Year: 1862

bring such wicked stories here tonight of
all nights ?''


at is the awful truth confessed to me
with his own lips" answered the wretched
father, "and his excuses are debts con-
tracted at the gaming-table, and for the
means of dissipation which he has hidden
from me so craftily all these years. I
have paid back the money, and he is free
to hide his shame where he chooses. But
he is dead to me, to all of us forever"


''Where is he, oh where is hep" she
moaned.


''Miles away by this time," answered
the father. ''By tomorrow he will be
upon the ocean. wish he were beneath
it,


"Without seeing me, without bidding me
farewell" sobbed the girl. 81 cannot
bear it."


'Can you wish to see him?" said the
old man, in a wondering voice


And she answered only, 81 loved him,
l loved him!"


"And too loved him. said the father,
''and for that very reason l wish that he
were dead"


There had been music and laughter and
glittering lamps and blazing fires in that
old mansion an hour before but when an
other hour had passed, the candles were
eXtinguished, the fires were smOuldering
into embers, the guests were gone, and
she who should have been a happy bride
lay moaning on her pillow with the hot
blood of fever in her veins And in her
burning hand letter was crushed, blot
ted scrawl which had been brought to the
door by a strange messenger, and in it
were these words:


My love-my lost darling !-even while you
scorn me- as you mnst, pity me little. By the
memory of the time when you thought me
worthy of your love, when was worthier than
I am now, pray you to believe that, wicked as
/ have been, l gave you a true and constant
heart. They may tell you many evil things of
me and speak the truth; but if they say have
ever been false to you in thought or deed, they
lie, so help me Heaven! Oh! that money, that
horrible, tempting money! some fiend must
have placed it in my reach to tempt me- Yet /
did not mean to steal it. Ihoped to pay it back
at some future time. IwOuid have done it-in-
deed, indeed I would. I had led dissipated
life, of which they knew nothing at home I
had debts of which could not tell my father.
/ lOnged to leave the companions of my past
madness, and live better man henceforth I
could only rid myself of them by paying their
demands. Their power to disgrace me was
great, and they would have no mercy. The
means were there-pity me, Rose, oh! pity me,
for / was mad when I took that gold My
darling! it was for your sake that would have
flung those evil associates from me. / lOnged
to make myself-oh! my God what have
made myself in my blind madness? An out
cast; thing for men to point at with the finger
of scorn; creature unfit to grasp the hand of
an honest fellow-man. Yet loved you. Rose,
I loved you. Pray for me sometimes. Do not
full and mad but he loved ME and pity me
for that. You will never be disgraced by the
sound of my name. 1 forsake it as forsake
my native land. But while live. your memory
will linger with me; and when die (may it be
soon), your name will be the last upon my lips.


The epistle closed without signature,
as though the writer had indeed no right
to bear his fathers honest name, and Rose
read in the absence of those well known
characters, an awful sign of her lovers
misery and degradation.


Despised, forsaken, homeless, nameless,
she thought ofhim wandering over the face
of the cruel world, and fallen though he
was, her heart clung to him still. Had he
come at that moment to her threshold, had
his hand struck the panels Of her door, she
would have opened it and passed out with
him to share his life of shame and poverty
wheresoe'er it leads him. He had sinned,
but his identity remained to her. He was
still the lover of her girlhood, the husband
of the future she had dreamed of, and she
longed to see him, to fold him to her heart
and comfort him.


But days passed by, and months and
years followed them, and there were no
tidings of him. The orphan heiress lived
alone in the dwelling where her marriage
feast had once been spread, and the gray
haired parents Of her loved one grew old
with the weight Of their miserable memo
RIGS.


Only once throughout the gloom came
ray of light to tell of the existence of the
lost one. A letter with foreign post
mark, enclosing the sum which the father
had paid to free his wretched son from the
clutches of the law, came to the old mans
door one day, and these words were writ
ten on the paper folded abont the notes in
the familiar hand


/ need not tell you whence this money
comes. 1t cannot cancel the debt of clemency
1oWe you DuC you Impoverished youIscu !Or
me, and cannot bear to think of it otherwise
1 should not have awakened the memory of one
who must be hateful to you, and who has prov
ed curse to all who ever loved him.


After this, the hope she had once had of
meeting him died out of Roses heart.
Wherever he dwelt, whatever fate had
dealt to him, there was no thought of
coming home within his breast, she saw
that plainly.


She was young yet. Young and beau
tiful, and rich also, and friends would not
be shaken off by her sadness and coldness.
So by degrees her woman's pride came to
her aid, and rather than parade her grief
before the world, she smothercd it and
went in secret Peonle said she had for