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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson, et
+al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dynamiter
+       More New Arabian Nights
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 3, 2011  [eBook #647]
+This file was first posted on September 13, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNAMITER***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                        _MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS_
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DYNAMITER
+
+
+                                    BY
+
+                          ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+                                   AND
+                       FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON
+
+                      [Picture: The Silver Library]
+
+                             _NEW IMPRESSION_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+                        39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
+                           NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
+
+                                   1903
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           _BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE_
+
+    _First Edition_, _April 1885_; _Reprinted May 1885_, _July 1885_.
+
+ _Silver Library Edition_, _January 1895_; _Reprinted March 1897_, _July
+                          1899_, _August 1903_.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MESSRS. COLE AND COX,
+POLICE OFFICERS
+
+
+_Gentlemen,—In the volume now in your hands_, _the authors have touched
+upon that ugly devil of crime_, _with which it is your glory to have
+contended_.  _It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit_.  _Let
+us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled strain_, _where crime
+preserves some features of nobility_, _and where reason and humanity can
+still relish the temptation_.  _Horror_, _in this case_, _is due to Mr.
+Parnell_: _he sits before posterity silent_, _Mr. Forster’s appeal
+echoing down the ages_.  _Horror is due to ourselves_, _in that we have
+so long coquetted with political crime_; _not seriously weighing_, _not
+acutely following it from cause to consequence_; _but with a generous_,
+_unfounded heat of sentiment_, _like the schoolboy with the penny tale_,
+_applauding what was specious_.  _When it touched ourselves_ (_truly in a
+vile shape_), _we proved false to the imaginations_; _discovered_, _in a
+clap_, _that crime was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding
+names_; _and recoiled from our false deities_.
+
+_But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our
+defenders_.  _Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war of
+politics_; _whatever elements of greed_, _whatever traits of the bully_,
+_dishonour both parties in this inhuman contest_;—_your side_, _your
+part_, _is at least pure of doubt_.  _Yours is the side of the child_,
+_of the breeding woman_, _of individual pity and public trust_.  _If our
+society were the mere kingdom of the devil_ (_as indeed it wears some of
+his colours_) _it yet embraces many precious elements and many innocent
+persons whom it is a glory to defend_.  _Courage and devotion_, _so
+common in the ranks of the police_, _so little recognised_, _so meagrely
+rewarded_, _have at length found their commemoration in an historical
+act_.  _History_, _which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under
+the appeal of Mr. Forster_, _and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic
+enterprise_, _will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his
+defenceless hands_, _nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his aid_.
+
+                                                  _ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON_
+
+                                            _FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+_THE DYNAMITER_
+
+                                               PAGE
+PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN                       1
+CHALLONER’S ADVENTURE:
+   THE SQUIRE OF DAMES                           13
+   STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL                 27
+THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (_continued_)                76
+SUMMERSET’S ADVENTURE:
+   THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION                      100
+   NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY           108
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (_continued_)           145
+   ZERO’S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB            195
+DESBOROUGH’S ADVENTURE:
+   THE BROWN BOX                                209
+   STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN                      219
+THE BROWN BOX (_continued_)                     269
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (_continued_)           286
+EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN                     299
+
+A NOTE FOR THE READER
+
+
+It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume,
+and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW
+ARABIAN NIGHTS.  The loss is yours—and mine; or to be more exact, my
+publishers’.  But if you are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass
+you a hint.  When you shall find a reference in the following pages to
+one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho,
+you must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a person
+than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe,
+now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+_PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN_
+
+
+In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
+precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young
+men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.  The first,
+who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best fashion,
+hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.
+
+‘What!’ he cried, ‘Paul Somerset!’
+
+‘I am indeed Paul Somerset,’ returned the other, ‘or what remains of him
+after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law.  But in you,
+Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said, without
+hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your azure brow.’
+
+‘All,’ replied Challoner, ‘is not gold that glitters.  But we are here in
+an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the movement of these
+ladies.  Let us, if you please, find a more private corner.’
+
+‘If you will allow me to guide you,’ replied Somerset, ‘I will offer you
+the best cigar in London.’
+
+And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a brisk
+pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street, Soho.  The
+entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic Highlanders of wood which
+have almost risen to the standing of antiquities; and across the
+window-glass, which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and
+cigars, there ran the gilded legend: ‘Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T.
+Godall.’  The interior of the shop was small, but commodious and ornate;
+the salesman grave, smiling, and urbane; and the two young men, each
+puffing a select regalia, had soon taken their places on a sofa of
+mouse-coloured plush and proceeded to exchange their stories.
+
+‘I am now,’ said Somerset, ‘a barrister; but Providence and the attorneys
+have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine.  A select society at
+the Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall
+could testify, have been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings,
+I have taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before twelve.
+At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly, and I am proud to
+remember, most agreeably expended.  Since then a gentleman, who has
+really nothing else to recommend him beyond the fact of being my maternal
+uncle, deals me the small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold
+me once more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my favourite
+quarter, you will readily divine that I have come into a fortune.’
+
+‘I should not have supposed so,’ replied Challoner.  ‘But doubtless I met
+you on the way to your tailors.’
+
+‘It is a visit that I purpose to delay,’ returned Somerset, with a smile.
+‘My fortune has definite limits.  It consists, or rather this morning it
+consisted, of one hundred pounds.’
+
+‘That is certainly odd,’ said Challoner; ‘yes, certainly the coincidence
+is strange.  I am myself reduced to the same margin.’
+
+‘You!’ cried Somerset.  ‘And yet Solomon in all his glory—’
+
+‘Such is the fact.  I am, dear boy, on my last legs,’ said Challoner.
+‘Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have scarcely a decent
+trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how, I would this instant set about
+some sort of work or commerce.  With a hundred pounds for capital, a man
+should push his way.’
+
+‘It may be,’ returned Somerset; ‘but what to do with mine is more than I
+can fancy.  Mr. Godall,’ he added, addressing the salesman, ‘you are a
+man who knows the world: what can a young fellow of reasonable education
+do with a hundred pounds?’
+
+‘It depends,’ replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.  ‘The power
+of money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a sceptic.  A
+hundred pounds will with difficulty support you for a year; with somewhat
+more difficulty you may spend it in a night; and without any difficulty
+at all you may lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange.  If you are
+of that stamp of man that rises, a penny would be as useful; if you
+belong to those that fall, a penny would be no more useless.  When I was
+myself thrown unexpectedly upon the world, it was my fortune to possess
+an art: I knew a good cigar.  Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?’
+
+‘Not even law,’ was the reply.
+
+‘The answer is worthy of a sage,’ returned Mr. Godall.  ‘And you, sir,’
+he continued, turning to Challoner, ‘as the friend of Mr. Somerset, may I
+be allowed to address you the same question?’
+
+‘Well,’ replied Challoner, ‘I play a fair hand at whist.’
+
+‘How many persons are there in London,’ returned the salesman, ‘who have
+two-and-thirty teeth?  Believe me, young gentleman, there are more still
+who play a fair hand at whist.  Whist, sir, is wide as the world; ’tis an
+accomplishment like breathing.  I once knew a youth who announced that he
+was studying to be Chancellor of England; the design was certainly
+ambitious; but I find it less excessive than that of the man who aspires
+to make a livelihood by whist.’
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Challoner, ‘I am afraid I shall have to fall to be a
+working man.’
+
+‘Fall to be a working man?’ echoed Mr. Godall.  ‘Suppose a rural dean to
+be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were
+cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge?  The ignorance of your
+middle class surprises me.  Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie
+quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of
+the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and
+each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge.  By the defects
+of your education you are more disqualified to be a working man than to
+be the ruler of an empire.  The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned
+arts—those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent
+laymen—are those which give his title to the artisan.’
+
+‘This is a very pompous fellow,’ said Challoner, in the ear of his
+companion.
+
+‘He is immense,’ said Somerset.
+
+Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young fellow made
+his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some tobacco.  He was
+younger than the others; and, in a somewhat meaningless and altogether
+English way, he was a handsome lad.  When he had been served, and had
+lighted his pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself
+to Challoner by the name of Desborough.
+
+‘Desborough, to be sure,’ cried Challoner.  ‘Well, Desborough, and what
+do you do?’
+
+‘The fact is,’ said Desborough, ‘that I am doing nothing.’
+
+‘A private fortune possibly?’ inquired the other.
+
+‘Well, no,’ replied Desborough, rather sulkily.  ‘The fact is that I am
+waiting for something to turn up.’
+
+‘All in the same boat!’ cried Somerset.  ‘And have you, too, one hundred
+pounds?’
+
+‘Worse luck,’ said Mr. Desborough.
+
+‘This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,’ said Somerset: ‘Three
+futiles.’
+
+‘A character of this crowded age,’ returned the salesman.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Somerset, ‘I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one
+fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we
+are all three as futile as the devil.  What am I?  I have smattered law,
+smattered letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have
+even a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all
+London roaring by at the street’s end, as impotent as any baby.  I have a
+prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to
+deny it, I should simply resolve into my elements like an unstable
+mixture.  I begin to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing
+to the bottom—were it only literature.  And yet, sir, the man of the
+world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an extraordinary
+mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he has seen life
+in all its phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of
+existence should bear fruit.  I count myself a man of the world,
+accomplished, _cap-à-pie_.  So do you, Challoner.  And you, Mr.
+Desborough?’
+
+‘Oh yes,’ returned the young man.
+
+‘Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world, without a
+trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of the universe
+(for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the midst of the
+chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous chink of
+money on the surface of the globe.  Sir, as civilised men, what do we do?
+I will show you.  You take in a paper?’
+
+‘I take,’ said Mr. Godall solemnly, ‘the best paper in the world, the
+_Standard_.’
+
+‘Good,’ resumed Somerset.  ‘I now hold it in my hand, the voice of the
+world, a telephone repeating all men’s wants.  I open it, and where my
+eye first falls—well, no, not Morrison’s Pills—but here, sure enough, and
+but a little above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak
+spot in the armour of society.  Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of
+substantial gratitude: “_Two hundred Pounds Reward_.—The above reward
+will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and
+whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green
+Park.  He was over six feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately
+broad, close shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin
+great-coat.”  There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.’
+
+‘Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?’ inquired
+Challoner.
+
+‘Do I propose it?  No, sir,’ cried Somerset.  ‘It is reason, destiny, the
+plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it.  Here all our
+merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers of conversation,
+vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we are and have builds up
+the character of the complete detective.  It is, in short, the only
+profession for a gentleman.’
+
+‘The proposition is perhaps excessive,’ replied Challoner; ‘for hitherto
+I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and ungentlemanly
+trades, the least and lowest.’
+
+‘To defend society?’ asked Somerset; ‘to stake one’s life for others? to
+deracinate occult and powerful evil?  I appeal to Mr. Godall.  He, at
+least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine
+opinions.  He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually
+to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better
+cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the soldier.  Do
+you, by any chance, deceive yourself into supposing that a general would
+either ask or expect, from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most
+momentous battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham
+Rye?’ {9}
+
+‘I did not understand we were to join the force,’ said Challoner.
+
+‘Nor shall we.  These are the hands; but here—here, sir, is the head,’
+cried Somerset.  ‘Enough; it is decreed.  We shall hunt down this
+miscreant in the sealskin coat.’
+
+‘Suppose that we agreed,’ retorted Challoner, ‘you have no plan, no
+knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.’
+
+‘Challoner!’ cried Somerset, ‘is it possible that you hold the doctrine
+of Free Will?  And are you devoid of any tincture of philosophy, that you
+should harp on such exploded fallacies?  Chance, the blind Madonna of the
+Pagan, rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole
+reliance.  Chance has brought us three together; when we next separate
+and go forth our several ways, Chance will continually drag before our
+careless eyes a thousand eloquent clues, not to this mystery only, but to
+the countless mysteries by which we live surrounded.  Then comes the part
+of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.  This clue,
+which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as a cat, he
+leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and passion, and from
+one trifling circumstance divines a world.’
+
+‘Just so,’ said Challoner; ‘and I am delighted that you should recognise
+these virtues in yourself.  But in the meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself
+incapable of joining.  I was neither born nor bred as a detective, but as
+a placable and very thirsty gentleman; and, for my part, I begin to weary
+for a drink.  As for clues and adventures, the only adventure that is
+ever likely to occur to me will be an adventure with a bailiff.’
+
+‘Now there is the fallacy,’ cried Somerset.  ‘There I catch the secret of
+your futility in life.  The world teems and bubbles with adventure; it
+besieges you along the street: hands waving out of windows, swindlers
+coming up and swearing they knew you when you were abroad, affable and
+doubtful people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for
+your notice.  But not you: you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round,
+you must go the dullest way.  Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure
+that offers itself, embrace it in with both your arms; whatever it looks,
+grimy or romantic, grasp it.  I will do the like; the devil is in it, but
+at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate the story
+of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the divan, the great Godall,
+now hearing me with inward joy.  Come, is it a bargain?  Will you,
+indeed, both promise to welcome every chance that offers, to plunge
+boldly into every opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head
+composed, to study and piece together all that happens?  Come, promise:
+let me open to you the doors of the great profession of intrigue.’
+
+‘It is not much in my way,’ said Challoner, ‘but, since you make a point
+of it, amen.’
+
+‘I don’t mind promising,’ said Desborough, ‘but nothing will happen to
+me.’
+
+‘O faithless ones!’ cried Somerset.  ‘But at least I have your promises;
+and Godall, I perceive, is transported with delight.’
+
+‘I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various narratives,’
+said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of his manner.
+
+‘And now, gentlemen,’ concluded Somerset, ‘let us separate.  I hasten to
+put myself in fortune’s way.  Hark how, in this quiet corner, London
+roars like the noise of battle; four million destinies are here
+concentred; and in the strong panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to
+the bearer, I am about to plunge into that web.’
+
+
+
+
+CHALLONER’S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE SQUIRE OF DAMES_
+
+
+Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney, where
+he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the people of
+the house.  To this remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in
+the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot.  He was a
+young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body;
+bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses.  In happier days
+he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were now denied him;
+and with what courage he could muster he addressed himself to walk.
+
+It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
+serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along
+the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the
+warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the
+city.  He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing
+and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the
+labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the
+silence.  Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house
+after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop
+displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he
+steered his course, under day’s effulgent dome and through this
+encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.
+
+‘Here,’ he reflected, ‘if I were like my scatter-brained companion, here
+were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.  Here, in
+broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January,
+and in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of
+Yucatan.  If I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an
+army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of sleep.’
+
+He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came into
+a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the quarter.
+Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of trees, were
+several of those discreet, _bijou_ residences on which propriety is apt
+to look askance.  Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks of
+the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a dairy, or a
+ticket announcing the business of the mangler.  Before one such house,
+that stood a little separate among walled gardens, a cat was playing with
+a straw, and Challoner paused a moment, looking on this sleek and
+solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With
+the cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the
+house stood smokeless: the blinds down, the whole machinery of life
+arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the breathing of
+the sleepers.
+
+As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from
+within.  This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a
+kettle of the bigness of St. Paul’s; and at the same time from every
+chink of door and window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.  The cat
+disappeared with a cry.  Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the
+stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an
+elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled
+without a word.  The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in
+the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still
+Challoner was rooted to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear awoke
+together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.
+
+Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed
+his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report of
+his senses, some theory of the occurrence.  But the occasion of the
+sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange
+conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were
+mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an obscure awe he considered them in
+his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the web of streets, and once
+more alone in morning sunshine.
+
+In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely
+west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which
+presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst.  Here
+was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves
+was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was
+something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his
+eyes upon the pavement and his mind running upon distant scenes, till he
+was recalled, upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked his further progress.
+This street, whose name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.
+
+He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he
+raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on the
+figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third of the
+incongruous fugitives.  She had run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall
+had checked her career: and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the
+ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among the summer
+dust.  Each saw the other in the same instant of time; and she, with one
+wild look, sprang to her feet and began to hurry from the scene.
+
+Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his
+adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.  Pity and
+alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of his mind; and
+yet, in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady’s
+wake.  He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, tread
+as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty
+street.  Their sound appeared to strike in her some strong emotion; for
+scarce had he begun to follow ere she paused.  A second time she
+addressed herself to flight; and a second time she paused.  Then she
+turned about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance
+of timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side continued to
+advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.  At length,
+when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she
+reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.
+
+‘Are you an English gentleman?’ she cried.
+
+The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He was the spirit
+of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any
+lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous
+adventures.  He looked east and west; but the houses that looked down
+upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though
+in the full glare of the day’s eye, cut off from any human intervention.
+His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.  He remarked with
+irritation that she was charming both in face and figure, elegantly
+dressed and gloved; a lady undeniable; the picture of distress and
+innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.
+
+‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion; and if
+I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street, which has
+deceived us both.’  An unmistakable relief appeared upon the lady’s face.
+‘I might have guessed it!’ she exclaimed.  ‘Thank you a thousand times!
+But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring
+windows, I am lost in terrors—oh, lost in them!’ she cried, her face
+blanching at the words.  ‘I beg you to lend me your arm,’ she added with
+the loveliest, suppliant inflection.  ‘I dare not go alone; my nerve is
+gone—I had a shock, oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.’
+
+‘My dear madam,’ responded Challoner heavily, ‘my arm is at your
+service.’
+
+‘She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her sobs; and
+the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the
+city.  One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain
+her fears were genuine.  Still, as she went, she spied around as if for
+dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now
+clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant
+and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and
+he wailed in spirit and longed for release.
+
+‘Madam,’ he said at last, ‘I am, of course, charmed to be of use to any
+lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that you
+follow, and a word of explanation—’
+
+‘Hush!’ she sobbed, ‘not here—not here!’
+
+The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the lady mad; but
+his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view of the
+detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind
+was lost among mysteries.  So they continued to thread the maze of
+streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling
+with incommunicable terrors.  In time, however, and above all by their
+quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady
+ceased to peer about the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the
+resonant tread and distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge
+with more of spirit and directness.
+
+‘I thought,’ said he, in the tone of conversation, ‘that I had
+indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two
+gentlemen.’
+
+‘Oh!’ she said, ‘you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  You saw me
+flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not gentlemen.
+In such a case, the best of compliments is to be frank.’
+
+‘I thought,’ resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was surprised by
+the spirit of her reply, ‘to have perceived, besides, a certain odour.  A
+noise, too—I do not know to what I should compare it—’
+
+‘Silence!’ she cried.  ‘You do not know the danger you invoke.  Wait,
+only wait; and as soon as we have left those streets, and got beyond the
+reach of listeners, all shall be explained.  Meanwhile, avoid the topic.
+What a sight is this sleeping city!’ she exclaimed; and then, with a most
+thrilling voice, ‘“Dear God,” she quoted, “the very houses seem asleep,
+and all that mighty heart is lying still.”’
+
+‘I perceive, madam,’ said he, ‘you are a reader.’
+
+‘I am more than that,’ she answered, with a sigh.  ‘I am a girl condemned
+to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate, that this walk
+upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude of peace.’
+
+They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Station
+and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused, withdrew her arm
+from Challoner’s, and looked up and down as though in pain or indecision.
+Then, with a lovely change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand
+upon his arm—
+
+‘What you already think of me,’ she said, ‘I tremble to conceive; yet I
+must here condemn myself still further.  Here I must leave you, and here
+I beseech you to wait for my return.  Do not attempt to follow me or spy
+upon my actions.  Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent
+as your own sister; and do not, above all, desert me.  Stranger as you
+are, I have none else to look to.  You see me in sorrow and great fear;
+you are a gentleman, courteous and kind: and when I beg for a few
+minutes’ patience, I make sure beforehand you will not deny me.’
+
+Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful
+eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force of her appeal had
+been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of
+sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales.
+Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to
+weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the
+spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The reader, if he has ever
+plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be unaware
+that, in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain early
+taverns inaugurate the business of the day.  It was into one of these
+that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming
+companion disappear.  To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had
+long since left that sentiment behind him.  Acute disgust and
+disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned
+this commonplace enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a second, ere the
+swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a young man
+of mean and slouching attire.  For some five or six exchanges they
+conversed together with an animated air; then the fellow shouldered again
+into the tap; and the young lady, with something swifter than a walk,
+retraced her steps towards Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of
+grace; her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements
+eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still entertained some
+thoughts of flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance lessened.
+Against mere beauty he was proof: it was her unmistakable gentility that
+now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.  With a proved
+adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with one who, in spite of
+all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.  At
+the very corner from whence he had spied upon her interview, she came
+upon him, still transfixed, and—‘Ah!’ she cried, with a bright flush of
+colour.  ‘Ah!  Ungenerous!’
+
+The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames to the
+possession of himself.
+
+‘Madam,’ he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, ‘I do not think that
+hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I have suffered
+myself to be led over a considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I
+now request you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have
+friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.’
+
+She stood a moment dumb.
+
+‘It is well,’ she said.  ‘Go! go, and may God help me!  You have seen
+me—me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by
+sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await
+my explanation or to help in my distress.  Go!’ she repeated.  ‘I am lost
+indeed.’  And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the
+street.
+
+Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable sense
+of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being gulled.
+She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings took the upper
+hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice, that his conduct was
+a perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her
+choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her movements, cried out
+aloud against a harsh construction; and between penitence and curiosity
+he began slowly to follow in her wake.  At the corner he had her once
+more full in view.  Her speed was failing like a stricken bird’s.  Even
+as he looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned
+against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner’s fortitude gave way.  In
+a few strides he overtook her and, for the first time removing his hat,
+assured her in the most moving terms of his entire respect and firm
+desire to help her.  He spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it
+appeared that she began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and
+drew herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of
+forgiveness, turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and
+gratitude were mingled.  ‘Ah, madam,’ he cried, ‘use me as you will!’
+And once more, but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the
+conduct of his arm.  She took it with a sigh that struck him to the
+heart; and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But now
+her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on the way;
+she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the parent bird,
+stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  Her physical distress was not
+accompanied by any failing of her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon
+into a playful and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not
+sufficiently admire the elasticity of his companion’s nature.  ‘Let me
+forget,’ she had said, ‘for one half hour, let me forget;’ and sure
+enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.  Before
+every house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched
+his character: here lived the old general whom she was to marry on the
+fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had
+set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily on the
+young man’s arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant in his ears.
+‘Ah,’ she sighed, by way of commentary, ‘in such a life as mine I must
+seize tight hold of any happiness that I can find.’
+
+When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of Grosvenor
+Place, the gates of the park were opening and the bedraggled company of
+night-walkers were being at last admitted into that paradise of lawns.
+Challoner and his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile
+in silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary
+with the night’s patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches
+or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon
+utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded
+on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.
+
+Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a mound of
+turf.  The young lady looked about her with relief.
+
+‘Here,’ she said, ‘here at last we are secure from listeners.  Here,
+then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could not bear that we
+should part, and that you should still suppose your kindness squandered
+upon one who was unworthy.’
+
+Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take a
+place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with the
+greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.
+
+
+
+_STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL_
+
+
+My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient,
+but untitled family; and by some event, fault or misfortune, he was
+driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of
+his ancestors.  He sought the States; and instead of lingering in
+effeminate cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploring
+party of frontiersmen.  He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not only
+brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and above
+all in botany, which he particularly loved.  Thus it fell that, before
+many months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted
+and bowed to his opinion.
+
+They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the
+West.  For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans, guiding
+themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and
+animals.  Then they inclined their route a little to the north, and,
+losing even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding
+stillness.
+
+I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock,
+cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far between; and
+neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude.  On the fortieth day they
+had already run so short of food that it was judged advisable to call a
+halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt.  A great fire was built, that
+its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the party mounted
+and struck off at a venture into the surrounding desert.
+
+My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the one
+hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered vale
+dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city.  At length he
+found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair
+among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of
+most unusual size.  He quickened the pace of his steed, and still
+following the quarry, came at last to the division of two watersheds.  On
+the far side the country was exceeding intricate and difficult, heaped
+with boulders, and dotted here and there with a few pines, which seemed
+to indicate the neighbourhood of water.  Here, then, he picketed his
+horse, and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
+wilderness.
+
+Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound
+of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was
+rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely
+intermixed.  The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and winding
+passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles together
+unscalable by man.  The water, when the stream was swelled with rains,
+must have filled it from side to side; the sun’s rays only plumbed it in
+the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp funnel, blew
+tempestuously.  And yet, in the bottom of this den, immediately below my
+father’s eyes as he leaned over the margin of the cliff, a party of some
+half a hundred men, women, and children lay scattered uneasily among the
+rocks.  They lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring;
+their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and
+emaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a
+faint sound of moaning mounted to my father’s ears.
+
+While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound his
+blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who sat hard
+by propped against a rock.  The girl did not seem to be conscious of the
+act; and the old man, after having looked upon her with the most engaging
+pity, returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on the
+turf.  But the scene had not passed without observation even in that
+starving camp.  From the very outskirts of the party, a man with a white
+beard and seemingly of venerable years, rose upon his knees, and came
+crawling stealthily among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my
+father’s indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip from
+her both the coverings and return with them to his original position.
+Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as my father
+imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had raised himself again
+upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then
+swiftly carried his hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth.  By the
+movement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of famine he had
+reserved a store of nourishment; and while his companions lay in the
+stupor of approaching death, secretly restored his powers.
+
+My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle; and
+but for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot the fellow
+dead upon the spot.  How different would then have been my history!  But
+it was not to be: even as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the
+bear, as it crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the
+hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that he discharged
+his piece.  The bear leaped and fell into a pool of the river; the canyon
+re-echoed the report; and in a moment the camp was afoot.  With cries
+that were scarce human, stumbling, falling and throwing each other down,
+these starving people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father,
+climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream,
+many were already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a fire
+was being built by the more dainty.
+
+His arrival was for some time unremarked.  He stood in the midst of these
+tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by their cries;
+but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass; even those who were
+too weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the
+bear; and my father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the
+thick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to weep.  A touch
+upon the arm restrained him.  Turning about, he found himself face to
+face with the old man he had so nearly killed; and yet, at the second
+glance, recognised him for no old man at all, but one in the full
+strength of his years, and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual
+countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine.  He beckoned my father
+near the cliff, and there, in the most private whisper, begged for
+brandy.  My father looked at him with scorn: ‘You remind me,’ he said,
+‘of a neglected duty.  Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to
+revive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you
+robbing of her blankets.’  And with that, not heeding his appeals, my
+father turned his back upon the egoist.
+
+The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk in the
+first stage of death to have observed the bustle round her couch; but
+when my father had raised her head, put the flask to her lips, and forced
+or aided her to swallow some drops of the restorative, she opened her
+languid eyes and smiled upon him faintly.  Never was there a smile of a
+more touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet, more
+honestly eloquent of the soul!  I speak with knowledge, for these were
+the same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle.  From her who was to be
+his wife, my father, still jealously watched and followed by the man with
+the grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party, and
+gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the men who seemed in
+the most need.
+
+‘Is there none left? not a drop for me?’ said the man with the beard.
+
+‘Not one drop,’ replied my father; ‘and if you find yourself in want, let
+me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your coat.’
+
+‘Ah!’ cried the other, ‘you misjudge me.  You think me one who clings to
+life for selfish and commonplace considerations.  But let me tell you,
+that were all this caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of
+a weight.  These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as May-flies,
+in the slums of European cities, whom I myself have plucked from
+degradation and misery, from the dung-heap and gin-palace door.  And you
+compare their lives with mine!’
+
+‘You are then a Mormon missionary?’ asked my father.
+
+‘Oh!’ cried the man, with a strange smile, ‘a Mormon missionary if you
+will!  I value not the title.  Were I no more than that, I could have
+died without a murmur.  But with my life as a physician is bound up the
+knowledge of great secrets and the future of man.  This it was, when we
+missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolate
+ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beard
+from ebony to silver.’
+
+‘And you are a physician,’ mused my father, looking on his face, ‘bound
+by oath to succour man in his distresses.’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned the Mormon, ‘my name is Grierson: you will hear that name
+again; and you will then understand that my duty was not to this caravan
+of paupers, but to mankind at large.’
+
+My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now sufficiently
+revived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to bring help
+from his own party; ‘and,’ he added, ‘if you be again reduced to such
+extremities, look round you, and you will see the earth strewn with
+assistance.  Here, for instance, growing on the under side of fissures in
+this cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss.  Trust me, it is both edible
+and excellent.’
+
+‘Ha!’ said Doctor Grierson, ‘you know botany!’
+
+‘Not I alone,’ returned my father, lowering his voice; ‘for see where
+these have been scraped away.  Am I right?  Was that your secret store?’
+
+My father’s comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire, had
+made a good day’s hunting.  They were thus the more easily persuaded to
+extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day beheld both
+parties on the march for the frontiers of Utah.  The distance to be
+traversed was not great; but the nature of the country, and the
+difficulty of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks;
+and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl whom
+he had succoured.  I will call my mother Lucy.  Her family name I am not
+at liberty to mention; it is one you would know well.  By what series of
+undeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined
+by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the
+horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.  Let it
+suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart
+worthy of her own.  The ardour of attachment which united my father and
+mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it
+knew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my father, for her
+sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and abjure his faith; and a
+week had not yet passed upon the march before he had resigned from his
+party, accepted the Mormon doctrine, and received the promise of my
+mother’s hand on the arrival of the party at Salt Lake.
+
+The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.  My father
+prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my mother; and
+though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were few happier homes
+in any country than that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood.
+We were, indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics and
+half-believers by the more precise and pious of the faithful: Young
+himself, that formidable tyrant, was known to look askance upon my
+father’s riches; but of this I had no guess.  I dwelt, indeed, under the
+Mormon system, with perfect innocence and faith.  Some of our friends had
+many wives; but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me more
+than marriage itself?  From time to time one of our rich acquaintances
+would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses shared
+among the elders of the Church, and his memory only recalled with bated
+breath and dreadful headshakings.  When I had been very still, and my
+presence perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would arise among my
+elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer together and
+look behind them with scared eyes; and I might gather from their
+whisperings how some one, rich, honoured, healthy, and in the prime of
+his days, some one, perhaps, who had taken me on his knees a week before,
+had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished like an
+image from a mirror, leaving not a print behind.  It was terrible,
+indeed; but so was death, the universal law.  And even if the talk should
+wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear
+named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand
+these mysteries?  I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child
+might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect and
+without the wish for further information.  Life anywhere, in society as
+in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden
+blooming in the desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of
+my parents’ tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my existence; and
+why should I pry beneath this honest seeming surface for the mysteries on
+which it stood?
+
+We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a
+beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and
+surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky
+desert.  The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, which
+went no further than my father’s door; the rest were bridle-tracks
+impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to
+the European.  Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson.  To my young eyes,
+after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and the
+ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there was
+something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin
+white hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor.  Yet,
+though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of
+fear in his presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful
+solitude in which he lived and the obscurity that hung about his
+occupations.  His house was but a mile or two from ours, but very
+differently placed.  It stood overlooking the road on the summit of a
+steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging bluffs.
+Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the works of man; for
+the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort, and the cliffs of a
+constant height, like the ramparts of a city.  Not even spring could
+change one feature of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down
+across a plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on the
+north.  Twice or thrice I remember passing within view of this forbidding
+residence; and seeing it always shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I
+remarked to my parents that some day it would certainly be robbed.
+
+‘Ah, no,’ said my father, ‘never robbed;’ and I observed a strange
+conviction in his tone.
+
+At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, I
+chanced to see the doctor’s house in a new light.  My father was ill; my
+mother confined to his bedside; and I was suffered to go, under the
+charge of our driver, to the lonely house some twenty miles away, where
+our packages were left for us.  The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us
+halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning when the driver
+and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that part of the road which ran
+below the doctor’s house.  The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains
+in this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its
+station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not only
+shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the
+great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and
+so voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, and
+its shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali.
+As we continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb began
+to divide the silence.  First it seemed to me like the beating of a
+heart; and next it put into my mind the thought of some giant, smothered
+under mountains and still, with incalculable effort, fetching breath.  I
+had heard of the railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask
+the driver if this resembled it.  But some look in his eye, some pallor,
+whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my
+lips.  We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were close
+below the lighted house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle,
+there burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth and
+set the echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff.  A pillar
+of amber flame leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of
+sparks; and at the same time the lights in the windows turned for one
+instant ruby red and then expired.  The driver had checked his horse
+instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off among the
+mountains, when there broke from the now darkened interior a series of
+yells—whether of man or woman it was impossible to guess—the door flew
+open, and there ran forth into the moonlight, at the top of the long
+slope, a figure clad in white, which began to dance and leap and throw
+itself down, and roll as if in agony, before the house.  I could no more
+restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the horse’s flank, and
+we fled up the rough track at the peril of our lives; and did not draw
+rein till, turning the corner of the mountain, we beheld my father’s
+ranch and deep, green groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.
+
+This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed to the
+very topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached the
+age of seventeen.  I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended my
+garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to
+coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a
+mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the features
+of my parents.  But the fears which had long pressed on others were now
+to be laid on my youth.  I had thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy
+afternoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on the verandah, where my
+mother sat with her embroidery; and when my father joined her from the
+garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so startling a
+nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.
+
+‘The blow has come,’ my father said, after a long pause.
+
+I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.
+
+‘Yes,’ continued my father, ‘I have received to-day a list of all that I
+possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lips
+are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on the
+bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven.  Does the air, then,
+carry secrets?  Are the hills of glass?  Do the stones we tread upon
+preserve the footprint to betray us?  Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have
+come to such a country!’
+
+‘But this,’ returned my mother, ‘is no very new or very threatening
+event.  You are accused of some concealment.  You will pay more taxes in
+the future, and be mulcted in a fine.  It is disquieting, indeed, to find
+our acts so spied upon, and the most private known.  But is this new?
+Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of grass?’
+
+‘Ay, and our shadows!’ cried my father.  ‘But all this is nothing.  Here
+is the letter that accompanied the list.’
+
+I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.
+
+‘I see,’ she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading: ‘“From
+a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world’s goods,”’
+she continued, ‘“the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of
+piety.”  There lies the sting.  Am I not right?  These are the words you
+fear?’
+
+‘These are the words,’ replied my father.  ‘Lucy, you remember Priestley?
+Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an
+isolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any
+quarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such a
+station; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and
+that I heard, his story.  He had received a letter such as this; and he
+submitted to my approval an answer, in which he offered to resign a third
+of his possessions.  I conjured him, as he valued life, to raise his
+offering; and, before we parted, he had doubled the amount.  Well, two
+days later he was gone—gone from the chief street of the city in the hour
+of noon—and gone for ever.  O God!’ cried my father, ‘by what art do they
+thus spirit out of life the solid body?  What death do they command that
+leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this
+skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in
+a moment from the world of sense?  A horror dwells in that thought more
+awful than mere death.’
+
+‘Is there no hope in Grierson?’ asked my mother.
+
+‘Dismiss the thought,’ replied my father.  ‘He now knows all that I can
+teach, and will do naught to save me.  His power, besides, is small, his
+own danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, lives
+apart; he leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited
+for an unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price—but
+no; I will not believe it: I have no love for him, but I will not believe
+it.’
+
+‘Believe what?’ asked my mother; and then, with a change of note, ‘But
+oh, what matters it?’ she cried.  ‘Abimelech, there is but one way open:
+we must fly!’
+
+‘It is in vain,’ returned my father.  ‘I should but involve you in my
+fate.  To leave this land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men are
+closed in life; and there is no issue but the grave.’
+
+‘We can but die then,’ replied my mother.  ‘Let us at least die together.
+Let not Asenath {43} and myself survive you.  Think to what a fate we
+should be doomed!’
+
+My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I could
+see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his whole
+estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him at the moment,
+and to flee that night, which promised to be dark and cloudy.  As soon as
+the servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with provisions; two
+others were to carry my mother and myself; and, striking through the
+mountains by an unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke for
+liberty and life.  As soon as they had thus decided, I showed myself at
+the window, and, owning that I had heard all, assured them that they
+could rely on my prudence and devotion.  I had no fear, indeed, but to
+show myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my hand without
+alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed Heaven for
+the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride and some of
+the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look forward to the
+perils of our flight.
+
+Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had left far
+behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain
+canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing
+with the roar of a tumultuous torrent.  Cascade after cascade thundered
+and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with
+the wet wind of its descent.  The trail was breakneck, and led to
+famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for more
+practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod from year
+to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when turning suddenly an
+angle of the cliffs, we found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an
+impending rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with
+charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.
+We looked upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into a
+passion of tears; but not a word was said.  The mules were turned about;
+and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced our
+steps in silence.  Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at home,
+condemned beyond reprieve.
+
+What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little
+before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road
+in a great pother of dust.  He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw
+hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer,
+that was, in my eyes, very reassuring.  He was, indeed, a very honest man
+and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor
+any one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark of
+diffidence that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and
+entered the room where our unhappy family was gathered.  My mother and
+me, he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with my
+father laid before him a blank signature of President Young’s, and
+offered him a choice of services: either to set out as a missionary to
+the tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next day, with a party of
+Destroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty German immigrants.  The last,
+of course, my father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as a
+pretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife defenceless, and to
+collect fresh victims for the tyranny under which he was himself
+oppressed, he felt sure he would never be suffered to return.  He refused
+both; and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious,
+at the spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for my
+father and his family.  He besought him to reconsider his decision; and
+at length, finding he could not prevail, gave him till the moon rose to
+settle his affairs, and say farewell to wife and daughter.  ‘For,’ said
+he, ‘then, at the latest, you must ride with me.’
+
+I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast;
+and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father and
+Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey.  My
+mother, though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shut
+herself in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the
+dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to saddle
+my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to enjoy
+one farewell sight of my departing father.  The two men had set forth at
+a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them, when I reached the point
+of view.  I was the more amazed to see no moving creature in the
+landscape.  The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and nowhere,
+under the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a bush, a farm,
+a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one.  From the corner
+where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the
+doctor’s house; and across the top of that projection the soft night wind
+carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable smoke.  What fuel
+could produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what
+furnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew
+well enough that it came from the doctor’s chimney; I saw well enough
+that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I
+connected in my mind the loss of that dear protector with the ribbon of
+foul smoke that trailed along the mountains.
+
+Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a week
+went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father and
+husband.  As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so in
+the ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting my horse and
+following upon his trail, had that strong and brave man vanished out of
+life.  Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now
+certain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defenceless
+family.  Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when I
+look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event.  On the
+last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone
+in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
+attendants, with one accord, had fled: and as we knew them to be
+gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight.
+The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening we
+were called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of horse’s
+hoofs.
+
+The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,
+and saluted us.  He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery than
+ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.
+
+‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would have you
+recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President, that he should
+send as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband’s oldest
+friend in Utah.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said my mother, ‘I have but one concern, one thought.  You know
+well what it is.  Speak: my husband?’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, ‘if you
+were a silly child, my position would now be painfully embarrassing.  You
+are, on the other hand, a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: you
+have, by my forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own
+conclusions and to accept the inevitable.  Farther words from me are, I
+conceive, superfluous.’
+
+My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her my
+hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till I could
+have cried aloud.  ‘Then, sir,’ said she at last, ‘you speak to deaf
+ears.  If this be indeed so, what have I to do with errands?  What do I
+ask of Heaven but to die?’
+
+‘Come,’ said the doctor, ‘command yourself.  I bid you dismiss all
+thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon your
+own future and the fate of that young girl.’
+
+‘You bid me dismiss—’ began my mother.  ‘Then you know!’ she cried.
+
+‘I know,’ replied the doctor.
+
+‘You know?’ broke out the poor woman.  ‘Then it was you who did the deed!
+I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you are—you,
+whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes raving—you, the
+Destroying Angel!’
+
+‘Well, madam, and what then?’ returned the doctor.  ‘Have not my fate and
+yours been similar?  Are we not both immured in this strong prison of
+Utah?  Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye confront you
+in the canyon?  Who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?
+Not I, at least.  Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the
+most ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that
+have spared your husband?  You know well it would not.  I, too, had
+perished along with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his last
+moments, nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the hand of
+Brigham Young.’
+
+‘Ah!’ cried I, ‘and could you purchase life by such concessions?’
+
+‘Young lady,’ answered the doctor, ‘I both could and did; and you will
+live to thank me for that baseness.  You have a spirit, Asenath, that it
+pleases me to recognise.  But we waste time.  Mr. Fonblanque’s estate
+reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some part of it has
+been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that person, I
+should perhaps tell you without more delay, is no other than myself.’
+
+At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung
+together like lost souls.
+
+‘It is as I supposed,’ resumed the doctor, with the same measured
+utterance.  ‘You recoil from this arrangement.  Do you expect me to
+convince you?  You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view
+of women.  Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the
+slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among
+themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the
+union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it.  No: you need
+not, madam, and my old friend’—and here the doctor rose and bowed with
+something of gallantry—‘you need not apprehend my importunities.  On the
+contrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am
+obliged to bid you follow me at once, and that in the name, not of my
+wish, but of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a common
+mind.’
+
+So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had now
+fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.
+
+‘What does it mean?—what will become of us?’ I cried.
+
+‘Not that, at least,’ replied my mother, shuddering.  ‘So far we can
+trust him.  I seem to read among his words a certain tragic promise.
+Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserable
+parents?’
+
+Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to explain her
+words; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend the doctor for a
+friend.  ‘The doctor!’ I cried at last; ‘the man who killed my father?’
+
+‘Nay,’ said she, ‘let us be just.  I do believe before, Heaven, he played
+the friendliest part.  And he alone, Asenath, can protect you in this
+land of death.’
+
+At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we were all
+in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter to discuss
+with Mrs. Fonblanque.  They came at a foot’s pace, eagerly conversing in
+a whisper; and presently after the moon rose and showed them looking
+eagerly in each other’s faces as they went, my mother laying her hand
+upon the doctor’s arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual custom,
+making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.
+
+At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to his
+door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.
+
+‘Here,’ he said, ‘we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to be
+alone, you and I shall walk together to my house.’
+
+‘Shall I see her again?’ I asked.
+
+‘I give you my word,’ he said, and helped me to alight.  ‘We leave the
+horses here,’ he added.  ‘There are no thieves in this stone wilderness.’
+
+The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.  The windows were
+once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the most
+absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother very
+slowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human soul
+within a range of miles.  At the thought, I looked upon the doctor,
+gravely walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, and
+then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like some
+industrious factory.  And then my curiosity broke forth.  ‘In Heaven’s
+name,’ I cried, ‘what do you make in this inhuman desert?’
+
+He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion—
+
+‘This is not the first time,’ said he, ‘that you have seen my furnaces
+alight.  One morning, in the small hours, I saw you driving past; a
+delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit myself of having
+startled either your driver or the horse that drew you.’
+
+‘What!’ cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure,
+‘could that be you?’
+
+‘It was I,’ he replied; ‘but do not fancy that I was mad.  I was in
+agony.  I had been scalded cruelly.’
+
+We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of the
+country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.  Stone, too, was its
+foundation, stone its background.  Not a blade of grass sprouted among
+the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows.
+Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely
+sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood;
+but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance,
+and set me shrinking.  The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney
+top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of the
+building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the
+moon and vanished.
+
+The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.  ‘You ask me
+what I make here,’ he observed.  ‘Two things: Life and Death.’  And he
+motioned me to enter.
+
+‘I shall await my mother,’ said I.
+
+‘Child,’ he replied, ‘look at me: am I not old and broken?  Of us two,
+which is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?’
+
+I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by a
+good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.  It was furnished only with a
+dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these the
+doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into the
+interior of the house, he left me to myself.  Presently I heard the jar
+of iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed by the
+same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now so near
+at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake the house with
+every recurrence of the stroke.  I had scarce time to master my alarm
+when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother
+appeared upon the threshold.  But how am I to describe to you the peace
+and ravishment of that face?  Years seemed to have passed over her head
+during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone,
+her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel of
+ecstatic tenderness.  I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank a
+little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yet
+unearthly.  To the doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand as
+to a friend and helper; and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be
+offended.
+
+‘Lucy,’ said the doctor, ‘all is prepared.  Will you go alone, or shall
+your daughter follow us?’
+
+‘Let Asenath come,’ she answered, ‘dear Asenath!  At this hour, when I am
+purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and my
+affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her
+presence.  Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she might
+misjudge your kindness.’
+
+‘Mother,’ I cried wildly, ‘mother, what is this?’
+
+But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only ‘Hush!’ as though I were
+a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me be
+silent and trouble her no more.  ‘You have made a choice,’ he continued,
+addressing my mother, ‘that has often strangely tempted me.  The two
+extremes: all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon the
+clock—these have been my incongruous desires.  But to accept the middle
+term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn
+out—never for an hour, never since I was born, has satisfied the appetite
+of my ambition.’  He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration
+and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led
+the way into the inner room.
+
+It was very long.  From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which by
+the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping sounds
+with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric.  At the
+extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a
+lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the
+room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors.  The
+walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with the
+implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered in
+the light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door, a heavy
+driving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys,
+with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.  In one
+corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously
+wreathed with wire.  To this my mother advanced with a decisive
+swiftness.
+
+‘Is this it?’ she asked.
+
+The doctor bowed in silence.
+
+‘Asenath,’ said my mother, ‘in this sad end of my life I have found one
+helper.  Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson.  Be not, oh my daughter,
+be not ungrateful to that friend!’
+
+She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated
+the arms.
+
+‘Am I right?’ she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancy
+of face that I trembled for her reason.  Once more the doctor bowed, but
+this time leaning hard against the wall.  He must have touched a spring.
+The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar
+appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like one
+resigned to weariness.  I was at her knees that moment; but her hands
+fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the same
+touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.
+
+I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my
+tearful face, I met the doctor’s eyes.  They rested upon mine with such a
+depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of my
+sorrow, I was startled into attention.
+
+‘Enough,’ he said, ‘to lamentation.  Your mother went to death as to a
+bridal, dying where her husband died.  It is time, Asenath, to think of
+the survivors.  Follow me to the next room.’
+
+I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he
+gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began to
+address me—
+
+‘You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate watch
+of Brigham Young.  It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances, to
+become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular
+fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes
+of the President himself.  Such a fate for a girl like you were worse
+than death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily deeper
+in the mire of this pit of woman’s degradation.  But is escape
+conceivable?  Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with what
+security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted
+a sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom.  Where your father
+failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless in
+the toils?’
+
+I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
+understood.
+
+‘I see,’ I cried; ‘you judge me rightly.  I must follow where my parents
+led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!’
+
+‘No,’ replied the doctor, ‘not death for you.  The flawed vessel we may
+break, but not the perfect.  No, your mother cherished a different hope,
+and so do I.  I see,’ he cried, ‘the girl develop to the completed woman,
+the plan reach fulfilment, the promise—ay, outdone!  I could not bear to
+arrest so lively, so comely a process.  It was your mother’s thought,’ he
+added, with a change of tone, ‘that I should marry you myself.’  I fear I
+must have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made
+haste to quiet me.  ‘Reassure yourself, Asenath,’ he resumed.  ‘Old as I
+am, I have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth.  I have passed
+my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils I have not
+forgotten the tune of a young pulse.  Age asks with timidity to be spared
+intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard, demands joy like a
+right.  These things I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly
+felt, none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed them to
+their day.  See, then: you stand without support; the only friend left to
+you, this old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy.  Answer me
+but one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the world
+calls love?  Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you
+fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?’
+
+I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him,
+lay with my dead parents.
+
+‘It is enough,’ he said.  ‘It has been my fate to be called on often, too
+often, for those services of which we spoke to-night; none in Utah could
+carry them so well to a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my hands
+a certain share of influence which I now lay at your service, partly for
+the sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the interest I bear
+you in your own right.  I shall send you to England, to the great city of
+London, there to await the bridegroom I have selected.  He shall be a son
+of mine, a young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that
+quality of beauty that your years demand.  Since your heart is free, you
+may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for much expense
+and still more danger: to await the arrival of that bridegroom with the
+delicacy of a wife.’
+
+I sat awhile stunned.  The doctor’s marriages, I remembered to have
+heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress.
+But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of
+escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me some
+dawn of hope; and in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.
+
+He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked
+for.  ‘You shall see,’ he cried; ‘you shall judge for yourself.’  And
+hurrying to the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat
+coarsely done in oils.  It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty
+years before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor.  ‘Do
+you like it?’ he asked.  ‘That is myself when I was young.  My—my boy
+will be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels might
+condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind.  That
+should be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand.  A man
+like that—one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the
+force, the dignity of age—one to fill all the parts and faculties, one to
+be man’s epitome—say, will that not satisfy the needs of an ambitious
+girl?  Say, is not that enough?’  And as he held the picture close before
+my eyes, his hands shook.
+
+I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced with
+this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the most
+insolent revolt surged through my arteries.  I held him in horror, him,
+his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice but death or a
+Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.
+
+‘It is well,’ he replied, ‘and I had rightly counted on your spirit.
+Eat, then, for you have far to go.’  So saying, he set meat before me;
+and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned with
+an armful of coarse raiment.  ‘There,’ said he, ‘is your disguise.  I
+leave you to your toilet.’
+
+The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen;
+and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements.
+But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of
+their origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged.  I had
+scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a back
+window, helped me out into the narrow space between the house and the
+overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron footholds mortised in
+the rock.  ‘Mount,’ he said, ‘swiftly.  When you are at the summit, walk,
+so far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke.  The smoke will bring
+you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, and you will find a
+man with two horses.  Him you will implicitly obey.  And remember,
+silence!  That machinery, which I now put in motion for your service, may
+by one word be turned against you.  Go; Heaven prosper you!’
+
+The ascent was easy.  Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on
+the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the
+moon and the surrounding mountains.  Nowhere was any vantage or
+concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made
+haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke.  Sometimes
+it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial
+curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the
+earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like some
+mountain fog.  But, one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened
+furnace protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to
+the canyon.
+
+There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of
+saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence
+by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains.  A little
+before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the
+bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next night,
+before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings.  About
+noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screen
+of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his pack, bade me
+change my dress once more.  The bundle contained clothing of my own,
+taken from our house, with such necessaries as a comb and soap.  I made
+my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and
+smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image, the
+mountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness; and
+while I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly increased a
+storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds.  Shall I own to you,
+that I fell upon my face and shrieked?  And yet this was but the overland
+train winding among the near mountains: the very means of my salvation:
+the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!
+
+When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,
+both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over the borders
+in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reached
+the railway station, half a mile below.  ‘Here,’ he added, ‘is your
+ticket as far as Council Bluffs.  The East express will pass in a few
+hours.’  With that, he took both horses, and, without further words or
+any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.
+
+Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train as
+it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of the
+mountain.  The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbing
+terror of pursuit—above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance,
+kept me from any logical or melancholy thought.  I had gone to the
+doctor’s house two nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse than
+death; what had passed, terrible although it was, looked almost bright
+compared to my anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a full
+night in the flying palace car, that I awoke to the sense of my
+irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about the future.  In this
+mood, I examined the contents of the bag.  It was well supplied with
+gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far
+as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with a
+fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, and
+bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son.  All then had been
+arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and what was tenfold
+worse, upon my mother’s voluntary death.  My horror of my only friend, my
+aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the whole
+current and conditions of my life, were now complete.  I was sitting
+stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very
+pleasant lady offered me her conversation.  I clutched at the relief; and
+I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor’s letter: how I was
+a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I
+had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted my
+instructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me with questions,
+began to embroider on my own account.  This soon carried one of my
+inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on the
+lady’s face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly addressed me.
+
+‘Miss Gould, I believe?’ said he; and then, excusing himself to the lady
+by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of the
+Pullman car.  ‘Miss Gould,’ he said in my ear, ‘is it possible that you
+suppose yourself in safety?  Let me completely undeceive you.  One more
+such indiscretion and you return to Utah.  And, in the meanwhile, if this
+woman should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
+“Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me to
+choose my own associates.”’
+
+Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myself
+drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult; and
+thenceforward, through all that day, I sat in silence, gazing on the bare
+plains and swallowing my tears.  Let that suffice: it was the pattern of
+my journey.  Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the ocean
+steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller but
+I was certain to be interrupted.  In every place, on every side, the most
+unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors to
+forward me upon my journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.
+Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still
+following my movements; and when at length a cab had set me down before
+that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this morning, I had
+already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.
+
+The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was expecting
+my arrival.  A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon the garden;
+there were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and there (I had
+almost said with contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw month
+follow month over my head.  At times my landlady took me for a walk or an
+excursion, but she would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I,
+seeing that she also lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormon
+terror, felt too much pity to resist.  To the child born on Mormon soil,
+as to the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no escape is
+possible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful even for this
+respite.  Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for my
+approaching nuptials.  The day drew near when my bridegroom was to visit
+me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent.  A son of Doctor
+Grierson’s, be he what he pleased, must still be young, and it was even
+probable he should be handsome; on more than that, I felt I dared not
+reckon; and in moulding my mind towards consent I dwelt the more
+carefully on these physical attractions which I felt I might expect, and
+averted my eyes from moral or intellectual considerations.  We have a
+great power upon our spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into a
+frame of acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow impatient for the hour.
+At night sleep forsook me; I sat all day by the fire, absorbed in dreams,
+conjuring up the features of my husband, and anticipating in fancy the
+touch of his hand and the sound of his voice.  In the dead level and
+solitude of my existence, this was the one eastern window and the one
+door of hope.  At last, I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that I
+began to be besieged with fears upon the other side.  How if it was I
+that did not please?  How if this unseen lover should turn from me with
+disaffection?  And now I spent hours before the glass, studying and
+judging my attractions, and was never weary of changing my dress or
+ordering my hair.
+
+When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort of
+hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now
+stand or fall by nature.  My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most
+sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling
+rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting,
+shrinking, and colouring to the brow.  Love is not to be prepared, I
+know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at last
+rattled to the door and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the
+tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself might have been proud
+to own their parentage.  The door opened, and it was Doctor Grierson that
+appeared.  I believe I must have screamed aloud, and I know, at least,
+that I fell fainting to the floor.
+
+When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse.  ‘I
+have startled you,’ he said.  ‘A difficulty unforeseen—the impossibility
+of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity—has forced me to resort to
+London unprepared.  I regret that I should have shown myself once more
+without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me
+are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea.  Youth is but
+a state, as passing as that syncope from which you are but just awakened,
+and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find,
+Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant.  Since my first
+years, I have devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task;
+and the time of my success is at hand.  In these new countries, where I
+was so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
+have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what
+was a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a
+son of mine I did so in a figure.  That son—that husband, Asenath, is
+myself—not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy of
+youth.  You think me mad?  It is the customary attitude of ignorance.  I
+will not argue; I will leave facts to speak.  When you behold me
+purified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image—when you
+recognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect expression of the
+powers of mankind—I shall be able to laugh with a better grace at your
+passing and natural incredulity.  To what can you aspire—fame, riches,
+power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age—that I shall not
+be able to afford you in perfection?  Do not deceive yourself.  I already
+excel you in every human gift but one: when that gift also has been
+restored to me you will recognise your master.’
+
+Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to
+myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he
+withdrew.  I had not the courage to move; the night fell and found me
+still where he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands,
+my soul drowned in the darkest apprehensions.  Late in the evening he
+returned, carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade
+me rise and sup.  ‘Is it possible,’ he added, ‘that I have been deceived
+in your courage?  A cowardly girl is no fit mate for me.’
+
+I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought
+him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice
+was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his
+hopeless and derisible inferior.
+
+‘Why, certainly,’ he replied.  ‘I know you better than yourself; and I am
+well enough acquainted with human nature to understand this scene.  It is
+addressed to me,’ he added with a smile, ‘in my character of the still
+untransformed.  But do not alarm yourself about the future.  Let me but
+attain my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face of
+the earth becomes my willing slave.’
+
+Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;
+helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable host; and
+it was not till a late hour, that, bidding me courteously good-night, he
+once more left me alone to my misery.
+
+In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I scarce
+knew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil.  If his
+hopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some abhorrent miracle,
+he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that most
+unnatural, that most ungodly union.  If, on the other hand, these dreams
+were merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my pity
+would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt against the
+marriage.  So passed the night, in alternations of rebellion and despair,
+of hate and pity; and with the next morning I was only to comprehend more
+fully my enslaved position.  For though he appeared with a very tranquil
+countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of grief upon my brow
+than an answering darkness gathered on his own.  ‘Asenath.’ he said, ‘you
+owe me much already; with one finger I still hold you suspended over
+death; my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I choose,’ said he,
+with a remarkable accent of command, ‘that you shall greet me with a
+pleasant face.’  He never needed to repeat the recommendation; from that
+day forward I was always ready to receive him with apparent cheerfulness;
+and he rewarded me with a good deal of his company, and almost more than
+I could bear of his confidence.  He had set up a laboratory in the back
+part of the house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and he
+would come thence to visit me in my parlour: now with passing humours of
+discouragement; now, and far more often, radiant with hope.  It was
+impossible to see so much of him, and not to recognise that the sands of
+his life were running low; and yet all the time he would be laying out
+vast fields of future, and planning, with all the confidence of youth,
+the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and ambition.  How I replied I
+know not; but I found a voice and words to answer, even while I wept and
+raged to hear him.
+
+A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great
+exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness.  ‘Asenath,’ said
+he, ‘I have now obtained the last ingredient.  In one week from now the
+perilous moment of the last projection will draw nigh.  You have once
+before assisted, although unconsciously, at the failure of a similar
+experiment.  It was the elixir which so terribly exploded one night when
+you were passing my house; and it is idle to deny that the conduct of so
+delicate a process, among the million jars and trepidations of so great a
+city, presents a certain element of danger.  From this point of view, I
+cannot but regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts;
+but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularly
+unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is due
+rather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients; and as all
+are now of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have little fear for the
+result.  In a week then from to-day, my dear Asenath, this period of
+trial will be ended.’  And he smiled upon me in a manner unusually
+paternal.
+
+I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest and
+most unbridled terror.  What if he failed?  And oh, tenfold worse! what
+if he succeeded?  What detested and unnatural changeling would appear
+before me to claim my hand?  And could there, I asked myself with a
+dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over
+my reluctance?  I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a
+sign.  Suppose, then, this experiment to succeed; suppose him to return
+to me, hideously restored, like a vampire in a legend; and suppose that,
+by some devilish fascination . . . My head turned; all former fears
+deserted me: and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference to this.
+
+My mind was instantly made up.  The doctor’s presence in London was
+justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity.  Often, in our
+conversation, he would gloat over the details of that great organisation,
+which he feared even while yet he wielded it; and would remind me, that
+even in the humming labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that
+unsleeping eye in Utah.  His visitors, indeed, who were of every sort,
+from the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to belong to
+every rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled me with unmixed
+repulsion and alarm.  I knew that if my secret were to reach the ear of
+any leader my fate were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in my present
+pass of horror and despair, it was to these very men that I turned for
+help.  I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man of
+a low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce remember
+what elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his intermediacy
+entered into correspondence with my father’s family.  They recognised my
+claim for help, and on this very day I was to begin my escape.
+
+Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the doctor’s
+labours, and prepared against the worst.  The nights at this season and
+in this northern latitude are short; and I had soon the company of the
+returning daylight.  The silence in and around the house was only broken
+by the movements of the doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened,
+watch in hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and yet consumed by
+anxiety about the strange experiment that was going forward overhead.
+Indeed, now that I was conscious of some protection for myself, my
+sympathies had turned more directly to the doctor’s side; I caught myself
+even praying for his success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cry
+reached my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control my
+impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.
+
+The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a large,
+round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a bright
+amber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude and joy
+unspeakable.  As he saw me he raised the flask at arm’s length.
+‘Victory!’ he cried.  ‘Victory, Asenath!’  And then—whether the flask
+escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the explosion were spontaneous,
+I cannot tell—enough that we were thrown, I against the door-post, the
+doctor into the corner of the room; enough that we were shaken to the
+soul by the same explosion that must have startled you upon the street;
+and that, in the brief space of an indistinguishable instant, there
+remained nothing of the labours of the doctor’s lifetime but a few shards
+of broken crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that
+pursued me in my flight.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SQUIRE OF DAMES_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+What with the lady’s animated manner and dramatic conduct of her voice,
+Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine emotion.  His
+fancy, which was not perhaps of a very lively character, applauded both
+the matter and the style; but the more judicial functions of his mind
+refused assent.  It was an excellent story; and it might be true, but he
+believed it was not.  Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless
+possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but how was a gentleman to
+tell her so?  His spirits for some time had been sinking, but they now
+fell to zero; and long after her voice had died away he still sat with a
+troubled and averted countenance, and could find no form of words to
+thank her for her narrative.  His mind, indeed, was empty of everything
+beyond a dull longing for escape.  From this pause, which grew the more
+embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden laughter of
+the lady.  His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes
+met; and he caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as put him
+instantly at ease.
+
+‘You certainly,’ he said, ‘appear to bear your calamities with excellent
+spirit.’
+
+‘Do I not?’ she cried, and fell once more into delicious laughter.  But
+from this access she more speedily recovered.  ‘This is all very well,’
+said she, nodding at him gravely, ‘but I am still in a most distressing
+situation, from which, if you deny me your help, I shall find it
+difficult indeed to free myself.’
+
+At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original gloom.
+
+‘My sympathies are much engaged with you,’ he said, ‘and I should be
+delighted, I am sure.  But our position is most unusual; and
+circumstances over which I have, I can assure you, no control, deprive me
+of the power—the pleasure—Unless, indeed,’ he added, somewhat brightening
+at the thought, ‘I were to recommend you to the care of the police?’
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; and he saw
+with wonder that, for the first time since the moment of their meeting,
+every trace of colour had faded from her cheek.
+
+‘Do so,’ she said, ‘and—weigh my words well—you kill me as certainly as
+with a knife.’
+
+‘God bless me!’ exclaimed Challoner.
+
+‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I can see you disbelieve my story and make light of the
+perils that surround me; but who are you to judge?  My family share my
+apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an
+emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen to supply me with the
+funds for my escape.  I admit that you are brave and clever and have
+impressed me most favourably; but how are you to prefer your opinion
+before that of my uncle, an ex-minister of state, a man with the ear of
+the Queen, and of a long political experience?  If I am mad, is he?  And
+you must allow me, besides, a special claim upon your help.  Strange as
+you may think my story, you know that much of it is true; and if you who
+heard the explosion and saw the Mormon at Victoria, refuse to credit and
+assist me, to whom am I to turn?’
+
+‘He gave you money then?’ asked Challoner, who had been dwelling singly
+on that fact.
+
+‘I begin to interest you,’ she cried.  ‘But, frankly, you are condemned
+to help me.  If the service I had to ask of you were serious, were
+suspicious, were even unusual, I should say no more.  But what is it?  To
+take a pleasure trip (for which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay)
+and to carry from one lady to another a sum of money!  What can be more
+simple?’
+
+‘Is the sum,’ asked Challoner, ‘considerable?’
+
+She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had not yet
+found time to make the count, tore open the cover and spread upon her
+knees a considerable number of Bank of England notes.  It took some time
+to make the reckoning, for the notes were of every degree of value; but
+at last, and counting a few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be
+a little under £710 sterling.  The sight of so much money worked an
+immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.
+
+‘And you propose, madam,’ he cried, ‘to intrust that money to a perfect
+stranger?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said she, with a charming smile, ‘but I no longer regard you as a
+stranger.’
+
+‘Madam,’ said Challoner, ‘I perceive I must make you a confession.
+Although of a very good family—through my mother, indeed, a lineal
+descendant of the patriot Bruce—I dare not conceal from you that my
+affairs are deeply, very deeply involved.  I am in debt; my pockets are
+practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that state when a
+considerable sum of money would prove to many men an irresistible
+temptation.’
+
+‘Do you not see,’ returned the young lady, ‘that by these words you have
+removed my last hesitation?  Take them.’  And she thrust the notes into
+the young man’s hand.
+
+He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss
+Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.
+
+‘Pray,’ she said, ‘hesitate no further; put them in your pocket; and to
+relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name
+I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the
+awkwardness of the pronoun.’
+
+Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors had come
+lightly to the young man’s aid; but upon what pretext could he refuse so
+generous a trust?  Upon none he saw, that was not unpardonably wounding;
+and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion had already
+made a breach in the rampart of Challoner’s caution.  The whole thing, he
+reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it were the height of
+solemn folly to resent.  On the other hand, the explosion, the interview
+at the public-house, and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove
+beyond denial the existence of some serious danger; and if that were so,
+could he desert her?  There was a choice of risks: the risk of behaving
+with extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness to a lady, and the risk
+of going on a fool’s errand.  The story seemed false; but then the money
+was undeniable.  The whole circumstances were questionable and obscure;
+but the lady was charming, and had the speech and manners of society.
+While he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned upon his mind
+with some of the dignity of prophecy.  Had he not promised Somerset to
+break with the traditions of the commonplace, and to accept the first
+adventure offered?  Well, here was the adventure.
+
+He thrust the money into his pocket.
+
+‘My name is Challoner,’ said he.
+
+‘Mr. Challoner,’ she replied, ‘you have come very generously to my aid
+when all was against me.  Though I am myself a very humble person, my
+family commands great interest; and I do not think you will repent this
+handsome action.’
+
+Challoner flushed with pleasure.
+
+‘I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,’ she added, her eyes dwelling on
+him with a judicial admiration, ‘a consulship in some great town or
+capital—or else—But we waste time; let us set about the work of my
+delivery.’
+
+She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his heart; and once
+more laying by all serious thoughts, she entertained him, as they crossed
+the park, with her agreeable gaiety of mind.  Near the Marble Arch they
+found a hansom, which rapidly conveyed them to the terminus at Euston
+Square; and here, in the hotel, they sat down to an excellent breakfast.
+The young lady’s first step was to call for writing materials and write,
+upon one corner of the table, a hasty note; still, as she did so,
+glancing with smiles at her companion.  ‘Here,’ said she, ‘here is the
+letter which will introduce you to my cousin.’  She began to fold the
+paper.  ‘My cousin, although I have never seen her, has the character of
+a very charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I know nothing,
+but at least she has been very kind to me; so has my lord her father; so
+have you—kinder than all—kinder than I can bear to think of.’  She said
+this with unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed the envelope.
+‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘I have shut my letter!  It is not quite courteous; and
+yet, as between friends, it is perhaps better so.  I introduce you, after
+all, into a family secret; and though you and I are already old comrades,
+you are still unknown to my uncle.  You go then to this address, Richard
+Street, Glasgow; go, please, as soon as you arrive; and give this letter
+with your own hands into those of Miss Fonblanque, for that is the name
+by which she is to pass.  When we next meet, you will tell me what you
+think of her,’ she added, with a touch of the provocative.
+
+‘Ah,’ said Challoner, almost tenderly, ‘she can be nothing to me.’
+
+‘You do not know,’ replied the young lady, with a sigh.  ‘By-the-bye, I
+had forgotten—it is very childish, and I am almost ashamed to mention
+it—but when you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have to make yourself a
+little ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way suits you.  We had
+agreed upon a watchword.  You will have to address an earl’s daughter in
+these words: “_Nigger_, _nigger_, _never die_;” but reassure yourself,’
+she added, laughing, ‘for the fair patrician will at once finish the
+quotation.  Come now, say your lesson.’
+
+‘“Nigger, nigger, never die,”’ repeated Challoner, with undisguised
+reluctance.
+
+Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.  ‘Excellent,’ said she, ‘it
+will be the most humorous scene.’  And she laughed again.
+
+‘And what will be the counterword?’ asked Challoner stiffly.
+
+‘I will not tell you till the last moment,’ said she; ‘for I perceive you
+are growing too imperious.’
+
+Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform, bought him
+the _Graphic_, the _Athenæum_, and a paper-cutter, and stood on the step
+conversing till the whistle sounded.  Then she put her head into the
+carriage.  ‘_Black face and shining eye_!’ she whispered, and instantly
+leaped down upon the platform, with a thrill of gay and musical laughter.
+As the train steamed out of the great arch of glass, the sound of that
+laughter still rang in the young man’s ears.
+
+Challoner’s position was too unusual to be long welcome to his mind.  He
+found himself projected the whole length of England, on a mission beset
+with obscure and ridiculous circumstances, and yet, by the trust he had
+accepted, irrevocably bound to persevere.  How easy it appeared, in the
+retrospect, to have refused the whole proposal, returned the money, and
+gone forth again upon his own affairs, a free and happy man!  And it was
+now impossible: the enchantress who had held him with her eye had now
+disappeared, taking his honour in pledge; and as she had failed to leave
+him an address, he was denied even the inglorious safety of retreat.  To
+use the paper-knife, or even to read the periodicals with which she had
+presented him, was to renew the bitterness of his remorse; and as he was
+alone in the compartment, he passed the day staring at the landscape in
+impotent repentance, and long before he was landed on the platform of St.
+Enoch’s, had fallen to the lowest and coldest zones of self-contempt.
+
+As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have preferred to
+dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the words of the young lady,
+and his own impatient eagerness, would suffer no delay.  In the late,
+luminous, and lamp-starred dusk of the summer evening, he accordingly set
+forward with brisk steps.
+
+The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in the
+character of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside; but the
+extension of the city had long since, and on every hand, surrounded it
+with miles of streets.  From the top of the hill a range of very tall
+buildings, densely inhabited by the poorest classes of the population and
+variegated by drying-poles from every second window, overplumbed the
+villas and their little gardens like a sea-board cliff.  But still, under
+the grime of years of city smoke, these antiquated cottages, with their
+venetian blinds and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat melancholy
+savour of the past.
+
+The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly deserted.  From hard
+by, indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls filled the ear; but in
+Richard Street itself there was neither light nor sound of human
+habitation.  The appearance of the neighbourhood weighed heavily on the
+mind of the young man; once more, as in the streets of London, he was
+impressed with the sense of city deserts; and as he approached the number
+indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang the bell, his heart sank within
+him.
+
+The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and garrulous note;
+and it was some time before it ceased to sound from the rear quarters of
+the building.  Following upon this an inner door was stealthily opened,
+and careful and catlike steps drew near along the hall.  Challoner,
+supposing he was to be instantly admitted, produced his letter, and, as
+well as he was able, prepared a smiling face.  To his indescribable
+surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and then, after a pause and with
+the like stealthiness, withdrew once more, and died away in the interior
+of the house.  A second time the young man rang violently at the bell; a
+second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle of discreet footing
+moved upon the hollow boards of the old villa; and again the fainthearted
+garrison only drew near to retreat.  The cup of the visitor’s endurance
+was now full to overflowing; and, committing the whole family of
+Fonblanque to every mood and shade of condemnation, he turned upon his
+heel and redescended the steps.  Perhaps the mover in the house was
+watching from a window, and plucked up courage at the sight of this
+desistance; or perhaps, where he lurked trembling in the back parts of
+the villa, reason in its own right had conquered his alarms.  Challoner,
+at least, had scarce set foot upon the pavement when he was arrested by
+the sound of the withdrawal of an inner bolt; one followed another,
+rattling in their sockets; the key turned harshly in the lock; the door
+opened; and there appeared upon the threshold a man of a very stalwart
+figure in his shirt sleeves.  He was a person neither of great manly
+beauty nor of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary moods,
+to attract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in the doorway,
+he was marked so legibly with the extreme passion of terror that
+Challoner stood wonder-struck.  For a fraction of a minute they gazed
+upon each other in silence; and then the man of the house, with ashen
+lips and gasping voice, inquired the business of his visitor.  Challoner
+replied, in tones from which he strove to banish his surprise, that he
+was the bearer of a letter to a certain Miss Fonblanque.  At this name,
+as at a talisman, the man fell back and impatiently invited him to enter;
+and no sooner had the adventurer crossed the threshold, than the door was
+closed behind him and his retreat cut off.
+
+It was already long past eight at night; and though the late twilight of
+the north still lingered in the streets, in the passage it was already
+groping dark.  The man led Challoner directly to a parlour looking on the
+garden to the back.  Here he had apparently been supping; for by the
+light of a tallow dip the table was seen to be covered with a napkin, and
+set out with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a Gouda cheese.  The
+room, on the other hand, was furnished with faded solidity, and the walls
+were lined with scholarly and costly volumes in glazed cases.  The house
+must have been taken furnished; for it had no congruity with this man of
+the shirt sleeves and the mean supper.  As for the earl’s daughter, the
+earl and the visionary consulships in foreign cities, they had long ago
+begun to fade in Challoner’s imagination.  Like Doctor Grierson and the
+Mormon angels, they were plainly woven of the stuff of dreams.  Not an
+illusion remained to the knight-errant; not a hope was left him, but to
+be speedily relieved from this disreputable business.
+
+The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised anxiety, and
+began once more to press him for his errand.
+
+‘I am here,’ said Challoner, ‘simply to do a service between two ladies;
+and I must ask you, without further delay, to summon Miss Fonblanque,
+into whose hands alone I am authorised to deliver the letter that I
+bear.’
+
+A growing wonder began to mingle on the man’s face with the lines of
+solicitude.  ‘I am Miss Fonblanque,’ he said; and then, perceiving the
+effect of this communication, ‘Good God!’ he cried, ‘what are you staring
+at?  I tell you, I am Miss Fonblanque.’
+
+Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, and the
+remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could only suppose
+himself the subject of a jest.  He was no longer under the spell of the
+young lady’s presence; and with men, and above all with his inferiors, he
+was capable of some display of spirit.
+
+‘Sir,’ said he, pretty roundly, ‘I have put myself to great inconvenience
+for persons of whom I know too little, and I begin to be weary of the
+business.  Either you shall immediately summon Miss Fonblanque, or I
+leave this house and put myself under the direction of the police.’
+
+‘This is horrible!’ exclaimed the man.  ‘I declare before Heaven I am the
+person meant, but how shall I convince you?  It must have been Clara, I
+perceive, that sent you on this errand—a madwoman, who jests with the
+most deadly interests; and here we are incapable, perhaps, of an
+agreement, and Heaven knows what may depend on our delay!’
+
+He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same time there
+flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous jingle which was to
+serve as password.  ‘This may, perhaps, assist you,’ he said, and then,
+with some embarrassment, ‘“Nigger, nigger, never die.”’
+
+A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the man with the
+chin-beard.  ‘“Black face and shining eye”—give me the letter,’ he
+panted, in one gasp.
+
+‘Well,’ said Challoner, though still with some reluctance, ‘I suppose I
+must regard you as the proper recipient; and though I may justly complain
+of the spirit in which I have been treated, I am only too glad to be done
+with all responsibility.  Here it is,’ and he produced the envelope.
+
+The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled in a
+manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the letter.  As he
+read, terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch of nightmare.  He
+struck one hand upon his brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously,
+he crumpled the paper to a ball.  ‘My gracious powers!’ he cried; and
+then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden, he clapped
+forth his head and shoulders, and whistled long and shrill.  Challoner
+fell back into a corner, and resolutely grasping his staff, prepared for
+the most desperate events; but the thoughts of the man with the
+chin-beard were far removed from violence.  Turning again into the room,
+and once more beholding his visitor, whom he appeared to have forgotten,
+he fairly danced with trepidation.  ‘Impossible!’ he cried.  ‘Oh, quite
+impossible!  O Lord, I have lost my head.’  And then, once more striking
+his hand upon his brow, ‘The money!’ he exclaimed.  ‘Give me the money.’
+
+‘My good friend,’ replied Challoner, ‘this is a very painful exhibition;
+and until I see you reasonably master of yourself, I decline to proceed
+with any business.’
+
+‘You are quite right,’ said the man.  ‘I am of a very nervous habit; a
+long course of the dumb ague has undermined my constitution.  But I know
+you have money; it may be still the saving of me; and oh, dear young
+gentleman, in pity’s name be expeditious!’  Challoner, sincerely uneasy
+as he was, could scarce refrain from laughter; but he was himself in a
+hurry to be gone, and without more delay produced the money.  ‘You will
+find the sum, I trust, correct,’ he observed ‘and let me ask you to give
+me a receipt.’
+
+But the man heeded him not.  He seized the money, and disregarding the
+sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, thrust the bundle of notes
+into his pocket.
+
+‘A receipt,’ repeated Challoner, with some asperity.  ‘I insist on a
+receipt.’
+
+‘Receipt?’ repeated the man, a little wildly.  ‘A receipt?  Immediately!
+Await me here.’
+
+Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no unnecessary time, as
+he was himself desirous of catching a particular train.
+
+‘Ah, by God, and so am I!’ exclaimed the man with the chin-beard; and
+with that he was gone out of the room, and had rattled upstairs, four at
+a time, to the upper story of the villa.
+
+‘This is certainly a most amazing business,’ thought Challoner;
+‘certainly a most disquieting affair; and I cannot conceal from myself
+that I have become mixed up with either lunatics or malefactors.  I may
+truly thank my stars that I am so nearly and so creditably done with it.’
+Thus thinking, and perhaps remembering the episode of the whistle, he
+turned to the open window.  The garden was still faintly clear; he could
+distinguish the stairs and terraces with which the small domain had been
+adorned by former owners, and the blackened bushes and dead trees that
+had once afforded shelter to the country birds; beyond these he saw the
+strong retaining wall, some thirty feet in height, which enclosed the
+garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of dingy buildings
+rearing its frontage high into the night.  A peculiar object lying
+stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length
+he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into
+one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument
+could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by
+the noise of some one running violently down the stairs.  This was
+followed by the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that
+again, by rapid and retreating footsteps in the street.
+
+Challoner sprang into the passage.  He ran from room to room, upstairs
+and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten house, he found
+himself alone.  Only in one apartment, looking to the front, were there
+any traces of the late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently slept in
+and not made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search, and on the
+floor a roll of crumpled paper.  This he picked up.  The light in this
+upper story looking to the front was considerably brighter than in the
+parlour; and he was able to make out that the paper bore the mark of the
+hotel at Euston, and even, by peering closely, to decipher the following
+lines in a very elegant and careful female hand:
+
+    ‘DEAR M‘GUIRE,—It is certain your retreat is known.  We have just had
+    another failure, clockwork thirty hours too soon, with the usual
+    humiliating result.  Zero is quite disheartened.  We are all
+    scattered, and I could find no one but the _solemn ass_ who brings
+    you this and the money.  I would love to see your meeting.—Ever
+    yours,
+
+                                                             SHINING EYE.’
+
+Challoner was stricken to the heart.  He perceived by what facility, by
+what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the gull of
+this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure
+against himself, against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle
+counsels had impelled him to embark on that adventure.  At the same time
+a great and troubled curiosity, and a certain chill of fear, possessed
+his spirit.  The conduct of the man with the chin-beard, the terms of the
+letter, and the explosion of the early morning, fitted together like
+parts in some obscure and mischievous imbroglio.  Evil was certainly
+afoot; evil, secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions and the
+passions of the people among whom he had begun to move, like a blind
+puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience told him, was often
+doomed to perish as a victim.
+
+From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the letter
+in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the bell.  He glanced from
+the window; and, conceive his horror and surprise when he beheld,
+clustered on the steps, in the front garden and on the pavement of the
+street, a formidable posse of police!  He started to the full possession
+of his powers and courage.  Escape, and escape at any cost, was the one
+idea that possessed him.  Swiftly and silently he redescended the
+creaking stairs; he was already in the passage when a second and more
+imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes of the empty house; nor
+had the bell ceased to jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill of
+the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden.  His coat was
+hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent heels
+and head below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth, and followed
+by several pots, he dropped upon the sod.  Once more the bell was rung,
+and now with furious and repeated peals.  The desperate Challoner turned
+his eyes on every side.  They fell upon the ladder, and he ran to it, and
+with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to raise it from the ground.
+Suddenly the weight, which was thus resisting his whole strength, began
+to lighten in his hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its
+bulk from off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost
+superstitious terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot by foot,
+against the face of the retaining wall.  At the same time, two heads were
+dimly visible above the parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle.
+Something in its modulation recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the
+man with the chin-beard.
+
+Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those very
+miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?  Was this, indeed, a
+means of safety, or but the starting-point of further complication and
+disaster?  He paused not to reflect.  Scarce was the ladder reared to its
+full length than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand over hand,
+swift as an ape, he scaled the tottering stairway.  Strong arms received,
+embraced, and helped him; he was lifted and set once more upon the earth;
+and with the spasm of his alarm yet unsubsided, found himself in the
+company of two rough-looking men, in the paved back yard of one of the
+tall houses that crowned the summit of the hill.  Meanwhile, from below,
+the note of the bell had been succeeded by the sound of vigorous and
+redoubling blows.
+
+‘Are you all out?’ asked one of his companions; and, as soon as he had
+babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was cut from the top
+round, and the ladder thrust roughly back into the garden, where it fell
+and broke with clattering reverberations.  Its fall was hailed with many
+broken cries; for the whole of Richard Street was now in high emotion,
+the people crowding to the windows or clambering on the garden walls.
+The same man who had already addressed Challoner seized him by the arm;
+whisked him through the basement of the house and across the street upon
+the other side; and before the unfortunate adventurer had time to realise
+his situation, a door was opened, and he was thrust into a low and dark
+compartment.
+
+‘Bedad,’ observed his guide, ‘there was no time to lose.  Is M’Guire
+gone, or was it you that whistled?
+
+‘M’Guire is gone,’ said Challoner.
+
+The guide now struck a light.  ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘this will never do.  You
+dare not go upon the streets in such a figure.  Wait quietly here and I
+will bring you something decent.’
+
+With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus rudely
+awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been worked in
+his attire.  His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly ripped; and the
+best part of one tail of his very elegant frockcoat had been left hanging
+from the iron crockets of the window.  He had scarce had time to measure
+these disasters when his host re-entered the apartment and proceeded,
+without a word, to envelop the refined and urbane Challoner in a long
+ulster of the cheapest material, and of a pattern so gross and vulgar
+that his spirit sickened at the sight.  This calumnious disguise was
+crowned and completed by a soft felt hat of the Tyrolese design, and
+several sizes too small.  At another moment Challoner would simply have
+refused to issue forth upon the world thus travestied; but the desire to
+escape from Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed
+upon his mind.  With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of his new
+coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement.  The man assured
+him that the whole expense was easily met from funds in his possession,
+and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make his best speed out of
+the neighbourhood.
+
+The young man was not loath to take the hint.  True to his usual
+courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his taste in
+greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat abashed by these remarks and the
+manner of their delivery, he hurried forth into the lamplit city.  The
+last train was gone ere, after many deviations, he had reached the
+terminus.  Attired as he was he dared not present himself at any
+reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity of his
+demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth and possibly
+suspicion, in any humbler hostelry.  He was thus condemned to pass the
+solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in pacing the streets of
+Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn,
+with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all
+things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his
+conduct.  It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of
+the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all
+night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a
+thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his
+wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective.  With the
+coming of day, he found in a shy milk-shop the means to appease his
+hunger.  There were still many hours to wait before the departure of the
+South express; these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in
+the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped quietly into
+the station and took his place in the darkest corner of a third-class
+carriage.  Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed
+by heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers.  By the half
+return ticket in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey on the
+easy cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but alas! in
+his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, commingle with his equals;
+and this small annoyance, coming last in such a series of disasters, cut
+him to the heart.
+
+That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the expense,
+anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld the ruins of his
+last good trousers and his last presentable coat; and above all, when his
+eye by any chance alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster,
+his heart would overflow with bitterness, and it was only by a serious
+call on his philosophy that he maintained the dignity of his demeanour.
+
+
+
+
+SOMERSET’S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+
+
+Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery
+imagination, with very small capacity for action.  He was one who lived
+exclusively in dreams and in the future: the creature of his own
+theories, and an actor in his own romances.  From the cigar divan he
+proceeded to parade the streets, still heated with the fire of his
+eloquence, and scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate
+adventure.  In the continual stream of passers-by, on the sealed fronts
+of houses, on the posters that covered the hoardings, and in every
+lineament and throb of the great city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful
+hieroglyph.  But although the elements of adventure were streaming by him
+as thick as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a
+beseeching, now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and
+provoked the notice of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to
+the touch, he even thrust himself into the way and came into direct
+collision with those of the more promising demeanour.  Persons brimful of
+secrets, persons pining for affection, persons perishing for lack of help
+or counsel, he was sure he could perceive on every side; but by some
+contrariety of fortune, each passed upon his way without remarking the
+young gentleman, and went farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the
+confidant, the friend, or the adviser.  To thousands he must have turned
+an appealing countenance, and yet not one regarded him.
+
+A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous aspirations,
+broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune; and when he returned
+to the task, the lamps were already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd was
+dense upon the pavement.  Before a certain restaurant, whose name will
+readily occur to any student of our Babylon, people were already packed
+so closely that passage had grown difficult; and Somerset, standing in
+the kennel, watched, with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat
+weary, the faces and the manners of the crowd.  Suddenly he was startled
+by a gentle touch upon the shoulder, and facing about, he was aware of a
+very plain and elegant brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful horses, and
+driven by a man in sober livery.  There were no arms upon the panel; the
+window was open, but the interior was obscure; the driver yawned behind
+his palm; and the young man was already beginning to suppose himself the
+dupe of his own fancy, when a hand, no larger than a child’s and smoothly
+gloved in white, appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned
+him to approach.  He did so, and looked in.  The carriage was occupied by
+a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in
+impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery,
+addressed him in these words—
+
+‘Open the door and get in.’
+
+‘It must be,’ thought the young man with an almost unbearable thrill, ‘it
+must be that duchess at last!’  Yet, although the moment was one to which
+he had long looked forward, it was with a certain share of alarm that he
+opened the door, and, mounting into the brougham, took his seat beside
+the lady of the lace.  Whether or no she had touched a spring, or given
+some other signal, the young man had hardly closed the door before the
+carriage, with considerable swiftness, and with a very luxurious and easy
+movement on its springs, turned and began to drive towards the west.
+
+Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long been his
+particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most unlikely
+situations; and this, among others, of the patrician ravisher, was one he
+had familiarly studied.  Strange as it may seem, however, he could find
+no apposite remark; and as the lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further
+sign, they continued to drive in silence through the streets.  Except for
+alternate flashes from the passing lamps, the carriage was plunged in
+obscurity; and beyond the fact that the fittings were luxurious, and that
+the lady was singularly small and slender in person, and, all but one
+gloved hand, still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could
+decipher no detail of an inspiring nature.  The suspense began to grow
+unbearable.  Twice he cleared his throat, and twice the whole resources
+of the language failed him.  In similar scenes, when he had forecast them
+on the theatre of fancy, his presence of mind had always been complete,
+his eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity between the rehearsal and
+the performance, he began to be seized with a panic of apprehension.
+Here, on the very threshold of adventure, suppose him ignominiously to
+fail; suppose that after ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still
+uninterrupted silence, the lady should touch the check-string and
+re-deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the common street!
+Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he reasoned, would be found more
+equal to the part; could, that very instant, by some decisive step, prove
+the lady’s choice to have been well inspired, and put a stop to this
+intolerable silence.
+
+His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.  It was better to fall by
+desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one tremulous
+swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself.  One
+overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his
+embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no less
+incapable of speech or further progress; and with the lady’s hand in his,
+sat helpless.  But worse was in store.  A peculiar quivering began to
+agitate the form of his companion; the hand that lay unresistingly in
+Somerset’s trembled as with ague; and presently there broke forth, in the
+shadow of the carriage, the bubbling and musical sound of laughter,
+resisted but triumphant.  The young man dropped his prize; had it been
+possible, he would have bounded from the carriage.  The lady, meanwhile,
+lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill to trill of the most
+heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and fairy-sounding merriment.
+
+‘You must not be offended,’ she said at last, catching an opportunity
+between two paroxysms.  ‘If you have been mistaken in the warmth of your
+attentions, the fault is solely mine; it does not flow from your
+presumption, but from my eccentric manner of recruiting friends; and,
+believe me, I am the last person in the world to think the worse of a
+young man for showing spirit.  As for to-night, it is my intention to
+entertain you to a little supper; and if I shall continue to be as much
+pleased with your manners as I was taken with your face, I may perhaps
+end by making you an advantageous offer.’
+
+Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his discomfiture
+had been too recent and complete.
+
+‘Come,’ returned the lady, ‘we must have no display of temper; that is
+for me the one disqualifying fault; and as I perceive we are drawing near
+our destination, I shall ask you to descend and offer me your arm.’
+
+Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a stately and
+severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset, who was possessed of
+an excellent temper, with the best grace in the world assisted the lady
+to alight.  The door was opened by an old woman of a grim appearance, who
+ushered the pair into a dining-room somewhat dimly lighted, but already
+laid for supper, and occupied by a prodigious company of large and
+valuable cats.  Here, as soon as they were alone, the lady divested
+herself of the lace in which she was enfolded; and Somerset was relieved
+to find, that although still bearing the traces of great beauty, and
+still distinguished by the fire and colour of her eye, her hair was of a
+silvery whiteness and her face lined with years.
+
+‘And now, _mon preux_,’ said the old lady, nodding at him with a quaint
+gaiety, ‘you perceive that I am no longer in my first youth.  You will
+soon find that I am all the better company for that.’
+
+As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light but tasteful
+supper.  They sat down, accordingly, to table, the cats with savage
+pantomime surrounding the old lady’s chair; and what with the excellence
+of the meal and the gaiety of his entertainer, Somerset was soon
+completely at his ease.  When they had well eaten and drunk, the old lady
+leaned back in her chair, and taking a cat upon her lap, subjected her
+guest to a prolonged but evidently mirthful scrutiny.
+
+‘I fear, madam,’ said Somerset, ‘that my manners have not risen to the
+height of your preconceived opinion.’
+
+‘My dear young man,’ she replied, ‘you were never more mistaken in your
+life.  I find you charming, and you may very well have lighted on a fairy
+godmother.  I am not one of those who are given to change their opinions,
+and short of substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour
+continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of decision, read
+my fellow men and women with a glance, and have acted throughout life on
+first impressions.  Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as
+I suppose, you are a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not
+improbable that we may strike a bargain.’
+
+‘Ah, madam,’ returned Somerset, ‘you have divined my situation.  I am a
+man of birth, parts, and breeding; excellent company, or at least so I
+find myself; but by a peculiar iniquity of fate, destitute alike of trade
+or money.  I was, indeed, this evening upon the quest of an adventure,
+resolved to close with any offer of interest, emolument, or pleasure; and
+your summons, which I profess I am still at some loss to understand,
+jumped naturally with the inclination of my mind.  Call it, if you will,
+impudence; I am here, at least, prepared for any proposition you can find
+it in your heart to make, and resolutely determined to accept.’
+
+‘You express yourself very well,’ replied the old lady, ‘and are
+certainly a droll and curious young man.  I should not care to affirm
+that you were sane, for I have never found any one entirely so besides
+myself; but at least the nature of your madness entertains me, and I will
+reward you with some description of my character and life.’
+
+Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap, proceeded to
+narrate the following particulars.
+
+
+
+_NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY_
+
+
+I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a
+valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.  Our family, a very
+large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good
+old stock where beauty was an heirloom.  In Christian grace of character
+we were unhappily deficient.  From my earliest years I saw and deplored
+the defects of those relatives whose age and position should have enabled
+them to conquer my esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father married
+a second wife, in whom (strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were
+exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree.  Whatever may be
+said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was
+in vain that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my
+stepmother’s demands; and from the hour she entered my father’s house, I
+may say that I met with nothing but injustice and ingratitude.
+
+I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my disposition; for one
+other of the family besides myself was free from any violence of
+character.  Before I had reached the age of sixteen, this cousin, John by
+name, had conceived for me a sincere but silent passion; and although the
+poor lad was too timid to hint at the nature of his feelings, I had soon
+divined and begun to share them.  For some days I pondered on the odd
+situation created for me by the bashfulness of my admirer; and at length,
+perceiving that he began, in his distress, rather to avoid than seek my
+company, I determined to take the matter into my own hands.  Finding him
+alone in a retired part of the rectory garden, I told him that I had
+divined his amiable secret, that I knew with what disfavour our union was
+sure to be regarded; and that, under the circumstances, I was prepared to
+flee with him at once.  Poor John was literally paralysed with joy; such
+was the force of his emotions, that he could find no words in which to
+thank me; and that I, seeing him thus helpless, was obliged to arrange,
+myself, the details of our flight, and of the stolen marriage which was
+immediately to crown it.  John had been at that time projecting a visit
+to the metropolis.  In this I bade him persevere, and promised on the
+following day to join him at the Tavistock Hotel.
+
+True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose, on the day
+in question, before the servants, packed a few necessaries in a bag, took
+with me the little money I possessed, and bade farewell for ever to the
+rectory.  I walked with good spirits to a town some thirty miles from
+home, and was set down the next morning in this great city of London.  As
+I walked from the coach-office to the hotel, I could not help exulting in
+the pleasant change that had befallen me; beholding, meanwhile, with
+innocent delight, the traffic of the streets, and depicting, in all the
+colours of fancy, the reception that awaited me from John.  But alas!
+when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such
+gentleman among the guests.  By what channel our secret had leaked out,
+or what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I could
+never fathom.  Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself
+alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible
+mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred
+for ever from my father’s house.
+
+I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood of Euston
+Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted the joys of
+independence.  Three days afterwards, an advertisement in the _Times_
+directed me to the office of a solicitor whom I knew to be in my father’s
+confidence.  There I was given the promise of a very moderate allowance,
+and a distinct intimation that I must never look to be received at home.
+I could not but resent so cruel a desertion, and I told the lawyer it was
+a meeting I desired as little as themselves.  He smiled at my courageous
+spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave me the remainder
+of my personal effects, which had been sent to me, under his care, in a
+couple of rather ponderous boxes.  With these I returned in triumph to my
+lodgings, more content with my position than I should have thought
+possible a week before, and fully determined to make the best of the
+future.
+
+All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own fault alone
+that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of life.  I have, I must
+confess, the fatal trick of spoiling my inferiors.  My landlady, to whom
+I had as usual been overkind, impertinently called me in fault for some
+particular too small to mention; and I, annoyed that I had allowed her
+the freedom upon which she thus presumed, ordered her to leave my
+presence.  She stood a moment dumb, and then, recalling her
+self-possession, ‘Your bill,’ said she, ‘shall be ready this evening, and
+to-morrow, madam, you shall leave my house.  See,’ she added, ‘that you
+are able to pay what you owe me; for if I do not receive the uttermost
+farthing, no box of yours shall pass my threshold.’
+
+I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole quarter’s income was due
+to me, not otherwise affected by the threat.  That afternoon, as I left
+the solicitor’s door, carrying in one hand, and done up in a paper
+parcel, the whole amount of my fortune, there befell me one of those
+decisive incidents that sometimes shape a life.  The lawyer’s office was
+situate in a street that opened at the upper end upon the Strand, and was
+closed at the lower, at the time of which I speak, by a row of iron
+railings looking on the Thames.  Down this street, then, I beheld my
+stepmother advancing to meet me, and doubtless bound to the very house I
+had just left.  She was attended by a maid whose face was new to me, but
+her own was too clearly printed on my memory; and the sight of it, even
+from a distance, filled me with generous indignation.  Flight was
+impossible.  There was nothing left but to retreat against the railing,
+and with my back turned to the street, pretend to be admiring the barges
+on the river or the chimneys of transpontine London.
+
+I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the turbulence of
+my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me with a trivial
+question.  It was the maid whom my stepmother, with characteristic
+hardness, had left to await her on the street, while she transacted her
+business with the family solicitor.  The girl did not know who I was; the
+opportunity too golden to be lost; and I was soon hearing the latest news
+of my father’s rectory and parish.  It did not surprise me to find that
+she detested her employers; and yet the terms in which she spoke of them
+were hard to bear, hard to let pass unchallenged.  I heard them, however,
+without dissent, for my self-command is wonderful; and we might have
+parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to criticise
+the rector’s missing daughter, and with the most shocking perversions, to
+narrate the story of her flight.  My nature is so essentially generous
+that I can never pause to reason.  I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as
+well as I remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet
+slipped from my fingers, glanced between the railings, and fell and sunk
+in the river.  I stood a moment petrified, and then, struck by the
+drollery of the incident, gave way to peals of laughter.  I was still
+laughing when my stepmother reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless
+considered me insane, ran off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my
+gravity when I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh
+advance.  His answer made me serious enough, for it was a flat refusal;
+and it was not until I had besought him even with tears, that he
+consented to lend me ten pounds from his own pocket.  ‘I am a poor man,’
+said he, ‘and you must look for nothing farther at my hands.’
+
+The landlady met me at the door.  ‘Here, madam,’ said she, with a curtsey
+insolently low, ‘here is my bill.  Would it inconvenience you to settle
+it at once?’
+
+‘You shall be paid, madam,’ said I, ‘in the morning, in the proper
+course.’  And I took the paper with a very high air, but inwardly
+quaking.
+
+I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost.  I had
+been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had now
+reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen
+and fourpence halfpenny.  All evening I sat by the fire considering my
+situation.  I could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to
+remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was I to find
+another lodging?  For three months, unless I could invent some remedy, I
+was condemned to be without a roof and without a penny.  It can surprise
+no one that I decided on immediate flight; but even here I was confronted
+by a difficulty, for I had no sooner packed my boxes than I found I was
+not strong enough to move, far less to carry them.
+
+In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a shawl and
+bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I betook myself to that
+great bazaar of dangerous and smiling chances, the pavement of the city.
+It was already late at night, and the weather being wet and windy, there
+were few abroad besides policemen.  These, on my present mission, I had
+wit enough to know for enemies; and wherever I perceived their moving
+lanterns, I made haste to turn aside and choose another thoroughfare.  A
+few miserable women still walked the pavement; here and there were young
+fellows returning drunk, or ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the
+mouths of alleys; but of any one to whom I might appeal in my distress, I
+began almost to despair.
+
+At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one who was
+evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments, from his furred
+great-coat to the fine cigar which he was smoking, comfortably breathed
+of wealth.  Much as my face has changed from its original beauty, I still
+retain (or so I tell myself) some traces of the youthful lightness of my
+figure.  Even veiled as I then was, I could perceive the gentleman was
+struck by my appearance: and this emboldened me for my adventure.
+
+‘Sir,’ said I, with a quickly beating heart, ‘sir, are you one in whom a
+lady can confide?’
+
+‘Why, my dear,’ said he, removing his cigar, ‘that depends on
+circumstances.  If you will raise your veil—’
+
+‘Sir,’ I interrupted, ‘let there be no mistake.  I ask you, as a
+gentleman, to serve me, but I offer no reward.’
+
+‘That is frank,’ said he; ‘but hardly tempting.  And what, may I inquire,
+is the nature of the service?’
+
+But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on so short an
+interview.  ‘If you will accompany me,’ said I, ‘to a house not far from
+here, you can see for yourself.’
+
+He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing away his
+cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, ‘Here goes!’ said he, and with
+perfect politeness offered me his arm.  I was wise enough to take it; to
+prolong our walk as far as possible, by more than one excursion from the
+shortest line; and to beguile the way with that sort of conversation
+which should prove to him indubitably from what station in society I
+sprang.  By the time we reached the door of my lodging, I felt sure I had
+confirmed his interest, and might venture, before I turned the pass-key,
+to beseech him to moderate his voice and to tread softly.  He promised to
+obey me: and I admitted him into the passage and thence into my
+sitting-room, which was fortunately next the door.
+
+‘And now,’ said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted a candle,
+‘what is the meaning of all this?’
+
+‘I wish you,’ said I, speaking with great difficulty, ‘to help me out
+with these boxes—and I wish nobody to know.’
+
+He took up the candle.  ‘And I wish to see your face,’ said he.
+
+I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with every
+appearance of resolve that I could summon up.  For some time he gazed
+into my face, still holding up the candle.  ‘Well,’ said he at last, ‘and
+where do you wish them taken?’
+
+I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in my voice
+that I replied.  ‘I had thought we might carry them between us to the
+corner of Euston Road,’ said I, ‘where, even at this late hour, we may
+still find a cab.’
+
+‘Very good,’ was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the heavier of my
+trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle of the second, signed to
+me to help him at the other end.  In this order we made good our retreat
+from the house, and without the least adventure, drew pretty near to the
+corner of Euston Road.  Before a house, where there was a light still
+burning, my companion paused.  ‘Let us here,’ said he, ‘set down our
+boxes, while we go forward to the end of the street in quest of a cab.
+By doing so, we can still keep an eye upon their safety, and we avoid the
+very extraordinary figure we should otherwise present—a young man, a
+young lady, and a mass of baggage, standing castaway at midnight on the
+streets of London.’  So it was done, and the event proved him to be wise;
+for long before there was any word of a cab, a policeman appeared upon
+the scene, turned upon us the full glare of his lantern, and hung
+suspiciously behind us in a doorway.
+
+‘There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,’ said my champion, with
+affected cheerfulness.  But the constable’s answer was ungracious; and as
+for the offer of a cigar, with which this rebuff was most unwisely
+followed up, he refused it point-blank, and without the least civility.
+The young gentleman looked at me with a warning grimace, and there we
+continued to stand, on the edge of the pavement, in the beating rain, and
+with the policeman still silently watching our movements from the
+doorway.
+
+At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler
+appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my
+companion.  ‘Just pull up here, will you?’ he cried.  ‘We have some
+baggage up the street.’
+
+And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still
+closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose
+from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil.  The light
+in the house had been extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was
+dark; there was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded
+trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such
+questionable circumstances.
+
+‘Where have these things come from?’ asked the policeman, flashing his
+light full into my champion’s face.
+
+‘Why, from that house, of course,’ replied the young gentleman, hastily
+shouldering a trunk.
+
+The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows; he then
+took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course which had
+infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us already hurrying down the
+street under our double burthen, thought better or worse of it, and
+followed in our wake.
+
+‘For God’s sake,’ whispered my companion, ‘tell me where to drive to.’
+
+‘Anywhere,’ I replied with anguish.  ‘I have no idea.  Anywhere you
+like.’
+
+Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I had already
+entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones the address of
+the house in which we are now seated.  The policeman, I could see, was
+staggered.  This neighbourhood, so retired, so aristocratic, was far from
+what he had expected.  For all that, he took the number of the cab, and
+spoke for a few seconds and with a decided manner in the cabman’s ear.
+
+‘What can he have said?’ I gasped, as soon as the cab had rolled away.
+
+‘I can very well imagine,’ replied my champion; ‘and I can assure you
+that you are now condemned to go where I have said; for, should we
+attempt to change our destination by the way, the jarvey will drive us
+straight to a police-office.  Let me compliment you on your nerves,’ he
+added.  ‘I have had, I believe, the most horrible fright of my
+existence.’
+
+But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange a disarray
+that speech was now become impossible; and we made the drive
+thenceforward in unbroken silence.  When we arrived before the door of
+our destination, the young gentleman alighted, opened it with a pass-key
+like one who was at home, bade the driver carry the trunks into the hall,
+and dismissed him with a handsome fee.  He then led me into this
+dining-room, looking nearly as you behold it, but with certain marks of
+bachelor occupancy, and hastened to pour out a glass of wine, which he
+insisted on my drinking.  As soon as I could find my voice, ‘In God’s
+name,’ I cried, ‘where am I?’
+
+He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no more
+urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits.  As he spoke
+he offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed, I stood in great
+want, for I was faint, and inclined to be hysterical.  Then he sat down
+beside the fire, lit another cigar, and for some time observed me
+curiously in silence.
+
+‘And now,’ said he, ‘that you have somewhat restored yourself, will you
+be kind enough to tell me in what sort of crime I have become a partner?
+Are you murderer, smuggler, thief, or only the harmless and domestic
+moonlight flitter?’
+
+I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without permission,
+for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on our first meeting; and
+now, at these explicit insults, I resolved at once to reconquer his
+esteem.  The judgment of the world I have consistently despised, but I
+had already begun to set a certain value on the good opinion of my
+entertainer.  Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon brightening into
+my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly narrated the circumstances of
+my birth, my flight, and subsequent misfortunes.  He heard me to an end
+in silence, gravely smoking.  ‘Miss Fanshawe,’ said he, when I had done,
+‘you are a very comical and most enchanting creature; and I can see
+nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow morning and satisfy
+your landlady’s demands.’
+
+‘You strangely misinterpret my confidence,’ was my reply; ‘and if you had
+at all appreciated my character, you would understand that I can take no
+money at your hands.’
+
+‘Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,’ he returned; ‘nor do
+I at all despair of persuading even your unconquerable self.  I desire
+you to examine me with critical indulgence.  My name is Henry Luxmore,
+Lord Southwark’s second son.  I possess nine thousand a year, the house
+in which we are now sitting, and seven others in the best neighbourhoods
+in town.  I do not believe I am repulsive to the eye, and as for my
+character, you have seen me under trial.  I think you simply the most
+original of created beings; I need not tell you what you know very well,
+that you are ravishingly pretty; and I have nothing more to add, except
+that, foolish as it may appear, I am already head over heels in love with
+you.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I am prepared to be misjudged; but while I continue to
+accept your hospitality that fact alone should be enough to protect me
+from insult.’
+
+‘Pardon me,’ said he: ‘I offer you marriage.’  And leaning back in his
+chair he replaced his cigar between his lips.
+
+I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, but couched
+in terms so singular.  But he knew very well how to obtain his purposes,
+for he was not only handsome in person, but his very coolness had a
+charm; and to make a long story short, a fortnight later I became the
+wife of the Honourable Henry Luxmore.
+
+For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet.  My
+Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his roof, but
+not for long; for though he was easily over-excited, his nature was
+placable below the surface, and with all his faults, I loved him
+tenderly.  At last he was taken from me; and such is the power of
+self-deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying, he actually
+assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the violence of my
+temper!
+
+There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara.  She had,
+indeed, inherited a shadow of her father’s failing; but in all things
+else, unless my partial eyes deceived me, she derived her qualities from
+me, and might be called my moral image.  On my side, whatever else I may
+have done amiss, as a mother I was above reproach.  Here, then, was
+surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a relation in
+which I might hope to taste repose.  But it was not to be.  You will
+hardly credit me when I inform you that she ran away from home; yet such
+was the case.  Some whim about oppressed nationalities—Ireland, Poland,
+and the like—has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter a
+young lady (I must say, of remarkable attractions) answering to the name
+of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I am told she uses these
+indifferently, as well as many others), tell her, from me, that I forgive
+her cruelty, and though I will never more behold her face, I am at any
+time prepared to make her a liberal allowance.
+
+On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details of
+business.  I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides this,
+formed part of Mr. Luxmore’s property: I have found them seven white
+elephants.  The greed of tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors, and the
+incapacity that sits upon the bench, have combined together to make these
+houses the burthen of my life.  I had no sooner, indeed, begun to look
+into these matters for myself, than I discovered so many injustices and
+met with so much studied incivility, that I was plunged into a long
+series of lawsuits, some of which are pending to this day.  You must have
+heard my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports: a
+strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for
+peace!  But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once begun a
+task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled.  I have met with
+every obstacle: insolence and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my
+adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most
+distasteful in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed—always, I
+must allow, civility—but never a spark of independence, never that
+knowledge of the law and love of justice which we have a right to look
+for in a judge, the most august of human officers.  And still, against
+all these odds, I have undissuadably persevered.
+
+It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on which
+I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy pilgrimage
+to my various houses.  Four were at that time tenantless and closed, like
+pillars of salt, commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline
+of private virtue.  Three were occupied by persons who had wearied me by
+every conceivable unjust demand and legal subterfuge—persons whom, at
+that very hour, I was moving heaven and earth to turn into the street.
+This was perhaps the sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot
+within me to behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an
+insolent ostentation, these handsome structures which were as much mine
+as the flesh upon my body.
+
+One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are.  I had
+let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that I have
+always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman attached to Prince
+Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must certainly have heard of; and I had
+supposed, from the character and position of my tenant, that here, at
+least, I was safe against annoyance.  What was my surprise to find this
+house also shuttered and apparently deserted!  I will not deny that I was
+offended; I conceived that a house, like a yacht, was better to be kept
+in commission; and I promised myself to bring the matter before my
+solicitor the following morning.  Meanwhile the sight recalled my fancy
+naturally to the past; and yielding to the tender influence of sentiment,
+I sat down opposite the door upon the garden parapet.  It was August, and
+a sultry afternoon, but that spot is sheltered, as you may observe by
+daylight, under the branches of a spreading chestnut; the square, too,
+was deserted; there was a sound of distant music in the air; and all
+combined to plunge me into that most agreeable of states, which is
+neither happiness nor sorrow, but shares the poignancy of both.
+
+From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very handsomely
+appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several men of an
+appearance more than decent, and bearing on its panels, instead of a
+trader’s name, a coat-of-arms too modest to be deciphered from where I
+sat.  It drew up before my house, the door of which was immediately
+opened by one of the men.  His companions—I counted seven of them in
+all—proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the van and carry
+into the house a variety of hampers, bottle-baskets, and boxes, such as
+are designed for plate and napery.  The windows of the dining-room were
+thrown widely open, as though to air it; and I saw some of those within
+laying the table for a meal.  Plainly, I concluded, my tenant was about
+to return; and while still determined to submit to no aggression on my
+rights, I was gratified by the number and discipline of his attendants,
+and the quiet profusion that appeared to reign in his establishment.  I
+was still so thinking when, to my extreme surprise, the windows and
+shutters of the dining-room were once more closed; the men began to
+reappear from the interior and resume their stations on the van; the last
+closed the door behind his exit; the van drove away; and the house was
+once more left to itself, looking blindly on the square with shuttered
+windows, as though the whole affair had been a vision.
+
+It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and thus brought my
+eyes a little nearer to the level of the fanlight over the door, I saw
+that, though the day had still some hours to run, the hall lamps had been
+lighted and left burning.  Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were
+not expected before night.  For whom, I asked myself with indignation,
+were such secret preparations likely to be made?  Although no prude, I am
+a woman of decided views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband
+had brought me, was to serve in the character of a _petite maison_, I saw
+myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of litigation; and,
+determined to return and know the worst, I hastened to my hotel for
+dinner.
+
+I was at my post by ten.  The night was clear and quiet; the moon rode
+very high and put the lamps to shame; and the shadow below the chestnut
+was black as ink.  Here, then, I ensconced myself on the low parapet,
+with my back against the railings, face to face with the moonlit front of
+my old home, and ruminating gently on the past.  Time fled; eleven struck
+on all the city clocks; and presently after I was aware of the approach
+of a gentleman of stately and agreeable demeanour.  He was smoking as he
+walked; his light paletôt, which was open, did not conceal his evening
+clothes; and he bore himself with a serious grace that immediately
+awakened my attention.  Before the door of this house he took a pass-key
+from his pocket, quietly admitted himself, and disappeared into the
+lamplit hall.
+
+He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much younger man
+approaching hastily from the opposite side of the square.  Considering
+the season of the year and the genial mildness of the night, he was
+somewhat closely muffled up; and as he came, for all his hurry, he kept
+looking nervously behind him.  Arrived before my door, he halted and set
+one foot upon the step, as though about to enter; then, with a sudden
+change, he turned and began to hurry away; halted a second time, as if in
+painful indecision; and lastly, with a violent gesture, wheeled about,
+returned straight to the door, and rapped upon the knocker.  He was
+almost immediately admitted by the first arrival.
+
+My curiosity was now broad awake.  I made myself as small as I could in
+the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the sequel.  Nor had I
+long to wait.  From the same side of the square a second young man made
+his appearance, walking slowly and softly, and like the first, muffled to
+the nose.  Before the house he paused, looked all about him with a swift
+and comprehensive glance; and seeing the square lie empty in the moon and
+lamplight, leaned far across the area railings and appeared to listen to
+what was passing in the house.  From the dining-room there came the
+report of a champagne cork, and following upon that, the sound of rich
+and manly laughter.  The listener took heart of grace, produced a key,
+unlocked the area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him, and descended the
+stair.  Just when his head had reached the level of the pavement, he
+turned half round and once more raked the square with a suspicious
+eyeshot.  The mufflings had fallen lower round his neck; the moon shone
+full upon him; and I was startled to observe the pallor and passionate
+agitation of his face.
+
+I could remain no longer passive.  Persuaded that something deadly was
+afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the area railings.  There was
+no one below; the man must therefore have entered the house, with what
+purpose I dreaded to imagine.  I have at no part of my career lacked
+courage; and now, finding the area gate was merely laid to, I pushed it
+gently open and descended the stairs.  The kitchen door of the house,
+like the area gate, was closed but not fastened.  It flashed upon me that
+the criminal was thus preparing his escape; and the thought, as it
+confirmed the worst of my suspicions, lent me new resolve.  I entered the
+house; and being now quite reckless of my life, I shut and locked the
+door.
+
+From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of a voice in
+easy conversation.  On the ground floor all was not only profoundly
+silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh upon my eyes.  Here, then, I
+stood for some time, having thrust myself uncalled into the utmost peril,
+and being destitute of any power to help or interfere.  Nor will I deny
+that fear had begun already to assail me, when I became aware, all at
+once and as though by some immediate but silent incandescence, of a
+certain glimmering of light upon the passage floor.  Towards this I
+groped my way with infinite precaution; and having come at length as far
+as the angle of the corridor, beheld the door of the butler’s pantry
+standing just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling from the
+chink.  Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture.  The man sat
+within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most rapt
+attention.  On a table before him he had laid a watch, a pair of steel
+revolvers, and a bull’s-eye lantern.  For one second many contradictory
+theories and projects whirled together in my head; the next, I had
+slammed the door and turned the key upon the malefactor.  Surprised at my
+own decision, I stood and panted, leaning on the wall.  From within the
+pantry not a sound was to be heard; the man, whatever he was, had
+accepted his fate without a struggle, and now, as I hugged myself to
+fancy, sat frozen with terror and looking for the worst to follow.  I
+promised myself that he should not be disappointed; and the better to
+complete my task, I turned to ascend the stairs.
+
+The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed to me
+suddenly by my strong sense of humour.  Here was I, the owner of the
+house, burglariously present in its walls; and there, in the dining-room,
+were two gentlemen, unknown to me, seated complacently at supper, and
+only saved by my promptitude from some surprising or deadly interruption.
+It were strange if I could not manage to extract the matter of amusement
+from so unusual a situation.
+
+Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended for a
+library.  It was to this that I cautiously groped my way; and you will
+see how fortune had exactly served me.  The weather, I have said, was
+sultry; in order to ventilate the dining-room and yet preserve the
+uninhabited appearance of the mansion to the front, the window of the
+library had been widely opened, and the door of communication between the
+two apartments left ajar.  To this interval I now applied my eye.
+
+Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened brightness
+on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a cold collation of
+the rarest delicacy.  The two gentlemen had finished supper, and were now
+trifling with cigars and maraschino; while in a silver spirit lamp,
+coffee of the most captivating fragrance was preparing in the fashion of
+the East.  The elder of the two, he who had first arrived, was placed
+directly facing me; the other was set on his left hand.  Both, like the
+man in the butler’s pantry, seemed to be intently listening; and on the
+face of the second I thought I could perceive the marks of fear.  Oddly
+enough, however, when they came to speak, the parts were found to be
+reversed.
+
+‘I assure you,’ said the elder gentleman, ‘I not only heard the slamming
+of a door, but the sound of very guarded footsteps.’
+
+‘Your highness was certainly deceived,’ replied the other.  ‘I am endowed
+with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled.’
+Yet the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord with
+the tenor of his words.
+
+His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince Florizel)
+looked at his companion for the least fraction of a second; and though
+nothing shook the easy quiet of his attitude, I could see that he was far
+from being duped.  ‘It is well,’ said he; ‘let us dismiss the topic.  And
+now, sir, that I have very freely explained the sentiments by which I am
+directed, let me ask you, according to your promise, to imitate my
+frankness.’
+
+‘I have heard you,’ replied the other, ‘with great interest.’
+
+‘With singular patience,’ said the prince politely.
+
+‘Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,’ returned the young
+man.  ‘I know not how to tell the change that has befallen me.  You have,
+I must suppose, a charm, to which even your enemies are subject.’  He
+looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and visibly blanched.  ‘So late!’
+he cried.  ‘Your highness—God knows I am now speaking from the
+heart—before it be too late, leave this house!’
+
+The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very deliberately
+shook the ash from his cigar.  ‘That is a strange remark,’ said he; ‘and
+_á propos de bottes_, I never continue a cigar when once the ash is
+fallen; the spell breaks, the soul of the flavour flies away, and there
+remains but the dead body of tobacco; and I make it a rule to throw away
+that husk and choose another.’  He suited the action to the words.
+
+‘Do not trifle with my appeal,’ resumed the young man, in tones that
+trembled with emotion.  ‘It is made at the price of my honour and to the
+peril of my life.  Go—go now! lose not a moment; and if you have any
+kindness for a young man, miserably deceived indeed, but not devoid of
+better sentiments, look not behind you as you leave.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said the prince, ‘I am here upon your honour; assure you upon mine
+that I shall continue to rely upon that safeguard.  The coffee is ready;
+I must again trouble you, I fear.’  And with a courteous movement of the
+hand, he seemed to invite his companion to pour out the coffee.
+
+The unhappy young man rose from his seat.  ‘I appeal to you,’ he cried,
+‘by every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in pity to yourself,
+begone before it is too late.’
+
+‘Sir,’ replied the prince, ‘I am not readily accessible to fear; and if
+there is one defect to which I must plead guilty, it is that of a curious
+disposition.  You go the wrong way about to make me leave this house, in
+which I play the part of your entertainer; and, suffer me to add, young
+man, if any peril threaten us, it was of your contriving, not of mine.’
+
+‘Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,’ cried the other.  ‘But I
+at least will have no hand in it.’  With these words he carried his hand
+to his pocket, hastily swallowed the contents of a phial, and, with the
+very act, reeled back and fell across his chair upon the floor.  The
+prince left his place and came and stood above him, where he lay
+convulsed upon the carpet.  ‘Poor moth!’ I heard his highness murmur.
+‘Alas, poor moth! must we again inquire which is the more fatal—weakness
+or wickedness?  And can a sympathy with ideas, surely not ignoble in
+themselves, conduct a man to this dishonourable death?’
+
+By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the room.  ‘Your
+highness,’ said I, ‘this is no time for moralising; with a little
+promptness we may save this creature’s life; and as for the other, he
+need cause you no concern, for I have him safely under lock and key.’
+
+The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me certainly
+with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which almost robbed me of
+my self-possession.  ‘My dear madam,’ he cried at last, ‘and who the
+devil are you?’
+
+I was already on the floor beside the dying man.  I had, of course, no
+idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and I was forced to try
+him with a variety of antidotes.  Here were both oil and vinegar, for the
+prince had done the young man the honour of compounding for him one of
+his celebrated salads; and of each of these I administered from a quarter
+to half a pint, with no apparent efficacy.  I next plied him with the hot
+coffee, of which there may have been near upon a quart.
+
+‘Have you no milk?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,’ returned the prince.
+
+‘Salt, then,’ said I; ‘salt is a revulsive.  Pass the salt.’
+
+‘And possibly the mustard?’ asked his highness, as he offered me the
+contents of the various salt-cellars poured together on a plate.
+
+‘Ah,’ cried I, ‘the thought is excellent!  Mix me about half a pint of
+mustard, drinkably dilute.’
+
+Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere combination of so
+many subversive agents, as soon as the last had been poured over his
+throat, the young sufferer obtained relief.
+
+‘There!’ I exclaimed, with natural triumph, ‘I have saved a life!’
+
+‘And yet, madam,’ returned the prince, ‘your mercy may be cruelty
+disguised.  Where the honour is lost, it is, at least, superfluous to
+prolong the life.’
+
+‘If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,’ I replied,
+‘you would hold a very different opinion.  For my part, and after
+whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should still count
+to-morrow worth a trial.’
+
+‘You speak as a lady, madam,’ said the prince; ‘and for such you speak
+the truth.  But to men there is permitted such a field of license, and
+the good behaviour asked of them is at once so easy and so little, that
+to fail in that is to fall beyond the reach of pardon.  But will you
+suffer me to repeat a question, put to you at first, I am afraid, with
+some defect of courtesy; and to ask you once more, who you are and how I
+have the honour of your company?’
+
+‘I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,’ said I.
+
+‘And still I am at fault,’ returned the prince.
+
+But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to strike the
+hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself upon one elbow, with
+an expression of despair and horror that I have never seen excelled,
+cried lamentably, ‘Midnight! oh, just God!’  We stood frozen to our
+places, while the tingling hammer of the timepiece measured the remaining
+strokes; nor had we yet stirred, so tragic had been the tones of the
+young man, when the various bells of London began in turn to declare the
+hour.  The timepiece was inaudible beyond the walls of the chamber where
+we stood; but the second pulsation of Big Ben had scarcely throbbed into
+the night, before a sharp detonation rang about the house.  The prince
+sprang for the door by which I had entered; but quick as he was, I yet
+contrived to intercept him.
+
+‘Are you armed?’ I cried.
+
+‘No, madam,’ replied he.  ‘You remind me appositely; I will take the
+poker.’
+
+‘The man below,’ said I, ‘has two revolvers.  Would you confront him at
+such odds?’
+
+He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.
+
+‘And yet, madam,’ said he, ‘we cannot continue to remain in ignorance of
+what has passed.’
+
+‘No!’ cried I.  ‘And who proposes it?  I am as curious as yourself, but
+let us rather send for the police; or, if your highness dreads a scandal,
+for some of your own servants.’
+
+‘Nay, madam,’ he replied, smiling, ‘for so brave a lady, you surprise me.
+Would you have me, then, send others where I fear to go myself?’
+
+‘You are perfectly right,’ said I, ‘and I was entirely wrong.  Go, in
+God’s name, and I will hold the candle!’
+
+Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he carrying the
+poker, I the light; and together we approached and opened the door of the
+butler’s pantry.  In some sort, I believe, I was prepared for the
+spectacle that met our eyes; I was prepared, that is, to find the villain
+dead, but the rude details of such a violent suicide I was unable to
+endure.  The prince, unshaken by horror as he had remained unshaken by
+alarm, assisted me with the most respectful gallantry to regain the
+dining-room.
+
+There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly
+recovered and already seated on a chair.  He held out both his hands with
+a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.
+
+‘He is dead,’ said the prince.
+
+‘Alas!’ cried the young man, ‘and it should be I!  What do I do, thus
+lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, my sure comrade,
+blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fidelity, has judged and
+slain himself for an involuntary fault?  Ah, sir,’ said he, ‘and you too,
+madam, without whose cruel help I should be now beyond the reach of my
+accusing conscience, you behold in me the victim equally of my own faults
+and virtues.  I was born a hater of injustice; from my most tender years
+my blood boiled against heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men
+when I witnessed the sorrows of the poor; the pauper’s crust stuck in my
+throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple child has set
+me weeping.  What was there in that but what was noble? and yet observe
+to what a fall these thoughts have led me!  Year after year this passion
+for the lost besieged me closer.  What hope was there in kings? what hope
+in these well-feathered classes that now roll in money?  I had observed
+the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler of to-day, to be
+base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age, combine to pull down
+that which was immediately above and to prey upon those that were below;
+his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his
+days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor
+child shiver in the rain?  The better days, indeed, were coming, but the
+child would die before that.  Alas, your highness, in surely no
+ungenerous impatience I enrolled myself among the enemies of this unjust
+and doomed society; in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fires of my
+philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an irrevocable oath.
+
+‘That oath is all my history.  To give freedom to posterity I had
+forsworn my own.  I must attend upon every signal; and soon my father
+complained of my irregular hours and turned me from his house.  I was
+engaged in betrothal to an honest girl; from her also I had to part, for
+she was too shrewd to credit my inventions and too innocent to be
+entrusted with the truth.  Behold me, then, alone with conspirators!
+Alas! as the years went on, my illusions left me.  Surrounded as I was by
+the fervent disciples and apologists of revolution, I beheld them daily
+advance in confidence and desperation; I beheld myself, upon the other
+hand, and with an almost equal regularity, decline in faith.  I had
+sacrificed all to further that cause in which I still believed; and daily
+I began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.  Horrible was
+the society with which we warred, but our own means were not less
+horrible.
+
+‘I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to tell you how,
+when I beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers of
+children, cheerfully toiling at their work, my heart reproached me with
+the greatness and vanity of my unhappy sacrifice.  I will not describe to
+you how, worn by poverty, poor lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet
+conscience, my health began to fail, and in the long nights, as I
+wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel sufferings of the
+body were added to the tortures of my mind.  These things are not
+personal to me; they are common to all unfortunates in my position.  An
+oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a thing to break: an oath,
+taken in the heat of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, but
+yet in vain repented, as the years go on: an oath, that was once the very
+utterance of the truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a
+meaningless and empty slavery; such is the yoke that many young men
+joyfully assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer worse
+than death.
+
+‘It is not that I was patient.  I have begged to be released; but I knew
+too much, and I was still refused.  I have fled; ay, and for the time
+successfully.  I reached Paris.  I found a lodging in the Rue St.
+Jacques, almost opposite the Val de Grâce.  My room was mean and bare,
+but the sun looked into it towards evening; it commanded a peep of a
+green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour’s window and made the morning
+beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed and rest myself: I, who
+was in full revolt against the principles that I had served, was now no
+longer at the beck of the council, and was no longer charged with
+shameful and revolting tasks.  Oh! what an interval of peace was that!  I
+still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of my neighbour’s bird.
+
+‘My money was running out, and it became necessary that I should find
+employment.  Scarcely had I been three days upon the search, ere I
+thought that I was being followed.  I made certain of the features of the
+man, which were quite strange to me, and turned into a small café, where
+I whiled away an hour, pretending to read the papers, but inwardly
+convulsed with terror.  When I came forth again into the street, it was
+quite empty, and I breathed again; but alas, I had not turned three
+corners, when I once more observed the human hound pursuing me.  Not an
+hour was to be lost; timely submission might yet preserve a life which
+otherwise was forfeit and dishonoured; and I fled, with what speed you
+may conceive, to the Paris agency of the society I served.
+
+‘My submission was accepted.  I took up once more the hated burthen of
+that life; once more I was at the call of men whom I despised and hated,
+while yet I envied and admired them.  They at least were wholehearted in
+the things they purposed; but I, who had once been such as they, had
+fallen from the brightness of my faith, and now laboured, like a
+hireling, for the wages of a loathed existence.  Ay, sir, to that I was
+condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and lived but to obey.
+
+‘The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has to-night so
+tragically ended.  Boldly telling who I was, I was to request from your
+highness, on behalf of my society, a private audience, where it was
+designed to murder you.  If one thing remained to me of my old
+convictions, it was the hate of kings; and when this task was offered me,
+I took it gladly.  Alas, sir, you triumphed.  As we supped, you gained
+upon my heart.  Your character, your talents, your designs for our
+unhappy country, all had been misrepresented.  I began to forget you were
+a prince; I began, all too feelingly, to remember that you were a man.
+As I saw the hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and when, at last,
+we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my unwilling ears
+the arrival of the partner of my crime, you will bear me out with what
+instancy I besought you to depart.  You would not, alas! and what could
+I?  Kill you, I could not; my heart revolted, my hand turned back from
+such a deed.  Yet it was impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for
+when the hour struck and my companion came, true to his appointment, and
+he, at least, true to our design, I could neither suffer you to be killed
+nor yet him to be arrested.  From such a tragic passage, death, and death
+alone, could save me; and it is no fault of mine if I continue to exist.
+
+‘But you, madam,’ continued the young man, addressing himself more
+directly to myself, ‘were doubtless born to save the prince and to
+confound our purposes.  My life you have prolonged; and by turning the
+key on my companion, you have made me the author of his death.  He heard
+the hour strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to
+honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon his highness and perish
+for lack of his support, he has turned his pistol on himself.’
+
+‘You are right,’ said Prince Florizel: ‘it was in no ungenerous spirit
+that you brought these burthens on yourself; and when I see you so nobly
+to blame, so tragically punished, I stand like one reproved.  For is it
+not strange, madam, that you and I, by practising accepted and
+inconsiderable virtues, and commonplace but still unpardonable faults,
+should stand here, in the sight of God, with what we call clean hands and
+quiet consciences; while this poor youth, for an error that I could
+almost envy him, should be sunk beyond the reach of hope?
+
+‘Sir,’ resumed the prince, turning to the young man, ‘I cannot help you;
+my help would but unchain the thunderbolt that overhangs you; and I can
+but leave you free.’
+
+‘And, sir,’ said I, ‘as this house belongs to me, I will ask you to have
+the kindness to remove the body.  You and your conspirators, it appears
+to me, can hardly in civility do less.’
+
+‘It shall be done,’ said the young man, with a dismal accent.
+
+‘And you, dear madam,’ said the prince, ‘you, to whom I owe my life, how
+can I serve you?’
+
+‘Your highness,’ I said, ‘to be very plain, this is my favourite house,
+being not only a valuable property, but endeared to me by various
+associations.  I have endless troubles with tenants of the ordinary
+class: and at first applauded my good fortune when I found one of the
+station of your Master of the Horse.  I now begin to think otherwise:
+dangers set a siege about great personages; and I do not wish my tenement
+to share these risks.  Procure me the resiliation of the lease, and I
+shall feel myself your debtor.’
+
+‘I must tell you, madam,’ replied his highness, ‘that Colonel Geraldine
+is but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry indeed to think myself
+so unacceptable a tenant.’
+
+‘Your highness,’ said I, ‘I have conceived a sincere admiration for your
+character; but on the subject of house property, I cannot allow the
+interference of my feelings.  I will, however, to prove to you that there
+is nothing personal in my request, here solemnly engage my word that I
+will never put another tenant in this house.’
+
+‘Madam,’ said Florizel, ‘you plead your cause too charmingly to be
+refused.’
+
+Thereupon we all three withdrew.  The young man, still reeling in his
+walk, departed by himself to seek the assistance of his
+fellow-conspirators; and the prince, with the most attentive gallantry,
+lent me his escort to the door of my hotel.  The next day, the lease was
+cancelled; nor from that hour to this, though sometimes regretting my
+engagement, have I suffered a tenant in this house.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Continued_).
+
+
+As soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset made haste to
+offer her his compliments.
+
+‘Madam,’ said he, ‘your story is not only entertaining but instructive;
+and you have told it with infinite vivacity.  I was much affected towards
+the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should
+certainly have joined a secret society if I had been able to find one.
+But the whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for
+you in your various perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat hasty
+temper.’
+
+‘I do not understand you,’ said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks of
+irritation.  ‘You must have strangely misinterpreted what I have told
+you.  You fill me with surprise.’
+
+Somerset, alarmed by the old lady’s change of tone and manner, hurried to
+recant.
+
+‘Dear Mrs. Luxmore,’ said he, ‘you certainly misconstrue my remark.  As a
+man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly pricked me when I
+heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons similarly
+constituted.’
+
+‘Oh, very well indeed,’ replied the old lady; ‘and a very proper spirit.
+I regret that I have met with it so rarely.’
+
+‘But in all this,’ resumed the young man, ‘I perceive nothing that
+concerns myself.’
+
+‘I am about to come to that,’ she returned.  ‘And you have already before
+you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of the elements of the
+affair.  I am a woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before
+the courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have
+ever been ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in a
+crowd.  Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for
+Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must leave behind and dare not
+let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that
+concern, and do you a very good turn into the bargain, by lending you the
+mansion, with all its fittings, as it stands.  The idea was sudden; it
+appealed to me as humorous: and I am sure it will cause my relatives, if
+they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible chagrin.  Here, then,
+is the key; and when you return at two to-morrow afternoon, you will find
+neither me nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession.’
+
+So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but
+Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.
+
+‘Dear Mrs. Luxmore,’ said he, ‘this is a most unusual proposal.  You know
+nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both impudence and
+timidity.  I may be the worst kind of scoundrel; I may sell your
+furniture—’
+
+‘You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!’ cried Mrs.
+Luxmore.  ‘It is in vain to reason.  Such is the force of my character
+that, when I have one idea clearly in my head, I do not care two straws
+for any side consideration.  It amuses me to do it, and let that suffice.
+On your side, you may do what you please—let apartments, or keep a
+private hotel; on mine, I promise you a full month’s warning before I
+return, and I never fail religiously to keep my promises.’
+
+The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a sudden
+and significant change in the old lady’s countenance.
+
+‘If I thought you capable of disrespect!’ she cried.
+
+‘Madam,’ said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration, ‘madam,
+I accept.  I beg you to understand that I accept with joy and gratitude.’
+
+‘Ah well,’ returned Mrs. Luxmore, ‘if I am mistaken, let it pass.  And
+now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you a good-night.’
+
+Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried
+Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing, key in hand, upon
+the pavement.
+
+The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way to
+the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that was not its
+name.  What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live in dreams, and yet
+be unprepared for their realisation.  It was already with a certain pang
+of surprise that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a
+solid among solids.  The key, upon trial, readily opened the front door;
+he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the
+echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty chambers.  Cats, servant,
+old lady, the very marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been
+in these few hours obliterated.  He wandered from floor to floor, and
+found the house of great extent; the kitchen offices commodious and well
+appointed; the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in particular,
+an apartment of princely size and tasteful decoration.  Although the day
+without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a ruffling wind from the
+quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of suspended animation inhabited
+the house.  Dust and shadows met the eye; and but for the ominous
+procession of the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden
+trees, the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.
+
+Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the old
+lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted cupolas of the
+kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room appeared to greet him
+with a smiling countenance.  He might as well, he thought, avoid the
+expense of lodging: the library, fitted with an iron bedstead which he
+had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve his purpose for
+the night; while in the dining-room, which was large, airy, and
+lightsome, looking on the square and garden, he might very agreeably pass
+his days, cook his meals, and study to bring himself to some proficiency
+in that art of painting which he had recently determined to adopt.  It
+did not take him long to make the change: he had soon returned to the
+mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was readily
+induced, by the young man’s pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to
+assist him in the installation of the iron bed.  By six in the evening,
+when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon the
+mansion with a sense of pride and property.  Four-square it stood, of an
+imposing frontage, and flanked on either side by family hatchments.  His
+eye, from where he stood whistling in the key, with his back to the
+garden railings, reposed on every feature of reality; and yet his own
+possession seemed as flimsy as a dream.
+
+In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began
+to remark the customs of their neighbour.  The sight of a young gentleman
+discussing a clay pipe, about four o’clock of the afternoon, in the
+drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more,
+his periodical excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his
+unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised to a
+high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of the
+square.  The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded to
+the length of insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable with any class
+of men; and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably
+shared, gained for him the right of toleration.
+
+The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of
+its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices.  He scorned to bear
+the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the
+dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life.  There he
+amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen,
+the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in
+smiling assiduity.  Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead
+lay, like a load, upon his imagination.  To hold so great a stake and to
+do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to
+act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with
+wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small handbill announcing
+furnished lodgings.  At half-past six of a fine July morning, he affixed
+the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result.  It seemed,
+to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the
+drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty
+problem of how much he was to charge.
+
+Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.
+Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in
+the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float; and the
+better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself with
+his clay pipe.  On several occasions, passers-by appeared to be arrested
+by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the
+very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there was something
+repulsive in the appearance of the house; for with one accord, they would
+cast but one look upward, and hastily resume their onward progress or
+direct the driver to proceed.  Somerset had thus the mortification of
+actually meeting the eye of a large number of lodging-seekers; and though
+he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to compose his features to an air
+of invitation, he was never rewarded by so much as an inquiry.  ‘Can
+there,’ he thought, ‘be anything repellent in myself?’  But a candid
+examination in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to
+dismiss the fear.
+
+Something, however, was amiss.  His vast and accurate calculations on the
+fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been
+an idle sacrifice of time.  By these, he had variously computed the
+weekly takings of the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty
+shillings, up to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet,
+in despite of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making
+literally nothing.
+
+This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful leisure
+on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had detected the
+error of his method.  ‘This,’ he reflected, ‘is an age of generous
+display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears’ legendary
+soap, and of Eno’s fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and
+the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid
+that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough’s pyretic saline.  Lamplough
+was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and
+abominably vulgar; and here have I, a man of some pretensions to
+knowledge of the world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper,
+a few cold words which do not directly address the imagination, and the
+adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red wafers!  Am I,
+then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno?  Am I to adopt that
+modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to take hold of the red
+facts of life with the emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?’
+
+Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very
+largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded to
+compose an ensign that might attract the eye, and at the same time, in
+his own phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger.
+Something taking in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words,
+and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to
+lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
+must be the elements of his advertisement.  It was possible, upon the one
+hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire,
+blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was
+possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to
+set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or,
+boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan.  So long did the artist waver
+between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had
+finally conceived and completed both designs.  With the proverbially
+tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice either
+of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate
+days.  ‘In this way,’ he thought, ‘I shall address myself indifferently
+to all classes of the world.’
+
+The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the more
+imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune, and appeared first
+in the window of the mansion.  It was of a high fancy, the legend
+eloquently writ, the scheme of colour taking and bold; and but for the
+imperfection of the artist’s drawing, it might have been taken for a
+model of its kind.  As it was, however, when viewed from his favourite
+point against the garden railings, and with some touch of distance, it
+caused a pleasurable rising of the artist’s heart.  ‘I have thrown away,’
+he ejaculated, ‘an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my
+first academy picture.’
+
+The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.  A crowd would
+certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-railings; but they
+came to jeer and not to speculate; and those who pushed their inquiries
+further, were too plainly animated by the spirit of derision.  The racier
+of the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive merit;
+and though it had a certain share of that success called scandalous,
+failed utterly of its effect.  On the day, however, of the second
+appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did actually present
+himself before the eyes of Somerset.
+
+This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment, and his
+voice under inadequate control.
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ said he, ‘but what is the meaning of your
+extraordinary bill?’
+
+‘I beg yours,’ returned Somerset hotly.  ‘Its meaning is sufficiently
+explicit.’  And being now, from dire experience, fearful of ridicule, he
+was preparing to close the door, when the gentleman thrust his cane into
+the aperture.
+
+‘Not so fast, I beg of you,’ said he.  ‘If you really let apartments,
+here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing would give me greater
+pleasure than to see the accommodation and to learn your terms.’
+
+His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, showed him
+over the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive
+eloquence, expounded their attractions.  The gentleman was particularly
+pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-room.
+
+‘This,’ he said, ‘would suit me very well.  What, may I ask, would be
+your terms a week, for this floor and the one above it?’
+
+‘I was thinking,’ returned Somerset, ‘of a hundred pounds.’
+
+‘Surely not,’ exclaimed the gentleman.
+
+‘Well, then,’ returned Somerset, ‘fifty.’
+
+The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement.  ‘You seem to
+be strangely elastic in your demands,’ said he.  ‘What if I were to
+proceed on your own principle of division, and offer twenty-five?’
+
+‘Done!’ cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden embarrassment,
+‘You see,’ he added apologetically, ‘it is all found money for me.’
+
+‘Really?’ said the stranger, looking at him all the while with growing
+wonder.  ‘Without extras, then?’
+
+‘I—I suppose so,’ stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.
+
+‘Service included?’ pursued the gentleman.
+
+‘Service?’ cried Somerset.  ‘Do you mean that you expect me to empty your
+slops?’
+
+The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest.  ‘My dear
+fellow,’ said he, ‘if you take my advice, you will give up this
+business.’  And thereupon he resumed his hat and took himself away.
+
+This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist of
+the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier illusions.
+First one and then the other of his great works was condemned, withdrawn
+from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration
+of the dining-room.  Their place was taken by a replica of the original
+wafered announcement, to which, in particularly large letters, he had
+added the pithy rubric: ‘_No service_.’  Meanwhile he had fallen into
+something as nearly bordering on low spirits as was consistent with his
+disposition; depressed, at once by the failure of his scheme, the
+laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of the
+public to the merit of the twin cartoons.
+
+Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note of the
+knocker.  A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat military air,
+yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat, desired in the politest terms
+to visit the apartments.  He had (he explained) a friend, a gentleman in
+tender health, desirous of a sedate and solitary life, apart from
+interruptions and the noises of the common lodging-house.  ‘The unusual
+clause,’ he continued, ‘in your announcement, particularly struck me.
+“This,” I said, “is the place for Mr. Jones.”  You are yourself, sir, a
+professional gentleman?’ concluded the visitor, looking keenly in
+Somerset’s face.
+
+‘I am an artist,’ replied the young man lightly.
+
+‘And these,’ observed the other, taking a side glance through the open
+door of the dining-room, which they were then passing, ‘these are some of
+your works.  Very remarkable.’  And he again and still more sharply
+peered into the countenance of the young man.
+
+Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead his
+visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.
+
+‘Excellent,’ observed the stranger, as he looked from one of the back
+windows.  ‘Is that a mews behind, sir?  Very good.  Well, sir: see here.
+My friend will take your drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back
+drawing-room; his nurse, an excellent Irish widow, will attend on all his
+wants and occupy a garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten dollars a
+week; and you, on your part, will engage to receive no other lodger?  I
+think that fair.’
+
+Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and joy.
+
+‘Agreed,’ said the other; ‘and to spare you trouble, my friend will bring
+some men with him to make the changes.  You will find him a retiring
+inmate, sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves the house, except at
+night.’
+
+‘Since I have been in this house,’ returned Somerset, ‘I have myself,
+unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except in the evening.
+But a man,’ he added, ‘must have some amusement.’
+
+An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset sat down
+to compute in English money the value of the figure named.  The result of
+this investigation filled him with amazement and disgust; but it was now
+too late; nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited the arrival of
+his tenant, still trying, by various arithmetical expedients, to obtain a
+more favourable quotation for the dollar.  With the approach of dusk,
+however, his impatience drove him once more to the front balcony.  The
+night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone around the central darkness
+of the garden; and through the tall grove of trees that intervened, many
+warmly illuminated windows on the farther side of the square, told their
+tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial hospitality.  The stars
+were already thickening overhead, when the young man’s eyes alighted on a
+procession of three four-wheelers, coasting round the garden railing and
+bound for the Superfluous Mansion.  They were laden with formidable
+boxes; moved in a military order, one following another; and, by the
+extreme slowness of their advance, inspired Somerset with the most
+serious ideas of his tenant’s malady.
+
+By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
+pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military
+gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart porters.  These proceeded
+instantly to take possession of the house; with their own hands, and
+firmly rejecting Somerset’s assistance, they carried in the various
+crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the
+back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and it was
+not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were
+complete, that there descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a
+gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder
+of a woman in a widow’s dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and
+muffled in a coloured comforter.
+
+Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into the
+back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on the
+house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-past ten, and,
+with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in the
+neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to be alone in
+the Superfluous Mansion.
+
+Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
+sight of his mysterious lodger.  The doors of the drawing-room flat were
+never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the
+tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments.  Visitors,
+indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours
+of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
+decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of Somerset,
+displeasing.  A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to them all;
+they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the military
+gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at all; and
+as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were not
+suggestive of a university career.  The nurse, again, was scarcely a
+desirable house-fellow.  Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in the
+young man’s private bottle was much accelerated; and though never
+communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar.  When asked about
+the patient’s health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare
+that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
+
+Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
+complaint was other than bodily.  The ill-looking birds that gathered to
+the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the
+dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate habits of
+the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of
+Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn
+to in a court of justice—all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man’s
+mind.  A sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and
+depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in
+his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of
+observing the features of his tenant.  It fell in this way.  The young
+landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in the hall.
+Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he saw the tall
+man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman who had
+taken the rooms.  The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in
+that of his tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease,
+but every sign of health, energy, and resolution.  While he was still
+looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having
+carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of
+lassitude.
+
+That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into the
+hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the practice
+of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind.  The day was
+destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long been seated at the
+easel ere the first of these occurred.  A cab laden with baggage drew up
+before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the steps and
+began to pound upon the knocker.  Somerset hastened to attend the
+summons.
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ she said, with the utmost gaiety, ‘here I come dropping
+from the moon.  I am delighted to find you faithful; and I have no doubt
+you will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty.’
+
+Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the
+spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the threshold of
+the dining-room.  The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated to
+inspire astonishment.  The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and
+empty bottles; on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was littered
+from end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the materials of
+the painter’s craft; but what far outstripped the other wonders of the
+place was the corner which had been arranged for the study of still-life.
+This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous upon which, according to the
+principles of the art of composition, a cabbage was relieved against a
+copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail of a boiled lobster.
+
+‘My gracious goodness!’ cried the lady of the house; and then, turning in
+wrath on the young man, ‘From what rank in life are you sprung?’ she
+demanded.  ‘You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the
+astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a
+greengrocer’s man.  Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no
+more of you.’
+
+‘Madam,’ babbled Somerset, ‘you promised me a month’s warning.’
+
+‘That was under a misapprehension,’ returned the old lady.  ‘I now give
+you warning to leave at once.’
+
+‘Madam,’ said the young man, ‘I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am
+concerned, it might be done.  But then, my lodger!’
+
+‘Your lodger?’ echoed Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+‘My lodger: why should I deny it?’ returned Somerset.  ‘He is only by the
+week.’
+
+The old lady sat down upon a chair.  ‘You have a lodger?—you?’ she cried.
+‘And pray, how did you get him?’
+
+‘By advertisement,’ replied the young man. ‘O madam, I have not lived
+unobservantly.  I adopted’—his eyes involuntarily shifted to the
+cartoons—‘I adopted every method.’
+
+Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset’s experience,
+she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the
+works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her
+trilling and soprano laughter.
+
+‘Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!’ she cried.  ‘I do hope you had
+them in the window.  M’Pherson,’ she continued, crying to her maid, who
+had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, ‘I lunch with Mr.
+Somerset.  Take the cellar key and bring some wine.’
+
+In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
+Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M’Pherson bring
+up from the cellar—‘as a present, my dear,’ she said, with another burst
+of tearful merriment, ‘for your charming pictures, which you must be sure
+to leave me when you go;’ and finally, protesting that she dared not
+spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed
+(as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.
+
+She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor the
+Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly
+strong emotion.  It was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones
+had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore’s visit, and
+that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the invalid’s
+uneasiness.  Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the
+affair.
+
+‘Is that all?’ cried the woman.  ‘As God sees you, is that all?’
+
+‘My good woman,’ said the young man, ‘I have no idea what you can be
+driving at.  Suppose the lady were my friend’s wife, suppose she were my
+fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should
+that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?’
+
+‘Blessed Mary!’ cried the nurse, ‘it’s he that will be glad to hear it!’
+
+And immediately she fled upstairs.
+
+Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a very
+thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder
+of the bottle.  It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its equals
+and superiors, that can in some degree support the competition of
+tobacco.  Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on from
+suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver and
+rosier as the bottle ebbed.  He was a sceptic, none prouder of the name;
+he had no horror at command, whether for crimes or vices, but beheld and
+embraced the world, with an immoral approbation, the frequent consequence
+of youth and health.  At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt
+under the same roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate
+instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.  The bottle had run low;
+the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment, night and
+the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.
+
+He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not so
+much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed.  What
+with one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he returned
+home.  A cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found
+himself face to face with one of the most regular of the few who visited
+Mr. Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard
+in the American fashion.  This person was carrying on one shoulder a
+black portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight.  That he should find
+a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd
+stories to the young man’s memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus
+gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very
+furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now, in a
+mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a
+drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and
+knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor.  With a face
+struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard called
+lamentably on the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat
+at the foot of the stairs.  At the same time, though only for a single
+instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish nurse popped out like
+rabbits over the banisters of the first floor; and on both the same scare
+and pallor were apparent.
+
+The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he
+continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and, with
+the help of the handrail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once more
+upon his feet.
+
+‘What in Heaven’s name ails you?’ gasped the young man as soon as he
+could find words and utterance.
+
+‘Have you a drop of brandy?’ returned the other.  ‘I am sick.’
+
+Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man with the
+chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself in
+apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result, he
+said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a hand
+that still sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and
+departed.
+
+Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.  What, he asked himself, had
+been the contents of the black portmanteau?  Stolen goods? the carcase of
+one murdered? or—and at the thought he sat upright in bed—an infernal
+machine?  He took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest;
+and with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room
+window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await and profit by the earliest
+opportunity.
+
+The hours went heavily by.  Within the house there was no circumstance of
+novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made little
+journeys round the corner of the square, and before afternoon was
+somewhat loose of speech and gait.  A little after six, however, there
+came round the corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly
+dressed young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, and
+with frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.
+It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon
+it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had
+already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and
+had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.  He hailed her
+coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little nearer to the
+window to enjoy the sight.  What was his surprise, however, when, as if
+with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps and tapped
+discreetly at the door!  He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who
+was not improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive this
+gracious visitor in person.
+
+She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the young
+man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he thought he
+could perceive her to be smiling), ‘because,’ she added, ‘if you are, I
+should like to see some of the other rooms.’  Somerset told her he was
+under an engagement to receive no other lodgers; but she assured him that
+would be no matter, as these were friends of Mr. Jones’s.  ‘And,’ she
+continued, moving suddenly to the dining-room door, ‘let us begin here.’
+Somerset was too late to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the
+courage to essay.  ‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘how changed it is!’
+
+‘Madam,’ cried the young man, ‘since your entrance, it is I who have the
+right to say so.’
+
+She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop of
+the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled litter,
+now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two
+apartments.  She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a
+heightened colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high
+opinion of their merits.  She praised the effective disposition of the
+rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to
+defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.  ‘How simple and
+manly!’ she cried: ‘none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so
+detestable in a man!’  Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to
+reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further,
+she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ascended the staircase
+alone.
+
+For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones;
+and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they
+left the house in company.  This was the first time since the arrival of
+his lodger, that Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish widow;
+and without the loss of any more time than was required by decency, he
+stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.  She came
+instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and when the
+young man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures of his art,
+she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for, though she
+had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently observed his
+beautiful pictures through the door.  On entering the dining-room, the
+sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle critic; and
+as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was easily
+persuaded to join the painter in a single glass.  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘are
+my respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a
+gentleman like yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I
+am sure.’  One glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the
+acceptance of a second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from the
+affectation of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she asked it
+of her own accord.  ‘For indeed,’ said she, ‘what with all these clocks
+and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be impossible
+entirely.  And you seen yourself that even M’Guire was glad to beg for
+it.  And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these cruel
+disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be
+sometimes crying for a glass of it.  And I’ll thank you for a thimbleful
+to settle what I got.’  Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the
+deathbed dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband.
+Then she declared she heard ‘the master’ calling her, rose to her feet,
+made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head
+upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.
+
+Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of the
+drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps.  It was a great
+apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows, and joined by a
+pair of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion,
+papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned
+with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles.  Such was the
+room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld was changed in
+almost every feature: the furniture covered with a figured chintz; the
+walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by the
+curtained recesses for no less than seven windows.  It seemed to himself
+that he must have entered, without observing the transition, into the
+adjoining house.  Presently from these more specious changes, his eye
+condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor was
+littered.  Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and
+clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some
+reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars and
+bottles; a carpenter’s bench and a laboratory-table.
+
+The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise
+undergone a change.  It was transformed to the exact appearance of a
+common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied one
+corner; and the window was blocked by the regulation table and mirror.
+The door of a small closet here attracted the young man’s attention; and
+striking a vesta, he opened it and entered.  On a table several wigs and
+beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous display of
+suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last the young man
+observed a large overall of the most costly sealskin.  In a flash his
+mind reverted to the advertisement in the _Standard_ newspaper.  The
+great height of his lodger, the disproportionate breadth of his
+shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, all pointed to
+the same conclusion.
+
+The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon his
+arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room.  There, with
+a mixture of fear and admiration, he pored upon its goodly proportions
+and the regularity and softness of the pile.  The sight of a large
+pier-glass put another fancy in his head.  He donned the fur-coat; and
+standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a Russian prince,
+he thrust his hands into the ample pockets.  There his fingers
+encountered a folded journal.  He drew it out, and recognised the type
+and paper of the _Standard_; and at the same instant, his eyes alighted
+on the offer of two hundred pounds.  Plainly then, his lodger, now no
+longer mysterious, had laid aside his coat on the very day of the
+appearance of the advertisement.
+
+He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the incriminating
+paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall lodger, with a firm
+but somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room and closed the door again
+behind him.  For some time, the two looked upon each other in perfect
+silence; then Mr. Jones moved forward to the table, took a seat, and
+still without once changing the direction of his eyes, addressed the
+young man.
+
+‘You are right,’ he said.  ‘It is for me the blood money is offered.  And
+now what will you do?’
+
+It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to reply.
+Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man’s own coat, and
+surrounded by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives, the keeper of the
+lodging-house was silenced.
+
+‘Yes,’ resumed the other, ‘I am he.  I am that man, whom with impotent
+hate and fear, they still hunt from den to den, from disguise to
+disguise.  Yes, my landlord, you have it in your power, if you be poor,
+to lay the basis of your fortune; if you be unknown, to capture honour at
+one snatch.  You have hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here in
+my apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped money, searching my
+wardrobe, and your hand—shame, sir!—your hand in my very pocket.  You can
+now complete the cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at once
+the simplest, the safest, and the most remunerative.’  The speaker paused
+as if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change of tone and
+manner, thus resumed: ‘And yet, sir, when I look upon your face, I feel
+certain that I cannot be deceived: certain that in spite of all, I have
+the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman.  Take off my coat,
+sir—which but cumbers you.  Divest yourself of this confusion: that which
+is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen to the conscience; we
+have all harboured guilty thoughts: and if it flashed into your mind to
+sell my flesh and blood, my anguish in the dock, and the sweat of my
+death agony—it was a thought, dear sir, you were as incapable of acting
+on, as I of any further question of your honour.’  At these words, the
+speaker, with a very open, smiling countenance, like a forgiving father,
+offered Somerset his hand.
+
+It was not in the young man’s nature to refuse forgiveness or dissect
+generosity.  He instantly, and almost without thought, accepted the
+proffered grasp.
+
+‘And now,’ resumed the lodger, ‘now that I hold in mine your loyal hand,
+I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I go further—by an effort
+of will, I banish the memory of what is past.  How you came here, I care
+not: enough that you are here—as my guest.  Sit ye down; and let us, with
+your good permission, improve acquaintance over a glass of excellent
+whisky.’
+
+So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle: and the pair pledged each
+other in silence.
+
+‘Confess,’ observed the smiling host, ‘you were surprised at the
+appearance of the room.’
+
+‘I was indeed,’ said Somerset; ‘nor can I imagine the purpose of these
+changes.’
+
+‘These,’ replied the conspirator, ‘are the devices by which I continue to
+exist.  Conceive me now, accused before one of your unjust tribunals;
+conceive the various witnesses appearing, and the singular variety of
+their reports!  One will have visited me in this drawing-room as it
+originally stood; a second finds it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or
+next day, all may have been changed.  If you love romance (as artists
+do), few lives are more romantic than that of the obscure individual now
+addressing you.  Obscure yet famous.  Mine is an anonymous, infernal
+glory.  By infamous means, I work towards my bright purpose.  I found the
+liberty and peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future
+smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a
+hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and practice hell’s
+dexterities.’
+
+Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and
+listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment.  He
+looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of
+education; and wondered the more profoundly.
+
+‘Sir,’ he said—‘for I know not whether I should still address you as Mr.
+Jones—’
+
+‘Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland, by all
+or any of these you may address me,’ said the plotter; ‘for all I have at
+some time borne.  Yet that which I most prize, that which is most feared,
+hated, and obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is
+not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed, like the
+celebrated clan M’Gregor, I may justly describe myself as being nameless
+by day.  But,’ he continued, rising to his feet, ‘by night, and among my
+desperate followers, I am the redoubted Zero.’
+
+Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely expressed
+surprise and gratification.  ‘I am to understand,’ he continued, ‘that,
+under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?’ {176}
+
+The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.
+
+‘I do,’ he said.  ‘In this dark period of time, a star—the star of
+dynamite—has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise its
+use, so thick beset with dangers and attended by such incredible
+difficulties and disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not
+many—’  He paused, and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his
+face—‘not many have been more successful than myself.’
+
+‘I can imagine,’ observed Somerset, ‘that, from the sweeping consequences
+looked for, the career is not devoid of interest.  You have, besides,
+some of the entertainment of the game of hide and seek.  But it would
+still seem to me—I speak as a layman—that nothing could be simpler or
+safer than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an adjacent
+county to await the painful consequences.’
+
+‘You speak, indeed,’ returned the plotter, with some evidence of warmth,
+‘you speak, indeed, most ignorantly.  Do you make nothing, then, of such
+a peril as we share this moment?  Do you think it nothing to occupy a
+house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering
+to its fall?’
+
+‘Good God!’ ejaculated Somerset.
+
+‘And when you speak of ease,’ pursued Zero, ‘in this age of scientific
+studies, you fill me with surprise.  Are you not aware that chemicals are
+proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very
+devil?  Do you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety?  Do you observe
+the silver threads that mingle with my hair?  Clockwork, clockwork has
+stamped them on my brow—chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!  No,
+Mr. Somerset,’ he resumed, after a moment’s pause, his voice still
+quivering with sensibility, ‘you must not suppose the dynamiter’s life to
+be all gold.  On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the
+bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine.
+I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is
+ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face to
+deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England, the
+massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap
+like that of a child’s pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of
+so much time and plant!  If,’ he concluded, musingly, ‘we had been merely
+able to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I could
+have remedied the peccant engine.  But what with the loss of plant and
+the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our friends
+in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium.  They propose,
+instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep off whole
+populations with the devastating typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a
+scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical
+simplicity.  I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the
+poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune.  And, for my
+small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking,
+and (if you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb.  Yes,’ he
+cried, with unshaken hope, ‘I will still continue, and, I feel it in my
+bosom, I shall yet succeed.’
+
+‘Two things I remark,’ said Somerset.  ‘The first somewhat staggers me.
+Have you, then—in all this course of life, which you have sketched so
+vividly—have you not once succeeded?’
+
+‘Pardon me,’ said Zero.  ‘I have had one success.  You behold in me the
+author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.’
+
+‘But if I remember right,’ objected Somerset, ‘the thing was a _fiasco_.
+A scavenger’s barrow and some copies of the _Weekly Budget_—these were
+the only victims.’
+
+‘You will pardon me again,’ returned Zero with positive asperity: ‘a
+child was injured.’
+
+‘And that fitly brings me to my second point,’ said Somerset.  ‘For I
+observed you to employ the word “indiscriminate.”  Now, surely, a
+scavenger’s barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very
+acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of ineffectual
+reprisal.’
+
+‘Did I employ the word?’ asked Zero.  ‘Well, I will not defend it.  But
+for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so
+vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses.  Disputation is
+dry work,’ he added, with a charming gaiety of manner.
+
+Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog; and
+Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more
+largely to develop his opinions.
+
+‘The indiscriminate?’ he began.  ‘War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate.
+War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless
+scavenger.  No more,’ he concluded, beaming, ‘no more do I.  Whatever may
+strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the
+guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer,
+is welcome to my simple plans.  You are not,’ he inquired, with a shade
+of sympathetic interest, ‘you are not, I trust, a believer?’
+
+‘Sir, I believe in nothing,’ said the young man.
+
+‘You are then,’ replied Zero, ‘in a position to grasp my argument.  We
+agree that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of humanity; and
+being pledged to labour for that end, and face to face with the banded
+opposition of kings, parliaments, churches, and the members of the force,
+who am I—who are we, dear sir—to affect a nicety about the tools
+employed?  You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the Queen, the
+sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but
+there you would be in error.  Our appeal is to the body of the people; it
+is these that we would touch and interest.  Now, sir, have you observed
+the English housemaid?’
+
+‘I should think I had,’ cried Somerset.
+
+‘From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,’ returned
+the conspirator politely.  ‘A type apart; a very charming figure; and
+thoroughly adapted to our ends.  The neat cap, the clean print, the
+comely person, the engaging manner; her position between classes, parents
+in one, employers in another; the probability that she will have at least
+one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall address:—yes, I have a
+leaning—call it, if you will, a weakness—for the housemaid.  Not that I
+would be understood to despise the nurse.  For the child is a very
+interesting feature: I have long since marked out the child as the
+sensitive point in society.’  He wagged his head, with a wise, pensive
+smile.  ‘And talking, sir, of children and of the perils of our trade,
+let me now narrate to you a little incident of an explosive bomb, that
+fell out some weeks ago under my own observation.  It fell out thus.’
+
+And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following simple tale.
+
+
+
+_ZERO’S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB_. {182}
+
+
+I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a private
+chamber at St. James’s Hall.  You have seen the man: it was M’Guire, the
+most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances.
+Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what
+enormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine.  I set our
+little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being hard by; and
+the better to avert miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invention of
+my own, by which the opening of the Gladstone bag in which the bomb was
+carried, should instantly determine the explosion.  M’Guire was somewhat
+dashed by this arrangement, which was new to him: and pointed out, with
+excellent, clear good sense, that should he be arrested, it would
+probably involve him in the fall of our opponents.  But I was not to be
+moved, made a strong appeal to his patriotism, gave him a good glass of
+whisky, and despatched him on his glorious errand.
+
+Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot,
+I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, still
+very foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of his
+disgusting political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the
+immediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, errand-boys,
+unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and infirm old men—all
+classes making a direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitable
+with our designs.  As M’Guire drew near his heart was inflamed by the
+most noble sentiment of triumph.  Never had he seen the garden so
+crowded; children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth, ran to and
+fro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, sick pensioner sat
+upon the nearest bench, a medal on his breast, a stick with which he
+walked (for he was disabled by wounds) reclining on his knee.  Guilty
+England would thus be stabbed in the most delicate quarters; the moment
+had, indeed, been well selected; and M’Guire, with a radiant provision of
+the event, drew merrily nearer.  Suddenly his eye alighted on the burly
+form of a policeman, standing hard by the effigy in an attitude of watch.
+My bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and there, at
+different points of the enclosure, other men stood or loitered, affecting
+an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk,
+feigning to be weary and to rest upon the benches.  M’Guire was no child
+in these affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of the
+Machiavellian Gladstone.
+
+A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain nervousness
+in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design draws
+near, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion
+of intent; and frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed
+specific denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings.  But for this
+purely accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an historical
+expression.  On the receipt of such a letter, the Government lay a trap
+for their adversaries, and surround the threatened spot with hirelings.
+My blood sometimes boils in my veins, when I consider the case of those
+who sell themselves for money in such a cause.  True, thanks to the
+generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortable
+stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyond
+the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M’Guire, again, ere he
+joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God!
+receives a decent income.  That is as it should be; the patriot must not
+be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the distinction
+between our position and that of the police is too obvious to be stated.
+
+Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged; the
+Government had craftily filled the place with minions; even the pensioner
+was not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our emissary, without
+other aid or protection than the simple apparatus in his bag, found
+himself confronted by force; brutal force; that strong hand which was a
+character of the ages of oppression.  Should he venture to deposit the
+machine, it was almost certain that he would be observed and arrested; a
+cry would arise; and there was just a fear that the police might not be
+present in sufficient force, to protect him from the savagery of the mob.
+The scheme must be delayed.  He stood with his bag on his arm, pretending
+to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there flashed into his mind a
+thought to appal the bravest.  The machine was set; at the appointed
+hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval, was he to be rid of it?
+
+Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot.  There he
+was, friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life, for he is
+not yet forty; with long years of happiness before him; and now
+condemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite!
+The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the
+Alhambra leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled against the
+railing.  It is probable he fainted.
+
+When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.
+
+‘My God!’ he cried.
+
+‘You seem to be unwell, sir,’ said the hireling.
+
+‘I feel better now,’ cried poor M’Guire: and with uneven steps, for the
+pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his footing, he
+fled from the scene of this disaster.  Fled?  Alas, from what was he
+fleeing?  Did he not carry that from which he fled along with him? and
+had he the wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean winds,
+could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the earth, how
+should he escape the ruin that he carried?  We have heard of living men
+who have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is
+no more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who
+should be linked, like poor M’Guire, to an explosive bomb.
+
+A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his liver:
+suppose it were the hour already.  He stopped as though he had been shot,
+and plucked his watch out.  There was a howling in his ears, as loud as a
+winter tempest; his sight was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by a
+lightning flash, would show him the very dust upon the street.  But so
+brief were these intervals of vision, and so violently did the watch
+vibrate in his hands, that it was impossible to distinguish the numbers
+on the dial.  He covered his eyes for a few seconds; and in that space,
+it seemed to him that he had fallen to be a man of ninety.  When he
+looked again, the watch-plate had grown legible: he had twenty minutes.
+Twenty minutes, and no plan!
+
+Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a little
+girl of about six drawing near to him, and as she came, kicking in front
+of her, as children will, a piece of wood.  She sang, too; and something
+in her accent recalling him to the past, produced a sudden clearness in
+his mind.  Here was a God-sent opportunity!
+
+‘My dear,’ said he, ‘would you like a present of a pretty bag?’
+
+The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it.  She had
+looked first at the bag, like a true child; but most unfortunately,
+before she had yet received the fatal gift, her eyes fell directly on
+M’Guire; and no sooner had she seen the poor gentleman’s face, than she
+screamed out and leaped backward, as though she had seen the devil.
+Almost at the same moment a woman appeared upon the threshold of a
+neighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger.  ‘Come here,
+colleen,’ she said, ‘and don’t be plaguing the poor old gentleman!’  With
+that she re-entered the house, and the child followed her, sobbing aloud.
+
+With the loss of this hope M’Guire’s reason swooned within him.  When
+next he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before St.
+Martin’s-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken man; the passers-by
+regarding him with eyes in which he read, as in a glass, an image of the
+terror and horror that dwelt within his own.
+
+‘I am afraid you are very ill, sir,’ observed a woman, stopping and
+gazing hard in his face.  ‘Can I do anything to help you?’
+
+‘Ill?’ said M’Guire.  ‘O God!’  And then, recovering some shadow of his
+self-command, ‘Chronic, madam,’ said he: ‘a long course of the dumb ague.
+But since you are so compassionate—an errand that I lack the strength to
+carry out,’ he gasped—‘this bag to Portman Square.  Oh, compassionate
+woman, as you hope to be saved, as you are a mother, in the name of your
+babes that wait to welcome you at home, oh, take this bag to Portman
+Square!  I have a mother, too,’ he added, with a broken voice.  ‘Number
+19, Portman Square.’
+
+I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice; for the
+woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him.  ‘Poor gentleman!’
+said she.  ‘If I were you, I would go home.’  And she left him standing
+there in his distress.
+
+‘Home!’ thought M’Guire, ‘what a derision!’  What home was there for him,
+the victim of philanthropy?  He thought of his old mother, of his happy
+youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibility
+that he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled
+for life, condemned to lifelong pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely
+deafened.  Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter’s peril; but even
+waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man
+of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the
+music of life, and from the voice of friendship, and love?  How little do
+we realise the sufferings of others!  Even your brutal Government, in the
+heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the
+patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and
+to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a
+doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with
+the fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.
+
+But I wander from M’Guire.  From this dread glance into the past and
+future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present.  How had he
+wandered there? and how long—oh, heavens! how long had he been about it?
+He pulled out his watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed.
+It seemed too bright a thing to be believed.  He glanced at the church
+clock; and sure enough, it marked an hour four minutes faster than the
+watch.
+
+Of all that he endured, M’Guire declares that pang was the most desolate.
+Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in whom he plenarily
+trusted; by whose advertisement, he numbered the minutes that remained to
+him of life; on whose sure testimony, he could tell when the time was
+come to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away from him, and take
+to flight.  And now in what was he to place reliance?  His watch was
+slow; it might be losing time; if so, in what degree?  What limit could
+he set to its derangement? and how much was it possible for a watch to
+lose in thirty minutes?  Five? ten? fifteen?  It might be so; already, it
+seemed years since he had left St. James’s Hall on this so promising
+enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked for.
+
+In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses settled
+down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived for
+centuries and for centuries been dead.  The buildings and the people in
+the street became incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London
+sounded in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cab
+that nearly charged him down, was like a sound from Africa.  Meanwhile,
+he was conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard and
+felt his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small, debile
+and tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.
+
+As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it
+seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped into
+his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by,
+where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked.  Thither,
+then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the
+pavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a man in a
+sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a straw.  He passed him by, and twice
+patrolled the entry, scouting for the barest chance; but the man had
+faced about and continued to observe him curiously.
+
+Another hope was gone.  M’Guire reissued from the entry, still followed
+by the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat.  He once more
+consulted his watch: there were but fourteen minutes left to him.  At
+that, it seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain;
+for a second or two, he saw the world as red as blood; and thereafter
+entered into a complete possession of himself, with an incredible
+cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to sing and chuckle as he walked.
+And yet this mirth seemed to belong to things external; and within, like
+a black and leaden-heavy kernel, he was conscious of the weight upon his
+soul.
+
+    I care for nobody, no, not I,
+    And nobody cares for me,
+
+he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the passengers
+stared upon him on the street.  And still the warmth seemed to increase
+and to become more genial.  What was life? he considered, and what he,
+M’Guire?  What even Erin, our green Erin?  All seemed so incalculably
+little that he smiled as he looked down upon it.  He would have given
+years, had he possessed them, for a glass of spirits; but time failed,
+and he must deny himself this last indulgence.
+
+At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom cab;
+jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the Embankment, which
+he named; and as soon as the vehicle was in motion, concealed the bag as
+completely as he could under the vantage of the apron, and once more drew
+out his watch.  So he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart in
+his mouth at every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearing
+to wake the attention of the driver by too obvious a change of plan, and
+willing, if possible, to leave him time to forget the Gladstone bag.
+
+At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed; the
+cab was stopped; and he alighted—with how glad a heart!  He thrust his
+hand into his pocket.  All was now over; he had saved his life; nor that
+alone, but he had engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what could
+be more pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion of a hansom
+cab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London.  He felt in one
+pocket; then in another.  The most crushing seizure of despair descended
+on his soul; and struck into abject dumbness, he stared upon the driver.
+He had not one penny.
+
+‘Hillo,’ said the driver, ‘don’t seem well.’
+
+‘Lost my money,’ said M’Guire, in tones so faint and strange that they
+surprised his hearing.
+
+The man looked through the trap.  ‘I dessay,’ said he: ‘you’ve left your
+bag.’
+
+M’Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that black
+continent at arm’s length, withered inwardly and felt his features
+sharpen as with mortal sickness.
+
+‘This is not mine,’ said he.  ‘Your last fare must have left it.  You had
+better take it to the station.’
+
+‘Now look here,’ returned the cabman: ‘are you off your chump? or am I?’
+
+‘Well, then, I’ll tell you what,’ exclaimed M’Guire; ‘you take it for
+your fare!’
+
+‘Oh, I dessay,’ replied the driver.  ‘Anything else?  What’s _in_ your
+bag?  Open it, and let me see.’
+
+‘No, no,’ returned M’Guire.  ‘Oh no, not that.  It’s a surprise; it’s
+prepared expressly: a surprise for honest cabmen.’
+
+‘No, you don’t,’ said the man, alighting from his perch, and coming very
+close to the unhappy patriot.  ‘You’re either going to pay my fare, or
+get in again and drive to the office.’
+
+It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M’Guire spied the stout
+figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing near along
+the Embankment.  The man was not unknown to him; he had bought of his
+wares, and heard him quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was now
+the nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope, he clutched
+with gratitude.
+
+‘Thank God!’ he cried.  ‘Here comes a friend of mine.  I’ll borrow.’  And
+he dashed to meet the tradesman.  ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘Mr. Godall, I have
+dealt with you—you doubtless know my face—calamities for which I cannot
+blame myself have overwhelmed me.  Oh, sir, for the love of innocence,
+for the sake of the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at the
+throne of grace, lend me two-and-six!’
+
+‘I do not recognise your face,’ replied Mr. Godall; ‘but I remember the
+cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike.  Here, sir, is
+a sovereign; which I very willingly advance to you, on the single
+condition that you shave your chin.’
+
+M’Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman, calling
+out to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps, flung the bag far
+forth into the river, and fell headlong after it.  He was plucked from a
+watery grave, it is believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall.  Even as he was
+being hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion shook
+the solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the river a momentary
+fountain rose and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Continued_)
+
+
+Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.  He had, in
+the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon; the plotter
+began to melt in twain, and seemed to expand and hover on his seat; and
+with a vague sense of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his
+feet, and, refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour
+was late and he must positively get to bed.
+
+‘Dear me,’ observed Zero, ‘I find you very temperate.  But I will not be
+oppressive.  Suffice it that we are now fast friends; and, my dear
+landlord, _au revoir_!’
+
+So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the politest
+ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted the bewildered young
+gentleman to the top of the stair.
+
+Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset remained in
+utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow, he started broad
+awake, there fell upon his mind a perfect hurricane of horror and wonder.
+That he should have suffered himself to be led into the semblance of
+intimacy with such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold
+light of day, a mystery of human weakness.  True, he was caught in a
+situation that might have tested the aplomb of Talleyrand.  That was
+perhaps a palliation; but it was no excuse.  For so wholesale a
+capitulation of principle, for such a fall into criminal familiarity, no
+excuse indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once from
+the relation.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on a rupture.
+Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.
+
+‘Come in,’ he cried, ‘dear Mr. Somerset!  Come in, sit down, and, without
+ceremony, join me at my morning meal.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Somerset, ‘you must permit me first to disengage my honour.
+Last night, I was surprised into a certain appearance of complicity; but
+once for all, let me inform you that I regard you and your machinations
+\with unmingled horror and disgust, and I will leave no stone unturned to
+crush your vile conspiracy.’
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ replied Zero, with an air of some complacency, ‘I am
+well accustomed to these human weaknesses.  Disgust?  I have felt it
+myself; it speedily wears off.  I think none the worse, I think the more
+of you, for this engaging frankness.  And in the meanwhile, what are you
+to do?  You find yourself, if I interpret rightly, in very much the same
+situation as Charles the Second (possibly the least degraded of your
+British sovereigns) when he was taken into the confidence of the thief.
+To denounce me, is out of the question; and what else can you attempt?
+No, dear Mr. Somerset, your hands are tied; and you find yourself
+condemned, under pain of behaving like a cad, to be that same charming
+and intellectual companion who delighted me last night.’
+
+‘At least,’ cried Somerset, ‘I can, and do, order you to leave this
+house.’
+
+‘Ah!’ cried the plotter, ‘but there I fail to follow you.  You may, if
+you please, enact the part of Judas; but if, as I suppose, you recoil
+from that extremity of meanness, I am, on my side, far too intelligent to
+leave these lodgings, in which I please myself exceedingly, and from
+which you lack the power to drive me.  No, no, dear sir; here I am, and
+here I propose to stay.’
+
+‘I repeat,’ cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense of his own
+weakness, ‘I repeat that I give you warning.  I am the master of this
+house; and I emphatically give you warning.’
+
+‘A week’s warning?’ said the imperturbable conspirator.  ‘Very well: we
+will talk of it a week from now.  That is arranged; and in the meanwhile,
+I observe my breakfast growing cold.  Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you
+find yourself condemned, for a week at least, to the society of a very
+interesting character, display some of that open favour, some of that
+interest in life’s obscurer sides, which stamp the character of the true
+artist.  Hang me, if you will, to-morrow; but to-day show yourself
+divested of the scruples of the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share
+my meal.’
+
+‘Man!’ cried Somerset, ‘do you understand my sentiments?’
+
+‘Certainly,’ replied Zero; ‘and I respect them!  Would you be outdone in
+such a contest? will you alone be partial? and in this nineteenth
+century, cannot two gentlemen of education agree to differ on a point of
+politics?  Come, sir: all your hard words have left me smiling; judge
+then, which of us is the philosopher!’
+
+Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by nature
+easily amenable to sophistry.  He threw up his hands with a gesture of
+despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him.  The
+meal was excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious
+information.  He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the
+torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures.  The
+interest of what he had to tell was great; his character, besides,
+developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew
+some of the discomfort of his false position, but began to regard the
+conspirator with a familiarity that verged upon contempt.  In any
+circumstances, he had a singular inability to leave the society in which
+he found himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like a
+limed sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow hour, was
+easily persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did not even attempt
+to withdraw till, on the approach of evening, Zero, with many apologies,
+dismissed his guest.  His fellow-conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely
+explained, as they were unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the
+young man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.
+
+As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of the
+morning.  He raged at the thought of his facility; he paced the
+dining-room, forming the sternest resolutions for the future; he wrung
+the hand which had been dishonoured by the touch of an assassin; and
+among all these whirling thoughts, there flashed in from time to time,
+and ever with a chill of fear, the thought of the confounded ingredients
+with which the house was stored.  A powder magazine seemed a secure
+smoking-room alongside of the Superfluous Mansion.
+
+He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing bowl.  As long
+as the bars were open, he travelled from one to another, seeking light,
+safety, and the companionship of human faces; when these resources failed
+him, he fell back on the belated baked-potato man; and at length, still
+pacing the streets, he was goaded to fraternise with the police.  Alas,
+with what a sense of guilt he conversed with these guardians of the law;
+how gladly had he wept upon their ample bosoms; and how the secret
+fluttered to his lips and was still denied an exit!  Fatigue began at
+last to triumph over remorse; and about the hour of the first milkman, he
+returned to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a horrid
+expectation, as though it should have burst that instant into flames;
+drew out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps, once
+more lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a
+coffee-shop.
+
+It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.  Dismally searching in his
+pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and when he had paid
+the price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to return to the
+Superfluous Mansion.  He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to the
+cupboard where he kept his money.  Yet half a minute, he told himself,
+and he would be free for days from his obseding lodger, and might decide
+at leisure on the course he should pursue.  But fate had otherwise
+designed: there came a tap at the door and Zero entered.
+
+‘Have I caught you?’ he cried, with innocent gaiety.  ‘Dear fellow, I was
+growing quite impatient.’  And on the speaker’s somewhat stolid face,
+there came a glow of genuine affection.  ‘I am so long unused to have a
+friend,’ he continued, ‘that I begin to be afraid I may prove jealous.’
+And he wrung the hand of his landlord.
+
+Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting.  To
+reject these kind advances was beyond his strength.  That he could not
+return cordiality for cordiality, was already almost more than he could
+carry.  That inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous
+characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed him to the
+ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.
+
+‘That is all right,’ cried Zero—‘that is as it should be—say no more!  I
+had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted me; but I now own that fear
+to have been unworthy, and apologise.  To doubt of your forgiveness were
+to repeat my sin.  Come, then; dinner waits; join me again and tell me
+your adventures of the night.’
+
+Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself once
+more to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal acquaintance.
+Once more, the plotter plunged up to the neck in damaging disclosures:
+now it would be the name and biography of an individual, now the address
+of some important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips;
+and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy
+guest.  Finally, the course of Zero’s bland monologue led him to the
+young lady of two days ago: that young lady, who had flashed on Somerset
+for so brief a while but with so conquering a charm; and whose engaging
+grace, communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt,
+remained imprinted on his memory.
+
+‘You saw her?’ said Zero.  ‘Beautiful, is she not?  She, too, is one of
+ours: a true enthusiast: nervous, perhaps, in presence of the chemicals;
+but in matters of intrigue, the very soul of skill and daring.  Lake,
+Fonblanque, de Marly, Valdevia, such are some of the names that she
+employs; her true name—but there, perhaps, I go too far.  Suffice it,
+that it is to her I owe my present lodging, and, dear Somerset, the
+pleasure of your acquaintance.  It appears she knew the house.  You see
+dear fellow, I make no concealment: all that you can care to hear, I tell
+you openly.’
+
+‘For God’s sake,’ cried the wretched Somerset, ‘hold your tongue!  You
+cannot imagine how you torture me!’
+
+A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance of Zero.
+
+‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when I begin to fancy that you do not like
+me.  Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of cordiality?  I am depressed;
+the touchstone of my life draws near; and if I fail’—he gloomily
+nodded—‘from all the height of my ambitious schemes, I fall, dear boy,
+into contempt.  These are grave thoughts, and you may judge my need of
+your delightful company.  Innocent prattler, you relieve the weight of my
+concerns.  And yet . . . and yet . . .’  The speaker pushed away his
+plate, and rose from table.  ‘Follow me,’ said he, ‘follow me.  My mood
+is on; I must have air, I must behold the plain of battle.’
+
+So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion, and
+thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform, sheltered at
+one end by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the actual summit of
+the roof.  On both sides, it bordered, without parapet or rail, on the
+incline of slates; and, northward above all, commanded an extensive view
+of housetops, and rising through the smoke, the distant spires of
+churches.
+
+‘Here,’ cried Zero, ‘you behold this field of city, rich, crowded,
+laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how soon, to be laid
+low!  Some day, some night, from this coign of vantage, you shall perhaps
+be startled by the detonation of the judgment gun—not sharp and empty
+like the crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn.
+Instantly thereafter, you shall behold the flames break forth.  Ay,’ he
+cried, stretching forth his hand, ‘ay, that will be a day of retribution.
+Then shall the pallid constable flee side by side with the detected
+thief.  Blaze!’ he cried, ‘blaze, derided city!  Fall, flatulent
+monarchy, fall like Dagon!’
+
+With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for Somerset’s
+quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into space.  Pale as a
+sheet, and limp as a pocket-handkerchief, he was dragged from the edge of
+downfall by one arm; helped, or rather carried, down the ladder; and
+deposited in safety on the attic landing.  Here he began to come to
+himself, wiped his brow, and at length, seizing Somerset’s hand in both
+of his, began to utter his acknowledgments.
+
+‘This seals it,’ said he.  ‘Ours is a life and death connection.  You
+have plucked me from the jaws of death; and if I were before attracted by
+your character, judge now of the ardour of my gratitude and love!  But I
+perceive I am still greatly shaken.  Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your
+arm as far as my apartment.’
+
+A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his customary
+self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and genially
+convalescent, when his eye was attracted by the dejection of the
+unfortunate young man.
+
+‘Good heavens, dear Somerset,’ he cried, ‘what ails you?  Let me offer
+you a touch of spirits.’
+
+But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material comfort.
+
+‘Let me be,’ he said.  ‘I am lost; you have caught me in the toils.  Up
+to this moment, I have lived all my life in the most reckless manner, and
+done exactly what I pleased, with the most perfect innocence.  And
+now—what am I?  Are you so blind and wooden that you do not see the
+loathing you inspire me with?  Is it possible you can suppose me willing
+to continue to exist upon such terms?  To think,’ he cried, ‘that a young
+man, guilty of no fault on earth but amiability, should find himself
+involved in such a damned imbroglio!’  And placing his knuckles in his
+eyes, Somerset rolled upon the sofa.
+
+‘My God,’ said Zero, ‘is this possible?  And I so filled with tenderness
+and interest!  Can it be, dear Somerset, that you are under the empire of
+these out-worn scruples? or that you judge a patriot by the morality of
+the religious tract?  I thought you were a good agnostic.’
+
+‘Mr. Jones,’ said Somerset, ‘it is in vain to argue.  I boast myself a
+total disbeliever, not only in revealed religion, but in the data,
+method, and conclusions of the whole of ethics.  Well! what matters it?
+what signifies a form of words?  I regard you as a reptile, whom I would
+rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel.  You would blow up others?
+Well then, understand: I want, with every circumstance of infamy and
+agony, to blow up you!’
+
+‘Somerset, Somerset!’ said Zero, turning very pale, ‘this is wrong; this
+is very wrong.  You pain, you wound me, Somerset.’
+
+‘Give me a match!’ cried Somerset wildly.  ‘Let me set fire to this
+incomparable monster!  Let me perish with him in his fall!’
+
+‘For God’s sake,’ cried Zero, clutching hold of the young man, ‘for God’s
+sake command yourself!  We stand upon the brink; death yawns around us; a
+man—a stranger in this foreign land—one whom you have called your
+friend—’
+
+‘Silence!’ cried Somerset, ‘you are no friend, no friend of mine.  I look
+on you with loathing, like a toad: my flesh creeps with physical
+repulsion; my soul revolts against the sight of you.’
+
+Zero burst into tears.  ‘Alas!’ he sobbed, ‘this snaps the last link that
+bound me to humanity.  My friend disowns—he insults me.  I am indeed
+accurst.’
+
+Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of front.
+The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from the room and
+from the house.  The first dash of his escape carried him hard upon
+half-way to the next police-office: but presently began to droop; and
+before he reached the house of lawful intervention, he fell once more
+among doubtful counsels.  Was he an agnostic? had he a right to act?
+Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his thoughts.  And then
+again: had he not promised, had he not shaken hands and broken bread? and
+that with open eyes? and if so how could he take action, and not forfeit
+honour?  But honour? what was honour?  A figment, which, in the hot
+pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.  Ay, but crime?  A figment,
+too, which his enfranchised intellect discarded.  All day, he wandered in
+the parks, a prey to whirling thoughts; all night, patrolled the city;
+and at the peep of day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of
+Peckham and bitterly wept.  His gods had fallen.  He who had chosen the
+broad, daylit, unencumbered paths of universal scepticism, found himself
+still the bondslave of honour.  He who had accepted life from a point of
+view as lofty as the predatory eagle’s, though with no design to prey; he
+who had clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of commercial
+competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to help the escaping
+murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found, to the overthrow of
+all his logic, that he objected to the use of dynamite.  The dawn crept
+among the sleeping villas and over the smokeless fields of city; and
+still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed over his fall from consistency.
+
+At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.  ‘There is no
+question as to fact,’ he cried; ‘right and wrong are but figments and the
+shadow of a word; but for all that, there are certain things that I
+cannot do, and there are certain others that I will not stand.’
+Thereupon he decided to return to make one last effort of persuasion,
+and, if he could not prevail on Zero to desist from his infernal trade,
+throw delicacy to the winds, give the plotter an hour’s start, and
+denounce him to the police.  Fast as he went, being winged by this
+resolution, it was already well on in the morning when he came in sight
+of the Superfluous Mansion.  Tripping down the steps, was the young lady
+of the various aliases; and he was surprised to see upon her countenance
+the marks of anger and concern.
+
+‘Madam,’ he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear knowledge of
+what he was to add.
+
+But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock of fear or
+horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden movement; and fled,
+without turning, from the square.
+
+Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes of
+Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic episode of THE
+BROWN BOX.
+
+
+
+
+DESBOROUGH’S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE BROWN BOX_
+
+
+Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
+Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London, but
+itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace.  It was in Queen
+Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the Children’s
+Hospital, on your left hand as you go north: Queen Square, sacred to
+humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor
+were taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where groups
+of patient little ones would hover all day long before the hospital, if
+by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a word to their sick
+brother at the window.  Desborough’s room was on the first floor and
+fronted to the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he often
+profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which looked down
+upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn commanded by the
+windows of an empty room.
+
+On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon this
+terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now some weeks
+on the vain quest of situations, and prepared for melancholy and tobacco.
+Here, at least, he told himself that he would be alone; for, like most
+youths, who are neither rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather
+shunned than courted the society of other men.  Even as he expressed the
+thought, his eye alighted on the window of the room that looked upon the
+terrace; and to his surprise and annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a
+silken hanging.  It was like his luck, he thought; his privacy was gone,
+he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer suffer
+his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself with
+sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he struck his
+pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force.  It was an old, sweet,
+seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment, and justly
+dear to his fancy.  What, then, was his chagrin, when the head snapped
+from the stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and disappeared among the
+lilacs of the garden?
+
+He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the
+story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore off a fragment of
+the last sheet, which contains only the answers to correspondents, and
+set himself to roll a cigarette.  He was no master of the art; again and
+again, the paper broke between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon
+the ground; and he was already on the point of angry resignation, when
+the window swung slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and
+a lady, somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.
+
+‘Señorito,’ said she, and there was a rich thrill in her voice, like an
+organ note, ‘Señorito, you are in difficulties.  Suffer me to come to
+your assistance.’
+
+With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting
+hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough’s eyes, seemed magical,
+rolled and presented him a cigarette.  He took it, still seated, still
+without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition.  Her face
+was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant triangle, so
+innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in our more northern
+climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited by changing lights;
+her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the
+womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life,
+and slender by grace of some divine proportion.
+
+‘You do not like my cigarrito, Señor?’ she asked.  ‘Yet it is better made
+than yours.’  At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled in his ear
+like music; but the next moment her face fell.  ‘I see,’ she cried.  ‘It
+is my manner that repels you.  I am too constrained, too cold.  I am
+not,’ she added, with a more engaging air, ‘I am not the simple English
+maiden I appear.’
+
+‘Oh!’ murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.
+
+‘In my own dear land,’ she pursued, ‘things are differently ordered.
+There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous restrictions;
+little is permitted her; she learns to be distant, she learns to appear
+forbidding.  But here, in free England—oh, glorious liberty!’ she cried,
+and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable grace—‘here there are
+no fetters; here the woman may dare to be herself entirely, and the men,
+the chivalrous men—is it not written on the very shield of your nation,
+_honi soit_?  Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be
+myself.  You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this
+stiffness, I shall end by growing English.  Do I speak the language
+well?’
+
+‘Perfectly—oh, perfectly!’ said Harry, with a fervency of conviction
+worthy of a graver subject.
+
+‘Ah, then,’ she said, ‘I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my
+father’s veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in your
+expressive tongue.  If I speak already without accent, with my thorough
+English appearance, there is nothing left to change except my manners.’
+
+‘Oh no,’ said Desborough.  ‘Oh pray not!  I—madam—’
+
+‘I am,’ interrupted the lady, ‘the Señorita Teresa Valdevia.  The evening
+air grows chill.  Adios, Señorito.’  And before Harry could stammer out a
+word, she had disappeared into her room.
+
+He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand.  His
+thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified the
+image of his new acquaintance.  Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her
+eyes, of which he could not tell the colour, haunted his soul.  The
+clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world.  What
+she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her.  Her age, he durst not
+estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, and thinking sacrilege
+to couple that fair favour with the thought of mortal changes.  As for
+her character, beauty to the young is always good.  So the poor lad
+lingered late upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained
+window, sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of romance;
+and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled mutton
+and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.
+
+Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little ajar,
+and he enjoyed a view of the lady’s shoulder, as she sat patiently sewing
+and all unconscious of his presence.  On the next, he had scarce appeared
+when the window opened, and the Señorita tripped forth into the sunlight,
+in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign,
+tropical, and strange.  In one hand she held a packet.
+
+‘Will you try,’ she said, ‘some of my father’s tobacco—from dear Cuba?
+There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen.  So
+you need not fear to annoy me.  The fragrance will remind me of home.  My
+home, Señor, was by the sea.’  And as she uttered these few words,
+Desborough, for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the
+great deep.  ‘Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home, dear Cuba!’
+
+‘But some day,’ said Desborough, with an inward pang, ‘some day you will
+return?’
+
+‘Never!’ she cried; ‘ah, never, in Heaven’s name!’
+
+‘Are you then resident for life in England?’ he inquired, with a strange
+lightening of spirit.
+
+‘You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,’ she answered sadly; and
+then, resuming her gaiety of manner: ‘But you have not tried my Cuban
+tobacco,’ she said.
+
+‘Señorita,’ said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in her
+manner, ‘whatever comes to me—you—I mean,’ he concluded, deeply flushing,
+‘that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.’
