The Slaithwaite Guardian and Colne Valley News. — 1901-02-15 (Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, England)

CROWS 11E.11•1:1{ATE.  The gay party of travellers whom Strange. more and Ferris had joined did not think they had gained much by the accession to their numbers. Strangemore was gloomy, thoughtful, grave, • awl appeared to be totally wrapped up in some absorbing theme witliin himself. Ferris was moody and boisterously gay by fits and r•-t•atts. He was " everything by turns and nothing long." The travellers decided among themselves that these two brilliant and accomplished men had something out of the common the matter with them. They looked like men with secrets on their 'ninths, they seemed fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. 'lt any one had told them the actual truth— that one of these men was a cruel murderer— that he had ruthlessly killed a beatitiful woman because she had played with his heart like the foolish butterfly that she was—and that the other man had been so foolish and so weak that lie had driven the fairest and most loving wife in the world to her death, they would not have wondered at their grave looks, they would halve recoiled from them in horror and contempt and fear. But there was no one near to betray these vital secrets, and 50 Strangemore and Ferris remained with the party, each a silent vigilant spy upon the movements of the other, and sometimes a terrible, murderous gleam flashed into the gloomy cavernous orbs of Ferris that boded no good to the man who was tracking him down. " if I could only find him alone in some dis• !ant lonely spot cut of sight and sound of all the others, his soul Shwa(' soon follow that of Sibyl St. Alban to Hades !" he would mutter vindict holy. He knew that Strangemore watched him nnrelentingly, unremittingly, for some token of his hidden sin. He knew that when for very weariness he fell asleep beneath the Egyptian stars on the banks of " old IN " that hi, enemy listened breathlessly to the mutterings of his slumber, longing for him to betray himself in his feverish dreams of the past. A mail hatred for Talbot Strangemore grew within him. A thousand Limes he wished him dead. "He is the only living being that suspects me, and in time he will track me down,' he thought, fearfully. "One or the other of VI must die, and that soon."  Vet lie shuddered -when he thought ol imbruing his hands again in human blood. "1 do not want to kill him. I wish tr. heaven that he would go away and forsake hi. deadly purpose, so that I need not be compelled :0 destroy him to save myself," he thought, shudderingly, while his brow was beaded with die cold dews of horror. • In Ihe long, horror-haunted nights and days he cursed the memory of the fair coquette wbo had driven him mad with her sweet words and . smiles until he had forgotten everything but his burning pain and his thirst for revenge. "I loved her, but I killed her. Ah, how horrible it is to love with such madness that emit slays the heartless fair one who has wrought him woe !" ho thought. He wearied of the idle dalliance of their lift in Egypt. He longed to push on to Africa here the men talked of hunting lions and igems. " That will he the sport for me," he said to himself. "In the keen ardour of such pursuits, many forget ms-self and forget her whom in my madness I slew." But, his comrades could not be induced to hasten their march into Africa. They had left ono of their number sick in England and they could go no fin ther without him. "We promised to wait for him here," they said, " and we cannot afford to leave him. He N a noted hunter. He has been in Africa before, and he knows the rout e." Strangemore and Ferris did not take much interest in the expected new-comer, until one tiny when they heard quite incidentally that he was an American. " lint he will never return to his native land," I hey said. "He is a misanthrope and a womanhater. His life has been blasted by the falsity of his once idolized wife, and he has forsworn his country for ever," and then the two listeners felt as if they hold some kindehip with the absent man.  41HAPTER XLII,