Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1907-11-14
CHAPTER K.
BY the Calais Mail.

The mail-packet steamed out Of Do.
yer harbor on its way to Calais under
the shining stars of cloudless night.
Mr.. Mark Buckingham stood on the
deck and watched the lights of the
shore recede. He had no remem-
brance of the great ocean he had
crossed when his mother brought him
from the land of his birth, India 1t
had been quite revelation to him
that he had ever been there.
He had accepted the fact that he
was the child Of female tramp who
had deserted him in the farmers barn,
and he had concluded that he was
born in the land in which he was
abandoned. the land he had never
quilted.
AS the cliffs of England receded
from his gaze he felt like a man who
for the first time is leaving his native
country and putting out into the un-
known. He lighted pipe, drew his
travelling cap down over his eyes, and
leaning over the bulwarks, watched
the lights of Dover grow gradually
| DINNER,
For the first time he felt absolutely
! safe. In the land he was leaving be-
hind lay the prison where his vacant
cell must still be all object of painful
! contemplation to the warders. Far
| away, in another portion of the land,
| his wife was probably at this lonely
| hour sitting in her lonely room won
/ dering what might be her husbands
! fate. It was possible that she pictur-
| ed him in the direst distress and pri-
walton; she might even be praying for
| his deliverance from the hands of his
! pursuers.
| Elsewhere in the land that was now
only a dim outline in the distance
| stood the ancient home Of his ances-
| tors, the grand old Tudor mansion
! that had been the home of the Bret
-! tinghams for centuries.
{ There his father, the fine old Eng
| lish gentleman whom he had seen for
! the first time the previous evening,
was living, weak and broken man,
hiding his horrible secret from the
world. In Mark Brettingham's heart,
| hardened as it was, there was feel
| ing of pity for the old aristocrat whose
pride had been brought SO low.
| Once or twice he had found himself
wishing that, for his fathers sake, he
| could have come to him with clean
| er record.
But his feeling Of pity for his father
| was gradually mingled with feeling
of pity for himself.
He had been very badly treated. He
| had been left in barn when he ought
| to have been nursed and tended amid
; luxurious surroundings. He had been
! allowed to grow up dependent on
| the charity of stranger, when he
! ought to have been brought up and
| educated as the heir to an ancient
title
| And through this sorry trick that
Fortune had played upon him he had
/ become reckless and desperate in his
need Of money, and had brought him.
! self to a felon's doom. His name was
| registered upon the books of the Do-
! lice, and his portrait was in the con-
! Yict album of Scotland Yard.
| Because his father had not taken
sufficient trouble to find him out, all
these things had happened to him;
and, ignorant of the position which
was his by right, he had married the
! daughter of shopkeeper, young
woman pretty and amiable enough,
/ but by no means the sort of girl he
! would have selected had he known
| then what he knew now. His wife
since his Imprisonment had become a
| work girl, or something of that sort.
/ How could he be expected, when he
came into his estates, to introduce a
| work girl into society as Lady Bret
! tingham?