+
+‘Ah, Señor,’ she said, with almost mournful gravity, ‘you seemed so
+simple and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments—and
+besides,’ she added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a
+smile, ‘you do it so badly!  English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be
+fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be companions,
+comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet never encroach.  Do
+not seek to please me by copying the graces of my countrymen.  Be
+yourself: the frank, kindly, honest English gentleman that I have heard
+of since my childhood and still longed to meet.’
+
+Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the Cuban
+gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.
+
+‘Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Señor,’ said the
+lady.  ‘See!’ marking a line with her dainty, slippered foot, ‘thus far
+it shall be common ground; there, at my window-sill, begins the
+scientific frontier.  If you choose, you may drive me to my forts; but
+if, on the other hand, we are to be real English friends, I may join you
+here when I am not too sad; or, when I am yet more graciously inclined,
+you may draw your chair beside the window and teach me English customs,
+while I work.  You will find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the
+task.’  She laid her hand lightly upon Harry’s arm, and looked into his
+eyes.  ‘Do you know,’ said she, ‘I am emboldened to believe that I have
+already caught something of your English aplomb?  Do you not perceive a
+change, Señor?  Slight, perhaps, but still a change?  Is my deportment
+not more open, more free, more like that of the dear “British Miss” than
+when you saw me first?’  She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from
+Harry’s arm; and before the young man could formulate in words the
+eloquent emotions that ran riot through his brain—with an ‘Adios, Señor:
+good-night, my English friend,’ she vanished from his sight behind the
+curtain.
+
+The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the neutral
+terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the dinner-hour
+summoned him at length from the scene of disappointment.  On the next it
+rained; but nothing, neither business nor weather, neither prospective
+poverty nor present hardship, could now divert the young man from the
+service of his lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised,
+he took his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture
+of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with tender and
+delightful ardours.  Presently the window opened, and the fair Cuban,
+with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared upon the sill.
+
+‘Come here,’ she said, ‘here, beside my window.  The small verandah gives
+a belt of shelter.’  And she graciously handed him a folding-chair.
+
+As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain
+bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-handed.
+
+‘I have taken the liberty,’ said he, ‘of bringing you a little book.  I
+thought of you, when I observed it on the stall, because I saw it was in
+Spanish.  The man assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite
+proper.’  As he spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand.  Her eyes
+fell as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again upon her
+cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting.  ‘You are angry,’ he cried in agony.
+‘I have presumed.’
+
+‘No, Señor, it is not that,’ returned the lady.  ‘I—’ and a flood of
+colour once more mounted to her brow—‘I am confused and ashamed because I
+have deceived you.  Spanish,’ she began, and paused—‘Spanish is, of
+course, my native tongue,’ she resumed, as though suddenly taking
+courage; ‘and this should certainly put the highest value on your
+thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?  And how
+shall I confess to you the truth—the humiliating truth—that I cannot
+read?’
+
+As Harry’s eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban seemed
+to shrink before his gaze.  ‘Read?’ repeated Harry.  ‘You!’
+
+She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
+gesture.  ‘Enter, Señor,’ said she.  ‘The time has come to which I have
+long looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose
+your friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my life.’
+
+It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry passed the
+window.  A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided over
+the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself.  It was
+filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues,
+and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an
+antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of
+cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels.  The fair Cuban, herself a gem
+of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to
+a seat, and sinking herself into another, thus began her history.
+
+
+
+_STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN_
+
+
+I am not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from
+grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the
+patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings;
+but, alas! these kings were African.  She was fair as the day: fairer
+than I, for I inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my
+European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and
+accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours, and
+surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect, I grew up to
+adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh upon my lips,
+still ignorant that she was a slave, and alas! my father’s mistress.  Her
+death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had
+known: it left our home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of
+melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable
+change.  Months went by; with the elasticity of my years, I regained some
+of the simple mirth that had before distinguished me; the plantation
+smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate had already forgotten
+my mother and transferred their simple obedience to myself; but still the
+cloud only darkened on the brows of Señor Valdevia.  His absences from
+home had been frequent even in the old days, for he did business in
+precious gems in the city of Havana; they now became almost continuous;
+and when he returned, it was but for the night and with the manner of a
+man crushed down by adverse fortune.
+
+The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the
+Caribbean Sea, some half-hour’s rowing from the coasts of Cuba.  It was
+steep, rugged, and, except for my father’s family and plantation,
+uninhabited and left to nature.  The house, a low building surrounded by
+spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea
+to Cuba.  The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay
+swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and flowers of the
+magnolia.  Behind and to the left, the quarter of the negroes and the
+waving fields of the plantation covered an eighth part of the surface of
+the isle.  On the right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast
+and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted with
+profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-eating crabs,
+snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.  Into the recesses of that jungle,
+none could penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible,
+unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the air was
+death.
+
+One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous
+misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in that warm climate
+all are early risers, and found not a servant to attend upon my wants.  I
+made the circuit of the house, still calling: and my surprise had almost
+changed into alarm, when coming at last into a large verandahed court, I
+found it thronged with negroes.  Even then, even when I was amongst them,
+not one turned or paid the least regard to my arrival.  They had eyes and
+ears for but one person: a woman, richly and tastefully attired; of
+elegant carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in years, as worn
+and marred by self-indulgence: her face, which was still attractive,
+stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning with the greed of
+evil.  It was not from her appearance, I believe, but from some emanation
+of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting terror; as we hear of
+plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the woman shocked and
+daunted me.  But I was of a brave nature; trod the weakness down; and
+forcing my way through the slaves, who fell back before me in
+embarrassment, as though in the presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in
+imperious tones: ‘Who is this person?’
+
+A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a
+care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.
+
+In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes,
+studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.
+
+‘Young woman,’ said she, at last, ‘I have had a great experience in
+refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them.  You really tempt
+me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my
+hand, I should certainly buy you at your father’s sale.’
+
+‘Madam—’ I began, but my voice failed me.
+
+‘Is it possible that you do not know your position?’ she returned, with a
+hateful laugh.  ‘How comical!  Positively, I must buy her.
+Accomplishments, I suppose?’ she added, turning to the servants.
+
+Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like any
+lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.
+
+‘She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,’ said the
+Señora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; ‘and I
+should take a pleasure,’ she pursued, more directly addressing myself,
+‘in bringing you acquainted with a whip.’  And she smiled at me with a
+savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.
+
+At this, I found expression.  Calling by name upon the servants, I bade
+them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and set her
+back upon the mainland.  But with one voice, they protested that they
+durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be
+more wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of
+this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me
+as from one who had blasphemed.  A superstitious reverence plainly
+encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and
+in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces;
+and their fear perhaps reacted on myself.  I looked again at Madam
+Mendizabal.  She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through her
+glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
+superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage,
+fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.
+
+I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.  As I went, my head
+whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults.  Who was
+she? what, in Heaven’s name, the power she wielded over my obedient
+negroes?  Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father’s
+sale?  To all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and in
+the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful leering
+image of the woman.
+
+I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father coming
+to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry that I thought would
+have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a passion of sobs and
+tears upon his bosom.  He made me sit down below a tall palmetto that
+grew not far off; comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice;
+and as soon as I regained the least command upon my feelings, asked me,
+not without harshness, what this grief betokened.  I was surprised by his
+tone into a still greater measure of composure; and in firm tones, though
+still interrupted by sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island,
+at which I thought he started and turned pale; that the servants would
+not obey me; that the stranger’s name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that,
+he seemed to me both troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me,
+treated me as a slave (and here my father’s brow began to darken),
+threatened to buy me at a sale, and questioned my own servants before my
+face; and that, at last, finding myself quite helpless and exposed to
+these intolerable liberties, I had fled from the house in terror,
+indignation, and amazement.
+
+‘Teresa,’ said my father, with singular gravity of voice, ‘I must make
+to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much
+that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman
+by her spirit.  As for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to
+tell you what she is?  Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves;
+to-day she is what you see her—prematurely old, disgraced by the practice
+of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they
+say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among
+her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its
+reason is mysterious.  Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire:
+the rites of Hoodoo.  Be that as it may, I would have you dismiss the
+thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her that danger
+threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you shall never
+fall.’
+
+‘Father!’ I cried.  ‘Fall?  Was there any truth, then, in her words?  Am
+I—O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.’
+
+‘I will tell you,’ he replied, with merciful bluntness.  ‘Your mother was
+a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail
+to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her:
+a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment,
+intervened.  You will now understand the heaviness with which your
+mother’s memory hangs about my neck.’
+
+I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to console the
+survivor, I forgot myself.
+
+‘It matters not,’ resumed my father.  ‘What I have left undone can never
+be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse.  But, Teresa,
+with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to
+do what was still possible: to liberate yourself.’
+
+I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre
+roughness.
+
+‘Your mother’s illness,’ he resumed, ‘had engaged too great a portion of
+my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of
+ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the
+more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the
+darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what
+quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred—all these had been too long
+absent from the conduct of affairs.  Teresa, I was insolvent.’
+
+‘What matters that?’ I cried.  ‘What matters poverty, if we be left
+together with our love and sacred memories?’
+
+‘You do not comprehend,’ he said gloomily.  ‘Slave, as you are,
+young—alas! scarce more than child!—accomplished, beautiful with the most
+touching beauty, innocent as an angel—all these qualities that should
+disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom
+I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell.  You are a chattel; a
+marketable thing; and worth—heavens, that I should say such words!—worth
+money.  Do you begin to see?  If I were to give you freedom, I should
+defraud my creditors; the manumission would be certainly annulled; you
+would be still a slave, and I a criminal.’
+
+I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself, in
+sympathy for my father.
+
+‘How I have toiled,’ he continued, ‘how I have dared and striven to
+repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember.  Its blessing was
+denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed
+to descend upon my daughter’s head.  At length, all hope was at an end; I
+was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which
+I could not meet; I should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my
+lands, my jewels that I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and
+rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be
+sold and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers.  Too
+long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great crime of slavery;
+but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied daughter, was _she_ to pay the
+price?  I cried out—no!—I took Heaven to witness my temptation; I caught
+up this bag and fled.  Close upon my track are the pursuers; perhaps
+to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon this isle, sacred to the
+memory of the dear soul that bore you, to consign your father to an
+ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour.  We have not
+many hours before us.  Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good
+fortune, an English yacht has for some days been hovering.  It belongs to
+Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I have
+rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our escape.
+Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power to force
+him.  For what does it mean, my child—what means this Englishman, who
+hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns from every trip with
+new and valuable gems?’
+
+‘He may have found a mine,’ I hazarded.
+
+‘So he declares,’ returned my father; ‘but the strange gift I have
+received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.  He brought me
+diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second
+glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had first seen the
+day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their peculiar water
+and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient temples.  Thus
+put upon the scent, I made inquiries.  Oh, he is cunning, but I was
+cunninger than he.  He visited, I found, the shop of every jeweller in
+town; to one he came with rubies, to one with emeralds, to one with
+precious beryl; to all, with this same story of the mine.  But in what
+mine, what rich epitome of the earth’s surface, were there conjoined the
+rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of
+Golconda?  No, child, that man, for all his yacht and title, that man
+must fear and must obey me.  To-night, then, as soon as it is dark, we
+must take our way through the swamp by the path which I shall presently
+show you; thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is blazed,
+which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close by the yacht
+is riding.  Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I look to
+see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man attends on the
+mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark, the
+redness of a fire, if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing
+headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put the swamp between
+ourselves and danger.  Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would,
+before all things, be seen to arrive at the house with empty hands; a
+blabbing slave might else undo us.  For see!’ he added; and holding up
+the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap a shower of
+unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size and colour, and
+catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of the
+sun.
+
+I could not restrain a cry of admiration.
+
+‘Even in your ignorant eyes,’ pursued my father, ‘they command respect.
+Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the tool, cold as death?
+Ingrate!’ he cried.  ‘Each one of these—miracles of nature’s patience,
+conceived out of the dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each
+one is, for you and me, a year of life, liberty, and mutual affection.
+How, then, should I cherish them! and why do I delay to place them beyond
+reach!  Teresa, follow me.’
+
+He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle, where
+they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the declivity of
+the hill on which my father’s house stood planted.  For some while he
+skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket.  Then, seeming
+to recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately lightened
+of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me.  ‘Here,’ said he, ‘is
+the entrance of the secret path that I have mentioned, and here you shall
+await me.  I but pass some hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my
+poor treasure; as soon as that is safe, I will return.’  It was in vain
+that I sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in vain
+that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the black blood that I
+now knew to circulate in my veins: to all my appeals he turned a deaf
+ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes, disappeared
+into the pestilential silence of the swamp.
+
+At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and my
+father stepped from out the thicket, and paused and almost staggered in
+the first shock of the blinding sunlight.  His face was of a singular
+dusky red; and yet for all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not seem
+to sweat.
+
+‘You are tired,’ I cried, springing to meet him.  ‘You are ill.’
+
+‘I am tired,’ he replied; ‘the air in that jungle stifles one; my eyes,
+besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine
+pierces them like knives.  A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment.  All
+shall yet be well.  I have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately
+beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright
+things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them there, if
+needful.  But come, let us to the house; it is time to eat against our
+journey of the night: to eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to
+sleep.’  And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as
+if in pity.
+
+We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long,
+and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch of
+the verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the
+shuttered house.  The meal was spread; the house servants, already
+informed by the boatmen of the master’s return, were all back at their
+posts, and terrified, as I could see, to face me.  My father still
+murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I hurried at once
+to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left his arm than he
+paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange gesture of groping.
+‘How is this?’ he cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice.  ‘Am I blind?’  I ran
+to him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and stood
+stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as if in a painful
+effort after breath.  Then suddenly he raised both hands to his temples,
+cried out, ‘My head, my head!’ and reeled and fell against the wall.
+
+I knew too well what it must be.  I turned and begged the servants to
+relieve him.  But they, with one accord, denied the possibility of hope;
+the master had gone into the swamp, they said, the master must die; all
+help was idle.  Why should I dwell upon his sufferings?  I had him
+carried to a bed, and watched beside him.  He lay still, and at times
+ground his teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only that one word
+of hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, and telling me that, even
+in the last struggle with the powers of death, his mind was still
+tortured by his daughter’s peril.  The sun had gone down, the darkness
+had fallen, when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy earth.
+What thought had I of flight, of safety, of the impending dangers of my
+situation?  Beside the body of my last friend, I had forgotten all except
+the natural pangs of my bereavement.
+
+The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I was recalled
+to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the entrance of the slave-girl
+to whom I have already referred.  The poor soul was indeed devotedly
+attached to me; and it was with streaming tears that she broke to me the
+import of her coming.  With the first light of dawn a boat had reached
+our landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till now so fortunate)
+a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my father’s person, and a
+man of a gross body and low manners, who declared the island, the
+plantation, and all its human chattels, to be now his own.  ‘I think,’
+said my slave-girl, ‘he must be a politician or some very powerful
+sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming, than she
+took to the woods.’
+
+‘Fool,’ said I, ‘it was the officers she feared; and at any rate why does
+that beldam still dare to pollute the island with her presence?  And O
+Cora,’ I exclaimed, remembering my grief, ‘what matter all these troubles
+to an orphan?’
+
+‘Mistress,’ said she, ‘I must remind you of two things.  Never speak as
+you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person of colour; for she
+is the most powerful woman in this world, and her real name even, if one
+durst pronounce it, were a spell to raise the dead.  And whatever you do,
+speak no more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it is possible she
+may be afraid of the police (and indeed I think that I have heard she is
+in hiding), and though I know that you will laugh and not believe, yet it
+is true, and proved, and known that she hears every word that people
+utter in this whole vast world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough
+in her black books.  She looks at me, mistress, till my blood turns ice.
+That is the first I had to say; and now for the second: do, pray, for
+Heaven’s sake, bear in mind that you are no longer the poor Señor’s
+daughter.  He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no more than a
+common slave-girl like myself.  The man to whom you belong calls for you;
+oh, my dear mistress, go at once!  With your youth and beauty, you may
+still, if you are winning and obedient, secure yourself an easy life.’
+
+For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may
+conceive; the next, it was gone: she did but speak after her kind, as the
+bird sings or cattle bellow.  ‘Go,’ said I.  ‘Go, Cora.  I thank you for
+your kind intentions.  Leave me alone one moment with my dead father; and
+tell this man that I will come at once.’
+
+She went: and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those deaf
+ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence.  ‘Father,’
+I said, ‘it was your last thought, even in the pangs of dissolution, that
+your daughter should escape disgrace.  Here, at your side, I swear to you
+that purpose shall be carried out; by what means, I know not; by crime,
+if need be; and Heaven forgive both you and me and our oppressors, and
+Heaven help my helplessness!’  Thereupon I felt strengthened as by long
+repose; stepped to the mirror, ay, even in that chamber of the dead;
+hastily arranged my hair, refreshed my tear-worn eyes, breathed a dumb
+farewell to the originator of my days and sorrows; and composing my
+features to a smile, went forth to meet my master.
+
+He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which
+he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age,
+sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by
+nature.  But the sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter,
+warned me to expect the worst.
+
+‘Is this your late mistress?’ he inquired of the slaves; and when he had
+learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them.  ‘Now, my dear,’ said he, ‘I
+am a plain man: none of your damned Spaniards, but a true blue,
+hard-working, honest Englishman.  My name is Caulder.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had seen the
+servants.
+
+‘Come,’ said he, ‘this is better than I had expected; and if you choose
+to be dutiful in the station to which it has pleased God to call you, you
+will find me a very kind old fellow.  I like your looks,’ he added,
+calling me by my name, which he scandalously mispronounced.  ‘Is your
+hair all your own?’ he then inquired with a certain sharpness, and coming
+up to me, as though I were a horse, he grossly satisfied his doubts.  I
+was all one flame from head to foot, but I contained my righteous anger
+and submitted.  ‘That is very well,’ he continued, chucking me good
+humouredly under the chin.  ‘You will have no cause to regret coming to
+old Caulder, eh?  But that is by the way.  What is more to the point is
+this: your late master was a most dishonest rogue, and levanted with some
+valuable property that belonged of rights to me.  Now, considering your
+relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person to know what has
+become of it; and I warn you, before you answer, that my whole future
+kindness will depend upon your honesty.  I am an honest man myself, and
+expect the same in my servants.’
+
+‘Do you mean the jewels?’ said I, sinking my voice into a whisper.
+
+‘That is just precisely what I do,’ said he, and chuckled.
+
+‘Hush!’ said I.
+
+‘Hush?’ he repeated.  ‘And why hush?  I am on my own place, I would have
+you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful servants.’
+
+‘Are the officers gone?’ I asked; and oh! how my hopes hung upon the
+answer!
+
+‘They are,’ said he, looking somewhat disconcerted.  ‘Why do you ask?’
+
+‘I wish you had kept them,’ I answered, solemnly enough, although my
+heart at that same moment leaped with exultation.  ‘Master, I must not
+conceal from you the truth.  The servants on this estate are in a
+dangerous condition, and mutiny has long been brewing.’
+
+‘Why,’ he cried, ‘I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers in my
+life.’  But for all that he turned somewhat pale.
+
+‘Did they tell you,’ I continued, ‘that Madam Mendizabal is on the
+island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if, this
+morning, they have received you with even decent civility, it was only by
+her orders—issued with what after-thought I leave you to consider?’
+
+‘Madam Jezebel?’ said he.  ‘Well, she is a dangerous devil; the police
+are after her, besides, for a whole series of murders; but after all,
+what then?  To be sure, she has a great influence with you coloured folk.
+But what in fortune’s name can be her errand here?’
+
+‘The jewels,’ I replied.  ‘Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure, sapphire
+and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies red as the
+sunset—of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the
+eye!—had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as _she_ has—you would
+understand and tremble at your danger.’
+
+‘She has seen them!’ he cried, and I could see by his face, that my
+audacity was justified by its success.
+
+I caught his hand in mine.  ‘My master,’ said I, ‘I am now yours; it is
+my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your interests and life.
+Hear my advice, then; and, I conjure you, be guided by my prudence.
+Follow me privily; let none see where we are going; I will lead you to
+the place where the treasure has been buried; that once disinterred, let
+us make straight for the boat, escape to the mainland, and not return to
+this dangerous isle without the countenance of soldiers.’
+
+What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion?
+But this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused,
+to quiet the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that
+slavery was natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him.  He
+praised and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in a
+servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the nature and value
+of the treasure, and I had once more artfully inflamed his greed, bade me
+without delay proceed to carry out my plan of action.
+
+From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by
+devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the
+swamp.  I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools,
+and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and
+followed.  When we were come as far as the beginning of the path, it
+flashed into my mind I had forgotten meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in the
+shadow of a tree, I returned alone to the house for a basket of
+provisions.  Were they for him?  I asked myself.  And a voice within me
+answered, No. While we were face to face, while I still saw before my
+eyes the man to whom I belonged as the hand belongs to the body, my
+indignation held me bravely up.  But now that I was alone, I conceived a
+sickness at myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; I longed to
+throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn him from
+that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die; but my vow
+to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon these
+scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected the horror
+that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that I returned to the
+borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that I bade him rise and
+follow me.
+
+The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the
+living jungle.  On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage was
+continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth of
+super-impending wood; and the air was hot like steam, and heady with
+vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.
+Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on each
+side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts with a
+continuous hissing rustle; and but for these sentient vegetables, all in
+that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.
+
+We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
+nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.  My heart yearned, as I
+beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his
+steps.  What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked.  But no,
+he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest
+man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the
+while, like a sick dog.  Presently he got to his feet again, protesting
+he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I
+saw in his changed countenance, the first approaches of death.
+
+‘Master,’ said I, ‘you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me with
+dread.  Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we
+seek.’
+
+‘Wench,’ he cried, ‘look before you; look at your steps.  I declare to
+Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you of
+the change in your position.’
+
+A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a
+whisper, that its touch was death.  Presently a great green serpent,
+vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once
+again I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes.
+‘The coffin snake,’ said I, ‘the snake that dogs its victim like a
+hound.’
+
+But he was not to be dissuaded.  ‘I am an old traveller,’ said he.  ‘This
+is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.’
+
+‘Ay,’ said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, ‘what end?’
+
+Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then,
+perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, ‘There!’ said
+he.  ‘What did I tell you?  We are past the worst.’
+
+Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow
+and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it
+broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers:
+sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat
+heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.
+
+‘If we fall from that unsteady bridge,’ said I, ‘see, where the caiman
+lies ready to devour us!  If, by the least divergence from the path, we
+should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin
+scour the border of the thicket!  Once helpless, how they would swarm
+together to the assault!  What could man do against a thousand of such
+mailed assailants?  And what a death were that, to perish alive under
+their claws.’
+
+‘Are you mad, girl?’ he cried.  ‘I bid you be silent and lead on.’
+
+Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick
+that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face.  ‘Lead on!’ he
+cried again.  ‘Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough,
+and all for a prating slave-girl?’
+
+I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled back
+upon my heart.  Something, I know not what, fell at that moment with a
+dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it was my pity
+that had fallen.
+
+On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was not
+so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved.  It was possible,
+here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight, or to
+distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions of
+some soaring tree.  The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth,
+upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened broadly;
+and there was a patch of open ground, beset with horrible ant-heaps,
+thick with their artificers.  I laid down the tools and basket by the
+cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with the crawling
+ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious victim.
+Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his
+features were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the
+turning of a mighty wheel.
+
+‘Here,’ I said, ‘is the spot.  I cannot dig, for I have not learned to
+use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to be swift
+in what you do.’
+
+He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw
+rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father’s.
+‘I feel ill,’ he gasped, ‘horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the
+drone of these carrion flies confounds me.  Have you not wine?’
+
+I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.  ‘It is for you to think,’
+said I, ‘if you should further persevere.  The swamp has an ill name.’
+And at the word I ominously nodded.
+
+‘Give me the pick,’ said he.  ‘Where are the jewels buried?’
+
+I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim
+twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it
+overhead with the vigour of a healthy man.  At first, there broke forth
+upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the
+greedy insects settled thickly.
+
+‘To sweat in such a place,’ said I.  ‘O master, is this wise?  Fever is
+drunk in through open pores.’
+
+‘What do you mean?’ he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in the
+soil.  ‘Do you seek to drive me mad?  Do you think I do not understand
+the danger that I run?’
+
+‘That is all I want,’ said I: ‘I only wish you to be swift.’  And then,
+my mind flitting to my father’s deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above
+my breath, the same vain repetition of words, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry.’
+
+Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while he
+still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows,
+repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, ‘Hurry, hurry,
+hurry;’ and then again, ‘There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill
+name, ill name;’ and then back to ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’ with a dreadful,
+mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as a sick man rolls upon
+his pillow.  The sweat had disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I
+could see of him, of the same dull brick red.  Presently his pick
+unearthed the bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued
+hewing at the soil.
+
+‘Master,’ said I, ‘there is the treasure.’  He seemed to waken from a
+dream.  ‘Where?’ he cried; and then, seeing it before his eyes, ‘Can this
+be possible?’ he added.  ‘I must be light-headed.  Girl,’ he cried
+suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once before
+observed, ‘what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?’
+
+‘It is a grave,’ I answered.  ‘You will not go out alive; and as for me,
+my life is in God’s hands.’
+
+He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from the
+effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot tell.
+Pretty soon, he raised his head.  ‘You have brought me here to die,’ he
+said; ‘at the risk of your own days, you have condemned me.  Why?’
+
+‘To save my honour,’ I replied.  ‘Bear me out that I have warned you.
+Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer.’
+
+He took out his revolver and handed it to me.  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I
+could have killed you even yet.  But I am dying, as you say; nothing
+could save me; and my bill is long enough already.  Dear me, dear me,’ he
+said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look, like
+a dull child at school, ‘if there be a judgment afterwards, my bill is
+long enough.’
+
+At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed
+his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp and
+besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I could
+have bought back his, I had not balanced at the cost.  But he was
+determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret my act.
+
+‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said he.  ‘Dear heaven, what a thing is an
+old fool!  I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me.’
+
+He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness,
+clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman.
+Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and
+died away; and he came again to the full possession of his mind.  ‘I must
+write my will,’ he said.  ‘Get out my pocket-book.’  I did so, and he
+wrote hurriedly on one page with a pencil.  ‘Do not let my son know,’ he
+said; ‘he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let him know how you
+have paid me out;’ and then all of a sudden, ‘God,’ he cried, ‘I am
+blind,’ and clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a
+groaning whisper, ‘Don’t leave me to the crabs!’  I swore I would be true
+to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.  I sat
+there and watched him, as I had watched my father, but with what
+different, with what appalling thoughts!  Through the long afternoon, he
+gradually sank.  All that while, I fought an uphill battle to shield him
+from the swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my
+crime.  The night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the
+dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed
+his last.  At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine,
+grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was free.
+
+I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die
+than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and the bag of
+gems, set forward towards the north.  The swamp, at that hour of the
+night, was filled with a continuous din: animals and insects of all
+kinds, and all inimical to life, contributing their parts.  Yet in the
+midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes were bandaged,
+beholding nothing.  The soil sank under my foot, with a horrid, slippery
+consistence, as though I were walking among toads; the touch of the thick
+wall of foliage, by which alone I guided myself, affrighted me like the
+touch of serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a gag; indeed,
+I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that nocturnal
+walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I found the
+path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and saw, although
+still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of the moon.
+
+Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst
+noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic
+smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the
+expressive silence of the night.  My negro blood had carried me unhurt
+across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had
+escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I
+had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle
+and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English
+yacht.  It was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father
+had described; and I was casting about for any landmark, and, in my
+ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, when there
+fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many voices
+hurriedly singing.
+
+I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the
+direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour’s walking, came
+unperceived to the margin of an open glade.  It was lighted by the strong
+moon and by the flames of a fire.  In the midst, there stood a little low
+and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered
+to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of
+Hoodoo.  Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually
+agitated and stirring to and fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I
+presently perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds
+and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed
+one upon another.  Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring
+of kneeling Africans, both men and women.  Now they would raise their
+palms half-closed to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of
+supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their hands
+before them on the ground.  As the double movement passed and repassed
+along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the
+sea; and still, as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant
+continued.  I stood spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair,
+knowing that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
+
+Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth a tall
+negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife.  He
+was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam
+Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the
+level of her face, an open basket of wicker.  It was filled with coiling
+snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot
+through the osier grating and curled about her arms.  At the sight of
+this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the
+chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent.  Then, at
+a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in
+the moon and firelight, the singing died away, and there began the second
+stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration.  From different parts of
+the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst;
+ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the
+priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered aloud the
+blackest wishes of the heart.  Death and disease were the favours usually
+invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down
+these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to whom I
+swear I had been never less than kind, invoking them upon myself.  At
+each petition, the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some bird or
+animal from the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the knife, and
+tossed its body on the ground.  At length, it seemed, it reached the turn
+of the high-priestess.  She set down the basket on the steps, moved into
+the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and
+still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, and
+with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort
+of horror through my blood.
+
+‘Power,’ she began, ‘whose name we do not utter; power that is neither
+good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good, greater than
+evil—all my life long I have adored and served thee.  Who has shed blood
+upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy praises?
+whose limbs are faint before their age with leaping in thy revels?  Who
+has slain the child of her body?  I,’ she cried, ‘I, Metamnbogu!  By my
+own name, I name myself.  I tear away the veil.  I would be served or
+perish.  Hear me, slime of the fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom
+of the serpent’s udder—hear or slay me!  I would have two things, O
+shapeless one, O horror of emptiness—two things, or die!  The blood of my
+white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy of Hoodoo; give me
+his blood!  And yet another, O racer of the blind winds, O germinator in
+the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of corruption!  I grow old, I
+grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy servant then
+lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess turn again to the
+blossom of her days, and be a girl once more, and the desired of all men,
+even as in the past!  And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not
+yet wrought since we were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the
+sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth—the kid without the horns?’
+
+Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through
+all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and
+swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an
+instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door, carrying in his arms
+the body of the slave-girl, Cora.  I know not if I saw what followed.
+When next my mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was laid upon the
+steps before the serpents; the negro with the knife stood over her; the
+knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great horror, bidding them,
+in God’s name, to pause.
+
+A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.  A moment more, and they must
+have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished.  But Heaven
+had designed to save me.  The silence of these wretched men was not yet
+broken, when there arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the
+roar of any European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any
+Eastern wind.  Blackness engulfed the world; blackness, stabbed across
+from every side by intricate and blinding lightning.  Almost in the same
+second, at one world-swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached
+the clearing.  I heard an agonising crash, and the light of my reason was
+overwhelmed.
+
+When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.  I was unhurt; the
+trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have thought at
+first that the tornado was a feature in a dream.  It was otherwise
+indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction
+by a hand’s-breadth.  Right through the forest, which here covered hill
+and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of ruin.  On either hand, the
+trees waved uninjured in the air of the morning; but in the forthright
+course of its advance, the hurricane had left no trophy standing.
+Everything, in that line, tree, man, or animal, the desecrated chapel and
+the votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that brief
+spasm of anger of the powers of air.  Everything, but a yard or two
+beyond the line of its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor
+vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to heaven, awoke
+unharmed in the crystal purity and peace of the new day.
+
+To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so
+wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that fugitive
+convulsion.  I crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience, with so
+many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the further side, bankrupt
+alike of strength and courage.  There I sat down awhile to recruit my
+forces; and as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness of Heaven!) my
+eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great trees, alighted on
+a trunk that had been blazed.  Yes, by the directing hand of Providence,
+I had been conducted to the very track I was to follow.  With what a
+light heart I now set forth, and walking with how glad a step, traversed
+the uplands of the isle!
+
+It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn,
+to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea.  About
+all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a
+particular fury and made a fringe of snow.  Close at my feet, I saw a
+haven, set in precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock.  Just outside,
+a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted,
+so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized
+with admiration.  The English colours blew from her masthead; and from my
+high station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she rolled on
+the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of her deck
+furniture.  There, then, was my ship of refuge; and of all my
+difficulties only one remained: to get on board of her.
+
+Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the margin of a
+cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows entered, and along
+whose shores they broke with a surprising loudness.  A wooded promontory
+hid the yacht; and I had walked some distance round the beach, in what
+appeared to be a virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat, drawn into
+a natural harbour, where it rocked in safety, but deserted.  I looked
+about for those who should have manned her; and presently, in the
+immediate entrance of the wood, spied the red embers of a fire, and,
+stretched around in various attitudes, a party of slumbering mariners.
+To these I drew near: most were black, a few white; but all were dressed
+with the conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, from his peaked cap
+and glittering buttons, I rightly divined to be an officer.  Him, then, I
+touched upon the shoulder.  He started up; the sharpness of his movement
+woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.
+
+‘What do you want?’ inquired the officer.
+
+‘To go on board the yacht,’ I answered.
+
+I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer, with
+something of sharpness, asked me who I was.  Now I had determined to
+conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose to
+my lips was that of the Señora Mendizabal.  At the word, there went a
+shock about the little party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with
+indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something of a scared
+surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief prompted me to add, ‘And
+if the name is new to your ears, call me Metamnbogu.’
+
+I had never seen an effect so wonderful.  The negroes threw their hands
+into the air, with the same gesture I remarked the night before about the
+Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and then another, ran forward and kneeled
+down and kissed the skirts of my torn dress; and when the white officer
+broke out swearing and calling to know if they were mad, the coloured
+seamen took him by the shoulders, dragged him on one side till they were
+out of hearing, and surrounded him with open mouths and extravagant
+pantomime.  The officer seemed to struggle hard; he laughed aloud, and I
+saw him make gestures of dissent and protest; but in the end, whether
+overcome by reason or simply weary of resistance, he gave in—approached
+me civilly enough, but with something of a sneering manner underneath—and
+touching his cap, ‘My lady,’ said he, ‘if that is what you are, the boat
+is ready.’
+
+My reception on board the _Nemorosa_ (for so the yacht was named) partook
+of the same mingled nature.  We were scarcely within hail of that great
+and elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale under and churning the
+blue sea to snow, before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a
+great crowd of seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the few
+who manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some _lingua franca_
+incomprehensible to me.  All eyes were directed on the passenger; and
+once more I saw the negroes toss up their hands to heaven, but now as if
+with passionate wonder and delight.
+
+At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer, a
+gentlemanly man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I addressed my
+demand to see Sir George.
+
+‘But this is not—’ he cried, and paused.
+
+‘I know it,’ returned the other officer, who had brought me from the
+shore.  ‘But what the devil can we do?  Look at all the niggers!’
+
+I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the poor
+ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands into the air,
+as though in the presence of a creature half divine.  Apparently the
+officer with the whiskers had instantly come round to the opinion of his
+subaltern; for he now addressed me with every signal of respect.
+
+‘Sir George is at the island, my lady,’ said he: ‘for which, with your
+ladyship’s permission, I shall immediately make all sail.  The cabins are
+prepared.  Steward, take Lady Greville below.’
+
+Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that I could
+neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious and airy cabin,
+hung about with weapons and surrounded by divans.  The steward asked for
+my commands; but I was by this time so wearied, bewildered, and
+disturbed, that I could only wave him to leave me to myself, and sink
+upon a pile of cushions.  Presently, by the changed motion of the ship, I
+knew her to be under way; my thoughts, so far from clarifying, grew the
+more distracted and confused; dreams began to mingle and confound them;
+and at length, by insensible transition, I sank into a dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once more morning.
+The world on which I reopened my eyes swam strangely up and down; the
+jewels in the bag that lay beside me chinked together ceaselessly; the
+clock and the barometer wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead,
+seamen were singing out at their work, and coils of rope clattering and
+thumping on the deck.  Yet it was long before I had divined that I was at
+sea; long before I had recalled, one after another, the tragical,
+mysterious, and inexplicable events that had brought me where was.
+
+When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to find
+had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and seeing a silver bell
+hard by upon a table, rang it loudly.  The steward instantly appeared; I
+asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while
+with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny.  To relieve myself of my
+embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show of ease as I could
+muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry so numerous a crew?
+
+‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I know not who you are, nor what mad fancy has induced
+you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not yours.  I warn
+you from the soul.  No sooner arrived at the island—’
+
+At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, who had
+entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon his shoulder.
+The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear, that was imprinted on the
+steward’s face, formed a startling addition to his words.
+
+‘Parker!’ said the officer, and pointed towards the door.
+
+‘Yes, Mr. Kentish,’ said the steward.  ‘For God’s sake, Mr. Kentish!’
+And vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.
+
+Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, and join in
+the meal.  ‘I fill your ladyship’s glass,’ said he, and handed me a
+tumbler of neat rum.
+
+‘Sir,’ cried I, ‘do you expect me to drink this?’
+
+He laughed heartily.  ‘Your ladyship is so much changed,’ said he, ‘that
+I no longer expect any one thing more than any other.’
+
+Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted both Mr.
+Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a sail in sight,
+which was bound to pass us very close, and that Mr. Harland was in doubt
+about the colours.
+
+‘Being so near the island?’ asked Mr. Kentish.
+
+‘That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,’ returned the sailor, with a
+scrape.
+
+‘Better not, I think,’ said Mr. Kentish.  ‘My compliments to Mr. Harland;
+and if she seem a lively boat, give her the stars and stripes; but if she
+be dull, and we can easily outsail her, show John Dutchman.  That is
+always another word for incivility at sea; so we can disregard a hail or
+a flag of distress, without attracting notice.’
+
+As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the officer in
+wonder.  ‘Mr. Kentish, if that be your name,’ said I, ‘are you ashamed of
+your own colours?’
+
+‘Your ladyship refers to the _Jolly Roger_?’ he inquired, with perfect
+gravity; and immediately after, went into peals of laughter.  ‘Pardon
+me,’ said he; ‘but here for the first time I recognise your ladyship’s
+impetuosity.’  Nor, try as I pleased, could I extract from him any
+explanation of this mystery, but only oily and commonplace evasion.
+
+While we were thus occupied, the movement of the _Nemorosa_ gradually
+became less violent; its speed at the same time diminished; and presently
+after, with a sullen plunge, the anchor was discharged into the sea.
+Kentish immediately rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck;
+where I found we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky
+islets, hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.  Immediately
+under our board, a somewhat larger isle was green with trees, set with a
+few low buildings and approached by a pier of very crazy workmanship; and
+a little inshore of us, a smaller vessel lay at anchor.
+
+I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat was lowered.
+I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me, and we pulled briskly to
+the pier.  A crowd of villainous, armed loiterers, both black and white,
+looked on upon our landing; and again the word passed about among the
+negroes, and again I was received with prostrations and the same gesture
+of the flung-up hand.  By this, what with the appearance of these men,
+and the lawless, sea-girt spot in which I found myself, my courage began
+a little to decline, and clinging to the arm of Mr. Kentish, I begged him
+to tell me what it meant?
+
+‘Nay, madam,’ he returned, ‘_you_ know.’  And leading me smartly through
+the crowd, which continued to follow at a considerable distance, and at
+which he still kept looking back, I thought, with apprehension, he
+brought me to a low house that stood alone in an encumbered yard, opened
+the door, and begged me to enter.
+
+‘But why?’ said I.  ‘I demand to see Sir George.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black as thunder, ‘to
+drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you are; beyond the fact that
+you are not the person whose name you have assumed.  But be what you
+please, spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-judging jester, if you do not
+immediately enter that house, I will cut you to the earth.’  And even as
+he spoke, he threw an uneasy glance behind him at the following crowd of
+blacks.
+
+I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and with a
+palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was locked from the
+outside and the key withdrawn.  The interior was long, low, and quite
+unfurnished, but filled, almost from end to end, with sugar-cane,
+tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other incongruous and highly inflammable
+material; and not only was the door locked, but the solitary window
+barred with iron.
+
+I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I would
+have given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr. Caulder.  I
+still stood, with my hands clasped, the image of despair, looking about
+me on the lumber of the room or raising my eyes to heaven; when there
+appeared outside the window bars, the face of a very black negro, who
+signed to me imperiously to draw near.  I did so, and he instantly, and
+with every mark of fervour, addressed me a long speech in some unknown
+and barbarous tongue.
+
+‘I declare,’ I cried, clasping my brow, ‘I do not understand one
+syllable.’
+
+‘Not?’ he said in Spanish.  ‘Great, great, are the powers of Hoodoo!  Her
+very mind is changed!  But, O chief priestess, why have you suffered
+yourself to be shut into this cage? why did you not call your slaves at
+once to your defence?  Do you not see that all has been prepared to
+murder you? at a spark, this flimsy house will go in flames; and alas!
+who shall then be the chief priestess? and what shall be the profit of
+the miracle?’
+
+‘Heavens!’ cried I, ‘can I not see Sir George?  I must, I must, come by
+speech of him.  Oh, bring me to Sir George!’  And, my terror fairly
+mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and began to pray to all the
+saints.
+
+‘Lordy!’ cried the negro, ‘here they come!’  And his black head was
+instantly withdrawn from the window.
+
+‘I never heard such nonsense in my life,’ exclaimed a voice.
+
+‘Why, so we all say, Sir George,’ replied the voice of Mr. Kentish.  ‘But
+put yourself in our place.  The niggers were near two to one.  And upon
+my word, if you’ll excuse me, sir, considering the notion they have taken
+in their heads, I regard it as precious fortunate for all of us that the
+mistake occurred.’
+
+‘This is no question of fortune, sir,’ returned Sir George.  ‘It is a
+question of my orders, and you may take my word for it, Kentish, either
+Harland, or yourself, or Parker—or, by George, all three of you!—shall
+swing for this affair.  These are my sentiments.  Give me the key and be
+off.’
+
+Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared upon
+the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty, with a very open
+countenance, and of a stout and personable figure.
+
+‘My dear young lady,’ said he, ‘who the devil may you be?’
+
+I told him all my story in one rush of words.  He heard me, from the
+first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I came to the
+death of the Señora Mendizabal in the tornado, he fairly leaped into the
+air.
+
+‘My dear child,’ he cried, clasping me in his arms, ‘excuse a man who
+might be your father!  This is the best news I ever had since I was born;
+for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my wife.’  He sat
+down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy.  ‘Dear me,’ said he, ‘I
+declare this tempts me to believe in Providence.  And what,’ he added,
+‘can I do for you?’
+
+‘Sir George,’ said I, ‘I am already rich: all that I ask is your
+protection.’
+
+‘Understand one thing,’ he said, with great energy.  ‘I will never
+marry.’
+
+‘I had not ventured to propose it,’ I exclaimed, unable to restrain my
+mirth; ‘I only seek to be conveyed to England, the natural home of the
+escaped slave.’
+
+‘Well,’ returned Sir George, ‘frankly I owe you something for this
+exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me.  Now, I have
+made a small competence in business—a jewel mine, a sort of naval agency,
+et cætera, and I am on the point of breaking up my company, and retiring
+to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old age, unmarried.  One good
+turn deserves another: if you swear to hold your tongue about this
+island, these little bonfire arrangements, and the whole episode of my
+unfortunate marriage, why, I’ll carry you home aboard the _Nemorosa_.’  I
+eagerly accepted his conditions.
+
+‘One thing more,’ said he.  ‘My late wife was some sort of a sorceress
+among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she has come alive again in
+your agreeable person.  Now, you will have the goodness to keep up that
+fancy, if you please; and to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or
+whatever his name may be, that I am from this moment quite a sacred
+character.’
+
+‘I swear it,’ said I, ‘by my father’s memory; and that is a vow that I
+will never break.’
+
+‘I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,’ returned Sir
+George, with a chuckle; ‘for you are not only an escaped slave, but have,
+by your own account, a considerable amount of stolen property.’
+
+I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised that
+these jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I decided they
+should be restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that I had just
+regained.  Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and
+watched me with a smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder’s pocket-book and turned
+to the page on which the dying man had scrawled his testament.  How shall
+I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with which I read it! for
+my victim had not only set me free, but bequeathed to me the bag of
+jewels.
+
+My plain tale draws towards a close.  Sir George and I, in my character
+of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm among the
+negroes, and were cheered and followed to the place of embarkation.
+There, Sir George, turning about, made a speech to his old companions, in
+which he thanked and bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and
+towards the end of which he fell on some expressions which I still
+remember.  ‘If any of you gentry lose your money,’ he said, ‘take care
+you do not come to me; for in the first place, I shall do my best to have
+you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to the law.  Blackmail
+won’t do for me.  I’ll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to
+pieces by degrees.  I’ll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit
+to one man-jack of you.’  That same night we got under way and crossed to
+the port of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the
+pocket-book to Mr. Caulder’s son.  In a week’s time, the men were all
+paid off; new hands were shipped; and the _Nemorosa_ weighed her anchor
+for Old England.
+
+A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.  Sir George, of course,
+was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected gaiety of character
+that naturally endeared him to the young; and it was interesting to hear
+him lay out his projects for the future, when he should be returned to
+Parliament, and place at the service of the nation his experience of
+marine affairs.  I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a private
+yacht were not original.  But he told me, no.  ‘A yacht, Miss Valdevia,’
+he observed, ‘is a chartered nuisance.  Who smuggles?  Who robs the
+salmon rivers of the West of Scotland?  Who cruelly beats the keepers if
+they dare to intervene?  The crews and the proprietors of yachts.  All I
+have done is to extend the line a trifle, and if you ask me for my
+unbiassed opinion, I do not suppose that I am in the least alone.’
+
+In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father and
+daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect which
+is only due to moral excellence.
+
+We were still some days’ sail from England, when Sir George obtained,
+from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and from that fatal
+hour my misfortunes recommenced.  He sat, the same evening, in the cabin,
+reading the news, and making savoury comments on the decline of England
+and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly observed him to
+change countenance.
+
+‘Hullo!’ said he, ‘this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia.  You
+would not listen to sound sense, you would send that pocket-book to that
+man Caulder’s son.’
+
+‘Sir George,’ said I, ‘it was my duty.’
+
+‘You are prettily paid for it, at least,’ says he; ‘and much as I regret
+it, I, for one, am done with you.  This fellow Caulder demands your
+extradition.’
+
+‘But a slave,’ I returned, ‘is safe in England.’
+
+‘Yes, by George!’ replied the baronet; ‘but it’s not a slave, Miss
+Valdevia, it’s a thief that he demands.  He has quietly destroyed the
+will; and now accuses you of robbing your father’s bankrupt estate of
+jewels to the value of a hundred thousand pounds.’
+
+I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and concern
+for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more at
+ease.
+
+‘Do not be cast down,’ said he.  ‘Of course, I wash my hands of you
+myself.  A man in my position—baronet, old family, and all that—cannot
+possibly be too particular about the company he keeps.  But I am a deuced
+good-humoured old boy, let me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do
+the best I can to put you right.  I will lend you a trifle of ready
+money, give you the address of an excellent lawyer in London, and find a
+way to set you on shore unsuspected.’
+
+He was in every particular as good as his word.  Four days later, the
+_Nemorosa_ sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night, into a
+certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with muffled
+oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone’s throw of a railway
+station.  Thither, guided by Sir George’s directions, I groped a devious
+way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped in a
+man’s fur great-coat, to await the coming of the day.  It was still dark
+when a light was struck behind one of the windows of the building; nor
+had the east begun to kindle to the warmer colours of the dawn, before a
+porter carrying a lantern, issued from the door and found himself face to
+face with the unfortunate Teresa.  He looked all about him; in the grey
+twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie deserted, and the yacht
+had long since disappeared.
+
+‘Who are you?’ he cried.
+
+‘I am a traveller,’ said I.
+
+‘And where do you come from?’ he asked.
+
+‘I am going by the first train to London,’ I replied.
+
+In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her bag
+of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent fashion,
+without history or name, she took her place among the millions of a new
+country.
+
+Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying concealed
+in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not knowing at what
+hour my liberty and honour may be lost.
+
+
+
+
+_THE BROWN BOX_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant and
+convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she now
+became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and the most
+unhappy of her sex.  He was bereft of words to utter what he felt: what
+pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and
+adventurous.  ‘O madam!’ he began; and finding no language adequate to
+that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own.  ‘Count upon
+me,’ he added, with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out
+of the apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found
+himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at
+dull passers-by, a fallen angel.  She had smiled upon him as he left, and
+with how significant, how beautiful a smile!  The memory lingered in his
+heart; and when he found his way to a certain restaurant where music was
+performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal.  The
+strings went to the melody of that parting smile; they paraphrased and
+glossed it in the sense that he desired; and for the first time in his
+plain and somewhat dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste for
+music.
+
+The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that delectable air.
+Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not at all; now saw her and
+was put by.  The fall of her foot upon the stair entranced him; the books
+that he sought out and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her
+indirectly; nay, and in the very landlady’s parlour, he found one that
+told of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail,
+confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth of her recital.
+Presently he began to fall into that prettiest mood of a young love, in
+which the lover scorns himself for his presumption.  Who was he, the dull
+one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the impure,
+the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire and air, and
+hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of life?  What should
+he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call down the notice of these
+eyes to so terrene a being as himself?
+
+He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square, where,
+being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of
+acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the
+visitors that hung before the windows of the Children’s Hospital.  There
+he walked, considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the
+adored one’s super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say a pleasant
+word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with a great heave of
+breath, remembering the queen of women, and the sunshine of his life.
+
+What was he to do?  Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of leaving
+the house towards afternoon: she might, perchance, run danger from some
+Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the balance in
+her favour: how, then, if he should follow her?  To offer his company
+would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest
+impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which,
+though in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he
+could practise with the skill of a detective.
+
+The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.  At the corner of
+Tottenham Court Road, however, the Señorita suddenly turned back, and met
+him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and surprise.
+
+‘Ah, Señor, I am sometimes fortunate!’ she cried.  ‘I was looking for a
+messenger;’ and with the sweetest of smiles, she despatched him to the
+East End of London, to an address which he was unable to find.  This was
+a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn
+out with fruitless wandering and dismayed by his _fiasco_, the lady
+received him with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was for the
+best, since she had changed her mind and long since repented of her
+message.
+
+Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
+determined to protect Teresa with his life.  But a painful shock awaited
+him.  In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about
+and addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes that were new to
+the young man’s experience.
+
+‘Do I understand that you follow me, Señor?’ she cried.  ‘Are these the
+manners of the English gentleman?’
+
+Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be
+forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed,
+crestfallen and heavy of heart.  The check was final; he gave up that
+road to service; and began once more to hang about the square or on the
+terrace, filled with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit
+object for the scorn and envy of older men.  In these idle hours, while
+he was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out naturally
+that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as came about
+the house.  One person alone was the occasional visitor of the young
+lady: a man of considerable stature, and distinguished only by the
+doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.
+Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon
+him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to
+inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed by her
+reply.
+
+‘That gentleman,’ said she, a smile struggling to her face, ‘that
+gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires my hand in
+marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour.  Alas, what am
+I to say?  I, the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such
+protestations?’
+
+Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him; and
+he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with decency.  In
+the solitude of his own chamber, he gave way to every manifestation of
+despair.  He passionately adored the Señorita; but it was not only the
+thought of her possible union with another that distressed his soul, it
+was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy.  To a duke,
+a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned with obvious
+qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself
+follow the wedding party from a great way off; he saw himself return to
+the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have wept
+for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly.  But this affair
+looked otherwise.  The man was patently no gentleman; he had a startled,
+skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive; his
+love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a
+Cuban emissary!
+
+Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next evening,
+about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a spot whence his
+eye commanded the three issues of the square.
+
+Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the man with the
+chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by Harry to enter
+the house with a brown box hoisted on his back.  Half an hour later, he
+came forth again without the box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk;
+and Desborough, with the same skill and caution that he had displayed in
+following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer.  The man
+began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the wares of the small
+fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly upon his former
+course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered a moment’s
+hesitation, once more set forth with resolute and swift steps in the
+direction of Lincoln’s Inn.  At length, in a deserted by-street, he
+turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance which seemed to have
+become older and whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if he had
+not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.
+
+‘You have, sir,’ said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a good show of
+stoutness; ‘and I will not deny that I was following you on purpose.
+Doubtless,’ he added, for he supposed that all men’s minds must still be
+running on Teresa, ‘you can divine my reason.’
+
+At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
+tremor.  He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance which his
+fear denied him; and then whipping sharply about, he took to his heels at
+the most furious speed of running.
+
+Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by the
+time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only rewarded by
+a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a hansom, which
+immediately after disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.
+
+Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the
+house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the
+fair Cuban’s door.  She bade him enter, and he found her kneeling with
+rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.
+
+‘Señorita,’ he broke out, ‘I doubt whether that man’s character is what
+he wishes you to believe.  His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
+admitted that I was following him, was not the manner of an honest man.’
+
+‘Oh!’ she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, ‘Don Quixote,
+Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?’  And then,
+with a laugh, ‘Poor soul!’ she added, ‘how you must have terrified him!
+For know that the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may
+soon be hunted down.  Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor’s office
+may find himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies.’
+
+‘A humble clerk!’ cried Harry, ‘why, you told me yourself that he wished
+to marry you!’
+
+‘I thought you English like what you call a joke,’ replied the lady
+calmly.  ‘As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer’s clerk, and has been here
+to-night charged with disastrous news.  I am in sore straits, Señor
+Harry.  Will you help me?’
+
+At this most welcome word, the young man’s heart exulted; and in the
+hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled with the very thought of
+service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady’s jest.  ‘Can you ask?’ he
+cried.  ‘What is there that I can do?  Only tell me that.’
+
+With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the fair Cuban
+laid her hand upon the box.  ‘This box,’ she said, ‘contains my jewels,
+papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba and
+my dreadful past.  They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the
+opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy.  To-morrow, on board the
+Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box: the problem still unsolved, is
+to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on
+board the steamer, and instantly return to town.  Will you be he?  Will
+you leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear
+still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so much
+as a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your interest, leave
+the box where you have put it and come straight on shore? Will you do
+this, and so save your friend?’
+
+‘I do not clearly understand . . .’ began Harry.
+
+‘No more do I,’ replied the Cuban.  ‘It is not necessary that we should,
+so long as we obey the lawyer’s orders.’
+
+‘Señorita,’ returned Harry gravely, ‘I think this, of course, a very
+little thing to do for you, when I would willingly do all.  But suffer me
+to say one word.  If London is unsafe for your treasures, it cannot long
+be safe for you; and indeed, if I at all fathom the plan of your
+solicitor, I fear I may find you already fled on my return.  I am not
+considered clever, and can only speak out plainly what is in my heart:
+that I love you, and that I cannot bear to lose all knowledge of you.  I
+hope no more than to be your servant; I ask no more than just that I
+shall hear of you.  Oh, promise me so much!’
+
+‘You shall,’ she said, after a pause.  ‘I promise you, you shall.’  But
+though she spoke with earnestness, the marks of great embarrassment and a
+strong conflict of emotions appeared upon her face.
+
+‘I wish to tell you,’ resumed Desborough, ‘in case of accidents. . . .’
+
+‘Accidents!’ she cried: ‘why do you say that?’
+
+‘I do not know,’ said he, ‘you may be gone before my return, and we may
+not meet again for long.  And so I wished you to know this: That since
+the day you gave me the cigarette, you have never once, not once, been
+absent from my mind; and if it will in any way serve you, you may crumple
+me up like that piece of paper, and throw me on the fire.  I would love
+to die for you.’
+
+‘Go!’ she said.  ‘Go now at once.  My brain is in a whirl.  I scarce know
+what we are talking.  Go; and good-night; and oh, may you come safe!’
+
+Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man’s mind;
+and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the broken
+utterance of her last words, his heart at once exulted and misgave him.
+Love had indeed looked upon him with a tragic mask; and yet what
+mattered, since at least it was love—since at least she was commoved at
+their division?  He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed
+from one dream to another all night long, the white face of Teresa still
+haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and in the grey of the dawn,
+leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of horror.  It was already time for
+him to rise.  He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that had been
+laid for him the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for
+the box.  The door was open; a strange disorder reigned within; the
+furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room left bare of
+impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured mind.
+There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with these words:
+‘Harry, I hope to be back before you go.  Teresa.’
+
+He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table.  She had
+called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill the day with
+sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered room still
+poisoned his enjoyment.  The door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open;
+and though he turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but
+observe the bed had not been slept in.  He was still pondering what this
+should mean, still trying to convince himself that all was well, when the
+moving needle of his watch summoned him to set forth without delay.  He
+was before all things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to
+fetch a cab; and taking the box on the front seat, drove off towards the
+terminus.
+
+The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye; and
+the young man’s attention centred on the dumb companion of his drive.  A
+card was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription: ‘Miss Doolan,
+passenger to Dublin.  Glass.  With care.’  He thought with a sentimental
+shock that the fair idol of his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the
+name of Doolan; and as he still studied the card, he was aware of a
+deadly, black depression settling steadily upon his spirits.  It was in
+vain for him to contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself
+or tried to whistle: the sense of some impending blow was not to be
+averted.  He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its
+way without a trace of any follower.  He gave ear; and over and above the
+jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a certain
+regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box.  He put his
+ear to the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate
+ticking: the next, the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening
+recapture it.  He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued; and
+it was with more than the common relief of an arrival, that he leaped
+from the cab before the station.
+
+Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty minutes
+earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the charge of
+a porter, who sat it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the
+platform.  Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was looking
+at the books when he was seized by the arm.  He turned, and, though she
+was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.
+
+‘Where is it?’ she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.
+
+‘It?’ he said.  ‘What?’
+
+‘The box.  Have it put on a cab instantly.  I am in fearful haste.’
+
+He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to
+trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and
+the box mounted on the front, she passed a little way off upon the
+pavement and beckoned him to follow.
+
+‘Now,’ said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at
+first affected him, ‘you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the
+steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to
+him that all has been put off: if not,’ she added, with a sobbing sigh,
+‘it does not matter.  So, good-bye.’
+
+‘Teresa,’ said Harry, ‘get into your cab, and I will go along with you.
+You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole,
+not even you can make me leave you.’
+
+‘You will not?’ she asked.  ‘O Harry, it were better!’
+
+‘I will not,’ said Harry stoutly.
+
+She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly
+and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and still holding
+him, walked to the cab-door.
+
+‘Where are we to drive?’ asked Harry.
+
+‘Home, quickly,’ she answered; ‘double fare!’  And as soon as they had
+both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the
+station.
+
+Teresa leaned back in a corner.  The whole way Harry could perceive her
+tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation.  At the
+door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered
+the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his
+shoulders.
+
+‘Let the man take it,’ she whispered.  ‘Let the man take it.’
+
+‘I will do no such thing,’ said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the
+fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her
+key.  The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the
+house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down
+Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his
+burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled
+ticking as before.  The lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her
+room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in the corner by the
+window.
+
+‘And now,’ said Harry, ‘what is wrong?’
+
+‘You will not go away?’ she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and
+beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience.  ‘O Harry,
+Harry, go away!  Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!’
+
+‘The fate?’ repeated Harry.  ‘What is this?’
+
+‘No fate,’ she resumed.  ‘I do not know what I am saying.  But I wish to
+be alone.  You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you
+like; but leave me now, only leave me now!’  And then suddenly, ‘I have
+an errand,’ she exclaimed; ‘you cannot refuse me that!’
+
+‘No,’ replied Harry, ‘you have no errand.  You are in grief or danger.
+Lift your veil and tell me what it is.’
+
+‘Then,’ she said, with a sudden composure, ‘you leave but one course open
+to me.’  And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which
+every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on
+which resolve had conquered fear.  ‘Harry,’ she began, ‘I am not what I
+seem.’
+
+‘You have told me that before,’ said Harry, ‘several times.’
+
+‘O Harry, Harry,’ she cried, ‘how you shame me!  But this is the God’s
+truth.  I am a dangerous and wicked girl.  My name is Clara Luxmore.  I
+was never nearer Cuba than Penzance.  From first to last I have cheated
+and played with you.  And what I am I dare not even name to you in words.
+Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never
+grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt.’
+
+The young man looked upon her aghast.  Then a generous current poured
+along his veins.  ‘That is all one,’ he said.  ‘If you be all you say,
+you have the greater need of me.’
+
+‘Is it possible,’ she exclaimed, ‘that I have schemed in vain?  And will
+nothing drive you from this house of death?’
+
+‘Of death?’ he echoed.
+
+‘Death!’ she cried: ‘death!  In that box that you have dragged about
+London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger’s
+mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.’
+
+‘My God!’ cried Harry.
+
+‘Ah!’ she continued wildly, ‘will you flee now?  At any moment you may
+hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building.  I was sure M’Guire
+was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my
+fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own
+contrivances.  I knew then I loved you—Harry, will you go now?  Will you
+not spare me this unwilling crime?’
+
+Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned
+to her.
+
+‘Is it,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘an infernal machine?’
+
+Her lips formed the word ‘Yes,’ which her voice refused to utter.
+
+With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that
+still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured
+sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
+
+‘For whom?’ he asked.
+
+‘What matters it,’ she cried, seizing him by the arm.  ‘If you may still
+be saved, what matter questions?’
+
+‘God in heaven!’ cried Harry.  ‘And the Children’s Hospital!  At whatever
+cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!’
+
+‘It cannot,’ she gasped.  ‘The power of man cannot avert the blow.  But
+you, Harry—you, my beloved—you may still—’
+
+And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch
+was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour.  For
+one second the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony eyes.
+Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the
+girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.
+
+A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked
+against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning
+people, they fell to the floor.  Then followed a prolonged and strident
+hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the
+throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
+
+Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they drew
+themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first object
+that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner,
+but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
+
+‘Oh, poor Zero!’ cried the girl, with a strange sobbing laugh.  ‘Alas,
+poor Zero!  This will break his heart!’
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to
+all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero
+seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection.  Close beside him
+stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation.  The room
+besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor
+was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this
+disorder lay a lady’s glove.
+
+‘I have come,’ cried Somerset, ‘to make an end of this.  Either you will
+instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce
+you to the police.’
+
+‘Ah!’ replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.  ‘You are too late, dear
+fellow!  I am already at the end of all my hopes, and fallen to be a
+laughing-stock and mockery.  My reading,’ he added, with a gentle
+despondency of manner, ‘has not been much among romances; yet I recall
+from one a phrase that depicts my present state with critical exactitude;
+and you behold me sitting here “like a burst drum.”’
+
+‘What has befallen you?’ cried Somerset.
+
+‘My last batch,’ returned the plotter wearily, ‘like all the others, is a
+hollow mockery and a fraud.  In vain do I combine the elements; in vain
+adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of
+disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul
+that I can face.  My subordinates themselves have turned upon me.  What
+language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what
+pungency of expression!  She came once; I could have pardoned that, for
+she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing
+blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane.  Yes, dear fellow, I have
+drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well,
+well!  Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead.  I am
+extinct.  It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should
+be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful
+description; but here,’ he added, ‘is another: “Othello’s occupation’s
+gone.”  Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and
+how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to
+a less glorious life?’
+
+‘I cannot describe how you relieve me,’ returned Somerset, sitting down
+on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the
+floor.  ‘I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character;
+I have a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty;
+and upon both grounds, your news delights me.  But I seem to perceive,’
+he added, ‘a certain sound of ticking in this box.’
+
+‘Yes,’ replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, ‘I have set
+several of them going.’
+
+‘My God!’ cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.
+
+‘Machines?’
+
+‘Machines!’ returned the plotter bitterly.  ‘Machines indeed!  I blush to
+be their author.  Alas!’ he said, burying his face in his hands, ‘that I
+should live to say it!’
+
+‘Madman!’ cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm.  ‘What am I to
+understand?  Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in
+motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?’
+
+‘“Hoist with his own petard?”’ returned the plotter musingly.  ‘One more
+quotation: strange!  But indeed my brain is struck with numbness.  Yes,
+dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in motion.  The one on
+which you are sitting, I have timed for half an hour.  Yon other—’
+
+‘Half an hour!—’ echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation.  ‘Merciful
+Heavens, in half an hour?’
+
+‘Dear fellow, why so much excitement?’ inquired Zero.  ‘My dynamite is
+not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him
+to play with.  You see this brick?’ he continued, lifting a cake of the
+infernal compound from the laboratory-table.  ‘At a touch it should
+explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the
+square with ruins.  Well now, behold!  I dash it on the floor.’
+
+Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy of
+terror, wrested the brick from his possession.  ‘Heavens!’ he cried,
+wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her
+first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of
+the apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side,
+dispiritedly watching him.
+
+‘It was entirely harmless,’ he sighed.  ‘They describe it as burning like
+tobacco.’
+
+‘In the name of fortune,’ cried Somerset, ‘what have I done to you, or
+what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane
+behaviour?  If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from
+this doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart to leave you; and
+then, if you will take my advice, and if your determination be sincere,
+you will instantly quit this city, where no further occupation can detain
+you.’
+
+‘Such, dear fellow, was my own design,’ replied the plotter.  ‘I have, as
+you observe, no further business here; and once I have packed a little
+bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to
+the station, and see the last of a broken-hearted man.  And yet,’ he
+added, looking on the boxes with a lingering regret, ‘I should have liked
+to make quite certain.  I cannot but suspect my underlings of some
+mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I cherish that idea: it may be the
+weakness of a man of science, but yet,’ he cried, rising into some
+energy, ‘I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite
+has had fair usage!’
+
+‘Five minutes!’ said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece.
+‘If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you.’
+
+‘A few necessaries,’ returned Zero, ‘only a few necessaries, dear
+Somerset, and you behold me ready.’
+
+He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to draw
+out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing in
+his hand an open Gladstone bag.  His movements were still horribly
+deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he
+moved to and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles.
+Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.
+
+‘Put that down!’ cried Somerset.  ‘If what you say be true, you have no
+call to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.’
+
+‘Merely a curiosity, dear boy,’ he said persuasively, and slipped the
+brick into his bag; ‘merely a memento of the past—ah, happy past, bright
+past!  You will not take a touch of spirits? no?  I find you very
+abstemious.  Well,’ he added, ‘if you have really no curiosity to await
+the event—’
+
+‘I!’ cried Somerset.  ‘My blood boils to get away.’
+
+‘Well, then,’ said Zero, ‘I am ready; I would I could say, willing; but
+thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours—’
+
+Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged him
+downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion; and
+still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the
+square in the Oxford Street direction.  They had not yet passed the
+corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an
+extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a
+shattering _fracas_.  Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in
+twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its
+cellars.  At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground.  His
+first glance was towards Zero.  The plotter had but reeled against the
+garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his
+heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and the young
+man heard him murmur to himself: ‘_Nunc dimittis_, _nunc dimittis_!’
+
+The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole of Golden
+Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and
+fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors.
+And under favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering
+plotter.
+
+‘It was grand,’ he continued to murmur: ‘it was indescribably grand.  Ah,
+green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh, my calumniated
+dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!’
+
+Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the
+footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.
+
+‘Good God!’ he cried, ‘how mortifying! seven minutes too early!  The
+dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has
+once more betrayed me.  Alas, can there be no success unmixed with
+failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?’
+
+‘Incomparable ass!’ said Somerset, ‘what have you done?  Blown up the
+house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly property of the
+only person who is fool enough to befriend you!’
+
+‘You do not understand these matters,’ replied Zero, with an air of great
+dignity.  ‘This will shake England to the heart.  Gladstone, the
+truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge.  And
+now that my dynamite is proved effective—’
+
+‘Heavens, you remind me!’ ejaculated Somerset.  ‘That brick in your bag
+must be instantly disposed of.  But how?  If we could throw it in the
+river—’
+
+‘A torpedo,’ cried Zero, brightening, ‘a torpedo in the Thames!  Superb,
+dear fellow!  I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch.’
+
+‘True!’ returned Somerset.  ‘It cannot so be done; and there is no help
+but you must carry it away with you.  Come on, then, and let me at once
+consign you to a train.’
+
+‘Nay, nay, dear boy,’ protested Zero.  ‘There is now no call for me to
+leave.  My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the
+best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await
+the author of the Golden Square Atrocity.’
+
+‘My young friend,’ returned the other, ‘I give you your choice.  I will
+either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol.’
+
+‘Somerset, this is unlike you!’ said the chymist.  ‘You surprise me,
+Somerset.’
+
+‘I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,’
+returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage.  ‘For on one point
+my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and
+all, or else you dine in prison.’
+
+‘You have perhaps neglected one point,’ returned the unoffended Zero:
+‘for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ
+to force me.  The will, my dear fellow—’
+
+‘Now, see here,’ interrupted Somerset.  ‘You are ignorant of anything but
+science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have
+studied life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand
+and voice—here in this street—and the mob—’
+
+‘Good God in heaven, Somerset,’ cried Zero, turning deadly white and
+stopping in his walk, ‘great God in heaven, what words are these?  Oh,
+not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used!  The brutal mob, the
+savage passions . . . Somerset, for God’s sake, a public-house!’
+
+Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.  ‘This is very
+interesting,’ said he.  ‘You recoil from such a death?’
+
+‘Who would not?’ asked the plotter.
+
+‘And to be blown up by dynamite,’ inquired the young man, ‘doubtless
+strikes you as a form of euthanasia?’
+
+‘Pardon me,’ returned Zero: ‘I own, and since I have braved it daily in
+my professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually
+distasteful to the mind of man.’
+
+‘One more question,’ said Somerset: ‘you object to Lynch Law? why?’
+
+‘It is assassination,’ said the plotter calmly, but with eyebrows a
+little lifted, as in wonder at the question.
+
+‘Shake hands with me,’ cried Somerset.  ‘Thank God, I have now no
+ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on
+the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your departure.’
+
+‘I do not very clearly take your meaning,’ said Zero, ‘but I am sure you
+mean kindly.  As to my departure, there is another point to be
+considered.  I have neglected to supply myself with funds; my little all
+has perished in what history will love to relate under the name of the
+Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is coarsely if vigorously called
+stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to pass the
+ocean.’
+
+‘For me,’ said Somerset, ‘you have now ceased to be a man.  You have no
+more claim upon me than a door scraper; but the touching confusion of
+your mind disarms me from extremities.  Until to-day, I always thought
+stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your
+idiot face, laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the
+tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood.  What should this
+portend?  I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in scepticism.  Is it
+possible,’ he cried, in a kind of horror of himself—‘is it conceivable
+that I believe in right and wrong?  Already I have found myself, with
+incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.
+And must this change proceed?  Have you robbed me of my youth?  Must I
+fall, at my time of life, into the Common Banker?  But why should I
+address that head of wood?  Let this suffice.  I dare not let you stay
+among women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any
+means I may avoid it; you have no money: well then, take mine, and go;
+and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day will be your last.’
+
+‘Under the circumstances,’ replied Zero, ‘I scarce see my way to refuse
+your offer.  Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am
+aware our point of view requires a little training, a little moral
+hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points that has always
+charmed me in your character is this delightful frankness.  As for the
+small advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia.’
+
+‘It shall not,’ said Somerset.
+
+‘Dear fellow, you do not understand,’ returned the plotter.  ‘I shall now
+be received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my experiments
+will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse.’
+
+‘What I am now about, sir, is a crime,’ replied Somerset; ‘and were you
+to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be reimbursed of
+money I had so scandalously misapplied.  Take it, and keep it.  By
+George, sir, three days of you have transformed me to an ancient Roman.’
+
+With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair were
+driven rapidly to the railway terminus.  There, an oath having been
+exacted, the money changed hands.
+
+‘And now,’ said Somerset, ‘I have bought back my honour with every penny
+I possess.  And I thank God, though there is nothing before me but
+starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel
+Jones.’
+
+‘To starve?’ cried Zero.  ‘Dear fellow, I cannot endure the thought.’
+
+‘Take your ticket!’ returned Somerset.
+
+‘I think you display temper,’ said Zero.
+
+‘Take your ticket,’ reiterated the young man.
+
+‘Well,’ said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, ‘your attitude
+is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should ask you to
+shake hands.’
+
+‘As a man, no,’ replied Somerset; ‘but I have no objection to shake hands
+with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or bell-fire.’
+
+‘This is a very cold parting,’ sighed the dynamiter; and still followed
+by Somerset, he began to descend the platform.  This was now bustling
+with passengers; the train for Liverpool was just about to start, another
+had but recently arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult.
+As the pair reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they
+came into an open space; and here the attention of the plotter was
+attracted by a _Standard_ broadside bearing the words: ‘Second Edition:
+Explosion in Golden Square.’  His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for
+the necessary coin, he sprang forward—his bag knocked sharply on the
+corner of the stall—and instantly, with a formidable report, the dynamite
+exploded.  When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen much shattered,
+and the stall keeper running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the
+Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to be found.
+
+In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and
+came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with
+hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.  Yet as he continued to walk
+the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful
+exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and
+the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even if the
+worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was
+expunged.
+
+Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall’s shop;
+and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he
+did, he opened the glass door and entered.
+
+‘Ha!’ said Mr. Godall, ‘Mr. Somerset!  Well, have you met with an
+adventure?  Have you the promised story?  Sit down, if you please; suffer
+me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a
+narrative in your best style.’
+
+‘I must not take a cigar,’ said Somerset.
+
+‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Godall.  ‘But now I come to look at you more closely,
+I perceive that you are changed.  My poor boy, I hope there is nothing
+wrong?’
+
+Somerset burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+_EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN_
+
+
+On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and
+between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner
+pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in
+Rupert Street.  It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory
+of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having
+prevented his return.  Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the
+shop was free of customers.
+
+The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny
+version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner’s arrival.  On a second
+glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.
+
+‘By Jove,’ he thought, ‘unquestionably Somerset!’
+
+And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to
+avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste
+to curiosity.
+
+‘“Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,”’ said the shopman to himself, in
+the tone of one considering a verse.  ‘I suppose it would be too much to
+say “orotunda,” and yet how noble it were!  “Or opulent orotunda strike
+the sky.”  But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and
+some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.’
+
+‘Somerset, my dear fellow,’ said Challoner, ‘is this a masquerade?’
+
+‘What?  Challoner!’ cried the shopman.  ‘I am delighted to see you.  One
+moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.’  And
+with a friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the
+commerce of the Muses.  ‘I say,’ he said presently, looking up, ‘you seem
+in wonderful preservation: how about the hundred pounds?’
+
+‘I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,’ replied
+Challoner modestly.
+
+‘Ah,’ said Somerset, ‘I very much doubt the legitimacy of inheritance.
+The State, in my view, should collar it.  I am now going through a stage
+of socialism and poetry,’ he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a
+course of medicinal waters.
+
+‘And are you really the person of the—establishment?’ inquired Challoner,
+deftly evading the word ‘shop.’
+
+‘A vendor, sir, a vendor,’ returned the other, pocketing his poesy.  ‘I
+help old Happy and Glorious.  Can I offer you a weed?’
+
+‘Well, I scarcely like . . . ’ began Challoner.
+
+‘Nonsense, my dear fellow,’ cried the shopman.  ‘We are very proud of the
+business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being the most
+egregious of created beings from the point of view of ethics, is
+literally sprung from the loins of kings.  “_De Godall je suis le
+fervent_.”  There is only one Godall.—By the way,’ he added, as Challoner
+lit his cigar, ‘how did you get on with the detective trade?’
+
+‘I did not try,’ said Challoner curtly.
+
+‘Ah, well, I did,’ returned Somerset, ‘and made the most incomparable
+mess of it: lost all my money and fairly covered myself with odium and
+ridicule.  There is more in that business, Challoner, than meets the eye;
+there is more, in fact, in all businesses.  You must believe in them, or
+get up the belief that you believe.  Hence,’ he added, ‘the recognised
+inferiority of the plumber, for no one could believe in plumbing.’
+
+‘_A propos_,’ asked Challoner, ‘do you still paint?’
+
+‘Not now,’ replied Paul; ‘but I think of taking up the violin.’
+
+Challoner’s eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade of the
+detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the columns of the
+morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.
+
+‘By Jove,’ he cried, ‘that’s odd!’
+
+‘What is odd?’ asked Paul.
+
+‘Oh, nothing,’ returned the other: ‘only I once met a person called
+M’Guire.’
+
+‘So did I!’ cried Somerset.  ‘Is there anything about him?’
+
+Challoner read as follows: ‘_Mysterious death in Stepney_.  An inquest
+was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M’Guire, described as a
+carpenter.  Doctor Dovering stated that he had for some time treated the
+deceased as a dispensary patient, for sleeplessness, loss of appetite,
+and nervous depression.  There was no cause of death to be found.  He
+would say the deceased had sunk.  Deceased was not a temperate man, which
+doubtless accelerated death.  Deceased complained of dumb ague, but
+witness had never been able to detect any positive disease.  He did not
+know that he had any family.  He regarded him as a person of unsound
+intellect, who believed himself a member and the victim of some secret
+society.  If he were to hazard an opinion, he would say deceased had died
+of fear.’
+
+‘And the doctor would be right,’ cried Somerset; ‘and my dear Challoner,
+I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will—Well, after all,’ he
+added, ‘poor devil, he was well served.’
+
+The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the
+threshold.  He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly supplied
+with buttons; his boots were full of water, his hat greasy with service;
+and yet he wore the air of one exceeding well content with life.  He was
+hailed by the two others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.
+
+‘And did you try the detective business?’ inquired Paul.
+
+‘No,’ returned Harry.  ‘Oh yes, by the way, I did though: twice, and got
+caught out both times.  But I thought I should find my—my wife here?’ he
+added, with a kind of proud confusion.
+
+‘What? are you married?’ cried Somerset.
+
+‘Oh yes,’ said Harry, ‘quite a long time: a month at least.’
+
+‘Money?’ asked Challoner.
+
+‘That’s the worst of it,’ Desborough admitted.  ‘We are deadly hard up.
+But the Pri--- Mr. Godall is going to do something for us.  That is what
+brings us here.’
+
+‘Who was Mrs. Desborough?’ said Challoner, in the tone of a man of
+society.
+
+‘She was a Miss Luxmore,’ returned Harry.  ‘You fellows will be sure to
+like her, for she is much cleverer than I.  She tells wonderful stories,
+too; better than a book.’
+
+And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered.  Somerset
+cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the Superfluous Mansion,
+and Challoner fell back a step and dropped his cigar as he beheld the
+sorceress of Chelsea.
+
+‘What!’ cried Harry, ‘do you both know my wife?’
+
+‘I believe I have seen her,’ said Somerset, a little wildly.
+
+‘I think I have met the gentleman,’ said Mrs. Desborough sweetly; ‘but I
+cannot imagine where it was.’
+
+‘Oh no,’ cried Somerset fervently: ‘I have no notion—I cannot
+conceive—where it could have been.  Indeed,’ he continued, growing in
+emphasis, ‘I think it highly probable that it’s a mistake.’
+
+‘And you, Challoner?’ asked Harry, ‘you seemed to recognise her too.’
+
+‘These are both friends of yours, Harry?’ said the lady.  ‘Delighted, I
+am sure.  I do not remember to have met Mr. Challoner.’
+
+Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped after his
+cigar.  ‘I do not remember to have had the pleasure,’ he responded
+huskily.
+
+‘Well, and Mr. Godall?’ asked Mrs. Desborough.
+
+‘Are you the lady that has an appointment with old—’ began Somerset, and
+paused blushing.  ‘Because if so,’ he resumed, ‘I was to announce you at
+once.’
+
+And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small
+pavilion which had been added to the back of the house.  On the roof, the
+rain resounded musically.  The walls were lined with maps and prints and
+a few works of reference.  Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt
+and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured
+pins, the progress of the different wars was being followed day by day.
+A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air;
+and a fire, not of foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets,
+chattered upon silver dogs.  In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr.
+Godall sat in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening
+to the rain upon the roof.
+
+‘Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,’ said he, ‘and have you since last night
+adopted any fresh political principle?’
+
+‘The lady, sir,’ said Somerset, with another blush.
+
+‘You have seen her, I believe?’ returned Mr. Godall; and on Somerset’s
+replying in the affirmative, ‘You will excuse me, my dear sir,’ he
+resumed, ‘if I offer you a hint.  I think it not improbable this lady may
+desire entirely to forget the past.  From one gentleman to another, no
+more words are necessary.’
+
+A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
+touching urbanity that so well became him.
+
+‘I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,’ he said; ‘and
+shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy and a
+pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious benefit to you
+and Mr. Desborough.’
+
+‘Your Highness,’ replied Clara, ‘I must begin with thanks; it is like
+what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the case of the
+unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.’
+She paused.
+
+‘But for yourself?’ suggested Mr. Godall—‘it was thus you were about to
+continue, I believe.’
+
+‘You take the words out of my mouth,’ she said.  ‘For myself, it is
+different.’
+
+‘I am not here to be a judge of men,’ replied the Prince; ‘still less of
+women.  I am now a private person like yourself and many million others;
+but I am one who still fights upon the side of quiet.  Now, madam, you
+know better than I, and God better than you, what you have done to
+mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the future I
+concern myself, it is for the future I demand security.  I would not
+willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not
+restore to wealth one of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war.  I
+speak with some severity, and yet I pick my terms.  I tell myself
+continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of
+the children whose lives and limbs you have endangered.  A woman,’ he
+repeated solemnly—‘and children.  Possibly, madam, when you are yourself
+a mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you
+kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than
+any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease,
+you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.’
+
+‘You look at the fault,’ she said, ‘and not at the excuse.  Has your own
+heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression?  But, alas,
+no! for you were born upon a throne.’
+
+‘I was born of woman,’ said the Prince; ‘I came forth from my mother’s
+agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.  This, which you
+forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.  Is it not one of your
+English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast
+circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a
+great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about for what
+should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last,
+in the centre of all, a mother and her babe?  These, madam, are my
+politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have
+caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue.  Yes, these are my
+politics: to change what we can, to better what we can; but still to bear
+in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs
+and impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause
+however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.’
+
+There was a silence of a moment.
+
+‘I fear, madam,’ resumed the Prince, ‘that I but weary you.  My views are
+formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to grow old.  But I
+must still trouble you for some reply.’
+
+‘I can say but one thing,’ said Mrs. Desborough: ‘I love my husband.’
+
+‘It is a good answer,’ returned the Prince; ‘and you name a good
+influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.’
+
+‘I will not play at pride with such a man as you,’ she answered.  ‘What
+do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure.  What shall I say?  I
+have done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do again.  Can I
+say more?  Yes: I can say this: I never abused myself with the
+muddle-headed fairy tales of politics.  I was at least prepared to meet
+reprisals.  While I was levying war myself—or levying murder, if you
+choose the plainer term—I never accused my adversaries of assassination.
+I never felt or feigned a righteous horror, when a price was put upon my
+life by those whom I attacked.  I never called the policeman a hireling.
+I may have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.’
+
+‘Enough, madam,’ returned the Prince: ‘more than enough!  Your words are
+most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even the assassin is a
+sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual
+clarity.  Suffer me, then, to ask you to retire; for by the signal of
+that bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother, to be close at hand.
+With her I promise you to do my utmost.’
+
+And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, opening a door
+upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+‘Madam and my very good friend,’ said he, ‘is my face so much changed
+that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr. Godall?’
+
+‘To be sure!’ she cried, looking at him through her glasses.  ‘I have
+always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and in your altered
+circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep regret, I will beg
+you to consider my respect increased instead of lessened.’
+
+‘I have found it so,’ returned the Prince, ‘with every class of my
+acquaintance.  But, madam, I pray you to be seated.  My business is of a
+delicate order, and regards your daughter.’
+
+‘In that case,’ said Mrs. Luxmore, ‘you may save yourself the trouble of
+speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have nothing to do with
+her.  I will not hear one word in her defence; but as I value nothing so
+particularly as the virtue of justice, I think it my duty to explain to
+you the grounds of my complaint.  She deserted me, her natural protector;
+for years, she has consorted with the most disreputable persons; and to
+fill the cup of her offence, she has recently married.  I refuse to see
+her, or the being to whom she has linked herself.  One hundred and twenty
+pounds a year, I have always offered her: I offer it again.  It is what I
+had myself when I was her age.’
+
+‘Very well, madam,’ said the Prince; ‘and be that so!  But to touch upon
+another matter: what was the income of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?’
+
+‘My father?’ asked the spirited old lady.  ‘I believe he had seven
+hundred pounds in the year.’
+
+‘You were one, I think, of several?’ pursued the Prince.
+
+‘Of four,’ was the reply.  ‘We were four daughters; and painful as the
+admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be found in
+England.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said the Prince.  ‘And you, madam, have an income of eight
+thousand?’
+
+‘Not more than five,’ returned the old lady; ‘but where on earth are you
+conducting me?’
+
+‘To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,’ replied Florizel,
+smiling.  ‘For I must not suffer you to take your father for a rule.  He
+was poor, you are rich.  He had many calls upon his poverty: there are
+none upon your wealth.  And indeed, madam, if you will let me touch this
+matter with a needle, there is but one point in common to your two
+positions: that each had a daughter more remarkable for liveliness than
+duty.’
+
+‘I have been entrapped into this house,’ said the old lady, getting to
+her feet.  ‘But it shall not avail.  Not all the tobacconists in Europe . . .’
+
+‘Ah, madam,’ interrupted Florizel, ‘before what is referred to as my
+fall, you had not used such language!  And since you so much object to
+the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint.  If
+you will not consent to support your daughter, I shall be constrained to
+place that lady behind my counter, where I doubt not she would prove a
+great attraction; and your son-in-law shall have a livery and run the
+errands.  With such young blood my business might be doubled, and I might
+be bound in common gratitude to place the name of Luxmore beside that of
+Godall.’
+
+‘Your Highness,’ said the old lady, ‘I have been very rude, and you are
+very cunning.  I suppose the minx is on the premises.  Produce her.’
+
+‘Let us rather observe them unperceived,’ said the Prince; and so saying
+he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.
+
+Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and Harry
+were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest; Challoner,
+alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the detested
+neighbourhood of the enchantress.
+
+‘At that moment,’ Mrs. Desborough was saying, ‘Mr Gladstone detected the
+features of his cowardly assailant.  A cry rose to his lips: a cry of
+mingled triumph . . .’
+
+‘That is Mr. Somerset!’ interrupted the spirited old lady, in the highest
+note of her register.  ‘Mr. Somerset, what have you done with my
+house-property?’
+
+‘Madam,’ said the Prince, ‘let it be mine to give the explanation; and in
+the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.’
+
+‘Well, Clara, how do you do?’ said Mrs. Luxmore.  ‘It appears I am to
+give you an allowance.  So much the better for you.  As for Mr. Somerset,
+I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole affair, though
+costly, was eminently humorous.  And at any rate,’ she added, nodding to
+Paul, ‘he is a young gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his
+pictures were the funniest I ever saw.’
+
+‘I have ordered a collation,’ said the Prince.  ‘Mr. Somerset, as these
+are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that you should join them
+at table.  I will take the shop.’
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+{9}  Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.
+Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset
+should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon the English
+people to remember with more gratitude the services of the police; to
+what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against
+what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward, either in
+fame or money: matter, it has appeared to the translators, too serious
+for this place.
+
+{43}  In this name the accent falls upon the _e_; the _s_ is sibilant.
+
+{176}  The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage
+conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader.  We subjoin a
+specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or
+verse: ‘Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a
+never-resting fightard;’ and he goes on (if we correctly gather his
+meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously correct spellings as
+lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-filchard (clearly justified by the
+parallel—pilchard) and opera dancard.  ‘Dynamitist,’ he adds, ‘I could
+understand.’
+
+{182}  The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch which
+our translation usually prætermits, here registers a somewhat interesting
+detail.  Zero pronounced the word ‘boom;’ and the reader, if but for the
+nonce, will possibly consent to follow him.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson, et
+al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dynamiter
+       More New Arabian Nights
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 3, 2011  [eBook #647]
+This file was first posted on September 13, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNAMITER***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by
+David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS</i></p>
+<h1>THE DYNAMITER</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON<br />
+<span class="smcap">and</span><br />
+FANNY VAN <span class="smcap">de</span> GRIFT STEVENSON</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p0b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"The Silver Library"
+title=
+"The Silver Library"
+src="images/p0s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap"><i>new
+impression</i></span></p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.<br />
+39 <span class="smcap">paternoster row</span>, <span
+class="smcap">london</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">new york and bombay</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">1903</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page iv--><a
+name="pageiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. iv</span><span
+class="smcap"><i>bibliographic note</i></span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>First Edition</i>, <i>April
+1885</i>; <i>Reprinted May 1885</i>, <i>July 1885</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Silver Library Edition</i>,
+<i>January 1895</i>; <i>Reprinted March 1897</i>, <i>July
+1899</i>, <i>August 1903</i>.</p>
+<h2><!-- page v--><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+v</span>TO<br />
+MESSRS. COLE AND COX,<br />
+<span class="smcap">police officers</span></h2>
+<p><i>Gentlemen,&mdash;In the volume now in your hands</i>,
+<i>the authors have touched upon that ugly devil of crime</i>,
+<i>with which it is your glory to have contended</i>.&nbsp; <i>It
+were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled
+strain</i>, <i>where crime preserves some features of
+nobility</i>, <i>and where reason and humanity can still relish
+the temptation</i>.&nbsp; <i>Horror</i>, <i>in this case</i>,
+<i>is due to Mr. Parnell</i>: <i>he sits before posterity
+silent</i>, <i>Mr. Forster&rsquo;s appeal echoing down the
+ages</i>.&nbsp; <i>Horror is due to ourselves</i>, <i>in that we
+have so long coquetted with political crime</i>; <i>not seriously
+weighing</i>, <i>not acutely following it from cause to
+consequence</i>; <i>but with a generous</i>, <i>unfounded heat of
+sentiment</i>, <i>like the schoolboy with the penny tale</i>,
+<i>applauding what was specious</i>.&nbsp; <i>When it touched
+ourselves</i> (<i>truly in a vile shape</i>), <i>we proved false
+to the imaginations</i>; <i>discovered</i>, <i>in a clap</i>,
+<i>that crime was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding
+names</i>; <i>and recoiled from our false deities</i>.</p>
+<p><!-- page vi--><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+vi</span><i>But seriousness comes most in place when we are to
+speak of our defenders</i>.&nbsp; <i>Whoever be in the right in
+this great and confused war of politics</i>; <i>whatever elements
+of greed</i>, <i>whatever traits of the bully</i>, <i>dishonour
+both parties in this inhuman contest</i>;&mdash;<i>your side</i>,
+<i>your part</i>, <i>is at least pure of doubt</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>Yours is the side of the child</i>, <i>of the breeding
+woman</i>, <i>of individual pity and public trust</i>.&nbsp;
+<i>If our society were the mere kingdom of the devil</i> (<i>as
+indeed it wears some of his colours</i>) <i>it yet embraces many
+precious elements and many innocent persons whom it is a glory to
+defend</i>.&nbsp; <i>Courage and devotion</i>, <i>so common in
+the ranks of the police</i>, <i>so little recognised</i>, <i>so
+meagrely rewarded</i>, <i>have at length found their
+commemoration in an historical act</i>.&nbsp; <i>History</i>,
+<i>which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the
+appeal of Mr. Forster</i>, <i>and Gordon setting forth upon his
+tragic enterprise</i>, <i>will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the
+dynamite in his defenceless hands</i>, <i>nor Mr. Cox coming
+coolly to his aid</i>.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</i></p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>FANNY VAN </i><span
+class="smcap"><i>de</i></span><i> GRIFT STEVENSON</i></p>
+<h2><!-- page vii--><a name="pagevii"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. vii</span>CONTENTS<br />
+<i>THE DYNAMITER</i></h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="smcap">page</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Prologue of the Cigar Divan</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Challoner&rsquo;s
+Adventure</span>:</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Squire of
+Dames</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page13">13</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Story of the
+Destroying Angel</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page27">27</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Squire of Dames</span>
+(<i>continued</i>)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page76">76</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Summerset&rsquo;s
+Adventure</span>:</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Superfluous
+Mansion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page100">100</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Narrative of the
+Spirited Old Lady</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page108">108</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Superfluous Mansion</span>
+(<i>continued</i>)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page145">145</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Zero&rsquo;s Tale of
+the Explosive Bomb</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page195">195</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Desborough&rsquo;s
+Adventure</span>:</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Brown
+Box</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page209">209</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Story of the Fair
+Cuban</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page219">219</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Brown Box</span>
+(<i>continued</i>)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page269">269</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Superfluous Mansion</span>
+(<i>continued</i>)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page286">286</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Epilogue of the Cigar Divan</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page299">299</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><!-- page viii--><a name="pageviii"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. viii</span>A NOTE FOR THE READER</h2>
+<p>It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up
+this volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the
+first series of <span class="smcap">New Arabian
+Nights</span>.&nbsp; The loss is yours&mdash;and mine; or to be
+more exact, my publishers&rsquo;.&nbsp; But if you are thus
+unlucky, the least I can do is to pass you a hint.&nbsp; When you
+shall find a reference in the following pages to one Theophilus
+Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho, you
+must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a
+person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the
+magnates of Europe, now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and
+embarked in the tobacco trade.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">R. L. S.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+1</span><i>PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN</i></h2>
+<p>In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be
+more precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square,
+two young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of
+separation.&nbsp; The first, who was of a very smooth address and
+clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched
+and shabby air of his companion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;Paul Somerset!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am indeed Paul Somerset,&rsquo; returned the other,
+&lsquo;or what remains of him after a well-deserved experience of
+poverty and law.&nbsp; But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no
+change; and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no
+wrinkle on your azure brow.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;is not gold that
+glitters.&nbsp; But we are here in an ill posture for
+confidences, and interrupt the movement of these ladies.&nbsp;
+Let us, if you please, find a more private corner.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you will allow me to guide you,&rsquo; replied
+Somerset, &lsquo;I will offer you the best cigar in
+London.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and
+at a brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert
+Street, Soho.&nbsp; The entrance was adorned with one of those
+gigantic Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to the
+standing of antiquities; and across the window-glass, which
+sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars, there
+ran the gilded legend: &lsquo;Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T.
+Godall.&rsquo;&nbsp; The interior of the shop was small, but
+commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and urbane;
+and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia, had soon
+taken their places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush and
+proceeded to exchange their stories.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am now,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;a barrister; but
+Providence and the attorneys have hitherto denied me the
+opportunity to shine.&nbsp; A select society at the Cheshire
+Cheese engaged my evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall could
+testify, have been generally passed in this divan; and my
+mornings, I have taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising
+before twelve.&nbsp; At this rate, my little patrimony was very
+rapidly, and I am proud to remember, most agreeably
+expended.&nbsp; Since then a gentleman, who has really nothing
+else to recommend him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle,
+deals me the small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold
+me once more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my
+favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come into
+a fortune.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should not have supposed so,&rsquo; replied
+Challoner.&nbsp; &lsquo;But doubtless I met you on the way to
+your tailors.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a visit that I purpose to delay,&rsquo; returned
+Somerset, with a smile.&nbsp; &lsquo;My fortune has definite
+limits.&nbsp; It consists, or rather this morning it consisted,
+of one hundred pounds.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is certainly odd,&rsquo; said Challoner;
+&lsquo;yes, certainly the coincidence is strange.&nbsp; I am
+myself reduced to the same margin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;And yet
+Solomon in all his glory&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Such is the fact.&nbsp; I am, dear boy, on my last
+legs,&rsquo; said Challoner.&nbsp; &lsquo;Besides the clothes in
+which you see me, I have scarcely a decent trouser in my
+wardrobe; and if I knew how, I would this instant set about some
+sort of work or commerce.&nbsp; With a hundred pounds for
+capital, a man should push his way.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It may be,&rsquo; returned Somerset; &lsquo;but what to
+do with mine is more than I can fancy.&nbsp; Mr. Godall,&rsquo;
+he added, addressing the salesman, &lsquo;you are a man who knows
+the world: what can a young fellow of reasonable education do
+with a hundred pounds?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It depends,&rsquo; replied the salesman, withdrawing
+his cheroot.&nbsp; &lsquo;The power of money is an article of
+faith in which I profess myself a sceptic.&nbsp; A hundred pounds
+will with difficulty support you for a year; with somewhat more
+difficulty you may spend it in a night; and without any
+difficulty at all you may lose it in five minutes on the Stock
+Exchange.&nbsp; If you are of that stamp of man that rises, a
+penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a
+penny would be no more useless.&nbsp; When I was myself thrown
+unexpectedly upon the world, it was my fortune to possess an art:
+I knew a good cigar.&nbsp; Do you know nothing, Mr.
+Somerset?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not even law,&rsquo; was the reply.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The answer is worthy of a sage,&rsquo; returned Mr.
+Godall.&nbsp; &lsquo;And you, sir,&rsquo; he continued, turning
+to Challoner, &lsquo;as the friend of Mr. Somerset, may I be
+allowed to address you the same question?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;I play a fair
+hand at whist.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How many persons are there in London,&rsquo; returned
+the salesman, &lsquo;who have two-and-thirty teeth?&nbsp; Believe
+me, young gentleman, there are more still who play a fair hand at
+whist.&nbsp; Whist, sir, is wide as the world; &rsquo;tis an
+accomplishment like breathing.&nbsp; I once knew a youth who
+announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of England; the
+design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less excessive than
+that of the man who aspires to make a livelihood by
+whist.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;I am afraid I
+shall have to fall to be a working man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Fall to be a working man?&rsquo; echoed Mr.
+Godall.&nbsp; &lsquo;Suppose a rural dean to be unfrocked, does
+he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were cashiered, would he
+fall to be a puisne judge?&nbsp; The ignorance of your middle
+class surprises me.&nbsp; Outside itself, it thinks the world to
+lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but
+to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in
+ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular
+aptitudes and knowledge.&nbsp; By the defects of your education
+you are more disqualified to be a working man than to be the
+ruler of an empire.&nbsp; The gulf, sir, is below; and the true
+learned arts&mdash;those which alone are safe from the
+competition of insurgent laymen&mdash;are those which give his
+title to the artisan.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a very pompous fellow,&rsquo; said Challoner,
+in the ear of his companion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is immense,&rsquo; said Somerset.</p>
+<p>Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young
+fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some
+tobacco.&nbsp; He was younger than the others; and, in a somewhat
+meaningless and altogether English way, he was a handsome
+lad.&nbsp; When he had been served, and had lighted his pipe and
+taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself to Challoner
+by the name of Desborough.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Desborough, to be sure,&rsquo; cried Challoner.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Well, Desborough, and what do you do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The fact is,&rsquo; said Desborough, &lsquo;that I am
+doing nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A private fortune possibly?&rsquo; inquired the
+other.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, no,&rsquo; replied Desborough, rather
+sulkily.&nbsp; &lsquo;The fact is that I am waiting for something
+to turn up.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;All in the same boat!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And have you, too, one hundred pounds?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Worse luck,&rsquo; said Mr. Desborough.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,&rsquo; said
+Somerset: &lsquo;Three futiles.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A character of this crowded age,&rsquo; returned the
+salesman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I deny that the age
+is crowded; I will admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am
+futile, that he is futile, and that we are all three as futile as
+the devil.&nbsp; What am I?&nbsp; I have smattered law, smattered
+letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even
+a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all
+London roaring by at the street&rsquo;s end, as impotent as any
+baby.&nbsp; I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle;
+but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve
+into my elements like an unstable mixture.&nbsp; I begin to
+perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the
+bottom&mdash;were it only literature.&nbsp; And yet, sir, the man
+of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of
+an extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere
+at home; he has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible
+but that this great habit of existence should bear fruit.&nbsp; I
+count myself a man of the world, accomplished,
+<i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>.&nbsp; So do you, Challoner.&nbsp; And
+you, Mr. Desborough?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh yes,&rsquo; returned the young man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the
+world, without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic
+centre of the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert
+Street), in the midst of the chief mass of people, and within
+ear-shot of the most continuous chink of money on the surface of
+the globe.&nbsp; Sir, as civilised men, what do we do?&nbsp; I
+will show you.&nbsp; You take in a paper?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I take,&rsquo; said Mr. Godall solemnly, &lsquo;the
+best paper in the world, the <i>Standard</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good,&rsquo; resumed Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;I now hold
+it in my hand, the voice of the world, a telephone repeating all
+men&rsquo;s wants.&nbsp; I open it, and where my eye first
+falls&mdash;well, no, not Morrison&rsquo;s Pills&mdash;but here,
+sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was
+seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society.&nbsp;
+Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude:
+&ldquo;<i>Two hundred Pounds Reward</i>.&mdash;The above reward
+will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity
+and whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the neighbourhood
+of the Green Park.&nbsp; He was over six feet in height, with
+shoulders disproportionately broad, close shaved, with black
+moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is
+founded.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn
+detectives?&rsquo; inquired Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do I propose it?&nbsp; No, sir,&rsquo; cried
+Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is reason, destiny, the plain face of
+the world, that commands and imposes it.&nbsp; Here all our
+merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers of
+conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we
+are and have builds up the character of the complete
+detective.&nbsp; It is, in short, the only profession for a
+gentleman.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The proposition is perhaps excessive,&rsquo; replied
+Challoner; &lsquo;for hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all
+dirty, sneaking, and ungentlemanly trades, the least and
+lowest.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To defend society?&rsquo; asked Somerset; &lsquo;to
+stake one&rsquo;s life for others? to deracinate occult and
+powerful evil?&nbsp; I appeal to Mr. Godall.&nbsp; He, at least,
+as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such
+philistine opinions.&nbsp; He knows that the policeman, as he is
+called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both worse
+equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence a more
+noble hero than the soldier.&nbsp; Do you, by any chance, deceive
+yourself into supposing that a general would either ask or
+expect, from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most
+momentous battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at
+Peckham Rye?&rsquo; <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9"
+class="citation">[9]</a></p>
+<p>&lsquo;I did not understand we were to join the force,&rsquo;
+said Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nor shall we.&nbsp; These are the hands; but
+here&mdash;here, sir, is the head,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Enough; it is decreed.&nbsp; We shall hunt down this
+miscreant in the sealskin coat.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Suppose that we agreed,&rsquo; retorted Challoner,
+&lsquo;you have no plan, no knowledge; you know not where to seek
+for a beginning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Challoner!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;is it possible
+that you hold the doctrine of Free Will?&nbsp; And are you devoid
+of any tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such
+exploded fallacies?&nbsp; Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan,
+rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole
+reliance.&nbsp; Chance has brought us three together; when we
+next separate and go forth our several ways, Chance will
+continually drag before our careless eyes a thousand eloquent
+clues, not to this mystery only, but to the countless mysteries
+by which we live surrounded.&nbsp; Then comes the part of the man
+of the world, of the detective born and bred.&nbsp; This clue,
+which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as a
+cat, he leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and
+passion, and from one trifling circumstance divines a
+world.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Just so,&rsquo; said Challoner; &lsquo;and I am
+delighted that you should recognise these virtues in
+yourself.&nbsp; But in the meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself
+incapable of joining.&nbsp; I was neither born nor bred as a
+detective, but as a placable and very thirsty gentleman; and, for
+my part, I begin to weary for a drink.&nbsp; As for clues and
+adventures, the only adventure that is ever likely to occur to me
+will be an adventure with a bailiff.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now there is the fallacy,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;There I catch the secret of your futility in life.&nbsp;
+The world teems and bubbles with adventure; it besieges you along
+the street: hands waving out of windows, swindlers coming up and
+swearing they knew you when you were abroad, affable and doubtful
+people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for your
+notice.&nbsp; But not you: you turn away, you walk your seedy
+mill round, you must go the dullest way.&nbsp; Now here, I beg of
+you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it in with
+both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic, grasp
+it.&nbsp; I will do the like; the devil is in it, but at least we
+shall have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate the story of
+our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the divan, the great
+Godall, now hearing me with inward joy.&nbsp; Come, is it a
+bargain?&nbsp; Will you, indeed, both promise to welcome every
+chance that offers, to plunge boldly into every opening, and,
+keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to study and piece
+together all that happens?&nbsp; Come, promise: let me open to
+you the doors of the great profession of intrigue.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is not much in my way,&rsquo; said Challoner,
+&lsquo;but, since you make a point of it, amen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t mind promising,&rsquo; said Desborough,
+&lsquo;but nothing will happen to me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;O faithless ones!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But at least I have your promises; and Godall, I perceive,
+is transported with delight.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I promise myself at least much pleasure from your
+various narratives,&rsquo; said the salesman, with the customary
+calm polish of his manner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now, gentlemen,&rsquo; concluded Somerset,
+&lsquo;let us separate.&nbsp; I hasten to put myself in
+fortune&rsquo;s way.&nbsp; Hark how, in this quiet corner, London
+roars like the noise of battle; four million destinies are here
+concentred; and in the strong panoply of one hundred pounds,
+payable to the bearer, I am about to plunge into that
+web.&rsquo;</p>
+<h2><!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+13</span>CHALLONER&rsquo;S ADVENTURE</h2>
+<h3><i>THE SQUIRE OF DAMES</i></h3>
+<p>Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of
+Putney, where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere
+esteem of the people of the house.&nbsp; To this remote home he
+found himself, at a very early hour in the morning of the next
+day, condemned to set forth on foot.&nbsp; He was a young man of
+a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body; bland,
+sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses.&nbsp; In
+happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries
+were now denied him; and with what courage he could muster he
+addressed himself to walk.</p>
+<p>It was then the height of the season and the summer; the
+weather was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the
+blinded houses and along the vacant streets, the chill of the
+dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all the brightness of
+the July day already shone upon the city.&nbsp; He walked at
+first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and repenting
+his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the labyrinth
+of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the
+silence.&nbsp; Street after street looked down upon his solitary
+figure, house after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly
+jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front and its
+commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course, under
+day&rsquo;s effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal
+sleepers, lonely as a ship.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he reflected, &lsquo;if I were like my
+scatter-brained companion, here were indeed the scene where I
+might look for an adventure.&nbsp; Here, in broad day, the
+streets are secret as in the blackest night of January, and in
+the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of
+Yucatan.&nbsp; If I but raise my voice I could summon up the
+number of an army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this
+city of sleep.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was still following these quaint and serious musings when
+he came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common
+in the quarter.&nbsp; Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and
+the green tops of trees, were several of those discreet,
+<i>bijou</i> residences on which propriety is apt to look
+askance.&nbsp; Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks
+of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a
+dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.&nbsp;
+Before one such house, that stood a little separate among walled
+gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a
+moment, looking on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed
+an emblem of the neighbouring peace.&nbsp; With the cessation of
+the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the house stood
+smokeless: the blinds down, the whole machinery of life arrested;
+and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the breathing of
+the sleepers.</p>
+<p>As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring
+detonation from within.&nbsp; This was followed by a monstrous
+hissing and simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St.
+Paul&rsquo;s; and at the same time from every chink of door and
+window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.&nbsp; The cat disappeared
+with a cry.&nbsp; Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the
+stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men
+and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street
+and fled without a word.&nbsp; The hissing had already ceased,
+the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had come and
+gone as in a dream, and still Challoner was rooted to the
+spot.&nbsp; At last his reason and his fear awoke together, and
+with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.</p>
+<p>Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had
+resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the
+confused report of his senses, some theory of the
+occurrence.&nbsp; But the occasion of the sounds and stench that
+had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange conjunction of
+fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were
+mysteries beyond his plummet.&nbsp; With an obscure awe he
+considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the
+web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.</p>
+<p>In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now,
+steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an
+unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a
+strip of gardens in the midst.&nbsp; Here was quite a stir of
+birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was grateful;
+instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was something
+brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his eyes
+upon the pavement and his mind running upon distant scenes, till
+he was recalled, upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked his
+further progress.&nbsp; This street, whose name I have forgotten,
+is no thoroughfare.</p>
+<p>He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for
+as he raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they
+alighted on the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to
+recognise the third of the incongruous fugitives.&nbsp; She had
+run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall had checked her career:
+and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the ground beside
+the garden railings, soiling her dress among the summer
+dust.&nbsp; Each saw the other in the same instant of time; and
+she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and began to hurry
+from the scene.</p>
+<p>Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of
+his adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned
+him.&nbsp; Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the
+possession of his mind; and yet, in spite of both, he saw himself
+condemned to follow in the lady&rsquo;s wake.&nbsp; He did so
+gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, tread as
+lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty
+street.&nbsp; Their sound appeared to strike in her some strong
+emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere she paused.&nbsp;
+A second time she addressed herself to flight; and a second time
+she paused.&nbsp; Then she turned about, and with doubtful steps
+and the most attractive appearance of timidity, drew near to the
+young man.&nbsp; He on his side continued to advance with similar
+signals of distress and bashfulness.&nbsp; At length, when they
+were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she
+reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you an English gentleman?&rsquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.&nbsp;
+He was the spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to
+fail in his devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was
+a man averse from amorous adventures.&nbsp; He looked east and
+west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview
+remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the full
+glare of the day&rsquo;s eye, cut off from any human
+intervention.&nbsp; His looks returned at last upon the
+suppliant.&nbsp; He remarked with irritation that she was
+charming both in face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a
+lady undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping
+and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I protest you have no
+cause to fear intrusion; and if I have appeared to follow you,
+the fault is in this street, which has deceived us
+both.&rsquo;&nbsp; An unmistakable relief appeared upon the
+lady&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; &lsquo;I might have guessed it!&rsquo;
+she exclaimed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thank you a thousand times!&nbsp; But
+at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these
+staring windows, I am lost in terrors&mdash;oh, lost in
+them!&rsquo; she cried, her face blanching at the words.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I beg you to lend me your arm,&rsquo; she added with the
+loveliest, suppliant inflection.&nbsp; &lsquo;I dare not go
+alone; my nerve is gone&mdash;I had a shock, oh, what a
+shock!&nbsp; I beg of you to be my escort.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear madam,&rsquo; responded Challoner heavily,
+&lsquo;my arm is at your service.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling
+with her sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead
+him in the direction of the city.&nbsp; One thing was plain,
+among so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were
+genuine.&nbsp; Still, as she went, she spied around as if for
+dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and
+now clutch his arm in hers.&nbsp; To Challoner her terror was at
+once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it
+still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and longed for
+release.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he said at last, &lsquo;I am, of course,
+charmed to be of use to any lady; but I confess I was bound in a
+direction opposite to that you follow, and a word of
+explanation&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; she sobbed, &lsquo;not here&mdash;not
+here!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The blood of Challoner ran cold.&nbsp; He might have thought
+the lady mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous
+stuff; and in view of the detonation, the smoke and the flight of
+the ill-assorted trio, his mind was lost among mysteries.&nbsp;
+So they continued to thread the maze of streets in silence, with
+the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with
+incommunicable terrors.&nbsp; In time, however, and above all by
+their quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise to firmer
+spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the corners; and
+Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and distant figure of
+a constable, returned to the charge with more of spirit and
+directness.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I thought,&rsquo; said he, in the tone of conversation,
+&lsquo;that I had indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in
+the company of two gentlemen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;you need not fear to wound
+me by the truth.&nbsp; You saw me flee from a common
+lodging-house, and my companions were not gentlemen.&nbsp; In
+such a case, the best of compliments is to be frank.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I thought,&rsquo; resumed Challoner, encouraged as much
+as he was surprised by the spirit of her reply, &lsquo;to have
+perceived, besides, a certain odour.&nbsp; A noise, too&mdash;I
+do not know to what I should compare it&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Silence!&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;You do not know
+the danger you invoke.&nbsp; Wait, only wait; and as soon as we
+have left those streets, and got beyond the reach of listeners,
+all shall be explained.&nbsp; Meanwhile, avoid the topic.&nbsp;
+What a sight is this sleeping city!&rsquo; she exclaimed; and
+then, with a most thrilling voice, &lsquo;&ldquo;Dear God,&rdquo;
+she quoted, &ldquo;the very houses seem asleep, and all that
+mighty heart is lying still.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I perceive, madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you are a
+reader.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am more than that,&rsquo; she answered, with a
+sigh.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am a girl condemned to thoughts beyond her
+age; and so untoward is my fate, that this walk upon the arm of a
+stranger is like an interlude of peace.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the
+Victoria Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady
+paused, withdrew her arm from Challoner&rsquo;s, and looked up
+and down as though in pain or indecision.&nbsp; Then, with a
+lovely change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand upon his
+arm&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What you already think of me,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I
+tremble to conceive; yet I must here condemn myself still
+further.&nbsp; Here I must leave you, and here I beseech you to
+wait for my return.&nbsp; Do not attempt to follow me or spy upon
+my actions.&nbsp; Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as
+innocent as your own sister; and do not, above all, desert
+me.&nbsp; Stranger as you are, I have none else to look to.&nbsp;
+You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman,
+courteous and kind: and when I beg for a few minutes&rsquo;
+patience, I make sure beforehand you will not deny me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a
+grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner.&nbsp; But the force
+of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man was
+not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative nearer
+than a great-aunt in Wales.&nbsp; Now he was alone, besides, the
+spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered
+his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the spirit of revolt,
+he started in pursuit.&nbsp; The reader, if he has ever plied the
+fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be unaware that,
+in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain early
+taverns inaugurate the business of the day.&nbsp; It was into one
+of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block,
+beheld his charming companion disappear.&nbsp; To say he was
+surprised were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment
+behind him.&nbsp; Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon
+his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace
+enchantress.&nbsp; She had scarce been gone a second, ere the
+swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a
+young man of mean and slouching attire.&nbsp; For some five or
+six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air; then
+the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady,
+with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards
+Challoner.&nbsp; He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her
+ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements
+eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still entertained some
+thoughts of flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance
+lessened.&nbsp; Against mere beauty he was proof: it was her
+unmistakable gentility that now robbed him of the courage of his
+cowardice.&nbsp; With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly
+on his right; with one who, in spite of all, he could not quite
+deny to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.&nbsp; At the very
+corner from whence he had spied upon her interview, she came upon
+him, still transfixed, and&mdash;&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she cried,
+with a bright flush of colour.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah!&nbsp;
+Ungenerous!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of
+Dames to the possession of himself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he returned, with a fair show of
+stoutness, &lsquo;I do not think that hitherto you can complain
+of any lack of generosity; I have suffered myself to be led over
+a considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I now request
+you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have friends
+at hand who will be glad of the succession.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She stood a moment dumb.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go! go, and
+may God help me!&nbsp; You have seen me&mdash;me, an innocent
+girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by sinister
+men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await my
+explanation or to help in my distress.&nbsp; Go!&rsquo; she
+repeated.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am lost indeed.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with a
+passionate gesture she turned and fled along the street.</p>
+<p>Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost
+intolerable sense of guilt contending with the profound sense
+that he was being gulled.&nbsp; She was no sooner gone than the
+first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he had
+done her less than justice, that his conduct was a perfect model
+of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her choice of
+language, and the elegant decorum of her movements, cried out
+aloud against a harsh construction; and between penitence and
+curiosity he began slowly to follow in her wake.&nbsp; At the
+corner he had her once more full in view.&nbsp; Her speed was
+failing like a stricken bird&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Even as he looked,
+she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned against the
+wall.&nbsp; At the spectacle, Challoner&rsquo;s fortitude gave
+way.&nbsp; In a few strides he overtook her and, for the first
+time removing his hat, assured her in the most moving terms of
+his entire respect and firm desire to help her.&nbsp; He spoke at
+first unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she began to
+comprehend his words; she moved a little, and drew herself
+upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness,
+turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and
+gratitude were mingled.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; he cried,
+&lsquo;use me as you will!&rsquo;&nbsp; And once more, but now
+with a great air of deference, he offered her the conduct of his
+arm.&nbsp; She took it with a sigh that struck him to the heart;
+and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.&nbsp; But
+now her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on
+the way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like
+the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.&nbsp;
+Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her
+spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful and
+charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire
+the elasticity of his companion&rsquo;s nature.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let
+me forget,&rsquo; she had said, &lsquo;for one half hour, let me
+forget;&rsquo; and sure enough, with the very word, her sorrows
+appeared to be forgotten.&nbsp; Before every house she paused,
+invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched his character:
+here lived the old general whom she was to marry on the fifth of
+the next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had
+set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily on
+the young man&rsquo;s arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant
+in his ears.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; she sighed, by way of
+commentary, &lsquo;in such a life as mine I must seize tight hold
+of any happiness that I can find.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of
+Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the
+bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last admitted
+into that paradise of lawns.&nbsp; Challoner and his companion
+followed the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in that
+tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary with the
+night&rsquo;s patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the
+benches or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the
+park had soon utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders;
+and the pair proceeded on their way alone in the grateful quiet
+of the morning.</p>
+<p>Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on
+a mound of turf.&nbsp; The young lady looked about her with
+relief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;here at last we are
+secure from listeners.&nbsp; Here, then, you shall learn and
+judge my history.&nbsp; I could not bear that we should part, and
+that you should still suppose your kindness squandered upon one
+who was unworthy.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner
+to take a place immediately beside her, began in the following
+words, and with the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate
+the story of her life.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+27</span><i>STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL</i></h3>
+<p>My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great,
+ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or
+misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth and
+to lay aside the name of his ancestors.&nbsp; He sought the
+States; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at
+once into the far West with an exploring party of
+frontiersmen.&nbsp; He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not
+only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many
+sciences, and above all in botany, which he particularly
+loved.&nbsp; Thus it fell that, before many months, Fremont
+himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted and bowed to
+his opinion.</p>
+<p>They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown
+regions of the West.&nbsp; For some time they followed the track
+of Mormon caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and
+melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and animals.&nbsp; Then
+they inclined their route a little to the north, and, losing even
+these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding
+stillness.</p>
+<p>I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that
+ride: rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were
+very far between; and neither beast nor bird disturbed the
+solitude.&nbsp; On the fortieth day they had already run so short
+of food that it was judged advisable to call a halt and scatter
+upon all sides to hunt.&nbsp; A great fire was built, that its
+smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the party
+mounted and struck off at a venture into the surrounding
+desert.</p>
+<p>My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs
+upon the one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an
+unwatered vale dotted with boulders like the site of some
+subverted city.&nbsp; At length he found the slot of a great
+animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair among the brush,
+judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of most
+unusual size.&nbsp; He quickened the pace of his steed, and still
+following the quarry, came at last to the division of two
+watersheds.&nbsp; On the far side the country was exceeding
+intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted here
+and there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the
+neighbourhood of water.&nbsp; Here, then, he picketed his horse,
+and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
+wilderness.</p>
+<p>Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of
+the sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that
+direction, was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human
+pathos strangely intermixed.&nbsp; The stream ran at the bottom
+of a narrow and winding passage, whose wall-like sides of rock
+were sometimes for miles together unscalable by man.&nbsp; The
+water, when the stream was swelled with rains, must have filled
+it from side to side; the sun&rsquo;s rays only plumbed it in the
+hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp funnel, blew
+tempestuously.&nbsp; And yet, in the bottom of this den,
+immediately below my father&rsquo;s eyes as he leaned over the
+margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, women,
+and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks.&nbsp; They
+lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring;
+their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and
+emaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of the
+stream, a faint sound of moaning mounted to my father&rsquo;s
+ears.</p>
+<p>While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet,
+unwound his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a
+young girl who sat hard by propped against a rock.&nbsp; The girl
+did not seem to be conscious of the act; and the old man, after
+having looked upon her with the most engaging pity, returned to
+his former bed and lay down again uncovered on the turf.&nbsp;
+But the scene had not passed without observation even in that
+starving camp.&nbsp; From the very outskirts of the party, a man
+with a white beard and seemingly of venerable years, rose upon
+his knees, and came crawling stealthily among the sleepers
+towards the girl; and judge of my father&rsquo;s indignation,
+when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip from her both the
+coverings and return with them to his original position.&nbsp;
+Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as my father
+imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had raised
+himself again upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at his
+companions, and then swiftly carried his hand into his bosom and
+thence to his mouth.&nbsp; By the movement of his jaws he must be
+eating; in that camp of famine he had reserved a store of
+nourishment; and while his companions lay in the stupor of
+approaching death, secretly restored his powers.</p>
+<p>My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his
+rifle; and but for an accident, he has often declared, he would
+have shot the fellow dead upon the spot.&nbsp; How different
+would then have been my history!&nbsp; But it was not to be: even
+as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the bear, as it
+crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the
+hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that he
+discharged his piece.&nbsp; The bear leaped and fell into a pool
+of the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and in a moment
+the camp was afoot.&nbsp; With cries that were scarce human,
+stumbling, falling and throwing each other down, these starving
+people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father, climbing
+down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream,
+many were already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a
+fire was being built by the more dainty.</p>
+<p>His arrival was for some time unremarked.&nbsp; He stood in
+the midst of these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was
+surrounded by their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on the
+dead carcass; even those who were too weak to move, lay,
+half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the bear; and my
+father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the thick of
+this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to weep.&nbsp; A
+touch upon the arm restrained him.&nbsp; Turning about, he found
+himself face to face with the old man he had so nearly killed;
+and yet, at the second glance, recognised him for no old man at
+all, but one in the full strength of his years, and of a strong,
+speaking, and intellectual countenance stigmatised by weariness
+and famine.&nbsp; He beckoned my father near the cliff, and
+there, in the most private whisper, begged for brandy.&nbsp; My
+father looked at him with scorn: &lsquo;You remind me,&rsquo; he
+said, &lsquo;of a neglected duty.&nbsp; Here is my flask; it
+contains enough, I trust, to revive the women of your party; and
+I will begin with her whom I saw you robbing of her
+blankets.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with that, not heeding his appeals, my
+father turned his back upon the egoist.</p>
+<p>The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far
+sunk in the first stage of death to have observed the bustle
+round her couch; but when my father had raised her head, put the
+flask to her lips, and forced or aided her to swallow some drops
+of the restorative, she opened her languid eyes and smiled upon
+him faintly.&nbsp; Never was there a smile of a more touching
+sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet, more honestly
+eloquent of the soul!&nbsp; I speak with knowledge, for these
+were the same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle.&nbsp; From
+her who was to be his wife, my father, still jealously watched
+and followed by the man with the grey beard, carried his
+attentions to all the women of the party, and gave the last
+drainings of his flask to those among the men who seemed in the
+most need.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is there none left? not a drop for me?&rsquo; said the
+man with the beard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not one drop,&rsquo; replied my father; &lsquo;and if
+you find yourself in want, let me counsel you to put your hand
+into the pocket of your coat.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried the other, &lsquo;you misjudge
+me.&nbsp; You think me one who clings to life for selfish and
+commonplace considerations.&nbsp; But let me tell you, that were
+all this caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of a
+weight.&nbsp; These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as
+May-flies, in the slums of European cities, whom I myself have
+plucked from degradation and misery, from the dung-heap and
+gin-palace door.&nbsp; And you compare their lives with
+mine!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are then a Mormon missionary?&rsquo; asked my
+father.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; cried the man, with a strange smile,
+&lsquo;a Mormon missionary if you will!&nbsp; I value not the
+title.&nbsp; Were I no more than that, I could have died without
+a murmur.&nbsp; But with my life as a physician is bound up the
+knowledge of great secrets and the future of man.&nbsp; This it
+was, when we missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and
+wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in
+five days, has changed my beard from ebony to silver.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you are a physician,&rsquo; mused my father,
+looking on his face, &lsquo;bound by oath to succour man in his
+distresses.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; returned the Mormon, &lsquo;my name is
+Grierson: you will hear that name again; and you will then
+understand that my duty was not to this caravan of paupers, but
+to mankind at large.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now
+sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off at
+once to bring help from his own party; &lsquo;and,&rsquo; he
+added, &lsquo;if you be again reduced to such extremities, look
+round you, and you will see the earth strewn with
+assistance.&nbsp; Here, for instance, growing on the under side
+of fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss.&nbsp;
+Trust me, it is both edible and excellent.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ha!&rsquo; said Doctor Grierson, &lsquo;you know
+botany!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not I alone,&rsquo; returned my father, lowering his
+voice; &lsquo;for see where these have been scraped away.&nbsp;
+Am I right?&nbsp; Was that your secret store?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My father&rsquo;s comrades, he found, when he returned to the
+signal-fire, had made a good day&rsquo;s hunting.&nbsp; They were
+thus the more easily persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon
+caravan; and the next day beheld both parties on the march for
+the frontiers of Utah.&nbsp; The distance to be traversed was not
+great; but the nature of the country, and the difficulty of
+procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks; and my
+father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl
+whom he had succoured.&nbsp; I will call my mother Lucy.&nbsp;
+Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you
+would know well.&nbsp; By what series of undeserved calamities
+this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education,
+ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of
+a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.&nbsp; Let it
+suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a
+heart worthy of her own.&nbsp; The ardour of attachment which
+united my father and mother was perhaps partly due to the strange
+manner of their meeting; it knew, at least, no bounds either
+divine or human; my father, for her sake, determined to renounce
+his ambitions and abjure his faith; and a week had not yet passed
+upon the march before he had resigned from his party, accepted
+the Mormon doctrine, and received the promise of my
+mother&rsquo;s hand on the arrival of the party at Salt Lake.</p>
+<p>The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.&nbsp;
+My father prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful
+to my mother; and though you may wonder to hear it, I believe
+there were few happier homes in any country than that in which I
+saw the light and grew to girlhood.&nbsp; We were, indeed, and in
+spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers
+by the more precise and pious of the faithful: Young himself,
+that formidable tyrant, was known to look askance upon my
+father&rsquo;s riches; but of this I had no guess.&nbsp; I dwelt,
+indeed, under the Mormon system, with perfect innocence and
+faith.&nbsp; Some of our friends had many wives; but such was the
+custom; and why should it surprise me more than marriage
+itself?&nbsp; From time to time one of our rich acquaintances
+would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses
+shared among the elders of the Church, and his memory only
+recalled with bated breath and dreadful headshakings.&nbsp; When
+I had been very still, and my presence perhaps was forgotten,
+some such topic would arise among my elders by the evening fire;
+I would see them draw the closer together and look behind them
+with scared eyes; and I might gather from their whisperings how
+some one, rich, honoured, healthy, and in the prime of his days,
+some one, perhaps, who had taken me on his knees a week before,
+had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished
+like an image from a mirror, leaving not a print behind.&nbsp; It
+was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the universal law.&nbsp;
+And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous
+silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the
+Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these
+mysteries?&nbsp; I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy
+child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with
+vague respect and without the wish for further information.&nbsp;
+Life anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread
+foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the
+desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of my
+parents&rsquo; tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my
+existence; and why should I pry beneath this honest seeming
+surface for the mysteries on which it stood?</p>
+<p>We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved
+to a beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing
+water, and surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of
+poisonous and rocky desert.&nbsp; The city was thirty miles away;
+there was but one road, which went no further than my
+father&rsquo;s door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in
+winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to the
+European.&nbsp; Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson.&nbsp; To my
+young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the
+city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their
+harems, there was something agreeable in the correct manner, the
+fine bearing, the thin white hair and beard, and the piercing
+looks of the old doctor.&nbsp; Yet, though he was almost our only
+visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of fear in his presence;
+and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude in
+which he lived and the obscurity that hung about his
+occupations.&nbsp; His house was but a mile or two from ours, but
+very differently placed.&nbsp; It stood overlooking the road on
+the summit of a steep slope, and planted close against a range of
+overhanging bluffs.&nbsp; Nature, you would say, had here desired
+to imitate the works of man; for the slope was even, like the
+glacis of a fort, and the cliffs of a constant height, like the
+ramparts of a city.&nbsp; Not even spring could change one
+feature of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down
+across a plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone
+sierras on the north.&nbsp; Twice or thrice I remember passing
+within view of this forbidding residence; and seeing it always
+shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to my parents that
+some day it would certainly be robbed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, no,&rsquo; said my father, &lsquo;never
+robbed;&rsquo; and I observed a strange conviction in his
+tone.</p>
+<p>At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy
+family, I chanced to see the doctor&rsquo;s house in a new
+light.&nbsp; My father was ill; my mother confined to his
+bedside; and I was suffered to go, under the charge of our
+driver, to the lonely house some twenty miles away, where our
+packages were left for us.&nbsp; The horse cast a shoe; night
+overtook us halfway home; and it was well on for three in the
+morning when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to
+that part of the road which ran below the doctor&rsquo;s
+house.&nbsp; The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in
+this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its
+station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff,
+not only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival,
+but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of
+smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for miles along
+the windless night air, and its shadow lay far abroad in the
+moonlight upon the glittering alkali.&nbsp; As we continued to
+draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb began to divide
+the silence.&nbsp; First it seemed to me like the beating of a
+heart; and next it put into my mind the thought of some giant,
+smothered under mountains and still, with incalculable effort,
+fetching breath.&nbsp; I had heard of the railway, though I had
+not seen it, and I turned to ask the driver if this resembled
+it.&nbsp; But some look in his eye, some pallor, whether of fear
+or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my
+lips.&nbsp; We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till
+we were close below the lighted house; when suddenly, without one
+premonitory rustle, there burst forth a report of such a bigness
+that it shook the earth and set the echoes of the mountains
+thundering from cliff to cliff.&nbsp; A pillar of amber flame
+leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; and
+at the same time the lights in the windows turned for one instant
+ruby red and then expired.&nbsp; The driver had checked his horse
+instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off
+among the mountains, when there broke from the now darkened
+interior a series of yells&mdash;whether of man or woman it was
+impossible to guess&mdash;the door flew open, and there ran forth
+into the moonlight, at the top of the long slope, a figure clad
+in white, which began to dance and leap and throw itself down,
+and roll as if in agony, before the house.&nbsp; I could no more
+restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the
+horse&rsquo;s flank, and we fled up the rough track at the peril
+of our lives; and did not draw rein till, turning the corner of
+the mountain, we beheld my father&rsquo;s ranch and deep, green
+groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.</p>
+<p>This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had
+climbed to the very topmost point of material prosperity, and I
+myself had reached the age of seventeen.&nbsp; I was still
+innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran upon the
+hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry or to
+material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a mirror
+or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the features
+of my parents.&nbsp; But the fears which had long pressed on
+others were now to be laid on my youth.&nbsp; I had thrown
+myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the windows
+stood open on the verandah, where my mother sat with her
+embroidery; and when my father joined her from the garden, their
+conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so startling a nature
+that it held me enthralled where I lay.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The blow has come,&rsquo; my father said, after a long
+pause.</p>
+<p>I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made
+no reply.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; continued my father, &lsquo;I have received
+to-day a list of all that I possess; of all, I say; of what I
+have lent privately to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of
+what I have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain, when
+there was not a bird in heaven.&nbsp; Does the air, then, carry
+secrets?&nbsp; Are the hills of glass?&nbsp; Do the stones we
+tread upon preserve the footprint to betray us?&nbsp; Oh, Lucy,
+Lucy, that we should have come to such a country!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But this,&rsquo; returned my mother, &lsquo;is no very
+new or very threatening event.&nbsp; You are accused of some
+concealment.&nbsp; You will pay more taxes in the future, and be
+mulcted in a fine.&nbsp; It is disquieting, indeed, to find our
+acts so spied upon, and the most private known.&nbsp; But is this
+new?&nbsp; Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of
+grass?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ay, and our shadows!&rsquo; cried my father.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But all this is nothing.&nbsp; Here is the letter that
+accompanied the list.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time
+silent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; she said at last; and then, with the tone
+of one reading: &lsquo;&ldquo;From a believer so largely blessed
+by Providence with this world&rsquo;s goods,&rdquo;&rsquo; she
+continued, &lsquo;&ldquo;the Church awaits in confidence some
+signal mark of piety.&rdquo;&nbsp; There lies the sting.&nbsp; Am
+I not right?&nbsp; These are the words you fear?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;These are the words,&rsquo; replied my father.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Lucy, you remember Priestley?&nbsp; Two days before he
+disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an isolated butte; we
+could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of
+this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station;
+but it was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and
+that I heard, his story.&nbsp; He had received a letter such as
+this; and he submitted to my approval an answer, in which he
+offered to resign a third of his possessions.&nbsp; I conjured
+him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we
+parted, he had doubled the amount.&nbsp; Well, two days later he
+was gone&mdash;gone from the chief street of the city in the hour
+of noon&mdash;and gone for ever.&nbsp; O God!&rsquo; cried my
+father, &lsquo;by what art do they thus spirit out of life the
+solid body?&nbsp; What death do they command that leaves no
+traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this
+skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be thus
+reft in a moment from the world of sense?&nbsp; A horror dwells
+in that thought more awful than mere death.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is there no hope in Grierson?&rsquo; asked my
+mother.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dismiss the thought,&rsquo; replied my father.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;He now knows all that I can teach, and will do naught to
+save me.&nbsp; His power, besides, is small, his own danger not
+improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he
+leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited for
+an unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful
+price&mdash;but no; I will not believe it: I have no love for
+him, but I will not believe it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Believe what?&rsquo; asked my mother; and then, with a
+change of note, &lsquo;But oh, what matters it?&rsquo; she
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Abimelech, there is but one way open: we must
+fly!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is in vain,&rsquo; returned my father.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I should but involve you in my fate.&nbsp; To leave this
+land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men are closed in life;
+and there is no issue but the grave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We can but die then,&rsquo; replied my mother.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Let us at least die together.&nbsp; Let not Asenath <a
+name="citation43"></a><a href="#footnote43"
+class="citation">[43]</a> and myself survive you.&nbsp; Think to
+what a fate we should be doomed!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though
+I could see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to
+desert his whole estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he
+had by him at the moment, and to flee that night, which promised
+to be dark and cloudy.&nbsp; As soon as the servants were asleep,
+he was to load two mules with provisions; two others were to
+carry my mother and myself; and, striking through the mountains
+by an unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke for
+liberty and life.&nbsp; As soon as they had thus decided, I
+showed myself at the window, and, owning that I had heard all,
+assured them that they could rely on my prudence and
+devotion.&nbsp; I had no fear, indeed, but to show myself
+unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my hand without alarm;
+and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed Heaven for
+the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride and
+some of the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look
+forward to the perils of our flight.</p>
+<p>Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had
+left far behind us the plantations of the valley, and were
+mounting a certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with
+great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous
+torrent.&nbsp; Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its
+flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the wet
+wind of its descent.&nbsp; The trail was breakneck, and led to
+famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for more
+practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod
+from year to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when
+turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we found a bright
+bonfire blazing by itself under an impending rock; and on the
+face of the rock, drawn very rudely with charred wood, the great
+Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.&nbsp; We looked
+upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into a passion
+of tears; but not a word was said.&nbsp; The mules were turned
+about; and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon, we
+retraced our steps in silence.&nbsp; Day had not yet broken ere
+we were once more at home, condemned beyond reprieve.</p>
+<p>What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later,
+a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride
+slowly up the road in a great pother of dust.&nbsp; He was clad
+in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard;
+and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes,
+very reassuring.&nbsp; He was, indeed, a very honest man and
+pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he
+nor any one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark
+of diffidence that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall,
+and entered the room where our unhappy family was gathered.&nbsp;
+My mother and me, he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as
+he was alone with my father laid before him a blank signature of
+President Young&rsquo;s, and offered him a choice of services:
+either to set out as a missionary to the tribes about the White
+Sea, or to join the next day, with a party of Destroying Angels,
+in the massacre of sixty German immigrants.&nbsp; The last, of
+course, my father could not entertain, and the first he regarded
+as a pretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife
+defenceless, and to collect fresh victims for the tyranny under
+which he was himself oppressed, he felt sure he would never be
+suffered to return.&nbsp; He refused both; and Aspinwall, he
+said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious, at the spectacle
+of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for my father and
+his family.&nbsp; He besought him to reconsider his decision; and
+at length, finding he could not prevail, gave him till the moon
+rose to settle his affairs, and say farewell to wife and
+daughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;For,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;then, at the
+latest, you must ride with me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all
+too fast; and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range,
+and my father and Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their
+nocturnal journey.&nbsp; My mother, though still bearing an
+heroic countenance, had hastened to shut herself in her
+apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the dark
+house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to
+saddle my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain,
+and to enjoy one farewell sight of my departing father.&nbsp; The
+two men had set forth at a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind
+them, when I reached the point of view.&nbsp; I was the more
+amazed to see no moving creature in the landscape.&nbsp; The
+moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and nowhere, under
+the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a bush, a
+farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one.&nbsp;
+From the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of
+bluffs concealed the doctor&rsquo;s house; and across the top of
+that projection the soft night wind carried and unwound about the
+hills a coil of sable smoke.&nbsp; What fuel could produce a
+vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace
+pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew
+well enough that it came from the doctor&rsquo;s chimney; I saw
+well enough that my father had already disappeared; and in
+despite of reason, I connected in my mind the loss of that dear
+protector with the ribbon of foul smoke that trailed along the
+mountains.</p>
+<p>Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for
+news; a week went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of
+the father and husband.&nbsp; As smoke dissipates, as the image
+glides from the mirror, so in the ten or twenty minutes that I
+had spent in getting my horse and following upon his trail, had
+that strong and brave man vanished out of life.&nbsp; Hope, if
+any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now certain
+for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defenceless
+family.&nbsp; Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I
+marvel when I look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited
+the event.&nbsp; On the last day of the third week we rose in the
+morning to find ourselves alone in the house, alone, so far as we
+searched, on the estate; all our attendants, with one accord, had
+fled: and as we knew them to be gratefully devoted, we drew the
+darkest intimations from their flight.&nbsp; The day passed,
+indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening we were
+called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of
+horse&rsquo;s hoofs.</p>
+<p>The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden,
+dismounted, and saluted us.&nbsp; He seemed much more bent, and
+his hair more silvery than ever; but his demeanour was composed,
+serious, and not unkind.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I am come upon a weighty
+errand; and I would have you recognise it as an effect of
+kindness in the President, that he should send as his ambassador
+your only neighbour and your husband&rsquo;s oldest friend in
+Utah.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said my mother, &lsquo;I have but one
+concern, one thought.&nbsp; You know well what it is.&nbsp;
+Speak: my husband?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; returned the doctor, taking a chair on
+the verandah, &lsquo;if you were a silly child, my position would
+now be painfully embarrassing.&nbsp; You are, on the other hand,
+a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: you have, by my
+forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own
+conclusions and to accept the inevitable.&nbsp; Farther words
+from me are, I conceive, superfluous.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I
+gave her my hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and
+wrung it till I could have cried aloud.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then,
+sir,&rsquo; said she at last, &lsquo;you speak to deaf
+ears.&nbsp; If this be indeed so, what have I to do with
+errands?&nbsp; What do I ask of Heaven but to die?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; said the doctor, &lsquo;command
+yourself.&nbsp; I bid you dismiss all thoughts of your late
+husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon your own future and
+the fate of that young girl.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You bid me dismiss&mdash;&rsquo; began my mother.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Then you know!&rsquo; she cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know,&rsquo; replied the doctor.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know?&rsquo; broke out the poor woman.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Then it was you who did the deed!&nbsp; I tear off the
+mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you are&mdash;you,
+whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes
+raving&mdash;you, the Destroying Angel!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, madam, and what then?&rsquo; returned the
+doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Have not my fate and yours been
+similar?&nbsp; Are we not both immured in this strong prison of
+Utah?&nbsp; Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye
+confront you in the canyon?&nbsp; Who can escape the watch of
+that unsleeping eye of Utah?&nbsp; Not I, at least.&nbsp;
+Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the most
+ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that
+have spared your husband?&nbsp; You know well it would not.&nbsp;
+I, too, had perished along with him; nor would I have been able
+to alleviate his last moments, nor could I to-day have stood
+between his family and the hand of Brigham Young.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;and could you purchase life
+by such concessions?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Young lady,&rsquo; answered the doctor, &lsquo;I both
+could and did; and you will live to thank me for that
+baseness.&nbsp; You have a spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to
+recognise.&nbsp; But we waste time.&nbsp; Mr. Fonblanque&rsquo;s
+estate reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some
+part of it has been reserved for him who is to marry the family;
+and that person, I should perhaps tell you without more delay, is
+no other than myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and
+clung together like lost souls.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is as I supposed,&rsquo; resumed the doctor, with
+the same measured utterance.&nbsp; &lsquo;You recoil from this
+arrangement.&nbsp; Do you expect me to convince you?&nbsp; You
+know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of
+women.&nbsp; Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left
+the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel
+among themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such
+was not the union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue
+it.&nbsp; No: you need not, madam, and my old
+friend&rsquo;&mdash;and here the doctor rose and bowed with
+something of gallantry&mdash;&lsquo;you need not apprehend my
+importunities.&nbsp; On the contrary, I am rejoiced to read in
+you a Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you follow me at
+once, and that in the name, not of my wish, but of my orders, I
+hope it will be found that we are of a common mind.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the
+night had now fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our
+horses.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What does it mean?&mdash;what will become of us?&rsquo;
+I cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not that, at least,&rsquo; replied my mother,
+shuddering.&nbsp; &lsquo;So far we can trust him.&nbsp; I seem to
+read among his words a certain tragic promise.&nbsp; Asenath, if
+I leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserable
+parents?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to
+explain her words; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend
+the doctor for a friend.&nbsp; &lsquo;The doctor!&rsquo; I cried
+at last; &lsquo;the man who killed my father?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;let us be just.&nbsp; I do
+believe before, Heaven, he played the friendliest part.&nbsp; And
+he alone, Asenath, can protect you in this land of
+death.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when
+we were all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had
+matter to discuss with Mrs. Fonblanque.&nbsp; They came at a
+foot&rsquo;s pace, eagerly conversing in a whisper; and presently
+after the moon rose and showed them looking eagerly in each
+other&rsquo;s faces as they went, my mother laying her hand upon
+the doctor&rsquo;s arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual
+custom, making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.</p>
+<p>At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the
+mountain to his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;we shall dismount; and as
+your mother prefers to be alone, you and I shall walk together to
+my house.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Shall I see her again?&rsquo; I asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I give you my word,&rsquo; he said, and helped me to
+alight.&nbsp; &lsquo;We leave the horses here,&rsquo; he
+added.&nbsp; &lsquo;There are no thieves in this stone
+wilderness.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.&nbsp;
+The windows were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited
+smoke; but the most absolute silence reigned, and, but for the
+figure of my mother very slowly following in our wake, I felt
+convinced there was no human soul within a range of miles.&nbsp;
+At the thought, I looked upon the doctor, gravely walking by my
+side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, and then once more
+at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like some industrious
+factory.&nbsp; And then my curiosity broke forth.&nbsp; &lsquo;In
+Heaven&rsquo;s name,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;what do you make in
+this inhuman desert?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an
+evasion&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is not the first time,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that
+you have seen my furnaces alight.&nbsp; One morning, in the small
+hours, I saw you driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried;
+and I cannot acquit myself of having startled either your driver
+or the horse that drew you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What!&rsquo; cried I, beholding again in fancy the
+antics of the figure, &lsquo;could that be you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was I,&rsquo; he replied; &lsquo;but do not fancy
+that I was mad.&nbsp; I was in agony.&nbsp; I had been scalded
+cruelly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses
+of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.&nbsp;
+Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background.&nbsp; Not a
+blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the walls,
+not a flower adorned the windows.&nbsp; Over the door, by way of
+sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been
+brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the
+night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set
+me shrinking.&nbsp; The smoke rolled voluminously from the
+chimney top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far
+corner of the building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam
+shone snow-white in the moon and vanished.</p>
+<p>The doctor opened the door and paused upon the
+threshold.&nbsp; &lsquo;You ask me what I make here,&rsquo; he
+observed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Two things: Life and Death.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And he motioned me to enter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I shall await my mother,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Child,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;look at me: am I not
+old and broken?&nbsp; Of us two, which is the stronger, the young
+maiden or the withered man?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen,
+lit by a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.&nbsp; It was
+furnished only with a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden
+benches; and on one of these the doctor motioned me to take a
+seat; and passing by another door into the interior of the house,
+he left me to myself.&nbsp; Presently I heard the jar of iron
+from the far end of the building; and this was followed by the
+same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now
+so near at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake
+the house with every recurrence of the stroke.&nbsp; I had scarce
+time to master my alarm when the doctor returned, and almost in
+the same moment my mother appeared upon the threshold.&nbsp; But
+how am I to describe to you the peace and ravishment of that
+face?&nbsp; Years seemed to have passed over her head during that
+brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her
+smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel
+of ecstatic tenderness.&nbsp; I ran to her in a kind of terror;
+but she shrank a little back and laid her finger on her lips,
+with something arch and yet unearthly.&nbsp; To the doctor, on
+the contrary, she reached out her hand as to a friend and helper;
+and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lucy,&rsquo; said the doctor, &lsquo;all is
+prepared.&nbsp; Will you go alone, or shall your daughter follow
+us?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let Asenath come,&rsquo; she answered, &lsquo;dear
+Asenath!&nbsp; At this hour, when I am purified of fear and
+sorrow, and already survive myself and my affections, it is for
+your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her presence.&nbsp;
+Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she might
+misjudge your kindness.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mother,&rsquo; I cried wildly, &lsquo;mother, what is
+this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only
+&lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; as though I were a child again, and tossing
+in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me be silent and trouble
+her no more.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have made a choice,&rsquo; he
+continued, addressing my mother, &lsquo;that has often strangely
+tempted me.&nbsp; The two extremes: all, or else nothing; never,
+or this very hour upon the clock&mdash;these have been my
+incongruous desires.&nbsp; But to accept the middle term, to be
+content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn
+out&mdash;never for an hour, never since I was born, has
+satisfied the appetite of my ambition.&rsquo;&nbsp; He looked
+upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch of envy
+in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led the way into the
+inner room.</p>
+<p>It was very long.&nbsp; From end to end it was lit up by many
+lamps, which by the changeful colour of their light, and by the
+incessant snapping sounds with which they burned, I have since
+divined to be electric.&nbsp; At the extreme end an open door
+gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to shed beside
+the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the room, was
+painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors.&nbsp; The
+walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded
+with the implements of chemical research; great glass
+accumulators glittered in the light; and through a hole in the
+gable near the shed door, a heavy driving-belt entered the
+apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy
+activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.&nbsp; In one
+corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and
+curiously wreathed with wire.&nbsp; To this my mother advanced
+with a decisive swiftness.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is this it?&rsquo; she asked.</p>
+<p>The doctor bowed in silence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Asenath,&rsquo; said my mother, &lsquo;in this sad end
+of my life I have found one helper.&nbsp; Look upon him: it is
+Doctor Grierson.&nbsp; Be not, oh my daughter, be not ungrateful
+to that friend!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that
+terminated the arms.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Am I right?&rsquo; she asked, and looked upon the
+doctor with such a radiancy of face that I trembled for her
+reason.&nbsp; Once more the doctor bowed, but this time leaning
+hard against the wall.&nbsp; He must have touched a spring.&nbsp;
+The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least
+passing jar appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in
+the chair like one resigned to weariness.&nbsp; I was at her
+knees that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp; her
+face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank forward
+on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.</p>
+<p>I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a
+moment my tearful face, I met the doctor&rsquo;s eyes.&nbsp; They
+rested upon mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and
+interest, that even from the freshness of my sorrow, I was
+startled into attention.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Enough,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;to lamentation.&nbsp;
+Your mother went to death as to a bridal, dying where her husband
+died.&nbsp; It is time, Asenath, to think of the survivors.&nbsp;
+Follow me to the next room.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by
+the fire, he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone
+floor, he thus began to address me&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under
+the immediate watch of Brigham Young.&nbsp; It would be your lot,
+in ordinary circumstances, to become the fiftieth bride of some
+ignoble elder, or by particular fortune, as fortune is counted in
+this land, to find favour in the eyes of the President
+himself.&nbsp; Such a fate for a girl like you were worse than
+death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily
+deeper in the mire of this pit of woman&rsquo;s
+degradation.&nbsp; But is escape conceivable?&nbsp; Your father
+tried; and you beheld yourself with what security his jailers
+acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted a sufficient
+sentry over the avenues of freedom.&nbsp; Where your father
+failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too,
+helpless in the toils?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I
+believed I understood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; I cried; &lsquo;you judge me
+rightly.&nbsp; I must follow where my parents led; and oh! I am
+not only willing, I am eager!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; replied the doctor, &lsquo;not death for
+you.&nbsp; The flawed vessel we may break, but not the
+perfect.&nbsp; No, your mother cherished a different hope, and so
+do I.&nbsp; I see,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;the girl develop to
+the completed woman, the plan reach fulfilment, the
+promise&mdash;ay, outdone!&nbsp; I could not bear to arrest so
+lively, so comely a process.&nbsp; It was your mother&rsquo;s
+thought,&rsquo; he added, with a change of tone, &lsquo;that I
+should marry you myself.&rsquo;&nbsp; I fear I must have shown a
+perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made haste to
+quiet me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Reassure yourself, Asenath,&rsquo; he
+resumed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Old as I am, I have not forgotten the
+tumultuous fancies of youth.&nbsp; I have passed my days, indeed,
+in laboratories; but in all my vigils I have not forgotten the
+tune of a young pulse.&nbsp; Age asks with timidity to be spared
+intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard, demands joy
+like a right.&nbsp; These things I have not forgotten; none,
+rather, has more keenly felt, none more jealously considered
+them; I have but postponed them to their day.&nbsp; See, then:
+you stand without support; the only friend left to you, this old
+investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy.&nbsp; Answer me
+but one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the
+world calls love?&nbsp; Do you still command your heart and
+purposes? or are you fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and
+ear?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have
+told him, lay with my dead parents.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is enough,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;It has been
+my fate to be called on often, too often, for those services of
+which we spoke to-night; none in Utah could carry them so well to
+a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my hands a certain
+share of influence which I now lay at your service, partly for
+the sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the
+interest I bear you in your own right.&nbsp; I shall send you to
+England, to the great city of London, there to await the
+bridegroom I have selected.&nbsp; He shall be a son of mine, a
+young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that
+quality of beauty that your years demand.&nbsp; Since your heart
+is free, you may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in
+return for much expense and still more danger: to await the
+arrival of that bridegroom with the delicacy of a
+wife.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I sat awhile stunned.&nbsp; The doctor&rsquo;s marriages, I
+remembered to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added
+perplexity to my distress.&nbsp; But I was alone, as he had said,
+alone in that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal
+marriage, was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope;
+and in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.</p>
+<p>He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably
+have looked for.&nbsp; &lsquo;You shall see,&rsquo; he cried;
+&lsquo;you shall judge for yourself.&rsquo;&nbsp; And hurrying to
+the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat coarsely
+done in oils.&nbsp; It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty
+years before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the
+doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you like it?&rsquo; he asked.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;That is myself when I was young.&nbsp; My&mdash;my boy
+will be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels
+might condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of
+commanding mind.&nbsp; That should be a man, I think; that should
+be one among ten thousand.&nbsp; A man like that&mdash;one to
+combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the force, the
+dignity of age&mdash;one to fill all the parts and faculties, one
+to be man&rsquo;s epitome&mdash;say, will that not satisfy the
+needs of an ambitious girl?&nbsp; Say, is not that
+enough?&rsquo;&nbsp; And as he held the picture close before my
+eyes, his hands shook.</p>
+<p>I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was
+transpierced with this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I
+said the words, the most insolent revolt surged through my
+arteries.&nbsp; I held him in horror, him, his portrait, and his
+son; and had there been any choice but death or a Mormon
+marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;and I had rightly
+counted on your spirit.&nbsp; Eat, then, for you have far to
+go.&rsquo;&nbsp; So saying, he set meat before me; and while I
+was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned with an
+armful of coarse raiment.&nbsp; &lsquo;There,&rsquo; said he,
+&lsquo;is your disguise.&nbsp; I leave you to your
+toilet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy
+of fifteen; and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly
+hampered my movements.&nbsp; But what filled me with
+uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of their origin and
+the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged.&nbsp; I had
+scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a
+back window, helped me out into the narrow space between the
+house and the overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron
+footholds mortised in the rock.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mount,&rsquo; he
+said, &lsquo;swiftly.&nbsp; When you are at the summit, walk, so
+far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke.&nbsp; The smoke
+will bring you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down,
+and you will find a man with two horses.&nbsp; Him you will
+implicitly obey.&nbsp; And remember, silence!&nbsp; That
+machinery, which I now put in motion for your service, may by one
+word be turned against you.&nbsp; Go; Heaven prosper
+you!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The ascent was easy.&nbsp; Arrived at the top of the cliff, I
+saw before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of
+stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding
+mountains.&nbsp; Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and
+knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to
+veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke.&nbsp;
+Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no
+more substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes
+again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no
+higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog.&nbsp; But,
+one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace
+protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to
+the canyon.</p>
+<p>There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a
+pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we
+wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among
+the mountains.&nbsp; A little before the dayspring we took refuge
+in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge; lay there all
+day concealed; and the next night, before the glow had faded out
+of the west, resumed our wanderings.&nbsp; About noon we stopped
+again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screen of
+bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his pack,
+bade me change my dress once more.&nbsp; The bundle contained
+clothing of my own, taken from our house, with such necessaries
+as a comb and soap.&nbsp; I made my toilet by the mirror of a
+quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and smiling with some
+complacency to see myself restored to my own image, the mountains
+rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness; and while
+I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly increased a
+storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds.&nbsp; Shall I
+own to you, that I fell upon my face and shrieked?&nbsp; And yet
+this was but the overland train winding among the near mountains:
+the very means of my salvation: the strong wings that were to
+carry me from Utah!</p>
+<p>When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained,
+he said, both money and papers; and telling me that I was already
+over the borders in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the
+stream until I reached the railway station, half a mile
+below.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;is your ticket
+as far as Council Bluffs.&nbsp; The East express will pass in a
+few hours.&rsquo;&nbsp; With that, he took both horses, and,
+without further words or any salutation, rode off by the way that
+we had come.</p>
+<p>Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of
+the train as it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered
+in tunnels of the mountain.&nbsp; The change of scene, the sense
+of escape, the still throbbing terror of pursuit&mdash;above all,
+the astounding magic of my new conveyance, kept me from any
+logical or melancholy thought.&nbsp; I had gone to the
+doctor&rsquo;s house two nights before prepared to die, prepared
+for worse than death; what had passed, terrible although it was,
+looked almost bright compared to my anticipations; and it was not
+till I had slept a full night in the flying palace car, that I
+awoke to the sense of my irreparable loss and to some reasonable
+alarm about the future.&nbsp; In this mood, I examined the
+contents of the bag.&nbsp; It was well supplied with gold; it
+contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far
+as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me
+with a fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded
+silence, and bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his
+son.&nbsp; All then had been arranged beforehand: he had counted
+upon my consent, and what was tenfold worse, upon my
+mother&rsquo;s voluntary death.&nbsp; My horror of my only
+friend, my aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt
+against the whole current and conditions of my life, were now
+complete.&nbsp; I was sitting stupefied by my distress and
+helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant lady offered me
+her conversation.&nbsp; I clutched at the relief; and I was soon
+glibly telling her the story in the doctor&rsquo;s letter: how I
+was a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle,
+what money I had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had
+exhausted my instructions, and, as the lady still continued to
+ply me with questions, began to embroider on my own
+account.&nbsp; This soon carried one of my inexperience beyond
+her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on the
+lady&rsquo;s face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly
+addressed me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Miss Gould, I believe?&rsquo; said he; and then,
+excusing himself to the lady by the authority of my guardian,
+drew me to the fore platform of the Pullman car.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Miss Gould,&rsquo; he said in my ear, &lsquo;is it
+possible that you suppose yourself in safety?&nbsp; Let me
+completely undeceive you.&nbsp; One more such indiscretion and
+you return to Utah.&nbsp; And, in the meanwhile, if this woman
+should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
+&ldquo;Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you
+will suffer me to choose my own associates.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already
+felt myself drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I
+dismissed with insult; and thenceforward, through all that day, I
+sat in silence, gazing on the bare plains and swallowing my
+tears.&nbsp; Let that suffice: it was the pattern of my
+journey.&nbsp; Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board
+the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any
+fellow-traveller but I was certain to be interrupted.&nbsp; In
+every place, on every side, the most unlikely persons, man or
+woman, rich or poor, became protectors to forward me upon my
+journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.&nbsp; Thus
+I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still
+following my movements; and when at length a cab had set me down
+before that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this
+morning, I had already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.</p>
+<p>The landlady, like every one else through all that journey,
+was expecting my arrival.&nbsp; A fire was lighted in my room,
+which looked upon the garden; there were books on the table,
+clothes in the drawers; and there (I had almost said with
+contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw month follow
+month over my head.&nbsp; At times my landlady took me for a walk
+or an excursion, but she would never suffer me to leave the house
+alone; and I, seeing that she also lived under the shadow of that
+widespread Mormon terror, felt too much pity to resist.&nbsp; To
+the child born on Mormon soil, as to the man who accepts the
+engagements of a secret order, no escape is possible; so I had
+clearly read, and I was thankful even for this respite.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for my approaching
+nuptials.&nbsp; The day drew near when my bridegroom was to visit
+me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent.&nbsp; A
+son of Doctor Grierson&rsquo;s, be he what he pleased, must still
+be young, and it was even probable he should be handsome; on more
+than that, I felt I dared not reckon; and in moulding my mind
+towards consent I dwelt the more carefully on these physical
+attractions which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes from
+moral or intellectual considerations.&nbsp; We have a great power
+upon our spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into a frame
+of acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow impatient for the
+hour.&nbsp; At night sleep forsook me; I sat all day by the fire,
+absorbed in dreams, conjuring up the features of my husband, and
+anticipating in fancy the touch of his hand and the sound of his
+voice.&nbsp; In the dead level and solitude of my existence, this
+was the one eastern window and the one door of hope.&nbsp; At
+last, I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that I began to
+be besieged with fears upon the other side.&nbsp; How if it was I
+that did not please?&nbsp; How if this unseen lover should turn
+from me with disaffection?&nbsp; And now I spent hours before the
+glass, studying and judging my attractions, and was never weary
+of changing my dress or ordering my hair.</p>
+<p>When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last,
+with a sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do
+no more, and must now stand or fall by nature.&nbsp; My
+occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most sickening impatience,
+mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling rumour of the
+streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting,
+shrinking, and colouring to the brow.&nbsp; Love is not to be
+prepared, I know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet,
+when the cab at last rattled to the door and I heard my visitor
+mount the stairs, such was the tumult of hopes in my poor bosom
+that love itself might have been proud to own their
+parentage.&nbsp; The door opened, and it was Doctor Grierson that
+appeared.&nbsp; I believe I must have screamed aloud, and I know,
+at least, that I fell fainting to the floor.</p>
+<p>When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my
+pulse.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have startled you,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;A difficulty unforeseen&mdash;the impossibility of
+obtaining a certain drug in its full purity&mdash;has forced me
+to resort to London unprepared.&nbsp; I regret that I should have
+shown myself once more without those poor attractions which are
+much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more considerable than
+rain that falls into the sea.&nbsp; Youth is but a state, as
+passing as that syncope from which you are but just awakened,
+and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find,
+Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant.&nbsp; Since
+my first years, I have devoted every hour and act of life to one
+ambitious task; and the time of my success is at hand.&nbsp; In
+these new countries, where I was so long content to stay, I
+collected indispensable ingredients; I have fortified myself on
+every side from the possibility of error; what was a dream now
+takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a son of
+mine I did so in a figure.&nbsp; That son&mdash;that husband,
+Asenath, is myself&mdash;not as you now behold me, but restored
+to the first energy of youth.&nbsp; You think me mad?&nbsp; It is
+the customary attitude of ignorance.&nbsp; I will not argue; I
+will leave facts to speak.&nbsp; When you behold me purified,
+invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image&mdash;when
+you recognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect
+expression of the powers of mankind&mdash;I shall be able to
+laugh with a better grace at your passing and natural
+incredulity.&nbsp; To what can you aspire&mdash;fame, riches,
+power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of
+age&mdash;that I shall not be able to afford you in
+perfection?&nbsp; Do not deceive yourself.&nbsp; I already excel
+you in every human gift but one: when that gift also has been
+restored to me you will recognise your master.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave
+me to myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish
+fancies, he withdrew.&nbsp; I had not the courage to move; the
+night fell and found me still where he had laid me during my
+faint, my face buried in my hands, my soul drowned in the darkest
+apprehensions.&nbsp; Late in the evening he returned, carrying a
+candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade me rise and
+sup.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is it possible,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;that I
+have been deceived in your courage?&nbsp; A cowardly girl is no
+fit mate for me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of
+tears besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring
+him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of
+intellect and character I was his hopeless and derisible
+inferior.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, certainly,&rsquo; he replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;I know
+you better than yourself; and I am well enough acquainted with
+human nature to understand this scene.&nbsp; It is addressed to
+me,&rsquo; he added with a smile, &lsquo;in my character of the
+still untransformed.&nbsp; But do not alarm yourself about the
+future.&nbsp; Let me but attain my end, and not you only,
+Asenath, but every woman on the face of the earth becomes my
+willing slave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to
+table; helped and entertained me with the attentions of a
+fashionable host; and it was not till a late hour, that, bidding
+me courteously good-night, he once more left me alone to my
+misery.</p>
+<p>In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his
+youth, I scarce knew from which hypothesis I should the more
+eagerly recoil.&nbsp; If his hopes reposed on any base of fact,
+if indeed, by some abhorrent miracle, he should discard his age,
+death were my only refuge from that most unnatural, that most
+ungodly union.&nbsp; If, on the other hand, these dreams were
+merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my
+pity would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt
+against the marriage.&nbsp; So passed the night, in alternations
+of rebellion and despair, of hate and pity; and with the next
+morning I was only to comprehend more fully my enslaved
+position.&nbsp; For though he appeared with a very tranquil
+countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of grief upon my
+brow than an answering darkness gathered on his own.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Asenath.&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;you owe me much already;
+with one finger I still hold you suspended over death; my life is
+full of labour and anxiety; and I choose,&rsquo; said he, with a
+remarkable accent of command, &lsquo;that you shall greet me with
+a pleasant face.&rsquo;&nbsp; He never needed to repeat the
+recommendation; from that day forward I was always ready to
+receive him with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a
+good deal of his company, and almost more than I could bear of
+his confidence.&nbsp; He had set up a laboratory in the back part
+of the house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and he
+would come thence to visit me in my parlour: now with passing
+humours of discouragement; now, and far more often, radiant with
+hope.&nbsp; It was impossible to see so much of him, and not to
+recognise that the sands of his life were running low; and yet
+all the time he would be laying out vast fields of future, and
+planning, with all the confidence of youth, the most unbounded
+schemes of pleasure and ambition.&nbsp; How I replied I know not;
+but I found a voice and words to answer, even while I wept and
+raged to hear him.</p>
+<p>A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great
+exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Asenath,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I have now obtained the
+last ingredient.&nbsp; In one week from now the perilous moment
+of the last projection will draw nigh.&nbsp; You have once before
+assisted, although unconsciously, at the failure of a similar
+experiment.&nbsp; It was the elixir which so terribly exploded
+one night when you were passing my house; and it is idle to deny
+that the conduct of so delicate a process, among the million jars
+and trepidations of so great a city, presents a certain element
+of danger.&nbsp; From this point of view, I cannot but regret the
+perfect stillness of my house among the deserts; but, on the
+other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularly
+unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection,
+is due rather to the impurity than to the nature of the
+ingredients; and as all are now of an equal and exquisite nicety,
+I have little fear for the result.&nbsp; In a week then from
+to-day, my dear Asenath, this period of trial will be
+ended.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he smiled upon me in a manner unusually
+paternal.</p>
+<p>I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the
+blackest and most unbridled terror.&nbsp; What if he
+failed?&nbsp; And oh, tenfold worse! what if he succeeded?&nbsp;
+What detested and unnatural changeling would appear before me to
+claim my hand?&nbsp; And could there, I asked myself with a
+dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured
+victory over my reluctance?&nbsp; I knew him, indeed, to be
+masterful, to lead my life at a sign.&nbsp; Suppose, then, this
+experiment to succeed; suppose him to return to me, hideously
+restored, like a vampire in a legend; and suppose that, by some
+devilish fascination . . . My head turned; all former fears
+deserted me: and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference
+to this.</p>
+<p>My mind was instantly made up.&nbsp; The doctor&rsquo;s
+presence in London was justified by the affairs of the Mormon
+polity.&nbsp; Often, in our conversation, he would gloat over the
+details of that great organisation, which he feared even while
+yet he wielded it; and would remind me, that even in the humming
+labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that unsleeping eye
+in Utah.&nbsp; His visitors, indeed, who were of every sort, from
+the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to belong to
+every rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled me with
+unmixed repulsion and alarm.&nbsp; I knew that if my secret were
+to reach the ear of any leader my fate were sealed beyond
+redemption; and yet in my present pass of horror and despair, it
+was to these very men that I turned for help.&nbsp; I waylaid
+upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man of a low
+class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce remember
+what elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his
+intermediacy entered into correspondence with my father&rsquo;s
+family.&nbsp; They recognised my claim for help, and on this very
+day I was to begin my escape.</p>
+<p>Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the
+doctor&rsquo;s labours, and prepared against the worst.&nbsp; The
+nights at this season and in this northern latitude are short;
+and I had soon the company of the returning daylight.&nbsp; The
+silence in and around the house was only broken by the movements
+of the doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened, watch in
+hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and yet consumed by anxiety
+about the strange experiment that was going forward
+overhead.&nbsp; Indeed, now that I was conscious of some
+protection for myself, my sympathies had turned more directly to
+the doctor&rsquo;s side; I caught myself even praying for his
+success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cry reached my
+ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control my
+impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.</p>
+<p>The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand
+a large, round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a
+bright amber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude
+and joy unspeakable.&nbsp; As he saw me he raised the flask at
+arm&rsquo;s length.&nbsp; &lsquo;Victory!&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Victory, Asenath!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then&mdash;whether the
+flask escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the explosion
+were spontaneous, I cannot tell&mdash;enough that we were thrown,
+I against the door-post, the doctor into the corner of the room;
+enough that we were shaken to the soul by the same explosion that
+must have startled you upon the street; and that, in the brief
+space of an indistinguishable instant, there remained nothing of
+the labours of the doctor&rsquo;s lifetime but a few shards of
+broken crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that
+pursued me in my flight.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+76</span><i>THE SQUIRE OF DAMES</i><br />
+(<i>Concluded</i>)</h2>
+<p>What with the lady&rsquo;s animated manner and dramatic
+conduct of her voice, Challoner had thrilled to every incident
+with genuine emotion.&nbsp; His fancy, which was not perhaps of a
+very lively character, applauded both the matter and the style;
+but the more judicial functions of his mind refused assent.&nbsp;
+It was an excellent story; and it might be true, but he believed
+it was not.&nbsp; Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was
+doubtless possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but how
+was a gentleman to tell her so?&nbsp; His spirits for some time
+had been sinking, but they now fell to zero; and long after her
+voice had died away he still sat with a troubled and averted
+countenance, and could find no form of words to thank her for her
+narrative.&nbsp; His mind, indeed, was empty of everything beyond
+a dull longing for escape.&nbsp; From this pause, which grew the
+more embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden
+laughter of the lady.&nbsp; His vanity was alarmed; he turned and
+faced her; their eyes met; and he caught from hers a spark of
+such frank merriment as put him instantly at ease.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You certainly,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;appear to bear
+your calamities with excellent spirit.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do I not?&rsquo; she cried, and fell once more into
+delicious laughter.&nbsp; But from this access she more speedily
+recovered.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is all very well,&rsquo; said she,
+nodding at him gravely, &lsquo;but I am still in a most
+distressing situation, from which, if you deny me your help, I
+shall find it difficult indeed to free myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original
+gloom.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My sympathies are much engaged with you,&rsquo; he
+said, &lsquo;and I should be delighted, I am sure.&nbsp; But our
+position is most unusual; and circumstances over which I have, I
+can assure you, no control, deprive me of the power&mdash;the
+pleasure&mdash;Unless, indeed,&rsquo; he added, somewhat
+brightening at the thought, &lsquo;I were to recommend you to the
+care of the police?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes;
+and he saw with wonder that, for the first time since the moment
+of their meeting, every trace of colour had faded from her
+cheek.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do so,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and&mdash;weigh my words
+well&mdash;you kill me as certainly as with a knife.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;God bless me!&rsquo; exclaimed Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;I can see you disbelieve
+my story and make light of the perils that surround me; but who
+are you to judge?&nbsp; My family share my apprehensions; they
+help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an emissary, and
+in what a place, they have chosen to supply me with the funds for
+my escape.&nbsp; I admit that you are brave and clever and have
+impressed me most favourably; but how are you to prefer your
+opinion before that of my uncle, an ex-minister of state, a man
+with the ear of the Queen, and of a long political
+experience?&nbsp; If I am mad, is he?&nbsp; And you must allow
+me, besides, a special claim upon your help.&nbsp; Strange as you
+may think my story, you know that much of it is true; and if you
+who heard the explosion and saw the Mormon at Victoria, refuse to
+credit and assist me, to whom am I to turn?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He gave you money then?&rsquo; asked Challoner, who had
+been dwelling singly on that fact.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I begin to interest you,&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But, frankly, you are condemned to help me.&nbsp; If the
+service I had to ask of you were serious, were suspicious, were
+even unusual, I should say no more.&nbsp; But what is it?&nbsp;
+To take a pleasure trip (for which, if you will suffer me, I
+propose to pay) and to carry from one lady to another a sum of
+money!&nbsp; What can be more simple?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is the sum,&rsquo; asked Challoner,
+&lsquo;considerable?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she
+had not yet found time to make the count, tore open the cover and
+spread upon her knees a considerable number of Bank of England
+notes.&nbsp; It took some time to make the reckoning, for the
+notes were of every degree of value; but at last, and counting a
+few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be a little under
+&pound;710 sterling.&nbsp; The sight of so much money worked an
+immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you propose, madam,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;to
+intrust that money to a perfect stranger?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said she, with a charming smile, &lsquo;but
+I no longer regard you as a stranger.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;I perceive I must
+make you a confession.&nbsp; Although of a very good
+family&mdash;through my mother, indeed, a lineal descendant of
+the patriot Bruce&mdash;I dare not conceal from you that my
+affairs are deeply, very deeply involved.&nbsp; I am in debt; my
+pockets are practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that
+state when a considerable sum of money would prove to many men an
+irresistible temptation.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you not see,&rsquo; returned the young lady,
+&lsquo;that by these words you have removed my last
+hesitation?&nbsp; Take them.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she thrust the
+notes into the young man&rsquo;s hand.</p>
+<p>He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that
+Miss Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pray,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;hesitate no further; put
+them in your pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of
+embarrassment, tell me by what name I am to address my
+knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the awkwardness of
+the pronoun.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors
+had come lightly to the young man&rsquo;s aid; but upon what
+pretext could he refuse so generous a trust?&nbsp; Upon none he
+saw, that was not unpardonably wounding; and the bright eyes and
+the high spirits of his companion had already made a breach in
+the rampart of Challoner&rsquo;s caution.&nbsp; The whole thing,
+he reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it were the
+height of solemn folly to resent.&nbsp; On the other hand, the
+explosion, the interview at the public-house, and the very money
+in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial the existence of some
+serious danger; and if that were so, could he desert her?&nbsp;
+There was a choice of risks: the risk of behaving with
+extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness to a lady, and the
+risk of going on a fool&rsquo;s errand.&nbsp; The story seemed
+false; but then the money was undeniable.&nbsp; The whole
+circumstances were questionable and obscure; but the lady was
+charming, and had the speech and manners of society.&nbsp; While
+he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned upon his mind
+with some of the dignity of prophecy.&nbsp; Had he not promised
+Somerset to break with the traditions of the commonplace, and to
+accept the first adventure offered?&nbsp; Well, here was the
+adventure.</p>
+<p>He thrust the money into his pocket.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My name is Challoner,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Challoner,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;you have come
+very generously to my aid when all was against me.&nbsp; Though I
+am myself a very humble person, my family commands great
+interest; and I do not think you will repent this handsome
+action.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner flushed with pleasure.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,&rsquo; she
+added, her eyes dwelling on him with a judicial admiration,
+&lsquo;a consulship in some great town or capital&mdash;or
+else&mdash;But we waste time; let us set about the work of my
+delivery.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his
+heart; and once more laying by all serious thoughts, she
+entertained him, as they crossed the park, with her agreeable
+gaiety of mind.&nbsp; Near the Marble Arch they found a hansom,
+which rapidly conveyed them to the terminus at Euston Square; and
+here, in the hotel, they sat down to an excellent
+breakfast.&nbsp; The young lady&rsquo;s first step was to call
+for writing materials and write, upon one corner of the table, a
+hasty note; still, as she did so, glancing with smiles at her
+companion.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;here is the
+letter which will introduce you to my cousin.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+began to fold the paper.&nbsp; &lsquo;My cousin, although I have
+never seen her, has the character of a very charming woman and a
+recognised beauty; of that I know nothing, but at least she has
+been very kind to me; so has my lord her father; so have
+you&mdash;kinder than all&mdash;kinder than I can bear to think
+of.&rsquo;&nbsp; She said this with unusual emotion; and, at the
+same time, sealed the envelope.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she
+cried, &lsquo;I have shut my letter!&nbsp; It is not quite
+courteous; and yet, as between friends, it is perhaps better
+so.&nbsp; I introduce you, after all, into a family secret; and
+though you and I are already old comrades, you are still unknown
+to my uncle.&nbsp; You go then to this address, Richard Street,
+Glasgow; go, please, as soon as you arrive; and give this letter
+with your own hands into those of Miss Fonblanque, for that is
+the name by which she is to pass.&nbsp; When we next meet, you
+will tell me what you think of her,&rsquo; she added, with a
+touch of the provocative.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Challoner, almost tenderly, &lsquo;she
+can be nothing to me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You do not know,&rsquo; replied the young lady, with a
+sigh.&nbsp; &lsquo;By-the-bye, I had forgotten&mdash;it is very
+childish, and I am almost ashamed to mention it&mdash;but when
+you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have to make yourself a little
+ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way suits you.&nbsp; We
+had agreed upon a watchword.&nbsp; You will have to address an
+earl&rsquo;s daughter in these words: &ldquo;<i>Nigger</i>,
+<i>nigger</i>, <i>never die</i>;&rdquo; but reassure
+yourself,&rsquo; she added, laughing, &lsquo;for the fair
+patrician will at once finish the quotation.&nbsp; Come now, say
+your lesson.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Nigger, nigger, never die,&rdquo;&rsquo;
+repeated Challoner, with undisguised reluctance.</p>
+<p>Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Excellent,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;it will be the most
+humorous scene.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she laughed again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And what will be the counterword?&rsquo; asked
+Challoner stiffly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will not tell you till the last moment,&rsquo; said
+she; &lsquo;for I perceive you are growing too
+imperious.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform,
+bought him the <i>Graphic</i>, the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, and a
+paper-cutter, and stood on the step conversing till the whistle
+sounded.&nbsp; Then she put her head into the carriage.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;<i>Black face and shining eye</i>!&rsquo; she whispered,
+and instantly leaped down upon the platform, with a thrill of gay
+and musical laughter.&nbsp; As the train steamed out of the great
+arch of glass, the sound of that laughter still rang in the young
+man&rsquo;s ears.</p>
+<p>Challoner&rsquo;s position was too unusual to be long welcome
+to his mind.&nbsp; He found himself projected the whole length of
+England, on a mission beset with obscure and ridiculous
+circumstances, and yet, by the trust he had accepted, irrevocably
+bound to persevere.&nbsp; How easy it appeared, in the
+retrospect, to have refused the whole proposal, returned the
+money, and gone forth again upon his own affairs, a free and
+happy man!&nbsp; And it was now impossible: the enchantress who
+had held him with her eye had now disappeared, taking his honour
+in pledge; and as she had failed to leave him an address, he was
+denied even the inglorious safety of retreat.&nbsp; To use the
+paper-knife, or even to read the periodicals with which she had
+presented him, was to renew the bitterness of his remorse; and as
+he was alone in the compartment, he passed the day staring at the
+landscape in impotent repentance, and long before he was landed
+on the platform of St. Enoch&rsquo;s, had fallen to the lowest
+and coldest zones of self-contempt.</p>
+<p>As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have
+preferred to dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the
+words of the young lady, and his own impatient eagerness, would
+suffer no delay.&nbsp; In the late, luminous, and lamp-starred
+dusk of the summer evening, he accordingly set forward with brisk
+steps.</p>
+<p>The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in
+the character of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside;
+but the extension of the city had long since, and on every hand,
+surrounded it with miles of streets.&nbsp; From the top of the
+hill a range of very tall buildings, densely inhabited by the
+poorest classes of the population and variegated by drying-poles
+from every second window, overplumbed the villas and their little
+gardens like a sea-board cliff.&nbsp; But still, under the grime
+of years of city smoke, these antiquated cottages, with their
+venetian blinds and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat
+melancholy savour of the past.</p>
+<p>The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly
+deserted.&nbsp; From hard by, indeed, the sound of a thousand
+footfalls filled the ear; but in Richard Street itself there was
+neither light nor sound of human habitation.&nbsp; The appearance
+of the neighbourhood weighed heavily on the mind of the young
+man; once more, as in the streets of London, he was impressed
+with the sense of city deserts; and as he approached the number
+indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang the bell, his heart sank
+within him.</p>
+<p>The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and
+garrulous note; and it was some time before it ceased to sound
+from the rear quarters of the building.&nbsp; Following upon this
+an inner door was stealthily opened, and careful and catlike
+steps drew near along the hall.&nbsp; Challoner, supposing he was
+to be instantly admitted, produced his letter, and, as well as he
+was able, prepared a smiling face.&nbsp; To his indescribable
+surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and then, after a pause
+and with the like stealthiness, withdrew once more, and died away
+in the interior of the house.&nbsp; A second time the young man
+rang violently at the bell; a second time, to his keen
+hearkening, a certain bustle of discreet footing moved upon the
+hollow boards of the old villa; and again the fainthearted
+garrison only drew near to retreat.&nbsp; The cup of the
+visitor&rsquo;s endurance was now full to overflowing; and,
+committing the whole family of Fonblanque to every mood and shade
+of condemnation, he turned upon his heel and redescended the
+steps.&nbsp; Perhaps the mover in the house was watching from a
+window, and plucked up courage at the sight of this desistance;
+or perhaps, where he lurked trembling in the back parts of the
+villa, reason in its own right had conquered his alarms.&nbsp;
+Challoner, at least, had scarce set foot upon the pavement when
+he was arrested by the sound of the withdrawal of an inner bolt;
+one followed another, rattling in their sockets; the key turned
+harshly in the lock; the door opened; and there appeared upon the
+threshold a man of a very stalwart figure in his shirt
+sleeves.&nbsp; He was a person neither of great manly beauty nor
+of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary moods, to
+attract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in the
+doorway, he was marked so legibly with the extreme passion of
+terror that Challoner stood wonder-struck.&nbsp; For a fraction
+of a minute they gazed upon each other in silence; and then the
+man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping voice, inquired the
+business of his visitor.&nbsp; Challoner replied, in tones from
+which he strove to banish his surprise, that he was the bearer of
+a letter to a certain Miss Fonblanque.&nbsp; At this name, as at
+a talisman, the man fell back and impatiently invited him to
+enter; and no sooner had the adventurer crossed the threshold,
+than the door was closed behind him and his retreat cut off.</p>
+<p>It was already long past eight at night; and though the late
+twilight of the north still lingered in the streets, in the
+passage it was already groping dark.&nbsp; The man led Challoner
+directly to a parlour looking on the garden to the back.&nbsp;
+Here he had apparently been supping; for by the light of a tallow
+dip the table was seen to be covered with a napkin, and set out
+with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a Gouda cheese.&nbsp;
+The room, on the other hand, was furnished with faded solidity,
+and the walls were lined with scholarly and costly volumes in
+glazed cases.&nbsp; The house must have been taken furnished; for
+it had no congruity with this man of the shirt sleeves and the
+mean supper.&nbsp; As for the earl&rsquo;s daughter, the earl and
+the visionary consulships in foreign cities, they had long ago
+begun to fade in Challoner&rsquo;s imagination.&nbsp; Like Doctor
+Grierson and the Mormon angels, they were plainly woven of the
+stuff of dreams.&nbsp; Not an illusion remained to the
+knight-errant; not a hope was left him, but to be speedily
+relieved from this disreputable business.</p>
+<p>The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised
+anxiety, and began once more to press him for his errand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am here,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;simply to do a
+service between two ladies; and I must ask you, without further
+delay, to summon Miss Fonblanque, into whose hands alone I am
+authorised to deliver the letter that I bear.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A growing wonder began to mingle on the man&rsquo;s face with
+the lines of solicitude.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am Miss
+Fonblanque,&rsquo; he said; and then, perceiving the effect of
+this communication, &lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;what
+are you staring at?&nbsp; I tell you, I am Miss
+Fonblanque.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length,
+and the remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner
+could only suppose himself the subject of a jest.&nbsp; He was no
+longer under the spell of the young lady&rsquo;s presence; and
+with men, and above all with his inferiors, he was capable of
+some display of spirit.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said he, pretty roundly, &lsquo;I have put
+myself to great inconvenience for persons of whom I know too
+little, and I begin to be weary of the business.&nbsp; Either you
+shall immediately summon Miss Fonblanque, or I leave this house
+and put myself under the direction of the police.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is horrible!&rsquo; exclaimed the man.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I declare before Heaven I am the person meant, but how
+shall I convince you?&nbsp; It must have been Clara, I perceive,
+that sent you on this errand&mdash;a madwoman, who jests with the
+most deadly interests; and here we are incapable, perhaps, of an
+agreement, and Heaven knows what may depend on our
+delay!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same
+time there flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous
+jingle which was to serve as password.&nbsp; &lsquo;This may,
+perhaps, assist you,&rsquo; he said, and then, with some
+embarrassment, &lsquo;&ldquo;Nigger, nigger, never
+die.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the
+man with the chin-beard.&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Black face and
+shining eye&rdquo;&mdash;give me the letter,&rsquo; he panted, in
+one gasp.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said Challoner, though still with some
+reluctance, &lsquo;I suppose I must regard you as the proper
+recipient; and though I may justly complain of the spirit in
+which I have been treated, I am only too glad to be done with all
+responsibility.&nbsp; Here it is,&rsquo; and he produced the
+envelope.</p>
+<p>The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that
+trembled in a manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded
+the letter.&nbsp; As he read, terror seemed to mount upon him to
+the pitch of nightmare.&nbsp; He struck one hand upon his brow,
+while with the other, as if unconsciously, he crumpled the paper
+to a ball.&nbsp; &lsquo;My gracious powers!&rsquo; he cried; and
+then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden, he
+clapped forth his head and shoulders, and whistled long and
+shrill.&nbsp; Challoner fell back into a corner, and resolutely
+grasping his staff, prepared for the most desperate events; but
+the thoughts of the man with the chin-beard were far removed from
+violence.&nbsp; Turning again into the room, and once more
+beholding his visitor, whom he appeared to have forgotten, he
+fairly danced with trepidation.&nbsp; &lsquo;Impossible!&rsquo;
+he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, quite impossible!&nbsp; O Lord, I have
+lost my head.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, once more striking his hand
+upon his brow, &lsquo;The money!&rsquo; he exclaimed.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Give me the money.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My good friend,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;this
+is a very painful exhibition; and until I see you reasonably
+master of yourself, I decline to proceed with any
+business.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are quite right,&rsquo; said the man.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am of a very nervous habit; a long course of the dumb
+ague has undermined my constitution.&nbsp; But I know you have
+money; it may be still the saving of me; and oh, dear young
+gentleman, in pity&rsquo;s name be expeditious!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Challoner, sincerely uneasy as he was, could scarce refrain from
+laughter; but he was himself in a hurry to be gone, and without
+more delay produced the money.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will find the
+sum, I trust, correct,&rsquo; he observed &lsquo;and let me ask
+you to give me a receipt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But the man heeded him not.&nbsp; He seized the money, and
+disregarding the sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor,
+thrust the bundle of notes into his pocket.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A receipt,&rsquo; repeated Challoner, with some
+asperity.&nbsp; &lsquo;I insist on a receipt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Receipt?&rsquo; repeated the man, a little
+wildly.&nbsp; &lsquo;A receipt?&nbsp; Immediately!&nbsp; Await me
+here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no
+unnecessary time, as he was himself desirous of catching a
+particular train.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, by God, and so am I!&rsquo; exclaimed the man with
+the chin-beard; and with that he was gone out of the room, and
+had rattled upstairs, four at a time, to the upper story of the
+villa.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is certainly a most amazing business,&rsquo;
+thought Challoner; &lsquo;certainly a most disquieting affair;
+and I cannot conceal from myself that I have become mixed up with
+either lunatics or malefactors.&nbsp; I may truly thank my stars
+that I am so nearly and so creditably done with it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Thus thinking, and perhaps remembering the episode of the
+whistle, he turned to the open window.&nbsp; The garden was still
+faintly clear; he could distinguish the stairs and terraces with
+which the small domain had been adorned by former owners, and the
+blackened bushes and dead trees that had once afforded shelter to
+the country birds; beyond these he saw the strong retaining wall,
+some thirty feet in height, which enclosed the garden to the
+back; and again above that, the pile of dingy buildings rearing
+its frontage high into the night.&nbsp; A peculiar object lying
+stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but
+at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of
+ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what
+service so great an instrument could be in such a scant
+enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some
+one running violently down the stairs.&nbsp; This was followed by
+the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that again,
+by rapid and retreating footsteps in the street.</p>
+<p>Challoner sprang into the passage.&nbsp; He ran from room to
+room, upstairs and downstairs; and in that old dingy and
+worm-eaten house, he found himself alone.&nbsp; Only in one
+apartment, looking to the front, were there any traces of the
+late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently slept in and not
+made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search, and on the
+floor a roll of crumpled paper.&nbsp; This he picked up.&nbsp;
+The light in this upper story looking to the front was
+considerably brighter than in the parlour; and he was able to
+make out that the paper bore the mark of the hotel at Euston, and
+even, by peering closely, to decipher the following lines in a
+very elegant and careful female hand:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&lsquo;<span class="smcap">Dear
+M&lsquo;Guire</span>,&mdash;It is certain your retreat is
+known.&nbsp; We have just had another failure, clockwork thirty
+hours too soon, with the usual humiliating result.&nbsp; Zero is
+quite disheartened.&nbsp; We are all scattered, and I could find
+no one but the <i>solemn ass</i> who brings you this and the
+money.&nbsp; I would love to see your meeting.&mdash;Ever
+yours,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Shining
+Eye</span>.&rsquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Challoner was stricken to the heart.&nbsp; He perceived by
+what facility, by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been
+brought down to be the gull of this intriguer; and his wrath
+flowed forth in almost equal measure against himself, against the
+woman, and against Somerset, whose idle counsels had impelled him
+to embark on that adventure.&nbsp; At the same time a great and
+troubled curiosity, and a certain chill of fear, possessed his
+spirit.&nbsp; The conduct of the man with the chin-beard, the
+terms of the letter, and the explosion of the early morning,
+fitted together like parts in some obscure and mischievous
+imbroglio.&nbsp; Evil was certainly afoot; evil, secrecy, terror,
+and falsehood were the conditions and the passions of the people
+among whom he had begun to move, like a blind puppet; and he who
+began as a puppet, his experience told him, was often doomed to
+perish as a victim.</p>
+<p>From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with
+the letter in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the
+bell.&nbsp; He glanced from the window; and, conceive his horror
+and surprise when he beheld, clustered on the steps, in the front
+garden and on the pavement of the street, a formidable posse of
+police!&nbsp; He started to the full possession of his powers and
+courage.&nbsp; Escape, and escape at any cost, was the one idea
+that possessed him.&nbsp; Swiftly and silently he redescended the
+creaking stairs; he was already in the passage when a second and
+more imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes of the
+empty house; nor had the bell ceased to jangle before he had
+bestridden the window-sill of the parlour and was lowering
+himself into the garden.&nbsp; His coat was hooked upon the iron
+flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent heels and head
+below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth, and followed by
+several pots, he dropped upon the sod.&nbsp; Once more the bell
+was rung, and now with furious and repeated peals.&nbsp; The
+desperate Challoner turned his eyes on every side.&nbsp; They
+fell upon the ladder, and he ran to it, and with strenuous but
+unavailing effort sought to raise it from the ground.&nbsp;
+Suddenly the weight, which was thus resisting his whole strength,
+began to lighten in his hands; the ladder, like a thing of life,
+reared its bulk from off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back
+with a cry of almost superstitious terror, beheld the whole
+structure mount, foot by foot, against the face of the retaining
+wall.&nbsp; At the same time, two heads were dimly visible above
+the parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle.&nbsp;
+Something in its modulation recalled, like an echo, the whistle
+of the man with the chin-beard.</p>
+<p>Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by
+those very miscreants whose messenger and gull he had
+become?&nbsp; Was this, indeed, a means of safety, or but the
+starting-point of further complication and disaster?&nbsp; He
+paused not to reflect.&nbsp; Scarce was the ladder reared to its
+full length than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand over
+hand, swift as an ape, he scaled the tottering stairway.&nbsp;
+Strong arms received, embraced, and helped him; he was lifted and
+set once more upon the earth; and with the spasm of his alarm yet
+unsubsided, found himself in the company of two rough-looking
+men, in the paved back yard of one of the tall houses that
+crowned the summit of the hill.&nbsp; Meanwhile, from below, the
+note of the bell had been succeeded by the sound of vigorous and
+redoubling blows.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you all out?&rsquo; asked one of his companions;
+and, as soon as he had babbled an answer in the affirmative, the
+rope was cut from the top round, and the ladder thrust roughly
+back into the garden, where it fell and broke with clattering
+reverberations.&nbsp; Its fall was hailed with many broken cries;
+for the whole of Richard Street was now in high emotion, the
+people crowding to the windows or clambering on the garden
+walls.&nbsp; The same man who had already addressed Challoner
+seized him by the arm; whisked him through the basement of the
+house and across the street upon the other side; and before the
+unfortunate adventurer had time to realise his situation, a door
+was opened, and he was thrust into a low and dark
+compartment.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bedad,&rsquo; observed his guide, &lsquo;there was no
+time to lose.&nbsp; Is M&rsquo;Guire gone, or was it you that
+whistled?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;M&rsquo;Guire is gone,&rsquo; said Challoner.</p>
+<p>The guide now struck a light.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said he,
+&lsquo;this will never do.&nbsp; You dare not go upon the streets
+in such a figure.&nbsp; Wait quietly here and I will bring you
+something decent.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus
+rudely awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had
+been worked in his attire.&nbsp; His hat was gone; his trousers
+were cruelly ripped; and the best part of one tail of his very
+elegant frockcoat had been left hanging from the iron crockets of
+the window.&nbsp; He had scarce had time to measure these
+disasters when his host re-entered the apartment and proceeded,
+without a word, to envelop the refined and urbane Challoner in a
+long ulster of the cheapest material, and of a pattern so gross
+and vulgar that his spirit sickened at the sight.&nbsp; This
+calumnious disguise was crowned and completed by a soft felt hat
+of the Tyrolese design, and several sizes too small.&nbsp; At
+another moment Challoner would simply have refused to issue forth
+upon the world thus travestied; but the desire to escape from
+Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed upon
+his mind.&nbsp; With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of
+his new coat, he inquired what was to pay for this
+accoutrement.&nbsp; The man assured him that the whole expense
+was easily met from funds in his possession, and begged him,
+instead of wasting time, to make his best speed out of the
+neighbourhood.</p>
+<p>The young man was not loath to take the hint.&nbsp; True to
+his usual courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him
+upon his taste in greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat
+abashed by these remarks and the manner of their delivery, he
+hurried forth into the lamplit city.&nbsp; The last train was
+gone ere, after many deviations, he had reached the
+terminus.&nbsp; Attired as he was he dared not present himself at
+any reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity
+of his demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth
+and possibly suspicion, in any humbler hostelry.&nbsp; He was
+thus condemned to pass the solemn and uneventful hours of a whole
+night in pacing the streets of Glasgow; supperless; a figure of
+fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn, with hope indeed, but
+with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all things, filled with
+a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his conduct.&nbsp;
+It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of
+the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his
+ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he
+could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his confusion,
+it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the
+amateur detective.&nbsp; With the coming of day, he found in a
+shy milk-shop the means to appease his hunger.&nbsp; There were
+still many hours to wait before the departure of the South
+express; these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in
+the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped
+quietly into the station and took his place in the darkest corner
+of a third-class carriage.&nbsp; Here, all day long, he jolted on
+the bare boards, distressed by heat and continually reawakened
+from uneasy slumbers.&nbsp; By the half return ticket in his
+purse, he was entitled to make the journey on the easy cushions
+and with the ample space of the first-class; but alas! in his
+absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, commingle with his
+equals; and this small annoyance, coming last in such a series of
+disasters, cut him to the heart.</p>
+<p>That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the
+expense, anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld
+the ruins of his last good trousers and his last presentable
+coat; and above all, when his eye by any chance alighted on the
+Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster, his heart would overflow
+with bitterness, and it was only by a serious call on his
+philosophy that he maintained the dignity of his demeanour.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 100</span>SOMERSET&rsquo;S ADVENTURE</h2>
+<h3><i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION</i></h3>
+<p>Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery
+imagination, with very small capacity for action.&nbsp; He was
+one who lived exclusively in dreams and in the future: the
+creature of his own theories, and an actor in his own
+romances.&nbsp; From the cigar divan he proceeded to parade the
+streets, still heated with the fire of his eloquence, and
+scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate
+adventure.&nbsp; In the continual stream of passers-by, on the
+sealed fronts of houses, on the posters that covered the
+hoardings, and in every lineament and throb of the great city, he
+saw a mysterious and hopeful hieroglyph.&nbsp; But although the
+elements of adventure were streaming by him as thick as drops of
+water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a beseeching,
+now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and provoked
+the notice of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to
+the touch, he even thrust himself into the way and came into
+direct collision with those of the more promising
+demeanour.&nbsp; Persons brimful of secrets, persons pining for
+affection, persons perishing for lack of help or counsel, he was
+sure he could perceive on every side; but by some contrariety of
+fortune, each passed upon his way without remarking the young
+gentleman, and went farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of
+the confidant, the friend, or the adviser.&nbsp; To thousands he
+must have turned an appealing countenance, and yet not one
+regarded him.</p>
+<p>A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous
+aspirations, broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune;
+and when he returned to the task, the lamps were already lighted,
+and the nocturnal crowd was dense upon the pavement.&nbsp; Before
+a certain restaurant, whose name will readily occur to any
+student of our Babylon, people were already packed so closely
+that passage had grown difficult; and Somerset, standing in the
+kennel, watched, with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat
+weary, the faces and the manners of the crowd.&nbsp; Suddenly he
+was startled by a gentle touch upon the shoulder, and facing
+about, he was aware of a very plain and elegant brougham, drawn
+by a pair of powerful horses, and driven by a man in sober
+livery.&nbsp; There were no arms upon the panel; the window was
+open, but the interior was obscure; the driver yawned behind his
+palm; and the young man was already beginning to suppose himself
+the dupe of his own fancy, when a hand, no larger than a
+child&rsquo;s and smoothly gloved in white, appeared in a corner
+of the window and privily beckoned him to approach.&nbsp; He did
+so, and looked in.&nbsp; The carriage was occupied by a single
+small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in
+impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and
+silvery, addressed him in these words&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Open the door and get in.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It must be,&rsquo; thought the young man with an almost
+unbearable thrill, &lsquo;it must be that duchess at
+last!&rsquo;&nbsp; Yet, although the moment was one to which he
+had long looked forward, it was with a certain share of alarm
+that he opened the door, and, mounting into the brougham, took
+his seat beside the lady of the lace.&nbsp; Whether or no she had
+touched a spring, or given some other signal, the young man had
+hardly closed the door before the carriage, with considerable
+swiftness, and with a very luxurious and easy movement on its
+springs, turned and began to drive towards the west.</p>
+<p>Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long
+been his particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most
+unlikely situations; and this, among others, of the patrician
+ravisher, was one he had familiarly studied.&nbsp; Strange as it
+may seem, however, he could find no apposite remark; and as the
+lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further sign, they continued to
+drive in silence through the streets.&nbsp; Except for alternate
+flashes from the passing lamps, the carriage was plunged in
+obscurity; and beyond the fact that the fittings were luxurious,
+and that the lady was singularly small and slender in person,
+and, all but one gloved hand, still swathed in her costly veil,
+the young man could decipher no detail of an inspiring
+nature.&nbsp; The suspense began to grow unbearable.&nbsp; Twice
+he cleared his throat, and twice the whole resources of the
+language failed him.&nbsp; In similar scenes, when he had
+forecast them on the theatre of fancy, his presence of mind had
+always been complete, his eloquence remarkable; and at this
+disparity between the rehearsal and the performance, he began to
+be seized with a panic of apprehension.&nbsp; Here, on the very
+threshold of adventure, suppose him ignominiously to fail;
+suppose that after ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still
+uninterrupted silence, the lady should touch the check-string and
+re-deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the common
+street!&nbsp; Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he
+reasoned, would be found more equal to the part; could, that very
+instant, by some decisive step, prove the lady&rsquo;s choice to
+have been well inspired, and put a stop to this intolerable
+silence.</p>
+<p>His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.&nbsp; It was
+better to fall by desperate councils than to continue as he was;
+and with one tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and
+drew them to himself.&nbsp; One overt step, it had appeared to
+him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he
+found it otherwise: he found himself no less incapable of speech
+or further progress; and with the lady&rsquo;s hand in his, sat
+helpless.&nbsp; But worse was in store.&nbsp; A peculiar
+quivering began to agitate the form of his companion; the hand
+that lay unresistingly in Somerset&rsquo;s trembled as with ague;
+and presently there broke forth, in the shadow of the carriage,
+the bubbling and musical sound of laughter, resisted but
+triumphant.&nbsp; The young man dropped his prize; had it been
+possible, he would have bounded from the carriage.&nbsp; The
+lady, meanwhile, lying back upon the cushions, passed on from
+trill to trill of the most heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and
+fairy-sounding merriment.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You must not be offended,&rsquo; she said at last,
+catching an opportunity between two paroxysms.&nbsp; &lsquo;If
+you have been mistaken in the warmth of your attentions, the
+fault is solely mine; it does not flow from your presumption, but
+from my eccentric manner of recruiting friends; and, believe me,
+I am the last person in the world to think the worse of a young
+man for showing spirit.&nbsp; As for to-night, it is my intention
+to entertain you to a little supper; and if I shall continue to
+be as much pleased with your manners as I was taken with your
+face, I may perhaps end by making you an advantageous
+offer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his
+discomfiture had been too recent and complete.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; returned the lady, &lsquo;we must have no
+display of temper; that is for me the one disqualifying fault;
+and as I perceive we are drawing near our destination, I shall
+ask you to descend and offer me your arm.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a
+stately and severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset,
+who was possessed of an excellent temper, with the best grace in
+the world assisted the lady to alight.&nbsp; The door was opened
+by an old woman of a grim appearance, who ushered the pair into a
+dining-room somewhat dimly lighted, but already laid for supper,
+and occupied by a prodigious company of large and valuable
+cats.&nbsp; Here, as soon as they were alone, the lady divested
+herself of the lace in which she was enfolded; and Somerset was
+relieved to find, that although still bearing the traces of great
+beauty, and still distinguished by the fire and colour of her
+eye, her hair was of a silvery whiteness and her face lined with
+years.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now, <i>mon preux</i>,&rsquo; said the old lady,
+nodding at him with a quaint gaiety, &lsquo;you perceive that I
+am no longer in my first youth.&nbsp; You will soon find that I
+am all the better company for that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light
+but tasteful supper.&nbsp; They sat down, accordingly, to table,
+the cats with savage pantomime surrounding the old lady&rsquo;s
+chair; and what with the excellence of the meal and the gaiety of
+his entertainer, Somerset was soon completely at his ease.&nbsp;
+When they had well eaten and drunk, the old lady leaned back in
+her chair, and taking a cat upon her lap, subjected her guest to
+a prolonged but evidently mirthful scrutiny.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I fear, madam,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;that my
+manners have not risen to the height of your preconceived
+opinion.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear young man,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;you were
+never more mistaken in your life.&nbsp; I find you charming, and
+you may very well have lighted on a fairy godmother.&nbsp; I am
+not one of those who are given to change their opinions, and
+short of substantial demerit, those who have once gained my
+favour continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of
+decision, read my fellow men and women with a glance, and have
+acted throughout life on first impressions.&nbsp; Yours, as I
+tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you are a
+young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not improbable
+that we may strike a bargain.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;you have
+divined my situation.&nbsp; I am a man of birth, parts, and
+breeding; excellent company, or at least so I find myself; but by
+a peculiar iniquity of fate, destitute alike of trade or
+money.&nbsp; I was, indeed, this evening upon the quest of an
+adventure, resolved to close with any offer of interest,
+emolument, or pleasure; and your summons, which I profess I am
+still at some loss to understand, jumped naturally with the
+inclination of my mind.&nbsp; Call it, if you will, impudence; I
+am here, at least, prepared for any proposition you can find it
+in your heart to make, and resolutely determined to
+accept.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You express yourself very well,&rsquo; replied the old
+lady, &lsquo;and are certainly a droll and curious young
+man.&nbsp; I should not care to affirm that you were sane, for I
+have never found any one entirely so besides myself; but at least
+the nature of your madness entertains me, and I will reward you
+with some description of my character and life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap,
+proceeded to narrate the following particulars.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 108--><a name="page108"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 108</span><i>NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD
+LADY</i></h3>
+<p>I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe,
+who held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and
+Wells.&nbsp; Our family, a very large one, was noted for a
+sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where
+beauty was an heirloom.&nbsp; In Christian grace of character we
+were unhappily deficient.&nbsp; From my earliest years I saw and
+deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and position
+should have enabled them to conquer my esteem; and while I was
+yet a child, my father married a second wife, in whom (strange to
+say) the Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and
+almost laughable degree.&nbsp; Whatever may be said against me,
+it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was in vain
+that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my
+stepmother&rsquo;s demands; and from the hour she entered my
+father&rsquo;s house, I may say that I met with nothing but
+injustice and ingratitude.</p>
+<p>I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my
+disposition; for one other of the family besides myself was free
+from any violence of character.&nbsp; Before I had reached the
+age of sixteen, this cousin, John by name, had conceived for me a
+sincere but silent passion; and although the poor lad was too
+timid to hint at the nature of his feelings, I had soon divined
+and begun to share them.&nbsp; For some days I pondered on the
+odd situation created for me by the bashfulness of my admirer;
+and at length, perceiving that he began, in his distress, rather
+to avoid than seek my company, I determined to take the matter
+into my own hands.&nbsp; Finding him alone in a retired part of
+the rectory garden, I told him that I had divined his amiable
+secret, that I knew with what disfavour our union was sure to be
+regarded; and that, under the circumstances, I was prepared to
+flee with him at once.&nbsp; Poor John was literally paralysed
+with joy; such was the force of his emotions, that he could find
+no words in which to thank me; and that I, seeing him thus
+helpless, was obliged to arrange, myself, the details of our
+flight, and of the stolen marriage which was immediately to crown
+it.&nbsp; John had been at that time projecting a visit to the
+metropolis.&nbsp; In this I bade him persevere, and promised on
+the following day to join him at the Tavistock Hotel.</p>
+<p>True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose,
+on the day in question, before the servants, packed a few
+necessaries in a bag, took with me the little money I possessed,
+and bade farewell for ever to the rectory.&nbsp; I walked with
+good spirits to a town some thirty miles from home, and was set
+down the next morning in this great city of London.&nbsp; As I
+walked from the coach-office to the hotel, I could not help
+exulting in the pleasant change that had befallen me; beholding,
+meanwhile, with innocent delight, the traffic of the streets, and
+depicting, in all the colours of fancy, the reception that
+awaited me from John.&nbsp; But alas! when I inquired for Mr.
+Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such gentleman among
+the guests.&nbsp; By what channel our secret had leaked out, or
+what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I
+could never fathom.&nbsp; Enough that my family had triumphed;
+that I found myself alone in London, tender in years, smarting
+under the most sensible mortification, and by every sentiment of
+pride and self-respect debarred for ever from my father&rsquo;s
+house.</p>
+<p>I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood
+of Euston Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted
+the joys of independence.&nbsp; Three days afterwards, an
+advertisement in the <i>Times</i> directed me to the office of a
+solicitor whom I knew to be in my father&rsquo;s
+confidence.&nbsp; There I was given the promise of a very
+moderate allowance, and a distinct intimation that I must never
+look to be received at home.&nbsp; I could not but resent so
+cruel a desertion, and I told the lawyer it was a meeting I
+desired as little as themselves.&nbsp; He smiled at my courageous
+spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave me the
+remainder of my personal effects, which had been sent to me,
+under his care, in a couple of rather ponderous boxes.&nbsp; With
+these I returned in triumph to my lodgings, more content with my
+position than I should have thought possible a week before, and
+fully determined to make the best of the future.</p>
+<p>All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own
+fault alone that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of
+life.&nbsp; I have, I must confess, the fatal trick of spoiling
+my inferiors.&nbsp; My landlady, to whom I had as usual been
+overkind, impertinently called me in fault for some particular
+too small to mention; and I, annoyed that I had allowed her the
+freedom upon which she thus presumed, ordered her to leave my
+presence.&nbsp; She stood a moment dumb, and then, recalling her
+self-possession, &lsquo;Your bill,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;shall
+be ready this evening, and to-morrow, madam, you shall leave my
+house.&nbsp; See,&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;that you are able to
+pay what you owe me; for if I do not receive the uttermost
+farthing, no box of yours shall pass my threshold.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole
+quarter&rsquo;s income was due to me, not otherwise affected by
+the threat.&nbsp; That afternoon, as I left the solicitor&rsquo;s
+door, carrying in one hand, and done up in a paper parcel, the
+whole amount of my fortune, there befell me one of those decisive
+incidents that sometimes shape a life.&nbsp; The lawyer&rsquo;s
+office was situate in a street that opened at the upper end upon
+the Strand, and was closed at the lower, at the time of which I
+speak, by a row of iron railings looking on the Thames.&nbsp;
+Down this street, then, I beheld my stepmother advancing to meet
+me, and doubtless bound to the very house I had just left.&nbsp;
+She was attended by a maid whose face was new to me, but her own
+was too clearly printed on my memory; and the sight of it, even
+from a distance, filled me with generous indignation.&nbsp;
+Flight was impossible.&nbsp; There was nothing left but to
+retreat against the railing, and with my back turned to the
+street, pretend to be admiring the barges on the river or the
+chimneys of transpontine London.</p>
+<p>I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the
+turbulence of my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me
+with a trivial question.&nbsp; It was the maid whom my
+stepmother, with characteristic hardness, had left to await her
+on the street, while she transacted her business with the family
+solicitor.&nbsp; The girl did not know who I was; the opportunity
+too golden to be lost; and I was soon hearing the latest news of
+my father&rsquo;s rectory and parish.&nbsp; It did not surprise
+me to find that she detested her employers; and yet the terms in
+which she spoke of them were hard to bear, hard to let pass
+unchallenged.&nbsp; I heard them, however, without dissent, for
+my self-command is wonderful; and we might have parted as we met,
+had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to criticise the
+rector&rsquo;s missing daughter, and with the most shocking
+perversions, to narrate the story of her flight.&nbsp; My nature
+is so essentially generous that I can never pause to
+reason.&nbsp; I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as well as I
+remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet
+slipped from my fingers, glanced between the railings, and fell
+and sunk in the river.&nbsp; I stood a moment petrified, and
+then, struck by the drollery of the incident, gave way to peals
+of laughter.&nbsp; I was still laughing when my stepmother
+reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless considered me insane, ran
+off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my gravity when I
+presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh
+advance.&nbsp; His answer made me serious enough, for it was a
+flat refusal; and it was not until I had besought him even with
+tears, that he consented to lend me ten pounds from his own
+pocket.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am a poor man,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and
+you must look for nothing farther at my hands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The landlady met me at the door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here,
+madam,&rsquo; said she, with a curtsey insolently low,
+&lsquo;here is my bill.&nbsp; Would it inconvenience you to
+settle it at once?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You shall be paid, madam,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;in the
+morning, in the proper course.&rsquo;&nbsp; And I took the paper
+with a very high air, but inwardly quaking.</p>
+<p>I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be
+lost.&nbsp; I had been short of money and had allowed my debt to
+mount; and it had now reached the sum, which I shall never
+forget, of twelve pounds thirteen and fourpence halfpenny.&nbsp;
+All evening I sat by the fire considering my situation.&nbsp; I
+could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to remove
+my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was I to find
+another lodging?&nbsp; For three months, unless I could invent
+some remedy, I was condemned to be without a roof and without a
+penny.&nbsp; It can surprise no one that I decided on immediate
+flight; but even here I was confronted by a difficulty, for I had
+no sooner packed my boxes than I found I was not strong enough to
+move, far less to carry them.</p>
+<p>In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a
+shawl and bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I
+betook myself to that great bazaar of dangerous and smiling
+chances, the pavement of the city.&nbsp; It was already late at
+night, and the weather being wet and windy, there were few abroad
+besides policemen.&nbsp; These, on my present mission, I had wit
+enough to know for enemies; and wherever I perceived their moving
+lanterns, I made haste to turn aside and choose another
+thoroughfare.&nbsp; A few miserable women still walked the
+pavement; here and there were young fellows returning drunk, or
+ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the mouths of alleys; but
+of any one to whom I might appeal in my distress, I began almost
+to despair.</p>
+<p>At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one
+who was evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments,
+from his furred great-coat to the fine cigar which he was
+smoking, comfortably breathed of wealth.&nbsp; Much as my face
+has changed from its original beauty, I still retain (or so I
+tell myself) some traces of the youthful lightness of my
+figure.&nbsp; Even veiled as I then was, I could perceive the
+gentleman was struck by my appearance: and this emboldened me for
+my adventure.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said I, with a quickly beating heart,
+&lsquo;sir, are you one in whom a lady can confide?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, my dear,&rsquo; said he, removing his cigar,
+&lsquo;that depends on circumstances.&nbsp; If you will raise
+your veil&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; I interrupted, &lsquo;let there be no
+mistake.&nbsp; I ask you, as a gentleman, to serve me, but I
+offer no reward.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is frank,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but hardly
+tempting.&nbsp; And what, may I inquire, is the nature of the
+service?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on
+so short an interview.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you will accompany
+me,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;to a house not far from here, you can
+see for yourself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing
+away his cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, &lsquo;Here
+goes!&rsquo; said he, and with perfect politeness offered me his
+arm.&nbsp; I was wise enough to take it; to prolong our walk as
+far as possible, by more than one excursion from the shortest
+line; and to beguile the way with that sort of conversation which
+should prove to him indubitably from what station in society I
+sprang.&nbsp; By the time we reached the door of my lodging, I
+felt sure I had confirmed his interest, and might venture, before
+I turned the pass-key, to beseech him to moderate his voice and
+to tread softly.&nbsp; He promised to obey me: and I admitted him
+into the passage and thence into my sitting-room, which was
+fortunately next the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said he, when with trembling fingers I
+had lighted a candle, &lsquo;what is the meaning of all
+this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish you,&rsquo; said I, speaking with great
+difficulty, &lsquo;to help me out with these boxes&mdash;and I
+wish nobody to know.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He took up the candle.&nbsp; &lsquo;And I wish to see your
+face,&rsquo; said he.</p>
+<p>I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with
+every appearance of resolve that I could summon up.&nbsp; For
+some time he gazed into my face, still holding up the
+candle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said he at last, &lsquo;and
+where do you wish them taken?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in
+my voice that I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;I had thought we might
+carry them between us to the corner of Euston Road,&rsquo; said
+I, &lsquo;where, even at this late hour, we may still find a
+cab.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Very good,&rsquo; was his reply; and he immediately
+hoisted the heavier of my trunks upon his shoulder, and taking
+one handle of the second, signed to me to help him at the other
+end.&nbsp; In this order we made good our retreat from the house,
+and without the least adventure, drew pretty near to the corner
+of Euston Road.&nbsp; Before a house, where there was a light
+still burning, my companion paused.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let us
+here,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;set down our boxes, while we go
+forward to the end of the street in quest of a cab.&nbsp; By
+doing so, we can still keep an eye upon their safety, and we
+avoid the very extraordinary figure we should otherwise
+present&mdash;a young man, a young lady, and a mass of baggage,
+standing castaway at midnight on the streets of
+London.&rsquo;&nbsp; So it was done, and the event proved him to
+be wise; for long before there was any word of a cab, a policeman
+appeared upon the scene, turned upon us the full glare of his
+lantern, and hung suspiciously behind us in a doorway.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,&rsquo; said
+my champion, with affected cheerfulness.&nbsp; But the
+constable&rsquo;s answer was ungracious; and as for the offer of
+a cigar, with which this rebuff was most unwisely followed up, he
+refused it point-blank, and without the least civility.&nbsp; The
+young gentleman looked at me with a warning grimace, and there we
+continued to stand, on the edge of the pavement, in the beating
+rain, and with the policeman still silently watching our
+movements from the doorway.</p>
+<p>At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a
+four-wheeler appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was
+instantly hailed by my companion.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just pull up here,
+will you?&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;We have some baggage up
+the street.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the
+policeman, still closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying
+in the rain, he arose from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude
+of something evil.&nbsp; The light in the house had been
+extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was dark; there
+was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded trunks;
+and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such
+questionable circumstances.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where have these things come from?&rsquo; asked the
+policeman, flashing his light full into my champion&rsquo;s
+face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, from that house, of course,&rsquo; replied the
+young gentleman, hastily shouldering a trunk.</p>
+<p>The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows;
+he then took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a
+course which had infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us
+already hurrying down the street under our double burthen,
+thought better or worse of it, and followed in our wake.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; whispered my companion,
+&lsquo;tell me where to drive to.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Anywhere,&rsquo; I replied with anguish.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+have no idea.&nbsp; Anywhere you like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I had
+already entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones
+the address of the house in which we are now seated.&nbsp; The
+policeman, I could see, was staggered.&nbsp; This neighbourhood,
+so retired, so aristocratic, was far from what he had
+expected.&nbsp; For all that, he took the number of the cab, and
+spoke for a few seconds and with a decided manner in the
+cabman&rsquo;s ear.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What can he have said?&rsquo; I gasped, as soon as the
+cab had rolled away.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can very well imagine,&rsquo; replied my champion;
+&lsquo;and I can assure you that you are now condemned to go
+where I have said; for, should we attempt to change our
+destination by the way, the jarvey will drive us straight to a
+police-office.&nbsp; Let me compliment you on your nerves,&rsquo;
+he added.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have had, I believe, the most horrible
+fright of my existence.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange
+a disarray that speech was now become impossible; and we made the
+drive thenceforward in unbroken silence.&nbsp; When we arrived
+before the door of our destination, the young gentleman alighted,
+opened it with a pass-key like one who was at home, bade the
+driver carry the trunks into the hall, and dismissed him with a
+handsome fee.&nbsp; He then led me into this dining-room, looking
+nearly as you behold it, but with certain marks of bachelor
+occupancy, and hastened to pour out a glass of wine, which he
+insisted on my drinking.&nbsp; As soon as I could find my voice,
+&lsquo;In God&rsquo;s name,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;where am
+I?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and
+had no more urgent business than to rest myself and recover my
+spirits.&nbsp; As he spoke he offered me another glass of wine,
+of which, indeed, I stood in great want, for I was faint, and
+inclined to be hysterical.&nbsp; Then he sat down beside the
+fire, lit another cigar, and for some time observed me curiously
+in silence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that you have somewhat
+restored yourself, will you be kind enough to tell me in what
+sort of crime I have become a partner?&nbsp; Are you murderer,
+smuggler, thief, or only the harmless and domestic moonlight
+flitter?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without
+permission, for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on our
+first meeting; and now, at these explicit insults, I resolved at
+once to reconquer his esteem.&nbsp; The judgment of the world I
+have consistently despised, but I had already begun to set a
+certain value on the good opinion of my entertainer.&nbsp;
+Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon brightening into my
+habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly narrated the
+circumstances of my birth, my flight, and subsequent
+misfortunes.&nbsp; He heard me to an end in silence, gravely
+smoking.&nbsp; &lsquo;Miss Fanshawe,&rsquo; said he, when I had
+done, &lsquo;you are a very comical and most enchanting creature;
+and I can see nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow
+morning and satisfy your landlady&rsquo;s demands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You strangely misinterpret my confidence,&rsquo; was my
+reply; &lsquo;and if you had at all appreciated my character, you
+would understand that I can take no money at your
+hands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your landlady will doubtless not be so
+particular,&rsquo; he returned; &lsquo;nor do I at all despair of
+persuading even your unconquerable self.&nbsp; I desire you to
+examine me with critical indulgence.&nbsp; My name is Henry
+Luxmore, Lord Southwark&rsquo;s second son.&nbsp; I possess nine
+thousand a year, the house in which we are now sitting, and seven
+others in the best neighbourhoods in town.&nbsp; I do not believe
+I am repulsive to the eye, and as for my character, you have seen
+me under trial.&nbsp; I think you simply the most original of
+created beings; I need not tell you what you know very well, that
+you are ravishingly pretty; and I have nothing more to add,
+except that, foolish as it may appear, I am already head over
+heels in love with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I am prepared to be
+misjudged; but while I continue to accept your hospitality that
+fact alone should be enough to protect me from insult.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said he: &lsquo;I offer you
+marriage.&rsquo;&nbsp; And leaning back in his chair he replaced
+his cigar between his lips.</p>
+<p>I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared,
+but couched in terms so singular.&nbsp; But he knew very well how
+to obtain his purposes, for he was not only handsome in person,
+but his very coolness had a charm; and to make a long story
+short, a fortnight later I became the wife of the Honourable
+Henry Luxmore.</p>
+<p>For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect
+quiet.&nbsp; My Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to
+flee from his roof, but not for long; for though he was easily
+over-excited, his nature was placable below the surface, and with
+all his faults, I loved him tenderly.&nbsp; At last he was taken
+from me; and such is the power of self-deception, and so strange
+are the whims of the dying, he actually assured me, with his
+latest breath, that he forgave the violence of my temper!</p>
+<p>There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter
+Clara.&nbsp; She had, indeed, inherited a shadow of her
+father&rsquo;s failing; but in all things else, unless my partial
+eyes deceived me, she derived her qualities from me, and might be
+called my moral image.&nbsp; On my side, whatever else I may have
+done amiss, as a mother I was above reproach.&nbsp; Here, then,
+was surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a
+relation in which I might hope to taste repose.&nbsp; But it was
+not to be.&nbsp; You will hardly credit me when I inform you that
+she ran away from home; yet such was the case.&nbsp; Some whim
+about oppressed nationalities&mdash;Ireland, Poland, and the
+like&mdash;has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere
+encounter a young lady (I must say, of remarkable attractions)
+answering to the name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I am
+told she uses these indifferently, as well as many others), tell
+her, from me, that I forgive her cruelty, and though I will never
+more behold her face, I am at any time prepared to make her a
+liberal allowance.</p>
+<p>On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details
+of business.&nbsp; I believe I have mentioned that seven
+mansions, besides this, formed part of Mr. Luxmore&rsquo;s
+property: I have found them seven white elephants.&nbsp; The
+greed of tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors, and the
+incapacity that sits upon the bench, have combined together to
+make these houses the burthen of my life.&nbsp; I had no sooner,
+indeed, begun to look into these matters for myself, than I
+discovered so many injustices and met with so much studied
+incivility, that I was plunged into a long series of lawsuits,
+some of which are pending to this day.&nbsp; You must have heard
+my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports: a
+strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly
+desire for peace!&nbsp; But I am of the stamp of those who, when
+they have once begun a task, will rather die than leave their
+duty unfulfilled.&nbsp; I have met with every obstacle: insolence
+and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my adversaries, that
+fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most distasteful in
+the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed&mdash;always, I
+must allow, civility&mdash;but never a spark of independence,
+never that knowledge of the law and love of justice which we have
+a right to look for in a judge, the most august of human
+officers.&nbsp; And still, against all these odds, I have
+undissuadably persevered.</p>
+<p>It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a
+subject on which I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make
+a melancholy pilgrimage to my various houses.&nbsp; Four were at
+that time tenantless and closed, like pillars of salt,
+commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline of
+private virtue.&nbsp; Three were occupied by persons who had
+wearied me by every conceivable unjust demand and legal
+subterfuge&mdash;persons whom, at that very hour, I was moving
+heaven and earth to turn into the street.&nbsp; This was perhaps
+the sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot within me
+to behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an insolent
+ostentation, these handsome structures which were as much mine as
+the flesh upon my body.</p>
+<p>One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now
+are.&nbsp; I had let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel,
+the life that I have always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a
+gentleman attached to Prince Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must
+certainly have heard of; and I had supposed, from the character
+and position of my tenant, that here, at least, I was safe
+against annoyance.&nbsp; What was my surprise to find this house
+also shuttered and apparently deserted!&nbsp; I will not deny
+that I was offended; I conceived that a house, like a yacht, was
+better to be kept in commission; and I promised myself to bring
+the matter before my solicitor the following morning.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile the sight recalled my fancy naturally to the past; and
+yielding to the tender influence of sentiment, I sat down
+opposite the door upon the garden parapet.&nbsp; It was August,
+and a sultry afternoon, but that spot is sheltered, as you may
+observe by daylight, under the branches of a spreading chestnut;
+the square, too, was deserted; there was a sound of distant music
+in the air; and all combined to plunge me into that most
+agreeable of states, which is neither happiness nor sorrow, but
+shares the poignancy of both.</p>
+<p>From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very
+handsomely appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by
+several men of an appearance more than decent, and bearing on its
+panels, instead of a trader&rsquo;s name, a coat-of-arms too
+modest to be deciphered from where I sat.&nbsp; It drew up before
+my house, the door of which was immediately opened by one of the
+men.&nbsp; His companions&mdash;I counted seven of them in
+all&mdash;proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the
+van and carry into the house a variety of hampers,
+bottle-baskets, and boxes, such as are designed for plate and
+napery.&nbsp; The windows of the dining-room were thrown widely
+open, as though to air it; and I saw some of those within laying
+the table for a meal.&nbsp; Plainly, I concluded, my tenant was
+about to return; and while still determined to submit to no
+aggression on my rights, I was gratified by the number and
+discipline of his attendants, and the quiet profusion that
+appeared to reign in his establishment.&nbsp; I was still so
+thinking when, to my extreme surprise, the windows and shutters
+of the dining-room were once more closed; the men began to
+reappear from the interior and resume their stations on the van;
+the last closed the door behind his exit; the van drove away; and
+the house was once more left to itself, looking blindly on the
+square with shuttered windows, as though the whole affair had
+been a vision.</p>
+<p>It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and thus
+brought my eyes a little nearer to the level of the fanlight over
+the door, I saw that, though the day had still some hours to run,
+the hall lamps had been lighted and left burning.&nbsp; Plainly,
+then, guests were expected, and were not expected before
+night.&nbsp; For whom, I asked myself with indignation, were such
+secret preparations likely to be made?&nbsp; Although no prude, I
+am a woman of decided views upon morality; if my house, to which
+my husband had brought me, was to serve in the character of a
+<i>petite maison</i>, I saw myself forced, however unwillingly,
+into a new course of litigation; and, determined to return and
+know the worst, I hastened to my hotel for dinner.</p>
+<p>I was at my post by ten.&nbsp; The night was clear and quiet;
+the moon rode very high and put the lamps to shame; and the
+shadow below the chestnut was black as ink.&nbsp; Here, then, I
+ensconced myself on the low parapet, with my back against the
+railings, face to face with the moonlit front of my old home, and
+ruminating gently on the past.&nbsp; Time fled; eleven struck on
+all the city clocks; and presently after I was aware of the
+approach of a gentleman of stately and agreeable demeanour.&nbsp;
+He was smoking as he walked; his light palet&ocirc;t, which was
+open, did not conceal his evening clothes; and he bore himself
+with a serious grace that immediately awakened my
+attention.&nbsp; Before the door of this house he took a pass-key
+from his pocket, quietly admitted himself, and disappeared into
+the lamplit hall.</p>
+<p>He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much
+younger man approaching hastily from the opposite side of the
+square.&nbsp; Considering the season of the year and the genial
+mildness of the night, he was somewhat closely muffled up; and as
+he came, for all his hurry, he kept looking nervously behind
+him.&nbsp; Arrived before my door, he halted and set one foot
+upon the step, as though about to enter; then, with a sudden
+change, he turned and began to hurry away; halted a second time,
+as if in painful indecision; and lastly, with a violent gesture,
+wheeled about, returned straight to the door, and rapped upon the
+knocker.&nbsp; He was almost immediately admitted by the first
+arrival.</p>
+<p>My curiosity was now broad awake.&nbsp; I made myself as small
+as I could in the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the
+sequel.&nbsp; Nor had I long to wait.&nbsp; From the same side of
+the square a second young man made his appearance, walking slowly
+and softly, and like the first, muffled to the nose.&nbsp; Before
+the house he paused, looked all about him with a swift and
+comprehensive glance; and seeing the square lie empty in the moon
+and lamplight, leaned far across the area railings and appeared
+to listen to what was passing in the house.&nbsp; From the
+dining-room there came the report of a champagne cork, and
+following upon that, the sound of rich and manly laughter.&nbsp;
+The listener took heart of grace, produced a key, unlocked the
+area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him, and descended the
+stair.&nbsp; Just when his head had reached the level of the
+pavement, he turned half round and once more raked the square
+with a suspicious eyeshot.&nbsp; The mufflings had fallen lower
+round his neck; the moon shone full upon him; and I was startled
+to observe the pallor and passionate agitation of his face.</p>
+<p>I could remain no longer passive.&nbsp; Persuaded that
+something deadly was afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near
+the area railings.&nbsp; There was no one below; the man must
+therefore have entered the house, with what purpose I dreaded to
+imagine.&nbsp; I have at no part of my career lacked courage; and
+now, finding the area gate was merely laid to, I pushed it gently
+open and descended the stairs.&nbsp; The kitchen door of the
+house, like the area gate, was closed but not fastened.&nbsp; It
+flashed upon me that the criminal was thus preparing his escape;
+and the thought, as it confirmed the worst of my suspicions, lent
+me new resolve.&nbsp; I entered the house; and being now quite
+reckless of my life, I shut and locked the door.</p>
+<p>From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of
+a voice in easy conversation.&nbsp; On the ground floor all was
+not only profoundly silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh upon
+my eyes.&nbsp; Here, then, I stood for some time, having thrust
+myself uncalled into the utmost peril, and being destitute of any
+power to help or interfere.&nbsp; Nor will I deny that fear had
+begun already to assail me, when I became aware, all at once and
+as though by some immediate but silent incandescence, of a
+certain glimmering of light upon the passage floor.&nbsp; Towards
+this I groped my way with infinite precaution; and having come at
+length as far as the angle of the corridor, beheld the door of
+the butler&rsquo;s pantry standing just ajar and a narrow thread
+of brightness falling from the chink.&nbsp; Creeping still
+closer, I put my eye to the aperture.&nbsp; The man sat within
+upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most rapt
+attention.&nbsp; On a table before him he had laid a watch, a
+pair of steel revolvers, and a bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern.&nbsp;
+For one second many contradictory theories and projects whirled
+together in my head; the next, I had slammed the door and turned
+the key upon the malefactor.&nbsp; Surprised at my own decision,
+I stood and panted, leaning on the wall.&nbsp; From within the
+pantry not a sound was to be heard; the man, whatever he was, had
+accepted his fate without a struggle, and now, as I hugged myself
+to fancy, sat frozen with terror and looking for the worst to
+follow.&nbsp; I promised myself that he should not be
+disappointed; and the better to complete my task, I turned to
+ascend the stairs.</p>
+<p>The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed
+to me suddenly by my strong sense of humour.&nbsp; Here was I,
+the owner of the house, burglariously present in its walls; and
+there, in the dining-room, were two gentlemen, unknown to me,
+seated complacently at supper, and only saved by my promptitude
+from some surprising or deadly interruption.&nbsp; It were
+strange if I could not manage to extract the matter of amusement
+from so unusual a situation.</p>
+<p>Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended
+for a library.&nbsp; It was to this that I cautiously groped my
+way; and you will see how fortune had exactly served me.&nbsp;
+The weather, I have said, was sultry; in order to ventilate the
+dining-room and yet preserve the uninhabited appearance of the
+mansion to the front, the window of the library had been widely
+opened, and the door of communication between the two apartments
+left ajar.&nbsp; To this interval I now applied my eye.</p>
+<p>Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened
+brightness on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a
+cold collation of the rarest delicacy.&nbsp; The two gentlemen
+had finished supper, and were now trifling with cigars and
+maraschino; while in a silver spirit lamp, coffee of the most
+captivating fragrance was preparing in the fashion of the
+East.&nbsp; The elder of the two, he who had first arrived, was
+placed directly facing me; the other was set on his left
+hand.&nbsp; Both, like the man in the butler&rsquo;s pantry,
+seemed to be intently listening; and on the face of the second I
+thought I could perceive the marks of fear.&nbsp; Oddly enough,
+however, when they came to speak, the parts were found to be
+reversed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I assure you,&rsquo; said the elder gentleman, &lsquo;I
+not only heard the slamming of a door, but the sound of very
+guarded footsteps.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your highness was certainly deceived,&rsquo; replied
+the other.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am endowed with the acutest hearing,
+and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled.&rsquo;&nbsp; Yet
+the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord
+with the tenor of his words.</p>
+<p>His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince
+Florizel) looked at his companion for the least fraction of a
+second; and though nothing shook the easy quiet of his attitude,
+I could see that he was far from being duped.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is
+well,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;let us dismiss the topic.&nbsp; And
+now, sir, that I have very freely explained the sentiments by
+which I am directed, let me ask you, according to your promise,
+to imitate my frankness.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have heard you,&rsquo; replied the other, &lsquo;with
+great interest.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With singular patience,&rsquo; said the prince
+politely.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for
+sympathy,&rsquo; returned the young man.&nbsp; &lsquo;I know not
+how to tell the change that has befallen me.&nbsp; You have, I
+must suppose, a charm, to which even your enemies are
+subject.&rsquo;&nbsp; He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece
+and visibly blanched.&nbsp; &lsquo;So late!&rsquo; he
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your highness&mdash;God knows I am now
+speaking from the heart&mdash;before it be too late, leave this
+house!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very
+deliberately shook the ash from his cigar.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is a
+strange remark,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;and <i>&aacute; propos de
+bottes</i>, I never continue a cigar when once the ash is fallen;
+the spell breaks, the soul of the flavour flies away, and there
+remains but the dead body of tobacco; and I make it a rule to
+throw away that husk and choose another.&rsquo;&nbsp; He suited
+the action to the words.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do not trifle with my appeal,&rsquo; resumed the young
+man, in tones that trembled with emotion.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is made
+at the price of my honour and to the peril of my life.&nbsp;
+Go&mdash;go now! lose not a moment; and if you have any kindness
+for a young man, miserably deceived indeed, but not devoid of
+better sentiments, look not behind you as you leave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said the prince, &lsquo;I am here upon your
+honour; assure you upon mine that I shall continue to rely upon
+that safeguard.&nbsp; The coffee is ready; I must again trouble
+you, I fear.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with a courteous movement of the
+hand, he seemed to invite his companion to pour out the
+coffee.</p>
+<p>The unhappy young man rose from his seat.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+appeal to you,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;by every holy sentiment,
+in mercy to me, if not in pity to yourself, begone before it is
+too late.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; replied the prince, &lsquo;I am not readily
+accessible to fear; and if there is one defect to which I must
+plead guilty, it is that of a curious disposition.&nbsp; You go
+the wrong way about to make me leave this house, in which I play
+the part of your entertainer; and, suffer me to add, young man,
+if any peril threaten us, it was of your contriving, not of
+mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,&rsquo;
+cried the other.&nbsp; &lsquo;But I at least will have no hand in
+it.&rsquo;&nbsp; With these words he carried his hand to his
+pocket, hastily swallowed the contents of a phial, and, with the
+very act, reeled back and fell across his chair upon the
+floor.&nbsp; The prince left his place and came and stood above
+him, where he lay convulsed upon the carpet.&nbsp; &lsquo;Poor
+moth!&rsquo; I heard his highness murmur.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas, poor
+moth! must we again inquire which is the more
+fatal&mdash;weakness or wickedness?&nbsp; And can a sympathy with
+ideas, surely not ignoble in themselves, conduct a man to this
+dishonourable death?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the
+room.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;this is
+no time for moralising; with a little promptness we may save this
+creature&rsquo;s life; and as for the other, he need cause you no
+concern, for I have him safely under lock and key.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me
+certainly with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which
+almost robbed me of my self-possession.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dear
+madam,&rsquo; he cried at last, &lsquo;and who the devil are
+you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was already on the floor beside the dying man.&nbsp; I had,
+of course, no idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and
+I was forced to try him with a variety of antidotes.&nbsp; Here
+were both oil and vinegar, for the prince had done the young man
+the honour of compounding for him one of his celebrated salads;
+and of each of these I administered from a quarter to half a
+pint, with no apparent efficacy.&nbsp; I next plied him with the
+hot coffee, of which there may have been near upon a quart.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you no milk?&rsquo; I inquired.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,&rsquo;
+returned the prince.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Salt, then,&rsquo; said I; &lsquo;salt is a
+revulsive.&nbsp; Pass the salt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And possibly the mustard?&rsquo; asked his highness, as
+he offered me the contents of the various salt-cellars poured
+together on a plate.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;the thought is
+excellent!&nbsp; Mix me about half a pint of mustard, drinkably
+dilute.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere
+combination of so many subversive agents, as soon as the last had
+been poured over his throat, the young sufferer obtained
+relief.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There!&rsquo; I exclaimed, with natural triumph,
+&lsquo;I have saved a life!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And yet, madam,&rsquo; returned the prince, &lsquo;your
+mercy may be cruelty disguised.&nbsp; Where the honour is lost,
+it is, at least, superfluous to prolong the life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your
+highness,&rsquo; I replied, &lsquo;you would hold a very
+different opinion.&nbsp; For my part, and after whatever
+extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should still count
+to-morrow worth a trial.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You speak as a lady, madam,&rsquo; said the prince;
+&lsquo;and for such you speak the truth.&nbsp; But to men there
+is permitted such a field of license, and the good behaviour
+asked of them is at once so easy and so little, that to fail in
+that is to fall beyond the reach of pardon.&nbsp; But will you
+suffer me to repeat a question, put to you at first, I am afraid,
+with some defect of courtesy; and to ask you once more, who you
+are and how I have the honour of your company?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am the proprietor of the house in which we
+stand,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And still I am at fault,&rsquo; returned the
+prince.</p>
+<p>But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to
+strike the hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself
+upon one elbow, with an expression of despair and horror that I
+have never seen excelled, cried lamentably, &lsquo;Midnight! oh,
+just God!&rsquo;&nbsp; We stood frozen to our places, while the
+tingling hammer of the timepiece measured the remaining strokes;
+nor had we yet stirred, so tragic had been the tones of the young
+man, when the various bells of London began in turn to declare
+the hour.&nbsp; The timepiece was inaudible beyond the walls of
+the chamber where we stood; but the second pulsation of Big Ben
+had scarcely throbbed into the night, before a sharp detonation
+rang about the house.&nbsp; The prince sprang for the door by
+which I had entered; but quick as he was, I yet contrived to
+intercept him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you armed?&rsquo; I cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, madam,&rsquo; replied he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You remind
+me appositely; I will take the poker.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The man below,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;has two
+revolvers.&nbsp; Would you confront him at such odds?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And yet, madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;we cannot
+continue to remain in ignorance of what has passed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No!&rsquo; cried I.&nbsp; &lsquo;And who proposes
+it?&nbsp; I am as curious as yourself, but let us rather send for
+the police; or, if your highness dreads a scandal, for some of
+your own servants.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay, madam,&rsquo; he replied, smiling, &lsquo;for so
+brave a lady, you surprise me.&nbsp; Would you have me, then,
+send others where I fear to go myself?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are perfectly right,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;and I
+was entirely wrong.&nbsp; Go, in God&rsquo;s name, and I will
+hold the candle!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he
+carrying the poker, I the light; and together we approached and
+opened the door of the butler&rsquo;s pantry.&nbsp; In some sort,
+I believe, I was prepared for the spectacle that met our eyes; I
+was prepared, that is, to find the villain dead, but the rude
+details of such a violent suicide I was unable to endure.&nbsp;
+The prince, unshaken by horror as he had remained unshaken by
+alarm, assisted me with the most respectful gallantry to regain
+the dining-room.</p>
+<p>There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but
+vastly recovered and already seated on a chair.&nbsp; He held out
+both his hands with a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is dead,&rsquo; said the prince.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; cried the young man, &lsquo;and it should
+be I!&nbsp; What do I do, thus lingering on the stage I have
+disgraced, while he, my sure comrade, blameworthy indeed for
+much, but yet the soul of fidelity, has judged and slain himself
+for an involuntary fault?&nbsp; Ah, sir,&rsquo; said he,
+&lsquo;and you too, madam, without whose cruel help I should be
+now beyond the reach of my accusing conscience, you behold in me
+the victim equally of my own faults and virtues.&nbsp; I was born
+a hater of injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled
+against heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I
+witnessed the sorrows of the poor; the pauper&rsquo;s crust stuck
+in my throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple
+child has set me weeping.&nbsp; What was there in that but what
+was noble? and yet observe to what a fall these thoughts have led
+me!&nbsp; Year after year this passion for the lost besieged me
+closer.&nbsp; What hope was there in kings? what hope in these
+well-feathered classes that now roll in money?&nbsp; I had
+observed the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler of
+to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age,
+combine to pull down that which was immediately above and to prey
+upon those that were below; his dulness, I knew, would ultimately
+bring about his ruin; I knew his days were numbered, and yet how
+was I to wait? how was I to let the poor child shiver in the
+rain?&nbsp; The better days, indeed, were coming, but the child
+would die before that.&nbsp; Alas, your highness, in surely no
+ungenerous impatience I enrolled myself among the enemies of this
+unjust and doomed society; in surely no unnatural desire to keep
+the fires of my philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an
+irrevocable oath.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That oath is all my history.&nbsp; To give freedom to
+posterity I had forsworn my own.&nbsp; I must attend upon every
+signal; and soon my father complained of my irregular hours and
+turned me from his house.&nbsp; I was engaged in betrothal to an
+honest girl; from her also I had to part, for she was too shrewd
+to credit my inventions and too innocent to be entrusted with the
+truth.&nbsp; Behold me, then, alone with conspirators!&nbsp;
+Alas! as the years went on, my illusions left me.&nbsp;
+Surrounded as I was by the fervent disciples and apologists of
+revolution, I beheld them daily advance in confidence and
+desperation; I beheld myself, upon the other hand, and with an
+almost equal regularity, decline in faith.&nbsp; I had sacrificed
+all to further that cause in which I still believed; and daily I
+began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.&nbsp;
+Horrible was the society with which we warred, but our own means
+were not less horrible.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause
+to tell you how, when I beheld young men still free and happy,
+married, fathers of children, cheerfully toiling at their work,
+my heart reproached me with the greatness and vanity of my
+unhappy sacrifice.&nbsp; I will not describe to you how, worn by
+poverty, poor lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet conscience, my
+health began to fail, and in the long nights, as I wandered
+bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel sufferings of the
+body were added to the tortures of my mind.&nbsp; These things
+are not personal to me; they are common to all unfortunates in my
+position.&nbsp; An oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a
+thing to break: an oath, taken in the heat of youth, repented
+with what sobbings of the heart, but yet in vain repented, as the
+years go on: an oath, that was once the very utterance of the
+truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a meaningless
+and empty slavery; such is the yoke that many young men joyfully
+assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer worse
+than death.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is not that I was patient.&nbsp; I have begged to be
+released; but I knew too much, and I was still refused.&nbsp; I
+have fled; ay, and for the time successfully.&nbsp; I reached
+Paris.&nbsp; I found a lodging in the Rue St. Jacques, almost
+opposite the Val de Gr&acirc;ce.&nbsp; My room was mean and bare,
+but the sun looked into it towards evening; it commanded a peep
+of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour&rsquo;s window and
+made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed
+and rest myself: I, who was in full revolt against the principles
+that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the council,
+and was no longer charged with shameful and revolting
+tasks.&nbsp; Oh! what an interval of peace was that!&nbsp; I
+still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of my
+neighbour&rsquo;s bird.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My money was running out, and it became necessary that
+I should find employment.&nbsp; Scarcely had I been three days
+upon the search, ere I thought that I was being followed.&nbsp; I
+made certain of the features of the man, which were quite strange
+to me, and turned into a small caf&eacute;, where I whiled away
+an hour, pretending to read the papers, but inwardly convulsed
+with terror.&nbsp; When I came forth again into the street, it
+was quite empty, and I breathed again; but alas, I had not turned
+three corners, when I once more observed the human hound pursuing
+me.&nbsp; Not an hour was to be lost; timely submission might yet
+preserve a life which otherwise was forfeit and dishonoured; and
+I fled, with what speed you may conceive, to the Paris agency of
+the society I served.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My submission was accepted.&nbsp; I took up once more
+the hated burthen of that life; once more I was at the call of
+men whom I despised and hated, while yet I envied and admired
+them.&nbsp; They at least were wholehearted in the things they
+purposed; but I, who had once been such as they, had fallen from
+the brightness of my faith, and now laboured, like a hireling,
+for the wages of a loathed existence.&nbsp; Ay, sir, to that I
+was condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and lived but to
+obey.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which
+has to-night so tragically ended.&nbsp; Boldly telling who I was,
+I was to request from your highness, on behalf of my society, a
+private audience, where it was designed to murder you.&nbsp; If
+one thing remained to me of my old convictions, it was the hate
+of kings; and when this task was offered me, I took it
+gladly.&nbsp; Alas, sir, you triumphed.&nbsp; As we supped, you
+gained upon my heart.&nbsp; Your character, your talents, your
+designs for our unhappy country, all had been
+misrepresented.&nbsp; I began to forget you were a prince; I
+began, all too feelingly, to remember that you were a man.&nbsp;
+As I saw the hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and when,
+at last, we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my
+unwilling ears the arrival of the partner of my crime, you will
+bear me out with what instancy I besought you to depart.&nbsp;
+You would not, alas! and what could I?&nbsp; Kill you, I could
+not; my heart revolted, my hand turned back from such a
+deed.&nbsp; Yet it was impossible that I should suffer you to
+stay; for when the hour struck and my companion came, true to his
+appointment, and he, at least, true to our design, I could
+neither suffer you to be killed nor yet him to be arrested.&nbsp;
+From such a tragic passage, death, and death alone, could save
+me; and it is no fault of mine if I continue to exist.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But you, madam,&rsquo; continued the young man,
+addressing himself more directly to myself, &lsquo;were doubtless
+born to save the prince and to confound our purposes.&nbsp; My
+life you have prolonged; and by turning the key on my companion,
+you have made me the author of his death.&nbsp; He heard the hour
+strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to
+honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon his highness and
+perish for lack of his support, he has turned his pistol on
+himself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; said Prince Florizel: &lsquo;it
+was in no ungenerous spirit that you brought these burthens on
+yourself; and when I see you so nobly to blame, so tragically
+punished, I stand like one reproved.&nbsp; For is it not strange,
+madam, that you and I, by practising accepted and inconsiderable
+virtues, and commonplace but still unpardonable faults, should
+stand here, in the sight of God, with what we call clean hands
+and quiet consciences; while this poor youth, for an error that I
+could almost envy him, should be sunk beyond the reach of
+hope?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; resumed the prince, turning to the young
+man, &lsquo;I cannot help you; my help would but unchain the
+thunderbolt that overhangs you; and I can but leave you
+free.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And, sir,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;as this house belongs
+to me, I will ask you to have the kindness to remove the
+body.&nbsp; You and your conspirators, it appears to me, can
+hardly in civility do less.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It shall be done,&rsquo; said the young man, with a
+dismal accent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you, dear madam,&rsquo; said the prince,
+&lsquo;you, to whom I owe my life, how can I serve
+you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;to be very plain,
+this is my favourite house, being not only a valuable property,
+but endeared to me by various associations.&nbsp; I have endless
+troubles with tenants of the ordinary class: and at first
+applauded my good fortune when I found one of the station of your
+Master of the Horse.&nbsp; I now begin to think otherwise:
+dangers set a siege about great personages; and I do not wish my
+tenement to share these risks.&nbsp; Procure me the resiliation
+of the lease, and I shall feel myself your debtor.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must tell you, madam,&rsquo; replied his highness,
+&lsquo;that Colonel Geraldine is but a cloak for myself; and I
+should be sorry indeed to think myself so unacceptable a
+tenant.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I have conceived a
+sincere admiration for your character; but on the subject of
+house property, I cannot allow the interference of my
+feelings.&nbsp; I will, however, to prove to you that there is
+nothing personal in my request, here solemnly engage my word that
+I will never put another tenant in this house.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Florizel, &lsquo;you plead your
+cause too charmingly to be refused.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon we all three withdrew.&nbsp; The young man, still
+reeling in his walk, departed by himself to seek the assistance
+of his fellow-conspirators; and the prince, with the most
+attentive gallantry, lent me his escort to the door of my
+hotel.&nbsp; The next day, the lease was cancelled; nor from that
+hour to this, though sometimes regretting my engagement, have I
+suffered a tenant in this house.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 145--><a name="page145"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 145</span><i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION</i><br />
+(<i>Continued</i>).</h2>
+<p>As soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset
+made haste to offer her his compliments.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;your story is not only
+entertaining but instructive; and you have told it with infinite
+vivacity.&nbsp; I was much affected towards the end, as I held at
+one time very liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined
+a secret society if I had been able to find one.&nbsp; But the
+whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for
+you in your various perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat
+hasty temper.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not understand you,&rsquo; said Mrs. Luxmore, with
+some marks of irritation.&nbsp; &lsquo;You must have strangely
+misinterpreted what I have told you.&nbsp; You fill me with
+surprise.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset, alarmed by the old lady&rsquo;s change of tone and
+manner, hurried to recant.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear Mrs. Luxmore,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you certainly
+misconstrue my remark.&nbsp; As a man of somewhat fiery humour,
+my conscience repeatedly pricked me when I heard what you had
+suffered at the hands of persons similarly
+constituted.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, very well indeed,&rsquo; replied the old lady;
+&lsquo;and a very proper spirit.&nbsp; I regret that I have met
+with it so rarely.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But in all this,&rsquo; resumed the young man, &lsquo;I
+perceive nothing that concerns myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am about to come to that,&rsquo; she returned.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And you have already before you, in the pledge I gave
+Prince Florizel, one of the elements of the affair.&nbsp; I am a
+woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before the
+courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I
+have ever been ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am
+always happy in a crowd.&nbsp; Well, to come more shortly to the
+point, I am now on the wing for Evian; this incubus of a house,
+which I must leave behind and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my
+hands; and I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a
+very good turn into the bargain, by lending you the mansion, with
+all its fittings, as it stands.&nbsp; The idea was sudden; it
+appealed to me as humorous: and I am sure it will cause my
+relatives, if they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible
+chagrin.&nbsp; Here, then, is the key; and when you return at two
+to-morrow afternoon, you will find neither me nor my cats to
+disturb you in your new possession.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor;
+but Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to
+protest.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear Mrs. Luxmore,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is a
+most unusual proposal.&nbsp; You know nothing of me, beyond the
+fact that I displayed both impudence and timidity.&nbsp; I may be
+the worst kind of scoundrel; I may sell your
+furniture&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I
+care!&rsquo; cried Mrs. Luxmore.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is in vain to
+reason.&nbsp; Such is the force of my character that, when I have
+one idea clearly in my head, I do not care two straws for any
+side consideration.&nbsp; It amuses me to do it, and let that
+suffice.&nbsp; On your side, you may do what you please&mdash;let
+apartments, or keep a private hotel; on mine, I promise you a
+full month&rsquo;s warning before I return, and I never fail
+religiously to keep my promises.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed
+a sudden and significant change in the old lady&rsquo;s
+countenance.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If I thought you capable of disrespect!&rsquo; she
+cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Somerset, with the extreme fervour
+of asseveration, &lsquo;madam, I accept.&nbsp; I beg you to
+understand that I accept with joy and gratitude.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah well,&rsquo; returned Mrs. Luxmore, &lsquo;if I am
+mistaken, let it pass.&nbsp; And now, since all is comfortably
+settled, I wish you a good-night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she
+hurried Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing,
+key in hand, upon the pavement.</p>
+<p>The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found
+his way to the square, which I will here call Golden Square,
+though that was not its name.&nbsp; What to expect, he knew not;
+for a man may live in dreams, and yet be unprepared for their
+realisation.&nbsp; It was already with a certain pang of surprise
+that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a solid
+among solids.&nbsp; The key, upon trial, readily opened the front
+door; he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and,
+escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty
+chambers.&nbsp; Cats, servant, old lady, the very marks of
+habitation, like writing on a slate, had been in these few hours
+obliterated.&nbsp; He wandered from floor to floor, and found the
+house of great extent; the kitchen offices commodious and well
+appointed; the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in
+particular, an apartment of princely size and tasteful
+decoration.&nbsp; Although the day without was warm, genial, and
+sunny, with a ruffling wind from the quarter of Torquay, a chill,
+as it were, of suspended animation inhabited the house.&nbsp;
+Dust and shadows met the eye; and but for the ominous procession
+of the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden trees,
+the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.</p>
+<p>Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by
+the old lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted
+cupolas of the kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room
+appeared to greet him with a smiling countenance.&nbsp; He might
+as well, he thought, avoid the expense of lodging: the library,
+fitted with an iron bedstead which he had remarked, in one of the
+upper chambers, would serve his purpose for the night; while in
+the dining-room, which was large, airy, and lightsome, looking on
+the square and garden, he might very agreeably pass his days,
+cook his meals, and study to bring himself to some proficiency in
+that art of painting which he had recently determined to
+adopt.&nbsp; It did not take him long to make the change: he had
+soon returned to the mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman
+who brought him was readily induced, by the young man&rsquo;s
+pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to assist him in the
+installation of the iron bed.&nbsp; By six in the evening, when
+Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon the
+mansion with a sense of pride and property.&nbsp; Four-square it
+stood, of an imposing frontage, and flanked on either side by
+family hatchments.&nbsp; His eye, from where he stood whistling
+in the key, with his back to the garden railings, reposed on
+every feature of reality; and yet his own possession seemed as
+flimsy as a dream.</p>
+<p>In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the
+square began to remark the customs of their neighbour.&nbsp; The
+sight of a young gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about four
+o&rsquo;clock of the afternoon, in the drawing-room balcony of so
+discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more, his periodical
+excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his
+unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised
+to a high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried
+servants of the square.&nbsp; The disfavour of some of these
+gentlemen at first proceeded to the length of insult; but
+Somerset knew how to be affable with any class of men; and a few
+rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably shared,
+gained for him the right of toleration.</p>
+<p>The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a
+notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of
+offices.&nbsp; He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular
+schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into
+a studio for the reproduction of still life.&nbsp; There he
+amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the
+kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent
+his days in smiling assiduity.&nbsp; Meantime, the great bulk of
+empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon his
+imagination.&nbsp; To hold so great a stake and to do nothing,
+argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to act
+upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with
+wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small handbill
+announcing furnished lodgings.&nbsp; At half-past six of a fine
+July morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into the square
+to study the result.&nbsp; It seemed, to his eye, promising and
+unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to
+consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he
+was to charge.</p>
+<p>Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of
+painting.&nbsp; Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the
+best part of the day in the front balcony, like the attentive
+angler poring on his float; and the better to support the tedium,
+he would frequently console himself with his clay pipe.&nbsp; On
+several occasions, passers-by appeared to be arrested by the
+ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the
+very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there was
+something repulsive in the appearance of the house; for with one
+accord, they would cast but one look upward, and hastily resume
+their onward progress or direct the driver to proceed.&nbsp;
+Somerset had thus the mortification of actually meeting the eye
+of a large number of lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to
+withdraw his pipe, and to compose his features to an air of
+invitation, he was never rewarded by so much as an inquiry.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Can there,&rsquo; he thought, &lsquo;be anything repellent
+in myself?&rsquo;&nbsp; But a candid examination in one of the
+pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to dismiss the fear.</p>
+<p>Something, however, was amiss.&nbsp; His vast and accurate
+calculations on the fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of
+playbills, appeared to have been an idle sacrifice of time.&nbsp;
+By these, he had variously computed the weekly takings of the
+house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty shillings, up to
+the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in despite
+of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making literally
+nothing.</p>
+<p>This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his
+thoughtful leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him
+that he had detected the error of his method.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;This,&rsquo; he reflected, &lsquo;is an age of generous
+display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of
+Pears&rsquo; legendary soap, and of Eno&rsquo;s fruit salt,
+which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting
+pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid that
+comforter of my childhood, Lamplough&rsquo;s pyretic
+saline.&nbsp; Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent;
+Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably vulgar; and here
+have I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of the world,
+contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a few cold
+words which do not directly address the imagination, and the
+adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red
+wafers!&nbsp; Am I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with
+Eno?&nbsp; Am I to adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming
+in a duke? or to take hold of the red facts of life with the
+emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of
+the very largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his
+paints, proceeded to compose an ensign that might attract the
+eye, and at the same time, in his own phrase, directly address
+the imagination of the passenger.&nbsp; Something taking in the
+way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words, and a realistic
+design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to lead
+within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
+must be the elements of his advertisement.&nbsp; It was possible,
+upon the one hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic
+life, the evening fire, blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn;
+but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it
+were more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an
+existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly say, the
+paradise of the Mohammedan.&nbsp; So long did the artist waver
+between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion,
+he had finally conceived and completed both designs.&nbsp; With
+the proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself
+unable to sacrifice either of these offsprings of his art; and
+decided to expose them on alternate days.&nbsp; &lsquo;In this
+way,&rsquo; he thought, &lsquo;I shall address myself
+indifferently to all classes of the world.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and
+the more imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune,
+and appeared first in the window of the mansion.&nbsp; It was of
+a high fancy, the legend eloquently writ, the scheme of colour
+taking and bold; and but for the imperfection of the
+artist&rsquo;s drawing, it might have been taken for a model of
+its kind.&nbsp; As it was, however, when viewed from his
+favourite point against the garden railings, and with some touch
+of distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of the artist&rsquo;s
+heart.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have thrown away,&rsquo; he ejaculated,
+&lsquo;an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my
+first academy picture.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The fate of neither of these works was equal to its
+merit.&nbsp; A crowd would certainly, from time to time, collect
+before the area-railings; but they came to jeer and not to
+speculate; and those who pushed their inquiries further, were too
+plainly animated by the spirit of derision.&nbsp; The racier of
+the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive
+merit; and though it had a certain share of that success called
+scandalous, failed utterly of its effect.&nbsp; On the day,
+however, of the second appearance of the companion work, a real
+inquirer did actually present himself before the eyes of
+Somerset.</p>
+<p>This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent
+merriment, and his voice under inadequate control.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;but what is
+the meaning of your extraordinary bill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg yours,&rsquo; returned Somerset hotly.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Its meaning is sufficiently explicit.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+being now, from dire experience, fearful of ridicule, he was
+preparing to close the door, when the gentleman thrust his cane
+into the aperture.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not so fast, I beg of you,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If you really let apartments, here is a possible tenant at
+your door; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see
+the accommodation and to learn your terms.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor,
+showed him over the various apartments, and, with some return of
+his persuasive eloquence, expounded their attractions.&nbsp; The
+gentleman was particularly pleased by the elegant proportions of
+the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;would suit me very
+well.&nbsp; What, may I ask, would be your terms a week, for this
+floor and the one above it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was thinking,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;of a
+hundred pounds.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Surely not,&rsquo; exclaimed the gentleman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, then,&rsquo; returned Somerset,
+&lsquo;fifty.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The gentleman regarded him with an air of some
+amazement.&nbsp; &lsquo;You seem to be strangely elastic in your
+demands,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;What if I were to proceed
+on your own principle of division, and offer
+twenty-five?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Done!&rsquo; cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a
+sudden embarrassment, &lsquo;You see,&rsquo; he added
+apologetically, &lsquo;it is all found money for me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Really?&rsquo; said the stranger, looking at him all
+the while with growing wonder.&nbsp; &lsquo;Without extras,
+then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&mdash;I suppose so,&rsquo; stammered the keeper of
+the lodging-house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Service included?&rsquo; pursued the gentleman.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Service?&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you
+mean that you expect me to empty your slops?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly
+interest.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dear fellow,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;if
+you take my advice, you will give up this business.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And thereupon he resumed his hat and took himself away.</p>
+<p>This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the
+artist of the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his
+rosier illusions.&nbsp; First one and then the other of his great
+works was condemned, withdrawn from exhibition, and relegated, as
+a mere wall-picture, to the decoration of the dining-room.&nbsp;
+Their place was taken by a replica of the original wafered
+announcement, to which, in particularly large letters, he had
+added the pithy rubric: &lsquo;<i>No service</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Meanwhile he had fallen into something as nearly bordering on low
+spirits as was consistent with his disposition; depressed, at
+once by the failure of his scheme, the laughable turn of his late
+interview, and the judicial blindness of the public to the merit
+of the twin cartoons.</p>
+<p>Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the
+note of the knocker.&nbsp; A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and
+somewhat military air, yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat,
+desired in the politest terms to visit the apartments.&nbsp; He
+had (he explained) a friend, a gentleman in tender health,
+desirous of a sedate and solitary life, apart from interruptions
+and the noises of the common lodging-house.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+unusual clause,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;in your announcement,
+particularly struck me.&nbsp; &ldquo;This,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;is the place for Mr. Jones.&rdquo;&nbsp; You are yourself,
+sir, a professional gentleman?&rsquo; concluded the visitor,
+looking keenly in Somerset&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am an artist,&rsquo; replied the young man
+lightly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And these,&rsquo; observed the other, taking a side
+glance through the open door of the dining-room, which they were
+then passing, &lsquo;these are some of your works.&nbsp; Very
+remarkable.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he again and still more sharply
+peered into the countenance of the young man.</p>
+<p>Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to
+lead his visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excellent,&rsquo; observed the stranger, as he looked
+from one of the back windows.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is that a mews behind,
+sir?&nbsp; Very good.&nbsp; Well, sir: see here.&nbsp; My friend
+will take your drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back
+drawing-room; his nurse, an excellent Irish widow, will attend on
+all his wants and occupy a garret; he will pay you the round sum
+of ten dollars a week; and you, on your part, will engage to
+receive no other lodger?&nbsp; I think that fair.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude
+and joy.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Agreed,&rsquo; said the other; &lsquo;and to spare you
+trouble, my friend will bring some men with him to make the
+changes.&nbsp; You will find him a retiring inmate, sir; receives
+but few, and rarely leaves the house, except at night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Since I have been in this house,&rsquo; returned
+Somerset, &lsquo;I have myself, unless it were to fetch beer,
+rarely gone abroad except in the evening.&nbsp; But a man,&rsquo;
+he added, &lsquo;must have some amusement.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and
+Somerset sat down to compute in English money the value of the
+figure named.&nbsp; The result of this investigation filled him
+with amazement and disgust; but it was now too late; nothing
+remained but to endure; and he awaited the arrival of his tenant,
+still trying, by various arithmetical expedients, to obtain a
+more favourable quotation for the dollar.&nbsp; With the approach
+of dusk, however, his impatience drove him once more to the front
+balcony.&nbsp; The night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone
+around the central darkness of the garden; and through the tall
+grove of trees that intervened, many warmly illuminated windows
+on the farther side of the square, told their tale of white
+napery, choice wine, and genial hospitality.&nbsp; The stars were
+already thickening overhead, when the young man&rsquo;s eyes
+alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers, coasting round
+the garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp;
+They were laden with formidable boxes; moved in a military order,
+one following another; and, by the extreme slowness of their
+advance, inspired Somerset with the most serious ideas of his
+tenant&rsquo;s malady.</p>
+<p>By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside
+the pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the
+military gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart
+porters.&nbsp; These proceeded instantly to take possession of
+the house; with their own hands, and firmly rejecting
+Somerset&rsquo;s assistance, they carried in the various crates
+and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the
+back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and
+it was not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and the
+arrangements were complete, that there descended, from the third
+of the three vehicles, a gentleman of great stature and broad
+shoulders, leaning on the shoulder of a woman in a widow&rsquo;s
+dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and muffled in a
+coloured comforter.</p>
+<p>Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut
+into the back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence
+redescended on the house; and had not the nurse appeared a little
+before half-past ten, and, with a strong brogue, asked if there
+were a decent public-house in the neighbourhood, Somerset might
+have still supposed himself to be alone in the Superfluous
+Mansion.</p>
+<p>Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by
+speech or sight of his mysterious lodger.&nbsp; The doors of the
+drawing-room flat were never open; and although Somerset could
+hear him moving to and fro, the tall man had never quitted the
+privacy of his apartments.&nbsp; Visitors, indeed, arrived;
+sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours of night
+or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
+decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of
+Somerset, displeasing.&nbsp; A certain air of fear and secrecy
+was common to them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and
+ill at ease; even the military gentleman proved, on a closer
+inspection, to be no gentleman at all; and as for the doctor who
+attended the sick man, his manners were not suggestive of a
+university career.&nbsp; The nurse, again, was scarcely a
+desirable house-fellow.&nbsp; Since her arrival, the fall of
+whisky in the young man&rsquo;s private bottle was much
+accelerated; and though never communicative, she was at times
+unpleasantly familiar.&nbsp; When asked about the patient&rsquo;s
+health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare that the
+poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.</p>
+<p>Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion
+that his complaint was other than bodily.&nbsp; The ill-looking
+birds that gathered to the house, the strange noises that sounded
+from the drawing-room in the dead hours of night, the careless
+attendance and intemperate habits of the nurse, the entire
+absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. Jones
+himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn to
+in a court of justice&mdash;all weighed unpleasantly upon the
+young man&rsquo;s mind.&nbsp; A sense of something evil,
+irregular and underhand, haunted and depressed him; and this
+uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in his mind, when, in
+the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of observing the
+features of his tenant.&nbsp; It fell in this way.&nbsp; The
+young landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise
+in the hall.&nbsp; Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of
+the library, he saw the tall man, candle in hand, in earnest
+conversation with the gentleman who had taken the rooms.&nbsp;
+The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in that of his
+tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but
+every sign of health, energy, and resolution.&nbsp; While he was
+still looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid,
+having carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without
+a trace of lassitude.</p>
+<p>That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more
+into the hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning
+resumed the practice of his art with careless hand and an
+abstracted mind.&nbsp; The day was destined to be fertile in
+surprises; nor had he long been seated at the easel ere the first
+of these occurred.&nbsp; A cab laden with baggage drew up before
+the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the steps
+and began to pound upon the knocker.&nbsp; Somerset hastened to
+attend the summons.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow,&rsquo; she said, with the utmost
+gaiety, &lsquo;here I come dropping from the moon.&nbsp; I am
+delighted to find you faithful; and I have no doubt you will be
+equally pleased to be restored to liberty.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome;
+and the spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the
+threshold of the dining-room.&nbsp; The sight that met her eyes
+was one well calculated to inspire astonishment.&nbsp; The
+mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and empty bottles; on the
+fire some chops were frying; the floor was littered from end to
+end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the materials of the
+painter&rsquo;s craft; but what far outstripped the other wonders
+of the place was the corner which had been arranged for the study
+of still-life.&nbsp; This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous
+upon which, according to the principles of the art of
+composition, a cabbage was relieved against a copper kettle, and
+both contrasted with the mail of a boiled lobster.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My gracious goodness!&rsquo; cried the lady of the
+house; and then, turning in wrath on the young man, &lsquo;From
+what rank in life are you sprung?&rsquo; she demanded.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the
+astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a
+greengrocer&rsquo;s man.&nbsp; Pray, gather up your vegetables,
+and let me see no more of you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; babbled Somerset, &lsquo;you promised me
+a month&rsquo;s warning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That was under a misapprehension,&rsquo; returned the
+old lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;I now give you warning to leave at
+once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said the young man, &lsquo;I wish I
+could; and indeed, as far as I am concerned, it might be
+done.&nbsp; But then, my lodger!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your lodger?&rsquo; echoed Mrs. Luxmore.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My lodger: why should I deny it?&rsquo; returned
+Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is only by the week.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The old lady sat down upon a chair.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have a
+lodger?&mdash;you?&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;And pray, how
+did you get him?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By advertisement,&rsquo; replied the young man.
+&lsquo;O madam, I have not lived unobservantly.&nbsp; I
+adopted&rsquo;&mdash;his eyes involuntarily shifted to the
+cartoons&mdash;&lsquo;I adopted every method.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in
+Somerset&rsquo;s experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and
+as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she
+gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and soprano
+laughter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!&rsquo; she
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;I do hope you had them in the window.&nbsp;
+M&rsquo;Pherson,&rsquo; she continued, crying to her maid, who
+had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, &lsquo;I lunch
+with Mr. Somerset.&nbsp; Take the cellar key and bring some
+wine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon;
+presented Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made
+M&rsquo;Pherson bring up from the cellar&mdash;&lsquo;as a
+present, my dear,&rsquo; she said, with another burst of tearful
+merriment, &lsquo;for your charming pictures, which you must be
+sure to leave me when you go;&rsquo; and finally, protesting that
+she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole
+of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent
+of Europe.</p>
+<p>She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the
+corridor the Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a
+prey to singularly strong emotion.&nbsp; It was made to appear,
+from her account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely in
+his health from Mrs. Luxmore&rsquo;s visit, and that nothing
+short of a full explanation could allay the invalid&rsquo;s
+uneasiness.&nbsp; Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he
+thought fit of the affair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is that all?&rsquo; cried the woman.&nbsp; &lsquo;As
+God sees you, is that all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My good woman,&rsquo; said the young man, &lsquo;I have
+no idea what you can be driving at.&nbsp; Suppose the lady were
+my friend&rsquo;s wife, suppose she were my fairy godmother,
+suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should that
+affect yourself or Mr. Jones?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Blessed Mary!&rsquo; cried the nurse, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s
+he that will be glad to hear it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And immediately she fled upstairs.</p>
+<p>Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a
+very thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of
+the remainder of the bottle.&nbsp; It was port; and port is a
+wine, sole among its equals and superiors, that can in some
+degree support the competition of tobacco.&nbsp; Sipping,
+smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on from suspicion to
+suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver and
+rosier as the bottle ebbed.&nbsp; He was a sceptic, none prouder
+of the name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes or
+vices, but beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral
+approbation, the frequent consequence of youth and health.&nbsp;
+At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt under the same
+roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate instinct of
+the chase impelled him to severity.&nbsp; The bottle had run low;
+the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment,
+night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.</p>
+<p>He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in
+consonance, not so much with his purse, as with the admirable
+wine he had discussed.&nbsp; What with one thing and another, it
+was long past midnight when he returned home.&nbsp; A cab was at
+the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found himself face to
+face with one of the most regular of the few who visited Mr.
+Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a
+chin-beard in the American fashion.&nbsp; This person was
+carrying on one shoulder a black portmanteau, seemingly of
+considerable weight.&nbsp; That he should find a visitor removing
+baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd stories to the
+young man&rsquo;s memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus
+gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very
+furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now,
+in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner
+of a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the
+chin-beard and knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the
+floor.&nbsp; With a face struck suddenly as white as paper, the
+man with the chin-beard called lamentably on the name of his
+maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat at the foot of the
+stairs.&nbsp; At the same time, though only for a single instant,
+the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish nurse popped out like
+rabbits over the banisters of the first floor; and on both the
+same scare and pallor were apparent.</p>
+<p>The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone,
+and he continued speechless, while the man gathered himself
+together, and, with the help of the handrail and audibly thanking
+God, scrambled once more upon his feet.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What in Heaven&rsquo;s name ails you?&rsquo; gasped the
+young man as soon as he could find words and utterance.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you a drop of brandy?&rsquo; returned the
+other.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am sick.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the
+man with the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to
+confound himself in apologies for what he called his miserable
+nervousness, the result, he said, of a long course of dumb ague;
+and having taken leave with a hand that still sweated and
+trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and departed.</p>
+<p>Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.&nbsp; What, he asked
+himself, had been the contents of the black portmanteau?&nbsp;
+Stolen goods? the carcase of one murdered? or&mdash;and at the
+thought he sat upright in bed&mdash;an infernal machine?&nbsp; He
+took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest; and
+with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room
+window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await and profit by the
+earliest opportunity.</p>
+<p>The hours went heavily by.&nbsp; Within the house there was no
+circumstance of novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more
+frequently made little journeys round the corner of the square,
+and before afternoon was somewhat loose of speech and gait.&nbsp;
+A little after six, however, there came round the corner of the
+gardens a very handsome and elegantly dressed young woman, who
+paused a little way off, and for some time, and with frequent
+sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp;
+It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked
+upon it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the
+young man had already had occasion to remark the lively slimness
+of her carriage, and had already been the butt of a chance arrow
+from her eye.&nbsp; He hailed her coming, then, with pleasant
+feelings, and moved a little nearer to the window to enjoy the
+sight.&nbsp; What was his surprise, however, when, as if with a
+sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps and tapped
+discreetly at the door!&nbsp; He made haste to get before the
+Irish nurse, who was not improbably asleep, and had the
+satisfaction to receive this gracious visitor in person.</p>
+<p>She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition,
+asked the young man if he were the person of the house (and at
+the words, he thought he could perceive her to be smiling),
+&lsquo;because,&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;if you are, I should
+like to see some of the other rooms.&rsquo;&nbsp; Somerset told
+her he was under an engagement to receive no other lodgers; but
+she assured him that would be no matter, as these were friends of
+Mr. Jones&rsquo;s.&nbsp; &lsquo;And,&rsquo; she continued, moving
+suddenly to the dining-room door, &lsquo;let us begin
+here.&rsquo;&nbsp; Somerset was too late to prevent her entering,
+and perhaps he lacked the courage to essay.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;how changed it is!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; cried the young man, &lsquo;since your
+entrance, it is I who have the right to say so.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious
+droop of the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the
+mingled litter, now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the
+wonders of the two apartments.&nbsp; She gazed upon the cartoons
+with sparkling eyes, and a heightened colour, and in a somewhat
+breathless voice, expressed a high opinion of their merits.&nbsp;
+She praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the
+bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the
+entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.&nbsp; &lsquo;How
+simple and manly!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;none of that
+effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a
+man!&rsquo;&nbsp; Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time
+to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him
+no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and
+ascended the staircase alone.</p>
+<p>For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with
+Mr. Jones; and at the end of that time, the night being now come
+completely, they left the house in company.&nbsp; This was the
+first time since the arrival of his lodger, that Somerset had
+found himself alone with the Irish widow; and without the loss of
+any more time than was required by decency, he stepped to the
+foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.&nbsp; She came
+instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and
+when the young man politely offered to introduce her to the
+treasures of his art, she swore that nothing could afford her
+greater pleasure, for, though she had never crossed the
+threshold, she had frequently observed his beautiful pictures
+through the door.&nbsp; On entering the dining-room, the sight of
+a bottle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle critic; and
+as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was
+easily persuaded to join the painter in a single glass.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;are my respects; and a
+pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a gentleman like
+yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I am
+sure.&rsquo;&nbsp; One glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to
+lead to the acceptance of a second; at the third, Somerset was
+free to cease from the affectation of keeping her company; and as
+for the fourth, she asked it of her own accord.&nbsp; &lsquo;For
+indeed,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;what with all these clocks and
+chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be
+impossible entirely.&nbsp; And you seen yourself that even
+M&rsquo;Guire was glad to beg for it.&nbsp; And even himself,
+when he is downhearted with all these cruel disappointments,
+though as temperate a man as any child, will be sometimes crying
+for a glass of it.&nbsp; And I&rsquo;ll thank you for a
+thimbleful to settle what I got.&rsquo;&nbsp; Soon after, she
+began with tears to narrate the deathbed dispositions and lament
+the trifling assets of her husband.&nbsp; Then she declared she
+heard &lsquo;the master&rsquo; calling her, rose to her feet,
+made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with
+her head upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.</p>
+<p>Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the
+door of the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several
+lamps.&nbsp; It was a great apartment; looking on the square with
+three tall windows, and joined by a pair of ample folding-doors
+to the next room; elegant in proportion, papered in sea-green,
+furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned with a
+majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles.&nbsp; Such was
+the room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld was
+changed in almost every feature: the furniture covered with a
+figured chintz; the walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and
+diversified by the curtained recesses for no less than seven
+windows.&nbsp; It seemed to himself that he must have entered,
+without observing the transition, into the adjoining house.&nbsp;
+Presently from these more specious changes, his eye condescended
+to the many curious objects with which the floor was
+littered.&nbsp; Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks
+and clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily
+ticking, some reduced to their dainty elements; a great company
+of carboys, jars and bottles; a carpenter&rsquo;s bench and a
+laboratory-table.</p>
+<p>The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had
+likewise undergone a change.&nbsp; It was transformed to the
+exact appearance of a common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with
+green curtains occupied one corner; and the window was blocked by
+the regulation table and mirror.&nbsp; The door of a small closet
+here attracted the young man&rsquo;s attention; and striking a
+vesta, he opened it and entered.&nbsp; On a table several wigs
+and beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous
+display of suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last
+the young man observed a large overall of the most costly
+sealskin.&nbsp; In a flash his mind reverted to the advertisement
+in the <i>Standard</i> newspaper.&nbsp; The great height of his
+lodger, the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders, and the
+strange particulars of his instalment, all pointed to the same
+conclusion.</p>
+<p>The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat
+upon his arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted
+drawing-room.&nbsp; There, with a mixture of fear and admiration,
+he pored upon its goodly proportions and the regularity and
+softness of the pile.&nbsp; The sight of a large pier-glass put
+another fancy in his head.&nbsp; He donned the fur-coat; and
+standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a Russian
+prince, he thrust his hands into the ample pockets.&nbsp; There
+his fingers encountered a folded journal.&nbsp; He drew it out,
+and recognised the type and paper of the <i>Standard</i>; and at
+the same instant, his eyes alighted on the offer of two hundred
+pounds.&nbsp; Plainly then, his lodger, now no longer mysterious,
+had laid aside his coat on the very day of the appearance of the
+advertisement.</p>
+<p>He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the
+incriminating paper in his hand, when the door opened and the
+tall lodger, with a firm but somewhat pallid face, stepped into
+the room and closed the door again behind him.&nbsp; For some
+time, the two looked upon each other in perfect silence; then Mr.
+Jones moved forward to the table, took a seat, and still without
+once changing the direction of his eyes, addressed the young
+man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is for
+me the blood money is offered.&nbsp; And now what will you
+do?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to
+reply.&nbsp; Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the
+man&rsquo;s own coat, and surrounded by a whole arsenal of
+diabolical explosives, the keeper of the lodging-house was
+silenced.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; resumed the other, &lsquo;I am he.&nbsp; I
+am that man, whom with impotent hate and fear, they still hunt
+from den to den, from disguise to disguise.&nbsp; Yes, my
+landlord, you have it in your power, if you be poor, to lay the
+basis of your fortune; if you be unknown, to capture honour at
+one snatch.&nbsp; You have hocussed an innocent widow; and I find
+you here in my apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped
+money, searching my wardrobe, and your hand&mdash;shame,
+sir!&mdash;your hand in my very pocket.&nbsp; You can now
+complete the cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at
+once the simplest, the safest, and the most
+remunerative.&rsquo;&nbsp; The speaker paused as if to emphasise
+his words; and then, with a great change of tone and manner, thus
+resumed: &lsquo;And yet, sir, when I look upon your face, I feel
+certain that I cannot be deceived: certain that in spite of all,
+I have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman.&nbsp;
+Take off my coat, sir&mdash;which but cumbers you.&nbsp; Divest
+yourself of this confusion: that which is but thought upon, thank
+God, need be no burthen to the conscience; we have all harboured
+guilty thoughts: and if it flashed into your mind to sell my
+flesh and blood, my anguish in the dock, and the sweat of my
+death agony&mdash;it was a thought, dear sir, you were as
+incapable of acting on, as I of any further question of your
+honour.&rsquo;&nbsp; At these words, the speaker, with a very
+open, smiling countenance, like a forgiving father, offered
+Somerset his hand.</p>
+<p>It was not in the young man&rsquo;s nature to refuse
+forgiveness or dissect generosity.&nbsp; He instantly, and almost
+without thought, accepted the proffered grasp.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; resumed the lodger, &lsquo;now that I
+hold in mine your loyal hand, I lay by my apprehensions, I
+dismiss suspicion, I go further&mdash;by an effort of will, I
+banish the memory of what is past.&nbsp; How you came here, I
+care not: enough that you are here&mdash;as my guest.&nbsp; Sit
+ye down; and let us, with your good permission, improve
+acquaintance over a glass of excellent whisky.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle: and the pair
+pledged each other in silence.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Confess,&rsquo; observed the smiling host, &lsquo;you
+were surprised at the appearance of the room.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was indeed,&rsquo; said Somerset; &lsquo;nor can I
+imagine the purpose of these changes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;These,&rsquo; replied the conspirator, &lsquo;are the
+devices by which I continue to exist.&nbsp; Conceive me now,
+accused before one of your unjust tribunals; conceive the various
+witnesses appearing, and the singular variety of their
+reports!&nbsp; One will have visited me in this drawing-room as
+it originally stood; a second finds it as it is to-night; and
+to-morrow or next day, all may have been changed.&nbsp; If you
+love romance (as artists do), few lives are more romantic than
+that of the obscure individual now addressing you.&nbsp; Obscure
+yet famous.&nbsp; Mine is an anonymous, infernal glory.&nbsp; By
+infamous means, I work towards my bright purpose.&nbsp; I found
+the liberty and peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the
+future smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the
+existence of a hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and
+practice hell&rsquo;s dexterities.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic
+before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with
+indescribable bewilderment.&nbsp; He looked him in the face with
+curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and
+wondered the more profoundly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; he said&mdash;&lsquo;for I know not whether
+I should still address you as Mr. Jones&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot,
+Henderland, by all or any of these you may address me,&rsquo;
+said the plotter; &lsquo;for all I have at some time borne.&nbsp;
+Yet that which I most prize, that which is most feared, hated,
+and obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is
+not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed, like
+the celebrated clan M&rsquo;Gregor, I may justly describe myself
+as being nameless by day.&nbsp; But,&rsquo; he continued, rising
+to his feet, &lsquo;by night, and among my desperate followers, I
+am the redoubted Zero.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely
+expressed surprise and gratification.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am to
+understand,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;that, under this alias,
+you follow the profession of a dynamiter?&rsquo; <a
+name="citation176"></a><a href="#footnote176"
+class="citation">[176]</a></p>
+<p>The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the
+glasses.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;In this dark period
+of time, a star&mdash;the star of dynamite&mdash;has risen for
+the oppressed; and among those who practise its use, so thick
+beset with dangers and attended by such incredible difficulties
+and disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not
+many&mdash;&rsquo;&nbsp; He paused, and a shade of embarrassment
+appeared upon his face&mdash;&lsquo;not many have been more
+successful than myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can imagine,&rsquo; observed Somerset, &lsquo;that,
+from the sweeping consequences looked for, the career is not
+devoid of interest.&nbsp; You have, besides, some of the
+entertainment of the game of hide and seek.&nbsp; But it would
+still seem to me&mdash;I speak as a layman&mdash;that nothing
+could be simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal machine and
+retire to an adjacent county to await the painful
+consequences.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You speak, indeed,&rsquo; returned the plotter, with
+some evidence of warmth, &lsquo;you speak, indeed, most
+ignorantly.&nbsp; Do you make nothing, then, of such a peril as
+we share this moment?&nbsp; Do you think it nothing to occupy a
+house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally
+tottering to its fall?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; ejaculated Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And when you speak of ease,&rsquo; pursued Zero,
+&lsquo;in this age of scientific studies, you fill me with
+surprise.&nbsp; Are you not aware that chemicals are proverbially
+fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very
+devil?&nbsp; Do you see upon my brow these furrows of
+anxiety?&nbsp; Do you observe the silver threads that mingle with
+my hair?&nbsp; Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on my
+brow&mdash;chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!&nbsp; No,
+Mr. Somerset,&rsquo; he resumed, after a moment&rsquo;s pause,
+his voice still quivering with sensibility, &lsquo;you must not
+suppose the dynamiter&rsquo;s life to be all gold.&nbsp; On the
+contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the bloodshot vigils and
+the staggering disappointments of a life like mine.&nbsp; I have
+toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is
+ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face
+to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England,
+the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and
+lo! a snap like that of a child&rsquo;s pistol, an offensive
+smell, and the entire loss of so much time and plant!&nbsp;
+If,&rsquo; he concluded, musingly, &lsquo;we had been merely able
+to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I
+could have remedied the peccant engine.&nbsp; But what with the
+loss of plant and the almost insuperable scientific difficulties
+of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to desert the
+chosen medium.&nbsp; They propose, instead, to break up the
+drainage system of cities and sweep off whole populations with
+the devastating typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a scientific
+project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical
+simplicity.&nbsp; I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have
+something of the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the
+tribune.&nbsp; And, for my small part, I shall remain devoted to
+that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more
+popular method, of the explosive bomb.&nbsp; Yes,&rsquo; he
+cried, with unshaken hope, &lsquo;I will still continue, and, I
+feel it in my bosom, I shall yet succeed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Two things I remark,&rsquo; said Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The first somewhat staggers me.&nbsp; Have you,
+then&mdash;in all this course of life, which you have sketched so
+vividly&mdash;have you not once succeeded?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have had
+one success.&nbsp; You behold in me the author of the outrage of
+Red Lion Court.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But if I remember right,&rsquo; objected Somerset,
+&lsquo;the thing was a <i>fiasco</i>.&nbsp; A scavenger&rsquo;s
+barrow and some copies of the <i>Weekly Budget</i>&mdash;these
+were the only victims.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will pardon me again,&rsquo; returned Zero with
+positive asperity: &lsquo;a child was injured.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And that fitly brings me to my second point,&rsquo;
+said Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;For I observed you to employ the word
+&ldquo;indiscriminate.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now, surely, a
+scavenger&rsquo;s barrow and a child (if child there were)
+represent the very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and,
+pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did I employ the word?&rsquo; asked Zero.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Well, I will not defend it.&nbsp; But for efficiency, you
+touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so vast a
+subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses.&nbsp;
+Disputation is dry work,&rsquo; he added, with a charming gaiety
+of manner.</p>
+<p>Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a
+stalwart grog; and Zero, leaning back with an air of some
+complacency, proceeded more largely to develop his opinions.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The indiscriminate?&rsquo; he began.&nbsp; &lsquo;War,
+my dear sir, is indiscriminate.&nbsp; War spares not the child;
+it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger.&nbsp; No
+more,&rsquo; he concluded, beaming, &lsquo;no more do I.&nbsp;
+Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the
+activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial
+Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple
+plans.&nbsp; You are not,&rsquo; he inquired, with a shade of
+sympathetic interest, &lsquo;you are not, I trust, a
+believer?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, I believe in nothing,&rsquo; said the young
+man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are then,&rsquo; replied Zero, &lsquo;in a position
+to grasp my argument.&nbsp; We agree that humanity is the object,
+the glorious triumph of humanity; and being pledged to labour for
+that end, and face to face with the banded opposition of kings,
+parliaments, churches, and the members of the force, who am
+I&mdash;who are we, dear sir&mdash;to affect a nicety about the
+tools employed?&nbsp; You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the
+Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous
+Granville; but there you would be in error.&nbsp; Our appeal is
+to the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and
+interest.&nbsp; Now, sir, have you observed the English
+housemaid?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should think I had,&rsquo; cried Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected
+it,&rsquo; returned the conspirator politely.&nbsp; &lsquo;A type
+apart; a very charming figure; and thoroughly adapted to our
+ends.&nbsp; The neat cap, the clean print, the comely person, the
+engaging manner; her position between classes, parents in one,
+employers in another; the probability that she will have at least
+one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall address:&mdash;yes, I
+have a leaning&mdash;call it, if you will, a weakness&mdash;for
+the housemaid.&nbsp; Not that I would be understood to despise
+the nurse.&nbsp; For the child is a very interesting feature: I
+have long since marked out the child as the sensitive point in
+society.&rsquo;&nbsp; He wagged his head, with a wise, pensive
+smile.&nbsp; &lsquo;And talking, sir, of children and of the
+perils of our trade, let me now narrate to you a little incident
+of an explosive bomb, that fell out some weeks ago under my own
+observation.&nbsp; It fell out thus.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following
+simple tale.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 182--><a name="page182"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 182</span><i>ZERO&rsquo;S TALE OF THE
+EXPLOSIVE BOMB</i>. <a name="citation182"></a><a
+href="#footnote182" class="citation">[182]</a></h3>
+<p>I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in
+a private chamber at St. James&rsquo;s Hall.&nbsp; You have seen
+the man: it was M&rsquo;Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures,
+but not himself expert in our contrivances.&nbsp; Hence the
+necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what enormous
+issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine.&nbsp; I set
+our little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being
+hard by; and the better to avert miscarriage, employed a device,
+a recent invention of my own, by which the opening of the
+Gladstone bag in which the bomb was carried, should instantly
+determine the explosion.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire was somewhat dashed
+by this arrangement, which was new to him: and pointed out, with
+excellent, clear good sense, that should he be arrested, it would
+probably involve him in the fall of our opponents.&nbsp; But I
+was not to be moved, made a strong appeal to his patriotism, gave
+him a good glass of whisky, and despatched him on his glorious
+errand.</p>
+<p>Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester
+Square: a spot, I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake
+of the dramatist, still very foolishly claimed as a glory by the
+English race, in spite of his disgusting political opinions; but
+from the fact that the seats in the immediate neighbourhood are
+often thronged by children, errand-boys, unfortunate young ladies
+of the poorer class and infirm old men&mdash;all classes making a
+direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitable with our
+designs.&nbsp; As M&rsquo;Guire drew near his heart was inflamed
+by the most noble sentiment of triumph.&nbsp; Never had he seen
+the garden so crowded; children, still stumbling in the impotence
+of youth, ran to and fro, shouting and playing, round the
+pedestal; an old, sick pensioner sat upon the nearest bench, a
+medal on his breast, a stick with which he walked (for he was
+disabled by wounds) reclining on his knee.&nbsp; Guilty England
+would thus be stabbed in the most delicate quarters; the moment
+had, indeed, been well selected; and M&rsquo;Guire, with a
+radiant provision of the event, drew merrily nearer.&nbsp;
+Suddenly his eye alighted on the burly form of a policeman,
+standing hard by the effigy in an attitude of watch.&nbsp; My
+bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and
+there, at different points of the enclosure, other men stood or
+loitered, affecting an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the
+shrubs, feigning to talk, feigning to be weary and to rest upon
+the benches.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire was no child in these affairs;
+he instantly divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian
+Gladstone.</p>
+<p>A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain
+nervousness in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour
+of some design draws near, these chicken-souled conspirators
+appear to suffer some revulsion of intent; and frequently
+despatch to the authorities, not indeed specific denunciations,
+but vague anonymous warnings.&nbsp; But for this purely
+accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an historical
+expression.&nbsp; On the receipt of such a letter, the Government
+lay a trap for their adversaries, and surround the threatened
+spot with hirelings.&nbsp; My blood sometimes boils in my veins,
+when I consider the case of those who sell themselves for money
+in such a cause.&nbsp; True, thanks to the generosity of our
+supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortable stipend; I
+myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyond the
+reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M&rsquo;Guire, again,
+ere he joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now,
+thank God! receives a decent income.&nbsp; That is as it should
+be; the patriot must not be diverted from his task by any base
+consideration; and the distinction between our position and that
+of the police is too obvious to be stated.</p>
+<p>Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been
+divulged; the Government had craftily filled the place with
+minions; even the pensioner was not improbably a hireling in
+disguise; and our emissary, without other aid or protection than
+the simple apparatus in his bag, found himself confronted by
+force; brutal force; that strong hand which was a character of
+the ages of oppression.&nbsp; Should he venture to deposit the
+machine, it was almost certain that he would be observed and
+arrested; a cry would arise; and there was just a fear that the
+police might not be present in sufficient force, to protect him
+from the savagery of the mob.&nbsp; The scheme must be
+delayed.&nbsp; He stood with his bag on his arm, pretending to
+survey the front of the Alhambra, when there flashed into his
+mind a thought to appal the bravest.&nbsp; The machine was set;
+at the appointed hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval,
+was he to be rid of it?</p>
+<p>Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that
+patriot.&nbsp; There he was, friendless and helpless; a man in
+the very flower of life, for he is not yet forty; with long years
+of happiness before him; and now condemned, in one moment, to a
+cruel and revolting death by dynamite!&nbsp; The square, he said,
+went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the Alhambra leap into
+the air like a balloon; and reeled against the railing.&nbsp; It
+is probable he fainted.</p>
+<p>When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; he cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You seem to be unwell, sir,&rsquo; said the
+hireling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I feel better now,&rsquo; cried poor M&rsquo;Guire: and
+with uneven steps, for the pavement of the square seemed to lurch
+and reel under his footing, he fled from the scene of this
+disaster.&nbsp; Fled?&nbsp; Alas, from what was he fleeing?&nbsp;
+Did he not carry that from which he fled along with him? and had
+he the wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean
+winds, could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the
+earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried?&nbsp; We
+have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; the
+grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the
+case is but a flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like
+poor M&rsquo;Guire, to an explosive bomb.</p>
+<p>A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his
+liver: suppose it were the hour already.&nbsp; He stopped as
+though he had been shot, and plucked his watch out.&nbsp; There
+was a howling in his ears, as loud as a winter tempest; his sight
+was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by a lightning flash,
+would show him the very dust upon the street.&nbsp; But so brief
+were these intervals of vision, and so violently did the watch
+vibrate in his hands, that it was impossible to distinguish the
+numbers on the dial.&nbsp; He covered his eyes for a few seconds;
+and in that space, it seemed to him that he had fallen to be a
+man of ninety.&nbsp; When he looked again, the watch-plate had
+grown legible: he had twenty minutes.&nbsp; Twenty minutes, and
+no plan!</p>
+<p>Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now
+observed a little girl of about six drawing near to him, and as
+she came, kicking in front of her, as children will, a piece of
+wood.&nbsp; She sang, too; and something in her accent recalling
+him to the past, produced a sudden clearness in his mind.&nbsp;
+Here was a God-sent opportunity!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;would you like a
+present of a pretty bag?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take
+it.&nbsp; She had looked first at the bag, like a true child; but
+most unfortunately, before she had yet received the fatal gift,
+her eyes fell directly on M&rsquo;Guire; and no sooner had she
+seen the poor gentleman&rsquo;s face, than she screamed out and
+leaped backward, as though she had seen the devil.&nbsp; Almost
+at the same moment a woman appeared upon the threshold of a
+neighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come here, colleen,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and
+don&rsquo;t be plaguing the poor old gentleman!&rsquo;&nbsp; With
+that she re-entered the house, and the child followed her,
+sobbing aloud.</p>
+<p>With the loss of this hope M&rsquo;Guire&rsquo;s reason
+swooned within him.&nbsp; When next he awoke to consciousness, he
+was standing before St. Martin&rsquo;s-in-the-Fields, wavering
+like a drunken man; the passers-by regarding him with eyes in
+which he read, as in a glass, an image of the terror and horror
+that dwelt within his own.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am afraid you are very ill, sir,&rsquo; observed a
+woman, stopping and gazing hard in his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;Can I
+do anything to help you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ill?&rsquo; said M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; &lsquo;O
+God!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, recovering some shadow of his
+self-command, &lsquo;Chronic, madam,&rsquo; said he: &lsquo;a
+long course of the dumb ague.&nbsp; But since you are so
+compassionate&mdash;an errand that I lack the strength to carry
+out,&rsquo; he gasped&mdash;&lsquo;this bag to Portman
+Square.&nbsp; Oh, compassionate woman, as you hope to be saved,
+as you are a mother, in the name of your babes that wait to
+welcome you at home, oh, take this bag to Portman Square!&nbsp; I
+have a mother, too,&rsquo; he added, with a broken voice.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Number 19, Portman Square.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of
+voice; for the woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of
+him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Poor gentleman!&rsquo; said she.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If I were you, I would go home.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she left
+him standing there in his distress.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Home!&rsquo; thought M&rsquo;Guire, &lsquo;what a
+derision!&rsquo;&nbsp; What home was there for him, the victim of
+philanthropy?&nbsp; He thought of his old mother, of his happy
+youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the
+possibility that he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly
+mangled, crippled for life, condemned to lifelong pains, blinded
+perhaps, and almost surely deafened.&nbsp; Ah, you spoke lightly
+of the dynamiter&rsquo;s peril; but even waiving death, have you
+realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be
+smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of
+life, and from the voice of friendship, and love?&nbsp; How
+little do we realise the sufferings of others!&nbsp; Even your
+brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though
+it scruples not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the
+corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous
+gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am
+well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear
+before it of the withering scorn of the good.</p>
+<p>But I wander from M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; From this dread glance
+into the past and future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon
+the present.&nbsp; How had he wandered there? and how
+long&mdash;oh, heavens! how long had he been about it?&nbsp; He
+pulled out his watch; and found that but three minutes had
+elapsed.&nbsp; It seemed too bright a thing to be believed.&nbsp;
+He glanced at the church clock; and sure enough, it marked an
+hour four minutes faster than the watch.</p>
+<p>Of all that he endured, M&rsquo;Guire declares that pang was
+the most desolate.&nbsp; Till then, he had had one friend, one
+counsellor, in whom he plenarily trusted; by whose advertisement,
+he numbered the minutes that remained to him of life; on whose
+sure testimony, he could tell when the time was come to risk the
+last adventure, to cast the bag away from him, and take to
+flight.&nbsp; And now in what was he to place reliance?&nbsp; His
+watch was slow; it might be losing time; if so, in what
+degree?&nbsp; What limit could he set to its derangement? and how
+much was it possible for a watch to lose in thirty minutes?&nbsp;
+Five? ten? fifteen?&nbsp; It might be so; already, it seemed
+years since he had left St. James&rsquo;s Hall on this so
+promising enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be
+looked for.</p>
+<p>In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his
+pulses settled down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though
+he had lived for centuries and for centuries been dead.&nbsp; The
+buildings and the people in the street became incredibly small,
+and far-away, and bright; London sounded in his ears stilly, like
+a whisper; and the rattle of the cab that nearly charged him
+down, was like a sound from Africa.&nbsp; Meanwhile, he was
+conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard and
+felt his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small,
+debile and tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.</p>
+<p>As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a
+medium, it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air,
+there slipped into his mind the recollection of a certain entry
+in Whitcomb Street hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his
+tragic cargo unremarked.&nbsp; Thither, then, he bent his steps,
+seeming, as he went, to float above the pavement; and there, in
+the mouth of the entry, he found a man in a sleeved waistcoat,
+gravely chewing a straw.&nbsp; He passed him by, and twice
+patrolled the entry, scouting for the barest chance; but the man
+had faced about and continued to observe him curiously.</p>
+<p>Another hope was gone.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire reissued from the
+entry, still followed by the wondering eyes of the man in the
+sleeved waistcoat.&nbsp; He once more consulted his watch: there
+were but fourteen minutes left to him.&nbsp; At that, it seemed
+as if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain; for a
+second or two, he saw the world as red as blood; and thereafter
+entered into a complete possession of himself, with an incredible
+cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to sing and chuckle as he
+walked.&nbsp; And yet this mirth seemed to belong to things
+external; and within, like a black and leaden-heavy kernel, he
+was conscious of the weight upon his soul.</p>
+<blockquote><p>I care for nobody, no, not I,<br />
+And nobody cares for me,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the
+passengers stared upon him on the street.&nbsp; And still the
+warmth seemed to increase and to become more genial.&nbsp; What
+was life? he considered, and what he, M&rsquo;Guire?&nbsp; What
+even Erin, our green Erin?&nbsp; All seemed so incalculably
+little that he smiled as he looked down upon it.&nbsp; He would
+have given years, had he possessed them, for a glass of spirits;
+but time failed, and he must deny himself this last
+indulgence.</p>
+<p>At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a
+hansom cab; jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the
+Embankment, which he named; and as soon as the vehicle was in
+motion, concealed the bag as completely as he could under the
+vantage of the apron, and once more drew out his watch.&nbsp; So
+he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart in his mouth at
+every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearing to
+wake the attention of the driver by too obvious a change of plan,
+and willing, if possible, to leave him time to forget the
+Gladstone bag.</p>
+<p>At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he
+hailed; the cab was stopped; and he alighted&mdash;with how glad
+a heart!&nbsp; He thrust his hand into his pocket.&nbsp; All was
+now over; he had saved his life; nor that alone, but he had
+engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what could be more
+pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion of a hansom
+cab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London.&nbsp; He
+felt in one pocket; then in another.&nbsp; The most crushing
+seizure of despair descended on his soul; and struck into abject
+dumbness, he stared upon the driver.&nbsp; He had not one
+penny.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hillo,&rsquo; said the driver, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t seem
+well.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lost my money,&rsquo; said M&rsquo;Guire, in tones so
+faint and strange that they surprised his hearing.</p>
+<p>The man looked through the trap.&nbsp; &lsquo;I dessay,&rsquo;
+said he: &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve left your bag.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>M&rsquo;Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking
+on that black continent at arm&rsquo;s length, withered inwardly
+and felt his features sharpen as with mortal sickness.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is not mine,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your
+last fare must have left it.&nbsp; You had better take it to the
+station.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now look here,&rsquo; returned the cabman: &lsquo;are
+you off your chump? or am I?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, then, I&rsquo;ll tell you what,&rsquo; exclaimed
+M&rsquo;Guire; &lsquo;you take it for your fare!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, I dessay,&rsquo; replied the driver.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Anything else?&nbsp; What&rsquo;s <i>in</i> your
+bag?&nbsp; Open it, and let me see.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; returned M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh
+no, not that.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a surprise; it&rsquo;s prepared
+expressly: a surprise for honest cabmen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, you don&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the man, alighting
+from his perch, and coming very close to the unhappy
+patriot.&nbsp; &lsquo;You&rsquo;re either going to pay my fare,
+or get in again and drive to the office.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that
+M&rsquo;Guire spied the stout figure of one Godall, a tobacconist
+of Rupert Street, drawing near along the Embankment.&nbsp; The
+man was not unknown to him; he had bought of his wares, and heard
+him quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was now the
+nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope, he
+clutched with gratitude.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank God!&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here comes a
+friend of mine.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll borrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he
+dashed to meet the tradesman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said he,
+&lsquo;Mr. Godall, I have dealt with you&mdash;you doubtless know
+my face&mdash;calamities for which I cannot blame myself have
+overwhelmed me.&nbsp; Oh, sir, for the love of innocence, for the
+sake of the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at the
+throne of grace, lend me two-and-six!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not recognise your face,&rsquo; replied Mr.
+Godall; &lsquo;but I remember the cut of your beard, which I have
+the misfortune to dislike.&nbsp; Here, sir, is a sovereign; which
+I very willingly advance to you, on the single condition that you
+shave your chin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>M&rsquo;Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the
+cabman, calling out to him to keep the change; bounded down the
+steps, flung the bag far forth into the river, and fell headlong
+after it.&nbsp; He was plucked from a watery grave, it is
+believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall.&nbsp; Even as he was being
+hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion shook
+the solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the river a
+momentary fountain rose and disappeared.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 195--><a name="page195"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 195</span><i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION</i><br />
+(<i>Continued</i>)</h2>
+<p>Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these
+words.&nbsp; He had, in the meanwhile, applied himself
+assiduously to the flagon; the plotter began to melt in twain,
+and seemed to expand and hover on his seat; and with a vague
+sense of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his feet,
+and, refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour
+was late and he must positively get to bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; observed Zero, &lsquo;I find you very
+temperate.&nbsp; But I will not be oppressive.&nbsp; Suffice it
+that we are now fast friends; and, my dear landlord, <i>au
+revoir</i>!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the
+politest ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted the
+bewildered young gentleman to the top of the stair.</p>
+<p>Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset
+remained in utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow,
+he started broad awake, there fell upon his mind a perfect
+hurricane of horror and wonder.&nbsp; That he should have
+suffered himself to be led into the semblance of intimacy with
+such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold light
+of day, a mystery of human weakness.&nbsp; True, he was caught in
+a situation that might have tested the aplomb of
+Talleyrand.&nbsp; That was perhaps a palliation; but it was no
+excuse.&nbsp; For so wholesale a capitulation of principle, for
+such a fall into criminal familiarity, no excuse indeed was
+possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once from the
+relation.</p>
+<p>As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on
+a rupture.&nbsp; Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old
+friend.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;dear Mr.
+Somerset!&nbsp; Come in, sit down, and, without ceremony, join me
+at my morning meal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;you must permit me
+first to disengage my honour.&nbsp; Last night, I was surprised
+into a certain appearance of complicity; but once for all, let me
+inform you that I regard you and your machinations \with
+unmingled horror and disgust, and I will leave no stone unturned
+to crush your vile conspiracy.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow,&rsquo; replied Zero, with an air of
+some complacency, &lsquo;I am well accustomed to these human
+weaknesses.&nbsp; Disgust?&nbsp; I have felt it myself; it
+speedily wears off.&nbsp; I think none the worse, I think the
+more of you, for this engaging frankness.&nbsp; And in the
+meanwhile, what are you to do?&nbsp; You find yourself, if I
+interpret rightly, in very much the same situation as Charles the
+Second (possibly the least degraded of your British sovereigns)
+when he was taken into the confidence of the thief.&nbsp; To
+denounce me, is out of the question; and what else can you
+attempt?&nbsp; No, dear Mr. Somerset, your hands are tied; and
+you find yourself condemned, under pain of behaving like a cad,
+to be that same charming and intellectual companion who delighted
+me last night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At least,&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;I can, and do,
+order you to leave this house.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried the plotter, &lsquo;but there I fail
+to follow you.&nbsp; You may, if you please, enact the part of
+Judas; but if, as I suppose, you recoil from that extremity of
+meanness, I am, on my side, far too intelligent to leave these
+lodgings, in which I please myself exceedingly, and from which
+you lack the power to drive me.&nbsp; No, no, dear sir; here I
+am, and here I propose to stay.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I repeat,&rsquo; cried Somerset, beside himself with a
+sense of his own weakness, &lsquo;I repeat that I give you
+warning.&nbsp; I am the master of this house; and I emphatically
+give you warning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A week&rsquo;s warning?&rsquo; said the imperturbable
+conspirator.&nbsp; &lsquo;Very well: we will talk of it a week
+from now.&nbsp; That is arranged; and in the meanwhile, I observe
+my breakfast growing cold.&nbsp; Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you
+find yourself condemned, for a week at least, to the society of a
+very interesting character, display some of that open favour,
+some of that interest in life&rsquo;s obscurer sides, which stamp
+the character of the true artist.&nbsp; Hang me, if you will,
+to-morrow; but to-day show yourself divested of the scruples of
+the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share my meal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Man!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;do you understand my
+sentiments?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly,&rsquo; replied Zero; &lsquo;and I respect
+them!&nbsp; Would you be outdone in such a contest? will you
+alone be partial? and in this nineteenth century, cannot two
+gentlemen of education agree to differ on a point of
+politics?&nbsp; Come, sir: all your hard words have left me
+smiling; judge then, which of us is the philosopher!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by
+nature easily amenable to sophistry.&nbsp; He threw up his hands
+with a gesture of despair, and took the seat to which the
+conspirator invited him.&nbsp; The meal was excellent; the host
+not only affable, but primed with curious information.&nbsp; He
+seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the torture of
+silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures.&nbsp; The
+interest of what he had to tell was great; his character,
+besides, developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled,
+not only outgrew some of the discomfort of his false position,
+but began to regard the conspirator with a familiarity that
+verged upon contempt.&nbsp; In any circumstances, he had a
+singular inability to leave the society in which he found
+himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like a
+limed sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow
+hour, was easily persuaded to sit down once more to table, and
+did not even attempt to withdraw till, on the approach of
+evening, Zero, with many apologies, dismissed his guest.&nbsp;
+His fellow-conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely explained, as
+they were unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the young
+man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.</p>
+<p>As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of
+the morning.&nbsp; He raged at the thought of his facility; he
+paced the dining-room, forming the sternest resolutions for the
+future; he wrung the hand which had been dishonoured by the touch
+of an assassin; and among all these whirling thoughts, there
+flashed in from time to time, and ever with a chill of fear, the
+thought of the confounded ingredients with which the house was
+stored.&nbsp; A powder magazine seemed a secure smoking-room
+alongside of the Superfluous Mansion.</p>
+<p>He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing
+bowl.&nbsp; As long as the bars were open, he travelled from one
+to another, seeking light, safety, and the companionship of human
+faces; when these resources failed him, he fell back on the
+belated baked-potato man; and at length, still pacing the
+streets, he was goaded to fraternise with the police.&nbsp; Alas,
+with what a sense of guilt he conversed with these guardians of
+the law; how gladly had he wept upon their ample bosoms; and how
+the secret fluttered to his lips and was still denied an
+exit!&nbsp; Fatigue began at last to triumph over remorse; and
+about the hour of the first milkman, he returned to the door of
+the mansion; looked at it with a horrid expectation, as though it
+should have burst that instant into flames; drew out his key, and
+when his foot already rested on the steps, once more lost heart
+and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a coffee-shop.</p>
+<p>It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.&nbsp; Dismally
+searching in his pockets, he found himself reduced to
+half-a-crown; and when he had paid the price of his distasteful
+couch, saw himself obliged to return to the Superfluous
+Mansion.&nbsp; He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to
+the cupboard where he kept his money.&nbsp; Yet half a minute, he
+told himself, and he would be free for days from his obseding
+lodger, and might decide at leisure on the course he should
+pursue.&nbsp; But fate had otherwise designed: there came a tap
+at the door and Zero entered.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have I caught you?&rsquo; he cried, with innocent
+gaiety.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear fellow, I was growing quite
+impatient.&rsquo;&nbsp; And on the speaker&rsquo;s somewhat
+stolid face, there came a glow of genuine affection.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am so long unused to have a friend,&rsquo; he continued,
+&lsquo;that I begin to be afraid I may prove
+jealous.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he wrung the hand of his landlord.</p>
+<p>Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a
+greeting.&nbsp; To reject these kind advances was beyond his
+strength.&nbsp; That he could not return cordiality for
+cordiality, was already almost more than he could carry.&nbsp;
+That inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous
+characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed him
+to the ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is all right,&rsquo; cried Zero&mdash;&lsquo;that
+is as it should be&mdash;say no more!&nbsp; I had a vague alarm;
+I feared you had deserted me; but I now own that fear to have
+been unworthy, and apologise.&nbsp; To doubt of your forgiveness
+were to repeat my sin.&nbsp; Come, then; dinner waits; join me
+again and tell me your adventures of the night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered
+himself once more to be set down to table with his innocent and
+criminal acquaintance.&nbsp; Once more, the plotter plunged up to
+the neck in damaging disclosures: now it would be the name and
+biography of an individual, now the address of some important
+centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips; and each
+word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy
+guest.&nbsp; Finally, the course of Zero&rsquo;s bland monologue
+led him to the young lady of two days ago: that young lady, who
+had flashed on Somerset for so brief a while but with so
+conquering a charm; and whose engaging grace, communicative eyes,
+and admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt, remained imprinted
+on his memory.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You saw her?&rsquo; said Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;Beautiful,
+is she not?&nbsp; She, too, is one of ours: a true enthusiast:
+nervous, perhaps, in presence of the chemicals; but in matters of
+intrigue, the very soul of skill and daring.&nbsp; Lake,
+Fonblanque, de Marly, Valdevia, such are some of the names that
+she employs; her true name&mdash;but there, perhaps, I go too
+far.&nbsp; Suffice it, that it is to her I owe my present
+lodging, and, dear Somerset, the pleasure of your
+acquaintance.&nbsp; It appears she knew the house.&nbsp; You see
+dear fellow, I make no concealment: all that you can care to
+hear, I tell you openly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; cried the wretched
+Somerset, &lsquo;hold your tongue!&nbsp; You cannot imagine how
+you torture me!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance
+of Zero.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There are times,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;when I begin to
+fancy that you do not like me.&nbsp; Why, why, dear Somerset,
+this lack of cordiality?&nbsp; I am depressed; the touchstone of
+my life draws near; and if I fail&rsquo;&mdash;he gloomily
+nodded&mdash;&lsquo;from all the height of my ambitious schemes,
+I fall, dear boy, into contempt.&nbsp; These are grave thoughts,
+and you may judge my need of your delightful company.&nbsp;
+Innocent prattler, you relieve the weight of my concerns.&nbsp;
+And yet . . . and yet . . .&rsquo;&nbsp; The speaker pushed away
+his plate, and rose from table.&nbsp; &lsquo;Follow me,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;follow me.&nbsp; My mood is on; I must have air,
+I must behold the plain of battle.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the
+mansion, and thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded
+platform, sheltered at one end by a great stalk of chimneys and
+occupying the actual summit of the roof.&nbsp; On both sides, it
+bordered, without parapet or rail, on the incline of slates; and,
+northward above all, commanded an extensive view of housetops,
+and rising through the smoke, the distant spires of churches.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; cried Zero, &lsquo;you behold this field
+of city, rich, crowded, laughing with the spoil of continents;
+but soon, how soon, to be laid low!&nbsp; Some day, some night,
+from this coign of vantage, you shall perhaps be startled by the
+detonation of the judgment gun&mdash;not sharp and empty like the
+crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn.&nbsp;
+Instantly thereafter, you shall behold the flames break
+forth.&nbsp; Ay,&rsquo; he cried, stretching forth his hand,
+&lsquo;ay, that will be a day of retribution.&nbsp; Then shall
+the pallid constable flee side by side with the detected
+thief.&nbsp; Blaze!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;blaze, derided
+city!&nbsp; Fall, flatulent monarchy, fall like Dagon!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for
+Somerset&rsquo;s quickness, he had been instantly precipitated
+into space.&nbsp; Pale as a sheet, and limp as a
+pocket-handkerchief, he was dragged from the edge of downfall by
+one arm; helped, or rather carried, down the ladder; and
+deposited in safety on the attic landing.&nbsp; Here he began to
+come to himself, wiped his brow, and at length, seizing
+Somerset&rsquo;s hand in both of his, began to utter his
+acknowledgments.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This seals it,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ours is a
+life and death connection.&nbsp; You have plucked me from the
+jaws of death; and if I were before attracted by your character,
+judge now of the ardour of my gratitude and love!&nbsp; But I
+perceive I am still greatly shaken.&nbsp; Lend me, I beseech you,
+lend me your arm as far as my apartment.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his
+customary self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and
+genially convalescent, when his eye was attracted by the
+dejection of the unfortunate young man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good heavens, dear Somerset,&rsquo; he cried,
+&lsquo;what ails you?&nbsp; Let me offer you a touch of
+spirits.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material
+comfort.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let me be,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am lost; you
+have caught me in the toils.&nbsp; Up to this moment, I have
+lived all my life in the most reckless manner, and done exactly
+what I pleased, with the most perfect innocence.&nbsp; And
+now&mdash;what am I?&nbsp; Are you so blind and wooden that you
+do not see the loathing you inspire me with?&nbsp; Is it possible
+you can suppose me willing to continue to exist upon such
+terms?&nbsp; To think,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;that a young man,
+guilty of no fault on earth but amiability, should find himself
+involved in such a damned imbroglio!&rsquo;&nbsp; And placing his
+knuckles in his eyes, Somerset rolled upon the sofa.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My God,&rsquo; said Zero, &lsquo;is this
+possible?&nbsp; And I so filled with tenderness and
+interest!&nbsp; Can it be, dear Somerset, that you are under the
+empire of these out-worn scruples? or that you judge a patriot by
+the morality of the religious tract?&nbsp; I thought you were a
+good agnostic.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Jones,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;it is in vain
+to argue.&nbsp; I boast myself a total disbeliever, not only in
+revealed religion, but in the data, method, and conclusions of
+the whole of ethics.&nbsp; Well! what matters it? what signifies
+a form of words?&nbsp; I regard you as a reptile, whom I would
+rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel.&nbsp; You would
+blow up others?&nbsp; Well then, understand: I want, with every
+circumstance of infamy and agony, to blow up you!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Somerset, Somerset!&rsquo; said Zero, turning very
+pale, &lsquo;this is wrong; this is very wrong.&nbsp; You pain,
+you wound me, Somerset.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Give me a match!&rsquo; cried Somerset wildly.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Let me set fire to this incomparable monster!&nbsp; Let me
+perish with him in his fall!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; cried Zero, clutching hold
+of the young man, &lsquo;for God&rsquo;s sake command
+yourself!&nbsp; We stand upon the brink; death yawns around us; a
+man&mdash;a stranger in this foreign land&mdash;one whom you have
+called your friend&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Silence!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;you are no
+friend, no friend of mine.&nbsp; I look on you with loathing,
+like a toad: my flesh creeps with physical repulsion; my soul
+revolts against the sight of you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Zero burst into tears.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; he sobbed,
+&lsquo;this snaps the last link that bound me to humanity.&nbsp;
+My friend disowns&mdash;he insults me.&nbsp; I am indeed
+accurst.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change
+of front.&nbsp; The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he
+fled from the room and from the house.&nbsp; The first dash of
+his escape carried him hard upon half-way to the next
+police-office: but presently began to droop; and before he
+reached the house of lawful intervention, he fell once more among
+doubtful counsels.&nbsp; Was he an agnostic? had he a right to
+act?&nbsp; Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his
+thoughts.&nbsp; And then again: had he not promised, had he not
+shaken hands and broken bread? and that with open eyes? and if so
+how could he take action, and not forfeit honour?&nbsp; But
+honour? what was honour?&nbsp; A figment, which, in the hot
+pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.&nbsp; Ay, but
+crime?&nbsp; A figment, too, which his enfranchised intellect
+discarded.&nbsp; All day, he wandered in the parks, a prey to
+whirling thoughts; all night, patrolled the city; and at the peep
+of day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of Peckham
+and bitterly wept.&nbsp; His gods had fallen.&nbsp; He who had
+chosen the broad, daylit, unencumbered paths of universal
+scepticism, found himself still the bondslave of honour.&nbsp; He
+who had accepted life from a point of view as lofty as the
+predatory eagle&rsquo;s, though with no design to prey; he who
+had clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of
+commercial competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to help
+the escaping murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found,
+to the overthrow of all his logic, that he objected to the use of
+dynamite.&nbsp; The dawn crept among the sleeping villas and over
+the smokeless fields of city; and still the unfortunate sceptic
+sobbed over his fall from consistency.</p>
+<p>At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;There is no question as to fact,&rsquo; he cried;
+&lsquo;right and wrong are but figments and the shadow of a word;
+but for all that, there are certain things that I cannot do, and
+there are certain others that I will not stand.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Thereupon he decided to return to make one last effort of
+persuasion, and, if he could not prevail on Zero to desist from
+his infernal trade, throw delicacy to the winds, give the plotter
+an hour&rsquo;s start, and denounce him to the police.&nbsp; Fast
+as he went, being winged by this resolution, it was already well
+on in the morning when he came in sight of the Superfluous
+Mansion.&nbsp; Tripping down the steps, was the young lady of the
+various aliases; and he was surprised to see upon her countenance
+the marks of anger and concern.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he began, yielding to impulse and with no
+clear knowledge of what he was to add.</p>
+<p>But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock
+of fear or horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden
+movement; and fled, without turning, from the square.</p>
+<p>Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes
+of Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic
+episode of <span class="smcap">The Brown Box</span>.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 209--><a name="page209"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 209</span>DESBOROUGH&rsquo;S ADVENTURE</h2>
+<h3><i>THE BROWN BOX</i></h3>
+<p>Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter
+of Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of
+London, but itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city
+peace.&nbsp; It was in Queen Square that he had pitched his tent,
+next door to the Children&rsquo;s Hospital, on your left hand as
+you go north: Queen Square, sacred to humane and liberal arts,
+whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor were taught,
+where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where groups of
+patient little ones would hover all day long before the hospital,
+if by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a word to their
+sick brother at the window.&nbsp; Desborough&rsquo;s room was on
+the first floor and fronted to the square; but he enjoyed
+besides, a right by which he often profited, to sit and smoke
+upon a terrace at the back, which looked down upon a fine forest
+of back gardens, and was in turn commanded by the windows of an
+empty room.</p>
+<p>On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth
+upon this terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had
+been now some weeks on the vain quest of situations, and prepared
+for melancholy and tobacco.&nbsp; Here, at least, he told himself
+that he would be alone; for, like most youths, who are neither
+rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather shunned than courted
+the society of other men.&nbsp; Even as he expressed the thought,
+his eye alighted on the window of the room that looked upon the
+terrace; and to his surprise and annoyance, he beheld it
+curtained with a silken hanging.&nbsp; It was like his luck, he
+thought; his privacy was gone, he could no longer brood and sigh
+unwatched, he could no longer suffer his discouragement to find a
+vent in words or soothe himself with sentimental whistling; and
+in the irritation of the moment, he struck his pipe upon the rail
+with unnecessary force.&nbsp; It was an old, sweet, seasoned
+briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment, and justly dear
+to his fancy.&nbsp; What, then, was his chagrin, when the head
+snapped from the stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and
+disappeared among the lilacs of the garden?</p>
+<p>He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out
+the story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore off a
+fragment of the last sheet, which contains only the answers to
+correspondents, and set himself to roll a cigarette.&nbsp; He was
+no master of the art; again and again, the paper broke between
+his fingers and the tobacco showered upon the ground; and he was
+already on the point of angry resignation, when the window swung
+slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and a lady,
+somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orito,&rsquo; said she, and there was a rich
+thrill in her voice, like an organ note, &lsquo;Se&ntilde;orito,
+you are in difficulties.&nbsp; Suffer me to come to your
+assistance.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his
+unresisting hands; and with a facility that, in
+Desborough&rsquo;s eyes, seemed magical, rolled and presented him
+a cigarette.&nbsp; He took it, still seated, still without a
+word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition.&nbsp; Her
+face was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant
+triangle, so innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in
+our more northern climates; her eyes were large, starry, and
+visited by changing lights; her hair was partly covered by a lace
+mantilla, through which her arms, bare to the shoulder, gleamed
+white; her figure, full and soft in all the womanly contours, was
+yet alive and active, light with excess of life, and slender by
+grace of some divine proportion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You do not like my cigarrito, Se&ntilde;or?&rsquo; she
+asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yet it is better made than
+yours.&rsquo;&nbsp; At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled
+in his ear like music; but the next moment her face fell.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is my manner that
+repels you.&nbsp; I am too constrained, too cold.&nbsp; I am
+not,&rsquo; she added, with a more engaging air, &lsquo;I am not
+the simple English maiden I appear.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible
+thoughts.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In my own dear land,&rsquo; she pursued, &lsquo;things
+are differently ordered.&nbsp; There, I must own, a girl is bound
+by many and rigorous restrictions; little is permitted her; she
+learns to be distant, she learns to appear forbidding.&nbsp; But
+here, in free England&mdash;oh, glorious liberty!&rsquo; she
+cried, and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable
+grace&mdash;&lsquo;here there are no fetters; here the woman may
+dare to be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous
+men&mdash;is it not written on the very shield of your nation,
+<i>honi soit</i>?&nbsp; Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for
+me to dare to be myself.&nbsp; You must not judge me yet awhile;
+I shall end by conquering this stiffness, I shall end by growing
+English.&nbsp; Do I speak the language well?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perfectly&mdash;oh, perfectly!&rsquo; said Harry, with
+a fervency of conviction worthy of a graver subject.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, then,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I shall soon learn;
+English blood ran in my father&rsquo;s veins; and I have had the
+advantage of some training in your expressive tongue.&nbsp; If I
+speak already without accent, with my thorough English
+appearance, there is nothing left to change except my
+manners.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh no,&rsquo; said Desborough.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh pray
+not!&nbsp; I&mdash;madam&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am,&rsquo; interrupted the lady, &lsquo;the
+Se&ntilde;orita Teresa Valdevia.&nbsp; The evening air grows
+chill.&nbsp; Adios, Se&ntilde;orito.&rsquo;&nbsp; And before
+Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared into her
+room.</p>
+<p>He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his
+hand.&nbsp; His thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still
+recalled and beautified the image of his new acquaintance.&nbsp;
+Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her eyes, of which he could
+not tell the colour, haunted his soul.&nbsp; The clouds had risen
+at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world.&nbsp; What she
+was, he could not fancy, but he adored her.&nbsp; Her age, he
+durst not estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, and
+thinking sacrilege to couple that fair favour with the thought of
+mortal changes.&nbsp; As for her character, beauty to the young
+is always good.&nbsp; So the poor lad lingered late upon the
+terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained window, sighing
+to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of romance; and when
+at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled mutton
+and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.</p>
+<p>Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a
+little ajar, and he enjoyed a view of the lady&rsquo;s shoulder,
+as she sat patiently sewing and all unconscious of his
+presence.&nbsp; On the next, he had scarce appeared when the
+window opened, and the Se&ntilde;orita tripped forth into the
+sunlight, in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow
+foreign, tropical, and strange.&nbsp; In one hand she held a
+packet.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you try,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;some of my
+father&rsquo;s tobacco&mdash;from dear Cuba?&nbsp; There, as I
+suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen.&nbsp;
+So you need not fear to annoy me.&nbsp; The fragrance will remind
+me of home.&nbsp; My home, Se&ntilde;or, was by the
+sea.&rsquo;&nbsp; And as she uttered these few words, Desborough,
+for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the great
+deep.&nbsp; &lsquo;Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home,
+dear Cuba!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But some day,&rsquo; said Desborough, with an inward
+pang, &lsquo;some day you will return?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Never!&rsquo; she cried; &lsquo;ah, never, in
+Heaven&rsquo;s name!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you then resident for life in England?&rsquo; he
+inquired, with a strange lightening of spirit.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,&rsquo;
+she answered sadly; and then, resuming her gaiety of manner:
+&lsquo;But you have not tried my Cuban tobacco,&rsquo; she
+said.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; said he, shyly abashed by some
+shadow of coquetry in her manner, &lsquo;whatever comes to
+me&mdash;you&mdash;I mean,&rsquo; he concluded, deeply flushing,
+&lsquo;that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo; she said, with almost mournful
+gravity, &lsquo;you seemed so simple and good, and already you
+are trying to pay compliments&mdash;and besides,&rsquo; she
+added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a smile,
+&lsquo;you do it so badly!&nbsp; English gentlemen, I used to
+hear, could be fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be
+companions, comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet
+never encroach.&nbsp; Do not seek to please me by copying the
+graces of my countrymen.&nbsp; Be yourself: the frank, kindly,
+honest English gentleman that I have heard of since my childhood
+and still longed to meet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners
+of the Cuban gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of
+plagiarism.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you,
+Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo; said the lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;See!&rsquo;
+marking a line with her dainty, slippered foot, &lsquo;thus far
+it shall be common ground; there, at my window-sill, begins the
+scientific frontier.&nbsp; If you choose, you may drive me to my
+forts; but if, on the other hand, we are to be real English
+friends, I may join you here when I am not too sad; or, when I am
+yet more graciously inclined, you may draw your chair beside the
+window and teach me English customs, while I work.&nbsp; You will
+find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the task.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+She laid her hand lightly upon Harry&rsquo;s arm, and looked into
+his eyes.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you know,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;I am
+emboldened to believe that I have already caught something of
+your English aplomb?&nbsp; Do you not perceive a change,
+Se&ntilde;or?&nbsp; Slight, perhaps, but still a change?&nbsp; Is
+my deportment not more open, more free, more like that of the
+dear &ldquo;British Miss&rdquo; than when you saw me
+first?&rsquo;&nbsp; She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand
+from Harry&rsquo;s arm; and before the young man could formulate
+in words the eloquent emotions that ran riot through his
+brain&mdash;with an &lsquo;Adios, Se&ntilde;or: good-night, my
+English friend,&rsquo; she vanished from his sight behind the
+curtain.</p>
+<p>The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon
+the neutral terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and
+the dinner-hour summoned him at length from the scene of
+disappointment.&nbsp; On the next it rained; but nothing, neither
+business nor weather, neither prospective poverty nor present
+hardship, could now divert the young man from the service of his
+lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised, he took
+his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture
+of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with
+tender and delightful ardours.&nbsp; Presently the window opened,
+and the fair Cuban, with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared
+upon the sill.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;here, beside my
+window.&nbsp; The small verandah gives a belt of
+shelter.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she graciously handed him a
+folding-chair.</p>
+<p>As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a
+certain bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not come
+empty-handed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have taken the liberty,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;of
+bringing you a little book.&nbsp; I thought of you, when I
+observed it on the stall, because I saw it was in Spanish.&nbsp;
+The man assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite
+proper.&rsquo;&nbsp; As he spoke, he placed the little volume in
+her hand.&nbsp; Her eyes fell as she turned the pages, and a
+flush rose and died again upon her cheeks, as deep as it was
+fleeting.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are angry,&rsquo; he cried in
+agony.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have presumed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, Se&ntilde;or, it is not that,&rsquo; returned the
+lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&mdash;&rsquo; and a flood of colour once
+more mounted to her brow&mdash;&lsquo;I am confused and ashamed
+because I have deceived you.&nbsp; Spanish,&rsquo; she began, and
+paused&mdash;&lsquo;Spanish is, of course, my native
+tongue,&rsquo; she resumed, as though suddenly taking courage;
+&lsquo;and this should certainly put the highest value on your
+thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?&nbsp;
+And how shall I confess to you the truth&mdash;the humiliating
+truth&mdash;that I cannot read?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As Harry&rsquo;s eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the
+fair Cuban seemed to shrink before his gaze.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Read?&rsquo; repeated Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;You!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and
+noble gesture.&nbsp; &lsquo;Enter, Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo; said
+she.&nbsp; &lsquo;The time has come to which I have long looked
+forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose your
+friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my
+life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry
+passed the window.&nbsp; A semi-barbarous delight in form and
+colour had presided over the studied disorder of the room in
+which he found himself.&nbsp; It was filled with dainty stuffs,
+furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant
+and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon
+a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut
+about half full of unset jewels.&nbsp; The fair Cuban, herself a
+gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame,
+motioned Harry to a seat, and sinking herself into another, thus
+began her history.</p>
+<h3><!-- page 219--><a name="page219"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 219</span><i>STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN</i></h3>
+<p>I am not what I seem.&nbsp; My father drew his descent, on the
+one hand, from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the
+maternal line, from the patriot Bruce.&nbsp; My mother, too, was
+the descendant of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings were
+African.&nbsp; She was fair as the day: fairer than I, for I
+inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my European
+father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and accomplished;
+and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours, and
+surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect, I grew
+up to adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh
+upon my lips, still ignorant that she was a slave, and alas! my
+father&rsquo;s mistress.&nbsp; Her death, which befell me in my
+sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had known: it left our
+home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of melancholy on
+my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable
+change.&nbsp; Months went by; with the elasticity of my years, I
+regained some of the simple mirth that had before distinguished
+me; the plantation smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the
+estate had already forgotten my mother and transferred their
+simple obedience to myself; but still the cloud only darkened on
+the brows of Se&ntilde;or Valdevia.&nbsp; His absences from home
+had been frequent even in the old days, for he did business in
+precious gems in the city of Havana; they now became almost
+continuous; and when he returned, it was but for the night and
+with the manner of a man crushed down by adverse fortune.</p>
+<p>The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set
+in the Caribbean Sea, some half-hour&rsquo;s rowing from the
+coasts of Cuba.&nbsp; It was steep, rugged, and, except for my
+father&rsquo;s family and plantation, uninhabited and left to
+nature.&nbsp; The house, a low building surrounded by spacious
+verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea
+to Cuba.&nbsp; The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as
+we lay swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and
+flowers of the magnolia.&nbsp; Behind and to the left, the
+quarter of the negroes and the waving fields of the plantation
+covered an eighth part of the surface of the isle.&nbsp; On the
+right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast and deadly
+swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted with
+profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-eating
+crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.&nbsp; Into the
+recesses of that jungle, none could penetrate but those of
+African descent; an invisible, unconquerable foe lay there in
+wait for the European; and the air was death.</p>
+<p>One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my
+ruinous misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in
+that warm climate all are early risers, and found not a servant
+to attend upon my wants.&nbsp; I made the circuit of the house,
+still calling: and my surprise had almost changed into alarm,
+when coming at last into a large verandahed court, I found it
+thronged with negroes.&nbsp; Even then, even when I was amongst
+them, not one turned or paid the least regard to my
+arrival.&nbsp; They had eyes and ears for but one person: a
+woman, richly and tastefully attired; of elegant carriage, and a
+musical speech; not so much old in years, as worn and marred by
+self-indulgence: her face, which was still attractive, stamped
+with the most cruel passions, her eye burning with the greed of
+evil.&nbsp; It was not from her appearance, I believe, but from
+some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting
+terror; as we hear of plants that blight and snakes that
+fascinate, the woman shocked and daunted me.&nbsp; But I was of a
+brave nature; trod the weakness down; and forcing my way through
+the slaves, who fell back before me in embarrassment, as though
+in the presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones:
+&lsquo;Who is this person?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to
+have a care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new
+to me.</p>
+<p>In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her
+eyes, studied me with insolent particularity from head to
+foot.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Young woman,&rsquo; said she, at last, &lsquo;I have
+had a great experience in refractory servants, and take a pride
+in breaking them.&nbsp; You really tempt me; and if I had not
+other affairs, and these of more importance, on my hand, I should
+certainly buy you at your father&rsquo;s sale.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam&mdash;&rsquo; I began, but my voice failed
+me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it possible that you do not know your
+position?&rsquo; she returned, with a hateful laugh.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;How comical!&nbsp; Positively, I must buy her.&nbsp;
+Accomplishments, I suppose?&rsquo; she added, turning to the
+servants.</p>
+<p>Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought
+up like any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She would do very well for my place of business in
+Havana,&rsquo; said the Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal, once more
+studying me through her glasses; &lsquo;and I should take a
+pleasure,&rsquo; she pursued, more directly addressing myself,
+&lsquo;in bringing you acquainted with a whip.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty upon her
+face.</p>
+<p>At this, I found expression.&nbsp; Calling by name upon the
+servants, I bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch her
+to the boat, and set her back upon the mainland.&nbsp; But with
+one voice, they protested that they durst not obey, coming close
+about me, pleading and beseeching me to be more wise; and, when I
+insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of this foul
+intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me as
+from one who had blasphemed.&nbsp; A superstitious reverence
+plainly encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed
+demeanour, and in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural
+colour of their faces; and their fear perhaps reacted on
+myself.&nbsp; I looked again at Madam Mendizabal.&nbsp; She stood
+perfectly composed, watching my face through her glasses with a
+smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured superiority to
+all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage, fear,
+and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.</p>
+<p>I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.&nbsp; As
+I went, my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events
+and insults.&nbsp; Who was she? what, in Heaven&rsquo;s name, the
+power she wielded over my obedient negroes?&nbsp; Why had she
+addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father&rsquo;s
+sale?&nbsp; To all these tumultuary questions I could find no
+answer; and in the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except
+the hateful leering image of the woman.</p>
+<p>I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my
+father coming to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry
+that I thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms and
+broke into a passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom.&nbsp; He
+made me sit down below a tall palmetto that grew not far off;
+comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice; and as soon
+as I regained the least command upon my feelings, asked me, not
+without harshness, what this grief betokened.&nbsp; I was
+surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of composure;
+and in firm tones, though still interrupted by sobs, I told him
+there was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he started
+and turned pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the
+stranger&rsquo;s name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he
+seemed to me both troubled and relieved; that she had insulted
+me, treated me as a slave (and here my father&rsquo;s brow began
+to darken), threatened to buy me at a sale, and questioned my own
+servants before my face; and that, at last, finding myself quite
+helpless and exposed to these intolerable liberties, I had fled
+from the house in terror, indignation, and amazement.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Teresa,&rsquo; said my father, with singular gravity of
+voice, &lsquo;I must make to-day a call upon your courage; much
+must be told you, there is much that you must do to help me; and
+my daughter must prove herself a woman by her spirit.&nbsp; As
+for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to tell you
+what she is?&nbsp; Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of
+slaves; to-day she is what you see her&mdash;prematurely old,
+disgraced by the practice of every vice and every nefarious
+industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable
+man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient
+mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its
+reason is mysterious.&nbsp; Horrible rites, it is supposed,
+cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo.&nbsp; Be that as it may,
+I would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch;
+it is not from her that danger threatens us; and into her hands,
+I make bold to promise, you shall never fall.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Father!&rsquo; I cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Fall?&nbsp; Was
+there any truth, then, in her words?&nbsp; Am I&mdash;O father,
+tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will tell you,&rsquo; he replied, with merciful
+bluntness.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your mother was a slave; it was my
+design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail to the free
+land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her: a
+design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment,
+intervened.&nbsp; You will now understand the heaviness with
+which your mother&rsquo;s memory hangs about my neck.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to
+console the survivor, I forgot myself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It matters not,&rsquo; resumed my father.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What I have left undone can never be repaired, and I must
+bear the penalty of my remorse.&nbsp; But, Teresa, with so
+cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to
+do what was still possible: to liberate yourself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a
+sombre roughness.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your mother&rsquo;s illness,&rsquo; he resumed,
+&lsquo;had engaged too great a portion of my time; my business in
+the city had lain too long at the mercy of ignorant underlings;
+my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the more precious
+stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the darkest
+night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what
+quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred&mdash;all these had
+been too long absent from the conduct of affairs.&nbsp; Teresa, I
+was insolvent.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What matters that?&rsquo; I cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;What
+matters poverty, if we be left together with our love and sacred
+memories?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You do not comprehend,&rsquo; he said gloomily.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Slave, as you are, young&mdash;alas! scarce more than
+child!&mdash;accomplished, beautiful with the most touching
+beauty, innocent as an angel&mdash;all these qualities that
+should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of
+those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and
+sell.&nbsp; You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and
+worth&mdash;heavens, that I should say such words!&mdash;worth
+money.&nbsp; Do you begin to see?&nbsp; If I were to give you
+freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be
+certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a
+criminal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for
+myself, in sympathy for my father.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How I have toiled,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;how I
+have dared and striven to repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and
+will remember.&nbsp; Its blessing was denied to my endeavours,
+or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed to descend upon
+my daughter&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; At length, all hope was at an
+end; I was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the
+morrow, which I could not meet; I should be declared a bankrupt,
+and my goods, my lands, my jewels that I so much loved, my slaves
+whom I have spoiled and rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse,
+you, my beloved daughter, would be sold and pass into the hands
+of ignorant and greedy traffickers.&nbsp; Too long, I saw, had I
+accepted and profited by this great crime of slavery; but was my
+daughter, my innocent unsullied daughter, was <i>she</i> to pay
+the price?&nbsp; I cried out&mdash;no!&mdash;I took Heaven to
+witness my temptation; I caught up this bag and fled.&nbsp; Close
+upon my track are the pursuers; perhaps to-night, perhaps
+to-morrow, they will land upon this isle, sacred to the memory of
+the dear soul that bore you, to consign your father to an
+ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour.&nbsp;
+We have not many hours before us.&nbsp; Off the north coast of
+our isle, by strange good fortune, an English yacht has for some
+days been hovering.&nbsp; It belongs to Sir George Greville, whom
+I slightly know, to whom ere now I have rendered unusual
+services, and who will not refuse to help in our escape.&nbsp; Or
+if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power to
+force him.&nbsp; For what does it mean, my child&mdash;what means
+this Englishman, who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and
+returns from every trip with new and valuable gems?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He may have found a mine,&rsquo; I hazarded.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So he declares,&rsquo; returned my father; &lsquo;but
+the strange gift I have received from nature, easily transpierced
+the fable.&nbsp; He brought me diamonds only, which I bought, at
+first, in innocence; at a second glance, I started; for of these
+stones, my child, some had first seen the day in Africa, some in
+Brazil; while others, from their peculiar water and rude
+workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient temples.&nbsp;
+Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries.&nbsp; Oh, he is
+cunning, but I was cunninger than he.&nbsp; He visited, I found,
+the shop of every jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies,
+to one with emeralds, to one with precious beryl; to all, with
+this same story of the mine.&nbsp; But in what mine, what rich
+epitome of the earth&rsquo;s surface, were there conjoined the
+rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of
+Golconda?&nbsp; No, child, that man, for all his yacht and title,
+that man must fear and must obey me.&nbsp; To-night, then, as
+soon as it is dark, we must take our way through the swamp by the
+path which I shall presently show you; thence, across the
+highlands of the isle, a track is blazed, which shall conduct us
+to the haven on the north; and close by the yacht is
+riding.&nbsp; Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I
+look to see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man
+attends on the mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold,
+if it be dark, the redness of a fire, if it be day, a pillar of
+smoke, on the opposing headland; and thus warned, we shall have
+time to put the swamp between ourselves and danger.&nbsp;
+Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would, before all things,
+be seen to arrive at the house with empty hands; a blabbing slave
+might else undo us.&nbsp; For see!&rsquo; he added; and holding
+up the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap
+a shower of unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every
+size and colour, and catching, as they fell, upon a million
+dainty facets, the ardour of the sun.</p>
+<p>I could not restrain a cry of admiration.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Even in your ignorant eyes,&rsquo; pursued my father,
+&lsquo;they command respect.&nbsp; Yet what are they but pebbles,
+passive to the tool, cold as death?&nbsp; Ingrate!&rsquo; he
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Each one of these&mdash;miracles of
+nature&rsquo;s patience, conceived out of the dust in centuries
+of microscopical activity, each one is, for you and me, a year of
+life, liberty, and mutual affection.&nbsp; How, then, should I
+cherish them! and why do I delay to place them beyond
+reach!&nbsp; Teresa, follow me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great
+jungle, where they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky
+foliage, the declivity of the hill on which my father&rsquo;s
+house stood planted.&nbsp; For some while he skirted, with
+attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket.&nbsp; Then, seeming to
+recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately
+lightened of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;is the entrance of the secret
+path that I have mentioned, and here you shall await me.&nbsp; I
+but pass some hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my poor
+treasure; as soon as that is safe, I will return.&rsquo;&nbsp; It
+was in vain that I sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of
+the place; in vain that I begged to be allowed to follow,
+pleading the black blood that I now knew to circulate in my
+veins: to all my appeals he turned a deaf ear, and, bending back
+a portion of the screen of bushes, disappeared into the
+pestilential silence of the swamp.</p>
+<p>At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust
+aside; and my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused and
+almost staggered in the first shock of the blinding
+sunlight.&nbsp; His face was of a singular dusky red; and yet for
+all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not seem to sweat.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are tired,&rsquo; I cried, springing to meet
+him.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are ill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am tired,&rsquo; he replied; &lsquo;the air in that
+jungle stifles one; my eyes, besides, have grown accustomed to
+its gloom, and the strong sunshine pierces them like
+knives.&nbsp; A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment.&nbsp; All
+shall yet be well.&nbsp; I have buried the hoard under a cypress,
+immediately beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the
+path; beautiful, bright things, they now lie whelmed in slime;
+you shall find them there, if needful.&nbsp; But come, let us to
+the house; it is time to eat against our journey of the night: to
+eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to
+sleep.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes,
+shaking his head as if in pity.</p>
+<p>We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone
+too long, and that the servants might suspect; passed through the
+airy stretch of the verandah; and came at length into the
+grateful twilight of the shuttered house.&nbsp; The meal was
+spread; the house servants, already informed by the boatmen of
+the master&rsquo;s return, were all back at their posts, and
+terrified, as I could see, to face me.&nbsp; My father still
+murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I hurried
+at once to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left his
+arm than he paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange
+gesture of groping.&nbsp; &lsquo;How is this?&rsquo; he cried, in
+a sharp, unhuman voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Am I blind?&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+ran to him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted
+and stood stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as
+if in a painful effort after breath.&nbsp; Then suddenly he
+raised both hands to his temples, cried out, &lsquo;My head, my
+head!&rsquo; and reeled and fell against the wall.</p>
+<p>I knew too well what it must be.&nbsp; I turned and begged the
+servants to relieve him.&nbsp; But they, with one accord, denied
+the possibility of hope; the master had gone into the swamp, they
+said, the master must die; all help was idle.&nbsp; Why should I
+dwell upon his sufferings?&nbsp; I had him carried to a bed, and
+watched beside him.&nbsp; He lay still, and at times ground his
+teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only that one word of
+hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, and telling me that,
+even in the last struggle with the powers of death, his mind was
+still tortured by his daughter&rsquo;s peril.&nbsp; The sun had
+gone down, the darkness had fallen, when I perceived that I was
+alone on this unhappy earth.&nbsp; What thought had I of flight,
+of safety, of the impending dangers of my situation?&nbsp; Beside
+the body of my last friend, I had forgotten all except the
+natural pangs of my bereavement.</p>
+<p>The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I was
+recalled to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the entrance
+of the slave-girl to whom I have already referred.&nbsp; The poor
+soul was indeed devotedly attached to me; and it was with
+streaming tears that she broke to me the import of her
+coming.&nbsp; With the first light of dawn a boat had reached our
+landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till now so
+fortunate) a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my
+father&rsquo;s person, and a man of a gross body and low manners,
+who declared the island, the plantation, and all its human
+chattels, to be now his own.&nbsp; &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; said my
+slave-girl, &lsquo;he must be a politician or some very powerful
+sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming,
+than she took to the woods.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Fool,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;it was the officers she
+feared; and at any rate why does that beldam still dare to
+pollute the island with her presence?&nbsp; And O Cora,&rsquo; I
+exclaimed, remembering my grief, &lsquo;what matter all these
+troubles to an orphan?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mistress,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;I must remind you of
+two things.&nbsp; Never speak as you do now of Madam Mendizabal;
+or never to a person of colour; for she is the most powerful
+woman in this world, and her real name even, if one durst
+pronounce it, were a spell to raise the dead.&nbsp; And whatever
+you do, speak no more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it
+is possible she may be afraid of the police (and indeed I think
+that I have heard she is in hiding), and though I know that you
+will laugh and not believe, yet it is true, and proved, and known
+that she hears every word that people utter in this whole vast
+world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough in her black
+books.&nbsp; She looks at me, mistress, till my blood turns
+ice.&nbsp; That is the first I had to say; and now for the
+second: do, pray, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake, bear in mind that you
+are no longer the poor Se&ntilde;or&rsquo;s daughter.&nbsp; He is
+gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no more than a common
+slave-girl like myself.&nbsp; The man to whom you belong calls
+for you; oh, my dear mistress, go at once!&nbsp; With your youth
+and beauty, you may still, if you are winning and obedient,
+secure yourself an easy life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you
+may conceive; the next, it was gone: she did but speak after her
+kind, as the bird sings or cattle bellow.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go,&rsquo;
+said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go, Cora.&nbsp; I thank you for your kind
+intentions.&nbsp; Leave me alone one moment with my dead father;
+and tell this man that I will come at once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She went: and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to
+those deaf ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered
+innocence.&nbsp; &lsquo;Father,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;it was your
+last thought, even in the pangs of dissolution, that your
+daughter should escape disgrace.&nbsp; Here, at your side, I
+swear to you that purpose shall be carried out; by what means, I
+know not; by crime, if need be; and Heaven forgive both you and
+me and our oppressors, and Heaven help my
+helplessness!&rsquo;&nbsp; Thereupon I felt strengthened as by
+long repose; stepped to the mirror, ay, even in that chamber of
+the dead; hastily arranged my hair, refreshed my tear-worn eyes,
+breathed a dumb farewell to the originator of my days and
+sorrows; and composing my features to a smile, went forth to meet
+my master.</p>
+<p>He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once
+ours, to which he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine
+man of middle age, sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged
+rightly, not ill-disposed by nature.&nbsp; But the sparkle that
+came into his eye as he observed me enter, warned me to expect
+the worst.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is this your late mistress?&rsquo; he inquired of the
+slaves; and when he had learnt it was so, instantly dismissed
+them.&nbsp; &lsquo;Now, my dear,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I am a
+plain man: none of your damned Spaniards, but a true blue,
+hard-working, honest Englishman.&nbsp; My name is
+Caulder.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you, sir,&rsquo; said I, and curtsied very
+smartly as I had seen the servants.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is better than I had
+expected; and if you choose to be dutiful in the station to which
+it has pleased God to call you, you will find me a very kind old
+fellow.&nbsp; I like your looks,&rsquo; he added, calling me by
+my name, which he scandalously mispronounced.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is
+your hair all your own?&rsquo; he then inquired with a certain
+sharpness, and coming up to me, as though I were a horse, he
+grossly satisfied his doubts.&nbsp; I was all one flame from head
+to foot, but I contained my righteous anger and submitted.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;That is very well,&rsquo; he continued, chucking me good
+humouredly under the chin.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will have no cause to
+regret coming to old Caulder, eh?&nbsp; But that is by the
+way.&nbsp; What is more to the point is this: your late master
+was a most dishonest rogue, and levanted with some valuable
+property that belonged of rights to me.&nbsp; Now, considering
+your relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person to
+know what has become of it; and I warn you, before you answer,
+that my whole future kindness will depend upon your
+honesty.&nbsp; I am an honest man myself, and expect the same in
+my servants.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you mean the jewels?&rsquo; said I, sinking my voice
+into a whisper.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is just precisely what I do,&rsquo; said he, and
+chuckled.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hush?&rsquo; he repeated.&nbsp; &lsquo;And why
+hush?&nbsp; I am on my own place, I would have you to know, and
+surrounded by my own lawful servants.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are the officers gone?&rsquo; I asked; and oh! how my
+hopes hung upon the answer!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They are,&rsquo; said he, looking somewhat
+disconcerted.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why do you ask?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish you had kept them,&rsquo; I answered, solemnly
+enough, although my heart at that same moment leaped with
+exultation.&nbsp; &lsquo;Master, I must not conceal from you the
+truth.&nbsp; The servants on this estate are in a dangerous
+condition, and mutiny has long been brewing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I never saw a
+milder-looking lot of niggers in my life.&rsquo;&nbsp; But for
+all that he turned somewhat pale.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did they tell you,&rsquo; I continued, &lsquo;that
+Madam Mendizabal is on the island? that, since her coming, they
+obey none but her? that if, this morning, they have received you
+with even decent civility, it was only by her orders&mdash;issued
+with what after-thought I leave you to consider?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam Jezebel?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well, she
+is a dangerous devil; the police are after her, besides, for a
+whole series of murders; but after all, what then?&nbsp; To be
+sure, she has a great influence with you coloured folk.&nbsp; But
+what in fortune&rsquo;s name can be her errand here?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The jewels,&rsquo; I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, sir, had
+you seen that treasure, sapphire and emerald and opal, and the
+golden topaz, and rubies red as the sunset&mdash;of what
+incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the
+eye!&mdash;had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as <i>she</i>
+has&mdash;you would understand and tremble at your
+danger.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She has seen them!&rsquo; he cried, and I could see by
+his face, that my audacity was justified by its success.</p>
+<p>I caught his hand in mine.&nbsp; &lsquo;My master,&rsquo; said
+I, &lsquo;I am now yours; it is my duty, it should be my
+pleasure, to defend your interests and life.&nbsp; Hear my
+advice, then; and, I conjure you, be guided by my prudence.&nbsp;
+Follow me privily; let none see where we are going; I will lead
+you to the place where the treasure has been buried; that once
+disinterred, let us make straight for the boat, escape to the
+mainland, and not return to this dangerous isle without the
+countenance of soldiers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a
+devotion?&nbsp; But this oppressor, through the very arts and
+sophistries he had abused, to quiet the rebellion of his
+conscience and to convince himself that slavery was natural, fell
+like a child into the trap I laid for him.&nbsp; He praised and
+thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in a
+servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the nature
+and value of the treasure, and I had once more artfully inflamed
+his greed, bade me without delay proceed to carry out my plan of
+action.</p>
+<p>From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and
+thence, by devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to
+the entrance of the swamp.&nbsp; I walked first, carrying, as I
+was now in duty bound, the tools, and glancing continually behind
+me, lest we should be spied upon and followed.&nbsp; When we were
+come as far as the beginning of the path, it flashed into my mind
+I had forgotten meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in the shadow of a
+tree, I returned alone to the house for a basket of
+provisions.&nbsp; Were they for him?&nbsp; I asked myself.&nbsp;
+And a voice within me answered, No. While we were face to face,
+while I still saw before my eyes the man to whom I belonged as
+the hand belongs to the body, my indignation held me bravely
+up.&nbsp; But now that I was alone, I conceived a sickness at
+myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; I longed to
+throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn
+him from that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to
+die; but my vow to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth,
+prevailed upon these scruples; and though my face was pale and
+must have reflected the horror that oppressed my spirits, it was
+with a firm step that I returned to the borders of the swamp, and
+with smiling lips that I bade him rise and follow me.</p>
+<p>The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel,
+through the living jungle.&nbsp; On either hand and overhead, the
+mass of foliage was continuously joined; the day sparingly
+filtered through the depth of super-impending wood; and the air
+was hot like steam, and heady with vegetable odours, and lay like
+a load upon the lungs and brain.&nbsp; Underfoot, a great depth
+of mould received our silent footprints; on each side, mimosas,
+as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts with a continuous
+hissing rustle; and but for these sentient vegetables, all in
+that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.</p>
+<p>We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized
+with sudden nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.&nbsp;
+My heart yearned, as I beheld him; and I seriously begged the
+doomed mortal to return upon his steps.&nbsp; What were a few
+jewels in the scales with life? I asked.&nbsp; But no, he said;
+that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest
+man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting
+the while, like a sick dog.&nbsp; Presently he got to his feet
+again, protesting he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we
+again began to go forward, I saw in his changed countenance, the
+first approaches of death.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Master,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;you look pale, deathly
+pale; your pallor fills me with dread.&nbsp; Your eyes are
+bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we seek.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Wench,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;look before you; look at
+your steps.&nbsp; I declare to Heaven, if you annoy me once again
+by looking back, I shall remind you of the change in your
+position.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told,
+in a whisper, that its touch was death.&nbsp; Presently a great
+green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across
+the path; and once again I paused and looked back at my
+companion, with a horror in my eyes.&nbsp; &lsquo;The coffin
+snake,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;the snake that dogs its victim like
+a hound.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But he was not to be dissuaded.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am an old
+traveller,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a foul jungle
+indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; said I, looking at him, with a strange
+smile, &lsquo;what end?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily;
+and then, perceiving that the path began to widen and grow
+higher, &lsquo;There!&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;What did I
+tell you?&nbsp; We are past the worst.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place
+very narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either
+hand we could see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of
+trees and hanging creepers: sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and
+sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads of alligators, and
+its banks alive with scarlet crabs.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If we fall from that unsteady bridge,&rsquo; said I,
+&lsquo;see, where the caiman lies ready to devour us!&nbsp; If,
+by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a
+morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the
+border of the thicket!&nbsp; Once helpless, how they would swarm
+together to the assault!&nbsp; What could man do against a
+thousand of such mailed assailants?&nbsp; And what a death were
+that, to perish alive under their claws.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you mad, girl?&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;I bid
+you be silent and lead on.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised
+the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the
+face.&nbsp; &lsquo;Lead on!&rsquo; he cried again.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough,
+and all for a prating slave-girl?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood
+welled back upon my heart.&nbsp; Something, I know not what, fell
+at that moment with a dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon,
+and I told myself it was my pity that had fallen.</p>
+<p>On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the
+wood was not so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly
+convolved.&nbsp; It was possible, here and there, to mark a patch
+of somewhat brighter daylight, or to distinguish, through the
+lighter web of parasites, the proportions of some soaring
+tree.&nbsp; The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth,
+upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened
+broadly; and there was a patch of open ground, beset with
+horrible ant-heaps, thick with their artificers.&nbsp; I laid
+down the tools and basket by the cypress root, where they were
+instantly blackened over with the crawling ants; and looked once
+more in the face of my unconscious victim.&nbsp; Mosquitoes and
+foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his features were
+obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the turning of a
+mighty wheel.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;is the spot.&nbsp; I cannot
+dig, for I have not learned to use such instruments; but, for
+your own sake, I beseech you to be swift in what you
+do.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish;
+and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had
+mantled on my father&rsquo;s.&nbsp; &lsquo;I feel ill,&rsquo; he
+gasped, &lsquo;horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone
+of these carrion flies confounds me.&nbsp; Have you not
+wine?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is
+for you to think,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;if you should further
+persevere.&nbsp; The swamp has an ill name.&rsquo;&nbsp; And at
+the word I ominously nodded.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Give me the pick,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Where
+are the jewels buried?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness,
+and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe,
+swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man.&nbsp; At
+first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his
+face to shine, and in which the greedy insects settled
+thickly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To sweat in such a place,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;O
+master, is this wise?&nbsp; Fever is drunk in through open
+pores.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you mean?&rsquo; he screamed, pausing with the
+pick buried in the soil.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you seek to drive me
+mad?&nbsp; Do you think I do not understand the danger that I
+run?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is all I want,&rsquo; said I: &lsquo;I only wish
+you to be swift.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, my mind flitting to my
+father&rsquo;s deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above my
+breath, the same vain repetition of words, &lsquo;Hurry, hurry,
+hurry.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up;
+and while he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and
+uncertain blows, repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a
+song, &lsquo;Hurry, hurry, hurry;&rsquo; and then again,
+&lsquo;There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill
+name;&rsquo; and then back to &lsquo;Hurry, hurry, hurry,&rsquo;
+with a dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance,
+as a sick man rolls upon his pillow.&nbsp; The sweat had
+disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I could see of him, of
+the same dull brick red.&nbsp; Presently his pick unearthed the
+bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at
+the soil.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Master,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;there is the
+treasure.&rsquo;&nbsp; He seemed to waken from a dream.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Where?&rsquo; he cried; and then, seeing it before his
+eyes, &lsquo;Can this be possible?&rsquo; he added.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I must be light-headed.&nbsp; Girl,&rsquo; he cried
+suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once
+before observed, &lsquo;what is wrong? is this swamp
+accursed?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a grave,&rsquo; I answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will
+not go out alive; and as for me, my life is in God&rsquo;s
+hands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but
+whether from the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of
+the malady, I cannot tell.&nbsp; Pretty soon, he raised his
+head.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have brought me here to die,&rsquo; he
+said; &lsquo;at the risk of your own days, you have condemned
+me.&nbsp; Why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To save my honour,&rsquo; I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;Bear
+me out that I have warned you.&nbsp; Greed of these pebbles, and
+not I, has been your undoer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He took out his revolver and handed it to me.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+see,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I could have killed you even
+yet.&nbsp; But I am dying, as you say; nothing could save me; and
+my bill is long enough already.&nbsp; Dear me, dear me,&rsquo; he
+said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic
+look, like a dull child at school, &lsquo;if there be a judgment
+afterwards, my bill is long enough.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his
+feet, kissed his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol
+back into his grasp and besought him to avenge his death; for
+indeed, if with my life I could have bought back his, I had not
+balanced at the cost.&nbsp; But he was determined, the poor soul,
+that I should yet more bitterly regret my act.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have nothing to forgive,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Dear heaven, what a thing is an old fool!&nbsp; I thought,
+upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming
+dizziness, clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of
+some woman.&nbsp; Presently this spasm, which I watched with
+choking tears, lessened and died away; and he came again to the
+full possession of his mind.&nbsp; &lsquo;I must write my
+will,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Get out my
+pocket-book.&rsquo;&nbsp; I did so, and he wrote hurriedly on one
+page with a pencil.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do not let my son know,&rsquo;
+he said; &lsquo;he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let
+him know how you have paid me out;&rsquo; and then all of a
+sudden, &lsquo;God,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I am blind,&rsquo;
+and clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a
+groaning whisper, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t leave me to the
+crabs!&rsquo;&nbsp; I swore I would be true to him so long as a
+pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.&nbsp; I sat there and
+watched him, as I had watched my father, but with what different,
+with what appalling thoughts!&nbsp; Through the long afternoon,
+he gradually sank.&nbsp; All that while, I fought an uphill
+battle to shield him from the swarms of ants and the clouds of
+mosquitoes: the prisoner of my crime.&nbsp; The night fell, the
+roar of insects instantly redoubled in the dark arcades of the
+swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed his
+last.&nbsp; At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in
+mine, grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was
+free.</p>
+<p>I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather
+to die than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and
+the bag of gems, set forward towards the north.&nbsp; The swamp,
+at that hour of the night, was filled with a continuous din:
+animals and insects of all kinds, and all inimical to life,
+contributing their parts.&nbsp; Yet in the midst of this turmoil
+of sound, I walked as though my eyes were bandaged, beholding
+nothing.&nbsp; The soil sank under my foot, with a horrid,
+slippery consistence, as though I were walking among toads; the
+touch of the thick wall of foliage, by which alone I guided
+myself, affrighted me like the touch of serpents; the darkness
+checked my breathing like a gag; indeed, I have never suffered
+such extremes of fear as during that nocturnal walk, nor have I
+ever known a more sensible relief than when I found the path
+beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and saw,
+although still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of
+the moon.</p>
+<p>Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come
+forth amongst noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry
+dust, the aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been baked
+all day in sunlight, and the expressive silence of the
+night.&nbsp; My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that
+reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had
+escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive;
+and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to
+cross the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my
+acceptance on the English yacht.&nbsp; It was impossible by night
+to follow such a track as my father had described; and I was
+casting about for any landmark, and, in my ignorance, vainly
+consulting the disposition of the stars, when there fell upon my
+ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many voices
+hurriedly singing.</p>
+<p>I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps
+in the direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an
+hour&rsquo;s walking, came unperceived to the margin of an open
+glade.&nbsp; It was lighted by the strong moon and by the flames
+of a fire.&nbsp; In the midst, there stood a little low and rude
+building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered
+to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites
+of Hoodoo.&nbsp; Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass,
+continually agitated and stirring to and fro as if with
+inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to be a heap of
+cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still
+struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed one upon
+another.&nbsp; Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a
+ring of kneeling Africans, both men and women.&nbsp; Now they
+would raise their palms half-closed to heaven, with a peculiar,
+passionate gesture of supplication; now they would bow their
+heads and spread their hands before them on the ground.&nbsp; As
+the double movement passed and repassed along the line, the heads
+kept rising and falling, like waves upon the sea; and still, as
+if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant
+continued.&nbsp; I stood spellbound, knowing that my life
+depended by a hair, knowing that I had stumbled on a celebration
+of the rites of Hoodoo.</p>
+<p>Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth
+a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the
+sacrificial knife.&nbsp; He was followed by an apparition still
+more strange and shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and
+carrying in both hands and raised to the level of her face, an
+open basket of wicker.&nbsp; It was filled with coiling snakes;
+and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot
+through the osier grating and curled about her arms.&nbsp; At the
+sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly
+higher; and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in
+time and accent.&nbsp; Then, at a sign from the tall negro, where
+he stood, motionless and smiling, in the moon and firelight, the
+singing died away, and there began the second stage of this
+barbarous and bloody celebration.&nbsp; From different parts of
+the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the
+midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand,
+before the priestess and her snakes; and with various
+adjurations, uttered aloud the blackest wishes of the
+heart.&nbsp; Death and disease were the favours usually invoked:
+the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down
+these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to
+whom I swear I had been never less than kind, invoking them upon
+myself.&nbsp; At each petition, the tall negro, still smiling,
+picked up some bird or animal from the heaving mass upon his
+left, slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the
+ground.&nbsp; At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the
+high-priestess.&nbsp; She set down the basket on the steps, moved
+into the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the
+reptiles, and still grovelling lifted up her voice, between
+speech and singing, and with so great, with so insane a fervour
+of excitement, as struck a sort of horror through my blood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Power,&rsquo; she began, &lsquo;whose name we do not
+utter; power that is neither good nor evil, but below them both;
+stronger than good, greater than evil&mdash;all my life long I
+have adored and served thee.&nbsp; Who has shed blood upon thine
+altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy praises?
+whose limbs are faint before their age with leaping in thy
+revels?&nbsp; Who has slain the child of her body?&nbsp;
+I,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;I, Metamnbogu!&nbsp; By my own name,
+I name myself.&nbsp; I tear away the veil.&nbsp; I would be
+served or perish.&nbsp; Hear me, slime of the fat swamp,
+blackness of the thunder, venom of the serpent&rsquo;s
+udder&mdash;hear or slay me!&nbsp; I would have two things, O
+shapeless one, O horror of emptiness&mdash;two things, or
+die!&nbsp; The blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that;
+he is the enemy of Hoodoo; give me his blood!&nbsp; And yet
+another, O racer of the blind winds, O germinator in the ruins of
+the dead, O root of life, root of corruption!&nbsp; I grow old, I
+grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy
+servant then lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess
+turn again to the blossom of her days, and be a girl once more,
+and the desired of all men, even as in the past!&nbsp; And, O
+lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet wrought since we
+were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the sacrifice in
+which thy soul delighteth&mdash;the kid without the
+horns?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy
+through all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and
+rose again; and swelled at last into rapture, when the tall
+negro, who had stepped an instant into the chapel, reappeared
+before the door, carrying in his arms the body of the slave-girl,
+Cora.&nbsp; I know not if I saw what followed.&nbsp; When next my
+mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was laid upon the steps
+before the serpents; the negro with the knife stood over her; the
+knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great horror,
+bidding them, in God&rsquo;s name, to pause.</p>
+<p>A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.&nbsp; A moment
+more, and they must have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly
+have perished.&nbsp; But Heaven had designed to save me.&nbsp;
+The silence of these wretched men was not yet broken, when there
+arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the roar of any
+European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any Eastern
+wind.&nbsp; Blackness engulfed the world; blackness, stabbed
+across from every side by intricate and blinding lightning.&nbsp;
+Almost in the same second, at one world-swallowing stride, the
+heart of the tornado reached the clearing.&nbsp; I heard an
+agonising crash, and the light of my reason was overwhelmed.</p>
+<p>When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.&nbsp; I was
+unhurt; the trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I
+might have thought at first that the tornado was a feature in a
+dream.&nbsp; It was otherwise indeed; for when I looked abroad, I
+perceived I had escaped destruction by a
+hand&rsquo;s-breadth.&nbsp; Right through the forest, which here
+covered hill and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of
+ruin.&nbsp; On either hand, the trees waved uninjured in the air
+of the morning; but in the forthright course of its advance, the
+hurricane had left no trophy standing.&nbsp; Everything, in that
+line, tree, man, or animal, the desecrated chapel and the
+votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that
+brief spasm of anger of the powers of air.&nbsp; Everything, but
+a yard or two beyond the line of its passage, humble flower,
+lofty tree, and the poor vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her
+gratitude to heaven, awoke unharmed in the crystal purity and
+peace of the new day.</p>
+<p>To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to
+man, so wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together
+by that fugitive convulsion.&nbsp; I crossed it indeed; with such
+labour and patience, with so many dangerous slips and falls, as
+left me, at the further side, bankrupt alike of strength and
+courage.&nbsp; There I sat down awhile to recruit my forces; and
+as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness of Heaven!) my eye,
+flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great trees, alighted
+on a trunk that had been blazed.&nbsp; Yes, by the directing hand
+of Providence, I had been conducted to the very track I was to
+follow.&nbsp; With what a light heart I now set forth, and
+walking with how glad a step, traversed the uplands of the
+isle!</p>
+<p>It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered
+and wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below
+me on the sea.&nbsp; About all the coast, the surf, roused by the
+tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a
+fringe of snow.&nbsp; Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in
+precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock.&nbsp; Just outside,
+a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily
+painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my
+heart was seized with admiration.&nbsp; The English colours blew
+from her masthead; and from my high station, I caught glimpses of
+her snowy planking, as she rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the
+sun glitter on the brass of her deck furniture.&nbsp; There,
+then, was my ship of refuge; and of all my difficulties only one
+remained: to get on board of her.</p>
+<p>Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the
+margin of a cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows
+entered, and along whose shores they broke with a surprising
+loudness.&nbsp; A wooded promontory hid the yacht; and I had
+walked some distance round the beach, in what appeared to be a
+virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat, drawn into a natural
+harbour, where it rocked in safety, but deserted.&nbsp; I looked
+about for those who should have manned her; and presently, in the
+immediate entrance of the wood, spied the red embers of a fire,
+and, stretched around in various attitudes, a party of slumbering
+mariners.&nbsp; To these I drew near: most were black, a few
+white; but all were dressed with the conspicuous decency of
+yachtsmen; and one, from his peaked cap and glittering buttons, I
+rightly divined to be an officer.&nbsp; Him, then, I touched upon
+the shoulder.&nbsp; He started up; the sharpness of his movement
+woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you want?&rsquo; inquired the officer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To go on board the yacht,&rsquo; I answered.</p>
+<p>I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the
+officer, with something of sharpness, asked me who I was.&nbsp;
+Now I had determined to conceal my name until I met Sir George;
+and the first name that rose to my lips was that of the
+Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal.&nbsp; At the word, there went a shock
+about the little party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with
+indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something of
+a scared surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief prompted
+me to add, &lsquo;And if the name is new to your ears, call me
+Metamnbogu.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I had never seen an effect so wonderful.&nbsp; The negroes
+threw their hands into the air, with the same gesture I remarked
+the night before about the Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and then
+another, ran forward and kneeled down and kissed the skirts of my
+torn dress; and when the white officer broke out swearing and
+calling to know if they were mad, the coloured seamen took him by
+the shoulders, dragged him on one side till they were out of
+hearing, and surrounded him with open mouths and extravagant
+pantomime.&nbsp; The officer seemed to struggle hard; he laughed
+aloud, and I saw him make gestures of dissent and protest; but in
+the end, whether overcome by reason or simply weary of
+resistance, he gave in&mdash;approached me civilly enough, but
+with something of a sneering manner underneath&mdash;and touching
+his cap, &lsquo;My lady,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;if that is what
+you are, the boat is ready.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My reception on board the <i>Nemorosa</i> (for so the yacht
+was named) partook of the same mingled nature.&nbsp; We were
+scarcely within hail of that great and elegant fabric, where she
+lay rolling gunwale under and churning the blue sea to snow,
+before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a great crowd of
+seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the few who
+manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some <i>lingua
+franca</i> incomprehensible to me.&nbsp; All eyes were directed
+on the passenger; and once more I saw the negroes toss up their
+hands to heaven, but now as if with passionate wonder and
+delight.</p>
+<p>At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer,
+a gentlemanly man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I
+addressed my demand to see Sir George.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But this is not&mdash;&rsquo; he cried, and paused.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know it,&rsquo; returned the other officer, who had
+brought me from the shore.&nbsp; &lsquo;But what the devil can we
+do?&nbsp; Look at all the niggers!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the
+poor ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands
+into the air, as though in the presence of a creature half
+divine.&nbsp; Apparently the officer with the whiskers had
+instantly come round to the opinion of his subaltern; for he now
+addressed me with every signal of respect.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir George is at the island, my lady,&rsquo; said he:
+&lsquo;for which, with your ladyship&rsquo;s permission, I shall
+immediately make all sail.&nbsp; The cabins are prepared.&nbsp;
+Steward, take Lady Greville below.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that
+I could neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious
+and airy cabin, hung about with weapons and surrounded by
+divans.&nbsp; The steward asked for my commands; but I was by
+this time so wearied, bewildered, and disturbed, that I could
+only wave him to leave me to myself, and sink upon a pile of
+cushions.&nbsp; Presently, by the changed motion of the ship, I
+knew her to be under way; my thoughts, so far from clarifying,
+grew the more distracted and confused; dreams began to mingle and
+confound them; and at length, by insensible transition, I sank
+into a dreamless slumber.</p>
+<p>When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once
+more morning.&nbsp; The world on which I reopened my eyes swam
+strangely up and down; the jewels in the bag that lay beside me
+chinked together ceaselessly; the clock and the barometer wagged
+to and fro like pendulums; and overhead, seamen were singing out
+at their work, and coils of rope clattering and thumping on the
+deck.&nbsp; Yet it was long before I had divined that I was at
+sea; long before I had recalled, one after another, the tragical,
+mysterious, and inexplicable events that had brought me where
+was.</p>
+<p>When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised
+to find had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and
+seeing a silver bell hard by upon a table, rang it loudly.&nbsp;
+The steward instantly appeared; I asked for food; and he
+proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while with a
+disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny.&nbsp; To relieve myself of
+my embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show of ease as I
+could muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry so numerous a
+crew?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I know not who you are,
+nor what mad fancy has induced you to usurp a name and an
+appalling destiny that are not yours.&nbsp; I warn you from the
+soul.&nbsp; No sooner arrived at the island&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer,
+who had entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon
+his shoulder.&nbsp; The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear,
+that was imprinted on the steward&rsquo;s face, formed a
+startling addition to his words.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Parker!&rsquo; said the officer, and pointed towards
+the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, Mr. Kentish,&rsquo; said the steward.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Mr. Kentish!&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.</p>
+<p>Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me,
+and join in the meal.&nbsp; &lsquo;I fill your ladyship&rsquo;s
+glass,&rsquo; said he, and handed me a tumbler of neat rum.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;do you expect me to drink
+this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He laughed heartily.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your ladyship is so much
+changed,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that I no longer expect any one
+thing more than any other.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted
+both Mr. Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a
+sail in sight, which was bound to pass us very close, and that
+Mr. Harland was in doubt about the colours.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Being so near the island?&rsquo; asked Mr. Kentish.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,&rsquo; returned
+the sailor, with a scrape.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Better not, I think,&rsquo; said Mr. Kentish.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;My compliments to Mr. Harland; and if she seem a lively
+boat, give her the stars and stripes; but if she be dull, and we
+can easily outsail her, show John Dutchman.&nbsp; That is always
+another word for incivility at sea; so we can disregard a hail or
+a flag of distress, without attracting notice.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the
+officer in wonder.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Kentish, if that be your
+name,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;are you ashamed of your own
+colours?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your ladyship refers to the <i>Jolly Roger</i>?&rsquo;
+he inquired, with perfect gravity; and immediately after, went
+into peals of laughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said he;
+&lsquo;but here for the first time I recognise your
+ladyship&rsquo;s impetuosity.&rsquo;&nbsp; Nor, try as I pleased,
+could I extract from him any explanation of this mystery, but
+only oily and commonplace evasion.</p>
+<p>While we were thus occupied, the movement of the
+<i>Nemorosa</i> gradually became less violent; its speed at the
+same time diminished; and presently after, with a sullen plunge,
+the anchor was discharged into the sea.&nbsp; Kentish immediately
+rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck; where I found we
+were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky islets,
+hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.&nbsp;
+Immediately under our board, a somewhat larger isle was green
+with trees, set with a few low buildings and approached by a pier
+of very crazy workmanship; and a little inshore of us, a smaller
+vessel lay at anchor.</p>
+<p>I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat
+was lowered.&nbsp; I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me,
+and we pulled briskly to the pier.&nbsp; A crowd of villainous,
+armed loiterers, both black and white, looked on upon our
+landing; and again the word passed about among the negroes, and
+again I was received with prostrations and the same gesture of
+the flung-up hand.&nbsp; By this, what with the appearance of
+these men, and the lawless, sea-girt spot in which I found
+myself, my courage began a little to decline, and clinging to the
+arm of Mr. Kentish, I begged him to tell me what it meant?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay, madam,&rsquo; he returned, &lsquo;<i>you</i>
+know.&rsquo;&nbsp; And leading me smartly through the crowd,
+which continued to follow at a considerable distance, and at
+which he still kept looking back, I thought, with apprehension,
+he brought me to a low house that stood alone in an encumbered
+yard, opened the door, and begged me to enter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But why?&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;I demand to see
+Sir George.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as
+black as thunder, &lsquo;to drop all fence, I know neither who
+nor what you are; beyond the fact that you are not the person
+whose name you have assumed.&nbsp; But be what you please, spy,
+ghost, devil, or most ill-judging jester, if you do not
+immediately enter that house, I will cut you to the
+earth.&rsquo;&nbsp; And even as he spoke, he threw an uneasy
+glance behind him at the following crowd of blacks.</p>
+<p>I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and
+with a palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was
+locked from the outside and the key withdrawn.&nbsp; The interior
+was long, low, and quite unfurnished, but filled, almost from end
+to end, with sugar-cane, tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other
+incongruous and highly inflammable material; and not only was the
+door locked, but the solitary window barred with iron.</p>
+<p>I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that
+I would have given years of my life to be once more the slave of
+Mr. Caulder.&nbsp; I still stood, with my hands clasped, the
+image of despair, looking about me on the lumber of the room or
+raising my eyes to heaven; when there appeared outside the window
+bars, the face of a very black negro, who signed to me
+imperiously to draw near.&nbsp; I did so, and he instantly, and
+with every mark of fervour, addressed me a long speech in some
+unknown and barbarous tongue.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I declare,&rsquo; I cried, clasping my brow, &lsquo;I
+do not understand one syllable.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not?&rsquo; he said in Spanish.&nbsp; &lsquo;Great,
+great, are the powers of Hoodoo!&nbsp; Her very mind is
+changed!&nbsp; But, O chief priestess, why have you suffered
+yourself to be shut into this cage? why did you not call your
+slaves at once to your defence?&nbsp; Do you not see that all has
+been prepared to murder you? at a spark, this flimsy house will
+go in flames; and alas! who shall then be the chief priestess?
