The pioneer express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]) 1883-1928, 1896-03-27

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
By HENRY HERMAN.


Would truth stand before him naked,
shameless, cold and cruel? Would he
know that her father was an assas-
sin? Would he despise her and bid
her 80 from him?
And yet, SO holy is true woman.
that, In her heart of hearts, she prayed
that heaven might let him speedily re-
cover.
The young earl had been lying ut
his couch something over Il fortnight,
when the cottage next to the Nest
received two visitors. One of them
was the landlord Of the Greyhound
Inn. who held the key of the place and
was charged with its letting; the Sec
Ond was Il middlc-aged man. dressed
in unassuming gentleManly gray
tweeds, and having the appearance Of
a person well-to-dO in q middle walk
of life, Of servant whom fortune
had favored, Or of q tradesman early
retired from business. He was of
medium height, and stoutly built; a
bull-neck gave him look of forbid
ding strength, and his hands. red and
blotchy, were evidence Of the fact that
he had not passed his youth in mere
idleness. There was peculiar cum
ming about an otherwise insignificant
face-the kind Of stealth and slyness
that would not be deferred from stop
ping to the mean; q face that would
not, by Its first sight, secure for its
owner a position of trust in a bank.
Yet. it was not an unpleasant face,
and it grinned with a mixture Of cock
ney and outlandish humor. The small
sandy mustache dropped after the
fashion. to later period burlesGued
by Mr.. Sothern as Brother Sam, and
gave Il peculiar admiXture Of simple
ity to the otherwise not over-prepos-
sessing features.
The .'isitor examined the little house
and its grounds with the utmost care.
He drew on scrap Of paper small
plan of the place, and if the landlord
had stayed with him he might have
been seen measuring With PAGES the
distance between the Nest and the
unoccupied house, which boosted of
the high-sounding appellation, "Ree-
don Lodge" The man obtained all
particulars from mine host of the
Greyhound. discussed questions OF
rent and other conditions, and finally
withdrew. after securing a promise
from the landlord that he would have
the refusal of the place for forty eight
hours.
The pcrson.thus Enthusiastically in
troduced at this portion of our his
tory was Mr.. Edward Wall, known
to some as Ned Wall, and to
others. especially those who had
made his acquaintance out West, dur
ing Pixies Peak Rush, as Pug-nosed
Ned. Mr.. Ned Wall had, at an early
period of his career, done faithful ser
vice to her majesty, in various to her
majesty's jails. In the result, Mr.. Ned
Wall came to look upon his native
land, where the liberty to steal was so
shamefully denied to the subject, as q
very hot-bed of oppression, and the
fiedgling Blue-skin winged away to
the freer fields Of the Far West. Such
is the perversity Of fate, however, that
Mr.. Ned Wall made the amazing dis
covery that those who obtain gold by
simply digging it from the earth OBJ
jected to having it taken from them
without their leave, by young man in
whose welfOre they took no special in
terest. Mr.. Ned Wall would certainly,
on two several occasions, have been
strung up by the neck until dead had
not the powerful Intervention of Mr..
George Maclane saved him from un-
timely extinction. Mr.. George Maclane
had found Mr.. Ned Wall an unscrupu-
lous but useful,sweep, ready to do any
dirty work as long as his belly was
filled, and, in addition to that. neat
with his fingers and glib with his
tongue, an excellent bargainer and a
stony hearted taskmaster to those
placed under his charge. In the end,
Pug-nosed Ned reblossomed into Mr..
Edward Wall and became q hybrid be-
tween private secretary and a valet
of both the Maclanes, who, in that ca
pacity, took him with them to Europe.
On the evening Of the day when Mr..
Edward Wall had inspected Reedon
Lodge, the Maclanes were closeted
with their Representatives at the Boil
tons. Ned exhibited his plan of the
and Of the adjoining cottage and
grounds, and pointed out the exact To-
cation of the room in which Herbert
was lying.
Georges coldly glitterins eye de-
voured every line, every mark.
Il guess it's all right, Ned" he said,
at last. "Only yew've got to make sure
Of yewr Observation-Disclosures sart;n
sure We mustn't get wrong, right or
left, an inch. Yew'll go down to-morror
an hire that cottage and pay him three
months rent on the nail, and If he
wants references say yew're a stran-
ger, an leave him a fifty-pound note
as yewr bond. An, mind now, it's five
an'-twenty thousand golden dollars as
yew're workin' for, SO yew jest fix Up
yewr hind-sight an TEX keer that yew
don't get euchered, nohow."
A diabolical smile lit up his face.
We've got it all fixed an square
now, Dave" he exclaimed. "It only
wants the pluck an weeks hard
work, an guess we'll stop his jaw
forever. He won't remember nothin'
about Dick Ashland, nor nobody else,
when we've done with him, yew bet"
CHAPTER Z.
There were not more than 4 dozen
residences along the lane where Rec
don Lodge was situated, and the in
habitants Of none of these took any
interest in the fact that the little fur
nished house had been lot. The three
tradcsmcn, the butcher, the baker and
the grocer, who called, were told by
Mr.. Sylvanus Thompson, as Mr.. Ed