was strongly tempted to wake Mary Quince, and take counsel with her, and persuade her to undertake a reconnoissance. The fact is, I was persuaded that my uncle was in extremity, and I was quite wild to know the doctors opinion. But, after all, it would be cruel to summon the good soul from her refreshing nap. So, as I began to feel very cold, I returned to my bed, where I continued to listen and conjecture until I fell asleep. In the morning, as was usual, before I was dressed, in came Milly. How is Uncle Silas? I eagerly enquired. Old LAmour says hes queerish still; but hes not so dull as yesterday, answered she. Was not the doctor sent for? I asked. Was he? Well, thats odd; and she said never a word ot to me, answered she. Im asking only, said I. I dont know whether he came or no, she replied; but what makes you take that in your head? A chaise arrived here between two and three oclock last night. Hey! and who told you? Milly seemed all on a sudden highly interested. I saw it, Milly; and someone, I fancy the doctor, came from it into the house. Fudge, lass! whod send for the doctor? Twasnt he, I tell you. What was he like? said Milly. I could only see clearly that he, or she, was tall, and wore a cloak, I replied. Then twasnt him nor tother I was thinking on, neither; and Ill be hanged but I think it will be Cormoran, cried Milly, with a thoughtful rap with her knuckle on the table. Precisely at this juncture a tapping came to the door. Come in, said I. And old LAmour entered the room, with a courtesy. I came to tell Miss Quince her breakfasts ready, said the old lady. Who came in the chaise, LAmour? demanded Milly. What chaise? spluttered the beldame tartly. The chaise that came last night, past two oclock, said Milly. Thats a lie, and a damn lie! cried the beldame. There wornt no chaise at the door since Miss Maud there come from Knowl. I stared at the audacious old menial who could utter such language. Yes, there was a chaise, and Cormoran, as I think, be come in it, said Milly, who seemed accustomed to LAmours daring address. And theres another damn lie, as big as the tother, said the crone, her haggard and withered face flushing orange all over. I beg you will not use such language in my room, I replied, very angrily. I saw the chaise at the door; your untruth signifies very little, but your impertinence here I will not permit. Should it be repeated, I will assuredly complain to my uncle. The old woman flushed more fiercely as I spoke, and fixed her bleared glare on me, with a compression of her mouth that amounted to a wicked grimace. She resisted her angry impulse, however, and only chuckled a little spitefully, saying, No offence, miss it be a way we has in Derbyshire o speaking our minds. No offence, miss, were meant, and none took, as I hopes, and she made me another courtesy. And I forgot to tell you, Miss Milly, the master wants you this minute. So Milly, in mute haste, withdrew, followed closely by LAmour. II Doctor Bryerly Emerges When Milly joined me at breakfast, her eyes were red and swollen. She was still sniffing with that little sobbing hiccup, which betrays, even were there no other signs, recent violent weeping. She sat down quite silent. Is he worse, Milly? I enquired, anxiously. No, nothings wrong wi him; hes right well, said Milly, fiercely. Whats the matter then, Milly dear? The poisonous old witch! Twas just to tell the Govnor how Id said twas Cormoran that came by the poshay last night. And who is Cormoran? I enquired. Ay, there it is; Id like to tell, and you want to hearand I just darent, for hell send me off right to a French schoolhang ithang them all!if I do. And why should Uncle Silas care? said I, a good deal surprised. Theyre atellin lies. Who? said I. LAmourthats who. So soon as she made her complaint of me, the Govnor asked her, sharp enough, did anyone come last night, or a poshay; and she was ready to swear there was no one. Are ye quite sure, Maud, you really did see aught, or appen twas all a dream? It was no dream, Milly; so sure as you are there, I saw exactly what I told you, I replied. Govnor wont believe it anyhow; and hes right mad wi me; and he threatens me hell have me off to France; I wish twas under the sea. I hate FranceI dolike the devil. Dont you? Theyre always athreatening me wi France, if I dare say a word more about the poshay, oror anyone. I really was curious about Cormoran; but Cormoran was not to be defined to me by Milly; nor did she, in reality, know more than I respecting the arrival of the night before. One day I was surprised to see Doctor Bryerly on the stairs. I was standing in a dark gallery as he walked across the floor of the lobby to my uncles door, his hat on, and some papers in his hand. He did not see me; and when he had entered Uncle Silass door, I went down and found Milly awaiting me in the hall. So Doctor Bryerly is here, I said. Thats the thin fellow, wi the sharp look, and the shiny black coat, that went up just now? asked Milly. Yes, hes gone into your papas room, said I. Appen twas he come tother night. He may be staying here, though we see him seldom, for its a barrack of a houseit is. The same thought had struck me for a moment, but was dismissed immediately. It certainly was not Doctor Bryerlys figure which I had seen. So, without any new light gathered from this apparition, we went on our way, and made our little sketch of the ruined bridge. We found the gate locked as before; and, as Milly could not persuade me to climb it, we got round the paling by the rivers bank. While at our drawing, we saw the swarthy face, sooty locks, and old weatherstained red coat of Zamiel, who was glowering malignly at us from among the trunks of the forest trees, and standing motionless as a monumental figure in the side aisle of a cathedral. When we looked again he was gone. Although it was a fine mild day for the wintry season, we yet, cloaked as we were, could not pursue so still an occupation as sketching for more than ten or fifteen minutes. As we returned, in passing a clump of trees, we heard a sudden outbreak of voices, angry and expostulatory; and saw, under the trees, the savage old Zamiel strike his daughter with his stick two great blows, one of which was across the head. Beauty ran only a short distance away, while the swart old wooddemon stumped lustily after her, cursing and brandishing his cudgel. My blood boiled. I was so shocked that for a moment I could not speak; but in a moment more I screamed You brute! How dare you strike the poor girl? She had only run a few steps, and turned about confronting him and us, her eyes gleaming fire, her features pale and quivering to suppress a burst of weeping. Two little rivulets of blood were trickling over her temple. I say, fayther, look at that, she said, with a strange tremulous smile, lifting her hand, which was smeared with blood. Perhaps he was ashamed, and the more enraged on that account, for he growled another curse, and started afresh to reach her, whirling his stick in the air. Our voices, however, arrested him. My uncle shall hear of your brutality. The poor girl! Strike him, Meg, if he does it again; and pitch his leg into the river tonight, when hes asleep. Id serve you the same; and out came an oath. Youd have her lick her fayther, would ye? Look out! And he wagged his head with a scowl at Milly, and a flourish of his cudgel. Be quiet, Milly, I whispered, for Milly was preparing for battle; and I again addressed him with the assurance that, on reaching home, I would tell my uncle how he had treated the poor girl. Tis you she may thank fort, a wheedling o her to open that gate, he snarled. Thats a lie; we went round by the brook, cried Milly. I did not think proper to discuss the matter with him; and looking very angry, and, I thought, a little put out, he jerked and swayed himself out of sight. I merely repeated my promise of informing my uncle as he went, to which, over his shoulder, he bawled Silas wont mind ye that; snapping his horny finger and thumb. The girl remained where she had stood, wiping the blood off roughly with the palm of her hand, and looking at it before she rubbed it on her apron. My poor girl, I said, you must not cry. Ill speak to my uncle about you. But she was not crying. She raised her head, and looked at us a little askance, with a sullen contempt, I thought. And you must have these appleswont you? We had brought in our basket two or three of those splendid apples for which Bartram was famous. I hesitated to go near her, these Hawkeses, Beauty and Pegtop, were such savages. So I rolled the apples gently along the ground to her feet. She continued to look doggedly at us with the same expression, and kicked away the apples sullenly that approached her feet. Then, wiping her temple and forehead in her apron, without a word, she turned and walked slowly away. Poor thing! Im afraid she leads a hard life. What strange, repulsive people they are! When we reached home, at the head of the great staircase old LAmour was awaiting me; and with a courtesy, and very respectfully, she informed me that the Master would be happy to see me. Could it be about my evidence as to the arrival of the mysterious chaise that he summoned me to this interview? Gentle as were his ways, there was something undefinable about Uncle Silas which inspired fear; and I should have liked few things less than meeting his gaze in the character of a culprit. There was an uncertainty, too, as to the state in which I might find him, and a positive horror of beholding him again in the condition in which I had last seen him. I entered the room, then, in some trepidation, but was instantly relieved. Uncle Silas was in the same health apparently, and, as nearly as I could recollect it, in precisely the same rather handsome though negligent garb in which I had first seen him. Doctor Bryerlywhat a marked and vulgar contrast, and yet, somehow, how reassuring!sat at the table near him, and was tying up papers. His eyes watched me, I thought, with an anxious scrutiny as I approached; and I think it was not until I had saluted him that he recollected suddenly that he had not seen me before at Bartram, and stood up and greeted me in his usual abrupt and somewhat familiar way. It was vulgar and not cordial, and yet it was honest and indefinably kind. Up rose my uncle, that strangely venerable, pale portrait, in his loose Rembrandt black velvet. How gentle, how benignant, how unearthly, and inscrutable! I need not say how she is. Those lilies and roses, Doctor Bryerly, speak their own beautiful praises of the air of Bartram. I almost regret that her carriage will be home so soon. I only hope it may not abridge her rambles. It positively does me good to look at her. It is the glow of flowers in winter, and the fragrance of a field which the Lord hath blessed. Country air, Miss Ruthyn, is a right good kitchen to country fare. I like to see young women eat heartily. You have had some pounds of beef and mutton since I saw you last, said Dr. Bryerly. And this sly speech made, he scrutinised my countenance in silence rather embarrassingly. My system, Doctor Bryerly, as a disciple of Aesculapius you will approvehealth first, accomplishment afterwards. The Continent is the best field for elegant instruction, and we must see the world a little, byandby, Maud; and to me, if my health be spared, there would be an unspeakable though a melancholy charm in the scenes where so many happy, though so many wayward and foolish, young days were passed; and I think I should return to these picturesque solitudes with, perhaps, an increased relish. You remember old Chaulieus sweet lines Dsert, aimable solitude, Sjour du calme et de la paix, Asile o nentrrent jamais Le tumulte et linquitude. I cant say that care and sorrow have not sometimes penetrated these sylvan fastnesses; but the tumults of the world, thank Heaven!never. There was a sly scepticism, I thought, in Doctor Bryerlys sharp face; and hardly waiting for the impressive never, he said I forgot to ask, who is your banker? Oh! Bartlet and Hall, Lombard Street, answered Uncle Silas, dryly and shortly. Dr. Bryerly made a note of it, with an expression of face which seemed, with a sly resolution, to say, You shant come the anchorite over me. I saw Uncle Silass wild and piercing eye rest suspiciously on me for a moment, as if to ascertain whether I felt the spirit of Doctor Bryerlys almost interruption; and, nearly at the same moment, stuffing his papers into his capacious coat pockets, Doctor Bryerly rose and took his leave. When he was gone, I bethought me that now was a good opportunity of making my complaint of Dickon Hawkes. Uncle Silas having risen, I hesitated, and began, Uncle, may I mention an occurrencewhich I witnessed? Certainly, child, he answered, fixing his eye sharply on me. I really think he fancied that the conversation was about to turn upon the phantom chaise. So I described the scene which had shocked Milly and me, an hour or so ago, in the Windmill Wood. You see, my dear child, they are rough persons; their ideas are not ours; their young people must be chastised, and in a way and to a degree that we would look upon in a serious light. Ive found it a bad plan interfering in strictly domestic misunderstandings, and should rather not. But he struck her violently on the head, uncle, with a heavy cudgel, and she was bleeding very fast. Ah? said my uncle, dryly. And only that Milly and I deterred him by saying that we would certainly tell you, he would have struck her again; and I really think if he goes on treating her with so much violence and cruelty he may injure her seriously, or perhaps kill her. Why, you romantic little child, people in that rank of life think absolutely nothing of a broken head, answered Uncle Silas, in the same way. But is it not horrible brutality, uncle? To be sure it is brutality; but then you must remember they are brutes, and it suits them, said he. I was disappointed. I had fancied that Uncle Silass gentle nature would have recoiled from such an outrage with horror and indignation; and instead, here he was, the apologist of that savage ruffian, Dickon Hawkes. And he is always so rude and impertinent to Milly and to me, I continued. Oh! impertinent to youthats another matter. I must see to that. Nothing more, my dear child? Well, there was nothing more. Hes a useful servant, Hawkes; and though his looks are not prepossessing, and his ways and language rough, yet he is a very kind father, and a most honest mana thoroughly moral man, though severea very rough diamond though, and has no idea of the refinements of polite society. I venture to say he honestly believes that he has been always unexceptionably polite to you, so we must make allowances. And Uncle Silas smoothed my hair with his thin aged hand, and kissed my forehead. Yes, we must make allowances; we must be kind. What says the Book?Judge not, that ye be not judged. Your dear father acted upon that maximso noble and so awfuland I strive to do so. Alas! dear Austin, longo intervalle, far behind! and you are removedmy example and my help; you are gone to your rest, and I remain beneath my burden, still marching on by bleak and alpine paths, under the awful night. O nuit, nuit douloureuse! O toi, tardive aurore! Vienstu? vastu venir? estu bien loin encore? And repeating these lines of Chnier, with upturned eyes, and one hand lifted, and an indescribable expression of grief and fatigue, he sank stiffly into his chair, and remained mute, with eyes closed for some time. Then applying his scented handkerchief to them hastily, and looking very kindly at me, he said Anything more, dear child? Nothing, uncle, thank you, very much, only about that man, Hawkes; I dare say that he does not mean to be so uncivil as he is, but I am really afraid of him, and he makes our walks in that direction quite unpleasant. I understand quite, my dear. I will see to it; and you must remember that nothing is to be allowed to vex my beloved niece and ward during her stay at Bartramnothing that her old kinsman, Silas Ruthyn, can remedy. So with a tender smile, and a charge to shut the door perfectly, but without clapping it, he dismissed me. Doctor Bryerly had not slept at Bartram, but at the little inn in Feltram, and he was going direct to London, as I afterwards learned. Your ugly doctors gone away in a fly, said Milly, as we met on the stairs, she running up, I down. On reaching the little apartment which was our sittingroom, however, I found that she was mistaken; for Doctor Bryerly, with his hat and a great pair of woollen gloves on, and an old Oxford grey surtout that showed his lank length to advantage, buttoned all the way up to his chin, had set down his black leather bag on the table, and was reading at the window a little volume which I had borrowed from my uncles library. It was Swedenborgs account of the other worlds, Heaven and Hell. He closed it on his finger as I entered, and without recollecting to remove his hat, he made a step or two towards me with his splay, creaking boots. With a quick glance at the door, he said Glad to see you alone for a minutevery glad. But his countenance, on the contrary, looked very anxious. III A Midnight Departure Im going this minuteII want to knowanother glance at the doorare you really quite comfortable here? Quite, I answered promptly. You have only your cousins company? he continued, glancing at the table, which was laid for two. Yes; but Milly and I are very happy together. Thats very nice; but I think there are no teachers, you seepainters, and singers, and that sort of thing that is usual with young ladies. No teachers of that kindof any kindare there? No; my uncle thinks it better I should lay in a store of health, he says. I know; and the carriage and horses have not come; how soon are they expected? I really cant say, and I assure you I dont much care. I think running about great fun. You walk to church? Yes; Uncle Silass carriage wants a new wheel, he told me. Ay, but a young woman of your rank, you know, it is not usual she should be without the use of a carriage. Have you horses to ride? I shook my head. Your uncle, you know, has a very liberal allowance for your maintenance and education. I remembered something in the will about it, and Mary Quince was constantly grumbling that he did not spend a pound a week on our board. I answered nothing, but looked down. Another glance at the door from Doctor Bryerlys sharp black eyes. Is he kind to you? Very kindmost gentle and affectionate. Why doesnt he keep company with you? Does he ever dine with you, or drink tea, or talk to you? Do you see much of him? He is a miserable invalidhis hours and regimen are peculiar. Indeed I wish very much you would consider his case; he is, I believe, often insensible for a long time, and his mind in a strange feeble state sometimes. I dare sayworn out in his young days; and I saw that preparation of opium in his bottlehe takes too much. Why do you think so, Doctor Bryerly? Its made on water the spirit interferes with the use of it beyond a certain limit. You have no idea what those fellows can swallow. Read the Opium Eater. I knew two cases in which the quantity exceeded De Quincys. Aha! its new to you? and he laughed quietly at my simplicity. And what do you think his complaint is? I asked. Pooh! I havent a notion; but, probably, one way or another, he has been all his days working on his nerves and his brain. These men of pleasure, who have no other pursuit, use themselves up mostly, and pay a smart price for their sins. And so hes kind and affectionate, but hands you over to your cousin and the servants. Are his people civil and obliging? Well, I cant say much for them; there is a man named Hawkes, and his daughter, who are very rude, and even abusive sometimes, and say they have orders from my uncle to shut us out from a portion of the grounds; but I dont believe that, for Uncle Silas never alluded to it when I was making my complaint of them today. From what part of the grounds is that? asked Doctor Bryerly, sharply. I described the situation as well as I could. Can we see it from this? he asked, peeping from the window. Oh, no. Doctor Bryerly made a note in his pocketbook here, and I said But I am really quite sure it was a story of Dickons, he is such a surly, disobliging man. And what sort is that old servant that came in and out of his room? Oh, that is old LAmour, I answered, rather indirectly, and forgetting that I was using Millys nickname. And is she civil? he asked. No, she certainly was not; a most disagreeable old woman, with a vein of wickedness. I thought I had heard her swearing. They dont seem to be a very engaging lot, said Doctor Bryerly; but where theres one, there will be more. See here, I was just reading a passage, and he opened the little volume at the place where his finger marked it, and read for me a few sentences, the purport of which I well remember, although, of course, the words have escaped me. It was in that awful portion of the book which assumes to describe the condition of the condemned; and it said that, independently of the physical causes in that state operating to enforce community of habitation, and an isolation from superior spirits, there exist sympathies, aptitudes, and necessities which would, of themselves, induce that depraved gregariousness, and isolation too. And what of the rest of the servants, are they better? he resumed. We saw little or nothing of the others, except of old Giblets, the butler, who went about like a little automaton of dry bones, poking here and there, and whispering and smiling to himself as he laid the cloth; and seeming otherwise quite unconscious of an external world. This room is not got up like Mr. Ruthyns does he talk of furnishings and making things a little smart? No! Well, I must say, I think he might. Here there was a little silence, and Doctor Bryerly, with his accustomed simultaneous glance at the door, said in low, cautious tones, very distinctly Have you been thinking at all over that matter again, I mean about getting your uncle to forego his guardianship? I would not mind his first refusal. You could make it worth his while, unless hethat isunless hes very unreasonable indeed; and I think you would consult your interest, Miss Ruthyn, by doing so and, if possible, getting out of this place. But I have not thought of it at all; I am much happier here than I had at all expected, and I am very fond of my cousin Milly. How long have you been here exactly? I told him. It was some two or three months. Have you seen your other cousin yetthe young gentleman? No. Hm! Arent you very lonely? he enquired. We see no visitors here; but that, you know, I was prepared for. Doctor Bryerly read the wrinkles on his splay boot intently and peevishly, and tapped the sole lightly on the ground. Yes, it is very lonely, and the people a bad lot. Youd be pleasanter somewhere elsewith Lady Knollys, for instance, eh? Well, there certainly. But I am very well here really the time passes very pleasantly; and my uncle is so kind. I have only to mention anything that annoys me, and he will see that it is remedied he is always impressing that on me. Yes, it is not a fit place for you, said Doctor Bryerly. Of course, about your uncle, he resumed, observing my surprised look, it is all right but hes quite helpless, you know. At all events, think about it.

Heres my addressHans Emmanuel Bryerly, M.D., 17 King Street, Covent Garden, Londondont lose it, mind, and he tore the leaf out of his notebook. Heres my fly at the door, and you mustyou must (he was looking at his watch)mind you must think of it seriously; and so, you see, dont let anyone see that. Youll be sure to leave it throwing about. The best way will be just to scratch it on the door of your press, inside, you know; and dont put my nameyoull remember thatonly the rest of the address; and burn this. Quince is with you? Yes, I answered, glad to have a satisfactory word to say. Well, dont let her go; its a bad sign if they wish it. Dont consent, mind; but just tip me a hint and youll have me down. And any letters you get from Lady Knollys, you know, for shes very plainspoken, youd better burn them offhand. And Ive stayed too long, though; mind what I say, scratch it with a pin, and burn that, and not a word to a mortal about it. Goodbye; oh, I was taking away your book. And so, in a fuss, with a slight shake of the hand, getting up his umbrella, his bag, and tin box, he hurried from the room; and in a minute more, I heard the sound of his vehicle as it drove away. I looked after it with a sigh; the uneasy sensations which I had experienced respecting my sojourn at BartramHaugh were reawakened. My ugly, vulgar, true friend was disappearing beyond those gigantic lime trees which hid Bartram from the eyes of the outer world. The fly, with the doctors valise on top, vanished, and I sighed an anxious sigh. The shadow of the overarching trees contracted, and I felt helpless and forsaken; and glancing down the torn leaf, Doctor Bryerlys address met my eye, between my fingers. I slipt it into my breast, and ran upstairs stealthily, trembling lest the old woman should summon me again, at the head of the stairs, into Uncle Silass room, where under his gaze, I fancied, I should be sure to betray myself. But I glided unseen and safely by, entered my room, and shut my door. So listening and working, I, with my scissors point, scratched the address where Doctor Bryerly had advised. Then, in positive terror, lest someone should even knock during the operation, I, with a match, consumed to ashes the telltale bit of paper. Now, for the first time, I experienced the unpleasant sensations of having a secret to keep. I fancy the pain of this solitary liability was disproportionately acute in my case, for I was naturally very open and very nervous. I was always on the point of betraying it apropos des bottesalways reproaching myself for my duplicity; and in constant terror when honest Mary Quince approached the press, or goodnatured Milly made her occasional survey of the wonders of my wardrobe. I would have given anything to go and point to the tiny inscription, and sayThis is Doctor Bryerlys address in London. I scratched it with my scissors point, taking every precaution lest anyoneyou, my good friends, includedshould surprise me. I have ever since kept this secret to myself, and trembled whenever your frank kind faces looked into the press. Thereyou at last know all about it. Can you ever forgive my deceit? But I could not make up my mind to reveal it; nor yet to erase the inscription, which was my alternative thought. Indeed I am a wavering, irresolute creature as ever lived, in my ordinary mood. High excitement or passion only can inspire me with decision. Under the inspiration of either, however, I am transformed, and often both prompt and brave. Someone left here last night, I think, Miss, said Mary Quince, with a mysterious nod, one morning. Twas two oclock, and I was bad with the toothache, and went down to get a pinch o red pepperleaving the candle alight here lest you should awake. When I was coming upas I was crossing the lobby, at the far end of the long gallerywhat should I hear, but a horse snorting, and some people atalking, short and quiet like. So I looks out o the window; and there surely I did see two horses yoked to a shay, and a fellah apullin a box up o top; and out comes a walise and a bag; and I think it was old Wyat, pleasem, that Miss Milly calls LAmour, that stood in the doorway atalking to the driver. And who got into the chaise, Mary? I asked. Well, Miss, I waited as long as I could; but the pain was bad, and me so awful cold; I gave it up at last, and came back to bed, for I could not say how much longer they might wait. And youll find, Miss, twill be kep a secret, like the shay as you sawd, Miss, last week. I hate them dark ways, and secrets; and old Wyatshe does tell stories, dont she?and she as ought to be partickler, seein her time be short now, and she so old. It is awful, an old un like that telling such crams as she do. Milly was as curious as I, but could throw no light on this. We both agreed, however, that the departure was probably that of the person whose arrival I had accidentally witnessed. This time the chaise had drawn up at the side door, round the corner of the left side of the house; and, no doubt, driven away by the back road. Another accident had revealed this nocturnal move. It was very provoking, however, that Mary Quince had not had resolution to wait for the appearance of the traveller. We all agreed, however, that we were to observe a strict silence, and that even to WyatLAmour I had better continue to call herMary Quince was not to hint what she had seen. I suspect, however, that injured curiosity asserted itself, and that Mary hardly adhered to this selfdenying resolve. But cheerful wintry suns and frosty skies, long nights, and brilliant starlight, with good homely fires in our snuggerygossipings, stories, short readings now and then, and brisk walks through the always beautiful scenery of BartramHaugh, and, above all, the unbroken tenor of our life, which had fallen into a serene routine, foreign to the idea of danger or misadventure, gradually quieted the qualms and misgivings which my interview with Doctor Bryerly had so powerfully resuscitated. My cousin Monica, to my inexpressible joy, had returned to her countryhouse; and an active diplomacy, through the postoffice, was negotiating the reopening of friendly relations between the courts of Elverston and of Bartram. At length, one fine day, Cousin Monica, smiling pleasantly, with her cloak and bonnet on, and her colour fresh from the shrewd air of the Derbyshire hills, stood suddenly before me in our sittingroom. Our meeting was that of two schoolcompanions long separated. Cousin Monica was always a girl in my eyes. What a hug it was; what a shower of kisses and ejaculations, enquiries and caresses! At last I pressed her down into a chair, and, laughing, she said You have no idea what selfdenial I have exercised to bring this visit about. I, who detest writing, have actually written five letters to Silas; and I dont think I said a single impertinent thing in one of them! What a wonderful little old thing your butler is! I did not know what to make of him on the steps. Is he a struldbrug, or a fairy, or only a ghost? Where on earth did your uncle pick him up? Im sure he came in on All Hallows Een, to answer an incantationnot your future husband, I hopeand hell vanish some night into gray smoke, and whisk sadly up the chimney. Hes the most venerable little thing I ever beheld in my life. I leaned back in the carriage and thought I should absolutely die of laughing. Hes gone up to prepare your uncle for my visit; and I really am very glad, for Im sure I shall look as young as Hebe after him. But who is this? Who are you, my dear? This was addressed to poor Milly, who stood at the corner of the chimneypiece, staring with her round eyes and plump cheeks in fear and wonder upon the strange lady. How stupid of me, I exclaimed. Milly, dear, this is your cousin, Lady Knollys. And so you are Millicent. Well, dear, I am very glad to see you. And Cousin Monica was on her feet again in an instant, with Millys hand very cordially in hers; and she gave her a kiss upon each cheek, and patted her head. Milly, I must mention, was a much more presentable figure than when I first encountered her. Her dresses were at least a quarter of a yard longer. Though very rustic, therefore, she was not so barbarously grotesque, by any means. IV Cousin Monica and Uncle Silas Meet Cousin Monica, with her hands upon Millys shoulders, looked amusedly and kindly in her face. And, said she, we must be very good friendsyou funny creature, you and I. Im allowed to be the most saucy old woman in Derbyshirequite incorrigibly privileged; and nobody is ever affronted with me, so I say the most shocking things constantly. Im a bit that way, myself; and I think, said poor Milly, making an effort, and growing very red; she quite lost her head at that point, and was incompetent to finish the sentiment she had prefaced. You think? Now, take my advice, and never wait to think my dear; talk first, and think afterwards, that is my way; though, indeed, I cant say I ever think at all. It is a very cowardly habit. Our coldblooded cousin Maud, there, thinks sometimes; but it is always such a failure that I forgive her. I wonder when your little preAdamite butler will return. He speaks the language of the Picts and Ancient Britons, I dare say, and your father requires a little time to translate him. And, Milly dear, I am very hungry, so I wont wait for your butler, who would give me, I suppose, one of the cakes baked by King Alfred, and some Danish beer in a skull; but Ill ask you for a little of that nice bread and butter. With which accordingly Lady Knollys was quickly supplied; but it did not at all impede her utterance. Do you think, girls, you could be ready to come away with me, if Silas gives leave, in an hour or two? I should so like to take you both home with me to Elverston. How delightful! you darling, cried I, embracing and kissing her; for my part, I should be ready in five minutes; what do you say, Milly? Poor Millys wardrobe, I am afraid, was more portable than handsome; and she looked horribly affrighted, and whispered in my ear My best petticoat is away at the laundress; say in a week, Maud. What does she say? asked Lady Knollys. She fears she cant be ready, I answered, dejectedly. Theres a deal of my slops in the wash, blurted out poor Milly, staring straight at Lady Knollys. In the name of wonder, what does my cousin mean? asked Lady Knollys. Her things have not come home yet from the laundress, I replied; and at this moment our wondrous old butler entered to announce to Lady Knollys that his master was ready to receive her, whenever she was disposed to favour him; and also to make polite apologies for his being compelled, by his state of health, to give her the trouble of ascending to his room. So Cousin Monica was at the door in a moment, over her shoulder calling to us, Come, girls. Please, not yet, my ladyyou alone; and he requests the young ladies will be in the way, as he will send for them presently. I began to admire poor Giblets as the wreck of a tolerably respectable servant. Very good; perhaps it is better we should kiss and be friends in private first, said Cousin Knollys, laughing; and away she went under the guidance of the mummy. I had an account of this ttette afterwards from Lady Knollys. When I saw him, my dear, she said, I could hardly believe my eyes; such white hairsuch a white facesuch mad eyessuch a deathlike smile. When I saw him last, his hair was dark; he dressed himself like a modern Englishman; and he really preserved a likeness to the fulllength portrait at Knowl, that you fell in love with, you know; but, angels and ministers of grace! such a spectre! I asked myself, is it necromancy, or is it delirium tremens that has reduced him to this? And said he, with that odious smile, that made me fancy myself half insane You see a change, Monica. What a sweet, gentle, insufferable voice he has! Somebody once told me about the tone of a glass flute that made some people hysterical to listen to, and I was thinking of it all the time. There was always a peculiar quality in his voice. I do see a change, Silas, I said at last; and, no doubt, so do you in mea great change. There has been time enough to work a greater than I observe in you since you last honoured me with a visit, said he. I think he was at his old sarcasms, and meant that I was the same impertinent minx he remembered long ago, uncorrected by time; and so I am, and he must not expect compliments from old Monica Knollys. It is a long time, Silas; but that, you know, is not my fault, said I. Not your fault, my dearyour instinct. We are all imitative creatures the great people ostracised me, and the small ones followed. We are very like turkeys, we have so much good sense and so much generosity. Fortune, in a freak, wounded my head, and the whole brood were upon me, pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them, dear Monica. It wasnt your fault, only your instinct, so I quite forgive you; but no wonder the peckers wear better than the pecked. You are robust; and I, what I am. Now, Silas, I have not come here to quarrel. If we quarrel now, mind, we can never make it upwe are too old, so let us forget all we can, and try to forgive something; and if we can do neither, at all events let there be truce between us while I am here. My personal wrongs I can quite forgive, and I do, Heaven knows, from my heart; but there are things which ought not to be forgiven. My children have been ruined by it. I may, by the mercy of Providence, be yet set right in the world, and so soon as that time comes, I will remember, and I will act; but my childrenyou will see that wretched girl, my daughtereducation, society, all would come too latemy children have been ruined by it. I have not done it; but I know what you mean, I said. You menace litigation whenever you have the means; but you forget that Austin placed you under promise, when he gave you the use of this house and place, never to disturb my title to Elverston. So there is my answer, if you mean that. I mean what I mean, he replied, with his old smile. You mean then, said I, that for the pleasure of vexing me with litigation, you are willing to forfeit your tenure of this house and place. Suppose I did mean precisely that, why should I forfeit anything? My beloved brother, by his will, has given me a right to the use of BartramHaugh for my life, and attached no absurd condition of the kind you fancy to his gift. Silas was in one of his vicious old moods, and liked to menace me. His vindictiveness got the better of his craft; but he knows as well as I do that he never could succeed in disturbing the title of my poor dear Harry Knollys; and I was not at all alarmed by his threats; and I told him so, as coolly as I speak to you now. Well, Monica, he said, I have weighed you in the balance, and you are not found wanting. For a moment the old man possessed me the thought of my children, of past unkindness, and present affliction and disgrace, exasperated me, and I was mad. It was but for a momentthe galvanic spasm of a corpse. Never was breast more dead than mine to the passions and ambitions of the world. They are not for white locks like these, nor for a man who, for a week in every month, lies in the gate of death. Will you shake hands? HereI do strike a truce; and I do forget and forgive everything. I dont know what he meant by this scene. I have no idea whether he was acting, or lost his head, or, in fact, why or how it occurred; but I am glad, darling, that, unlike myself, I was calm, and that a quarrel has not been forced upon me. When our turn came and we were summoned to the presence, Uncle Silas was quite as usual; but Cousin Monicas heightened colour, and the flash of her eyes, showed plainly that something exciting and angry had occurred. Uncle Silas commented in his own vein upon the effect of Bartram air and liberty, all he had to offer; and called on me to say how I liked them. And then he called Milly to him, kissed her tenderly, smiled sadly upon her, and turning to Cousin Monica, said This is my daughter Millyoh! she has been presented to you downstairs, has she? You have, no doubt, been interested by her. As I told her cousin Maud, though I am not yet quite a Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, she is a very finished Miss Hoyden. Are not you, my poor Milly? You owe your distinction, my dear, to that line of circumvallation which has, ever since your birth, intercepted all civilisation on its way to Bartram. You are much obliged, Milly, to everybody who, whether naturally or unnaturally, turned a sod in that invisible, but impenetrable, work. For your accomplishmentsrather singular than fashionableyou are indebted, in part, to your cousin, Lady Knollys. Is not she, Monica? Thank her, Milly. This is your truce, Silas, said Lady Knollys, with a quiet sharpness. I think, Silas Ruthyn, you want to provoke me to speak in a way before these young creatures which we should all regret. So my badinage excites your temper, Monnie. Think how you would feel, then, if I had found you by the highway side, mangled by robbers, and set my foot upon your throat, and spat in your face. Butstop this. Why have I said this? simply to emphasize my forgiveness. See, girls, Lady Knollys and I, cousins long estranged, forget and forgive the past, and join hands over its buried injuries. Well, be it so; only let us have done with ironies and covert taunts. And with these words their hands were joined; and Uncle Silas, after he had released hers, patted and fondled it with his, laughing icily and very low all the time. I wish so much, dear Monica, he said, when this piece of silent byplay was over, that I could ask you to stay tonight; but absolutely I have not a bed to offer, and even if I had, I fear my suit would hardly prevail. Then came Lady Knollys invitation for Milly and me. He was very much obliged; he smiled over it a great deal, meditating. I thought he was puzzled; and amid his smiles, his wild eyes scanned Cousin Monicas frank face once or twice suspiciously. There was a difficultyan undefined difficultyabout letting us go that day; but on a future onesoonvery soonhe would be most happy. Well, there was an end of that little project, for today at least; and Cousin Monica was too wellbred to urge it beyond a certain point. Milly, my dear, will you put on your hat and show me the grounds about the house? May she, Silas? I should like to renew my acquaintance. Youll see them sadly neglected, Monnie. A poor mans pleasure grounds must rely on Nature, and trust to her for effects. Where there is fine timber, however, and abundance of slope, and rock, and hollow, we sometimes gain in picturesqueness what we lose by neglect in luxury. Then, as Cousin Monica said she would cross the grounds by a path, and meet her carriage at a point to which we would accompany her, and so make her way home, she took leave of Uncle Silas; a ceremony whereatwithout, I thought, much zeal at either sidea kiss took place. Now, girls! said Cousin Knollys, when we were fairly in motion over the grass, what do you saywill he let you comeyes or no? I cant say, but I think, dear,this to Millyhe ought to let you see a little more of the world than appears among the glens and bushes of Bartram. Very pretty they are, like yourself; but very wild, and very little seen. Where is your brother, Milly; is not he older than you? I dont know where; and he is older by six years and a bit. Byandby, when Milly was gesticulating to frighten some herons by the rivers brink into the air, Cousin Monica said confidentially to me He has run away, Im toldI wish I could believe itand enlisted in a regiment going to India, perhaps the best thing for him. Did you see him here before his judicious selfbanishment? No. Well, I suppose you have had no loss. Doctor Bryerly says from all he can learn he is a very bad young man. And now tell me, dear, is Silas kind to you? Yes, always gentle, just as you saw him today; but we dont see a great deal of himvery little, in fact. And how do you like your life and the people? she asked. My life, very well; and the people, pretty well. Theres an old women we dont like, old Wyat, she is cross and mysterious and tells untruths; but I dont think she is dishonestso Mary Quince saysand that, you know, is a point; and there is a family, father and daughter, called Hawkes, who live in the Windmill Wood, who are perfect savages, though my uncle says they dont mean it; but they are very disagreeable, rude people; and except them we see very little of the servants or other people. But there has been a mysterious visit; someone came late at night, and remained for some days, though Milly and I never saw them, and Mary Quince saw a chaise at the sidedoor at two oclock at night. Cousin Monica was so highly interested at this that she arrested her walk and stood facing me, with her hand on my arm, questioning and listening, and lost, as it seemed, in dismal conjecture. It is not pleasant, you know, I said. No, it is not pleasant, said Lady Knollys, very gloomily. And just then Milly joined us, shouting to us to look at the herons flying; so Cousin Monica did, and smiled and nodded in thanks to Milly, and was again silent and thoughtful as we walked on. You are to come to me, mind, both of you girls, she said, abruptly; you shall. Ill manage it. When silence returned, and Milly ran away once more to try whether the old gray trout was visible in the still water under the bridge, Cousin Monica said to me in a low tone, looking hard at me Youve not seen anything to frighten you, Maud? Dont look so alarmed, dear, she added with a little laugh, which was not very merry, however. I dont mean frighten in any awful sensein fact, I did not mean frighten at all. I meantI cant exactly express itanything to vex, or make you uncomfortable; have you? No, I cant say I have, except that room in which Mr. Charke was found dead. Oh! you saw that, did you?I should like to see it so much. Your bedroom is not near it? Oh, no; on the floor beneath, and looking to the front. And Doctor Bryerly talked a little to me, and there seemed to be something on his mind more than he chose to tell me; so that for some time after I saw him I really was, as you say, frightened; but, except that, I really have had no cause. And what was in your mind when you asked me? Well, you know, Maud, you are afraid of ghosts, banditti, and everything; and I wished to know whether you were uncomfortable, and what your particular bogle was just nowthat, I assure you, was all; and I know, she continued, suddenly changing her light tone and manner for one of pointed entreaty, what Doctor Bryerly said; and I implore of you, Maud, to think of it seriously; and when you come to me, you shall do so with the intention of remaining at Elverston. Now, Cousin Monica, is this fair? You and Doctor Bryerly both talk in the same awful way to me; and I assure you, you dont know how nervous I am sometimes, and yet you wont, either of you, say what you mean. Now, Monica, dear cousin, wont you tell me? You see, dear, it is so lonely; its a strange place, and he so odd. I dont like the place, and I dont like him. Ive tried, but I cant, and I think I never shall. He may be a verywhat was it that good little silly curate at Knowl used to call him?a very advanced Christianthat is it, and I hope he is; but if he is only what he used to be, his utter seclusion from society removes the only check, except personal fearand he never had much of thatupon a very bad man. And you must know, my dear Maud, what a prize you are, and what an immense trust it is. Suddenly Cousin Monica stopped short, and looked at me as if she had gone too far. But, you know, Silas may be very good now, although he was wild and selfish in his young days. Indeed I dont know what to make of him; but I am sure when you have thought it over, you will agree with me and Doctor Bryerly, that you must not stay here. It was vain trying to induce my cousin to be more explicit. I hope to see you at Elverston in a very few days. I will shame Silas into letting you come. I dont like his reluctance. But dont you think he must know that Milly would require some little outfit before her visit? Well, I cant say. I hope that is all; but be it what it may, Ill make him let you come, and immediately, too. After she had gone, I experienced a repetition of those undefined doubts which had tortured me for some time after my conversation with Dr. Bryerly. I had truly said, however, I was well enough contented with my mode of life here, for I had been trained at Knowl to a solitude very nearly as profound. V In Which I Make Another Cousins Acquaintance My correspondence about this time was not very extensive. About once a fortnight a letter from honest Mrs. Rusk conveyed to me how the dogs and ponies were, in queer English, oddly spelt; some village gossip, a critique upon Doctor Clays or the Curates last sermon, and some severities generally upon the Dissenters doings, with loves to Mary Quince, and all good wishes to me. Sometimes a welcome letter from cheerful Cousin Monica; and now, to vary the series, a copy of complimentary verses, without a signature, very adoringvery like Byron, I then fancied, and now, I must confess, rather vapid. Could I doubt from whom they came? I had received, about a month after my arrival, a copy of verses in the same hand, in a plaintive ballad style, of the soldierly sort, in which the writer said, that as living his sole object was to please me, so dying I should be his latest thought; and some more poetic impieties, asking only in return that when the storm of battle had swept over, I should shed a tear on seeing the oak lie, where it fell. Of course, about this lugubrious pun, there could be no misconception. The Captain was unmistakably indicated; and I was so moved that I could no longer retain my secret; but walking with Milly that day, confided the little romance to that unsophisticated listener, under the chestnut trees. The lines were so amorously dejected, and yet so heroically redolent of blood and gunpowder, that Milly and I agreed that the writer must be on the verge of a sanguinary campaign. It was not easy to get at Uncle Silass Times or Morning Post, which we fancied would explain these horrible allusions; but Milly bethought her of a sergeant in the militia, resident in Feltram, who knew the destination and quarters of every regiment in the service; and circuitously, from this authority, we learned, to my infinite relief, that Captain Oakleys regiment had still two years to sojourn in England. I was summoned one evening by old LAmour, to my uncles room. I remember his appearance that evening so well, as he lay back in his chair; the pillow; the white glare of his strange eye; his feeble, painful smile. Youll excuse my not rising, dear Maud, I am so miserably ill this evening. I expressed my respectful condolence. Yes; I am to be pitied; but pity is of no use, dear, he murmured, peevishly. I sent for you to make you acquainted with your cousin, my son. Where are you Dudley? A figure seated in a low lounging chair, at the other side of the fire, and which till then I had not observed, at these words rose up a little slowly, like a man stiff after a days hunting; and I beheld with a shock that held my breath, and fixed my eyes upon him in a stare, the young man whom I had encountered at Church Scarsdale, on the day of my unpleasant excursion there with Madame, and who, to the best of my belief, was also one of that ruffianly party who had so unspeakably terrified me in the warren at Knowl. I suppose I looked very much affrighted. If I had been looking at a ghost I could not have felt much more scared and incredulous. When I was able to turn my eyes upon my uncle he was not looking at me; but with a glimmer of that smile with which a father looks on a son whose youth and comeliness he admires, his white face was turned towards the young man, in whom I beheld nothing but the image of odious and dreadful associations. Come, sir, said my uncle, we must not be too modest. Heres your cousin Maudwhat do you say? How are ye, Miss? he said, with a sheepish grin. Miss! Come, come. Miss us, no Misses, said my uncle; she is Maud, and you Dudley, or I mistake; or we shall have you calling Milly, madame. Shell not refuse you her hand, I venture to think. Come, young gentleman, speak for yourself. How are ye, Maud? he said, doing his best, and drawing near, he extended his hand. Youre welcome to BartramHaugh, Miss. Kiss your cousin, sir. Wheres your gallantry? On my honour, I disown you, exclaimed my uncle, with more energy than he had shown before. With a clumsy effort, and a grin that was both sheepish and impudent, he grasped my hand and advanced his face. The imminent salute gave me strength to spring back a step or two, and he hesitated. My uncle laughed peevishly. Well, well, that will do, I suppose. In my time firstcousins did not meet like strangers; but perhaps we were wrong; we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us. I haveIve seen him beforethat is; and at this point I stopped. My uncle turned his strange glare, in a sort of scowl of enquiry, upon me. Oh!hey! why this is news. You never told me. Where have you meteh, Dudley? Never saw her in my days, so far as Im aweer on, said the young man. No! Well, then, Maud, will you enlighten us? said Uncle Silas, coldly. I did see that young gentleman before, I faltered. Meaning me, maam? he asked, coolly. Yescertainly you. I did, uncle, answered I. And where was it, my dear? Not at Knowl, I fancy. Poor dear Austin did not trouble me or mine much with his hospitalities. This was not a pleasant tone to take in speaking of his dead brother and benefactor; but at the moment I was too much engaged upon the one point to observe it. I metI could not say my cousinI met him, uncleyour sonthat young gentlemanI saw him, I should say, at Church Scarsdale, and afterwards with some other persons in the warren at Knowl. It was the night our gamekeeper was beaten. Well, Dudley, what do you say to that? asked Uncle Silas. I never was at them places, so help me. I dont know where they be; and I never set eyes on the young lady before, as I hope to be saved, in all my days, said he, with a countenance so unchanged and an air so confident that I began to think I must be the dupe of one of those strange resemblances which have been known to lead to positive identification in the witnessbox, afterwards proved to be utterly mistaken. You look soso uncomfortable, Maud, at the idea of having seen him before, that I hardly wonder at the vehemence of his denial. There was plainly something disagreeable; but you see as respects him it is a total mistake. My boy was always a truthtelling fellowyou may rely implicitly on what he says. You were not at those places? I wish I may began the ingenuous youth, with increased vehemence. There, therethat will do; your honour and word as a gentlemanand that you are, though a poor onewill quite satisfy your cousin Maud. Am I right, my dear? I do assure you, as a gentleman, I never knew him to say the thing that was not. So Mr. Dudley Ruthyn began, not to curse, but to swear, in the prescribed form, that he had never seen me before, or the places I had named, since I was weaned, by Thats enoughnow shake hands, if you wont kiss, like cousins, interrupted my uncle. And very uncomfortably I did lend him my hand to shake. Youll want some supper, Dudley, so Maud and I will excuse your going. Good night, my dear boy, and he smiled and waved him from the room. Thats as fine a young fellow, I think, as any English father can boast for his sontrue, brave, and kind, and quite an Apollo.

Did you observe how finely proportioned he is, and what exquisite features the fellow has? Hes rustic and rough, as you see; but a year or two in the militiaIve a promise of a commission for himhes too old for the linewill form and polish him. He wants nothing but manner; and I protest when he has had a little drilling of that kind, I do believe hell be as pretty a fellow as youd find in England. I listened with amazement. I could discover nothing but what was disagreeable in the horrid bumpkin, and thought such an instance of the blindness of parental partiality was hardly credible. I looked down, dreading another direct appeal to my judgment; and Uncle Silas, I suppose, referred those downcast looks to maiden modesty, for he forbore to task mine by any new interrogatory. Dudley Ruthyns cool and resolute denial of ever having seen me or the places I had named, and the inflexible serenity of his countenance while doing so, did very much shake my confidence in my own identification of him. I could not be quite certain that the person I had seen at Church Scarsdale was the very same whom I afterwards saw at Knowl. And now, in this particular instance, after the lapse of a still longer period, could I be perfectly certain that my memory, deceived by some accidental points of resemblance, had not duped me, and wronged my cousin, Dudley Ruthyn? I suppose my uncle had expected from me some signs of acquiesence in his splendid estimate of his cub, and was nettled at my silence. After a short interval he said Ive seen something of the world in my day, and I can say without a misgiving of partiality, that Dudley is the material of a perfect English gentleman. I am not blind, of coursethe training must be supplied; a year or two of good models, active selfcriticism, and good society. I simply say that the material is there. Here was another interval of silence. And now tell me, child, what these recollections of ChurchChurchwhat? Church Scarsdale, I replied. Yes, thank youChurch Scarsdale and Knowlare? So I related my stories as well as I could. Well, dear Maud, the adventure of Church Scarsdale is hardly so terrific as I expected, said Uncle Silas with a cold little laugh; and I dont see, if he had really been the hero of it, why he should shrink from avowing it. I know I should not. And I really cant say that your picnic party in the grounds of Knowl has frightened me much more. A lady waiting in the carriage, and two or three tipsy young men. Her presence seems to me a guarantee that no mischief was meant; but champagne is the soul of frolic, and a row with the gamekeepers a natural consequence. It happened to me onceforty years ago, when I was a wild young buckone of the worst rows I ever was in. And Uncle Silas poured some eaudecologne over the corner of his handkerchief, and touched his temples with it. If my boy had been there, I do assure youand I know himhe would say so at once. I fancy he would rather boast of it. I never knew him utter an untruth. When you know him a little youll say so. With these words Uncle Silas leaned back exhausted, and languidly poured some of his favourite eaudecologne over the palms of his hands, nodded a farewell, and, in a whisper, wished me good night. Dudleys come, whispered Milly, taking me under the arm as I entered the lobby. But I dont care he never gives me nout; and he gets money from Governor, as much as he likes, and I never a sixpence. Its a shame! So there was no great love between the only son and only daughter of the younger line of the Ruthyns. I was curious to learn all that Milly could tell me of this new inmate of BartramHaugh; and Milly was communicative without having a great deal to relate, and what I heard from her tended to confirm my own disagreeable impressions about him. She was afraid of him. He was a woundy ugly customer in a wax, she could tell me. He was the only one she ever knowed as had pluck to jaw the Governor. But he was afeard on the Governor, too. His visits to BartramHaugh, I heard, were desultory; and this, to my relief, would probably not outlast a week or a fortnight. He was such a fashionable cove; he was always agadding about, mostly to Liverpool and Birmingham, and sometimes to Lunnun, itself. He was keeping company one time with Beauty, Governor thought, and he was awfully afraid hed a married her; but that was all bosh and nonsense; and Beauty would have none of his chaff and wheedling, for she liked Tom Brice; and Milly thought that Dudley never cared a crack of a whip for her. He used to go to the Windmill to have a smoke with Pegtop; and he was a member of the Feltram Club, that met at the Plume o Feathers. He was a rare good shot, she heard; and he was before the justices for poaching, but they could make nothing of it. And the Governor said it was all through spite of himfor they hate us for being better blood than they. And all but the squires and those upstart folk loves Dudley, he is so handsome and gaythough he be a bit cross at home. And, Governor says, hell be a Parliament man yet, spite o them all. Next morning, when our breakfast was nearly ended, Dudley tapped at the window with the end of his clay pipea churchwarden Milly called itjust such a long curved pipe as Joe Willet is made to hold between his lips in those charming illustrations of Barnaby Rudgewhich we all know so welland lifting his wideawake with a burlesque salutation, which, I suppose, would have charmed the Plume of Feathers, he dropped, kicked and caught his wideawake, with an agility and gravity, as he replaced it, so inexpressibly humorous, that Milly went off in a loud fit of laughter, with the ejaculation Did you ever? It was odd how repulsively my confidence in my original identification always revived on unexpectedly seeing Dudley after an interval. I could perceive that this piece of comic byplay was meant to make a suitable impression on me. I received it, however, with a killing gravity; and after a word or two to Milly, he lounged away, having first broken his pipe, bit by bit, into pieces, which he balanced in turn on his nose and on his chin, from which features he jerked them into his mouth, with a precision which, along with his excellent pantomime of eating them, highly excited Millys mirth and admiration. VI My Cousin Dudley Greatly to my satisfaction, this engaging person did not appear again that day. But next day Milly told me that my uncle had taken him to task for the neglect with which he was treating us. He did pitch into him, sharp and short, and not a word from him, only sulky like; and I so frightened, I durst not look up almost; and they said a lot I could not make head or tail of; and Governor ordered me out o the room, and glad I was to go; and so they had it out between them. Milly could throw no light whatsoever upon the adventures at Church Scarsdale and Knowl; and I was left still in doubt, which sometimes oscillated one way and sometimes another. But, on the whole, I could not shake off the misgivings which constantly recurred and pointed very obstinately to Dudley as the hero of those odious scenes. Oddly enough, though, I now felt far less confident upon the point than I did at first sight. I had begun to distrust my memory, and to suspect my fancy; but of this there could be no question, that between the person so unpleasantly linked in my remembrance with those scenes, and Dudley Ruthyn, a striking, though possibly only a general resemblance did exist. Milly was certainly right as to the gist of Uncle Silass injunction, for we saw more of Dudley henceforward. He was shy; he was impudent; he was awkward; he was conceited;altogether a most intolerable bumpkin. Though he sometimes flushed and stammered, and never for a moment was at his ease in my presence, yet, to my inexpressible disgust, there was a selfcomplacency in his manner, and a kind of triumph in his leer, which very plainly told me how satisfied he was as to the nature of the impression he was making upon me. I would have given worlds to tell him how odious I thought him. Probably, however, he would not have believed me. Perhaps he fancied that ladies affected airs of indifference and repulsion to cover their real feelings. I never looked at or spoke to him when I could avoid either, and then it was as briefly as I could. To do him justice, however, he seemed to have no liking for our society, and certainly never seemed altogether comfortable in it. I find it hard to write quite impartially even of Dudley Ruthyns personal appearance; but, with an effort, I confess that his features were good, and his figure not amiss, though a little fattish. He had light whiskers, light hair, and a pink complexion, and very good blue eyes. So far my uncle was right; and if he had been perfectly gentlemanlike, he really might have passed for a handsome man in the judgment of some critics. But there was that odious mixture of mauvaise honte and impudence, a clumsiness, a slyness, and a consciousness in his bearing and countenance, not distinctly boorish, but low, which turned his good looks into an ugliness more intolerable than that of feature; and a corresponding vulgarity pervading his dress, his demeanour, and his very walk, marred whatever good points his figure possessed. If you take all this into account, with the ominous and startling misgivings constantly recurring, you will understand the mixed feelings of anger and disgust with which I received the admiration he favoured me with. Gradually he grew less constrained in my presence, and certainly his manners were not improved by his growing ease and confidence. He came in while Milly and I were at luncheon, jumped up, with a rightabout face performed in the air, sitting on the sideboard, whence grinning slyly and kicking his heels, he leered at us. Will you have something, Dudley? asked Milly. No, lass; but Ill look at ye, and maybe drink a drop for company. And with these words, he took a sportsmans flask from his pocket; and helping himself to a large glass and a decanter, he compounded a glass of strong brandyandwater, as he talked, and refreshed himself with it from time to time. Curates up wi the Governor, he said, with a grin. I wanted a word wi him; but I spose Ill hardly git in this hour or more; theyre a praying and disputing, and a Biblechopping, as usual. Ha, ha! But twont hold much longer, old Wyat says, now that Uncle Austins dead; theres nout to be made o praying and that work no longer, and it dont pay of itself. O fie! For shame, you sinner! laughed Milly. He wasnt in a church these five years, he says, and then only to meet a young lady. Now, isnt he a sinner, Maudisnt he? Dudley, grinning, looked with a languishing slyness at me, biting the edge of his wideawake, which he held over his breast. Dudley Ruthyn probably thought there was a manly and desperate sort of fascination in the impiety he professed. I wonder, Milly, said I, at your laughing. How can you laugh? Youd have me cry, would ye? answered Milly. I certainly would not have you laugh, I replied. I know I wish someone ud cry for me, and I know who, said Dudley, in what he meant for a very engaging way, and he looked at me as if he thought I must feel flattered by his caring to have my tears. Instead of crying, however, I leaned back in my chair, and began quietly to turn over the pages of Walter Scotts poems, which I and Milly were then reading in the evenings. The tone in which this odious young man spoke of his father, his coarse mention of mine, and his low boasting of his irreligion, disgusted me more than ever with him. They parsons be slow coachesawful slow. Ill have a good bit to wait, I spose. I should be three miles away and more by this timedrat it! He was eyeing the legging of the foot which he held up while he spoke, as if calculating how far away that limb should have carried him by this time. Why cant folk do their Bible and prayers o Sundays, and get it off their stomachs? I say, Milly lass, will ye see if Governor be done wi the Curate? Do. Im a losing the whole day along o him. Milly jumped up, accustomed to obey her brother, and as she passed me, whispered, with a wink Money. And away she went. Dudley whistled a tune, and swung his foot like a pendulum, as he followed her with his sideglance. I say, it is a hard case, Miss, a lad o spirit should be kept so tight. I havent a shilling but what comes through his fingers; an drat the tizzy hell gi me till he knows the reason why. Perhaps, I said, my uncle thinks you should earn some for yourself. Id like to know how a fellas to earn money nowadays. You wouldnt have a gentleman to keep a shop, I fancy. But Ill ha a fistful jist now, and no thanks to he. Them executors, you know, owes me a deal o money. Very honest chaps, of course; but theyre cursed slow about paying, I know. I made no remark upon this elegant allusion to the executors of my dear fathers will. An I tell ye, Maud, when I git the tin, I know who Ill buy a farin for. I do, lass. The odious creature drawled this with a sidelong leer, which, I suppose, he fancied quite irresistible. I am one of those unfortunate persons who always blushed when I most wished to look indifferent; and now, to my inexpressible chagrin, with its accustomed perversity, I felt the blush mount to my cheeks, and glow even on my forehead. I saw that he perceived this most disconcerting indication of a sentiment the very idea of which was so detestable, that, equally enraged with myself and with him, I did not know how to exhibit my contempt and indignation. Mistaking the cause of my discomposure, Mr. Dudley Ruthyn laughed softly, with an insufferable suavity. And theres someat, lass, I must have in return. Honour thy father, you know; you would not ha me disobey the Governor? No, you wouldntwould ye? I darted at him a look which I hoped would have quelled his impertinence; but I blushed most provokinglymore violently than ever. Id back them eyes again the county, I would, he exclaimed, with a condescending enthusiasm. Youre awful pretty, you are, Maud. I dont know what came over me tother night when Governor told me to buss ye; but dang it, ye shant deny me now, and Ill have a kiss, lass, in spite o thy blushes. He jumped from his elevated seat on the sideboard, and came swaggering toward me, with an odious grin, and his arms extended. I started to my feet, absolutely transported with fury. Drat me, if she baint agoing to fight me! he chuckled humorously. Come, Maud, you would not be illnatured, sure? Arter all, its only our duty. Governor bid us kiss, didnt he? Dontdont, sir. Stand back, or Ill call the servants. And as it was I began to scream for Milly. Theres how it is wi all they cattle! You never knows your own mindye dont, he said, surlily. You make such a row about a bit o play. Drop it, will you? Theres no one aharming youis there? Im not, for sartain. And, with an angry chuckle, he turned on his heel, and left the room. I think I was perfectly right to resist, with all the vehemence of which I was capable, this attempt to assume an intimacy which, notwithstanding my uncles opinion to the contrary, seemed to me like an outrage. Milly found me alonenot frightened, but very angry. I had quite made up my mind to complain to my uncle, but the Curate was still with him; and, by the time he had gone, I was cooler. My awe of my uncle had returned. I fancied that he would treat the whole affair as a mere playful piece of gallantry. So, with the comfortable conviction that he had had a lesson, and would think twice before repeating his impertinence, I resolved, with Millys approbation, to leave matters as they were. Dudley, greatly to my comfort, was huffed with me, and hardly appeared, and was sulky and silent when he did. I lived then in the pleasant anticipation of his departure, which, Milly thought, would be very soon. My uncle had his Bible and his consolations; but it cannot have been pleasant to this old rou, converted though he wasthis refined man of fashionto see his son grow up an outcast, and a Tony Lumpkin; for whatever he may have thought of his natural gifts, he must have known how mere a boor he was. I try to recall my then impressions of my uncles character. Grizzly and chaotic the image risessilver head, feet of clay. I as yet knew little of him. I began to perceive that he was what Mary Quince used to call dreadful particularI suppose a little selfish and impatient. He used to get cases of turtle from Liverpool. He drank claret and hock for his health, and ate woodcock and other light and salutary dainties for the same reason; and was petulant and vicious about the cooking of these, and the flavour and clearness of his coffee. His conversation was easy, polished, and, with a sentimental glazing, cold; but across this artificial talk, with its French rhymes, racy phrases, and fluent eloquence, like a streak of angry light, would, at intervals, suddenly gleam some dismal thought of religion. I never could quite satisfy myself whether they were affectations or genuine, like intermittent thrills of pain. The light of his large eyes was very peculiar. I can liken it to nothing but the sheen of intense moonlight on burnished metal. But that cannot express it. It glared white and suddenlyalmost fatuous. I thought of Moores lines whenever I looked on it Oh, ye dead! oh, ye dead! whom we know by the light you give From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live. I never saw in any other eye the least glimmer of the same baleful effulgence. His fits, toohis hoverings between life and deathbetween intellect and insanitya dubious, marshfire existence, horrible to look on! I was puzzled even to comprehend his feelings toward his children. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was ready to lay down his soul for them; at others, he looked and spoke almost as if he hated them. He talked as if the image of death was always before him, yet he took a terrible interest in life, while seemingly dozing away the dregs of his days in sight of his coffin. Oh! Uncle Silas, tremendous figure in the past, burning always in memory in the same awful lights; the fixed white face of scorn and anguish! It seems as if the Woman of Endor had led me to that chamber and showed me a spectre. Dudley had not left BartramHaugh when a little note reached me from Lady Knollys. It said Dearest MaudI have written by this post to Silas, beseeching a loan of you and my Cousin Milly. I see no reason your uncle can possibly have for refusing me; and, therefore, I count confidently on seeing you both at Elverston tomorrow, to stay for at least a week. I have hardly a creature to meet you. I have been disappointed in several visitors; but another time we shall have a gayer house. Tell Millywith my lovethat I will not forgive her if she fails to accompany you. Believe me ever your affectionate cousin, Monica Knollys. Milly and I were both afraid that Uncle Silas would refuse his consent, although we could not divine any sound reason for his doing so, and there were many in favour of his improving the opportunity of allowing poor Milly to see some persons of her own sex above the rank of menials. At about twelve oclock my uncle sent for us, and, to our great delight, announced his consent, and wished us a very happy excursion. VII Elverston and Its People So Milly and I drove through the gabled high street of Feltram next day. We saw my gracious cousin smoking with a man like a groom, at the door of the Plume of Feathers. I drew myself back as we passed, and Milly popped her head out of the window. Im blessed, said she, laughing, if he hadnt his thumb to his nose, and winding up his little finger, the way he does with old WyatLAmour, ye know; and you may be sure he said something funny, for Jim Jolliter was laughin, with his pipe in his hand. I wish I had not seen him, Milly. I feel as if it were an ill omen. He always looks so cross; and I dare say he wished us some ill, I said. No, no, you dont know Dudley if he were angry, hed say nothing thats funny; no, hes not vexed, only shamming vexed. The scenery through which we passed was very pretty. The road brought us through a narrow and wooded glen. Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my raptures, and requite them. Then over one of those beautiful Derbyshire moors we drove, and so into a wide wooded hollow, where was our first view of Cousin Monicas pretty gabled house, beautified with that indescribable air of shelter and comfort which belongs to an old English residence, with old timber grouped round it, and something in its aspect of the quaint old times and bygone merrymakings, saying sadly, but genially, Come in I bid you welcome. For two hundred years, or more, have I been the home of this beloved old family, whose generations I have seen in the cradle and in the coffin, and whose mirth and sorrows and hospitalities I remember. All their friends, like you, were welcome; and you, like them, will here enjoy the warm illusions that cheat the sad conditions of mortality; and like them you will go your way, and others succeed you, till at last I, too, shall yield to the general law of decay, and disappear. By this time poor Milly had grown very nervous; a state which she described in such very odd phraseology as threw me, in spite of myselffor I affected an impressive gravity in lecturing her upon her languageinto a hearty fit of laughter. I must mention, however, that in certain important points Milly was very essentially reformed. Her dress, though not very fashionable, was no longer absurd. And I had drilled her into speaking and laughing quietly; and for the rest I trusted to the indulgence which is always, I think, more honestly and easily obtained from wellbred than from underbred people. Cousin Monica was out when we arrived; but we found that she had arranged a doublebedded room for me and Milly, greatly to our content; and good Mary Quince was placed in the dressingroom beside us. We had only just commenced our toilet when our hostess entered, as usual in high spirits, welcomed and kissed us both again and again. She was, indeed, in extraordinary delight, for she had anticipated some stratagem or evasion to prevent our visit; and in her usual way she spoke her mind as frankly about Uncle Silas to poor Milly as she used to do of my dear father to me. I did not think he would let you come without a battle; and you know if he chose to be obstinate it would not have been easy to get you out of the enchanted ground, for so it seems to be with that awful old wizard in the midst of it. I mean, Silas, your papa, my dear. Honestly, is not he very like Michael Scott? I never saw him, answered poor Milly. At least, that Im aware of, she added, perceiving us smile. But I do think hes a thought like old Michael Dobbs, that sells the ferrets, maybe you mean him? Why, you told me, Maud, that you and Milly were reading Walter Scotts poems. Well, no matter. Michael Scott, my dear, was a dead wizard, with ever so much silvery hair, lying in his grave for ever so many years, with just life enough to scowl when they took his book; and youll find him in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, exactly like your papa, my dear. And my people tell me that your brother Dudley has been seen drinking and smoking about Feltram this week. How long does he remain at home? Not very long, eh? And, Maud, dear, he has not been making love to you? Well, I see; of course he has. And apropos of lovemaking, I hope that impudent creature, Charles Oakley, has not been teasing you with notes or verses. Indeed but he has though, interposed Miss Milly; a good deal to my chagrin, for I saw no particular reason for placing his verses in Cousin Monicas hands. So I confessed the two little copies of verses, with the qualification, however, that I did not know from whom they came. Well now, dear Maud, have not I told you fifty times over to have nothing to say to him? Ive found out, my dear, he plays, and he is very much in debt. Ive made a vow to pay no more for him. Ive been such a fool, you have no notion; and Im speaking, you know, against myself; it would be such a relief if he were to find a wife to support him; and he has been, Im told, very sweet upon a rich old maida buttonmakers sister, in Manchester. This arrow was well shot. But dont be frightened you are richer as well as younger; and, no doubt, will have your chance first, my dear; and in the meantime, I dare say, those verses, like Falstaffs billetdoux, you know, are doing double duty. I laughed, but the buttonmaker was a secret trouble to me; and I would have given I know not what that Captain Oakley were one of the company, that I might treat him with the refined contempt which his deserts and my dignity demanded. Cousin Monica busied herself about Millys toilet, and was a very useful ladys maid, chatting in her own way all the time; and, at last, tapping Milly under the chin with her finger, she said, very complacently I think I have succeeded, Miss Milly; look in the glass. She really is a very pretty creature. And Milly blushed, and looked with a shy gratification, which made her still prettier, on the mirror. Milly indeed was very pretty. She looked much taller now that her dresses were made of the usual length. A little plump she was, beautifully fair, with such azure eyes, and rich hair. The more you laugh the better, Milly, for youve got very pretty teethvery pretty; and if you were my daughter, or if your father would become president of a college of magicians, and give you up to me, I venture to say I would place you very well; and even as it is we must try, my dear. So down to the drawingroom we went; and Cousin Monica entered, leading us both by the hands. By this time the curtains were closed, and the drawingroom dependent on the pleasant glow of the fire, and the slight provisional illumination usual before dinner. Here are my two cousins, began Lady Knollys this is Miss Ruthyn, of Knowl, whom I take the liberty of calling Maud; and this is Miss Millicent Ruthyn, Silass daughter, you know, whom I venture to call Milly; and they are very pretty, as you will see, when we get a little more light, and they know it very well themselves. And as she spoke, a frankeyed, gentle, prettyish lady, not so tall as I, but with a very kind face, rose up from a book of prints, and, smiling, took our hands. She was by no means young, as I then counted youthpast thirty, I supposeand with an air that was very quiet, and friendly, and engaging. She had never been a mere fashionable woman plainly; but she had the ease and polish of the best society, and seemed to take a kindly interest both in Milly and me; and Cousin Monica called her Mary, and sometimes Polly. That was all I knew of her for the present. So very pleasantly the time passed by till the dressingbell rang, and we ran away to our room. Did I say anything very bad? asked poor Milly, standing exactly before me, so soon as our door was shut. Nothing, Milly; you are doing admirably. And I do look a great fool, dont I? she demanded. You look extremely pretty, Milly; and not a bit like a fool. I watch everything. I think Ill learn it at last; but it comes a little troublesome at first; and they do talk different from what I usedyou were quite right there. When we returned to the drawingroom, we found the party already assembled, and chatting, evidently with spirit. The village doctor, whose name I forget, a small man, grey, with shrewd grey eyes, sharp and mulberry nose, whose conflagration extended to his rugged cheeks, and touched his chin and forehead, was conversing, no doubt agreeably, with Mary, as Cousin Monica called her guest. Over my shoulder, Milly whispered Mr. Carysbroke. And Milly was quite right that gentleman chatting with Lady Knollys, his elbow resting on the chimneypiece, was, indeed, our acquaintance of the Windmill Wood. He instantly recognised us, and met us with his pleased and intelligent smile. I was just trying to describe to Lady Knollys the charming scenery of the Windmill Wood, among which I was so fortunate as to make your acquaintance, Miss Ruthyn. Even in this beautiful county I know of nothing prettier. Then he sketched it, as it were, with a few light but glowing words. What a sweet scene! said Cousin Monica only think of her never bringing me through it. She reserves it, I fancy, for her romantic adventures; and you, I know, are very benevolent, Ilbury, and all that kind of thing; but I am not quite certain that you would have walked along that narrow parapet, over a river, to visit a sick old woman, if you had not happened to see two very pretty demoiselles on the other side. What an illnatured speech! I must either forfeit my character for disinterested benevolence, so justly admired, or disavow a motive that does such infinite credit to my taste, exclaimed Mr. Carysbroke. I think a charitable person would have said that a philanthropist, in prosecuting his virtuous, but perilous vocation, was unexpectedly rewarded by a vision of angels. And with these angels loitered away the time which ought to have been devoted to good Mother Hubbard, in her fit of lumbago, and returned without having set eyes on that afflicted Christian, to amaze his worthy sister with poetic babblings about woodnymphs and such pagan impieties, rejoined Lady Knollys. Well, be just, he replied, laughing; did not I go next day and see the patient? Yes; next day you went by the same routein quest of the dryads, I am afraidand were rewarded by the spectacle of Mother Hubbard. Will nobody help a humane man in difficulties? Mr. Carysbroke appealed. I do believe, said the lady whom as yet I knew only as Mary, that every word that Monica says is perfectly true. And if it be so, am I not all the more in need of help? Truth is simply the most dangerous kind of defamation, and I really think Im most cruelly persecuted. At this moment dinner was announced, and a meek and dapper little clergyman, with smooth pink cheeks, and tresses parted down the middle, whom I had not seen before, emerged from shadow. This little man was assigned to Milly, Mr. Carysbroke to me, and I know not how the remaining ladies divided the doctor between them. That dinner, the first at Elverston, I remember as a very pleasant repast. Everyone talkedit was impossible that conversation should flag where Lady Knollys was; and Mr. Carysbroke was very agreeable and amusing. At the other side of the table, the little pink curate, I was happy to see, was prattling away, with a modest fluency, in an undertone to Milly, who was following my instructions most conscientiously, and speaking in so low a key that I could hardly hear at the opposite side one word she was saying. That night Cousin Monica paid us a visit, as we sat chatting by the fire in our room; and I told her I have just been telling Milly what an impression she has made. The pretty little clergymanil en est prishe has evidently quite lost his heart to her. I dare say hell preach next Sunday on some of King Solomons wise sayings about the irresistible strength of women. Yes, said Lady Knollys, or maybe on the sensible text, Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour, and so forth. At all events, I may say, Milly, whoso findeth a husband such as he, findeth a tolerably good thing.

He is an exemplary little creature, second son of Sir Harry Biddlepen, with a little independent income of his own, beside his church revenues of ninety pounds a year; and I dont think a more harmless and docile little husband could be found anywhere; and I think, Miss Maud, you seemed a good deal interested, too. I laughed and blushed, I suppose; and Cousin Monica, skipping after her wont to quite another matter, said in her odd frank way And how has Silas been?not cross, I hope, or very odd. There was a rumour that your brother, Dudley, had gone a soldiering to India, Milly, or somewhere; but that was all a story, for he has turned up, just as usual. And what does he mean to do with himself? He has got some money nowyour poor fathers will, Maud. Surely he doesnt mean to go on lounging and smoking away his life among poachers, and prizefighters, and worse people. He ought to go to Australia, like Thomas Swain, who, they say, is making a fortunea great fortuneand coming home again. Thats what your brother Dudley should do, if he has either sense or spirit; but I suppose he wonttoo long abandoned to idleness and low companyand hell not have a shilling left in a year or two. Does he know, I wonder, that his father has served a notice or something on Dr. Bryerly, telling him to pay sixteen hundred pounds of poor Austins legacy to him, and saying that he has paid debts of the young man, and holds his acknowledgments to that amount? He wont have a guinea in a year if he stays here. Id give fifty pounds he was in Van Diemens Landnot that I care for the cub, Milly, any more than you do; but I really dont see any honest business he has in England. Milly gaped in a total puzzle as Lady Knollys rattled on. You know, Milly, you must not be talking about this when you go home to Bartram, because Silas would prevent your coming to me any more if he thought I spoke so freely; but I cant help it so you must promise to be more discreet than I. And I am told that all kinds of claims are about to be pressed against him, now that he is thought to have got some money; and he has been cutting down oak and selling the bark, Doctor Bryerly has been told, in that Windmill Wood; and he has kilns there for burning charcoal, and got a man from Lancashire who understands itHawk, or something like that. Ay, HawkesDickon Hawkes; thats Pegtop, you know, Maud, said Milly. Well, I dare say; but a man of very bad character, Dr. Bryerly says; and he has written to Mr. Danvers about itfor that is what they call waste, cutting down and selling the timber, and the oakbark, and burning the willows, and other trees that are turned into charcoal. It is all waste, and Dr. Bryerly is about to put a stop to it. Has he got your carriage for you, Maud, and your horses? asked Cousin Monica, suddenly. They have not come yet, but in a few weeks, Dudley says, positively Cousin Monica laughed a little and shook her head. Yes, Maud, the carriage and horses will always be coming in a few weeks, till the time is over; and meanwhile the old travelling chariot and posthorses will do very well; and she laughed a little again. Thats why the stiles pulled away at the paling, I suppose; and BeautyMeg Hawkes, that isis put there to stop us going through; for I often spied the smoke beyond the windmill, observed Milly. Cousin Monica listened with interest, and nodded silently. I was very much shocked. It seemed to me quite incredible. I think Lady Knollys read my amazement and my exalted estimate of the heinousness of the procedure in my face, for she said You know we cant quite condemn Silas till we have heard what he has to say. He may have done it in ignorance; or, it is just possible, he may have the right. Quite true. He may have the right to cut down trees at BartramHaugh. At all events, I am sure he thinks he has, I echoed. The fact was, that I would not avow to myself a suspicion of Uncle Silas. Any falsehood there opened an abyss beneath my feet into which I dared not look. And now, dear girls, good night. You must be tired. We breakfast at a quarter past ninenot too early for you, I know. And so saying, she kissed us, smiling, and was gone. I was so unpleasantly occupied, for some time after her departure, with the knaveries said to be practised among the dense cover of the Windmill Wood, that I did not immediately recollect that we had omitted to ask her any particulars about her guests. Who can Mary be? asked Milly. Cousin Monica says shes engaged to be married, and I think I heard the Doctor call her Lady Mary, and I intended asking her ever so much about her; but what she told us about cutting down the trees, and all that, quite put it out of my head. We shall have time enough tomorrow, however, to ask questions. I like her very much, I know. And I think, said Milly, it is to Mr. Carysbroke shes to be married. Do you? said I, remembering that he had sat beside her for more than a quarter of an hour after tea in very close and lowtoned conversation; and have you any particular reason? I asked. Well, I heard her once or twice call him dear, and she called him his Christian name, just like Lady Knollys didIlbury, I thinkand I saw him gi her a sly kiss as she was going upstairs. I laughed. Well, Milly, I said, I remarked something myself, I thought, like confidential relations; but if you really saw them kiss on the staircase, the question is pretty well settled. Ay, lass. Youre not to say lass. Well, Maud, then. I did see them with the corner of my eye, and my back turned, when they did not think I could spy anything, as plain as I see you now. I laughed again; but I felt an odd pangsomething of mortificationsomething of regret; but I smiled very gaily, as I stood before the glass, unmaking my toilet preparatory to bed. MaudMaudfickle Maud!What, Captain Oakley already superseded! and Mr. Carysbrokeoh! humiliationengaged. So I smiled on, very much vexed; and being afraid lest I had listened with too apparent an interest to this impostor, I sang a verse of a gay little chanson, and tried to think of Captain Oakley, who somehow had become rather silly. VIII News at Bartram Gate Milly and I, thanks to our early Bartram hours, were first down next morning; and so soon as Cousin Monica appeared we attacked her. So Lady Mary is the fiance of Mr. Carysbroke, said I, very cleverly; and I think it was very wicked of you to try and involve me in a flirtation with him yesterday. And who told you that, pray? asked Lady Knollys, with a pleasant little laugh. Milly and I discovered it, simple as we stand here, I answered. But you did not flirt with Mr. Carysbroke, Maud, did you? she asked. No, certainly not; but that was not your doing, wicked woman, but my discretion. And now that we know your secret, you must tell us all about her, and all about him; and in the first place, what is her nameLady Mary what? I demanded. Who would have thought you so cunning? Two country missestwo little nuns from the cloisters of Bartram! Well, I suppose I must answer. It is vain trying to hide anything from you; but how on earth did you find it out? Well tell you that presently, but you shall first tell us who she is, I persisted. Well, that I will, of course, without compulsion. She is Lady Mary Carysbroke, said Lady Knollys. A relation of Mr. Carysbrokes, I asserted. Yes, a relation; but who told you he was Mr. Carysbroke? asked Cousin Monica. Milly told me, when we saw him in the Windmill Wood. And who told you, Milly? It was LAmour, answered Milly, with her blue eyes very wide open. What does the child mean? LAmour! You dont mean love? exclaimed Lady Knollys, puzzled in her turn. I mean old Wyat; she told me and the Governor. Youre not to say that, I interposed. You mean your father? suggested Lady Knollys. Well, yes; father told her, and so I knew him. What could he mean? exclaimed Lady Knollys, laughing, as it were, in soliloquy; and I did not mention his name, I recollect now. He recognised you, and you him, when you came into the room yesterday; and now you must tell me how you discovered that he and Lady Mary were to be married. So Milly restated her evidence, and Lady Knollys laughed unaccountably heartily; and she said They will be so confounded! but they deserve it; and, remember, I did not say so. Oh! we acquit you. All I say is, such a deceitful, dangerous pair of girlsall things consideredI never heard of before, exclaimed Lady Knollys. Theres no such thing as conspiring in your presence. Good morning. I hope you slept well. She was addressing the lady and gentleman who were just entering the room from the conservatory. Youll hardly sleep so well tonight, when you have learned what eyes are upon you. Here are two very pretty detectives who have found out your secret, and entirely by your imprudence and their own cleverness have discovered that you are a pair of betrothed lovers, about to ratify your vows at the hymeneal altar. I assure you I did not tell of you; you betrayed yourselves. If you will talk in that confidential way on sofas, and call one another stealthily by your Christian names, and actually kiss at the foot of the stairs, while a clever detective is scaling them, apparently with her back toward you, you must only take the consequences, and be known prematurely as the hero and heroine of the forthcoming paragraph in the Morning Post. Milly and I were horribly confounded, but Cousin Monica was resolved to place us all upon the least formal terms possible, and I believe she had set about it in the right way. And now, girls, I am going to make a counterdiscovery, which, I fear, a little conflicts with yours. This Mr. Carysbroke is Lord Ilbury, brother of this Lady Mary; and it is all my fault for not having done my honours better; but you see what clever matchmaking little creatures they are. You cant think how flattered I am at being made the subject of a theory, even a mistaken one, by Miss Ruthyn. And so, after our modest fit was over, Milly and I were very merry, like the rest, and we all grew a great deal more intimate that morning. I think altogether those were the pleasantest and happiest days of my life gay, intelligent, and kindly society at home; charming excursionssometimes ridingsometimes by carriageto distant points of beauty in the county. Evenings varied with music, reading, and spirited conversation. Now and then a visitor for a day or two, and constantly some neighbour from the town, or its dependencies, dropt in. Of these I but remember tall old Miss Wintletop, most entertaining of rustic old maids, with her nice lace and thick satin, and her small, kindly round facepretty, I dare say, in other days, and now frosty, but kindlywho told us such delightful old stories of the county in her fathers and grandfathers time; who knew the lineage of every family in it, and could recount all its duels and elopements; give us illustrative snatches from old election squibs, and lines from epitaphs, and tell exactly where all the oldworld highway robberies had been committed how it fared with the chief delinquents after the assizes; and, above all, where, and of what sort, the goblins and elves of the county had made themselves seen, from the phantom postboy, who every third night crossed Windale Moor, by the old coachroad, to the fat old ghost, in mulberry velvet, who showed his great face, crutch, and ruffles, by moonlight, at the bow window of the old courthouse that was taken down in 1803. You cannot imagine what agreeable evenings we passed in this society, or how rapidly my good Cousin Milly improved in it. I remember well the intense suspense in which she and I awaited the answer from BartramHaugh to kind Cousin Monicas application for an extension of our leave of absence. It came, and with it a note from Uncle Silas, which was curious, and, therefore, is printed here My Dear Lady KnollysTo your kind letter I say yes (that is, for another week, not a fortnight), with all my heart. I am glad to hear that my starlings chatter so pleasantly; at all events the refrain is not that of Sternes. They can get out; and do get out; and shall get out as much as they please. I am no gaoler, and shut up nobody but myself. I have always thought that young people have too little liberty. My principle has been to make little free men and women of them from the first. In morals, altogetherin intellect, more than we allowselfeducation is that which abides; and it only begins where constraint ends. Such is my theory. My practice is consistent. Let them remain for a week longer, as you say. The horses shall be at Elverston on Tuesday, the 7th. I shall be more than usually sad and solitary till their return; so pray, I selfishly entreat, do not extend their absence. You will smile, remembering how little my health will allow me to see of them, even when at home; but as Chaulieu so prettily saysI stupidly forget the words, but the sentiment is thisalthough concealed by a sylvan wall of leaves, impenetrable(he is pursuing his favourite nymphs through the alleys and intricacies of a rustic labyrinth)yet, your songs, your prattle, and your laughter, faint and far away, inspire my fancy; and, through my ears, I see your unseen smiles, your blushes, your floating tresses, and your ivory feet; and so, though sad, am happy; though alone, in company;and such is my case. One only request, and I have done. Pray remind them of a promise made to me. The Book of Lifethe fountain of lifeit must be drunk of, night and morning, or their spiritual life expires. And now, Heaven bless and keep you, my dear cousin; and with all assurances of affection to my beloved niece and my child, believe me ever yours affectionately, Silas Ruthyn. Said Cousin Monica, with a waggish smile And so, girls, you have Chaulieu and the evangelists; the French rhymester in his alley, and Silas in the valley of the shadow of death; perfect liberty, and a peremptory order to return in a week;all illustrating one another. Poor Silas! old as he is, I dont think his religion fits him. I really rather liked his letter. I was struggling hard to think well of him, and Cousin Monica knew it; and I really think if I had not been by, she would often have been less severe on him. As we were all sitting pleasantly about the breakfast table a day or two after, the sun shining on the pleasant wintry landscape, Cousin Monica suddenly exclaimed I quite forgot to tell you that Charles Oakley has written to say he is coming on Wednesday. I really dont want him. Poor Charlie! I wonder how they manage those doctors certificates. I know nothing ails him, and hed be much better with his regiment. Wednesday!how odd. Exactly the day after my departure. I tried to look perfectly unconcerned. Lady Knollys had addressed herself more to Lady Mary and Milly than to me, and nobody in particular was looking at me. Notwithstanding, with my usual perversity, I felt myself blushing with a brilliancy that may have been very becoming, but which was so intolerably provoking that I would have risen and left the room but that matters would have been so infinitely worse. I could have boxed my odious ears. I could almost have jumped from the window. I felt that Lord Ilbury saw it. I saw Lady Marys eyes for a moment resting gravely on my telltalemy lying cheeksfor I really had begun to think much less celestially of Captain Oakley. I was angry with Cousin Monica, who, knowing my blushing infirmity, had mentioned her nephew so suddenly while I was strapped by etiquette in my chair, with my face to the window, and two pair of most disconcerting eyes, at least, opposite. I was angry with myselfgenerally angryrefused more tea rather dryly, and was laconic to Lord Ilbury, all which, of course, was very cross and foolish; and afterwards, from my bedroom window, I saw Cousin Monica and Lady Mary among the flowers, under the drawingroom window, talking, as I instinctively knew, of that little incident. I was standing at the glass. My odious, stupid, perjured face, I whispered, furiously, at the same time stamping on the floor, and giving myself quite a smart slap on the cheek. I cant go downIm ready to cryIve a mind to return to Bartram today; I am always blushing; and I wish that impudent Captain Oakley was at the bottom of the sea. I was, perhaps, thinking more of Lord Ilbury than I was aware; and I am sure if Captain Oakley had arrived that day, I should have treated him with most unjustifiable rudeness. Notwithstanding this unfortunate blush, the remainder of our visit passed very happily for me. No one who has not experienced it can have an idea how intimate a small party, such as ours, will grow in a short time in a country house. Of course, a young lady of a wellregulated mind cannot possibly care a pin about anyone of the opposite sex until she is well assured that he is beginning, at least, to like her better than all the world beside; but I could not deny to myself that I was rather anxious to know more about Lord Ilbury than I actually did know. There was a Peerage, in its bright scarlet and gold uniform, corpulent and tempting, upon the little marble table in the drawingroom. I had many opportunities of consulting it, but I never could find courage to do so. For an inexperienced person it would have been a matter of several minutes, and during those minutes what awful risk of surprise and detection. One day, all being quiet, I did venture, and actually, with a beating heart, got so far as to find out the letter Il, when I heard a step outside the door, which opened a little bit, and I heard Lady Knollys, luckily arrested at the entrance, talk some sentences outside, her hand still upon the doorhandle. I shut the book, as Mrs. Bluebeard might the door of the chamber of horrors at the sound of her husbands step, and skipped to a remote part of the room, where Cousin Knollys found me in a mysterious state of agitation. On any other subject I would have questioned Cousin Monica unhesitatingly; upon this, somehow, I was dumb. I distrusted myself, and dreaded my odious habit of blushing, and knew that I should look so horribly guilty, and become so agitated and odd, that she would have reasonably concluded that I had quite lost my heart to him. After the lesson I had received, and my narrow escape of detection in the very act, you may be sure I never trusted myself in the vicinity of that fat and cruel Peerage, which possessed the secret, but would not disclose without compromising me. In this state of tantalizing darkness and conjecture I should have departed, had not Cousin Monica quite spontaneously relieved me. The night before our departure she sat with us in our room, chatting a little farewell gossip. And what do you think of Ilbury? she asked. I think him clever and accomplished, and amusing; but he sometimes appears to me very melancholythat is, for a few minutes togetherand then, I fancy, with an effort, reengages in our conversation. Yes, poor Ilbury! He lost his brother only about five months since, and is only beginning to recover his spirits a little. They were very much attached, and people thought that he would have succeeded to the title, had he lived, because Ilbury is difficileor a philosopheror a Saint Kevin; and, in fact, has begun to be treated as a premature old bachelor. What a charming person his sister, Lady Mary, is. She has made me promise to write to her, I said, I supposesuch hypocrites are weto prove to Cousin Knollys that I did not care particularly to hear anything more about him. Yes, and so devoted to him. He came down here, and took The Grange, for change of scene and solitudeof all things the worst for a man in griefa morbid whim, as he is beginning to find out; for he is very glad to stay here, and confesses that he is much better since he came. His letters are still addressed to him as Mr. Carysbroke; for he fancied if his rank were known, that the county people would have been calling upon him, and so he would have found himself soon involved in a tiresome round of dinners, and must have gone somewhere else. You saw him, Milly, at Bartram, before Maud came? Yes, she had, when he called there to see her father. He thought, as he had accepted the trusteeship, that he could hardly, residing so near, omit to visit Silas. He was very much struck and interested by him, and he has a better opinion of himyou are not angry, Millythan some illnatured people I could name; and he says that the cutting down of the trees will turn out to have been a mere slip. But these slips dont occur with clever men in other things; and some persons have a way of always making them in their own favour. And, to talk of other things, I suspect that you and Milly will probably see Ilbury at Bartram; for I think he likes you very much. You; did she mean both, or only me? So our pleasant visit was over. Millys good little curate had been much thrown in her way by our deep and dangerous cousin Monica. He was most laudably steady; and his flirtation advanced upon the field of theology, where, happily, Millys little reading had been concentrated. A mild and earnest interest in poor, pretty Millys orthodoxy was the leading feature of his case; and I was highly amused at her references to me, when we had retired at night, upon the points which she had disputed with him, and her anxious reports of their lowtoned conferences, carried on upon a sequestered ottoman, where he patted and stroked his crossed leg, as he smiled tenderly and shook his head at her questionable doctrine. Millys reverence for her instructor, and his admiration, grew daily; and he was known among us as Millys confessor. He took luncheon with us on the day of our departure, and with an adroit privacy, which in a layman would have been sly, presented her, in right of his holy calling, with a little book, the binding of which was medieval and costly, and whose letterpress dealt in a way which he commended, with some points on which she was not satisfactory; and she found on the flyleaf this little inscriptionPresented to Miss Millicent Ruthyn by an earnest wellwisher, 1st December 1844. A text, very neatly penned, followed this; and the presentation was made unctiously indeed, but with a blush, as well as the accustomed smile, and with eyes that were lowered. The early crimson sun of December had gone down behind the hills before we took our seats in the carriage. Lord Ilbury leaned with his elbow on the carriage window, looking in, and he said to me I really dont know what we shall do, Miss Ruthyn; we shall all feel so lonely. For myself, I think I shall run away to Grange. This appeared to me as nearly perfect eloquence as human lips could utter. His hand still rested on the window, and the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen was standing with a saddened smirk on the door steps, when the whip smacked, the horses scrambled into motion, and away we rolled down the avenue, leaving behind us the pleasantest house and hostess in the world, and trotting fleetly into darkness towards BartramHaugh. We were both rather silent. Milly had her book in her lap, and I saw her every now and then try to read her earnest wellwishers little inscription, but there was not light to read by. When we reached the great gate of BartramHaugh it was dark. Old Crowl, who kept the gate, I heard enjoining the postilion to make no avoidable noise at the halldoor, for the odd but startling reason that he believed my uncle would be dead by this time. Very much shocked and frightened, we stopped the carriage, and questioned the tremulous old porter. Uncle Silas, it seemed, had been sillyish all yesterday, and could not be woke this morning, and the doctor had been here twice, being now in the house. Is he better? I asked, tremblingly. Not as Im aweer on, Miss; he lay at Gods mercy two hours agone; appen hes in heaven be this time. Drive ondrive fast, I said to the driver. Dont be frightened, Milly; please Heaven we shall find all going well. After some delay, during which my heart sank, and I quite gave up Uncle Silas, the aged little servantman opened the door, and trotted shakily down the steps to the carriage side. Uncle Silas had been at deaths door for hours; the question of life had trembled in the scale; but now the doctor said he might do. Where was the doctor? In masters room; he blooded him three hours agone. I dont think that Milly was so frightened as I. My heart beat, and I was trembling so that I could hardly get upstairs. IX A Friend Arises At the top of the great staircase I was glad to see the friendly face of Mary Quince, who stood, candle in hand, greeting us with many little courtesies, and a very haggard and pallid smile. Very welcome, Miss, hoping you are very well. All well, and you are well, Mary? and oh! tell us quickly how is Uncle Silas? We thought he was gone, Miss, this morning, but doing fairly now; doctor says in a trance like. I was helping old Wyat most of the day, and was there when doctor blooded him, an he spoke at last; but he must be awful weak, he took a deal o blood from his arm, Miss; I held the basin. And hes betterdecidedly better? I asked. Well, hes better, doctor says; he talked some, and doctor says if he goes off asleep again, and begins asnoring like he did before, were to loose the bandage, and let him bleed till he comes to his self again; which, it seems to me and Wyat, is the same thing amost as saying hes to be killed offhand, for I dont believe he has a drop to spare, as youll say likewise, Miss, if youll please look in the basin. This was not an invitation with which I cared to comply. I thought I was going to faint. I sat on the stairs and sipped a little water, and Quince sprinkled a little in my face, and my strength returned. Milly must have felt her fathers danger more than I, for she was affectionate, and loved him from habit and relation, although he was not kind to her. But I was more nervous and more impetuous, and my feelings both stimulated and overpowered me more easily. The moment I was able to stand I saidthinking of nothing but the one idea We must see himcome, Milly. I entered his sittingroom; a common dip candle hanging like the tower of Pisa all to one side, with a dim, long wick, in a greasy candlestick, profaned the table of the fastidious invalid. The light was little better than darkness, and I crossed the room swiftly, still transfixed by the one idea of seeing my uncle. His bedroom door beside the fireplace stood partly open, and I looked in. Old Wyat, a white, highcauled ghost, was pottering in her slippers in the shadow at the far side of the bed. The doctor, a stout little bald man, with a paunch and a big bunch of seals, stood with his back to the fireplace, which corresponded with that in the next room, eyeing his patient through the curtains of the bed with a listless sort of importance. The head of the large fourposter rested against the opposite wall. Its foot was presented toward the fireplace; but the curtains at the side, which alone I could see from my position, were closed. The little doctor knew me, and thinking me, I suppose, a person of consequence, removed his hands from behind him, suffering the skirts of his coat to fall forward, and with great celerity and gravity made me a low but important bow; then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason. He bowed me back again into my uncles study, and the light of old Wyats dreadful candle. Doctor Jolks was suave and pompous. I longed for a fussy practitioner who would have got over the ground in half the time. Coma, madam; coma. Miss Ruthyn, your uncle, I may tell you, has been in a very critical state; highly so. Coma of the most obstinate type. He would have sunkhe must have gone, in fact, had I not resorted to a very extreme remedy, and bled him freely, which happily told precisely as we could have wished. A wonderful constitutiona marvellous constitutionprodigious nervous fibre; the greatest pity in the world he wont give himself fair play. His habits, you know, are quite, I may say, destructive. We do our bestwe do all we can, but if the patient wont cooperate it cant possibly end satisfactorily. And Jolks accompanied this with an awful shrug. Is there anything? Do you think change of air? What an awful complaint it is, I exclaimed. He smiled, mysteriously looking down, and shook his head undertakerlike. Why, we can hardly call it a complaint, Miss Ruthyn. I look upon it he has been poisonedhe has had, you understand me, he pursued, observing my startled look, an overdose of opium; you know he takes opium habitually; he takes it in laudanum, he takes it in water, and, most dangerous of all, he takes it solid, in lozenges. Ive known people take it moderately. Ive known people take it to excess, but they all were particular as to measure, and that is exactly the point Ive tried to impress upon him. The habit, of course, you understand is formed, theres no uprooting that; but he wont measurehe goes by the eye and by sensation, which I need not tell you, Miss Ruthyn, is going by chance; and opium, as no doubt you are aware, is strictly a poison; a poison, no doubt, which habit will enable you to partake of, I may say, in considerable quantities, without fatal consequences, but still a poison; and to exhibit a poison so, is, I need scarcely tell you, to trifle with death. He has been so threatened, and for a time he changes his haphazard mode of dealing with it, and then returns; he may escapeof course, that is possiblebut he may any day overdo the thing. I dont think the present crisis will result seriously. I am very glad, independently of the honour of making your acquaintance, Miss Ruthyn, that you and your cousin have returned; for, however zealous, I fear the servants are deficient in intelligence; and as in the event of a recurrence of the symptomswhich, however, is not probableI would beg to inform you of their nature, and how exactly best to deal with them. So upon these points he delivered us a pompous little lecture, and begged that either Milly or I would remain in the room with the patient until his return at two or three oclock in the morning; a reappearance of the coma might be very bad indeed. Of course Milly and I did as we were directed. We sat by the fire, scarcely daring to whisper. Uncle Silas, about whom a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me, lay still and motionless as if he were actually dead. Had he attempted to poison himself? If he believed his position to be as desperate as Lady Knollys had described it, was this, after all, improbable? There were strange wild theories, I had been told, mixed up in his religion. Sometimes, at an hours interval, a sign of life would comea moan from that tall sheeted figure in the beda moan and a pattering of the lips. Was it prayerwhat was it? who could guess what thoughts were passing behind that whitefillited forehead? I had peeped at him a white cloth steeped in vinegar and water was folded round his head; his great eyes were closed, so were his marble lips; his figure straight, thin, and long, dressed in a white dressinggown, looked like a corpse laid out in the bed; his gaunt bandaged arm lay outside the sheet that covered his body. With this awful image of death we kept our vigil, until poor Milly grew so sleepy that old Wyat proposed that she should take her place and watch with me. Little as I liked the crone with the highcauled cap, she would, at all events, keep awake, which Milly could not. And so at one oclock this new arrangement began. Mr. Dudley Ruthyn is not at home? I whispered to old Wyat. He went away wi himself yesternight, to Cloperton, Miss, to see the wrestling; it was to come off this morning. Was he sent for? Not he. And why not? He would na leave the sport for this, Im thinking, and the old woman grinned uglily. When is he to return? When he wants money.