+and what shall be the profit of the miracle?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Heavens!&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;can I not see Sir
+George?&nbsp; I must, I must, come by speech of him.&nbsp; Oh,
+bring me to Sir George!&rsquo;&nbsp; And, my terror fairly
+mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and began to pray to
+all the saints.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lordy!&rsquo; cried the negro, &lsquo;here they
+come!&rsquo;&nbsp; And his black head was instantly withdrawn
+from the window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I never heard such nonsense in my life,&rsquo;
+exclaimed a voice.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, so we all say, Sir George,&rsquo; replied the
+voice of Mr. Kentish.&nbsp; &lsquo;But put yourself in our
+place.&nbsp; The niggers were near two to one.&nbsp; And upon my
+word, if you&rsquo;ll excuse me, sir, considering the notion they
+have taken in their heads, I regard it as precious fortunate for
+all of us that the mistake occurred.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is no question of fortune, sir,&rsquo; returned
+Sir George.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is a question of my orders, and you
+may take my word for it, Kentish, either Harland, or yourself, or
+Parker&mdash;or, by George, all three of you!&mdash;shall swing
+for this affair.&nbsp; These are my sentiments.&nbsp; Give me the
+key and be off.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there
+appeared upon the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty,
+with a very open countenance, and of a stout and personable
+figure.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear young lady,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;who the
+devil may you be?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I told him all my story in one rush of words.&nbsp; He heard
+me, from the first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture,
+but when I came to the death of the Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal in
+the tornado, he fairly leaped into the air.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear child,&rsquo; he cried, clasping me in his
+arms, &lsquo;excuse a man who might be your father!&nbsp; This is
+the best news I ever had since I was born; for that hag of a
+mulatto was no less a person than my wife.&rsquo;&nbsp; He sat
+down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear
+me,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I declare this tempts me to believe in
+Providence.&nbsp; And what,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;can I do for
+you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir George,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I am already rich:
+all that I ask is your protection.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Understand one thing,&rsquo; he said, with great
+energy.&nbsp; &lsquo;I will never marry.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I had not ventured to propose it,&rsquo; I exclaimed,
+unable to restrain my mirth; &lsquo;I only seek to be conveyed to
+England, the natural home of the escaped slave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; returned Sir George, &lsquo;frankly I owe
+you something for this exhilarating news; besides, your father
+was of use to me.&nbsp; Now, I have made a small competence in
+business&mdash;a jewel mine, a sort of naval agency, et
+c&aelig;tera, and I am on the point of breaking up my company,
+and retiring to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old age,
+unmarried.&nbsp; One good turn deserves another: if you swear to
+hold your tongue about this island, these little bonfire
+arrangements, and the whole episode of my unfortunate marriage,
+why, I&rsquo;ll carry you home aboard the
+<i>Nemorosa</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp; I eagerly accepted his
+conditions.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One thing more,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;My late
+wife was some sort of a sorceress among the blacks; and they are
+all persuaded she has come alive again in your agreeable
+person.&nbsp; Now, you will have the goodness to keep up that
+fancy, if you please; and to swear to them, on the authority of
+Hoodoo or whatever his name may be, that I am from this moment
+quite a sacred character.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I swear it,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;by my father&rsquo;s
+memory; and that is a vow that I will never break.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have considerably better hold on you than any
+oath,&rsquo; returned Sir George, with a chuckle; &lsquo;for you
+are not only an escaped slave, but have, by your own account, a
+considerable amount of stolen property.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I
+recognised that these jewels were no longer mine; with similar
+quickness, I decided they should be restored, ay, if it cost me
+the liberty that I had just regained.&nbsp; Forgetful of all
+else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and watched me with a
+smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder&rsquo;s pocket-book and turned to
+the page on which the dying man had scrawled his testament.&nbsp;
+How shall I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with
+which I read it! for my victim had not only set me free, but
+bequeathed to me the bag of jewels.</p>
+<p>My plain tale draws towards a close.&nbsp; Sir George and I,
+in my character of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves
+arm-in-arm among the negroes, and were cheered and followed to
+the place of embarkation.&nbsp; There, Sir George, turning about,
+made a speech to his old companions, in which he thanked and bade
+them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards the end of
+which he fell on some expressions which I still remember.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If any of you gentry lose your money,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;take care you do not come to me; for in the first place, I
+shall do my best to have you murdered; and if that fails, I hand
+you over to the law.&nbsp; Blackmail won&rsquo;t do for me.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to pieces
+by degrees.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll rather be found out and hang, than
+give a doit to one man-jack of you.&rsquo;&nbsp; That same night
+we got under way and crossed to the port of New Orleans, whence,
+as a sacred trust, I sent the pocket-book to Mr. Caulder&rsquo;s
+son.&nbsp; In a week&rsquo;s time, the men were all paid off; new
+hands were shipped; and the <i>Nemorosa</i> weighed her anchor
+for Old England.</p>
+<p>A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.&nbsp; Sir
+George, of course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an
+unaffected gaiety of character that naturally endeared him to the
+young; and it was interesting to hear him lay out his projects
+for the future, when he should be returned to Parliament, and
+place at the service of the nation his experience of marine
+affairs.&nbsp; I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a
+private yacht were not original.&nbsp; But he told me, no.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;A yacht, Miss Valdevia,&rsquo; he observed, &lsquo;is a
+chartered nuisance.&nbsp; Who smuggles?&nbsp; Who robs the salmon
+rivers of the West of Scotland?&nbsp; Who cruelly beats the
+keepers if they dare to intervene?&nbsp; The crews and the
+proprietors of yachts.&nbsp; All I have done is to extend the
+line a trifle, and if you ask me for my unbiassed opinion, I do
+not suppose that I am in the least alone.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father
+and daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that
+respect which is only due to moral excellence.</p>
+<p>We were still some days&rsquo; sail from England, when Sir
+George obtained, from an outward-bound ship, a packet of
+newspapers; and from that fatal hour my misfortunes
+recommenced.&nbsp; He sat, the same evening, in the cabin,
+reading the news, and making savoury comments on the decline of
+England and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly
+observed him to change countenance.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hullo!&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is bad; this is
+deuced bad, Miss Valdevia.&nbsp; You would not listen to sound
+sense, you would send that pocket-book to that man
+Caulder&rsquo;s son.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir George,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;it was my
+duty.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are prettily paid for it, at least,&rsquo; says he;
+&lsquo;and much as I regret it, I, for one, am done with
+you.&nbsp; This fellow Caulder demands your
+extradition.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But a slave,&rsquo; I returned, &lsquo;is safe in
+England.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, by George!&rsquo; replied the baronet; &lsquo;but
+it&rsquo;s not a slave, Miss Valdevia, it&rsquo;s a thief that he
+demands.&nbsp; He has quietly destroyed the will; and now accuses
+you of robbing your father&rsquo;s bankrupt estate of jewels to
+the value of a hundred thousand pounds.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge
+and concern for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made
+haste to put me more at ease.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do not be cast down,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of
+course, I wash my hands of you myself.&nbsp; A man in my
+position&mdash;baronet, old family, and all that&mdash;cannot
+possibly be too particular about the company he keeps.&nbsp; But
+I am a deuced good-humoured old boy, let me tell you, when not
+ruffled; and I will do the best I can to put you right.&nbsp; I
+will lend you a trifle of ready money, give you the address of an
+excellent lawyer in London, and find a way to set you on shore
+unsuspected.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was in every particular as good as his word.&nbsp; Four
+days later, the <i>Nemorosa</i> sounded her way, under the cloak
+of a dark night, into a certain haven of the coast of England;
+and a boat, rowing with muffled oars, set me ashore upon the
+beach within a stone&rsquo;s throw of a railway station.&nbsp;
+Thither, guided by Sir George&rsquo;s directions, I groped a
+devious way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me down,
+wrapped in a man&rsquo;s fur great-coat, to await the coming of
+the day.&nbsp; It was still dark when a light was struck behind
+one of the windows of the building; nor had the east begun to
+kindle to the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter
+carrying a lantern, issued from the door and found himself face
+to face with the unfortunate Teresa.&nbsp; He looked all about
+him; in the grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie
+deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who are you?&rsquo; he cried.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am a traveller,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And where do you come from?&rsquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am going by the first train to London,&rsquo; I
+replied.</p>
+<p>In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa
+with her bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this
+silent fashion, without history or name, she took her place among
+the millions of a new country.</p>
+<p>Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying
+concealed in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not
+knowing at what hour my liberty and honour may be lost.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 269--><a name="page269"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 269</span><i>THE BROWN BOX</i><br />
+(<i>Concluded</i>)</h2>
+<p>The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was
+instant and convincing.&nbsp; The Fair Cuban had been already the
+loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the
+most innocent, and the most unhappy of her sex.&nbsp; He was
+bereft of words to utter what he felt: what pity, what
+admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and
+adventurous.&nbsp; &lsquo;O madam!&rsquo; he began; and finding
+no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and
+wrung it in his own.&nbsp; &lsquo;Count upon me,&rsquo; he added,
+with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the
+apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found
+himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses,
+wondering at dull passers-by, a fallen angel.&nbsp; She had
+smiled upon him as he left, and with how significant, how
+beautiful a smile!&nbsp; The memory lingered in his heart; and
+when he found his way to a certain restaurant where music was
+performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his
+meal.&nbsp; The strings went to the melody of that parting smile;
+they paraphrased and glossed it in the sense that he desired; and
+for the first time in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he
+perceived himself to have a taste for music.</p>
+<p>The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that
+delectable air.&nbsp; Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw
+her not at all; now saw her and was put by.&nbsp; The fall of her
+foot upon the stair entranced him; the books that he sought out
+and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her indirectly; nay,
+and in the very landlady&rsquo;s parlour, he found one that told
+of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail,
+confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth of her
+recital.&nbsp; Presently he began to fall into that prettiest
+mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns himself for his
+presumption.&nbsp; Who was he, the dull one, the commonplace
+unemployed, the man without adventure, the impure, the
+untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire and air,
+and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of
+life?&nbsp; What should he do, to be more worthy? by what
+devotion, call down the notice of these eyes to so terrene a
+being as himself?</p>
+<p>He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the
+square, where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a
+circle of acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the
+half-domestic cats and the visitors that hung before the windows
+of the Children&rsquo;s Hospital.&nbsp; There he walked,
+considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the adored
+one&rsquo;s super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say a
+pleasant word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with a
+great heave of breath, remembering the queen of women, and the
+sunshine of his life.</p>
+<p>What was he to do?&nbsp; Teresa, he had observed, was in the
+habit of leaving the house towards afternoon: she might,
+perchance, run danger from some Cuban emissary, when the presence
+of a friend might turn the balance in her favour: how, then, if
+he should follow her?&nbsp; To offer his company would seem like
+an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest impertinence; he
+saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though in
+some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he could
+practise with the skill of a detective.</p>
+<p>The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.&nbsp; At
+the corner of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Se&ntilde;orita
+suddenly turned back, and met him face to face, with every mark
+of pleasure and surprise.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or, I am sometimes fortunate!&rsquo; she
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;I was looking for a messenger;&rsquo; and
+with the sweetest of smiles, she despatched him to the East End
+of London, to an address which he was unable to find.&nbsp; This
+was a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at
+night, worn out with fruitless wandering and dismayed by his
+<i>fiasco</i>, the lady received him with a friendly gaiety,
+protesting that all was for the best, since she had changed her
+mind and long since repented of her message.</p>
+<p>Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and
+courage, and determined to protect Teresa with his life.&nbsp;
+But a painful shock awaited him.&nbsp; In the narrow and silent
+Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about and addressed him with a
+manner and a light in her eyes that were new to the young
+man&rsquo;s experience.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do I understand that you follow me,
+Se&ntilde;or?&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Are these the
+manners of the English gentleman?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and
+prayers to be forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at
+length dismissed, crestfallen and heavy of heart.&nbsp; The check
+was final; he gave up that road to service; and began once more
+to hang about the square or on the terrace, filled with remorse
+and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit object for the scorn and
+envy of older men.&nbsp; In these idle hours, while he was
+courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out
+naturally that he should observe the manners and appearance of
+such as came about the house.&nbsp; One person alone was the
+occasional visitor of the young lady: a man of considerable
+stature, and distinguished only by the doubtful ornament of a
+chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.&nbsp; Something in
+his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon him in
+the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to
+inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed
+by her reply.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That gentleman,&rsquo; said she, a smile struggling to
+her face, &lsquo;that gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal
+from you, desires my hand in marriage, and presses me with the
+most respectful ardour.&nbsp; Alas, what am I to say?&nbsp; I,
+the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such
+protestations?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed
+him; and he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave
+with decency.&nbsp; In the solitude of his own chamber, he gave
+way to every manifestation of despair.&nbsp; He passionately
+adored the Se&ntilde;orita; but it was not only the thought of
+her possible union with another that distressed his soul, it was
+the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy.&nbsp;
+To a duke, a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned
+with obvious qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter
+joy; he saw himself follow the wedding party from a great way
+off; he saw himself return to the poor house, then robbed of its
+jewel; and while he could have wept for his despair, he felt he
+could support it nobly.&nbsp; But this affair looked
+otherwise.&nbsp; The man was patently no gentleman; he had a
+startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his
+eyes evasive; his love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps,
+under this deep disguise, a Cuban emissary!</p>
+<p>Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next
+evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at
+a spot whence his eye commanded the three issues of the
+square.</p>
+<p>Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the
+man with the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was
+seen by Harry to enter the house with a brown box hoisted on his
+back.&nbsp; Half an hour later, he came forth again without the
+box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk; and Desborough, with
+the same skill and caution that he had displayed in following
+Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer.&nbsp; The man
+began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the wares of the
+small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly upon
+his former course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered
+a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, once more set forth with resolute
+and swift steps in the direction of Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn.&nbsp; At
+length, in a deserted by-street, he turned; and coming up to
+Harry with a countenance which seemed to have become older and
+whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if he had not had
+the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have, sir,&rsquo; said Harry, somewhat abashed, but
+with a good show of stoutness; &lsquo;and I will not deny that I
+was following you on purpose.&nbsp; Doubtless,&rsquo; he added,
+for he supposed that all men&rsquo;s minds must still be running
+on Teresa, &lsquo;you can divine my reason.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a
+palsied tremor.&nbsp; He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the
+utterance which his fear denied him; and then whipping sharply
+about, he took to his heels at the most furious speed of
+running.</p>
+<p>Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue;
+and by the time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition
+was only rewarded by a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard
+mounting into a hansom, which immediately after disappeared into
+the moving crowds of Holborn.</p>
+<p>Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned
+to the house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to
+knock at the fair Cuban&rsquo;s door.&nbsp; She bade him enter,
+and he found her kneeling with rather a disconsolate air beside a
+brown wooden trunk.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; he broke out, &lsquo;I doubt
+whether that man&rsquo;s character is what he wishes you to
+believe.&nbsp; His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
+admitted that I was following him, was not the manner of an
+honest man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; she cried, throwing up her hands as in
+desperation, &lsquo;Don Quixote, Don Quixote, have you again been
+tilting against windmills?&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, with a laugh,
+&lsquo;Poor soul!&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;how you must have
+terrified him!&nbsp; For know that the Cuban authorities are
+here, and your poor Teresa may soon be hunted down.&nbsp; Even
+yon humble clerk from my solicitor&rsquo;s office may find
+himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A humble clerk!&rsquo; cried Harry, &lsquo;why, you
+told me yourself that he wished to marry you!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I thought you English like what you call a joke,&rsquo;
+replied the lady calmly.&nbsp; &lsquo;As a matter of fact, he is
+my lawyer&rsquo;s clerk, and has been here to-night charged with
+disastrous news.&nbsp; I am in sore straits, Se&ntilde;or
+Harry.&nbsp; Will you help me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this most welcome word, the young man&rsquo;s heart
+exulted; and in the hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled
+with the very thought of service, he forgot to dwell upon the
+lady&rsquo;s jest.&nbsp; &lsquo;Can you ask?&rsquo; he
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is there that I can do?&nbsp; Only tell
+me that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the
+fair Cuban laid her hand upon the box.&nbsp; &lsquo;This
+box,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;contains my jewels, papers, and
+clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba and my
+dreadful past.&nbsp; They must now be smuggled out of England;
+or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy.&nbsp;
+To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box:
+the problem still unsolved, is to find some one to carry it as
+far as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and
+instantly return to town.&nbsp; Will you be he?&nbsp; Will you
+leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear
+still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without
+so much as a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your
+interest, leave the box where you have put it and come straight
+on shore? Will you do this, and so save your friend?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not clearly understand . . .&rsquo; began
+Harry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No more do I,&rsquo; replied the Cuban.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
+is not necessary that we should, so long as we obey the
+lawyer&rsquo;s orders.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; returned Harry gravely,
+&lsquo;I think this, of course, a very little thing to do for
+you, when I would willingly do all.&nbsp; But suffer me to say
+one word.&nbsp; If London is unsafe for your treasures, it cannot
+long be safe for you; and indeed, if I at all fathom the plan of
+your solicitor, I fear I may find you already fled on my
+return.&nbsp; I am not considered clever, and can only speak out
+plainly what is in my heart: that I love you, and that I cannot
+bear to lose all knowledge of you.&nbsp; I hope no more than to
+be your servant; I ask no more than just that I shall hear of
+you.&nbsp; Oh, promise me so much!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You shall,&rsquo; she said, after a pause.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I promise you, you shall.&rsquo;&nbsp; But though she
+spoke with earnestness, the marks of great embarrassment and a
+strong conflict of emotions appeared upon her face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish to tell you,&rsquo; resumed Desborough,
+&lsquo;in case of accidents. . . .&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Accidents!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;why do you say
+that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not know,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you may be gone
+before my return, and we may not meet again for long.&nbsp; And
+so I wished you to know this: That since the day you gave me the
+cigarette, you have never once, not once, been absent from my
+mind; and if it will in any way serve you, you may crumple me up
+like that piece of paper, and throw me on the fire.&nbsp; I would
+love to die for you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Go!&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go now at once.&nbsp;
+My brain is in a whirl.&nbsp; I scarce know what we are
+talking.&nbsp; Go; and good-night; and oh, may you come
+safe!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young
+man&rsquo;s mind; and as he recalled her face struck suddenly
+white and the broken utterance of her last words, his heart at
+once exulted and misgave him.&nbsp; Love had indeed looked upon
+him with a tragic mask; and yet what mattered, since at least it
+was love&mdash;since at least she was commoved at their
+division?&nbsp; He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts;
+passed from one dream to another all night long, the white face
+of Teresa still haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and
+in the grey of the dawn, leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of
+horror.&nbsp; It was already time for him to rise.&nbsp; He
+dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that had been laid for
+him the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for
+the box.&nbsp; The door was open; a strange disorder reigned
+within; the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the
+room left bare of impediment, as though for the pacing of a
+creature with a tortured mind.&nbsp; There lay the box, however,
+and upon the lid a paper with these words: &lsquo;Harry, I hope
+to be back before you go.&nbsp; Teresa.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the
+table.&nbsp; She had called him Harry: that should be enough, he
+thought, to fill the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the sight
+of that disordered room still poisoned his enjoyment.&nbsp; The
+door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open; and though he turned
+aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but observe the
+bed had not been slept in.&nbsp; He was still pondering what this
+should mean, still trying to convince himself that all was well,
+when the moving needle of his watch summoned him to set forth
+without delay.&nbsp; He was before all things a man of his word;
+ran round to Southampton Row to fetch a cab; and taking the box
+on the front seat, drove off towards the terminus.</p>
+<p>The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the
+eye; and the young man&rsquo;s attention centred on the dumb
+companion of his drive.&nbsp; A card was nailed upon one side,
+bearing the superscription: &lsquo;Miss Doolan, passenger to
+Dublin.&nbsp; Glass.&nbsp; With care.&rsquo;&nbsp; He thought
+with a sentimental shock that the fair idol of his heart was
+perhaps driven to adopt the name of Doolan; and as he still
+studied the card, he was aware of a deadly, black depression
+settling steadily upon his spirits.&nbsp; It was in vain for him
+to contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself or
+tried to whistle: the sense of some impending blow was not to be
+averted.&nbsp; He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab
+pursued its way without a trace of any follower.&nbsp; He gave
+ear; and over and above the jolting of the wheels upon the road,
+he was conscious of a certain regular and quiet sound that seemed
+to issue from the box.&nbsp; He put his ear to the cover; at one
+moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate ticking: the next, the
+sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening recapture
+it.&nbsp; He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued;
+and it was with more than the common relief of an arrival, that
+he leaped from the cab before the station.</p>
+<p>Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some
+thirty minutes earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the
+box into the charge of a porter, who sat it on a truck, he
+proceeded briskly to pace the platform.&nbsp; Presently the
+bookstall opened; and the young man was looking at the books when
+he was seized by the arm.&nbsp; He turned, and, though she was
+closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where is it?&rsquo; she asked; and the sound of her
+voice surprised him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It?&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;What?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The box.&nbsp; Have it put on a cab instantly.&nbsp; I
+am in fearful haste.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not
+daring to trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been
+brought round, and the box mounted on the front, she passed a
+little way off upon the pavement and beckoned him to follow.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now,&rsquo; said she, still in those mechanical and
+hushed tones that had at first affected him, &lsquo;you must go
+on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a
+man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has
+been put off: if not,&rsquo; she added, with a sobbing sigh,
+&lsquo;it does not matter.&nbsp; So, good-bye.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Teresa,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;get into your cab,
+and I will go along with you.&nbsp; You are in some distress,
+perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole, not even you can
+make me leave you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will not?&rsquo; she asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;O Harry,
+it were better!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will not,&rsquo; said Harry stoutly.</p>
+<p>She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand
+suddenly and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and
+still holding him, walked to the cab-door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where are we to drive?&rsquo; asked Harry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Home, quickly,&rsquo; she answered; &lsquo;double
+fare!&rsquo;&nbsp; And as soon as they had both mounted to their
+places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the station.</p>
+<p>Teresa leaned back in a corner.&nbsp; The whole way Harry
+could perceive her tears to flow under her veil; but she
+vouchsafed no explanation.&nbsp; At the door of the house in
+Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered the box,
+which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let the man take it,&rsquo; she whispered.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Let the man take it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will do no such thing,&rsquo; said Harry cheerfully;
+and having paid the fare, he followed Teresa through the door
+which she had opened with her key.&nbsp; The landlady and maid
+were gone upon their morning errands; the house was empty and
+still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down Gloucester
+Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his burthen,
+he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled
+ticking as before.&nbsp; The lady, still preceding him, opened
+the door of her room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in
+the corner by the window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;what is
+wrong?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You will not go away?&rsquo; she cried, with a sudden
+break in her voice and beating her hands together in the very
+agony of impatience.&nbsp; &lsquo;O Harry, Harry, go away!&nbsp;
+Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The fate?&rsquo; repeated Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is
+this?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No fate,&rsquo; she resumed.&nbsp; &lsquo;I do not know
+what I am saying.&nbsp; But I wish to be alone.&nbsp; You may
+come back this evening, Harry; come again when you like; but
+leave me now, only leave me now!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then suddenly,
+&lsquo;I have an errand,&rsquo; she exclaimed; &lsquo;you cannot
+refuse me that!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; replied Harry, &lsquo;you have no
+errand.&nbsp; You are in grief or danger.&nbsp; Lift your veil
+and tell me what it is.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then,&rsquo; she said, with a sudden composure,
+&lsquo;you leave but one course open to me.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which every
+trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on
+which resolve had conquered fear.&nbsp; &lsquo;Harry,&rsquo; she
+began, &lsquo;I am not what I seem.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have told me that before,&rsquo; said Harry,
+&lsquo;several times.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;O Harry, Harry,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;how you shame
+me!&nbsp; But this is the God&rsquo;s truth.&nbsp; I am a
+dangerous and wicked girl.&nbsp; My name is Clara Luxmore.&nbsp;
+I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance.&nbsp; From first to last I
+have cheated and played with you.&nbsp; And what I am I dare not
+even name to you in words.&nbsp; Indeed, until to-day, until the
+sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and
+foulness of my guilt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The young man looked upon her aghast.&nbsp; Then a generous
+current poured along his veins.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is all
+one,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you be all you say, you have
+the greater need of me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it possible,&rsquo; she exclaimed, &lsquo;that I
+have schemed in vain?&nbsp; And will nothing drive you from this
+house of death?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of death?&rsquo; he echoed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Death!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;death!&nbsp; In that
+box that you have dragged about London and carried on your
+defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger&rsquo;s mercy, the
+destroying energies of dynamite.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; cried Harry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she continued wildly, &lsquo;will you flee
+now?&nbsp; At any moment you may hear the click that sounds the
+ruin of this building.&nbsp; I was sure M&rsquo;Guire was wrong;
+this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears;
+I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own
+contrivances.&nbsp; I knew then I loved you&mdash;Harry, will you
+go now?&nbsp; Will you not spare me this unwilling
+crime?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at
+last he turned to her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it,&rsquo; he asked hoarsely, &lsquo;an infernal
+machine?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Her lips formed the word &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; which her voice
+refused to utter.</p>
+<p>With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box;
+in that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at
+the measured sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For whom?&rsquo; he asked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What matters it,&rsquo; she cried, seizing him by the
+arm.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you may still be saved, what matter
+questions?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;God in heaven!&rsquo; cried Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;And the
+Children&rsquo;s Hospital!&nbsp; At whatever cost, this damned
+contrivance must be stopped!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It cannot,&rsquo; she gasped.&nbsp; &lsquo;The power of
+man cannot avert the blow.&nbsp; But you, Harry&mdash;you, my
+beloved&mdash;you may still&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a
+sudden catch was audible, like the catch of a clock before it
+strikes the hour.&nbsp; For one second the two stared at each
+other with lifted brows and stony eyes.&nbsp; Then Harry,
+throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the girl
+to his breast and staggered against the wall.</p>
+<p>A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their
+eyes blinked against the coming horror; and still clinging
+together like drowning people, they fell to the floor.&nbsp; Then
+followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from the indignant
+pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat; the room was
+filled with dense and choking fumes.</p>
+<p>Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length
+they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture,
+the first object that greeted their vision was the box reposing
+uninjured in its corner, but still leaking little wreaths of
+vapour round the lid.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, poor Zero!&rsquo; cried the girl, with a strange
+sobbing laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas, poor Zero!&nbsp; This will
+break his heart!&rsquo;</p>
+<h2><!-- page 286--><a name="page286"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 286</span><i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION</i><br />
+(<i>Concluded</i>)</h2>
+<p>Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room,
+contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young
+man found Zero seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular
+dejection.&nbsp; Close beside him stood an untasted grog, the
+mark of strong preoccupation.&nbsp; The room besides was in
+confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was
+strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this
+disorder lay a lady&rsquo;s glove.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have come,&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;to make an
+end of this.&nbsp; Either you will instantly abandon all your
+schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce you to the
+police.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You are too late, dear fellow!&nbsp; I am already at the
+end of all my hopes, and fallen to be a laughing-stock and
+mockery.&nbsp; My reading,&rsquo; he added, with a gentle
+despondency of manner, &lsquo;has not been much among romances;
+yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my present state with
+critical exactitude; and you behold me sitting here &ldquo;like a
+burst drum.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What has befallen you?&rsquo; cried Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My last batch,&rsquo; returned the plotter wearily,
+&lsquo;like all the others, is a hollow mockery and a
+fraud.&nbsp; In vain do I combine the elements; in vain adjust
+the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of
+disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not
+know a soul that I can face.&nbsp; My subordinates themselves
+have turned upon me.&nbsp; What language have I heard to-day,
+what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of
+expression!&nbsp; She came once; I could have pardoned that, for
+she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this
+crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane.&nbsp; Yes,
+dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is
+remarkable for . . . well, well!&nbsp; Denounce me, if you will;
+you but denounce the dead.&nbsp; I am extinct.&nbsp; It is
+strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be
+haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful
+description; but here,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;is another:
+&ldquo;Othello&rsquo;s occupation&rsquo;s gone.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yes,
+dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I
+ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to
+a less glorious life?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot describe how you relieve me,&rsquo; returned
+Somerset, sitting down on one of several boxes that had been
+drawn out into the middle of the floor.&nbsp; &lsquo;I had
+conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character; I have
+a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty;
+and upon both grounds, your news delights me.&nbsp; But I seem to
+perceive,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;a certain sound of ticking in
+this box.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied Zero, with the same slow weariness
+of manner, &lsquo;I have set several of them going.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; cried Somerset, bounding to his
+feet.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Machines?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Machines!&rsquo; returned the plotter bitterly.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Machines indeed!&nbsp; I blush to be their author.&nbsp;
+Alas!&rsquo; he said, burying his face in his hands, &lsquo;that
+I should live to say it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madman!&rsquo; cried Somerset, shaking him by the
+arm.&nbsp; &lsquo;What am I to understand?&nbsp; Have you,
+indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in motion? and do we
+stay here to be blown up?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Hoist with his own petard?&rdquo;&rsquo;
+returned the plotter musingly.&nbsp; &lsquo;One more quotation:
+strange!&nbsp; But indeed my brain is struck with numbness.&nbsp;
+Yes, dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in
+motion.&nbsp; The one on which you are sitting, I have timed for
+half an hour.&nbsp; Yon other&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Half an hour!&mdash;&rsquo; echoed Somerset, dancing
+with trepidation.&nbsp; &lsquo;Merciful Heavens, in half an
+hour?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear fellow, why so much excitement?&rsquo; inquired
+Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy;
+had I an only child, I would give it him to play with.&nbsp; You
+see this brick?&rsquo; he continued, lifting a cake of the
+infernal compound from the laboratory-table.&nbsp; &lsquo;At a
+touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable energy
+as should bestrew the square with ruins.&nbsp; Well now,
+behold!&nbsp; I dash it on the floor.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very
+ecstasy of terror, wrested the brick from his possession.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Heavens!&rsquo; he cried, wiping his brow; and then with
+more care than ever mother handled her first-born withal,
+gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of the
+apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side,
+dispiritedly watching him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was entirely harmless,&rsquo; he sighed.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;They describe it as burning like tobacco.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In the name of fortune,&rsquo; cried Somerset,
+&lsquo;what have I done to you, or what have you done to
+yourself, that you should persist in this insane behaviour?&nbsp;
+If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from this
+doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart to leave you;
+and then, if you will take my advice, and if your determination
+be sincere, you will instantly quit this city, where no further
+occupation can detain you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Such, dear fellow, was my own design,&rsquo; replied
+the plotter.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have, as you observe, no further
+business here; and once I have packed a little bag, I shall ask
+you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to the
+station, and see the last of a broken-hearted man.&nbsp; And
+yet,&rsquo; he added, looking on the boxes with a lingering
+regret, &lsquo;I should have liked to make quite certain.&nbsp; I
+cannot but suspect my underlings of some mismanagement; it may be
+fond, but yet I cherish that idea: it may be the weakness of a
+man of science, but yet,&rsquo; he cried, rising into some
+energy, &lsquo;I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my
+poor dynamite has had fair usage!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Five minutes!&rsquo; said Somerset, glancing with
+horror at the timepiece.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you do not instantly
+buckle to your bag, I leave you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A few necessaries,&rsquo; returned Zero, &lsquo;only a
+few necessaries, dear Somerset, and you behold me
+ready.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed
+to draw out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he
+returned, bearing in his hand an open Gladstone bag.&nbsp; His
+movements were still horribly deliberate, and his eyes lingered
+gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he moved to and fro about the
+drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles.&nbsp; Last of all,
+he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Put that down!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;If
+what you say be true, you have no call to load yourself with that
+ungodly contraband.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Merely a curiosity, dear boy,&rsquo; he said
+persuasively, and slipped the brick into his bag; &lsquo;merely a
+memento of the past&mdash;ah, happy past, bright past!&nbsp; You
+will not take a touch of spirits? no?&nbsp; I find you very
+abstemious.&nbsp; Well,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;if you have
+really no curiosity to await the event&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;My blood boils
+to get away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, then,&rsquo; said Zero, &lsquo;I am ready; I
+would I could say, willing; but thus to leave the scene of my
+sublime endeavours&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and
+dragged him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the
+deserted mansion; and still towing his laggardly companion, the
+young man sped across the square in the Oxford Street
+direction.&nbsp; They had not yet passed the corner of the
+garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an
+extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a
+shattering <i>fracas</i>.&nbsp; Somerset turned in time to see
+the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and
+instantly collapse into its cellars.&nbsp; At the same moment, he
+was thrown violently to the ground.&nbsp; His first glance was
+towards Zero.&nbsp; The plotter had but reeled against the garden
+rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his
+heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and the
+young man heard him murmur to himself: &lsquo;<i>Nunc
+dimittis</i>, <i>nunc dimittis</i>!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole
+of Golden Square was alive with men, women, and children, running
+wildly to and fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and
+out of the house doors.&nbsp; And under favour of this confusion,
+Somerset dragged away the lingering plotter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was grand,&rsquo; he continued to murmur: &lsquo;it
+was indescribably grand.&nbsp; Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a
+day of glory! and oh, my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly
+hast thou prevailed!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle
+of the footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;how mortifying! seven
+minutes too early!&nbsp; The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the
+clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me.&nbsp;
+Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even
+this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Incomparable ass!&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;what
+have you done?&nbsp; Blown up the house of an unoffending old
+lady, and the whole earthly property of the only person who is
+fool enough to befriend you!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You do not understand these matters,&rsquo; replied
+Zero, with an air of great dignity.&nbsp; &lsquo;This will shake
+England to the heart.&nbsp; Gladstone, the truculent old man,
+will quail before the pointing finger of revenge.&nbsp; And now
+that my dynamite is proved effective&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Heavens, you remind me!&rsquo; ejaculated
+Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;That brick in your bag must be instantly
+disposed of.&nbsp; But how?&nbsp; If we could throw it in the
+river&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A torpedo,&rsquo; cried Zero, brightening, &lsquo;a
+torpedo in the Thames!&nbsp; Superb, dear fellow!&nbsp; I
+recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;True!&rsquo; returned Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;It cannot
+so be done; and there is no help but you must carry it away with
+you.&nbsp; Come on, then, and let me at once consign you to a
+train.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay, nay, dear boy,&rsquo; protested Zero.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;There is now no call for me to leave.&nbsp; My character
+is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the best thing I
+have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await the
+author of the Golden Square Atrocity.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My young friend,&rsquo; returned the other, &lsquo;I
+give you your choice.&nbsp; I will either see you safe on board a
+train or safe in gaol.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Somerset, this is unlike you!&rsquo; said the
+chymist.&nbsp; &lsquo;You surprise me, Somerset.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I shall considerably more surprise you at the next
+police office,&rsquo; returned Somerset, with something bordering
+on rage.&nbsp; &lsquo;For on one point my mind is settled: either
+I see you packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine
+in prison.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have perhaps neglected one point,&rsquo; returned
+the unoffended Zero: &lsquo;for, speaking as a philosopher, I
+fail to see what means you can employ to force me.&nbsp; The
+will, my dear fellow&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, see here,&rsquo; interrupted Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You are ignorant of anything but science, which I can
+never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life;
+and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand and
+voice&mdash;here in this street&mdash;and the
+mob&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good God in heaven, Somerset,&rsquo; cried Zero,
+turning deadly white and stopping in his walk, &lsquo;great God
+in heaven, what words are these?&nbsp; Oh, not in jest, not even
+in jest, should they be used!&nbsp; The brutal mob, the savage
+passions . . . Somerset, for God&rsquo;s sake, a
+public-house!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;This is very interesting,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+recoil from such a death?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who would not?&rsquo; asked the plotter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And to be blown up by dynamite,&rsquo; inquired the
+young man, &lsquo;doubtless strikes you as a form of
+euthanasia?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; returned Zero: &lsquo;I own, and
+since I have braved it daily in my professional career, I own it
+even with pride: it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind
+of man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One more question,&rsquo; said Somerset: &lsquo;you
+object to Lynch Law? why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is assassination,&rsquo; said the plotter calmly,
+but with eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the
+question.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Shake hands with me,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Thank God, I have now no ill-feeling left; and though you
+cannot conceive how I burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite
+contentedly assist at your departure.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not very clearly take your meaning,&rsquo; said
+Zero, &lsquo;but I am sure you mean kindly.&nbsp; As to my
+departure, there is another point to be considered.&nbsp; I have
+neglected to supply myself with funds; my little all has perished
+in what history will love to relate under the name of the Golden
+Square Atrocity; and without what is coarsely if vigorously
+called stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to
+pass the ocean.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For me,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;you have now
+ceased to be a man.&nbsp; You have no more claim upon me than a
+door scraper; but the touching confusion of your mind disarms me
+from extremities.&nbsp; Until to-day, I always thought stupidity
+was funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your idiot
+face, laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the
+tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood.&nbsp; What
+should this portend?&nbsp; I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in
+scepticism.&nbsp; Is it possible,&rsquo; he cried, in a kind of
+horror of himself&mdash;&lsquo;is it conceivable that I believe
+in right and wrong?&nbsp; Already I have found myself, with
+incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal
+honour.&nbsp; And must this change proceed?&nbsp; Have you robbed
+me of my youth?&nbsp; Must I fall, at my time of life, into the
+Common Banker?&nbsp; But why should I address that head of
+wood?&nbsp; Let this suffice.&nbsp; I dare not let you stay among
+women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any
+means I may avoid it; you have no money: well then, take mine,
+and go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day
+will be your last.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Under the circumstances,&rsquo; replied Zero, &lsquo;I
+scarce see my way to refuse your offer.&nbsp; Your expressions
+may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am aware our point of view
+requires a little training, a little moral hygiene, if I may so
+express it; and one of the points that has always charmed me in
+your character is this delightful frankness.&nbsp; As for the
+small advance, it shall be remitted you from
+Philadelphia.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It shall not,&rsquo; said Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear fellow, you do not understand,&rsquo; returned the
+plotter.&nbsp; &lsquo;I shall now be received with fresh
+confidence by my superiors; and my experiments will be no longer
+hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What I am now about, sir, is a crime,&rsquo; replied
+Somerset; &lsquo;and were you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt,
+I should scorn to be reimbursed of money I had so scandalously
+misapplied.&nbsp; Take it, and keep it.&nbsp; By George, sir,
+three days of you have transformed me to an ancient
+Roman.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the
+pair were driven rapidly to the railway terminus.&nbsp; There, an
+oath having been exacted, the money changed hands.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I have bought
+back my honour with every penny I possess.&nbsp; And I thank God,
+though there is nothing before me but starvation, I am free from
+all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel Jones.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To starve?&rsquo; cried Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear fellow,
+I cannot endure the thought.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take your ticket!&rsquo; returned Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think you display temper,&rsquo; said Zero.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take your ticket,&rsquo; reiterated the young man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said the plotter, as he returned, ticket
+in hand, &lsquo;your attitude is so strange and painful, that I
+scarce know if I should ask you to shake hands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As a man, no,&rsquo; replied Somerset; &lsquo;but I
+have no objection to shake hands with you, as I might with a
+pump-well that ran poison or bell-fire.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is a very cold parting,&rsquo; sighed the
+dynamiter; and still followed by Somerset, he began to descend
+the platform.&nbsp; This was now bustling with passengers; the
+train for Liverpool was just about to start, another had but
+recently arrived; and the double tide made movement
+difficult.&nbsp; As the pair reached the neighbourhood of the
+bookstall, however, they came into an open space; and here the
+attention of the plotter was attracted by a <i>Standard</i>
+broadside bearing the words: &lsquo;Second Edition: Explosion in
+Golden Square.&rsquo;&nbsp; His eye lighted; groping in his
+pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang forward&mdash;his bag
+knocked sharply on the corner of the stall&mdash;and instantly,
+with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded.&nbsp; When the
+smoke cleared away the stall was seen much shattered, and the
+stall keeper running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the
+Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to be
+found.</p>
+<p>In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his
+escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his
+body sick with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.&nbsp;
+Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in
+his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a
+sense, as it were, of divine presence and the kindliness of fate;
+and he was able to tell himself that even if the worst befell, he
+could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was
+expunged.</p>
+<p>Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr.
+Godall&rsquo;s shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast,
+and scarce considering what he did, he opened the glass door and
+entered.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ha!&rsquo; said Mr. Godall, &lsquo;Mr. Somerset!&nbsp;
+Well, have you met with an adventure?&nbsp; Have you the promised
+story?&nbsp; Sit down, if you please; suffer me to choose you a
+cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a narrative in
+your best style.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must not take a cigar,&rsquo; said Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Indeed!&rsquo; said Mr. Godall.&nbsp; &lsquo;But now I
+come to look at you more closely, I perceive that you are
+changed.&nbsp; My poor boy, I hope there is nothing
+wrong?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Somerset burst into tears.</p>
+<h2><!-- page 299--><a name="page299"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 299</span><i>EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR
+DIVAN</i></h2>
+<p>On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year,
+and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward
+Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the
+Cigar Divan in Rupert Street.&nbsp; It was a place he had visited
+but once before: the memory of what had followed on that visit
+and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return.&nbsp; Even
+now, he looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of
+customers.</p>
+<p>The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a
+penny version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner&rsquo;s
+arrival.&nbsp; On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that
+he recognised him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By Jove,&rsquo; he thought, &lsquo;unquestionably
+Somerset!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously
+careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of
+custom changed distaste to curiosity.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,&rdquo;&rsquo;
+said the shopman to himself, in the tone of one considering a
+verse.&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose it would be too much to say
+&ldquo;orotunda,&rdquo; and yet how noble it were!&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Or opulent orotunda strike the sky.&rdquo;&nbsp; But that
+is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and some
+nonsense about sense continually intervenes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Somerset, my dear fellow,&rsquo; said Challoner,
+&lsquo;is this a masquerade?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What?&nbsp; Challoner!&rsquo; cried the shopman.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am delighted to see you.&nbsp; One moment, till I finish
+the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with a
+friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the
+commerce of the Muses.&nbsp; &lsquo;I say,&rsquo; he said
+presently, looking up, &lsquo;you seem in wonderful preservation:
+how about the hundred pounds?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in
+Wales,&rsquo; replied Challoner modestly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I very much doubt the
+legitimacy of inheritance.&nbsp; The State, in my view, should
+collar it.&nbsp; I am now going through a stage of socialism and
+poetry,&rsquo; he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a
+course of medicinal waters.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And are you really the person of
+the&mdash;establishment?&rsquo; inquired Challoner, deftly
+evading the word &lsquo;shop.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A vendor, sir, a vendor,&rsquo; returned the other,
+pocketing his poesy.&nbsp; &lsquo;I help old Happy and
+Glorious.&nbsp; Can I offer you a weed?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, I scarcely like . . . &rsquo; began
+Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nonsense, my dear fellow,&rsquo; cried the
+shopman.&nbsp; &lsquo;We are very proud of the business; and the
+old man, let me inform you, besides being the most egregious of
+created beings from the point of view of ethics, is literally
+sprung from the loins of kings.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>De Godall je suis
+le fervent</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is only one Godall.&mdash;By
+the way,&rsquo; he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, &lsquo;how
+did you get on with the detective trade?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I did not try,&rsquo; said Challoner curtly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, well, I did,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;and
+made the most incomparable mess of it: lost all my money and
+fairly covered myself with odium and ridicule.&nbsp; There is
+more in that business, Challoner, than meets the eye; there is
+more, in fact, in all businesses.&nbsp; You must believe in them,
+or get up the belief that you believe.&nbsp; Hence,&rsquo; he
+added, &lsquo;the recognised inferiority of the plumber, for no
+one could believe in plumbing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>A propos</i>,&rsquo; asked Challoner, &lsquo;do you
+still paint?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not now,&rsquo; replied Paul; &lsquo;but I think of
+taking up the violin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner&rsquo;s eye, which had been somewhat restless since
+the trade of the detective had been named, now rested for a
+moment on the columns of the morning paper, where it lay spread
+upon the counter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By Jove,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;that&rsquo;s
+odd!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is odd?&rsquo; asked Paul.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, nothing,&rsquo; returned the other: &lsquo;only I
+once met a person called M&rsquo;Guire.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So did I!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is there
+anything about him?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner read as follows: &lsquo;<i>Mysterious death in
+Stepney</i>.&nbsp; An inquest was held yesterday on the body of
+Patrick M&rsquo;Guire, described as a carpenter.&nbsp; Doctor
+Dovering stated that he had for some time treated the deceased as
+a dispensary patient, for sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and
+nervous depression.&nbsp; There was no cause of death to be
+found.&nbsp; He would say the deceased had sunk.&nbsp; Deceased
+was not a temperate man, which doubtless accelerated death.&nbsp;
+Deceased complained of dumb ague, but witness had never been able
+to detect any positive disease.&nbsp; He did not know that he had
+any family.&nbsp; He regarded him as a person of unsound
+intellect, who believed himself a member and the victim of some
+secret society.&nbsp; If he were to hazard an opinion, he would
+say deceased had died of fear.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And the doctor would be right,&rsquo; cried Somerset;
+&lsquo;and my dear Challoner, I am so relieved to hear of his
+demise, that I will&mdash;Well, after all,&rsquo; he added,
+&lsquo;poor devil, he was well served.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon
+the threshold.&nbsp; He was wrapped in a long waterproof,
+imperfectly supplied with buttons; his boots were full of water,
+his hat greasy with service; and yet he wore the air of one
+exceeding well content with life.&nbsp; He was hailed by the two
+others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And did you try the detective business?&rsquo; inquired
+Paul.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; returned Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh yes, by the
+way, I did though: twice, and got caught out both times.&nbsp;
+But I thought I should find my&mdash;my wife here?&rsquo; he
+added, with a kind of proud confusion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What? are you married?&rsquo; cried Somerset.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh yes,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;quite a long time: a
+month at least.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Money?&rsquo; asked Challoner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s the worst of it,&rsquo; Desborough
+admitted.&nbsp; &lsquo;We are deadly hard up.&nbsp; But the
+Pri--- Mr. Godall is going to do something for us.&nbsp; That is
+what brings us here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who was Mrs. Desborough?&rsquo; said Challoner, in the
+tone of a man of society.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was a Miss Luxmore,&rsquo; returned Harry.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You fellows will be sure to like her, for she is much
+cleverer than I.&nbsp; She tells wonderful stories, too; better
+than a book.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough
+entered.&nbsp; Somerset cried out aloud to recognise the young
+lady of the Superfluous Mansion, and Challoner fell back a step
+and dropped his cigar as he beheld the sorceress of Chelsea.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What!&rsquo; cried Harry, &lsquo;do you both know my
+wife?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I believe I have seen her,&rsquo; said Somerset, a
+little wildly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think I have met the gentleman,&rsquo; said Mrs.
+Desborough sweetly; &lsquo;but I cannot imagine where it
+was.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh no,&rsquo; cried Somerset fervently: &lsquo;I have
+no notion&mdash;I cannot conceive&mdash;where it could have
+been.&nbsp; Indeed,&rsquo; he continued, growing in emphasis,
+&lsquo;I think it highly probable that it&rsquo;s a
+mistake.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And you, Challoner?&rsquo; asked Harry, &lsquo;you
+seemed to recognise her too.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;These are both friends of yours, Harry?&rsquo; said the
+lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;Delighted, I am sure.&nbsp; I do not remember
+to have met Mr. Challoner.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped
+after his cigar.&nbsp; &lsquo;I do not remember to have had the
+pleasure,&rsquo; he responded huskily.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, and Mr. Godall?&rsquo; asked Mrs. Desborough.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you the lady that has an appointment with
+old&mdash;&rsquo; began Somerset, and paused blushing.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Because if so,&rsquo; he resumed, &lsquo;I was to announce
+you at once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed
+into a small pavilion which had been added to the back of the
+house.&nbsp; On the roof, the rain resounded musically.&nbsp; The
+walls were lined with maps and prints and a few works of
+reference.&nbsp; Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and
+the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of
+coloured pins, the progress of the different wars was being
+followed day by day.&nbsp; A light, refreshing odour of the most
+delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal,
+but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver
+dogs.&nbsp; In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat
+in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to
+the rain upon the roof.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and
+have you since last night adopted any fresh political
+principle?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The lady, sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, with another
+blush.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have seen her, I believe?&rsquo; returned Mr.
+Godall; and on Somerset&rsquo;s replying in the affirmative,
+&lsquo;You will excuse me, my dear sir,&rsquo; he resumed,
+&lsquo;if I offer you a hint.&nbsp; I think it not improbable
+this lady may desire entirely to forget the past.&nbsp; From one
+gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that
+grave and touching urbanity that so well became him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor
+house,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;and shall be still more so, if what
+were else a barren courtesy and a pleasure personal to myself,
+shall prove to be of serious benefit to you and Mr.
+Desborough.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your Highness,&rsquo; replied Clara, &lsquo;I must
+begin with thanks; it is like what I have heard of you, that you
+should thus take up the case of the unfortunate; and as for my
+Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+paused.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But for yourself?&rsquo; suggested Mr.
+Godall&mdash;&lsquo;it was thus you were about to continue, I
+believe.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You take the words out of my mouth,&rsquo; she
+said.&nbsp; &lsquo;For myself, it is different.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not here to be a judge of men,&rsquo; replied the
+Prince; &lsquo;still less of women.&nbsp; I am now a private
+person like yourself and many million others; but I am one who
+still fights upon the side of quiet.&nbsp; Now, madam, you know
+better than I, and God better than you, what you have done to
+mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the
+future I concern myself, it is for the future I demand
+security.&nbsp; I would not willingly put arms into the hands of
+a disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of the
+levyers of a private and a barbarous war.&nbsp; I speak with some
+severity, and yet I pick my terms.&nbsp; I tell myself
+continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds
+me of the children whose lives and limbs you have
+endangered.&nbsp; A woman,&rsquo; he repeated
+solemnly&mdash;&lsquo;and children.&nbsp; Possibly, madam, when
+you are yourself a mother, you will feel the bite of that
+antithesis: possibly when you kneel at night beside a cradle, a
+fear will fall upon you, heavier than any shame; and when your
+child lies in the pain and danger of disease, you shall hesitate
+to kneel before your Maker.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You look at the fault,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and not
+at the excuse.&nbsp; Has your own heart never leaped within you
+at some story of oppression?&nbsp; But, alas, no! for you were
+born upon a throne.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was born of woman,&rsquo; said the Prince; &lsquo;I
+came forth from my mother&rsquo;s agony, helpless as a wren, like
+other nurselings.&nbsp; This, which you forgot, I have still
+faithfully remembered.&nbsp; Is it not one of your English poets,
+that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations,
+innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust
+of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about for what should
+be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last,
+in the centre of all, a mother and her babe?&nbsp; These, madam,
+are my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry
+Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the Bohemian
+tongue.&nbsp; Yes, these are my politics: to change what we can,
+to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but
+a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions,
+and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause however just
+and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There was a silence of a moment.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I fear, madam,&rsquo; resumed the Prince, &lsquo;that I
+but weary you.&nbsp; My views are formal like myself; and like
+myself, they also begin to grow old.&nbsp; But I must still
+trouble you for some reply.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can say but one thing,&rsquo; said Mrs. Desborough:
+&lsquo;I love my husband.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a good answer,&rsquo; returned the Prince;
+&lsquo;and you name a good influence, but one that need not be
+conterminous with life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will not play at pride with such a man as you,&rsquo;
+she answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;What do you ask of me? not
+protestations, I am sure.&nbsp; What shall I say?&nbsp; I have
+done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do
+again.&nbsp; Can I say more?&nbsp; Yes: I can say this: I never
+abused myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of
+politics.&nbsp; I was at least prepared to meet reprisals.&nbsp;
+While I was levying war myself&mdash;or levying murder, if you
+choose the plainer term&mdash;I never accused my adversaries of
+assassination.&nbsp; I never felt or feigned a righteous horror,
+when a price was put upon my life by those whom I attacked.&nbsp;
+I never called the policeman a hireling.&nbsp; I may have been a
+criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Enough, madam,&rsquo; returned the Prince: &lsquo;more
+than enough!&nbsp; Your words are most reviving to my spirits;
+for in this age, when even the assassin is a sentimentalist,
+there is no virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual
+clarity.&nbsp; Suffer me, then, to ask you to retire; for by the
+signal of that bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother, to be
+close at hand.&nbsp; With her I promise you to do my
+utmost.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince,
+opening a door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam and my very good friend,&rsquo; said he,
+&lsquo;is my face so much changed that you no longer recognise
+Prince Florizel in Mr. Godall?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To be sure!&rsquo; she cried, looking at him through
+her glasses.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have always regarded your Highness as
+a perfect man; and in your altered circumstances, of which I have
+already heard with deep regret, I will beg you to consider my
+respect increased instead of lessened.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have found it so,&rsquo; returned the Prince,
+&lsquo;with every class of my acquaintance.&nbsp; But, madam, I
+pray you to be seated.&nbsp; My business is of a delicate order,
+and regards your daughter.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In that case,&rsquo; said Mrs. Luxmore, &lsquo;you may
+save yourself the trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up
+my mind to have nothing to do with her.&nbsp; I will not hear one
+word in her defence; but as I value nothing so particularly as
+the virtue of justice, I think it my duty to explain to you the
+grounds of my complaint.&nbsp; She deserted me, her natural
+protector; for years, she has consorted with the most
+disreputable persons; and to fill the cup of her offence, she has
+recently married.&nbsp; I refuse to see her, or the being to whom
+she has linked herself.&nbsp; One hundred and twenty pounds a
+year, I have always offered her: I offer it again.&nbsp; It is
+what I had myself when I was her age.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Very well, madam,&rsquo; said the Prince; &lsquo;and be
+that so!&nbsp; But to touch upon another matter: what was the
+income of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My father?&rsquo; asked the spirited old lady.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I believe he had seven hundred pounds in the
+year.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You were one, I think, of several?&rsquo; pursued the
+Prince.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of four,&rsquo; was the reply.&nbsp; &lsquo;We were
+four daughters; and painful as the admission is to make, a more
+detestable family could scarce be found in England.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dear me!&rsquo; said the Prince.&nbsp; &lsquo;And you,
+madam, have an income of eight thousand?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not more than five,&rsquo; returned the old lady;
+&lsquo;but where on earth are you conducting me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,&rsquo;
+replied Florizel, smiling.&nbsp; &lsquo;For I must not suffer you
+to take your father for a rule.&nbsp; He was poor, you are
+rich.&nbsp; He had many calls upon his poverty: there are none
+upon your wealth.&nbsp; And indeed, madam, if you will let me
+touch this matter with a needle, there is but one point in common
+to your two positions: that each had a daughter more remarkable
+for liveliness than duty.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have been entrapped into this house,&rsquo; said the
+old lady, getting to her feet.&nbsp; &lsquo;But it shall not
+avail.&nbsp; Not all the tobacconists in Europe . . .&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; interrupted Florizel, &lsquo;before
+what is referred to as my fall, you had not used such
+language!&nbsp; And since you so much object to the simple
+industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint.&nbsp;
+If you will not consent to support your daughter, I shall be
+constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I doubt
+not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law shall
+have a livery and run the errands.&nbsp; With such young blood my
+business might be doubled, and I might be bound in common
+gratitude to place the name of Luxmore beside that of
+Godall.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your Highness,&rsquo; said the old lady, &lsquo;I have
+been very rude, and you are very cunning.&nbsp; I suppose the
+minx is on the premises.&nbsp; Produce her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let us rather observe them unperceived,&rsquo; said the
+Prince; and so saying he rose and quietly drew back the
+curtain.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset
+and Harry were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest;
+Challoner, alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the
+detested neighbourhood of the enchantress.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At that moment,&rsquo; Mrs. Desborough was saying,
+&lsquo;Mr Gladstone detected the features of his cowardly
+assailant.&nbsp; A cry rose to his lips: a cry of mingled triumph
+. . .&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is Mr. Somerset!&rsquo; interrupted the spirited
+old lady, in the highest note of her register.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr.
+Somerset, what have you done with my house-property?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said the Prince, &lsquo;let it be mine to
+give the explanation; and in the meanwhile, welcome your
+daughter.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, Clara, how do you do?&rsquo; said Mrs.
+Luxmore.&nbsp; &lsquo;It appears I am to give you an
+allowance.&nbsp; So much the better for you.&nbsp; As for Mr.
+Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole
+affair, though costly, was eminently humorous.&nbsp; And at any
+rate,&rsquo; she added, nodding to Paul, &lsquo;he is a young
+gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his pictures
+were the funniest I ever saw.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have ordered a collation,&rsquo; said the
+Prince.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Somerset, as these are all your friends,
+I propose, if you please, that you should join them at
+table.&nbsp; I will take the shop.&rsquo;</p>
+<h2>Footnotes</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9"
+class="footnote">[9]</a>&nbsp; Hereupon the Arabian author enters
+on one of his digressions.&nbsp; Fearing, apparently, that the
+somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset should throw discredit
+on a part of truth, he calls upon the English people to remember
+with more gratitude the services of the police; to what
+unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against
+what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward,
+either in fame or money: matter, it has appeared to the
+translators, too serious for this place.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote43"></a><a href="#citation43"
+class="footnote">[43]</a>&nbsp; In this name the accent falls
+upon the <i>e</i>; the <i>s</i> is sibilant.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote176"></a><a href="#citation176"
+class="footnote">[176]</a>&nbsp; The Arabian author of the
+original has here a long passage conceived in a style too
+oriental for the English reader.&nbsp; We subjoin a specimen, and
+it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse:
+&lsquo;Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a
+never-resting fightard;&rsquo; and he goes on (if we correctly
+gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously
+correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-filchard
+(clearly justified by the parallel&mdash;pilchard) and opera
+dancard.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dynamitist,&rsquo; he adds, &lsquo;I could
+understand.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote182"></a><a href="#citation182"
+class="footnote">[182]</a>&nbsp; The Arabian author, with that
+quaint particularity of touch which our translation usually
+pr&aelig;termits, here registers a somewhat interesting
+detail.&nbsp; Zero pronounced the word &lsquo;boom;&rsquo; and
+the reader, if but for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow
+him.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNAMITER***</p>
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+</pre></body>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson, et
+al
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dynamiter
+       More New Arabian Nights
+
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 3, 2011  [eBook #647]
+This file was first posted on September 13, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DYNAMITER***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                        _MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS_
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DYNAMITER
+
+
+                                    BY
+
+                          ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+                                   AND
+                       FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON
+
+                      [Picture: The Silver Library]
+
+                             _NEW IMPRESSION_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+                        39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
+                           NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
+
+                                   1903
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           _BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE_
+
+    _First Edition_, _April 1885_; _Reprinted May 1885_, _July 1885_.
+
+ _Silver Library Edition_, _January 1895_; _Reprinted March 1897_, _July
+                          1899_, _August 1903_.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MESSRS. COLE AND COX,
+POLICE OFFICERS
+
+
+_Gentlemen,--In the volume now in your hands_, _the authors have touched
+upon that ugly devil of crime_, _with which it is your glory to have
+contended_.  _It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit_.  _Let
+us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled strain_, _where crime
+preserves some features of nobility_, _and where reason and humanity can
+still relish the temptation_.  _Horror_, _in this case_, _is due to Mr.
+Parnell_: _he sits before posterity silent_, _Mr. Forster's appeal
+echoing down the ages_.  _Horror is due to ourselves_, _in that we have
+so long coquetted with political crime_; _not seriously weighing_, _not
+acutely following it from cause to consequence_; _but with a generous_,
+_unfounded heat of sentiment_, _like the schoolboy with the penny tale_,
+_applauding what was specious_.  _When it touched ourselves_ (_truly in a
+vile shape_), _we proved false to the imaginations_; _discovered_, _in a
+clap_, _that crime was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding
+names_; _and recoiled from our false deities_.
+
+_But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our
+defenders_.  _Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war of
+politics_; _whatever elements of greed_, _whatever traits of the bully_,
+_dishonour both parties in this inhuman contest_;--_your side_, _your
+part_, _is at least pure of doubt_.  _Yours is the side of the child_,
+_of the breeding woman_, _of individual pity and public trust_.  _If our
+society were the mere kingdom of the devil_ (_as indeed it wears some of
+his colours_) _it yet embraces many precious elements and many innocent
+persons whom it is a glory to defend_.  _Courage and devotion_, _so
+common in the ranks of the police_, _so little recognised_, _so meagrely
+rewarded_, _have at length found their commemoration in an historical
+act_.  _History_, _which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under
+the appeal of Mr. Forster_, _and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic
+enterprise_, _will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his
+defenceless hands_, _nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his aid_.
+
+                                                  _ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON_
+
+                                            _FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+_THE DYNAMITER_
+
+                                               PAGE
+PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN                       1
+CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE:
+   THE SQUIRE OF DAMES                           13
+   STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL                 27
+THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (_continued_)                76
+SUMMERSET'S ADVENTURE:
+   THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION                      100
+   NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY           108
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (_continued_)           145
+   ZERO'S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB            195
+DESBOROUGH'S ADVENTURE:
+   THE BROWN BOX                                209
+   STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN                      219
+THE BROWN BOX (_continued_)                     269
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (_continued_)           286
+EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN                     299
+
+A NOTE FOR THE READER
+
+
+It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume,
+and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW
+ARABIAN NIGHTS.  The loss is yours--and mine; or to be more exact, my
+publishers'.  But if you are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass
+you a hint.  When you shall find a reference in the following pages to
+one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho,
+you must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a person
+than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe,
+now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.
+
+                                                                  R. L. S.
+
+
+
+
+_PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN_
+
+
+In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
+precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young
+men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.  The first,
+who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best fashion,
+hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.
+
+'What!' he cried, 'Paul Somerset!'
+
+'I am indeed Paul Somerset,' returned the other, 'or what remains of him
+after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law.  But in you,
+Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said, without
+hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your azure brow.'
+
+'All,' replied Challoner, 'is not gold that glitters.  But we are here in
+an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the movement of these
+ladies.  Let us, if you please, find a more private corner.'
+
+'If you will allow me to guide you,' replied Somerset, 'I will offer you
+the best cigar in London.'
+
+And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a brisk
+pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street, Soho.  The
+entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic Highlanders of wood which
+have almost risen to the standing of antiquities; and across the
+window-glass, which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and
+cigars, there ran the gilded legend: 'Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T.
+Godall.'  The interior of the shop was small, but commodious and ornate;
+the salesman grave, smiling, and urbane; and the two young men, each
+puffing a select regalia, had soon taken their places on a sofa of
+mouse-coloured plush and proceeded to exchange their stories.
+
+'I am now,' said Somerset, 'a barrister; but Providence and the attorneys
+have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine.  A select society at
+the Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall
+could testify, have been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings,
+I have taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before twelve.
+At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly, and I am proud to
+remember, most agreeably expended.  Since then a gentleman, who has
+really nothing else to recommend him beyond the fact of being my maternal
+uncle, deals me the small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold
+me once more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my favourite
+quarter, you will readily divine that I have come into a fortune.'
+
+'I should not have supposed so,' replied Challoner.  'But doubtless I met
+you on the way to your tailors.'
+
+'It is a visit that I purpose to delay,' returned Somerset, with a smile.
+'My fortune has definite limits.  It consists, or rather this morning it
+consisted, of one hundred pounds.'
+
+'That is certainly odd,' said Challoner; 'yes, certainly the coincidence
+is strange.  I am myself reduced to the same margin.'
+
+'You!' cried Somerset.  'And yet Solomon in all his glory--'
+
+'Such is the fact.  I am, dear boy, on my last legs,' said Challoner.
+'Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have scarcely a decent
+trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how, I would this instant set about
+some sort of work or commerce.  With a hundred pounds for capital, a man
+should push his way.'
+
+'It may be,' returned Somerset; 'but what to do with mine is more than I
+can fancy.  Mr. Godall,' he added, addressing the salesman, 'you are a
+man who knows the world: what can a young fellow of reasonable education
+do with a hundred pounds?'
+
+'It depends,' replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.  'The power
+of money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a sceptic.  A
+hundred pounds will with difficulty support you for a year; with somewhat
+more difficulty you may spend it in a night; and without any difficulty
+at all you may lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange.  If you are
+of that stamp of man that rises, a penny would be as useful; if you
+belong to those that fall, a penny would be no more useless.  When I was
+myself thrown unexpectedly upon the world, it was my fortune to possess
+an art: I knew a good cigar.  Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?'
+
+'Not even law,' was the reply.
+
+'The answer is worthy of a sage,' returned Mr. Godall.  'And you, sir,'
+he continued, turning to Challoner, 'as the friend of Mr. Somerset, may I
+be allowed to address you the same question?'
+
+'Well,' replied Challoner, 'I play a fair hand at whist.'
+
+'How many persons are there in London,' returned the salesman, 'who have
+two-and-thirty teeth?  Believe me, young gentleman, there are more still
+who play a fair hand at whist.  Whist, sir, is wide as the world; 'tis an
+accomplishment like breathing.  I once knew a youth who announced that he
+was studying to be Chancellor of England; the design was certainly
+ambitious; but I find it less excessive than that of the man who aspires
+to make a livelihood by whist.'
+
+'Dear me,' said Challoner, 'I am afraid I shall have to fall to be a
+working man.'
+
+'Fall to be a working man?' echoed Mr. Godall.  'Suppose a rural dean to
+be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were
+cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge?  The ignorance of your
+middle class surprises me.  Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie
+quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of
+the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and
+each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge.  By the defects
+of your education you are more disqualified to be a working man than to
+be the ruler of an empire.  The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned
+arts--those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent
+laymen--are those which give his title to the artisan.'
+
+'This is a very pompous fellow,' said Challoner, in the ear of his
+companion.
+
+'He is immense,' said Somerset.
+
+Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young fellow made
+his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some tobacco.  He was
+younger than the others; and, in a somewhat meaningless and altogether
+English way, he was a handsome lad.  When he had been served, and had
+lighted his pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself
+to Challoner by the name of Desborough.
+
+'Desborough, to be sure,' cried Challoner.  'Well, Desborough, and what
+do you do?'
+
+'The fact is,' said Desborough, 'that I am doing nothing.'
+
+'A private fortune possibly?' inquired the other.
+
+'Well, no,' replied Desborough, rather sulkily.  'The fact is that I am
+waiting for something to turn up.'
+
+'All in the same boat!' cried Somerset.  'And have you, too, one hundred
+pounds?'
+
+'Worse luck,' said Mr. Desborough.
+
+'This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,' said Somerset: 'Three
+futiles.'
+
+'A character of this crowded age,' returned the salesman.
+
+'Sir,' said Somerset, 'I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one
+fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we
+are all three as futile as the devil.  What am I?  I have smattered law,
+smattered letters, smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have
+even a working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all
+London roaring by at the street's end, as impotent as any baby.  I have a
+prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to
+deny it, I should simply resolve into my elements like an unstable
+mixture.  I begin to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing
+to the bottom--were it only literature.  And yet, sir, the man of the
+world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an extraordinary
+mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he has seen life
+in all its phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of
+existence should bear fruit.  I count myself a man of the world,
+accomplished, _cap-a-pie_.  So do you, Challoner.  And you, Mr.
+Desborough?'
+
+'Oh yes,' returned the young man.
+
+'Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world, without a
+trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of the universe
+(for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the midst of the
+chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous chink of
+money on the surface of the globe.  Sir, as civilised men, what do we do?
+I will show you.  You take in a paper?'
+
+'I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, 'the best paper in the world, the
+_Standard_.'
+
+'Good,' resumed Somerset.  'I now hold it in my hand, the voice of the
+world, a telephone repeating all men's wants.  I open it, and where my
+eye first falls--well, no, not Morrison's Pills--but here, sure enough,
+and but a little above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the
+weak spot in the armour of society.  Here is a want, a plaint, an offer
+of substantial gratitude: "_Two hundred Pounds Reward_.--The above reward
+will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and
+whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green
+Park.  He was over six feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately
+broad, close shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin
+great-coat."  There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'
+
+'Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?' inquired
+Challoner.
+
+'Do I propose it?  No, sir,' cried Somerset.  'It is reason, destiny, the
+plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it.  Here all our
+merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers of conversation,
+vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we are and have builds up
+the character of the complete detective.  It is, in short, the only
+profession for a gentleman.'
+
+'The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner; 'for hitherto
+I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and ungentlemanly
+trades, the least and lowest.'
+
+'To defend society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for others? to
+deracinate occult and powerful evil?  I appeal to Mr. Godall.  He, at
+least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine
+opinions.  He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually
+to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better
+cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the soldier.  Do
+you, by any chance, deceive yourself into supposing that a general would
+either ask or expect, from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most
+momentous battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham
+Rye?' {9}
+
+'I did not understand we were to join the force,' said Challoner.
+
+'Nor shall we.  These are the hands; but here--here, sir, is the head,'
+cried Somerset.  'Enough; it is decreed.  We shall hunt down this
+miscreant in the sealskin coat.'
+
+'Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, 'you have no plan, no
+knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.'
+
+'Challoner!' cried Somerset, 'is it possible that you hold the doctrine
+of Free Will?  And are you devoid of any tincture of philosophy, that you
+should harp on such exploded fallacies?  Chance, the blind Madonna of the
+Pagan, rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole
+reliance.  Chance has brought us three together; when we next separate
+and go forth our several ways, Chance will continually drag before our
+careless eyes a thousand eloquent clues, not to this mystery only, but to
+the countless mysteries by which we live surrounded.  Then comes the part
+of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.  This clue,
+which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as a cat, he
+leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and passion, and from
+one trifling circumstance divines a world.'
+
+'Just so,' said Challoner; 'and I am delighted that you should recognise
+these virtues in yourself.  But in the meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself
+incapable of joining.  I was neither born nor bred as a detective, but as
+a placable and very thirsty gentleman; and, for my part, I begin to weary
+for a drink.  As for clues and adventures, the only adventure that is
+ever likely to occur to me will be an adventure with a bailiff.'
+
+'Now there is the fallacy,' cried Somerset.  'There I catch the secret of
+your futility in life.  The world teems and bubbles with adventure; it
+besieges you along the street: hands waving out of windows, swindlers
+coming up and swearing they knew you when you were abroad, affable and
+doubtful people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for
+your notice.  But not you: you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round,
+you must go the dullest way.  Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure
+that offers itself, embrace it in with both your arms; whatever it looks,
+grimy or romantic, grasp it.  I will do the like; the devil is in it, but
+at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate the story
+of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the divan, the great Godall,
+now hearing me with inward joy.  Come, is it a bargain?  Will you,
+indeed, both promise to welcome every chance that offers, to plunge
+boldly into every opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head
+composed, to study and piece together all that happens?  Come, promise:
+let me open to you the doors of the great profession of intrigue.'
+
+'It is not much in my way,' said Challoner, 'but, since you make a point
+of it, amen.'
+
+'I don't mind promising,' said Desborough, 'but nothing will happen to
+me.'
+
+'O faithless ones!' cried Somerset.  'But at least I have your promises;
+and Godall, I perceive, is transported with delight.'
+
+'I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various narratives,'
+said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of his manner.
+
+'And now, gentlemen,' concluded Somerset, 'let us separate.  I hasten to
+put myself in fortune's way.  Hark how, in this quiet corner, London
+roars like the noise of battle; four million destinies are here
+concentred; and in the strong panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to
+the bearer, I am about to plunge into that web.'
+
+
+
+
+CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE SQUIRE OF DAMES_
+
+
+Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney, where
+he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the people of
+the house.  To this remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in
+the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot.  He was a
+young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body;
+bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses.  In happier days
+he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were now denied him;
+and with what courage he could muster he addressed himself to walk.
+
+It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
+serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along
+the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the
+warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the
+city.  He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing
+and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the
+labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the
+silence.  Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house
+after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop
+displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he
+steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through this
+encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.
+
+'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained companion, here
+were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.  Here, in
+broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January,
+and in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of
+Yucatan.  If I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an
+army, and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of sleep.'
+
+He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came into
+a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the quarter.
+Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of trees, were
+several of those discreet, _bijou_ residences on which propriety is apt
+to look askance.  Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks of
+the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a dairy, or a
+ticket announcing the business of the mangler.  Before one such house,
+that stood a little separate among walled gardens, a cat was playing with
+a straw, and Challoner paused a moment, looking on this sleek and
+solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With
+the cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the
+house stood smokeless: the blinds down, the whole machinery of life
+arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the breathing of
+the sleepers.
+
+As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from
+within.  This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a
+kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the same time from every
+chink of door and window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.  The cat
+disappeared with a cry.  Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the
+stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an
+elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled
+without a word.  The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in
+the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still
+Challoner was rooted to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear awoke
+together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.
+
+Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed
+his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report of
+his senses, some theory of the occurrence.  But the occasion of the
+sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange
+conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were
+mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an obscure awe he considered them in
+his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the web of streets, and once
+more alone in morning sunshine.
+
+In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely
+west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which
+presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst.  Here
+was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves
+was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was
+something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his
+eyes upon the pavement and his mind running upon distant scenes, till he
+was recalled, upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked his further progress.
+This street, whose name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.
+
+He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he
+raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on the
+figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third of the
+incongruous fugitives.  She had run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall
+had checked her career: and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the
+ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among the summer
+dust.  Each saw the other in the same instant of time; and she, with one
+wild look, sprang to her feet and began to hurry from the scene.
+
+Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his
+adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.  Pity and
+alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of his mind; and
+yet, in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady's
+wake.  He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, tread
+as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty
+street.  Their sound appeared to strike in her some strong emotion; for
+scarce had he begun to follow ere she paused.  A second time she
+addressed herself to flight; and a second time she paused.  Then she
+turned about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance
+of timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side continued to
+advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.  At length,
+when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and she
+reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.
+
+'Are you an English gentleman?' she cried.
+
+The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He was the spirit
+of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any
+lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous
+adventures.  He looked east and west; but the houses that looked down
+upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though
+in the full glare of the day's eye, cut off from any human intervention.
+His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.  He remarked with
+irritation that she was charming both in face and figure, elegantly
+dressed and gloved; a lady undeniable; the picture of distress and
+innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.
+
+'Madam,' he said, 'I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion; and if
+I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street, which has
+deceived us both.'  An unmistakable relief appeared upon the lady's face.
+'I might have guessed it!' she exclaimed.  'Thank you a thousand times!
+But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these staring
+windows, I am lost in terrors--oh, lost in them!' she cried, her face
+blanching at the words.  'I beg you to lend me your arm,' she added with
+the loveliest, suppliant inflection.  'I dare not go alone; my nerve is
+gone--I had a shock, oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.'
+
+'My dear madam,' responded Challoner heavily, 'my arm is at your
+service.'
+
+'She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her sobs; and
+the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the
+city.  One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain
+her fears were genuine.  Still, as she went, she spied around as if for
+dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now
+clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant
+and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and
+he wailed in spirit and longed for release.
+
+'Madam,' he said at last, 'I am, of course, charmed to be of use to any
+lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that you
+follow, and a word of explanation--'
+
+'Hush!' she sobbed, 'not here--not here!'
+
+The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the lady mad; but
+his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view of the
+detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind
+was lost among mysteries.  So they continued to thread the maze of
+streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling
+with incommunicable terrors.  In time, however, and above all by their
+quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady
+ceased to peer about the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the
+resonant tread and distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge
+with more of spirit and directness.
+
+'I thought,' said he, in the tone of conversation, 'that I had
+indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two
+gentlemen.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, 'you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  You saw me
+flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not gentlemen.
+In such a case, the best of compliments is to be frank.'
+
+'I thought,' resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was surprised by
+the spirit of her reply, 'to have perceived, besides, a certain odour.  A
+noise, too--I do not know to what I should compare it--'
+
+'Silence!' she cried.  'You do not know the danger you invoke.  Wait,
+only wait; and as soon as we have left those streets, and got beyond the
+reach of listeners, all shall be explained.  Meanwhile, avoid the topic.
+What a sight is this sleeping city!' she exclaimed; and then, with a most
+thrilling voice, '"Dear God," she quoted, "the very houses seem asleep,
+and all that mighty heart is lying still."'
+
+'I perceive, madam,' said he, 'you are a reader.'
+
+'I am more than that,' she answered, with a sigh.  'I am a girl condemned
+to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate, that this walk
+upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude of peace.'
+
+They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Station
+and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused, withdrew her arm
+from Challoner's, and looked up and down as though in pain or indecision.
+Then, with a lovely change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand
+upon his arm--
+
+'What you already think of me,' she said, 'I tremble to conceive; yet I
+must here condemn myself still further.  Here I must leave you, and here
+I beseech you to wait for my return.  Do not attempt to follow me or spy
+upon my actions.  Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent
+as your own sister; and do not, above all, desert me.  Stranger as you
+are, I have none else to look to.  You see me in sorrow and great fear;
+you are a gentleman, courteous and kind: and when I beg for a few
+minutes' patience, I make sure beforehand you will not deny me.'
+
+Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful
+eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force of her appeal had
+been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of
+sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales.
+Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to
+weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the
+spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The reader, if he has ever
+plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be unaware
+that, in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain early
+taverns inaugurate the business of the day.  It was into one of these
+that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming
+companion disappear.  To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had
+long since left that sentiment behind him.  Acute disgust and
+disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned
+this commonplace enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a second, ere the
+swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a young man
+of mean and slouching attire.  For some five or six exchanges they
+conversed together with an animated air; then the fellow shouldered again
+into the tap; and the young lady, with something swifter than a walk,
+retraced her steps towards Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of
+grace; her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements
+eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still entertained some
+thoughts of flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance lessened.
+Against mere beauty he was proof: it was her unmistakable gentility that
+now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.  With a proved
+adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with one who, in spite of
+all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.  At
+the very corner from whence he had spied upon her interview, she came
+upon him, still transfixed, and--'Ah!' she cried, with a bright flush of
+colour.  'Ah!  Ungenerous!'
+
+The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames to the
+possession of himself.
+
+'Madam,' he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, 'I do not think that
+hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I have suffered
+myself to be led over a considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I
+now request you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have
+friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.'
+
+She stood a moment dumb.
+
+'It is well,' she said.  'Go! go, and may God help me!  You have seen
+me--me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by
+sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await
+my explanation or to help in my distress.  Go!' she repeated.  'I am lost
+indeed.'  And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the
+street.
+
+Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable sense
+of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being gulled.
+She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings took the upper
+hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice, that his conduct was
+a perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her
+choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her movements, cried out
+aloud against a harsh construction; and between penitence and curiosity
+he began slowly to follow in her wake.  At the corner he had her once
+more full in view.  Her speed was failing like a stricken bird's.  Even
+as he looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned
+against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner's fortitude gave way.  In
+a few strides he overtook her and, for the first time removing his hat,
+assured her in the most moving terms of his entire respect and firm
+desire to help her.  He spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it
+appeared that she began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and
+drew herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of
+forgiveness, turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and
+gratitude were mingled.  'Ah, madam,' he cried, 'use me as you will!'
+And once more, but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the
+conduct of his arm.  She took it with a sigh that struck him to the
+heart; and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But now
+her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on the way;
+she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the parent bird,
+stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  Her physical distress was not
+accompanied by any failing of her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon
+into a playful and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not
+sufficiently admire the elasticity of his companion's nature.  'Let me
+forget,' she had said, 'for one half hour, let me forget;' and sure
+enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.  Before
+every house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched
+his character: here lived the old general whom she was to marry on the
+fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had
+set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily on the
+young man's arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant in his ears.
+'Ah,' she sighed, by way of commentary, 'in such a life as mine I must
+seize tight hold of any happiness that I can find.'
+
+When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of Grosvenor
+Place, the gates of the park were opening and the bedraggled company of
+night-walkers were being at last admitted into that paradise of lawns.
+Challoner and his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile
+in silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary
+with the night's patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches
+or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon
+utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded
+on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.
+
+Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a mound of
+turf.  The young lady looked about her with relief.
+
+'Here,' she said, 'here at last we are secure from listeners.  Here,
+then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could not bear that we
+should part, and that you should still suppose your kindness squandered
+upon one who was unworthy.'
+
+Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take a
+place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with the
+greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.
+
+
+
+_STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL_
+
+
+My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient,
+but untitled family; and by some event, fault or misfortune, he was
+driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of
+his ancestors.  He sought the States; and instead of lingering in
+effeminate cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploring
+party of frontiersmen.  He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not only
+brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and above
+all in botany, which he particularly loved.  Thus it fell that, before
+many months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted
+and bowed to his opinion.
+
+They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the
+West.  For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans, guiding
+themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and
+animals.  Then they inclined their route a little to the north, and,
+losing even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding
+stillness.
+
+I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock,
+cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far between; and
+neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude.  On the fortieth day they
+had already run so short of food that it was judged advisable to call a
+halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt.  A great fire was built, that
+its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the party mounted
+and struck off at a venture into the surrounding desert.
+
+My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the one
+hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered vale
+dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city.  At length he
+found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair
+among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of
+most unusual size.  He quickened the pace of his steed, and still
+following the quarry, came at last to the division of two watersheds.  On
+the far side the country was exceeding intricate and difficult, heaped
+with boulders, and dotted here and there with a few pines, which seemed
+to indicate the neighbourhood of water.  Here, then, he picketed his
+horse, and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
+wilderness.
+
+Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound
+of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was
+rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely
+intermixed.  The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and winding
+passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles together
+unscalable by man.  The water, when the stream was swelled with rains,
+must have filled it from side to side; the sun's rays only plumbed it in
+the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp funnel, blew
+tempestuously.  And yet, in the bottom of this den, immediately below my
+father's eyes as he leaned over the margin of the cliff, a party of some
+half a hundred men, women, and children lay scattered uneasily among the
+rocks.  They lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring;
+their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and
+emaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a
+faint sound of moaning mounted to my father's ears.
+
+While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound his
+blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who sat hard
+by propped against a rock.  The girl did not seem to be conscious of the
+act; and the old man, after having looked upon her with the most engaging
+pity, returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on the
+turf.  But the scene had not passed without observation even in that
+starving camp.  From the very outskirts of the party, a man with a white
+beard and seemingly of venerable years, rose upon his knees, and came
+crawling stealthily among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my
+father's indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip from
+her both the coverings and return with them to his original position.
+Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as my father
+imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had raised himself again
+upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then
+swiftly carried his hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth.  By the
+movement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of famine he had
+reserved a store of nourishment; and while his companions lay in the
+stupor of approaching death, secretly restored his powers.
+
+My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle; and
+but for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot the fellow
+dead upon the spot.  How different would then have been my history!  But
+it was not to be: even as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the
+bear, as it crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the
+hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that he discharged
+his piece.  The bear leaped and fell into a pool of the river; the canyon
+re-echoed the report; and in a moment the camp was afoot.  With cries
+that were scarce human, stumbling, falling and throwing each other down,
+these starving people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father,
+climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream,
+many were already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a fire
+was being built by the more dainty.
+
+His arrival was for some time unremarked.  He stood in the midst of these
+tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by their cries;
+but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass; even those who were
+too weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the
+bear; and my father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the
+thick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to weep.  A touch
+upon the arm restrained him.  Turning about, he found himself face to
+face with the old man he had so nearly killed; and yet, at the second
+glance, recognised him for no old man at all, but one in the full
+strength of his years, and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual
+countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine.  He beckoned my father
+near the cliff, and there, in the most private whisper, begged for
+brandy.  My father looked at him with scorn: 'You remind me,' he said,
+'of a neglected duty.  Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to
+revive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you
+robbing of her blankets.'  And with that, not heeding his appeals, my
+father turned his back upon the egoist.
+
+The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk in the
+first stage of death to have observed the bustle round her couch; but
+when my father had raised her head, put the flask to her lips, and forced
+or aided her to swallow some drops of the restorative, she opened her
+languid eyes and smiled upon him faintly.  Never was there a smile of a
+more touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet, more
+honestly eloquent of the soul!  I speak with knowledge, for these were
+the same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle.  From her who was to be
+his wife, my father, still jealously watched and followed by the man with
+the grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party, and
+gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the men who seemed in
+the most need.
+
+'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with the beard.
+
+'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself in want, let
+me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your coat.'
+
+'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me.  You think me one who clings to
+life for selfish and commonplace considerations.  But let me tell you,
+that were all this caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of
+a weight.  These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as May-flies,
+in the slums of European cities, whom I myself have plucked from
+degradation and misery, from the dung-heap and gin-palace door.  And you
+compare their lives with mine!'
+
+'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.
+
+'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon missionary if you
+will!  I value not the title.  Were I no more than that, I could have
+died without a murmur.  But with my life as a physician is bound up the
+knowledge of great secrets and the future of man.  This it was, when we
+missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolate
+ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beard
+from ebony to silver.'
+
+'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his face, 'bound
+by oath to succour man in his distresses.'
+
+'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson: you will hear that name
+again; and you will then understand that my duty was not to this caravan
+of paupers, but to mankind at large.'
+
+My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now sufficiently
+revived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to bring help
+from his own party; 'and,' he added, 'if you be again reduced to such
+extremities, look round you, and you will see the earth strewn with
+assistance.  Here, for instance, growing on the under side of fissures in
+this cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss.  Trust me, it is both edible
+and excellent.'
+
+'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'
+
+'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for see where
+these have been scraped away.  Am I right?  Was that your secret store?'
+
+My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire, had
+made a good day's hunting.  They were thus the more easily persuaded to
+extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day beheld both
+parties on the march for the frontiers of Utah.  The distance to be
+traversed was not great; but the nature of the country, and the
+difficulty of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks;
+and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl whom
+he had succoured.  I will call my mother Lucy.  Her family name I am not
+at liberty to mention; it is one you would know well.  By what series of
+undeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined
+by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the
+horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.  Let it
+suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart
+worthy of her own.  The ardour of attachment which united my father and
+mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it
+knew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my father, for her
+sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and abjure his faith; and a
+week had not yet passed upon the march before he had resigned from his
+party, accepted the Mormon doctrine, and received the promise of my
+mother's hand on the arrival of the party at Salt Lake.
+
+The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.  My father
+prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my mother; and
+though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were few happier homes
+in any country than that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood.
+We were, indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics and
+half-believers by the more precise and pious of the faithful: Young
+himself, that formidable tyrant, was known to look askance upon my
+father's riches; but of this I had no guess.  I dwelt, indeed, under the
+Mormon system, with perfect innocence and faith.  Some of our friends had
+many wives; but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me more
+than marriage itself?  From time to time one of our rich acquaintances
+would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses shared
+among the elders of the Church, and his memory only recalled with bated
+breath and dreadful headshakings.  When I had been very still, and my
+presence perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would arise among my
+elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer together and
+look behind them with scared eyes; and I might gather from their
+whisperings how some one, rich, honoured, healthy, and in the prime of
+his days, some one, perhaps, who had taken me on his knees a week before,
+had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished like an
+image from a mirror, leaving not a print behind.  It was terrible,
+indeed; but so was death, the universal law.  And even if the talk should
+wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear
+named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand
+these mysteries?  I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child
+might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect and
+without the wish for further information.  Life anywhere, in society as
+in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden
+blooming in the desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of
+my parents' tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my existence; and
+why should I pry beneath this honest seeming surface for the mysteries on
+which it stood?
+
+We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a
+beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and
+surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky
+desert.  The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road, which
+went no further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks
+impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to
+the European.  Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson.  To my young eyes,
+after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city, and the
+ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there was
+something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin
+white hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor.  Yet,
+though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of
+fear in his presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful
+solitude in which he lived and the obscurity that hung about his
+occupations.  His house was but a mile or two from ours, but very
+differently placed.  It stood overlooking the road on the summit of a
+steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging bluffs.
+Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the works of man; for
+the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort, and the cliffs of a
+constant height, like the ramparts of a city.  Not even spring could
+change one feature of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down
+across a plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on the
+north.  Twice or thrice I remember passing within view of this forbidding
+residence; and seeing it always shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I
+remarked to my parents that some day it would certainly be robbed.
+
+'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a strange
+conviction in his tone.
+
+At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, I
+chanced to see the doctor's house in a new light.  My father was ill; my
+mother confined to his bedside; and I was suffered to go, under the
+charge of our driver, to the lonely house some twenty miles away, where
+our packages were left for us.  The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us
+halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning when the driver
+and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that part of the road which ran
+below the doctor's house.  The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains
+in this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its
+station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not only
+shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the
+great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and
+so voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, and
+its shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali.
+As we continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb began
+to divide the silence.  First it seemed to me like the beating of a
+heart; and next it put into my mind the thought of some giant, smothered
+under mountains and still, with incalculable effort, fetching breath.  I
+had heard of the railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask
+the driver if this resembled it.  But some look in his eye, some pallor,
+whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my
+lips.  We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were close
+below the lighted house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle,
+there burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth and
+set the echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff.  A pillar
+of amber flame leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of
+sparks; and at the same time the lights in the windows turned for one
+instant ruby red and then expired.  The driver had checked his horse
+instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off among the
+mountains, when there broke from the now darkened interior a series of
+yells--whether of man or woman it was impossible to guess--the door flew
+open, and there ran forth into the moonlight, at the top of the long
+slope, a figure clad in white, which began to dance and leap and throw
+itself down, and roll as if in agony, before the house.  I could no more
+restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the horse's flank, and
+we fled up the rough track at the peril of our lives; and did not draw
+rein till, turning the corner of the mountain, we beheld my father's
+ranch and deep, green groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.
+
+This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed to the
+very topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached the
+age of seventeen.  I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended my
+garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to
+coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a
+mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the features
+of my parents.  But the fears which had long pressed on others were now
+to be laid on my youth.  I had thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy
+afternoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on the verandah, where my
+mother sat with her embroidery; and when my father joined her from the
+garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so startling a
+nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.
+
+'The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.
+
+I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.
+
+'Yes,' continued my father, 'I have received to-day a list of all that I
+possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lips
+are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on the
+bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven.  Does the air, then,
+carry secrets?  Are the hills of glass?  Do the stones we tread upon
+preserve the footprint to betray us?  Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have
+come to such a country!'
+
+'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very threatening
+event.  You are accused of some concealment.  You will pay more taxes in
+the future, and be mulcted in a fine.  It is disquieting, indeed, to find
+our acts so spied upon, and the most private known.  But is this new?
+Have we not long feared and suspected every blade of grass?'
+
+'Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father.  'But all this is nothing.  Here
+is the letter that accompanied the list.'
+
+I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.
+
+'I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading: '"From
+a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world's goods,"'
+she continued, '"the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of
+piety."  There lies the sting.  Am I not right?  These are the words you
+fear?'
+
+'These are the words,' replied my father.  'Lucy, you remember Priestley?
+Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an
+isolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any
+quarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it were in such a
+station; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and
+that I heard, his story.  He had received a letter such as this; and he
+submitted to my approval an answer, in which he offered to resign a third
+of his possessions.  I conjured him, as he valued life, to raise his
+offering; and, before we parted, he had doubled the amount.  Well, two
+days later he was gone--gone from the chief street of the city in the
+hour of noon--and gone for ever.  O God!' cried my father, 'by what art
+do they thus spirit out of life the solid body?  What death do they
+command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong
+arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should be
+thus reft in a moment from the world of sense?  A horror dwells in that
+thought more awful than mere death.'
+
+'Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.
+
+'Dismiss the thought,' replied my father.  'He now knows all that I can
+teach, and will do naught to save me.  His power, besides, is small, his
+own danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, lives
+apart; he leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited
+for an unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price--but
+no; I will not believe it: I have no love for him, but I will not believe
+it.'
+
+'Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of note, 'But
+oh, what matters it?' she cried.  'Abimelech, there is but one way open:
+we must fly!'
+
+'It is in vain,' returned my father.  'I should but involve you in my
+fate.  To leave this land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men are
+closed in life; and there is no issue but the grave.'
+
+'We can but die then,' replied my mother.  'Let us at least die together.
+Let not Asenath {43} and myself survive you.  Think to what a fate we
+should be doomed!'
+
+My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I could
+see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his whole
+estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him at the moment,
+and to flee that night, which promised to be dark and cloudy.  As soon as
+the servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with provisions; two
+others were to carry my mother and myself; and, striking through the
+mountains by an unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke for
+liberty and life.  As soon as they had thus decided, I showed myself at
+the window, and, owning that I had heard all, assured them that they
+could rely on my prudence and devotion.  I had no fear, indeed, but to
+show myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my hand without
+alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed Heaven for
+the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride and some of
+the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look forward to the
+perils of our flight.
+
+Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had left far
+behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain
+canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing
+with the roar of a tumultuous torrent.  Cascade after cascade thundered
+and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with
+the wet wind of its descent.  The trail was breakneck, and led to
+famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for more
+practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod from year
+to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when turning suddenly an
+angle of the cliffs, we found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an
+impending rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with
+charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.
+We looked upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into a
+passion of tears; but not a word was said.  The mules were turned about;
+and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced our
+steps in silence.  Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at home,
+condemned beyond reprieve.
+
+What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little
+before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road
+in a great pother of dust.  He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw
+hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer,
+that was, in my eyes, very reassuring.  He was, indeed, a very honest man
+and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor
+any one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark of
+diffidence that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and
+entered the room where our unhappy family was gathered.  My mother and
+me, he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with my
+father laid before him a blank signature of President Young's, and
+offered him a choice of services: either to set out as a missionary to
+the tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next day, with a party of
+Destroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty German immigrants.  The last,
+of course, my father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as a
+pretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife defenceless, and to
+collect fresh victims for the tyranny under which he was himself
+oppressed, he felt sure he would never be suffered to return.  He refused
+both; and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious,
+at the spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for my
+father and his family.  He besought him to reconsider his decision; and
+at length, finding he could not prevail, gave him till the moon rose to
+settle his affairs, and say farewell to wife and daughter.  'For,' said
+he, 'then, at the latest, you must ride with me.'
+
+I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast;
+and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father and
+Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey.  My
+mother, though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shut
+herself in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the
+dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to saddle
+my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to enjoy
+one farewell sight of my departing father.  The two men had set forth at
+a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them, when I reached the point
+of view.  I was the more amazed to see no moving creature in the
+landscape.  The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day; and nowhere,
+under the whole arch of night, was there a growing tree, a bush, a farm,
+a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but one.  From the corner
+where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the
+doctor's house; and across the top of that projection the soft night wind
+carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable smoke.  What fuel
+could produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what
+furnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew
+well enough that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enough
+that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I
+connected in my mind the loss of that dear protector with the ribbon of
+foul smoke that trailed along the mountains.
+
+Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a week
+went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father and
+husband.  As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so in
+the ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting my horse and
+following upon his trail, had that strong and brave man vanished out of
+life.  Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now
+certain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defenceless
+family.  Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when I
+look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event.  On the
+last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone
+in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
+attendants, with one accord, had fled: and as we knew them to be
+gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight.
+The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening we
+were called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of horse's
+hoofs.
+
+The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,
+and saluted us.  He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery than
+ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would have you
+recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President, that he should
+send as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband's oldest
+friend in Utah.'
+
+'Sir,' said my mother, 'I have but one concern, one thought.  You know
+well what it is.  Speak: my husband?'
+
+'Madam,' returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, 'if you
+were a silly child, my position would now be painfully embarrassing.  You
+are, on the other hand, a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: you
+have, by my forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own
+conclusions and to accept the inevitable.  Farther words from me are, I
+conceive, superfluous.'
+
+My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her my
+hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till I could
+have cried aloud.  'Then, sir,' said she at last, 'you speak to deaf
+ears.  If this be indeed so, what have I to do with errands?  What do I
+ask of Heaven but to die?'
+
+'Come,' said the doctor, 'command yourself.  I bid you dismiss all
+thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon your
+own future and the fate of that young girl.'
+
+'You bid me dismiss--' began my mother.  'Then you know!' she cried.
+
+'I know,' replied the doctor.
+
+'You know?' broke out the poor woman.  'Then it was you who did the deed!
+I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you are--you,
+whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes raving--you, the
+Destroying Angel!'
+
+'Well, madam, and what then?' returned the doctor.  'Have not my fate and
+yours been similar?  Are we not both immured in this strong prison of
+Utah?  Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye confront you
+in the canyon?  Who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?
+Not I, at least.  Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the
+most ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that
+have spared your husband?  You know well it would not.  I, too, had
+perished along with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his last
+moments, nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the hand of
+Brigham Young.'
+
+'Ah!' cried I, 'and could you purchase life by such concessions?'
+
+'Young lady,' answered the doctor, 'I both could and did; and you will
+live to thank me for that baseness.  You have a spirit, Asenath, that it
+pleases me to recognise.  But we waste time.  Mr. Fonblanque's estate
+reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some part of it has
+been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that person, I
+should perhaps tell you without more delay, is no other than myself.'
+
+At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung
+together like lost souls.
+
+'It is as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same measured
+utterance.  'You recoil from this arrangement.  Do you expect me to
+convince you?  You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view
+of women.  Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the
+slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among
+themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the
+union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it.  No: you need
+not, madam, and my old friend'--and here the doctor rose and bowed with
+something of gallantry--'you need not apprehend my importunities.  On the
+contrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am
+obliged to bid you follow me at once, and that in the name, not of my
+wish, but of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a common
+mind.'
+
+So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had now
+fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.
+
+'What does it mean?--what will become of us?' I cried.
+
+'Not that, at least,' replied my mother, shuddering.  'So far we can
+trust him.  I seem to read among his words a certain tragic promise.
+Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserable
+parents?'
+
+Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to explain her
+words; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend the doctor for a
+friend.  'The doctor!' I cried at last; 'the man who killed my father?'
+
+'Nay,' said she, 'let us be just.  I do believe before, Heaven, he played
+the friendliest part.  And he alone, Asenath, can protect you in this
+land of death.'
+
+At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we were all
+in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter to discuss
+with Mrs. Fonblanque.  They came at a foot's pace, eagerly conversing in
+a whisper; and presently after the moon rose and showed them looking
+eagerly in each other's faces as they went, my mother laying her hand
+upon the doctor's arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual custom,
+making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.
+
+At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to his
+door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.
+
+'Here,' he said, 'we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to be
+alone, you and I shall walk together to my house.'
+
+'Shall I see her again?' I asked.
+
+'I give you my word,' he said, and helped me to alight.  'We leave the
+horses here,' he added.  'There are no thieves in this stone wilderness.'
+
+The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.  The windows were
+once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the most
+absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother very
+slowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human soul
+within a range of miles.  At the thought, I looked upon the doctor,
+gravely walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair, and
+then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like some
+industrious factory.  And then my curiosity broke forth.  'In Heaven's
+name,' I cried, 'what do you make in this inhuman desert?'
+
+He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion--
+
+'This is not the first time,' said he, 'that you have seen my furnaces
+alight.  One morning, in the small hours, I saw you driving past; a
+delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit myself of having
+startled either your driver or the horse that drew you.'
+
+'What!' cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure,
+'could that be you?'
+
+'It was I,' he replied; 'but do not fancy that I was mad.  I was in
+agony.  I had been scalded cruelly.'
+
+We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of the
+country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.  Stone, too, was its
+foundation, stone its background.  Not a blade of grass sprouted among
+the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows.
+Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely
+sculptured; I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood;
+but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance,
+and set me shrinking.  The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney
+top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of the
+building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the
+moon and vanished.
+
+The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.  'You ask me
+what I make here,' he observed.  'Two things: Life and Death.'  And he
+motioned me to enter.
+
+'I shall await my mother,' said I.
+
+'Child,' he replied, 'look at me: am I not old and broken?  Of us two,
+which is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?'
+
+I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by a
+good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.  It was furnished only with a
+dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these the
+doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into the
+interior of the house, he left me to myself.  Presently I heard the jar
+of iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed by the
+same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but now so near
+at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake the house with
+every recurrence of the stroke.  I had scarce time to master my alarm
+when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother
+appeared upon the threshold.  But how am I to describe to you the peace
+and ravishment of that face?  Years seemed to have passed over her head
+during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone,
+her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel of
+ecstatic tenderness.  I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank a
+little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yet
+unearthly.  To the doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand as
+to a friend and helper; and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be
+offended.
+
+'Lucy,' said the doctor, 'all is prepared.  Will you go alone, or shall
+your daughter follow us?'
+
+'Let Asenath come,' she answered, 'dear Asenath!  At this hour, when I am
+purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and my
+affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her
+presence.  Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be feared she might
+misjudge your kindness.'
+
+'Mother,' I cried wildly, 'mother, what is this?'
+
+But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only 'Hush!' as though I were
+a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me be
+silent and trouble her no more.  'You have made a choice,' he continued,
+addressing my mother, 'that has often strangely tempted me.  The two
+extremes: all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon the
+clock--these have been my incongruous desires.  But to accept the middle
+term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn
+out--never for an hour, never since I was born, has satisfied the
+appetite of my ambition.'  He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of
+admiration and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound
+sigh, he led the way into the inner room.
+
+It was very long.  From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which by
+the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping sounds
+with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric.  At the
+extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a
+lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the
+room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors.  The
+walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with the
+implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered in
+the light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door, a heavy
+driving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys,
+with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.  In one
+corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously
+wreathed with wire.  To this my mother advanced with a decisive
+swiftness.
+
+'Is this it?' she asked.
+
+The doctor bowed in silence.
+
+'Asenath,' said my mother, 'in this sad end of my life I have found one
+helper.  Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson.  Be not, oh my daughter,
+be not ungrateful to that friend!'
+
+She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated
+the arms.
+
+'Am I right?' she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancy
+of face that I trembled for her reason.  Once more the doctor bowed, but
+this time leaning hard against the wall.  He must have touched a spring.
+The least shock agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar
+appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the chair like one
+resigned to weariness.  I was at her knees that moment; but her hands
+fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still beatified with the same
+touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.
+
+I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my
+tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes.  They rested upon mine with such a
+depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of my
+sorrow, I was startled into attention.
+
+'Enough,' he said, 'to lamentation.  Your mother went to death as to a
+bridal, dying where her husband died.  It is time, Asenath, to think of
+the survivors.  Follow me to the next room.'
+
+I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he
+gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began to
+address me--
+
+'You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate watch
+of Brigham Young.  It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances, to
+become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular
+fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes
+of the President himself.  Such a fate for a girl like you were worse
+than death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily deeper
+in the mire of this pit of woman's degradation.  But is escape
+conceivable?  Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with what
+security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted
+a sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom.  Where your father
+failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless in
+the toils?'
+
+I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
+understood.
+
+'I see,' I cried; 'you judge me rightly.  I must follow where my parents
+led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!'
+
+'No,' replied the doctor, 'not death for you.  The flawed vessel we may
+break, but not the perfect.  No, your mother cherished a different hope,
+and so do I.  I see,' he cried, 'the girl develop to the completed woman,
+the plan reach fulfilment, the promise--ay, outdone!  I could not bear to
+arrest so lively, so comely a process.  It was your mother's thought,' he
+added, with a change of tone, 'that I should marry you myself.'  I fear I
+must have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made
+haste to quiet me.  'Reassure yourself, Asenath,' he resumed.  'Old as I
+am, I have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth.  I have passed
+my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils I have not
+forgotten the tune of a young pulse.  Age asks with timidity to be spared
+intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard, demands joy like a
+right.  These things I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly
+felt, none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed them to
+their day.  See, then: you stand without support; the only friend left to
+you, this old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy.  Answer me
+but one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the world
+calls love?  Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you
+fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?'
+
+I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him,
+lay with my dead parents.
+
+'It is enough,' he said.  'It has been my fate to be called on often, too
+often, for those services of which we spoke to-night; none in Utah could
+carry them so well to a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my hands
+a certain share of influence which I now lay at your service, partly for
+the sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the interest I bear
+you in your own right.  I shall send you to England, to the great city of
+London, there to await the bridegroom I have selected.  He shall be a son
+of mine, a young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that
+quality of beauty that your years demand.  Since your heart is free, you
+may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for much expense
+and still more danger: to await the arrival of that bridegroom with the
+delicacy of a wife.'
+
+I sat awhile stunned.  The doctor's marriages, I remembered to have
+heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress.
+But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of
+escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough to revive in me some
+dawn of hope; and in what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.
+
+He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked
+for.  'You shall see,' he cried; 'you shall judge for yourself.'  And
+hurrying to the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat
+coarsely done in oils.  It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty
+years before, young indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor.  'Do
+you like it?' he asked.  'That is myself when I was young.  My--my boy
+will be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels might
+condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind.  That
+should be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand.  A man
+like that--one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the
+force, the dignity of age--one to fill all the parts and faculties, one
+to be man's epitome--say, will that not satisfy the needs of an ambitious
+girl?  Say, is not that enough?'  And as he held the picture close before
+my eyes, his hands shook.
+
+I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced with
+this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the most
+insolent revolt surged through my arteries.  I held him in horror, him,
+his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice but death or a
+Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.
+
+'It is well,' he replied, 'and I had rightly counted on your spirit.
+Eat, then, for you have far to go.'  So saying, he set meat before me;
+and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the room and returned with
+an armful of coarse raiment.  'There,' said he, 'is your disguise.  I
+leave you to your toilet.'
+
+The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen;
+and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements.
+But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of
+their origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged.  I had
+scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened a back
+window, helped me out into the narrow space between the house and the
+overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron footholds mortised in
+the rock.  'Mount,' he said, 'swiftly.  When you are at the summit, walk,
+so far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke.  The smoke will bring
+you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, and you will find a
+man with two horses.  Him you will implicitly obey.  And remember,
+silence!  That machinery, which I now put in motion for your service, may
+by one word be turned against you.  Go; Heaven prosper you!'
+
+The ascent was easy.  Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on
+the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the
+moon and the surrounding mountains.  Nowhere was any vantage or
+concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made
+haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke.  Sometimes
+it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial
+curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the
+earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like some
+mountain fog.  But, one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened
+furnace protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to
+the canyon.
+
+There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of
+saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence
+by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains.  A little
+before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the
+bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next night,
+before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings.  About
+noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screen
+of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his pack, bade me
+change my dress once more.  The bundle contained clothing of my own,
+taken from our house, with such necessaries as a comb and soap.  I made
+my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and
+smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image, the
+mountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness; and
+while I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly increased a
+storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds.  Shall I own to you,
+that I fell upon my face and shrieked?  And yet this was but the overland
+train winding among the near mountains: the very means of my salvation:
+the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!
+
+When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,
+both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over the borders
+in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reached
+the railway station, half a mile below.  'Here,' he added, 'is your
+ticket as far as Council Bluffs.  The East express will pass in a few
+hours.'  With that, he took both horses, and, without further words or
+any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.
+
+Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train as
+it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of the
+mountain.  The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbing
+terror of pursuit--above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance,
+kept me from any logical or melancholy thought.  I had gone to the
+doctor's house two nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse than
+death; what had passed, terrible although it was, looked almost bright
+compared to my anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a full
+night in the flying palace car, that I awoke to the sense of my
+irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about the future.  In this
+mood, I examined the contents of the bag.  It was well supplied with
+gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far
+as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with a
+fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, and
+bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son.  All then had been
+arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and what was tenfold
+worse, upon my mother's voluntary death.  My horror of my only friend, my
+aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the whole
+current and conditions of my life, were now complete.  I was sitting
+stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very
+pleasant lady offered me her conversation.  I clutched at the relief; and
+I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's letter: how I was
+a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I
+had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted my
+instructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me with questions,
+began to embroider on my own account.  This soon carried one of my
+inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on the
+lady's face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly addressed me.
+
+'Miss Gould, I believe?' said he; and then, excusing himself to the lady
+by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of the
+Pullman car.  'Miss Gould,' he said in my ear, 'is it possible that you
+suppose yourself in safety?  Let me completely undeceive you.  One more
+such indiscretion and you return to Utah.  And, in the meanwhile, if this
+woman should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
+"Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me to
+choose my own associates."'
+
+Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myself
+drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult; and
+thenceforward, through all that day, I sat in silence, gazing on the bare
+plains and swallowing my tears.  Let that suffice: it was the pattern of
+my journey.  Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the ocean
+steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller but
+I was certain to be interrupted.  In every place, on every side, the most
+unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors to
+forward me upon my journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.
+Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still
+following my movements; and when at length a cab had set me down before
+that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee this morning, I had
+already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.
+
+The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was expecting
+my arrival.  A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon the garden;
+there were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and there (I had
+almost said with contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw month
+follow month over my head.  At times my landlady took me for a walk or an
+excursion, but she would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I,
+seeing that she also lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormon
+terror, felt too much pity to resist.  To the child born on Mormon soil,
+as to the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no escape is
+possible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful even for this
+respite.  Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for my
+approaching nuptials.  The day drew near when my bridegroom was to visit
+me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent.  A son of Doctor
+Grierson's, be he what he pleased, must still be young, and it was even
+probable he should be handsome; on more than that, I felt I dared not
+reckon; and in moulding my mind towards consent I dwelt the more
+carefully on these physical attractions which I felt I might expect, and
+averted my eyes from moral or intellectual considerations.  We have a
+great power upon our spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into a
+frame of acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow impatient for the hour.
+At night sleep forsook me; I sat all day by the fire, absorbed in dreams,
+conjuring up the features of my husband, and anticipating in fancy the
+touch of his hand and the sound of his voice.  In the dead level and
+solitude of my existence, this was the one eastern window and the one
+door of hope.  At last, I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that I
+began to be besieged with fears upon the other side.  How if it was I
+that did not please?  How if this unseen lover should turn from me with
+disaffection?  And now I spent hours before the glass, studying and
+judging my attractions, and was never weary of changing my dress or
+ordering my hair.
+
+When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort of
+hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now
+stand or fall by nature.  My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most
+sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling
+rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting,
+shrinking, and colouring to the brow.  Love is not to be prepared, I
+know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at last
+rattled to the door and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the
+tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself might have been proud
+to own their parentage.  The door opened, and it was Doctor Grierson that
+appeared.  I believe I must have screamed aloud, and I know, at least,
+that I fell fainting to the floor.
+
+When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse.  'I
+have startled you,' he said.  'A difficulty unforeseen--the impossibility
+of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity--has forced me to resort
+to London unprepared.  I regret that I should have shown myself once more
+without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me
+are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea.  Youth is but
+a state, as passing as that syncope from which you are but just awakened,
+and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find,
+Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant.  Since my first
+years, I have devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task;
+and the time of my success is at hand.  In these new countries, where I
+was so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
+have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what
+was a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a
+son of mine I did so in a figure.  That son--that husband, Asenath, is
+myself--not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy of
+youth.  You think me mad?  It is the customary attitude of ignorance.  I
+will not argue; I will leave facts to speak.  When you behold me
+purified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image--when you
+recognise in me (what I shall be) the first perfect expression of the
+powers of mankind--I shall be able to laugh with a better grace at your
+passing and natural incredulity.  To what can you aspire--fame, riches,
+power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age--that I shall
+not be able to afford you in perfection?  Do not deceive yourself.  I
+already excel you in every human gift but one: when that gift also has
+been restored to me you will recognise your master.'
+
+Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to
+myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he
+withdrew.  I had not the courage to move; the night fell and found me
+still where he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands,
+my soul drowned in the darkest apprehensions.  Late in the evening he
+returned, carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade
+me rise and sup.  'Is it possible,' he added, 'that I have been deceived
+in your courage?  A cowardly girl is no fit mate for me.'
+
+I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought
+him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice
+was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his
+hopeless and derisible inferior.
+
+'Why, certainly,' he replied.  'I know you better than yourself; and I am
+well enough acquainted with human nature to understand this scene.  It is
+addressed to me,' he added with a smile, 'in my character of the still
+untransformed.  But do not alarm yourself about the future.  Let me but
+attain my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face of
+the earth becomes my willing slave.'
+
+Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;
+helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable host; and
+it was not till a late hour, that, bidding me courteously good-night, he
+once more left me alone to my misery.
+
+In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I scarce
+knew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil.  If his
+hopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some abhorrent miracle,
+he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that most
+unnatural, that most ungodly union.  If, on the other hand, these dreams
+were merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my pity
+would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt against the
+marriage.  So passed the night, in alternations of rebellion and despair,
+of hate and pity; and with the next morning I was only to comprehend more
+fully my enslaved position.  For though he appeared with a very tranquil
+countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of grief upon my brow
+than an answering darkness gathered on his own.  'Asenath.' he said, 'you
+owe me much already; with one finger I still hold you suspended over
+death; my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I choose,' said he,
+with a remarkable accent of command, 'that you shall greet me with a
+pleasant face.'  He never needed to repeat the recommendation; from that
+day forward I was always ready to receive him with apparent cheerfulness;
+and he rewarded me with a good deal of his company, and almost more than
+I could bear of his confidence.  He had set up a laboratory in the back
+part of the house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and he
+would come thence to visit me in my parlour: now with passing humours of
+discouragement; now, and far more often, radiant with hope.  It was
+impossible to see so much of him, and not to recognise that the sands of
+his life were running low; and yet all the time he would be laying out
+vast fields of future, and planning, with all the confidence of youth,
+the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and ambition.  How I replied I
+know not; but I found a voice and words to answer, even while I wept and
+raged to hear him.
+
+A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great
+exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness.  'Asenath,' said
+he, 'I have now obtained the last ingredient.  In one week from now the
+perilous moment of the last projection will draw nigh.  You have once
+before assisted, although unconsciously, at the failure of a similar
+experiment.  It was the elixir which so terribly exploded one night when
+you were passing my house; and it is idle to deny that the conduct of so
+delicate a process, among the million jars and trepidations of so great a
+city, presents a certain element of danger.  From this point of view, I
+cannot but regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts;
+but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularly
+unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is due
+rather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients; and as all
+are now of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have little fear for the
+result.  In a week then from to-day, my dear Asenath, this period of
+trial will be ended.'  And he smiled upon me in a manner unusually
+paternal.
+
+I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest and
+most unbridled terror.  What if he failed?  And oh, tenfold worse! what
+if he succeeded?  What detested and unnatural changeling would appear
+before me to claim my hand?  And could there, I asked myself with a
+dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over
+my reluctance?  I knew him, indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a
+sign.  Suppose, then, this experiment to succeed; suppose him to return
+to me, hideously restored, like a vampire in a legend; and suppose that,
+by some devilish fascination . . . My head turned; all former fears
+deserted me: and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference to this.
+
+My mind was instantly made up.  The doctor's presence in London was
+justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity.  Often, in our
+conversation, he would gloat over the details of that great organisation,
+which he feared even while yet he wielded it; and would remind me, that
+even in the humming labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that
+unsleeping eye in Utah.  His visitors, indeed, who were of every sort,
+from the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to belong to
+every rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled me with unmixed
+repulsion and alarm.  I knew that if my secret were to reach the ear of
+any leader my fate were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in my present
+pass of horror and despair, it was to these very men that I turned for
+help.  I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man of
+a low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce remember
+what elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his intermediacy
+entered into correspondence with my father's family.  They recognised my
+claim for help, and on this very day I was to begin my escape.
+
+Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the doctor's
+labours, and prepared against the worst.  The nights at this season and
+in this northern latitude are short; and I had soon the company of the
+returning daylight.  The silence in and around the house was only broken
+by the movements of the doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened,
+watch in hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and yet consumed by
+anxiety about the strange experiment that was going forward overhead.
+Indeed, now that I was conscious of some protection for myself, my
+sympathies had turned more directly to the doctor's side; I caught myself
+even praying for his success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cry
+reached my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control my
+impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.
+
+The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a large,
+round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a bright
+amber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude and joy
+unspeakable.  As he saw me he raised the flask at arm's length.
+'Victory!' he cried.  'Victory, Asenath!'  And then--whether the flask
+escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the explosion were spontaneous,
+I cannot tell--enough that we were thrown, I against the door-post, the
+doctor into the corner of the room; enough that we were shaken to the
+soul by the same explosion that must have startled you upon the street;
+and that, in the brief space of an indistinguishable instant, there
+remained nothing of the labours of the doctor's lifetime but a few shards
+of broken crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that
+pursued me in my flight.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SQUIRE OF DAMES_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+What with the lady's animated manner and dramatic conduct of her voice,
+Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine emotion.  His
+fancy, which was not perhaps of a very lively character, applauded both
+the matter and the style; but the more judicial functions of his mind
+refused assent.  It was an excellent story; and it might be true, but he
+believed it was not.  Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless
+possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but how was a gentleman to
+tell her so?  His spirits for some time had been sinking, but they now
+fell to zero; and long after her voice had died away he still sat with a
+troubled and averted countenance, and could find no form of words to
+thank her for her narrative.  His mind, indeed, was empty of everything
+beyond a dull longing for escape.  From this pause, which grew the more
+embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden laughter of
+the lady.  His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes
+met; and he caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as put him
+instantly at ease.
+
+'You certainly,' he said, 'appear to bear your calamities with excellent
+spirit.'
+
+'Do I not?' she cried, and fell once more into delicious laughter.  But
+from this access she more speedily recovered.  'This is all very well,'
+said she, nodding at him gravely, 'but I am still in a most distressing
+situation, from which, if you deny me your help, I shall find it
+difficult indeed to free myself.'
+
+At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original gloom.
+
+'My sympathies are much engaged with you,' he said, 'and I should be
+delighted, I am sure.  But our position is most unusual; and
+circumstances over which I have, I can assure you, no control, deprive me
+of the power--the pleasure--Unless, indeed,' he added, somewhat
+brightening at the thought, 'I were to recommend you to the care of the
+police?'
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; and he saw
+with wonder that, for the first time since the moment of their meeting,
+every trace of colour had faded from her cheek.
+
+'Do so,' she said, 'and--weigh my words well--you kill me as certainly as
+with a knife.'
+
+'God bless me!' exclaimed Challoner.
+
+'Oh,' she cried, 'I can see you disbelieve my story and make light of the
+perils that surround me; but who are you to judge?  My family share my
+apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an
+emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen to supply me with the
+funds for my escape.  I admit that you are brave and clever and have
+impressed me most favourably; but how are you to prefer your opinion
+before that of my uncle, an ex-minister of state, a man with the ear of
+the Queen, and of a long political experience?  If I am mad, is he?  And
+you must allow me, besides, a special claim upon your help.  Strange as
+you may think my story, you know that much of it is true; and if you who
+heard the explosion and saw the Mormon at Victoria, refuse to credit and
+assist me, to whom am I to turn?'
+
+'He gave you money then?' asked Challoner, who had been dwelling singly
+on that fact.
+
+'I begin to interest you,' she cried.  'But, frankly, you are condemned
+to help me.  If the service I had to ask of you were serious, were
+suspicious, were even unusual, I should say no more.  But what is it?  To
+take a pleasure trip (for which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay)
+and to carry from one lady to another a sum of money!  What can be more
+simple?'
+
+'Is the sum,' asked Challoner, 'considerable?'
+
+She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had not yet
+found time to make the count, tore open the cover and spread upon her
+knees a considerable number of Bank of England notes.  It took some time
+to make the reckoning, for the notes were of every degree of value; but
+at last, and counting a few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be
+a little under 710 pounds sterling.  The sight of so much money worked an
+immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.
+
+'And you propose, madam,' he cried, 'to intrust that money to a perfect
+stranger?'
+
+'Ah!' said she, with a charming smile, 'but I no longer regard you as a
+stranger.'
+
+'Madam,' said Challoner, 'I perceive I must make you a confession.
+Although of a very good family--through my mother, indeed, a lineal
+descendant of the patriot Bruce--I dare not conceal from you that my
+affairs are deeply, very deeply involved.  I am in debt; my pockets are
+practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that state when a
+considerable sum of money would prove to many men an irresistible
+temptation.'
+
+'Do you not see,' returned the young lady, 'that by these words you have
+removed my last hesitation?  Take them.'  And she thrust the notes into
+the young man's hand.
+
+He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss
+Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.
+
+'Pray,' she said, 'hesitate no further; put them in your pocket; and to
+relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name
+I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the
+awkwardness of the pronoun.'
+
+Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors had come
+lightly to the young man's aid; but upon what pretext could he refuse so
+generous a trust?  Upon none he saw, that was not unpardonably wounding;
+and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion had already
+made a breach in the rampart of Challoner's caution.  The whole thing, he
+reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it were the height of
+solemn folly to resent.  On the other hand, the explosion, the interview
+at the public-house, and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove
+beyond denial the existence of some serious danger; and if that were so,
+could he desert her?  There was a choice of risks: the risk of behaving
+with extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness to a lady, and the risk
+of going on a fool's errand.  The story seemed false; but then the money
+was undeniable.  The whole circumstances were questionable and obscure;
+but the lady was charming, and had the speech and manners of society.
+While he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned upon his mind
+with some of the dignity of prophecy.  Had he not promised Somerset to
+break with the traditions of the commonplace, and to accept the first
+adventure offered?  Well, here was the adventure.
+
+He thrust the money into his pocket.
+
+'My name is Challoner,' said he.
+
+'Mr. Challoner,' she replied, 'you have come very generously to my aid
+when all was against me.  Though I am myself a very humble person, my
+family commands great interest; and I do not think you will repent this
+handsome action.'
+
+Challoner flushed with pleasure.
+
+'I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,' she added, her eyes dwelling on
+him with a judicial admiration, 'a consulship in some great town or
+capital--or else--But we waste time; let us set about the work of my
+delivery.'
+
+She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his heart; and once
+more laying by all serious thoughts, she entertained him, as they crossed
+the park, with her agreeable gaiety of mind.  Near the Marble Arch they
+found a hansom, which rapidly conveyed them to the terminus at Euston
+Square; and here, in the hotel, they sat down to an excellent breakfast.
+The young lady's first step was to call for writing materials and write,
+upon one corner of the table, a hasty note; still, as she did so,
+glancing with smiles at her companion.  'Here,' said she, 'here is the
+letter which will introduce you to my cousin.'  She began to fold the
+paper.  'My cousin, although I have never seen her, has the character of
+a very charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I know nothing,
+but at least she has been very kind to me; so has my lord her father; so
+have you--kinder than all--kinder than I can bear to think of.'  She said
+this with unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed the envelope.
+'Ah!' she cried, 'I have shut my letter!  It is not quite courteous; and
+yet, as between friends, it is perhaps better so.  I introduce you, after
+all, into a family secret; and though you and I are already old comrades,
+you are still unknown to my uncle.  You go then to this address, Richard
+Street, Glasgow; go, please, as soon as you arrive; and give this letter
+with your own hands into those of Miss Fonblanque, for that is the name
+by which she is to pass.  When we next meet, you will tell me what you
+think of her,' she added, with a touch of the provocative.
+
+'Ah,' said Challoner, almost tenderly, 'she can be nothing to me.'
+
+'You do not know,' replied the young lady, with a sigh.  'By-the-bye, I
+had forgotten--it is very childish, and I am almost ashamed to mention
+it--but when you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have to make yourself a
+little ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way suits you.  We had
+agreed upon a watchword.  You will have to address an earl's daughter in
+these words: "_Nigger_, _nigger_, _never die_;" but reassure yourself,'
+she added, laughing, 'for the fair patrician will at once finish the
+quotation.  Come now, say your lesson.'
+
+'"Nigger, nigger, never die,"' repeated Challoner, with undisguised
+reluctance.
+
+Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.  'Excellent,' said she, 'it
+will be the most humorous scene.'  And she laughed again.
+
+'And what will be the counterword?' asked Challoner stiffly.
+
+'I will not tell you till the last moment,' said she; 'for I perceive you
+are growing too imperious.'
+
+Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform, bought him
+the _Graphic_, the _Athenaeum_, and a paper-cutter, and stood on the step
+conversing till the whistle sounded.  Then she put her head into the
+carriage.  '_Black face and shining eye_!' she whispered, and instantly
+leaped down upon the platform, with a thrill of gay and musical laughter.
+As the train steamed out of the great arch of glass, the sound of that
+laughter still rang in the young man's ears.
+
+Challoner's position was too unusual to be long welcome to his mind.  He
+found himself projected the whole length of England, on a mission beset
+with obscure and ridiculous circumstances, and yet, by the trust he had
+accepted, irrevocably bound to persevere.  How easy it appeared, in the
+retrospect, to have refused the whole proposal, returned the money, and
+gone forth again upon his own affairs, a free and happy man!  And it was
+now impossible: the enchantress who had held him with her eye had now
+disappeared, taking his honour in pledge; and as she had failed to leave
+him an address, he was denied even the inglorious safety of retreat.  To
+use the paper-knife, or even to read the periodicals with which she had
+presented him, was to renew the bitterness of his remorse; and as he was
+alone in the compartment, he passed the day staring at the landscape in
+impotent repentance, and long before he was landed on the platform of St.
+Enoch's, had fallen to the lowest and coldest zones of self-contempt.
+
+As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have preferred to
+dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the words of the young lady,
+and his own impatient eagerness, would suffer no delay.  In the late,
+luminous, and lamp-starred dusk of the summer evening, he accordingly set
+forward with brisk steps.
+
+The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in the
+character of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside; but the
+extension of the city had long since, and on every hand, surrounded it
+with miles of streets.  From the top of the hill a range of very tall
+buildings, densely inhabited by the poorest classes of the population and
+variegated by drying-poles from every second window, overplumbed the
+villas and their little gardens like a sea-board cliff.  But still, under
+the grime of years of city smoke, these antiquated cottages, with their
+venetian blinds and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat melancholy
+savour of the past.
+
+The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly deserted.  From hard
+by, indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls filled the ear; but in
+Richard Street itself there was neither light nor sound of human
+habitation.  The appearance of the neighbourhood weighed heavily on the
+mind of the young man; once more, as in the streets of London, he was
+impressed with the sense of city deserts; and as he approached the number
+indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang the bell, his heart sank within
+him.
+
+The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and garrulous note;
+and it was some time before it ceased to sound from the rear quarters of
+the building.  Following upon this an inner door was stealthily opened,
+and careful and catlike steps drew near along the hall.  Challoner,
+supposing he was to be instantly admitted, produced his letter, and, as
+well as he was able, prepared a smiling face.  To his indescribable
+surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and then, after a pause and with
+the like stealthiness, withdrew once more, and died away in the interior
+of the house.  A second time the young man rang violently at the bell; a
+second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle of discreet footing
+moved upon the hollow boards of the old villa; and again the fainthearted
+garrison only drew near to retreat.  The cup of the visitor's endurance
+was now full to overflowing; and, committing the whole family of
+Fonblanque to every mood and shade of condemnation, he turned upon his
+heel and redescended the steps.  Perhaps the mover in the house was
+watching from a window, and plucked up courage at the sight of this
+desistance; or perhaps, where he lurked trembling in the back parts of
+the villa, reason in its own right had conquered his alarms.  Challoner,
+at least, had scarce set foot upon the pavement when he was arrested by
+the sound of the withdrawal of an inner bolt; one followed another,
+rattling in their sockets; the key turned harshly in the lock; the door
+opened; and there appeared upon the threshold a man of a very stalwart
+figure in his shirt sleeves.  He was a person neither of great manly
+beauty nor of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary moods,
+to attract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in the doorway,
+he was marked so legibly with the extreme passion of terror that
+Challoner stood wonder-struck.  For a fraction of a minute they gazed
+upon each other in silence; and then the man of the house, with ashen
+lips and gasping voice, inquired the business of his visitor.  Challoner
+replied, in tones from which he strove to banish his surprise, that he
+was the bearer of a letter to a certain Miss Fonblanque.  At this name,
+as at a talisman, the man fell back and impatiently invited him to enter;
+and no sooner had the adventurer crossed the threshold, than the door was
+closed behind him and his retreat cut off.
+
+It was already long past eight at night; and though the late twilight of
+the north still lingered in the streets, in the passage it was already
+groping dark.  The man led Challoner directly to a parlour looking on the
+garden to the back.  Here he had apparently been supping; for by the
+light of a tallow dip the table was seen to be covered with a napkin, and
+set out with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a Gouda cheese.  The
+room, on the other hand, was furnished with faded solidity, and the walls
+were lined with scholarly and costly volumes in glazed cases.  The house
+must have been taken furnished; for it had no congruity with this man of
+the shirt sleeves and the mean supper.  As for the earl's daughter, the
+earl and the visionary consulships in foreign cities, they had long ago
+begun to fade in Challoner's imagination.  Like Doctor Grierson and the
+Mormon angels, they were plainly woven of the stuff of dreams.  Not an
+illusion remained to the knight-errant; not a hope was left him, but to
+be speedily relieved from this disreputable business.
+
+The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised anxiety, and
+began once more to press him for his errand.
+
+'I am here,' said Challoner, 'simply to do a service between two ladies;
+and I must ask you, without further delay, to summon Miss Fonblanque,
+into whose hands alone I am authorised to deliver the letter that I
+bear.'
+
+A growing wonder began to mingle on the man's face with the lines of
+solicitude.  'I am Miss Fonblanque,' he said; and then, perceiving the
+effect of this communication, 'Good God!' he cried, 'what are you staring
+at?  I tell you, I am Miss Fonblanque.'
+
+Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, and the
+remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could only suppose
+himself the subject of a jest.  He was no longer under the spell of the
+young lady's presence; and with men, and above all with his inferiors, he
+was capable of some display of spirit.
+
+'Sir,' said he, pretty roundly, 'I have put myself to great inconvenience
+for persons of whom I know too little, and I begin to be weary of the
+business.  Either you shall immediately summon Miss Fonblanque, or I
+leave this house and put myself under the direction of the police.'
+
+'This is horrible!' exclaimed the man.  'I declare before Heaven I am the
+person meant, but how shall I convince you?  It must have been Clara, I
+perceive, that sent you on this errand--a madwoman, who jests with the
+most deadly interests; and here we are incapable, perhaps, of an
+agreement, and Heaven knows what may depend on our delay!'
+
+He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same time there
+flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous jingle which was to
+serve as password.  'This may, perhaps, assist you,' he said, and then,
+with some embarrassment, '"Nigger, nigger, never die."'
+
+A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the man with the
+chin-beard.  '"Black face and shining eye"--give me the letter,' he
+panted, in one gasp.
+
+'Well,' said Challoner, though still with some reluctance, 'I suppose I
+must regard you as the proper recipient; and though I may justly complain
+of the spirit in which I have been treated, I am only too glad to be done
+with all responsibility.  Here it is,' and he produced the envelope.
+
+The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled in a
+manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the letter.  As he
+read, terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch of nightmare.  He
+struck one hand upon his brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously,
+he crumpled the paper to a ball.  'My gracious powers!' he cried; and
+then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden, he clapped
+forth his head and shoulders, and whistled long and shrill.  Challoner
+fell back into a corner, and resolutely grasping his staff, prepared for
+the most desperate events; but the thoughts of the man with the
+chin-beard were far removed from violence.  Turning again into the room,
+and once more beholding his visitor, whom he appeared to have forgotten,
+he fairly danced with trepidation.  'Impossible!' he cried.  'Oh, quite
+impossible!  O Lord, I have lost my head.'  And then, once more striking
+his hand upon his brow, 'The money!' he exclaimed.  'Give me the money.'
+
+'My good friend,' replied Challoner, 'this is a very painful exhibition;
+and until I see you reasonably master of yourself, I decline to proceed
+with any business.'
+
+'You are quite right,' said the man.  'I am of a very nervous habit; a
+long course of the dumb ague has undermined my constitution.  But I know
+you have money; it may be still the saving of me; and oh, dear young
+gentleman, in pity's name be expeditious!'  Challoner, sincerely uneasy
+as he was, could scarce refrain from laughter; but he was himself in a
+hurry to be gone, and without more delay produced the money.  'You will
+find the sum, I trust, correct,' he observed 'and let me ask you to give
+me a receipt.'
+
+But the man heeded him not.  He seized the money, and disregarding the
+sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, thrust the bundle of notes
+into his pocket.
+
+'A receipt,' repeated Challoner, with some asperity.  'I insist on a
+receipt.'
+
+'Receipt?' repeated the man, a little wildly.  'A receipt?  Immediately!
+Await me here.'
+
+Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no unnecessary time, as
+he was himself desirous of catching a particular train.
+
+'Ah, by God, and so am I!' exclaimed the man with the chin-beard; and
+with that he was gone out of the room, and had rattled upstairs, four at
+a time, to the upper story of the villa.
+
+'This is certainly a most amazing business,' thought Challoner;
+'certainly a most disquieting affair; and I cannot conceal from myself
+that I have become mixed up with either lunatics or malefactors.  I may
+truly thank my stars that I am so nearly and so creditably done with it.'
+Thus thinking, and perhaps remembering the episode of the whistle, he
+turned to the open window.  The garden was still faintly clear; he could
+distinguish the stairs and terraces with which the small domain had been
+adorned by former owners, and the blackened bushes and dead trees that
+had once afforded shelter to the country birds; beyond these he saw the
+strong retaining wall, some thirty feet in height, which enclosed the
+garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of dingy buildings
+rearing its frontage high into the night.  A peculiar object lying
+stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length
+he had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into
+one; and he was still wondering of what service so great an instrument
+could be in such a scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by
+the noise of some one running violently down the stairs.  This was
+followed by the sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that
+again, by rapid and retreating footsteps in the street.
+
+Challoner sprang into the passage.  He ran from room to room, upstairs
+and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten house, he found
+himself alone.  Only in one apartment, looking to the front, were there
+any traces of the late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently slept in
+and not made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search, and on the
+floor a roll of crumpled paper.  This he picked up.  The light in this
+upper story looking to the front was considerably brighter than in the
+parlour; and he was able to make out that the paper bore the mark of the
+hotel at Euston, and even, by peering closely, to decipher the following
+lines in a very elegant and careful female hand:
+
+    'DEAR M'GUIRE,--It is certain your retreat is known.  We have just
+    had another failure, clockwork thirty hours too soon, with the usual
+    humiliating result.  Zero is quite disheartened.  We are all
+    scattered, and I could find no one but the _solemn ass_ who brings
+    you this and the money.  I would love to see your meeting.--Ever
+    yours,
+
+                                                             SHINING EYE.'
+
+Challoner was stricken to the heart.  He perceived by what facility, by
+what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the gull of
+this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure
+against himself, against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle
+counsels had impelled him to embark on that adventure.  At the same time
+a great and troubled curiosity, and a certain chill of fear, possessed
+his spirit.  The conduct of the man with the chin-beard, the terms of the
+letter, and the explosion of the early morning, fitted together like
+parts in some obscure and mischievous imbroglio.  Evil was certainly
+afoot; evil, secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions and the
+passions of the people among whom he had begun to move, like a blind
+puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience told him, was often
+doomed to perish as a victim.
+
+From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the letter
+in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the bell.  He glanced from
+the window; and, conceive his horror and surprise when he beheld,
+clustered on the steps, in the front garden and on the pavement of the
+street, a formidable posse of police!  He started to the full possession
+of his powers and courage.  Escape, and escape at any cost, was the one
+idea that possessed him.  Swiftly and silently he redescended the
+creaking stairs; he was already in the passage when a second and more
+imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes of the empty house; nor
+had the bell ceased to jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill of
+the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden.  His coat was
+hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent heels
+and head below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth, and followed
+by several pots, he dropped upon the sod.  Once more the bell was rung,
+and now with furious and repeated peals.  The desperate Challoner turned
+his eyes on every side.  They fell upon the ladder, and he ran to it, and
+with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to raise it from the ground.
+Suddenly the weight, which was thus resisting his whole strength, began
+to lighten in his hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its
+bulk from off the sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost
+superstitious terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot by foot,
+against the face of the retaining wall.  At the same time, two heads were
+dimly visible above the parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle.
+Something in its modulation recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the
+man with the chin-beard.
+
+Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those very
+miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?  Was this, indeed, a
+means of safety, or but the starting-point of further complication and
+disaster?  He paused not to reflect.  Scarce was the ladder reared to its
+full length than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand over hand,
+swift as an ape, he scaled the tottering stairway.  Strong arms received,
+embraced, and helped him; he was lifted and set once more upon the earth;
+and with the spasm of his alarm yet unsubsided, found himself in the
+company of two rough-looking men, in the paved back yard of one of the
+tall houses that crowned the summit of the hill.  Meanwhile, from below,
+the note of the bell had been succeeded by the sound of vigorous and
+redoubling blows.
+
+'Are you all out?' asked one of his companions; and, as soon as he had
+babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was cut from the top
+round, and the ladder thrust roughly back into the garden, where it fell
+and broke with clattering reverberations.  Its fall was hailed with many
+broken cries; for the whole of Richard Street was now in high emotion,
+the people crowding to the windows or clambering on the garden walls.
+The same man who had already addressed Challoner seized him by the arm;
+whisked him through the basement of the house and across the street upon
+the other side; and before the unfortunate adventurer had time to realise
+his situation, a door was opened, and he was thrust into a low and dark
+compartment.
+
+'Bedad,' observed his guide, 'there was no time to lose.  Is M'Guire
+gone, or was it you that whistled?
+
+'M'Guire is gone,' said Challoner.
+
+The guide now struck a light.  'Ah,' said he, 'this will never do.  You
+dare not go upon the streets in such a figure.  Wait quietly here and I
+will bring you something decent.'
+
+With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus rudely
+awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been worked in
+his attire.  His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly ripped; and the
+best part of one tail of his very elegant frockcoat had been left hanging
+from the iron crockets of the window.  He had scarce had time to measure
+these disasters when his host re-entered the apartment and proceeded,
+without a word, to envelop the refined and urbane Challoner in a long
+ulster of the cheapest material, and of a pattern so gross and vulgar
+that his spirit sickened at the sight.  This calumnious disguise was
+crowned and completed by a soft felt hat of the Tyrolese design, and
+several sizes too small.  At another moment Challoner would simply have
+refused to issue forth upon the world thus travestied; but the desire to
+escape from Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed
+upon his mind.  With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of his new
+coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement.  The man assured
+him that the whole expense was easily met from funds in his possession,
+and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make his best speed out of
+the neighbourhood.
+
+The young man was not loath to take the hint.  True to his usual
+courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his taste in
+greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat abashed by these remarks and the
+manner of their delivery, he hurried forth into the lamplit city.  The
+last train was gone ere, after many deviations, he had reached the
+terminus.  Attired as he was he dared not present himself at any
+reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity of his
+demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth and possibly
+suspicion, in any humbler hostelry.  He was thus condemned to pass the
+solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in pacing the streets of
+Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn,
+with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all
+things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his
+conduct.  It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of
+the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all
+night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a
+thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his
+wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective.  With the
+coming of day, he found in a shy milk-shop the means to appease his
+hunger.  There were still many hours to wait before the departure of the
+South express; these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in
+the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped quietly into
+the station and took his place in the darkest corner of a third-class
+carriage.  Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed
+by heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers.  By the half
+return ticket in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey on the
+easy cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but alas! in
+his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, commingle with his equals;
+and this small annoyance, coming last in such a series of disasters, cut
+him to the heart.
+
+That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the expense,
+anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld the ruins of his
+last good trousers and his last presentable coat; and above all, when his
+eye by any chance alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster,
+his heart would overflow with bitterness, and it was only by a serious
+call on his philosophy that he maintained the dignity of his demeanour.
+
+
+
+
+SOMERSET'S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+
+
+Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery
+imagination, with very small capacity for action.  He was one who lived
+exclusively in dreams and in the future: the creature of his own
+theories, and an actor in his own romances.  From the cigar divan he
+proceeded to parade the streets, still heated with the fire of his
+eloquence, and scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate
+adventure.  In the continual stream of passers-by, on the sealed fronts
+of houses, on the posters that covered the hoardings, and in every
+lineament and throb of the great city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful
+hieroglyph.  But although the elements of adventure were streaming by him
+as thick as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a
+beseeching, now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and
+provoked the notice of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to
+the touch, he even thrust himself into the way and came into direct
+collision with those of the more promising demeanour.  Persons brimful of
+secrets, persons pining for affection, persons perishing for lack of help
+or counsel, he was sure he could perceive on every side; but by some
+contrariety of fortune, each passed upon his way without remarking the
+young gentleman, and went farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the
+confidant, the friend, or the adviser.  To thousands he must have turned
+an appealing countenance, and yet not one regarded him.
+
+A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous aspirations,
+broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune; and when he returned
+to the task, the lamps were already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd was
+dense upon the pavement.  Before a certain restaurant, whose name will
+readily occur to any student of our Babylon, people were already packed
+so closely that passage had grown difficult; and Somerset, standing in
+the kennel, watched, with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat
+weary, the faces and the manners of the crowd.  Suddenly he was startled
+by a gentle touch upon the shoulder, and facing about, he was aware of a
+very plain and elegant brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful horses, and
+driven by a man in sober livery.  There were no arms upon the panel; the
+window was open, but the interior was obscure; the driver yawned behind
+his palm; and the young man was already beginning to suppose himself the
+dupe of his own fancy, when a hand, no larger than a child's and smoothly
+gloved in white, appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned
+him to approach.  He did so, and looked in.  The carriage was occupied by
+a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in
+impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery,
+addressed him in these words--
+
+'Open the door and get in.'
+
+'It must be,' thought the young man with an almost unbearable thrill, 'it
+must be that duchess at last!'  Yet, although the moment was one to which
+he had long looked forward, it was with a certain share of alarm that he
+opened the door, and, mounting into the brougham, took his seat beside
+the lady of the lace.  Whether or no she had touched a spring, or given
+some other signal, the young man had hardly closed the door before the
+carriage, with considerable swiftness, and with a very luxurious and easy
+movement on its springs, turned and began to drive towards the west.
+
+Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long been his
+particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most unlikely
+situations; and this, among others, of the patrician ravisher, was one he
+had familiarly studied.  Strange as it may seem, however, he could find
+no apposite remark; and as the lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further
+sign, they continued to drive in silence through the streets.  Except for
+alternate flashes from the passing lamps, the carriage was plunged in
+obscurity; and beyond the fact that the fittings were luxurious, and that
+the lady was singularly small and slender in person, and, all but one
+gloved hand, still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could
+decipher no detail of an inspiring nature.  The suspense began to grow
+unbearable.  Twice he cleared his throat, and twice the whole resources
+of the language failed him.  In similar scenes, when he had forecast them
+on the theatre of fancy, his presence of mind had always been complete,
+his eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity between the rehearsal and
+the performance, he began to be seized with a panic of apprehension.
+Here, on the very threshold of adventure, suppose him ignominiously to
+fail; suppose that after ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still
+uninterrupted silence, the lady should touch the check-string and
+re-deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the common street!
+Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he reasoned, would be found more
+equal to the part; could, that very instant, by some decisive step, prove
+the lady's choice to have been well inspired, and put a stop to this
+intolerable silence.
+
+His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.  It was better to fall by
+desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one tremulous
+swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself.  One
+overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his
+embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no less
+incapable of speech or further progress; and with the lady's hand in his,
+sat helpless.  But worse was in store.  A peculiar quivering began to
+agitate the form of his companion; the hand that lay unresistingly in
+Somerset's trembled as with ague; and presently there broke forth, in the
+shadow of the carriage, the bubbling and musical sound of laughter,
+resisted but triumphant.  The young man dropped his prize; had it been
+possible, he would have bounded from the carriage.  The lady, meanwhile,
+lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill to trill of the most
+heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and fairy-sounding merriment.
+
+'You must not be offended,' she said at last, catching an opportunity
+between two paroxysms.  'If you have been mistaken in the warmth of your
+attentions, the fault is solely mine; it does not flow from your
+presumption, but from my eccentric manner of recruiting friends; and,
+believe me, I am the last person in the world to think the worse of a
+young man for showing spirit.  As for to-night, it is my intention to
+entertain you to a little supper; and if I shall continue to be as much
+pleased with your manners as I was taken with your face, I may perhaps
+end by making you an advantageous offer.'
+
+Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his discomfiture
+had been too recent and complete.
+
+'Come,' returned the lady, 'we must have no display of temper; that is
+for me the one disqualifying fault; and as I perceive we are drawing near
+our destination, I shall ask you to descend and offer me your arm.'
+
+Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a stately and
+severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset, who was possessed of
+an excellent temper, with the best grace in the world assisted the lady
+to alight.  The door was opened by an old woman of a grim appearance, who
+ushered the pair into a dining-room somewhat dimly lighted, but already
+laid for supper, and occupied by a prodigious company of large and
+valuable cats.  Here, as soon as they were alone, the lady divested
+herself of the lace in which she was enfolded; and Somerset was relieved
+to find, that although still bearing the traces of great beauty, and
+still distinguished by the fire and colour of her eye, her hair was of a
+silvery whiteness and her face lined with years.
+
+'And now, _mon preux_,' said the old lady, nodding at him with a quaint
+gaiety, 'you perceive that I am no longer in my first youth.  You will
+soon find that I am all the better company for that.'
+
+As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light but tasteful
+supper.  They sat down, accordingly, to table, the cats with savage
+pantomime surrounding the old lady's chair; and what with the excellence
+of the meal and the gaiety of his entertainer, Somerset was soon
+completely at his ease.  When they had well eaten and drunk, the old lady
+leaned back in her chair, and taking a cat upon her lap, subjected her
+guest to a prolonged but evidently mirthful scrutiny.
+
+'I fear, madam,' said Somerset, 'that my manners have not risen to the
+height of your preconceived opinion.'
+
+'My dear young man,' she replied, 'you were never more mistaken in your
+life.  I find you charming, and you may very well have lighted on a fairy
+godmother.  I am not one of those who are given to change their opinions,
+and short of substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour
+continue to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiftness of decision, read
+my fellow men and women with a glance, and have acted throughout life on
+first impressions.  Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as
+I suppose, you are a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not
+improbable that we may strike a bargain.'
+
+'Ah, madam,' returned Somerset, 'you have divined my situation.  I am a
+man of birth, parts, and breeding; excellent company, or at least so I
+find myself; but by a peculiar iniquity of fate, destitute alike of trade
+or money.  I was, indeed, this evening upon the quest of an adventure,
+resolved to close with any offer of interest, emolument, or pleasure; and
+your summons, which I profess I am still at some loss to understand,
+jumped naturally with the inclination of my mind.  Call it, if you will,
+impudence; I am here, at least, prepared for any proposition you can find
+it in your heart to make, and resolutely determined to accept.'
+
+'You express yourself very well,' replied the old lady, 'and are
+certainly a droll and curious young man.  I should not care to affirm
+that you were sane, for I have never found any one entirely so besides
+myself; but at least the nature of your madness entertains me, and I will
+reward you with some description of my character and life.'
+
+Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap, proceeded to
+narrate the following particulars.
+
+
+
+_NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY_
+
+
+I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a
+valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.  Our family, a very
+large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good
+old stock where beauty was an heirloom.  In Christian grace of character
+we were unhappily deficient.  From my earliest years I saw and deplored
+the defects of those relatives whose age and position should have enabled
+them to conquer my esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father married
+a second wife, in whom (strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were
+exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree.  Whatever may be
+said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was
+in vain that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my
+stepmother's demands; and from the hour she entered my father's house, I
+may say that I met with nothing but injustice and ingratitude.
+
+I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my disposition; for one
+other of the family besides myself was free from any violence of
+character.  Before I had reached the age of sixteen, this cousin, John by
+name, had conceived for me a sincere but silent passion; and although the
+poor lad was too timid to hint at the nature of his feelings, I had soon
+divined and begun to share them.  For some days I pondered on the odd
+situation created for me by the bashfulness of my admirer; and at length,
+perceiving that he began, in his distress, rather to avoid than seek my
+company, I determined to take the matter into my own hands.  Finding him
+alone in a retired part of the rectory garden, I told him that I had
+divined his amiable secret, that I knew with what disfavour our union was
+sure to be regarded; and that, under the circumstances, I was prepared to
+flee with him at once.  Poor John was literally paralysed with joy; such
+was the force of his emotions, that he could find no words in which to
+thank me; and that I, seeing him thus helpless, was obliged to arrange,
+myself, the details of our flight, and of the stolen marriage which was
+immediately to crown it.  John had been at that time projecting a visit
+to the metropolis.  In this I bade him persevere, and promised on the
+following day to join him at the Tavistock Hotel.
+
+True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose, on the day
+in question, before the servants, packed a few necessaries in a bag, took
+with me the little money I possessed, and bade farewell for ever to the
+rectory.  I walked with good spirits to a town some thirty miles from
+home, and was set down the next morning in this great city of London.  As
+I walked from the coach-office to the hotel, I could not help exulting in
+the pleasant change that had befallen me; beholding, meanwhile, with
+innocent delight, the traffic of the streets, and depicting, in all the
+colours of fancy, the reception that awaited me from John.  But alas!
+when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such
+gentleman among the guests.  By what channel our secret had leaked out,
+or what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I could
+never fathom.  Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself
+alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible
+mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred
+for ever from my father's house.
+
+I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood of Euston
+Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted the joys of
+independence.  Three days afterwards, an advertisement in the _Times_
+directed me to the office of a solicitor whom I knew to be in my father's
+confidence.  There I was given the promise of a very moderate allowance,
+and a distinct intimation that I must never look to be received at home.
+I could not but resent so cruel a desertion, and I told the lawyer it was
+a meeting I desired as little as themselves.  He smiled at my courageous
+spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave me the remainder
+of my personal effects, which had been sent to me, under his care, in a
+couple of rather ponderous boxes.  With these I returned in triumph to my
+lodgings, more content with my position than I should have thought
+possible a week before, and fully determined to make the best of the
+future.
+
+All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own fault alone
+that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of life.  I have, I must
+confess, the fatal trick of spoiling my inferiors.  My landlady, to whom
+I had as usual been overkind, impertinently called me in fault for some
+particular too small to mention; and I, annoyed that I had allowed her
+the freedom upon which she thus presumed, ordered her to leave my
+presence.  She stood a moment dumb, and then, recalling her
+self-possession, 'Your bill,' said she, 'shall be ready this evening, and
+to-morrow, madam, you shall leave my house.  See,' she added, 'that you
+are able to pay what you owe me; for if I do not receive the uttermost
+farthing, no box of yours shall pass my threshold.'
+
+I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole quarter's income was due
+to me, not otherwise affected by the threat.  That afternoon, as I left
+the solicitor's door, carrying in one hand, and done up in a paper
+parcel, the whole amount of my fortune, there befell me one of those
+decisive incidents that sometimes shape a life.  The lawyer's office was
+situate in a street that opened at the upper end upon the Strand, and was
+closed at the lower, at the time of which I speak, by a row of iron
+railings looking on the Thames.  Down this street, then, I beheld my
+stepmother advancing to meet me, and doubtless bound to the very house I
+had just left.  She was attended by a maid whose face was new to me, but
+her own was too clearly printed on my memory; and the sight of it, even
+from a distance, filled me with generous indignation.  Flight was
+impossible.  There was nothing left but to retreat against the railing,
+and with my back turned to the street, pretend to be admiring the barges
+on the river or the chimneys of transpontine London.
+
+I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the turbulence of
+my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me with a trivial
+question.  It was the maid whom my stepmother, with characteristic
+hardness, had left to await her on the street, while she transacted her
+business with the family solicitor.  The girl did not know who I was; the
+opportunity too golden to be lost; and I was soon hearing the latest news
+of my father's rectory and parish.  It did not surprise me to find that
+she detested her employers; and yet the terms in which she spoke of them
+were hard to bear, hard to let pass unchallenged.  I heard them, however,
+without dissent, for my self-command is wonderful; and we might have
+parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to criticise
+the rector's missing daughter, and with the most shocking perversions, to
+narrate the story of her flight.  My nature is so essentially generous
+that I can never pause to reason.  I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as
+well as I remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet
+slipped from my fingers, glanced between the railings, and fell and sunk
+in the river.  I stood a moment petrified, and then, struck by the
+drollery of the incident, gave way to peals of laughter.  I was still
+laughing when my stepmother reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless
+considered me insane, ran off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my
+gravity when I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh
+advance.  His answer made me serious enough, for it was a flat refusal;
+and it was not until I had besought him even with tears, that he
+consented to lend me ten pounds from his own pocket.  'I am a poor man,'
+said he, 'and you must look for nothing farther at my hands.'
+
+The landlady met me at the door.  'Here, madam,' said she, with a curtsey
+insolently low, 'here is my bill.  Would it inconvenience you to settle
+it at once?'
+
+'You shall be paid, madam,' said I, 'in the morning, in the proper
+course.'  And I took the paper with a very high air, but inwardly
+quaking.
+
+I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost.  I had
+been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had now
+reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen
+and fourpence halfpenny.  All evening I sat by the fire considering my
+situation.  I could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to
+remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was I to find
+another lodging?  For three months, unless I could invent some remedy, I
+was condemned to be without a roof and without a penny.  It can surprise
+no one that I decided on immediate flight; but even here I was confronted
+by a difficulty, for I had no sooner packed my boxes than I found I was
+not strong enough to move, far less to carry them.
+
+In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a shawl and
+bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I betook myself to that
+great bazaar of dangerous and smiling chances, the pavement of the city.
+It was already late at night, and the weather being wet and windy, there
+were few abroad besides policemen.  These, on my present mission, I had
+wit enough to know for enemies; and wherever I perceived their moving
+lanterns, I made haste to turn aside and choose another thoroughfare.  A
+few miserable women still walked the pavement; here and there were young
+fellows returning drunk, or ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the
+mouths of alleys; but of any one to whom I might appeal in my distress, I
+began almost to despair.
+
+At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one who was
+evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments, from his furred
+great-coat to the fine cigar which he was smoking, comfortably breathed
+of wealth.  Much as my face has changed from its original beauty, I still
+retain (or so I tell myself) some traces of the youthful lightness of my
+figure.  Even veiled as I then was, I could perceive the gentleman was
+struck by my appearance: and this emboldened me for my adventure.
+
+'Sir,' said I, with a quickly beating heart, 'sir, are you one in whom a
+lady can confide?'
+
+'Why, my dear,' said he, removing his cigar, 'that depends on
+circumstances.  If you will raise your veil--'
+
+'Sir,' I interrupted, 'let there be no mistake.  I ask you, as a
+gentleman, to serve me, but I offer no reward.'
+
+'That is frank,' said he; 'but hardly tempting.  And what, may I inquire,
+is the nature of the service?'
+
+But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on so short an
+interview.  'If you will accompany me,' said I, 'to a house not far from
+here, you can see for yourself.'
+
+He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing away his
+cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, 'Here goes!' said he, and with
+perfect politeness offered me his arm.  I was wise enough to take it; to
+prolong our walk as far as possible, by more than one excursion from the
+shortest line; and to beguile the way with that sort of conversation
+which should prove to him indubitably from what station in society I
+sprang.  By the time we reached the door of my lodging, I felt sure I had
+confirmed his interest, and might venture, before I turned the pass-key,
+to beseech him to moderate his voice and to tread softly.  He promised to
+obey me: and I admitted him into the passage and thence into my
+sitting-room, which was fortunately next the door.
+
+'And now,' said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted a candle,
+'what is the meaning of all this?'
+
+'I wish you,' said I, speaking with great difficulty, 'to help me out
+with these boxes--and I wish nobody to know.'
+
+He took up the candle.  'And I wish to see your face,' said he.
+
+I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with every
+appearance of resolve that I could summon up.  For some time he gazed
+into my face, still holding up the candle.  'Well,' said he at last, 'and
+where do you wish them taken?'
+
+I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in my voice
+that I replied.  'I had thought we might carry them between us to the
+corner of Euston Road,' said I, 'where, even at this late hour, we may
+still find a cab.'
+
+'Very good,' was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the heavier of my
+trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle of the second, signed to
+me to help him at the other end.  In this order we made good our retreat
+from the house, and without the least adventure, drew pretty near to the
+corner of Euston Road.  Before a house, where there was a light still
+burning, my companion paused.  'Let us here,' said he, 'set down our
+boxes, while we go forward to the end of the street in quest of a cab.
+By doing so, we can still keep an eye upon their safety, and we avoid the
+very extraordinary figure we should otherwise present--a young man, a
+young lady, and a mass of baggage, standing castaway at midnight on the
+streets of London.'  So it was done, and the event proved him to be wise;
+for long before there was any word of a cab, a policeman appeared upon
+the scene, turned upon us the full glare of his lantern, and hung
+suspiciously behind us in a doorway.
+
+'There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,' said my champion, with
+affected cheerfulness.  But the constable's answer was ungracious; and as
+for the offer of a cigar, with which this rebuff was most unwisely
+followed up, he refused it point-blank, and without the least civility.
+The young gentleman looked at me with a warning grimace, and there we
+continued to stand, on the edge of the pavement, in the beating rain, and
+with the policeman still silently watching our movements from the
+doorway.
+
+At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler
+appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my
+companion.  'Just pull up here, will you?' he cried.  'We have some
+baggage up the street.'
+
+And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still
+closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose
+from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil.  The light
+in the house had been extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was
+dark; there was nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded
+trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such
+questionable circumstances.
+
+'Where have these things come from?' asked the policeman, flashing his
+light full into my champion's face.
+
+'Why, from that house, of course,' replied the young gentleman, hastily
+shouldering a trunk.
+
+The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows; he then
+took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course which had
+infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us already hurrying down the
+street under our double burthen, thought better or worse of it, and
+followed in our wake.
+
+'For God's sake,' whispered my companion, 'tell me where to drive to.'
+
+'Anywhere,' I replied with anguish.  'I have no idea.  Anywhere you
+like.'
+
+Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I had already
+entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones the address of
+the house in which we are now seated.  The policeman, I could see, was
+staggered.  This neighbourhood, so retired, so aristocratic, was far from
+what he had expected.  For all that, he took the number of the cab, and
+spoke for a few seconds and with a decided manner in the cabman's ear.
+
+'What can he have said?' I gasped, as soon as the cab had rolled away.
+
+'I can very well imagine,' replied my champion; 'and I can assure you
+that you are now condemned to go where I have said; for, should we
+attempt to change our destination by the way, the jarvey will drive us
+straight to a police-office.  Let me compliment you on your nerves,' he
+added.  'I have had, I believe, the most horrible fright of my
+existence.'
+
+But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange a disarray
+that speech was now become impossible; and we made the drive
+thenceforward in unbroken silence.  When we arrived before the door of
+our destination, the young gentleman alighted, opened it with a pass-key
+like one who was at home, bade the driver carry the trunks into the hall,
+and dismissed him with a handsome fee.  He then led me into this
+dining-room, looking nearly as you behold it, but with certain marks of
+bachelor occupancy, and hastened to pour out a glass of wine, which he
+insisted on my drinking.  As soon as I could find my voice, 'In God's
+name,' I cried, 'where am I?'
+
+He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no more
+urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits.  As he spoke
+he offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed, I stood in great
+want, for I was faint, and inclined to be hysterical.  Then he sat down
+beside the fire, lit another cigar, and for some time observed me
+curiously in silence.
+
+'And now,' said he, 'that you have somewhat restored yourself, will you
+be kind enough to tell me in what sort of crime I have become a partner?
+Are you murderer, smuggler, thief, or only the harmless and domestic
+moonlight flitter?'
+
+I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without permission,
+for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on our first meeting; and
+now, at these explicit insults, I resolved at once to reconquer his
+esteem.  The judgment of the world I have consistently despised, but I
+had already begun to set a certain value on the good opinion of my
+entertainer.  Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon brightening into
+my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly narrated the circumstances of
+my birth, my flight, and subsequent misfortunes.  He heard me to an end
+in silence, gravely smoking.  'Miss Fanshawe,' said he, when I had done,
+'you are a very comical and most enchanting creature; and I can see
+nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow morning and satisfy
+your landlady's demands.'
+
+'You strangely misinterpret my confidence,' was my reply; 'and if you had
+at all appreciated my character, you would understand that I can take no
+money at your hands.'
+
+'Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,' he returned; 'nor do
+I at all despair of persuading even your unconquerable self.  I desire
+you to examine me with critical indulgence.  My name is Henry Luxmore,
+Lord Southwark's second son.  I possess nine thousand a year, the house
+in which we are now sitting, and seven others in the best neighbourhoods
+in town.  I do not believe I am repulsive to the eye, and as for my
+character, you have seen me under trial.  I think you simply the most
+original of created beings; I need not tell you what you know very well,
+that you are ravishingly pretty; and I have nothing more to add, except
+that, foolish as it may appear, I am already head over heels in love with
+you.'
+
+'Sir,' said I, 'I am prepared to be misjudged; but while I continue to
+accept your hospitality that fact alone should be enough to protect me
+from insult.'
+
+'Pardon me,' said he: 'I offer you marriage.'  And leaning back in his
+chair he replaced his cigar between his lips.
+
+I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, but couched
+in terms so singular.  But he knew very well how to obtain his purposes,
+for he was not only handsome in person, but his very coolness had a
+charm; and to make a long story short, a fortnight later I became the
+wife of the Honourable Henry Luxmore.
+
+For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet.  My
+Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his roof, but
+not for long; for though he was easily over-excited, his nature was
+placable below the surface, and with all his faults, I loved him
+tenderly.  At last he was taken from me; and such is the power of
+self-deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying, he actually
+assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the violence of my
+temper!
+
+There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara.  She had,
+indeed, inherited a shadow of her father's failing; but in all things
+else, unless my partial eyes deceived me, she derived her qualities from
+me, and might be called my moral image.  On my side, whatever else I may
+have done amiss, as a mother I was above reproach.  Here, then, was
+surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a relation in
+which I might hope to taste repose.  But it was not to be.  You will
+hardly credit me when I inform you that she ran away from home; yet such
+was the case.  Some whim about oppressed nationalities--Ireland, Poland,
+and the like--has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter
+a young lady (I must say, of remarkable attractions) answering to the
+name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I am told she uses these
+indifferently, as well as many others), tell her, from me, that I forgive
+her cruelty, and though I will never more behold her face, I am at any
+time prepared to make her a liberal allowance.
+
+On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details of
+business.  I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides this,
+formed part of Mr. Luxmore's property: I have found them seven white
+elephants.  The greed of tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors, and the
+incapacity that sits upon the bench, have combined together to make these
+houses the burthen of my life.  I had no sooner, indeed, begun to look
+into these matters for myself, than I discovered so many injustices and
+met with so much studied incivility, that I was plunged into a long
+series of lawsuits, some of which are pending to this day.  You must have
+heard my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports: a
+strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for
+peace!  But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once begun a
+task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled.  I have met with
+every obstacle: insolence and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my
+adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most
+distasteful in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed--always, I
+must allow, civility--but never a spark of independence, never that
+knowledge of the law and love of justice which we have a right to look
+for in a judge, the most august of human officers.  And still, against
+all these odds, I have undissuadably persevered.
+
+It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on which
+I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy pilgrimage
+to my various houses.  Four were at that time tenantless and closed, like
+pillars of salt, commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline
+of private virtue.  Three were occupied by persons who had wearied me by
+every conceivable unjust demand and legal subterfuge--persons whom, at
+that very hour, I was moving heaven and earth to turn into the street.
+This was perhaps the sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot
+within me to behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an
+insolent ostentation, these handsome structures which were as much mine
+as the flesh upon my body.
+
+One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are.  I had
+let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that I have
+always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman attached to Prince
+Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must certainly have heard of; and I had
+supposed, from the character and position of my tenant, that here, at
+least, I was safe against annoyance.  What was my surprise to find this
+house also shuttered and apparently deserted!  I will not deny that I was
+offended; I conceived that a house, like a yacht, was better to be kept
+in commission; and I promised myself to bring the matter before my
+solicitor the following morning.  Meanwhile the sight recalled my fancy
+naturally to the past; and yielding to the tender influence of sentiment,
+I sat down opposite the door upon the garden parapet.  It was August, and
+a sultry afternoon, but that spot is sheltered, as you may observe by
+daylight, under the branches of a spreading chestnut; the square, too,
+was deserted; there was a sound of distant music in the air; and all
+combined to plunge me into that most agreeable of states, which is
+neither happiness nor sorrow, but shares the poignancy of both.
+
+From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very handsomely
+appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several men of an
+appearance more than decent, and bearing on its panels, instead of a
+trader's name, a coat-of-arms too modest to be deciphered from where I
+sat.  It drew up before my house, the door of which was immediately
+opened by one of the men.  His companions--I counted seven of them in
+all--proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the van and carry
+into the house a variety of hampers, bottle-baskets, and boxes, such as
+are designed for plate and napery.  The windows of the dining-room were
+thrown widely open, as though to air it; and I saw some of those within
+laying the table for a meal.  Plainly, I concluded, my tenant was about
+to return; and while still determined to submit to no aggression on my
+rights, I was gratified by the number and discipline of his attendants,
+and the quiet profusion that appeared to reign in his establishment.  I
+was still so thinking when, to my extreme surprise, the windows and
+shutters of the dining-room were once more closed; the men began to
+reappear from the interior and resume their stations on the van; the last
+closed the door behind his exit; the van drove away; and the house was
+once more left to itself, looking blindly on the square with shuttered
+windows, as though the whole affair had been a vision.
+
+It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and thus brought my
+eyes a little nearer to the level of the fanlight over the door, I saw
+that, though the day had still some hours to run, the hall lamps had been
+lighted and left burning.  Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were
+not expected before night.  For whom, I asked myself with indignation,
+were such secret preparations likely to be made?  Although no prude, I am
+a woman of decided views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband
+had brought me, was to serve in the character of a _petite maison_, I saw
+myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of litigation; and,
+determined to return and know the worst, I hastened to my hotel for
+dinner.
+
+I was at my post by ten.  The night was clear and quiet; the moon rode
+very high and put the lamps to shame; and the shadow below the chestnut
+was black as ink.  Here, then, I ensconced myself on the low parapet,
+with my back against the railings, face to face with the moonlit front of
+my old home, and ruminating gently on the past.  Time fled; eleven struck
+on all the city clocks; and presently after I was aware of the approach
+of a gentleman of stately and agreeable demeanour.  He was smoking as he
+walked; his light paletot, which was open, did not conceal his evening
+clothes; and he bore himself with a serious grace that immediately
+awakened my attention.  Before the door of this house he took a pass-key
+from his pocket, quietly admitted himself, and disappeared into the
+lamplit hall.
+
+He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much younger man
+approaching hastily from the opposite side of the square.  Considering
+the season of the year and the genial mildness of the night, he was
+somewhat closely muffled up; and as he came, for all his hurry, he kept
+looking nervously behind him.  Arrived before my door, he halted and set
+one foot upon the step, as though about to enter; then, with a sudden
+change, he turned and began to hurry away; halted a second time, as if in
+painful indecision; and lastly, with a violent gesture, wheeled about,
+returned straight to the door, and rapped upon the knocker.  He was
+almost immediately admitted by the first arrival.
+
+My curiosity was now broad awake.  I made myself as small as I could in
+the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the sequel.  Nor had I
+long to wait.  From the same side of the square a second young man made
+his appearance, walking slowly and softly, and like the first, muffled to
+the nose.  Before the house he paused, looked all about him with a swift
+and comprehensive glance; and seeing the square lie empty in the moon and
+lamplight, leaned far across the area railings and appeared to listen to
+what was passing in the house.  From the dining-room there came the
+report of a champagne cork, and following upon that, the sound of rich
+and manly laughter.  The listener took heart of grace, produced a key,
+unlocked the area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him, and descended the
+stair.  Just when his head had reached the level of the pavement, he
+turned half round and once more raked the square with a suspicious
+eyeshot.  The mufflings had fallen lower round his neck; the moon shone
+full upon him; and I was startled to observe the pallor and passionate
+agitation of his face.
+
+I could remain no longer passive.  Persuaded that something deadly was
+afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the area railings.  There was
+no one below; the man must therefore have entered the house, with what
+purpose I dreaded to imagine.  I have at no part of my career lacked
+courage; and now, finding the area gate was merely laid to, I pushed it
+gently open and descended the stairs.  The kitchen door of the house,
+like the area gate, was closed but not fastened.  It flashed upon me that
+the criminal was thus preparing his escape; and the thought, as it
+confirmed the worst of my suspicions, lent me new resolve.  I entered the
+house; and being now quite reckless of my life, I shut and locked the
+door.
+
+From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of a voice in
+easy conversation.  On the ground floor all was not only profoundly
+silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh upon my eyes.  Here, then, I
+stood for some time, having thrust myself uncalled into the utmost peril,
+and being destitute of any power to help or interfere.  Nor will I deny
+that fear had begun already to assail me, when I became aware, all at
+once and as though by some immediate but silent incandescence, of a
+certain glimmering of light upon the passage floor.  Towards this I
+groped my way with infinite precaution; and having come at length as far
+as the angle of the corridor, beheld the door of the butler's pantry
+standing just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling from the
+chink.  Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture.  The man sat
+within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most rapt
+attention.  On a table before him he had laid a watch, a pair of steel
+revolvers, and a bull's-eye lantern.  For one second many contradictory
+theories and projects whirled together in my head; the next, I had
+slammed the door and turned the key upon the malefactor.  Surprised at my
+own decision, I stood and panted, leaning on the wall.  From within the
+pantry not a sound was to be heard; the man, whatever he was, had
+accepted his fate without a struggle, and now, as I hugged myself to
+fancy, sat frozen with terror and looking for the worst to follow.  I
+promised myself that he should not be disappointed; and the better to
+complete my task, I turned to ascend the stairs.
+
+The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed to me
+suddenly by my strong sense of humour.  Here was I, the owner of the
+house, burglariously present in its walls; and there, in the dining-room,
+were two gentlemen, unknown to me, seated complacently at supper, and
+only saved by my promptitude from some surprising or deadly interruption.
+It were strange if I could not manage to extract the matter of amusement
+from so unusual a situation.
+
+Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended for a
+library.  It was to this that I cautiously groped my way; and you will
+see how fortune had exactly served me.  The weather, I have said, was
+sultry; in order to ventilate the dining-room and yet preserve the
+uninhabited appearance of the mansion to the front, the window of the
+library had been widely opened, and the door of communication between the
+two apartments left ajar.  To this interval I now applied my eye.
+
+Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened brightness
+on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a cold collation of
+the rarest delicacy.  The two gentlemen had finished supper, and were now
+trifling with cigars and maraschino; while in a silver spirit lamp,
+coffee of the most captivating fragrance was preparing in the fashion of
+the East.  The elder of the two, he who had first arrived, was placed
+directly facing me; the other was set on his left hand.  Both, like the
+man in the butler's pantry, seemed to be intently listening; and on the
+face of the second I thought I could perceive the marks of fear.  Oddly
+enough, however, when they came to speak, the parts were found to be
+reversed.
+
+'I assure you,' said the elder gentleman, 'I not only heard the slamming
+of a door, but the sound of very guarded footsteps.'
+
+'Your highness was certainly deceived,' replied the other.  'I am endowed
+with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled.'
+Yet the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord with
+the tenor of his words.
+
+His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince Florizel)
+looked at his companion for the least fraction of a second; and though
+nothing shook the easy quiet of his attitude, I could see that he was far
+from being duped.  'It is well,' said he; 'let us dismiss the topic.  And
+now, sir, that I have very freely explained the sentiments by which I am
+directed, let me ask you, according to your promise, to imitate my
+frankness.'
+
+'I have heard you,' replied the other, 'with great interest.'
+
+'With singular patience,' said the prince politely.
+
+'Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,' returned the young
+man.  'I know not how to tell the change that has befallen me.  You have,
+I must suppose, a charm, to which even your enemies are subject.'  He
+looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and visibly blanched.  'So late!'
+he cried.  'Your highness--God knows I am now speaking from the
+heart--before it be too late, leave this house!'
+
+The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very deliberately
+shook the ash from his cigar.  'That is a strange remark,' said he; 'and
+_a propos de bottes_, I never continue a cigar when once the ash is
+fallen; the spell breaks, the soul of the flavour flies away, and there
+remains but the dead body of tobacco; and I make it a rule to throw away
+that husk and choose another.'  He suited the action to the words.
+
+'Do not trifle with my appeal,' resumed the young man, in tones that
+trembled with emotion.  'It is made at the price of my honour and to the
+peril of my life.  Go--go now! lose not a moment; and if you have any
+kindness for a young man, miserably deceived indeed, but not devoid of
+better sentiments, look not behind you as you leave.'
+
+'Sir,' said the prince, 'I am here upon your honour; assure you upon mine
+that I shall continue to rely upon that safeguard.  The coffee is ready;
+I must again trouble you, I fear.'  And with a courteous movement of the
+hand, he seemed to invite his companion to pour out the coffee.
+
+The unhappy young man rose from his seat.  'I appeal to you,' he cried,
+'by every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in pity to yourself,
+begone before it is too late.'
+
+'Sir,' replied the prince, 'I am not readily accessible to fear; and if
+there is one defect to which I must plead guilty, it is that of a curious
+disposition.  You go the wrong way about to make me leave this house, in
+which I play the part of your entertainer; and, suffer me to add, young
+man, if any peril threaten us, it was of your contriving, not of mine.'
+
+'Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,' cried the other.  'But I
+at least will have no hand in it.'  With these words he carried his hand
+to his pocket, hastily swallowed the contents of a phial, and, with the
+very act, reeled back and fell across his chair upon the floor.  The
+prince left his place and came and stood above him, where he lay
+convulsed upon the carpet.  'Poor moth!' I heard his highness murmur.
+'Alas, poor moth! must we again inquire which is the more fatal--weakness
+or wickedness?  And can a sympathy with ideas, surely not ignoble in
+themselves, conduct a man to this dishonourable death?'
+
+By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the room.  'Your
+highness,' said I, 'this is no time for moralising; with a little
+promptness we may save this creature's life; and as for the other, he
+need cause you no concern, for I have him safely under lock and key.'
+
+The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me certainly
+with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which almost robbed me of
+my self-possession.  'My dear madam,' he cried at last, 'and who the
+devil are you?'
+
+I was already on the floor beside the dying man.  I had, of course, no
+idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and I was forced to try
+him with a variety of antidotes.  Here were both oil and vinegar, for the
+prince had done the young man the honour of compounding for him one of
+his celebrated salads; and of each of these I administered from a quarter
+to half a pint, with no apparent efficacy.  I next plied him with the hot
+coffee, of which there may have been near upon a quart.
+
+'Have you no milk?' I inquired.
+
+'I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,' returned the prince.
+
+'Salt, then,' said I; 'salt is a revulsive.  Pass the salt.'
+
+'And possibly the mustard?' asked his highness, as he offered me the
+contents of the various salt-cellars poured together on a plate.
+
+'Ah,' cried I, 'the thought is excellent!  Mix me about half a pint of
+mustard, drinkably dilute.'
+
+Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere combination of so
+many subversive agents, as soon as the last had been poured over his
+throat, the young sufferer obtained relief.
+
+'There!' I exclaimed, with natural triumph, 'I have saved a life!'
+
+'And yet, madam,' returned the prince, 'your mercy may be cruelty
+disguised.  Where the honour is lost, it is, at least, superfluous to
+prolong the life.'
+
+'If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,' I replied,
+'you would hold a very different opinion.  For my part, and after
+whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should still count
+to-morrow worth a trial.'
+
+'You speak as a lady, madam,' said the prince; 'and for such you speak
+the truth.  But to men there is permitted such a field of license, and
+the good behaviour asked of them is at once so easy and so little, that
+to fail in that is to fall beyond the reach of pardon.  But will you
+suffer me to repeat a question, put to you at first, I am afraid, with
+some defect of courtesy; and to ask you once more, who you are and how I
+have the honour of your company?'
+
+'I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,' said I.
+
+'And still I am at fault,' returned the prince.
+
+But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to strike the
+hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself upon one elbow, with
+an expression of despair and horror that I have never seen excelled,
+cried lamentably, 'Midnight! oh, just God!'  We stood frozen to our
+places, while the tingling hammer of the timepiece measured the remaining
+strokes; nor had we yet stirred, so tragic had been the tones of the
+young man, when the various bells of London began in turn to declare the
+hour.  The timepiece was inaudible beyond the walls of the chamber where
+we stood; but the second pulsation of Big Ben had scarcely throbbed into
+the night, before a sharp detonation rang about the house.  The prince
+sprang for the door by which I had entered; but quick as he was, I yet
+contrived to intercept him.
+
+'Are you armed?' I cried.
+
+'No, madam,' replied he.  'You remind me appositely; I will take the
+poker.'
+
+'The man below,' said I, 'has two revolvers.  Would you confront him at
+such odds?'
+
+He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.
+
+'And yet, madam,' said he, 'we cannot continue to remain in ignorance of
+what has passed.'
+
+'No!' cried I.  'And who proposes it?  I am as curious as yourself, but
+let us rather send for the police; or, if your highness dreads a scandal,
+for some of your own servants.'
+
+'Nay, madam,' he replied, smiling, 'for so brave a lady, you surprise me.
+Would you have me, then, send others where I fear to go myself?'
+
+'You are perfectly right,' said I, 'and I was entirely wrong.  Go, in
+God's name, and I will hold the candle!'
+
+Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he carrying the
+poker, I the light; and together we approached and opened the door of the
+butler's pantry.  In some sort, I believe, I was prepared for the
+spectacle that met our eyes; I was prepared, that is, to find the villain
+dead, but the rude details of such a violent suicide I was unable to
+endure.  The prince, unshaken by horror as he had remained unshaken by
+alarm, assisted me with the most respectful gallantry to regain the
+dining-room.
+
+There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly
+recovered and already seated on a chair.  He held out both his hands with
+a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.
+
+'He is dead,' said the prince.
+
+'Alas!' cried the young man, 'and it should be I!  What do I do, thus
+lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, my sure comrade,
+blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fidelity, has judged and
+slain himself for an involuntary fault?  Ah, sir,' said he, 'and you too,
+madam, without whose cruel help I should be now beyond the reach of my
+accusing conscience, you behold in me the victim equally of my own faults
+and virtues.  I was born a hater of injustice; from my most tender years
+my blood boiled against heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men
+when I witnessed the sorrows of the poor; the pauper's crust stuck in my
+throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple child has set
+me weeping.  What was there in that but what was noble? and yet observe
+to what a fall these thoughts have led me!  Year after year this passion
+for the lost besieged me closer.  What hope was there in kings? what hope
+in these well-feathered classes that now roll in money?  I had observed
+the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler of to-day, to be
+base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age, combine to pull down
+that which was immediately above and to prey upon those that were below;
+his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his
+days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor
+child shiver in the rain?  The better days, indeed, were coming, but the
+child would die before that.  Alas, your highness, in surely no
+ungenerous impatience I enrolled myself among the enemies of this unjust
+and doomed society; in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fires of my
+philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an irrevocable oath.
+
+'That oath is all my history.  To give freedom to posterity I had
+forsworn my own.  I must attend upon every signal; and soon my father
+complained of my irregular hours and turned me from his house.  I was
+engaged in betrothal to an honest girl; from her also I had to part, for
+she was too shrewd to credit my inventions and too innocent to be
+entrusted with the truth.  Behold me, then, alone with conspirators!
+Alas! as the years went on, my illusions left me.  Surrounded as I was by
+the fervent disciples and apologists of revolution, I beheld them daily
+advance in confidence and desperation; I beheld myself, upon the other
+hand, and with an almost equal regularity, decline in faith.  I had
+sacrificed all to further that cause in which I still believed; and daily
+I began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.  Horrible was
+the society with which we warred, but our own means were not less
+horrible.
+
+'I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to tell you how,
+when I beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers of
+children, cheerfully toiling at their work, my heart reproached me with
+the greatness and vanity of my unhappy sacrifice.  I will not describe to
+you how, worn by poverty, poor lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet
+conscience, my health began to fail, and in the long nights, as I
+wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel sufferings of the
+body were added to the tortures of my mind.  These things are not
+personal to me; they are common to all unfortunates in my position.  An
+oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a thing to break: an oath,
+taken in the heat of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, but
+yet in vain repented, as the years go on: an oath, that was once the very
+utterance of the truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a
+meaningless and empty slavery; such is the yoke that many young men
+joyfully assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer worse
+than death.
+
+'It is not that I was patient.  I have begged to be released; but I knew
+too much, and I was still refused.  I have fled; ay, and for the time
+successfully.  I reached Paris.  I found a lodging in the Rue St.
+Jacques, almost opposite the Val de Grace.  My room was mean and bare,
+but the sun looked into it towards evening; it commanded a peep of a
+green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour's window and made the morning
+beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed and rest myself: I, who
+was in full revolt against the principles that I had served, was now no
+longer at the beck of the council, and was no longer charged with
+shameful and revolting tasks.  Oh! what an interval of peace was that!  I
+still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of my neighbour's bird.
+
+'My money was running out, and it became necessary that I should find
+employment.  Scarcely had I been three days upon the search, ere I
+thought that I was being followed.  I made certain of the features of the
+man, which were quite strange to me, and turned into a small cafe, where
+I whiled away an hour, pretending to read the papers, but inwardly
+convulsed with terror.  When I came forth again into the street, it was
+quite empty, and I breathed again; but alas, I had not turned three
+corners, when I once more observed the human hound pursuing me.  Not an
+hour was to be lost; timely submission might yet preserve a life which
+otherwise was forfeit and dishonoured; and I fled, with what speed you
+may conceive, to the Paris agency of the society I served.
+
+'My submission was accepted.  I took up once more the hated burthen of
+that life; once more I was at the call of men whom I despised and hated,
+while yet I envied and admired them.  They at least were wholehearted in
+the things they purposed; but I, who had once been such as they, had
+fallen from the brightness of my faith, and now laboured, like a
+hireling, for the wages of a loathed existence.  Ay, sir, to that I was
+condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and lived but to obey.
+
+'The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has to-night so
+tragically ended.  Boldly telling who I was, I was to request from your
+highness, on behalf of my society, a private audience, where it was
+designed to murder you.  If one thing remained to me of my old
+convictions, it was the hate of kings; and when this task was offered me,
+I took it gladly.  Alas, sir, you triumphed.  As we supped, you gained
+upon my heart.  Your character, your talents, your designs for our
+unhappy country, all had been misrepresented.  I began to forget you were
+a prince; I began, all too feelingly, to remember that you were a man.
+As I saw the hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and when, at last,
+we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my unwilling ears
+the arrival of the partner of my crime, you will bear me out with what
+instancy I besought you to depart.  You would not, alas! and what could
+I?  Kill you, I could not; my heart revolted, my hand turned back from
+such a deed.  Yet it was impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for
+when the hour struck and my companion came, true to his appointment, and
+he, at least, true to our design, I could neither suffer you to be killed
+nor yet him to be arrested.  From such a tragic passage, death, and death
+alone, could save me; and it is no fault of mine if I continue to exist.
+
+'But you, madam,' continued the young man, addressing himself more
+directly to myself, 'were doubtless born to save the prince and to
+confound our purposes.  My life you have prolonged; and by turning the
+key on my companion, you have made me the author of his death.  He heard
+the hour strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to
+honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon his highness and perish
+for lack of his support, he has turned his pistol on himself.'
+
+'You are right,' said Prince Florizel: 'it was in no ungenerous spirit
+that you brought these burthens on yourself; and when I see you so nobly
+to blame, so tragically punished, I stand like one reproved.  For is it
+not strange, madam, that you and I, by practising accepted and
+inconsiderable virtues, and commonplace but still unpardonable faults,
+should stand here, in the sight of God, with what we call clean hands and
+quiet consciences; while this poor youth, for an error that I could
+almost envy him, should be sunk beyond the reach of hope?
+
+'Sir,' resumed the prince, turning to the young man, 'I cannot help you;
+my help would but unchain the thunderbolt that overhangs you; and I can
+but leave you free.'
+
+'And, sir,' said I, 'as this house belongs to me, I will ask you to have
+the kindness to remove the body.  You and your conspirators, it appears
+to me, can hardly in civility do less.'
+
+'It shall be done,' said the young man, with a dismal accent.
+
+'And you, dear madam,' said the prince, 'you, to whom I owe my life, how
+can I serve you?'
+
+'Your highness,' I said, 'to be very plain, this is my favourite house,
+being not only a valuable property, but endeared to me by various
+associations.  I have endless troubles with tenants of the ordinary
+class: and at first applauded my good fortune when I found one of the
+station of your Master of the Horse.  I now begin to think otherwise:
+dangers set a siege about great personages; and I do not wish my tenement
+to share these risks.  Procure me the resiliation of the lease, and I
+shall feel myself your debtor.'
+
+'I must tell you, madam,' replied his highness, 'that Colonel Geraldine
+is but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry indeed to think myself
+so unacceptable a tenant.'
+
+'Your highness,' said I, 'I have conceived a sincere admiration for your
+character; but on the subject of house property, I cannot allow the
+interference of my feelings.  I will, however, to prove to you that there
+is nothing personal in my request, here solemnly engage my word that I
+will never put another tenant in this house.'
+
+'Madam,' said Florizel, 'you plead your cause too charmingly to be
+refused.'
+
+Thereupon we all three withdrew.  The young man, still reeling in his
+walk, departed by himself to seek the assistance of his
+fellow-conspirators; and the prince, with the most attentive gallantry,
+lent me his escort to the door of my hotel.  The next day, the lease was
+cancelled; nor from that hour to this, though sometimes regretting my
+engagement, have I suffered a tenant in this house.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Continued_).
+
+
+As soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset made haste to
+offer her his compliments.
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'your story is not only entertaining but instructive;
+and you have told it with infinite vivacity.  I was much affected towards
+the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should
+certainly have joined a secret society if I had been able to find one.
+But the whole tale came home to me; and I was the better able to feel for
+you in your various perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat hasty
+temper.'
+
+'I do not understand you,' said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks of
+irritation.  'You must have strangely misinterpreted what I have told
+you.  You fill me with surprise.'
+
+Somerset, alarmed by the old lady's change of tone and manner, hurried to
+recant.
+
+'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'you certainly misconstrue my remark.  As a
+man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly pricked me when I
+heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons similarly
+constituted.'
+
+'Oh, very well indeed,' replied the old lady; 'and a very proper spirit.
+I regret that I have met with it so rarely.'
+
+'But in all this,' resumed the young man, 'I perceive nothing that
+concerns myself.'
+
+'I am about to come to that,' she returned.  'And you have already before
+you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of the elements of the
+affair.  I am a woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before
+the courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have
+ever been ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in a
+crowd.  Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for
+Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must leave behind and dare not
+let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that
+concern, and do you a very good turn into the bargain, by lending you the
+mansion, with all its fittings, as it stands.  The idea was sudden; it
+appealed to me as humorous: and I am sure it will cause my relatives, if
+they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible chagrin.  Here, then,
+is the key; and when you return at two to-morrow afternoon, you will find
+neither me nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession.'
+
+So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but
+Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.
+
+'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'this is a most unusual proposal.  You know
+nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both impudence and
+timidity.  I may be the worst kind of scoundrel; I may sell your
+furniture--'
+
+'You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!' cried Mrs.
+Luxmore.  'It is in vain to reason.  Such is the force of my character
+that, when I have one idea clearly in my head, I do not care two straws
+for any side consideration.  It amuses me to do it, and let that suffice.
+On your side, you may do what you please--let apartments, or keep a
+private hotel; on mine, I promise you a full month's warning before I
+return, and I never fail religiously to keep my promises.'
+
+The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a sudden
+and significant change in the old lady's countenance.
+
+'If I thought you capable of disrespect!' she cried.
+
+'Madam,' said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration, 'madam,
+I accept.  I beg you to understand that I accept with joy and gratitude.'
+
+'Ah well,' returned Mrs. Luxmore, 'if I am mistaken, let it pass.  And
+now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you a good-night.'
+
+Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried
+Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing, key in hand, upon
+the pavement.
+
+The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way to
+the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that was not its
+name.  What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live in dreams, and yet
+be unprepared for their realisation.  It was already with a certain pang
+of surprise that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a
+solid among solids.  The key, upon trial, readily opened the front door;
+he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the
+echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty chambers.  Cats, servant,
+old lady, the very marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been
+in these few hours obliterated.  He wandered from floor to floor, and
+found the house of great extent; the kitchen offices commodious and well
+appointed; the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in particular,
+an apartment of princely size and tasteful decoration.  Although the day
+without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a ruffling wind from the
+quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of suspended animation inhabited
+the house.  Dust and shadows met the eye; and but for the ominous
+procession of the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden
+trees, the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.
+
+Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the old
+lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted cupolas of the
+kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room appeared to greet him
+with a smiling countenance.  He might as well, he thought, avoid the
+expense of lodging: the library, fitted with an iron bedstead which he
+had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve his purpose for
+the night; while in the dining-room, which was large, airy, and
+lightsome, looking on the square and garden, he might very agreeably pass
+his days, cook his meals, and study to bring himself to some proficiency
+in that art of painting which he had recently determined to adopt.  It
+did not take him long to make the change: he had soon returned to the
+mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was readily
+induced, by the young man's pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to
+assist him in the installation of the iron bed.  By six in the evening,
+when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon the
+mansion with a sense of pride and property.  Four-square it stood, of an
+imposing frontage, and flanked on either side by family hatchments.  His
+eye, from where he stood whistling in the key, with his back to the
+garden railings, reposed on every feature of reality; and yet his own
+possession seemed as flimsy as a dream.
+
+In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began
+to remark the customs of their neighbour.  The sight of a young gentleman
+discussing a clay pipe, about four o'clock of the afternoon, in the
+drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more,
+his periodical excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his
+unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised to a
+high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of the
+square.  The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded to
+the length of insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable with any class
+of men; and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably
+shared, gained for him the right of toleration.
+
+The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of
+its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices.  He scorned to bear
+the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the
+dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life.  There he
+amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen,
+the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in
+smiling assiduity.  Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead
+lay, like a load, upon his imagination.  To hold so great a stake and to
+do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined to
+act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick, with
+wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small handbill announcing
+furnished lodgings.  At half-past six of a fine July morning, he affixed
+the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result.  It seemed,
+to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the
+drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty
+problem of how much he was to charge.
+
+Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.
+Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in
+the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float; and the
+better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself with
+his clay pipe.  On several occasions, passers-by appeared to be arrested
+by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the
+very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there was something
+repulsive in the appearance of the house; for with one accord, they would
+cast but one look upward, and hastily resume their onward progress or
+direct the driver to proceed.  Somerset had thus the mortification of
+actually meeting the eye of a large number of lodging-seekers; and though
+he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to compose his features to an air
+of invitation, he was never rewarded by so much as an inquiry.  'Can
+there,' he thought, 'be anything repellent in myself?'  But a candid
+examination in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to
+dismiss the fear.
+
+Something, however, was amiss.  His vast and accurate calculations on the
+fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been
+an idle sacrifice of time.  By these, he had variously computed the
+weekly takings of the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty
+shillings, up to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet,
+in despite of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making
+literally nothing.
+
+This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful leisure
+on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had detected the
+error of his method.  'This,' he reflected, 'is an age of generous
+display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears' legendary
+soap, and of Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and
+the most disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid
+that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough's pyretic saline.  Lamplough
+was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and
+abominably vulgar; and here have I, a man of some pretensions to
+knowledge of the world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper,
+a few cold words which do not directly address the imagination, and the
+adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red wafers!  Am I,
+then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno?  Am I to adopt that
+modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to take hold of the red
+facts of life with the emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?'
+
+Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very
+largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded to
+compose an ensign that might attract the eye, and at the same time, in
+his own phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger.
+Something taking in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words,
+and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to
+lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
+must be the elements of his advertisement.  It was possible, upon the one
+hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire,
+blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was
+possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to
+set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or,
+boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan.  So long did the artist waver
+between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had
+finally conceived and completed both designs.  With the proverbially
+tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice either
+of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate
+days.  'In this way,' he thought, 'I shall address myself indifferently
+to all classes of the world.'
+
+The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the more
+imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune, and appeared first
+in the window of the mansion.  It was of a high fancy, the legend
+eloquently writ, the scheme of colour taking and bold; and but for the
+imperfection of the artist's drawing, it might have been taken for a
+model of its kind.  As it was, however, when viewed from his favourite
+point against the garden railings, and with some touch of distance, it
+caused a pleasurable rising of the artist's heart.  'I have thrown away,'
+he ejaculated, 'an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my
+first academy picture.'
+
+The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.  A crowd would
+certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-railings; but they
+came to jeer and not to speculate; and those who pushed their inquiries
+further, were too plainly animated by the spirit of derision.  The racier
+of the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive merit;
+and though it had a certain share of that success called scandalous,
+failed utterly of its effect.  On the day, however, of the second
+appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did actually present
+himself before the eyes of Somerset.
+
+This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment, and his
+voice under inadequate control.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said he, 'but what is the meaning of your
+extraordinary bill?'
+
+'I beg yours,' returned Somerset hotly.  'Its meaning is sufficiently
+explicit.'  And being now, from dire experience, fearful of ridicule, he
+was preparing to close the door, when the gentleman thrust his cane into
+the aperture.
+
+'Not so fast, I beg of you,' said he.  'If you really let apartments,
+here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing would give me greater
+pleasure than to see the accommodation and to learn your terms.'
+
+His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, showed him
+over the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive
+eloquence, expounded their attractions.  The gentleman was particularly
+pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-room.
+
+'This,' he said, 'would suit me very well.  What, may I ask, would be
+your terms a week, for this floor and the one above it?'
+
+'I was thinking,' returned Somerset, 'of a hundred pounds.'
+
+'Surely not,' exclaimed the gentleman.
+
+'Well, then,' returned Somerset, 'fifty.'
+
+The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement.  'You seem to
+be strangely elastic in your demands,' said he.  'What if I were to
+proceed on your own principle of division, and offer twenty-five?'
+
+'Done!' cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden embarrassment,
+'You see,' he added apologetically, 'it is all found money for me.'
+
+'Really?' said the stranger, looking at him all the while with growing
+wonder.  'Without extras, then?'
+
+'I--I suppose so,' stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.
+
+'Service included?' pursued the gentleman.
+
+'Service?' cried Somerset.  'Do you mean that you expect me to empty your
+slops?'
+
+The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest.  'My dear
+fellow,' said he, 'if you take my advice, you will give up this
+business.'  And thereupon he resumed his hat and took himself away.
+
+This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist of
+the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier illusions.
+First one and then the other of his great works was condemned, withdrawn
+from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration
+of the dining-room.  Their place was taken by a replica of the original
+wafered announcement, to which, in particularly large letters, he had
+added the pithy rubric: '_No service_.'  Meanwhile he had fallen into
+something as nearly bordering on low spirits as was consistent with his
+disposition; depressed, at once by the failure of his scheme, the
+laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of the
+public to the merit of the twin cartoons.
+
+Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note of the
+knocker.  A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat military air,
+yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat, desired in the politest terms
+to visit the apartments.  He had (he explained) a friend, a gentleman in
+tender health, desirous of a sedate and solitary life, apart from
+interruptions and the noises of the common lodging-house.  'The unusual
+clause,' he continued, 'in your announcement, particularly struck me.
+"This," I said, "is the place for Mr. Jones."  You are yourself, sir, a
+professional gentleman?' concluded the visitor, looking keenly in
+Somerset's face.
+
+'I am an artist,' replied the young man lightly.
+
+'And these,' observed the other, taking a side glance through the open
+door of the dining-room, which they were then passing, 'these are some of
+your works.  Very remarkable.'  And he again and still more sharply
+peered into the countenance of the young man.
+
+Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead his
+visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.
+
+'Excellent,' observed the stranger, as he looked from one of the back
+windows.  'Is that a mews behind, sir?  Very good.  Well, sir: see here.
+My friend will take your drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back
+drawing-room; his nurse, an excellent Irish widow, will attend on all his
+wants and occupy a garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten dollars a
+week; and you, on your part, will engage to receive no other lodger?  I
+think that fair.'
+
+Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and joy.
+
+'Agreed,' said the other; 'and to spare you trouble, my friend will bring
+some men with him to make the changes.  You will find him a retiring
+inmate, sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves the house, except at
+night.'
+
+'Since I have been in this house,' returned Somerset, 'I have myself,
+unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except in the evening.
+But a man,' he added, 'must have some amusement.'
+
+An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset sat down
+to compute in English money the value of the figure named.  The result of
+this investigation filled him with amazement and disgust; but it was now
+too late; nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited the arrival of
+his tenant, still trying, by various arithmetical expedients, to obtain a
+more favourable quotation for the dollar.  With the approach of dusk,
+however, his impatience drove him once more to the front balcony.  The
+night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone around the central darkness
+of the garden; and through the tall grove of trees that intervened, many
+warmly illuminated windows on the farther side of the square, told their
+tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial hospitality.  The stars
+were already thickening overhead, when the young man's eyes alighted on a
+procession of three four-wheelers, coasting round the garden railing and
+bound for the Superfluous Mansion.  They were laden with formidable
+boxes; moved in a military order, one following another; and, by the
+extreme slowness of their advance, inspired Somerset with the most
+serious ideas of his tenant's malady.
+
+By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
+pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military
+gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart porters.  These proceeded
+instantly to take possession of the house; with their own hands, and
+firmly rejecting Somerset's assistance, they carried in the various
+crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the
+back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and it was
+not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were
+complete, that there descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a
+gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder
+of a woman in a widow's dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and
+muffled in a coloured comforter.
+
+Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into the
+back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on the
+house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-past ten, and,
+with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in the
+neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to be alone in
+the Superfluous Mansion.
+
+Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
+sight of his mysterious lodger.  The doors of the drawing-room flat were
+never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the
+tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments.  Visitors,
+indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours
+of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired, some
+decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of Somerset,
+displeasing.  A certain air of fear and secrecy was common to them all;
+they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the military
+gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at all; and
+as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners were not
+suggestive of a university career.  The nurse, again, was scarcely a
+desirable house-fellow.  Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in the
+young man's private bottle was much accelerated; and though never
+communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar.  When asked about
+the patient's health, she would dolorously shake her head, and declare
+that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.
+
+Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
+complaint was other than bodily.  The ill-looking birds that gathered to
+the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the
+dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate habits of
+the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of
+Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn
+to in a court of justice--all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man's
+mind.  A sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and
+depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in
+his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of
+observing the features of his tenant.  It fell in this way.  The young
+landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in the hall.
+Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he saw the tall
+man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman who had
+taken the rooms.  The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in
+that of his tenant, Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease,
+but every sign of health, energy, and resolution.  While he was still
+looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having
+carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of
+lassitude.
+
+That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into the
+hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the practice
+of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind.  The day was
+destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long been seated at the
+easel ere the first of these occurred.  A cab laden with baggage drew up
+before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the steps and
+began to pound upon the knocker.  Somerset hastened to attend the
+summons.
+
+'My dear fellow,' she said, with the utmost gaiety, 'here I come dropping
+from the moon.  I am delighted to find you faithful; and I have no doubt
+you will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty.'
+
+Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the
+spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the threshold of
+the dining-room.  The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated to
+inspire astonishment.  The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and
+empty bottles; on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was littered
+from end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the materials of
+the painter's craft; but what far outstripped the other wonders of the
+place was the corner which had been arranged for the study of still-life.
+This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous upon which, according to the
+principles of the art of composition, a cabbage was relieved against a
+copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail of a boiled lobster.
+
+'My gracious goodness!' cried the lady of the house; and then, turning in
+wrath on the young man, 'From what rank in life are you sprung?' she
+demanded.  'You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the
+astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a
+greengrocer's man.  Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no
+more of you.'
+
+'Madam,' babbled Somerset, 'you promised me a month's warning.'
+
+'That was under a misapprehension,' returned the old lady.  'I now give
+you warning to leave at once.'
+
+'Madam,' said the young man, 'I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am
+concerned, it might be done.  But then, my lodger!'
+
+'Your lodger?' echoed Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+'My lodger: why should I deny it?' returned Somerset.  'He is only by the
+week.'
+
+The old lady sat down upon a chair.  'You have a lodger?--you?' she
+cried.  'And pray, how did you get him?'
+
+'By advertisement,' replied the young man. 'O madam, I have not lived
+unobservantly.  I adopted'--his eyes involuntarily shifted to the
+cartoons--'I adopted every method.'
+
+Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's experience,
+she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the
+works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her
+trilling and soprano laughter.
+
+'Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!' she cried.  'I do hope you had
+them in the window.  M'Pherson,' she continued, crying to her maid, who
+had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, 'I lunch with Mr.
+Somerset.  Take the cellar key and bring some wine.'
