The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-05

Quickly Miriam told him that she knew, through high sources of information that Hilda was safe and would rejoin him in two days. Then she begged him to listen to her story.
 She began by saying that her mother had been English while on her fathers side she sprang from one of those few princely families of southern Italy that still retained enormous wealth and vast influence. She mentioned name that made the sculptor start with amazement and then turn pale, for only a few years before the world had rung with Miriam's real name in connection with a mysterious and terrible event.
 She went on to say that while still a child she had been betrothed to Mar chese of another branch of their house. When she came of age she repudiated the contract for her destined husband had traits so vile, so evil and wicked that they could be accounted for only by the insanity which often developed in old, close-kept races Of men.
 Then occurred the terrible crime, to which Miriam would barely allude AL though she was innocent, suspicion of guilty connection with it fell so darlzly on her that in her despair she fled from home.
 She had begun a new life for herself in Rome and had begun to taste happi ness, when her evil fate came to her again in the form of the strange man of the catacomb, who was none other than the Marchese. His madness had led him into fearfully grotesque life of mingled depravity and penance. He had entered a monastery. where his frightful, self inflicted penances had won for him the reputation of superior sancity and had gained for him greater freedom than is generally enjoyed by monks.
 His meeting with Miriam, whom he had thought dead, inspired him with fresh impulses to blacker crime than ever. To bend her to his will he held over her the threat of exposing her.
 And thus," said Miriam, weeping, 'I have since become a horror in Hilda's eyes by crime that she saw me help to perpetrate. What 1t was she will tell are only two more days left for us to be
 
 morse, is determined then to submit him. self to earthly justice"
 'Why do we talk now of what makes us sorrowful?" said Donatello. "There are still two days. Let us be happyt'
 As Kenyon looked at him all the sweet and delightful characteristics of the an- tique Faun seemed to have returned to him. Miriam smiled on him, and Kenyon thought that she, too, like Donatello, had reached a wayside paradise For few hours he was the sylvan faun and she his fit companion, nymph of grove or foun- tain. Then a remorseful man and wo- man, linked by a marriage bond of crime, they would set forth toward an inevitable goal
 Two days afterward Hilda returned as a prisoner in a convent while the despotic government of Rome took steps to sup press such parts of the affair as it was not desired to bring to the light of day. Miriam had returned to Rome and called on her great connections there to free the innocent girl, proving to them that she had acted simply as a messenger and had no knowledge of the important secrets that the packet contained.
 So well was the power of Miriam's fam fly exerted that. though the authorities had more than suspected the cause of the monks death, no word of it was ever permitted to reach the world.
 The arm of the law left her untouched. Indeed, after all, her crime lay merely in a glance. She had done no murder! But that earthly mercy was truly cruel ty to one who could find peace only in the tomb.
 And Donatello?' Kenyon was asked long afterward, when Hilda and he had been married many years and were on a visit to Rome once more. What be- came of, him?"
 .'There are deep dungeons in Rome" said Kenyon sadly, "and in one of them lies our poor Faun.'
 And did Donatello's ears really re- senble those of the F Faun of Braxiteles?" he was asked.
 'I know, but may not tell" replied Kenyon, smiling mysteriously
 Next Sundays one-page classic will be .,rhe Black Tulip by Alexandre Du- mas.