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-  <body>   
-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of For whose sake?, by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: For whose sake?</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>a sequel to “why did he wed her?”</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 15, 2023 [eBook #69809]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR WHOSE SAKE? ***</div>
-
-<div class='tnotes covernote'>
-
-<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
-
-<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='titlepage'>
-
-<div>
-  <h1 class='c001'><em>FOR WHOSE SAKE?</em><br> <span class='xlarge'><span class='sc'>A Sequel to “Why Did He Wed Her?”</span></span></h1>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c002'>
-    <div><span class='large'>By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH</span></div>
-    <div class='c002'><span class='small'>Author of</span></div>
-    <div><span class='small'>“Lilith,” “The Unloved Wife,” “Em,” “Em’s Husband,” “Ishmael,” “Self-Raised,” Etc.</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div  class='figcenter id001'>
-<img src='images/i_title.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-  <div class='nf-center'>
-    <div>A. L. BURT COMPANY</div>
-    <div>PUBLISHERS      :: ::      NEW YORK</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='border'>
-
-<div class='chapter ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div>Popular Books</div>
-    <div class='c002'><span class='large'>By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH</span></div>
-    <div class='c002'><span class='small'>In Handsome Cloth Binding</span></div>
-    <div class='c002'><span class='large'>Price      60 Cents per Volume</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class='c004'>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>CAPITOLA’S PERIL</div>
-      <div class='line'>CRUEL AS THE GRAVE</div>
-      <div class='line'>“EM”</div>
-      <div class='line'>EM’S HUSBAND</div>
-      <div class='line'>FOR WHOSE SAKE</div>
-      <div class='line'>ISHMAEL</div>
-      <div class='line'>LILITH</div>
-      <div class='line'>THE BRIDE’S FATE</div>
-      <div class='line'>THE CHANGED BRIDES</div>
-      <div class='line'>THE HIDDEN HAND</div>
-      <div class='line'>THE UNLOVED WIFE</div>
-      <div class='line'>TRIED FOR HER LIFE</div>
-      <div class='line'>SELF-RAISED</div>
-      <div class='line'>WHY DID HE WED HER</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<hr class='c005'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c006'>
-    <div>For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-  <div class='nf-center'>
-    <div>A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS</div>
-    <div>52 Duane Street      New York</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-  <div class='nf-center'>
-    <div>Copyright, 1884</div>
-    <div>By ROBERT BONNER</div>
-    <div class='c002'><span class='sc'>For Whose Sake</span></div>
-    <div class='c002'>Printed by special arrangement with</div>
-    <div>STREET &#38; SMITH</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter ph1'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div>FOR WHOSE SAKE?</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<div>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER I<br> <span class='large'>A STARTLING RENCONTRE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Two travelers on board the ocean steamer <em>Scorpio</em>,
-bound from New York to Liverpool, were Gentleman Geff
-and his queenly bride.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was in blissful ignorance that his forsaken wife and
-her infant were on the same ship.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The wife whom he believed to be in her pauper grave in
-potter’s field, and the child of whose birth he had never
-heard!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was riding on the topmost wave of success
-and popularity. He had paid a high price for his fortune,
-but he told himself continually that the fortune was
-worth all he had given for it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Certainly there were two awful pictures that would present
-themselves to his mental vision with terrible distinctness
-and persistent regularity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The first was of a deep wood, in the dead of night, and a
-young man’s ghastly face turned up to the starlight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The other was of a silent city street, in the dark hours before
-day, and a girl’s form prone upon the pavement, with a
-dark stream creeping from a wound in her side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were moments when the murderer would have
-given all that he had gained by his crimes to wake up and
-find that they had all been “the phantasmagoria of a midnight
-dream”; that he was not the counterfeit Randolph
-Hay, Esquire, of Haymore, with a rent roll of twenty
-thousand pounds sterling a year, and an income from invested
-funds of twice as much, and with two atrocious
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>murders on his soul, but simply the poor devil of an adventurer
-who lived by his wits, and was known to the miners
-as Gentleman Geff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At such times he would drink deeply of brandy, and
-under its influence find all his views change. He would
-philosophize about life, fortune, destiny, necessity, and try
-to persuade himself that he had been more sinned against
-than sinning. He then felt sure that, if he had been born
-to wealth, he would have been a philanthropist of the highest
-order, a benefactor to the whole human race; would have
-founded churches, and sent out missionaries; would have
-established hospitals and asylums, and erected model tenement
-houses for the poor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ah! how good and great a man he would have proved
-himself if he had only been born to vast wealth! But he
-had been born to genteel poverty. Fate had been unkind.
-It was all the fault of fate, he argued.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In this exaltation he would go into the gentlemen’s
-saloon, sit down at one of the gaming tables, and stake,
-and win or lose, large sums of money; and so, in the feverish
-mental and physical excitement of drinking and gambling,
-he would seek to drive away remorse.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Often he would drink himself into a state of maudlin
-sentimentality, and in that state reel into the stateroom
-occupied by himself and his bride. He was really more “in
-love” with Lamia Leegh than he had ever been with any
-woman in his long career of “lady-killing.” He had married
-her for love, although it was the Turk’s love.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Lamia did not love him in the least. She had married
-him for rank, money and position. She had begun by
-liking him, then enduring him, and now she ended by detesting
-him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Some poor girls marry old men for money; some marry
-ugly men or withered men for the same cause; but to marry
-a drunkard for that, or for any cause; to be obliged to live
-with the beast; to be unable to escape from him; to see him
-day and night; to smell his nauseous breath—it is horrible,
-abhorrent, abominable!” she said to herself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yet she never dared to let her disgust and abhorrence appear
-to its object. She was too politic to offend him, for—he
-held the purse strings. There had been no settlements—nothing
-of the sort—notwithstanding all the talk about
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>them with Will Walling. For every dollar she would receive
-she must depend on her husband.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Cashmere shawls and sable furs and solitaire diamonds
-that she longed for, if she should get them at all,
-must be got from him, and she knew she would get them,
-and everything else she might want, so long as he should
-possess his fortune and she retain his favor. So she veiled
-her dislike under a show of affection, and she even made
-for herself a rule and set for herself a task, so that he might
-never find out her real feelings toward him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The more disgusted she might really be, the more enamored
-she would pretend to be.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was surely a very hard way of earning diamonds
-and the rest, but, like Gentleman Geff, she told herself that
-they were worth it; and she thought so.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Their fellow passengers all knew them to be a newly married
-pair; for there happened to be a few New York
-“society” people on the ship, who had heard all about the
-grand wedding at Peter Vansitart’s, and they had spread
-the news in the first cabin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Their fellow voyagers also believed them to be a very
-happy couple; though ladies sometimes whispered together
-that he certainly did look rather dissipated; and gentlemen
-remarked to each other that it was a pity he drank so hard
-and played so high. It was a bad beginning at his age, and
-if it should continue Haymore fortunes could scarcely
-“stand the racket.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But notwithstanding these drawbacks, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
-Hay were very popular among their fellow voyagers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The weather continued good for the first week.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bride and groom were daily to be seen on deck—well
-wrapped up, for the fine October days were cold on midocean.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yet though they were every day on deck, they had never
-yet encountered Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>How was that? And where was Jennie?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie Montgomery was in her stateroom, so prostrated
-by seasickness that she was scarcely able to take care of her
-child. She had never once left her room even to go into the
-ladies’ saloon, but passed her time between her lower berth
-and her broad sofa.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stewardess Hopkins became interested in poor little
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>Jennie and her baby—“one as much of a baby as t’other,”
-she had said to one of the stateroom stewards—and so she
-showed them kindness from a heartfelt sympathy, such as
-no fee could have purchased.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the eighth day out, Mrs. Hopkins was in the room
-with the young mother and child, when Jennie, looking
-gratefully at the stewardess, said, with tears in her eyes:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mrs. Hopkins, I do thank you with all my heart,
-but feel so deeply that that is not enough. I shall never,
-never be able to repay you for all your goodness to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t talk in that way, my dear,” replied the stewardess,
-in self-depreciation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If it were not for you, I believe that I and baby should
-both die on the sea.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, dear. ‘The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn
-lamb,’ and if I hadn’t been here He would have provided
-some one else for you. But now, dear, I do really think you
-ought to try and exert yourself to go up on deck. Here
-we are a week at sea, and you have had no enjoyment of the
-voyage at all. Don’t you think, now that the baby has gone
-to sleep, and is safe to be quiet for two or three hours, you
-could let me wrap you up warm and help you up on deck?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should like to do so, but I am not able; indeed I am
-not. I am as weak as a rat.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Rats are remarkably strong for their size, my dear, for
-they’re all muscle. And as for you being weak, it is only a
-nervous fancy, caused by your seasickness. But you’re over
-that now. And if you will only let me help you up on deck,
-why, every step you take and every breath you breathe will
-give you new life and strength,” persisted the stewardess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I will go.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie stood up, holding by the edge of the upper berth
-for support, while the stewardess prepared her to go up on
-deck.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And when last of all Jennie was well wrapped up in her
-fur-lined cloak, Mrs. Hopkins led and supported her to the
-stairs, and took her carefully up to the deck, and found her
-a sheltered seat on the lee side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sit here,” she said, “and every breath of this fresh air
-you breathe will give you new life.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And having tucked a rug well around the feet of her
-charge, the stewardess left Jennie to herself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>Jennie looked around her. There were very few people
-within the range of her vision, only the man at the wheel
-and two or three deck hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was the luncheon hour, and nearly all the passengers
-who were not in their staterooms had gone to the dining
-saloon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Jennie looked abroad over the boundless expanse of
-dazzling blue sea, leaping and sparkling under the light of
-a radiant blue sky. It was splendid, glorious, but blinding
-to vision just out of the shadows of the stateroom and cabin,
-and so Jennie closed her eyes to recover them, and sat with
-them closed for some moments. At this hour it was very
-quiet on deck. Only the sounds of the ship’s movements
-were heard. Jennie, with her tired eyes shut, sat there in
-calm content.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am going mad! I am going mad! It has taken
-shape at last—or is this—delirium tremens? I—must not—drink
-so much!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a low, husky, shuddering voice that uttered these
-strange words in Jennie’s hearing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She opened her eyes at the sound, looked up and saw——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery, her husband, within a few feet of
-her, staring in horror upon her, while he supported himself
-in a collapsed state against the bulwarks of the ship. The
-face that confronted her was ashen, ghastly, awe-stricken,
-yet defiant, as with the impotent revolt of a demon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie returned his glare with a gaze of amazement and
-perplexity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so they remained spellbound, staring at each other,
-without moving or speaking, for perhaps a full minute.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie was the first to recover herself. A moment’s reflection
-enabled her to understand the situation—that
-Kightly Montgomery, under his new name and with his
-new wife, was her fellow passenger on the <em>Scorpio</em>. This
-was clear enough to her now.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She was also the first to break the spell of silence, though
-it cost her an effort to do so, and her voice quivered, and
-she lowered her eyes as she said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You seem to take me for an optical illusion.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He still glared at her without answering.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am no ‘illusion,’” she continued, more steadily, gaining
-more self-control every moment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>“If not—what—in the devil—are you?” he gasped at
-length, terrified, yet aggressive.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am your wife; but shall never claim, or wish to claim,
-the position,” she replied, still keeping her eyes down to
-avoid the pain of seeing his face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are—I do not—I thought——How——” he began,
-in utter confusion of mind, and with his eyes starting
-from the intensity of his stare.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go away, please, and collect yourself. Do not fear me.
-I shall not trouble you. But pray, go now, and do not come
-near me or speak to me again,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I thought—you were dead!” he blurted out, with
-brutal bluntness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie reflected for a moment. Why should he have
-thought that she was dead, even though he had tried to kill
-her, and had indeed left her for dead? Then she concluded
-that he must have fled from the city immediately after having
-committed the crime by which he had intended to rid
-himself of her forever; but she made no reply to his remark.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why have you followed me here?” he demanded, trying
-to cover his intense anxiety with an air of bravado.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I did not follow you. I did not know that you were to
-be on this boat. How should I have known it? And why
-should I have followed you?” she calmly inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How is it—that you are here, then?” he questioned, his
-voice still shaking, his eyes staring, his form supported
-against the bulwarks of the ship.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am going home to my father’s house. When I got
-well in the Samaritan Hospital a few good women of means
-clubbed together and raised the funds to give me an outfit
-and pay my passage to England. They engaged for me one
-of the best staterooms in the ladies’ cabin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How is it—that I have never seen you—or suspected
-your presence on the ship before? Have you been hiding
-from me?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; I have already told you that I did not know you
-were on board. You have not seen me because I have been
-seasick in my stateroom. This is my first day on deck.
-And now will you please to go away and leave me?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Presently. By Jove, Jennie, you take things very
-coolly!” he exclaimed, drawing a handkerchief from his
-breast pocket and wiping his forehead, on which beads of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>perspiration stood out. “What do you intend to do?” he
-suddenly demanded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nothing to trouble you while you are on this ship. I do
-not wish to see, or speak to, or even to know you here again,
-and I will not.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I—well—I thank you for so much grace. But what will
-you do after you shall have reached England?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I shall tell my father the whole story—of which he has
-no suspicion now—and I shall place myself in his hands for
-direction, and do whatever he counsels me to do. He was
-my guard and guide all my life until I threw off his safe
-authority and followed you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pity!” muttered Gentleman Geff to himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now,” said Jennie, “once more, and for the third
-time, I beg you to leave me. Let this distressing and most
-improper interview come to an end at once. I think it is
-both sinful and shameful, in view of the past and the
-present, for you to speak to me, or even to look at me. Perhaps
-I am doing wrong in keeping quiet. Perhaps I ought
-to denounce you to the captain and officers of this ship.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That would be quite useless, my girl,” exclaimed Gentleman
-Geff, daring to speak contemptuously for the first time
-during the interview, yet still quaking between the conflicting
-passions of terror and defiance; “you could not prove
-anything against me here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Probably not; and my interference would not only be
-useless, but worse than useless; it would make an ugly scandal,
-and create a great disturbance. No, I will do nothing
-until I take counsel with my father. But let me give you
-this warning: My father is to meet me at Liverpool. Do
-not let him see you then! And now, Capt. Montgomery,
-if you do not leave me, I shall be obliged to go to my room,”
-Jennie concluded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff turned away. It was time, for people
-were leaving the dining saloon and coming up on deck.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Several people—men, women and children—passed
-Jennie on their way forward; nearly every one of these
-glanced at Jennie with more or less interest; for hers was
-a new face. Now, in the beginning of a sea voyage nearly
-all the passengers are strangers to each other. But after
-eight days, when every one on board is known to the other
-by sight, a new face is an event. And this face was fair,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>pensive and interesting, and it belonged to a young woman
-who seemed to be quite alone on board.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Among those who passed was a superbly beautiful woman,
-whose Juno-like form was wrapped in a rich fur-lined cloak,
-the hood of which was drawn over her lovely head, partly
-concealing the glory of her red, gold-hued hair, and half
-shading the radiance of her blond and blooming complexion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This goddess did something more than glance at the
-pretty, pale, childlike form reclining there. She stopped
-and gazed at her for a moment, and then, when Jennie
-lowered her eyes, the goddess passed on.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the stream of passengers had all gone forward
-Jennie drew a sigh of relief and composed herself to rest
-and to think over the sudden, overwhelming interview
-which had just passed between herself and her husband.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie was troubled, not in her affections—for if Kightly
-Montgomery had not succeeded in slaying her, he had certainly
-managed to kill her love for him—but in her conscience.
-Was she right in letting him go on in his course
-of evil? Ought she not to stop it? But could she, even if
-she tried? And she shrank from trying. For if she should
-succeed in exposing him, what a terrible mortification it
-would be to that unfortunate young lady whom he had
-feloniously married; who was reported to be as religious
-and charitable as she was beautiful and accomplished; who,
-even in the busy week before her wedding day, had given
-time to go out shopping for her—Jennie’s—outfit; and
-whom it was now too late to save, since she had been living
-with her supposed husband for a week.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To expose him now, and here, would be to degrade her
-before all the ship’s passengers, so that all who now admired,
-honored or envied her, would soon pity and avoid
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie could not bring an “unoffending” fellow creature
-to that pass; and if her forbearance was a sin, she hoped
-the Lord would pardon her for His sake who pitied the
-sinful woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While Jennie was “wrestling” so in the spirit, the stewardess
-came up and put her baby in her arms, smiling, and
-saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As I was passing by your stateroom I just looked in to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>see if all was right, and then I saw this little thing lying
-wide awake and crowing to herself as good as pie. And I
-thought I would wrap her up and bring her to you for a
-breath of this good, fresh air, which, if it was doing you
-good, wouldn’t do her harm. Was I right?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, Mrs. Hopkins. And I thank you so much,”
-said Jennie, as she stooped and kissed the babe that lay
-upon her lap; but Mrs. Hopkins had already gone about
-her business.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie smiled and cooed to the little one, enjoying its
-presence, and rejoicing that Kightly Montgomery was gone
-from her side and was not likely to return. She had purposely
-avoided speaking of the child to him. She was glad
-that he had not once inquired about it. She had almost a
-superstitious dread of his seeing, touching or even knowing
-of the babe, for fear that his evil nature might, in some
-moral, physical or, perhaps, occult way, bring harm to the
-little innocent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She was still bending over the babe, when a soft, sweet,
-melodious voice addressed her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pardon me, you are Mrs. Montgomery, are you not?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie looked up. The goddess had come back. Jennie
-did not know her, but she answered quietly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am Mrs. Randolph Hay; and that I had heard of you
-and become interested in you must be my excuse for intruding
-my acquaintance on you,” added the beauty, with a
-bewitching smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie flushed, paled, trembled and cast down her eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This, then, was Lamia Leegh, the unfortunate young lady
-whom Kightly Montgomery had married!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie felt sorry for her, standing there in all the pride
-and pomp of her beauty and wealth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, madam,” was all that she could find
-to say, in a low tone, with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The goddess thought the little woman overpowered by
-her own grandeur, smiled condescendingly, and said complacently:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What a pretty baby you have! Girl or a boy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Girl, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is right. I love girl babies. What is her name?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She is not christened yet.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>“How old is she?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Two months on the third of this month, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! She is well grown for that age. I need not ask
-if she has good health. She looks so well.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, madam. Thank Heaven!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is the first time you have been on deck, I think?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Suffered from seasickness, I fear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam, until this morning.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! very sad to have missed all this beautiful voyage.
-An exceptionally fine voyage. I have crossed many times,
-but have never experienced so fine a voyage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie did not reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, then, seasickness is a great benefit to some constitutions.
-I hope that it will have been so in your case.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Still Jennie did not answer, except by a bow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you quite recovered?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite, ma’am, thank you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yet you feel weak?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will pass away. You are traveling quite alone, I
-believe.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, if I or Mr. Randolph Hay can be of any service
-to you, I hope you will call on us. I, and I am sure Mr.
-Hay also, would be very much pleased to serve you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you, madam, very much, but my dear father
-will meet me at Liverpool, so that I shall not need assistance.
-But equally I thank you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie would have said more had she been able. She
-would have acknowledged the services or the supposed services
-the lady had performed for her before they had ever
-met; but her tongue “clove to the roof of her mouth,” so
-to speak. It was all she could do to utter the perfunctory
-words she had spoken, and these without raising her eyes to
-the face of the goddess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Randolph Hay bowed graciously, and passed on
-toward the cabin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poor thing!” breathed Jennie, with deep pity; “poor,
-poor thing! She, so proud, so stately, so beautiful, to be
-cast down to the dust! Oh, no! Heaven pardon me, but
-I must spare him for her sake! I will do nothing until I
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>see my father, and then I must tell him all, and be guided
-by his counsels.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So then Jennie stooped and kissed her baby and felt at
-peace with all the world.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia Leegh was not one to hide her “light under a
-bushel.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Before many hours had passed every one had heard the
-pathetic story of the English curate’s young daughter, who
-had been married, deserted and months afterward half
-murdered by her husband; how she had been taken to the
-Samaritan Hospital, where she became a mother; how certain
-charitable ladies had become so interested in her case
-that they had made up a fund to give her and her child an
-outfit and send them home to her father, and how she was
-on this very ship.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Without claiming all the credit in so many words, Lamia
-Leegh had left the impression on the minds of her hearers
-that she herself had been the principal, if not the only, benefactress
-of Jennie Montgomery, and she won applause for
-her benevolence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Kightly Montgomery left his wife seated on the
-deck it was with a feeling of relief to get out of her presence.
-He hurried to his stateroom, looked around, and
-felt more relief to find that his deceived bride was absent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He kept a private stock of strong old brandy in a case.
-He opened a bottle, poured out half a goblet full, and drank
-it at a draught.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he felt better still.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She will keep her word,” he said to himself. “If she
-had intended to give me away, she would have done so before
-this. Any man would have denounced another under
-such circumstances. But these women are inexplicable. I
-wonder if her child was born alive? I wonder if it is living,
-and if she has it with her, or if she has placed it in some
-asylum? Impossible to say. She volunteers no information
-on the subject, and I certainly cannot question her
-about it. She wishes me to avoid her. I am quite willing
-to oblige her in that particular. I very much do not wish
-to see her again. No, nor her father! I must not meet the
-dominie, under present complications. It would be awkward.
-I shall shirk that <i><span lang="fr">rencontre</span></i> by getting off the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>steamer at Queenstown and taking the mail route to London
-via Kingstown and Holyhead. That will do!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He filled and drank another half goblet of brandy, and
-then sat staring at his boots.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Lamia Leegh entered the stateroom. He
-looked up at her stupidly. His face was flushed, his eyes
-were fishy. The air was full of the smell of brandy. She
-knew that he had been drinking to intoxication; but she
-cared too little for him and too much for herself to notice
-this. He might drink himself to death, if he pleased, without
-any interference from her, so that he supplied her with
-plenty of money while he lived and left her a rich dower
-when he should die.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So, without seeming to notice his state, she sat down on
-the sofa by him and said, very pleasantly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You remember hearing me speak of that interesting
-young woman from the Samaritan Hospital for whom we
-furnished an outfit and engaged a stateroom in this cabin
-to send her home to her people?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What young woman? Ah! yes, I believe I do. What of
-her?” he drawled, with assumed indifference.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have just seen her and her child——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Child?” he echoed involuntarily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; I told you she had a child, you remember.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Aw—no—I didn’t.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes. Such a pretty little girl baby! They have
-been shut up in their stateroom for a week on account of
-the mother’s seasickness. She is out on deck to-day for the
-first time. When I saw a new face there I thought it was
-hers, but was not certain, so I passed her by. But a little
-later, when I saw the stewardess place a young infant in
-her arms, then I felt almost certain, and I went up and
-spoke to her. A prodigal daughter, I fear she is, but a most
-interesting one, and her father is to meet her at Liverpool
-and——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lamia,” interrupted the man, “suppose we drop the
-subject. I am not at all interested in your charity girl.”
-He yawned with a bored air.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, very well; what shall we talk about? The end of
-the voyage? Well, I heard the captain say that we shall
-be at Queenstown to-morrow morning.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And we shall get off at Queenstown; do you hear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>“At Queenstown? But why, when our tickets are for
-Liverpool?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because I will it to be so!” said the man, in the sullen
-wilfulness of intoxication.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, very well! Quite right! So be it!” replied Lamia,
-with contemptuous submission.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the discussion ended.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She loosened her dress and laid herself down on the
-lower berth to take an afternoon nap.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He sat on the sofa, with the brandy bottle before him,
-and drank and drank and drank.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That evening Gentleman Geff was much too drunk to go
-into the dining saloon, yet with the fatuity of drunkenness
-he insisted on doing so, and he reeled out of his stateroom
-and through the cabin and up the stairs. But had it
-not been for Lamia’s strong support he could never have
-reached his seat at their table. Lamia was like Burns’
-Nanny:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“A handsome jaud and strang,”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>and she succeeded in setting him safe in his seat, where he
-sat bloated, blear-eyed, and luckily stupid, instead of hilarious
-or quarrelsome. Every one at table noticed his condition,
-and—</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What a pity! What a pity!” was thought or whispered
-by one or another.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a severe ordeal for Lamia, yet the trial was softened
-by the thought that all the sympathies of the company
-were with her, all the condemnation for him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She was glad at last when she succeeded in drawing him
-away from the table to the privacy of their stateroom, where
-he fell upon the sofa and sank into the heavy sleep of intoxication.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia felt too bitterly humiliated to return to the saloon
-or go on deck, so she remained in the stateroom, reading a
-French book until it was time to retire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she turned into her berth, leaving the stupefied
-inebriate to sleep off the fumes of his brandy, lying on the
-sofa dressed as he was.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie Montgomery sat on deck with her baby on her
-knees until the fading day and the freshening breeze warned
-her to seek shelter in the cabin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>Then she took her child to her stateroom, where soon
-after both were rocked to sleep by the rolling of the ship.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a dark night, partly overclouded, and with but
-few stars shining.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A few passengers, all men, remained on deck to catch the
-first glimpse of land. Before midnight the man on the
-lookout made Cape Clear Lighthouse, and the ship ran
-along the coast of Ireland.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER II<br> <span class='large'>FATHER AND DAUGHTER</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Jennie slept late that morning, and was finally awakened
-by the cessation of the motion to which she had been accustomed
-day and night for the last nine days.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She started up and looked out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ship was at anchor in the fine cove of Cork, and the
-window of her stateroom commanded the harbor. She knew
-there was a crowd of people on deck, but she felt no disposition
-to join them; so after she had washed and
-dressed her child and herself she sat down and waited until
-the kind stewardess brought her some breakfast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, here we are at Queenstown,” said the good woman,
-as she set down the breakfast tray.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you for bringing my breakfast, Mrs. Hopkins.
-How long will we remain here?” inquired Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Only a few hours. The bride and groom—Mr. and Mrs.
-Randolph Hay, you know—have got off. I know they took
-their tickets for Liverpool, and here they have got off at
-Queenstown. Now they will go to London by way of Holyhead.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah,” said Jennie, only because she felt that she must say
-something.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very queer, I call it, for gentlemen and ladies to sacrifice
-their passage money in that way. But when people have
-more money than they know what to do with they do fling
-a good deal away, that’s certain.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie began to drink her coffee to avoid the necessity of
-speaking. She did not think it was queer that the pair
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>should have left the steamer at Queenstown, for she understood
-very well that Kightly Montgomery dared not face her
-father at Liverpool.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Are they really off, Mrs. Hopkins?” she inquired at last.
-“Are you sure they have actually gone?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Went ashore in the boat half an hour ago. Took all
-their baggage from the stateroom, but left that which is in
-the hold—big trunks that must go to Liverpool, where they
-will claim them at the custom house, when they themselves
-get there by the mail route,” replied the stewardess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was a great relief to Jennie. To know that Kightly
-Montgomery was really gone from the steamer, not to
-return, gave her a sense of freedom and security which she
-had not experienced since she had discovered his baleful
-presence on board. She felt now that she could go freely on
-the deck and take her child there, and enjoy all the delights
-of the voyage across the channel and up the Mersey, without
-the fear of meeting him or his deceived bride.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not think, Mrs. Hopkins, that I shall trouble any
-one to bring my meals to me here after this. I shall go to
-the public table,” she said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It would be much better for you, my dear,” the stewardess
-replied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now that I have finished breakfast, I will take baby
-and go up on deck.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will be better for you, too, my dear. Let me help
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no. I am quite well and ever so much stronger than
-I was yesterday. Besides, the ship is quite still, so you see
-I can walk steadily and carry baby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the stewardess resolutely took the child from the
-arms of the young mother and carried it up before her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The deck was a crowded and busy scene. All the passengers
-were up there, gazing out upon the beautiful
-scenery. But crowded as it was, the people were nearly all
-standing, so it was easy for the stewardess to find a good
-seat for the mother, to whom, when comfortably arranged,
-she gave the child.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her fellow passengers took but little notice of Jennie
-now; they were too much interested in other matters. She
-sat there and enjoyed the scene until the ship got under
-way again and stood out for the mouth of the Mersey.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>This last day on board Jennie enjoyed the voyage very
-much. She spent nearly the whole day on deck, and left it
-with reluctance at night to retire to her stateroom. That
-night she could scarcely sleep for the excitement of anticipating
-her meeting with her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nevertheless, she was up and out on deck early the next
-morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were near the mouth of the Mersey. As soon as she
-had breakfasted she packed up all her effects, so as to be
-ready to go on shore as soon as the ship should land.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she sat on deck to watch the shores until at last
-the steamer drew near to the great English seaport and
-came to anchor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A steam tender from the piers was rapidly approaching
-the <em>Scorpio</em>.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A great crowd of people were on board the tender, apparently
-coming to meet friends on the <em>Scorpio</em>.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Many field glasses were in active use in the hands of voyagers
-trying to make out the persons of their friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie had no glass, but as she stood bending forward,
-straining her eyes to see, a gentleman near her said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you take my glass?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She thanked him, and took it, adjusted the lenses to her
-sight, and held the instrument up to her eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A cry of joy had nearly broken from her lips. She saw
-her father standing on the deck of the coming tender, looking
-well and happy. He, too, had a glass, and was using it.
-She saw that he had seen her; he took off his hat and
-waved it to her. She waved her hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The tender was drawing very near, and now came a general
-waving of handkerchiefs in salutation from the passengers
-on both steamers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In another minute the tender was alongside, the gangplank
-thrown down, and the rush of friends to meet each
-other made a joyous confusion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie found herself in her father’s arms, scarcely knowing
-how she got there in such a crowd and confusion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My daughter! my daughter! welcome! welcome! welcome!
-welcome to my heart!” the father cried, in a breaking,
-choking voice, as he pressed her fondly to his breast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My own beloved father! Oh, thank the Lord—thank
-the Lord, that I see you again! And my mother!—my
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>darling mother!—how is she?” cried Jennie, sobbing for
-joy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my dearest, well, thank Heaven! Sends fondest
-love to you, my child, and waits your return with a joyful
-heart.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! how have I deserved this love and tenderness, this
-divine compassion and forgiveness? Oh! my father, I
-ought to fall—not on your neck—but at your feet, and say—what
-I feel! what I feel!—‘Father, I have sinned against
-Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be
-called thy child.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hush! my darling, hush! We will talk later. Let us go
-away from here as soon as possible. Where is your babe,
-Jennie?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In my stateroom, dear father, fast asleep. Will you
-come down with me and see her?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The father and daughter struggled through the pressing
-crowd, and made their way slowly and with difficulty down
-into the cabin, which was now all “upside down” with
-ladies and ladies’ maids, and gentlemen and valets, stewards
-and stewardesses, getting together their “traps” and making
-ready to go on shore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie took her father directly to her stateroom, where
-the pretty babe lay sleeping on the lower berth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie lifted the babe and placed it in her father’s arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister received the child, raised his eyes, and
-solemnly invoked God’s blessing on it, then stooped and
-pressed a kiss upon its brow. Finally he returned the babe
-to its mother, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Wrap her up, my dear. We must hurry, or we shall
-miss the first return trip of the tender and have to wait for
-the second, which would cause us to lose our train.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie quickly folded the baby in the warm white cloak
-and hood which had been given her by the Duncan children.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now I will take her again and carry her for you. Do
-you take up your hand-bag and parasol. I will speak to
-have the other things brought after us,” said Mr. Campbell,
-as he led the way to the deck, carrying the babe, and followed
-by his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The passengers had all left the steamer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Men were carrying baggage on board the tender. Mr.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>Campbell spoke to one of them, directing him to the stateroom
-of his daughter. Then, holding the babe on one arm,
-he gave the other to Jennie, and led her across the gangplank
-and on board the tender, where by this time all the
-passengers were gathered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In a few minutes the tender put off from the ship and
-steamed to the piers, where she soon arrived. The passengers
-swarmed out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell called a cab, put his daughter and her
-child into it, followed them and gave the order: To the
-Lime Street Railway Station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they reached the place the minister stopped the
-cab, got out and took the babe from her mother’s arms,
-and led the way into a second-class waiting-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will stay here, my dear,” he said, “while I go back
-to the custom house and get your baggage through. You
-will not mind?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, dearest father. I shall not mind anything, except
-missing the sight of your dear face, even for a minute.
-It seems to me as if I should never bear to lose sight of you
-again.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I shall come back as soon as possible, my dear,” said the
-minister; and he found for her a comfortable seat, placed
-the baby in her arms, and so left her in the waiting-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie sat there without feeling the time pass wearily,
-after all; her mind was too full of delightful anticipations
-of homegoing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nearly an hour passed, and then her father came hurrying
-in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is all done, my dear. Your trunks are rescued from
-the custom house and deposited on the train, and now we
-have five minutes left in which to take some refreshments,
-if you would like,” he said cheerfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I want nothing, dear papa, for I have not very long since
-breakfasted. But you?” she inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear; nothing for me. And now, my dear child, I
-have at length found breathing space in this hurry and confusion
-to ask about your husband. You did not name him
-at all in your letter, from which I argued ill; and if there
-had been time, I should have written to you for some explanation;
-but I knew that you were then to sail in a few
-days, and that you would reach Liverpool before my letter
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>could get to New York. Now, my dear, I must ask you
-some very serious questions.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How is it that you, the daughter of a clergyman of the
-Church of England, and the wife of an ex-captain in her
-majesty’s army, should have been confined in the charity
-ward of a public hospital?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie shuddered, but did not answer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How was it that you had to be indebted to alms for your
-outfit and passage to this country? Why did you not mention
-your husband’s name in your letter to me? Why are
-you here alone? Where is your husband? Tell me, child.
-Do not fear or hesitate to tell your father everything,” he
-said, tenderly taking her hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, your goodness goes to my heart. He has left
-me, papa,” she said, and then suddenly lifting her soft, dark
-eyes, full of truth and candor, to meet her father’s pitying
-gaze, she added: “But do not mind that, dear papa. I do
-not. The best thing he ever did for me was to leave me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear, it was, indeed. I am not saying this
-from pride or bravado, but because it is the very truth itself,
-that the best thing he ever did for me was to leave me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You do not care for him, then?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And yet, my child, he is your husband still,” said the
-minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Unhappily, yes; but he has left me. It is the kindest
-act of his life toward me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you never wish to see him again, Jennie?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never, nor to hear of him. I am happy now in a quiet
-way. I wish for nothing better on earth than to live in a
-quiet way at the darling little parsonage with you and dearest
-mamma and my blessed baby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Suddenly into the pathos and gravity of Jennie’s face
-came a ripple of humor as she spoke of her child and looked
-at her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Rev. James Campbell was certainly the youngest
-grandfather in England, if not in Europe. He was really
-but thirty-eight years old, and might have been taken for
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>a mere boy, for he was of medium height and of slight and
-elegant form, with a shapely head, pure, clean-cut classic
-features, a clear, fair complexion and dark chestnut hair,
-parted in the middle, cut rather short and slightly curling.
-He wore neither beard nor mustache. His dress was a
-clerical suit of black cloth of the cheapest quality and somewhat
-threadbare; but it perfectly fitted his faultless figure;
-but his linen collar and cuffs were spotless even after a
-railway journey in the second-class cars and his gloves were
-neatly mended.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Altogether he looked very young and even boyish, as we
-said, though he was in middle life and a grandfather.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But for the close resemblance between the father and
-daughter, their fellow passengers in the waiting-room must
-have taken them for a married pair, and “o’er young to
-marry also.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But about this man, Jennie,” he said, seeing that she
-paused. “Where is he now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In Ireland, I believe, papa. It is a long story I have to
-tell when we get home. And—here is our train.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The whistle sounded, and the minister took his grandchild
-from his daughter and carried it, followed by its
-mother, to their seats in one of the second-class carriages.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER III<br> <span class='large'>HER WELCOME HOME</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>The curate and his daughter found themselves in a
-crowded carriage of the second class, on the Great Northern
-express train from Liverpool to Glasgow. I say crowded,
-for though no one was standing up, yet many of the passengers
-had well-grown children on their laps.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell and Jennie took the last two vacant seats.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Give me the baby now, papa dear,” said the little
-mother, holding opt her arms, as soon as she had settled
-herself in her seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear, the child is sleeping. If she wakes and frets,
-I will hand her over to you; otherwise I will hold her to
-rest you,” replied her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>Their fellow travelers turned and looked at the young
-grandfather and the youthful mother, and very naturally
-drew false conclusions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were mostly of the class who listen, comment and
-observe.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s easy to see that is a young married pair, with their
-first child,” whispered a fat, florid country woman, with one
-baby sitting on her knees and two on the floor at her feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He won’t be quite so fond of loading himself down with,
-the kids when there’s a dozen of ’em, maybe,” replied her
-companion, a stout, brown woman with a burden of two
-heavy bundles and a basket on and about her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister and his daughter heard every word of this
-whispered colloquy with slight smiles of amusement; but
-it warned them that they could not indulge in any very
-confidential discourse there, where every whispered word could
-be so distinctly heard.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All further explanations would have to be postponed until
-they should reach Medge Parsonage. And that was a hundred
-miles off as yet. Nothing but the commonplaces of
-conversation could pass between them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Are you quite comfortable, my dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, thank you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You don’t feel the draught from that window?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, papa dear.” Etcetera.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie took particular pains to call her young father
-“papa” whenever she spoke to him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But that did not enlighten their companions as to the
-true relations between the two. They thought it only one
-more silly affectation of the youthful parents. Many vain
-young mothers called their husbands “papa” for baby, as
-many proud young fathers called their wives “mamma” also
-for baby.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So merely trivial talk passed between the father and
-daughter until the train blew the steam whistle and
-“slowed” into the first station after leaving Liverpool,
-stopped ten seconds and sped on again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie had not seen her native country for two years, and
-she looked out at the vanishing station almost with the curiosity
-of a stranger, and then exclaimed with a look of astonishment:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, papa! That was Huton!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>“Well, my dear!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie looked at her father in amazement.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, my dear?” inquired the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Matter? Why, papa, matter enough. We have certainly
-taken the wrong train. Huton is on the Great Northern,
-and not the South Eastern Railroad. This is not the
-way to Medge.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, dear, we are not going to Medge.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not going to Medge?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, my dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie stared.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I also have something to tell you which I have reserved
-until now,” said the minister gravely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is it, papa? Oh, what is it?” demanded the
-young girl in sudden alarm. “You said my dear mother
-was quite well. If she were in heaven, you might say with
-truth she was quite well; but oh! how could I bear it! Oh,
-how could I bear it! Is she quite well in this world?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite well, here on earth, my dear. Compose yourself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then what is it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nothing to alarm you, Jennie.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where are we going?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, where
-I have a curacy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To Hay—— And you never told me!” said Jennie,
-aghast with astonishment. All her life, until her hasty
-marriage, two years before, she had lived with her parents
-at Medge. She considered them as fixtures to that spot.
-She would as soon have expected the old parish church
-and graveyard to be plucked up by the roots from Medge
-and transplanted to Haymore as to have her father and
-mother removed from the first to the last named place.
-“‘Haymore!’” she said to herself—“‘Haymore!’ Surely
-that was the name of the manor to which Kightly Montgomery
-had fallen heir. And in Yorkshire, too. It must be
-the same place! She and her father were going there!
-And—Kightly Montgomery, under his new name, and with
-his new bride, was also going there. The first as the lord
-of the manor, the second as pastor of the parish. What
-was to be done? They must surely meet, and then?”
-Jennie was dumfounded from consternation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>“Why, what ails you, Jennie, my child?” inquired her
-father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She found her tongue at last, and said, because she did
-not know what else to say:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You never told me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I explained that I reserved the information for our
-meeting,” gently replied the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How long have you been at Haymore?” was her next
-question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“About twelve weeks. Not quite three months. But
-don’t look so horrified, my dear. If I had changed my
-religion, instead of having changed my parish, you could
-scarcely seem more confounded,” said the curate, with a
-little laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa dear, what made you leave dear old Medge?”
-she dolefully inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Necessity, Jennie. My old rector died——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! Good old Dr. Twomby! Has he gone?” exclaimed
-Jennie in a tone of grief.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear—full of years and honors. It would be impious
-to mourn the departure of so sainted a man. His
-successor was a young Oxonian, who gave me warning and
-put in a classmate of his own as his curate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what made you go so far—quite from the south to
-the north of England?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Again necessity, my dear. I was out of employment,
-and your mother and myself were living in cheap lodgings
-in the village, when I received a letter from Dr. Orton—an
-old friend of my father, who had heard of my misfortune—inviting
-me to come with my wife to Haymore and take
-his parish and occupy his parsonage for a year, during
-which he was ordered by his physician to travel for his
-health. I gratefully accepted the offer.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And how do you like it, papa?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very much, my dear. The rectory is a beautiful old
-house, very conveniently fitted with all modern improvements
-and very comfortably furnished. The house is covered
-with ivy and the porches with climbing plants. There
-is a luxuriant old garden, full of flowers and herbs and
-all kinds of fruits and vegetables that our climate will grow,
-and there is a lawn with old oak trees.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>“How lovely!” impulsively exclaimed Jennie. But then
-her face fell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, it is lovely,” assented the minister, who had not
-noticed the change in his child’s countenance. “And I like
-it so well that I shall grieve to leave it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, but you are sure of it for a twelvemonth!” exclaimed
-Jennie, eager to please her father, yet again stopping
-short at the sudden memory of what must meet him
-at Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, my dear. I am not sure of the place for a
-month even. Orton has heart disease, and, though he may
-live for months or years, he may drop dead at any moment.
-He may be dead now. And in such a case, you see, the
-very same thing that happened to me at Medge would
-happen again at Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How, papa?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If Orton should die, his successor would turn me adrift,
-to put in my place some friend of his own.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who has the appointing of the incumbent? The bishop
-of the diocese or some nobleman?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Neither. The living is attached to Haymore Manor, and
-is in the gift of the new squire.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the gift of the new squire, and that squire Kightly
-Montgomery under a new name!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The thought of this complication turned Jennie pale. In
-her dismay and confusion, she could settle upon but one
-course—the course she had thought of all along—to tell her
-father everything; every single fact she knew concerning
-Kightly Montgomery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister was now watching her curiously, anxiously.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To cover her distress, she asked the first question that
-came into her head, and not an irrelevant one:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Were the terms favorable upon which you agreed to
-take this parish for a year, papa?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, yes, I suppose so. The living is worth six hundred
-pounds a year, and Orton gives me two hundred, with
-the use of the rectory.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you do all the work for one-third of the salary?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear; and I am very glad to do it. And there
-are hundreds of capable clergymen in England who would
-be glad to do it for one-sixth of the salary.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Mr. Campbell suddenly became conscious that he
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>was talking too freely of private matters in a crowded car.
-He looked about him. But every one seemed too sleepy to
-attend to him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The woman with the three babies was sound asleep, as
-was her brood, and the group reminded the curate of a fat,
-cozy pussy cat and her kittens.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The woman with the bundles was nodding, catching herself,
-gripping her parcels and nodding again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were the nearest passengers to the curate and his
-daughter, and had evidently not been listening to the conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The express had been running on a long while without
-stopping, but now, about noon, the steam horn shrieked
-again and the train drew into the station of a large
-manufacturing town, stopped two minutes and roared on again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The swift motion of the train, that sent nearly all the
-grown people to nodding and all the children to sleep,
-seemed to have so overpowered the nerves of Jennie’s young
-baby as to steep it into a deep stupor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The little mother at length grew anxious.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t you think baby sleeps too soundly, papa?” she
-inquired uneasily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, my dear! She is all right. She will sleep
-until we get home and then wake up as bright as a daisy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ten minutes for refreshments!” shouted the guard at
-the window, as he climbed along on the outside of the carriage,
-while the train drew into the station of another large
-town.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you get out, Jennie?” inquired her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No papa dear, I would much rather not,” she answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then take the baby while I go,” he said, carefully
-placing the little one on her lap within her arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, what shall I bring you, dear?” he next inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A cup of tea and a biscuit, papa, nothing more,” replied
-Jennie, who remembered the slender purse of the curate,
-who could ill afford the journey to Liverpool and back with
-his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She had ten pounds left of her own, but did not dare to
-offer them to her father, whose very poverty made him sensitive.
-She meant, however, when she should reach the parsonage,
-to put that little fund, through her mother’s agency,
-into the general household expenses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>Mr. Campbell left the carriage and went across to the
-refreshment rooms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie’s fellow passengers of the second class did not
-leave their seats, but took out luncheon baskets, and soon the
-air was full of the sound of popping ginger beer or ale or
-porter bottles, while bread and cheese and beef were laid out
-on laps covered with brown wrapping paper for a tablecloth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The woman with the babies and the woman with the bundles,
-who sat opposite to Jennie and seemed to be friends,
-drew the cork of brown stout—one holding the bottle, and
-the other pulling the screw with all her might.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the mother filled a little thick glass tumbler with
-the foaming porter and held it to Jennie, saying kindly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Drink it, dearie. It’ll do ’ee good; ’specially as ye’re
-nussing a young babe.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie, touched by the kindness, smiled her sweetest and
-thanked her neighbor, explaining that her heart was weak
-and that she could not bear strong porter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I hope your good man will bring ’ee some light
-wine,” replied the woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The gentleman with me is my father,” said Jennie, glad
-to make this explanation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your fey—— And the grandfeyther o’ the bairn?”
