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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13740 ***
+
+MISCHIEVOUS MAID FAYNIE
+
+Author's Special Edition
+
+by
+
+LAURA JEAN LIBBEY
+
+Author of _Ione_, _Parted By Fate_, _Sweet Kitty Clover_, etc.
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover of Mischievous Maid Faynie]
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE LOVER'S TRYST.
+
+
+It was five o'clock on a raw, gusty February afternoon. All that day and
+all the night before it had been snowing hard. New York lay buried
+beneath over two feet of its cold white mantle, and with the gathering
+dusk a fierce hurricane set in, proclaiming the approach of the terrible
+blizzard which had been predicted.
+
+On this afternoon, which was destined to be so memorable, two young men
+were breasting the sleet and hail, which tore down Broadway with
+demoniac glee, as though amused that the cable cars were stalled fully a
+mile along the line, and the people were obliged to get out and walk,
+facing the full fury of the elements, if they hoped to arrive at their
+destinations that night.
+
+It could easily be ascertained by the gray, waning light that both young
+men were tall, broad-shouldered and handsome of face, bearing a
+striking resemblance to one another.
+
+They were seldom in each other's company, but those who saw them thus
+jumped naturally to the conclusion that they were twin brothers; but
+this was a great mistake; they were only cousins. One was Clinton
+Kendale, whom everybody was speaking of as "the rage of New York," the
+handsomest actor who had ever trod the metropolitan boards, the idol of
+the matinee girls, and the greatest attraction the delighted managers
+had gotten hold of for years.
+
+His companion was of not much consequence, only Lester Armstrong,
+assistant cashier in the great dry goods house of Marsh & Co., on upper
+Broadway.
+
+He had entered their employ as a cashboy; had grown to manhood in their
+service, and he had no further hope for the future, save to remain in
+his present position by strict application, proving himself worthy of a
+greater opportunity if the head cashier ever chose to retire.
+
+He lived in the utmost simplicity, was frugal, dressed with unusual
+plainness, and put by money.
+
+He hadn't a relative on earth, save his handsome, debonair cousin, who
+never sought him out save when he wanted to borrow money of him.
+
+Clint Kendale's salary was fifty dollars per week, but that did not go
+far toward paying his bills at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, keeping a fast
+horse and giving wine suppers. In his early youth he had begun the pace
+he was now going. He had received a fine collegiate education, and at
+his majority stepped into the magnificent fortune his parents had left
+him. It took him just one year to run through it, then, penniless, he
+came from Boston to New York and sought out his poor cousin. Lester
+Armstrong succeeded in getting a position for Kendale with the same firm
+with which he was employed, but at the end of the first week Clinton
+Kendale threw it up with disgust, declaring that what he had gone
+through these six days was too much for him. He had rather die than
+work.
+
+He borrowed a hundred dollars from his Cousin Lester and suddenly
+disappeared. When he was next heard from he blossomed out, astonishing
+all New York as the handsomest society actor who had ever graced the
+metropolitan boards, and caused a furore.
+
+There was another great difference between the two cousins, and that was
+a heart; just one of them possessed it, and that one was Lester
+Armstrong.
+
+On this particular afternoon Kendale had lain in wait for his cousin at
+the entrance of Marsh & Co.'s to waylay him when he came from the
+office. He must see him, he told himself, and Lester must let him have
+another loan.
+
+Lester Armstrong was glad from the bottom of his true, honest heart to
+see him, but his brow clouded over with a troubled expression when he
+learned that he wanted to borrow five hundred dollars. That amount
+seemed small, indeed, to the lordly Kendale, but to Lester it meant
+months of toil and rigid self-denial.
+
+"Come into the café, and while we lunch I will explain to you why I must
+have it, old fellow," said Kendale, always ready with some plausible
+story on his glib tongue.
+
+"Haven't time now," declared Armstrong. "I must catch the five-twenty
+train from the Grand Central Depot; haven't a moment to lose. I will be
+back on the nine o'clock train. If you will come over to my lodging
+house then I'll talk with you. I cannot let you have the sum you want.
+I'll tell you why then, and you will readily understand my position. Ah,
+this is your corner. We part here. Wish me luck on the trip I am about
+to take, for I never had more need for your good wishes."
+
+"You are not going off to be married, I hope?" exclaimed Kendale in the
+greatest of astonishment.
+
+A light-hearted, happy, ringing laugh broke from Armstrong's mustached
+lips, the color rushed into his face, and his brown eyes twinkled
+merrily.
+
+"There's the dearest little girl in all the world in the case," he
+admitted, "but I haven't time to tell you about it now. I'll see you
+later."
+
+With this remark he plunged forward into the gathering gloom, leaving
+Clinton Kendale standing motionless gazing after him in the greatest
+surprise. But the cold was too intense for him to remain there but an
+instant; then wheeling about, he hastily struck into a side street,
+muttering between his teeth:
+
+"He must let me have that five hundred dollars, or I am ruined. I must
+have it from him by fair means or foul, ere the light of another day
+dawns. I've borrowed a cool two thousand from him in four months. I
+wonder how much more he has laid by? I must have that five hundred, no
+matter what I have to resort to to get it, that's all there is about it.
+I am desperate to-night, and a person in my terrible fix fears neither
+God nor man."
+
+Meanwhile Lester Armstrong pushed rapidly onward, scarcely heeding the
+bitter cold and terrible, raging storm, for his heart was in a glow.
+
+He reached the Grand Central Depot just as the gates were closing, but
+managed to dash through them and swing himself aboard of the train just
+as it was moving out of the station.
+
+The car was crowded; standing room only seemed to be the prospect, but
+the young man did not seem disturbed by it, but settled his broad frame
+against the door and looked out at the sharp sleet that lashed against
+the window panes with something like a smile on his lips.
+
+He had scarcely twenty miles to ride thus, but that comforting
+remembrance did not cause the pleasant smile to deepen about the mobile
+mouth.
+
+He was thinking of the lovely young girl who had written him a note to
+say that she expected him at the trysting place, without fail, at seven
+that evening, as she had something of the greatest importance to
+communicate to him.
+
+"Of course my dear little girl will not keep the appointment in such a
+blizzard as this. She could not have foreseen how the weather would be
+when she wrote the precious little note that is tucked away so carefully
+in my breast pocket; but, like a true knight, I must obey my little
+lady's commands, no matter what they may be, despite storm or
+tempests--ay, even though I rode through seas of blood!"
+
+Half a score of times the engine became firmly wedged in snowdrifts in
+traversing as many miles. There were loud exclamations of discomfiture
+on all sides, but the handsome young man never heard them. He was still
+staring out of the window--staring without seeing--and the smile on his
+face had given place to an expression of deep wistfulness.
+
+"Sometimes I wonder how I have dared to aspire to her love--the
+beautiful, petted daughter of a millionaire, and I only an assistant
+cashier on a very humble salary--ay, a salary so small that my whole
+year's earnings is less than the pin money she spends each month.
+
+"If she were but poor like myself, how quickly I would make her mine.
+How can I, how dare I, ask her to share my lot? Will her father be
+amused, or terribly angry at my presumption?
+
+"This sort of thing must stop. I cannot be meeting my darling
+clandestinely any longer. My honor forbids, my manhood cries out against
+it.
+
+"But, oh, God! how the thought terrifies me that from the moment they
+find out that we have met, and are lovers, they will try to part
+us--tear my darling from me!"
+
+They had met in a very ordinary manner, but to the infatuated young
+lover it seemed the most ideal, most romantic of meetings. The pretty
+little heiress had gone to the office of Marsh & Co. to settle her
+monthly account. The old cashier was out to lunch. His assistant, Lester
+Armstrong, stepped forward and attended to the matter for the pretty
+young girl, surely the sweetest and daintiest that he had ever beheld.
+
+That night he dreamed of the lovely, dimpled rosebud face, framed in a
+mass of golden curls; a pair of bewildering violet eyes, and a gay,
+musical voice like a chiming of silver bells, and lo! the mischief was
+done. The next day the assistant cashier made the first mistake of his
+life over his accounts. The old cashier, Mr. Conway, looked at him
+grimly from over the tops of his gold-rimmed glasses.
+
+"I hope you have not taken to playing cards nights, Mr. Armstrong," he
+said. "They are dangerous; avoid them. Wine is still worse, and above
+all, let me warn you against womankind. They are a snare and a delusion.
+Avoid them, one and all, as you would a pestilence."
+
+But the warning had come to the handsome young assistant cashier too
+late.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"YOU MUST NOT MARRY HIM--HEAVEN INTENDED YOU FOR ME."
+
+
+Slowly but surely the sturdy engine struggled on through the huge
+snowdrifts, reaching Beechwood a little after seven, over an hour and a
+half behind time.
+
+Lester Armstrong swung himself off the rear platform into fully five
+feet of snow, floundering helplessly about for an instant, while the
+train plunged onward, and at last struck the path that led up over the
+hills in the village beyond.
+
+Beechwood consisted of but a few elegant homes owned and occupied by
+retired New Yorkers of wealth. Horace Fairfax was perhaps the most
+influential, as well as the wealthiest of these; his magnificent home on
+the brow of the farthest hill was certainly the most imposing and
+pretentious.
+
+Lester Armstrong's heart gave a great bound as he came within sight of
+it, standing like a great castle, with its peaks and gables, and windows
+all blazing with light and the red glow of inward warmth against its
+dark background of fir trees more than a century old, and the white
+wilderness of snow stretching out and losing itself in the darkness
+beyond.
+
+All heedless of the terrible storm raging about him, the young man
+paused at the arched gate and looked with sad wistfulness, as he leaned
+his arms on one of the stone pillars, up the serpentine path that led to
+the main entrance.
+
+"What I ought to do is never to see Faynie again," he murmured, but as
+the bare thought rushed through his mind, his handsome face paled to the
+lips and his strong frame trembled. Never see Faynie again! That would
+mean shut out the only gleam of sunshine that had ever lighted up the
+gray somberness of his existence; take away from him the only dear joy
+that had made life worth the living for the few months. He had drifted
+into these clandestine meetings, not by design; chance, or fate, rather,
+had forced him into it.
+
+Mr. Marsh, the senior member of the firm by whom he was employed, also
+resided in Beechwood. It was his whim that the keys of the private
+office should be brought to him each night. Thus it happened that the
+performance of his duties led Lester each evening past the Fairfax home.
+
+One summer evening he espied Faynie, the object of his ardent
+admiration, standing in the flower garden, herself the fairest flower of
+all. It was beyond human nature to resist stopping still to gaze upon
+her. This he did, believing himself unseen, but Faynie Fairfax had
+beheld the tall, well-known form afar down the road, and she was not
+displeased at the prospect of having a delightful little chat with the
+handsome young cashier.
+
+Faynie's home was not as congenial to the young girl as it might have
+been, for a stepmother reigned supreme there, and all of her love was
+lavished upon her own daughter Claire, a crippled, quiet girl of about
+Faynie's own age, and Faynie was left to do about as she pleased. Her
+father almost lived in his library among his books, and she saw little
+of him for days at a time.
+
+Therefore there was no one to notice why Faynie suddenly developed such
+a liking for roaming in the garden at twilight; no one to notice the
+growing attachment that sprang up and deepened into the strongest of
+love between the petted heiress and the poor young cashier.
+
+Lester Armstrong had struggled manfully against it, but it was for a
+higher power than man's to direct where the love of his heart should go.
+He made strong resolutions that the lovely maiden should never guess the
+existing state of affairs, but he might as well have attempted to stay
+the mighty waters of the ocean by his weak will. All in an unforeseen
+moment the words burst from his lips--the secret he had attempted to
+guard so carefully was out.
+
+He had expected that beautiful Faynie Fairfax would turn from him in
+anger and dismay, but to his intense surprise, she burst into a flood of
+tears, even though she looked at him with smiling lips, April sunshine
+and showers commingled, confessing with all a young girl's pretty,
+hesitating shyness that she loved him, even as he loved her, with all
+her heart. Then followed half an hour of bliss for the lovers such as
+the poets tell of in their verses of a glimpse of Paradise.
+
+Although they exchanged a hundred vows of eternal affection, Lester
+Armstrong hesitated to speak of marriage yet. Faynie was young--only
+eighteen. There was plenty of time. And to tell the truth, he dared not
+face the possibilities of it just yet. It required a little more courage
+than he had been able to muster up to seek an audience with the
+millionaire--beard the lion in his den, as it were--and dare propose
+such a monstrously preposterous thing as the asking of his lovely,
+dainty young daughter's hand in marriage. Lester was timid. He dreaded
+beyond words the setting of the ball rolling which would tear his
+beautiful love and himself asunder. Heaven help him, he was so
+unutterably happy in the bewildering present.
+
+His reverie was suddenly interrupted by seeing a little black figure
+hurrying down the path. Another instant, and the little breathless
+figure was clasped in his arms, close, close to his madly throbbing
+heart.
+
+"Oh, Faynie, my love, my darling, my precious, why did you brave the
+fury of the tempest to keep the tryst to-night? I am here, but I did not
+expect you, much as I love to see you. I was praying you would not
+venture out. Oh, my precious, what is it?" he cried in alarm, as the
+fitful light of the gas lamp that hung over the arched gate fell full
+upon her. "Your sweet face is as white as marble, and your beautiful
+golden hair is wet with drifted snow, as is your cloak."
+
+To his intense amazement and distress, she burst into the wildest of
+sobs and clung to him like a terrified child. All in vain he attempted
+to soothe her and find out what it was all about.
+
+The first thought that flashed through his mind was that their meetings
+had been discovered, and that they meant to put him from Faynie, and he
+strained her closer to his heart, crying out that whatever it was,
+nothing save death should separate them.
+
+Little by little the story came out, and the two young lovers, clasped
+so fondly in each other's arms, did not feel the intense cold or hear
+the wild moaning of the winds around them. Through her tears Faynie told
+her handsome, strong young lover just what had happened. Her father had
+sent for her to come to his library that morning, and when she had
+complied with the summons, he had informed her that a friend of his had
+asked for her hand in marriage, and he had consented, literally settling
+the matter without consulting her, the one most vitally interested. She
+had most furiously rebelled, there had been a terrible scene, and it had
+ended by her father harshly bidding her to prepare for the wedding,
+which would take place on the morrow, adding that a father was supposed
+to know best what to do for his daughter's interests; that the fiat had
+gone forth; that she would marry the husband he had selected for her on
+the morrow, though all the angels above or the demons below attempted to
+frustrate it.
+
+"You will save me, Lester?" cried the girl, wildly clinging to him with
+death-cold hands. "Oh, Lester, my love, tell me, what am I to do? He is
+very old, quite forty, and I am only eighteen. I abhor him quite as much
+as I love you, Lester. Tell me, dear, what am I to do?"
+
+He gathered her close in his arms in an agony that words are too weak to
+portray.
+
+"You shall not, you must not, marry the man your father has selected for
+you, my darling. You are mine, Faynie, and you must marry me," he cried,
+hoarsely. "Heaven intended us for each other, and for no one else. You
+shall be mine past the power of any one human to part us ere the
+morrow's light dawns, if--if you wish it so."
+
+She clung to him, weeping hysterically, answering:
+
+"Oh, yes, Lester, let it be so. I will marry you, and you will take me
+away from this place, where no one, save Claire--not even my
+father--loves me."
+
+He strained her to his throbbing heart with broken words, but at that
+instant the shriek of an approaching train sounded upon his ears. He
+tore himself away from her encircling embrace.
+
+"To do all that I have to do, I must return to the city, quickly arrange
+for the marriage and a suitable place to take my bride. I will return by
+ten o'clock. Be at this gate, my darling, with whatever change of
+clothing you wish to take with you. I will bring a carriage. The way by
+carriage road from the city is less than seven miles, you know. We will
+drive to the minister's in the village below. A few words and I shall
+have the right to protect you through life, and oh! my darling, my idol,
+my trusting little love, may God deal by me as I deal with you!"
+
+Those were the last words Faynie heard, for in the next instant her
+lover had torn himself free from her clinging arms and was dashing like
+one mad through the drifts toward the railroad station again. Then, with
+a strange, unaccountable presentiment of coming evil, Faynie Fairfax
+turned and stole up the serpentine path into the house again.
+
+In just an hour's time Lester Armstrong was hurrying along Broadway
+again, making all haste toward his lodgings. Suddenly some one tapped
+him on the shoulder, and a voice which he instantly recognised as his
+cousin's said, laughingly:
+
+"Both bent in the same direction, it seems. Well, we'll travel along
+together to your lodging house, Lester."
+
+But alas! Who can see the strange workings of destiny? In that instant
+Lester Armstrong slipped on the icy pavement, and Kendale, bending
+quickly over him, exclaimed:
+
+"He has broken his neck! He is dying. He won't last five minutes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A TERRIBLE PLOT AGAINST A HELPLESS YOUNG GIRL.
+
+
+A gasp of horror broke from Kendale's lips. Yes, Lester Armstrong was
+fatally injured, he could see that.
+
+Glancing up, he saw that they were within a few doors of his lodgings.
+Picking him up by main force, he carried him thither at once and placed
+him upon his couch. He had expected to see him breathe his last, but to
+his great surprise Lester Armstrong opened his eyes and whispered his
+name.
+
+"It is all over with me, Clinton," he whispered. "I--I realize that my
+fall was fatal, and that it is a question of moments with me, but I--I
+cannot die until I have told you all, and you have promised to go
+quickly to my darling and tell her my sad fate."
+
+"Any commission you have you may be sure I will execute for you,"
+replied Kendale, and even while he spoke he was wondering whereabouts in
+that room Lester Armstrong kept his cash.
+
+Between gasps, his voice growing fainter and fainter with each word,
+poor Lester told his story, of his love, his wooing and the climax which
+was to have taken place in two hours' time.
+
+Kendale listened with bated breath. To say that he was amazed,
+dumfounded, scarcely expressed his intense surprise.
+
+Armstrong, his poor plodding cousin, to strike such luck as to be about
+to marry an heiress! It seemed like a veritable fairy story. Who would
+have thought the poor cashier would have known enough to play for such
+high stakes?
+
+Almost as soon as Lester Armstrong had uttered the last word, he fell
+back upon his pillow in a dead faint.
+
+"The end is not far," muttered Kendale. "I suppose it would look better
+to send a call for an ambulance and have him sent to the hospital."
+
+He acted upon the thought without a moment's delay, and while the wagon
+was _en route_ made a quick search of his unfortunate cousin's
+apartment, a sardonic smile of triumph lighting his face. And as he
+transferred the money to his pocket, a sudden thought rushed through his
+brain--a thought that for the instant almost took his breath away.
+
+Like one fascinated, he looked down at the white face. "I could do it;
+yes, I am sure I could do it," he muttered, drawing his breath hard.
+
+At that moment the ambulance wagon rattled up to the door. In another
+instant the two attachés entered the room.
+
+"What is the difficulty?" queried the man, and briefly Kendale
+explained.
+
+"It seems hardly worth while to take him to the hospital," said one of
+the men; "he would hardly last until we reach there. Still, if you
+insist--"
+
+"Yes, I insist," he cut in sharply.
+
+"What name is to be entered?" asked the surgeon.
+
+"Clinton Kendale. He is an actor, and my cousin," he responded in a low
+even voice.
+
+He watched them while they carried forth the unconscious man.
+
+"My first test will be with the people of this house," he muttered,
+shutting his teeth hard.
+
+Thrusting the money still deeper in his pocket, he walked boldly down
+the stairs, tapping at the door to the right, which he knew to be the
+living room of the family.
+
+"I am going to give up my room," he said.
+
+"Laws a mercy, Mr. Armstrong!" exclaimed the old lady. "What sudden
+notice! I am so sorry to lose you!"
+
+He chatted for a few moments, paid what was due her, then turned hastily
+and left the place, remarking before he went that he should not need the
+few things that he left in his room; that she could keep them if she
+liked as remembrances.
+
+Once again he was out on the street, with the cold wind blowing on his
+face.
+
+"Nothing ventured, nothing won!" he said, under his breath. "Now for the
+heiress and the million of money. By Jove! it's better to be born lucky
+than rich. I shall need an accomplice in this affair, and that imp of
+Satan, Halloran, is just the one to help me out with my scheme. It's
+lucky I have an appointment with him to-night. I shall be sure to catch
+him. I think it was a stroke of fate that I wasn't in the cast for the
+rest of the week, though I kicked pretty hard against it at the time.
+Good-by, footlights and freezing dressing-rooms. I can make a million of
+money ere the day dawns."
+
+He hailed a passing cab, jumped into it and was driven across the city.
+
+Halloran, the comedian at the same theatre, was sitting in his room
+half asleep over a half-emptied rum bottle. He always resorted to this
+course to drown his sorrows when he was laid off.
+
+An hour later the two men were driving with lightning-like rapidity
+toward the direction of Beechwood.
+
+"Ten," sounded from the belfry of a far-off church as the horses,
+plunging and panting, struggled up the road that led to the Fairfax
+mansion.
+
+"Now see that you play your cards right," warned Halloran.
+
+"Trust me for that," replied his companion, removing a cigar from his
+white teeth, and blowing forth a cloud of smoke. He was about to draw a
+flask from his breast pocket, but Halloran put a restraining hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Remember that is your besetting sin," he said. "You have had enough of
+that already. It will require a steady nerve to meet the girl and carry
+out the deception, for the eyes of love are quick to discern. If she
+should for an instant suspect that you are not her lover, Lester
+Armstrong, the game is up, and you have lost the high stake you are
+playing for."
+
+"You are right," exclaimed the other, "nothing must interfere with the
+marriage."
+
+"This must be the place," exclaimed Halloran, in a low voice; "large
+gabled house, arched gate, serpentine walk; yes, there is the figure of
+a woman in the shadow of the stone post this way. You are actually
+trembling. Remember, it's only a young girl you are to face on this
+occasion, and a deucedly pretty one, at that. The time that you will be
+more apt to be shaky is when you face her father; but I guess you're
+equal to it."
+
+A low laugh was his companion's only answer. The next moment Kendale
+called to the driver to halt, threw open the door and sprang out into
+the main road, hastening toward the little figure that had emerged out
+of the shadow.
+
+"Oh, Lester, you have been so long," cried the girl, springing into his
+arms with a little sobbing cry. "I have been waiting here almost half an
+hour."
+
+"It took longer to come than I had reckoned on, my darling," he
+answered. "You know I had to stop at the village below and make
+arrangements for the wedding."
+
+The girl drew back and looked at him.
+
+"Your voice sounds so hoarse and strange, Lester," she said. "Have you
+been crying?"
+
+His arms fell from her; he drew back, laughing immoderately.
+
+"What, weeping on the happiest day of my life?" he cried. "Well, that's
+pretty good. I've been up to my ears in business, rushing around, to
+get everything in shipshape order, but, good Lord! what am I thinking
+about, to keep you standing here in the snow? Here is the coach, and by
+the way, I've brought along an old friend of mine, who was wild to
+witness the marriage ceremony."
+
+As he spoke he took her by the arm and drew the girl toward the carriage
+in waiting.
+
+What was there about her lover that seemed so changed to the girl, that
+caused the love to suddenly die out of her heart?
+
+"Lester," she cried, drawing back, "oh--oh, please do not be angry with
+me, but I've changed my mind. It seemed such a terrible thing to do. Let
+us not be married to-night."
+
+Something like an imprecation rose to his lips, but he chopped it off
+quickly, uttering again that laugh, so hard, so cruel, so
+blood-curdling, that it sent a chill of terror to her young heart.
+
+"It's too late to change your mind now," he exclaimed. "It's only
+natural you should feel this way; girls always do. Here is the coach and
+the horses. The driver and my friend will be impatient to be off."
+
+Either the excitement of his coming triumph or the brandy he had taken
+had made him recklessly wild.
+
+He drew her along, heedless of her struggles, her passionate protest.
+His face was flushed, his dark eyes gleamed; he was ready at that moment
+to face and defy devils and men.
+
+"Don't make a fuss, my darling. You've got to come along," he exclaimed.
+"Of course, you have scruples and all that. I think the more of you for
+them, but you'll thank me for not listening some day. I'll bring you
+back after the ceremony's over and set you down at your own gate, if you
+say so, I swear I will," and as he spoke he caught her in his arms and
+fairly thrust her into the vehicle, placed her on the seat and sprang in
+beside her.
+
+The door closed with a bang and the horses were off like a flash.
+
+Too terrified to utter another word of protest, and half fainting from
+fright, Faynie sank back, gasping, into the farthest corner. Her
+companion turned to the man sitting opposite.
+
+"My friend, Smith, Faynie," he said by way of introduction, and adding,
+before the other could utter one word to acknowledge the introduction,
+"let's have a little more of that. I'm chilled to the marrow with the
+cold, standing out there in the snow."
+
+There was a faint move of the little bundle huddled up in the corner.
+She fell forward in a dead faint.
+
+"So much the better," cried Kendale. "She will not bother us until
+we've had time to formulate our plans. Ha, ha, ha! how easy it is for a
+sharp-witted fellow like myself to make a million of money!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FOND LOVE TO HATRED TURNED.
+
+
+Despite the severe shock which caused Faynie to swoon, her
+unconsciousness lasted but a few moments, then, dazed and bewildered,
+her blue eyes opened slowly, and she realized with horror too great for
+words that she was whirling swiftly over the snowy road, still in the
+company of the two men, her lover and his companion.
+
+They were talking together in low, guarded tones. She could not help but
+hear every word distinctly, and they fell upon her ears with horror so
+intense she wondered that she lived through it from moment to moment.
+
+It was Lester Armstrong who was speaking at that moment, and she was
+obliged to clutch her hands tightly together to keep from screaming
+aloud as she heard him say to his companion:
+
+"I have always been a free lance among the pretty girls, drifting about
+much after the fashion of the bee wherever my fancy listed, and it will
+be more than irksome to yoke myself in the matrimonial harness to this
+girl. She is not of the kind--face, figure, temperament, anything--that
+is calculated to arouse my admiration. I detest your baby-faced
+creatures of her stamp, but she's heiress to a million, and I have
+concluded to swallow the gilded pill.
+
+"There's one thing I assure you of, before she is married to me a
+fortnight I'll break that cursed temper of hers, if I have to break her
+neck or her heart, or both, to do it. She shall find that I'm her lord
+and master from this hour henceforth, and my word is law."
+
+"I'd advise you not to rush the scheme for getting that big sum of money
+until you have gained her confidence a little. More flies can be caught
+with molasses than vinegar, you know."
+
+"I shall have little patience with her," declared her lover. "I detested
+her the first instant my eyes rested upon her, and I am positive the
+feeling will grow upon me with every passing hour, instead of
+diminishing."
+
+"It is easy enough to guess the reason for that," laughed the other.
+"You are in love with the queenly Gertrude, who has already more adorers
+than she can count. It is common report that you are the beauty's
+favorite, however, and if you weren't both so confoundedly poor, you'd
+make a first-class couple. As it is, of course it's not to be thought
+of."
+
+"Except in one way," cut in the other in a sharp, dry, hard voice. "If
+this girl whom I marry to-night were to die suddenly on the wedding
+trip, for instance, I would come in for her fortune; then, when the
+excitement blew over, I could go to Gertrude and say--"
+
+The sentence was never finished, for at that moment the door of the
+vehicle was suddenly wrenched open, and with a piercing cry Faynie
+sprang out into the raging storm and the inky blackness of the night.
+
+A terrible imprecation broke from the lips of the handsome scoundrel by
+her side.
+
+"I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that that little fool tricked us by
+feigning unconsciousness, and has heard every word we uttered. Of
+course, it's to be regretted, but that doesn't change my plans a
+particle. I'll be the husband of the willful little heiress in an hour's
+time, or my name isn't--"
+
+"Lester Armstrong," put in the other, laconically.