So we grew silent, and again I thought of suicide, and of the unhappy old man, who just then whispered a sentence or two to himself with a sigh. For the next hour he had been quite silent, and old Wyat informed me that she must go down for candles. Ours were already burnt down to the sockets. Theres a candle in the next room, I suggested, hating the idea of being left alone with the patient. Hoot! Miss. I dare na set a candle but wax in his presence, whispered the old woman, scornfully. I think if we were to stir the fire, and put on a little more coal, we should have a great deal of light. Hell ha the candles, said Dame Wyat, doggedly; and she tottered from the chamber, muttering to herself; and I heard her take her candle from the next room and depart, shutting the outer door after her. Here was I then alone, but for this unearthly companion, whom I feared inexpressibly, at two oclock, in the vast old house of Bartram. I stirred the fire. It was low, and would not blaze. I stood up, and, with my hand on the mantelpiece, endeavoured to think of cheerful things. But it was a struggle against wind and tidevain; and so I drifted away into haunted regions. Uncle Silas was perfectly still. I would not suffer myself to think of the number of dark rooms and passages which now separated me from the other living tenants of the house. I awaited with a false composure the return of old Wyat. Over the mantelpiece was a lookingglass. At another time this might have helped to entertain my solitary moments, but now I did not like to venture a peep. A small thick Bible lay on the chimneypiece, and leaning its back against the mirror, I began to read in it with a mind as attentively directed as I could. While so engaged in turning over the leaves, I lighted upon two or three oddlooking papers, which had been folded into it. One was a broad printed thing, with names and dates written into blank spaces, and was about the size of a quarter of a yard of very broad ribbon. The others were mere scraps, with Dudley Ruthyn penned in my cousins vulgar roundhand at the foot. While I folded and replaced these, I really dont know what caused me to fancy that something was moving behind me, as I stood with my back toward the bed. I do not recollect any sound whatever; but instinctively I glanced into the mirror, and my eyes were instantly fixed by what I saw. The figure of Uncle Silas rose up, and dressed in a long white morning gown, slid over the end of the bed, and with two or three swift noiseless steps, stood behind me, with a deathlike scowl and a simper. Preternaturally tall and thin, he stood for a moment almost touching me, with the white bandage pinned across his forehead, his bandaged arm stiffly by his side, and diving over my shoulder, with his long thin hand he snatched the Bible, and whispered over my headThe serpent beguiled her and she did eat; and after a momentary pause, he glided to the farthest window, and appeared to look out upon the midnight prospect. It was cold, but he did not seem to feel it. With the same inflexible scowl and smile, he continued to look out for several minutes, and then with a great sigh, he sat down on the side of his bed, his face immovably turned towards me, with the same painful look. It seemed to me an hour before old Wyat came back; and never was lover made happier at sight of his mistress than I to behold that withered crone. You may be sure I did not prolong my watch. There was now plainly no risk of my uncles relapsing into lethargy. I had a long hysterical fit of weeping when I got into my room, with honest Mary Quince by my side. Whenever I closed my eyes, the face of Uncle Silas was before me, as I had seen it reflected in the glass. The sorceries of Bartram were enveloping me once more. Next morning the doctor said he was quite out of danger, but very weak. Milly and I saw him; and again in our afternoon walk we saw the doctor marching under the trees in the direction of the Windmill Wood. Going down to see that poor girl there? he said, when he had made his salutation, prodding with his levelled stick in the direction. Hawke, or Hawkes, I think. Beautys sick, Maud, exclaimed Milly. Hawkes. Shes upon my dispensary list. Yes, said the doctor, looking into his little notebookHawkes. And what is her complaint? Rheumatic fever. Not infectious? Not the leastno more, as we say, Miss Ruthyn, than a broken leg, and he laughed obligingly. So soon as the doctor had departed, Milly and I agreed to follow to Hawkes cottage and enquire more particularly how she was. To say truth, I am afraid it was rather for the sake of giving our walk a purpose and a point of termination, than for any very charitable interest we might have felt in the patient. Over the inequalities of the upland slope, clumped with trees, we reached the gabled cottage, with its neglected little farmyard. A rheumatic old woman was the only attendant; and, having turned her ear in an attitude of attention, which induced us in gradually exalted keys to enquire how Meg was, she informed us in very loud tones that she had long lost her hearing and was perfectly deaf. And added considerately When the man comes in, appen hell tell ye what ye want. Through the door of a small room at the further end of that in which we were, we could see a portion of the narrow apartment of the patient, and hear her moans and the doctors voice. Well see him, Milly, when he comes out. Let us wait here. So we stood upon the doorstone awaiting him. The sounds of suffering had moved my compassion and interested us for the sick girl. Blest if here isnt Pegtop, said Milly. And the weatherstained red coat, the swarthy forbidding face and sooty locks of old Hawkes loomed in sight, as he stumped, steadying himself with his stick, over the uneven pavement of the yard. He touched his hat gruffly to me, but did not seem half to like our being where we were, for he looked surlily, and scratched his head under his wideawake. Your daughter is very ill, Im afraid, said I. Ayshell be costin me a handful, like her mother did, said Pegtop. I hope her room is comfortable, poor thing. Ay, thats it; she be comfortable enough, I warrantmore nor I. It be all Meg, and nout o Dickon. When did her illness commence? I asked. Day the mare wor shodSaturday. I talked a bit wi the workus folk, but they wont gie noutdang eman how be I to dot? It be allays hard bread wi Silas, an a deal harder now she taen them pains. I wont stan it much longer. Gammon! If she keeps on that way Ill just cut. See how the workus fellahs ill like that! The Doctor gives his services for nothing, I said. An does nothin, bless him! ha, ha. No more nor that old deaf gammon there that costs me three tizzies a week, and haint worth a hporthno more nor Meg there, thats making all she can o them pains. They be all a foolin o me, an thinks I dont know t. Hey? Well see. All this time he was cutting a bit of tobacco into shreds on the windowstone. A workin man be same as a hoss; if he baint cared, he cant worktisnt in him and with these words, having by this time stuffed his pipe with tobacco, he poked the deaf lady, who was pattering about with her back toward him, rather viciously with the point of his stick, and signed for a light. It baint in him, you cant get it out o im, no more nor yell draw smoke out o this, and he raised his pipe an inch or two, with his thumb on the bowl, without backy and fire. Tisnt in it. Maybe I can be of some use? I said, thinking. Maybe, he rejoined. By this time he received from the old deaf abigail a flaming roll of brown paper, and, touching his hat to me, he withdrew, lighting his pipe and sending up little white puffs, like the salute of a departing ship. So he did not care to hear how his daughter was, and had only come here to light his pipe! Just then the Doctor emerged. We have been waiting to hear how your poor patient is today? I said. Very ill, indeed, and utterly neglected, I fear. If she were equal to itbut shes notI think she ought to be removed to the hospital immediately. That poor old woman is quite deaf, and the man is so surly and selfish! Could you recommend a nurse who would stay here till shes better? I will pay her with pleasure, and anything you think might be good for the poor girl. So this was settled on the spot. Doctor Jolks was kind, like most men of his calling, and undertook to send the nurse from Feltram with a few comforts for the patient; and he called Dickon to the yardgate, and I suppose told him of the arrangement; and Milly and I went to the poor girls door and asked, May we come in? There was no answer. So, with the conventional construction of silence, we entered. Her looks showed how ill she was. We adjusted her bedclothes, and darkened the room, and did what we could for hernoting, beside, what her comfort chiefly required. She did not answer any questions. She did not thank us. I should almost have fancied that she had not perceived our presence, had I not observed her dark, sunken eyes once or twice turned up towards my face, with a dismal look of wonder and enquiry. The girl was very ill, and we went every day to see her. Sometimes she would answer our questionssometimes not. Thoughtful, observant, surly, she seemed; and as people like to be thanked, I sometimes wonder that we continued to throw our bread upon these ungrateful waters. Milly was specially impatient under this treatment, and protested against it, and finally refused to accompany me into poor Beautys bedroom. I think, my good Meg, said I one day, as I stood by her bedshe was now recovering with the sure reascent of youththat you ought to thank Miss Milly. Ill not thank her, said Beauty, doggedly. Very well, Meg; I only thought Id ask you, for I think you ought. As I spoke, she very gently took just the tip of my finger, which hung close to her coverlet, in her fingers, and drew it beneath, and before I was aware, burying her head in the clothes, she suddenly clasped my hand in both hers to her lips, and kissed it passionately, again and again, sobbing. I felt her tears. I tried to withdraw my hand, but she held it with an angry pull, continuing to weep and kiss it. Do you wish to say anything, my poor Meg? I asked. Nout, Miss, she sobbed gently; and she continued to kiss my hand and weep. But suddenly she said, I wont thank Milly, for its a you; it baint her, she hadnt the thoughtno, no, its a you, Miss. I cried hearty in the dark last night, thinkin o the apples, and the way I knocked them awa wi a pur o my foot, the day father rapped me ower the head wi his stick; it was kind o you and very bad o me. I wish youd beat me, Miss; yere better to me than father or motherbetter to me than a; an I wish I could die for you, Miss, for Im not fit to look at you. I was surprised. I began to cry. I could have hugged poor Meg. I did not know her history. I have never learned it since. She used to talk with the most utter selfabasement before me. It was no religious feelingit was a kind of expression of her love and worship of meall the more strange that she was naturally very proud. There was nothing she would not have borne from me except the slightest suspicion of her entire devotion, or that she could in the most trifling way wrong or deceive me. I am not young now. I have had my sorrows, and with them all that wealth, virtually unlimited, can command; and through the retrospect a few bright and pure lights quiver along my lifes dark streamdark, but for them; and these are shed, not by the splendour of a splendid fortune, but by two or three of the simplest and kindest remembrances, such as the poorest and homeliest life may count up, and beside which, in the quiet hours of memory, all artificial triumphs pale, and disappear, for they are never quenched by time or distance, being founded on the affections, and so far heavenly. X A ChapterFull of Lovers We had about this time a pleasant and quite unexpected visit from Lord Ilbury. He had come to pay his respects, understanding that my uncle Silas was sufficiently recovered to see visitors. And I think Ill run upstairs first, and see him, if he admits me, and then I have ever so long a message from my sister, Mary, for you and Miss Millicent; but I had better dispose of my business firstdont you think so?and I shall return in a few minutes. And as he spoke our tremulous old butler returned to say that Uncle Silas would be happy to see him. So he departed; and you cant think how pleasant our homely sittingroom looked with his coat and stick in itguarantees of his return. Do you think, Milly, he is going to speak about the timber, you know, that Cousin Knollys spoke of? I do hope not. So do I, said Milly. I wish hed stayed a bit longer with us first, for if he does, father will sure to turn him out of doors, and well see no more of him. Exactly, my dear Milly; and hes so pleasant and goodnatured. And he likes you awful well, he does. Im sure he likes us both equally, Milly; he talked a great deal to you at Elverston, and used to ask you so often to sing those two pretty Lancashire ballads, I said; but you know when you were at your controversies and religious exercises in the window, with that pillar of the church, the Rev. Spriggs Biddlepen Get awa wi your nonsense, Maud; how could I help answering when he dodged me up and down my Testament and catechism?an I most hate him, I tell you, and Cousin Knollys, youre such fools, I do. And whatever you say, the lord likes you uncommon, and well you know it, ye hussy. I know no such thing; and you dont think it, you hussy, and I really dont care who likes me or who doesnt, except my relations; and I make the lord a present to you, if youll have him. In this strain were we talking when he reentered the room, a little sooner than we had expected to see him. Milly, who, you are to recollect, was only in process of reformation, and still retained something of the Derbyshire dairymaid, gave me a little clandestine pinch on the arm just as he made his appearance. I just refused a present from her, said odious Milly, in answer to his enquiring look, because I knew she could not spare it. The effect of all this was that I blushed one of my overpowering blushes. People told me they became me very much; I hope so, for the misfortune was frequent; and I think nature owed me that compensation. It places you both in a most becoming light, said Lord Ilbury, quite innocently. I really dont know which most to admirethe generosity of the offer or of the refusal. Well, it was kind, if you but knew. Im most tempted to tell him, said Milly. I checked her with a really angry look, and said, Perhaps you have not observed it; but I really think, for a sensible person, my cousin Milly here talks more nonsense than any twenty other girls. A twentygirl power! Thats an immense compliment. Ive the greatest respect for nonsense, I owe it so much; and I really think if nonsense were banished, the earth would grow insupportable. Thank you, Lord Ilbury, said Milly, who had grown quite easy in his company during our long visit at Elverston; and I tell you, Miss Maud, if you grow saucy, Ill accept your present, and what will you say then? I really dont know; but just now I want to ask Lord Ilbury how he thinks my uncle looks; neither I nor Milly have seen him since his illness. Very much weaker, I think; but he may be gaining strength. Still, as my business was not quite pleasant, I thought it better to postpone it, and if you think it would be right, Ill write to Doctor Bryerly to ask him to postpone the discussion for a little time. I at once assented, and thanked him; indeed, if I had had my way, the subject should never have been mentioned, I felt so hardhearted and rapacious; but Lord Ilbury explained that the trustees were constrained by the provisions of the will, and that I really had no power to release them; and I hoped that Uncle Silas also understood all this. And now, said he, weve returned to Grange, my sister and I, and it is nearer than Elverston, so that we are really neighbours; and Mary wants Lady Knollys to fix a timeshe owes us a visit, you knowand you really must come at the same time; it will be so very pleasant, the same party exactly meeting in a new scene; and we have not half explored our neighbourhood; and Ive got down all those Spanish engravings I told you of, and the Venetian missals, and all the rest. I think I remember very accurately the things you were most interested by, and theyre all there; and really you must promise, you and Miss Millicent Ruthyn. And I forgot to mentionyou know you complained that you were ill supplied with books, so Mary thought you would allow her to share her supplythey are the new books, you knowand when you have read yours, you and she can exchange. What girl was ever quite frank about her likings? I dont think I was more of a cheat than others; but I never could tell of myself. It is quite true that this duplicity and reserve seldom deceives. Our hypocrisies are forced upon some of our sex by the acuteness and vigilance of all in this field of enquiry; but if we are sly, we are also lynxeyed, capital detectives, most ingenious in fitting together the bits and dovetails of a cumulative case; and in those affairs of love and liking, have a terrible exploratory instinct, and so, for the most part, when detected we are found out not only to be in love, but to be rogues moreover. Lady Mary was very kind; but had Lady Mary of her own mere motion taken all this trouble? Was there no more energetic influence at the bottom of that welcome chest of books, which arrived only half an hour later? The circulating library of those days was not the epidemic and ubiquitous influence to which it has grown; and there were many places where it could not find you out. Altogether that evening Bartram had acquired a peculiar beautya bright and mellow glow, in which even its gateposts and wheelbarrow were interesting, and next day came a little cloudDudley appeared. You may be sure he wants money, said Milly. He and father had words this morning. He took a chair at our luncheon, found fault with everything in his own laconic dialect, ate a good deal notwithstanding, and was sulky, and with Milly snappish. To me, on the contrary, when Milly went into the hall, he was mild and whimpering, and disposed to be confidential. Theres the Governor says he hasnt a bob! Danged if I know how an old fellah in his bedroom muddles away money at that rate. I dont suppose he thinks I can git along without tin, and he knows them trustees wont gie me a tizzy till they get what they calls an opiniondang em! Bryerly says he doubts it must all go under settlement. Theyll settle me nicely if they do; and Governor knows all about it, and wont gie me a danged brass farthin, an me wi bills to pay, an lawyersdang emwriting letters. He knows summat o that hisself, does Governor; and he might ha consideration a bit for his own flesh and blood, I say. But he never does nout for none but hisself. Ill sell his books and his jewels next fit he takesthats how Ill fit him. This amiable young man, glowering, with his elbows on the table and his fingers in his great whiskers, followed his homily, where clergymen append the blessing, with a muttered variety of very different matter. Now, Maud, said he, pathetically, leaning back suddenly in his chair, with all his conscious beauty and misfortunes in his face, is not it hard lines? I thought the appeal was going to shape itself into an application for money; but it did not. I never knowd a reel beautyfirstchop, of course, I meanthat wasnt kind along of it, and Im a fellah as cant git along without sympathythats why I say itan isnt it hard lines? Now, say its hard lineshaint it, Maud? I did not know exactly what hard lines meant, but I said I suppose it is very disagreeable. And with this concession, not caring to hear any more in the same vein, I rose, intending to take my departure. No, thats jest it. I knew yed say it, Maud. Yere a kind lassye betis in yer pretty face. I like ye awful, I dotheres not a handsomer lass in Liverpool nor Lunnon itselfnowhere. He had seized my hand, and trying to place his arm about my waist, essayed that salute which I had so narrowly escaped on my first introduction. Dont, sir, I exclaimed in high indignation, escaping at the same moment from his grasp. No offence, lass; no harm, Maud; you must not be so shywere cousins, you knowan I wouldnt hurt ye, Maud, no more nor Id knock my head off. I wouldnt. I did not wait to hear the rest of his tender protestations, but, without showing how nervous I was, I glided out of the room quietly, making an orderly retreat, the more meritorious as I heard him call after me persuasivelyCome back, Maud. What are ye afeard on, lass? Come back, I saydo now; theres a good wench. As Milly and I were taking our walk that day, in the direction of the Windmill Wood, to which, in consequence perhaps of some secret order, we had now free access, we saw Beauty, for the first time since her illness, in the little yard, throwing grain to the poultry. How do you find yourself today, Meg? I am very glad to see you able to be about again; but I hope it is not too soon. We were standing at the barred gate of the little enclosure, and quite close to Meg, who, however, did not choose to raise her head, but, continuing to shower her grain and potatoskins among her hens and chickens, said in a low tone Father baint in sight? Look jist round a bit and say if ye see him. But Dickons dusky red costume was nowhere visible. So Meg looked up, pale and thin, and with her old grave, observant eyes, and she said quietly Tisnt that Im not glad to see ye; but if father was to spy me talking friendly wi ye, now that Im hearty, and you havin no more call to me, hed be allays a watching and thinkin I was tellin o tales, and appen hed want me to worrit ye for money, Miss Maud; an tisnt here hed spend it, but in the Feltram pottusses, he would, and we want for nothin thats good for us. But thats how twould be, an hed allays be a jawing and a lickin of I; so dont mind me, Miss Maud, and appen I might do ye a good turn some day. A few days after this little interview with Meg, as Milly and I were walking brisklyfor it was a clear frosty dayalong the pleasant slopes of the sheepwalk, we were overtaken by Dudley Ruthyn. It was not a pleasant surprise. There was this mitigation, however we were on foot, and he driving in a dogcart along the track leading to the moor, with his dogs and gun. He brought his horse for a moment to a walk, and with a careless nod to me, removing his short pipe from his mouth, he said Governors callin for ye, Milly; and he told me to send you slick home to him if I saw you, and I think hell gie ye some money; but ye better take him while hes in the humour, lass, or mayhap yell go long without. And with those words, apparently intent on his game, he nodded again, and, pipe in mouth, drove at a quick trot over the slope of the hill, and disappeared. So I agreed to await Millys return while she ran home, and rejoined me where I was. Away she ran, in high spirits, and I wandered listlessly about in search of some convenient spot to sit down upon, for I was a little tired. She had not been gone five minutes, when I heard a step approaching, and looking round, saw the dogcart close by, the horse browsing on the short grass, and Dudley Ruthyn within a few paces of me. Ye see, Maud, Ive bin thinkin why youre so vexed wi me, an I thought Id jest come back an ask ye what I may a done to anger ye so; theres no sin in that, I thinkis there? Im not angry. I did not say so. I hope thats enough, I said, startled; and, notwithstanding my speech, very angry, for I felt instinctively that Millys despatch homeward was a mere trick, and I the dupe of this coarse stratagem. Well then, if ye baint angry, so much the better, Maud. I only want to know why youre afeard o me. I never struck a man foul, much less hurt a girl, in my days; besides, Maud, I likes ye too well to hurt ye. Dang it, lass, youre my cousin, ye know, and cousins is allays together and lovin like, an none says again it. Ive nothing to explainthere is nothing to explain. Ive been quite friendly, I said, hurriedly. Friendly! Well, if there baint a cram! How can ye think it friendly, Maud, when ye wont amost shake hands wi me? Its enough to make a fellah sware, or cry amost. Why dye like aggravatin a poor devil? Now baint ye an illnatured little puss, Maud, an I likin ye so well? Youre the prettiest lass in Derbyshire; theres nothin I wouldnt do for ye. And he backed his declaration with an oath. Be so good, then, as to reenter your dogcart and drive away, I replied, very much incensed. Now, there it is again! Ye cant speak me civil. Another fellahd fly out, an maybe kiss ye for spite; but I baint that sort, Im all for coaxin and kindness, an ye wont let me. What be you drivin at, Maud? I think Ive said very plainly, sir, that I wish to be alone. Youve nothing to say, except utter nonsense, and Ive heard quite enough. Once for all, I beg, sir, that you will be so good as to leave me. Well, now, look here, Maud; Ill do anything you likeburn me if I dontif youll only jest be kind to me, like cousins should. What did I ever do to vex you? If you think I like any lass better than yousome fellah at Elverstons bin talkin, maybeits nout but lies an nonsense. Not but theres lots o wenches likes me well enough, though I be a plain lad, and speaks my mind straight out. I cant see that you are so frank, sir, as you describe; you have just played a shabby trick to bring about this absurd and most disagreeable interview. And supposin I did send that fool, Milly, out o the way, to talk a bit wi you here, wheres the harm? Dang it, lass, ye mustnt be too hard. Didnt I say Id do whatever ye wished? And you wont, said I. Ye mean to get along out o this? Well, now, I will. There! No use, of course, askin you to kiss and be friends, before I go, as cousins should. Well, dont be riled, lass, Im not askin it; only mind, I do like you awful, and appen Ill find ye in better humour another time. Goodbye, Maud; Ill make ye like me at last. And with these words, to my comfort, he addressed himself to his horse and pipe, and was soon honestly on his way to the moor. XI The Rivals All the time that Dudley chose to persecute me with his odious society, I continued to walk at a brisk pace toward home, so that I had nearly reached the house when Milly met me, with a note which had arrived for me by the post, in her hand. Here, Milly, are more verses. He is a very persevering poet, whoever he is. So I broke the seal; but this time it was prose. And the first words were Captain Oakley! I confess to an odd sensation as these remarkable words met my eye. It might possibly be a proposal. I did not wait to speculate, however, but read these sentences traced in the identical handwriting which had copied the lines with which I had been twice favoured. Captain Oakley presents his compliments to Miss Ruthyn, and trusts she will excuse his venturing to ask whether, during his short stay in Feltram, he might be permitted to pay his respects at BartramHaugh. He has been making a short visit to his aunt, and could not find himself so near without at least attempting to renew an acquaintance which he has never ceased to cherish in memory. If Miss Ruthyn would be so very good as to favour him with ever so short a reply to the question he ventures most respectfully to ask, her decision would reach him at the Hall Hotel, Feltram. Well, hes a roundabout fellah, anyhow. Couldnt he come up and see you if he wanted to? They poeters, they do love writing long yarnsdont they? And with this reflection, Milly took the note and read it through again. Its jolly polite anyhow, isnt it Maud? said Milly, who had conned it over, and accepted it as a model composition. I must have been, I think, naturally a rather shrewd girl; and considering how very little I had seen of the worldnothing in factI often wonder now at the sage conclusions at which I arrived. Were I to answer this handsome and cunning fool according to his folly, in what position should I find myself? No doubt my reply would induce a rejoinder, and that compel another note from me, and that invite yet another from him; and however his might improve in warmth, they were sure not to abate. Was it his impertinent plan, with this show of respect and ceremony, to drag me into a clandestine correspondence? Inexperienced girl as I was, I fired at the idea of becoming his dupe, and fancying, perhaps, that there was more in merely answering his note than it would have amounted to, I said That kind of thing may answer very well with buttonmakers, but ladies dont like it. What would your papa think of it if he found that I had been writing to him, and seeing him without his permission? If he wanted to see me he could have(I really did not know exactly what he could have done)he could have timed his visit to Lady Knollys differently; at all events, he has no right to place me in an embarrassing situation, and I am certain Cousin Knollys would say so; and I think his note both shabby and impertinent. Decision was not with me an intellectual process. When quite cool I was the most undecided of mortals, but once my feelings were excited I was prompt and bold. Ill give the note to Uncle Silas, I said, quickening my pace toward home; hell know what to do. But Milly, who, I fancy, had no objection to the little romance which the young officer proposed, told me that she could not see her father, that he was ill, and not speaking to anyone. And arnt ye making a plaguy row about nothin? I lay a guinea if ye had never set eyes on Lord Ilbury youd a told him to come, and see ye, an welcome. Dont talk like a fool, Milly. You never knew me do anything deceitful. Lord Ilbury has no more to do with it, you know very well, than the man in the moon. I was altogether very indignant. I did not speak another word to Milly. The proportions of the house are so great, that it is a much longer walk than you would suppose from the halldoor to Uncle Silass room. But I did not cool all that way; and it was not till I had just reached the lobby, and saw the sour, jealous face, and high caul of old Wyat, and felt the influence of that neighbourhood, that I paused to reconsider. I fancied there was a cool consciousness of success behind all the deferential phraseology of Captain Oakley, which nettled me extremely. No; there could be no doubt. I tapped softly at the door. What is it now, Miss? snarled the querulous old woman, with her shrivelled fingers on the doorhandle. Can I see my uncle for a moment? Hes tired, and not a word from him all day long. Not ill, though? Awful bad in the night, said the old crone, with a sudden savage glare in my face, as if I had brought it about. Oh! Im very sorry. I had not heard a word of it. No one does but old Wyat. Theres Milly there never asks neitherhis own child! Weakness, or what? One o them fits. Hell slide awa in one o them some day, and no one but old Wyat to know nor ask word about it; thats how twill be. Will you please hand him this note, if he is well enough to look at it, and say I am at the door? She took it with a peevish nod and a grunt, closing the door in my face, and in a few minutes returned Come in wi ye, said Dame Wyat, and I appeared. Uncle Silas, who, after his nightly horror or vision, lay extended on a sofa, with his faded yellow silk dressinggown about him, his long white hair hanging toward the ground, and that wild and feeble smile lighting his facea glimmer I feared to look uponhis long thin arms lay by his sides, with hands and fingers that stirred not, except when now and then, with a feeble motion, he wet his temples and forehead with eau de cologne from a glass saucer placed beside him.

Excellent girl! dutiful ward and niece! murmured the oracle; heaven reward youyour frank dealing is your own safety and my peace. Sit you down, and say who is this Captain Oakley, when you made his acquaintance, what his age, fortune, and expectations, and who the aunt he mentions. Upon all these points I satisfied him as fully as I was able. Wyatthe white drops, he called, in a thin, stern tone. Ill write a line presently. I cant see visitors, and, of course, you cant receive young captains before youve come out. Farewell! God bless you, dear. Wyat was dropping the white restorative into a wineglass and the room was redolent of ether. I was glad to escape. The figures and whole miseenscne were unearthly. Well, Milly, I said, as I met her in the hall, your papa is going to write to him. I sometimes wonder whether Milly was right, and how I should have acted a few months earlier. Next day whom should we meet in the Windmill Wood but Captain Oakley. The spot where this interesting rencontre occurred was near that ruinous bridge on my sketch of which I had received so many compliments. It was so great a surprise that I had not time to recollect my indignation, and, having received him very affably, I found it impossible, during our brief interview, to recover my lost altitude. After our greetings were over, and some compliments neatly made, he said I had such a curious note from Mr. Silas Ruthyn. I am sure he thinks me a very impertinent fellow, for it was really anything but invitingextremely rude, in fact. But I could not quite see that because he does not want me to invade his bedrooman incursion I never dreamed ofI was not to present myself to you, who had already honoured me with your acquaintance, with the sanction of those who were most interested in your welfare, and who were just as well qualified as he, I fancy, to say who were qualified for such an honour. My uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, you are aware, is my guardian; and this is my cousin, his daughter. This was an opportunity of becoming a little lofty, and I improved it. He raised his hat and bowed to Milly. Im afraid Ive been very rude and stupid. Mr. Ruthyn, of course, has a perfect right totoin fact, I was not the least aware that I had the honour of so near a relationsaaand what exquisite scenery you have! I think this country round Feltram particularly fine; and this BartramHaugh is, I venture to say, about the very most beautiful spot in this beautiful region. I do assure you I am tempted beyond measure to make Feltram and the Hall Hotel my headquarters for at least a week. I only regret the foliage; but your trees show wonderfully, even in winter, so many of them have got that ivy about them. They say it spoils trees, but it certainly beautifies them. I have just ten days leave unexpired; I wish I could induce you to advise me how to apply them. What shall I do, Miss Ruthyn? I am the worst person in the world to make plans, even for myself, I find it so troublesome. What do you say? Suppose you try Wales or Scotland, and climb up some of those fine mountains that look so well in winter? I should much prefer Feltram. I so wish you would recommend it. What is this pretty plant? We call that Mauds myrtle. She planted it, and its very pretty when its full in blow, said Milly. Our visit to Elverston had been of immense use to us both. Oh! planted by you? he said, very softly, with a momentary corresponding glance. May Iever so littlejust a leaf? And without waiting for permission, he held a sprig of it next his waistcoat. Yes, it goes very prettily with those buttons. They are very pretty buttons; are not they, Milly? A present, a souvenir, I dare say? This was a terrible hit at the buttonmaker, and I thought he looked a little oddly at me, but my countenance was so bewitchingly simple that I suppose his suspicions were allayed. Now, it was very odd of me, I must confess, to talk in this way, and to receive all those tender allusions from a gentleman about whom I had spoken and felt so sharply only the evening before. But Bartram was abominably lonely. A civilised person was a valuable waif or stray in that region of the picturesque and the brutal; and to my lady reader especially, because she will probably be hardest upon me, I put itcan you not recollect any such folly in your own past life? Can you not in as many minutes call to mind at least six similar inconsistencies of your own practising? For my part, I really cant see the advantage of being the weaker sex if we are always to be as strong as our masculine neighbours. There was, indeed, no revival of the little sentiment which I had once experienced. When these things once expire, I do believe they are as hard to revive as our dead lapdogs, guineapigs, and parrots. It was my perfect coolness which enabled me to chat, I flatter myself, so agreeably with the refined Captain, who plainly thought me his captive, and was probably now and then thinking what was to be done to utilise that little bit of Bartram, or to beautify some other, when he should see fit to become its master, as we rambled over these wild but beautiful grounds. It was just about then that Milly nudged me rather vehemently, and whispered Look there! I followed with mine the direction of her eyes, and saw my odious cousin, Dudley, in a flagrant pair of crossbarred pegtops, and what Milly before her reformation used to call other slops of corresponding atrocity, approaching our refined little party with great strides. I really think that Milly was very nearly ashamed of him. I certainly was. I had no apprehension, however, of the scene which was imminent. The charming Captain mistook him probably for some rustic servant of the place, for he continued his agreeable remarks up to the very moment when Dudley, whose face was pale with anger, and whose rapid advance had not served to cool him, without recollecting to salute either Milly or me, accosted our elegant companion as follows By your leave, master, baint you summat in the wrong box here, dont you think? He had planted himself directly in his front, and looked unmistakably menacing. May I speak to him? Will you excuse me? said the Captain blandly. Oway, theyll excuse ye ready enough, I dessay; youre to deal wi me though. Baint ye in the wrong box now? Im not conscious, sir, of being in a box at all, replied the Captain, with severe disdain. It strikes me you are disposed to get up a row. Let us, if you please, get a little apart from the ladies if that is your purpose. I mean to turn you out o this the way ye came. If you make a row, so much the wuss for you, for Ill lick ye to fits. Tell him not to fight, whispered Milly; hell a no chance wi Dudley. I saw Dickon Hawkes grinning over the paling on which he leaned. Mr. Hawkes, I said, drawing Milly with me toward that unpromising mediator, pray prevent unpleasantness and go between them. An git licked o both sides? Rather not, Miss, thank ye, grinned Dickon, tranquilly. Who are you, sir? demanded our romantic acquaintance, with military sternness. Ill tell you who you areyoure Oakley, as stops at the Hall, that Governor wrote, overnight, not to dare show your nose inside the grounds. Youre a halfstarved cappen, come down here to look for a wife, and Before Dudley could finish his sentence, Captain Oakley, than whose face no regimentals could possibly have been more scarlet, at that moment, struck with his switch at Dudleys handsome features. I dont know how it was doneby some devilish cantrip slight. A smack was heard, and the Captain lay on his back on the ground, with his mouth full of blood. How do ye like the taste o that? roared Dickon, from his post of observation. In an instant Captain Oakley was on his feet again, hatless, looking quite frantic, and striking out at Dudley, who was ducking and dipping quite coolly, and again the same horrid sound, only this time it was double, like a quick postmans knock, and Captain Oakley was on the grass again. Tapped his smeller, by ! thundered Dickon, with a roar of laughter. Come away, MillyIm growing ill, said I. Drop it, Dudley, I tell ye; youll kill him, screamed Milly. But the devoted Captain, whose nose, and mouth, and shirtfront formed now but one great patch of blood, and who was bleeding beside over one eye, dashed at him again. I turned away. I felt quite faint, and on the point of crying, with mere horror. Hammer away at his knocker, bellowed Dickon, in a frenzy of delight. Hell break it now, if it aint already, cried Milly, alluding, as I afterwards understood, to the Captains Grecian nose. Brayvo, little un! The Captain was considerably the taller. Another smack, and, I suppose, Captain Oakley fell once more. Hooray! the dinnerservice again, by , roared Dickon. Stick to that. Over the same groundsubsoil, I say. He hant enough yet. In a perfect tremor of disgust, I was making as quick a retreat as I could, and as I did, I heard Captain Oakley shriek hoarsely Youre a d prizefighter; I cant box you. I told ye Id lick ye to fits, hooted Dudley. But youre the son of a gentleman, and by you shall fight me as a gentleman. A yell of hooting laughter from Dudley and Dickon followed this sally. Gie my love to the Colonel, and think o me when ye look in the glasswont ye? An so youre goin arter all; well, follow whats left o yer nose. Ye forgot some o yer ivories, didnt ye, on th grass? These and many similar jibes followed the mangled Captain in his retreat. XII Doctor Bryerly Reappears No one who has not experienced it can imagine the nervous disgust and horror which such a spectacle as we had been forced in part to witness leaves upon the mind of a young person of my peculiar temperament. It affected ever after my involuntary estimate of the principal actors in it. An exhibition of such thorough inferiority, accompanied by such a shock to the feminine sense of elegance, is not forgotten by any woman. Captain Oakley had been severely beaten by a smaller man. It was pitiable, but also undignified; and Millys anxieties about his teeth and nose, though in a certain sense horrible, had also a painful suspicion of the absurd. People say, on the other hand, that superior prowess, even in such barbarous contests, inspires in our sex an interest akin to admiration. I can positively say in my case it was quite the reverse. Dudley Ruthyn stood lower than ever in my estimation; for though I feared him more, it was by reason of these brutal and coldblooded associations. After this I lived in constant apprehension of being summoned to my uncles room, and being called on for an explanation of my meeting with Captain Oakley, which, notwithstanding my perfect innocence, looked suspicious, but no such inquisition resulted. Perhaps he did not suspect me; or, perhaps, he thought, not in his haste, all women are liars, and did not care to hear what I might say. I rather lean to the latter interpretation. The exchequer just now, I suppose, by some means, was replenished, for next morning Dudley set off upon one of his fashionable excursions, as poor Milly thought them, to Wolverhampton. And the same day Dr. Bryerly arrived. Milly and I, from my room window, saw him step from his vehicle to the courtyard. A lean man, with sandy hair and whiskers, was in the chaise with him. Dr. Bryerly descended in the unchangeable black suit that always looked new and never fitted him. The Doctor looked careworn, and older, I thought, by several years, than when I last saw him. He was not shown up to my uncles room; on the contrary, Milly, who was more actively curious than I, ascertained that our tremulous butler informed him that my uncle was not sufficiently well for an interview. Whereupon Dr. Bryerly had pencilled a note, the reply to which was a message from Uncle Silas, saying that he would be happy to see him in five minutes. As Milly and I were conjecturing what it might mean, and before the five minutes had expired, Mary Quince entered. Wyat bid me tell you, Miss, your uncle wants you this minute. When I entered his room, Uncle Silas was seated at the table, with his desk before him. He looked up. Could anything be more dignified, suffering, and venerable? I sent for you, dear, he said very gently, extending his thin, white hand, and taking mine, which he held affectionately while he spoke, because I desire to have no secrets, and wish you thoroughly to know all that concerns your own interests while subject to my guardianship; and I am happy to think, my beloved niece, that you requite my candour. Oh, here is the gentleman. Sit down, dear. Doctor Bryerly was advancing, as it seemed, to shake hands with Uncle Silas, who, however, rose with a severe and haughty air, not the least overacted, and made him a slow, ceremonious bow. I wondered how the homely Doctor could confront so tranquilly that astounding statue of hauteur. A faint and weary smile, rather sad than comtemptuous, was the only sign he showed of feeling his repulse. How do you do, Miss? he said, extending his hand, and greeting me after his ungallant fashion, as if it were an afterthought. I think I may as well take a chair, sir, said Doctor Bryerly, sitting down serenely, near the table, and crossing his ungainly legs. My uncle bowed. You understand the nature of the business, sir. Do you wish Miss Ruthyn to remain? asked Doctor Bryerly. I sent for her, sir, replied my uncle, in a very gentle and sarcastic tone, a smile on his thin lips, and his strangelycontorted eyebrows raised for a moment contemptuously. This gentleman, my dear Maud, thinks proper to insinuate that I am robbing you. It surprises me a little, and, no doubt, youIve nothing to conceal, and wished you to be present while he favours me more particularly with his views. Im right, I think, in describing it as robbery, sir? Why, said Doctor Bryerly thoughtfully, for he was treating the matter as one of right, and not of feeling, it would be, certainly, taking that which does not belong to you, and converting it to your own use; but, at the worst, it would more resemble thieving, I think, than robbery. I saw Uncle Silass lip, eyelid, and thin cheek quiver and shrink, as if with a thrill of ticdouloureux, as Doctor Bryerly spoke this unconsciously insulting answer. My uncle had, however, the selfcommand which is learned at the gamingtable. He shrugged, with a chilly, sarcastic, little laugh, and a glance at me. Your note says waste, I think, sir? Yes, wastethe felling and sale of timber in the Windmill Wood, the selling of oak bark and burning of charcoal, as Im informed, said Bryerly, as sadly and quietly as a man might relate a piece of intelligence from the newspaper. Detectives? or private spies of your ownor, perhaps, my servants, bribed with my poor brothers money? A very highminded procedure. Nothing of the kind, sir. My uncle sneered. I mean, sir, there has been no undue canvass for evidence, and the question is simply one of right; and it is our duty to see that this inexperienced young lady is not defrauded. By her own uncle? By anyone, said Doctor Bryerly, with a natural impenetrability that excited my admiration. Of course you come armed with an opinion? said my smiling uncle, insinuatingly. The case is before Mr. Serjeant Grinders. These bigwigs dont return their cases sometimes so quickly as we could wish. Then you have no opinion? smiled my uncle. My solicitor is quite clear upon it; and it seems to me there can be no question raised, but for forms sake. Yes, for forms sake you take one, and in the meantime, upon a nice question of law, the surmises of a thickheaded attorney and of an ingenious apothI beg pardon, physicianare sufficient warrant for telling my niece and ward, in my presence, that I am defrauding her! My uncle leaned back in his chair, and smiled with a contemptuous patience over Doctor Bryerlys head, as he spoke. I dont know whether I used that expression, sir, but I am speaking merely in a technical sense. I mean to say, that, whether by mistake or otherwise, you are exercising a power which you dont lawfully possess, and that the effect of that is to impoverish the estate, and, by so much as it benefits you, to wrong this young lady. Im a technical defrauder, I see, and your manner conveys the rest. I thank my God, sir, I am a very different man from what I once was. Uncle Silas was speaking in a low tone, and with extraordinary deliberation. I remember when I should have certainly knocked you down, sir, or tried it, at least, for a great deal less. But seriously, sir, what do you propose? asked Doctor Bryerly, sternly and a little flushed, for I think the old man was stirred within him; and though he did not raise his voice, his manner was excited. I propose to defend my rights, sir, murmured Uncle Silas, very grim. Im not without an opinion, though you are. You seem to think, sir, that I have a pleasure in annoying you; you are quite wrong. I hate annoying anyoneconstitutionallyI hate it; but dont you see, sir, the position Im placed in? I wish I could please everyone, and do my duty. Uncle Silas bowed and smiled. Ive brought with me the Scotch steward from Tolkingden, your estate, Miss, and if you let us we will visit the spot and make a note of what we observe, that is, assuming that you admit waste, and merely question our law. If you please, sir, you and your Scotchman shall do no such thing; and, bearing in mind that I neither deny nor admit anything, you will please further never more to present yourself, under any pretext whatsoever, either in this house or on the grounds of BartramHaugh, during my lifetime. Uncle Silas rose up with the same glassy smile and scowl, in token that the interview was ended. Goodbye, sir, said Doctor Bryerly, with a sad and thoughtful air, and hesitating for a moment, he said to me, Do you think, Miss, you could afford me a word in the hall? Not a word, sir, snarled Uncle Silas, with a white flash from his eyes. There was a pause. Sit where you are, Maud. Another pause. If you have anything to say to my ward, sir, you will please to say it here. Doctor Bryerlys dark and homely face was turned on me with an expression of unspeakable compassion. I was going to say, that if you think of any way in which I can be of the least service, Miss, Im ready to act, thats all; mind, any way. He hesitated, looking at me with the same expression as if he had something more to say; but he only repeated Thats all, Miss. Wont you shake hands, Doctor Bryerly, before you go? I said, eagerly approaching him. Without a smile, with the same sad anxiety in his face, with his mind, as it seemed to me, on something else, and irresolute whether to speak it or be silent, he took my fingers in a very cold hand, and holding it so, and slowly shaking it, his grave and troubled glance unconsciously rested on Uncle Silass face, while in a sad tone and absent way he said Goodbye, Miss. From before that sad gaze my uncle averted his strange eyes quickly, and looked, oddly, to the window. In a moment more Doctor Bryerly let my hand go with a sigh, and with an abrupt little nod to me, he left the room; and I heard that dismallest of sounds, the retreating footsteps of a true friend, lost. Lead us not into temptation; if we pray so, we must not mock the eternal Majesty of Heaven by walking into temptation of our own accord. This oracular sentence was not uttered by my uncle until Doctor Bryerly had been gone at least five minutes. Ive forbid him my house, Maudfirst, because his perfectly unconscious insolence tries my patience nearly beyond endurance; and again, because I have heard unfavourable reports of him. On the question of right which he disputes, I am perfectly informed. I am your tenant, my dear niece; when I am gone you will learn how scrupulous I have been; you will see how, under the pressure of the most agonising pecuniary difficulties, the terrific penalty of a misspent youth, I have been careful never by a hairs breadth to transgress the strict line of my legal privileges; alike, as your tenant, Maud, and as your guardian; how, amid frightful agitations, I have kept myself, by the miraculous strength and grace vouchsafed mepure. The world, he resumed after a short pause, has no faith in any mans conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge. What I was I will describe in blacker terms, and with more heartfelt detestation, than my traducersa reckless prodigal, a godless profligate. Such I was; what I am, I am. If I had no hope beyond this world, of all men most miserable; but with that hope, a sinner saved. Then he waxed eloquent and mystical. I think his Swedenborgian studies had crossed his notions of religion with strange lights. I never could follow him quite in these excursions into the region of symbolism. I only recollect that he talked of the deluge and the waters of Mara, and said, I am washedI am sprinkled, and then, pausing, bathed his thin temples and forehead with eau de cologne; a process which was, perhaps, suggested by his imagery of sprinkling and so forth. Thus refreshed, he sighed and smiled, and passed to the subject of Doctor Bryerly. Of Doctor Bryerly, I know that he is sly, that he loves money, was born poor, and makes nothing by his profession. But he possesses many thousand pounds, under my poor brothers will, of your money; and he has glided with, of course a modest nolo episcopari, into the acting trusteeship, with all its multitudinous opportunities, of your immense property. That is not doing so badly for a visionary Swedenborgian. Such a man must prosper. But if he expected to make money of me, he is disappointed. Money, however, he will make of his trusteeship, as you will see. It is a dangerous resolution. But if he will seek the life of Dives, the worst I wish him is to find the death of Lazarus. But whether, like Lazarus, he be borne of angels into Abrahams bosom, or, like the rich man, only dies and is buried, and the rest, neither living nor dying do I desire his company. Uncle Silas here seemed suddenly overtaken by exhaustion. He leaned back with a ghastly look, and his lean features glistened with the dew of faintness. I screamed for Wyat. But he soon recovered sufficiently to smile his odd smile, and with it and his frown, nodded and waved me away. XIII Question and Answer My uncle, after all, was not ill that day, after the strange fashion of his malady, be it what it might. Old Wyat repeated in her sour laconic way that there was nothing to speak of amiss with him. But there remained with me a sense of pain and fear. Doctor Bryerly, notwithstanding my uncles sarcastic reflections, remained, in my estimation, a true and wise friend. I had all my life been accustomed to rely upon others, and here, haunted by many unavowed and illdefined alarms and doubts, the disappearance of an active and able friend caused my heart to sink. Still there remained my dear Cousin Monica, and my pleasant and trusted friend, Lord Ilbury; and in less than a week arrived an invitation from Lady Mary to the Grange, for me and Milly, to meet Lady Knollys. It was accompanied, she told me, by a note from Lord Ilbury to my uncle, supporting her request; and in the afternoon I received a message to attend my uncle in his room. An invitation from Lady Mary Carysbroke for you and Milly to meet Monica Knollys; have you received it? asked my uncle, so soon as I was seated. Answered in the affirmative, he continued Now, Maud Ruthyn, I expect the truth from you; I have been frank, so shall you. Have you ever heard me spoken ill of by Lady Knollys? I was quite taken aback. I felt my cheeks flushing. I was returning his fierce cold gaze with a stupid stare, and remained dumb. Yes, Maud, you have. I looked down in silence. I know it; but it is right you should answer; have you or have you not? I had to clear my voice twice or thrice. There was a kind of spasm in my throat. I am trying to recollect, I said at last. Do recollect, he replied imperiously. There was a little interval of silence. I would have given the world to be, on any conditions, anywhere else in the world. Surely, Maud, you dont wish to deceive your guardian? Come, the question is a plain one, and I know the truth already. I ask you againhave you ever heard me spoken ill of by Lady Knollys? Lady Knollys, I said, half articulately, speaks very freely, and often half in jest; but, I continued, observing something menacing in his face, I have heard her express disapprobation of some things you have done. Come, Maud, he continued, in a stern, though still a low key, did she not insinuate that chargethen, I suppose, in a state of incubation, the other day presented here fullfledged, with beak and claws, by that scheming apothecarythe statement that I was defrauding you by cutting down timber upon the grounds? She certainly did mention the circumstance; but she also argued that it might have been through ignorance of the extent of your rights. Come, come, Maud, you must not prevaricate, girl. I will have it. Does she not habitually speak disparagingly of me, in your presence, and to you? Answer. I hung my head. Yes or no? Well, perhaps soyes, I faltered, and burst into tears. There, dont cry; it may well shock you. Did she not, to your knowledge, say the same things in presence of my child Millicent? I know it, I repeatthere is no use in hesitating; and I command you to answer. Sobbing, I told the truth. Now sit still, while I write my reply. He wrote, with the scowl and smile so painful to witness, as he looked down upon the paper, and then he placed the note before me Read that, my dear. It began My Dear Lady Knollys, You have favoured me with a note, adding your request to that of Lord Ilbury, that I should permit my ward and my daughter to avail themselves of Lady Marys invitation. Being perfectly cognisant of the illfeeling you have always and unaccountably cherished toward me, and also of the terms in which you have had the delicacy and the conscience to speak of me before and to my child and my ward, I can only express my amazement at the modesty of your request, while peremptorily refusing it. And I shall conscientiously adopt effectual measures to prevent your ever again having an opportunity of endeavouring to destroy my influence and authority over my ward and my child, by direct or insinuated slander. Your defamed and injured kinsman, Silas Ruthyn. I was stunned; yet what could I plead against the blow that was to isolate me? I wept aloud, with my hands clasped, looking on the marble face of the old man. Without seeming to hear, he folded and sealed his note, and then proceeded to answer Lord Ilbury. When that note was written, he placed it likewise before me, and I read it also through. It simply referred him to Lady Knollys for an explanation of the unhappy circumstances which compelled him to decline an invitation which it would have made his niece and his daughter so happy to accept. You see, my dear Maud, how frank I am with you, he said, waving the open note, which I had just read, slightly before he folded it. I think I may ask you to reciprocate my candour. Dismissed from this interview, I ran to Milly, who burst into tears from sheer disappointment, so we wept and wailed together. But in my grief I think there was more reason. I sat down to the dismal task of writing to my dear Lady Knollys. I implored her to make her peace with my uncle. I told her how frank he had been with me, and how he had shown me his sad reply to her letter. I told her of the interview to which he had himself invited me with Dr. Bryerly; how little disturbed he was by the accusationno sign of guilt; quite the contrary, perfect confidence. I implored of her to think the best, and remembering my isolation, to accomplish a reconciliation with Uncle Silas. Only think, I wrote, I only nineteen, and two years of solitude before me. What a separation! No broken merchant ever signed the schedule of his bankruptcy with a heavier heart than did I this letter. The griefs of youth are like the wounds of the godsthere is an ichor which heals the scars from which it flows and thus Milly and I consoled ourselves, and next day enjoyed our ramble, our talk and readings, with a wonderful resignation to the inevitable. Milly and I stood in the relation of Lord Duberly to Doctor Pangloss. I was to mend her cackleology, and the occupation amused us both. I think at the bottom of our submission to destiny lurked a hope that Uncle Silas, the inexorable, would relent, or that Cousin Monica, that siren, would win and melt him to her purpose. Whatever comfort, however, I derived from the absence of Dudley was not to be of very long duration; for one morning, as I was amusing myself alone, with a piece of worsted work, thinking, and just at that moment not unpleasantly, of many things, my cousin Dudley entered the room. Back again, like a bad halfpenny, ye see. And how a ye bin ever since, lass? Purely, I warrant, be your looks. Im jolly glad to see ye, I am; no cattle going like ye, Maud. I think I must ask you to let go my hand, as I cant continue my work, I said, very stiffly, hoping to chill his enthusiasm a little. Anything to pleasure ye, Maud, taint in my heart to refuse ye nout. I abin to Wolverhampton, lassjolly row thereand run over to Leamington; amost broke my neck, faith, wi a borrowed horse arter the dogs; ye would na care, Maud, if I broke my neck, would ye? Well, appen, jest a little, he goodnaturedly supplied, as I was silent. Little over a week since I left here, by George; and to me its half the almanac like; can ye guess the reason, Maud? Have you seen your sister, Milly, or your father, since your return? I asked coldly. Theyll keep, Maud, never mind em; it be you I want to seeit be you I wor thinkin on a the time. I tell ye, lass, Im allays a thinkin on ye. I think you ought to go and see your father; you have been away, you say, some time. I dont think it is respectful, I said, a little sharply. If ye bid me go Id amost go, but I could na quite; theres nout on earth I would na do for you, Maud, excep leaving you. And that, I said, with a petulant flush, is the only thing on earth I would ask you to do. Blessed if you baint a blushin, Maud, he drawled, with an odious grin. His stupidity was proof against everything. It is too bad! I muttered, with an indignant little pat of my foot and mimic stamp. Well, you lasses be queer cattle; yere angry wi me now, cos ye think I got into mischiefye do, Maud; ye know t, ye buxsom little fool, down there at Wolverhampton; and jest for that yere ready to turn me off again the minute I come back; tisnt fair. I dont understand you, sir; and I beg that youll leave me. Now, didnt I tell ye about leavin ye, Maud? tis the only thing I cant compass for yer sake. Im jest a child in yere hands, I am, ye know. I can lick a big fellah to pot as limp as a rag, by George!(his oaths were not really so mild)ye see summat o that tother day. Well, dont be vexed, Maud; twas all along o you; ye know, I wor a bit jealous, appen; but anyhow I can do it; and look at me here, jest a child, I say, in yer hands. I wish youd go away. Have you nothing to do, and no one to see? Why cant you leave me alone, sir? Cos I cant, Maud, thats jest why; and I wonder, Maud, how can you be so illnatured, when you see me like this; how can ye? I wish Milly would come, said I peevishly, looking toward the door. Well, Ill tell you how it is, Maud. I may as well have it out. I like you better than any lass that ever I saw, a deal; youre nicer by chalks; theres none like yethere isnt; and I wish youd have me. I hant much tinfathers run through a deal, hes pretty well up a tree, ye know; but though I baint so rich as some folk, Im a better man, appen; and if yed take a tidy lad, that likes ye awful, and id die for your sake, why here he is.

What can you mean, sir? I exclaimed, rising in indignant bewilderment. I mean, Maud, if yell marry me, youll never ha cause to complain; Ill never let ye want for nout, nor gie ye a wry word. Actually a proposal! I ejaculated, like a person speaking in a dream. I stood with my hand on the back of a chair, staring at Dudley; and looking, I dare say, as stupefied as I felt. Theres a good lass, ye would na deny me, said the odious creature, with one knee on the seat of the chair behind which I was standing, and attempting to place his arm lovingly round my neck. This effectually roused me, and starting back, I stamped upon the ground with actual fury. What has there ever been, sir, in my conduct, words, or looks, to warrant this unparalleled audacity? But that you are as stupid as you are impertinent, brutal, and ugly, you must, long ago, sir, have seen how I dislike you. How dare you, sir? Dont presume to obstruct me; Im going to my uncle. I had never spoken so violently to mortal before. He in turn looked a little confounded; and I passed his extended but motionless arm with a quick and angry step. He followed me a pace or two, however, before I reached the door, looking horridly angry, but stopped, and only swore after me some of those wry words which I was never to have heard. I was myself, however, too much incensed, and moving at too rapid a pace, to catch their import; and I had knocked at my uncles door before I began to collect my thoughts. Come in, replied my uncles voice, clear, thin, and peevish. I entered and confronted him. Your son, sir, has insulted me. He looked at me with a cold curiosity steadly for a few seconds, as I stood panting before him with flaming cheeks. Insulted you? repeated he. Egad, you surprise me! The ejaculation savoured of the old man, to borrow his scriptural phrase, more than anything I had heard from him before. How? he continued; how has Dudley insulted you, my dear child? Come, youre excited; sit down; take time, and tell me all about it. I did not know that Dudley was here. Iheit is an insult. He knew very wellhe must know I dislike him; and he presumed to make a proposal of marriage to me. Oooh! exclaimed my uncle, with a prolonged intonation which plainly said, Is that the mighty matter? He looked at me as he leaned back with the same steady curiosity, this time smiling, which somehow frightened me, and his countenance looked to me wicked, like the face of a witch, with a guilt I could not understand. And that is the amount of your complaint. He made you a formal proposal of marriage! Yes; he proposed for me. As I cooled, I began to feel just a very little disconcerted, and a suspicion was troubling me that possibly an indifferent person might think that, having no more to complain of, my language was perhaps a little exaggerated, and my demeanour a little too tempestuous. My uncle, I dare say, saw some symptoms of this misgiving, for, smiling still, he said My dear Maud, however just, you appear to me a little cruel; you dont seem to remember how much you are yourself to blame; you have one faithful friend at least, whom I advise your consultingI mean your lookingglass. The foolish fellow is young, quite ignorant in the worlds ways. He is in lovedesperately enamoured Aimer cest craindre, et craindre cest souffrir. And suffering prompts to desperate remedies. We must not be too hard on a rough but romantic young fool, who talks according to his folly and his pain. XIV An Apparition But, after all, he suddenly resumed, as if a new thought had struck him, is it quite such folly, after all? It really strikes me, dear Maud, that the subject may be worth a second thought. No, no, you wont refuse to hear me, he said, observing me on the point of protesting. I am, of course, assuming that you are fancy free. I am assuming, too, that you dont care twopence about Dudley, and even that you fancy you dislike him. You know in that pleasant play, poor Sheridandelightful fellow!all our fine spirits are deadhe makes Mrs. Malaprop say there is nothing like beginning with a little aversion. Now, though in matrimony, of course, that is only a joke, yet in love, believe me, it is no such thing. His own marriage with Miss Ogle, I know, was a case in point. She expressed a positive horror of him at their first acquaintance; and yet, I believe, she would, a few months later, have died rather than not have married him. I was again about to speak, but with a smile he beckoned me into silence. There are two or three points you must bear in mind. One of the happiest privileges of your fortune is that you may, without imprudence, marry simply for love. There are few men in England who could offer you an estate comparable with that you already possess; or, in fact, appreciably increase the splendour of your fortune. If, therefore, he were in all other respects eligible, I cant see that his poverty would be an objection to weigh for one moment. He is quite a rough diamond. He has been, like many young men of the highest rank, too much given up to athletic sportsto that society which constitutes the aristocracy of the ring and the turf, and all that kind of thing. You see, I am putting all the worst points first. But I have known so many young men in my day, after a madcap career of a few years among prizefighters, wrestlers, and jockeyslearning their slang and affecting their mannerstake up and cultivate the graces and the decencies. There was poor dear Newgate, many degrees lower in that kind of frolic, who, when he grew tired of it, became one of the most elegant and accomplished men in the House of Peers. Poor Newgate, hes gone, too! I could reckon up fifty of my early friends who all began like Dudley, and all turned out, more or less, like Newgate. At this moment came a knock at the door, and Dudley put in his head most inopportunely for the vision of his future graces and accomplishments. My good fellow, said his father, with a sharp sort of playfulness, I happen to be talking about my son, and should rather not be overheard; you will, therefore, choose another time for your visit. Dudley hesitated gruffly at the door, but another look from his father dismissed him. And now, my dear, you are to remember that Dudley has fine qualitiesthe most affectionate son in his rough way that ever father was blessed with; most admirable qualitiesindomitable courage, and a high sense of honour; and lastly, that he has the Ruthyn bloodthe purest blood, I maintain it, in England. My uncle, as he said this, drew himself up a little, unconsciously, his thin hand laid lightly over his heart with a little patting motion, and his countenance looked so strangely dignified and melancholy, that in admiring contemplation of it I lost some sentences which followed next. Therefore, dear, naturally anxious that my boy should not be dismissed from homeas he must be, should you persevere in rejecting his suitI beg that you will reserve your decision to this day fortnight, when I will with much pleasure hear what you may have to say on the subject. But till then, observe me, not a word. That evening he and Dudley were closeted for a long time. I suspect that he lectured him on the psychology of ladies; for a bouquet was laid beside my plate every morning at breakfast, which it must have been troublesome to get, for the conservatory at Bartram was a desert. In a few days more an anonymous green parrot arrived, in a gilt cage, with a little note in a clerks hand, addressed to Miss Ruthyn (of Knowl), BartramHaugh, etc. It contained only Directions for caring green parrot, at the close of which, underlined, the words appearedThe birds name is Maud. The bouquets I invariably left on the tablecloth, where I found themthe bird I insisted on Millys keeping as her property. During the intervening fortnight Dudley never appeared, as he used sometimes to do before, at luncheon, nor looked in at the window as we were at breakfast. He contented himself with one day placing himself in my way in the hall in his shooting accoutrements, and, with a clumsy, shuffling kind of respect, and hat in hand, he said I think, Miss, I must a spoke uncivil tother day. I was so awful put about, and didnt know no more nor a child what I was saying; and I wanted to tell ye Im sorry for it, and I beg your pardonvery humble, I do. I did not know what to say. I therefore said nothing, but made a grave inclination, and passed on. Two or three times Milly and I saw him at a little distance in our walks. He never attempted to join us. Once only he passed so near that some recognition was inevitable, and he stopped and in silence lifted his hat with an awkward respect. But although he did not approach us, he was ostentatious with a kind of telegraphic civility in the distance. He opened gates, he whistled his dogs to heel, he drove away cattle, and then himself withdrew. I really think he watched us occasionally to render these services, for in this distant way we encountered him decidedly oftener than we used to do before his flattering proposal of marriage. You may be sure that we discussed, Milly and I, that occurrence pretty constantly in all sorts of moods. Limited as had been her experience of human society, she very clearly saw now how far below its presentable level was her hopeful brother. The fortnight sped swiftly, as time always does when something we dislike and shrink from awaits us at its close. I never saw Uncle Silas during that period. It may seem odd to those who merely read the report of our last interview, in which his manner had been more playful and his talk more trifling than in any other, that from it I had carried away a profounder sense of fear and insecurity than from any other. It was with a foreboding of evil and an awful dejection that on a very dark day, in Millys room, I awaited the summons which I was sure would reach me from my punctual guardian. As I looked from the window upon the slanting rain and leaden sky, and thought of the hated interview that awaited me, I pressed my hand to my troubled heart, and murmured, O that I had wings like a dove! then would I flee away, and be at rest. Just then the prattle of the parrot struck my ear. I looked round on the wire cage, and remembered the words, The birds name is Maud. Poor bird! I said. I dare say, Milly, it longs to get out. If it were a native of this country, would not you like to open the window, and then the door of that cruel cage, and let the poor thing fly away? Master wants Miss Maud, said Wyats disagreeable tones, at the halfopen door. I followed in silence, with the pressure of a near alarm at my heart, like a person going to an operation. When I entered the room, my heart beat so fast that I could hardly speak. The tall form of Uncle Silas rose before me, and I made him a faltering reverence. He darted from under his brows a wild, fierce glance at old Wyat, and pointed to the door imperiously with his skeleton finger. The door shut, and we were alone. A chair? he said, pointing to a seat. Thank you, uncle, I prefer standing, I faltered. He also stoodhis white head bowed forward, the phosphoric glare of his strange eyes shone upon me from under his browshis fingernails just rested on the table. You saw the luggage corded and addressed, as it stands ready for removal in the hall? he asked. I had. Milly and I had read the cards which dangled from the trunkhandles and guncase. The address wasMr. Dudley R. Ruthyn, Paris, via Dover. I am oldagitatedon the eve of a decision on which much depends. Pray relieve my suspense. Is my son to leave Bartram today in sorrow, or to remain in joy? Pray answer quickly. I stammered I know not what. I was incoherentwild, perhaps; but somehow I expressed my meaningmy unalterable decision. I thought his lips grew whiter and his eyes shone brighter as I spoke. When I had quite made an end, he heaved a great sigh, and turning his eyes slowly to the right and the left, like a man in a helpless distraction, he whispered Gods will be done. I thought he was upon the point of faintinga clay tint darkened the white of his face; and, seeming to forget my presence, he sat down, looking with a despairing scowl on his ashy old hand, as it lay upon the table. I stood gazing at him, feeling almost as if I had murdered the old manhe still gazing askance, with an imbecile scowl, upon his hand. Shall I go, sir? I at length found courage to whisper. Go? he said, looking up suddenly; and it seemed to me as if a stream of cold sheetlightning had crossed and enveloped me for a moment. Go?oh!ayesyes, Maudgo. I must see poor Dudley before his departure, he added, as it were, in soliloquy. Trembling lest he should revoke his permission to depart, I glided quickly and noiselessly from the room. Old Wyat was prowling outside, with a cloth in her hand, pretending to dust the carved doorcase. She frowned a stare of enquiry over her shrunken arm on me, as I passed. Milly, who had been on the watch, ran and met me. We heard my uncles voice, as I shut the door, calling Dudley. He had been waiting, probably, in the adjoining room. I hurried into my chamber, with Milly at my side, and there my agitation found relief in tears, as that of girlhood naturally does. A little while after we saw from the window Dudley, looking, I thought, very pale, get into a vehicle, on the top of which his luggage lay, and drive away from Bartram. I began to take comfort. His departure was an inexpressible relief. His final departure! a distant journey! We had tea in Millys room that night. Firelight and candles are inspiring. In that red glow I always felt and feel more safe, as well as more comfortable, than in the daylightquite irrationally, for we know the night is the appointed day of such as love the darkness better than light, and evil walks thereby. But so it is. Perhaps the very consciousness of external danger enhances the enjoyment of the welllighted interior, just as the storm does that roars and hurtles over the roof. While Milly and I were talking, very cosily, a knock came to the roomdoor, and, without waiting for an invitation to enter, old Wyat came in, and glowering at us, with her brown claw upon the doorhandle, she said to Milly Ye must leave your funnin, Miss Milly, and take your turn in your fathers room. Is he ill? I asked. She answered, addressing not me, but Milly A wrought two hours in a fit arter Master Dudley went. Twill be the death o him, Im thinkin, poor old fellah. I wor sorry myself when I saw Master Dudley a going off in the moist today, poor fellah. Theres trouble enough in the family without a that; but twont be a family long, Im thinkin. Nout but trouble, nout but trouble, since late changes came. Judging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those late changes to which all the sorrows of the house were referred. I felt unhappy under the illwill even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless. I must go. I wish youd come wi me, Maud, Im so afraid all alone, said Milly, imploringly. Certainly, Milly, I answered, not liking it, you may be sure; you shant sit there alone. So together we went, old Wyat cautioning us for our lives to make no noise. We passed through the old mans sittingroom, where that day had occurred his brief but momentous interview with me, and his parting with his only son, and entered the bedroom at the farther end. A low fire burned in the grate. The room was in a sort of twilight. A dim lamp near the foot of the bed at the farther side was the only light burning there. Old Wyat whispered an injunction not to speak above our breaths, nor to leave the fireside unless the sick man called or showed signs of weariness. These were the directions of the doctor, who had been there. So Milly and I sat ourselves down near the hearth, and old Wyat left us to our resources. We could hear the patient breathe; but he was quite still. In whispers we talked; but our conversation flagged. I was, after my wont, upbraiding myself for the suffering I had inflicted. After about half an hours desultory whispering, and intervals, growing longer and longer, of silence, it was plain that Milly was falling asleep. She strove against it, and I tried hard to keep her talking; but it would not dosleep overcame her; and I was the only person in that ghastly room in a state of perfect consciousness. There were associations connected with my last vigil there to make my situation very nervous and disagreeable. Had I not had so much to occupy my mind of a distinctly practical kindDudleys audacious suit, my uncles questionable toleration of it, and my own conduct throughout that most disagreeable period of my existenceI should have felt my present situation a great deal more. As it was, I thought of my real troubles, and something of Cousin Knollys, and, I confess, a good deal of Lord Ilbury. When looking towards the door, I thought I saw a human face, about the most terrible my fancy could have called up, looking fixedly into the room. It was only a threequarter, and not the whole figurethe door hid that in a great measure, and I fancied I saw, too, a portion of the fingers. The face gazed toward the bed, and in the imperfect light looked like a livid mask, with chalky eyes. I had so often been startled by similar apparitions formed by accidental lights and shadows disguising homely objects, that I stooped forward, expecting, though tremulously, to see this tremendous one in like manner dissolve itself into its harmless elements; and now, to my unspeakable terror, I became perfectly certain that I saw the countenance of Madame de la Rougierre. With a cry, I started back, and shook Milly furiously from her trance. Look! look! I cried. But the apparition or illusion was gone. I clung so fast to Millys arm, cowering behind her, that she could not rise. Milly! Milly! Milly! Milly! I went on crying, like one struck with idiotcy, and unable to say anything else. In a panic, Milly, who had seen nothing, and could conjecture nothing of the cause of my terror, jumped up, and clinging to one another, we huddled together into the corner of the room, I still crying wildly, Milly! Milly! Milly! and nothing else. What is itwhere is itwhat do you see? cried Milly, clinging to me as I did to her. It will come again; it will come; oh, heaven! Whatwhat is it, Maud? The face! the face! I cried. Oh, Milly! Milly! Milly! We heard a step softly approaching the open door, and, in a horrible sauve qui peut, we rushed and stumbled together toward the light by Uncle Silass bed. But old Wyats voice and figure reassured us. Milly, I said, so soon as, pale and very faint, I reached my apartment, no power on earth shall ever tempt me to enter that room again after dark. Why, Maud dear, what, in Heavens name, did you see? said Milly, scarcely less terrified. Oh, I cant; I cant; I cant, Milly. Never ask me. It is haunted. The room is haunted horribly. Was it Charke? whispered Milly, looking over her shoulder, all aghast. No, nodont ask me; a fiend in a worse shape. I was relieved at last by a long fit of weeping; and all night good Mary Quince sat by me, and Milly slept by my side. Starting and screaming, and drugged with salvolatile, I got through that night of supernatural terror, and saw the blessed light of heaven again. Doctor Jolks, when he came to see my uncle in the morning, visited me also. He pronounced me very hysterical, made minute enquiries respecting my hours and diet, asked what I had had for dinner yesterday. There was something a little comforting in his cool and confident poohpoohing of the ghost theory. The result was, a regimen which excluded tea, and imposed chocolate and porter, earlier hours, and I forget all beside; and he undertook to promise that, if I would but observe his directions, I should never see a ghost again. XV Millys Farewell A few days time saw me much better. Doctor Jolks was so contemptuously sturdy and positive on the point, that I began to have comfortable doubts about the reality of my ghost; and having still a horror indescribable of the illusion, if such it were, the room in which it appeared, and everything concerning it, I would neither speak, nor, so far as I could, think of it. So, though BartramHaugh was gloomy as well as beautiful, and some of its associations awful, and the solitude that reigned there sometimes almost terrible, yet early hours, bracing exercise, and the fine air that predominates that region, soon restored my nerves to a healthier tone. But it seemed to me that BartramHaugh was to be to me a vale of tears; or rather, in my sad pilgrimage, that valley of the shadow of death through which poor Christian fared alone and in the dark. One day Milly ran into the parlour, pale, with wet cheeks, and, without saying a word, threw her arms about my neck, and burst into a paroxysm of weeping. What is it, Millywhats the matter, dearwhat is it? I cried aghast, but returning her close embrace heartily. Oh! MaudMaud darling, hes going to send me away. Away, dear! where away? And leave me alone in this dreadful solitude, where he knows I shall die of fear and grief without you? Oh! nono, it must be a mistake. Im going to France, MaudIm going away. Mrs. Jolks is going to London, day arter tomorrow, and Im to go wi her; and an old French lady, he says, from the school will meet me there, and bring me the rest o the way. Ohhohohohoooo! cried poor Milly, hugging me closer still, with her head buried in my shoulder, and swaying me about like a wrestler, in her agony. I never wor away from home afore, except that little bit wi you over there at Elverston; and you wor wi me then, Maud; an I love yebetter than Bartrambetter than a; an I think Ill die, Maud, if they take me away. I was just as wild in my woe as poor Milly; and it was not until we had wept together for a full hoursometimes standingsometimes walking up and down the roomsometimes sitting and getting up in turns to fall on one anothers necksthat Milly, plucking her handkerchief from her pocket, drew a note from it at the same time, which, as it fell upon the floor, she at once recollected to be one from Uncle Silas to me. It was to this effect I wish to apprise my dear niece and ward of my plans. Milly proceeds to an admirable French school, as a pensionnaire, and leaves this on Thursday next. If after three months trial she finds it in any way objectionable, she returns to us. If, on the contrary, she finds it in all respects the charming residence it has been presented to me, you, on the expiration of that period, join her there, until the temporary complication of my affairs shall have been so far adjusted as to enable me to receive you once more at Bartram. Hoping for happier days, and wishing to assure you that three months is the extreme limit of your separation from my poor Milly, I have written this, feeling alas! unequal to seeing you at present. Bartram, Tuesday. P.S.I can have no objection to your apprising Monica Knollys of these arrangements. You will understand, of course, not a copy of this letter, but its substance. Over this document, scanning it as lawyers do a new Act of Parliament, we took comfort. After all, it was limited; a separation not to exceed three months, possibly much shorter. On the whole, too, I pleased myself with thinking Uncle Silass note, though peremptory, was kind. Our paroxysms subsided into sadness; a close correspondence was arranged. Something of the bustle and excitement of change supervened. If it turned out to be, in truth, a charming residence, how very delightful our meeting in France, with the interest of foreign scenery, ways, and faces, would be! So Thursday arriveda new gush of sorrowa new brightening upand, amid regrets and anticipations, we parted at the gate at the farther end of the Windmill Wood. Then, of course, were more goodbyes, more embraces, and tearful smiles. Good Mrs. Jolks, who met us there, was in a huge fuss; I believe it was her first visit to the metropolis, and she was in proportion heated and important, and terrified about the train, so we had not many last words. I watched poor Milly, whose head was stretched from the window, her hand waving many adieux, until the curve of the road, and the clump of old ashtrees, thick with ivy, hid Milly, carriage and all, from view. My eyes filled again with tears. I turned towards Bartram. At my side stood honest Mary Quince. Dont take on so, Miss; twont be no time passing; three months is nothing at all, she said, smiling kindly. I smiled through my tears and kissed the good creature, and so side by side we reentered the gate. The lithe young man in fustian, whom I had seen talking with Beauty on the morning of our first encounter with that youthful Amazon, was awaiting our reentrance with the key in his hand. He stood half behind the open wicket. One lean brown cheek, one shy eye, and his sharp upturned nose, I saw as we passed. He was treating me to a stealthy scrutiny, and seemed to shun my glance, for he shut the door quickly, and busied himself locking it, and then began stubbing up some thistles which grew close by, with the toe of his thick shoe, his back to us all the time. It struck me that I recognised his features, and I asked Mary Quince. Have you seen that young man before, Quince? He brings up game for your uncle, sometimes, Miss, and lends a hand in the garden, I believe. Do you know his name, Mary? They call him Tom, I dont know what more, Miss. Tom, I called; please, Tom, come here for a moment. Tom turned about, and approached slowly. He was more civil than the Bartram people usually were, for he plucked off his shapeless cap of rabbitskin with a clownish respect. Tom, what is your other nameTom what, my good man? I asked. Tom Brice, maam. Havent I seen you before, Tom Brice? I pursued, for my curiosity was excited, and with it much graver feelings; for there certainly was a resemblance in Toms features to those of the postilion who had looked so hard at me as I passed the carriage in the warren at Knowl, on the evening of the outrage which had scared that quiet place. Appen you may have, maam, he answered, quite coolly, looking down the buttons of his gaiters. Are you a good whipdo you drive well? Ill drive a plough wi most lads hereabout, answered Tom. Have you ever been to Knowl, Tom? Tom gaped very innocently. Anan, he said. Here, Tom, is halfacrown. He took it readily enough. That be very good, said Tom, with a nod, having glanced sharply at the coin. I cant say whether he applied that term to the coin, or to his luck, or to my generous self. Now, Tom, youll tell me, have you ever been to Knowl? Maught a bin, maam, but I dont mind no sich placeno. As Tom spoke this with great deliberation, like a man who loves truth, putting a strain upon his memory for its sake, he spun the silver coin two or three times into the air and caught it, staring at it the while, with all his might. Now, Tom, recollect yourself, and tell me the truth, and Ill be a friend to you. Did you ride postilion to a carriage having a lady in it, and, I think, several gentlemen, which came to the grounds of Knowl, when the party had their luncheon on the grass, and there was aa quarrel with the gamekeepers? Try, Tom, to recollect; you shall, upon my honour, have no trouble about it, and Ill try to serve you. Tom was silent, while with a vacant gape he watched the spin of his halfcrown twice, and then catching it with a smack in his hand, which he thrust into his pocket, he said, still looking in the same direction I never rid postilion in my days, maam. I know nout o sich a place, though appen I maught a bin there; Knowl, ye cat. I was neer out o Derbyshire but thrice to Warwick fair wi horses be rail, an twice to York. Youre certain, Tom? Sartin sure, maam. And Tom made another loutish salute, and cut the conference short by turning off the path and beginning to hollo after some trespassing cattle. I had not felt anything like so nearly sure in this essay at identification as I had in that of Dudley. Even of Dudleys identity with the Church Scarsdale man, I had daily grown less confident; and, indeed, had it been proposed to bring it to the test of a wager, I do not think I should, in the language of sporting gentlemen, have cared to back my original opinion. There was, however, a sufficient uncertainty to make me uncomfortable; and there was another uncertainty to enhance the unpleasant sense of ambiguity. On our way back we passed the bleaching trunks and limbs of several ranks of barkless oaks lying side by side, some squared by the hatchet, perhaps sold, for there were large letters and Roman numerals traced upon them in red chalk. I sighed as I passed them by, not because it was wrongfully done, for I really rather leaned to the belief that Uncle Silas was well advised in point of law. But, alas! here lay low the grand old family decorations of BartramHaugh, not to be replaced for centuries to come, under whose spreading boughs the Ruthyns of three hundred years ago had hawked and hunted! On the trunk of one of these I sat down to rest, Mary Quince meanwhile pattering about in unmeaning explorations. While thus listlessly seated, the girl Meg Hawkes, walked by, carrying a basket. Hish! she said quickly, as she passed, without altering a pace or raising her eyes; dont ye speak nor lookfayther spies us; Ill tell ye next turn. Next turnwhen was that? Well, she might be returning; and as she could not then say more than she had said, in merely passing without a pause, I concluded to wait for a short time and see what would come of it. After a short time I looked about me a little, and I saw Dickon HawkesPegtop, as poor Milly used to call himwith an axe in his hand, prowling luridly among the timber. Observing that I saw him, he touched his hat sulkily, and byandby passed me, muttering to himself. He plainly could not understand what business I could have in that particular part of the Windmill Wood, and let me see it in his countenance. His daughter did pass me again; but this time he was near, and she was silent. Her next transit occurred as he was questioning Mary Quince at some little distance; and as she passed precisely in the same way, she said Dont you be alone wi Master Dudley nowhere for the worlds worth. The injunction was so startling that I was on the point of questioning the girl. But I recollected myself, and waited in the hope that in her future transits she might be more explicit. But one word more she did not utter, and the jealous eye of old Pegtop was so constantly upon us that I refrained. There was vagueness and suggestion enough in the oracle to supply work for many an hour of anxious conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. Was I never to know peace at BartramHaugh? Ten days of poor Millys absence, and of my solitude, had already passed, when my uncle sent for me to his room. When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my heart died within me. It was latejust that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties mostwhen the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night sets in. When I entered my uncles sittingroomthough his windowshutters were open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes in the chasms of the dark western cloudsa pair of candles were burning; one stood upon the table by his desk, the other on the chimneypiece, before which his tall, thin figure stooped. His hand leaned on the mantelpiece, and the light from the candle just above his bowed head touched his silvery hair.