-exclaimed the woman, opening her eyes with astonishment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, it’s wonderful! He didn’t look a day over twenty-five.
-Do he, now, M’riah?” she said, appealing to her companion
-of the bundles.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He don’t that,” replied the latter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But here the three babies became clamorous for something
-to eat, and the two women turned their attention to
-them. And though this party had been nibbling cake or
-candy, more or less, during the whole journey, as is too
-much the custom of their class, yet now they all ate as if
-they had fasted since breakfast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell reappeared with a little tray in his hand,
-on which was arranged a cup of tea, a small plate of cream
-toast, and another plate with the wing of a roast chicken,
-which he placed on the vacant seat, while he relieved Jennie
-of her sleeping babe.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, dear papa, to think that you should remember my
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>taste for milk toast and chicken, and bring them to me!
-This is killing the fatted calf, indeed,” said Jennie gratefully
-as she took the tray upon her lap.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell then sat down on the vacant seat with the
-baby in his arms; but he made no reply except by a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The train started.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, dear,” said Jennie, “we are carrying off the crockery
-ware!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all,” replied the father. “The return train will
-bring them back and leave them at this station. Such is the
-arrangement.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then my mind is easy. Did you get anything to eat,
-papa dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes; a slice of cold beef and a cup of coffee while
-they were fixing up your tray.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am glad,” said Jennie; and she gave her attention to
-her tray, and exhibited such a healthy appetite that not a
-crumb or a drop was left when she finished her meal and
-put the little service under the seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The train rushed on, nor stopped again until nearly sunset,
-when it ran in at the station of York.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here the father and daughter got off to take a branch line
-to Chuxton, the nearest railway station to Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Willingly would the curate have stayed here overnight to
-show his daughter the great cathedral city, which she had
-never seen, had not two good reasons prevented—first, his
-poverty, which could not bear the expense; secondly, the
-anxiety of the wife and mother at home to see her long-absent
-daughter, which, he knew, could not tolerate the delay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Some day we will return to see this ancient city, my
-dear; but to-day we must hurry home to your mother,” he
-said as he led her into the waiting-room to stay till their
-train should be ready to start.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There the “little angel” awoke in no angelic temper, but
-impatient to be nursed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie took her into the dressing-room, where she attended
-to all her needs, and presently brought her back
-smiling and good-natured to the arms of her grandfather.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I foresee what an idol the grandmother will make of
-this little one,” he said as he received her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The idea of calling my pretty young mamma a grandmother!
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>It is well she is not a woman of fashion, or she
-would be disgusted,” said Jennie, laughing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As it is, she will be delighted,” said her father, looking
-curiously at his child. He was very pleasantly disappointed
-in Jennie. He had feared to meet in her a heartbroken
-woman—a forsaken wife, whom none of her “old blessings”
-of father and mother, home and family affection, could possibly
-console—and he found a daughter who had let go the
-unfaithful husband and comforted herself with her unoffending
-babe, and meant even to enjoy herself with her
-parents at the parsonage in the performance of every filial,
-maternal and domestic duty. And that this disposition was
-not forced, but was natural, might be seen and heard in her
-contented countenance and frequent laugh. Even now, if
-the thought would recur that the curate’s temporary parish
-lay in the manor of Haymore, and the reigning or pretending
-squire was Kightly Montgomery, still, upon later reflection,
-she felt so much confidence in the wisdom and
-goodness of her father that she dismissed all dread of any
-fatal or even serious result of his meeting with her husband.
-And for one circumstance Jennie felt glad and grateful,
-namely, for the change of residence from Medge, where
-everybody had known her from childhood, and might, therefore,
-wonder and ask questions why the curate’s married
-daughter should return home to live without her husband—since
-it was clear from her dress that she was not a
-widow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No such wonder could be excited at Haymore; no such
-questions asked. The people were strangers. They had
-taken their temporary pastor upon well-merited trust, and
-his family history was unknown to them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As for the other matter connected with Kightly Montgomery,
-she would tell her father everything, and he would
-know what to do.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery, she knew, never by any chance entered
-a church, so her father would never see him there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As for the curate, when she should have told him who
-the new squire really was, it was unlikely that Mr. Campbell
-would feel disposed to make a clerical call at the manor
-house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Under the divine Providence she would leave everything
-to her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>While the father and daughter were still chatting pleasantly
-together a door was flung open and a voice was heard
-announcing:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Train for Chuxton.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my child,” said Mr. Campbell, rising with the
-baby on his arms and crossing the room, followed by Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They went out to the train and entered the second-class
-carriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In five minutes, after they were comfortably seated, the
-train was off, speeding away from the old cathedral city in
-a northerly direction across the moors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sun had not yet set, though it was on the edge of the
-horizon. Jennie fixed her eyes on the vastness of the brown
-moor that stretched, or rather rolled, away in all directions
-to meet the horizon. It reminded her of the sea. It seemed
-a boundless ocean, enchanted into stillness; for not a breath
-of air disturbed the motionless heather, and not a hamlet or
-a farmhouse broke the illusion. No doubt there were farms
-and villages not far off, but they were in the hollows, out
-of sight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Jennie turned from the window to look at her
-baby. The little one was fast asleep again; so was the
-curate, who had been traveling all night and all day, for
-twenty-four hours. He had his arms so securely wound
-around the sleeping child that Jennie forbore to take it
-away, lest she should disturb their rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sun set; twilight faded; yet the train sped on over
-the moor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Jennie observed twinkling lights before her
-that seemed to be on the edge of the horizon. As the train
-sped on toward those lights she recognized them as belonging
-to a station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the steam horn shrieked and waked up all the passengers,
-and the guide shouted:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Chuxton!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here we are, my dear,” said the curate, waking up as
-the train stopped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were but few passengers who got out here, and
-there were all sorts of conveyances waiting for them, from
-donkey carts to fine coaches.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How far are we from Haymore, papa?” inquired Jennie
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>as her father led her from the train to the waiting-room
-of the station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ten miles, my dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is there a stagecoach to Haymore?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, my dear, but I took the precaution to engage the
-fly from the Red Fox to meet us here for this train. If it
-has not come yet—and I do not see it—it will be here soon.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How much expense I put you to, dear papa!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tut, tut! there is a time to spend! Whether there is
-a time to save or not, while there is the least need anywhere
-of spending, I really do not know! There’s the fly
-now!” exclaimed the curate, at the sound of wheels, suddenly
-breaking off in his discourse and going to the door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Nahum, you are on time, I see!” said Mr. Campbell,
-speaking cheerfully to some one in the outer darkness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ay, bound to be, sir, when your reverence had bespoken
-the kerridge,” answered a buoyant voice from the shades.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear! But, Nahum, perhaps the mule wants
-food and water?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not she, sir! She had her oats and her water and her
-mug of ale! You’d no believe, sir, how that lass loves ale!
-So, with your leave, I’ll e’en give her another mug of that
-same, whiles she rests five minutes. No longer, your reverence.
-No longer, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite right. Let us know when you are ready.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate sat down by his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In something less than five minutes the voice of the hostler
-was heard, calling:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right now, sir. Miss Nancy and me is at your service,
-sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Miss Nancy?” inquired Jennie as she arose and took
-her father’s arm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This mule, of course. Nahum is an oddity! His avocations
-are multiform. He is coachman, groom, hostler and
-handy man generally at the Red Fox,” Mr. Campbell explained
-as he took his daughter out to the carriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was not a “fly” at all, though they called it so; it was
-a strong, snug carryall, covered all over with a black tarpaulin,
-except the front, which was open. It was drawn by a
-stout mule.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell put his daughter and her child in the sheltered
-back seat and placed himself beside the coachman in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>the front. And the carryall rolled away over the murky
-moor until it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But “Miss Nancy” knew the road, and, if she had not
-known it, her driver did. So they went on in safety.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER IV<br> <span class='large'>STARTLING NEWS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Nahum opened conversation with Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The last of the workmen have left to-day, sir,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The workmen? Oh, the decorators and upholsterers
-who were fitting up Haymore Hold for the young squire and
-his bride.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. All is finished in the very latest style, and
-with all the modernest improvements. And they do say as
-there is not a place in the North Riding aquil to it for
-magnificence and splendiferousness! They do that!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, when are the young pair expected?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That I can’t jest tell you, sir. But Mr. Isaiah Prowt,
-the bailiff, do say as he is to receive a week’s notice of their
-arrival, so as to have the triumphanting arches put up all
-along the road leading into the village and the avenue from
-the park gate to the hall.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will make a fine display, Nahum, but an expensive
-one. However, I suppose it will give pleasure to the
-people.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will that, your reverence. And that is not all! They
-are to have tents and markees and pavilions all over the
-lawn, and a great outdoor gala for all the tenants, and even
-the villagers who are not tenants, and for the whole neighborhood;
-in fact, men, women, and children, sir, are to be
-feasted on the fat of the land, and have dances and games,
-and all that, all day long, and at night fireworks! All at
-the young squire’s expense.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will be a boon to the village, where there is never
-even a market day or a fair.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will that, sir. Why, the people have gone stark, staring
-mad over the very thought of it, though they don’t the
-least know when it is to come off. But they are looking
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>forrid to it. For, as you say, sir, they never have anything
-here. Chuxton is the market town, and the fairs go
-there on market day.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So they never have a public fête unless it is given by the
-lord of the manor on the occasion of a marriage, or a coming
-of age in the family?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And never then, up to this toime. Such a day as this
-coming on has never been seen at Haymore in the memory
-of man. The old squires never did nothing like it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No? Why was that?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, they kept themselves aloof. They never thought
-about their tenants, except to keep them pretty strict and
-punctuous in the payment of the rents. Otherwise they
-looked down on them as dirt underneath of their feet.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let us hope, from the present signs, that the new squire
-will be more genial and benevolent.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He will that, sir. You may depend upon it. And no
-doubt he will have the old church repaired. And you’ll do
-your part to welcome the bridal pair. You’ll have the
-parish school children drilled to stand aich side the road by
-which they come and sing songs and throw flowers? And
-you’ll have the bellringers to ring out joyful peals of
-music?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, certainly, with all my heart. It falls in the
-way of my office to see that the parish school children and
-the bellringers take their part and do their duties properly
-in the ceremonial reception of the bridal couple,” cordially
-responded Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No more was said just then.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie was aghast. She had not thought that Kightly
-Montgomery would bring his deceived bride, who was not a
-lawful wife, to England so soon after his <i><span lang="fr">rencontre</span></i> with herself
-on shipboard. When he had left the steamer at Queenstown,
-to avoid meeting her father at Liverpool, she had
-supposed that he would go to the continent for his bridal
-tour, and return later to England. But instead of doing so
-he had written a letter from Queenstown, on the morning
-of his arrival there, to announce his intention of coming to
-Haymore. This letter he must have posted on the same
-morning, so that it came over land and sea by the shorter
-route of the Irish mail, and reached its destination at Haymore
-before she, by the longer way of the channel, arrived
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>at Liverpool. But why did he think of coming to Haymore
-at this time?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A little reflection told her why. She tried to put herself
-in Kightly Montgomery’s place and think out his motives.
-Then she understood.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery knew certainly that Jennie had
-gone home to her father’s, but he believed, erroneously, that
-she had gone to him in his old parish at Medge, in Hantz,
-where the curate had lived and preached for twenty years
-past, and where he was likely to continue to minister for
-forty years to come.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nearly the whole length of England lay between Medge,
-on the south coast of Hantz, and Haymore, in the North
-Riding of Yorkshire. He might, therefore, go safely to his
-manor house without fear of being troubled by Jennie or
-her people. He could not dream, of course, that the Rev.
-James Campbell had left Medge to become the pastor of the
-parish of Haymore, where his daughter would be with him;
-else he would as soon have rushed into a burning furnace
-as to come to Yorkshire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So far Jennie reasoned out correctly the meaning of
-Kightly Montgomery’s course. But there was more cause
-for his false sense of security than she knew anything about.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery had not the least idea that Jennie,
-by putting odds and ends of facts and probabilities together,
-had made herself acquainted with his fraudulent claim to
-the name of Hay, and to the inheritance of Haymore. He
-thought she knew nothing beyond the fact of his second
-marriage, not even the name under which he married, and
-that, therefore, she could not know how or where to seek
-him, even if she were disposed to do so, which he utterly
-disbelieved. With his wronged wife at the extreme south of
-England, and in ignorance of his present name and residence,
-he felt perfectly safe in coming to Haymore in the
-north, to gratify his pride and vanity by a triumphant
-entry, with his queenly and beautiful bride, into the village
-and on to the manor house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He little dreamed of the dread Nemesis awaiting him
-there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my darling, why are you so silent?” inquired
-Mr. Campbell, breaking in upon his daughter’s reverie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have been listening, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“But you have not heard anything for the last half hour.
-We have not been talking.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I listened with a great deal of interest while you did
-talk, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you have heard that in a few days, perhaps, we
-are going to have grand doings at Haymore to welcome the
-young squire and his bride.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear, I heard all that.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you think of it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think it will be a very exciting time,” evasively replied
-the young woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my dear, you speak so faintly. Are you tired?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear—rather tired.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Take courage, then, for we are near home, where the
-mother is waiting to welcome us with a bright fire and a
-nice tea table,” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa. Don’t mind me, dear. It is a healthful
-weariness that will make me sleep all the better,” replied
-Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the last words were fairly jolted out of her mouth,
-for the carryall was now ascending a very steep hill.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate turned his head again to speak to his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We are entering the village, dear, and the church and
-parsonage are at this end. You can see nothing from where
-you sit behind there. If you could you would see a stony
-road, with paving stones set sharp edge up to make a hold
-for horses’ hoofs, otherwise they could scarcely climb it
-And you would see high stone walls on each side of the road,
-with plantations behind them. These walls, my dear, inclose
-Haymore Park, through a portion of which this road
-runs. On the top of the hill is Haymore Old Church and
-Rectory. There is our home at present. There is an old
-graveyard around the church, and an old garden around
-the rectory. All this is at the entrance of the village, which
-stretches on both sides of the road over the hill and down
-the declivity. All around the manor, the church and the
-village roll the everlasting moors from the center to the
-circumference. There, my dear, you have a picture of our
-home, though you cannot see it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I see it in my mind’s eye, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>All this time the mule was toiling slowly, painfully up
-the steep ascent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie, straining her eyes to look forward, saw nothing
-for a while but the black forms of her father and the driver
-against the darkness, but presently fitful lights glanced in
-sight and disappeared. After a while they grew more steady
-and stationary, and Jennie recognized</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“The lights in the village,”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>though they were still distant before her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here we are,” said the curate blithely as the panting
-mule drew up before a gate in a wall, all covered with ivy
-or some other creeping plant, Jennie could not see what.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Beyond the gate and the wall was the front of a two-story,
-double stone house, like the wall, all covered with
-creeping vines, but with a bright firelight and lamplight
-gleaming redly from the windows of the lower room on the
-right-hand side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate lifted his daughter and her child from the
-carryall and opened the gate that led between two low stone
-walls, also covered with green creepers, up to the steps of
-the long porch before the house. But some one in the house
-had heard the sound of wheels, for the front door was flung
-open, a small, slender woman rushed out and threw herself,
-sobbing, into the arms of Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my darling! my darling! my darling!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, mother! mother! mother!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That was all they could say, as they clasped each other,
-sobbing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell went on before them into the house, carrying
-the baby out of the night air.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come in, come in, come in! Oh, welcome home, my
-child! my child!” sobbed the mother, as, with her arm
-around the waist of her daughter, she supported her into the
-house, through the hall and into that warm, bright room,
-where a sea coal fire was blazing in the grate, and a chandelier
-hung from the ceiling just over a dainty white cloth
-that covered the tea table, on which a pretty china service
-was arranged.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The parlor was furnished entirely in crimson—carpet,
-curtains, chair and sofa covers were all crimson, which, in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>the lamplight and firelight, gave a very warm, bright glow
-to the room, which the travelers had seen from the carryall
-without.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie was placed in an easy-chair, and her fur-lined
-cloak and beaver hat taken off her by gentle mother hands.
-Even in that sacred moment of meeting, the feminine instinct
-caused the curate’s wife to hold up and admire the
-rich cloak and hat that had been given Jennie by her New
-York friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You haven’t looked at baby, mother dear,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! so I haven’t! How could I forget!” exclaimed the
-young grandmother; and down went cloak and hat, disregarded,
-on the floor, while she turned to look for the little
-queen who was destined to ascend the throne of the household.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, smiling at this impetuosity, placed the infant
-in her arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then—but I will spare my readers the rhapsodies
-that ensued.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, everything else was forgotten.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Nahum, the driver, remembered he had to collect his
-fare, and so “made bold” to walk into the curate’s house,
-and stand, hat in hand, at the parlor door. As he stood in
-the full glare of the light, he appeared a little, sturdy,
-muscular man, with a strange mixture of complexion; for
-while his skin was swarthy and his short hair, stubby beard
-and heavy eyebrows were as black as jet, his eyes were light
-blue. But the most characteristic feature in his remarkable
-face was his nose, which was large and turned up so that
-his nostrils described a semicircle upward. It was a “mocking
-nose,” of the most distinct type. He wore a suit of
-coarse blue tweed, and carried a battered felt hat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Nahum!” exclaimed the curate on catching sight
-of him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please, your reverence, it is eight shillings, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! Ah! Yes!” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the price was paid and the driver dismissed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Esther Campbell and her recovered daughter were now
-seated close together on the crimson sofa, which was drawn
-up on one side of the blazing fire. Esther had her grandchild
-on her lap and her right arm around Jennie’s waist,
-while Jennie’s head rested on her shoulder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>“Come, Hetty, my love, we want our tea,” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell put the baby in its mother’s arms and
-rang the bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A Yorkshire woman of middle age, dressed in a blue
-cheviot cloth skirt and a gay striped sack of many colors,
-came in with the tea urn and put it on the table. She was
-a stranger to Jennie, but she courtesied to the “master’s”
-daughter, who returned her greeting with a smile and bow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is our old servant, mamma?” inquired Jennie
-when the new one had left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Julia? She married the greengrocer and left us
-just before we left Medge.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Julia was forty years old at least!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear, and the greengrocer was a widower of fifty
-with all his children grown up, married and settled.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A good match for Julia, then!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Excellent.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Yorkshire woman re-entered the room, bringing in a
-tray on which was arranged hot muffins, dried toast, broiled
-chicken and fried ham, all of which she placed on the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is our daughter, Mrs. Montgomery, whom we have
-been expecting to see for so long a time, Elspeth,” said Mrs.
-Campbell, speaking from her own genial nature and overflowing
-happiness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth courtesied again and smiled, but said nothing;
-she was rather shy. She took the baby, however, when the
-curate and his wife and daughter sat down to the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Esther Campbell looked a young, fair and pretty woman
-as she presided over the tea urn. She was really thirty-five
-years old, but did not look more than twenty-three. But,
-then, she had always had excellent health, few family cares
-and no sorrows, except in the marriage of her daughter, and
-even that was a light one compared to what that wayward
-daughter was made to suffer. She was a woman of medium
-height and slender form, for she had escaped the malady of
-fat to which women of middle age or those approaching
-middle age are subjected. Her figure was girlish, her features
-were delicate, her complexion very fair, with a faint
-rose hue over cheeks and chin. Her hair was brown, bright
-and curly. She wore her only Sunday’s dress, a dark green
-silk with a little lace at the throat and wrists. It was put on
-in honor of her daughter’s return.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>The party of three waited on themselves and each other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When all were served Hetty Campbell would most eagerly
-have asked her daughter:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is your husband?” but that she feared something
-was very wrong with him and dared not question Jennie on
-this subject in the presence of the new servant.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie had a healthy young appetite, and ate heartily, to
-the great comfort of her mother, who joyously watched her
-plate and kept it well supplied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you like this place, mamma?” inquired Jennie at
-length.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear, on many accounts I like it very much.
-Of course we felt a natural regret at leaving a home where
-we had lived so long that we seemed grown into it, like a
-cluster of oysters in their shells, which to shuck out is death.
-But as it was not our own act there was no compunction;
-and as it was inevitable, there had to be resignation. We
-are happy here, my dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the old friends—the people papa has christened and
-married and comforted and instructed for twenty years!
-For he was there before you were married, mamma.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, it was hard to leave them. But the knowledge that
-we must submit to the inevitable strengthened us even for
-that.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And how do you like the people here, mamma?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very much, indeed. They are exceedingly kind.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth having set the baby in its mother’s lap, and left
-the room to take a new supply of hot muffins from the oven,
-Jennie lowered her voice and inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And the one humble woman among the people with
-whom we are in daily intercourse, and on whom so much
-of our comfort must depend, mamma?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You mean our new servant?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course. Is she a worthy successor to Julia?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A most worthy one. Elspeth—the widow Longman—has
-not always been in service. She has had reverses and
-great sorrows—the loss of her husband while she was still
-a young woman with an infant boy, a boy whom she spoiled
-as only a widowed mother can spoil an only child. He grew
-up, so it is said, not really wicked or worthless, but idle,
-wilful, headstrong, and fond of pleasure and of roving.
-One day the poor mother lost her temper, under some great
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>provocation, and told him he was the one grief and trial of
-her life, or words to that effect. He took his hat and walked
-out of the house. She thought he had only gone to the barn
-or to the village, and her burst of grief and anger being
-over, she prepared that evening an extra good supper for
-her boy, that they might make up their misunderstanding.
-But, though she waited long and anxiously, he did not come,
-nor has he ever come, nor has she ever heard one word of
-him since that day when he walked out of the house in
-sullen wrath.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, how dreadful! how dreadful!” exclaimed Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; it nearly killed her. The farm, with no one to
-look after it, went to rack and ruin. She was compelled to
-sell off all the stock to pay the rent, and then to give up
-the lease and go into service. That is Elspeth’s sad little
-story,” said Mrs. Campbell, hurriedly concluding as she
-saw the subject of her discourse re-entering the room with
-the plate of hot muffins in hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But no one wanted any more.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate gave thanks and they arose from the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The mother and daughter reseated themselves on the
-crimson sofa in the glow of the fire, Hetty Campbell took
-the baby on her lap, and the fondling and idolizing recommenced,
-and might have continued all night, but that
-James Campbell wisely put an end to the play.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come!” he said. “I have been traveling night and day
-for twenty-four hours, and am well worn out. So is Jennie,
-though she has only traveled one day by rail. So we had
-better go straight to bed. Listen, Hetty: I have had our
-daughter all day long to myself. You take her to your
-bosom to-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh?” exclaimed his wife, not understanding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you sleep with Jennie and the precious baby to-night.
-That will make you all very happy, though I am not
-so sure about the baby. Only don’t talk all night. Put off
-all mutual explanations until the morning,” the curate explained.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie sprang to her father and embraced him, exclaiming:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa! how good of you!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty, with the baby in her arms, came up on the other
-side, kissed him, and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>“How kindly thoughtful of you, dear Jim!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate laughed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There! there! I shall not break my heart for your absence
-this one night, Hetty, my dear. I shall sleep too
-soundly. And the arrangement is on no account to be a
-perpetual one.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth, having cleared away the tea table, was called in,
-and the evening worship was offered earlier than usual.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell in the course of his devotions prayed for
-the safe return of the poor widow’s son. This he had always
-done morning and evening since Elspeth had been living
-with the family.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a great comfort to the poor mother, who one day
-said to Mrs. Campbell:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No minister ever prayed for my poor lad to come back
-before. Now the minister prays for him, I know he will
-come. I see it a’ as plain as if my eyes were opened; the
-maister’s prayer goes straight up to the Throne; the Lord
-receives it, and sends its spirit straight down to my boy’s
-heart, wherever he may be on the footstool; and he will feel
-it a-drawing and a-drawing of him until he turns his steps
-homeward. I know it! And, oh! mem, the one that kept
-me from going crazy with the trouble was the thought that
-go where he would, he wouldn’t get out of the Lord’s world;
-and if I didn’t know where he was, the Lord did; and if I
-couldn’t see him, the Lord could. So I prayed for him, and
-by the Lord’s help kept up.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the prayers were over the little family circle separated.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth went back to her kitchen to wash up her dishes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie kissed the husband and father good-night
-and went up to a spacious, white-draped chamber
-which was over the parlor, and where a fine sea coal fire
-was burning; and there they went to rest.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER V<br> <span class='large'>IN THE SILVER MOON MINING CAMP</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>It was the close of a dark November day. Heavy mists
-hung over the gulch and settled upon the mountain stream
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>that ran between high banks at its bottom, and upon the
-miners’ huts that dotted either side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The men had returned from their work and many of
-them were seeking rest and refreshment in the shed dignified
-with the name of saloon, where they paid very high
-prices for very bad whisky, and won or lost money with very
-grimy cards.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One excuse for them was this—the camp was a new one,
-far out of civilization. It had been called into existence by
-the hue and cry of a new and grand discovery of ore in a
-mine which the discoverers christened the Silver Moon. It
-was formed mostly of men who had been unsuccessful in
-other mines. And there was not a woman in it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Three men sat on the ground in the rudest of rude stone
-huts, built up irregularly of small fragments of rocks, and
-roofed with slender logs. There was neither door, window
-nor chimney, but there was an opening in front, protected
-by a buffalo hide—to keep the heat in, and there was a hole
-in the roof to let the smoke out. The floor was the solid
-earth, and the fire was built against the wall. There was
-scarcely any furniture to be seen, only a heap of coarse
-blankets in one corner, and an iron pot and a few tin cups
-and plates in another.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy’s well-ordered hut at Grizzly was a little palace
-compared to this squalid shelter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three men sitting on the earth floor, before the fire,
-which afforded the only light in the place, were unkempt,
-unwashed and altogether about the roughest-looking savages
-since the prehistoric ages. Yet they were three as different
-men as could be found anywhere.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The first was perhaps the very tallest man ever seen outside
-of a show, grandly proportioned, with a fine head, fine
-face, clear, blue eyes, and yellow hair that flowed to his
-shoulders, and a yellow beard that fell to his bosom. He
-was clothed in a buckskin coat trimmed with fur, now much
-the worse for wear, and buckskin leggings and buffalo-hide
-boots. In a word, this Hercules was our old friend, Samson
-Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The second was a medium-sized and elderly man, with a
-thin, red face, red beard and a bald head. He was clothed
-in a coarse, gray shirt, duck trousers, a nondescript jacket,
-and many wrappings of sackcloth and sage grass around his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>feet and ankles, by way of boots. He was our old acquaintance,
-Andrew Quin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The third was a slight yet muscular youth, with clear,
-bright complexion, dark gray eyes and dark brown hair, a
-mocking nose and a laughing mouth. He wore a coarse, red
-flannel shirt, duck trousers, tucked into hide boots, a knit-woolen
-blouse, and battered felt hat. Of course, he was
-young Michael Man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All three of the men lived together like friends in this
-hut. This evening they were all very grave, not to say
-gloomy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Old Dandy Quin, sitting flat upon the ground and engaged
-in unwinding the strips of sacking from his tired
-feet, was the first to break a silence that had continued some
-time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’m gettin’ tired of this yere,” he grumbled. “Here
-we’ve been more’n two months working like mules, and
-never got a gleam o’ this yere moonlight. It’s moon-calves
-we are, all on us. Ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his
-gun we’d ’a’ starved! that’s what we would—’a’ starved!
-We never had no luck nowhere! Leastways, I never had!
-I’ve been nigh twenty years slaving in the mines, digging in
-the bowels of the yeth, working hard and living harder, and
-running like a luny after a jack-o’-lantern, from one grand
-discov’ry to another, but never got no more but hard work
-and harder living out of any on ’em, and now I’m sixty
-years old come next Martinmas, and I’m gettin’ tired on
-it,” he concluded, flinging his rags aside and caressing his
-poor feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dandy, ye poor ould craychur, haven’t ye pit a cint itself,
-nowhere?” questioned Mike in a sympathetic tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, jest eleven hund’ed dollar in the savings bank at
-Sacramento, and that I hev saved up, dollar be dollar, in
-the last twenty years, a-working hard an’ the—Regiment hard, and
-a-starving and a-stinting of meself to do it! And since here
-we have come to this Silver Moon Mine it hev been all loss
-and no gain! And as I said before, we’d ’a’ starved to
-death ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun. And now
-he is going back on us!” concluded Dandy in an injured
-tone and with a look of reproach at the giant.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should be sorry to do that,” said Longman, stroking
-his long, yellow beard. “But, Dandy, why won’t you go
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>with me? I will gladly take you. You are alone here and
-growing old. Have you no natural longings to see your
-native country? Come! come along with me!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why can’t you stay here? How do you know but to-morrow
-the stroke of a pick may strike a vein of solid
-silver running down to the very middle of the earth?” demanded
-Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, that’s it! Delusive hope has been the will-o’-the-wisp
-that has led you on from post to pillar for twenty years
-of unsuccess.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, after working twenty years for almost nothing,
-you wouldn’t have a man miss the chance of turning up a
-fortune with the very next stroke of his pick—a fortune
-that would pay him for all he has suffered—would you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, certainly not, if such luck were probable. But,
-Dandy, my friend, your pick has never struck a vein, and I
-think it never will. Be sensible. Draw your money from
-the savings bank, and come home to England with me.
-That sum will be a fortune to you in England, and set you
-up in any light business you may like; or buy you a small
-annuity, sufficient for your comforts for the rest of your
-life. Think of it, Dandy,” said Longman, with kindly interest
-in the lonely man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What makes you so hot-foot all of a sudden to go back
-to England?” demanded Dandy. “A great, strapping, very
-strapping young fellow like you to leave the grand field of
-enterprise to go back to England?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman sighed and asked in his turn:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What brought you here, Dandy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I s’pose it was the goold.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ay, man, the gold—the gold fever. I have nothing to
-say against it, because it has, on the whole, enriched and
-blessed the world; or, at least, I hope and believe so. But
-you, to come out here to the gold country at forty years of
-age, and to spend twenty years of life as hard as the life of
-a convict, in the pursuit of an ignis-fatuus that always
-eluded you, still under the delusion that the next stroke of
-your pick may discover a vein, is to have lost so much of
-your life! Think of what I have said, Dandy, and redeem
-and enjoy the rest.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’ll think of it, Maister Longman. But ye hevn’t answered
-my question. What brought yerself out? Not the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>goold fever, I’ll be bound. I hev never seed ye handle a
-pick or shool.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, not the gold fever. I was never fond of digging or
-delving, or any sort of hard work. That was my ruin,
-Dandy,” said Longman with a deep sigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ruin!” exclaimed old Andrew, looking at the speaker
-from head to foot. “Well, then, ye are the foinest spacimin
-of a well-presarved ruin as ever I seed in my loife.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My hatred of steady work made me an outcast from my
-home and an exile from my country, Dandy,” gravely replied
-the hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A great, tall, strong fellow like you to be lazy!” exclaimed
-Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, not lazy; but averse to steady, hard, confining
-work,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An’ for that same did the feyther of ye turn ye adrift,
-me poor Sam?” inquired Mike, striking into the talk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, not my father—he was dead; but my mother did.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your mither! Hivenly mither av us all!” exclaimed
-Mike, stupidly staring at the hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I deserved it, Michael,” said the hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Och, thin, tell us all and about it, Sam, dear,” said
-Mike sympathetically.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Longman briefly told his little story.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see, my father was a small farmer at Chuxton, in
-the North Riding of Yorkshire. I do not remember him,
-though I hope some day to make his acquaintance in the
-upper world. He left this one when I was a very young
-child—the first and only child,” he began.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow?’ Ye’ll be
-looked after, Sam, be the Lord Himsilf, or ilse all the
-howly fathers have taiched me is not true,” put in Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Our neighbors used to say that my mother spoiled me.
-I have often heard them say it to her before my face when
-I was a bairn.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, no doobt, they telled the truth,” exclaimed Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what would the mither say to that?” inquired
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She would only draw me to her side and kiss me, to
-comfort me for the mortification of hearing such words.
-But you were right, Dandy. The neighbors did tell the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>truth. My poor, widowed young mother did spoil her only
-child in her excessive fondness for him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, it was naterel,” admitted Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I grew up a very idle and headstrong boy, fonder of consorting
-with gamekeepers, and even with poachers, than of
-working on our farm. I think if I could have been taken
-on as an assistant by some gamekeeper, who would have
-given me plenty to do among guns and game, I might have
-been contented to stay at home; but I could get no such
-place. Besides, my work was badly wanted on the farm.
-We were not able to hire laborers. My mother, myself and
-one boy were expected to do everything; but I neglected my
-part,” said Longman with a deep sigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No one made any reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mother bore with me very patiently for all the years I
-was growing; but by the time I was twenty years old, and
-as strong and tall for that age as if I had been twenty-five
-instead, and when the farm had been growing from bad to
-worse for years, my poor mother frequently lost her temper
-and scolded me—scolded me, a man, whom she had never
-scolded as a boy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, faith, ye desarved it, hinny,” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know I did. But one thing I can remember with
-satisfaction: bad as I was, I never gave my mother what
-she would have called ‘the back answer.’ I never in my
-life spoke an undutiful word to my mother.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good for ye, Sam!” exclaimed Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When her words were very sharp and bitter, and I could
-stand them no longer, I used to take my hat and walk out,
-and never come back till night. And she—poor mother!—she
-would have a nice, hot supper waiting for her prodigal
-son, with some extra luxury that she could ill afford added
-to the feast.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An’ she was a good craychur, be that same token,” exclaimed
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, she was good—very good—but I tired her beyond
-her patience. One day the crisis came; the rent was behindhand;
-the bailiff was threatening; there seemed danger of
-an eviction. Then my mother, in her grief and anger,
-turned on me, said that if it had not been for my worthlessness
-the farm would have been prosperous. She had said
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>that so often before that the words had lost all significance
-to me. But she ended in saying this:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘If it hadn’t been for you, Samson, I shouldn’t ha’ been
-brought to this disgrace and poverty. The cost of keeping
-you in idleness would have paid an able-bodied farm laborer,
-who would have kept the place in order. And now I tell
-you, if you can’t work here, you had better go and find employment
-somewhere else to suit you.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Faix, it was harrd on ye,” said Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It was, though she did not mean it. She was half crazy
-with the trouble that I might have warded off from her.
-But, boys,” added Longman solemnly, “her words fell on
-me stinging, burning, smarting, humiliating as a lash laid
-on a naked back. Without a word I took up my hat and
-walked out of the house, as I had often done before on other
-but less bitter occasions; only this time I did not return.
-That was five years ago. I have never seen my mother
-since.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A solemn silence fell on the trio.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently old Dandy inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An’ where did ye go thin? Ye couldn’t hev hed mooch
-money in yer pocket, if there was none to pay the rint.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, I had not a shilling. I walked into Chuxton, sold
-my silver watch for all it would bring, and then took a
-third-class ticket in the cheap parliamentary train to London,
-shipped as an able-bodied seaman on board the <em>Auro</em>,
-bound from St. Katherine’s Docks to the Golden Gate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So it was for goold ye kem, after all,” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all. I never went near the mines in search of
-gold. I drew my pay at ’Frisco, bought a couple of guns,
-a lot of ammunition, some boots, and struck into the wilderness,
-where there was plenty of game and no game laws.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An’ how hev ye thriven? Ye see, I niver knowed ye
-afore we met in the woods last summer,” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have done well. I have been an industrious hunter.
-I have supplied forts, post agencies, miners’ camps and
-military caravans with game. I have saved more money
-than you have, Dandy; and I am going home to old England—on
-a visit, mind you, not to stay—I wouldn’t stay
-there on any terms, unless some one would make me head
-keeper on some estate where there is plenty of game. Even
-that would be a poor substitute for the grand, free life of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>the hunter in these wilds. But, Mike, why do you look at
-me in that strange way?” Longman inquired of the Irish
-boy, who had been sitting with his elbows on his knees, and
-his head held between the palms of his hands, gazing silently
-and steadfastly into the face of the hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis, I’m lookin’ at ye; I’m observin’ ye, Misther Longman.
-That’s so! That’s a fact there’s no denyin’,” replied
-Mike, without removing his gaze, which was becoming embarrassing,
-if not offensive, to the good-natured hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why? What’s the matter?” demanded Longman,
-shifting his position so as to get out of the range of Mike’s
-eyes’ fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matther? Och! he ax what is the matther!
-Haven’t ye just telled us how ye ran away fram yer poor
-withowed mither in her throuble, an’ nivir wint back to ax
-how she windded through it? An’ ye ax me what’s the matther?”
-exclaimed Mike with much excitement.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, Mike, she turned me out of doors.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, she didn’t, Misther Longman. Not aven on your
-own showin’, which was like to be in your own favor. She
-upbreeded you for idleness an’ neglect av dooty. An’ she
-was right! An’ she told yer if ye couldn’t worruk on the
-farrm ye’d betther go and worruk somewheres else. An’ she
-was right again, so she was.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, she was right; and I took her at her word and left
-to work somewhere else.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis; an’ ye were the vagabond av the worruld for doin’
-that same, Misther Longman. Sure ye knew she nivir
-meant it, an’ yez leaving must ha’ broke her heart, and yez
-her onliest one in the worruld.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What would you have had me to do, Mike?” inquired
-Longman very patiently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What wad I hev had ye to do, is it? Why, to hev gone
-to worruk on the farm and mindded yer ways from that
-hour, and hed the rint reddy on pay day. That’s what I
-wud hev had ye to do, Misther Longman. I nivir hed a
-mither; me and me twin swishter, Judy, was orphint childer—born
-so—and nivir knowed a mither. But if I hed hed a
-mither, and she had got mad at me and put me out av the
-front door, I’d ’a’ kem in at the back one. I wud nivir hev
-deserted me own mither—nivir! But I nivir hed a mither,
-and thim as has blessings nivir vally thim. I’m spaking me
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>mind, Misther Longman, and ye may dooble me oop and
-fling me over the bank and brek me neck at the bottom of the
-gulch if ye like, for ye’re twice as big and strong as meself,
-but I’m bound to spake me mind!” exclaimed the Irish boy
-excitedly, digging his hands in his trousers pockets and
-straightening himself up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Give me your hand, Mike. You are a brave, true young
-fellow, and all that you say is right. Now, then, I must tell
-you that I have not neglected my mother. I wrote to her
-before I sailed from London, telling her where I was going.
-I also wrote to her from ’Frisco. I have written to her
-from every available point where I have taken up my abode.
-But I have never had an answer to any letter. She must
-have discarded me, and perhaps married again, for she was
-a comely woman, only thirty-eight years old, when I left
-her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did it nivir occur till ye that the letthers might be lost
-in a wild, onsartin part uv the worruld like this?” inquired
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I have thought of that. And lately—I don’t know
-why—the thought has grown upon me that my poor mother
-may be lonely and pining for her prodigal son. I cannot
-get rid of that thought. It haunts me day and night. That
-is why I have made up my mind to go home and make
-friends with my mother.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As if she ivir was anything else but frinds wi’ ye, Sam,
-darlint!” broke in Mike. He had stopped calling his comrade
-“Misther Longman.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I didn’t mean that exactly. I meant to make it all up
-with her, and to her, if I could. To give her all the money
-I have saved, to make her comfortable for life; and then
-come back to the free woods and the free game.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Less ye could win to a keeper’s place in the owld counthry,”
-put in Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; but that’s a dream,” laughed Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Aven so, it’s a dhrame that may kem as thrue as me own
-swishter Judy’s dhrame about her swateharrt that brought
-her all through the Black Woods to find him at last.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t in the least see how my dream—which was not
-even a dream, but a passing thought of a bare possibility—can
-come true,” laughed Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>“Then I’ll tell you!” exclaimed Mike. “Ye know Ran,
-whose life ye saved?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, of course!” exclaimed Longman in surprise at the
-vain question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I only wanted to mind ye of him. Ye know he
-has kum into a great estate?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course, I have heard that, too.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, thin. He’s going to live on it. And if ye be
-in England, and wanting av a keeper’s place, what more
-natural than Misther Hay should pit you over his own kivvirs?
-You thet saved his life!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, of course, the estate has a gamekeeper already.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tare an’ ’ounds, man, and supposin’ an’ if it has!
-Misther Hay wud kape two keepers before he’d lave you
-out’n the cold!” indignantly exclaimed Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know he would do all he possibly could for any of us.
-But it is time enough to think of all that when we get to
-England,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And are you bent on going, Mr. Longman?” inquired
-Andrew Quin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Bent on’ it, Dandy? I can’t help it. Something is
-drawing me. I feel it all the time.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On a visit?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On a visit for the present.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I go with you, sir, and come back with you, if I
-feel like it—though it is giving up the chance of a grand
-future.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But it is making reasonably sure of enjoying the rest of
-your days, Dandy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, mates, if you’ll both be laving, it’s meself that will
-go wid you. The ould fort will be right on our road, and
-I can shtop there to see me swishter Judy, and then I’ll go
-back to Grizzly. Grizzly ain’t no great shakes; but for a
-steady-going old mining camp, that will nivir promise to
-mek a man a millingnaire, nor yet starve him to death, but
-sorter keep him a-going on fair hopes and fair profits, why,
-thin, give me ould Grizzly!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good for you, Mike, my bold boy! We shall be glad to
-have your company, even as far as the fort, if no further,”
-said Longman, clapping his young comrade on the shoulder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, now, boys,” said Andrew, “I hev hed twenty years’
-experience in these regions, where both of you are, relatively
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>speaking, newcomers. And I tell you, airly as it is in the
-season, there’s snow not far off, and if so be we are bound to
-start, we had better be off to-morrow. What do you say?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’m riddy,” said Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you, Mr. Longman?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I agree with you.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line in4'>“‘Laugh those who can! Weep those who may!</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>Southward we march by break of day!’”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VI<br> <span class='large'>AT THE FORT</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>It was a glorious November morning, not yet cold in the
-latitude of the fort. Though there was a large wood fire in
-the sitting-room of the colonel’s quarters, the front windows
-were open, admitting the fresh air as well as the bright sunshine.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The colonel’s wife sat in her sewing-chair beside her
-work-stand at some little distance from the open window
-and nearer the fire, engaged in making a frock for one of
-her younger girls.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy sat at the window with a book in her hand, dividing
-her attention between the open page and the open view.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no one else in the room. The colonel and his
-eldest son, “Jim,” were at the adjutant’s office. All the
-younger children were in the schoolroom under the charge
-of their eldest sister, “Betty,” who was their teacher.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy had been three months separated from her brother,
-and from her betrothed, and under the exclusive care of
-Mrs. Moseley. Quick, witty, imitative and anxious to improve,
-Judy had made rapid advances. She had recovered
-all the half-forgotten book knowledge taught her at the convent
-school, and had progressed considerably beyond that.
-Hearing only good English spoken about her, she had
-gradually dropped her sweet dialect, which both Col. Moseley
-and Mr. Jim declared to be a lost charm, and only occasionally,
-under emotion or excitement, she would suddenly
-fall into it again. She was also better dressed than formerly;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>though again the colonel and his son declared not so
-picturesquely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley had judiciously expended a portion of the
-money left by Mike for the benefit of his sister, and her
-short, red skirt and black jacket had given place to a brown
-dress with white cuffs and collars, exchanged on Sundays
-for a fine, dark blue one with embroidered frills.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The mail came twice a week to the fort, and every mail
-brought Judy two or more letters from Ran; for he wrote
-nearly every day. The desire to answer all Ran’s letters was
-a great spur to improvement in Judy, who, showing all her
-compositions to Mrs. Moseley, begging her to correct the
-spelling, grammar and punctuation, and then carefully
-studying these corrections before making the clean copy that
-finally went to her betrothed, made greater progress in
-her education than she could have accomplished under any
-other circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran kept her advised of everything that happened to him,
-and his latest communications assured her that his cause
-was going on swimmingly, though, of course, there were,
-necessarily, “law’s delays.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To corroborate this, Mrs. Moseley received occasional letters
-from her old schoolmate, Mrs. Samuel Walling, who
-gave her chapter after chapter of what she called this romance
-in real life; how much the hero of it was admired
-by all to whom she had introduced him; how from his dark
-beauty and grace he was dubbed the Oriental Prince; how
-he was taken up by every one in society except the Vansitarts,
-who, in the interests of their late governess and
-favorite, and with idiotic obstinacy, disallowed a claim that
-every one else was forced to admit; last of all, how young
-Randolph Hay had discovered a lovely cousin, and sole surviving
-relative, in Palma Hay Stuart, the only child of his
-late Uncle James Jordan Hay, and the wife of Cleve Stuart,
-a man of fortune from Mississippi.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Much of this information—all of it, in fact, except that
-which concerned his “lionizing”—Ran had faithfully imparted
-to Judy. And she rejoiced in his present prosperity
-and future prospects.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy had but one source of anxiety—her Brother Mike!
