Iron County register., 1891-11-26

hands. ''Our mother was right" he
suddenly shouted, again springing erect.
God was against all that bad business!
I never felt it as / feel it now. But you
don't feel it-you." he went on, in scath-
ing wrath. You're an athcist-you've
been one for yearsl You call it agnos-
tic, free-thinker, nationalist and such
facile, convenient names. But atheist
is behind them all. Come, now, Gerald,
if you refuse to give me back those pa
pers, that in turn may fling them back
among the powers of evil where they
belong, II shall never willingly speak
to you or notice you again"
Gerald measured his brothers frame
with kindled and contemptuous eyes.
"Then we separate from this hour" he
said. 81 will not give the papers back.
Il despise in you the spirit that makes
you seek to burn them, and I gladly
agree that we shall henceforth be
strangers"
Furious, he dashed himself out of
Sylvan's house. Doubtless at any pre-
vious period of his life he would have
remembered with pity that illness had
perhaps lain at the root of his brothers
arrogant claim. But now he quickly
forgot even the fact of their quarrel. 1t
was so easy for his infatuated mind and
heart to forget every thing except the
new devotion which now mastered both.
month, two months, passed for him
like the lapse of week. He received
three or four kind letters from Thorn
dyke, telling of the frightful fire and
his own extraordinary financial escape
from disaster which had beggered not a
few of his fellow-citizens. Two of the
letters inclosed drafts, which Gerald
cashed in New York, scarcely having Il
grateful thought, as he did so, with re-
gard to the kindly motive that prompted
their conveyance. At another time he
would have written his protector pages
of thankful response. But now he
wrote only brief if cordial notes, all
sense of duty being vailed for him in
vapors of needless egoism. He inces-
sanity saw the woman he loved, and in
cessantly told himself that she grew
dearer to him after each fresh inter-
view. He had become jealous of the
possibility that she would ever regain
her memory. He preferred her just as
she was, and had no realization of the
reckless outlook on his own future
which he betrayed when declaring to
Clyde: Even if she had really been
some other mans wife my marriage
with her would now seem to me wholly
sacred. Death took her, and in dying
all the worldly bonds that she had
formed were nullified. Death gave her
back to me, newborn, a second and
perhaps a finer self. If she had sinned
some dark sin during her former life, /
should never dream of not pardoning it.
feel that she will soon consent to
marry me. Almost Immediately, then,
we shall be made one. Her health is
rail, and will take her into the West,
where DR.. Thorndyke, ever kind to me,
will welcome u.s."
Clyde expostulated but vaialy. Here
was madness indeed, but of a sort with
which his whole pharmacopesa of drugs
had no power to deal. He had seen the
men who had brought ''Perdita's" body
to Gerald's rooms and had tried to wiring
from them a confession of that sort of
robbery in which the rope of wedding
ring might be included But the men
were rough fellows and yet keen-witted
ones. They seemed clearly to under
stand that when hiring them as he had
done, Clyde had laid hisasah open, In