+
+The coach was instantly stopped, and both men made a flying leap into
+the huge snowdrift that banked both sides of the country road, calling
+back to the driver to light a lantern, if he had been careful enough to
+bring one with him, and hand it to them in double-quick order.
+
+The search lasted for fully half an hour. Had the ground suddenly opened
+and swallowed her? they asked each other, with imprecations both loud
+and furious.
+
+To have a fortune of a cool million so near his clutches, and suddenly
+lose it, was more than the villain could endure calmly. He was frenzied.
+His rage at the girl slipping so cleverly, so audaciously, through his
+fingers knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to stifle the fierce
+exclamations that sprang to his lips of what he should do when he once
+found her.
+
+When Faynie had jumped from the vehicle she lay for an instant half
+stunned upon the cold, frozen ground where she had fallen. It had taken
+the coach a minute to stop, but that minute had carried it several rods
+beyond the spot where she lay. She saw by the uncertain glimmer of the
+carriage lamp the two forms spring out into the darkness and come back
+in search of her, and a piteous cry of unutterable fear rose to her
+blanched lips from the very depths of her panting, terror-stricken
+heart.
+
+She tried to spring to her feet and fly, but the depth to which she sank
+with every step exhausted her quickly, and she sank down among the white
+drifts awaiting her doom like a wounded bird in the brush whom the
+cruel sportsmen are nearing with their hounds.
+
+She raised her lovely young face to the dark night sky, calling upon God
+and the angels to protect her, to save her from the man she had loved
+with all the passionate strength of her heart up to that hour, and whom
+she hated and feared now a thousandfold more than she had ever loved
+him.
+
+All in a few moments of time her idol had fallen from its high pedestal
+of manly honor and lay in ruins at her feet.
+
+How could she ever have believed Lester Armstrong noble, good and true,
+a king among men? Where was the tenderness in voice and manner that had
+won her heart from her, and his oft-repeated assurance that he cared for
+her for herself alone; that he wished to Heaven she were no heiress, but
+as poor as himself, that he might show her the power of his great love?
+An hour ago--only an hour ago--yet it seemed the length of a lifetime in
+the shadowy past, she had crept out of the house to meet her lover at
+the trysting place, her heart beating with love for him, sobbing out to
+Heaven to send her true love quickly back to her.
+
+As she had closed the door of the great mansion noiselessly behind her,
+she realized that she was putting wealth and luxury away from her
+deliberately and choosing a life of rigid economy with the lover whose
+earnings were, alas, so much smaller than even the pin money she had
+been accustomed to.
+
+But with love to brighten the way, she felt that she could endure any
+hardship with noble Lester Armstrong, who loved her so dearly and
+devotedly.
+
+After a time, perhaps, her father would forgive her for this step, and
+take her back to his home and heart, and welcome Lester, too. She had
+read of such things.
+
+The night air blew bitterly cold against her face as she stepped bravely
+forth, but she did not waver.
+
+The great hall clock chimed the hour of ten, and her heart beat faster,
+for she said to herself that her lover was nearing the trysting place
+and she had not much time to spare.
+
+"Good-by, papa," she murmured, turning for an instant and looking up at
+his lighted window. "Good-by, my stepmamma," she whispered. "You have
+always hated me and wished me out of the way. I am going now, and you
+will rejoice. Good-by, Claire," she added, as her eyes wandered upward
+to the little lighted window in the western wing. "You never hated me.
+You always loved me as though we had indeed been sisters. Good-by, kind
+old family servants. You will all miss me, I know, but I am going to
+happiness and love. What fate could be better?"
+
+She waited some moments at the trysting place ere she heard the sound of
+crunching wheels on the snow. A moment later she heard the welcome voice
+saying: "Faynie, where are you?" The next instant she was folded in a
+pair of strong, masculine arms.
+
+But as the owner of them touched her lips with his own Faynie had
+started back with a terrible feeling of faintness rushing over her. For
+the first time her lover's breath was strong with the odor of brandy.
+
+And the voice, which was always so gentle, kind and endearing, was
+muttering something about "the cursed darkness of the night."
+
+No wonder the girl's soul revolted, and that she changed her mind
+suddenly about the elopement, which was to make or mar her young life.
+And what she heard after he forced her into the coach only added to the
+terror which had grown into her heart against him, and when she made
+that flying leap from the coach, her one cry to Heaven was that she
+might escape the man whom she had but so lately madly adored, but whom
+she now so thoroughly abhorred.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"CAN YOU PERFORM THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY AT ONCE, REVEREND SIR?"
+
+
+It was the hour of eleven by the village clock. Eleven sounded from the
+old clock on the mantel. The fire burned low in the grate of Rev. Dr.
+Warner's study. The air was growing chill in the room. Still, the old
+pastor, who had looked after the village flock for nearly half a
+century, heeded neither the time nor the chill, he was so intent upon
+the sermon he was writing for the morrow.
+
+He had scarcely concluded the last line ere he heard a well-known tap
+upon the door.
+
+He smiled as he arose from his chair, crossed the room and flung open
+the door.
+
+He knew well whom he should find standing there, old Adam, the village
+sexton and grave digger, who always stopped when he saw a light in the
+study window.
+
+"Come in, Adam," said the reverend gentleman; "come up to the fire and
+warm yourself; it's a wild night to be about. Has any one sent you here
+for me?"
+
+"No, parson," replied Adam, hobbling in. "There's no call for you to be
+out on this terrible night, thank Heaven. It's quite by chance that I
+left my own fireside myself. I had an errand at the other end of the
+village. The weather caught me returning--a regular blizzard--and I have
+been floundering about in the drifting snow for hours. I thought I had
+lost my way until I saw the light in the window, and--"
+
+But the rest of the sentence was never finished, for at that moment both
+men heard distinctly the sound of carriage wheels without, accompanied
+by the loud neighing of horses.
+
+Before they could express their wonderment there was a loud peal at the
+front door bell.
+
+The reverend gentleman answered the summons in person.
+
+Before him stood three persons, two men and a woman, a slender figure
+wearing a long dark cloak, and whose face was covered by a thick veil.
+
+Both men had their coat collars turned up and their hats pulled low over
+their faces to protect them from the stinging cold.
+
+"You are the Rev. Dr. Warner?" queried one of the gentlemen. The
+minister bowed in the affirmative, hurriedly bidding his guests to
+enter.
+
+"You will pardon our errand," exclaimed the stranger who had already
+spoken, "but we are here to enlist your services. Can you perform a
+wedding ceremony in the old chapel across the way? Our time is limited.
+We are in all haste to catch a train, and wish the marriage to take
+place with the least possible delay."
+
+"Certainly, certainly, sir," returned the good man. "I am always pleased
+to join two souls in holy matrimony. Step in; the lady must be
+thoroughly chilled. This is a dreadful night."
+
+"We prefer to make our way directly over to the chapel," remarked the
+man who had spoken up to this point. "The lady is warm, having but just
+left the carriage, a few steps beyond."
+
+"As you will," responded the pastor. Turning to the old sexton, he said,
+quietly: "Will you step over to the church, Adam, brush the snow from
+the steps and light the lamps about the altar?"
+
+Adam hastened to carry out his commands. He had scarcely completed his
+task when the bridal party entered, preceded by the pastor.
+
+Adam watched them curiously as they filed down the aisle, both men still
+supporting the slender figure quite until the altar was reached.
+
+The Rev. Dr. Warner, shivering with the severe cold of the place, picked
+up his book quickly.
+
+"Which is the bridegroom?" he asked, looking from one muffled figure to
+the other. The man toward the left of the girl dropped back a pace or
+two, silently waving his hand toward his friend.
+
+The old minister had never heard the names of the contracting parties
+before, and the idle thought for an instant found lodgment in his mind
+whether or no they could be fictitious. Then he blamed himself roundly
+for his momentary suspicion, and went on hurriedly with the ceremony.
+
+The man answered in a low, guarded voice. There was a tone in it which
+somehow jarred on the good minister's sensitive nerves. The girl's voice
+was pitifully fluttering, almost hysterical.
+
+But that was not an uncommon occurrence. Few brides are calm and
+self-possessed.
+
+"You will please lift your veil for the final benediction," said the
+aged pastor, pausing, book in hand, and gazing at the slim, silent,
+dark-robed figure, who had made her responses faintly, gaspingly, almost
+inaudibly. Again it was the stranger to the left who complied with his
+request, but for one instant both the clergyman and the old sexton
+caught sight of a face white as death, yet beautiful as an angel's,
+framed in a mass of dead-gold hair; but the flickering of the lamps
+caused strange shadows to flit over it. There was a moment of utter
+silence, broken only by the howling of the wind outside.
+
+Then slowly the minister's voice broke the terrible silence by uttering
+the words: "Then I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined
+together let no man put asunder."
+
+As the last word echoed through the dim old church the cold steel of a
+revolver, which had been pressed steadily to the girl's throbbing heart
+by the hand of the bridegroom, concealed by her long cloak, was quickly
+withdrawn.
+
+"My wedded wife!" murmured the man, and in his voice there was a tone of
+mocking triumph. The girl swooned in his arms, but, turning quickly with
+her, he hurried forward into the dense shadows of the church, carrying
+her to the coach in waiting without attracting attention.
+
+He could scarcely restrain himself from shouting aloud, so exuberant
+were his spirits.
+
+"Rave. Do whatever you like. You cannot change matters now. I am your
+husband, ay, the husband of a girl worth a million of money. When we are
+out of hearing of the old parson I will give three rousing cheers to
+celebrate the occasion and give vent to my triumph--ay, three cheers and
+a tiger with a will and a vengeance."
+
+The appearance of his friend, who had remained behind to adjust the
+little matters that needed attention, put a stop to his hilarity for the
+moment.
+
+"Well, what's next on the programme? What do you suggest now, Halloran?"
+he exclaimed, as that individual sprang into the coach and took his seat
+with chattering teeth.
+
+"I propose that you drive to the nearest inn or hostelry, or whatever
+they choose to call it hereabouts. I understand there is one some five
+miles from here, and, indeed, the horses won't last much longer than
+that."
+
+"I'm governed by your advice," replied his companion, with a hilarious
+laugh. "Give the order to get to the hostelry as soon as the driver can
+make it. Anything will suit me. I'm not proud, even if I have made a
+cool million in an hour's time. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"Are you mad?" whispered his companion, giving him a violent nudge.
+
+"Bah! You needn't fear that she will hear what I'm saying. The puny
+little dear has swooned again. Didn't you notice that I had to fairly
+carry her from the altar?"
+
+"These dainty little heiresses have to be handled with kid gloves,"
+remarked Halloran. "Fainting when anything goes wrong seems to be their
+especial weakness."
+
+"She will soon find out that I will not tolerate that kind of thing!"
+exclaimed Armstrong, as he insisted upon being called from that moment
+out.
+
+"Be easy with her. Don't show your hand or your temper until you get
+hold of the money," warned Halloran. "Remember you are playing for a
+great stake, and the surest way of winning is by keeping the girl in
+love with you."
+
+"She is mine now. I am her lord and master. I shall not bother making
+love to the milk-and-water, sentimental creature, as the other one
+probably did. She isn't my style, and I have little patience with her.
+There was a decided feeling of antagonism between us from the start, and
+then my forcing her to go through the ceremony at the point of a cold
+steel weapon will not have the effect of endearing me to her ladyship.
+She is sure to hate me, but that won't bother me a snap of my finger."
+
+"Don't get independent too soon," remarked Halloran. "Pride always goeth
+before a fall, you know. You haven't the money in your hands yet. Don't
+lose sight of that important fact, my dear boy."
+
+They talked on for half an hour or more; then suddenly the driver drew
+rein.
+
+"This is the country tavern, and my horses cannot go any further; they
+are dead lame and played out," he announced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE VILLAIN AND HIS VICTIM.
+
+
+It was certainly something entirely out of the experience of the old
+innkeeper at the country crossroads to be aroused from his slumbers at
+midnight by guests seeking the shelter of his hospitable roof, and that,
+too, on the most terrible night of the year.
+
+The old man could scarcely believe his ears when he heard the sound of
+the old brass knocker on the front door resound loudly through the
+house.
+
+He quite imagined that he must have dreamed it, until a second and third
+peal brought him to his senses and his feet at the same instant.
+
+His bewilderment knew no bounds when he appeared at the door a few
+minutes later and found a coach standing there and the occupants seeking
+a lodging, also shelter for the horses.
+
+"I haven't but one room to spare," exclaimed the old innkeeper, holding
+a flaring candle high above his head to better view his visitor.
+
+"Have you a room in which a fire could be made?" asked one of the men.
+"We have a lady with us."
+
+"I suppose we could let you have my daughter Betsy's, she being off to
+the city on a visit."
+
+"My companion and his br--his wife could have that; you can dispose of
+me anywhere," returned the speaker. "I could doze in a chair in the
+barroom for that matter. The driver could be as easily disposed of."
+
+"Then bring the lady right in," said the old innkeeper. A moment later,
+the lovely girl, still unconscious, was brought in and laid upon the
+settee in the best room.
+
+"What is the matter with the young woman?" gasped the innkeeper, his
+eyes opening wide with amazement.
+
+"Merely fainted from the intense cold," returned one of the men briefly,
+adding: "If you will see that a fire is lighted in the room that you
+spoke of I shall be very much obliged."
+
+"I'll have my wife down in a jiffy. No doubt the poor creature's half
+frozen, but a hot whiskey toddy will thaw her out quicker than you could
+say Jack Robinson," and he trotted off briskly on his double mission of
+rousing his wife to look after the girl and his hired help to assist the
+driver in putting away the horses, while he himself attended to making a
+blazing fire in the little chamber over the best room.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell it the good housewife was by the
+girl's side.
+
+"What a beautiful young creature!" she exclaimed, as the veil was
+thrown back and she beheld the lovely face, white as chiseled marble,
+framed in its cloud of golden hair. "Is it your sister, sir?" she asked,
+with all a country woman's thoughtless curiosity.
+
+"No, she is my wife," exclaimed the stranger, who stood over by the
+fireplace, his brows meeting in a decided frown.
+
+"Laws a mercy! Isn't she young to be married?" exclaimed the woman.
+"Why, she don't look sixteen. Been married long?"
+
+The stranger by the fireplace deliberately turned his back on the woman,
+vouchsafing her no reply.
+
+By that time the innkeeper announced that the room above was ready, and
+that they might come up as soon as they liked.
+
+Again the stranger by the fireplace lifted the slender figure, bore her
+up the narrow rickety stairway, saying good-night to his friend as he
+passed him by.
+
+"Good-night to you, and pleasant dreams," replied Halloran; "the same to
+your wife."
+
+The innkeeper followed the tall stranger with his burden to see that
+everything was made comfortable, put more logs in the fireplace, then
+turning, said:
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you, stranger?"
+
+"Nothing," replied the man curtly, but as the old innkeeper reached the
+door he called sharply: "Yes, I think there is something else that would
+add to my comfort, and that is a good stiff glass of brandy, if you have
+such a thing about the place."
+
+The old man hesitated.
+
+"I'll pay well for it," said the other, eagerly.
+
+"You see, we haven't a license, stranger, to sell drinks, and they're
+pretty strict with us hereabouts. I generally let a man have it when I
+know him pretty well, but I can't say how it would affect you."
+
+"Have no fear on that score," returned the other. "Here's a five-dollar
+note for a pint bottle of brandy. Will that pay you?"
+
+"Yes," returned the innkeeper. It was the golden key. The man laughed to
+see how quickly he trotted off on his errand, returning with the bottle
+in a trice.
+
+"Anything else, sir?" he said.
+
+"No," replied the other, "save," adding, "do not call us too early
+to-morrow. We're not of the kind that rise with the sun. Nine o'clock
+will answer. And see that that wife of yours gets up the best breakfast
+that can be obtained."
+
+"You won't have to complain of that, sir," exclaimed the innkeeper,
+pompously. "You'll get a piece of steak with the blood followin' the
+knife; crisp potatoes, a plate of buckwheat cakes, with butter as is
+butter, and honey that's the real thing; a mug of coffee that would bear
+up an egg, with good old-fashioned cream, not skim milk, to say nothing
+of--"
+
+"That will do," exclaimed the stranger, with an impatient wave of his
+white hand. "I never like to know beforehand what I'm going to get."
+
+"But the lady, sir? Mebbe she'd like somethin' kind a delicate like--a
+bit o' bird or somethin' like that?"
+
+"We'll see about that to-morrow all in good time," fairly closing the
+door in the garrulous innkeeper's face "Good-night," and he shut the
+door with a click and turned the key in the lock, and for the first time
+he was alone with the girl he had forced so dastardly into the cruellest
+of marriages. He had placed Faynie on the white couch. He crossed the
+room and stood looking down at her, with his hands behind his back, and
+a sardonic smile on his face.
+
+"You and your millions of money belong to me," he cried, under his
+breath. "Ye gods! what a lucky dog I am after all!" and a low laugh that
+was not pleasant to hear broke from his lips.
+
+At that instant a broken sigh stirred the girl's white lips.
+
+"Ah, you are coming to, are you?" he muttered. "The old lady's toddy is
+beginning to revive you."
+
+He could not help but notice how unusually beautiful the girl was.
+
+"What a chance of fortune this is for me, but it does not follow, even
+though she was madly in love with my cousin, that she will hold me in
+the same favor. But I'll stand none of her airs. I'll show her right
+from the start that I'm the boss, and see how that will strike her
+fancy. There'll be a terrible time when she comes to--screams, shrieks
+of anger, that will call everybody to the door."
+
+He turned on his heel and walked over to the mantel, where the innkeeper
+had deposited the bottle and the glass.
+
+He poured out a heavy draught and drank it at a single swallow. This was
+followed by another and yet another.
+
+"Ah, there's nothing like bracing oneself up for a scene like this," he
+muttered, with a sardonic laugh.
+
+The liquor seemed to turn the blood in his veins to fire and set his
+heart in a glow. He laughed aloud. In that moment he felt as rich as a
+king, and as diabolical as Satan himself.
+
+He was nerved for any emergency; he was the girl's lord and master, her
+wedded husband. She would be made to understand that fact with little
+ceremony.
+
+He threw himself down in a chair, where he could watch her, and waited
+results, and each instant he sat there the fumes of the brandy rose
+higher and higher, until it reached his brain.
+
+    "There was a laughing devil in his sneer
+    That woke emotions of both hate and fear;
+    And where his scowl of fierceness darkly fell,
+    Hope, withering, fled and mercy sighed farewell."
+
+Yes, a few short moments and consciousness would return to the girl--the
+stormy scene would begin.
+
+Would the sharp eyes of love detect the difference between himself and
+Lester Armstrong, whom he was impersonating? He knew every tone of his
+cousin's voice so perfectly that he would have little difficulty in
+imitating that. The more closely he watched the girl, the more conscious
+he became of her wonderful beauty, and his heart gave a bound of
+triumph.
+
+It was worth a struggle, after all, to have as beautiful a bride as she,
+even though she hated him.
+
+"If I watch her much longer it will end by my being madly in love with
+her," he mused. "I never could withstand a pretty face."
+
+The wild winds moaned like demons outside. The bare branches writhed and
+twisted in the storm, tapping weirdly against the window pane. The room
+grew warmer as the fire took hold of the logs in the grate, and with
+the heat the fumes of the brandy rose into his brain, and with it his
+color heightened, his cheeks and lips were flushed and his eyes
+scintillating. With unsteady hand he reached out for the flask again,
+uncorked it, and without taking the trouble to reach for the glass,
+placed the bottle to his lips and drained it to the dregs.
+
+"She is awaking," he muttered, with a maudlin laugh, and springing from
+his seat with unsteady steps, he crossed the room and stood by the
+couch, looking down eagerly into the beautiful white face upon the
+pillow. As if impelled by that steady, serpentine, fiery glance, the
+girl moaned uneasily.
+
+"Awaking at last!" he muttered, with a diabolical smile. At that moment
+Faynie's violet eyes opened wide and stared up into his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HE RAISED HIS CLINCHED HAND, AND THE BLOW FELL HEAVILY UPON THE
+BEAUTIFUL UPTURNED FACE.
+
+
+With returning consciousness, Faynie's violet eyes opened slowly--taking
+in, by the flickering light of the candle, the strange room in which she
+found herself; then, as they opened wider, in amazement too great for
+words, she beheld the figure of a man, half hidden among the shadows,
+standing but a few feet away from the couch, his eyes fastened upon her;
+she could even hear his nervous breathing.
+
+With a gasp of terror Faynie sprang from the couch with a single bound;
+but the cry she would have uttered was strangled upon her lips by the
+heavy hand that fell suddenly over them, pressing so tightly against
+them as to almost take her breath away.
+
+"Don't attempt to scream or make any fuss," cried a hissing voice in her
+ear--"submit to the inevitable--you are my wife--there is nothing out of
+the way in your being here with me. Come, now, take matters
+philosophically and we shall get along all right."
+
+He attempted to draw the girl into his encircling arms, her wonderful
+beauty suddenly dawning upon him; but she shrank from his embrace, and
+from the approach of his brandy-reeking lips, as though he had been a
+scorpion.
+
+With a suddenness that took him greatly aback, and for an instant at a
+disadvantage, she freed herself from his grasp, and stood facing him
+like a young tragedy queen in all her furious anger and outraged pride.
+
+"Do not utter another word, Lester Armstrong!" she panted, "you only add
+insult to injury--why it seems to me some horrible trick of the
+senses--some nightmare--to imagine even that I could ever have cared for
+you--to have believed you noble, honorable and--a gentleman. Why, you
+almost seem to be a different person in his guise--you are so changed in
+tone and manner from him to whom I gave my heart. The affection that I
+thought I had for you died a violent death."
+
+She did not notice that the man before her started violently at these
+words--but the look of fear in his eyes gave place the next instant to
+braggadocio.
+
+He would have answered her, but she held up her little white hand with a
+gesture commanding silence, saying, slowly, with quivering lips:
+
+"I repeat, the affection that I believed filled my heart for you died
+suddenly when I told you that I had changed my mind about eloping, and
+instead of studying my desires you insisted that the arrangement must be
+carried out."
+
+"My--my--love for you prompted it, Faynie," he exclaimed, in a maudlin
+voice. He knew he had the name wrong, but could not think what it was to
+save his life. "Come, now, let's kiss and make up, and love each other
+in the same old way, as the song goes."
+
+"What! love a man who thrusts me into a coach despite my entreaties,
+takes me to a church, and with a revolver pressed close to my
+heart--beneath my cloak--forces me to become his wife! No. No! I loathe,
+abhor you--open that door and let me go!"
+
+With an unsteady spring he placed himself between her and the door,
+crying angrily as he ground out a fierce imprecation from between his
+white teeth. "Come, now, none of that, my beauty. You're my wife all
+right, no matter how much of a fuss you make over it. I want to be
+agreeable, but you persist in raising the devil in me, and though you
+may not know it, I've a deuce of a temper when I'm thoroughly roused to
+anger--at least that's what the folks who know me say.
+
+"Sit right down here now, and let's talk the matter over--if you want to
+go home to the old gent, why I'm sure I have no objection, providing he
+agrees to take your hubby along with you. There'll be a scene of
+course--we may expect that--but when you tell him how you love me, and
+couldn't live without me and all that--and mind, you put it on heavy--it
+will end by his saying: 'Youth is youth, and love goes where it is sent.
+I forgive you, my children; come right back to the paternal
+roof--consider it yours in fact.' And when the occasion is ripe, you
+could suggest that the old gent start your hubby in business. Your wish
+would be law; he might demur a trifle at first, but if you stuck well
+to your point he'd soon cave in and ask what figure I'd take to--"
+
+"Stop!--stop right where you are, you mercenary wretch!" cried Faynie in
+a ringing voice. "I see it all now--as clear as day. You--you--have
+married me because you have believed me my father's heiress, and--"
+
+"You couldn't help but be, my dear," he hiccoughed. "An only child--no
+one else on earth to come in for his gold--couldn't help but be his
+heiress, you know--couldn't disinherit you if he wanted to. You've got
+the old chap foul enough there, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"You seem to have suddenly lost sight of the fact that there is some one
+beside myself--my stepmother and her daughter Claire."
+
+He fell back a step and looked at her with dilated eyes--despite the
+brandy he had imbibed he still understood thoroughly every word she was
+saying.
+
+"A stepmother--and--another daughter!" he cried, in astonishment--almost
+incoherently.
+
+"You seem to forget that you always used to say to me--that you hoped
+they were well," said Faynie with deepening scorn in her clear, young
+voice.
+
+"Oh--ah--yes," he muttered, "but you see I was not thinking of
+them---only of you," and deep in his heart he was cursing the hapless
+cousin--whom he believed dead by this time--for not mentioning that the
+girl had a stepmother and sister.
+
+"Had you taken the time to listen to something else that I had to tell
+you, you might have reconsidered the advisability of eloping with me in
+such haste," went on the girl in her clear, ringing tones, "for it has
+become apparent to me--with even as little knowledge of the world as I
+possess--that you are a fortune hunter--that most despicable of all
+creatures--but in this instance your dastardly scheme has entangled your
+own feet. Your well-aimed arrow has missed the mark. You have wedded
+this night a penniless girl. An hour before you met me at the arched
+gate my father disinherited me, and when he has once made up his mind
+upon any course of action--nothing human, nothing on earth or in heaven
+would have power enough to induce him to change it."
+
+The effect of her words were magical upon him. With a bound he was at
+her side grasping her slender wrists with so tight a hold that they
+nearly snapped asunder.
+
+Intense as the pain was, Faynie would not cry aloud. He should not see
+that he had power to hurt her, even though she dropped dead at his feet
+at last from the excruciating torture of it.
+
+"What is it you say--the old rascal has--disinherited you?" he cried,
+scarcely crediting the evidence of his own ears.
+
+"That is just what I said--my father has disinherited me," she replied
+slowly and distinctly, adding: "His money was his own--to do with as he
+pleased--he gave me the choice of--of--marrying to suit him or being cut
+off entirely. I--I--refused to accept the man he had selected for me.
+That ended the matter. 'Then from this hour know that you shall not
+inherit one penny of my wealth,' he cried. 'I will cut you off with but
+the small amount required by law. There is nothing more to be said. You
+are a Fairfax. You have taken your choice, and as a Fairfax you must
+abide by your decision!' You will remember I told you I had something to
+tell you the moment you came up to me at the arched gate, but you would
+not listen. Now the consequence is upon your own head."
+
+"I have married a beggar, when I thought I was marrying an--heiress!" he
+cried in a rage so horrible that Faynie, brave as she was, recoiled from
+him in terror and, dismay.
+
+"You have married a penniless young girl," she corrected, half
+inaudibly.
+
+He raised his clinched hand with a terrible volley of oaths, before
+which she quailed, despite her bravery.
+
+"When the old man cast you off you thought you would tie yourself on to
+me," he cried. "You women are cunning--oh, yes, you are, don't tell me
+you're not; and you are the shrewdest one I've come across yet. You lie
+when you say you meant to tell me what had happened beforehand, and you
+know it. But you'll find out at your cost what it means to bind me to a
+millstone for a wife. But you shan't be a millstone. You'll do your
+share toward the support. Yes, by George, you shall. I'll put you on the
+stage--and you--"
+
+"Never!" cried the girl with a bitter sob. "I'd die first."
+
+"Don't set up your authority against mine," he cried, and as he uttered
+the words--half crazed by the brandy he had drunk so copiously--his
+clinched fist came down with a heavy blow upon the girl's beautiful,
+upturned face, and she fell like one dead at his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+WHAT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT ON THE LONELY RIVER ROAD.
+
+
+For one moment he looked down half stupefied at his work--the girl lay
+in a little dark heap at his feet just as he had struck her down--the
+crimson blood pouring from a wound on her temple which his ring had
+caused.
