The Northern Guardian. — 1897-07-26 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE FATAL REQUEST.  BY A. L. HARRIS,  AUTHOR OP "MINE OWN FAMILIAR FRIEND.' CHAPTER XVl.—Continued.  Mrs. Burritt, partly to her daughter's relief, seemed hardly capable of realieing it. " Ah, those railway companies ! What they have to anewer for! Its all their fault. But for them your father would be alive and hearty now. What's that you keep eaying about hie being murdered? Of coures--ian't that will .1 teia. all along? His &mai lite at their 1(1001 and traffeikriation for lite is the very least they deserve. Shot through the head, did you say ? And you are sure it had nothing to do with the railway company? How can you know—a child like you ?0 wee only the other day I was letting down a tuek in yorlir frock! Ancl.who else could it have been ? It's no use you trying to prove that he wasn't killed in the &cogent. That won't bring your dear father to life again—aria I'm gun, a better one no girl ever had. I knew you mean well, my dear, but nothing you can say or do oan alter the case. If he hadn't been in that train he'd have been alive now—you can't deny that. I suppose none of the other people were shot who were killed at the same time? And is it likely they'd pick out your father? No my dear, I feel convinced that he perished in that terrible accident, and it's no good the railway company trying to put the blame on anyone else. He's dead !—dead !" slit) cried hysterically. "It down't make any differenoe tome how he died. If it had only been an illness, that I could have nursed him through, I should not have minded so much. But I wasn't there and they won't let me see him—and now you coma telling me that he wasn't killed in the railway accident after all—as though that would be any comfort to I me! What does it matter so long as he is dead— dead—dead ?"  The next was the day of the funeral. It was numerously attended, either out of respect Of curiosity, and, as he reviewed the troops of friends and acquaintances that assembled round the grave, the son of the dead man wondered, for an instant, whether it were possible for that one false friend to be among them? ' But the idea was rejected as soon u formed. He looked in vain for one who corresponded with the description of the tall, thin, elderly man, with • dried-up look and grey moustache, and who walked with a limp when last seen by the guard. At last it was all over. The mourner. lied departed, the blinds were drawn up, and everything began to look as usual, in spite of the empty chair in the study and the letter which would never be finished now.  Dinner was served and the two who eat down to it found that it was still possible to take a certain interest in what was put before them. Downstairs oonsiderable relief was openly felt and expressed that the house was free of the mysterious presence, the thought of which had caused so many cold shudders, and such a distaste to look over one's shoulder'', particularly after dusk. "What I objects to in the death in the family," said the cook, after a nice little hot supper, "is not so much the funeral, which draws us all together, like, or the undertaker's men, as I've generally found civil spoken and sociable, but it's the waking up at nights and thinking of the coffin, and listening for you don't know what. But there, you must , take your ape with your downs, and black always I wee becoming to me from a child :"