He was looking, as it seemed, into the subsiding embers of the fire, and was a very statue of forsaken dejection and decay. Uncle! I ventured to say, having stood for some time unperceived near his table. Ah, yes, Maud, my dear childmy dear child. He turned, and with the candle in his hand, smiling his silvery smile of suffering on me. He walked more feebly and stiffly, I thought, than I had ever seen him move before. Sit down, Maudpray sit there. I took the chair he indicated. In my misery and my solitude, Maud, I have invoked you like a spirit, and you appear. With his two hands leaning on the table, he looked across at me, in a stooping attitude; he had not seated himself. I continued silent until it should be his pleasure to question or address me. At last he said, raising himself and looking upward, with a wild adorationhis fingertips elevated and glimmering in the faint mixed light No, I thank my Creator, I am not quite forsaken. Another silence, during which he looked steadfastly at me, and muttered, as if thinking aloud My guardian angel!my guardian angel! Maud, you have a heart. He addressed me suddenlyListen, for a few moments, to the appeal of an old and brokenhearted manyour guardianyour uncleyour suppliant. I had resolved never to speak to you more on this subject. But I was wrong. It was pride that inspired memere pride. I felt myself growing pale and flushed by turns during the pause that followed. Im very miserablevery nearly desperate. What remains for mewhat remains? Fortune has done her worstthrown in the dust, her wheels rolled over me; and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had passed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, MaudI say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire. As people passed by Bartram, and looked upon its neglected grounds and smokeless chimneys, they thought my plight, I dare say, about the worst a proud man could be reduced to. They could not imagine one half its misery. But this old hecticthis old epilepticthis old spectre of wrongs, calamities, and follies, had still one hopemy manly though untutored sonthe last male scion of the Ruthyns. Maud, have I lost him? His fatemy fateI may say Millys fate;we all await your sentence. He loves you, as none but the very young can love, and that once only in a life. He loves you desperatelya most affectionate naturea Ruthyn, the best blood in Englandthe last man of the race; and Iif I lose him I lose all; and you will see me in my coffin, Maud, before many months. I stand before you in the attitude of a suppliantshall I kneel? His eyes were fixed on me with the light of despair, his knotted hands clasped, his whole figure bowed toward me. I was inexpressibly shocked and pained. Oh, uncle! uncle! I cried, and from very excitement I burst into tears. I saw that his eyes were fixed on me with a dismal scrutiny. I think he divined the nature of my agitation; but he determined, notwithstanding, to press me while my helpless agitation continued. You see my suspenseyou see my miserable and frightful suspense. You are kind, Maud; you love your fathers memory; you pity your fathers brother; you would not say no, and place a pistol at his head? Oh! I mustI mustI must say no. Oh! spare me, uncle, for Heavens sake. Dont question medont press me. I could notI could not do what you ask. I yield, MaudI yield, my dear. I will not press you; you shall have time, your own time, to think. I will accept no answer nowno, none, Maud. He said this, raising his thin hand to silence me. There, Maud, enough. I have spoken, as I always do to you, frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak out, and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel. With these words Uncle Silas entered his bedchamber, and shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought I heard a cry. I hastened to my own room. I threw myself on my knees, and thanked Heaven for the firmness vouchsafed me; I could not believe it to have been my own. I was more miserable in consequence of this renewed suit on behalf of my odious cousin than I can describe. My uncle had taken such a line of importunity that it became a sort of agony to resist. I thought of the possibility of my hearing of his having made away with himself, and was every morning relieved when I heard that he was still as usual. I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling. XVI Sarah Matilda Comes to Light Some time after this interview, one day as I sat, sad enough, in my room, looking listlessly from the window, with good Mary Quince, whom, whether in the house or in my melancholy rambles, I always had by my side, I was startled by the sound of a loud and shrill female voice, in violent hysterical action, gabbling with great rapidity, sobbing, and very nearly screaming in a sort of fury. I started up, staring at the door. Lord bless us! cried honest Mary Quince, with round eyes and mouth agape, staring in the same direction. MaryMary, what can it be? Are they beating someone down yonder? I dont know where it comes from, gasped Quince. I willI willIll see her. Its her I want. OohoohoohoooooMiss Maud Ruthyn of Knowl. Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Hoohoohoohoooo! What on earth can it be? I exclaimed, in great bewilderment and terror. It was now plainly very near indeed, and I heard the voice of our mild and shaky butler evidently remonstrating with the distressed damsel. Ill see her, she continued, pouring a torrent of vile abuse upon me, which stung me with a sudden sense of anger. What had I done to be afraid of anyone? How dared anyone in my uncles housein my housemix my name up with her detestable scurrilities? For Heavens sake, Miss, dont ye go out, cried poor Quince; its some drunken creature. But I was very angry, and, like a fool as I was, I threw open the door, exclaiming in a loud and haughty key Here is Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Who wants to see her? A pink and white young lady, with black tresses, violent, weeping, shrill, voluble, was flouncing up the last stair, and shook her dress out on the lobby; and poor old Giblets, as Milly used to call him, was following in her wake, with many small remonstrances and entreaties, perfectly unheeded. The moment I looked at this person, it struck me that she was the identical lady whom I had seen in the carriage at Knowl Warren. The next moment I was in doubt; the next, still more so. She was decidedly thinner, and dressed by no means in such ladylike taste. Perhaps she was hardly like her at all. I began to distrust all these resemblances, and to fancy, with a shudder, that they originated, perhaps, only in my own sick brain. On seeing me, this young ladyas it seemed to me, a good deal of the barmaid or ladysmaid speciesdried her eyes fiercely, and, with a flaming countenance, called upon me peremptorily to produce her lawful husband. Her loud, insolent, outrageous attack had the effect of enhancing my indignation, and I quite forget what I said to her, but I well remember that her manner became a good deal more decent. She was plainly under the impression that I wanted to appropriate her husband, or, at least, that he wanted to marry me; and she ran on at such a pace, and her harangue was so passionate, incoherent, and unintelligible, that I thought her out of her mind she was far from it, however. I think if she had allowed me even a second for reflection, I should have hit upon her meaning. As it was, nothing could exceed my perplexity, until, plucking a soiled newspaper from her pocket, she indicated a particular paragraph, already sufficiently emphasised by double lines of red ink at its sides. It was a Lancashire paper, of about six weeks since, and very much worn and soiled for its age. I remember in particular a circular stain from the bottom of a vessel, either of coffee or brown stout. The paragraph was as follows, recording an event a year or more anterior to the date of the paper MarriageOn Tuesday, August 7, 18at Leatherwig Church, by the Rev. Arthur Hughes, Dudley R. Ruthyn, Esq., only son and heir of Silas Ruthyn, Esq., of BartramHaugh, Derbyshire, to Sarah Matilda, second daughter of John Mangles, Esq., of Wiggan, in this county. At first I read nothing but amazement in this announcement, but in another moment I felt how completely I was relieved; and showing, I believe, my intense satisfaction in my countenancefor the young lady eyed me with considerable surprise and curiosityI said This is extremely important. You must see Mr. Silas Ruthyn this moment. I am certain he knows nothing of it. I will conduct you to him. No more he doesI know that myself, she replied, following me with a selfasserting swagger, and a great rustling of cheap silk. As we entered, Uncle Silas looked up from his sofa, and closed his Revue des Deux Mondes. What is all this? he enquired, drily. This lady has brought with her a newspaper containing an extraordinary statement which affects our family, I answered. Uncle Silas raised himself, and looked with a hard, narrow scrutiny at the unknown young lady. A libel, I suppose, in the paper? he said, extending his hand for it. No, uncleno; only a marriage, I answered. Not Monica? he said, as he took it. Pah, it smells all over of tobacco and beer, he added, throwing a little eau de cologne over it. He raised it with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, saying again pah, as he did so. He read the paragraph, and as he did his face changed from white, all over, to lead colour. He raised his eyes, and looked steadily for some seconds at the young lady, who seemed a little awed by his strange presence. And you are, I suppose, the young lady, Sarah Matilda ne Mangles, mentioned in this little paragraph? he said, in a tone you would have called a sneer, were it not that it trembled. Sarah Matilda assented. My son is, I dare say, within reach. It so happens that I wrote to arrest his journey, and summon him here, some days sincesome days sincesome days since, he repeated slowly, like a person whose mind has wandered far away from the theme on which he is speaking. He had rung his bell, and old Wyat, always hovering about his rooms, entered. I want my son, immediately. If not in the house, send Harry to the stables; if not there, let him be followed, instantly. Brice is an active fellow, and will know where to find him. If he is in Feltram, or at a distance, let Brice take a horse, and Master Dudley can ride it back. He must be here without the loss of one moment. There intervened nearly a quarter of an hour, during which whenever he recollected her, Uncle Silas treated the young lady with a hyperrefined and ceremonious politeness, which appeared to make her uneasy, and even a little shy, and certainly prevented a renewal of those lamentations and invectives which he had heard faintly from the stairhead. But for the most part Uncle Silas seemed to forget us and his book, and all that surrounded him, lying back in the corner of his sofa, his chin upon his breast, and such a fearful shade and carving on his features as made me prefer looking in any direction but his. At length we heard the tread of Dudleys thick boots on the oak boards, and faint and muffled the sound of his voice as he crossexamined old Wyat before entering the chamber of audience. I think he suspected quite another visitor, and had no expectation of seeing the particular young lady, who rose from her chair as he entered, in an opportune flood of tears, crying Oh, Dudley, Dudley!oh, Dudley, could you? Oh, Dudley, your own poor Sal! You could notyou would notyour lawful wife! This and a good deal more, with cheeks that streamed like a windowpane in a thundershower, spoke Sarah Matilda with all her oratory, working his arm, which she clung to, up and down all the time, like the handle of a pump. But Dudley was, manifestly, confounded and dumbfounded. He stood for a long time gaping at his father, and stole just one sheepish glance at me; and, with red face and forehead, looked down at his boots, and then again at his father, who remained just in the attitude I have described, and with the same forbidding and dreary intensity in his strange face. Like a quarrelsome man worried in his sleep by a noise, Dudley suddenly woke up, as it were, with a start, in a halfsuppressed exasperation, and shook her off with a jerk and a muttered curse, as she whisked involuntarily into a chair, with more violence than could have been pleasant. Judging by your looks and demeanour, sir, I can almost anticipate your answers, said my uncle, addressing him suddenly. Will you be good enoughpray, madame (parenthetically to our visitor), command yourself for a few moments. Is this young person the daughter of a Mr. Mangles, and is her name Sarah Matilda? I dessay, answered Dudley, hurriedly. Is she your wife? Is she my wife? repeated Dudley, ill at ease. Yes, sir; it is a plain question. All this time Sarah Matilda was perpetually breaking into talk, and with difficulty silenced by my uncle. Well, appen she says I amdoes she? replied Dudley. Is she your wife, sir? Mayhap she so considers it, after a fashion, he replied, with an impudent swagger, seating himself as he did so. What do you think, sir? persisted Uncle Silas. I dont think nout about it, replied Dudley, surlily. Is that account true? said my uncle, handing him the paper. They wishes us to believe so, at any rate. Answer directly, sir. We have our thoughts upon it. If it be true, it is capable of every proof. For expeditions sake I ask you. There is no use in prevaricating. Who wants to deny it? It is truethere! There! I knew he would, screamed the young woman, hysterically, with a laugh of strange joy. Shut up, will ye? growled Dudley, savagely. Oh, Dudley, Dudley, darling! what have I done? Bin and ruined me, jestthats all. Oh! no, no, no, Dudley. Ye know I wouldnt. I could notcould not hurt ye, Dudley. No, no, no! He grinned at her, and, with a sharp sidenod, said Wait a bit. Oh, Dudley, dont be vexed, dear. I did not mean it. I would not hurt ye for all the world. Never. Well, never mind. You and yours tricked me finely; and now youve got methats all. My uncle laughed a very odd laugh. I knew it, of course; and upon my word, madame, you and he make a very pretty couple, sneered Uncle Silas. Dudley made no answer, looking, however, very savage. And with this poor young wife, so recently wedded, the low villain had actually solicited me to marry him! I am quite certain that my uncle was as entirely ignorant as I of Dudleys connection, and had, therefore, no participation in this appalling wickedness. And I have to congratulate you, my good fellow, on having secured the affections of a very suitable and vulgar young woman. I baint the first o the family as a done the same, retorted Dudley. At this taunt the old mans fury for a moment overpowered him. In an instant he was on his feet, quivering from head to foot. I never saw such a countenancelike one of those demongrotesques we see in the Gothic sideaisles and groiningsa dreadful grimace, monkeylike and insaneand his thin hand caught up his ebony stick, and shook it paralytically in the air. If ye touch me wi that, Ill smash ye, by ! shouted Dudley, furious, raising his hands and hitching his shoulder, just as I had seen him when he fought Captain Oakley. For a moment this picture was suspended before me, and I screamed, I know not what, in my terror. But the old man, the veteran of many a scene of excitement, where men disguise their ferocity in calm tones, and varnish their fury with smiles, had not quite lost his selfcommand. He turned toward me and said Does he know what hes saying? And with an icy laugh of contempt, his high, thin forehead still flushed, he sat down trembling. If you want to say aught, Ill hear ye. Ye may jaw me all ye like, and Ill stan it. Oh, I may speak? Thank you, sneered Uncle Silas, glancing slowly round at me, and breaking into a cold laugh. Ay, I dont mind cheek, not I; but you must not go for to do that, ye know. Gammon. I wont stand a blowI wont fro no one. Well, sir, availing myself of your permission to speak, I may remark, without offence to the young lady, that I dont happen to recollect the name Mangles among the old families of England. I presume you have chosen her chiefly for her virtues and her graces. Mrs. Sarah Matilda, not apprehending this compliment quite as Uncle Silas meant it, dropped a courtesy, notwithstanding her agitation, and, wiping her eyes, said, with a blubbered smile Youre very kind, sure. I hope, for both your sakes, she has got a little money. I dont see how you are to live else. Youre too lazy for a gamekeeper; and I dont think you could keep a pothouse, you are so addicted to drinking and quarrelling. The only thing I am quite clear upon is, that you and your wife must find some other abode than this. You shall depart this evening and now, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Ruthyn, you may quit this room, if you please. Uncle Silas had risen, and made them one of his old courtly bows, smiling a deathlike sneer, and pointing to the door with his trembling fingers. Come, will ye? said Dudley, grinding his teeth. Youre pretty well done here. Not half understanding the situation, but looking woefully bewildered, she dropped a farewell courtesy at the door. Will ye cut? barked Dudley, in a tone that made her jump; and suddenly, without looking about, he strode after her from the room. Maud, how shall I recover this? The vulgar villainthe fool! What an abyss were we approaching! and for me the last hope goneand for me utter, utter, irretrievable ruin. He was passing his fingers tremulously back and forward along the top of the mantelpiece, like a man in search of something, and continued so, looking along it, feebly and vacantly, although there was nothing there. I wish, uncleyou do not know how much I wishI could be of any use to you. Maybe I can? He turned, and looked at me sharply. Maybe you can, he echoed slowly. Yes, maybe you can, he repeated more briskly. Let uslet us seelet us thinkthat d fellow!my head! Youre not well, uncle? Oh! yes, very well. Well talk in the eveningIll send for you. I found Wyat in the next room, and told her to hasten, as I thought he was ill. I hope it was not very selfish, but such had grown to be my horror of seeing him in one of his strange seizures, that I hastened from the room precipitatelypartly to escape the risk of being asked to remain. The walls of Bartram House are thick, and the recess at the doorway deep. As I closed my uncles door, I heard Dudleys voice on the stairs. I did not wish to be seen by him or by his lady, as his poor wife called herself, who was engaged in vehement dialogue with him as I emerged, and not caring either to reenter my uncles room, I remained quietly ensconced within the heavy doorcase, in which position I overheard Dudley say with a savage snarl Youll jest go back the way ye came. Im not goin wi ye, if thats what ye be drivin atdang your impitins! Oh! Dudley, dear, what have I donewhat have I doneye hate me so? What a ye done? Ye vicious little beast, ye! Youve got us turned out an disinherited wi yer dd bosh, thats all; dont ye think its enough? I could only hear her sobs and shrill tones in reply, for they were descending the stairs; and Mary Quince reported to me, in a horrified sort of way, that she saw him bundle her into the fly at the door, like a truss of hay into a hayloft. And he stood with his head in at the window, scolding her, till it drove away. I knew he wor jawing her, poor thing! By the way he kep waggin his headan he had his fist inside, a shakin in her face Im sure he looked wicked enough for anything; an she a crying like a babby, an lookin back, an wavin her wet hankicher to himpoor thing!and she so young! Tis a pity. Dear me! I often think, Miss, tis well for me I never was married. And see how we all would like to get husbands for all that, though so few is happy together. Tis a queer world, and them thats single is maybe the best off after all. XVII The Picture of a Wolf I went down that evening to the sittingroom which had been assigned to Milly and me, in search of a bookmy good Mary Quince always attending me. The door was a little open, and I was startled by the light of a candle proceeding from the fireside, together with a considerable aroma of tobacco and brandy. On my little worktable, which he had drawn beside the hearth, lay Dudleys pipe, his brandyflask, and an empty tumbler; and he was sitting with one foot on the fender, his elbow on his knee, and his head resting in his hand, weeping. His back being a little toward the door, he did not perceive us; and we saw him rub his knuckles in his eyes, and heard the sounds of his selfish lamentation. Mary and I stole away quietly, leaving him in possession, wondering when he was to leave the house, according to the sentence which I had heard pronounced upon him. I was delighted to see old Giblets quietly strapping his luggage in the hall, and heard from him in a whisper that he was to leave that evening by railhe did not know whither. About half an hour afterwards, Mary Quince, going out to reconnoitre, heard from old Wyat in the lobby that he had just started to meet the train. Blessed be heaven for that deliverance! An evil spirit had been cast out, and the house looked lighter and happier. It was not until I sat down in the quiet of my room that the scenes and images of that agitating day began to move before my memory in orderly procession, and for the first time I appreciated, with a stunning sense of horror and a perfect rapture of thanksgiving, the value of my escape and the immensity of the danger which had threatened me. It may have been miserable weaknessI think it was. But I was young, nervous, and afflicted with a troublesome sort of conscience, which occasionally went mad, and insisted, in small things as well as great, upon sacrifices which my reason now assures me were absurd. Of Dudley I had a perfect horror; and yet had that system of solicitation, that dreadful and direct appeal to my compassion, that placing of my feeble girlhood in the seat of the arbiter of my aged uncles hope or despair, been long persisted in, my resistance might have been worn outwho can tell?and I selfsacrificed! Just as criminals in Germany are teased, and watched, and crossexamined, year after year, incessantly, into a sort of madness; and worn out with the suspense, the iteration, the selfrestraint, and insupportable fatigue, they at last cut all short, accuse themselves, and go infinitely relieved to the scaffoldyou may guess, then, for me, nervous, selfdiffident, and alone, how intense was the comfort of knowing that Dudley was actually married, and the harrowing importunity which had just commenced forever silenced. That night I saw my uncle. I pitied him, though I feared him. I was longing to tell him how anxious I was to help him, if only he could point out the way. It was in substance what I had already said, but now strongly urged. He brightened; he sat up perpendicularly in his chair with a countenance, not weak or fatuous now, but resolute and searching, and which contracted into dark thought or calculation as I talked. I dare say I spoke confusedly enough. I was always nervous in his presence; there was, I fancy, something mesmeric in the odd sort of influence which, without effort, he exercised over my imagination. Sometimes this grew into a dismal panic, and Uncle Silaspolished, mildseemed unaccountably horrible to me. Then it was no longer an accidental fascination of electrobiology. It was something more. His nature was incomprehensible by me. He was without the nobleness, without the freshness, without the softness, without the frivolities of such human nature as I had experienced, either within myself or in other persons. I instinctively felt that appeals to sympathies or feelings could no more affect him than a marble monument. He seemed to accommodate his conversation to the moral structure of others, just as spirits are said to assume the shape of mortals. There were the sensualities of the gourmet for his body, and there ended his human nature, as it seemed to me. Through that semitransparent structure I thought I could now and then discern the light or the glare of his inner life. But I understood it not. He never scoffed at what was good or noblehis hardest critic could not nail him to one such sentence; and yet, it seemed somehow to me that his unknown nature was a systematic blasphemy against it all. If fiend he was, he was yet something higher than the garrulous, and withal feeble, demon of Goethe. He assumed the limbs and features of our mortal nature. He shrouded his own, and was a profoundly reticent Mephistopheles. Gentle he had been to mekindly he had nearly always spoken; but it seemed like the mild talk of one of those goblins of the desert, whom Asiatic superstition tells of, who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, beckon to them from afar, call them by their names, and lead them where they are found no more. Was, then, all his kindness but a phosphoric radiance covering something colder and more awful than the grave? It is very noble of you, Maudit is angelic; your sympathy with a ruined and despairing old man. But I fear you will recoil. I tell you frankly that less than twenty thousand pounds will not extricate me from the quag of ruin in which I am entangledlost! Recoil! Far from it. Ill do it. There must be some way. Enough, my fair young protectresscelestial enthusiast, enough. Though you do not, yet I recoil. I could not bring myself to accept this sacrifice. What signifies, even to me, my extrication? I lie a mangled wretch, with fifty mortal wounds on my crown; what avails the healing of one wound, when there are so many beyond all cure? Better to let me perish where I fall; and reserve your money for the worthier objects whom, perhaps, hereafter may avail to save. But I will do this. I must. I cannot see you suffer with the power in my hands unemployed to help you, I exclaimed. Enough, dear Maud; the will is hereenough there is balm in your compassion and goodwill. Leave me, ministering angel; for the present I cannot. If you will, we can talk of it again. Good night. And so we parted. The attorney from Feltram, I afterwards heard, was with him nearly all that night, trying in vain to devise by their joint ingenuity any means by which I might tie myself up. But there were none. I could not bind myself. I was myself full of the hope of helping him. What was this sum to me, great as it seemed? Truly nothing. I could have spared it, and never felt the loss. I took up a large quarto with coloured prints, one of the few books I had brought with me from dear old Knowl. Too much excited to hope for sleep in bed, I opened it, and turned over the leaves, my mind still full of Uncle Silas and the sum I hoped to help him with. Unaccountably one of those coloured engravings arrested my attention. It represented the solemn solitude of a lofty forest; a girl, in Swiss costume, was flying in terror, and as she fled flinging a piece of meat behind her which she had taken from a little marketbasket hanging upon her arm. Through the glade a pack of wolves were pursuing her. The narrative told, that on her return homeward with her marketing, she had been chased by wolves, and barely escaped by flying at her utmost speed, from time to time retarding, as she did so, the pursuit, by throwing, piece by piece, the contents of her basket, in her wake, to be devoured and fought for by the famished beasts of prey. This print had seized my imagination. I looked with a curious interest on the print something in the disposition of the trees, their great height, and rude boughs, interlacing, and the awful shadow beneath, reminded me of a portion of the Windmill Wood where Milly and I had often rambled. Then I looked at the figure of the poor girl, flying for her life, and glancing terrified over her shoulder. Then I gazed on the gaping, murderous pack, and the hoary brute that led the van; and then I leaned back in my chair, and I thoughtperhaps some latent association suggested what seemed a thing so unlikelyof a fine print in my portfolio from van Dycks noble picture of Belisarius. Idly I traced with my pencil, as I leaned back, on an envelope that lay upon the table, this little inscription. It was mere fiddling; and, absurd as it looked, there was nothing but an honest meaning in it20,000. Date Obolum Belisario! My dear father had translated the little Latin inscription for me, and I had written it down as a sort of exercise of memory; and also, perhaps, as expressive of that sort of compassion which my uncles fall and miserable fate excited invariably in me. So I threw this queer little memorandum upon the open leaf of the book, and again the flight, the pursuit, and the bait to stay it, engaged my eye. And I heard a voice near the hearthstone, as I thought, say, in a stern whisper, Fly the fangs of Belisarius! Whats that? said I, turning sharply to Mary Quince. Mary rose from her work at the fireside, staring at me with that odd sort of frown that accompanies fear and curiosity. You spoke? Did you speak? I said, catching her by the arm, very much frightened myself. No, Miss; no, dear! answered she, plainly thinking that I was a little wrong in my head. There could be no doubt it was a trick of the imagination, and yet to this hour I could recognise that clear stern voice among a thousand, were it to speak again. Jaded after a night of broken sleep and much agitation, I was summoned next morning to my uncles room. He received me oddly, I thought. His manner had changed, and made an uncomfortable impression upon me. He was gentle, kind, smiling, submissive, as usual; but it seemed to me that he experienced henceforth toward me the same halfsuperstitous repulsion which I had always felt from him. Dream, or voice, or visionwhich had done it? There seemed to be an unconscious antipathy and fear. When he thought I was not looking, his eyes were sometimes grimly fixed for a moment upon me. When I looked at him, his eyes were upon the book before him; and when he spoke, a person not heeding what he uttered would have fancied that he was reading aloud from it. There was nothing tangible but this shrinking from the encounter of our eyes. I said he was kind as usual. He was even more so. But there was this new sign of our silently repellant natures. Dislike it could not be. He knew I longed to serve him. Was it shame? Was there not a shade of horror in it? I have not slept, said he. For me the night has passed in thought, and the fruit of it is thisI cannot, Maud, accept your noble offer. I am very sorry, exclaimed I, in all honesty. I know it, my dear niece, and appreciate your goodness; but there are many reasonsnone of them, I trust, ignobleand which together render it impossible. No. It would be misunderstoodmy honour shall not be impugned. But, sir, that could not be; you have never proposed it. It would be all, from first to last, my doing. True, dear Maud, but I know, alas! more of this evil and slanderous world than your happy inexperience can do. Who will receive our testimony? Noneno, not one. The difficultythe insuperable moral difficulty is thisthat I should expose myself to the plausible imputation of having worked upon you, unduly, for this end; and more, that I could not hold myself quite free from blame. It is your voluntary goodness, Maud.

But you are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. Some people may call this quixotic. In my mind it is an imperious mandate of conscience; and I peremptorily refuse to disobey it, although within three weeks an execution will be in this house! I did not quite know what an execution meant; but from two harrowing novels, with whose distresses I was familiar, I knew that it indicated some direful process of legal torture and spoliation. Oh, uncle Ioh, sir!you cannot allow this to happen. What will people say of me? Andand there is poor Millyand everything! Think what it will be. It cannot be helpedyou cannot help it, Maud. Listen to me. There will be an execution here, I cannot say exactly how soon, but, I think, in a little more than a fortnight. I must provide for your comfort. You must leave. I have arranged that you shall join Milly, for the present, in France, till I have time to look about me. You had better, I think, write to your cousin, Lady Knollys. She, with all her oddities, has a heart. Can you say, Maud, that I have been kind? You have never been anything but kind, I exclaimed. That Ive been selfdenying when you made me a generous offer? he continued. That I now act to spare you pain? You may tell her, not as a message from me, but as a fact, that I am seriously thinking of vacating my guardianshipthat I feel I have done her an injustice, and that, so soon as my mind is a little less tortured, I shall endeavour to effect a reconciliation with her, and would wish ultimately to transfer the care of your person and education to her. You may say I have no longer an interest even in vindicating my name. My son has wrecked himself by a marriage. I forgot to tell you he stopped at Feltram, and this morning wrote to pray a parting interview. If I grant it, it shall be the last. I shall never see him or correspond with him more. The old man seemed much overcome, and held his hankerchief to his eyes. He and his wife are, I understand, about to emigrate; the sooner the better, he resumed, bitterly. Deeply, Maud, I regret having tolerated his suit to you, even for a moment. Had I thought it over, as I did the whole case last night, nothing could have induced me to permit it. But I have lived for so long like a monk in his cell, my wants and observation limited to the narrow compass of this chamber, that my knowledge of the world has died out with my youth and my hopes and I did not, as I ought to have done, consider many objections. Therefore, dear Maud, on this one subject, I entreat, be silent; its discussion can effect nothing now. I was wrong, and frankly ask you to forget my mistake. I had been on the point of writing to Lady Knollys on this odious subject, when, happily, it was set at rest by the disclosure of yesterday; and being so, I could have no difficulty in acceding to my uncles request. He was conceding so much that I could not withhold so trifling a concession in return. I hope Monica will continue to be kind to poor Milly after I am gone. Here there were a few seconds of meditation. Maud, you will not, I think, refuse to convey the substance of what I have just said in a letter to Lady Knollys, and perhaps you would have no objection to let me see it when it is written. It will prevent the possibility of its containing any misconception of what I have just spoken and, Maud, you wont forget to say whether I have been kind. It would be a satisfaction to me to know that Monica was assured that I never either teased or bullied my young ward. With these words he dismissed me; and forthwith I completed such a letter as would quite embody what he had said; and in my own glowing terms, being in high goodhumour with Uncle Silas, recorded my estimate of his gentleness and goodnature; and when I submitted it to him, he expressed his admiration of what he was pleased to call my cleverness in so exactly conveying what he wished, and his gratitude for the handsome terms in which I had spoken of my old guardian. XVIII An Odd Proposal As I and Mary Quince returned from our walk that day, and had entered the hall, I was surprised most disagreeably by Dudleys emerging from the vestibule at the foot of the great staircase. He was, I suppose, in his travelling costumea rather soiled white surtout, a great coloured muffler in folds about his throat, his chimneypot on, and his fur cap sticking out from his pocket. He had just descended, I suppose, from my uncles room. On seeing me he stepped back, and stood with his shoulders to the wall, like a mummy in a museum. I pretended to have a few words to say to Mary before leaving the hall, in the hope that, as he seemed to wish to escape me, he would take the opportunity of getting quickly off the scene. But he had changed his mind, it would seem, in the interval; for when I glanced in that direction again he had moved toward us, and stood in the hall with his hat in his hand. I must do him the justice to say he looked horribly dismal, sulky, and frightened. Yell gie me a word, Missonly a thing I ought to sayfor your good; by , mind, its for your good, Miss. Dudley stood a little way off, viewing me, with his hat in both hands and a glooming countenance. I detested the idea of either hearing or speaking to him; but I had no resolution to refuse, and only saying I cant imagine what you can wish to speak to me about, I approached him. Wait there at the banister, Quince. There was a fragrance of alcohol about the flushed face and gaudy muffler of this odious cousin, which heightened the effect of his horribly dismal features. He was speaking, besides, a little thickly; but his manner was dejected, and he was treating me with an elaborate and discomfited respect which reassured me. Im a bit up a tree, Miss, he said shuffling his feet on the oak floor. I behaved a d fool; but I baint one o they sort. Im a fellah as ill fight his man, an stan up to m fair, dont ye see? An baint one o they sortno, dang it, I baint. Dudley delivered his puzzling harangue with a good deal of undertoned vehemence, and was strangely agitated. He, too, had got an unpleasant way of avoiding my eye, and glancing along the floor from corner to corner as he spoke, which gave him a very hangdog air. He was twisting his fingers in his great sandy whisker, and pulling it roughly enough to drag his cheek about by that savage purchase; and with his other hand he was crushing and rubbing his hat against his knee. The old boy above there be half crazed, I think; he dont mean half as he says thof, not he. But Im in a bad fix anyhowa regular sell its been, and I cant get a tizzy out of him. So, ye see, Im up a tree, Miss; and he sich a one, hell make it a wuss mull if I let him. Hes as sharp wi me as one o them lawyer chaps, dang em, and hes a lot of I Os and rubbitch o mine; and Bryerly writes to me he cant gie me my legacy, cause hes got a notice from Archer and Sleigh a warnin him not to gie me as much as a bob; for I signed it away to governor, he sayswhich I believes a lie. I may a signed some writingappen I didwhen I was a bit cut one night. But thats no way to catch a gentleman, and twont stand. Theres justice to be had, and twont stand, I say; and Im not in is hands that way. Thof I may be a bit up the spout, too, I dont deny; only I baint agoin the whole hog all at once. Im none o they sort. Hell find I baint. Here Mary Quince coughed demurely from the foot of the stair, to remind me that the conversation was protracted. I dont very well understand, I said gravely; and I am now going upstairs. Dont jest a minute, Miss; its only a word, ye see. Well be goin t Australia, Sary Mangles, an me, aboard the Seamew, on the 5th. Im for Liverpool tonight, and shell meet me there, anan, please God Almighty, yell never see me more; an Id rather gie ye a lift, Maud, before I go an I tell ye what, if yell just gie me your written promise yell gie me that twenty thousand ye were offering to gie the Governor, Ill take ye cleverly out o Bartram, and put ye wi your cousin Knollys, or anywhere ye like best. Take me from Bartramfor twenty thousand pounds! Take me away from my guardian! You seem to forget, sir, my indignation rising as I spoke, that I can visit my cousin, Lady Knollys, whenever I please. Well, that is as it may be, he said, with a sulky deliberation, scraping about a little bit of paper that lay on the floor with the toe of his boot. It is as it may be, and that is as I say, sir; and considering how you have treated meyour mean, treacherous, and infamous suit, and your cruel treason to your poor wife, I am amazed at your effrontery. I turned to leave him, being, in truth, in one of my passions. Dont ye be a flyin out, he said peremptorily, and catching me roughly by the wrist, I baint agoing to vex ye. What a mouth you be, as cant see your way! Cant ye speak wi common sense, like a womandang itfor once, and not keep brawling like a bratcant ye see what Im saying? Ill take ye out o all this, and put ye wi your cousin, or wheresoever you list, if yell gie me what I say. He was, for the first time, looking me in the face, but with contracted eyes, and a countenance very much agitated. Money? said I, with a prompt disdain. Ay, moneytwenty thousand poundsthere. On or off? he replied, with an unpleasant sort of effort. You ask my promise for twenty thousand pounds, and you shant have it. My cheeks were flaming, and I stamped on the ground as I spoke. If he had known how to appeal to my better feelings, I am sure I should have done, perhaps not quite that, all at once at least, but something handsome, to assist him. But this application was so shabby and insolent! What could he take me for? That I should suppose his placing me with Cousin Monica constituted her my guardian? Why, he must fancy me the merest baby. There was a kind of stupid cunning in this that disgusted my goodnature and outraged my selfimportance. You wont gie me that, then? he said, looking down again, with a frown, and working his mouth and cheeks about as I could fancy a man rolling a piece of tobacco in his jaw. Certainly not, sir, I replied. Take it, then, he replied, still looking down, very black and discontented. I joined Mary Quince, extremely angry. As I passed under the carved oak arch of the vestibule, I saw his figure in the deepening twilight. The picture remains in its murky halo fixed in memory. Standing where he last spoke in the centre of the hall, not looking after me, but downward, and, as well as I could see, with the countenance of a man who has lost a game, and a ruinous wager toothat is black and desperate. I did not utter a syllable on the way up. When I reached my room, I began to reconsider the interview more at my leisure. I was, such were my ruminations, to have agreed at once to his preposterous offer, and to have been driven, while he smirked and grimaced behind my back at his acquaintances, through Feltram in his dogcart to Elverston; and then, to the just indignation of my uncle, to have been delivered up to Lady Knollys guardianship, and to have handed my driver, as I alighted, the handsome fare of 20,000. It required the impudence of Tony Lumpkin, without either his fun or his shrewdness, to have conceived such a prodigious practical joke. Maybe youd like a little tea, Miss? insinuated Mary Quince. What impertinence! I exclaimed, with one of my angry stamps on the floor. Not you, dear old Quince, I added. Nono tea just now. And I resumed my ruminations, which soon led me to this train of thoughtStupid and insulting as Dudleys proposition was, it yet involved a great treason against my uncle. Should I be weak enough to be silent, may he not, wishing to forestall me, misrepresent all that has passed, so as to throw the blame altogether upon me? This idea seized upon me with a force which I could not withstand; and on the impulse of the moment I obtained admission to my uncle, and related exactly what had passed. When I had finished my narrative, which he listened to without once raising his eyes, my uncle cleared his throat once or twice, as if to speak. He was smilingI thought with an effort, and with elevated brows. When I concluded, he hummed one of those sliding notes, which a less refined man might have expressed by a whistle of surprise and contempt, and again he essayed to speak, but continued silent. The fact is, he seemed to me very much disconcerted. He rose from his seat, and shuffled about the room in his slippers, I believe affecting only to be in search of something, opening and shutting two or three drawers, and turning over some books and papers; and at length, taking up some loose sheets of manuscript, he appeared to have found what he was looking for, and began to read them carelessly, with his back towards me, and with another effort to clear his voice, he said at last And pray, what could the fool mean by all that? I think he must have taken me for an idiot, sir, I answered. Not unlikely. He has lived in a stable, among horses and ostlers; he has always seemed to me something like a centaurthat is a centaur composed not of man and horse, but of an ape and an ass. And upon this jibe he laughed, not coldly and sarcastically, as was his wont, but, I thought, flurriedly. And, continuing to look into his papers, he said, his back still toward me as he read And he did not favour you with an exposition of his meaning, which, except in so far as it estimated his deserts at the modest sum you have named, appears to me too oracular to be interpreted without a kindred inspiration? And again he laughed. He was growing more like himself. As to your visiting your cousin, Lady Knollys, the stupid rogue had only five minutes before heard me express my wish that you should do so before leaving this. I am quite resolved you shallthat is, unless, dear Maud, you should yourself object; but, of course, we must wait for an invitation, which, I conjecture, will not be long in coming. In fact, your letter will naturally bring it about, and, I trust, open the way to a permanent residence with her. The more I think it over, the more am I convinced, dear niece, that as things are likely to turn out, my roof would be no desirable shelter for you; and that, under all circumstances, hers would. Such were my motives, Maud, in opening, through your letter, a door of reconciliation between us. I felt that I ought to have kissed his handthat he had indicated precisely the future that I most desired; and yet there was within me a vague feeling, akin to suspicionakin to dismay which chilled and overcast my soul. But, Maud, he said, I am disquieted to think of that stupid jackanapes presuming to make you such an offer! A creditable situation trulyarriving in the dark at Elverston, under the solitary escort of that wild young man, with whom you would have fled from my guardianship; and, Maud, I tremble as I ask myself the question, would he have conducted you to Elverston at all? When you have lived as long in the world as I, you will appreciate its wickedness more justly. Here there was a little pause. I know, my dear, that were he convinced of his legal marriage with that young woman, he resumed, perceiving how startled I looked, such an idea, of course, would not have entered his head; but he does not believe any such thing. Contrary to fact and logic, he does honestly think that his hand is still at his disposal; and I certainly do suspect that he would have employed that excursion in endeavouring to persuade you to think as he does. Be that how it may, however, it is satisfactory to me to know that you shall never more be troubled by one word from that illregulated young man. I made him my adieux, such as they were, this evening; and never more shall he enter the walls of BartramHaugh while we two live. Uncle Silas replaced the papers which had ostensibly interested him so much, and returned. There was a vein which was visible near the angle of his lofty temple, and in moments of agitation stood out against the surrounding pallor in a knotted blue cord; and as he came back smiling askance, I saw this sign of inward tumult. We can, however, afford to despise the follies and knaveries of the world, Maud, as long as we act, as we have hitherto done, with perfect confidence in each other. Heaven bless you, dear Maud! Your report troubled me, I believe, more than it needtroubled me a good deal; but reflection assures me it is nothing. He is gone. In a few days time he will be on the sea. I will issue my orders tomorrow morning, and he will never more, during his brief stay in England, gain admission to BartramHaugh. Good night, my good niece; I thank you. And so I returned to Mary Quince, on the whole happier than I had left her, but still with the confused and jarring vision I could not interpret perpetually rising before me; and as, from time to time, shapeless anxieties agitated me, relieving them by appeals to Him who alone is wise and strong. Next day brought me a goodnatured gossiping letter from dear Milly, written in compulsory French, which was, in some places, very difficult to interpret. She gave me a very pleasant account of the place, and her opinion of the girls who were inmates, and mentioned some of the nuns with high commendation. The language plainly cramped poor Millys genius; but although there was by no means so much fun as an honest English letter would have brought me, there could be no mistake about her liking the place, and she expressed her honest longing to see me in the most affectionate terms. This letter came enclosed in one to my uncle, from the proper authority in the convent; and as there was neither address within, nor postmark without, I was as much in the dark as ever as to poor Millys whereabouts. Pencilled across the envelope of this letter, in my uncles hand, were the words, Let me have your answer when sealed, and I will transmit it.S. R. When, accordingly, some days later, I did place my letter to Milly in my uncles hands, he told me the reason of his reserves on the subject. I thought it best, dear Maud, not to plague you with a secret, and Millys present address is one. It will in a few weeks become the rallyingpoint of our diverse routes, when you shall meet her, and I join you both. Nobody, until the storm shall have blown over, must know where I am to be found, except my lawyer; and I think you would prefer ignorance to the trouble of keeping a secret on which so much may depend. This being reasonable, and even considerate, I acquiesced. In that interval there reached me such a charming, gay, and affectionate lettera very long letter, toothough the writer was scarcely seven miles away, from dear Cousin Monica, full of pleasant gossip, and rosecoloured and golden castles in the air, and the kindest interest in poor Milly, and the warmest affection for me. One other incident varied that interval, if possible more pleasantly than those. It was the announcement, in a Liverpool paper, of the departure of the Seamew, bound for Melbourne; and among the passengers were reported Dudley Ruthyn, Esquire, of BartramH., and Mrs. D. Ruthyn. And now I began to breathe freely, I plainly saw the end of my probation approaching a short excursion to France, a happy meeting with Milly, and then a delightful residence with Cousin Monica for the remainder of my nonage. You will say then that my spirits and my serenity were quite restored. Not quite. How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so longthe care of caresthe only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heavenand straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light. What was my new trouble? A very fantastic one, you will saythe illusion of a selftormentor. It was the face of Uncle Silas which haunted me. Notwithstanding the old pale smile, there was a shrinking grimness, and the alwaysaverted look. Sometimes I fancied his mind was disordered. I could not account for the eerie lights and shadows that flickered on his face, except so. There was a look of shame and fear of me, amazing as that seems, in the sheen of his peaked smile. I thought, Perhaps he blames himself for having tolerated Dudleys suitfor having urged it on grounds of personal distressfor having altogether lowered, though under sore temptation, both himself and his office; and he thinks that he has forfeited my respect. Such was my analysis; but in the coupdoeil of that white face that dazzled me in darkness, and haunted my daily reveries with a faded light, there was an intangible character of the insidious and the terrible. XIX In Search of Mr. Charkes Skeleton On the whole, however, I was unspeakably relieved. Dudley Ruthyn, Esq., and Mrs. D. Ruthyn, were now skimming the blue waves on the wings of the Seamew, and every morning widened the distance between us, which was to go on increasing until it measured a point on the antipodes. The Liverpool paper containing this golden line was carefully preserved in my room; and like the gentleman who, when much tried by the shrewish heiress whom he had married, used to retire to his closet and read over his marriage settlement, I used, when blue devils haunted me, to unfold my newspaper and read the paragraph concerning the Seamew. The day I now speak of was a dismal one of sleety snow. My own room seemed to me cheerier than the lonely parlour, where I could not have had good Mary Quince so decorously. A good fire, that kind and trusty face, the peep I had just indulged in at my favourite paragraph, and the certainty of soon seeing my dear cousin Monica, and afterwards affectionate Milly, raised my spirits. So, said I, as old Wyat, you say, is laid up with rheumatism, and cant turn up to scold me, I think Ill run upstairs and make an exploration, and find poor Mr. Charkes skeleton in a closet. Oh, law, Miss Maud, how can you say such things! exclaimed good old Quince, lifting up her honest grey head and round eyes from her knitting. I had grown so familiar with the frightful tradition of Mr. Charke and his suicide, that I could now afford to frighten old Quince with him. I am quite serious. I am going to have a ramble upstairs and downstairs, like gooseygooseygander; and if I do light upon his chamber, it is all the more interesting. I feel so like Adelaide, in the Romance of the Forest, the book I was reading to you last night, when she commenced her delightful rambles through the interminable ruined abbey in the forest. Shall I go with you, Miss? No, Quince; stay there; keep a good fire, and make some tea. I suspect I shall lose heart and return very soon; and with a shawl about me, cowl fashion, over my head, I stole upstairs. I shall not recount with the particularity of the conscientious heroine of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, all the suites of apartments, corridors, and lobbies, which I threaded in my ramble. It will be enough to mention that I lighted upon a door at the end of a long gallery, which, I think, ran parallel with the front of the house; it interested me because it had the air of having been very long undisturbed. There were two rusty bolts, which did not evidently belong to its original securities, and had been, though very long ago, somewhat clumsily superadded. Dusty and rusty they were, but I had no difficulty in drawing them back. There was a rusty key, I remember it well, with a crooked handle in the lock; I tried to turn it, but could not. My curiosity was piqued. I was thinking of going back and getting Mary Quinces assistance. It struck me, however, that possibly it was not locked, so I pulled the door and it opened quite easily. I did not find myself in a strangelyfurnished suite of apartments, but at the entrance of a gallery, which diverged at right angles from that through which I had just passed; it was very imperfectly lighted, and ended in total darkness. I began to think how far I had already come, and to consider whether I could retrace my steps with accuracy in case of a panic, and I had serious thoughts of returning. The idea of Mr. Charke was growing unpleasantly sharp and menacing; and as I looked down the long space before me, losing itself among ambiguous shadows, lulled in a sinister silence, and as it were inviting my entrance like a trap, I was very near yielding to the cowardly impulse. But I took heart of grace and determined to see a little more. I opened a sidedoor, and entered a large room, where were, in a corner, some rusty and cobwebbed birdcages, but nothing more. It was a wainscoted room, but a white mildew stained the panels. I looked from the window it commanded that dismal, weedchoked quadrangle into which I had once looked from another window. I opened a door at its farther end, and entered another chamber, not quite so large, but equally dismal, with the same prisonlike lookout, not very easily discerned through the grimy panes and the sleet that was falling thickly outside. The door through which I had entered made a little accidental creak, and, with my heart at my lips, I gazed at it, expecting to see Charke, or the skeleton of which I had talked so lightly, stalk in at the halfopen aperture. But I had an odd sort of courage which was always fighting against my cowardly nerves, and I walked to the door, and looking up and down the dismal passage, was reassured. Well, one room morejust that whose deepset door fronted me, with a melancholy frown, at the opposite end of the chamber. So to it I glided, shoved it open, advancing one step, and the great bony figure of Madame de la Rougierre was before me. I could see nothing else. The drowsy traveller who opens his sheets to slip into bed, and sees a scorpion coiled between them, may have experienced a shock the same in kind, but immeasurably less in degree. She sat in a clumsy old armchair, with an ancient shawl about her, and her bare feet in a delft tub. She looked a thought more withered. Her wig shoved back disclosed her bald wrinkled forehead, and enhanced the ugly effect of her exaggerated features and the gaunt hollows of her face. With a sense of incredulity and terror I gazed, freezing, at this evil phantom, who returned my stare for a few seconds with a shrinking scowl, dismal and grim, as of an evil spirit detected. The meeting, at least then and there, was as complete a surprise for her as for me. She could not tell how I might take it; but she quickly rallied, burst into a loud screeching laugh, and, with her old Walpurgis gaiety, danced some fantastic steps in her bare wet feet, tracking the floor with water, and holding out with finger and thumb, in dainty caricature, her slammakin old skirt, while she sang some of her nasal patois with an abominable hilarity and emphasis. With a gasp, I too recovered from the fascination of the surprise. I could not speak though for some seconds, and Madame was first. Ah, dear Maud, what surprise! Are we not overjoy, dearest, and cannot speak? I am full of joyquite charmedravieof seeing you. So are you of me, your face betray. Ah! yes, thou dear little baboon! here is poor Madame once more! Who could have imagine? I thought you were in France, Madame, I said, with a dismal effort. And so I was, dear Maud; I av just arrive. Your uncle Silas he wrote to the superioress for gouvernante to accompany a young ladythat is you, Maudon her journey, and she send me; and so, ma chre, here is poor Madame arrive to charge herself of that affair. How soon do we leave for France, Madame? I asked. I do not know, but the old womenwat is her name? Wyat, I suggested. Oh! oui, Waiatt;she says two, three week. And who conduct you to poor Madames apartment, my dear Maud? She inquired insinuatingly. No one, I answered promptly I reached it quite accidentally, and I cant imagine why you should conceal yourself. Something like indignation kindled in my mind as I began to wonder at the sly strategy which had been practised upon me. I av not conceal myself, Mademoiselle, retorted the governness. I av act precisally as I av been ordered. Your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, he is afraid, Waiatt says, to be interrupted by his creditors, and everything must be done very quaitly. I have been commanded to avoid me faire voir, you know, and I must obey my employervoil tout! And for how long have you been residing here? I persisted, in the same resentful vein. Bout a week. It is soche triste place! I am so glad to see you, Maud! Ive been so isole, you dear leetle fool! You are not glad, Madame; you dont love meyou never did, I exclaimed with sudden vehemence. Yes, I am very glad; you know not, chre petite niaise, how I av desire to educate you a leetle more. Let us understand one another. You think I do not love you, Mademoiselle, because you have mentioned to your poor papa that little drglement in his library. I have repent very often that so great indiscretion of my life. I thought to find some letters of Dr. Braierly. I think that man was trying to get your property, my dear Maud, and if I had found something I would tell you all about. But it was very great sottise, and you were very right to denounce me to Monsieur. Je nai point de rancune contre vous. No, no, none at all. On the contrary, I shall be your gardienne tutelairewat you call?guardian angelah, yes, that is it. You think I speak par drision; not at all. No, my dear cheaile, I do not speak par moquerie, unless perhaps the very least degree in the world. And with these words Madame laughed unpleasantly, showing the black caverns at the side of her mouth, and with a cold, steady malignity in her gaze. Yes, I said; I know what you mean, Madameyou hate me. Oh! wat great ogly word! I am shock! Vous me faites honte. Poor Madame, she never hate anyone; she loves all her friends, and her enemies she leaves to Heaven; while I am, as you see, more gay, more joyeuse than ever, they have not been appyno, they have not been fortunate these others. Wen I return, I find always some of my enemy they av die, and some they have put themselves into embarrassment, or there has arrived to them some misfortune; and Madame shrugged and laughed a little scornfully. A kind of horror chilled my rising anger, and I was silent. You see, my dear Maud, it is very natural you should think I hate you. When I was with Mr. Austin Ruthyn, at Knowl, you know you did not like a menever. But in consequence of our intimacy I confide you that which I av of most dear in the world, my reputation. It is always so. The pupil can calomniate, without been discover, the gouvernante. Av I not been always kind to you, Maud? Which av I use of violence or of sweetness the most? I am, like other persons, jalouse de ma rputation; and it was difficult to suffer with patience the banishment which was invoked by you, because chiefly for your good, and for an indiscretion to which I was excited by motives the most pure and laudable. It was you who spied so cleverlyeh! and denounce me to Monsieur Ruthyn? Helas! wat bad world it is! I do not mean to speak at all about that occurrence, Madame; I will not discuss it. I dare say what you tell me of the cause of your engagement here is true, and I suppose we must travel, as you say, in company; but you must know that the less we see of each other while in this house the better. I am not so sure of that, my sweet little bte; your education has been neglected, or rather entirely abandoned, since you av arrive at this place, I am told. You must not be a bestiole. We must do, you and I, as we are ordered. Mr. Silas Ruthyn he will tell us. All this time Madame was pulling on her stockings, getting her boots on, and otherwise proceeding with her dowdy toilet.

I do not know why I stood there talking to her. We often act very differently from what we would have done upon reflection. I had involved myself in a dialogue, as wiser generals than I have entangled themselves in a general action when they meant only an affair of outposts. I had grown a little angry, and would not betray the least symptom of fear, although I felt that sensation profoundly. My beloved father thought you so unfit a companion for me that he dismissed you at an hours notice, and I am very sure that my uncle will think as he did; you are not a fit companion for me, and had my uncle known what had passed he would never have admitted you to this housenever! Helas! Quelle disgrace! And you really think so, my dear Maud, exclaimed Madame, adjusting her wig before her glass, in the corner of which I could see half of her sly, grinning face, as she ogled herself in it. I do, and so do you, Madame, I replied, growing more frightened. It may bewe shall see; but everyone is not so cruel as you, ma chre petite calomniatrice. You shant call me those names, I said, in an angry tremor. What name, dearest cheaile? Calomniatricethat is an insult. Why, my most foolish little Maud, we may say rogue, and a thousand other little words in play which we do not say seriously. You are not playingyou never playyou are angry, and you hate me, I exclaimed, vehemently. Oh, fie!wat shame! Do you not perceive, dearest cheaile, how much education you still need? You are proud, little demoiselle; you must become, on the contrary, quaite humble. Je ferai baiser le babouin vousha, ha, ha! I weel make a you to kees the monkey. You are too proud, my dear cheaile. I am not such a fool as I was at Knowl, I said; you shall not terrify me here. I will tell my uncle the whole truth, I said. Well, it may be that is the best, she replied, with provoking coolness. You think I dont mean it? Of course you do, she replied. And we shall see what my uncle thinks of it. We shall see, my dear, she replied, with an air of mock contrition. Adieu, Madame! You are going to Monsieur Ruthyn?very good! I made her no answer, but more agitated than I cared to show her, I left the room. I hurried along the twilight passage, and turned into the long gallery that opened from it at right angles. I had not gone halfadozen steps on my return when I heard a heavy tread and a rustling behind me. I am ready, my dear; I weel accompany you, said the smirking phantom, hurrying after me. Very well, was my reply; and threading our way, with a few hesitations and mistakes, we reached and descended the stairs, and in a minute more stood at my uncles door. My uncle looked hard and strangely at us as we entered. He looked, indeed, as if his temper was violently excited, and glared and muttered to himself for a few seconds; and treating Madame to a stare of disgust, he asked peevishly Why am I disturbed, pray? Miss Maud a Ruthyn, she weel explain, replied Madame, with a great courtesy, like a boat going down in a ground swell. Will you explain, my dear? he asked, in his coldest and most sarcastic tone. I was agitated, and I am sure my statement was confused. I succeeded, however, in saying what I wanted. Why, Madame, this is a grave charge! Do you admit it, pray? Madame, with the coolest possible effrontery, denied it all; with the most solemn asseverations, and with streaming eyes and clasped hands, conjured me melodramatically to withdraw that intolerable story, and to do her justice. I stared at her for a while astounded, and turning suddenly to my uncle, as vehemently asserted the truth of every syllable I had related. You hear, my dear child, you hear her deny everything; what am I to think? You must excuse the bewilderment of my old head. Madame de lathat lady has arrived excellently recommended by the superioress of the place where dear Milly awaits you, and such persons are particular. It strikes me, my dear niece, that you must have made a mistake. I protested here. But he went on without seeming to hear the parenthesis I know, my dear Maud, that you are quite incapable of wilfully deceiving anyone; but you are liable to be deceived like other young people. You were, no doubt, very nervous, and but half awake when you fancied you saw the occurrence you describe; and Madame dede De la Rougierre, I supplied. Yes, thank youMadame de la Rougierre, who has arrived with excellent testimonials, strenuously denies the whole thing. Here is a conflict, my dearin my mind a presumption of mistake. I confess I should prefer that theory to a peremptory assumption of guilt. I felt incredulous and amazed; it seemed as if a dream were being enacted before me. A transaction of the most serious import, which I had witnessed with my own eyes, and described with unexceptionable minuteness and consistency, is discredited by that strange and suspicious old man with an imbecile coolness. It was quite in vain my reiterating my statement, backing it with the most earnest asseverations. I was beating the air. It did not seem to reach his mind. It was all received with a simper of feeble incredulity. He patted and smoothed my headhe laughed gently, and shook his while I insisted; and Madame protested her purity in now tranquil floods of innocent tears, and murmured mild and melancholy prayers for my enlightenment and reformation. I felt as if I should lose my reason. There now, dear Maud, we have heard enough; it is, I do believe, a delusion. Madame de la Rougierre will be your companion, at the utmost, for three or four weeks. Do exercise a little of your selfcommand and good senseyou know how I am tortured. Do not, I entreat, add to my perplexities. You may make yourself very happy with Madame if you will, I have no doubt. I propose to Mademoiselle, said Madame, drying her eyes with a gentle alacrity, to profit of my visit for her education. But she does not seem to weesh wat I think is so useful. She threatened me with some horrid French vulgarismde faire baiser le babouin moi, whatever that means; and I know she hates me, I replied, impetuously. Doucementdoucement! said my uncle, with a smile at once amused and compassionate. Doucement! ma chre. With great hands and cunning eyes uplifted, Madame tearfullyfor her tears came on short noticeagain protested her absolute innocence. She had never in all her life so much as heard one so villain phrase. You see, my dear, you have misheard; young people never attend. You will do well to take advantage of Madames short residence to get up your French a little, and the more you are with her the better. I understand then, Mr. Ruthyn, you weesh I should resume my instructions? asked Madame. Certainly; and converse all you can in French with Mademoiselle Maud. You will be glad, my dear, that Ive insisted on it, he said, turning to me, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else. And now, dear Maudno, not a word moreyou must leave me. Farewell, Madame! And he waved us out a little impatiently; and I, without one look toward Madame de la Rougierre, stunned and incensed, walked into my room and shut the door. XX The Foot of Hercules I stood at the windowstill the same leaden sky and feathery sleet before metrying to estimate the magnitude of the discovery I had just made. Gradually a kind of despair seized me, and I threw myself passionately on my bed, weeping aloud. Good Mary Quince was, of course, beside me in a moment, with her pale, concerned face. Oh, Mary, Mary, shes comethat dreadful woman, Madame de la Rougierre, has come to be my governess again; and Uncle Silas wont hear or believe anything about her. It is vain talking; he is prepossessed. Was ever so unfortunate a creature as I? Who could have fancied or feared such a thing? Oh, Mary, Mary, what am I to do? what is to become of me? Am I never to shake off that vindictive, terrible woman? Mary said all she could to console me. I was making too much of her. What was she, after all, more than a governess?she could not hurt me. I was not a child no longershe could not bully me now; and my uncle, though he might be deceived for a while, would not be long finding her out. Thus and soforth did good Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much of Madames visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a terrible moving background of shadows. In a few minutes there was a knock at my door, and Madame herself entered. She was in walking costume. There had been a brief clearing of the weather, and she proposed our making a promenade together. On seeing Mary Quince she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting, and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and pressed it with wonderful tenderness. Honest Mary suffered all this somewhat reluctantly, never smiling, and, on the contrary, looking rather ruefully at her feet. Weel you make a some tea? When I come back, dear Mary Quince, I av so much to tell you and dear Miss Maud of all my adventures while I av been away; it will make a you laugh ever so much. I waswhat you theenk?near, ever so near to be married! And upon this she broke into a screeching laugh, and shook Mary Quince merrily by the shoulder. I sullenly declined going out, or rising; and when she had gone away, I told Mary that I should confine myself to my room while Madame stayed. But selfdenying ordinances selfimposed are not always long observed by youth. Madame de la Rougierre laid herself out to be agreeable; she had no end of storiesmore than half, no doubt, pure fictionsto tell, but all, in that triste place, amusing. Mary Quince began to entertain a better opinion of her. She actually helped to make beds, and tried to be in every way of use, and seemed to have quite turned over a new leaf; and so gradually she moved me, first to listen, and at last to talk. On the whole, these terms were better than a perpetual skirmish; but, notwithstanding all her gossip and friendliness, I continued to have a profound distrust and even terror of her. She seemed curious about the BartramHaugh family, and all their ways, and listened darkly when I spoke. I told her, bit by bit, the whole story of Dudley, and she used, whenever there was news of the Seamew, to read the paragraph for my benefit; and in poor Millys battered little Atlas she used to trace the ships course with a pencil, writing in, from point to point, the date at which the vessel was spoken at sea. She seemed amused at the irrepressible satisfaction with which I received these minutes of his progress; and she used to calculate the distance;on such a day he was two hundred and sixty miles, on such another five hundred; the last point was more than eight hundredgood, better, bestbest of all would be those deleecious antipode, were he would so soon promener on his head twelve thousand mile away; and at the conceit she would fall into screams of laughter. Laugh as she might, however, there was substantial comfort in thinking of the boundless stretch of blue wave that rolled between me and that villainous cousin. I was now on very odd terms with Madame. She had not relapsed into her favourite vein of oracular sarcasm and menace; she had, on the contrary, affected her goodhumoured and genial vein. But I was not to be deceived by this. I carried in my heart that deepseated fear of her which her unpleasant goodhumour and gaiety never disturbed for a moment. I was very glad, therefore, when she went to Todcaster by rail, to make some purchases for the journey which we were daily expecting to commence; and happy in the opportunity of a walk, good old Mary Quince and I set forth for a little ramble. As I wished to make some purchases in Feltram, I set out, with Mary Quince for my companion. On reaching the great gate we found it locked. The key, however, was in it, and as it required more than the strength of my hand to turn, Mary tried it. At the same moment old Crowle came out of the sombre lodge by its side, swallowing down a mouthful of his dinner in haste. No one, I believe, liked the long suspicious face of the old man, seldom shorn or washed, and furrowed with great, grimy perpendicular wrinkles. Leering fiercely at Mary, not pretending to see me, he wiped his mouth hurriedly with the back of his hand, and growled Drop it. Open it, please, Mr. Crowle, said Mary, renouncing the task. Crowle wiped his mouth as before, looking inauspicious; shuffling to the spot, and muttering to himself, he first satisfied himself that the lock was fast, and then lodged the key in his coatpocket, and still muttering, retraced his steps. We want the gate open, please, said Mary. No answer. Miss Maud wants to go into the town, she insisted. We wants many a thing we cant get, he growled, stepping into his habitation. Please open the gate, I said, advancing. He half turned on his threshold, and made a dumb show of touching his hat, although he had none on. Cant, maam; without an order from master, no one goes out here. You wont allow me and my maid to pass the gate? I said. Tisnt me, maam, said he; but I cant break orders, and no one goes out without the master allows. And without awaiting further parley, he entered, shutting his hatch behind him. So Mary and I stood, looking very foolish at one another. This was the first restraint I had experienced since Milly and I had been refused a passage through the Windmill paling. The rule, however, on which Crowle insisted I felt confident could not have been intended to apply to me. A word to Uncle Silas would set all right; and in the meantime I proposed to Mary that we should take a walkmy favourite rambleinto the Windmill Wood. I looked toward Dickons farmstead as we passed, thinking that Beauty might have been there. I did see the girl, who was plainly watching us. She stood in the doorway of the cottage, withdrawn into the shade, and, I fancied, anxious to escape observation. When we had passed on a little, I was confirmed in that belief by seeing her run down the footpath which led from the rear of the farmyard in the direction contrary to that in which we were moving. So, I thought, poor Meg falls from me! Mary Quince and I rambled on through the wood, till we reached the windmill itself, and seeing its low arched door open, we entered the chiaroscuro of its circular basement. As we did so I heard a rush and the creak of a plank, and looking up, I saw just a footno moredisappearing through the trapdoor. In the case of one we love or fear intensely, what feats of comparative anatomy will not the mind unconsciously perform? Constructing the whole living animal from the turn of an elbow, the curl of a whisker, a segment of a hand. How instantaneous and unerring is the instinct! Oh, Mary, what have I seen! I whispered, recovering from the fascination that held my gaze fast to the topmost rounds of the ladder, that disappeared in the darkness above the open door in the loft. Come, Marycome away. At the same instant appeared the swarthy, sullen face of Dickon Hawkes in the shadow of the aperture. Having but one serviceable leg, his descent was slow and awkward, and having got his head to the level of the loft he stopped to touch his hat to me, and to hasp and lock the trapdoor. When this was done, the man again touched his hat, and looked steadily and searchingly at me for a second or so, while he got the key into his pocket. These fellahs stores their flour too long ere, maam. Theres a deal o trouble alooking arter it. Ill talk wi Silas, and settle that. By this time he had got upon the worntiled floor, and touching his hat again, he said Im agoin to lock the door, maam! So with a start, and again whispering Come, Marycome away With my arm fast in hers, we made a swift departure. I feel very faint, Mary, said I. Come quickly. Theres nobody following us? No, Miss, dear. That man with the wooden leg is putting a padlock on the door. Come very fast, I said; and when we had got a little farther, I said, Look again, and see whether anyone is following. No one, Miss, answered Mary, plainly surprised. Hes putting the key in his pocket, and standin there alookin after us. Oh, Mary, did not you see it? What, Miss? asked Mary, almost stopping. Come on, Mary. Dont pause. They will observe us, I whispered, hurrying her forward. What did you see, Miss? repeated Mary. Mr. Dudley, I whispered, with a terrified emphasis, not daring to turn my head as I spoke. Lawk, Miss! remonstrated honest Quince, with a protracted intonation of wonder and incredulity, which plainly implied a suspicion that I was dreaming. Yes, Mary. When we went into that dreadful roomthat dark, round placeI saw his foot on the ladder. His foot, Mary I cant be mistaken. I wont be questioned. Youll find Im right. Hes here. He never went in that ship at all. A fraud has been practised on meit is infamousit is terrible. Im frightened out of my life. For heavens sake, look back again, and tell me what you see. Nothing, Miss, answered Mary, in contagious whispers, but that woodenlegged chap, standin hard by the door. And no one with him? No one, Miss. We got without pursuit through the gate in the paling. I drew breath so soon as we had reached the cover of the thicket near the chestnut hollow, and I began to reflect that whoever the owner of the foot might beand I was still instinctively certain that it was no other than Dudleyconcealment was plainly his object. I need not, then, be at all uneasy lest he should pursue us. As we walked slowly and in silence along the grassy footpath, I heard a voice calling my name from behind. Mary Quince had not heard it at all, but I was quite certain. It was repeated twice or thrice, and, looking in considerable doubt and trepidation under the hanging boughs, I saw Beauty, not ten yards away, standing among the underwood. I remember how white the eyes and teeth of the swarthy girl looked, as with hand uplifted toward her ear, she watched us while, as it seemed, listening for more distant sounds. Beauty beckoned eagerly to me, advancing, with looks of great fear and anxiety, two or three short steps toward me. She baint to come, said Beauty, under her breath, so soon as I had nearly reached her, pointing without raising her hand at Mary Quince. Tell her to sit on the ashtree stump down yonder, and call ye as loud as she can if she sees any fellah acomin this way, an rin ye back to me; and she impatiently beckoned me away on her errand. When I returned, having made this dispositions, I perceived how pale the girl was. Are you ill, Meg? I asked. Never ye mind. Well enough. Listen, Miss; I must tell it all in a crack, an if she calls, rin awa to her, and le me to myself, for if fayther or tother un wor to kotch me here, I think theyd kill me amost. Hish! She paused a second, looking askance, in the direction where she fancied Mary Quince was. Then she resumed in a whisper Now, lass, mind ye, yell keep what I say to yourself. Youre not to tell that un nor any other for your life, mind, a word o what Im goin to tell ye. Ill not say a word. Go on. Did ye see Dudley? I think I saw him getting up the ladder. In the mill? Ha! thats him. He never went beyond Todcaster. He stayed in Feltram after. It was my turn to look pale now. My worst conjecture was established. XXI I Conspire Thats a bad un, he isoh, Miss, Miss Maud! Its nout thats good as keeps him an fayther(mind, lass, ye promised you would not tell no one)as keeps them two atalkin and asmokin secretlike together in the mill. An fayther dont know I found him out. They dont let me into the town, but Brice tells me, and he knows its Dudley; and its nout thats good, but summat very bad. An I reckon, Miss, its all about you. Be ye frightened, Miss Maud? I felt on the point of fainting, but I rallied. Not much, Meg. Go on, for Heavens sake. Does Uncle Silas know he is here? Well, Miss, they were with him, Brice told me, from eleven oclock to nigh one o Tuesday night, an went in and come out like thieves, feard yed see em. And how does Brice know anything bad? I asked, with a strange freezing sensation creeping from my heels to my head and down againI am sure deadly pale, but speaking very collectedly. Brice said, Miss, he saw Dudley acryin and lookin awful black, and says he to fayther, Tisnt in my line nohow, an I cant; and says fayther to he, No one likes they soart o things, but how can ye help it? The old boys behind ye wi his pitchfork, and ye canna stop. An wi that he bethought him o Brice, and says he, What be ye adoin there? Get ye down wi the nags to blacksmith, do ye. An oop gits Dudley, pullin his hat ower his brows, an says he, I wish I was in the Seamew. Im good for nout wi this thing ahangin ower me. An thats all as Brice heard. An hes afeard o fayther and Dudley awful. Dudley could lick him to pot if he crossed him, and he and fayther ud think nout o havin him afore the justices for poachin, and swearin him into gaol. But why does he think its about me? Hish! said Meg, who fancied she heard a sound, but all was quiet. I cant saywere in danger, lass. I dont know whybut he does, an so do I, an, for that matter, so do ye. Meg, Ill leave Bartram. Ye cant. Cant. What do you mean, girl? They wont let ye oot. The gates is all locked. Theyve dogstheyve bloodhounds, Brice says. Ye cant git oot, mind; put that oot o your head. I tell ye what yell do. Write a bit o a note to the lady yonder at Elverston; an though Brice be a wild fellah, and appen not ower good sometimes, he likes me, an Ill make him take it. Fayther will be grindin at mill tomorrow. Coom ye here about one oclockthats if ye see the millsails aturninand me and Brice will meet ye here. Bring that old lass wi ye. Theres an old French un, though, that talks wi Dudley. Mind ye, that un knows nout o the matter. Brice be a kind lad to me, whatsoeer he be wi others, and I think he wont split. Now, lass, I must go. God help ye; God bless ye; an, for the worlds wealth, dont ye let one o them see yeve got ought in your head, not even that un. Before I could say another word, the girl had glided from me, with a wild gesture of silence, and a shake of her head. I cant at all account for the state in which I was. There are resources both of energy and endurance in human nature which we never suspect until the tremendous voice of necessity summons them into play. Petrified with a totally new horror, but with something of the coldness and impassiveness of the transformation, I stood, spoke, and acteda wonder, almost a terror, to myself. I met Madame on my return as if nothing had happened. I heard her ugly gabble, and looked at the fruits of her hours shopping, as I might hear, and see, and talk, and smile, in a dream. But the night was dreadful. When Mary Quince and I were alone, I locked the door. I continued walking up and down the room, with my hands clasped, looking at the inexorable floor, the walls, the ceiling, with a sort of imploring despair. I was afraid to tell my dear old Mary. The least indiscretion would be failure, and failure destruction. I answered her perplexed solicitudes by telling her that I was not very wellthat I was uneasy; but I did not fail to extract from her a promise that she would not hint to mortal, either my suspicions about Dudley, or our rencontre with Meg Hawkes. I remember how, when, after we had got, late at night, into bed, I sat up, shivering with horror, in mine, while honest Marys tranquil breathing told how soundly she slept. I got up, and looked from the window, expecting to see some of those wolfish dogs which they had brought to the place prowling about the courtyard. Sometimes I prayed, and felt tranquillised, and fancied that I was perhaps to have a short interval of sleep. But the serenity was delusive, and all the time my nerves were strung hysterically. Sometimes I felt quite wild, and on the point of screaming. At length that dreadful night passed away. Morning came, and a less morbid, though hardly a less terrible state of mind. Madame paid me an early visit. A thought struck me. I knew that she loved shopping, and I said, quite carelessly Your yesterdays shopping tempts me, Madame, and I must get a few things before we leave for France. Suppose we go into Feltram today, and make my purchases, you and I? She looked from the corner of her cunning eye in my face without answering. I did not blench, and she said Vary good. I would be vary appy, and again she looked oddly at me. Wat hour, my dear Maud? One oclock? I think that weel de very well, eh? I assented, and she grew silent. I wonder whether I did look as careless as I tried. I do not know. Through the whole of this awful period I was, I think, supernatural; and I even now look back with wonder upon my strange selfcommand. Madame, I hoped, had heard nothing of the order which prohibited my exit from the place. She would herself conduct me to Feltram, and secure, by accompanying me, my free egress. Once in Feltram, I would assert my freedom, and manage to reach my dear cousin Knollys. Back to Bartram no power should convey me. My heart swelled and fluttered in the awful suspense of that hour. Oh, BartramHaugh! how came you by those lofty walls? Which of my ancestors had begirt me with an impassable barrier in this horrible strait? Suddenly I remembered my letter to Lady Knollys. If I were disappointed in effecting my escape through Feltram, all would depend upon it. Having locked my door, I wrote as follows Oh, my beloved cousin, as you hope for comfort in your hour of fear, aid me now. Dudley has returned, and is secreted somewhere about the grounds. It is a fraud. They all pretend to me that he is gone away in the Seamew; and he or they had his name published as one of the passengers. Madame de la Rougierre has appeared! She is here, and my uncle insists on making her my close companion. I am at my wits ends. I cannot escapethe walls are a prison; and I believe the eyes of my gaolers are always upon me. Dogs are kept for pursuityes, dogs! and the gates are locked against my escape. God help me! I dont know where to look, or whom to trust. I fear my uncle more than all. I think I could bear this better if I knew what their plans are, even the worst. If ever you loved or pitied me, dear cousin, I conjure you, help me in this extremity. Take me away from this. Oh, darling, for Gods sake take me away! Your distracted and terrified cousin, BartramHaugh. Maud. I sealed this letter jealously, as if the inanimate missive would burst its cerements, and proclaim my desperate appeal through all the chambers and passages of silent Bartram. Old Quince, greatly to cousin Monicas amusement, persisted in furnishing me with those capacious pockets which belonged to a former generation. I was glad of this oldworld eccentricity now, and placed my guilty letter, that, amidst all my hypocrisies, spoke out with terrible frankness, deep in this receptacle, and having hid away the pen and ink, my accomplices, I opened the door, and resumed my careless looks, awaiting Madames return. I was to demand to Mr. Ruthyn the permission to go to Feltram, and I think he will allow. He want to speak to you. With Madame I entered my uncles room. He was reclining on a sofa, his back towards us, and his long white hair, as fine as spun glass, hung over the back of the couch. I was going to ask you, dear Maud, to execute two or three little commissions for me in Feltram. My dreadful letter felt lighter in my pocket, and my heart beat violently. But I have just recollected that this is a marketday, and Feltram will be full of doubtful characters and tipsy persons, so we must wait till tomorrow; and Madame says, very kindly, that she will, as she does not so much mind, make any little purchases today which cannot conveniently wait. Madame assented with a courtesy to Uncle Silas, and a great hollow smile to me. By this time Uncle Silas had raised himself from his reclining posture, and was sitting, gaunt and white, upon the sofa. News of my prodigal today, he said, with a peevish smile, drawing the newspaper towards him. The vessel has been spoken again. How many miles away, do you suppose? He spoke in a plaintive key, looking at me, with hungry eyes, and a horribly smiling countenance. How far do you suppose Dudley is today? and he laid the palm of his hand on the paragraph as he spoke. Guess! For a moment I fancied this was a theatric preparation to give point to the disclosure of Dudleys real whereabouts. It was a very long way. Guess! he repeated. So, stammering a little and pale, I performed the required hypocrisy, after which my uncle read aloud for my benefit the line or two in which were recorded the event, and the latitude and longitude of the vessel at the time, of which Madame made a note in her memory, for the purpose of making her usual tracing in poor Millys Atlas. I cannot say how it really was, but I fancied that Uncle Silas was all the time reading my countenance, with a grim and practised scrutiny; but nothing came of it, and we were dismissed. Madame loved shopping, even for its own sake, but shopping with opportunities of peculation still more. She she had had her luncheon, and was dressed for the excursion, she did precisely what I now most desiredshe proposed to take charge of my commissions and my money; and thus entrusted, left me at liberty to keep tryst at the Chestnut Hollow. So soon as I had seen Madame fairly off, I hurried Mary Quince, and got my things on quickly. We left the house by the side entrance, which I knew my uncles windows did not command. Glad was I to feel a slight breeze, enough to make the millsails revolve; and as we got further into the grounds, and obtained a distant view of the picturesque old windmill, I felt inexpressibly relieved on seeing that it was actually working. We were now in the Chestnut Hollow, and I sent Mary Quince to her old point of observation, which commanded a view of the path in the direction of the Windmill Wood, with her former order to call Ive found it, as loudly as she could, in case she should see anyone approaching. I stopped at the point of our yesterdays meeting. I peered under the branches, and my heart beat fast as I saw Meg Hawkes awaiting me. XXII The Letter Come away, lass, whispered Beauty, very pale; hes hereTom Brice. And she led the way, shoving aside the leafless underwood, and we reached Tom. The slender youth, groom or poacherhe might answer for eitherwith his short coat and gaitered legs, was sitting on a low horizontal bough, with his shoulder against the trunk. Dont ye mind; sit ye still, lad, said Meg, observing that he was preparing to rise, and had entangled his hat in the boughs. Sit ye still, and hark to the lady. Hell take it, Miss Maud, if he can; wi na ye, lad? Ees, Ill take it, he replied, holding out his hand. Tom Brice, you wont deceive me? Noa, sure, said Tom and Meg nearly in the same breath. You are an honest English lad, Tomyou would not betray me? I was speaking imploringly. Noa, sure, repeated Tom. There was something a little unsatisfactory in the countenance of this lighthaired youth, with the sharpish upturned nose. Throughout our interview he said next to nothing, and smiled lazily to himself, like a man listening to a childs solemn nonsense, and leading it on, with an amused irony, from one wise sally to another. Thus it seemed to me that this young clown, without in the least intending to be offensive, was listening to me with a profound and lazy mockery. I could not choose, however; and, such as he was, I must employ him or none. Now, Tom Brice, a great deal depends on this. Thats true for her, Tom Brice, said Meg, who now and then confirmed my asseverations. Ill give you a pound now, Tom, and I placed the coin and the letter together in his hand.