+
+"I--I've killed her," he muttered, setting his teeth together
+hard--"she--she provoked me to it--curse her! My God! the girl is
+actually dying." Then, through his half-dazed brain came the thought
+that his crime would soon be discovered, and his only safety lay in
+instant flight.
+
+It was but the work of a moment to hurry from the room, making his way
+through the inky darkness as best he could to the barroom, where he knew
+he should find Halloran and the cabby dozing in the big armchairs.
+
+The full realization of his crime had quite sobered him by this time.
+
+The innkeeper had left a dim light in the barroom. By the aid of this he
+made his way quickly to his friend's side. A few rapid words whispered
+excitedly in Halloran's ear told him the condition of affairs.
+
+"You are right," exclaimed Halloran, springing to his feet. "We must
+get out of here without a moment's delay. The cabman must go with us,
+taking his horses, even though we have to pay him the price of them."
+
+"I--I--will leave everything to you, Halloran," muttered his companion,
+huskily, "your brain is clearer and a thousand times shrewder than
+mine."
+
+"Nor must the girl be left here," went on Halloran. "She must not be
+found dead in this house."
+
+"Why, what in Heaven's name could we do with her?" returned the other,
+sharply. "I tell you she is dying, any one could see that."
+
+"Put her effectually out of the way, and past all human possibility of
+any one finding out how she came by her death. I have a desperate plan.
+I cannot explain it to you now. All I say is, be guided by my directions
+to-night--leave everything to me," said Halloran, with a grim gaze.
+
+"I put myself in your hands, Halloran," was the husky reply.
+
+The cabby was hurriedly awakened. At first he demurred angrily against
+the idea of starting off again; but when a roll of bank notes was
+pressed into his hands as the price of his complying with their
+demand--a sum that would more than cover the price of the horses if he
+lost them--he no longer found grounds for complaint, but agreed with
+alacrity to do their bidding.
+
+Besides, Halloran knew a little secret of the cabby's past--just how he
+came by the money to buy that outfit--and as it was done in a
+particularly shady way, the man dared not make an enemy of him.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell it the coach stood at the door again.
+
+It was Halloran--nervy, cool-headed Halloran, whom the other had always
+dubbed half man, half fiend--who stole up to the room above, found the
+girl lying in the exact spot his companion had described, and, catching
+up her cloak, wrapped it about her, bore her noiselessly down the stairs
+and out to the coach in waiting.
+
+"Is it all over with her yet?" whispered the other in a strained, husky
+voice, showing intense fear.
+
+"Almost," returned Halloran, briefly, jumping in and closing the door
+after him.
+
+For some moments they rode along in utter silence. Then, as Halloran
+made no attempt to break it, his companion leaned over, asking
+breathlessly: "Where are we going--and--and--what do you propose to do
+with her?"
+
+"I am just trying to solve that problem in my mind, and it is a knotty
+one. I must have more time to think it over," replied Halloran, tersely.
+
+Before his companion could reply, the coach came to a sudden
+standstill, and both of the men within heard their driver's voice in
+earnest colloquy with some one standing by the roadside.
+
+"It is the girl's father, or friends, who have just discovered her
+absence and have been scouring the country about to find her," gasped
+the fraudulent Lester Armstrong, and the hand that grasped his
+companion's arm shook like an aspen leaf.
+
+"Don't be a coward!" hissed Halloran. "If worst comes to worst, whoever
+it is can share the girl's fate," and with these words he opened the
+door of the coach, asking sharply, angrily:
+
+"What is the matter, driver?"
+
+"Nothing, save a poor old fellow who wants me to give him a lift on the
+box beside me. He has lost his way. He's an old grave digger, who says
+he lives hereabouts, somewhere. He's half frozen with the cold tramping
+about. I told him 'Yes, climb up;' it's a little extra work for the
+horses, but I suppose as long as I don't mind it you'll not object."
+
+"Ha! Satan always helps his own out of difficulties," whispered Halloran
+to his companion; and, without waiting for a reply, he was out of the
+coach like a flash, and his hand was on the old grave digger's arm ere
+he could make the ascent to the box beside the driver.
+
+"Wait a moment, my good friend," said Halloran, "we have a little work
+which you of all persons are best fitted to perform for us ere we
+proceed."
+
+Old Adam, the grave digger, looked at the tall gentleman before him in
+some little perplexity, answering, slowly:
+
+"I hope you will not take it amiss, sir, if I answer that I do not fully
+comprehend your words."
+
+"Perhaps not; but permit me to make them clear to you, in as plain
+English as I can command. I want you to dig a grave here and now."
+
+"A grave--here!" echoed Adam, quite believing his old ears were not
+serving him truly--that he had certainly not heard aright.
+
+"That is what I said," returned Halloran, grimly.
+
+"But, sir!" began old Adam, "this is no graveyard."
+
+"Curse you, who said it was?" cut in the other, sharply.
+
+"It is not to be thought of, sir," murmured the grave digger, trembling
+in every limb, his brain too bewildered to try to reason out the meaning
+of this strange request, and quite believing the stranger must be an
+escaped lunatic.
+
+Coolly and deliberately Halloran drew a revolver from his pocket, and
+placed it at Adam's throbbing temple, saying, grimly, and harshly:
+
+"You will do as I command or your life will pay the forfeit. I give you
+one moment of time to decide."
+
+It was a moment so fraught with tragic horror that in all the after
+years of his life Adam always looked back to it with a shudder of deadly
+fear.
+
+He was no longer young--the sands of life were running slower than in
+the long ago--still, life was sweet to him, ah, very sweet. He had a
+good wife and little bairns at home, and an aged mother, to whom he was
+very dear, and he was their only support.
+
+Who was this dark-browed stranger? Why did he wish a grave dug by the
+roadside on this terrible night? Whom did he wish to bury there, and was
+the body within the coach?
+
+All these thoughts were surging rapidly through his brain, when suddenly
+Halloran said:
+
+"Your moment for contemplation is up. Will you dig the grave here and
+now as I command you, or will you prefer that the next passer-by should
+find you on this spot with a bullet hole through your head?"
+
+Even through the semi-darkness old Adam could see the stranger's eyes
+gleaming pitilessly upon him as he uttered the words, and he realized
+that if he refused he might expect no mercy at this man's hands.
+
+"Your answer!" said Halloran, pressing the messenger of death still
+closer to the throbbing brow of the now thoroughly terrified old grave
+digger.
+
+"Y--es," stammered old Adam.
+
+"That is well," declared Halloran, removing the weapon. "Begin right
+here by the roadside. This is as good a spot as any. You need not make
+it the regulation depth--three feet or such a matter will answer. Begin
+without delay. I will also add that not only will you save your own
+neck, but you shall earn a comfortable fee if you work quickly. Mind,
+every minute counts."
+
+The old grave digger slowly took his spade from his shoulder, and by the
+light from the carriage lamp began his work on the spot pointed out,
+while Halloran stood by watching him with keen interest.
+
+Old Adam was used to work in the terrible heat of summer and in the
+bitter cold of the winter. He set to work with a will, and the frozen
+ground yielded quickly to the strokes of his trusty spade, and surely
+the faint moon, glimmering from between the drifting clouds sweeping
+across the dark face of the black heavens overhead, never looked upon a
+wilder, more weird scene.
+
+Twice old Adam paused, the perspiration pouring down his face like
+rain.
+
+He was about to cry out: "I cannot go on with this uncanny work," but
+each time the cold steel of the revolver was pressed to his throbbing
+brow, and the harsh voice of the muffled stranger said: "Go on; your
+work is almost accomplished."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"THERE MUST NOT BE A SINGLE TRACE LEFT TO MARK THE SPOT OF THE GRAVE YOU
+ARE NOW DIGGING," SAID THE MUFFLED STRANGER.
+
+
+The old grave digger worked on faster and faster by the fitful light of
+the carriage lamp, with the wild night winds howling about him, and the
+perspiration streaming down his face, as the stranger stood over him
+covering his heart with the deadly revolver.
+
+"That will do, my man," he said, as old Adam paused for breath a moment.
+"That is deep enough, I guess. It will not take long to place its future
+tenant therein; then you must replace the earth and pack the snow so
+carefully about it that it would not attract the attention of the
+casual passer-by. Do you comprehend?"
+
+"Yes," answered the old grave digger, and it seemed to him that his own
+voice sounded like nothing human.
+
+The stranger turned and walked leisurely to the coach in waiting.
+
+Old Adam would have fled from the spot in mortal terror, but that his
+limbs were trembling and refused to carry him.
+
+He leaned heavily on his spade, asking himself in growing fright--what
+terrible mystery was this that fate had drawn him into, and awaiting
+with quaking heart what would follow.
+
+He had not long to wait. The stranger who had stepped to the carriage
+evidently proposed to lose no time.
+
+In less time than it takes to recount it, he had lifted from the vehicle
+a slender figure, closely wrapped in a long dark garment, and as he did
+so a second person stepped from the coach--a man, closely muffled like
+his companion--and wearing his soft hat pulled low over his eyes.
+
+One glance at the flickering light of the carriage lamp fell upon them,
+bearing the slender figure between them, and old Adam's heart fairly
+stood still with horror.
+
+He recognized them at once as the parties who had stood before the
+altar in the old stone church scarcely an hour before.
+
+Great God! could it be? Ah, yes, it must be the body of the beautiful,
+hapless young bride they were bringing to this wild and lonely grave.
+
+How did she happen to die? She who had been so full of bounding life but
+one short hour before--only the all-seeing eye of the God above could
+tell--ay, could solve this horrible mystery.
+
+Another moment, and in utter silence, the slender figure was lowered
+into the frozen ground by the two strangers.
+
+This accomplished, the same man turned to old Adam again, saying,
+abruptly:
+
+"Now finish your work as speedily as possible, I repeat the
+caution--mind--not a trace must be visible when you have accomplished
+your task, to mark the spot."
+
+No word from the old grave digger answered him. He could not have
+uttered a single syllable if his very life had depended upon it.
+
+While the other had been speaking, a gust of wind had for a single
+instant tossed aside the heavy cloth that covered the face, and old Adam
+saw beyond all doubt that it was indeed the lovely young creature who
+had within that hour been made a bride, and with that terrible discovery
+came another--there was, as sure as fate, a flush upon the beautiful
+face of her whom they were consigning to the tomb.
+
+"Hold!" he cried out with all his strength, drawing back from his work,
+shaking with terror. "The--the--girl is not dead; there is color--"
+
+A fierce oath from the lips of both men simultaneously cut his words
+short.
+
+"The girl is dead," exclaimed the man who had so far done the talking.
+"That is blood you see on her face. She had a hemorrhage. Go on with
+your work, you fool--or, here! give me the spade. I will make a short
+shift of it."
+
+But as the stranger uttered these words, stepping quickly forward to put
+the thought into execution, a sudden thought, like an inspiration,
+occurred to the ancient grave digger.
+
+"No--no--I will finish my work," he muttered. "I--I--can do it best, as
+I--I--understand it--and--and--you, would not."
+
+"Make all haste, then; it is growing bitter cold. We shall all freeze to
+death."
+
+"Could you not get into the coach, sir, to keep warm?" suggested old
+Adam; "you can be of no aid to me, you know. When I have
+finished--you--you can step out and see if it is done to your
+satisfaction."
+
+For a moment the stranger hesitated, then said, sharply:
+
+"I think I will take your advice, my man; my feet are about as numb as
+they could well be, I assure you; and as you say, my standing here will
+not help you. I can watch from the carriage window, and when the work is
+done step out and look at it."
+
+With that he hurried quickly to the vehicle, and with a thankfulness in
+his heart that words are weak to describe, and with a mental "God be
+praised," the old grave digger bent to his task with renewed energy.
+
+Both men watched narrowly and anxiously, as spadeful after spadeful of
+dirt quickly disappeared from the white ground. Then the white heaping
+snow was leveled over the dark narrow space, and the grave digger
+announced that his work was completed.
+
+"I do not know as it is worth while to examine it; the old fellow knows
+his business," remarked Halloran to his companion, who was by this time
+fairly well under the weather from large draughts of brandy he had drunk
+from a bottle he had seized from the bar. "Step up on the box beside the
+driver"--thrusting a bank note into the old grave digger's nervous,
+trembling hand--"we will take you along the road as far as we go."
+
+For an instant old Adam hesitated, but it was only for an instant, for
+he said to himself he must not arouse the suspicion of this stranger by
+refusing to ride, especially as he had begged for that permission so
+short a time before. He could frame no reasonable excuse for asking to
+remain behind.
+
+Marking the spot as best he could in the intense darkness, he climbed up
+to the driver's box as he had been bidden, and took his seat.
+
+With a sharp cut of the whip upon their flanks, the horses were started,
+and swaying to and fro with their every motion as they dashed along over
+the uneven road, the coach sped onward.
+
+No word fell from the driver's lips, and old Adam was too much excited
+to vouchsafe a remark.
+
+He knew that the men, as well as the rig, did not belong thereabouts,
+for he well knew every team in the village, and those of the adjoining
+farmers.
+
+How far they traversed thus he could not judge, but to his intense
+relief he saw at last that they were passing a familiar landmark, an old
+bridge that spanned a dry creek which was scarcely a dozen rods from his
+own door.
+
+"I will leave you here," said Adam. "I thank you for giving me a lift."
+
+Again the coach came to a halt, and the man within put out his head,
+inquiring sharply:
+
+"What is the matter now?"
+
+"This man wants to get off here."
+
+"Very well," replied Halloran, drawing back into the warmth of the coach
+and giving the matter no further thought, and resuming the castles in
+the air which he had been building when the vehicle came to a stop. "I
+shall see that you carry out to the fullest detail the little plot I am
+laying this night for you," he muttered, looking steadily at his
+companion, who had dozed off into a heavy stupefied sleep upon the
+opposite seat, "and when you come into possession of the money which
+your marriage to the little heiress to-night will bring you, I shall
+come in for the lion's share of it. You dare not refuse my demands, no
+matter how exorbitant they may be, under penalty of exposure. That will
+be the sword in my hands that will always hang over your head.
+
+"It would have been more difficult to accomplish my scheme if the girl
+had lived. It is best as it is. Dead people tell no tales. Of course
+they will search for the girl when they discover that she has eloped,
+but will believe she is cleverly eluding them or traveling about the
+country. I have always had golden dreams of a fortune that would be in
+my grasp some day, and now, lo! my dream is about to be realized."
+
+While he was thus soliloquizing, old Adam, the grave digger, was
+standing silently in the road where they had set him down, then
+suddenly he turned abruptly--not toward his home--but as quickly as his
+aged limbs could carry him back over the ground the coach had just
+traversed, praying to Heaven to guide him to the spot where he had dug
+the lonely grave of the beautiful, hapless young bride of an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+SNATCHED FROM THE GRAVE.
+
+
+Back over that terrible road of drifting snow the old grave digger made
+his way as swiftly as his trembling limbs could carry him.
+
+He had endeavored to mark carefully the spot where he had made that
+lonely grave, but the snow was drifting so hard with each furious gust
+of wind as to make it almost impossible to find it upon retracing his
+steps.
+
+Quaking with terror, and with a prayer on his lips to Heaven to guide
+him, old Adam sat down his lantern, and by its dim, flickering light
+peered breathlessly around.
+
+There was the blasted pine tree and toward the right of it the stump.
+The grave must be less than a rod below it.
+
+With a heart beating with great strangling throbs, he paced off the
+distance, and then stood quite still, holding his lantern down close to
+the frozen earth.
+
+For an instant his heart almost ceased beating--there was no sign of the
+little mound, with the leafless branch of bush he had been so careful to
+place there.
+
+Then, suddenly a moan from beneath his very feet fell upon his ear,
+causing him to fairly gasp for breath.
+
+"Thank God! I have found it!" he cried.
+
+In an instant he had thrown off his coat, thin though it was, and set to
+work as he had never worked in all his life before--against time.
+
+He had thrown in the earth loosely, taking care to leave the head
+exposed, for he felt as sure as he did of his own existence that life
+was not yet extinct in the body of the young girl for whom he was forced
+to prepare that grave at the point of a revolver in the hands of the two
+desperate strangers.
+
+He had taken his own life in his hands when he had announced the work
+finished satisfactorily, for had the man stepped from the coach to
+examine the work he would have found the deep hole which left the head
+uncovered.
+
+The cold winds and the drifting snow blew into the old grave digger's
+face, but he worked on with desperate zeal, realizing that another life
+might depend upon the swiftness of his rescue.
+
+At last, after what seemed to him an eternity of time, he reached the
+body, and quickly lifted it from its resting place.
+
+Half an hour later he reached his own humble cottage home, bearing the
+slender burden in his strong arms.
+
+His good wife had waited up for him. She could never sleep when Adam was
+away from home.
+
+She heard his footstep on the crunching snow and hastened to open the
+door for him, starting back with a cry of great surprise as she caught
+sight of the figure in his arms.
+
+"Is it some neighbor's little girl lost in the storm, Adam?" she cried,
+clasping her hands together in affright.
+
+"Don't ask any questions now, Mary," he exclaimed, delivering the burden
+into her willing, motherly arms, and sinking down into the nearest
+chair, thoroughly exhausted. "I'll tell you all about it later, when I
+get my breath and my nerves are settled. Do everything you can to revive
+the poor young creature. She is freezing to death."
+
+As old Adam's kindly wife threw back the dark cloak which had enveloped
+the fair young face and form, an exclamation of surprise broke from her
+wondering lips.
+
+"She is a stranger hereabouts," she observed, but she wisely obeyed her
+husband's injunctions, making no further remark, knowing she would hear
+all about it in good time.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell it, the beautiful young stranger was
+put to bed in the little spare room up under the eaves, wrapped in
+flannel blankets, with bottles of hot water at the feet, and a generous
+draught of brandy, which the grave digger's wife always kept in the
+house for emergencies, forced down her throat.
+
+"She will soon return to consciousness now," she exclaimed to her
+husband, who stood beside the bedside anxiously watching her labors;
+"see that flush on her cheeks. We will sit down quietly and wait until
+she opens her eyes. It won't be long."
+
+And while they waited thus, Adam told his wife the story he had to tell
+concerning the young girl--this fair, hapless, beautiful young stranger
+whose wedding he had witnessed and burial he had assisted in within the
+hour, first binding his wife to solemn secrecy.
+
+The good woman's amazement as she listened can better be imagined than
+described. For once in her life she was too dumfounded to offer even a
+theory.
+
+As they glanced toward the bed, to their amazement they saw the girl's
+eyes fastened upon old Adam with an expression of horror in them,
+heartrending to behold, and they realized that she had heard every word
+he had said.
+
+In an instant they were on their feet bending over the couch.
+
+"Is it true--they buried me--and--you--you--rescued me?" she asked, in a
+terrified whisper, catching at the old man's hands and clutching them in
+a grasp from which he could not draw them away, her teeth chattering,
+her violet eyes almost bulging from their sockets.
+
+"Since you have heard all, I might as well confess that it is quite
+true," he answered. "And God forgive that brute of a husband you just
+married. He ought to swing for the crime as sure as there is a heaven
+above us. There will be no end of the good minister's wrath when he
+hears the story, my poor girl."
+
+Again the beautiful young stranger caught at his hands.
+
+"He must never know!" she cried, incoherently. "Promise me, by all you
+hold dear, that both you and your wife will keep my secret--will never
+reveal one word of what has happened this night."
+
+"It is not right that we should keep silent upon such an amazing
+procedure. That would be letting escape the man who should be punished,
+if there is any law in the land to reach him for committing such a
+heinous crime."
+
+"I plead with you--I, who know best and am the one wronged, and most
+vitally interested, to utter no word that would cause the story to
+become blazoned all over the world. Let me make my words a prayer to you
+both--to keep my pitiful secret."
+
+It was beyond human power to look into those beautiful violet eyes,
+drowned in the most agonized tears, and the white, terrified, anxious
+face, without yielding to her prayer.
+
+"I do not know what good reason you may have for binding us to secrecy,"
+he said, slowly and reluctantly, "but we cannot choose but to give you
+the promise--nay, the pledge--you plead for. I can answer for my Mary as
+well as myself--the story of to-night's happenings shall never pass our
+lips until you give us leave to speak."
+
+"Thank you! Oh, I thank you a thousand times!" sobbed the girl. "You
+have lifted a terrible load from my heart. If the time ever comes when I
+can repay you, rest assured it shall surely be done."
+
+She tried to rise from her couch, but the good wife held her back upon
+her pillow with a detaining hand, exclaiming:
+
+"What are you about to do, my dear child?"
+
+"Go away from here," sobbed the girl, again attempting to arise from the
+couch, but falling back upon the pillow from sheer weakness.
+
+She did not leave that couch for many a day. What she had undergone had
+been too much for her shattered nerves.
+
+Brain fever threatened the hapless girl, but was warded off by the
+faithful nursing of old Adam's faithful wife.
+
+And during those weeks the good woman could learn nothing of the history
+of the beautiful young stranger, who persistently refused to divulge one
+word concerning herself. She would turn her face to the wall and weep so
+violently when any allusion was made to her past that the grave digger's
+wife gave up questioning her.
+
+One morning the bed was empty. It had not been slept in. The girl had
+fled in the night.
+
+Who she was, or where she had gone, was to them the darkest, deepest
+mystery. Would it ever be revealed? They could not discuss it with the
+old minister or any of the neighbors, for their lips were sealed in
+eternal silence concerning the matter.
+
+"I feel sure the end of this matter is not yet," said old Adam,
+prophetically. "When the girl comes face to face with the dastardly
+villain she wedded that night, it will end in a tragedy."
+
+"God forbid!" murmured his wife with a shudder; but down in her own
+heart she felt that her husband had spoken the truth; the tragic end of
+this affair had not yet come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"YOU ARE DISINHERITED--EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS MINE."
+
+
+Faynie had indeed departed from that humble home as she had entered it,
+in the dark, dim silence of the bitter-cold night.
+
+She made her way as best she could to the station which, fortunately
+enough, was not far distant. The station master was old and anxious to
+get home, and therefore paid little heed to the little dark-robed figure
+who bought a ticket to New York, and soon after crept silently aboard of
+the train which steamed into the little depot of the hamlet, almost
+buried in the snowdrifts across the hills.
+
+Weak and faint from her recent illness, Faynie, the beautiful, petted
+little heiress of a short time before, huddled into a corner of the seat
+by the door, and drawing her veil carefully over her face, wept silently
+and unheeded as the midnight express bore her along to her destination.
+
+She was going home to Beechwood; going back to the home she had left in
+such high spirits to join the lover who was to be all in all to her
+forever more; the lover who was to shield her henceforth and forever
+from the world's storms, and was to be all devotion to her and love her
+fondly until death did them part. And this had been the end of it. Her
+high hopes lay in ruins around her. Her idol had been formed of
+commonest clay, and lay crumbled in a thousand fragments at her feet.
+
+Surely, no young girl's love dream ever had such a sad awakening, and
+was so cruelly dispelled.
+
+She would go home to her haughty old father, tell him all, then lie down
+at his feet and die. That would end it all. Even in that moment lines
+she had once read came back to her with renewed meaning:
+
+    "And this is all! The end has come at last!
+      The bitter end of all that pleasant dream,
+    That cast a hallow o'er the happy past,
+      Like golden sunshine on a summer stream.
+
+    "Sweet were the days that marked life's sunny slope,
+      When we together drew our hearts atune,
+    And through the vision of a future hope,
+      We did not dream that they would pass so soon.
+
+    "In happy mood fair castles we upreared,
+      And thought that life was one long summer day;
+    We had no dread of future pain, nor feared
+      That shadows e'er should fall athwart our way.
+
+    "But sunken rocks lie hid in every stream,
+      And ships are wrecked when just in sight of land;
+    So we to-day wake from our pleasant dream
+      To find our hopes were builded on the sand.
+
+    "I do not blame you that you do not keep
+      The troth you plighted e'er your heart you knew;
+    Better the parting now than wake to weep,
+      When time has robbed life's roses of their dew.
+
+    "Another face will help you to forget,
+      The idle dream that had its birth in trust,
+    And other lips will kiss away regret,
+      For broken faith and idols turned to dust,
+
+    "Ah, well, you chose, perhaps, the better way;
+      Another love may in your heart be shrined;
+    And I--I shall go down my darkened way,
+      Seeking forever what I ne'er shall find."
+
+It was two o'clock by the church belfry when she reached Beechwood, and
+a quarter of an hour later when she reached the great mansion that stood
+on the brow of the hill.
+
+She remembered that one of the rear doors, seldom used, was never
+fastened, and toward this she bent her faltering footsteps. It yielded
+to her touch, and like a ghost she glided through it and up the wide,
+familiar corridors, her tears falling like rain at every step.
+
+She knew it was her father's custom to spend long hours in his library,
+sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the
+presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him
+for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive
+of his unbounded, undying affection for her.
+
+In his library, among his books, there was no nagging. Here he found
+peace, silence and quiet.
+
+Therefore, toward the library, late as the hour was, Faynie made her
+way, stealing along quietly as a shadow.
+
+The door stood slightly ajar, and a ray of light, a narrow, thread-like
+strip, fell athwart the dim corridor.
+
+When Faynie reached the door she paused, trembling with apprehension, a
+feeling of intense dread, like a presentiment of coming evil, stealing
+over her like the shadow of doom.
+
+She was prepared for his bitter anger, for the whirlwind of wrath that
+would be sure to follow, but she would cast herself on her knees at his
+feet, and with head bowed, oh, so lowly, so piteously, wait for the
+hurricane of his rage to exhaust itself. Then she would bend over her
+head still lower, her pride crushed, her pitiful humiliation complete,
+and sue on her bended knees, with her hands clasped for his pardon and
+his love again.
+
+She would plead for it for the sake of the fair, hapless young mother
+whom she had loved and lost in his early youth. Surely, for her sake he
+would find mercy, perhaps pardon, for the child she had left behind her,
+the fair, petted, hapless daughter, who had been so lonely, and whose
+heart yearned so for love ever since he had brought in a second wife to
+rule over his household.
+
+Ay, from that hour he and his daughter had seemed to drift apart.
+
+Nerving herself for the ordeal, the girl crept to the door and timidly
+swung it back.
+
+There was a figure bending over the writing desk; not the tall form of
+her father, but her stepmother.
+
+Faynie drew back with a startled cry.
+
+In a single instant, with the swiftness of a lioness, the woman who had
+been examining the desk, cleared the space that divided her from the
+girl, and clutched her by the shoulder.
+
+"You!" she panted, in a voice that was scarcely human, it was so full of
+venomous hatred. "You!" she repeated, flinging the girl from her, as
+though she had been something vile to the touch. "How dare you come
+here?"
+
+Faynie looked at her for a moment with dilated eyes gazing out from her
+pale face.
+
+Had her stepmother suddenly gone mad? was the thought that flashed
+through the girl's brain.
+
+"I--I have come back to my father, and--and to his home--and mine. Any
+explanation I have to offer will be made to him alone."
+
+The woman laughed a sneering, demoniac laugh, and her clutch on the
+girl's shoulder grew stronger, fiercer.
+
+"How lovely, how beautifully worded, how dutiful!" she sneered. "By that
+I judge that you have not been keeping abreast of the times, or you
+would have known, girl, that your father is dead, and that he has
+disinherited you, leaving every dollar of his wealth to me."
+
+"Dead!" Faynie repeated the words in an awful whisper.
+
+It seemed to her that every drop of blood in her veins seemed suddenly
+turned to ice. A mist swam before her eyes and she put out her hand
+gropingly, grasping the back of the nearest chair for support.
+
+She did not even hear the last of the sentence. Her thoughts and hearing
+seemed to end with that one awful word.
