The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-02-04

beaming upon her companion.
Sure / will the husband replied;
and the place in the park, where
buried the policeman, who was going
to arrest me as a suspicious character.
New York has changed ! suppose, in
the last forty or fifty years; but it
would be difficult for them to trans
form street so that | couldn't go
into it today and say:
There's the site Of the old Jug
and-Bottle inn, where l shot the Eng
lish dude, who tried to cheat at cards;
or Here stood the house of Jonathan
Todd, the miser, who died from an
overdose of chloroform that | admin
istered preliminary 20 searching his
premises or ON this lot stood an oil
stone mansion, where, forty-tive years
ago | killed three brothers, who came
upon me stealthily, while was col
lecting the silver in the dining-room.' ~
In this strain the old gentleman
talked from the time we left Utica
until the train drew into the Grand
Central station at New York.
There were moments when the re-
cital of his atrocious crimes made me
feel sick and faint. Occasionally, !
pinched my self to make sure that
was awake and not the victim of some
diabolical nightmare.
Again. I wondered if the old man
was insane, and the lady was simply
humoring his whim by pretending TO
believe all the fantasies that crowded
his diseased imagination, presenting
themselves as "reminiscences of his
youthful days.
But, whenever l caught a glance ut
the old mans eye, l saw no suspicion
Of mania. It was clear, steady eye;
whose mild, benignant expression
doubtless, had been one of its own
er's best assets in enabling him 10
pose before the world as a model cit
izan, while with consummate cum
ming he had succeeded in effacing all
traces of his connection with some
of the most dastardly crimes of past
generation.
But I reflected, what a life this
woman's must have been. She must
have met and married him without
knowing anything of his criminal
career. She had been won, doubt
less, by his refined. handsome face
his thrilling voice and courtly man
ners. She had looked up to him as
her beau ideal of man. Perhaps
for months or years he had allowed
her to cherish her illusion; and then,
his egregrious vanity his callous in
difference to every law human and
divine, had prompted him, little by
little, to reveal incidents in the dark
past.
At first the woman had shrunk from
, from him in horror. Perhaps, she had
left his house and gone to her own peo-
nile carving the dark secret locked
in her own bosom.
Then, as he had sought her out and
pleaded with her, pointed to his ire
proachabIe habits since his marriage
threatened to return to his lawle5s
ways unless she should come back
TO him; and she had yielded to his
prayers; she had remembered her
marriage vows, and decided to live
up to them-to love and cherish him
in sickness and in health, to cling to
him. for better or for worse.
And from that reconciliation had
dated 'the tragedy of this woman's
moral deterioration; the gradual de-
cay of all her finer sensibilities. The
old habit of hero worship had return
ed. and from condemning his crimes
she had come to find certain fearful
pride in them. While she would chide
him for his graceless gloating over
robbery and murder, secretly she had
admired the nerve and courage which
had enabled him to carry out his plots
and schemes, she applauded the
, aplomb with which for forty years OF
more he had held his head erect ant
looked every man squarely in tho
, face, mutely defying the world to fint
/ in him the solution of the CHASTITY
mysteries that had bafhed two gen
, erations of criminal investigators.
! With thoughts like these passinl
5 through my mind, I found myself il
New York; and, as the old lady anC
gentleman stood up to leave the train
= I followed close behind them, deter,
mined to learn their names and thei
: destination.
AS they stepped on to the platform
| caught sight of my friend Ton