-Three letters she had received from him since he took leave
-of her in September; but these had reached her at intervals
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>of a week or ten days apart, and since the last of these
-three, two months had passed and she had heard nothing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were times when she grew very much distressed,
-and felt almost sure that the party of adventurers to which
-Mike belonged had been massacred.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On this splendid November morning Judy, sitting at the
-window, with her grammar in hand, was more than usually
-downcast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First, there was the news that had come to her from her
-betrothed, that he was to sail for England about the first of
-December with Mr. Will Walling, to go through certain
-forms, preliminary to taking possession of the Hay estate
-and ousting the present usurper; his absence must be indefinite;
-but he would return as soon as possible—he hoped
-in two months’ time at the furthest. That news depressed
-the girl very much; but that was not all. The mail that
-brought Ran’s letter brought none from Mike. It was at
-least her twentieth disappointment, but she felt it as bitterly
-as if it had been her first.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, Judy?” at length inquired the colonel’s
-wife, noticing the dejected countenance of her
-protégée.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, it’s about Mike! I am sure the Indians
-must have—— Oh, ma’am, I can’t spake it!” the girl answered,
-breaking off with a sob.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My poor child, there is really no cause for such keen
-anxiety. Your brother and his party have gone far beyond
-the mail route in their search for silver. He cannot send
-a letter to you from his present camp, except by the chance
-of some one returning toward the mail routes. Be patient
-and hopeful, Judy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do try, ma’am; but it is awful to lose one’s brother in
-such a—void!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is no void in which any creature can be lost,
-Judy; for the Creator is everywhere, and He is our Father
-as well, and none of His children can stray out of His presence.
-It must be dreadful to have any beloved one disappear
-mysteriously, but it is certain that the Lord knows
-where he or she is, and will take care of His child, living
-or dead!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I believe that, ma’am,” said Judy, trying to rally her
-spirits.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>She returned to the study of her book; but her thoughts
-were too distracted for concentration, and her eyes wandered
-from the page to the open window. The great gates of the
-fort were directly in front of the colonel’s quarters and
-about a hundred yards distant.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Judy, looking out toward them, dropped her
-book, started up and exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why! What!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then she stopped and gazed through the window.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is it, my child?” inquired the lady.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A strange officer, ma’am, and several strange soldiers
-coming in at the gate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley laid down her work and came and joined
-Judy at the window.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A small troop of horsemen, about ten men in all, with
-an officer at their head, marched through the gate, wheeled
-to the right, and rode up to the adjutant’s quarters, where
-they all dismounted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The officer, attended by an orderly, went into the office.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The men remained outside, standing by their horses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What does it mean, ma’am, do you think?” inquired
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know. It may be some small reinforcement on
-their way to some other fort. We shall hear when the
-colonel comes in.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As the lady spoke the orderly came out of the adjutant’s
-office and spoke to the dismounted men, who immediately
-dispersed, leading their horses away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The two women stood a few minutes longer at the window,
-and then, as there was nothing more to be learned by
-looking out, each returned to her employment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Even after that, Judy continued to glance from her lesson
-in syntax, through the open window that commanded the
-great gates and a broad sweep of the fort grounds; but
-nothing occurred to reward her vigilance or satisfy her
-curiosity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length she grew tired of watching, and gave her undivided
-attention to her lesson.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Two hours passed, and the colonel might have been seen
-coming from the adjutant’s office to his own quarters, with
-a brisk step and a radiant face, with full twenty years taken
-off his fifty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>“Good news, Dolly, my dear!” he said, bursting into the
-sitting-room. “Good news! Dispatches from Washington.
-Call all the children together to hear the good news.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go, Judy, dear, and bring them,” exclaimed Mrs. Moseley
-in eager anticipation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy flew to do her bidding, and soon the room was filled
-with the progeny of the military patriarch.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where’s Jim?” demanded the colonel, looking around.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here I am, father,” said the eldest son, entering the
-room at that moment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And Betty?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here, father, behind you. So close to you that you can’t
-see me!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And Baby Lu?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Right there between your feet, father. If you look down
-you will see her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hadn’t you better call the roll, dad? Then you will be
-sure that we are all here!” cried Master Clin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hold your tongue, you young scamp, and listen!” exclaimed
-the colonel, laughing. Then turning to his wife
-gravely, almost tearfully, he said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dolly, my dear, it has come at last! It has been a long
-time coming. I have got my promotion and six months’
-leave!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley jumped from her chair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Moses! Moses! I am so glad! So thankful! I
-never expected it in our lifetime—never! I looked that we
-should live and die among the frontier forts, with no change
-but from one to another. Oh, thank Heaven! Thank
-Heaven!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Maj. Lawson will succeed me in command here. Capt.
-King, who brought the dispatches, remains here with the
-ten new recruits who are to take the places of as many of
-our soldiers whose terms of service are drawing to a close.
-There, children, there is my good news. Now be off with
-you and rollic over it!” he added, turning to the young
-people.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! father dear, are we really going East? Really
-going to the cities and to civilization?” breathlessly demanded
-Betty, thinking this news much too good, too wonderful
-to be true.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>And the faces of all the other children eagerly seconded
-their elder sister’s question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Really and truly, my dear ones. And my pleasure in
-going is immeasurably heightened by the joy the anticipation
-of the change gives you all. Now run away; I wish to
-speak to your mother,” he said, smiling on them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tell us one thing, dad, do!” said Master Clinton.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, what is it, my boy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When are we going?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In a very few days. I cannot tell you yet what day.
-Now run away.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The boy scampered off, and his army of brothers and
-sisters followed him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy also would have left the room, but Mrs. Moseley
-stopped her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Stay, my dear girl. We only sent the children away that
-they might give vent to their joy in the open air, as you hear
-them doing. Now, Moses!” said the lady.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear, it is only this: King will dine with us
-to-day, and I have invited Lawson, and Hill, and Perry to
-meet him. Is it too late to make some suitable addition to
-our family spread?” anxiously inquired the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! no, not if we put back the dinner an hour. There
-is a fine haunch of venison, a buffalo tongue, and a bunch
-of prairie fowl that I have just bought from an Indian.
-And then I will open my preserve jars in honor of the occasion,
-though I did not intend to touch them until Christmas.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are a tower of strength, Dolly, my dear, but we
-shall not be here at Christmas. Now I have something to
-do over at the office. I will be back with King a little
-while before dinner,” concluded the colonel as he left the
-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, Judy? You look very grave, my
-dear,” said Mrs. Moseley, who was at last at leisure to observe
-her protégée.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am!” said the girl in a broken voice, being almost
-in tears; “oh, dear, ma’am, it is not that I am not glad
-and thankful for the good fortune that has come to you and
-the dear colonel and the childer——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Children, Judy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>“Yes, ma’am, children, to be sure, only sometimes I do
-forget.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, you were saying——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am, I was saying I am glad and thankful to
-the Lord and all the saints for the blessing and the prosperity
-that have come to you; but, but, but——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But what, Judy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The girl did not answer, but burst into tears and sobbed
-aloud.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy! Judy! Judy! What is all this? Are you crying
-because you are doubtful of what is to become of you?”
-tenderly inquired the lady, laying her hand on the girl’s
-curly, dark hair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s the parting with yeez a’, ma’am! And the thought
-what will I do at all, at all, when ye lave this! Oh, sure
-it is a silfish wretch that I am to be graiving for meself,
-instid of rejoicing with yeez!” wept the girl, backsliding
-hopelessly into her dialect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy, dear, do you think we would leave you behind?
-No, dear, not one of us would think of such a cruel thing.
-We must take you with us, Judy, my poor child!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, sure and it’s a hivinly angel av goodness ye
-are and always was, and meself always said it. And I’d go
-with you, willing, and glad, and grateful, only there’s me
-poor Mike. If Mike should write to me, or come to see
-me, what wud he do not to find me?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My girl, we would leave word with the adjutant to forward
-any letters that might come for you, and if your
-brother should appear in person, to tell him where you were
-to be found. There! will that do? And remember we are
-going to New York, and you will see Ran before he sails
-for England. Come, now! will that do?” archly inquired
-the colonel’s wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yis, ma’am! Yis, sure!” exclaimed Judy, her eyes
-sparkling through her tears. “And sure meself will be
-the thankful craychur!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Creature, Judy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So it is! Creature, ma’am, thank you, and I will learn
-after a while.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley then left the sitting-room and went to the
-kitchen to give directions to the soldier’s wife who filled the
-place of her cook.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>Judy laid aside her book and began to put the room in
-order for the visitors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Punctually at about fifteen minutes before the dinner
-hour the colonel came in with Capt. King, a fine, tall, stalwart-looking
-man with dark complexion, black hair and
-mustache, and about thirty-five years of age. He introduced
-the strangers to Mrs. Moseley, who received him
-cordially, and to “Miss Man,” who only bowed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were soon joined by the major, the adjutant and
-the surgeon, and then all went in to dinner. Judy scarcely
-opened her lips in speech during the meal, for fear of falling
-into her dialect. The impromptu dinner party passed
-off very successfully, and the evening passed gayly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day being Tuesday, preparations for leaving
-the fort were commenced by the colonel and his family.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They fixed the ensuing Monday for their departure.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley, in the midst of her packing, found time
-to write to her friend, Augusta Walling, announcing their
-return to the East, and asking her to find a large furnished
-house suitable to their large family and moderate income,
-somewhere in an inexpensive suburb of New York, and to
-have it ready for them to enter on their arrival, to save the
-cost of going to a hotel with their numerous party.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Every one was happy except Judy, who was grieving to
-go away without having heard from her missing brother,
-even though she was going where she would be sure to meet
-her betrothed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With distressful anxiety she watched for the one remaining
-mail that would come in before they would leave the
-fort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Thursday, the next mail day, came and brought her letters
-from Ran, telling her of the progress of his business
-and the passing of his time, and that he had at length
-secured apartments in the same building with his cousins,
-and had left his hotel to establish himself there until he
-should sail for England.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy was satisfied so far as her lover was concerned; but
-she was so bitterly disappointed and distressed at not getting
-any news of her brother by this last mail that she felt
-as if her last hope for him had died out, almost as if she
-might mourn him as dead, and she went away to her own
-tiny room to have her cry out by herself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>Then she wrote a long letter addressed to her brother, in
-which she explained to him the necessity of leaving the
-fort with the colonel’s family, and begging him to write to
-her or come and see her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This she placed in the adjutant’s hands, begging him to
-give it to Mike if he should come to the fort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By Friday night all the preparations for departure were
-completed. It had been a heavy week’s work to get ready a
-family of fifteen for a removal and a long journey, but the
-task was finished at last, and the colonel said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We may now take two Sabbaths’ rest, the Jewish and
-the Christian, before setting out on our pilgrimage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And that night the whole family went to bed tired enough
-to enjoy the two days’ rest to come.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day—Saturday—was a beautiful day, clear,
-and bright, and mild. Fine fires were burning in all the
-fireplaces, but all the windows were open.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley was distributing to the few soldiers’ wives
-that were in the camp many household articles that she
-would not want. Also she was receiving informal visits
-from officers’ wives, who were sorry to have her leave the
-fort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy, having nothing on earth to do, was walking up
-and down on the piazza of the colonel’s quarters, thinking
-of her brother, Mike, and his too probable fate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On this day, people were coming in and going out of
-the fort gates continually; but Judy took no notice of them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently there came through the gates another troop—not
-a troop of horse as on the preceding Monday, but a
-very small troop on foot, consisting of some half a dozen
-of the most ragged, dirty, forlorn and Heaven-forsaken
-looking tramps that Christian eyes ever beheld.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy, pacing up and down the piazza, never saw them.
-She was muttering to herself:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know he is dead, but I shall never know how he died,
-or where he died, or how much he might have suffered
-before he died. And this will be a sorrow to me worse than
-death itself! A life-long sorrow that even me darlint Ran
-can nivir comfort me for.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A familiar voice called in her ear, a hard hand clapped
-her on the shoulder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>She sprang as if she had been shot, gazed for an instant
-as if she had gone mad, and then, with a great cry, flung
-herself in her brother’s arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike was worn out with his wearisome tramp, so he sat
-down on one of the wooden benches, drew his sister on
-his knees, and held her to his bosom, where she lay sobbing
-in a great paroxysm of emotion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her cry had brought Mrs. Moseley and several other
-members of the family to the door. They saw Mike sitting
-there with his sister’s face hidden on his bosom. Mike
-lifted his old rag of a hat to the lady, who smiled and returned
-into the house with all who had followed her to the
-door. She would not disturb such a joyful meeting. She
-was as much delighted as surprised that it had come so
-opportunely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was some time before Judy was composed enough to
-speak. And even then her first utterances were incoherent
-ejaculations of thankfulness, delight and affection. At
-length she said, falling into her old dialect:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s an answer to prayer! It’s a blissing come down
-from the Mither av Hivin. Oh, sure me harrt was breaking
-in me brest to lave this, an’ yoursilf away, and me unbeknownst
-of whativir hed become av ye!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Wheriver were ye going, Judy?” he asked.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, sure ye didn’t know! How should ye?” she said.
-And then she told him the situation, and inquired, in her
-turn, how it was that he came so happily to see her, before
-her departure.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That Silver Moon Mine was jist the most misfortunate
-ventur’ as ivir was made! Iviry one of the bhoys as went
-from Grizzly have come back, hed to, ilse we wud ha’ perished
-in the snow there, this winter. What a differint climit
-this is! Why, it’s almost like simmir here compared to
-there. So we’s all going back to slow and sure old Grizzly.
-All, lasteways, ixcipt Longman and Dandy, who are going
-back to the ould counthry.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike, are you going back to Grizzly?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis, sure! Where ilse wud I go?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike, don’t let us be parted! Go with me to New
-York! Ran is going to England about the first of December;
-wouldn’t you like to see him once more before he
-goes?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>Mike hesitated, then he said slowly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure, and I wud like to go with ye, Judy, and I wud
-like to see Ran, but——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, don’t say but, Mike. Draw out the bit of money ye
-left in the savings bank at ’Frisco, and come with us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis, but what the divil will I do before I get to ’Frisco
-without a cint av money or a dacint suit av clothes?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh—I’ll—I’ll—I’ll spake to the colonel’s leddy!” said
-Judy, springing up impulsively and running into the house
-to lay the case before her benefactress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley was all sympathy and kindness, and soon
-devised a plan by which Mike should have an outfit and
-transportation to San Francisco, where he might draw his
-savings from the bank, and repay all advances.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That day and the next, through the kindness of the colonel
-and his officers, the footsore, starved and wearied
-tramps were fed and rested at the fort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Monday the determined miners went on their way to
-Grizzly, well provided with food and drink for their journey
-through the woods.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At the same time a train of ambulances and army
-wagons, containing the colonel and his numerous family,
-the discharged soldiers, with Longman, Mike, Dandy and
-much goods, filed out of the fort gates and took the road to
-St. Agnetta, where they were all to take the train to San
-Francisco, en route for New York.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VII<br> <span class='large'>A GLAD SURPRISE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>“I have found them, ma’am! I have found them! And
-they are charming—charming!” exclaimed Ran Hay with
-boyish exultation, bursting into Mrs. Samuel Walling’s parlor
-with the freedom of an inmate on the morning succeeding
-his meeting with Cleve and Palma Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sit down, you excitable fellow, and tell me whom you
-have found. Is it Sir John Franklin and his crew, or is it
-Mr. Livingstone?” inquired the lady, rising and giving her
-hand to the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>“Neither, ma’am; though I would give my life to find
-either if it were possible. But I have found my own dear
-cousins!” replied Ran, dropping into a chair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your Uncle James Jordan’s children? Those whom you
-advertised for?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“His daughter, ma’am; his sole surviving child, Palma,
-and her husband, Cleve Stuart, who is the only son and sole
-heir of the late John Stuart, a rich planter of Mississippi.
-They are a charming young couple, only a few months married.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cleve Stuart?” said Mrs. Walling, musing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, I know him! He used to be a devoted admirer of
-Lamia Leegh. We all thought that it would certainly be
-a match. But I fancy she discarded him in favor of the
-wealthier suitor, your treacherous traveling companion,
-Gentleman Geff, the rival claimant of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If she did she made a miserable mistake. But I do not
-think she did. I don’t believe she ever had the chance. I
-cannot fancy Stuart ever having been enslaved by any
-woman before his lovely wife, to whom he is perfectly devoted!”
-replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! well, I may have been mistaken. He was very
-much in society. So was Miss Leegh. They were frequently
-together. But tell me how you found them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Through that advertisement, of course.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, I know. But how?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Stuart answered my advertisement by coming in
-person to my hotel; finding me out, he left a note with his
-address, asking me to call there. I got that note when I
-came in, and immediately started out to see my cousins. I
-found them in an elegant little flat, their rooms almost as
-charming as themselves. I spent the afternoon with them,
-dined with them, went to the theater with them, supped
-with them, and only left them in the ‘wee sma’ hours’ of
-the morning. And I could not sleep for happiness in the
-thought of having found my kindred, and such delightful
-kindred! Then as soon as possible this morning I came to
-tell you the good news.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to hear it, Mr. Hay! I have lost sight
-of Mr. Stuart for the last six months.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is just as long as they have been married. They
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>were married on the first of May last, and spent the whole
-season at some place up the Hudson, and have only been in
-town for a few weeks. And I do not think she knows a
-soul here!” said Ran with a pleading look in his soft, dark
-eyes that said as plainly as words could have spoken:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Won’t you please to take the dear little one under your
-wing?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling replied just as if he had spoken his plea.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, certainly, I will call on Mrs. Stuart with great
-pleasure if you will give me her address.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When? Oh, when?” demanded Ran with more eagerness
-than politeness. And then suddenly remembering
-himself he said: “Oh, I beg pardon.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, any time—this week, to-morrow, to-day, if you
-like. Yes, to-day, it will be just as convenient as any other
-day. Will you escort me, Mr. Hay?” said the lady.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, with the greatest pleasure and gratitude, ma’am.
-You are very kind.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling touched a bell, which brought a servant to
-the room. She ordered her carriage to be brought to
-the door, and then turning to young Hay, said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you will remain here until I put on my bonnet and
-wraps I will not keep you long.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran rose and bowed, and Mrs. Walling left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Twenty minutes later Ran handed the lady into her carriage,
-entered after her, and gave the order:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To the Alto Flats.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The truth is that Mrs. Samuel Walling was impelled by
-curiosity as well as by neighborly kindness in thus promptly
-going to call on Mrs. Cleve Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A half hour’s drive brought them to the flats.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Leaving Mrs. Walling in the carriage, but taking her
-card, he entered the office of the house and gave it, with his
-own, to the janitor’s boy, who took them upstairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In five minutes the boy came down and reported that
-Mrs. Cleve Stuart was at home, and would the gentleman
-and lady come up?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran returned to the carriage, assisted Mrs. Walling to
-alight, and conducted her into the house; they entered the
-elevator and were soon “landed” at the door of the private
-hall leading into the Stuarts’ suite of apartments.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The boy opened the parlor door and they entered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>Palma, neatly dressed in her well-worn, best suit of crimson
-cashmere, with its narrow, white frills at throat and
-wrists, and her curly, black hair lightly shading her forehead,
-arose from her chair and came forward with shy grace
-to receive her visitors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is Mrs. Samuel Walling, dear Cousin Palma. She
-does me the honor to be my good friend. Mrs. Walling, my
-cousin, Mrs. Cleve Stuart,” said Ran, going through the introduction
-as well as he could.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma put out her hand shyly, half in doubt whether she
-should do so or not, and murmured:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to see you, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Mrs. Walling took her hand with a frank and cordial
-smile and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am delighted to know you! I should have recognized
-you without an introduction, anywhere, from your likeness
-to your cousin here! Why, you might be twins.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In a few minutes the three friends were seated and talking
-as freely as if they had known each other all their lives.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Evidently the two women were mutually pleased with
-each other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While they conversed Cleve Stuart came in from his
-daily, fruitless quest after employment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He looked surprised and pleased to see Mrs. Walling with
-his wife, and warmly shook hands with her, expressing his
-satisfaction at meeting her again after so long an interval
-of time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It was your own fault, Mr. Stuart. You should have
-sent an old friend your wedding cards,” said the lady,
-laughing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We had none, madam. My little girl was an invalid,
-and our wedding was a very quiet one at Lull’s, where I had
-taken her for a change of air,” replied Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will not excuse you, sir. On your return to the city
-with your sweet, young wife, you should have sent me your
-address, that I might have called sooner. I hold that you
-have deprived me of some weeks’ enjoyment I should otherwise
-have had in the acquaintance of Mrs. Cleve Stuart.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I have no more to say, dear madam, but to throw
-myself upon your mercy,” replied Stuart as he seated himself
-near the group.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never mind, my dear,” said Mrs. Walling, turning to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>Palma, “we must make up for lost time by becoming at
-once very intimate friends. Now, will you come and take
-tea with me to-morrow at six o’clock? Not a fashionable
-tea, dear child, at which hundreds of people sip Oolong or
-Gunpowder out of dolls’ china cups, but a real unfashionable
-tea party of ten or a dozen intimate friends, who assemble
-at ‘early candle-light,’ and sit comfortably down to
-a long table—a custom of my grandmother’s that I loved
-in my childhood, and brought with me from old Maryland
-to this city, and indulge in whenever I can with some of my
-friends. Will you come, you and Mr. Stuart, dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With much pleasure, thank you, ma’am,” replied Palma,
-speaking for both.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I want you to meet my friend, Mrs. Duncan, and one
-or two other good people.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you very much, madam,” said Palma shyly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She will be glad to make friends among your friends,
-Mrs. Walling, for she is almost a stranger here,” added
-Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then, to-morrow afternoon, at six o’clock,”
-concluded the lady, and she arose to take her leave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran shook hands with his cousins and escorted Mrs. Walling
-back to her carriage, and would have bid her good-by
-at the door, but that the lady said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come in here, Mr. Hay. I want to have more talk
-with you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran obeyed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they were seated and were well on their way along
-the avenue Mrs. Walling said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have heard from our friends at the fort but once since
-your arrival, Mr. Hay! The letter of introduction you
-brought is the last, except a card, I have had from Mrs.
-Moseley, and never has so long an interval passed without
-hearing from her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you answered her last letter, dear madam?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course I did, immediately, and have written one or
-two since. Have you heard from them, Mr. Hay?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not for two weeks! And I should be very anxious if I
-did not know that they must have written. The mails in
-that unsettled region are very irregular, often delayed and
-sometimes lost. That condition of affairs out there explains
-an apparent silence that might otherwise make me
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>seriously anxious. We shall get letters by and by, Mrs.
-Walling, for every mail is not lost.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I hope they got my letters.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They must have received every one, though we have got
-none,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the carriage drew up before the Walling house and
-Ran had helped the lady to alight and escorted her to her
-own door, he would have taken leave, but she insisted that
-he should enter with her and remain for dinner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There he spent the evening, after dinner taking a hand
-in a rubber of whist with Mrs. Walling and the two Messrs.
-Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That same night Mr. Samuel Walling left by the late
-train for Washington to see the British minister. He expected
-to be back in three days.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next morning Mrs. Walling sent out her few invitations
-to intimate friends for her entertainment. It was
-only under certain conditions that the lady could indulge
-in the practical reminiscence of her childhood, represented
-by this old-fashioned tea party, which, when it occurred,
-always superseded the late dinner; and the first of these
-conditions was the absence of her husband, who could never
-give up a dinner for a tea, no matter how abundantly the
-table for the latter might be spread.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling’s journey to Washington furnished her opportunity
-on this occasion. So, early in the morning, she
-sent out about half a dozen little cocked-hat notes of invitation
-to some of her old friends not among the most
-fashionable of her acquaintances. And all who were disengaged
-accepted at once. Among these was good little Mrs.
-Duncan, and old Mrs. Murphy, and Miss Christiansen—all
-pleasant people.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At six o’clock her guests began to arrive—only eight in
-number, including the hostess. Six of these were ladies,
-the only gentlemen present being Mr. Cleve Stuart, Mr.
-Randolph Hay and Mr. Roger Duncan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The elegant and luxurious “tea” was as abundant and
-varied as any dinner need be, and much more dainty than
-any dinner can be. It was not a full dress party, nor a
-ceremonious occasion; so both before and after tea there
-was some card playing and much gossip.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Stuart and Mr. Duncan, with Miss Christiansen and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>Mrs. Murphy, sat down to a rubber of whist. Mrs. Walling,
-Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Stuart and Mr. Hay sat near each other
-in a group and gossiped with all their might and main.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan was the principal talker; and after telling
-many a spicy but harmless bit of news, she took up the story
-of her protégée, Jennie Montgomery, and soon interested all
-her hearers in it. The facts were new to them all except
-to herself and Mrs. Murphy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What puzzled me about the young thing was this: That
-while she had lost every particle of respect and affection for
-her would-be murderer, she persisted in shielding him from
-justice. Now, I can understand a woman shielding a criminal
-whom she has loved, and still loves; but I cannot
-understand her protecting an assassin who has aimed at
-her life, and whom she fears and abhors!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Palma’s eyes began to sparkle. She had her little
-story to tell, too. And she wanted to tell it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you know,” she said, as soon as she could slip into
-the busy conversation—“do you know that my husband was
-arrested by mistake for Capt. Kightly Montgomery, and
-held for a murderous assault, until he could prove his identity
-by competent witnesses?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ladies, startled by this information, made little, low
-exclamations of surprise.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your husband was one of the witnesses, Mrs. Walling,”
-continued Palma, pleased with herself that she could contribute
-some little item of interest to the conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! I think I remember hearing something about
-some one being arrested by mistake, charged with something
-or other, and Mr. Walling being called as a witness to prove
-the accused to be some other than the man wanted; but,
-really, now, there are so many sensational items in the daily
-papers that one shoves the other from the memory. So it
-was Mr. Cleve Stuart, was it? Pleasant for him,” said
-Mrs. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And it was really your husband, Mrs. Stuart, who was
-taken to the woman’s ward of the hospital to be identified
-by Jennie Montgomery! I heard all about it at the time,
-but I had forgotten the name of the gentleman who had
-been arrested by mistake,” said Mrs. Duncan, taking a good
-look at Stuart, who was in a fine light for the view, seated
-at the card table immediately under a chandelier. “And
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>there certainly is a very striking likeness between him and
-the miniature of the young woman’s murderous husband,”
-she concluded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then all the other ladies turned and gazed at Stuart,
-who was blissfully unconscious of the severe scrutiny.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But though there is a striking likeness, there is also a
-very great difference,” resumed Mrs. Duncan. “But you
-can see for yourselves. By the merest chance I have that
-miniature in my pocket.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, do let us see it, dear Mrs. Duncan, do!” pleaded
-Palma, eager to behold the likeness that had led to her
-husband’s false arrest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear; but first let me tell you how I happen to
-have it in my possession, and also to have it with me here.
-Mrs. Montgomery spent the last ten days of her stay in the
-city in my house. The miniature which had been found in
-her possession when the police searched her room, and had
-been used in the vain effort to trace her assailant, was at
-length restored to her. And to show how entirely she had
-ceased to care for the man who tried to murder her, she
-actually forgot his picture, and left it behind in her bureau
-drawer. I never chanced to find it until this morning; and
-as I was coming out, I thought I would do it up and send it
-out to her by mail. So I put it in a small box, directed and
-sealed it and put it in my pocket with the intention of
-posting it, and then—forgot all about it until now. Now
-you shall see it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She drew a small pasteboard box from her pocket, broke
-the seals, opened it and took out a small morocco case, which
-she also opened and handed to Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is a slight resemblance. Only a very slight one.
-I do not see how any one could mistake this sinister-looking
-face for a miniature of Mr. Stuart. Now, do you, Mrs.
-Walling?” said Palma with an aggrieved air as she passed
-the picture to her friend and hostess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is a very wonderful likeness to my eyes, my dear,
-in features, hair, complexion and all—except expression.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And expression is everything. I see scarcely any likeness
-myself,” persisted Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you allow me to look at it?” Ran inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling placed it in his hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>“Now, do you see any likeness between that ill face and
-Cleve’s?” inquired Palma, appealing to her cousin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not the least!” exclaimed Ran on the first cursory
-glance at the miniature. Then holding it closer and gazing
-more attentively he exclaimed suddenly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, I know this fellow! It is Gentleman Geff, as he
-appeared when he first came to Grizzly, before he shaved his
-mustache off and let his beard grow! It’s Gentleman Geff!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Gentleman Geff!’” echoed all the ladies, except Mrs.
-Walling, who took the picture and gazed at it in silence for
-a moment, and then, returning it, said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! I see now! So it is! Though the full beard
-made so great a difference that even the likeness did not
-occur to me. Excuse me one moment, friends. I will return
-directly.” And she hastily left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran could scarcely get over his astonishment at his discovery.
-Gentleman Geff, the very fine dude who had seemed
-too dainty for any of the rudenesses of life, yet who had
-treacherously shot him in the woods, robbed him of his
-documents, and possessed himself of his estates, was also
-the man who had attempted the murder of his own wife and
-feloniously married another woman!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But who is Gentleman Geff?” inquired Palma, Mrs.
-Duncan and Miss Christiansen, in a breath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please wait a little, ladies, until the return of Mrs.
-Walling. Perhaps she will inform you, or allow me to tell
-you, who he is,” said Ran respectfully, and even deprecatingly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling returned with what might be called Mr.
-Walling’s professional photograph album in her hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She opened it at a certain page and pointed out a face
-and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look at that and compare it with the miniature, and
-then tell me if the two are not likenesses of the same person,
-notwithstanding the difference made by the mustache on
-one face and the full beard on the other.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She had handed the two pictures first to Palma, who
-gazed for a moment, and then nodded assent, and passed
-them around to her companions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But who is the man?” inquired Mrs. Duncan, while
-Palma and Miss Christiansen seconded the question by their
-eager looks.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>“Friends, he was one of Messrs. Wallings’ clients, but is
-so no longer. He has managed to deceive two astute lawyers,
-to impose upon society, to get hold of a name and an
-estate that does not belong to him, and to marry the most
-beautiful woman in the country and take her off to Europe
-in triumph, while his own deserted wife and child, whom
-he believed he had safely disposed of by murder, sailed with
-him in the same ship, unsuspected by him, unsuspicious,
-also, it seems, of her faithless, murderous husband’s presence
-there. He is an adventurer of many aliases, a gambler,
-a forger, a swindler, a perjurer, a bigamist and an assassin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling paused a moment to look upon her shocked
-audience, and then continued:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is the man. What his name is I cannot tell you.
-We knew him as Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore. You
-have all heard of him under that name, and the <i><span lang="fr">éclat</span></i> of the
-splendid festivities at the Vansitart mansion on the occasion
-of his marriage with Miss Leegh has scarcely died away.
-Jennie Montgomery knew him as Capt. Kightly Montgomery;
-my young friend, Mr. Hay, knew him as Geoffrey
-Delamere, Esq.; and gamblers of Grizzly Gulch as Gentleman
-Geff.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She paused again to mark the effect of her words.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But no one spoke; the women were shocked into silence
-and pallor. At length, however, Ran murmured:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is too horrible!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You know that the man whom society has been lionizing
-for the last six months is a fraudulent claimant of the Haymore
-estate; you should also know that this gentleman here,
-whom I introduced to you as simply Mr. Hay, is really the
-true Randolph Hay, of Haymore, and a few weeks at
-furthest will see him invested with his manor.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan and Miss Christiansen both turned to congratulate
-Ran, who laughed and blushed like a girl at the
-honor due him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Four by honors and six by tricks, and we have beat the
-rubber!” exclaimed Mr. Roger Duncan, rising in triumph
-from the whist table and breaking in upon the gravity of
-the circle collected around the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No one of that circle thought of speaking to the others
-of their discovery through the miniature and photograph.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And soon the company broke up.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VIII<br> <span class='large'>UNEXPECTED ARRIVALS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>From this day forth the life of Cleve and Palma
-changed. They made friends and went much into company
-through the introductions of Mrs. Walling. They were
-young and innocently fond of gayety, and they were led on
-by Ran, who was liberally supplied with money advanced
-by his solicitors, and who, from being a daily visitor at
-their apartments, had at last taken up his abode under the
-same roof for the sake of being nearer to them until he
-should sail for England, accompanied by Mr. William Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Unfortunately, neither Randolph Hay nor the Wallings
-suspected the impoverished condition of their new friends,
-else they would not have tempted or led the young pair
-into a way of life so much above their means.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As it was, their scanty little fund had to be drawn upon
-for such additions to Palma’s toilet, and even to Cleve’s, in
-the way of nice boots and fresh gloves, that seemed really
-indispensable to them when they went out in the evening.
-Had Palma even suspected their own poverty she would not
-have gone anywhere if it cost money to go there. But,
-unsuspicious as she was, believing, as she did, that her husband
-was in very easy circumstances, she went out a great
-deal; and Cleve, seeing how much she enjoyed society, had
-not the heart to check her enjoyment by telling her the
-truth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Only gloves and boots and car fare her pleasures cost
-them. She had two dresses, the crimson cashmere, much
-worn, but carefully preserved, and often cleaned and repaired
-for continual use by the careful hands of Mrs. Pole.
-This was her dress for dinners and afternoon teas. Her
-white India muslin—her confirmation robe, and afterward
-her wedding suit—was now her only evening dress. Neither
-of these were at all stylish, but they were neat and clean;
-and then her boots and gloves were perfectly fitting, fresh
-and faultless.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Every day Cleve went forth to seek employment, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>every night returned disappointed to find himself poorer by
-the day’s expenditures than he had been the day before.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Everything was going out and nothing coming in; and
-yet he shrank from saying to Palma:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We cannot afford another pair of new gloves even,
-dear,” or to do anything but smile in her face when she
-would only ask him to go with her to a lunch party at Mrs.
-Duncan’s, or to a five-o’clock tea at Miss Christiansen’s.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>If Ran had only known their straits as he bounded daily
-up and down the stairs, too full of life and energy to avail
-himself of the elevator, how gladly, how joyously, would he
-have poured into his cousin’s lap wealth from his own abundant
-means, nor ever dreamed of offering offense in proffering
-what he himself, in their reversed circumstances,
-would have been frankly willing to receive from them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he knew nothing, suspected nothing, of their poverty;
-and even if he had known, and had offered to give
-assistance, Cleve Stuart, in his spirit of pride or independence,
-would have refused it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran held firmly to his purpose of giving his cousin a fair
-share of their grandfather’s estate, as soon as he himself
-should be put in lawful possession, which was only a question
-of a few weeks’ time; but he said nothing more about
-it to either Palma or Cleve. He thought they understood
-his intentions, and believed in them, and that it would be
-in bad taste to refer to them again. Besides, he did not
-suspect how dark the future looked to one of them at least,
-and what a source of anxiety it was.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What the young pair really thought of their cousin’s offer
-to share, was just this—that it had been made, not from a
-delicate sense of justice that would stand the test of time
-and opportunity, but from a sudden impulse of generosity
-that might yield to cool afterthought. Neither of them
-placed much reliance on the offer, especially as they had
-repudiated it at the time, and Ran had never renewed it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The day for young Hay’s departure for England was at
-length fixed. He was to sail on the second of December.
-It had been first suggested that Mr. Samuel Walling should
-attend him to England, and introduce him personally to the
-London solicitors of the Hays of Haymore; but, as usual,
-Mr. Will put in his plea of overwork, brain exhaustion,
-want of change, and so on, and, as usual, his claim was
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>allowed, and it was decided that he should accompany the
-young heir.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The aged priest, Father Pedro de Leon, having under
-oath testified to the identity of Randolph Hay, had bidden
-an affectionate good-by to his pupil and returned to his
-flock in San Francisco.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was remarkable that while Mr. Sam Walling, the head
-of the firm of Walling &#38; Walling, took all the heaviest responsibilities,
-did all the hardest work, seldom left his desk
-during the office hours, and never left the city except on
-business, Mr. Will, the junior partner, required all the
-relaxation in frequent visits to Newport and Saratoga during
-the summer months, and Washington and even Savannah
-during the winter season. And now it seemed absolutely
-necessary that Mr. Will should have a sea voyage to restore
-the shaken equilibrium of his overtasked mind and body.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That’s just it!” Mrs. Walling said one day to Ran when
-speaking of the trip to England. “Our firm, as a firm, is
-always full of work, yet manages to have a good deal of
-play also; only Sam takes the work and Will the play.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As the month of November drew to a close and the day
-of his departure came near, Ran grew more and more uneasy.
-He had not heard a word from Judy for more than
-three weeks, though in that time he had written so many
-letters; nor had Mrs. Walling lately heard from Mrs. Moseley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran was not of a temperament to borrow trouble. Quite
-the contrary; he always looked on the bright side. He was
-willing to make every allowance for the well-known uncertainty
-of the mails in those unsettled regions guarded by
-the frontier forts; but still it seemed strange and alarming
-that for a month past no mail had come safely through
-contingent dangers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His greatest anxiety now was that he should have to sail
-for Europe without having heard from Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He confided his trouble to Cleve and Palma, with whom
-he now spent every evening whenever they were at home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One evening, about a week before he was to sail, he was
-sitting with Cleve and Palma in their tiny parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve had been reading aloud, but laid down his book on
-the entrance of Ran. Palma was knitting a woolen wristlet,
-the last of four pair that she had been making for Cleve and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>Mrs. Pole, and she continued to knit after greeting her
-cousin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran brought a chair to the little table at which the other
-two sat, threw himself into it, sighed and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is Saturday night, the twenty-fifth, and in one
-week from to-day, on Saturday, the second of December, I
-must sail for England.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, Cousin Randolph, I know. And I am very sorry it
-should be necessary that you should have to go—very. But
-you will soon return,” sympathetically replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is about Judy,” frankly exclaimed Ran. “I have not
-had a letter from her for nearly a month.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you yourself have told us of the uncertainty of the
-mails.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, and that might have been an explanation, and
-therefore a kind of comfort, for failing to get a single letter
-in time. But when three or four that I should have got
-have failed to come, it is strange and alarming.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Neither Cleve nor Palma found anything to answer to
-this. They knew and felt that it was both “strange and
-alarming.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let us hope that you will get a letter within a few
-days,” at length ventured Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, you may get one even to-morrow,” hopefully exclaimed
-Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! And I may have to sail for England in the
-most agonizing anxiety as to Judy’s fate!” said Ran with
-a profound sigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But there is no reason for such an intense anxiety. She
-is in excellent hands,” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! but when I came away there was a talk of the intended
-rising of the Indians! Good Heaven! the fort may
-have been stormed and all hands massacred for all I know!”
-exclaimed the youth, growing pallid at the very thought.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Randolph!” cried Palma in horror.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nothing of that sort could have happened without our
-having heard of it before this. The authorities at Washington
-would have received the news, and it would have been
-in all the papers. Some survivor would have escaped to the
-nearest telegraph station and sent the message flying to
-Washington,” said Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes—certainly. But I never thought of that! It is
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>a real relief to me! I hope I may get a letter before I go!
-If I do not, and could have my own way, I would sacrifice
-the passage and wait here until I could hear from Judy.
-But Mr. Walling says it is absolutely necessary that I
-should go no later certainly than the day set for sailing.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But if a letter should come we will immediately send it
-after you,” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, cousin, dear; I know that you will do all
-that you can. Well, I have learned one lesson from all
-this,” said Ran so solemnly that both his companions looked
-up inquiringly, and Palma asked:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is it, Cousin Randolph?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is this: If Heaven ever should bring my dear Judy
-and myself together again I will never part with her—no,
-never while we both shall live! Nothing shall ever part us
-again except the will of Heaven!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But how about school and college that was to have prepared
-you both for the sphere of life to which you are
-called?” Palma inquired with some little amusement.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother that! It was all the nonsense about ‘the
-sphere of life to which we are called’ that parted Judy and
-me! And it shall never part us again! We will go to
-school and college, but we need not part and live in school
-and college. We will marry and go to housekeeping in some
-city where there are educational advantages. I will attend
-the college courses. Judy shall have teachers at home.
-And so we will live until we are polished up bright enough
-to show ourselves to my grandfather’s neighbors and tenants
-at Haymore. Then we will settle there for good, and no one
-will ever know that the successors of Squire Hay were first
-of all a pair of little ragamuffins and ignoramuses from a
-California mining camp! Yes, that is what I will do, and
-no prudence, and no policy, and no consideration for ‘that
-sphere of life to which we are called,’ nor for anything
-else but Judy herself, shall influence me! When we meet
-again we shall be married out of hand and nothing but
-death shall part us! When we meet again! But when will
-that be? Ah, me!” sighed poor Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There came a rap at the door, and the “boy” put in his
-head and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The lady and ge’men would come up, sir, which they
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>said there wasn’t no call to send up no card,” then withdrew
-his head and ran away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three cousins looked up to see a tall, martial-looking
-man with a gray mustache, and clothed in a military overcoat
-and fatigue cap, enter the room with a slender, graceful
-girl, in a long gray cloth ulster and a little gray plush
-hat, hanging on his arm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three companions stared for a moment, and then
-Ran sprang up, overturning his chair in his haste, and
-rushed toward them, exclaiming:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley! Judy! Oh, Judy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And in another instant Judy was pressed to his heart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, introduce us to your friends, Mr. Hay,” said the
-colonel, taking off his cap and bowing to the lady and gentleman,
-who had risen to their feet to receive the unknown
-and unexpected guests.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, pardon me,” exclaimed Ran, raising Judy, drawing
-her arm through his own and taking her up to his cousins.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, this is Miss Judith Man, my betrothed.
-Judy, darling, these are my Cousin Palma and her
-husband,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was to be thought that the young girl would have made
-her quaint, parish school courtesy; but she did not. She
-bowed, blushed and smiled very prettily. Cleve Stuart
-shook hands with her and said that he was very glad to see
-her. But Palma drew the girl to her bosom and kissed her,
-with a few murmured words of welcome.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Ran presented:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley, Mrs. Stuart, Mr. Stuart.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And all shook hands in the old-time, cordial manner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And when all were seated, Col. Moseley in Ran’s vacated
-chair at the little table with Cleve and Palma, and Ran
-and Judy, side by side, on the little sofa near them, there
-came the natural question from Stuart:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When did you reach New York, colonel?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“At noon to-day,” replied Moseley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“At noon to-day, and I see nothing of Judy until eight
-o’clock this evening!” exclaimed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Patience, my dear fellow; I had to find you before I
-could bring her. I arrived, with a large party, at noon, as
-I said; took them all to an old-fashioned hotel downtown,
-where the prices are not quite ruinous; left them all there,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>and went to hunt up you at your hotel, found that you had
-left it, but could not find out where you had gone; went
-back to own place and dined with my family; after dinner
-went out to hunt up the Wallings, with the view of finding
-you, and also of finding the furnished house I had commissioned
-Walling to engage for me; looked in at the office first,
-but found no one there but the janitor cleaning up; office
-hours were over; Mr. Samuel Walling gone home to his
-dinner; got his address; went to the house; found Mr. and
-Mrs. Samuel Walling, who were as much amazed at seeing
-me as if I had been a ghost risen from the dead. In fact,
-they had not got my letter of advice, and, consequently, had
-not engaged any furnished house for my tribe. However,
-they insisted on making it all right for us. They told me
-where to find you, Hay; and then when I said I must go
-back to the hotel to pick up Judy, Mrs. Walling insisted on
-going with me to see her old schoolmate and dear friend,
-and she went with me. Well, in brief, when she met my
-wife, nothing would do but she must take her and all the
-girls home to her own house to stay until we can find a
-home for ourselves. I and the boys remain at the hotel.
-Judy is to join Mrs. Moseley and the girls at the Wallings’.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, Judy is to do nothing of the sort. Judy is
-to stay here with me. I am her natural protector under the
-circumstances,” said little Palma, drawing herself up with
-an assumption of matronly dignity that was very amusing
-to the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, my dear lady. It shall be as you please, or
-as Miss Judith pleases; only, I do not know how I shall
-face Mesdames Walling and Moseley without taking her to
-them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will write a note and relieve you of responsibility in
-the matter,” exclaimed Palma, rising and going toward a
-little writing-desk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you have not consulted Miss Judith,” said the
-colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I know she will stay with us,” exclaimed Palma,
-going toward the girl and putting her arms around her
-neck and murmuring:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will stay with us, will you not, dear Judy? I may
-call you Judy, may I not? I have known you as Judy, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>loved you as Judy, before I ever saw you. Shall I call you
-Judy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure and ye may, ma’am!” exclaimed the girl with
-cordial impetuosity; but then, catching herself up suddenly,
-she blushed and added softly: “If you please, ma’am, I
-should like you to call me so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma smiled, kissed her forehead, and then went to her
-tiny desk and wrote the note to Mrs. Moseley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The colonel had but little time to stay, and soon arose to
-say good-night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By the way,” he said, “I had almost forgotten. I am
-the bearer of an invitation for you all to come and dine with
-us at Mrs. Walling’s to-morrow, at seven.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma looked at her husband, understood his eyes, and
-answered for both:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Love to Mrs. Walling, and we will go with much
-pleasure.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley shook hands all around, like the plain, old-fashioned
-soldier that he was, and then went away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There remained Ran and Judy, sitting on the sofa, and
-Cleve and Palma at the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The lovers were comparing notes, giving in their experience
-of the time while they were separated, speaking in
-subdued tones that presently sank so low as to be quite inaudible
-to any other ears than their own; so it might be
-surmised that Ran was imparting to Judy his new scheme
-of life for the future.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The married pair at the table with the truest politeness
-ignored the presence of the just reunited lovers, and took
-up their occupations that had been interrupted by the visitors.
-Cleve opened his book and resumed his reading, but
-now in a lower tone, quite audible to Palma, but not disturbing
-to Ran or Judy. He was reading Marmion, the scene
-of the meeting between the pilgrim and the abbess on the
-balcony. But Palma, knitting mechanically, could not
-listen. She was seized with a terrible anxiety that filled her
-mind and crowded out everything else. She had, from the
-impulse of a warm heart, invited Judy to stay, and Judy
-was staying.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But where on the face of the earth was she to put Judy?