+
+In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
+Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M'Pherson bring
+up from the cellar--'as a present, my dear,' she said, with another burst
+of tearful merriment, 'for your charming pictures, which you must be sure
+to leave me when you go;' and finally, protesting that she dared not
+spoil the absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed
+(as she vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.
+
+She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor the
+Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly
+strong emotion.  It was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones
+had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore's visit, and
+that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the invalid's
+uneasiness.  Somerset, somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the
+affair.
+
+'Is that all?' cried the woman.  'As God sees you, is that all?'
+
+'My good woman,' said the young man, 'I have no idea what you can be
+driving at.  Suppose the lady were my friend's wife, suppose she were my
+fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should
+that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?'
+
+'Blessed Mary!' cried the nurse, 'it's he that will be glad to hear it!'
+
+And immediately she fled upstairs.
+
+Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a very
+thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder
+of the bottle.  It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its equals
+and superiors, that can in some degree support the competition of
+tobacco.  Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on from
+suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing braver and
+rosier as the bottle ebbed.  He was a sceptic, none prouder of the name;
+he had no horror at command, whether for crimes or vices, but beheld and
+embraced the world, with an immoral approbation, the frequent consequence
+of youth and health.  At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt
+under the same roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate
+instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.  The bottle had run low;
+the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment, night and
+the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.
+
+He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not so
+much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed.  What
+with one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he returned
+home.  A cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found
+himself face to face with one of the most regular of the few who visited
+Mr. Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard
+in the American fashion.  This person was carrying on one shoulder a
+black portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight.  That he should find
+a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd
+stories to the young man's memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus
+gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very
+furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now, in a
+mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a
+drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and
+knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor.  With a face
+struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard called
+lamentably on the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat
+at the foot of the stairs.  At the same time, though only for a single
+instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish nurse popped out like
+rabbits over the banisters of the first floor; and on both the same scare
+and pallor were apparent.
+
+The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he
+continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and, with
+the help of the handrail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once more
+upon his feet.
+
+'What in Heaven's name ails you?' gasped the young man as soon as he
+could find words and utterance.
+
+'Have you a drop of brandy?' returned the other.  'I am sick.'
+
+Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man with the
+chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself in
+apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result, he
+said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a hand
+that still sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and
+departed.
+
+Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.  What, he asked himself, had
+been the contents of the black portmanteau?  Stolen goods? the carcase of
+one murdered? or--and at the thought he sat upright in bed--an infernal
+machine?  He took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest;
+and with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room
+window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await and profit by the earliest
+opportunity.
+
+The hours went heavily by.  Within the house there was no circumstance of
+novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made little
+journeys round the corner of the square, and before afternoon was
+somewhat loose of speech and gait.  A little after six, however, there
+came round the corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly
+dressed young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, and
+with frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.
+It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon
+it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had
+already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and
+had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.  He hailed her
+coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little nearer to the
+window to enjoy the sight.  What was his surprise, however, when, as if
+with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps and tapped
+discreetly at the door!  He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who
+was not improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive this
+gracious visitor in person.
+
+She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the young
+man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he thought he
+could perceive her to be smiling), 'because,' she added, 'if you are, I
+should like to see some of the other rooms.'  Somerset told her he was
+under an engagement to receive no other lodgers; but she assured him that
+would be no matter, as these were friends of Mr. Jones's.  'And,' she
+continued, moving suddenly to the dining-room door, 'let us begin here.'
+Somerset was too late to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the
+courage to essay.  'Ah!' she cried, 'how changed it is!'
+
+'Madam,' cried the young man, 'since your entrance, it is I who have the
+right to say so.'
+
+She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop of
+the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled litter,
+now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two
+apartments.  She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a
+heightened colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high
+opinion of their merits.  She praised the effective disposition of the
+rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to
+defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.  'How simple and
+manly!' she cried: 'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so
+detestable in a man!'  Hard upon this, telling him, before he had time to
+reply, that she very well knew her way, and would trouble him no further,
+she took her leave with an engaging smile, and ascended the staircase
+alone.
+
+For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones;
+and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they
+left the house in company.  This was the first time since the arrival of
+his lodger, that Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish widow;
+and without the loss of any more time than was required by decency, he
+stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.  She came
+instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and when the
+young man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures of his art,
+she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for, though she
+had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently observed his
+beautiful pictures through the door.  On entering the dining-room, the
+sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle critic; and
+as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was easily
+persuaded to join the painter in a single glass.  'Here,' she said, 'are
+my respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a
+gentleman like yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I
+am sure.'  One glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the
+acceptance of a second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from the
+affectation of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she asked it
+of her own accord.  'For indeed,' said she, 'what with all these clocks
+and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would be impossible
+entirely.  And you seen yourself that even M'Guire was glad to beg for
+it.  And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these cruel
+disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be
+sometimes crying for a glass of it.  And I'll thank you for a thimbleful
+to settle what I got.'  Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the
+deathbed dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband.
+Then she declared she heard 'the master' calling her, rose to her feet,
+made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head
+upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.
+
+Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of the
+drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps.  It was a great
+apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows, and joined by a
+pair of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion,
+papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned
+with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles.  Such was the
+room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld was changed in
+almost every feature: the furniture covered with a figured chintz; the
+walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by the
+curtained recesses for no less than seven windows.  It seemed to himself
+that he must have entered, without observing the transition, into the
+adjoining house.  Presently from these more specious changes, his eye
+condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor was
+littered.  Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and
+clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some
+reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars and
+bottles; a carpenter's bench and a laboratory-table.
+
+The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise
+undergone a change.  It was transformed to the exact appearance of a
+common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied one
+corner; and the window was blocked by the regulation table and mirror.
+The door of a small closet here attracted the young man's attention; and
+striking a vesta, he opened it and entered.  On a table several wigs and
+beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous display of
+suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last the young man
+observed a large overall of the most costly sealskin.  In a flash his
+mind reverted to the advertisement in the _Standard_ newspaper.  The
+great height of his lodger, the disproportionate breadth of his
+shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, all pointed to
+the same conclusion.
+
+The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon his
+arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room.  There, with
+a mixture of fear and admiration, he pored upon its goodly proportions
+and the regularity and softness of the pile.  The sight of a large
+pier-glass put another fancy in his head.  He donned the fur-coat; and
+standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a Russian prince,
+he thrust his hands into the ample pockets.  There his fingers
+encountered a folded journal.  He drew it out, and recognised the type
+and paper of the _Standard_; and at the same instant, his eyes alighted
+on the offer of two hundred pounds.  Plainly then, his lodger, now no
+longer mysterious, had laid aside his coat on the very day of the
+appearance of the advertisement.
+
+He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the incriminating
+paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall lodger, with a firm
+but somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room and closed the door again
+behind him.  For some time, the two looked upon each other in perfect
+silence; then Mr. Jones moved forward to the table, took a seat, and
+still without once changing the direction of his eyes, addressed the
+young man.
+
+'You are right,' he said.  'It is for me the blood money is offered.  And
+now what will you do?'
+
+It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to reply.
+Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man's own coat, and
+surrounded by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives, the keeper of the
+lodging-house was silenced.
+
+'Yes,' resumed the other, 'I am he.  I am that man, whom with impotent
+hate and fear, they still hunt from den to den, from disguise to
+disguise.  Yes, my landlord, you have it in your power, if you be poor,
+to lay the basis of your fortune; if you be unknown, to capture honour at
+one snatch.  You have hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here in
+my apartment, for whose use I pay you in stamped money, searching my
+wardrobe, and your hand--shame, sir!--your hand in my very pocket.  You
+can now complete the cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at
+once the simplest, the safest, and the most remunerative.'  The speaker
+paused as if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change of
+tone and manner, thus resumed: 'And yet, sir, when I look upon your face,
+I feel certain that I cannot be deceived: certain that in spite of all, I
+have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman.  Take off my
+coat, sir--which but cumbers you.  Divest yourself of this confusion:
+that which is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen to the
+conscience; we have all harboured guilty thoughts: and if it flashed into
+your mind to sell my flesh and blood, my anguish in the dock, and the
+sweat of my death agony--it was a thought, dear sir, you were as
+incapable of acting on, as I of any further question of your honour.'  At
+these words, the speaker, with a very open, smiling countenance, like a
+forgiving father, offered Somerset his hand.
+
+It was not in the young man's nature to refuse forgiveness or dissect
+generosity.  He instantly, and almost without thought, accepted the
+proffered grasp.
+
+'And now,' resumed the lodger, 'now that I hold in mine your loyal hand,
+I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I go further--by an
+effort of will, I banish the memory of what is past.  How you came here,
+I care not: enough that you are here--as my guest.  Sit ye down; and let
+us, with your good permission, improve acquaintance over a glass of
+excellent whisky.'
+
+So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle: and the pair pledged each
+other in silence.
+
+'Confess,' observed the smiling host, 'you were surprised at the
+appearance of the room.'
+
+'I was indeed,' said Somerset; 'nor can I imagine the purpose of these
+changes.'
+
+'These,' replied the conspirator, 'are the devices by which I continue to
+exist.  Conceive me now, accused before one of your unjust tribunals;
+conceive the various witnesses appearing, and the singular variety of
+their reports!  One will have visited me in this drawing-room as it
+originally stood; a second finds it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or
+next day, all may have been changed.  If you love romance (as artists
+do), few lives are more romantic than that of the obscure individual now
+addressing you.  Obscure yet famous.  Mine is an anonymous, infernal
+glory.  By infamous means, I work towards my bright purpose.  I found the
+liberty and peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future
+smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a
+hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and practice hell's
+dexterities.'
+
+Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and
+listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment.  He
+looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of
+education; and wondered the more profoundly.
+
+'Sir,' he said--'for I know not whether I should still address you as Mr.
+Jones--'
+
+'Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland, by all
+or any of these you may address me,' said the plotter; 'for all I have at
+some time borne.  Yet that which I most prize, that which is most feared,
+hated, and obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is
+not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed, like the
+celebrated clan M'Gregor, I may justly describe myself as being nameless
+by day.  But,' he continued, rising to his feet, 'by night, and among my
+desperate followers, I am the redoubted Zero.'
+
+Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely expressed
+surprise and gratification.  'I am to understand,' he continued, 'that,
+under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?' {176}
+
+The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.
+
+'I do,' he said.  'In this dark period of time, a star--the star of
+dynamite--has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise its
+use, so thick beset with dangers and attended by such incredible
+difficulties and disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not
+many--'  He paused, and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his
+face--'not many have been more successful than myself.'
+
+'I can imagine,' observed Somerset, 'that, from the sweeping consequences
+looked for, the career is not devoid of interest.  You have, besides,
+some of the entertainment of the game of hide and seek.  But it would
+still seem to me--I speak as a layman--that nothing could be simpler or
+safer than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an adjacent
+county to await the painful consequences.'
+
+'You speak, indeed,' returned the plotter, with some evidence of warmth,
+'you speak, indeed, most ignorantly.  Do you make nothing, then, of such
+a peril as we share this moment?  Do you think it nothing to occupy a
+house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering
+to its fall?'
+
+'Good God!' ejaculated Somerset.
+
+'And when you speak of ease,' pursued Zero, 'in this age of scientific
+studies, you fill me with surprise.  Are you not aware that chemicals are
+proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very
+devil?  Do you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety?  Do you observe
+the silver threads that mingle with my hair?  Clockwork, clockwork has
+stamped them on my brow--chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!
+No, Mr. Somerset,' he resumed, after a moment's pause, his voice still
+quivering with sensibility, 'you must not suppose the dynamiter's life to
+be all gold.  On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the
+bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine.
+I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is
+ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face to
+deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England, the
+massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap
+like that of a child's pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of
+so much time and plant!  If,' he concluded, musingly, 'we had been merely
+able to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I could
+have remedied the peccant engine.  But what with the loss of plant and
+the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our friends
+in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium.  They propose,
+instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep off whole
+populations with the devastating typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a
+scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical
+simplicity.  I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the
+poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune.  And, for my
+small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking,
+and (if you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb.  Yes,' he
+cried, with unshaken hope, 'I will still continue, and, I feel it in my
+bosom, I shall yet succeed.'
+
+'Two things I remark,' said Somerset.  'The first somewhat staggers me.
+Have you, then--in all this course of life, which you have sketched so
+vividly--have you not once succeeded?'
+
+'Pardon me,' said Zero.  'I have had one success.  You behold in me the
+author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.'
+
+'But if I remember right,' objected Somerset, 'the thing was a _fiasco_.
+A scavenger's barrow and some copies of the _Weekly Budget_--these were
+the only victims.'
+
+'You will pardon me again,' returned Zero with positive asperity: 'a
+child was injured.'
+
+'And that fitly brings me to my second point,' said Somerset.  'For I
+observed you to employ the word "indiscriminate."  Now, surely, a
+scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very
+acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of ineffectual
+reprisal.'
+
+'Did I employ the word?' asked Zero.  'Well, I will not defend it.  But
+for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so
+vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses.  Disputation is
+dry work,' he added, with a charming gaiety of manner.
+
+Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog; and
+Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more
+largely to develop his opinions.
+
+'The indiscriminate?' he began.  'War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate.
+War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless
+scavenger.  No more,' he concluded, beaming, 'no more do I.  Whatever may
+strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the
+guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer,
+is welcome to my simple plans.  You are not,' he inquired, with a shade
+of sympathetic interest, 'you are not, I trust, a believer?'
+
+'Sir, I believe in nothing,' said the young man.
+
+'You are then,' replied Zero, 'in a position to grasp my argument.  We
+agree that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of humanity; and
+being pledged to labour for that end, and face to face with the banded
+opposition of kings, parliaments, churches, and the members of the force,
+who am I--who are we, dear sir--to affect a nicety about the tools
+employed?  You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the Queen, the
+sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but
+there you would be in error.  Our appeal is to the body of the people; it
+is these that we would touch and interest.  Now, sir, have you observed
+the English housemaid?'
+
+'I should think I had,' cried Somerset.
+
+'From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,' returned
+the conspirator politely.  'A type apart; a very charming figure; and
+thoroughly adapted to our ends.  The neat cap, the clean print, the
+comely person, the engaging manner; her position between classes, parents
+in one, employers in another; the probability that she will have at least
+one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall address:--yes, I have a
+leaning--call it, if you will, a weakness--for the housemaid.  Not that I
+would be understood to despise the nurse.  For the child is a very
+interesting feature: I have long since marked out the child as the
+sensitive point in society.'  He wagged his head, with a wise, pensive
+smile.  'And talking, sir, of children and of the perils of our trade,
+let me now narrate to you a little incident of an explosive bomb, that
+fell out some weeks ago under my own observation.  It fell out thus.'
+
+And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following simple tale.
+
+
+
+_ZERO'S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB_. {182}
+
+
+I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a private
+chamber at St. James's Hall.  You have seen the man: it was M'Guire, the
+most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances.
+Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what
+enormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine.  I set our
+little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being hard by; and
+the better to avert miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invention of
+my own, by which the opening of the Gladstone bag in which the bomb was
+carried, should instantly determine the explosion.  M'Guire was somewhat
+dashed by this arrangement, which was new to him: and pointed out, with
+excellent, clear good sense, that should he be arrested, it would
+probably involve him in the fall of our opponents.  But I was not to be
+moved, made a strong appeal to his patriotism, gave him a good glass of
+whisky, and despatched him on his glorious errand.
+
+Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot,
+I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, still
+very foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of his
+disgusting political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the
+immediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, errand-boys,
+unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and infirm old men--all
+classes making a direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitable
+with our designs.  As M'Guire drew near his heart was inflamed by the
+most noble sentiment of triumph.  Never had he seen the garden so
+crowded; children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth, ran to and
+fro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, sick pensioner sat
+upon the nearest bench, a medal on his breast, a stick with which he
+walked (for he was disabled by wounds) reclining on his knee.  Guilty
+England would thus be stabbed in the most delicate quarters; the moment
+had, indeed, been well selected; and M'Guire, with a radiant provision of
+the event, drew merrily nearer.  Suddenly his eye alighted on the burly
+form of a policeman, standing hard by the effigy in an attitude of watch.
+My bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and there, at
+different points of the enclosure, other men stood or loitered, affecting
+an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk,
+feigning to be weary and to rest upon the benches.  M'Guire was no child
+in these affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of the
+Machiavellian Gladstone.
+
+A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain nervousness
+in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design draws
+near, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion
+of intent; and frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed
+specific denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings.  But for this
+purely accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an historical
+expression.  On the receipt of such a letter, the Government lay a trap
+for their adversaries, and surround the threatened spot with hirelings.
+My blood sometimes boils in my veins, when I consider the case of those
+who sell themselves for money in such a cause.  True, thanks to the
+generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortable
+stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyond
+the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M'Guire, again, ere he
+joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God!
+receives a decent income.  That is as it should be; the patriot must not
+be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the distinction
+between our position and that of the police is too obvious to be stated.
+
+Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged; the
+Government had craftily filled the place with minions; even the pensioner
+was not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our emissary, without
+other aid or protection than the simple apparatus in his bag, found
+himself confronted by force; brutal force; that strong hand which was a
+character of the ages of oppression.  Should he venture to deposit the
+machine, it was almost certain that he would be observed and arrested; a
+cry would arise; and there was just a fear that the police might not be
+present in sufficient force, to protect him from the savagery of the mob.
+The scheme must be delayed.  He stood with his bag on his arm, pretending
+to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there flashed into his mind a
+thought to appal the bravest.  The machine was set; at the appointed
+hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval, was he to be rid of it?
+
+Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot.  There he
+was, friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life, for he is
+not yet forty; with long years of happiness before him; and now
+condemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite!
+The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the
+Alhambra leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled against the
+railing.  It is probable he fainted.
+
+When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.
+
+'My God!' he cried.
+
+'You seem to be unwell, sir,' said the hireling.
+
+'I feel better now,' cried poor M'Guire: and with uneven steps, for the
+pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his footing, he
+fled from the scene of this disaster.  Fled?  Alas, from what was he
+fleeing?  Did he not carry that from which he fled along with him? and
+had he the wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean winds,
+could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the earth, how
+should he escape the ruin that he carried?  We have heard of living men
+who have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is
+no more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who
+should be linked, like poor M'Guire, to an explosive bomb.
+
+A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his liver:
+suppose it were the hour already.  He stopped as though he had been shot,
+and plucked his watch out.  There was a howling in his ears, as loud as a
+winter tempest; his sight was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by a
+lightning flash, would show him the very dust upon the street.  But so
+brief were these intervals of vision, and so violently did the watch
+vibrate in his hands, that it was impossible to distinguish the numbers
+on the dial.  He covered his eyes for a few seconds; and in that space,
+it seemed to him that he had fallen to be a man of ninety.  When he
+looked again, the watch-plate had grown legible: he had twenty minutes.
+Twenty minutes, and no plan!
+
+Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a little
+girl of about six drawing near to him, and as she came, kicking in front
+of her, as children will, a piece of wood.  She sang, too; and something
+in her accent recalling him to the past, produced a sudden clearness in
+his mind.  Here was a God-sent opportunity!
+
+'My dear,' said he, 'would you like a present of a pretty bag?'
+
+The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it.  She had
+looked first at the bag, like a true child; but most unfortunately,
+before she had yet received the fatal gift, her eyes fell directly on
+M'Guire; and no sooner had she seen the poor gentleman's face, than she
+screamed out and leaped backward, as though she had seen the devil.
+Almost at the same moment a woman appeared upon the threshold of a
+neighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger.  'Come here,
+colleen,' she said, 'and don't be plaguing the poor old gentleman!'  With
+that she re-entered the house, and the child followed her, sobbing aloud.
+
+With the loss of this hope M'Guire's reason swooned within him.  When
+next he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before St.
+Martin's-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken man; the passers-by
+regarding him with eyes in which he read, as in a glass, an image of the
+terror and horror that dwelt within his own.
+
+'I am afraid you are very ill, sir,' observed a woman, stopping and
+gazing hard in his face.  'Can I do anything to help you?'
+
+'Ill?' said M'Guire.  'O God!'  And then, recovering some shadow of his
+self-command, 'Chronic, madam,' said he: 'a long course of the dumb ague.
+But since you are so compassionate--an errand that I lack the strength to
+carry out,' he gasped--'this bag to Portman Square.  Oh, compassionate
+woman, as you hope to be saved, as you are a mother, in the name of your
+babes that wait to welcome you at home, oh, take this bag to Portman
+Square!  I have a mother, too,' he added, with a broken voice.  'Number
+19, Portman Square.'
+
+I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice; for the
+woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him.  'Poor gentleman!'
+said she.  'If I were you, I would go home.'  And she left him standing
+there in his distress.
+
+'Home!' thought M'Guire, 'what a derision!'  What home was there for him,
+the victim of philanthropy?  He thought of his old mother, of his happy
+youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibility
+that he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled
+for life, condemned to lifelong pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely
+deafened.  Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but even
+waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man
+of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the
+music of life, and from the voice of friendship, and love?  How little do
+we realise the sufferings of others!  Even your brutal Government, in the
+heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the
+patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and
+to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a
+doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with
+the fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.
+
+But I wander from M'Guire.  From this dread glance into the past and
+future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present.  How had he
+wandered there? and how long--oh, heavens! how long had he been about it?
+He pulled out his watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed.
+It seemed too bright a thing to be believed.  He glanced at the church
+clock; and sure enough, it marked an hour four minutes faster than the
+watch.
+
+Of all that he endured, M'Guire declares that pang was the most desolate.
+Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in whom he plenarily
+trusted; by whose advertisement, he numbered the minutes that remained to
+him of life; on whose sure testimony, he could tell when the time was
+come to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away from him, and take
+to flight.  And now in what was he to place reliance?  His watch was
+slow; it might be losing time; if so, in what degree?  What limit could
+he set to its derangement? and how much was it possible for a watch to
+lose in thirty minutes?  Five? ten? fifteen?  It might be so; already, it
+seemed years since he had left St. James's Hall on this so promising
+enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked for.
+
+In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses settled
+down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived for
+centuries and for centuries been dead.  The buildings and the people in
+the street became incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London
+sounded in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cab
+that nearly charged him down, was like a sound from Africa.  Meanwhile,
+he was conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard and
+felt his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small, debile
+and tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.
+
+As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it
+seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped into
+his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by,
+where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked.  Thither,
+then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the
+pavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a man in a
+sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a straw.  He passed him by, and twice
+patrolled the entry, scouting for the barest chance; but the man had
+faced about and continued to observe him curiously.
+
+Another hope was gone.  M'Guire reissued from the entry, still followed
+by the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat.  He once more
+consulted his watch: there were but fourteen minutes left to him.  At
+that, it seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain;
+for a second or two, he saw the world as red as blood; and thereafter
+entered into a complete possession of himself, with an incredible
+cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to sing and chuckle as he walked.
+And yet this mirth seemed to belong to things external; and within, like
+a black and leaden-heavy kernel, he was conscious of the weight upon his
+soul.
+
+    I care for nobody, no, not I,
+    And nobody cares for me,
+
+he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the passengers
+stared upon him on the street.  And still the warmth seemed to increase
+and to become more genial.  What was life? he considered, and what he,
+M'Guire?  What even Erin, our green Erin?  All seemed so incalculably
+little that he smiled as he looked down upon it.  He would have given
+years, had he possessed them, for a glass of spirits; but time failed,
+and he must deny himself this last indulgence.
+
+At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom cab;
+jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the Embankment, which
+he named; and as soon as the vehicle was in motion, concealed the bag as
+completely as he could under the vantage of the apron, and once more drew
+out his watch.  So he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart in
+his mouth at every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearing
+to wake the attention of the driver by too obvious a change of plan, and
+willing, if possible, to leave him time to forget the Gladstone bag.
+
+At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed; the
+cab was stopped; and he alighted--with how glad a heart!  He thrust his
+hand into his pocket.  All was now over; he had saved his life; nor that
+alone, but he had engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what could
+be more pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion of a hansom
+cab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London.  He felt in one
+pocket; then in another.  The most crushing seizure of despair descended
+on his soul; and struck into abject dumbness, he stared upon the driver.
+He had not one penny.
+
+'Hillo,' said the driver, 'don't seem well.'
+
+'Lost my money,' said M'Guire, in tones so faint and strange that they
+surprised his hearing.
+
+The man looked through the trap.  'I dessay,' said he: 'you've left your
+bag.'
+
+M'Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that black
+continent at arm's length, withered inwardly and felt his features
+sharpen as with mortal sickness.
+
+'This is not mine,' said he.  'Your last fare must have left it.  You had
+better take it to the station.'
+
+'Now look here,' returned the cabman: 'are you off your chump? or am I?'
+
+'Well, then, I'll tell you what,' exclaimed M'Guire; 'you take it for
+your fare!'
+
+'Oh, I dessay,' replied the driver.  'Anything else?  What's _in_ your
+bag?  Open it, and let me see.'
+
+'No, no,' returned M'Guire.  'Oh no, not that.  It's a surprise; it's
+prepared expressly: a surprise for honest cabmen.'
+
+'No, you don't,' said the man, alighting from his perch, and coming very
+close to the unhappy patriot.  'You're either going to pay my fare, or
+get in again and drive to the office.'
+
+It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M'Guire spied the stout
+figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing near along
+the Embankment.  The man was not unknown to him; he had bought of his
+wares, and heard him quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was now
+the nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope, he clutched
+with gratitude.
+
+'Thank God!' he cried.  'Here comes a friend of mine.  I'll borrow.'  And
+he dashed to meet the tradesman.  'Sir,' said he, 'Mr. Godall, I have
+dealt with you--you doubtless know my face--calamities for which I cannot
+blame myself have overwhelmed me.  Oh, sir, for the love of innocence,
+for the sake of the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at the
+throne of grace, lend me two-and-six!'
+
+'I do not recognise your face,' replied Mr. Godall; 'but I remember the
+cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike.  Here, sir, is
+a sovereign; which I very willingly advance to you, on the single
+condition that you shave your chin.'
+
+M'Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman, calling
+out to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps, flung the bag far
+forth into the river, and fell headlong after it.  He was plucked from a
+watery grave, it is believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall.  Even as he was
+being hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion shook
+the solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the river a momentary
+fountain rose and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Continued_)
+
+
+Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.  He had, in
+the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon; the plotter
+began to melt in twain, and seemed to expand and hover on his seat; and
+with a vague sense of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his
+feet, and, refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour
+was late and he must positively get to bed.
+
+'Dear me,' observed Zero, 'I find you very temperate.  But I will not be
+oppressive.  Suffice it that we are now fast friends; and, my dear
+landlord, _au revoir_!'
+
+So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the politest
+ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted the bewildered young
+gentleman to the top of the stair.
+
+Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset remained in
+utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow, he started broad
+awake, there fell upon his mind a perfect hurricane of horror and wonder.
+That he should have suffered himself to be led into the semblance of
+intimacy with such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold
+light of day, a mystery of human weakness.  True, he was caught in a
+situation that might have tested the aplomb of Talleyrand.  That was
+perhaps a palliation; but it was no excuse.  For so wholesale a
+capitulation of principle, for such a fall into criminal familiarity, no
+excuse indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once from
+the relation.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on a rupture.
+Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.
+
+'Come in,' he cried, 'dear Mr. Somerset!  Come in, sit down, and, without
+ceremony, join me at my morning meal.'
+
+'Sir,' said Somerset, 'you must permit me first to disengage my honour.
+Last night, I was surprised into a certain appearance of complicity; but
+once for all, let me inform you that I regard you and your machinations
+\with unmingled horror and disgust, and I will leave no stone unturned to
+crush your vile conspiracy.'
+
+'My dear fellow,' replied Zero, with an air of some complacency, 'I am
+well accustomed to these human weaknesses.  Disgust?  I have felt it
+myself; it speedily wears off.  I think none the worse, I think the more
+of you, for this engaging frankness.  And in the meanwhile, what are you
+to do?  You find yourself, if I interpret rightly, in very much the same
+situation as Charles the Second (possibly the least degraded of your
+British sovereigns) when he was taken into the confidence of the thief.
+To denounce me, is out of the question; and what else can you attempt?
+No, dear Mr. Somerset, your hands are tied; and you find yourself
+condemned, under pain of behaving like a cad, to be that same charming
+and intellectual companion who delighted me last night.'
+
+'At least,' cried Somerset, 'I can, and do, order you to leave this
+house.'
+
+'Ah!' cried the plotter, 'but there I fail to follow you.  You may, if
+you please, enact the part of Judas; but if, as I suppose, you recoil
+from that extremity of meanness, I am, on my side, far too intelligent to
+leave these lodgings, in which I please myself exceedingly, and from
+which you lack the power to drive me.  No, no, dear sir; here I am, and
+here I propose to stay.'
+
+'I repeat,' cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense of his own
+weakness, 'I repeat that I give you warning.  I am the master of this
+house; and I emphatically give you warning.'
+
+'A week's warning?' said the imperturbable conspirator.  'Very well: we
+will talk of it a week from now.  That is arranged; and in the meanwhile,
+I observe my breakfast growing cold.  Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you
+find yourself condemned, for a week at least, to the society of a very
+interesting character, display some of that open favour, some of that
+interest in life's obscurer sides, which stamp the character of the true
+artist.  Hang me, if you will, to-morrow; but to-day show yourself
+divested of the scruples of the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share
+my meal.'
+
+'Man!' cried Somerset, 'do you understand my sentiments?'
+
+'Certainly,' replied Zero; 'and I respect them!  Would you be outdone in
+such a contest? will you alone be partial? and in this nineteenth
+century, cannot two gentlemen of education agree to differ on a point of
+politics?  Come, sir: all your hard words have left me smiling; judge
+then, which of us is the philosopher!'
+
+Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by nature
+easily amenable to sophistry.  He threw up his hands with a gesture of
+despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him.  The
+meal was excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious
+information.  He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the
+torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures.  The
+interest of what he had to tell was great; his character, besides,
+developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew
+some of the discomfort of his false position, but began to regard the
+conspirator with a familiarity that verged upon contempt.  In any
+circumstances, he had a singular inability to leave the society in which
+he found himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like a
+limed sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow hour, was
+easily persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did not even attempt
+to withdraw till, on the approach of evening, Zero, with many apologies,
+dismissed his guest.  His fellow-conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely
+explained, as they were unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the
+young man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.
+
+As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of the
+morning.  He raged at the thought of his facility; he paced the
+dining-room, forming the sternest resolutions for the future; he wrung
+the hand which had been dishonoured by the touch of an assassin; and
+among all these whirling thoughts, there flashed in from time to time,
+and ever with a chill of fear, the thought of the confounded ingredients
+with which the house was stored.  A powder magazine seemed a secure
+smoking-room alongside of the Superfluous Mansion.
+
+He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing bowl.  As long
+as the bars were open, he travelled from one to another, seeking light,
+safety, and the companionship of human faces; when these resources failed
+him, he fell back on the belated baked-potato man; and at length, still
+pacing the streets, he was goaded to fraternise with the police.  Alas,
+with what a sense of guilt he conversed with these guardians of the law;
+how gladly had he wept upon their ample bosoms; and how the secret
+fluttered to his lips and was still denied an exit!  Fatigue began at
+last to triumph over remorse; and about the hour of the first milkman, he
+returned to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a horrid
+expectation, as though it should have burst that instant into flames;
+drew out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps, once
+more lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a
+coffee-shop.
+
+It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.  Dismally searching in his
+pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and when he had paid
+the price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to return to the
+Superfluous Mansion.  He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to the
+cupboard where he kept his money.  Yet half a minute, he told himself,
+and he would be free for days from his obseding lodger, and might decide
+at leisure on the course he should pursue.  But fate had otherwise
+designed: there came a tap at the door and Zero entered.
+
+'Have I caught you?' he cried, with innocent gaiety.  'Dear fellow, I was
+growing quite impatient.'  And on the speaker's somewhat stolid face,
+there came a glow of genuine affection.  'I am so long unused to have a
+friend,' he continued, 'that I begin to be afraid I may prove jealous.'
+And he wrung the hand of his landlord.
+
+Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting.  To
+reject these kind advances was beyond his strength.  That he could not
+return cordiality for cordiality, was already almost more than he could
+carry.  That inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous
+characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed him to the
+ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.
+
+'That is all right,' cried Zero--'that is as it should be--say no more!
+I had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted me; but I now own that
+fear to have been unworthy, and apologise.  To doubt of your forgiveness
+were to repeat my sin.  Come, then; dinner waits; join me again and tell
+me your adventures of the night.'
+
+Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself once
+more to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal acquaintance.
+Once more, the plotter plunged up to the neck in damaging disclosures:
+now it would be the name and biography of an individual, now the address
+of some important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips;
+and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy
+guest.  Finally, the course of Zero's bland monologue led him to the
+young lady of two days ago: that young lady, who had flashed on Somerset
+for so brief a while but with so conquering a charm; and whose engaging
+grace, communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt,
+remained imprinted on his memory.
+
+'You saw her?' said Zero.  'Beautiful, is she not?  She, too, is one of
+ours: a true enthusiast: nervous, perhaps, in presence of the chemicals;
+but in matters of intrigue, the very soul of skill and daring.  Lake,
+Fonblanque, de Marly, Valdevia, such are some of the names that she
+employs; her true name--but there, perhaps, I go too far.  Suffice it,
+that it is to her I owe my present lodging, and, dear Somerset, the
+pleasure of your acquaintance.  It appears she knew the house.  You see
+dear fellow, I make no concealment: all that you can care to hear, I tell
+you openly.'
+
+'For God's sake,' cried the wretched Somerset, 'hold your tongue!  You
+cannot imagine how you torture me!'
+
+A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance of Zero.
+
+'There are times,' he said, 'when I begin to fancy that you do not like
+me.  Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of cordiality?  I am depressed;
+the touchstone of my life draws near; and if I fail'--he gloomily
+nodded--'from all the height of my ambitious schemes, I fall, dear boy,
+into contempt.  These are grave thoughts, and you may judge my need of
+your delightful company.  Innocent prattler, you relieve the weight of my
+concerns.  And yet . . . and yet . . .'  The speaker pushed away his
+plate, and rose from table.  'Follow me,' said he, 'follow me.  My mood
+is on; I must have air, I must behold the plain of battle.'
+
+So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion, and
+thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform, sheltered at
+one end by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the actual summit of
+the roof.  On both sides, it bordered, without parapet or rail, on the
+incline of slates; and, northward above all, commanded an extensive view
+of housetops, and rising through the smoke, the distant spires of
+churches.
+
+'Here,' cried Zero, 'you behold this field of city, rich, crowded,
+laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how soon, to be laid
+low!  Some day, some night, from this coign of vantage, you shall perhaps
+be startled by the detonation of the judgment gun--not sharp and empty
+like the crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn.
+Instantly thereafter, you shall behold the flames break forth.  Ay,' he
+cried, stretching forth his hand, 'ay, that will be a day of retribution.
+Then shall the pallid constable flee side by side with the detected
+thief.  Blaze!' he cried, 'blaze, derided city!  Fall, flatulent
+monarchy, fall like Dagon!'
+
+With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for Somerset's
+quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into space.  Pale as a
+sheet, and limp as a pocket-handkerchief, he was dragged from the edge of
+downfall by one arm; helped, or rather carried, down the ladder; and
+deposited in safety on the attic landing.  Here he began to come to
+himself, wiped his brow, and at length, seizing Somerset's hand in both
+of his, began to utter his acknowledgments.
+
+'This seals it,' said he.  'Ours is a life and death connection.  You
+have plucked me from the jaws of death; and if I were before attracted by
+your character, judge now of the ardour of my gratitude and love!  But I
+perceive I am still greatly shaken.  Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your
+arm as far as my apartment.'
+
+A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his customary
+self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and genially
+convalescent, when his eye was attracted by the dejection of the
+unfortunate young man.
+
+'Good heavens, dear Somerset,' he cried, 'what ails you?  Let me offer
+you a touch of spirits.'
+
+But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material comfort.
+
+'Let me be,' he said.  'I am lost; you have caught me in the toils.  Up
+to this moment, I have lived all my life in the most reckless manner, and
+done exactly what I pleased, with the most perfect innocence.  And
+now--what am I?  Are you so blind and wooden that you do not see the
+loathing you inspire me with?  Is it possible you can suppose me willing
+to continue to exist upon such terms?  To think,' he cried, 'that a young
+man, guilty of no fault on earth but amiability, should find himself
+involved in such a damned imbroglio!'  And placing his knuckles in his
+eyes, Somerset rolled upon the sofa.
+
+'My God,' said Zero, 'is this possible?  And I so filled with tenderness
+and interest!  Can it be, dear Somerset, that you are under the empire of
+these out-worn scruples? or that you judge a patriot by the morality of
+the religious tract?  I thought you were a good agnostic.'
+
+'Mr. Jones,' said Somerset, 'it is in vain to argue.  I boast myself a
+total disbeliever, not only in revealed religion, but in the data,
+method, and conclusions of the whole of ethics.  Well! what matters it?
+what signifies a form of words?  I regard you as a reptile, whom I would
+rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel.  You would blow up others?
+Well then, understand: I want, with every circumstance of infamy and
+agony, to blow up you!'
+
+'Somerset, Somerset!' said Zero, turning very pale, 'this is wrong; this
+is very wrong.  You pain, you wound me, Somerset.'
+
+'Give me a match!' cried Somerset wildly.  'Let me set fire to this
+incomparable monster!  Let me perish with him in his fall!'
+
+'For God's sake,' cried Zero, clutching hold of the young man, 'for God's
+sake command yourself!  We stand upon the brink; death yawns around us; a
+man--a stranger in this foreign land--one whom you have called your
+friend--'
+
+'Silence!' cried Somerset, 'you are no friend, no friend of mine.  I look
+on you with loathing, like a toad: my flesh creeps with physical
+repulsion; my soul revolts against the sight of you.'
+
+Zero burst into tears.  'Alas!' he sobbed, 'this snaps the last link that
+bound me to humanity.  My friend disowns--he insults me.  I am indeed
+accurst.'
+
+Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of front.
+The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from the room and
+from the house.  The first dash of his escape carried him hard upon
+half-way to the next police-office: but presently began to droop; and
+before he reached the house of lawful intervention, he fell once more
+among doubtful counsels.  Was he an agnostic? had he a right to act?
+Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his thoughts.  And then
+again: had he not promised, had he not shaken hands and broken bread? and
+that with open eyes? and if so how could he take action, and not forfeit
+honour?  But honour? what was honour?  A figment, which, in the hot
+pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.  Ay, but crime?  A figment,
+too, which his enfranchised intellect discarded.  All day, he wandered in
+the parks, a prey to whirling thoughts; all night, patrolled the city;
+and at the peep of day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of
+Peckham and bitterly wept.  His gods had fallen.  He who had chosen the
+broad, daylit, unencumbered paths of universal scepticism, found himself
+still the bondslave of honour.  He who had accepted life from a point of
+view as lofty as the predatory eagle's, though with no design to prey; he
+who had clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of commercial
+competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to help the escaping
+murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found, to the overthrow of
+all his logic, that he objected to the use of dynamite.  The dawn crept
+among the sleeping villas and over the smokeless fields of city; and
+still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed over his fall from consistency.
+
+At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.  'There is no
+question as to fact,' he cried; 'right and wrong are but figments and the
+shadow of a word; but for all that, there are certain things that I
+cannot do, and there are certain others that I will not stand.'
+Thereupon he decided to return to make one last effort of persuasion,
+and, if he could not prevail on Zero to desist from his infernal trade,
+throw delicacy to the winds, give the plotter an hour's start, and
+denounce him to the police.  Fast as he went, being winged by this
+resolution, it was already well on in the morning when he came in sight
+of the Superfluous Mansion.  Tripping down the steps, was the young lady
+of the various aliases; and he was surprised to see upon her countenance
+the marks of anger and concern.
+
+'Madam,' he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear knowledge of
+what he was to add.
+
+But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock of fear or
+horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden movement; and fled,
+without turning, from the square.
+
+Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes of
+Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic episode of THE
+BROWN BOX.
+
+
+
+
+DESBOROUGH'S ADVENTURE
+
+
+_THE BROWN BOX_
+
+
+Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
+Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London, but
+itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace.  It was in Queen
+Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the Children's
+Hospital, on your left hand as you go north: Queen Square, sacred to
+humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor
+were taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where groups
+of patient little ones would hover all day long before the hospital, if
+by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a word to their sick
+brother at the window.  Desborough's room was on the first floor and
+fronted to the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he often
+profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which looked down
+upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn commanded by the
+windows of an empty room.
+
+On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon this
+terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now some weeks
+on the vain quest of situations, and prepared for melancholy and tobacco.
+Here, at least, he told himself that he would be alone; for, like most
+youths, who are neither rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather
+shunned than courted the society of other men.  Even as he expressed the
+thought, his eye alighted on the window of the room that looked upon the
+terrace; and to his surprise and annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a
+silken hanging.  It was like his luck, he thought; his privacy was gone,
+he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer suffer
+his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself with
+sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he struck his
+pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force.  It was an old, sweet,
+seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment, and justly
+dear to his fancy.  What, then, was his chagrin, when the head snapped
+from the stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and disappeared among the
+lilacs of the garden?
+
+He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the
+story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore off a fragment of
+the last sheet, which contains only the answers to correspondents, and
+set himself to roll a cigarette.  He was no master of the art; again and
+again, the paper broke between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon
+the ground; and he was already on the point of angry resignation, when
+the window swung slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and
+a lady, somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.
+
+'Senorito,' said she, and there was a rich thrill in her voice, like an
+organ note, 'Senorito, you are in difficulties.  Suffer me to come to
+your assistance.'
+
+With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting
+hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough's eyes, seemed magical,
+rolled and presented him a cigarette.  He took it, still seated, still
+without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition.  Her face
+was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant triangle, so
+innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in our more northern
+climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited by changing lights;
+her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the
+womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life,
+and slender by grace of some divine proportion.
+
+'You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?' she asked.  'Yet it is better made
+than yours.'  At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled in his ear
+like music; but the next moment her face fell.  'I see,' she cried.  'It
+is my manner that repels you.  I am too constrained, too cold.  I am
+not,' she added, with a more engaging air, 'I am not the simple English
+maiden I appear.'
+
+'Oh!' murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.
+
+'In my own dear land,' she pursued, 'things are differently ordered.
+There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous restrictions;
+little is permitted her; she learns to be distant, she learns to appear
+forbidding.  But here, in free England--oh, glorious liberty!' she cried,
+and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable grace--'here there are
+no fetters; here the woman may dare to be herself entirely, and the men,
+the chivalrous men--is it not written on the very shield of your nation,
+_honi soit_?  Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be
+myself.  You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this
+stiffness, I shall end by growing English.  Do I speak the language
+well?'
+
+'Perfectly--oh, perfectly!' said Harry, with a fervency of conviction
+worthy of a graver subject.
+
+'Ah, then,' she said, 'I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my
+father's veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in your
+expressive tongue.  If I speak already without accent, with my thorough
+English appearance, there is nothing left to change except my manners.'
+
+'Oh no,' said Desborough.  'Oh pray not!  I--madam--'
+
+'I am,' interrupted the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia.  The evening
+air grows chill.  Adios, Senorito.'  And before Harry could stammer out a
+word, she had disappeared into her room.
+
+He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand.  His
+thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified the
+image of his new acquaintance.  Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her
+eyes, of which he could not tell the colour, haunted his soul.  The
+clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world.  What
+she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her.  Her age, he durst not
+estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, and thinking sacrilege
+to couple that fair favour with the thought of mortal changes.  As for
+her character, beauty to the young is always good.  So the poor lad
+lingered late upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained
+window, sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of romance;
+and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled mutton
+and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.
+
+Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little ajar,
+and he enjoyed a view of the lady's shoulder, as she sat patiently sewing
+and all unconscious of his presence.  On the next, he had scarce appeared
+when the window opened, and the Senorita tripped forth into the sunlight,
+in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign,
+tropical, and strange.  In one hand she held a packet.
+
+'Will you try,' she said, 'some of my father's tobacco--from dear Cuba?
+There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen.  So
+you need not fear to annoy me.  The fragrance will remind me of home.  My
+home, Senor, was by the sea.'  And as she uttered these few words,
+Desborough, for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the
+great deep.  'Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home, dear Cuba!'
+
+'But some day,' said Desborough, with an inward pang, 'some day you will
+return?'
+
+'Never!' she cried; 'ah, never, in Heaven's name!'
+
+'Are you then resident for life in England?' he inquired, with a strange
+lightening of spirit.
+
+'You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,' she answered sadly; and
+then, resuming her gaiety of manner: 'But you have not tried my Cuban
+tobacco,' she said.
+
+'Senorita,' said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in her
+manner, 'whatever comes to me--you--I mean,' he concluded, deeply
+flushing, 'that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.'
+
+'Ah, Senor,' she said, with almost mournful gravity, 'you seemed so
+simple and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments--and
+besides,' she added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a
+smile, 'you do it so badly!  English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be
+fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be companions,
+comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet never encroach.  Do
+not seek to please me by copying the graces of my countrymen.  Be
+yourself: the frank, kindly, honest English gentleman that I have heard
+of since my childhood and still longed to meet.'
+
+Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the Cuban
+gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.
+
+'Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Senor,' said the
+lady.  'See!' marking a line with her dainty, slippered foot, 'thus far
+it shall be common ground; there, at my window-sill, begins the
+scientific frontier.  If you choose, you may drive me to my forts; but
+if, on the other hand, we are to be real English friends, I may join you
+here when I am not too sad; or, when I am yet more graciously inclined,
+you may draw your chair beside the window and teach me English customs,
+while I work.  You will find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the
+task.'  She laid her hand lightly upon Harry's arm, and looked into his
+eyes.  'Do you know,' said she, 'I am emboldened to believe that I have
+already caught something of your English aplomb?  Do you not perceive a
+change, Senor?  Slight, perhaps, but still a change?  Is my deportment
+not more open, more free, more like that of the dear "British Miss" than
+when you saw me first?'  She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from
+Harry's arm; and before the young man could formulate in words the
+eloquent emotions that ran riot through his brain--with an 'Adios, Senor:
+good-night, my English friend,' she vanished from his sight behind the
+curtain.
+
+The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the neutral
+terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the dinner-hour
+summoned him at length from the scene of disappointment.  On the next it
+rained; but nothing, neither business nor weather, neither prospective
+poverty nor present hardship, could now divert the young man from the
+service of his lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised,
+he took his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture
+of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with tender and
+delightful ardours.  Presently the window opened, and the fair Cuban,
+with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared upon the sill.
+
+'Come here,' she said, 'here, beside my window.  The small verandah gives
+a belt of shelter.'  And she graciously handed him a folding-chair.
+
+As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain
+bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-handed.
+
+'I have taken the liberty,' said he, 'of bringing you a little book.  I
+thought of you, when I observed it on the stall, because I saw it was in
+Spanish.  The man assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite
+proper.'  As he spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand.  Her eyes
+fell as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again upon her
+cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting.  'You are angry,' he cried in agony.
+'I have presumed.'
+
+'No, Senor, it is not that,' returned the lady.  'I--' and a flood of
+colour once more mounted to her brow--'I am confused and ashamed because
+I have deceived you.  Spanish,' she began, and paused--'Spanish is, of
+course, my native tongue,' she resumed, as though suddenly taking
+courage; 'and this should certainly put the highest value on your
+thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?  And how
+shall I confess to you the truth--the humiliating truth--that I cannot
+read?'
+
+As Harry's eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban seemed
+to shrink before his gaze.  'Read?' repeated Harry.  'You!'
+
+She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
+gesture.  'Enter, Senor,' said she.  'The time has come to which I have
+long looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose
+your friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my life.'
+
+It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry passed the
+window.  A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided over
+the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself.  It was
+filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues,
+and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an
+antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of
+cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels.  The fair Cuban, herself a gem
+of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to
+a seat, and sinking herself into another, thus began her history.
+
+
+
+_STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN_
+
+
+I am not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from
+grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the
+patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings;
+but, alas! these kings were African.  She was fair as the day: fairer
+than I, for I inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my
+European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and
+accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours, and
+surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect, I grew up to
+adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh upon my lips,
+still ignorant that she was a slave, and alas! my father's mistress.  Her
+death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had
+known: it left our home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of
+melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable
+change.  Months went by; with the elasticity of my years, I regained some
+of the simple mirth that had before distinguished me; the plantation
+smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate had already forgotten
+my mother and transferred their simple obedience to myself; but still the
+cloud only darkened on the brows of Senor Valdevia.  His absences from
+home had been frequent even in the old days, for he did business in
+precious gems in the city of Havana; they now became almost continuous;
+and when he returned, it was but for the night and with the manner of a
+man crushed down by adverse fortune.
+
+The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the
+Caribbean Sea, some half-hour's rowing from the coasts of Cuba.  It was
+steep, rugged, and, except for my father's family and plantation,
+uninhabited and left to nature.  The house, a low building surrounded by
+spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea
+to Cuba.  The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay
+swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs and flowers of the
+magnolia.  Behind and to the left, the quarter of the negroes and the
+waving fields of the plantation covered an eighth part of the surface of
+the isle.  On the right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast
+and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted with
+profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-eating crabs,
+snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.  Into the recesses of that jungle,
+none could penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible,
+unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the air was
+death.
+
+One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous
+misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in that warm climate
+all are early risers, and found not a servant to attend upon my wants.  I
+made the circuit of the house, still calling: and my surprise had almost
+changed into alarm, when coming at last into a large verandahed court, I
+found it thronged with negroes.  Even then, even when I was amongst them,
+not one turned or paid the least regard to my arrival.  They had eyes and
+ears for but one person: a woman, richly and tastefully attired; of
+elegant carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in years, as worn
+and marred by self-indulgence: her face, which was still attractive,
+stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning with the greed of
+evil.  It was not from her appearance, I believe, but from some emanation
+of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting terror; as we hear of
+plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the woman shocked and
+daunted me.  But I was of a brave nature; trod the weakness down; and
+forcing my way through the slaves, who fell back before me in
+embarrassment, as though in the presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in
+imperious tones: 'Who is this person?'
+
+A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a
+care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.
+
+In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes,
+studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.
+
+'Young woman,' said she, at last, 'I have had a great experience in
+refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them.  You really tempt
+me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my
+hand, I should certainly buy you at your father's sale.'
+
+'Madam--' I began, but my voice failed me.
+
+'Is it possible that you do not know your position?' she returned, with a
+hateful laugh.  'How comical!  Positively, I must buy her.
+Accomplishments, I suppose?' she added, turning to the servants.
+
+Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like any
+lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.
+
+'She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,' said the
+Senora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; 'and I
+should take a pleasure,' she pursued, more directly addressing myself,
+'in bringing you acquainted with a whip.'  And she smiled at me with a
+savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.
+
+At this, I found expression.  Calling by name upon the servants, I bade
+them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and set her
+back upon the mainland.  But with one voice, they protested that they
+durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be
+more wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of
+this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me
+as from one who had blasphemed.  A superstitious reverence plainly
+encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and
+in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces;
+and their fear perhaps reacted on myself.  I looked again at Madam
+Mendizabal.  She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through her
+glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
+superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage,
+fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.
+
+I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.  As I went, my head
+whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults.  Who was
+she? what, in Heaven's name, the power she wielded over my obedient
+negroes?  Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father's
+sale?  To all these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and in
+the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain except the hateful leering
+image of the woman.
+
+I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father coming
+to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry that I thought would
+have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a passion of sobs and
+tears upon his bosom.  He made me sit down below a tall palmetto that
+grew not far off; comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice;
+and as soon as I regained the least command upon my feelings, asked me,
+not without harshness, what this grief betokened.  I was surprised by his
+tone into a still greater measure of composure; and in firm tones, though
+still interrupted by sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island,
+at which I thought he started and turned pale; that the servants would
+not obey me; that the stranger's name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that,
+he seemed to me both troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me,
+treated me as a slave (and here my father's brow began to darken),
+threatened to buy me at a sale, and questioned my own servants before my
+face; and that, at last, finding myself quite helpless and exposed to
+these intolerable liberties, I had fled from the house in terror,
+indignation, and amazement.
+
+'Teresa,' said my father, with singular gravity of voice, 'I must make
+to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much
+that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman
+by her spirit.  As for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to
+tell you what she is?  Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves;
+to-day she is what you see her--prematurely old, disgraced by the
+practice of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich,
+married, they say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and
+exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as
+unbounded as its reason is mysterious.  Horrible rites, it is supposed,
+cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo.  Be that as it may, I would have
+you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her
+that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you
+shall never fall.'
+
+'Father!' I cried.  'Fall?  Was there any truth, then, in her words?  Am
+I--O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.'
+
+'I will tell you,' he replied, with merciful bluntness.  'Your mother was
+a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail
+to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her:
+a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment,
+intervened.  You will now understand the heaviness with which your
+mother's memory hangs about my neck.'
+
+I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to console the
+survivor, I forgot myself.
+
+'It matters not,' resumed my father.  'What I have left undone can never
+be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse.  But, Teresa,
+with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to
+do what was still possible: to liberate yourself.'
+
+I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre
+roughness.
+
+'Your mother's illness,' he resumed, 'had engaged too great a portion of
+my time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of
+ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the
+more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the
+darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what
+quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred--all these had been too long
+absent from the conduct of affairs.  Teresa, I was insolvent.'
+
+'What matters that?' I cried.  'What matters poverty, if we be left
+together with our love and sacred memories?'
+
+'You do not comprehend,' he said gloomily.  'Slave, as you are,
+young--alas! scarce more than child!--accomplished, beautiful with the
+most touching beauty, innocent as an angel--all these qualities that
+should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those
+to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell.  You are a
+chattel; a marketable thing; and worth--heavens, that I should say such
+words!--worth money.  Do you begin to see?  If I were to give you
+freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be
+certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a criminal.'
+
+I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself, in
+sympathy for my father.
+
+'How I have toiled,' he continued, 'how I have dared and striven to
+repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember.  Its blessing was
+denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed
+to descend upon my daughter's head.  At length, all hope was at an end; I
+was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which
+I could not meet; I should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my
+lands, my jewels that I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and
+rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be
+sold and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers.  Too
+long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great crime of slavery;
+but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied daughter, was _she_ to pay the
+price?  I cried out--no!--I took Heaven to witness my temptation; I
+caught up this bag and fled.  Close upon my track are the pursuers;
+perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon this isle,
+sacred to the memory of the dear soul that bore you, to consign your
+father to an ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour.
+We have not many hours before us.  Off the north coast of our isle, by
+strange good fortune, an English yacht has for some days been hovering.
+It belongs to Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now
+I have rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our
+escape.  Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power
+to force him.  For what does it mean, my child--what means this
+Englishman, who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns from
+every trip with new and valuable gems?'
+
+'He may have found a mine,' I hazarded.
+
+'So he declares,' returned my father; 'but the strange gift I have
+received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.  He brought me
+diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second
+glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had first seen the
+day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their peculiar water
+and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient temples.  Thus
+put upon the scent, I made inquiries.  Oh, he is cunning, but I was
+cunninger than he.  He visited, I found, the shop of every jeweller in
+town; to one he came with rubies, to one with emeralds, to one with
+precious beryl; to all, with this same story of the mine.  But in what
+mine, what rich epitome of the earth's surface, were there conjoined the
+rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of
+Golconda?  No, child, that man, for all his yacht and title, that man
+must fear and must obey me.  To-night, then, as soon as it is dark, we
+must take our way through the swamp by the path which I shall presently
+show you; thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is blazed,
+which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close by the yacht
+is riding.  Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I look to
+see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man attends on the
+mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark, the
+redness of a fire, if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing
+headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put the swamp between
+ourselves and danger.  Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would,
+before all things, be seen to arrive at the house with empty hands; a
+blabbing slave might else undo us.  For see!' he added; and holding up
+the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured into my lap a shower of
+unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size and colour, and
+catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of the
+sun.
+
+I could not restrain a cry of admiration.
+
+'Even in your ignorant eyes,' pursued my father, 'they command respect.
+Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the tool, cold as death?
+Ingrate!' he cried.  'Each one of these--miracles of nature's patience,
+conceived out of the dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each
+one is, for you and me, a year of life, liberty, and mutual affection.
+How, then, should I cherish them! and why do I delay to place them beyond
+reach!  Teresa, follow me.'
+
+He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle, where
+they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the declivity of
+the hill on which my father's house stood planted.  For some while he
+skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket.  Then, seeming
+to recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately lightened
+of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me.  'Here,' said he, 'is
+the entrance of the secret path that I have mentioned, and here you shall
+await me.  I but pass some hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my
+poor treasure; as soon as that is safe, I will return.'  It was in vain
+that I sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in vain
+that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the black blood that I
+now knew to circulate in my veins: to all my appeals he turned a deaf
+ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes, disappeared
+into the pestilential silence of the swamp.
+
+At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and my
+father stepped from out the thicket, and paused and almost staggered in
+the first shock of the blinding sunlight.  His face was of a singular
+dusky red; and yet for all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not seem
+to sweat.
+
+'You are tired,' I cried, springing to meet him.  'You are ill.'
+
+'I am tired,' he replied; 'the air in that jungle stifles one; my eyes,
+besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine
+pierces them like knives.  A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment.  All
+shall yet be well.  I have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately
+beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright
+things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them there, if
+needful.  But come, let us to the house; it is time to eat against our
+journey of the night: to eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to
+sleep.'  And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as
+if in pity.
+
+We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long,
+and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch of
+the verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the
+shuttered house.  The meal was spread; the house servants, already
+informed by the boatmen of the master's return, were all back at their
+posts, and terrified, as I could see, to face me.  My father still
+murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I hurried at once
+to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left his arm than he
+paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange gesture of groping.
+'How is this?' he cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice.  'Am I blind?'  I ran
+to him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and stood
+stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as if in a painful
+effort after breath.  Then suddenly he raised both hands to his temples,
+cried out, 'My head, my head!' and reeled and fell against the wall.
+
+I knew too well what it must be.  I turned and begged the servants to
+relieve him.  But they, with one accord, denied the possibility of hope;
+the master had gone into the swamp, they said, the master must die; all
+help was idle.  Why should I dwell upon his sufferings?  I had him
+carried to a bed, and watched beside him.  He lay still, and at times
+ground his teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only that one word
+of hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, and telling me that, even
+in the last struggle with the powers of death, his mind was still
+tortured by his daughter's peril.  The sun had gone down, the darkness
+had fallen, when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy earth.
+What thought had I of flight, of safety, of the impending dangers of my
+situation?  Beside the body of my last friend, I had forgotten all except
+the natural pangs of my bereavement.
+
+The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I was recalled
+to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the entrance of the slave-girl
+to whom I have already referred.  The poor soul was indeed devotedly
+attached to me; and it was with streaming tears that she broke to me the
+import of her coming.  With the first light of dawn a boat had reached
+our landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till now so fortunate)
+a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my father's person, and a
+man of a gross body and low manners, who declared the island, the
+plantation, and all its human chattels, to be now his own.  'I think,'
+said my slave-girl, 'he must be a politician or some very powerful
+sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming, than she
+took to the woods.'
+
+'Fool,' said I, 'it was the officers she feared; and at any rate why does
+that beldam still dare to pollute the island with her presence?  And O
+Cora,' I exclaimed, remembering my grief, 'what matter all these troubles
+to an orphan?'
+
+'Mistress,' said she, 'I must remind you of two things.  Never speak as
+you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person of colour; for she
+is the most powerful woman in this world, and her real name even, if one
+durst pronounce it, were a spell to raise the dead.  And whatever you do,
+speak no more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it is possible she
+may be afraid of the police (and indeed I think that I have heard she is
+in hiding), and though I know that you will laugh and not believe, yet it
+is true, and proved, and known that she hears every word that people
+utter in this whole vast world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough
+in her black books.  She looks at me, mistress, till my blood turns ice.
+That is the first I had to say; and now for the second: do, pray, for
+Heaven's sake, bear in mind that you are no longer the poor Senor's
+daughter.  He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no more than a
+common slave-girl like myself.  The man to whom you belong calls for you;
+oh, my dear mistress, go at once!  With your youth and beauty, you may
+still, if you are winning and obedient, secure yourself an easy life.'
+
+For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may
+conceive; the next, it was gone: she did but speak after her kind, as the
+bird sings or cattle bellow.  'Go,' said I.  'Go, Cora.  I thank you for
+your kind intentions.  Leave me alone one moment with my dead father; and
+tell this man that I will come at once.'
+
+She went: and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those deaf
+ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence.  'Father,'
+I said, 'it was your last thought, even in the pangs of dissolution, that
+your daughter should escape disgrace.  Here, at your side, I swear to you
+that purpose shall be carried out; by what means, I know not; by crime,
+if need be; and Heaven forgive both you and me and our oppressors, and
+Heaven help my helplessness!'  Thereupon I felt strengthened as by long
+repose; stepped to the mirror, ay, even in that chamber of the dead;
+hastily arranged my hair, refreshed my tear-worn eyes, breathed a dumb
+farewell to the originator of my days and sorrows; and composing my
+features to a smile, went forth to meet my master.
+
+He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which
+he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age,
+sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by
+nature.  But the sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter,
+warned me to expect the worst.
+
+'Is this your late mistress?' he inquired of the slaves; and when he had
+learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them.  'Now, my dear,' said he, 'I
+am a plain man: none of your damned Spaniards, but a true blue,
+hard-working, honest Englishman.  My name is Caulder.'
+
+'Thank you, sir,' said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had seen the
+servants.
+
+'Come,' said he, 'this is better than I had expected; and if you choose
+to be dutiful in the station to which it has pleased God to call you, you
+will find me a very kind old fellow.  I like your looks,' he added,
+calling me by my name, which he scandalously mispronounced.  'Is your
+hair all your own?' he then inquired with a certain sharpness, and coming
+up to me, as though I were a horse, he grossly satisfied his doubts.  I
+was all one flame from head to foot, but I contained my righteous anger
+and submitted.  'That is very well,' he continued, chucking me good
+humouredly under the chin.  'You will have no cause to regret coming to
+old Caulder, eh?  But that is by the way.  What is more to the point is
+this: your late master was a most dishonest rogue, and levanted with some
+valuable property that belonged of rights to me.  Now, considering your
+relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person to know what has
+become of it; and I warn you, before you answer, that my whole future
+kindness will depend upon your honesty.  I am an honest man myself, and
+expect the same in my servants.'
+
+'Do you mean the jewels?' said I, sinking my voice into a whisper.
+
+'That is just precisely what I do,' said he, and chuckled.
+
+'Hush!' said I.
+
+'Hush?' he repeated.  'And why hush?  I am on my own place, I would have
+you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful servants.'
+
+'Are the officers gone?' I asked; and oh! how my hopes hung upon the
+answer!
+
+'They are,' said he, looking somewhat disconcerted.  'Why do you ask?'
+
+'I wish you had kept them,' I answered, solemnly enough, although my
+heart at that same moment leaped with exultation.  'Master, I must not
+conceal from you the truth.  The servants on this estate are in a
+dangerous condition, and mutiny has long been brewing.'
+
+'Why,' he cried, 'I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers in my
+life.'  But for all that he turned somewhat pale.
+
+'Did they tell you,' I continued, 'that Madam Mendizabal is on the
+island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if, this
+morning, they have received you with even decent civility, it was only by
+her orders--issued with what after-thought I leave you to consider?'
+
+'Madam Jezebel?' said he.  'Well, she is a dangerous devil; the police
+are after her, besides, for a whole series of murders; but after all,
+what then?  To be sure, she has a great influence with you coloured folk.
+But what in fortune's name can be her errand here?'
+
+'The jewels,' I replied.  'Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure, sapphire
+and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies red as the
+sunset--of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the
+eye!--had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as _she_ has--you would
+understand and tremble at your danger.'
+
+'She has seen them!' he cried, and I could see by his face, that my
+audacity was justified by its success.
+
+I caught his hand in mine.  'My master,' said I, 'I am now yours; it is
+my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your interests and life.
+Hear my advice, then; and, I conjure you, be guided by my prudence.
+Follow me privily; let none see where we are going; I will lead you to
+the place where the treasure has been buried; that once disinterred, let
+us make straight for the boat, escape to the mainland, and not return to
+this dangerous isle without the countenance of soldiers.'
+
+What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion?
+But this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused,
+to quiet the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that
+slavery was natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him.  He
+praised and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued in a
+servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the nature and value
+of the treasure, and I had once more artfully inflamed his greed, bade me
+without delay proceed to carry out my plan of action.
+
+From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by
+devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the
+swamp.  I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools,
+and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and
+followed.  When we were come as far as the beginning of the path, it
+flashed into my mind I had forgotten meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in the
+shadow of a tree, I returned alone to the house for a basket of
+provisions.  Were they for him?  I asked myself.  And a voice within me
+answered, No. While we were face to face, while I still saw before my
+eyes the man to whom I belonged as the hand belongs to the body, my
+indignation held me bravely up.  But now that I was alone, I conceived a
+sickness at myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; I longed to
+throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn him from
+that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die; but my vow
+to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon these
+scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected the horror
+that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that I returned to the
+borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that I bade him rise and
+follow me.
+
+The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the
+living jungle.  On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage was
+continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth of
+super-impending wood; and the air was hot like steam, and heady with
+vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.
+Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on each
+side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts with a
+continuous hissing rustle; and but for these sentient vegetables, all in
+that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.
+
+We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
+nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.  My heart yearned, as I
+beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his
+steps.  What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked.  But no,
+he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest
+man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the
+while, like a sick dog.  Presently he got to his feet again, protesting
+he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I
+saw in his changed countenance, the first approaches of death.
+
+'Master,' said I, 'you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me with
+dread.  Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we
+seek.'
+
+'Wench,' he cried, 'look before you; look at your steps.  I declare to
+Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you of
+the change in your position.'
+
+A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a
+whisper, that its touch was death.  Presently a great green serpent,
+vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once
+again I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes.
+'The coffin snake,' said I, 'the snake that dogs its victim like a
+hound.'
+
+But he was not to be dissuaded.  'I am an old traveller,' said he.  'This
+is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.'
+
+'Ay,' said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, 'what end?'
+
+Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then,
+perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, 'There!' said
+he.  'What did I tell you?  We are past the worst.'
+
+Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow
+and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it
+broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers:
+sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat
+heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.
+
+'If we fall from that unsteady bridge,' said I, 'see, where the caiman
+lies ready to devour us!  If, by the least divergence from the path, we
+should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin
+scour the border of the thicket!  Once helpless, how they would swarm
+together to the assault!  What could man do against a thousand of such
+mailed assailants?  And what a death were that, to perish alive under
+their claws.'
+
+'Are you mad, girl?' he cried.  'I bid you be silent and lead on.'
+
+Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick
+that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face.  'Lead on!' he
+cried again.  'Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough,
+and all for a prating slave-girl?'
+
+I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled back
+upon my heart.  Something, I know not what, fell at that moment with a
+dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it was my pity
+that had fallen.
+
+On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was not
+so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved.  It was possible,
+here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight, or to
+distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions of
+some soaring tree.  The cypress on the left stood very visibly forth,
+upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened broadly;
+and there was a patch of open ground, beset with horrible ant-heaps,
+thick with their artificers.  I laid down the tools and basket by the
+cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with the crawling
+ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious victim.
+Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his
+features were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the
+turning of a mighty wheel.
+
+'Here,' I said, 'is the spot.  I cannot dig, for I have not learned to
+use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to be swift
+in what you do.'
+
+He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw
+rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's.
+'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the
+drone of these carrion flies confounds me.  Have you not wine?'
+
+I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.  'It is for you to think,'
+said I, 'if you should further persevere.  The swamp has an ill name.'
+And at the word I ominously nodded.
+
+'Give me the pick,' said he.  'Where are the jewels buried?'
+
+I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim
+twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it
+overhead with the vigour of a healthy man.  At first, there broke forth
+upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the
+greedy insects settled thickly.
+
+'To sweat in such a place,' said I.  'O master, is this wise?  Fever is
+drunk in through open pores.'
+
+'What do you mean?' he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in the
+soil.  'Do you seek to drive me mad?  Do you think I do not understand
+the danger that I run?'
+
+'That is all I want,' said I: 'I only wish you to be swift.'  And then,
+my mind flitting to my father's deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above
+my breath, the same vain repetition of words, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry.'
+
+Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while he
+still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows,
+repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, 'Hurry, hurry,
+hurry;' and then again, 'There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill
+name, ill name;' and then back to 'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' with a dreadful,
+mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied utterance, as a sick man rolls upon
+his pillow.  The sweat had disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I
+could see of him, of the same dull brick red.  Presently his pick
+unearthed the bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued
+hewing at the soil.
+
+'Master,' said I, 'there is the treasure.'  He seemed to waken from a
+dream.  'Where?' he cried; and then, seeing it before his eyes, 'Can this
+be possible?' he added.  'I must be light-headed.  Girl,' he cried
+suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once before
+observed, 'what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?'
+
+'It is a grave,' I answered.  'You will not go out alive; and as for me,
+my life is in God's hands.'
+
+He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from the
+effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot tell.
+Pretty soon, he raised his head.  'You have brought me here to die,' he
+said; 'at the risk of your own days, you have condemned me.  Why?'
+
+'To save my honour,' I replied.  'Bear me out that I have warned you.
+Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer.'
+
+He took out his revolver and handed it to me.  'You see,' he said, 'I
+could have killed you even yet.  But I am dying, as you say; nothing
+could save me; and my bill is long enough already.  Dear me, dear me,' he
+said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look, like
+a dull child at school, 'if there be a judgment afterwards, my bill is
+long enough.'
+
+At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed
+his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp and
+besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I could
+have bought back his, I had not balanced at the cost.  But he was
+determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret my act.
+
+'I have nothing to forgive,' said he.  'Dear heaven, what a thing is an
+old fool!  I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me.'
+
+He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness,
+clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman.
+Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and
+died away; and he came again to the full possession of his mind.  'I must
+write my will,' he said.  'Get out my pocket-book.'  I did so, and he
+wrote hurriedly on one page with a pencil.  'Do not let my son know,' he
+said; 'he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let him know how you
+have paid me out;' and then all of a sudden, 'God,' he cried, 'I am
+blind,' and clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a
+groaning whisper, 'Don't leave me to the crabs!'  I swore I would be true
+to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.  I sat
+there and watched him, as I had watched my father, but with what
+different, with what appalling thoughts!  Through the long afternoon, he
+gradually sank.  All that while, I fought an uphill battle to shield him
+from the swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my
+crime.  The night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the
+dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed
+his last.  At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine,
+grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was free.
+
+I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die
+than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and the bag of
+gems, set forward towards the north.  The swamp, at that hour of the
+night, was filled with a continuous din: animals and insects of all
+kinds, and all inimical to life, contributing their parts.  Yet in the
+midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes were bandaged,
+beholding nothing.  The soil sank under my foot, with a horrid, slippery
+consistence, as though I were walking among toads; the touch of the thick
+wall of foliage, by which alone I guided myself, affrighted me like the
+touch of serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a gag; indeed,
+I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that nocturnal
+walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I found the
+path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and saw, although
+still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of the moon.
+
+Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst
+noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic
+smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the
+expressive silence of the night.  My negro blood had carried me unhurt
+across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had
+escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I
+had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle
+and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English
+yacht.  It was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father
+had described; and I was casting about for any landmark, and, in my
+ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, when there
+fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many voices
+hurriedly singing.
+
+I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the
+direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour's walking, came
+unperceived to the margin of an open glade.  It was lighted by the strong
+moon and by the flames of a fire.  In the midst, there stood a little low
+and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered
+to have heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of
+Hoodoo.  Hard by the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually
+agitated and stirring to and fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I
+presently perceived to be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds
+and animals, still struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed
+one upon another.  Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring
+of kneeling Africans, both men and women.  Now they would raise their
+palms half-closed to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of
+supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their hands
+before them on the ground.  As the double movement passed and repassed
+along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the
+sea; and still, as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant
+continued.  I stood spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair,
+knowing that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
+
+Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth a tall
+negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife.  He
+was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam
+Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the
+level of her face, an open basket of wicker.  It was filled with coiling
+snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot
+through the osier grating and curled about her arms.  At the sight of
+this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the
+chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent.  Then, at
+a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in
+the moon and firelight, the singing died away, and there began the second
+stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration.  From different parts of
+the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst;
+ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the
+priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered aloud the
+blackest wishes of the heart.  Death and disease were the favours usually
+invoked: the death or the disease of enemies or rivals; some calling down
+these plagues upon the nearest of their own blood, and one, to whom I
+swear I had been never less than kind, invoking them upon myself.  At
+each petition, the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some bird or
+animal from the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the knife, and
+tossed its body on the ground.  At length, it seemed, it reached the turn
+of the high-priestess.  She set down the basket on the steps, moved into
+the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and
+still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, and
+with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort
+of horror through my blood.
+
+'Power,' she began, 'whose name we do not utter; power that is neither
+good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good, greater than
+evil--all my life long I have adored and served thee.  Who has shed blood
+upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy praises?
+whose limbs are faint before their age with leaping in thy revels?  Who
+has slain the child of her body?  I,' she cried, 'I, Metamnbogu!  By my
+own name, I name myself.  I tear away the veil.  I would be served or
+perish.  Hear me, slime of the fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom
+of the serpent's udder--hear or slay me!  I would have two things, O
+shapeless one, O horror of emptiness--two things, or die!  The blood of
+my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy of Hoodoo; give
+me his blood!  And yet another, O racer of the blind winds, O germinator
+in the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of corruption!  I grow
+old, I grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy servant
+then lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess turn again to the
+blossom of her days, and be a girl once more, and the desired of all men,
+even as in the past!  And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not
+yet wrought since we were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the
+sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth--the kid without the horns?'
+
+Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through
+all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and
+swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an
+instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door, carrying in his arms
+the body of the slave-girl, Cora.  I know not if I saw what followed.
+When next my mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was laid upon the
+steps before the serpents; the negro with the knife stood over her; the
+knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great horror, bidding them,
+in God's name, to pause.
+
+A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.  A moment more, and they must
+have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished.  But Heaven
+had designed to save me.  The silence of these wretched men was not yet
+broken, when there arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the
+roar of any European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any
+Eastern wind.  Blackness engulfed the world; blackness, stabbed across
+from every side by intricate and blinding lightning.  Almost in the same
+second, at one world-swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached
+the clearing.  I heard an agonising crash, and the light of my reason was
+overwhelmed.
+
+When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.  I was unhurt; the
+trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have thought at
+first that the tornado was a feature in a dream.  It was otherwise
+indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction
+by a hand's-breadth.  Right through the forest, which here covered hill
+and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of ruin.  On either hand, the
+trees waved uninjured in the air of the morning; but in the forthright
+course of its advance, the hurricane had left no trophy standing.
+Everything, in that line, tree, man, or animal, the desecrated chapel and
+the votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that brief
+spasm of anger of the powers of air.  Everything, but a yard or two
+beyond the line of its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor
+vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to heaven, awoke
+unharmed in the crystal purity and peace of the new day.
+
+To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so
+wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that fugitive
+convulsion.  I crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience, with so
+many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the further side, bankrupt
+alike of strength and courage.  There I sat down awhile to recruit my
+forces; and as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness of Heaven!) my
+eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great trees, alighted on
+a trunk that had been blazed.  Yes, by the directing hand of Providence,
+I had been conducted to the very track I was to follow.  With what a
+light heart I now set forth, and walking with how glad a step, traversed
+the uplands of the isle!
+
+It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn,
+to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea.  About
+all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a
+particular fury and made a fringe of snow.  Close at my feet, I saw a
+haven, set in precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock.  Just outside,
+a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted,
+so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized
+with admiration.  The English colours blew from her masthead; and from my
+high station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she rolled on
+the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of her deck
+furniture.  There, then, was my ship of refuge; and of all my
+difficulties only one remained: to get on board of her.
+
+Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the margin of a
+cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows entered, and along
+whose shores they broke with a surprising loudness.  A wooded promontory
+hid the yacht; and I had walked some distance round the beach, in what
+appeared to be a virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat, drawn into
+a natural harbour, where it rocked in safety, but deserted.  I looked
+about for those who should have manned her; and presently, in the
+immediate entrance of the wood, spied the red embers of a fire, and,
+stretched around in various attitudes, a party of slumbering mariners.
+To these I drew near: most were black, a few white; but all were dressed
+with the conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, from his peaked cap
+and glittering buttons, I rightly divined to be an officer.  Him, then, I
+touched upon the shoulder.  He started up; the sharpness of his movement
+woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.
+
+'What do you want?' inquired the officer.
+
+'To go on board the yacht,' I answered.
+
+I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer, with
+something of sharpness, asked me who I was.  Now I had determined to
+conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose to
+my lips was that of the Senora Mendizabal.  At the word, there went a
+shock about the little party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with
+indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something of a scared
+surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief prompted me to add, 'And
+if the name is new to your ears, call me Metamnbogu.'
+
+I had never seen an effect so wonderful.  The negroes threw their hands
+into the air, with the same gesture I remarked the night before about the
+Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and then another, ran forward and kneeled
+down and kissed the skirts of my torn dress; and when the white officer
+broke out swearing and calling to know if they were mad, the coloured
+seamen took him by the shoulders, dragged him on one side till they were
+out of hearing, and surrounded him with open mouths and extravagant
+pantomime.  The officer seemed to struggle hard; he laughed aloud, and I
+saw him make gestures of dissent and protest; but in the end, whether
+overcome by reason or simply weary of resistance, he gave in--approached
+me civilly enough, but with something of a sneering manner
+underneath--and touching his cap, 'My lady,' said he, 'if that is what
+you are, the boat is ready.'
+
+My reception on board the _Nemorosa_ (for so the yacht was named) partook
+of the same mingled nature.  We were scarcely within hail of that great
+and elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale under and churning the
+blue sea to snow, before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a
+great crowd of seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the few
+who manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some _lingua franca_
+incomprehensible to me.  All eyes were directed on the passenger; and
+once more I saw the negroes toss up their hands to heaven, but now as if
+with passionate wonder and delight.
+
+At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer, a
+gentlemanly man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I addressed my
+demand to see Sir George.
+
+'But this is not--' he cried, and paused.
+
+'I know it,' returned the other officer, who had brought me from the
+shore.  'But what the devil can we do?  Look at all the niggers!'
+
+I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the poor
+ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands into the air,
+as though in the presence of a creature half divine.  Apparently the
+officer with the whiskers had instantly come round to the opinion of his
+subaltern; for he now addressed me with every signal of respect.
+
+'Sir George is at the island, my lady,' said he: 'for which, with your
+ladyship's permission, I shall immediately make all sail.  The cabins are
+prepared.  Steward, take Lady Greville below.'
+
+Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that I could
+neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious and airy cabin,
+hung about with weapons and surrounded by divans.  The steward asked for
+my commands; but I was by this time so wearied, bewildered, and
+disturbed, that I could only wave him to leave me to myself, and sink
+upon a pile of cushions.  Presently, by the changed motion of the ship, I
+knew her to be under way; my thoughts, so far from clarifying, grew the
+more distracted and confused; dreams began to mingle and confound them;
+and at length, by insensible transition, I sank into a dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once more morning.
+The world on which I reopened my eyes swam strangely up and down; the
+jewels in the bag that lay beside me chinked together ceaselessly; the
+clock and the barometer wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead,
+seamen were singing out at their work, and coils of rope clattering and
+thumping on the deck.  Yet it was long before I had divined that I was at
+sea; long before I had recalled, one after another, the tragical,
+mysterious, and inexplicable events that had brought me where was.
+
+When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to find
+had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and seeing a silver bell
+hard by upon a table, rang it loudly.  The steward instantly appeared; I
+asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while
+with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny.  To relieve myself of my
+embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show of ease as I could
+muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry so numerous a crew?
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'I know not who you are, nor what mad fancy has induced
+you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not yours.  I warn
+you from the soul.  No sooner arrived at the island--'
+
+At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, who had
+entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon his shoulder.
+The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear, that was imprinted on the
+steward's face, formed a startling addition to his words.
+
+'Parker!' said the officer, and pointed towards the door.
+
+'Yes, Mr. Kentish,' said the steward.  'For God's sake, Mr. Kentish!'
+And vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.
+
+Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, and join in
+the meal.  'I fill your ladyship's glass,' said he, and handed me a
+tumbler of neat rum.
+
+'Sir,' cried I, 'do you expect me to drink this?'
+
+He laughed heartily.  'Your ladyship is so much changed,' said he, 'that
+I no longer expect any one thing more than any other.'
+
+Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted both Mr.
+Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a sail in sight,
+which was bound to pass us very close, and that Mr. Harland was in doubt
+about the colours.
+
+'Being so near the island?' asked Mr. Kentish.
+
+'That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,' returned the sailor, with a
+scrape.
+
+'Better not, I think,' said Mr. Kentish.  'My compliments to Mr. Harland;
+and if she seem a lively boat, give her the stars and stripes; but if she
+be dull, and we can easily outsail her, show John Dutchman.  That is
+always another word for incivility at sea; so we can disregard a hail or
+a flag of distress, without attracting notice.'
+
+As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the officer in
+wonder.  'Mr. Kentish, if that be your name,' said I, 'are you ashamed of
+your own colours?'
+
+'Your ladyship refers to the _Jolly Roger_?' he inquired, with perfect
+gravity; and immediately after, went into peals of laughter.  'Pardon
+me,' said he; 'but here for the first time I recognise your ladyship's
+impetuosity.'  Nor, try as I pleased, could I extract from him any
+explanation of this mystery, but only oily and commonplace evasion.
+
+While we were thus occupied, the movement of the _Nemorosa_ gradually
+became less violent; its speed at the same time diminished; and presently
+after, with a sullen plunge, the anchor was discharged into the sea.
+Kentish immediately rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck;
+where I found we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky
+islets, hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.  Immediately
+under our board, a somewhat larger isle was green with trees, set with a
+few low buildings and approached by a pier of very crazy workmanship; and
+a little inshore of us, a smaller vessel lay at anchor.
+
+I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat was lowered.
+I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me, and we pulled briskly to
+the pier.  A crowd of villainous, armed loiterers, both black and white,
+looked on upon our landing; and again the word passed about among the
+negroes, and again I was received with prostrations and the same gesture
+of the flung-up hand.  By this, what with the appearance of these men,
+and the lawless, sea-girt spot in which I found myself, my courage began
+a little to decline, and clinging to the arm of Mr. Kentish, I begged him
+to tell me what it meant?
+
+'Nay, madam,' he returned, '_you_ know.'  And leading me smartly through
+the crowd, which continued to follow at a considerable distance, and at
+which he still kept looking back, I thought, with apprehension, he
+brought me to a low house that stood alone in an encumbered yard, opened
+the door, and begged me to enter.
+
+'But why?' said I.  'I demand to see Sir George.'
+
+'Madam,' returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black as thunder, 'to
+drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you are; beyond the fact that
+you are not the person whose name you have assumed.  But be what you
+please, spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-judging jester, if you do not
+immediately enter that house, I will cut you to the earth.'  And even as
+he spoke, he threw an uneasy glance behind him at the following crowd of
+blacks.
+
+I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and with a
+palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was locked from the
+outside and the key withdrawn.  The interior was long, low, and quite
+unfurnished, but filled, almost from end to end, with sugar-cane,
+tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other incongruous and highly inflammable
+material; and not only was the door locked, but the solitary window
+barred with iron.
+
+I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I would
+have given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr. Caulder.  I
+still stood, with my hands clasped, the image of despair, looking about
+me on the lumber of the room or raising my eyes to heaven; when there
+appeared outside the window bars, the face of a very black negro, who
+signed to me imperiously to draw near.  I did so, and he instantly, and
+with every mark of fervour, addressed me a long speech in some unknown
+and barbarous tongue.
+
+'I declare,' I cried, clasping my brow, 'I do not understand one
+syllable.'
+
+'Not?' he said in Spanish.  'Great, great, are the powers of Hoodoo!  Her
+very mind is changed!  But, O chief priestess, why have you suffered
+yourself to be shut into this cage? why did you not call your slaves at
+once to your defence?  Do you not see that all has been prepared to
+murder you? at a spark, this flimsy house will go in flames; and alas!
+who shall then be the chief priestess? and what shall be the profit of
+the miracle?'
+
+'Heavens!' cried I, 'can I not see Sir George?  I must, I must, come by
+speech of him.  Oh, bring me to Sir George!'  And, my terror fairly
+mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and began to pray to all the
+saints.
+
+'Lordy!' cried the negro, 'here they come!'  And his black head was
+instantly withdrawn from the window.
+
+'I never heard such nonsense in my life,' exclaimed a voice.
+
+'Why, so we all say, Sir George,' replied the voice of Mr. Kentish.  'But
+put yourself in our place.  The niggers were near two to one.  And upon
+my word, if you'll excuse me, sir, considering the notion they have taken
+in their heads, I regard it as precious fortunate for all of us that the
+mistake occurred.'
+
+'This is no question of fortune, sir,' returned Sir George.  'It is a
+question of my orders, and you may take my word for it, Kentish, either
+Harland, or yourself, or Parker--or, by George, all three of you!--shall
+swing for this affair.  These are my sentiments.  Give me the key and be
+off.'
+
+Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared upon
+the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty, with a very open
+countenance, and of a stout and personable figure.
+
+'My dear young lady,' said he, 'who the devil may you be?'
+
+I told him all my story in one rush of words.  He heard me, from the
+first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I came to the
+death of the Senora Mendizabal in the tornado, he fairly leaped into the
+air.
+
+'My dear child,' he cried, clasping me in his arms, 'excuse a man who
+might be your father!  This is the best news I ever had since I was born;
+for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my wife.'  He sat
+down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy.  'Dear me,' said he, 'I
+declare this tempts me to believe in Providence.  And what,' he added,
+'can I do for you?'
+
+'Sir George,' said I, 'I am already rich: all that I ask is your
+protection.'
+
+'Understand one thing,' he said, with great energy.  'I will never
+marry.'
+
+'I had not ventured to propose it,' I exclaimed, unable to restrain my
+mirth; 'I only seek to be conveyed to England, the natural home of the
+escaped slave.'
+
+'Well,' returned Sir George, 'frankly I owe you something for this
+exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me.  Now, I have
+made a small competence in business--a jewel mine, a sort of naval
+agency, et caetera, and I am on the point of breaking up my company, and
+retiring to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old age, unmarried.
+One good turn deserves another: if you swear to hold your tongue about
+this island, these little bonfire arrangements, and the whole episode of
+my unfortunate marriage, why, I'll carry you home aboard the _Nemorosa_.'
+I eagerly accepted his conditions.
+
+'One thing more,' said he.  'My late wife was some sort of a sorceress
+among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she has come alive again in
+your agreeable person.  Now, you will have the goodness to keep up that
+fancy, if you please; and to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or
+whatever his name may be, that I am from this moment quite a sacred
+character.'
+
+'I swear it,' said I, 'by my father's memory; and that is a vow that I
+will never break.'
+
+'I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,' returned Sir
+George, with a chuckle; 'for you are not only an escaped slave, but have,
+by your own account, a considerable amount of stolen property.'
+
+I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised that
+these jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I decided they
+should be restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that I had just
+regained.  Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and
+watched me with a smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder's pocket-book and turned
+to the page on which the dying man had scrawled his testament.  How shall
+I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with which I read it! for
+my victim had not only set me free, but bequeathed to me the bag of
+jewels.
+
+My plain tale draws towards a close.  Sir George and I, in my character
+of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm among the
+negroes, and were cheered and followed to the place of embarkation.
+There, Sir George, turning about, made a speech to his old companions, in
+which he thanked and bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and
+towards the end of which he fell on some expressions which I still
+remember.  'If any of you gentry lose your money,' he said, 'take care
+you do not come to me; for in the first place, I shall do my best to have
+you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to the law.  Blackmail
+won't do for me.  I'll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to
+pieces by degrees.  I'll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit
+to one man-jack of you.'  That same night we got under way and crossed to
+the port of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the
+pocket-book to Mr. Caulder's son.  In a week's time, the men were all
+paid off; new hands were shipped; and the _Nemorosa_ weighed her anchor
+for Old England.
+
+A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.  Sir George, of course,
+was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected gaiety of character
+that naturally endeared him to the young; and it was interesting to hear
+him lay out his projects for the future, when he should be returned to
+Parliament, and place at the service of the nation his experience of
+marine affairs.  I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a private
+yacht were not original.  But he told me, no.  'A yacht, Miss Valdevia,'
+he observed, 'is a chartered nuisance.  Who smuggles?  Who robs the
+salmon rivers of the West of Scotland?  Who cruelly beats the keepers if
+they dare to intervene?  The crews and the proprietors of yachts.  All I
+have done is to extend the line a trifle, and if you ask me for my
+unbiassed opinion, I do not suppose that I am in the least alone.'
+
+In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father and
+daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect which
+is only due to moral excellence.
+
+We were still some days' sail from England, when Sir George obtained,
+from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and from that fatal
+hour my misfortunes recommenced.  He sat, the same evening, in the cabin,
+reading the news, and making savoury comments on the decline of England
+and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly observed him to
+change countenance.
+
+'Hullo!' said he, 'this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia.  You
+would not listen to sound sense, you would send that pocket-book to that
+man Caulder's son.'
+
+'Sir George,' said I, 'it was my duty.'
+
+'You are prettily paid for it, at least,' says he; 'and much as I regret
+it, I, for one, am done with you.  This fellow Caulder demands your
+extradition.'
+
+'But a slave,' I returned, 'is safe in England.'
+
+'Yes, by George!' replied the baronet; 'but it's not a slave, Miss
+Valdevia, it's a thief that he demands.  He has quietly destroyed the
+will; and now accuses you of robbing your father's bankrupt estate of
+jewels to the value of a hundred thousand pounds.'
+
+I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and concern
+for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more at
+ease.
+
+'Do not be cast down,' said he.  'Of course, I wash my hands of you
+myself.  A man in my position--baronet, old family, and all that--cannot
+possibly be too particular about the company he keeps.  But I am a deuced
+good-humoured old boy, let me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do
+the best I can to put you right.  I will lend you a trifle of ready
+money, give you the address of an excellent lawyer in London, and find a
+way to set you on shore unsuspected.'
+
+He was in every particular as good as his word.  Four days later, the
+_Nemorosa_ sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night, into a
+certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with muffled
+oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone's throw of a railway
+station.  Thither, guided by Sir George's directions, I groped a devious
+way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped in a
+man's fur great-coat, to await the coming of the day.  It was still dark
+when a light was struck behind one of the windows of the building; nor
+had the east begun to kindle to the warmer colours of the dawn, before a
+porter carrying a lantern, issued from the door and found himself face to
+face with the unfortunate Teresa.  He looked all about him; in the grey
+twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie deserted, and the yacht
+had long since disappeared.
+
+'Who are you?' he cried.
+
+'I am a traveller,' said I.
+
+'And where do you come from?' he asked.
+
+'I am going by the first train to London,' I replied.
+
+In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her bag
+of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent fashion,
+without history or name, she took her place among the millions of a new
+country.
+
+Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying concealed
+in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not knowing at what
+hour my liberty and honour may be lost.
+
+
+
+
+_THE BROWN BOX_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant and
+convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she now
+became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and the most
+unhappy of her sex.  He was bereft of words to utter what he felt: what
+pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and
+adventurous.  'O madam!' he began; and finding no language adequate to
+that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own.  'Count upon
+me,' he added, with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out
+of the apartment and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found
+himself in the strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at
+dull passers-by, a fallen angel.  She had smiled upon him as he left, and
+with how significant, how beautiful a smile!  The memory lingered in his
+heart; and when he found his way to a certain restaurant where music was
+performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal.  The
+strings went to the melody of that parting smile; they paraphrased and
+glossed it in the sense that he desired; and for the first time in his
+plain and somewhat dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste for
+music.
+
+The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that delectable air.
+Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not at all; now saw her and
+was put by.  The fall of her foot upon the stair entranced him; the books
+that he sought out and read were books on Cuba, and spoke of her
+indirectly; nay, and in the very landlady's parlour, he found one that
+told of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail,
+confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth of her recital.
+Presently he began to fall into that prettiest mood of a young love, in
+which the lover scorns himself for his presumption.  Who was he, the dull
+one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the impure,
+the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire and air, and
+hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of life?  What should
+he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call down the notice of these
+eyes to so terrene a being as himself?
+
+He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square, where,
+being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of
+acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the
+visitors that hung before the windows of the Children's Hospital.  There
+he walked, considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the
+adored one's super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say a pleasant
+word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with a great heave of
+breath, remembering the queen of women, and the sunshine of his life.
+
+What was he to do?  Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of leaving
+the house towards afternoon: she might, perchance, run danger from some
+Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the balance in
+her favour: how, then, if he should follow her?  To offer his company
+would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest
+impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part, which,
+though in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt that he
+could practise with the skill of a detective.
+
+The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.  At the corner of
+Tottenham Court Road, however, the Senorita suddenly turned back, and met
+him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and surprise.
+
+'Ah, Senor, I am sometimes fortunate!' she cried.  'I was looking for a
+messenger;' and with the sweetest of smiles, she despatched him to the
+East End of London, to an address which he was unable to find.  This was
+a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn
+out with fruitless wandering and dismayed by his _fiasco_, the lady
+received him with a friendly gaiety, protesting that all was for the
+best, since she had changed her mind and long since repented of her
+message.
+
+Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
+determined to protect Teresa with his life.  But a painful shock awaited
+him.  In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about
+and addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes that were new to
+the young man's experience.
+
+'Do I understand that you follow me, Senor?' she cried.  'Are these the
+manners of the English gentleman?'
+
+Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be
+forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed,
+crestfallen and heavy of heart.  The check was final; he gave up that
+road to service; and began once more to hang about the square or on the
+terrace, filled with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit
+object for the scorn and envy of older men.  In these idle hours, while
+he was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out naturally
+that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as came about
+the house.  One person alone was the occasional visitor of the young
+lady: a man of considerable stature, and distinguished only by the
+doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.
+Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon
+him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to
+inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed by her
+reply.
+
+'That gentleman,' said she, a smile struggling to her face, 'that
+gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires my hand in
+marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour.  Alas, what am
+I to say?  I, the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such
+protestations?'
+
+Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him; and
+he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with decency.  In
+the solitude of his own chamber, he gave way to every manifestation of
+despair.  He passionately adored the Senorita; but it was not only the
+thought of her possible union with another that distressed his soul, it
+was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy.  To a duke,
+a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned with obvious
+qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself
+follow the wedding party from a great way off; he saw himself return to
+the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have wept
+for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly.  But this affair
+looked otherwise.  The man was patently no gentleman; he had a startled,
+skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive; his
+love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a
+Cuban emissary!
+
+Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next evening,
+about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a spot whence his
+eye commanded the three issues of the square.
+
+Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the man with the
+chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by Harry to enter
+the house with a brown box hoisted on his back.  Half an hour later, he
+came forth again without the box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk;
+and Desborough, with the same skill and caution that he had displayed in
+following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer.  The man
+began to loiter, studying with apparent interest the wares of the small
+fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly upon his former
+course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered a moment's
+hesitation, once more set forth with resolute and swift steps in the
+direction of Lincoln's Inn.  At length, in a deserted by-street, he
+turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance which seemed to have
+become older and whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if he had
+not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.
+
+'You have, sir,' said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a good show of
+stoutness; 'and I will not deny that I was following you on purpose.
+Doubtless,' he added, for he supposed that all men's minds must still be
+running on Teresa, 'you can divine my reason.'
+
+At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
+tremor.  He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance which his
+fear denied him; and then whipping sharply about, he took to his heels at
+the most furious speed of running.
+
+Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by the
+time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only rewarded by
+a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a hansom, which
+immediately after disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.
+
+Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the
+house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the
+fair Cuban's door.  She bade him enter, and he found her kneeling with
+rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.
+
+'Senorita,' he broke out, 'I doubt whether that man's character is what
+he wishes you to believe.  His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
+admitted that I was following him, was not the manner of an honest man.'
+
+'Oh!' she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, 'Don Quixote,
+Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?'  And then,
+with a laugh, 'Poor soul!' she added, 'how you must have terrified him!
+For know that the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may
+soon be hunted down.  Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor's office
+may find himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies.'
+
+'A humble clerk!' cried Harry, 'why, you told me yourself that he wished
+to marry you!'
+
+'I thought you English like what you call a joke,' replied the lady
+calmly.  'As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer's clerk, and has been here
+to-night charged with disastrous news.  I am in sore straits, Senor
+Harry.  Will you help me?'
+
+At this most welcome word, the young man's heart exulted; and in the
+hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled with the very thought of
+service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady's jest.  'Can you ask?' he
+cried.  'What is there that I can do?  Only tell me that.'
+
+With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the fair Cuban
+laid her hand upon the box.  'This box,' she said, 'contains my jewels,
+papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba and
+my dreadful past.  They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the
+opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy.  To-morrow, on board the
+Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box: the problem still unsolved, is
+to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on
+board the steamer, and instantly return to town.  Will you be he?  Will
+you leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear
+still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so much
+as a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your interest, leave
+the box where you have put it and come straight on shore? Will you do
+this, and so save your friend?'
+
+'I do not clearly understand . . .' began Harry.
+
+'No more do I,' replied the Cuban.  'It is not necessary that we should,
+so long as we obey the lawyer's orders.'
+
+'Senorita,' returned Harry gravely, 'I think this, of course, a very
+little thing to do for you, when I would willingly do all.  But suffer me
+to say one word.  If London is unsafe for your treasures, it cannot long
+be safe for you; and indeed, if I at all fathom the plan of your
+solicitor, I fear I may find you already fled on my return.  I am not
+considered clever, and can only speak out plainly what is in my heart:
+that I love you, and that I cannot bear to lose all knowledge of you.  I
+hope no more than to be your servant; I ask no more than just that I
+shall hear of you.  Oh, promise me so much!'
+
+'You shall,' she said, after a pause.  'I promise you, you shall.'  But
+though she spoke with earnestness, the marks of great embarrassment and a
+strong conflict of emotions appeared upon her face.
+
+'I wish to tell you,' resumed Desborough, 'in case of accidents. . . .'
+
+'Accidents!' she cried: 'why do you say that?'
+
+'I do not know,' said he, 'you may be gone before my return, and we may
+not meet again for long.  And so I wished you to know this: That since
+the day you gave me the cigarette, you have never once, not once, been
+absent from my mind; and if it will in any way serve you, you may crumple
+me up like that piece of paper, and throw me on the fire.  I would love
+to die for you.'
+
+'Go!' she said.  'Go now at once.  My brain is in a whirl.  I scarce know
+what we are talking.  Go; and good-night; and oh, may you come safe!'
+
+Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man's mind;
+and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the broken
+utterance of her last words, his heart at once exulted and misgave him.
+Love had indeed looked upon him with a tragic mask; and yet what
+mattered, since at least it was love--since at least she was commoved at
+their division?  He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed
+from one dream to another all night long, the white face of Teresa still
+haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and in the grey of the dawn,
+leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of horror.  It was already time for
+him to rise.  He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that had been
+laid for him the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for
+the box.  The door was open; a strange disorder reigned within; the
+furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room left bare of
+impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured mind.
+There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with these words:
+'Harry, I hope to be back before you go.  Teresa.'
+
+He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table.  She had
+called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill the day with
+sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered room still
+poisoned his enjoyment.  The door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open;
+and though he turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but
+observe the bed had not been slept in.  He was still pondering what this
+should mean, still trying to convince himself that all was well, when the
+moving needle of his watch summoned him to set forth without delay.  He
+was before all things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to
+fetch a cab; and taking the box on the front seat, drove off towards the
+terminus.
+
+The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye; and
+the young man's attention centred on the dumb companion of his drive.  A
+card was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription: 'Miss Doolan,
+passenger to Dublin.  Glass.  With care.'  He thought with a sentimental
+shock that the fair idol of his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the
+name of Doolan; and as he still studied the card, he was aware of a
+deadly, black depression settling steadily upon his spirits.  It was in
+vain for him to contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself
+or tried to whistle: the sense of some impending blow was not to be
+averted.  He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its
+way without a trace of any follower.  He gave ear; and over and above the
+jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a certain
+regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box.  He put his
+ear to the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate
+ticking: the next, the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening
+recapture it.  He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued; and
+it was with more than the common relief of an arrival, that he leaped
+from the cab before the station.
+
+Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty minutes
+earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the charge of
+a porter, who sat it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the
+platform.  Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was looking
+at the books when he was seized by the arm.  He turned, and, though she
+was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.
+
+'Where is it?' she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.
+
+'It?' he said.  'What?'
+
+'The box.  Have it put on a cab instantly.  I am in fearful haste.'
+
+He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to
+trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and
+the box mounted on the front, she passed a little way off upon the
+pavement and beckoned him to follow.
+
+'Now,' said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at
+first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the
+steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to
+him that all has been put off: if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh,
+'it does not matter.  So, good-bye.'
+
+'Teresa,' said Harry, 'get into your cab, and I will go along with you.
+You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole,
+not even you can make me leave you.'
+
+'You will not?' she asked.  'O Harry, it were better!'
+
+'I will not,' said Harry stoutly.
+
+She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly
+and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and still holding
+him, walked to the cab-door.
+
+'Where are we to drive?' asked Harry.
+
+'Home, quickly,' she answered; 'double fare!'  And as soon as they had
+both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the
+station.
+
+Teresa leaned back in a corner.  The whole way Harry could perceive her
+tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation.  At the
+door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered
+the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his
+shoulders.
+
+'Let the man take it,' she whispered.  'Let the man take it.'
+
+'I will do no such thing,' said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the
+fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her
+key.  The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the
+house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down
+Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his
+burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled
+ticking as before.  The lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her
+room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in the corner by the
+window.
+
+'And now,' said Harry, 'what is wrong?'
+
+'You will not go away?' she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and
+beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience.  'O Harry,
+Harry, go away!  Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!'
+
+'The fate?' repeated Harry.  'What is this?'
+
+'No fate,' she resumed.  'I do not know what I am saying.  But I wish to
+be alone.  You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you
+like; but leave me now, only leave me now!'  And then suddenly, 'I have
+an errand,' she exclaimed; 'you cannot refuse me that!'
+
+'No,' replied Harry, 'you have no errand.  You are in grief or danger.
+Lift your veil and tell me what it is.'
+
+'Then,' she said, with a sudden composure, 'you leave but one course open
+to me.'  And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which
+every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on
+which resolve had conquered fear.  'Harry,' she began, 'I am not what I
+seem.'
+
+'You have told me that before,' said Harry, 'several times.'
+
+'O Harry, Harry,' she cried, 'how you shame me!  But this is the God's
+truth.  I am a dangerous and wicked girl.  My name is Clara Luxmore.  I
+was never nearer Cuba than Penzance.  From first to last I have cheated
+and played with you.  And what I am I dare not even name to you in words.
+Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never
+grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt.'
+
+The young man looked upon her aghast.  Then a generous current poured
+along his veins.  'That is all one,' he said.  'If you be all you say,
+you have the greater need of me.'
+
+'Is it possible,' she exclaimed, 'that I have schemed in vain?  And will
+nothing drive you from this house of death?'
+
+'Of death?' he echoed.
+
+'Death!' she cried: 'death!  In that box that you have dragged about
+London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger's
+mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.'
+
+'My God!' cried Harry.
+
+'Ah!' she continued wildly, 'will you flee now?  At any moment you may
+hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building.  I was sure M'Guire
+was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my
+fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own
+contrivances.  I knew then I loved you--Harry, will you go now?  Will you
+not spare me this unwilling crime?'
+
+Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned
+to her.
+
+'Is it,' he asked hoarsely, 'an infernal machine?'
+
+Her lips formed the word 'Yes,' which her voice refused to utter.
+
+With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that
+still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured
+sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
+
+'For whom?' he asked.
+
+'What matters it,' she cried, seizing him by the arm.  'If you may still
+be saved, what matter questions?'
+
+'God in heaven!' cried Harry.  'And the Children's Hospital!  At whatever
+cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!'
+
+'It cannot,' she gasped.  'The power of man cannot avert the blow.  But
+you, Harry--you, my beloved--you may still--'
+
+And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch
+was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour.  For
+one second the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony eyes.
+Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the
+girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.
+
+A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked
+against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning
+people, they fell to the floor.  Then followed a prolonged and strident
+hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the
+throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.
+
+Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they drew
+themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first object
+that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner,
+but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.
+
+'Oh, poor Zero!' cried the girl, with a strange sobbing laugh.  'Alas,
+poor Zero!  This will break his heart!'
+
+
+
+
+_THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION_
+(_Concluded_)
+
+
+Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to
+all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero
+seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection.  Close beside him
+stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation.  The room
+besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor
+was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this
+disorder lay a lady's glove.
+
+'I have come,' cried Somerset, 'to make an end of this.  Either you will
+instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce
+you to the police.'
+
+'Ah!' replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.  'You are too late, dear
+fellow!  I am already at the end of all my hopes, and fallen to be a
+laughing-stock and mockery.  My reading,' he added, with a gentle
+despondency of manner, 'has not been much among romances; yet I recall
+from one a phrase that depicts my present state with critical exactitude;
+and you behold me sitting here "like a burst drum."'
+
+'What has befallen you?' cried Somerset.
+
+'My last batch,' returned the plotter wearily, 'like all the others, is a
+hollow mockery and a fraud.  In vain do I combine the elements; in vain
+adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of
+disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul
+that I can face.  My subordinates themselves have turned upon me.  What
+language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what
+pungency of expression!  She came once; I could have pardoned that, for
+she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing
+blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane.  Yes, dear fellow, I have
+drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well,
+well!  Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead.  I am
+extinct.  It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should
+be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful
+description; but here,' he added, 'is another: "Othello's occupation's
+gone."  Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and
+how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend to
+a less glorious life?'
+
+'I cannot describe how you relieve me,' returned Somerset, sitting down
+on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the
+floor.  'I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character;
+I have a great distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty;
+and upon both grounds, your news delights me.  But I seem to perceive,'
+he added, 'a certain sound of ticking in this box.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, 'I have set
+several of them going.'
+
+'My God!' cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.
+
+'Machines?'
+
+'Machines!' returned the plotter bitterly.  'Machines indeed!  I blush to
+be their author.  Alas!' he said, burying his face in his hands, 'that I
+should live to say it!'
+
+'Madman!' cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm.  'What am I to
+understand?  Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in
+motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?'
+
+'"Hoist with his own petard?"' returned the plotter musingly.  'One more
+quotation: strange!  But indeed my brain is struck with numbness.  Yes,
+dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in motion.  The one on
+which you are sitting, I have timed for half an hour.  Yon other--'
+
+'Half an hour!--' echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation.  'Merciful
+Heavens, in half an hour?'
+
+'Dear fellow, why so much excitement?' inquired Zero.  'My dynamite is
+not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him
+to play with.  You see this brick?' he continued, lifting a cake of the
+infernal compound from the laboratory-table.  'At a touch it should
+explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the
+square with ruins.  Well now, behold!  I dash it on the floor.'
+
+Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy of
+terror, wrested the brick from his possession.  'Heavens!' he cried,
+wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her
+first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of
+the apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen to his side,
+dispiritedly watching him.
+
+'It was entirely harmless,' he sighed.  'They describe it as burning like
+tobacco.'
+
+'In the name of fortune,' cried Somerset, 'what have I done to you, or
+what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane
+behaviour?  If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from
+this doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart to leave you; and
+then, if you will take my advice, and if your determination be sincere,
+you will instantly quit this city, where no further occupation can detain
+you.'
+
+'Such, dear fellow, was my own design,' replied the plotter.  'I have, as
+you observe, no further business here; and once I have packed a little
+bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to
+the station, and see the last of a broken-hearted man.  And yet,' he
+added, looking on the boxes with a lingering regret, 'I should have liked
+to make quite certain.  I cannot but suspect my underlings of some
+mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I cherish that idea: it may be the
+weakness of a man of science, but yet,' he cried, rising into some
+energy, 'I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite
+has had fair usage!'
+
+'Five minutes!' said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece.
+'If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you.'
+
+'A few necessaries,' returned Zero, 'only a few necessaries, dear
+Somerset, and you behold me ready.'
+
+He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to draw
+out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing in
+his hand an open Gladstone bag.  His movements were still horribly
+deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he
+moved to and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles.
+Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.
+
+'Put that down!' cried Somerset.  'If what you say be true, you have no
+call to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.'
+
+'Merely a curiosity, dear boy,' he said persuasively, and slipped the
+brick into his bag; 'merely a memento of the past--ah, happy past, bright
+past!  You will not take a touch of spirits? no?  I find you very
+abstemious.  Well,' he added, 'if you have really no curiosity to await
+the event--'
+
+'I!' cried Somerset.  'My blood boils to get away.'
+
+'Well, then,' said Zero, 'I am ready; I would I could say, willing; but
+thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours--'
+
+Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged him
+downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion; and
+still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the
+square in the Oxford Street direction.  They had not yet passed the
+corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an
+extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a
+shattering _fracas_.  Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in
+twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its
+cellars.  At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground.  His
+first glance was towards Zero.  The plotter had but reeled against the
+garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his
+heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and the young
+man heard him murmur to himself: '_Nunc dimittis_, _nunc dimittis_!'
+
+The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole of Golden
+Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and
+fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors.
+And under favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering
+plotter.
+
+'It was grand,' he continued to murmur: 'it was indescribably grand.  Ah,
+green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh, my calumniated
+dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!'
+
+Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the
+footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.
+
+'Good God!' he cried, 'how mortifying! seven minutes too early!  The
+dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has
+once more betrayed me.  Alas, can there be no success unmixed with
+failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered by a shadow?'
+
+'Incomparable ass!' said Somerset, 'what have you done?  Blown up the
+house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly property of the
+only person who is fool enough to befriend you!'
+
+'You do not understand these matters,' replied Zero, with an air of great
+dignity.  'This will shake England to the heart.  Gladstone, the
+truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge.  And
+now that my dynamite is proved effective--'
+
+'Heavens, you remind me!' ejaculated Somerset.  'That brick in your bag
+must be instantly disposed of.  But how?  If we could throw it in the
+river--'
+
+'A torpedo,' cried Zero, brightening, 'a torpedo in the Thames!  Superb,
+dear fellow!  I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch.'
+
+'True!' returned Somerset.  'It cannot so be done; and there is no help
+but you must carry it away with you.  Come on, then, and let me at once
+consign you to a train.'
+
+'Nay, nay, dear boy,' protested Zero.  'There is now no call for me to
+leave.  My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the
+best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await
+the author of the Golden Square Atrocity.'
+
+'My young friend,' returned the other, 'I give you your choice.  I will
+either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol.'
+
+'Somerset, this is unlike you!' said the chymist.  'You surprise me,
+Somerset.'
+
+'I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,'
+returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage.  'For on one point
+my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and
+all, or else you dine in prison.'
+
+'You have perhaps neglected one point,' returned the unoffended Zero:
+'for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ
+to force me.  The will, my dear fellow--'
+
+'Now, see here,' interrupted Somerset.  'You are ignorant of anything but
+science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have
+studied life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand
+and voice--here in this street--and the mob--'
+
+'Good God in heaven, Somerset,' cried Zero, turning deadly white and
+stopping in his walk, 'great God in heaven, what words are these?  Oh,
+not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used!  The brutal mob, the
+savage passions . . . Somerset, for God's sake, a public-house!'
+
+Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.  'This is very
+interesting,' said he.  'You recoil from such a death?'
+
+'Who would not?' asked the plotter.
+
+'And to be blown up by dynamite,' inquired the young man, 'doubtless
+strikes you as a form of euthanasia?'
+
+'Pardon me,' returned Zero: 'I own, and since I have braved it daily in
+my professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually
+distasteful to the mind of man.'
+
+'One more question,' said Somerset: 'you object to Lynch Law? why?'
+
+'It is assassination,' said the plotter calmly, but with eyebrows a
+little lifted, as in wonder at the question.
+
+'Shake hands with me,' cried Somerset.  'Thank God, I have now no
+ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on
+the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your departure.'
+
+'I do not very clearly take your meaning,' said Zero, 'but I am sure you
+mean kindly.  As to my departure, there is another point to be
+considered.  I have neglected to supply myself with funds; my little all
+has perished in what history will love to relate under the name of the
+Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is coarsely if vigorously called
+stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible for me to pass the
+ocean.'
+
+'For me,' said Somerset, 'you have now ceased to be a man.  You have no
+more claim upon me than a door scraper; but the touching confusion of
+your mind disarms me from extremities.  Until to-day, I always thought
+stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your
+idiot face, laughter rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the
+tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as blood.  What should this
+portend?  I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in scepticism.  Is it
+possible,' he cried, in a kind of horror of himself--'is it conceivable
+that I believe in right and wrong?  Already I have found myself, with
+incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.
+And must this change proceed?  Have you robbed me of my youth?  Must I
+fall, at my time of life, into the Common Banker?  But why should I
+address that head of wood?  Let this suffice.  I dare not let you stay
+among women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any
+means I may avoid it; you have no money: well then, take mine, and go;
+and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day will be your last.'
+
+'Under the circumstances,' replied Zero, 'I scarce see my way to refuse
+your offer.  Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am
+aware our point of view requires a little training, a little moral
+hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points that has always
+charmed me in your character is this delightful frankness.  As for the
+small advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia.'
+
+'It shall not,' said Somerset.
+
+'Dear fellow, you do not understand,' returned the plotter.  'I shall now
+be received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my experiments
+will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse.'
+
+'What I am now about, sir, is a crime,' replied Somerset; 'and were you
+to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be reimbursed of
+money I had so scandalously misapplied.  Take it, and keep it.  By
+George, sir, three days of you have transformed me to an ancient Roman.'
+
+With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair were
+driven rapidly to the railway terminus.  There, an oath having been
+exacted, the money changed hands.
+
+'And now,' said Somerset, 'I have bought back my honour with every penny
+I possess.  And I thank God, though there is nothing before me but
+starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel
+Jones.'
+
+'To starve?' cried Zero.  'Dear fellow, I cannot endure the thought.'
+
+'Take your ticket!' returned Somerset.
+
+'I think you display temper,' said Zero.
+
+'Take your ticket,' reiterated the young man.
+
+'Well,' said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, 'your attitude
+is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should ask you to
+shake hands.'
+
+'As a man, no,' replied Somerset; 'but I have no objection to shake hands
+with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or bell-fire.'
+
+'This is a very cold parting,' sighed the dynamiter; and still followed
+by Somerset, he began to descend the platform.  This was now bustling
+with passengers; the train for Liverpool was just about to start, another
+had but recently arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult.
+As the pair reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they
+came into an open space; and here the attention of the plotter was
+attracted by a _Standard_ broadside bearing the words: 'Second Edition:
+Explosion in Golden Square.'  His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for
+the necessary coin, he sprang forward--his bag knocked sharply on the
+corner of the stall--and instantly, with a formidable report, the
+dynamite exploded.  When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen much
+shattered, and the stall keeper running forth in terror from the ruins;
+but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to
+be found.
+
+In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and
+came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with
+hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.  Yet as he continued to walk
+the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful
+exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence and
+the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even if the
+worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since Zero was
+expunged.
+
+Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall's shop;
+and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he
+did, he opened the glass door and entered.
+
+'Ha!' said Mr. Godall, 'Mr. Somerset!  Well, have you met with an
+adventure?  Have you the promised story?  Sit down, if you please; suffer
+me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a
+narrative in your best style.'
+
+'I must not take a cigar,' said Somerset.
+
+'Indeed!' said Mr. Godall.  'But now I come to look at you more closely,
+I perceive that you are changed.  My poor boy, I hope there is nothing
+wrong?'
+
+Somerset burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+_EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN_
+
+
+On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and
+between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner
+pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in
+Rupert Street.  It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory
+of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having
+prevented his return.  Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the
+shop was free of customers.
+
+The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny
+version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner's arrival.  On a second
+glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.
+
+'By Jove,' he thought, 'unquestionably Somerset!'
+
+And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to
+avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste
+to curiosity.
+
+'"Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,"' said the shopman to himself, in
+the tone of one considering a verse.  'I suppose it would be too much to
+say "orotunda," and yet how noble it were!  "Or opulent orotunda strike
+the sky."  But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and
+some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.'
+
+'Somerset, my dear fellow,' said Challoner, 'is this a masquerade?'
+
+'What?  Challoner!' cried the shopman.  'I am delighted to see you.  One
+moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.'  And
+with a friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the
+commerce of the Muses.  'I say,' he said presently, looking up, 'you seem
+in wonderful preservation: how about the hundred pounds?'
+
+'I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,' replied
+Challoner modestly.
+
+'Ah,' said Somerset, 'I very much doubt the legitimacy of inheritance.
+The State, in my view, should collar it.  I am now going through a stage
+of socialism and poetry,' he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a
+course of medicinal waters.
+
+'And are you really the person of the--establishment?' inquired
+Challoner, deftly evading the word 'shop.'
+
+'A vendor, sir, a vendor,' returned the other, pocketing his poesy.  'I
+help old Happy and Glorious.  Can I offer you a weed?'
+
+'Well, I scarcely like . . . ' began Challoner.
+
+'Nonsense, my dear fellow,' cried the shopman.  'We are very proud of the
+business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being the most
+egregious of created beings from the point of view of ethics, is
+literally sprung from the loins of kings.  "_De Godall je suis le
+fervent_."  There is only one Godall.--By the way,' he added, as
+Challoner lit his cigar, 'how did you get on with the detective trade?'
+
+'I did not try,' said Challoner curtly.
+
+'Ah, well, I did,' returned Somerset, 'and made the most incomparable
+mess of it: lost all my money and fairly covered myself with odium and
+ridicule.  There is more in that business, Challoner, than meets the eye;
+there is more, in fact, in all businesses.  You must believe in them, or
+get up the belief that you believe.  Hence,' he added, 'the recognised
+inferiority of the plumber, for no one could believe in plumbing.'
+
+'_A propos_,' asked Challoner, 'do you still paint?'
+
+'Not now,' replied Paul; 'but I think of taking up the violin.'
+
+Challoner's eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade of the
+detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the columns of the
+morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.
+
+'By Jove,' he cried, 'that's odd!'
+
+'What is odd?' asked Paul.
+
+'Oh, nothing,' returned the other: 'only I once met a person called
+M'Guire.'
+
+'So did I!' cried Somerset.  'Is there anything about him?'
+
+Challoner read as follows: '_Mysterious death in Stepney_.  An inquest
+was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M'Guire, described as a
+carpenter.  Doctor Dovering stated that he had for some time treated the
+deceased as a dispensary patient, for sleeplessness, loss of appetite,
+and nervous depression.  There was no cause of death to be found.  He
+would say the deceased had sunk.  Deceased was not a temperate man, which
+doubtless accelerated death.  Deceased complained of dumb ague, but
+witness had never been able to detect any positive disease.  He did not
+know that he had any family.  He regarded him as a person of unsound
+intellect, who believed himself a member and the victim of some secret
+society.  If he were to hazard an opinion, he would say deceased had died
+of fear.'
+
+'And the doctor would be right,' cried Somerset; 'and my dear Challoner,
+I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will--Well, after all,' he
+added, 'poor devil, he was well served.'
+
+The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the
+threshold.  He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly supplied
+with buttons; his boots were full of water, his hat greasy with service;
+and yet he wore the air of one exceeding well content with life.  He was
+hailed by the two others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.
+
+'And did you try the detective business?' inquired Paul.
+
+'No,' returned Harry.  'Oh yes, by the way, I did though: twice, and got
+caught out both times.  But I thought I should find my--my wife here?' he
+added, with a kind of proud confusion.
+
+'What? are you married?' cried Somerset.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Harry, 'quite a long time: a month at least.'
+
+'Money?' asked Challoner.
+
+'That's the worst of it,' Desborough admitted.  'We are deadly hard up.
+But the Pri--- Mr. Godall is going to do something for us.  That is what
+brings us here.'
+
+'Who was Mrs. Desborough?' said Challoner, in the tone of a man of
+society.
+
+'She was a Miss Luxmore,' returned Harry.  'You fellows will be sure to
+like her, for she is much cleverer than I.  She tells wonderful stories,
+too; better than a book.'
+
+And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered.  Somerset
+cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the Superfluous Mansion,
+and Challoner fell back a step and dropped his cigar as he beheld the
+sorceress of Chelsea.
+
+'What!' cried Harry, 'do you both know my wife?'
+
+'I believe I have seen her,' said Somerset, a little wildly.
+
+'I think I have met the gentleman,' said Mrs. Desborough sweetly; 'but I
+cannot imagine where it was.'
+
+'Oh no,' cried Somerset fervently: 'I have no notion--I cannot
+conceive--where it could have been.  Indeed,' he continued, growing in
+emphasis, 'I think it highly probable that it's a mistake.'
+
+'And you, Challoner?' asked Harry, 'you seemed to recognise her too.'
+
+'These are both friends of yours, Harry?' said the lady.  'Delighted, I
+am sure.  I do not remember to have met Mr. Challoner.'
+
+Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped after his
+cigar.  'I do not remember to have had the pleasure,' he responded
+huskily.
+
+'Well, and Mr. Godall?' asked Mrs. Desborough.
+
+'Are you the lady that has an appointment with old--' began Somerset, and
+paused blushing.  'Because if so,' he resumed, 'I was to announce you at
+once.'
+
+And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small
+pavilion which had been added to the back of the house.  On the roof, the
+rain resounded musically.  The walls were lined with maps and prints and
+a few works of reference.  Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt
+and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured
+pins, the progress of the different wars was being followed day by day.
+A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air;
+and a fire, not of foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets,
+chattered upon silver dogs.  In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr.
+Godall sat in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening
+to the rain upon the roof.
+
+'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last night
+adopted any fresh political principle?'
+
+'The lady, sir,' said Somerset, with another blush.
+
+'You have seen her, I believe?' returned Mr. Godall; and on Somerset's
+replying in the affirmative, 'You will excuse me, my dear sir,' he
+resumed, 'if I offer you a hint.  I think it not improbable this lady may
+desire entirely to forget the past.  From one gentleman to another, no
+more words are necessary.'
+
+A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
+touching urbanity that so well became him.
+
+'I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,' he said; 'and
+shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy and a
+pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious benefit to you
+and Mr. Desborough.'
+
+'Your Highness,' replied Clara, 'I must begin with thanks; it is like
+what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the case of the
+unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.'
+She paused.
+
+'But for yourself?' suggested Mr. Godall--'it was thus you were about to
+continue, I believe.'
+
+'You take the words out of my mouth,' she said.  'For myself, it is
+different.'
+
+'I am not here to be a judge of men,' replied the Prince; 'still less of
+women.  I am now a private person like yourself and many million others;
+but I am one who still fights upon the side of quiet.  Now, madam, you
+know better than I, and God better than you, what you have done to
+mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire; it is with the future I
+concern myself, it is for the future I demand security.  I would not
+willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not
+restore to wealth one of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war.  I
+speak with some severity, and yet I pick my terms.  I tell myself
+continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of
+the children whose lives and limbs you have endangered.  A woman,' he
+repeated solemnly--'and children.  Possibly, madam, when you are yourself
+a mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you
+kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than
+any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease,
+you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.'
+
+'You look at the fault,' she said, 'and not at the excuse.  Has your own
+heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression?  But, alas,
+no! for you were born upon a throne.'
+
+'I was born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my mother's
+agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.  This, which you
+forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.  Is it not one of your
+English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast
+circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a
+great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about for what
+should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied at last,
+in the centre of all, a mother and her babe?  These, madam, are my
+politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have
+caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue.  Yes, these are my
+politics: to change what we can, to better what we can; but still to bear
+in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs
+and impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause
+however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.'
+
+There was a silence of a moment.
+
+'I fear, madam,' resumed the Prince, 'that I but weary you.  My views are
+formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to grow old.  But I
+must still trouble you for some reply.'
+
+'I can say but one thing,' said Mrs. Desborough: 'I love my husband.'
+
+'It is a good answer,' returned the Prince; 'and you name a good
+influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.'
+
+'I will not play at pride with such a man as you,' she answered.  'What
+do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure.  What shall I say?  I
+have done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do again.  Can I
+say more?  Yes: I can say this: I never abused myself with the
+muddle-headed fairy tales of politics.  I was at least prepared to meet
+reprisals.  While I was levying war myself--or levying murder, if you
+choose the plainer term--I never accused my adversaries of assassination.
+I never felt or feigned a righteous horror, when a price was put upon my
+life by those whom I attacked.  I never called the policeman a hireling.
+I may have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.'
+
+'Enough, madam,' returned the Prince: 'more than enough!  Your words are
+most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even the assassin is a
+sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual
+clarity.  Suffer me, then, to ask you to retire; for by the signal of
+that bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother, to be close at hand.
+With her I promise you to do my utmost.'
+
+And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, opening a door
+upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+'Madam and my very good friend,' said he, 'is my face so much changed
+that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr. Godall?'
+
+'To be sure!' she cried, looking at him through her glasses.  'I have
+always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and in your altered
+circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep regret, I will beg
+you to consider my respect increased instead of lessened.'
+
+'I have found it so,' returned the Prince, 'with every class of my
+acquaintance.  But, madam, I pray you to be seated.  My business is of a
+delicate order, and regards your daughter.'
+
+'In that case,' said Mrs. Luxmore, 'you may save yourself the trouble of
+speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have nothing to do with
+her.  I will not hear one word in her defence; but as I value nothing so
+particularly as the virtue of justice, I think it my duty to explain to
+you the grounds of my complaint.  She deserted me, her natural protector;
+for years, she has consorted with the most disreputable persons; and to
+fill the cup of her offence, she has recently married.  I refuse to see
+her, or the being to whom she has linked herself.  One hundred and twenty
+pounds a year, I have always offered her: I offer it again.  It is what I
+had myself when I was her age.'
+
+'Very well, madam,' said the Prince; 'and be that so!  But to touch upon
+another matter: what was the income of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?'
+
+'My father?' asked the spirited old lady.  'I believe he had seven
+hundred pounds in the year.'
+
+'You were one, I think, of several?' pursued the Prince.
+
+'Of four,' was the reply.  'We were four daughters; and painful as the
+admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be found in
+England.'
+
+'Dear me!' said the Prince.  'And you, madam, have an income of eight
+thousand?'
+
+'Not more than five,' returned the old lady; 'but where on earth are you
+conducting me?'
+
+'To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,' replied Florizel,
+smiling.  'For I must not suffer you to take your father for a rule.  He
+was poor, you are rich.  He had many calls upon his poverty: there are
+none upon your wealth.  And indeed, madam, if you will let me touch this
+matter with a needle, there is but one point in common to your two
+positions: that each had a daughter more remarkable for liveliness than
+duty.'
+
+'I have been entrapped into this house,' said the old lady, getting to
+her feet.  'But it shall not avail.  Not all the tobacconists in Europe . . .'
+
+'Ah, madam,' interrupted Florizel, 'before what is referred to as my
+fall, you had not used such language!  And since you so much object to
+the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint.  If
+you will not consent to support your daughter, I shall be constrained to
+place that lady behind my counter, where I doubt not she would prove a
+great attraction; and your son-in-law shall have a livery and run the
+errands.  With such young blood my business might be doubled, and I might
+be bound in common gratitude to place the name of Luxmore beside that of
+Godall.'
+
+'Your Highness,' said the old lady, 'I have been very rude, and you are
+very cunning.  I suppose the minx is on the premises.  Produce her.'
+
+'Let us rather observe them unperceived,' said the Prince; and so saying
+he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.
+
+Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and Harry
+were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest; Challoner,
+alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the detested
+neighbourhood of the enchantress.
+
+'At that moment,' Mrs. Desborough was saying, 'Mr Gladstone detected the
+features of his cowardly assailant.  A cry rose to his lips: a cry of
+mingled triumph . . .'
+
+'That is Mr. Somerset!' interrupted the spirited old lady, in the highest
+note of her register.  'Mr. Somerset, what have you done with my
+house-property?'
+
+'Madam,' said the Prince, 'let it be mine to give the explanation; and in
+the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.'
+
+'Well, Clara, how do you do?' said Mrs. Luxmore.  'It appears I am to
+give you an allowance.  So much the better for you.  As for Mr. Somerset,
+I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole affair, though
+costly, was eminently humorous.  And at any rate,' she added, nodding to
+Paul, 'he is a young gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his
+pictures were the funniest I ever saw.'
+
+'I have ordered a collation,' said the Prince.  'Mr. Somerset, as these
+are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that you should join them
+at table.  I will take the shop.'
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+{9}  Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.
+Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset
+should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon the English
+people to remember with more gratitude the services of the police; to
+what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against
+what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward, either in
+fame or money: matter, it has appeared to the translators, too serious
+for this place.
+
+{43}  In this name the accent falls upon the _e_; the _s_ is sibilant.
+
+{176}  The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage
+conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader.  We subjoin a
+specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or
+verse: 'Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a
+never-resting fightard;' and he goes on (if we correctly gather his
+meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously correct spellings as
+lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-filchard (clearly justified by the
+parallel--pilchard) and opera dancard.  'Dynamitist,' he adds, 'I could
+understand.'
+
+{182}  The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch which
+our translation usually praetermits, here registers a somewhat
+interesting detail.  Zero pronounced the word 'boom;' and the reader, if
+but for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow him.
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+(#32 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Dynamiter
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
+
+Release Date: September, 1996  [EBook #647]
+[This file was first posted on September 13, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE DYNAMITER ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE DYNAMITER
+
+
+
+
+TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS
+
+
+
+Gentlemen,--In the volume now in your hands, the authors have
+touched upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is your glory
+to have contended.  It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious
+spirit.  Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled
+strain, where crime preserves some features of nobility, and where
+reason and humanity can still relish the temptation.  Horror, in
+this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:  he sits before posterity silent,
+Mr. Forster's appeal echoing down the ages.  Horror is due to
+ourselves, in that we have so long coquetted with political crime;
+not seriously weighing, not acutely following it from cause to
+consequence; but with a generous, unfounded heat of sentiment, like
+the schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding what was specious.
+When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved false
+to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime was no less
+cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and recoiled from our
+false deities.
+
+But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our
+defenders.  Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war
+of politics; whatever elements of greed, whatever traits of the
+bully, dishonour both parties in this inhuman contest;--your side,
+your part, is at least pure of doubt.  Yours is the side of the
+child, of the breeding woman, of individual pity and public trust.
+If our society were the mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it
+wears some of his colours) it yet embraces many precious elements
+and many innocent persons whom it is a glory to defend.  Courage
+and devotion, so common in the ranks of the police, so little
+recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length found their
+commemoration in an historical act.  History, which will represent
+Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. Forster, and
+Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget
+Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr.
+Cox coming coolly to his aid.
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson
+Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson
+
+
+
+A NOTE FOR THE READER
+
+
+
+It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this
+volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor:  the first
+series of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS.  The loss is yours--and mine; or to
+be more exact, my publishers'.  But if you are thus unlucky, the
+least I can do is to pass you a hint.  When you shall find a
+reference in the following pages to one Theophilus Godall of the
+Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho, you must be prepared
+to recognise, under his features, no less a person than Prince
+Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe, now
+dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.
+
+R. L. S.
+
+
+
+NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
+
+A SECOND SERIES
+
+THE DYNAMITER
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN
+
+
+
+In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
+precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two
+young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.
+The first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best
+fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his
+companion.
+
+'What!' he cried, 'Paul Somerset!'
+
+'I am indeed Paul Somerset,' returned the other, 'or what remains
+of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law.  But in
+you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said,
+without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your azure brow.'
+
+'All,' replied Challoner, 'is not gold that glitters.  But we are
+here in an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the movement
+of these ladies.  Let us, if you please, find a more private
+corner.'
+
+'If you will allow me to guide you,' replied Somerset, 'I will
+offer you the best cigar in London.'
+
+And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a
+brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street,
+Soho.  The entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic
+Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to the standing of
+antiquities; and across the window-glass, which sheltered the usual
+display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars, there ran the gilded legend:
+'Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T. Godall.'  The interior of the shop was
+small, but commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and
+urbane; and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia, had
+soon taken their places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush and
+proceeded to exchange their stories.
+
+'I am now,' said Somerset, 'a barrister; but Providence and the
+attorneys have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine.  A
+select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my
+afternoons, as Mr. Godall could testify, have been generally passed
+in this divan; and my mornings, I have taken the precaution to
+abbreviate by not rising before twelve.  At this rate, my little
+patrimony was very rapidly, and I am proud to remember, most
+agreeably expended.  Since then a gentleman, who has really nothing
+else to recommend him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle,
+deals me the small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold
+me once more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my
+favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come into a
+fortune.'
+
+'I should not have supposed so,' replied Challoner.  'But doubtless
+I met you on the way to your tailors.'
+
+'It is a visit that I purpose to delay,' returned Somerset, with a
+smile.  'My fortune has definite limits.  It consists, or rather
+this morning it consisted, of one hundred pounds.'
+
+'That is certainly odd,' said Challoner; 'yes, certainly the
+coincidence is strange.  I am myself reduced to the same margin.'
+
+'You!' cried Somerset.  'And yet Solomon in all his glory--'
+
+'Such is the fact.  I am, dear boy, on my last legs,' said
+Challoner.  'Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have
+scarcely a decent trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how, I
+would this instant set about some sort of work or commerce.  With a
+hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his way.'
+
+'It may be,' returned Somerset; 'but what to do with mine is more
+than I can fancy.  Mr. Godall,' he added, addressing the salesman,
+'you are a man who knows the world:  what can a young fellow of
+reasonable education do with a hundred pounds?'
+
+'It depends,' replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.  'The
+power of money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a
+sceptic.  A hundred pounds will with difficulty support you for a
+year; with somewhat more difficulty you may spend it in a night;
+and without any difficulty at all you may lose it in five minutes
+on the Stock Exchange.  If you are of that stamp of man that rises,
+a penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a
+penny would be no more useless.  When I was myself thrown
+unexpectedly upon the world, it was my fortune to possess an art:
+I knew a good cigar.  Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?'
+
+'Not even law,' was the reply.
+
+'The answer is worthy of a sage,' returned Mr. Godall.  'And you,
+sir,' he continued, turning to Challoner, 'as the friend of Mr.
+Somerset, may I be allowed to address you the same question?'
+
+'Well,' replied Challoner, 'I play a fair hand at whist.'
+
+'How many persons are there in London,' returned the salesman, 'who
+have two-and-thirty teeth?  Believe me, young gentleman, there are
+more still who play a fair hand at whist.  Whist, sir, is wide as
+the world; 'tis an accomplishment like breathing.  I once knew a
+youth who announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of
+England; the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less
+excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a livelihood by
+whist.'
+
+'Dear me,' said Challoner, 'I am afraid I shall have to fall to be
+a working man.'
+
+'Fall to be a working man?' echoed Mr. Godall.  'Suppose a rural
+dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain
+were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge?  The ignorance
+of your middle class surprises me.  Outside itself, it thinks the
+world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common
+degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to
+stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular
+aptitudes and knowledge.  By the defects of your education you are
+more disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an
+empire.  The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts--those
+which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent laymen--are
+those which give his title to the artisan.'
+
+'This is a very pompous fellow,' said Challoner, in the ear of his
+companion.
+
+'He is immense,' said Somerset.
+
+Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young
+fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some
+tobacco.  He was younger than the others; and, in a somewhat
+meaningless and altogether English way, he was a handsome lad.
+When he had been served, and had lighted his pipe and taken his
+place upon the sofa, he recalled himself to Challoner by the name
+of Desborough.
+
+'Desborough, to be sure,' cried Challoner.  'Well, Desborough, and
+what do you do?'
+
+'The fact is,' said Desborough, 'that I am doing nothing.'
+
+'A private fortune possibly?' inquired the other.
+
+'Well, no,' replied Desborough, rather sulkily.  'The fact is that
+I am waiting for something to turn up.'
+
+'All in the same boat!' cried Somerset.  'And have you, too, one
+hundred pounds?'
+
+'Worse luck,' said Mr. Desborough.
+
+'This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,' said Somerset:  'Three
+futiles.'
+
+'A character of this crowded age,' returned the salesman.
+
+'Sir,' said Somerset, 'I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit
+one fact, and one fact only:  that I am futile, that he is futile,
+and that we are all three as futile as the devil.  What am I?  I
+have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography,
+smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial
+astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street's
+end, as impotent as any baby.  I have a prodigious contempt for my
+maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should
+simply resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture.  I begin
+to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the
+bottom--were it only literature.  And yet, sir, the man of the
+world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an
+extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at
+home; he has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible but
+that this great habit of existence should bear fruit.  I count
+myself a man of the world, accomplished, CAP-A-PIE.  So do you,
+Challoner.  And you, Mr. Desborough?'
+
+'Oh yes,' returned the young man.
+
+'Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world,
+without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of
+the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in
+the midst of the chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the
+most continuous chink of money on the surface of the globe.  Sir,
+as civilised men, what do we do?  I will show you.  You take in a
+paper?'
+
+'I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, 'the best paper in the world,
+the Standard.'
+
+'Good,' resumed Somerset.  'I now hold it in my hand, the voice of
+the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants.  I open it, and
+where my eye first falls--well, no, not Morrison's Pills--but here,
+sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was
+seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society.  Here is a
+want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude:  "TWO HUNDRED
+POUNDS REWARD.--The above reward will be paid to any person giving
+information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed
+yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green Park.  He was over six
+feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately broad, close
+shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat."
+There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'
+
+'Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?'
+inquired Challoner.
+
+'Do I propose it?  No, sir,' cried Somerset.  'It is reason,
+destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it.
+Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers
+of conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we
+are and have builds up the character of the complete detective.  It
+is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman.'
+
+'The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner; 'for
+hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and
+ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.'
+
+'To defend society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for
+others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil?  I appeal to Mr.
+Godall.  He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will
+spit upon such philistine opinions.  He knows that the policeman,
+as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that
+both worse equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence
+a more noble hero than the soldier.  Do you, by any chance, deceive
+yourself into supposing that a general would either ask or expect,
+from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous
+battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham Rye?'
+{1}
+
+'I did not understand we were to join the force,' said Challoner.
+
+'Nor shall we.  These are the hands; but here--here, sir, is the
+head,' cried Somerset.  'Enough; it is decreed.  We shall hunt down
+this miscreant in the sealskin coat.'
+
+'Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, 'you have no plan, no
+knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.'
+
+'Challoner!' cried Somerset, 'is it possible that you hold the
+doctrine of Free Will?  And are you devoid of any tincture of
+philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded fallacies?
+Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules this terrestrial
+bustle; and in Chance I place my sole reliance.  Chance has brought
+us three together; when we next separate and go forth our several
+ways, Chance will continually drag before our careless eyes a
+thousand eloquent clues, not to this mystery only, but to the
+countless mysteries by which we live surrounded.  Then comes the
+part of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.  This
+clue, which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as
+a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and
+passion, and from one trifling circumstance divines a world.'
+
+'Just so,' said Challoner; 'and I am delighted that you should
+recognise these virtues in yourself.  But in the meanwhile, dear
+boy, I own myself incapable of joining.  I was neither born nor
+bred as a detective, but as a placable and very thirsty gentleman;
+and, for my part, I begin to weary for a drink.  As for clues and
+adventures, the only adventure that is ever likely to occur to me
+will be an adventure with a bailiff.'
+
+'Now there is the fallacy,' cried Somerset.  'There I catch the
+secret of your futility in life.  The world teems and bubbles with
+adventure; it besieges you along the street:  hands waving out of
+windows, swindlers coming up and swearing they knew you when you
+were abroad, affable and doubtful people of all sorts and
+conditions begging and truckling for your notice.  But not you:
+you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round, you must go the
+dullest way.  Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure that
+offers itself, embrace it in with both your arms; whatever it
+looks, grimy or romantic, grasp it.  I will do the like; the devil
+is in it, but at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall
+narrate the story of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the
+divan, the great Godall, now hearing me with inward joy.  Come, is
+it a bargain?  Will you, indeed, both promise to welcome every
+chance that offers, to plunge boldly into every opening, and,
+keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to study and piece
+together all that happens?  Come, promise:  let me open to you the
+doors of the great profession of intrigue.'
+
+'It is not much in my way,' said Challoner, 'but, since you make a
+point of it, amen.'
+
+'I don't mind promising,' said Desborough, 'but nothing will happen
+to me.'
+
+'O faithless ones!' cried Somerset.  'But at least I have your
+promises; and Godall, I perceive, is transported with delight.'
+
+'I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various
+narratives,' said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of
+his manner.
+
+'And now, gentlemen,' concluded Somerset, 'let us separate.  I
+hasten to put myself in fortune's way.  Hark how, in this quiet
+corner, London roars like the noise of battle; four million
+destinies are here concentred; and in the strong panoply of one
+hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am about to plunge into
+that web.'
+
+
+
+CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE:  THE SQUIRE OF DAMES
+
+
+
+Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney,
+where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of
+the people of the house.  To this remote home he found himself, at
+a very early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set
+forth on foot.  He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of
+the exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a
+prop of omnibuses.  In happier days he would have chartered a cab;
+but these luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he
+could muster he addressed himself to walk.
+
+It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather
+was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses
+and along the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and
+some of the warmth and all the brightness of the July day already
+shone upon the city.  He walked at first in a profound abstraction,
+bitterly reviewing and repenting his performances at whist; but as
+he advanced into the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was
+gradually mastered by the silence.  Street after street looked down
+upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his passage
+with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front
+and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course,
+under day's effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal
+sleepers, lonely as a ship.
+
+'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained companion,
+here were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.
+Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night
+of January, and in the midst of some four million sleepers,
+solitary as the woods of Yucatan.  If I but raise my voice I could
+summon up the number of an army, and yet the grave is not more
+silent than this city of sleep.'
+
+He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he
+came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in
+the quarter.  Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green
+tops of trees, were several of those discreet, bijou residences on
+which propriety is apt to look askance.  Here, too, were many of
+the brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps,
+serving as ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business
+of the mangler.  Before one such house, that stood a little
+separate among walled gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and
+Challoner paused a moment, looking on this sleek and solitary
+creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With the
+cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the
+house stood smokeless:  the blinds down, the whole machinery of
+life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the
+breathing of the sleepers.
+
+As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation
+from within.  This was followed by a monstrous hissing and
+simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the
+same time from every chink of door and window spirted an ill-
+smelling vapour.  The cat disappeared with a cry.  Within the
+lodging-house feet pounded on the stairs; the door flew back,
+emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an elegantly dressed
+young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled without a word.
+The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in the air,
+the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still
+Challoner was rooted to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear
+awoke together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to
+running.
+
+Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had
+resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the
+confused report of his senses, some theory of the occurrence.  But
+the occasion of the sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed
+him, and the strange conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to
+issue from the house, were mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an
+obscure awe he considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile,
+to thread the web of streets, and once more alone in morning
+sunshine.
+
+In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering
+vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street,
+which presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the
+midst.  Here was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the
+shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere
+of cities, there was something brisk and rural in the air; and
+Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind
+running upon distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden,
+by a wall that blocked his further progress.  This street, whose
+name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.
+
+He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he
+raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on
+the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third
+of the incongruous fugitives.  She had run there, seemingly,
+blindfold; the wall had checked her career:  and being entirely
+wearied, she had sunk upon the ground beside the garden railings,
+soiling her dress among the summer dust.  Each saw the other in the
+same instant of time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her
+feet and began to hurry from the scene.
+
+Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his
+adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.
+Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of
+his mind; and yet, in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to
+follow in the lady's wake.  He did so gingerly, as fearing to
+increase her terrors; but, tread as lightly as he might, his
+footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty street.  Their sound
+appeared to strike in her some strong emotion; for scarce had he
+begun to follow ere she paused.  A second time she addressed
+herself to flight; and a second time she paused.  Then she turned
+about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance
+of timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side continued
+to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.  At
+length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim
+over, and she reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.
+
+'Are you an English gentleman?' she cried.
+
+The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He was the
+spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his
+devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse
+from amorous adventures.  He looked east and west; but the houses
+that looked down upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and
+he saw himself, though in the full glare of the day's eye, cut off
+from any human intervention.  His looks returned at last upon the
+suppliant.  He remarked with irritation that she was charming both
+in face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady
+undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping and lost
+in the city of diurnal sleep.
+
+'Madam,' he said, 'I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion;
+and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street,
+which has deceived us both.'  An unmistakable relief appeared upon
+the lady's face.  'I might have guessed it!' she exclaimed.  'Thank
+you a thousand times!  But at this hour, in this appalling silence,
+and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors--oh, lost
+in them!' she cried, her face blanching at the words.  'I beg you
+to lend me your arm,' she added with the loveliest, suppliant
+inflection.  'I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone--I had a shock,
+oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.'
+
+'My dear madam,' responded Challoner heavily, 'my arm is at your
+service.'
+
+
+'She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her
+sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the
+direction of the city.  One thing was plain, among so much that was
+obscure:  it was plain her fears were genuine.  Still, as she went,
+she spied around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a
+person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner
+her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and
+mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and
+longed for release.
+
+'Madam,' he said at last, 'I am, of course, charmed to be of use to
+any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that
+you follow, and a word of explanation--'
+
+'Hush!' she sobbed, 'not here--not here!'
+
+The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the lady
+mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in
+view of the detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-
+assorted trio, his mind was lost among mysteries.  So they
+continued to thread the maze of streets in silence, with the speed
+of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with incommunicable terrors.
+In time, however, and above all by their quick pace of walking, the
+pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about
+the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and
+distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with more of
+spirit and directness.
+
+'I thought,' said he, in the tone of conversation, 'that I had
+indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two
+gentlemen.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, 'you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  You
+saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not
+gentlemen.  In such a case, the best of compliments is to be
+frank.'
+
+'I thought,' resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was
+surprised by the spirit of her reply, 'to have perceived, besides,
+a certain odour.  A noise, too--I do not know to what I should
+compare it--'
+
+'Silence!' she cried.  'You do not know the danger you invoke.
+Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those streets, and got
+beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be explained.  Meanwhile,
+avoid the topic.  What a sight is this sleeping city!' she
+exclaimed; and then, with a most thrilling voice, '"Dear God," she
+quoted, "the very houses seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is
+lying still."'
+
+'I perceive, madam,' said he, 'you are a reader.'
+
+'I am more than that,' she answered, with a sigh.  'I am a girl
+condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate,
+that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude of
+peace.'
+
+They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria
+Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused,
+withdrew her arm from Challoner's, and looked up and down as though
+in pain or indecision.  Then, with a lovely change of countenance,
+and laying her gloved hand upon his arm -
+
+'What you already think of me,' she said, 'I tremble to conceive;
+yet I must here condemn myself still further.  Here I must leave
+you, and here I beseech you to wait for my return.  Do not attempt
+to follow me or spy upon my actions.  Suspend yet awhile your
+judgment of a girl as innocent as your own sister; and do not,
+above all, desert me.  Stranger as you are, I have none else to
+look to.  You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman,
+courteous and kind:  and when I beg for a few minutes' patience, I
+make sure beforehand you will not deny me.'
+
+Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful
+eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force of her appeal
+had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute
+of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in
+Wales.  Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto
+obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer;
+and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The
+reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the
+noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the
+great railway centres, certain early taverns inaugurate the
+business of the day.  It was into one of these that Challoner,
+coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming companion
+disappear.  To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had long
+since left that sentiment behind him.  Acute disgust and
+disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he
+damned this commonplace enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a
+second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in
+company with a young man of mean and slouching attire.  For some
+five or six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air;
+then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady,
+with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards
+Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as
+she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements eloquent of
+speed and youth; and though he still entertained some thoughts of
+flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance lessened.
+Against mere beauty he was proof:  it was her unmistakable
+gentility that now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.
+With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with
+one who, in spite of all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he
+found himself disarmed.  At the very corner from whence he had
+spied upon her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed, and-
+-'Ah!' she cried, with a bright flush of colour.  'Ah!
+Ungenerous!'
+
+The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames
+to the possession of himself.
+
+'Madam,' he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, 'I do not
+think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I
+have suffered myself to be led over a considerable portion of the
+metropolis; and if I now request you to discharge me of my office
+of protector, you have friends at hand who will be glad of the
+succession.'
+
+She stood a moment dumb.
+
+'It is well,' she said.  'Go! go, and may God help me!  You have
+seen me--me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and
+haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour
+move you to await my explanation or to help in my distress.  Go!'
+she repeated.  'I am lost indeed.'  And with a passionate gesture
+she turned and fled along the street.
+
+Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable
+sense of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being
+gulled.  She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings
+took the upper hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice,
+that his conduct was a perfect model of the ungracious; the
+cultured tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the elegant
+decorum of her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh
+construction; and between penitence and curiosity he began slowly
+to follow in her wake.  At the corner he had her once more full in
+view.  Her speed was failing like a stricken bird's.  Even as he
+looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned
+against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner's fortitude gave
+way.  In a few strides he overtook her and, for the first time
+removing his hat, assured her in the most moving terms of his
+entire respect and firm desire to help her.  He spoke at first
+unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she began to comprehend
+his words; she moved a little, and drew herself upright; and
+finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness, turned on the
+young man a countenance in which reproach and gratitude were
+mingled.  'Ah, madam,' he cried, 'use me as you will!'  And once
+more, but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the
+conduct of his arm.  She took it with a sigh that struck him to the
+heart; and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But
+now her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on
+the way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the
+parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  Her
+physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her
+spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful and charming
+vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire the
+elasticity of his companion's nature.  'Let me forget,' she had
+said, 'for one half hour, let me forget;' and sure enough, with the
+very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.  Before every
+house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched
+his character:  here lived the old general whom she was to marry on
+the fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich
+widow who had set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung
+wearily on the young man's arm, her laughter sounded low and
+pleasant in his ears.  'Ah,' she sighed, by way of commentary, 'in
+such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness that I
+can find.'
+
+When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of
+Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the
+bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last admitted
+into that paradise of lawns.  Challoner and his companion followed
+the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in that
+tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary with the
+night's patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches or
+wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon
+utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair
+proceeded on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.
+
+Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a
+mound of turf.  The young lady looked about her with relief.
+
+'Here,' she said, 'here at last we are secure from listeners.
+Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could not bear
+that we should part, and that you should still suppose your
+kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.'
+
+Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to
+take a place immediately beside her, began in the following words,
+and with the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story
+of her life.
+
+
+
+STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL
+
+
+
+My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great,
+ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or
+misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth and to
+lay aside the name of his ancestors.  He sought the States; and
+instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the
+far West with an exploring party of frontiersmen.  He was no
+ordinary traveller; for he was not only brave and impetuous by
+character, but learned in many sciences, and above all in botany,
+which he particularly loved.  Thus it fell that, before many
+months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted
+and bowed to his opinion.
+
+They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of
+the West.  For some time they followed the track of Mormon
+caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by
+the skeletons of men and animals.  Then they inclined their route a
+little to the north, and, losing even these dire memorials, came
+into a country of forbidding stillness.
+
+I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride:
+rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far
+between; and neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude.  On the
+fortieth day they had already run so short of food that it was
+judged advisable to call a halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt.
+A great fire was built, that its smoke might serve to rally them;
+and each man of the party mounted and struck off at a venture into
+the surrounding desert.
+
+My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the
+one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered
+vale dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city.  At
+length he found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks
+and the hair among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a
+cinnamon bear of most unusual size.  He quickened the pace of his
+steed, and still following the quarry, came at last to the division
+of two watersheds.  On the far side the country was exceeding
+intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted here and
+there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the neighbourhood
+of water.  Here, then, he picketed his horse, and relying on his
+trusty rifle, advanced alone into that wilderness.
+
+Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the
+sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction,
+was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos
+strangely intermixed.  The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and
+winding passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for
+miles together unscalable by man.  The water, when the stream was
+swelled with rains, must have filled it from side to side; the
+sun's rays only plumbed it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that
+narrow and damp funnel, blew tempestuously.  And yet, in the bottom
+of this den, immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over
+the margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, women,
+and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks.  They lay some
+upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring; their upturned
+faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and emaciation; and
+from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a faint sound
+of moaning mounted to my father's ears.
+
+While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet,
+unwound his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young
+girl who sat hard by propped against a rock.  The girl did not seem
+to be conscious of the act; and the old man, after having looked
+upon her with the most engaging pity, returned to his former bed
+and lay down again uncovered on the turf.  But the scene had not
+passed without observation even in that starving camp.  From the
+very outskirts of the party, a man with a white beard and seemingly
+of venerable years, rose upon his knees, and came crawling
+stealthily among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my
+father's indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip
+from her both the coverings and return with them to his original
+position.  Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as
+my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had
+raised himself again upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at
+his companions, and then swiftly carried his hand into his bosom
+and thence to his mouth.  By the movement of his jaws he must be
+eating; in that camp of famine he had reserved a store of
+nourishment; and while his companions lay in the stupor of
+approaching death, secretly restored his powers.
+
+My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle;
+and but for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot
+the fellow dead upon the spot.  How different would then have been
+my history!  But it was not to be:  even as he raised the barrel,
+his eye lighted on the bear, as it crawled along a ledge some way
+below him; and ceding to the hunters instinct, it was at the brute,
+not at the man, that he discharged his piece.  The bear leaped and
+fell into a pool of the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and
+in a moment the camp was afoot.  With cries that were scarce human,
+stumbling, falling and throwing each other down, these starving
+people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father, climbing down
+by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream, many were
+already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a fire was
+being built by the more dainty.
+
+His arrival was for some time unremarked.  He stood in the midst of
+these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by
+their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass;
+even those who were too weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with
+their eyes riveted upon the bear; and my father, seeing himself
+stand as though invisible in the thick of this dreary hubbub, was
+seized with a desire to weep.  A touch upon the arm restrained him.
+Turning about, he found himself face to face with the old man he
+had so nearly killed; and yet, at the second glance, recognised him
+for no old man at all, but one in the full strength of his years,
+and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual countenance stigmatised
+by weariness and famine.  He beckoned my father near the cliff, and
+there, in the most private whisper, begged for brandy.  My father
+looked at him with scorn:  'You remind me,' he said, 'of a
+neglected duty.  Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to
+revive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I
+saw you robbing of her blankets.'  And with that, not heeding his
+appeals, my father turned his back upon the egoist.
+
+The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk
+in the first stage of death to have observed the bustle round her
+couch; but when my father had raised her head, put the flask to her
+lips, and forced or aided her to swallow some drops of the
+restorative, she opened her languid eyes and smiled upon him
+faintly.  Never was there a smile of a more touching sweetness;
+never were eyes more deeply violet, more honestly eloquent of the
+soul!  I speak with knowledge, for these were the same eyes that
+smiled upon me in the cradle.  From her who was to be his wife, my
+father, still jealously watched and followed by the man with the
+grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party,
+and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the men who
+seemed in the most need.
+
+'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with the
+beard.
+
+'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself in
+want, let me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your
+coat.'
+
+'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me.  You think me one who
+clings to life for selfish and commonplace considerations.  But let
+me tell you, that were all this caravan to perish, the world would
+but be lightened of a weight.  These are but human insects,
+pullulating, thick as May-flies, in the slums of European cities,
+whom I myself have plucked from degradation and misery, from the
+dung-heap and gin-palace door.  And you compare their lives with
+mine!'
+
+'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.
+
+'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon missionary if
+you will!  I value not the title.  Were I no more than that, I
+could have died without a murmur.  But with my life as a physician
+is bound up the knowledge of great secrets and the future of man.
+This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and
+wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in
+five days, has changed my beard from ebony to silver.'
+
+'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his face,
+'bound by oath to succour man in his distresses.'
+
+'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson:  you will hear
+that name again; and you will then understand that my duty was not
+to this caravan of paupers, but to mankind at large.'
+
+My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now
+sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off at
+once to bring help from his own party; 'and,' he added, 'if you be
+again reduced to such extremities, look round you, and you will see
+the earth strewn with assistance.  Here, for instance, growing on
+the under side of fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a
+yellow moss.  Trust me, it is both edible and excellent.'
+
+'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'
+
+'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for see
+where these have been scraped away.  Am I right?  Was that your
+secret store?'
+
+My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-
+fire, had made a good day's hunting.  They were thus the more
+easily persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and
+the next day beheld both parties on the march for the frontiers of
+Utah.  The distance to be traversed was not great; but the nature
+of the country, and the difficulty of procuring food, extended the
+time to nearly three weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to
+know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured.  I will call my
+mother Lucy.  Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is
+one you would know well.  By what series of undeserved calamities
+this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education,
+ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a
+Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.  Let it suffice, that
+even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of
+her own.  The ardour of attachment which united my father and
+mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their
+meeting; it knew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my
+father, for her sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and
+abjure his faith; and a week had not yet passed upon the march
+before he had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon
+doctrine, and received the promise of my mother's hand on the
+arrival of the party at Salt Lake.
+
+The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.  My father
+prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my
+mother; and though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were
+few happier homes in any country than that in which I saw the light
+and grew to girlhood.  We were, indeed, and in spite of all our
+wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers by the more precise
+and pious of the faithful:  Young himself, that formidable tyrant,
+was known to look askance upon my father's riches; but of this I
+had no guess.  I dwelt, indeed, under the Mormon system, with
+perfect innocence and faith.  Some of our friends had many wives;
+but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me more than
+marriage itself?  From time to time one of our rich acquaintances
+would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses
+shared among the elders of the Church, and his memory only recalled
+with bated breath and dreadful headshakings.  When I had been very
+still, and my presence perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would
+arise among my elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw
+the closer together and look behind them with scared eyes; and I
+might gather from their whisperings how some one, rich, honoured,
+healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one, perhaps, who had
+taken me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been spirited
+from home and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror,
+leaving not a print behind.  It was terrible, indeed; but so was
+death, the universal law.  And even if the talk should wax still
+bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear named
+in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand
+these mysteries?  I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy
+child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague
+respect and without the wish for further information.  Life
+anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I
+beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the desert, pious people
+crowding to worship; I was aware of my parents' tenderness and all
+the harmless luxuries of my existence; and why should I pry beneath
+this honest seeming surface for the mysteries on which it stood?
+
+We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a
+beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water,
+and surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous
+and rocky desert.  The city was thirty miles away; there was but
+one road, which went no further than my father's door; the rest
+were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a
+solitude inconceivable to the European.  Our only neighbour was Dr.
+Grierson.  To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded
+elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women
+of their harems, there was something agreeable in the correct
+manner, the fine bearing, the thin white hair and beard, and the
+piercing looks of the old doctor.  Yet, though he was almost our
+only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of fear in his
+presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude
+in which he lived and the obscurity that hung about his
+occupations.  His house was but a mile or two from ours, but very
+differently placed.  It stood overlooking the road on the summit of
+a steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging
+bluffs.  Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the
+works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort,
+and the cliffs of a constant height, like the ramparts of a city.
+Not even spring could change one feature of that desolate scene;
+and the windows looked down across a plain, snowy with alkali, to
+ranges of cold stone sierras on the north.  Twice or thrice I
+remember passing within view of this forbidding residence; and
+seeing it always shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to
+my parents that some day it would certainly be robbed.
+
+'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a strange
+conviction in his tone.
+
+At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, I
+chanced to see the doctor's house in a new light.  My father was
+ill; my mother confined to his bedside; and I was suffered to go,
+under the charge of our driver, to the lonely house some twenty
+miles away, where our packages were left for us.  The horse cast a
+shoe; night overtook us halfway home; and it was well on for three
+in the morning when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came
+to that part of the road which ran below the doctor's house.  The
+moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay
+utterly deserted; but the house, from its station on the top of the
+long slope and close under the bluff, not only shone abroad from
+every window like a place of festival, but from the great chimney
+at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and so
+voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air,
+and its shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering
+alkali.  As we continued to draw near, besides, a regular and
+panting throb began to divide the silence.  First it seemed to me
+like the beating of a heart; and next it put into my mind the
+thought of some giant, smothered under mountains and still, with
+incalculable effort, fetching breath.  I had heard of the railway,
+though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask the driver if this
+resembled it.  But some look in his eye, some pallor, whether of
+fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my
+lips.  We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were
+close below the lighted house; when suddenly, without one
+premonitory rustle, there burst forth a report of such a bigness
+that it shook the earth and set the echoes of the mountains
+thundering from cliff to cliff.  A pillar of amber flame leaped
+from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; and at the
+same time the lights in the windows turned for one instant ruby red
+and then expired.  The driver had checked his horse instinctively,
+and the echoes were still rumbling farther off among the mountains,
+when there broke from the now darkened interior a series of yells--
+whether of man or woman it was impossible to guess--the door flew
+open, and there ran forth into the moonlight, at the top of the
+long slope, a figure clad in white, which began to dance and leap
+and throw itself down, and roll as if in agony, before the house.
+I could no more restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about
+the horse's flank, and we fled up the rough track at the peril of
+our lives; and did not draw rein till, turning the corner of the
+mountain, we beheld my father's ranch and deep, green groves and
+gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.
+
+This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed
+to the very topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had
+reached the age of seventeen.  I was still innocent and merry like
+a child; tended my garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity;
+gave not a thought to coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye
+rested on my own image in a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to
+seek and recognise the features of my parents.  But the fears which
+had long pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth.  I had
+thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the
+windows stood open on the verandah, where my mother sat with her
+embroidery; and when my father joined her from the garden, their
+conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so startling a nature
+that it held me enthralled where I lay.
+
+'The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.
+
+I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no
+reply.
+
+'Yes,' continued my father, 'I have received to-day a list of all
+that I possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men
+whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with my
+own hand on the bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven.
+Does the air, then, carry secrets?  Are the hills of glass?  Do the
+stones we tread upon preserve the footprint to betray us?  Oh,
+Lucy, Lucy, that we should have come to such a country!'
+
+'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very threatening
+event.  You are accused of some concealment.  You will pay more
+taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine.  It is disquieting,
+indeed, to find our acts so spied upon, and the most private known.
+But is this new?  Have we not long feared and suspected every blade
+of grass?'
+
+'Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father.  'But all this is nothing.
+Here is the letter that accompanied the list.'
+
+I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.
+
+'I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading:
+'"From a believer so largely blessed by Providence with this
+world's goods,"' she continued, '"the Church awaits in confidence
+some signal mark of piety."  There lies the sting.  Am I not right?
+These are the words you fear?'
+
+'These are the words,' replied my father.  'Lucy, you remember
+Priestley?  Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the
+summit of an isolated butte; we could see around us for ten miles;
+sure, if in any quarter of this land a man were safe from spies, it
+were in such a station; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror
+that he told me, and that I heard, his story.  He had received a
+letter such as this; and he submitted to my approval an answer, in
+which he offered to resign a third of his possessions.  I conjured
+him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we
+parted, he had doubled the amount.  Well, two days later he was
+gone--gone from the chief street of the city in the hour of noon--
+and gone for ever.  O God!' cried my father, 'by what art do they
+thus spirit out of life the solid body?  What death do they command
+that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong
+arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should
+be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense?  A horror dwells
+in that thought more awful than mere death.'
+
+'Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.
+
+'Dismiss the thought,' replied my father.  'He now knows all that I
+can teach, and will do naught to save me.  His power, besides, is
+small, his own danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for
+he, too, lives apart; he leaves his wives neglected and unwatched;
+he is openly cited for an unbeliever; and unless he buys security
+at a more awful price--but no; I will not believe it:  I have no
+love for him, but I will not believe it.'
+
+'Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of note,
+'But oh, what matters it?' she cried.  'Abimelech, there is but one
+way open:  we must fly!'
+
+'It is in vain,' returned my father.  'I should but involve you in
+my fate.  To leave this land is hopeless:  we are closed in it as
+men are closed in life; and there is no issue but the grave.'
+
+'We can but die then,' replied my mother.  'Let us at least die
+together.  Let not Asenath {2} and myself survive you.  Think to
+what a fate we should be doomed!'
+
+My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I
+could see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to
+desert his whole estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he
+had by him at the moment, and to flee that night, which promised to
+be dark and cloudy.  As soon as the servants were asleep, he was to
+load two mules with provisions; two others were to carry my mother
+and myself; and, striking through the mountains by an unfrequented
+trail, we were to make a fair stroke for liberty and life.  As soon
+as they had thus decided, I showed myself at the window, and,
+owning that I had heard all, assured them that they could rely on
+my prudence and devotion.  I had no fear, indeed, but to show
+myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my hand without
+alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed Heaven
+for the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride and
+some of the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look
+forward to the perils of our flight.
+
+Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had left
+far behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a
+certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks,
+and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous torrent.  Cascade after
+cascade thundered and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night,
+or fanned our faces with the wet wind of its descent.  The trail
+was breakneck, and led to famine-guarded deserts; it had been long
+since deserted for more practicable routes; and it was now a part
+of the world untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of
+our dismay, when turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we found
+a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an impending rock; and on
+the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with charred wood, the
+great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.  We looked
+upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into a passion of
+tears; but not a word was said.  The mules were turned about; and
+leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced our
+steps in silence.  Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at
+home, condemned beyond reprieve.
+
+What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a
+little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride
+slowly up the road in a great pother of dust.  He was clad in
+homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had
+an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very
+reassuring.  He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon;
+with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor any one in
+Utah dared to disobey; and it was with every mark of diffidence
+that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and entered the
+room where our unhappy family was gathered.  My mother and me, he
+awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with my
+father laid before him a blank signature of President Young's, and
+offered him a choice of services:  either to set out as a
+missionary to the tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next
+day, with a party of Destroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty
+German immigrants.  The last, of course, my father could not
+entertain, and the first he regarded as a pretext:  even if he
+could consent to leave his wife defenceless, and to collect fresh
+victims for the tyranny under which he was himself oppressed, he
+felt sure he would never be suffered to return.  He refused both;
+and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious,
+at the spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for
+my father and his family.  He besought him to reconsider his
+decision; and at length, finding he could not prevail, gave him
+till the moon rose to settle his affairs, and say farewell to wife
+and daughter.  'For,' said he, 'then, at the latest, you must ride
+with me.'
+
+I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed:  they fled all too
+fast; and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my
+father and Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their
+nocturnal journey.  My mother, though still bearing an heroic
+countenance, had hastened to shut herself in her apartment,
+thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the dark house, and
+consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to saddle my Indian
+pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to enjoy one
+farewell sight of my departing father.  The two men had set forth
+at a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them, when I reached
+the point of view.  I was the more amazed to see no moving creature
+in the landscape.  The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day;
+and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a growing
+tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man,
+but one.  From the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion of the
+line of bluffs concealed the doctor's house; and across the top of
+that projection the soft night wind carried and unwound about the
+hills a coil of sable smoke.  What fuel could produce a vapour so
+sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace pour it
+forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well
+enough that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enough
+that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I
+connected in my mind the loss of that dear protector with the
+ribbon of foul smoke that trailed along the mountains.
+
+Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a
+week went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father
+and husband.  As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the
+mirror, so in the ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting
+my horse and following upon his trail, had that strong and brave
+man vanished out of life.  Hope, if any hope we had, fled with
+every hour; the worst was now certain for my father, the worst was
+to be dreaded for his defenceless family.  Without weakness, with a
+desperate calm at which I marvel when I look back upon it, the
+widow and the orphan awaited the event.  On the last day of the
+third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone in the
+house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
+attendants, with one accord, had fled:  and as we knew them to be
+gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their
+flight.  The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of
+the evening we were called at last into the verandah by the
+approaching clink of horse's hoofs.
+
+The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden,
+dismounted, and saluted us.  He seemed much more bent, and his hair
+more silvery than ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious,
+and not unkind.
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would
+have you recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President,
+that he should send as his ambassador your only neighbour and your
+husband's oldest friend in Utah.'
+
+'Sir,' said my mother, 'I have but one concern, one thought.  You
+know well what it is.  Speak:  my husband?'
+
+'Madam,' returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, 'if
+you were a silly child, my position would now be painfully
+embarrassing.  You are, on the other hand, a woman of great
+intelligence and fortitude:  you have, by my forethought, been
+allowed three weeks to draw your own conclusions and to accept the
+inevitable.  Farther words from me are, I conceive, superfluous.'
+
+My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave
+her my hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it
+till I could have cried aloud.  'Then, sir,' said she at last, 'you
+speak to deaf ears.  If this be indeed so, what have I to do with
+errands?  What do I ask of Heaven but to die?'
+
+'Come,' said the doctor, 'command yourself.  I bid you dismiss all
+thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon
+your own future and the fate of that young girl.'
+
+'You bid me dismiss--' began my mother.  'Then you know!' she
+cried.
+
+'I know,' replied the doctor.
+
+'You know?' broke out the poor woman.  'Then it was you who did the
+deed!  I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as
+you are--you, whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and
+awakes raving--you, the Destroying Angel!'
+
+'Well, madam, and what then?' returned the doctor.  'Have not my
+fate and yours been similar?  Are we not both immured in this
+strong prison of Utah?  Have you not tried to flee, and did not the
+Open Eye confront you in the canyon?  Who can escape the watch of
+that unsleeping eye of Utah?  Not I, at least.  Horrible tasks
+have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the most ungrateful was the
+last; but had I refused my offices, would that have spared your
+husband?  You know well it would not.  I, too, had perished along
+with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his last moments,
+nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the hand of
+Brigham Young.'
+
+'Ah!' cried I, 'and could you purchase life by such concessions?'
+
+'Young lady,' answered the doctor, 'I both could and did; and you
+will live to thank me for that baseness.  You have a spirit,
+Asenath, that it pleases me to recognise.  But we waste time.  Mr.
+Fonblanque's estate reverts, as you doubtless imagine, to the
+Church; but some part of it has been reserved for him who is to
+marry the family; and that person, I should perhaps tell you
+without more delay, is no other than myself.'
+
+At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung
+together like lost souls.
+
+'It is as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same measured
+utterance.  'You recoil from this arrangement.  Do you expect me to
+convince you?  You know very well that I have never held the Mormon
+view of women.  Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left
+the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among
+themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not
+the union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it.  No:
+you need not, madam, and my old friend'--and here the doctor rose
+and bowed with something of gallantry--'you need not apprehend my
+importunities.  On the contrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a
+Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you follow me at once, and
+that in the name, not of my wish, but of my orders, I hope it will
+be found that we are of a common mind.'
+
+So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night
+had now fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.
+
+'What does it mean?--what will become of us?' I cried.
+
+'Not that, at least,' replied my mother, shuddering.  'So far we
+can trust him.  I seem to read among his words a certain tragic
+promise.  Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will not forget
+your miserable parents?'
+
+Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes:  I beseeching her to explain
+her words; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend the
+doctor for a friend.  'The doctor!' I cried at last; 'the man who
+killed my father?'
+
+'Nay,' said she, 'let us be just.  I do believe before, Heaven, he
+played the friendliest part.  And he alone, Asenath, can protect
+you in this land of death.'
+
+At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we
+were all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter
+to discuss with Mrs. Fonblanque.  They came at a foot's pace,
+eagerly conversing in a whisper; and presently after the moon rose
+and showed them looking eagerly in each other's faces as they went,
+my mother laying her hand upon the doctor's arm, and the doctor
+himself, against his usual custom, making vigorous gestures of
+protest or asseveration.
+
+At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain
+to his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.
+
+'Here,' he said, 'we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to
+be alone, you and I shall walk together to my house.'
+
+'Shall I see her again?' I asked.
+
+'I give you my word,' he said, and helped me to alight.  'We leave
+the horses here,' he added.  'There are no thieves in this stone
+wilderness.'
+
+The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.  The
+windows were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke;
+but the most absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of
+my mother very slowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there
+was no human soul within a range of miles.  At the thought, I
+looked upon the doctor, gravely walking by my side, with his bowed
+shoulders and white hair, and then once more at his house, lit up
+and pouring smoke like some industrious factory.  And then my
+curiosity broke forth.  'In Heaven's name,' I cried, 'what do you
+make in this inhuman desert?'
+
+He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion
+-
+
+'This is not the first time,' said he, 'that you have seen my
+furnaces alight.  One morning, in the small hours, I saw you
+driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit
+myself of having startled either your driver or the horse that drew
+you.'
+
+'What!' cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure,
+'could that be you?'
+
+'It was I,' he replied; 'but do not fancy that I was mad.  I was in
+agony.  I had been scalded cruelly.'
+
+We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of
+the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.  Stone, too,
+was its foundation, stone its background.  Not a blade of grass
+sprouted among the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower
+adorned the windows.  Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the
+Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought up to view
+that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape,
+it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking.  The
+smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney top, its edges ruddy
+with the fire; and from the far corner of the building, near the
+ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the moon and
+vanished.
+
+The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.  'You ask
+me what I make here,' he observed.  'Two things:  Life and Death.'
+And he motioned me to enter.
+
+'I shall await my mother,' said I.
+
+'Child,' he replied, 'look at me:  am I not old and broken?  Of us
+two, which is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?'
+
+I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by
+a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.  It was furnished only with
+a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of
+these the doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another
+door into the interior of the house, he left me to myself.
+Presently I heard the jar of iron from the far end of the building;
+and this was followed by the same throbbing noise that had startled
+me in the valley, but now so near at hand as to be menacing by
+loudness, and even to shake the house with every recurrence of the
+stroke.  I had scarce time to master my alarm when the doctor
+returned, and almost in the same moment my mother appeared upon the
+threshold.  But how am I to describe to you the peace and
+ravishment of that face?  Years seemed to have passed over her head
+during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes
+shone, her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman but
+the angel of ecstatic tenderness.  I ran to her in a kind of
+terror; but she shrank a little back and laid her finger on her
+lips, with something arch and yet unearthly.  To the doctor, on the
+contrary, she reached out her hand as to a friend and helper; and
+so strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.
+
+'Lucy,' said the doctor, 'all is prepared.  Will you go alone, or
+shall your daughter follow us?'
+
+'Let Asenath come,' she answered, 'dear Asenath!  At this hour,
+when I am purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself
+and my affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that I
+desire her presence.  Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to be
+feared she might misjudge your kindness.'
+
+'Mother,' I cried wildly, 'mother, what is this?'
+
+But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only 'Hush!' as though
+I were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor
+bade me be silent and trouble her no more.  'You have made a
+choice,' he continued, addressing my mother, 'that has often
+strangely tempted me.  The two extremes:  all, or else nothing;
+never, or this very hour upon the clock--these have been my
+incongruous desires.  But to accept the middle term, to be content
+with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn out--never for an
+hour, never since I was born, has satisfied the appetite of my
+ambition.'  He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration
+and some touch of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he
+led the way into the inner room.
+
+It was very long.  From end to end it was lit up by many lamps,
+which by the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant
+snapping sounds with which they burned, I have since divined to be
+electric.  At the extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into
+what must have been a lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in
+strong contrast to the room, was painted with a red reverberation
+as from furnace-doors.  The walls were lined with books and glazed
+cases, the tables crowded with the implements of chemical research;
+great glass accumulators glittered in the light; and through a hole
+in the gable near the shed door, a heavy driving-belt entered the
+apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity
+and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.  In one corner I perceived
+a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously wreathed with
+wire.  To this my mother advanced with a decisive swiftness.
+
+'Is this it?' she asked.
+
+The doctor bowed in silence.
+
+'Asenath,' said my mother, 'in this sad end of my life I have found
+one helper.  Look upon him:  it is Doctor Grierson.  Be not, oh my
+daughter, be not ungrateful to that friend!'
+
+She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that
+terminated the arms.
+
+'Am I right?' she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a
+radiancy of face that I trembled for her reason.  Once more the
+doctor bowed, but this time leaning hard against the wall.  He must
+have touched a spring.  The least shock agitated my mother where
+she sat; the least passing jar appeared to cross her features; and
+she sank back in the chair like one resigned to weariness.  I was
+at her knees that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp;
+her face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank
+forward on her bosom:  her spirit had for ever fled.
+
+I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a
+moment my tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes.  They rested upon
+mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even
+from the freshness of my sorrow, I was startled into attention.
+
+'Enough,' he said, 'to lamentation.  Your mother went to death as
+to a bridal, dying where her husband died.  It is time, Asenath, to
+think of the survivors.  Follow me to the next room.'
+
+I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the
+fire, he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor,
+he thus began to address me -
+
+'You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate
+watch of Brigham Young.  It would be your lot, in ordinary
+circumstances, to become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder,
+or by particular fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to
+find favour in the eyes of the President himself.  Such a fate for
+a girl like you were worse than death; better to die as your mother
+died than to sink daily deeper in the mire of this pit of woman's
+degradation.  But is escape conceivable?  Your father tried; and
+you beheld yourself with what security his jailers acted, and how a
+dumb drawing on a rock was counted a sufficient sentry over the
+avenues of freedom.  Where your father failed, will you be wiser or
+more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless in the toils?'
+
+I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed
+I understood.
+
+'I see,' I cried; 'you judge me rightly.  I must follow where my
+parents led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!'
+
+'No,' replied the doctor, 'not death for you.  The flawed vessel we
+may break, but not the perfect.  No, your mother cherished a
+different hope, and so do I.  I see,' he cried, 'the girl develop
+to the completed woman, the plan reach fulfilment, the promise--ay,
+outdone!  I could not bear to arrest so lively, so comely a
+process.  It was your mother's thought,' he added, with a change of
+tone, 'that I should marry you myself.'  I fear I must have shown a
+perfect horror of aversion from this fate, for he made haste to
+quiet me.  'Reassure yourself, Asenath,' he resumed.  'Old as I am,
+I have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth.  I have
+passed my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils I
+have not forgotten the tune of a young pulse.  Age asks with
+timidity to be spared intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by
+the beard, demands joy like a right.  These things I have not
+forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly felt, none more jealously
+considered them; I have but postponed them to their day.  See,
+then:  you stand without support; the only friend left to you, this
+old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy.  Answer me but
+one question:  Are you free from the entanglement of what the world
+calls love?  Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are
+you fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?'
+
+I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told
+him, lay with my dead parents.
+
+'It is enough,' he said.  'It has been my fate to be called on
+often, too often, for those services of which we spoke to-night;
+none in Utah could carry them so well to a conclusion; hence there
+has fallen into my hands a certain share of influence which I now
+lay at your service, partly for the sake of my dead friends, your
+parents; partly for the interest I bear you in your own right.  I
+shall send you to England, to the great city of London, there to
+await the bridegroom I have selected.  He shall be a son of mine, a
+young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that quality
+of beauty that your years demand.  Since your heart is free, you
+may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for much
+expense and still more danger:  to await the arrival of that
+bridegroom with the delicacy of a wife.'
+
+I sat awhile stunned.  The doctor's marriages, I remembered to have
+heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my
+distress.  But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark
+land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage, was already
+enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and in what words I know
+not, I accepted the proposal.
+
+He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have
+looked for.  'You shall see,' he cried; 'you shall judge for
+yourself.'  And hurrying to the next room he returned with a small
+portrait somewhat coarsely done in oils.  It showed a man in the
+dress of nearly forty years before, young indeed, but still
+recognisable to be the doctor.  'Do you like it?' he asked.  'That
+is myself when I was young.  My--my boy will be like that, like but
+nobler; with such health as angels might condescend to envy; and a
+man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind.  That should be a man, I
+think; that should be one among ten thousand.  A man like that--one
+to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the force, the
+dignity of age--one to fill all the parts and faculties, one to be
+man's epitome--say, will that not satisfy the needs of an ambitious
+girl?  Say, is not that enough?'  And as he held the picture close
+before my eyes, his hands shook.
+
+I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced
+with this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the
+words, the most insolent revolt surged through my arteries.  I held
+him in horror, him, his portrait, and his son; and had there been
+any choice but death or a Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven
+I had embraced it.
+
+'It is well,' he replied, 'and I had rightly counted on your
+spirit.  Eat, then, for you have far to go.'  So saying, he set
+meat before me; and while I was endeavouring to obey, he left the
+room and returned with an armful of coarse raiment.  'There,' said
+he, 'is your disguise.  I leave you to your toilet.'
+
+The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of
+fifteen; and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered
+my movements.  But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings,
+was the problem of their origin and the fate of the lad to whom
+they had belonged.  I had scarcely effected the exchange when the
+doctor returned, opened a back window, helped me out into the
+narrow space between the house and the overhanging bluffs, and
+showed me a ladder of iron footholds mortised in the rock.
+'Mount,' he said, 'swiftly.  When you are at the summit, walk, so
+far as you are able, in the shadow of the smoke.  The smoke will
+bring you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down, and you
+will find a man with two horses.  Him you will implicitly obey.
+And remember, silence!  That machinery, which I now put in motion
+for your service, may by one word be turned against you.  Go;
+Heaven prosper you!'
+
+The ascent was easy.  Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before
+me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying
+bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains.  Nowhere was any
+vantage or concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset
+with spies, I made haste to veil my movements under the blowing
+trail of smoke.  Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind,
+and I had no more substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow;
+sometimes again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it,
+no higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog.  But, one
+way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace protected the
+first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to the canyon.
+
+There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair
+of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in
+silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains.
+A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty
+cavern at the bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and
+the next night, before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed
+our wanderings.  About noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a
+little river, where was a screen of bushes; and here my guide,
+handing me a bundle from his pack, bade me change my dress once
+more.  The bundle contained clothing of my own, taken from our
+house, with such necessaries as a comb and soap.  I made my toilet
+by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and smiling
+with some complacency to see myself restored to my own image, the
+mountains rang with a scream of far more than human piercingness;
+and while I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiftly
+increased a storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds.
+Shall I own to you, that I fell upon my face and shrieked?  And yet
+this was but the overland train winding among the near mountains:
+the very means of my salvation:  the strong wings that were to
+carry me from Utah!
+
+When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he
+said, both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over
+the borders in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream
+until I reached the railway station, half a mile below.  'Here,' he
+added, 'is your ticket as far as Council Bluffs.  The East express
+will pass in a few hours.'  With that, he took both horses, and,
+without further words or any salutation, rode off by the way that
+we had come.
+
+Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the
+train as it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in
+tunnels of the mountain.  The change of scene, the sense of escape,
+the still throbbing terror of pursuit--above all, the astounding
+magic of my new conveyance, kept me from any logical or melancholy
+thought.  I had gone to the doctor's house two nights before
+prepared to die, prepared for worse than death; what had passed,
+terrible although it was, looked almost bright compared to my
+anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a full night in the
+flying palace car, that I awoke to the sense of my irreparable loss
+and to some reasonable alarm about the future.  In this mood, I
+examined the contents of the bag.  It was well supplied with gold;
+it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey as far
+as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor, supplying me with
+a fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence,
+and bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son.  All then
+had been arranged beforehand:  he had counted upon my consent, and
+what was tenfold worse, upon my mother's voluntary death.  My
+horror of my only friend, my aversion for this son who was to marry
+me, my revolt against the whole current and conditions of my life,
+were now complete.  I was sitting stupefied by my distress and
+helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant lady offered me her
+conversation.  I clutched at the relief; and I was soon glibly
+telling her the story in the doctor's letter:  how I was a Miss
+Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I
+had, what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted my
+instructions, and, as the lady still continued to ply me with
+questions, began to embroider on my own account.  This soon carried
+one of my inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked
+a shadow on the lady's face, when a gentleman drew near and very
+civilly addressed me.
+
+'Miss Gould, I believe?' said he; and then, excusing himself to the
+lady by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform
+of the Pullman car.  'Miss Gould,' he said in my ear, 'is it
+possible that you suppose yourself in safety?  Let me completely
+undeceive you.  One more such indiscretion and you return to Utah.
+And, in the meanwhile, if this woman should again address you, you
+are to reply with these words:  "Madam, I do not like you, and I
+will be obliged if you will suffer me to choose my own
+associates."'
+
+Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt
+myself drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with
+insult; and thenceforward, through all that day, I sat in silence,
+gazing on the bare plains and swallowing my tears.  Let that
+suffice:  it was the pattern of my journey.  Whether on the train,
+at the hotels, or on board the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a
+friendly word with any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be
+interrupted.  In every place, on every side, the most unlikely
+persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors to forward
+me upon my journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct.
+Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye
+still following my movements; and when at length a cab had set me
+down before that London lodging-house from which you saw me flee
+this morning, I had already ceased to struggle and ceased to hope.
+
+The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was
+expecting my arrival.  A fire was lighted in my room, which looked
+upon the garden; there were books on the table, clothes in the
+drawers; and there (I had almost said with contentment, and
+certainly with resignation) I saw month follow month over my head.
+At times my landlady took me for a walk or an excursion, but she
+would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I, seeing that
+she also lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormon terror,
+felt too much pity to resist.  To the child born on Mormon soil, as
+to the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no escape
+is possible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful even for
+this respite.  Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for
+my approaching nuptials.  The day drew near when my bridegroom was
+to visit me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent.  A
+son of Doctor Grierson's, be he what he pleased, must still be
+young, and it was even probable he should be handsome; on more than
+that, I felt I dared not reckon; and in moulding my mind towards
+consent I dwelt the more carefully on these physical attractions
+which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes from moral or
+intellectual considerations.  We have a great power upon our
+spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into a frame of
+acquiescence, nay, and I began to grow impatient for the hour.  At
+night sleep forsook me; I sat all day by the fire, absorbed in
+dreams, conjuring up the features of my husband, and anticipating
+in fancy the touch of his hand and the sound of his voice.  In the
+dead level and solitude of my existence, this was the one eastern
+window and the one door of hope.  At last, I had so cultivated and
+prepared my will, that I began to be besieged with fears upon the
+other side.  How if it was I that did not please?  How if this
+unseen lover should turn from me with disaffection?  And now I
+spent hours before the glass, studying and judging my attractions,
+and was never weary of changing my dress or ordering my hair.
+
+When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a
+sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more,
+and must now stand or fall by nature.  My occupation ended, I fell
+a prey to the most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms;
+giving ear to the swelling rumour of the streets, and at each
+change of sound or silence, starting, shrinking, and colouring to
+the brow.  Love is not to be prepared, I know, without some
+knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at last rattled to
+the door and I heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the
+tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself might have been
+proud to own their parentage.  The door opened, and it was Doctor
+Grierson that appeared.  I believe I must have screamed aloud, and
+I know, at least, that I fell fainting to the floor.
+
+When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse.
+'I have startled you,' he said.  'A difficulty unforeseen--the
+impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity--has
+forced me to resort to London unprepared.  I regret that I should
+have shown myself once more without those poor attractions which
+are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more considerable than
+rain that falls into the sea.  Youth is but a state, as passing as
+that syncope from which you are but just awakened, and, if there be
+truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find, Asenath, that I
+must now take you for my confidant.  Since my first years, I have
+devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task; and the
+time of my success is at hand.  In these new countries, where I was
+so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
+have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error;
+what was a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I
+offered you a son of mine I did so in a figure.  That son--that
+husband, Asenath, is myself--not as you now behold me, but restored
+to the first energy of youth.  You think me mad?  It is the
+customary attitude of ignorance.  I will not argue; I will leave
+facts to speak.  When you behold me purified, invigorated, renewed,
+restamped in the original image--when you recognise in me (what I
+shall be) the first perfect expression of the powers of mankind--I
+shall be able to laugh with a better grace at your passing and
+natural incredulity.  To what can you aspire--fame, riches, power,
+the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of age--that I shall not
+be able to afford you in perfection?  Do not deceive yourself.  I
+already excel you in every human gift but one:  when that gift also
+has been restored to me you will recognise your master.'
+
+Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to
+myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he
+withdrew.  I had not the courage to move; the night fell and found
+me still where he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my
+hands, my soul drowned in the darkest apprehensions.  Late in the
+evening he returned, carrying a candle, and, with a certain
+irritable tremor, bade me rise and sup.  'Is it possible,' he
+added, 'that I have been deceived in your courage?  A cowardly girl
+is no fit mate for me.'
+
+I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears
+besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that
+my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of intellect and
+character I was his hopeless and derisible inferior.
+
+'Why, certainly,' he replied.  'I know you better than yourself;
+and I am well enough acquainted with human nature to understand
+this scene.  It is addressed to me,' he added with a smile, 'in my
+character of the still untransformed.  But do not alarm yourself
+about the future.  Let me but attain my end, and not you only,
+Asenath, but every woman on the face of the earth becomes my
+willing slave.'
+
+Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;
+helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable
+host; and it was not till a late hour, that, bidding me courteously
+good-night, he once more left me alone to my misery.
+
+In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I
+scarce knew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil.
+If his hopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some
+abhorrent miracle, he should discard his age, death were my only
+refuge from that most unnatural, that most ungodly union.  If, on
+the other hand, these dreams were merely lunatic, the madness of a
+life waxed suddenly acute, my pity would become a load almost as
+heavy to bear as my revolt against the marriage.  So passed the
+night, in alternations of rebellion and despair, of hate and pity;
+and with the next morning I was only to comprehend more fully my
+enslaved position.  For though he appeared with a very tranquil
+countenance, he had no sooner observed the marks of grief upon my
+brow than an answering darkness gathered on his own.  'Asenath.' he
+said, 'you owe me much already; with one finger I still hold you
+suspended over death; my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I
+choose,' said he, with a remarkable accent of command, 'that you
+shall greet me with a pleasant face.'  He never needed to repeat
+the recommendation; from that day forward I was always ready to
+receive him with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a
+good deal of his company, and almost more than I could bear of his
+confidence.  He had set up a laboratory in the back part of the
+house, where he toiled day and night at his elixir, and he would
+come thence to visit me in my parlour:  now with passing humours of
+discouragement; now, and far more often, radiant with hope.  It was
+impossible to see so much of him, and not to recognise that the
+sands of his life were running low; and yet all the time he would
+be laying out vast fields of future, and planning, with all the
+confidence of youth, the most unbounded schemes of pleasure and
+ambition.  How I replied I know not; but I found a voice and words
+to answer, even while I wept and raged to hear him.
+
+A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great
+exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness.  'Asenath,'
+said he, 'I have now obtained the last ingredient.  In one week
+from now the perilous moment of the last projection will draw nigh.
+You have once before assisted, although unconsciously, at the
+failure of a similar experiment.  It was the elixir which so
+terribly exploded one night when you were passing my house; and it
+is idle to deny that the conduct of so delicate a process, among
+the million jars and trepidations of so great a city, presents a
+certain element of danger.  From this point of view, I cannot but
+regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts; but, on
+the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularly
+unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is
+due rather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients;
+and as all are now of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have little
+fear for the result.  In a week then from to-day, my dear Asenath,
+this period of trial will be ended.'  And he smiled upon me in a
+manner unusually paternal.