+
+"That is what I said," replied her stepmother, nonchalantly, "and you
+are his murderess, girl, quite as much as though you had plunged a
+dagger in his heart. Your elopement caused him to have a terrible
+hemorrhage. He knew all the details about it in less than an hour's
+time, learning from one of the servants how you stole out of the house
+and met the tall man at the gate, who took you off in a closed carriage,
+and just as he made this discovery one of the maids handed him your
+note, which you left pinned to the pillow, addressed to him. He had no
+sooner read it than he fell into a rage so horrible that it ended as I
+have said, in a hemorrhage. Within ten minutes' time your name, which he
+cursed, was stricken from his will, and he left everything to me,
+disinheriting you. Do you comprehend the force of my remark?"
+
+The steady, awful look in the young girl's eyes made the woman quail in
+spite of her bravado. "I--I do not care for my father's wealth, but that
+he should curse me--oh, that is too much--too much. Oh, God, let me die
+here and now, that I may follow him to the Great White Throne and there
+kneel before him and tell him all my pitiful story!"
+
+"That is a pretty theory, but people cannot go to and come at will from
+the Great White Throne, as you call it. You had better get back to the
+realities of life on this mundane sphere, where you find yourself just
+at present. I repeat for the third time that you are disinherited. I
+cannot seem to make you grasp that fact. This home and everything in it
+belongs absolutely to me."
+
+Faynie heard and realized, and without a word, turned and staggered like
+one dying toward the door, but her stepmother put herself quickly before
+her.
+
+"Sit down there. I have something else to say to you," she added in a
+shrill whisper, pushing the girl into the nearest seat.
+
+"I must go. I will not listen," cried Faynie, struggling to her feet.
+
+"Yes, you shall listen and comply with my proposition," exclaimed her
+stepmother, her glittering eyes fastened on the beautiful face of the
+girl she hated so intensely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IMPENDING EVIL.
+
+
+We must return for one brief instant, dear reader, to our hero, Lester
+Armstrong, whom we left as he was being hurried off to the hospital on
+the night which proved so thrillingly eventful.
+
+At the first rapid glance, the surgeon had believed his patient dying,
+but upon examination after he had reached the hospital, it was
+discovered that his injury was by no means as serious as had been
+apprehended; but a trouble quite as grave confronted the patient.
+
+"An injury to the base of the brain, such as he has received, no matter
+how slight, might, in this instance, produce either insanity or partial
+loss of memory, which is almost as bad," said the surgeon. "It will
+soon be determined when consciousness, returns to him."
+
+This indeed proved to be the case. Just as daylight broke Lester
+Armstrong opened his eyes, looking in amazement around the strange
+apartment in which he found himself.
+
+A kindly-faced nurse bent over him, who, in answer to his look of
+inquiry, said:
+
+"You had a severe fall and hurt yourself last night and was brought to
+the hospital. You are doing finely. Can you remember anything about the
+incident?"
+
+Lester looked up vacantly into the dark-gray eyes. "I--I was in a hurry
+to close my books at the office; that is all I recollect," he murmured.
+
+From documents found in his pockets, it was learned that he had some
+connection with the great dry goods house of Marsh & Co., and the senior
+member of the firm was notified. Within an hour Mr. Marsh responded in
+person. He was greatly distressed over the occurrence and took it deeply
+to heart.
+
+"I think as much of that young man as if he were my own son. Do
+everything in human power for him. Let no pains be spared. I will stand
+every expense," he said, and then and there he also confided a startling
+secret to the surgeon.
+
+"I am a lone man in this world, without one kindred tie on earth. Some
+little time since I made my will. I left every dollar I possessed on
+earth to my young cashier, Lester Armstrong, though he never even
+dreamed of such an existing state of affairs. I never intended that he
+should know that I had made him my heir for perhaps years to come yet."
+
+"Lester Armstrong!" exclaimed the surgeon. "Why, that is not the name he
+is entered here under, Mr. Marsh. The friend who was with him did not
+call him that."
+
+"Then the friend who was with him evidently did not know him. I identify
+him as my cashier, Lester Armstrong."
+
+The surgeon bowed courteously.
+
+"I would also suggest no mention whatever of this affair be given to the
+newspapers," continued the gentleman. "They would make a sensational
+story out of it, and I detest notoriety."
+
+"Your wishes shall be respected, sir," replied the surgeon, who had a
+great reverence for men of wealth.
+
+His prediction proved quite correct. When Lester Armstrong arose from
+that bed of sickness ten days later, his mind, although as bright and
+keen as ever on some subjects, on others was hopelessly clouded. Even
+the slightest recollection of beautiful Faynie Fairfax, the little
+sweetheart whom he had loved better than his own life, was completely
+obliterated from his mind. He did not even remember such a being had
+ever existed.
+
+Another event had transpired on the eventful night of his injury. The
+humble boarding house where he had made his home so many years, had been
+destroyed by fire, and the people had gone none knew whither. This was
+indeed a trying blow to Lester, for the fire had completely wiped out
+all of his savings which he had kept in the little haircloth trunk in
+his room. But, without a murmur, he took up the burden of life over
+again and went back to his work at his desk.
+
+In going over his accounts he suddenly came across the name of Faynie
+Fairfax.
+
+The pen fell from his fingers and he brushed his hand over his brow.
+
+"What a strangely familiar ring that name has to me!" he muttered, "but
+I cannot imagine who it can be. Her checks seem to be paid in here. I
+must remember to notice who she is when next she comes to this window."
+
+Life had dropped into the same old groove again for Lester Armstrong,
+the only difference in the routine of his daily life being that he was
+not obliged to take his daily trips to Beechwood any more, for the
+reason that his employer, Mr. Marsh, had taken up his residence in the
+city again.
+
+But in less than a fortnight another event happened.
+
+Mr. Marsh died suddenly, and to the great surprise of every one, Lester
+Armstrong was named as his sole heir. At first the young man was
+dumfounded. He could not believe the evidence of his own senses, when
+first the news was conveyed to him.
+
+The papers contained columns concerning the young man's wonderful luck.
+Those who knew Lester Armstrong said the great fortune which had come to
+him would not spoil him.
+
+There was one who read this account with amazed eyes, and that was
+Halloran.
+
+"Great God!" he muttered, his hands shaking, his teeth chattering.
+"Kendale told me that Armstrong was taken to the hospital in a
+precarious condition and died there."
+
+He made all haste to Kendale's lodgings. The latter, who was still
+masquerading under the name of Lester Armstrong, had been on a
+continuous spree ever since the night he had wedded the little beauty,
+and Halloran had let him take his course, saying to himself that there
+was plenty of time in the future to carry out their scheme.
+
+For once he found Kendale partially sober. He knew by Halloran's face
+that something out of the usual order of events had transpired.
+
+"What is the matter?" he cried; "what's up now?"
+
+For answer Halloran laid the paper before him, pointing to the column,
+remarking, grimly:
+
+"The game's up now, and we've gone through all this trouble for nothing.
+Your cousin, Lester Armstrong, is not dead, but instead is alive and
+well."
+
+The papers which contained the account gave another bit of unfortunate
+information, stating that Lester Armstrong had suffered from loss of
+memory since he had received the fall on that fatal night.
+
+"Well," said Halloran, as his friend laid down the paper, "you see, the
+game's up."
+
+"By no means," exclaimed Kendale, perfectly sober by this time. "It's a
+poor rule that won't work both ways," he added, excitedly.
+
+"I don't understand your cause for rejoicing," returned Halloran,
+gloomily.
+
+"Don't you?" cried Kendale. "Then let me make it clear to you. We not
+only have one fortune through the girl that I tied myself to, and can,
+as her husband, collect all in good time, but with a little strategy I
+can come in for the Marsh millions. We can decoy Armstrong into a coach,
+and let the world find out his fate after that if it can. I will coolly
+take his place, just as I did in that other affair, and who is there to
+question that I am not he."
+
+"But they know you there. You worked a week in the employ of Marsh & Co.
+You forget that."
+
+"It was at one of their branch stores," was the reply, "and they had
+never heard of Armstrong there, and had never seen him. I left in a
+week. I did not resemble my cousin so much at that particular time for
+the reason that my mustache was shaven off then. Without that you would
+be surprised to see what a wide difference there is between us."
+
+"It is a great scheme, if you are sure that you can carry it through,"
+said Halloran, breathing hard and eying his companion fixedly.
+
+"Trust that to me," replied Kendale, jumping up and walking the floor to
+and fro excitedly.
+
+It was midnight when Halloran left Kendale's apartments. During those
+long hours the two plotters had concocted a diabolical scheme, which
+they meant to carry out ere the morning light dawned.
+
+All unconscious of the nefarious plot against his life, Lester Armstrong
+was up with the sun the next morning, and was down to the office at an
+early hour transacting the great amount of business that he found upon
+his hands, contingent upon being the head of the firm of which he had
+for so many years been but an humble cashier.
+
+Despite the sudden wealth which had come to him, all that day he felt a
+strange depression of the heart, a strong impression of impending evil,
+which he could not shake off. Even those about him noticed what a gloomy
+look there was in his eyes.
+
+He was the last one to leave the great building that night, and as he
+stepped out upon the sidewalk, he muttered to himself: "I wonder what is
+about to happen to me, my heart feels so heavy, so depressed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+IN THE TOILS OF THE CONSPIRATORS.
+
+
+Lester Armstrong had no sooner stepped to the pavement than he was
+accosted by a man who stepped suddenly up to him.
+
+"Mr. Armstrong?" he said, interrogatively, touching his hat
+respectfully.
+
+"Yes," responded Lester, "what can I do for you?"
+
+"I am here on a deed of mercy. A friend of mine, an employee of yours,
+sir, has met with a serious accident and calls for you repeatedly. I am
+a hackman, and I volunteered to come for you and ask you to let me take
+you to him. It is not very far. My cab stands right here."
+
+"I will go to the poor fellow, certainly," responded Lester, hurrying to
+the vehicle in question and hastily entering it.
+
+In a moment the driver had mounted the box and was off like the wind. It
+did not occur to Lester until he was well under way that he had not
+thought to inquire who the injured man was.
+
+As the cab rolled swiftly along over the crowded thoroughfare, Lester
+leaned back and gave himself up to his own thoughts.
+
+Wealth had come to him, and with it honors had crowded thick and fast
+upon him. The world of society held out its arms eagerly to him. Lovely
+young girls, matrons of the house, offered their congratulations to him
+with the most bewitching of smiles, and mothers with marriageable
+daughters from all over the city opened an account with the great dry
+goods house, whose sole owner was a young and handsome bachelor.
+
+But for all this there seemed to be something sadly missing in his life,
+a want which he could hardly define, and it seemed to take the shape of
+something which he was striving to remember, but could not.
+
+Only that morning he had been talking with some one in the office about
+it, and had been laughingly informed that there was a method that could
+bring back to his memory that which he desired so ardently to recollect.
+"If you will tell me how to unravel this tangle that is in my brain, you
+will have my everlasting gratitude," declared Lester, earnestly.
+
+"It takes people with nerves of steel to accomplish it. A person who is
+nervous to the slightest degree would not dare to try it, for fear of
+turning suddenly insane from the terrible mental struggle. Do you still
+wish to know what it is?"
+
+"Yes," responded Lester, "and I can use my judgment whether I dare try
+it or not."
+
+"Very good," replied the gentleman, "then here it is: Counting five
+thousand backward will either restore your loss of memory, or, as I have
+taken care to warn you gravely in advance, cause you to go insane. It
+must be done rapidly, and in a given space of time. In my belief the
+remedy is by far worse than the malady. I feel, somehow, as though I
+ought not to have told you about it."
+
+"Nonsense," said Lester. "You need have little fear of my trying it."
+
+He thought of it, however, as the cab rolled rapidly along.
+
+"I wonder if harm would result from my trying it?" he mused. "I have
+unusually strong nerves, and--and, if anything disastrous should come of
+it, there is not one soul on the wide earth that would be injured. There
+is no mother to weep, no fair young sister to grieve, no father or
+brother to be bowed down with sorrow. I am alone in the world. My
+foolhardiness would injure only myself--only myself."
+
+He had been thinking so deeply that he had not noted the flight of time,
+nor that the street lamps had grown fewer and far between, at last
+ceasing altogether, and that they were traveling a country road.
+Suddenly the vehicle came to a stop. The driver jumped from his box and
+opened the door with a jerk, remarking:
+
+"This is the place."
+
+Lester alighted, looking about him in a rather mystified manner, but
+before he could make the inquiry that rose to his lips the driver
+hastened to say:
+
+"The path that leads to the house, which is just beyond that clump of
+trees, is so narrow that we cannot drive there. We will have to walk. It
+is but a short distance. You will see the house at the first turn in the
+path."
+
+And as the man uttered the words he gave a peculiar cough.
+
+"Who is the person who sent for me?" Lester queried, stopping short. The
+man made an evasive answer, which aroused his suspicions that all was
+not as it should be.
+
+"Why do you not answer my question? I refuse to proceed a step farther
+until you have satisfied me on this point," declared Lester, haughtily.
+
+"That's your opinion. I think differently, my fine fellow," answered the
+man insolently. "I'd advise you to come along quietly."
+
+Lester Armstrong saw at once that he had been lured into a trap. It was
+natural for him to jump to the conclusion that it was for robbery, owing
+to the fact of his coming into possession of the great Marsh fortune so
+recently, and a sudden sternness settled upon his face. He was not used
+to broils, but this fellow should see that he was not quite a stranger
+to the manly art of self-defense, and that he had an adversary worthy of
+his steel.
+
+"Are you coming along peaceably with me, or shall I be obliged to call
+upon my pals for assistance?" he asked, grimly.
+
+"I propose to defend myself against all odds," answered Lester, more
+than angry with himself for falling so easily into the trap that had
+been so cunningly set for him.
+
+He had but a few dollars in money about him, and the disappointment of
+his assailant in not finding a large roll of bills would in all
+probability cause the man to take desperate chances in trying to make
+away with him. If he was armed he was at the fellow's mercy. There might
+be half a dozen accomplices in collusion with him, he had little doubt.
+
+Again the cabby uttered that peculiar cough which was half a whistle,
+and in response two men, whose features were covered by black masks,
+sprang from the adjacent bushes.
+
+Our hero put up a splendid defense, but the united strength of his three
+antagonists at length overpowered him.
+
+What was there in the figure of one of the men that seemed so familiar
+to him? he wondered, and just as they were bearing him to the ground by
+their united efforts, he suddenly reached forward and tore the mask from
+his assailant's face.
+
+One glance, and the horror of death seemed to suddenly freeze the blood
+in his veins. His eyes dilated and seemed to nearly burst from their
+sockets. The face into which he gazed was that of Clinton Kendale, his
+cousin.
+
+"You!" he gasped, quite disbelieving the evidence of his own senses.
+
+Kendale laughed a diabolical laugh, while his features were distorted
+into those of a fiend incarnate.
+
+"I haven't the least hesitation in admitting my identity," he said,
+coolly. "Yes, you are in good hands, if you give us no trouble, and come
+along quietly, without compelling us to use further force."
+
+"What is the meaning of this outrage?" cried Lester, white to the lips.
+
+"That you shall learn all in good time, cousin mine," replied Kendale,
+mockingly.
+
+In struggling out of their grasp to better protect himself, Lester fell
+headlong on the icy ground, striking his head heavily against the
+gnarled, projecting root of a tree and lying at their feet like one
+dead.
+
+"He will give us little enough trouble now," said Kendale, grimly. "Lend
+a hand there, both of you, and get him into the house quickly. I am
+almost frozen to death here."
+
+In less time than it takes to narrate it, Lester Armstrong was hurriedly
+conveyed into the house.
+
+The place consisted of but two rooms, and into the inner one Lester was
+thrust with but little ceremony, and tossed upon a pallet of straw in
+the corner.
+
+He had not entirely lost consciousness, as they supposed, but was only
+stunned, realizing fully all that was transpiring about him.
+
+"Your scheme has worked like a charm, Halloran," said Kendale. "We have
+bagged our game more easily than I imagined we would. Now there is
+nothing in the way between me and the fortune that liberal old fool
+Marsh willed to my amiable cousin."
+
+"Everything rests with the shrewdness with which you play your part,"
+answered the man addressed as Halloran.
+
+"You ought not to have any scruples on that score," exclaimed Kendale,
+boastfully. "After leaving my amiable cousin on the night of the
+accident, did I not go immediately to the pretty little heiress, Faynie
+Fairfax, and successfully pass myself off as the lover she was waiting
+to elope with? And the little beauty never knew the difference."
+
+"I must own that you played your cards successfully in that direction,"
+was the response, "but this will be a far different matter from
+hoodwinking a young, unsophisticated girl."
+
+"Within a month from to-day I shall have the Fairfax fortune and the
+Marsh millions added to it," said Clinton Kendale, emphatically.
+
+"I would put an eternal quietus upon my fortunate cousin here, did I not
+need his assistance in one or two matters concerning the method of
+running the business, which was known only to old Marsh and himself."
+
+"Are you fool enough to think that he will divulge those secrets to
+you?" said Halloran, impatiently.
+
+"They can be forced from him. I know how," returned Kendale, with a
+brutal laugh. "Come," he said, turning on his heel.
+
+His companion followed him from the apartment, and the door closed with
+a resounding bang, and Lester lay there too horror-stricken to move hand
+or foot, fairly spellbound by the disclosures he had overheard as they
+stood over him, believing him unconscious.
+
+All in an instant a great wave of awakened memory swept over him,
+opening out the flood-gates of recollection like a flash. He remembered
+his interview with his sweetheart, his darling Faynie, and how he was
+arranging to hurry back to marry her when the fatal accident occurred,
+and how, believing himself dying, he had confided all to his treacherous
+cousin, bidding him take the message to his darling, that even in death
+his only thought was of her.
+
+Oh, merciful God! how horribly had his treacherous cousin betrayed that
+sacred trust, because of his fatal resemblance to himself! He cried out
+to God and the listening angels:
+
+"Heaven help my beautiful darling and save her from the machinations of
+that desperate villain!"
+
+He knew that Clinton Kendale would stop at nothing to gain his end, and
+his agony at the thought that he might be unable to prevent it in time
+almost drove him to the verge of madness.
+
+He felt that they would hold him there until they tortured from him
+whatever secret he held which they wished to learn; then they would
+deliberately make away with him. Clinton Kendale would step into his
+place, personating himself so cleverly that the great world, under whose
+very eyes the terrible tragedy had taken place, would never know the
+difference. Even Faynie would not know how she had been tricked and
+cheated, and the last thought almost drove him to the point of frenzy,
+nearly succeeding in turning his tortured brain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"YOU ARE OUR PRISONER!"
+
+
+For hours Lester Armstrong lay like one stunned, turning over and over
+in his mind the awful revelation he had heard. That a human being,
+especially his cousin, Clinton Kendale, should have plotted so horribly
+against him seemed almost past believing. Then he remembered how
+treacherous he had been in his early days, and he wondered that he had
+been so mad as to have trusted him.
+
+"Heaven save my darling from him!" he cried out in an agony too great
+for words. To realize that she was in the mercy of such a man was a
+sorrow so great that all else on earth paled before it. Then a mighty
+resolve came to him--to foil the villainous plot, weak though he was; he
+must make his escape and fly to his darling's aid.
+
+He knew that Clinton Kendale would follow out his line of action,
+keeping him there as long as it was necessary--that is, until he learned
+all the secrets that he was so anxious to ascertain--then he would put
+him out of the way with as little compunction as he would a dog. He
+might expect little mercy at Kendale's hands, when two fortunes and a
+beautiful young girl hung in the balance.
+
+For hours he lay there, turning the matter over in his mind. He knew he
+was terribly weak from the awful fall which he had received, and which
+had hurt his head the second time in almost the same place; but escape
+he must from the clutches of the conspirators, even though he were
+dying.
+
+Suddenly the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Kendale
+entered, bearing a lighted candle in his hand.
+
+"Ah, you have come to, have you?" he remarked, seeing the other's eyes
+turn toward him; and before Lester Armstrong could answer he went on
+quickly: "You are the only one who knows the combination which opens the
+safe of the late Marsh & Co., and as I intend to open it to-morrow
+morning at the usual hour in place of your punctual self, it will be
+most necessary for you to give me the required information."
+
+For one moment Lester Armstrong gazed steadily into the face of the
+fiend incarnate before him--a look before which the other quailed
+despite his apparent bravado.
+
+"I am in your power and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture
+me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know. That safe
+contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my
+keeping. You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will
+die with me."
+
+Kendale laughed a little short, hard laugh.
+
+"You are mad to thus defy me," he cried, harshly, "when you stop to
+consider that I can open it in any event. I can simply say the
+combination has slipped from my mind. Who is there to question Mr.
+Lester Armstrong, the head of the firm? No one--no one. It will be
+broken open quite as soon as workmen can be found to accomplish it."
+
+The lines about the sufferer's mouth tightened; he clutched his hands
+hard. He knew the dare devil Kendale would stop at nothing--nothing.
+
+"I will give you until daylight to decide. I promise you that it will go
+hard with you if you are not complaisant."
+
+With that he turned on his heel and quitted the room.
+
+During all the long hours of that never-to-be-forgotten night Lester
+Armstrong lay there on his pallet of straw praying for strength to foil
+the villain--for Heaven to direct him what to do.
+
+For the Marsh millions he cared nothing; but his heart was wrung with
+anguish when he trusted himself to think of Faynie.
+
+He knew that Kendale had kept the appointment made by himself, but for
+some reason the elopement could not have taken place. A thousand causes
+might have prevented its successful carrying out, though Kendale was
+sure of a satisfactory finish, he imagined.
+
+Daylight broke at last; he could see it dimly through the dust-begrimed,
+boarded-up windows; but it was not until the sun had well risen that his
+cousin put in an appearance again. Lester was suffering intense pain
+from the terrible bruise on his head at the base of the brain, but he
+set his teeth hard together, determining that his mortal foe should not
+know it.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Kendale, sneeringly. "Wide awake, I see!--probably the
+fixed habit of years. You have, no doubt, come to a more sensible frame
+of mind than I left you in last night, I trust, regarding the
+information I want concerning the combination of the big safe in the
+private office of Marsh & Co."
+
+"I will never reveal it to you," cried Lester. "Never!"
+
+For an instant a black, malignant scowl swept over Kendale's face, but
+after a moment's deep thought he turned on his heel again, laughing
+immoderately as he stepped to the door and held a low conversation with
+the two men who were still in the outer apartment, and in a trice they
+had joined Kendale, one of them still wearing the black mask which he
+had used the night before.
+
+"We will proceed to relieve him of his private papers, keys, wallet, and
+so forth," said Kendale; and, as if in compliance with some previously
+arranged plan, the three set upon Lester, and in his almost helpless
+condition it was not difficult to overpower him and take from him his
+possessions, which Kendale quickly took charge of.
+
+In the encounter, owing to his exhausted condition, Lester lost
+consciousness; and thus they left him, making him their prisoner by
+turning the key in the lock again when they reached the outer room.
+
+"And now," said Halloran, removing the square of black linen from his
+face, "what's next on the programme?"
+
+"Our friend, the cabby, will take me back to town with as much speed as
+possible. You, my dear fellow, will remain here on guard, making
+yourself as comfortable as is absolutely possible under the dismal
+circumstances of keeping guard and circumventing any attempt of our
+prisoner to escape. You know we have great need of him yet, in forcing
+him to disclose much that is advantageous to us. We can starve it out of
+him, if threats fail. As long as you have a good warm fire, plenty of
+provisions and plenty to read here you ought not to complain. You are
+having the easiest part of the bargain, Halloran, while I am doing all
+of the hazardous work."
+
+"What if I should be suspected in the _rôle_ I am about to play for the
+Marsh millions? Why, it would mean State's prison instead of the fortune
+we have planned for so desperately."
+
+"You will carry it through all right," declared Halloran, confidently.
+
+"My nerve has never failed me so far, and I'm depending on that," said
+Kendale, mechanically.
+
+Two hours later Kendale was breakfasting in a fashionable downtown
+restaurant, endeavoring to fortify himself with courage for the trying
+ordeal which he was about to face.
+
+He had given Halloran his promise to abstain from touching even a drop
+of liquor, fully realizing it to be his mortal foe; but with Kendale a
+promise amounted to scarcely a flip of his white fingers when it ran
+contrary to his own desires.
+
+He told himself that he must have a "bracer" to steady his nerves. It
+was not until a second and a third had been drunk that the proper amount
+of courage came to him to undertake the dastardly scheme. Half an hour
+later he walked boldly into the big dry goods emporium. He had no idea
+where the private office was, but his quick wits served him in this
+dilemma. Laying his hands on an errand boy who was just passing out,
+whose cap bore the name of Marsh & Co., he said, carelessly:
+
+"Here, lad, take my coat up to the private office; I will follow you. Go
+slowly, though, through the crowd of shoppers."
+
+With a respectful bow the boy took the coat from him.
+
+It so happened that one of the rules of the house was that the employees
+must not use the elevators, and by the time Kendale had climbed the
+fourth flight of stairs he was thoroughly exhausted, the perspiration
+fairly streaming down his face.
+
+"Don't you know enough to go by way of the elevator, you young idiot?"
+he roared, almost gasping for breath.
+
+"You forget it's against the rules for us to do so, Mr. Armstrong,"
+returned the lad.
+
+"Rules be hanged!" cried his companion. "How many more floors up is it?"
+
+The lad looked up into his face in the greatest amazement. Such a
+question on the lips of the head of the firm rather astounded him; but
+then, perhaps it had not occurred to the gentleman just how many flights
+of steps the boys were obliged to climb.
+
+"We are only on the fourth floor, sir," he responded, "and it's up the
+other four flights, you know."
+
+"Get into the elevator," commanded Kendale; and the boy turned, and
+walked over to it, closely followed by his companion, mentally wondering
+what in the world had come over courteous, kindly Mr. Lester Armstrong.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE NEW BROOM DID NOT SWEEP CLEAN.
+
+
+Clinton Kendale showed himself to be a thorough actor in carrying out a
+part carefully, as he followed the boy through the main office, where
+all of the bookkeepers were at work, toward the little office in the
+rear.
+
+"Ah, this is indeed comfortable," he exclaimed, flinging himself into a
+luxurious leather armchair. "Throw the coat down anywhere, and go," he
+said, as the boy stood before him awaiting his dismissal.
+
+"Great Scott! What an elegant nest Lester got himself into!" he
+ejaculated, looking about him. "I can enjoy it far better than he could,
+though I don't expect to be cooped up here more than an hour or two a
+day. Those fellows out there in the outer office are paid to do the
+work, and I'll be hanged if they shan't do it--every bit of it. I'll
+break 'em in my way, and they'll think it's new rules. By George!
+they'll find plenty of new rules. Ha! ha! ha! I suppose I'd better be
+opening that desk."
+
+Feeling in his pocket, he drew forth the bunch of keys which he had
+taken by force from his cousin. One by one he fitted each to the lock,
+but none of them seemed to work.
+
+"Confound the thing!" he muttered. "My patience won't last much longer.
+Then I'll stave it in with my heel.
+
+"Hello, there!" he cried, as, hearing a slight noise behind him, he
+wheeled around and found an elderly man, with a pen behind his ear, and
+a sheet of paper in his hand, standing there.
+
+"Why the deuce didn't you knock?" he cried, angrily and flushing hotly,
+for he realized this man must have witnessed his vain attempts to open
+the desk. "What do you want?" he asked sharply and ill-humoredly.
+
+Mr. Conway, the old cashier--for it was he--was looking at him with
+dilated, amazed eyes; but in a moment he recovered himself.
+
+"You said to come into your office quite as soon as you came this
+morning, as you wished to see me on particular business, Mr. Armstrong,"
+he replied in the low voice habitual with him.
