The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-05

fascinating like the face of a sorceress, and as false. He saw that check to his ambitions when he had renounced his worldly hopes. dreaming in one brief fever of poetry that comes to all men, of living forever in the paradise of love.
 He lived again through those first few months of bliss. Then came the waning passion, the gradual withdrawal of each from each, and then a reawakening of love when their boy was born to them.
 But behind the bright ohilds face Will liam Brandon's eyes, staring into the past, saw a keen, handsome, evil face smiling sneeringly My Lord Mauleverer had come into his life.
 He suffered again the hot torment of discovering his friends treachery, his wife's guilt. Once more, greater than his pain, came the ha1f-crazed exultation over his evil revenge. He cast off the woman. telling her falsely that he had betrayed her into a mock marriage and he sold her to Mauleverer in return for political pref erment.
 If there was shame in the man it could not rise against his passionate triumph and against his ambitions that famed out the more fiercely for their brief suppress sion Even as he sat there, great, rich and honored, he felt no shame, but lived over again the keen delight in his re- venge.
 | While he sat there the witness was an- nounced He entered-a tmid, small thin | man, evidently of the lowest orders, with ! a sly, yet not evil face Carefully and minutely the lawyer questioned him. He answered humbly, telling how he had | been present at the death of a woman who had come to her end in a poor lodg- ing in London, leaving an infant son. | After her death he had stolen her belong ings and sold them to the pawnbroker, 1 but he had kept some letters, and these 1 he now turned over to the lawyer. They were his own to Judith.
 And the boy?" asked the lawyer eag- erly.
 He had disappeared some years ago, re- piled the man, and it had been impossi- ble to trace him. When the fellow left l the house 1t was with money in his pock- ct and with a promise of great reward .shoud he find trace of the young man.
 Left alone, the lawyer read the letters again and burned them. one by one. The childs face swan before his eyes and filled his heart with a strange, unwonted |, feeling. After his wfe's disappearance he had lavished all his affection and built all his hopes on his son. He had watched over him by day and by night. His ambi- tions had revolved around him. And then the woman, having been deserted by Maul- everer when he tired of her. stole the child and disappeared again without leav- ing a trace.
 The story of her wretched death left him unmoved. Indeed, even after all these years, he felt joy in the misery that had come to her. Dlsmissng her from his mind, he bent all his sharp wits to finding the boy.
 It proved baffllng task. His agents failed again and again It was as if the lad had been swallowed up.
 While he was engaged in his search the first of his new honors fell in. Simul- taneousy with the elevation of his friend Mauleverer to the office of chamberlain he was made judge
 At the same time Lord Mauleverer was robbed again, and by the same Captain Iovett and his two companions who had robbed him before. He carried his jewelry with him this time, and, being we'll armed had thought that he and his retinue could defy all the gentlemen of the road But at the point where the Henley and Read ing roads united two men suddenly rode ct the carriage and knocked the two post boys from their horses with celerity that scarcely gave him an opportunity to cry out.
 The next moment the horses were whirled into ditch, where the carriage upset. Mauleverers armed servant fired at third robbef who was galloping up. He missed. and hastily tore open the car riage door to help his master out.
 Mauleverer, by no means coward faced the hishwaymen determinedly. The , two whoh da begun the attack cut the traces or the nprses and let them gallop