+
+I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the
+blackest and most unbridled terror.  What if he failed?  And oh,
+tenfold worse! what if he succeeded?  What detested and unnatural
+changeling would appear before me to claim my hand?  And could
+there, I asked myself with a dreadful sinking, be any truth in his
+boasts of an assured victory over my reluctance?  I knew him,
+indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a sign.  Suppose, then,
+this experiment to succeed; suppose him to return to me, hideously
+restored, like a vampire in a legend; and suppose that, by some
+devilish fascination . . . My head turned; all former fears
+deserted me:  and I felt I could embrace the worst in preference to
+this.
+
+My mind was instantly made up.  The doctor's presence in London was
+justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity.  Often, in our
+conversation, he would gloat over the details of that great
+organisation, which he feared even while yet he wielded it; and
+would remind me, that even in the humming labyrinth of London, we
+were still visible to that unsleeping eye in Utah.  His visitors,
+indeed, who were of every sort, from the missionary to the
+destroying angel, and seemed to belong to every rank of life, had,
+up to that moment, filled me with unmixed repulsion and alarm.  I
+knew that if my secret were to reach the ear of any leader my fate
+were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in my present pass of horror
+and despair, it was to these very men that I turned for help.  I
+waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man of a
+low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce remember
+what elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his
+intermediacy entered into correspondence with my father's family.
+They recognised my claim for help, and on this very day I was to
+begin my escape.
+
+Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the
+doctor's labours, and prepared against the worst.  The nights at
+this season and in this northern latitude are short; and I had soon
+the company of the returning daylight.  The silence in and around
+the house was only broken by the movements of the doctor in the
+laboratory; to these I listened, watch in hand, awaiting the hour
+of my escape, and yet consumed by anxiety about the strange
+experiment that was going forward overhead.  Indeed, now that I was
+conscious of some protection for myself, my sympathies had turned
+more directly to the doctor's side; I caught myself even praying
+for his success; and when some hours ago a low, peculiar cry
+reached my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control my
+impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.
+
+The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a
+large, round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a
+bright amber-coloured liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude
+and joy unspeakable.  As he saw me he raised the flask at arm's
+length.  'Victory!' he cried.  'Victory, Asenath!'  And then--
+whether the flask escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the
+explosion were spontaneous, I cannot tell--enough that we were
+thrown, I against the door-post, the doctor into the corner of the
+room; enough that we were shaken to the soul by the same explosion
+that must have startled you upon the street; and that, in the brief
+space of an indistinguishable instant, there remained nothing of
+the labours of the doctor's lifetime but a few shards of broken
+crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that pursued
+me in my flight.
+
+
+
+THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (Concluded)
+
+
+
+What with the lady's animated manner and dramatic conduct of her
+voice, Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine
+emotion.  His fancy, which was not perhaps of a very lively
+character, applauded both the matter and the style; but the more
+judicial functions of his mind refused assent.  It was an excellent
+story; and it might be true, but he believed it was not.  Miss
+Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless possible for a lady to
+wander from the truth; but how was a gentleman to tell her so?  His
+spirits for some time had been sinking, but they now fell to zero;
+and long after her voice had died away he still sat with a troubled
+and averted countenance, and could find no form of words to thank
+her for her narrative.  His mind, indeed, was empty of everything
+beyond a dull longing for escape.  From this pause, which grew the
+more embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden
+laughter of the lady.  His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced
+her; their eyes met; and he caught from hers a spark of such frank
+merriment as put him instantly at ease.
+
+'You certainly,' he said, 'appear to bear your calamities with
+excellent spirit.'
+
+'Do I not?' she cried, and fell once more into delicious laughter.
+But from this access she more speedily recovered.  'This is all
+very well,' said she, nodding at him gravely, 'but I am still in a
+most distressing situation, from which, if you deny me your help, I
+shall find it difficult indeed to free myself.'
+
+At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original gloom.
+
+'My sympathies are much engaged with you,' he said, 'and I should
+be delighted, I am sure.  But our position is most unusual; and
+circumstances over which I have, I can assure you, no control,
+deprive me of the power--the pleasure--Unless, indeed,' he added,
+somewhat brightening at the thought, 'I were to recommend you to
+the care of the police?'
+
+She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; and
+he saw with wonder that, for the first time since the moment of
+their meeting, every trace of colour had faded from her cheek.
+
+'Do so,' she said, 'and--weigh my words well--you kill me as
+certainly as with a knife.'
+
+'God bless me!' exclaimed Challoner.
+
+'Oh,' she cried, 'I can see you disbelieve my story and make light
+of the perils that surround me; but who are you to judge?  My
+family share my apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw
+yourself by what an emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen
+to supply me with the funds for my escape.  I admit that you are
+brave and clever and have impressed me most favourably; but how are
+you to prefer your opinion before that of my uncle, an ex-minister
+of state, a man with the ear of the Queen, and of a long political
+experience?  If I am mad, is he?  And you must allow me, besides, a
+special claim upon your help.  Strange as you may think my story,
+you know that much of it is true; and if you who heard the
+explosion and saw the Mormon at Victoria, refuse to credit and
+assist me, to whom am I to turn?'
+
+'He gave you money then?' asked Challoner, who had been dwelling
+singly on that fact.
+
+'I begin to interest you,' she cried.  'But, frankly, you are
+condemned to help me.  If the service I had to ask of you were
+serious, were suspicious, were even unusual, I should say no more.
+But what is it?  To take a pleasure trip (for which, if you will
+suffer me, I propose to pay) and to carry from one lady to another
+a sum of money!  What can be more simple?'
+
+'Is the sum,' asked Challoner, 'considerable?'
+
+She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had
+not yet found time to make the count, tore open the cover and
+spread upon her knees a considerable number of Bank of England
+notes.  It took some time to make the reckoning, for the notes were
+of every degree of value; but at last, and counting a few loose
+sovereigns, she made out the sum to be a little under 710 pounds
+sterling.  The sight of so much money worked an immediate
+revolution in the mind of Challoner.
+
+'And you propose, madam,' he cried, 'to intrust that money to a
+perfect stranger?'
+
+'Ah!' said she, with a charming smile, 'but I no longer regard you
+as a stranger.'
+
+'Madam,' said Challoner, 'I perceive I must make you a confession.
+Although of a very good family--through my mother, indeed, a lineal
+descendant of the patriot Bruce--I dare not conceal from you that
+my affairs are deeply, very deeply involved.  I am in debt; my
+pockets are practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that
+state when a considerable sum of money would prove to many men an
+irresistible temptation.'
+
+'Do you not see,' returned the young lady, 'that by these words you
+have removed my last hesitation?  Take them.'  And she thrust the
+notes into the young man's hand.
+
+He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss
+Fonblanque once more bubbled into laughter.
+
+'Pray,' she said, 'hesitate no further; put them in your pocket;
+and to relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me
+by what name I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself
+reduced to the awkwardness of the pronoun.'
+
+Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors had
+come lightly to the young man's aid; but upon what pretext could he
+refuse so generous a trust?  Upon none he saw, that was not
+unpardonably wounding; and the bright eyes and the high spirits of
+his companion had already made a breach in the rampart of
+Challoner's caution.  The whole thing, he reasoned, might be a mere
+mystification, which it were the height of solemn folly to resent.
+On the other hand, the explosion, the interview at the public-
+house, and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove beyond
+denial the existence of some serious danger; and if that were so,
+could he desert her?  There was a choice of risks:  the risk of
+behaving with extraordinary incivility and unhandsomeness to a
+lady, and the risk of going on a fool's errand.  The story seemed
+false; but then the money was undeniable.  The whole circumstances
+were questionable and obscure; but the lady was charming, and had
+the speech and manners of society.  While he still hung in the
+wind, a recollection returned upon his mind with some of the
+dignity of prophecy.  Had he not promised Somerset to break with
+the traditions of the commonplace, and to accept the first
+adventure offered?  Well, here was the adventure.
+
+He thrust the money into his pocket.
+
+'My name is Challoner,' said he.
+
+'Mr. Challoner,' she replied, 'you have come very generously to my
+aid when all was against me.  Though I am myself a very humble
+person, my family commands great interest; and I do not think you
+will repent this handsome action.'
+
+Challoner flushed with pleasure.
+
+'I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,' she added, her eyes
+dwelling on him with a judicial admiration, 'a consulship in some
+great town or capital--or else--But we waste time; let us set about
+the work of my delivery.'
+
+She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his heart;
+and once more laying by all serious thoughts, she entertained him,
+as they crossed the park, with her agreeable gaiety of mind.  Near
+the Marble Arch they found a hansom, which rapidly conveyed them to
+the terminus at Euston Square; and here, in the hotel, they sat
+down to an excellent breakfast.  The young lady's first step was to
+call for writing materials and write, upon one corner of the table,
+a hasty note; still, as she did so, glancing with smiles at her
+companion.  'Here,' said she, 'here is the letter which will
+introduce you to my cousin.'  She began to fold the paper.  'My
+cousin, although I have never seen her, has the character of a very
+charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I know nothing, but
+at least she has been very kind to me; so has my lord her father;
+so have you--kinder than all--kinder than I can bear to think of.'
+She said this with unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed
+the envelope.  'Ah!' she cried, 'I have shut my letter!  It is not
+quite courteous; and yet, as between friends, it is perhaps better
+so.  I introduce you, after all, into a family secret; and though
+you and I are already old comrades, you are still unknown to my
+uncle.  You go then to this address, Richard Street, Glasgow; go,
+please, as soon as you arrive; and give this letter with your own
+hands into those of Miss Fonblanque, for that is the name by which
+she is to pass.  When we next meet, you will tell me what you think
+of her,' she added, with a touch of the provocative.
+
+'Ah,' said Challoner, almost tenderly, 'she can be nothing to me.'
+
+'You do not know,' replied the young lady, with a sigh.  'By-the-
+bye, I had forgotten--it is very childish, and I am almost ashamed
+to mention it--but when you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have to
+make yourself a little ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way
+suits you.  We had agreed upon a watchword.  You will have to
+address an earl's daughter in these words:  "NIGGER, NIGGER, NEVER
+DIE;" but reassure yourself,' she added, laughing, 'for the fair
+patrician will at once finish the quotation.  Come now, say your
+lesson.'
+
+'"Nigger, nigger, never die,"' repeated Challoner, with undisguised
+reluctance.
+
+Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.  'Excellent,' said she,
+'it will be the most humorous scene.'  And she laughed again.
+
+'And what will be the counterword?' asked Challoner stiffly.
+
+'I will not tell you till the last moment,' said she; 'for I
+perceive you are growing too imperious.'
+
+Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform,
+bought him the Graphic, the Athenaeum, and a paper-cutter, and
+stood on the step conversing till the whistle sounded.  Then she
+put her head into the carriage.  'BLACK FACE AND SHINING EYE!' she
+whispered, and instantly leaped down upon the platform, with a
+thrill of gay and musical laughter.  As the train steamed out of
+the great arch of glass, the sound of that laughter still rang in
+the young man's ears.
+
+Challoner's position was too unusual to be long welcome to his
+mind.  He found himself projected the whole length of England, on a
+mission beset with obscure and ridiculous circumstances, and yet,
+by the trust he had accepted, irrevocably bound to persevere.  How
+easy it appeared, in the retrospect, to have refused the whole
+proposal, returned the money, and gone forth again upon his own
+affairs, a free and happy man!  And it was now impossible:  the
+enchantress who had held him with her eye had now disappeared,
+taking his honour in pledge; and as she had failed to leave him an
+address, he was denied even the inglorious safety of retreat.  To
+use the paper-knife, or even to read the periodicals with which she
+had presented him, was to renew the bitterness of his remorse; and
+as he was alone in the compartment, he passed the day staring at
+the landscape in impotent repentance, and long before he was landed
+on the platform of St. Enoch's, had fallen to the lowest and
+coldest zones of self-contempt.
+
+As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have
+preferred to dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the words
+of the young lady, and his own impatient eagerness, would suffer no
+delay.  In the late, luminous, and lamp-starred dusk of the summer
+evening, he accordingly set forward with brisk steps.
+
+The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in the
+character of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside; but the
+extension of the city had long since, and on every hand, surrounded
+it with miles of streets.  From the top of the hill a range of very
+tall buildings, densely inhabited by the poorest classes of the
+population and variegated by drying-poles from every second window,
+overplumbed the villas and their little gardens like a sea-board
+cliff.  But still, under the grime of years of city smoke, these
+antiquated cottages, with their venetian blinds and rural
+porticoes, retained a somewhat melancholy savour of the past.
+
+The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly deserted.  From
+hard by, indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls filled the ear;
+but in Richard Street itself there was neither light nor sound of
+human habitation.  The appearance of the neighbourhood weighed
+heavily on the mind of the young man; once more, as in the streets
+of London, he was impressed with the sense of city deserts; and as
+he approached the number indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang
+the bell, his heart sank within him.
+
+The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and garrulous
+note; and it was some time before it ceased to sound from the rear
+quarters of the building.  Following upon this an inner door was
+stealthily opened, and careful and catlike steps drew near along
+the hall.  Challoner, supposing he was to be instantly admitted,
+produced his letter, and, as well as he was able, prepared a
+smiling face.  To his indescribable surprise, however, the
+footsteps ceased, and then, after a pause and with the like
+stealthiness, withdrew once more, and died away in the interior of
+the house.  A second time the young man rang violently at the bell;
+a second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle of discreet
+footing moved upon the hollow boards of the old villa; and again
+the fainthearted garrison only drew near to retreat.  The cup of
+the visitor's endurance was now full to overflowing; and,
+committing the whole family of Fonblanque to every mood and shade
+of condemnation, he turned upon his heel and redescended the steps.
+Perhaps the mover in the house was watching from a window, and
+plucked up courage at the sight of this desistance; or perhaps,
+where he lurked trembling in the back parts of the villa, reason in
+its own right had conquered his alarms.  Challoner, at least, had
+scarce set foot upon the pavement when he was arrested by the sound
+of the withdrawal of an inner bolt; one followed another, rattling
+in their sockets; the key turned harshly in the lock; the door
+opened; and there appeared upon the threshold a man of a very
+stalwart figure in his shirt sleeves.  He was a person neither of
+great manly beauty nor of a refined exterior; he was not the man,
+in ordinary moods, to attract the eyes of the observer; but as he
+now stood in the doorway, he was marked so legibly with the extreme
+passion of terror that Challoner stood wonder-struck.  For a
+fraction of a minute they gazed upon each other in silence; and
+then the man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping voice,
+inquired the business of his visitor.  Challoner replied, in tones
+from which he strove to banish his surprise, that he was the bearer
+of a letter to a certain Miss Fonblanque.  At this name, as at a
+talisman, the man fell back and impatiently invited him to enter;
+and no sooner had the adventurer crossed the threshold, than the
+door was closed behind him and his retreat cut off.
+
+It was already long past eight at night; and though the late
+twilight of the north still lingered in the streets, in the passage
+it was already groping dark.  The man led Challoner directly to a
+parlour looking on the garden to the back.  Here he had apparently
+been supping; for by the light of a tallow dip the table was seen
+to be covered with a napkin, and set out with a quart of bottled
+ale and the heel of a Gouda cheese.  The room, on the other hand,
+was furnished with faded solidity, and the walls were lined with
+scholarly and costly volumes in glazed cases.  The house must have
+been taken furnished; for it had no congruity with this man of the
+shirt sleeves and the mean supper.  As for the earl's daughter, the
+earl and the visionary consulships in foreign cities, they had long
+ago begun to fade in Challoner's imagination.  Like Doctor Grierson
+and the Mormon angels, they were plainly woven of the stuff of
+dreams.  Not an illusion remained to the knight-errant; not a hope
+was left him, but to be speedily relieved from this disreputable
+business.
+
+The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised
+anxiety, and began once more to press him for his errand.
+
+'I am here,' said Challoner, 'simply to do a service between two
+ladies; and I must ask you, without further delay, to summon Miss
+Fonblanque, into whose hands alone I am authorised to deliver the
+letter that I bear.'
+
+A growing wonder began to mingle on the man's face with the lines
+of solicitude.  'I am Miss Fonblanque,' he said; and then,
+perceiving the effect of this communication, 'Good God!' he cried,
+'what are you staring at?  I tell you, I am Miss Fonblanque.'
+
+Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, and
+the remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could
+only suppose himself the subject of a jest.  He was no longer under
+the spell of the young lady's presence; and with men, and above all
+with his inferiors, he was capable of some display of spirit.
+
+'Sir,' said he, pretty roundly, 'I have put myself to great
+inconvenience for persons of whom I know too little, and I begin to
+be weary of the business.  Either you shall immediately summon Miss
+Fonblanque, or I leave this house and put myself under the
+direction of the police.'
+
+'This is horrible!' exclaimed the man.  'I declare before Heaven I
+am the person meant, but how shall I convince you?  It must have
+been Clara, I perceive, that sent you on this errand--a madwoman,
+who jests with the most deadly interests; and here we are
+incapable, perhaps, of an agreement, and Heaven knows what may
+depend on our delay!'
+
+He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same time
+there flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous jingle
+which was to serve as password.  'This may, perhaps, assist you,'
+he said, and then, with some embarrassment, '"Nigger, nigger, never
+die."'
+
+A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the man
+with the chin-beard.  '"Black face and shining eye"--give me the
+letter,' he panted, in one gasp.
+
+'Well,' said Challoner, though still with some reluctance, 'I
+suppose I must regard you as the proper recipient; and though I may
+justly complain of the spirit in which I have been treated, I am
+only too glad to be done with all responsibility.  Here it is,' and
+he produced the envelope.
+
+The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled
+in a manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the
+letter.  As he read, terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch
+of nightmare.  He struck one hand upon his brow, while with the
+other, as if unconsciously, he crumpled the paper to a ball.  'My
+gracious powers!' he cried; and then, dashing to the window, which
+stood open on the garden, he clapped forth his head and shoulders,
+and whistled long and shrill.  Challoner fell back into a corner,
+and resolutely grasping his staff, prepared for the most desperate
+events; but the thoughts of the man with the chin-beard were far
+removed from violence.  Turning again into the room, and once more
+beholding his visitor, whom he appeared to have forgotten, he
+fairly danced with trepidation.  'Impossible!' he cried.  'Oh,
+quite impossible!  O Lord, I have lost my head.'  And then, once
+more striking his hand upon his brow, 'The money!' he exclaimed.
+'Give me the money.'
+
+'My good friend,' replied Challoner, 'this is a very painful
+exhibition; and until I see you reasonably master of yourself, I
+decline to proceed with any business.'
+
+'You are quite right,' said the man.  'I am of a very nervous
+habit; a long course of the dumb ague has undermined my
+constitution.  But I know you have money; it may be still the
+saving of me; and oh, dear young gentleman, in pity's name be
+expeditious!'  Challoner, sincerely uneasy as he was, could scarce
+refrain from laughter; but he was himself in a hurry to be gone,
+and without more delay produced the money.  'You will find the sum,
+I trust, correct,' he observed 'and let me ask you to give me a
+receipt.'
+
+But the man heeded him not.  He seized the money, and disregarding
+the sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, thrust the bundle
+of notes into his pocket.
+
+'A receipt,' repeated Challoner, with some asperity.  'I insist on
+a receipt.'
+
+'Receipt?' repeated the man, a little wildly.  'A receipt?
+Immediately!  Await me here.'
+
+Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no unnecessary
+time, as he was himself desirous of catching a particular train.
+
+'Ah, by God, and so am I!' exclaimed the man with the chin-beard;
+and with that he was gone out of the room, and had rattled
+upstairs, four at a time, to the upper story of the villa.
+
+'This is certainly a most amazing business,' thought Challoner;
+'certainly a most disquieting affair; and I cannot conceal from
+myself that I have become mixed up with either lunatics or
+malefactors.  I may truly thank my stars that I am so nearly and so
+creditably done with it.'  Thus thinking, and perhaps remembering
+the episode of the whistle, he turned to the open window.  The
+garden was still faintly clear; he could distinguish the stairs and
+terraces with which the small domain had been adorned by former
+owners, and the blackened bushes and dead trees that had once
+afforded shelter to the country birds; beyond these he saw the
+strong retaining wall, some thirty feet in height, which enclosed
+the garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of dingy
+buildings rearing its frontage high into the night.  A peculiar
+object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his
+eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder, or
+series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of
+what service so great an instrument could be in such a scant
+enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one
+running violently down the stairs.  This was followed by the
+sudden, clamorous banging of the house door; and that again, by
+rapid and retreating footsteps in the street.
+
+Challoner sprang into the passage.  He ran from room to room,
+upstairs and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten
+house, he found himself alone.  Only in one apartment, looking to
+the front, were there any traces of the late inhabitant:  a bed
+that had been recently slept in and not made, a chest of drawers
+disordered by a hasty search, and on the floor a roll of crumpled
+paper.  This he picked up.  The light in this upper story looking
+to the front was considerably brighter than in the parlour; and he
+was able to make out that the paper bore the mark of the hotel at
+Euston, and even, by peering closely, to decipher the following
+lines in a very elegant and careful female hand:
+
+
+'DEAR M'GUIRE,--It is certain your retreat is known.  We have just
+had another failure, clockwork thirty hours too soon, with the
+usual humiliating result.  Zero is quite disheartened.  We are all
+scattered, and I could find no one but the SOLEMN ASS who brings
+you this and the money.  I would love to see your meeting.--Ever
+yours,
+
+SHINING EYE.'
+
+
+Challoner was stricken to the heart.  He perceived by what
+facility, by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought
+down to be the gull of this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth
+in almost equal measure against himself, against the woman, and
+against Somerset, whose idle counsels had impelled him to embark on
+that adventure.  At the same time a great and troubled curiosity,
+and a certain chill of fear, possessed his spirit.  The conduct of
+the man with the chin-beard, the terms of the letter, and the
+explosion of the early morning, fitted together like parts in some
+obscure and mischievous imbroglio.  Evil was certainly afoot; evil,
+secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions and the passions
+of the people among whom he had begun to move, like a blind puppet;
+and he who began as a puppet, his experience told him, was often
+doomed to perish as a victim.
+
+From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the
+letter in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the bell.  He
+glanced from the window; and, conceive his horror and surprise when
+he beheld, clustered on the steps, in the front garden and on the
+pavement of the street, a formidable posse of police!  He started
+to the full possession of his powers and courage.  Escape, and
+escape at any cost, was the one idea that possessed him.  Swiftly
+and silently he redescended the creaking stairs; he was already in
+the passage when a second and more imperious summons from the door
+awoke the echoes of the empty house; nor had the bell ceased to
+jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill of the parlour and
+was lowering himself into the garden.  His coat was hooked upon the
+iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent heels and head
+below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth, and followed by
+several pots, he dropped upon the sod.  Once more the bell was
+rung, and now with furious and repeated peals.  The desperate
+Challoner turned his eyes on every side.  They fell upon the
+ladder, and he ran to it, and with strenuous but unavailing effort
+sought to raise it from the ground.  Suddenly the weight, which was
+thus resisting his whole strength, began to lighten in his hands;
+the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its bulk from off the sod;
+and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost superstitious
+terror, beheld the whole structure mount, foot by foot, against the
+face of the retaining wall.  At the same time, two heads were dimly
+visible above the parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle.
+Something in its modulation recalled, like an echo, the whistle of
+the man with the chin-beard,
+
+Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those
+very miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?  Was this,
+indeed, a means of safety, or but the starting-point of further
+complication and disaster?  He paused not to reflect.  Scarce was
+the ladder reared to its full length than he had sprung already on
+the rounds; hand over hand, swift as an ape, he scaled the
+tottering stairway.  Strong arms received, embraced, and helped
+him; he was lifted and set once more upon the earth; and with the
+spasm of his alarm yet unsubsided, found himself in the company of
+two rough-looking men, in the paved back yard of one of the tall
+houses that crowned the summit of the hill.  Meanwhile, from below,
+the note of the bell had been succeeded by the sound of vigorous
+and redoubling blows.
+
+'Are you all out?' asked one of his companions; and, as soon as he
+had babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was cut from the
+top round, and the ladder thrust roughly back into the garden,
+where it fell and broke with clattering reverberations.  Its fall
+was hailed with many broken cries; for the whole of Richard Street
+was now in high emotion, the people crowding to the windows or
+clambering on the garden walls.  The same man who had already
+addressed Challoner seized him by the arm; whisked him through the
+basement of the house and across the street upon the other side;
+and before the unfortunate adventurer had time to realise his
+situation, a door was opened, and he was thrust into a low and dark
+compartment.
+
+'Bedad,' observed his guide, 'there was no time to lose.  Is
+M'Guire gone, or was it you that whistled?
+
+'M'Guire is gone,' said Challoner.
+
+The guide now struck a light.  'Ah,' said he, 'this will never do.
+You dare not go upon the streets in such a figure.  Wait quietly
+here and I will bring you something decent.'
+
+With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus
+rudely awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been
+worked in his attire.  His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly
+ripped; and the best part of one tail of his very elegant frockcoat
+had been left hanging from the iron crockets of the window.  He had
+scarce had time to measure these disasters when his host re-entered
+the apartment and proceeded, without a word, to envelop the refined
+and urbane Challoner in a long ulster of the cheapest material, and
+of a pattern so gross and vulgar that his spirit sickened at the
+sight.  This calumnious disguise was crowned and completed by a
+soft felt hat of the Tyrolese design, and several sizes too small.
+At another moment Challoner would simply have refused to issue
+forth upon the world thus travestied; but the desire to escape from
+Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively impressed upon his
+mind.  With one haggard glance at the spotted tails of his new
+coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement.  The man
+assured him that the whole expense was easily met from funds in his
+possession, and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make his
+best speed out of the neighbourhood.
+
+The young man was not loath to take the hint.  True to his usual
+courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his
+taste in greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat abashed by these
+remarks and the manner of their delivery, he hurried forth into the
+lamplit city.  The last train was gone ere, after many deviations,
+he had reached the terminus.  Attired as he was he dared not
+present himself at any reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the
+unassuming dignity of his demeanour would serve to attract
+attention, perhaps mirth and possibly suspicion, in any humbler
+hostelry.  He was thus condemned to pass the solemn and uneventful
+hours of a whole night in pacing the streets of Glasgow;
+supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn,
+with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all
+things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of
+his conduct.  It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the
+memory of the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang
+in his ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when
+he could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his
+confusion, it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of
+the amateur detective.  With the coming of day, he found in a shy
+milk-shop the means to appease his hunger.  There were still many
+hours to wait before the departure of the South express; these he
+passed wandering with indescribable fatigue in the obscurer by-
+streets of the city; and at length slipped quietly into the station
+and took his place in the darkest corner of a third-class carriage.
+Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed by
+heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers.  By the half
+return ticket in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey on
+the easy cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but
+alas! in his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, commingle
+with his equals; and this small annoyance, coming last in such a
+series of disasters, cut him to the heart.
+
+That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the expense,
+anxiety, and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld the ruins
+of his last good trousers and his last presentable coat; and above
+all, when his eye by any chance alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the
+degrading ulster, his heart would overflow with bitterness, and it
+was only by a serious call on his philosophy that he maintained the
+dignity of his demeanour.
+
+
+
+SOMERSET'S ADVENTURE:  THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION
+
+
+
+Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery
+imagination, with very small capacity for action.  He was one who
+lived exclusively in dreams and in the future:  the creature of his
+own theories, and an actor in his own romances.  From the cigar
+divan he proceeded to parade the streets, still heated with the
+fire of his eloquence, and scouting upon every side for the offer
+of some fortunate adventure.  In the continual stream of passers-
+by, on the sealed fronts of houses, on the posters that covered the
+hoardings, and in every lineament and throb of the great city, he
+saw a mysterious and hopeful hieroglyph.  But although the elements
+of adventure were streaming by him as thick as drops of water in
+the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a beseeching, now with
+something of a braggadocio air, he courted and provoked the notice
+of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to the touch, he
+even thrust himself into the way and came into direct collision
+with those of the more promising demeanour.  Persons brimful of
+secrets, persons pining for affection, persons perishing for lack
+of help or counsel, he was sure he could perceive on every side;
+but by some contrariety of fortune, each passed upon his way
+without remarking the young gentleman, and went farther (surely to
+fare worse!) in quest of the confidant, the friend, or the adviser.
+To thousands he must have turned an appealing countenance, and yet
+not one regarded him.
+
+A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous
+aspirations, broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune;
+and when he returned to the task, the lamps were already lighted,
+and the nocturnal crowd was dense upon the pavement.  Before a
+certain restaurant, whose name will readily occur to any student of
+our Babylon, people were already packed so closely that passage had
+grown difficult; and Somerset, standing in the kennel, watched,
+with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat weary, the faces
+and the manners of the crowd.  Suddenly he was startled by a gentle
+touch upon the shoulder, and facing about, he was aware of a very
+plain and elegant brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful horses, and
+driven by a man in sober livery.  There were no arms upon the
+panel; the window was open, but the interior was obscure; the
+driver yawned behind his palm; and the young man was already
+beginning to suppose himself the dupe of his own fancy, when a
+hand, no larger than a child's and smoothly gloved in white,
+appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned him to
+approach.  He did so, and looked in.  The carriage was occupied by
+a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders
+in impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and
+silvery, addressed him in these words -
+
+'Open the door and get in.'
+
+'It must be,' thought the young man with an almost unbearable
+thrill, 'it must be that duchess at last!'  Yet, although the
+moment was one to which he had long looked forward, it was with a
+certain share of alarm that he opened the door, and, mounting into
+the brougham, took his seat beside the lady of the lace.  Whether
+or no she had touched a spring, or given some other signal, the
+young man had hardly closed the door before the carriage, with
+considerable swiftness, and with a very luxurious and easy movement
+on its springs, turned and began to drive towards the west.
+
+Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long been
+his particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most
+unlikely situations; and this, among others, of the patrician
+ravisher, was one he had familiarly studied.  Strange as it may
+seem, however, he could find no apposite remark; and as the lady,
+on her side, vouchsafed no further sign, they continued to drive in
+silence through the streets.  Except for alternate flashes from the
+passing lamps, the carriage was plunged in obscurity; and beyond
+the fact that the fittings were luxurious, and that the lady was
+singularly small and slender in person, and, all but one gloved
+hand, still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could
+decipher no detail of an inspiring nature.  The suspense began to
+grow unbearable.  Twice he cleared his throat, and twice the whole
+resources of the language failed him.  In similar scenes, when he
+had forecast them on the theatre of fancy, his presence of mind had
+always been complete, his eloquence remarkable; and at this
+disparity between the rehearsal and the performance, he began to be
+seized with a panic of apprehension.  Here, on the very threshold
+of adventure, suppose him ignominiously to fail; suppose that after
+ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still uninterrupted silence, the
+lady should touch the check-string and re-deposit him, weighed and
+found wanting, on the common street!  Thousands of persons of no
+mind at all, he reasoned, would be found more equal to the part;
+could, that very instant, by some decisive step, prove the lady's
+choice to have been well inspired, and put a stop to this
+intolerable silence.
+
+His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.  It was better to fall
+by desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one
+tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to
+himself.  One overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve
+the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise:  he
+found himself no less incapable of speech or further progress; and
+with the lady's hand in his, sat helpless.  But worse was in store.
+A peculiar quivering began to agitate the form of his companion;
+the hand that lay unresistingly in Somerset's trembled as with
+ague; and presently there broke forth, in the shadow of the
+carriage, the bubbling and musical sound of laughter, resisted but
+triumphant.  The young man dropped his prize; had it been possible,
+he would have bounded from the carriage.  The lady, meanwhile,
+lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill to trill of the
+most heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and fairy-sounding merriment.
+
+'You must not be offended,' she said at last, catching an
+opportunity between two paroxysms.  'If you have been mistaken in
+the warmth of your attentions, the fault is solely mine; it does
+not flow from your presumption, but from my eccentric manner of
+recruiting friends; and, believe me, I am the last person in the
+world to think the worse of a young man for showing spirit.  As for
+to-night, it is my intention to entertain you to a little supper;
+and if I shall continue to be as much pleased with your manners as
+I was taken with your face, I may perhaps end by making you an
+advantageous offer.'
+
+Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his
+discomfiture had been too recent and complete.
+
+'Come,' returned the lady, 'we must have no display of temper; that
+is for me the one disqualifying fault; and as I perceive we are
+drawing near our destination, I shall ask you to descend and offer
+me your arm.'
+
+Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a stately
+and severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset, who was
+possessed of an excellent temper, with the best grace in the world
+assisted the lady to alight.  The door was opened by an old woman
+of a grim appearance, who ushered the pair into a dining-room
+somewhat dimly lighted, but already laid for supper, and occupied
+by a prodigious company of large and valuable cats.  Here, as soon
+as they were alone, the lady divested herself of the lace in which
+she was enfolded; and Somerset was relieved to find, that although
+still bearing the traces of great beauty, and still distinguished
+by the fire and colour of her eye, her hair was of a silvery
+whiteness and her face lined with years.
+
+'And now, mon preux,' said the old lady, nodding at him with a
+quaint gaiety, 'you perceive that I am no longer in my first youth.
+You will soon find that I am all the better company for that.'
+
+As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light but
+tasteful supper.  They sat down, accordingly, to table, the cats
+with savage pantomime surrounding the old lady's chair; and what
+with the excellence of the meal and the gaiety of his entertainer,
+Somerset was soon completely at his ease.  When they had well eaten
+and drunk, the old lady leaned back in her chair, and taking a cat
+upon her lap, subjected her guest to a prolonged but evidently
+mirthful scrutiny.
+
+'I fear, madam,' said Somerset, 'that my manners have not risen to
+the height of your preconceived opinion.'
+
+'My dear young man,' she replied, 'you were never more mistaken in
+your life.  I find you charming, and you may very well have lighted
+on a fairy godmother.  I am not one of those who are given to
+change their opinions, and short of substantial demerit, those who
+have once gained my favour continue to enjoy it; but I have a
+singular swiftness of decision, read my fellow men and women with a
+glance, and have acted throughout life on first impressions.
+Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose,
+you are a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not
+improbable that we may strike a bargain.'
+
+'Ah, madam,' returned Somerset, 'you have divined my situation.  I
+am a man of birth, parts, and breeding; excellent company, or at
+least so I find myself; but by a peculiar iniquity of fate,
+destitute alike of trade or money.  I was, indeed, this evening
+upon the quest of an adventure, resolved to close with any offer of
+interest, emolument, or pleasure; and your summons, which I profess
+I am still at some loss to understand, jumped naturally with the
+inclination of my mind.  Call it, if you will, impudence; I am
+here, at least, prepared for any proposition you can find it in
+your heart to make, and resolutely determined to accept.'
+
+'You express yourself very well,' replied the old lady, 'and are
+certainly a droll and curious young man.  I should not care to
+affirm that you were sane, for I have never found any one entirely
+so besides myself; but at least the nature of your madness
+entertains me, and I will reward you with some description of my
+character and life.'
+
+Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap,
+proceeded to narrate the following particulars.
+
+
+
+NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY
+
+
+
+I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who
+held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.  Our
+family, a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive
+wit, and came of a good old stock where beauty was an heirloom.  In
+Christian grace of character we were unhappily deficient.  From my
+earliest years I saw and deplored the defects of those relatives
+whose age and position should have enabled them to conquer my
+esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father married a second
+wife, in whom (strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were
+exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree.  Whatever
+may be said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern
+daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching patience,
+I submitted to my stepmother's demands; and from the hour she
+entered my father's house, I may say that I met with nothing but
+injustice and ingratitude.
+
+I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my disposition; for
+one other of the family besides myself was free from any violence
+of character.  Before I had reached the age of sixteen, this
+cousin, John by name, had conceived for me a sincere but silent
+passion; and although the poor lad was too timid to hint at the
+nature of his feelings, I had soon divined and begun to share them.
+For some days I pondered on the odd situation created for me by the
+bashfulness of my admirer; and at length, perceiving that he began,
+in his distress, rather to avoid than seek my company, I determined
+to take the matter into my own hands.  Finding him alone in a
+retired part of the rectory garden, I told him that I had divined
+his amiable secret, that I knew with what disfavour our union was
+sure to be regarded; and that, under the circumstances, I was
+prepared to flee with him at once.  Poor John was literally
+paralysed with joy; such was the force of his emotions, that he
+could find no words in which to thank me; and that I, seeing him
+thus helpless, was obliged to arrange, myself, the details of our
+flight, and of the stolen marriage which was immediately to crown
+it.  John had been at that time projecting a visit to the
+metropolis.  In this I bade him persevere, and promised on the
+following day to join him at the Tavistock Hotel.
+
+True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose, on
+the day in question, before the servants, packed a few necessaries
+in a bag, took with me the little money I possessed, and bade
+farewell for ever to the rectory.  I walked with good spirits to a
+town some thirty miles from home, and was set down the next morning
+in this great city of London.  As I walked from the coach-office to
+the hotel, I could not help exulting in the pleasant change that
+had befallen me; beholding, meanwhile, with innocent delight, the
+traffic of the streets, and depicting, in all the colours of fancy,
+the reception that awaited me from John.  But alas! when I inquired
+for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such gentleman
+among the guests.  By what channel our secret had leaked out, or
+what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I
+could never fathom.  Enough that my family had triumphed; that I
+found myself alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the
+most sensible mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and
+self-respect debarred for ever from my father's house.
+
+I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood of
+Euston Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted the
+joys of independence.  Three days afterwards, an advertisement in
+the Times directed me to the office of a solicitor whom I knew to
+be in my father's confidence.  There I was given the promise of a
+very moderate allowance, and a distinct intimation that I must
+never look to be received at home.  I could not but resent so cruel
+a desertion, and I told the lawyer it was a meeting I desired as
+little as themselves.  He smiled at my courageous spirit, paid me
+the first quarter of my income, and gave me the remainder of my
+personal effects, which had been sent to me, under his care, in a
+couple of rather ponderous boxes.  With these I returned in triumph
+to my lodgings, more content with my position than I should have
+thought possible a week before, and fully determined to make the
+best of the future.
+
+All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own fault
+alone that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of life.  I
+have, I must confess, the fatal trick of spoiling my inferiors.  My
+landlady, to whom I had as usual been overkind, impertinently
+called me in fault for some particular too small to mention; and I,
+annoyed that I had allowed her the freedom upon which she thus
+presumed, ordered her to leave my presence.  She stood a moment
+dumb, and then, recalling her self-possession, 'Your bill,' said
+she, 'shall be ready this evening, and to-morrow, madam, you shall
+leave my house.  See,' she added, 'that you are able to pay what
+you owe me; for if I do not receive the uttermost farthing, no box
+of yours shall pass my threshold.'
+
+I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole quarter's income
+was due to me, not otherwise affected by the threat.  That
+afternoon, as I left the solicitor's door, carrying in one hand,
+and done up in a paper parcel, the whole amount of my fortune,
+there befell me one of those decisive incidents that sometimes
+shape a life.  The lawyer's office was situate in a street that
+opened at the upper end upon the Strand, and was closed at the
+lower, at the time of which I speak, by a row of iron railings
+looking on the Thames.  Down this street, then, I beheld my
+stepmother advancing to meet me, and doubtless bound to the very
+house I had just left.  She was attended by a maid whose face was
+new to me, but her own was too clearly printed on my memory; and
+the sight of it, even from a distance, filled me with generous
+indignation.  Flight was impossible.  There was nothing left but to
+retreat against the railing, and with my back turned to the street,
+pretend to be admiring the barges on the river or the chimneys of
+transpontine London.
+
+I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the
+turbulence of my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me
+with a trivial question.  It was the maid whom my stepmother, with
+characteristic hardness, had left to await her on the street, while
+she transacted her business with the family solicitor.  The girl
+did not know who I was; the opportunity too golden to be lost; and
+I was soon hearing the latest news of my father's rectory and
+parish.  It did not surprise me to find that she detested her
+employers; and yet the terms in which she spoke of them were hard
+to bear, hard to let pass unchallenged.  I heard them, however,
+without dissent, for my self-command is wonderful; and we might
+have parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an evil hour, to
+criticise the rector's missing daughter, and with the most shocking
+perversions, to narrate the story of her flight.  My nature is so
+essentially generous that I can never pause to reason.  I flung up
+my hand sharply, by way, as well as I remember, of indignant
+protest; and, in the act, the packet slipped from my fingers,
+glanced between the railings, and fell and sunk in the river.  I
+stood a moment petrified, and then, struck by the drollery of the
+incident, gave way to peals of laughter.  I was still laughing when
+my stepmother reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless considered me
+insane, ran off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my gravity
+when I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh
+advance.  His answer made me serious enough, for it was a flat
+refusal; and it was not until I had besought him even with tears,
+that he consented to lend me ten pounds from his own pocket.  'I am
+a poor man,' said he, 'and you must look for nothing farther at my
+hands.'
+
+The landlady met me at the door.  'Here, madam,' said she, with a
+curtsey insolently low, 'here is my bill.  Would it inconvenience
+you to settle it at once?'
+
+'You shall be paid, madam,' said I, 'in the morning, in the proper
+course.'  And I took the paper with a very high air, but inwardly
+quaking.
+
+I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost.  I
+had been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it
+had now reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve
+pounds thirteen and fourpence halfpenny.  All evening I sat by the
+fire considering my situation.  I could not pay the bill; my
+landlady would not suffer me to remove my boxes; and without either
+baggage or money, how was I to find another lodging?  For three
+months, unless I could invent some remedy, I was condemned to be
+without a roof and without a penny.  It can surprise no one that I
+decided on immediate flight; but even here I was confronted by a
+difficulty, for I had no sooner packed my boxes than I found I was
+not strong enough to move, far less to carry them.
+
+In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a shawl
+and bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I betook myself
+to that great bazaar of dangerous and smiling chances, the pavement
+of the city.  It was already late at night, and the weather being
+wet and windy, there were few abroad besides policemen.  These, on
+my present mission, I had wit enough to know for enemies; and
+wherever I perceived their moving lanterns, I made haste to turn
+aside and choose another thoroughfare.  A few miserable women still
+walked the pavement; here and there were young fellows returning
+drunk, or ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the mouths of
+alleys; but of any one to whom I might appeal in my distress, I
+began almost to despair.
+
+At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one who
+was evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments, from
+his furred great-coat to the fine cigar which he was smoking,
+comfortably breathed of wealth.  Much as my face has changed from
+its original beauty, I still retain (or so I tell myself) some
+traces of the youthful lightness of my figure.  Even veiled as I
+then was, I could perceive the gentleman was struck by my
+appearance:  and this emboldened me for my adventure.
+
+'Sir,' said I, with a quickly beating heart, 'sir, are you one in
+whom a lady can confide?'
+
+'Why, my dear,' said he, removing his cigar, 'that depends on
+circumstances.  If you will raise your veil--'
+
+'Sir,' I interrupted, 'let there be no mistake.  I ask you, as a
+gentleman, to serve me, but I offer no reward.'
+
+'That is frank,' said he; 'but hardly tempting.  And what, may I
+inquire, is the nature of the service?'
+
+But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on so
+short an interview.  'If you will accompany me,' said I, 'to a
+house not far from here, you can see for yourself.'
+
+He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing away
+his cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, 'Here goes!' said
+he, and with perfect politeness offered me his arm.  I was wise
+enough to take it; to prolong our walk as far as possible, by more
+than one excursion from the shortest line; and to beguile the way
+with that sort of conversation which should prove to him
+indubitably from what station in society I sprang.  By the time we
+reached the door of my lodging, I felt sure I had confirmed his
+interest, and might venture, before I turned the pass-key, to
+beseech him to moderate his voice and to tread softly.  He promised
+to obey me:  and I admitted him into the passage and thence into my
+sitting-room, which was fortunately next the door.
+
+'And now,' said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted a
+candle, 'what is the meaning of all this?'
+
+'I wish you,' said I, speaking with great difficulty, 'to help me
+out with these boxes--and I wish nobody to know.'
+
+He took up the candle.  'And I wish to see your face,' said he.
+
+I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with every
+appearance of resolve that I could summon up.  For some time he
+gazed into my face, still holding up the candle.  'Well,' said he
+at last, 'and where do you wish them taken?'
+
+I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in my
+voice that I replied.  'I had thought we might carry them between
+us to the corner of Euston Road,' said I, 'where, even at this late
+hour, we may still find a cab.'
+
+'Very good,' was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the heavier
+of my trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle of the
+second, signed to me to help him at the other end.  In this order
+we made good our retreat from the house, and without the least
+adventure, drew pretty near to the corner of Euston Road.  Before a
+house, where there was a light still burning, my companion paused.
+'Let us here,' said he, 'set down our boxes, while we go forward to
+the end of the street in quest of a cab.  By doing so, we can still
+keep an eye upon their safety, and we avoid the very extraordinary
+figure we should otherwise present--a young man, a young lady, and
+a mass of baggage, standing castaway at midnight on the streets of
+London.'  So it was done, and the event proved him to be wise; for
+long before there was any word of a cab, a policeman appeared upon
+the scene, turned upon us the full glare of his lantern, and hung
+suspiciously behind us in a doorway.
+
+'There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,' said my champion, with
+affected cheerfulness.  But the constable's answer was ungracious;
+and as for the offer of a cigar, with which this rebuff was most
+unwisely followed up, he refused it point-blank, and without the
+least civility.  The young gentleman looked at me with a warning
+grimace, and there we continued to stand, on the edge of the
+pavement, in the beating rain, and with the policeman still
+silently watching our movements from the doorway.
+
+At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler
+appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my
+companion.  'Just pull up here, will you?' he cried.  'We have some
+baggage up the street.'
+
+And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman,
+still closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain,
+he arose from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something
+evil.  The light in the house had been extinguished; the whole
+frontage of the street was dark; there was nothing to explain the
+presence of these unguarded trunks; and no two innocent people were
+ever, I believe, detected in such questionable circumstances.
+
+'Where have these things come from?' asked the policeman, flashing
+his light full into my champion's face.
+
+'Why, from that house, of course,' replied the young gentleman,
+hastily shouldering a trunk.
+
+The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows; he
+then took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course
+which had infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us already
+hurrying down the street under our double burthen, thought better
+or worse of it, and followed in our wake.
+
+'For God's sake,' whispered my companion, 'tell me where to drive
+to.'
+
+'Anywhere,' I replied with anguish.  'I have no idea.  Anywhere you
+like.'
+
+Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I had
+already entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones the
+address of the house in which we are now seated.  The policeman, I
+could see, was staggered.  This neighbourhood, so retired, so
+aristocratic, was far from what he had expected.  For all that, he
+took the number of the cab, and spoke for a few seconds and with a
+decided manner in the cabman's ear.
+
+'What can he have said?' I gasped, as soon as the cab had rolled
+away.
+
+'I can very well imagine,' replied my champion; 'and I can assure
+you that you are now condemned to go where I have said; for, should
+we attempt to change our destination by the way, the jarvey will
+drive us straight to a police-office.  Let me compliment you on
+your nerves,' he added.  'I have had, I believe, the most horrible
+fright of my existence.'
+
+But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange a
+disarray that speech was now become impossible; and we made the
+drive thenceforward in unbroken silence.  When we arrived before
+the door of our destination, the young gentleman alighted, opened
+it with a pass-key like one who was at home, bade the driver carry
+the trunks into the hall, and dismissed him with a handsome fee.
+He then led me into this dining-room, looking nearly as you behold
+it, but with certain marks of bachelor occupancy, and hastened to
+pour out a glass of wine, which he insisted on my drinking.  As
+soon as I could find my voice, 'In God's name,' I cried, 'where am
+I?'
+
+He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no
+more urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits.
+As he spoke he offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed,
+I stood in great want, for I was faint, and inclined to be
+hysterical.  Then he sat down beside the fire, lit another cigar,
+and for some time observed me curiously in silence.
+
+'And now,' said he, 'that you have somewhat restored yourself, will
+you be kind enough to tell me in what sort of crime I have become a
+partner?  Are you murderer, smuggler, thief, or only the harmless
+and domestic moonlight flitter?'
+
+I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without
+permission, for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on our
+first meeting; and now, at these explicit insults, I resolved at
+once to reconquer his esteem.  The judgment of the world I have
+consistently despised, but I had already begun to set a certain
+value on the good opinion of my entertainer.  Beginning with a note
+of pathos, but soon brightening into my habitual vivacity and
+humour, I rapidly narrated the circumstances of my birth, my
+flight, and subsequent misfortunes.  He heard me to an end in
+silence, gravely smoking.  'Miss Fanshawe,' said he, when I had
+done, 'you are a very comical and most enchanting creature; and I
+can see nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow morning
+and satisfy your landlady's demands.'
+
+'You strangely misinterpret my confidence,' was my reply; 'and if
+you had at all appreciated my character, you would understand that
+I can take no money at your hands.'
+
+'Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,' he returned;
+'nor do I at all despair of persuading even your unconquerable
+self.  I desire you to examine me with critical indulgence.  My
+name is Henry Luxmore, Lord Southwark's second son.  I possess nine
+thousand a year, the house in which we are now sitting, and seven
+others in the best neighbourhoods in town.  I do not believe I am
+repulsive to the eye, and as for my character, you have seen me
+under trial.  I think you simply the most original of created
+beings; I need not tell you what you know very well, that you are
+ravishingly pretty; and I have nothing more to add, except that,
+foolish as it may appear, I am already head over heels in love with
+you.'
+
+'Sir,' said I, 'I am prepared to be misjudged; but while I continue
+to accept your hospitality that fact alone should be enough to
+protect me from insult.'
+
+'Pardon me,' said he:  'I offer you marriage.'  And leaning back in
+his chair he replaced his cigar between his lips.
+
+I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, but
+couched in terms so singular.  But he knew very well how to obtain
+his purposes, for he was not only handsome in person, but his very
+coolness had a charm; and to make a long story short, a fortnight
+later I became the wife of the Honourable Henry Luxmore.
+
+For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet.
+My Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his
+roof, but not for long; for though he was easily over-excited, his
+nature was placable below the surface, and with all his faults, I
+loved him tenderly.  At last he was taken from me; and such is the
+power of self-deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying,
+he actually assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the
+violence of my temper!
+
+There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara.  She
+had, indeed, inherited a shadow of her father's failing; but in all
+things else, unless my partial eyes deceived me, she derived her
+qualities from me, and might be called my moral image.  On my side,
+whatever else I may have done amiss, as a mother I was above
+reproach.  Here, then, was surely every promise for the future;
+here, at last, was a relation in which I might hope to taste
+repose.  But it was not to be.  You will hardly credit me when I
+inform you that she ran away from home; yet such was the case.
+Some whim about oppressed nationalities--Ireland, Poland, and the
+like--has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter a
+young lady (I must say, of remarkable attractions) answering to the
+name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I am told she uses these
+indifferently, as well as many others), tell her, from me, that I
+forgive her cruelty, and though I will never more behold her face,
+I am at any time prepared to make her a liberal allowance.
+
+On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details of
+business.  I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides
+this, formed part of Mr. Luxmore's property:  I have found them
+seven white elephants.  The greed of tenants, the dishonesty of
+solicitors, and the incapacity that sits upon the bench, have
+combined together to make these houses the burthen of my life.  I
+had no sooner, indeed, begun to look into these matters for myself,
+than I discovered so many injustices and met with so much studied
+incivility, that I was plunged into a long series of lawsuits, some
+of which are pending to this day.  You must have heard my name
+already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the Law Reports:  a strange
+destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly desire for
+peace!  But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once
+begun a task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled.  I
+have met with every obstacle:  insolence and ingratitude from my
+own lawyers; in my adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to
+me perhaps the most distasteful in the calendar; from the bench,
+civility indeed--always, I must allow, civility--but never a spark
+of independence, never that knowledge of the law and love of
+justice which we have a right to look for in a judge, the most
+august of human officers.  And still, against all these odds, I
+have undissuadably persevered.
+
+It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on
+which I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy
+pilgrimage to my various houses.  Four were at that time tenantless
+and closed, like pillars of salt, commemorating the corruption of
+the age and the decline of private virtue.  Three were occupied by
+persons who had wearied me by every conceivable unjust demand and
+legal subterfuge--persons whom, at that very hour, I was moving
+heaven and earth to turn into the street.  This was perhaps the
+sadder spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot within me to
+behold them occupying, in my very teeth, and with an insolent
+ostentation, these handsome structures which were as much mine as
+the flesh upon my body.
+
+One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are.
+I had let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that
+I have always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman
+attached to Prince Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must certainly
+have heard of; and I had supposed, from the character and position
+of my tenant, that here, at least, I was safe against annoyance.
+What was my surprise to find this house also shuttered and
+apparently deserted!  I will not deny that I was offended; I
+conceived that a house, like a yacht, was better to be kept in
+commission; and I promised myself to bring the matter before my
+solicitor the following morning.  Meanwhile the sight recalled my
+fancy naturally to the past; and yielding to the tender influence
+of sentiment, I sat down opposite the door upon the garden parapet.
+It was August, and a sultry afternoon, but that spot is sheltered,
+as you may observe by daylight, under the branches of a spreading
+chestnut; the square, too, was deserted; there was a sound of
+distant music in the air; and all combined to plunge me into that
+most agreeable of states, which is neither happiness nor sorrow,
+but shares the poignancy of both.
+
+From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very
+handsomely appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several
+men of an appearance more than decent, and bearing on its panels,
+instead of a trader's name, a coat-of-arms too modest to be
+deciphered from where I sat.  It drew up before my house, the door
+of which was immediately opened by one of the men.  His companions-
+-I counted seven of them in all--proceeded, with disciplined
+activity, to take from the van and carry into the house a variety
+of hampers, bottle-baskets, and boxes, such as are designed for
+plate and napery.  The windows of the dining-room were thrown
+widely open, as though to air it; and I saw some of those within
+laying the table for a meal.  Plainly, I concluded, my tenant was
+about to return; and while still determined to submit to no
+aggression on my rights, I was gratified by the number and
+discipline of his attendants, and the quiet profusion that appeared
+to reign in his establishment.  I was still so thinking when, to my
+extreme surprise, the windows and shutters of the dining-room were
+once more closed; the men began to reappear from the interior and
+resume their stations on the van; the last closed the door behind
+his exit; the van drove away; and the house was once more left to
+itself, looking blindly on the square with shuttered windows, as
+though the whole affair had been a vision.
+
+It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and thus
+brought my eyes a little nearer to the level of the fanlight over
+the door, I saw that, though the day had still some hours to run,
+the hall lamps had been lighted and left burning.  Plainly, then,
+guests were expected, and were not expected before night.  For
+whom, I asked myself with indignation, were such secret
+preparations likely to be made?  Although no prude, I am a woman of
+decided views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband had
+brought me, was to serve in the character of a petite maison, I saw
+myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of
+litigation; and, determined to return and know the worst, I
+hastened to my hotel for dinner.
+
+I was at my post by ten.  The night was clear and quiet; the moon
+rode very high and put the lamps to shame; and the shadow below the
+chestnut was black as ink.  Here, then, I ensconced myself on the
+low parapet, with my back against the railings, face to face with
+the moonlit front of my old home, and ruminating gently on the
+past.  Time fled; eleven struck on all the city clocks; and
+presently after I was aware of the approach of a gentleman of
+stately and agreeable demeanour.  He was smoking as he walked; his
+light paletot, which was open, did not conceal his evening clothes;
+and he bore himself with a serious grace that immediately awakened
+my attention.  Before the door of this house he took a pass-key
+from his pocket, quietly admitted himself, and disappeared into the
+lamplit hall.
+
+He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much younger man
+approaching hastily from the opposite side of the square.
+Considering the season of the year and the genial mildness of the
+night, he was somewhat closely muffled up; and as he came, for all
+his hurry, he kept looking nervously behind him.  Arrived before my
+door, he halted and set one foot upon the step, as though about to
+enter; then, with a sudden change, he turned and began to hurry
+away; halted a second time, as if in painful indecision; and
+lastly, with a violent gesture, wheeled about, returned straight to
+the door, and rapped upon the knocker.  He was almost immediately
+admitted by the first arrival.
+
+My curiosity was now broad awake.  I made myself as small as I
+could in the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the sequel.
+Nor had I long to wait.  From the same side of the square a second
+young man made his appearance, walking slowly and softly, and like
+the first, muffled to the nose.  Before the house he paused, looked
+all about him with a swift and comprehensive glance; and seeing the
+square lie empty in the moon and lamplight, leaned far across the
+area railings and appeared to listen to what was passing in the
+house.  From the dining-room there came the report of a champagne
+cork, and following upon that, the sound of rich and manly
+laughter.  The listener took heart of grace, produced a key,
+unlocked the area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him, and
+descended the stair.  Just when his head had reached the level of
+the pavement, he turned half round and once more raked the square
+with a suspicious eyeshot.  The mufflings had fallen lower round
+his neck; the moon shone full upon him; and I was startled to
+observe the pallor and passionate agitation of his face.
+
+I could remain no longer passive.  Persuaded that something deadly
+was afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the area railings.
+There was no one below; the man must therefore have entered the
+house, with what purpose I dreaded to imagine.  I have at no part
+of my career lacked courage; and now, finding the area gate was
+merely laid to, I pushed it gently open and descended the stairs.
+The kitchen door of the house, like the area gate, was closed but
+not fastened.  It flashed upon me that the criminal was thus
+preparing his escape; and the thought, as it confirmed the worst of
+my suspicions, lent me new resolve.  I entered the house; and being
+now quite reckless of my life, I shut and locked the door.
+
+From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of a
+voice in easy conversation.  On the ground floor all was not only
+profoundly silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh upon my eyes.
+Here, then, I stood for some time, having thrust myself uncalled
+into the utmost peril, and being destitute of any power to help or
+interfere.  Nor will I deny that fear had begun already to assail
+me, when I became aware, all at once and as though by some
+immediate but silent incandescence, of a certain glimmering of
+light upon the passage floor.  Towards this I groped my way with
+infinite precaution; and having come at length as far as the angle
+of the corridor, beheld the door of the butler's pantry standing
+just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling from the chink.
+Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture.  The man sat
+within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most rapt
+attention.  On a table before him he had laid a watch, a pair of
+steel revolvers, and a bull's-eye lantern.  For one second many
+contradictory theories and projects whirled together in my head;
+the next, I had slammed the door and turned the key upon the
+malefactor.  Surprised at my own decision, I stood and panted,
+leaning on the wall.  From within the pantry not a sound was to be
+heard; the man, whatever he was, had accepted his fate without a
+struggle, and now, as I hugged myself to fancy, sat frozen with
+terror and looking for the worst to follow.  I promised myself that
+he should not be disappointed; and the better to complete my task,
+I turned to ascend the stairs.
+
+The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed to
+me suddenly by my strong sense of humour.  Here was I, the owner of
+the house, burglariously present in its walls; and there, in the
+dining-room, were two gentlemen, unknown to me, seated complacently
+at supper, and only saved by my promptitude from some surprising or
+deadly interruption.  It were strange if I could not manage to
+extract the matter of amusement from so unusual a situation.
+
+Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended for a
+library.  It was to this that I cautiously groped my way; and you
+will see how fortune had exactly served me.  The weather, I have
+said, was sultry; in order to ventilate the dining-room and yet
+preserve the uninhabited appearance of the mansion to the front,
+the window of the library had been widely opened, and the door of
+communication between the two apartments left ajar.  To this
+interval I now applied my eye.
+
+Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened
+brightness on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a
+cold collation of the rarest delicacy.  The two gentlemen had
+finished supper, and were now trifling with cigars and maraschino;
+while in a silver spirit lamp, coffee of the most captivating
+fragrance was preparing in the fashion of the East.  The elder of
+the two, he who had first arrived, was placed directly facing me;
+the other was set on his left hand.  Both, like the man in the
+butler's pantry, seemed to be intently listening; and on the face
+of the second I thought I could perceive the marks of fear.  Oddly
+enough, however, when they came to speak, the parts were found to
+be reversed.
+
+'I assure you,' said the elder gentleman, 'I not only heard the
+slamming of a door, but the sound of very guarded footsteps.'
+
+'Your highness was certainly deceived,' replied the other.  'I am
+endowed with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse
+has rustled.'  Yet the pallor and contraction of his features were
+in total discord with the tenor of his words.
+
+His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince
+Florizel) looked at his companion for the least fraction of a
+second; and though nothing shook the easy quiet of his attitude, I
+could see that he was far from being duped.  'It is well,' said he;
+'let us dismiss the topic.  And now, sir, that I have very freely
+explained the sentiments by which I am directed, let me ask you,
+according to your promise, to imitate my frankness.'
+
+'I have heard you,' replied the other, 'with great interest.'
+
+'With singular patience,' said the prince politely.
+
+'Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,' returned the
+young man.  'I know not how to tell the change that has befallen
+me.  You have, I must suppose, a charm, to which even your enemies
+are subject.'  He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and
+visibly blanched.  'So late!' he cried.  'Your highness--God knows
+I am now speaking from the heart--before it be too late, leave this
+house!'
+
+The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very
+deliberately shook the ash from his cigar.  'That is a strange
+remark,' said he; 'and a propos de bottes, I never continue a cigar
+when once the ash is fallen; the spell breaks, the soul of the
+flavour flies away, and there remains but the dead body of tobacco;
+and I make it a rule to throw away that husk and choose another.'
+He suited the action to the words.
+
+'Do not trifle with my appeal,' resumed the young man, in tones
+that trembled with emotion.  'It is made at the price of my honour
+and to the peril of my life.  Go--go now! lose not a moment; and if
+you have any kindness for a young man, miserably deceived indeed,
+but not devoid of better sentiments, look not behind you as you
+leave.'
+
+'Sir,' said the prince, 'I am here upon your honour; assure you
+upon mine that I shall continue to rely upon that safeguard.  The
+coffee is ready; I must again trouble you, I fear.'  And with a
+courteous movement of the hand, he seemed to invite his companion
+to pour out the coffee.
+
+The unhappy young man rose from his seat.  'I appeal to you,' he
+cried, 'by every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in pity to
+yourself, begone before it is too late.'
+
+'Sir,' replied the prince, 'I am not readily accessible to fear;
+and if there is one defect to which I must plead guilty, it is that
+of a curious disposition.  You go the wrong way about to make me
+leave this house, in which I play the part of your entertainer;
+and, suffer me to add, young man, if any peril threaten us, it was
+of your contriving, not of mine.'
+
+'Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,' cried the other.
+'But I at least will have no hand in it.'  With these words he
+carried his hand to his pocket, hastily swallowed the contents of a
+phial, and, with the very act, reeled back and fell across his
+chair upon the floor.  The prince left his place and came and stood
+above him, where he lay convulsed upon the carpet.  'Poor moth!' I
+heard his highness murmur.  'Alas, poor moth! must we again inquire
+which is the more fatal--weakness or wickedness?  And can a
+sympathy with ideas, surely not ignoble in themselves, conduct a
+man to this dishonourable death?'
+
+By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the room.
+'Your highness,' said I, 'this is no time for moralising; with a
+little promptness we may save this creature's life; and as for the
+other, he need cause you no concern, for I have him safely under
+lock and key.'
+
+The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me
+certainly with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which
+almost robbed me of my self-possession.  'My dear madam,' he cried
+at last, 'and who the devil are you?'
+
+I was already on the floor beside the dying man.  I had, of course,
+no idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and I was forced
+to try him with a variety of antidotes.  Here were both oil and
+vinegar, for the prince had done the young man the honour of
+compounding for him one of his celebrated salads; and of each of
+these I administered from a quarter to half a pint, with no
+apparent efficacy.  I next plied him with the hot coffee, of which
+there may have been near upon a quart.
+
+'Have you no milk?' I inquired.
+
+'I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,' returned the prince.
+
+'Salt, then,' said I; 'salt is a revulsive.  Pass the salt.'
+
+'And possibly the mustard?' asked his highness, as he offered me
+the contents of the various salt-cellars poured together on a
+plate.
+
+'Ah,' cried I, 'the thought is excellent!  Mix me about half a pint
+of mustard, drinkably dilute.'
+
+Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere combination of
+so many subversive agents, as soon as the last had been poured over
+his throat, the young sufferer obtained relief.
+
+'There!' I exclaimed, with natural triumph, 'I have saved a life!'
+
+'And yet, madam,' returned the prince, 'your mercy may be cruelty
+disguised.  Where the honour is lost, it is, at least, superfluous
+to prolong the life.'
+
+'If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,' I
+replied, 'you would hold a very different opinion.  For my part,
+and after whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should
+still count to-morrow worth a trial.'
+
+'You speak as a lady, madam,' said the prince; 'and for such you
+speak the truth.  But to men there is permitted such a field of
+license, and the good behaviour asked of them is at once so easy
+and so little, that to fail in that is to fall beyond the reach of
+pardon.  But will you suffer me to repeat a question, put to you at
+first, I am afraid, with some defect of courtesy; and to ask you
+once more, who you are and how I have the honour of your company?'
+
+'I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,' said I.
+
+'And still I am at fault,' returned the prince.
+
+But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to
+strike the hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself upon
+one elbow, with an expression of despair and horror that I have
+never seen excelled, cried lamentably, 'Midnight! oh, just God!'
+We stood frozen to our places, while the tingling hammer of the
+timepiece measured the remaining strokes; nor had we yet stirred,
+so tragic had been the tones of the young man, when the various
+bells of London began in turn to declare the hour.  The timepiece
+was inaudible beyond the walls of the chamber where we stood; but
+the second pulsation of Big Ben had scarcely throbbed into the
+night, before a sharp detonation rang about the house.  The prince
+sprang for the door by which I had entered; but quick as he was, I
+yet contrived to intercept him.
+
+'Are you armed?' I cried.
+
+'No, madam,' replied he.  'You remind me appositely; I will take
+the poker.'
+
+'The man below,' said I, 'has two revolvers.  Would you confront
+him at such odds?'
+
+He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.
+
+'And yet, madam,' said he, 'we cannot continue to remain in
+ignorance of what has passed.'
+
+'No!' cried I.  'And who proposes it?  I am as curious as yourself,
+but let us rather send for the police; or, if your highness dreads
+a scandal, for some of your own servants.'
+
+'Nay, madam,' he replied, smiling, 'for so brave a lady, you
+surprise me.  Would you have me, then, send others where I fear to
+go myself?'
+
+'You are perfectly right,' said I, 'and I was entirely wrong.  Go,
+in God's name, and I will hold the candle!'
+
+Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he carrying
+the poker, I the light; and together we approached and opened the
+door of the butler's pantry.  In some sort, I believe, I was
+prepared for the spectacle that met our eyes; I was prepared, that
+is, to find the villain dead, but the rude details of such a
+violent suicide I was unable to endure.  The prince, unshaken by
+horror as he had remained unshaken by alarm, assisted me with the
+most respectful gallantry to regain the dining-room.
+
+There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly
+recovered and already seated on a chair.  He held out both his
+hands with a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.
+
+'He is dead,' said the prince.
+
+'Alas!' cried the young man, 'and it should be I!  What do I do,
+thus lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, my sure
+comrade, blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fidelity,
+has judged and slain himself for an involuntary fault?  Ah, sir,'
+said he, 'and you too, madam, without whose cruel help I should be
+now beyond the reach of my accusing conscience, you behold in me
+the victim equally of my own faults and virtues.  I was born a
+hater of injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled
+against heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I
+witnessed the sorrows of the poor; the pauper's crust stuck in my
+throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple child
+has set me weeping.  What was there in that but what was noble? and
+yet observe to what a fall these thoughts have led me!  Year after
+year this passion for the lost besieged me closer.  What hope was
+there in kings? what hope in these well-feathered classes that now
+roll in money?  I had observed the course of history; I knew the
+burgess, our ruler of to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw
+him, in every age, combine to pull down that which was immediately
+above and to prey upon those that were below; his dulness, I knew,
+would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his days were
+numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor
+child shiver in the rain?  The better days, indeed, were coming,
+but the child would die before that.  Alas, your highness, in
+surely no ungenerous impatience I enrolled myself among the enemies
+of this unjust and doomed society; in surely no unnatural desire to
+keep the fires of my philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an
+irrevocable oath.
+
+'That oath is all my history.  To give freedom to posterity I had
+forsworn my own.  I must attend upon every signal; and soon my
+father complained of my irregular hours and turned me from his
+house.  I was engaged in betrothal to an honest girl; from her also
+I had to part, for she was too shrewd to credit my inventions and
+too innocent to be entrusted with the truth.  Behold me, then,
+alone with conspirators!  Alas! as the years went on, my illusions
+left me.  Surrounded as I was by the fervent disciples and
+apologists of revolution, I beheld them daily advance in confidence
+and desperation; I beheld myself, upon the other hand, and with an
+almost equal regularity, decline in faith.  I had sacrificed all to
+further that cause in which I still believed; and daily I began to
+grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.  Horrible was the
+society with which we warred, but our own means were not less
+horrible.
+
+'I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to tell you
+how, when I beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers
+of children, cheerfully toiling at their work, my heart reproached
+me with the greatness and vanity of my unhappy sacrifice.  I will
+not describe to you how, worn by poverty, poor lodging, scanty
+food, and an unquiet conscience, my health began to fail, and in
+the long nights, as I wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the
+most cruel sufferings of the body were added to the tortures of my
+mind.  These things are not personal to me; they are common to all
+unfortunates in my position.  An oath, so light a thing to swear,
+so grave a thing to break:  an oath, taken in the heat of youth,
+repented with what sobbings of the heart, but yet in vain repented,
+as the years go on:  an oath, that was once the very utterance of
+the truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a meaningless
+and empty slavery; such is the yoke that many young men joyfully
+assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer worse than
+death.
+
+'It is not that I was patient.  I have begged to be released; but I
+knew too much, and I was still refused.  I have fled; ay, and for
+the time successfully.  I reached Paris.  I found a lodging in the
+Rue St. Jacques, almost opposite the Val de Grace.  My room was
+mean and bare, but the sun looked into it towards evening; it
+commanded a peep of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour's
+window and made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might
+lie in bed and rest myself:  I, who was in full revolt against the
+principles that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the
+council, and was no longer charged with shameful and revolting
+tasks.  Oh! what an interval of peace was that!  I still dream, at
+times, that I can hear the note of my neighbour's bird.
+
+'My money was running out, and it became necessary that I should
+find employment.  Scarcely had I been three days upon the search,
+ere I thought that I was being followed.  I made certain of the
+features of the man, which were quite strange to me, and turned
+into a small cafe, where I whiled away an hour, pretending to read
+the papers, but inwardly convulsed with terror.  When I came forth
+again into the street, it was quite empty, and I breathed again;
+but alas, I had not turned three corners, when I once more observed
+the human hound pursuing me.  Not an hour was to be lost; timely
+submission might yet preserve a life which otherwise was forfeit
+and dishonoured; and I fled, with what speed you may conceive, to
+the Paris agency of the society I served.
+
+'My submission was accepted.  I took up once more the hated burthen
+of that life; once more I was at the call of men whom I despised
+and hated, while yet I envied and admired them.  They at least were
+wholehearted in the things they purposed; but I, who had once been
+such as they, had fallen from the brightness of my faith, and now
+laboured, like a hireling, for the wages of a loathed existence.
+Ay, sir, to that I was condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and
+lived but to obey.
+
+'The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has to-
+night so tragically ended.  Boldly telling who I was, I was to
+request from your highness, on behalf of my society, a private
+audience, where it was designed to murder you.  If one thing
+remained to me of my old convictions, it was the hate of kings; and
+when this task was offered me, I took it gladly.  Alas, sir, you
+triumphed.  As we supped, you gained upon my heart.  Your
+character, your talents, your designs for our unhappy country, all
+had been misrepresented.  I began to forget you were a prince; I
+began, all too feelingly, to remember that you were a man.  As I
+saw the hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and when, at
+last, we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my
+unwilling ears the arrival of the partner of my crime, you will
+bear me out with what instancy I besought you to depart.  You would
+not, alas! and what could I?  Kill you, I could not; my heart
+revolted, my hand turned back from such a deed.  Yet it was
+impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for when the hour
+struck and my companion came, true to his appointment, and he, at
+least, true to our design, I could neither suffer you to be killed
+nor yet him to be arrested.  From such a tragic passage, death, and
+death alone, could save me; and it is no fault of mine if I
+continue to exist.
+
+'But you, madam,' continued the young man, addressing himself more
+directly to myself, 'were doubtless born to save the prince and to
+confound our purposes.  My life you have prolonged; and by turning
+the key on my companion, you have made me the author of his death.
+He heard the hour strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking
+himself forfeit to honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon
+his highness and perish for lack of his support, he has turned his
+pistol on himself.'
+
+'You are right,' said Prince Florizel:  'it was in no ungenerous
+spirit that you brought these burthens on yourself; and when I see
+you so nobly to blame, so tragically punished, I stand like one
+reproved.  For is it not strange, madam, that you and I, by
+practising accepted and inconsiderable virtues, and commonplace but
+still unpardonable faults, should stand here, in the sight of God,
+with what we call clean hands and quiet consciences; while this
+poor youth, for an error that I could almost envy him, should be
+sunk beyond the reach of hope?
+
+'Sir,' resumed the prince, turning to the young man, 'I cannot help
+you; my help would but unchain the thunderbolt that overhangs you;
+and I can but leave you free.'
+
+'And, sir,' said I, 'as this house belongs to me, I will ask you to
+have the kindness to remove the body.  You and your conspirators,
+it appears to me, can hardly in civility do less.'
+
+'It shall be done,' said the young man, with a dismal accent.
+
+'And you, dear madam,' said the prince, 'you, to whom I owe my
+life, how can I serve you?'
+
+'Your highness,' I said, 'to be very plain, this is my favourite
+house, being not only a valuable property, but endeared to me by
+various associations.  I have endless troubles with tenants of the
+ordinary class:  and at first applauded my good fortune when I
+found one of the station of your Master of the Horse.  I now begin
+to think otherwise:  dangers set a siege about great personages;
+and I do not wish my tenement to share these risks.  Procure me the
+resiliation of the lease, and I shall feel myself your debtor.'
+
+'I must tell you, madam,' replied his highness, 'that Colonel
+Geraldine is but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry indeed
+to think myself so unacceptable a tenant.'
+
+'Your highness,' said I, 'I have conceived a sincere admiration for
+your character; but on the subject of house property, I cannot
+allow the interference of my feelings.  I will, however, to prove
+to you that there is nothing personal in my request, here solemnly
+engage my word that I will never put another tenant in this house.'
+
+'Madam,' said Florizel, 'you plead your cause too charmingly to be
+refused.'
+
+Thereupon we all three withdrew.  The young man, still reeling in
+his walk, departed by himself to seek the assistance of his fellow-
+conspirators; and the prince, with the most attentive gallantry,
+lent me his escort to the door of my hotel.  The next day, the
+lease was cancelled; nor from that hour to this, though sometimes
+regretting my engagement, have I suffered a tenant in this house.
+
+
+
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Continued).
+
+
+
+As soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset made
+haste to offer her his compliments.
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'your story is not only entertaining but
+instructive; and you have told it with infinite vivacity.  I was
+much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very liberal
+opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret society if I
+had been able to find one.  But the whole tale came home to me; and
+I was the better able to feel for you in your various perplexities,
+as I am myself of somewhat hasty temper.'
+
+'I do not understand you,' said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks of
+irritation.  'You must have strangely misinterpreted what I have
+told you.  You fill me with surprise.'
+
+Somerset, alarmed by the old lady's change of tone and manner,
+hurried to recant.
+
+'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'you certainly misconstrue my remark.
+As a man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly pricked
+me when I heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons
+similarly constituted.'
+
+'Oh, very well indeed,' replied the old lady; 'and a very proper
+spirit.  I regret that I have met with it so rarely.'
+
+'But in all this,' resumed the young man, 'I perceive nothing that
+concerns myself.'
+
+'I am about to come to that,' she returned.  'And you have already
+before you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of the
+elements of the affair.  I am a woman of the nomadic sort, and when
+I have no case before the courts I make it a habit to visit
+continental spas:  not that I have ever been ill; but then I am no
+longer young, and I am always happy in a crowd.  Well, to come more
+shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for Evian; this incubus
+of a house, which I must leave behind and dare not let, hangs
+heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that concern,
+and do you a very good turn into the bargain, by lending you the
+mansion, with all its fittings, as it stands.  The idea was sudden;
+it appealed to me as humorous:  and I am sure it will cause my
+relatives, if they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible
+chagrin.  Here, then, is the key; and when you return at two to-
+morrow afternoon, you will find neither me nor my cats to disturb
+you in your new possession.'
+
+So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but
+Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.
+
+'Dear Mrs. Luxmore,' said he, 'this is a most unusual proposal.
+You know nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both
+impudence and timidity.  I may be the worst kind of scoundrel; I
+may sell your furniture--'
+
+'You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!' cried
+Mrs. Luxmore.  'It is in vain to reason.  Such is the force of my
+character that, when I have one idea clearly in my head, I do not
+care two straws for any side consideration.  It amuses me to do it,
+and let that suffice.  On your side, you may do what you please--
+let apartments, or keep a private hotel; on mine, I promise you a
+full month's warning before I return, and I never fail religiously
+to keep my promises.'
+
+The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a
+sudden and significant change in the old lady's countenance.
+
+'If I thought you capable of disrespect!' she cried.
+
+'Madam,' said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration,
+'madam, I accept.  I beg you to understand that I accept with joy
+and gratitude.'
+
+'Ah well,' returned Mrs. Luxmore, 'if I am mistaken, let it pass.
+And now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you a good-
+night.'
+
+Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried
+Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing, key in hand,
+upon the pavement.
+
+The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way
+to the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that
+was not its name.  What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live
+in dreams, and yet be unprepared for their realisation.  It was
+already with a certain pang of surprise that he beheld the mansion,
+standing in the eye of day, a solid among solids.  The key, upon
+trial, readily opened the front door; he entered that great house,
+a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion,
+rapidly reviewed the empty chambers.  Cats, servant, old lady, the
+very marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been in
+these few hours obliterated.  He wandered from floor to floor, and
+found the house of great extent; the kitchen offices commodious and
+well appointed; the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in
+particular, an apartment of princely size and tasteful decoration.
+Although the day without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a
+ruffling wind from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of
+suspended animation inhabited the house.  Dust and shadows met the
+eye; and but for the ominous procession of the echoes, and the
+rumour of the wind among the garden trees, the ear of the young man
+was stretched in vain.
+
+Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the
+old lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted cupolas
+of the kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room appeared
+to greet him with a smiling countenance.  He might as well, he
+thought, avoid the expense of lodging:  the library, fitted with an
+iron bedstead which he had remarked, in one of the upper chambers,
+would serve his purpose for the night; while in the dining-room,
+which was large, airy, and lightsome, looking on the square and
+garden, he might very agreeably pass his days, cook his meals, and
+study to bring himself to some proficiency in that art of painting
+which he had recently determined to adopt.  It did not take him
+long to make the change:  he had soon returned to the mansion with
+his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was readily induced,
+by the young man's pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to assist
+him in the installation of the iron bed.  By six in the evening,
+when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon the
+mansion with a sense of pride and property.  Four-square it stood,
+of an imposing frontage, and flanked on either side by family
+hatchments.  His eye, from where he stood whistling in the key,
+with his back to the garden railings, reposed on every feature of
+reality; and yet his own possession seemed as flimsy as a dream.
+
+In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square
+began to remark the customs of their neighbour.  The sight of a
+young gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about four o'clock of the
+afternoon, in the drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion;
+and perhaps still more, his periodical excursion to a decent tavern
+in the neighbourhood, and his unabashed return, nursing the full
+tankard:  had presently raised to a high pitch the interest and
+indignation of the liveried servants of the square.  The disfavour
+of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded to the length of
+insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable with any class of men;
+and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably
+shared, gained for him the right of toleration.
+
+The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion
+of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices.  He scorned
+to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn
+one half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of
+still life.  There he amassed a variety of objects,
+indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the
+back garden; and there spent his days in smiling assiduity.
+Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead lay, like a
+load, upon his imagination.  To hold so great a stake and to do
+nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at length determined
+to act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to stick,
+with wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small handbill
+announcing furnished lodgings.  At half-past six of a fine July
+morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into the square to
+study the result.  It seemed, to his eye, promising and
+unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to
+consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he
+was to charge.
+
+Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of
+painting.  Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best
+part of the day in the front balcony, like the attentive angler
+poring on his float; and the better to support the tedium, he would
+frequently console himself with his clay pipe.  On several
+occasions, passers-by appeared to be arrested by the ticket, and on
+several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the very doorstep by
+the carriageful; but it appeared there was something repulsive in
+the appearance of the house; for with one accord, they would cast
+but one look upward, and hastily resume their onward progress or
+direct the driver to proceed.  Somerset had thus the mortification
+of actually meeting the eye of a large number of lodging-seekers;
+and though he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to compose his
+features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded by so much
+as an inquiry.  'Can there,' he thought, 'be anything repellent in
+myself?'  But a candid examination in one of the pier-glasses of
+the drawing-room led him to dismiss the fear.
+
+Something, however, was amiss.  His vast and accurate calculations
+on the fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared
+to have been an idle sacrifice of time.  By these, he had variously
+computed the weekly takings of the house, from sums as modest as
+five-and-twenty shillings, up to the more majestic figure of a
+hundred pounds; and yet, in despite of the very elements of
+arithmetic, here he was making literally nothing.
+
+This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful
+leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had
+detected the error of his method.  'This,' he reflected, 'is an age
+of generous display:  the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of
+Pears' legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer
+brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever
+remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood,
+Lamplough's pyretic saline.  Lamplough was genteel, Eno was
+omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably
+vulgar; and here have I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of
+the world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a few
+cold words which do not directly address the imagination, and the
+adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red wafers!  Am
+I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno?  Am I to
+adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to
+take hold of the red facts of life with the emphasis of the
+tradesman and the poet?'
+
+Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the
+very largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints,
+proceeded to compose an ensign that might attract the eye, and at
+the same time, in his own phrase, directly address the imagination
+of the passenger.  Something taking in the way of colour, a good,
+savoury choice of words, and a realistic design setting forth the
+life a lodger might expect to lead within the walls of that palace
+of delight:  these, he perceived, must be the elements of his
+advertisement.  It was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the
+sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed
+urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and
+he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to set forth
+the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly
+say, the paradise of the Mohammedan.  So long did the artist waver
+between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion,
+he had finally conceived and completed both designs.  With the
+proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to
+sacrifice either of these offsprings of his art; and decided to
+expose them on alternate days.  'In this way,' he thought, 'I shall
+address myself indifferently to all classes of the world.'
+
+The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the
+more imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune, and
+appeared first in the window of the mansion.  It was of a high
+fancy, the legend eloquently writ, the scheme of colour taking and
+bold; and but for the imperfection of the artist's drawing, it
+might have been taken for a model of its kind.  As it was, however,
+when viewed from his favourite point against the garden railings,
+and with some touch of distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of
+the artist's heart.  'I have thrown away,' he ejaculated, 'an
+invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my first
+academy picture.'
+
+The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.  A crowd
+would certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-
+railings; but they came to jeer and not to speculate; and those who
+pushed their inquiries further, were too plainly animated by the
+spirit of derision.  The racier of the two cartoons displayed,
+indeed, no symptom of attractive merit; and though it had a certain
+share of that success called scandalous, failed utterly of its
+effect.  On the day, however, of the second appearance of the
+companion work, a real inquirer did actually present himself before
+the eyes of Somerset.
+
+This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment,
+and his voice under inadequate control.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said he, 'but what is the meaning of your
+extraordinary bill?'
+
+'I beg yours,' returned Somerset hotly.  'Its meaning is
+sufficiently explicit.'  And being now, from dire experience,
+fearful of ridicule, he was preparing to close the door, when the
+gentleman thrust his cane into the aperture.
+
+'Not so fast, I beg of you,' said he.  'If you really let
+apartments, here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing
+would give me greater pleasure than to see the accommodation and to
+learn your terms.'
+
+His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, showed
+him over the various apartments, and, with some return of his
+persuasive eloquence, expounded their attractions.  The gentleman
+was particularly pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-
+room.
+
+'This,' he said, 'would suit me very well.  What, may I ask, would
+be your terms a week, for this floor and the one above it?'
+
+'I was thinking,' returned Somerset, 'of a hundred pounds.'
+
+'Surely not,' exclaimed the gentleman.
+
+'Well, then,' returned Somerset, 'fifty.'
+
+The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement.  'You
+seem to be strangely elastic in your demands,' said he.  'What if I
+were to proceed on your own principle of division, and offer
+twenty-five?'
+
+'Done!' cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden
+embarrassment, 'You see,' he added apologetically, 'it is all found
+money for me.'
+
+'Really?' said the stranger, looking at him all the while with
+growing wonder.  'Without extras, then?'
+
+'I--I suppose so,' stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.
+
+'Service included?' pursued the gentleman.
+
+'Service?' cried Somerset.  'Do you mean that you expect me to
+empty your slops?'
+
+The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest.  'My dear
+fellow,' said he, 'if you take my advice, you will give up this
+business.'  And thereupon he resumed his hat and took himself away.
+
+This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist
+of the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier
+illusions.  First one and then the other of his great works was
+condemned, withdrawn from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere
+wall-picture, to the decoration of the dining-room.  Their place
+was taken by a replica of the original wafered announcement, to
+which, in particularly large letters, he had added the pithy
+rubric:  'NO SERVICE.'  Meanwhile he had fallen into something as
+nearly bordering on low spirits as was consistent with his
+disposition; depressed, at once by the failure of his scheme, the
+laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of
+the public to the merit of the twin cartoons.
+
+Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note
+of the knocker.  A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat
+military air, yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat, desired in
+the politest terms to visit the apartments.  He had (he explained)
+a friend, a gentleman in tender health, desirous of a sedate and
+solitary life, apart from interruptions and the noises of the
+common lodging-house.  'The unusual clause,' he continued, 'in your
+announcement, particularly struck me.  "This," I said, "is the
+place for Mr. Jones."  You are yourself, sir, a professional
+gentleman?' concluded the visitor, looking keenly in Somerset's
+face.
+
+'I am an artist,' replied the young man lightly.
+
+'And these,' observed the other, taking a side glance through the
+open door of the dining-room, which they were then passing, 'these
+are some of your works.  Very remarkable.'  And he again and still
+more sharply peered into the countenance of the young man.
+
+Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead
+his visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.
+
+'Excellent,' observed the stranger, as he looked from one of the
+back windows.  'Is that a mews behind, sir?  Very good.  Well, sir:
+see here.  My friend will take your drawing-room floor; he will
+sleep in the back drawing-room; his nurse, an excellent Irish
+widow, will attend on all his wants and occupy a garret; he will
+pay you the round sum of ten dollars a week; and you, on your part,
+will engage to receive no other lodger?  I think that fair.'
+
+Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and
+joy.
+
+'Agreed,' said the other; 'and to spare you trouble, my friend will
+bring some men with him to make the changes.  You will find him a
+retiring inmate, sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves the
+house, except at night.'
+
+'Since I have been in this house,' returned Somerset, 'I have
+myself, unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except in
+the evening.  But a man,' he added, 'must have some amusement.'
+
+An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset
+sat down to compute in English money the value of the figure named.
+The result of this investigation filled him with amazement and
+disgust; but it was now too late; nothing remained but to endure;
+and he awaited the arrival of his tenant, still trying, by various
+arithmetical expedients, to obtain a more favourable quotation for
+the dollar.  With the approach of dusk, however, his impatience
+drove him once more to the front balcony.  The night fell, mild and
+airless; the lamps shone around the central darkness of the garden;
+and through the tall grove of trees that intervened, many warmly
+illuminated windows on the farther side of the square, told their
+tale of white napery, choice wine, and genial hospitality.  The
+stars were already thickening overhead, when the young man's eyes
+alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers, coasting round the
+garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion.  They were
+laden with formidable boxes; moved in a military order, one
+following another; and, by the extreme slowness of their advance,
+inspired Somerset with the most serious ideas of his tenant's
+malady.
+
+By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
+pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military
+gentleman of the morning and two very stalwart porters.  These
+proceeded instantly to take possession of the house; with their own
+hands, and firmly rejecting Somerset's assistance, they carried in
+the various crates and boxes; with their own hands dismounted and
+transferred to the back drawing-room the bed in which the tenant
+was to sleep; and it was not until the bustle of arrival had
+subsided, and the arrangements were complete, that there descended,
+from the third of the three vehicles, a gentleman of great stature
+and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder of a woman in a
+widow's dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and muffled in a
+coloured comforter.
+
+Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into
+the back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended
+on the house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-
+past ten, and, with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent
+public-house in the neighbourhood, Somerset might have still
+supposed himself to be alone in the Superfluous Mansion.
+
+Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech
+or sight of his mysterious lodger.  The doors of the drawing-room
+flat were never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving
+to and fro, the tall man had never quitted the privacy of his
+apartments.  Visitors, indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk,
+sometimes at intempestuous hours of night or morning; men, for the
+most part; some meanly attired, some decently; some loud, some
+cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of Somerset, displeasing.  A
+certain air of fear and secrecy was common to them all; they were
+all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even the military
+gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman at
+all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners
+were not suggestive of a university career.  The nurse, again, was
+scarcely a desirable house-fellow.  Since her arrival, the fall of
+whisky in the young man's private bottle was much accelerated; and
+though never communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar.
+When asked about the patient's health, she would dolorously shake
+her head, and declare that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful
+condition.
+
+Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that
+his complaint was other than bodily.  The ill-looking birds that
+gathered to the house, the strange noises that sounded from the
+drawing-room in the dead hours of night, the careless attendance
+and intemperate habits of the nurse, the entire absence of
+correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. Jones himself, whose
+face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn to in a court of
+justice--all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man's mind.  A
+sense of something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and
+depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted
+in his mind, when, in the fulness of time, he had an opportunity of
+observing the features of his tenant.  It fell in this way.  The
+young landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a noise in
+the hall.  Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the
+library, he saw the tall man, candle in hand, in earnest
+conversation with the gentleman who had taken the rooms.  The faces
+of both were strongly illuminated; and in that of his tenant,
+Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but every
+sign of health, energy, and resolution.  While he was still
+looking, the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having
+carefully fastened the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace
+of lassitude.
+
+That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into
+the hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed
+the practice of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind.
+The day was destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long
+been seated at the easel ere the first of these occurred.  A cab
+laden with baggage drew up before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in
+person rapidly mounted the steps and began to pound upon the
+knocker.  Somerset hastened to attend the summons.
+
+'My dear fellow,' she said, with the utmost gaiety, 'here I come
+dropping from the moon.  I am delighted to find you faithful; and I
+have no doubt you will be equally pleased to be restored to
+liberty.'
+
+Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and
+the spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the
+threshold of the dining-room.  The sight that met her eyes was one
+well calculated to inspire astonishment.  The mantelpiece was
+arrayed with saucepans and empty bottles; on the fire some chops
+were frying; the floor was littered from end to end with books,
+clothes, walking-canes and the materials of the painter's craft;
+but what far outstripped the other wonders of the place was the
+corner which had been arranged for the study of still-life.  This
+formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous upon which, according to the
+principles of the art of composition, a cabbage was relieved
+against a copper kettle, and both contrasted with the mail of a
+boiled lobster.
+
+'My gracious goodness!' cried the lady of the house; and then,
+turning in wrath on the young man, 'From what rank in life are you
+sprung?' she demanded.  'You have the exterior of a gentleman; but
+from the astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only
+be a greengrocer's man.  Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let
+me see no more of you.'
+
+'Madam,' babbled Somerset, 'you promised me a month's warning.'
+
+'That was under a misapprehension,' returned the old lady.  'I now
+give you warning to leave at once.'
+
+'Madam,' said the young man, 'I wish I could; and indeed, as far as
+I am concerned, it might be done.  But then, my lodger!'
+
+'Your lodger?' echoed Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+'My lodger:  why should I deny it?' returned Somerset.  'He is only
+by the week.'
+
+The old lady sat down upon a chair.  'You have a lodger?--you?' she
+cried.  'And pray, how did you get him?'
+
+'By advertisement,' replied the young man. 'O madam, I have not
+lived unobservantly.  I adopted'--his eyes involuntarily shifted to
+the cartoons--'I adopted every method.'
+
+Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's
+experience, she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the
+full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal
+after peal of her trilling and soprano laughter.
+
+'Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!' she cried.  'I do hope
+you had them in the window.  M'Pherson,' she continued, crying to
+her maid, who had been all this time grimly waiting in the hall, 'I
+lunch with Mr. Somerset.  Take the cellar key and bring some wine.'
+
+In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
+Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M'Pherson
+bring up from the cellar--'as a present, my dear,' she said, with
+another burst of tearful merriment, 'for your charming pictures,
+which you must be sure to leave me when you go;' and finally,
+protesting that she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful of
+madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it)
+for the continent of Europe.
+
+She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor
+the Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to
+singularly strong emotion.  It was made to appear, from her
+account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely in his health
+from Mrs. Luxmore's visit, and that nothing short of a full
+explanation could allay the invalid's uneasiness.  Somerset,
+somewhat staring, told what he thought fit of the affair.
+
+'Is that all?' cried the woman.  'As God sees you, is that all?'
+
+'My good woman,' said the young man, 'I have no idea what you can
+be driving at.  Suppose the lady were my friend's wife, suppose she
+were my fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal;
+and how should that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?'
+
+'Blessed Mary!' cried the nurse, 'it's he that will be glad to hear
+it!'
+
+And immediately she fled upstairs.
+
+Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a very
+thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the
+remainder of the bottle.  It was port; and port is a wine, sole
+among its equals and superiors, that can in some degree support the
+competition of tobacco.  Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset
+moved on from suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve,
+still growing braver and rosier as the bottle ebbed.  He was a
+sceptic, none prouder of the name; he had no horror at command,
+whether for crimes or vices, but beheld and embraced the world,
+with an immoral approbation, the frequent consequence of youth and
+health.  At the same time, he felt convinced that he dwelt under
+the same roof with secret malefactors; and the unregenerate
+instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.  The bottle had run
+low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment,
+night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.
+
+He went forth, and dined in the Criterion:  a dinner in consonance,
+not so much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had
+discussed.  What with one thing and another, it was long past
+midnight when he returned home.  A cab was at the door; and
+entering the hall, Somerset found himself face to face with one of
+the most regular of the few who visited Mr. Jones:  a man of
+powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard in the
+American fashion.  This person was carrying on one shoulder a black
+portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight.  That he should find
+a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled some odd
+stories to the young man's memory; he had heard of lodgers who thus
+gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the very
+furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now,
+in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of
+a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard
+and knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor.  With a
+face struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard
+called lamentably on the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap
+on the mat at the foot of the stairs.  At the same time, though
+only for a single instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the
+Irish nurse popped out like rabbits over the banisters of the first
+floor; and on both the same scare and pallor were apparent.
+
+The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and
+he continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together,
+and, with the help of the handrail and audibly thanking God,
+scrambled once more upon his feet.
+
+'What in Heaven's name ails you?' gasped the young man as soon as
+he could find words and utterance.
+
+'Have you a drop of brandy?' returned the other.  'I am sick.'
+
+Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man
+with the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound
+himself in apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness,
+the result, he said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having
+taken leave with a hand that still sweated and trembled, he
+gingerly resumed his burthen and departed.
+
+Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.  What, he asked himself,
+had been the contents of the black portmanteau?  Stolen goods? the
+carcase of one murdered? or--and at the thought he sat upright in
+bed--an infernal machine?  He took a solemn vow that he would set
+these doubts at rest; and with the next morning, installed himself
+beside the dining-room window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await
+and profit by the earliest opportunity.
+
+The hours went heavily by.  Within the house there was no
+circumstance of novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more
+frequently made little journeys round the corner of the square, and
+before afternoon was somewhat loose of speech and gait.  A little
+after six, however, there came round the corner of the gardens a
+very handsome and elegantly dressed young woman, who paused a
+little way off, and for some time, and with frequent sighs,
+contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.  It was not the
+first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon it, like
+our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had
+already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage,
+and had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.  He
+hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little
+nearer to the window to enjoy the sight.  What was his surprise,
+however, when, as if with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted
+the steps and tapped discreetly at the door!  He made haste to get
+before the Irish nurse, who was not improbably asleep, and had the
+satisfaction to receive this gracious visitor in person.
+
+She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the
+young man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he
+thought he could perceive her to be smiling), 'because,' she added,
+'if you are, I should like to see some of the other rooms.'
+Somerset told her he was under an engagement to receive no other
+lodgers; but she assured him that would be no matter, as these were
+friends of Mr. Jones's.  'And,' she continued, moving suddenly to
+the dining-room door, 'let us begin here.'  Somerset was too late
+to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the courage to
+essay.  'Ah!' she cried, 'how changed it is!'
+
+'Madam,' cried the young man, 'since your entrance, it is I who
+have the right to say so.'
+
+She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious
+droop of the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the
+mingled litter, now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the
+wonders of the two apartments.  She gazed upon the cartoons with
+sparkling eyes, and a heightened colour, and in a somewhat
+breathless voice, expressed a high opinion of their merits.  She
+praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the
+bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the
+entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.  'How simple and
+manly!' she cried:  'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is
+so detestable in a man!'  Hard upon this, telling him, before he
+had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would
+trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile,
+and ascended the staircase alone.
+
+For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr.
+Jones; and at the end of that time, the night being now come
+completely, they left the house in company.  This was the first
+time since the arrival of his lodger, that Somerset had found
+himself alone with the Irish widow; and without the loss of any
+more time than was required by decency, he stepped to the foot of
+the stairs and hailed her by her name.  She came instantly,
+wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head; and when the young
+man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures of his art,
+she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure, for,
+though she had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently
+observed his beautiful pictures through the door.  On entering the
+dining-room, the sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her to
+be a gentle critic; and as soon as the pictures had been viewed and
+praised, she was easily persuaded to join the painter in a single
+glass.  'Here,' she said, 'are my respects; and a pleasure it is,
+in this horrible house, to see a gentleman like yourself, so
+affable and free, and a very nice painter, I am sure.'  One glass
+so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the acceptance of a
+second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from the
+affectation of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she
+asked it of her own accord.  'For indeed,' said she, 'what with all
+these clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life
+would be impossible entirely.  And you seen yourself that even
+M'Guire was glad to beg for it.  And even himself, when he is
+downhearted with all these cruel disappointments, though as
+temperate a man as any child, will be sometimes crying for a glass
+of it.  And I'll thank you for a thimbleful to settle what I got.'
+Soon after, she began with tears to narrate the deathbed
+dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband.  Then
+she declared she heard 'the master' calling her, rose to her feet,
+made but one lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her
+head upon the lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.
+
+Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of
+the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps.  It
+was a great apartment; looking on the square with three tall
+windows, and joined by a pair of ample folding-doors to the next
+room; elegant in proportion, papered in sea-green, furnished in
+velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned with a majestic mantelpiece
+of variously tinted marbles.  Such was the room that Somerset
+remembered; that which he now beheld was changed in almost every
+feature:  the furniture covered with a figured chintz; the walls
+hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified by the
+curtained recesses for no less than seven windows.  It seemed to
+himself that he must have entered, without observing the
+transition, into the adjoining house.  Presently from these more
+specious changes, his eye condescended to the many curious objects
+with which the floor was littered.  Here were the locks of
+dismounted pistols; clocks and clockwork in every stage of
+demolition, some still busily ticking, some reduced to their dainty
+elements; a great company of carboys, jars and bottles; a
+carpenter's bench and a laboratory-table.
+
+The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise
+undergone a change.  It was transformed to the exact appearance of
+a common lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied
+one corner; and the window was blocked by the regulation table and
+mirror.  The door of a small closet here attracted the young man's
+attention; and striking a vesta, he opened it and entered.  On a
+table several wigs and beards were lying spread; about the walls
+hung an incongruous display of suits and overcoats; and conspicuous
+among the last the young man observed a large overall of the most
+costly sealskin.  In a flash his mind reverted to the advertisement
+in the Standard newspaper.  The great height of his lodger, the
+disproportionate breadth of his shoulders, and the strange
+particulars of his instalment, all pointed to the same conclusion.
+
+The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon
+his arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room.
+There, with a mixture of fear and admiration, he pored upon its
+goodly proportions and the regularity and softness of the pile.
+The sight of a large pier-glass put another fancy in his head.  He
+donned the fur-coat; and standing before the mirror in an attitude
+suggestive of a Russian prince, he thrust his hands into the ample
+pockets.  There his fingers encountered a folded journal.  He drew
+it out, and recognised the type and paper of the Standard; and at
+the same instant, his eyes alighted on the offer of two hundred
+pounds.  Plainly then, his lodger, now no longer mysterious, had
+laid aside his coat on the very day of the appearance of the
+advertisement.
+
+He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the
+incriminating paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall
+lodger, with a firm but somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room
+and closed the door again behind him.  For some time, the two
+looked upon each other in perfect silence; then Mr. Jones moved
+forward to the table, took a seat, and still without once changing
+the direction of his eyes, addressed the young man.
+
+'You are right,' he said.  'It is for me the blood money is
+offered.  And now what will you do?'
+
+It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to
+reply.  Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man's own
+coat, and surrounded by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives,
+the keeper of the lodging-house was silenced.
+
+'Yes,' resumed the other, 'I am he.  I am that man, whom with
+impotent hate and fear, they still hunt from den to den, from
+disguise to disguise.  Yes, my landlord, you have it in your power,
+if you be poor, to lay the basis of your fortune; if you be
+unknown, to capture honour at one snatch.  You have hocussed an
+innocent widow; and I find you here in my apartment, for whose use
+I pay you in stamped money, searching my wardrobe, and your hand--
+shame, sir!--your hand in my very pocket.  You can now complete the
+cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at once the
+simplest, the safest, and the most remunerative.'  The speaker
+paused as if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change
+of tone and manner, thus resumed:  'And yet, sir, when I look upon
+your face, I feel certain that I cannot be deceived:  certain that
+in spite of all, I have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a
+gentleman.  Take off my coat, sir--which but cumbers you.  Divest
+yourself of this confusion:  that which is but thought upon, thank
+God, need be no burthen to the conscience; we have all harboured
+guilty thoughts:  and if it flashed into your mind to sell my flesh
+and blood, my anguish in the dock, and the sweat of my death agony-
+-it was a thought, dear sir, you were as incapable of acting on, as
+I of any further question of your honour.'  At these words, the
+speaker, with a very open, smiling countenance, like a forgiving
+father, offered Somerset his hand.
+
+It was not in the young man's nature to refuse forgiveness or
+dissect generosity.  He instantly, and almost without thought,
+accepted the proffered grasp.
+
+'And now,' resumed the lodger, 'now that I hold in mine your loyal
+hand, I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I go further-
+-by an effort of will, I banish the memory of what is past.  How
+you came here, I care not:  enough that you are here--as my guest.
+Sit ye down; and let us, with your good permission, improve
+acquaintance over a glass of excellent whisky.'
+
+So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle:  and the pair
+pledged each other in silence.
+
+'Confess,' observed the smiling host, 'you were surprised at the
+appearance of the room.'
+
+'I was indeed,' said Somerset; 'nor can I imagine the purpose of
+these changes.'
+
+'These,' replied the conspirator, 'are the devices by which I
+continue to exist.  Conceive me now, accused before one of your
+unjust tribunals; conceive the various witnesses appearing, and the
+singular variety of their reports!  One will have visited me in
+this drawing-room as it originally stood; a second finds it as it
+is to-night; and to-morrow or next day, all may have been changed.
+If you love romance (as artists do), few lives are more romantic
+than that of the obscure individual now addressing you.  Obscure
+yet famous.  Mine is an anonymous, infernal glory.  By infamous
+means, I work towards my bright purpose.  I found the liberty and
+peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future smiles upon
+that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a hunted
+brute, work towards appalling ends, and practice hell's
+dexterities.'
+
+Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before
+him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable
+bewilderment.  He looked him in the face with curious
+particularity; saw there the marks of education; and wondered the
+more profoundly.
+
+'Sir,' he said--'for I know not whether I should still address you
+as Mr. Jones--'
+
+'Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland,
+by all or any of these you may address me,' said the plotter; 'for
+all I have at some time borne.  Yet that which I most prize, that
+which is most feared, hated, and obeyed, is not a name to be found
+in your directories; it is not a name current in post-offices or
+banks; and, indeed, like the celebrated clan M'Gregor, I may justly
+describe myself as being nameless by day.  But,' he continued,
+rising to his feet, 'by night, and among my desperate followers, I
+am the redoubted Zero.'
+
+Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely expressed
+surprise and gratification.  'I am to understand,' he continued,
+'that, under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?'
+{3}
+
+The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.
+
+'I do,' he said.  'In this dark period of time, a star--the star of
+dynamite--has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise
+its use, so thick beset with dangers and attended by such
+incredible difficulties and disappointments, few have been more
+assiduous, and not many--'  He paused, and a shade of embarrassment
+appeared upon his face--'not many have been more successful than
+myself.'
+
+'I can imagine,' observed Somerset, 'that, from the sweeping
+consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of interest.  You
+have, besides, some of the entertainment of the game of hide and
+seek.  But it would still seem to me--I speak as a layman--that
+nothing could be simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal
+machine and retire to an adjacent county to await the painful
+consequences.'
+
+'You speak, indeed,' returned the plotter, with some evidence of
+warmth, 'you speak, indeed, most ignorantly.  Do you make nothing,
+then, of such a peril as we share this moment?  Do you think it
+nothing to occupy a house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a
+word, literally tottering to its fall?'
+
+'Good God!' ejaculated Somerset.
+
+'And when you speak of ease,' pursued Zero, 'in this age of
+scientific studies, you fill me with surprise.  Are you not aware
+that chemicals are proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as
+capricious as the very devil?  Do you see upon my brow these
+furrows of anxiety?  Do you observe the silver threads that mingle
+with my hair?  Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on my brow--
+chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!  No, Mr. Somerset,' he
+resumed, after a moment's pause, his voice still quivering with
+sensibility, 'you must not suppose the dynamiter's life to be all
+gold.  On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the
+bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like
+mine.  I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down
+late; my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried
+with white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the
+fall of England, the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and
+execration; and lo! a snap like that of a child's pistol, an
+offensive smell, and the entire loss of so much time and plant!
+If,' he concluded, musingly, 'we had been merely able to recover
+the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I could have
+remedied the peccant engine.  But what with the loss of plant and
+the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our
+friends in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium.
+They propose, instead, to break up the drainage system of cities
+and sweep off whole populations with the devastating typhoid
+pestilence:  a tempting and a scientific project:  a process,
+indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical simplicity.  I recognise
+its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the poet in my nature;
+something, possibly, of the tribune.  And, for my small part, I
+shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if
+you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb.  Yes,' he
+cried, with unshaken hope, 'I will still continue, and, I feel it
+in my bosom, I shall yet succeed.'
+
+'Two things I remark,' said Somerset.  'The first somewhat staggers
+me.  Have you, then--in all this course of life, which you have
+sketched so vividly--have you not once succeeded?'
+
+'Pardon me,' said Zero.  'I have had one success.  You behold in me
+the author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.'
+
+'But if I remember right,' objected Somerset, 'the thing was a
+fiasco.  A scavenger's barrow and some copies of the Weekly Budget-
+-these were the only victims.'
+
+'You will pardon me again,' returned Zero with positive asperity:
+'a child was injured.'
+
+'And that fitly brings me to my second point,' said Somerset.  'For
+I observed you to employ the word "indiscriminate."  Now, surely, a
+scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the
+very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of
+ineffectual reprisal.'
+
+'Did I employ the word?' asked Zero.  'Well, I will not defend it.
+But for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before
+entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our
+glasses.  Disputation is dry work,' he added, with a charming
+gaiety of manner.
+
+Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart
+grog; and Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency,
+proceeded more largely to develop his opinions.
+
+'The indiscriminate?' he began.  'War, my dear sir, is
+indiscriminate.  War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow
+of the harmless scavenger.  No more,' he concluded, beaming, 'no
+more do I.  Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or
+paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child,
+imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple
+plans.  You are not,' he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic
+interest, 'you are not, I trust, a believer?'
+
+'Sir, I believe in nothing,' said the young man.
+
+'You are then,' replied Zero, 'in a position to grasp my argument.
+We agree that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of
+humanity; and being pledged to labour for that end, and face to
+face with the banded opposition of kings, parliaments, churches,
+and the members of the force, who am I--who are we, dear sir--to
+affect a nicety about the tools employed?  You might, perhaps,
+expect us to attack the Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid
+Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error.
+Our appeal is to the body of the people; it is these that we would
+touch and interest.  Now, sir, have you observed the English
+housemaid?'
+
+'I should think I had,' cried Somerset.
+
+'From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,'
+returned the conspirator politely.  'A type apart; a very charming
+figure; and thoroughly adapted to our ends.  The neat cap, the
+clean print, the comely person, the engaging manner; her position
+between classes, parents in one, employers in another; the
+probability that she will have at least one sweet-heart, whose
+feelings we shall address: --yes, I have a leaning--call it, if you
+will, a weakness--for the housemaid.  Not that I would be
+understood to despise the nurse.  For the child is a very
+interesting feature:  I have long since marked out the child as the
+sensitive point in society.'  He wagged his head, with a wise,
+pensive smile.  'And talking, sir, of children and of the perils of
+our trade, let me now narrate to you a little incident of an
+explosive bomb, that fell out some weeks ago under my own
+observation.  It fell out thus.'
+
+And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following simple
+tale.
+
+
+
+ZERO'S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB. {4}
+
+
+
+I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a
+private chamber at St. James's Hall.  You have seen the man:  it
+was M'Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself
+expert in our contrivances.  Hence the necessity of our meeting;
+for I need not remind you what enormous issues depend upon the nice
+adjustment of the engine.  I set our little petard for half an
+hour, the scene of action being hard by; and the better to avert
+miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invention of my own, by
+which the opening of the Gladstone bag in which the bomb was
+carried, should instantly determine the explosion.  M'Guire was
+somewhat dashed by this arrangement, which was new to him:  and
+pointed out, with excellent, clear good sense, that should he be
+arrested, it would probably involve him in the fall of our
+opponents.  But I was not to be moved, made a strong appeal to his
+patriotism, gave him a good glass of whisky, and despatched him on
+his glorious errand.
+
+Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square:  a
+spot, I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the
+dramatist, still very foolishly claimed as a glory by the English
+race, in spite of his disgusting political opinions; but from the
+fact that the seats in the immediate neighbourhood are often
+thronged by children, errand-boys, unfortunate young ladies of the
+poorer class and infirm old men--all classes making a direct appeal
+to public pity, and therefore suitable with our designs.  As
+M'Guire drew near his heart was inflamed by the most noble
+sentiment of triumph.  Never had he seen the garden so crowded;
+children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth, ran to and
+fro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, sick
+pensioner sat upon the nearest bench, a medal on his breast, a
+stick with which he walked (for he was disabled by wounds)
+reclining on his knee.  Guilty England would thus be stabbed in the
+most delicate quarters; the moment had, indeed, been well selected;
+and M'Guire, with a radiant provision of the event, drew merrily
+nearer.  Suddenly his eye alighted on the burly form of a
+policeman, standing hard by the effigy in an attitude of watch.  My
+bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and there,
+at different points of the enclosure, other men stood or loitered,
+affecting an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs,
+feigning to talk, feigning to be weary and to rest upon the
+benches.  M'Guire was no child in these affairs; he instantly
+divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian Gladstone.
+
+A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain
+nervousness in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of
+some design draws near, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to
+suffer some revulsion of intent; and frequently despatch to the
+authorities, not indeed specific denunciations, but vague anonymous
+warnings.  But for this purely accidental circumstance, England had
+long ago been an historical expression.  On the receipt of such a
+letter, the Government lay a trap for their adversaries, and
+surround the threatened spot with hirelings.  My blood sometimes
+boils in my veins, when I consider the case of those who sell
+themselves for money in such a cause.  True, thanks to the
+generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very
+comfortable stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts
+me quite beyond the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts;
+M'Guire, again, ere he joined our ranks, was on the brink of
+starving, and now, thank God! receives a decent income.  That is as
+it should be; the patriot must not be diverted from his task by any
+base consideration; and the distinction between our position and
+that of the police is too obvious to be stated.
+
+Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged;
+the Government had craftily filled the place with minions; even the
+pensioner was not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our
+emissary, without other aid or protection than the simple apparatus
+in his bag, found himself confronted by force; brutal force; that
+strong hand which was a character of the ages of oppression.
+Should he venture to deposit the machine, it was almost certain
+that he would be observed and arrested; a cry would arise; and
+there was just a fear that the police might not be present in
+sufficient force, to protect him from the savagery of the mob.  The
+scheme must be delayed.  He stood with his bag on his arm,
+pretending to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there flashed
+into his mind a thought to appal the bravest.  The machine was set;
+at the appointed hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval,
+was he to be rid of it?
+
+Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot.  There
+he was, friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life,
+for he is not yet forty; with long years of happiness before him;
+and now condemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by
+dynamite!  The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope;
+he saw the Alhambra leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled
+against the railing.  It is probable he fainted.
+
+When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.
+
+'My God!' he cried.
+
+'You seem to be unwell, sir,' said the hireling.
+
+'I feel better now,' cried poor M'Guire:  and with uneven steps,
+for the pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his
+footing, he fled from the scene of this disaster.  Fled?  Alas,
+from what was he fleeing?  Did he not carry that from which he fled
+along with him? and had he the wings of the eagle, had he the
+swiftness of the ocean winds, could he have been rapt into the
+uttermost quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that
+he carried?  We have heard of living men who have been fettered to
+the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, is no more than
+sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him who should
+be linked, like poor M'Guire, to an explosive bomb.
+
+A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his
+liver:  suppose it were the hour already.  He stopped as though he
+had been shot, and plucked his watch out.  There was a howling in
+his ears, as loud as a winter tempest; his sight was now obscured
+as if by a cloud, now, as by a lightning flash, would show him the
+very dust upon the street.  But so brief were these intervals of
+vision, and so violently did the watch vibrate in his hands, that
+it was impossible to distinguish the numbers on the dial.  He
+covered his eyes for a few seconds; and in that space, it seemed to
+him that he had fallen to be a man of ninety.  When he looked
+again, the watch-plate had grown legible:  he had twenty minutes.
+Twenty minutes, and no plan!
+
+Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a
+little girl of about six drawing near to him, and as she came,
+kicking in front of her, as children will, a piece of wood.  She
+sang, too; and something in her accent recalling him to the past,
+produced a sudden clearness in his mind.  Here was a God-sent
+opportunity!
+
+'My dear,' said he, 'would you like a present of a pretty bag?'
+
+The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it.
+She had looked first at the bag, like a true child; but most
+unfortunately, before she had yet received the fatal gift, her eyes
+fell directly on M'Guire; and no sooner had she seen the poor
+gentleman's face, than she screamed out and leaped backward, as
+though she had seen the devil.  Almost at the same moment a woman
+appeared upon the threshold of a neighbouring shop, and called upon
+the child in anger.  'Come here, colleen,' she said, 'and don't be
+plaguing the poor old gentleman!'  With that she re-entered the
+house, and the child followed her, sobbing aloud.
+
+With the loss of this hope M'Guire's reason swooned within him.
+When next he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before St.
+Martin's-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken man; the passers-by
+regarding him with eyes in which he read, as in a glass, an image
+of the terror and horror that dwelt within his own.
+
+'I am afraid you are very ill, sir,' observed a woman, stopping and
+gazing hard in his face.  'Can I do anything to help you?'
+
+'Ill?' said M'Guire.  'O God!'  And then, recovering some shadow of
+his self-command, 'Chronic, madam,' said he:  'a long course of the
+dumb ague.  But since you are so compassionate--an errand that I
+lack the strength to carry out,' he gasped--'this bag to Portman
+Square.  Oh, compassionate woman, as you hope to be saved, as you
+are a mother, in the name of your babes that wait to welcome you at
+home, oh, take this bag to Portman Square!  I have a mother, too,'
+he added, with a broken voice.  'Number 19, Portman Square.'
+
+I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice;
+for the woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him.  'Poor
+gentleman!' said she.  'If I were you, I would go home.'  And she
+left him standing there in his distress.
+
+'Home!' thought M'Guire, 'what a derision!'  What home was there
+for him, the victim of philanthropy?  He thought of his old mother,
+of his happy youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion;
+of the possibility that he might not be killed, that he might be
+cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to lifelong pains,
+blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened.  Ah, you spoke lightly
+of the dynamiter's peril; but even waiving death, have you realised
+what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten
+suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and
+from the voice of friendship, and love?  How little do we realise
+the sufferings of others!  Even your brutal Government, in the
+heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the
+patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman,
+and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so
+horrible a doom:  not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from
+philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of
+the good.
+
+But I wander from M'Guire.  From this dread glance into the past
+and future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present.  How
+had he wandered there? and how long--oh, heavens! how long had he
+been about it?  He pulled out his watch; and found that but three
+minutes had elapsed.  It seemed too bright a thing to be believed.
+He glanced at the church clock; and sure enough, it marked an hour
+four minutes faster than the watch.
+
+Of all that he endured, M'Guire declares that pang was the most
+desolate.  Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in
+whom he plenarily trusted; by whose advertisement, he numbered the
+minutes that remained to him of life; on whose sure testimony, he
+could tell when the time was come to risk the last adventure, to
+cast the bag away from him, and take to flight.  And now in what
+was he to place reliance?  His watch was slow; it might be losing
+time; if so, in what degree?  What limit could he set to its
+derangement? and how much was it possible for a watch to lose in
+thirty minutes?  Five? ten? fifteen?  It might be so; already, it
+seemed years since he had left St. James's Hall on this so
+promising enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be
+looked for.
+
+In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses
+settled down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had
+lived for centuries and for centuries been dead.  The buildings and
+the people in the street became incredibly small, and far-away, and
+bright; London sounded in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the
+rattle of the cab that nearly charged him down, was like a sound
+from Africa.  Meanwhile, he was conscious of a strange abstraction
+from himself; and heard and felt his footfalls on the ground, as
+those of a very old, small, debile and tragically fortuned man,
+whom he sincerely pitied.
+
+As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a
+medium, it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air,
+there slipped into his mind the recollection of a certain entry in
+Whitcomb Street hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his tragic
+cargo unremarked.  Thither, then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he
+went, to float above the pavement; and there, in the mouth of the
+entry, he found a man in a sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a
+straw.  He passed him by, and twice patrolled the entry, scouting
+for the barest chance; but the man had faced about and continued to
+observe him curiously.
+
+Another hope was gone.  M'Guire reissued from the entry, still
+followed by the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat.
+He once more consulted his watch:  there were but fourteen minutes
+left to him.  At that, it seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were
+spread about his brain; for a second or two, he saw the world as
+red as blood; and thereafter entered into a complete possession of
+himself, with an incredible cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him
+to sing and chuckle as he walked.  And yet this mirth seemed to
+belong to things external; and within, like a black and leaden-
+heavy kernel, he was conscious of the weight upon his soul.
+
+
+I care for nobody, no, not I,
+And nobody cares for me,
+
+
+he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the
+passengers stared upon him on the street.  And still the warmth
+seemed to increase and to become more genial.  What was life? he
+considered, and what he, M'Guire?  What even Erin, our green Erin?
+All seemed so incalculably little that he smiled as he looked down
+upon it.  He would have given years, had he possessed them, for a
+glass of spirits; but time failed, and he must deny himself this
+last indulgence.
+
+At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom
+cab; jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the
+Embankment, which he named; and as soon as the vehicle was in
+motion, concealed the bag as completely as he could under the
+vantage of the apron, and once more drew out his watch.  So he rode
+for five interminable minutes, his heart in his mouth at every
+jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearing to wake the
+attention of the driver by too obvious a change of plan, and
+willing, if possible, to leave him time to forget the Gladstone
+bag.
+
+At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed;
+the cab was stopped; and he alighted--with how glad a heart!  He
+thrust his hand into his pocket.  All was now over; he had saved
+his life; nor that alone, but he had engineered a striking act of
+dynamite; for what could be more pictorial, what more effective,
+than the explosion of a hansom cab, as it sped rapidly along the
+streets of London.  He felt in one pocket; then in another.  The
+most crushing seizure of despair descended on his soul; and struck
+into abject dumbness, he stared upon the driver.  He had not one
+penny.
+
+'Hillo,' said the driver, 'don't seem well.'
+
+'Lost my money,' said M'Guire, in tones so faint and strange that
+they surprised his hearing.
+
+The man looked through the trap.  'I dessay,' said he:  'you've
+left your bag.'
+
+M'Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that
+black continent at arm's length, withered inwardly and felt his
+features sharpen as with mortal sickness.
+
+'This is not mine,' said he.  'Your last fare must have left it.
+You had better take it to the station.'
+
+'Now look here,' returned the cabman:  'are you off your chump? or
+am I?'
+
+'Well, then, I'll tell you what,' exclaimed M'Guire; 'you take it
+for your fare!'
+
+'Oh, I dessay,' replied the driver.  'Anything else?  What's IN
+your bag?  Open it, and let me see.'
+
+'No, no,' returned M'Guire.  'Oh no, not that.  It's a surprise;
+it's prepared expressly:  a surprise for honest cabmen.'
+
+'No, you don't,' said the man, alighting from his perch, and coming
+very close to the unhappy patriot.  'You're either going to pay my
+fare, or get in again and drive to the office.'
+
+It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M'Guire spied the
+stout figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing
+near along the Embankment.  The man was not unknown to him; he had
+bought of his wares, and heard him quoted for the soul of
+liberality; and such was now the nearness of his peril, that even
+at such a straw of hope, he clutched with gratitude.
+
+'Thank God!' he cried.  'Here comes a friend of mine.  I'll
+borrow.'  And he dashed to meet the tradesman.  'Sir,' said he,
+'Mr. Godall, I have dealt with you--you doubtless know my face--
+calamities for which I cannot blame myself have overwhelmed me.
+Oh, sir, for the love of innocence, for the sake of the bonds of
+humanity, and as you hope for mercy at the throne of grace, lend me
+two-and-six!'
+
+'I do not recognise your face,' replied Mr. Godall; 'but I remember
+the cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike.
+Here, sir, is a sovereign; which I very willingly advance to you,
+on the single condition that you shave your chin.'
+
+M'Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman,
+calling out to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps,
+flung the bag far forth into the river, and fell headlong after it.
+He was plucked from a watery grave, it is believed, by the hands of
+Mr. Godall.  Even as he was being hoisted dripping to the shore, a
+dull and choked explosion shook the solid masonry of the
+Embankment, and far out in the river a momentary fountain rose and
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Continued)
+
+
+
+Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.  He
+had, in the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon;
+the plotter began to melt in twain, and seemed to expand and hover
+on his seat; and with a vague sense of nightmare, the young man
+rose unsteadily to his feet, and, refusing the proffer of a third
+grog, insisted that the hour was late and he must positively get to
+bed.
+
+'Dear me,' observed Zero, 'I find you very temperate.  But I will
+not be oppressive.  Suffice it that we are now fast friends; and,
+my dear landlord, au revoir!'
+
+So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the politest
+ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted the bewildered
+young gentleman to the top of the stair.
+
+Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset
+remained in utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow,
+he started broad awake, there fell upon his mind a perfect
+hurricane of horror and wonder.  That he should have suffered
+himself to be led into the semblance of intimacy with such a man as
+his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold light of day, a
+mystery of human weakness.  True, he was caught in a situation that
+might have tested the aplomb of Talleyrand.  That was perhaps a
+palliation; but it was no excuse.  For so wholesale a capitulation
+of principle, for such a fall into criminal familiarity, no excuse
+indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw at once from
+the relation.
+
+As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on a
+rupture.  Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.
+
+'Come in,' he cried, 'dear Mr. Somerset!  Come in, sit down, and,
+without ceremony, join me at my morning meal.'
+
+'Sir,' said Somerset, 'you must permit me first to disengage my
+honour.  Last night, I was surprised into a certain appearance of
+complicity; but once for all, let me inform you that I regard you
+and your machinations with unmingled horror and disgust, and I will
+leave no stone unturned to crush your vile conspiracy.'
+
+'My dear fellow,' replied Zero, with an air of some complacency, 'I
+am well accustomed to these human weaknesses.  Disgust?  I have
+felt it myself; it speedily wears off.  I think none the worse, I
+think the more of you, for this engaging frankness.  And in the
+meanwhile, what are you to do?  You find yourself, if I interpret
+rightly, in very much the same situation as Charles the Second
+(possibly the least degraded of your British sovereigns) when he
+was taken into the confidence of the thief.  To denounce me, is out
+of the question; and what else can you attempt?  No, dear Mr.
+Somerset, your hands are tied; and you find yourself condemned,
+under pain of behaving like a cad, to be that same charming and
+intellectual companion who delighted me last night.'
+
+'At least,' cried Somerset, 'I can, and do, order you to leave this
+house.'
+
+'Ah!' cried the plotter, 'but there I fail to follow you.  You may,
+if you please, enact the part of Judas; but if, as I suppose, you
+recoil from that extremity of meanness, I am, on my side, far too
+intelligent to leave these lodgings, in which I please myself
+exceedingly, and from which you lack the power to drive me.  No,
+no, dear sir; here I am, and here I propose to stay.'
+
+'I repeat,' cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense of his own
+weakness, 'I repeat that I give you warning.  I am the master of
+this house; and I emphatically give you warning.'
+
+'A week's warning?' said the imperturbable conspirator.  'Very
+well:  we will talk of it a week from now.  That is arranged; and
+in the meanwhile, I observe my breakfast growing cold.  Do, dear
+Mr. Somerset, since you find yourself condemned, for a week at
+least, to the society of a very interesting character, display some
+of that open favour, some of that interest in life's obscurer
+sides, which stamp the character of the true artist.  Hang me, if
+you will, to-morrow; but to-day show yourself divested of the
+scruples of the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share my meal.'
+
+'Man!' cried Somerset, 'do you understand my sentiments?'
+
+'Certainly,' replied Zero; 'and I respect them!  Would you be
+outdone in such a contest? will you alone be partial? and in this
+nineteenth century, cannot two gentlemen of education agree to
+differ on a point of politics?  Come, sir:  all your hard words
+have left me smiling; judge then, which of us is the philosopher!'
+
+Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by
+nature easily amenable to sophistry.  He threw up his hands with a
+gesture of despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator
+invited him.  The meal was excellent; the host not only affable,
+but primed with curious information.  He seemed, indeed, like one
+who had too long endured the torture of silence, to exult in the
+most wholesale disclosures.  The interest of what he had to tell
+was great; his character, besides, developed step by step; and
+Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew some of the discomfort
+of his false position, but began to regard the conspirator with a
+familiarity that verged upon contempt.  In any circumstances, he
+had a singular inability to leave the society in which he found
+himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like a
+limed sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow
+hour, was easily persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did
+not even attempt to withdraw till, on the approach of evening,
+Zero, with many apologies, dismissed his guest.  His fellow-
+conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely explained, as they were
+unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the young man, would be
+alarmed at the sight of a strange face.
+
+As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of the
+morning.  He raged at the thought of his facility; he paced the
+dining-room, forming the sternest resolutions for the future; he
+wrung the hand which had been dishonoured by the touch of an
+assassin; and among all these whirling thoughts, there flashed in
+from time to time, and ever with a chill of fear, the thought of
+the confounded ingredients with which the house was stored.  A
+powder magazine seemed a secure smoking-room alongside of the
+Superfluous Mansion.
+
+He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing bowl.  As
+long as the bars were open, he travelled from one to another,
+seeking light, safety, and the companionship of human faces; when
+these resources failed him, he fell back on the belated baked-
+potato man; and at length, still pacing the streets, he was goaded
+to fraternise with the police.  Alas, with what a sense of guilt he
+conversed with these guardians of the law; how gladly had he wept
+upon their ample bosoms; and how the secret fluttered to his lips
+and was still denied an exit!  Fatigue began at last to triumph
+over remorse; and about the hour of the first milkman, he returned
+to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a horrid expectation,
+as though it should have burst that instant into flames; drew out
+his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps, once more
+lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a coffee-
+shop.
+
+It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.  Dismally searching in
+his pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and when he
+had paid the price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to
+return to the Superfluous Mansion.  He sneaked into the hall and
+stole on tiptoe to the cupboard where he kept his money.  Yet half
+a minute, he told himself, and he would be free for days from his
+obseding lodger, and might decide at leisure on the course he
+should pursue.  But fate had otherwise designed:  there came a tap
+at the door and Zero entered.
+
+'Have I caught you?' he cried, with innocent gaiety.  'Dear fellow,
+I was growing quite impatient.'  And on the speaker's somewhat
+stolid face, there came a glow of genuine affection.  'I am so long
+unused to have a friend,' he continued, 'that I begin to be afraid
+I may prove jealous.'  And he wrung the hand of his landlord.
+
+Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting.
+To reject these kind advances was beyond his strength.  That he
+could not return cordiality for cordiality, was already almost more
+than he could carry.  That inequality between kind sentiments
+which, to generous characters, will always seem to be a sort of
+guilt, oppressed him to the ground; and he stammered vague and
+lying words.
+
+'That is all right,' cried Zero--'that is as it should be--say no
+more!  I had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted me; but I now
+own that fear to have been unworthy, and apologise.  To doubt of
+your forgiveness were to repeat my sin.  Come, then; dinner waits;
+join me again and tell me your adventures of the night.'
+
+Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself
+once more to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal
+acquaintance.  Once more, the plotter plunged up to the neck in
+damaging disclosures:  now it would be the name and biography of an
+individual, now the address of some important centre, that rose, as
+if by accident, upon his lips; and each word was like another turn
+of the thumbscrew to his unhappy guest.  Finally, the course of
+Zero's bland monologue led him to the young lady of two days ago:
+that young lady, who had flashed on Somerset for so brief a while
+but with so conquering a charm; and whose engaging grace,
+communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt,
+remained imprinted on his memory.
+
+'You saw her?' said Zero.  'Beautiful, is she not?  She, too, is
+one of ours:  a true enthusiast:  nervous, perhaps, in presence of
+the chemicals; but in matters of intrigue, the very soul of skill
+and daring.  Lake, Fonblanque, de Marly, Valdevia, such are some of
+the names that she employs; her true name--but there, perhaps, I go
+too far.  Suffice it, that it is to her I owe my present lodging,
+and, dear Somerset, the pleasure of your acquaintance.  It appears
+she knew the house.  You see dear fellow, I make no concealment:
+all that you can care to hear, I tell you openly.'
+
+'For God's sake,' cried the wretched Somerset, 'hold your tongue!
+You cannot imagine how you torture me!'
+
+A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance of
+Zero.
+
+'There are times,' he said, 'when I begin to fancy that you do not
+like me.  Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of cordiality?  I am
+depressed; the touchstone of my life draws near; and if I fail'--he
+gloomily nodded--'from all the height of my ambitious schemes, I
+fall, dear boy, into contempt.  These are grave thoughts, and you
+may judge my need of your delightful company.  Innocent prattler,
+you relieve the weight of my concerns.  And yet . . . and yet . .
+.'  The speaker pushed away his plate, and rose from table.
+'Follow me,' said he, 'follow me.  My mood is on; I must have air,
+I must behold the plain of battle.'
+
+So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion,
+and thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform,
+sheltered at one end by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the
+actual summit of the roof.  On both sides, it bordered, without
+parapet or rail, on the incline of slates; and, northward above
+all, commanded an extensive view of housetops, and rising through
+the smoke, the distant spires of churches.
+
+'Here,' cried Zero, 'you behold this field of city, rich, crowded,
+laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how soon, to be
+laid low!  Some day, some night, from this coign of vantage, you
+shall perhaps be startled by the detonation of the judgment gun--
+not sharp and empty like the crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed and
+unctuously solemn.  Instantly thereafter, you shall behold the
+flames break forth.  Ay,' he cried, stretching forth his hand, 'ay,
+that will be a day of retribution.  Then shall the pallid constable
+flee side by side with the detected thief.  Blaze!' he cried,
+'blaze, derided city!  Fall, flatulent monarchy, fall like Dagon!'
+
+With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for
+Somerset's quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into
+space.  Pale as a sheet, and limp as a pocket-handkerchief, he was
+dragged from the edge of downfall by one arm; helped, or rather
+carried, down the ladder; and deposited in safety on the attic
+landing.  Here he began to come to himself, wiped his brow, and at
+length, seizing Somerset's hand in both of his, began to utter his
+acknowledgments.
+
+'This seals it,' said he.  'Ours is a life and death connection.
+You have plucked me from the jaws of death; and if I were before
+attracted by your character, judge now of the ardour of my
+gratitude and love!  But I perceive I am still greatly shaken.
+Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your arm as far as my apartment.'
+
+A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his
+customary self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and
+genially convalescent, when his eye was attracted by the dejection
+of the unfortunate young man.
+
+'Good heavens, dear Somerset,' he cried, 'what ails you?  Let me
+offer you a touch of spirits.'
+
+But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material comfort.
+
+'Let me be,' he said.  'I am lost; you have caught me in the toils.
+Up to this moment, I have lived all my life in the most reckless
+manner, and done exactly what I pleased, with the most perfect
+innocence.  And now--what am I?  Are you so blind and wooden that
+you do not see the loathing you inspire me with?  Is it possible
+you can suppose me willing to continue to exist upon such terms?
+To think,' he cried, 'that a young man, guilty of no fault on earth
+but amiability, should find himself involved in such a damned
+imbroglio!'  And placing his knuckles in his eyes, Somerset rolled
+upon the sofa.
+
+'My God,' said Zero, 'is this possible?  And I so filled with
+tenderness and interest!  Can it be, dear Somerset, that you are
+under the empire of these out-worn scruples? or that you judge a
+patriot by the morality of the religious tract?  I thought you were
+a good agnostic.'
+
+'Mr. Jones,' said Somerset, 'it is in vain to argue.  I boast
+myself a total disbeliever, not only in revealed religion, but in
+the data, method, and conclusions of the whole of ethics.  Well!
+what matters it? what signifies a form of words?  I regard you as a
+reptile, whom I would rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel.
+You would blow up others?  Well then, understand:  I want, with
+every circumstance of infamy and agony, to blow up you!'
+
+'Somerset, Somerset!' said Zero, turning very pale, 'this is wrong;
+this is very wrong.  You pain, you wound me, Somerset.'
+
+'Give me a match!' cried Somerset wildly.  'Let me set fire to this
+incomparable monster!  Let me perish with him in his fall!'
+
+'For God's sake,' cried Zero, clutching hold of the young man, 'for
+God's sake command yourself!  We stand upon the brink; death yawns
+around us; a man--a stranger in this foreign land--one whom you
+have called your friend--'
+
+'Silence!' cried Somerset, 'you are no friend, no friend of mine.
+I look on you with loathing, like a toad:  my flesh creeps with
+physical repulsion; my soul revolts against the sight of you.'
+
+Zero burst into tears.  'Alas!' he sobbed, 'this snaps the last
+link that bound me to humanity.  My friend disowns--he insults me.
+I am indeed accurst.'
+
+Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of
+front.  The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from
+the room and from the house.  The first dash of his escape carried
+him hard upon half-way to the next police-office:  but presently
+began to droop; and before he reached the house of lawful
+intervention, he fell once more among doubtful counsels.  Was he an
+agnostic? had he a right to act?  Away with such nonsense, and let
+Zero perish! ran his thoughts.  And then again:  had he not
+promised, had he not shaken hands and broken bread? and that with
+open eyes? and if so how could he take action, and not forfeit
+honour?  But honour? what was honour?  A figment, which, in the hot
+pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.  Ay, but crime?  A
+figment, too, which his enfranchised intellect discarded.  All day,
+he wandered in the parks, a prey to whirling thoughts; all night,
+patrolled the city; and at the peep of day he sat down by the
+wayside in the neighbourhood of Peckham and bitterly wept.  His
+gods had fallen.  He who had chosen the broad, daylit, unencumbered
+paths of universal scepticism, found himself still the bondslave of
+honour.  He who had accepted life from a point of view as lofty as
+the predatory eagle's, though with no design to prey; he who had
+clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of commercial
+competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to help the escaping
+murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found, to the
+overthrow of all his logic, that he objected to the use of
+dynamite.  The dawn crept among the sleeping villas and over the
+smokeless fields of city; and still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed
+over his fall from consistency.
+
+At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.  'There is
+no question as to fact,' he cried; 'right and wrong are but
+figments and the shadow of a word; but for all that, there are
+certain things that I cannot do, and there are certain others that
+I will not stand.'  Thereupon he decided to return to make one last
+effort of persuasion, and, if he could not prevail on Zero to
+desist from his infernal trade, throw delicacy to the winds, give
+the plotter an hour's start, and denounce him to the police.  Fast
+as he went, being winged by this resolution, it was already well on
+in the morning when he came in sight of the Superfluous Mansion.
+Tripping down the steps, was the young lady of the various aliases;
+and he was surprised to see upon her countenance the marks of anger
+and concern.
+
+'Madam,' he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear knowledge
+of what he was to add.
+
+But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock of
+fear or horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden
+movement; and fled, without turning, from the square.
+
+Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes of
+Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic episode of
+THE BROWN BOX.
+
+
+
+DESBOROUGH'S ADVENTURE:  THE BROWN BOX
+
+
+
+Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
+Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London,
+but itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace.  It was
+in Queen Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the
+Children's Hospital, on your left hand as you go north:  Queen
+Square, sacred to humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made
+beautiful, where the poor were taught, where the sparrows were
+plentiful and loud, and where groups of patient little ones would
+hover all day long before the hospital, if by chance they might
+kiss their hand or speak a word to their sick brother at the
+window.  Desborough's room was on the first floor and fronted to
+the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he often
+profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which looked
+down upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn commanded
+by the windows of an empty room.
+
+On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon
+this terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now
+some weeks on the vain quest of situations, and prepared for
+melancholy and tobacco.  Here, at least, he told himself that he
+would be alone; for, like most youths, who are neither rich, nor
+witty, nor successful, he rather shunned than courted the society
+of other men.  Even as he expressed the thought, his eye alighted
+on the window of the room that looked upon the terrace; and to his
+surprise and annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a silken
+hanging.  It was like his luck, he thought; his privacy was gone,
+he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer
+suffer his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself
+with sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he
+struck his pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force.  It was an
+old, sweet, seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long
+employment, and justly dear to his fancy.  What, then, was his
+chagrin, when the head snapped from the stem, leaped airily in
+space, and fell and disappeared among the lilacs of the garden?
+
+He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the
+story-paper which he had brought with him to read, tore off a
+fragment of the last sheet, which contains only the answers to
+correspondents, and set himself to roll a cigarette.  He was no
+master of the art; again and again, the paper broke between his
+fingers and the tobacco showered upon the ground; and he was
+already on the point of angry resignation, when the window swung
+slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and a lady,
+somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.
+
+'Senorito,' said she, and there was a rich thrill in her voice,
+like an organ note, 'Senorito, you are in difficulties.  Suffer me
+to come to your assistance.'
+
+With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting
+hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough's eyes, seemed
+magical, rolled and presented him a cigarette.  He took it, still
+seated, still without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that
+apparition.  Her face was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was
+that piquant triangle, so innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so
+rare in our more northern climates; her eyes were large, starry,
+and visited by changing lights; her hair was partly covered by a
+lace mantilla, through which her arms, bare to the shoulder,
+gleamed white; her figure, full and soft in all the womanly
+contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life, and
+slender by grace of some divine proportion.
+
+'You do not like my cigarrito, Senor?' she asked.  'Yet it is
+better made than yours.'  At that she laughed, and her laughter
+trilled in his ear like music; but the next moment her face fell.
+'I see,' she cried.  'It is my manner that repels you.  I am too
+constrained, too cold.  I am not,' she added, with a more engaging
+air, 'I am not the simple English maiden I appear.'
+
+'Oh!' murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.
+
+'In my own dear land,' she pursued, 'things are differently
+ordered.  There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous
+restrictions; little is permitted her; she learns to be distant,
+she learns to appear forbidding.  But here, in free England--oh,
+glorious liberty!' she cried, and threw up her arms with a gesture
+of inimitable grace--'here there are no fetters; here the woman may
+dare to be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men--is it
+not written on the very shield of your nation, honi soit?  Ah, it
+is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself.  You
+must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this
+stiffness, I shall end by growing English.  Do I speak the language
+well?'
+
+'Perfectly--oh, perfectly!' said Harry, with a fervency of
+conviction worthy of a graver subject.
+
+'Ah, then,' she said, 'I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my
+father's veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in
+your expressive tongue.  If I speak already without accent, with my
+thorough English appearance, there is nothing left to change except
+my manners.'
+
+'Oh no,' said Desborough.  'Oh pray not!  I--madam--'
+
+'I am,' interrupted the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia.  The
+evening air grows chill.  Adios, Senorito.'  And before Harry could
+stammer out a word, she had disappeared into her room.
+
+He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand.
+His thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and
+beautified the image of his new acquaintance.  Her voice re-echoed
+in his memory; her eyes, of which he could not tell the colour,
+haunted his soul.  The clouds had risen at her coming, and he
+beheld a new-created world.  What she was, he could not fancy, but
+he adored her.  Her age, he durst not estimate; fearing to find her
+older than himself, and thinking sacrilege to couple that fair
+favour with the thought of mortal changes.  As for her character,
+beauty to the young is always good.  So the poor lad lingered late
+upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at the curtained window,
+sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of romance;
+and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled
+mutton and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.
+
+Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little
+ajar, and he enjoyed a view of the lady's shoulder, as she sat
+patiently sewing and all unconscious of his presence.  On the next,
+he had scarce appeared when the window opened, and the Senorita
+tripped forth into the sunlight, in a morning disorder, delicately
+neat, and yet somehow foreign, tropical, and strange.  In one hand
+she held a packet.
+
+'Will you try,' she said, 'some of my father's tobacco--from dear
+Cuba?  There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as
+gentlemen.  So you need not fear to annoy me.  The fragrance will
+remind me of home.  My home, Senor, was by the sea.'  And as she
+uttered these few words, Desborough, for the first time in his
+life, realised the poetry of the great deep.  'Awake or asleep, I
+dream of it:  dear home, dear Cuba!'
+
+'But some day,' said Desborough, with an inward pang, 'some day you
+will return?'
+
+' Never!' she cried; 'ah, never, in Heaven's name!'
+
+'Are you then resident for life in England?' he inquired, with a
+strange lightening of spirit.
+
+'You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,' she answered
+sadly; and then, resuming her gaiety of manner:  'But you have not
+tried my Cuban tobacco,' she said.
+
+'Senorita,' said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in
+her manner, 'whatever comes to me--you--I mean,' he concluded,
+deeply flushing, 'that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.'
+
+'Ah, Senor,' she said, with almost mournful gravity, 'you seemed so
+simple and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments--and
+besides,' she added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into
+a smile, 'you do it so badly!  English gentlemen, I used to hear,
+could be fast friends, respectful, honest friends; could be
+companions, comforters, if the need arose, or champions, and yet
+never encroach.  Do not seek to please me by copying the graces of
+my countrymen.  Be yourself:  the frank, kindly, honest English
+gentleman that I have heard of since my childhood and still longed
+to meet.'
+
+Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the
+Cuban gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.
+
+'Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Senor,'
+said the lady.  'See!' marking a line with her dainty, slippered
+foot, 'thus far it shall be common ground; there, at my window-
+sill, begins the scientific frontier.  If you choose, you may drive
+me to my forts; but if, on the other hand, we are to be real
+English friends, I may join you here when I am not too sad; or,
+when I am yet more graciously inclined, you may draw your chair
+beside the window and teach me English customs, while I work.  You
+will find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the task.'  She
+laid her hand lightly upon Harry's arm, and looked into his eyes.
+'Do you know,' said she, 'I am emboldened to believe that I have
+already caught something of your English aplomb?  Do you not
+perceive a change, Senor?  Slight, perhaps, but still a change?  Is
+my deportment not more open, more free, more like that of the dear
+"British Miss" than when you saw me first?'  She gave a radiant
+smile; withdrew her hand from Harry's arm; and before the young man
+could formulate in words the eloquent emotions that ran riot
+through his brain--with an 'Adios, Senor:  good-night, my English
+friend,' she vanished from his sight behind the curtain.
+
+The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the
+neutral terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the
+dinner-hour summoned him at length from the scene of
+disappointment.  On the next it rained; but nothing, neither
+business nor weather, neither prospective poverty nor present
+hardship, could now divert the young man from the service of his
+lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised, he took
+his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture of
+damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with tender
+and delightful ardours.  Presently the window opened, and the fair
+Cuban, with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared upon the sill.
+
+'Come here,' she said, 'here, beside my window.  The small verandah
+gives a belt of shelter.'  And she graciously handed him a folding-
+chair.
+
+As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain
+bulkiness in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-
+handed.
+
+'I have taken the liberty,' said he, 'of bringing you a little
+book.  I thought of you, when I observed it on the stall, because I
+saw it was in Spanish.  The man assured me it was by one of the
+best authors, and quite proper.'  As he spoke, he placed the little
+volume in her hand.  Her eyes fell as she turned the pages, and a
+flush rose and died again upon her cheeks, as deep as it was
+fleeting.  'You are angry,' he cried in agony.  'I have presumed.'
+
+'No, Senor, it is not that,' returned the lady.  'I--' and a flood
+of colour once more mounted to her brow--'I am confused and ashamed
+because I have deceived you.  Spanish,' she began, and paused--
+'Spanish is, of course, my native tongue,' she resumed, as though
+suddenly taking courage; 'and this should certainly put the highest
+value on your thoughtful present; but alas, sir, of what use is it
+to me?  And how shall I confess to you the truth--the humiliating
+truth--that I cannot read?'
+
+As Harry's eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban
+seemed to shrink before his gaze.  'Read?' repeated Harry.  'You!'
+
+She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
+gesture.  'Enter, Senor,' said she.  'The time has come to which I
+have long looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either
+fear to lose your friendship, or tell you without disguise the
+story of my life.'
+
+It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry passed
+the window.  A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had
+presided over the studied disorder of the room in which he found
+himself.  It was filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and
+scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant and curious
+trifles-fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket,
+and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full
+of unset jewels.  The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the
+fit masterpiece for that rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and
+sinking herself into another, thus began her history.
+
+
+
+STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN
+
+
+
+I am not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one hand,
+from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal
+line, from the patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was the descendant
+of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings were African.  She was
+fair as the day:  fairer than I, for I inherited a darker strain of
+blood from the veins of my European father; her mind was noble, her
+manners queenly and accomplished; and seeing her more than the
+equal of her neighbours, and surrounded by the most considerate
+affection and respect, I grew up to adore her, and when the time
+came, received her last sigh upon my lips, still ignorant that she
+was a slave, and alas! my father's mistress.  Her death, which
+befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had known:
+it left our home bereaved of its attractions, cast a shade of
+melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and
+durable change.  Months went by; with the elasticity of my years, I
+regained some of the simple mirth that had before distinguished me;
+the plantation smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate
+had already forgotten my mother and transferred their simple
+obedience to myself; but still the cloud only darkened on the brows
+of Senor Valdevia.  His absences from home had been frequent even
+in the old days, for he did business in precious gems in the city
+of Havana; they now became almost continuous; and when he returned,
+it was but for the night and with the manner of a man crushed down
+by adverse fortune.
+
+The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in
+the Caribbean Sea, some half-hour's rowing from the coasts of Cuba.
+It was steep, rugged, and, except for my father's family and
+plantation, uninhabited and left to nature.  The house, a low
+building surrounded by spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of
+ground and looked across the sea to Cuba.  The breezes blew about
+it gratefully, fanned us as we lay swinging in our silken hammocks,
+and tossed the boughs and flowers of the magnolia.  Behind and to
+the left, the quarter of the negroes and the waving fields of the
+plantation covered an eighth part of the surface of the isle.  On
+the right and closely bordering on the garden, lay a vast and
+deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing fever, dotted
+with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters, man-
+eating crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.  Into the
+recesses of that jungle, none could penetrate but those of African
+descent; an invisible, unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the
+European; and the air was death.
+
+One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous
+misfortune) I left my room a little after day, for in that warm
+climate all are early risers, and found not a servant to attend
+upon my wants.  I made the circuit of the house, still calling:
+and my surprise had almost changed into alarm, when coming at last
+into a large verandahed court, I found it thronged with negroes.
+Even then, even when I was amongst them, not one turned or paid the
+least regard to my arrival.  They had eyes and ears for but one
+person:  a woman, richly and tastefully attired; of elegant
+carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old in years, as worn
+and marred by self-indulgence:  her face, which was still
+attractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning
+with the greed of evil.  It was not from her appearance, I believe,
+but from some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of
+fainting terror; as we hear of plants that blight and snakes that
+fascinate, the woman shocked and daunted me.  But I was of a brave
+nature; trod the weakness down; and forcing my way through the
+slaves, who fell back before me in embarrassment, as though in the
+presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones:  'Who is
+this person?'
+
+A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have
+a care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.
+
+In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes,
+studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.
+
+'Young woman,' said she, at last, 'I have had a great experience in
+refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them.  You really
+tempt me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more
+importance, on my hand, I should certainly buy you at your father's
+sale.'
+
+'Madam--' I began, but my voice failed me.
+
+'Is it possible that you do not know your position?' she returned,
+with a hateful laugh.  'How comical!  Positively, I must buy her.
+Accomplishments, I suppose?' she added, turning to the servants.
+
+Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up
+like any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.
+
+'She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,' said
+the Senora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses;
+'and I should take a pleasure,' she pursued, more directly
+addressing myself, 'in bringing you acquainted with a whip.'  And
+she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.
+
+At this, I found expression.  Calling by name upon the servants, I
+bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat,
+and set her back upon the mainland.  But with one voice, they
+protested that they durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading
+and beseeching me to be more wise; and, when I insisted, rising
+higher in passion and speaking of this foul intruder in the terms
+she had deserved, they fell back from me as from one who had
+blasphemed.  A superstitious reverence plainly encircled the
+stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and in the
+paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces; and
+their fear perhaps reacted on myself.  I looked again at Madam
+Mendizabal.  She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through
+her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
+superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of
+rage, fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the
+house.
+
+I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.  As I went,
+my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and
+insults.  Who was she? what, in Heaven's name, the power she
+wielded over my obedient negroes?  Why had she addressed me as a
+slave? why spoken of my father's sale?  To all these tumultuary
+questions I could find no answer; and in the turmoil of my mind,
+nothing was plain except the hateful leering image of the woman.
+
+I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father
+coming to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry that I
+thought would have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a
+passion of sobs and tears upon his bosom.  He made me sit down
+below a tall palmetto that grew not far off; comforted me, but with
+some abstraction in his voice; and as soon as I regained the least
+command upon my feelings, asked me, not without harshness, what
+this grief betokened.  I was surprised by his tone into a still
+greater measure of composure; and in firm tones, though still
+interrupted by sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island,
+at which I thought he started and turned pale; that the servants
+would not obey me; that the stranger's name was Madam Mendizabal,
+and, at that, he seemed to me both troubled and relieved; that she
+had insulted me, treated me as a slave (and here my father's brow
+began to darken), threatened to buy me at a sale, and questioned my
+own servants before my face; and that, at last, finding myself
+quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable liberties, I had
+fled from the house in terror, indignation, and amazement.
+
+'Teresa,' said my father, with singular gravity of voice, 'I must
+make to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there
+is much that you must do to help me; and my daughter must prove
+herself a woman by her spirit.  As for this Mendizabal, what shall
+I say? or how am I to tell you what she is?  Twenty years ago, she
+was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see her--
+prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every
+nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some
+reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her
+ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its
+reason is mysterious.  Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her
+empire:  the rites of Hoodoo.  Be that as it may, I would have you
+dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her
+that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to
+promise, you shall never fall.'
+
+'Father!' I cried.  'Fall?  Was there any truth, then, in her
+words?  Am I--O father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this
+suspense.'
+
+'I will tell you,' he replied, with merciful bluntness.  'Your
+mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a
+competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, where the law
+would suffer me to marry her:  a design too long procrastinated;
+for death, at the last moment, intervened.  You will now understand
+the heaviness with which your mother's memory hangs about my neck.'
+
+I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to
+console the survivor, I forgot myself.
+
+'It matters not,' resumed my father.  'What I have left undone can
+never be repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse.  But,
+Teresa, with so cutting a reminder of the evils of delay, I set
+myself at once to do what was still possible:  to liberate
+yourself.'
+
+I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre
+roughness.
+
+'Your mother's illness,' he resumed, 'had engaged too great a
+portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long at
+the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled
+knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by which I can
+distinguish, even on the darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and
+tell at a glance in what quarter of the earth a gem was
+disinterred--all these had been too long absent from the conduct of
+affairs.  Teresa, I was insolvent.'
+
+'What matters that?' I cried.  'What matters poverty, if we be left
+together with our love and sacred memories?'
+
+'You do not comprehend,' he said gloomily.  'Slave, as you are,
+young--alas! scarce more than child!--accomplished, beautiful with
+the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel--all these qualities
+that should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes
+of those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell.
+You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and worth--heavens, that I
+should say such words!--worth money.  Do you begin to see?  If I
+were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the
+manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a
+slave, and I a criminal.'
+
+I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for
+myself, in sympathy for my father.
+
+'How I have toiled,' he continued, 'how I have dared and striven to
+repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember.  Its
+blessing was denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by
+thinking, but delayed to descend upon my daughter's head.  At
+length, all hope was at an end; I was ruined beyond retrieve; a
+heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which I could not meet; I
+should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my lands, my jewels
+that I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and rendered
+happy, and oh! tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be
+sold and pass into the hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers.
+Too long, I saw, had I accepted and profited by this great crime of
+slavery; but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied daughter, was
+SHE to pay the price?  I cried out--no!--I took Heaven to witness
+my temptation; I caught up this bag and fled.  Close upon my track
+are the pursuers; perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will
+land upon this isle, sacred to the memory of the dear soul that
+bore you, to consign your father to an ignominious prison, and
+yourself to slavery and dishonour.  We have not many hours before
+us.  Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good fortune, an
+English yacht has for some days been hovering.  It belongs to Sir
+George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I have
+rendered unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our
+escape.  Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the
+power to force him.  For what does it mean, my child--what means
+this Englishman, who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and
+returns from every trip with new and valuable gems?'
+
+'He may have found a mine,' I hazarded.
+
+'So he declares,' returned my father; 'but the strange gift I have
+received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.  He brought me
+diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second
+glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had first
+seen the day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their
+peculiar water and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of
+ancient temples.  Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries.  Oh,
+he is cunning, but I was cunninger than he.  He visited, I found,
+the shop of every jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies, to
+one with emeralds, to one with precious beryl; to all, with this
+same story of the mine.  But in what mine, what rich epitome of the
+earth's surface, were there conjoined the rubies of Ispahan, the
+pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of Golconda?  No, child,
+that man, for all his yacht and title, that man must fear and must
+obey me.  To-night, then, as soon as it is dark, we must take our
+way through the swamp by the path which I shall presently show you;
+thence, across the highlands of the isle, a track is blazed, which
+shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close by the yacht
+is riding.  Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I look
+to see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man attends
+on the mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be
+dark, the redness of a fire, if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on
+the opposing headland; and thus warned, we shall have time to put
+the swamp between ourselves and danger.  Meantime, I would conceal
+this bag; I would, before all things, be seen to arrive at the
+house with empty hands; a blabbing slave might else undo us.  For
+see!' he added; and holding up the bag, which he had already shown
+me, he poured into my lap a shower of unmounted jewels, brighter
+than flowers, of every size and colour, and catching, as they fell,
+upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of the sun.
+
+I could not restrain a cry of admiration.
+
+'Even in your ignorant eyes,' pursued my father, 'they command
+respect.  Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the tool, cold
+as death?  Ingrate!' he cried.  'Each one of these--miracles of
+nature's patience, conceived out of the dust in centuries of
+microscopical activity, each one is, for you and me, a year of
+life, liberty, and mutual affection.  How, then, should I cherish
+them! and why do I delay to place them beyond reach!  Teresa,
+follow me.'
+
+He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle,
+where they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the
+declivity of the hill on which my father's house stood planted.
+For some while he skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the
+thicket.  Then, seeming to recognise some mark, for his countenance
+became immediately lightened of a load of thought, he paused and
+addressed me.  'Here,' said he, 'is the entrance of the secret path
+that I have mentioned, and here you shall await me.  I but pass
+some hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my poor treasure; as
+soon as that is safe, I will return.'  It was in vain that I sought
+to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in vain that I
+begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the black blood that I now
+knew to circulate in my veins:  to all my appeals he turned a deaf
+ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes,
+disappeared into the pestilential silence of the swamp.
+
+At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside;
+and my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused and almost
+staggered in the first shock of the blinding sunlight.  His face
+was of a singular dusky red; and yet for all the heat of the
+tropical noon, he did not seem to sweat.
+
+'You are tired,' I cried, springing to meet him.  'You are ill.'
+
+'I am tired,' he replied; 'the air in that jungle stifles one; my
+eyes, besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong
+sunshine pierces them like knives.  A moment, Teresa, give me but a
+moment.  All shall yet be well.  I have buried the hoard under a
+cypress, immediately beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of
+the path; beautiful, bright things, they now lie whelmed in slime;
+you shall find them there, if needful.  But come, let us to the
+house; it is time to eat against our journey of the night:  to eat
+and then to sleep, my poor Teresa:  then to sleep.'  And he looked
+upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as if in pity.
+
+We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too
+long, and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy
+stretch of the verandah; and came at length into the grateful
+twilight of the shuttered house.  The meal was spread; the house
+servants, already informed by the boatmen of the master's return,
+were all back at their posts, and terrified, as I could see, to
+face me.  My father still murmuring of haste with weary and
+feverish pertinacity, I hurried at once to take my place at table;
+but I had no sooner left his arm than he paused and thrust forth
+both his hands with a strange gesture of groping.  'How is this?'
+he cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice.  'Am I blind?'  I ran to him
+and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and stood
+stiffly where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as if in a
+painful effort after breath.  Then suddenly he raised both hands to
+his temples, cried out, 'My head, my head!' and reeled and fell
+against the wall.
+
+I knew too well what it must be.  I turned and begged the servants
+to relieve him.  But they, with one accord, denied the possibility
+of hope; the master had gone into the swamp, they said, the master
+must die; all help was idle.  Why should I dwell upon his
+sufferings?  I had him carried to a bed, and watched beside him.
+He lay still, and at times ground his teeth, and talked at times
+unintelligibly, only that one word of hurry, hurry, coming
+distinctly to my ears, and telling me that, even in the last
+struggle with the powers of death, his mind was still tortured by
+his daughter's peril.  The sun had gone down, the darkness had
+fallen, when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy earth.
+What thought had I of flight, of safety, of the impending dangers
+of my situation?  Beside the body of my last friend, I had
+forgotten all except the natural pangs of my bereavement.
+
+The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I was
+recalled to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the entrance of
+the slave-girl to whom I have already referred.  The poor soul was
+indeed devotedly attached to me; and it was with streaming tears
+that she broke to me the import of her coming.  With the first
+light of dawn a boat had reached our landing-place, and set on
+shore upon our isle (till now so fortunate) a party of officers
+bearing a warrant to arrest my father's person, and a man of a
+gross body and low manners, who declared the island, the
+plantation, and all its human chattels, to be now his own.  'I
+think,' said my slave-girl, 'he must be a politician or some very
+powerful sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them
+coming, than she took to the woods.'
+
+'Fool,' said I, 'it was the officers she feared; and at any rate
+why does that beldam still dare to pollute the island with her
+presence?  And O Cora,' I exclaimed, remembering my grief, 'what
+matter all these troubles to an orphan?'
+
+'Mistress,' said she, 'I must remind you of two things.  Never
+speak as you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person of
+colour; for she is the most powerful woman in this world, and her
+real name even, if one durst pronounce it, were a spell to raise
+the dead.  And whatever you do, speak no more of her to your
+unhappy Cora; for though it is possible she may be afraid of the
+police (and indeed I think that I have heard she is in hiding), and
+though I know that you will laugh and not believe, yet it is true,
+and proved, and known that she hears every word that people utter
+in this whole vast world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough
+in her black books.  She looks at me, mistress, till my blood turns
+ice.  That is the first I had to say; and now for the second:  do,
+pray, for Heaven's sake, bear in mind that you are no longer the
+poor Senor's daughter.  He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are
+no more than a common slave-girl like myself.  The man to whom you
+belong calls for you; oh, my dear mistress, go at once!  With your
+youth and beauty, you may still, if you are winning and obedient,
+secure yourself an easy life.'
+
+For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may
+conceive; the next, it was gone:  she did but speak after her kind,
+as the bird sings or cattle bellow.  'Go,' said I.  'Go, Cora.  I
+thank you for your kind intentions.  Leave me alone one moment with
+my dead father; and tell this man that I will come at once.'
+
+She went:  and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those
+deaf ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence.
+'Father,' I said, 'it was your last thought, even in the pangs of
+dissolution, that your daughter should escape disgrace.  Here, at
+your side, I swear to you that purpose shall be carried out; by
+what means, I know not; by crime, if need be; and Heaven forgive
+both you and me and our oppressors, and Heaven help my
+helplessness!'  Thereupon I felt strengthened as by long repose;
+stepped to the mirror, ay, even in that chamber of the dead;
+hastily arranged my hair, refreshed my tear-worn eyes, breathed a
+dumb farewell to the originator of my days and sorrows; and
+composing my features to a smile, went forth to meet my master.
+
+He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to
+which he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle
+age, sensual, vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-
+disposed by nature.  But the sparkle that came into his eye as he
+observed me enter, warned me to expect the worst.
+
+'Is this your late mistress?' he inquired of the slaves; and when
+he had learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them.  'Now, my dear,'
+said he, 'I am a plain man:  none of your damned Spaniards, but a
+true blue, hard-working, honest Englishman.  My name is Caulder.'
+
+'Thank you, sir,' said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had seen
+the servants.
+
+'Come,' said he, 'this is better than I had expected; and if you
+choose to be dutiful in the station to which it has pleased God to
+call you, you will find me a very kind old fellow.  I like your
+looks,' he added, calling me by my name, which he scandalously
+mispronounced.  'Is your hair all your own?' he then inquired with
+a certain sharpness, and coming up to me, as though I were a horse,
+he grossly satisfied his doubts.  I was all one flame from head to
+foot, but I contained my righteous anger and submitted.  'That is
+very well,' he continued, chucking me good humouredly under the
+chin.  'You will have no cause to regret coming to old Caulder, eh?
+But that is by the way.  What is more to the point is this:  your
+late master was a most dishonest rogue, and levanted with some
+valuable property that belonged of rights to me.  Now, considering
+your relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person to know
+what has become of it; and I warn you, before you answer, that my
+whole future kindness will depend upon your honesty.  I am an
+honest man myself, and expect the same in my servants.'
+
+'Do you mean the jewels?' said I, sinking my voice into a whisper.
+
+'That is just precisely what I do,' said he, and chuckled.
+
+'Hush!' said I.
+
+'Hush?' he repeated.  'And why hush?  I am on my own place, I would
+have you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful servants.'
+
+'Are the officers gone?' I asked; and oh! how my hopes hung upon
+the answer!
+
+'They are,' said he, looking somewhat disconcerted.  'Why do you
+ask?'
+
+'I wish you had kept them,' I answered, solemnly enough, although
+my heart at that same moment leaped with exultation.  'Master, I
+must not conceal from you the truth.  The servants on this estate
+are in a dangerous condition, and mutiny has long been brewing.'
+
+'Why,' he cried, 'I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers in my
+life.'  But for all that he turned somewhat pale.
+
+'Did they tell you,' I continued, 'that Madam Mendizabal is on the
+island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if,
+this morning, they have received you with even decent civility, it
+was only by her orders--issued with what after-thought I leave you
+to consider?'
+
+'Madam Jezebel?' said he.  'Well, she is a dangerous devil; the
+police are after her, besides, for a whole series of murders; but
+after all, what then?  To be sure, she has a great influence with
+you coloured folk.  But what in fortune's name can be her errand
+here?'
+
+'The jewels,' I replied.  'Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure,
+sapphire and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies red
+as the sunset--of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled
+beauty to the eye!--had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as SHE
+has--you would understand and tremble at your danger.'
+
+'She has seen them!' he cried, and I could see by his face, that my
+audacity was justified by its success.
+
+I caught his hand in mine.  'My master,' said I, 'I am now yours;
+it is my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your interests
+and life.  Hear my advice, then; and, I conjure you, be guided by
+my prudence.  Follow me privily; let none see where we are going; I
+will lead you to the place where the treasure has been buried; that
+once disinterred, let us make straight for the boat, escape to the
+mainland, and not return to this dangerous isle without the
+countenance of soldiers.'
+
+What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a
+devotion?  But this oppressor, through the very arts and
+sophistries he had abused, to quiet the rebellion of his conscience
+and to convince himself that slavery was natural, fell like a child
+into the trap I laid for him.  He praised and thanked me; told me I
+had all the qualities he valued in a servant; and when he had
+questioned me further as to the nature and value of the treasure,
+and I had once more artfully inflamed his greed, bade me without
+delay proceed to carry out my plan of action.
+
+From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by
+devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of
+the swamp.  I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound,
+the tools, and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be
+spied upon and followed.  When we were come as far as the beginning
+of the path, it flashed into my mind I had forgotten meat; and
+leaving Mr. Caulder in the shadow of a tree, I returned alone to
+the house for a basket of provisions.  Were they for him?  I asked
+myself.  And a voice within me answered, No. While we were face to
+face, while I still saw before my eyes the man to whom I belonged
+as the hand belongs to the body, my indignation held me bravely up.
+But now that I was alone, I conceived a sickness at myself and my
+designs that I could scarce endure; I longed to throw myself at his
+feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn him from that
+pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die; but my vow
+to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon
+these scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected
+the horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that
+I returned to the borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that
+I bade him rise and follow me.
+
+The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through
+the living jungle.  On either hand and overhead, the mass of
+foliage was continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through
+the depth of super-impending wood; and the air was hot like steam,
+and heady with vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs
+and brain.  Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent
+footprints; on each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my
+passing skirts with a continuous hissing rustle; and but for these
+sentient vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless
+and noiseless.
+
+We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with
+sudden nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.  My heart
+yearned, as I beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal
+to return upon his steps.  What were a few jewels in the scales
+with life? I asked.  But no, he said; that witch Madam Jezebel
+would find them out; he was an honest man, and would not stand to
+be defrauded, and so forth, panting the while, like a sick dog.
+Presently he got to his feet again, protesting he had conquered his
+uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I saw in his
+changed countenance, the first approaches of death.
+
+'Master,' said I, 'you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills
+me with dread.  Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the
+rubies that we seek.'
+
+'Wench,' he cried, 'look before you; look at your steps.  I declare
+to Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall
+remind you of the change in your position.'
+
+A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a
+whisper, that its touch was death.  Presently a great green
+serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the
+path; and once again I paused and looked back at my companion, with
+a horror in my eyes.  'The coffin snake,' said I, 'the snake that
+dogs its victim like a hound.'
+
+But he was not to be dissuaded.  'I am an old traveller,' said he.
+'This is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.'
+
+'Ay,' said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, 'what end?'
+
+Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and
+then, perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher,
+'There!' said he.  'What did I tell you?  We are past the worst.'
+
+Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very
+narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we
+could see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and
+hanging creepers:  sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly
+stench, floated on by the flat heads of alligators, and its banks
+alive with scarlet crabs.
+
+'If we fall from that unsteady bridge,' said I, 'see, where the
+caiman lies ready to devour us!  If, by the least divergence from
+the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads
+of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket!  Once helpless,
+how they would swarm together to the assault!  What could man do
+against a thousand of such mailed assailants?  And what a death
+were that, to perish alive under their claws.'
+
+'Are you mad, girl?' he cried.  'I bid you be silent and lead on.'
+
+Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the
+stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face.
+'Lead on!' he cried again.  'Must I be all day, catching my death
+in this vile slough, and all for a prating slave-girl?'
+
+I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled
+back upon my heart.  Something, I know not what, fell at that
+moment with a dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told
+myself it was my pity that had fallen.
+
+On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood
+was not so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved.  It
+was possible, here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter
+daylight, or to distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites,
+the proportions of some soaring tree.  The cypress on the left
+stood very visibly forth, upon the edge of such a clearing; the
+path in that place widened broadly; and there was a patch of open
+ground, beset with horrible ant-heaps, thick with their artificers.
+I laid down the tools and basket by the cypress root, where they
+were instantly blackened over with the crawling ants; and looked
+once more in the face of my unconscious victim.  Mosquitoes and
+foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his features were
+obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the turning of a
+mighty wheel.
+
+'Here,' I said, 'is the spot.  I cannot dig, for I have not learned
+to use such instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to
+be swift in what you do.'
+
+He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I
+saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my
+father's.  'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns
+around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds me.  Have you
+not wine?'
+
+I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.  'It is for you to
+think,' said I, 'if you should further persevere.  The swamp has an
+ill name.'  And at the word I ominously nodded.
+
+'Give me the pick,' said he.  'Where are the jewels buried?'
+
+I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and
+dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging
+it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man.  At first, there
+broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine,
+and in which the greedy insects settled thickly.
+
+'To sweat in such a place,' said I.  'O master, is this wise?
+Fever is drunk in through open pores.'
+
+'What do you mean?' he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in
+the soil.  'Do you seek to drive me mad?  Do you think I do not
+understand the danger that I run?'
+
+'That is all I want,' said I:  'I only wish you to be swift.'  And
+then, my mind flitting to my father's deathbed, I began to murmur,
+scarce above my breath, the same vain repetition of words, 'Hurry,
+hurry, hurry.'
+
+Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and
+while he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and
+uncertain blows, repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a
+song, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry;' and then again, 'There is no time to
+lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill name;' and then back to
+'Hurry, hurry, hurry,' with a dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and
+yet wearied utterance, as a sick man rolls upon his pillow.  The
+sweat had disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I could see of
+him, of the same dull brick red.  Presently his pick unearthed the
+bag of jewels; but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at
+the soil.
+
+'Master,' said I, 'there is the treasure.'  He seemed to waken from
+a dream.  'Where?' he cried; and then, seeing it before his eyes,
+'Can this be possible?' he added.  'I must be light-headed.  Girl,'
+he cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had
+once before observed, 'what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?'
+
+'It is a grave,' I answered.  'You will not go out alive; and as
+for me, my life is in God's hands.'
+
+He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether
+from the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady,
+I cannot tell.  Pretty soon, he raised his head.  'You have brought
+me here to die,' he said; 'at the risk of your own days, you have
+condemned me.  Why?'
+
+'To save my honour,' I replied.  'Bear me out that I have warned
+you.  Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer.'
+
+He took out his revolver and handed it to me.  'You see,' he said,
+'I could have killed you even yet.  But I am dying, as you say;
+nothing could save me; and my bill is long enough already.  Dear
+me, dear me,' he said, looking in my face with a curious, puzzled,
+and pathetic look, like a dull child at school, 'if there be a
+judgment afterwards, my bill is long enough.'
+
+At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet,
+kissed his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into
+his grasp and besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with
+my life I could have bought back his, I had not balanced at the
+cost.  But he was determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more
+bitterly regret my act.
+
+'I have nothing to forgive,' said he.  'Dear heaven, what a thing
+is an old fool!  I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a
+fancy to me.'
+
+He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming
+dizziness, clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of
+some woman.  Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking
+tears, lessened and died away; and he came again to the full
+possession of his mind.  'I must write my will,' he said.  'Get out
+my pocket-book.'  I did so, and he wrote hurriedly on one page with
+a pencil.  'Do not let my son know,' he said; 'he is a cruel dog,
+is my son Philip; do not let him know how you have paid me out;'
+and then all of a sudden, 'God,' he cried, 'I am blind,' and
+clapped both hands before his eyes; and then again, and in a
+groaning whisper, 'Don't leave me to the crabs!'  I swore I would
+be true to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my
+promise.  I sat there and watched him, as I had watched my father,
+but with what different, with what appalling thoughts!  Through the
+long afternoon, he gradually sank.  All that while, I fought an
+uphill battle to shield him from the swarms of ants and the clouds
+of mosquitoes:  the prisoner of my crime.  The night fell, the roar
+of insects instantly redoubled in the dark arcades of the swamp;
+and still I was not sure that he had breathed his last.  At length,
+the flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine, grew chill between
+my fingers, and I knew that I was free.
+
+I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to
+die than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and the
+bag of gems, set forward towards the north.  The swamp, at that
+hour of the night, was filled with a continuous din:  animals and
+insects of all kinds, and all inimical to life, contributing their
+parts.  Yet in the midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as
+though my eyes were bandaged, beholding nothing.  The soil sank
+under my foot, with a horrid, slippery consistence, as though I
+were walking among toads; the touch of the thick wall of foliage,
+by which alone I guided myself, affrighted me like the touch of
+serpents; the darkness checked my breathing like a gag; indeed, I
+have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that nocturnal
+walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I
+found the path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot,
+and saw, although still some way in front of me, the silver
+brightness of the moon.
+
+Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth
+amongst noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the
+aromatic smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in
+sunlight, and the expressive silence of the night.  My negro blood
+had carried me unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass;
+by mere good fortune, I had escaped the crawling and stinging
+vermin with which it was alive; and I had now before me the easier
+portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my
+arrival at the haven and my acceptance on the English yacht.  It
+was impossible by night to follow such a track as my father had
+described; and I was casting about for any landmark, and, in my
+ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars, when
+there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of
+many voices hurriedly singing.
+
+I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in
+the direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour's walking,
+came unperceived to the margin of an open glade.  It was lighted by
+the strong moon and by the flames of a fire.  In the midst, there
+stood a little low and rude building, surmounted by a cross:  a
+chapel, as I then remembered to have heard, long since desecrated
+and given over to the rites of Hoodoo.  Hard by the steps of
+entrance was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and
+fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to
+be a heap of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still
+struggling, but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed one upon
+another.  Both the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring of
+kneeling Africans, both men and women.  Now they would raise their
+palms half-closed to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of
+supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their hands
+before them on the ground.  As the double movement passed and
+repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like
+waves upon the sea; and still, as if in time to these
+gesticulations, the hurried chant continued.  I stood spellbound,
+knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing that I had
+stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
+
+Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth a
+tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial
+knife.  He was followed by an apparition still more strange and
+shocking:  Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands
+and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker.  It
+was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with
+the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled
+about her arms.  At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd
+seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant rose in pitch and
+grew more irregular in time and accent.  Then, at a sign from the
+tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in the moon and
+firelight, the singing died away, and there began the second stage
+of this barbarous and bloody celebration.  From different parts of
+the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran forth into the
+midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up hand, before
+the priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations, uttered
+aloud the blackest wishes of the heart.  Death and disease were the
+favours usually invoked:  the death or the disease of enemies or
+rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their
+own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been never less than
+kind, invoking them upon myself.  At each petition, the tall negro,
+still smiling, picked up some bird or animal from the heaving mass
+upon his left, slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the
+ground.  At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the high-
+priestess.  She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the
+centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and
+still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing,
+and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as
+struck a sort of horror through my blood.
+
+'Power,' she began, 'whose name we do not utter; power that is
+neither good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good,
+greater than evil--all my life long I have adored and served thee.
+Who has shed blood upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with
+the singing of thy praises? whose limbs are faint before their age
+with leaping in thy revels?  Who has slain the child of her body?
+I,' she cried, 'I, Metamnbogu!  By my own name, I name myself.  I
+tear away the veil.  I would be served or perish.  Hear me, slime
+of the fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom of the serpent's
+udder--hear or slay me!  I would have two things, O shapeless one,
+O horror of emptiness--two things, or die!  The blood of my white-
+faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy of Hoodoo; give me
+his blood!  And yet another, O racer of the blind winds, O
+germinator in the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of
+corruption!  I grow old, I grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted
+for my life:  let thy servant then lay by this outworn body; let
+thy chief priestess turn again to the blossom of her days, and be a
+girl once more, and the desired of all men, even as in the past!
+And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet wrought
+since we were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the
+sacrifice in which thy soul delighteth--the kid without the horns?'
+
+Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy
+through all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose
+again; and swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who
+had stepped an instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door,
+carrying in his arms the body of the slave-girl, Cora.  I know not
+if I saw what followed.  When next my mind awoke to a clear
+knowledge, Cora was laid upon the steps before the serpents; the
+negro with the knife stood over her; the knife rose; and at this I
+screamed out in my great horror, bidding them, in God's name, to
+pause.
+
+A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.  A moment more, and
+they must have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have
+perished.  But Heaven had designed to save me.  The silence of
+these wretched men was not yet broken, when there arose, in the
+empty night, a sound louder than the roar of any European tempest,
+swifter to travel than the wings of any Eastern wind.  Blackness
+engulfed the world; blackness, stabbed across from every side by
+intricate and blinding lightning.  Almost in the same second, at
+one world-swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached the
+clearing.  I heard an agonising crash, and the light of my reason
+was overwhelmed.
+
+When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.  I was unhurt;
+the trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have
+thought at first that the tornado was a feature in a dream.  It was
+otherwise indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had
+escaped destruction by a hand's-breadth.  Right through the forest,
+which here covered hill and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of
+ruin.  On either hand, the trees waved uninjured in the air of the
+morning; but in the forthright course of its advance, the hurricane
+had left no trophy standing.  Everything, in that line, tree, man,
+or animal, the desecrated chapel and the votaries of Hoodoo, had
+been subverted and destroyed in that brief spasm of anger of the
+powers of air.  Everything, but a yard or two beyond the line of
+its passage, humble flower, lofty tree, and the poor vulnerable
+maid who now knelt to pay her gratitude to heaven, awoke unharmed
+in the crystal purity and peace of the new day.
+
+To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man,
+so wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that
+fugitive convulsion.  I crossed it indeed; with such labour and
+patience, with so many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at
+the further side, bankrupt alike of strength and courage.  There I
+sat down awhile to recruit my forces; and as I ate (how should I
+bless the kindliness of Heaven!) my eye, flitting to and fro in the
+colonnade of the great trees, alighted on a trunk that had been
+blazed.  Yes, by the directing hand of Providence, I had been
+conducted to the very track I was to follow.  With what a light
+heart I now set forth, and walking with how glad a step, traversed
+the uplands of the isle!
+
+It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and
+wayworn, to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on
+the sea.  About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of
+the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow.
+Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm-
+crowned bluffs of rock.  Just outside, a ship was heaving on the
+surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and
+point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with
+admiration.  The English colours blew from her masthead; and from
+my high station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she
+rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of
+her deck furniture.  There, then, was my ship of refuge; and of all
+my difficulties only one remained:  to get on board of her.
+
+Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the margin
+of a cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows entered,
+and along whose shores they broke with a surprising loudness.  A
+wooded promontory hid the yacht; and I had walked some distance
+round the beach, in what appeared to be a virgin solitude, when my
+eye fell on a boat, drawn into a natural harbour, where it rocked
+in safety, but deserted.  I looked about for those who should have
+manned her; and presently, in the immediate entrance of the wood,
+spied the red embers of a fire, and, stretched around in various
+attitudes, a party of slumbering mariners.  To these I drew near:
+most were black, a few white; but all were dressed with the
+conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, from his peaked cap and
+glittering buttons, I rightly divined to be an officer.  Him, then,
+I touched upon the shoulder.  He started up; the sharpness of his
+movement woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.
+
+'What do you want?' inquired the officer.
+
+'To go on board the yacht,' I answered.
+
+I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer,
+with something of sharpness, asked me who I was.  Now I had
+determined to conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first
+name that rose to my lips was that of the Senora Mendizabal.  At
+the word, there went a shock about the little party of seamen; the
+negroes stared at me with indescribable eagerness, the whites
+themselves with something of a scared surprise; and instantly the
+spirit of mischief prompted me to add, 'And if the name is new to
+your ears, call me Metamnbogu.'
+
+I had never seen an effect so wonderful.  The negroes threw their
+hands into the air, with the same gesture I remarked the night
+before about the Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and then another, ran
+forward and kneeled down and kissed the skirts of my torn dress;
+and when the white officer broke out swearing and calling to know
+if they were mad, the coloured seamen took him by the shoulders,
+dragged him on one side till they were out of hearing, and
+surrounded him with open mouths and extravagant pantomime.  The
+officer seemed to struggle hard; he laughed aloud, and I saw him
+make gestures of dissent and protest; but in the end, whether
+overcome by reason or simply weary of resistance, he gave in--
+approached me civilly enough, but with something of a sneering
+manner underneath--and touching his cap, 'My lady,' said he, 'if
+that is what you are, the boat is ready.'
+
+My reception on board the Nemorosa (for so the yacht was named)
+partook of the same mingled nature.  We were scarcely within hail
+of that great and elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale
+under and churning the blue sea to snow, before the bulwarks were
+lined with the heads of a great crowd of seamen, black, white, and
+yellow; and these and the few who manned the boat began exchanging
+shouts in some lingua franca incomprehensible to me.  All eyes were
+directed on the passenger; and once more I saw the negroes toss up
+their hands to heaven, but now as if with passionate wonder and
+delight.
+
+At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer, a
+gentlemanly man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I
+addressed my demand to see Sir George.
+
+'But this is not--' he cried, and paused.
+
+'I know it,' returned the other officer, who had brought me from
+the shore.  'But what the devil can we do?  Look at all the
+niggers!'
+
+I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the poor
+ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands into the
+air, as though in the presence of a creature half divine.
+Apparently the officer with the whiskers had instantly come round
+to the opinion of his subaltern; for he now addressed me with every
+signal of respect.
+
+'Sir George is at the island, my lady,' said he:  'for which, with
+your ladyship's permission, I shall immediately make all sail.  The
+cabins are prepared.  Steward, take Lady Greville below.'
+
+Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that I
+could neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious and
+airy cabin, hung about with weapons and surrounded by divans.  The
+steward asked for my commands; but I was by this time so wearied,
+bewildered, and disturbed, that I could only wave him to leave me
+to myself, and sink upon a pile of cushions.  Presently, by the
+changed motion of the ship, I knew her to be under way; my
+thoughts, so far from clarifying, grew the more distracted and
+confused; dreams began to mingle and confound them; and at length,
+by insensible transition, I sank into a dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once more
+morning.  The world on which I reopened my eyes swam strangely up
+and down; the jewels in the bag that lay beside me chinked together
+ceaselessly; the clock and the barometer wagged to and fro like
+pendulums; and overhead, seamen were singing out at their work, and
+coils of rope clattering and thumping on the deck.  Yet it was long
+before I had divined that I was at sea; long before I had recalled,
+one after another, the tragical, mysterious, and inexplicable
+events that had brought me where was.
+
+When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to
+find had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and seeing a
+silver bell hard by upon a table, rang it loudly.  The steward
+instantly appeared; I asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the
+table, regarding me the while with a disquieting and pertinacious
+scrutiny.  To relieve myself of my embarrassment, I asked him, with
+as fair a show of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for
+yachts to carry so numerous a crew?
+
+'Madam,' said he, 'I know not who you are, nor what mad fancy has
+induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not
+yours.  I warn you from the soul.  No sooner arrived at the island-
+-'
+
+At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, who had
+entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon his
+shoulder.  The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear, that was
+imprinted on the steward's face, formed a startling addition to his
+words.
+
+'Parker!' said the officer, and pointed towards the door.
+
+'Yes, Mr. Kentish,' said the steward.  'For God's sake, Mr.
+Kentish!'  And vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.
+
+Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, and
+join in the meal.  'I fill your ladyship's glass,' said he, and
+handed me a tumbler of neat rum.
+
+'Sir,' cried I, 'do you expect me to drink this?'
+
+He laughed heartily.  'Your ladyship is so much changed,' said he,
+'that I no longer expect any one thing more than any other.'
+
+Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted both
+Mr. Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a sail
+in sight, which was bound to pass us very close, and that Mr.
+Harland was in doubt about the colours.
+
+'Being so near the island?' asked Mr. Kentish.
+
+'That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,' returned the sailor, with a
+scrape.
+
+'Better not, I think,' said Mr. Kentish.  'My compliments to Mr.
+Harland; and if she seem a lively boat, give her the stars and
+stripes; but if she be dull, and we can easily outsail her, show
+John Dutchman.  That is always another word for incivility at sea;
+so we can disregard a hail or a flag of distress, without
+attracting notice.'
+
+As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the officer in
+wonder.  'Mr.  Kentish, if that be your name,' said I, 'are you
+ashamed of your own colours?'
+
+'Your ladyship refers to the Jolly Roger?' he inquired, with
+perfect gravity; and immediately after, went into peals of
+laughter.  'Pardon me,' said he; 'but here for the first time I
+recognise your ladyship's impetuosity.'  Nor, try as I pleased,
+could I extract from him any explanation of this mystery, but only
+oily and commonplace evasion.
+
+While we were thus occupied, the movement of the Nemorosa gradually
+became less violent; its speed at the same time diminished; and
+presently after, with a sullen plunge, the anchor was discharged
+into the sea.  Kentish immediately rose, offered his arm, and
+conducted me on deck; where I found we were lying in a roadstead
+among many low and rocky islets, hovered about by an innumerable
+cloud of sea-fowl.  Immediately under our board, a somewhat larger
+isle was green with trees, set with a few low buildings and
+approached by a pier of very crazy workmanship; and a little
+inshore of us, a smaller vessel lay at anchor.
+
+I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat was
+lowered.  I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me, and we
+pulled briskly to the pier.  A crowd of villainous, armed
+loiterers, both black and white, looked on upon our landing; and
+again the word passed about among the negroes, and again I was
+received with prostrations and the same gesture of the flung-up
+hand.  By this, what with the appearance of these men, and the
+lawless, sea-girt spot in which I found myself, my courage began a
+little to decline, and clinging to the arm of Mr. Kentish, I begged
+him to tell me what it meant?
+
+'Nay, madam,' he returned, 'YOU know.'  And leading me smartly
+through the crowd, which continued to follow at a considerable
+distance, and at which he still kept looking back, I thought, with
+apprehension, he brought me to a low house that stood alone in an
+encumbered yard, opened the door, and begged me to enter.
+
+'But why?' said I.  'I demand to see Sir George.'
+
+'Madam,' returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black as
+thunder, 'to drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you are;
+beyond the fact that you are not the person whose name you have
+assumed.  But be what you please, spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-
+judging jester, if you do not immediately enter that house, I will
+cut you to the earth.'  And even as he spoke, he threw an uneasy
+glance behind him at the following crowd of blacks.
+
+I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and with a
+palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was locked from
+the outside and the key withdrawn.  The interior was long, low, and
+quite unfurnished, but filled, almost from end to end, with sugar-
+cane, tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other incongruous and highly
+inflammable material; and not only was the door locked, but the
+solitary window barred with iron.
+
+I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I
+would have given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr.
+Caulder.  I still stood, with my hands clasped, the image of
+despair, looking about me on the lumber of the room or raising my
+eyes to heaven; when there appeared outside the window bars, the
+face of a very black negro, who signed to me imperiously to draw
+near.  I did so, and he instantly, and with every mark of fervour,
+addressed me a long speech in some unknown and barbarous tongue.
+
+'I declare,' I cried, clasping my brow, 'I do not understand one
+syllable.'
+
+'Not?' he said in Spanish.  'Great, great, are the powers of
+Hoodoo!  Her very mind is changed!  But, O chief priestess, why
+have you suffered yourself to be shut into this cage? why did you
+not call your slaves at once to your defence?  Do you not see that
+all has been prepared to murder you? at a spark, this flimsy house
+will go in flames; and alas! who shall then be the chief priestess?
+and what shall be the profit of the miracle?'
+
+'Heavens!' cried I, 'can I not see Sir George?  I must, I must,
+come by speech of him.  Oh, bring me to Sir George!'  And, my
+terror fairly mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and began
+to pray to all the saints.
+
+'Lordy!' cried the negro, 'here they come!'  And his black head was
+instantly withdrawn from the window.
+
+'I never heard such nonsense in my life,' exclaimed a voice.
+
+'Why, so we all say, Sir George,' replied the voice of Mr. Kentish.
+'But put yourself in our place.  The niggers were near two to one.
+And upon my word, if you'll excuse me, sir, considering the notion
+they have taken in their heads, I regard it as precious fortunate
+for all of us that the mistake occurred.'
+
+'This is no question of fortune, sir,' returned Sir George.  'It is
+a question of my orders, and you may take my word for it, Kentish,
+either Harland, or yourself, or Parker--or, by George, all three of
+you!--shall swing for this affair.  These are my sentiments.  Give
+me the key and be off.'
+
+Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared
+upon the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty, with a
+very open countenance, and of a stout and personable figure.
+
+'My dear young lady,' said he, 'who the devil may you be?'
+
+I told him all my story in one rush of words.  He heard me, from
+the first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I
+came to the death of the Senora Mendizabal in the tornado, he
+fairly leaped into the air.
+
+'My dear child,' he cried, clasping me in his arms, 'excuse a man
+who might be your father!  This is the best news I ever had since I
+was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than my
+wife.'  He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy.
+'Dear me,' said he, 'I declare this tempts me to believe in
+Providence.  And what,' he added, 'can I do for you?'
+
+'Sir George,' said I, 'I am already rich:  all that I ask is your
+protection.'
+
+'Understand one thing,' he said, with great energy.  'I will never
+marry.'
+
+'I had not ventured to propose it,' I exclaimed, unable to restrain
+my mirth; 'I only seek to be conveyed to England, the natural home
+of the escaped slave.'
+
+'Well,' returned Sir George, 'frankly I owe you something for this
+exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me.  Now, I
+have made a small competence in business--a jewel mine, a sort of
+naval agency, et caetera, and I am on the point of breaking up my
+company, and retiring to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old
+age, unmarried.  One good turn deserves another:  if you swear to
+hold your tongue about this island, these little bonfire
+arrangements, and the whole episode of my unfortunate marriage,
+why, I'll carry you home aboard the Nemorosa.'  I eagerly accepted
+his conditions.
+
+'One thing more,' said he.  'My late wife was some sort of a
+sorceress among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she has come
+alive again in your agreeable person.  Now, you will have the
+goodness to keep up that fancy, if you please; and to swear to
+them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his name may be, that
+I am from this moment quite a sacred character.'
+
+'I swear it,' said I, 'by my father's memory; and that is a vow
+that I will never break.'
+
+'I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,' returned
+Sir George, with a chuckle; 'for you are not only an escaped slave,
+but have, by your own account, a considerable amount of stolen
+property.'
+
+I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised
+that these jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I
+decided they should be restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that
+I had just regained.  Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir
+George, who sat and watched me with a smile, I drew out Mr.
+Caulder's pocket-book and turned to the page on which the dying man
+had scrawled his testament.  How shall I describe the agony of
+happiness and remorse with which I read it! for my victim had not
+only set me free, but bequeathed to me the bag of jewels.
+
+My plain tale draws towards a close.  Sir George and I, in my
+character of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm
+among the negroes, and were cheered and followed to the place of
+embarkation.  There, Sir George, turning about, made a speech to
+his old companions, in which he thanked and bade them farewell with
+a very manly spirit; and towards the end of which he fell on some
+expressions which I still remember.  'If any of you gentry lose
+your money,' he said, 'take care you do not come to me; for in the
+first place, I shall do my best to have you murdered; and if that
+fails, I hand you over to the law.  Blackmail won't do for me.
