The Weekly Journal. — 1902-10-31 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. A family secret which intimately concerns Francis Tremewan, a man of local position Bring at Dartbridge, in Devonshire, has been wntten down by one Mat, a broken-down actor, who has the documents concealed upon him while tramping from • northern provincial town to London. He has as companion a stranded actress named Judith, equally forlorn and more unscrupulous. Having failed to persuade him to convert his secret into gold by means oi blackmail, she steals the documents while he is in a faint from exhaustion and hting:r. She proceeds to Dartbridge, and induces Tremewan to agree to take her into his rerviee as housekeeper by way of purchasing her siiene,-. While she is posing in public at Salcombe, near by, as Mrs. -Bedowen, the widow ot • ship's captain, preliminary to tasking over he: new duties, Mat, who is not dead as she supposes, diacorers her whereabouts and overtakes her in a storm on a mountain path overhanging thi rocks at Bolt Head. A life and death struggle ensues, from which the woman escapes in a mist, with the man alter her fioni rolling a revolver. There is a try of agony—a heavy plunge—and all is silence again. Five years later we find " Mrs. Bedowen" • fixture as housekeeper to Trenuvran and the wife—the languid. passionless woman with "serves—whom this stern, cold man adores. Dora I remewan, the one child of the house, is a young woman now, who loves and is beloved by %% iii Ilannaturd. But she confides to her friend Sue Gillaid, the only daughter of a poor and selfish Colonel and the sister of five unruly boys, that she is forbidden by her father to communicate with the man she loves, who is ill London. seeking fame and tontine as an author. There is an old-standing quarrel of some kind between Trernewan and Will's lather, and the two men have not spoken for years. Dora believes that by her fa her's instructions Mrs. Bedowen has intercepted at least one letter from her lover. In the course of a visit paid by Sue to Dora, Treniewan summons his daughter to his study for what bodes to be an unpleasant interview. The interview relates to a letter from Will Hannaford to Dora which has been intercepted. Her father reiterates his ban rgainst the young man, and points out that in the letter Will tells how Mr. Hannniord has threatened to disinherit him if be CUIUOiI back to Dartbridge without permission. After the interview Mrs. Bedowen proffers her friendship to Dora, and tenders her services in promoting the success of her love affair, but is unmistakeably repelled. Then the housekeeper gets her letter and sensation, for on opening a communication received by post which Dora hands to her, she drops on the floor. "That devil that devil ." she exclaims, on quickly coming to herself. 'The dead are alive—alive:" Presently we find loir stealthily visiting "The Eight Bells,- a waterside public-hous.: of no very clean reputation at Darthridge, to meet a.masterful visitor who goes by the name of Captain Max. Captain Max turns OUL to be Mrs. Brdowen's old tramping companion. Ile was not killed, as she had supposod, in that hand-to-hand encounter at Bolt Dead, when she flung him into the sea after his attempt to shoot her. A fisherman relicrod him, after which he went to South America. made money at cards, lost it at Monte Carlo, and ham now returned penniless in his yacht to share in the blackmail she is extracting from Treinewan. She gives him 12210 in notes, and returns home to the Gray Hones, where Mrs. Tremewan has been confiding to Dora the reason why her father objects to Will Hannaford. It s that Will's father was in Mrs. Tremewan's youth a rival for her hand. The family retire to rest with the exception of Tremewan and Dora, hearing a footstep, sees from her bedroom—which she finds to be locked—a man enter the lighted window of her father's study. In the morning Mrs. Ihdowen alarms her with the news tha,t her father has been found dead, apparently murdered.