+
+For an instant the bogus Lester Armstrong's brows were knit closely
+together; then he said, coolly, sharply: "I've changed my mind; I don't
+want to see you."
+
+Still the man lingered.
+
+"Pardon me," he said. "I thought probably it might be in regard to those
+notes of Jordan & Beckwith which you were considering negotiating for."
+
+"Well, you'll have to think again," exclaimed the other, tartly.
+
+Mr. Conway turned toward the door, but as he stretched out his hand to
+grasp the knob his employer sang out, sharply:
+
+"Hold on, there! Come here and see if you can do anything with this
+confounded desk. It's got the jim-jams or something. I've been monkeying
+with it for the last half hour, and can do nothing with it." And as he
+uttered the words, he held out the bunch of keys toward him.
+
+If Mr. Conway had been startled before, he was certainly alarmed now,
+and he looked at his companion in amazement which could not be
+concealed.
+
+"Well," cried the other, his temper rising, the result of the brandy
+diffusing itself through his brain, "what are you staring at me like
+that for? Why don't you take the keys and go ahead?"
+
+Quite as soon as speech would come to him the old cashier said, slowly:
+
+"You seem to forget, Mr. Armstrong, that the keys have been done away
+with some time, and the desk now opens with a secret spring which you
+yourself devised."
+
+"Well, come here and open it. My fingers are all thumbs to-day,"
+replied his companion, looking at him doggedly.
+
+Mr. Conway stepped forward and touched what appeared to be one of the
+brass nails that studded the outer rim, and, as if by magic, the desk
+flew open, the other watching keenly to see how he did it.
+
+Without further comment Mr. Conway turned away and with slow, heavy
+tread left the private office and walked toward his desk. When he
+reached it his emotions overcame him completely, and he laid his head
+down upon his ledger, tears falling like rain down his face.
+
+In an instant half a dozen of his fellow bookkeepers were about him,
+frightened beyond words at this unusual scene and inquiring what could
+be the matter.
+
+For a moment the old cashier hesitated, then he resolved to break the
+truth to them; they would soon find it out for themselves; he would tell
+them, and at the same time instruct them as best he could in this
+unfortunate affair. He raised his white head, the head that had grown
+gray in the employ of the firm he had loved so well and served so
+faithfully.
+
+"You must know the truth, my fellows," he answered, slowly, huskily, and
+with apparent difficulty. "Our Mr. Armstrong has, for the first time
+since we have all known him, gone wrong; he is under the influence of
+strong drink, and by no means himself. I may add that I earnestly pray
+that each of you be loyal to him, even through this misfortune, and not
+let even a hint of it go forth to the outside world, for at this crisis
+it would ruin the well-known firm of Marsh & Co., which is now vested in
+him."
+
+The horror and amazement on the faces of the men can better be imagined
+than described. All had loved and revered Lester Armstrong, and to hear
+that he had suddenly gone wrong because he had become possessed of a
+fortune was alarming and distressing news to them.
+
+"Drink changes him so completely in temperament that it is hard to
+realize that he is the same courteous companion of those other days. He
+was so far gone from the effects of liquor I am not even sure that he
+recognized me. Hark! what is that?"
+
+Several of the detectives of the place were rushing through the main
+office toward the private office, in answer to Mr. Armstrong's summons.
+The call for them had been so furious that they rushed in pell-mell,
+without waiting to take time to rap.
+
+The bogus Mr. Lester Armstrong still sat in the luxurious leather
+armchair, his heels on the desk, fairly hidden in heavy clouds of blue
+smoke from his Havana cigar, at which he was puffing vigorously, fairly
+going into convulsions of laughter over a letter bearing a blue and
+gold monogram, which he was reading.
+
+The unceremonious entrance of the four men caused him to spring suddenly
+to his feet.
+
+"What the d---l do you fellows want?" he exclaimed angrily. "How dare
+you intrude upon me, in my private office, in this unheard-of fashion,
+like a herd of escaped lunatics?"
+
+"You rang for us," replied one of the men.
+
+"I did not," replied the bogus Mr. Armstrong, resuming his seat
+pompously.
+
+"The bells certainly rang, sir!" exclaimed the other three,
+simultaneously.
+
+"Didn't I tell you that I didn't ring?" he answered, stamping his feet
+furiously.
+
+In less time than it takes to tell it three more men dashed into the
+private office, exclaiming:
+
+"We are here, sir, at the very first tap of your bell."
+
+"You have all gone suddenly stark mad, or you are a set of the blamedest
+fools in existence, as I have just told these men. I did not ring. What
+on earth do you mean, by insisting that I did, I should like to know?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, but you are still ringing, sir," declared one of the
+men. "We can distinctly hear the bell ringing furiously. Do you not see
+that your foot is still on it?"
+
+"My foot!" exclaimed the bogus Mr. Armstrong, angrily. "Explain what you
+mean at once."
+
+For answer, the man stepped forward, and pulled aside the mat under his
+employer's feet, mentally wondering if Mr. Lester Armstrong had not
+grown suddenly daft himself, thereby disclosing a set of electric
+buttons which the rug had cunningly concealed.
+
+"You kept your foot on them and they rang, calling us here instantly,"
+returned the man.
+
+"Bless me! I forgot entirely about those confounded electric buttons,"
+declared the bogus Armstrong, turning very red. "I'll have 'em put
+somewhere else to-morrow; great nuisance; always in the way." And after
+an instant a bright thought occurred to him, and he said blandly: "Well,
+to tell you the truth, men, I was only trying you to see how quickly you
+would respond; you may all go now."
+
+The men quitted the private office, looking rather dumfounded into each
+other's blank faces, and in less than half an hour afterward every
+employee in the vast dry goods establishment heard the shocking news,
+that Mr. Lester Armstrong, whom they all believed well-nigh perfect, was
+terribly intoxicated up in his private office, but they were to be
+still more astounded ere the eventful day closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE WILL DISINHERITING FAYNIE.
+
+
+As soon as the men had quitted the private office Kendale sprang to his
+feet and began pacing up and down the length of the room excitedly,
+muttering under his breath:
+
+    "'Ah, what a fatal web we weave
+    When first we practice to deceive.'
+
+"It seems to me that there are traps in every direction to catch me. I
+must be extra shrewd. I'll have those confounded bells changed at once.
+I shouldn't be at all surprised to find an electric bell connected with
+that chair at the desk which would call up the entire fire force of the
+city if I were to lean back far enough in it."
+
+He flung himself down in his seat again and took up the letter which he
+had been perusing and which interested him so.
+
+When he had first broken the seal of this missive his heart had fairly
+jumped into his throat; at the first glance he saw that it was from Mrs.
+Fairfax, of Beechwood.
+
+He read it carefully through fully a half dozen times. It ran as
+follows:
+
+     "MY DEAR MR. ARMSTRONG: I wish to extend to you my sincere
+     congratulations over your good fortune in succeeding to the
+     business of my dear old friend and neighbor, Mr. Marsh, late of
+     Beechwood village. I feel as though I know you well from hearing
+     him speak so continually of you. I am indeed thankful that his
+     business fell into the hands of one whom he trusted so deeply.
+
+     "It was his wish, long ago, that we should meet and know each
+     other, and in remembrance of this, his earnest and oft-repeated
+     wish, I now extend you a cordial invitation to visit our home at
+     Beechwood at your earliest convenience and dine with the family. My
+     daughter and I will have a most hearty welcome for you. Any date
+     convenient to you which you may set will be agreeable to us.
+
+     "Trusting that we may have the pleasure of seeing you very soon, I
+     remain, yours very truly,
+
+     "MRS. HORACE FAIRFAX, Beechwood."
+
+The bogus Lester Armstrong laid the letter down and looked abstractedly
+out of the window.
+
+"Of all places in the world, to think that I should be invited there,"
+he mused. "While I have just been wondering how they took Faynie's
+elopement--and never hearing from her since--and wondering how in the
+world I was to discover all that--lo! a way is opened to me!"
+
+Then his thoughts flew back to that stormy wedding night, and that
+midnight scene in the little inn, when the girl he had just wedded,
+believing her to be an heiress, revealed to him the exasperating truth,
+that only that night her father had disinherited her, making a new will
+in favor of her stepmother and her daughter Claire. The plan which
+Halloran had laid out was to wait a reasonable time, then put in an
+appearance, stating that he was Faynie's husband, and that she had just
+died, and claim her portion of the estate. Every detail had been most
+carefully mapped out; but here he saw an easier way of gaining that same
+fortune without the trouble of litigation--marry the girl Claire.
+
+They would never know anything about that previous marriage with Faynie,
+and the dead could tell no secrets.
+
+"I'll go," he muttered. "I shall reply at once, telling her she may
+expect me two days hence--let me see, this is Tuesday; I will dine with
+her Thursday, and, at least, see what the girl Claire looks like. It
+would be the proper caper to gather in as many fortunes as drift my way.
+I suppose I shall run through half a dozen of them ere I reach the end
+of my tether."
+
+All in due season his letter of acceptance reached Mrs. Fairfax, and she
+was highly elated over it.
+
+She had seized upon her neighborly acquaintance with the late Mr. Marsh
+to invite to her home the young man who had fallen heir to his
+millions, in order that her daughter Claire might win him--if it were a
+possibility.
+
+She had succeeded in forcing Faynie to remain beneath that roof, even
+after informing her that she was disinherited--dependent upon her
+stepmother--by saying that it was her father's wish that she should thus
+remain for at least six months.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax's real reason was that the outside world would not know
+just how affairs stood in the family until she had had time to turn
+everything into cash and get over to Europe to look up another
+millionaire widower.
+
+On the very night that Faynie had returned so unceremoniously there had
+been a most thrilling scene but an hour before between Mrs. Fairfax and
+her daughter.
+
+Unable to sleep, Claire had wandered down to her late stepfather's
+library in search of a book.
+
+She was not a little surprised to see her mother there--writing--at that
+late hour.
+
+Her footsteps had made no sound on the thick velvet carpet, and she
+stole up to her side quite unobserved, looking over her shoulder to see
+what interested her mother so deeply.
+
+One--two---three--four--five minutes she stood there, fairly rooted to
+the spot, then a gasp of terror broke from her white lips, causing her
+mother to spring to her feet like a flash.
+
+"Claire!" she exclaimed, hoarsely, trembling like an aspen leaf and
+clinging to the back of the nearest chair for support. "How long have
+you been here?" she gasped.
+
+"Quite--five--minutes," whispered the girl.
+
+"And you have seen--" The mother looked into the daughter's eyes
+fearfully, not daring to utter the words trembling on her lips.
+
+"I saw you change the--the will!" whispered Claire, in a terror-stricken
+voice. "I saw you erase with a green fluid, which must have been a most
+powerful chemical, the words of the will, 'to my daughter Faynie' in the
+sentence: 'I bequeath all of my estate, both personal and real,' and
+insert therein the words, 'my wife, Margaret' in place of 'my daughter
+Faynie.'"
+
+The woman stepped forward and clutched the girl's arm.
+
+"It was for your sake, Claire, that I did it," she whispered, shrilly;
+"he cut us off with almost nothing, giving all to that proud daughter
+Faynie of his. We would have had to step out into the world--beggars
+again. We know what it is to be poor--ay, in want; we could never endure
+it again--death would be easier for both of us.
+
+"The will was drawn two years ago; I am confident that it is the
+latest--that there is no other. I took a desperate chance to do what I
+have done to-night--so cleverly that it could never be detected.
+
+"A few strokes of the pen meant wealth or poverty for us, Claire. I am
+too old to face beggary after living a life of luxury. You will not
+betray me, Claire--you dare not, knowing that it was done for your sake,
+Claire."
+
+The girl was not naturally wicked; she had always had a great respect
+for the high-bred, beautiful Faynie--her stepfather's daughter by his
+first wife. There had been no discord between the two young girls.
+
+Still, as her mother had said so emphatically, it was better that Faynie
+should step out of that lovely home a beggar than that they should lose
+it.
+
+Claire quite agreed with her mother that Faynie must stay there for the
+present at all hazards; it would arouse such an uproar if she were
+thrust from that roof just then.
+
+"If my father has expressed the desire that I shall stay here six
+months, I--I shall do so, even though it breaks my heart," Faynie had
+said.
+
+She kept her own apartments, refusing to come down to her meals, and
+Mrs. Fairfax humored this whim by ordering Faynie's meals served in her
+rooms.
+
+In vain the old housekeeper expostulated with Faynie, urging her to
+come down at least to the drawing-room evenings, as she used to do.
+
+Faynie shook her golden curls.
+
+"It is no longer my home," she would say, with bitter sobs; "I am only
+biding my time here--the six months that I am in duty bound to
+remain--then I am going away--it does not matter where."
+
+The old housekeeper had tried in vain to coax from the girl the story of
+where she had been while away from home.
+
+"That is my secret," Faynie would say, with a burst of bitter tears; "I
+shall never divulge it--until the hour I lie dying."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+EVERY MAN TO HIS TRADE.
+
+
+After the bogus Lester Armstrong had dispatched his letter of acceptance
+to Mrs. Fairfax he braced himself for what would happen next by taking a
+deep draught from the silver brandy flask which he kept in his breast
+pocket, though he realized that he had need of all his senses for any
+emergency.
+
+During the next hour a score or more bookkeepers came to him with
+bills, letters and papers of all descriptions. To one and all he said,
+with a yawn, and very impatiently: "Leave what you have brought on my
+desk; I'll look over it this afternoon."
+
+Then it occurred to him that such a great concern must have a general
+manager, and of course he would know something about the different
+papers these people had brought for his inspection and for him to pass
+upon, which were like so much Greek to him.
+
+In answer to his summons, a tall, dignified, keen-eyed elderly man
+responded--a man who struck considerable awe to Kendale's guilty heart.
+He said to himself that he wished to the Lord he knew this man's name to
+be able to call him by it--but of course it couldn't be helped.
+
+"I have concluded to permit you to attend to these matters for me--get
+through them the best you can in your own way without bothering me with
+them; do just as you would if I were away on a vacation, we will say,
+and left everything in your charge--all matters for you to settle as you
+deemed best."
+
+The gentleman looked surprised and bowed gravely. "I can attend to most
+of the documents connected with the firm, but there are a few matters I
+see there that the parties interested might object to if they saw the
+name of Manager Wright attached instead of the name of the proprietor."
+
+"In that case, show me where you want me to sign, and I'll put down my
+name here and now, to end the matter."
+
+"Without first examining the documents carefully?" asked the manager, in
+amazement, thinking how slipshod in his business methods the new
+proprietor of the great establishment was becoming since he suddenly
+found himself raised from a poor cashier to a multi-millionaire, and
+thinking that good old Mr. Marsh would turn over in his grave if he had
+heard that.
+
+"Thank Heaven all that is off my mind," muttered Kendale, breathing
+freer as the manager left the office with the papers, adding,
+thoughtfully: "I hope I won't have to come in contact with that man very
+often. I felt so uncomfortable that it was by the greatest effort I
+could control myself--keep from springing from my chair, seizing my hat
+and fairly flying out of this place.
+
+"His keen gray eyes seemed to pierce through and through me. I expected
+every moment to hear him shout out: 'Come hither, everybody--quickly;
+this man is not Lester Armstrong, striking though the resemblance is.
+Send for the police, that this mystery may be solved at once!'"
+
+He was not far wrong in his suspicions.
+
+Manager Wright had quitted the private office with a deeply knitted brow
+and a troubled expression on his face.
+
+"The change in Lester Armstrong since yesterday is amazing," he mused.
+"Long years of dissipation could not have told more on him than the
+change these few hours have worked. He must have been out drinking and
+carousing all night long--the odor of the room from the fumes of strong
+liquor was almost unbearable; it was blue with smoke, too, and Lester
+Armstrong always led us to believe that he had never smoked a cigar in
+his life; and, worst of all, from a gentleman he has suddenly turned
+into a libertine, if I am any judge of features.
+
+"I cannot begin to account for the great change in him; it mystifies me
+quite as much as it did the store detectives and Mr. Conway, the
+cashier. It is all terribly wrong--somehow--somewhere. If it were not
+that I have been here so many years I would tender Mr. Armstrong my
+resignation. I am not at all satisfied--and yet, yesterday, when Mr.
+Armstrong called me into his private office and we had that long talk
+about the business matters of the house, I felt that all would go well;
+to-day he is like a different man--appears to have forgotten completely
+all of the instructions he was so particular to give me. Yesterday he
+said: 'We will go over the books and papers very carefully, you and I,
+and see that every department is run as carefully and well as
+heretofore. I should not like any one in the establishment to feel that
+my taking possession will mean any change for them--save for the
+better.'
+
+"To-day he is as different as night from day; he does not know what he
+wants; he seems all at sea over the simplest details which he ought to
+be decidedly familiar with." His musings were suddenly cut short by an
+immediate summons to return to the private office.
+
+It was with some misgivings that he entered his employer's presence the
+second time.
+
+The bogus Mr. Armstrong was almost invisible from a cloud of smoke from
+a freshly lighted Havana. He held the morning paper in his hand and was
+perusing its columns with apparent avidity.
+
+"Wright!" he cried, excitedly, "how much ready money do you suppose
+there is in the safe of this shebang---hey?"
+
+It took Mr. Wright almost a moment to recover his usual calm dignity and
+make answer:
+
+"Five thousand in cash, and there are negotiable notes amounting to
+upward of forty thousand more."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" queried Kendale, his excitement growing keener;
+"how do you know?"
+
+"You placed bills in my hands a few moments since which necessitated
+conferring with Mr. Conway, the cashier, about meeting them."
+
+"Well, hold on--don't pay out any bills to-day; I want to make use of
+that money--two great opportunities here. Say!" he added in the next
+breath, "do you know anything about sailing yachts and trotters?"
+
+The question fairly staggered Mr. Wright, but he answered promptly:
+
+"Nothing whatever, Mr. Armstrong. I have never taken any interest in
+them; it would be out of place for a man in my position to cultivate a
+taste for that which is so far beyond his means. I am glad to be able to
+say to you, sir, that my tastes are simple and my wants few. I have
+never been on board a yacht, nor have I ever ridden behind what you call
+a trotter."
+
+"Then you've missed a deal of sport," declared Kendale. "But that isn't
+what I sent for you to discuss. What I meant to say is that there's a
+fellow from Newport gone all to smash. His fine yacht, the _Daisy Bell_,
+is to be sold at auction to-day, likewise the contents of his stables.
+There are two of his animals that are flyers--the Lady Albia and
+Sterling. Why, the Lady has a record better than 2.05 1-2, open gaited,
+warranted sound, both of 'em, and no end of traps, tea carts, and
+buggies. I tell you what, Wright, I must have that yacht and that team.
+You must go and bid them in for me--get 'em at any price, if you have to
+run it up to a hundred thousand, and you can even do a little better
+than that rather than see some other lucky fellow get 'em."
+
+Mr. Wright was staring at him as though he quite believed his employer
+had gone suddenly out of his mind.
+
+"Well," said the bogus Mr. Lester Armstrong, coolly, "you heard my
+command to you, didn't you?"
+
+Without another word the general manager turned and with slow, unsteady
+steps quitted his new employer's presence.
+
+"Heaven help me, that I should live to see this hour," he groaned; "a
+hundred thousand dollars--ten fortunes to a poor man like
+myself--frittered away on a yacht and a pair of horses! Mr. Marsh would
+pitch him out if he could but know and come back long enough to do it.
+It spoils the best of 'em to have money thrown at them--to come into a
+fortune that they haven't worked for. A yacht and a pair of horses! What
+will people say to see me, a business man of supposed sense and
+judgment, bidding at a public auction mart for anything like this?
+Heaven help me, I can see the finish of the time-honored dry goods house
+of Marsh & Co., in which I have taken such a world of pride. But I
+suppose I must do as he has ordered, no matter how galling it is to me."
+
+Mr. Wright had no sooner reached the auction mart than a telegram was
+handed him. It was from his employer, and read as follows:
+
+"There are also a pair of seal-brown pacers to be sold. Secure these in
+addition to the others. Price must not stand in the way."
+
+David Wright crushed the telegram in his hands, and the first oath he
+had ever uttered in all his life was ground out between his teeth.
+
+The yacht and two pairs of horses were spiritedly bid for by half a
+dozen gentlemen, who were apparently eager to secure them.
+
+It was easy to see that the quiet, elderly business man, who always went
+higher than the others, was little used to such contests, but he secured
+them at last for one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and there
+was more than one amused laugh in the auction room, knowing ones
+whispering that he had paid three times more than the owner had been
+asking for them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MARGERY'S LOVE DREAM.
+
+
+An hour after Mr. Wright had concluded his purchase for his employer he
+returned to the establishment, accompanied by one of the persons
+authorized to collect the money. When he presented the order at the
+cashier's window, Mr. Conway, the old cashier, drew back aghast as he
+looked at the man.
+
+"Is--is it possible you have indorsed this?" he asked, turning to the
+manager.
+
+Mr. Wright bowed, but his face betrayed deep agitation.
+
+"I cannot pay it without consulting Mr. Armstrong," he exclaimed, in a
+troubled voice. "Wait a moment."
+
+Could it be possible that Lester Armstrong had authorized the payment of
+an amount like that, knowing that the firm was a little crippled for
+cash just at that season of the year? Surely the man must be mad, he
+told himself; and that for which the money was to be paid fairly
+staggered him. He had to look a second time to satisfy himself that he
+had not made a horrible mistake when he read: "For one steam yacht and
+two pairs of horses, $125,000; terms cash."
+
+He set his lips hard together, saying to himself that this was the
+beginning of the end.
+
+At that same moment quite a thrilling scene was taking place in the
+private office, which would have unnerved the old cashier completely had
+he known of it. It so happened, in exploring the nooks of the office,
+Kendale had by chance touched another bell, the bell communicating with
+the suit department, which was in charge of Mr. Conway's pretty
+daughter, Miss Margery. When that bell tapped it meant that the young
+lady was to make all possible haste to the private office, to which she
+had been summoned, and this the young girl proceeded to do, not without
+some little trepidation, however. Fair Margery Conway had a secret
+romance in her life, a romance which no one in the wide world would ever
+have guessed.
+
+For many a long day she had been secretly in love with Mr. Lester
+Armstrong, her father's assistant, of whom; she had heard him speak so
+much and praise so highly.
+
+She admired him immensely. Many a time she made excuses to speak with
+her father a moment in their private office. No one in the wide world
+guessed that grave, handsome Lester Armstrong was the attraction that
+brought her there.
+
+She had many a casual chat with him, and somehow the hope grew in her
+heart that he was not altogether indifferent to her.
+
+Once, when she had started home in the pouring rain, he had gone out of
+his way to see her safely to her destination under the shelter of his
+umbrella.
+
+He had only been courteous, but she had built up many a hope from this
+little incident alone.
+
+She had not seen very much of Lester Armstrong since that
+never-to-be-forgotten day, but her father had told her that he usually
+asked each morning: "How is your daughter, Miss Margery?" and once her
+father had said:
+
+"Of all the young men whom I have met, I have the greatest regard for
+Lester Armstrong. Such young men are the salt of the earth. There is a
+future before him. When he earns a dollar he puts by more than half of
+it against a rainy day. He is not extravagant. Few young men making his
+salary would dress so very plainly and make his clothes do him as long.
+He has no bad habits; he neither smokes nor drinks, and that is
+something you can say of very few young men nowadays."
+
+Margery looked up into her father's face with shining eyes. She made no
+answer, but a vivid flush crept up into her cheeks, and the little hands
+that were busy with the teacups trembled a little. She knew quite well
+that in the depth of his heart her father was hoping that she and
+Lester Armstrong would take a fancy to each other, and that in time
+that fancy might ripen into love, and instead of being only
+acquaintances, she and the assistant cashier might be nearer and dearer
+to each other.
+
+Not long after this Margery Conway received a letter, a poem, rather,
+typewritten. There was no name signed to it, but she felt sure that it
+came from some one in the establishment of Marsh & Co. More than one
+salesman looked at pretty Margery Conway with admiring eyes, but she
+never thought of any of these. The truth was, it was sent by one of the
+bookkeepers, but the girl jumped at once to the conclusion that it was
+from Lester Armstrong. She imagined that from the tender, sentimental
+words. She read the beautiful poem over and over again, until she knew
+every word by heart. The lines even floated dreamily through her brain
+in her sleep. She would awaken with them on her lips. Ah, surely, the
+poem was from Lester Armstrong, she fully believed. It read as follows:
+
+    "What have I done that one face holds me so,
+      And follows me in fancy through the day?
+    Why do I seek your love? I only know
+      That fate is resolute, and points the way
+    To where you stand, bathed in amber light.
+    Since first you looked on me I've seen no night--
+        What have I done?
+
+    "What can be done? As yet no touch, no kiss;
+      Only a gaze across your eyes' blue lake.
+    Better it were, sweetheart, to dream like this,
+      Than afterward to shudder and awake.
+    Love is so very bitter, and his ways
+      Tortured with thorns--with wild weeds overgrown.
+    Must I endure, unloved, these loveless days?--
+        What can be done?
+
+    "This I say, 'Marry where your heart goes first,
+      Dear heart, and then you will be blessed.
+    Ah, how can others choose for you
+      What is for your best?
+    If you're told to wed for gold,
+      Dear girl, or for rank or show,
+    Stand by love, and boldly say,
+      "No, my heart cries no!"'"
+
+Like most young girls, pretty Margery was sentimental. She slept with
+the folded paper beneath her pillow at night, and all day long it was
+carefully tucked away over her beating heart.
+
+It was quite a week after receiving this ere she saw Lester Armstrong
+again; then her face turned burning red. Lester saw it, but how was he
+to dream that he was the cause of her emotion?
+
+"Sweet Margery Conway is not strong," he thought, pityingly. "How
+frightened her father would be were he to see that sudden rush of blood
+to the head."
+
+He wondered whether or not he should run to her and proffer his
+assistance. He had once seen a young woman who was thus affected fall
+to the floor in a fit, and it had been many a long day ere the
+unfortunate woman could return to her work again. He devoutly hoped this
+might not be the case with poor, pretty Margery.
+
+She saw him start and look at her searchingly. She could not have
+stopped and exchanged a word with him if her life had depended upon it.
+She hurried past him with desperate haste, praying that he might not
+hear the beating of her heart.
+
+He noticed that she did not stop to speak, but he quite believed that it
+was because she was very busy. The next moment he had forgotten all
+about it, and about the girl, too, for that matter.
+
+He scarcely remembered pretty Margery until he happened to see her
+again. The girl was fairly stunned by the intelligence that the great
+millionaire owner of the establishment had made Lester Armstrong his
+heir.
+
+At first her joy was so great that she could not speak. Then a sudden
+fright swept over her heart. He was rich now, and she was poor. Would it
+make any difference with him. She tried to put the chilling thought from
+her, for it made her heart turn cold as ice. Her gentle eyes did not
+close in sleep all the long night through. Her pillow was wet with
+tears. The one prayer on her lips was: "I pray to Heaven this may make
+no change in him; that he will care for me as much as when he sent me
+the poem."
+
+She had not seen Lester Armstrong since he had taken his new position as
+proprietor of the great establishment, and now, when his bell rang for
+her, no wonder the girl's heart leaped into her mouth, and involuntarily
+she looked into the long pier glass eagerly. Ah, it was a fair face
+reflected there. There were few fairer, with its delicate coloring
+framed in nut-brown curls, gathered back so carelessly from the white
+brow, and there was a light in the brown eyes beautiful to behold. She
+had been wondering only the moment before if the hero of her daydreams
+had forgotten her, and lo! the summons of his bell had seemed to come in
+answer to the thought.
+
+With trembling, hopeful anticipation, Margery wended her way to her
+employer's office, taking the nearer route, not through the main office,
+where her father was, but by a more direct narrow passage, which was
+seldom used.