And you are to give this letter to Lady Knollys, at Elverston; you know Elverston, dont you? He does, Miss. Dont ye, lad? Ees. Well, do so, Tom, and Ill be good to you so long as I live. Dye hear, lad? Ees, said Tom; its very good. Youll take the letter, Tom? I said, in much greater trepidation as to his answer than I showed. Ees, Ill take the letter, said he, rising, and turning it about in his fingers under his eye, like a curiosity. Tom Brice, I said, If you cant be true to me, say so; but dont take the letter except to give it to Lady Knollys, at Elverston. If you wont promise that, let me have the note back. Keep the pound; but tell me that you wont mention my having asked you to carry a letter to Elverston to anyone. For the first time Tom looked perfectly serious. He twiddled the corner of my letter between his finger and thumb, and wore very much the countenance of a poacher about to be committed. I dont want to chouce ye, Miss; but I must take care o myself, ye see. The letters goes all through Silass fingers to the post, and hed know damn well this wornt among em. They do say he opens em, and reads em before they go; an thats his diversion. I dont know; but I do believe thats how it be; an if this one turned up, theyd all know it went be hand, and Id be spotted fort. But you know who I am, Tom, and Id save you, said I, eagerly. Yed want savin yerself, Im thinkin, if that feel oot, said Tom, cynically. I dont say, though, Ill not take itonly thisI wont run my head again a wall for no one. Tom, I said, with a sudden inspiration, give me back the letter, and take me out of Bartram; take me to Elverston; it will be the best thingfor you, Tom, I meanit will indeedthat ever befell you. With this clown I was pleading, as for my life; my hand was on his sleeve. I was gazing imploringly in his face. But it would not do; Tom Brice looked amused again, swung his head a little on one side, grinning sheepishly over his shoulder on the roots of the trees beside him, as if he were striving to keep himself from an uncivil fit of laughter. Ill do what a wise lad may, Miss; but ye dont know they lads; they baint that easy come over; and I wont get knocked on the head, nor sent to gaol appen, for no good to thee nor me. Theres Meg there, she knows well enough I could na manage that; so I wont try it, Miss, by no chance; no offence, Miss; but Id rayther not, an Ill just try what I can make othis; thats all I can do for ye. Tom Brice, with these words, stood up, and looked uneasily in the direction of the Windmill Wood. Mind ye, Miss, coom what will, yell not tell o me? Whar ill ye go now, Tom? inquired Meg, uneasily. Never ye mind, lass, answered he, breaking his way through the thicket, and soon disappearing. Ees that ill be ithell git into the sheepwalk behind the mound. Theyre all down yonder; git ye back, Miss, to the hoosebe the sidedoor; mind ye, dont go round the corner; and Ill jest sit awhile among the bushes, and wait a good time for a start. And goodbye, Miss; and dont ye show like as if there was aught out o common on your mind. Hish! There was a distant hallooing. That be fayther! she whispered, with a very blank countenance, and listened with her sunburnt hand to her ear. Tisnt me, only Davy hell be callin, she said, with a great sigh, and a joyless smile. Now git ye away i Gods name. So running lightly along the path, under cover of this thick wood, I recalled Mary Quince, and together we hastened back again to the house, and entered, as directed, by the sidedoor, which did not expose us to be seen from the Windmill Wood, and, like two criminals, we stole up by the backstairs, and so through the sidegallery to my room; and there sat down to collect my wits, and try to estimate the exact effect of what had just occurred. Madame had not returned. That was well; she always visited my room first, and everything was precisely as I had left ita certain sign that her prying eyes and busy fingers had not been at work during my absence. When she did appear, strange to say, it was to bring me unexpected comfort. She had in her hand a letter from my dear Lady Knollysa gleam of sunlight from the free and happy outer world entered with it. The moment Madame left me to myself, I opened it and read as follows I am so happy, my dearest Maud, in the immediate prospect of seeing you. I have had a really kind letter from poor Silaspoor I say, for I really compassionate his situation, about which he has been, I do believe, quite frankat least Ilbury says so, and somehow he happens to know. I have had quite an affecting, changed letter. I will tell you all when I see you. He wants me ultimately to undertake that which would afford me the most unmixed happinessI mean the care of you, my dear girl. I only fear lest my too eager acceptance of the trust should excite that vein of opposition which is in most human beings, and induce him to think over his offer less favourably again. He says I must come to Bartram, and stay a night, and promises to lodge me comfortably; about which last I honestly do not care a pin, when the chance of a comfortable evenings gossip with you is in view. Silas explains his sad situation, and must hold himself in readiness for early flight, if he would avoid the risk of losing his personal liberty. It is a sad thing that he should have so irretrievably ruined himself, that poor Austins liberality seems to have positively precipitated his extremity. His great anxiety is that I should see you before you leave for your short stay in France. He thinks you must leave before a fortnight. I am thinking of asking you to come over here; I know you would be just as well at Elverston as in France; but perhaps, as he seems disposed to do what we all wish, it may be safer to let him set about it in his own way. The truth is, I have so set my heart upon it that I fear to risk it by crossing him even in a trifle. He says I must fix an early day next week, and talks as if he meant to urge me to make a longer visit than he defined. I shall be only too happy. I begin, my dear Maud, to think that there is no use in trying to control events, and that things often turn out best, and most exactly to our wishes, by being left quite to themselves. I think it was Talleyrand who praised the talent of waiting so much. In high spirits, and with my head brimful of plans, I remain, dearest Maud, ever your affectionate cousin, Monica. Here was an inexplicable puzzle! A faint radiance of hope, however, began to overspread a landscape only a few minutes before darkened by total eclipse; but construct what theory I might, all were inconsistent with many wellestablished and awful incongruities, and their wrecks lay strown over the troubled waters of the gulf into which I gazed. Why was Madame here? Why was Dudley concealed about the place? Why was I a prisoner within the walls? What were those dangers which Meg Hawkes seemed to think so great and so imminent as to induce her to risk her lovers safety for my deliverance? All these menacing facts stood grouped together against the dark certainty that never were men more deeply interested in making away with one human being, than were Uncle Silas and Dudley in removing me. Sometimes to these dreadful evidences I abandoned my soul. Sometimes, reading Cousin Monicas sunny letter, the sky would clear, and my terrors melt away like nightmares in the morning. I never repented, however, that I had sent my letter by Tom Brice. Escape from BartramHaugh was my hourly longing. That evening Madame invited herself to tea with me. I did not object. It was better just then to be on friendly relations with everybody, if possible, even on their own terms. She was in one of her boisterous and hilarious moods, and there was a perfume of brandy. She narrated some compliments paid her that morning in Feltram by that good crayature Mrs. Litheways, the silkmercer, and what ansom faylow was her new foreman(she intended plainly that I should queez her)and how he follow her with his eyes wherever she went. I thought, perhaps, he fancied she might pocket some of his lace or gloves. And all the time her great wicked eyes were rolling and glancing according to her ideas of fascination, and her bony face grinning and flaming with the strong drink in which she delighted. She sang twaddling chansons, and being, as was her wont under such exhilarating influences, in a vapouring mood, she vowed that I should have my carriage and horses immediately. I weel try what I can do weeth your Uncle Silas. We are very good old friends, Mr. Ruthyn and I, she said with a leer which I did not understand, and which yet frightened me. I never could quite understand why these Jezebels like to insinuate the dreadful truth against themselves; but they do. Is it the spirit of feminine triumph overcoming feminine shame, and making them vaunt their fall as an evidence of bygone fascination and existing power? Need we wonder? Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance? Thus, as they enjoyed the fear inspired among simple neighbours by their imagined traffic with the father of ill, did Madame, I think, relish with a cynical vainglory the suspicion of her satanic superiority. Next morning Uncle Silas sent for me. He was seated at his table, and spoke his little French greeting, smiling as usual, pointing to a chair opposite. How far, I forget, he said, carelessly laying his newspaper on the table, did you yesterday guess Dudley to be? Eleven hundred miles I thought it was. Oh yes, so it was; and then there was an abstracted pause. I have been writing to Lord Ilbury, your trustee, he resumed. I ventured to say, my dear Maud(for having thoughts of a different arrangement for you, more suitable under my distressing circumstances, I do not wish to vacate without some expression of your estimate of my treatment of you while under my roof)I ventured to say that you thought me kind, considerate, indulgentmay I say so? I assented. What could I say? I said you had enjoyed our poor way of living hereour rough ways and liberty. Was I right? Again I assented. And, in fact, that you had nothing to object against your poor old uncle, except indeed his poverty, which you forgave. I think I said truth. Did I, dear Maud? Again I acquiesced. All this time he was fumbling among the papers in his coatpocket. That is satisfactory. So I expected you to say, he murmured. I expected no less. On a sudden a frightful change spread across his face. He rose like a spectre with a white scowl. Then how do you account for that? he shrieked in a voice of thunder, and smiting my open letter to Lady Knollys, face upward, upon the table. I stared at my uncle, unable to speak, until I seemed to lose sight of him; but his voice, like a bell, still yelled in my ears. There! young hypocrite and liar! explain that farrago of slander which you bribed my servant to place in the hands of my kinswoman, Lady Knollys. And so on and on it went, I gazing into darkness, until the voice itself became indistinct, grew into a buzz, and hummed away into silence. I think I must have had a fit. When I came to myself I was drenched with water, my hair, face, neck, and dress. I did not in the least know where I was. I thought my father was ill, and spoke to him. Uncle Silas was standing near the window, looking unspeakably grim. Madame was seated beside me, and an open bottle of ether, one of Uncle Silass restoratives, on the table before me. Whos thatwhos illis anyone dead? I cried. At last I was relieved by long paroxysms of weeping. When I was sufficiently recovered, I was conveyed into my own room. XXIII Lady Knollys Carriage Next morningit was SundayI lay on my bed in my dressinggown, dull, apathetic, with all my limbs sore, and, as I thought, rheumatic, and feeling so ill that I did not care to speak or lift my head. My recollection of what had passed in Uncle Silass room was utterly confused, and it seemed to me as if my poor father had been there and taken a shareI could not remember howin the conference. I was too exhausted and stupid to clear up this horrible muddle, and merely lay with my face toward the wall, motionless and silent, except for a great sigh every now and then. Good Mary Quince was in the roomthere was some comfort in that; but I felt quite worn out, and had rather she did not speak to me; and indeed for the time I felt absolutely indifferent as to whether I lived or died. Cousin Monica this morning, at pleasant Elverston, allunconscious of my sad plight, proposed to Lady Mary Carysbroke and Lord Ilbury, her guests, to drive over to church at Feltram, and then pay us a visit at BartramHaugh, to which they readily agreed. Accordingly, at about two oclock, this pleasant party of three arrived at Bartram. They walked, having left the carriage to follow when the horses were fed; and Madame de la Rougierre, who was in my uncles room when little Giblets arrived to say that the party were in the parlour, whispered for a little with my uncle, who then said Miss Maud Ruthyn has gone out to drive, but I shall be happy to see Lady Knollys here, if she will do me the favour to come upstairs and see me for a few moments; and you can mention that I am very far from well. Madame followed him out upon the lobby, and added, holding him by the collar, and whispering earnestly in his ear Bring hair ladysheep up by the backstairsmind, the backstairs. And the next moment Madame entered my room, with long tiptoe steps, and looking, Mary Quince said, as if she were going to be hanged. On entering she looked sharply round, and being satisfied of Mary Quinces presence, she turned the key in the door, and made some affectionate enquiries about me in a whisper; and then she stole to the window and peeped out, standing back some way; after which she came to my bedside, murmured some tender sentences, drew the curtain a little, and making some little fidgety adjustments about the room; among the rest she took the key from the lock, quietly, and put it into her pocket. This was so odd a procedure that honest Mary Quince rose stoutly from her chair, pointing to the lock, with her frank little blue eyes fixed on Madame, and she whisperedWont you put the key in the lock, please? Oh, certainly, Mary Queence; but it is better it shall be locked, for I think her uncle he is coming to see her, and I am sure she would be very much frightened, for he is very much displease, dont you see? and we can tell him she is not well enough, or asleep, and so he weel go away again, without any trouble. I heard nothing of this, which was conducted in close whispers; and Mary, although she did not give Madame credit for caring whether I was frightened or not, and suspected her motives in everything, acquiesced grudgingly, fearing lest her alleged reason might possibly be the true one. So Madame hovered about the door, uneasily; and of what went on elsewhere during that period Lady Knollys afterwards gave me the following account We were very much disappointed; but of course I was glad to see Silas, and your little hobgoblin butler led me upstairs to his room a different way, I think, from that I came before; but I dont know the house of Bartram well enough to speak positively. I only know that I was conducted quite across his bedroom, which I had not seen on my former visit, and so into his sittingroom, where I found him. He seemed very glad to see me, came forward smilingI disliked his smile alwayswith both hands out, and shook mine with more warmth than I ever remembered in his greeting before, and said My dear, dear Monica, how very good of youthe very person I longed to see! I have been miserably ill, the sad consequence of still more miserable anxiety. Sit down, pray, for a moment. And he paid me some nice little French compliment in verse. And where is Maud? said I. I think Maud is by this time about halfway to Elverston, said the old gentleman. I persuaded her to take a drive, and advised a call there, which seemed to please her, so I conjecture she obeyed. How very provoking! cried I. My poor Maud will be sadly disappointed, but you will console her by a visityou have promised to come, and I shall try to make you comfortable. I shall be happier, Monica, with this proof of our perfect reconciliation. You wont deny me? Certainly not. I am only too glad to come, said I; and I want to thank you, Silas. For what? said he. For wishing to place Maud in my care. I am very much obliged to you. I did not suggest it, I must say, Monica, with the least intention of obliging you, said Silas. I thought he was going to break into one of his ungracious moods. But I am obliged to youvery much obliged to you, Silas; and you shant refuse my thanks. I am happy, at all events, Monica, in having won your goodwill; we learn at last that in the affections only are our capacities for happiness; and how true is St. Pauls preference of lovethe principle that abideth! The affections, dear Monica, are eternal; and being so, celestial, divine, and consequently happy, deriving happiness, and bestowing it. I was always impatient of his or anybody elses metaphysics; but I controlled myself, and only said, with my customary impudence Well, dear Silas, and when do you wish me to come? The earlier the better, said he. Lady Mary and Ilbury will be leaving me on Tuesday morning. I can come to you in the afternoon, if you think Tuesday a good day. Thank you, dear Monica. I shall be, I trust, enlightened by that day as to my enemies plans. It is a humiliating confession, Monica, but I am past feeling that. It is quite possible that an execution may be sent into this house tomorrow, and an end of all my schemes. It is not likely, howeverhardly possiblebefore three weeks, my attorney tells me. I shall hear from him tomorrow morning, and then I shall ask you to name a very early day. If we are to have an unmolested fortnight certain, you shall hear, and name your own day. Then he asked me who had accompanied me, and lamented ever so much his not being able to go down to receive them; and he offered luncheon, with a sort of Ravenswood smile, and a shrug, and I declined, telling him that we had but a few minutes, and that my companions were walking in the grounds near the house. I asked whether Maud was likely to return soon? Certainly not before five oclock. He thought we should probably meet her on our way back to Elverston; but could not be certain, as she might have changed her plans. So then cameno more remaining to be saida very affectionate parting. I believe all about his legal dangers was strictly true. How he could, unless that horrid woman had deceived him, with so serene a countenance tell me all those gross untruths about Maud, I can only admire. In the meantime, as I lay in my bed, Madame, gliding hither and thither, whispering sometimes, listening at others, I suddenly startled them both by saying Whose carriage? What carriage, dear? inquired Quince, whose ears were not so sharp as mine. Madame peeped from the window. Tis the physician, Doctor Jolks. He is come to see your uncle, my dear, said Madame. But I hear a female voice, I said, sitting up. No, my dear; there is only the doctor, said Madame. He is come to your uncle. I tell you he is getting out of his carriage, and she affected to watch the doctors descent. The carriage is driving away! I cried. Yes, it is draiving away, she echoed. But I had sprung from my bed, and was looking over her shoulder, before she perceived me. It is Lady Knollys! I screamed, seizing the windowframe to force it up, and, vainly struggling to open it, I cried Im here, Cousin Monica. For Gods sake, Cousin MonicaCousin Monica! You are mad, Meessgo back, screamed Madame, exerting her superior strength to force me back. But I saw deliverance and escape gliding away from my reach, and, strung to unnatural force by desperation, I pushed past her, and beat the window wildly with my hands, screaming Save mesave me! Here, here, Monica, here! Cousin, cousin, oh! save me! Madame had seized my wrists, and a wild struggle was going on. A windowpane was broken, and I was shrieking to stop the carriage. The Frenchwoman looked black and haggard as a fury, as if she could have murdered me. Nothing dauntedfranticI screamed in my despair, seeing the carriage drive swiftly awayseeing Cousin Monicas bonnet, as she sat chatting with her visvis. Oh, oh, oh! I shrieked, in vain and prolonged agony, as Madame, exerting her strength and matching her fury against my despair, forced me back in spite of my wild struggles, and pushed me sitting on the bed, where she held me fast, glaring in my face, and chuckling and panting over me. I think I felt something of the despair of a lost spirit. I remember the face of poor Mary Quinceits horror, its wonderas she stood gaping into my face, over Madames shoulder, and crying What is it, Miss Maud? What is it, dear? And turning fiercely on Madame, and striving to force her grasp from my wrists, Are you hurting the child? Let her golet her go. I weel let her go. Wat old fool are you, Mary Queence! She is mad, I think. She as lost hair head. Oh, Mary, cry from the window. Stop the carriage! I cried. Mary looked out, but there was by this time, of course, nothing in sight. Why dont a you stop the carriage? sneered Madame. Call a the coachman and the postilion. Were is the footman? Bah! Elle a le cerveau mal timbr. Oh, Mary, Mary, is it goneis it gone? Is there nothing there? cried I, rushing to the window; and turning to Madame, after a vain straining of my eyes, my face against the glass Oh, cruel, cruel, wicked woman! why have you done this? What was it to you? Why do you persecute me? What good can you gain by my ruin? Rueen! Par bleu! ma chre, you talk too fast. Did not a you see it, Mary Queence? It was the doctors carriage, and Mrs. Jolks, and that eempudent faylow, young Jolks, staring up to the window, and Mademoiselle she come in soche shocking deshabille to show herself knocking at the window. Twould be very nice thing, Mary Queence, dont you think? I was sitting now on the bedside, crying in mere despair. I did not care to dispute or to resist. Oh! why had rescue come so near, only to prove that it could not reach me? So I went on crying, with a clasping of my hands and turning up of my eyes, in incoherent prayer. I was not thinking of Madame, or of Mary Quince, or any other person, only babbling my anguish and despair helplessly in the ear of heaven. I did not think there was soche fool. Wat enfant gat! My dear cheaile, wat a can you mean by soche strange language and conduct? Wat for should a you weesh to display yourself in the window in soche orrible deshabille to the people in the doctors coach? It was Cousin KnollysCousin Knollys. Oh, Cousin Knollys! Youre goneyoure goneyoure gone! And if it was Lady Knollys coach, there was certainly a coachman and a footman; and whoever has the coach there was young gentlemen in it. If it was Lady Knollys carriage it would av been worse than the doctor. It is no matterit is all over. Oh, Cousin Monica, your poor Maudwhere is she to turn? Is there no help? That evening Madame visited me again, in one of her sedate and moral moods. She found me dejected and passive, as she had left me. I think, Maud, there is news; but I am not certain. I raised my head and looked at her wistfully. I think there is letter of bad news from the attorney in London. Oh! I said, in a tone which I am sure implied the absolute indifference of dejection. But, my dear Maud, ift be so, we shall go at once, you and me, to join Meess Millicent in France. La belle France! You weel like so moche! We shall be so gay. You cannot imagine there are such naice girl there. They all love a me so moche, you will be delight. How soon do we go? I asked. I do not know. Bote I was to bring in a case of eau de cologne that came this evening, and he laid down a letter and sayThe blow has descended, Madame! My niece must hold herself in readiness. I said, For what, Monsieur? twice; bote he did not answer. I am sure it is un procs. They av ruin him. Eh bien, my dear. I suppose we shall leave this triste place immediately. I am so rejoice. It appears to me un cimetire! Yes, I should like to leave it, I said, sitting up, with a great sigh and sunken eyes. It seemed to me that I had quite lost all sense of resentment towards Madame. A debility of feeling had supervenedthe fatigue, I suppose, and prostration of the passions. I weel make excuse to go into his room again, said Madame; and I weel endeavor to learn something more from him, and I weel come back again to you in half an hour. She departed. But in half an hour did not return. I had a dull longing to leave BartramHaugh. For me, since the departure of poor Milly, it had grown like the haunt of evil spirits, and to escape on any terms from it was a blessing unspeakable. Another halfhour passed, and another, and I grew insufferably feverish. I sent Mary Quince to the lobby to try and see Madame, who, I feared, was probably toing and froing in and out of Uncle Silass room. Mary returned to tell me that she had seen old Wyat, who told her that she thought Madame had gone to her bed half an hour before. XXIV A Sudden Departure Mary, said I, I am miserably anxious to hear what Madame may have to tell; she knows the state I am in, and she would not like so much trouble as to look in at my door to say a word. Did you hear what she told me? No, Miss Maud, she answered, rising and drawing near. She thinks we are going to France immediately, and to leave this place perhaps forever. Heaven be praised for that, if it be so, Miss! said Mary, with more energy than was common with her, for there is no luck about it, and I dont expect to see you ever well or happy in it. You must take your candle, Mary, and make out her room, upstairs; I found it accidentally myself one evening. But Wyat wont let us upstairs. Dont mind her, Mary; I tell you to go. You must try. I cant sleep till we hear. What direction is her room in, Miss? asked Mary. Somewhere in that direction, Mary, I answered, pointing. I cannot describe the turns; but I think you will find it if you go along the great passage to your left, on getting to the top of the stairs, till you come to the crossgalleries, and then turn to your left; and when you have passed four or perhaps five doors, you must be very near it, and I am sure she will hear if you call. But will she tell meshe is such a rum un, Miss? suggested Mary. Tell her exactly what I have said to you, and when she learns that you already know as much as I do, she mayunless, indeed, she wishes to torture me. If she wont, perhaps at least you can persuade her to come to me for a moment. Try, dear Mary; we can but fail. Will you be very lonely, Miss, while I am away? asked Mary, uneasily, as she lighted her candle. I cant help it, Mary. Go. I think if I heard we were going, I could almost get up and dance and sing. I cant bear this dreadful uncertainty any longer. If old Wyat is outside, Ill come back and wait here a bit, till shes out o the way, said Mary; and, anyhow, Ill make all the haste I can. The drops and the salvolatile is here, Miss, by your hand. And with an anxious look at me, she made her exit, softly, and did not immediately return, by which I concluded that she had found the way clear, and had gained the upper story without interruption. This little anxiety ended, its subsidence was followed by a sense of loneliness, and with it, of vague insecurity, which increased at last to such a pitch, that I wondered at my own madness in sending my companion away; and at last my terrors so grew, that I drew back into the farthest corner of the bed, with my shoulders to the wall, and my bedclothes huddled about me, with only a point open to peep at. At last the door opened gently. Whos there? I cried, in extremity of horror, expecting I knew not whom. Me, Miss, whispered Mary Quince, to my unutterable relief; and with her candle flared, and a wild and pallid face, Mary Quince glided into the room, locking the door as she entered. I do not know how it was, but I found myself holding Mary fast with both my hands as we stood side by side on the floor. Mary, you are terrified; for Gods sake, what is the matter? I cried. No, Miss, said Mary, faintly, not much. I see it in your face. What is it? Let me sit down, Miss. Ill tell you what I saw; only Im just a bit queerish. Mary sat down by my bed. Get in, Miss; youll take cold. Get into bed, and Ill tell you. It is not much. I did get into bed, and gazing on Marys frightened face, I felt a corresponding horror. For mercys sake, Mary, say what it is? So again assuring me it was not much, she gave me in a somewhat diffuse and tangled narrative the following facts On closing my door, she raised her candle above her head and surveyed the lobby, and seeing no one there she ascended the stairs swiftly. She passed along the great gallery to the left, and paused a moment at the cross gallery, and then recollected my directions clearly, and followed the passage to the right. There are doors at each side, and she had forgotten to ask me at which Madames was. She opened several. In one room she was frightened by a bat, which had very nearly put her candle out. She went on a little, paused, and began to lose heart in the dismal solitude, when on a sudden, a few doors farther on, she thought she heard Madames voice. She said that she knocked at the door, but receiving no answer, and hearing Madame still talking within, she opened it. There was a candle on the chimneypiece, and another in a stable lantern near the window. Madame was conversing volubly on the hearth, with her face toward the window, the entire frame of which had been taken from its place Dickon Hawkes, the Zamiel of the wooden leg, was supporting it with one hand, as it leaned imperfectly against the angle of the recess. There was a third figure standing, buttoned up in a surtout, with a bundle of tools under his arm, like a glazier, and, with a silent thrill of fear, she distinctly recognised the features as those of Dudley Ruthyn. Twas him, Miss, so sure as I sit here! Well, like that, they were as mute as mice; three pairs of eyes were on me. I dont know what made me so study like, but somat told me I should not make as though I knew any but Madame; and so I made a courtesy, as well as I could, and I said, Might I speak a word wi ye, please, on the lobby? Mr. Dudley was making belief be this time to look out at window, wi his back to me, and I kept looking straight on Madame, and she said, Theyre mendin my broken glass, Mary, walking between them and me, and coming close up to me very quick; and so she marched me backward out o the door, prating all the time. When we were on the lobby, she took my candle from my hand, shutting the door behind her, and she held the light a bit behind her ear; so twas full on my face, as she looked sharp into it; and, after a bit, she said again, in her queer lingothere was two panes broke in her room, and men sent for to mend it. I was awful frightened when I saw Mr. Dudley, for I could not believe any such thing before, and I dont know how I could look her in the face as I did and not show it. I was as smooth and cool as yonder chimneypiece, and she has an awful evil eye to stan against; but I never flinched, and I think shes puzzled, for as cunning as she is, whether I believe all she said, or knowed twas a pack o stories. So I told her your message, and she said she had not heard another word since; but she did believe we had not many more days here, and would tell you if she heard tonight, when she brought his soup to your uncle, in half an hours time.

I asked her, as soon as I could speak, whether she was perfectly certain as to the fact that the man in the surtout was Dudley, and she made answer Id swear to him on that Bible, Miss. So far from any longer wishing Madames return that night, I trembled at the idea of it. Who could tell who might enter the room with her when the door opened to admit her? Dudley, so soon as he recovered the surprise, had turned about, evidently anxious to prevent recognition; Dickon Hawkes stood glowering at her. Both might have hope of escaping recognition in the imperfect light, for the candle on the chimneypiece was flaring in the air, and the light from the lantern fell in spots, and was confusing. What could that ruffian, Hawkes, be doing in the house? Why was Dudley there? Could a more ominous combination be imagined? I puzzled my distracted head over all Mary Quinces details, but could make nothing of their occupation. I know of nothing so terrifying as this kind of perpetual puzzling over ominous problems. You may imagine how the long hours of that night passed, and how my heart beat at every fancied sound outside my door. But morning came, and with its light some reassurance. Early, Madame de la Rougierre made her appearance; she searched my eyes darkly and shrewdly, but made no allusion to Mary Quinces visit. Perhaps she expected some question from me, and, hearing none, thought it as well to leave the subject at rest. She had merely come in to say that she had heard nothing since, but was now going to make my uncles chocolate; and that so soon as her interview was ended she would see me again, and let me hear anything she should have gleaned. In a little while a knock came to my door, and Mary Quince was ordered by old Wyat into my uncles room. She returned flushed, in a huge fuss, to say that I was to be up and dressed for a journey in half an hour, and to go straight, when dressed, to my uncles room. It was good news; at the same time it was a shock. I was glad. I was stunned. I jumped out of bed, and set about my toilet with an energy quite new to me. Good Mary Quince was busily packing my boxes, and consulting as to what I should take with me, and whatnot. Was Mary Quince to accompany me? He had not said a word on that point; and I feared from his silence she was to remain. There was comfort, however, in thisthat the separation would not be for long; I felt confident of that; and I was about to join Milly, whom I loved better than I could have believed before our separation; but whatsoever the conditions might be, it was an indescribable relief to have done with BartramHaugh, and leave behind me its sinister lines of circumvallation, its haunted recesses, and the awful spectres that had lately appeared within its walls. I stood too much in awe of my uncle to fail in presenting myself punctually at the close of the halfhour. I entered his sittingroom under the shadow of sour old Wyats highcauled cap; she closed the door behind me, and the conference commenced. Madame de la Rougierre sat there, dressed and draped for a journey, and with a thick black lace veil on. My uncle rose, gaunt and venerable, and with a harsh and severe countenance. He did not offer his hand; he made me a kind of bow, more of repulsion than of respect. He remained in a standing position, supporting his crooked frame by his hand, which he leaned on a despatchbox; he glared on me steadily with his wild phosphoric eyes, from under the dark brows I have described to you, now corrugated in lines indescribably stern. You shall join my daughter at the Pension, in France; Madame de la Rougierre shall accompany you, said my uncle, delivering his directions with the stern monotony and the measured pauses of a person dictating an important despatch to a secretary. Old Mrs. Quince shall follow with me, or, if alone, in a week. You shall pass tonight in London; tomorrow night you proceed thence to Dover, and cross by the mailpacket. You shall now sit down and write a letter to your cousin Monica Knollys, which I will first read and then despatch. Tomorrow you shall write a note to Lady Knollys, from London, telling her how you have got over so much of your journey, and that you cannot write from Dover, as you must instantly start by the packet on reaching it; and that until my affairs are a little settled, you cannot write to her from France, as it is of high importance to my safety that no clue should exist as to our address. Intelligence, however, shall reach her through my attorneys, Archer and Sleigh, and I trust we shall soon return. You will, please, submit that latter note to Madame de la Rougierre, who has my directions to see that it contains no libels upon my character. Now, sit down. So, with those unpleasant words tingling in my ears, I obeyed. Write, said he, when I was duly placed. You shall convey the substance of what I say in your own language. The immiment danger this morning announced of an executionremember the word, and he spelled it for mebeing put into this house either this afternoon or tomorrow, compels me to anticipate my plans, and despatch you for France this day. That you are starting with an attendant. Here an uneasy movement from Madame, whose dignity was perhaps excited. An attendant, he repeated, with a discordant emphasis; and you can, if you pleasebut I dont solicit that justicesay that you have been as kindly treated here as my unfortunate circumstances would permit. That is all. You have just fifteen minutes to write. Begin. I wrote accordingly. My hysterical state had made me far less combative than I might have proved some months since, for there was much that was insulting as well as formidable in his manner. I completed my letter, however, to his satisfaction in the prescribed time; and he said, as he laid it and its envelope on the table Please to remember that this lady is not your attendant only, but that she has authority to direct every detail respecting your journey, and will make all the necessary payments on the way. You will please, then, implicitly to comply with her directions. The carriage awaits you at the halldoor. Having thus spoken, with another grim bow, and I wish you a safe and pleasant journey, he receded a step or two, and I, with an undefinable kind of melancholy, though also with a sense of relief, withdrew. My letter, I afterwards found, reached Lady Knollys, accompanied by one from Uncle Silas, who saidDear Maud apprises me that she has written to tell you something of our movements. A sudden crisis in my miserable affairs compels a breakup as sudden here. Maud joins my daughter at the Pension, in France. I purposely omit the address, because I mean to reside in its vicinity until this storm shall have blown over; and as the consequences of some of my unhappy entanglements might pursue me even there, I must only for the present spare you the pain and trouble of keeping a secret. I am sure that for some little time you will excuse the girls silence; in the meantime you shall hear of them, and perhaps circuitously, from me. Our dear Maud started this morning en route for her destination, very sorry, as am I, that she could not enjoy first a flying visit to Elverston, but in high spirits, notwithstanding, at the new life and sights before her. At the door my beloved old friend, Mary Quince, awaited me. Am I going with you, Miss Maud? I burst into tears and clasped her in my arms. Im not, said Mary, very sorrowfully; and I never was from you yet, Miss, since you wasnt the length of my arm. And kind old Mary began to cry with me. Bote you are coming in a few days, Mary Quince, expostulated Madame. I wonder you are soche fool. What is two, three days? Bah! nonsense, girl. Another farewell to poor Mary Quince, quite bewildered at the suddenness of her bereavement. A serious and tremulous bow from our little old butler on the steps. Madame bawling through the open window to the driver to make good speed, and remember that we had but nineteen minutes to reach the station. Away we went. Old Crowles iron grille rolled back before us. I looked on the receding landscape, the giant treesthe palatial, timestained mansion. A strange conflict of feelings, sweet and bitter, rose and mingled in the reverie. Had I been too hard and suspicious with the inhabitants of that old house of my family? Was my uncle justly indignant? Was I ever again to know such pleasant rambles as some of those I had enjoyed with dear Millicent through the wild and beautiful woodlands I was leaving behind me? And there, with my latest glimpse of the front of BartramHaugh, I beheld dear old Mary Quince gazing after us. Again my tears flowed. I waved my handkerchief from the window; and now the parkwall hid all from view, and at a great pace, throught the steep wooded glen, with the rocky and precipitous character of a ravine, we glided; and when the road next emerged, BartramHaugh was a misty mass of forest and chimneys, slope and hollow, and we within a few minutes of the station. XXV The Journey Waiting for the train, as we stood upon the platform, I looked back again toward the wooded uplands of Bartram; and far behind, the fine range of mountains, azure and soft in the distance, beyond which lay beloved old Knowl, and my lost father and mother, and the scenes of my childhood, never embittered except by the sibyl who sat beside me. Under happier circumstances I should have been, at my then early age, quite wild with pleasurable excitement on entering London for the first time. But black Care sat by me, with her pale hand in mine a voice of fear and warning, whose words I could not catch, was always in my ear. We drove through London, amid the glare of lamps, toward the Westend, and for a little while the sense of novelty and curiosity overcame my despondency, and I peeped eagerly from the window; while Madame, who was in high goodhumour, spite of the fatigues of our long railway flight, screeched scraps of topographic information in my ear; for London was a picturebook in which she was well read. That is Euston Square, my dearRussell Square. Here is Oxford StreetHaymarket. See, there is the Opera HouseHair Majestys Theatre. See all the carriages waiting; and so on, till we reached at length a little narrow street, which she told me was off Piccadilly, where we drew up before a private house, as it seemed to mea family hoteland I was glad to be at rest for the night. Fatigued with the peculiar fatigue of railway travelling, dusty, a little chilly, with eyes aching and wearied, I ascended the stairs silently, our garrulous and bustling landlady leading the way, and telling her ofttold story of the house, its noble owner in old time, and how those fine drawingrooms were taken every year during the Session by the Bishop of RochetonCopeley, and at last into our doublebedded room. I would fain have been alone, but I was too tired and dejected to care very much for anything. At tea, Madame expanded in spirit, like a giant refreshed, and chattered and sang; and at last, seeing that I was nodding, advised my going to bed, while she ran across the street to see her dear old friend, Mademoiselle St. Eloi, who was sure to be up, and would be offended if she failed to make her ever so short a call. I cared little what she said, and was glad to be rid of her even for a short time, and was soon fast asleep. I saw her, I know not how much later, poking about the room, like a figure in a dream, and taking off her things. She had her breakfast in bed next morning, and I was, to my comfort, left to take mine in solitary possession of our sittingroom; where I began to wonder how little annoyance I had as yet suffered from her company, and began to speculate upon the chances of my making the journey with tolerable comfort. Our hostess gave me five minutes of her valuable time. Her talk ran chiefly upon nuns and convents, and her old acquaintance with Madame; and it seemed to me that she had at one time driven a kind of trade, no doubt profitable enough, in escorting young ladies to establishments on the Continent; and although I did not then quite understand the tone in which she spoke to me, I often thought afterwards that Madame had represented me as a young person destined for the holy vocation of the veil. When she was gone, I sat listlessly looking out of the window, and saw some chance equipages drive by, and now and then a fashionable pedestrian; and wondered if this quiet thoroughfare could really be one of the arteries so near the heart of the tumultuous capital. I think my nervous vitality must have burnt very low just then, for I felt perfectly indifferent about all the novelty and world of wonders beyond, and should have hated to leave the dull tranquillity of my window for an excursion through the splendours of the unseen streets and palaces that surrounded me. It was one oclock before Madame joined me; and finding me in this dull mood, she did not press me to accompany her in her drive, no doubt well pleased to be rid of me. After tea that evening, as we sat alone in our room, she entertained me with some very odd conversationat the time unintelligiblebut which acquired a tolerably distinct meaning from the events that followed. Two or three times that day Madame appeared to me on the point of saying something of grave import, as she scanned me with her bleak wicked stare. It was a peculiarity of hers, that whenever she was pressed upon by an anxiety that really troubled her, her countenance did not look sad or solicitous, as other peoples would, but simply wicked. Her great gaunt mouth was compressed and drawn down firmly at the corners, and her eyes glared with a dismal scowl. At last she said suddenly Are you ever grateful, Maud? I hope so, Madame, I answered. And how do you show your gratitude? For instance, would a you do great deal for a person who would run risqu for your sake? It struck me all at once that she was sounding me about poor Meg Hawkes, whose fidelity, notwithstanding the treason or cowardice of her lover, Tom Brice, I never doubted; and I grew at once wary and reserved. I know of no opportunity, thank Heaven, for any such service, Madame. How can anyone serve me at present, by themselves incurring danger? What do you mean? Do you like, for example, to go to that French Pension? Would you not like better some other arrangement? Of course there are other arrangements I should like better; but I see no use in talking of them; they are not to be, I answered. What other arrangements do you mean, my dear cheaile? enquired Madame. You mean, I suppose, you would like better to go to Lady Knollys? My uncle does not choose it at present; and except with his consent nothing can be done! He weel never consent, dear cheaile. But he has consentednot immediately indeed, but in a short time, when his affairs are settled. Lanternes! They will never be settle, said Madame. At all events, for the present I am to go to France. Milly seems very happy, and I dare say I shall like it too. I am very glad to leave BartramHaugh, at all events. But your uncle weel bring you back there, said Madame, drily. It is doubtful whether he will ever return to Bartram himself, I said. Ah! said Madame, with a longdrawn nasal intonation, you theenk I hate you. You are quaite wrong, my dear Maud. I am, on the contrary, very much interested for youI am, I assure you, dear a cheaile. And she laid her great hand, with joints misshapen by old chilblains, upon the back of mine. I looked up in her face. She was not smiling. On the contrary, her wide mouth was drawn down at the corners ruefully, as before, and she gazed on my face with a scowl from her abysmal eyes. I used to think the flare of that irony which lighted her face so often immeasurably worse than any other expression she could assume; but this lacklustre stare and dismal collapse of feature was more wicked still. Suppose I should bring you to Lady Knollys, and place you in her charge, what would a you do then for poor Madame? said this dark spectre. I was inwardly startled at these words. I looked into her unsearchable face, but could draw thence nothing but fear. Had she made the same overture only two days since, I think I would have offered her half my fortune. But circumstances were altered. I was no longer in the panic of despair. The lesson I had received from Tom Brice was fresh in my mind, and my profound distrust of her was uppermost. I saw before me only a tempter and betrayer, and said Do you mean to imply, Madame, that my guardian is not to be trusted, and that I ought to make my escape from him, and that you are really willing to aid me in doing so? This, you see, was turning the tables upon her. I looked her steadily in the face as I spoke. She returned my gaze with a strange stare and a gape, which haunted me long after; and it seemed as we sat in utter silence that each was rather horribly fascinated by the others gaze. At last she shut her mouth sternly, and eyes me with a more determined and meaning scowl, and then said in a low tone I believe, Maud, that you are a cunning and wicked little thing. Wisdom is not cunning, Madame; nor is it wicked to ask your meaning in explicit language, I replied. And so, you clever cheaile, we two sit here, playing at a game of chess, over this little table, to decide which shall destroy the otheris it not so? I will not allow you to destroy me, I retorted, with a sudden flash. Madame stood up, and rubbed her mouth with her open hand. She looked to me like some evil being seen in a dream. I was frightened. You are going to hurt me! I ejaculated, scarce knowing what I said. If I were, you deserve it. You are very malicious, ma chre or, it may be, only very stupid. A knock came to the door. Come in, I cried, with a glad sense of relief. A maid entered. A letter, pleasem, she said, handing it to me. For me, snarled Madame, snatching it. I had seen my uncles hand, and the Feltram postmark. Madame broke the seal, and read. It seemed but a word, for she turned it about after the first momentary glance, and examined the interior of the envelope, and then returned to the line she had already read. She folded the letter again, drawing her nails in a sharp pinch along the creases, as she stared in a blank, hesitating way at me. You are stupid little ingrate, I am employ by Monsieur Ruthyn, and of course I am faithful to my employer. I do not want to talk to you. There, you may read that. She jerked the letter before me on the table. It contained but these words BartramHaugh 30th January, 1845. My Dear Madame, Be so good as to take the halfpast eight oclock train to Dover tonight. Beds are prepared. Yours very truly, Silas Ruthyn. I cannot say what it was in this short advice that struck me with fear. Was it the thick line beneath the word Dover, that was so uncalled for, and gave me a faint but terrible sense of something preconcerted? I said to Madame Why is Dover underlined? I do not know, little fool, no more than you. How can I tell what is passing in your oncles head when he make that a mark? Has it not a meaning, Madame? How can you talk like that? she answered, more in her old way. You are either mocking of me, or you are becoming truly a fool! She rang the bell, called for our bill, saw our hostess; while I made a few hasty prepartions in my room. You need not look after the trunksthey will follow us all right. Let us go, cheailewe av half an hour only to reach the train. No one ever fussed like Madame when occasion offered. There was a cab at the door, into which she hurried me. I assumed that she would give all needful directions, and leaned back, very weary and sleepy already, though it was so early, listening to her farewell screamed from the cabstep, and seeing her black cloak flitting and flapping this way and that, like the wings of a raven disturbed over its prey. In she got, and away we drove through a glare of lamps, and shopwindows, still open; gas everywhere, and cabs, busses, and carriages, still thundering through the streets. I was too tired and too depressed to look at those things. Madame, on the contrary, had her head out of the window till we reached the station. Where are the rest of the boxes? I asked, as Madame placed me in charge of her box and my bag in the office of the terminus. They will follow with Boots in another cab, and will come safe with us in this train. Mind those two, we weel bring in the carriage with us. So into a carriage we got; in came Madames box and my bag; Madame stood at the door, and, I think, frightened away intending passengers, by her size and shrillness. At last the bell rang her into her place, the door clapt, the whistle sounded, and we were off. XXVI Our Bedchamber I had passed a miserable night, and, indeed, for many nights had not had my due proportion of sleep. Still I sometimes fancy that I may have swallowed something in my tea that helped to make me so irresistibly drowsy. It was a very dark nightno moon, and the stars soon hid by the gathering clouds. Madame sat silent, and ruminating in her place, with her rugs about her. I, in my corner similarly enveloped, tried to keep awake. Madame plainly thought I was asleep already, for she stole a leather flask from her pocket, and applied it to her lips, causing an aroma of brandy. But it was vain struggling against the influence that was stealing over me, and I was soon in a profound and dreamless slumber. Madame awoke me at last, in a huge fuss. She had got out all our things and hurried them away to a close carriage which was awaiting us. It was still dark and starless. We got along the platform, I half asleep, the porter carrying our rugs, by the glare of a pair of gasjets in the wall, and out by a small door at the end. I remember that Madame, contrary to her wont, gave the man some money. By the puzzling light of the carriagelamps we got in and took our seats. Go on, screamed Madame, and drew up the window with a great chuck; and we were enclosed in darkness and silence, the most favourable conditions for thought. My sleep had not restored me as it might; I felt feverish, fatigued, and still very drowsy, though unable to sleep as I had done. I dozed by fits and starts, and lay awake, or halfawake, sometimes, not thinking but in a way imagining what kind of a place Dover would be; but too tired and listless to ask Madame any questions, and merely seeing the hedges, grey in the lamplight, glide backward into darkness, as I leaned back. We turned off the main road, at right angles, and drew up. Get down and poosh it, it is open, screamed Madame from the window. A gate, I suppose, was thus passed; for when we resumed our brisk trot, Madame bawled across the carriage We are now in the otel grounds. And so all again was darkness and silence, and I fell into another doze, from which, on waking, I found that we had come to a standstill, and Madame was standing on the low step of an open door, paying the driver. She, herself, pulled her box and the bag in. I was too tired to care what had become of the rest of our luggage. I descended, glancing to the right and left, but there was nothing visible but a patch of light from the lamps on a paved ground and on the wall. We stepped into the hall or vestibule, and Madame shut the door, and I thought I heard the key turn in it. We were in total darkness. Where are the lights, Madamewhere are the people? I asked, more awake than I had been. Tis pass three oclock, cheaile, bote there is always light here. She was groping at the side; and in a moment more lighted a lucifer match, and so a bedroom candle. We were in a flagged lobby, under an archway at the right, and at the left of which opened long flagged passages, lost in darkness; a winding stair, barely wide enough to admit Madame, dragging her box, led upward under a doorway, in a corner at the right. Come, dear cheaile, take your bag; dont mind the rugs, they are safe enough. But where are we to go? There is no one! I said, looking round in wonder. It certainly was a strange reception at an hotel. Never mind, my dear cheaile. They know me here, and I have always the same room ready when I write for it. Follow me quaitely. So she mounted, carrying the candle. The stair was steep, and the march long. We halted at the second landing, and entered a gaunt, grimy passage. All the way up we had not heard a single sound of life, nor seen a human being, nor so much as passed a gaslight. Viola! here tis, my dear old room. Enter, dearest Maud. And so I did. The room was large and lofty, but shabby and dismal. There was a tall fourpost bed, with its foot beside the window, hung with darkgreen curtains, of some plush or velvet texture, that looked like a dusty pall. The remaining furniture was scant and old, and a ravelled square of threadbare carpet covered a patch of floor at the bedside. The room was grim and large, and had a cold, vaultlike atmosphere, as if long uninhabited; but there were cinders in the grate and under it. The imperfect light of our muttonfat candle made all this look still more comfortless. Madame placed the candle on the chimneypiece, locked the door, and put the key in her pocket. I always do so in otel, said she, with a wink at me. And, then with a long ha! expressive of fatigue and relief, she threw herself into a chair. So ere we are at last! said she; Im glad. Theres your bed, Maud. Mine is in the dressingroom. She took the candle, and I went in with her. A shabby press bed, a chair, and table were all its furniture; it was rather a closet than a dressingroom, and had no door except that through which we had entered. So we returned, and very tired, wondering, I sat down on the side of my bed and yawned. I hope they will call us in time for the packet, I said. Oh yes, they never fail, she answered, looking steadfastly on her box, which she was diligently uncording. Uninviting as was my bed, I was longing to lie down in it; and having made those ablutions which our journey rendered necessary, I at length lay down, having first religiously stuck my talismanic pin, with the head of sealingwax, into the bolster. Nothing escaped the restless eye of Madame. Wat is that, dear cheaile? she enquired, drawing near and scrutinising the head of the gipsy charm, which showed like a little ladybird newly lighted on the sheet. Nothinga charmfolly. Pray, Madame, allow me to go to sleep. So, with another look and a little twiddle between her finger and thumb, she seemed satisfied; but, unhappily for me, she did not seem at all sleepy. She busied herself in unpacking and displaying over the back of the chair a whole series of London purchasessilk dresses, a shawl, a sort of lace demicoiffure then in vogue, and a variety of other articles. The vainest and most slammakin of womenthe merest slut at home, a milliners lay figure out of doorsshe had one square foot of lookingglass upon the chimneypiece, and therein tried effects, and conjured up grotesque simpers upon her sinister and weary face. I knew that the sure way to prolong this worry was to express my uneasiness under it, so I bore it as quietly as I could; and at last fell fast asleep with the gaunt image of Madame, with a festoon of grey silk with a cerise stripe, pinched up in her finger and thumb, and smiling over her shoulder across it into the little shavingglass that stood on the chimney. I awoke suddenly in the morning, and sat up in my bed, having for a moment forgotten all about our travelling. A moment more, however, brought all back again. Are we in time, Madame? For the packet? she enquired, with one of her charming smiles, and cutting a caper on the floor. To be sure; you dont suppose they would forget. We have two hours yet to wait. Can we see the sea from the window? No, dearest cheaile; you will seet time enough. Id like to get up, I said. Time enough, my dear Maud; you are fatigued; are you sure you feel quite well? Well enough to get up; I should be better, I think, out of bed. There is no hurry, you know; you need not even go by the next packet. Your uncle, he tell me, I may use my discretion. Is there any water? They will bring some. Please, Madame, ring the bell. She pulled it with alacrity. I afterwards learnt that it did not ring. What has become of my gipsy pin? I demanded, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart. Oh! the little pin with the red top? maybe it as fall on the ground; we weel find when you get up. I suspected that she had taken it merely to spite me. It would have been quite the thing she would have liked. I cannot describe to you how the loss of this little charm depressed and excited me. I searched the bed; I turned over all the bedclothes; I searched in and outside; at last I gave up. How odious! I cried; somebody has stolen it merely to vex me. And, like a fool as I was, I threw myself on my face on the bed and wept, partly in anger, partly in dismay. After a time, however, this blew over. I had a hope of recovering it. If Madame had stolen it, it would turn up yet. But in the meantime its disappearance troubled me like an omen. I am afraid, my dear cheaile, you are not very well. It is really very odd you should make such fuss about a pin! Nobody would believe! Do you not theenk it would be a good plan to take a your breakfast in your bed? She continued to urge this point for some time. At last, however, having by this time quite recovered my selfcommand, and resolved to preserve ostensibly fair terms with Madame, who could contribute so essentially to make me wretched during the rest of my journey, and possibly to prejudice me very seriously on my arrival, I said quietly Well, Madame, I know it is very silly; but I had kept that foolish little pin so long and so carefully, that I had grown quite fond of it; but I suppose it is lost, and I must content myself, though I cannot laugh as you do. So I will get up now, and dress. I think you will do well to get all the repose you can, answered Madame; but as you please, she added, observing that I was getting up. So soon as I had got some of my things on, I said Is there a pretty view from the window? No, said Madame. I looked out and saw a dreary quadrangle of cut stone, in one side of which my window was placed. As I looked a dream rose up before me. This hotel, I said, in a puzzled way. Is it a hotel? Why this is just likeit is the inner court of BartramHaugh! Madame clapped her large hands together, made a fantastic chass on the floor, burst into a great nasal laugh like the scream of a parrot, and then said Well, dearest Maud, is not clever trick? I was so utterly confounded that I could only stare about me in stupid silence, a spectacle which renewed Madames peals of laughter. We are at BartramHaugh! I repeated, in utter consternation. How was this done? I had no reply but shrieks of laughter, and one of those Walpurgis dances in which she excelled. It is a mistakeis it? What is it? All a mistake, of course. BartramHaugh, it is so like Dover, as all philosophers know. I sat down in total silence, looking out into the deep and dark enclosure, and trying to comprehend the reality and the meaning of all this. Well, Madame, I suppose you will be able to satisfy my uncle of your fidelity and intelligence. But to me it seems that his money has been illspent, and his directions anything but well observed. Ah, ha! Never mind; I think he will forgive me, laughed Madame. Her tone frightened me. I began to think, with a vague but overpowering sense of danger, that she had acted under the Machiavellian directions of her superior. You have brought me back, then, by my uncles orders? Did I say so? No; but what you have said can have no other meaning, though I cant believe it. And why have I been brought here? What is the object of all this duplicity and trick. I will know. It is not possible that my uncle, a gentleman and a kinsman, can be privy to so disreputable a manouvre.

First you will eat your breakfast, dear Maud; next you can tell your story to your uncle, Monsieur Ruthyn; and then you shall hear what he thinks of my so terrible misconduct. What nonsense, cheaile! Can you not think how many things may appen to change a your uncles plans? Is he not in danger to be arrest? Bah! You are cheaile still; you cannot have intelligence more than a cheaile. Dress yourself, and I will order breakfast. I could not comprehend the strategy which had been practised on me. Why had I been so shamelessly deceived? If it were decided that I should remain here, for what imaginable reason had I been sent so far on my journey to France? Why had I been conveyed back with such mystery? Why was I removed to this uncomfortable and desolate room, on the same floor with the apartment in which Charke had met his death, and with no window commanding the front of the house, and no view but the deep and weedchoked court, that looked like a deserted churchyard in a city? I suppose I may go to my own room? I said. Not today, my dear cheaile, for it was all disarrange when we go way; twill be ready again in two three days. Where is Mary Quince? I asked. Mary Quince!she has follow us to France, said Madame, making what in Ireland they call a bull. They are not sure where they will go or what will do for day or two more. I will go and get breakfast. Adieu for a moment. Madame was out of the door as she said this, and I thought I heard the key turn in the lock. XXVII A WellKnown Face Looks In You who have never experienced it can have no idea how angry and frightened you become under the sinister insult of being locked into a room, as on trying the door I found I was. The key was in the lock; I could see it through the hole. I called after Madame, I shook at the solid oakdoor, beat upon it with my hands, kicked itbut all to no purpose. I rushed into the next room, forgettingif indeed I had observed it, that there was no door from it upon the gallery. I turned round in an angry and dismayed perplexity, and, like prisoners in romances, examined the windows. I was shocked and affrighted on discovering in reality what they occasionally finda series of iron bars crossing the window! They were firmly secured in the oak woodwork of the windowframe, and each window was, besides, so compactly screwed down that it could not open. This bedroom was converted into a prison. A momentary hope flashed on meperhaps all the windows were secured alike! But it was no such thing these gaollike precautions were confined to the windows to which I had access. For a few minutes I felt quite distracted; but I bethought me that I must now, if ever, control my terrors and exert whatever faculties I possessed. I stood upon a chair and examined the oakwork. I thought I detected marks of new chiselling here and there. The screws, too, looked new; and they and the scars on the woodwork were freshly smeared over with some coloured stuff by way of disguise. While I was making these observations, I heard the key stealthily stirred. I suspect that Madame wished to surprise me. Her approaching step, indeed, was seldom audible; she had the soft tread of the feline tribe. I was standing in the centre of the room confronting her when she entered. Why did you lock the door, Madame? I demanded. She slipped in suddenly with an insidious smirk, and locked the door hastily. Hish! whispered Madame, raising her broad palm; and then screwing in her cheeks, she made an ogle over her shoulder in the direction of the passage. Hish! be quiate, cheaile, weel you, and I weel tale you everything presently. She paused, with her ear laid to the door. Now I can speak, ma chre; I weel tale a you there is bailiff in the house, two, three, four soche impertinent fallows! They have another as bad as themselve to make a leest of the furniture we most keep them out of these rooms, dear Maud. You left the key in the door on the outside, I retorted; that was not to keep them out, but me in, Madame. Deed I leave the key in the door? ejaculated Madame, with both hands raised, and such a genuine look of consternation as for a moment shook me. It was the nature of this womans deceptions that they often puzzled though they seldom convinced me. I really think, Maud, all those so frequent changes and excitements they weel overturn my poor head. And the windows are secured with iron barswhat are they for? I whispered sternly, pointing with my finger at these grim securities. That is for more a than forty years, when Sir Phileep Aylmer was to reside here, and had this room for his childrens nursery, and was afraid they should fall out. But if you look you will find these bars have been put here very recently the screws and marks are quite new. Eendeed! ejaculated Madame, with prolonged emphasis, in precisely the same consternation. Why, my dear, they told a me down stair what I have tell a you, when I ask the reason! Late a me see. And Madame mounted on a chair, and made her scrutiny with much curiosity, but could not agree with me as to the very recent date of the carpentry. There is nothing, I think, so exasperating as that sort of falsehood which affects not to see what is quite palpable. Do you mean to say, Madame, that you really think those chisellings and screws are forty years old? How can I tell, cheaile? What does signify whether it is forty or only fourteen years? Bah! we av other theeng to theenk about. Those villain men! I am glad to see bar and bolt, and lock and key, at least, to our room, to keep soche faylows out! At that moment a knock came to the door, and Madames nasal in moment answered promptly, and she opened the door, stealthily popping out her head. Oh, that is all right; go you long, no ting more, go way. Whos there? I cried. Hold a your tongue, said Madame imperiously to the visitor, whose voice I fancied I recognisedgo way. Out slipped Madame again, locking the door; but this time she returned immediately, bearing a tray with breakfast. I think she fancied that I would perhaps attempt to break away and escape; but I had no such thought at that moment. She hastily set down the tray on the floor at the threshold, locking the door as before. My share of breakfast was a little tea; but Madames digestion was seldom disturbed by her sympathies, and she ate voraciously. During this process there was a silence unusual in her company; but when her meal was ended she proposed a reconnaissance, professing much uncertainty as to whether my Uncle had been arrested or not. And in case the poor old gentleman be poot in what you call stone jug, where are we to go my dear Maudto Knowl or to Elverston? You must direct. And so she disappeared, turning the key in the door as before. It was an old custom of hers, locking herself in her room, and leaving the key in the lock; and the habit prevailed, for she left it there again. With a heavy heart I completed my simple toilet, wondering all the while how much of Madames story might be false and how much, if any, true. Then I looked out upon the dingy courtyard below, in its deep damp shadow, and thought, How could an assassin have scaled that height in safety, and entered so noiselessly as not to awaken the slumbering gamester? Then there were the iron bars across my window. What a fool had I been to object to that security! I was labouring hard to reassure myself, and keep all ghastly suspicions at arms length. But I wished that my room had been to the front of the house, with some view less dismal. Lost in these ruminations of fear, as I stood at the window I was startled by the sound of a sharp tread on the lobby, and by the key turning in the lock of my door. In a panic I sprang back into the corner, and stood with my eyes fixed upon the door. It opened a little, and the black head of Meg Hawkes was introduced. Oh, Meg! I cried; thank God! I guessed twas you, Miss Maud. I am feared, Miss. The millers daughter was pale, and her eyes, I thought, were red and swollen. Oh, Meg! for Gods sake, what is it all? I darnt come in. The old uns gone down, and locked the crossdoor, and left me to watch. They think I care nout about ye, no more nor themselves. I donna know all, but summat more nor her. They tell her nout, shes so gin to drink; they say shes not safe, an awful quarrelsome. I hear a deal when fayther and Master Dudley be atalkin in the mill. They think, comin in an out, I dont mind; but I put one think an tother together. An dont ye eat nor drink nout here, Miss; hide away this; its black enough, but wholesome anyhow! and she slipt a piece of a coarse loaf from under her apron. Hide it mind. Drink nout but the water in the jug thereits clean spring. Oh, Meg! Oh, Meg! I know what you mean, said I, faintly. Ay, Miss, Im feared theyll try it; theyll try to make away wi ye somehow. Im goin to your friends arter dark; I darnt try it no sooner. Ill git awa to Ellerston, to your ladycousin, and Ill bring em back wi me in a rin; so keep a good hairt, lass. Meg Hawkes will stan to ye. Ye were better to me than fayther and mother, and a, and she clasped me round the waist, and buried her head in my dress; an Ill gie my life for ye, darling, and if they hurt ye Ill kill myself. She recovered her sterner mood quickly Not a word, lass, she said, in her old tone. Dont ye try to git awaytheyll kill yeye cant dot. Leave a to me. It wont be, whatever it is, till two or three oclock in the morning. Ill hae them a here long afore; so keep a brave hearttheres a darling. I suppose she heard, or fancied she heard, a step approaching, for she said Hish! Her pale wild face vanished, the door shut quickly and softly, and the key turned again in the lock. Meg, in her rude way, had spoken softlyalmost under her breath; but no prophecy shrieked by the Pythoness ever thundered so madly in the ears of the hearer. I dare say that Meg fancied I was marvellously little moved by her words. I felt my gaze grow intense, and my flesh and bones literally freeze. She did not know that every word she spoke seemed to burst like a blaze in my brain. She had delivered her frightful warning, and told her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling, which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful situation. I was stupidthe imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as we sometimes see horrorsheads cut off and houses burntin a dream, and without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to the side of my head and saying Oh, it wont beit wont beOh no!never!it could not be! And in this stunned state Madame found me on her return. But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The horror of great darkness is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights. There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found itagonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the ordeal. Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch; it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four oclock, it said. Four oclock! It would be dark at fivenight in one hour! Madame, what oclock is it? Is it evening? I cried with my hand to my forehead, like a person puzzled. Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came upstairs, answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window. Oh, Madame! Madame! Im frightened, cried I, with a wild and piteous voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and shaking her arm loose What you mean, cheaile? Oh save me, Madame!oh save me!oh save me, Madame! I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos. Save a you, indeed! Save! What niaiserie! Oh, Madame! Oh, dear Madame! for Gods sake, only get me awayget me from this, and Ill do everything you ask me all my lifeI willindeed, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! save me! I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony. And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger? demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare. I am, MadameI amin great danger! Oh, Madame, think of metake pity on me! I have none to help methere is no one but God and you! Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face. Well, maybe you arehow can I tell? Maybe your uncle is madmaybe you are mad. You have been my enemy alwayswhy should I care? Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death. I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little roguepetite tratresse! Reflect, if you can, how you av always treat Madame. You av attempt to ruin meyou conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy meand you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to meyou ad no mercy for meyou join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? Bah! This terrific Bah! with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder. I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the houndmore than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not careI ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely. XXVIII Spiced Claret I did not lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heaven. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets. The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent there is a sudden curve there, two great ashtrees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picturethe same motion without progressthe same dreadful suspense and impatience. I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first one then another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage moodssometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth. She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative. I had not moved since she left my room. She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wildbeast stare. You are a very secrete family, you Ruthynsyou are so coning. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away tonight. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis. Madames words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Megs journey was already frustrated she was not to reach Elverston in time. Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for me. It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering. I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible and exaggerated distinctnessOh Meg!Oh cousin Monica!Oh come! Oh Heaven, have mercy!Lord, have mercy! I thought I heard a roaring and jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silass room. It might be the tipsy violence of Madame. It mightmerciful Heaven!be the arrival of friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was it in my brain?was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open. I fled wildly. There was a subsiding sound of voices in my uncles room. I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stairhead outside my uncles apartment. My hand was on the banisters, my foot on the first step, when below me and against the faint light that glimmered through the great window on the landing I saw a bulky human form ascending, and a voice said Hush! I staggered back, and at that instant fancied, with a thrill of conviction, I heard Lady Knollyss voice in Uncle Silas room. I dont know how I entered the room; I was there like a ghost. I was frightened at my own state. Lady Knollys was not thereno one but Madame and my guardian. I can never forget the look that Uncle Silas fixed on me as he cowered, seemingly as appalled as I. I think I must have looked like a phantom newly risen from the grave. Whats that?where do you come from? whispered he. Death! death! was my whispered answer, as I froze with terror where I stood. What does she mean?what does all this mean? said Uncle Silas, recovering wonderfully, and turning with a withering sneer on Madame. Do you think it right to disobey my plain directions, and let her run about the house at this hour? Death! death! Oh, pray to God for you and me! I whispered in the same dreadful tones. My uncle stared strangely at me again; and after several horrible seconds, in which he seemed to have recovered himself, he said, sternly and coolly You give too much place to your imagination, niece. Your spirits are in an odd stateyou ought to have advice. Oh, uncle, pity me! Oh, uncle, you are good! youre kind; youre kind when you think. You could notyou could notcould not! Oh, think of your brother that was always so good to you! He sees me here. He sees us both. Oh, save me, unclesave me!and Ill give up everything to you. Ill pray to God to bless youIll never forget your goodness and mercy. But dont keep me in doubt. If Im to go, oh, for Gods sake, shoot me now! You were always odd, niece; I begin to fear you are insane, he replied, in the same stern icy tone. Oh, uncleoh!am I? Am I mad? I hope not; but youll conduct yourself like a sane person if you wish to enjoy the privileges of one. Then, with his finger pointing at me, he turned to Madame, and said, in a tone of suppressed ferocity Whats the meaning of this?why is she here? Madame was gabbling volubly, but to me it was only a shrilly noise. My whole soul was concentrated in my uncle, the arbiter of my life, before whom I stood in the wildest agony of supplication. That night was dreadful. The people I saw dizzily, made of smoke or shining vapour, smiling or frowning, I could have passed my hand through them. They were evil spirits. Theres no ill intended you; by theres none, said my uncle, for the first time violently agitated. Madame told you why weve changed your room. You told her about the bailiffs, did not you? with a stamp of fury he demanded of Madame, whose nasal roullades of talk were running on like a accompaniment all the time. She had told me indeed only a few hours since, and now it sounded to me like the echo of something heard a month ago or more. You cant go about the house, dn it, with bailiffs in occupation. There nowtheres the whole thing. Get to your room, Maud, and dont vex me. Theres a good girl. He was trying to smile as he spoke these last words, and, with quavering soft tones, to quiet me; but the old scowl was there, the smile was corpselike and contorted, and the softness of his tones was more dreadful than another mans ferocity. There, Madame, shell go quite gently, and you can call if you want help. Dont let it happen again. Come, Maud, said Madame, encircling but not hurting my arm with her grip; let us go, my friend. I did go, you will wonder, as well you mayas you may wonder at the docility with which strong men walk through the pressroom to the drop, and thank the people of the prison for their civility when they bid them goodbye, and facilitate the fixing of the rope and adjusting of the cap. Have you never wondered that they dont make a last battle for life with the unscrupulous energy of terror, instead of surrendering it so gently in cold blood, on a silent calculation, the arithmetic of despair? I went upstairs with Madame like a somnambulist. I rather quickened my step as I drew near my room. I went in, and stood a phantom at the window, looking into the dark quadrange. A thin glimmering crescent hung in the frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at the other side spread on the dark azure of the night this glorious blazonry of the unfathomable Creator. To me a dreadful scrollinexorable eyesthe cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers and agonies. I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silass littered room, and the travelling bags and black boxes plied on the floor by his tablethe desk, hatcase, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready for a journeyreached my brain and suggested thought. The miseenscne had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I wonderedWhen is he goinghow soon? Is he going to carry me away and place me in a madhouse? Am Iam I mad? I began to think. Is this all a dream, or is it real? I remembered how a thin polite gentleman, with a tall grizzled head and a black velvet waistcoat, came into the carriage on our journey, and said a few words to me; how Madame whispered him something, and he murmured Oh! very gently, with raised eyebrows, and a glance at me, and thenceforward spoke no more to me, only to Madame, and at the next station carried his hat and other travelling chattels into another carriage. Had she told him I was mad? These horrid bars! Madame always with me! The direful hints that dropt from my uncle! My own terrific sensations!All these evidences revolved in my brain, and presented themselves in turn like writings on a wheel of fire. There came a knock to the door Oh, Meg! Was it she? No; old Wyat whispered Madame something about her room. So Madame reentered, with a little silver tray and flagon in her hands, and a glass. Nothing came from Uncle Silas in ungentlemanlike fashion. Drink, Maud, said Madame, raising the cover, and evidently enjoying the fragrant steam. I could not. I might have done so had I been able to swallow anythingfor I was too distracted to think of Megs warning. Madame suddenly recollected her mistake of that evening, and tried the door; but it was duly locked. She took the key from her pocket and placed it in her breast. You weel av these rooms to yourself, ma chre. I shall sleep downstairs tonight. She poured out some of the hot claret into the glass abstractedly, and drank it off. Tis very goodI drank without theenk. Bote tis very good. Why dont you drink some? I could not, I repeated. And Madame boldly helped herself. Vary polite, certally, to Madame was it to send nothing at all for hair (so she pronounced her); bote is all same thing. And so she ran on in her tipsy vein, which was loud and sarcastic, with a fierce laugh now and then. Afterwards I heard that they were afraid of Madame, who was given to cross purposes, and violent in her cups. She had been noisy and quarrelsome downstairs. She was under the delusion that I was to be conveyed away that night to a remote and safe place, and she was to be handsomely compensated for services and evidence to be afterwards given. She was not to be trusted, however, with the truth. That was to be known but to three people on earth. I never knew, but I believe that the spiced claret which Madame drank was drugged. She was a person who could, I have been told, drink a great deal without exhibiting any change from it but an inflamed colour and furious temper. I can only state for certain what I saw, and that was, that shortly after she had finished the claret she laid down upon my bed, and, I now know, fell asleep. I then thought she was feigning sleep only, and that she was really watching me. About an hour after this I suddenly heard a little clink in the yard beneath. I peeped out, but saw nothing. The sound was repeated, howeversometimes more frequently, sometimes at long intervals. At last, in the deep shadow next the farther wall, I thought I could discover a figure, sometimes erect, sometimes stooping and bowing toward the earth. I could see this figure only in the rudest outline mingling with the dark. Like a thunderbolt it smote my brain. They are making my grave! After the first dreadful stun I grew quite wild, and ran up and down the room wringing my hands and gasping prayers to heaven. Then a calm stole over mesuch a dreadful calm as I could fancy glide over one who floated in a boat under the shadow of the Traitors Gate, leaving life and hope and trouble behind. Shortly after there came a very low tap at my door; then another, like a tiny postknock. I could never understand why it was I made no answer. Had I done so, and thus shown that I was awake, it might have sealed my fate. I was standing in the middle of the floor staring at the door, which I expected to see open, and admit I knew not what troop of spectres. XXIX The Hour of Death It was a very still night and frosty. My candle had long burnt out. There was still a faint moonlight, which fell in a square of yellow on the floor near the window, leaving the rest of the room in what to an eye less accustomed than mine had become to that faint light would have been total darkness. Now, I am sure, I heard a soft whispering outside my door. I knew that I was in a state of siege! The crisis was come, and strange to say, I felt myself grow all at once resolute and selfpossessed. It was not a subsidence, however, of the dreadful excitement, but a sudden screwingup of my nerves to a pitch such as I cannot describe. I suppose the people outside moved with great caution; and the perfect solidity of the floor, which had not anywhere a creaking board in it, favoured their noiseless movements. It was well for me that there were in the house three persons whom it was part of their plan to mystify respecting my fate. This alone compelled the extreme caution of their proceedings. They suspected that I had placed furniture against the door, and were afraid to force it, lest a crash, a scream, perhaps a long and shrilly struggle, might follow. I remained for a space which I cannot pretend to estimate in the same posture, afraid to stirafraid to move my eye from the door. A very peculiar grating sound above my head startled me from my watchsomething of the character of sawing, only more crunching, and with a faint continued rumble in itutterly inexplicable. It sounded over that portion of the roof which was farthest from the door, toward which I now glided; and as I took my stand under cover of the projecting angle of a clumsy old press that stood close by it, I perceived the room a little darkened, and I saw a man descend and take his stand upon the windowstone. He let go a rope, which, however, was still fast round his body, and employed both his hands, with apparently some exertion, about something at the side of the window, which in a moment more, in one mass, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, admitting the frosty nightair; and the man, whom I now distinctly saw to be Dudley Ruthyn, kneeled on the sill, and stepped, after a moments listening, into the room. His foot made no sound upon the floor; his head was bare, and he wore his usual short shootingjacket. I cowered to the ground in my post of observation. He stood, as it seemed to me irresolutely for a moment, and then drew from his pocket an instrument which I distinctly saw against the faint moonlight. Imagine a hammer, one end of which had been beaten out into a longish tapering spike, with a handle something longer than usual. He drew stealthily to the window, and seemed to examine this hurriedly, and tested its strength with a twist or two of his hand. And then he adjusted it very carefully in his grasp, and made two or three little experimental picks with it in the air. I remained perfectly still, with a terrible composure, crouched in my hidingplace, my teeth clenched, and prepared to struggle like a tigress for my life when discovered. I thought his next measure would be to light a match. I saw a lantern, I fancied, on the windowsill. But this was not his plan. He stole, in a groping way, which seemed strange to me, who could distinguish objects in this light, to the side of my bed, the exact position of which he evidently knew; he stooped over it. Madame was breathing in the deep respiration of heavy sleep. Suddenly but softly he laid, as it seemed to me, his left hand over her face, and nearly at the same instant there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek, beginning small and swelling for two or three seconds into a yell such as are imagined in haunted houses, accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the arms drumming on the bed; and then another blowand with a horrid gasp he recoiled a step or two, and stood perfectly still. I heard a horrible tremor quivering through the joints and curtains of the bedsteadthe convulsions of the murdered woman. It was a dreadful sound, like the shaking of a tree and rustling of leaves. Then once more he steps to the side of the bed, and I heard another of those horrid blowsand silenceand anotherand more silenceand the diabolical surgery was ended.

For a few seconds, I think, I was on the point of fainting; but a gentle stir outside the door, close to my ear, startled me, and proved that there had been a watcher posted outside. There was a little tapping at the door. Whos that? whispered Dudley, hoarsely. A friend, answered a sweet voice. And a key was introduced, the door quickly unlocked, and Uncle Silas entered. I saw that frail, tall, white figure, the venerable silver locks that resembled those upon the honoured head of John Wesley, and his thin white hand, the back of which hung so close to my face that I feared to breathe. I could see his fingers twitching nervously. The smell of perfumes and of ether entered the room with him. Dudley was trembling now like a man in an aguefit. Look what you made me do! he said, maniacally. Steady, sir! said the old man, close beside me. Yes, you damned old murderer! Ive a mind to do for you. There, Dudley, like a dear boy, dont give way; its done. Right or wrong, we cant help it. You must be quiet, said the old man, with a stern gentleness. Dudley groaned. Whoever advised it, youre a gainer, Dudley, said Uncle Silas. Then there was a pause. I hope that was not heard, said Uncle Silas. Dudley walked to the window and stood there. Come, Dudley, you and Hawkes must use expedition. You know you must get that out of the way. Ive done too much. I wont do nout; Ill not touch it. I wish my hand was off first; I wish I was a soger. Do as ye like, you an Hawkes. I wont go nigh it; damn ye bothand that! and he hurled the hammer with all his force upon the floor. Come, come, be reasonable, Dudley, dear boy. Theres nothing to fear but your own folly. You wont make a noise? Oh, oh, my God! said Dudley, hoarsely, and wiped his forehead with his open hand. There now, youll be all well in a minute, continued the old man. You said twouldnt hurt her. If Id a known shed a screeched like that Id never a done it. Twas a damn lie. Youre the damndest villain on earth. Come, Dudley! said the old man under his breath, but very sternly, make up your mind. If you dont choose to go on, it cant be helped; only its a pity you began. For you it is a good dealit does not much matter for me. Ay, for you! echoed Dudley, through his set teeth. The old talk! Well, sir, snarled the old man, in the same low tones, you should have thought of all this before. Its only taking leave of the world a year or two sooner, but a year or twos something. Ill leave you to do as you please. Stop, will you? Stop here. I know its a fixt thing now. If a fella does a thing hes damned for, you might let him talk a bit anyhow. I dont care much if I was shot. There nowtherejust stick to that, and dont run off again. Theres a box and a bag here; we must change the direction, and take them away. The box has some jewels. Can you see them? I wish we had a light. No, Id rayther not; I can see well enough. I wish we were out o this. Heres the box. Pull it to the window, said the old man, to my inexpressible relief advancing at last a few steps. Coolness was given me in that dreadful moment, and I knew that all depended on my being prompt and resolute. I stood up swiftly. I often thought if I had happened to wear silk instead of the cachmere I had on that night, its rustle would have betrayed me. I distinctly saw the tall stooping figure of my uncle, and the outline of his venerable tresses, as he stood between me and the dull light of the window, like a shape cut in card. He was saying just to there, and pointing with his long arm at that contracting patch of moonlight which lay squared upon the floor. The door was about a quarter open, and just as Dudley began to drag Madames heavy box, with my jewelcase in it, across the floor from her room, inhaling a great breathwith a mental prayer for helpI glided on tiptoe from the room and found myself on the gallery floor. I turned to my right, simply by chance, and followed a long gallery in the dark, not runningI was too fearful of making the least noisebut walking with the tiptoeswiftness of terror. At the termination of this was a crossgallery, one end of whichthat to my leftterminated in a great window, through which the dusky nightview was visible. With the instinct of terror I chose the darker, and turned again to my right; hurrying through this long and nearly dark passage, I was terrified by a light, about thirty feet before me, emerging from the ceiling. In spotted patches this light fell through the door and sides of a stable lantern, and showed me a ladder, down which, from an open skylight I suppose for the cool nightair floated in my face, came Dickon Hawkes notwithstanding his maimed condition, with so much celerity as to leave me hardly a moment for consideration. He sat on the last round of the ladder, and tightened the strap of his wooden leg. At my left was a doorcase open, but no door. I entered; it was a short passage about six feet long, leading perhaps to a backstair, but the door at the end was locked. I was forced to stand in this recess, then, which afforded no shelter, while Pegtop stumped by with his lantern in his hand. I fancy he had some idea of listening to his master unperceived, for he stopped close to my hidingplace, blew out the candle, and pinched the long snuff with his horny finger and thumb. Having listened for a few seconds, he stumped stealthily along the gallery which I had just traversed, and turned the corner in the direction of the chamber where the crime had just been committed, and the discovery was impending. I could see him against the broad window which in the daytime lighted this long passage, and the moment he had passed the corner I resumed my flight. I descended a stair corresponding with that backstair, as I am told, up which Madame had led me only the night before. I tried the outer door. To my wild surprise it was open. In a moment I was upon the step, in the free air, and as instantaneously was seized by the arm in the grip of a man. It was Tom Brice, who had already betrayed me, and who was now, in surtout and hat, waiting to drive the carriage with the guilty father and son from the scene of their abhorred outrage. XXX In the Oak Parlour So it was vain I was trapped, and all was over. I stood before him on the step, the white moon shining on my face. I was trembling so that I wonder I could stand, my helpless hands raised towards him, and I looked up in his face. A long shuddering moanOhohoh! was all I uttered. The man, still holding my arm, looked, I thought frightened, into my white dumb face. Suddenly he said, in a wild, fierce whisper Never say another word (I had not uttered one). They shant hurt ye, Miss; git ye in; I dont care a damn! It was an uncouth speech. To me it was the voice of an angel. With a burst of gratitude that sounded in my own ears like a laugh, I thanked God for those blessed words. In a moment more he had placed me in the carriage, and almost instantly we were in motionvery cautiously while crossing the court, until he had got the wheels upon the grass, and then at a rapid pace, improving his speed as the distance increased. He drove along the side of the backapproach to the house, keeping on the grass; so that our progress, though swaying like that of a ship in a swell, was very nearly as noiseless. The gate had been left unlockedhe swung it open, and remounted the box. And we were now beyond the spell of BartramHaugh, thunderingHeaven be praised!along the Queens highway, right in the route to Elverston. It was literally a gallop. Through the chariot windows I saw Tom stand as he drove, and every now and then throw an awful glance over his shoulder. Were we pursued? Never was agony of prayer like mine, as with clasped hands and wild stare I gazed through the windows on the road, whose trees and hedges and gabled cottages were chasing one another backward at so giddy a speed. We were now ascending that identical steep, with the giant ashtrees at the right and the stile between, which my vision of Meg Hawkes had presented all that night, when my excited eye detected a running figure within the hedge. I saw the head of someone crossing the stile in pursuit, and I heard Brices name shrieked. Drive ononon! I screamed. But Brice pulled up. I was on my knees on the floor of the carriage, with clasped hands, expecting capture, when the door opened, and Meg Hawkes, pale as death, her cloak drawn over her black tresses, looked in. Oh!ho!ho!thank God! she screamed. Shake hands, lass. Tom, yer a good un! Hes a good lad, Tom. Come in, Megyou must sit by me, I said, recovering all at once. Meg made no demur. Take my hand, I said offering mine to her disengaged one. I cant, Missmy arms broke. And so it was, poor thing! She had been espied and overtaken in her errand of mercy for me, and her ruffian father had felled her with his cudgel, and then locked her into the cottage, whence, however, she had contrived to escape, and was now flying to Elverston, having tried in vain to get a hearing in Feltram, whose people had been for hours in bed. The door being shut upon Meg, the steaming horses were instantly at a gallop again. Tom was still watching as before, with many an anxious glance to rearward, for pursuit. Again he pulled up, and came to the window. Oh, what is it? cried I. Bout that letter, Miss; I couldnt help. Twas Dickon, he found it in my pocket. Thats a. Oh yes!no matterthank youthank Heaven! Are we near Elverston? Twill be a mile, Miss and pleasem to mind I had no finger int. Thanksthank youyoure very goodI shall always thank you, Tom, as long as I live! At length we entered Elverston. I think I was half wild. I dont know how I got into the hall. I was in the oakparlour, I believe, when I saw cousin Monica. I was standing, my arms extended. I could not speak; but I ran with a loud long scream into her arms. I forget a great deal after that. Colophon Uncle Silas was published in 1864 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Kenneth Williams, and is based on a transcription produced in 2005 by Suzanne Shell, Bob McKillip, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from Google Books. The cover page is adapted from Study of an Old Man with a Gold Chain, a painting completed in 1632 by Rembrandt. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 13, 2024, 914 p.m. and is based on revision 692d1c5. The first edition of this ebook was released on December 6, 2017, 837 p.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksjsheridanlefanuunclesilas. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Conclusion Oh, my beloved cousin Monica! Thank Heaven, you are living still, and younger, I think, than I in all things but in years. And Milly, my dear companion, she is now the happy wife of that good little clergyman, Sprigge Biddlepen. It has been in my power to be of use to them, and he shall have the next presentation to Dawling. Meg Hawkes, proud and wayward, and the most affectionate creature on earth, was married to Tom Brice a few months after these events; and, as both wished to emigrate, I furnished them with the capital, and I am told they are likely to be rich. I hear from my kind Meg often, and she seems very happy. My dear old friends, Mary Quince and Mrs. Rusk, are, alas! growing old, but living with me, and very happy. And after long solicitation, I persuaded Doctor Bryerly, the best and truest of ministers, with my dearest friends concurrence, to undertake the management of the Derbyshire estates. In this I have been most fortunate. He is the very person for such a chargeso punctual, so laborious, so kind, and so shrewd. In compliance with medical advice, cousin Monica hurried me away to the Continent, where she would never permit me to allude to the terrific scenes which remain branded so awfully on my brain. It needed no constraint. It is a sort of agony to me even now to think of them. The plan was craftily devised. Neither old Wyat nor Giles, the butler, had a suspicion that I had returned to Bartram. Had I been put to death, the secret of my fate would have been deposited in the keeping of four persons onlythe two Ruthyns, Hawkes, and ultimately Madame. My dear cousin Monica had been artfully led to believe in my departure for France, and prepared for my silence. Suspicion might not have been excited for a year after my death, and then would never, in all probability, have pointed to Bartram as the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Rougierre was unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of BartramHaugh. It was more than two years after that I heard what had befallen at Bartram after my flight. Old Wyat, who went early to Uncle Silass room, to her surprisefor he had told her that he was that night to accompany his son, who had to meet the mailtrain to Derby at five oclock in the morningsaw her old master lying on the sofa, much in his usual position. There was nout much strange about him, old Wyat said, but that his scentbottle was spilt on its side over on the table, and he dead. She thought he was not quite cold when she found him, and she sent the old butler for Doctor Jolks, who said he died of too much loddlum. Of my wretched uncles religion what am I to say? Was it utter hypocrisy, or had it at any time a vein of sincerity in it? I cannot say. I dont believe that he had any heart left for religion, which is the highest form of affection, to take hold of. Perhaps he was a sceptic with misgivings about the future, but past the time for finding anything reliable in it. The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels. The idea of marrying me to his son by fair means, then by foul, and, when that wicked chance was gone, then the design of seizing all by murder, supervened. I dare say that Uncle Silas thought for a while that he was a righteous man. He wished to have heaven and to escape hell, if there were such places. But there were other things whose existence was not speculative, of which some he coveted, and some he dreaded more, and temptation came. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every mans work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is. There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; he which is filthy, let him be filthy still. Dudley had disappeared; but in one of her letters, Meg, writing from her Australian farm, says Theres a fella in toon as calls hisself Colbroke, wi a good hoose o wood, fifteen foot length, and as by bout as silling o the pearler o Bartramonly lots o rats, they do say, my ladya bying and sellin of goold back and forred wi the diggin foke and the marchants. His chick and mouth be wry wi scar o burns or vitterel, an no wiskers, bless you; but my Tom ee toll him he knowed him for Master Doodley. I ant seed him; but he sade ad shute Tom soon is look at im, an denide it, wi mouthful o curses and oaf. Tom baint right shure; if I seed un wons id no for sartin; but appen, twil best be let be. This was all. Old Hawkes stood his ground, relying on the profound cunning with which their actual proceedings had been concealed, even from the suspicions of the two inmates of the house, and on the mystery that habitually shrouded BartramHaugh and all its belongings from the eyes of the outer world. Strangely enough, he fancied that I had made my escape long before the room was entered; and, even if he were arrested, there was no evidence, he was certain, to connect him with the murder, all knowledge of which he would stoutly deny. There was an inquest on the body of my uncle, and Dr. Jolks was the chief witness. They found that his death was caused by an excessive dose of laudanum, accidentally administered by himself. It was not until nearly a year after the dreadful occurrences at Bartram that Dickon Hawkes was arrested on a very awful charge, and placed in gaol. It was an old crime, committed in Lancashire, that had found him out. After his conviction, as a last chance, he tried a disclosure of all the circumstances of the unsuspected death of the Frenchwoman. Her body was discovered buried where he indicated, in the inner court of BartramHaugh, and, after due legal enquiry, was interred in the churchyard of Feltram. Thus I escaped the horrors of the witnessbox, or the far worse torture of a dreadful secret. Doctor Bryerly, shortly after Lady Knollys had described to him the manner in which Dudley entered my room, visited the house of BartramHaugh, and minutely examined the windows of the room in which Mr. Charke had slept on the night of his murder. One of these he found provided with powerful steel hinges, very craftily sunk and concealed in the timber of the windowframe, which was secured by an iron pin outside, and swung open on its removal. This was the room in which they had placed me, and this the contrivance by means of which the room had been entered. The problem of Mr. Charkes murder was solved. I have penned it. I sit for a moment breathless. My hands are cold and damp. I rise with a great sigh, and look out on the sweet green landscape and pastoral hills, and see the flowers and birds and the waving boughs of glorious treesall images of liberty and safety; and as the tremendous nightmare of my youth melts into air, I lift my eyes in boundless gratitude to the God of all comfort, whose mighty hand and outstretched arm delivered me. When I lower my eyes and unclasp my hands, my cheeks are wet with tears. A tiny voice is calling me Mamma! and a beloved smiling face, with his dear fathers silken brown tresses, peeps in. Yes, darling, our walk. Come away! I am Lady Ilbury, happy in the affection of a beloved and noblehearted husband. The shy useless girl you have known is now a mothertrying to be a good one; and this, the last pledge, has lived. I am not going to tell of sorrowshow brief has been my pride of early maternity, or how beloved were those whom the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. But sometimes as, smiling on my little boy, the tears gather in my eyes, and he wonders, I can see, why they come, I am thinkingand trembling while I smileto think, how strong is love, how frail is life; and rejoicing while I tremble that, in the deathless love of those who mourn, the Lord of Life, who never gave a pang in vain, conveys the sweet and ennobling promise of a compensation by eternal reunion. So, through my sorrows, I have heard a voice from heaven say, Write, from hencefore blessed are the dead that die in the Lord! This world is a parablethe habitation of symbolsthe phantoms of spiritual things immortal shown in material shape. May the blessed secondsight be mineto recognise under these beautiful forms of earth the Angels who wear them; for I am sure we may walk with them if we will, and hear them speak! To the right Hon. the Countess of Gifford, as a token of respect, sympathy, and admiration, this tale is inscribed by the Author. Uncle Silas A Tale of BartramHaugh Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from Google Books. The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook. Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. A Preliminary Word The writer of this Tale ventures, in his own person, to address a very few words, chiefly of explanation, to his readers. A leading situation in this Story of BartramHaugh is repeated, with a slight variation, from a short magazine tale of some fifteen pages written by him, and published long ago in a periodical under the title of A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess, and afterwards, still anonymously, in a small volume under an altered title. It is very unlikely that any of his readers should have encountered, and still more so that they should remember, this trifle. The bare possibility, however, he has ventured to anticipate by this brief explanation, lest he should be charged with plagiarismalways a disrespect to a reader. May he be permitted a few words also of remonstrance against the promiscuous application of the term sensation to that large school of fiction which transgresses no one of those canons of construction and morality which, in producing the unapproachable Waverley Novels, their great author imposed upon himself? No one, it is assumed, would describe Sir Walter Scotts romances as sensation novels; yet in that marvellous series there is not a single tale in which death, crime, and, in some form, mystery, have not a place. Passing by those grand romances of Ivanhoe, Old Mortality, and Kenilworth, with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed, constructed with so fine a mastery of the art of exciting suspense and horror, let the reader pick out those two exceptional novels in the series which profess to paint contemporary manners and the scenes of common life; and remembering in the Antiquary the vision in the tapestried chamber, the duel, the horrible secret, and the death of old Elspeth, the drowned fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tidebound party under the cliffs; and in St. Ronans Well, the longdrawn mystery, the suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide;determine whether an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scotts stories, is fairly applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, yet observe the same limitations of incident, and the same moral aims. The author trusts that the Press, to whose masterly criticism and generous encouragement he and other humble labourers in the art owe so much, will insist upon the limitation of that degrading term to the peculiar type of fiction which it was originally intended to indicate, and prevent, as they may, its being made to include the legitimate school of tragic English romance, which has been ennobled, and in great measure founded, by the genius of Sir Walter Scott. December, 1864. Uncle Silas By J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Volume I Volume II Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dedication A Preliminary Word Uncle Silas Volume I I Austin Ruthyn, of Knowl, and His Daughter II Uncle Silas III A New Face IV Madame de la Rougierre V Sights and Noises VI A Walk in the Wood VII Church Scarsdale VIII The Smoker IX Monica Knollys X Lady Knollys Removes a Coverlet XI Lady Knollys Sees the Features XII A Curious Conversation XIII Before and After Breakfast XIV Angry Words XV A Warning XVI Doctor Bryerly Looks In XVII An Adventure XVIII A Midnight Visitor XIX Au Revoir XX Austin Ruthyn Sets Out on His Journey XXI Arrivals XXII Somebody in the Room with the Coffin XXIII I Talk with Doctor Bryerly XXIV The Opening of the Will XXV I Hear from Uncle Silas XXVI The Story of Uncle Silas XXVII More About Tom Charkes Suicide XXVIII I Am Persuaded XXIX How the Ambassador Fared XXX On the Road XXXI BartramHaugh XXXII Uncle Silas XXXIII The Windmill Wood XXXIV Zamiel XXXV We Visit a Room in the Second Storey Volume II I An Arrival at Dead of Night II Doctor Bryerly Emerges III A Midnight Departure IV Cousin Monica and Uncle Silas Meet V In Which I Make Another Cousins Acquaintance VI My Cousin Dudley VII Elverston and Its People VIII News at Bartram Gate IX A Friend Arises X A ChapterFull of Lovers XI The Rivals XII Doctor Bryerly Reappears XIII Question and Answer XIV An Apparition XV Millys Farewell XVI Sarah Matilda Comes to Light XVII The Picture of a Wolf XVIII An Odd Proposal XIX In Search of Mr. Charkes Skeleton XX The Foot of Hercules XXI I Conspire XXII The Letter XXIII Lady Knollys Carriage XXIV A Sudden Departure XXV The Journey XXVI Our Bedchamber XXVII A WellKnown Face Looks In XXVIII Spiced Claret XXIX The Hour of Death XXX In the Oak Parlour Conclusion Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks Uncle Silas

