St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1885-06-13


last in his efforts to determine the guilty
party by any process of mental insight,
he resorted to more prosaic methods,
endeavorlng to ascertain if either of the
men had incurred any unusual expendi-
lures, or been specializing in stocks on
the sly. Failing in these lines of inyes-
LEGATION. he tried to decoy the robber
with tempting bait of gold notes; but
it was evident that alarm had been
taken and the thief was on his guard
Macy's suspicious oscillated from one to
the other, but always returned with
added conviction to the handsome fell
low who came and went in these days
with a singular fightiness of action.
Macy became convinced that Markham
meditated flight, and resolved to keep
sharp lookout for him on steamer
DAYS.
In the midst of his own fruitless in
vestigations he waited with ever-increas-
ing impotence for the result of Man
tissa's experiment, observing with much
satisfaction that she never failed to
place herself in Markham's vicinity on
the occasions of his visits to the house,
watching his actions and listening to
the conversation with unfag ging
patience. Hoyt, honest fellow, seemed
undisturbed by this mark of preference,
and it was evident to Macy that the
latter had received some inkling of the
dark cloud gathering over his rival s
head.
Macy was by no. means a tender
hearted man, but one evening his heart
misgave him. The young men had
both dined with them, and, when they
adjourned to the parlor, Tissa sat down
at the piano and sang some nonsensical
Scotch ballads of love and loss, while
Markham stood by and turned the
music with look that Macy had never
perceived before in his ewes. When
Hoyt took his leave, Macy beat a pre-
cipitate retreat to the library, and re-
fiected on the meaning of that look.
Was it possible that TiSsa, in her new
found zeal, was treading on a mans
heart for the sake of accomplishing her
purpose? 1t would be rather hard on a
man, be he ever so dishonest, to be be-
trayed by the woman he loved. He
should speak to the child about the
matter in the morning. Tissa was over
doing her part.
The evening was well progressed
when he conceived the idea of taking a
little walk over to the office, advancing
the ostensible plea that the cool night
air would do him good, but secretly
actuated by desire to hunt up chap
ter on projectiles, and problem that
with certain metaphysical substitutions
would apply to the case that was agitat-
ing his mind. It was by no means the
first time that he had made like sur
reptitious visit to the deserted building
for a similar purpose, but, as he drew
out a small volume of Davies "Calcu-
lus," the thought occurred to him that
if his movements should chance to be
observed by his Grant employee, they
might well strike terror to his guilty
heart. He tenderly turned the dog
cared pages, gloating over the formulas
and diagrams with the lingering affec-
ton some men display in reviewing ia
vorite lines of poetry, or following the
lines of choice engravings.
He found the place, and stopped to
admire the lissome grace of a hyper
bolic curve that from given point CAY
commenced its march into infnity,
when he became conscious of a singu-
lar and radical change of thought. He
no longer coolly and dispassionately
reasoned of abstract rules and princi-
plies, and applied them in cold blood to
his felloW-men From a faithful de-
votee of an abstruse science, ne found
himself one of its component parts,
and discovered that he was inextricably
entangled in spiral curve which held
him captive with the tenacity of a steel
coil, and bore down with a cruel pres
sure on his head. His perplexity and
irritation were heightened in geometri-
cal ratio by the jeering line Of specta-
tors who passed scornfully by, ridicul-
ing his sufferings without making the
slightest attempt to extricate him.
A paraIlelogram, skipping by on a
pair of borrowed legs, laughed in his
face and tweaked his nose without the
slightest provocation. Simultaneous
equations winked hideously at his mis-
ery. Negative induces turned cold
shoulder to his piteous appeals for help.
A ghoulish-looking fellow, with a face
shaped like a rhomboid, 1eered at him
through pair of triangular eyes, and
made low obeisance in mockery of
his misery. Propositions in proportion
revolyed about him in merciless coquet-
nv, and he became antecedent and con-
sequent in turn. was multiplied and di-
vided without quarter, and suffered the
excruciating torture of being calculated
in duplicate and triplicate ratio. A
small army of knaves, each wearing an
absurd hat, shaped like a radical sign,
mined his flesh with tiny shovels in an
ambitious effort to extract the square
and cube roots out of his system.
Looking down upon his person, he