-They had in their doll’s house of a flat but four tiny rooms—parlor,
-kitchen and two bedrooms. What was to be done?
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>How could she listen to the story the abbess was telling the
-pilgrim, and the minutes passing so rapidly, and bedtime
-coming on, and no bed to put her invited guest in? And
-there was Cleve utterly unconscious of her dilemma, although
-he knew as well as she did the extent—or rather
-limits—of their accommodation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve finished the canto and closed the book in complacent
-ignorance that Palma had not heard a word of it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The clock on the mantel struck eleven. It was a cheap
-clock and it struck loudly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran arose to bid good-night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I really ought to beg your pardon for keeping you up.
-But you will excuse me for this once,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, certainly! Certainly! Don’t go yet. We shall
-not retire for hours. Oh, pray! pray! don’t go yet!” pleaded
-Palma with her curly hair fairly stiffening itself on end;
-for, when Ran had left, what, in the name of Heaven, was
-she to do with Judy? Take the girl in with herself and
-Cleve? Or lay her over Mrs. Pole on that narrow slab of a
-cot that could not hold two side by side?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma had got into a terrible dilemma which she feared,
-by the creepy coldness of her scalp, was going to turn her
-hair white!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She would have been very much relieved if—after the old-fashioned
-New England style—the betrothed lovers should
-sit up all night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, do, do, do stay longer!” she still pleaded, looking
-beseechingly at Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Ran was looking at his sweetheart, and replied
-gravely:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are very kind! Too kind! And I thank you so
-much! But, even for Judy’s sake, I ought to go. She is
-very tired from her long journey. Good-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he turned to go, Judy following him to the door of
-the parlor, where, of course, they lingered over their adieus.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Stuart got a chance to speak apart with Palma. He
-looked into her dismayed face and broke into a little, low
-laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! what in the name of goodness shall I do?” she exclaimed,
-clasping her hands and gazing appealingly up into
-his face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he pitied her evident distress and answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>“Why, dear, you will have to share your own bed with
-Miss Judy and give me a rug on the sofa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her face brightened.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve!” she exclaimed, “you are an angel of light in
-a cutaway coat! You have saved my life—or reason!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then suddenly growing grave she added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the little sofa is so short, and you are so long!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now don’t look so distressed, dear. The inconvenience
-is nothing at all. And it is only for one night. To-morrow
-I will see the janitor and try to get a room for our little
-friend contiguous to our own, so that she may remain with
-us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart spoke of incurring this additional expense with apparent
-cheerfulness, although his small funds were nearly
-exhausted, and his efforts to procure employment were quite
-fruitless.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he said no more then, for Ran, who had lingered at
-the door over his last words with Judy, now kissed her
-good-night and went away, and the girl rejoined her friends
-in the little parlor.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER IX<br> <span class='large'>PALMA’S NEW FRIEND</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>“I will leave you for half an hour to make your arrangements,”
-said Stuart to his wife; and he left the room
-and went downstairs and out upon the sidewalk to take
-the air.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy had thrown herself into an easy-chair and stretched
-out her feet to the bright little fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma pushed the small sofa back against the wall, and
-then went into the bedroom, from which she brought a cushion
-and a rug. When she had arranged the sofa into a
-couch she turned and looked at her guest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy was nodding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma went and laid her hand on the sleeper’s shoulder
-and gently aroused her, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Whenever you wish to retire, dear, your room is ready.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! sure, I thank ye, ma’am. Any time as shutes yourself
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>will shute me,” replied Judy with a wide gape, waking
-up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, then,” said Palma, and she led the sleepy and
-half-bewildered girl into the pretty little bedchamber, where
-she had laid out a dainty night dress for her guest. Judy
-waked up fully in the process of disrobing, and then her
-hostess said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To-morrow you shall have a better accommodation, but
-to-night you will share my room. I hope you won’t
-mind it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Och, no, ma’am. Sure and haven’t I been used to pigging
-in itself?” began Judy brightly, but she suddenly
-checked herself and amended her phraseology—“I mean,
-ma’am, I have been accustomed to close quarters in the
-mining camp, and this is a palace compared to any place I
-have ever seen before.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a pretty little doll’s house as one could wish, for
-dolls,” replied Palma with a laugh. “Not quite spacious
-enough, however, for one who loves space.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Which side am I to sleep on, ma’am?” inquired the girl
-when she was ready for bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Any side you wish, dear. But, Judy, please don’t call
-me ‘ma’am.’ If you do I shall be obliged to call you ‘miss,’
-and I should not like that, and I do not think you would
-like it, either.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Fegs and I wouldn’t! Oh! that is to say, no, ma’am,
-I should not. I should feel it to be cold and unkind of you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then, Judy dear, do as you would be done
-by.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will, ma’am,” said the girl, getting into bed and lying
-down on the side next to the wall and squeezing herself
-against it to take up as little room as possible, “and indeed,
-ma’am, since it displeases you, I will try to remember—never—to
-call—you ma’am—again.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The last word was scarcely audible, for as soon as Judy’s
-head dropped on the pillow her eyes closed and she fell
-fast asleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma returned to the parlor, drew the easy-chair to the
-fire, and seated herself to wait for Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He came in at length and dropped himself into the larger
-easy-chair by Palma’s side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy is fast asleep. She dropped asleep first in this
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>chair here, and afterward, when I got her to bed, she fell
-asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow,” Palma told
-him with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you?” inquired Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am not at all sleepy. I feel too much elated by
-the arrival of all these people. I wonder what Mrs. Pole
-will think when she finds out that we have a visitor staying
-with us?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Doesn’t she know, Palma?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, no, Cleve. She went to bed before the colonel
-left us, and how could she know that the girl remained behind?
-And I wonder what she will say?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Palma, I think she will disapprove.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you don’t, Cleve?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all, dear. I am glad you took the girl in. We
-will find a room for her to-morrow.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The clock struck twelve, yet still the young couple sat
-talking to each other like a pair of lovers loath to say good-night,
-as any young “courting couple” could possibly be;
-for, in fact, they were now sweethearts. Palma, we know,
-had always loved Cleve; but only since their marriage had
-Cleve been growing every day more in love with his wife.
-So they sat and talked, or sat in silence over the fire, until
-the clock struck two.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, you must really go to bed, even if you are
-not sleepy,” said Stuart, rising and standing up, as much
-as to say, “Here I shall stand until you go.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You turn me out, then?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I turn you out!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma stood on tiptoes to kiss him good-night. He lifted
-her in his arms and kissed her again and again, and then
-set her down, and she vanished through the damask portières
-into the little bedroom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart threw off his coat and lay down on the sofa. It
-was a short sofa with a low back and two arms. Cleve’s
-head lay upon one arm and his legs dangled over the other.
-The discomfort of the position would have kept him from
-sleep even if the apartment had been quiet, which it was
-not.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma’s entrance had waked Judy. The girl had had
-three hours’ sound sleep and had waked up refreshed in
-mind and body, delighted to find herself in such a rare,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>beautiful little room and with such a lovely companion.
-She felt no inclination to sleep more just then—but to talk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A kindly yet indiscreet question from Palma set her
-tongue going, and she talked on and never stopped until she
-had told her whole story.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As there was nothing but the red damask portières that
-separated the little chamber from the little parlor, Stuart
-heard the whole of that story; he could not help hearing it.
-Once or twice he hemmed to let the narrator know that he
-was awake and listening; but that made no difference to
-Judy. She had no secrets. “All the birds of the air” were
-welcome to hear her history. It was near daylight when
-at length she had talked herself to sleep. As for Palma, she
-had dozed through the narrative, though Judy had not suspected
-it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With the first glinting of the rising sun’s rays through
-the slats of the parlor blinds, Stuart gladly arose from his
-uncomfortable couch and went into the little bathroom to
-make his morning toilet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he had finished it, in returning to the parlor he
-passed by the open door and saw that Mrs. Pole had risen,
-tidied up her kitchen and got breakfast well under way.
-He stepped in to tell her about their guest and send her
-into the parlor to set the room to rights. Then he went
-downstairs to take the air on the sidewalk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole passed into the parlor to hoist the window, replenish
-the fire, and restore the place to order before setting
-the breakfast table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her movements awoke the two sleepers in the next room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They arose laughing and talking, dressed themselves
-quickly and came out into the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole turned from the window she was just closing
-to look at the stranger.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma laughingly introduced the two.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is our friend, Miss Judith Man, Poley. And,
-Judy, darling, this is our dear Mrs. Pole, who is like a second
-mother to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The elder woman wiped her clean hands on her clean
-apron, and then gave the stranger a close clasp and a warm
-welcome.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, dear, you can go and look after the breakfast,
-and we will set the table. Miss Judith is quite at home
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>with us, and knows as much about housekeeping as we do,”
-said Palma brightly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole made no objection, but left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Palma—and Judy following her example—began
-to take the books off the center table and pile them in a
-corner. Then they folded the table cover and laid it upon
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma went to the prettiest little doll’s corner cupboard
-that ever was seen, opened a drawer in the lower part of it,
-and took out a white damask cloth which she spread upon
-the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she handed out the china, piece by piece, which
-Judy took and arranged on the cloth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see, dear, what a little casket we live in,” said
-Palma when the table was ready and the cupboard closed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure, darlint, ye are a precious jewel yerself, and where
-would ye be stored but in a casket itself?” demanded Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Stuart came up from below and greeted the
-two young women cordially.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole brought in the breakfast and they sat down to
-the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were scarcely seated when Ran entered, shook hands
-all around, and took the fourth place at the table, which had
-been prepared for him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The conversation grew lively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When shall we see Mike?” inquired Ran at length.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! to-day, I hope,” replied Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Does he know where to find us?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He didn’t yesterday! No more did we! And he wint
-with his friends—friends to a chape—cheap boarding-house
-before the colonel found you out. But sure he will know
-where we are by this time! The colonel will have told
-him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While they were yet speaking in walked the colonel with
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All the company arose from the table to receive them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Mike closed hands cordially at once, while the
-colonel was shaking hands with Stuart, Palma, and Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Ran introduced Mike to his cousins, who received
-him heartily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, now, won’t you both sit down and take some
-breakfast with us?” inquired Stuart and Palma in a breath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>“Oh, thank you! I just got up from my breakfast to
-bring Man here,” said the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And meself finished before I wint to his honor,” said
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But do not let us disturb you. Pray, go on with your
-own breakfast,” said Col. Moseley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, we have done!” replied Stuart, while Palma rang
-the bell for Mrs. Pole to come and take away the service.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A few minutes later they were all seated in the little parlor,
-which the company of six nearly filled.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And how is the misthress this morning, sir?” inquired
-Judy of the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! she has quite recovered from her fatigue and has
-gone house-hunting with Mrs. Walling.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And the childher?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! well and delighted with the great city,” replied
-Col. Moseley; and as Judy asked no more questions he
-turned to Ran and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I find that you have had very little difficulty in prevailing
-on the Messrs. Walling to recognize your rights, Hay!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“None whatever, sir; thanks to your strong letter!” replied
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thanks to your strong proofs, rather. Who could withstand
-such overwhelming evidence? But, Hay, in none of
-your letters did you tell us who the rival claimant was, although
-I asked you to do so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I never got your letter containing such a request, sir,
-or I should have complied with it. The reason why I never
-volunteered the information was because the subject was a
-painful one. And, by the way, has not Mr. or Mrs. Walling
-told you who that impostor was?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No. I have not had five minutes’ private conversation
-with them yet. Mrs. Walling may have told my wife by this
-time.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, colonel, the claimant was, not my Uncle James’
-son, as I suspected, but a fraudulent adventurer whom we
-have known as Gentleman Geff.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Gentleman Geff! Why, I thought he had been quite
-killed by the same parties that half killed you, and that his
-bones were buried in the old fort cemetery!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So did I. So did we all. But we were mistaken. The
-body buried in the cemetery for Gentleman Geff’s was not
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>his, but that of some poor victim of border ruffianism, whose
-identification we shall, perhaps, never discover, and Gentleman
-Geff is alive and flourishing in stolen plumes on the
-continent of Europe.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tell me all about it!” exclaimed the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Ran went over the story of Gentleman Geff’s crimes,
-already so well known to our readers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley listened with grave interest; Mike with
-open-mouthed wonder, Judy in stupefaction.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not know why one should ever be surprised at anything
-that happens,” mused the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Bedad, meself is only shurprised that I nivir had the
-sinse to shuspect it,” remarked Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And he that particular about his clane linen! Sure, I
-nivir less would have belaived it av sich a jintleman!”
-sighed Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is the scoundrel now?” inquired the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Somewhere in Europe on his bridal tour,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On his bridal tour?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then he told the story of Gentleman Geff’s felonious
-marriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A fine account he will have to settle!” exclaimed the
-colonel. “Two assaults, with intent to kill, one bigamy,
-divers forgeries and perjuries, to say nothing of the fraudulent
-claim of a name and estate to which he has no right.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I shall not take a single step toward prosecuting him,”
-said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! you won’t! By the way, do you really sail on
-Saturday?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, colonel, really. And, moreover, I mean to take
-Judy with me. Yes, indeed, sir. She is more than wealth,
-and rank, and culture, and every other worldly good.
-Sooner than part again, with half a sphere between us, we
-will get married first and go to school afterward,” said
-Ran, taking Judy’s hand within his own and keeping a close
-hold of it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Whe-ew! And what does Miss Judy say to that?” inquired
-the colonel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure, thin, sir,” began Judy—but her face flamed and
-she mended her speech—“indeed, sir, I have consented to do
-as Ran wishes. Why should I not? Absence has tried us.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>He has graived—suffered, that is. And as for myself, sir,
-there was many a time when I could have started to walk
-clear across the continent to go to him just as I walked
-through the wilderness to find him when he was wounded,
-only it would not have been—been—right, I suppose.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And so you mean really to marry this young fellow and
-go to Europe with him?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis—yes, if you please, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you said out there at the fort that you would not do
-it until—something or other, I have forgotten what.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Until he had seen something of the world, sir, to be sure
-of his own mind—that is what I mint—meant. And now
-it is not as if Ran and myself had only met lately at a party
-and took a sudden fancy to each other. We have known
-each other for years.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, sir,” said Ran, “you must not think that we have
-given up the plan of education; for we have not. I have
-talked it over with my Cousin Cleve here, and settled upon
-a plan, to which Judy has agreed. We will marry, as I
-said, before we sail for England. After we have visited
-Haymore we will go to London, as being the place of places
-where we can live in the strictest retirement, unknown and
-untroubled, until education shall have fitted us to mingle
-with society. After which we will go and settle at Haymore.
-This is the best plan I can think of to keep us
-united. And I will not entertain any plan that is to part
-this dear, true girl from me, even for a season.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Bravo, my boy! Even if I had a right to set up any
-opposition to your wishes, I should not do it. And what is
-to be done with Mike?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mike is my brother,” replied Ran. “He shall share with
-me in any way he likes. He shall go to England and live
-with us if he likes. Or stay here, and enter into any business
-that he may choose and be fit for.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley looked at Ran, and thought him the most
-unselfish, the most unworldly individual he had ever seen in
-all the days of his life.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so Ran was.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The colonel soon took leave, expressing his pleasure in
-the prospect of meeting his friends at Mr. Samuel Walling’s
-that evening.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, young man, that I have shown you the way to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>your sister’s abiding-place, you will not need my guidance
-any longer. Good-day to you,” he said to Mike as he left
-the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-day, and many thanks for your shivility, sir,” returned
-Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It occurred to Ran then that perhaps Mike, in the simplicity
-of his heart, was staying longer than was convenient
-in the narrow quarters of his cousins; so very soon he
-asked him:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where are Longman and old Dandy staying? I should
-like to see them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, they are at Markiss’, away down on Water Street.
-They’d be proud to see you, Ran. Come with me, and I
-will take ye straight to them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was exactly what Ran wished. He arose and bade
-the two young women good-morning, and left the house
-with his friend.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma and Judy began to think of making preparations
-for the family dinner party at Mrs. Walling’s.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma took out her crimson cashmere dress and gave it
-to Mrs. Pole to be brushed and shaken, sponged and pressed,
-and looked over her small stock of lace and gloves.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy looked down on her own brown traveling dress and
-said ruefully:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This will never do to wear this evening. I have got a
-pretty dark blue French merino; but it is in my trunk at
-the hotel, and sure it might as well be in Aigypt—Egypt,
-that is.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley will be sure to send the trunk to you,” suggested
-Palma. And even while she spoke a noise was heard
-outside and a knock came to the door, and the janitor entered
-the parlor, followed by a porter with the girl’s trunk
-on his shoulders. When he put it down on the floor Stuart
-paid and discharged him, and shortly after left the house
-on his daily hopeless search for employment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That evening Stuart, Palma, Hay, Judith, Col. and Mrs.
-Moseley, Mr. James and Miss Betty Moseley met at dinner
-at Mr. Samuel Walling’s. A happier party never gathered
-around a table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After dinner the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room,
-leaving the gentlemen to their wine.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>In the drawing-room Mrs. Moseley introduced the subject
-of Ran and Judy’s proposed marriage. She said to Judy:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, we are all friends here—intimate friends, indeed—so
-it is quite proper that I should speak plainly. My
-young favorite, Mr. Hay, has taken counsel with me concerning
-his wish to marry you and take you to Europe with
-him. Am I right in supposing that this is your wish also?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis—yes, madam,” replied Judy, modestly lowering her
-eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, dear, are you willing that Mrs. Stuart and myself
-should make all the arrangements for you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should be very grateful to you, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look here! I am not going to be left out in the cold!”
-exclaimed Augusta Walling, laughing and joining the circle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course you are not! How should you be, when we
-are hoping that the wedding breakfast will be served right
-here in your house on Saturday morning next?” said Mrs.
-Moseley, well knowing that she might take a much greater
-liberty than that with her old schoolmate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will be perfectly delightful!” exclaimed Mrs.
-Walling. “I adore a wedding breakfast at home, and never
-expected to enjoy one until my own daughter, now at
-Vassar, grows up and gets married. Miss Judith, shall this
-be so? Will you place yourself in my hands?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure and”—brightly exclaimed Judy, and then she
-stopped suddenly, blushed and amended her speech—“I
-should be glad and grateful, ma’am,” she answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Mrs. Walling turned to Palma, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you will give me back your guest in time? You
-are rather too young a matron to chaperon a bride-elect,”
-she added with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As you and my cousins please, dear Mrs. Walling. I
-should myself be very happy to serve them, but I will not
-stand in the way of another who can do so much better,”
-replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That’s a dear, unselfish angel!” exclaimed Mrs. Walling.
-And then the four women formed themselves into a committee
-of ways and means, and discussed wedding breakfasts,
-trousseaus and so forth, treating Judy with as much
-freedom, tenderness and liberality as if she had been their
-own child, until the gentlemen came in and the subject was
-dropped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>The evening passed so pleasantly that it was late when
-the party broke up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart, Palma, Ran and Judy returned to their flat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart had not been able to find a room for Judy. All
-the rooms were in suites. One more night he had to sleep as
-well as he could on the short sofa, while Judy shared
-Palma’s bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the next day, toward the afternoon, Mrs. Walling
-came for Judy, to take her to the Walling home to make
-preparations for her marriage on Saturday.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Moseleys,” she said, “have secured a fine old manor
-house at Fort Washington, about fifteen minutes by rail
-from New York. It is completely furnished and in perfect
-readiness for occupation. The family are in Europe, and
-the house has been left in the care of an agent, who has
-just kept it in perfect order. They leave us to-night; so
-you see we have room for a score of young girls, if we could
-find them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma made no objection to the departure of Judy, but
-kissed her an affectionate good-by; and Mrs. Walling took
-the girl and the girl’s little trunk away with her in the
-luxurious family carriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Ran forsook the Stuarts and spent that evening with
-the Wallings, returning quite late to his suite of rooms on
-their flat. But, under the circumstances, his cousins forgave
-him.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER X<br> <span class='large'>A WEDDING AND OTHER INCIDENTS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Stuart and Palma were both very glad and very grateful
-that Mrs. Walling had undertaken all the responsibilities
-of their cousin’s wedding. They knew that her means
-were ample, and that Walling &#38; Walling were advancing,
-and would continue to advance, any sum that Randolph or
-Judith might require for their personal preparations. They
-knew also that Mrs. Walling was sincerely delighted with
-the idea of the wedding celebration at her own house;
-whereas, had it been settled to come off at the Stuarts’
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>apartments, Stuart, from impecuniosity, and Palma, from
-inexperience, would have been very much embarrassed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling was in her element selecting a proper trousseau
-and outfit for Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She came in her carriage every morning to take Palma
-out shopping with her and Judy. Mrs. Moseley could not
-accompany the party; not because she was a little way out
-of town, for the cars ran all the time and would have
-brought her in in fifteen minutes, but because she was “up
-to her eyes in business” settling her large family in their
-new home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So Mrs. Walling, Palma, and Judy went out together
-every day, until all the shopping was completed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy’s outfit was a very complete but not a very costly
-one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You know, dear,” Mrs. Walling explained to Palma,
-“that our little friend is not going at all into society for two
-or three years to come. The young pair will live very quietly
-somewhere, to advance their education, before they show
-themselves to their neighbors at Haymore; and so she will
-really need little more than a schoolgirl’s ‘kist.’ Her wedding
-dress, of course, must be a pretty one, and her traveling
-dress must be very nice, but the others plain and simple
-and inexpensive.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma agreed to the prudence of all this. And Judy
-said never a word. She left her affairs entirely in the hands
-of her two friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While the lady shopped for Judy she shopped for herself
-as well. But, after a day or two, she could not but notice
-that Palma bought nothing; that she let all the tempting
-goods, so pretty and so cheap, pass under her admiring eyes
-unpurchased.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matter with the young one?” inquired Augusta
-of herself. “Doesn’t she care for dress at all?” Then
-she remembered that she had never seen Mrs. Stuart in but
-two dresses, and very inexpensive ones at that, namely, an
-India muslin, sometimes, in her evenings at home, and a
-fine crimson cashmere for visiting. And then it occurred
-to Augusta Walling that the Stuarts might be in straitened
-circumstances; and her heart was touched with sympathy
-for the beautiful young woman who saw so many
-attractive articles of adornment pass under her eyes or be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>bought by others without being able to buy one of them.
-And she wondered how she might make Palma a pretty
-present without giving offense.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I hate the rôle of a pretended benefactress. I should
-shrink from such an imputation. Lovely little creature!
-how elegant she would look in a ruby velvet, with duchess
-lace! And she shall have it! Yes, that she shall! And I
-will take the risk of being snubbed and stood in a corner for
-my impertinence.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The outcome of the lady’s resolution was this: After she
-had set down Palma at the Stuarts’ apartments, and taken
-Judy home to the Walling house, she set out on a second
-shopping expedition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The same night, while Stuart was taking his usual walk
-up and down the pavement before the house, and Palma sat
-in her little room stitching fresh edges on frayed collars and
-cuffs, one of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s young ladies arrived at
-the apartment home, followed by a boy with a large bandbox,
-and asked for Mrs. Cleve Stuart. She was brought up
-in the elevator and ushered into the presence of Palma, who
-arose to receive the unexpected visitor, staring a little. The
-stranger merely nodded to the lady, then, without any preface,
-she took the bandbox from the boy, set it on a chair,
-untied, unwrapped and opened it, and took from it a glorious
-suit of dark, bright blue damassé velvet, trimmed with
-satin, and spread it over a chair, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If it is convenient, I would like to have you try it on
-now, ma’am, so that I may make any alterations that may
-be necessary before I leave.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I——” began the wondering Palma, when she was
-suddenly interrupted by the dressmaker exclaiming:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I beg your pardon! I forgot!” And she handed a
-note addressed to Mrs. Cleve Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma took it in perplexity, opened it, and read:</p>
-<p class='c012'>“Beauty to the beautiful! To Palma Stuart, with the
-true love of Augusta Walling.”</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>Palma was touched, melted, delighted all at once. She
-had never had, nor ever expected to have, so superb a dress.
-She was but a child in some things. She could not speak
-for surprise, gratitude and embarrassment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>But the matter-of-fact young woman from the suit department
-of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s went on to say:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We were very sorry that we had not a ruby velvet made
-up, but the lady who gave us your order said that there
-would be no time to make up one, and she selected this;
-and I really think, madam, that this shade of mazarine blue
-will be quite as becoming to your brunette style as garnet
-or ruby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is beautiful! It could not be more beautiful!” exclaimed
-Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you try it on now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma arose and the dressmaker helped to relieve her of
-her cashmere dress and induct her into the velvet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But slight alteration was necessary—the front breadth
-shortened, the sleeves shortened, the side seams of the waist
-taken in—that was all.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young dressmaker laid off her hat and her wraps, and
-took from her little hand-bag needle, sewing silk, scissors
-and thimble, and sat down to work.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Palma, having nothing else to occupy herself with
-while the dressmaker sat there, began idly to rummage
-among the silver tissue paper in the bottom of the big bandbox,
-and there she found another box—a smaller one—which
-she took out to examine. It had her name on it. She
-opened the box and found a fichu and pocket handkerchief
-of duchess lace, a pair of the finest white kid gloves, a lovely
-fan, and a little turban of velvet and satin to match her
-dress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The dressmaker soon finished her task, folded the dress,
-returned it to the box, and took her leave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Palma started up, like the delighted child that she
-was, opened the box again, took out the elegant dress,
-spread it all over the sofa to display its beauties to the best
-advantage, and called in Mrs. Pole to admire it; and when
-that good woman had risen to as much enthusiasm as she
-was capable of—for a suit—and returned to her own dominions,
-Palma still left it there, that Stuart might be regaled
-with the vision when he should come in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Cleve did come in and was shown the present and
-the note that came with it he looked rather grave; he did
-not like presents, would much rather that his pretty little
-wife had continued to wear her shabby red cashmere, rather
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>than be indebted to any one for a sapphire velvet; but it
-was too late to prevent her acceptance of it now, so he quickly
-cleared his brow and admired the dress to her heart’s content.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On that same evening Ran was, as usual, spending the
-hour with Mrs. Walling and Judy. There was no other
-company. Ran had a secret source of distress, and it was
-this—his humble, faithful friends down at Markiss’ Hotel,
-in the lower part of the city. They certainly did not belong
-to the Walling “set.” Conventionally, they were a long,
-long way below that set; yet Ran wanted them to be present
-both at his wedding and at the wedding breakfast, and
-that wedding was to be celebrated at one of the most “fashionable”
-churches in the city; and that wedding breakfast
-was to be given at Mrs. Walling’s. How could Ran ask
-that very fine lady to invite his humble friends? And,
-on the other hand, how could he slight those faithful
-friends? Mike, his brother-in-law expectant, must come, of
-course; that was to be taken for granted, and then Longman,
-who had rescued him on the night when he was shot,
-and who had actually saved his life—Longman ought certainly
-to come. And, finally, poor old Andrew Quin ought
-not to be left—the only one—“out in the cold.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While Ran was turning these matters over in his mind
-he was not noticing what Mrs. Walling was doing. That
-good lady sat at a small writing-desk busy with note paper
-and envelopes. Presently she said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Randolph, dear, give me the address of those good
-friends of yours.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Friends, madam!” exclaimed Ran, the more taken by
-surprise that he had been just thinking of them. It seemed
-to him that the lady must have read his thoughts.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, those old friends of yours who came on with Judy
-and the Moseleys and are boarding somewhere down in the
-city while waiting for their steamer.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! yes, madam! You mean Samson Longman and
-Andrew Quin? They are with Michael at Markiss’ on
-Water Street. I do not know the number.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is not necessary. I am sending them invitations
-to the wedding and the breakfast; for though, of course,
-such a hasty affair as this is will not admit of much ceremony
-and elaboration, yet they must be present. There will
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>be the Moseleys, the Stuarts, ourselves and your friends
-from Markiss’.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should tell you beforehand that those friends of mine
-come from a mining camp, and though good and true as
-men can be, they are rough and plain.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear boy, I have told you who is coming, and
-so you may know that these friends will meet no one in our
-house who will be so silly as to look down upon them for
-being rough and plain. Really, Ran, dear, it ought not to
-be necessary for me to say this,” concluded the lady.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>For all answer, Randolph Hay went to her side, raised
-her hand and pressed it to his lips with reverential tenderness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy looked up in her face with eyes full of tears and
-murmured:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Lord in heaven bless you, sweet and lovely lady!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling smiled deprecatingly at this effusiveness
-and patted Judy gently on the head. Then she turned to her
-writing-desk and wrote her informal notes. These were the
-only invitations the lady had written. The few others to the
-members of the two families more immediately concerned
-had been verbal ones.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When she had finished directing the envelopes she handed
-them over to Ran, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The letter box is directly on your way home; will you
-mind dropping them in?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will take charge of them with pleasure,” said Ran, and
-as the hour was late he arose, said good-night and left the
-house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Ran did not drop the notes in a letter box. He
-walked over to Sixth Avenue, hailed a car, boarded it and
-rode down as far as that car would take him, then got out
-and walked to Markiss’; for he was anxious that his friends
-should get their bids as soon as possible. He found Mike,
-Longman, and Dandy all sitting smoking in the grimy back
-parlor behind Markiss’ bar.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He entered and sat down among them. There happened
-to be no other guests in the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, boys, did you think I had forgotten you?” inquired
-Ran, really remorseful for not having sought them
-out before.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>“If we did we excused you, under the circumstances,”
-replied Longman, speaking for the rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I suppose Mike has told you that I am to marry his
-sister on Saturday morning—that is, the day after to-morrow?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ay! trust Mike for that!” cried old Dandy with a
-little giggle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I have come to-night to bring you invitations to
-be present at the ceremony in the church and afterward at
-the breakfast at the house. And, boys, you must be sure
-to come.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And where am I to get the widding garment proper for
-the occasion? Sure, there’s no time to be cutted and fitted
-and made dacint to appear in sich grand company, though I
-thank the lady all the same,” said Andrew Quin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Dandy! Don’t you know that you are in New
-York, where you can be fitted out for a wedding or a funeral
-or an Arctic expedition in five minutes—more or less?”
-laughed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; it’s more or less, I’ll allow. But I do reckon I can
-get a ready-made suit of clothes raisonable enough here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly you can! But you must let me see to that,
-Dandy. I will be down here again to-morrow. And, lest
-I should forget to tell you, I must do so now. On Saturday
-morning you must let Mike bring you to the church. He
-knows where it is.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right, Misther Hay,” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, Longman, you have not promised, but you will
-come, I am sure. My friends uptown wish to make the acquaintance
-of the Nimrod who saved my life.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mr. Hay!” laughed the giant deprecatingly. “But
-I shall be proud to come to your wedding,” he added.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Ran bade them good-night and went home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day—Friday—was the last before the wedding
-and the sailing. There were yet a few articles to be purchased,
-and so Mrs. Walling got ready to go on her usual
-morning shopping round. She asked Judy to put on her
-hat to go with her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She did not intend to call for Palma on this occasion; a
-feeling of delicacy withheld her from going into the way of
-her thanks.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But while the carriage was standing at the door, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>while Mrs. Walling was waiting in the parlor for Judy to
-join her, Mrs. Cleve Stuart was announced and entered the
-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma went straight up to Mrs. Walling with outstretched
-hands and glowing eyes and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How shall I thank you for the rich, beautiful dress—the
-soft, lovely, caressing dress—that folds me around with
-the feeling of a friend’s embrace—your embrace?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>For answer the lady drew the speaker to her bosom and
-kissed her, smiling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I want you to know,” continued Palma, “that I feel
-more comfort in this than I should if I had bought it myself
-out of boundless riches.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again Mrs. Walling kissed her, laughing this time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Every time I put it on I shall feel your love around
-me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The elder lady pressed both the younger one’s hands and
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We are going out to try to find a suitable sea cloak for
-Judy. We must find an extra heavy one. It will be terribly
-cold crossing the ocean at this season. They will be on the
-banks of Newfoundland in the first days of December.
-Will you go with us?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With pleasure,” said Palma. And as Judy now entered
-the room, ready dressed for the drive, they arose to go out.
-But just at that moment Mrs. Duncan was announced and
-came in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Both Mrs. Walling and Palma received her as cordially
-as if she had not interrupted their departure. Mrs. Walling
-then introduced:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My young friend, Miss Judith Man.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How do you do, my dear? I am glad to see you,” said
-the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy bowed and smiled.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are going out. Don’t let me detain you. I was on
-my way down to Fourteenth Street to do a little shopping
-and just dropped in here to tell you a piece of news; but
-I can take another opportunity,” Mrs. Duncan explained.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no! Pray do not! We should die of suspense!
-Pray, sit right down and open your budget. Our errand
-can wait as well as yours. It is only shopping. And when
-you are ready for yours you would oblige us by taking the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>fourth seat in our carriage, so that we can go together,”
-Mrs. Walling pleaded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan laid down her muff and shopping bag and
-seated herself in one of the luxurious armchairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling rang a bell and gave an order:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Bring coffee into this room.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And presently the four women had tiny china cups in
-their hands, sipping hot and fragrant Mocha, three of them
-listening while the fourth told her news.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is about Jennie Montgomery, the true wife of the
-counterfeit Randolph Hay——” began the speaker.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! yes!” eagerly exclaimed Mrs. Walling and Palma
-in a breath, while Judy looked up in eager curiosity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You know, without any one’s planning—unless fate be
-some one—that Jennie and her child were passengers on the
-same steamship, and even in the same cabin, with her fraudulent
-husband and his false bride?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! yes!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I said when I discovered that complication that those
-elements were as explosive as dynamite. Neither could
-have expected the presence of the other on the steamer, and
-so I was really anxious to hear what happened when Miss
-Leegh and her ‘bridegroom’ met his lawful wife and child
-on the ship, on the ocean, whence neither could escape without
-jumping into the sea.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, have you heard?” impatiently demanded Mrs.
-Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; I have just received a long letter from Jennie,
-dated November 15th. She had been at home four weeks
-before she found time to write to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And——” breathlessly exclaimed Mrs. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She met her husband on the deck of the steamer. She
-was as much astonished as he was confounded. But I had
-better read her letter to you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the visitor drew a thickly packed envelope, with a
-foreign stamp, from her pocket, and read the pages describing
-Jennie’s voyage, her meeting with her husband and Miss
-Leegh on the <em>Scorpio</em>, and her arrival at home in her
-father’s new vicarage, as these events are already known to
-our readers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To think of Jennie’s self-control and forbearance!”
-concluded Mrs. Duncan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>“And to think of Lamia Leegh’s insolence in trying to
-patronize her, the real wife of her own ‘brevet’ bridegroom!”
-exclaimed Mrs. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And to think of the man’s assurance in carrying off matters
-with such a high hand!” remarked Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Och, sure, and himself had always the impidince av the
-divil, had Gintleman Geff!” exclaimed Judy, surprised into
-her dialect; then, suddenly aware of her “backsliding,” she
-clapped her hand to her mouth a minute too late and looked
-frightened; but as she saw that neither of her friends were
-in the least disturbed she felt relieved, while the visitor
-evidently thought that the brogue had been humorously assumed
-for the occasion, for she replied in kind:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ay, has he—the thaif av the worruld!” Then, turning
-to Mrs. Walling, she continued: “What an active fate there
-seems to be at work here! Did you see the significance of
-the latter part of Jennie’s letter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course; her father has left Medge, in the south
-of England, and is in temporary charge of Haymore vicarage,
-in the north of England,” replied Mrs. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And our Gentleman Geff of the many wives and aliases,
-in trying to escape his one real wife and avoid her father
-by getting off the steamer at Queenstown will unwittingly
-rush into their power again the moment he sets foot within
-his stolen estate at Haymore. Now, if his lawful wife had
-been anybody else there might be a chance for a show of
-fight. But the daughter of the Vicar of Haymore!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Walling, drawing her breath hard.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie writes of the great preparations they are making
-at Haymore to receive the usurping squire, who is now expected
-to arrive with a large party of invited friends for
-the Christmas holidays, little knowing that he will there
-meet his lawful wife and her avenging, priestly father.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And confront the lawful heir of Haymore with the more
-terrible family solicitors,” laughed Mrs. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then Mr. Randolph Hay is really going over at once to
-take possession of his estates?” inquired the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; he sails on Saturday; but not alone—he takes his
-wife with him. He will be married on Saturday morning
-and embark in the afternoon.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, indeed! That is news. I had heard no rumor of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>his being engaged, or even attentive to any of our girls.
-Who is she?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My young friend here,” replied Mrs. Walling, pointing
-to Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan jumped up and kissed the girl with effusions
-and congratulations.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy blushed and smiled and bowed, but did not venture
-to speak again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The wedding is to be quiet. We don’t want a second
-edition of the ‘princely nuptials’ of ‘Mr. Randolph Hay’
-and Miss Lamia Leegh. They, we think, have done enough
-in that way ‘for the honor of the family.’ Our wedding
-must be very plain. There are ‘no cards.’ I will not say
-there will also be ‘no cake, no nothing.’ So, as you are interested,
-if you will drop in, ‘promiscuously,’ at the ‘Little
-Church Around the Corner’ about ten o’clock to-morrow
-morning, you will witness one of the happiest, though not
-one of the grandest, weddings on record.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I shall do myself that pleasure without a doubt,” replied
-Mrs. Duncan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then she arose and took up her muff and hand-bag to
-intimate that she was ready to go.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the four ladies entered the close carriage that was
-waiting at the door and went on their shopping expedition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was perfectly successful, even to the sea cloak, a heavy
-cloth one, reaching from head to heel, having long sleeves
-and hood, and lined throughout with fur.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They took Mrs. Duncan to her door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is one thing I would rather see than the wedding,”
-said Mrs. Duncan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what is that?” inquired Augusta Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The circus at Haymore Court when Mr. Randolph Hay
-and his wife arrive there and meet Gentleman Geff and
-Miss Lamia Leegh.”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XI<br> <span class='large'>A BLITHE BRIDAL</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>It was a splendid winter morning. The snow, which had
-fallen thickly during the night, was now frozen hard on the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>ground, the housetops and the trees, and sparkled like
-frosted silver sprinkled with diamond dust in the dazzling
-sunshine.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling’s household was astir. They were to have
-an early family breakfast before dressing to go to church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling and her young protégée met in the breakfast
-room. Judy was pale and nervous.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear. Do you see that the clouds
-have gone with the night? A good omen for you, according
-to the folklore—‘Blessed is the bride that the sun shines
-on,’” said the lady as she drew the girl to her bosom and
-pressed a kiss on her brow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, I have prayed the Lord to bless the day for
-Ran’s sake, but my heart misgives me, ma’am,” sighed
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is very natural, but in your case very unreasonable,
-my child. I never knew nuptials more promising for future
-happiness than are yours and Randolph’s.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, but, ma’am, am I a fit wife for a gentleman?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not for every gentleman; for there are not so many
-gentlemen who would be as worthy of you as Randolph Hay
-is. But why should you think that you are not fit for him?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, I am only a poor, ignorant girl, and, with
-all the pains you and Mrs. Moseley have taken with me, I
-have not been able to improve much. Only yesterday I forgot
-my manners before the strange lady.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You mean that you fell for a moment into the sweet dialect
-of your childhood? That did no harm, Judy. And,
-besides, when you go to London you will soon drop it altogether.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We are to live in retirement, to be sure, until we are
-both trained for society, I know. But still, for all that, I
-fear I am doing Ran a wrong to marry him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look here, Judy! You and Randolph were engaged to
-be married to each other, I think, while you were both in
-the miners’ camp—you a miner’s sister; Ran a miner and
-the partner of your brother. You, neither of you, dreamed
-of any higher position or better fortune than luck in the
-mines might bring you. Is it not so?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. Now suppose that it had been to you,
-instead of to Randolph, that the unexpected fortune had
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>come? Suppose that some nobleman of high rank and
-wealth had suddenly come forward and claimed you as his
-lost child and heiress, would you then have broken off with
-poor Ran, because he was only a poor miner?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! No! No!” cried Judy with flashing eyes and rising
-excitement. “I nivir could a bin such a baste av the
-wurruld!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she suddenly stopped and clapped her hands to her
-lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But if Randolph had taken it into his head that he, a
-poor miner, was no fit husband for you under your changed
-circumstances, what would you have done?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should have broken me harrt entirely!” exclaimed
-Judy, falling again into dialect, as she always did when
-strongly moved.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And yet you can talk about not being a fit wife for
-Randolph, just because, since his engagement to you, he
-has come into a fortune. My dear, you should consider
-your betrothal so sacred that no change of fortune could be
-able to affect it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I see it, ma’am! I see it! And I will say no more
-about it,” said Judy, smiling through her timid tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now we will have breakfast,” said Mrs. Walling,
-rising and ringing the bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The tray was brought in at one door, while Mr. Walling
-came in at the other, and the three sat down to breakfast,
-the master of the house merely greeting the guest with a
-kindly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear,” as he took his seat at the
-table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as breakfast was finished they separated to dress
-for church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>I would like, also, to give my reader a glimpse of the
-young bridegroom-expectant on this the morning of his
-wedding day, in his temporary home in the apartment house
-occupied by Stuart and Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three young people breakfasted together in the little,
-elegant parlor of the Stuarts’ suite of rooms, Mrs. Pole
-waiting on them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran’s face shone with joy that he could not hide; Cleve’s
-and Palma’s were bright with sympathetic smiles.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran had entreated Mike Man to come and share his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>rooms at these flats until the wedding day and the embarkation
-for Europe, but Mike had steadily refused, declaring
-that, well as he loved his brother-in-law, he would be out of
-place among Ran’s fine friends, and that he would feel more
-at home “along wid Samson and Dandy.” Mike had decided
-to accompany these old friends to Europe, in the second
-cabin of the same steamer on which Ran had taken a
-stateroom in the first cabin for himself and his bride. These
-three miners were going home to the old country to settle
-there. Different motives actuated the three. Old Dandy
-wished to spend his declining years among old friends.
-Longman wanted to return to his aged and widowed mother.
-Mike could not stay behind all his friends, and must go with
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What each was to do on the other side of the ocean was
-not very clear, even to themselves. Each had a little money
-saved up. Dandy thought he would sink his savings in a
-life annuity. Longman hoped to get a gamekeeper’s place
-on some estate. Mike wanted to go to school for a little
-while. He was really nineteen years old, but so small and
-slender that he might easily have passed for a schoolboy.
-But he meant to keep near his mining “pards,” so as not to
-“inthrude” on Ran and Judy and their fine friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Vainly had faithful Ran combated this resolution. Mike
-had been firm, and Ran had to yield the point.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now, as Ran sat at table with Stuart and Palma, the
-latter said to him:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You and Judy will be married as Cleve and myself
-were—without bridesmaid or groomsman.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Ran; “but it is not my fault or Judy’s. I
-wanted Judy’s brother, my old partner, Mike Man, to be
-my groomsman, which would have been right enough; but
-Mike stoutly refused. If Mike had consented to stand up
-with me, then Judy might have had a bridesmaid in one of
-the Moseley young ladies. But, no; Mike was as stubborn
-as a mule. To be sure, I know that Mr. Jim Moseley and
-Miss Betty Moseley would have kindly stood up with us,
-but Judy said no; and so we must stand up alone.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is just as well. And now, my dear,” said Palma,
-rising from her seat with a pretty little matronly air of
-authority, “as you have finished your breakfast, you had
-better go and dress yourself. Your carriage was ordered
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>at half-past nine, I think. When you have finished, come
-to me that I may put the last touches on your toilet—twirl
-the curls and mustache, and pin the boutonnière, as you
-have no valet. Though, I suppose, you will set up some
-Monsieur Frangipanni as your personal attendant and
-dresser.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Cousin Palma. Never! Never! I should
-be too much in awe of such a grand dignitary,” said Ran,
-laughing, as he left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What a happy dog he is, my dear,” exclaimed Stuart to
-his wife as they also retired to dress for the wedding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at this same hour, in an upper room at
-Markiss’ Hotel on Water Street, another scene of preparation
-was going on.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Samson Longman, Andrew Quin, and Michael Man were
-dressing for the wedding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three men were fresh from the bath and the barber.
-Longman had his hair cut and his fine, flowing beard
-dressed, and, with his strong, regular features and his clear,
-blue eyes, looked a very handsome colossus, indeed. He wore
-a fashionable dress suit of black cloth, with a vest of black
-satin, a small white tie, a tea rose in his buttonhole, white
-kid gloves and patent leather boots.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He looked every inch a gentleman, as he really was.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy had had his red hair and side whiskers trimmed
-and dressed. He also wore a dress suit of exactly the same
-style of Longman’s, even to the little details of the white
-tie, tea rose, kid gloves and patent leathers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike, with his short, dark, curly hair neatly arranged, his
-fresh face, innocent of beard or mustache, and his slight
-figure in a dress suit proper to the occasion, looked like
-a boy got up for a birthday party, or a freshman ready for
-his first college exhibition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, Mike! Stop admiring yourself and hurry up.
-Dandy, come! It is nine o’clock, and time to start if we
-are to reach the church and get seated in time to see the
-wedding party come in,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh, Lorrd! But me courage has sunk down into the
-bottom av me boots! What would ail me to be pushing
-meself amongst gentlefolk, anyway?” exclaimed the nervous
-old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because it is my own Ran and Judy’s wedding, sure,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>and you are invited. And they would feel hurt by your
-absence,” replied Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh, Lorrd, I wouldn’t mind the church so much. Sure,
-ivirybody’s free to go into a church. But it’s the breakfast.