I I Take a Country House This is the story of how a middleaged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. For twenty years I had been perfectly comfortable; for twenty years I had had the windowboxes filled in the spring, the carpets lifted, the awnings put up and the furniture covered with brown linen; for as many summers I had said goodbye to my friends, and, after watching their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet in town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water supply does not depend on a tank on the roof. And thenthe madness seized me. When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I have turned very grayLiddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little bluing in the rinsewater would make my hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things and I snapped her off. No, I said sharply, Im not going to use bluing at my time of life, or starch, either. Liddys nerves are gone, she says, since that awful summer, but she has enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go around with a lump in her throat, all I have to do is to threaten to return to Sunnyside, and she is frightened into a semblance of cheerfulnessfrom which you may judge that the summer there was anything but a success. The newspaper accounts have been so garbled and incompleteone of them mentioned me but once, and then only as the tenant at the time the thing happenedthat I feel it my due to tell what I know. Mr. Jamieson, the detective, said himself he could never have done without me, although he gave me little enough credit, in print. I shall have to go back several yearsthirteen, to be exactto start my story. At that time my brother died, leaving me his two children. Halsey was eleven then, and Gertrude was seven. All the responsibilities of maternity were thrust upon me suddenly; to perfect the profession of motherhood requires precisely as many years as the child has lived, like the man who started to carry the calf and ended by walking along with the bull on his shoulders. However, I did the best I could. When Gertrude got past the hairribbon age, and Halsey asked for a scarfpin and put on long trousersand a wonderful help that was to the darning!I sent them away to good schools. After that, my responsibility was chiefly postal, with three months every summer in which to replenish their wardrobes, look over their lists of acquaintances, and generally to take my fostermotherhood out of its nine months retirement in camphor. I missed the summers with them when, somewhat later, at boardingschool and college, the children spent much of their vacations with friends. Gradually I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter, though I wrote them at stated intervals. But when Halsey had finished his electrical course and Gertrude her boardingschool, and both came home to stay, things were suddenly changed. The winter Gertrude came out was nothing but a succession of sitting up late at night to bring her home from things, taking her to the dressmakers between naps the next day, and discouraging ineligible youths with either more money than brains, or more brains than money. Also, I acquired a great many things to say lingerie for undergarments, frocks and gowns instead of dresses, and that beardless sophomores are not college boys, but college men. Halsey required less personal supervision, and as they both got their mothers fortune that winter, my responsibility became purely moral. Halsey bought a car, of course, and I learned how to tie over my bonnet a gray baize veil, and, after a time, never to stop to look at the dogs one has run down. People are apt to be so unpleasant about their dogs. The additions to my education made me a properly equipped maiden aunt, and by spring I was quite tractable. So when Halsey suggested camping in the Adirondacks and Gertrude wanted Bar Harbor, we compromised on a good country house with links near, within motor distance of town and telephone distance of the doctor. That was how we went to Sunnyside. We went out to inspect the property, and it seemed to deserve its name. Its cheerful appearance gave no indication whatever of anything out of the ordinary. Only one thing seemed unusual to me the housekeeper, who had been left in charge, had moved from the house to the gardeners lodge, a few days before. As the lodge was far enough away from the house, it seemed to me that either fire or thieves could complete their work of destruction undisturbed. The property was an extensive one the house on the top of a hill, which sloped away in great stretches of green lawn and clipped hedges, to the road; and across the valley, perhaps a couple of miles away, was the Greenwood Club House. Gertrude and Halsey were infatuated. Why, its everything you want, Halsey said. View, air, good water and good roads. As for the house, its big enough for a hospital, if it has a Queen Anne front and a Mary Anne back, which was ridiculous it was pure Elizabethan. Of course we took the place; it was not my idea of comfort, being much too large and sufficiently isolated to make the servant question serious. But I give myself credit for this whatever has happened since, I never blamed Halsey and Gertrude for taking me there. And another thing if the series of catastrophes there did nothing else, it taught me one thingthat somehow, somewhere, from perhaps a halfcivilized ancestor who wore a sheepskin garment and trailed his food or his prey, I have in me the instinct of the chase. Were I a man I should be a trapper of criminals, trailing them as relentlessly as no doubt my sheepskin ancestor did his wild boar. But being an unmarried woman, with the handicap of my sex, my first acquaintance with crime will probably be my last. Indeed, it came near enough to being my last acquaintance with anything. The property was owned by Paul Armstrong, the president of the Traders Bank, who at the time we took the house was in the west with his wife and daughter, and a Doctor Walker, the Armstrong family physician. Halsey knew Louise Armstronghad been rather attentive to her the winter before, but as Halsey was always attentive to somebody, I had not thought of it seriously, although she was a charming girl. I knew of Mr. Armstrong only through his connection with the bank, where the childrens money was largely invested, and through an ugly story about the son, Arnold Armstrong, who was reported to have forged his fathers name, for a considerable amount, to some bank paper. However, the story had had no interest for me. I cleared Halsey and Gertrude away to a house party, and moved out to Sunnyside the first of May. The roads were bad, but the trees were in leaf, and there were still tulips in the borders around the house. The arbutus was fragrant in the woods under the dead leaves, and on the way from the station, a short mile, while the car stuck in the mud, I found a bank showered with tiny forgetmenots. The birdsdont ask me what kind; they all look alike to me, unless they have a hallmark of some bright colorthe birds were chirping in the hedges, and everything breathed of peace. Liddy, who was born and bred on a brick pavement, got a little bit downspirited when the crickets began to chirp, or scrape their legs together, or whatever it is they do, at twilight. The first night passed quietly enough. I have always been grateful for that one nights peace; it shows what the country might be, under favorable circumstances. Never after that night did I put my head on my pillow with any assurance how long it would be there; or on my shoulders, for that matter. On the following morning Liddy and Mrs. Ralston, my own housekeeper, had a difference of opinion, and Mrs. Ralston left on the eleven train. Just after luncheon, Burke, the butler, was taken unexpectedly with a pain in his right side, much worse when I was within hearing distance, and by afternoon he was started cityward. That night the cooks sister had a babythe cook, seeing indecision in my face, made it twins on second thoughtand, to be short, by noon the next day the household staff was down to Liddy and myself. And this in a house with twentytwo rooms and five baths! Liddy wanted to go back to the city at once, but the milkboy said that Thomas Johnson, the Armstrongs colored butler, was working as a waiter at the Greenwood Club, and might come back. I have the usual scruples about coercing peoples servants away, but few of us have any conscience regarding institutions or corporationswitness the way we beat railroads and streetcar companies when we canso I called up the club, and about eight oclock Thomas Johnson came to see me. Poor Thomas! Well, it ended by my engaging Thomas on the spot, at outrageous wages, and with permission to sleep in the gardeners lodge, empty since the house was rented. The old manhe was whitehaired and a little stooped, but with an immense idea of his personal dignitygave me his reasons hesitatingly. I aint sayin nothin, Mis Innes, he said, with his hand on the doorknob, but theres been goinson here this las few months as aint natchal. Taint one thing an taint anotherits jest a door squealin here, an a winder closin there, but when doors an winders gets to cuttin up capers and theres nobody nigh em, its time Thomas Johnson sleeps somewhars else. Liddy, who seemed to be never more than ten feet away from me that night, and was afraid of her shadow in that great barn of a place, screamed a little, and turned a yellowgreen. But I am not easily alarmed. It was entirely in vain; I represented to Thomas that we were alone, and that he would have to stay in the house that night. He was politely firm, but he would come over early the next morning, and if I gave him a key, he would come in time to get some sort of breakfast. I stood on the huge veranda and watched him shuffle along down the shadowy drive, with mingled feelingsirritation at his cowardice and thankfulness at getting him at all. I am not ashamed to say that I doublelocked the hall door when I went in. You can lock up the rest of the house and go to bed, Liddy, I said severely. You give me the creeps standing there. A woman of your age ought to have better sense. It usually braces Liddy to mention her age she owns to fortywhich is absurd. Her mother cooked for my grandfather, and Liddy must be at least as old as I. But that night she refused to brace. Youre not going to ask me to lock up, Miss Rachel! she quavered. Why, theres a dozen French windows in the drawingroom and the billiardroom wing, and every one opens on a porch. And Mary Anne said that last night there was a man standing by the stable when she locked the kitchen door. Mary Anne was a fool, I said sternly. If there had been a man there, she would have had him in the kitchen and been feeding him what was left from dinner, inside of an hour, from force of habit. Now dont be ridiculous. Lock up the house and go to bed. I am going to read. But Liddy set her lips tight and stood still. Im not going to bed, she said. I am going to pack up, and tomorrow I am going to leave. Youll do nothing of the sort, I snapped. Liddy and I often desire to part company, but never at the same time. If you are afraid, I will go with you, but for goodness sake dont try to hide behind me. The house was a typical summer residence on an extensive scale. Wherever possible, on the first floor, the architect had done away with partitions, using arches and columns instead. The effect was cool and spacious, but scarcely cozy. As Liddy and I went from one window to another, our voices echoed back at us uncomfortably. There was plenty of lightthe electric plant down in the village supplied usbut there were long vistas of polished floor, and mirrors which reflected us from unexpected corners, until I felt some of Liddys foolishness communicate itself to me. The house was very long, a rectangle in general form, with the main entrance in the center of the long side. The brickpaved entry opened into a short hall to the right of which, separated only by a row of pillars, was a huge livingroom. Beyond that was the drawingroom, and in the end, the billiardroom. Off the billiardroom, in the extreme right wing, was a den, or cardroom, with a small hall opening on the east veranda, and from there went up a narrow circular staircase. Halsey had pointed it out with delight. Just look, Aunt Rachel, he said with a flourish. The architect that put up this joint was wise to a few things. Arnold Armstrong and his friends could sit here and play cards all night and stumble up to bed in the early morning, without having the family send in a police call. Liddy and I got as far as the cardroom and turned on all the lights. I tried the small entry door there, which opened on the veranda, and examined the windows. Everything was secure, and Liddy, a little less nervous now, had just pointed out to me the disgracefully dusty condition of the hardwood floor, when suddenly the lights went out. We waited a moment; I think Liddy was stunned with fright, or she would have screamed. And then I clutched her by the arm and pointed to one of the windows opening on the porch. The sudden change threw the window into relief, an oblong of grayish light, and showed us a figure standing close, peering in. As I looked it darted across the veranda and out of sight in the darkness. II A Link CuffButton Liddys knees seemed to give away under her. Without a sound she sank down, leaving me staring at the window in petrified amazement. Liddy began to moan under her breath, and in my excitement I reached down and shook her. Stop it, I whispered. Its only a womanmaybe a maid of the Armstrongs. Get up and help me find the door. She groaned again. Very well, I said, then Ill have to leave you here. Im going. She moved at that, and, holding to my sleeve, we felt our way, with numerous collisions, to the billiardroom, and from there to the drawingroom. The lights came on then, and, with the long French windows unshuttered, I had a creepy feeling that each one sheltered a peering face. In fact, in the light of what happened afterward, I am pretty certain we were under surveillance during the entire ghostly evening. We hurried over the rest of the lockingup and got upstairs as quickly as we could. I left the lights all on, and our footsteps echoed cavernously. Liddy had a stiff neck the next morning, from looking back over her shoulder, and she refused to go to bed. Let me stay in your dressingroom, Miss Rachel, she begged. If you dont, Ill sit in the hall outside the door. Im not going to be murdered with my eyes shut. If youre going to be murdered, I retorted, it wont make any difference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in the dressingroom, if you will lie on the couch when you sleep in a chair you snore. She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came to the door and looked in to where I was composing myself for sleep with Drummonds Spiritual Life. That wasnt a woman, Miss Rachel, she said, with her shoes in her hand. It was a man in a long coat. What woman was a man? I discouraged her without looking up, and she went back to the couch. It was eleven oclock when I finally prepared for bed. In spite of my assumption of indifference, I locked the door into the hall, and finding the transom did not catch, I put a chair cautiously before the doorit was not necessary to rouse Liddyand climbing up put on the ledge of the transom a small dressingmirror, so that any movement of the frame would send it crashing down. Then, secure in my precautions, I went to bed. I did not go to sleep at once. Liddy disturbed me just as I was growing drowsy, by coming in and peering under the bed. She was afraid to speak, however, because of her previous snubbing, and went back, stopping in the doorway to sigh dismally. Somewhere downstairs a clock with a chime sang away the hourseleventhirty, fortyfive, twelve. And then the lights went out to stay. The Casanova Electric Company shuts up shop and goes home to bed at midnight when one has a party, I believe it is customary to fee the company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person always awake and ready to talk when she wasnt wanted and dozing off to sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipethen I got up and lighted a bedroom candle. My bedroom and dressing room were above the big livingroom on the first floor. On the second floor a long corridor ran the length of the house, with rooms opening from both sides. In the wings were small corridors crossing the main onethe plan was simplicity itself. And just as I got back into bed, I heard a sound from the east wing, apparently, that made me stop, frozen, with one bedroom slipper half off, and listen. It was a rattling metallic sound, and it reverberated along the empty halls like the crash of doom. It was for all the world as if something heavy, perhaps a piece of steel, had rolled clattering and jangling down the hardwood stairs leading to the cardroom. In the silence that followed Liddy stirred and snored again. I was exasperated first she kept me awake by silly alarms, then when she was needed she slept like Joe Jefferson, or Ripthey are always the same to me. I went in and aroused her, and I give her credit for being wide awake the minute I spoke. Get up, I said, if you dont want to be murdered in your bed. Where? How? she yelled vociferously, and jumped up. Theres somebody in the house, I said. Get up. Well have to get to the telephone. Not out in the hall! she gasped; Oh, Miss Rachel, not out in the hall! trying to hold me back. But I am a large woman and Liddy is small. We got to the door, somehow, and Liddy held a brass andiron, which it was all she could do to lift, let alone brain anybody with. I listened, and, hearing nothing, opened the door a little and peered into the hall. It was a black void, full of terrible suggestion, and my candle only emphasized the gloom. Liddy squealed and drew me back again, and as the door slammed, the mirror I had put on the transom came down and hit her on the head. That completed our demoralization. It was some time before I could persuade her she had not been attacked from behind by a burglar, and when she found the mirror smashed on the floor she wasnt much better. Theres going to be a death! she wailed. Oh, Miss Rachel, theres going to be a death! There will be, I said grimly, if you dont keep quiet, Liddy Allen. And so we sat there until morning, wondering if the candle would last until dawn, and arranging what trains we could take back to town. If we had only stuck to that decision and gone back before it was too late! The sun came finally, and from my window I watched the trees along the drive take shadowy form, gradually lose their ghostlike appearance, become gray and then green. The Greenwood Club showed itself a dab of white against the hill across the valley, and an early robin or two hopped around in the dew. Not until the milkboy and the sun came, about the same time, did I dare to open the door into the hall and look around. Everything was as we had left it. Trunks were heaped here and there, ready for the trunkroom, and through an end window of stained glass came a streak of red and yellow daylight that was eminently cheerful. The milkboy was pounding somewhere below, and the day had begun. Thomas Johnson came ambling up the drive about halfpast six, and we could hear him clattering around on the lower floor, opening shutters. I had to take Liddy to her room upstairs, howevershe was quite sure she would find something uncanny. In fact, when she did not, having now the courage of daylight, she was actually disappointed. Well, we did not go back to town that day. The discovery of a small picture fallen from the wall of the drawingroom was quite sufficient to satisfy Liddy that the alarm had been a false one, but I was anything but convinced. Allowing for my nerves and the fact that small noises magnify themselves at night, there was still no possibility that the picture had made the series of sounds I heard. To prove it, however, I dropped it again. It fell with a single muffled crash of its wooden frame, and incidentally ruined itself beyond repair. I justified myself by reflecting that if the Armstrongs chose to leave pictures in unsafe positions, and to rent a house with a family ghost, the destruction of property was their responsibility, not mine. I warned Liddy not to mention what had happened to anybody, and telephoned to town for servants. Then after a breakfast which did more credit to Thomas heart than his head, I went on a short tour of investigation. The sounds had come from the east wing, and not without some qualms I began there. At first I found nothing. Since then I have developed my powers of observation, but at that time I was a novice. The small cardroom seemed undisturbed. I looked for footprints, which is, I believe, the conventional thing to do, although my experience has been that as clues both footprints and thumbmarks are more useful in fiction than in fact. But the stairs in that wing offered something. At the top of the flight had been placed a tall wicker hamper, packed, with linen that had come from town. It stood at the edge of the top step, almost barring passage, and on the step below it was a long fresh scratch. For three steps the scratch was repeated, gradually diminishing, as if some object had fallen, striking each one. Then for four steps nothing. On the fifth step below was a round dent in the hard wood. That was all, and it seemed little enough, except that I was positive the marks had not been there the day before. It bore out my theory of the sound, which had been for all the world like the bumping of a metallic object down a flight of steps. The four steps had been skipped. I reasoned that an iron bar, for instance, would do something of the sortstrike two or three steps, end down, then turn over, jumping a few stairs, and landing with a thud. Iron bars, however, do not fall downstairs in the middle of the night alone. Coupled with the figure on the veranda the agency by which it climbed might be assumed. Butand here was the thing that puzzled me mostthe doors were all fastened that morning, the windows unmolested, and the particular door from the cardroom to the veranda had a combination lock of which I held the key, and which had not been tampered with. I fixed on an attempt at burglary, as the most natural explanationan attempt frustrated by the falling of the object, whatever it was, that had roused me. Two things I could not understand how the intruder had escaped with everything locked, and why he had left the small silver, which, in the absence of a butler, had remained downstairs overnight. Under pretext of learning more about the place, Thomas Johnson led me through the house and the cellars, without result. Everything was in good order and repair; money had been spent lavishly on construction and plumbing. The house was full of conveniences, and I had no reason to repent my bargain, save the fact that, in the nature of things, night must come again. And other nights must followand we were a long way from a policestation. In the afternoon a hack came up from Casanova, with a fresh relay of servants. The driver took them with a flourish to the servants entrance, and drove around to the front of the house, where I was awaiting him. Two dollars, he said in reply to my question. I dont charge full rates, because, bringin em up all summer as I do, it pays to make a special price. When they got off the train, I sez, sez I, Theres another bunch for Sunnyside, cook, parlor maid and all. Yesmsix summers, and a new lot never less than once a month. They wont stand for the country and the lonesomeness, I reckon. But with the presence of the bunch of servants my courage revived, and late in the afternoon came a message from Gertrude that she and Halsey would arrive that night at about eleven oclock, coming in the car from Richfield. Things were looking up; and when Beulah, my cat, a most intelligent animal, found some early catnip on a bank near the house and rolled in it in a feline ecstasy, I decided that getting back to nature was the thing to do. While I was dressing for dinner, Liddy rapped at the door. She was hardly herself yet, but privately I think she was worrying about the broken mirror and its augury, more than anything else. When she came in she was holding something in her hand, and she laid it on the dressingtable carefully. I found it in the linen hamper, she said. It must be Mr. Halseys, but it seems queer how it got there. It was the half of a link cuffbutton of unique design, and I looked at it carefully. Where was it? In the bottom of the hamper? I asked. On the very top, she replied. Its a mercy it didnt fall out on the way. When Liddy had gone I examined the fragment attentively. I had never seen it before, and I was certain it was not Halseys. It was of Italian workmanship, and consisted of a motherofpearl foundation, encrusted with tiny seedpearls, strung on horsehair to hold them. In the center was a small ruby. The trinket was odd enough, but not intrinsically of great value. Its interest for me lay in this Liddy had found it lying in the top of the hamper which had blocked the eastwing stairs. That afternoon the Armstrongs housekeeper, a youngish goodlooking woman, applied for Mrs. Ralstons place, and I was glad enough to take her. She looked as though she might be equal to a dozen of Liddy, with her snapping black eyes and heavy jaw. Her name was Anne Watson, and I dined that evening for the first time in three days. III Mr. John Bailey Appears I had dinner served in the breakfastroom. Somehow the huge diningroom depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful enough all day, allowed his spirits to go down with the sun. He had a habit of watching the corners of the room, left shadowy by the candles on the table, and altogether it was not a festive meal. Dinner over I went into the livingroom. I had three hours before the children could possibly arrive, and I got out my knitting. I had brought along two dozen pairs of slipper soles in assorted sizesI always send knitted slippers to the Old Ladies Home at Christmasand now I sorted over the wools with a grim determination not to think about the night before. But my mind was not on my work at the end of a halfhour I found I had put a row of blue scallops on Eliza Klinefelters lavender slippers, and I put them away. I got out the cufflink and went with it to the pantry. Thomas was wiping silver and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. I sniffed and looked around, but there was no pipe to be seen. Thomas, I said, you have been smoking. No, mam. He was injured innocence itself. Its on my coat, mam. Over at the club the gentlemen But Thomas did not finish. The pantry was suddenly filled with the odor of singeing cloth. Thomas gave a clutch at his coat, whirled to the sink, filled a tumbler with water and poured it into his right pocket with the celerity of practice. Thomas, I said, when he was sheepishly mopping the floor, smoking is a filthy and injurious habit. If you must smoke, you must; but dont stick a lighted pipe in your pocket again. Your skins your own you can blister it if you like. But this house is not mine, and I dont want a conflagration. Did you ever see this cufflink before? No, he never had, he said, but he looked at it oddly. I picked it up in the hall, I added indifferently. The old mans eyes were shrewd under his bushy eyebrows. Theres strange goinson here, Mis Innes, he said, shaking his head. Somethins goin to happen, sure. You aint took notice that the big clock in the hall is stopped, I reckon? Nonsense, I said. Clocks have to stop, dont they, if theyre not wound? Its wound up, all right, and it stopped at three oclock last night, he answered solemnly. Moren that, that there clock aint stopped for fifteen years, not since Mr. Armstrongs first wife died. And that aint allno mam. Last three nights I slep in this place, after the electrics went out I had a token. My oil lamp was full of oil, but it kep goin out, do what I would. Minute I shet my eyes, out that lampd go. There aint no surer token of death. The Bible sez, Let yer light shine! When a hand you cant see puts yer light out, it means death, sure. The old mans voice was full of conviction. In spite of myself I had a chilly sensation in the small of my back, and I left him mumbling over his dishes. Later on I heard a crash from the pantry, and Liddy reported that Beulah, who is coal black, had darted in front of Thomas just as he picked up a tray of dishes; that the bad omen had been too much for him, and he had dropped the tray. The chug of the automobile as it climbed the hill was the most welcome sound I had heard for a long time, and with Gertrude and Halsey actually before me, my troubles seemed over for good. Gertrude stood smiling in the hall, with her hat quite over one ear, and her hair in every direction under her pink veil. Gertrude is a very pretty girl, no matter how her hat is, and I was not surprised when Halsey presented a goodlooking young man, who bowed at me and looked at Trudethat is the ridiculous nickname Gertrude brought from school. I have brought a guest, Aunt Ray, Halsey said. I want you to adopt him into your affections and your SaturdaytoMonday list. Let me present John Bailey, only you must call him Jack. In twelve hours hell be calling you Aunt I know him. We shook hands, and I got a chance to look at Mr. Bailey; he was a tall fellow, perhaps thirty, and he wore a small mustache. I remember wondering why he seemed to have a good mouth and when he smiled his teeth were above the average. One never knows why certain men cling to a messy upper lip that must get into things, any more than one understands some women building up their hair on wire atrocities. Otherwise, he was very good to look at, stalwart and tanned, with the direct gaze that I like. I am particular about Mr. Bailey, because he was a prominent figure in what happened later. Gertrude was tired with the trip and went up to bed very soon. I made up my mind to tell them nothing until the next day, and then to make as light of our excitement as possible. After all, what had I to tell? An inquisitive face peering in at a window; a crash in the night; a scratch or two on the stairs, and half a cuffbutton! As for Thomas and his forebodings, it was always my belief that a negro is one part thief, one part pigment, and the rest superstition. It was Saturday night. The two men went to the billiardroom, and I could hear them talking as I went upstairs. It seemed that Halsey had stopped at the Greenwood Club for gasoline and found Jack Bailey there, with the Sunday golf crowd. Mr. Bailey had not been hard to persuadeprobably Gertrude knew whyand they had carried him off triumphantly. I roused Liddy to get them something to eatThomas was beyond reach in the lodgeand paid no attention to her evident terror of the kitchen regions. Then I went to bed. The men were still in the billiardroom when I finally dozed off, and the last thing I remember was the howl of a dog in front of the house. It wailed a crescendo of woe that trailed off hopefully, only to break out afresh from a new point of the compass.

At three oclock in the morning I was roused by a revolver shot. The sound seemed to come from just outside my door. For a moment I could not move. ThenI heard Gertrude stirring in her room, and the next moment she had thrown open the connecting door. O Aunt Ray! Aunt Ray! she cried hysterically. Someone has been killed, killed! Thieves, I said shortly. Thank goodness, there are some men in the house tonight. I was getting into my slippers and a bathrobe, and Gertrude with shaking hands was lighting a lamp. Then we opened the door into the hall, where, crowded on the upper landing of the stairs, the maids, whitefaced and trembling, were peering down, headed by Liddy. I was greeted by a series of low screams and questions, and I tried to quiet them. Gertrude had dropped on a chair and sat there limp and shivering. I went at once across the hall to Halseys room and knocked; then I pushed the door open. It was empty; the bed had not been occupied! He must be in Mr. Baileys room, I said excitedly, and followed by Liddy, we went there. Like Halseys, it had not been occupied! Gertrude was on her feet now, but she leaned against the door for support. They have been killed! she gasped. Then she caught me by the arm and dragged me toward the stairs. They may only be hurt, and we must find them, she said, her eyes dilated with excitement. I dont remember how we got down the stairs I do remember expecting every moment to be killed. The cook was at the telephone upstairs, calling the Greenwood Club, and Liddy was behind me, afraid to come and not daring to stay behind. We found the livingroom and the drawingroom undisturbed. Somehow I felt that whatever we found would be in the cardroom or on the staircase, and nothing but the fear that Halsey was in danger drove me on; with every step my knees seemed to give way under me. Gertrude was ahead and in the cardroom she stopped, holding her candle high. Then she pointed silently to the doorway into the hall beyond. Huddled there on the floor, face down, with his arms extended, was a man. Gertrude ran forward with a gasping sob. Jack, she cried, oh, Jack! Liddy had run, screaming, and the two of us were there alone. It was Gertrude who turned him over, finally, until we could see his white face, and then she drew a deep breath and dropped limply to her knees. It was the body of a man, a gentleman, in a dinner coat and white waistcoat, stained now with bloodthe body of a man I had never seen before. IV Where Is Halsey? Gertrude gazed at the face in a kind of fascination. Then she put out her hands blindly, and I thought she was going to faint. He has killed him! she muttered almost inarticulately; and at that, because my nerves were going, I gave her a good shake. What do you mean? I said frantically. There was a depth of grief and conviction in her tone that was worse than anything she could have said. The shake braced her, anyhow, and she seemed to pull herself together. But not another word would she say she stood gazing down at that gruesome figure on the floor, while Liddy, ashamed of her flight and afraid to come back alone, drove before her three terrified womenservants into the drawingroom, which was as near as any of them would venture. Once in the drawingroom, Gertrude collapsed and went from one fainting spell into another. I had all I could do to keep Liddy from drowning her with cold water, and the maids huddled in a corner, as much use as so many sheep. In a short time, although it seemed hours, a car came rushing up, and Anne Watson, who had waited to dress, opened the door. Three men from the Greenwood Club, in all kinds of costumes, hurried in. I recognized a Mr. Jarvis, but the others were strangers. Whats wrong? the Jarvis man askedand we made a strange picture, no doubt. Nobody hurt, is there? He was looking at Gertrude. Worse than that, Mr. Jarvis, I said. I think it is murder. At the word there was a commotion. The cook began to cry, and Mrs. Watson knocked over a chair. The men were visibly impressed. Not any member of the family? Mr. Jarvis asked, when he had got his breath. No, I said; and motioning Liddy to look after Gertrude, I led the way with a lamp to the cardroom door. One of the men gave an exclamation, and they all hurried across the room. Mr. Jarvis took the lamp from meI remember thatand then, feeling myself getting dizzy and lightheaded, I closed my eyes. When I opened them their brief examination was over, and Mr. Jarvis was trying to put me in a chair. You must get upstairs, he said firmly, you and Miss Gertrude, too. This has been a terrible shock. In his own home, too. I stared at him without comprehension. Who is it? I asked with difficulty. There was a band drawn tight around my throat. It is Arnold Armstrong, he said, looking at me oddly, and he has been murdered in his fathers house. After a minute I gathered myself together and Mr. Jarvis helped me into the livingroom. Liddy had got Gertrude upstairs, and the two strange men from the club stayed with the body. The reaction from the shock and strain was tremendous I was collapsedand then Mr. Jarvis asked me a question that brought back my wandering faculties. Where is Halsey? he asked. Halsey! Suddenly Gertrudes stricken face rose before me the empty rooms upstairs. Where was Halsey? He was here, wasnt he? Mr. Jarvis persisted. He stopped at the club on his way over. Idont know where he is, I said feebly. One of the men from the club came in, asked for the telephone, and I could hear him excitedly talking, saying something about coroners and detectives. Mr. Jarvis leaned over to me. Why dont you trust me, Miss Innes? he said. If I can do anything I will. But tell me the whole thing. I did, finally, from the beginning, and when I told of Jack Baileys being in the house that night, he gave a long whistle. I wish they were both here, he said when I finished. Whatever mad prank took them away, it would look better if they were here. Especially Especially what? Especially since Jack Bailey and Arnold Armstrong were notoriously bad friends. It was Bailey who got Arnold into trouble last springsomething about the bank. And then, too Go on, I said. If there is anything more, I ought to know. Theres nothing more, he said evasively. Theres just one thing we may bank on, Miss Innes. Any court in the country will acquit a man who kills an intruder in his house, at night. If Halsey Why, you dont think Halsey did it! I exclaimed. There was a queer feeling of physical nausea coming over me. No, no, not at all, he said with forced cheerfulness. Come, Miss Innes, youre a ghost of yourself and I am going to help you upstairs and call your maid. This has been too much for you. Liddy helped me back to bed, and under the impression that I was in danger of freezing to death, put a hotwater bottle over my heart and another at my feet. Then she left me. It was early dawn now, and from voices under my window I surmised that Mr. Jarvis and his companions were searching the grounds. As for me, I lay in bed, with every faculty awake. Where had Halsey gone? How had he gone, and when? Before the murder, no doubt, but who would believe that? If either he or Jack Bailey had heard an intruder in the house and shot himas they might have been justified in doingwhy had they run away? The whole thing was unheard of, outrageous, andimpossible to ignore. About six oclock Gertrude came in. She was fully dressed, and I sat up nervously. Poor Aunty! she said. What a shocking night you have had! She came over and sat down on the bed, and I saw she looked very tired and worn. Is there anything new? I asked anxiously. Nothing. The car is gone, but Warnerhe is the chauffeurWarner is at the lodge and knows nothing about it. Well, I said, if I ever get my hands on Halsey Innes, I shall not let go until I have told him a few things. When we get this cleared up, I am going back to the city to be quiet. One more night like the last two will end me. The peace of the countryfiddlesticks! Whereupon I told Gertrude of the noises the night before, and the figure on the veranda in the east wing. As an afterthought I brought out the pearl cufflink. I have no doubt now, I said, that it was Arnold Armstrong the night before last, too. He had a key, no doubt, but why he should steal into his fathers house I can not imagine. He could have come with my permission, easily enough. Anyhow, whoever it was that night, left this little souvenir. Gertrude took one look at the cufflink, and went as white as the pearls in it; she clutched at the foot of the bed, and stood staring. As for me, I was quite as astonished as she was. Where didyoufind it? she asked finally, with a desperate effort at calm. And while I told her she stood looking out of the window with a look I could not fathom on her face. It was a relief when Mrs. Watson tapped at the door and brought me some tea and toast. The cook was in bed, completely demoralized, she reported, and Liddy, brave with the daylight, was looking for footprints around the house. Mrs. Watson herself was a wreck; she was bluewhite around the lips, and she had one hand tied up. She said she had fallen downstairs in her excitement. It was natural, of course, that the thing would shock her, having been the Armstrongs housekeeper for several years, and knowing Mr. Arnold well. Gertrude had slipped out during my talk with Mrs. Watson, and I dressed and went downstairs. The billiard and cardrooms were locked until the coroner and the detectives got there, and the men from the club had gone back for more conventional clothing. I could hear Thomas in the pantry, alternately wailing for Mr. Arnold, as he called him, and citing the tokens that had precursed the murder. The house seemed to choke me, and, slipping a shawl around me, I went out on the drive. At the corner by the east wing I met Liddy. Her skirts were draggled with dew to her knees, and her hair was still in crimps. Go right in and change your clothes, I said sharply. Youre a sight, and at your age! She had a golfstick in her hand, and she said she had found it on the lawn. There was nothing unusual about it, but it occurred to me that a golfstick with a metal end might have been the object that had scratched the stairs near the cardroom. I took it from her, and sent her up for dry garments. Her daylight courage and selfimportance, and her shuddering delight in the mystery, irritated me beyond words. After I left her I made a circuit of the building. Nothing seemed to be disturbed the house looked as calm and peaceful in the morning sun as it had the day I had been coerced into taking it. There was nothing to show that inside had been mystery and violence and sudden death. In one of the tulip beds back of the house an early blackbird was pecking viciously at something that glittered in the light. I picked my way gingerly over through the dew and stooped down almost buried in the soft ground was a revolver! I scraped the earth off it with the tip of my shoe, and, picking it up, slipped it into my pocket. Not until I had got into my bedroom and doublelocked the door did I venture to take it out and examine it. One look was all I needed. It was Halseys revolver. I had unpacked it the day before and put it on his shavingstand, and there could be no mistake. His name was on a small silver plate on the handle. I seemed to see a network closing around my boy, innocent as I knew he was. The revolverI am afraid of them, but anxiety gave me courage to look through the barrelthe revolver had still two bullets in it. I could only breathe a prayer of thankfulness that I had found the revolver before any sharpeyed detective had come around. I decided to keep what clues I had, the cufflink, the golfstick and the revolver, in a secure place until I could see some reason for displaying them. The cufflink had been dropped into a little filigree box on my toilet table. I opened the box and felt around for it. The box was emptythe cufflink had disappeared! V Gertrudes Engagement At ten oclock the Casanova hack brought up three men. They introduced themselves as the coroner of the county and two detectives from the city. The coroner led the way at once to the locked wing, and with the aid of one of the detectives examined the rooms and the body. The other detective, after a short scrutiny of the dead man, busied himself with the outside of the house. It was only after they had got a fair idea of things as they were that they sent for me. I received them in the livingroom, and I had made up my mind exactly what to tell. I had taken the house for the summer, I said, while the Armstrongs were in California. In spite of a rumor among the servants about strange noisesI cited Thomasnothing had occurred the first two nights. On the third night I believed that someone had been in the house I had heard a crashing sound, but being alone with one maid had not investigated. The house had been locked in the morning and apparently undisturbed. Then, as clearly as I could, I related how, the night before, a shot had roused us; that my niece and I had investigated and found a body; that I did not know who the murdered man was until Mr. Jarvis from the club informed me, and that I knew of no reason why Mr. Arnold Armstrong should steal into his fathers house at night. I should have been glad to allow him entre there at any time. Have you reason to believe, Miss Innes, the coroner asked, that any member of your household, imagining Mr. Armstrong was a burglar, shot him in selfdefense? I have no reason for thinking so, I said quietly. Your theory is that Mr. Armstrong was followed here by some enemy, and shot as he entered the house? I dont think I have a theory, I said. The thing that has puzzled me is why Mr. Armstrong should enter his fathers house two nights in succession, stealing in like a thief, when he needed only to ask entrance to be admitted. The coroner was a very silent man he took some notes after this, but he seemed anxious to make the next train back to town. He set the inquest for the following Saturday, gave Mr. Jamieson, the younger of the two detectives, and the more intelligent looking, a few instructions, and, after gravely shaking hands with me and regretting the unfortunate affair, took his departure, accompanied by the other detective. I was just beginning to breathe freely when Mr. Jamieson, who had been standing by the window, came over to me. The family consists of yourself alone, Miss Innes? My niece is here, I said. There is no one but yourself and your niece? My nephew. I had to moisten my lips. Oh, a nephew. I should like to see him, if he is here. He is not here just now, I said as quietly as I could. I expect himat any time. He was here yesterday evening, I believe? Noyes. Didnt he have a guest with him? Another man? He brought a friend with him to stay over Sunday, Mr. Bailey. Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the Traders Bank I believe. And I knew that someone at the Greenwood Club had told. When did they leave? Very earlyI dont know at just what time. Mr. Jamieson turned suddenly and looked at me. Please try to be more explicit, he said. You say your nephew and Mr. Bailey were in the house last night, and yet you and your niece, with some womenservants, found the body. Where was your nephew? I was entirely desperate by that time. I do not know, I cried, but be sure of this Halsey knows nothing of this thing, and no amount of circumstantial evidence can make an innocent man guilty. Sit down, he said, pushing forward a chair. There are some things I have to tell you, and, in return, please tell me all you know. Believe me, things always come out. In the first place, Mr. Armstrong was shot from above. The bullet was fired at close range, entered below the shoulder and came out, after passing through the heart, well down the back. In other words, I believe the murderer stood on the stairs and fired down. In the second place, I found on the edge of the billiardtable a charred cigar which had burned itself partly out, and a cigarette which had consumed itself to the cork tip. Neither one had been more than lighted, then put down and forgotten. Have you any idea what it was that made your nephew and Mr. Bailey leave their cigars and their game, take out the automobile without calling the chauffeur, and all this atlet me seecertainly before three oclock in the morning? I dont know, I said; but depend on it, Mr. Jamieson, Halsey will be back himself to explain everything. I sincerely hope so, he said. Miss Innes, has it occurred to you that Mr. Bailey might know something of this? Gertrude had come downstairs and just as he spoke she came in. I saw her stop suddenly, as if she had been struck. He does not, she said in a tone that was not her own. Mr. Bailey and my brother know nothing of this. The murder was committed at three. They left the house at a quarter before three. How do you know that? Mr. Jamieson asked oddly. Do you know at what time they left? I do, Gertrude answered firmly. At a quarter before three my brother and Mr. Bailey left the house, by the main entrance. Iwasthere. Gertrude, I said excitedly, you are dreaming! Why, at a quarter to three Listen, she said. At halfpast two the downstairs telephone rang. I had not gone to sleep, and I heard it. Then I heard Halsey answer it, and in a few minutes he came upstairs and knocked at my door. Wewe talked for a minute, then I put on my dressinggown and slippers, and went downstairs with him. Mr. Bailey was in the billiardroom. Wewe all talked together for perhaps ten minutes. Then it was decided thatthat they should both go away Cant you be more explicit? Mr. Jamieson asked. Why did they go away? I am only telling you what happened, not why it happened, she said evenly. Halsey went for the car, and instead of bringing it to the house and rousing people, he went by the lower road from the stable. Mr. Bailey was to meet him at the foot of the lawn. Mr. Bailey left Which way? Mr. Jamieson asked sharply. By the main entrance. He leftit was a quarter to three. I know exactly. The clock in the hall is stopped, Miss Innes, said Jamieson. Nothing seemed to escape him. He looked at his watch, she replied, and I could see Mr. Jamiesons snap, as if he had made a discovery. As for myself, during the whole recital I had been plunged into the deepest amazement. Will you pardon me for a personal question? The detective was a youngish man, and I thought he was somewhat embarrassed. What are youryour relations with Mr. Bailey? Gertrude hesitated. Then she came over and put her hand lovingly in mine. I am engaged to marry him, she said simply. I had grown so accustomed to surprises that I could only gasp again, and as for Gertrude, the hand that lay in mine was burning with fever. Andafter that, Mr. Jamieson went on, you went directly to bed? Gertrude hesitated. No, she said finally. II am not nervous, and after I had extinguished the light, I remembered something I had left in the billiardroom, and I felt my way back there through the darkness. Will you tell me what it was you had forgotten? I can not tell you, she said slowly. II did not leave the billiardroom at once Why? The detectives tone was imperative. This is very important, Miss Innes. I was crying, Gertrude said in a low tone. When the French clock in the drawingroom struck three, I got up, and thenI heard a step on the east porch, just outside the cardroom. Someone with a key was working with the latch, and I thought, of course, of Halsey. When we took the house he called that his entrance, and he had carried a key for it ever since. The door opened and I was about to ask what he had forgotten, when there was a flash and a report. Some heavy body dropped, and, half crazed with terror and shock, I ran through the drawingroom and got upstairsI scarcely remember how. She dropped into a chair, and I thought Mr. Jamieson must have finished. But he was not through. You certainly clear your brother and Mr. Bailey admirably, he said. The testimony is invaluable, especially in view of the fact that your brother and Mr. Armstrong had, I believe, quarreled rather seriously some time ago. Nonsense, I broke in. Things are bad enough, Mr. Jamieson, without inventing bad feeling where it doesnt exist. Gertrude, I dont think Halsey knew thethe murdered man, did he? But Mr. Jamieson was sure of his ground. The quarrel, I believe, he persisted, was about Mr. Armstrongs conduct to you, Miss Gertrude. He had been paying you unwelcome attentions. And I had never seen the man! When she nodded a yes I saw the tremendous possibilities involved. If this detective could prove that Gertrude feared and disliked the murdered man, and that Mr. Armstrong had been annoying and possibly pursuing her with hateful attentions, all that, added to Gertrudes confession of her presence in the billiardroom at the time of the crime, looked strange, to say the least. The prominence of the family assured a strenuous effort to find the murderer, and if we had nothing worse to look forward to, we were sure of a distasteful publicity. Mr. Jamieson shut his notebook with a snap, and thanked us. I have an idea, he said, apropos of nothing at all, that at any rate the ghost is laid here. Whatever the rappings have beenand the colored man says they began when the family went west three months agothey are likely to stop now. Which shows how much he knew about it. The ghost was not laid with the murder of Arnold Armstrong he, or it, only seemed to take on fresh vigor. Mr. Jamieson left then, and when Gertrude had gone upstairs, as she did at once, I sat and thought over what I had just heard. Her engagement, once so engrossing a matter, paled now beside the significance of her story. If Halsey and Jack Bailey had left before the crime, how came Halseys revolver in the tulip bed? What was the mysterious cause of their sudden flight? What had Gertrude left in the billiardroom? What was the significance of the cufflink, and where was it? VI In the East Corridor When the detective left he enjoined absolute secrecy on everybody in the household. The Greenwood Club promised the same thing, and as there are no Sunday afternoon papers, the murder was not publicly known until Monday. The coroner himself notified the Armstrong family lawyer, and early in the afternoon he came out. I had not seen Mr. Jamieson since morning, but I knew he had been interrogating the servants. Gertrude was locked in her room with a headache, and I had luncheon alone. Mr. Harton, the lawyer, was a little, thin man, and he looked as if he did not relish his business that day. This is very unfortunate, Miss Innes, he said, after we had shaken hands. Most unfortunateand mysterious. With the father and mother in the west, I find everything devolves on me; and, as you can understand, it is an unpleasant duty. No doubt, I said absently. Mr. Harton, I am going to ask you some questions, and I hope you will answer them. I feel that I am entitled to some knowledge, because I and my family are just now in a most ambiguous position. I dont know whether he understood me or not he took off his glasses and wiped them. I shall be very happy, he said with oldfashioned courtesy. Thank you. Mr. Harton, did Mr. Arnold Armstrong know that Sunnyside had been rented? I thinkyes, he did. In fact, I myself told him about it. And he knew who the tenants were? Yes. He had not been living with the family for some years, I believe? No. Unfortunately, there had been trouble between Arnold and his father. For two years he had lived in town. Then it would be unlikely that he came here last night to get possession of anything belonging to him? I should think it hardly possible, he admitted. To be perfectly frank, Miss Innes, I can not think of any reason whatever for his coming here as he did. He had been staying at the clubhouse across the valley for the last week, Jarvis tells me, but that only explains how he came here, not why. It is a most unfortunate family. He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this driedup little man was the repository of much that he had not told me. I gave up trying to elicit any information from him, and we went together to view the body before it was taken to the city. It had been lifted on to the billiardtable and a sheet thrown over it; otherwise nothing had been touched. A soft hat lay beside it, and the collar of the dinnercoat was still turned up. The handsome, dissipated face of Arnold Armstrong, purged of its ugly lines, was now only pathetic. As we went in Mrs. Watson appeared at the cardroom door. Come in, Mrs. Watson, the lawyer said. But she shook her head and withdrew she was the only one in the house who seemed to regret the dead man, and even she seemed rather shocked than sorry. I went to the door at the foot of the circular staircase and opened it. If I could only have seen Halsey coming at his usual harebrained clip up the drive, if I could have heard the throb of the motor, I would have felt that my troubles were over. But there was nothing to be seen. The countryside lay sunny and quiet in its peaceful Sunday afternoon calm, and far down the drive Mr. Jamieson was walking slowly, stooping now and then, as if to examine the road. When I went back, Mr. Harton was furtively wiping his eyes. The prodigal has come home, Miss Innes, he said. How often the sins of the fathers are visited on the children! Which left me pondering. Before Mr. Harton left, he told me something of the Armstrong family. Paul Armstrong, the father, had been married twice. Arnold was a son by the first marriage. The second Mrs. Armstrong had been a widow, with a child, a little girl. This child, now perhaps twenty, was Louise Armstrong, having taken her stepfathers name, and was at present in California with the family. They will probably return at once, he concluded, and part of my errand here today is to see if you will relinquish your lease here in their favor. We would better wait and see if they wish to come, I said. It seems unlikely, and my town house is being remodeled. At that he let the matter drop, but it came up unpleasantly enough, later. At six oclock the body was taken away, and at seventhirty, after an early dinner, Mr. Harton went. Gertrude had not come down, and there was no news of Halsey. Mr. Jamieson had taken a lodging in the village, and I had not seen him since midafternoon. It was about nine oclock, I think, when the bell rang and he was ushered into the livingroom. Sit down, I said grimly. Have you found a clue that will incriminate me, Mr. Jamieson? He had the grace to look uncomfortable. No, he said. If you had killed Mr. Armstrong, you would have left no clues. You would have had too much intelligence. After that we got along better. He was fishing in his pocket, and after a minute he brought out two scraps of paper. I have been to the clubhouse, he said, and among Mr. Armstrongs effects, I found these. One is curious; the other is puzzling. The first was a sheet of club notepaper, on which was written, over and over, the name Halsey B. Innes. It was Halseys flowing signature to a dot, but it lacked Halseys ease. The ones toward the bottom of the sheet were much better than the top ones. Mr. Jamieson smiled at my face. His old tricks, he said. That one is merely curious; this one, as I said before, is puzzling. The second scrap, folded and refolded into a compass so tiny that the writing had been partly obliterated, was part of a letterthe lower half of a sheet, not typed, but written in a cramped hand. by altering the plans for rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to the plan for in one of the rooms chimney. That was all. Well? I said, looking up. There is nothing in that, is there? A man ought to be able to change the plan of his house without becoming an object of suspicion. There is little in the paper itself, he admitted; but why should Arnold Armstrong carry that around, unless it meant something? He never built a house, you may be sure of that. If it is this house, it may mean anything, from a secret room To an extra bathroom, I said scornfully. Havent you a thumbprint, too? I have, he said with a smile, and the print of a foot in a tulip bed, and a number of other things. The oddest part is, Miss Innes, that the thumbmark is probably yours and the footprint certainly. His audacity was the only thing that saved me his amused smile put me on my mettle, and I ripped out a perfectly good scallop before I answered. Why did I step into the tulip bed? I asked with interest. You picked up something, he said goodhumoredly, which you are going to tell me about later. Am I, indeed? I was politely curious. With this remarkable insight of yours, I wish you would tell me where I shall find my fourthousanddollar motorcar. I was just coming to that, he said. You will find it about thirty miles away, at Andrews Station, in a blacksmith shop, where it is being repaired. I laid down my knitting then and looked at him. And Halsey? I managed to say. We are going to exchange information, he said. I am going to tell you that, when you tell me what you picked up in the tulip bed. We looked steadily at each other it was not an unfriendly stare; we were only measuring weapons. Then he smiled a little and got up. With your permission, he said, I am going to examine the cardroom and the staircase again. You might think over my offer in the meantime. He went on through the drawingroom, and I listened to his footsteps growing gradually fainter. I dropped my pretense at knitting and, leaning back, I thought over the last fortyeight hours. Here was I, Rachel Innes, spinster, a granddaughter of old John Innes of Revolutionary days, a D.A.R., a Colonial Dame, mixed up with a vulgar and revolting crime, and even attempting to hoodwink the law! Certainly I had left the straight and narrow way. I was roused by hearing Mr. Jamieson coming rapidly back through the drawingroom. He stopped at the door. Miss Innes, he said quickly, will you come with me and light the east corridor? I have fastened somebody in the small room at the head of the cardroom stairs. I jumped up at once. You meanthe murderer? I gasped. Possibly, he said quietly, as we hurried together up the stairs. Someone was lurking on the staircase when I went back. I spoke; instead of an answer, whoever it was turned and ran up. I followedit was darkbut as I turned the corner at the top a figure darted through this door and closed it. The bolt was on my side, and I pushed it forward. It is a closet, I think. We were in the upper hall now. If you will show me the electric switch, Miss Innes, you would better wait in your own room. Trembling as I was, I was determined to see that door opened. I hardly knew what I feared, but so many terrible and inexplicable things had happened that suspense was worse than certainty. I am perfectly cool, I said, and I am going to remain here. The lights flashed up along that end of the corridor, throwing the doors into relief. At the intersection of the small hallway with the larger, the circular staircase wound its way up, as if it had been an afterthought of the architect. And just around the corner, in the small corridor, was the door Mr. Jamieson had indicated. I was still unfamiliar with the house, and I did not remember the door. My heart was thumping wildly in my ears, but I nodded to him to go ahead. I was perhaps eight or ten feet awayand then he threw the bolt back. Come out, he said quietly. There was no response. Comeout, he repeated. ThenI think he had a revolver, but I am not surehe stepped aside and threw the door open. From where I stood I could not see beyond the door, but I saw Mr. Jamiesons face change and heard him mutter something, then he bolted down the stairs, three at a time.

When my knees had stopped shaking, I moved forward, slowly, nervously, until I had a partial view of what was beyond the door. It seemed at first to be a closet, empty. Then I went close and examined it, to stop with a shudder. Where the floor should have been was black void and darkness, from which came the indescribable, damp smell of the cellars. Mr. Jamieson had locked somebody in the clothes chute. As I leaned over I fancied I heard a groanor was it the wind? VII A Sprained Ankle I was panicstricken. As I ran along the corridor I was confident that the mysterious intruder and probable murderer had been found, and that he lay dead or dying at the foot of the chute. I got down the staircase somehow, and through the kitchen to the basement stairs. Mr. Jamieson had been before me, and the door stood open. Liddy was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a fryingpan by the handle as a weapon. Dont go down there, she yelled, when she saw me moving toward the basement stairs. Dont you do it, Miss Rachel. That Jamiesons down there now. Theres only trouble comes of hunting ghosts; they lead you into bottomless pits and things like that. Oh, Miss Rachel, dont as I tried to get past her. She was interrupted by Mr. Jamiesons reappearance. He ran up the stairs two at a time, and his face was flushed and furious. The whole place is locked, he said angrily. Wheres the laundry key kept? Its kept in the door, Liddy snapped. That whole end of the cellar is kept locked, so nobody can get at the clothes, and then the keys left in the door, so that unless a thief was as blind asas some detectives, he could walk right in. Liddy, I said sharply, come down with us and turn on all the lights. She offered her resignation, as usual, on the spot, but I took her by the arm, and she came along finally. She switched on all the lights and pointed to a door just ahead. Thats the door, she said sulkily. The keys in it. But the key was not in it. Mr. Jamieson shook it, but it was a heavy door, well locked. And then he stooped and began punching around the keyhole with the end of a leadpencil. When he stood up his face was exultant. Its locked on the inside, he said in a low tone. There is somebody in there. Lord have mercy! gasped Liddy, and turned to run. Liddy, I called, go through the house at once and see who is missing, or if anyone is. Well have to clear this thing at once. Mr. Jamieson, if you will watch here I will go to the lodge and find Warner. Thomas would be of no use. Together you may be able to force the door. A good idea, he assented. Butthere are windows, of course, and there is nothing to prevent whoever is in there from getting out that way. Then lock the door at the top of the basement stairs, I suggested, and patrol the house from the outside. We agreed to this, and I had a feeling that the mystery of Sunnyside was about to be solved. I ran down the steps and along the drive. Just at the corner I ran full tilt into somebody who seemed to be as much alarmed as I was. It was not until I had recoiled a step or two that I recognized Gertrude, and she me. Good gracious, Aunt Ray, she exclaimed, what is the matter? Theres somebody locked in the laundry, I panted. That isunlessyou didnt see anyone crossing the lawn or skulking around the house, did you? I think we have mystery on the brain, Gertrude said wearily. No, I havent seen anyone, except old Thomas, who looked for all the world as if he had been ransacking the pantry. What have you locked in the laundry? I cant wait to explain, I replied. I must get Warner from the lodge. If you came out for air, youd better put on your overshoes. And then I noticed that Gertrude was limpingnot much, but sufficiently to make her progress very slow, and seemingly painful. You have hurt yourself, I said sharply. I fell over the carriage block, she explained. I thought perhaps I might see Halsey coming home. Hehe ought to be here. I hurried on down the drive. The lodge was some distance from the house, in a grove of trees where the drive met the county road. There were two white stone pillars to mark the entrance, but the iron gates, once closed and tended by the lodgekeeper, now stood permanently open. The day of the motorcar had come; no one had time for closed gates and lodgekeepers. The lodge at Sunnyside was merely a sort of supplementary servants quarters it was as convenient in its appointments as the big house and infinitely more cozy. As I went down the drive, my thoughts were busy. Who would it be that Mr. Jamieson had trapped in the cellar? Would we find a body or someone badly injured? Scarcely either. Whoever had fallen had been able to lock the laundry door on the inside. If the fugitive had come from outside the house, how did he get in? If it was some member of the household, who could it have been? And thena feeling of horror almost overwhelmed me. Gertrude! Gertrude and her injured ankle! Gertrude found limping slowly up the drive when I had thought she was in bed! I tried to put the thought away, but it would not go. If Gertrude had been on the circular staircase that night, why had she fled from Mr. Jamieson? The idea, puzzling as it was, seemed borne out by this circumstance. Whoever had taken refuge at the head of the stairs could scarcely have been familiar with the house, or with the location of the chute. The mystery seemed to deepen constantly. What possible connection could there be between Halsey and Gertrude, and the murder of Arnold Armstrong? And yet, every way I turned I seemed to find something that pointed to such a connection. At the foot of the drive the road described a long, sloping, horseshoeshaped curve around the lodge. There were lights there, streaming cheerfully out on to the trees, and from an upper room came wavering shadows, as if someone with a lamp was moving around. I had come almost silently in my evening slippers, and I had my second collision of the evening on the road just above the house. I ran full into a man in a long coat, who was standing in the shadow beside the drive, with his back to me, watching the lighted windows. What the hell! he ejaculated furiously, and turned around. When he saw me, however, he did not wait for any retort on my part. He faded awaythis is not slang; he didhe absolutely disappeared in the dusk without my getting more than a glimpse of his face. I had a vague impression of unfamiliar features and of a sort of cap with a visor. Then he was gone. I went to the lodge and rapped. It required two or three poundings to bring Thomas to the door, and he opened it only an inch or so. Where is Warner? I asked. II think hes in bed, mam. Get him up, I said, and for goodness sake open the door, Thomas. Ill wait for Warner. Its kind o close in here, mam, he said, obeying gingerly, and disclosing a cool and comfortable looking interior. Perhaps youd keer to set on the porch an rest yoself. It was so evident that Thomas did not want me inside that I went in. Tell Warner he is needed in a hurry, I repeated, and turned into the little sittingroom. I could hear Thomas going up the stairs, could hear him rouse Warner, and the steps of the chauffeur as he hurriedly dressed. But my attention was busy with the room below. On the centertable, open, was a sealskin traveling bag. It was filled with goldtopped bottles and brushes, and it breathed opulence, luxury, femininity from every inch of surface. How did it get there? I was still asking myself the question when Warner came running down the stairs and into the room. He was completely but somewhat incongruously dressed, and his open, boyish face looked abashed. He was a country boy, absolutely frank and reliable, of fair education and intelligenceone of the small army of American youths who turn a natural aptitude for mechanics into the special field of the automobile, and earn good salaries in a congenial occupation. What is it, Miss Innes? he asked anxiously. There is someone locked in the laundry, I replied. Mr. Jamieson wants you to help him break the lock. Warner, whose bag is this? He was in the doorway by this time, and he pretended not to hear. Warner, I called, come back here. Whose bag is this? He stopped then, but he did not turn around. Itsit belongs to Thomas, he said, and fled up the drive. To Thomas! A London bag with mirrors and cosmetic jars of which Thomas could not even have guessed the use! However, I put the bag in the back of my mind, which was fast becoming stored with anomalous and apparently irreconcilable facts, and followed Warner to the house. Liddy had come back to the kitchen the door to the basement stairs was doublebarred, and had a table pushed against it; and beside her on the table was most of the kitchen paraphernalia. Did you see if there was anyone missing in the house? I asked, ignoring the array of saucepans, rollingpins, and the poker of the range. Rosie is missing, Liddy said with unction. She had objected to Rosie, the parlor maid, from the start. Mrs. Watson went into her room, and found she had gone without her hat. People that trust themselves a dozen miles from the city, in strange houses, with servants they dont know, neednt be surprised if they wake up some morning and find their throats cut. After which carefully veiled sarcasm Liddy relapsed into gloom. Warner came in then with a handful of small tools, and Mr. Jamieson went with him to the basement. Oddly enough, I was not alarmed. With all my heart I wished for Halsey, but I was not frightened. At the door he was to force, Warner put down his tools and looked at it. Then he turned the handle. Without the slightest difficulty the door opened, revealing the blackness of the dryingroom beyond! Mr. Jamieson gave an exclamation of disgust. Gone! he said. Confound such careless work! I might have known. It was true enough. We got the lights on finally and looked all through the three rooms that constituted this wing of the basement. Everything was quiet and empty. An explanation of how the fugitive had escaped injury was found in a heapedup basket of clothes under the chute. The basket had been overturned, but that was all. Mr. Jamieson examined the windows one was unlocked, and offered an easy escape. The window or the door? Which way had the fugitive escaped? The door seemed most probable, and I hoped it had been so. I could not have borne, just then, to think that it was my poor Gertrude we had been hounding through the darkness, and yetI had met Gertrude not far from that very window. I went upstairs at last, tired and depressed. Mrs. Watson and Liddy were making tea in the kitchen. In certain walks of life the teapot is the refuge in times of stress, trouble or sickness they give tea to the dying and they put it in the babys nursing bottle. Mrs. Watson was fixing a tray to be sent in to me, and when I asked her about Rosie she confirmed her absence. Shes not here, she said; but I would not think much of that, Miss Innes. Rosie is a pretty young girl, and perhaps she has a sweetheart. It will be a good thing if she has. The maids stay much better when they have something like that to hold them here. Gertrude had gone back to her room, and while I was drinking my cup of hot tea, Mr. Jamieson came in. We might take up the conversation where we left off an hour and a half ago, he said. But before we go on, I want to say this The person who escaped from the laundry was a woman with a foot of moderate size and well arched. She wore nothing but a stocking on her right foot, and, in spite of the unlocked door, she escaped by the window. And again I thought of Gertrudes sprained ankle. Was it the right or the left? VIII The Other Half of the Line Miss Innes, the detective began, what is your opinion of the figure you saw on the east veranda the night you and your maid were in the house alone? It was a woman, I said positively. And yet your maid affirms with equal positiveness that it was a man. Nonsense, I broke in. Liddy had her eyes shutshe always shuts them when shes frightened. And you never thought then that the intruder who came later that night might be a womanthe woman, in fact, whom you saw on the veranda? I had reasons for thinking it was a man, I said, remembering the pearl cufflink. Now we are getting down to business. What were your reasons for thinking that? I hesitated. If you have any reason for believing that your midnight guest was Mr. Armstrong, other than his visit here the next night, you ought to tell me, Miss Innes. We can take nothing for granted. If, for instance, the intruder who dropped the bar and scratched the staircaseyou see, I know about thatif this visitor was a woman, why should not the same woman have come back the following night, met Mr. Armstrong on the circular staircase, and in alarm shot him? It was a man, I reiterated. And then, because I could think of no other reason for my statement, I told him about the pearl cufflink. He was intensely interested. Will you give me the link, he said, when I finished, or, at least, let me see it? I consider it a most important clue. Wont the description do? Not as well as the original. Well, Im very sorry, I said, as calmly as I could, Ithe thing is lost. Itit must have fallen out of a box on my dressingtable. Whatever he thought of my explanation, and I knew he doubted it, he made no sign. He asked me to describe the link accurately, and I did so, while he glanced at a list he took from his pocket. One set monogram cufflinks, he read, one set plain pearl links, one set cufflinks, womans head set with diamonds and emeralds. There is no mention of such a link as you describe, and yet, if your theory is right, Mr. Armstrong must have taken back in his cuffs one complete cufflink, and a half, perhaps, of the other. The idea was new to me. If it had not been the murdered man who had entered the house that night, who had it been? There are a number of strange things connected with this case, the detective went on. Miss Gertrude Innes testified that she heard someone fumbling with the lock, that the door opened, and that almost immediately the shot was fired. Now, Miss Innes, here is the strange part of that. Mr. Armstrong had no key with him. There was no key in the lock, or on the floor. In other words, the evidence points absolutely to this Mr. Armstrong was admitted to the house from within. It is impossible, I broke in. Mr. Jamieson, do you know what your words imply? Do you know that you are practically accusing Gertrude Innes of admitting that man? Not quite that, he said, with his friendly smile. In fact, Miss Innes, I am quite certain she did not. But as long as I learn only parts of the truth, from both you and her, what can I do? I know you picked up something in the flower bed you refuse to tell me what it was. I know Miss Gertrude went back to the billiardroom to get something, she refuses to say what. You suspect what happened to the cufflink, but you wont tell me. So far, all I am sure of is this I do not believe Arnold Armstrong was the midnight visitor who so alarmed you by droppingshall we say, a golfstick? And I believe that when he did come he was admitted by someone in the house. Who knowsit may have beenLiddy! I stirred my tea angrily. I have always heard, I said dryly, that undertakers assistants are jovial young men. A mans sense of humor seems to be in inverse proportion to the gravity of his profession. A mans sense of humor is a barbarous and a cruel thing, Miss Innes, he admitted. It is to the feminine as the hug of a bear is to the scratch ofwell, anything with claws. Is that you, Thomas? Come in. Thomas Johnson stood in the doorway. He looked alarmed and apprehensive, and suddenly I remembered the sealskin dressingbag in the lodge. Thomas came just inside the door and stood with his head drooping, his eyes, under their shaggy gray brows, fixed on Mr. Jamieson. Thomas, said the detective, not unkindly, I sent for you to tell us what you told Sam Bohannon at the club, the day before Mr. Arnold was found here, dead. Let me see. You came here Friday night to see Miss Innes, didnt you? And came to work here Saturday morning? For some unexplained reason Thomas looked relieved. Yas, sah, he said. You see it were like this When Mistah Armstrong and the famly went away, Mis Watson an me, we was lef in charge till the place was rented. Mis Watson, sheve bin here a good while, an she warn skeery. So she slep in the house. Id bin havin tokensI tol Mis Innes some of eman I slep in the lodge. Then one day Mis Watson, she came to me an she sez, sez she, Thomas, youll hev to sleep up in the big house. Im too nervous to do it any more. But I jes reckon to myself that ef its too skeery fer her, its too skeery fer me. We had it, then, sho nuff, and it ended up with Mis Watson stayin in the lodge nights an me lookin fer work at de club. Did Mrs. Watson say that anything had happened to alarm her? No, sah. She was jes natchally skeered. Well, that was all, fars I know, until the night I come over to see Mis Innes. I come across the valley, along the path from the clubhouse, and I goes home that way. Down in the creek bottom I almost run into a man. He wuz standin with his back to me, an he was workin with one of these yere electric light things that fit in yer pocket. He was havin troubleone minute itd flash out, an the nex itd be gone. I hed a view of is white dress shirt an tie, as I passed. I didnt see his face. But I know it warnt Mr. Arnold. It was a taller man than Mr. Arnold. Beside that, Mr. Arnold was playin cards when I got to the clubhouse, sames hed been doin all day. And the next morning you came back along the path, pursued Mr. Jamieson relentlessly. The nex mornin I come back along the path an down where I dun see the man night befoh, I picked up this here. The old man held out a tiny object and Mr. Jamieson took it. Then he held it on his extended palm for me to see. It was the other half of the pearl cufflink! But Mr. Jamieson was not quite through questioning him. And so you showed it to Sam, at the club, and asked him if he knew anyone who owned such a link, and Sam saidwhat? Wal, Sam, he lowed hed seen such a pair of cuffbuttons in a shirt belongin to Mr. BaileyMr. Jack Bailey, sah. Ill keep this link, Thomas, for a while, the detective said. Thats all I wanted to know. Good night. As Thomas shuffled out, Mr. Jamieson watched me sharply. You see, Miss Innes, he said, Mr. Bailey insists on mixing himself with this thing. If Mr. Bailey came here that Friday night expecting to meet Arnold Armstrong, and missed himif, as I say, he had done this, might he not, seeing him enter the following night, have struck him down, as he had intended before? But the motive? I gasped. There could be motive proved, I think. Arnold Armstrong and John Bailey have been enemies since the latter, as cashier of the Traders Bank, brought Arnold almost into the clutches of the law. Also, you forget that both men have been paying attention to Miss Gertrude. Baileys flight looks bad, too. And you think Halsey helped him to escape? Undoubtedly. Why, what could it be but flight? Miss Innes, let me reconstruct that evening, as I see it. Bailey and Armstrong had quarreled at the club. I learned this today. Your nephew brought Bailey over. Prompted by jealous, insane fury, Armstrong followed, coming across by the path. He entered the billiardroom wingperhaps rapping, and being admitted by your nephew. Just inside he was shot, by someone on the circular staircase. The shot fired, your nephew and Bailey left the house at once, going toward the automobile house. They left by the lower road, which prevented them being heard, and when you and Miss Gertrude got downstairs everything was quiet. ButGertrudes story, I stammered. Miss Gertrude only brought forward her explanation the following morning. I do not believe it, Miss Innes. It is the story of a loving and ingenious woman. Andthis thing tonight? May upset my whole view of the case. We must give the benefit of every doubt, after all. We may, for instance, come back to the figure on the porch if it was a woman you saw that night through the window, we might start with other premises. Or Mr. Innes explanation may turn us in a new direction. It is possible that he shot Arnold Armstrong as a burglar and then fled, frightened at what he had done. In any case, however, I feel confident that the body was here when he left. Mr. Armstrong left the club ostensibly for a moonlight saunter, about half after eleven oclock. It was three when the shot was fired. I leaned back bewildered. It seemed to me that the evening had been full of significant happenings, had I only held the key. Had Gertrude been the fugitive in the clothes chute? Who was the man on the drive near the lodge, and whose goldmounted dressingbag had I seen in the lodge sittingroom? It was late when Mr. Jamieson finally got up to go. I went with him to the door, and together we stood looking out over the valley. Below lay the village of Casanova, with its Old World houses, its blossoming trees and its peace. Above on the hill across the valley were the lights of the Greenwood Club. It was even possible to see the curving row of parallel lights that marked the carriage road. Rumors that I had heard about the club came backof drinking, of high play, and once, a year ago, of a suicide under those very lights. Mr. Jamieson left, taking a shortcut to the village, and I still stood there. It must have been after eleven, and the monotonous tick of the big clock on the stairs behind me was the only sound. Then I was conscious that someone was running up the drive. In a minute a woman darted into the area of light made by the open door, and caught me by the arm. It was RosieRosie in a state of collapse from terror, and, not the least important, clutching one of my Coalport plates and a silver spoon. She stood staring into the darkness behind, still holding the plate. I got her into the house and secured the plate; then I stood and looked down at her where she crouched tremblingly against the doorway. Well, I asked, didnt your young man enjoy his meal? She couldnt speak. She looked at the spoon she still heldI wasnt so anxious about it thank Heaven, it wouldnt chipand then she stared at me. I appreciate your desire to have everything nice for him, I went on, but the next time, you might take the Limoges china. Its more easily duplicated and less expensive. I havent a young mannot here. She had got her breath now, as I had guessed she would. II have been chased by a thief, Miss Innes. Did he chase you out of the house and back again? I asked. Then Rosie began to crynot silently, but noisily, hysterically. I stopped her by giving her a good shake. What in the world is the matter with you? I snapped. Has the day of good common sense gone by! Sit up and tell me the whole thing. Rosie sat up then, and sniffled. I was coming up the drive she began. You must start with when you went down the drive, with my dishes and my silver, I interrupted, but, seeing more signs of hysteria, I gave in. Very well. You were coming up the drive I had a basket ofof silver and dishes on my arm and I was carrying the plate, becausebecause I was afraid Id break it. Partway up the road a man stepped out of the bushes, and held his arm like this, spread out, so I couldnt get past. He saidhe saidNot so fast, young lady; I want you to let me see whats in that basket. She got up in her excitement and took hold of my arm. It was like this, Miss Innes, she said, and say you was the man. When he said that, I screamed and ducked under his arm like this. He caught at the basket and I dropped it. I ran as fast as I could, and he came after as far as the trees. Then he stopped. Oh, Miss Innes, it must have been the man that killed that Mr. Armstrong! Dont be foolish, I said. Whoever killed Mr. Armstrong would put as much space between himself and this house as he could. Go up to bed now; and mind, if I hear of this story being repeated to the other maids, I shall deduct from your wages for every broken dish I find in the drive. I listened to Rosie as she went upstairs, running past the shadowy places and slamming her door. Then I sat down and looked at the Coalport plate and the silver spoon. I had brought my own china and silver, and, from all appearances, I would have little enough to take back. But though I might jeer at Rosie as much as I wished, the fact remained that someone had been on the drive that night who had no business there. Although neither had Rosie, for that matter. I could fancy Liddys face when she missed the extra pieces of chinashe had opposed Rosie from the start. If Liddy once finds a prophecy fulfilled, especially an unpleasant one, she never allows me to forget it. It seemed to me that it was absurd to leave that china dotted along the road for her to spy the next morning; so with a sudden resolution, I opened the door again and stepped out into the darkness. As the door closed behind me I half regretted my impulse; then I shut my teeth and went on. I have never been a nervous woman, as I said before. Moreover, a minute or two in the darkness enabled me to see things fairly well. Beulah gave me rather a start by rubbing unexpectedly against my feet; then we two, side by side, went down the drive. There were no fragments of china, but where the grove began I picked up a silver spoon. So far Rosies story was borne out I began to wonder if it were not indiscreet, to say the least, this midnight prowling in a neighborhood with such a deservedly bad reputation. Then I saw something gleaming, which proved to be the handle of a cup, and a step or two farther on I found a Vshaped bit of a plate. But the most surprising thing of all was to find the basket sitting comfortably beside the road, with the rest of the broken crockery piled neatly within, and a handful of small silver, spoons, forks, and the like, on top! I could only stand and stare. Then Rosies story was true. But where had Rosie carried her basket? And why had the thief, if he were a thief, picked up the broken china out of the road and left it, with his booty? It was with my nearest approach to a nervous collapse that I heard the familiar throbbing of an automobile engine. As it came closer I recognized the outline of the Dragon Fly, and knew that Halsey had come back. Strange enough it must have seemed to Halsey, too, to come across me in the middle of the night, with the skirt of my gray silk gown over my shoulders to keep off the dew, holding a red and green basket under one arm and a black cat under the other. What with relief and joy, I began to cry, right there, and very nearly wiped my eyes on Beulah in the excitement. IX Just Like a Girl Aunt Ray! Halsey said from the gloom behind the lamps. What in the world are you doing here? Taking a walk, I said, trying to be composed. I dont think the answer struck either of us as being ridiculous at the time. Oh, Halsey, where have you been? Let me take you up to the house. He was in the road, and had Beulah and the basket out of my arms in a moment. I could see the car plainly now, and Warner was at the wheelWarner in an ulster and a pair of slippers, over Heaven knows what. Jack Bailey was not there. I got in, and we went slowly and painfully up to the house. We did not talk. What we had to say was too important to commence there, and, besides, it took all kinds of coaxing from both men to get the Dragon Fly up the last grade. Only when we had closed the front door and stood facing each other in the hall, did Halsey say anything. He slipped his strong young arm around my shoulders and turned me so I faced the light. Poor Aunt Ray! he said gently. And I nearly wept again. II must see Gertrude, too; we will have a threecornered talk. And then Gertrude herself came down the stairs. She had not been to bed, evidently she still wore the white negligee she had worn earlier in the evening, and she limped somewhat. During her slow progress down the stairs I had time to notice one thing Mr. Jamieson had said the woman who escaped from the cellar had worn no shoe on her right foot. Gertrudes right ankle was the one she had sprained! The meeting between brother and sister was tense, but without tears. Halsey kissed her tenderly, and I noticed evidences of strain and anxiety in both young faces. Is everythingright? she asked. Right as can be, with forced cheerfulness. I lighted the livingroom and we went in there. Only a halfhour before I had sat with Mr. Jamieson in that very room, listening while he overtly accused both Gertrude and Halsey of at least a knowledge of the death of Arnold Armstrong. Now Halsey was here to speak for himself I should learn everything that had puzzled me. I saw it in the paper tonight for the first time, he was saying. It knocked me dumb. When I think of this houseful of women, and a thing like that occurring! Gertrudes face was still set and white. That isnt all, Halsey, she said. You andand Jack left almost at the time it happened. The detective here thinks that youthat weknow something about it. The devil he does! Halseys eyes were fairly starting from his head. I beg your pardon, Aunt Ray, butthe fellows a lunatic. Tell me everything, wont you, Halsey? I begged. Tell me where you went that night, or rather morning, and why you went as you did. This has been a terrible fortyeight hours for all of us. He stood staring at me, and I could see the horror of the situation dawning in his face. I cant tell you where I went, Aunt Ray, he said, after a moment. As to why, you will learn that soon enough. But Gertrude knows that Jack and I left the house before this thingthis horrible murderoccurred. Mr. Jamieson does not believe me, Gertrude said drearily. Halsey, if the worst comes, if they should arrest you, you musttell. I shall tell nothing, he said with a new sternness in his voice. Aunt Ray, it was necessary for Jack and me to leave that night. I can not tell you whyjust yet. As to where we went, if I have to depend on that as an alibi, I shall not tell. The whole thing is an absurdity, a trumpedup charge that can not possibly be serious. Has Mr. Bailey gone back to the city, I demanded, or to the club? Neither, defiantly; at the present moment I do not know where he is. Halsey, I asked gravely, leaning forward, have you the slightest suspicion who killed Arnold Armstrong? The police think he was admitted from within, and that he was shot down from above, by someone on the circular staircase. I know nothing of it, he maintained; but I fancied I caught a sudden glance at Gertrude, a flash of something that died as it came. As quietly, as calmly as I could, I went over the whole story, from the night Liddy and I had been alone up to the strange experience of Rosie and her pursuer. The basket still stood on the table, a mute witness to this last mystifying occurrence. There is something else, I said hesitatingly, at the last. Halsey, I have never told this even to Gertrude, but the morning after the crime, I found, in a tulip bed, a revolver. Itit was yours, Halsey. For an appreciable moment Halsey stared at me. Then he turned to Gertrude. My revolver, Trude! he exclaimed. Why, Jack took my revolver with him, didnt he? Oh, for Heavens sake dont say that, I implored. The detective thinks possibly Jack Bailey came back, andand the thing happened then. He didnt come back, Halsey said sternly. Gertrude, when you brought down a revolver that night for Jack to take with him, what one did you bring? Mine? Gertrude was defiant now. No. Yours was loaded, and I was afraid of what Jack might do. I gave him one I have had for a year or two. It was empty. Halsey threw up both hands despairingly. If that isnt like a girl! he said.