+I'll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to pieces by
+degrees.  I'll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit to
+one man-jack of you.'  That same night we got under way and crossed
+to the port of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the
+pocket-book to Mr. Caulder's son.  In a week's time, the men were
+all paid off; new hands were shipped; and the Nemorosa weighed her
+anchor for Old England.
+
+A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.  Sir George, of
+course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected
+gaiety of character that naturally endeared him to the young; and
+it was interesting to hear him lay out his projects for the future,
+when he should be returned to Parliament, and place at the service
+of the nation his experience of marine affairs.  I asked him, if
+his notion of piracy upon a private yacht were not original.  But
+he told me, no.  'A yacht, Miss Valdevia,' he observed, 'is a
+chartered nuisance.  Who smuggles?  Who robs the salmon rivers of
+the West of Scotland?  Who cruelly beats the keepers if they dare
+to intervene?  The crews and the proprietors of yachts.  All I have
+done is to extend the line a trifle, and if you ask me for my
+unbiassed opinion, I do not suppose that I am in the least alone.'
+
+In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father and
+daughter; though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect
+which is only due to moral excellence.
+
+We were still some days' sail from England, when Sir George
+obtained, from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and
+from that fatal hour my misfortunes recommenced.  He sat, the same
+evening, in the cabin, reading the news, and making savoury
+comments on the decline of England and the poor condition of the
+navy, when I suddenly observed him to change countenance.
+
+'Hullo!' said he, 'this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia.
+You would not listen to sound sense, you would send that pocket-
+book to that man Caulder's son.'
+
+'Sir George,' said I, 'it was my duty.'
+
+'You are prettily paid for it, at least,' says he; 'and much as I
+regret it, I, for one, am done with you.  This fellow Caulder
+demands your extradition.'
+
+'But a slave,' I returned, 'is safe in England.'
+
+'Yes, by George!' replied the baronet; 'but it's not a slave, Miss
+Valdevia, it's a thief that he demands.  He has quietly destroyed
+the will; and now accuses you of robbing your father's bankrupt
+estate of jewels to the value of a hundred thousand pounds.'
+
+I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and
+concern for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to
+put me more at ease.
+
+'Do not be cast down,' said he.  'Of course, I wash my hands of you
+myself.  A man in my position--baronet, old family, and all that--
+cannot possibly be too particular about the company he keeps.  But
+I am a deuced good-humoured old boy, let me tell you, when not
+ruffled; and I will do the best I can to put you right.  I will
+lend you a trifle of ready money, give you the address of an
+excellent lawyer in London, and find a way to set you on shore
+unsuspected.'
+
+He was in every particular as good as his word.  Four days later,
+the Nemorosa sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night, into
+a certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with
+muffled oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone's throw
+of a railway station.  Thither, guided by Sir George's directions,
+I groped a devious way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat
+me down, wrapped in a man's fur great-coat, to await the coming of
+the day.  It was still dark when a light was struck behind one of
+the windows of the building; nor had the east begun to kindle to
+the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter carrying a lantern,
+issued from the door and found himself face to face with the
+unfortunate Teresa.  He looked all about him; in the grey twilight
+of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie deserted, and the yacht had
+long since disappeared.
+
+'Who are you?' he cried.
+
+'I am a traveller,' said I.
+
+'And where do you come from?' he asked.
+
+'I am going by the first train to London,' I replied.
+
+In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her
+bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent
+fashion, without history or name, she took her place among the
+millions of a new country.
+
+Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying
+concealed in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not
+knowing at what hour my liberty and honour may be lost.
+
+
+
+THE BROWN BOX (Concluded)
+
+
+
+The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant
+and convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she
+now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and
+the most unhappy of her sex.  He was bereft of words to utter what
+he felt:  what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a
+career so vivid and adventurous.  'O madam!' he began; and finding
+no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and
+wrung it in his own.  'Count upon me,' he added, with bewildered
+fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the apartment and from
+the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the
+strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at dull
+passers-by, a fallen angel.  She had smiled upon him as he left,
+and with how significant, how beautiful a smile!  The memory
+lingered in his heart; and when he found his way to a certain
+restaurant where music was performed, flutes (as it were of
+Paradise) accompanied his meal.  The strings went to the melody of
+that parting smile; they paraphrased and glossed it in the sense
+that he desired; and for the first time in his plain and somewhat
+dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste for music.
+
+The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that
+delectable air.  Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not
+at all; now saw her and was put by.  The fall of her foot upon the
+stair entranced him; the books that he sought out and read were
+books on Cuba, and spoke of her indirectly; nay, and in the very
+landlady's parlour, he found one that told of precisely such a
+hurricane, and, down to the smallest detail, confirmed (had
+confirmation been required) the truth of her recital.  Presently he
+began to fall into that prettiest mood of a young love, in which
+the lover scorns himself for his presumption.  Who was he, the dull
+one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without adventure, the
+impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire
+and air, and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of
+life?  What should he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call
+down the notice of these eyes to so terrene a being as himself?
+
+He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square,
+where, being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of
+acquaintances among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and
+the visitors that hung before the windows of the Children's
+Hospital.  There he walked, considering the depth of his demerit
+and the height of the adored one's super-excellence; now lighting
+upon earth to say a pleasant word to the brother of some infant
+invalid; now, with a great heave of breath, remembering the queen
+of women, and the sunshine of his life.
+
+What was he to do?  Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of
+leaving the house towards afternoon:  she might, perchance, run
+danger from some Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend
+might turn the balance in her favour:  how, then, if he should
+follow her?  To offer his company would seem like an intrusion; to
+dog her openly were a manifest impertinence; he saw himself reduced
+to a more stealthy part, which, though in some ways distasteful to
+his mind, he did not doubt that he could practise with the skill of
+a detective.
+
+The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.  At the corner
+of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Senorita suddenly turned
+back, and met him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and
+surprise.
+
+'Ah, Senor, I am sometimes fortunate!' she cried.  'I was looking
+for a messenger;' and with the sweetest of smiles, she despatched
+him to the East End of London, to an address which he was unable to
+find.  This was a bitter pill to the knight-errant; but when he
+returned at night, worn out with fruitless wandering and dismayed
+by his fiasco, the lady received him with a friendly gaiety,
+protesting that all was for the best, since she had changed her
+mind and long since repented of her message.
+
+Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
+determined to protect Teresa with his life.  But a painful shock
+awaited him.  In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned
+suddenly about and addressed him with a manner and a light in her
+eyes that were new to the young man's experience.
+
+'Do I understand that you follow me, Senor?' she cried.  'Are these
+the manners of the English gentleman?'
+
+Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers
+to be forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length
+dismissed, crestfallen and heavy of heart.  The check was final; he
+gave up that road to service; and began once more to hang about the
+square or on the terrace, filled with remorse and love, admirable
+and idiotic, a fit object for the scorn and envy of older men.  In
+these idle hours, while he was courting fortune for a sight of the
+beloved, it fell out naturally that he should observe the manners
+and appearance of such as came about the house.  One person alone
+was the occasional visitor of the young lady:  a man of
+considerable stature, and distinguished only by the doubtful
+ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.
+Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew
+upon him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered
+courage to inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more
+dismayed by her reply.
+
+'That gentleman,' said she, a smile struggling to her face, 'that
+gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires my hand
+in marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour.  Alas,
+what am I to say?  I, the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse or
+accept such protestations?'
+
+Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him;
+and he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with
+decency.  In the solitude of his own chamber, he gave way to every
+manifestation of despair.  He passionately adored the Senorita; but
+it was not only the thought of her possible union with another that
+distressed his soul, it was the indefeasible conviction that her
+suitor was unworthy.  To a duke, a bishop, a victorious general, or
+any man adorned with obvious qualities, he had resigned her with a
+sort of bitter joy; he saw himself follow the wedding party from a
+great way off; he saw himself return to the poor house, then robbed
+of its jewel; and while he could have wept for his despair, he felt
+he could support it nobly.  But this affair looked otherwise.  The
+man was patently no gentleman; he had a startled, skulking, guilty
+bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive; his love perhaps
+was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a Cuban
+emissary!
+
+Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next
+evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a
+spot whence his eye commanded the three issues of the square.
+
+Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the man
+with the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by
+Harry to enter the house with a brown box hoisted on his back.
+Half an hour later, he came forth again without the box, and struck
+eastward at a rapid walk; and Desborough, with the same skill and
+caution that he had displayed in following Teresa, proceeded to dog
+the steps of her admirer.  The man began to loiter, studying with
+apparent interest the wares of the small fruiterer or tobacconist;
+twice he returned hurriedly upon his former course; and then, as
+though he had suddenly conquered a moment's hesitation, once more
+set forth with resolute and swift steps in the direction of
+Lincoln's Inn.  At length, in a deserted by-street, he turned; and
+coming up to Harry with a countenance which seemed to have become
+older and whiter, inquired with some severity of speech if he had
+not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.
+
+'You have, sir,' said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a good show
+of stoutness; 'and I will not deny that I was following you on
+purpose.  Doubtless,' he added, for he supposed that all men's
+minds must still be running on Teresa, 'you can divine my reason.'
+
+At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a
+palsied tremor.  He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance
+which his fear denied him; and then whipping sharply about, he took
+to his heels at the most furious speed of running.
+
+Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and
+by the time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only
+rewarded by a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into
+a hansom, which immediately after disappeared into the moving
+crowds of Holborn.
+
+Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to
+the house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock
+at the fair Cuban's door.  She bade him enter, and he found her
+kneeling with rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden
+trunk.
+
+'Senorita,' he broke out, 'I doubt whether that man's character is
+what he wishes you to believe.  His manner, when he found, and
+indeed when I admitted that I was following him, was not the manner
+of an honest man.'
+
+'Oh!' she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, 'Don
+Quixote, Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against
+windmills?'  And then, with a laugh, 'Poor soul!' she added, 'how
+you must have terrified him!  For know that the Cuban authorities
+are here, and your poor Teresa may soon be hunted down.  Even yon
+humble clerk from my solicitor's office may find himself at any
+moment the quarry of armed spies.'
+
+'A humble clerk!' cried Harry, 'why, you told me yourself that he
+wished to marry you!'
+
+'I thought you English like what you call a joke,' replied the lady
+calmly.  'As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer's clerk, and has
+been here to-night charged with disastrous news.  I am in sore
+straits, Senor Harry.  Will you help me?'
+
+At this most welcome word, the young man's heart exulted; and in
+the hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled with the very thought
+of service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady's jest.  'Can you
+ask?' he cried.  'What is there that I can do?  Only tell me that.'
+
+With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the fair
+Cuban laid her hand upon the box.  'This box,' she said, 'contains
+my jewels, papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects
+me with Cuba and my dreadful past.  They must now be smuggled out
+of England; or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond
+remedy.  To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits
+the box:  the problem still unsolved, is to find some one to carry
+it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and
+instantly return to town.  Will you be he?  Will you leave to-
+morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear still in
+mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so much as
+a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your interest,
+leave the box where you have put it and come straight on shore?
+Will you do this, and so save your friend?'
+
+'I do not clearly understand . . .' began Harry.
+
+'No more do I,' replied the Cuban.  'It is not necessary that we
+should, so long as we obey the lawyer's orders.'
+
+'Senorita,' returned Harry gravely, 'I think this, of course, a
+very little thing to do for you, when I would willingly do all.
+But suffer me to say one word.  If London is unsafe for your
+treasures, it cannot long be safe for you; and indeed, if I at all
+fathom the plan of your solicitor, I fear I may find you already
+fled on my return.  I am not considered clever, and can only speak
+out plainly what is in my heart:  that I love you, and that I
+cannot bear to lose all knowledge of you.  I hope no more than to
+be your servant; I ask no more than just that I shall hear of you.
+Oh, promise me so much!'
+
+'You shall,' she said, after a pause.  'I promise you, you shall.'
+But though she spoke with earnestness, the marks of great
+embarrassment and a strong conflict of emotions appeared upon her
+face.
+
+'I wish to tell you,' resumed Desborough, 'in case of accidents. .
+. .'
+
+'Accidents!' she cried:  'why do you say that?'
+
+'I do not know,' said he, 'you may be gone before my return, and we
+may not meet again for long.  And so I wished you to know this:
+That since the day you gave me the cigarette, you have never once,
+not once, been absent from my mind; and if it will in any way serve
+you, you may crumple me up like that piece of paper, and throw me
+on the fire.  I would love to die for you.'
+
+'Go!' she said.  'Go now at once.  My brain is in a whirl.  I
+scarce know what we are talking.  Go; and good-night; and oh, may
+you come safe!'
+
+Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man's
+mind; and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the
+broken utterance of her last words, his heart at once exulted and
+misgave him.  Love had indeed looked upon him with a tragic mask;
+and yet what mattered, since at least it was love--since at least
+she was commoved at their division?  He got to bed with these
+parti-coloured thoughts; passed from one dream to another all night
+long, the white face of Teresa still haunting him, wrung with
+unspoken thoughts; and in the grey of the dawn, leaped suddenly out
+of bed, in a kind of horror.  It was already time for him to rise.
+He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that had been laid for
+him the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for the
+box.  The door was open; a strange disorder reigned within; the
+furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room left bare of
+impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured
+mind.  There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with
+these words:  'Harry, I hope to be back before you go.  Teresa.'
+
+He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table.  She
+had called him Harry:  that should be enough, he thought, to fill
+the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered
+room still poisoned his enjoyment.  The door of the bed-chamber
+stood gaping open; and though he turned aside his eyes as from a
+sacrilege, he could not but observe the bed had not been slept in.
+He was still pondering what this should mean, still trying to
+convince himself that all was well, when the moving needle of his
+watch summoned him to set forth without delay.  He was before all
+things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to fetch a
+cab; and taking the box on the front seat, drove off towards the
+terminus.
+
+The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye;
+and the young man's attention centred on the dumb companion of his
+drive.  A card was nailed upon one side, bearing the
+superscription:  'Miss Doolan, passenger to Dublin.  Glass.  With
+care.'  He thought with a sentimental shock that the fair idol of
+his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the name of Doolan; and as he
+still studied the card, he was aware of a deadly, black depression
+settling steadily upon his spirits.  It was in vain for him to
+contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself or tried to
+whistle:  the sense of some impending blow was not to be averted.
+He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its way
+without a trace of any follower.  He gave ear; and over and above
+the jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a
+certain regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box.
+He put his ear to the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a
+delicate ticking:  the next, the sound was gone, nor could his
+closest hearkening recapture it.  He laughed at himself; but still
+the gloom continued; and it was with more than the common relief of
+an arrival, that he leaped from the cab before the station.
+
+Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty
+minutes earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into
+the charge of a porter, who sat it on a truck, he proceeded briskly
+to pace the platform.  Presently the bookstall opened; and the
+young man was looking at the books when he was seized by the arm.
+He turned, and, though she was closely veiled, at once recognised
+the Fair Cuban.
+
+'Where is it?' she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.
+
+'It?' he said.  'What?'
+
+'The box.  Have it put on a cab instantly.  I am in fearful haste.'
+
+He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to
+trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been brought
+round, and the box mounted on the front, she passed a little way
+off upon the pavement and beckoned him to follow.
+
+'Now,' said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that
+had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on
+board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a
+pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off:  if not,' she
+added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it does not matter.  So, good-bye.'
+
+'Teresa,' said Harry, 'get into your cab, and I will go along with
+you.  You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I
+know the whole, not even you can make me leave you.'
+
+'You will not?' she asked.  'O Harry, it were better!'
+
+'I will not,' said Harry stoutly.
+
+She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand
+suddenly and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and
+still holding him, walked to the cab-door.
+
+'Where are we to drive?' asked Harry.
+
+'Home, quickly,' she answered; 'double fare!'  And as soon as they
+had both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from
+the station.
+
+Teresa leaned back in a corner.  The whole way Harry could perceive
+her tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no
+explanation.  At the door of the house in Queen Square, both
+alighted; and the cabman lowered the box, which Harry, glad to
+display his strength, received upon his shoulders.
+
+'Let the man take it,' she whispered.  'Let the man take it.'
+
+'I will do no such thing,' said Harry cheerfully; and having paid
+the fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened
+with her key.  The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning
+errands; the house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the
+cab died away down Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend
+the stair with his burthen, he heard close against his shoulders
+the same faint and muffled ticking as before.  The lady, still
+preceding him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to lower
+the box tenderly in the corner by the window.
+
+'And now,' said Harry, 'what is wrong?'
+
+'You will not go away?' she cried, with a sudden break in her voice
+and beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience.  'O
+Harry, Harry, go away!  Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I
+deserve!'
+
+'The fate?' repeated Harry.  'What is this?'
+
+'No fate,' she resumed.  'I do not know what I am saying.  But I
+wish to be alone.  You may come back this evening, Harry; come
+again when you like; but leave me now, only leave me now!'  And
+then suddenly, 'I have an errand,' she exclaimed; 'you cannot
+refuse me that!'
+
+'No,' replied Harry, 'you have no errand.  You are in grief or
+danger.  Lift your veil and tell me what it is.'
+
+'Then,' she said, with a sudden composure, 'you leave but one
+course open to me.'  And raising the veil, she showed him a
+countenance from which every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred
+with weeping, and a brow on which resolve had conquered fear.
+'Harry,' she began, 'I am not what I seem.'
+
+'You have told me that before,' said Harry, 'several times.'
+
+'O Harry, Harry,' she cried, 'how you shame me!  But this is the
+God's truth.  I am a dangerous and wicked girl.  My name is Clara
+Luxmore.  I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance.  From first to
+last I have cheated and played with you.  And what I am I dare not
+even name to you in words.  Indeed, until to-day, until the
+sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and
+foulness of my guilt.'
+
+The young man looked upon her aghast.  Then a generous current
+poured along his veins.  'That is all one,' he said.  'If you be
+all you say, you have the greater need of me.'
+
+'Is it possible,' she exclaimed, 'that I have schemed in vain?  And
+will nothing drive you from this house of death?'
+
+'Of death?' he echoed.
+
+'Death!' she cried:  'death!  In that box that you have dragged
+about London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at
+the trigger's mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.'
+
+'My God!' cried Harry.
+
+'Ah!' she continued wildly, 'will you flee now?  At any moment you
+may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building.  I was
+sure M'Guire was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero;
+he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a
+victim to my own contrivances.  I knew then I loved you--Harry,
+will you go now?  Will you not spare me this unwilling crime?'
+
+Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box:  at last he
+turned to her.
+
+'Is it,' he asked hoarsely, 'an infernal machine?'
+
+Her lips formed the word 'Yes,' which her voice refused to utter.
+
+With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in
+that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the
+measured sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.
+
+'For whom?' he asked.
+
+'What matters it,' she cried, seizing him by the arm.  'If you may
+still be saved, what matter questions?'
+
+'God in heaven!' cried Harry.  'And the Children's Hospital!  At
+whatever cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!'
+
+'It cannot,' she gasped.  'The power of man cannot avert the blow.
+But you, Harry--you, my beloved--you may still--'
+
+And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden
+catch was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the
+hour.  For one second the two stared at each other with lifted
+brows and stony eyes.  Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face,
+with the other clutched the girl to his breast and staggered
+against the wall.
+
+A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes
+blinked against the coming horror; and still clinging together like
+drowning people, they fell to the floor.  Then followed a prolonged
+and strident hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench
+seized them by the throat; the room was filled with dense and
+choking fumes.
+
+Presently these began a little to disperse:  and when at length
+they drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture,
+the first object that greeted their vision was the box reposing
+uninjured in its corner, but still leaking little wreaths of vapour
+round the lid.
+
+'Oh, poor Zero!' cried the girl, with a strange sobbing laugh.
+'Alas, poor Zero!  This will break his heart!'
+
+
+
+THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Concluded)
+
+
+
+Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room,
+contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young
+man found Zero seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular
+dejection.  Close beside him stood an untasted grog, the mark of
+strong preoccupation.  The room besides was in confusion:  boxes
+had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was strewn with keys and
+other implements; and in the midst of this disorder lay a lady's
+glove.
+
+'I have come,' cried Somerset, 'to make an end of this.  Either you
+will instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I
+will denounce you to the police.'
+
+'Ah!' replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.  'You are too late,
+dear fellow!  I am already at the end of all my hopes, and fallen
+to be a laughing-stock and mockery.  My reading,' he added, with a
+gentle despondency of manner, 'has not been much among romances;
+yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my present state with
+critical exactitude; and you behold me sitting here "like a burst
+drum."'
+
+'What has befallen you?' cried Somerset.
+
+'My last batch,' returned the plotter wearily, 'like all the
+others, is a hollow mockery and a fraud.  In vain do I combine the
+elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at
+such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear
+fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face.  My subordinates
+themselves have turned upon me.  What language have I heard to-day,
+what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression!  She
+came once; I could have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she
+returned, returned to announce to me this crushing blow; and,
+Somerset, she was very inhumane.  Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a
+bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for . . . well,
+well!  Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead.  I am
+extinct.  It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I
+should be haunted by quotations from works of an inexact and even
+fanciful description; but here,' he added, 'is another:  "Othello's
+occupation's gone."  Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a
+dynamiter; and how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys,
+am I to condescend to a less glorious life?'
+
+'I cannot describe how you relieve me,' returned Somerset, sitting
+down on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the
+middle of the floor.  'I had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration
+for your character; I have a great distaste, besides, for anything
+in the nature of a duty; and upon both grounds, your news delights
+me.  But I seem to perceive,' he added, 'a certain sound of ticking
+in this box.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, 'I
+have set several of them going.'
+
+'My God!' cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.
+
+'Machines?'
+
+'Machines!' returned the plotter bitterly.  'Machines indeed!  I
+blush to be their author.  Alas!' he said, burying his face in his
+hands, 'that I should live to say it!'
+
+'Madman!' cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm.  'What am I to
+understand?  Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in
+motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?'
+
+'"Hoist with his own petard?"' returned the plotter musingly.  'One
+more quotation:  strange!  But indeed my brain is struck with
+numbness.  Yes, dear boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivance in
+motion.  The one on which you are sitting, I have timed for half an
+hour.  Yon other--'
+
+'Half an hour!--' echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation.
+'Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?'
+
+'Dear fellow, why so much excitement?' inquired Zero.  'My dynamite
+is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give
+it him to play with.  You see this brick?' he continued, lifting a
+cake of the infernal compound from the laboratory-table.  'At a
+touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as
+should bestrew the square with ruins.  Well now, behold!  I dash it
+on the floor.'
+
+Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy
+of terror, wrested the brick from his possession.  'Heavens!' he
+cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother
+handled her first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive
+to the far end of the apartment:  the plotter, his arms once more
+fallen to his side, dispiritedly watching him.
+
+'It was entirely harmless,' he sighed.  'They describe it as
+burning like tobacco.'
+
+'In the name of fortune,' cried Somerset, 'what have I done to you,
+or what have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this
+insane behaviour?  If not for your own sake, then for mine, let us
+depart from this doomed house, where I profess I have not the heart
+to leave you; and then, if you will take my advice, and if your
+determination be sincere, you will instantly quit this city, where
+no further occupation can detain you.'
+
+'Such, dear fellow, was my own design,' replied the plotter.  'I
+have, as you observe, no further business here; and once I have
+packed a little bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to go
+with me as far as to the station, and see the last of a broken-
+hearted man.  And yet,' he added, looking on the boxes with a
+lingering regret, 'I should have liked to make quite certain.  I
+cannot but suspect my underlings of some mismanagement; it may be
+fond, but yet I cherish that idea:  it may be the weakness of a man
+of science, but yet,' he cried, rising into some energy, 'I will
+never, I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite has had
+fair usage!'
+
+'Five minutes!' said Somerset, glancing with horror at the
+timepiece.  'If you do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave
+you.'
+
+'A few necessaries,' returned Zero, 'only a few necessaries, dear
+Somerset, and you behold me ready.'
+
+He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to
+draw out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned,
+bearing in his hand an open Gladstone bag.  His movements were
+still horribly deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his
+dear boxes, as he moved to and fro about the drawing-room,
+gathering a few small trifles.  Last of all, he lifted one of the
+squares of dynamite.
+
+'Put that down!' cried Somerset.  'If what you say be true, you
+have no call to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.'
+
+'Merely a curiosity, dear boy,' he said persuasively, and slipped
+the brick into his bag; 'merely a memento of the past--ah, happy
+past, bright past!  You will not take a touch of spirits? no?  I
+find you very abstemious.  Well,' he added, 'if you have really no
+curiosity to await the event--'
+
+'I!' cried Somerset.  'My blood boils to get away.'
+
+'Well, then,' said Zero, 'I am ready; I would I could say, willing;
+but thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours--'
+
+Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged
+him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted
+mansion; and still towing his laggardly companion, the young man
+sped across the square in the Oxford Street direction.  They had
+not yet passed the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by
+a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and
+followed by a shattering fracas.  Somerset turned in time to see
+the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and
+instantly collapse into its cellars.  At the same moment, he was
+thrown violently to the ground.  His first glance was towards Zero.
+The plotter had but reeled against the garden rail; he stood there,
+the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon his heart, his whole face
+radiant with relief and gratitude; and the young man heard him
+murmur to himself:  'Nunc dimittis, nunc dimittis!'
+
+The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole of
+Golden Square was alive with men, women, and children, running
+wildly to and fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out
+of the house doors.  And under favour of this confusion, Somerset
+dragged away the lingering plotter.
+
+'It was grand,' he continued to murmur:  'it was indescribably
+grand.  Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh, my
+calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!'
+
+Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the
+footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.
+
+'Good God!' he cried, 'how mortifying! seven minutes too early!
+The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle
+clockwork, has once more betrayed me.  Alas, can there be no
+success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be
+chequered by a shadow?'
+
+'Incomparable ass!' said Somerset, 'what have you done?  Blown up
+the house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly
+property of the only person who is fool enough to befriend you!'
+
+'You do not understand these matters,' replied Zero, with an air of
+great dignity.  'This will shake England to the heart.  Gladstone,
+the truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of
+revenge.  And now that my dynamite is proved effective--'
+
+'Heavens, you remind me!' ejaculated Somerset.  'That brick in your
+bag must be instantly disposed of.  But how?  If we could throw it
+in the river--'
+
+'A torpedo,' cried Zero, brightening, 'a torpedo in the Thames!
+Superb, dear fellow!  I recognise in you the marks of an
+accomplished anarch.'
+
+'True!' returned Somerset.  'It cannot so be done; and there is no
+help but you must carry it away with you.  Come on, then, and let
+me at once consign you to a train.'
+
+'Nay, nay, dear boy,' protested Zero.  'There is now no call for me
+to leave.  My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this
+is the best thing I have done yet; and I see from here the ovations
+that await the author of the Golden Square Atrocity.'
+
+'My young friend,' returned the other, 'I give you your choice.  I
+will either see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol.'
+
+'Somerset, this is unlike you!' said the chymist.  'You surprise
+me, Somerset.'
+
+'I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,'
+returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage.  'For on one
+point my mind is settled:  either I see you packed off to America,
+brick and all, or else you dine in prison.'
+
+'You have perhaps neglected one point,' returned the unoffended
+Zero:  'for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means
+you can employ to force me.  The will, my dear fellow--'
+
+'Now, see here,' interrupted Somerset.  'You are ignorant of
+anything but science, which I can never regard as being truly
+knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform you
+that I have but to raise my hand and voice--here in this street--
+and the mob--'
+
+'Good God in heaven, Somerset,' cried Zero, turning deadly white
+and stopping in his walk, 'great God in heaven, what words are
+these?  Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used!
+The brutal mob, the savage passions . . . . Somerset, for God's
+sake, a public-house!'
+
+Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.  'This is
+very interesting,' said he.  'You recoil from such a death?'
+
+'Who would not?' asked the plotter.
+
+'And to be blown up by dynamite,' inquired the young man,
+'doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?'
+
+'Pardon me,' returned Zero:  'I own, and since I have braved it
+daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride:  it is a
+death unusually distasteful to the mind of man.'
+
+'One more question,' said Somerset:  'you object to Lynch Law?
+why?'
+
+'It is assassination,' said the plotter calmly, but with eyebrows a
+little lifted, as in wonder at the question.
+
+'Shake hands with me,' cried Somerset.  'Thank God, I have now no
+ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see
+you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your
+departure.'
+
+'I do not very clearly take your meaning,' said Zero, 'but I am
+sure you mean kindly.  As to my departure, there is another point
+to be considered.  I have neglected to supply myself with funds; my
+little all has perished in what history will love to relate under
+the name of the Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is
+coarsely if vigorously called stamps, you must be well aware it is
+impossible for me to pass the ocean.'
+
+'For me,' said Somerset, 'you have now ceased to be a man.  You
+have no more claim upon me than a door scraper; but the touching
+confusion of your mind disarms me from extremities.  Until to-day,
+I always thought stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise; and
+when I look upon your idiot face, laughter rises within me like a
+deadly sickness, and the tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as
+blood.  What should this portend?  I begin to doubt; I am losing
+faith in scepticism.  Is it possible,' he cried, in a kind of
+horror of himself--'is it conceivable that I believe in right and
+wrong?  Already I have found myself, with incredulous surprise, to
+be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.  And must this
+change proceed?  Have you robbed me of my youth?  Must I fall, at
+my time of life, into the Common Banker?  But why should I address
+that head of wood?  Let this suffice.  I dare not let you stay
+among women and children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by
+any means I may avoid it; you have no money:  well then, take mine,
+and go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day, that day will
+be your last.'
+
+'Under the circumstances,' replied Zero, 'I scarce see my way to
+refuse your offer.  Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise
+me; I am aware our point of view requires a little training, a
+little moral hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points
+that has always charmed me in your character is this delightful
+frankness.  As for the small advance, it shall be remitted you from
+Philadelphia.'
+
+'It shall not,' said Somerset.
+
+'Dear fellow, you do not understand,' returned the plotter.  'I
+shall now be received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my
+experiments will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the
+purse.'
+
+'What I am now about, sir, is a crime,' replied Somerset; 'and were
+you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be
+reimbursed of money I had so scandalously misapplied.  Take it, and
+keep it.  By George, sir, three days of you have transformed me to
+an ancient Roman.'
+
+With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair
+were driven rapidly to the railway terminus.  There, an oath having
+been exacted, the money changed hands.
+
+'And now,' said Somerset, 'I have bought back my honour with every
+penny I possess.  And I thank God, though there is nothing before
+me but starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero
+Pumpernickel Jones.'
+
+'To starve?' cried Zero.  'Dear fellow, I cannot endure the
+thought.'
+
+'Take your ticket!' returned Somerset.
+
+'I think you display temper,' said Zero.
+
+'Take your ticket,' reiterated the young man.
+
+'Well,' said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand, 'your
+attitude is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should
+ask you to shake hands.'
+
+'As a man, no,' replied Somerset; 'but I have no objection to shake
+hands with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or
+bell-fire.'
+
+'This is a very cold parting,' sighed the dynamiter; and still
+followed by Somerset, he began to descend the platform.  This was
+now bustling with passengers; the train for Liverpool was just
+about to start, another had but recently arrived; and the double
+tide made movement difficult.  As the pair reached the
+neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they came into an open
+space; and here the attention of the plotter was attracted by a
+Standard broadside bearing the words:  'Second Edition:  Explosion
+in Golden Square.'  His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the
+necessary coin, he sprang forward--his bag knocked sharply on the
+corner of the stall--and instantly, with a formidable report, the
+dynamite exploded.  When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen
+much shattered, and the stall keeper running forth in terror from
+the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no
+adequate remains were to be found.
+
+In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape,
+and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick
+with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.  Yet as he
+continued to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a
+sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were,
+of divine presence and the kindliness of fate; and he was able to
+tell himself that even if the worst befell, he could now starve
+with a certain comfort since Zero was expunged.
+
+Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall's
+shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce
+considering what he did, he opened the glass door and entered.
+
+'Ha!' said Mr. Godall, 'Mr. Somerset!  Well, have you met with an
+adventure?  Have you the promised story?  Sit down, if you please;
+suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward
+me with a narrative in your best style.'
+
+'I must not take a cigar,' said Somerset.
+
+'Indeed!' said Mr. Godall.  'But now I come to look at you more
+closely, I perceive that you are changed.  My poor boy, I hope
+there is nothing wrong?'
+
+Somerset burst into tears.
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN
+
+
+
+On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and
+between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward
+Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the
+Cigar Divan in Rupert Street.  It was a place he had visited but
+once before:  the memory of what had followed on that visit and the
+fear of Somerset having prevented his return.  Even now, he looked
+in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers.
+
+The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny
+version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner's arrival.  On a
+second glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.
+
+'By Jove,' he thought, 'unquestionably Somerset!'
+
+And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful
+to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed
+distaste to curiosity.
+
+'"Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,"' said the shopman to himself,
+in the tone of one considering a verse.  'I suppose it would be too
+much to say "orotunda," and yet how noble it were!  "Or opulent
+orotunda strike the sky."  But that is the bitterness of arts; you
+see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually
+intervenes.'
+
+'Somerset, my dear fellow,' said Challoner, 'is this a masquerade?'
+
+'What?  Challoner!' cried the shopman.  'I am delighted to see you.
+One moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet:  only the
+octave.'  And with a friendly waggle of the hand, he once more
+buried himself in the commerce of the Muses.  'I say,' he said
+presently, looking up, 'you seem in wonderful preservation:  how
+about the hundred pounds?'
+
+'I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,'
+replied Challoner modestly.
+
+'Ah,' said Somerset, 'I very much doubt the legitimacy of
+inheritance.  The State, in my view, should collar it.  I am now
+going through a stage of socialism and poetry,' he added
+apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of medicinal waters.
+
+'And are you really the person of the--establishment?' inquired
+Challoner, deftly evading the word 'shop.'
+
+'A vendor, sir, a vendor,' returned the other, pocketing his poesy.
+'I help old Happy and Glorious.  Can I offer you a weed?'
+
+'Well, I scarcely like . . . ' began Challoner.
+
+'Nonsense, my dear fellow,' cried the shopman.  'We are very proud
+of the business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being
+the most egregious of created beings from the point of view of
+ethics, is literally sprung from the loins of kings.  "De Godall je
+suis le fervent."  There is only one Godall.--By the way,' he
+added, as Challoner lit his cigar, 'how did you get on with the
+detective trade?'
+
+'I did not try,' said Challoner curtly.
+
+'Ah, well, I did,' returned Somerset, 'and made the most
+incomparable mess of it:  lost all my money and fairly covered
+myself with odium and ridicule.  There is more in that business,
+Challoner, than meets the eye; there is more, in fact, in all
+businesses.  You must believe in them, or get up the belief that
+you believe.  Hence,' he added, 'the recognised inferiority of the
+plumber, for no one could believe in plumbing.'
+
+'A propos,' asked Challoner, 'do you still paint?'
+
+'Not now,' replied Paul; 'but I think of taking up the violin.'
+
+Challoner's eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade
+of the detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the
+columns of the morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.
+
+'By Jove,' he cried, 'that's odd!'
+
+'What is odd?' asked Paul.
+
+'Oh, nothing,' returned the other:  'only I once met a person
+called M'Guire.'
+
+'So did I!' cried Somerset.  'Is there anything about him?'
+
+Challoner read as follows:  'MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN STEPNEY.  An
+inquest was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M'Guire,
+described as a carpenter.  Doctor Dovering stated that he had for
+some time treated the deceased as a dispensary patient, for
+sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and nervous depression.  There was
+no cause of death to be found.  He would say the deceased had sunk.
+Deceased was not a temperate man, which doubtless accelerated
+death.  Deceased complained of dumb ague, but witness had never
+been able to detect any positive disease.  He did not know that he
+had any family.  He regarded him as a person of unsound intellect,
+who believed himself a member and the victim of some secret
+society.  If he were to hazard an opinion, he would say deceased
+had died of fear.'
+
+'And the doctor would be right,' cried Somerset; 'and my dear
+Challoner, I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will--
+Well, after all,' he added, 'poor devil, he was well served.'
+
+The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the
+threshold.  He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly
+supplied with buttons; his boots were full of water, his hat greasy
+with service; and yet he wore the air of one exceeding well content
+with life.  He was hailed by the two others with exclamations of
+surprise and welcome.
+
+'And did you try the detective business?' inquired Paul.
+
+'No,' returned Harry.  'Oh yes, by the way, I did though:  twice,
+and got caught out both times.  But I thought I should find my--my
+wife here?' he added, with a kind of proud confusion.
+
+'What? are you married?' cried Somerset.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Harry, 'quite a long time:  a month at least.'
+
+'Money?' asked Challoner.
+
+'That's the worst of it,' Desborough admitted.  'We are deadly hard
+up.  But the Pri--- Mr. Godall is going to do something for us.
+That is what brings us here.'
+
+'Who was Mrs. Desborough?' said Challoner, in the tone of a man of
+society.
+
+'She was a Miss Luxmore,' returned Harry.  'You fellows will be
+sure to like her, for she is much cleverer than I.  She tells
+wonderful stories, too; better than a book.'
+
+And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered.
+Somerset cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the
+Superfluous Mansion, and Challoner fell back a step and dropped his
+cigar as he beheld the sorceress of Chelsea.
+
+'What!' cried Harry, 'do you both know my wife?'
+
+'I believe I have seen her,' said Somerset, a little wildly.
+
+'I think I have met the gentleman,' said Mrs. Desborough sweetly;
+'but I cannot imagine where it was.'
+
+'Oh no,' cried Somerset fervently:  'I have no notion--I cannot
+conceive--where it could have been.  Indeed,' he continued, growing
+in emphasis, 'I think it highly probable that it's a mistake.'
+
+'And you, Challoner?' asked Harry, 'you seemed to recognise her
+too.'
+
+'These are both friends of yours, Harry?' said the lady.
+'Delighted, I am sure.  I do not remember to have met Mr.
+Challoner.'
+
+Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped
+after his cigar.  'I do not remember to have had the pleasure,' he
+responded huskily.
+
+'Well, and Mr. Godall?' asked Mrs. Desborough.
+
+'Are you the lady that has an appointment with old--' began
+Somerset, and paused blushing.  'Because if so,' he resumed, 'I was
+to announce you at once.'
+
+And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a
+small pavilion which had been added to the back of the house.  On
+the roof, the rain resounded musically.  The walls were lined with
+maps and prints and a few works of reference.  Upon a table was a
+large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on
+which, by the aid of coloured pins, the progress of the different
+wars was being followed day by day.  A light, refreshing odour of
+the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of
+foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon
+silver dogs.  In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat
+in a morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to
+the rain upon the roof.
+
+'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last night
+adopted any fresh political principle?'
+
+'The lady, sir,' said Somerset, with another blush.
+
+'You have seen her, I believe?' returned Mr. Godall; and on
+Somerset's replying in the affirmative, 'You will excuse me, my
+dear sir,' he resumed, 'if I offer you a hint.  I think it not
+improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the past.  From
+one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.'
+
+A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
+touching urbanity that so well became him.
+
+'I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,' he said;
+'and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy
+and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious
+benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.'
+
+'Your Highness,' replied Clara, 'I must begin with thanks; it is
+like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take up the
+case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all
+that you can do.'  She paused.
+
+'But for yourself?' suggested Mr. Godall--'it was thus you were
+about to continue, I believe.'
+
+'You take the words out of my mouth,' she said.  'For myself, it is
+different.'
+
+'I am not here to be a judge of men,' replied the Prince; 'still
+less of women.  I am now a private person like yourself and many
+million others; but I am one who still fights upon the side of
+quiet.  Now, madam, you know better than I, and God better than
+you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause not to
+inquire; it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the
+future I demand security.  I would not willingly put arms into the
+hands of a disloyal combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one
+of the levyers of a private and a barbarous war.  I speak with some
+severity, and yet I pick my terms.  I tell myself continually that
+you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me of the children
+whose lives and limbs you have endangered.  A woman,' he repeated
+solemnly--'and children.  Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a
+mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis:  possibly when
+you kneel at night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you,
+heavier than any shame; and when your child lies in the pain and
+danger of disease, you shall hesitate to kneel before your Maker.'
+
+'You look at the fault,' she said, 'and not at the excuse.  Has
+your own heart never leaped within you at some story of oppression?
+But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.'
+
+'I was born of woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my
+mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.  This,
+which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.  Is it not
+one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and
+saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships
+at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously
+about for what should be the cause of so many and painful
+preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her
+babe?  These, madam, are my politics; and the verses, which are by
+Mr. Coventry Patmore, I have caused to be translated into the
+Bohemian tongue.  Yes, these are my politics:  to change what we
+can, to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is
+but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and
+impositions, and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause
+however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.'
+
+There was a silence of a moment.
+
+'I fear, madam,' resumed the Prince, 'that I but weary you.  My
+views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to
+grow old.  But I must still trouble you for some reply.'
+
+'I can say but one thing,' said Mrs. Desborough:  'I love my
+husband.'
+
+'It is a good answer,' returned the Prince; 'and you name a good
+influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.'
+
+'I will not play at pride with such a man as you,' she answered.
+'What do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure.  What shall I
+say?  I have done much that I cannot defend and that I would not do
+again.  Can I say more?  Yes:  I can say this:  I never abused
+myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of politics.  I was at
+least prepared to meet reprisals.  While I was levying war myself--
+or levying murder, if you choose the plainer term--I never accused
+my adversaries of assassination.  I never felt or feigned a
+righteous horror, when a price was put upon my life by those whom I
+attacked.  I never called the policeman a hireling.  I may have
+been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.'
+
+'Enough, madam,' returned the Prince:  'more than enough!  Your
+words are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even
+the assassin is a sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my
+eyes than intellectual clarity.  Suffer me, then, to ask you to
+retire; for by the signal of that bell, I perceive my old friend,
+your mother, to be close at hand.  With her I promise you to do my
+utmost.'
+
+And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, opening a
+door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.
+
+'Madam and my very good friend,' said he, 'is my face so much
+changed that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr.
+Godall?'
+
+'To be sure!' she cried, looking at him through her glasses.  'I
+have always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and in your
+altered circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep
+regret, I will beg you to consider my respect increased instead of
+lessened.'
+
+'I have found it so,' returned the Prince, 'with every class of my
+acquaintance.  But, madam, I pray you to be seated.  My business is
+of a delicate order, and regards your daughter.'
+
+'In that case,' said Mrs. Luxmore, 'you may save yourself the
+trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have
+nothing to do with her.  I will not hear one word in her defence;
+but as I value nothing so particularly as the virtue of justice, I
+think it my duty to explain to you the grounds of my complaint.
+She deserted me, her natural protector; for years, she has
+consorted with the most disreputable persons; and to fill the cup
+of her offence, she has recently married.  I refuse to see her, or
+the being to whom she has linked herself.  One hundred and twenty
+pounds a year, I have always offered her:  I offer it again.  It is
+what I had myself when I was her age.'
+
+'Very well, madam,' said the Prince; 'and be that so!  But to touch
+upon another matter:  what was the income of the Reverend Bernard
+Fanshawe?'
+
+'My father?' asked the spirited old lady.  'I believe he had seven
+hundred pounds in the year.'
+
+'You were one, I think, of several?' pursued the Prince.
+
+'Of four,' was the reply.  'We were four daughters; and painful as
+the admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be
+found in England.'
+
+'Dear me!' said the Prince.  'And you, madam, have an income of
+eight thousand?'
+
+'Not more than five,' returned the old lady; 'but where on earth
+are you conducting me?'
+
+'To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,' replied Florizel,
+smiling.  'For I must not suffer you to take your father for a
+rule.  He was poor, you are rich.  He had many calls upon his
+poverty:  there are none upon your wealth.  And indeed, madam, if
+you will let me touch this matter with a needle, there is but one
+point in common to your two positions:  that each had a daughter
+more remarkable for liveliness than duty.'
+
+'I have been entrapped into this house,' said the old lady, getting
+to her feet.  'But it shall not avail.  Not all the tobacconists in
+Europe . . .'
+
+'Ah, madam,' interrupted Florizel, 'before what is referred to as
+my fall, you had not used such language!  And since you so much
+object to the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a
+friendly hint.  If you will not consent to support your daughter, I
+shall be constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I
+doubt not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law
+shall have a livery and run the errands.  With such young blood my
+business might be doubled, and I might be bound in common gratitude
+to place the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.'
+
+'Your Highness,' said the old lady, 'I have been very rude, and you
+are very cunning.  I suppose the minx is on the premises.  Produce
+her.'
+
+'Let us rather observe them unperceived,' said the Prince; and so
+saying he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.
+
+Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and
+Harry were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest;
+Challoner, alleging some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the
+detested neighbourhood of the enchantress.
+
+'At that moment,' Mrs. Desborough was saying, 'Mr Gladstone
+detected the features of his cowardly assailant.  A cry rose to his
+lips:  a cry of mingled triumph . . .'
+
+'That is Mr. Somerset!' interrupted the spirited old lady, in the
+highest note of her register.  'Mr. Somerset, what have you done
+with my house-property?'
+
+'Madam,' said the Prince, 'let it be mine to give the explanation;
+and in the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.'
+
+'Well, Clara, how do you do?' said Mrs. Luxmore.  'It appears I am
+to give you an allowance.  So much the better for you.  As for Mr.
+Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation; for the whole
+affair, though costly, was eminently humorous.  And at any rate,'
+she added, nodding to Paul, 'he is a young gentleman for whom I
+have a great affection, and his pictures were the funniest I ever
+saw.'
+
+'I have ordered a collation,' said the Prince.  'Mr. Somerset, as
+these are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that you
+should join them at table.  I will take the shop.'
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.
+Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr.
+Somerset should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon
+the English people to remember with more gratitude the services of
+the police; to what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they
+are called; against what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how
+small a reward, either in fame or money:  matter, it has appeared
+to the translators, too serious for this place.
+
+{2}  In this name the accent falls upon the E; the S is sibilant.
+
+{3}  The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage
+conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader.  We
+subjoin a specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be
+printed as prose or verse:  'Any writard who writes dynamitard
+shall find in me a never-resting fightard;' and he goes on (if we
+correctly gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and
+obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-
+filchard (clearly justified by the parallel--pilchard) and opera
+dancard.  'Dynamitist,' he adds, 'I could understand.'
+
+{4}  The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch
+which our translation usually praetermits, here registers a
+somewhat interesting detail.  Zero pronounced the word 'boom;' and
+the reader, if but for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow
+him.
+
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
+<title>The Dynamiter</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dynamiter, by Robert Louis Stevenson
+(#32 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Dynamiter
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
+
+Release Date: September, 1996  [EBook #647]
+[This file was first posted on September 13, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE DYNAMITER<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Gentlemen, - In the volume now in your hands, the authors have touched
+upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is your glory to have contended.&nbsp;
+It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit.&nbsp; Let us dedicate
+our horror to acts of a more mingled strain, where crime preserves some
+features of nobility, and where reason and humanity can still relish
+the temptation.&nbsp; Horror, in this case, is due to Mr. Parnell: he
+sits before posterity silent, Mr. Forster&rsquo;s appeal echoing down
+the ages.&nbsp; Horror is due to ourselves, in that we have so long
+coquetted with political crime; not seriously weighing, not acutely
+following it from cause to consequence; but with a generous, unfounded
+heat of sentiment, like the schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding
+what was specious.&nbsp; When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile
+shape), we proved false to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap,
+that crime was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding names;
+and recoiled from our false deities.<br>
+<br>
+But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our defenders.&nbsp;
+Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war of politics;
+whatever elements of greed, whatever traits of the bully, dishonour
+both parties in this inhuman contest; - your side, your part, is at
+least pure of doubt.&nbsp; Yours is the side of the child, of the breeding
+woman, of individual pity and public trust.&nbsp; If our society were
+the mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it wears some of his colours)
+it yet embraces many precious elements and many innocent persons whom
+it is a glory to defend.&nbsp; Courage and devotion, so common in the
+ranks of the police, so little recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have
+at length found their commemoration in an historical act.&nbsp; History,
+which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of
+Mr. Forster, and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will
+not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands,
+nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his aid.<br>
+<br>
+Robert Louis Stevenson<br>
+Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A NOTE FOR THE READER<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume,
+and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW
+ARABIAN NIGHTS.&nbsp; The loss is yours - and mine; or to be more exact,
+my publishers&rsquo;.&nbsp; But if you are thus unlucky, the least I
+can do is to pass you a hint.&nbsp; When you shall find a reference
+in the following pages to one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar
+Divan in Rupert Street, Soho, you must be prepared to recognise, under
+his features, no less a person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly
+one of the magnates of Europe, now dethroned, exiled, impoverished,
+and embarked in the tobacco trade.<br>
+<br>
+R. L. S.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS<br>
+<br>
+<i>A SECOND SERIES<br>
+<br>
+</i>THE DYNAMITER<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
+precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young
+men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.&nbsp;
+The first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best
+fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;Paul Somerset!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am indeed Paul Somerset,&rsquo; returned the other, &lsquo;or
+what remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty and
+law.&nbsp; But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time
+may be said, without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your azure brow.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;All,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;is not gold that glitters.&nbsp;
+But we are here in an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the
+movement of these ladies.&nbsp; Let us, if you please, find a more private
+corner.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;If you will allow me to guide you,&rsquo; replied Somerset, &lsquo;I
+will offer you the best cigar in London.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a
+brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street, Soho.&nbsp;
+The entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic Highlanders of wood
+which have almost risen to the standing of antiquities; and across the
+window-glass, which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and
+cigars, there ran the gilded legend: &lsquo;Bohemian Cigar Divan, by
+T. Godall.&rsquo;&nbsp; The interior of the shop was small, but commodious
+and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and urbane; and the two young
+men, each puffing a select regalia, had soon taken their places on a
+sofa of mouse-coloured plush and proceeded to exchange their stories.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am now,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;a barrister; but Providence
+and the attorneys have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine.&nbsp;
+A select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my afternoons,
+as Mr. Godall could testify, have been generally passed in this divan;
+and my mornings, I have taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising
+before twelve.&nbsp; At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly,
+and I am proud to remember, most agreeably expended.&nbsp; Since then
+a gentleman, who has really nothing else to recommend him beyond the
+fact of being my maternal uncle, deals me the small sum of ten shillings
+a week; and if you behold me once more revisiting the glimpses of the
+street lamps in my favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I
+have come into a fortune.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I should not have supposed so,&rsquo; replied Challoner.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;But doubtless I met you on the way to your tailors.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is a visit that I purpose to delay,&rsquo; returned Somerset,
+with a smile.&nbsp; &lsquo;My fortune has definite limits.&nbsp; It
+consists, or rather this morning it consisted, of one hundred pounds.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is certainly odd,&rsquo; said Challoner; &lsquo;yes, certainly
+the coincidence is strange.&nbsp; I am myself reduced to the same margin.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;And yet Solomon in all
+his glory - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Such is the fact.&nbsp; I am, dear boy, on my last legs,&rsquo;
+said Challoner.&nbsp; &lsquo;Besides the clothes in which you see me,
+I have scarcely a decent trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how,
+I would this instant set about some sort of work or commerce.&nbsp;
+With a hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his way.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It may be,&rsquo; returned Somerset; &lsquo;but what to do with
+mine is more than I can fancy.&nbsp; Mr. Godall,&rsquo; he added, addressing
+the salesman, &lsquo;you are a man who knows the world: what can a young
+fellow of reasonable education do with a hundred pounds?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It depends,&rsquo; replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The power of money is an article of faith in which I profess
+myself a sceptic.&nbsp; A hundred pounds will with difficulty support
+you for a year; with somewhat more difficulty you may spend it in a
+night; and without any difficulty at all you may lose it in five minutes
+on the Stock Exchange.&nbsp; If you are of that stamp of man that rises,
+a penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a penny
+would be no more useless.&nbsp; When I was myself thrown unexpectedly
+upon the world, it was my fortune to possess an art: I knew a good cigar.&nbsp;
+Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not even law,&rsquo; was the reply.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The answer is worthy of a sage,&rsquo; returned Mr. Godall.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And you, sir,&rsquo; he continued, turning to Challoner, &lsquo;as
+the friend of Mr. Somerset, may I be allowed to address you the same
+question?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;I play a fair hand at
+whist.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;How many persons are there in London,&rsquo; returned the salesman,
+&lsquo;who have two-and-thirty teeth?&nbsp; Believe me, young gentleman,
+there are more still who play a fair hand at whist.&nbsp; Whist, sir,
+is wide as the world; &rsquo;tis an accomplishment like breathing.&nbsp;
+I once knew a youth who announced that he was studying to be Chancellor
+of England; the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less excessive
+than that of the man who aspires to make a livelihood by whist.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;I am afraid I shall have
+to fall to be a working man.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Fall to be a working man?&rsquo; echoed Mr. Godall.&nbsp; &lsquo;Suppose
+a rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a
+captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge?&nbsp; The
+ignorance of your middle class surprises me.&nbsp; Outside itself, it
+thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation;
+but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered
+hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge.&nbsp;
+By the defects of your education you are more disqualified to be a working
+man than to be the ruler of an empire.&nbsp; The gulf, sir, is below;
+and the true learned arts - those which alone are safe from the competition
+of insurgent laymen - are those which give his title to the artisan.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is a very pompous fellow,&rsquo; said Challoner, in the
+ear of his companion.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;He is immense,&rsquo; said Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young fellow
+made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some tobacco.&nbsp;
+He was younger than the others; and, in a somewhat meaningless and altogether
+English way, he was a handsome lad.&nbsp; When he had been served, and
+had lighted his pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled
+himself to Challoner by the name of Desborough.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Desborough, to be sure,&rsquo; cried Challoner.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,
+Desborough, and what do you do?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The fact is,&rsquo; said Desborough, &lsquo;that I am doing nothing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A private fortune possibly?&rsquo; inquired the other.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, no,&rsquo; replied Desborough, rather sulkily.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+fact is that I am waiting for something to turn up.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;All in the same boat!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;And
+have you, too, one hundred pounds?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Worse luck,&rsquo; said Mr. Desborough.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,&rsquo; said Somerset:
+&lsquo;Three futiles.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A character of this crowded age,&rsquo; returned the salesman.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I deny that the age is crowded;
+I will admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he
+is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil.&nbsp; What
+am I?&nbsp; I have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography,
+smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial astrology;
+and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street&rsquo;s end, as
+impotent as any baby.&nbsp; I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal
+uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve
+into my elements like an unstable mixture.&nbsp; I begin to perceive
+that it is necessary to know some one thing to the bottom - were it
+only literature.&nbsp; And yet, sir, the man of the world is a great
+feature of this age; he is possessed of an extraordinary mass and variety
+of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he has seen life in all its
+phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of existence
+should bear fruit.&nbsp; I count myself a man of the world, accomplished,
+<i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>.&nbsp; So do you, Challoner.&nbsp; And you,
+Mr. Desborough?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh yes,&rsquo; returned the young man.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world,
+without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of
+the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the
+midst of the chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous
+chink of money on the surface of the globe.&nbsp; Sir, as civilised
+men, what do we do?&nbsp; I will show you.&nbsp; You take in a paper?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I take,&rsquo; said Mr. Godall solemnly, &lsquo;the best paper
+in the world, the <i>Standard</i>.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Good,&rsquo; resumed Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;I now hold it in
+my hand, the voice of the world, a telephone repeating all men&rsquo;s
+wants.&nbsp; I open it, and where my eye first falls - well, no, not
+Morrison&rsquo;s Pills - but here, sure enough, and but a little above,
+I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour
+of society.&nbsp; Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial
+gratitude: &ldquo;<i>Two hundred Pounds Reward</i>. - The above reward
+will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and
+whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the
+Green Park.&nbsp; He was over six feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately
+broad, close shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?&rsquo;
+inquired Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do I propose it?&nbsp; No, sir,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is reason, destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands
+and imposes it.&nbsp; Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of
+the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge,
+all that we are and have builds up the character of the complete detective.&nbsp;
+It is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The proposition is perhaps excessive,&rsquo; replied Challoner;
+&lsquo;for hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking,
+and ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To defend society?&rsquo; asked Somerset; &lsquo;to stake one&rsquo;s
+life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil?&nbsp; I appeal
+to Mr. Godall.&nbsp; He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life,
+will spit upon such philistine opinions.&nbsp; He knows that the policeman,
+as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both
+worse equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence a more
+noble hero than the soldier.&nbsp; Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself
+into supposing that a general would either ask or expect, from the best
+army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous battle-field, the conduct
+of a common constable at Peckham Rye?&rsquo; <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a><br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I did not understand we were to join the force,&rsquo; said Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nor shall we.&nbsp; These are the hands; but here - here, sir,
+is the head,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Enough; it is decreed.&nbsp;
+We shall hunt down this miscreant in the sealskin coat.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Suppose that we agreed,&rsquo; retorted Challoner, &lsquo;you
+have no plan, no knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Challoner!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;is it possible that
+you hold the doctrine of Free Will?&nbsp; And are you devoid of any
+tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded fallacies?&nbsp;
+Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules this terrestrial bustle;
+and in Chance I place my sole reliance.&nbsp; Chance has brought us
+three together; when we next separate and go forth our several ways,
+Chance will continually drag before our careless eyes a thousand eloquent
+clues, not to this mystery only, but to the countless mysteries by which
+we live surrounded.&nbsp; Then comes the part of the man of the world,
+of the detective born and bred.&nbsp; This clue, which the whole town
+beholds without comprehension, swift as a cat, he leaps upon it, makes
+it his, follows it with craft and passion, and from one trifling circumstance
+divines a world.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Just so,&rsquo; said Challoner; &lsquo;and I am delighted that
+you should recognise these virtues in yourself.&nbsp; But in the meanwhile,
+dear boy, I own myself incapable of joining.&nbsp; I was neither born
+nor bred as a detective, but as a placable and very thirsty gentleman;
+and, for my part, I begin to weary for a drink.&nbsp; As for clues and
+adventures, the only adventure that is ever likely to occur to me will
+be an adventure with a bailiff.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Now there is the fallacy,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;There
+I catch the secret of your futility in life.&nbsp; The world teems and
+bubbles with adventure; it besieges you along the street: hands waving
+out of windows, swindlers coming up and swearing they knew you when
+you were abroad, affable and doubtful people of all sorts and conditions
+begging and truckling for your notice.&nbsp; But not you: you turn away,
+you walk your seedy mill round, you must go the dullest way.&nbsp; Now
+here, I beg of you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it
+in with both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic, grasp
+it.&nbsp; I will do the like; the devil is in it, but at least we shall
+have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate the story of our fortunes
+to my philosophic friend of the divan, the great Godall, now hearing
+me with inward joy.&nbsp; Come, is it a bargain?&nbsp; Will you, indeed,
+both promise to welcome every chance that offers, to plunge boldly into
+every opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to study
+and piece together all that happens?&nbsp; Come, promise: let me open
+to you the doors of the great profession of intrigue.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is not much in my way,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;but,
+since you make a point of it, amen.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t mind promising,&rsquo; said Desborough, &lsquo;but
+nothing will happen to me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;O faithless ones!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;But at
+least I have your promises; and Godall, I perceive, is transported with
+delight.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various narratives,&rsquo;
+said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of his manner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now, gentlemen,&rsquo; concluded Somerset, &lsquo;let us
+separate.&nbsp; I hasten to put myself in fortune&rsquo;s way.&nbsp;
+Hark how, in this quiet corner, London roars like the noise of battle;
+four million destinies are here concentred; and in the strong panoply
+of one hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am about to plunge into
+that web.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHALLONER&rsquo;S ADVENTURE: <i>THE SQUIRE OF DAMES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney,
+where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the
+people of the house.&nbsp; To this remote home he found himself, at
+a very early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth
+on foot.&nbsp; He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of the
+exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of
+omnibuses.&nbsp; In happier days he would have chartered a cab; but
+these luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he could muster
+he addressed himself to walk.<br>
+<br>
+It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
+serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along
+the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the
+warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the
+city.&nbsp; He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing
+and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the
+labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the silence.&nbsp;
+Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house after
+house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed
+its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered
+his course, under day&rsquo;s effulgent dome and through this encampment
+of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he reflected, &lsquo;if I were like my scatter-brained
+companion, here were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.&nbsp;
+Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night
+of January, and in the midst of some four million sleepers, solitary
+as the woods of Yucatan.&nbsp; If I but raise my voice I could summon
+up the number of an army, and yet the grave is not more silent than
+this city of sleep.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came
+into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the quarter.&nbsp;
+Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of trees,
+were several of those discreet, <i>bijou</i> residences on which propriety
+is apt to look askance.&nbsp; Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted
+barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a
+dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.&nbsp; Before
+one such house, that stood a little separate among walled gardens, a
+cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a moment, looking
+on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring
+peace.&nbsp; With the cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence
+fell dead; the house stood smokeless: the blinds down, the whole machinery
+of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the
+breathing of the sleepers.<br>
+<br>
+As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from
+within.&nbsp; This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering
+as from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul&rsquo;s; and at the same
+time from every chink of door and window spirted an ill-smelling vapour.&nbsp;
+The cat disappeared with a cry.&nbsp; Within the lodging-house feet
+pounded on the stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke;
+and two men and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into the
+street and fled without a word.&nbsp; The hissing had already ceased,
+the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had come and gone
+as in a dream, and still Challoner was rooted to the spot.&nbsp; At
+last his reason and his fear awoke together, and with the most unwonted
+energy he fell to running.<br>
+<br>
+Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed
+his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report
+of his senses, some theory of the occurrence.&nbsp; But the occasion
+of the sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed him, and the
+strange conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the
+house, were mysteries beyond his plummet.&nbsp; With an obscure awe
+he considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread the
+web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.<br>
+<br>
+In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely
+west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which presently
+widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst.&nbsp; Here was
+quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was
+grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there was something
+brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon
+the pavement and his mind running upon distant scenes, till he was recalled,
+upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked his further progress.&nbsp; This
+street, whose name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.<br>
+<br>
+He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he
+raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on the
+figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third of the
+incongruous fugitives.&nbsp; She had run there, seemingly, blindfold;
+the wall had checked her career: and being entirely wearied, she had
+sunk upon the ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among
+the summer dust.&nbsp; Each saw the other in the same instant of time;
+and she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and began to hurry from
+the scene.<br>
+<br>
+Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his adventure,
+and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.&nbsp; Pity and alarm,
+in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of his mind; and yet,
+in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady&rsquo;s
+wake.&nbsp; He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors;
+but, tread as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed in
+the empty street.&nbsp; Their sound appeared to strike in her some strong
+emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere she paused.&nbsp; A second
+time she addressed herself to flight; and a second time she paused.&nbsp;
+Then she turned about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive
+appearance of timidity, drew near to the young man.&nbsp; He on his
+side continued to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.&nbsp;
+At length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim
+over, and she reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you an English gentleman?&rsquo; she cried.<br>
+<br>
+The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.&nbsp; He was
+the spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs
+to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous
+adventures.&nbsp; He looked east and west; but the houses that looked
+down upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself,
+though in the full glare of the day&rsquo;s eye, cut off from any human
+intervention.&nbsp; His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.&nbsp;
+He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in face and figure,
+elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady undeniable; the picture of distress
+and innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I protest you have no cause to
+fear intrusion; and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in
+this street, which has deceived us both.&rsquo;&nbsp; An unmistakable
+relief appeared upon the lady&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; &lsquo;I might have
+guessed it!&rsquo; she exclaimed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thank you a thousand
+times!&nbsp; But at this hour, in this appalling silence, and among
+all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors - oh, lost in them!&rsquo;
+she cried, her face blanching at the words.&nbsp; &lsquo;I beg you to
+lend me your arm,&rsquo; she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone - I had a shock, oh, what
+a shock!&nbsp; I beg of you to be my escort.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear madam,&rsquo; responded Challoner heavily, &lsquo;my
+arm is at your service.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her
+sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction
+of the city.&nbsp; One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure:
+it was plain her fears were genuine.&nbsp; Still, as she went, she spied
+around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in
+a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers.&nbsp; To Challoner her terror
+was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, while
+it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and longed for release.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he said at last, &lsquo;I am, of course, charmed
+to be of use to any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite
+to that you follow, and a word of explanation - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; she sobbed, &lsquo;not here - not here!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The blood of Challoner ran cold.&nbsp; He might have thought the lady
+mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view
+of the detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-assorted trio,
+his mind was lost among mysteries.&nbsp; So they continued to thread
+the maze of streets in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and
+both thrilling with incommunicable terrors.&nbsp; In time, however,
+and above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair began to rise
+to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the corners; and Challoner,
+emboldened by the resonant tread and distant figure of a constable,
+returned to the charge with more of spirit and directness.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I thought,&rsquo; said he, in the tone of conversation, &lsquo;that
+I had indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two
+gentlemen.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;you need not fear to wound me by
+the truth.&nbsp; You saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my
+companions were not gentlemen.&nbsp; In such a case, the best of compliments
+is to be frank.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I thought,&rsquo; resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he
+was surprised by the spirit of her reply, &lsquo;to have perceived,
+besides, a certain odour.&nbsp; A noise, too - I do not know to what
+I should compare it - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Silence!&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;You do not know the danger
+you invoke.&nbsp; Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those
+streets, and got beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be explained.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, avoid the topic.&nbsp; What a sight is this sleeping city!&rsquo;
+she exclaimed; and then, with a most thrilling voice, &lsquo;&ldquo;Dear
+God,&rdquo; she quoted, &ldquo;the very houses seem asleep, and all
+that mighty heart is lying still.&rdquo;&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I perceive, madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you are a reader.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am more than that,&rsquo; she answered, with a sigh.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am a girl condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward
+is my fate, that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude
+of peace.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Station
+and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused, withdrew her arm
+from Challoner&rsquo;s, and looked up and down as though in pain or
+indecision.&nbsp; Then, with a lovely change of countenance, and laying
+her gloved hand upon his arm -<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What you already think of me,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I tremble
+to conceive; yet I must here condemn myself still further.&nbsp; Here
+I must leave you, and here I beseech you to wait for my return.&nbsp;
+Do not attempt to follow me or spy upon my actions.&nbsp; Suspend yet
+awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent as your own sister; and do
+not, above all, desert me.&nbsp; Stranger as you are, I have none else
+to look to.&nbsp; You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman,
+courteous and kind: and when I beg for a few minutes&rsquo; patience,
+I make sure beforehand you will not deny me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful eye-shot,
+vanished round the corner.&nbsp; But the force of her appeal had been
+a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters,
+but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales.&nbsp;
+Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began
+to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up
+the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.&nbsp; The reader, if he
+has ever plied the fascinating trade of the noctambulist, will not be
+unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain
+early taverns inaugurate the business of the day.&nbsp; It was into
+one of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld
+his charming companion disappear.&nbsp; To say he was surprised were
+inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment behind him.&nbsp;
+Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent
+oaths, he damned this commonplace enchantress.&nbsp; She had scarce
+been gone a second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again
+in company with a young man of mean and slouching attire.&nbsp; For
+some five or six exchanges they conversed together with an animated
+air; then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady,
+with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards Challoner.&nbsp;
+He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as she hurried, flashing
+from her dress; her movements eloquent of speed and youth; and though
+he still entertained some thoughts of flight, they grew miserably fainter
+as the distance lessened.&nbsp; Against mere beauty he was proof: it
+was her unmistakable gentility that now robbed him of the courage of
+his cowardice.&nbsp; With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly
+on his right; with one who, in spite of all, he could not quite deny
+to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.&nbsp; At the very corner from
+whence he had spied upon her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed,
+and - &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she cried, with a bright flush of colour.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Ah!&nbsp; Ungenerous!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames to
+the possession of himself.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, &lsquo;I
+do not think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity;
+I have suffered myself to be led over a considerable portion of the
+metropolis; and if I now request you to discharge me of my office of
+protector, you have friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She stood a moment dumb.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go! go, and may God
+help me!&nbsp; You have seen me - me, an innocent girl! fleeing from
+a dire catastrophe and haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity,
+nor honour move you to await my explanation or to help in my distress.&nbsp;
+Go!&rsquo; she repeated.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am lost indeed.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the street.<br>
+<br>
+Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable
+sense of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being
+gulled.&nbsp; She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings
+took the upper hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice,
+that his conduct was a perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured
+tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the elegant decorum of
+her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh construction; and between
+penitence and curiosity he began slowly to follow in her wake.&nbsp;
+At the corner he had her once more full in view.&nbsp; Her speed was
+failing like a stricken bird&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Even as he looked, she threw
+her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned against the wall.&nbsp; At
+the spectacle, Challoner&rsquo;s fortitude gave way.&nbsp; In a few
+strides he overtook her and, for the first time removing his hat, assured
+her in the most moving terms of his entire respect and firm desire to
+help her.&nbsp; He spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it appeared
+that she began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and drew
+herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness,
+turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and gratitude
+were mingled.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;use me
+as you will!&rsquo;&nbsp; And once more, but now with a great air of
+deference, he offered her the conduct of his arm.&nbsp; She took it
+with a sigh that struck him to the heart; and they began once more to
+trace the deserted streets.&nbsp; But now her steps, as though exhausted
+by emotion, began to linger on the way; she leaned the more heavily
+upon his arm; and he, like the parent bird, stooped fondly above his
+drooping convoy.&nbsp; Her physical distress was not accompanied by
+any failing of her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful
+and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire the
+elasticity of his companion&rsquo;s nature.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let me forget,&rsquo;
+she had said, &lsquo;for one half hour, let me forget;&rsquo; and sure
+enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.&nbsp;
+Before every house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and
+sketched his character: here lived the old general whom she was to marry
+on the fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow
+who had set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily
+on the young man&rsquo;s arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant
+in his ears.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; she sighed, by way of commentary,
+&lsquo;in such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness
+that I can find.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of Grosvenor
+Place, the gates of the park were opening and the bedraggled company
+of night-walkers were being at last admitted into that paradise of lawns.&nbsp;
+Challoner and his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile
+in silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary
+with the night&rsquo;s patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the
+benches or wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park
+had soon utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair
+proceeded on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.<br>
+<br>
+Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a mound
+of turf.&nbsp; The young lady looked about her with relief.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;here at last we are secure from
+listeners.&nbsp; Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history.&nbsp;
+I could not bear that we should part, and that you should still suppose
+your kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take
+a place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with
+the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient,
+but untitled family; and by some event, fault or misfortune, he was
+driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name
+of his ancestors.&nbsp; He sought the States; and instead of lingering
+in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploring
+party of frontiersmen.&nbsp; He was no ordinary traveller; for he was
+not only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences,
+and above all in botany, which he particularly loved.&nbsp; Thus it
+fell that, before many months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of
+the troop, courted and bowed to his opinion.<br>
+<br>
+They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the
+West.&nbsp; For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans,
+guiding themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons
+of men and animals.&nbsp; Then they inclined their route a little to
+the north, and, losing even these dire memorials, came into a country
+of forbidding stillness.<br>
+<br>
+I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock,
+cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far between;
+and neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude.&nbsp; On the fortieth
+day they had already run so short of food that it was judged advisable
+to call a halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt.&nbsp; A great fire
+was built, that its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of
+the party mounted and struck off at a venture into the surrounding desert.<br>
+<br>
+My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the
+one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered vale
+dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city.&nbsp; At
+length he found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks
+and the hair among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon
+bear of most unusual size.&nbsp; He quickened the pace of his steed,
+and still following the quarry, came at last to the division of two
+watersheds.&nbsp; On the far side the country was exceeding intricate
+and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted here and there with
+a few pines, which seemed to indicate the neighbourhood of water.&nbsp;
+Here, then, he picketed his horse, and relying on his trusty rifle,
+advanced alone into that wilderness.<br>
+<br>
+Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound
+of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was rewarded
+by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely intermixed.&nbsp;
+The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and winding passage, whose
+wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles together unscalable
+by man.&nbsp; The water, when the stream was swelled with rains, must
+have filled it from side to side; the sun&rsquo;s rays only plumbed
+it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp funnel, blew
+tempestuously.&nbsp; And yet, in the bottom of this den, immediately
+below my father&rsquo;s eyes as he leaned over the margin of the cliff,
+a party of some half a hundred men, women, and children lay scattered
+uneasily among the rocks.&nbsp; They lay some upon their backs, some
+prone, and not one stirring; their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary
+paleness and emaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of
+the stream, a faint sound of moaning mounted to my father&rsquo;s ears.<br>
+<br>
+While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound
+his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who
+sat hard by propped against a rock.&nbsp; The girl did not seem to be
+conscious of the act; and the old man, after having looked upon her
+with the most engaging pity, returned to his former bed and lay down
+again uncovered on the turf.&nbsp; But the scene had not passed without
+observation even in that starving camp.&nbsp; From the very outskirts
+of the party, a man with a white beard and seemingly of venerable years,
+rose upon his knees, and came crawling stealthily among the sleepers
+towards the girl; and judge of my father&rsquo;s indignation, when he
+beheld this cowardly miscreant strip from her both the coverings and
+return with them to his original position.&nbsp; Here he lay down for
+a while below his spoils, and, as my father imagined, feigned to be
+asleep; but presently he had raised himself again upon one elbow, looked
+with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then swiftly carried his
+hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth.&nbsp; By the movement of
+his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of famine he had reserved a
+store of nourishment; and while his companions lay in the stupor of
+approaching death, secretly restored his powers.<br>
+<br>
+My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle; and
+but for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot the fellow
+dead upon the spot.&nbsp; How different would then have been my history!&nbsp;
+But it was not to be: even as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted
+on the bear, as it crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding
+to the hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that he
+discharged his piece.&nbsp; The bear leaped and fell into a pool of
+the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and in a moment the camp
+was afoot.&nbsp; With cries that were scarce human, stumbling, falling
+and throwing each other down, these starving people rushed upon the
+quarry; and before my father, climbing down by the ledge, had time to
+reach the level of the stream, many were already satisfying their hunger
+on the raw flesh, and a fire was being built by the more dainty.<br>
+<br>
+His arrival was for some time unremarked.&nbsp; He stood in the midst
+of these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by
+their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass; even
+those who were too weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with their eyes
+riveted upon the bear; and my father, seeing himself stand as though
+invisible in the thick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire
+to weep.&nbsp; A touch upon the arm restrained him.&nbsp; Turning about,
+he found himself face to face with the old man he had so nearly killed;
+and yet, at the second glance, recognised him for no old man at all,
+but one in the full strength of his years, and of a strong, speaking,
+and intellectual countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine.&nbsp;
+He beckoned my father near the cliff, and there, in the most private
+whisper, begged for brandy.&nbsp; My father looked at him with scorn:
+&lsquo;You remind me,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;of a neglected duty.&nbsp;
+Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to revive the women of
+your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you robbing of her
+blankets.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with that, not heeding his appeals, my father
+turned his back upon the egoist.<br>
+<br>
+The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk in
+the first stage of death to have observed the bustle round her couch;
+but when my father had raised her head, put the flask to her lips, and
+forced or aided her to swallow some drops of the restorative, she opened
+her languid eyes and smiled upon him faintly.&nbsp; Never was there
+a smile of a more touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet,
+more honestly eloquent of the soul!&nbsp; I speak with knowledge, for
+these were the same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle.&nbsp; From
+her who was to be his wife, my father, still jealously watched and followed
+by the man with the grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women
+of the party, and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among
+the men who seemed in the most need.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is there none left? not a drop for me?&rsquo; said the man with
+the beard.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not one drop,&rsquo; replied my father; &lsquo;and if you find
+yourself in want, let me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket
+of your coat.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried the other, &lsquo;you misjudge me.&nbsp; You
+think me one who clings to life for selfish and commonplace considerations.&nbsp;
+But let me tell you, that were all this caravan to perish, the world
+would but be lightened of a weight.&nbsp; These are but human insects,
+pullulating, thick as May-flies, in the slums of European cities, whom
+I myself have plucked from degradation and misery, from the dung-heap
+and gin-palace door.&nbsp; And you compare their lives with mine!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are then a Mormon missionary?&rsquo; asked my father.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; cried the man, with a strange smile, &lsquo;a Mormon
+missionary if you will!&nbsp; I value not the title.&nbsp; Were I no
+more than that, I could have died without a murmur.&nbsp; But with my
+life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great secrets and the
+future of man.&nbsp; This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried
+for a short cut and wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into
+my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beard from ebony to silver.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And you are a physician,&rsquo; mused my father, looking on his
+face, &lsquo;bound by oath to succour man in his distresses.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; returned the Mormon, &lsquo;my name is Grierson:
+you will hear that name again; and you will then understand that my
+duty was not to this caravan of paupers, but to mankind at large.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now sufficiently
+revived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to bring help
+from his own party; &lsquo;and,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;if you be again
+reduced to such extremities, look round you, and you will see the earth
+strewn with assistance.&nbsp; Here, for instance, growing on the under
+side of fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss.&nbsp;
+Trust me, it is both edible and excellent.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ha!&rsquo; said Doctor Grierson, &lsquo;you know botany!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not I alone,&rsquo; returned my father, lowering his voice; &lsquo;for
+see where these have been scraped away.&nbsp; Am I right?&nbsp; Was
+that your secret store?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+My father&rsquo;s comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire,
+had made a good day&rsquo;s hunting.&nbsp; They were thus the more easily
+persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day
+beheld both parties on the march for the frontiers of Utah.&nbsp; The
+distance to be traversed was not great; but the nature of the country,
+and the difficulty of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three
+weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the
+girl whom he had succoured.&nbsp; I will call my mother Lucy.&nbsp;
+Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you would
+know well.&nbsp; By what series of undeserved calamities this innocent
+flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education, ennobled by the
+finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I
+must not stay to tell you.&nbsp; Let it suffice, that even in these
+untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of her own.&nbsp; The
+ardour of attachment which united my father and mother was perhaps partly
+due to the strange manner of their meeting; it knew, at least, no bounds
+either divine or human; my father, for her sake, determined to renounce
+his ambitions and abjure his faith; and a week had not yet passed upon
+the march before he had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon
+doctrine, and received the promise of my mother&rsquo;s hand on the
+arrival of the party at Salt Lake.<br>
+<br>
+The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.&nbsp; My father
+prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my mother;
+and though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were few happier
+homes in any country than that in which I saw the light and grew to
+girlhood.&nbsp; We were, indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided
+as heretics and half-believers by the more precise and pious of the
+faithful: Young himself, that formidable tyrant, was known to look askance
+upon my father&rsquo;s riches; but of this I had no guess.&nbsp; I dwelt,
+indeed, under the Mormon system, with perfect innocence and faith.&nbsp;
+Some of our friends had many wives; but such was the custom; and why
+should it surprise me more than marriage itself?&nbsp; From time to
+time one of our rich acquaintances would disappear, his family be broken
+up, his wives and houses shared among the elders of the Church, and
+his memory only recalled with bated breath and dreadful headshakings.&nbsp;
+When I had been very still, and my presence perhaps was forgotten, some
+such topic would arise among my elders by the evening fire; I would
+see them draw the closer together and look behind them with scared eyes;
+and I might gather from their whisperings how some one, rich, honoured,
+healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one, perhaps, who had taken
+me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been spirited from home
+and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror, leaving not a
+print behind.&nbsp; It was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the universal
+law.&nbsp; And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous
+silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying
+Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries?&nbsp; I heard
+of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England
+of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect and without the wish
+for further information.&nbsp; Life anywhere, in society as in nature,
+rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming
+in the desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of my parents&rsquo;
+tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my existence; and why should
+I pry beneath this honest seeming surface for the mysteries on which
+it stood?<br>
+<br>
+We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a
+beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and
+surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky
+desert.&nbsp; The city was thirty miles away; there was but one road,
+which went no further than my father&rsquo;s door; the rest were bridle-tracks
+impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude inconceivable
+to the European.&nbsp; Our only neighbour was Dr. Grierson.&nbsp; To
+my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the city,
+and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there
+was something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the
+thin white hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor.&nbsp;
+Yet, though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame
+a sense of fear in his presence; and this disquietude was rather fed
+by the awful solitude in which he lived and the obscurity that hung
+about his occupations.&nbsp; His house was but a mile or two from ours,
+but very differently placed.&nbsp; It stood overlooking the road on
+the summit of a steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging
+bluffs.&nbsp; Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the
+works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort, and
+the cliffs of a constant height, like the ramparts of a city.&nbsp;
+Not even spring could change one feature of that desolate scene; and
+the windows looked down across a plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges
+of cold stone sierras on the north.&nbsp; Twice or thrice I remember
+passing within view of this forbidding residence; and seeing it always
+shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to my parents that some
+day it would certainly be robbed.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, no,&rsquo; said my father, &lsquo;never robbed;&rsquo; and
+I observed a strange conviction in his tone.<br>
+<br>
+At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, I chanced
+to see the doctor&rsquo;s house in a new light.&nbsp; My father was
+ill; my mother confined to his bedside; and I was suffered to go, under
+the charge of our driver, to the lonely house some twenty miles away,
+where our packages were left for us.&nbsp; The horse cast a shoe; night
+overtook us halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning
+when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that part of
+the road which ran below the doctor&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; The moon swam
+clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay utterly deserted;
+but the house, from its station on the top of the long slope and close
+under the bluff, not only shone abroad from every window like a place
+of festival, but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth
+a coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for miles along
+the windless night air, and its shadow lay far abroad in the moonlight
+upon the glittering alkali.&nbsp; As we continued to draw near, besides,
+a regular and panting throb began to divide the silence.&nbsp; First
+it seemed to me like the beating of a heart; and next it put into my
+mind the thought of some giant, smothered under mountains and still,
+with incalculable effort, fetching breath.&nbsp; I had heard of the
+railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask the driver if
+this resembled it.&nbsp; But some look in his eye, some pallor, whether
+of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my lips.&nbsp;
+We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were close below
+the lighted house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle, there
+burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth and set
+the echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff.&nbsp; A
+pillar of amber flame leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes
+of sparks; and at the same time the lights in the windows turned for
+one instant ruby red and then expired.&nbsp; The driver had checked
+his horse instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther
+off among the mountains, when there broke from the now darkened interior
+a series of yells - whether of man or woman it was impossible to guess
+- the door flew open, and there ran forth into the moonlight, at the
+top of the long slope, a figure clad in white, which began to dance
+and leap and throw itself down, and roll as if in agony, before the
+house.&nbsp; I could no more restrain my cries; the driver laid his
+lash about the horse&rsquo;s flank, and we fled up the rough track at
+the peril of our lives; and did not draw rein till, turning the corner
+of the mountain, we beheld my father&rsquo;s ranch and deep, green groves
+and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.<br>
+<br>
+This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed to
+the very topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached
+the age of seventeen.&nbsp; I was still innocent and merry like a child;
+tended my garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not
+a thought to coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on
+my own image in a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise
+the features of my parents.&nbsp; But the fears which had long pressed
+on others were now to be laid on my youth.&nbsp; I had thrown myself,
+one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on
+the verandah, where my mother sat with her embroidery; and when my father
+joined her from the garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me,
+was of so startling a nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The blow has come,&rsquo; my father said, after a long pause.<br>
+<br>
+I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; continued my father, &lsquo;I have received to-day
+a list of all that I possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately
+to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I have buried with
+my own hand on the bare mountain, when there was not a bird in heaven.&nbsp;
+Does the air, then, carry secrets?&nbsp; Are the hills of glass?&nbsp;
+Do the stones we tread upon preserve the footprint to betray us?&nbsp;
+Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have come to such a country!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But this,&rsquo; returned my mother, &lsquo;is no very new or
+very threatening event.&nbsp; You are accused of some concealment.&nbsp;
+You will pay more taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine.&nbsp;
+It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied upon, and the most
+private known.&nbsp; But is this new?&nbsp; Have we not long feared
+and suspected every blade of grass?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ay, and our shadows!&rsquo; cried my father.&nbsp; &lsquo;But
+all this is nothing.&nbsp; Here is the letter that accompanied the list.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time silent.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; she said at last; and then, with the tone of one
+reading: &lsquo;&ldquo;From a believer so largely blessed by Providence
+with this world&rsquo;s goods,&rdquo;&rsquo; she continued, &lsquo;&ldquo;the
+Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of piety.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+There lies the sting.&nbsp; Am I not right?&nbsp; These are the words
+you fear?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;These are the words,&rsquo; replied my father.&nbsp; &lsquo;Lucy,
+you remember Priestley?&nbsp; Two days before he disappeared, he carried
+me to the summit of an isolated butte; we could see around us for ten
+miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land a man were safe from spies,
+it were in such a station; but it was in the very ague-fit of terror
+that he told me, and that I heard, his story.&nbsp; He had received
+a letter such as this; and he submitted to my approval an answer, in
+which he offered to resign a third of his possessions.&nbsp; I conjured
+him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we parted,
+he had doubled the amount.&nbsp; Well, two days later he was gone -
+gone from the chief street of the city in the hour of noon - and gone
+for ever.&nbsp; O God!&rsquo; cried my father, &lsquo;by what art do
+they thus spirit out of life the solid body?&nbsp; What death do they
+command that leaves no traces? that this material structure, these strong
+arms, this skeleton that can resist the grave for centuries, should
+be thus reft in a moment from the world of sense?&nbsp; A horror dwells
+in that thought more awful than mere death.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is there no hope in Grierson?&rsquo; asked my mother.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dismiss the thought,&rsquo; replied my father.&nbsp; &lsquo;He
+now knows all that I can teach, and will do naught to save me.&nbsp;
+His power, besides, is small, his own danger not improbably more imminent
+than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he leaves his wives neglected and
+unwatched; he is openly cited for an unbeliever; and unless he buys
+security at a more awful price - but no; I will not believe it: I have
+no love for him, but I will not believe it.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Believe what?&rsquo; asked my mother; and then, with a change
+of note, &lsquo;But oh, what matters it?&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Abimelech,
+there is but one way open: we must fly!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is in vain,&rsquo; returned my father.&nbsp; &lsquo;I should
+but involve you in my fate.&nbsp; To leave this land is hopeless: we
+are closed in it as men are closed in life; and there is no issue but
+the grave.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;We can but die then,&rsquo; replied my mother.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let
+us at least die together.&nbsp; Let not Asenath <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a>
+and myself survive you.&nbsp; Think to what a fate we should be doomed!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I could
+see he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his whole
+estate, beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him at the moment,
+and to flee that night, which promised to be dark and cloudy.&nbsp;
+As soon as the servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with provisions;
+two others were to carry my mother and myself; and, striking through
+the mountains by an unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke
+for liberty and life.&nbsp; As soon as they had thus decided, I showed
+myself at the window, and, owning that I had heard all, assured them
+that they could rely on my prudence and devotion.&nbsp; I had no fear,
+indeed, but to show myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my
+hand without alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck, had blessed
+Heaven for the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment of pride
+and some of the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look
+forward to the perils of our flight.<br>
+<br>
+Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had left far
+behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain
+canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing
+with the roar of a tumultuous torrent.&nbsp; Cascade after cascade thundered
+and hung up its flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces
+with the wet wind of its descent.&nbsp; The trail was breakneck, and
+led to famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for more
+practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world untrod from year
+to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay, when turning suddenly
+an angle of the cliffs, we found a bright bonfire blazing by itself
+under an impending rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely
+with charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon
+faith.&nbsp; We looked upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke
+into a passion of tears; but not a word was said.&nbsp; The mules were
+turned about; and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canyon,
+we retraced our steps in silence.&nbsp; Day had not yet broken ere we
+were once more at home, condemned beyond reprieve.<br>
+<br>
+What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little
+before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the
+road in a great pother of dust.&nbsp; He was clad in homespun, with
+a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple
+rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring.&nbsp; He was,
+indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his errand,
+though neither he nor any one in Utah dared to disobey; and it was with
+every mark of diffidence that he had had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall,
+and entered the room where our unhappy family was gathered.&nbsp; My
+mother and me, he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was
+alone with my father laid before him a blank signature of President
+Young&rsquo;s, and offered him a choice of services: either to set out
+as a missionary to the tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next
+day, with a party of Destroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty German
+immigrants.&nbsp; The last, of course, my father could not entertain,
+and the first he regarded as a pretext: even if he could consent to
+leave his wife defenceless, and to collect fresh victims for the tyranny
+under which he was himself oppressed, he felt sure he would never be
+suffered to return.&nbsp; He refused both; and Aspinwall, he said, betrayed
+sincere emotion, part religious, at the spectacle of such disobedience,
+but part human, in pity for my father and his family.&nbsp; He besought
+him to reconsider his decision; and at length, finding he could not
+prevail, gave him till the moon rose to settle his affairs, and say
+farewell to wife and daughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;For,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;then,
+at the latest, you must ride with me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast;
+and presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father and
+Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey.&nbsp;
+My mother, though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened
+to shut herself in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone
+in the dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste
+to saddle my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of the mountain,
+and to enjoy one farewell sight of my departing father.&nbsp; The two
+men had set forth at a deliberate pace; nor was I long behind them,
+when I reached the point of view.&nbsp; I was the more amazed to see
+no moving creature in the landscape.&nbsp; The moon, as the saying is,
+shone bright as day; and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was
+there a growing tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence
+of man, but one.&nbsp; From the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion
+of the line of bluffs concealed the doctor&rsquo;s house; and across
+the top of that projection the soft night wind carried and unwound about
+the hills a coil of sable smoke.&nbsp; What fuel could produce a vapour
+so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace pour it forth
+so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well enough that
+it came from the doctor&rsquo;s chimney; I saw well enough that my father
+had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I connected in my
+mind the loss of that dear protector with the ribbon of foul smoke that
+trailed along the mountains.<br>
+<br>
+Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a week
+went by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father and husband.&nbsp;
+As smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so in the
+ten or twenty minutes that I had spent in getting my horse and following
+upon his trail, had that strong and brave man vanished out of life.&nbsp;
+Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now certain
+for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defenceless family.&nbsp;
+Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when I look
+back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event.&nbsp; On the
+last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves
+alone in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all
+our attendants, with one accord, had fled: and as we knew them to be
+gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight.&nbsp;
+The day passed, indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening
+we were called at last into the verandah by the approaching clink of
+horse&rsquo;s hoofs.<br>
+<br>
+The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,
+and saluted us.&nbsp; He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery
+than ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I am come upon a weighty errand;
+and I would have you recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President,
+that he should send as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband&rsquo;s
+oldest friend in Utah.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said my mother, &lsquo;I have but one concern, one
+thought.&nbsp; You know well what it is.&nbsp; Speak: my husband?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah,
+&lsquo;if you were a silly child, my position would now be painfully
+embarrassing.&nbsp; You are, on the other hand, a woman of great intelligence
+and fortitude: you have, by my forethought, been allowed three weeks
+to draw your own conclusions and to accept the inevitable.&nbsp; Farther
+words from me are, I conceive, superfluous.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her
+my hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till
+I could have cried aloud.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then, sir,&rsquo; said she at
+last, &lsquo;you speak to deaf ears.&nbsp; If this be indeed so, what
+have I to do with errands?&nbsp; What do I ask of Heaven but to die?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; said the doctor, &lsquo;command yourself.&nbsp;
+I bid you dismiss all thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear
+mind to bear upon your own future and the fate of that young girl.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You bid me dismiss - &rsquo; began my mother.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then
+you know!&rsquo; she cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I know,&rsquo; replied the doctor.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You know?&rsquo; broke out the poor woman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then
+it was you who did the deed!&nbsp; I tear off the mask, and with dread
+and loathing see you as you are - you, whom the poor fugitive beholds
+in nightmares, and awakes raving - you, the Destroying Angel!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, madam, and what then?&rsquo; returned the doctor.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Have not my fate and yours been similar?&nbsp; Are we not both
+immured in this strong prison of Utah?&nbsp; Have you not tried to flee,
+and did not the Open Eye confront you in the canyon?&nbsp; Who can escape
+the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah?&nbsp; Not I, at least.&nbsp;
+Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the most ungrateful
+was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that have spared your
+husband?&nbsp; You know well it would not.&nbsp; I, too, had perished
+along with him; nor would I have been able to alleviate his last moments,
+nor could I to-day have stood between his family and the hand of Brigham
+Young.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;and could you purchase life by such
+concessions?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Young lady,&rsquo; answered the doctor, &lsquo;I both could and
+did; and you will live to thank me for that baseness.&nbsp; You have
+a spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to recognise.&nbsp; But we waste
+time.&nbsp; Mr. Fonblanque&rsquo;s estate reverts, as you doubtless
+imagine, to the Church; but some part of it has been reserved for him
+who is to marry the family; and that person, I should perhaps tell you
+without more delay, is no other than myself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung together
+like lost souls.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is as I supposed,&rsquo; resumed the doctor, with the same
+measured utterance.&nbsp; &lsquo;You recoil from this arrangement.&nbsp;
+Do you expect me to convince you?&nbsp; You know very well that I have
+never held the Mormon view of women.&nbsp; Absorbed in the most arduous
+studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch
+and quarrel among themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse;
+such was not the union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue
+it.&nbsp; No: you need not, madam, and my old friend&rsquo; - and here
+the doctor rose and bowed with something of gallantry - &lsquo;you need
+not apprehend my importunities.&nbsp; On the contrary, I am rejoiced
+to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you follow
+me at once, and that in the name, not of my wish, but of my orders,
+I hope it will be found that we are of a common mind.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had
+now fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What does it mean? - what will become of us?&rsquo; I cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not that, at least,&rsquo; replied my mother, shuddering.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;So far we can trust him.&nbsp; I seem to read among his words
+a certain tragic promise.&nbsp; Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you
+will not forget your miserable parents?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to explain her
+words; she putting me by, and continuing to recommend the doctor for
+a friend.&nbsp; &lsquo;The doctor!&rsquo; I cried at last; &lsquo;the
+man who killed my father?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nay,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;let us be just.&nbsp; I do believe
+before, Heaven, he played the friendliest part.&nbsp; And he alone,
+Asenath, can protect you in this land of death.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we were
+all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had matter to discuss
+with Mrs. Fonblanque.&nbsp; They came at a foot&rsquo;s pace, eagerly
+conversing in a whisper; and presently after the moon rose and showed
+them looking eagerly in each other&rsquo;s faces as they went, my mother
+laying her hand upon the doctor&rsquo;s arm, and the doctor himself,
+against his usual custom, making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.<br>
+<br>
+At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to
+his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;we shall dismount; and as your mother
+prefers to be alone, you and I shall walk together to my house.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Shall I see her again?&rsquo; I asked.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I give you my word,&rsquo; he said, and helped me to alight.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We leave the horses here,&rsquo; he added.&nbsp; &lsquo;There
+are no thieves in this stone wilderness.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view.&nbsp; The windows
+were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the
+most absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother
+very slowly following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human
+soul within a range of miles.&nbsp; At the thought, I looked upon the
+doctor, gravely walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white
+hair, and then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke like
+some industrious factory.&nbsp; And then my curiosity broke forth.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;In Heaven&rsquo;s name,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;what do you make
+in this inhuman desert?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion
+-<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is not the first time,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that you have
+seen my furnaces alight.&nbsp; One morning, in the small hours, I saw
+you driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot acquit
+myself of having startled either your driver or the horse that drew
+you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What!&rsquo; cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of
+the figure, &lsquo;could that be you?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It was I,&rsquo; he replied; &lsquo;but do not fancy that I was
+mad.&nbsp; I was in agony.&nbsp; I had been scalded cruelly.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of the
+country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.&nbsp; Stone, too, was
+its foundation, stone its background.&nbsp; Not a blade of grass sprouted
+among the broken mineral about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows.&nbsp;
+Over the door, by way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured;
+I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since
+the night of our escape, it had acquired a new significance, and set
+me shrinking.&nbsp; The smoke rolled voluminously from the chimney top,
+its edges ruddy with the fire; and from the far corner of the building,
+near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the moon and
+vanished.<br>
+<br>
+The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+ask me what I make here,&rsquo; he observed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Two things:
+Life and Death.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he motioned me to enter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I shall await my mother,&rsquo; said I.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Child,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;look at me: am I not old and
+broken?&nbsp; Of us two, which is the stronger, the young maiden or
+the withered man?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by
+a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp.&nbsp; It was furnished only with
+a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden benches; and on one of these
+the doctor motioned me to take a seat; and passing by another door into
+the interior of the house, he left me to myself.&nbsp; Presently I heard
+the jar of iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed
+by the same throbbing noise that had startled me in the valley, but
+now so near at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to shake
+the house with every recurrence of the stroke.&nbsp; I had scarce time
+to master my alarm when the doctor returned, and almost in the same
+moment my mother appeared upon the threshold.&nbsp; But how am I to
+describe to you the peace and ravishment of that face?&nbsp; Years seemed
+to have passed over her head during that brief ride, and left her younger
+and fairer; her eyes shone, her smile went to my heart; she seemed no
+more a woman but the angel of ecstatic tenderness.&nbsp; I ran to her
+in a kind of terror; but she shrank a little back and laid her finger
+on her lips, with something arch and yet unearthly.&nbsp; To the doctor,
+on the contrary, she reached out her hand as to a friend and helper;
+and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Lucy,&rsquo; said the doctor, &lsquo;all is prepared.&nbsp; Will
+you go alone, or shall your daughter follow us?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Let Asenath come,&rsquo; she answered, &lsquo;dear Asenath!&nbsp;
+At this hour, when I am purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive
+myself and my affections, it is for your sake, and not for mine, that
+I desire her presence.&nbsp; Were she shut out, dear friend, it is to
+be feared she might misjudge your kindness.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Mother,&rsquo; I cried wildly, &lsquo;mother, what is this?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only &lsquo;Hush!&rsquo;
+as though I were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the
+doctor bade me be silent and trouble her no more.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have
+made a choice,&rsquo; he continued, addressing my mother, &lsquo;that
+has often strangely tempted me.&nbsp; The two extremes: all, or else
+nothing; never, or this very hour upon the clock - these have been my
+incongruous desires.&nbsp; But to accept the middle term, to be content
+with a half-gift, to flicker awhile and to burn out - never for an hour,
+never since I was born, has satisfied the appetite of my ambition.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He looked upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch
+of envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led the way into
+the inner room.<br>
+<br>
+It was very long.&nbsp; From end to end it was lit up by many lamps,
+which by the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping
+sounds with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric.&nbsp;
+At the extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have
+been a lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast
+to the room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors.&nbsp;
+The walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded
+with the implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators glittered
+in the light; and through a hole in the gable near the shed door, a
+heavy driving-belt entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel
+pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.&nbsp;
+In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet, and curiously
+wreathed with wire.&nbsp; To this my mother advanced with a decisive
+swiftness.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is this it?&rsquo; she asked.<br>
+<br>
+The doctor bowed in silence.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Asenath,&rsquo; said my mother, &lsquo;in this sad end of my
+life I have found one helper.&nbsp; Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson.&nbsp;
+Be not, oh my daughter, be not ungrateful to that friend!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated
+the arms.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Am I right?&rsquo; she asked, and looked upon the doctor with
+such a radiancy of face that I trembled for her reason.&nbsp; Once more
+the doctor bowed, but this time leaning hard against the wall.&nbsp;
+He must have touched a spring.&nbsp; The least shock agitated my mother
+where she sat; the least passing jar appeared to cross her features;
+and she sank back in the chair like one resigned to weariness.&nbsp;
+I was at her knees that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp;
+her face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank forward
+on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.<br>
+<br>
+I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment
+my tearful face, I met the doctor&rsquo;s eyes.&nbsp; They rested upon
+mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from
+the freshness of my sorrow, I was startled into attention.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Enough,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;to lamentation.&nbsp; Your mother
+went to death as to a bridal, dying where her husband died.&nbsp; It
+is time, Asenath, to think of the survivors.&nbsp; Follow me to the
+next room.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire,
+he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus
+began to address me -<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate
+watch of Brigham Young.&nbsp; It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances,
+to become the fiftieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular
+fortune, as fortune is counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes
+of the President himself.&nbsp; Such a fate for a girl like you were
+worse than death; better to die as your mother died than to sink daily
+deeper in the mire of this pit of woman&rsquo;s degradation.&nbsp; But
+is escape conceivable?&nbsp; Your father tried; and you beheld yourself
+with what security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock
+was counted a sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom.&nbsp; Where
+your father failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you,
+too, helpless in the toils?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
+understood.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; I cried; &lsquo;you judge me rightly.&nbsp; I must
+follow where my parents led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; replied the doctor, &lsquo;not death for you.&nbsp;
+The flawed vessel we may break, but not the perfect.&nbsp; No, your
+mother cherished a different hope, and so do I.&nbsp; I see,&rsquo;
+he cried, &lsquo;the girl develop to the completed woman, the plan reach
+fulfilment, the promise - ay, outdone!&nbsp; I could not bear to arrest
+so lively, so comely a process.&nbsp; It was your mother&rsquo;s thought,&rsquo;
+he added, with a change of tone, &lsquo;that I should marry you myself.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+I fear I must have shown a perfect horror of aversion from this fate,
+for he made haste to quiet me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Reassure yourself, Asenath,&rsquo;
+he resumed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Old as I am, I have not forgotten the tumultuous
+fancies of youth.&nbsp; I have passed my days, indeed, in laboratories;
+but in all my vigils I have not forgotten the tune of a young pulse.&nbsp;
+Age asks with timidity to be spared intolerable pain; youth, taking
+fortune by the beard, demands joy like a right.&nbsp; These things I
+have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly felt, none more jealously
+considered them; I have but postponed them to their day.&nbsp; See,
+then: you stand without support; the only friend left to you, this old
+investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy.&nbsp; Answer me but
+one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the world calls
+love?&nbsp; Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you
+fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him,
+lay with my dead parents.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is enough,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;It has been my fate
+to be called on often, too often, for those services of which we spoke
+to-night; none in Utah could carry them so well to a conclusion; hence
+there has fallen into my hands a certain share of influence which I
+now lay at your service, partly for the sake of my dead friends, your
+parents; partly for the interest I bear you in your own right.&nbsp;
+I shall send you to England, to the great city of London, there to await
+the bridegroom I have selected.&nbsp; He shall be a son of mine, a young
+man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that quality of beauty
+that your years demand.&nbsp; Since your heart is free, you may well
+pledge me the sole promise that I ask in return for much expense and
+still more danger: to await the arrival of that bridegroom with the
+delicacy of a wife.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I sat awhile stunned.&nbsp; The doctor&rsquo;s marriages, I remembered
+to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my
+distress.&nbsp; But I was alone, as he had said, alone in that dark
+land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage, was already enough
+to revive in me some dawn of hope; and in what words I know not, I accepted
+the proposal.<br>
+<br>
+He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked
+for.&nbsp; &lsquo;You shall see,&rsquo; he cried; &lsquo;you shall judge
+for yourself.&rsquo;&nbsp; And hurrying to the next room he returned
+with a small portrait somewhat coarsely done in oils.&nbsp; It showed
+a man in the dress of nearly forty years before, young indeed, but still
+recognisable to be the doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you like it?&rsquo; he
+asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is myself when I was young.&nbsp; My - my boy
+will be like that, like but nobler; with such health as angels might
+condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath, of commanding mind.&nbsp;
+That should be a man, I think; that should be one among ten thousand.&nbsp;
+A man like that - one to combine the passions of youth with the restraint,
+the force, the dignity of age - one to fill all the parts and faculties,
+one to be man&rsquo;s epitome - say, will that not satisfy the needs
+of an ambitious girl?&nbsp; Say, is not that enough?&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+as he held the picture close before my eyes, his hands shook.<br>
+<br>
+I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was transpierced with
+this display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the
+most insolent revolt surged through my arteries.&nbsp; I held him in
+horror, him, his portrait, and his son; and had there been any choice
+but death or a Mormon marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced
+it.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;and I had rightly counted
+on your spirit.&nbsp; Eat, then, for you have far to go.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So saying, he set meat before me; and while I was endeavouring to obey,
+he left the room and returned with an armful of coarse raiment.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;There,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;is your disguise.&nbsp; I leave
+you to your toilet.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fifteen;
+and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements.&nbsp;
+But what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem
+of their origin and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged.&nbsp;
+I had scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned, opened
+a back window, helped me out into the narrow space between the house
+and the overhanging bluffs, and showed me a ladder of iron footholds
+mortised in the rock.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mount,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;swiftly.&nbsp;
+When you are at the summit, walk, so far as you are able, in the shadow
+of the smoke.&nbsp; The smoke will bring you, sooner or later, to a
+canyon; follow that down, and you will find a man with two horses.&nbsp;
+Him you will implicitly obey.&nbsp; And remember, silence!&nbsp; That
+machinery, which I now put in motion for your service, may by one word
+be turned against you.&nbsp; Go; Heaven prosper you!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The ascent was easy.&nbsp; Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before
+me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare
+to the moon and the surrounding mountains.&nbsp; Nowhere was any vantage
+or concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies,
+I made haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke.&nbsp;
+Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more
+substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it
+crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my
+shoulders, like some mountain fog.&nbsp; But, one way or another, the
+smoke of that ill-omened furnace protected the first steps of my escape,
+and led me unobserved to the canyon.<br>
+<br>
+There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair
+of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in
+silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains.&nbsp;
+A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern
+at the bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next
+night, before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings.&nbsp;
+About noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was
+a screen of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a bundle from his
+pack, bade me change my dress once more.&nbsp; The bundle contained
+clothing of my own, taken from our house, with such necessaries as a
+comb and soap.&nbsp; I made my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool;
+and as I was so doing, and smiling with some complacency to see myself
+restored to my own image, the mountains rang with a scream of far more
+than human piercingness; and while I still stood astonished, there sprang
+up and swiftly increased a storm of the most awful and earth-rending
+sounds.&nbsp; Shall I own to you, that I fell upon my face and shrieked?&nbsp;
+And yet this was but the overland train winding among the near mountains:
+the very means of my salvation: the strong wings that were to carry
+me from Utah!<br>
+<br>
+When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said,
+both money and papers; and telling me that I was already over the borders
+in the territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reached
+the railway station, half a mile below.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; he
+added, &lsquo;is your ticket as far as Council Bluffs.&nbsp; The East
+express will pass in a few hours.&rsquo;&nbsp; With that, he took both
+horses, and, without further words or any salutation, rode off by the
+way that we had come.<br>
+<br>
+Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train
+as it swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of
+the mountain.&nbsp; The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still
+throbbing terror of pursuit - above all, the astounding magic of my
+new conveyance, kept me from any logical or melancholy thought.&nbsp;
+I had gone to the doctor&rsquo;s house two nights before prepared to
+die, prepared for worse than death; what had passed, terrible although
+it was, looked almost bright compared to my anticipations; and it was
+not till I had slept a full night in the flying palace car, that I awoke
+to the sense of my irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm about
+the future.&nbsp; In this mood, I examined the contents of the bag.&nbsp;
+It was well supplied with gold; it contained tickets and complete directions
+for my journey as far as Liverpool, and a long letter from the doctor,
+supplying me with a fictitious name and story, recommending the most
+guarded silence, and bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his
+son.&nbsp; All then had been arranged beforehand: he had counted upon
+my consent, and what was tenfold worse, upon my mother&rsquo;s voluntary
+death.&nbsp; My horror of my only friend, my aversion for this son who
+was to marry me, my revolt against the whole current and conditions
+of my life, were now complete.&nbsp; I was sitting stupefied by my distress
+and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant lady offered me her
+conversation.&nbsp; I clutched at the relief; and I was soon glibly
+telling her the story in the doctor&rsquo;s letter: how I was a Miss
+Gould, of Nevada City, going to England to an uncle, what money I had,
+what family, my age, and so forth, until I had exhausted my instructions,
+and, as the lady still continued to ply me with questions, began to
+embroider on my own account.&nbsp; This soon carried one of my inexperience
+beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a shadow on the lady&rsquo;s
+face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly addressed me.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Miss Gould, I believe?&rsquo; said he; and then, excusing himself
+to the lady by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform
+of the Pullman car.&nbsp; &lsquo;Miss Gould,&rsquo; he said in my ear,
+&lsquo;is it possible that you suppose yourself in safety?&nbsp; Let
+me completely undeceive you.&nbsp; One more such indiscretion and you
+return to Utah.&nbsp; And, in the meanwhile, if this woman should again
+address you, you are to reply with these words: &ldquo;Madam, I do not
+like you, and I will be obliged if you will suffer me to choose my own
+associates.&rdquo;&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myself
+drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult;
+and thenceforward, through all that day, I sat in silence, gazing on
+the bare plains and swallowing my tears.&nbsp; Let that suffice: it
+was the pattern of my journey.&nbsp; Whether on the train, at the hotels,
+or on board the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with
+any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be interrupted.&nbsp; In every
+place, on every side, the most unlikely persons, man or woman, rich
+or poor, became protectors to forward me upon my journey, or spies to
+observe and regulate my conduct.&nbsp; Thus I crossed the States, thus
+passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still following my movements; and when
+at length a cab had set me down before that London lodging-house from
+which you saw me flee this morning, I had already ceased to struggle
+and ceased to hope.<br>
+<br>
+The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was expecting
+my arrival.&nbsp; A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon the
+garden; there were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and there
+(I had almost said with contentment, and certainly with resignation)
+I saw month follow month over my head.&nbsp; At times my landlady took
+me for a walk or an excursion, but she would never suffer me to leave
+the house alone; and I, seeing that she also lived under the shadow
+of that widespread Mormon terror, felt too much pity to resist.&nbsp;
+To the child born on Mormon soil, as to the man who accepts the engagements
+of a secret order, no escape is possible; so I had clearly read, and
+I was thankful even for this respite.&nbsp; Meanwhile, I tried honestly
+to prepare my mind for my approaching nuptials.&nbsp; The day drew near
+when my bridegroom was to visit me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged
+me to consent.&nbsp; A son of Doctor Grierson&rsquo;s, be he what he
+pleased, must still be young, and it was even probable he should be
+handsome; on more than that, I felt I dared not reckon; and in moulding
+my mind towards consent I dwelt the more carefully on these physical
+attractions which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes from moral
+or intellectual considerations.&nbsp; We have a great power upon our
+spirits; and as time passed I worked myself into a frame of acquiescence,
+nay, and I began to grow impatient for the hour.&nbsp; At night sleep
+forsook me; I sat all day by the fire, absorbed in dreams, conjuring
+up the features of my husband, and anticipating in fancy the touch of
+his hand and the sound of his voice.&nbsp; In the dead level and solitude
+of my existence, this was the one eastern window and the one door of
+hope.&nbsp; At last, I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that
+I began to be besieged with fears upon the other side.&nbsp; How if
+it was I that did not please?&nbsp; How if this unseen lover should
+turn from me with disaffection?&nbsp; And now I spent hours before the
+glass, studying and judging my attractions, and was never weary of changing
+my dress or ordering my hair.<br>
+<br>
+When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort
+of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must
+now stand or fall by nature.&nbsp; My occupation ended, I fell a prey
+to the most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to
+the swelling rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence,
+starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow.&nbsp; Love is not to
+be prepared, I know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet,
+when the cab at last rattled to the door and I heard my visitor mount
+the stairs, such was the tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love
+itself might have been proud to own their parentage.&nbsp; The door
+opened, and it was Doctor Grierson that appeared.&nbsp; I believe I
+must have screamed aloud, and I know, at least, that I fell fainting
+to the floor.<br>
+<br>
+When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have startled you,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;A difficulty
+unforeseen - the impossibility of obtaining a certain drug in its full
+purity - has forced me to resort to London unprepared.&nbsp; I regret
+that I should have shown myself once more without those poor attractions
+which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more considerable
+than rain that falls into the sea.&nbsp; Youth is but a state, as passing
+as that syncope from which you are but just awakened, and, if there
+be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I find, Asenath, that I
+must now take you for my confidant.&nbsp; Since my first years, I have
+devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task; and the time
+of my success is at hand.&nbsp; In these new countries, where I was
+so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I have
+fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what was
+a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a
+son of mine I did so in a figure.&nbsp; That son - that husband, Asenath,
+is myself - not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy
+of youth.&nbsp; You think me mad?&nbsp; It is the customary attitude
+of ignorance.&nbsp; I will not argue; I will leave facts to speak.&nbsp;
+When you behold me purified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the
+original image - when you recognise in me (what I shall be) the first
+perfect expression of the powers of mankind - I shall be able to laugh
+with a better grace at your passing and natural incredulity.&nbsp; To
+what can you aspire - fame, riches, power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought
+wisdom of age - that I shall not be able to afford you in perfection?&nbsp;
+Do not deceive yourself.&nbsp; I already excel you in every human gift
+but one: when that gift also has been restored to me you will recognise
+your master.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to myself;
+and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he withdrew.&nbsp;
+I had not the courage to move; the night fell and found me still where
+he had laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands, my soul
+drowned in the darkest apprehensions.&nbsp; Late in the evening he returned,
+carrying a candle, and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade me rise
+and sup.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is it possible,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;that I
+have been deceived in your courage?&nbsp; A cowardly girl is no fit
+mate for me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought
+him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice
+was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was
+his hopeless and derisible inferior.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Why, certainly,&rsquo; he replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;I know you better
+than yourself; and I am well enough acquainted with human nature to
+understand this scene.&nbsp; It is addressed to me,&rsquo; he added
+with a smile, &lsquo;in my character of the still untransformed.&nbsp;
+But do not alarm yourself about the future.&nbsp; Let me but attain
+my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face of the
+earth becomes my willing slave.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table;
+helped and entertained me with the attentions of a fashionable host;
+and it was not till a late hour, that, bidding me courteously good-night,
+he once more left me alone to my misery.<br>
+<br>
+In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I scarce
+knew from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil.&nbsp; If
+his hopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some abhorrent
+miracle, he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that
+most unnatural, that most ungodly union.&nbsp; If, on the other hand,
+these dreams were merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly
+acute, my pity would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt
+against the marriage.&nbsp; So passed the night, in alternations of
+rebellion and despair, of hate and pity; and with the next morning I
+was only to comprehend more fully my enslaved position.&nbsp; For though
+he appeared with a very tranquil countenance, he had no sooner observed
+the marks of grief upon my brow than an answering darkness gathered
+on his own.&nbsp; &lsquo;Asenath.&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;you owe me
+much already; with one finger I still hold you suspended over death;
+my life is full of labour and anxiety; and I choose,&rsquo; said he,
+with a remarkable accent of command, &lsquo;that you shall greet me
+with a pleasant face.&rsquo;&nbsp; He never needed to repeat the recommendation;
+from that day forward I was always ready to receive him with apparent
+cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a good deal of his company, and
+almost more than I could bear of his confidence.&nbsp; He had set up
+a laboratory in the back part of the house, where he toiled day and
+night at his elixir, and he would come thence to visit me in my parlour:
+now with passing humours of discouragement; now, and far more often,
+radiant with hope.&nbsp; It was impossible to see so much of him, and
+not to recognise that the sands of his life were running low; and yet
+all the time he would be laying out vast fields of future, and planning,
+with all the confidence of youth, the most unbounded schemes of pleasure
+and ambition.&nbsp; How I replied I know not; but I found a voice and
+words to answer, even while I wept and raged to hear him.<br>
+<br>
+A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great exhilaration
+contending with pitiful bodily weakness.&nbsp; &lsquo;Asenath,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;I have now obtained the last ingredient.&nbsp; In one
+week from now the perilous moment of the last projection will draw nigh.&nbsp;
+You have once before assisted, although unconsciously, at the failure
+of a similar experiment.&nbsp; It was the elixir which so terribly exploded
+one night when you were passing my house; and it is idle to deny that
+the conduct of so delicate a process, among the million jars and trepidations
+of so great a city, presents a certain element of danger.&nbsp; From
+this point of view, I cannot but regret the perfect stillness of my
+house among the deserts; but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in
+proving that the singularly unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the
+moment of projection, is due rather to the impurity than to the nature
+of the ingredients; and as all are now of an equal and exquisite nicety,
+I have little fear for the result.&nbsp; In a week then from to-day,
+my dear Asenath, this period of trial will be ended.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+he smiled upon me in a manner unusually paternal.<br>
+<br>
+I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest
+and most unbridled terror.&nbsp; What if he failed?&nbsp; And oh, tenfold
+worse! what if he succeeded?&nbsp; What detested and unnatural changeling
+would appear before me to claim my hand?&nbsp; And could there, I asked
+myself with a dreadful sinking, be any truth in his boasts of an assured
+victory over my reluctance?&nbsp; I knew him, indeed, to be masterful,
+to lead my life at a sign.&nbsp; Suppose, then, this experiment to succeed;
+suppose him to return to me, hideously restored, like a vampire in a
+legend; and suppose that, by some devilish fascination . . . My head
+turned; all former fears deserted me: and I felt I could embrace the
+worst in preference to this.<br>
+<br>
+My mind was instantly made up.&nbsp; The doctor&rsquo;s presence in
+London was justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity.&nbsp; Often,
+in our conversation, he would gloat over the details of that great organisation,
+which he feared even while yet he wielded it; and would remind me, that
+even in the humming labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that
+unsleeping eye in Utah.&nbsp; His visitors, indeed, who were of every
+sort, from the missionary to the destroying angel, and seemed to belong
+to every rank of life, had, up to that moment, filled me with unmixed
+repulsion and alarm.&nbsp; I knew that if my secret were to reach the
+ear of any leader my fate were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in
+my present pass of horror and despair, it was to these very men that
+I turned for help.&nbsp; I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon
+missionaries, a man of a low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told
+him I scarce remember what elaborate fable to explain my application;
+and by his intermediacy entered into correspondence with my father&rsquo;s
+family.&nbsp; They recognised my claim for help, and on this very day
+I was to begin my escape.<br>
+<br>
+Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the doctor&rsquo;s
+labours, and prepared against the worst.&nbsp; The nights at this season
+and in this northern latitude are short; and I had soon the company
+of the returning daylight.&nbsp; The silence in and around the house
+was only broken by the movements of the doctor in the laboratory; to
+these I listened, watch in hand, awaiting the hour of my escape, and
+yet consumed by anxiety about the strange experiment that was going
+forward overhead.&nbsp; Indeed, now that I was conscious of some protection
+for myself, my sympathies had turned more directly to the doctor&rsquo;s
+side; I caught myself even praying for his success; and when some hours
+ago a low, peculiar cry reached my ears from the laboratory, I could
+no longer control my impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the
+door.<br>
+<br>
+The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a large,
+round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a bright amber-coloured
+liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude and joy unspeakable.&nbsp;
+As he saw me he raised the flask at arm&rsquo;s length.&nbsp; &lsquo;Victory!&rsquo;
+he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Victory, Asenath!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then - whether
+the flask escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the explosion were
+spontaneous, I cannot tell - enough that we were thrown, I against the
+door-post, the doctor into the corner of the room; enough that we were
+shaken to the soul by the same explosion that must have startled you
+upon the street; and that, in the brief space of an indistinguishable
+instant, there remained nothing of the labours of the doctor&rsquo;s
+lifetime but a few shards of broken crystal and those voluminous and
+ill-smelling vapours that pursued me in my flight.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (Concluded)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>What with the lady&rsquo;s animated manner and dramatic conduct
+of her voice, Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine
+emotion.&nbsp; His fancy, which was not perhaps of a very lively character,
+applauded both the matter and the style; but the more judicial functions
+of his mind refused assent.&nbsp; It was an excellent story; and it
+might be true, but he believed it was not.&nbsp; Miss Fonblanque was
+a lady, and it was doubtless possible for a lady to wander from the
+truth; but how was a gentleman to tell her so?&nbsp; His spirits for
+some time had been sinking, but they now fell to zero; and long after
+her voice had died away he still sat with a troubled and averted countenance,
+and could find no form of words to thank her for her narrative.&nbsp;
+His mind, indeed, was empty of everything beyond a dull longing for
+escape.&nbsp; From this pause, which grew the more embarrassing with
+every second, he was roused by the sudden laughter of the lady.&nbsp;
+His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes met; and
+he caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as put him instantly
+at ease.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You certainly,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;appear to bear your calamities
+with excellent spirit.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do I not?&rsquo; she cried, and fell once more into delicious
+laughter.&nbsp; But from this access she more speedily recovered.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;This is all very well,&rsquo; said she, nodding at him gravely,
+&lsquo;but I am still in a most distressing situation, from which, if
+you deny me your help, I shall find it difficult indeed to free myself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original gloom.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My sympathies are much engaged with you,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and
+I should be delighted, I am sure.&nbsp; But our position is most unusual;
+and circumstances over which I have, I can assure you, no control, deprive
+me of the power - the pleasure - Unless, indeed,&rsquo; he added, somewhat
+brightening at the thought, &lsquo;I were to recommend you to the care
+of the police?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; and he
+saw with wonder that, for the first time since the moment of their meeting,
+every trace of colour had faded from her cheek.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do so,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and - weigh my words well - you
+kill me as certainly as with a knife.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;God bless me!&rsquo; exclaimed Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;I can see you disbelieve my story
+and make light of the perils that surround me; but who are you to judge?&nbsp;
+My family share my apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw
+yourself by what an emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen
+to supply me with the funds for my escape.&nbsp; I admit that you are
+brave and clever and have impressed me most favourably; but how are
+you to prefer your opinion before that of my uncle, an ex-minister of
+state, a man with the ear of the Queen, and of a long political experience?&nbsp;
+If I am mad, is he?&nbsp; And you must allow me, besides, a special
+claim upon your help.&nbsp; Strange as you may think my story, you know
+that much of it is true; and if you who heard the explosion and saw
+the Mormon at Victoria, refuse to credit and assist me, to whom am I
+to turn?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;He gave you money then?&rsquo; asked Challoner, who had been
+dwelling singly on that fact.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I begin to interest you,&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;But,
+frankly, you are condemned to help me.&nbsp; If the service I had to
+ask of you were serious, were suspicious, were even unusual, I should
+say no more.&nbsp; But what is it?&nbsp; To take a pleasure trip (for
+which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay) and to carry from one
+lady to another a sum of money!&nbsp; What can be more simple?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is the sum,&rsquo; asked Challoner, &lsquo;considerable?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had not
+yet found time to make the count, tore open the cover and spread upon
+her knees a considerable number of Bank of England notes.&nbsp; It took
+some time to make the reckoning, for the notes were of every degree
+of value; but at last, and counting a few loose sovereigns, she made
+out the sum to be a little under &pound;710 sterling.&nbsp; The sight
+of so much money worked an immediate revolution in the mind of Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And you propose, madam,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;to intrust that
+money to a perfect stranger?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said she, with a charming smile, &lsquo;but I no longer
+regard you as a stranger.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;I perceive I must make you
+a confession.&nbsp; Although of a very good family - through my mother,
+indeed, a lineal descendant of the patriot Bruce - I dare not conceal
+from you that my affairs are deeply, very deeply involved.&nbsp; I am
+in debt; my pockets are practically empty; and, in short, I am fallen
+to that state when a considerable sum of money would prove to many men
+an irresistible temptation.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do you not see,&rsquo; returned the young lady, &lsquo;that by
+these words you have removed my last hesitation?&nbsp; Take them.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And she thrust the notes into the young man&rsquo;s hand.<br>
+<br>
+He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss Fonblanque
+once more bubbled into laughter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Pray,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;hesitate no further; put them in
+your pocket; and to relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment,
+tell me by what name I am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself
+reduced to the awkwardness of the pronoun.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors had come
+lightly to the young man&rsquo;s aid; but upon what pretext could he
+refuse so generous a trust?&nbsp; Upon none he saw, that was not unpardonably
+wounding; and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion
+had already made a breach in the rampart of Challoner&rsquo;s caution.&nbsp;
+The whole thing, he reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it
+were the height of solemn folly to resent.&nbsp; On the other hand,
+the explosion, the interview at the public-house, and the very money
+in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial the existence of some serious
+danger; and if that were so, could he desert her?&nbsp; There was a
+choice of risks: the risk of behaving with extraordinary incivility
+and unhandsomeness to a lady, and the risk of going on a fool&rsquo;s
+errand.&nbsp; The story seemed false; but then the money was undeniable.&nbsp;
+The whole circumstances were questionable and obscure; but the lady
+was charming, and had the speech and manners of society.&nbsp; While
+he still hung in the wind, a recollection returned upon his mind with
+some of the dignity of prophecy.&nbsp; Had he not promised Somerset
+to break with the traditions of the commonplace, and to accept the first
+adventure offered?&nbsp; Well, here was the adventure.<br>
+<br>
+He thrust the money into his pocket.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My name is Challoner,&rsquo; said he.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Mr. Challoner,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;you have come very
+generously to my aid when all was against me.&nbsp; Though I am myself
+a very humble person, my family commands great interest; and I do not
+think you will repent this handsome action.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner flushed with pleasure.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,&rsquo; she added, her
+eyes dwelling on him with a judicial admiration, &lsquo;a consulship
+in some great town or capital - or else - But we waste time; let us
+set about the work of my delivery.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his heart; and
+once more laying by all serious thoughts, she entertained him, as they
+crossed the park, with her agreeable gaiety of mind.&nbsp; Near the
+Marble Arch they found a hansom, which rapidly conveyed them to the
+terminus at Euston Square; and here, in the hotel, they sat down to
+an excellent breakfast.&nbsp; The young lady&rsquo;s first step was
+to call for writing materials and write, upon one corner of the table,
+a hasty note; still, as she did so, glancing with smiles at her companion.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;here is the letter which will introduce
+you to my cousin.&rsquo;&nbsp; She began to fold the paper.&nbsp; &lsquo;My
+cousin, although I have never seen her, has the character of a very
+charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I know nothing, but
+at least she has been very kind to me; so has my lord her father; so
+have you - kinder than all - kinder than I can bear to think of.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+She said this with unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed the
+envelope.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;I have shut my letter!&nbsp;
+It is not quite courteous; and yet, as between friends, it is perhaps
+better so.&nbsp; I introduce you, after all, into a family secret; and
+though you and I are already old comrades, you are still unknown to
+my uncle.&nbsp; You go then to this address, Richard Street, Glasgow;
+go, please, as soon as you arrive; and give this letter with your own
+hands into those of Miss Fonblanque, for that is the name by which she
+is to pass.&nbsp; When we next meet, you will tell me what you think
+of her,&rsquo; she added, with a touch of the provocative.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Challoner, almost tenderly, &lsquo;she can be
+nothing to me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You do not know,&rsquo; replied the young lady, with a sigh.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;By-the-bye, I had forgotten - it is very childish, and I am almost
+ashamed to mention it - but when you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have
+to make yourself a little ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way
+suits you.&nbsp; We had agreed upon a watchword.&nbsp; You will have
+to address an earl&rsquo;s daughter in these words: &ldquo;<i>Nigger,
+nigger, never</i> <i>die</i>;&rdquo; but reassure yourself,&rsquo; she
+added, laughing, &lsquo;for the fair patrician will at once finish the
+quotation.&nbsp; Come now, say your lesson.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;&ldquo;Nigger, nigger, never die,&rdquo;&rsquo; repeated Challoner,
+with undisguised reluctance.<br>
+<br>
+Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter.&nbsp; &lsquo;Excellent,&rsquo;
+said she, &lsquo;it will be the most humorous scene.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+she laughed again.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And what will be the counterword?&rsquo; asked Challoner stiffly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will not tell you till the last moment,&rsquo; said she; &lsquo;for
+I perceive you are growing too imperious.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform, bought
+him the <i>Graphic</i>, the <i>Athenaeum</i>, and a paper-cutter, and
+stood on the step conversing till the whistle sounded.&nbsp; Then she
+put her head into the carriage.&nbsp; &lsquo;<i>Black face and shining</i>
+<i>eye</i>!&rsquo; she whispered, and instantly leaped down upon the
+platform, with a thrill of gay and musical laughter.&nbsp; As the train
+steamed out of the great arch of glass, the sound of that laughter still
+rang in the young man&rsquo;s ears.<br>
+<br>
+Challoner&rsquo;s position was too unusual to be long welcome to his
+mind.&nbsp; He found himself projected the whole length of England,
+on a mission beset with obscure and ridiculous circumstances, and yet,
+by the trust he had accepted, irrevocably bound to persevere.&nbsp;
+How easy it appeared, in the retrospect, to have refused the whole proposal,
+returned the money, and gone forth again upon his own affairs, a free
+and happy man!&nbsp; And it was now impossible: the enchantress who
+had held him with her eye had now disappeared, taking his honour in
+pledge; and as she had failed to leave him an address, he was denied
+even the inglorious safety of retreat.&nbsp; To use the paper-knife,
+or even to read the periodicals with which she had presented him, was
+to renew the bitterness of his remorse; and as he was alone in the compartment,
+he passed the day staring at the landscape in impotent repentance, and
+long before he was landed on the platform of St. Enoch&rsquo;s, had
+fallen to the lowest and coldest zones of self-contempt.<br>
+<br>
+As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have preferred
+to dine and to remove the stains of travel; but the words of the young
+lady, and his own impatient eagerness, would suffer no delay.&nbsp;
+In the late, luminous, and lamp-starred dusk of the summer evening,
+he accordingly set forward with brisk steps.<br>
+<br>
+The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in the character
+of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside; but the extension of
+the city had long since, and on every hand, surrounded it with miles
+of streets.&nbsp; From the top of the hill a range of very tall buildings,
+densely inhabited by the poorest classes of the population and variegated
+by drying-poles from every second window, overplumbed the villas and
+their little gardens like a sea-board cliff.&nbsp; But still, under
+the grime of years of city smoke, these antiquated cottages, with their
+venetian blinds and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat melancholy
+savour of the past.<br>
+<br>
+The street when Challoner entered it was perfectly deserted.&nbsp; From
+hard by, indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls filled the ear; but
+in Richard Street itself there was neither light nor sound of human
+habitation.&nbsp; The appearance of the neighbourhood weighed heavily
+on the mind of the young man; once more, as in the streets of London,
+he was impressed with the sense of city deserts; and as he approached
+the number indicated, and somewhat falteringly rang the bell, his heart
+sank within him.<br>
+<br>
+The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and garrulous note;
+and it was some time before it ceased to sound from the rear quarters
+of the building.&nbsp; Following upon this an inner door was stealthily
+opened, and careful and catlike steps drew near along the hall.&nbsp;
+Challoner, supposing he was to be instantly admitted, produced his letter,
+and, as well as he was able, prepared a smiling face.&nbsp; To his indescribable
+surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and then, after a pause and
+with the like stealthiness, withdrew once more, and died away in the
+interior of the house.&nbsp; A second time the young man rang violently
+at the bell; a second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle
+of discreet footing moved upon the hollow boards of the old villa; and
+again the fainthearted garrison only drew near to retreat.&nbsp; The
+cup of the visitor&rsquo;s endurance was now full to overflowing; and,
+committing the whole family of Fonblanque to every mood and shade of
+condemnation, he turned upon his heel and redescended the steps.&nbsp;
+Perhaps the mover in the house was watching from a window, and plucked
+up courage at the sight of this desistance; or perhaps, where he lurked
+trembling in the back parts of the villa, reason in its own right had
+conquered his alarms.&nbsp; Challoner, at least, had scarce set foot
+upon the pavement when he was arrested by the sound of the withdrawal
+of an inner bolt; one followed another, rattling in their sockets; the
+key turned harshly in the lock; the door opened; and there appeared
+upon the threshold a man of a very stalwart figure in his shirt sleeves.&nbsp;
+He was a person neither of great manly beauty nor of a refined exterior;
+he was not the man, in ordinary moods, to attract the eyes of the observer;
+but as he now stood in the doorway, he was marked so legibly with the
+extreme passion of terror that Challoner stood wonder-struck.&nbsp;
+For a fraction of a minute they gazed upon each other in silence; and
+then the man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping voice, inquired
+the business of his visitor.&nbsp; Challoner replied, in tones from
+which he strove to banish his surprise, that he was the bearer of a
+letter to a certain Miss Fonblanque.&nbsp; At this name, as at a talisman,
+the man fell back and impatiently invited him to enter; and no sooner
+had the adventurer crossed the threshold, than the door was closed behind
+him and his retreat cut off.<br>
+<br>
+It was already long past eight at night; and though the late twilight
+of the north still lingered in the streets, in the passage it was already
+groping dark.&nbsp; The man led Challoner directly to a parlour looking
+on the garden to the back.&nbsp; Here he had apparently been supping;
+for by the light of a tallow dip the table was seen to be covered with
+a napkin, and set out with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a
+Gouda cheese.&nbsp; The room, on the other hand, was furnished with
+faded solidity, and the walls were lined with scholarly and costly volumes
+in glazed cases.&nbsp; The house must have been taken furnished; for
+it had no congruity with this man of the shirt sleeves and the mean
+supper.&nbsp; As for the earl&rsquo;s daughter, the earl and the visionary
+consulships in foreign cities, they had long ago begun to fade in Challoner&rsquo;s
+imagination.&nbsp; Like Doctor Grierson and the Mormon angels, they
+were plainly woven of the stuff of dreams.&nbsp; Not an illusion remained
+to the knight-errant; not a hope was left him, but to be speedily relieved
+from this disreputable business.<br>
+<br>
+The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised anxiety,
+and began once more to press him for his errand.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am here,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;simply to do a service
+between two ladies; and I must ask you, without further delay, to summon
+Miss Fonblanque, into whose hands alone I am authorised to deliver the
+letter that I bear.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A growing wonder began to mingle on the man&rsquo;s face with the lines
+of solicitude.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am Miss Fonblanque,&rsquo; he said; and
+then, perceiving the effect of this communication, &lsquo;Good God!&rsquo;
+he cried, &lsquo;what are you staring at?&nbsp; I tell you, I am Miss
+Fonblanque.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, and the
+remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could only suppose
+himself the subject of a jest.&nbsp; He was no longer under the spell
+of the young lady&rsquo;s presence; and with men, and above all with
+his inferiors, he was capable of some display of spirit.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said he, pretty roundly, &lsquo;I have put myself
+to great inconvenience for persons of whom I know too little, and I
+begin to be weary of the business.&nbsp; Either you shall immediately
+summon Miss Fonblanque, or I leave this house and put myself under the
+direction of the police.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is horrible!&rsquo; exclaimed the man.&nbsp; &lsquo;I declare
+before Heaven I am the person meant, but how shall I convince you?&nbsp;
+It must have been Clara, I perceive, that sent you on this errand -
+a madwoman, who jests with the most deadly interests; and here we are
+incapable, perhaps, of an agreement, and Heaven knows what may depend
+on our delay!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same time there
+flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous jingle which was to
+serve as password.&nbsp; &lsquo;This may, perhaps, assist you,&rsquo;
+he said, and then, with some embarrassment, &lsquo;&ldquo;Nigger, nigger,
+never die.&rdquo;&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the man with
+the chin-beard.&nbsp; &lsquo;&ldquo;Black face and shining eye&rdquo;
+- give me the letter,&rsquo; he panted, in one gasp.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said Challoner, though still with some reluctance,
+&lsquo;I suppose I must regard you as the proper recipient; and though
+I may justly complain of the spirit in which I have been treated, I
+am only too glad to be done with all responsibility.&nbsp; Here it is,&rsquo;
+and he produced the envelope.<br>
+<br>
+The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled in
+a manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the letter.&nbsp;
+As he read, terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch of nightmare.&nbsp;
+He struck one hand upon his brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously,
+he crumpled the paper to a ball.&nbsp; &lsquo;My gracious powers!&rsquo;
+he cried; and then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden,
+he clapped forth his head and shoulders, and whistled long and shrill.&nbsp;
+Challoner fell back into a corner, and resolutely grasping his staff,
+prepared for the most desperate events; but the thoughts of the man
+with the chin-beard were far removed from violence.&nbsp; Turning again
+into the room, and once more beholding his visitor, whom he appeared
+to have forgotten, he fairly danced with trepidation.&nbsp; &lsquo;Impossible!&rsquo;
+he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, quite impossible!&nbsp; O Lord, I have lost
+my head.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, once more striking his hand upon his
+brow, &lsquo;The money!&rsquo; he exclaimed.&nbsp; &lsquo;Give me the
+money.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My good friend,&rsquo; replied Challoner, &lsquo;this is a very
+painful exhibition; and until I see you reasonably master of yourself,
+I decline to proceed with any business.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are quite right,&rsquo; said the man.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am of
+a very nervous habit; a long course of the dumb ague has undermined
+my constitution.&nbsp; But I know you have money; it may be still the
+saving of me; and oh, dear young gentleman, in pity&rsquo;s name be
+expeditious!&rsquo;&nbsp; Challoner, sincerely uneasy as he was, could
+scarce refrain from laughter; but he was himself in a hurry to be gone,
+and without more delay produced the money.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will find
+the sum, I trust, correct,&rsquo; he observed &lsquo;and let me ask
+you to give me a receipt.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But the man heeded him not.&nbsp; He seized the money, and disregarding
+the sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, thrust the bundle of
+notes into his pocket.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A receipt,&rsquo; repeated Challoner, with some asperity.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I insist on a receipt.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Receipt?&rsquo; repeated the man, a little wildly.&nbsp; &lsquo;A
+receipt?&nbsp; Immediately!&nbsp; Await me here.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no unnecessary time,
+as he was himself desirous of catching a particular train.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, by God, and so am I!&rsquo; exclaimed the man with the chin-beard;
+and with that he was gone out of the room, and had rattled upstairs,
+four at a time, to the upper story of the villa.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is certainly a most amazing business,&rsquo; thought Challoner;
+&lsquo;certainly a most disquieting affair; and I cannot conceal from
+myself that I have become mixed up with either lunatics or malefactors.&nbsp;
+I may truly thank my stars that I am so nearly and so creditably done
+with it.&rsquo;&nbsp; Thus thinking, and perhaps remembering the episode
+of the whistle, he turned to the open window.&nbsp; The garden was still
+faintly clear; he could distinguish the stairs and terraces with which
+the small domain had been adorned by former owners, and the blackened
+bushes and dead trees that had once afforded shelter to the country
+birds; beyond these he saw the strong retaining wall, some thirty feet
+in height, which enclosed the garden to the back; and again above that,
+the pile of dingy buildings rearing its frontage high into the night.&nbsp;
+A peculiar object lying stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled
+his eyesight; but at length he had made it out to be a long ladder,
+or series of ladders bound into one; and he was still wondering of what
+service so great an instrument could be in such a scant enclosure, when
+he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one running violently
+down the stairs.&nbsp; This was followed by the sudden, clamorous banging
+of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating footsteps
+in the street.<br>
+<br>
+Challoner sprang into the passage.&nbsp; He ran from room to room, upstairs
+and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten house, he found
+himself alone.&nbsp; Only in one apartment, looking to the front, were
+there any traces of the late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently
+slept in and not made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search,
+and on the floor a roll of crumpled paper.&nbsp; This he picked up.&nbsp;
+The light in this upper story looking to the front was considerably
+brighter than in the parlour; and he was able to make out that the paper
+bore the mark of the hotel at Euston, and even, by peering closely,
+to decipher the following lines in a very elegant and careful female
+hand:<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;DEAR M&rsquo;GUIRE, - It is certain your retreat is known.&nbsp;
+We have just had another failure, clockwork thirty hours too soon, with
+the usual humiliating result.&nbsp; Zero is quite disheartened.&nbsp;
+We are all scattered, and I could find no one but the <i>solemn ass</i>
+who brings you this and the money.&nbsp; I would love to see your meeting.
+- Ever yours,<br>
+<br>
+SHINING EYE.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Challoner was stricken to the heart.&nbsp; He perceived by what facility,
+by what unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the
+gull of this intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure
+against himself, against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle
+counsels had impelled him to embark on that adventure.&nbsp; At the
+same time a great and troubled curiosity, and a certain chill of fear,
+possessed his spirit.&nbsp; The conduct of the man with the chin-beard,
+the terms of the letter, and the explosion of the early morning, fitted
+together like parts in some obscure and mischievous imbroglio.&nbsp;
+Evil was certainly afoot; evil, secrecy, terror, and falsehood were
+the conditions and the passions of the people among whom he had begun
+to move, like a blind puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience
+told him, was often doomed to perish as a victim.<br>
+<br>
+From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the letter
+in his hand, he was awakened by the clatter of the bell.&nbsp; He glanced
+from the window; and, conceive his horror and surprise when he beheld,
+clustered on the steps, in the front garden and on the pavement of the
+street, a formidable posse of police!&nbsp; He started to the full possession
+of his powers and courage.&nbsp; Escape, and escape at any cost, was
+the one idea that possessed him.&nbsp; Swiftly and silently he redescended
+the creaking stairs; he was already in the passage when a second and
+more imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes of the empty house;
+nor had the bell ceased to jangle before he had bestridden the window-sill
+of the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden.&nbsp; His coat
+was hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung dependent
+heels and head below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth, and
+followed by several pots, he dropped upon the sod.&nbsp; Once more the
+bell was rung, and now with furious and repeated peals.&nbsp; The desperate
+Challoner turned his eyes on every side.&nbsp; They fell upon the ladder,
+and he ran to it, and with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to
+raise it from the ground.&nbsp; Suddenly the weight, which was thus
+resisting his whole strength, began to lighten in his hands; the ladder,
+like a thing of life, reared its bulk from off the sod; and Challoner,
+leaping back with a cry of almost superstitious terror, beheld the whole
+structure mount, foot by foot, against the face of the retaining wall.&nbsp;
+At the same time, two heads were dimly visible above the parapet, and
+he was hailed by a guarded whistle.&nbsp; Something in its modulation
+recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the man with the chin-beard,<br>
+<br>
+Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those very
+miscreants whose messenger and gull he had become?&nbsp; Was this, indeed,
+a means of safety, or but the starting-point of further complication
+and disaster?&nbsp; He paused not to reflect.&nbsp; Scarce was the ladder
+reared to its full length than he had sprung already on the rounds;
+hand over hand, swift as an ape, he scaled the tottering stairway.&nbsp;
+Strong arms received, embraced, and helped him; he was lifted and set
+once more upon the earth; and with the spasm of his alarm yet unsubsided,
+found himself in the company of two rough-looking men, in the paved
+back yard of one of the tall houses that crowned the summit of the hill.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, from below, the note of the bell had been succeeded by the
+sound of vigorous and redoubling blows.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you all out?&rsquo; asked one of his companions; and, as
+soon as he had babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was cut
+from the top round, and the ladder thrust roughly back into the garden,
+where it fell and broke with clattering reverberations.&nbsp; Its fall
+was hailed with many broken cries; for the whole of Richard Street was
+now in high emotion, the people crowding to the windows or clambering
+on the garden walls.&nbsp; The same man who had already addressed Challoner
+seized him by the arm; whisked him through the basement of the house
+and across the street upon the other side; and before the unfortunate
+adventurer had time to realise his situation, a door was opened, and
+he was thrust into a low and dark compartment.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Bedad,&rsquo; observed his guide, &lsquo;there was no time to
+lose.&nbsp; Is M&rsquo;Guire gone, or was it you that whistled?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;M&rsquo;Guire is gone,&rsquo; said Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+The guide now struck a light.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this
+will never do.&nbsp; You dare not go upon the streets in such a figure.&nbsp;
+Wait quietly here and I will bring you something decent.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his attention thus rudely
+awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been worked
+in his attire.&nbsp; His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly ripped;
+and the best part of one tail of his very elegant frockcoat had been
+left hanging from the iron crockets of the window.&nbsp; He had scarce
+had time to measure these disasters when his host re-entered the apartment
+and proceeded, without a word, to envelop the refined and urbane Challoner
+in a long ulster of the cheapest material, and of a pattern so gross
+and vulgar that his spirit sickened at the sight.&nbsp; This calumnious
+disguise was crowned and completed by a soft felt hat of the Tyrolese
+design, and several sizes too small.&nbsp; At another moment Challoner
+would simply have refused to issue forth upon the world thus travestied;
+but the desire to escape from Glasgow was now too strongly and too exclusively
+impressed upon his mind.&nbsp; With one haggard glance at the spotted
+tails of his new coat, he inquired what was to pay for this accoutrement.&nbsp;
+The man assured him that the whole expense was easily met from funds
+in his possession, and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make
+his best speed out of the neighbourhood.<br>
+<br>
+The young man was not loath to take the hint.&nbsp; True to his usual
+courtesy, he thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his taste
+in greatcoats; and leaving the man somewhat abashed by these remarks
+and the manner of their delivery, he hurried forth into the lamplit
+city.&nbsp; The last train was gone ere, after many deviations, he had
+reached the terminus.&nbsp; Attired as he was he dared not present himself
+at any reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity
+of his demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth and
+possibly suspicion, in any humbler hostelry.&nbsp; He was thus condemned
+to pass the solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in pacing the
+streets of Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting
+the dawn, with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above
+all things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of
+his conduct.&nbsp; It may be conceived with what curses he assailed
+the memory of the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang
+in his ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he
+could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it
+was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective.&nbsp;
+With the coming of day, he found in a shy milk-shop the means to appease
+his hunger.&nbsp; There were still many hours to wait before the departure
+of the South express; these he passed wandering with indescribable fatigue
+in the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length slipped quietly
+into the station and took his place in the darkest corner of a third-class
+carriage.&nbsp; Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed
+by heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers.&nbsp; By the
+half return ticket in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey
+on the easy cushions and with the ample space of the first-class; but
+alas! in his absurd attire, he durst not, for decency, commingle with
+his equals; and this small annoyance, coming last in such a series of
+disasters, cut him to the heart.<br>
+<br>
+That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the expense, anxiety,
+and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld the ruins of his last
+good trousers and his last presentable coat; and above all, when his
+eye by any chance alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster,
+his heart would overflow with bitterness, and it was only by a serious
+call on his philosophy that he maintained the dignity of his demeanour.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SOMERSET&rsquo;S ADVENTURE: <i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery imagination,
+with very small capacity for action.&nbsp; He was one who lived exclusively
+in dreams and in the future: the creature of his own theories, and an
+actor in his own romances.&nbsp; From the cigar divan he proceeded to
+parade the streets, still heated with the fire of his eloquence, and
+scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate adventure.&nbsp;
+In the continual stream of passers-by, on the sealed fronts of houses,
+on the posters that covered the hoardings, and in every lineament and
+throb of the great city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful hieroglyph.&nbsp;
+But although the elements of adventure were streaming by him as thick
+as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a beseeching,
+now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and provoked the
+notice of the passengers; in vain that, putting fortune to the touch,
+he even thrust himself into the way and came into direct collision with
+those of the more promising demeanour.&nbsp; Persons brimful of secrets,
+persons pining for affection, persons perishing for lack of help or
+counsel, he was sure he could perceive on every side; but by some contrariety
+of fortune, each passed upon his way without remarking the young gentleman,
+and went farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the confidant,
+the friend, or the adviser.&nbsp; To thousands he must have turned an
+appealing countenance, and yet not one regarded him.<br>
+<br>
+A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous aspirations,
+broke in upon the series of his attempts on fortune; and when he returned
+to the task, the lamps were already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd
+was dense upon the pavement.&nbsp; Before a certain restaurant, whose
+name will readily occur to any student of our Babylon, people were already
+packed so closely that passage had grown difficult; and Somerset, standing
+in the kennel, watched, with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat
+weary, the faces and the manners of the crowd.&nbsp; Suddenly he was
+startled by a gentle touch upon the shoulder, and facing about, he was
+aware of a very plain and elegant brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful
+horses, and driven by a man in sober livery.&nbsp; There were no arms
+upon the panel; the window was open, but the interior was obscure; the
+driver yawned behind his palm; and the young man was already beginning
+to suppose himself the dupe of his own fancy, when a hand, no larger
+than a child&rsquo;s and smoothly gloved in white, appeared in a corner
+of the window and privily beckoned him to approach.&nbsp; He did so,
+and looked in.&nbsp; The carriage was occupied by a single small and
+very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in impenetrable folds
+of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery, addressed him
+in these words -<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Open the door and get in.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It must be,&rsquo; thought the young man with an almost unbearable
+thrill, &lsquo;it must be that duchess at last!&rsquo;&nbsp; Yet, although
+the moment was one to which he had long looked forward, it was with
+a certain share of alarm that he opened the door, and, mounting into
+the brougham, took his seat beside the lady of the lace.&nbsp; Whether
+or no she had touched a spring, or given some other signal, the young
+man had hardly closed the door before the carriage, with considerable
+swiftness, and with a very luxurious and easy movement on its springs,
+turned and began to drive towards the west.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset, as I have written, was not unprepared; it had long been his
+particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most unlikely situations;
+and this, among others, of the patrician ravisher, was one he had familiarly
+studied.&nbsp; Strange as it may seem, however, he could find no apposite
+remark; and as the lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further sign, they
+continued to drive in silence through the streets.&nbsp; Except for
+alternate flashes from the passing lamps, the carriage was plunged in
+obscurity; and beyond the fact that the fittings were luxurious, and
+that the lady was singularly small and slender in person, and, all but
+one gloved hand, still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could
+decipher no detail of an inspiring nature.&nbsp; The suspense began
+to grow unbearable.&nbsp; Twice he cleared his throat, and twice the
+whole resources of the language failed him.&nbsp; In similar scenes,
+when he had forecast them on the theatre of fancy, his presence of mind
+had always been complete, his eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity
+between the rehearsal and the performance, he began to be seized with
+a panic of apprehension.&nbsp; Here, on the very threshold of adventure,
+suppose him ignominiously to fail; suppose that after ten, twenty, or
+sixty seconds of still uninterrupted silence, the lady should touch
+the check-string and re-deposit him, weighed and found wanting, on the
+common street!&nbsp; Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he reasoned,
+would be found more equal to the part; could, that very instant, by
+some decisive step, prove the lady&rsquo;s choice to have been well
+inspired, and put a stop to this intolerable silence.<br>
+<br>
+His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand.&nbsp; It was better to
+fall by desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one
+tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself.&nbsp;
+One overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of
+his embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no
+less incapable of speech or further progress; and with the lady&rsquo;s
+hand in his, sat helpless.&nbsp; But worse was in store.&nbsp; A peculiar
+quivering began to agitate the form of his companion; the hand that
+lay unresistingly in Somerset&rsquo;s trembled as with ague; and presently
+there broke forth, in the shadow of the carriage, the bubbling and musical
+sound of laughter, resisted but triumphant.&nbsp; The young man dropped
+his prize; had it been possible, he would have bounded from the carriage.&nbsp;
+The lady, meanwhile, lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill
+to trill of the most heartfelt, high-pitched, clear and fairy-sounding
+merriment.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You must not be offended,&rsquo; she said at last, catching an
+opportunity between two paroxysms.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you have been mistaken
+in the warmth of your attentions, the fault is solely mine; it does
+not flow from your presumption, but from my eccentric manner of recruiting
+friends; and, believe me, I am the last person in the world to think
+the worse of a young man for showing spirit.&nbsp; As for to-night,
+it is my intention to entertain you to a little supper; and if I shall
+continue to be as much pleased with your manners as I was taken with
+your face, I may perhaps end by making you an advantageous offer.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his discomfiture
+had been too recent and complete.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; returned the lady, &lsquo;we must have no display
+of temper; that is for me the one disqualifying fault; and as I perceive
+we are drawing near our destination, I shall ask you to descend and
+offer me your arm.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a stately and
+severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset, who was possessed
+of an excellent temper, with the best grace in the world assisted the
+lady to alight.&nbsp; The door was opened by an old woman of a grim
+appearance, who ushered the pair into a dining-room somewhat dimly lighted,
+but already laid for supper, and occupied by a prodigious company of
+large and valuable cats.&nbsp; Here, as soon as they were alone, the
+lady divested herself of the lace in which she was enfolded; and Somerset
+was relieved to find, that although still bearing the traces of great
+beauty, and still distinguished by the fire and colour of her eye, her
+hair was of a silvery whiteness and her face lined with years.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now, <i>mon preux</i>,&rsquo; said the old lady, nodding
+at him with a quaint gaiety, &lsquo;you perceive that I am no longer
+in my first youth.&nbsp; You will soon find that I am all the better
+company for that.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light but tasteful
+supper.&nbsp; They sat down, accordingly, to table, the cats with savage
+pantomime surrounding the old lady&rsquo;s chair; and what with the
+excellence of the meal and the gaiety of his entertainer, Somerset was
+soon completely at his ease.&nbsp; When they had well eaten and drunk,
+the old lady leaned back in her chair, and taking a cat upon her lap,
+subjected her guest to a prolonged but evidently mirthful scrutiny.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I fear, madam,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;that my manners have
+not risen to the height of your preconceived opinion.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear young man,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;you were never
+more mistaken in your life.&nbsp; I find you charming, and you may very
+well have lighted on a fairy godmother.&nbsp; I am not one of those
+who are given to change their opinions, and short of substantial demerit,
+those who have once gained my favour continue to enjoy it; but I have
+a singular swiftness of decision, read my fellow men and women with
+a glance, and have acted throughout life on first impressions.&nbsp;
+Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you
+are a young fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not improbable
+that we may strike a bargain.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;you have divined
+my situation.&nbsp; I am a man of birth, parts, and breeding; excellent
+company, or at least so I find myself; but by a peculiar iniquity of
+fate, destitute alike of trade or money.&nbsp; I was, indeed, this evening
+upon the quest of an adventure, resolved to close with any offer of
+interest, emolument, or pleasure; and your summons, which I profess
+I am still at some loss to understand, jumped naturally with the inclination
+of my mind.&nbsp; Call it, if you will, impudence; I am here, at least,
+prepared for any proposition you can find it in your heart to make,
+and resolutely determined to accept.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You express yourself very well,&rsquo; replied the old lady,
+&lsquo;and are certainly a droll and curious young man.&nbsp; I should
+not care to affirm that you were sane, for I have never found any one
+entirely so besides myself; but at least the nature of your madness
+entertains me, and I will reward you with some description of my character
+and life.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap, proceeded
+to narrate the following particulars.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who
+held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.&nbsp; Our family,
+a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came
+of a good old stock where beauty was an heirloom.&nbsp; In Christian
+grace of character we were unhappily deficient.&nbsp; From my earliest
+years I saw and deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and
+position should have enabled them to conquer my esteem; and while I
+was yet a child, my father married a second wife, in whom (strange to
+say) the Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and almost
+laughable degree.&nbsp; Whatever may be said against me, it cannot be
+denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most
+touching patience, I submitted to my stepmother&rsquo;s demands; and
+from the hour she entered my father&rsquo;s house, I may say that I
+met with nothing but injustice and ingratitude.<br>
+<br>
+I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my disposition; for
+one other of the family besides myself was free from any violence of
+character.&nbsp; Before I had reached the age of sixteen, this cousin,
+John by name, had conceived for me a sincere but silent passion; and
+although the poor lad was too timid to hint at the nature of his feelings,
+I had soon divined and begun to share them.&nbsp; For some days I pondered
+on the odd situation created for me by the bashfulness of my admirer;
+and at length, perceiving that he began, in his distress, rather to
+avoid than seek my company, I determined to take the matter into my
+own hands.&nbsp; Finding him alone in a retired part of the rectory
+garden, I told him that I had divined his amiable secret, that I knew
+with what disfavour our union was sure to be regarded; and that, under
+the circumstances, I was prepared to flee with him at once.&nbsp; Poor
+John was literally paralysed with joy; such was the force of his emotions,
+that he could find no words in which to thank me; and that I, seeing
+him thus helpless, was obliged to arrange, myself, the details of our
+flight, and of the stolen marriage which was immediately to crown it.&nbsp;
+John had been at that time projecting a visit to the metropolis.&nbsp;
+In this I bade him persevere, and promised on the following day to join
+him at the Tavistock Hotel.<br>
+<br>
+True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose, on the
+day in question, before the servants, packed a few necessaries in a
+bag, took with me the little money I possessed, and bade farewell for
+ever to the rectory.&nbsp; I walked with good spirits to a town some
+thirty miles from home, and was set down the next morning in this great
+city of London.&nbsp; As I walked from the coach-office to the hotel,
+I could not help exulting in the pleasant change that had befallen me;
+beholding, meanwhile, with innocent delight, the traffic of the streets,
+and depicting, in all the colours of fancy, the reception that awaited
+me from John.&nbsp; But alas! when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the
+porter assured me there was no such gentleman among the guests.&nbsp;
+By what channel our secret had leaked out, or what pressure had been
+brought to bear on the too facile John, I could never fathom.&nbsp;
+Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself alone in London,
+tender in years, smarting under the most sensible mortification, and
+by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred for ever from
+my father&rsquo;s house.<br>
+<br>
+I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood of Euston
+Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted the joys of independence.&nbsp;
+Three days afterwards, an advertisement in the <i>Times</i> directed
+me to the office of a solicitor whom I knew to be in my father&rsquo;s
+confidence.&nbsp; There I was given the promise of a very moderate allowance,
+and a distinct intimation that I must never look to be received at home.&nbsp;
+I could not but resent so cruel a desertion, and I told the lawyer it
+was a meeting I desired as little as themselves.&nbsp; He smiled at
+my courageous spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and gave
+me the remainder of my personal effects, which had been sent to me,
+under his care, in a couple of rather ponderous boxes.&nbsp; With these
+I returned in triumph to my lodgings, more content with my position
+than I should have thought possible a week before, and fully determined
+to make the best of the future.<br>
+<br>
+All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own fault alone
+that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of life.&nbsp; I have,
+I must confess, the fatal trick of spoiling my inferiors.&nbsp; My landlady,
+to whom I had as usual been overkind, impertinently called me in fault
+for some particular too small to mention; and I, annoyed that I had
+allowed her the freedom upon which she thus presumed, ordered her to
+leave my presence.&nbsp; She stood a moment dumb, and then, recalling
+her self-possession, &lsquo;Your bill,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;shall
+be ready this evening, and to-morrow, madam, you shall leave my house.&nbsp;
+See,&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;that you are able to pay what you owe
+me; for if I do not receive the uttermost farthing, no box of yours
+shall pass my threshold.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I was confounded at her audacity, but as a whole quarter&rsquo;s income
+was due to me, not otherwise affected by the threat.&nbsp; That afternoon,
+as I left the solicitor&rsquo;s door, carrying in one hand, and done
+up in a paper parcel, the whole amount of my fortune, there befell me
+one of those decisive incidents that sometimes shape a life.&nbsp; The
+lawyer&rsquo;s office was situate in a street that opened at the upper
+end upon the Strand, and was closed at the lower, at the time of which
+I speak, by a row of iron railings looking on the Thames.&nbsp; Down
+this street, then, I beheld my stepmother advancing to meet me, and
+doubtless bound to the very house I had just left.&nbsp; She was attended
+by a maid whose face was new to me, but her own was too clearly printed
+on my memory; and the sight of it, even from a distance, filled me with
+generous indignation.&nbsp; Flight was impossible.&nbsp; There was nothing
+left but to retreat against the railing, and with my back turned to
+the street, pretend to be admiring the barges on the river or the chimneys
+of transpontine London.<br>
+<br>
+I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the turbulence
+of my emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me with a trivial
+question.&nbsp; It was the maid whom my stepmother, with characteristic
+hardness, had left to await her on the street, while she transacted
+her business with the family solicitor.&nbsp; The girl did not know
+who I was; the opportunity too golden to be lost; and I was soon hearing
+the latest news of my father&rsquo;s rectory and parish.&nbsp; It did
+not surprise me to find that she detested her employers; and yet the
+terms in which she spoke of them were hard to bear, hard to let pass
+unchallenged.&nbsp; I heard them, however, without dissent, for my self-command
+is wonderful; and we might have parted as we met, had she not proceeded,
+in an evil hour, to criticise the rector&rsquo;s missing daughter, and
+with the most shocking perversions, to narrate the story of her flight.&nbsp;
+My nature is so essentially generous that I can never pause to reason.&nbsp;
+I flung up my hand sharply, by way, as well as I remember, of indignant
+protest; and, in the act, the packet slipped from my fingers, glanced
+between the railings, and fell and sunk in the river.&nbsp; I stood
+a moment petrified, and then, struck by the drollery of the incident,
+gave way to peals of laughter.&nbsp; I was still laughing when my stepmother
+reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless considered me insane, ran off
+to join her; nor had I yet recovered my gravity when I presented myself
+before the lawyer to solicit a fresh advance.&nbsp; His answer made
+me serious enough, for it was a flat refusal; and it was not until I
+had besought him even with tears, that he consented to lend me ten pounds
+from his own pocket.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am a poor man,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and
+you must look for nothing farther at my hands.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The landlady met me at the door.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here, madam,&rsquo; said
+she, with a curtsey insolently low, &lsquo;here is my bill.&nbsp; Would
+it inconvenience you to settle it at once?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You shall be paid, madam,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;in the morning,
+in the proper course.&rsquo;&nbsp; And I took the paper with a very
+high air, but inwardly quaking.<br>
+<br>
+I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost.&nbsp;
+I had been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had
+now reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen
+and fourpence halfpenny.&nbsp; All evening I sat by the fire considering
+my situation.&nbsp; I could not pay the bill; my landlady would not
+suffer me to remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how
+was I to find another lodging?&nbsp; For three months, unless I could
+invent some remedy, I was condemned to be without a roof and without
+a penny.&nbsp; It can surprise no one that I decided on immediate flight;
+but even here I was confronted by a difficulty, for I had no sooner
+packed my boxes than I found I was not strong enough to move, far less
+to carry them.<br>
+<br>
+In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a shawl
+and bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I betook myself
+to that great bazaar of dangerous and smiling chances, the pavement
+of the city.&nbsp; It was already late at night, and the weather being
+wet and windy, there were few abroad besides policemen.&nbsp; These,
+on my present mission, I had wit enough to know for enemies; and wherever
+I perceived their moving lanterns, I made haste to turn aside and choose
+another thoroughfare.&nbsp; A few miserable women still walked the pavement;
+here and there were young fellows returning drunk, or ruffians of the
+lowest class lurking in the mouths of alleys; but of any one to whom
+I might appeal in my distress, I began almost to despair.<br>
+<br>
+At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one who was
+evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments, from his furred
+great-coat to the fine cigar which he was smoking, comfortably breathed
+of wealth.&nbsp; Much as my face has changed from its original beauty,
+I still retain (or so I tell myself) some traces of the youthful lightness
+of my figure.&nbsp; Even veiled as I then was, I could perceive the
+gentleman was struck by my appearance: and this emboldened me for my
+adventure.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said I, with a quickly beating heart, &lsquo;sir,
+are you one in whom a lady can confide?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Why, my dear,&rsquo; said he, removing his cigar, &lsquo;that
+depends on circumstances.&nbsp; If you will raise your veil - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; I interrupted, &lsquo;let there be no mistake.&nbsp;
+I ask you, as a gentleman, to serve me, but I offer no reward.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is frank,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but hardly tempting.&nbsp;
+And what, may I inquire, is the nature of the service?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on so short
+an interview.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you will accompany me,&rsquo; said I,
+&lsquo;to a house not far from here, you can see for yourself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing away
+his cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, &lsquo;Here goes!&rsquo;
+said he, and with perfect politeness offered me his arm.&nbsp; I was
+wise enough to take it; to prolong our walk as far as possible, by more
+than one excursion from the shortest line; and to beguile the way with
+that sort of conversation which should prove to him indubitably from
+what station in society I sprang.&nbsp; By the time we reached the door
+of my lodging, I felt sure I had confirmed his interest, and might venture,
+before I turned the pass-key, to beseech him to moderate his voice and
+to tread softly.&nbsp; He promised to obey me: and I admitted him into
+the passage and thence into my sitting-room, which was fortunately next
+the door.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted
+a candle, &lsquo;what is the meaning of all this?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I wish you,&rsquo; said I, speaking with great difficulty, &lsquo;to
+help me out with these boxes - and I wish nobody to know.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He took up the candle.&nbsp; &lsquo;And I wish to see your face,&rsquo;
+said he.<br>
+<br>
+I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with every appearance
+of resolve that I could summon up.&nbsp; For some time he gazed into
+my face, still holding up the candle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said
+he at last, &lsquo;and where do you wish them taken?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in my voice
+that I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;I had thought we might carry them between
+us to the corner of Euston Road,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;where, even at
+this late hour, we may still find a cab.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Very good,&rsquo; was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the
+heavier of my trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle of the
+second, signed to me to help him at the other end.&nbsp; In this order
+we made good our retreat from the house, and without the least adventure,
+drew pretty near to the corner of Euston Road.&nbsp; Before a house,
+where there was a light still burning, my companion paused.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let
+us here,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;set down our boxes, while we go forward
+to the end of the street in quest of a cab.&nbsp; By doing so, we can
+still keep an eye upon their safety, and we avoid the very extraordinary
+figure we should otherwise present - a young man, a young lady, and
+a mass of baggage, standing castaway at midnight on the streets of London.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+So it was done, and the event proved him to be wise; for long before
+there was any word of a cab, a policeman appeared upon the scene, turned
+upon us the full glare of his lantern, and hung suspiciously behind
+us in a doorway.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,&rsquo; said my champion,
+with affected cheerfulness.&nbsp; But the constable&rsquo;s answer was
+ungracious; and as for the offer of a cigar, with which this rebuff
+was most unwisely followed up, he refused it point-blank, and without
+the least civility.&nbsp; The young gentleman looked at me with a warning
+grimace, and there we continued to stand, on the edge of the pavement,
+in the beating rain, and with the policeman still silently watching
+our movements from the doorway.<br>
+<br>
+At last, and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler
+appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my
+companion.&nbsp; &lsquo;Just pull up here, will you?&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We have some baggage up the street.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still
+closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose
+from mere suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil.&nbsp;
+The light in the house had been extinguished; the whole frontage of
+the street was dark; there was nothing to explain the presence of these
+unguarded trunks; and no two innocent people were ever, I believe, detected
+in such questionable circumstances.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Where have these things come from?&rsquo; asked the policeman,
+flashing his light full into my champion&rsquo;s face.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Why, from that house, of course,&rsquo; replied the young gentleman,
+hastily shouldering a trunk.<br>
+<br>
+The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows; he then
+took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course which had
+infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us already hurrying down the
+street under our double burthen, thought better or worse of it, and
+followed in our wake.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; whispered my companion, &lsquo;tell
+me where to drive to.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Anywhere,&rsquo; I replied with anguish.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have
+no idea.&nbsp; Anywhere you like.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thus it befell that, when the boxes had been stowed, and I had already
+entered the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones the address
+of the house in which we are now seated.&nbsp; The policeman, I could
+see, was staggered.&nbsp; This neighbourhood, so retired, so aristocratic,
+was far from what he had expected.&nbsp; For all that, he took the number
+of the cab, and spoke for a few seconds and with a decided manner in
+the cabman&rsquo;s ear.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What can he have said?&rsquo; I gasped, as soon as the cab had
+rolled away.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I can very well imagine,&rsquo; replied my champion; &lsquo;and
+I can assure you that you are now condemned to go where I have said;
+for, should we attempt to change our destination by the way, the jarvey
+will drive us straight to a police-office.&nbsp; Let me compliment you
+on your nerves,&rsquo; he added.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have had, I believe,
+the most horrible fright of my existence.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange a disarray
+that speech was now become impossible; and we made the drive thenceforward
+in unbroken silence.&nbsp; When we arrived before the door of our destination,
+the young gentleman alighted, opened it with a pass-key like one who
+was at home, bade the driver carry the trunks into the hall, and dismissed
+him with a handsome fee.&nbsp; He then led me into this dining-room,
+looking nearly as you behold it, but with certain marks of bachelor
+occupancy, and hastened to pour out a glass of wine, which he insisted
+on my drinking.&nbsp; As soon as I could find my voice, &lsquo;In God&rsquo;s
+name,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;where am I?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no
+more urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits.&nbsp;
+As he spoke he offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed, I
+stood in great want, for I was faint, and inclined to be hysterical.&nbsp;
+Then he sat down beside the fire, lit another cigar, and for some time
+observed me curiously in silence.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that you have somewhat restored
+yourself, will you be kind enough to tell me in what sort of crime I
+have become a partner?&nbsp; Are you murderer, smuggler, thief, or only
+the harmless and domestic moonlight flitter?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without permission,
+for I had not forgotten the one he threw away on our first meeting;
+and now, at these explicit insults, I resolved at once to reconquer
+his esteem.&nbsp; The judgment of the world I have consistently despised,
+but I had already begun to set a certain value on the good opinion of
+my entertainer.&nbsp; Beginning with a note of pathos, but soon brightening
+into my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly narrated the circumstances
+of my birth, my flight, and subsequent misfortunes.&nbsp; He heard me
+to an end in silence, gravely smoking.&nbsp; &lsquo;Miss Fanshawe,&rsquo;
+said he, when I had done, &lsquo;you are a very comical and most enchanting
+creature; and I can see nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow
+morning and satisfy your landlady&rsquo;s demands.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You strangely misinterpret my confidence,&rsquo; was my reply;
+&lsquo;and if you had at all appreciated my character, you would understand
+that I can take no money at your hands.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,&rsquo; he
+returned; &lsquo;nor do I at all despair of persuading even your unconquerable
+self.&nbsp; I desire you to examine me with critical indulgence.&nbsp;
+My name is Henry Luxmore, Lord Southwark&rsquo;s second son.&nbsp; I
+possess nine thousand a year, the house in which we are now sitting,
+and seven others in the best neighbourhoods in town.&nbsp; I do not
+believe I am repulsive to the eye, and as for my character, you have
+seen me under trial.&nbsp; I think you simply the most original of created
+beings; I need not tell you what you know very well, that you are ravishingly
+pretty; and I have nothing more to add, except that, foolish as it may
+appear, I am already head over heels in love with you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I am prepared to be misjudged; but
+while I continue to accept your hospitality that fact alone should be
+enough to protect me from insult.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said he: &lsquo;I offer you marriage.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And leaning back in his chair he replaced his cigar between his lips.<br>
+<br>
+I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, but couched
+in terms so singular.&nbsp; But he knew very well how to obtain his
+purposes, for he was not only handsome in person, but his very coolness
+had a charm; and to make a long story short, a fortnight later I became
+the wife of the Honourable Henry Luxmore.<br>
+<br>
+For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet.&nbsp;
+My Henry had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his roof,
+but not for long; for though he was easily over-excited, his nature
+was placable below the surface, and with all his faults, I loved him
+tenderly.&nbsp; At last he was taken from me; and such is the power
+of self-deception, and so strange are the whims of the dying, he actually
+assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the violence of
+my temper!<br>
+<br>
+There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara.&nbsp; She
+had, indeed, inherited a shadow of her father&rsquo;s failing; but in
+all things else, unless my partial eyes deceived me, she derived her
+qualities from me, and might be called my moral image.&nbsp; On my side,
+whatever else I may have done amiss, as a mother I was above reproach.&nbsp;
+Here, then, was surely every promise for the future; here, at last,
+was a relation in which I might hope to taste repose.&nbsp; But it was
+not to be.&nbsp; You will hardly credit me when I inform you that she
+ran away from home; yet such was the case.&nbsp; Some whim about oppressed
+nationalities - Ireland, Poland, and the like - has turned her brain;
+and if you should anywhere encounter a young lady (I must say, of remarkable
+attractions) answering to the name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for
+I am told she uses these indifferently, as well as many others), tell
+her, from me, that I forgive her cruelty, and though I will never more
+behold her face, I am at any time prepared to make her a liberal allowance.<br>
+<br>
+On the death of Mr. Luxmore, I sought oblivion in the details of business.&nbsp;
+I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides this, formed
+part of Mr. Luxmore&rsquo;s property: I have found them seven white
+elephants.&nbsp; The greed of tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors,
+and the incapacity that sits upon the bench, have combined together
+to make these houses the burthen of my life.&nbsp; I had no sooner,
+indeed, begun to look into these matters for myself, than I discovered
+so many injustices and met with so much studied incivility, that I was
+plunged into a long series of lawsuits, some of which are pending to
+this day.&nbsp; You must have heard my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore
+of the Law Reports: a strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an
+almost cowardly desire for peace!&nbsp; But I am of the stamp of those
+who, when they have once begun a task, will rather die than leave their
+duty unfulfilled.&nbsp; I have met with every obstacle: insolence and
+ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my adversaries, that fault of obstinacy
+which is to me perhaps the most distasteful in the calendar; from the
+bench, civility indeed - always, I must allow, civility - but never
+a spark of independence, never that knowledge of the law and love of
+justice which we have a right to look for in a judge, the most august
+of human officers.&nbsp; And still, against all these odds, I have undissuadably
+persevered.<br>
+<br>
+It was after the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on which
+I will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy pilgrimage
+to my various houses.&nbsp; Four were at that time tenantless and closed,
+like pillars of salt, commemorating the corruption of the age and the
+decline of private virtue.&nbsp; Three were occupied by persons who
+had wearied me by every conceivable unjust demand and legal subterfuge
+- persons whom, at that very hour, I was moving heaven and earth to
+turn into the street.&nbsp; This was perhaps the sadder spectacle of
+the two; and my heart grew hot within me to behold them occupying, in
+my very teeth, and with an insolent ostentation, these handsome structures
+which were as much mine as the flesh upon my body.<br>
+<br>
+One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are.&nbsp;
+I had let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that
+I have always preferred) to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman attached
+to Prince Florizel of Bohemia, whom you must certainly have heard of;
+and I had supposed, from the character and position of my tenant, that
+here, at least, I was safe against annoyance.&nbsp; What was my surprise
+to find this house also shuttered and apparently deserted!&nbsp; I will
+not deny that I was offended; I conceived that a house, like a yacht,
+was better to be kept in commission; and I promised myself to bring
+the matter before my solicitor the following morning.&nbsp; Meanwhile
+the sight recalled my fancy naturally to the past; and yielding to the
+tender influence of sentiment, I sat down opposite the door upon the
+garden parapet.&nbsp; It was August, and a sultry afternoon, but that
+spot is sheltered, as you may observe by daylight, under the branches
+of a spreading chestnut; the square, too, was deserted; there was a
+sound of distant music in the air; and all combined to plunge me into
+that most agreeable of states, which is neither happiness nor sorrow,
+but shares the poignancy of both.<br>
+<br>
+From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very handsomely
+appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several men of an appearance
+more than decent, and bearing on its panels, instead of a trader&rsquo;s
+name, a coat-of-arms too modest to be deciphered from where I sat.&nbsp;
+It drew up before my house, the door of which was immediately opened
+by one of the men.&nbsp; His companions - I counted seven of them in
+all - proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the van and
+carry into the house a variety of hampers, bottle-baskets, and boxes,
+such as are designed for plate and napery.&nbsp; The windows of the
+dining-room were thrown widely open, as though to air it; and I saw
+some of those within laying the table for a meal.&nbsp; Plainly, I concluded,
+my tenant was about to return; and while still determined to submit
+to no aggression on my rights, I was gratified by the number and discipline
+of his attendants, and the quiet profusion that appeared to reign in
+his establishment.&nbsp; I was still so thinking when, to my extreme
+surprise, the windows and shutters of the dining-room were once more
+closed; the men began to reappear from the interior and resume their
+stations on the van; the last closed the door behind his exit; the van
+drove away; and the house was once more left to itself, looking blindly
+on the square with shuttered windows, as though the whole affair had
+been a vision.<br>
+<br>
+It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet, and thus brought
+my eyes a little nearer to the level of the fanlight over the door,
+I saw that, though the day had still some hours to run, the hall lamps
+had been lighted and left burning.&nbsp; Plainly, then, guests were
+expected, and were not expected before night.&nbsp; For whom, I asked
+myself with indignation, were such secret preparations likely to be
+made?&nbsp; Although no prude, I am a woman of decided views upon morality;
+if my house, to which my husband had brought me, was to serve in the
+character of a <i>petite maison</i>, I saw myself forced, however unwillingly,
+into a new course of litigation; and, determined to return and know
+the worst, I hastened to my hotel for dinner.<br>
+<br>
+I was at my post by ten.&nbsp; The night was clear and quiet; the moon
+rode very high and put the lamps to shame; and the shadow below the
+chestnut was black as ink.&nbsp; Here, then, I ensconced myself on the
+low parapet, with my back against the railings, face to face with the
+moonlit front of my old home, and ruminating gently on the past.&nbsp;
+Time fled; eleven struck on all the city clocks; and presently after
+I was aware of the approach of a gentleman of stately and agreeable
+demeanour.&nbsp; He was smoking as he walked; his light palet&ocirc;t,
+which was open, did not conceal his evening clothes; and he bore himself
+with a serious grace that immediately awakened my attention.&nbsp; Before
+the door of this house he took a pass-key from his pocket, quietly admitted
+himself, and disappeared into the lamplit hall.<br>
+<br>
+He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much younger man
+approaching hastily from the opposite side of the square.&nbsp; Considering
+the season of the year and the genial mildness of the night, he was
+somewhat closely muffled up; and as he came, for all his hurry, he kept
+looking nervously behind him.&nbsp; Arrived before my door, he halted
+and set one foot upon the step, as though about to enter; then, with
+a sudden change, he turned and began to hurry away; halted a second
+time, as if in painful indecision; and lastly, with a violent gesture,
+wheeled about, returned straight to the door, and rapped upon the knocker.&nbsp;
+He was almost immediately admitted by the first arrival.<br>
+<br>
+My curiosity was now broad awake.&nbsp; I made myself as small as I
+could in the very densest of the shadow, and waited for the sequel.&nbsp;
+Nor had I long to wait.&nbsp; From the same side of the square a second
+young man made his appearance, walking slowly and softly, and like the
+first, muffled to the nose.&nbsp; Before the house he paused, looked
+all about him with a swift and comprehensive glance; and seeing the
+square lie empty in the moon and lamplight, leaned far across the area
+railings and appeared to listen to what was passing in the house.&nbsp;
+From the dining-room there came the report of a champagne cork, and
+following upon that, the sound of rich and manly laughter.&nbsp; The
+listener took heart of grace, produced a key, unlocked the area gate,
+shut it noiselessly behind him, and descended the stair.&nbsp; Just
+when his head had reached the level of the pavement, he turned half
+round and once more raked the square with a suspicious eyeshot.&nbsp;
+The mufflings had fallen lower round his neck; the moon shone full upon
+him; and I was startled to observe the pallor and passionate agitation
+of his face.<br>
+<br>
+I could remain no longer passive.&nbsp; Persuaded that something deadly
+was afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the area railings.&nbsp;
+There was no one below; the man must therefore have entered the house,
+with what purpose I dreaded to imagine.&nbsp; I have at no part of my
+career lacked courage; and now, finding the area gate was merely laid
+to, I pushed it gently open and descended the stairs.&nbsp; The kitchen
+door of the house, like the area gate, was closed but not fastened.&nbsp;
+It flashed upon me that the criminal was thus preparing his escape;
+and the thought, as it confirmed the worst of my suspicions, lent me
+new resolve.&nbsp; I entered the house; and being now quite reckless
+of my life, I shut and locked the door.<br>
+<br>
+From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of a voice
+in easy conversation.&nbsp; On the ground floor all was not only profoundly
+silent, but the darkness seemed to weigh upon my eyes.&nbsp; Here, then,
+I stood for some time, having thrust myself uncalled into the utmost
+peril, and being destitute of any power to help or interfere.&nbsp;
+Nor will I deny that fear had begun already to assail me, when I became
+aware, all at once and as though by some immediate but silent incandescence,
+of a certain glimmering of light upon the passage floor.&nbsp; Towards
+this I groped my way with infinite precaution; and having come at length
+as far as the angle of the corridor, beheld the door of the butler&rsquo;s
+pantry standing just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling
+from the chink.&nbsp; Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture.&nbsp;
+The man sat within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most
+rapt attention.&nbsp; On a table before him he had laid a watch, a pair
+of steel revolvers, and a bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern.&nbsp; For one second
+many contradictory theories and projects whirled together in my head;
+the next, I had slammed the door and turned the key upon the malefactor.&nbsp;
+Surprised at my own decision, I stood and panted, leaning on the wall.&nbsp;
+From within the pantry not a sound was to be heard; the man, whatever
+he was, had accepted his fate without a struggle, and now, as I hugged
+myself to fancy, sat frozen with terror and looking for the worst to
+follow.&nbsp; I promised myself that he should not be disappointed;
+and the better to complete my task, I turned to ascend the stairs.<br>
+<br>
+The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed to me
+suddenly by my strong sense of humour.&nbsp; Here was I, the owner of
+the house, burglariously present in its walls; and there, in the dining-room,
+were two gentlemen, unknown to me, seated complacently at supper, and
+only saved by my promptitude from some surprising or deadly interruption.&nbsp;
+It were strange if I could not manage to extract the matter of amusement
+from so unusual a situation.<br>
+<br>
+Behind this dining-room, there is a small apartment intended for a library.&nbsp;
+It was to this that I cautiously groped my way; and you will see how
+fortune had exactly served me.&nbsp; The weather, I have said, was sultry;
+in order to ventilate the dining-room and yet preserve the uninhabited
+appearance of the mansion to the front, the window of the library had
+been widely opened, and the door of communication between the two apartments
+left ajar.&nbsp; To this interval I now applied my eye.<br>
+<br>
+Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened brightness
+on the damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a cold collation
+of the rarest delicacy.&nbsp; The two gentlemen had finished supper,
+and were now trifling with cigars and maraschino; while in a silver
+spirit lamp, coffee of the most captivating fragrance was preparing
+in the fashion of the East.&nbsp; The elder of the two, he who had first
+arrived, was placed directly facing me; the other was set on his left
+hand.&nbsp; Both, like the man in the butler&rsquo;s pantry, seemed
+to be intently listening; and on the face of the second I thought I
+could perceive the marks of fear.&nbsp; Oddly enough, however, when
+they came to speak, the parts were found to be reversed.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I assure you,&rsquo; said the elder gentleman, &lsquo;I not only
+heard the slamming of a door, but the sound of very guarded footsteps.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your highness was certainly deceived,&rsquo; replied the other.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am endowed with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not
+a mouse has rustled.&rsquo;&nbsp; Yet the pallor and contraction of
+his features were in total discord with the tenor of his words.<br>
+<br>
+His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince Florizel)
+looked at his companion for the least fraction of a second; and though
+nothing shook the easy quiet of his attitude, I could see that he was
+far from being duped.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is well,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;let
+us dismiss the topic.&nbsp; And now, sir, that I have very freely explained
+the sentiments by which I am directed, let me ask you, according to
+your promise, to imitate my frankness.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have heard you,&rsquo; replied the other, &lsquo;with great
+interest.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;With singular patience,&rsquo; said the prince politely.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,&rsquo; returned
+the young man.&nbsp; &lsquo;I know not how to tell the change that has
+befallen me.&nbsp; You have, I must suppose, a charm, to which even
+your enemies are subject.&rsquo;&nbsp; He looked at the clock on the
+mantelpiece and visibly blanched.&nbsp; &lsquo;So late!&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Your highness - God knows I am now speaking from the heart -
+before it be too late, leave this house!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very deliberately
+shook the ash from his cigar.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is a strange remark,&rsquo;
+said he; &lsquo;and <i>&aacute; propos de</i> <i>bottes</i>, I never
+continue a cigar when once the ash is fallen; the spell breaks, the
+soul of the flavour flies away, and there remains but the dead body
+of tobacco; and I make it a rule to throw away that husk and choose
+another.&rsquo;&nbsp; He suited the action to the words.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do not trifle with my appeal,&rsquo; resumed the young man, in
+tones that trembled with emotion.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is made at the price
+of my honour and to the peril of my life.&nbsp; Go - go now! lose not
+a moment; and if you have any kindness for a young man, miserably deceived
+indeed, but not devoid of better sentiments, look not behind you as
+you leave.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said the prince, &lsquo;I am here upon your honour;
+assure you upon mine that I shall continue to rely upon that safeguard.&nbsp;
+The coffee is ready; I must again trouble you, I fear.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And with a courteous movement of the hand, he seemed to invite his companion
+to pour out the coffee.<br>
+<br>
+The unhappy young man rose from his seat.&nbsp; &lsquo;I appeal to you,&rsquo;
+he cried, &lsquo;by every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in
+pity to yourself, begone before it is too late.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; replied the prince, &lsquo;I am not readily accessible
+to fear; and if there is one defect to which I must plead guilty, it
+is that of a curious disposition.&nbsp; You go the wrong way about to
+make me leave this house, in which I play the part of your entertainer;
+and, suffer me to add, young man, if any peril threaten us, it was of
+your contriving, not of mine.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,&rsquo; cried the
+other.&nbsp; &lsquo;But I at least will have no hand in it.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+With these words he carried his hand to his pocket, hastily swallowed
+the contents of a phial, and, with the very act, reeled back and fell
+across his chair upon the floor.&nbsp; The prince left his place and
+came and stood above him, where he lay convulsed upon the carpet.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Poor moth!&rsquo; I heard his highness murmur.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas,
+poor moth! must we again inquire which is the more fatal - weakness
+or wickedness?&nbsp; And can a sympathy with ideas, surely not ignoble
+in themselves, conduct a man to this dishonourable death?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the room.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;this is no time for moralising;
+with a little promptness we may save this creature&rsquo;s life; and
+as for the other, he need cause you no concern, for I have him safely
+under lock and key.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me certainly
+with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which almost robbed me
+of my self-possession.&nbsp; &lsquo;My dear madam,&rsquo; he cried at
+last, &lsquo;and who the devil are you?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I was already on the floor beside the dying man.&nbsp; I had, of course,
+no idea with what drug he had attempted his life, and I was forced to
+try him with a variety of antidotes.&nbsp; Here were both oil and vinegar,
+for the prince had done the young man the honour of compounding for
+him one of his celebrated salads; and of each of these I administered
+from a quarter to half a pint, with no apparent efficacy.&nbsp; I next
+plied him with the hot coffee, of which there may have been near upon
+a quart.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Have you no milk?&rsquo; I inquired.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I fear, madam, that milk has been omitted,&rsquo; returned the
+prince.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Salt, then,&rsquo; said I; &lsquo;salt is a revulsive.&nbsp;
+Pass the salt.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And possibly the mustard?&rsquo; asked his highness, as he offered
+me the contents of the various salt-cellars poured together on a plate.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;the thought is excellent!&nbsp; Mix
+me about half a pint of mustard, drinkably dilute.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere combination of so
+many subversive agents, as soon as the last had been poured over his
+throat, the young sufferer obtained relief.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;There!&rsquo; I exclaimed, with natural triumph, &lsquo;I have
+saved a life!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And yet, madam,&rsquo; returned the prince, &lsquo;your mercy
+may be cruelty disguised.&nbsp; Where the honour is lost, it is, at
+least, superfluous to prolong the life.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,&rsquo;
+I replied, &lsquo;you would hold a very different opinion.&nbsp; For
+my part, and after whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should
+still count to-morrow worth a trial.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You speak as a lady, madam,&rsquo; said the prince; &lsquo;and
+for such you speak the truth.&nbsp; But to men there is permitted such
+a field of license, and the good behaviour asked of them is at once
+so easy and so little, that to fail in that is to fall beyond the reach
+of pardon.&nbsp; But will you suffer me to repeat a question, put to
+you at first, I am afraid, with some defect of courtesy; and to ask
+you once more, who you are and how I have the honour of your company?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,&rsquo; said
+I.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And still I am at fault,&rsquo; returned the prince.<br>
+<br>
+But at that moment the timepiece on the mantel-shelf began to strike
+the hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself upon one elbow,
+with an expression of despair and horror that I have never seen excelled,
+cried lamentably, &lsquo;Midnight! oh, just God!&rsquo;&nbsp; We stood
+frozen to our places, while the tingling hammer of the timepiece measured
+the remaining strokes; nor had we yet stirred, so tragic had been the
+tones of the young man, when the various bells of London began in turn
+to declare the hour.&nbsp; The timepiece was inaudible beyond the walls
+of the chamber where we stood; but the second pulsation of Big Ben had
+scarcely throbbed into the night, before a sharp detonation rang about
+the house.&nbsp; The prince sprang for the door by which I had entered;
+but quick as he was, I yet contrived to intercept him.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you armed?&rsquo; I cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No, madam,&rsquo; replied he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You remind me appositely;
+I will take the poker.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The man below,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;has two revolvers.&nbsp;
+Would you confront him at such odds?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And yet, madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;we cannot continue to
+remain in ignorance of what has passed.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No!&rsquo; cried I.&nbsp; &lsquo;And who proposes it?&nbsp; I
+am as curious as yourself, but let us rather send for the police; or,
+if your highness dreads a scandal, for some of your own servants.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nay, madam,&rsquo; he replied, smiling, &lsquo;for so brave a
+lady, you surprise me.&nbsp; Would you have me, then, send others where
+I fear to go myself?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are perfectly right,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;and I was entirely
+wrong.&nbsp; Go, in God&rsquo;s name, and I will hold the candle!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he carrying the
+poker, I the light; and together we approached and opened the door of
+the butler&rsquo;s pantry.&nbsp; In some sort, I believe, I was prepared
+for the spectacle that met our eyes; I was prepared, that is, to find
+the villain dead, but the rude details of such a violent suicide I was
+unable to endure.&nbsp; The prince, unshaken by horror as he had remained
+unshaken by alarm, assisted me with the most respectful gallantry to
+regain the dining-room.<br>
+<br>
+There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly recovered
+and already seated on a chair.&nbsp; He held out both his hands with
+a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;He is dead,&rsquo; said the prince.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; cried the young man, &lsquo;and it should be I!&nbsp;
+What do I do, thus lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he,
+my sure comrade, blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fidelity,
+has judged and slain himself for an involuntary fault?&nbsp; Ah, sir,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;and you too, madam, without whose cruel help I should
+be now beyond the reach of my accusing conscience, you behold in me
+the victim equally of my own faults and virtues.&nbsp; I was born a
+hater of injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled against
+heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I witnessed the
+sorrows of the poor; the pauper&rsquo;s crust stuck in my throat when
+I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple child has set me weeping.&nbsp;
+What was there in that but what was noble? and yet observe to what a
+fall these thoughts have led me!&nbsp; Year after year this passion
+for the lost besieged me closer.&nbsp; What hope was there in kings?
+what hope in these well-feathered classes that now roll in money?&nbsp;
+I had observed the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler
+of to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age,
+combine to pull down that which was immediately above and to prey upon
+those that were below; his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about
+his ruin; I knew his days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait?
