Year: 1878

| ioiiiiy hinu, lavish on his
return from an occasional visit to town
with trifiing gifts; she ever humbly
proud of his notice, truly grateful for
his magnificence.


The husband saw this, too. and saw
II with pride. Poor fool. he thought
that the valley, where men honored
women as their own mothers, wives
and sisters, was the world.


At last the guest departed. Next
DAY peddler from Mercadel passed
through the valley. Ii was afterward
recollected that he held some speech
with her while exhibiting his wares to
the people of the farm.


Many other things were recollected,
too, when, next night, her place at the
table in the kitchen was vacant. When
the country all about was secured only
TO discover, two days later, that stran-
ger and country-girl had met in the
market-place of Mercadel and had gone
together TO Port Mahon.


Thither the husband followed them,
mad with outraged love for her and
deadly hatred for her destroyer.


He found them not. They had gone
in the yacht which had brought the
traveller TO the island, and which had
lain waiting his pleasure in the harbor.
WHITTIER. To France some said. To
France he therefore went, by the first
vessel that sailed.


Ii would not profit to tell of the long,
fruitless search; to tell how, following
them from place to place, always too
late, he traversed all the Mediterra-
mean coast, until one day, hearing of
him and that he was now travelling
alone he knew that the inevitable had
come to pass, and that she had been
cast aside for fresher face, newer
love. ...


Still searching, he found her at last.


Found her in slum, surrounded by
thieves, by vagrants, by women who
were only women in name, dead, with
breathing babe on her rigid heart.


He took the child, and returning with
it TO his native place put it among those
who would care for it, and once more
turned his restless face towards his
goal. He carried keen knife, and
had a use for il sworn over her sacred
grave.


1t was dreary waiting; and some-
times his heart failed him. The knife
blade rubbed so often TO kill the rust,
was becoming thin.
Ii WAS becoming sharper, though,
and he smiled each time he felt its con-
stantly keener-growing edge.


sit will do its work all the better"
he thought. ''It will DO it all the more
surely, swiftly and fatally"


Sometimes, however,a a fear would
beset him Might he not die? The very
rowing life his pursuit led him exposed
him to periIs " hich might balk his pur-
pose.


eff should die before | meet him"
he thought. "My God if that should
be-"


And at this thought his blood would
turn to ice, and strange horror come
over him, horror that would Sc. his
brain whirling, full of mad devils, that
had all one single, mocking face, and
seemed TO jeer at him and taunt him
with defeat-defeat,


In one of those despairing fits let
ter reached him from what had been
his home. 1t told him that the child
her child-was ill, and besought him TO
return at once.


With a curse upon the fortune that
interrupted his purpose, even for a few
DAYS, he set about it to obey the letter
nevertheless.


He was in Palermo. The old brig
yonder lay there, bound for Majorca,
and he shipped on her.


On the night of the third day out,
they came upon a boat, drifting, and in
it a fainting man-the last survivor ola
pleasure-yacht foundered in a gale two
days before.


He was taken OH board, revived and
restored, and next day appeared on
deck. The husband saw him, and his
heart gave a great leap.
The end, long sought by many labo-
rious ways-through deadly peril, toll,
trouble. bitter want, but always with
undertaking faith, had come at last.
He and her murderer stood face to
face,


His hand went at once to the knife in
his bosom. but touched the priests let
ters and fell again.
| He must be cautious. He must not
create any barrier to his seeing the sick
little one among the Majorcan Hills.


His work could be done secretly and
surely on some one of the days of the
voyage yet TO come.


Several of these days passed without
bringing the opportunity.


At last II arrived.


One night the traveller and the cap
tain sat late together over their wine.
They were deep drinkers both, and
the cabin lamp saw many bumper
emptied before the carousers separated.


The man at the wheel, looking down
through the open cabin hatch, saw
them rise at last, and heard the En-
glishman speak, pressing his temples
between his hands:


81 have a headache" he said, Il Will
60 on deck for breath Of what little
fresh air there is"


Ii was hot; breathless, heavy sum-
mer night, oppressive with the intense
warmth of coming storm; but the
helmsman, as he felt for knife III his
bosom, all the furnaces OF hell couio
not have brought such fieace gust OF
flaming JOY as turned his blood to hre,
and flashed a red mist in his eager eyes
when figure stepped upon the deck.


At last, at last.


"a close, hot night, my man" SAID
the Englishman, in his easy, careless