Why didnt you do what I asked you to, Gertrude? You send Bailey off with an empty gun, and throw mine in a tulip bed, of all places on earth! Mine was a thirtyeight caliber. The inquest will show, of course, that the bullet that killed Armstrong was a thirtyeight. Then where shall I be? You forget, I broke in, that I have the revolver, and that no one knows about it. But Gertrude had risen angrily. I can not stand it; it is always with me, she cried. Halsey, I did not throw your revolver into the tulip bed. Ithinkyoudid ityourself! They stared at each other across the big library table, with young eyes all at once hard, suspicious. And then Gertrude held out both hands to him appealingly. We must not, she said brokenly. Just now, with so much at stake, itis shameful. I know you are as ignorant as I am. Make me believe it, Halsey. Halsey soothed her as best he could, and the breach seemed healed. But long after I went to bed he sat downstairs in the livingroom alone, and I knew he was going over the case as he had learned it. Some things were clear to him that were dark to me. He knew, and Gertrude, too, why Jack Bailey and he had gone away that night, as they did. He knew where they had been for the last fortyeight hours, and why Jack Bailey had not returned with him. It seemed to me that without fuller confidence from both the childrenthey are always children to meI should never be able to learn anything. As I was finally getting ready for bed, Halsey came upstairs and knocked at my door. When I had got into a negligeeI used to say wrapper before Gertrude came back from schoolI let him in. He stood in the doorway a moment, and then he went into agonies of silent mirth. I sat down on the side of the bed and waited in severe silence for him to stop, but he only seemed to grow worse. When he had recovered he took me by the elbow and pulled me in front of the mirror. How to be beautiful, he quoted. Advice to maids and matrons, by Beatrice Fairfax! And then I saw myself. I had neglected to remove my wrinkle eradicators, and I presume my appearance was odd. I believe that it is a womans duty to care for her looks, but it is much like telling a necessary falsehoodone must not be found out. By the time I got them off Halsey was serious again, and I listened to his story. Aunt Ray, he began, extinguishing his cigarette on the back of my ivory hairbrush, I would give a lot to tell you the whole thing. ButI cant, for a day or so, anyhow. But one thing I might have told you a long time ago. If you had known it, you would not have suspected me for a moment ofof having anything to do with the attack on Arnold Armstrong. Goodness knows what I might do to a fellow like that, if there was enough provocation, and I had a gun in my handunder ordinary circumstances. ButI care a great deal about Louise Armstrong, Aunt Ray. I hope to marry her some day. Is it likely I would kill her brother? Her stepbrother, I corrected. No, of course, it isnt likely, or possible. Why didnt you tell me, Halsey? Well, there were two reasons, he said slowly. One was that you had a girl already picked out for me Nonsense, I broke in, and felt myself growing red. I had, indeed, one of thebut no matter. And the second reason, he pursued, was that the Armstrongs would have none of me. I sat bolt upright at that and gasped. The Armstrongs! I repeated. With old Peter Armstrong driving a stage across the mountains while your grandfather was war governor Well, of course, the war governors dead, and out of the matrimonial market, Halsey interrupted. And the present Innes admits himself he isnt good enough forfor Louise. Exactly, I said despairingly, and, of course, you are taken at your own valuation. The Inneses are not always so selfdepreciatory. Not always, no, he said, looking at me with his boyish smile. Fortunately, Louise doesnt agree with her family. Shes willing to take me, war governor or no, provided her mother consents. She isnt overlyfond of her stepfather, but she adores her mother. And now, cant you see where this thing puts me? Down and out, with all of them. But the whole thing is absurd, I argued. And besides, Gertrudes sworn statement that you left before Arnold Armstrong came would clear you at once. Halsey got up and began to pace the room, and the air of cheerfulness dropped like a mask. She cant swear it, he said finally. Gertrudes story was true as far as it went, but she didnt tell everything. Arnold Armstrong came here at twothirtycame into the billiardroom and left in five minutes. He came to bringsomething. Halsey, I cried, you must tell me the whole truth. Every time I see a way for you to escape you block it yourself with this wall of mystery. What did he bring? A telegramfor Bailey, he said. It came by special messenger from town, and wasmost important. Bailey had started for here, and the messenger had gone back to the city. The steward gave it to Arnold, who had been drinking all day and couldnt sleep, and was going for a stroll in the direction of Sunnyside. And he brought it? Yes. What was in the telegram? I can tell youas soon as certain things are made public. It is only a matter of days now, gloomily. And Gertrudes story of a telephone message? Poor Trude! he half whispered. Poor loyal little girl! Aunt Ray, there was no such message. No doubt your detective already knows that and discredits all Gertrude told him. And when she went back, it was to getthe telegram? Probably, Halsey said slowly. When you get to thinking about it, Aunt Ray, it looks bad for all three of us, doesnt it? And yetI will take my oath none of us even inadvertently killed that poor devil. I looked at the closed door into Gertrudes dressingroom, and lowered my voice. The same horrible thought keeps recurring to me, I whispered. Halsey, Gertrude probably had your revolver she must have examined it, anyhow, that night. After youand Jack had gone, what if that ruffian came back, and sheand she I couldnt finish. Halsey stood looking at me with shut lips. She might have heard him fumbling at the doorhe had no key, the police sayand thinking it was you, or Jack, she admitted him. When she saw her mistake she ran up the stairs, a step or two, and turning, like an animal at bay, she fired. Halsey had his hand over my lips before I finished, and in that position we stared each at the other, our stricken glances crossing. The revolvermy revolverthrown into the tulip bed! he muttered to himself. Thrown perhaps from an upper window you say it was buried deep. Her prostration ever since, herAunt Ray, you dont think it was Gertrude who fell down the clothes chute? I could only nod my head in a hopeless affirmative. X The Traders Bank The morning after Halseys return was Tuesday. Arnold Armstrong had been found dead at the foot of the circular staircase at three oclock on Sunday morning. The funeral services were to be held on Tuesday, and the interment of the body was to be deferred until the Armstrongs arrived from California. No one, I think, was very sorry that Arnold Armstrong was dead, but the manner of his death aroused some sympathy and an enormous amount of curiosity. Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh, a cousin, took charge of the arrangements, and everything, I believe, was as quiet as possible. I gave Thomas Johnson and Mrs. Watson permission to go into town to pay their last respects to the dead man, but for some reason they did not care to go. Halsey spent part of the day with Mr. Jamieson, but he said nothing of what happened. He looked grave and anxious, and he had a long conversation with Gertrude late in the afternoon. Tuesday evening found us quiet, with the quiet that precedes an explosion. Gertrude and Halsey were both gloomy and distraught, and as Liddy had already discovered that some of the china was brokenit is impossible to have any secrets from an old servantI was not in a pleasant humor myself. Warner brought up the afternoon mail and the evening papers at sevenI was curious to know what the papers said of the murder. We had turned away at least a dozen reporters. But I read over the headline that ran halfway across the top of the Gazette twice before I comprehended it. Halsey had opened the Chronicle and was staring at it fixedly. The Traders Bank closes its doors! was what I read, and then I put down the paper and looked across the table. Did you know of this? I asked Halsey. I expected it. But not so soon, he replied. And you? to Gertrude. Jacktold ussomething, Gertrude said faintly. Oh, Halsey, what can he do now? Jack! I said scornfully. Your Jacks flight is easy enough to explain now. And you helped him, both of you, to get away! You get that from your mother; it isnt an Innes trait. Do you know that every dollar you have, both of you, is in that bank? Gertrude tried to speak, but Halsey stopped her. That isnt all, Gertrude, he said quietly; Jack isunder arrest. Under arrest! Gertrude screamed, and tore the paper out of his hand. She glanced at the heading, then she crumpled the newspaper into a ball and flung it to the floor. While Halsey, looking stricken and white, was trying to smooth it out and read it, Gertrude had dropped her head on the table and was sobbing stormily. I have the clipping somewhere, but just now I can remember only the essentials. On the afternoon before, Monday, while the Traders Bank was in the rush of closing hour, between two and three, Mr. Jacob Trautman, President of the Pearl Brewing Company, came into the bank to lift a loan. As security for the loan he had deposited some three hundred International Steamship Company 5s, in total value three hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Trautman went to the loan clerk and, after certain formalities had been gone through, the loan clerk went to the vault. Mr. Trautman, who was a large and genial German, waited for a time, whistling under his breath. The loan clerk did not come back. After an interval, Mr. Trautman saw the loan clerk emerge from the vault and go to the assistant cashier the two went hurriedly to the vault. A lapse of another ten minutes, and the assistant cashier came out and approached Mr. Trautman. He was noticeably white and trembling. Mr. Trautman was told that through an oversight the bonds had been misplaced, and was asked to return the following morning, when everything would be made all right. Mr. Trautman, however, was a shrewd businessman, and he did not like the appearance of things. He left the bank apparently satisfied, and within thirty minutes he had called up three different members of the Traders Board of Directors. At threethirty there was a hastily convened board meeting, with some stormy scenes, and late in the afternoon a national bank examiner was in possession of the books. The bank had not opened for business on Tuesday. At twelvethirty oclock the Saturday before, as soon as the business of the day was closed, Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the defunct bank, had taken his hat and departed. During the afternoon he had called up Mr. Aronson, a member of the board, and said he was ill, and might not be at the bank for a day or two. As Bailey was highly thought of, Mr. Aronson merely expressed a regret. From that time until Monday night, when Mr. Bailey had surrendered to the police, little was known of his movements. Some time after one on Saturday he had entered the Western Union office at Cherry and White Streets and had sent two telegrams. He was at the Greenwood Country Club on Saturday night, and appeared unlike himself. It was reported that he would be released under enormous bond, some time that day, Tuesday. The article closed by saying that while the officers of the bank refused to talk until the examiner had finished his work, it was known that securities aggregating a million and a quarter were missing. Then there was a diatribe on the possibility of such an occurrence; on the folly of a oneman bank, and of a Board of Directors that met only to lunch together and to listen to a brief report from the cashier, and on the poor policy of a government that arranges a three or fourday examination twice a year. The mystery, it insinuated, had not been cleared by the arrest of the cashier. Before now minor officials had been used to cloak the misdeeds of men higher up. Inseparable as the words speculation and peculation have grown to be, John Bailey was not known to be in the stock market. His only words, after his surrender, had been Send for Mr. Armstrong at once. The telegraph message which had finally reached the President of the Traders Bank, in an interior town in California, had been responded to by a telegram from Doctor Walker, the young physician who was traveling with the Armstrong family, saying that Paul Armstrong was very ill and unable to travel. That was how things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders Bank had suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The childrens money was gone that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if they would let me share. But Gertrudes grief was beyond any power of mine to comfort; the man she had chosen stood accused of a colossal embezzlementand even worse. For in the instant that I sat there I seemed to see the coils closing around John Bailey as the murderer of Arnold Armstrong. Gertrude lifted her head at last and stared across the table at Halsey. Why did he do it? she wailed. Couldnt you stop him, Halsey? It was suicidal to go back! Halsey was looking steadily through the windows of the breakfastroom, but it was evident he saw nothing. It was the only thing he could do, Trude, he said at last. Aunt Ray, when I found Jack at the Greenwood Club last Saturday night, he was frantic. I can not talk until Jack tells me I may, buthe is absolutely innocent of all this, believe me. I thought, Trude and I thought, we were helping him, but it was the wrong way. He came back. Isnt that the act of an innocent man? Then why did he leave at all? I asked, unconvinced. What innocent man would run away from here at three oclock in the morning? Doesnt it look rather as though he thought it impossible to escape? Gertrude rose angrily. You are not even just! she flamed. You dont know anything about it, and you condemn him! I know that we have all lost a great deal of money, I said. I shall believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be. You profess to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am I to think? Halsey leaned over and patted my hand. You must take us on faith, he said. Jack Bailey hasnt a penny that doesnt belong to him; the guilty man will be known in a day or so. I shall believe that when it is proved, I said grimly. In the meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do. Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned suddenly. But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey, wont the thief be detected at once? Halsey turned with a superior smile. It wouldnt be done that way, he said. They would be taken out of the vault by someone who had access to it, and used as collateral for a loan in another bank. It would be possible to realize eighty percent of their face value. In cash? In cash. But the man who did ithe would be known? Yes. I tell you both, as sure as I stand here, I believe that Paul Armstrong looted his own bank. I believe he has a million at least, as the result, and that he will never come back. Im worse than a pauper now. I cant ask Louise to share nothing a year with me and when I think of this disgrace for her, Im crazy. The most ordinary events of life seemed pregnant with possibilities that day, and when Halsey was called to the telephone, I ceased all pretense at eating. When he came back from the telephone his face showed that something had occurred. He waited, however, until Thomas left the diningroom then he told us. Paul Armstrong is dead, he announced gravely. He died this morning in California. Whatever he did, he is beyond the law now. Gertrude turned pale. And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it! she said despairingly. Also, I replied coldly, Mr. Armstrong is forever beyond the power of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with some two hundred thousand dollars in his hands, which is about what you have lost, I shall believe him innocent. Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me. There you go! he exclaimed. If he was the thief, he could return the money, of course. If he is innocent, he probably hasnt a tenth of that amount in the world. In his hands! Thats like a woman. Gertrude, who had been pale and despairing during the early part of the conversation, had flushed an indignant red. She got up and drew herself to her slender height, looking down at me with the scorn of the young and positive. You are the only mother I ever had, she said tensely. I have given you all I would have given my mother, had she livedmy love, my trust. And now, when I need you most, you fail me. I tell you, John Bailey is a good man, an honest man. If you say he is not, youyou Gertrude, Halsey broke in sharply. She dropped beside the table and, burying her face in her arms broke into a storm of tears. I love himlove him, she sobbed, in a surrender that was totally unlike her. Oh, I never thought it would be like this. I cant bear it. I cant. Halsey and I stood helpless before the storm. I would have tried to comfort her, but she had put me away, and there was something aloof in her grief, something new and strange. At last, when her sorrow had subsided to the dry shaking sobs of a tired child, without raising her head she put out one groping hand. Aunt Ray! she whispered. In a moment I was on my knees beside her, her arm around my neck, her cheek against my hair. Where am I in this? Halsey said suddenly and tried to put his arms around us both. It was a welcome distraction, and Gertrude was soon herself again. The little storm had cleared the air. Nevertheless, my opinion remained unchanged. There was much to be cleared up before I would consent to any renewal of my acquaintance with John Bailey. And Halsey and Gertrude knew it, knowing me. XI Halsey Makes a Capture It was about halfpast eight when we left the diningroom, and still engrossed with one subject, the failure of the bank and its attendant evils, Halsey and I went out into the grounds for a stroll. Gertrude followed us shortly. The light was thickening, to appropriate Shakespeares description of twilight, and once again the treetoads and the crickets were making night throb with their tiny life. It was almost oppressively lonely, in spite of its beauty, and I felt a sickening pang of homesickness for my city at nightfor the clatter of horses feet on cemented paving, for the lights, the voices, the sound of children playing. The country after dark oppresses me. The stars, quite eclipsed in the city by the electric lights, here become insistent, assertive. Whether I want to or not, I find myself looking for the few I know by name, and feeling ridiculously new and small by contrastalways an unpleasant sensation. After Gertrude joined us, we avoided any further mention of the murder. To Halsey, as to me, there was ever present, I am sure, the thought of our conversation of the night before. As we strolled back and forth along the drive, Mr. Jamieson emerged from the shadow of the trees. Good evening, he said, managing to include Gertrude in his bow. Gertrude had never been even ordinarily courteous to him, and she nodded coldly. Halsey, however, was more cordial, although we were all constrained enough. He and Gertrude went on together, leaving the detective to walk with me. As soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to me. Do you know, Miss Innes, he said, the deeper I go into this thing, the more strange it seems to me. I am very sorry for Miss Gertrude. It looks as if Bailey, whom she has tried so hard to save, is worse than a rascal; and after her plucky fight for him, it seems hard. I looked through the dusk to where Gertrudes light dinner dress gleamed among the trees. She had made a plucky fight, poor child. Whatever she might have been driven to do, I could find nothing but a deep sympathy for her. If she had only come to me with the whole truth then! Miss Innes, Mr. Jamieson was saying, in the last three days, have you seen aany suspicious figures around the grounds? Anywoman? No, I replied. I have a houseful of maids that will bear watching, one and all. But there has been no strange woman near the house or Liddy would have seen her, you may be sure. She has a telescopic eye. Mr. Jamieson looked thoughtful. It may not amount to anything, he said slowly. It is difficult to get any perspective on things around here, because everyone down in the village is sure he saw the murderer, either before or since the crime. And half of them will stretch a point or two as to facts, to be obliging. But the man who drives the hack down there tells a story that may possibly prove to be important. I have heard it, I think. Was it the one the parlor maid brought up yesterday, about a ghost wringing its hands on the roof? Or perhaps its the one the milkboy heard a tramp washing a dirty shirt, presumably bloody, in the creek below the bridge? I could see the gleam of Mr. Jamiesons teeth, as he smiled. Neither, he said. But Matthew Geist, which is our friends name, claims that on Saturday night, at ninethirty, a veiled lady I knew it would be a veiled lady, I broke in. A veiled lady, he persisted, who was apparently young and beautiful, engaged his hack and asked to be driven to Sunnyside. Near the gate, however, she made him stop, in spite of his remonstrances, saying she preferred to walk to the house. She paid him, and he left her there. Now, Miss Innes, you had no such visitor, I believe? None, I said decidedly. Geist thought it might be a maid, as you had got a supply that day. But he said her getting out near the gate puzzled him. Anyhow, we have now one veiled lady, who, with the ghostly intruder of Friday night, makes two assets that I hardly know what to do with. It is mystifying, I admitted, although I can think of one possible explanation. The path from the Greenwood Club to the village enters the road near the lodge gate. A woman who wished to reach the Country Club, unperceived, might choose such a method. There are plenty of women there. I think this gave him something to ponder, for in a short time he said good night and left. But I myself was far from satisfied. I was determined, however, on one thing. If my suspicionsfor I had suspicionswere true, I would make my own investigations, and Mr. Jamieson should learn only what was good for him to know. We went back to the house, and Gertrude, who was more like herself since her talk with Halsey, sat down at the mahogany desk in the livingroom to write a letter. Halsey prowled up and down the entire east wing, now in the cardroom, now in the billiardroom, and now and then blowing his clouds of tobacco smoke among the pink and gold hangings of the drawingroom. After a little I joined him in the billiardroom, and together we went over the details of the discovery of the body. The cardroom was quite dark. Where we sat, in the billiardroom, only one of the side brackets was lighted, and we spoke in subdued tones, as the hour and the subject seemed to demand. When I spoke of the figure Liddy and I had seen on the porch through the cardroom window Friday night, Halsey sauntered into the darkened room, and together we stood there, much as Liddy and I had done that other night. The window was the same grayish rectangle in the blackness as before. A few feet away in the hall was the spot where the body of Arnold Armstrong had been found. I was a bit nervous, and I put my hand on Halseys sleeve. Suddenly, from the top of the staircase above us came the sound of a cautious footstep. At first I was not sure, but Halseys attitude told me he had heard and was listening. The step, slow, measured, infinitely cautious, was nearer now. Halsey tried to loosen my fingers, but I was in a paralysis of fright. The swish of a body against the curving rail, as if for guidance, was plain enough, and now whoever it was had reached the foot of the staircase and had caught a glimpse of our rigid silhouettes against the billiardroom doorway. Halsey threw me off then and strode forward. Who is it? he called imperiously, and took a half dozen rapid strides toward the foot of the staircase. Then I heard him mutter something; there was the crash of a falling body, the slam of the outer door, and, for an instant, quiet. I screamed, I think. Then I remember turning on the lights and finding Halsey, white with fury, trying to untangle himself from something warm and fleecy. He had cut his forehead a little on the lowest step of the stairs, and he was rather a ghastly sight. He flung the white object at me, and, jerking open the outer door, raced into the darkness. Gertrude had come on hearing the noise, and now we stood, staring at each other overof all things on eartha white silk and wool blanket, exquisitely fine! It was the most unghostly thing in the world, with its lavender border and its faint scent. Gertrude was the first to speak. Somebodyhad it? she asked. Yes. Halsey tried to stop whoever it was and fell. Gertrude, that blanket is not mine. I have never seen it before. She held it up and looked at it then she went to the door on to the veranda and threw it open. Perhaps a hundred feet from the house were two figures, that moved slowly toward us as we looked. When they came within range of the light, I recognized Halsey, and with him Mrs. Watson, the housekeeper. XII One Mystery for Another The most commonplace incident takes on a new appearance if the attendant circumstances are unusual. There was no reason on earth why Mrs. Watson should not have carried a blanket down the east wing staircase, if she so desired. But to take a blanket down at eleven oclock at night, with every precaution as to noise, and, when discovered, to fling it at Halsey and boltHalseys word, and a good oneinto the groundsthis made the incident more than significant. They moved slowly across the lawn and up the steps. Halsey was talking quietly, and Mrs. Watson was looking down and listening. She was a woman of a certain amount of dignity, most efficient, so far as I could see, although Liddy would have found fault if she dared. But just now Mrs. Watsons face was an enigma. She was defiant, I think, under her mask of submission, and she still showed the effect of nervous shock. Mrs. Watson, I said severely, will you be so good as to explain this rather unusual occurrence? I dont think it so unusual, Miss Innes. Her voice was deep and very clear just now it was somewhat tremulous. I was taking a blanket down to Thomas, who isnot well tonight, and I used this staircase, as being nearer the path to the lodge. WhenMr. Innes called and then rushed at me, II was alarmed, and flung the blanket at him. Halsey was examining the cut on his forehead in a small mirror on the wall. It was not much of an injury, but it had bled freely, and his appearance was rather terrifying. Thomas ill? he said, over his shoulder. Why, I thought I saw Thomas out there as you made that cyclonic break out of the door and over the porch. I could see that under pretense of examining his injury he was watching her through the mirror. Is this one of the servants blankets, Mrs. Watson? I asked, holding up its luxurious folds to the light. Everything else is locked away, she replied. Which was true enough, no doubt. I had rented the house without bed furnishings. If Thomas is ill, Halsey said, some member of the family ought to go down to see him. You neednt bother, Mrs. Watson. I will take the blanket. She drew herself up quickly, as if in protest, but she found nothing to say. She stood smoothing the folds of her dead black dress, her face as white as chalk above it. Then she seemed to make up her mind. Very well, Mr. Innes, she said. Perhaps you would better go. I have done all I could. And then she turned and went up the circular staircase, moving slowly and with a certain dignity. Below, the three of us stared at one another across the intervening white blanket. Upon my word, Halsey broke out, this place is a walking nightmare. I have the feeling that we three outsiders who have paid our money for the privilege of staying in this spookfactory, are living on the very top of things. Were on the lid, so to speak. Now and then we get a sight of the things inside, but we are not a part of them. Do you suppose, Gertrude asked doubtfully, that she really meant that blanket for Thomas? Thomas was standing beside that magnolia tree, Halsey replied, when I ran after Mrs. Watson. Its down to this, Aunt Ray. Rosies basket and Mrs. Watsons blanket can only mean one thing there is somebody hiding or being hidden in the lodge. It wouldnt surprise me if we hold the key to the whole situation now. Anyhow, Im going to the lodge to investigate. Gertrude wanted to go, too, but she looked so shaken that I insisted she should not. I sent for Liddy to help her to bed, and then Halsey and I started for the lodge. The grass was heavy with dew, and, manlike, Halsey chose the shortest way across the lawn. Halfway, however, he stopped. Wed better go by the drive, he said. This isnt a lawn; its a field. Wheres the gardener these days? There isnt any, I said meekly. We have been thankful enough, so far, to have our meals prepared and served and the beds aired. The gardener who belongs here is working at the club. Remind me tomorrow to send out a man from town, he said. I know the very fellow. I record this scrap of conversation, just as I have tried to put down anything and everything that had a bearing on what followed, because the gardener Halsey sent the next day played an important part in the events of the next few weeksevents that culminated, as you know, by stirring the country profoundly. At that time, however, I was busy trying to keep my skirts dry, and paid little or no attention to what seemed then a most trivial remark. Along the drive I showed Halsey where I had found Rosies basket with the bits of broken china piled inside. He was rather skeptical. Warner probably, he said when I had finished. Began it as a joke on Rosie, and ended by picking up the broken china out of the road, knowing it would play hob with the tires of the car. Which shows how near one can come to the truth, and yet miss it altogether. At the lodge everything was quiet. There was a light in the sittingroom downstairs, and a faint gleam, as if from a shaded lamp, in one of the upper rooms. Halsey stopped and examined the lodge with calculating eyes. I dont know, Aunt Ray, he said dubiously; this is hardly a womans affair. If theres a scrap of any kind, you hike for the timber. Which was Halseys solicitous care for me, put into vernacular. I shall stay right here, I said, and crossing the small veranda, now shaded and fragrant with honeysuckle, I hammered the knocker on the door. Thomas opened the door himselfThomas, fully dressed and in his customary health. I had the blanket over my arm. I brought the blanket, Thomas, I said; I am sorry you are so ill. The old man stood staring at me and then at the blanket. His confusion under other circumstances would have been ludicrous. What! Not ill? Halsey said from the step. Thomas, Im afraid youve been malingering. Thomas seemed to have been debating something with himself. Now he stepped out on the porch and closed the door gently behind him. I reckon you bettah come in, Mis Innes, he said, speaking cautiously. Its got so I dunno what to do, and its boun to come out some time er ruther. He threw the door open then, and I stepped inside, Halsey close behind.

In the sittingroom the old negro turned with quiet dignity to Halsey. You bettah sit down, sah, he said. Its a place for a woman, sah. Things were not turning out the way Halsey expected. He sat down on the centertable, with his hands thrust in his pockets, and watched me as I followed Thomas up the narrow stairs. At the top a woman was standing, and a second glance showed me it was Rosie. She shrank back a little, but I said nothing. And then Thomas motioned to a partly open door, and I went in. The lodge boasted three bedrooms upstairs, all comfortably furnished. In this one, the largest and airiest, a night lamp was burning, and by its light I could make out a plain white metal bed. A girl was asleep thereor in a half stupor, for she muttered something now and then. Rosie had taken her courage in her hands, and coming in had turned up the light. It was only then that I knew. Feverflushed, ill as she was, I recognized Louise Armstrong. I stood gazing down at her in a stupor of amazement. Louise here, hiding at the lodge, ill and alone! Rosie came up to the bed and smoothed the white counterpane. I am afraid she is worse tonight, she ventured at last. I put my hand on the sick girls forehead. It was burning with fever, and I turned to where Thomas lingered in the hallway. Will you tell me what you mean, Thomas Johnson, by not telling me this before? I demanded indignantly. Thomas quailed. Mis Louise wouldn let me, he said earnestly. I wanted to. She ought to a had a doctor the night she came, but she wouldn hear to it. Is sheis she very bad, Mis Innes? Bad enough, I said coldly. Send Mr. Innes up. Halsey came up the stairs slowly, looking rather interested and inclined to be amused. For a moment he could not see anything distinctly in the darkened room; he stopped, glanced at Rosie and at me, and then his eyes fell on the restless head on the pillow. I think he felt who it was before he really saw her; he crossed the room in a couple of strides and bent over the bed. Louise! he said softly; but she did not reply, and her eyes showed no recognition. Halsey was young, and illness was new to him. He straightened himself slowly, still watching her, and caught my arm. Shes dying, Aunt Ray! he said huskily. Dying! Why, she doesnt know me! Fudge! I snapped, being apt to grow irritable when my sympathies are aroused. Shes doing nothing of the sortand dont pinch my arm. If you want something to do, go and choke Thomas. But at that moment Louise roused from her stupor to cough, and at the end of the paroxysm, as Rosie laid her back, exhausted, she knew us. That was all Halsey wanted; to him consciousness was recovery. He dropped on his knees beside the bed, and tried to tell her she was all right, and we would bring her around in a hurry, and how beautiful she lookedonly to break down utterly and have to stop. And at that I came to my senses, and put him out. This instant! I ordered, as he hesitated. And send Rosie here. He did not go far. He sat on the top step of the stairs, only leaving to telephone for a doctor, and getting in everybodys way in his eagerness to fetch and carry. I got him away finally, by sending him to fix up the car as a sort of ambulance, in case the doctor would allow the sick girl to be moved. He sent Gertrude down to the lodge loaded with all manner of impossible things, including an armful of Turkish towels and a box of mustard plasters, and as the two girls had known each other somewhat before, Louise brightened perceptibly when she saw her. When the doctor from Englewoodthe Casanova doctor, Doctor Walker, being awayhad started for Sunnyside, and I had got Thomas to stop trying to explain what he did not understand himself, I had a long talk with the old man, and this is what I learned. On Saturday evening before, about ten oclock, he had been reading in the sittingroom downstairs, when someone rapped at the door. The old man was alone, Warner not having arrived, and at first he was uncertain about opening the door. He did so finally, and was amazed at being confronted by Louise Armstrong. Thomas was an old family servant, having been with the present Mrs. Armstrong since she was a child, and he was overwhelmed at seeing Louise. He saw that she was excited and tired, and he drew her into the sittingroom and made her sit down. After a while he went to the house and brought Mrs. Watson, and they talked until late. The old man said Louise was in trouble, and seemed frightened. Mrs. Watson made some tea and took it to the lodge, but Louise made them both promise to keep her presence a secret. She had not known that Sunnyside was rented, and whatever her trouble was, this complicated things. She seemed puzzled. Her stepfather and her mother were still in Californiathat was all she would say about them. Why she had run away no one could imagine. Mr. Arnold Armstrong was at the Greenwood Club, and at last Thomas, not knowing what else to do, went over there along the path. It was almost midnight. Partway over he met Armstrong himself and brought him to the lodge. Mrs. Watson had gone to the house for some bedlinen, it having been arranged that under the circumstances Louise would be better at the lodge until morning. Arnold Armstrong and Louise had a long conference, during which he was heard to storm and become very violent. When he left it was after two. He had gone up to the houseThomas did not know whyand at three oclock he was shot at the foot of the circular staircase. The following morning Louise had been ill. She had asked for Arnold, and was told he had left town. Thomas had not the moral courage to tell her of the crime. She refused a doctor, and shrank morbidly from having her presence known. Mrs. Watson and Thomas had had their hands full, and at last Rosie had been enlisted to help them. She carried necessary provisionslittle enoughto the lodge, and helped to keep the secret. Thomas told me quite frankly that he had been anxious to keep Louises presence hidden for this reason they had all seen Arnold Armstrong that night, and he, himself, for one, was known to have had no very friendly feeling for the dead man. As to the reason for Louises flight from California, or why she had not gone to the Fitzhughs, or to some of her people in town, he had no more information than I had. With the death of her stepfather and the prospect of the immediate return of the family, things had become more and more impossible. I gathered that Thomas was as relieved as I at the turn events had taken. No, she did not know of either of the deaths in the family. Taken all around, I had only substituted one mystery for another. If I knew now why Rosie had taken the basket of dishes, I did not know who had spoken to her and followed her along the drive. If I knew that Louise was in the lodge, I did not know why she was there. If I knew that Arnold Armstrong had spent some time in the lodge the night before he was murdered, I was no nearer the solution of the crime. Who was the midnight intruder who had so alarmed Liddy and myself? Who had fallen down the clothes chute? Was Gertrudes lover a villain or a victim? Time was to answer all these things. XIII Louise The doctor from Englewood came very soon, and I went up to see the sick girl with him. Halsey had gone to supervise the fitting of the car with blankets and pillows, and Gertrude was opening and airing Louises own rooms at the house. Her private sittingroom, bedroom and dressingroom were as they had been when we came. They occupied the end of the east wing, beyond the circular staircase, and we had not even opened them. The girl herself was too ill to notice what was being done. When, with the help of the doctor, who was a fatherly man with a family of girls at home, we got her to the house and up the stairs into bed, she dropped into a feverish sleep, which lasted until morning. Doctor Stewartthat was the Englewood doctorstayed almost all night, giving the medicine himself, and watching her closely. Afterward he told me that she had had a narrow escape from pneumonia, and that the cerebral symptoms had been rather alarming. I said I was glad it wasnt an itis of some kind, anyhow, and he smiled solemnly. He left after breakfast, saying that he thought the worst of the danger was over, and that she must be kept very quiet. The shock of two deaths, I suppose, has done this, he remarked, picking up his case. It has been very deplorable. I hastened to set him right. She does not know of either, Doctor, I said. Please do not mention them to her. He looked as surprised as a medical man ever does. I do not know the family, he said, preparing to get into his top buggy. Young Walker, down in Casanova, has been attending them. I understand he is going to marry this young lady. You have been misinformed, I said stiffly. Miss Armstrong is going to marry my nephew. The doctor smiled as he picked up the reins. Young ladies are changeable these days, he said. We thought the wedding was to occur soon. Well, I will stop in this afternoon to see how my patient is getting along. He drove away then, and I stood looking after him. He was a doctor of the old school, of the class of family practitioner that is fast dying out; a loyal and honorable gentleman who was at once physician and confidential adviser to his patients. When I was a girl we called in the doctor alike when we had measles, or when mothers sister died in the far West. He cut out redundant tonsils and brought the babies with the same air of inspiring selfconfidence. Nowadays it requires a different specialist for each of these occurrences. When the babies cried, old Doctor Wainwright gave them peppermint and dropped warm sweet oil in their ears with sublime faith that if it was not colic it was earache. When, at the end of a year, father met him driving in his high sidebar buggy with the white mare ambling along, and asked for a bill, the doctor used to go home, estimate what his services were worth for that period, divide it in halfI dont think he kept any booksand send father a statement, in a cramped hand, on a sheet of ruled white paper. He was an honored guest at all the weddings, christenings, and funeralsyes, funeralsfor everyone knew he had done his best, and there was no gainsaying the ways of Providence. Ah, well, Doctor Wainwright is gone, and I am an elderly woman with an increasing tendency to live in the past. The contrast between my old doctor at home and the Casanova doctor, Frank Walker, always rouses me to wrath and digression. Some time about noon of that day, Wednesday, Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh telephoned me. I have the barest acquaintance with hershe managed to be put on the governing board of the Old Ladies Home and ruins their digestions by sending them icecream and cake on every holiday. Beyond that, and her reputation at bridge, which is insufferably badshe is the worst player at the bridge clubI know little of her. It was she who had taken charge of Arnold Armstrongs funeral, however, and I went at once to the telephone. Yes, I said, this is Miss Innes. Miss Innes, she said volubly, I have just received a very strange telegram from my cousin, Mrs. Armstrong. Her husband died yesterday, in California andwait, I will read you the message. I knew what was coming, and I made up my mind at once. If Louise Armstrong had a good and sufficient reason for leaving her people and coming home, a reason, moreover, that kept her from going at once to Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh, and that brought her to the lodge at Sunnyside instead, it was not my intention to betray her. Louise herself must notify her people. I do not justify myself now, but remember, I was in a peculiar position toward the Armstrong family. I was connected most unpleasantly with a coldblooded crime, and my niece and nephew were practically beggared, either directly or indirectly, through the head of the family. Mrs. Fitzhugh had found the message. Paul died yesterday. Heart disease, she read. Wire at once if Louise is with you. You see, Miss Innes, Louise must have started east, and Fanny is alarmed about her. Yes, I said. Louise is not here, Mrs. Fitzhugh went on, and none of her friendsthe few who are still in townhas seen her. I called you because Sunnyside was not rented when she went away, and Louise might have gone there. I am sorry, Mrs. Fitzhugh, but I can not help you, I said, and was immediately filled with compunction. Suppose Louise grew worse? Who was I to play Providence in this case? The anxious mother certainly had a right to know that her daughter was in good hands. So I broke in on Mrs. Fitzhughs voluble excuses for disturbing me. Mrs. Fitzhugh, I said. I was going to let you think I knew nothing about Louise Armstrong, but I have changed my mind. Louise is here, with me. There was a clatter of ejaculations at the other end of the wire. She is ill, and not able to be moved. Moreover, she is unable to see anyone. I wish you would wire her mother that she is with me, and tell her not to worry. No, I do not know why she came east. But my dear Miss Innes! Mrs. Fitzhugh began. I cut in ruthlessly. I will send for you as soon as she can see you, I said. No, she is not in a critical state now, but the doctor says she must have absolute quiet. When I had hung up the receiver, I sat down to think. So Louise had fled from her people in California, and had come east alone! It was not a new idea, but why had she done it? It occurred to me that Doctor Walker might be concerned in it, might possibly have bothered her with unwelcome attentions; but it seemed to me that Louise was hardly a girl to take refuge in flight under such circumstances. She had always been highspirited, with the wellpoised head and buoyant step of the outdoors girl. It must have been much more in keeping with Louises character, as I knew it, to resent vigorously any unwelcome attentions from Doctor Walker. It was the suitor whom I should have expected to see in headlong flight, not the lady in the case. The puzzle was no clearer at the end of the halfhour. I picked up the morning papers, which were still full of the looting of the Traders Bank, the interest at fever height again, on account of Paul Armstrongs death. The bank examiners were working on the books, and said nothing for publication John Bailey had been released on bond. The body of Paul Armstrong would arrive Sunday and would be buried from the Armstrong town house. There were rumors that the dead mans estate had been a comparatively small one. The last paragraph was the important one. Walter P. Broadhurst, of the Marine Bank, had produced two hundred American Traction bonds, which had been placed as security with the Marine Bank for a loan of one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, made to Paul Armstrong, just before his California trip. The bonds were a part of the missing traction bonds from the Traders Bank! While this involved the late president of the wrecked bank, to my mind it by no means cleared its cashier. The gardener mentioned by Halsey came out about two oclock in the afternoon, and walked up from the station. I was favorably impressed by him. His references were goodhe had been employed by the Brays until they went to Europe, and he looked young and vigorous. He asked for one assistant, and I was glad enough to get off so easily. He was a pleasantfaced young fellow, with black hair and blue eyes, and his name was Alexander Graham. I have been particular about Alex, because, as I said before, he played an important part later. That afternoon I had a new insight into the character of the dead banker. I had my first conversation with Louise. She sent for me, and against my better judgment I went. There were so many things she could not be told, in her weakened condition, that I dreaded the interview. It was much easier than I expected, however, because she asked no questions. Gertrude had gone to bed, having been up almost all night, and Halsey was absent on one of those mysterious absences of his that grew more and more frequent as time went on, until it culminated in the event of the night of June the tenth. Liddy was in attendance in the sickroom. There being little or nothing to do, she seemed to spend her time smoothing the wrinkles from the counterpane. Louise lay under a field of virgin white, folded back at an angle of geometrical exactness, and necessitating a readjustment every time the sick girl turned. Liddy heard my approach and came out to meet me. She seemed to be in a perpetual state of gooseflesh, and she had got in the habit of looking past me when she talked, as if she saw things. It had the effect of making me look over my shoulder to see what she was staring at, and was intensely irritating. Shes awake, Liddy said, looking uneasily down the circular staircase, which was beside me. She was talkin in her sleep something awfulabout dead men and coffins. Liddy, I said sternly, did you breathe a word about everything not being right here? Liddys gaze had wandered to the door of the chute, now bolted securely. Not a word, she said, beyond asking her a question or two, which there was no harm in. She says there never was a ghost known here. I glared at her, speechless, and closing the door into Louises boudoir, to Liddys great disappointment, I went on to the bedroom beyond. Whatever Paul Armstrong had been, he had been lavish with his stepdaughter. Gertrudes rooms at home were always beautiful apartments, but the three rooms in the east wing at Sunnyside, set apart for the daughter of the house, were much more splendid. From the walls to the rugs on the floor, from the furniture to the appointments of the bath, with its pool sunk in the floor instead of the customary unlovely tub, everything was luxurious. In the bedroom Louise was watching for me. It was easy to see that she was much improved; the flush was going, and the peculiar gasping breathing of the night before was now a comfortable and easy respiration. She held out her hand and I took it between both of mine. What can I say to you, Miss Innes? she said slowly. To have come like this I thought she was going to break down, but she did not. You are not to think of anything but of getting well, I said, patting her hand. When you are better, I am going to scold you for not coming here at once. This is your home, my dear, and of all people in the world, Halseys old aunt ought to make you welcome. She smiled a little, sadly, I thought. I ought not to see Halsey, she said. Miss Innes, there are a great many things you will never understand, I am afraid. I am an impostor on your sympathy, because II stay here and let you lavish care on me, and all the time I know you are going to despise me. Nonsense! I said briskly. Why, what would Halsey do to me if I even ventured such a thing? He is so big and masterful that if I dared to be anything but rapturous over you, he would throw me out of a window. Indeed, he would be quite capable of it. She seemed scarcely to hear my facetious tone. She had eloquent brown eyesthe Inneses are fair, and are prone to a grayishgreen optic that is better for use than appearanceand they seemed now to be clouded with trouble. Poor Halsey! she said softly. Miss Innes, I can not marry him, and I am afraid to tell him. I am a cowarda coward! I sat beside the bed and stared at her. She was too ill to argue with, and, besides, sick people take queer fancies. We will talk about that when you are stronger, I said gently. But there are some things I must tell you, she insisted. You must wonder how I came here, and why I stayed hidden at the lodge. Dear old Thomas has been almost crazy, Miss Innes. I did not know that Sunnyside was rented. I knew my mother wished to rent it, without telling mystepfather, but the news must have reached her after I left. When I started east, I had only one ideato be alone with my thoughts for a time, to bury myself here. Then, Imust have taken a cold on the train. You came east in clothing suitable for California, I said, and, like all young girls nowadays, I dont suppose you wear flannels. But she was not listening. Miss Innes, she said, has my stepbrother Arnold gone away? What do you mean? I asked, startled. But Louise was literal. He didnt come back that night, she said, and it was so important that I should see him. I believe he has gone away, I replied uncertainly. Isnt it something that we could attend to instead? But she shook her head. I must do it myself, she said dully. My mother must have rented Sunnyside without telling my stepfather, andMiss Innes, did you ever hear of anyone being wretchedly poor in the midst of luxury? Did you ever long, and long, for moneymoney to use without question, money that no one would take you to task about? My mother and I have been surrounded for years with every indulgenceeverything that would make a display. But we have never had any money, Miss Innes; that must have been why mother rented this house. My stepfather pays our bills. Its the most maddening, humiliating existence in the world. I would love honest poverty better. Never mind, I said; when you and Halsey are married you can be as honest as you like, and you will certainly be poor. Halsey came to the door at that moment and I could hear him coaxing Liddy for admission to the sickroom. Shall I bring him in? I asked Louise, uncertain what to do. The girl seemed to shrink back among her pillows at the sound of his voice. I was vaguely irritated with her; there are few young fellows like Halseystraightforward, honest, and willing to sacrifice everything for the one woman. I knew one once, more than thirty years ago, who was like that he died a long time ago. And sometimes I take out his picture, with its cane and its queer silk hat, and look at it. But of late years it has grown too painful he is always a boyand I am an old woman. I would not bring him back if I could. Perhaps it was some such memory that made me call out sharply. Come in, Halsey. And then I took my sewing and went into the boudoir beyond, to play propriety. I did not try to hear what they said, but every word came through the open door with curious distinctness. Halsey had evidently gone over to the bed and I suppose he kissed her. There was silence for a moment, as if words were superfluous things. I have been almost wild, sweetheart,Halseys voice. Why didnt you trust me, and send for me before? It was because I couldnt trust myself, she said in a low tone. I am too weak to struggle today; oh, Halsey, how I have wanted to see you! There was something I did not hear, then Halsey again. We could go away, he was saying. What does it matter about anyone in the world but just the two of us? To be always together, like this, hand in hand; Louisedont tell me it isnt going to be. I wont believe you. You dont know; you dont know, Louise repeated dully. Halsey, I careyou know thatbutnot enough to marry you. That is not true, Louise, he said sternly. You can not look at me with your honest eyes and say that. I can not marry you, she repeated miserably. Its bad enough, isnt it? Dont make it worse. Some day, before long, you will be glad. Then it is because you have never loved me. There were depths of hurt pride in his voice. You saw how much I loved you, and you let me think you caredfor a while. Nothat isnt like you, Louise. There is something you havent told me. Is itbecause there is someone else? Yes, almost inaudibly. Louise! Oh, I dont believe it. It is true, she said sadly. Halsey, you must not try to see me again. As soon as I can, I am going away from herewhere you are all so much kinder than I deserve. And whatever you hear about me, try to think as well of me as you can. I am going to marryanother man. How you must hate mehate me! I could hear Halsey cross the room to the window. Then, after a pause, he went back to her again. I could hardly sit still; I wanted to go in and give her a good shaking. Then its all over, he was saying with a long breath. The plans we made together, the hopes, theall of itover! Well, Ill not be a baby, and Ill give you up the minute you say I dont love you and I do lovesomeone else! I can not say that, she breathed, but, very soon, I shall marrythe other man. I could hear Halseys low triumphant laugh. I defy him, he said. Sweetheart, as long as you care for me, I am not afraid. The wind slammed the door between the two rooms just then, and I could hear nothing more, although I moved my chair quite close. After a discreet interval, I went into the other room, and found Louise alone. She was staring with sad eyes at the cherub painted on the ceiling over the bed, and because she looked tired I did not disturb her. XIV An Eggnog and a Telegram We had discovered Louise at the lodge Tuesday night. It was Wednesday I had my interview with her. Thursday and Friday were uneventful, save as they marked improvement in our patient. Gertrude spent almost all the time with her, and the two had grown to be great friends. But certain things hung over me constantly; the coroners inquest on the death of Arnold Armstrong, to be held Saturday, and the arrival of Mrs. Armstrong and young Doctor Walker, bringing the body of the dead president of the Traders Bank. We had not told Louise of either death. Then, too, I was anxious about the children. With their mothers inheritance swept away in the wreck of the bank, and with their love affairs in a disastrous condition, things could scarcely be worse. Added to that, the cook and Liddy had a flareup over the proper way to make beeftea for Louise, and, of course, the cook left. Mrs. Watson had been glad enough, I think, to turn Louise over to our care, and Thomas went upstairs night and morning to greet his young mistress from the doorway. Poor Thomas! He had the facultyfound still in some old negroes, who cling to the traditions of slavery daysof making his employers interest his. It was always we with Thomas; I miss him sorely; pipesmoking, obsequious, not over reliable, kindly old man! On Thursday Mr. Harton, the Armstrongs legal adviser, called up from town. He had been advised, he said, that Mrs. Armstrong was coming east with her husbands body and would arrive Monday. He came with some hesitation, he went on, to the fact that he had been further instructed to ask me to relinquish my lease on Sunnyside, as it was Mrs. Armstrongs desire to come directly there. I was aghast. Here! I said. Surely you are mistaken, Mr. Harton. I should think, afterwhat happened here only a few days ago, she would never wish to come back. Nevertheless, he replied, she is most anxious to come. This is what she says. Use every possible means to have Sunnyside vacated. Must go there at once. Mr. Harton, I said testily, I am not going to do anything of the kind. I and mine have suffered enough at the hands of this family. I rented the house at an exorbitant figure and I have moved out here for the summer. My city home is dismantled and in the hands of decorators. I have been here one week, during which I have had not a single night of uninterrupted sleep, and I intend to stay until I have recuperated. Moreover, if Mr. Armstrong died insolvent, as I believe was the case, his widow ought to be glad to be rid of so expensive a piece of property. The lawyer cleared his throat. I am very sorry you have made this decision, he said. Miss Innes, Mrs. Fitzhugh tells me Louise Armstrong is with you. She is. Has she been informed of thisdouble bereavement? Not yet, I said. She has been very ill; perhaps tonight she can be told. It is very sad; very sad, he said. I have a telegram for her, Mrs. Innes. Shall I send it out? Better open it and read it to me, I suggested. If it is important, that will save time. There was a pause while Mr. Harton opened the telegram. Then he read it slowly, judicially. Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday. Signed F. L. W. Hum! I said. Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday. Very well, Mr. Harton, I will tell her, but she is not in condition to watch for anyone. Well, Miss Innes, if you decide toerrelinquish the lease, let me know, the lawyer said. I shall not relinquish it, I replied, and I imagined his irritation from the way he hung up the receiver. I wrote the telegram down word for word, afraid to trust my memory, and decided to ask Doctor Stewart how soon Louise might be told the truth. The closing of the Traders Bank I considered unnecessary for her to know, but the death of her stepfather and stepbrother must be broken to her soon, or she might hear it in some unexpected and shocking manner. Doctor Stewart came about four oclock, bringing his leather satchel into the house with a great deal of care, and opening it at the foot of the stairs to show me a dozen big yellow eggs nesting among the bottles. Real eggs, he said proudly. None of your anemic store eggs, but the real thingsome of them still warm. Feel them! Eggnog for Miss Louise. He was beaming with satisfaction, and before he left, he insisted on going back to the pantry and making an eggnog with his own hands. Somehow, all the time he was doing it, I had a vision of Doctor Willoughby, my nerve specialist in the city, trying to make an eggnog. I wondered if he ever prescribed anything so plebeianand so delicious. And while Doctor Stewart whisked the eggs he talked. I said to Mrs. Stewart, he confided, a little red in the face from the exertion, after I went home the other day, that you would think me an old gossip, for saying what I did about Walker and Miss Louise. Nothing of the sort, I protested. The fact is, he went on, evidently justifying himself, I got that piece of information just as we get a lot of things, through the kitchen end of the house. Young Walkers chauffeurWalkers more fashionable than I am, and he goes around the country in a Stanhope carwell, his chauffeur comes to see our servant girl, and he told her the whole thing. I thought it was probable, because Walker spent a lot of time up here last summer, when the family was here, and besides, Riggs, thats Walkers man, had a very pat little story about the doctors building a house on this property, just at the foot of the hill. The sugar, please. The eggnog was finished. Drop by drop the liquor had cooked the egg, and now, with a final whisk, a last toss in the shaker, it was ready, a symphony in gold and white. The doctor sniffed it. Real eggs, real milk, and a touch of real Kentucky whisky, he said. He insisted on carrying it up himself, but at the foot of the stairs he paused. Riggs said the plans were drawn for the house, he said, harking back to the old subject. Drawn by Huston in town. So I naturally believed him. When the doctor came down, I was ready with a question. Doctor, I asked, is there anyone in the neighborhood named Carrington? Nina Carrington? Carrington? He wrinkled his forehead. Carrington? No, I dont remember any such family. There used to be Covingtons down the creek. The name was Carrington, I said, and the subject lapsed. Gertrude and Halsey went for a long walk that afternoon, and Louise slept. Time hung heavy on my hands, and I did as I had fallen into a habit of doing latelyI sat down and thought things over. One result of my meditations was that I got up suddenly and went to the telephone. I had taken the most intense dislike to this Doctor Walker, whom I had never seen, and who was being talked of in the countryside as the fianc of Louise Armstrong. I knew Sam Huston well. There had been a time, when Sam was a good deal younger than he is now, before he had married Anne Endicott, when I knew him even better. So now I felt no hesitation in calling him over the telephone. But when his office boy had given way to his confidential clerk, and that functionary had condescended to connect his employers desk telephone, I was somewhat at a loss as to how to begin. Why, how are you, Rachel? Sam said sonorously.

Going to build that house at Rock View? It was a twentyyearold joke of his. Sometime, perhaps, I said. Just now I want to ask you a question about something which is none of my business. I see you havent changed an iota in a quarter of a century, Rachel. This was intended to be another jest. Ask ahead everything but my domestic affairs is at your service. Try to be serious, I said. And tell me this has your firm made any plans for a house recently, for a Doctor Walker, at Casanova? Yes, we have. Where was it to be built? I have a reason for asking. It was to be, I believe, on the Armstrong place. Mr. Armstrong himself consulted me, and the inference wasin fact, I am quite certainthe house was to be occupied by Mr. Armstrongs daughter, who was engaged to marry Doctor Walker. When the architect had inquired for the different members of my family, and had finally rung off, I was certain of one thing. Louise Armstrong was in love with Halsey, and the man she was going to marry was Doctor Walker. Moreover, this decision was not new; marriage had been contemplated for some time. There must certainly be some explanationbut what was it? That day I repeated to Louise the telegram Mr. Harton had opened. She seemed to understand, but an unhappier face I have never seen. She looked like a criminal whose reprieve is over, and the day of execution approaching. XV Liddy Gives the Alarm The next day, Friday, Gertrude broke the news of her stepfathers death to Louise. She did it as gently as she could, telling her first that he was very ill, and finally that he was dead. Louise received the news in the most unexpected manner, and when Gertrude came out to tell me how she had stood it, I think she was almost shocked. She just lay and stared at me, Aunt Ray, she said. Do you know, I believe she is glad, glad! And she is too honest to pretend anything else. What sort of man was Mr. Paul Armstrong, anyhow? He was a bully as well as a rascal, Gertrude, I said. But I am convinced of one thing; Louise will send for Halsey now, and they will make it all up. For Louise had steadily refused to see Halsey all that day, and the boy was frantic. We had a quiet hour, Halsey and I, that evening, and I told him several things; about the request that we give up the lease to Sunnyside, about the telegram to Louise, about the rumors of an approaching marriage between the girl and Doctor Walker, and, last of all, my own interview with her the day before. He sat back in a big chair, with his face in the shadow, and my heart fairly ached for him. He was so big and so boyish! When I had finished he drew a long breath. Whatever Louise does, he said, nothing will convince me, Aunt Ray, that she doesnt care for me. And up to two months ago, when she and her mother went west, I was the happiest fellow on earth. Then something made a difference she wrote me that her people were opposed to the marriage; that her feeling for me was what it had always been, but that something had happened which had changed her ideas as to the future. I was not to write until she wrote me, and whatever occurred, I was to think the best I could of her. It sounded like a puzzle. When I saw her yesterday, it was the same thing, only, perhaps, worse. Halsey, I asked, have you any idea of the nature of the interview between Louise Armstrong and Arnold the night he was murdered? It was stormy. Thomas says once or twice he almost broke into the room, he was so alarmed for Louise. Another thing, Halsey, I said, have you ever heard Louise mention a woman named Carrington, Nina Carrington? Never, he said positively. For try as we would, our thoughts always came back to that fatal Saturday night, and the murder. Every conversational path led to it, and we all felt that Jamieson was tightening the threads of evidence around John Bailey. The detectives absence was hardly reassuring; he must have had something to work on in town, or he would have returned. The papers reported that the cashier of the Traders Bank was ill in his apartments at the Knickerbockera condition not surprising, considering everything. The guilt of the defunct president was no longer in doubt; the missing bonds had been advertised and some of them discovered. In every instance they had been used as collateral for large loans, and the belief was current that not less than a million and a half dollars had been realized. Everyone connected with the bank had been placed under arrest, and released on heavy bond. Was he alone in his guilt, or was the cashier his accomplice? Where was the money? The estate of the dead man was comparatively smalla city house on a fashionable street, Sunnyside, a large estate largely mortgaged, an insurance of fifty thousand dollars, and some personal propertythis was all. The rest lost in speculation probably, the papers said. There was one thing which looked uncomfortable for Jack Bailey he and Paul Armstrong together had promoted a railroad company in New Mexico, and it was rumored that together they had sunk large sums of money there. The business alliance between the two men added to the belief that Bailey knew something of the looting. His unexplained absence from the bank on Monday lent color to the suspicion against him. The strange thing seemed to be his surrendering himself on the point of departure. To me, it seemed the shrewd calculation of a clever rascal. I was not actively antagonistic to Gertrudes lover, but I meant to be convinced, one way or the other. I took no one on faith. That night the Sunnyside ghost began to walk again. Liddy had been sleeping in Louises dressingroom on a couch, and the approach of dusk was a signal for her to barricade the entire suite. Situated as it was, beyond the circular staircase, nothing but an extremity of excitement would have made her pass it after dark. I confess myself that the place seemed to me to have a sinister appearance, but we kept that wing well lighted, and until the lights went out at midnight it was really cheerful, if one did not know its history. On Friday night, then, I had gone to bed, resolved to go at once to sleep. Thoughts that insisted on obtruding themselves I pushed resolutely to the back of my mind, and I systematically relaxed every muscle. I fell asleep soon, and was dreaming that Doctor Walker was building his new house immediately in front of my windows I could hear the thumpthump of the hammers, and then I waked to a knowledge that somebody was pounding on my door. I was up at once, and with the sound of my footstep on the floor the low knocking ceased, to be followed immediately by sibilant whispering through the keyhole. Miss Rachel! Miss Rachel! somebody was saying, over and over. Is that you, Liddy? I asked, my hand on the knob. For the love of mercy, let me in! she said in a low tone. She was leaning against the door, for when I opened it, she fell in. She was greenishwhite, and she had a red and black barred flannel petticoat over her shoulders. Listen, she said, standing in the middle of the floor and holding on to me. Oh, Miss Rachel, its the ghost of that dead man hammering to get in! Sure enough, there was a dull thudthudthud from some place near. It was muffled one rather felt than heard it, and it was impossible to locate. One moment it seemed to come, three taps and a pause, from the floor under us the next, thudthudthudit came apparently from the wall. Its not a ghost, I said decidedly. If it was a ghost it wouldnt rap it would come through the keyhole. Liddy looked at the keyhole. But it sounds very much as though someone is trying to break into the house. Liddy was shivering violently. I told her to get me my slippers and she brought me a pair of kid gloves, so I found my things myself, and prepared to call Halsey. As before, the night alarm had found the electric lights gone the hall, save for its night lamp, was in darkness, as I went across to Halseys room. I hardly know what I feared, but it was a relief to find him there, very sound asleep, and with his door unlocked. Wake up, Halsey, I said, shaking him. He stirred a little. Liddy was half in and half out of the door, afraid as usual to be left alone, and not quite daring to enter. Her scruples seemed to fade, however, all at once. She gave a suppressed yell, bolted into the room, and stood tightly clutching the footboard of the bed. Halsey was gradually waking. Ive seen it, Liddy wailed. A woman in white down the hall! I paid no attention. Halsey, I persevered, someone is breaking into the house. Get up, wont you? It isnt our house, he said sleepily. And then he roused to the exigency of the occasion. All right, Aunt Ray, he said, still yawning. If youll let me get into something It was all I could do to get Liddy out of the room. The demands of the occasion had no influence on her she had seen the ghost, she persisted, and she wasnt going into the hall. But I got her over to my room at last, more dead than alive, and made her lie down on the bed. The tappings, which seemed to have ceased for a while, had commenced again, but they were fainter. Halsey came over in a few minutes, and stood listening and trying to locate the sound. Give me my revolver, Aunt Ray, he said; and I got itthe one I had found in the tulip bedand gave it to him. He saw Liddy there and divined at once that Louise was alone. You let me attend to this fellow, whoever it is, Aunt Ray, and go to Louise, will you? She may be awake and alarmed. So in spite of her protests, I left Liddy alone and went back to the east wing. Perhaps I went a little faster past the yawning blackness of the circular staircase; and I could hear Halsey creaking cautiously down the main staircase. The rapping, or pounding, had ceased, and the silence was almost painful. And then suddenly, from apparently under my very feet, there rose a womans scream, a cry of terror that broke off as suddenly as it came. I stood frozen and still. Every drop of blood in my body seemed to leave the surface and gather around my heart. In the dead silence that followed it throbbed as if it would burst. More dead than alive, I stumbled into Louises bedroom. She was not there! XVI In the Early Morning I stood looking at the empty bed. The coverings had been thrown back, and Louises pink silk dressinggown was gone from the foot, where it had lain. The night lamp burned dimly, revealing the emptiness of the place. I picked it up, but my hand shook so that I put it down again, and got somehow to the door. There were voices in the hall and Gertrude came running toward me. What is it? she cried. What was that sound? Where is Louise? She is not in her room, I said stupidly. I thinkit was shewho screamed. Liddy had joined us now, carrying a light. We stood huddled together at the head of the circular staircase, looking down into its shadows. There was nothing to be seen, and it was absolutely quiet down there. Then we heard Halsey running up the main staircase. He came quickly down the hall to where we were standing. Theres no one trying to get in. I thought I heard someone shriek. Who was it? Our stricken faces told him the truth. Someone screamed down there, I said. Andand Louise is not in her room. With a jerk Halsey took the light from Liddy and ran down the circular staircase. I followed him, more slowly. My nerves seemed to be in a state of paralysis I could scarcely step. At the foot of the stairs Halsey gave an exclamation and put down the light. Aunt Ray, he called sharply. At the foot of the staircase, huddled in a heap, her head on the lower stair, was Louise Armstrong. She lay limp and white, her dressinggown dragging loose from one sleeve of her nightdress, and the heavy braid of her dark hair stretching its length a couple of steps above her head, as if she had slipped down. She was not dead Halsey put her down on the floor, and began to rub her cold hands, while Gertrude and Liddy ran for stimulants. As for me, I sat there at the foot of that ghostly staircasesat, because my knees wouldnt hold meand wondered where it would all end. Louise was still unconscious, but she was breathing better, and I suggested that we get her back to bed before she came to. There was something grisly and horrible to me, seeing her there in almost the same attitude and in the same place where we had found her brothers body. And to add to the similarity, just then the hall clock, far off, struck faintly three oclock. It was four before Louise was able to talk, and the first rays of dawn were coming through her windows, which faced the east, before she could tell us coherently what had occurred. I give it as she told it. She lay propped in bed, and Halsey sat beside her, unrebuffed, and held her hand while she talked. I was not sleeping well, she began, partly, I think, because I had slept during the afternoon. Liddy brought me some hot milk at ten oclock and I slept until twelve. Then I wakened andI got to thinking about things, and worrying, so I could not go to sleep. I was wondering why I had not heard from Arnold since thesince I saw him that night at the lodge. I was afraid he was ill, becausehe was to have done something for me, and he had not come back. It must have been three when I heard someone rapping. I sat up and listened, to be quite sure, and the rapping kept up. It was cautious, and I was about to call Liddy. Then suddenly I thought I knew what it was. The east entrance and the circular staircase were always used by Arnold when he was out late, and sometimes, when he forgot his key, he would rap and I would go down and let him in. I thought he had come back to see meI didnt think about the time, for his hours were always erratic. But I was afraid I was too weak to get down the stairs. The knocking kept up, and just as I was about to call Liddy, she ran through the room and out into the hall. I got up then, feeling weak and dizzy, and put on my dressinggown. If it was Arnold, I knew I must see him. It was very dark everywhere, but, of course, I knew my way. I felt along for the stairrail, and went down as quickly as I could. The knocking had stopped, and I was afraid I was too late. I got to the foot of the staircase and over to the door on to the east veranda. I had never thought of anything but that it was Arnold, until I reached the door. It was unlocked and opened about an inch. Everything was black it was perfectly dark outside. I felt very queer and shaky. Then I thought perhaps Arnold had used his key; he didstrange things sometimes, and I turned around. Just as I reached the foot of the staircase I thought I heard someone coming. My nerves were going anyhow, there in the dark, and I could scarcely stand. I got up as far as the third or fourth step; then I felt that someone was coming toward me on the staircase. The next instant a hand met mine on the stairrail. Someone brushed past me, and I screamed. Then I must have fainted. That was Louises story. There could be no doubt of its truth, and the thing that made it inexpressibly awful to me was that the poor girl had crept down to answer the summons of a brother who would never need her kindly offices again. Twice now, without apparent cause, someone had entered the house by means of the east entrance had apparently gone his way unhindered through the house, and gone out again as he had entered. Had this unknown visitor been there a third time, the night Arnold Armstrong was murdered? Or a fourth, the time Mr. Jamieson had locked someone in the clothes chute? Sleep was impossible, I think, for any of us. We dispersed finally to bathe and dress, leaving Louise little the worse for her experience. But I determined that before the day was over she must know the true state of affairs. Another decision I made, and I put it into execution immediately after breakfast. I had one of the unused bedrooms in the east wing, back along the small corridor, prepared for occupancy, and from that time on, Alex, the gardener, slept there. One man in that barn of a house was an absurdity, with things happening all the time, and I must say that Alex was as unobjectionable as anyone could possibly have been. The next morning, also, Halsey and I made an exhaustive examination of the circular staircase, the small entry at its foot, and the cardroom opening from it. There was no evidence of anything unusual the night before, and had we not ourselves heard the rapping noises, I should have felt that Louises imagination had run away with her. The outer door was closed and locked, and the staircase curved above us, for all the world like any other staircase. Halsey, who had never taken seriously my account of the night Liddy and I were there alone, was grave enough now. He examined the paneling of the wainscoting above and below the stairs, evidently looking for a secret door, and suddenly there flashed into my mind the recollection of a scrap of paper that Mr. Jamieson had found among Arnold Armstrongs effects. As nearly as possible I repeated its contents to him, while Halsey took them down in a notebook. I wish you had told me that before, he said, as he put the memorandum carefully away. We found nothing at all in the house, and I expected little from any examination of the porch and grounds. But as we opened the outer door something fell into the entry with a clatter. It was a cue from the billiardroom. Halsey picked it up with an exclamation. Thats careless enough, he said. Some of the servants have been amusing themselves. I was far from convinced. Not one of the servants would go into that wing at night unless driven by dire necessity. And a billiard cue! As a weapon of either offense or defense it was an absurdity, unless one accepted Liddys hypothesis of a ghost, and even then, as Halsey pointed out, a billiardplaying ghost would be a very modern evolution of an ancient institution. That afternoon we, Gertrude, Halsey and I, attended the coroners inquest in town. Doctor Stewart had been summoned also, it transpiring that in that early Sunday morning, when Gertrude and I had gone to our rooms, he had been called to view the body. We went, the four of us, in the machine, preferring the execrable roads to the matinee train, with half of Casanova staring at us. And on the way we decided to say nothing of Louise and her interview with her stepbrother the night he died. The girl was in trouble enough as it was. XVII A Hint of Scandal In giving the gist of what happened at the inquest, I have only one excuseto recall to the reader the events of the night of Arnold Armstrongs murder. Many things had occurred which were not brought out at the inquest and some things were told there that were new to me. Altogether, it was a gloomy affair, and the six men in the corner, who constituted the coroners jury, were evidently the merest puppets in the hands of that allpowerful gentleman, the coroner. Gertrude and I sat well back, with our veils down. There were a number of people I knew Barbara Fitzhugh, in extravagant mourningshe always went into black on the slightest provocation, because it was becomingand Mr. Jarvis, the man who had come over from the Greenwood Club the night of the murder. Mr. Harton was there, too, looking impatient as the inquest dragged, but alive to every particle of evidence. From a corner Mr. Jamieson was watching the proceedings intently. Doctor Stewart was called first. His evidence was told briefly, and amounted to this on the Sunday morning previous, at a quarter before five, he had been called to the telephone. The message was from a Mr. Jarvis, who asked him to come at once to Sunnyside, as there had been an accident there, and Mr. Arnold Armstrong had been shot. He had dressed hastily, gathered up some instruments, and driven to Sunnyside. He was met by Mr. Jarvis, who took him at once to the east wing. There, just as he had fallen, was the body of Arnold Armstrong. There was no need of the instruments the man was dead. In answer to the coroners questionno, the body had not been moved, save to turn it over. It lay at the foot of the circular staircase. Yes, he believed death had been instantaneous. The body was still somewhat warm and rigor mortis had not set in. It occurred late in cases of sudden death. No, he believed the probability of suicide might be eliminated; the wounds could have been selfinflicted, but with difficulty, and there had been no weapon found. The doctors examination was over, but he hesitated and cleared his throat. Mr. Coroner, he said, at the risk of taking up valuable time, I would like to speak of an incident that may or may not throw some light on this matter. The audience was alert at once. Kindly proceed, Doctor, the coroner said. My home is in Englewood, two miles from Casanova, the doctor began. In the absence of Doctor Walker, a number of Casanova people have been consulting me. A month agofive weeks, to be exacta woman whom I had never seen came to my office. She was in deep mourning and kept her veil down, and she brought for examination a child, a boy of six. The little fellow was ill; it looked like typhoid, and the mother was frantic. She wanted a permit to admit the youngster to the Childrens Hospital in town here, where I am a member of the staff, and I gave her one. The incident would have escaped me, but for a curious thing. Two days before Mr. Armstrong was shot, I was sent for to go to the Country Club someone had been struck with a golfball that had gone wild. It was late when I leftI was on foot, and about a mile from the club, on the Claysburg road, I met two people. They were disputing violently, and I had no difficulty in recognizing Mr. Armstrong. The woman, beyond doubt, was the one who had consulted me about the child. At this hint of scandal, Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh sat up very straight. Jamieson was looking slightly skeptical, and the coroner made a note. The Childrens Hospital, you say, Doctor? he asked. Yes. But the child, who was entered as Lucien Wallace, was taken away by his mother two weeks ago. I have tried to trace them and failed. All at once I remembered the telegram sent to Louise by someone signed F. L. W.presumably Doctor Walker. Could this veiled woman be the Nina Carrington of the message? But it was only idle speculation. I had no way of finding out, and the inquest was proceeding. The report of the coroners physician came next. The postmortem examination showed that the bullet had entered the chest in the fourth left intercostal space and had taken an oblique course downward and backward, piercing both the heart and lungs. The left lung was collapsed, and the exit point of the ball had been found in the muscles of the back to the left of the spinal column. It was improbable that such a wound had been selfinflicted, and its oblique downward course pointed to the fact that the shot had been fired from above. In other words, as the murdered man had been found dead at the foot of a staircase, it was probable that the shot had been fired by someone higher up on the stairs. There were no marks of powder. The bullet, a thirtyeight caliber, had been found in the dead mans clothing, and was shown to the jury. Mr. Jarvis was called next, but his testimony amounted to little. He had been summoned by telephone to Sunnyside, had come over at once with the steward and Mr. Winthrop, at present out of town. They had been admitted by the housekeeper, and had found the body lying at the foot of the staircase. He had made a search for a weapon, but there was none around. The outer entry door in the east wing had been unfastened and was open about an inch. I had been growing more and more nervous. When the coroner called Mr. John Bailey, the room was filled with suppressed excitement. Mr. Jamieson went forward and spoke a few words to the coroner, who nodded. Then Halsey was called. Mr. Innes, the coroner said, will you tell under what circumstances you saw Mr. Arnold Armstrong the night he died? I saw him first at the Country Club, Halsey said quietly. He was rather pale, but very composed. I stopped there with my automobile for gasoline. Mr. Armstrong had been playing cards. When I saw him there, he was coming out of the cardroom, talking to Mr. John Bailey. The nature of the discussionwas it amicable? Halsey hesitated. They were having a dispute, he said. I asked Mr. Bailey to leave the club with me and come to Sunnyside over Sunday. Isnt it a fact, Mr. Innes, that you took Mr. Bailey away from the clubhouse because you were afraid there would be blows? The situation was unpleasant, Halsey said evasively. At that time had you any suspicion that the Traders Bank had been wrecked? No. What occurred next? Mr. Bailey and I talked in the billiardroom until twothirty. And Mr. Arnold Armstrong came there, while you were talking? Yes. He came about halfpast two. He rapped at the east door, and I admitted him. The silence in the room was intense. Mr. Jamiesons eyes never left Halseys face. Will you tell us the nature of his errand? He brought a telegram that had come to the club for Mr. Bailey. He was sober? Perfectly, at that time. Not earlier. Was not his apparent friendliness a change from his former attitude? Yes. I did not understand it. How long did he stay? About five minutes. Then he left, by the east entrance. What occurred then? We talked for a few minutes, discussing a plan Mr. Bailey had in mind. Then I went to the stables, where I kept my car, and got it out. Leaving Mr. Bailey alone in the billiardroom? Halsey hesitated. My sister was there. Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh had the courage to turn and eye Gertrude through her lorgnon. And then? I took the car along the lower road, not to disturb the household. Mr. Bailey came down across the lawn, through the hedge, and got into the car on the road. Then you know nothing of Mr. Armstrongs movements after he left the house? Nothing. I read of his death Monday evening for the first time. Mr. Bailey did not see him on his way across the lawn? I think not. If he had seen him he would have spoken of it. Thank you. That is all. Miss Gertrude Innes. Gertrudes replies were fully as concise as Halseys. Mrs. Fitzhugh subjected her to a close inspection, commencing with her hat and ending with her shoes. I flatter myself she found nothing wrong with either her gown or her manner, but poor Gertrudes testimony was the reverse of comforting. She had been summoned, she said, by her brother, after Mr. Armstrong had gone. She had waited in the billiardroom with Mr. Bailey, until the automobile had been ready. Then she had locked the door at the foot of the staircase, and, taking a lamp, had accompanied Mr. Bailey to the main entrance of the house, and had watched him cross the lawn. Instead of going at once to her room, she had gone back to the billiardroom for something which had been left there. The cardroom and billiardroom were in darkness. She had groped around, found the article she was looking for, and was on the point of returning to her room, when she had heard someone fumbling at the lock at the east outer door. She had thought it was probably her brother, and had been about to go to the door, when she heard it open. Almost immediately there was a shot, and she had run panicstricken through the drawingroom and had roused the house. You heard no other sound? the coroner asked. There was no one with Mr. Armstrong when he entered? It was perfectly dark. There were no voices and I heard nothing. There was just the opening of the door, the shot, and the sound of somebody falling. Then, while you went through the drawingroom and upstairs to alarm the household, the criminal, whoever it was, could have escaped by the east door? Yes. Thank you. That will do. I flatter myself that the coroner got little enough out of me. I saw Mr. Jamieson smiling to himself, and the coroner gave me up, after a time. I admitted I had found the body, said I had not known who it was until Mr. Jarvis told me, and ended by looking up at Barbara Fitzhugh and saying that in renting the house I had not expected to be involved in any family scandal. At which she turned purple. The verdict was that Arnold Armstrong had met his death at the hands of a person or persons unknown, and we all prepared to leave. Barbara Fitzhugh flounced out without waiting to speak to me, but Mr. Harton came up, as I knew he would. You have decided to give up the house, I hope, Miss Innes, he said. Mrs. Armstrong has wired me again. I am not going to give it up, I maintained, until I understand some things that are puzzling me. The day that the murderer is discovered, I will leave. Then, judging by what I have heard, you will be back in the city very soon, he said. And I knew that he suspected the discredited cashier of the Traders Bank. Mr. Jamieson came up to me as I was about to leave the coroners office. How is your patient? he asked with his odd little smile. I have no patient, I replied, startled. I will put it in a different way, then. How is Miss Armstrong? Sheshe is doing very well, I stammered. Good, cheerfully. And our ghost? Is it laid? Mr. Jamieson, I said suddenly, I wish you would do one thing I wish you would come to Sunnyside and spend a few days there. The ghost is not laid. I want you to spend one night at least watching the circular staircase. The murder of Arnold Armstrong was a beginning, not an end. He looked serious. Perhaps I can do it, he said. I have been doing something else, butwell, I will come out tonight. We were very silent during the trip back to Sunnyside. I watched Gertrude closely and somewhat sadly. To me there was one glaring flaw in her story, and it seemed to stand out for everyone to see. Arnold Armstrong had had no key, and yet she said she had locked the east door. He must have been admitted from within the house; over and over I repeated it to myself. That night, as gently as I could, I told Louise the story of her stepbrothers death. She sat in her big, pillowfilled chair, and heard me through without interruption. It was clear that she was shocked beyond words if I had hoped to learn anything from her expression, I had failed. She was as much in the dark as we were. XVIII A Hole in the Wall My taking the detective out to Sunnyside raised an unexpected storm of protest from Gertrude and Halsey. I was not prepared for it, and I scarcely knew how to account for it. To me Mr. Jamieson was far less formidable under my eyes where I knew what he was doing, than he was off in the city, twisting circumstances and motives to suit himself and learning what he wished to know, about events at Sunnyside, in some occult way. I was glad enough to have him there, when excitements began to come thick and fast. A new element was about to enter into affairs Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, would find Doctor Walker back in his green and white house in the village, and Louises attitude to him in the immediate future would signify Halseys happiness or wretchedness, as it might turn out. Then, too, the return of her mother would mean, of course, that she would have to leave us, and I had become greatly attached to her. From the day Mr. Jamieson came to Sunnyside there was a subtle change in Gertrudes manner to me. It was elusive, difficult to analyze, but it was there. She was no longer frank with me, although I think her affection never wavered. At the time I laid the change to the fact that I had forbidden all communication with John Bailey, and had refused to acknowledge any engagement between the two. Gertrude spent much of her time wandering through the grounds, or taking long crosscountry walks. Halsey played golf at the Country Club day after day, and after Louise left, as she did the following week, Mr. Jamieson and I were much together. He played a fair game of cribbage, but he cheated at solitaire. The night the detective arrived, Saturday, I had a talk with him.

I told him of the experience Louise Armstrong had had the night before, on the circular staircase, and about the man who had so frightened Rosie on the drive. I saw that he thought the information was important, and to my suggestion that we put an additional lock on the east wing door he opposed a strong negative. I think it probable, he said, that our visitor will be back again, and the thing to do is to leave things exactly as they are, to avoid rousing suspicion. Then I can watch for at least a part of each night and probably Mr. Innes will help us out. I would say as little to Thomas as possible. The old man knows more than he is willing to admit. I suggested that Alex, the gardener, would probably be willing to help, and Mr. Jamieson undertook to make the arrangement. For one night, however, Mr. Jamieson preferred to watch alone. Apparently nothing occurred. The detective sat in absolute darkness on the lower step of the stairs, dozing, he said afterwards, now and then. Nothing could pass him in either direction, and the door in the morning remained as securely fastened as it had been the night before. And yet one of the most inexplicable occurrences of the whole affair took place that very night. Liddy came to my room on Sunday morning with a face as long as the moral law. She laid out my things as usual, but I missed her customary garrulousness. I was not regaled with the new cooks extravagance as to eggs, and she even forbore to mention that Jamieson, on whose arrival she had looked with silent disfavor. Whats the matter, Liddy? I asked at last. Didnt you sleep last night? No, mam, she said stiffly. Did you have two cups of coffee at your dinner? I inquired. No, mam, indignantly. I sat up and almost upset my hot waterI always take a cup of hot water with a pinch of salt, before I get up. It tones the stomach. Liddy Allen, I said, stop combing that switch and tell me what is wrong with you. Liddy heaved a sigh. Girl and woman, she said, Ive been with you twentyfive years, Miss Rachel, through good temper and bad the idea! and what I have taken from her in the way of sulks!but I guess I cant stand it any longer. My trunks packed. Who packed it? I asked, expecting from her tone to be told she had wakened to find it done by some ghostly hand. I did; Miss Rachel, you wont believe me when I tell you this house is haunted. Who was it fell down the clothes chute? Who was it scared Miss Louise almost into her grave? Im doing my best to find out, I said. What in the world are you driving at? She drew a long breath. There is a hole in the trunkroom wall, dug out since last night. Its big enough to put your head in, and the plasters all over the place. Nonsense! I said. Plaster is always falling. But Liddy clenched that. Just ask Alex, she said. When he put the new cooks trunk there last night the wall was as smooth as this. This morning its dug out, and theres plaster on the cooks trunk. Miss Rachel, you can get a dozen detectives and put one on every stair in the house, and youll never catch anything. Theres some things you cant handcuff. Liddy was right. As soon as I could, I went up to the trunkroom, which was directly over my bedroom. The plan of the upper story of the house was like that of the second floor, in the main. One end, however, over the east wing, had been left only roughly finished, the intention having been to convert it into a ballroom at some future time. The maids rooms, trunkroom, and various storerooms, including a large airy linenroom, opened from a long corridor, like that on the second floor. And in the trunkroom, as Liddy had said, was a fresh break in the plaster. Not only in the plaster, but through the lathing, the aperture extended. I reached into the opening, and three feet away, perhaps, I could touch the bricks of the partition wall. For some reason, the architect, in building the house, had left a space there that struck me, even in the surprise of the discovery, as an excellent place for a conflagration to gain headway. You are sure the hole was not here yesterday? I asked Liddy, whose expression was a mixture of satisfaction and alarm. In answer she pointed to the new cooks trunkthat necessary adjunct of the migratory domestic. The top was covered with fine white plaster, as was the floor. But there were no large pieces of mortar lying aroundno bits of lathing. When I mentioned this to Liddy she merely raised her eyebrows. Being quite confident that the gap was of unholy origin, she did not concern herself with such trifles as a bit of mortar and lath. No doubt they were even then heaped neatly on a gravestone in the Casanova churchyard! I brought Mr. Jamieson up to see the hole in the wall, directly after breakfast. His expression was very odd when he looked at it, and the first thing he did was to try to discover what object, if any, such a hole could have. He got a piece of candle, and by enlarging the aperture a little was able to examine what lay beyond. The result was nil. The trunkroom, although heated by steam heat, like the rest of the house, boasted of a fireplace and mantel as well. The opening had been made between the flue and the outer wall of the house. There was revealed, however, on inspection, only the brick of the chimney on one side and the outer wall of the house on the other; in depth the space extended only to the flooring. The breach had been made about four feet from the floor, and inside were all the missing bits of plaster. It had been a methodical ghost. It was very much of a disappointment. I had expected a secret room, at the very least, and I think even Mr. Jamieson had fancied he might at last have a clue to the mystery. There was evidently nothing more to be discovered Liddy reported that everything was serene among the servants, and that none of them had been disturbed by the noise. The maddening thing, however, was that the nightly visitor had evidently more than one way of gaining access to the house, and we made arrangements to redouble our vigilance as to windows and doors that night. Halsey was inclined to poohpooh the whole affair. He said a break in the plaster might have occurred months ago and gone unnoticed, and that the dust had probably been stirred up the day before. After all, we had to let it go at that, but we put in an uncomfortable Sunday. Gertrude went to church, and Halsey took a long walk in the morning. Louise was able to sit up, and she allowed Halsey and Liddy to assist her downstairs late in the afternoon. The east veranda was shady, green with vines and palms, cheerful with cushions and lounging chairs. We put Louise in a steamer chair, and she sat there passively enough, her hands clasped in her lap. We were very silent. Halsey sat on the rail with a pipe, openly watching Louise, as she looked broodingly across the valley to the hills. There was something baffling in the girls eyes; and gradually Halseys boyish features lost their glow at seeing her about again, and settled into grim lines. He was like his father just then. We sat until late afternoon, Halsey growing more and more moody. Shortly before six, he got up and went into the house, and in a few minutes he came out and called me to the telephone. It was Anna Whitcomb, in town, and she kept me for twenty minutes, telling me the children had had the measles, and how Madame Sweeny had botched her new gown. When I finished, Liddy was behind me, her mouth a thin line. I wish you would try to look cheerful, Liddy, I groaned, your face would sour milk. But Liddy seldom replied to my gibes. She folded her lips a little tighter. He called her up, she said oracularly, he called her up, and asked her to keep you at the telephone, so he could talk to Miss Louise. A thankless child is sharper than a serpents tooth. Nonsense! I said bruskly. I might have known enough to leave them. Its a long time since you and I were in love, Liddy, andwe forget. Liddy sniffed. No man ever made a fool of me, she replied virtuously. Well, something did, I retorted. XIX Concerning Thomas Mr. Jamieson, I said, when we found ourselves alone after dinner that night, the inquest yesterday seemed to me the merest recapitulation of things that were already known. It developed nothing new beyond the story of Doctor Stewarts, and that was volunteered. An inquest is only a necessary formality, Miss Innes, he replied. Unless a crime is committed in the open, the inquest does nothing beyond getting evidence from witnesses while events are still in their minds. The police step in later. You and I both know how many important things never transpired. For instance the dead man had no key, and yet Miss Gertrude testified to a fumbling at the lock, and then the opening of the door. The piece of evidence you mention, Doctor Stewarts story, is one of those things we have to take cautiously the doctor has a patient who wears black and does not raise her veil. Why, it is the typical mysterious lady! Then the good doctor comes across Arnold Armstrong, who was a graceless scampde mortuiswhats the rest of it?and he is quarreling with a lady in black. Behold, says the doctor, they are one and the same. Why was Mr. Bailey not present at the inquest? The detectives expression was peculiar. Because his physician testified that he is ill, and unable to leave his bed. Ill! I exclaimed. Why, neither Halsey nor Gertrude has told me that. There are more things than that, Miss Innes, that are puzzling. Bailey gives the impression that he knew nothing of the crash at the bank until he read it in the paper Monday night, and that he went back and surrendered himself immediately. I do not believe it. Jonas, the watchman at the Traders Bank, tells a different story. He says that on the Thursday night before, about eightthirty, Bailey went back to the bank. Jonas admitted him, and he says the cashier was in a state almost of collapse. Bailey worked until midnight, then he closed the vault and went away. The occurrence was so unusual that the watchman pondered over it all the rest of the night. What did Bailey do when he went back to the Knickerbocker apartments that night? He packed a suitcase ready for instant departure. But he held off too long; he waited for something. My personal opinion is that he waited to see Miss Gertrude before flying from the country. Then, when he had shot down Arnold Armstrong that night, he had to choose between two evils. He did the thing that would immediately turn public opinion in his favor, and surrendered himself, as an innocent man. The strongest thing against him is his preparation for flight, and his deciding to come back after the murder of Arnold Armstrong. He was shrewd enough to disarm suspicion as to the graver charge. The evening dragged along slowly. Mrs. Watson came to my bedroom before I went to bed and asked if I had any arnica. She showed me a badly swollen hand, with reddish streaks running toward the elbow; she said it was the hand she had hurt the night of the murder a week before, and that she had not slept well since. It looked to me as if it might be serious, and I told her to let Doctor Stewart see it. The next morning Mrs. Watson went up to town on the eleven train, and was admitted to the Charity Hospital. She was suffering from bloodpoisoning. I fully meant to go up and see her there, but other things drove her entirely from my mind. I telephoned to the hospital that day, however, and ordered a private room for her, and whatever comforts she might be allowed. Mrs. Armstrong arrived Monday evening with her husbands body, and the services were set for the next day. The house on Chestnut Street, in town, had been opened, and Tuesday morning Louise left us to go home. She sent for me before she went, and I saw she had been crying. How can I thank you, Miss Innes? she said. You have taken me on faith, andyou have not asked me any questions. Some time, perhaps, I can tell you; and when that time comes, you will all despise meHalsey, too. I tried to tell her how glad I was to have had her but there was something else she wanted to say. She said it finally, when she had bade a constrained goodbye to Halsey and the car was waiting at the door. Miss Innes, she said in a low tone, if theyif there is any attempt made toto have you give up the house, do it, if you possibly can. I am afraidto have you stay. That was all. Gertrude went into town with her and saw her safely home. She reported a decided coolness in the greeting between Louise and her mother, and that Doctor Walker was there, apparently in charge of the arrangements for the funeral. Halsey disappeared shortly after Louise left and came home about nine that night, muddy and tired. As for Thomas, he went around dejected and sad, and I saw the detective watching him closely at dinner. Even now I wonderwhat did Thomas know? What did he suspect? At ten oclock the household had settled down for the night. Liddy, who was taking Mrs. Watsons place, had finished examining the teatowels and the corners of the shelves in the coolingroom, and had gone to bed. Alex, the gardener, had gone heavily up the circular staircase to his room, and Mr. Jamieson was examining the locks of the windows. Halsey dropped into a chair in the livingroom, and stared moodily ahead. Once he roused. What sort of a looking chap is that Walker, Gertrude? he asked. Rather tall, very dark, smoothshaven. Not bad looking, Gertrude said, putting down the book she had been pretending to read. Halsey kicked a taboret viciously. Lovely place this village must be in the winter, he said irrelevantly. A girl would be buried alive here. It was then someone rapped at the knocker on the heavy front door. Halsey got up leisurely and opened it, admitting Warner. He was out of breath from running, and he looked half abashed. I am sorry to disturb you, he said. But I didnt know what else to do. Its about Thomas. What about Thomas? I asked. Mr. Jamieson had come into the hall and we all stared at Warner. Hes acting queer, Warner explained. Hes sitting down there on the edge of the porch, and he says he has seen a ghost. The old man looks bad, too; he can scarcely speak. Hes as full of superstition as an egg is of meat, I said. Halsey, bring some whisky and we will all go down. No one moved to get the whisky, from which I judged there were three pocket flasks ready for emergency. Gertrude threw a shawl around my shoulders, and we all started down over the hill I had made so many nocturnal excursions around the place that I knew my way perfectly. But Thomas was not on the veranda, nor was he inside the house. The men exchanged significant glances, and Warner got a lantern. He cant have gone far, he said. He was trembling so that he couldnt stand, when I left. Jamieson and Halsey together made the round of the lodge, occasionally calling the old man by name. But there was no response. No Thomas came, bowing and showing his white teeth through the darkness. I began to be vaguely uneasy, for the first time. Gertrude, who was never nervous in the dark, went alone down the drive to the gate, and stood there, looking along the yellowish line of the road, while I waited on the tiny veranda. Warner was puzzled. He came around to the edge of the veranda and stood looking at it as if it ought to know and explain. He might have stumbled into the house, he said, but he could not have climbed the stairs. Anyhow, hes not inside or outside, that I can see. The other members of the party had come back now, and no one had found any trace of the old man. His pipe, still warm, rested on the edge of the rail, and inside on the table his old gray hat showed that its owner had not gone far. He was not far, after all. From the table my eyes traveled around the room, and stopped at the door of a closet. I hardly know what impulse moved me, but I went in and turned the knob. It burst open with the impetus of a weight behind it, and something fell partly forward in a heap on the floor. It was ThomasThomas without a mark of injury on him, and dead. XX Doctor Walkers Warning Warner was on his knees in a moment, fumbling at the old mans collar to loosen it, but Halsey caught his hand. Let him alone, he said. You cant help him; he is dead. We stood there, each avoiding the others eyes; we spoke low and reverently in the presence of death, and we tacitly avoided any mention of the suspicion that was in every mind. When Mr. Jamieson had finished his cursory examination, he got up and dusted the knees of his trousers. There is no sign of injury, he said, and I know I, for one, drew a long breath of relief. From what Warner says and from his hiding in the closet, I should say he was scared to death. Fright and a weak heart, together. But what could have done it? Gertrude asked. He was all right this evening at dinner. Warner, what did he say when you found him on the porch? Warner looked shaken his honest, boyish face was colorless. Just what I told you, Miss Innes. Hed been reading the paper downstairs; I had put up the car, and, feeling sleepy, I came down to the lodge to go to bed. As I went upstairs, Thomas put down the paper and, taking his pipe, went out on the porch. Then I heard an exclamation from him. What did he say? demanded Jamieson. I couldnt hear, but his voice was strange; it sounded startled. I waited for him to call out again, but he did not, so I went downstairs. He was sitting on the porch step, looking straight ahead, as if he saw something among the trees across the road. And he kept mumbling about having seen a ghost. He looked queer, and I tried to get him inside, but he wouldnt move. Then I thought Id better go up to the house. Didnt he say anything else you could understand? I asked. He said something about the grave giving up its dead. Mr. Jamieson was going through the old mans pockets, and Gertrude was composing his arms, folding them across his white shirtbosom, always so spotless. Mr. Jamieson looked up at me. What was that you said to me, Miss Innes, about the murder at the house being a beginning and not an end? By Jove, I believe you were right! In the course of his investigations the detective had come to the inner pocket of the dead butlers black coat. Here he found some things that interested him. One was a small flat key, with a red cord tied to it, and the other was a bit of white paper, on which was written something in Thomas cramped hand. Mr. Jamieson read it then he gave it to me. It was an address in fresh ink Lucien Wallace, 14 Elm Street, Richfield. As the card went around, I think both the detective and I watched for any possible effect it might have, but, beyond perplexity, there seemed to be none. Richfield! Gertrude exclaimed. Why, Elm Street is the main street; dont you remember, Halsey? Lucien Wallace! Halsey said. That is the child Stewart spoke of at the inquest. Warner, with his mechanics instinct, had reached for the key. What he said was not a surprise. Yale lock, he said. Probably a key to the east entry. There was no reason why Thomas, an old and trusted servant, should not have had a key to that particular door, although the servants entry was in the west wing. But I had not known of this key, and it opened up a new field of conjecture. Just now, however, there were many things to be attended to, and, leaving Warner with the body, we all went back to the house. Mr. Jamieson walked with me, while Halsey and Gertrude followed. I suppose I shall have to notify the Armstrongs, I said. They will know if Thomas had any people and how to reach them. Of course, I expect to defray the expenses of the funeral, but his relatives must be found. What do you think frightened him, Mr. Jamieson? It is hard to say, he replied slowly, but I think we may be certain it was fright, and that he was hiding from something. I am sorry in more than one way I have always believed that Thomas knew something, or suspected something, that he would not tell. Do you know how much money there was in that wornout wallet of his? Nearly a hundred dollars! Almost two months wagesand yet those darkies seldom have a penny. Wellwhat Thomas knew will be buried with him. Halsey suggested that the grounds be searched, but Mr. Jamieson vetoed the suggestion. You would find nothing, he said. A person clever enough to get into Sunnyside and tear a hole in the wall, while I watched downstairs, is not to be found by going around the shrubbery with a lantern. With the death of Thomas, I felt that a climax had come in affairs at Sunnyside. The night that followed was quiet enough. Halsey watched at the foot of the staircase, and a complicated system of bolts on the other doors seemed to be effectual. Once in the night I wakened and thought I heard the tapping again. But all was quiet, and I had reached the stage where I refused to be disturbed for minor occurrences. The Armstrongs were notified of Thomas death, and I had my first interview with Doctor Walker as a result. He came up early the next morning, just as we finished breakfast, in a professional looking car with a black hood. I found him striding up and down the livingroom, and, in spite of my preconceived dislike, I had to admit that the man was presentable. A big fellow he was, tall and dark, as Gertrude had said, smoothshaven and erect, with prominent features and a square jaw. He was painfully spruce in his appearance, and his manner was almost obtrusively polite. I must make a double excuse for this early visit, Miss Innes, he said as he sat down. The chair was lower than he expected, and his dignity required collecting before he went on. My professional duties are urgent and long neglected, anda fall to the everyday mannersomething must be done about that body. Yes, I said, sitting on the edge of my chair. I merely wished the address of Thomas people. You might have telephoned, if you were busy. He smiled. I wished to see you about something else, he said. As for Thomas, it is Mrs. Armstrongs wish that you would allow her to attend to the expense. About his relatives, I have already notified his brother, in the village. It was heart disease, I think. Thomas always had a bad heart. Heart disease and fright, I said, still on the edge of my chair. But the doctor had no intention of leaving. I understand you have a ghost up here, and that you have the house filled with detectives to exorcise it, he said. For some reason I felt I was being pumped, as Halsey says. You have been misinformed, I replied. What, no ghost, no detectives! he said, still with his smile. What a disappointment to the village! I resented his attempt at playfulness. It had been anything but a joke to us. Doctor Walker, I said tartly, I fail to see any humor in the situation. Since I came here, one man has been shot, and another one has died from shock. There have been intruders in the house, and strange noises. If that is funny, there is something wrong with my sense of humor. You miss the point, he said, still goodnaturedly. The thing that is funny, to me, is that you insist on remaining here, under the circumstances. I should think nothing would keep you. You are mistaken. Everything that occurs only confirms my resolution to stay until the mystery is cleared. I have a message for you, Miss Innes, he said, rising at last. Mrs. Armstrong asked me to thank you for your kindness to Louise, whose whim, occurring at the time it did, put her to great inconvenience. Alsoand this is a delicate mattershe asked me to appeal to your natural sympathy for her, at this time, and to ask you if you will not reconsider your decision about the house. Sunnyside is her home; she loves it dearly, and just now she wishes to retire here for quiet and peace. She must have had a change of heart, I said, ungraciously enough. Louise told me her mother despised the place. Besides, this is no place for quiet and peace just now. Anyhow, doctor, while I dont care to force an issue, I shall certainly remain here, for a time at least. For how long? he asked. My lease is for six months. I shall stay until some explanation is found for certain things. My own family is implicated now, and I shall do everything to clear the mystery of Arnold Armstrongs murder. The doctor stood looking down, slapping his gloves thoughtfully against the palm of a welllookedafter hand. You say there have been intruders in the house? he asked. You are sure of that, Miss Innes? Certain. In what part? In the east wing. Can you tell me when these intrusions occurred, and what the purpose seemed to be? Was it robbery? No, I said decidedly. As to time, once on Friday night a week ago, again the following night, when Arnold Armstrong was murdered, and again last Friday night. The doctor looked serious. He seemed to be debating some question in his mind, and to reach a decision. Miss Innes, he said, I am in a peculiar position; I understand your attitude, of course; butdo you think you are wise? Ever since you have come here there have been hostile demonstrations against you and your family. Im not a croaker, buttake a warning. Leave before anything occurs that will cause you a lifelong regret. I am willing to take the responsibility, I said coldly. I think he gave me up then as a poor proposition. He asked to be shown where Arnold Armstrongs body had been found, and I took him there. He scrutinized the whole place carefully, examining the stairs and the lock. When he had taken a formal farewell I was confident of one thing. Doctor Walker would do anything he could to get me away from Sunnyside. XXI Fourteen Elm Street It was Monday evening when we found the body of poor old Thomas. Monday night had been uneventful; things were quiet at the house and the peculiar circumstances of the old mans death had been carefully kept from the servants. Rosie took charge of the diningroom and pantry, in the absence of a butler, and, except for the warning of the Casanova doctor, everything breathed of peace. Affairs at the Traders Bank were progressing slowly. The failure had hit small stockholders very hard, the minister of the little Methodist chapel in Casanova among them. He had received as a legacy from an uncle a few shares of stock in the Traders Bank, and now his joy was turned to bitterness he had to sacrifice everything he had in the world, and his feeling against Paul Armstrong, dead, as he was, must have been bitter in the extreme. He was asked to officiate at the simple services when the dead bankers body was interred in Casanova churchyard, but the good man providentially took cold, and a substitute was called in. A few days after the services he called to see me, a kindfaced little man, in a very bad frockcoat and laundered tie. I think he was uncertain as to my connection with the Armstrong family, and dubious whether I considered Mr. Armstrongs taking away a matter for condolence or congratulation. He was not long in doubt. I liked the little man. He had known Thomas well, and had promised to officiate at the services in the rickety African Zion Church. He told me more of himself than he knew, and before he left, I astonished himand myself, I admitby promising a new carpet for his church. He was much affected, and I gathered that he had yearned over his ragged chapel as a mother over a halfclothed child. You are laying up treasure, Miss Innes, he said brokenly, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. It is certainly a safer place than Sunnyside, I admitted. And the thought of the carpet permitted him to smile. He stood just inside the doorway, looking from the luxury of the house to the beauty of the view. The rich ought to be good, he said wistfully. They have so much that is beautiful, and beauty is ennobling. And yetwhile I ought to say nothing but good of the deadMr. Armstrong saw nothing of this fair prospect. To him these trees and lawns were not the work of God. They were property, at so much an acre. He loved money, Miss Innes. He offered up everything to his golden calf. Not power, not ambition, was his fetish it was money. Then he dropped his pulpit manner, and, turning to me with his engaging smile In spite of all this luxury, he said, the country people here have a saying that Mr. Paul Armstrong could sit on a dollar and see all around it. Unlike the summer people, he gave neither to the poor nor to the church. He loved money for its own sake. And there are no pockets in shrouds! I said cynically. I sent him home in the car, with a bunch of hothouse roses for his wife, and he was quite overwhelmed. As for me, I had a generous glow that was cheap at the price of a church carpet. I received less gratificationand less gratitudewhen I presented the new silver communion set to St. Barnabas. I had a great many things to think about in those days. I made out a list of questions and possible answers, but I seemed only to be working around in a circle. I always ended where I began. The list was something like this Who had entered the house the night before the murder? Thomas claimed it was Mr. Bailey, whom he had seen on the footpath, and who owned the pearl cufflink. Why did Arnold Armstrong come back after he had left the house the night he was killed? No answer. Was it on the mission Louise had mentioned? Who admitted him? Gertrude said she had locked the east entry. There was no key on the dead man or in the door. He must have been admitted from within. Who had been locked in the clothes chute? Someone unfamiliar with the house, evidently. Only two people missing from the household, Rosie and Gertrude. Rosie had been at the lodge. Thereforebut was it Gertrude? Might it not have been the mysterious intruder again? Who had accosted Rosie on the drive? Againperhaps the nightly visitor. It seemed more likely someone who suspected a secret at the lodge. Was Louise under surveillance? Who had passed Louise on the circular staircase? Could it have been Thomas? The key to the east entry made this a possibility. But why was he there, if it were indeed he? Who had made the hole in the trunkroom wall? It was not vandalism. It had been done quietly, and with deliberate purpose. If I had only known how to read the purpose of that gaping aperture what I might have saved in anxiety and mental strain! Why had Louise left her people and come home to hide at the lodge? There was no answer, as yet, to this, or to the next questions. Why did both she and Doctor Walker warn us away from the house? Who was Lucien Wallace? What did Thomas see in the shadows the night he died? What was the meaning of the subtle change in Gertrude? Was Jack Bailey an accomplice or a victim in the looting of the Traders Bank? What allpowerful reason made Louise determine to marry Doctor Walker? The examiners were still working on the books of the Traders Bank, and it was probable that several weeks would elapse before everything was cleared up. The firm of expert accountants who had examined the books some two months before testified that every bond, every piece of valuable paper, was there at that time. It had been shortly after their examination that the president, who had been in bad health, had gone to California. Mr. Bailey was still ill at the Knickerbocker, and in this, as in other ways, Gertrudes conduct puzzled me. She seemed indifferent, refused to discuss matters pertaining to the bank, and never, to my knowledge, either wrote to him or went to see him. Gradually I came to the conclusion that Gertrude, with the rest of the world, believed her lover guilty, andalthough I believed it myself, for that matterI was irritated by her indifference. Girls in my day did not meekly accept the publics verdict as to the man they loved. But presently something occurred that made me think that under Gertrudes surface calm there was a seething flood of emotions. Tuesday morning the detective made a careful search of the grounds, but he found nothing.