+
+All unmindful of his daughter's presence in the main office, the old
+cashier had bent his steps thither for instructions regarding the bill
+which had just been presented, but he had scarcely reached out his hand
+to knock, ere he heard a blood-curdling, piercing scream, in a woman's
+voice, from within, and recognized, in horror too great for words, the
+voice of his own daughter, his Margery!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+PRETTY MARGERY'S TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Pretty Margery Conway had made her way eagerly enough to Mr. Lester
+Armstrong's private office, but her light tap on the door brought no
+response, and, as it was slightly ajar, she pushed it open and stepped
+across the threshold.
+
+To her great surprise she saw that her employer was deeply engrossed in
+the pictures of a comic weekly, and the loud "Ha! ha! ha!" that fell
+from his lips struck upon the girl's sensitive nerves most unpleasantly.
+
+She was wondering how she should make her presence known to him, when
+suddenly he turned around, and then he saw her and a quick gleam of
+intense admiration leaped into his bold, dark eyes at the vision of the
+lovely, blushing, dimpled face of the slender, graceful young girl.
+
+"I am here in response to your summons, Mr. Armstrong," she said, with
+much embarrassment. "Your bell rang so imperatively that--"
+
+"I didn't ring any bell, my dear," he exclaimed, "but still I am
+uncommonly glad to see you. Sit down and we'll have a little chat."
+
+"There is a customer awaiting my return as soon as you--"
+
+"Oh, hang the customer," cut in Kendale. "Sit down, pretty one, and
+we'll make each other's acquaintance."
+
+Margery looked at him in helpless bewilderment.
+
+Had handsome Lester Armstrong, the hero of her dream, gone suddenly mad,
+she wondered?
+
+"Sit down, my dear," he reiterated, "don't look at me in such affright.
+I'm not an ogre; I don't intend to eat you, though, upon my honor, those
+peachy cheeks and pomegranate lips are most wonderfully tempting."
+
+Margery was so intensely surprised she was fairly speechless--incapable
+of word or action.
+
+From where she stood the fumes of strong brandy reached her, and she
+realized that the man before her was under its influence to an alarming
+extent.
+
+No wonder her pretty face paled; even her lips grew white.
+
+She stood before him as one mesmerized by the baleful gleam in his
+merciless concentrated gaze, as the fluttering, frightened bird does in
+the presence of the deadly serpent that means to destroy it.
+
+"Won't be sociable, eh?" muttered Kendale. "You are not diplomatic; you
+don't know your own interests. Sit down here and tell me all about
+yourself--how long you have been here, and all about it. I ought to
+know, of course, but I forget. Come, brush up my memory a bit, won't
+you?"
+
+"Your memory seems indeed very poor all at once," said Margery,
+spiritedly, "considering the fact that you have known me since I was a
+little child"--and, in spite of her efforts at self-control, big tears
+brimmed over the pretty eyes and rolled down the round cheeks.
+
+In an instant Kendale was on his feet.
+
+"There, there, Susie, don't cry," he said, reaching her side quickly and
+grasping both of the little clasped hands in one of his.
+
+"You must have some one else in your mind--that is quite evident. Please
+to recollect that I am Margery Conway, not--not Susie--whoever she may
+be."
+
+He laughed a rollicking, maudlin laugh. The brandy was beginning to
+diffuse itself through his brain.
+
+"I'll never call you anything but Margery again," he cried, "beautiful,
+peerless Margery, the sweetest, jolliest, most bewitching and lovable
+shop girl in all New York."
+
+The young girl looked at him with dilated eyes. Every impulse in her
+terrified heart warned her to turn and fly from the place, but it was
+all in vain. She could not have moved hand or foot if her very life had
+been the forfeit.
+
+"So you are toiling away in a place like this for a mere pittance," he
+went on; "probably hardly enough to keep soul and body together. That's
+a confounded shame for a pretty girl like you. Work isn't for such as
+you--you ought to be out in the sunshine, dressed in silks and velvets
+and diamonds galore. It's bad enough for the old and ugly--those whose
+hair is streaked with gray and around whose eyes the crow's feet have
+been planted by the hand of time, to work--ay, toil for their bread. By
+Jove, I say you are far too lovely for such a fate!"
+
+"Sir!" cried Margery, drawing herself up to her fullest height. "I work
+for my living, but I want you to understand that I am proud of the fact,
+instead of deeming it a disgrace, as you seem to think it.
+
+"Up to this hour I have always considered you a man of honor--one of
+nature's noblemen--a gentleman. Now I know you as you are--a _roué_--ay,
+a scoundrel. I would scorn to remain another hour in your employ. Money
+earned in this establishment from this moment would burn my fingers."
+
+"Hoity-toity! Don't get big feelings too suddenly, my pretty dear," he
+cried, with a load, hilarious laugh. "Lord! what simpletons some girls
+are! You're standing in your own light, pretty one! Can't you see that?"
+
+"Sir!" cried Margery, struggling to free herself from the grasp of his
+strong hand, "it is dastardly, it is cowardly to summon me here to
+subject me to--insult."
+
+"'Pon my honor, I want to be friendly, but you won't have it so--you
+seem determined to kick up a row. Come, now, be friendly; sit down here
+and we'll talk it over."
+
+"Unhand me!" cried Margery in terror. "Let me go, or I shall scream for
+help!"
+
+"You won't do any such thing, my little ruffled birdling," he cut in, an
+angry light leaping up into his eyes, adding: "I am disposed to treat
+you very kindly, but you seem determined to make an enemy of me instead
+of a friend, my dear, and your reason ought to tell you how foolish that
+is. Come, be sensible and listen to me. I've taken a violent fancy to
+that pretty face of yours. We must be friends--excellent friends. That's
+a good beginning, you know."
+
+Margery glanced toward the door, the fright deepening in her eyes. He
+had placed himself between her and the door, kicking it to with his
+foot.
+
+He saw that quick glance, and read it aright, and his brow darkened.
+
+"Don't be a little fool!" he cried. "Don't anger me, girl. You had
+better make a friend instead of an enemy of me."
+
+"Your enmity or friendship is a matter of equal indifference to me now,"
+gasped Margery, sobbing bitterly.
+
+"You have slain my respect for you. I--I am sorry--sorry from the bottom
+of my heart--that I realize you have fallen from such a noble height in
+my estimation."
+
+"That's all bosh and moonshine," hiccoughed Kendale; "respect and high
+pedestal of honor and all that sort of thing. You're among the clouds;
+get down to earth. I'm only a man--you mustn't take me for a little god.
+Come, now, what in the name of reason is the use of making such a fuss
+over this thing, and storming like an angry princess on the stage
+because I tell you frankly that I've taken a notion to you. By George,
+you ought to be mighty pleased to know that you've captured the fancy of
+a man like me, with no end of money at my command. Do you realize that,
+little one?"
+
+The girl's terror was growing intense with each passing moment.
+
+Her horror and dread of the man before her was a thousand-fold greater
+at that moment than her admiration for Lester Armstrong had been in days
+gone by. He seemed to her a different being in the same form--one
+suddenly transformed from all that was manly and noble to a very fiend
+incarnate.
+
+An awful stillness had fallen over the girl--a full realization of the
+meaning of his jocular remarks was just dawning upon her. She was
+looking at him with the awful pallor of death on her lovely young face.
+
+"Come, my pretty Margery," he cried, quite mistaking the reason that her
+struggle to free herself from his clasping hand had so suddenly ceased;
+"now you are falling into a more complaisant mood. I am glad of that.
+Sit down and we'll talk. I must lock that door, or some blundering fool
+will be stumbling in without taking the trouble to knock. But first give
+me a kiss from those sweet lips, my dear, to assure me you don't quite
+dislike me, you know."
+
+As he spoke he flung his arm about the girl's slender waist, and it was
+then that Margery's piercing scream rang out so loudly upon her father's
+ears, fairly electrifying him as he stood with his hand upon the knob of
+the door of the private office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A FATHER'S RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION
+
+
+For an instant the old cashier stood like one suddenly paralyzed before
+the door of the private office from which that terrified scream had
+issued.
+
+Great God! was he mad or dreaming, that he should imagine he heard his
+daughter Margery's voice calling for help from within?
+
+But even as he stood there, trembling, irresolute, the piercing cry was
+repeated more shrilly, more piteous than before, and it cut through the
+frightened father's heart like the thrust of a dagger.
+
+"I am coming, I am here, Margery!" he answered, twisting the bronze knob
+fiercely; But the door did not yield to his touch as usual, and to his
+horror he realized that it was locked upon the inside!
+
+With the fury of a tiger, David Conway threw himself against it with all
+his strength; strong as the lock was, it could not withstand the weight
+that was brought to bear upon it, and in an instant it was snapped
+asunder, the door falling in with a crash.
+
+With a terrible imprecation Kendale wheeled about, his grasp around the
+girl's waist slackening for a single instant.
+
+And in that instant Margery sprang from him, darting into the arms of
+her father, who had leaped over the threshold.
+
+"How dare you enter here?" shrieked Kendale, fairly beside himself with
+baffled rage.
+
+The old cashier thrust his daughter behind him and walked up to the
+foiled villain, gazing him steadily, unflinchingly in the eye.
+
+"I am here just in time to defend my child," he cried, white to the
+lips, "and here to chastise you, you villain, old man as I am"--and with
+the rapidity of lightning his clinched fist fell upon the face of the
+man before him with stinging blows, that resounded with all the strength
+and force of a steel hammer.
+
+Kendale, who was by this time entirely under the influence of the brandy
+he had imbibed, was no match for the enraged cashier, who followed up
+his advantage by ringing blows, which fell as thick and fast as driving
+hail, until the other, coward as he was, fell down on his knees before
+him, shrieking out for mercy.
+
+The unusual disturbance soon brought a throng of cashiers, bookkeepers
+and clerks flocking to the scene.
+
+The old cashier turned upon them, holding up his hand to stay their
+steps as they crowded over the threshold, Mr. Wright, the manager,
+calling upon him anxiously to explain at once this unusual scene--this
+disgraceful encounter between his employer, who seemed unable to speak
+because of his injuries, and himself.
+
+"It is due you all to know just what has happened," replied the old
+cashier, in a high, clear voice, "but I say to you, by the God above me,
+if this hound dares arise from his knees ere I have finished, I will
+kill him before your very eyes. There is something he has to say before
+you all while still on his knees. Let no man speak until I have had my
+say, and then you--my companions of years, my fellow-workers, my friends
+of a lifetime--shall judge of my action in this matter and deal with me
+accordingly."
+
+The scene was so extraordinary that no man among them seemed capable of
+uttering so much as a syllable, so great was their consternation at
+beholding their employer on his knees, groveling before the old cashier,
+who stood over him like an aroused, avenging spirit.
+
+In a voice high and clear the old cashier, whom they had known and
+revered for years, told his story in a simple, straightforward way, yet
+quivering with excitement, drawing his terror-stricken daughter Margery
+into the shelter of his strong arms as he spoke.
+
+"I am Margery's father--her only protector," he said, in conclusion.
+"Is there a man among you with a father's heart beating in his bosom who
+would not have done as I have done to the villain who dared to thus
+insult his child. Ay, there are men among you who would not have
+hesitated to have stricken him dead with a single blow--who would have
+considered it a crime to have spared him."
+
+By this time Kendale was recovering from the stunning blows which had
+been dealt him--realized that help was at hand; the employees would be
+in duty bound to protect him from the enraged man before him.
+
+He realized, too, that the old cashier meant that he should remain there
+on his knees and beg the girl's pardon before all these people.
+
+Ere Mr. Conway could judge of his design the bogus Lester Armstrong had
+bounded to his feet and into the midst of the crowd.
+
+"You are discharged!" he cried, turning to the old cashier. "I will give
+you just ten minutes to get out of this building--you and the girl, both
+of you. It was a plan hatched up between you and her to extort money
+from me."
+
+The old cashier attempted to spring at him, but the strong hands of
+indignant, pitying friends held him back.
+
+Suddenly he stopped short, saying, with a dignity wonderful to behold:
+
+"It is not necessary, I think, to ask any of you, who all know me so
+well and know also my little Margery, not to give credence to so heinous
+a statement. I am going from this place, friends. I would not stay
+another moment in this villain's employ, nor would my Margery, though he
+weighed us down with all the wealth the world holds. Come, Margery."
+
+The crowd slowly parted, making way for them, and together Margery and
+her father passed through the line of sympathizing faces, hand in
+hand--the old man white, stern and resolute, pretty Margery sobbing as
+though her heart would break.
+
+Mr. Wright, the manager, who had been--like the old cashier--fully five
+and twenty years beneath that roof, turned and faced the throng, saying,
+huskily:
+
+"Mr. Armstrong, I herewith tender you my resignation. My friend of a
+lifetime is going, and I shall go, too."
+
+"And I," "And I," "And I," quickly rang out, voice after voice.
+
+"Confound you all, I discharge the whole lot of you!" shouted Kendale,
+now quite sobered by the excitement he was passing through. "Don't think
+your going troubles me even a little bit. The set of men don't live who
+will ever trouble me or my business!"
+
+With great rapidity the men fled from the private office, and, without
+waiting even to close their ledgers, took down their coats and hats, got
+into them quickly and filed downstairs.
+
+Kendale never could fully comprehend how it happened that in five
+minutes' time the five hundred employees of the place heard what had
+occurred, and in less time than it takes to recount it the strangest
+event that had ever taken place in the annals of a great New York
+business house occurred--there was a mighty uproar and by one accord the
+great throng of employees quitted their tasks--badly as they needed
+work--and dashed out into the street, leaving the vast emporium to the
+hundreds of astonished customers with which it was crowded at that hour.
+
+For an instant Kendale was horror-stricken when he realized what was
+occurring.
+
+"God Almighty!" he gasped, "I am ruined, disgraced! A thousand furies
+take that girl; but she shall pay dearly for this. The police will be
+here to quell the riot and disperse the crowd outside, and turn out the
+people who are still inside!"
+
+Looking from the window, he saw that the throng of angry employees were
+gathered around the old cashier and his daughter in a mighty mob.
+
+"Good Lord! if Halloran were only here, to advise me this time," he
+muttered, turning pale with fear. He could hear their loud, angry voices
+hurling imprecations at him, and he knew full well that he would never
+be able to pass through that throng of thoroughly aroused and angry men
+without their doing him bodily injury, and he told himself in affright
+that all the Marsh millions for which he had bartered his soul would not
+save him from the hands of that raging mob.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+"I LIKE HER BETTER THAN ANY I HAVE MET--I SHALL MARRY HER."
+
+
+Kendale was clever and quick of resource. He realized that there must be
+sudden action on his part. Should he fly headlong from the place and
+give up all? Then a remembrance of the yacht and the horses came to him,
+and he set his teeth hard together.
+
+"I will see this game through, come what may," he muttered.
+
+At that instant a daring thought came to him, and he acted upon it
+before he could have time to back down through cowardice.
+
+Throwing open the window wide, he stepped boldly out upon the ledge in
+full view of the angry crowd of five hundred employees.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, raising his voice to a high key
+that all might hear, "I have something to say, and it is only due me
+that you should listen and then pass judgment.
+
+"Please believe me, one and all, I had no thought, no wish to offend Mr.
+Conway's pretty daughter Margery. I may as well own the truth. I had
+fallen desperately in love with the girl and was telling her so, and was
+just on the point of asking her to accept me as a suitor for her hand
+when she, mistaking my motives, it appears, called for assistance, and I
+was not permitted to speak in order to explain.
+
+"Assuring her and all of you that my motives were most honorable, I beg
+of you to reconsider leaving me in this abrupt fashion. Return to your
+posts of duty, and this little difficulty will be adjusted
+satisfactorily to you and to Miss Conway."
+
+Kendale was used to making a hit with an audience--used to throwing his
+soul, as it were, into anything he had to say.
+
+The effect on the crowd below was magical; for a moment they were
+stunned.
+
+The old cashier was almost stunned. The young millionaire was just about
+proposing marriage to Margery! Why, what a mistake he had made--what a
+terrible mistake! Even Margery had fallen back a step or two and was
+clinging to her father's hand in the greatest amazement.
+
+"I--I think I was mad, friends and fellow-workers," he exclaimed,
+huskily. "I believe I was too precipitate in this affair.
+
+"It is so long since I was young I--I had forgotten that it is the
+custom of men now, as in the years long since gone by, to speak to a
+maiden of love before he said anything of marriage.
+
+"It did not occur to me that the great millionaire wanted my little girl
+for his wife, as he now says.
+
+"Hear me, friends, one and all. I most heartily regret causing this
+disturbance and I move that we return to our places, as our employer
+suggests."
+
+There was a murmur of assent among the throng; then, all in a body, they
+moved forward, entering the building again; and in less than five
+minutes' time matters were moving on quite as smoothly once more as
+though no sudden upheaval had ever occurred in the great dry goods
+establishment.
+
+Mr. Conway, however, was too upset to attend further to his duties that
+afternoon, and accepted the manager's suggestion that he should go to
+his home, Margery accompanying him.
+
+Meanwhile Kendale had thrown himself down into the nearest chair,
+breathing hard, feeling like a general who had achieved a most wonderful
+victory.
+
+"A few soft, silvery words saved me this time," he muttered, "but it
+throws the girl on my hands. Well, I suppose I will have to propose
+marriage to her now--every one expects it; there would be a terrible
+rumpus kicked up if I did not. Well, let there be an engagement between
+us; that doesn't mean that there will be a marriage, by any means. The
+engagement can drag along three or four years, and then we can break
+off. By that time I shall be ready to marry the heiress of the Fairfax
+millions. Ah, how much easier it is to scheme for a fortune than to toil
+for one, as most poor mortals do."
+
+The entrance of the manager with the bill for the hundred and
+twenty-five thousand put an end to his musings and plans for the
+present. Mr. Wright emerged from the office ten minutes later with a
+very troubled expression on his face. It was dearly patent to him that
+Mr. Lester Armstrong did not care how badly the business was crippled,
+so long as he secured the yacht and the fast horses.
+
+From that first day, so full of awkward and almost fatal mistakes,
+Kendale spent as little time as was absolutely necessary in the
+establishment of Marsh & Company, as it was still called, preferring to
+let all of the business cares fall upon the manager's already weighted
+shoulders.
+
+In less than a week it was noised about social circles that the young
+man who had so suddenly dropped into millions of money was something of
+a sport--a yachtsman whose magnificent yachting parties were the wonder
+of the metropolis; a horseman whose racing stables were second to none
+and were worth a handsome fortune; and it was hinted that he seemed no
+stranger at cards and gambled sums of gold that would have purchased a
+king's ransom at a single game--until those who looked on in speechless
+wonder were sure he must have exhaustless wealth. Every one prophesied,
+however, that this reckless extravagance must have an ending some time.
+Meanwhile society held out its arms to the young millionaire, welcoming
+him with its sweetest smiles.
+
+The date which he had set to dine with the Fairfaxes, of Beechwood,
+rolled around at last, and for once in his life Kendale, or rather the
+bogus Lester Armstrong, was punctual in his appointment.
+
+He was ushered into a drawing-room of such magnificence that for a
+moment he fairly caught his breath in wonder.
+
+"So this was the home of Faynie Fairfax, the girl whom I wedded in the
+old church and who died so suddenly on her bridal eve," he soliloquized.
+"Well, all this could be mine for the fighting for it as Faynie's
+husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, 'It's a deal
+easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother's daughter,
+who has come into it by Faynie's father cutting her off at the eleventh
+hour.'
+
+"I wonder what the girl Claire is like."
+
+There was a portrait of a young girl done in water colors over the
+mantel. He stepped over to examine it.
+
+"If this is Claire's portrait she's certainly not bad looking," he
+mused, "but she is one I should not care to cross."
+
+The figure was slight, draped in a gown of some light, airy fabric. The
+head was small, crowned in a mass of waving dark hair. The contour of
+the face was perfect; a pair of deep gray eyes looked out of it straight
+at you; the lips were small, but a little too compressed, showing that
+the owner of them had certainly a will of her own, which it was neither
+wise nor best to cross.
+
+He was startled from his contemplation by the sound of silken robes
+rustling across the carpet, and, wheeling suddenly about, he was
+confronted by a tall, slim, magnificent woman, who welcomed him most
+graciously to Fairfax House.
+
+"My daughter Claire will join us in a very few minutes. Ah, she is here
+now," she announced, as a swift step was heard in the corridor outside;
+a moment later the portières parted, and the young girl whose portrait
+he had been critically analyzing entered the room.
+
+"I shall know at once by the first words he utters whether I shall like
+him or not," thought the girl, looking straight into his face with her
+fearless, keen, gray eyes. "He is handsome, and that generally goes with
+great conceit, Faynie always said."
+
+"I hope we shall be friends, Miss Fairfax," he said, extending his hand
+and bowing low over the little brown one that lay for an instant in his
+palm.
+
+"There is a great mistake evident at the outset," said the girl, looking
+up into his face. "Mamma said just now: 'This is my daughter Claire.' I
+think mamma intended to add, 'Miss Claire Stanhope.' Mr. Fairfax was my
+steppapa."
+
+Kendale smiled amusedly, both at the mother's momentary discomfiture
+and the young girl's brusque straightforwardness.
+
+"I like her better than any one I have ever met. I shall marry her," he
+promised himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+CLAIRE'S LOVER.
+
+
+During the dinner that followed Kendale longed to introduce the subject
+of "Faynie," but found no opening. His eagerness to know what they
+thought and what they had to say concerning her disappearance was
+intense, but he had to bide his time to find out.
+
+Meanwhile he paid the most flattering attention to Claire.
+
+He had noticed with a keen sense of regret that the girl limped most
+painfully in her walk, but, despite this defect, for the first time in
+his reckless life, he was thoroughly fascinated with her.
+
+He took his leave early, promising them that he would certainly avail
+himself of their gracious permission to call again, very, very soon.
+
+Long after his departure the mother and daughter still sat in the
+drawing-room discussing him eagerly.
+
+"It is a good thing for you that Faynie declines to come down to the
+drawing-room to see visitors and insists upon having her meals in her
+own room. If she had seen this handsome Mr. Armstrong, you would have
+stood little chance of winning him, my dear," declared Mrs. Fairfax.
+
+Claire rose slowly to her feet, turned and faced her mother.
+
+"You and I do not agree on that point, mamma," she said, quickly, "I
+have what you call a Quixotic notion, perhaps, and that is that we are
+attracted toward those whom Heaven intended for us, and if this be so he
+would not have been attracted toward Faynie if he were intended for me."
+
+"We will not argue the matter, Claire, for we shall never agree,"
+declared her mother, adding: "I shall always be opposed to Mr. Armstrong
+meeting Faynie or ever hearing one word concerning the existence of such
+a person. If he should, mind, I predict harm will come of it."
+
+Those were the words that rang in Claire's ears long after she retired
+to her room.
+
+"I shall tell Faynie that we had a caller last evening and how handsome
+he was; but I shall take good care to follow mamma's advice and never
+let her know his name," the girl ruminated.
+
+She was only a young girl, full of girlish enthusiasm, and it was
+certainly beyond human expectation to believe she could refrain from
+mentioning that much to Faynie the next morning.
+
+Faynie laid a little white hand on Claire's nut-brown head.
+
+"Take care not to fall too deeply in love with this handsome stranger,"
+she said, "for handsome men are not always good and true as they seem."
+
+"I am sure this gentleman is," declared impulsive Claire emphatically.
+"He has the deepest, richest, mellowest voice I ever heard, and such
+eyes--wine dark eyes--those are the only words which seem to express
+what they are like--and when he takes your hand and looks down into your
+face, the hand he holds so lightly tingles from the finger tips straight
+to your heart."
+
+"I am afraid he has been holding your hand, Claire. Ah, take
+care--beware!" warned Faynie.
+
+During the fortnight that followed Kendale was a constant visitor at the
+palatial Fairfax home.
+
+And those two weeks changed the whole after current of Claire's life, as
+Faynie observed with wonder. It was certainly evident the girl was
+deeply in love, and Faynie trembled for her, for love would bring to
+such natures as hers the greatest peace or the bitterest sorrow.
+
+She wondered if her stepmother saw how affairs were drifting.
+
+If it had not been that she and her stepmother were always at
+cross-purposes with each other, she would have gone to her and warned
+her that it was dangerous to throw this handsome young man so often into
+Claire's society, unless she could readily see that he was pleased with
+the girl--realizing that poor Claire had a sad drawback in her lameness
+and that many would seek her society because she was bright and witty,
+who would never dream of asking her hand in marriage because of it.
+
+Once she attempted to warn Claire of the hidden rocks that lay in love's
+ocean, but the girl turned quickly a white, pained face toward her.
+
+"Say no more, Faynie," she cried; "the mischief, as you call it, has
+already been done. My heart has left me and gone to him. If I do not win
+him I shall die. You know the words:
+
+    "Some hold that love is a foolish thing,
+      A thing of little worth;
+    But little or great, or weak or strong.
+      'Tis love that rules the earth.
+
+    "The tale is new, yet ever told;
+      It has often been breathed ere now---
+    'There was a lad who loved a lass'--
+      'Tis old as the world, I trow!
+
+    "The song I sing has been sung before,
+      And will often again be sung
+    While lads and lasses have lips to kiss,
+      Or bard a tuneful tongue.
+
+    "And this is the burden of my rhyme--
+      Though love be of little worth,
+    Yet from pole to pole and shore to shore,
+      'Tis love that rules the earth."
+
+"And it is love that breaks hearts and wrecks lives," murmured Faynie,
+with streaming eyes and quivering lips. "Oh, Claire! again I warn you to
+take care--beware!"
+
+For one brief moment she was tempted to tell Claire her own story.
+
+Ah, had she but done so, how much misery might have been spared the
+hapless girl! But she put the impulse from her with a shudder.
+
+No, no, she could not breathe to human ears the story of her false lover
+and the tragedy that had ended her dream of love.
+
+She had never permitted her thoughts to dwell upon Lester Armstrong
+since that fatal night.
+
+If there were times when she thought of him as when she knew him first,
+seemingly so loving, tender and true, she put the thought quickly from
+her, remembering him as she saw him that fatal night--transformed
+suddenly into a demon by strong drink, when he struck her down upon
+finding that she had just been disinherited--that she was not the
+heiress that he had taken her to be.
+
+He thought his crime buried fathoms deep under the drifting snow heaps.
+Ah, how great would be his terror to find that the grave to which he had
+consigned her had given her back to the world of the living! No, no, she
+could not shock Claire's young ears with that horrible story!
+
+It would be bad enough for her to learn of it in after years.
+
+Thus Faynie settled the matter in her own mind, and her lips were
+sealed.
+
+One morning Claire burst eagerly into the room, quite as soon as it was
+light.
+
+"I was here late last night, but you were asleep, Faynie," she said,
+"and I came away, though I could scarcely wait to tell you the wonderful
+news."
+
+"I think I can guess what it is," replied Faynie, stroking the girl's
+brown curls, "Your lover has declared his love for you and asked you to
+be his wife. Is it not so?"
+
+"You know it could be nothing else which could make me so very, very
+happy," laughed Claire, her cheeks reddening.
+
+"And you have answered--yes?" asked Faynie.
+
+"Of course I said yes," responded Claire.
+
+"And when is the wedding to take place?" queried Faynie, hoping with all
+her heart that this lover of whom the girl was so desperately fond loved
+Claire for herself--not for the wealth she had fallen heir to.
+
+Claire raised her bright, blushing face shyly, the dimples coming and
+going, making her rather plain little face almost beautiful at that
+moment.
+
+"Mamma wanted the marriage put off for a year--I am so young--but Lester
+was so impatient that he would consent to no such arrangement. He wants
+the ceremony performed with as little delay as is absolutely necessary."