+how was I to let the poor child shiver in the rain?&nbsp; The better
+days, indeed, were coming, but the child would die before that.&nbsp;
+Alas, your highness, in surely no ungenerous impatience I enrolled myself
+among the enemies of this unjust and doomed society; in surely no unnatural
+desire to keep the fires of my philanthropy alight, I bound myself by
+an irrevocable oath.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That oath is all my history.&nbsp; To give freedom to posterity
+I had forsworn my own.&nbsp; I must attend upon every signal; and soon
+my father complained of my irregular hours and turned me from his house.&nbsp;
+I was engaged in betrothal to an honest girl; from her also I had to
+part, for she was too shrewd to credit my inventions and too innocent
+to be entrusted with the truth.&nbsp; Behold me, then, alone with conspirators!&nbsp;
+Alas! as the years went on, my illusions left me.&nbsp; Surrounded as
+I was by the fervent disciples and apologists of revolution, I beheld
+them daily advance in confidence and desperation; I beheld myself, upon
+the other hand, and with an almost equal regularity, decline in faith.&nbsp;
+I had sacrificed all to further that cause in which I still believed;
+and daily I began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed.&nbsp;
+Horrible was the society with which we warred, but our own means were
+not less horrible.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to tell
+you how, when I beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers
+of children, cheerfully toiling at their work, my heart reproached me
+with the greatness and vanity of my unhappy sacrifice.&nbsp; I will
+not describe to you how, worn by poverty, poor lodging, scanty food,
+and an unquiet conscience, my health began to fail, and in the long
+nights, as I wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel sufferings
+of the body were added to the tortures of my mind.&nbsp; These things
+are not personal to me; they are common to all unfortunates in my position.&nbsp;
+An oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a thing to break: an oath,
+taken in the heat of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart,
+but yet in vain repented, as the years go on: an oath, that was once
+the very utterance of the truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol
+of a meaningless and empty slavery; such is the yoke that many young
+men joyfully assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer
+worse than death.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is not that I was patient.&nbsp; I have begged to be released;
+but I knew too much, and I was still refused.&nbsp; I have fled; ay,
+and for the time successfully.&nbsp; I reached Paris.&nbsp; I found
+a lodging in the Rue St. Jacques, almost opposite the Val de Gr&acirc;ce.&nbsp;
+My room was mean and bare, but the sun looked into it towards evening;
+it commanded a peep of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour&rsquo;s
+window and made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie
+in bed and rest myself: I, who was in full revolt against the principles
+that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the council, and
+was no longer charged with shameful and revolting tasks.&nbsp; Oh! what
+an interval of peace was that!&nbsp; I still dream, at times, that I
+can hear the note of my neighbour&rsquo;s bird.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My money was running out, and it became necessary that I should
+find employment.&nbsp; Scarcely had I been three days upon the search,
+ere I thought that I was being followed.&nbsp; I made certain of the
+features of the man, which were quite strange to me, and turned into
+a small caf&eacute;, where I whiled away an hour, pretending to read
+the papers, but inwardly convulsed with terror.&nbsp; When I came forth
+again into the street, it was quite empty, and I breathed again; but
+alas, I had not turned three corners, when I once more observed the
+human hound pursuing me.&nbsp; Not an hour was to be lost; timely submission
+might yet preserve a life which otherwise was forfeit and dishonoured;
+and I fled, with what speed you may conceive, to the Paris agency of
+the society I served.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My submission was accepted.&nbsp; I took up once more the hated
+burthen of that life; once more I was at the call of men whom I despised
+and hated, while yet I envied and admired them.&nbsp; They at least
+were wholehearted in the things they purposed; but I, who had once been
+such as they, had fallen from the brightness of my faith, and now laboured,
+like a hireling, for the wages of a loathed existence.&nbsp; Ay, sir,
+to that I was condemned; I obeyed to continue to live, and lived but
+to obey.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has to-night
+so tragically ended.&nbsp; Boldly telling who I was, I was to request
+from your highness, on behalf of my society, a private audience, where
+it was designed to murder you.&nbsp; If one thing remained to me of
+my old convictions, it was the hate of kings; and when this task was
+offered me, I took it gladly.&nbsp; Alas, sir, you triumphed.&nbsp;
+As we supped, you gained upon my heart.&nbsp; Your character, your talents,
+your designs for our unhappy country, all had been misrepresented.&nbsp;
+I began to forget you were a prince; I began, all too feelingly, to
+remember that you were a man.&nbsp; As I saw the hour approach, I suffered
+agonies untold; and when, at last, we heard the slamming of the door
+which announced in my unwilling ears the arrival of the partner of my
+crime, you will bear me out with what instancy I besought you to depart.&nbsp;
+You would not, alas! and what could I?&nbsp; Kill you, I could not;
+my heart revolted, my hand turned back from such a deed.&nbsp; Yet it
+was impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for when the hour struck
+and my companion came, true to his appointment, and he, at least, true
+to our design, I could neither suffer you to be killed nor yet him to
+be arrested.&nbsp; From such a tragic passage, death, and death alone,
+could save me; and it is no fault of mine if I continue to exist.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But you, madam,&rsquo; continued the young man, addressing himself
+more directly to myself, &lsquo;were doubtless born to save the prince
+and to confound our purposes.&nbsp; My life you have prolonged; and
+by turning the key on my companion, you have made me the author of his
+death.&nbsp; He heard the hour strike; he was impotent to help; and
+thinking himself forfeit to honour, thinking that I should fall alone
+upon his highness and perish for lack of his support, he has turned
+his pistol on himself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; said Prince Florizel: &lsquo;it was in
+no ungenerous spirit that you brought these burthens on yourself; and
+when I see you so nobly to blame, so tragically punished, I stand like
+one reproved.&nbsp; For is it not strange, madam, that you and I, by
+practising accepted and inconsiderable virtues, and commonplace but
+still unpardonable faults, should stand here, in the sight of God, with
+what we call clean hands and quiet consciences; while this poor youth,
+for an error that I could almost envy him, should be sunk beyond the
+reach of hope?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; resumed the prince, turning to the young man, &lsquo;I
+cannot help you; my help would but unchain the thunderbolt that overhangs
+you; and I can but leave you free.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And, sir,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;as this house belongs to me,
+I will ask you to have the kindness to remove the body.&nbsp; You and
+your conspirators, it appears to me, can hardly in civility do less.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It shall be done,&rsquo; said the young man, with a dismal accent.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And you, dear madam,&rsquo; said the prince, &lsquo;you, to whom
+I owe my life, how can I serve you?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;to be very plain, this is
+my favourite house, being not only a valuable property, but endeared
+to me by various associations.&nbsp; I have endless troubles with tenants
+of the ordinary class: and at first applauded my good fortune when I
+found one of the station of your Master of the Horse.&nbsp; I now begin
+to think otherwise: dangers set a siege about great personages; and
+I do not wish my tenement to share these risks.&nbsp; Procure me the
+resiliation of the lease, and I shall feel myself your debtor.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I must tell you, madam,&rsquo; replied his highness, &lsquo;that
+Colonel Geraldine is but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry indeed
+to think myself so unacceptable a tenant.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your highness,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I have conceived a sincere
+admiration for your character; but on the subject of house property,
+I cannot allow the interference of my feelings.&nbsp; I will, however,
+to prove to you that there is nothing personal in my request, here solemnly
+engage my word that I will never put another tenant in this house.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Florizel, &lsquo;you plead your cause too
+charmingly to be refused.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon we all three withdrew.&nbsp; The young man, still reeling
+in his walk, departed by himself to seek the assistance of his fellow-conspirators;
+and the prince, with the most attentive gallantry, lent me his escort
+to the door of my hotel.&nbsp; The next day, the lease was cancelled;
+nor from that hour to this, though sometimes regretting my engagement,
+have I suffered a tenant in this house.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Continued).<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>As soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset made
+haste to offer her his compliments.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;your story is not only entertaining
+but instructive; and you have told it with infinite vivacity.&nbsp;
+I was much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very liberal
+opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret society if I had
+been able to find one.&nbsp; But the whole tale came home to me; and
+I was the better able to feel for you in your various perplexities,
+as I am myself of somewhat hasty temper.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do not understand you,&rsquo; said Mrs. Luxmore, with some
+marks of irritation.&nbsp; &lsquo;You must have strangely misinterpreted
+what I have told you.&nbsp; You fill me with surprise.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset, alarmed by the old lady&rsquo;s change of tone and manner,
+hurried to recant.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear Mrs. Luxmore,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you certainly misconstrue
+my remark.&nbsp; As a man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly
+pricked me when I heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons
+similarly constituted.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh, very well indeed,&rsquo; replied the old lady; &lsquo;and
+a very proper spirit.&nbsp; I regret that I have met with it so rarely.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But in all this,&rsquo; resumed the young man, &lsquo;I perceive
+nothing that concerns myself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am about to come to that,&rsquo; she returned.&nbsp; &lsquo;And
+you have already before you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one
+of the elements of the affair.&nbsp; I am a woman of the nomadic sort,
+and when I have no case before the courts I make it a habit to visit
+continental spas: not that I have ever been ill; but then I am no longer
+young, and I am always happy in a crowd.&nbsp; Well, to come more shortly
+to the point, I am now on the wing for Evian; this incubus of a house,
+which I must leave behind and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my hands;
+and I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a very good
+turn into the bargain, by lending you the mansion, with all its fittings,
+as it stands.&nbsp; The idea was sudden; it appealed to me as humorous:
+and I am sure it will cause my relatives, if they should ever hear of
+it, the keenest possible chagrin.&nbsp; Here, then, is the key; and
+when you return at two to-morrow afternoon, you will find neither me
+nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but Somerset,
+looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear Mrs. Luxmore,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is a most unusual
+proposal.&nbsp; You know nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed
+both impudence and timidity.&nbsp; I may be the worst kind of scoundrel;
+I may sell your furniture - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!&rsquo;
+cried Mrs. Luxmore.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is in vain to reason.&nbsp; Such
+is the force of my character that, when I have one idea clearly in my
+head, I do not care two straws for any side consideration.&nbsp; It
+amuses me to do it, and let that suffice.&nbsp; On your side, you may
+do what you please - let apartments, or keep a private hotel; on mine,
+I promise you a full month&rsquo;s warning before I return, and I never
+fail religiously to keep my promises.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a sudden
+and significant change in the old lady&rsquo;s countenance.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;If I thought you capable of disrespect!&rsquo; she cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration,
+&lsquo;madam, I accept.&nbsp; I beg you to understand that I accept
+with joy and gratitude.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah well,&rsquo; returned Mrs. Luxmore, &lsquo;if I am mistaken,
+let it pass.&nbsp; And now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish
+you a good-night.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried Somerset
+out of the front door, and left him standing, key in hand, upon the
+pavement.<br>
+<br>
+The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way
+to the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that was
+not its name.&nbsp; What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live
+in dreams, and yet be unprepared for their realisation.&nbsp; It was
+already with a certain pang of surprise that he beheld the mansion,
+standing in the eye of day, a solid among solids.&nbsp; The key, upon
+trial, readily opened the front door; he entered that great house, a
+privileged burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly
+reviewed the empty chambers.&nbsp; Cats, servant, old lady, the very
+marks of habitation, like writing on a slate, had been in these few
+hours obliterated.&nbsp; He wandered from floor to floor, and found
+the house of great extent; the kitchen offices commodious and well appointed;
+the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in particular, an apartment
+of princely size and tasteful decoration.&nbsp; Although the day without
+was warm, genial, and sunny, with a ruffling wind from the quarter of
+Torquay, a chill, as it were, of suspended animation inhabited the house.&nbsp;
+Dust and shadows met the eye; and but for the ominous procession of
+the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden trees, the ear
+of the young man was stretched in vain.<br>
+<br>
+Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the old
+lady in her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and netted cupolas of the
+kitchen quarters; and on a second visit, this room appeared to greet
+him with a smiling countenance.&nbsp; He might as well, he thought,
+avoid the expense of lodging: the library, fitted with an iron bedstead
+which he had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve his
+purpose for the night; while in the dining-room, which was large, airy,
+and lightsome, looking on the square and garden, he might very agreeably
+pass his days, cook his meals, and study to bring himself to some proficiency
+in that art of painting which he had recently determined to adopt.&nbsp;
+It did not take him long to make the change: he had soon returned to
+the mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was
+readily induced, by the young man&rsquo;s pleasant manner and a small
+gratuity, to assist him in the installation of the iron bed.&nbsp; By
+six in the evening, when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to
+look back upon the mansion with a sense of pride and property.&nbsp;
+Four-square it stood, of an imposing frontage, and flanked on either
+side by family hatchments.&nbsp; His eye, from where he stood whistling
+in the key, with his back to the garden railings, reposed on every feature
+of reality; and yet his own possession seemed as flimsy as a dream.<br>
+<br>
+In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began
+to remark the customs of their neighbour.&nbsp; The sight of a young
+gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about four o&rsquo;clock of the afternoon,
+in the drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still
+more, his periodical excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood,
+and his unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised
+to a high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants
+of the square.&nbsp; The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first
+proceeded to the length of insult; but Somerset knew how to be affable
+with any class of men; and a few rude words merrily accepted, and a
+few glasses amicably shared, gained for him the right of toleration.<br>
+<br>
+The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion
+of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices.&nbsp; He scorned
+to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one
+half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still
+life.&nbsp; There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately
+chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back garden; and
+there spent his days in smiling assiduity.&nbsp; Meantime, the great
+bulk of empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon his imagination.&nbsp;
+To hold so great a stake and to do nothing, argued some defect of energy;
+and he at length determined to act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore
+herself, and to stick, with wafers, in the window of the dining-room,
+a small handbill announcing furnished lodgings.&nbsp; At half-past six
+of a fine July morning, he affixed the bill, and went forth into the
+square to study the result.&nbsp; It seemed, to his eye, promising and
+unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to consider,
+over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he was to charge.<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.&nbsp;
+Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day
+in the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his float;
+and the better to support the tedium, he would frequently console himself
+with his clay pipe.&nbsp; On several occasions, passers-by appeared
+to be arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen
+drove to the very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared there
+was something repulsive in the appearance of the house; for with one
+accord, they would cast but one look upward, and hastily resume their
+onward progress or direct the driver to proceed.&nbsp; Somerset had
+thus the mortification of actually meeting the eye of a large number
+of lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and
+to compose his features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded
+by so much as an inquiry.&nbsp; &lsquo;Can there,&rsquo; he thought,
+&lsquo;be anything repellent in myself?&rsquo;&nbsp; But a candid examination
+in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to dismiss the
+fear.<br>
+<br>
+Something, however, was amiss.&nbsp; His vast and accurate calculations
+on the fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to
+have been an idle sacrifice of time.&nbsp; By these, he had variously
+computed the weekly takings of the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty
+shillings, up to the more majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet,
+in despite of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making literally
+nothing.<br>
+<br>
+This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful leisure
+on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had detected the
+error of his method.&nbsp; &lsquo;This,&rsquo; he reflected, &lsquo;is
+an age of generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffiths,
+of Pears&rsquo; legendary soap, and of Eno&rsquo;s fruit salt, which,
+by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever
+remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood,
+Lamplough&rsquo;s pyretic saline.&nbsp; Lamplough was genteel, Eno was
+omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably vulgar;
+and here have I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of the world,
+contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a few cold words which
+do not directly address the imagination, and the adornment (if adornment
+it may be called) of four red wafers!&nbsp; Am I, then, to sink with
+Lamplough, or to soar with Eno?&nbsp; Am I to adopt that modesty which
+is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to take hold of the red facts of
+life with the emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very
+largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded
+to compose an ensign that might attract the eye, and at the same time,
+in his own phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger.&nbsp;
+Something taking in the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words,
+and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect
+to lead within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
+must be the elements of his advertisement.&nbsp; It was possible, upon
+the one hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening
+fire, blond-headed urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it
+was possible (and he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse)
+to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range
+or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan.&nbsp; So long did the
+artist waver between these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion,
+he had finally conceived and completed both designs.&nbsp; With the
+proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to
+sacrifice either of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose
+them on alternate days.&nbsp; &lsquo;In this way,&rsquo; he thought,
+&lsquo;I shall address myself indifferently to all classes of the world.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the more
+imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune, and appeared first
+in the window of the mansion.&nbsp; It was of a high fancy, the legend
+eloquently writ, the scheme of colour taking and bold; and but for the
+imperfection of the artist&rsquo;s drawing, it might have been taken
+for a model of its kind.&nbsp; As it was, however, when viewed from
+his favourite point against the garden railings, and with some touch
+of distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of the artist&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have thrown away,&rsquo; he ejaculated, &lsquo;an invaluable
+motive; and this shall be the subject of my first academy picture.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.&nbsp; A crowd
+would certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-railings;
+but they came to jeer and not to speculate; and those who pushed their
+inquiries further, were too plainly animated by the spirit of derision.&nbsp;
+The racier of the two cartoons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive
+merit; and though it had a certain share of that success called scandalous,
+failed utterly of its effect.&nbsp; On the day, however, of the second
+appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did actually present
+himself before the eyes of Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment, and
+his voice under inadequate control.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I beg your pardon,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;but what is the meaning
+of your extraordinary bill?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I beg yours,&rsquo; returned Somerset hotly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Its
+meaning is sufficiently explicit.&rsquo;&nbsp; And being now, from dire
+experience, fearful of ridicule, he was preparing to close the door,
+when the gentleman thrust his cane into the aperture.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not so fast, I beg of you,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you
+really let apartments, here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing
+would give me greater pleasure than to see the accommodation and to
+learn your terms.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor, showed him
+over the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive
+eloquence, expounded their attractions.&nbsp; The gentleman was particularly
+pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-room.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;would suit me very well.&nbsp; What,
+may I ask, would be your terms a week, for this floor and the one above
+it?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I was thinking,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;of a hundred
+pounds.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Surely not,&rsquo; exclaimed the gentleman.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, then,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;fifty.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+seem to be strangely elastic in your demands,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What if I were to proceed on your own principle of division,
+and offer twenty-five?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Done!&rsquo; cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden embarrassment,
+&lsquo;You see,&rsquo; he added apologetically, &lsquo;it is all found
+money for me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Really?&rsquo; said the stranger, looking at him all the while
+with growing wonder.&nbsp; &lsquo;Without extras, then?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I - I suppose so,&rsquo; stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Service included?&rsquo; pursued the gentleman.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Service?&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you mean that
+you expect me to empty your slops?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest.&nbsp; &lsquo;My
+dear fellow,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;if you take my advice, you will
+give up this business.&rsquo;&nbsp; And thereupon he resumed his hat
+and took himself away.<br>
+<br>
+This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist
+of the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier illusions.&nbsp;
+First one and then the other of his great works was condemned, withdrawn
+from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration
+of the dining-room.&nbsp; Their place was taken by a replica of the
+original wafered announcement, to which, in particularly large letters,
+he had added the pithy rubric: &lsquo;<i>No service</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Meanwhile he had fallen into something as nearly bordering on low spirits
+as was consistent with his disposition; depressed, at once by the failure
+of his scheme, the laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial
+blindness of the public to the merit of the twin cartoons.<br>
+<br>
+Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note of
+the knocker.&nbsp; A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat military
+air, yet closely shaven and wearing a soft hat, desired in the politest
+terms to visit the apartments.&nbsp; He had (he explained) a friend,
+a gentleman in tender health, desirous of a sedate and solitary life,
+apart from interruptions and the noises of the common lodging-house.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The unusual clause,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;in your announcement,
+particularly struck me.&nbsp; &ldquo;This,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is
+the place for Mr. Jones.&rdquo;&nbsp; You are yourself, sir, a professional
+gentleman?&rsquo; concluded the visitor, looking keenly in Somerset&rsquo;s
+face.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am an artist,&rsquo; replied the young man lightly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And these,&rsquo; observed the other, taking a side glance through
+the open door of the dining-room, which they were then passing, &lsquo;these
+are some of your works.&nbsp; Very remarkable.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he again
+and still more sharply peered into the countenance of the young man.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead his
+visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Excellent,&rsquo; observed the stranger, as he looked from one
+of the back windows.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is that a mews behind, sir?&nbsp;
+Very good.&nbsp; Well, sir: see here.&nbsp; My friend will take your
+drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back drawing-room; his nurse,
+an excellent Irish widow, will attend on all his wants and occupy a
+garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten dollars a week; and you,
+on your part, will engage to receive no other lodger?&nbsp; I think
+that fair.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and joy.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Agreed,&rsquo; said the other; &lsquo;and to spare you trouble,
+my friend will bring some men with him to make the changes.&nbsp; You
+will find him a retiring inmate, sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves
+the house, except at night.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Since I have been in this house,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;I
+have myself, unless it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except
+in the evening.&nbsp; But a man,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;must have some
+amusement.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset sat
+down to compute in English money the value of the figure named.&nbsp;
+The result of this investigation filled him with amazement and disgust;
+but it was now too late; nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited
+the arrival of his tenant, still trying, by various arithmetical expedients,
+to obtain a more favourable quotation for the dollar.&nbsp; With the
+approach of dusk, however, his impatience drove him once more to the
+front balcony.&nbsp; The night fell, mild and airless; the lamps shone
+around the central darkness of the garden; and through the tall grove
+of trees that intervened, many warmly illuminated windows on the farther
+side of the square, told their tale of white napery, choice wine, and
+genial hospitality.&nbsp; The stars were already thickening overhead,
+when the young man&rsquo;s eyes alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers,
+coasting round the garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp;
+They were laden with formidable boxes; moved in a military order, one
+following another; and, by the extreme slowness of their advance, inspired
+Somerset with the most serious ideas of his tenant&rsquo;s malady.<br>
+<br>
+By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the pavement;
+and from the two first, there had alighted the military gentleman of
+the morning and two very stalwart porters.&nbsp; These proceeded instantly
+to take possession of the house; with their own hands, and firmly rejecting
+Somerset&rsquo;s assistance, they carried in the various crates and
+boxes; with their own hands dismounted and transferred to the back drawing-room
+the bed in which the tenant was to sleep; and it was not until the bustle
+of arrival had subsided, and the arrangements were complete, that there
+descended, from the third of the three vehicles, a gentleman of great
+stature and broad shoulders, leaning on the shoulder of a woman in a
+widow&rsquo;s dress, and himself covered by a long cloak and muffled
+in a coloured comforter.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into
+the back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on
+the house; and had not the nurse appeared a little before half-past
+ten, and, with a strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house
+in the neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to
+be alone in the Superfluous Mansion.<br>
+<br>
+Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
+sight of his mysterious lodger.&nbsp; The doors of the drawing-room
+flat were never open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to
+and fro, the tall man had never quitted the privacy of his apartments.&nbsp;
+Visitors, indeed, arrived; sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous
+hours of night or morning; men, for the most part; some meanly attired,
+some decently; some loud, some cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of
+Somerset, displeasing.&nbsp; A certain air of fear and secrecy was common
+to them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill at ease; even
+the military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no gentleman
+at all; and as for the doctor who attended the sick man, his manners
+were not suggestive of a university career.&nbsp; The nurse, again,
+was scarcely a desirable house-fellow.&nbsp; Since her arrival, the
+fall of whisky in the young man&rsquo;s private bottle was much accelerated;
+and though never communicative, she was at times unpleasantly familiar.&nbsp;
+When asked about the patient&rsquo;s health, she would dolorously shake
+her head, and declare that the poor gentleman was in a pitiful condition.<br>
+<br>
+Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
+complaint was other than bodily.&nbsp; The ill-looking birds that gathered
+to the house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room
+in the dead hours of night, the careless attendance and intemperate
+habits of the nurse, the entire absence of correspondence, the entire
+seclusion of Mr. Jones himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could
+not have sworn to in a court of justice - all weighed unpleasantly upon
+the young man&rsquo;s mind.&nbsp; A sense of something evil, irregular
+and underhand, haunted and depressed him; and this uneasy sentiment
+was the more firmly rooted in his mind, when, in the fulness of time,
+he had an opportunity of observing the features of his tenant.&nbsp;
+It fell in this way.&nbsp; The young landlord was awakened about four
+in the morning by a noise in the hall.&nbsp; Leaping to his feet, and
+opening the door of the library, he saw the tall man, candle in hand,
+in earnest conversation with the gentleman who had taken the rooms.&nbsp;
+The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in that of his tenant,
+Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but every sign
+of health, energy, and resolution.&nbsp; While he was still looking,
+the visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having carefully fastened
+the front door, sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude.<br>
+<br>
+That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into
+the hot fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the
+practice of his art with careless hand and an abstracted mind.&nbsp;
+The day was destined to be fertile in surprises; nor had he long been
+seated at the easel ere the first of these occurred.&nbsp; A cab laden
+with baggage drew up before the door; and Mrs. Luxmore in person rapidly
+mounted the steps and began to pound upon the knocker.&nbsp; Somerset
+hastened to attend the summons.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear fellow,&rsquo; she said, with the utmost gaiety, &lsquo;here
+I come dropping from the moon.&nbsp; I am delighted to find you faithful;
+and I have no doubt you will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the
+spirited old lady pushed briskly by him and paused on the threshold
+of the dining-room.&nbsp; The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated
+to inspire astonishment.&nbsp; The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans
+and empty bottles; on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was
+littered from end to end with books, clothes, walking-canes and the
+materials of the painter&rsquo;s craft; but what far outstripped the
+other wonders of the place was the corner which had been arranged for
+the study of still-life.&nbsp; This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous
+upon which, according to the principles of the art of composition, a
+cabbage was relieved against a copper kettle, and both contrasted with
+the mail of a boiled lobster.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My gracious goodness!&rsquo; cried the lady of the house; and
+then, turning in wrath on the young man, &lsquo;From what rank in life
+are you sprung?&rsquo; she demanded.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have the exterior
+of a gentleman; but from the astonishing evidences before me, I should
+say you can only be a greengrocer&rsquo;s man.&nbsp; Pray, gather up
+your vegetables, and let me see no more of you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; babbled Somerset, &lsquo;you promised me a month&rsquo;s
+warning.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That was under a misapprehension,&rsquo; returned the old lady.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I now give you warning to leave at once.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said the young man, &lsquo;I wish I could; and
+indeed, as far as I am concerned, it might be done.&nbsp; But then,
+my lodger!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your lodger?&rsquo; echoed Mrs. Luxmore.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My lodger: why should I deny it?&rsquo; returned Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;He is only by the week.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The old lady sat down upon a chair.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have a lodger?
+- you?&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;And pray, how did you get him?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;By advertisement,&rsquo; replied the young man. &lsquo;O madam,
+I have not lived unobservantly.&nbsp; I adopted&rsquo; - his eyes involuntarily
+shifted to the cartoons - &lsquo;I adopted every method.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset&rsquo;s experience,
+she produced a double eye-glass; and as soon as the full merit of the
+works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling
+and soprano laughter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I do hope you had them in the window.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Pherson,&rsquo;
+she continued, crying to her maid, who had been all this time grimly
+waiting in the hall, &lsquo;I lunch with Mr. Somerset.&nbsp; Take the
+cellar key and bring some wine.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
+Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M&rsquo;Pherson
+bring up from the cellar - &lsquo;as a present, my dear,&rsquo; she
+said, with another burst of tearful merriment, &lsquo;for your charming
+pictures, which you must be sure to leave me when you go;&rsquo; and
+finally, protesting that she dared not spoil the absurdest houseful
+of madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she vaguely phrased it)
+for the continent of Europe.<br>
+<br>
+She was no sooner gone, than Somerset encountered in the corridor the
+Irish nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly
+strong emotion.&nbsp; It was made to appear, from her account, that
+Mr. Jones had already suffered acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore&rsquo;s
+visit, and that nothing short of a full explanation could allay the
+invalid&rsquo;s uneasiness.&nbsp; Somerset, somewhat staring, told what
+he thought fit of the affair.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is that all?&rsquo; cried the woman.&nbsp; &lsquo;As God sees
+you, is that all?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My good woman,&rsquo; said the young man, &lsquo;I have no idea
+what you can be driving at.&nbsp; Suppose the lady were my friend&rsquo;s
+wife, suppose she were my fairy godmother, suppose she were the Queen
+of Portugal; and how should that affect yourself or Mr. Jones?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Blessed Mary!&rsquo; cried the nurse, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s he that
+will be glad to hear it!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And immediately she fled upstairs.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and with a very
+thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder
+of the bottle.&nbsp; It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its
+equals and superiors, that can in some degree support the competition
+of tobacco.&nbsp; Sipping, smoking, and theorising, Somerset moved on
+from suspicion to suspicion, from resolve to resolve, still growing
+braver and rosier as the bottle ebbed.&nbsp; He was a sceptic, none
+prouder of the name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes
+or vices, but beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral approbation,
+the frequent consequence of youth and health.&nbsp; At the same time,
+he felt convinced that he dwelt under the same roof with secret malefactors;
+and the unregenerate instinct of the chase impelled him to severity.&nbsp;
+The bottle had run low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at
+the same moment, night and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his
+dreams.<br>
+<br>
+He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not
+so much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed.&nbsp;
+What with one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he returned
+home.&nbsp; A cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found
+himself face to face with one of the most regular of the few who visited
+Mr. Jones: a man of powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard
+in the American fashion.&nbsp; This person was carrying on one shoulder
+a black portmanteau, seemingly of considerable weight.&nbsp; That he
+should find a visitor removing baggage in the dead of night, recalled
+some odd stories to the young man&rsquo;s memory; he had heard of lodgers
+who thus gradually drained away, not only their own effects, but the
+very furniture and fittings of the house that sheltered them; and now,
+in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of
+a drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and
+knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor.&nbsp; With a
+face struck suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard
+called lamentably on the name of his maker, and fell in a mere heap
+on the mat at the foot of the stairs.&nbsp; At the same time, though
+only for a single instant, the heads of the sick lodger and the Irish
+nurse popped out like rabbits over the banisters of the first floor;
+and on both the same scare and pallor were apparent.<br>
+<br>
+The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he
+continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and,
+with the help of the handrail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once
+more upon his feet.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What in Heaven&rsquo;s name ails you?&rsquo; gasped the young
+man as soon as he could find words and utterance.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Have you a drop of brandy?&rsquo; returned the other.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+am sick.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset administered two drams, one after the other, to the man with
+the chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself
+in apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result,
+he said, of a long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with
+a hand that still sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen
+and departed.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep.&nbsp; What, he asked himself,
+had been the contents of the black portmanteau?&nbsp; Stolen goods?
+the carcase of one murdered? or - and at the thought he sat upright
+in bed - an infernal machine?&nbsp; He took a solemn vow that he would
+set these doubts at rest; and with the next morning, installed himself
+beside the dining-room window, vigilant with eye; and ear, to await
+and profit by the earliest opportunity.<br>
+<br>
+The hours went heavily by.&nbsp; Within the house there was no circumstance
+of novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made little
+journeys round the corner of the square, and before afternoon was somewhat
+loose of speech and gait.&nbsp; A little after six, however, there came
+round the corner of the gardens a very handsome and elegantly dressed
+young woman, who paused a little way off, and for some time, and with
+frequent sighs, contemplated the front of the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp;
+It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon
+it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man
+had already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage,
+and had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye.&nbsp;
+He hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little
+nearer to the window to enjoy the sight.&nbsp; What was his surprise,
+however, when, as if with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted
+the steps and tapped discreetly at the door!&nbsp; He made haste to
+get before the Irish nurse, who was not improbably asleep, and had the
+satisfaction to receive this gracious visitor in person.<br>
+<br>
+She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the
+young man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he thought
+he could perceive her to be smiling), &lsquo;because,&rsquo; she added,
+&lsquo;if you are, I should like to see some of the other rooms.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Somerset told her he was under an engagement to receive no other lodgers;
+but she assured him that would be no matter, as these were friends of
+Mr. Jones&rsquo;s.&nbsp; &lsquo;And,&rsquo; she continued, moving suddenly
+to the dining-room door, &lsquo;let us begin here.&rsquo;&nbsp; Somerset
+was too late to prevent her entering, and perhaps he lacked the courage
+to essay.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;how changed it is!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; cried the young man, &lsquo;since your entrance,
+it is I who have the right to say so.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop
+of the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled
+litter, now with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the
+two apartments.&nbsp; She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes,
+and a heightened colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed
+a high opinion of their merits.&nbsp; She praised the effective disposition
+of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which Somerset had vainly endeavoured
+to defend the entry, she fairly broke forth in admiration.&nbsp; &lsquo;How
+simple and manly!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;none of that effeminacy of
+neatness, which is so detestable in a man!&rsquo;&nbsp; Hard upon this,
+telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her
+way, and would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging
+smile, and ascended the staircase alone.<br>
+<br>
+For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones;
+and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they
+left the house in company.&nbsp; This was the first time since the arrival
+of his lodger, that Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish
+widow; and without the loss of any more time than was required by decency,
+he stepped to the foot of the stairs and hailed her by her name.&nbsp;
+She came instantly, wreathed in weak smiles and with a nodding head;
+and when the young man politely offered to introduce her to the treasures
+of his art, she swore that nothing could afford her greater pleasure,
+for, though she had never crossed the threshold, she had frequently
+observed his beautiful pictures through the door.&nbsp; On entering
+the dining-room, the sight of a bottle and two glasses prepared her
+to be a gentle critic; and as soon as the pictures had been viewed and
+praised, she was easily persuaded to join the painter in a single glass.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;are my respects; and a pleasure
+it is, in this horrible house, to see a gentleman like yourself, so
+affable and free, and a very nice painter, I am sure.&rsquo;&nbsp; One
+glass so agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the acceptance of a
+second; at the third, Somerset was free to cease from the affectation
+of keeping her company; and as for the fourth, she asked it of her own
+accord.&nbsp; &lsquo;For indeed,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;what with all
+these clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life would
+be impossible entirely.&nbsp; And you seen yourself that even M&rsquo;Guire
+was glad to beg for it.&nbsp; And even himself, when he is downhearted
+with all these cruel disappointments, though as temperate a man as any
+child, will be sometimes crying for a glass of it.&nbsp; And I&rsquo;ll
+thank you for a thimbleful to settle what I got.&rsquo;&nbsp; Soon after,
+she began with tears to narrate the deathbed dispositions and lament
+the trifling assets of her husband.&nbsp; Then she declared she heard
+&lsquo;the master&rsquo; calling her, rose to her feet, made but one
+lurch of it into the still-life rockery, and with her head upon the
+lobster, fell into stertorous slumbers.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of
+the drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps.&nbsp;
+It was a great apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows,
+and joined by a pair of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant
+in proportion, papered in sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate
+blue, and adorned with a majestic mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles.&nbsp;
+Such was the room that Somerset remembered; that which he now beheld
+was changed in almost every feature: the furniture covered with a figured
+chintz; the walls hung with a rhubarb-coloured paper, and diversified
+by the curtained recesses for no less than seven windows.&nbsp; It seemed
+to himself that he must have entered, without observing the transition,
+into the adjoining house.&nbsp; Presently from these more specious changes,
+his eye condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor
+was littered.&nbsp; Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks
+and clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking,
+some reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars
+and bottles; a carpenter&rsquo;s bench and a laboratory-table.<br>
+<br>
+The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise undergone
+a change.&nbsp; It was transformed to the exact appearance of a common
+lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied one corner;
+and the window was blocked by the regulation table and mirror.&nbsp;
+The door of a small closet here attracted the young man&rsquo;s attention;
+and striking a vesta, he opened it and entered.&nbsp; On a table several
+wigs and beards were lying spread; about the walls hung an incongruous
+display of suits and overcoats; and conspicuous among the last the young
+man observed a large overall of the most costly sealskin.&nbsp; In a
+flash his mind reverted to the advertisement in the <i>Standard</i>
+newspaper.&nbsp; The great height of his lodger, the disproportionate
+breadth of his shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment,
+all pointed to the same conclusion.<br>
+<br>
+The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon his
+arm, Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room.&nbsp; There,
+with a mixture of fear and admiration, he pored upon its goodly proportions
+and the regularity and softness of the pile.&nbsp; The sight of a large
+pier-glass put another fancy in his head.&nbsp; He donned the fur-coat;
+and standing before the mirror in an attitude suggestive of a Russian
+prince, he thrust his hands into the ample pockets.&nbsp; There his
+fingers encountered a folded journal.&nbsp; He drew it out, and recognised
+the type and paper of the <i>Standard</i>; and at the same instant,
+his eyes alighted on the offer of two hundred pounds.&nbsp; Plainly
+then, his lodger, now no longer mysterious, had laid aside his coat
+on the very day of the appearance of the advertisement.<br>
+<br>
+He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the incriminating
+paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall lodger, with a
+firm but somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room and closed the
+door again behind him.&nbsp; For some time, the two looked upon each
+other in perfect silence; then Mr. Jones moved forward to the table,
+took a seat, and still without once changing the direction of his eyes,
+addressed the young man.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is for me the
+blood money is offered.&nbsp; And now what will you do?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to reply.&nbsp;
+Taken as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man&rsquo;s own coat,
+and surrounded by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives, the keeper
+of the lodging-house was silenced.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; resumed the other, &lsquo;I am he.&nbsp; I am that
+man, whom with impotent hate and fear, they still hunt from den to den,
+from disguise to disguise.&nbsp; Yes, my landlord, you have it in your
+power, if you be poor, to lay the basis of your fortune; if you be unknown,
+to capture honour at one snatch.&nbsp; You have hocussed an innocent
+widow; and I find you here in my apartment, for whose use I pay you
+in stamped money, searching my wardrobe, and your hand - shame, sir!
+- your hand in my very pocket.&nbsp; You can now complete the cycle
+of your ignominious acts, by what will be at once the simplest, the
+safest, and the most remunerative.&rsquo;&nbsp; The speaker paused as
+if to emphasise his words; and then, with a great change of tone and
+manner, thus resumed: &lsquo;And yet, sir, when I look upon your face,
+I feel certain that I cannot be deceived: certain that in spite of all,
+I have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman.&nbsp; Take
+off my coat, sir - which but cumbers you.&nbsp; Divest yourself of this
+confusion: that which is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen
+to the conscience; we have all harboured guilty thoughts: and if it
+flashed into your mind to sell my flesh and blood, my anguish in the
+dock, and the sweat of my death agony - it was a thought, dear sir,
+you were as incapable of acting on, as I of any further question of
+your honour.&rsquo;&nbsp; At these words, the speaker, with a very open,
+smiling countenance, like a forgiving father, offered Somerset his hand.<br>
+<br>
+It was not in the young man&rsquo;s nature to refuse forgiveness or
+dissect generosity.&nbsp; He instantly, and almost without thought,
+accepted the proffered grasp.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; resumed the lodger, &lsquo;now that I hold in
+mine your loyal hand, I lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion,
+I go further - by an effort of will, I banish the memory of what is
+past.&nbsp; How you came here, I care not: enough that you are here
+- as my guest.&nbsp; Sit ye down; and let us, with your good permission,
+improve acquaintance over a glass of excellent whisky.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+So speaking, he produced glasses and a bottle: and the pair pledged
+each other in silence.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Confess,&rsquo; observed the smiling host, &lsquo;you were surprised
+at the appearance of the room.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I was indeed,&rsquo; said Somerset; &lsquo;nor can I imagine
+the purpose of these changes.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;These,&rsquo; replied the conspirator, &lsquo;are the devices
+by which I continue to exist.&nbsp; Conceive me now, accused before
+one of your unjust tribunals; conceive the various witnesses appearing,
+and the singular variety of their reports!&nbsp; One will have visited
+me in this drawing-room as it originally stood; a second finds it as
+it is to-night; and to-morrow or next day, all may have been changed.&nbsp;
+If you love romance (as artists do), few lives are more romantic than
+that of the obscure individual now addressing you.&nbsp; Obscure yet
+famous.&nbsp; Mine is an anonymous, infernal glory.&nbsp; By infamous
+means, I work towards my bright purpose.&nbsp; I found the liberty and
+peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future smiles upon
+that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a hunted brute,
+work towards appalling ends, and practice hell&rsquo;s dexterities.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him,
+and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment.&nbsp;
+He looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the
+marks of education; and wondered the more profoundly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; he said - &lsquo;for I know not whether I should
+still address you as Mr. Jones - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland,
+by all or any of these you may address me,&rsquo; said the plotter;
+&lsquo;for all I have at some time borne.&nbsp; Yet that which I most
+prize, that which is most feared, hated, and obeyed, is not a name to
+be found in your directories; it is not a name current in post-offices
+or banks; and, indeed, like the celebrated clan M&rsquo;Gregor, I may
+justly describe myself as being nameless by day.&nbsp; But,&rsquo; he
+continued, rising to his feet, &lsquo;by night, and among my desperate
+followers, I am the redoubted Zero.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely expressed surprise
+and gratification.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am to understand,&rsquo; he continued,
+&lsquo;that, under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?&rsquo;
+<a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a><br>
+<br>
+The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;In this dark period of time,
+a star - the star of dynamite - has risen for the oppressed; and among
+those who practise its use, so thick beset with dangers and attended
+by such incredible difficulties and disappointments, few have been more
+assiduous, and not many - &rsquo;&nbsp; He paused, and a shade of embarrassment
+appeared upon his face - &lsquo;not many have been more successful than
+myself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I can imagine,&rsquo; observed Somerset, &lsquo;that, from the
+sweeping consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of interest.&nbsp;
+You have, besides, some of the entertainment of the game of hide and
+seek.&nbsp; But it would still seem to me - I speak as a layman - that
+nothing could be simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal machine
+and retire to an adjacent county to await the painful consequences.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You speak, indeed,&rsquo; returned the plotter, with some evidence
+of warmth, &lsquo;you speak, indeed, most ignorantly.&nbsp; Do you make
+nothing, then, of such a peril as we share this moment?&nbsp; Do you
+think it nothing to occupy a house like this one, mined, menaced, and,
+in a word, literally tottering to its fall?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; ejaculated Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And when you speak of ease,&rsquo; pursued Zero, &lsquo;in this
+age of scientific studies, you fill me with surprise.&nbsp; Are you
+not aware that chemicals are proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork
+as capricious as the very devil?&nbsp; Do you see upon my brow these
+furrows of anxiety?&nbsp; Do you observe the silver threads that mingle
+with my hair?&nbsp; Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on my brow
+- chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks!&nbsp; No, Mr. Somerset,&rsquo;
+he resumed, after a moment&rsquo;s pause, his voice still quivering
+with sensibility, &lsquo;you must not suppose the dynamiter&rsquo;s
+life to be all gold.&nbsp; On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself
+the bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like
+mine.&nbsp; I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down
+late; my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with
+white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England,
+the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo!
+a snap like that of a child&rsquo;s pistol, an offensive smell, and
+the entire loss of so much time and plant!&nbsp; If,&rsquo; he concluded,
+musingly, &lsquo;we had been merely able to recover the lost bags, I
+believe with but a touch or two, I could have remedied the peccant engine.&nbsp;
+But what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable scientific
+difficulties of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to
+desert the chosen medium.&nbsp; They propose, instead, to break up the
+drainage system of cities and sweep off whole populations with the devastating
+typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a scientific project: a process,
+indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical simplicity.&nbsp; I recognise
+its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the poet in my nature; something,
+possibly, of the tribune.&nbsp; And, for my small part, I shall remain
+devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more
+popular method, of the explosive bomb.&nbsp; Yes,&rsquo; he cried, with
+unshaken hope, &lsquo;I will still continue, and, I feel it in my bosom,
+I shall yet succeed.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Two things I remark,&rsquo; said Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;The first
+somewhat staggers me.&nbsp; Have you, then - in all this course of life,
+which you have sketched so vividly - have you not once succeeded?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have had one success.&nbsp;
+You behold in me the author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But if I remember right,&rsquo; objected Somerset, &lsquo;the
+thing was a <i>fiasco</i>.&nbsp; A scavenger&rsquo;s barrow and some
+copies of the <i>Weekly Budget</i> - these were the only victims.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You will pardon me again,&rsquo; returned Zero with positive
+asperity: &lsquo;a child was injured.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And that fitly brings me to my second point,&rsquo; said Somerset.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;For I observed you to employ the word &ldquo;indiscriminate.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Now, surely, a scavenger&rsquo;s barrow and a child (if child there
+were) represent the very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and,
+pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Did I employ the word?&rsquo; asked Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,
+I will not defend it.&nbsp; But for efficiency, you touch on graver
+matters; and before entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once
+more to fill our glasses.&nbsp; Disputation is dry work,&rsquo; he added,
+with a charming gaiety of manner.<br>
+<br>
+Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog;
+and Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more
+largely to develop his opinions.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The indiscriminate?&rsquo; he began.&nbsp; &lsquo;War, my dear
+sir, is indiscriminate.&nbsp; War spares not the child; it spares not
+the barrow of the harmless scavenger.&nbsp; No more,&rsquo; he concluded,
+beaming, &lsquo;no more do I.&nbsp; Whatever may strike fear, whatever
+may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow
+or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my
+simple plans.&nbsp; You are not,&rsquo; he inquired, with a shade of
+sympathetic interest, &lsquo;you are not, I trust, a believer?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir, I believe in nothing,&rsquo; said the young man.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are then,&rsquo; replied Zero, &lsquo;in a position to grasp
+my argument.&nbsp; We agree that humanity is the object, the glorious
+triumph of humanity; and being pledged to labour for that end, and face
+to face with the banded opposition of kings, parliaments, churches,
+and the members of the force, who am I - who are we, dear sir - to affect
+a nicety about the tools employed?&nbsp; You might, perhaps, expect
+us to attack the Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or
+the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error.&nbsp; Our
+appeal is to the body of the people; it is these that we would touch
+and interest.&nbsp; Now, sir, have you observed the English housemaid?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I should think I had,&rsquo; cried Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,&rsquo;
+returned the conspirator politely.&nbsp; &lsquo;A type apart; a very
+charming figure; and thoroughly adapted to our ends.&nbsp; The neat
+cap, the clean print, the comely person, the engaging manner; her position
+between classes, parents in one, employers in another; the probability
+that she will have at least one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall
+address: - yes, I have a leaning - call it, if you will, a weakness
+- for the housemaid.&nbsp; Not that I would be understood to despise
+the nurse.&nbsp; For the child is a very interesting feature: I have
+long since marked out the child as the sensitive point in society.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He wagged his head, with a wise, pensive smile.&nbsp; &lsquo;And talking,
+sir, of children and of the perils of our trade, let me now narrate
+to you a little incident of an explosive bomb, that fell out some weeks
+ago under my own observation.&nbsp; It fell out thus.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And Zero, leaning back in his chair, narrated the following simple tale.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>ZERO&rsquo;S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB</i>. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a private
+chamber at St. James&rsquo;s Hall.&nbsp; You have seen the man: it was
+M&rsquo;Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert
+in our contrivances.&nbsp; Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I
+need not remind you what enormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment
+of the engine.&nbsp; I set our little petard for half an hour, the scene
+of action being hard by; and the better to avert miscarriage, employed
+a device, a recent invention of my own, by which the opening of the
+Gladstone bag in which the bomb was carried, should instantly determine
+the explosion.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire was somewhat dashed by this arrangement,
+which was new to him: and pointed out, with excellent, clear good sense,
+that should he be arrested, it would probably involve him in the fall
+of our opponents.&nbsp; But I was not to be moved, made a strong appeal
+to his patriotism, gave him a good glass of whisky, and despatched him
+on his glorious errand.<br>
+<br>
+Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot,
+I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, still
+very foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of his
+disgusting political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the
+immediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, errand-boys,
+unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and infirm old men - all
+classes making a direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitable
+with our designs.&nbsp; As M&rsquo;Guire drew near his heart was inflamed
+by the most noble sentiment of triumph.&nbsp; Never had he seen the
+garden so crowded; children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth,
+ran to and fro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, sick
+pensioner sat upon the nearest bench, a medal on his breast, a stick
+with which he walked (for he was disabled by wounds) reclining on his
+knee.&nbsp; Guilty England would thus be stabbed in the most delicate
+quarters; the moment had, indeed, been well selected; and M&rsquo;Guire,
+with a radiant provision of the event, drew merrily nearer.&nbsp; Suddenly
+his eye alighted on the burly form of a policeman, standing hard by
+the effigy in an attitude of watch.&nbsp; My bold companion paused;
+he looked about him closely; here and there, at different points of
+the enclosure, other men stood or loitered, affecting an abstraction,
+feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk, feigning to be weary
+and to rest upon the benches.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire was no child in these
+affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian
+Gladstone.<br>
+<br>
+A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain nervousness
+in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design draws
+near, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion
+of intent; and frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed specific
+denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings.&nbsp; But for this purely
+accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an historical expression.&nbsp;
+On the receipt of such a letter, the Government lay a trap for their
+adversaries, and surround the threatened spot with hirelings.&nbsp;
+My blood sometimes boils in my veins, when I consider the case of those
+who sell themselves for money in such a cause.&nbsp; True, thanks to
+the generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortable
+stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyond
+the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M&rsquo;Guire, again,
+ere he joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank
+God! receives a decent income.&nbsp; That is as it should be; the patriot
+must not be diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the
+distinction between our position and that of the police is too obvious
+to be stated.<br>
+<br>
+Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged; the
+Government had craftily filled the place with minions; even the pensioner
+was not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our emissary, without
+other aid or protection than the simple apparatus in his bag, found
+himself confronted by force; brutal force; that strong hand which was
+a character of the ages of oppression.&nbsp; Should he venture to deposit
+the machine, it was almost certain that he would be observed and arrested;
+a cry would arise; and there was just a fear that the police might not
+be present in sufficient force, to protect him from the savagery of
+the mob.&nbsp; The scheme must be delayed.&nbsp; He stood with his bag
+on his arm, pretending to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there
+flashed into his mind a thought to appal the bravest.&nbsp; The machine
+was set; at the appointed hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval,
+was he to be rid of it?<br>
+<br>
+Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot.&nbsp; There
+he was, friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life, for
+he is not yet forty; with long years of happiness before him; and now
+condemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite!&nbsp;
+The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the Alhambra
+leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled against the railing.&nbsp;
+It is probable he fainted.<br>
+<br>
+When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; he cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You seem to be unwell, sir,&rsquo; said the hireling.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I feel better now,&rsquo; cried poor M&rsquo;Guire: and with
+uneven steps, for the pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel
+under his footing, he fled from the scene of this disaster.&nbsp; Fled?&nbsp;
+Alas, from what was he fleeing?&nbsp; Did he not carry that from which
+he fled along with him? and had he the wings of the eagle, had he the
+swiftness of the ocean winds, could he have been rapt into the uttermost
+quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that he carried?&nbsp;
+We have heard of living men who have been fettered to the dead; the
+grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the case
+is but a flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like poor M&rsquo;Guire,
+to an explosive bomb.<br>
+<br>
+A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his liver:
+suppose it were the hour already.&nbsp; He stopped as though he had
+been shot, and plucked his watch out.&nbsp; There was a howling in his
+ears, as loud as a winter tempest; his sight was now obscured as if
+by a cloud, now, as by a lightning flash, would show him the very dust
+upon the street.&nbsp; But so brief were these intervals of vision,
+and so violently did the watch vibrate in his hands, that it was impossible
+to distinguish the numbers on the dial.&nbsp; He covered his eyes for
+a few seconds; and in that space, it seemed to him that he had fallen
+to be a man of ninety.&nbsp; When he looked again, the watch-plate had
+grown legible: he had twenty minutes.&nbsp; Twenty minutes, and no plan!<br>
+<br>
+Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a little
+girl of about six drawing near to him, and as she came, kicking in front
+of her, as children will, a piece of wood.&nbsp; She sang, too; and
+something in her accent recalling him to the past, produced a sudden
+clearness in his mind.&nbsp; Here was a God-sent opportunity!<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;would you like a present of a
+pretty bag?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it.&nbsp;
+She had looked first at the bag, like a true child; but most unfortunately,
+before she had yet received the fatal gift, her eyes fell directly on
+M&rsquo;Guire; and no sooner had she seen the poor gentleman&rsquo;s
+face, than she screamed out and leaped backward, as though she had seen
+the devil.&nbsp; Almost at the same moment a woman appeared upon the
+threshold of a neighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come here, colleen,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and don&rsquo;t be
+plaguing the poor old gentleman!&rsquo;&nbsp; With that she re-entered
+the house, and the child followed her, sobbing aloud.<br>
+<br>
+With the loss of this hope M&rsquo;Guire&rsquo;s reason swooned within
+him.&nbsp; When next he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before
+St. Martin&rsquo;s-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken man; the passers-by
+regarding him with eyes in which he read, as in a glass, an image of
+the terror and horror that dwelt within his own.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am afraid you are very ill, sir,&rsquo; observed a woman, stopping
+and gazing hard in his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;Can I do anything to help
+you?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ill?&rsquo; said M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; &lsquo;O God!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And then, recovering some shadow of his self-command, &lsquo;Chronic,
+madam,&rsquo; said he: &lsquo;a long course of the dumb ague.&nbsp;
+But since you are so compassionate - an errand that I lack the strength
+to carry out,&rsquo; he gasped - &lsquo;this bag to Portman Square.&nbsp;
+Oh, compassionate woman, as you hope to be saved, as you are a mother,
+in the name of your babes that wait to welcome you at home, oh, take
+this bag to Portman Square!&nbsp; I have a mother, too,&rsquo; he added,
+with a broken voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Number 19, Portman Square.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice; for
+the woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Poor
+gentleman!&rsquo; said she.&nbsp; &lsquo;If I were you, I would go home.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And she left him standing there in his distress.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Home!&rsquo; thought M&rsquo;Guire, &lsquo;what a derision!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+What home was there for him, the victim of philanthropy?&nbsp; He thought
+of his old mother, of his happy youth; of the hideous, rending pang
+of the explosion; of the possibility that he might not be killed, that
+he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to lifelong
+pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened.&nbsp; Ah, you spoke
+lightly of the dynamiter&rsquo;s peril; but even waiving death, have
+you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be
+smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life,
+and from the voice of friendship, and love?&nbsp; How little do we realise
+the sufferings of others!&nbsp; Even your brutal Government, in the
+heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the
+patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman,
+and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible
+a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but
+with the fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.<br>
+<br>
+But I wander from M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; From this dread glance into the
+past and future, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present.&nbsp;
+How had he wandered there? and how long - oh, heavens! how long had
+he been about it?&nbsp; He pulled out his watch; and found that but
+three minutes had elapsed.&nbsp; It seemed too bright a thing to be
+believed.&nbsp; He glanced at the church clock; and sure enough, it
+marked an hour four minutes faster than the watch.<br>
+<br>
+Of all that he endured, M&rsquo;Guire declares that pang was the most
+desolate.&nbsp; Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in
+whom he plenarily trusted; by whose advertisement, he numbered the minutes
+that remained to him of life; on whose sure testimony, he could tell
+when the time was come to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away
+from him, and take to flight.&nbsp; And now in what was he to place
+reliance?&nbsp; His watch was slow; it might be losing time; if so,
+in what degree?&nbsp; What limit could he set to its derangement? and
+how much was it possible for a watch to lose in thirty minutes?&nbsp;
+Five? ten? fifteen?&nbsp; It might be so; already, it seemed years since
+he had left St. James&rsquo;s Hall on this so promising enterprise;
+at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked for.<br>
+<br>
+In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses settled
+down; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived for centuries
+and for centuries been dead.&nbsp; The buildings and the people in the
+street became incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London sounded
+in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cab that nearly
+charged him down, was like a sound from Africa.&nbsp; Meanwhile, he
+was conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard and felt
+his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small, debile and
+tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.<br>
+<br>
+As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium,
+it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped
+into his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street
+hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked.&nbsp;
+Thither, then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above
+the pavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a man in
+a sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a straw.&nbsp; He passed him by,
+and twice patrolled the entry, scouting for the barest chance; but the
+man had faced about and continued to observe him curiously.<br>
+<br>
+Another hope was gone.&nbsp; M&rsquo;Guire reissued from the entry,
+still followed by the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat.&nbsp;
+He once more consulted his watch: there were but fourteen minutes left
+to him.&nbsp; At that, it seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were spread
+about his brain; for a second or two, he saw the world as red as blood;
+and thereafter entered into a complete possession of himself, with an
+incredible cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to sing and chuckle
+as he walked.&nbsp; And yet this mirth seemed to belong to things external;
+and within, like a black and leaden-heavy kernel, he was conscious of
+the weight upon his soul.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+I care for nobody, no, not I,<br>
+And nobody cares for me,<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the passengers
+stared upon him on the street.&nbsp; And still the warmth seemed to
+increase and to become more genial.&nbsp; What was life? he considered,
+and what he, M&rsquo;Guire?&nbsp; What even Erin, our green Erin?&nbsp;
+All seemed so incalculably little that he smiled as he looked down upon
+it.&nbsp; He would have given years, had he possessed them, for a glass
+of spirits; but time failed, and he must deny himself this last indulgence.<br>
+<br>
+At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom cab;
+jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the Embankment, which
+he named; and as soon as the vehicle was in motion, concealed the bag
+as completely as he could under the vantage of the apron, and once more
+drew out his watch.&nbsp; So he rode for five interminable minutes,
+his heart in his mouth at every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors,
+yet fearing to wake the attention of the driver by too obvious a change
+of plan, and willing, if possible, to leave him time to forget the Gladstone
+bag.<br>
+<br>
+At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed;
+the cab was stopped; and he alighted - with how glad a heart!&nbsp;
+He thrust his hand into his pocket.&nbsp; All was now over; he had saved
+his life; nor that alone, but he had engineered a striking act of dynamite;
+for what could be more pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion
+of a hansom cab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London.&nbsp;
+He felt in one pocket; then in another.&nbsp; The most crushing seizure
+of despair descended on his soul; and struck into abject dumbness, he
+stared upon the driver.&nbsp; He had not one penny.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Hillo,&rsquo; said the driver, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t seem well.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Lost my money,&rsquo; said M&rsquo;Guire, in tones so faint and
+strange that they surprised his hearing.<br>
+<br>
+The man looked through the trap.&nbsp; &lsquo;I dessay,&rsquo; said
+he: &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve left your bag.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+M&rsquo;Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that
+black continent at arm&rsquo;s length, withered inwardly and felt his
+features sharpen as with mortal sickness.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is not mine,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your last fare
+must have left it.&nbsp; You had better take it to the station.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Now look here,&rsquo; returned the cabman: &lsquo;are you off
+your chump? or am I?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, then, I&rsquo;ll tell you what,&rsquo; exclaimed M&rsquo;Guire;
+&lsquo;you take it for your fare!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh, I dessay,&rsquo; replied the driver.&nbsp; &lsquo;Anything
+else?&nbsp; What&rsquo;s <i>in</i> your bag?&nbsp; Open it, and let
+me see.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; returned M&rsquo;Guire.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh no, not
+that.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a surprise; it&rsquo;s prepared expressly: a
+surprise for honest cabmen.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No, you don&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said the man, alighting from his
+perch, and coming very close to the unhappy patriot.&nbsp; &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+either going to pay my fare, or get in again and drive to the office.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M&rsquo;Guire spied
+the stout figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing
+near along the Embankment.&nbsp; The man was not unknown to him; he
+had bought of his wares, and heard him quoted for the soul of liberality;
+and such was now the nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw
+of hope, he clutched with gratitude.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Thank God!&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here comes a friend
+of mine.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll borrow.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he dashed to meet
+the tradesman.&nbsp; &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;Mr. Godall,
+I have dealt with you - you doubtless know my face - calamities for
+which I cannot blame myself have overwhelmed me.&nbsp; Oh, sir, for
+the love of innocence, for the sake of the bonds of humanity, and as
+you hope for mercy at the throne of grace, lend me two-and-six!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do not recognise your face,&rsquo; replied Mr. Godall; &lsquo;but
+I remember the cut of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike.&nbsp;
+Here, sir, is a sovereign; which I very willingly advance to you, on
+the single condition that you shave your chin.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+M&rsquo;Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman,
+calling out to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps, flung
+the bag far forth into the river, and fell headlong after it.&nbsp;
+He was plucked from a watery grave, it is believed, by the hands of
+Mr. Godall.&nbsp; Even as he was being hoisted dripping to the shore,
+a dull and choked explosion shook the solid masonry of the Embankment,
+and far out in the river a momentary fountain rose and disappeared.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Continued)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.&nbsp;
+He had, in the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon;
+the plotter began to melt in twain, and seemed to expand and hover on
+his seat; and with a vague sense of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily
+to his feet, and, refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that
+the hour was late and he must positively get to bed.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; observed Zero, &lsquo;I find you very temperate.&nbsp;
+But I will not be oppressive.&nbsp; Suffice it that we are now fast
+friends; and, my dear landlord, <i>au revoir</i>!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+So saying the plotter once more shook hands; and with the politest ceremonies,
+and some necessary guidance, conducted the bewildered young gentleman
+to the top of the stair.<br>
+<br>
+Precisely, how he got to bed, was a point on which Somerset remained
+in utter darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow, he started
+broad awake, there fell upon his mind a perfect hurricane of horror
+and wonder.&nbsp; That he should have suffered himself to be led into
+the semblance of intimacy with such a man as his abominable lodger,
+appeared, in the cold light of day, a mystery of human weakness.&nbsp;
+True, he was caught in a situation that might have tested the aplomb
+of Talleyrand.&nbsp; That was perhaps a palliation; but it was no excuse.&nbsp;
+For so wholesale a capitulation of principle, for such a fall into criminal
+familiarity, no excuse indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to withdraw
+at once from the relation.<br>
+<br>
+As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on a rupture.&nbsp;
+Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;dear Mr. Somerset!&nbsp; Come
+in, sit down, and, without ceremony, join me at my morning meal.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;you must permit me first to
+disengage my honour.&nbsp; Last night, I was surprised into a certain
+appearance of complicity; but once for all, let me inform you that I
+regard you and your machinations with unmingled horror and disgust,
+and I will leave no stone unturned to crush your vile conspiracy.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear fellow,&rsquo; replied Zero, with an air of some complacency,
+&lsquo;I am well accustomed to these human weaknesses.&nbsp; Disgust?&nbsp;
+I have felt it myself; it speedily wears off.&nbsp; I think none the
+worse, I think the more of you, for this engaging frankness.&nbsp; And
+in the meanwhile, what are you to do?&nbsp; You find yourself, if I
+interpret rightly, in very much the same situation as Charles the Second
+(possibly the least degraded of your British sovereigns) when he was
+taken into the confidence of the thief.&nbsp; To denounce me, is out
+of the question; and what else can you attempt?&nbsp; No, dear Mr. Somerset,
+your hands are tied; and you find yourself condemned, under pain of
+behaving like a cad, to be that same charming and intellectual companion
+who delighted me last night.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;At least,&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;I can, and do, order
+you to leave this house.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; cried the plotter, &lsquo;but there I fail to follow
+you.&nbsp; You may, if you please, enact the part of Judas; but if,
+as I suppose, you recoil from that extremity of meanness, I am, on my
+side, far too intelligent to leave these lodgings, in which I please
+myself exceedingly, and from which you lack the power to drive me.&nbsp;
+No, no, dear sir; here I am, and here I propose to stay.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I repeat,&rsquo; cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense
+of his own weakness, &lsquo;I repeat that I give you warning.&nbsp;
+I am the master of this house; and I emphatically give you warning.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A week&rsquo;s warning?&rsquo; said the imperturbable conspirator.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Very well: we will talk of it a week from now.&nbsp; That is
+arranged; and in the meanwhile, I observe my breakfast growing cold.&nbsp;
+Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you find yourself condemned, for a week
+at least, to the society of a very interesting character, display some
+of that open favour, some of that interest in life&rsquo;s obscurer
+sides, which stamp the character of the true artist.&nbsp; Hang me,
+if you will, to-morrow; but to-day show yourself divested of the scruples
+of the burgess, and sit down pleasantly to share my meal.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Man!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;do you understand my sentiments?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Certainly,&rsquo; replied Zero; &lsquo;and I respect them!&nbsp;
+Would you be outdone in such a contest? will you alone be partial? and
+in this nineteenth century, cannot two gentlemen of education agree
+to differ on a point of politics?&nbsp; Come, sir: all your hard words
+have left me smiling; judge then, which of us is the philosopher!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by nature
+easily amenable to sophistry.&nbsp; He threw up his hands with a gesture
+of despair, and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him.&nbsp;
+The meal was excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious
+information.&nbsp; He seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured
+the torture of silence, to exult in the most wholesale disclosures.&nbsp;
+The interest of what he had to tell was great; his character, besides,
+developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time fled, not only outgrew
+some of the discomfort of his false position, but began to regard the
+conspirator with a familiarity that verged upon contempt.&nbsp; In any
+circumstances, he had a singular inability to leave the society in which
+he found himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like
+a limed sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow hour,
+was easily persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did not even
+attempt to withdraw till, on the approach of evening, Zero, with many
+apologies, dismissed his guest.&nbsp; His fellow-conspirators, the dynamiter
+handsomely explained, as they were unacquainted with the sterling qualities
+of the young man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.<br>
+<br>
+As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of the morning.&nbsp;
+He raged at the thought of his facility; he paced the dining-room, forming
+the sternest resolutions for the future; he wrung the hand which had
+been dishonoured by the touch of an assassin; and among all these whirling
+thoughts, there flashed in from time to time, and ever with a chill
+of fear, the thought of the confounded ingredients with which the house
+was stored.&nbsp; A powder magazine seemed a secure smoking-room alongside
+of the Superfluous Mansion.<br>
+<br>
+He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing bowl.&nbsp;
+As long as the bars were open, he travelled from one to another, seeking
+light, safety, and the companionship of human faces; when these resources
+failed him, he fell back on the belated baked-potato man; and at length,
+still pacing the streets, he was goaded to fraternise with the police.&nbsp;
+Alas, with what a sense of guilt he conversed with these guardians of
+the law; how gladly had he wept upon their ample bosoms; and how the
+secret fluttered to his lips and was still denied an exit!&nbsp; Fatigue
+began at last to triumph over remorse; and about the hour of the first
+milkman, he returned to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a
+horrid expectation, as though it should have burst that instant into
+flames; drew out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps,
+once more lost heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a
+coffee-shop.<br>
+<br>
+It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke.&nbsp; Dismally searching
+in his pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and when he
+had paid the price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to
+return to the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp; He sneaked into the hall and
+stole on tiptoe to the cupboard where he kept his money.&nbsp; Yet half
+a minute, he told himself, and he would be free for days from his obseding
+lodger, and might decide at leisure on the course he should pursue.&nbsp;
+But fate had otherwise designed: there came a tap at the door and Zero
+entered.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Have I caught you?&rsquo; he cried, with innocent gaiety.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Dear fellow, I was growing quite impatient.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+on the speaker&rsquo;s somewhat stolid face, there came a glow of genuine
+affection.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am so long unused to have a friend,&rsquo;
+he continued, &lsquo;that I begin to be afraid I may prove jealous.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And he wrung the hand of his landlord.<br>
+<br>
+Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting.&nbsp;
+To reject these kind advances was beyond his strength.&nbsp; That he
+could not return cordiality for cordiality, was already almost more
+than he could carry.&nbsp; That inequality between kind sentiments which,
+to generous characters, will always seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed
+him to the ground; and he stammered vague and lying words.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is all right,&rsquo; cried Zero - &lsquo;that is as it should
+be - say no more!&nbsp; I had a vague alarm; I feared you had deserted
+me; but I now own that fear to have been unworthy, and apologise.&nbsp;
+To doubt of your forgiveness were to repeat my sin.&nbsp; Come, then;
+dinner waits; join me again and tell me your adventures of the night.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself
+once more to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal acquaintance.&nbsp;
+Once more, the plotter plunged up to the neck in damaging disclosures:
+now it would be the name and biography of an individual, now the address
+of some important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips;
+and each word was like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy
+guest.&nbsp; Finally, the course of Zero&rsquo;s bland monologue led
+him to the young lady of two days ago: that young lady, who had flashed
+on Somerset for so brief a while but with so conquering a charm; and
+whose engaging grace, communicative eyes, and admirable conduct of the
+sweeping skirt, remained imprinted on his memory.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You saw her?&rsquo; said Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;Beautiful, is she
+not?&nbsp; She, too, is one of ours: a true enthusiast: nervous, perhaps,
+in presence of the chemicals; but in matters of intrigue, the very soul
+of skill and daring.&nbsp; Lake, Fonblanque, de Marly, Valdevia, such
+are some of the names that she employs; her true name - but there, perhaps,
+I go too far.&nbsp; Suffice it, that it is to her I owe my present lodging,
+and, dear Somerset, the pleasure of your acquaintance.&nbsp; It appears
+she knew the house.&nbsp; You see dear fellow, I make no concealment:
+all that you can care to hear, I tell you openly.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; cried the wretched Somerset, &lsquo;hold
+your tongue!&nbsp; You cannot imagine how you torture me!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance of Zero.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;There are times,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;when I begin to fancy
+that you do not like me.&nbsp; Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of
+cordiality?&nbsp; I am depressed; the touchstone of my life draws near;
+and if I fail&rsquo; - he gloomily nodded - &lsquo;from all the height
+of my ambitious schemes, I fall, dear boy, into contempt.&nbsp; These
+are grave thoughts, and you may judge my need of your delightful company.&nbsp;
+Innocent prattler, you relieve the weight of my concerns.&nbsp; And
+yet . . . and yet . . .&rsquo;&nbsp; The speaker pushed away his plate,
+and rose from table.&nbsp; &lsquo;Follow me,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;follow
+me.&nbsp; My mood is on; I must have air, I must behold the plain of
+battle.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion,
+and thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform, sheltered
+at one end by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the actual summit
+of the roof.&nbsp; On both sides, it bordered, without parapet or rail,
+on the incline of slates; and, northward above all, commanded an extensive
+view of housetops, and rising through the smoke, the distant spires
+of churches.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; cried Zero, &lsquo;you behold this field of city,
+rich, crowded, laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how
+soon, to be laid low!&nbsp; Some day, some night, from this coign of
+vantage, you shall perhaps be startled by the detonation of the judgment
+gun - not sharp and empty like the crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed
+and unctuously solemn.&nbsp; Instantly thereafter, you shall behold
+the flames break forth.&nbsp; Ay,&rsquo; he cried, stretching forth
+his hand, &lsquo;ay, that will be a day of retribution.&nbsp; Then shall
+the pallid constable flee side by side with the detected thief.&nbsp;
+Blaze!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;blaze, derided city!&nbsp; Fall, flatulent
+monarchy, fall like Dagon!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for Somerset&rsquo;s
+quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into space.&nbsp; Pale
+as a sheet, and limp as a pocket-handkerchief, he was dragged from the
+edge of downfall by one arm; helped, or rather carried, down the ladder;
+and deposited in safety on the attic landing.&nbsp; Here he began to
+come to himself, wiped his brow, and at length, seizing Somerset&rsquo;s
+hand in both of his, began to utter his acknowledgments.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This seals it,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ours is a life and
+death connection.&nbsp; You have plucked me from the jaws of death;
+and if I were before attracted by your character, judge now of the ardour
+of my gratitude and love!&nbsp; But I perceive I am still greatly shaken.&nbsp;
+Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your arm as far as my apartment.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A dram of spirits restored the plotter to something of his customary
+self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and genially convalescent,
+when his eye was attracted by the dejection of the unfortunate young
+man.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Good heavens, dear Somerset,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;what ails
+you?&nbsp; Let me offer you a touch of spirits.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material comfort.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Let me be,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am lost; you have caught
+me in the toils.&nbsp; Up to this moment, I have lived all my life in
+the most reckless manner, and done exactly what I pleased, with the
+most perfect innocence.&nbsp; And now - what am I?&nbsp; Are you so
+blind and wooden that you do not see the loathing you inspire me with?&nbsp;
+Is it possible you can suppose me willing to continue to exist upon
+such terms?&nbsp; To think,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;that a young man,
+guilty of no fault on earth but amiability, should find himself involved
+in such a damned imbroglio!&rsquo;&nbsp; And placing his knuckles in
+his eyes, Somerset rolled upon the sofa.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My God,&rsquo; said Zero, &lsquo;is this possible?&nbsp; And
+I so filled with tenderness and interest!&nbsp; Can it be, dear Somerset,
+that you are under the empire of these out-worn scruples? or that you
+judge a patriot by the morality of the religious tract?&nbsp; I thought
+you were a good agnostic.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Mr. Jones,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;it is in vain to argue.&nbsp;
+I boast myself a total disbeliever, not only in revealed religion, but
+in the data, method, and conclusions of the whole of ethics.&nbsp; Well!
+what matters it? what signifies a form of words?&nbsp; I regard you
+as a reptile, whom I would rejoice, whom I long, to stamp under my heel.&nbsp;
+You would blow up others?&nbsp; Well then, understand: I want, with
+every circumstance of infamy and agony, to blow up you!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Somerset, Somerset!&rsquo; said Zero, turning very pale, &lsquo;this
+is wrong; this is very wrong.&nbsp; You pain, you wound me, Somerset.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Give me a match!&rsquo; cried Somerset wildly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let
+me set fire to this incomparable monster!&nbsp; Let me perish with him
+in his fall!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; cried Zero, clutching hold of the
+young man, &lsquo;for God&rsquo;s sake command yourself!&nbsp; We stand
+upon the brink; death yawns around us; a man - a stranger in this foreign
+land - one whom you have called your friend - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Silence!&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;you are no friend, no
+friend of mine.&nbsp; I look on you with loathing, like a toad: my flesh
+creeps with physical repulsion; my soul revolts against the sight of
+you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Zero burst into tears.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas!&rsquo; he sobbed, &lsquo;this
+snaps the last link that bound me to humanity.&nbsp; My friend disowns
+- he insults me.&nbsp; I am indeed accurst.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of front.&nbsp;
+The next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from the room and
+from the house.&nbsp; The first dash of his escape carried him hard
+upon half-way to the next police-office: but presently began to droop;
+and before he reached the house of lawful intervention, he fell once
+more among doubtful counsels.&nbsp; Was he an agnostic? had he a right
+to act?&nbsp; Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish! ran his
+thoughts.&nbsp; And then again: had he not promised, had he not shaken
+hands and broken bread? and that with open eyes? and if so how could
+he take action, and not forfeit honour?&nbsp; But honour? what was honour?&nbsp;
+A figment, which, in the hot pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside.&nbsp;
+Ay, but crime?&nbsp; A figment, too, which his enfranchised intellect
+discarded.&nbsp; All day, he wandered in the parks, a prey to whirling
+thoughts; all night, patrolled the city; and at the peep of day he sat
+down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of Peckham and bitterly wept.&nbsp;
+His gods had fallen.&nbsp; He who had chosen the broad, daylit, unencumbered
+paths of universal scepticism, found himself still the bondslave of
+honour.&nbsp; He who had accepted life from a point of view as lofty
+as the predatory eagle&rsquo;s, though with no design to prey; he who
+had clearly recognised the common moral basis of war, of commercial
+competition, and of crime; he who was prepared to help the escaping
+murderer or to embrace the impenitent thief, found, to the overthrow
+of all his logic, that he objected to the use of dynamite.&nbsp; The
+dawn crept among the sleeping villas and over the smokeless fields of
+city; and still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed over his fall from consistency.<br>
+<br>
+At length, he rose and took the rising sun to witness.&nbsp; &lsquo;There
+is no question as to fact,&rsquo; he cried; &lsquo;right and wrong are
+but figments and the shadow of a word; but for all that, there are certain
+things that I cannot do, and there are certain others that I will not
+stand.&rsquo;&nbsp; Thereupon he decided to return to make one last
+effort of persuasion, and, if he could not prevail on Zero to desist
+from his infernal trade, throw delicacy to the winds, give the plotter
+an hour&rsquo;s start, and denounce him to the police.&nbsp; Fast as
+he went, being winged by this resolution, it was already well on in
+the morning when he came in sight of the Superfluous Mansion.&nbsp;
+Tripping down the steps, was the young lady of the various aliases;
+and he was surprised to see upon her countenance the marks of anger
+and concern.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear
+knowledge of what he was to add.<br>
+<br>
+But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock of fear
+or horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden movement; and
+fled, without turning, from the square.<br>
+<br>
+Here then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes of Somerset,
+and proceed to relate the strange and romantic episode of THE BROWN
+BOX.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DESBOROUGH&rsquo;S ADVENTURE: <i>THE BROWN BOX<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
+Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London,
+but itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace.&nbsp; It was
+in Queen Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the Children&rsquo;s
+Hospital, on your left hand as you go north: Queen Square, sacred to
+humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the
+poor were taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where
+groups of patient little ones would hover all day long before the hospital,
+if by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a word to their sick
+brother at the window.&nbsp; Desborough&rsquo;s room was on the first
+floor and fronted to the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by
+which he often profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back,
+which looked down upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn
+commanded by the windows of an empty room.<br>
+<br>
+On the afternoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon this
+terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now some weeks
+on the vain quest of situations, and prepared for melancholy and tobacco.&nbsp;
+Here, at least, he told himself that he would be alone; for, like most
+youths, who are neither rich, nor witty, nor successful, he rather shunned
+than courted the society of other men.&nbsp; Even as he expressed the
+thought, his eye alighted on the window of the room that looked upon
+the terrace; and to his surprise and annoyance, he beheld it curtained
+with a silken hanging.&nbsp; It was like his luck, he thought; his privacy
+was gone, he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched, he could no longer
+suffer his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe himself
+with sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he
+struck his pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force.&nbsp; It was an
+old, sweet, seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment,
+and justly dear to his fancy.&nbsp; What, then, was his chagrin, when
+the head snapped from the stem, leaped airily in space, and fell and
+disappeared among the lilacs of the garden?<br>
+<br>
+He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the story-paper
+which he had brought with him to read, tore off a fragment of the last
+sheet, which contains only the answers to correspondents, and set himself
+to roll a cigarette.&nbsp; He was no master of the art; again and again,
+the paper broke between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon the
+ground; and he was already on the point of angry resignation, when the
+window swung slowly inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and
+a lady, somewhat strangely attired, stepped forth upon the terrace.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orito,&rsquo; said she, and there was a rich thrill
+in her voice, like an organ note, &lsquo;Se&ntilde;orito, you are in
+difficulties.&nbsp; Suffer me to come to your assistance.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting
+hands; and with a facility that, in Desborough&rsquo;s eyes, seemed
+magical, rolled and presented him a cigarette.&nbsp; He took it, still
+seated, still without a word; staring with all his eyes upon that apparition.&nbsp;
+Her face was warm and rich in colour; in shape, it was that piquant
+triangle, so innocently sly, so saucily attractive, so rare in our more
+northern climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited by changing
+lights; her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which
+her arms, bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and
+soft in all the womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with
+excess of life, and slender by grace of some divine proportion.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You do not like my cigarrito, Se&ntilde;or?&rsquo; she asked.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Yet it is better made than yours.&rsquo;&nbsp; At that she laughed,
+and her laughter trilled in his ear like music; but the next moment
+her face fell.&nbsp; &lsquo;I see,&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
+is my manner that repels you.&nbsp; I am too constrained, too cold.&nbsp;
+I am not,&rsquo; she added, with a more engaging air, &lsquo;I am not
+the simple English maiden I appear.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;In my own dear land,&rsquo; she pursued, &lsquo;things are differently
+ordered.&nbsp; There, I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous
+restrictions; little is permitted her; she learns to be distant, she
+learns to appear forbidding.&nbsp; But here, in free England - oh, glorious
+liberty!&rsquo; she cried, and threw up her arms with a gesture of inimitable
+grace - &lsquo;here there are no fetters; here the woman may dare to
+be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men - is it not written
+on the very shield of your nation, <i>honi soit</i>?&nbsp; Ah, it is
+hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself.&nbsp; You must
+not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this stiffness, I
+shall end by growing English.&nbsp; Do I speak the language well?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Perfectly - oh, perfectly!&rsquo; said Harry, with a fervency
+of conviction worthy of a graver subject.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, then,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I shall soon learn; English
+blood ran in my father&rsquo;s veins; and I have had the advantage of
+some training in your expressive tongue.&nbsp; If I speak already without
+accent, with my thorough English appearance, there is nothing left to
+change except my manners.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh no,&rsquo; said Desborough.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh pray not!&nbsp;
+I - madam - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am,&rsquo; interrupted the lady, &lsquo;the Se&ntilde;orita
+Teresa Valdevia.&nbsp; The evening air grows chill.&nbsp; Adios, Se&ntilde;orito.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And before Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared into
+her room.<br>
+<br>
+He stood transfixed, the cigarette still unlighted in his hand.&nbsp;
+His thoughts had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified
+the image of his new acquaintance.&nbsp; Her voice re-echoed in his
+memory; her eyes, of which he could not tell the colour, haunted his
+soul.&nbsp; The clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created
+world.&nbsp; What she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her.&nbsp;
+Her age, he durst not estimate; fearing to find her older than himself,
+and thinking sacrilege to couple that fair favour with the thought of
+mortal changes.&nbsp; As for her character, beauty to the young is always
+good.&nbsp; So the poor lad lingered late upon the terrace, stealing
+timid glances at the curtained window, sighing to the gold laburnums,
+rapt into the country of romance; and when at length he entered and
+sat down to dine, on cold boiled mutton and a pint of ale, he feasted
+on the food of gods.<br>
+<br>
+Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a little ajar,
+and he enjoyed a view of the lady&rsquo;s shoulder, as she sat patiently
+sewing and all unconscious of his presence.&nbsp; On the next, he had
+scarce appeared when the window opened, and the Se&ntilde;orita tripped
+forth into the sunlight, in a morning disorder, delicately neat, and
+yet somehow foreign, tropical, and strange.&nbsp; In one hand she held
+a packet.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Will you try,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;some of my father&rsquo;s
+tobacco - from dear Cuba?&nbsp; There, as I suppose you know, all smoke,
+ladies as well as gentlemen.&nbsp; So you need not fear to annoy me.&nbsp;
+The fragrance will remind me of home.&nbsp; My home, Se&ntilde;or, was
+by the sea.&rsquo;&nbsp; And as she uttered these few words, Desborough,
+for the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the great deep.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Awake or asleep, I dream of it: dear home, dear Cuba!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But some day,&rsquo; said Desborough, with an inward pang, &lsquo;some
+day you will return?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo; Never!&rsquo; she cried; &lsquo;ah, never, in Heaven&rsquo;s
+name!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you then resident for life in England?&rsquo; he inquired,
+with a strange lightening of spirit.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,&rsquo; she answered
+sadly; and then, resuming her gaiety of manner: &lsquo;But you have
+not tried my Cuban tobacco,&rsquo; she said.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; said he, shyly abashed by some shadow
+of coquetry in her manner, &lsquo;whatever comes to me - you - I mean,&rsquo;
+he concluded, deeply flushing, &lsquo;that I have no doubt the tobacco
+is delightful.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo; she said, with almost mournful gravity,
+&lsquo;you seemed so simple and good, and already you are trying to
+pay compliments - and besides,&rsquo; she added, brightening, with a
+quick upward glance, into a smile, &lsquo;you do it so badly!&nbsp;
+English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be fast friends, respectful,
+honest friends; could be companions, comforters, if the need arose,
+or champions, and yet never encroach.&nbsp; Do not seek to please me
+by copying the graces of my countrymen.&nbsp; Be yourself: the frank,
+kindly, honest English gentleman that I have heard of since my childhood
+and still longed to meet.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the
+Cuban gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo;
+said the lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;See!&rsquo; marking a line with her dainty,
+slippered foot, &lsquo;thus far it shall be common ground; there, at
+my window-sill, begins the scientific frontier.&nbsp; If you choose,
+you may drive me to my forts; but if, on the other hand, we are to be
+real English friends, I may join you here when I am not too sad; or,
+when I am yet more graciously inclined, you may draw your chair beside
+the window and teach me English customs, while I work.&nbsp; You will
+find me an apt scholar, for my heart is in the task.&rsquo;&nbsp; She
+laid her hand lightly upon Harry&rsquo;s arm, and looked into his eyes.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Do you know,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;I am emboldened to believe
+that I have already caught something of your English aplomb?&nbsp; Do
+you not perceive a change, Se&ntilde;or?&nbsp; Slight, perhaps, but
+still a change?&nbsp; Is my deportment not more open, more free, more
+like that of the dear &ldquo;British Miss&rdquo; than when you saw me
+first?&rsquo;&nbsp; She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from
+Harry&rsquo;s arm; and before the young man could formulate in words
+the eloquent emotions that ran riot through his brain - with an &lsquo;Adios,
+Se&ntilde;or: good-night, my English friend,&rsquo; she vanished from
+his sight behind the curtain.<br>
+<br>
+The next day Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the neutral
+terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the dinner-hour summoned
+him at length from the scene of disappointment.&nbsp; On the next it
+rained; but nothing, neither business nor weather, neither prospective
+poverty nor present hardship, could now divert the young man from the
+service of his lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised,
+he took his stand against the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture
+of damp and discomfort to the eye, but glowing inwardly with tender
+and delightful ardours.&nbsp; Presently the window opened, and the fair
+Cuban, with a smile imperfectly dissembled, appeared upon the sill.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;here, beside my window.&nbsp;
+The small verandah gives a belt of shelter.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she graciously
+handed him a folding-chair.<br>
+<br>
+As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain bulkiness
+in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-handed.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have taken the liberty,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;of bringing
+you a little book.&nbsp; I thought of you, when I observed it on the
+stall, because I saw it was in Spanish.&nbsp; The man assured me it
+was by one of the best authors, and quite proper.&rsquo;&nbsp; As he
+spoke, he placed the little volume in her hand.&nbsp; Her eyes fell
+as she turned the pages, and a flush rose and died again upon her cheeks,
+as deep as it was fleeting.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are angry,&rsquo; he cried
+in agony.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have presumed.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No, Se&ntilde;or, it is not that,&rsquo; returned the lady.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I - &rsquo; and a flood of colour once more mounted to her brow
+- &lsquo;I am confused and ashamed because I have deceived you.&nbsp;
+Spanish,&rsquo; she began, and paused - &lsquo;Spanish is, of course,
+my native tongue,&rsquo; she resumed, as though suddenly taking courage;
+&lsquo;and this should certainly put the highest value on your thoughtful
+present; but alas, sir, of what use is it to me?&nbsp; And how shall
+I confess to you the truth - the humiliating truth - that I cannot read?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+As Harry&rsquo;s eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban
+seemed to shrink before his gaze.&nbsp; &lsquo;Read?&rsquo; repeated
+Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;You!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
+gesture.&nbsp; &lsquo;Enter, Se&ntilde;or,&rsquo; said she.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+time has come to which I have long looked forward, not without alarm;
+when I must either fear to lose your friendship, or tell you without
+disguise the story of my life.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion, that Harry passed the
+window.&nbsp; A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided
+over the studied disorder of the room in which he found himself.&nbsp;
+It was filled with dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant
+hues, and set with elegant and curious trifles-fans on the mantelshelf,
+an antique lamp upon a bracket, and on the table a silver-mounted bowl
+of cocoa-nut about half full of unset jewels.&nbsp; The fair Cuban,
+herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that rich frame,
+motioned Harry to a seat, and sinking herself into another, thus began
+her history.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>I am not what I seem.&nbsp; My father drew his descent, on the one
+hand, from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal
+line, from the patriot Bruce.&nbsp; My mother, too, was the descendant
+of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings were African.&nbsp; She was
+fair as the day: fairer than I, for I inherited a darker strain of blood
+from the veins of my European father; her mind was noble, her manners
+queenly and accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her
+neighbours, and surrounded by the most considerate affection and respect,
+I grew up to adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh
+upon my lips, still ignorant that she was a slave, and alas! my father&rsquo;s
+mistress.&nbsp; Her death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was
+the first sorrow I had known: it left our home bereaved of its attractions,
+cast a shade of melancholy on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic
+and durable change.&nbsp; Months went by; with the elasticity of my
+years, I regained some of the simple mirth that had before distinguished
+me; the plantation smiled with fresh crops; the negroes on the estate
+had already forgotten my mother and transferred their simple obedience
+to myself; but still the cloud only darkened on the brows of Se&ntilde;or
+Valdevia.&nbsp; His absences from home had been frequent even in the
+old days, for he did business in precious gems in the city of Havana;
+they now became almost continuous; and when he returned, it was but
+for the night and with the manner of a man crushed down by adverse fortune.<br>
+<br>
+The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the
+Caribbean Sea, some half-hour&rsquo;s rowing from the coasts of Cuba.&nbsp;
+It was steep, rugged, and, except for my father&rsquo;s family and plantation,
+uninhabited and left to nature.&nbsp; The house, a low building surrounded
+by spacious verandahs, stood upon a rise of ground and looked across
+the sea to Cuba.&nbsp; The breezes blew about it gratefully, fanned
+us as we lay swinging in our silken hammocks, and tossed the boughs
+and flowers of the magnolia.&nbsp; Behind and to the left, the quarter
+of the negroes and the waving fields of the plantation covered an eighth
+part of the surface of the isle.&nbsp; On the right and closely bordering
+on the garden, lay a vast and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood,
+breathing fever, dotted with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous
+oysters, man-eating crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes.&nbsp;
+Into the recesses of that jungle, none could penetrate but those of
+African descent; an invisible, unconquerable foe lay there in wait for
+the European; and the air was death.<br>
+<br>
+One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous misfortune)
+I left my room a little after day, for in that warm climate all are
+early risers, and found not a servant to attend upon my wants.&nbsp;
+I made the circuit of the house, still calling: and my surprise had
+almost changed into alarm, when coming at last into a large verandahed
+court, I found it thronged with negroes.&nbsp; Even then, even when
+I was amongst them, not one turned or paid the least regard to my arrival.&nbsp;
+They had eyes and ears for but one person: a woman, richly and tastefully
+attired; of elegant carriage, and a musical speech; not so much old
+in years, as worn and marred by self-indulgence: her face, which was
+still attractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye burning
+with the greed of evil.&nbsp; It was not from her appearance, I believe,
+but from some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting
+terror; as we hear of plants that blight and snakes that fascinate,
+the woman shocked and daunted me.&nbsp; But I was of a brave nature;
+trod the weakness down; and forcing my way through the slaves, who fell
+back before me in embarrassment, as though in the presence of rival
+mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones: &lsquo;Who is this person?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a
+care, for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.<br>
+<br>
+In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes,
+studied me with insolent particularity from head to foot.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Young woman,&rsquo; said she, at last, &lsquo;I have had a great
+experience in refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them.&nbsp;
+You really tempt me; and if I had not other affairs, and these of more
+importance, on my hand, I should certainly buy you at your father&rsquo;s
+sale.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam - &rsquo; I began, but my voice failed me.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is it possible that you do not know your position?&rsquo; she
+returned, with a hateful laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;How comical!&nbsp; Positively,
+I must buy her.&nbsp; Accomplishments, I suppose?&rsquo; she added,
+turning to the servants.<br>
+<br>
+Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like
+any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,&rsquo;
+said the Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her
+glasses; &lsquo;and I should take a pleasure,&rsquo; she pursued, more
+directly addressing myself, &lsquo;in bringing you acquainted with a
+whip.&rsquo;&nbsp; And she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty
+upon her face.<br>
+<br>
+At this, I found expression.&nbsp; Calling by name upon the servants,
+I bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and
+set her back upon the mainland.&nbsp; But with one voice, they protested
+that they durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading and beseeching
+me to be more wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and
+speaking of this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved, they fell
+back from me as from one who had blasphemed.&nbsp; A superstitious reverence
+plainly encircled the stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour,
+and in the paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their
+faces; and their fear perhaps reacted on myself.&nbsp; I looked again
+at Madam Mendizabal.&nbsp; She stood perfectly composed, watching my
+face through her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of
+her assured superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips,
+a cry of rage, fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the
+house.<br>
+<br>
+I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach.&nbsp; As I went,
+my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults.&nbsp;
+Who was she? what, in Heaven&rsquo;s name, the power she wielded over
+my obedient negroes?&nbsp; Why had she addressed me as a slave? why
+spoken of my father&rsquo;s sale?&nbsp; To all these tumultuary questions
+I could find no answer; and in the turmoil of my mind, nothing was plain
+except the hateful leering image of the woman.<br>
+<br>
+I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father coming
+to meet me from the landing-place; and with a cry that I thought would
+have killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a passion of sobs
+and tears upon his bosom.&nbsp; He made me sit down below a tall palmetto
+that grew not far off; comforted me, but with some abstraction in his
+voice; and as soon as I regained the least command upon my feelings,
+asked me, not without harshness, what this grief betokened.&nbsp; I
+was surprised by his tone into a still greater measure of composure;
+and in firm tones, though still interrupted by sobs, I told him there
+was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he started and turned
+pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the stranger&rsquo;s
+name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he seemed to me both troubled
+and relieved; that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave (and here
+my father&rsquo;s brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a sale,
+and questioned my own servants before my face; and that, at last, finding
+myself quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable liberties, I
+had fled from the house in terror, indignation, and amazement.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Teresa,&rsquo; said my father, with singular gravity of voice,
+&lsquo;I must make to-day a call upon your courage; much must be told
+you, there is much that you must do to help me; and my daughter must
+prove herself a woman by her spirit.&nbsp; As for this Mendizabal, what
+shall I say? or how am I to tell you what she is?&nbsp; Twenty years
+ago, she was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see her
+- prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every
+nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable
+man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates,
+the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious.&nbsp;
+Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo.&nbsp;
+Be that as it may, I would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable
+witch; it is not from her that danger threatens us; and into her hands,
+I make bold to promise, you shall never fall.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Father!&rsquo; I cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Fall?&nbsp; Was there any
+truth, then, in her words?&nbsp; Am I - O father, tell me plain; I can
+bear anything but this suspense.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will tell you,&rsquo; he replied, with merciful bluntness.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Your mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved
+a competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, where the law would
+suffer me to marry her: a design too long procrastinated; for death,
+at the last moment, intervened.&nbsp; You will now understand the heaviness
+with which your mother&rsquo;s memory hangs about my neck.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and in seeking to console
+the survivor, I forgot myself.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It matters not,&rsquo; resumed my father.&nbsp; &lsquo;What I
+have left undone can never be repaired, and I must bear the penalty
+of my remorse.&nbsp; But, Teresa, with so cutting a reminder of the
+evils of delay, I set myself at once to do what was still possible:
+to liberate yourself.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre roughness.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your mother&rsquo;s illness,&rsquo; he resumed, &lsquo;had engaged
+too great a portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too
+long at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled
+knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by which I can distinguish,
+even on the darkest night, a sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance
+in what quarter of the earth a gem was disinterred - all these had been
+too long absent from the conduct of affairs.&nbsp; Teresa, I was insolvent.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What matters that?&rsquo; I cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;What matters
+poverty, if we be left together with our love and sacred memories?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You do not comprehend,&rsquo; he said gloomily.&nbsp; &lsquo;Slave,
+as you are, young - alas! scarce more than child! - accomplished, beautiful
+with the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel - all these qualities
+that should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes
+of those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell.&nbsp;
+You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and worth - heavens, that I should
+say such words! - worth money.&nbsp; Do you begin to see?&nbsp; If I
+were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission
+would be certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a criminal.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself,
+in sympathy for my father.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;How I have toiled,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;how I have dared
+and striven to repair my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember.&nbsp;
+Its blessing was denied to my endeavours, or, as I please myself by
+thinking, but delayed to descend upon my daughter&rsquo;s head.&nbsp;
+At length, all hope was at an end; I was ruined beyond retrieve; a heavy
+debt fell due upon the morrow, which I could not meet; I should be declared
+a bankrupt, and my goods, my lands, my jewels that I so much loved,
+my slaves whom I have spoiled and rendered happy, and oh! tenfold worse,
+you, my beloved daughter, would be sold and pass into the hands of ignorant
+and greedy traffickers.&nbsp; Too long, I saw, had I accepted and profited
+by this great crime of slavery; but was my daughter, my innocent unsullied
+daughter, was <i>she</i> to pay the price?&nbsp; I cried out - no! -
+I took Heaven to witness my temptation; I caught up this bag and fled.&nbsp;
+Close upon my track are the pursuers; perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow,
+they will land upon this isle, sacred to the memory of the dear soul
+that bore you, to consign your father to an ignominious prison, and
+yourself to slavery and dishonour.&nbsp; We have not many hours before
+us.&nbsp; Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good fortune,
+an English yacht has for some days been hovering.&nbsp; It belongs to
+Sir George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I have rendered
+unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our escape.&nbsp;
+Or if he did, if his gratitude were in default, I have the power to
+force him.&nbsp; For what does it mean, my child - what means this Englishman,
+who hangs for years upon the shores of Cuba, and returns from every
+trip with new and valuable gems?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;He may have found a mine,&rsquo; I hazarded.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;So he declares,&rsquo; returned my father; &lsquo;but the strange
+gift I have received from nature, easily transpierced the fable.&nbsp;
+He brought me diamonds only, which I bought, at first, in innocence;
+at a second glance, I started; for of these stones, my child, some had
+first seen the day in Africa, some in Brazil; while others, from their
+peculiar water and rude workmanship, I divined to be the spoil of ancient
+temples.&nbsp; Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries.&nbsp; Oh,
+he is cunning, but I was cunninger than he.&nbsp; He visited, I found,
+the shop of every jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies, to one
+with emeralds, to one with precious beryl; to all, with this same story
+of the mine.&nbsp; But in what mine, what rich epitome of the earth&rsquo;s
+surface, were there conjoined the rubies of Ispahan, the pearls of Coromandel,
+and the diamonds of Golconda?&nbsp; No, child, that man, for all his
+yacht and title, that man must fear and must obey me.&nbsp; To-night,
+then, as soon as it is dark, we must take our way through the swamp
+by the path which I shall presently show you; thence, across the highlands
+of the isle, a track is blazed, which shall conduct us to the haven
+on the north; and close by the yacht is riding.&nbsp; Should my pursuers
+come before the hour at which I look to see them, they will still arrive
+too late; a trusty man attends on the mainland; as soon as they appear,
+we shall behold, if it be dark, the redness of a fire, if it be day,
+a pillar of smoke, on the opposing headland; and thus warned, we shall
+have time to put the swamp between ourselves and danger.&nbsp; Meantime,
+I would conceal this bag; I would, before all things, be seen to arrive
+at the house with empty hands; a blabbing slave might else undo us.&nbsp;
+For see!&rsquo; he added; and holding up the bag, which he had already
+shown me, he poured into my lap a shower of unmounted jewels, brighter
+than flowers, of every size and colour, and catching, as they fell,
+upon a million dainty facets, the ardour of the sun.<br>
+<br>
+I could not restrain a cry of admiration.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Even in your ignorant eyes,&rsquo; pursued my father, &lsquo;they
+command respect.&nbsp; Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the
+tool, cold as death?&nbsp; Ingrate!&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Each
+one of these - miracles of nature&rsquo;s patience, conceived out of
+the dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each one is, for you
+and me, a year of life, liberty, and mutual affection.&nbsp; How, then,
+should I cherish them! and why do I delay to place them beyond reach!&nbsp;
+Teresa, follow me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle,
+where they overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the declivity
+of the hill on which my father&rsquo;s house stood planted.&nbsp; For
+some while he skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket.&nbsp;
+Then, seeming to recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately
+lightened of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me.&nbsp; &lsquo;Here,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;is the entrance of the secret path that I have mentioned,
+and here you shall await me.&nbsp; I but pass some hundreds of yards
+into the swamp to bury my poor treasure; as soon as that is safe, I
+will return.&rsquo;&nbsp; It was in vain that I sought to dissuade him,
+urging the dangers of the place; in vain that I begged to be allowed
+to follow, pleading the black blood that I now knew to circulate in
+my veins: to all my appeals he turned a deaf ear, and, bending back
+a portion of the screen of bushes, disappeared into the pestilential
+silence of the swamp.<br>
+<br>
+At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and
+my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused and almost staggered
+in the first shock of the blinding sunlight.&nbsp; His face was of a
+singular dusky red; and yet for all the heat of the tropical noon, he
+did not seem to sweat.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are tired,&rsquo; I cried, springing to meet him.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+are ill.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am tired,&rsquo; he replied; &lsquo;the air in that jungle
+stifles one; my eyes, besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and
+the strong sunshine pierces them like knives.&nbsp; A moment, Teresa,
+give me but a moment.&nbsp; All shall yet be well.&nbsp; I have buried
+the hoard under a cypress, immediately beyond the bayou, on the left-hand
+margin of the path; beautiful, bright things, they now lie whelmed in
+slime; you shall find them there, if needful.&nbsp; But come, let us
+to the house; it is time to eat against our journey of the night: to
+eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to sleep.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as if in pity.<br>
+<br>
+We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long,
+and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch
+of the verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the
+shuttered house.&nbsp; The meal was spread; the house servants, already
+informed by the boatmen of the master&rsquo;s return, were all back
+at their posts, and terrified, as I could see, to face me.&nbsp; My
+father still murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity,
+I hurried at once to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left
+his arm than he paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange
+gesture of groping.&nbsp; &lsquo;How is this?&rsquo; he cried, in a
+sharp, unhuman voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Am I blind?&rsquo;&nbsp; I ran to
+him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and stood stiffly
+where he was, opening and shutting his jaws, as if in a painful effort
+after breath.&nbsp; Then suddenly he raised both hands to his temples,
+cried out, &lsquo;My head, my head!&rsquo; and reeled and fell against
+the wall.<br>
+<br>
+I knew too well what it must be.&nbsp; I turned and begged the servants
+to relieve him.&nbsp; But they, with one accord, denied the possibility
+of hope; the master had gone into the swamp, they said, the master must
+die; all help was idle.&nbsp; Why should I dwell upon his sufferings?&nbsp;
+I had him carried to a bed, and watched beside him.&nbsp; He lay still,
+and at times ground his teeth, and talked at times unintelligibly, only
+that one word of hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears, and telling
+me that, even in the last struggle with the powers of death, his mind
+was still tortured by his daughter&rsquo;s peril.&nbsp; The sun had
+gone down, the darkness had fallen, when I perceived that I was alone
+on this unhappy earth.&nbsp; What thought had I of flight, of safety,
+of the impending dangers of my situation?&nbsp; Beside the body of my
+last friend, I had forgotten all except the natural pangs of my bereavement.<br>
+<br>
+The sun was some four hours above the eastern line, when I was recalled
+to a knowledge of the things of earth, by the entrance of the slave-girl
+to whom I have already referred.&nbsp; The poor soul was indeed devotedly
+attached to me; and it was with streaming tears that she broke to me
+the import of her coming.&nbsp; With the first light of dawn a boat
+had reached our landing-place, and set on shore upon our isle (till
+now so fortunate) a party of officers bearing a warrant to arrest my
+father&rsquo;s person, and a man of a gross body and low manners, who
+declared the island, the plantation, and all its human chattels, to
+be now his own.&nbsp; &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; said my slave-girl, &lsquo;he
+must be a politician or some very powerful sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal
+had no sooner seen them coming, than she took to the woods.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Fool,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;it was the officers she feared; and
+at any rate why does that beldam still dare to pollute the island with
+her presence?&nbsp; And O Cora,&rsquo; I exclaimed, remembering my grief,
+&lsquo;what matter all these troubles to an orphan?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Mistress,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;I must remind you of two things.&nbsp;
+Never speak as you do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person
+of colour; for she is the most powerful woman in this world, and her
+real name even, if one durst pronounce it, were a spell to raise the
+dead.&nbsp; And whatever you do, speak no more of her to your unhappy
+Cora; for though it is possible she may be afraid of the police (and
+indeed I think that I have heard she is in hiding), and though I know
+that you will laugh and not believe, yet it is true, and proved, and
+known that she hears every word that people utter in this whole vast
+world; and your poor Cora is already deep enough in her black books.&nbsp;
+She looks at me, mistress, till my blood turns ice.&nbsp; That is the
+first I had to say; and now for the second: do, pray, for Heaven&rsquo;s
+sake, bear in mind that you are no longer the poor Se&ntilde;or&rsquo;s
+daughter.&nbsp; He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no more
+than a common slave-girl like myself.&nbsp; The man to whom you belong
+calls for you; oh, my dear mistress, go at once!&nbsp; With your youth
+and beauty, you may still, if you are winning and obedient, secure yourself
+an easy life.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+For a moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may conceive;
+the next, it was gone: she did but speak after her kind, as the bird
+sings or cattle bellow.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go,
+Cora.&nbsp; I thank you for your kind intentions.&nbsp; Leave me alone
+one moment with my dead father; and tell this man that I will come at
+once.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+She went: and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those deaf
+ears the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Father,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;it was your last thought, even
+in the pangs of dissolution, that your daughter should escape disgrace.&nbsp;
+Here, at your side, I swear to you that purpose shall be carried out;
+by what means, I know not; by crime, if need be; and Heaven forgive
+both you and me and our oppressors, and Heaven help my helplessness!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Thereupon I felt strengthened as by long repose; stepped to the mirror,
+ay, even in that chamber of the dead; hastily arranged my hair, refreshed
+my tear-worn eyes, breathed a dumb farewell to the originator of my
+days and sorrows; and composing my features to a smile, went forth to
+meet my master.<br>
+<br>
+He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which
+he had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age, sensual,
+vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by nature.&nbsp;
+But the sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter, warned
+me to expect the worst.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is this your late mistress?&rsquo; he inquired of the slaves;
+and when he had learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them.&nbsp; &lsquo;Now,
+my dear,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I am a plain man: none of your damned
+Spaniards, but a true blue, hard-working, honest Englishman.&nbsp; My
+name is Caulder.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Thank you, sir,&rsquo; said I, and curtsied very smartly as I
+had seen the servants.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Come,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is better than I had expected;
+and if you choose to be dutiful in the station to which it has pleased
+God to call you, you will find me a very kind old fellow.&nbsp; I like
+your looks,&rsquo; he added, calling me by my name, which he scandalously
+mispronounced.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is your hair all your own?&rsquo; he then
+inquired with a certain sharpness, and coming up to me, as though I
+were a horse, he grossly satisfied his doubts.&nbsp; I was all one flame
+from head to foot, but I contained my righteous anger and submitted.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;That is very well,&rsquo; he continued, chucking me good humouredly
+under the chin.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will have no cause to regret coming
+to old Caulder, eh?&nbsp; But that is by the way.&nbsp; What is more
+to the point is this: your late master was a most dishonest rogue, and
+levanted with some valuable property that belonged of rights to me.&nbsp;
+Now, considering your relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest
+person to know what has become of it; and I warn you, before you answer,
+that my whole future kindness will depend upon your honesty.&nbsp; I
+am an honest man myself, and expect the same in my servants.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do you mean the jewels?&rsquo; said I, sinking my voice into
+a whisper.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is just precisely what I do,&rsquo; said he, and chuckled.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; said I.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Hush?&rsquo; he repeated.&nbsp; &lsquo;And why hush?&nbsp; I
+am on my own place, I would have you to know, and surrounded by my own
+lawful servants.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are the officers gone?&rsquo; I asked; and oh! how my hopes hung
+upon the answer!<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;They are,&rsquo; said he, looking somewhat disconcerted.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Why do you ask?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I wish you had kept them,&rsquo; I answered, solemnly enough,
+although my heart at that same moment leaped with exultation.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Master, I must not conceal from you the truth.&nbsp; The servants
+on this estate are in a dangerous condition, and mutiny has long been
+brewing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Why,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I never saw a milder-looking lot
+of niggers in my life.&rsquo;&nbsp; But for all that he turned somewhat
+pale.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Did they tell you,&rsquo; I continued, &lsquo;that Madam Mendizabal
+is on the island? that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that
+if, this morning, they have received you with even decent civility,
+it was only by her orders - issued with what after-thought I leave you
+to consider?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam Jezebel?&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Well, she is a dangerous
+devil; the police are after her, besides, for a whole series of murders;
+but after all, what then?&nbsp; To be sure, she has a great influence
+with you coloured folk.&nbsp; But what in fortune&rsquo;s name can be
+her errand here?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The jewels,&rsquo; I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, sir, had you seen
+that treasure, sapphire and emerald and opal, and the golden topaz,
+and rubies red as the sunset - of what incalculable worth, of what unequalled
+beauty to the eye! - had you seen it, as I have, and alas! as <i>she</i>
+has - you would understand and tremble at your danger.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;She has seen them!&rsquo; he cried, and I could see by his face,
+that my audacity was justified by its success.<br>
+<br>
+I caught his hand in mine.&nbsp; &lsquo;My master,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I
+am now yours; it is my duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your
+interests and life.&nbsp; Hear my advice, then; and, I conjure you,
+be guided by my prudence.&nbsp; Follow me privily; let none see where
+we are going; I will lead you to the place where the treasure has been
+buried; that once disinterred, let us make straight for the boat, escape
+to the mainland, and not return to this dangerous isle without the countenance
+of soldiers.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion?&nbsp;
+But this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused,
+to quiet the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that
+slavery was natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him.&nbsp;
+He praised and thanked me; told me I had all the qualities he valued
+in a servant; and when he had questioned me further as to the nature
+and value of the treasure, and I had once more artfully inflamed his
+greed, bade me without delay proceed to carry out my plan of action.<br>
+<br>
+From a shed in the garden, I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by
+devious paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of
+the swamp.&nbsp; I walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound,
+the tools, and glancing continually behind me, lest we should be spied
+upon and followed.&nbsp; When we were come as far as the beginning of
+the path, it flashed into my mind I had forgotten meat; and leaving
+Mr. Caulder in the shadow of a tree, I returned alone to the house for
+a basket of provisions.&nbsp; Were they for him?&nbsp; I asked myself.&nbsp;
+And a voice within me answered, No. While we were face to face, while
+I still saw before my eyes the man to whom I belonged as the hand belongs
+to the body, my indignation held me bravely up.&nbsp; But now that I
+was alone, I conceived a sickness at myself and my designs that I could
+scarce endure; I longed to throw myself at his feet, avow my intended
+treachery, and warn him from that pestilential swamp, to which I was
+decoying him to die; but my vow to my dead father, my duty to my innocent
+youth, prevailed upon these scruples; and though my face was pale and
+must have reflected the horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with
+a firm step that I returned to the borders of the swamp, and with smiling
+lips that I bade him rise and follow me.<br>
+<br>
+The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the
+living jungle.&nbsp; On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage
+was continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth
+of super-impending wood; and the air was hot like steam, and heady with
+vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.&nbsp;
+Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on
+each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts
+with a continuous hissing rustle; and but for these sentient vegetables,
+all in that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.<br>
+<br>
+We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
+nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path.&nbsp; My heart yearned,
+as I beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return
+upon his steps.&nbsp; What were a few jewels in the scales with life?
+I asked.&nbsp; But no, he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find
+them out; he was an honest man, and would not stand to be defrauded,
+and so forth, panting the while, like a sick dog.&nbsp; Presently he
+got to his feet again, protesting he had conquered his uneasiness; but
+as we again began to go forward, I saw in his changed countenance, the
+first approaches of death.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Master,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;you look pale, deathly pale; your
+pallor fills me with dread.&nbsp; Your eyes are bloodshot; they are
+red like the rubies that we seek.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Wench,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;look before you; look at your
+steps.&nbsp; I declare to Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking
+back, I shall remind you of the change in your position.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a whisper,
+that its touch was death.&nbsp; Presently a great green serpent, vivid
+as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again
+I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;The coffin snake,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;the snake that dogs its
+victim like a hound.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+But he was not to be dissuaded.&nbsp; &lsquo;I am an old traveller,&rsquo;
+said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon
+be at an end.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, &lsquo;what
+end?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then,
+perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, &lsquo;There!&rsquo;
+said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;What did I tell you?&nbsp; We are past the worst.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow
+and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see
+it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers:
+sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the
+flat heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;If we fall from that unsteady bridge,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;see,
+where the caiman lies ready to devour us!&nbsp; If, by the least divergence
+from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads
+of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket!&nbsp; Once helpless,
+how they would swarm together to the assault!&nbsp; What could man do
+against a thousand of such mailed assailants?&nbsp; And what a death
+were that, to perish alive under their claws.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you mad, girl?&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;I bid you be
+silent and lead on.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick
+that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face.&nbsp; &lsquo;Lead
+on!&rsquo; he cried again.&nbsp; &lsquo;Must I be all day, catching
+my death in this vile slough, and all for a prating slave-girl?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled
+back upon my heart.&nbsp; Something, I know not what, fell at that moment
+with a dull plunge in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it
+was my pity that had fallen.<br>
+<br>
+On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was
+not so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved.&nbsp; It
+was possible, here and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight,
+or to distinguish, through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions
+of some soaring tree.&nbsp; The cypress on the left stood very visibly
+forth, upon the edge of such a clearing; the path in that place widened
+broadly; and there was a patch of open ground, beset with horrible ant-heaps,
+thick with their artificers.&nbsp; I laid down the tools and basket
+by the cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with the
+crawling ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious victim.&nbsp;
+Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his features
+were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the turning of
+a mighty wheel.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;is the spot.&nbsp; I cannot dig,
+for I have not learned to use such instruments; but, for your own sake,
+I beseech you to be swift in what you do.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw
+rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I feel ill,&rsquo; he gasped, &lsquo;horribly ill; the swamp
+turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds me.&nbsp;
+Have you not wine?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is for you
+to think,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;if you should further persevere.&nbsp;
+The swamp has an ill name.&rsquo;&nbsp; And at the word I ominously
+nodded.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Give me the pick,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Where are the
+jewels buried?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim
+twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead
+with the vigour of a healthy man.&nbsp; At first, there broke forth
+upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the
+greedy insects settled thickly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To sweat in such a place,&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;O master,
+is this wise?&nbsp; Fever is drunk in through open pores.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What do you mean?&rsquo; he screamed, pausing with the pick buried
+in the soil.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do you seek to drive me mad?&nbsp; Do you
+think I do not understand the danger that I run?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is all I want,&rsquo; said I: &lsquo;I only wish you to
+be swift.&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, my mind flitting to my father&rsquo;s
+deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above my breath, the same vain repetition
+of words, &lsquo;Hurry, hurry, hurry.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while
+he still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows,
+repeated to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, &lsquo;Hurry,
+hurry, hurry;&rsquo; and then again, &lsquo;There is no time to lose;
+the marsh has an ill name, ill name;&rsquo; and then back to &lsquo;Hurry,
+hurry, hurry,&rsquo; with a dreadful, mechanical, hurried, and yet wearied
+utterance, as a sick man rolls upon his pillow.&nbsp; The sweat had
+disappeared; he was now dry, but all that I could see of him, of the
+same dull brick red.&nbsp; Presently his pick unearthed the bag of jewels;
+but he did not observe it, and continued hewing at the soil.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Master,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;there is the treasure.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He seemed to waken from a dream.&nbsp; &lsquo;Where?&rsquo; he cried;
+and then, seeing it before his eyes, &lsquo;Can this be possible?&rsquo;
+he added.&nbsp; &lsquo;I must be light-headed.&nbsp; Girl,&rsquo; he
+cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once
+before observed, &lsquo;what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is a grave,&rsquo; I answered.&nbsp; &lsquo;You will not go
+out alive; and as for me, my life is in God&rsquo;s hands.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from
+the effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot
+tell.&nbsp; Pretty soon, he raised his head.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have brought
+me here to die,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;at the risk of your own days,
+you have condemned me.&nbsp; Why?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To save my honour,&rsquo; I replied.&nbsp; &lsquo;Bear me out
+that I have warned you.&nbsp; Greed of these pebbles, and not I, has
+been your undoer.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He took out his revolver and handed it to me.&nbsp; &lsquo;You see,&rsquo;
+he said, &lsquo;I could have killed you even yet.&nbsp; But I am dying,
+as you say; nothing could save me; and my bill is long enough already.&nbsp;
+Dear me, dear me,&rsquo; he said, looking in my face with a curious,
+puzzled, and pathetic look, like a dull child at school, &lsquo;if there
+be a judgment afterwards, my bill is long enough.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed
+his hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp
+and besought him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I
+could have bought back his, I had not balanced at the cost.&nbsp; But
+he was determined, the poor soul, that I should yet more bitterly regret
+my act.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have nothing to forgive,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear
+heaven, what a thing is an old fool!&nbsp; I thought, upon my word,
+you had taken quite a fancy to me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness,
+clung to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman.&nbsp;
+Presently this spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and
+died away; and he came again to the full possession of his mind.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I must write my will,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Get out my
+pocket-book.&rsquo;&nbsp; I did so, and he wrote hurriedly on one page
+with a pencil.&nbsp; &lsquo;Do not let my son know,&rsquo; he said;
+&lsquo;he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip; do not let him know how
+you have paid me out;&rsquo; and then all of a sudden, &lsquo;God,&rsquo;
+he cried, &lsquo;I am blind,&rsquo; and clapped both hands before his
+eyes; and then again, and in a groaning whisper, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t
+leave me to the crabs!&rsquo;&nbsp; I swore I would be true to him so
+long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise.&nbsp; I sat there
+and watched him, as I had watched my father, but with what different,
+with what appalling thoughts!&nbsp; Through the long afternoon, he gradually
+sank.&nbsp; All that while, I fought an uphill battle to shield him
+from the swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of
+my crime.&nbsp; The night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled
+in the dark arcades of the swamp; and still I was not sure that he had
+breathed his last.&nbsp; At length, the flesh of his hand, which I yet
+held in mine, grew chill between my fingers, and I knew that I was free.<br>
+<br>
+I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die
+than to be captured, and laden besides with the basket and the bag of
+gems, set forward towards the north.&nbsp; The swamp, at that hour of
+the night, was filled with a continuous din: animals and insects of
+all kinds, and all inimical to life, contributing their parts.&nbsp;
+Yet in the midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as though my eyes
+were bandaged, beholding nothing.&nbsp; The soil sank under my foot,
+with a horrid, slippery consistence, as though I were walking among
+toads; the touch of the thick wall of foliage, by which alone I guided
+myself, affrighted me like the touch of serpents; the darkness checked
+my breathing like a gag; indeed, I have never suffered such extremes
+of fear as during that nocturnal walk, nor have I ever known a more
+sensible relief than when I found the path beginning to mount and to
+grow firmer under foot, and saw, although still some way in front of
+me, the silver brightness of the moon.<br>
+<br>
+Presently, I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst
+noble and lofty woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic
+smell of mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and
+the expressive silence of the night.&nbsp; My negro blood had carried
+me unhurt across that reeking and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune,
+I had escaped the crawling and stinging vermin with which it was alive;
+and I had now before me the easier portion of my enterprise, to cross
+the isle and to make good my arrival at the haven and my acceptance
+on the English yacht.&nbsp; It was impossible by night to follow such
+a track as my father had described; and I was casting about for any
+landmark, and, in my ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of
+the stars, when there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front,
+the sound of many voices hurriedly singing.<br>
+<br>
+I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the
+direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour&rsquo;s walking,
+came unperceived to the margin of an open glade.&nbsp; It was lighted
+by the strong moon and by the flames of a fire.&nbsp; In the midst,
+there stood a little low and rude building, surmounted by a cross: a
+chapel, as I then remembered to have heard, long since desecrated and
+given over to the rites of Hoodoo.&nbsp; Hard by the steps of entrance
+was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and fro as if
+with inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to be a heap
+of cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still struggling,
+but helplessly tethered and cruelly tossed one upon another.&nbsp; Both
+the fire and the chapel were surrounded by a ring of kneeling Africans,
+both men and women.&nbsp; Now they would raise their palms half-closed
+to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of supplication; now
+they would bow their heads and spread their hands before them on the
+ground.&nbsp; As the double movement passed and repassed along the line,
+the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the sea; and still,
+as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued.&nbsp;
+I stood spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing
+that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.<br>
+<br>
+Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came forth a tall
+negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife.&nbsp;
+He was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam
+Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the
+level of her face, an open basket of wicker.&nbsp; It was filled with
+coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket,
+shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms.&nbsp; At the
+sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher;
+and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent.&nbsp;
+Then, at a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and
+smiling, in the moon and firelight, the singing died away, and there
+began the second stage of this barbarous and bloody celebration.&nbsp;
+From different parts of the ring, one after another, man or woman, ran
+forth into the midst; ducked, with that same gesture of the thrown-up
+hand, before the priestess and her snakes; and with various adjurations,
+uttered aloud the blackest wishes of the heart.&nbsp; Death and disease
+were the favours usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies
+or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their
+own blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been never less than kind,
+invoking them upon myself.&nbsp; At each petition, the tall negro, still
+smiling, picked up some bird or animal from the heaving mass upon his
+left, slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the ground.&nbsp;
+At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the high-priestess.&nbsp;
+She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the centre of the ring,
+grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still grovelling lifted
+up her voice, between speech and singing, and with so great, with so
+insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort of horror through my
+blood.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Power,&rsquo; she began, &lsquo;whose name we do not utter; power
+that is neither good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good,
+greater than evil - all my life long I have adored and served thee.&nbsp;
+Who has shed blood upon thine altars? whose voice is broken with the
+singing of thy praises? whose limbs are faint before their age with
+leaping in thy revels?&nbsp; Who has slain the child of her body?&nbsp;
+I,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;I, Metamnbogu!&nbsp; By my own name, I name
+myself.&nbsp; I tear away the veil.&nbsp; I would be served or perish.&nbsp;
+Hear me, slime of the fat swamp, blackness of the thunder, venom of
+the serpent&rsquo;s udder - hear or slay me!&nbsp; I would have two
+things, O shapeless one, O horror of emptiness - two things, or die!&nbsp;
+The blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the enemy
+of Hoodoo; give me his blood!&nbsp; And yet another, O racer of the
+blind winds, O germinator in the ruins of the dead, O root of life,
+root of corruption!&nbsp; I grow old, I grow hideous; I am known, I
+am hunted for my life: let thy servant then lay by this outworn body;
+let thy chief priestess turn again to the blossom of her days, and be
+a girl once more, and the desired of all men, even as in the past!&nbsp;
+And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet wrought since
+we were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the sacrifice in
+which thy soul delighteth - the kid without the horns?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Even as she uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through
+all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and
+swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an
+instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door, carrying in his
+arms the body of the slave-girl, Cora.&nbsp; I know not if I saw what
+followed.&nbsp; When next my mind awoke to a clear knowledge, Cora was
+laid upon the steps before the serpents; the negro with the knife stood
+over her; the knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great horror,
+bidding them, in God&rsquo;s name, to pause.<br>
+<br>
+A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals.&nbsp; A moment more, and
+they must have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished.&nbsp;
+But Heaven had designed to save me.&nbsp; The silence of these wretched
+men was not yet broken, when there arose, in the empty night, a sound
+louder than the roar of any European tempest, swifter to travel than
+the wings of any Eastern wind.&nbsp; Blackness engulfed the world; blackness,
+stabbed across from every side by intricate and blinding lightning.&nbsp;
+Almost in the same second, at one world-swallowing stride, the heart
+of the tornado reached the clearing.&nbsp; I heard an agonising crash,
+and the light of my reason was overwhelmed.<br>
+<br>
+When I recovered consciousness, the day was come.&nbsp; I was unhurt;
+the trees close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have thought
+at first that the tornado was a feature in a dream.&nbsp; It was otherwise
+indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction
+by a hand&rsquo;s-breadth.&nbsp; Right through the forest, which here
+covered hill and dale, the storm had ploughed a lane of ruin.&nbsp;
+On either hand, the trees waved uninjured in the air of the morning;
+but in the forthright course of its advance, the hurricane had left
+no trophy standing.&nbsp; Everything, in that line, tree, man, or animal,
+the desecrated chapel and the votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted
+and destroyed in that brief spasm of anger of the powers of air.&nbsp;
+Everything, but a yard or two beyond the line of its passage, humble
+flower, lofty tree, and the poor vulnerable maid who now knelt to pay
+her gratitude to heaven, awoke unharmed in the crystal purity and peace
+of the new day.<br>
+<br>
+To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so
+wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that fugitive
+convulsion.&nbsp; I crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience,
+with so many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the further side,
+bankrupt alike of strength and courage.&nbsp; There I sat down awhile
+to recruit my forces; and as I ate (how should I bless the kindliness
+of Heaven!) my eye, flitting to and fro in the colonnade of the great
+trees, alighted on a trunk that had been blazed.&nbsp; Yes, by the directing
+hand of Providence, I had been conducted to the very track I was to
+follow.&nbsp; With what a light heart I now set forth, and walking with
+how glad a step, traversed the uplands of the isle!<br>
+<br>
+It was hard upon the hour of noon, when I came, all tattered and wayworn,
+to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea.&nbsp;
+About all the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat
+with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow.&nbsp; Close at my
+feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock.&nbsp;
+Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so
+glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that
+my heart was seized with admiration.&nbsp; The English colours blew
+from her masthead; and from my high station, I caught glimpses of her
+snowy planking, as she rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter
+on the brass of her deck furniture.&nbsp; There, then, was my ship of
+refuge; and of all my difficulties only one remained: to get on board
+of her.<br>
+<br>
+Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the margin
+of a cove, into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows entered, and
+along whose shores they broke with a surprising loudness.&nbsp; A wooded
+promontory hid the yacht; and I had walked some distance round the beach,
+in what appeared to be a virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat,
+drawn into a natural harbour, where it rocked in safety, but deserted.&nbsp;
+I looked about for those who should have manned her; and presently,
+in the immediate entrance of the wood, spied the red embers of a fire,
+and, stretched around in various attitudes, a party of slumbering mariners.&nbsp;
+To these I drew near: most were black, a few white; but all were dressed
+with the conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, from his peaked
+cap and glittering buttons, I rightly divined to be an officer.&nbsp;
+Him, then, I touched upon the shoulder.&nbsp; He started up; the sharpness
+of his movement woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What do you want?&rsquo; inquired the officer.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To go on board the yacht,&rsquo; I answered.<br>
+<br>
+I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer, with
+something of sharpness, asked me who I was.&nbsp; Now I had determined
+to conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose
+to my lips was that of the Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal.&nbsp; At the word,
+there went a shock about the little party of seamen; the negroes stared
+at me with indescribable eagerness, the whites themselves with something
+of a scared surprise; and instantly the spirit of mischief prompted
+me to add, &lsquo;And if the name is new to your ears, call me Metamnbogu.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I had never seen an effect so wonderful.&nbsp; The negroes threw their
+hands into the air, with the same gesture I remarked the night before
+about the Hoodoo camp-fire; first one, and then another, ran forward
+and kneeled down and kissed the skirts of my torn dress; and when the
+white officer broke out swearing and calling to know if they were mad,
+the coloured seamen took him by the shoulders, dragged him on one side
+till they were out of hearing, and surrounded him with open mouths and
+extravagant pantomime.&nbsp; The officer seemed to struggle hard; he
+laughed aloud, and I saw him make gestures of dissent and protest; but
+in the end, whether overcome by reason or simply weary of resistance,
+he gave in - approached me civilly enough, but with something of a sneering
+manner underneath - and touching his cap, &lsquo;My lady,&rsquo; said
+he, &lsquo;if that is what you are, the boat is ready.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+My reception on board the <i>Nemorosa</i> (for so the yacht was named)
+partook of the same mingled nature.&nbsp; We were scarcely within hail
+of that great and elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale under
+and churning the blue sea to snow, before the bulwarks were lined with
+the heads of a great crowd of seamen, black, white, and yellow; and
+these and the few who manned the boat began exchanging shouts in some
+<i>lingua franca</i> incomprehensible to me.&nbsp; All eyes were directed
+on the passenger; and once more I saw the negroes toss up their hands
+to heaven, but now as if with passionate wonder and delight.<br>
+<br>
+At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer, a gentlemanly
+man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I addressed my demand
+to see Sir George.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But this is not - &rsquo; he cried, and paused.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I know it,&rsquo; returned the other officer, who had brought
+me from the shore.&nbsp; &lsquo;But what the devil can we do?&nbsp;
+Look at all the niggers!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the poor
+ignorant Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands into the
+air, as though in the presence of a creature half divine.&nbsp; Apparently
+the officer with the whiskers had instantly come round to the opinion
+of his subaltern; for he now addressed me with every signal of respect.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir George is at the island, my lady,&rsquo; said he: &lsquo;for
+which, with your ladyship&rsquo;s permission, I shall immediately make
+all sail.&nbsp; The cabins are prepared.&nbsp; Steward, take Lady Greville
+below.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that I could
+neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious and airy cabin,
+hung about with weapons and surrounded by divans.&nbsp; The steward
+asked for my commands; but I was by this time so wearied, bewildered,
+and disturbed, that I could only wave him to leave me to myself, and
+sink upon a pile of cushions.&nbsp; Presently, by the changed motion
+of the ship, I knew her to be under way; my thoughts, so far from clarifying,
+grew the more distracted and confused; dreams began to mingle and confound
+them; and at length, by insensible transition, I sank into a dreamless
+slumber.<br>
+<br>
+When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once more morning.&nbsp;
+The world on which I reopened my eyes swam strangely up and down; the
+jewels in the bag that lay beside me chinked together ceaselessly; the
+clock and the barometer wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead,
+seamen were singing out at their work, and coils of rope clattering
+and thumping on the deck.&nbsp; Yet it was long before I had divined
+that I was at sea; long before I had recalled, one after another, the
+tragical, mysterious, and inexplicable events that had brought me where
+was.<br>
+<br>
+When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to find
+had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and seeing a silver
+bell hard by upon a table, rang it loudly.&nbsp; The steward instantly
+appeared; I asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding
+me the while with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny.&nbsp; To
+relieve myself of my embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show
+of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry so numerous
+a crew?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I know not who you are, nor what
+mad fancy has induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that
+are not yours.&nbsp; I warn you from the soul.&nbsp; No sooner arrived
+at the island - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, who had
+entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon his shoulder.&nbsp;
+The sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear, that was imprinted on the
+steward&rsquo;s face, formed a startling addition to his words.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Parker!&rsquo; said the officer, and pointed towards the door.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes, Mr. Kentish,&rsquo; said the steward.&nbsp; &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s
+sake, Mr. Kentish!&rsquo;&nbsp; And vanished, with a white face, from
+the cabin.<br>
+<br>
+Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, and join
+in the meal.&nbsp; &lsquo;I fill your ladyship&rsquo;s glass,&rsquo;
+said he, and handed me a tumbler of neat rum.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;do you expect me to drink this?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He laughed heartily.&nbsp; &lsquo;Your ladyship is so much changed,&rsquo;
+said he, &lsquo;that I no longer expect any one thing more than any
+other.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Immediately after, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted both Mr.
+Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a sail in sight,
+which was bound to pass us very close, and that Mr. Harland was in doubt
+about the colours.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Being so near the island?&rsquo; asked Mr. Kentish.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,&rsquo; returned the sailor,
+with a scrape.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Better not, I think,&rsquo; said Mr. Kentish.&nbsp; &lsquo;My
+compliments to Mr. Harland; and if she seem a lively boat, give her
+the stars and stripes; but if she be dull, and we can easily outsail
+her, show John Dutchman.&nbsp; That is always another word for incivility
+at sea; so we can disregard a hail or a flag of distress, without attracting
+notice.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the officer in wonder.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Mr.&nbsp; Kentish, if that be your name,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;are
+you ashamed of your own colours?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your ladyship refers to the <i>Jolly Roger</i>?&rsquo; he inquired,
+with perfect gravity; and immediately after, went into peals of laughter.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;but here for the first time
+I recognise your ladyship&rsquo;s impetuosity.&rsquo;&nbsp; Nor, try
+as I pleased, could I extract from him any explanation of this mystery,
+but only oily and commonplace evasion.<br>
+<br>
+While we were thus occupied, the movement of the <i>Nemorosa</i> gradually
+became less violent; its speed at the same time diminished; and presently
+after, with a sullen plunge, the anchor was discharged into the sea.&nbsp;
+Kentish immediately rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck;
+where I found we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky
+islets, hovered about by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl.&nbsp; Immediately
+under our board, a somewhat larger isle was green with trees, set with
+a few low buildings and approached by a pier of very crazy workmanship;
+and a little inshore of us, a smaller vessel lay at anchor.<br>
+<br>
+I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters, ere a boat was lowered.&nbsp;
+I was handed in, Kentish took place beside me, and we pulled briskly
+to the pier.&nbsp; A crowd of villainous, armed loiterers, both black
+and white, looked on upon our landing; and again the word passed about
+among the negroes, and again I was received with prostrations and the
+same gesture of the flung-up hand.&nbsp; By this, what with the appearance
+of these men, and the lawless, sea-girt spot in which I found myself,
+my courage began a little to decline, and clinging to the arm of Mr.
+Kentish, I begged him to tell me what it meant?<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nay, madam,&rsquo; he returned, <i>&lsquo;you</i> know.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And leading me smartly through the crowd, which continued to follow
+at a considerable distance, and at which he still kept looking back,
+I thought, with apprehension, he brought me to a low house that stood
+alone in an encumbered yard, opened the door, and begged me to enter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But why?&rsquo; said I.&nbsp; &lsquo;I demand to see Sir George.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black
+as thunder, &lsquo;to drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you
+are; beyond the fact that you are not the person whose name you have
+assumed.&nbsp; But be what you please, spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-judging
+jester, if you do not immediately enter that house, I will cut you to
+the earth.&rsquo;&nbsp; And even as he spoke, he threw an uneasy glance
+behind him at the following crowd of blacks.<br>
+<br>
+I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once, and with a
+palpitating heart; and the next moment, the door was locked from the
+outside and the key withdrawn.&nbsp; The interior was long, low, and
+quite unfurnished, but filled, almost from end to end, with sugar-cane,
+tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other incongruous and highly inflammable
+material; and not only was the door locked, but the solitary window
+barred with iron.<br>
+<br>
+I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I would
+have given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr. Caulder.&nbsp;
+I still stood, with my hands clasped, the image of despair, looking
+about me on the lumber of the room or raising my eyes to heaven; when
+there appeared outside the window bars, the face of a very black negro,
+who signed to me imperiously to draw near.&nbsp; I did so, and he instantly,
+and with every mark of fervour, addressed me a long speech in some unknown
+and barbarous tongue.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I declare,&rsquo; I cried, clasping my brow, &lsquo;I do not
+understand one syllable.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not?&rsquo; he said in Spanish.&nbsp; &lsquo;Great, great, are
+the powers of Hoodoo!&nbsp; Her very mind is changed!&nbsp; But, O chief
+priestess, why have you suffered yourself to be shut into this cage?
+why did you not call your slaves at once to your defence?&nbsp; Do you
+not see that all has been prepared to murder you? at a spark, this flimsy
+house will go in flames; and alas! who shall then be the chief priestess?
+and what shall be the profit of the miracle?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Heavens!&rsquo; cried I, &lsquo;can I not see Sir George?&nbsp;
+I must, I must, come by speech of him.&nbsp; Oh, bring me to Sir George!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And, my terror fairly mastering my courage, I fell upon my knees and
+began to pray to all the saints.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Lordy!&rsquo; cried the negro, &lsquo;here they come!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And his black head was instantly withdrawn from the window.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I never heard such nonsense in my life,&rsquo; exclaimed a voice.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Why, so we all say, Sir George,&rsquo; replied the voice of Mr.
+Kentish.&nbsp; &lsquo;But put yourself in our place.&nbsp; The niggers
+were near two to one.&nbsp; And upon my word, if you&rsquo;ll excuse
+me, sir, considering the notion they have taken in their heads, I regard
+it as precious fortunate for all of us that the mistake occurred.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is no question of fortune, sir,&rsquo; returned Sir George.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is a question of my orders, and you may take my word for it,
+Kentish, either Harland, or yourself, or Parker - or, by George, all
+three of you! - shall swing for this affair.&nbsp; These are my sentiments.&nbsp;
+Give me the key and be off.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Immediately after, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared upon
+the threshold a gentleman, between forty and fifty, with a very open
+countenance, and of a stout and personable figure.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear young lady,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;who the devil may
+you be?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I told him all my story in one rush of words.&nbsp; He heard me, from
+the first, with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I came
+to the death of the Se&ntilde;ora Mendizabal in the tornado, he fairly
+leaped into the air.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My dear child,&rsquo; he cried, clasping me in his arms, &lsquo;excuse
+a man who might be your father!&nbsp; This is the best news I ever had
+since I was born; for that hag of a mulatto was no less a person than
+my wife.&rsquo;&nbsp; He sat down upon a tar-barrel, as if unmanned
+by joy.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear me,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I declare this
+tempts me to believe in Providence.&nbsp; And what,&rsquo; he added,
+&lsquo;can I do for you?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir George,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I am already rich: all that
+I ask is your protection.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Understand one thing,&rsquo; he said, with great energy.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I will never marry.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I had not ventured to propose it,&rsquo; I exclaimed, unable
+to restrain my mirth; &lsquo;I only seek to be conveyed to England,
+the natural home of the escaped slave.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; returned Sir George, &lsquo;frankly I owe you something
+for this exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me.&nbsp;
+Now, I have made a small competence in business - a jewel mine, a sort
+of naval agency, et caetera, and I am on the point of breaking up my
+company, and retiring to my place in Devonshire to pass a plain old
+age, unmarried.&nbsp; One good turn deserves another: if you swear to
+hold your tongue about this island, these little bonfire arrangements,
+and the whole episode of my unfortunate marriage, why, I&rsquo;ll carry
+you home aboard the <i>Nemorosa.&rsquo;</i>&nbsp; I eagerly accepted
+his conditions.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;One thing more,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;My late wife was
+some sort of a sorceress among the blacks; and they are all persuaded
+she has come alive again in your agreeable person.&nbsp; Now, you will
+have the goodness to keep up that fancy, if you please; and to swear
+to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his name may be, that
+I am from this moment quite a sacred character.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I swear it,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;by my father&rsquo;s memory;
+and that is a vow that I will never break.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have considerably better hold on you than any oath,&rsquo;
+returned Sir George, with a chuckle; &lsquo;for you are not only an
+escaped slave, but have, by your own account, a considerable amount
+of stolen property.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised
+that these jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I decided
+they should be restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that I had just
+regained.&nbsp; Forgetful of all else, forgetful of Sir George, who
+sat and watched me with a smile, I drew out Mr. Caulder&rsquo;s pocket-book
+and turned to the page on which the dying man had scrawled his testament.&nbsp;
+How shall I describe the agony of happiness and remorse with which I
+read it! for my victim had not only set me free, but bequeathed to me
+the bag of jewels.<br>
+<br>
+My plain tale draws towards a close.&nbsp; Sir George and I, in my character
+of his rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm among the negroes,
+and were cheered and followed to the place of embarkation.&nbsp; There,
+Sir George, turning about, made a speech to his old companions, in which
+he thanked and bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards
+the end of which he fell on some expressions which I still remember.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If any of you gentry lose your money,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;take
+care you do not come to me; for in the first place, I shall do my best
+to have you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to the law.&nbsp;
+Blackmail won&rsquo;t do for me.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll rather risk all upon
+a cast, than be pulled to pieces by degrees.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll rather
+be found out and hang, than give a doit to one man-jack of you.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+That same night we got under way and crossed to the port of New Orleans,
+whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the pocket-book to Mr. Caulder&rsquo;s
+son.&nbsp; In a week&rsquo;s time, the men were all paid off; new hands
+were shipped; and the <i>Nemorosa</i> weighed her anchor for Old England.<br>
+<br>
+A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy.&nbsp; Sir George, of
+course, was not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected gaiety
+of character that naturally endeared him to the young; and it was interesting
+to hear him lay out his projects for the future, when he should be returned
+to Parliament, and place at the service of the nation his experience
+of marine affairs.&nbsp; I asked him, if his notion of piracy upon a
+private yacht were not original.&nbsp; But he told me, no.&nbsp; &lsquo;A
+yacht, Miss Valdevia,&rsquo; he observed, &lsquo;is a chartered nuisance.&nbsp;
+Who smuggles?&nbsp; Who robs the salmon rivers of the West of Scotland?&nbsp;
+Who cruelly beats the keepers if they dare to intervene?&nbsp; The crews
+and the proprietors of yachts.&nbsp; All I have done is to extend the
+line a trifle, and if you ask me for my unbiassed opinion, I do not
+suppose that I am in the least alone.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+In short, we were the best of friends, and lived like father and daughter;
+though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect which is only
+due to moral excellence.<br>
+<br>
+We were still some days&rsquo; sail from England, when Sir George obtained,
+from an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and from that fatal
+hour my misfortunes recommenced.&nbsp; He sat, the same evening, in
+the cabin, reading the news, and making savoury comments on the decline
+of England and the poor condition of the navy, when I suddenly observed
+him to change countenance.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Hullo!&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;this is bad; this is deuced bad,
+Miss Valdevia.&nbsp; You would not listen to sound sense, you would
+send that pocket-book to that man Caulder&rsquo;s son.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Sir George,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;it was my duty.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You are prettily paid for it, at least,&rsquo; says he; &lsquo;and
+much as I regret it, I, for one, am done with you.&nbsp; This fellow
+Caulder demands your extradition.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But a slave,&rsquo; I returned, &lsquo;is safe in England.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes, by George!&rsquo; replied the baronet; &lsquo;but it&rsquo;s
+not a slave, Miss Valdevia, it&rsquo;s a thief that he demands.&nbsp;
+He has quietly destroyed the will; and now accuses you of robbing your
+father&rsquo;s bankrupt estate of jewels to the value of a hundred thousand
+pounds.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and concern
+for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more
+at ease.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do not be cast down,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;Of course,
+I wash my hands of you myself.&nbsp; A man in my position - baronet,
+old family, and all that - cannot possibly be too particular about the
+company he keeps.&nbsp; But I am a deuced good-humoured old boy, let
+me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do the best I can to put you
+right.&nbsp; I will lend you a trifle of ready money, give you the address
+of an excellent lawyer in London, and find a way to set you on shore
+unsuspected.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He was in every particular as good as his word.&nbsp; Four days later,
+the <i>Nemorosa</i> sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night,
+into a certain haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with
+muffled oars, set me ashore upon the beach within a stone&rsquo;s throw
+of a railway station.&nbsp; Thither, guided by Sir George&rsquo;s directions,
+I groped a devious way; and finding a bench upon the platform, sat me
+down, wrapped in a man&rsquo;s fur great-coat, to await the coming of
+the day.&nbsp; It was still dark when a light was struck behind one
+of the windows of the building; nor had the east begun to kindle to
+the warmer colours of the dawn, before a porter carrying a lantern,
+issued from the door and found himself face to face with the unfortunate
+Teresa.&nbsp; He looked all about him; in the grey twilight of the dawn,
+the haven was seen to lie deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Who are you?&rsquo; he cried.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am a traveller,&rsquo; said I.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And where do you come from?&rsquo; he asked.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am going by the first train to London,&rsquo; I replied.<br>
+<br>
+In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her
+bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent fashion,
+without history or name, she took her place among the millions of a
+new country.<br>
+<br>
+Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying concealed
+in quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not knowing at what
+hour my liberty and honour may be lost.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>THE BROWN BOX (Concluded)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant
+and convincing.&nbsp; The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest,
+she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and
+the most unhappy of her sex.&nbsp; He was bereft of words to utter what
+he felt: what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career
+so vivid and adventurous.&nbsp; &lsquo;O madam!&rsquo; he began; and
+finding no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand
+and wrung it in his own.&nbsp; &lsquo;Count upon me,&rsquo; he added,
+with bewildered fervour; and getting somehow or other out of the apartment
+and from the circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the
+strange out-of-doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at dull passers-by,
+a fallen angel.&nbsp; She had smiled upon him as he left, and with how
+significant, how beautiful a smile!&nbsp; The memory lingered in his
+heart; and when he found his way to a certain restaurant where music
+was performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his meal.&nbsp;
+The strings went to the melody of that parting smile; they paraphrased
+and glossed it in the sense that he desired; and for the first time
+in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he perceived himself to have
+a taste for music.<br>
+<br>
+The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that delectable
+air.&nbsp; Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not at all;
+now saw her and was put by.&nbsp; The fall of her foot upon the stair
+entranced him; the books that he sought out and read were books on Cuba,
+and spoke of her indirectly; nay, and in the very landlady&rsquo;s parlour,
+he found one that told of precisely such a hurricane, and, down to the
+smallest detail, confirmed (had confirmation been required) the truth
+of her recital.&nbsp; Presently he began to fall into that prettiest
+mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns himself for his presumption.&nbsp;
+Who was he, the dull one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without
+adventure, the impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature
+made of fire and air, and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable
+passages of life?&nbsp; What should he do, to be more worthy? by what
+devotion, call down the notice of these eyes to so terrene a being as
+himself?<br>
+<br>
+He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square, where,
+being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of acquaintances
+among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the visitors that
+hung before the windows of the Children&rsquo;s Hospital.&nbsp; There
+he walked, considering the depth of his demerit and the height of the
+adored one&rsquo;s super-excellence; now lighting upon earth to say
+a pleasant word to the brother of some infant invalid; now, with a great
+heave of breath, remembering the queen of women, and the sunshine of
+his life.<br>
+<br>
+What was he to do?&nbsp; Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of
+leaving the house towards afternoon: she might, perchance, run danger
+from some Cuban emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the
+balance in her favour: how, then, if he should follow her?&nbsp; To
+offer his company would seem like an intrusion; to dog her openly were
+a manifest impertinence; he saw himself reduced to a more stealthy part,
+which, though in some ways distasteful to his mind, he did not doubt
+that he could practise with the skill of a detective.<br>
+<br>
+The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action.&nbsp; At the corner
+of Tottenham Court Road, however, the Se&ntilde;orita suddenly turned
+back, and met him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and surprise.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, Se&ntilde;or, I am sometimes fortunate!&rsquo; she cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I was looking for a messenger;&rsquo; and with the sweetest of
+smiles, she despatched him to the East End of London, to an address
+which he was unable to find.&nbsp; This was a bitter pill to the knight-errant;
+but when he returned at night, worn out with fruitless wandering and
+dismayed by his <i>fiasco</i>, the lady received him with a friendly
+gaiety, protesting that all was for the best, since she had changed
+her mind and long since repented of her message.<br>
+<br>
+Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
+determined to protect Teresa with his life.&nbsp; But a painful shock
+awaited him.&nbsp; In the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned
+suddenly about and addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes
+that were new to the young man&rsquo;s experience.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Do I understand that you follow me, Se&ntilde;or?&rsquo; she
+cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;Are these the manners of the English gentleman?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to
+be forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed, crestfallen
+and heavy of heart.&nbsp; The check was final; he gave up that road
+to service; and began once more to hang about the square or on the terrace,
+filled with remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit object for
+the scorn and envy of older men.&nbsp; In these idle hours, while he
+was courting fortune for a sight of the beloved, it fell out naturally
+that he should observe the manners and appearance of such as came about
+the house.&nbsp; One person alone was the occasional visitor of the
+young lady: a man of considerable stature, and distinguished only by
+the doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an American deacon.&nbsp;
+Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this distaste grew upon
+him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered courage to
+inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed by
+her reply.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That gentleman,&rsquo; said she, a smile struggling to her face,
+&lsquo;that gentleman, I will not attempt to conceal from you, desires
+my hand in marriage, and presses me with the most respectful ardour.&nbsp;
+Alas, what am I to say?&nbsp; I, the forlorn Teresa, how shall I refuse
+or accept such protestations?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him;
+and he had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with decency.&nbsp;
+In the solitude of his own chamber, he gave way to every manifestation
+of despair.&nbsp; He passionately adored the Se&ntilde;orita; but it
+was not only the thought of her possible union with another that distressed
+his soul, it was the indefeasible conviction that her suitor was unworthy.&nbsp;
+To a duke, a bishop, a victorious general, or any man adorned with obvious
+qualities, he had resigned her with a sort of bitter joy; he saw himself
+follow the wedding party from a great way off; he saw himself return
+to the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and while he could have
+wept for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly.&nbsp; But this
+affair looked otherwise.&nbsp; The man was patently no gentleman; he
+had a startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his
+eyes evasive; his love perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under
+this deep disguise, a Cuban emissary!<br>
+<br>
+Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next evening,
+about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a spot whence
+his eye commanded the three issues of the square.<br>
+<br>
+Presently after, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door, and the man with
+the chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by Harry
+to enter the house with a brown box hoisted on his back.&nbsp; Half
+an hour later, he came forth again without the box, and struck eastward
+at a rapid walk; and Desborough, with the same skill and caution that
+he had displayed in following Teresa, proceeded to dog the steps of
+her admirer.&nbsp; The man began to loiter, studying with apparent interest
+the wares of the small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he returned hurriedly
+upon his former course; and then, as though he had suddenly conquered
+a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, once more set forth with resolute and swift
+steps in the direction of Lincoln&rsquo;s Inn.&nbsp; At length, in a
+deserted by-street, he turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance
+which seemed to have become older and whiter, inquired with some severity
+of speech if he had not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You have, sir,&rsquo; said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with
+a good show of stoutness; &lsquo;and I will not deny that I was following
+you on purpose.&nbsp; Doubtless,&rsquo; he added, for he supposed that
+all men&rsquo;s minds must still be running on Teresa, &lsquo;you can
+divine my reason.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
+tremor.&nbsp; He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the utterance which
+his fear denied him; and then whipping sharply about, he took to his
+heels at the most furious speed of running.<br>
+<br>
+Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by
+the time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only rewarded
+by a glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a hansom,
+which immediately after disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.<br>
+<br>
+Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the
+house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the
+fair Cuban&rsquo;s door.&nbsp; She bade him enter, and he found her
+kneeling with rather a disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; he broke out, &lsquo;I doubt whether
+that man&rsquo;s character is what he wishes you to believe.&nbsp; His
+manner, when he found, and indeed when I admitted that I was following
+him, was not the manner of an honest man.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation,
+&lsquo;Don Quixote, Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against
+windmills?&rsquo;&nbsp; And then, with a laugh, &lsquo;Poor soul!&rsquo;
+she added, &lsquo;how you must have terrified him!&nbsp; For know that
+the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may soon be hunted
+down.&nbsp; Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor&rsquo;s office may
+find himself at any moment the quarry of armed spies.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A humble clerk!&rsquo; cried Harry, &lsquo;why, you told me yourself
+that he wished to marry you!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I thought you English like what you call a joke,&rsquo; replied
+the lady calmly.&nbsp; &lsquo;As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer&rsquo;s
+clerk, and has been here to-night charged with disastrous news.&nbsp;
+I am in sore straits, Se&ntilde;or Harry.&nbsp; Will you help me?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+At this most welcome word, the young man&rsquo;s heart exulted; and
+in the hope, pride, and self-esteem that kindled with the very thought
+of service, he forgot to dwell upon the lady&rsquo;s jest.&nbsp; &lsquo;Can
+you ask?&rsquo; he cried.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is there that I can do?&nbsp;
+Only tell me that.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the fair Cuban
+laid her hand upon the box.&nbsp; &lsquo;This box,&rsquo; she said,
+&lsquo;contains my jewels, papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that
+still connects me with Cuba and my dreadful past.&nbsp; They must now
+be smuggled out of England; or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost
+beyond remedy.&nbsp; To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand
+awaits the box: the problem still unsolved, is to find some one to carry
+it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and instantly
+return to town.&nbsp; Will you be he?&nbsp; Will you leave to-morrow
+by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear still in mind that
+you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and without so much as a look behind
+you, or a single movement to betray your interest, leave the box where
+you have put it and come straight on shore? Will you do this, and so
+save your friend?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do not clearly understand . . .&rsquo; began Harry.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No more do I,&rsquo; replied the Cuban.&nbsp; &lsquo;It is not
+necessary that we should, so long as we obey the lawyer&rsquo;s orders.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Se&ntilde;orita,&rsquo; returned Harry gravely, &lsquo;I think
+this, of course, a very little thing to do for you, when I would willingly
+do all.&nbsp; But suffer me to say one word.&nbsp; If London is unsafe
+for your treasures, it cannot long be safe for you; and indeed, if I
+at all fathom the plan of your solicitor, I fear I may find you already
+fled on my return.&nbsp; I am not considered clever, and can only speak
+out plainly what is in my heart: that I love you, and that I cannot
+bear to lose all knowledge of you.&nbsp; I hope no more than to be your
+servant; I ask no more than just that I shall hear of you.&nbsp; Oh,
+promise me so much!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You shall,&rsquo; she said, after a pause.&nbsp; &lsquo;I promise
+you, you shall.&rsquo;&nbsp; But though she spoke with earnestness,
+the marks of great embarrassment and a strong conflict of emotions appeared
+upon her face.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I wish to tell you,&rsquo; resumed Desborough, &lsquo;in case
+of accidents. . . .&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Accidents!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;why do you say that?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do not know,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you may be gone before
+my return, and we may not meet again for long.&nbsp; And so I wished
+you to know this: That since the day you gave me the cigarette, you
+have never once, not once, been absent from my mind; and if it will
+in any way serve you, you may crumple me up like that piece of paper,
+and throw me on the fire.&nbsp; I would love to die for you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Go!&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Go now at once.&nbsp; My brain
+is in a whirl.&nbsp; I scarce know what we are talking.&nbsp; Go; and
+good-night; and oh, may you come safe!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man&rsquo;s
+mind; and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the broken
+utterance of her last words, his heart at once exulted and misgave him.&nbsp;
+Love had indeed looked upon him with a tragic mask; and yet what mattered,
+since at least it was love - since at least she was commoved at their
+division?&nbsp; He got to bed with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed
+from one dream to another all night long, the white face of Teresa still
+haunting him, wrung with unspoken thoughts; and in the grey of the dawn,
+leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind of horror.&nbsp; It was already
+time for him to rise.&nbsp; He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food
+that had been laid for him the night before; and went down to the room
+of his idol for the box.&nbsp; The door was open; a strange disorder
+reigned within; the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the
+room left bare of impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature
+with a tortured mind.&nbsp; There lay the box, however, and upon the
+lid a paper with these words: &lsquo;Harry, I hope to be back before
+you go.&nbsp; Teresa.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table.&nbsp;
+She had called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill
+the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered
+room still poisoned his enjoyment.&nbsp; The door of the bed-chamber
+stood gaping open; and though he turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege,
+he could not but observe the bed had not been slept in.&nbsp; He was
+still pondering what this should mean, still trying to convince himself
+that all was well, when the moving needle of his watch summoned him
+to set forth without delay.&nbsp; He was before all things a man of
+his word; ran round to Southampton Row to fetch a cab; and taking the
+box on the front seat, drove off towards the terminus.<br>
+<br>
+The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye;
+and the young man&rsquo;s attention centred on the dumb companion of
+his drive.&nbsp; A card was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription:
+&lsquo;Miss Doolan, passenger to Dublin.&nbsp; Glass.&nbsp; With care.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+He thought with a sentimental shock that the fair idol of his heart
+was perhaps driven to adopt the name of Doolan; and as he still studied
+the card, he was aware of a deadly, black depression settling steadily
+upon his spirits.&nbsp; It was in vain for him to contend against the
+tide; in vain that he shook himself or tried to whistle: the sense of
+some impending blow was not to be averted.&nbsp; He looked out; in the
+long, empty streets, the cab pursued its way without a trace of any
+follower.&nbsp; He gave ear; and over and above the jolting of the wheels
+upon the road, he was conscious of a certain regular and quiet sound
+that seemed to issue from the box.&nbsp; He put his ear to the cover;
+at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate ticking: the next, the
+sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening recapture it.&nbsp;
+He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued; and it was with
+more than the common relief of an arrival, that he leaped from the cab
+before the station.<br>
+<br>
+Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty minutes
+earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the charge
+of a porter, who sat it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the
+platform.&nbsp; Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was
+looking at the books when he was seized by the arm.&nbsp; He turned,
+and, though she was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Where is it?&rsquo; she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised
+him.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It?&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;What?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The box.&nbsp; Have it put on a cab instantly.&nbsp; I am in
+fearful haste.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to trouble
+her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and the
+box mounted on the front, she passed a little way off upon the pavement
+and beckoned him to follow.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Now,&rsquo; said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones
+that had at first affected him, &lsquo;you must go on to Holyhead alone;
+go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and
+a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,&rsquo; she
+added, with a sobbing sigh, &lsquo;it does not matter.&nbsp; So, good-bye.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Teresa,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;get into your cab, and I will
+go along with you.&nbsp; You are in some distress, perhaps some danger;
+and till I know the whole, not even you can make me leave you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You will not?&rsquo; she asked.&nbsp; &lsquo;O Harry, it were
+better!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will not,&rsquo; said Harry stoutly.<br>
+<br>
+She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly
+and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and still holding
+him, walked to the cab-door.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Where are we to drive?&rsquo; asked Harry.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Home, quickly,&rsquo; she answered; &lsquo;double fare!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+And as soon as they had both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily
+trundled from the station.<br>
+<br>
+Teresa leaned back in a corner.&nbsp; The whole way Harry could perceive
+her tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation.&nbsp;
+At the door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman
+lowered the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received
+upon his shoulders.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Let the man take it,&rsquo; she whispered.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let the
+man take it.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will do no such thing,&rsquo; said Harry cheerfully; and having
+paid the fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened
+with her key.&nbsp; The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning
+errands; the house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab
+died away down Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the
+stair with his burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same
+faint and muffled ticking as before.&nbsp; The lady, still preceding
+him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly
+in the corner by the window.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;what is wrong?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You will not go away?&rsquo; she cried, with a sudden break in
+her voice and beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;O Harry, Harry, go away!&nbsp; Oh, go, and leave me to the fate
+that I deserve!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The fate?&rsquo; repeated Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is this?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No fate,&rsquo; she resumed.&nbsp; &lsquo;I do not know what
+I am saying.&nbsp; But I wish to be alone.&nbsp; You may come back this
+evening, Harry; come again when you like; but leave me now, only leave
+me now!&rsquo;&nbsp; And then suddenly, &lsquo;I have an errand,&rsquo;
+she exclaimed; &lsquo;you cannot refuse me that!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; replied Harry, &lsquo;you have no errand.&nbsp; You
+are in grief or danger.&nbsp; Lift your veil and tell me what it is.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Then,&rsquo; she said, with a sudden composure, &lsquo;you leave
+but one course open to me.&rsquo;&nbsp; And raising the veil, she showed
+him a countenance from which every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred
+with weeping, and a brow on which resolve had conquered fear.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Harry,&rsquo; she began, &lsquo;I am not what I seem.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You have told me that before,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;several
+times.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;O Harry, Harry,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;how you shame me!&nbsp;
+But this is the God&rsquo;s truth.&nbsp; I am a dangerous and wicked
+girl.&nbsp; My name is Clara Luxmore.&nbsp; I was never nearer Cuba
+than Penzance.&nbsp; From first to last I have cheated and played with
+you.&nbsp; And what I am I dare not even name to you in words.&nbsp;
+Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never
+grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The young man looked upon her aghast.&nbsp; Then a generous current
+poured along his veins.&nbsp; &lsquo;That is all one,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If you be all you say, you have the greater need of me.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is it possible,&rsquo; she exclaimed, &lsquo;that I have schemed
+in vain?&nbsp; And will nothing drive you from this house of death?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Of death?&rsquo; he echoed.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Death!&rsquo; she cried: &lsquo;death!&nbsp; In that box that
+you have dragged about London and carried on your defenceless shoulders,
+sleep, at the trigger&rsquo;s mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; cried Harry.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she continued wildly, &lsquo;will you flee now?&nbsp;
+At any moment you may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building.&nbsp;
+I was sure M&rsquo;Guire was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew
+to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall
+a victim to my own contrivances.&nbsp; I knew then I loved you - Harry,
+will you go now?&nbsp; Will you not spare me this unwilling crime?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned
+to her.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Is it,&rsquo; he asked hoarsely, &lsquo;an infernal machine?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Her lips formed the word &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; which her voice refused
+to utter.<br>
+<br>
+With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that
+still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured
+sound, the blood flowed back upon his heart.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;For whom?&rsquo; he asked.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What matters it,&rsquo; she cried, seizing him by the arm.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If you may still be saved, what matter questions?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;God in heaven!&rsquo; cried Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;And the Children&rsquo;s
+Hospital!&nbsp; At whatever cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It cannot,&rsquo; she gasped.&nbsp; &lsquo;The power of man cannot
+avert the blow.&nbsp; But you, Harry - you, my beloved - you may still
+- &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch
+was audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour.&nbsp;
+For one second the two stared at each other with lifted brows and stony
+eyes.&nbsp; Then Harry, throwing one arm over his face, with the other
+clutched the girl to his breast and staggered against the wall.<br>
+<br>
+A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked
+against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning
+people, they fell to the floor.&nbsp; Then followed a prolonged and
+strident hissing as from the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized
+them by the throat; the room was filled with dense and choking fumes.<br>
+<br>
+Presently these began a little to disperse: and when at length they
+drew themselves, all limp and shaken, to a sitting posture, the first
+object that greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its
+corner, but still leaking little wreaths of vapour round the lid.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh, poor Zero!&rsquo; cried the girl, with a strange sobbing
+laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;Alas, poor Zero!&nbsp; This will break his heart!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (Concluded)<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary
+to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero
+seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection.&nbsp; Close beside
+him stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation.&nbsp;
+The room besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro;
+the floor was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst
+of this disorder lay a lady&rsquo;s glove.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have come,&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;to make an end of
+this.&nbsp; Either you will instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost
+what it may) I will denounce you to the police.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; replied Zero, slowly shaking his head.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+are too late, dear fellow!&nbsp; I am already at the end of all my hopes,
+and fallen to be a laughing-stock and mockery.&nbsp; My reading,&rsquo;
+he added, with a gentle despondency of manner, &lsquo;has not been much
+among romances; yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my present
+state with critical exactitude; and you behold me sitting here &ldquo;like
+a burst drum.&rdquo;&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What has befallen you?&rsquo; cried Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My last batch,&rsquo; returned the plotter wearily, &lsquo;like
+all the others, is a hollow mockery and a fraud.&nbsp; In vain do I
+combine the elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have now arrived
+at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow)
+I do not know a soul that I can face.&nbsp; My subordinates themselves
+have turned upon me.&nbsp; What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality
+of sentiment, what pungency of expression!&nbsp; She came once; I could
+have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to
+announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane.&nbsp;
+Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is
+remarkable for . . . well, well!&nbsp; Denounce me, if you will; you
+but denounce the dead.&nbsp; I am extinct.&nbsp; It is strange how,
+at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be haunted by quotations
+from works of an inexact and even fanciful description; but here,&rsquo;
+he added, &lsquo;is another: &ldquo;Othello&rsquo;s occupation&rsquo;s
+gone.&rdquo;&nbsp; Yes, dear Somerset, it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter;
+and how, I ask you, after having tasted of these joys, am I to condescend
+to a less glorious life?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I cannot describe how you relieve me,&rsquo; returned Somerset,
+sitting down on one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the
+middle of the floor.&nbsp; &lsquo;I had conceived a sort of maudlin
+toleration for your character; I have a great distaste, besides, for
+anything in the nature of a duty; and upon both grounds, your news delights
+me.&nbsp; But I seem to perceive,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;a certain
+sound of ticking in this box.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner,
+&lsquo;I have set several of them going.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My God!&rsquo; cried Somerset, bounding to his feet.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Machines?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Machines!&rsquo; returned the plotter bitterly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Machines
+indeed!&nbsp; I blush to be their author.&nbsp; Alas!&rsquo; he said,
+burying his face in his hands, &lsquo;that I should live to say it!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madman!&rsquo; cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What am I to understand?&nbsp; Have you, indeed, set these diabolical
+contrivances in motion? and do we stay here to be blown up?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;&ldquo;Hoist with his own petard?&rdquo;&rsquo; returned the
+plotter musingly.&nbsp; &lsquo;One more quotation: strange!&nbsp; But
+indeed my brain is struck with numbness.&nbsp; Yes, dear boy, I have,
+as you say, put my contrivance in motion.&nbsp; The one on which you
+are sitting, I have timed for half an hour.&nbsp; Yon other - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Half an hour! - &rsquo; echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear fellow, why so much excitement?&rsquo; inquired Zero.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;My dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child,
+I would give it him to play with.&nbsp; You see this brick?&rsquo; he
+continued, lifting a cake of the infernal compound from the laboratory-table.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;At a touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable
+energy as should bestrew the square with ruins.&nbsp; Well now, behold!&nbsp;
+I dash it on the floor.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset sprang forward, and with the strength of the very ecstasy of
+terror, wrested the brick from his possession.&nbsp; &lsquo;Heavens!&rsquo;
+he cried, wiping his brow; and then with more care than ever mother
+handled her first-born withal, gingerly transported the explosive to
+the far end of the apartment: the plotter, his arms once more fallen
+to his side, dispiritedly watching him.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It was entirely harmless,&rsquo; he sighed.&nbsp; &lsquo;They
+describe it as burning like tobacco.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;In the name of fortune,&rsquo; cried Somerset, &lsquo;what have
+I done to you, or what have you done to yourself, that you should persist
+in this insane behaviour?&nbsp; If not for your own sake, then for mine,
+let us depart from this doomed house, where I profess I have not the
+heart to leave you; and then, if you will take my advice, and if your
+determination be sincere, you will instantly quit this city, where no
+further occupation can detain you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Such, dear fellow, was my own design,&rsquo; replied the plotter.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have, as you observe, no further business here; and once I
+have packed a little bag, I shall ask you to share a frugal meal, to
+go with me as far as to the station, and see the last of a broken-hearted
+man.&nbsp; And yet,&rsquo; he added, looking on the boxes with a lingering
+regret, &lsquo;I should have liked to make quite certain.&nbsp; I cannot
+but suspect my underlings of some mismanagement; it may be fond, but
+yet I cherish that idea: it may be the weakness of a man of science,
+but yet,&rsquo; he cried, rising into some energy, &lsquo;I will never,
+I cannot if I try, believe that my poor dynamite has had fair usage!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Five minutes!&rsquo; said Somerset, glancing with horror at the
+timepiece.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you do not instantly buckle to your bag,
+I leave you.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A few necessaries,&rsquo; returned Zero, &lsquo;only a few necessaries,
+dear Somerset, and you behold me ready.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+He passed into the bedroom, and after an interval which seemed to draw
+out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing
+in his hand an open Gladstone bag.&nbsp; His movements were still horribly
+deliberate, and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he
+moved to and fro about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles.&nbsp;
+Last of all, he lifted one of the squares of dynamite.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Put that down!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;If what you
+say be true, you have no call to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Merely a curiosity, dear boy,&rsquo; he said persuasively, and
+slipped the brick into his bag; &lsquo;merely a memento of the past
+- ah, happy past, bright past!&nbsp; You will not take a touch of spirits?
+no?&nbsp; I find you very abstemious.&nbsp; Well,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;if
+you have really no curiosity to await the event - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;My blood boils to get
+away.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, then,&rsquo; said Zero, &lsquo;I am ready; I would I could
+say, willing; but thus to leave the scene of my sublime endeavours -
+&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged
+him downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion;
+and still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across
+the square in the Oxford Street direction.&nbsp; They had not yet passed
+the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of
+an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a shattering<i>
+fracas</i>.&nbsp; Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in
+twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its
+cellars.&nbsp; At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground.&nbsp;
+His first glance was towards Zero.&nbsp; The plotter had but reeled
+against the garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight
+upon his heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and
+the young man heard him murmur to himself: <i>&lsquo;Nunc dimittis,
+nunc</i> <i>dimittis</i>!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The consternation of the populace was indescribable; the whole of Golden
+Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and
+fro, and like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors.&nbsp;
+And under favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering
+plotter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It was grand,&rsquo; he continued to murmur: &lsquo;it was indescribably
+grand.&nbsp; Ah, green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and oh,
+my calumniated dynamite, how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the
+footway, he consulted the dial of his watch.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;how mortifying! seven minutes
+too early!&nbsp; The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork,
+fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me.&nbsp; Alas, can there be
+no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be
+chequered by a shadow?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Incomparable ass!&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;what have you
+done?&nbsp; Blown up the house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole
+earthly property of the only person who is fool enough to befriend you!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You do not understand these matters,&rsquo; replied Zero, with
+an air of great dignity.&nbsp; &lsquo;This will shake England to the
+heart.&nbsp; Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the
+pointing finger of revenge.&nbsp; And now that my dynamite is proved
+effective - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Heavens, you remind me!&rsquo; ejaculated Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;That
+brick in your bag must be instantly disposed of.&nbsp; But how?&nbsp;
+If we could throw it in the river - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A torpedo,&rsquo; cried Zero, brightening, &lsquo;a torpedo in
+the Thames!&nbsp; Superb, dear fellow!&nbsp; I recognise in you the
+marks of an accomplished anarch.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;True!&rsquo; returned Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;It cannot so be
+done; and there is no help but you must carry it away with you.&nbsp;
+Come on, then, and let me at once consign you to a train.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nay, nay, dear boy,&rsquo; protested Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;There
+is now no call for me to leave.&nbsp; My character is now reinstated;
+my fame brightens; this is the best thing I have done yet; and I see
+from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden Square Atrocity.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My young friend,&rsquo; returned the other, &lsquo;I give you
+your choice.&nbsp; I will either see you safe on board a train or safe
+in gaol.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Somerset, this is unlike you!&rsquo; said the chymist.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You surprise me, Somerset.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,&rsquo;
+returned Somerset, with something bordering on rage.&nbsp; &lsquo;For
+on one point my mind is settled: either I see you packed off to America,
+brick and all, or else you dine in prison.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You have perhaps neglected one point,&rsquo; returned the unoffended
+Zero: &lsquo;for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means
+you can employ to force me.&nbsp; The will, my dear fellow - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Now, see here,&rsquo; interrupted Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+are ignorant of anything but science, which I can never regard as being
+truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied life; and allow me to inform you
+that I have but to raise my hand and voice - here in this street - and
+the mob - &rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Good God in heaven, Somerset,&rsquo; cried Zero, turning deadly
+white and stopping in his walk, &lsquo;great God in heaven, what words
+are these?&nbsp; Oh, not in jest, not even in jest, should they be used!&nbsp;
+The brutal mob, the savage passions . . . . Somerset, for God&rsquo;s
+sake, a public-house!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity.&nbsp; &lsquo;This
+is very interesting,&rsquo; said he.&nbsp; &lsquo;You recoil from such
+a death?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Who would not?&rsquo; asked the plotter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And to be blown up by dynamite,&rsquo; inquired the young man,
+&lsquo;doubtless strikes you as a form of euthanasia?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Pardon me,&rsquo; returned Zero: &lsquo;I own, and since I have
+braved it daily in my professional career, I own it even with pride:
+it is a death unusually distasteful to the mind of man.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;One more question,&rsquo; said Somerset: &lsquo;you object to
+Lynch Law? why?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is assassination,&rsquo; said the plotter calmly, but with
+eyebrows a little lifted, as in wonder at the question.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Shake hands with me,&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thank
+God, I have now no ill-feeling left; and though you cannot conceive
+how I burn to see you on the gallows, I can quite contentedly assist
+at your departure.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I do not very clearly take your meaning,&rsquo; said Zero, &lsquo;but
+I am sure you mean kindly.&nbsp; As to my departure, there is another
+point to be considered.&nbsp; I have neglected to supply myself with
+funds; my little all has perished in what history will love to relate
+under the name of the Golden Square Atrocity; and without what is coarsely
+if vigorously called stamps, you must be well aware it is impossible
+for me to pass the ocean.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;For me,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;you have now ceased to be
+a man.&nbsp; You have no more claim upon me than a door scraper; but
+the touching confusion of your mind disarms me from extremities.&nbsp;
+Until to-day, I always thought stupidity was funny; I now know otherwise;
+and when I look upon your idiot face, laughter rises within me like
+a deadly sickness, and the tears spring up into my eyes as bitter as
+blood.&nbsp; What should this portend?&nbsp; I begin to doubt; I am
+losing faith in scepticism.&nbsp; Is it possible,&rsquo; he cried, in
+a kind of horror of himself - &lsquo;is it conceivable that I believe
+in right and wrong?&nbsp; Already I have found myself, with incredulous
+surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.&nbsp;
+And must this change proceed?&nbsp; Have you robbed me of my youth?&nbsp;
+Must I fall, at my time of life, into the Common Banker?&nbsp; But why
+should I address that head of wood?&nbsp; Let this suffice.&nbsp; I
+dare not let you stay among women and children; I lack the courage to
+denounce you, if by any means I may avoid it; you have no money: well
+then, take mine, and go; and if ever I behold your face after to-day,
+that day will be your last.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Under the circumstances,&rsquo; replied Zero, &lsquo;I scarce
+see my way to refuse your offer.&nbsp; Your expressions may pain, they
+cannot surprise me; I am aware our point of view requires a little training,
+a little moral hygiene, if I may so express it; and one of the points
+that has always charmed me in your character is this delightful frankness.&nbsp;
+As for the small advance, it shall be remitted you from Philadelphia.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It shall not,&rsquo; said Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear fellow, you do not understand,&rsquo; returned the plotter.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I shall now be received with fresh confidence by my superiors;
+and my experiments will be no longer hampered by pitiful conditions
+of the purse.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What I am now about, sir, is a crime,&rsquo; replied Somerset;
+&lsquo;and were you to roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn
+to be reimbursed of money I had so scandalously misapplied.&nbsp; Take
+it, and keep it.&nbsp; By George, sir, three days of you have transformed
+me to an ancient Roman.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair were
+driven rapidly to the railway terminus.&nbsp; There, an oath having
+been exacted, the money changed hands.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And now,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I have bought back my honour
+with every penny I possess.&nbsp; And I thank God, though there is nothing
+before me but starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero
+Pumpernickel Jones.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To starve?&rsquo; cried Zero.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dear fellow, I cannot
+endure the thought.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Take your ticket!&rsquo; returned Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I think you display temper,&rsquo; said Zero.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Take your ticket,&rsquo; reiterated the young man.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said the plotter, as he returned, ticket in hand,
+&lsquo;your attitude is so strange and painful, that I scarce know if
+I should ask you to shake hands.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;As a man, no,&rsquo; replied Somerset; &lsquo;but I have no objection
+to shake hands with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison
+or bell-fire.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;This is a very cold parting,&rsquo; sighed the dynamiter; and
+still followed by Somerset, he began to descend the platform.&nbsp;
+This was now bustling with passengers; the train for Liverpool was just
+about to start, another had but recently arrived; and the double tide
+made movement difficult.&nbsp; As the pair reached the neighbourhood
+of the bookstall, however, they came into an open space; and here the
+attention of the plotter was attracted by a <i>Standard</i> broadside
+bearing the words: &lsquo;Second Edition: Explosion in Golden Square.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang
+forward - his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the stall - and instantly,
+with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded.&nbsp; When the smoke
+cleared away the stall was seen much shattered, and the stall keeper
+running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or
+the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to be found.<br>
+<br>
+In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and
+came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with
+hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin.&nbsp; Yet as he continued
+to walk the pavements, he wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful
+exultation, a great content, a sense, as it were, of divine presence
+and the kindliness of fate; and he was able to tell himself that even
+if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain comfort since
+Zero was expunged.<br>
+<br>
+Late in the afternoon, he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall&rsquo;s
+shop; and being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering
+what he did, he opened the glass door and entered.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ha!&rsquo; said Mr. Godall, &lsquo;Mr. Somerset!&nbsp; Well,
+have you met with an adventure?&nbsp; Have you the promised story?&nbsp;
+Sit down, if you please; suffer me to choose you a cigar of my own special
+brand; and reward me with a narrative in your best style.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I must not take a cigar,&rsquo; said Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Indeed!&rsquo; said Mr. Godall.&nbsp; &lsquo;But now I come to
+look at you more closely, I perceive that you are changed.&nbsp; My
+poor boy, I hope there is nothing wrong?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Somerset burst into tears.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+</i>On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and
+between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner
+pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in
+Rupert Street.&nbsp; It was a place he had visited but once before:
+the memory of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset
+having prevented his return.&nbsp; Even now, he looked in before he
+entered; but the shop was free of customers.<br>
+<br>
+The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny
+version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner&rsquo;s arrival.&nbsp;
+On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;By Jove,&rsquo; he thought, &lsquo;unquestionably Somerset!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to
+avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste
+to curiosity.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;&ldquo;Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,&rdquo;&rsquo; said
+the shopman to himself, in the tone of one considering a verse.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I suppose it would be too much to say &ldquo;orotunda,&rdquo;
+and yet how noble it were!&nbsp; &ldquo;Or opulent orotunda strike the
+sky.&rdquo;&nbsp; But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good
+effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Somerset, my dear fellow,&rsquo; said Challoner, &lsquo;is this
+a masquerade?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What?&nbsp; Challoner!&rsquo; cried the shopman.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+am delighted to see you.&nbsp; One moment, till I finish the octave
+of my sonnet: only the octave.&rsquo;&nbsp; And with a friendly waggle
+of the hand, he once more buried himself in the commerce of the Muses.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I say,&rsquo; he said presently, looking up, &lsquo;you seem
+in wonderful preservation: how about the hundred pounds?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,&rsquo;
+replied Challoner modestly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Somerset, &lsquo;I very much doubt the legitimacy
+of inheritance.&nbsp; The State, in my view, should collar it.&nbsp;
+I am now going through a stage of socialism and poetry,&rsquo; he added
+apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of medicinal waters.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And are you really the person of the - establishment?&rsquo;
+inquired Challoner, deftly evading the word &lsquo;shop.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;A vendor, sir, a vendor,&rsquo; returned the other, pocketing
+his poesy.&nbsp; &lsquo;I help old Happy and Glorious.&nbsp; Can I offer
+you a weed?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, I scarcely like . . . &rsquo; began Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Nonsense, my dear fellow,&rsquo; cried the shopman.&nbsp; &lsquo;We
+are very proud of the business; and the old man, let me inform you,
+besides being the most egregious of created beings from the point of
+view of ethics, is literally sprung from the loins of kings.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>De
+Godall je suis le fervent</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; There is only one Godall.
+- By the way,&rsquo; he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, &lsquo;how
+did you get on with the detective trade?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I did not try,&rsquo; said Challoner curtly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, well, I did,&rsquo; returned Somerset, &lsquo;and made the
+most incomparable mess of it: lost all my money and fairly covered myself
+with odium and ridicule.&nbsp; There is more in that business, Challoner,
+than meets the eye; there is more, in fact, in all businesses.&nbsp;
+You must believe in them, or get up the belief that you believe.&nbsp;
+Hence,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;the recognised inferiority of the plumber,
+for no one could believe in plumbing.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;<i>A propos,&rsquo;</i> asked Challoner, &lsquo;do you still
+paint?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not now,&rsquo; replied Paul; &lsquo;but I think of taking up
+the violin.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner&rsquo;s eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade
+of the detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the columns
+of the morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;By Jove,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;that&rsquo;s odd!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What is odd?&rsquo; asked Paul.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh, nothing,&rsquo; returned the other: &lsquo;only I once met
+a person called M&rsquo;Guire.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;So did I!&rsquo; cried Somerset.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is there anything
+about him?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner read as follows: &lsquo;<i>Mysterious death in Stepney</i>.&nbsp;
+An inquest was held yesterday on the body of Patrick M&rsquo;Guire,
+described as a carpenter.&nbsp; Doctor Dovering stated that he had for
+some time treated the deceased as a dispensary patient, for sleeplessness,
+loss of appetite, and nervous depression.&nbsp; There was no cause of
+death to be found.&nbsp; He would say the deceased had sunk.&nbsp; Deceased
+was not a temperate man, which doubtless accelerated death.&nbsp; Deceased
+complained of dumb ague, but witness had never been able to detect any
+positive disease.&nbsp; He did not know that he had any family.&nbsp;
+He regarded him as a person of unsound intellect, who believed himself
+a member and the victim of some secret society.&nbsp; If he were to
+hazard an opinion, he would say deceased had died of fear.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And the doctor would be right,&rsquo; cried Somerset; &lsquo;and
+my dear Challoner, I am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will
+- Well, after all,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;poor devil, he was well served.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the threshold.&nbsp;
+He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly supplied with buttons;
+his boots were full of water, his hat greasy with service; and yet he
+wore the air of one exceeding well content with life.&nbsp; He was hailed
+by the two others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And did you try the detective business?&rsquo; inquired Paul.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; returned Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh yes, by the way, I
+did though: twice, and got caught out both times.&nbsp; But I thought
+I should find my - my wife here?&rsquo; he added, with a kind of proud
+confusion.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What? are you married?&rsquo; cried Somerset.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh yes,&rsquo; said Harry, &lsquo;quite a long time: a month
+at least.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Money?&rsquo; asked Challoner.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That&rsquo;s the worst of it,&rsquo; Desborough admitted.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;We are deadly hard up.&nbsp; But the Pri--- Mr. Godall is going
+to do something for us.&nbsp; That is what brings us here.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Who was Mrs. Desborough?&rsquo; said Challoner, in the tone of
+a man of society.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;She was a Miss Luxmore,&rsquo; returned Harry.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+fellows will be sure to like her, for she is much cleverer than I.&nbsp;
+She tells wonderful stories, too; better than a book.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered.&nbsp; Somerset
+cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the Superfluous Mansion,
+and Challoner fell back a step and dropped his cigar as he beheld the
+sorceress of Chelsea.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;What!&rsquo; cried Harry, &lsquo;do you both know my wife?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I believe I have seen her,&rsquo; said Somerset, a little wildly.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I think I have met the gentleman,&rsquo; said Mrs. Desborough
+sweetly; &lsquo;but I cannot imagine where it was.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Oh no,&rsquo; cried Somerset fervently: &lsquo;I have no notion
+- I cannot conceive - where it could have been.&nbsp; Indeed,&rsquo;
+he continued, growing in emphasis, &lsquo;I think it highly probable
+that it&rsquo;s a mistake.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;And you, Challoner?&rsquo; asked Harry, &lsquo;you seemed to
+recognise her too.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;These are both friends of yours, Harry?&rsquo; said the lady.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Delighted, I am sure.&nbsp; I do not remember to have met Mr.
+Challoner.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped after
+his cigar.&nbsp; &lsquo;I do not remember to have had the pleasure,&rsquo;
+he responded huskily.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, and Mr. Godall?&rsquo; asked Mrs. Desborough.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Are you the lady that has an appointment with old - &rsquo; began
+Somerset, and paused blushing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Because if so,&rsquo; he
+resumed, &lsquo;I was to announce you at once.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small
+pavilion which had been added to the back of the house.&nbsp; On the
+roof, the rain resounded musically.&nbsp; The walls were lined with
+maps and prints and a few works of reference.&nbsp; Upon a table was
+a large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on
+which, by the aid of coloured pins, the progress of the different wars
+was being followed day by day.&nbsp; A light, refreshing odour of the
+most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal,
+but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver dogs.&nbsp;
+In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a morning muse,
+placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to the rain upon the roof.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and have you
+since last night adopted any fresh political principle?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;The lady, sir,&rsquo; said Somerset, with another blush.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You have seen her, I believe?&rsquo; returned Mr. Godall; and
+on Somerset&rsquo;s replying in the affirmative, &lsquo;You will excuse
+me, my dear sir,&rsquo; he resumed, &lsquo;if I offer you a hint.&nbsp;
+I think it not improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget the
+past.&nbsp; From one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+A moment after, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
+touching urbanity that so well became him.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,&rsquo;
+he said; &lsquo;and shall be still more so, if what were else a barren
+courtesy and a pleasure personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious
+benefit to you and Mr. Desborough.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your Highness,&rsquo; replied Clara, &lsquo;I must begin with
+thanks; it is like what I have heard of you, that you should thus take
+up the case of the unfortunate; and as for my Harry, he is worthy of
+all that you can do.&rsquo;&nbsp; She paused.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;But for yourself?&rsquo; suggested Mr. Godall - &lsquo;it was
+thus you were about to continue, I believe.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You take the words out of my mouth,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;For
+myself, it is different.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I am not here to be a judge of men,&rsquo; replied the Prince;
+&lsquo;still less of women.&nbsp; I am now a private person like yourself
+and many million others; but I am one who still fights upon the side
+of quiet.&nbsp; Now, madam, you know better than I, and God better than
+you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause not to inquire;
+it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the future I demand
+security.&nbsp; I would not willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal
+combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of the levyers of a
+private and a barbarous war.&nbsp; I speak with some severity, and yet
+I pick my terms.&nbsp; I tell myself continually that you are a woman;
+and a voice continually reminds me of the children whose lives and limbs
+you have endangered.&nbsp; A woman,&rsquo; he repeated solemnly - &lsquo;and
+children.&nbsp; Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a mother, you
+will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you kneel at night
+beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than any shame;
+and when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease, you shall
+hesitate to kneel before your Maker.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You look at the fault,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and not at the
+excuse.&nbsp; Has your own heart never leaped within you at some story
+of oppression?&nbsp; But, alas, no! for you were born upon a throne.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I was born of woman,&rsquo; said the Prince; &lsquo;I came forth
+from my mother&rsquo;s agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings.&nbsp;
+This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered.&nbsp; Is
+it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth
+and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships
+at sea and a great dust of battles on shore; and casting anxiously about
+for what should be the cause of so many and painful preparations, spied
+at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe?&nbsp; These, madam,
+are my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore,
+I have caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue.&nbsp; Yes,
+these are my politics: to change what we can, to better what we can;
+but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by
+some generous beliefs and impositions, and for no word however nobly
+sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture
+of these bonds.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+There was a silence of a moment.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I fear, madam,&rsquo; resumed the Prince, &lsquo;that I but weary
+you.&nbsp; My views are formal like myself; and like myself, they also
+begin to grow old.&nbsp; But I must still trouble you for some reply.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I can say but one thing,&rsquo; said Mrs. Desborough: &lsquo;I
+love my husband.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;It is a good answer,&rsquo; returned the Prince; &lsquo;and you
+name a good influence, but one that need not be conterminous with life.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I will not play at pride with such a man as you,&rsquo; she answered.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;What do you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure.&nbsp; What
+shall I say?&nbsp; I have done much that I cannot defend and that I
+would not do again.&nbsp; Can I say more?&nbsp; Yes: I can say this:
+I never abused myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of politics.&nbsp;
+I was at least prepared to meet reprisals.&nbsp; While I was levying
+war myself - or levying murder, if you choose the plainer term - I never
+accused my adversaries of assassination.&nbsp; I never felt or feigned
+a righteous horror, when a price was put upon my life by those whom
+I attacked.&nbsp; I never called the policeman a hireling.&nbsp; I may
+have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a fool.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Enough, madam,&rsquo; returned the Prince: &lsquo;more than enough!&nbsp;
+Your words are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even
+the assassin is a sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my eyes
+than intellectual clarity.&nbsp; Suffer me, then, to ask you to retire;
+for by the signal of that bell, I perceive my old friend, your mother,
+to be close at hand.&nbsp; With her I promise you to do my utmost.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the Prince, opening a
+door upon the other side, admitted Mrs. Luxmore.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam and my very good friend,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;is my face
+so much changed that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr.
+Godall?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To be sure!&rsquo; she cried, looking at him through her glasses.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I have always regarded your Highness as a perfect man; and in
+your altered circumstances, of which I have already heard with deep
+regret, I will beg you to consider my respect increased instead of lessened.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have found it so,&rsquo; returned the Prince, &lsquo;with every
+class of my acquaintance.&nbsp; But, madam, I pray you to be seated.&nbsp;
+My business is of a delicate order, and regards your daughter.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;In that case,&rsquo; said Mrs. Luxmore, &lsquo;you may save yourself
+the trouble of speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have nothing
+to do with her.&nbsp; I will not hear one word in her defence; but as
+I value nothing so particularly as the virtue of justice, I think it
+my duty to explain to you the grounds of my complaint.&nbsp; She deserted
+me, her natural protector; for years, she has consorted with the most
+disreputable persons; and to fill the cup of her offence, she has recently
+married.&nbsp; I refuse to see her, or the being to whom she has linked
+herself.&nbsp; One hundred and twenty pounds a year, I have always offered
+her: I offer it again.&nbsp; It is what I had myself when I was her
+age.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Very well, madam,&rsquo; said the Prince; &lsquo;and be that
+so!&nbsp; But to touch upon another matter: what was the income of the
+Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;My father?&rsquo; asked the spirited old lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+believe he had seven hundred pounds in the year.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;You were one, I think, of several?&rsquo; pursued the Prince.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Of four,&rsquo; was the reply.&nbsp; &lsquo;We were four daughters;
+and painful as the admission is to make, a more detestable family could
+scarce be found in England.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Dear me!&rsquo; said the Prince.&nbsp; &lsquo;And you, madam,
+have an income of eight thousand?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Not more than five,&rsquo; returned the old lady; &lsquo;but
+where on earth are you conducting me?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,&rsquo; replied
+Florizel, smiling.&nbsp; &lsquo;For I must not suffer you to take your
+father for a rule.&nbsp; He was poor, you are rich.&nbsp; He had many
+calls upon his poverty: there are none upon your wealth.&nbsp; And indeed,
+madam, if you will let me touch this matter with a needle, there is
+but one point in common to your two positions: that each had a daughter
+more remarkable for liveliness than duty.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have been entrapped into this house,&rsquo; said the old lady,
+getting to her feet.&nbsp; &lsquo;But it shall not avail.&nbsp; Not
+all the tobacconists in Europe . . .&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Ah, madam,&rsquo; interrupted Florizel, &lsquo;before what is
+referred to as my fall, you had not used such language!&nbsp; And since
+you so much object to the simple industry by which I live, let me give
+you a friendly hint.&nbsp; If you will not consent to support your daughter,
+I shall be constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I
+doubt not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law shall
+have a livery and run the errands.&nbsp; With such young blood my business
+might be doubled, and I might be bound in common gratitude to place
+the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Your Highness,&rsquo; said the old lady, &lsquo;I have been very
+rude, and you are very cunning.&nbsp; I suppose the minx is on the premises.&nbsp;
+Produce her.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Let us rather observe them unperceived,&rsquo; said the Prince;
+and so saying he rose and quietly drew back the curtain.<br>
+<br>
+Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and Harry
+were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest; Challoner, alleging
+some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the detested neighbourhood
+of the enchantress.<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;At that moment,&rsquo; Mrs. Desborough was saying, &lsquo;Mr
+Gladstone detected the features of his cowardly assailant.&nbsp; A cry
+rose to his lips: a cry of mingled triumph . . .&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;That is Mr. Somerset!&rsquo; interrupted the spirited old lady,
+in the highest note of her register.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Somerset, what
+have you done with my house-property?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Madam,&rsquo; said the Prince, &lsquo;let it be mine to give
+the explanation; and in the meanwhile, welcome your daughter.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;Well, Clara, how do you do?&rsquo; said Mrs. Luxmore.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
+appears I am to give you an allowance.&nbsp; So much the better for
+you.&nbsp; As for Mr. Somerset, I am very ready to have an explanation;
+for the whole affair, though costly, was eminently humorous.&nbsp; And
+at any rate,&rsquo; she added, nodding to Paul, &lsquo;he is a young
+gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his pictures were the
+funniest I ever saw.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&lsquo;I have ordered a collation,&rsquo; said the Prince.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr.
+Somerset, as these are all your friends, I propose, if you please, that
+you should join them at table.&nbsp; I will take the shop.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Footnotes:<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a>&nbsp; Hereupon
+the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.&nbsp; Fearing,
+apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset should
+throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon the English people
+to remember with more gratitude the services of the police; to what
+unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against what
+odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward, either in fame
+or money: matter, it has appeared to the translators, too serious for
+this place.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a>&nbsp; In this name
+the accent falls upon the <i>e</i>; the <i>s</i> is sibilant.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a>&nbsp; The Arabian
+author of the original has here a long passage conceived in a style
+too oriental for the English reader.&nbsp; We subjoin a specimen, and
+it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse: &lsquo;Any
+writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a never-resting fightard;&rsquo;
+and he goes on (if we correctly gather his meaning) to object to such
+elegant and obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard,
+apple-filchard (clearly justified by the parallel - pilchard) and opera
+dancard.&nbsp; &lsquo;Dynamitist,&rsquo; he adds, &lsquo;I could understand.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a>&nbsp; The Arabian
+author, with that quaint particularity of touch which our translation
+usually praetermits, here registers a somewhat interesting detail.&nbsp;
+Zero pronounced the word &lsquo;boom;&rsquo; and the reader, if but
+for the nonce, will possibly consent to follow him.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE DYNAMITER ***<br>
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