In the afternoon he disappeared, and it was late that night when he came home. He said he would have to go back to the city the following day, and arranged with Halsey and Alex to guard the house. Liddy came to me on Wednesday morning with her black silk apron held up like a bag, and her eyes big with virtuous wrath. It was the day of Thomas funeral in the village, and Alex and I were in the conservatory cutting flowers for the old mans casket. Liddy is never so happy as when she is making herself wretched, and now her mouth drooped while her eyes were triumphant. I always said there were plenty of things going on here, right under our noses, that we couldnt see, she said, holding out her apron. I dont see with my nose, I remarked. What have you got there? Liddy pushed aside a halfdozen geranium pots, and in the space thus cleared she dumped the contents of her aprona handful of tiny bits of paper. Alex had stepped back, but I saw him watching her curiously. Wait a moment, Liddy, I said. You have been going through the library paperbasket again! Liddy was arranging her bits of paper with the skill of long practice and paid no attention. Did it ever occur to you, I went on, putting my hand over the scraps, that when people tear up their correspondence, it is for the express purpose of keeping it from being read? If they wasnt ashamed of it they wouldnt take so much trouble, Miss Rachel, Liddy said oracularly. More than that, with things happening every day, I consider it my duty. If you dont read and act on this, I shall give it to that Jamieson, and Ill venture hell not go back to the city today. That decided me. If the scraps had anything to do with the mystery ordinary conventions had no value. So Liddy arranged the scraps, like working out one of the puzzlepictures children play with, and she did it with much the same eagerness. When it was finished she stepped aside while I read it. Wednesday night, nine oclock. Bridge, I read aloud. Then, aware of Alexs stare, I turned on Liddy. Someone is to play bridge tonight at nine oclock, I said. Is that your business, or mine? Liddy was aggrieved. She was about to reply when I scooped up the pieces and left the conservatory. Now then, I said, when we got outside, will you tell me why you choose to take Alex into your confidence? Hes no fool. Do you suppose he thinks anyone in this house is going to play bridge tonight at nine oclock, by appointment! I suppose you have shown it in the kitchen, and instead of my being able to slip down to the bridge tonight quietly, and see who is there, the whole household will be going in a procession. Nobody knows it, Liddy said humbly. I found it in the basket in Miss Gertrudes dressingroom. Look at the back of the sheet. I turned over some of the scraps, and, sure enough, it was a blank deposit slip from the Traders Bank. So Gertrude was going to meet Jack Bailey that night by the bridge! And I had thought he was ill! It hardly seemed like the action of an innocent manthis avoidance of daylight, and of his fiances people. I decided to make certain, however, by going to the bridge that night. After luncheon Mr. Jamieson suggested that I go with him to Richfield, and I consented. I am inclined to place more faith in Doctor Stewarts story, he said, since I found that scrap in old Thomas pocket. It bears out the statement that the woman with the child, and the woman who quarreled with Armstrong, are the same. It looks as if Thomas had stumbled on to some affair which was more or less discreditable to the dead man, and, with a certain loyalty to the family, had kept it to himself. Then, you see, your story about the woman at the cardroom window begins to mean something. It is the nearest approach to anything tangible that we have had yet. Warner took us to Richfield in the car. It was about twentyfive miles by railroad, but by taking a series of atrociously rough shortcuts we got there very quickly. It was a pretty little town, on the river, and back on the hill I could see the Mortons big country house, where Halsey and Gertrude had been staying until the night of the murder. Elm Street was almost the only street, and number fourteen was easily found. It was a small white house, dilapidated without having gained anything picturesque, with a low window and a porch only a foot or so above the bit of a lawn. There was a babycarriage in the path, and from a swing at the side came the sound of conflict. Three small children were disputing vociferously, and a faded young woman with a kindly face was trying to hush the clamor. When she saw us she untied her gingham apron and came around to the porch. Good afternoon, I said. Jamieson lifted his hat, without speaking. I came to inquire about a child named Lucien Wallace. I am glad you have come, she said. In spite of the other children, I think the little fellow is lonely. We thought perhaps his mother would be here today. Mr. Jamieson stepped forward. You are Mrs. Tate? I wondered how the detective knew. Yes, sir. Mrs. Tate, we want to make some inquiries. Perhaps in the house Come right in, she said hospitably. And soon we were in the little shabby parlor, exactly like a thousand of its prototypes. Mrs. Tate sat uneasily, her hands folded in her lap. How long has Lucien been here? Mr. Jamieson asked. Since a week ago last Friday. His mother paid one weeks board in advance; the other has not been paid. Was he ill when he came? No, sir, not what youd call sick. He was getting better of typhoid, she said, and hes picking up fine. Will you tell me his mothers name and address? Thats the trouble, the young woman said, knitting her brows. She gave her name as Mrs. Wallace, and said she had no address. She was looking for a boardinghouse in town. She said she worked in a department store, and couldnt take care of the child properly, and he needed fresh air and milk. I had three children of my own, and one more didnt make much difference in the work, butI wish she would pay this weeks board. Did she say what store it was? No, sir, but all the boys clothes came from Kings. He has far too fine clothes for the country. There was a chorus of shouts and shrill yells from the front door, followed by the loud stamping of childrens feet and a throaty whoa, whoa! Into the room came a tandem team of two chubby youngsters, a boy and a girl, harnessed with a clothesline, and driven by a laughing boy of about seven, in tan overalls and brass buttons. The small driver caught my attention at once he was a beautiful child, and, although he showed traces of recent severe illness, his skin had now the clear transparency of health. Whoa, Flinders, he shouted. Youre goin to smash the trap. Mr. Jamieson coaxed him over by holding out a leadpencil, striped blue and yellow. Now, then, he said, when the boy had taken the leadpencil and was testing its usefulness on the detectives cuff, now then, Ill bet you dont know what your name is! I do, said the boy. Lucien Wallace. Great! And whats your mothers name? Mother, of course. Whats your mothers name? And he pointed to me! I am going to stop wearing black it doubles a womans age. And where did you live before you came here? The detective was polite enough not to smile. Grossmutter, he said. And I saw Mr. Jamiesons eyebrows go up. German, he commented. Well, young man, you dont seem to know much about yourself. Ive tried it all week, Mrs. Tate broke in. The boy knows a word or two of German, but he doesnt know where he lived, or anything about himself. Mr. Jamieson wrote something on a card and gave it to her. Mrs. Tate, he said, I want you to do something. Here is some money for the telephone call. The instant the boys mother appears here, call up that number and ask for the person whose name is there. You can run across to the drugstore on an errand and do it quietly. Just say, The lady has come. The lady has come, repeated Mrs. Tate. Very well, sir, and I hope it will be soon. The milkbill alone is almost double what it was. How much is the childs board? I asked. Three dollars a week, including his washing. Very well, I said. Now, Mrs. Tate, I am going to pay last weeks board and a week in advance. If the mother comes, she is to know nothing of this visitabsolutely not a word, and, in return for your silence, you may use this money forsomething for your own children. Her tired, faded face lighted up, and I saw her glance at the little Tates small feet. Shoes, I divinedthe feet of the genteel poor being almost as expensive as their stomachs. As we went back Mr. Jamieson made only one remark I think he was laboring under the weight of a great disappointment. Is Kings a childrens outfitting place? he asked. Not especially. It is a general department store. He was silent after that, but he went to the telephone as soon as we got home, and called up King and Company, in the city. After a time he got the general manager, and they talked for some time. When Mr. Jamieson hung up the receiver he turned to me. The plot thickens, he said with his ready smile. There are four women named Wallace at Kings, none of them married, and none over twenty. I think I shall go up to the city tonight. I want to go to the Childrens Hospital. But before I go, Miss Innes, I wish you would be more frank with me than you have been yet. I want you to show me the revolver you picked up in the tulip bed. So he had known all along! It was a revolver, Mr. Jamieson, I admitted, cornered at last, but I can not show it to you. It is not in my possession. XXII A Ladder Out of Place At dinner Mr. Jamieson suggested sending a man out in his place for a couple of days, but Halsey was certain there would be nothing more, and felt that he and Alex could manage the situation. The detective went back to town early in the evening, and by nine oclock Halsey, who had been playing golfas a man does anything to take his mind away from troublewas sleeping soundly on the big leather davenport in the livingroom. I sat and knitted, pretending not to notice when Gertrude got up and wandered out into the starlight. As soon as I was satisfied that she had gone, however, I went out cautiously. I had no intention of eavesdropping, but I wanted to be certain that it was Jack Bailey she was meeting. Too many things had occurred in which Gertrude was, or appeared to be, involved, to allow anything to be left in question. I went slowly across the lawn, skirted the hedge to a break not far from the lodge, and found myself on the open road. Perhaps a hundred feet to the left the path led across the valley to the Country Club, and only a little way off was the footbridge over Casanova Creek. But just as I was about to turn down the path I heard steps coming toward me, and I shrank into the bushes. It was Gertrude, going back quickly toward the house. I was surprised. I waited until she had had time to get almost to the house before I started. And then I stepped back again into the shadows. The reason why Gertrude had not kept her tryst was evident. Leaning on the parapet of the bridge in the moonlight, and smoking a pipe, was Alex, the gardener. I could have throttled Liddy for her carelessness in reading the torn note where he could hear. And I could cheerfully have choked Alex to death for his audacity. But there was no help for it I turned and followed Gertrude slowly back to the house. The frequent invasions of the house had effectually prevented any relaxation after dusk. We had redoubled our vigilance as to bolts and windowlocks but, as Mr. Jamieson had suggested, we allowed the door at the east entry to remain as before, locked by the Yale lock only. To provide only one possible entrance for the invader, and to keep a constant guard in the dark at the foot of the circular staircase, seemed to be the only method. In the absence of the detective, Alex and Halsey arranged to change off, Halsey to be on duty from ten to two, and Alex from two until six. Each man was armed, and, as an additional precaution, the one off duty slept in a room near the head of the circular staircase and kept his door open, to be ready for emergency. These arrangements were carefully kept from the servants, who were only commencing to sleep at night, and who retired, one and all, with barred doors and lamps that burned full until morning. The house was quiet again Wednesday night. It was almost a week since Louise had encountered someone on the stairs, and it was four days since the discovery of the hole in the trunkroom wall. Arnold Armstrong and his father rested side by side in the Casanova churchyard, and at the Zion African Church, on the hill, a new mound marked the last restingplace of poor Thomas. Louise was with her mother in town, and, beyond a polite note of thanks to me, we had heard nothing from her. Doctor Walker had taken up his practice again, and we saw him now and then flying past along the road, always at top speed. The murder of Arnold Armstrong was still unavenged, and I remained firm in the position I had takento stay at Sunnyside until the thing was at least partly cleared. And yet, for all its quiet, it was on Wednesday night that perhaps the boldest attempt was made to enter the house. On Thursday afternoon the laundress sent word she would like to speak to me, and I saw her in my private sittingroom, a small room beyond the dressingroom. Mary Anne was embarrassed. She had rolled down her sleeves and tied a white apron around her waist, and she stood making folds in it with fingers that were red and shiny from her soapsuds. Well, Mary, I said encouragingly, whats the matter? Dont dare to tell me the soap is out. No, mam, Miss Innes. She had a nervous habit of looking first at my one eye and then at the other, her own optics shifting ceaselessly, right eye, left eye, right eye, until I found myself doing the same thing. No, mam. I was askin did you want the ladder left up the clothes chute? The what? I screeched, and was sorry the next minute. Seeing her suspicions were verified, Mary Anne had gone white, and stood with her eyes shifting more wildly than ever. Theres a ladder up the clothes chute, Miss Innes, she said. Its up that tight I cant move it, and I didnt like to ask for help until I spoke to you. It was useless to dissemble; Mary Anne knew now as well as I did that the ladder had no business to be there. I did the best I could, however. I put her on the defensive at once. Then you didnt lock the laundry last night? I locked it tight, and put the key in the kitchen on its nail. Very well, then you forgot a window. Mary Anne hesitated. Yesm, she said at last. I thought I locked them all, but there was one open this morning. I went out of the room and down the hall, followed by Mary Anne. The door into the clothes chute was securely bolted, and when I opened it I saw the evidence of the womans story. A pruningladder had been brought from where it had lain against the stable and now stood upright in the clothes shaft, its end resting against the wall between the first and second floors. I turned to Mary. This is due to your carelessness, I said. If we had all been murdered in our beds it would have been your fault. She shivered. Now, not a word of this through the house, and send Alex to me. The effect on Alex was to make him apoplectic with rage, and with it all I fancied there was an element of satisfaction. As I look back, so many things are plain to me that I wonder I could not see at the time. It is all known now, and yet the whole thing was so remarkable that perhaps my stupidity was excusable. Alex leaned down the chute and examined the ladder carefully. It is caught, he said with a grim smile. The fools, to have left a warning like that! The only trouble is, Miss Innes, they wont be apt to come back for a while. I shouldnt regard that in the light of a calamity, I replied. Until late that evening Halsey and Alex worked at the chute. They forced down the ladder at last, and put a new bolt on the door. As for myself, I sat and wondered if I had a deadly enemy, intent on my destruction. I was growing more and more nervous. Liddy had given up all pretense at bravery, and slept regularly in my dressingroom on the couch, with a prayerbook and a game knife from the kitchen under her pillow, thus preparing for both the natural and the supernatural. That was the way things stood that Thursday night, when I myself took a hand in the struggle. XXIII While the Stables Burned About nine oclock that night Liddy came into the livingroom and reported that one of the housemaids declared she had seen two men slip around the corner of the stable. Gertrude had been sitting staring in front of her, jumping at every sound. Now she turned on Liddy pettishly. I declare, Liddy, she said, you are a bundle of nerves. What if Eliza did see some men around the stable? It may have been Warner and Alex. Warner is in the kitchen, miss, Liddy said with dignity. And if you had come through what I have, you would be a bundle of nerves, too. Miss Rachel, Id be thankful if youd give me my months wages tomorrow. Ill be going to my sisters. Very well, I said, to her evident amazement. I will make out the check. Warner can take you down to the noon train. Liddys face was really funny. Youll have a nice time at your sisters, I went on. Five children, hasnt she? Thats it, Liddy said, suddenly bursting into tears. Send me away, after all these years, and your new shawl only half done, and nobody knowin how to fix the water for your bath. Its time I learned to prepare my own bath. I was knitting complacently. But Gertrude got up and put her arms around Liddys shaking shoulders. You are two big babies, she said soothingly. Neither one of you could get along for an hour without the other. So stop quarreling and be good. Liddy, go right up and lay out Auntys night things. She is going to bed early. After Liddy had gone I began to think about the men at the stable, and I grew more and more anxious. Halsey was aimlessly knocking the billiardballs around in the billiardroom, and I called to him. Halsey, I said when he sauntered in, is there a policeman in Casanova? Constable, he said laconically. Veteran of the war, one arm; in office to conciliate the G.A.R. element. Why? Because I am uneasy tonight. And I told him what Liddy had said. Is there anyone you can think of who could be relied on to watch the outside of the house tonight? We might get Sam Bohannon from the club, he said thoughtfully. It wouldnt be a bad scheme. Hes a smart darky, and with his mouth shut and his shirtfront covered, you couldnt see him a yard off in the dark. Halsey conferred with Alex, and the result, in an hour, was Sam. His instructions were simple. There had been numerous attempts to break into the house; it was the intention, not to drive intruders away, but to capture them. If Sam saw anything suspicious outside, he was to tap at the east entry, where Alex and Halsey were to alternate in keeping watch through the night. It was with a comfortable feeling of security that I went to bed that night. The door between Gertrudes rooms and mine had been opened, and, with the doors into the hall bolted, we were safe enough. Although Liddy persisted in her belief that doors would prove no obstacles to our disturbers. As before, Halsey watched the east entry from ten until two. He had an eye to comfort, and he kept vigil in a heavy oak chair, very large and deep. We went upstairs rather early, and through the open door Gertrude and I kept up a running fire of conversation. Liddy was brushing my hair, and Gertrude was doing her own, with a long free sweep of her strong round arms. Did you know Mrs. Armstrong and Louise are in the village? she called. No, I replied, startled. How did you hear it? I met the oldest Stewart girl today, the doctors daughter, and she told me they had not gone back to town after the funeral. They went directly to that little yellow house next to Doctor Walkers, and are apparently settled there. They took the house furnished for the summer. Why, its a bandbox, I said. I cant imagine Fanny Armstrong in such a place. Its true, nevertheless. Ella Stewart says Mrs. Armstrong has aged terribly, and looks as if she is hardly able to walk. I lay and thought over some of these things until midnight. The electric lights went out then, fading slowly until there was only a redhot loop to be seen in the bulb, and then even that died away and we were embarked on the darkness of another night. Apparently only a few minutes elapsed, during which my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. Then I noticed that the windows were reflecting a faint pinkish light; Liddy noticed it at the same time, and I heard her jump up. At that moment Sams deep voice boomed from somewhere just below. Fire! he yelled. The stables on fire! I could see him in the glare dancing up and down on the drive, and a moment later Halsey joined him. Alex was awake and running down the stairs, and in five minutes from the time the fire was discovered, three of the maids were sitting on their trunks in the drive, although, excepting a few sparks, there was no fire nearer than a hundred yards. Gertrude seldom loses her presence of mind, and she ran to the telephone. But by the time the Casanova volunteer fire department came toiling up the hill the stable was a furnace, with the Dragon Fly safe but blistered, in the road. Some gasoline exploded just as the volunteer department got to work, which shook their nerves as well as the burning building. The stable, being on a hill, was a torch to attract the population from every direction. Rumor had it that Sunnyside was burning, and it was amazing how many people threw something over their nightclothes and flew to the conflagration. I take it Casanova has few fires, and Sunnyside was furnishing the people, in one way and another, the greatest excitement they had had for years. The stable was off the west wing. I hardly know how I came to think of the circular staircase and the unguarded door at its foot. Liddy was putting my clothes into sheets, preparatory to tossing them out the window, when I found her, and I could hardly persuade her to stop. I want you to come with me, Liddy, I said. Bring a candle and a couple of blankets. She lagged behind considerably when she saw me making for the east wing, and at the top of the staircase she balked. I am not going down there, she said firmly. There is no one guarding the door down there, I explained. Who knows?this may be a scheme to draw everybody away from this end of the house, and let someone in here. The instant I had said it I was convinced I had hit on the explanation, and that perhaps it was already too late. It seemed to me as I listened that I heard stealthy footsteps on the east porch, but there was so much shouting outside that it was impossible to tell. Liddy was on the point of retreat. Very well, I said, then I shall go down alone. Run back to Mr. Halseys room and get his revolver. Dont shoot down the stairs if you hear a noise rememberI shall be down there. And hurry. I put the candle on the floor at the top of the staircase and took off my bedroom slippers. Then I crept down the stairs, going very slowly, and listening with all my ears. I was keyed to such a pitch that I felt no fear like the condemned who sleep and eat the night before execution, I was no longer able to suffer apprehension. I was past that. Just at the foot of the stairs I stubbed my toe against Halseys big chair, and had to stand on one foot in a soundless agony until the pain subsided to a dull ache. And thenI knew I was right. Someone had put a key into the lock, and was turning it. For some reason it refused to work, and the key was withdrawn. There was a muttering of voices outside I had only a second. Another trial, and the door would open. The candle above made a faint gleam down the welllike staircase, and at that moment, with a second, no more, to spare, I thought of a plan. The heavy oak chair almost filled the space between the newel post and the door. With a crash I had turned it on its side, wedging it against the door, its legs against the stairs. I could hear a faint scream from Liddy, at the crash, and then she came down the stairs on a run, with the revolver held straight out in front of her. Thank God, she said, in a shaking voice. I thought it was you. I pointed to the door, and she understood. Call out the windows at the other end of the house, I whispered. Run. Tell them not to wait for anything. She went up the stairs at that, two at a time. Evidently she collided with the candle, for it went out, and I was left in darkness. I was really astonishingly cool. I remember stepping over the chair and gluing my ear to the door, and I shall never forget feeling it give an inch or two there in the darkness, under a steady pressure from without. But the chair held, although I could hear an ominous cracking of one of the legs. And then, without the slightest warning, the cardroom window broke with a crash. I had my finger on the trigger of the revolver, and as I jumped it went off, right through the door. Someone outside swore roundly, and for the first time I could hear what was said. Only a scratch. Men are at the other end of the house. Have the whole rats nest on us. And a lot of profanity which I wont write down. The voices were at the broken window now, and although I was trembling violently, I was determined that I would hold them until help came. I moved up the stairs until I could see into the cardroom, or rather through it, to the window. As I looked a small man put his leg over the sill and stepped into the room. The curtain confused him for a moment; then he turned, not toward me, but toward the billiardroom door. I fired again, and something that was glass or china crashed to the ground. Then I ran up the stairs and along the corridor to the main staircase. Gertrude was standing there, trying to locate the shots, and I must have been a peculiar figure, with my hair in crimps, my dressinggown flying, no slippers, and a revolver clutched in my hand. I had no time to talk. There was the sound of footsteps in the lower hall, and someone bounded up the stairs. I had gone berserk, I think. I leaned over the stairrail and fired again. Halsey, below, yelled at me. What are you doing up there? he yelled. You missed me by an inch. And then I collapsed and fainted. When I came around Liddy was rubbing my temples with eau de quinine, and the search was in full blast. Well, the man was gone. The stable burned to the ground, while the crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and Halsey searched every corner of the lower floor, finding no one. The truth of my story was shown by the broken window and the overturned chair. That the unknown had got upstairs was almost impossible. He had not used the main staircase, there was no way to the upper floor in the east wing, and Liddy had been at the window, in the west wing, where the servants stair went up. But we did not go to bed at all. Sam Bohannon and Warner helped in the search, and not a closet escaped scrutiny. Even the cellars were given a thorough overhauling, without result. The door in the east entry had a hole through it where my bullet had gone. The hole slanted downward, and the bullet was embedded in the porch. Some reddish stains showed it had done execution. Somebody will walk lame, Halsey said, when he had marked the course of the bullet. Its too low to have hit anything but a leg or foot. From that time on I watched every person I met for a limp, and to this day the man who halts in his walk is an object of suspicion to me. But Casanova had no lame men the nearest approach to it was an old fellow who tended the safety gates at the railroad, and he, I learned on inquiry, had two artificial legs. Our man had gone, and the large and expensive stable at Sunnyside was a heap of smoking rafters and charred boards. Warner swore the fire was incendiary, and in view of the attempt to enter the house, there seemed to be no doubt of it. XXIV Flinders If Halsey had only taken me fully into his confidence, through the whole affair, it would have been much simpler. If he had been altogether frank about Jack Bailey, and if the day after the fire he had told me what he suspected, there would have been no harrowing period for all of us, with the boy in danger. But young people refuse to profit by the experience of their elders, and sometimes the elders are the ones to suffer. I was much used up the day after the fire, and Gertrude insisted on my going out. The machine was temporarily out of commission, and the carriage horses had been sent to a farm for the summer. Gertrude finally got a trap from the Casanova liveryman, and we went out. Just as we turned from the drive into the road we passed a woman. She had put down a small valise, and stood inspecting the house and grounds minutely. I should hardly have noticed her, had it not been for the fact that she had been horribly disfigured by smallpox. Ugh! Gertrude said, when we had passed, what a face! I shall dream of it tonight. Get up, Flinders. Flinders? I asked. Is that the horses name? It is. She flicked the horses stubby mane with the whip. He didnt look like a livery horse, and the liveryman said he had bought him from the Armstrongs when they purchased a couple of motors and cut down the stable. Nice Flindersgood old boy! Flinders was certainly not a common name for a horse, and yet the youngster at Richfield had named his prancing, curlyhaired little horse Flinders! It set me to thinking. At my request Halsey had already sent word of the fire to the agent from whom we had secured the house. Also, he had called Mr. Jamieson by telephone, and somewhat guardedly had told him of the previous nights events. Mr. Jamieson promised to come out that night, and to bring another man with him. I did not consider it necessary to notify Mrs. Armstrong, in the village. No doubt she knew of the fire, and in view of my refusal to give up the house, an interview would probably have been unpleasant enough. But as we passed Doctor Walkers white and green house I thought of something. Stop here, Gertrude, I said. I am going to get out. To see Louise? she asked. No, I want to ask this young Walker something. She was curious, I knew, but I did not wait to explain. I went up the walk to the house, where a brass sign at the side announced the office, and went in. The receptionroom was empty, but from the consultingroom beyond came the sound of two voices, not very amicable. It is an outrageous figure, someone was storming. Then the doctors quiet tone, evidently not arguing, merely stating something. But I had not time to listen to some person probably disputing his bill, so I coughed. The voices ceased at once a door closed somewhere, and the doctor entered from the hall of the house. He looked sufficiently surprised at seeing me. Good afternoon, Doctor, I said formally. I shall not keep you from your patient. I wish merely to ask you a question. Wont you sit down? It will not be necessary. Doctor, has anyone come to you, either early this morning or today, to have you treat a bullet wound? Nothing so startling has happened to me, he said. A bullet wound! Things must be lively at Sunnyside. I didnt say it was at Sunnyside. But as it happens, it was. If any such case comes to you, will it be too much trouble for you to let me know? I shall be only too happy, he said. I understand you have had a fire up there, too. A fire and shooting in one night is rather lively for a quiet place like that. It is as quiet as a boilershop, I replied, as I turned to go. And you are still going to stay? Until I am burned out, I responded. And then on my way down the steps, I turned around suddenly.

Doctor, I asked at a venture, have you ever heard of a child named Lucien Wallace? Clever as he was, his face changed and stiffened. He was on his guard again in a moment. Lucien Wallace? he repeated. No, I think not. There are plenty of Wallaces around, but I dont know any Lucien. I was as certain as possible that he did. People do not lie readily to me, and this man lied beyond a doubt. But there was nothing to be gained now; his defenses were up, and I left, half irritated and wholly baffled. Our reception was entirely different at Doctor Stewarts. Taken into the bosom of the family at once, Flinders tied outside and nibbling the grass at the roadside, Gertrude and I drank some homemade elderberry wine and told briefly of the fire. Of the more serious part of the nights experience, of course, we said nothing. But when at last we had left the family on the porch and the good doctor was untying our steed, I asked him the same question I had put to Doctor Walker. Shot! he said. Bless my soul, no. Why, what have you been doing up at the big house, Miss Innes? Someone tried to enter the house during the fire, and was shot and slightly injured, I said hastily. Please dont mention it; we wish to make as little of it as possible. There was one other possibility, and we tried that. At Casanova station I saw the station master, and asked him if any trains left Casanova between one oclock and daylight. There was none until six a.m. The next question required more diplomacy. Did you notice on the sixoclock train any personany manwho limped a little? I asked. Please try to remember we are trying to trace a man who was seen loitering around Sunnyside last night before the fire. He was all attention in a moment. I was up there myself at the fire, he said volubly. Im a member of the volunteer company. First big fire weve had since the summer house burned over to the club golf links. My wife was sayin the other day, Dave, you might as well a saved the money in that there helmet and shirt. And here last night they came in handy. Rang that bell so hard I hadnt time scarcely to get em on. Anddid you see a man who limped? Gertrude put in, as he stopped for breath. Not at the train, mam, he said. No such person got on here today. But Ill tell you where I did see a man that limped. I didnt wait till the fire company left; theres a fast freight goes through at four fortyfive, and I had to get down to the station. I seen there wasnt much more to do anyhow at the firewed got the flames under controlGertrude looked at me and smiledso I started down the hill. There was folks here and there goin home, and along by the path to the Country Club I seen two men. One was a short fellow. He was sitting on a big rock, his back to me, and he had something white in his hand, as if he was tying up his foot. After Id gone on a piece I looked back, and he was hobbling on andexcuse me, misshe was swearing something sickening. Did they go toward the club? Gertrude asked suddenly, leaning forward. No, miss. I think they came into the village. I didnt get a look at their faces, but I know every chick and child in the place, and everybody knows me. When they didnt shout at mein my uniform, you knowI took it they were strangers. So all we had for our afternoons work was this someone had been shot by the bullet that went through the door; he had not left the village, and he had not called in a physician. Also, Doctor Walker knew who Lucien Wallace was, and his very denial made me confident that, in that one direction at least, we were on the right track. The thought that the detective would be there that night was the most cheering thing of all, and I think even Gertrude was glad of it. Driving home that afternoon, I saw her in the clear sunlight for the first time in several days, and I was startled to see how ill she looked. She was thin and colorless, and all her bright animation was gone. Gertrude, I said, I have been a very selfish old woman. You are going to leave this miserable house tonight. Annie Morton is going to Scotland next week, and you shall go right with her. To my surprise, she flushed painfully. I dont want to go, Aunt Ray, she said. Dont make me leave now. You are losing your health and your good looks, I said decidedly. You should have a change. I shant stir a foot. She was equally decided. Then, more lightly Why, you and Liddy need me to arbitrate between you every day in the week. Perhaps I was growing suspicious of everyone, but it seemed to me that Gertrudes gaiety was forced and artificial. I watched her covertly during the rest of the drive, and I did not like the two spots of crimson in her pale cheeks. But I said nothing more about sending her to Scotland I knew she would not go. XXV A Visit from Louise That day was destined to be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wristswhatever good that is supposed to doI knew that the ghost had been walking again, and this time in daylight. Eliza was in a frenzy of fear. She clutched at my sleeve when I went close to her, and refused to let go until she had told her story. Coming just after the fire, the household was demoralized, and it was no surprise to me to find Alex and the undergardener struggling downstairs with a heavy trunk between them. I didnt want to do it, Miss Innes, Alex said. But she was so excited, I was afraid she would do as she saiddrag it down herself, and scratch the staircase. I was trying to get my bonnet off and to keep the maids quiet at the same time. Now, Eliza, when you have washed your face and stopped bawling, I said, come into my sittingroom and tell me what has happened. Liddy put away my things without speaking. The very set of her shoulders expressed disapproval. Well, I said, when the silence became uncomfortable, things seem to be warming up. Silence from Liddy, and a long sigh. If Eliza goes, I dont know where to look for another cook. More silence. Rosie is probably a good cook. Sniff. Liddy, I said at last, dont dare to deny that you are having the time of your life. You positively gloat in this excitement. You never looked better. Its my opinion all this running around, and getting jolted out of a rut, has stirred up that torpid liver of yours. Its not myself Im thinking about, she said, goaded into speech. Maybe my liver was torpid, and maybe it wasnt; but I know this Ive got some feelings left, and to see you standing at the foot of that staircase shootin through the doorIll never be the same woman again. Well, Im glad of thatanything for a change, I said. And in came Eliza, flanked by Rosie and Mary Anne. Her story, broken with sobs and corrections from the other two, was this At two oclock (twofifteen, Rosie insisted) she had gone upstairs to get a picture from her room to show Mary Anne. (A picture of a lady, Mary Anne interposed.) She went up the servants staircase and along the corridor to her room, which lay between the trunkroom and the unfinished ballroom. She heard a sound as she went down the corridor, like someone moving furniture, but she was not nervous. She thought it might be men examining the house after the fire the night before, but she looked in the trunkroom and saw nobody. She went into her room quietly. The noise had ceased, and everything was quiet. Then she sat down on the side of her bed, and, feeling faintshe was subject to spells(I told you that when I came, didnt I, Rosie? Yesm, indeed she did!)she put her head down on her pillow and Took a nap. All right! I said. Go on. When I came to, Miss Innes, sure as Im sittin here, I thought Id die. Somethin hit me on the face, and I set up, sudden. And then I seen the plaster drop, droppin from a little hole in the wall. And the first thing I knew, an iron bar that long (fully two yards by her measure) shot through that hole and tumbled on the bed. If Id been still sleeping (Fainting, corrected Rosie) Id a been hit on the head and killed! I wisht youd heard her scream, put in Mary Anne. And her face as white as a pillowslip when she tumbled down the stairs. No doubt there is some natural explanation for it, Eliza, I said. You may have dreamed it, in your fainting attack. But if it is true, the metal rod and the hole in the wall will show it. Eliza looked a little bit sheepish. The holes there all right, Miss Innes, she said. But the bar was gone when Mary Anne and Rosie went up to pack my trunk. That wasnt all, Liddys voice came funereally from a corner. Eliza said that from the hole in the wall a burning eye looked down at her! The wall must be at least six inches thick, I said with asperity. Unless the person who drilled the hole carried his eyes on the ends of a stick, Eliza couldnt possibly have seen them. But the fact remained, and a visit to Elizas room proved it. I might jeer all I wished someone had drilled a hole in the unfinished wall of the ballroom, passing between the bricks of the partition, and shooting through the unresisting plaster of Elizas room with such force as to send the rod flying on to her bed. I had gone upstairs alone, and I confess the thing puzzled me in two or three places in the wall small apertures had been made, none of them of any depth. Not the least mysterious thing was the disappearance of the iron implement that had been used. I remembered a story I read once about an impish dwarf that lived in the spaces between the double walls of an ancient castle. I wondered vaguely if my original idea of a secret entrance to a hidden chamber could be right, after all, and if we were housing some erratic guest, who played pranks on us in the dark, and destroyed the walls that he might listen, hidden safely away, to our amazed investigations. Mary Anne and Eliza left that afternoon, but Rosie decided to stay. It was about five oclock when the hack came from the station to get them, and, to my amazement, it had an occupant. Matthew Geist, the driver, asked for me, and explained his errand with pride. Ive brought you a cook, Miss Innes, he said. When the message came to come up for two girls and their trunks, I supposed there was something doing, and as this here woman had been looking for work in the village, I thought Id bring her along. Already I had acquired the true suburbanite ability to take servants on faith; I no longer demanded written and unimpeachable references. I, Rachel Innes, have learned not to mind if the cook sits down comfortably in my sittingroom when she is taking the orders for the day, and I am grateful if the silver is not cleaned with scouring soap. And so that day I merely told Liddy to send the new applicant in. When she came, however, I could hardly restrain a gasp of surprise. It was the woman with the pitted face. She stood somewhat awkwardly just inside the door, and she had an air of selfconfidence that was inspiring. Yes, she could cook; was not a fancy cook, but could make good soups and desserts if there was anyone to take charge of the salads. And so, in the end, I took her. As Halsey said, when we told him, it didnt matter much about the cooks face, if it was clean. I have spoken of Halseys restlessness. On that day it seemed to be more than ever a resistless impulse that kept him out until after luncheon. I think he hoped constantly that he might meet Louise driving over the hills in her runabout possibly he did meet her occasionally, but from his continued gloom I felt sure the situation between them was unchanged. Part of the afternoon I believe he readGertrude and I were out, as I have said, and at dinner we both noticed that something had occurred to distract him. He was disagreeable, which is unlike him, nervous, looking at his watch every few minutes, and he ate almost nothing. He asked twice during the meal on what train Mr. Jamieson and the other detective were coming, and had long periods of abstraction during which he dug his fork into my damask cloth and did not hear when he was spoken to. He refused dessert, and left the table early, excusing himself on the ground that he wanted to see Alex. Alex, however, was not to be found. It was after eight when Halsey ordered the car, and started down the hill at a pace that, even for him, was unusually reckless. Shortly after, Alex reported that he was ready to go over the house, preparatory to closing it for the night. Sam Bohannon came at a quarter before nine, and began his patrol of the grounds, and with the arrival of the two detectives to look forward to, I was not especially apprehensive. At halfpast nine I heard the sound of a horse driven furiously up the drive. It came to a stop in front of the house, and immediately after there were hurried steps on the veranda. Our nerves were not what they should have been, and Gertrude, always apprehensive lately, was at the door almost instantly. A moment later Louise had burst into the room and stood there bareheaded and breathing hard! Where is Halsey? she demanded. Above her plain black gown her eyes looked big and somber, and the rapid drive had brought no color to her face. I got up and drew forward a chair. He has not come back, I said quietly. Sit down, child; you are not strong enough for this kind of thing. I dont think she even heard me. He has not come back? she asked, looking from me to Gertrude. Do you know where he went? Where can I find him? For Heavens sake, Louise, Gertrude burst out, tell us what is wrong. Halsey is not here. He has gone to the station for Mr. Jamieson. What has happened? To the station, Gertrude? You are sure? Yes, I said. Listen. There is the whistle of the train now. She relaxed a little at our matteroffact tone, and allowed herself to sink into a chair. Perhaps I was wrong, she said heavily. Hewill be here in a few moments ifeverything is right. We sat there, the three of us, without attempt at conversation. Both Gertrude and I recognized the futility of asking Louise any questions her reticence was a part of a role she had assumed. Our ears were strained for the first throb of the motor as it turned into the drive and commenced the climb to the house. Ten minutes passed, fifteen, twenty. I saw Louises hands grow rigid as they clutched the arms of her chair. I watched Gertrudes bright color slowly ebbing away, and around my own heart I seemed to feel the grasp of a giant hand. Twentyfive minutes, and then a sound. But it was not the chug of the motor it was the unmistakable rumble of the Casanova hack. Gertrude drew aside the curtain and peered into the darkness. Its the hack, I am sure, she said, evidently relieved. Something has gone wrong with the car, and no wonderthe way Halsey went down the hill. It seemed a long time before the creaking vehicle came to a stop at the door. Louise rose and stood watching, her hand to her throat. And then Gertrude opened the door, admitting Mr. Jamieson and a stocky, middleaged man. Halsey was not with them. When the door had closed and Louise realized that Halsey had not come, her expression changed. From tense watchfulness to relief, and now again to absolute despair, her face was an open page. Halsey? I asked unceremoniously, ignoring the stranger. Did he not meet you? No. Mr. Jamieson looked slightly surprised. I rather expected the car, but we got up all right. You didnt see him at all? Louise demanded breathlessly. Mr. Jamieson knew her at once, although he had not seen her before. She had kept to her rooms until the morning she left. No, Miss Armstrong, he said. I saw nothing of him. What is wrong? Then we shall have to find him, she asserted. Every instant is precious. Mr. Jamieson, I have reason for believing that he is in danger, but I dont know what it is. Onlyhe must be found. The stocky man had said nothing. Now, however, he went quickly toward the door. Ill catch the hack down the road and hold it, he said. Is the gentleman down in the town? Mr. Jamieson, Louise said impulsively, I can use the hack. Take my horse and trap outside and drive like mad. Try to find the Dragon Flyit ought to be easy to trace. I can think of no other way. Only, dont lose a moment. The new detective had gone, and a moment later Jamieson went rapidly down the drive, the cobs feet striking fire at every step. Louise stood looking after them. When she turned around she faced Gertrude, who stood indignant, almost tragic, in the hall. You know what threatens Halsey, Louise, she said accusingly. I believe you know this whole horrible thing, this mystery that we are struggling with. If anything happens to Halsey, I shall never forgive you. Louise only raised her hands despairingly and dropped them again. He is as dear to me as he is to you, she said sadly. I tried to warn him. Nonsense! I said, as briskly as I could. We are making a lot of trouble out of something perhaps very small. Halsey was probably latehe is always late. Any moment we may hear the car coming up the road. But it did not come. After a halfhour of suspense, Louise went out quietly, and did not come back. I hardly knew she was gone until I heard the station hack moving off. At eleven oclock the telephone rang. It was Mr. Jamieson. I have found the Dragon Fly, Miss Innes, he said. It has collided with a freight car on the siding above the station. No, Mr. Innes was not there, but we shall probably find him. Send Warner for the car. But they did not find him. At four oclock the next morning we were still waiting for news, while Alex watched the house and Sam the grounds. At daylight I dropped into exhausted sleep. Halsey had not come back, and there was no word from the detective. XXVI Halseys Disappearance Nothing that had gone before had been as bad as this. The murder and Thomas sudden death we had been able to view in a detached sort of way. But with Halseys disappearance everything was altered. Our little circle, intact until now, was broken. We were no longer onlookers who saw a battle passing around them. We were the center of action. Of course, there was no time then to voice such an idea. My mind seemed able to hold only one thought that Halsey had been foully dealt with, and that every minute lost might be fatal. Mr. Jamieson came back about eight oclock the next morning he was covered with mud, and his hat was gone. Altogether, we were a sadlooking trio that gathered around a breakfast that no one could eat. Over a cup of black coffee the detective told us what he had learned of Halseys movements the night before. Up to a certain point the car had made it easy enough to follow him. And I gathered that Mr. Burns, the other detective, had followed a similar car for miles at dawn, only to find it was a touring car on an endurance run. He left here about ten minutes after eight, Mr. Jamieson said. He went alone, and at eight twenty he stopped at Doctor Walkers. I went to the doctors about midnight, but he had been called out on a case, and had not come back at four oclock. From the doctors it seems Mr. Innes walked across the lawn to the cottage Mrs. Armstrong and her daughter have taken. Mrs. Armstrong had retired, and he said perhaps a dozen words to Miss Louise. She will not say what they were, but the girl evidently suspects what has occurred. That is, she suspects foul play, but she doesnt know of what nature. Then, apparently, he started directly for the station. He was going very fastthe flagman at the Carol Street crossing says he saw the car pass. He knew the siren. Along somewhere in the dark stretch between Carol Street and the depot he evidently swerved suddenlyperhaps someone in the roadand went full into the side of a freight. We found it there last night. He might have been thrown under the train by the force of the shock, I said tremulously. Gertrude shuddered. We examined every inch of track. There wasno sign. But surelyhe cant begone! I cried. Arent there traces in the mudanything? There is no mudonly dust. There has been no rain. And the footpath there is of cinders. Miss Innes, I am inclined to think that he has met with bad treatment, in the light of what has gone before. I do not think he has been murdered. I shrank from the word. Burns is back in the country, on a clue we got from the night clerk at the drugstore. There will be two more men here by noon, and the city office is on the lookout. The creek? Gertrude asked. The creek is shallow now. If it were swollen with rain, it would be different. There is hardly any water in it. Now, Miss Innes, he said, turning to me, I must ask you some questions. Had Mr. Halsey any possible reason for going away like this, without warning? None whatever. He went away once before, he persisted. And you were as sure then. He did not leave the Dragon Fly jammed into the side of a freight car before. No, but he left it for repairs in a blacksmith shop, a long distance from here. Do you know if he had any enemies? Anyone who might wish him out of the way? Not that I know of, unlessno, I can not think of any. Was he in the habit of carrying money? He never carried it far. No, he never had more than enough for current expenses. Mr. Jamieson got up then and began to pace the room. It was an unwonted concession to the occasion. Then I think we get at it by elimination. The chances are against flight. If he was hurt, we find no trace of him. It looks almost like an abduction. This young Doctor Walkerhave you any idea why Mr. Innes should have gone there last night? I can not understand it, Gertrude said thoughtfully. I dont think he knew Doctor Walker at all, andtheir relations could hardly have been cordial, under the circumstances. Jamieson pricked up his ears, and little by little he drew from us the unfortunate story of Halseys love affair, and the fact that Louise was going to marry Doctor Walker. Mr. Jamieson listened attentively. There are some interesting developments here, he said thoughtfully. The woman who claims to be the mother of Lucien Wallace has not come back. Your nephew has apparently been spirited away. There is an organized attempt being made to enter this house; in fact, it has been entered. Witness the incident with the cook yesterday. And I have a new piece of information. He looked carefully away from Gertrude. Mr. John Bailey is not at his Knickerbocker apartments, and I dont know where he is. Its a hash, thats what it is. Its a Chinese puzzle. They wont fit together, unlessunless Mr. Bailey and your nephew have again And once again Gertrude surprised me. They are not together, she said hotly. Iknow where Mr. Bailey is, and my brother is not with him. The detective turned and looked at her keenly. Miss Gertrude, he said, if you and Miss Louise would only tell me everything you know and surmise about this business, I should be able to do a great many things. I believe I could find your brother, and I might be able towell, to do some other things. But Gertrudes glance did not falter. Nothing that I know could help you to find Halsey, she said stubbornly. I know absolutely as little of his disappearance as you do, and I can only say this I do not trust Doctor Walker. I think he hated Halsey, and he would get rid of him if he could. Perhaps you are right. In fact, I had some such theory myself. But Doctor Walker went out late last night to a serious case in Summitville, and is still there. Burns traced him there. We have made guarded inquiry at the Greenwood Club, and through the village. There is absolutely nothing to go on but this. On the embankment above the railroad, at the point where we found the machine, is a small house. An old woman and a daughter, who is very lame, live there. They say that they distinctly heard the shock when the Dragon Fly hit the car, and they went to the bottom of their garden and looked over. The automobile was there; they could see the lights, and they thought someone had been injured. It was very dark, but they could make out two figures, standing together. The women were curious, and, leaving the fence, they went back and by a roundabout path down to the road. When they got there the car was still standing, the headlight broken and the bonnet crushed, but there was no one to be seen. The detective went away immediately, and to Gertrude and me was left the womans part, to watch and wait. By luncheon nothing had been found, and I was frantic. I went upstairs to Halseys room finally, from sheer inability to sit across from Gertrude any longer, and meet her terrorfilled eyes. Liddy was in my dressingroom, suspiciously redeyed, and trying to put a right sleeve in a left armhole of a new waist for me. I was too much shaken to scold. What name did that woman in the kitchen give? she demanded, viciously ripping out the offending sleeve. Bliss. Mattie Bliss, I replied. Bliss. M. B. Well, thats not what she has on her suitcase. It is marked N. F. C. The new cook and her initials troubled me not at all. I put on my bonnet and sent for what the Casanova liveryman called a stylish turnout. Having once made up my mind to a course of action, I am not one to turn back. Warner drove me; he was plainly disgusted, and he steered the livery horse as he would the Dragon Fly, feeling uneasily with his left foot for the clutch, and working his right elbow at an imaginary horn every time a dog got in the way. Warner had something on his mind, and after we had turned into the road, he voiced it. Miss Innes, he said. I overheard a part of a conversation yesterday that I didnt understand. It wasnt my business to understand it, for that matter. But Ive been thinking all day that Id better tell you. Yesterday afternoon, while you and Miss Gertrude were out driving, I had got the car in some sort of shape again after the fire, and I went to the library to call Mr. Innes to see it. I went into the livingroom, where Miss Liddy said he was, and halfway across to the library I heard him talking to someone. He seemed to be walking up and down, and he was in a rage, I can tell you. What did he say? The first thing I heard wasexcuse me, Miss Innes, but its what he said, The damned rascal, he said, Ill see him inwell, in hell was what he said, in hell first. Then somebody else spoke up; it was a woman. She said, I warned them, but they thought I would be afraid. A woman! Did you wait to see who it was? I wasnt spying, Miss Innes, Warner said with dignity. But the next thing caught my attention. She said, I knew there was something wrong from the start. A man isnt well one day, and dead the next, without some reason. I thought she was speaking of Thomas. And you dont know who it was! I exclaimed. Warner, you had the key to this whole occurrence in your hands, and did not use it! However, there was nothing to be done. I resolved to make inquiry when I got home, and in the meantime, my present errand absorbed me. This was nothing less than to see Louise Armstrong, and to attempt to drag from her what she knew, or suspected, of Halseys disappearance. But here, as in every direction I turned, I was baffled. A neat maid answered the bell, but she stood squarely in the doorway, and it was impossible to preserve ones dignity and pass her. Miss Armstrong is very ill, and unable to see anyone, she said. I did not believe her. And Mrs. Armstrongis she also ill? She is with Miss Louise and can not be disturbed. Tell her it is Miss Innes, and that it is a matter of the greatest importance. It would be of no use, Miss Innes. My orders are positive. At that moment a heavy step sounded on the stairs. Past the maids whitestrapped shoulder I could see a familiar thatch of gray hair, and in a moment I was face to face with Doctor Stewart. He was very grave, and his customary geniality was tinged with restraint. You are the very woman I want to see, he said promptly. Send away your trap, and let me drive you home. What is this about your nephew? He has disappeared, doctor. Not only that, but there is every evidence that he has been either abducted, or I could not finish. The doctor helped me into his capacious buggy in silence. Until we had got a little distance he did not speak; then he turned and looked at me. Now tell me about it, he said. He heard me through without speaking. And you think Louise knows something? he said when I had finished. I dontin fact, I am sure of it. The best evidence of it is this she asked me if he had been heard from, or if anything had been learned. She wont allow Walker in the room, and she made me promise to see you and tell you this dont give up the search for him. Find him, and find him soon. He is living. Well, I said, if she knows that, she knows more. She is a very cruel and ungrateful girl. She is a very sick girl, he said gravely. Neither you nor I can judge her until we know everything. Both she and her mother are ghosts of their former selves. Under all this, these two sudden deaths, this bank robbery, the invasions at Sunnyside and Halseys disappearance, there is some mystery that, mark my words, will come out some day. And when it does, we shall find Louise Armstrong a victim. I had not noticed where we were going, but now I saw we were beside the railroad, and from a knot of men standing beside the track I divined that it was here the car had been found. The siding, however, was empty. Except a few bits of splintered wood on the ground, there was no sign of the accident. Where is the freight car that was rammed? the doctor asked a bystander. It was taken away at daylight, when the train was moved. There was nothing to be gained. He pointed out the house on the embankment where the old lady and her daughter had heard the crash and seen two figures beside the car. Then we drove slowly home. I had the doctor put me down at the gate, and I walked to the housepast the lodge where we had found Louise, and, later, poor Thomas; up the drive where I had seen a man watching the lodge and where, later, Rosie had been frightened; past the east entrance, where so short a time before the most obstinate effort had been made to enter the house, and where, that night two weeks ago, Liddy and I had seen the strange woman. Not far from the west wing lay the blackened ruins of the stables. I felt like a ruin myself, as I paused on the broad veranda before I entered the house. Two private detectives had arrived in my absence, and it was a relief to turn over to them the responsibility of the house and grounds. Mr. Jamieson, they said, had arranged for more to assist in the search for the missing man, and at that time the country was being scoured in all directions. The household staff was again depleted that afternoon. Liddy was waiting to tell me that the new cook had gone, bag and baggage, without waiting to be paid. No one had admitted the visitor whom Warner had heard in the library, unless, possibly, the missing cook. Again I was working in a circle. XXVII Who Is Nina Carrington? The four days, from Saturday to the following Tuesday, we lived, or existed, in a state of the most dreadful suspense. We ate only when Liddy brought in a tray, and then very little. The papers, of course, had got hold of the story, and we were besieged by newspaper men. From all over the country false clues came pouring in and raised hopes that crumbled again to nothing. Every morgue within a hundred miles, every hospital, had been visited, without result. Mr. Jamieson, personally, took charge of the organized search, and every evening, no matter where he happened to be, he called us by long distance telephone. It was the same formula. Nothing today. A new clue to work on. Better luck tomorrow. And heartsick we would put up the receiver and sit down again to our vigil. The inaction was deadly. Liddy cried all day, and, because she knew I objected to tears, sniffled audibly around the corner. For Heavens sake, smile! I snapped at her. And her ghastly attempt at a grin, with her swollen nose and red eyes, made me hysterical.

I laughed and cried together, and pretty soon, like the two old fools we were, we were sitting together weeping into the same handkerchief. Things were happening, of course, all the time, but they made little or no impression. The Charity Hospital called up Doctor Stewart and reported that Mrs. Watson was in a critical condition. I understood also that legal steps were being taken to terminate my lease at Sunnyside. Louise was out of danger, but very ill, and a trained nurse guarded her like a gorgon. There was a rumor in the village, brought up by Liddy from the butchers, that a wedding had already taken place between Louise and Doctor Walker and this roused me for the first time to action. On Tuesday, then, I sent for the car, and prepared to go out. As I waited at the portecochre I saw the undergardener, an inoffensive, grayishhaired man, trimming borders near the house. The day detective was watching him, sitting on the carriage block. When he saw me, he got up. Miss Innes, he said, taking off his hat, do you know where Alex, the gardener, is? Why, no. Isnt he here? I asked. He has been gone since yesterday afternoon. Have you employed him long? Only a couple of weeks. Is he efficient? A capable man? I hardly know, I said vaguely. The place looks all right, and I know very little about such things. I know much more about boxes of roses than bushes of them. This man, pointing to the assistant, says Alex isnt a gardener. That he doesnt know anything about plants. Thats very strange, I said, thinking hard. Why, he came to me from the Brays, who are in Europe. Exactly. The detective smiled. Every man who cuts grass isnt a gardener, Miss Innes, and just now it is our policy to believe every person around here a rascal until he proves to be the other thing. Warner came up with the car then, and the conversation stopped. As he helped me in, however, the detective said something further. Not a word or sign to Alex, if he comes back, he said cautiously. I went first to Doctor Walkers. I was tired of beating about the bush, and I felt that the key to Halseys disappearance was here at Casanova, in spite of Mr. Jamiesons theories. The doctor was in. He came at once to the door of his consultingroom, and there was no mask of cordiality in his manner. Please come in, he said curtly. I shall stay here, I think, doctor. I did not like his face or his manner; there was a subtle change in both. He had thrown off the air of friendliness, and I thought, too, that he looked anxious and haggard. Doctor Walker, I said, I have come to you to ask some questions. I hope you will answer them. As you know, my nephew has not yet been found. So I understand, stiffly. I believe, if you would, you could help us, and that leads to one of my questions. Will you tell me what was the nature of the conversation you held with him the night he was attacked and carried off? Attacked! Carried off! he said, with pretended surprise. Really, Miss Innes, dont you think you exaggerate? I understand it is not the first time Mr. Innes hasdisappeared. You are quibbling, doctor. This is a matter of life and death. Will you answer my question? Certainly. He said his nerves were bad, and I gave him a prescription for them. I am violating professional ethics when I tell you even as much as that. I could not tell him he lied. I think I looked it. But I hazarded a random shot. I thought perhaps, I said, watching him narrowly, that it might be aboutNina Carrington. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me. He grew livid, and a small crooked bloodvessel in his temple swelled and throbbed curiously. Then he forced a short laugh. Who is Nina Carrington? he asked. I am about to discover that, I replied, and he was quiet at once. It was not difficult to divine that he feared Nina Carrington a good deal more than he did the devil. Our leavetaking was brief; in fact, we merely stared at each other over the waitingroom table, with its litter of yearold magazines. Then I turned and went out. To Richfield, I told Warner, and on the way I thought, and thought hard. Nina Carrington, Nina Carrington, the roar and rush of the wheels seemed to sing the words. Nina Carrington, N. C. And I then knew, knew as surely as if I had seen the whole thing. There had been an N. C. on the suitcase belonging to the woman with the pitted face. How simple it all seemed. Mattie Bliss had been Nina Carrington. It was she Warner had heard in the library. It was something she had told Halsey that had taken him frantically to Doctor Walkers office, and from there perhaps to his death. If we could find the woman, we might find what had become of Halsey. We were almost at Richfield now, so I kept on. My mind was not on my errand there now. It was back with Halsey on that memorable night. What was it he had said to Louise, that had sent her up to Sunnyside, half wild with fear for him? I made up my mind, as the car drew up before the Tate cottage, that I would see Louise if I had to break into the house at night. Almost exactly the same scene as before greeted my eyes at the cottage. Mrs. Tate, the babycarriage in the path, the children at the swingall were the same. She came forward to meet me, and I noticed that some of the anxious lines had gone out of her face. She looked young, almost pretty. I am glad you have come back, she said. I think I will have to be honest and give you back your money. Why? I asked. Has the mother come? No, but someone came and paid the boys board for a month. She talked to him for a long time, but when I asked him afterward he didnt know her name. A young woman? Not very young. About forty, I suppose. She was small and fairhaired, just a little bit gray, and very sad. She was in deep mourning, and, I think, when she came, she expected to go at once. But the child, Lucien, interested her. She talked to him for a long time, and, indeed, she looked much happier when she left. You are sure this was not the real mother? O mercy, no! Why, she didnt know which of the three was Lucien. I thought perhaps she was a friend of yours, but, of course, I didnt ask. She was notpockmarked? I asked at a venture. No, indeed. A skin like a babys. But perhaps you will know the initials. She gave Lucien a handkerchief and forgot it. It was very fine, blackbordered, and it had three handworked letters in the cornerF. B. A. No, I said with truth enough, she is not a friend of mine. F. B. A. was Fanny Armstrong, without a chance of doubt! With another warning to Mrs. Tate as to silence, we started back to Sunnyside. So Fanny Armstrong knew of Lucien Wallace, and was sufficiently interested to visit him and pay for his support. Who was the childs mother and where was she? Who was Nina Carrington? Did either of them know where Halsey was or what had happened to him? On the way home we passed the little cemetery where Thomas had been laid to rest. I wondered if Thomas could have helped us to find Halsey, had he lived. Farther along was the more imposing burialground, where Arnold Armstrong and his father lay in the shadow of a tall granite shaft. Of the three, I think Thomas was the only one sincerely mourned. XXVIII A Tramp and the Toothache The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders Bank seemed to grow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people who had lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantly hearing new stories of the mans grasping avarice. The Traders had been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had thought to be selfsupporting to the last found themselves confronting the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away. All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were trying to promise twenty percent on deposits. But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almost forgotten by Gertrude and myself. We did not mention Jack Bailey I had found nothing to change my impression of his guilt, and Gertrude knew how I felt. As for the murder of the bank presidents son, I was of two minds. One day I thought Gertrude knew or at least suspected that Jack had done it; the next I feared that it had been Gertrude herself, that night alone on the circular staircase. And then the mother of Lucien Wallace would obtrude herself, and an almost equally good case might be made against her. There were times, of course, when I was disposed to throw all those suspicions aside, and fix definitely on the unknown, whoever that might be. I had my greatest disappointment when it came to tracing Nina Carrington. The woman had gone without leaving a trace. Marked as she was, it should have been easy to follow her, but she was not to be found. A description to one of the detectives, on my arrival at home, had started the ball rolling. But by night she had not been found. I told Gertrude, then, about the telegram to Louise when she had been ill before; about my visit to Doctor Walker, and my suspicions that Mattie Bliss and Nina Carrington were the same. She thought, as I did, that there was little doubt of it. I said nothing to her, however, of the detectives suspicions about Alex. Little things that I had not noticed at the time now came back to me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Alex was a spy, and that by taking him into the house I had played into the enemys hand. But at eight oclock that night Alex himself appeared, and with him a strange and repulsive individual. They made a queer pair, for Alex was almost as disreputable as the tramp, and he had a badly swollen eye. Gertrude had been sitting listlessly waiting for the evening message from Mr. Jamieson, but when the singular pair came in, as they did, without ceremony, she jumped up and stood staring. Winters, the detective who watched the house at night, followed them, and kept his eyes sharply on Alexs prisoner. For that was the situation as it developed. He was a tall lanky individual, ragged and dirty, and just now he looked both terrified and embarrassed. Alex was too much engrossed to be either, and to this day I dont think I ever asked him why he went off without permission the day before. Miss Innes, Alex began abruptly, this man can tell us something very important about the disappearance of Mr. Innes. I found him trying to sell this watch. He took a watch from his pocket and put it on the table. It was Halseys watch. I had given it to him on his twentyfirst birthday I was dumb with apprehension. He says he had a pair of cufflinks also, but he sold them Fer a dollarn half, put in the disreputable individual hoarsely, with an eye on the detective. He is notdead? I implored. The tramp cleared his throat. Nom, he said huskily. He was used up pretty bad, but he werent dead. He was comin to hisself when Ihe stopped and looked at the detective. I didnt steal it, Mr. Winters, he whined. I found it in the road, honest to God, I did. Mr. Winters paid no attention to him. He was watching Alex. Id better tell what he told me, Alex broke in. It will be quicker. When Jamiesonwhen Mr. Jamieson calls up we can start him right. Mr. Winters, I found this man trying to sell that watch on Fifth Street. He offered it to me for three dollars. How did you know the watch? Winters snapped at him. I had seen it before, many times. I used it at night when I was watching at the foot of the staircase. The detective was satisfied. When he offered the watch to me, I knew it, and I pretended I was going to buy it. We went into an alley and I got the watch. The tramp shivered. It was plain how Alex had secured the watch. ThenI got the story from this fellow. He claims to have seen the whole affair. He says he was in an empty carin the car the automobile struck. The tramp broke in here, and told his story, with frequent interpretations by Alex and Mr. Winters. He used a strange medley, in which familiar words took unfamiliar meanings, but it was gradually made clear to us. On the night in question the tramp had been pounding his earthis stuck to me as being graphicin an empty boxcar along the siding at Casanova. The train was going west, and due to leave at dawn. The tramp and the brakey were friendly, and things going well. About ten oclock, perhaps earlier, a terrific crash against the side of the car roused him. He tried to open the door, but could not move it. He got out of the other side, and just as he did so, he heard someone groan. The habits of a lifetime made him cautious. He slipped on to the bumper of a car and peered through. An automobile had struck the car, and stood there on two wheels. The tail lights were burning, but the headlights were out. Two men were stooping over someone who lay on the ground. Then the taller of the two started on a dogtrot along the train looking for an empty. He found one four cars away and ran back again. The two lifted the unconscious man into the empty boxcar, and, getting in themselves, stayed for three or four minutes. When they came out, after closing the sliding door, they cut up over the railroad embankment toward the town. One, the short one, seemed to limp. The tramp was wary. He waited for ten minutes or so. Some women came down a path to the road and inspected the automobile. When they had gone, he crawled into the boxcar and closed the door again. Then he lighted a match. The figure of a man, unconscious, gagged, and with his hands tied, lay far at the end. The tramp lost no time; he went through his pockets, found a little money and the cufflinks, and took them. Then he loosened the gagit had been cruelly tightand went his way, again closing the door of the boxcar. Outside on the road he found the watch. He got on the fast freight east, some time after, and rode into the city. He had sold the cufflinks, but on offering the watch to Alex he had been copped. The story, with its cold recital of villainy, was done. I hardly knew if I were more anxious, or less. That it was Halsey, there could be no doubt. How badly he was hurt, how far he had been carried, were the questions that demanded immediate answer. But it was the first real information we had had; my boy had not been murdered outright. But instead of vague terrors there was now the real fear that he might be lying in some strange hospital receiving the casual attention commonly given to the charity cases. Even this, had we known it, would have been paradise to the terrible truth. I wake yet and feel myself cold and trembling with the horror of Halseys situation for three days after his disappearance. Mr. Winters and Alex disposed of the tramp with a warning. It was evident he had told us all he knew. We had occasion, within a day or two, to be doubly thankful that we had given him his freedom. When Mr. Jamieson telephoned that night we had news for him; he told me what I had not realized beforethat it would not be possible to find Halsey at once, even with this clue. The cars by this time, three days, might be scattered over the Union. But he said to keep on hoping, that it was the best news we had had. And in the meantime, consumed with anxiety as we were, things were happening at the house in rapid succession. We had one peaceful daythen Liddy took sick in the night. I went in when I heard her groaning, and found her with a hotwater bottle to her face, and her right cheek swollen until it was glassy. Toothache? I asked, not too gently. You deserve it. A woman of your age, who would rather go around with an exposed nerve in her head than have the tooth pulled! It would be over in a moment. So would hanging, Liddy protested, from behind the hotwater bottle. I was hunting around for cotton and laudanum. You have a tooth just like it yourself, Miss Rachel, she whimpered. And Im sure Doctor Boyles been trying to take it out for years. There was no laudanum, and Liddy made a terrible fuss when I proposed carbolic acid, just because I had put too much on the cotton once and burned her mouth. Im sure it never did her any permanent harm; indeed, the doctor said afterward that living on liquid diet had been a splendid rest for her stomach. But she would have none of the acid, and she kept me awake groaning, so at last I got up and went to Gertrudes door. To my surprise, it was locked. I went around by the hall and into her bedroom that way. The bed was turned down, and her dressinggown and nightdress lay ready in the little room next, but Gertrude was not there. She had not undressed. I dont know what terrible thoughts came to me in the minute I stood there. Through the door I could hear Liddy grumbling, with a squeal now and then when the pain stabbed harder. Then, automatically, I got the laudanum and went back to her. It was fully a halfhour before Liddys groans subsided. At intervals I went to the door into the hall and looked out, but I saw and heard nothing suspicious. Finally, when Liddy had dropped into a doze, I even ventured as far as the head of the circular staircase, but there floated up to me only the even breathing of Winters, the night detective, sleeping just inside the entry. And then, far off, I heard the rapping noise that had lured Louise down the staircase that other night, two weeks before. It was over my head, and very faintthree or four short muffled taps, a pause, and then again, stealthily repeated. The sound of Mr. Winters breathing was comforting; with the thought that there was help within call, something kept me from waking him. I did not move for a moment; ridiculous things Liddy had said about a ghostI am not at all superstitious, except, perhaps, in the middle of the night, with everything darkthings like that came back to me. Almost beside me was the clothes chute. I could feel it, but I could see nothing. As I stood, listening intently, I heard a sound near me. It was vague, indefinite. Then it ceased; there was an uneasy movement and a grunt from the foot of the circular staircase, and silence again. I stood perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. Then I knew I had been right. Someone was stealthily passing the head of the staircase and coming toward me in the dark. I leaned against the wall for supportmy knees were giving way. The steps were close now, and suddenly I thought of Gertrude. Of course it was Gertrude. I put out one hand in front of me, but I touched nothing. My voice almost refused me, but I managed to gasp out, Gertrude! Good Lord! a mans voice exclaimed, just beside me. And then I collapsed. I felt myself going, felt someone catch me, a horrible nauseathat was all I remembered. When I came to it was dawn. I was lying on the bed in Louises room, with the cherub on the ceiling staring down at me, and there was a blanket from my own bed thrown over me. I felt weak and dizzy, but I managed to get up and totter to the door. At the foot of the circular staircase Mr. Winters was still asleep. Hardly able to stand, I crept back to my room. The door into Gertrudes room was no longer locked she was sleeping like a tired child. And in my dressingroom Liddy hugged a cold hotwater bottle, and mumbled in her sleep. Theres some things you cant hold with handcuffs, she was muttering thickly. XXIX A Scrap of Paper For the first time in twenty years, I kept my bed that day. Liddy was alarmed to the point of hysteria, and sent for Doctor Stewart just after breakfast. Gertrude spent the morning with me, reading somethingI forget what. I was too busy with my thoughts to listen. I had said nothing to the two detectives. If Mr. Jamieson had been there, I should have told him everything, but I could not go to these strange men and tell them my niece had been missing in the middle of the night; that she had not gone to bed at all; that while I was searching for her through the house, I had met a stranger who, when I fainted, had carried me into a room and left me there, to get better or not, as it might happen. The whole situation was terrible had the issues been less vital, it would have been absurd. Here we were, guarded day and night by private detectives, with an extra man to watch the grounds, and yet we might as well have lived in a Japanese paper house, for all the protection we had. And there was something else the man I had met in the darkness had been even more startled than I, and about his voice, when he muttered his muffled exclamation, there was something vaguely familiar. All that morning, while Gertrude read aloud, and Liddy watched for the doctor, I was puzzling over that voice, without result. And there were other things, too. I wondered what Gertrudes absence from her room had to do with it all, or if it had any connection. I tried to think that she had heard the rapping noises before I did and gone to investigate, but Im afraid I was a moral coward that day. I could not ask her. Perhaps the diversion was good for me. It took my mind from Halsey, and the story we had heard the night before. The day, however, was a long vigil, with every ring of the telephone full of possibilities. Doctor Walker came up, some time just after luncheon, and asked for me. Go down and see him, I instructed Gertrude. Tell him I am outfor mercys sake dont say Im sick. Find out what he wants, and from this time on, instruct the servants that he is not to be admitted. I loathe that man. Gertrude came back very soon, her face rather flushed. He came to ask us to get out, she said, picking up her book with a jerk. He says Louise Armstrong wants to come here, now that she is recovering. And what did you say? I said we were very sorry we could not leave, but we would be delighted to have Louise come up here with us. He looked daggers at me. And he wanted to know if we would recommend Eliza as a cook. He has brought a patient, a man, out from town, and is increasing his establishmentthats the way he put it. I wish him joy of Eliza, I said tartly. Did he ask for Halsey? Yes. I told him that we were on the track last night, and that it was only a question of time. He said he was glad, although he didnt appear to be, but he said not to be too sanguine. Do you know what I believe? I asked. I believe, as firmly as I believe anything, that Doctor Walker knows something about Halsey, and that he could put his finger on him, if he wanted to. There were several things that day that bewildered me. About three oclock Mr. Jamieson telephoned from the Casanova station and Warner went down to meet him. I got up and dressed hastily, and the detective was shown up to my sittingroom. No news? I asked, as he entered. He tried to look encouraging, without success. I noticed that he looked tired and dusty, and, although he was ordinarily impeccable in his appearance, it was clear that he was at least two days from a razor. It wont be long now, Miss Innes, he said. I have come out here on a peculiar errand, which I will tell you about later. First, I want to ask some questions. Did anyone come out here yesterday to repair the telephone, and examine the wires on the roof? Yes, I said promptly; but it was not the telephone. He said the wiring might have caused the fire at the stable. I went up with him myself, but he only looked around. Mr. Jamieson smiled. Good for you! he applauded. Dont allow anyone in the house that you dont trust, and dont trust anybody. All are not electricians who wear rubber gloves. He refused to explain further, but he got a slip of paper out of his pocketbook and opened it carefully. Listen, he said. You heard this before and scoffed. In the light of recent developments I want you to read it again. You are a clever woman, Miss Innes. Just as surely as I sit here, there is something in this house that is wanted very anxiously by a number of people. The lines are closing up, Miss Innes. The paper was the one he had found among Arnold Armstrongs effects, and I read it again by altering the plans for rooms, may be possible. The best way, in my opinion, would be to the plan for in one of the rooms chimney. I think I understand, I said slowly. Someone is searching for the secret room, and the invaders And the holes in the plaster Have been in the progress of his Or herinvestigations. Her? I asked. Miss Innes, the detective said, getting up, I believe that somewhere in the walls of this house is hidden some of the money, at least, from the Traders Bank. I believe, just as surely, that young Walker brought home from California the knowledge of something of the sort and, failing in his effort to reinstall Mrs. Armstrong and her daughter here, he, or a confederate, has tried to break into the house. On two occasions I think he succeeded. On three, at least, I corrected. And then I told him about the night before. I have been thinking hard, I concluded, and I do not believe the man at the head of the circular staircase was Doctor Walker. I dont think he could have got in, and the voice was not his. Mr. Jamieson got up and paced the floor, his hands behind him. There is something else that puzzles me, he said, stepping before me. Who and what is the woman Nina Carrington? If it was she who came here as Mattie Bliss, what did she tell Halsey that sent him racing to Doctor Walkers, and then to Miss Armstrong? If we could find that woman we would have the whole thing. Mr. Jamieson, did you ever think that Paul Armstrong might not have died a natural death? That is the thing we are going to try to find out, he replied. And then Gertrude came in, announcing a man below to see Mr. Jamieson. I want you present at this interview, Miss Innes, he said. May Riggs come up? He has left Doctor Walker and he has something he wants to tell us. Riggs came into the room diffidently, but Mr. Jamieson put him at his ease. He kept a careful eye on me, however, and slid into a chair by the door when he was asked to sit down. Now, Riggs, began Mr. Jamieson kindly. You are to say what you have to say before this lady. You promised youd keep it quiet, Mr. Jamieson. Riggs plainly did not trust me. There was nothing friendly in the glance he turned on me. Yes, yes. You will be protected. But, first of all, did you bring what you promised? Riggs produced a roll of papers from under his coat, and handed them over. Mr. Jamieson examined them with lively satisfaction, and passed them to me. The blueprints of Sunnyside, he said. What did I tell you? Now, Riggs, we are ready. Id never have come to you, Mr. Jamieson, he began, if it hadnt been for Miss Armstrong. When Mr. Innes was spirited away, like, and Miss Louise got sick because of it, I thought things had gone far enough. Id done some things for the doctor before that wouldnt just bear looking into, but I turned a bit squeamish. Did you help with that? I asked, leaning forward. No, mam. I didnt even know of it until the next day, when it came out in the Casanova Weekly Ledger. But I know who did it, all right. Id better start at the beginning. When Doctor Walker went away to California with the Armstrong family, there was talk in the town that when he came back he would be married to Miss Armstrong, and we all expected it. First thing I knew, I got a letter from him, in the west. He seemed to be excited, and he said Miss Armstrong had taken a sudden notion to go home and he sent me some money. I was to watch for her, to see if she went to Sunnyside, and wherever she was, not to lose sight of her until he got home. I traced her to the lodge, and I guess I scared you on the drive one night, Miss Innes. And Rosie! I ejaculated. Riggs grinned sheepishly. I only wanted to make sure Miss Louise was there. Rosie started to run, and I tried to stop her and tell her some sort of a story to account for my being there. But she wouldnt wait. And the broken chinain the basket? Well, broken chinas death to rubber tires, he said. I hadnt any complaint against you people here, and the Dragon Fly was a good car. So Rosies highwayman was explained. Well, I telegraphed the doctor where Miss Louise was and I kept an eye on her. Just a day or so before they came home with the body, I got another letter, telling me to watch for a woman who had been pitted with smallpox. Her name was Carrington, and the doctor made things pretty strong. If I found any such woman loafing around, I was not to lose sight of her for a minute until the doctor got back. Well, I would have had my hands full, but the other woman didnt show up for a good while, and when she did the doctor was home. Riggs, I asked suddenly, did you get into this house a day or two after I took it, at night? I did not, Miss Innes. I have never been in the house before. Well, the Carrington woman didnt show up until the night Mr. Halsey disappeared. She came to the office late, and the doctor was out. She waited around, walking the floor and working herself into a passion. When the doctor didnt come back, she was in an awful way. She wanted me to hunt him, and when he didnt appear, she called him names; said he couldnt fool her. There was murder being done, and she would see him swing for it. She struck me as being an ugly customer, and when she left, about eleven oclock, and went across to the Armstrong place, I was not far behind her. She walked all around the house first, looking up at the windows. Then she rang the bell, and the minute the door was opened she was through it, and into the hall. How long did she stay? Thats the queer part of it, Riggs said eagerly. She didnt come out that night at all. I went to bed at daylight, and that was the last I heard of her until the next day, when I saw her on a truck at the station, covered with a sheet. Shed been struck by the express and you would hardly have known herdead, of course. I think she stayed all night in the Armstrong house, and the agent said she was crossing the track to take the uptrain to town when the express struck her. Another circle! I exclaimed. Then we are just where we started. Not so bad as that, Miss Innes, Riggs said eagerly. Nina Carrington came from the town in California where Mr. Armstrong died. Why was the doctor so afraid of her? The Carrington woman knew something. I lived with Doctor Walker seven years, and I know him well. There are few things he is afraid of. I think he killed Mr. Armstrong out in the west somewhere, thats what I think. What else he did I dont knowbut he dismissed me and pretty nearly throttled mefor telling Mr. Jamieson here about Mr. Innes having been at his office the night he disappeared, and about my hearing them quarreling. What was it Warner overheard the woman say to Mr. Innes, in the library? the detective asked me. She said I knew there was something wrong from the start. A man isnt well one day and dead the next without some reason. How perfectly it all seemed to fit! XXX When Churchyards Yawn It was on Wednesday Riggs told us the story of his connection with some incidents that had been previously unexplained. Halsey had been gone since the Friday night before, and with the passage of each day I felt that his chances were lessening. I knew well enough that he might be carried thousands of miles in the boxcar, locked in, perhaps, without water or food. I had read of cases where bodies had been found locked in cars on isolated sidings in the west, and my spirits went down with every hour. His recovery was destined to be almost as sudden as his disappearance, and was due directly to the tramp Alex had brought to Sunnyside. It seems the man was grateful for his release, and when he learned something of Halseys whereabouts from another member of his fraternityfor it is a fraternityhe was prompt in letting us know. On Wednesday evening Mr. Jamieson, who had been down at the Armstrong house trying to see Louiseand failingwas met near the gate at Sunnyside by an individual precisely as repulsive and unkempt as the one Alex had captured. The man knew the detective, and he gave him a piece of dirty paper, on which was scrawled the wordsHes at City Hospital, Johnsville.