+
+"Lester!" The name went through Faynie's heart like the thrust of a
+knife.
+
+For an instant every nerve in her body seemed to tremble and throb with
+quick, spasmodic pain, then to stand still as though the chill of death
+were creeping over her. Her eyes grew dim with an awful darkness, and
+Claire's voice seemed far off and indistinct. Then the world faded from
+her altogether and she fell at Claire's feet all in a little heap, in a
+dead swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE PROPOSAL.
+
+
+With all possible haste Claire summoned the housekeeper and gave Faynie
+into her charge.
+
+It was more than disappointing to her to have Faynie lapse into
+unconsciousness just as she had reached the most interesting part of her
+story and was about to tell her how very romantically handsome Lester
+had proposed. It had been just like a page from a French novel.
+
+She little dreamed that the art of making love was an old one to him.
+
+Kendale had gone to the Fairfax mansion with the express purpose of
+proposing marriage that evening, for only that day Mr. Conway, the old
+cashier, had told him confidentially that the affairs of the great dry
+goods concern were in a bad shape--that the check for the hundred and
+twenty-five thousand which had just been paid out had crippled them
+sorely.
+
+And, after a moment's pause and with a husky voice, he added slowly: "If
+something like three hundred thousand dollars is not raised within the
+next sixty days you are a ruined man, Mr. Armstrong."
+
+This announcement fell with crushing force upon Kendale, who had
+imagined that there could be no end to the flow of money that was
+pouring in upon him.
+
+"There's only one way of raking in that much money in a hurry, and that
+is by marrying the little lame heiress," he soliloquized.
+
+It so happened that he had an engagement to call there on this
+particular evening, and he resolved that he would not let the
+opportunity slip past him--that there was no time like the present.
+
+Fortune, fate, call it what you will, favored Kendale on this particular
+occasion, as it usually did. He found Claire alone in the drawing-room
+practising some sheet music which he had sent her a few days before.
+
+She started up in confusion as the servant ushered him into the room, a
+swift blush crimsoning her cheeks.
+
+"Mamma will be down directly, Mr. Armstrong," she said, looking at him
+shyly from beneath her long lashes.
+
+"Miss Stanhope--Claire!" he exclaimed impulsively, seizing both of her
+little hands in his, "may we not have a few words together before my
+card is sent up to your mother? Oh, Claire, you would surely say yes if
+you knew all I had to say to you. Be kind and consent."
+
+"Since you seem to desire it so earnestly, I am sure I have no wish to
+object," she answered, trembling in spite of her efforts to appear
+unconcerned under the fire of his keen, ardent gaze.
+
+"You are an angel," he cried, seating himself in a chair so near her
+that he could still hold the little fluttering hands, which she fain
+would have drawn from his clasp, for, although she had never before had
+a proposal of marriage, she guessed intuitively what was coming.
+
+"Since I have but a few minutes alone with you, Claire, what I have to
+say must be said quickly," he began.
+
+For the first time in her life Claire was at a loss for an answer.
+
+"I am sure you have guessed my secret, sweetest of all sweet girls," he
+murmured. "Every glance of my eyes, every touch of my hand, must have
+told it to you from the first moment we met. Did it--not?"
+
+"No," faltered Claire, her eyes drooping like a flower under the sun's
+piercing rays.
+
+"Then my lips shall tell you," he cried. "It is this--I love you, little
+Claire--love you with all my heart, all my soul. You are the light of my
+life, the sunshine of my existence, my lode-star, my hope--all that a
+young girl is to a man who idolizes her as the one supreme being on
+earth who can make him happy. Oh, Claire, I worship you as man never
+worshiped woman before, and I want you for my wife."
+
+She opened her lips to speak, but he went on rapidly, hoarsely:
+
+"Do not refuse me, for it would be my death warrant if you did. I tell
+you I cannot brook a refusal from those dear lips of yours. If you do
+not consent I shall make away with myself in your presence here and now
+with a revolver which lies in my breast pocket."
+
+A scream of terror broke from Claire's terrified lips.
+
+"Oh, do not make away with yourself, Mr; Armstrong!" "I--I will
+promise--anything you--you want me to! Only don't shoot
+yourself--don't!"
+
+"Then you accept me?" queried Kendale in a very businesslike manner.
+
+"Ye-es--if mamma does not--object," she answered in a stifling manner.
+
+"There must be no ifs," he declared. "You must take me, no matter who
+objects. If we cannot bring your mamma around to an amicable way of
+thinking, we must elope--that is all there is about it."
+
+"Elope!" gasped Claire in affright.
+
+"Why, what else would there be left to do?" he asked, with asperity. "I
+love you and I must have you, Claire, and if you are willing to take me,
+why, we will marry in spite of anything and everything that opposes.
+
+"Of course, if your mamma sees things as we do, all well and good; but
+I say now to you, her objections must make no difference whatever in our
+plans."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Armstrong!" gasped Claire, not knowing what in the world to say
+to this ardent lover, who was so impetuous in his wooing.
+
+Before he could add a word Mrs. Fairfax came down the grand stairway,
+her silken gown making a rustling frou-frou upon the velvet carpet.
+
+She looked much surprised at finding him there, as she had not been
+apprised of his coming.
+
+Kendale arose to greet her in his usual impressive, languid, courteous
+fashion, managing to whisper in Claire's ear hastily:
+
+"Make some excuse to leave the drawing-room for a few minutes, dear, and
+while you are gone I will broach the all-important subject to your
+mother."
+
+Mrs. Fairfax greeted the handsome young man cordially, pretending not to
+have noticed how near to each other they had been sitting upon her
+entrance to the drawing-room, and how suddenly they had sprung apart.
+
+Her daughter's blushing face and confused manner told her that the
+propitious moment had arrived--the handsome heir to the Marsh millions
+had proposed.
+
+And underneath her calm exterior Mrs. Fairfax's heart beat high with
+exultation. Her quick ear had also caught that rapidly whispered last
+remark to Claire, and, realizing that her daughter was too much
+flustered to act upon it, gave the young man the opportunity to be alone
+with her which he seemed to desire by remarking:
+
+"Dear me, I have left my fan in my boudoir, Claire, dear, would you mind
+ringing for my maid to fetch it to me?"
+
+"I will go for it, mamma," returned Claire, shyly, without daring to
+look at her lover.
+
+"As you like, my dear," returned Mrs. Fairfax, with very natural
+appearing carelessness.
+
+Claire was gone quite half an hour in search of the fan. When she
+returned to the drawing-room her mother met her with open arms.
+
+"Mr. Armstrong has told me all, my darling," she murmured, "and I give
+my consent. You may marry him if you love him, daughter, and quite as
+soon as he wishes."
+
+Kendale left the mansion two hours later with a self-satisfied smile on
+his lips.
+
+"Marrying heiresses is much easier than most men suppose," he
+muttered--and he stopped short in the grounds, standing under a tree
+until the lights went out one by one, shrouding the house in gloom.
+
+Meanwhile, girl like, Claire had flown to Faynie's apartment to tell
+her the wonderful news--that her handsome lover had really proposed and
+her mother had given her consent, and she was to be married at once.
+
+Faynie's swoon had put a stop to confiding to her all the wonderful
+things Lester had said. "I will tell her in the morning," she promised
+herself, little dreaming what was to transpire ere the morrow dawned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+AN AWFUL APPARITION.
+
+
+When Faynie awoke to consciousness she found the housekeeper bending
+over her. Hours had passed and Claire had long since retired to her
+room.
+
+Faynie opened her eyes slowly, in a half-dazed manner, but as she did so
+memory returned to her with startling force; but she bravely restrained
+the cry that rose to her lips.
+
+Claire had called her lover "Lester!" She wondered that the sound of
+that name had: not stricken her head.
+
+Could Claire's lover be--Ah! she dared not even imagine such a horrible
+possibility. Then she laughed aloud, thinking how foolish she had been
+to be so needlessly alarmed.
+
+The false lover who had wooed and won her so cruelly was not the only
+man in the world who bore the fateful name of Lester.
+
+"Ah, you are better, my dear," exclaimed the old housekeeper in great
+relief. "Your swoon lasted so long that I was greatly alarmed; What
+caused you to faint, my dear child?"
+
+Faynie murmured some reply which she could not quite catch, for the
+housekeeper was old and very deaf.
+
+"Take this and go to sleep," she said, holding a soothing, quieting
+draught to the girl's white, hot, parched lips. "You will awaken as well
+as ever to-morrow."
+
+Faynie did as she was requested, closing her eyes. She was glad when the
+kindly old face was turned away and she was left alone--not to sleep,
+but to think.
+
+Of course it could not be Lester Armstrong who was Claire's suitor, for
+he was poor, and her haughty stepmother would never encourage the suit
+of a man who did not have wealth at his command.
+
+If Faynie had but read the papers she would have known what was
+transpiring, but, alas! she did not and was utterly unaware of the
+strange turn of fortune's wheel which had occurred in the life of the
+young assistant cashier to whom she had given the wealth of her love,
+when he was poor.
+
+Lying there, going over every detail of, the past, which seemed now but
+the idle vagaries of a fleeting dream, she hardly knew, Heaven help her,
+whether she still loved--or hated with all the strength of her
+nature--Lester Armstrong.
+
+Her heart would fill with yearning tenderness almost unbearable when she
+looked back at the early days of that brief, sweet courtship.
+
+How strong, noble, true and brave he had seemed--how kind of heart!
+
+She had seen him pick up a little birdling that had fallen from its
+nest, lying with a bruised wing in the dust of the roadside, and restore
+it to the mother bird to be nursed back to health and life, and go out
+of his way to rescue a butterfly that had fallen in the millpond.
+
+It seemed like the distorted imagination of some diseased brain to bring
+herself to the realization that this same gentle hand that had rescued
+the robin and the butterfly had struck her down to death--that the kind,
+earnest voice that had been wont to whisper nothing but words of
+devotion and eternal love should fling out the vilest and bitterest of
+oaths at her, because she was not the heiress he had taken her to be.
+
+And without one tear, one bitter regret, he had consigned her to that
+lonely grave and gone back to the life which he had declared he could
+never live without her.
+
+Where was he now? she wondered vaguely; then she laughed a low, bitter
+laugh, sadder than any tears.
+
+He had missed the fortune he had hoped for and was back again in the
+office of Marsh & Co.
+
+Then the thought came to her again with crushing, alarming force--would
+he not (believing her dead and himself free to woo and wed again) seek
+out some other heiress, since that was his design? Many young girls came
+to the assistant cashier's window just as she had done; he would select
+the richest and marry her.
+
+The very thought seemed to stab her to the heart with a keen, subtle
+pain which she could neither understand nor clearly define, even to
+herself.
+
+"Heaven pity her in the hour when she finds that she has been
+deceived--that he married her for gold, not love," she sobbed, covering
+her face with her little trembling hands.
+
+She prayed to Heaven silently that Claire's lover, whoever he might be,
+was marrying her for love, and for love alone.
+
+So restless was she that, despite the quieting draught which the
+housekeeper had induced her to swallow, she could not sleep.
+
+But one thing remained for her to do, and that was to get up and dress
+and go down to her father's library and read herself into forgetfulness
+until day dawned.
+
+Faynie acted upon the impulse, noting as she stepped from her room into
+the corridor that the clock on her mantel chimed the hour of two.
+
+She had proceeded scarcely half a dozen steps ere she became aware that
+she was not alone in the corridor.
+
+She stopped short.
+
+The time was when Faynie would have shrieked aloud or swooned from
+terror; but she had gone through so many thrilling scenes during the
+last few weeks of her eventful young life that fear within her breast
+had quite died out.
+
+Was it only her wild, fanciful imagination, or did she hear the sound of
+low breathing? Faynie stood quite still, leaning behind a marble Flora,
+and listened.
+
+Yes, the sound was audible enough now. There was somebody in the
+corridor creeping toward the spot where she stood, with swift but
+noiseless feet.
+
+Nearer, nearer the footsteps crept, the soft, low-bated breathing
+sounding closer with every step.
+
+With a presence of mind which few young girls possessed, Faynie
+suddenly stepped forward and turned on the gas jet from an electric
+button, full head.
+
+The sight which met her gaze fairly rooted her to the spot.
+
+For one brief instant of time it seemed to Faynie as though her breath
+was leaving her body.
+
+She stood paralyzed, unable to stir hand or foot, if her very life had
+depended upon it.
+
+Outside the wind blew dismally; the shutters creaked to and fro on their
+hinges; the leafless branches of the trees tapped their ghostly fingers
+against the panes.
+
+Faynie tried to speak--to cry out--but her tongue seemed to cleave to
+the roof of her mouth, powerless. Her hands fell to her side a dead
+weight, her eyes fairly bulging from their sockets.
+
+It almost seemed to the girl that she was passing through the awful
+transition of death.
+
+The blood in her veins was turning to ice, and the heart in her bosom to
+marble.
+
+In an upper room, afar off, she heard one of the servants coughing
+protractedly in her sleep.
+
+Oh, God! if she could but burst the icy bonds that bound her hand and
+foot and cry out--bring the household about her. Her lips opened, but no
+sound came from them.
+
+The very breath in her body seemed dying out with each faint gasp that
+broke over the white, mute lips.
+
+Outside the night winds grew wilder and fiercer. A gust of hail battered
+against the window panes and rattled down the wide-throated chimneys.
+Then suddenly; all was still again!
+
+Oh, pitiful heavens! how hard Faynie tried to break the awful bonds that
+held her there, still, silent, motionless, unable to move or utter any
+sound, staring in horror words cannot picture at the sight that met her
+strained gaze.
+
+It had only been an instant of time since the bright blaze of the gas
+had illuminated the darkened corridor, yet it seemed to Faynie, standing
+there, white and cold as an image carved in marble, that long years had
+passed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+"I INTEND TO WATCH YOU DIE, INCH BY INCH, DAY BY DAY!"
+
+
+Before going on further with the thrilling event which we narrated in
+our last chapter it will be necessary to devote a few explanatory lines
+to the still more thrilling scene which led up to it, returning to the
+real Lester Armstrong, whom we left in the isolated cabin in the custody
+of Halloran.
+
+Lester's intense anxiety when Kendale forcibly took the keys from him
+and disappeared can better be imagined than described.
+
+In vain he pleaded with Halloran to release him, offering every kind of
+inducement, but the man was inexorable.
+
+Your Cousin Kendale will pay me twice as much for detaining you here,"
+he answered with a boisterous laugh, adding:
+
+"Besides, I have a grudge against you of many years' standing, Lester
+Armstrong, which this affair is wiping out pretty effectively."
+
+"I was not aware that I had ever seen you before," replied Lester.
+
+"Permit me to refresh your memory," exclaimed the other grimly. "When
+you were a boy of about fourteen years you attended the public school on
+Canal Street."
+
+"Yes," said Lester, still mystified.
+
+"At that time," went on Halloran, "the school was unusually crowded,
+owing to the enforcement of the law that the children of the
+neighborhood must attend school, thus bringing in all the urchins of
+the poor thereabouts; you surely remember that?"
+
+"It seems to me I have a faint recollection of some such circumstance,"
+replied Lester, eying the man who stood over him, his dark, scowling
+face growing more foreboding with each word he uttered.
+
+"If you carry your mind back you will also remember that there was a
+ragged boy sitting to the right of you, who seemed to have a weakness
+for purloining your pencils and other like articles."
+
+Lester did not answer; his mind was traveling back to the time this man
+recalled.
+
+"You will also recollect the boy who sat in front of you, who was the
+envy of all the boys in the school by being the possessor of a fine, new
+five-bladed jackknife, with which he used to whittle kites and whistles
+during recess. Ah! I see you do remember," said Halloran grimly, "and
+you also remember the day the ragged boy, sitting at the right of you,
+believing no one was looking, reached over and quietly, deftly, inserted
+his hand in the other's pocket and abstracted the coveted jackknife.
+
+"He meant to as quietly replace it in the other's pocket after he had
+whittled out a kite and whistle for himself; but, lo! without giving him
+time to carry out his intentions, you, good boy that you were, squealed
+and brought all the teachers in the room to the spot. You cried out to
+them what had occurred, and the ragged lad was caught red-handed with
+the knife in his possession. He was expelled from the school that day,
+but the affair did not end there. The father of the boy who owned the
+knife was a great judge, and he caused the ragged lad to be sent to a
+State reformatory, where the next five years of his life were spent in
+rigid discipline--stigmatized as a common thief! And all these years the
+bitterness of a terrible hatred rankled in his bosom against you--who
+were responsible for all this.
+
+"And he vowed a bitter vow of vengeance, that he would repay that act of
+yours if it took him a lifetime to accomplish it; that he would make you
+suffer like one on the rack for thrice five years, and then tell you
+why.
+
+"It will not take much stretch of imagination for you to surmise, Lester
+Armstrong, that I am that boy upon whom you peached, and on whom,
+through you, such a severe penalty was inflicted.
+
+"My hatred against you has intensified as the years rolled on, Lester
+Armstrong. You are in my power; I hold your life in my hands. Do you
+think if you were to pray to me on your bended knees that I would
+release you? No, a thousand times no! Every groan that falls from your
+lips is music to my ears.
+
+"Again I repeat, you are at my mercy, and I will give you a dose of
+that same mercy which you showed me in those other days. Ha! you turn
+pale, as well you may!
+
+"Listen! Let me tell you what I intend to do. I think you guess it from
+all that has gone on before, but I will repeat it. I intend to watch you
+die, inch by inch, day by day!
+
+"They tell of a man who put himself on exhibition in New York,
+challenging the people to come and see him fast forty days, during which
+time neither food nor drink should pass his lips.
+
+"But you will not last so long, Lester Armstrong; I think a week's time
+will be your limit. You will understand now how perfectly useless it
+would be to plead with me."
+
+"Do not imagine for one moment that I intend to do so. I am a man of
+nerve and iron will, and I can die like one. You have shackled me hand
+and foot and placed me in this death trap, but your ears shall not be
+greeted with any moans or cries of complaint. The vengeance you have
+mapped out will fall short in that."
+
+A sneer broke from Halloran's lips; he could not help but admire the
+dauntless courage of the man before him, but he would not have admitted
+it for anything the wide world held. With a fiendish laugh that rang in
+Lester's ears for long hours afterward, Halloran turned and left him,
+sauntering into the outer room and banging and locking the door after
+him.
+
+It was a night never to be forgotten by Lester to the last day of his
+life. His mouth was parched with thirst; the blood in his veins seemed
+turning to lava, and his eyes were scorched in their sockets.
+
+Once the door suddenly opened and Halloran thrust in his head,
+exclaiming:
+
+"Let me give you a piece of news to dream over, my dear fellow: Your
+Cousin, Kendale, is with the beauteous Faynie just now, probably holding
+her in his arms, kissing the lovely rosebud mouth. 'Pon my honor. I envy
+the lucky dog; don't you?"
+
+The door closed quite as quickly again, and Lester was alone with his
+bitter thoughts.
+
+"What have I done that a just God should torture me thus?" he cried out
+in an agony so intense that great beads of cold perspiration gathered on
+his forehead and rolled unheeded down his white cheeks. "If he tortured
+me to the gates of death I could endure it, but the very thought that my
+innocent darling, my beautiful, tender little Faynie, is in that
+dastardly villain's power, fairly goads me to madness. Oh, Heaven! if I
+but had the strength of Samson for but a single hour, to burst these
+cruel bonds asunder and fly to my dear one's side!"
+
+But, struggle as he would, the thongs which bound him, rendering him
+powerless to aid the girl he loved, would not give way.
+
+Thus a fortnight passed, and Halloran was beside himself with wonder to
+find each morning that Lester was still alive and that he had not gone
+mad.
+
+But Lester Armstrong's guardian angel had not quite forgotten him;
+Heaven had not intended that he should die by thirst and starvation in
+that isolated cabin, and served him in a strange, unlooked-for way.
+
+He soon discovered that a family of squirrels had made a home beneath a
+piece of flooring within easy reach of where he lay, and upon forcing up
+the piece of rotten plank he found to his intense joy an almost endless
+supply of nuts, and close beside their burrow a running stream of clear,
+cool, fresh, bubbling spring water.
+
+In an instant he had slaked his thirst and laved his burning brow.
+
+From that hour he felt sure that Heaven intended him to escape from his
+foes. He took good care, however, to conceal his wonderful discovery
+from Halloran's keen, sharp eyes when he looked in each day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A FIENDISH ACT.
+
+
+    "Like some lone bird
+    Without a mate,
+    My lonely heart is desolate;
+    I look around
+    And cannot trace, a friendly
+      smile, a welcome face.
+    Even in crowds
+    I'm still alone, because I
+      cannot love but one."
+
+Thus a fortnight passed, and under the rigid diet of the strengthening,
+nutritious nuts and clear spring water Lester rapidly gained strength.
+
+He only waited a fitting opportunity to make a dash for liberty.
+
+Halloran was well armed; he realized that fact, and that he would shoot
+him down like a dog ere he would suffer him to escape the fate that had
+been laid out for him.
+
+Therefore his only hope was to get away by strategy. He laid several
+plans, but each time they were frustrated by some unexpected act of
+Halloran's.
+
+Meanwhile the latter was pondering over his case, considerably
+mystified.
+
+"Confound the fellow! he does not seem to grow either pale or
+emaciated," he muttered. "I could almost say that starving seems to
+agree with him. I am quite tempted to give him his quietus and end this
+vigil. Remaining in this solitary hut does not quite come up to my
+liking. I wonder what Kendale is doing. He promised to let me know how
+he got on.
+
+"I have not heard from him for nearly a week now. Perhaps they made the
+discovery that he was not the real Lester Armstrong, and have placed him
+in limbo; but it strikes me that in such a predicament he would hasten
+to communicate with me, apprising me of the fact.
+
+"Then, again," he ruminated, "Kendale is thoroughly selfish to the
+backbone, and if he has successfully hoodwinked these people and is
+living off the fat of the land and rolling in money, as it were, ten
+chances to one he has quite forgotten my very existence.
+
+"He ought to have sent me more provisions to-day, and more tobacco; and
+it is nightfall and no sign of any one."
+
+The next day and the next passed in the same fashion.
+
+By this time Halloran had become thoroughly exasperated.
+
+"This settles the bill," he muttered; "I leave this place to-night. I do
+not see much need of staying here any longer, anyhow. Armstrong will not
+last many hours longer; he couldn't; it's beyond human physical
+possibility."
+
+In the semi-twilight he looked in at his prisoner.
+
+Lester had fallen into so deep a sleep that he seemed scarcely to
+breathe, and the dim, fading light falling in through the chinks of the
+boarded window gave his face, which was beginning to grow pale because
+of his confinement, an unusually grayish pallor at this twilight hour.
+
+"Ha! ha!" muttered Halloran, setting his teeth hard together; "it is
+perfectly safe to leave him now. He is dying; his hour has come at
+last."
+
+Turning on his heel he strode into the outer apartment, banging the door
+to after him, but not taking the trouble to lock it on this occasion.
+
+"As there seems to be little need of my remaining here longer, now that
+he is done for, I'm off for the city," he muttered; "and a pretty tramp
+I'll have of it over this barren country road, fully seven miles to the
+railway station, and hungry as a bear at that."
+
+Again he looked at Lester, to assure himself beyond all possibility of a
+doubt that he was actually dying.
+
+And again he was thoroughly deceived.
+
+"It's all over with him," he muttered, "and Kendale's secret is safe
+between him and me, and he'll have to pay me handsomely to keep it;
+that's certain."
+
+On the threshold he halted.
+
+"Dead men tell no tales," he muttered, "and he would be past all
+recognition by the time any one came across him in this isolated spot.
+Then, again, some one might happen to wander this way.
+
+"It's best to be sure; to put it beyond human power to discover his
+identity, and the only way to secure that end is to burn this place. Ay!
+that is the surest and safest way to effectually conceal the crime."
+
+He had muttered the words aloud, and they fell distinctly upon the ears
+of Lester Armstrong, who had awakened at the sound of his footsteps the
+second time, although he had given no sign of having done so. The words
+fell with horrible dread upon his ears because of the fact that he was
+bound hand and foot by an iron chain, fastened to a heavy ring in the
+floor.
+
+For the last week he had used every endeavor to force the links apart,
+but they had frustrated his most strenuous efforts.
+
+And he said to himself, if the fiend incarnate before him carried out
+his intention of firing the place it would be all over with him. The
+horrible smoke would assuredly suffocate him ere he could, even by
+exerting the most Herculean strength, succeed in liberating himself.
+
+With bated breath he heard Halloran enter the outer apartment.
+
+And he heard his impatient, muttered imprecations as he fumbled about
+for matches, seemingly without finding any.
+
+"This is where I put them," exclaimed Halloran, with an oath, "but they
+are not here now."
+
+After a moment's pause his voice broke the awful stillness, exclaiming:
+
+"Ah! here they are! I imagined they were not far away. One should always
+know where to put his hands on such things, even in the dark. A whole
+bunch of 'em; I did not remember that I had so many!"
+
+For the next few moments Lester heard him walking to and fro, apparently
+dragging heavy articles over the floor, and he knew that he was piling
+pieces of boards together in the middle of the room to start the blaze.
+
+His blood fairly ran cold in his veins at the thought.
+
+The moments that followed seemed the length of eternity.
+
+Each instant he expected to hear the dull scratching of the matches,
+quickly followed by the swift, crackling blaze.
+
+With all his strength he strove to rend asunder the heavy steel chain,
+but it resisted his every effort.
+
+"God in heaven! am I to die here like a rat in a trap?" he groaned, the
+veins standing out like knotted whipcord on his forehead, the
+perspiration pouring down his face like rain.
+
+For some moments there was a strange, unaccountable silence in the outer
+room.
+
+Lester paused in his efforts to wrench the iron bands asunder which
+bound his wrists, wondering what that ominous silence meant.
+
+The suspense was terrible, yet each moment meant that much of a respite
+from the horrible fate which awaited him.
+
+What could Halloran be doing? Surely he had not abandoned his intentions
+to set fire to the cabin?
+
+It was almost too good to be true. And yet that awful uncertainty was
+almost unbearable.
+
+In the outer room Halloran sat quietly thinking over his plans, match in
+hand, telling himself that he had better perfect them then than wait
+until he was journeying toward the railway station.
+
+He would take the first train bound for New York, seek Kendale at once,
+and have an understanding with him before he would disclose to him the
+fact that Lester Armstrong was effectually out of his way.
+
+"Yes, that is the only course to pursue," muttered Halloran, and
+springing to his feet, he struck half of the matches in his package at
+once, and lighted the pile heaped in the center of the cabin floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+HALLORAN MEETS WITH HIS REWARD.
+
+
+In an instant after the match had been applied a fiery tongue of flame
+leaped to the ceiling, lighting the interior of the cabin with a
+blinding glare of red light.
+
+Seizing his hat, Halloran dashed from the place and down the road, never
+pausing until he had reached the fork of the roads. Then he stopped for
+breath and looked back over his shoulder.
+
+A high ridge of ground intervened, completely hiding the doomed place
+from his view.
+
+He did not even behold the column of fire and smoke, as he had
+anticipated.
+
+"Those old boards are so damp that it will probably take some time to
+ignite them, and there's no use waiting to see that," he muttered. "I
+will be well on my way to the railway station by that time."
+
+He redoubled his speed to get as far away from the scene as possible,
+for, villain though he was, this was his first actual crime, and his
+conscience troubled him a little.
+
+Another mile or more he traversed through the heavy snow; then he
+suddenly became conscious that there were rapidly approaching footsteps
+behind him.
+
+Great heavens! had Lester Armstrong succeeded in making his escape? No,
+it could not be. Even if so, he was too weak to run in that rapid
+fashion. Involuntarily he paused and glanced backward over his shoulder.
+The next instant a wild, panting cry of mortal terror broke from his
+lips.