-Sure, an’ I nivir sat down to the table wid gentlefolks in
-all my life, and wouldn’t know more’n the babe just born
-how to behave myself, Lorrd! and if all tales be thrue,
-gentlefolks’ ways at table is that diffunt from our’n!”
-sighed Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I suppose they eat, and drink, and talk, and laugh pretty
-much as other people do. Take courage, Dandy, old man.
-Just look at yourself in the glass! Why, you might be a
-Wall Street millionaire, or a college professor, or a United
-States Senator, to look at you,” laughed Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know!” exclaimed Dandy with a self-satisfied smirk
-after glancing at the mirror. “Sure, ‘fine feathers make
-fine birds!’ And it is not how I look, at all, at all, but how
-I’m to behave, what I’m to say, and what I’m to do. That’s
-what bothers me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, bosh! You needn’t do anything nor say anything
-unless you like to. As for behaving, just watch other people
-and behave as they do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, that’s a first-rate idea o’ your’n, Longman—first-rate.
-And I’ll jist be guided by that. I’ll watch the gentry,
-and behave jist as they do, and thin I can’t do amiss!”
-exclaimed Dandy, brightening up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A very dangerous rule, with many unsuspected exceptions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now put on your overcoats and draw your woolen
-mittens over your white kids, and come along, you two, or
-we shall be late,” said Longman, who had already put on
-all his outer garments and stood ready to march.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the three men were quite ready they went downstairs
-together, walked over to the Fourth Avenue cars,
-boarded one and rode uptown; got out at Blank Street, and
-walked to the church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no sign about the building to indicate a wedding
-for that morning. The doors were closed, and there
-was not a carriage nor a human being near the sacred
-building.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The truth is that the Wallings and all concerned in the
-affair had kept the intended wedding not only out of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>papers but out of all gossiping circles. They did not want
-to have a sensational supplement to the magnificent pageantry
-of the grand Hay-Leegh wedding. And their reticence
-had even extended to a firm refusal to indorse any
-journalistic report of the appearance of the rightful claimant
-to the Haymore estate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t you think we hev bin afther making a mistake in
-the place, Mr. Longman?” inquired Dandy, looking mistrustingly
-up to the closed and silent building.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; we’re the first that’s come, that’s all. Walk in.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so saying he led the way, opening first the great
-black walnut outer door and then the red cloth inner door
-and entering the church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There they found the sexton, who asked them for cards.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman produced the three informal notes written by
-Mrs. Walling, and the sexton, after looking at them, marshaled
-the three men up the aisle, between empty pews, to
-seats near the altar, where they sat down.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they had become accustomed to the “dim religious
-light” of the interior, they perceived that they themselves
-were the only persons in the church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see that we are early,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, sure, thin, I’m not sorry. I can compose the
-narves av me,” replied Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They drew off their overcoats, folded them, and put them
-under the seats, shoved their silk hats after the coats, and
-then took off their woolen mitts, rolled them up, and put
-them in their pockets, and posed themselves for the scene
-expected.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently the door opened and quite a large party entered,
-and were led by the sexton to the front row of pews
-before the chancel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s the bowld Col. Moseley and his tribe, sure,” said
-Mike in a low voice to his companions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy looked up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was the tribe, indeed. The colonel, his wife and ten of
-his girls and boys. The two youngest children had been
-left at home on account of their tender age. The colonel’s
-wife wore her Sunday suit of brown satin, with a brown
-velvet bonnet and a rich old India shawl that had been an
-heirloom in her family, having come down to her from her
-great-grandmother. Her many daughters wore plain cardinal-red
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>or navy-blue dresses, with plush coats and felt
-hats to match.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Next entered a single pair, unknown to Longman and
-Dandy, but not to us. They were Mr. and Mrs. Cleve
-Stuart. Palma wore her lovely suit of navy-blue demassée
-velvet, with turban to match.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were provided with seats to the left of the Moseleys.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A few minutes after them came a lady alone. She was
-Mrs. Duncan, in a plum-colored satin dress and a sealskin
-coat and cap.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Finally, just as the organ began to peal forth a magnificent
-wedding march, streamed in two processions from two
-opposite points.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First, out from the vestry door came two white-robed
-clergymen, with open books in their hands, followed by the
-bridegroom, in evening dress, with a white rose in his buttonhole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, thin, see till our broth av a b’hoy! Sure, don’t his
-face shine like the morning starr itself?” whispered Dandy
-to his companion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman looked and saw Ran, with his brow radiant with
-frank happiness which he did not think of suppressing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Whish! Look down the aisle itself! There comes me
-swate swishter! Och! what an angel!” murmured Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman looked and smiled.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy turned his head and caught his breath. He had
-never in all his life seen anything half so lovely as little
-Judy in her bridal array. And yet her dress was simple
-enough. She wore a plain white silk, trained; a white tulle
-overskirt, looped with sprays of orange buds; a white tulle
-veil, fastened above her curly, black hair with sprigs of
-orange buds; and on her neck and arms a set of pearls given
-her by Ran. Her eyes were cast down until their long,
-sweeping, black lashes lay on her slightly flushed oval
-cheeks. She came slowly, leaning on the arm of Samuel
-Walling, who was to give her away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No doubt her brother would have been asked to perform
-this service, but that he was under age. And, besides, he
-would have shrunk from the honor of taking so conspicuous
-a part in the ceremony, since he would not even officiate
-as groomsman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Behind them came Mrs. Samuel Walling, in a superb suit
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>of ruby brocaded velvet, with turban to match. She was
-leaning on the arm of her brother-in-law, Mr. William
-Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The two clergymen advanced to the altar railing with
-open books in their hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bridegroom met the bride and took her hand; both
-bowed to the officiating ministers, and then knelt down on
-the hassocks before the altar.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Their immediate friends drew around them. The company
-in the pews stood up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike bent eagerly, breathlessly forward.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ceremony began. It continued amid a breathless silence,
-unbroken except by the voices of the officiating ministers
-and responses of the kneeling pair before them, and
-the short reply of the “church father” in bestowing “this
-woman” upon “this man.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the benediction was pronounced friends crowded
-around the newly wedded young pair with congratulations
-that were not merely conventional, but earnest, heartfelt.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike crept out of his pew, glided easily through the
-crowd, and stood before his sister and brother-in-law, mute,
-unable to speak, still looking like a very shy schoolboy at
-his college exhibition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Ran seized his hand and shook it heartily, and held
-it fast while he said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mike—dear boy—we were always brothers in heart, and
-now we are brothers in reality! Are you not going to embrace
-your sister? She is not less your sister because she
-is my wife, but more so, for she has married your bosom’s
-everlasting brother.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike then turned to Judy, who opened her arms and
-folded him to her heart in a warm embrace.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman and Dandy hung back for a little while, and
-then the old man stood up and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I can’t stand it at all, at all! Sure, I must go and spake
-to the darlints!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And out of the pew he went, and up to the chancel, where
-“fine” friends were still surrounding the young pair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They made way for the eager old man as he pushed
-through the group and confronted Ran and Judy, offering
-each a hand and crying with emotion:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’ve come to wish ye the blissing av the Lord and all
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>His holy saints, me brave bhoy and gurrul—I mane Misther
-and Misthress Randolph Hay av Hayti!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy took each a hand of the old miner and
-said something inarticulate in kindly thanks. Then, seeing
-Longman standing behind and towering above Dandy, Ran
-held up his hand and the colossus came forward and offered
-his congratulations, which both Ran and Judy received
-with much hearty feeling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not forget, Longman, that I never should have
-lived to see this happy day but for you,” said Ran, warmly
-pressing his hands, while Judy’s smile expressed all that she
-also would have said if she could have spoken.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my young friends,” said Mr. Samuel Walling,
-approaching the group, “we must not keep the reverend
-gentlemen waiting; we must go into the vestry room and
-sign the register.” And he drew Judy’s arm within his
-own and carried her off, followed by Ran and the rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When this form was completed the small company left
-the church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were but two carriages waiting before the door.
-One was Mrs. Walling’s, in which she had brought the bride
-to the church; the other was Ran’s, in which he was going to
-take his wife back.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling stood until she had seen Ran hand Judy
-into the clarence and take his seat beside her, when she
-turned to William Walling and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well! I would like to give you a seat back to the house;
-but I want to take in Mr. and Mrs. Stuart. Go up in the
-street car—that is a good fellow! And while you are at it
-see after those poor fellows from the mines. Get them into
-the same car with yourself, so that they won’t miss their
-way.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right!” exclaimed good-humored Mr. Will. “Where
-are the bears?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There they are!” she said, nodding toward the three
-men coming from the church door. “Go and introduce
-yourself to them, and then you will be capable of bringing
-them up to the house and presenting them to your brother
-and myself. They are great friends of Ran, you know. One
-of them saved his life! They came with the colonel’s family
-and Judy from California. Now be off!” added the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>lady as she saw her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, approaching,
-and went to meet them, saying to Palma:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, I have been waiting for you to come out. I
-have two vacant places in my carriage. I should be much
-pleased if you and Mr. Stuart would take them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you very much. You are very kind,” said
-Palma, accepting the offer as frankly as it was given.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart bowed—there was nothing left for him to say or
-do. The “ladies” had made the arrangement! That was
-enough for the Southern gentleman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They entered the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Walling
-and were driven rapidly uptown.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The colonel’s large family crowded into a street car.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling, Longman and Dandy found seats in another
-car.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so the wedding guests went their way to the Walling
-house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Arrived there, the ladies and children, only nine in all,
-were shown into an upper room to lay off their bonnets and
-wraps and add bouquets and white kid gloves to their
-toilets.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The gentlemen, ten in all, were shown into another room
-for light changes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And after half an hour’s performances they all filed
-down to the drawing-room, where they found their host
-and hostess, and the bride and groom, waiting to receive
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here also the wedding presents were on view for a short
-time, before being packed and dispatched to the steamer,
-which was to be effected while the company should be at
-table. There was a silver tea service from Mr. and Mrs.
-Walling; a silver salver from Mr. Will; a gold watch and
-chain from Col. and Mrs. Moseley; a box of fine handkerchiefs
-from Cleve and Palma Stuart—this was the same
-box that had been given by Cleve to Palma months before,
-but not a handkerchief had been disturbed, and having
-nothing else to give she gave it now, with Cleve’s consent.
-There was a gold chain and cross from Mike; a pretty hand-bag
-from Longman, a workbox from Dandy, and various
-dainty trifles, mostly of their own manufacture, from the
-Moseley girls and boys.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>A little later the butler slid back the rolling portières and
-announced breakfast, which was laid in a long rear room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The wedding party—host and hostess, bride and groom,
-and guests, filed in and seated themselves at the table—nine
-on each side, host and hostess at the head and foot. Ran
-and Judy sat on the right side of Mrs. Walling, Col. and
-Mrs. Moseley on her left. Below Judy sat Mr. and Mrs.
-Cleve Stuart. Below Mrs. Moseley sat Mr. William Walling
-and Mrs. Duncan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman sat on Mr. Walling’s right hand, and Dandy
-on his left. Other guests, chiefly the young people of the
-colonel’s family, filled all the other seats. Mike sat halfway
-up on the right side of the board.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Two waiters, in black dress suits, white satin waistcoats
-and kid gloves, served the guests.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Tea, coffee or chocolate was offered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy took tea—in what a little, fragile eggshell of a
-cup! How different from the massive, yellow bowl from
-which he used to gulp great draughts of that rare luxury, or
-something made up to imitate it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was afraid to touch this chrysalis for fear he should
-crush it. He left it on the table before him, and following
-Longman’s given rule, watched to see how other people
-handled their cups; as a matter of detail, he watched Col.
-Moseley, who stood, in his estimation, for the most perfect
-gentleman he knew.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By this precaution he avoided the mistake of pouring
-his tea into his saucer, which otherwise he would surely
-have done; for what on earth else were saucers made for
-anyhow?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently came around the boned turkey and the chicken
-salad.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy chose the salad. But where was the knife with
-which to shovel the delicious compounds into his capacious
-mouth? Clearly the waiter had neglected his duty in providing
-a knife, for there was nothing beside his plate but
-a silver instrument with four fine prongs. In despair he
-looked in the direction of his model, the colonel, and saw
-that gentleman eating with the silver thing, holding it in
-his right hand. All the others round the table were doing
-the same thing!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Old Dandy shook his head, saying within himself:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>“Sure, and I don’t like these newfangled ways; they
-ain’t Irish, nor ’Merican, nor they ain’t natural, nuther!
-But it’s a baste I am to be finding fault at Ran’s wedding,
-so it is.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then Dandy ate his salad as well as he could with
-his unaccustomed instrument.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The fest went on, and delicacy after delicacy was served.
-Plates were often changed, dishes were changed. Tea, coffee
-and chocolate gave place to tokay, champagne and
-johanisberg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy, following what he considered a safe rule, but
-which was soon proved to be anything else but safe, did as
-he saw other people do, and got through the feast very
-creditably until at length Col. Moseley arose in his place
-and called the attention of the company in a neat little
-speech, which he concluded with:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to
-propose the health of the bride and groom.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Up jumped Dandy to do as other people—notably his
-model colonel did, and exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Me, too, ladies and gintlemin! I purpose the good
-health of the bride and groom!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Consternation fell for a moment on the company, but the
-colonel had suffered more than one “surprise” in the course
-of his military life, and he was equal to the occasion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir, in the name of our friends,” he said
-gravely, bowing to Dandy. “Then, gentlemen, fill up your
-glasses.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The toast was honored. And no one felt more satisfied
-with himself and with all the world than did Dandy Quin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Other toasts were offered and equally honored, Dandy
-taking a conspicuous part in every one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was twelve o’clock when the guests sat down to the
-table. It was two when they arose and withdrew to the
-drawing-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Judy went upstairs to change her light bridal dress
-for the heavy green cloth suit that was to defend her from
-the wintry winds of the open sea.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At her earnest request no one was to go down to the
-steamer to see them off.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because I shall behave badly. I know I shall. I shall
-cry. And it is so awful to cry in public!” said Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>All her effects had been packed and sent on the steamer,
-except the one little trunk into which her last belongings
-were to go, and which was to be put into the carriage with
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So as soon as she was dressed for the departure—cloth
-suit, fur-lined cloak, beaver poke and all—she came down,
-into the drawing-room, where all her friends were assembled,
-and there she bade them all good-by. She kissed,
-embraced and wept over her friends, one after the other;
-but when she came to Mrs. Moseley she clung to her as if
-she could never leave her, weeping as if her heart would
-break.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At last it was that tender lady herself who gently unwound
-the girl’s arms from around her neck, and stooping,
-whispered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look at Ran, dear. See how distressed he is. He must
-not see you grieve so!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy hastily wiped her eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley beckoned Ran, who came forward and received
-the girl from the lady’s arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Ran, dear,” sobbed Judy, falling into her dialect,
-“don’t ye moind me crying. Sure it’s a cowld-harrted craychur
-I’d be not to graive, parting with the loikes av her, a
-rale highborn leddy as has ben sich a mother to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My own dear Judy!” whispered Ran. And that was
-all he could say.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike had taken leave of all his friends and had gone
-on before. But there were two more whom Judy thought
-she must bid good-by to.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is Misther Longman and Uncle Dandy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here we are, Misthress Hay!” answered old Dandy
-from the hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I must bid ye good-by, dear frinds!” said Judy,
-holding out her hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nivir a bit of it, hinny. Sure we’re all in the same boat!
-That is, the same stamer! We go wid ye across the say!
-On’v ye’s go in the grand first cabin, and we go in the
-second. Our duds went on board this morning, and Mike’s
-gone down to the tovvurn to pay our score. And, sure, he’ll
-join us on the stamer!” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I knew Mike was to go with us, but didn’t know
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>you were. I am so glad you are going with us!” exclaimed
-Judy, drying her last tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Ran was hurrying her into the carriage that was to
-take them to the steamer. When he had placed her in her
-seat he returned to speak to the two men.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Since you are going in the same ship, ride down with
-us. There are two vacant seats in our carriage,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Couldn’t think of such a thing!” exclaimed Longman,
-laughing. “What! intrude on a bride and groom! We appreciate
-your magnanimity and thank you mightily, but we
-couldn’t think of it!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And though Ran urged his invitation, Longman steadily
-refused it, much to Dandy’s disgust, who would willingly
-have enjoyed the luxury of a ride in that elegant clarence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We will go down in the horse cars and get there before
-you. You’ll find us on deck when you arrive. Come,
-Dandy!” said Longman, and raising his felt wide awake, he
-walked away, carrying off his unwilling little old friend.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran entered the carriage and gave the order to the coachman.
-And they started for the steamer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A half-hour’s drive brought them to the crowded pier,
-and five minutes’ struggle through the confusion transferred
-them to the deck of the <em>Boadicea</em>, where they found Will
-Walling, Mike, Longman, and Dandy waiting for them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No more partings here, dear Judy. Here are meetings!”
-said Ran with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>An hour later the <em>Boadicea</em> sailed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At that same moment Mrs. Duncan, taking leave of Mrs.
-Walling, repeated her words:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! won’t there be a circus when Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
-Hay confront Gentleman Geff and Miss Leegh at
-Haymore! How I would like to be there!”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XII<br> <span class='large'>DARKEST BEFORE DAY</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Stuart took his wife home from the wedding breakfast.
-It was four o’clock, and the wintry sun was low on the
-western horizon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>Mrs. Pole had a good fire burning in the little grate when
-they entered the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“See, Poley! I have brought you a piece of the wedding
-cake to dream on, you know!” said Palma, offering a pretty
-little box done up in silver paper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, my dear! My dreaming days are long past! long
-past!” sighed the old woman, as, nevertheless, she took the
-box.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What a prosaic old fogy you are, Poley, to be sure. For
-that matter all our dreaming days are over after we are
-married, I reckon.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, honey, until we begin to dream for our children.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma blushed and sank into sudden silence. She was
-beginning to dream sweet dreams of motherhood, but that
-was her own precious secret, she imagined, not suspecting
-that Mrs. Pole knew as much about it as she did herself, and
-perhaps more. To cover her confusion she laughed and
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Poley, if you do not care to dream on the cake
-yourself you can give it to some young friends of yours, to
-one of your many cousins or nieces; they will be glad to
-have it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she threw off her turban and her wraps, drew off
-her gloves and sank into an easy-chair before the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“After all, it is good to be quiet at home, is it not, Cleve?
-I love this little snuggery of ours. We can live very happily
-here until next May, and then flit to the woods and
-mountains again. I think I like our simple way of life.
-Cleve, quite as well, if not better, than if you spent all
-the revenues of your Mississippi plantation in living in the
-grand style of some of our friends. What do you think,
-Cleve?” she inquired, stretching out her pretty feet to the
-grateful warmth of the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He did not answer in words—he could not; he laid his
-hand tenderly on her curly, black hair and turned slowly
-away and went out of the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma received the caress as a full assent to all that she
-had said, and smiled to herself as she gazed into the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart went downstairs and out upon the sidewalk,
-and paced up and down before the house. This was his
-nightly promenade ground, where he came to smoke his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>cigar. But this evening he had no cigar, nor even the
-wherewithal to get one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yes, it had come to this—Cleve Stuart was absolutely
-penniless. He had paid out his last dime on the horse cars
-that brought himself and his wife from the wedding breakfast.
-This was Saturday, the second of December. On
-Monday, the fourth, their month’s rent would be due, and
-there was not a penny to meet it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What should he do?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>If all his remaining earthly possessions were pawned they
-would not bring money enough to meet the demand of their
-landlord.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nor could he hope for any forbearance from that quarter.
-The terms of the contract were strict, and amounted, in
-brief, to this: “Pay or go.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nor could he bring himself to the shame, not to say the
-dishonesty, of trying to borrow money which he could foresee
-no way of paying.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was the pass to which his marriage with Palma had
-brought him! Did he regret his marriage?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No,” he said to himself, “though I proposed to her, first
-of all, under the diabolical influence of the beautiful fiend
-who had me in her power, and for mercenary purposes that
-were to serve us, the two conspirators, yet for one redeeming
-event I do thank Providence—and that is that I discovered
-Palma to be penniless as well as invalided before I
-married her. Then I kept faith with her; I married her; I
-saved her precious life, and I have grown to know her and
-to love her above all things on earth. And to whatever
-straits I may be reduced, and however much I may suffer,
-I will, so far as possible, shield my beloved one from knowing
-them or sharing them. But in the meantime what in
-the name of Heaven am I to do? And what is to become
-of her? Men in such straits as mine have been driven, are
-daily driven, to commit suicide. We read such cases in
-almost every paper, and often with the concluding comment:
-‘No motive could be discovered for the desperate
-deed.’ I suppose, now, if I were to be so lost to a sense of
-justice as to end my trouble with a shot to-night, it would
-be said to-morrow: ‘He had just come from a wedding
-breakfast, where he appeared among the happiest of the
-guests. No motive can be surmised for his desperate deed.’
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>As if men paraded their perplexities to all and sundry, in
-season and out of season, and wore their motives and intentions
-pinned on their sleeves—especially such motives and
-intentions. Pah! nothing could drive me to such a deed.
-I must live and brave my fate, trusting in Heaven, doing
-my duty! But all the same, sweet little Palma, if it were
-Heaven’s will, I think it would be well if you and I should
-fall asleep to-night and never awake again in this world!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So deep, so painful, so absorbing was his reverie that he
-did not perceive the approach of the postman, who ran
-against him in the dark, begged his pardon and passed on
-until he reached the main entrance of the apartment house,
-went in, came out, and hurried on again out of sight up
-the street.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart had scarcely noticed him, beyond muttering, “Not
-at all,” when the other had said, “Beg pardon, sir.” And
-now he thought no more of the incident, but continued his
-walk for an hour, as if by wearying his body he might
-relieve his mind.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently, thinking that this was their dinner hour,
-though he had little appetite for dinner just now, he turned
-and entered the hall. He did not ring up the elevator, but
-he walked heavily up the five flights of stairs. It was a
-mental relief to fatigue himself to faintness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He entered the little parlor and found not dinner, but
-the tea table spread.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma was sitting behind the urn and waiting for him.
-The fire was very bright, the parlor very snug, and the little
-wife very happy. If this could only continue!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thought, after a wedding feast at two o’clock, that tea
-would be better than dinner at six. So I told Poley. Do
-you mind, Cleve?” inquired Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear; indeed, I prefer tea; it will be more refreshing,”
-he replied, trying to overcome the heaviness of his
-soul so that it should not appear in his look or tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And Poley has made some of her delicious, light, puffy
-muffins. I never saw any so nice anywhere as she can make.
-I tell you, Cleve, dear, if our riches should suddenly ‘take
-unto themselves wings and fly away,’ Poley and I would
-open a bake shop with a specialty of these tea muffins.
-Poley should make them. I would stand behind the counter
-and sell them and you should keep the accounts, and we
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>should all three make our fortunes and divide the profits,”
-said Palma as she poured out the delicate Japan tea.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart smiled as he took a cup from her hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I forgot to tell you. There’s a letter for you! It
-came while you were out. I put it on the corner of the
-mantelpiece. Will you look at it now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear; I know what it is. It is only the bill for the
-month’s rent. The landlord always sends it on the third of
-the month, and as the third comes on Sunday this time, he
-has sent it on Saturday, a day earlier.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Try a muffin, Cleve. You don’t know how nice they
-are.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He took one to please her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she chatted on about the wedding they had just
-attended, and the young pair who had just sailed for
-Europe.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They are so anxious that we shall go and visit them at
-Haymore as soon as they shall be settled there, Cleve. And,
-indeed, I did promise to use all my influence with you to
-persuade you to take me over next summer. Why, Cleve, it
-would be ever so much pleasanter than to go to Lull’s again,
-even! And yet I used to think Lull’s was just Paradise!
-What do you think, Cleve?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think, my dear one, that it would be very delightful
-to spend the summer with our friends at Haymore. As
-much as I have traveled, I have never been in Yorkshire.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then you think we may go?” eagerly demanded Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Providence permitting, yes, my dear,” he replied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She perceived no evasion in this answer. Indeed, the
-phrase was her own habitual formula whenever she fully
-intended to do any certain thing, “Providence permitting.”
-She took his words for consent and answered gleefully:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will be something to look forward to during the
-winter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart smiled. Ah! how hard to keep up that cheerful
-countenance and light tone when his heart was so heavy
-and his mind so dark.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They lingered long at the tea table, because Palma was
-full of life and of the enjoyment of all life’s blessings, in
-possession and in anticipation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they arose at last and the table was cleared of the
-tea service, and the books and magazines replaced on it,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>Palma took her workbasket and Cleve a book, and she
-sewed at mending gloves, he read aloud “The Annals of a
-Quiet Neighborhood.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The letter on the mantelpiece, confidently believed to be
-the rent bill, was not looked at, or even thought of. There
-it lay, and was fated to lay, until Monday morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young pair retired at their usual hour; but only
-Palma slept. The vulture of anxiety, gnawing at his heart,
-kept Stuart wide awake.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Sunday dawned clear, bright and beautiful.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young couple arose and breakfasted and went to
-church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They walked all the way, not because Cleve had not a
-dime to pay car fare—though he had not—but because
-Palma never wished to tax the horses on the Sabbath day
-except in cases of absolute necessity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because,” she urged, “the merciful command of the
-Lord provides for the rest of the beast as well as of the man,
-and these horses work hard enough all the week to rest on
-Sunday.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Stuart had always yielded to her scruples in this
-respect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The organ was pealing forth a fine voluntary when they
-entered the church and took their seats. The music ceased
-and the service began. Palma entered into it with all the
-loving devotion of her heart and soul. Cleve could not concentrate
-his thoughts on worship, though he tried to do so.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After a little while, in due course, the first hymn was
-given out, and the first line fell like a trumpet blast, calling
-the Christian soul to hope and courage:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“Give to the winds thy fears!</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Hope and be undismayed!</div>
-      <div class='line'>God hears thy sighs and sees thy tears,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>God shall lift up thy head.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>The words thrilled him, aroused him; all the black shadows
-of grief, shame, despair and desperation, which had
-bowed and cowed his spirit with the sense of helplessness
-and humiliation, rolled away as before a rising sun. It
-seemed wonderful, miraculous, a memory of divine intervention
-that never left him in all his after life. He had
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>always worshiped God as the supreme ruler of the universe;
-but never had known Him as the Heavenly Father. But
-from this hour he knew, or rather he felt, that “the God of
-the universe, the God of the race, was the God of the individual
-man,” the giver of life, the giver of heaven, the giver
-of the daily bread as well.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sermon which followed was from the text: “Are not
-two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall
-not fall on the ground without your Father.... Fear
-not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sermon that followed was almost worthy of the
-text, not quite, for no man’s nor angel’s words can add to
-the Word of the Lord; but it was faithfully, lovingly and
-practically applied, and it did good service.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At the end of the worship Stuart, as well as Palma, came
-out into the sunlight refreshed and comforted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That morning Stuart, in his dark mood, had shrunk from
-the exertion of going to church. What would be the use?
-he had thought in his secret heart; and he had tried to
-excuse himself to Palma, but she, from a feeling of duty,
-had persuaded him to go.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now as they walked uptown through the sunny air he
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad we went to church to-day, dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So am I. We got our daily bread, our heavenly manna
-there, did we not?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They reached home and found their pleasant little parlor
-aglow with the bright fire in the grate, and inviting with
-the neatly spread table and the simple midday meal of the
-Sabbath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole had also been to church at a much nearer point,
-and had got home before them in good time to lay the cloth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dinner over, they spent the afternoon in reading.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They had an early tea, and then went out to church for
-the evening service, walking there and back again. They
-reached home after ten o’clock, for the way was long. They
-were revived in spirit and wholesomely fatigued in body, so
-that they soon retired to rest and slept well. Even Stuart
-slept, though he believed that this night ended their last
-day in their pretty home, and that the next morning would
-send them adrift, bereft of all their effects, except the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>clothes they wore, and Heaven only knew whither! But—they
-would be in their Father’s world! No one could turn
-them out of that. So they slept in peace.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>I have been particular in describing these last two days
-of Stuart’s and Palma’s experience, for they were ever after
-memorable in their lives.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Monday morning they arose early, as usual. It had
-been Stuart’s daily custom to go out after breakfast in
-search of employment. He had continued this under all
-discouragements.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yet this morning he stayed at home to see the landlord’s
-collector, who always arrived the day after the bill had come
-by mail. As the bill had arrived on Saturday, and the collector
-could not come on Sunday, he would certainly put in
-an appearance on Monday, and Palma must not be left
-alone to receive him—under the circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma took her knitting—a pair of mittens for Mrs. Pole—and
-sat down to work near the window, from which she
-could look below upon the housetops and above to the glorious
-December sky.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart took a book and threw himself into a rocking-chair
-by the table, but he did not read. He was waiting—for
-what? He did not know.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The door opened and “the boy” came in, silently laid a
-letter on the table, and went out again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart took it up and opened it. Palma looked up from
-her work.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why—this is the rent bill. I thought it came Saturday.
-Where is that letter that came?” Stuart inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll get it for you,”
-said Palma; and she arose and handed him the letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He took it and gazed at it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know the handwriting at all,” he said meditatively,
-“and it is postmarked ‘Wolfswalk, West Virginia.’
-I should think it was intended for some one else, if my
-name was not such an uncommon one, and certainly there is
-no one else in this house that bears it.” And he turned it
-over and over and scrutinized it after the strange manner of
-people who receive a mysterious letter and play with their
-own curiosity by delaying to open it. At length he broke
-the envelope and unfolded the letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First of all he turned to the signature, which was at the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>bottom of the fourth page, so that he did not happen to
-open the sheet and find what lay between the leaves.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘John Cleve!’” he exclaimed. “Why, dear Palma, this
-is from my old bachelor great-uncle, who, I thought, had
-been gathered to his fathers ages ago. He must be at least
-eighty years old.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, read it to me! I never knew you had an
-uncle,” said Palma, dropping her work and coming and
-leaning over the back of his chair so that she could look at
-the open letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve read as follows:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Wolfswalk, West Virginia</span>,</div>
-      <div class='line in12'>“November 25, 186—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>My Dear Grand-nephew</span>: You will be surprised to
-get a letter from me, of whom you can have but little
-memory, as you have not seen me since you were a babe of
-three years old, when your dear mother—my dear and only
-niece—brought you to my house.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“Since her lamented death, in Mississippi, I had completely
-lost sight of you, thinking of you as in the hands of
-competent guardians during your minority, and of leading
-a prosperous life as an active planter on your estate since
-your majority. I thought of writing to you, but neglected
-to do so. How families do get separated in this world, to
-be sure, neglecting each other, forgetting each other, like
-aliens!</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“Several circumstances have occurred to bring you
-forcibly to my mind of late. First, the fact that my two
-grand-nephews, Frank and James, sole descendants of my
-only nephew, Charles, fell on the field of Cold Harbor,
-fighting for their native State. They died unmarried.
-This leaves you my sole heir.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“As soon as I learned this fact I wrote to you in Mississippi,
-but failed to get a letter from you. I wrote to the
-postmaster of your post office there, and learned from him
-that you had been an absentee from home for many years.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“Then I thought of advertising for you, but so hated the
-plan that I delayed putting it in execution.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“At length chance favored me and gave the information I
-desired. A neighbor of mine went off on a business trip and
-was in Washington City last week, and met there a friend
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>of yours—a Mr. Walling, of New York. By the merest
-accident your name came up—neither of the gentlemen
-knowing of how much importance it was to me—and Fairfax
-heard that you were in New York City, and, in fact,
-much about you which it is not necessary to repeat here, but
-all of which he told me. Therefore, I write you this letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“And now, since you are not bound down to your Mississippi
-plantation, and since you are my sole heir, and I am
-old and feeble, and cannot last long, I ask you to be a
-good boy, and a dutiful nephew, and to come and bring your
-wife and live with me on the farm.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“I have not suffered, as so many have, by the war. It
-did not sweep over my land, but gave it a rather wide berth.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“My negroes have remained with me at fair wages, but
-whether they do fair work is something else.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“I have an overseer to look after the negroes, but, my boy,
-I require some one to look after the overseer. Will you
-come?</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“As breaking up and traveling is always expensive, and
-as I do not know your financial condition, I inclose a check
-for five hundred dollars, merely as an advance to my heir.
-Give my love to your wife. Let me hear from you as soon
-as possible, and believe me, my dear Cleve, now and ever,
-your affectionate grand-uncle,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>John Cleve</span>.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank God!” fervently ejaculated Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But where is the check?” curiously inquired Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart opened the leaves of the letter again, then his face
-fell and he murmured:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My uncle must have forgotten to put it in!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No,” said Palma, “here it is!” And she picked it up
-from the carpet, to which it had slipped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank God!” said Stuart again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, I am glad, very glad, that you have heard from
-your uncle. But you, Cleve! I have never in all my life
-seen you so strongly moved. What is it all about?” exclaimed
-Palma, amazed at his extreme agitation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My darling, when this providential letter came we were
-on the brink of ruin!” he answered, telling her the truth
-at last.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Ruin!’ You! Cleve Stuart!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>“Yes, my beloved.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But your vast wealth?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A fond imagination of yours.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And your rich Mississippi plantation?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A blasted wilderness.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve! Cleve! How have we lived?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By the gradual disposal of all my useless effects.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve! Cleve!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The last dime was spent on Saturday, dear, and this
-morning I looked for nothing else but a distrain for rent
-and ejection from these premises.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you never told me! You never told me!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why should I have distressed you, dear one?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I could have worked, Cleve. But I didn’t know!
-I didn’t know! I thought you were rich. And I thought,
-sometimes, that you were too prudent, too saving, especially
-when you did not get a dress coat to go to Ran’s wedding.
-And all the time you were poor, and struggling on the very
-brink of ruin! Oh, Cleve!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never mind, dear heart, we are ready for the landlord,
-or for any other demand. Tell me, darling, shall you like
-to go to this mountain farmhouse in West Virginia, and
-keep house for the old man, and be mistress, doctress,
-teacher and everything, to his horde of darkies?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes—a thousand times, yes! I shall
-be delighted, Cleve!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. As it all depended upon you, I will
-answer the old man’s letter and accept his offer; then go out
-and change this check.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, no; first of all, dear Cleve,” said Palma, gravely,
-“let us kneel and return thanks to our Heavenly Father
-that we are saved.”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIII<br> <span class='large'>SAFE AT HOME</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>We left Jennie Montgomery sleeping in her mother’s
-arms, with her babe safe beside them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie would have talked all night till broad daylight;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>but her mother, knowing how tired the young traveler must
-be, discouraged all conversation by pretending to be sleepy,
-by replying only in monosyllables, or even answering at
-random, until at length the talker herself gave up in despair,
-grew tired, then stupid, and then fell fast asleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The consequence of her exhausted strength and her long
-vigil was that she slept long and deeply and late into the
-next morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When at last she awoke she found herself alone in the
-room, with the morning sunlight stealing through the slats
-of the window shutters, and gilding bright lines on the
-white window curtains and on the light gray ground of the
-carpet and the light gray color of the walls. She saw all
-this through the festooned white curtains at the foot of her
-bed. She raised herself up, and then she saw something
-through the same opening—a bright little coal fire burning
-in the grate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her mother was gone and her baby was gone. Evidently
-Jennie had slept so soundly that she had not heard their
-uprising and departure, and she had continued to sleep on
-until she knew not what hour of the day.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She thought she would get up and dress herself quietly
-before any one should discover that she was awake.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She slipped out of bed, and the first thing that she saw
-was her large sea trunk, that had been packed with undiscovered
-treasure of clothing by the benevolent women
-who had taken such a warm interest in her welfare, and who
-had given her an outfit as well as a first-class passage home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The key of her trunk was in her <i><span lang="fr">portemonnaie</span></i>, in the
-pocket of her traveling dress. She got it out, unstrapped
-and unlocked the treasure chest, and lifted the lid.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But just then she heard the voice of her baby crowing
-loudly in response to another cooing voice that she recognized
-as her mother’s.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were having a grand circus together in the parlor,
-that young grandmother and the baby.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie snatched up the first garment fitting to wear from
-the top of the trunk, and then dropped the lid and hastily
-washed and dressed herself, putting on a pretty blue cashmere
-princess wrapper, trimmed with blue satin ribbons.
-Then, while still buttoning up, she hastily opened the dividing
-door and entered the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>Her mother was there, sitting in a low rocker, holding
-the baby across her lap. Beside her, on the hob of the grate,
-stood the bowl of “infant food” from which she had been
-feeding the child.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no one else in the room, nor did there need to
-be to make it very lively there, for the baby was crowing
-with all the strength of her lungs, while laughing up in the
-pretty, smiling face, with the cooing voice, bending over
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma, darling! why didn’t you wake me?” exclaimed
-Jennie, coming up before Mrs. Campbell perceived
-her presence in the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Jennie! Up and dressed, my pet? Why didn’t
-you ring for some one to help you?” inquired the mother
-in her turn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You haven’t answered my question yet, and told me why
-you did not wake me when you got up and dressed baby,”
-said Jennie as she stooped and kissed her mother and the
-child.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I was so well satisfied to see you sleeping off your fatigue
-that I would not have disturbed you for a great deal,” said
-Mrs. Campbell, returning her daughter’s caress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, now, the reason I didn’t ring for any one was because
-I didn’t want any one. And when I heard you and
-baby in such earnest conversation, I hurried with my dressing
-and came in. I thought baby would be hungry.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She was hungry; but I sent to the chemist and got this
-‘infant food’ for her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! she never was fed with that before!” exclaimed
-Jennie, in some doubt of its good effects.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t be afraid, my dear. It is used in all the royal
-nurseries. See, the royal arms are on the label,” said the
-lady.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course, mamma, darling, if you give it, it is all right.
-I think your judgment quite as good as that of all the royal
-family put together.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tut! tut! my pet! Your visit to America must have
-turned you into a republican. But what a lovely wrapper
-you have got on, Jennie!” she said, perhaps to turn the
-conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is it not? And I have got another one just like it in
-mauve, which has never been on my back, and which you
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>must have, dear mamma. Those angel women in New York
-have given me that huge trunk full of beautiful clothing,
-and I shall never wear one-half of it out, but my greatest
-pleasure in it will be to divide it with you, my dear, darling,
-beautiful mamma.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie!” was all the curate’s wife found to say to
-that, for she did not mean to take any of her daughter’s
-pretty clothes, if she could help it, nor did she want to vex
-the girl by refusing them just then.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is papa?” inquired Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Gone out to make some sick calls; he will be home by
-noon. But here I am chatting away and forgetting that you
-have had no breakfast. We breakfasted two hours ago!”
-laughed Mrs. Campbell as she put her hand out to the bell
-rope and rang.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth Longman came in, smiled and nodded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, ma’am,” to Jennie, and then went to
-work to lay the cloth for her breakfast. It was soon spread
-upon the table—good coffee, rich cream, muffins, fresh
-butter, grilled ham and poached eggs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell gave the baby to Elspeth and sat down to
-pour out the coffee for her prodigal daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, mamma! You remember our old feeling, yours and
-mine, that a draught poured out by beloved hands has the
-power of life-giving to the spirit as well as to the body,”
-said Jennie as she received the cup from her mother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And the same may be said of work gifts, my dear.
-Your little Shetland veil that you knit for me years ago,
-always seemed full as it could hold of your dear love, and
-its touch on my face like your caress,” replied Mrs. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While they sat at table Elspeth Longman stood at one of
-the windows with the baby in her arms, tapping on the
-panes to make the child look out on the blue sky and the
-evergreen trees.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I shall stop calling baby ‘Baby’ now, mamma. She is
-going to be named after you—Esther. It is too grown up
-a name to call a little baby in common. And we can’t call
-her Hetty, because that is your pet name. Now what shall
-we call her for short?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Essy,” replied the young grandmother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Essy, then, it shall be. Mind, Mrs. Longman. Our
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>baby is to the christened Esther, after mamma, and we are
-to call her Essy for short.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, ma’am; it is a pretty name,” said the woman
-at the window.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And we will have her christened on Sunday, mamma.
-We must wait for Sunday, because I remember papa’s preference
-for christening babies on Sunday, unless there should
-be some pressing necessity to perform the ceremony on a
-week day.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There’s grandpa!” exclaimed Elspeth to the baby, tapping
-on the window. And the next instant, the Rev. James
-Campbell—otherwise familiarly and affectionately in his
-own family called “Jimmy”—entered the house and walked
-into the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He kissed his daughter good-morning, and then took his
-stand on the rug, with his back to the fire, looking so grave
-that his wife grew anxious, but forbore to question him in
-the presence of their newly returned daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And perhaps, after all,” she reflected, “it is nothing
-very personal. He may have just returned from the deathbed
-of a parishioner. Such scenes always affect him, more
-for the sake of those left behind than for the departed, for
-he has too much faith to fret after the freed soul.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While Mrs. Campbell was turning these thoughts over in
-her mind, and Mr. Campbell was standing in silence on the
-rug, Jennie finished her breakfast and arose and took her
-crowing baby from the arms of Elspeth, that the latter
-might clear off the table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When this was done, and the woman had left the room,
-and Jennie had put her baby to sleep in the pretty berceaunette
-that had been provided by her mother that very
-morning, and the father, mother and daughter were seated
-around the fire, both these women with needlework in their
-hands, the curate said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, if you will, you may give us the explanation
-you promised. Hetty!” he said, suddenly turning to
-his wife, “did she tell you anything last night?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not a word. I would not let her talk. I made her go
-to sleep.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That was right. Well, we know from her letter that
-she, daughter of a minister of the church of England,
-though a very humble one, and the wife of an ex-officer in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>her majesty’s service, though a most unworthy one—that
-she, a lady by birth and by marriage, was brought to such
-extremity as to be confined in the pauper ward of a public
-hospital, and to depend on private charity for her outfit and
-passage home to us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thanks be to the Lord that we have her and her child
-safe and sound in mind and body, however they came to
-us!” fervently exclaimed Hetty Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I say we know all this from our child’s letter. But we
-do not know why all this should have happened in this way;
-nor why she never mentioned her husband’s name in her
-letter; nor why she comes to us with her child alone; nor
-why, when I asked her for an explanation, she replied to
-me that the kindest act he ever did for her was—to leave
-her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my Jennie! Oh, my dear Jennie!” exclaimed
-Hetty in a tone of pain.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma; it is true. The kindest thing he ever did
-for me was to leave me. I am not heartbroken over it. I
-have nothing, not the least thing, to reproach myself with
-in all my conduct toward him. Mamma, when I made
-Capt. Kightly Montgomery’s acquaintance I</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘Foregathered wi’ the de’il.’”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie—my daughter!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is hard fact, mamma, as you will know when you
-have heard the story I am going to tell you. Is there any
-danger of any one coming in?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear. There is no one in the house besides ourselves
-except Elspeth, and as this is baking day she is very
-busy in the kitchen, and will not come in here unless she
-should be called,” said Hetty. Nevertheless, she got up and
-turned the keys in both doors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, then, my dear,” she said as she resumed her seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a long story, and a painful one; yet, for every reason,
-I feel that I must tell you the whole of it without
-reservation, because I shall have to seek your counsel and
-be guided by it as to my future course,” said Jennie, turning
-to her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; tell every word you know,” replied Jimmy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Jennie told the whole horrible story—of her secret
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>marriage—of which her parents had heard before—of the
-many devices by which her husband had kept her away
-from her parents, even after they had received her penitent
-letter, and forgiven her, and invited her and her bridegroom
-to visit them; of their wanderings through Europe, stopping
-at the great gambling centers; of his abandonment of her;
-or her pursuit of him over land and sea; of their meeting at
-night in the streets of New York, just when he was on the
-eve of marriage with another woman; of his fright at her
-appearance, his instant repudiation of her, and their bitter
-altercation, which ended in his stabbing her and leaving her
-for dead on the sidewalk of the deserted street,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“In the dead waste and middle of the night.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this point of the story Mrs. Campbell screamed and
-flung her hands up to her eyes as if to shut out the horrible
-vision her imagination had conjured up from the words of
-Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then there followed a pause in the narrative until Hetty
-had recovered herself. Meanwhile the curate sat in grim
-silence, like a man who resolves but does not mean to speak.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was Jennie who broke the spell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is the very worst, mamma. I have nothing to tell
-worse than this—no, nor half as bad—and you see that it
-did not kill me. And now what I have to tell you is mostly
-a pleasant experience; for when I recovered consciousness,
-which was after many hours, I found myself on a nice, white
-bed in a pleasant room, with the sweetest, kindest woman’s
-face, like an angel’s face, bending over me, and my new-born
-baby lying beside me. Yes; my wound had been in the
-flesh of my left breast, shocking me into a swoon, but not
-fatal—as he had supposed it to be—and not even dangerous.