The tramp who brought the paper pretended to know nothing, except this the paper had been passed along from a hobo in Johnsville, who seemed to know the information would be valuable to us. Again the long distance telephone came into requisition. Mr. Jamieson called the hospital, while we crowded around him. And when there was no longer any doubt that it was Halsey, and that he would probably recover, we all laughed and cried together. I am sure I kissed Liddy, and I have had terrible moments since when I seem to remember kissing Mr. Jamieson, too, in the excitement. Anyhow, by eleven oclock that night Gertrude was on her way to Johnsville, three hundred and eighty miles away, accompanied by Rosie. The domestic force was now down to Mary Anne and Liddy, with the undergardeners wife coming every day to help out. Fortunately, Warner and the detectives were keeping bachelor hall in the lodge. Out of deference to Liddy they washed their dishes once a day, and they concocted queer messes, according to their several abilities. They had one triumph that they ate regularly for breakfast, and that clung to their clothes and their hair the rest of the day. It was bacon, hardtack and onions, fried together. They were almost pathetically grateful, however, I noticed, for an occasional broiled tenderloin. It was not until Gertrude and Rosie had gone and Sunnyside had settled down for the night, with Winters at the foot of the staircase, that Mr. Jamieson broached a subject he had evidently planned before he came. Miss Innes, he said, stopping me as I was about to go to my room upstairs, how are your nerves tonight? I have none, I said happily. With Halsey found, my troubles have gone. I mean, he persisted, do you feel as though you could go through with something rather unusual? The most unusual thing I can think of would be a peaceful night. But if anything is going to occur, dont dare to let me miss it. Something is going to occur, he said. And youre the only woman I can think of that I can take along. He looked at his watch. Dont ask me any questions, Miss Innes. Put on heavy shoes, and some old dark clothes, and make up your mind not to be surprised at anything. Liddy was sleeping the sleep of the just when I went upstairs, and I hunted out my things cautiously. The detective was waiting in the hall, and I was astonished to see Doctor Stewart with him. They were talking confidentially together, but when I came down they ceased. There were a few preparations to be made the locks to be gone over, Winters to be instructed as to renewed vigilance, and then, after extinguishing the hall light, we crept, in the darkness, through the front door, and into the night. I asked no questions. I felt that they were doing me honor in making me one of the party, and I would show them I could be as silent as they. We went across the fields, passing through the woods that reached almost to the ruins of the stable, going over stiles now and then, and sometimes stepping over low fences. Once only somebody spoke, and then it was an emphatic bit of profanity from Doctor Stewart when he ran into a wire fence. We were joined at the end of five minutes by another man, who fell into step with the doctor silently. He carried something over his shoulder which I could not make out. In this way we walked for perhaps twenty minutes. I had lost all sense of direction I merely stumbled along in silence, allowing Mr. Jamieson to guide me this way or that as the path demanded. I hardly know what I expected. Once, when through a miscalculation I jumped a little short over a ditch and landed above my shoetops in the water and ooze, I remember wondering if this were really I, and if I had ever tasted life until that summer. I walked along with the water sloshing in my boots, and I was actually cheerful. I remember whispering to Mr. Jamieson that I had never seen the stars so lovely, and that it was a mistake, when the Lord had made the night so beautiful, to sleep through it! The doctor was puffing somewhat when we finally came to a halt. I confess that just at that minute even Sunnyside seemed a cheerful spot. We had paused at the edge of a level cleared place, bordered all around with primly trimmed evergreen trees. Between them I caught a glimpse of starlight shining down on rows of white headstones and an occasional more imposing monument, or towering shaft. In spite of myself, I drew my breath in sharply. We were on the edge of the Casanova churchyard. I saw now both the man who had joined the party and the implements he carried. It was Alex, armed with two longhandled spades. After the first shock of surprise, I flatter myself I was both cool and quiet. We went in single file between the rows of headstones, and although, when I found myself last, I had an instinctive desire to keep looking back over my shoulder, I found that, the first uneasiness past, a cemetery at night is much the same as any other country place, filled with vague shadows and unexpected noises. Once, indeedbut Mr. Jamieson said it was an owl, and I tried to believe him. In the shadow of the Armstrong granite shaft we stopped. I think the doctor wanted to send me back. Its no place for a woman, I heard him protesting angrily. But the detective said something about witnesses, and the doctor only came over and felt my pulse. Anyhow, I dont believe youre any worse off here than you would be in that nightmare of a house, he said finally, and put his coat on the steps of the shaft for me to sit on. There is an air of finality about a grave one watches the earth thrown in, with the feeling that this is the end. Whatever has gone before, whatever is to come in eternity, that particular temple of the soul has been given back to the elements from which it came. Thus, there is a sense of desecration, of a reversal of the everlasting fitness of things, in resurrecting a body from its mother clay. And yet that night, in the Casanova churchyard, I sat quietly by, and watched Alex and Mr. Jamieson steaming over their work, without a single qualm, except the fear of detection. The doctor kept a keen lookout, but no one appeared. Once in a while he came over to me, and gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. I never expected to come to this, he said once. Theres one thing sureIll not be suspected of complicity. A doctor is generally supposed to be handier at burying folks than at digging them up. The uncanny moment came when Alex and Jamieson tossed the spades on the grass, and I confess I hid my face. There was a period of stress, I think, while the heavy coffin was being raised. I felt that my composure was going, and, for fear I would shriek, I tried to think of something elsewhat time Gertrude would reach Halseyanything but the grisly reality that lay just beyond me on the grass. And then I heard a low exclamation from the detective and I felt the pressure of the doctors fingers on my arm. Now, Miss Innes, he said gently. If you will come over I held on to him frantically, and somehow I got there and looked down. The lid of the casket had been raised and a silver plate on it proved we had made no mistake. But the face that showed in the light of the lantern was a face I had never seen before. The man who lay before us was not Paul Armstrong! XXXI Between Two Fireplaces What with the excitement of the discovery, the walk home under the stars in wet shoes and draggled skirts, and getting upstairs and undressed without rousing Liddy, I was completely used up. What to do with my boots was the greatest puzzle of all, there being no place in the house safe from Liddy, until I decided to slip upstairs the next morning and drop them into the hole the ghost had made in the trunkroom wall. I went asleep as soon as I reached this decision, and in my dreams I lived over again the events of the night. Again I saw the group around the silent figure on the grass, and again, as had happened at the grave, I heard Alexs voice, tense and triumphant Then weve got them, he said. Only, in my dreams, he said it over and over until he seemed to shriek it in my ears. I wakened early, in spite of my fatigue, and lay there thinking. Who was Alex? I no longer believed that he was a gardener. Who was the man whose body we had resurrected? And where was Paul Armstrong? Probably living safely in some extraditionless country on the fortune he had stolen. Did Louise and her mother know of the shameful and wicked deception? What had Thomas known, and Mrs. Watson? Who was Nina Carrington? This last question, it seemed to me, was answered. In some way the woman had learned of the substitution, and had tried to use her knowledge for blackmail. Nina Carringtons own story died with her, but, however it happened, it was clear that she had carried her knowledge to Halsey the afternoon Gertrude and I were looking for clues to the man I had shot on the east veranda. Halsey had been half crazed by what he heard; it was evident that Louise was marrying Doctor Walker to keep the shameful secret, for her mothers sake. Halsey, always reckless, had gone at once to Doctor Walker and denounced him. There had been a scene, and he left on his way to the station to meet and notify Mr. Jamieson of what he had learned. The doctor was active mentally and physically. Accompanied perhaps by Riggs, who had shown himself not overscrupulous until he quarreled with his employer, he had gone across to the railroad embankment, and, by jumping in front of the car, had caused Halsey to swerve. The rest of the story we knew. That was my reconstructed theory of that afternoon and evening it was almost correctnot quite. There was a telegram that morning from Gertrude. Halsey conscious and improving. Probably home in day or so. Gertrude. With Halsey found and improving in health, and with at last something to work on, I began that day, Thursday, with fresh courage. As Mr. Jamieson had said, the lines were closing up. That I was to be caught and almost finished in the closing was happily unknown to us all. It was late when I got up. I lay in my bed, looking around the four walls of the room, and trying to imagine behind what one of them a secret chamber might lie. Certainly, in daylight, Sunnyside deserved its name never was a house more cheery and open, less sinister in general appearance. There was not a corner apparently that was not open and aboveboard, and yet, somewhere behind its handsomely papered walls I believed firmly that there lay a hidden room, with all the possibilities it would involve. I made a mental note to have the house measured during the day, to discover any discrepancy between the outer and inner walls, and I tried to recall again the exact wording of the paper Jamieson had found. The slip had said chimney. It was the only clue, and a house as large as Sunnyside was full of them. There was an open fireplace in my dressingroom, but none in the bedroom, and as I lay there, looking around, I thought of something that made me sit up suddenly. The trunkroom, just over my head, had an open fireplace and a brick chimney, and yet, there was nothing of the kind in my room. I got out of bed and examined the opposite wall closely. There was apparently no flue, and I knew there was none in the hall just beneath. The house was heated by steam, as I have said before. In the livingroom was a huge open fireplace, but it was on the other side. Why did the trunkroom have both a radiator and an open fireplace? Architects were not usually erratic! It was not fifteen minutes before I was upstairs, armed with a tapemeasure in lieu of a footrule, eager to justify Mr. Jamiesons opinion of my intelligence, and firmly resolved not to tell him of my suspicion until I had more than theory to go on. The hole in the trunkroom wall still yawned there, between the chimney and the outer wall. I examined it again, with no new result. The space between the brick wall and the plaster and lath one, however, had a new significance. The hole showed only one side of the chimney, and I determined to investigate what lay in the space on the other side of the mantel. I worked feverishly. Liddy had gone to the village to market, it being her firm belief that the store people sent short measure unless she watched the scales, and that, since the failure of the Traders Bank, we must watch the corners; and I knew that what I wanted to do must be done before she came back. I had no tools, but after rummaging around I found a pair of garden scissors and a hatchet, and thus armed, I set to work. The plaster came out easily the lathing was more obstinate. It gave under the blows, only to spring back into place again, and the necessity for caution made it doubly hard. I had a blister on my palm when at last the hatchet went through and fell with what sounded like the report of a gun to my overstrained nerves. I sat on a trunk, waiting to hear Liddy fly up the stairs, with the household behind her, like the tail of a comet. But nothing happened, and with a growing feeling of uncanniness I set to work enlarging the opening. The result was absolutely nil. When I could hold a lighted candle in the opening, I saw precisely what I had seen on the other side of the chimneya space between the true wall and the false one, possibly seven feet long and about three feet wide. It was in no sense of the word a secret chamber, and it was evident it had not been disturbed since the house was built. It was a supreme disappointment. It had been Mr. Jamiesons idea that the hidden room, if there was one, would be found somewhere near the circular staircase. In fact, I knew that he had once investigated the entire length of the clothes chute, hanging to a rope, with this in view. I was reluctantly about to concede that he had been right, when my eyes fell on the mantel and fireplace. The latter had evidently never been used it was closed with a metal fire front, and only when the front refused to move, and investigation showed that it was not intended to be moved, did my spirits revive. I hurried into the next room. Yes, sure enough, there was a similar mantel and fireplace there, similarly closed. In both rooms the chimney flue extended well out from the wall. I measured with the tapeline, my hands trembling so that I could scarcely hold it. They extended two feet and a half into each room, which, with the three feet of space between the two partitions, made eight feet to be accounted for. Eight feet in one direction and almost seven in the otherwhat a chimney it was! But I had only located the hidden room. I was not in it, and no amount of pressing on the carving of the wooden mantels, no search of the floors for loose boards, none of the customary methods availed at all. That there was a means of entrance, and probably a simple one, I could be certain. But what? What would I find if I did get in? Was the detective right, and were the bonds and money from the Traders Bank there? Or was our whole theory wrong? Would not Paul Armstrong have taken his booty with him? If he had not, and if Doctor Walker was in the secret, he would have known how to enter the chimney room. Thenwho had dug the other hole in the false partition? XXXII Anne Watsons Story Liddy discovered the fresh break in the trunkroom wall while we were at luncheon, and ran shrieking down the stairs. She maintained that, as she entered, unseen hands had been digging at the plaster; that they had stopped when she went in, and she had felt a gust of cold damp air. In support of her story she carried in my wet and muddy boots, that I had unluckily forgotten to hide, and held them out to the detective and myself. What did I tell you? she said dramatically. Look at em. Theyre yours, Miss Racheland covered with mud and soaked to the tops. I tell you, you can scoff all you like; something has been wearing your shoes. As sure as you sit there, theres the smell of the graveyard on them. How do we know they werent tramping through the Casanova churchyard last night, and sitting on the graves! Mr. Jamieson almost choked to death. I wouldnt be at all surprised if they were doing that very thing, Liddy, he said, when he got his breath. They certainly look like it. I think the detective had a plan, on which he was working, and which was meant to be a coup. But things went so fast there was no time to carry it into effect. The first thing that occurred was a message from the Charity Hospital that Mrs. Watson was dying, and had asked for me. I did not care much about going. There is a sort of melancholy pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I shrank from a deathbed. However, Liddy got out the black things and the crape veil I keep for such occasions, and I went. I left Mr. Jamieson and the day detective going over every inch of the circular staircase, pounding, probing and measuring. I was inwardly elated to think of the surprise I was going to give them that night; as it turned out, I did surprise them almost into spasms. I drove from the train to the Charity Hospital, and was at once taken to a ward. There, in a graywalled room in a high iron bed, lay Mrs. Watson. She was very weak, and she only opened her eyes and looked at me when I sat down beside her. I was consciencestricken. We had been so engrossed that I had left this poor creature to die without even a word of sympathy. The nurse gave her a stimulant, and in a little while she was able to talk. So broken and halfcoherent, however, was her story that I shall tell it in my own way. In an hour from the time I entered the Charity Hospital, I had heard a sad and pitiful narrative, and had seen a woman slip into the unconsciousness that is only a step from death. Briefly, then, the housekeepers story was this She was almost forty years old, and had been the sistermother of a large family of children. One by one they had died, and been buried beside their parents in a little town in the Middle West. There was only one sister left, the baby, Lucy. On her the older girl had lavished all the love of an impulsive and emotional nature. When Anne, the elder, was thirtytwo and Lucy was nineteen, a young man had come to the town. He was going east, after spending the summer at a celebrated ranch in Wyomingone of those places where wealthy men send worthless and dissipated sons, for a season of temperance, fresh air and hunting. The sisters, of course, knew nothing of this, and the young mans ardor rather carried them away. In a word, seven years before, Lucy Haswell had married a young man whose name was given as Aubrey Wallace. Anne Haswell had married a carpenter in her native town, and was a widow. For three months everything went fairly well. Aubrey took his bride to Chicago, where they lived at a hotel. Perhaps the very unsophistication that had charmed him in Valley Mill jarred on him in the city. He had been far from a model husband, even for the three months, and when he disappeared Anne was almost thankful. It was different with the young wife, however. She drooped and fretted, and on the birth of her baby boy, she had died. Anne took the child, and named him Lucien. Anne had had no children of her own, and on Lucien she had lavished all her aborted maternal instinct. On one thing she was determined, however that was that Aubrey Wallace should educate his boy. It was a part of her devotion to the child that she should be ambitious for him he must have every opportunity. And so she came east. She drifted around, doing plain sewing and keeping a home somewhere always for the boy. Finally, however, she realized that her only training had been domestic, and she put the boy in an Episcopalian home, and secured the position of housekeeper to the Armstrongs. There she found Luciens father, this time under his own name. It was Arnold Armstrong. I gathered that there was no particular enmity at that time in Annes mind. She told him of the boy, and threatened exposure if he did not provide for him. Indeed, for a time, he did so. Then he realized that Lucien was the ruling passion in this lonely womans life. He found out where the child was hidden, and threatened to take him away. Anne was frantic. The positions became reversed. Where Arnold had given money for Luciens support, as the years went on he forced money from Anne Watson instead until she was always penniless. The lower Arnold sank in the scale, the heavier his demands became. With the rupture between him and his family, things were worse. Anne took the child from the home and hid him in a farmhouse near Casanova, on the Claysburg road. There she went sometimes to see the boy, and there he had taken fever. The people were Germans, and he called the farmers wife Grossmutter. He had grown into a beautiful boy, and he was all Anne had to live for. The Armstrongs left for California, and Arnolds persecutions began anew. He was furious over the childs disappearance and she was afraid he would do her some hurt. She left the big house and went down to the lodge. When I had rented Sunnyside, however, she had thought the persecutions would stop. She had applied for the position of housekeeper, and secured it. That had been on Saturday. That night Louise arrived unexpectedly. Thomas sent for Mrs. Watson and then went for Arnold Armstrong at the Greenwood Club. Anne had been fond of Louiseshe reminded her of Lucy. She did not know what the trouble was, but Louise had been in a state of terrible excitement. Mrs. Watson tried to hide from Arnold, but he was ugly. He left the lodge and went up to the house about twothirty, was admitted at the east entrance and came out again very soon. Something had occurred, she didnt know what; but very soon Mr. Innes and another gentleman left, using the car. Thomas and she had got Louise quiet, and a little before three, Mrs. Watson started up to the house. Thomas had a key to the east entry, and gave it to her. On the way across the lawn she was confronted by Arnold, who for some reason was determined to get into the house. He had a golfstick in his hand, that he had picked up somewhere, and on her refusal he had struck her with it. One hand had been badly cut, and it was that, poisoning having set in, which was killing her. She broke away in a frenzy of rage and fear, and got into the house while Gertrude and Jack Bailey were at the front door. She went upstairs, hardly knowing what she was doing. Gertrudes door was open, and Halseys revolver lay there on the bed. She picked it up and turning, ran part way down the circular staircase. She could hear Arnold fumbling at the lock outside. She slipped down quietly and opened the door he was inside before she had got back to the stairs. It was quite dark, but she could see his white shirtbosom. From the fourth step she fired. As he fell, somebody in the billiardroom screamed and ran. When the alarm was raised, she had had no time to get upstairs she hid in the west wing until everyone was down on the lower floor. Then she slipped upstairs, and threw the revolver out of an upper window, going down again in time to admit the men from the Greenwood Club. If Thomas had suspected, he had never told. When she found the hand Arnold had injured was growing worse, she gave the address of Lucien at Richfield to the old man, and almost a hundred dollars. The money was for Luciens board until she recovered. She had sent for me to ask me if I would try to interest the Armstrongs in the child. When she found herself growing worse, she had written to Mrs. Armstrong, telling her nothing but that Arnolds legitimate child was at Richfield, and imploring her to recognize him. She was dying the boy was an Armstrong, and entitled to his fathers share of the estate. The papers were in her trunk at Sunnyside, with letters from the dead man that would prove what she said. She was going; she would not be judged by earthly laws; and somewhere else perhaps Lucy would plead for her. It was she who had crept down the circular staircase, drawn by a magnet, that night Mr. Jamieson had heard someone there. Pursued, she had fled madly, anywherethrough the first door she came to. She had fallen down the clothes chute, and been saved by the basket beneath. I could have cried with relief; then it had not been Gertrude, after all! That was the story. Sad and tragic though it was, the very telling of it seemed to relieve the dying woman. She did not know that Thomas was dead, and I did not tell her. I promised to look after little Lucien, and sat with her until the intervals of consciousness grew shorter and finally ceased altogether. She died that night. XXXIII At the Foot of the Stairs As I drove rapidly up to the house from Casanova Station in the hack, I saw the detective Burns loitering across the street from the Walker place. So Jamieson was putting the screws onlightly now, but ready to give them a twist or two, I felt certain, very soon. The house was quiet. Two steps of the circular staircase had been pried off, without result, and beyond a second message from Gertrude, that Halsey insisted on coming home and they would arrive that night, there was nothing new. Mr. Jamieson, having failed to locate the secret room, had gone to the village. I learned afterwards that he called at Doctor Walkers, under pretense of an attack of acute indigestion, and before he left, had inquired about the evening trains to the city. He said he had wasted a lot of time on the case, and a good bit of the mystery was in my imagination! The doctor was under the impression that the house was guarded day and night. Well, give a place a reputation like that, and you dont need a guard at allthus Jamieson. And sure enough, late in the afternoon, the two private detectives, accompanied by Mr. Jamieson, walked down the main street of Casanova and took a citybound train. That they got off at the next station and walked back again to Sunnyside at dusk, was not known at the time. Personally, I knew nothing of either move; I had other things to absorb me at that time. Liddy brought me some tea while I rested after my trip, and on the tray was a small book from the Casanova library. It was called The Unseen World and had a cheerful cover on which a halfdozen sheeted figures linked hands around a headstone. At this point in my story, Halsey always says Trust a woman to add two and two together, and make six. To which I retort that if two and two plus X make six, then to discover the unknown quantity is the simplest thing in the world. That a houseful of detectives missed it entirely was because they were busy trying to prove that two and two make four. The depression due to my visit to the hospital left me at the prospect of seeing Halsey again that night. It was about five oclock when Liddy left me for a nap before dinner, having put me into a gray silk dressinggown and a pair of slippers. I listened to her retreating footsteps, and as soon as she was safely below stairs, I went up to the trunkroom. The place had not been disturbed, and I proceeded at once to try to discover the entrance to the hidden room. The openings on either side, as I have said, showed nothing but perhaps three feet of brick wall. There was no sign of an entranceno levers, no hinges, to give a hint. Either the mantel or the roof, I decided, and after a halfhour at the mantel, productive of absolutely no result, I decided to try the roof. I am not fond of a height. The few occasions on which I have climbed a stepladder have always left me dizzy and weak in the knees. The top of the Washington Monument is as impossible to me as the elevation of the presidential chair. And yetI climbed out on to the Sunnyside roof without a seconds hesitation. Like a dog on a scent, like my bearskin progenitor, with his spear and his wild boar, to me now there was the lust of the chase, the frenzy of pursuit, the dust of battle. I got quite a little of the latter on me as I climbed from the unfinished ballroom out through a window to the roof of the east wing of the building, which was only two stories in height. Once out there, access to the top of the main building was rendered easyat least it looked easyby a small vertical iron ladder, fastened to the wall outside of the ballroom, and perhaps twelve feet high. The twelve feet looked short from below, but they were difficult to climb. I gathered my silk gown around me, and succeeded finally in making the top of the ladder. Once there, however, I was completely out of breath. I sat down, my feet on the top rung, and put my hair pins in more securely, while the wind bellowed my dressinggown out like a sail. I had torn a great strip of the silk loose, and now I ruthlessly finished the destruction of my gown by jerking it free and tying it around my head. From far below the smallest sounds came up with peculiar distinctness. I could hear the paper boy whistling down the drive, and I heard something else. I heard the thud of a stone, and a spit, followed by a long and startled meow from Beulah. I forgot my fear of a height, and advanced boldly almost to the edge of the roof. It was halfpast six by that time, and growing dusk. You boy, down there! I called. The paper boy turned and looked around. Then, seeing nobody, he raised his eyes. It was a moment before he located me when he did, he stood for one moment as if paralyzed, then he gave a horrible yell, and dropping his papers, bolted across the lawn to the road without stopping to look around. Once he fell, and his impetus was so great that he turned an involuntary somersault. He was up and off again without any perceptible pause, and he leaped the hedgewhich I am sure under ordinary stress would have been a feat for a man. I am glad in this way to settle the Gray Lady story, which is still a choice morsel in Casanova. I believe the moral deduced by the village was that it is always unlucky to throw a stone at a black cat. With Johnny Sweeny a cloud of dust down the road, and the dinnerhour approaching, I hurried on with my investigations. Luckily, the roof was flat, and I was able to go over every inch of it. But the result was disappointing; no trapdoor revealed itself, no glass window; nothing but a couple of pipes two inches across, and standing perhaps eighteen inches high and three feet apart, with a cap to prevent rain from entering and raised to permit the passage of air. I picked up a pebble from the roof and dropped it down, listening with my ear at one of the pipes. I could hear it strike on something with a sharp, metallic sound, but it was impossible for me to tell how far it had gone. I gave up finally and went down the ladder again, getting in through the ballroom window without being observed. I went back at once to the trunkroom, and, sitting down on a box, I gave my mind, as consistently as I could, to the problem before me. If the pipes in the roof were ventilators to the secret room, and there was no trapdoor above, the entrance was probably in one of the two rooms between which it layunless, indeed, the room had been built, and the opening then closed with a brick and mortar wall. The mantel fascinated me. Made of wood and carved, the more I looked the more I wondered that I had not noticed before the absurdity of such a mantel in such a place. It was covered with scrolls and panels, and finally, by the merest accident, I pushed one of the panels to the side. It moved easily, revealing a small brass knob. It is not necessary to detail the fluctuations of hope and despair, and not a little fear of what lay beyond, with which I twisted and turned the knob. It moved, but nothing seemed to happen, and then I discovered the trouble. I pushed the knob vigorously to one side, and the whole mantel swung loose from the wall almost a foot, revealing a cavernous space beyond.

I took a long breath, closed the door from the trunkroom into the hallthank Heaven, I did not lock itand pulling the manteldoor wide open, I stepped into the chimneyroom. I had time to get a hazy view of a small portable safe, a common wooden table and a chairthen the mantel door swung to, and clicked behind me. I stood quite still for a moment, in the darkness, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then I turned and beat furiously at the door with my fists. It was closed and locked again, and my fingers in the darkness slid over a smooth wooden surface without a sign of a knob. I was furiously angryat myself, at the mantel door, at everything. I did not fear suffocation; before the thought had come to me I had already seen a gleam of light from the two small ventilating pipes in the roof. They supplied air, but nothing else. The room itself was shrouded in blackness. I sat down in the stiffbacked chair and tried to remember how many days one could live without food and water. When that grew monotonous and rather painful, I got up and, according to the timehonored rule for people shut in unknown and inkblack prisons, I felt my way aroundit was small enough, goodness knows. I felt nothing but a splintery surface of boards, and in endeavoring to get back to the chair, something struck me full in the face, and fell with the noise of a thousand explosions to the ground. When I had gathered up my nerves again, I found it had been the bulb of a swinging electric light, and that had it not been for the accident, I might have starved to death in an illuminated sepulcher. I must have dozed off. I am sure I did not faint. I was never more composed in my life. I remember planning, if I were not discovered, who would have my things. I knew Liddy would want my heliotrope poplin, and shes a fright in lavender. Once or twice I heard mice in the partitions, and so I sat on the table, with my feet on the chair. I imagined I could hear the search going on through the house, and once someone came into the trunkroom; I could distinctly hear footsteps. In the chimney! In the chimney! I called with all my might, and was rewarded by a piercing shriek from Liddy and the slam of the trunkroom door. I felt easier after that, although the room was oppressively hot and enervating. I had no doubt the search for me would now come in the right direction, and after a little, I dropped into a doze. How long I slept I do not know. It must have been several hours, for I had been tired from a busy day, and I wakened stiff from my awkward position. I could not remember where I was for a few minutes, and my head felt heavy and congested. Gradually I roused to my surroundings, and to the fact that in spite of the ventilators, the air was bad and growing worse. I was breathing long, gasping respirations, and my face was damp and clammy. I must have been there a long time, and the searchers were probably hunting outside the house, dredging the creek, or beating the woodland. I knew that another hour or two would find me unconscious, and with my inability to cry out would go my only chance of rescue. It was the combination of bad air and heat, probably, for some inadequate ventilation was coming through the pipes. I tried to retain my consciousness by walking the length of the room and back, over and over, but I had not the strength to keep it up, so I sat down on the table again, my back against the wall. The house was very still. Once my straining ears seemed to catch a footfall beneath me, possibly in my own room. I groped for the chair from the table, and pounded with it frantically on the floor. But nothing happened I realized bitterly that if the sound was heard at all, no doubt it was classed with the other rappings that had so alarmed us recently. It was impossible to judge the flight of time. I measured five minutes by counting my pulse, allowing seventytwo beats to the minute. But it took eternities, and toward the last I found it hard to count; my head was confused. And thenI heard sounds from below me, in the house. There was a peculiar throbbing, vibrating noise that I felt rather than heard, much like the pulsing beat of fire engines in the city. For one awful moment I thought the house was on fire, and every drop of blood in my body gathered around my heart; then I knew. It was the engine of the automobile, and Halsey had come back. Hope sprang up afresh. Halseys clear head and Gertrudes intuition might do what Liddys hysteria and three detectives had failed in. After a time I thought I had been right. There was certainly something going on down below; doors were slamming, people were hurrying through the halls, and certain high notes of excited voices penetrated to me shrilly. I hoped they were coming closer, but after a time the sounds died away below, and I was left to the silence and heat, to the weight of the darkness, to the oppression of walls that seemed to close in on me and stifle me. The first warning I had was a stealthy fumbling at the lock of the manteldoor. With my mouth open to scream, I stopped. Perhaps the situation had rendered me acute, perhaps it was instinctive. Whatever it was, I sat without moving, and someone outside, in absolute stillness, ran his fingers over the carving of the mantel andfound the panel. Now the sounds below redoubled from the clatter and jarring I knew that several people were running up the stairs, and as the sounds approached, I could even hear what they said. Watch the end staircases! Jamieson was shouting. Damnationtheres no light here! And then a second later. All together now. Onetwothree The door into the trunkroom had been locked from the inside. At the second that it gave, opening against the wall with a crash and evidently tumbling somebody into the room, the stealthy fingers beyond the manteldoor gave the knob the proper impetus, andthe door swung open, and closed again. Onlyand Liddy always screams and puts her fingers in her ears at this pointonly now I was not alone in the chimney room. There was someone else in the darkness, someone who breathed hard, and who was so close I could have touched him with my hand. I was in a paralysis of terror. Outside there were excited voices and incredulous oaths. The trunks were being jerked around in a frantic search, the windows were thrown open, only to show a sheer drop of forty feet. And the man in the room with me leaned against the manteldoor and listened. His pursuers were plainly baffled I heard him draw a long breath, and turn to grope his way through the blackness. Thenhe touched my hand, cold, clammy, deathlike. A hand in an empty room! He drew in his breath, the sharp intaking of horror that fills lungs suddenly collapsed. Beyond jerking his hand away instantly, he made no movement. I think absolute terror had him by the throat. Then he stepped back, without turning, retreating foot by foot from The Dread in the corner, and I do not think he breathed. Then, with the relief of space between us, I screamed, earsplittingly, madly, and they heard me outside. In the chimney! I shrieked. Behind the mantel! The mantel! With an oath the figure hurled itself across the room at me, and I screamed again. In his blind fury he had missed me; I heard him strike the wall. That one time I eluded him; I was across the room, and I had got the chair. He stood for a second, listening, thenhe made another rush, and I struck out with my weapon. I think it stunned him, for I had a seconds respite when I could hear him breathing, and someone shouted outside Wecantgetin. Howdoesitopen? But the man in the room had changed his tactics. I knew he was creeping on me, inch by inch, and I could not tell from where. And thenhe caught me. He held his hand over my mouth, and I bit him. I was helpless, stranglingand someone was trying to break in the mantel from outside. It began to yield somewhere, for a thin wedge of yellowish light was reflected on the opposite wall. When he saw that, my assailant dropped me with a curse; thenthe opposite wall swung open noiselessly, closed again without a sound, and I was alone. The intruder was gone. In the next room! I called wildly. The next room! But the sound of blows on the mantel drowned my voice. By the time I had made them understand, a couple of minutes had elapsed. The pursuit was taken up then, by all except Alex, who was determined to liberate me. When I stepped out into the trunkroom, a free woman again, I could hear the chase far below. I must say, for all Alexs anxiety to set me free, he paid little enough attention to my plight. He jumped through the opening into the secret room, and picked up the portable safe. I am going to put this in Mr. Halseys room, Miss Innes, he said, and I shall send one of the detectives to guard it. I hardly heard him. I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breathto crawl into bed and have a cup of tea, and scold Liddy, and do any of the thousand natural things that I had never expected to do again. And the air! The touch of the cool night air on my face! As Alex and I reached the second floor, Mr. Jamieson met us. He was grave and quiet, and he nodded comprehendingly when he saw the safe. Will you come with me for a moment, Miss Innes? he asked soberly, and on my assenting, he led the way to the east wing. There were lights moving around below, and some of the maids were standing gaping down. They screamed when they saw me, and drew back to let me pass. There was a sort of hush over the scene; Alex, behind me, muttered something I could not hear, and brushed past me without ceremony. Then I realized that a man was lying doubled up at the foot of the staircase, and that Alex was stooping over him. As I came slowly down, Winters stepped back, and Alex straightened himself, looking at me across the body with impenetrable eyes. In his hand he held a shaggy gray wig, and before me on the floor lay the man whose headstone stood in Casanova churchyardPaul Armstrong. Winters told the story in a dozen words. In his headlong flight down the circular staircase, with Winters just behind, Paul Armstrong had pitched forward violently, struck his head against the door to the east veranda, and probably broken his neck. He had died as Winters reached him. As the detective finished, I saw Halsey, pale and shaken, in the cardroom doorway, and for the first time that night I lost my selfcontrol. I put my arms around my boy, and for a moment he had to support me. A second later, over Halseys shoulder, I saw something that turned my emotion into other channels, for, behind him, in the shadowy cardroom, were Gertrude and Alex, the gardener, andthere is no use mincing mattershe was kissing her! I was unable to speak. Twice I opened my mouth then I turned Halsey around and pointed. They were quite unconscious of us; her head was on his shoulder, his face against her hair. As it happened, it was Mr. Jamieson who broke up the tableau. He stepped over to Alex and touched him on the arm. And now, he said quietly, how long are you and I to play our little comedy, Mr. Bailey? XXXIV The Odds and Ends Of Doctor Walkers sensational escape that night to South America, of the recovery of over a million dollars in cash and securities in the safe from the chimney roomthe papers have kept the public well informed. Of my share in discovering the secret chamber they have been singularly silent. The inner history has never been told. Mr. Jamieson got all kinds of credit, and some of it he deserved, but if Jack Bailey, as Alex, had not traced Halsey and insisted on the disinterring of Paul Armstrongs casket, if he had not suspected the truth from the start, where would the detective have been? When Halsey learned the truth, he insisted on going the next morning, weak as he was, to Louise, and by night she was at Sunnyside, under Gertrudes particular care, while her mother had gone to Barbara Fitzhughs. What Halsey said to Mrs. Armstrong I never knew, but that he was considerate and chivalrous I feel confident. It was Halseys way always with women. He and Louise had no conversation together until that night. Gertrude and AlexI mean Jackhad gone for a walk, although it was nine oclock, and anybody but a pair of young geese would have known that dew was falling, and that it is next to impossible to get rid of a summer cold. At half after nine, growing weary of my own company, I went downstairs to find the young people. At the door of the livingroom I paused. Gertrude and Jack had returned and were there, sitting together on a divan, with only one lamp lighted. They did not see or hear me, and I beat a hasty retreat to the library. But here again I was driven back. Louise was sitting in a deep chair, looking the happiest I had ever seen her, with Halsey on the arm of the chair, holding her close. It was no place for an elderly spinster. I retired to my upstairs sittingroom and got out Eliza Klinefelters lavender slippers. Ah, well, the foster motherhood would soon have to be put away in camphor again. The next day, by degrees, I got the whole story. Paul Armstrong had a besetting evilthe love of money. Common enough, but he loved money, not for what it would buy, but for its own sake. An examination of the books showed no irregularities in the past year since John had been cashier, but before that, in the time of Anderson, the old cashier, who had died, much strange juggling had been done with the records. The railroad in New Mexico had apparently drained the bankers private fortune, and he determined to retrieve it by one stroke. This was nothing less than the looting of the banks securities, turning them into money, and making his escape. But the law has long arms. Paul Armstrong evidently studied the situation carefully. Just as the only good Indian is a dead Indian, so the only safe defaulter is a dead defaulter. He decided to die, to all appearances, and when the hue and cry subsided, he would be able to enjoy his money almost anywhere he wished. The first necessity was an accomplice. The connivance of Doctor Walker was suggested by his love for Louise. The man was unscrupulous, and with the girl as a bait, Paul Armstrong soon had him fast. The plan was apparently the acme of simplicity a small town in the west, an attack of heart disease, a body from a medical college dissectingroom shipped in a trunk to Doctor Walker by a colleague in San Francisco, and palmed off for the supposed dead banker. What was simpler? The woman, Nina Carrington, was the cog that slipped. What she only suspected, what she really knew, we never learned. She was a chambermaid in the hotel at C, and it was evidently her intention to blackmail Doctor Walker. His position at that time was uncomfortable to pay the woman to keep quiet would be confession. He denied the whole thing, and she went to Halsey. It was this that had taken Halsey to the doctor the night he disappeared. He accused the doctor of the deception, and, crossing the lawn, had said something cruel to Louise. Then, furious at her apparent connivance, he had started for the station. Doctor Walker and Paul Armstrongthe latter still lame where I had shot himhurried across to the embankment, certain only of one thing. Halsey must not tell the detective what he suspected until the money had been removed from the chimneyroom. They stepped into the road in front of the car to stop it, and fate played into their hands. The car struck the train, and they had only to dispose of the unconscious figure in the road. This they did as I have told. For three days Halsey lay in the box car, tied hand and foot, suffering tortures of thirst, delirious at times, and discovered by a tramp at Johnsville only in time to save his life. To go back to Paul Armstrong. At the last moment his plans had been frustrated. Sunnyside, with its hoard in the chimneyroom, had been rented without his knowledge! Attempts to dislodge me having failed, he was driven to breaking into his own house. The ladder in the chute, the burning of the stable and the entrance through the cardroom windowall were in the course of a desperate attempt to get into the chimneyroom. Louise and her mother had, from the first, been the great stumblingblocks. The plan had been to send Louise away until it was too late for her to interfere, but she came back to the hotel at C just at the wrong time. There was a terrible scene. The girl was told that something of the kind was necessary, that the bank was about to close and her stepfather would either avoid arrest and disgrace in this way, or kill himself. Fanny Armstrong was a weakling, but Louise was more difficult to manage. She had no love for her stepfather, but her devotion to her mother was entire, selfsacrificing. Forced into acquiescence by her mothers appeals, overwhelmed by the situation, the girl consented and fled. From somewhere in Colorado she sent an anonymous telegram to Jack Bailey at the Traders Bank. Trapped as she was, she did not want to see an innocent man arrested. The telegram, received on Thursday, had sent the cashier to the bank that night in a frenzy. Louise arrived at Sunnyside and found the house rented. Not knowing what to do, she sent for Arnold at the Greenwood Club, and told him a little, not all. She told him that there was something wrong, and that the bank was about to close. That his father was responsible. Of the conspiracy she said nothing. To her surprise, Arnold already knew, through Bailey that night, that things were not right. Moreover, he suspected what Louise did not, that the money was hidden at Sunnyside. He had a scrap of paper that indicated a concealed room somewhere. His inherited cupidity was aroused. Eager to get Halsey and Jack Bailey out of the house, he went up to the east entry, and in the billiardroom gave the cashier what he had refused earlier in the eveningthe address of Paul Armstrong in California and a telegram which had been forwarded to the club for Bailey, from Doctor Walker. It was in response to one Bailey had sent, and it said that Paul Armstrong was very ill. Bailey was almost desperate. He decided to go west and find Paul Armstrong, and to force him to disgorge. But the catastrophe at the bank occurred sooner than he had expected. On the moment of starting west, at Andrews Station, where Mr. Jamieson had located the car, he read that the bank had closed, and, going back, surrendered himself. John Bailey had known Paul Armstrong intimately. He did not believe that the money was gone; in fact, it was hardly possible in the interval since the securities had been taken. Where was it? And from some chance remark let fall some months earlier by Arnold Armstrong at a dinner, Bailey felt sure there was a hidden room at Sunnyside. He tried to see the architect of the building, but, like the contractor, if he knew of the room, he refused any information. It was Halseys idea that John Bailey come to the house as a gardener, and pursue his investigations as he could. His smooth upper lip had been sufficient disguise, with his change of clothes, and a haircut by a country barber. So it was Alex, Jack Bailey, who had been our ghost. Not only had he alarmed Louiseand himself, he admittedon the circular staircase, but he had dug the hole in the trunkroom wall, and later sent Eliza into hysteria. The note Liddy had found in Gertrudes scrapbasket was from him, and it was he who had startled me into unconsciousness by the clothes chute, and, with Gertrudes help, had carried me to Louises room. Gertrude, I learned, had watched all night beside me, in an extremity of anxiety about me. That old Thomas had seen his master, and thought he had seen the Sunnyside ghost, there could be no doubt. Of that story of Thomas, about seeing Jack Bailey in the footpath between the club and Sunnyside, the night Liddy and I heard the noise on the circular staircasethat, too, was right. On the night before Arnold Armstrong was murdered, Jack Bailey had made his first attempt to search for the secret room. He secured Arnolds keys from his room at the club and got into the house, armed with a golfstick for sounding the walls. He ran against the hamper at the head of the stairs, caught his cufflink in it, and dropped the golfstick with a crash. He was glad enough to get away without an alarm being raised, and he took the owl train to town. The oddest thing to me was that Mr. Jamieson had known for some time that Alex was Jack Bailey. But the face of the pseudogardener was very queer indeed, when that night, in the cardroom, the detective turned to him and said How long are you and I going to play our little comedy, Mr. Bailey? Well, it is all over now. Paul Armstrong rests in Casanova churchyard, and this time there is no mistake. I went to the funeral, because I wanted to be sure he was really buried, and I looked at the step of the shaft where I had sat that night, and wondered if it was all real. Sunnyside is for saleno, I shall not buy it. Little Lucien Armstrong is living with his stepgrandmother, and she is recovering gradually from troubles that had extended over the entire period of her second marriage. Anne Watson lies not far from the man she killed, and who as surely caused her death. Thomas, the fourth victim of the conspiracy, is buried on the hill. With Nina Carrington, five lives were sacrificed in the course of this grim conspiracy. There will be two weddings before long, and Liddy has asked for my heliotrope poplin to wear to the church. I knew she would. She has wanted it for three years, and she was quite ugly the time I spilled coffee on it. We are very quiet, just the two of us. Liddy still clings to her ghost theory, and points to my wet and muddy boots in the trunkroom as proof. I am gray, I admit, but I havent felt as well in a dozen years. Sometimes, when I am bored, I ring for Liddy, and we talk things over. When Warner married Rosie, Liddy sniffed and said what I took for faithfulness in Rosie had been nothing but mawkishness. I have not yet outlived Liddys contempt because I gave them silver knives and forks as a wedding gift. So we sit and talk, and sometimes Liddy threatens to leave, and often I discharge her, but we stay together somehow. I am talking of renting a house next year, and Liddy says to be sure there is no ghost. To be perfectly frank, I never really lived until that summer. Time has passed since I began this story. My neighbors are packing up for another summer. Liddy is having the awnings put up, and the window boxes filled. Liddy or no Liddy, I shall advertise tomorrow for a house in the country, and I dont care if it has a Circular Staircase. Colophon The Circular Staircase was published in 1908 by Mary Roberts Rinehart. This ebook was produced for Standard Ebooks by Brad Taylor, and is based on a transcription produced in 1996 by Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The cover page is adapted from Room Interior with Winding Staircase, a painting completed before 1912 by Francis Davis Millet. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. This edition was released on November 7, 2024, 947 p.m. and is based on revision 7eba5fc. The first edition of this ebook was released on February 27, 2024, 504 a.m. You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at standardebooks.orgebooksmaryrobertsrinehartthecircularstaircase. The volunteerdriven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org. Imprint This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain. This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive. The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook. Standard Ebooks is a volunteerdriven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org. List of Illustrations The plan of the first floor of Sunnyside. The main entrance is at the center of south wall and opens to a hall and the main staircase. To the right of the hall is the east wing going counterclockwise is a living room, drawing room, billiard room, card room, the circular staircase, and a library. There is a veranda outside the east wall that provides access to the circular staircase and billiard room. To the left of the main hall is the west wing going clockwise is a dining room, breakfast room, butlers pantry, kitchen, scullery, servants dining room, basement stairs, housekeepers office, and a smaller hall. There is a terrace and conservatory on the southwest corner. There is a porch on the west that provides access to the kitchen. There is a back entrance on the north wall opposite the main entrance. The Circular Staircase By Mary Roberts Rinehart. Uncopyright May you do good and not evil. May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others. May you share freely, never taking more than you give. Copyright pages exist to tell you that you cant do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If youre not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States. Nonauthorship activities performed on items that are in the public domainsocalled sweat of the brow workdont create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnt change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much. Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint I I Take a Country House II A Link CuffButton III Mr. John Bailey Appears IV Where Is Halsey? V Gertrudes Engagement VI In the East Corridor VII A Sprained Ankle VIII The Other Half of the Line IX Just Like a Girl X The Traders Bank XI Halsey Makes a Capture XII One Mystery for Another XIII Louise XIV An Eggnog and a Telegram XV Liddy Gives the Alarm XVI In the Early Morning XVII A Hint of Scandal XVIII A Hole in the Wall XIX Concerning Thomas XX Doctor Walkers Warning XXI Fourteen Elm Street XXII A Ladder Out of Place XXIII While the Stables Burned XXIV Flinders XXV A Visit from Louise XXVI Halseys Disappearance XXVII Who Is Nina Carrington? XXVIII A Tramp and the Toothache XXIX A Scrap of Paper XXX When Churchyards Yawn XXXI Between Two Fireplaces XXXII Anne Watsons Story XXXIII At the Foot of the Stairs XXXIV The Odds and Ends List of Illustrations Colophon Uncopyright Landmarks The Circular Staircase List of Illustrations

MELMOTH THE WANDERER BY CHARLES ROBERT MATURIN 1820 Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin. This edition was created and published by Global Grey GlobalGrey 2019 Get more free ebooks at globalgreyebooks.com Contents Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Preface The hint of this Romance (or Tale) was taken from a passage in one of my Sermons, which (as it is to be presumed very few have read) I shall here take the liberty to quote. The passage is this. At this moment is there one of us present, however we may have departed from the Lord, disobeyed his will, and disregarded his word is there one of us who would, at this moment, accept all that man could bestow, or earth afford, to resign the hope of his salvation? No, there is not one not such a fool on earth, were the enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer! This passage suggested the idea of Melmoth the Wanderer. The Reader will find that idea developed in the following pages, with what power or success he is to decide. The Spaniards Tale has been censured by a friend to whom I read it, as containing too much attempt at the revivification of the horrors of RadcliffeRomance, of the persecutions of convents, and the terrors of the Inquisition. I defended myself, by trying to point out to my friend, that I had made the misery of conventual life depend less on the startling adventures one meets with in romances, than on that irritating series of petty torments which constitutes the misery of life in general, and which, amid the tideless stagnation of monastic existence, solitude gives its inmates leisure to invent, and power combined with malignity, the full disposition to practise. I trust this defence will operate more on the conviction of the Reader, than it did on that of my friend. For the rest of the Romance, there are some parts of it which I have borrowed from real life. The story of John Sandal and Elinor Mortimer is founded in fact. The original from which the Wife of Walberg is imperfectly sketched is a living woman, and long may she live. I cannot again appear before the public in so unseemly a character as that of a writer of romances, without regretting the necessity that compels me to it. Did my profession furnish me with the means of subsistence, I should hold myself culpable indeed in having recourse to any other, but am I allowed the choice? Dublin, 31st August 1820 Chapter 1 Alive again? Then show me where he is; Ill give a thousand pounds to look upon him. Shakespeare. In the autumn of 1816, John Melmoth, a student in Trinity College, Dublin, quitted it to attend a dying uncle on whom his hopes for independence chiefly rested. John was the orphan son of a younger brother, whose small property scarce could pay Johns college expences; but the uncle was rich, unmarried, and old; and John, from his infancy, had been brought up to look on him with that mingled sensation of awe, and of the wish, without the means to conciliate, (that sensation at once attractive and repulsive), with which we regard a being who (as nurse, domestic, and parent have tutored us to believe) holds the very threads of our existence in his hands, and may prolong or snap them when he pleases. On receiving this summons, John set immediately out to attend his uncle. The beauty of the country through which he travelled (it was the county Wicklow) could not prevent his mind from dwelling on many painful thoughts, some borrowed from the past, and more from the future. His uncles caprice and moroseness, the strange reports concerning the cause of the secluded life he had led for many years, his own dependent state, fell like blows fast and heavy on his mind. He roused himself to repel them, sat up in the mail, in which he was a solitary passenger, looked out on the prospect, consulted his watch; then he thought they receded for a moment, but there was nothing to fill their place, and he was forced to invite them back for company. When the mind is thus active in calling over invaders, no wonder the conquest is soon completed. As the carriage drew near the Lodge, (the name of old Melmoths seat), Johns heart grew heavier every moment. The recollection of this awful uncle from infancy, when he was never permitted to approach him without innumerable lectures, not to be troublesome, not to go too near his uncle, not to ask him any questions, on no account to disturb the inviolable arrangement of his snuffbox, handbell, and spectacles, nor to suffer the glittering of the goldheaded cane to tempt him to the mortal sin of handling it, and, finally, to pilot himself aright through his perilous course in and out of the apartment without striking against the piles of books, globes, old newspapers, wigblocks, tobaccopipes, and snuffcannisters, not to mention certain hidden rocks of rattraps and mouldy books beneath the chairs, together with the final reverential bow at the door, which was to be closed with cautious gentleness, and the stairs to be descended as if he were shod with felt. This recollection was carried on to his schoolboy years, when at Christmas and Easter, the ragged poney, the jest of the school, was dispatched to bring the reluctant visitor to the Lodge, where his pastime was to sit visavis to his uncle, without speaking or moving, till the pair resembled Don Raymond and the ghost of Beatrice in the Monk, then watching him as he picked the bones of lean mutton out of his mess of weak broth, the latter of which he handed to his nephew with a needless caution not to take more than he liked, then hurried to bed by daylight, even in winter, to save the expence of an inch of candle, where he lay awake and restless from hunger, till his uncles retiring at eight oclock gave signal to the governante of the meagre household to steal up to him with some fragments of her own scanty meal, administering between every mouthful a whispered caution not to tell his uncle. Then his college life, passed in an attic in the second square, uncheered by an invitation to the country; the gloomy summer wasted in walking up and down the deserted streets, as his uncle would not defray the expences of his journey; the only intimation of his existence, received in quarterly epistles, containing, with the scanty but punctual remittance, complaints of the expences of his education, cautions against extravagance, and lamentations for the failure of tenants and the fall of the value of lands. All these recollections came over him, and along with them the remembrance of that last scene, where his dependence on his uncle was impressed on him by the dying lips of his father. John, I must leave you, my poor boy; it has pleased God to take your father from you before he could do for you what would have made this hour less painful to him. You must look up, John, to your uncle for every thing. He has oddities and infirmities, but you must learn to bear with them, and with many other things too, as you will learn too soon. And now, my poor boy, may He who is the father of the fatherless look on your desolate state, and give you favour in the eyes of your uncle. As this scene rose to Johns memory, his eyes filled fast with tears, which he hastened to wipe away as the carriage stopt to let him out at his uncles gate. He alighted, and with a change of linen in a handkerchief, (his only travelling equipment), he approached his uncles gate. The lodge was in ruins, and a barefooted boy from an adjacent cabin ran to lift on its single hinge what had once been a gate, but was now a few planks so villainously put together, that they clattered like a sign in a high wind. The stubborn post of the gate, yielding at last to the united strength of John and his barefooted assistant, grated heavily through the mud and gravel stones, in which it left a deep and sloughy furrow, and the entrance lay open. John, after searching his pocket in vain for a trifle to reward his assistant, pursued his way, while the lad, on his return, cleared the road at a hop step and jump, plunging through the mud with all the dabbling and amphibious delight of a duck, and scarce less proud of his agility than of his sarving a gentleman. As John slowly trod the miry road which had once been the approach, he could discover, by the dim light of an autumnal evening, signs of increasing desolation since he had last visited the spot, signs that penury had been aggravated and sharpened into downright misery. There was not a fence or a hedge round the domain an uncemented wall of loose stones, whose numerous gaps were filled with furze or thorns, supplied their place. There was not a tree or shrub on the lawn; the lawn itself was turned into pastureground, and a few sheep were picking their scanty food amid the pebblestones, thistles, and hard mould, through which a few blades of grass made their rare and squalid appearance. The house itself stood strongly defined even amid the darkness of the evening sky; for there were neither wings, or offices, or shrubbery, or tree, to shade or support it, and soften its strong harsh outline. John, after a melancholy gaze at the grassgrown steps and boarded windows, addressed himself to knock at the door; but knocker there was none loose stones, however, there were in plenty; and John was making vigorous application to the door with one of them, till the furious barking of a mastiff, who threatened at every bound to break his chain, and whose yell and growl, accompanied by eyes that glow and fangs that grin, savoured as much of hunger as of rage, made the assailant raise the siege on the door, and betake himself to a wellknown passage that led to the kitchen. A light glimmered in the window as he approached he raised the latch with a doubtful hand; but, when he saw the party within, he advanced with the step of a man no longer doubtful of his welcome. Round a turffire, whose wellreplenished fuel gave testimony to the masters indisposition, who would probably as soon have been placed on the fire himself as seen the whole kish emptied on it once, were seated the old housekeeper, two or three followers, (i.e. people who ate, drank, and lounged about in any kitchen that was open in the neighbourhood, on an occasion of grief or joy, all for his honors sake, and for the great rispict they bore the family), and an old woman, whom John immediately recognized as the doctress of the neighbourhood, a withered Sybil, who prolonged her squalid existence by practising on the fears, the ignorance, and the sufferings of beings as miserable as herself. Among the better sort, to whom she sometimes had access by the influence of servants, she tried the effects of some simples, her skill in which was sometimes productive of success. Among the lower orders she talked much of the effects of the evil eye, against which she boasted a counterspell, of unfailing efficacy; and while she spoke, she shook her grizzled locks with such witchlike eagerness, that she never failed to communicate to her halfterrified, halfbelieving audience, some portion of that enthusiasm which, amid all her consciousness of imposture, she herself probably felt a large share of; still, when the case at last became desperate, when credulity itself lost all patience, and hope and life were departing together, she urged the miserable patient to confess there was something about his heart; and when this confession was extorted from the weariness of pain and the ignorance of poverty, she nodded and muttered so mysteriously, as to convey to the bystanders, that she had had difficulties to contend with which were invincible by human power. When there was no pretext, from indisposition, for her visiting either his honors kitchen, or the cottars hut, when the stubborn and persevering convalescence of the whole country threatened her with starvation, she still had a resource if there were no lives to be shortened, there were fortunes to be told; she worked by spells, and by such daubry as is beyond our element. No one twined so well as she the mystic yarn to be dropt into the limekiln pit, on the edge of which stood the shivering inquirer into futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question of who holds? was to be uttered by the voice of demon or lover. No one knew so well as she to find where the four streams met, in which, on the same portentous season, the chemise was to be immersed, and then displayed before the fire, (in the name of one whom we dare not mention to ears polite), to be turned by the figure of the destined husband before morning. No one but herself (she said) knew the hand in which the comb was to be held, while the other was employed in conveying the apple to the mouth, while, during the joint operation, the shadow of the phantomspouse was to pass across the mirror before which it was performed. No one was more skilful or active in removing every iron implement from the kitchen where these ceremonies were usually performed by the credulous and terrified dupes of her wizardry, lest, instead of the form of a comely youth exhibiting a ring on his white finger, an headless figure should stalk to the rack, (Anglic, dresser), take down a long spit, or, in default of that, snatch a poker from the fireside, and mercilessly take measure with its iron length of the sleeper for a coffin. No one, in short, knew better how to torment or terrify her victims into a belief of that power which may and has reduced the strongest minds to the level of the weakest; and under the influence of which the cultivated sceptic, Lord Lyttleton, yelled and gnashed and writhed in his last hours, like the poor girl who, in the belief of the horrible visitation of the vampire, shrieked aloud, that her grandfather was sucking her vital blood while she slept, and expired under the influence of imaginary horror. Such was the being to whom old Melmoth had committed his life, half from credulity, and (Hibernic speaking) more than half from avarice. Among this groupe John advanced, recognising some, disliking more, distrusting all. The old housekeeper received him with cordiality; he was always her whiteheaded boy, she said, (imprimis, his hair was as black as jet), and she tried to lift her withered hand to his head with an action between a benediction and a caress, till the difficulty of the attempt forced on her the conviction that that head was fourteen inches higher than her reach since she had last patted it. The men, with the national deference of the Irish to a person of superior rank, all rose at his approach, (their stools chattering on the broken flags), and wished his honor a thousand years, and long life to the back of that; and would not his honor take something to keep the grief out of his heart; and so saying, five or six red and bony hands tendered him glasses of whiskey all at once. All this time the Sybil sat silent in the ample chimneycorner, sending redoubled whiffs out of her pipe. John gently declined the offer of spirits, received the attentions of the old housekeeper cordially, looked askance at the withered crone who occupied the chimney corner, and then glanced at the table, which displayed other cheer than he had been accustomed to see in his honors time. There was a wooden dish of potatoes, which old Melmoth would have considered enough for a weeks subsistence. There was the salted salmon, (a luxury unknown even in London. Vide Miss Edgeworths Tales, The Absentee). There was the slinkveal, flanked with tripe; and, finally, there were lobsters and fried turbot enough to justify what the author of the tale asserts, suo periculo, that when his great grandfather, the Dean of Killala, hired servants at the deanery, they stipulated that they should not be required to eat turbot or lobster more than twice aweek. There were also bottles of Wicklow ale, long and surreptitiously borrowed from his honors cellar, and which now made their first appearance on the kitchen hearth, and manifested their impatience of further constraint, by hissing, spitting, and bouncing in the face of the fire that provoked its animosity. But the whiskey (genuine illegitimate potsheen, smelling strongly of weed and smoke, and breathing defiance to excisemen) appeared, the veritable Amphitryon of the feast; every one praised, and drank as deeply as he praised. John, as he looked round the circle, and thought of his dying uncle, was forcibly reminded of the scene at Don Quixotes departure, where, in spite of the grief caused by the dissolution of the worthy knight, we are informed that nevertheless the niece eat her victuals, the housekeeper drank to the repose of his soul, and even Sancho cherished his little carcase. After returning, as he might, the courtesies of the party, John asked how his uncle was. As bad as he can be; Much better, and many thanks to your honor, was uttered in such rapid and discordant unison by the party, that John turned from one to the other, not knowing which or what to believe. They say his honour has had a fright, said a fellow, upwards of six feet high, approaching by way of whispering, and then bellowing the sound six inches above Johns head. But then his honor has had a cool since, said a man who was quietly swallowing the spirits that John had refused. At these words the Sybil who sat in the chimney corner slowly drew her pipe from her mouth, and turned towards the party The oracular movements of a Pythoness on her tripod never excited more awe, or impressed for the moment a deeper silence. Its not here, said she, pressing her withered finger on her wrinkled forehead, nor here, nor here; and she extended her hand to the foreheads of those who were near her, who all bowed as if they were receiving a benediction, but had immediate recourse to the spirits afterwards, as if to ensure its effects. Its all here its all about the heart; and as she spoke she spread and pressed her fingers on her hollow bosom with a force of action that thrilled her hearers. Its all here, she added, repeating the action, (probably excited by the effect she had produced), and then sunk on her seat, resumed her pipe, and spoke no more. At this moment of involuntary awe on the part of John, and of terrified silence on that of the rest, an unusual sound was heard in the house, and the whole company started as if a musket had been discharged among them it was the unwonted sound of old Melmoths bell. His domestics were so few, and so constantly near him, that the sound of his bell startled them as much as if he had been ringing the knell for his own interment. He used always to rap down for me, said the old housekeeper, hurrying out of the kitchen; he said pulling the bells wore out the ropes. The sound of the bell produced its full effect. The housekeeper rushed into the room, followed by a number of women, (the Irish prfic); all ready to prescribe for the dying or weep for the dead, all clapping their hard hands, or wiping their dry eyes. These hags all surrounded the bed; and to witness their loud, wild, and desperate grief, their cries of Oh! hes going, his honors going, his honors going, one would have imagined their lives were bound up in his, like those of the wives in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, who were to be interred alive with their deceased husbands. Four of them wrung their hands and howled round the bed, while one, with all the adroitness of a Mrs. Quickly, felt his honors feet, and upward and upward, and all was cold as any stone. Old Melmoth withdrew his feet from the grasp of the hag, counted with his keen eye (keen amid the approaching dimness of death) the number assembled round his bed, raised himself on his sharp elbow, and pushing away the housekeeper, (who attempted to settle his nightcap, that had been shoved on one side in the struggle, and gave his haggard, dying face, a kind of grotesque fierceness), bellowed out in tones that made the company start, What the devil brought ye all here? The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently using the sign of the cross, muttered The devil, Christ save us, the devil in his mouth the first word he spoke. Aye, roared the invalid, and the devil in my eye the first sight I see. Where, where? cried the terrified housekeeper, clinging close to the invalid in her terror, and halfhiding herself in the blanket, which she snatched without mercy from his struggling and exposed limbs. There, there, he repeated, (during the battle of the blanket), pointing to the huddled and terrified women, who stood aghast at hearing themselves arointed as the very demons they came to banish. Oh! Lord keep your honors head, said the housekeeper in a more soothing tone, when her fright was over; and sure your honour knows them all, isnt her name, and her name, and her name, and she pointed respectively to each of them, adding their names, which we shall spare the English reader the torture of reciting, (as a proof of our lenity, adding the last only, Cotchleen OMulligan), Ye lie, ye b h, growled old Melmoth; their name is Legion, for they are many, turn them all out of the room, turn them all out of doors, if they howl at my death, they shall howl in earnest, not for my death, for they would see me dead and damned too with dry eyes, but for want of the whiskey that they would have stolen if they could have got at it, (and here old Melmoth grasped a key which lay under his pillow, and shook it in vain triumph at the old housekeeper, who had long possessed the means of getting at the spirits unknown to his honor), and for want of the victuals you have pampered them with. Pampered, oh Ch st! ejaculated the housekeeper. Aye, and what are there so many candles for, all fours, and the same below I warrant. Ah! you you worthless, wasteful old devil. Indeed, your honor, they are all sixes. Sixes, and what the devil are you burning sixes for, dye think its the wake already? Ha? Oh! not yet, your honor, not yet, chorussed the beldams; but in Gods good time, your honor knows, in a tone that spoke ill suppressed impatience for the event. Oh! that your honor would think of making your soul. Thats the first sensible word you have said, said the dying man, fetch me the prayerbook, youll find it there under that old bootjack, blow off the cobwebs; it has not been opened this many a year. It was handed to him by the old governante, on whom he turned a reproaching eye. What made you burn sixes in the kitchen, you extravagant jade? How many years have you lived in this house? I dont know, your honor. Did you ever see any extravagance or waste in it? Oh never, never, your honor. Was any thing but a farthing candle ever burned in the kitchen? Never, never, your honor. Were not you kept as tight as hand and head and heart could keep you, were you not? answer me that. Oh yes, sure, your honor; every sowl about us knows that, every one does your honor justice, that you kept the closest house and closest hand in the country, your honor was always a good warrant for it. And how dare you unlock my hold before death has unlocked it, said the dying miser, shaking his meagre hand at her. I smelt meat in the house, I heard voices in the house, I heard the key turn in the door over and over. Oh that I was up, he added, rolling in impatient agony in his bed, Oh that I was up, to see the waste and ruin that is going on. But it would kill me, he continued, sinking back on the bolster, for he never allowed himself a pillow; it would kill me, the very thought of it is killing me now. The women, discomfited and defeated, after sundry winks and whispers, were huddling out of the room, till recalled by the sharp eager tones of old Melmoth. Where are ye trooping to now? back to the kitchen to gormandize and guzzle? Wont one of ye stay and listen while theres a prayer read for me? Ye may want it one day for yourselves, ye hags. Awed by this expostulation and menace, the train silently returned, and placed themselves round the bed, while the housekeeper, though a Catholic, asked if his honor would not have a clergyman to give him the rights, (rites) of his church. The eyes of the dying man sparkled with vexation at the proposal. What for, just to have him expect a scarf and hatband at the funeral. Read the prayers yourself, you old ; that will save something. The housekeeper made the attempt, but soon declined it, alleging, as her reason, that her eyes had been watery ever since his honor took ill. Thats because you had always a drop in them, said the invalid, with a spiteful sneer, which the contraction of approaching death stiffened into a hideous grin. Here, is not there one of you thats gnashing and howling there, that can get up a prayer to keep me from it? So adjured, one of the women offered her services; and of her it might truly be said, as of the most desartless man of the watch in Dogberrys time, that her reading and writing came by nature; for she never had been at school, and had never before seen or opened a Protestant prayer book in her life; nevertheless, on she went, and with more emphasis than good discretion, read nearly through the service for the churching of women; which in our prayerbooks following that of the burial of the dead, she perhaps imagined was someway connected with the state of the invalid. She read with great solemnity, it was a pity that two interruptions occurred during the performance, one from old Melmoth, who, shortly after the commencement of the prayers, turned towards the old housekeeper, and said, in a tone scandalously audible, Go down and draw the niggers of the kitchen fire closer, and lock the door, and let me hear it locked. I cant mind any thing till thats done. The other was from John Melmoth gliding into the room, hearing the inappropriate words uttered by the ignorant woman, taking quietly as he knelt beside her the prayerbook from her hands, and reading in a suppressed voice part of that solemn service which, by the forms of the Church of England, is intended for the consolation of the departing. That is Johns voice, said the dying man; and the little kindness he had ever shewed this unfortunate lad rushed on his hard heart at this moment, and touched it. He saw himself, too, surrounded by heartless and rapacious menials; and slight as must have been his dependence on a relative whom he had always treated as a stranger, he felt at this hour he was no stranger, and grasped at his support like a straw amid his wreck. John, my good boy, you are there. I kept you far from me when living, and now you are nearest me when dying. John, read on. John, affected deeply by the situation in which he beheld this poor man, amid all his wealth, as well as by the solemn request to impart consolation to his dying moments, read on; but in a short time his voice became indistinct, from the horror with which he listened to the increasing hiccup of the patient, which, however, he struggled with from time to time, to ask the housekeeper if the niggers were closed. John, who was a lad of feeling, rose from his knees in some degree of agitation. What, are you leaving me like the rest? said old Melmoth, trying to raise himself in the bed. No, Sir, said John; but, observing the altered looks of the dying man, I think you want some refreshment, some support, Sir. Aye, I do, I do, but whom can I trust to get it for me. They, (and his haggard eye wandered round the groupe), they would poison me. Trust me, Sir, said John; I will go to the apothecarys, or whoever you may employ. The old man grasped his hand, drew him close to his bed, cast a threatening yet fearful eye round the party, and then whispered in a voice of agonized constraint, I want a glass of wine, it would keep me alive for some hours, but there is not one I can trust to get it for me, theyd steal a bottle, and ruin me. John was greatly shocked. Sir, for Gods sake, let me get a glass of wine for you. Do you know where? said the old man, with an expression in his face John could not understand. No, Sir; you know I have been rather a stranger here, Sir. Take this key, said old Melmoth, after a violent spasm; take this key, there is wine in that closet, Madeira. I always told them there was nothing there, but they did not believe me, or I should not have been robbed as I have been. At one time I said it was whiskey, and then I fared worse than ever, for they drank twice as much of it. John took the key from his uncles hand; the dying man pressed it as he did so, and John, interpreting this as a mark of kindness, returned the pressure. He was undeceived by the whisper that followed, John, my lad, dont drink any of that wine while you are there. Good God! said John, indignantly throwing the key on the bed; then, recollecting that the miserable being before him was no object of resentment, he gave the promise required, and entered the closet, which no foot but that of old Melmoth had entered for nearly sixty years. He had some difficulty in finding out the wine, and indeed staid long enough to justify his uncles suspicions, but his mind was agitated, and his hand unsteady. He could not but remark his uncles extraordinary look, that had the ghastliness of fear superadded to that of death, as he gave him permission to enter his closet. He could not but see the looks of horror which the women exchanged as he approached it. And, finally, when he was in it, his memory was malicious enough to suggest some faint traces of a story, too horrible for imagination, connected with it. He remembered in one moment most distinctly, that no one but his uncle had ever been known to enter it for many years. Before he quitted it, he held up the dim light, and looked around him with a mixture of terror and curiosity. There was a great deal of decayed and useless lumber, such as might be supposed to be heaped up to rot in a misers closet; but Johns eyes were in a moment, and as if by magic, rivetted on a portrait that hung on the wall, and appeared, even to his untaught eye, far superior to the tribe of family pictures that are left to moulder on the walls of a family mansion. It represented a man of middle age. There was nothing remarkable in the costume, or in the countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels they wish they had never seen, and feels they can never forget. Had he been acquainted with the poetry of Southey, he might have often exclaimed in his afterlife, Only the eyes had life, They gleamed with demon light. THALABA. From an impulse equally resistless and painful, he approached the portrait, held the candle towards it, and could distinguish the words on the border of the painting, Jno. Melmoth, anno 1646. John was neither timid by nature, or nervous by constitution, or superstitious from habit, yet he continued to gaze in stupid horror on this singular picture, till, aroused by his uncles cough, he hurried into his room. The old man swallowed the wine. He appeared a little revived; it was long since he had tasted such a cordial, his heart appeared to expand to a momentary confidence. John, what did you see in that room? Nothing, Sir. Thats a lie; every one wants to cheat or to rob me. Sir, I dont want to do either. Well, what did you see that you you took notice of? Only a picture, Sir. A picture, Sir! the original is still alive. John, though under the impression of his recent feelings, could not but look incredulous.

John, whispered his uncle; John, they say I am dying of this and that; and one says it is for want of nourishment, and one says it is for want of medicine, but, John, and his face looked hideously ghastly, I am dying of a fright. That man, and he extended his meagre arm toward the closet, as if he was pointing to a living being; that man, I have good reason to know, is alive still. How is that possible, Sir? said John involuntarily, the date on the picture is 1646. You have seen it, you have noticed it, said his uncle. Well, he rocked and nodded on his bolster for a moment, then, grasping Johns hand with an unutterable look, he exclaimed, You will see him again, he is alive. Then, sinking back on his bolster, he fell into a kind of sleep or stupor, his eyes still open, and fixed on John. The house was now perfectly silent, and John had time and space for reflection. More thoughts came crowding on him than he wished to welcome, but they would not be repulsed. He thought of his uncles habits and character, turned the matter over and over again in his mind, and he said to himself, The last man on earth to be superstitious. He never thought of any thing but the price of stocks, and the rate of exchange, and my college expences, that hung heavier at his heart than all; and such a man to die of a fright, a ridiculous fright, that a man living 150 years ago is alive still, and yet he is dying. John paused, for facts will confute the most stubborn logician. With all his hardness of mind, and of heart, he is dying of a fright. I heard it in the kitchen, I have heard it from himself, he could not be deceived. If I had ever heard he was nervous, or fanciful, or superstitious, but a character so contrary to all these impressions; a man that, as poor Butler says, in his Remains, of the Antiquarian, would have sold Christ over again for the numerical piece of silver which Judas got for him, such a man to die of fear! Yet he is dying, said John, glancing his fearful eye on the contracted nostril, the glazed eye, the dropping jaw, the whole horrible apparatus of the facies Hippocratica displayed, and soon to cease its display. Old Melmoth at this moment seemed to be in a deep stupor; his eyes lost that little expression they had before, and his hands, that had convulsively been catching at the blankets, let go their short and quivering grasp, and lay extended on the bed like the claws of some bird that had died of hunger, so meagre, so yellow, so spread. John, unaccustomed to the sight of death, believed this to be only a sign that he was going to sleep; and, urged by an impulse for which he did not attempt to account to himself, caught up the miserable light, and once more ventured into the forbidden room, the blue chamber of the dwelling. The motion roused the dying man; he sat bolt upright in his bed. This John could not see, for he was now in the closet; but he heard the groan, or rather the choaked and guggling rattle of the throat, that announces the horrible conflict between muscular and mental convulsion. He started, turned away; but, as he turned away, he thought he saw the eyes of the portrait, on which his own was fixed, move, and hurried back to his uncles bedside. Old Melmoth died in the course of that night, and died as he had lived, in a kind of avaricious delirium. John could not have imagined a scene so horrible as his last hours presented. He cursed and blasphemed about three halfpence, missing, as he said, some weeks before, in an account of change with his groom, about hay to a starving horse that he kept. Then he grasped Johns hand, and asked him to give him the sacrament. If I send to the clergyman, he will charge me something for it, which I cannot pay, I cannot. They say I am rich, look at this blanket; but I would not mind that, if I could save my soul. And, raving, he added, Indeed, Doctor, I am a very poor man. I never troubled a clergyman before, and all I want is, that you will grant me two trifling requests, very little matters in your way, save my soul, and (whispering) make interest to get me a parish coffin, I have not enough left to bury me. I always told every one I was poor, but the more I told them so, the less they believed me. John, greatly shocked, retired from the bedside, and sat down in a distant corner of the room. The women were again in the room, which was very dark. Melmoth was silent from exhaustion, and there was a deathlike pause for some time. At this moment John saw the door open, and a figure appear at it, who looked round the room, and then quietly and deliberately retired, but not before John had discovered in his face the living original of the portrait. His first impulse was to utter an exclamation of terror, but his breath felt stopped. He was then rising to pursue the figure, but a moments reflection checked him. What could be more absurd, than to be alarmed or amazed at a resemblance between a living man and the portrait of a dead one! The likeness was doubtless strong enough to strike him even in that darkened room, but it was doubtless only a likeness; and though it might be imposing enough to terrify an old man of gloomy and retired habits, and with a broken constitution, John resolved it should not produce the same effect on him. But while he was applauding himself for this resolution, the door opened, and the figure appeared at it, beckoning and nodding to him, with a familiarity somewhat terrifying. John now started up, determined to pursue it; but the pursuit was stopped by the weak but shrill cries of his uncle, who was struggling at once with the agonies of death and his housekeeper. The poor woman, anxious for her masters reputation and her own, was trying to put on him a clean shirt and nightcap, and Melmoth, who had just sensation enough to perceive they were taking something from him, continued exclaiming feebly, They are robbing me, robbing me in my last moments, robbing a dying man. John, wont you assist me, I shall die a beggar; they are taking my last shirt, I shall die a beggar. And the miser died. Chapter 2 You that wander, scream, and groan, Round the mansions once your own. ROWE A few days after the funeral, the will was opened before proper witnesses, and John was found to be left sole heir to his uncles property, which, though originally moderate, had, by his grasping habits, and parsimonious life, become very considerable. As the attorney who read the will concluded, he added, There are some words here, at the corner of the parchment, which do not appear to be part of the will, as they are neither in the form of a codicil, nor is the signature of the testator affixed to them; but, to the best of my belief, they are in the handwriting of the deceased. As he spoke he shewed the lines to Melmoth, who immediately recognized his uncles hand, (that perpendicular and penurious hand, that seems determined to make the most of the very paper, thriftily abridging every word, and leaving scarce an atom of margin), and read, not without some emotion, the following words I enjoin my nephew and heir, John Melmoth, to remove, destroy, or cause to be destroyed, the portrait inscribed J. Melmoth, 1646, hanging in my closet. I also enjoin him to search for a manuscript, which I think he will find in the third and lowest lefthand drawer of the mahogany chest standing under that portrait, it is among some papers of no value, such as manuscript sermons, and pamphlets on the improvement of Ireland, and such stuff; he will distinguish it by its being tied round with a black tape, and the paper being very mouldy and discoloured. He may read it if he will; I think he had better not. At all events, I adjure him, if there be any power in the adjuration of a dying man, to burn it. After reading this singular memorandum, the business of the meeting was again resumed; and as old Melmoths will was very clear and legally worded, all was soon settled, the party dispersed, and John Melmoth was left alone. We should have mentioned, that his guardians appointed by the will (for he was not yet of age) advised him to return to College, and complete his education as soon as proper; but John urged the expediency of paying the respect due to his uncles memory, by remaining a decent time in the house after his decease. This was not his real motive. Curiosity, or something that perhaps deserves a better name, the wild and awful pursuit of an indefinite object, had taken strong hold of his mind. His guardians (who were men of respectability and property in the neighbourhood, and in whose eyes Johns consequence had risen rapidly since the reading of the will), pressed him to accept of a temporary residence in their respective houses, till his return to Dublin. This was declined gratefully, but steadily. They called for their horses, shook hands with the heir, and rode off Melmoth was left alone. The remainder of the day was passed in gloomy and anxious deliberation, in traversing his late uncles room, approaching the door of the closet, and then retreating from it, in watching the clouds, and listening to the wind, as if the gloom of the one, or the murmurs of the other, relieved instead of increasing the weight that pressed on his mind. Finally, towards evening, he summoned the old woman, from whom he expected something like an explanation of the extraordinary circumstances he had witnessed since his arrival at his uncles . The old woman, proud of the summons, readily attended, but she had very little to tell, her communication was nearly in the following words (We spare the reader her endless circumlocutions, her Irishcisms, and the frequent interruptions arising from her applications to her snuffbox, and to the glass of whiskey punch with which Melmoth took care to have her supplied). The old woman deposed, That his honor (as she always called the deceased) was always intent upon the little room inside his bedchamber, and reading there, within the last two years; that people, knowing his honor had money, and thinking it must be there, had broke into that room, (in other words, there was a robbery attempted there), but finding nothing but some papers, they had retired; that he was so frightened, he had bricked up the window; but she thought there was more in it than that, for when his honor missed but a halfpenny, he would make the house ring about it, but that, when the closet was bricked up, he never said a word; that afterwards his honor used to lock himself up in his own room, and though he was never fond of reading, was always found, when his dinner was brought him, hanging over a paper, which he hid the moment any one came into the room, and once there was a great bustle about a picture that he tried to conceal; that knowing there was an odd story in the family, she did her best to come at it, and even went to Biddy Brannigans, (the medical Sybil before mentioned), to find out the rights of it; but Biddy only shook her head, filled her pipe, uttered some words she did not understand, and smoked on; that it was but two evenings before his honor was struck, (i.e. took ill), she was standing at the door of the court, (which had once been surrounded by stables, pigeonhouse, and all the usual etceteras of a gentlemans residence, but now presented only a ruinous range of dismantled outoffices, thatched with thistles, and tenanted by pigs), when his honor called to her to lock the door, (his honor was always keen about locking the doors early); she was hastening to do so, when he snatched the key from her, swearing at her, (for he was always very keen about locking the doors, though the locks were so bad, and the keys so rusty, that it was always like the cry of the dead in the house when the keys were turned); that she stood aside for a minute, seeing he was angry, and gave him the key, when she heard him utter a scream, and saw him fall across the doorway; that she hurried to raise him, hoping it was a fit; that she found him stiff and stretched out, and called for help to lift him up; that then people came from the kitchen to assist; that she was so bewildered and terrified, she hardly knew what was done or said; but with all her terror remembered, that as they raised him up, the first sign of life he gave was lifting up his arm, and pointing it towards the court, and at that moment she saw the figure of a tall man cross the court, and go out of the court, she knew not where or how, for the outer gate was locked, and had not been opened for years, and they were all gathered round his honor at the other door; she saw the figure, she saw the shadow on the wall, she saw him walk slowly through the court, and in her terror cried, Stop him, but nobody minded her, all being busy about her master; and when he was brought to his room, nobody thought but of getting him to himself again. And further she could not tell. His honor (young Melmoth) knew as much as she, he had witnessed his last illness, had heard his last words, he saw him die, how could she know more than his honor. True, said Melmoth, I certainly saw him die; but you say there was an odd story in the family, do you know any thing about it? Not a word, it was long before my time, as old as I am. Certainly it must have been so; but, was my uncle ever superstitious, fanciful? and Melmoth was compelled to use many synonymous expressions, before he could make himself understood. When he did, the answer was plain and decisive, No, never, never. When his honor sat in the kitchen in winter, to save a fire in his own room, he could never bear the talk of the old women that came in to light their pipes betimes, (from time to time). He used to shew such impatience of their superstitious nonsense, that they were fain to smoke them in silence, without the consolatory accompaniment of one whisper about a child that the evil eye had looked on, or another, that though apparently a mewling, peevish, crippled brat all day, went regularly out at night to dance with the good people on the top of a neighbouring mountain, summoned thereto by the sound of a bagpipe, which was unfailingly heard at the cabin door every night. Melmoths thoughts began to take somewhat of a darker hue at this account. If his uncle was not superstitious, might he not have been guilty, and might not his strange and sudden death, and even the terrible visitation that preceded it, have been owing to some wrong that his rapacity had done the widow and the fatherless. He questioned the old woman indirectly and cautiously on the subject, her answer completely justified the deceased. He was a man, she said, of a hard hand, and a hard heart, but he was as jealous of anothers right as of his own. He would have starved all the world, but he would not have wronged it of a farthing. Melmoths last resource was to send for Biddy Brannigan, who was still in the house, and from whom he at least hoped to hear the odd story that the old woman confessed was in the family. She came, and, on her introduction to Melmoth, it was curious to observe the mingled look of servility and command, the result of the habits of her life, which was alternately one of abject mendicity, and of arrogant but clever imposture. When she first appeared, she stood at the door, awed and curtseying in the presence, and muttering sounds which, possibly intended for blessings, had, from the harsh tone and witchlike look of the speaker, every appearance of malediction; but when interrogated on the subject of the story, she rose at once into consequence, her figure seemed frightfully dilated, like that of Virgils Alecto, who exchanges in a moment the appearance of a feeble old woman for that of a menacing fury. She walked deliberately across the room, seated, or rather squatted herself on the hearthstone like a hare in her form, spread her bony and withered hands towards the blaze, and rocked for a considerable time in silence before she commenced her tale. When she had finished it, Melmoth remained in astonishment at the state of mind to which the late singular circumstances had reduced him, at finding himself listening with varying and increasing emotions of interest, curiosity, and terror, to a tale so wild, so improbable, nay, so actually incredible, that he at least blushed for the folly he could not conquer. The result of these impressions was, a resolution to visit the closet, and examine the manuscript that very night. This resolution he found it impossible to execute immediately, for, on inquiring for lights, the gouvernante confessed the very last had been burnt at his honors wake; and a barefooted boy was charged to run for life and death to the neighbouring village for candles; and if you could borry a couple of candlesticks, added the housekeeper. Are there no candlesticks in the house? said Melmoth. There are, honey, plinty, but its no time to be opening the old chest, for the plated ones, in regard of their being at the bottom of it, and the brass ones thats in it (in the house), one of them has no socket, and the other has no bottom. And how did you make shift yourself, said Melmoth. I stuck it in a potatoe, quoth the housekeeper. So the gossoon ran for life and death, and Melmoth, towards the close of the evening, was left alone to meditate. It was an evening apt for meditation, and Melmoth had his fill of it before the messenger returned. The weather was cold and gloomy; heavy clouds betokened a long and dreary continuance of autumnal rains; cloud after cloud came sweeping on like the dark banners of an approaching host, whose march is for desolation. As Melmoth leaned against the window, whose dismantled frame, and pieced and shattered panes, shook with every gust of wind, his eye encountered nothing but that most cheerless of all prospects, a misers garden, walls broken down, grassgrown walks whose grass was not even green, dwarfish, doddered, leafless trees, and a luxuriant crop of nettles and weeds rearing their unlovely heads where there had once been flowers, all waving and bending in capricious and unsightly forms, as the wind sighed over them. It was the verdure of the churchyard, the garden of death. He turned for relief to the room, but no relief was there, the wainscotting dark with dirt, and in many places cracked and starting from the walls, the rusty grate, so long unconscious of a fire, that nothing but a sullen smoke could be coaxed to issue from between its dingy bars, the crazy chairs, their torn bottoms of rush drooping inwards, and the great leathern seat displaying the stuffing round the worn edges, while the nails, though they kept their places, had failed to keep the covering they once fastened, the chimneypiece, which, tarnished more by time than by smoke, displayed for its garniture half a pair of snuffers, a tattered almanack of 1750, a timekeeper dumb for want of repair, and a rusty fowlingpiece without a lock. No wonder the spectacle of desolation drove Melmoth back to his own thoughts, restless and uncomfortable as they were. He recapitulated the Sybils story word by word, with the air of a man who is crossexamining an evidence, and trying to make him contradict himself. The first of the Melmoths, she says, who settled in Ireland, was an officer in Cromwells army, who obtained a grant of lands, the confiscated property of an Irish family attached to the royal cause. The elder brother of this man was one who had travelled abroad, and resided so long on the Continent, that his family had lost all recollection of him. Their memory was not stimulated by their affection, for there were strange reports concerning the traveller. He was said to be (like the damned magician, great Glendower,) a gentleman profited in strange concealments. It must be remembered, that at this period, and even to a later, the belief in astrology and witchcraft was very general. Even so late as the reign of Charles II. Dryden calculated the nativity of his son Charles, the ridiculous books of Glanville were in general circulation, and Delrio and Wierus were so popular, that even a dramatic writer (Shadwell) quoted copiously from them, in the notes subjoined to his curious comedy of the Lancashire witches. It was said, that during the lifetime of Melmoth, the traveller paid him a visit; and though he must have then been considerably advanced in life, to the astonishment of his family, he did not betray the slightest trace of being a year older than when they last beheld him. His visit was short, he said nothing of the past or the future, nor did his family question him. It was said that they did not feel themselves perfectly at ease in his presence. On his departure he left them his picture, (the same which Melmoth saw in the closet, bearing date 1646), and they saw him no more. Some years after, a person arrived from England, directed to Melmoths house, in pursuit of the traveller, and exhibiting the most marvellous and unappeasable solicitude to obtain some intelligence of him. The family could give him none, and after some days of restless inquiry and agitation, he departed, leaving behind him, either through negligence or intention, a manuscript, containing an extraordinary account of the circumstances under which he had met John Melmoth the Traveller (as he was called). The manuscript and portrait were both preserved, and of the original a report spread that he was still alive, and had been frequently seen in Ireland even to the present century, but that he was never known to appear but on the approaching death of one of the family, nor even then, unless when the evil passions or habits of the individual had cast a shade of gloomy and fearful interest over their dying hour. It was therefore judged no favourable augury for the spiritual destination of the last Melmoth, that this extraordinary person had visited, or been imagined to visit, the house previous to his decease. Such was the account given by Biddy Brannigan, to which she added her own solemnlyattested belief, that John Melmoth the Traveller was still without a hair on his head changed, or a muscle in his frame contracted; that she had seen those that had seen him, and would confirm their evidence by oath if necessary; that he was never heard to speak, seen to partake of food, or known to enter any dwelling but that of his family; and, finally, that she herself believed that his late appearance boded no good either to the living or the dead. John was still musing on these things when the lights were procured, and, disregarding the pallid countenances and monitory whispers of the attendants, he resolutely entered the closet, shut the door, and proceeded to search for the manuscript. It was soon found, for the directions of old Melmoth were forcibly written, and strongly remembered. The manuscript, old, tattered, and discoloured, was taken from the very drawer in which it was mentioned to be laid. Melmoths hands felt as cold as those of his dead uncle, when he drew the blotted pages from their nook. He sat down to read, there was a dead silence through the house. Melmoth looked wistfully at the candles, snuffed them, and still thought they looked dim, (perchance he thought they burned blue, but such thought he kept to himself.) Certain it is, he often changed his posture, and would have changed his chair, had there been more than one in the apartment. He sunk for a few moments into a fit of gloomy abstraction, till the sound of the clock striking twelve made him start, it was the only sound he had heard for some hours, and the sounds produced by inanimate things, while all living beings around are as dead, have at such an hour an effect indescribably awful. John looked at his manuscript with some reluctance, opened it, paused over the first lines, and as the wind sighed round the desolate apartment, and the rain pattered with a mournful sound against the dismantled window, wished what did he wish for? he wished the sound of the wind less dismal, and the dash of the rain less monotonous. He may be forgiven, it was past midnight, and there was not a human being awake but himself within ten miles when he began to read. Chapter 3 Apparebat eidolon senex. PLINY The manuscript was discoloured, obliterated, and mutilated beyond any that had ever before exercised the patience of a reader. Michaelis himself, scrutinizing into the pretended autograph of St Mark at Venice, never had a harder time of it. Melmoth could make out only a sentence here and there. The writer, it appeared, was an Englishman of the name of Stanton, who had travelled abroad shortly after the Restoration. Travelling was not then attended with the facilities which modern improvement has introduced, and scholars and literati, the intelligent, the idle, and the curious, wandered over the Continent for years, like Tom Coryat, though they had the modesty, on their return, to entitle the result of their multiplied observations and labours only crudities. Stanton, about the year 1676, was in Spain; he was, like most of the travellers of that age, a man of literature, intelligence, and curiosity, but ignorant of the language of the country, and fighting his way at times from convent to convent, in quest of what was called Hospitality, that is, obtaining board and lodging on the condition of holding a debate in Latin, on some point theological or metaphysical, with any monk who would become the champion of the strife. Now, as the theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This was not doomed to be his fate on the night of the 17th August 1677, when he found himself in the plains of Valencia, deserted by a cowardly guide, who had been terrified by the sight of a cross erected as a memorial of a murder, had slipped off his mule unperceived, crossing himself every step he took on his retreat from the heretic, and left Stanton amid the terrors of an approaching storm, and the dangers of an unknown country. The sublime and yet softened beauty of the scenery around, had filled the soul of Stanton with delight, and he enjoyed that delight as Englishmen generally do, silently. The magnificent remains of two dynasties that had passed away, the ruins of Roman palaces, and of Moorish fortresses, were around and above him; the dark and heavy thunderclouds that advanced slowly, seemed like the shrouds of these spectres of departed greatness; they approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if nature herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely valley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom before the approach of night. Stanton gazed around. The difference between the architecture of the Roman and Moorish ruins struck him. Among the former are the remains of a theatre, and something like a public place; the latter present only the remains of fortresses, embattled, castellated, and fortified from top to bottom, not a loophole for pleasure to get in by, the loopholes were only for arrows; all denoted military power and despotic subjugation a loutrance. The contrast might have pleased a philosopher, and he might have indulged in the reflection, that though the ancient Greeks and Romans were savages, (as Dr Johnson says all people who want a press must be, and he says truly), yet they were wonderful savages for their time, for they alone have left traces of their taste for pleasure in the countries they conquered, in their superb theatres, temples, (which were also dedicated to pleasure one way or another), and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never left any thing behind them but traces of their rage for power. So thought Stanton, as he still saw strongly defined, though darkened by the darkening clouds, the huge skeleton of a Roman amphitheatre, its arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now commingling with the purple thundercloud; and now the solid and heavy mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable walls, the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an old Christian, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark the distinction between them and the baptised Moors. All this was forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before him, light struggling with darkness, and darkness menacing a light still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is V victis, shatter to atoms the remains of a Roman tower; the rifted stones rolled down the hill and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a physical enemy, to bid it do its worst, and feel that its worst will perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The relics of art for ever decaying, the productions of nature for ever renewed. (Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock at the perishable monuments which men try in vain to rival them by). The pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton approached, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, There is none who will mourn for her! There is none who will mourn for her! said other voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and blackened figure of what had once been a man, comely and graceful; there is not one to mourn for her now! They were lovers, and he had been consumed by the flash that had destroyed her, while in the act of endeavouring to defend her. As they were about to remove the bodies, a person approached with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if he were alone unconscious of danger, and incapable of fear; and after looking on them for some time, burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and protracted, that the peasants, starting with as much horror at the sound as at that of the storm, hurried away, bearing the corse with them. Even Stantons fears were subdued by his astonishment, and, turning to the stranger, who remained standing on the same spot, he asked the reason of such an outrage on humanity.