+
+In that backward glance he had beheld a huge black bear, making rapidly
+toward the spot where he stood, fairly paralyzed with horror.
+
+It dawned upon him suddenly that only a few days before he had read of
+the escape of one of the most ferocious black bears of the zoological
+gardens, and, though two days had elapsed and men were scouring all
+parts of the adjacent places, no trace of the animal had been found, and
+great fears were expressed of the grave damage the bear might do before
+he was recaptured.
+
+This was undoubtedly the animal that had escaped which was making toward
+him with great leaps and savage growls, as though it had already marked
+him for its prey.
+
+His teeth chattered like castanets; his eyes fairly bulged from their
+sockets; the breath came in hot gasps from his white lips; his brain
+reeled, as he took in, in that rapid glance of horror, his awful doom.
+
+Nearer and nearer sounded the hoarse, awful growls; nearer and nearer
+moved the huge black mass over the white, crunching snow.
+
+The moon was slowly rising over the horizon, rendering all objects
+clearly distinct to his frightened gaze.
+
+He was passing through a narrow belt of woodland, and like an
+inspiration it occurred to him that his only hope of escape lay in
+climbing one of the trees and thus outwitting the bear.
+
+He saw with sinking heart that they were scarcely more than saplings,
+and whether or not they would bear his weight without snapping in twain
+he dared not even pause to consider.
+
+With a groan of mortal terror he sprang for the nearest tree. Fright
+seemed to lend him wonderful strength and agility; he succeeded in
+reaching the lowest limb as the animal, with glittering eyes and widely
+distended jaws, reached the tree.
+
+Up, up, crept Halloran, his teeth chattering, his strength almost
+leaving him as the animal's roar of baffled rage fell upon his ear.
+
+To and fro bent the sapling under his weight, threatening to snap
+asunder each moment and cast him into the jaws of the enraged beast.
+
+The hours that followed were of such keen, mortal terror that he vaguely
+wondered that he did not lose his reason through fright.
+
+With fascinated eyes he watched the antics of the thoroughly enraged
+animal. The bear made many efforts to climb the tree in pursuit of his
+prey, but the swaying sapling was too slender to give him a hold, and
+its bark too slippery with its coating of ice to insert the claws, which
+had been clipped quite close, rendering them almost powerless in taking
+a firm grasp.
+
+The night had closed in intensely cold, and Halloran could feel his
+cramped limbs and hands slowly stiffening, but he dared not lose his
+grip.
+
+The moon rose higher and higher in the night sky, shedding a white,
+clear, bright light over the snow-clad earth.
+
+He knew that the animal was watching his every movement closely, as each
+time he shifted his position brought a savage growl from the bear, which
+was circling round and round the tree, eying him intently.
+
+For long hours this lasted, until the half frozen man, hanging on for
+dear life to the upper branches of the sapling, thought he should go
+mad.
+
+With the coming of daylight the bear changed his tactics, lying down
+directly under the tree, still eying his prey with his small, beady,
+expectant eyes, as though measuring the time that his victim could hold
+out.
+
+The daylight grew stronger; slowly in the eastern horizon the red sun
+rose, gilding the white, glistening snow with its rosy light.
+
+Hour by hour it climbed the blue azure height, crossed the zenith, and
+then slowly sank behind the western hills, heralding the oncoming of
+another night.
+
+Still the brute, with almost incredible cunning, sat in the same
+position under the tree, watching Halloran's every move.
+
+"God rescue me!" he cried, lifting his white face to the Heaven he had
+so offended.
+
+"If I pass another night here I shall go mad--mad!"
+
+He was famished with hunger, numb with cold, and his mouth and throat
+were dry with unconquerable thirst.
+
+In those hours of suffering he thought of Lester Armstrong, and of the
+awful fate he had doomed him to. He realized by his own experience of a
+few hours what he must have endured, and a bitter groan of remorse broke
+from his clammy lips.
+
+"This is Heaven's punishment," he cried. "Oh, Lester Armstrong. God has
+surely avenged you! If I could but atone; if it were to be done over
+again, I would have no hand in the atrocious crime that has dyed my
+hands just as surely as though I had plunged a knife into your heart!"
+
+In his haste on leaving the cabin he had not taken time to secure his
+revolver; he had no weapon; he was doomed to meet the same fate that he
+had meted out to Lester Armstrong--starve to death slowly, hour by
+hour--knowing that when he was too weak to hold longer to the branch he
+would fall.
+
+Oh, God in heaven! fall into the gaping jaws of the enraged animal that
+was waiting to receive him.
+
+He had led too wicked a life to pray; he did not know a prayer; he could
+only raise his agonized eyes to the far-off sky, wondering how long his
+awful torture could last-how long he would be able to hold out--how
+long.
+
+He felt his blood slowly turning to ice in his veins, and slowly and
+surely the dusk deepened and the darkness of another night fell over the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+"SOME TERRIBLE PRESENTIMENT IS WARNING ME THAT MY DARLING IS IN DANGER."
+
+
+There never was a night so long that another day did not dawn--at
+last--and when the morrow's light broke, Halloran was slowly but surely
+collapsing--giving himself up to the horrible doom that awaited him--for
+the bear had not quitted his position under the tree, nor had he taken
+his eyes off his intended victim for a single moment.
+
+As the sun rose, Halloran watched it with dazed, bloodshot eyes,
+exclaiming:
+
+"Good-by, golden sun, I shall never see you set, nor witness you rise
+again upon another day. I--" the sentence was never finished, for over
+the snowy waste rang a voice like a bugle blast:
+
+"Keep quiet, take heart, help is at hand; I am going to shoot the animal
+and deliver you," and simultaneously with the voice four shots in rapid
+succession rang out upon the early morning air.
+
+There was a wild howl of pain, a terrible roaring bellow, a sudden dash
+toward a dark figure hurriedly approaching, two more shots, and the bear
+rolled over dying beyond power to harm, his red blood dyeing the white
+snow in great pools. Halloran knew no more. His strength and endurance
+seemed suddenly to leave him, darkness closed in about him, his hold
+loosened and he fell backward down, down through space.
+
+He did not know that a pair of strong arms caught him, thus saving him
+from a broken neck. When he opened his eyes a few moments later, to his
+intense surprise he found Lester Armstrong bending over him, and the
+sight rendered him fairly dumb with amazement.
+
+Before he could ask questions that sprang to his lips, Lester explained
+to him that owing to the dampness of the place, the fire Halloran had
+kindled had quickly gone out, thus saving the young man from being
+burned to death. He told him, too, why death had not come to him through
+starvation, as had been intended, and that it had taken him all that
+time to force apart the links of the chain, when he found that there was
+no one to hear or prevent, no matter how much noise he made in so doing.
+
+He had seen the revolver, which had been forgotten, and little imagining
+it would be of such vital use, had thrust it in his pocket and started
+forth to make his way back to New York, when he unexpectedly came upon
+the scene of the bear under the tree, and a fellow-being in deadly
+peril.
+
+"You saved me--me," cried Halloran, huskily, "your deadly foe, who
+tried to rob you of your life."
+
+"It was my duty, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,'" quoted Lester,
+quietly.
+
+Halloran fell on his knees, covering the other's hands with passionate
+kisses, tears falling like rain from his eyes.
+
+"From this hour the life that you have saved shall be devoted to
+you--and God!" he cried brokenly. "Oh, will Heaven ever forgive me for
+the past? There are two bullets left in the revolver; you ought to shoot
+me dead at your feet, Lester Armstrong. I deserve it."
+
+Lester shook his head.
+
+"Do better with your life than you have done in the past," he said.
+
+Halloran tried to rise to his feet, but fell back exhausted on the snow.
+
+"I cannot walk," he gasped. "I--I am sure my limbs are frozen."
+
+With a humane kindness that won him Halloran's gratitude to his dying
+day, Lester helped him to the railway station, and to board the incoming
+train, taking him to a hospital when they reached New York City.
+
+Halloran had lapsed into unconsciousness, but Lester was too kind of
+heart to desert him in his hour of need.
+
+The clock was striking five as Lester left the hospital.
+
+On the pavement he paused, asking himself if he could go to a hotel
+presenting that soiled, unkempt appearance. Then like an inspiration it
+occurred to him that the best place in the world to go to was Mr.
+Conway's; and he put the thought into execution at once, reaching there
+nearly an hour later.
+
+Mr. Conway and Margery were just sitting down to breakfast as he rang
+the bell of the humble little cottage.
+
+Mr. Conway answered the summons.
+
+The scene which followed can better be imagined than described.
+
+It was hard to convince father and daughter, at first, that in telling
+his story he was not attempting to play some practical joke upon them.
+
+That he had a cousin who so cleverly resembled him that even those who
+had known Lester intimately for long years should be so cleverly
+deceived by him seemed almost incredible. Margery hid her face in her
+trembling hands while her father gave Lester a full account of what had
+transpired, while the latter's emotion was great; and his distress
+intense, upon learning that Kendale had dared betroth himself to Margery
+in his name, and that the gentle-hearted girl had learned to care for
+the scamp, despite her repugnance to him at first.
+
+Lester thought it best, under the circumstances, to confide in full to
+Margery and her father concerning his own love affair, lest they might
+expect him to carry out the contract his cousin had made in regard to
+marrying his old friend's pretty daughter.
+
+Margery's next words, however, set his troubled heart at rest in that
+respect.
+
+She looked up at him suddenly through her tears, saying shyly:
+
+"There is another who cares for me, not knowing of this affair, one whom
+I once thought I could love. Yesterday he wrote me a letter, asking for
+my heart and hand.
+
+"Last night I wrote him a reply, saying 'No,' and telling him why. I
+shall destroy that letter to-night, thankful enough that I did not have
+time to send it. And my answer will then be 'Yes.'"
+
+"You have my best wishes for your happiness, little Margery," said
+Lester, adding smilingly: "And when; the wedding occurs, which I hope
+will be soon, you may, expect a very handsome present from me."
+
+Long after Mr. Conway and his unexpected visitor had finished their
+simple breakfast, they talked over the strange situation of affairs, and
+what was best to be done to avoid great publicity.
+
+"The bogus Lester Armstrong went to Beechwood last night," said the old
+cashier. "He probably will remain there, as is his custom, until to-day
+noon. You had better confront him there; meanwhile I will break the
+amazing story to those of the establishment whom it is absolutely
+necessary to tell. The rest of the employees and the public at large
+need never know of the glaring fraud that was so cleverly practised
+under their very eyes."
+
+Lester had sprung to his feet trembling with excitement, at the
+information that Kendale had gone to the home of Faynie, despite the
+fact that Mr. Conway had assured him that Kendale was not married.
+
+"Only yesterday he told me he contemplated marriage with a little
+heiress out at Beechwood, and if his wooing went on smoothly he would be
+a benedict in a few days' time--those were his exact words!" declared
+Mr. Conway.
+
+"Thank Heaven the mischief has not yet been done," cried Lester,
+fervently.
+
+He would have started for Beechwood at once, had it not been for Mr.
+Conway, who induced him to lie down for a few hours and take a little
+much-needed rest, explaining that he could not go in that apparel, and
+it would take some little time to secure suitable raiment, and renovate
+his appearance.
+
+Lester yielded to his judgment.
+
+Neither Mr. Conway nor Margery had the heart to awaken him, as hour
+after hour rolled by; he seemed so thoroughly exhausted and his deep
+sleep was doing him such a world of good, although the complete outfit
+which Mr. Conway had sent for had long since arrived.
+
+It was night when Lester opened his eyes--imagining his surroundings for
+the moment but the idle vagaries of a dream.
+
+Mr. Conway's kindly, solicitous face bending over him soon brought him
+to his senses, and a remembrance of all that had occurred.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Conway! You should not have let me sleep," he cried. "I ought
+to have been at Beechwood hours ago; something in my heart--some
+terrible presentiment is warning me that my darling is in danger!"
+
+"You are only fanciful," returned his old friend. "Anxiety makes you
+imagine that."
+
+"I hope it may prove as you say," replied Lester, huskily, and in an
+hour's time he was on his way to Beechwood and Faynie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+"GREAT GOD, IT IS A GHOST--THE GHOST OF FAYNIE!"
+
+
+We must now return to Faynie, and the thrilling position in which we so
+reluctantly left her.
+
+As the bright blaze of light illumined the corridor Faynie beheld the
+dark form of a man creeping toward her.
+
+"Great Scott! Some one must have touched an electric button
+somewhere--the wrong button!" he cried, instantly springing behind a
+marble Flora--but not before Faynie had distinctly beheld him, being
+herself unseen, because she was standing in the dense shadow.
+
+"It is he! It is Lester Armstrong!" was the cry that sprang from her
+terrified heart to her lips, but no sound issued from them as they
+parted.
+
+She leaned back faint and dizzy against the wall, unable to utter even
+the faintest sound. "So this is Claire's lover--the Lester she told me
+about--whom she is soon to marry! The dastardly wretch who wrecked my
+life and left me for dead under the cold, drifting snow heap," was the
+thought that flashed through her dazed brain as she watched him, with
+bated breath and dilated eyes.
+
+"It was only a false alarm; nobody would be roaming through the
+corridor of this place at this ghostly hour!" he muttered, sallying
+forth. "It seems that I was more scared than hurt on this occasion.
+Now for the library, to find that sum of money which my foolish
+mamma-in-law-that-is-to-be mentioned having placed there. It's a daring
+risk, stealing into the house like a thief in the night to search for
+it, but there's no other way to get it, and money I must have without
+delay.
+
+"It's mighty dangerous going through this corridor in this bright light.
+I wish I knew where to turn it off; the chandelier is too high or I'd do
+it in that way. I'm liable to be seen at any moment, if any one should
+take it into their head to come down through the house for any reason
+whatsoever."
+
+The next moment he had disappeared within the library, closing the door
+neatly to after him. The next moment he had lighted the shaded night
+lamp that stood on the table.
+
+Turning out the gas in the corridor, Faynie glided forward like a
+shadow, and, reaching the library, noiselessly pushed open the door,
+which he had left slightly ajar.
+
+"What was he doing here?" she wondered vaguely, her eyes blazing with
+fierce indignation as she stood there considering what her next action
+should be. He decided, the question by exclaiming:
+
+"Ha! This is the little iron safe she mentioned: of course the money is
+here, and the will is probably here, too, for that matter, which states
+that all of the Fairfax fortune goes to the old lady--which means the
+pretty Claire ultimately. Well, the more money the better; there is no
+one more competent to make it fly at a gay pace than myself. A prince of
+the royal blood couldn't go at a faster pace than I have been going
+during these last three weeks! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+In a moment he was kneeling before the safe. To his intense satisfaction
+the knob yielded to his deft touch.
+
+"I shall have less trouble than I anticipated," he muttered, with a
+little chuckle.
+
+Faynie stood motionless, scarcely three feet behind him, watching him
+intently, with horror-stricken eyes and glued tongue.
+
+She saw him take a roll of bills, and after carefully counting them,
+transfer them to his pocket.
+
+Heirlooms, too, in the way of a costly diamond stud, sleeve links, and
+massive watch and chain, which had been her father's, went the same way.
+
+Faynie seemed incapable of interfering.
+
+"Now we will soon determine what else there is here of importance--my
+time cannot be more profitably spent than by informing myself."
+
+Paper after paper he carefully unfolded, glancing quickly through their
+contents, and as quickly tossing them back into the safe.
+
+Evidently he had not yet found that for which he was searching so
+intently.
+
+Suddenly he came across a large square envelope, the words on which
+seemed to arrest his attention at once. And in a whispered, yet
+distinctly audible voice, he read the words:
+
+     "Horace Fairfax, last message to his wife--dated March 22, 18--."
+
+"Why that is the very date upon which he died," muttered Kendale. "This
+must have been written just before he committed suicide. Well, we will
+see what he had to say."
+
+And slowly he read, half aloud, as follows:
+
+     "MY DEAR WIFE: When you read the words here penned I shall be no
+     more. I know your heart will be most bitter against me for what I
+     have just done, but, realizing that my end was near, I have done it
+     for the best.
+
+     "I refer to the making of my will.
+
+     "When a man sees death before him, he naturally wishes to see those
+     nearest and dearest to him provided for, so far as he is able to do
+     so.
+
+     "You will remember distinctly the conversation we had at the time I
+     proposed marriage to you. I reminded you that I was a widower,
+     with a daughter whom I loved far better than the apple of my eye.
+
+     "I told you that this daughter would succeed to all my wealth, if
+     she lived, when time was no more with me; that no being on earth
+     could ever change my views in this regard--ay, in fulfilling my
+     duty.
+
+     "I asked you to marry me, knowing fully my intention in this
+     matter, stating at the time that I would give you in cash an ample
+     sum of money, which, if used frugally and judiciously, should last
+     you the remainder of your natural life, providing you outlived me.
+
+     "You accepted me under those conditions; you married me, and I, as
+     agreed, gave to you in a lump sum the money stipulated.
+
+     "It is needless to recall to you the fact that our wedded life has
+     been a failure. You have made my life miserable--ay, and that of my
+     sweet, motherless, tender little Faynie, until, in sheer
+     desperation, she has fled from her home on the night I write this,
+     and my grief is more poignant than I can well endure.
+
+     "You must feign neither surprise nor indignation when it is learned
+     that my will gives all my fortune to Faynie, save the amount set
+     aside for you.
+
+     "HORACE FAIRFAX."
+
+"Well! By all that's wonderful, if this isn't a pretty how-do-you-do.
+Mrs. Fairfax and her girl are penniless, and I came so near marrying
+Claire. I have found this thing out quite in the nick of time. The girl
+is clever enough, but it takes money, and plenty of it, to make me put
+my head into the yoke of matrimony.
+
+"I must find this will he speaks of. It will be here unless the woman
+has been shrewd enough to destroy it, and women never are clever enough
+to burn their telltale bridges which lie behind them, and that's how
+they get found out--at last.
+
+"I see through the whole thing now. Mrs. Fairfax trumped up a will in
+favor of herself, a brilliant scheme. I admire her grit immensely. Ah,
+yes, here is the real will, in the same handwriting as the letter. Yes,
+it gives all to his daughter Faynie. And here is the spurious one, a
+good imitation, I admit, still an expert could easily detect the
+handwriting of Mrs. Fairfax from beginning to end--signature and all.
+
+"I think I will take charge of this one giving all the Fairfax wealth to
+Faynie."
+
+But he did not succeed in transferring it to his pocket, for like a
+flash it was snatched from his hand.
+
+With a horrible oath, Kendale wheeled about.
+
+One glance, and his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets, his face grew
+ashen white, his teeth chattered, and the blood in his veins seemed
+suddenly to turn to ice.
+
+"Great Heaven! It is a ghost!" he yelled at the top of his voice; "the
+ghost of Faynie!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+AT THE LAST.
+
+
+The sound of that hoarse, piercing, awful cry echoed and re-echoed to
+every portion of the house, and in less time than it takes to relate it,
+the servants in a body, headed by Mrs. Fairfax and Claire, were rushing
+toward the library, from whence the sound proceeded.
+
+One glance as they reached the open doorways, and a cry of consternation
+broke from Mrs. Fairfax's lips, which was faintly echoed by her daughter
+Claire.
+
+The servants were too astounded at the sight that met their gaze to
+believe the evidence of their own eyes.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax was the first to recover herself.
+
+"What is the meaning of this!" she exclaimed, striding forward and
+facing Faynie and the horror-stricken man who stood facing her, his
+teeth chattering, as he muttered:
+
+"It is her ghost!--her ghost!"
+
+"Faynie Fairfax, why do I find you here, in the library, in the dead of
+the night, in the company of the man who is to wed my daughter Claire,
+and who parted from her scarcely two hours since, supposedly to leave
+the house? Why are you two here together! Explain this most
+extraordinary and most atrocious scene at once. I command you!" she
+cried, her voice rising to a shrill scream in her rising anger.
+
+Faynie turned a face toward her white as a marble statue, but no word
+broke from her lips.
+
+The presence of the others seemed to bring Kendale back to his senses.
+
+"It means," spoke Faynie, after a full moment's pause, "that the hour
+has come in which I must confess to all gathered here the pitiful story
+I have to tell, and which will explain what has long been an unsolved
+mystery to you--where, how and with whom I spent the time from the hour
+in which I left this roof until I returned to it.
+
+"You say that this is the man who is your daughter's lover, Mrs.
+Fairfax--the man who is soon to marry Claire.
+
+"I declare that this marriage can never be, because this man has a
+living wife," she cried, in a high, clear voice.
+
+"It is false!" shrieked Kendale. "The girl I married in the old church
+is dead--dead, I tell you. I--I saw her buried with my own eyes!"
+
+"She is not dead, for I am that unfortunate girl," answered Faynie, in a
+voice that trembled with agonized emotion.
+
+"Listen all, while I tell my story," she sobbed. "Surely the saddest,
+most pitiful story a young girl ever had to tell."
+
+Then, in a panting voice, she told her horrified listeners all, from the
+beginning to the very end, omitting not the slightest detail, dwelling
+with a pathos that brought tears to every eye, of how she had loved him
+up to the very hour he had come for her to elope with him; her horror
+and fear of him growing more intense because of the marriage he forced
+her into, with the concealed revolver pressed so close to her heart she
+dared not disobey his slightest command.
+
+And how the conviction grew upon her that he was marrying her for wealth
+only, and the inspiration that came to her to test his so-called love by
+telling him that she had been disinherited, though she was confident
+that her father had made his will in her favor, leaving her his entire
+fortune.
+
+Dwelling with piteous sobs on how he had then and there struck her down
+to death, as he supposed, and that he had made all haste to make away
+with her; and that she would at that moment have been lying in an
+unmarked grave, under the snowdrifts, if Heaven had not most
+miraculously interfered and saved her.
+
+Faynie ended her thrilling recital by adding that she had not known,
+until that hour, that this man was Claire's lover, because they had
+refrained from mentioning the name of the man in her presence. How she
+had come to the library in search of a book and had encountered him
+stealing through the halls, a veritable thief in the dead of the night,
+bent upon securing a sum of money which he had learned in some way was
+in the safe, and that he now had it in his pocket, and that she had
+prevented him from securing her father's will by snatching it from his
+grasp.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax had fallen back, trembling like an aspen leaf. She
+recognized her husband's will in Faynie's hands, and that, although the
+girl did not say so before the servants, she knew her treachery.
+
+"Come, Claire, my child," she said, turning to her daughter, "this is no
+place for you."
+
+But Claire did not stir; she stood quite still, looking from the one to
+the other, as though she could not fully comprehend all that she saw and
+heard.
+
+By this time Kendale had recovered from his shock, and as he listened to
+Faynie's recital, realized that she was not indeed a ghost, but the
+heiress of the Fairfax millions, and his own wife at that. And when he
+found his voice he cried out:
+
+"The girl tells the truth! She is mine, and as her husband I am lord and
+master of this house, and of her."
+
+As he uttered the words he strode toward Faynie with a diabolical
+chuckle, and seized her slender wrists in his grasp.
+
+"Unhand me!" shrieked Faynie, struggling frantically in his grasp,
+almost fainting with terror.
+
+"No one dares interfere between man and wife," replied Kendale,
+mockingly.
+
+He did not see three dark forms spring over the threshold, thrusting the
+servants hastily aside.
+
+But in less time than it takes to tell it, a strong arm thrust him
+aside, and a tall form sprang between him and Faynie, while a voice that
+struck terror to his very soul cried out:
+
+"You have come to the end of your rope, Clinton Kendale. You have lost
+the game, while it was almost in your grasp!"
+
+"Great Heaven, is it you, Lester Armstrong!" cried the guilty villain,
+fairly quivering with terror. "Oh, Lester, have pity--have mercy--I--"
+
+"You shall have the same quality of mercy dealt out to you that you have
+meted out to others!" replied Lester, sternly.
+
+Suddenly Kendale wrenched himself free from his grasp, crying out,
+hoarsely and triumphantly:
+
+"I am game yet. I have married the girl you love. She is my lawfully
+wedded wife. I have lost the Marsh millions, but you are checkmated,
+Lester Armstrong. I have the Fairfax fortune, and your Faynie!"
+
+"Don't delude yourself into believing so prettily an arranged scheme,"
+exclaimed a voice from the doorway, and a woman whom Kendale had not
+noticed among the crowd before glided hastily forward, threw back her
+veil, confronting the villain.
+
+"Gertrude!" he cried aghast, staggering back.
+
+"Yes, Gertrude, your wife," she replied. "Your wife, though you tried
+hard to induce me to go to Dakota and secure a divorce from you. I had
+instituted it and would soon have obtained it had I not read in the
+papers of the great fortune you had fallen into, for you had told me
+your cousin Lester Armstrong was dead, and you were to take his name and
+place as assistant cashier--no one knowing of his death, and you could
+easily pass yourself off for him owing to your wonderful resemblance to
+each other.
+
+"For my sake," she added, "Mr. Armstrong has promised to let you go
+free, providing you go with me."
+
+"It is false!" shouted Kendale. "All you say is a lie, woman!"
+
+"The man who accompanied us to the altar a year ago is here," he said.
+"He has with him my marriage certificate," pointing toward some one on
+the threshold, adding, "come forward, please."
+
+And Halloran, who had left a sickbed to accompany her, came slowly
+forward.
+
+"So you are against me, too!" cried Kendale. "Then all is up, indeed. I
+acknowledge that all that has been said is true. I had a few weeks of a
+gay, merry life, and I'm not sorry, either. Come, Gertrude!"
+
+And without a backward glance they slowly left the Fairfax mansion.
+
+The reuniting of Faynie and her lover was extremely affecting, and
+within an hour a minister was called in who made them one forevermore.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter were offered a home for life, but they
+chose to leave the following day. Faynie and Lester had gone through
+many thrilling experiences, but were happily reunited--at last.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+No. 1113 of THE NEW EAGLE SERIES, entitled "In Love's Name," by Emma
+Garrison Jones, is a story that tells of a romance that, after many
+sufferings, ends in a happy marriage feast.
+
+
+
+
+     HAVE YOU READ
+
+      Love Story
+
+       MAGAZINE
+
+           ?
+
+If not, you have a treat in store for you.
+
+LOVE STORY MAGAZINE is devoted to the publication of clean, wholesome
+romances.
+
+LOVE STORY MAGAZINE is developing a staff of writers each of which is
+destined to become famous.
+
+LOVE STORY MAGAZINE is really so good that it deserves your immediate
+investigation--that is, if you like a _good_ love story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+PRICE 15 CENTS
+
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Street & Smith Publication
+
+
+
+
+GARVICE
+
+The Love-Story King
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Look up the books by Charles Garvice, in the New Eagle Series. There are
+many of them, but not a dull one in the lot.
+
+So, if you want a splendid love story with a dash of adventure
+interwoven, investigate the works of Charles Garvice, the king of
+love-story writers.
+
+Novels by unknown authors are virtually foisted upon the public by
+certain book publishers. If the books succeed, the public pays; if not,
+the publisher does and tries all over again.
+
+Why take a chance of getting two cents' worth of reading for two
+dollars, when you can get two dollars' worth for twenty cents, every
+time, without risk?
+
+Your dealer has or will be glad to get the Garvice books for you. Ask
+him.
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN!
+
+How many of you have heard of Mrs. Hungerford, or, as she is more
+popularly known,
+
+  The Duchess?
+
+Her novels are really masterpieces of English literature and of intense
+interest to every class and creed.
+
+Unlike so many modern authors, "The Duchess" did not have to descend
+into the pit for material to make her novels popular. She relied mainly
+upon her knowledge of human nature--that things clean always attract. In
+the case of her books she was right; millions of them have been sold.
+
+Ask your dealer to get some of The Duchess' works in the Select library
+for you. Then prepare for the best reading treat you ever enjoyed.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13740 ***