-Under some anæsthetic—I suppose, though I do not know—my
-wound had been dressed, and my baby born, and I
-awoke in such a heaven of peace and good will, with my
-precious baby by my side, and with angels of mercy all
-about me, that, mamma, every vestige of anger against my
-husband for all his wrongs to me vanished from my bosom;
-although there remained a shrinking from the thought of
-ever meeting him again, and a horror of him that I feel can
-never be overcome in this life. As soon as I was well enough
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>to bear the ordeal I was questioned as to my assailant; but
-I would not tell who he was. The police searched my room
-on Vevay Street, and found his miniature; but it happened
-to be the one which had been taken when he was in the
-army, in his regimental uniform, and with his military
-mustache, and it bore his monogram, K. M. They brought
-it to me, but I would have nothing to say to it; nor was it
-available to trace Montgomery, for he now wore a citizen’s
-dress, had grown a full, long beard, and he bore another
-name—a name supported by documentary and direct evidence—a
-name which it will surprise you to hear—but let
-that pass for the present.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why not tell us now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Wait, mamma, dear. I am following the narrative as
-the facts came to my knowledge. The miniature was photographed
-and distributed to aid in the identification and
-arrest of the suspected party. It did not lead to Montgomery’s
-arrest, but to that of an unlucky gentleman who
-bore some resemblance to the photograph, especially in the
-matter of the martial mustache. This hapless person was
-brought before me for identification. The likeness struck
-even me at first, and startled me into a compromising exclamation;
-but a second glance assured me that I had never
-seen the man before in my life; and I told them so. They
-did not believe me. And afterward it took the evidence of
-several substantial citizens to convince the magistrate before
-whom he was brought that the accused man was quite a distinct
-individual from Capt. Kightly Montgomery, my supposed
-assailant. I say my supposed assailant, dear mamma;
-for they could not know him for such, since I would not
-give him up to justice; for I wish him no harm, though I
-never want to see him in this world.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never!” breathed Hetty with all a mother’s intense
-sympathy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I told you in my letter of the great goodness of those
-angel women in New York to me, and how, as soon as I
-was able to leave the hospital, one of them, dear Mrs. Duncan,
-took me home to her own house, where she cared for
-me and my baby as—as you do, sweet mamma.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“God bless them!” exclaimed Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I stayed with her while the ladies were preparing my
-outfit, and until I took passage on the <em>Scorpio</em>.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>“And you saw no more of that——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The conscientious minister hesitated at a word that any
-other man, under the circumstances, would have pronounced
-with vim.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie understood him, and answered promptly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, dear papa. I saw no more of him until I was eight
-days out at sea. Then we came face to face on deck.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Face to face on deck!’” exclaimed Hetty in dismay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Face to face on deck!’ Then he was actually coming
-over on the same ship with yourself?” said the curate, losing
-much of his self-control.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa. Yes, mamma. He was coming over on the
-same ship with myself. Coming over under his new name,
-with his new, deceived bride. They had been married with
-the greatest <i><span lang="fr">éclat</span></i> in one of the most wealthy and fashionable
-houses in New York. And they were on their wedding
-tour.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Jennie gave a detailed account of the meeting between
-the recreant husband and the wronged wife on board
-the <em>Scorpio</em>. She described his fright, awe, horror on meeting
-one whom he believed to be in a pauper’s grave in potter’s
-field, with the stigma of suicide on her name, and then
-his slow acceptance of the fact that it was herself in the
-body, and not an optical illusion created by <i><span lang="la">delirium tremens</span></i>,
-that was there before him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I had not dreamed of meeting him there, or anywhere
-else on earth,” said Jennie; “but when I saw him before
-me, so unexpectedly, I was calmer than he was. I bade him
-leave me and avoid me, and told him that I should not
-trouble him while we were, unfortunately, on the ship together,
-but that I should tell you my whole story and take
-your advice as to my future course.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You did wisely so far,” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I told him you were to meet me at Liverpool.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He had taken tickets for Liverpool, but he got off, with
-his party, at Queenstown.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” breathed the curate, “that was prudently done.
-But now, my child, tell me the alias under which this man
-is now traveling, and which you said would surprise us very
-much?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dear papa, first of all, will you please to tell me how
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>much you learned of Kightly Montgomery’s true history
-when you undertook to investigate the antecedents of the
-young officer who had run off with your daughter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear. There was no mystery about him. I
-went to the colonel of his regiment, and learned that he
-was the son of the late General the Honorable Arthur Montgomery,
-who was so distinguished in the Indian war, the
-grandson of the late and the nephew of the present Earl of
-Engelmeed, and a disgrace to his ancestry and relatives;
-and that he had held a commission in the—Regiment of
-Foot, but had been court-martialed and dismissed the service
-for ‘conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you are sure that he is really Kightly Montgomery—that
-that is his real name?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As sure as that James Campbell is my own,” said the
-curate. “And now, will you tell me what name he passed
-under in America, and why he dropped his own?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa; the name under which he passed in New
-York; the name under which he claims the richest estate in
-Yorkshire; the name under which he married Miss Lamia
-Leegh, of New York; the name under which he sailed in
-the <em>Scorpio</em> for Liverpool, is——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes? Well?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Great Heaven, Jennie!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good Lord, Jennie!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These exclamations burst simultaneously from the lips of
-Jimmy and Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma! Yes, papa! It is true as truth. Your
-landlord and patron, the new Squire of Haymore, for whose
-home-coming with his bride all these gorgeous preparations
-have been made, is no other than my husband, your son-in-law,
-ex-captain of Foot, Kightly Montgomery, who metaphorically
-fled from before your face by landing at Queenstown,
-to avoid meeting you at Liverpool.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Hetty! Hetty!” said the curate, appealing to his
-wife, “what is this world coming to?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To judgment one of these days, Jimmy, according to
-your own preaching! ‘Reck your own read,’ Jimmy. And
-take comfort, as I do, that whatever has been, or is, or is to
-be, we have our darling daughter and her babe safe at
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>home!” paid Hetty, closing her arm around Jennie’s waist
-and squeezing her fondly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what a complication! The scoundrel—Heaven
-forgive me, the word slipped out!—the man slunk off the
-steamer at Queenstown for fear of meeting me at Liverpool,
-and now he is walking unaware into my very arms!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I don’t believe that your arms will fold him in a
-very fond embrace!” exclaimed Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If they had but the strength I fear it would be in the
-grizzly bear’s hug, or the boa constrictor’s crush!” exclaimed
-the curate, gasping.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the mad audacity of his coming here, where you
-are! I don’t understand it,” said Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, he does not dream that I am here! How
-should he? He thinks that we are all at Medge, on the
-south coast, with the length of England between us and
-Haymore!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So! I forgot that! What shall you do, Jimmy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nothing at present; but wait for his coming; then I
-will confront him and expose him to the lady he has deceived
-and feloniously married. Meanwhile, Hetty and
-Jennie, my dears, breathe not a word of this secret to any
-one, whoever he or she may be. The effrontery of the man
-in calling himself Randolph Hay, and claiming the Haymore
-estates, is nothing less than insanity! And the credulity
-of lawyers in allowing his claim is past belief!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, but, my dear father, he had piles and piles of documents,
-and no end of direct testimony besides! I heard all
-about Mr. Randolph Hay’s appearance and claim to the
-Haymore estates, and his engagement to Miss Leegh from
-Mrs. Duncan, before I ever discovered that the claimant
-and bridegroom-elect were identical with my own recreant
-husband.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Forged or stolen documents, Jennie. And suborned and
-perjured witnesses! That is the story of his claim, Jennie.
-But breathe not a word to any one of this affair! Let the
-tenants and the villagers go on with their preparations for
-a grand fête. Let Capt. Kightly Montgomery and his bride
-come on in triumph to enjoy it! The higher the flight the
-heavier the fall for him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the poor lady! She was one of those who helped
-me, papa.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>“I am sorry for her! But, even for her sake, the man
-should be exposed and punished. She must not live with
-him in sin!” said the curate. Then, after a pause, “I cannot
-comprehend how he dares to come to England! One
-would think that he would be afraid of being recognized. It
-is true that he believes this family to be on the south coast.
-True, also, that he knows the regiment to which he lately
-belonged to be in India, so that there is no danger of his
-meeting with any of his late fellow officers, but still it is
-always possible that he may be recognized and exposed.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, you do not know what a change the full beard,
-and a difference in the parting of his hair, has made in
-him,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, besides, did we not hear that the new squire does
-not intend to reside in England for some years to come?
-Did not some one say that he was only coming here to make
-a sort of triumphal entry upon his paternal land, and then,
-after liberally treating all his tenants and the villagers, he
-was to leave on extended travels?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! yes! I believe we did hear something of the
-sort. I suppose the fellow thinks he can safely come here
-with his bride to gratify his pride and vanity, by exhibiting
-her and himself in a triumphal entry, after the manner of
-royal personages! I dare say he thinks himself secure in
-doing that. But he does not know the Nemesis that is waiting
-for him! He does not dream that he will exchange triumph
-for shame, luxury for torture, and Haymore Hall and
-fox-hunting for Portsmouth Isle and penal servitude!” exclaimed
-the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then rising, he said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I must go and write my sermon. And this has given me
-some new ideas for it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And when he left the room Hetty and Jennie both knew
-that the sermon in question would be likely to deal more
-with the terrors of the law than with the mercies of the
-Lord.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIV<br> <span class='large'>COMING EVENTS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>The autumn days passed calmly at the parsonage of Haymore.
-The curate had his own care, but he kept it to himself.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>On that morning succeeding Jennie’s arrival, when
-Hetty had observed traces of unusual disturbance on the
-brow of her Jimmy and had ascribed it to the effect of
-some distressing deathbed scene of some parishioner
-and therefore had forborne to question him, the cause of the
-curate’s uneasiness was just this: He had, by that morning’s
-mail, received a letter from his rector at Cannes,
-speaking hopelessly of his own illness and predicting an
-early and fatal issue.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>James Campbell would not disturb his wife and daughter
-with this news, though it troubled him deeply and for more
-reasons than one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the first place, he felt a warm affection for the venerable
-rector who had been his father’s classmate at Oxford,
-and who had remembered him when he could do him a
-service and put him into his present position.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the second place, should the rector die soon, his successor
-would be appointed by the Squire of Haymore and
-would naturally dismiss him, James Campbell, from his
-curacy. And he and his family would have to go forth in
-the world, homeless, moneyless and almost friendless, in
-midwinter. What prospect lay before the three but destitution
-and indebtedness—practically, first, to go into the
-cheapest lodgings they could find; then to go into debt for
-their daily food as long as he might be able to get credit.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And after that—what?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He did not know.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Of course, he would try to get work again—another curacy,
-or a tutorship, or a secretaryship. But Jimmy knew
-by all his past experience and observation how difficult, how
-almost impossible it was for a man in his position, once out
-of employment, ever to get in again. If he could only know
-who was to be the successor of his dying rector, he might,
-at a proper time, try to gain his favor to be made his curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Well—he thought—“while he preacheth to others he
-must not himself be a castaway.” As Hetty had told him,
-he must “reck his own read.” He must do the best he could
-and leave the result to divine Providence. If he could only
-hold his present position. What a commodious house he had
-for his dear ones! What an affluent garden! What a
-spacious glebe! What a lovely home, taken altogether!
-What a paradisal one for his family! If he could only retain
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>it by any amount of work—by doing double duty, tenfold
-duty in the parish! He would not shrink from any
-labor, any hardship, to retain this refuge for his beloved
-ones, he thought. Then his conscience reproached him—he
-was thinking too much of his own, too little of his parish;
-and besides, the idea of remaining in this sweet home was
-but a dream, for if even the successor of his dying rector
-should favor him so far as to retain him in the curacy, he
-could not continue to reside in the rectory—where, of
-course, the new rector would take up his abode—but would
-have to find a small house in the village suitable to his small
-salary as a curate. But even this last favor was highly improbable.
-The new rector would have some young clerical
-friend whom he would take as his curate. They always did,
-he remembered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is there much sickness or suffering in the parish, Jimmy?” Hetty
-asked one day when they happened to be alone
-in the parlor together, Jennie being in her bedroom with
-her baby, and Elspeth in the kitchen over her cooking.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sickness? Why, no! Why do you ask?” inquired the
-curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is there any distress, then?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, no! They are all unusually well just now, and
-very hilarious over the prospect of the arrival of their new
-squire and his bride and all the high jinks of their reception.
-Why did you ask such questions, Hetty?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because, Jimmy, you always look as solemn as a
-hearse!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do I? Well, in view of coming events, I cannot be expected
-to look very merry, can I, Hetty?” he inquired,
-rather evasively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You refer to the expected arrival of the fraudulent
-claimant and bigamous husband, and your duty to strike
-him down,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘Even in his pitch of pride.’</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>But I don’t see why that should make you look so solemn.
-And Jennie home, too! And the dear baby! Oh, Jimmy,
-if you cannot appreciate the blessings around you and be
-grateful and happy in the midst of them, the Lord help
-you! though He certainly has a discouraging job of you,
-just now!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>“I preach to my people and weary them, no doubt. You
-preach to me and—avenge them!” laughed the Reverend
-James.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I am glad to see you laugh, even if it is at my
-expense,” said Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What are you two quarreling about?” inquired Jennie,
-who had put her baby to sleep and now entered the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As to which is the best preacher, your mother of myself,”
-answered the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma! out and out! I have often wished I could
-hear her in the pulpit!” laughed Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That settles it! Hetty, you have gained the point!”
-said the Rev. James, as he strolled out of the parlor into
-his study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His wife’s words had not been without their effect. He
-was just now surrounded with such bright blessings, living
-in such an atmosphere of love, peace, health, comfort, and
-happiness that nothing could be added to their blessedness;
-yet their very perfection troubled him, lest they should not
-be permanent. He could not enjoy this blessed time, because
-next month or next year might bring a change which
-might be for the worse.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Why, what base thanklessness and faithlessness was this!
-While he “preached to others” he was himself “a castaway.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he resolved that he would reform all this. He would
-take no anxious care for the future. He would do the best
-he could and leave the rest to the Lord.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>From that day he presented a more cheerful aspect to his
-family.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The leading parishioners began to call on his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Partly from hearsay and partly from inference, they had
-got a mixed opinion about the status of the young woman.
-She was the wife—so they Lad heard—of one Capt. Kightly
-Montgomery, son of the late General the Honorable Arthur
-Montgomery, and grandson of the late and nephew of the
-present Earl of Engelwing; that the captain was now, of
-course, with his regiment in India, and that his young wife
-had come home with her infant on a long visit to her father,
-because the climate of India was so fatal to young children
-of European parentage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>Under these mingled impressions of truth and error they
-called to pay their respects to their pastor’s daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>From the village there came Mrs. and the Misses Leach,
-the doctor’s wife and daughters; Mrs. Drum, the lawyer’s
-mother, and the Misses Lesmore, the draper’s sisters, and
-several widows and maidens living on their annuities. From
-the country came Lady Nutt, of Nuttwood, the widow of a
-civil engineer who had been knighted for some special merit
-by the queen; the three Misses Frobisher, “ladies of a certain
-age,” co-heiresses of Frobisher Frowns, a queer and
-gloomy mansion on the moor, which stood against a bank
-crowned with dark evergreen trees that bent over the roof
-of the house, like towering brows on a human face—thence
-I suppose the quaint if not forbidding name.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were all. Others of the county gentry belonging to
-that neighborhood were absentees.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie as well as her mother was much pleased with the
-hearty, homely, cordial manners of these Yorkshire country
-people. But the better she liked the more she dreaded them!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma!” she said, “I fear they cannot know my
-real position here! They cannot know that I am a forsaken
-wife! Why, yesterday old Lady Nutt patted my head and
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘I can feel for you, my dear. I had a niece in the H. E.
-I. C.’s service, and she had to come home with her young
-children and leave them here with their grandmother while
-she went back to him. Do you intend to stay here with your
-child, or leave it here with your parents and join the captain
-in India?’</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma, in all innocence the dear old lady asked
-me that question! And my cheeks burned like fire as I answered
-her the truth and said, ‘I intend to stay here with
-my baby, my lady.’ She said, ‘That is right,’ and kissed me
-and went away before you came in.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She is a good old soul,” was Hetty’s only comment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma, but you have missed the point I wished to
-make. It is so embarrassing to have people call on me and
-make remarks that I must either correct by telling them
-plainly how I am situated, or else that I must pass unnoticed,
-as if they were true, and so, as it were, silently indorse
-a false view.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, I don’t see how you can help yourself. You
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>cannot blow a trumpet before you proclaiming to all and
-sundry the wickedness of your husband in deserting you,
-his lawful wife, and marrying, feloniously, another woman!
-You cannot even tell that to your visitors in confidence. It
-would not become you to do so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, mamma, dear, I cannot; but some day some visitor
-will innocently ask me some straightforward, plain question,
-which will require an answer, involving a confession
-of my real position. Oh! what shall I do in such a case?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear child, wait until that day comes and that question
-is asked. That will be time enough to worry about it.
-Jennie! the secret of peace is the practice of faith. Do your
-present duty, bear your present burden, enjoy your present
-blessings, and leave the future to the Lord. You have nothing
-to do with it. For you it has not even an existence,”
-said Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Early in December news came in a letter from Mr. Randolph
-Hay, in Paris, to his bailiff, Mr. John Prowt, announcing
-the return of the squire, with his wife and a party
-of friends, to spend the Christmas holidays at the Hall.
-The house was to be made ready for them by the fifteenth of
-the month.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again all the estate, all the village and all the surrounding
-country were agog with anticipations of the free festivities
-that should glorify the triumphal entry of the new
-squire upon his paternal estate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Every one who came to call at the rectory talked of nothing
-but the expected event.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the next Sunday morning the Rev. Mr. Campbell
-preached an awful warning from the text:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
-before a fall.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And in the afternoon he preached a similar jeremiad
-from another text:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading
-himself like a green bay tree.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yet he passed away, and lo! he was not; yea, I sought
-him, but he could not be found.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the course of the week there came dire news to the
-parish. A telegram from his attendant physician in Cannes
-announced to Mr. Campbell the death of his rector, the
-Rev. Dr. Orton, and added that his body would be brought
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>to the rectory to be interred under the chancel of the Haymore
-church.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Rev. James Campbell had been prepared for this
-blow for many weeks, or at least he thought he had been so;
-yet when it fell it nearly overwhelmed him. He was grieved
-for the loss of his friend and he was perplexed for his
-household. At first he did not know what to do at all. He
-was not a man of resources. Should he immediately vacate
-the rectory with his family, and go to the village tavern,
-horrid, beery place, with a bar and taproom, or should he
-seek lodgings in the village, dreadful, little, stuffy rooms, in
-such a place, or should he remain at the rectory until the
-arrival of the family with the remains of the deceased?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At the church he must remain, of course; but at the rectory
-when the family of the late rector were returning with
-his remains.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The family of the late rector, by the way, consisted of an
-aged widow and a maiden daughter, both of whom were
-with him at Cannes, and two unmarried sons, one a professor
-at Oxford, and the other a popular preacher in London.
-The curate consulted his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Telegraph the widow and know her will before you take
-any step,” was Hetty’s advice, and Jimmy acted upon it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In a few hours came a courteous answer from Miss Orton,
-saying, in effect, that Mr. Campbell was by no means to disturb
-himself or his family. That the delicate condition of
-the widow’s health must prevent her from leaving a sunny
-climate for a frosty one at this severe season; that the
-daughter would stay with her mother; that the remains of
-the deceased rector would be accompanied by his two sons,
-and taken directly from the train to the chancel of the
-church, where the second funeral services would be held on
-Friday, at 4 P. M. (the first having been held at Cannes),
-immediately after which the sons would leave for London
-and Oxford. So the curate’s family need not be disturbed
-in the rectory until the appointment of the new rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Until the appointment of the new rector!’ How long
-reprieve would that be?” inquired the curate. And then he
-blamed himself for his selfishness in thinking so much of
-his own and his family’s interests, when he should be thinking
-only of his departed friend.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Friday morning the parish church at Haymore was
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>decked in solemn funeral array to receive the remains of its
-rector. The pulpit, altar and chancel were draped with
-crape. Places of business and schools were all closed for
-the day, and all the parishioners filled the church, many in
-deep mourning, and all the others with some badge of
-mourning on their dresses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The wife and daughter of the curate sat in the rectory
-pew. There, later, they were joined by the two sons of the
-deceased rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate, in full vestments, waited the arrival of the
-casket, and, book in hand, went to meet it at the church
-door, through which, upon a bier of ebony, covered with a
-pall of black velvet, it was borne by six bearers, and marshaled
-it up the aisle and before the chancel, repeating the
-sublime words of our Lord:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am the resurrection and the life. He that liveth and
-believeth on me shall never die. And he that believeth on
-me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the bier, with the casket, was set down before the
-altar, and the chief mourners—the two sons of the deceased,
-who had followed it—had taken their seats in the rectory
-pew, then the funeral services, conducted by the curate,
-went on to their solemn ending.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At the close the parishoniers came out of their pews in
-an orderly manner, and passing on from the right to the left
-before the casket, took their last look at the mask of their
-deceased pastor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At last the door of the crypt below the chancel was
-opened, and the pallbearers bore the casket down the narrow
-stairs and laid it in the leaden coffin and lifted it to the
-stone niche prepared to receive it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the “dust to dust” was spoken, and the minister
-came up again, went to the altar, pronounced the benediction,
-and so dismissed the congregation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As the two sons of the late rector came out of their pew
-they met and shook hands with the curate, but declined his
-invitation to the rectory, saying that they were about to
-return immediately to Cannes, to remain with their widowed
-mother for the few days in which they would absent
-themselves from their professional duties.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So they took leave of the curate and his wife and daughter,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>entered a carriage that was waiting, and drove off to
-their train.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate, leaving his parishioners talking together in
-groups in the churchyard, while the sexton was closing up
-the church, followed his wife and daughter through the gate
-in the wall that divided that cemetery from the rectory
-grounds.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He went directly to his study to compose himself before
-joining his wife and daughter in the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But what he found there did not tend to his composure.
-A letter, with a Paris postmark, was lying on the table. He
-dropped into a chair and took it. At first he thought it
-must be from Kightly Montgomery, whom he knew to be
-flourishing in Paris under the name of Randolph Hay; but
-a moment’s reflection assured him that the false claimant
-was not likely to know of the accident of James Campbell’s
-temporary charge of the Haymore parish.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He opened the letter, glanced at the signature, and saw
-that it was not a stranger’s, and then read as follows:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Paris</span>, December 13, 187—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Reverend and Dear Sir</span>: I learned with extreme grief
-a few days ago of the lamented death of the late honored
-rector of Haymore. I immediately came over to the city to
-see my brother-in-law, Mr. Hay, and apply to him for the
-living which is in his gift. He has been pleased to bestow
-it on me. My induction will date from the first of January
-next. I do not wish to inconvenience you, but I should be
-obliged if you could vacate the rectory in time to have the
-house prepared for my reception. Mr. Randolph Hay and
-his wife will be going to Haymore Hall for the Christmas
-holidays with a party of friends, of which, at his invitation,
-I have the happiness to make one. We shall, therefore, soon
-meet at Haymore. With best respects to Mrs. Campbell, I
-remain, dear sir, very truly yours,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Cassius Leegh</span>.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my beloved helpless ones! What will become of you
-now?” moaned the curate, covering his eyes.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XV<br> <span class='large'>THE CURATE’S TROUBLE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>After brooding over this disastrous letter for a long
-hour the curate summoned enough courage to arise and go
-to his wife and take counsel with her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was, indeed, a trouble that he dared not keep from
-her, even to spare her from anxiety; for it was absolutely
-necessary that they should take immediate measures for removal
-from the rectory and settlement in lodgings somewhere
-in the town before the arrival of the new incumbent;
-or, so at least it seemed to the curate in his dismayed state
-of mind.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He went directly into the back parlor, where the fire was
-burning cheerfully in the grate, the tea table was set, and
-Hetty resting in her low rocking-chair on the rug.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is Jennie?” inquired the curate, dropping into
-another chair beside his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In her bedroom, putting her baby to sleep,” replied
-Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I am glad the child is not here just now. I have
-bad news to tell you, my dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh? Bad news? What is it, Jimmy? But, dear me,
-don’t look so dreadfully cast down! It cannot be such awfully
-bad news, since you, I, Jennie and the baby are all
-safe and sound in the house. But what, then, is your bad
-news?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have lost my position here, and we shall have to leave
-the rectory,” replied Mr. Campbell in a tone of despair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let me take a look at you?” said his wife, rising, giving
-him her hand, helping him to his feet, and surveying him
-all around. “Well, I don’t see that you have lost a limb, or
-any mental or bodily faculty, that you need look so woebegone!
-As for losing your position, of course you lost that
-when the old rector died; and as for leaving the rectory, we
-all knew that we should have to do that.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, but not so soon. We shall have to vacate by the
-first of January.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, that gives us plenty of time to choose new lodgings.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>I would not ‘fash my beard’ about that, if I were
-you, Jimmy! But why must we move by that time?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because my successor, or rather Dr. Orton’s successor,
-is appointed.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Already!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, already.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Upon my word, there has been but little time lost! And
-you have received notice to quit?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, in a letter from the new incumbent, which I found
-lying on my study table when I came in from the church.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who is he, then?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Who is he?’ That is the very worst of all. Do you
-remember that fellow, Cassius Leegh, who used to come to
-Medge parsonage long ago and fasten on us for weeks?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should think so!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He was the son of a small shopkeeper in the borough,
-London, studied for the ministry as a matter of pride and
-ambition; but, morally and spiritually, as unfit for the pulpit
-as a man can well be! I do not know how he has contrived
-to get himself inducted into this living, except upon
-the basis that he and the new squire are birds of a feather!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Stop!” exclaimed Hetty as a sudden light dawned on
-her mind—“I understand it all perfectly now! Don’t you
-know that this man, this so-called new squire of Haymore,
-married in New York a young lady by the name of Leegh?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I paid no attention to the name of the lady,” replied
-the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, naturally I did, being a woman, you know. And
-the bride’s name was Leegh! And surely you have heard
-Cassius Leegh speak of his beautiful sister Lamia, who was
-taken up by a wealthy New York family?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why—yes—certainly!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is it, then. This man Leegh, no doubt, sought out
-his brother-in-law and put in his plea for the living, even
-before Dr. Orton was dead, and so he has secured it, and
-lost no time in warning you out. But I wonder if he happened
-to mention your name to the ‘squire,’ for if so, the
-said squire, finding out that you were here, would scarcely
-venture to set foot within the place until you should be
-gone.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No,” said Mr. Campbell emphatically; “knowing the
-man as well as I do, I can say most positively that he has
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>never mentioned my name to his patron, or even alluded to
-the fact that the late Dr. Orton left a temporary substitute
-to fill his pulpit, when he himself went away for his health,
-lest, you see, the knowledge of this fact should cause the
-squire to take more time in appointing Dr. Orton’s successor.
-Don’t you see?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes. To leave the absent squire to believe that the parish
-of Haymore was entirely destitute of a pastor, would, of
-course, hasten the patron, who wishes the good opinion of
-his people, to appoint an incumbent, and the most natural
-thing would be to appoint his brother-in-law. I wish he
-were a better man.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So do I, with all my heart!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well! we are in Heaven’s hands. And as we must clear
-out by the first of January, and get into new lodgings somewhere
-or other, I will go out the first thing after breakfast
-to-morrow morning to look them up,” said Hetty cheerfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lodgings in this town!” ruefully grunted the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They needn’t be in this town. There are, no doubt,
-plenty of farmhouses in the surrounding country where we
-may get them very cheap, and very wholesome and pleasant.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; but how are we to pay, even for the cheapest?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jimmy Campbell! You a minister of the gospel, and
-have no more faith than to ask such a question! If you
-have lost your position here, and if we must leave the pleasant
-rectory, still we are three able-bodied people, who, if
-we do the best we can, and work at any honest thing our
-hands may find to do, will be helped by the Lord, and will
-do very well and pay our way.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Hetty, my dear, you have had no experience in a
-bitter struggle with the world!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If I have not, it is well, perhaps, that I should have.
-And I am ready to engage in the struggle, though I do not
-see why it need be a bitter one, but just a healthful one.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You have a healthful nature, dear, that is certain. As
-for me, I sometimes think I am falling weak in body and
-in mind,” sighed the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, no, dear Jimmy; not weak, only overworked and
-weary. Why, you have not had a vacation for eighteen
-years, to my certain knowledge. So long a strain might
-have made an idiot or a ‘damp, unpleasant corpse’ of any
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>man less strong and brave than yourself,” said the wife with
-affectionate fervor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It helps me to see your faith in me, dear,” he sighed as
-he took her hand and pressed it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As for me, Jimmy, I am glad that you will be obliged
-to rest for a few weeks or months. Don’t doubt. You must
-rest. It is our turn now. Mine and Jennie’s. We must
-work.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You! What in this world could you do?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A good many things. We—Jennie and I—could teach
-English and French, music and drawing, to young ladies, or
-A B C’s to little children. Failing that, we could take in
-dressmaking or plain sewing. Failing that, I could go out
-as sick nurse, and Jennie could do up fine laces.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hetty, you talk wildly.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all. Unless you preach wildly. I am only
-going to put into practice what you preach. You tell the
-artisans and agricultural laborers that work is worship.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I would not mind your teaching——” slowly began the
-curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course you would not,” promptly assented his wife;
-“and I should prefer it. Teaching is, conventionally, considered
-a very ‘genteel’ occupation for a poor lady. And
-for that, and a few other unworthy reasons, I would rather
-teach than do anything else. But if I cannot get teaching to
-do I hope I am Christian enough to take whatever work I
-can get, whether it should be dressmaking, plain sewing,
-sick nursing, or—washing and ironing. There! Even
-that! I am ashamed of myself for even preferring a ‘genteel’
-occupation to an humble one which is equally useful.
-But I won’t let my feelings govern me in this; and so sure
-as you have to leave your situation here, you shall take a rest
-after twenty years’ hard labor, and Jennie and I will go to
-work at whatever we can get to do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hetty, you amaze and distract me! You do, indeed!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look here, Jim. I have not kept my eyes shut all my
-life, and this is what I have seen—many unsuccessful professional
-‘gentlemen and ladies,’ who have not talent enough
-to climb where ‘there is more room higher up,’ or even to
-keep their footing on the level where they were born, but
-yet who will struggle, slip, flounder, suffer and sin where
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>they are rather than take a step ‘lower down,’ as they would
-consider it, but where there is also ‘more room.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t quite follow you, Hetty.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is what I mean: Take an illustration. A man
-may be an unsuccessful lawyer, but his knowledge of law
-would make him so much better a clerk that his chances of
-employment in that capacity would be much greater than
-those of other competitors. Another man may fail as a minister,
-but he might make all the better schoolmaster. A
-woman may fail as a teacher, but succeed as a nurse. And
-what I would both inculcate and practice is this: That
-when man or woman fails in the line of life they have been
-born into or chosen for themselves, and when they have
-neither the power to rise above the level or to keep their
-footing upon it, let them not give up in despair or struggle
-in vain, but step frankly down to an humbler and honester
-position. There is always some work of some sort to be got.
-He who said ‘Six days shalt thou labor’ will give work to
-every hand willing to take it, though it may not be the kind
-of work their pride would like best. As for me and my
-daughter, whatever our ‘hands find to do, we will do it with
-our might,’ whether we like it or not.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, my dear, do you really not care about leaving this
-beautiful home?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Under the circumstances, I should not care to stay, even
-if we could. Should you? Reflect. The new squire will be
-here in a few days. You will have to denounce him as an
-impostor, a fraudulent claimant, a bigamous bridegroom.
-But it would take time to prove these charges. Could you
-stay in the parish and preach in the church during that
-time with any sort of peace to us all? No. Better
-that we should go away, and the sooner we go the
-better.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, I shall easily prove the fellow to be a bigamist;
-but as his crime was committed in the United States
-of America, I cannot prosecute him for it here in England.
-Neither can I prove him to be a fraudulent claimant. I
-have been turning that matter over in my mind, and I do
-not even know that he is one.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What!” exclaimed Hetty with wide-open eyes. “You
-do not know him to be a fraudulent claimant when you
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>know that his name is Kightly Montgomery, and that he
-calls himself Randolph Hay?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“See here, my love. I know nothing of the conditions of
-inheritance that rule this estate. I know nothing of the
-history of the family or their intermarriages with other
-families. How should I, coming here a stranger from the
-south of England?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should think it could not require much experience to
-teach you that when a man’s name is Kightly Montgomery
-and he calls himself Randolph Hay, he is a liar, swindler
-and an impostor.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But consider, dear, he may he next of kin and heir-at-law,
-and his name now have been legally changed as the
-condition of his inheritance. His mother or his grandmother
-may have been born a daughter of Hay, of Haymore.
-The estate may have ‘fallen to the distaff,’ as it is called—that
-is, to the female line, and so the heir through that line
-might be obliged to take the family name as the condition
-of his heirship. Now do you see?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I see what you mean. But your theory has so
-many ‘mays’ that it won’t do. As for me, I prefer to think
-the villain a fraudulent claimant as well as a bigamous
-bridegroom.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were interrupted by a ring at the doorbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell went to answer it. It was his custom always,
-when at home, to do so, to save the steps of the rectory’s
-one elderly servant-woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was a hanging lamp in the little hall between the
-parlor and the study that gave but a subdued light. They
-had no gas, and oil was dear, and economy necessary.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell opened the door, expecting to see no one
-but the little old sexton. He saw, instead, the tallest and
-finest looking athlete he had ever seen in or out of a circus;
-but he could not distinguish his features.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell?” said the stranger interrogatively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is my name. What can I do for you?” inquired
-the curate, who, now that his eyes had got used to the obscurity,
-saw that the collossus was clothed from head to heel
-in an outlandish costume of dressed buckskin trimmed with
-fur, and that his stature was heightened, and his face
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>shortened by the tall fur cap he wore pulled low down over
-his forehead and ears, for the night was cold.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My name is Longman—Samson Longman, at your service,
-sir. I have been directed by the people at Chuxton to
-come to you, sir, for information concerning one Elizabeth
-Longman, widow——” The speaker’s voice trembled and
-broke.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your mother!” said the curate gravely. “She is well
-and happy as she can be, without the son she is always
-pining for and praying for.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Heaven be praised for that! And may the Lord forgive
-me. Where is she, sir, if you please?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With us here in the house, our cherished housekeeper,
-almost our mother——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank the Lord! Can I see her, sir, now, at once? I
-have come a long way to ask her forgiveness at last, and to
-stay with her forever.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come into my study. We must prepare her for the sight
-of her son, for although she seems to be always expecting
-you, yet the sudden meeting might be too much for her,”
-said the curate as he closed the front door after the entrance
-of his visitor and led the way into the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Mr. Longman, sit down here at my desk and write
-a letter to your mother. It need be only a line or so, to
-give me the means of breaking the glad tidings safely to
-her ears,” said Mr. Campbell as he turned up the light of
-the study lamp and placed a chair for the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman obeyed like a child, and sat down and wrote his
-letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will that do?” he inquired as he put the sheet of paper
-into the curate’s hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! that will do very well. Now put it into an envelope
-and seal and direct it regularly,” said the curate
-when he had read and returned the letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again Longman obeyed like a child, and when he had
-sealed the letter, arose and placed it in the hands of the
-curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Resume your seat and wait for my return,” said Mr.
-Campbell as he left the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He went first into the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty was still sitting there alone. Jennie was still with
-her baby in the bedroom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>“Who was that, Jim? A man come to serve you with a
-writ of eviction?” inquired Hetty mischievously.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hardly, my dear. But I am sure you will be happy to
-hear who it was.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who was it, then?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Elspeth Longman’s prodigal son returned.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh-h-h, Jim!” exclaimed Hetty, jumping up, her face
-perfectly radiant with benevolent delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear. And now, if you please, I will take you to
-see him in the study, where you can talk to him while I go
-and break these ‘glad tidings of great joy’ to the poor, long-suffering
-mother.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! I would love to go! What is the boy like?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Boy?’ ‘Like?’ He is like the Apollo Belvedere, or
-like the Colossus of Rhodes. A superb, a stupendous fellow.
-But all dressed in hides like a North American Indian, or
-a prehistoric Norseman. But come and see!” said Mr.
-Campbell, leading the way to the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty followed, now half anxious, half afraid to see the
-savage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As they entered Longman, seeing the lady, arose, bowed
-and handed a chair with so much ease, dignity and grace
-that Mrs. Campbell was surprised, pleased and reassured.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Longman, this lady is my wife. She will entertain
-you while I go to your mother,” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman bowed more profoundly than before, and murmured
-something to the effect that he was most honored
-and grateful to be permitted to make the lady’s acquaintance;
-but the hunter was always shy in the society of gentlewomen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Mr. Campbell, knowing that Hetty could give the
-prodigal son more satisfactory information about his mother
-in five minutes than any other creature could in five years,
-went out and left them together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He passed through the parlor and opened the kitchen
-door. He saw Elspeth sitting before the stove, knitting,
-while she waited for her muffins to bake.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the parlor for a moment? I wish to
-speak to you, Mrs. Longman,” said the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir,” replied the woman, rising and untying her
-kitchen apron, which she took off and hung over the back
-of her chair. Then she went into the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>“Take Mrs. Campbell’s rocking-chair while we talk. Save
-your back whenever you can, Mrs. Longman.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, sir, it better becomes me to stand in your reverence’s
-presence.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray, sit down. No, but I insist upon it. I have something
-to say to you which cannot be said in a minute.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The widow sighed profoundly and sank into the easy-chair.
-She thought she knew what was coming. Without
-the least intention of eavesdropping, she had heard enough
-of the conversation that had that evening passed between
-the minister and his wife—and which, by the way, had never
-been intended to be concealed—to know that they expected
-to leave the rectory under such reverse of fortune as would
-compel them to use the closest economy in their domestic
-arrangements.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Therefore Elspeth thought that she had been summoned
-to the parlor to receive her “warning” or her discharge.
-And she felt not so sorry for herself in the prospect of losing
-a good home as for the curate and his wife on having to
-dispense with her services. She was turning over in her
-meek mind the question of how, without seeming presumptuous,
-she could offer to remain with them and serve them
-without wages, just so long as her strength and also her
-clothes and shoes should last, and if they could afford to
-keep her even on such easy terms as her board and lodging.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell broke gently in upon her troubled thoughts
-by asking her:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you ever received any letter from your son since
-he has been away, Mrs. Longman?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not one, sir, though I feel sure in my mind that he has
-writ to me, maybe many letters, and they have all gone
-astray; and then what hurts me worst of all is that he may
-think I must have got some of his letters and as I was too
-mad at him and too unforgiving to answer any of them.
-And I don’t even know where to write to tell him any
-better.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But when at last you meet, face to face, then you can
-tell him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, sir. And I know that we shall meet again. He
-who raised the widow’s son from his bier will hear the poor
-old widowed mother’s prayer, and bring her boy back.
-Though it seems long! Oh, it seems long! But all the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>while it comforts me to think that if I don’t know where he
-is, the Lord does! If I can’t see him, the Lord can! And
-I may pray to the Lord for my boy and He will hear me!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How old are you, Mrs. Longman?” was the curate’s next
-seemingly irrelevant question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Forty-three, sir; will be forty-four on the thirty-first of
-December. But I must look full sixty, my hair is so white,
-and my face so thin and wrinkly.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, you have good health, and you Yorkshire people
-are long-lived. You may live forty years longer yet—forty
-happy years with your son.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, minister! what does your reverence mean? Have
-you heard anything? Have you got anything to tell me?”
-inquired the mother, startled by something in the curate’s
-tone or look, and speaking with repressed eagerness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, something has come. Have you anybody who
-would be likely to write a letter to you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nobody in the world, sir, except my boy, and I have
-never had a letter from him, as I told you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, a letter has come for you. I did not give it at
-first, for fear it might startle you. I think it must be from
-your son.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, give it to me, sir, please!—now, this moment!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate handed the letter. The woman seized it, held
-it under the light of the lamp and devoured the superscription
-with ravenous eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! It is his writing! It is his own! Oh, thank
-the Lord! Oh, thank the Lord!” she cried, falling on her
-knees and sinking her head in the cushion of the chair.
-But she soon arose and drew her spectacles from her pocket
-and opened the letter and tried to read it; but the words ran
-together in dark lines before her disturbed vision, and she
-could not decipher them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, sir, be so kind! Read it for me! Please do!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With pleasure,” said Mr. Campbell. And he took the
-letter, and omitting date, read as follows:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘<span class='sc'>My Beloved Mother</span>——’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The darling boy!” ejaculated Elspeth in rapture.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘I have crossed the sea and come back to England——’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is in England! In England! Oh, thank Heaven!
-Thank Heaven! Go on, sir! Please go on!” impatiently
-exclaimed Elspeth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>The curate smiled at her impetuosity and continued:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘To see your dear face again, and to beg your forgiveness,
-which I know you will grant me, though I know I do
-not deserve it——’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, hear the noble fellow! Taking all the blame on
-himself, though I was more in fault nor him! But go on,
-sir! Pray go on!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘I long to be with you, to stay with you all the rest of
-our lives; to work for you, and to try to make you happy
-and comfortable, and so atone for all the trouble I have
-caused you——’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! the grand son! the noble boy! He will stay with
-me all the rest of my life! Oh, that will be joyful!” exclaimed
-Elspeth, clapping her hands and breaking into a
-camp meeting revival hymn, very appropriate, it is true:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘Oh! that will be joyful!</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>Joyful! Joyful! Joyful!</div>
-      <div class='line'>Oh! that will be joyful,</div>
-      <div class='line in2'>To meet and part no more!’</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will be like heaven, sir! like heaven! to have my boy
-with me all the rest of my life! But do go on, sir! Forgive
-a poor mother’s impatience, and read me what else he
-says!” she cried, ready to turn from rapture to tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is not much more,” said Mr. Campbell. “Only
-this:</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“‘Please, dearest mother, if you can pardon me, let me
-know when I can come to see you. And believe me your
-sincerely penitent and evermore loving and dutiful son,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘<span class='sc'>Sam</span>.’”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>“Oh! the darling of darlings! the angel of angels! Oh,
-please, dear minister, write for me directly, for I never can
-hold a pen in the hand that is trembling for joy and blessedness
-and gratitude, and tell him to come immediately. But,
-no! I will go to him! Where is he? I’ll get the Red Fox
-carryall and start for the station immediately. Truly,
-where shall I go? Tell me, minister, dear! Look at the
-letter! Where is it dated from?” she eagerly demanded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will not have far to go. He is in this village,” said
-Mr. Campbell, smiling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>“In this village! Oh! then he is at the Red Fox! Let
-me get my bonnet and cloak!” she cried, rising to her feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is nearer to you than that,” said the minister. Then
-he drew the woman’s arm within his own and led her into
-the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mother!” exclaimed Longman, starting up and striding
-toward her with outstretched arms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my darling! my darling!” cried Elspeth, and she
-fell fainting on his bosom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So much for the careful breaking of the news.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But she did not swoon to unconsciousness. She almost
-immediately recovered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Longman seated her in the large armchair, and
-placed himself on the hassock at her feet. She put her arms
-over his shaggy head and smiled through her tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come!” said Hetty, laughing. “You and I are <i><span lang="fr">de trop</span></i>
-in a room with such a pair of lovers as these!” And she
-slipped her hand through her husband’s arm and dragged
-him from the room without the reunited pair—so absorbed
-in their meeting—seeing them go.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVI<br> <span class='large'>THE SQUIRE’S ARRIVAL</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Hetty drew her husband back into the cozy parlor, where
-they found Jennie waiting alone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I have put the baby to sleep at last! Little witch!
-she wanted to laugh and crow and kick all night. Such a
-time as I had getting her quiet! But where have you two
-been? You look—just as if you had come from a circus!”
-said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So we have! or rather from a domestic drama!” exclaimed
-Hetty, laughing; and then she told her daughter all
-about the sudden return of Samson Longman, and the joy
-of his mother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie listened in sympathetic delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, my dear, you may come in the kitchen and
-help me to bring in the tea. Elspeth has forgotten that
-there is any such thing as tea in the world. And who can
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>blame her!” exclaimed Hetty as she left the room attended
-by her daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was, indeed, nearly an hour beyond their usual tea
-time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The tea was drawn too much, and the muffins were baked
-too dry; nevertheless, father, mother, and daughter enjoyed
-the refreshment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was a good-sized dining-room in the rear of the
-house on the other side of the hall, but for reasons of economy
-it was not used in cold weather, as it would require another
-fire, the meals being served in the family sitting-room
-or parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now, however, as soon as the curate and his family arose
-from the tea, his wife said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jimmy, we must be kind. The kindlings and coal are
-all laid in the grate of the back room ready for lighting a
-fire when required. Do, dear, go and start it; and Jennie
-and I will clear off this tea table, and set another in there
-for Elspeth and her big boy to take their tea comfortably;
-for it is not every day that a prodigal son returns.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you just know how it is yourselves, don’t you, papa
-and mamma?” inquired the prodigal daughter, tenderly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, we do; and I will go right off and do as you wish,”
-exclaimed the curate merrily as he left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie went eagerly to work, and soon cleared
-away their own table, and then went and set one in the
-dining-room, where the curate had already kindled a good
-fire in the grate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty brought out from all the treasures of pantry and
-cupboard, and in addition to the substantial fare of cold
-beef and ham, cheese, bread and butter, she laid out cake,
-honey and sweetmeats.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When all this was done she made a large pot of fresh tea
-and set it to draw. Finally she returned to the parlor and
-sat down with her husband and daughter in pleasant expectancy
-for developments from the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She had not to wait long. Very soon came Elspeth into
-the parlor, her eyes shining with happiness, and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, Samson—that is my boy—would like
-to thank you and say good-evening before he goes away.”
-Then noticing for the first time that the tea table had been
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>cleared away, she started with a little look of dismay, and
-before anybody could speak again, she said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am so sorry! I clean forgot! I——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t say another word, dear woman. It is all right—quite
-right. Jennie and I did all that was necessary, and
-took pleasure in doing it. And as for your boy saying
-good-night and going away before he has broken bread with
-you, that cannot be permitted on any account. There!
-take him into the dining-room, where you will find a fine
-fire, and a tea table, and a pot of tea simmering on the hob.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, but you are too good!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nonsense! I’m delighted—we are all delighted! And,
-Elspeth, when you have had your tea, bring your boy in to
-us while you go upstairs and make him up a bed in the little
-spare room next to your own. Do you hear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, you are too good! Whatever shall I do to
-repay your kindness!” exclaimed the grateful creature, with
-eyes full of tears, as she lifted Hetty’s hand and pressed it
-to her lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do just as she tells you, Mrs. Longman. And say to
-your son that we should be pleased to have him remain
-here with you until after Christmas. He shall be most cordially
-welcome to us all,” added Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“God bless you, sir, for your great kindness; for indeed
-it will be a great joy to me to have my boy under the very
-same roof with me for a few days, now that he has come
-back,” said Elspeth, her wintry face in an April aspect of
-smiles and tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, of course, it is a delight to us to be able to contribute
-to your happiness, you know,” said Mr. Campbell
-cheerily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth dropped her old-fashioned courtesy and went out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And very soon the three remaining in the parlor heard
-the mother and her son going down the passage to the rear
-dining-room that was behind the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie took their needlework, and Mr. Campbell
-picked up the morning paper, which no one had had
-time to look at all day long, and began to read to them
-items of news.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So an hour passed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The reunited mother and son lingered long in the dining-room,
-but at length they came out and entered the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>Longman went at once up to Mr. Campbell and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sir, I thank you very much for the hospitality you have
-so kindly proffered me, and which, for my mother’s sake,
-I am very happy to accept.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention it, Mr. Longman. Have a seat. This
-is my daughter, Mrs. Montgomery,” said the curate, rising
-and handing a chair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman bowed profoundly to the young lady, and then
-dropped into his seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Elspeth was speaking to Mrs. Campbell:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Which room did you say, ma’am, he might have?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Any vacant one you please. The little room next to
-your own you might prefer, perhaps,” returned Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am, I would, thanky, ma’am,” said Elspeth, and
-she left the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When did you reach England, Mr. Longman?” inquired
-Hetty, to make conversation and set the embarrassed colossus
-at his ease.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Only about twenty-four hours since, ma’am. And I
-had the honor of traveling in company with the new Squire
-of Haymore and his bride, expected by the people in this
-neighborhood,” replied Longman, looking down on his own
-folded hands, so that he failed to see the effect of his words;
-for Mr. Campbell started, Hetty gasped, and Jennie turned
-pale.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the conversation that followed was all at cross-purposes,
-for Longman came to speak of Randolph Hay, the
-only true Squire of Haymore, and his wife, Judith, and of
-their crossing the Atlantic Ocean together; while the curate
-and his family spoke of Kightly Montgomery, the fraudulent
-claimant, and his deceived bride, Lamia Leegh, and of
-their crossing the English Channel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Squire of Haymore and his lady are in England,
-then?” was the remark with which the curate reopened the
-conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. I had the honor of coming over in the same
-steamer with them. We landed yesterday.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you left them in London?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Beg pardon, sir, no. We traveled from London together.
-We reached Chuxton this afternoon about sunset. We had
-to wait there for a conveyance hither, and while we waited,
-and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and their party took
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>luncheon, I went in search of my dear mother, expecting to
-find her there where I had left her, but I heard instead that
-she was living at the rectory with your family. So then I
-told Mr. Randolph Hay, and he very kindly offered me a
-seat in his carriage, and so brought me on here. I rode to
-the Hall with them, and there left them and walked on
-here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And do you mean to say that the squire and his lady
-are now really at the Hall?” demanded the astonished curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, as I said, or should have said, they arrived
-to-night a little after dusk.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But,” continued the deeply perplexed curate, “I don’t
-understand. The squire and—his lady were to have sent a
-telegram from London announcing their approach, and
-were expected to make quite a triumphal entry by daylight,
-amid the ringing of bells and singing of children, and flinging
-of flowers, and all the parade and pageantry that this
-season would permit. Prowt, the bailiff, has had his orders
-to be in readiness for weeks past, and for days has been
-waiting a telegram.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know how that is, sir. I know that Mr. and
-Mrs. Randolph Hay came home very quietly indeed,” replied
-Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But was it not a great surprise, not to say shock, to the
-servants at the Hall? And were they at all ready for the
-squire and—his lady?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think so, sir. I know Mr. Randolph Hay sent a dispatch
-to the housekeeper at the Hall, with instructions to
-have rooms aired and fires built, dinner prepared, and everything
-in readiness to receive himself and his wife this evening.
-I know it, sir, for I carried the dispatch to the telegraph
-office myself,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The people will be very much disappointed at missing
-the pageantry,” remarked the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not think Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay cared for
-display. I am a little surprised that it should have been
-thought of in connection with them,” said Longman, reflectively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, man alive, it was by the squire’s own orders, without
-the slightest suggestion from anybody here!” laughed
-the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>“It was not like him. A more modest and unpretending
-gentleman I do not know anywhere in this world!” persisted
-Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate repressed an inclination to utter a long, low
-whistle; but he did say to himself: “So much for the blindness
-of prejudice.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I have just thought of it! I will tell you why I
-think the triumphal entry was abandoned!” exclaimed
-Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why?” inquired her husband.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, on account of the death of the rector.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! to be sure! that was it; though it was a more
-gracious thought than I should have given the man credit
-for,” added Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this moment Elspeth came in, smiling. She had been
-absent much longer than they had expected her to be; for
-she had not only prepared the little spare bedroom for her
-son, but she had washed up all her dishes and done all her
-usual evening work. She carried a lighted candle in a low,
-broad brass candlestick. She courtesied to the ladies and
-gentleman, as was her custom, and then she said to her boy:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, Sam, the room the kind master has given you
-is all ready, and I will show it to you if you will come.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Longman arose, bade good-night to his hosts, and
-turned to leave the room, when Mr. Campbell said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But perhaps you would like to join us in our evening
-service.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman bowed in silence, and resumed his seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Elspeth brightly. “Every night and morning
-since I have been in this house has the minister prayed
-for my wandering boy’s return, and now that he has come
-we will give thanks.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie arose and got the Bible and prayer book and laid
-them before her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the evening service began.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the course of it Mr. Campbell did return “earnest and
-hearty thanks” for the restoration of the widow’s son, and
-prayed that all wanderers from the spiritual fold of the
-Lord might likewise be brought back.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the service was over, Elspeth, after bidding good-night
-to her friends, took up her candle and showed her boy
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>the way to his bedroom. And soon after the minister and
-his wife and daughter retired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day was one of those benign autumn days that
-sometimes revisit us even late in December, to encourage
-and help us through the winter. The sky was radiantly
-clear and the sun dazzlingly bright. The many evergreen
-trees around the parsonage had something like the fresh
-verdure of early spring upon them. It was a day that any
-healthy person might have enjoyed the outdoor air without
-much extra clothing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After breakfast Longman went over to the Hall to see
-his friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, standing together at the door,
-watched him walking down the walled road that led to the
-park gates.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is astonishing,” said the curate, “that so honest a
-man as Longman should have such a respect for that villain
-Montgomery as he appears to have.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I suppose the young fellow has never seen the villain’s
-cloven foot, and men have no intuitions to guide them as
-we have, you know,” replied Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then, though the splendor of the day invited them to
-remain outdoors, they went inside, each to his or her own
-work.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister went to his study to work on his next Sunday
-morning’s sermon. Hetty to her linen closet to look
-over her stores for mending. Jennie, well wrapped up, to
-take her baby, also warmly clad, through the garden walks.
-Elspeth to her kitchen to wash up the breakfast service.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister, however, had scarcely got under way with
-his manuscripts before the doorbell rang, and he sprang up
-to answer it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Prowt, the bailiff of Haymore, stood there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Could I speak to your reverence a moment, sir?” he
-inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly. Come in,” replied Mr. Campbell, and led the
-visitor into the study.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, minister,” said the bailiff, as soon as they were
-both seated at the writing-table near the window, “it has
-come at last. I have got a dispatch from the squire, announcing
-his immediate arrival with his bride and his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>brother-in-law, though not with the expected party of
-friends.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The curate started, and then passed his hand across his
-forehead, as if to clear away a cloud of perplexity. Had
-not Longman told him that the squire and his lady had
-arrived the night before? And he could not have made a
-mistake, because he came with them, and left them at the
-Hall. And now the bailiff tells him that he has received a
-dispatch, announcing the immediate arrival of the squire
-and his party. What did all this mean? At length an explanation
-suggested itself, and he spoke upon it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Has not that dispatch been delayed? Should it not have
-come yesterday?” he inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, sir! It was dated this morning, and came an
-hour ago!” exclaimed the bailiff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you got it about you? Would you mind letting
-me see it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here it is, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bailiff drew the paper from his vest pocket and put
-it into the hands of the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell opened it and read:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Langham’s Hotel, London</span>,</div>
-      <div class='line in12'>“December 15, 18—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To Mr. John Prowt</span>, Haymore Lodge, Haymore,
-Yorkshire: I shall arrive with my wife and brother-in-law,
-the Rev. Cassius Leegh, by the one-thirty train, at Chuxton.
-Send one comfortable carriage to meet us.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Randolph H. Hay.</span>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell returned the slip of paper to the bailiff and
-fell into silence. He could make nothing of it. He was
-dumfounded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So you see it is all right, sir,” said the bailiff. “I shall
-send the open barouche, as the day is so fine, and with two
-footmen, besides the coachman. I suppose they will enter
-this town about half-past two o’clock.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well,” said the dazed curate, “what do you wish me
-to do?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you would give orders to the bell ringers, sir, to be at
-their post, and also have the parish school children drawn
-up each side the road leading to the park gate——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>“It is rather an unfavorable season—December—for
-children to be parading outdoors,” suggested the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course, sir, the kids can’t wear the white frocks and
-pink sashes and wreaths of flowers on their bare heads, as
-they could have done three months ago; but they can wear
-their picturesque winter uniform of red cloaks and hoods,
-and black woolen stockings and gloves; and as the weather
-is so remarkably fine, and the hour just after noon, in the
-warmest part of the day, I do not think the exposure will
-hurt them. Do you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“N-oo! I do not suppose it will.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then will you kindly see to it, sir, that they are drawn
-up in proper array, to sing their songs of welcome and throw
-their flowers before the bridal pair?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where will they get flowers at this season of the year?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh!—a—from the conservatories of the Hall, if from
-no other place. I will see that they are sent over to the
-schoolroom. I think, also, that many of the cottagers have
-a few late flowers in their gardens, such as chrysanthemums
-and dahlias and——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And do you think, Mr. Prowt, that because a newly married
-pair happens to be happy and prosperous, that living
-and blooming flowers should be torn from their warm conservatories
-and sunny gardens, to be thrown down in the
-dirt to perish under carriage wheels, in their honor? I
-don’t.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, minister, I never heard of such an objection!”
-said the astonished bailiff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, you hear it now. And it might be well for you to
-think of it. The custom is a barbarous one, suitable only
-to prehistoric savages.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bailiff stared.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, Mr. Prowt, I wish to say this to you—with
-the kindest feelings toward yourself, and with sincere regret
-that I must disappoint you—that I cannot and will
-not allow the church bells to be rung, or the parish children
-to parade, or any single movement to be made in honor
-of this incoming bridal pair which it is in my power to
-prevent,” said the minister, all the more firmly because so
-quietly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>The bailiff stared in silence, too astonished to speak for
-a minute. Then he demanded:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why, in the name of Heaven, reverend sir, would
-you put such an affront upon the new squire and his bride?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I put no affront upon them. I simply decline to show
-them any honor whatever, or to allow any one under my
-authority to do so,” emphatically responded the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But this is most amazing, sir. Why, if you please, do
-you refuse to honor them?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because I cannot and must not.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yet, about three months ago, when there was first a talk
-of the new squire bringing home his bride, there was no one
-more interested than yourself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is true. But since that date circumstances have
-come to my knowledge that have changed all my views, and
-must change all my actions, toward the incoming squire and
-his—lady; circumstances that quite justify me in my present
-course of conduct.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“May I ask your reverence what those circumstances
-are?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not yet, Prowt. I cannot tell you. To-morrow or next
-day the whole parish may know.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I am perplexed. But, reverend sir, I must at least
-do my duty, and go over to the Hall to give directions there
-for the proper reception of the new squire, and send the
-carriage and servants to meet them. It is nine o’clock now,
-and they really ought to be off. I hope you do not blame
-me, sir, for doing my part.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly not. You must do your duty by your employer,”
-said Mr. Campbell kindly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, sir,” said the bailiff, taking up his hat
-to go.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-day, Mr. Prowt,” replied the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Even when the visitor was gone and the curate was alone
-he could not return to his manuscript sermon. It was impossible
-to concentrate his thoughts on the subject.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, well,” he said at last, “I shall have to take out one
-of my old Medge sermons for Sunday morning. It will be
-new to these parishioners at least.” And then he closed his
-desk, sat back in his armchair and gave himself up to the
-problem that was disturbing his mind.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>The dispatch from the squire lay on the table before him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bailiff had inadvertently left it behind him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell took it up, again read it carefully, and
-again passed his hand slowly over his forehead to clear away
-the thick cloud of confusion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The situation seemed inexplicable.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no doubt that this dispatch, dated this morning,
-signed Randolph Hay, and announcing the arrival of
-the squire and of his wife and brother-in-law on this day,
-was a perfectly genuine article and a very hard fact.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no doubt, either, that another Randolph Hay,
-with his wife and friends, had arrived at Haymore Hall in
-company with the indubitable traveling companion and eyewitness
-who had reported the fact to the minister’s family.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now what on earth did it all mean?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One Squire of Haymore and his wife at Haymore Hall,
-and another Squire of Haymore and his—lady on their way
-there!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Would the two parties meet to-day, and if so, what then?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The only possible theory of the situation, as it presented
-itself to the minister’s mind, was this, upon which he finally
-settled—that the Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay who had arrived
-on the preceding evening and were now at the Hall
-were the real lord and lady of the manor, and that the so-called
-Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay who were expected to arrive
-to-day were the fraudulent claimants whom he had taken
-them to be.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had not breathed a syllable of the first arrival to the
-bailiff, preferring to keep the matter to himself until he
-should see Samson Longman, who had walked over that
-morning to Haymore Hall, but would return to the rectory
-by midday.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the backwoodsman came in a little sooner than he
-had been expected. He came at once to the study door and
-rapped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell bade him enter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman’s face was radiant with merriment, and in his
-hand he carried a letter, which he fondled playfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Longman, you have been to see your friends at
-the Hall?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please sit down and tell me all about it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>Longman settled himself in the largest leather chair, put
-his fur cap down on the floor beside him and fondled his
-letter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You found the young squire and his wife quite well
-after their journey?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite well, sir. And also very much delighted with
-their new home, which they saw for the first time by daylight
-this morning.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Longman, you are sparkling all over with repressed
-amusement. What is the matter with you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Anticipation of an entertainment at the Hall to-day,
-sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think I understand. Do your friends know that there
-is another Mr. Randolph Hay and his—lady expected at the
-Hall to-day?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, sir,” exclaimed the giant, now bursting into a
-storm of laughter, which had to have its full vent before he
-could go on with his words. “Yes, sir. The bailiff came
-there an hour ago, full of importance, to announce the fact.
-He was somewhat amazed to find the young squire and his
-wife already in possession. But they are quite ready for
-the reception of the newcomers, sir, and that is the entertainment
-I anticipate. Here, sir, is a letter the young
-squire has intrusted to me to hand you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister took the missive, broke the seal and read:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Haymore Hall</span>, December 15, 18—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To the Rev. James Campbell</span>, Reverend and Dear
-Sir: Although I have not the honor of your personal acquaintance,
-yet I have heard enough of you to engage my
-sympathies and compel my respect. Therefore, I hope that
-you will forgive me for asking you to do me the favor to
-come this evening to the Hall to discuss with me the subject
-of the living of Haymore, which it is my privilege and
-pleasure to offer you, in the hope that you may do me the
-honor to accept it. May I presume, also, to ask you to waive
-ceremony, and bring your wife and daughter with you on
-this occasion? I have a special reason for this request,
-which, when you shall have heard from me, you will find
-to be perfectly satisfactory.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“I have the honor to be, reverend sir,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“Very respectfully yours,       <span class='sc'>Randolph Hay</span>.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>The curate rushed out of the study and into the room
-where his wife sat sewing in an avalanche of infirm linen
-and exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hetty, we need never leave the rectory! I have got the
-Haymore living! Read that, and thank the Lord!”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVII<br> <span class='large'>A MEMORABLE JOURNEY</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Yes, it was true! Randolph Hay, the rightful heir, was
-in full possession of Haymore. He had also entered into
-his estate with much more ease than could have been anticipated
-either by himself, his friends or his lawyers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To explain how this happened, a brief summary of events
-is necessary.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It will be remembered that Ran Hay, with his young
-bride, Judy, and a small party of friends, sailed on November
-the 29th from New York by the steamship <em>Boadicea</em>,
-hound for Liverpool.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran, Judy and Will Walling had staterooms in the first
-cabin; Mike, Dandy and Longman had berths in the second
-cabin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This arrangement, on the part of the three last mentioned,
-was much against the will of Ran, who would gladly
-have provided his brother-in-law and his two friends with
-the best accommodations the ship afforded, but that from
-very delicacy of feeling toward them he could not offer to
-do so. Besides, he knew that all three of these men had
-money enough to pay for a first-class passage each, had
-they desired it, but that for prudential reasons Dandy and
-Longman did not choose to squander their savings in that
-needless manner, and that Mike cast in his lot with his two
-friends; and so their little party voyaged in the plain but
-clean and wholesome second cabin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There could not, however, be much communication between
-the three in the first cabin and the three in the second,
-though they met occasionally on the common ground of the
-forward deck.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here Ran had long talks with his friends, and learned
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>much more of the past history of Dandy and Longman than
-he had ever known before.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here, Judy, wrapped from head to heel in her heavy
-fur cloak, would often join them, for the weather continued
-fine. “Wonderful!—just wonderful!” was the verdict of all
-the ship’s passengers; the oldest “salt” declaring that never,
-at this season of the year, had he known such weather in
-crossing the Atlantic.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Not one of our party suffered from seasickness. The only
-effect the voyage seemed to have upon them was an increase
-of health, vigor and appetite.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Their ship was rather a slow one, that was all.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a splendid winter morning about the seventh day
-out. The sky, of a clear, deep blue, without a single cloud,
-and on fire with a sun too dazzling to be seen, overhung a
-sea whose waves were like molten sapphires. The ship, with
-all her snowy sails spread and filled, was flying on before a
-fresh, fair wind.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the forward deck, grouped together, were Ran, Judy,
-Mike, Dandy and Longman. The hunter had been telling
-his story for the first time to Ran and Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And so you are from Chuxton! Is not that a strange
-coincidence? Haymore Hall and hamlet is in the neighborhood
-of Chuxton, I think,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“About ten miles off, sir. Chuxton is the nearest market
-town and railway station to Haymore,” replied Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear fellow, as you say you would never have
-left your native country if you could have obtained employment
-to suit you——” Ran said in a modest and hesitating
-way.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Among guns and game,” Longman interjected with a
-laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Exactly—’among guns and game?—I do earnestly hope
-that it may be in my way to suit you. Longman, I know
-nearly nothing of my patrimonial estate, but I have heard
-my father say that there was no such place for game in all
-the North Riding. I hope and trust and pray,” added Ran,
-with boyish earnestness, “that I may be able to make you
-head gamekeeper at Haymore without injustice to others.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I would not take another man’s place to his hurt, sir,”
-said the hunter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know that, good fellow. Nor would I offer you such
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>an effront. But it will hurt no one to make you an extra
-keeper at a good salary.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, now, Longman! D’ye moind that? Isn’t it jist
-what I was afther tilling ye!” exclaimed Mike. “Didn’t I
-say if Ran, or bigging his honor’s pardin, Misther Hay,
-hadn’t a place riddy made to shute ye, he’d crayate one?
-D’ye moind?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Something like that,” replied the hunter, laughing.
-“But I really do not wish Mr. Hay to make a place for
-me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Friends,” said the young squire, “we will leave that
-question until we get to Haymore. But in the meantime
-don’t distress me by calling me Mr.—anybody! I am Ran
-to all my old companions.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ouns! But whatever would the gintry round Haymore
-be thinking to hear the squire called be his Christian name,
-with divil a handle to it, be the loikes av us?” demanded
-Mike, with a laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not care what they think! They will soon know
-that I and my Judy and my friends came from the mining
-camps in the backwoods and mountains of North America,
-and that they must not expect more polish from us or more
-politeness than neighborly, loving kindness inspires. And
-now, Dandy, old friend, what do you intend to do when we
-all reach England?” inquired Ran of the old man, who
-seemed to have been left out, or to have withdrawn himself
-from the conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, I don’t know, sir! I hevn’t a living soul
-belonging to me in the old country except it is my brother’s
-orphan child, my niece, Julia Quin. When I left England
-she was a good-looking young wench, some seventeen years
-old, and was at service in a parson’s family down in Hantz.
-She’ll be married by this time, I reckon, with no end of
-kids! But, anyways, I’ll look her up, sir, if she is to be
-found.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you ever heard from her since you left England?”
-inquired Judy, breaking into the conversation the first time
-for the last half hour, and interested the moment another
-woman was brought upon the tapis.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lor’, no, Miss Judy!—which I beg your pardon. Mistress
-Hay; but I do be forgetting sometimes. Neither me
-nor mine was ever any great hand at letter writing. And
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>she was doing well at the vicarage, I knowed. And I was
-wandering about, seeking of my fortin, which I never yet
-found, though I might have found it the very next blow of
-my pick, for aught I know, if I had had the parsaverance
-to stay, which I couldn’t have after the boys here left, and
-so for twenty years I haven’t heard a word of my niece. She
-may be dead, poor wench; for death is no respecter of
-persons, though she was a fine, strapping, strong wench,
-too. Yes, that is so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I hope not. I hope she is alive and well for your sake.
-Where did you say you left her at service?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“At the vicarage, ma’am, in my native town, ma’am.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what town was that?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Medge, ma’am. In Hantz, on the south coast, where I
-was born and riz.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy had started at the first mention of Medge. Now
-she hastily inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What was the name of the vicar?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“One Rev. Mr. Campbell, ma’am; the Rev. Mr. James
-Campbell. He came from Scotland, horridonally; but settled
-into the south coast of England. Yes, that was so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By this time Ran was listening with the deepest interest
-to the words of old Dandy, but leaving Judy to sustain the
-conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Quin, we know who he is,” she gayly exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you know, ma’am? Indeed, and how, if you please?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Quin, it is too long a story to tell you how
-now; and besides, it concerns other people that I would
-rather not talk about; but this I can tell you, that the Rev.
-Mr. Campbell is not now at Medge, but——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is he then, ma’am, if you please to tell me that
-I may know where to seek for him? For I shall go to him
-first of all to ask after my niece.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is quite at the opposite end of England. He is at
-Haymore Rectory, where we are all going.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Lord be good to us! Is that so?” exclaimed Dandy
-joyfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, yes! And now, Mr. Quin, if you wish to hear
-news of your niece, Julia, you will have to go all the way
-to Haymore with us. And I am so glad that we will not be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>separated. It will be so pleasant for us all to go together
-to Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, Dandy, old boy, and you must stop with me, you
-know, until you find your niece,” added Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And will I see the Rev. Mr. James Campbell himself?”
-inquired Quin in some doubt.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course you will. And as servants don’t change places
-as often in the old country as they do in the new, it is more
-than likely you will find your niece at the rectory, unless she
-is married,” said Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Or—dead, poor wench!” added Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, indeed. She’s not dead! I’m certain of it,” exclaimed
-Judy, with good-natured but inexcusable presumption.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’ll take that for a prophecy, anyways, ma’am, and believe
-into it. Yes, that is so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you will come with us to Haymore, Dandy?” said
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you kindly, sir; I will.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray, Mr. Quin, stop calling me sir. You are an old
-man and I am a young one, almost a boy, and it is not fitting
-for you to call me sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Hay, I was brought up into the Church of England,
-and teached to be content with that station of life into
-which the Lord had called me; likewise, to respect my
-pastors and masters, and to honor my sooperioors. And
-twenty years’ wandering among the mines haven’t made me
-forget them airly lessons, nor yet my good manners, sir,”
-said Dandy, with a ceremonious bow, as he lifted his fur
-cap from his bald head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy, can’t you bring them to reason?” inquired Ran,
-with a laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sorrow a worrd they’ll listen to meself!” exclaimed
-Judy, backsliding into dialect, as she frequently did.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, do as you please, or I’ll make you!” laughed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And from that hour it was understood that the whole
-party should keep together until they should reach Haymore,
-instead of separating at Liverpool, as had been first
-intended.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The weather continued very fine, though very cold.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the morning of the tenth they reached Queenstown.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There Mr. Walling went on shore and telegraphed to his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>London correspondents, Messrs. Sothoron &#38; Drummond,
-Attorneys-at-Law, Lincoln’s Inns Fields, that his client, Mr.
-Randolph Hay, and himself would be in London on the
-afternoon of the twelfth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The run from Queenstown to Liverpool was as fine as any
-preceding part of the voyage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They reached port in the early dawn of the morning
-on the twelfth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Without lingering longer in the city than was necessary
-to get their baggage through the customhouse and fortify
-themselves with a substantial early breakfast at the
-“Queen’s,” they took the first mail train for London, where
-they arrived in the middle of the afternoon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Will Walling, an experienced traveler, who had been
-in London several times before, became the guide of the
-party, and took them from Euston Square down to Morley’s
-Hotel, Trafalgar Square, where they secured a comfortable
-suite of apartments on the second floor front.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman went to find cheaper quarters.
-Again Ran would gladly have entertained them at Morley’s,
-but could not offer to do so without affronting their spirit
-of independence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Even Mike, to whom Ran ventured an invitation, declined
-his brother-in-law’s hospitality, and cast in his lot with his
-two old mining friends. But he promised to look in again
-in the evening to let Ran and Judy know where he and his
-companions had found quarters.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After a hasty dinner in the private parlor of the Hays,
-Mr. Will Walling left the young pair still over their dessert
-and went out and called a cab and drove to Lincoln’s Inns
-Fields to call on Messrs. Sothoron &#38; Drummond.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They had been the solicitors of the Hays, of Haymore,
-for many years, and were, of course, deeply interested in
-all that concerned them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Much correspondence had already passed between the
-London and New York firms, bearing on the recent appearance
-of the undoubted lawful heir of Haymore in opposition
-to the fraudulent pretender, so that there was already a
-perfect understanding of the case established between them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was now a little after business hours, but Mr. Will
-Walling felt sure that, having received his dispatch announcing
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>his visit, one or both members of the firm would
-remain at their office to receive him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In fact, he found both gentlemen there. The case was
-considered much too important to admit of neglect or indifference,
-and being after office hours, they were quite at
-leisure to give their whole attention to the business in hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling spent four hours with Messrs. Sothoron &#38;
-Drummond, and together the three gentlemen went through
-the mass of documents, all together constituting indisputable,
-immovable proof of Randolph Hay’s identity as the
-only lawful heir of Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>I will not weary my reader with any of the lawyers’ talk,
-but hasten on to its results.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was nearly nine o’clock when the three gentlemen, having
-brought their interview to an end, left the office together
-and separated, to seek their several destinations—Sothoron
-to his home on Clapham Common, Drummond to his club
-on Regent Street, and Walling to his friends at Morley’s.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Will found Ran and Judy seated at the front window
-of their parlor, in which the gas had been turned down low
-to enable them to see out into the street, for they were
-gazing down on the panorama of the night scene on Trafalgar
-Square.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Will, as he entered the room,
-flung his hat across the floor and dropped into a large easy-chair
-near the two young people, “are you ready to set out
-for Yorkshire and Haymore by the first mail train to-morrow
-morning?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” inquired Ran, looking around,
-rather startled by the abrupt entrance and action of his
-lawyer, while Judy also wheeled her chair and raised her
-eyes inquiringly to the first speaker.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Just what I asked. Are you ready to start for Haymore
-Hall by the first train to-morrow morning?” repeated
-Mr. Will.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the use of your asking that, Walling, when
-you know there is ever such a law fight to go through first.
-And even after I have won my suit, as of course I shall win
-it, there must be writs of ejectment, and the Lord knows
-what all, before we can get that villain out of my house:
-for ‘possession is nine points of the law,’ you know, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>you may depend he will contest the tenth point to the bitter
-end,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all!” heartily exclaimed Will Walling; “there
-will be no fight. The fellow will not fight; he’ll fly. And
-though ‘possession is nine points of the law,’ he has never
-had possession. What do you think of that?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think your words are more incomprehensible than
-ever. I do not understand them in the least,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nor do I,” added Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, then, listen, both of you. I have been three or
-four or more hours closeted with Sothoron &#38; Drummond.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And we have been over, together, all the documentary
-proofs of your identity as Randolph Hay, the only lawful
-heir of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, every document connected with the case has your
-name, that is, Randolph Hay, as the heir and now the owner
-of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you, and you only, are Randolph Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Undoubtedly. But there is another who has taken my
-name and estates.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He has taken your name and stolen and squandered a
-good deal of your money during the last few months; there
-is no doubt about that. Nor will you ever get a penny of
-that lost money back; there is no hope of that. These
-moneys he has obtained by fraud from your bailiff, John
-Prowt, of Haymore, and from your family solicitors, Sothoron
-&#38; Drummond, at Lincoln’s Inns Fields. But, my dear
-sir, for all that, he has never been in possession of your
-estate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why not, when——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But he is not Randolph Hay, in whose name all the
-documents are made out.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But he is at Haymore Hall now. And it will require a
-legal process to get him out, for he will fight every inch of
-the ground.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all! He is not at Haymore Hall, nor has he ever
-been there. His fraudulent presence is not known there. If
-he were there now, or ever had been there, or if his person
-were known there under his stolen name of Randolph Hay,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>then, I grant you, in that case we might have to meet some
-trouble and confusion, yet not much. And as it is, we shall
-have no trouble at all.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But this is strange. How is it that he has never been
-to Haymore?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because, it seems, he prefers to squander the revenues
-of the estate in Paris. But let me tell you what I have
-this afternoon learned of the fellow from Messrs. Sothoron
-&#38; Drummond.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, pray do,” said Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It seems, then, that when he first brought his—lady over
-here, he intended to go to Haymore, and even had grand
-preparations made there for their reception; but from some
-caprice, he changed his mind and went to Paris, where he
-has been with his—lady ever since, squandering money just
-as if he knew it did not belong to him, and deferring his
-return from time to time, and drawing large sums from—your
-bankers.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“From what I know of Gentleman Geff, I should think it
-hard to draw him from the saloons of Paris to the seclusion
-of a Yorkshire country house,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; but now it seems he is really coming with a party
-of friends to spend Christmas at Haymore Hall. He has
-sent down orders for the house to be prepared to receive
-himself and—lady and guests by the fifteenth. Now then,
-the servants at the Hall are preparing to receive Mr. and
-Mrs. Randolph Hay, whom they have never seen. Now
-you and your wife are Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, what do you advise?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, man alive, your course is as plain as daylight.
-You and your wife take the first train to-morrow and speed
-to Yorkshire and to Haymore Hall, where you will arrive
-early in the evening, where you will, no doubt, find everything
-ready for you and be joyfully received by your servants.
-To be sure, you will arrive rather earlier than you
-were expected; but that will not matter much, especially as
-it will give you time to get well rested before you will be
-called upon to receive Gentleman Geff and his distinguished
-party.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, that will be the most delicious fun!” exclaimed
-Judy, clapping her hands with glee; “and we will have,
-besides Ran and myself, Mike, Dandy and Longman all
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>drawn up in a line to welcome him. He will think all
-Grizzly Gulch has come to Haymore Hall.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“For his guilty soul it would seem</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.’”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>said Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There would be an awful row,” exclaimed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all. There would be a surprise, a panic and a
-flight. That is, if you let the villain go. I am not sure
-that you ought not to have a warrant and an officer ready
-to arrest him. Or rather, I am sure that you ought.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I would rather not, if he will leave quietly,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you must make no terms with a criminal. That
-would be ‘compounding a felony,’ a serious offense against
-English law.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, is it settled? Shall we go to-morrow morning?”
-inquired Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear; certainly,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I will go down to the office and find a Bradshaw
-and see about our train,” said Mr. Will, picking up his hat
-and hurrying out of the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had scarcely disappeared when the door opened and
-Mike, Dandy and Longman entered the parlor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy ran forward to welcome them, while Ran turned
-up the gas.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We have been sitting in the dark to watch the scene in
-the square below,” Judy explained.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, boys, have you found comfortable quarters?” inquired
-Ran, as soon as they were all seated.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Illigant; and chape enough, too, be the same token, close
-by in the Strand; a very ginteel, dooble-bidded bidroom.
-Longman, being av a giant fit for a circus, do hev one bid
-all to himsilf. And Dandy and me, being av little fellows,
-do have the ithir to oursilves,” Mike explained.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While they were still talking Mr. Will Walling returned
-to the room with a Bradshaw in his hand. He greeted the
-three visitors pleasantly, dropped into a chair and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, there is a train that leaves Euston Square Station
-at six in the morning and reaches Chuxton at three in the
-afternoon. After that there is no other parliamentary train
-until twelve noon, which would make it nine in the evening
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>when it stops at Chuxton, and would be too late to go on
-to Haymore the same night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, then, we will leave by the earlier train, if Judy has
-no objection,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I? Why, I never minded getting up early!” exclaimed
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you say, boys?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The sooner the better for us, sir,” replied Dandy, speaking
-for the rest, who promptly assented.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then, as the hour was late, the visitors bade good-night,
-and the party left behind separated and retired to
-rest, to be ready for their early rising.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVIII<br> <span class='large'>AT HAYMORE HALL</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>The whole party were up in the double darkness of a
-London winter morning before sunrise. They dressed and
-breakfasted by gaslight, and then entered a large carriage
-and drove to Euston Square Railway Station, where they
-were met by Mike, Dandy and Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Had you not better telegraph to your housekeeper before
-we start to let her know that we shall certainly be at
-Haymore to-night so that there may be no mistake, and
-she will be sure to have beds aired, fires built and dinner
-ready for us when we get there?” suggested Mr. Walling,
-who was always directly on the lookout for his own personal
-comforts, and, incidentally, for those of others.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran immediately acted on the suggestion, saying, when
-he rejoined his friends after sending the dispatch:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She will think the message comes from the other fellow
-in Paris and that he is in London on his way to Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She will think, or rather she will see, that the telegram
-comes from Mr. Randolph Hay, and that will be enough,”
-replied Mr. Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When the other fellow comes on the fifteenth with his
-friends and finds us in possession——Well! I can’t help
-anticipating a rink, a circus, a hippodrome, a spectacular
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>drama, an earthquake, a conflagration and the day of judgment
-all rolled into one!” said Randolph, with a laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And there will be nothing of the sort. Only at most a
-panic and a total rout. Come, we must take our seats,” exclaimed
-Will Walling, as he led the way to the waiting train,
-where a guide showed them into the middle compartment
-of a first-class carriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman had taken tickets for the
-second class.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now is it not too bad that Ran cannot get our friends
-in here with us, Mr. Walling?” demanded Judy, as she
-settled herself in the luxurious corner front seat of their
-compartment and noticed that there were just six seats.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear Judy,” muttered Ran, “your brother and his
-companions are able to take these three vacant seats with
-us if they please, but for prudential and very praiseworthy
-reasons they choose to economize and take the second class.
-I could not offer them a worse offense than invite them
-to take these seats at my expense.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I do think there is a great deal of false pride in
-the world,” Judy pouted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So there is, darling; but we cannot cure it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a wonder their high mightinesses consent to go
-with you to Haymore and be your guests there.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is a different affair.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t see that it is.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But they do,” laughed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The train started, and the conversation dropped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was still in the darkness before day that they left the
-station and sped off into the open country, where the world
-was scarcely beginning to wake up. In London the world
-seems never to go to sleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Our three travelers had had but little rest in the last
-twenty-four hours; and so, between the darkness of the
-hour, the motion of the train and their own weariness, they
-dozed off into dreamland, where they lingered some hours,
-until they were called back by the sudden stopping of the
-train, for an instant only, for before they were fully awake
-it was off again, flying northward as if pursued by the
-furies.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy shook herself up and looked out of the window on
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>her right hand to see the eastern horizon red with the coming
-of the wintry sun above the moorland.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At noon they reached Liverpool, where they left their
-seats, got lunch and then changed their train for the Great
-Northern for York.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Late in the afternoon they entered the great cathedral
-city, where again they left their seats, took tea and a little
-later took train for Chuxton.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was nearly sunset when they came to the end of their
-railway journey at the little market town.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no carriage waiting to take them to Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then it occurred to Ran for the first time that by
-some strange oversight no carriage had been ordered by him
-or his attorney to come from the Hall to meet them at the
-station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were several vehicles around the place, but all
-seemed to be engaged by other parties.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Our friends walked together to the Tawny Lion Tavern,
-where Ran ordered refreshment and inquired for a conveyance
-to Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Tawny Lion boasted but one—a large carryall drawn
-by two stout horses—but that was then engaged, and would
-not be available to our travelers for perhaps two hours.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were passed by Ran and Judy, after they had finished
-their meal, in sauntering about the quaint, old-fashioned
-town and making acquaintance with its streets and
-houses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here’s where we shall have to come to do our country
-shopping, you know, darling,” said Ran; “for I have been
-told that there is but one general shop at Haymore, where,
-though they keep everything to sell, from a second-hand
-pulpit to a soup dish, you can get nothing very good.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I shall encourage the home trade, and deal at Haymore
-all the same,” replied Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Mr. Will Walling spent his time of waiting
-over the fire in the inn parlor, with a bottle of port wine
-and a stack of cigars on the table beside him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Longman, accompanied by his shadows, Dandy and
-Mike, walked out in the direction of the Old Heath Farm
-to make inquiries about his mother, and, naturally, the
-nearer he came to the scene of his boyhood’s home the keener
-and the more intense became his anxiety. It had never
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>seemed to him that his buxom, healthy, hearty mother
-could have sickened and died; nor had it seemed more than,
-barely possible that she might have married again. He
-rather hoped to find her where he had left her five years
-before, living on the farm. Still, as he turned from the
-Chuxton highroad and went into a narrow lane, overhung
-by the branches of the leafless trees that grew on each side
-the path leading to the farmhouse, all the dread possibilities
-of life seemed to threaten him ahead. He could not now
-speak of his feelings. He hurried on. The giant was as
-weak as a child when he passed through the farm yard and
-went up to the house. A man was approaching from another
-direction.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman leaned against the side of the house for support
-as he faltered forth a question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh?” demanded the farmer, looking fixedly at the
-stranger, as if he suspected him of being top heavy through
-too much drink. “Is it the Widow Longman ye’re asking
-about? No, she dun not bide here now. She hasn’t been
-here for these five years past.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Another faint, almost inaudible question from the weak
-giant, which the farmer had to bend his quick, sharp ear to
-hear at all.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is she living, do you arsk? Oh, ay, she’s living good
-enough. She’s keeping house for the parson at the rectory,
-Haymore, about ten miles to the norrard of this.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank the Lord!” ejaculated Longman, lifting his cap,
-almost overcome by the sudden collapse of highly strung
-nerves.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“See here, my man, what’s the matter with you? You
-look to be used up! I thought it was drink when I first
-saw you. But now I see it isn’t. You look to be faint for
-want of drink, not heavy from too much of it. Come in
-now and take a mug o’ beer, home brewed. ’Twill do ye
-good,” urged the farmer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, thank you. No, really. You are very kind, but
-I must get on,” said Longman, rising, and now that his
-tension of anxiety was relieved, gaining life with every
-breath he drew.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I wouldn’t wonder now if you was that son o’ hern who
-went to sea long years ago and never was heerd on since?”
-said the farmer, calling after him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>“Yes, I am her son, and I am going to Haymore now to
-find her. Thank you, and good-day to you,” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’m dogged glad on it! One widdy’s heart will sing
-for joy this night, anyhow! Well, good-day, and good
-luck to you, my lad!” were the last words of the kind-hearted
-farmer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Longman rejoined his two friends, who he had left
-waiting for him at the farm gate, his happy face told the
-“glad tidings” before his tongue could speak them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hooray! It’s good news ye’re afther hearing!” cried
-Mike, throwing up his cap and catching it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I thank the Lord!” replied Longman reverently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then, as they walked down the lane and out upon
-the highroad leading to Chuxton, Longman told them all
-that he had heard from the farmer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So she’s housekeeper at the rectory itself! That’s where
-your niece, Miss Julia, will be at service, Mr. Quin!” exclaimed
-Mike; “that is, if she’s not married,” he added.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Or dead, poor wench!” sighed old Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother that! Nobody’s dead, or going to die just
-yet, is there, Samson, man?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I hope not, Mike.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Anyways, we shall hear when we get to Haymore. Yes,
-that is so,” said Dandy, with an air of resignation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was not nearly so anxious to hear from his niece as
-Longman had been to get news of his mother. He did not,
-indeed, care much about her now, whatever he might come
-to care after he should have renewed his acquaintance with
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they reached Chuxton and turned into the street
-leading to the “Tawny Lion,” they saw the huge carryall
-drawn up before the door, with a crowd of idlers, mostly
-boys, gathered around it to see it start.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman and his companions went into the parlor, where
-they found the Hays and Will Walling waiting for them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why have you stayed for us, Mr. Hay? This is really
-too kind!” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Kind to myself, friend! I did not want to go without
-you. Even if I had, Judy would not have allowed it. I
-see by your face that you have good news of your mother.
-I congratulate you,” said Ran, offering his hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, thank Heaven!” replied the hunter. And then
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>in a few words, as they walked to the carryall, he told all
-he heard at the farm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is splendid!” exclaimed Judy with enthusiasm,
-as she was lifted into the carryall by Ran and placed in the
-sheltered back seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dandy must sit back there with you, darling. He is
-old, and then the drive over the moor will be a very cold
-one. You won’t mind it, will you, Judy?” he inquired, as
-he settled her among the cushions and tucked her fur cloak
-well around her feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, no, of course not. Especially if you will sit right
-in front of me so I can lean my head forward on your
-shoulder sometimes,” Judy replied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Ran helped Dandy in and made him sit by Judy.
-The others followed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Will Walling sat immediately in front of Judy
-and Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike and Longman on the third seat forward. The
-driver, a stout Yorkshireman, on the box.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The strong draught horses started at a moderate pace,
-such as might well be kept up during the whole journey
-across the moor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a dark, cold night, and the two glass lanterns,
-fixtures, on each side above the driver’s seat, did little better
-than make “darkness visible.” But the road was as safe
-as a road by night could be, and the horses knew it as well
-as they knew the way to their own cribs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Two hours of jog trot, safe and steady driving brought
-them to a great mass of dense shadows, like black mountains
-and forests against a dark gray northern sky.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The driver drew up his horses before this mystery and
-announced that they had reached the great wall of Haymore
-Park.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How far from the lodge gates?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“About half a mile, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Drive on then.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you please, Mr. Hay, I would like to leave the carryall
-at the point nearest Haymore hamlet and rectory,” said
-Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course! Of course! Naturally you must hasten first
-of all to your dear mother. But remember, friend, you are
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>my guest at the Hall, and bring your mother also if you
-can persuade her to come,” heartily responded Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, do, Mr. Longman. And I will go to see your
-mother just as soon as ever I can,” warmly added Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you both very much,” replied Longman, but he
-gave no promise.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Remember, Longman, that you saved my life. But for
-you—under the Divine Providence,” said Ran, reverently
-lifting his hat, “I should not be here now.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, nor I, either, for that matter,” added Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We both owe you a debt that we can never repay, Longman,”
-said Ran, with emotion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never, except in love and gratitude. And we would
-like to put ‘a body’ in our sentiments to make them ‘felt,’
-Mr. Longman. You will come and stay with us at the
-house, will you not?” pleaded Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You make too much of my service, a service that any
-man worthy of the name would have done for any other.
-I do not know what my plain old mother would say to
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am plain myself,” said Judy; “a child of the people.
-Less than that, for I never knew father or mother—a child
-of the planet only! My only worth is being the wife of my
-dear Ran here!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam, you are the wife of Mr. Randolph Hay, of
-Haymore. You are the lady of the manor. And in this
-country a social abyss divides you and yours from me and
-mine as deep, as impassable as that ‘great gulf’ that lay between
-Dives and Lazarus,” said Longman solemnly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is not so! It shall not be so! I will not have it!
-Nothing but the will of Heaven shall divide us from our
-dear friends!” said Judy passionately.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No!” added Ran with earnest emphasis. “No social
-gulf shall separate us, Longman, dear old boy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here we be at the lodge gates, sir. And this is the
-nearest point we pass to the rectory. We turn in here to go
-by the elm avenue up to the Hall. And the road continues
-right straight on under the park wall up to the rectory and
-the church, which is on the other side of the road,” the
-driver explained, drawing up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Longman, I should like you to go on to the house
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>and dine with us, but I know it would be wrong to ask
-you,” said Ran, as the hunter got up to leave the carryall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will see you early in the morning, sir,” said the giant.
-And then he shook hands all around, jumped from the
-carryall and strode on up the road to the rectory on that
-visit to his mother which we have already described.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A woman came out of the porter’s lodge on the right-hand
-side, swung open both broad leaves of the gate and stood
-courtesying as the carryall rolled through.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The old porter’s daughter—a worthy dame,” said the
-driver, in answer to a question from Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The carriage rolled on through an avenue shaded by great
-oaks, whose branches, however, were now bare. In the
-turns of this drive they caught glimpses of the house
-through the trees, with lights sparkling here and there from
-the many windows into the darkness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After several sweeping turns the avenue passed in front
-of the house, and the carriage drew up before a huge, oblong
-gray building, with turrets at each corner, bay windows on
-the first floor and balconies above.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As the carriage stopped the hall door was flung wide,
-and several men and women servants appeared in the
-lighted hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The butler stood in the door. Two footmen came down
-the steps to attend their master and mistress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran lifted Judy from the carriage, whispering:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Welcome home, my darling,” and led her up the steps
-and into the hall, followed by his friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The butler, with a low bow, made way for them to pass.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The housekeeper, a very aged woman, dressed in a brown
-satin gown and a lace cap, came forward to meet them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Welcome home, sir and madam. We have waited for
-you long, and greet you gladly,” she said in a tone of exaggerated
-reverence and with a deep courtesy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran held out his frank hand, and Judy said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Mrs.—Mrs.——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Basset, madam, and been in the family all my life, as
-mother and father were before me. Your old butler, sir,
-is my son, getting older every day, but not yet past service,
-either of us, I thank Heaven. Will you go to your room
-now, madam?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>“Yes, if you please,” said Judy. “I would like to take
-off my bonnet and cloak.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Basset looked all around, and then said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not think that your maid has come in yet. Shall
-I send one of the men out to hurry her? I suppose she is
-busy with the parcels in the carriage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I—I—I—have no maid—yet,” replied Judy, blushing
-deeply, for she was rather afraid of this fine ruin of an old-time
-housekeeper, even though the aged woman was evidently
-falling a little into her second childhood.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I see! I beg your pardon, ma’am. You will be
-waiting to take some good girl from the estate. That has
-been the way with the ladies of Hay from time immemorial.”
-She paused suddenly in her babble and looked
-fixedly, though still very respectfully, at Mr. Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now Ran was just a little sensitive about his personal
-appearance. He was not a handsome, soldierly blond, but
-a beautiful, dark brunette; graceful as a leopard, sinuous
-as a serpent. He was in the habit of humorously stigmatizing
-himself as “a little nigger.” So when the aged housekeeper
-regarded him with her wistful gaze, he thought she
-was saying to herself, how little like he was to any of the
-Hays. He laughed a little and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You do not find much resemblance in me to my tall and
-fair forefathers, Mrs. Basset.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sir,” she replied solemnly, “you are the living image
-of your honored grandmother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young man burst out laughing, and was joined by
-Mike and Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But their mirth ceased as the aged housekeeper added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She died at twenty-three years old. She was the best,
-the brightest and the most beautiful being that my eyes
-ever beheld! And, yes, she died at twenty-three years old!
-And you are her living image, as nearly as it is possible
-for a gentleman to be. That was the reason why I looked
-at you so, sir. I beg your pardon; I forgot myself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t speak of it, Mrs. Basset,” said Ran kindly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. You can see the portrait in the picture
-gallery to-morrow and judge for yourself—or even to-night
-if you will,” said the housekeeper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you; not to-night; we are too tired. To-morrow
-you shall show us over the whole house, if you will.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>“That I will with pride and pleasure, sir. And now,
-madam, shall I attend you to your room?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, yes, please,” said Judy; and she followed
-her conductress up the broad staircase to a vast upper hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The housekeeper opened a door near the head of the
-stairs and admitted her charge into a spacious, sumptuous
-bedchamber, upholstered in ebony and old gold, and in
-which burned a fine open coal fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The aged woman, much against Judy’s will, insisted upon
-waiting upon her; took off her heavy cloak and hat and
-hung them in the wardrobe, drew a luxurious easy-chair to
-the fire and seated her in it, and hovered around her with
-affectionate attentions until Mr. Hay came in, when, with
-one of her quaint courtesies, she withdrew from the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again Ran took Judy in his arms, folded her to his heart,
-kissed her fondly and welcomed her home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And to-morrow, my darling, we shall have to prepare
-to welcome Gentleman Geff and his—lady. I shall send in
-the morning for Mr. Campbell and his daughter, that the
-villain may be confronted with his wronged wife, as well as
-his betrayed friend,” said Ran, as he gave his arm to Judy
-to take her down to the dining-room, where dinner waited.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIX<br> <span class='large'>WAITING THE ISSUE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>In the morning Ran and Judy woke up to look, for the
-first time, by daylight on their new home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran opened the windows and let in the light of the
-December day upon their bedchamber, a vast, peaceful,
-slumberous room, upholstered throughout in olive green
-and gold, and looking out upon a park, full of sunny glades
-and shady groves, even now in winter when the light of day
-shone down on burnished dry grass in the glades and evergreen
-trees in the groves.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young couple, though lord and lady of the Manor
-of Haymore, had as yet neither valet nor maid. So Ran
-rang no bell, but from a hodful of coal at the chimney
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>corner, with his own hand, replenished the fire in the grate
-and then went to make his toilet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy lay still, with her eyes looking through the large
-windows on two sides of the spacious chamber, out upon the
-sunny and shady park until Ran had finished dressing and
-left the room. Then she arose and took her bath and opened
-her large sea trunk to find a dress suitable for her morning
-wear.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She finally selected a plain suit of dark gray velveteen,
-with crimped linen ruffles at the throat and wrists. She
-put it on and went downstairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the hall below she found the wide doors open in front,
-admitting the winter sunshine, and a great coal fire burning
-in the broad fireplace in the back; and between the two,
-near the front of the stairs, Ran, Will Walling, Mike and
-Dandy standing in conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy was the spokesman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I did think,” he was saying, “that Longman would
-have come back last night to bring me news of Julie. But,
-Lord, I do suppose he got so wrapped up into his mother
-that he clean forgot me and mine, or else, maybe, he could
-not well get away.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That was it, Dandy,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Same time, if, as how I had thought it might be so,
-myself would have gone to the rectory with him. And ’deed
-I’d agone, anyhow, only I didn’t like to be intruding into
-a strange place.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I can’t understand,” said Will Walling, speaking for the
-first time, “how you fortune-seekers can bear to stay away
-for years from your native country without hearing a word
-from any of your friends at home, and then, when you make
-up your mind to return, and once set foot in your native
-land, you straightway get into a fever of anxiety and impatience
-to meet them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No more do I, but so it is!” confessed Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis,” added Mike. “Sure it was the very same wid
-Mister Longman himself when he was gitting nigh onto the
-ould farrum where he left his mother. It is curious.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see, if I only knowed she were alive and well,”
-said Dandy apologetically.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, you may be sure of that,” cheerfully exclaimed Ran,
-“but I don’t think she is at the rectory.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>“Why don’t you then, sir?” inquired Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because if she had been Longman would have seen her
-and told her about you, and she would certainly have run
-over last night or early this morning to see you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So she would! So she would! And yet I dunno—I
-dunno! Even darters in these days ain’t none too dutiful
-to feythers, let alone nieces to uncles, ’specially when they’ve
-been parted twenty years,” said Dandy, shaking his bald
-head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t think she is at the rectory, or, under the circumstances,
-she would have run over here to see you,” said
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I dunno! I dunno!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is most likely she is married and away.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Or dead and buried, poor wench,” sighed Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, come, don’t be so downhearted. Longman will
-be here soon. He promised to come early this morning,
-and no doubt he will bring good news of your niece. Now
-here is Judy, and we will go in to our breakfast,” concluded
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy, stepping from the bottom stair to the hall floor,
-greeted Will Walling, Mike and Dandy with a cordial good-morning
-and led the way to the breakfast room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was just under the bedchamber Judy had left, and
-had the same outlook from windows on the east and north
-of sunny glades, of burnished dry grass and shady groves
-of Scotch firs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The table was laid for five, and the old butler was in attendance;
-not that His Importance, Mr. Basset, the butler,
-ever waited at any other meal except dinner, and then only
-at the sideboard; but on this particular occasion of the first
-breakfast of the bridal pair at Haymore he thought proper
-to volunteer his attendance in their honor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The consequence was that Mike, Dandy and even Judy
-were almost afraid to speak, lest they should expose their
-ignorance of high life to this imposing personage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The five sat down to table under the cloud of the butler’s
-greatness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But soon the fragrant Mocha, the luscious waffles and the
-savory venison steaks and other appetizing edibles combined
-to dispel the gloom and enliven their spirits.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>After breakfast Judy sent for the housekeeper, and
-claimed her promise to show them through the building.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Basset was only too willing to oblige. The five
-friends, led by their conductress, went first up the grand
-staircase that led from the lower to the upper halls on every
-floor to the top of the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We had better go to the top first, ma’am, while we are
-fresh, else we might find the stairs hard to climb,” said
-Mrs. Basset.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Judy, as she knew that the old woman spoke chiefly
-in the interests of her own infirmities, answered promptly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You know best, Mrs. Basset. Suit yourself, and you
-will suit us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They went upstairs to the low-ceiled rooms under the
-roof, which Mrs. Basset described as servants’ bedrooms—storerooms
-for furniture out of season, boxes, etc.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then to the next below, all extra bedrooms, and to the
-next below that, all family suites of apartments; and down
-to the next, on which were the long drawing and the ballroom,
-which, with the broad hall between them, took up
-the whole flat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lastly, they came down to the first floor, on which were
-the long dining-room, the breakfast room, the parlor, the
-library and the picture gallery, which was the last place
-to be inspected.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The family portraits were arranged in chronological order,
-beginning with the Saxon ancestor of the eighth century,
-who, with rudest arms and in rudest clothing, resisted
-the first invasion of the Danes, and whose “counterfeit presentment”
-here was probably but the work of the rough
-artist’s imagination, executed, or rather perpetrated, at a
-much later date.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then in regular order came the barons who had rallied
-around Hereward in his last desperate stand against the
-usurper, William of Normandy; the iron-clad knights who
-had followed Richard of the Lion heart to the Holy Land;
-the barons who had taken up arms in support of the House
-of York against that of Lancaster; the plumed cavaliers
-who had insanely flocked with all their retainers to the
-standard of the Stuarts in every mad attempt of that unhappy
-family to regain their lost throne; periwig-pated
-courtiers of the Georgian dynasty; and, lastly, the swallowtail
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>coated and patent leather booted gentlemen of the Victorian
-age, as represented by the late squire and his three
-sons.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ladies of the chiefs were all there, too, each by the
-side of her “lord,” and dressed in costume of her time, or
-in what was supposed to be such, for there is little doubt
-that many of the earlier portraits were merely fancy pictures.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Before the group of the late squire and his family Judy
-suddenly caught her breath and clasped her hands and stood
-stock-still, gazing on the full-length picture of a beautiful
-dark girl.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is like, isn’t it now, ma’am?” inquired the housekeeper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Like! Why, the picture might be taken for his portrait
-if it were not for the dress!” exclaimed Judy, gazing at her
-husband.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is still more like my Cousin Palma,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, so it is,” assented Judy; “and does not need
-change of dress to make it perfect. The hair of that lady
-in the picture is worn exactly as Palma wears hers, and
-that costume of dark blue is not unlike the dress Palma
-wore to our wedding in color and make.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is indeed a wonderful likeness to Mrs. Stuart,” remarked
-Mr. Walling. “Who is the lady?” he demanded,
-turning to the housekeeper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The last Mrs. Hay, of Haymore, the grandmother of
-the young squire here. She died at the age of twenty-three,
-leaving three boys, of one, two and three years of
-age—to give the figures in round numbers,” replied Mrs.
-Basset.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know she was the wife of the late squire; but
-whose daughter was she?” persisted Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The housekeeper was silent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Faix, Misther Walling, is it in the coorthoose ye are,
-with Misthress Basset intil the witness box, that ye would
-be cross-examining herself?” demanded Mike.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling turned a deprecating, apologetic glance
-upon Ran, who quietly replied:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She was the daughter of a gypsy chief. Her name was
-Gentyl Tuinquer.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Will. Then, feeling rather uncomfortable,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>he added, to cover his confusion. “How beautiful
-she must have been!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And how much more beautiful she must be now!” exclaimed
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The lawyer stared at her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Up there in heaven, I mean; for, of course, she is in
-heaven, for you may see by her face how good she is,” added
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The housekeeper sighed. All the ladies of the long line
-of Hays had been “angel born” before this gypsy girl from
-the tents came into the family. And though the woman
-could not help loving the memory of the lovely young creature,
-she equally could not help suffering in her own pride
-at any mention of the gypsy birth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran kissed the hand of the pictured lady and then turned
-with his party to leave the gallery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On stepping out into the hall a footman met him, and
-with a respectful salute said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, there is—a—person waiting to see
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A person? Who? What sort of a person?” demanded
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A foreign-looking tall man, sir; might be a Patagonian,
-only he can speak English.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Show him in here.” And with these words Ran crossed
-the hall and entered a morning parlor on the same floor.
-Then looking back he saw that, though his footman had
-gone on his errand, his friends lingered in the hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come in, all of you. It is only Longman. You will
-all want to see him, especially will Mr. Quin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do want to see him. Yes, that is so,” assented Dandy,
-as they all followed Ran into the parlor, where they found
-quite a variety of comfortable chairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were scarcely seated when Longman entered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran sprang up and met him; but Dandy pushed between
-them, his round, bald head, as well as his face, glowing red
-with excitement as he demanded:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you seen my Juley? Is she well and happy? Is
-she still in the service of the minister?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She is well and happy, but no longer in service anywhere.
-She is married to John Legg, the greengrocer of
-your native village, Medge. So I have not had the pleasure
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>of making her acquaintance,” Longman replied, with a
-laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Lord above us! Well, I did sort of hope she was an
-old-maid woman as would have been a housekeeper and a
-daughter to myself in my old days. Well, and now she is
-married, and, I do dare say, with a baker’s dozen of children.
-Yes, that is so,” said Dandy, with a heavy sigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, but it isn’t so. She only married a few months ago,
-when she was over forty years old, and John Legg, the
-widower, who took her for his second wife, over fifty; so
-she has no baker’s dozen of children as yet.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I’s warrant he has a house full o’ young uns for
-her to be stepmother to! And that will be a heap worse
-than if the wench had a score of her own! It is as bad as
-if I had found her dead! Yes, that is so,” sighed Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, it isn’t so. You are all out again. John Legg has
-no children at home. He has a son and daughter, and gave
-them both a grand education above his means, and to repay
-him they did all they could to break his heart. They had
-worldly ambitions above their state, and despised the calling
-of their father. The son took ‘holy orders,’ not for the love
-of the Lord or the neighbor, but for love of self and the
-world. He became a professional preacher only, not a minister
-of religion. Mr. Hay,” said the speaker, suddenly
-turning toward Ran, “I shall presently have something to
-say to you in reference to this man, in which you have an
-especial interest.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Longman. I will remember to remind you
-of it,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now will you please go on telling me about the family
-my niece married into?” said Dandy impatiently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly!” smiled Longman, good-humoredly. “The
-son utterly ignores his father and hangs on the skirts of
-influential people; but as yet has had but little success.
-The daughter went out as a governess, less it seems to be
-of service to children than to seek her own fortune, through
-her beauty, among the rich and noble. She also ignores
-her father. Both these hopefuls are ‘married and settled,’
-to use the common phrase. And the newly-wedded, middle-aged
-couple are alone.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And what could have tempted my gal to agone and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>married of a old widdyman, whose son and darter had
-showed sich bad blood?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, to get out of service, perhaps; to have a house
-and home and a good husband, whom she could love, in
-this John Legg.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t memorize the name of no John Legg at Medge,
-though, to be sure, I have been away from them parts for
-twenty years—yes, that is so!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, you can’t remember him. He was not a Medge
-man. He came from the borough in London about two
-years ago. After his wife died, broken-hearted, it is said,
-by the conduct of his children, he sold out his business in
-London and came down to Medge, where he had a married
-sister and many nieces and nephews, his only relatives, except
-his undutiful son and daughter. He had enough to
-live on in retirement, but could not enjoy himself in idleness.
-So he took the first chance to go into business again.
-It happened that the only greengrocer in the place, an aged
-man, wanted to sell out and go to live with his married
-daughter, who was the wife of a farmer in the neighborhood.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“More fool he!” exclaimed Dandy. “I saw the play of
-‘Lear’ once.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But there was a <em>Cordelia</em> in it, you know, Dandy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; go on.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“John Legg bought out the old greengrocer, shop, stock,
-house, furniture and good will. The rectory people dealt
-with him, as why not when he was the only greengrocer in
-the village? And so he made the acquaintance of their
-servant, Julia Quin, and soon proposed to marry her, and
-as she did not wish to leave Medge and go with the rector
-and his wife to Haymore, she accepted honest John Legg.
-And I hear that they make a very comfortable couple.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How do you know all this here you are a-telling me of
-so confident like?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because in your interests I made very minute inquiries
-into all the circumstances, and Mr. Campbell was so good as
-to give me all the particulars,” replied Longman. “And,
-Dandy, will you let me speak to my other friends—they
-are waiting, you see?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sartinly, Mr. Longman. Who’s a-hindering on you?
-I myself am going into the town to send a telescope message
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>to my niece,” replied the old man, and with a low bow,
-intended for all the company, he turned and left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran hastily shook hands with Longman, then leaving
-him with the others, hurried out after his old friend, whom
-he found on the drive.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dandy! Dandy, I say! Please stop!” he called.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Mr. Hay, what’s your will, sir?” the old fellow
-demanded, turning to face his host.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You must not walk into the village. Take the dogcart.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, Mr. Hay, sir; but——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will have my way. Come down with me to the stables.
-I have not seen them yet. But I know there is a dogcart,
-because Mr. Walling, who is always wide awake, took a
-drive in it this morning to get an appetite for his breakfast
-before we were up,” said Ran, as he turned into a footpath
-leading through the grounds to the rear of the hall, far behind
-which were the stables.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy followed him, if the truth is to be told, not unwilling
-to spare his old limbs by riding instead of walking
-to the village.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The stable yard occupied full a square quarter acre of
-ground, walled in by massive stone buildings, consisting of
-stables proper, carriage houses, harness rooms, coachman’s
-and groom’s quarters and kennels.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was full of activity on this morning; for all the fourlegged
-creatures there, horses and hounds, seemed spoiling
-for a run, and were venting their impatience of restraint—the
-horses by neighing and kicking and the hounds by howling
-and scratching.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yo’ ought to have a good hunting party of gentlemen
-down here for a few weeks, sir, to take the devil out of the
-brutes,” said the old head groom, touching his hat to his
-master.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All in good time—a——Tell me your name.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hobbs, sir, at your sarvice.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Hobbs, if you have a steady-going horse, have
-him put to a dogcart, and find a careful boy to drive Mr.
-Quin to the village.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. Old Dick will be the hoss and Young Sandy
-the driver. I’ll go and give the order.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The groom went across the yard on his errand, while Ran
-and Dandy walked off to the kennels to look at the dogs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>“Not one on ’em to be compared to your Tip or my Lion,
-Mr. Hay, in my poor opinion!” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“These cannot excel ours in courage, or affection, or
-fidelity, I am sure,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And both men gave deep sighs to the memory of the faithful
-creatures they had been compelled by circumstances to
-leave behind them at the fort, where, it is true, the two dogs
-were sure of the kindest treatment from their new owners—Surgeon
-Hill, who had adopted Tip, and Adjutant Rose,
-who had taken Lion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you think we will ever see them again, Mr. Hay?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I do. In this world or the next.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The next! Mr. Hay, sir!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why not? I believe the creature that once lives, lives
-forever. Especially the creature capable of love, courage,
-fidelity and self-sacrifice, as so many of the quadrupeds are,
-must be immortal.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What Dandy would have said in reply was arrested on his
-lips by the approach of the dogcart, driven by one of the
-under-grooms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran helped his old friend upon the seat, tucked the rug
-well over his knees and then inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where do you wish to go?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To the telescope office in the village.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Drive this gentleman to the telegraph office,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Beg pardon, sir; but there is no telegraph office in the
-village, and none nearer than Chuxton,” said the young
-groom, touching his hat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! Chuxton is ten miles off! Where we left the train
-last night you know, Mr. Quin,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know! Well, let him drive me there, then! That
-is if you can spare the carriage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course I can! All day, if you want it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“’Cause, you see, I don’t feel aquil to traveling all the
-way back to the south of England, after having come all
-the way up to the north, and I do want to see my niece very
-bad. And I mean to send a telescope as will be sartin to
-fetch her. Yes, that is so.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. Drive to Chuxton telegraph office, and
-then wherever Mr. Quin wishes to go. You are at his
-orders.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>The boy took the reins and drove off, and Ran turned
-again to question the old groom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Has there been much sport about here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“None at all, sir. Since the young squire were killed, the
-old squire never had no heart for nothing as long as he
-lived.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! How are the preserves?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, the game is increasing and multiplying to
-that degree for the want of sporting gents among ’em to
-thin ’em out, that for once in a way poachers is a blessing.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poachers! Why, what is the gamekeeper about, to permit
-poachers to trespass?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, there ain’t no gamekeeper here, nor likewise
-been none since the old squire died. The last gamekeeper
-went off to Australia to seek his fortune.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank Heaven!” breathed Ran with fervency, not loud
-but deep, that now he could put his friend in office without
-hurting any one’s feelings.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see, it was this a way, sir. When Kirby went to
-foreign parts, the old squire was too ill to be bothered about
-his successor, and after he died the place was left without
-one. But surely, sir, Mr. Prowt wrote to you about all
-these matters, for he sartinly told me as you had wrote back
-how you would wait till you come down here in person to
-see the place before you would appoint aither gamekeeper
-or coachman.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What! has the coachman gone too?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Surely, sir, Mr. Prowt wrote and told you that, too! He
-left to better himself, so he said—took sarvice along of the
-Duke of Ambleton.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What wages do you get as groom here, Hobbs?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Head groom, sir, and twenty pund a year and my keep,
-and bin in the famberly, man and boy, fifty years, and hope
-to continuate in it for fifty more, I was gwine to say, but
-anyways as long as I can work, and that will be as long as I
-live, for I’d scorn to retire.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Excellent, Hobbs. Have you a family?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Wife, sir, keeping house for me in the cottage there,”
-said the old man, pointing to a little stone cottage built in
-the wall next the stable, “and one son, sir—boy that driv
-the dogcart. Steady lad, sir, though his feyther says it; and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>one darter, sir, upper housemaid at the Hall—good girl,
-sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are blessed in your family, Hobbs.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thanks be to Heaven, sir!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, then, you said your wages as head groom were
-twenty pound a year. How much did the coachman get?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Just twice as much, sir, forty pound a year, and a good
-sound house over his head, and his livery and his beer. And
-left all that, sir, for ten pund more, and gold lace on his
-coat, and the honor of driving a duke. May the de’il fly
-away with him!—begging your pardon, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention it,” laughed Ran. “But you would not
-have left Haymore under the same circumstances?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Me!—why, sir, I never had the chance, so what would
-be the use of boasting? But, indeed, I don’t think I would.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hobbs, can you drive?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“None better in the world, sir, though I say it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then you shall be my coachman at the same wages that
-your predecessor now gets from his new master,” said Ran,
-smiling benignly down on the stupefied face of the man
-before him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, sir! sir! but this is too much, too much for poor
-me! Such a permotion as to be coachman! I can hardly
-believe it, sir! I can’t, indeed! And at a rise of wages,
-too! I can’t hardly believe it!” droned Hobbs, fairly dazed
-by his good fortune.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go and tell your wife, then. And begin to see about
-your livery, and fix up the coachman’s cottage—at my cost,
-Hobbs. All that will help you to believe it. Good-day.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With these words the gracious young master left the
-stable yard and walked back to the Hall, happy in the feeling
-of having made others so, yet grave and thoughtful in
-the recognition of his responsibilities for all who were dependent
-on him.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XX<br> <span class='large'>THE NEW RECTOR</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>When Ran entered the morning room, where he had left
-his friends, he found them all there, but now gathered in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>a wide circle around the glowing sea coal fire in the large
-open grate, listening to Longman, who was giving a detailed
-account of his visit to the rectory and his evening with his
-mother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran drew a chair, sat down among them and made one
-of the audience.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the speaker had finished his story Ran turned to
-him and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Longman, if you are ready you may tell me what
-you meant when you said that you had something to report
-in reference to that undutiful son of worthy John Legg,”
-said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. He has taken ‘holy orders,’ the more effectually
-to serve the devil, I fear. And he has been appointed
-by his brother-in-law to the living of Haymore parish,
-worth six hundred pounds, besides the rectory and glebe—all
-of which is in your gift, Mr. Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed! And who the mischief is the gentleman’s
-brother-in-law?” demanded Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who but the fraudulent claimant of Haymore? Gentleman
-Geff, or whatever his real name may be?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Ran, drawing his breath hard. “The
-plot seems to thicken! So the deceived wife of our Gentleman
-Geff, the young lady upon whom we have all wasted
-so much sympathy, is really no other than the pretty adventuress
-who left her father to seek her fortune! But I
-think we heard of her as Lamia Leegh.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well,” said Longman, “it would appear that when
-brother and sister left honest John Legg, their shopkeeping
-father, they must have changed the spelling of their names
-from plain Legg to mystic Leegh. The latter has a more
-aristocratic sound, you know. At any rate, their name was
-Legg; yet you heard of the girl as Leegh, and certainly the
-letter of the man to Mr. Campbell was signed Leegh—Cassius
-Leegh.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What did the fellow write to Mr. Campbell about?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, to warn him to leave the rectory, as he himself had
-been appointed to the living and should enter upon his office
-in January, after which he should not require the assistance
-of a curate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed!” again exclaimed Ran. “I think the fraudulent
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>claimant is giving away the Haymore patronage in a
-very reckless way!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman laughed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let us see now how the case stands. The plot thickens
-so fast that it requires a little clearing. The Rev. Mr.
-Campbell was called to Haymore to fill the pulpit of the
-late Dr. Orton during the absence of the latter at Cannes,
-and remains in the office at a low salary until a rector is
-appointed to the living. And my substitute, the fraudulent
-claimant, has appointed his unworthy brother-in-law, who
-has warned the good curate to leave. Have I stated the
-case correctly?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite so,” said Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. And we expect the three worthies,
-Gentleman Geff, Miss Legg and the Rev. Mr. Legg, calling
-themselves Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and the Rev. Cassius
-Leegh, all in full feather, here this evening! We must
-be prepared for them. Gentleman Geff must be confronted
-with the wife he deserted and the friend he assassinated.
-Oh, that Miss Legg might be met by her forsaken father!
-That is barely possible if John Legg should take the train
-for Chuxton immediately on the receipt of Dandy’s telegram,
-and come with his wife! And the Rev. Mr. Leegh
-shall be received by—the rector of Haymore! But that last
-item necessitates prompt action. Longman, come into the
-library with me, will you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The hunter arose and followed Ran upstairs and into the
-library, where they sat down at a table on which stood pen,
-ink and paper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Longman,” said Ran, “would it suit you to be gamekeeper
-of Haymore?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Hay, it would make me the happiest man on
-earth! But I really would not wish you to give me the
-place at another man’s expense.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never fear; it will be at no man’s expense in the sense
-you mean. There has been no gamekeeper at Haymore for
-a year past. The last one left to seek his fortune in Australia,
-and no successor has yet been appointed. The place
-is yours if you will have it. Indeed, you would please me
-much by taking it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, I will take it, sir, with many thanks,”
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>exclaimed the hunter warmly, his whole face glowing with
-the sincere delight he felt.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then that is settled. Get the keys from the bailiff and
-examine the cottage and have it fitted up for yourself and
-your mother in the most comfortable manner and send the
-bills to the bailiff.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will, Mr. Hay. You have made me very happy, for
-my mother’s sake as well as my own. We both owe you
-hearty thanks!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t speak of thanks again, Longman. The man who
-saved my life can never owe me thanks for anything that I
-may have the happiness of doing for him. Now to speak
-of another matter. Will you kindly take a letter for me to
-the Rev. Mr. Campbell?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly, sir, with great pleasure.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Take a book, then, or amuse yourself in any way you
-please, while I write it,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman arose and roamed about before the bookcases,
-reading the titles of the imprisoned volumes until he was
-tired of the amusement. None of the books attracted him.
-He was not a bookman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have finished my letter now, Longman, if you are
-ready to take it,” said Ran, folding and sealing the note in
-which he had invited Mr. Campbell to come with his wife
-and daughter to dine with himself and Mrs. Hay that evening
-and confer about the reverend gentleman’s appointment
-to the living of Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am quite ready, sir,” said Longman, and he took the
-letter and put it in his breast pocket and left the library.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had scarcely gone when a footman entered and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, the bailiff, Mr. Prowt, is here, asking
-to see you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let him come in here,” said Ran with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A moment later the bailiff entered, took off his hat, bowed
-profoundly to the young squire, and stood waiting.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Take a seat, Mr. Prowt, if you please. You wished to
-see me, I am told,” said Ran pleasantly, though hardly able
-to control the smile that lurked in the corners of his eyes
-and lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir,” replied the bailiff, sitting down and placing
-his hat on the floor between his feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?” inquired Ran after an awkward pause.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>“Well, squire, if there is anything amiss I hope you will
-excuse it. I really did not expect you down last evening,
-and made no preparations to meet you. I am told by the
-head groom that there was no carriage sent to the station at
-Chuxton.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It does not matter in the least, Mr. Prowt,” said Ran
-with a boyish twinkle in his eyes that he could not suppress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, begging your pardon, squire, but it matters
-very much. I wish to set myself right with you, sir. I wish
-to tell you that it was all the neglect and carelessness of
-them telegraph people in Chuxton not forwarding your dispatch
-in time. You must, in course, sent it yesterday morning
-to announce your arrival in the evening, but I never got
-it until this blessed morning, when I thought that it was
-this evening you were coming. And I did not know any
-better until I came over here and stopped at the stable to
-tell Hobbs to be sure to send the chariot to meet you. And
-he told me that you were already here—that you had arrived
-last night. I don’t think I ever was so knocked over
-in my life. And no one to meet you! And no ceremonies
-befitting the reception of the Squire of Haymore and his
-bride!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is all right. Don’t trouble yourself,” said Ran, now
-laughing outright. “Come and dine with me this evening.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Prowt stared for a moment before answering. Never in
-the memory of man had a bailiff been invited to dine with a
-squire of Haymore. Then he reflected that the young heir
-had been found in America, and that America was a very
-democratic and republican part of the world, and that would
-account for the free and easy ways of the new squire. Only
-the bailiff was afraid Mr. Hay might be going to ask the
-butler and the head groom to dine with him, also; and that
-the bailiff could not stand. If he had never dined with the
-squire, neither had he ever dined with butler or groom.
-While he hesitated, Ran, misunderstanding his perplexity,
-said kindly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An informal dinner, Prowt. Only the clergyman and
-his wife and daughter, my solicitor, my brother-in-law, two
-friends from America, Mrs. Hay and myself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Prowt drew a deep sigh of relief.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir,” he said. “You do me great honor.
-When shall I bring my books for your examination?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>“Not this week, Prowt. This is Thursday. No business
-until Monday.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Just as you please, sir,” said the bailiff, picking up his
-hat and rising.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And without more words he bowed himself out of the
-library.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran went downstairs and rejoined his friends in the
-morning room, and entertained them with an account of his
-interview with the bailiff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My chief reason for asking him to dinner,” concluded
-the young man, “was that he might be present this evening
-to assist us in receiving Mr. and Mrs. Gentleman Geff and
-their esteemed brother and brother-in-law.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this moment the luncheon bell rang, and the whole
-party went across the hall to the small dining-room.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXI<br> <span class='large'>TWO SCENES</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Could any member of the party gathered at Haymore
-Hall have been gifted with clairvoyance, he or she might
-have witnessed in succession two scenes on that morning of
-December the 15th, distant, indeed, in space, but near in
-interest to the household.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The first scene was in a greengrocer’s shop in Holly
-Street, Medge.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A tall, spare, gray-haired and grave-looking man, of fifty
-years or upward, stood behind his counter waiting for
-morning customers, for it was still early.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A blue-coated telegraph boy hurried in, put a blue envelope
-in his hand, and laid an open book on the counter,
-saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A dispatch, Mr. Legg; please sign.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The astonished John Legg, who had never received a
-telegram in the half century of his whole life, and now
-feared that this one must herald some well-merited misfortune
-to his unloving and undutiful but beloved son or
-daughter, nervously scrawled his name in the boy’s book
-and tore open the envelope and read:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>“<span class='sc'>Haymore, Chuxton, Yorkshire</span>,</div>
-      <div class='line in16'>December 15, 18—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To Mr. John Legg</span>, Medge, Hantz: I have just come
-from America; want to see my niece; am not able to travel.
-Let her come to me immediately. It will be to her advantage.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Andrew Quin.</span>”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>With a gasp of relief that this message was no herald of
-misfortune, but rather possibly of good fortune, honest John
-hurried with it into the back parlor, where his wife—a red-cheeked,
-blue-eyed, brown-haired, buxom woman of forty or
-more—sat sewing, and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here, Juley! Read this! What does it mean? Who is
-Andrew Quin?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he thrust the dispatch into her hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her eyes devoured it, and then she answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, it is from my dear old Uncle Dandy. He went
-out to the gold fields in California about twenty years ago,
-and we have never heard from him since. And now he has
-just come back, and rich as Croesus, of course! And I am
-the only relation he has in the whole world! And he wants
-to see me. And he isn’t able to travel. And he may be at
-death’s door, poor, dear old fellow. John Legg, when does
-the next northbound train stop here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, I believe there’s a parliamentary stops here at—let
-me see—nine o’clock,” answered the greengrocer, slowly
-collecting his ideas, that had been scattered by the intense
-excitement of his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then we must go by it!” exclaimed Mrs. Legg, jumping
-to her feet and beginning immediately to lock up cupboards
-and set back chairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What!” cried John Legg, aghast at this impetuosity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We must go by it, or he may be dead before we get
-there, and his hospital left to fortunes!” exclaimed Julia in
-such trepidation that she reversed her words and never perceived
-that she did so, nor, in his bewilderment, did John.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But we haven’t half an hour to get ready in!” he
-pleaded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We must get ready in less time!” cried Mrs. Legg,
-turning to run up the stairs that led from one corner of
-the back room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What’ll I do about the shop?” called John in dismay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>“Leave it to the boy a day or two,” replied Julia from
-the head of the stairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Everything will go to rack and ruin!” cried the greengrocer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“John Legg!” demanded his wife, rushing down the
-stairs fully equipped for the journey with bonnet and big
-shawl, an umbrella and bag in hand—“do you mean for the
-sake of a paltry, two-penny-ha’-penny shop, not worth fifty
-pounds, to risk an immense fortune, that will make you a
-millionaire, or a silver or a gold king, or a brown answer
-(bonanza?), or something of the sort?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ my dear,”
-said the man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jedehiah Judkins, come here and bring your master’s
-overcoat! And, Jed, do you mind the shop well while we
-are gone, and get Widow Willet’s Bob to come and help
-you, and I’ll pay him and give you half a sovereign if we
-find all right when we come back Saturday night,” said
-Mrs. Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The boy, who had just come in with his empty basket
-from delivering vegetables about the town, hastened with
-big eyes into the back room to obey his mistress’ orders.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg submitted. He always did. Julia went about
-fastening doors and windows, and lastly raking out and
-covering up the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then leaving only the key of the front door with “the
-boy,” the pair left the house and hurried to the station,
-where they were just in time to buy their tickets and jump
-into a second-class carriage. And before John Legg had
-time to recover his routed and dispersed mental faculties
-they were whirled halfway to London.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are the most energetic woman I ever saw in my
-life, Julia!” he said, trying to understand the situation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Need to be when there is a brown answer fortune, and
-a silver kingdom, if not a gold one, in the question—yes,
-and a dear, dying uncle, too!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I wonder if the boy will remember to take that celery to
-the vicarage when the market gardener brings it this afternoon?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother the celery, and the vicar, too! Think of the
-silver and gold kingdom—and—yes, of course, the poor,
-dear, dying uncle!” said Julia. And onward they flew
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>northward toward Yorkshire, unconscious that they were
-destined to take a part in a very memorable drama to be
-enacted at Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The other scene connected with the same drama, and
-which the clairvoyant might have looked in upon, was the
-elegant private parlor at Langham’s Hotel, where the counterfeit
-Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and the Rev. Mr.
-Cassius Leegh sat at an early breakfast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The personal appearance of Gentleman Geff and his
-“lady” are familiar to our readers. That of the Rev. Cassius
-Leegh may be described. He resembled his sister.
-Nature had given him a very handsome form and face, but
-sin had marred both.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On this morning both men looked bad; their faces were
-pallid, their eyes red, their hands shaky, their voices husky,
-their nerves “shattered,” their tempers—infernal!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had plunged into the gulf of dissipation
-to drown remorse. And the last two months of lawless
-deviltry in the French capital had made of him a mental
-and physical wreck.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His “reverend” brother-in-law was not far above him in
-the path that leads down to perdition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Gentleman Geff was as well as serene, and as beautiful
-as it was possible for her to be under her adverse circumstances.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But then, being the woman that she was, she had much
-to console her. She had come from Paris enriched with
-Indian shawls, velvet and satin dresses, laces and jewels
-which might have been the envy of a duchess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She wore her traveling suit of navy-blue poplin, for they
-were to take an early train for Yorkshire immediately after
-breakfast. She performed her duties as hostess at breakfast
-with perfect self-possession, though often under great
-provocation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When you are settled at the rectory you will, of course,
-bring down Mrs. Leegh and the children. I am quite longing
-to make the acquaintance of my sweet sister-in-law and
-her little ones,” said Lamia softly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know,” sulkily replied her brother. “It’s a bad
-time—in midwinter—to move children from the mild climate
-of Somerset to the severe one of York.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look here!” angrily and despotically exclaimed Gentleman
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>Geff. “I won’t have it! You’ve got to bring ’em,
-climate or no climate, or you’re no parson for my parish!
-It was well enough when you were rollicking and carousing
-’round Paris to leave your wife and kids with your father-in-law
-in Somerset, but when you’re settled in Haymore
-rectory you have got to have ’em with you. It would be
-deuced disreputable to have you, the pastor of a parish,
-living in one place and your wife and children in another.
-And I don’t want any reverend reprobates around me, I can
-tell you that much!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You shall have no cause to complain, Mr. Hay,” replied
-Cassius Leegh, controlling his temper and speaking coolly,
-though his blood was boiling with rage at the insult, for
-which he would have liked to knock his “patron” down.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think it is time to go.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff arose, muttering curses at all and sundry
-persons and things, flung his pocketbook at Mr. Leegh and
-told him to go down to the office and settle the bill and
-order a cab.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Half an hour later Gentleman Geff and his companions
-were seated in a compartment of a first-class carriage, flying
-northward as fast as the mail train could carry them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>My gentleman’s valet and my lady’s maid traveled by the
-second class of the same train.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff made himself as disagreeable to his fellow
-travelers as shattered nerves and bad temper could drive him
-to be, and as the hours passed he became so unendurable as
-to tax to the utmost the forbearance of his victims, who rejoiced
-when the day of torture drew to a close and their
-train steamed into the station at Chuxton and stopped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They all go out and stood on the platform. The train
-started again and steamed northward. Gentleman Geff
-looked around for his state carriage and four. There was
-none visible. He began to curse and swear.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come into the waiting-room, dearest,” said Lamia
-sweetly. “No doubt your carriage will be here in a few
-moments.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It should be here now, waiting. I’ll be —— ——!”
-(with a terrible oath) “if I don’t discharge every —— ——
-of them as soon as I get to Haymore!” he added as he led
-the way into the building and sat down, not to please Lamia,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>but to rest himself, for bodily weakness was one other of
-the bad effects of his intemperance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were but two other passengers besides Gentleman
-Geff’s party who got out at Chuxton.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were a middle-aged couple, who walked arm in arm
-to the Tawny Lion Tavern, engaged the only carriage there,
-and drove on to Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were, of course, Mr. and Mrs. John Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff and his friends waited and waited, the
-maid or the valet going out at intervals to see if the carriage
-from Haymore Hall had come, or was coming, Gentleman
-Geff cursing and swearing freely in the interim.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At last he burst out with a fearful oath, adding:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We can’t wait here all night, Leegh—and be —— to
-you! Be off with yourself to the Black Lion, or the Brown
-Bear, whatever the beastly tavern is called, and see if you
-can get a fly.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Rev. Cassius, glad enough to get out of sight and
-hearing of his worthy brother-in-law and patron, hurried
-off to the Tawny Lion, and made such haste that he soon returned
-with the fly, which had already taken Mr. and Mrs.
-John Legg to Haymore Hall and had just come back to
-the inn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With many threats, sealed by terrific oaths, of extirpation
-of all the domestic establishment at the Hall, Gentleman
-Geff entered the carriage with his party and drove off to
-meet Nemesis at Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXII<br> <span class='large'>AN ARRIVAL AT HAYMORE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>When the curate burst into his wife’s sitting-room with
-the joyful news that he was to be the Vicar of Haymore,
-his impetuous delight was not inspired by family affection
-alone, although he was deeply sensible of the benefits his beloved
-ones would derive from the commodious house and
-grounds and the liberal income attached to the living; but
-he was relieved and satisfied to know that his new flock, in
-whom he had already become interested, would not be
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>turned over to the wolf in sheep’s clothing he knew Cassius
-Leegh to be.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell received his news with a stare of stupefaction.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” she inquired at length.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I mean that Mr. Randolph Hay—the real Mr. Randolph
-Hay—the real Squire of Haymore—has offered me the living
-of Haymore, which is in his gift, and has invited me to
-dine with him this evening to talk over the affair, and
-begged me to waive ceremony and bring my wife and daughter
-with me to meet his wife and friends. And this he asks
-as a particular favor, for particular reasons which shall be
-explained when we meet, he adds. Of course I shall go, and
-you will both accompany me,” he concluded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course we will,” readily responded Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Jennie in dismay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What are you afraid of, my dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nothing. But, oh, papa, if I might only remain at
-home!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, dear, would you disoblige a man who is about
-to confer a great benefit upon you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not for the world, papa. I will go if you think my failure
-to do so would displease Mr. Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not think it would ‘displease’ him in the sense of
-angering him, my dear; for, by Longman’s account, he is
-one of the most amiable and considerate of men; but I do
-think, from the tone of his note, that it would disappoint
-him, for evidently he has a very strong motive for wanting
-our presence at Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then certainly I will go. But have you any idea, papa,
-what that motive can be?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think I have, my dear. You know that he who is now
-in possession is the rightful squire. But surely you have
-not forgotten that the fraudulent claimant has been daily
-expected for a week past.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh!” exclaimed Hetty and Jennie in a breath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, he is certainly on his way to the Hall this afternoon,
-and without a suspicion that the rightful owner of
-Haymore is in possession.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jim!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>These exclamations broke simultaneously from the lips
-of mother and daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear ones; the felon, when he shall enter the
-Hall to take possession, as he will think, of his stolen estate,
-will be confronted by the friend he treacherously assassinated
-and plundered and left for dead to be devoured by the
-wolves of the Black Woods in California, eight months ago.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jim!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a terrible story, my dear ones, as Longman has told
-it. But retribution is at hand.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And do you think, Jim, that Mr. Hay also wants the
-bigamist to be confronted by his forsaken wife?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear, I think he does.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa! papa!” cried Jennie, turning pale.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, you met the man on the steamer when you
-were alone and you were not afraid of him. If you meet
-him at Haymore you will be on my arm,” said the curate in
-a reassuring tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And on your arm I shall fear nothing, papa, dear! And
-now I will not distress you any more by my nervous fancies.
-I will go, papa, and behave as well as I can.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is my good, brave girl!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And—I know—Mrs. Longman will take good care of
-baby while we are gone,” said Jennie in a tone of confidence,
-but with a look of doubt.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course she will! There can be no mistake there!
-She will take better care of little Essie than you or I could
-with our best endeavors. ‘Why?’—do you ask?—because
-she is an experienced nurse and a conscientious woman—and
-a tender mother! Are those reasons enough?” demanded
-Hetty, laughing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie nodded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The proposed visit to Haymore Hall had for its suspected
-object a very grave and important matter. Yet these two
-women began immediately to think of the trifling items—what
-they should wear!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It is always so! Whether a woman is to be married or
-executed, her toilet seems to be an affair of the most serious
-consideration.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mary Stuart’s dress was as artistically arranged for the
-block as ever it had been for her bridals.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>Jennie’s big trunk was unlocked and invaded. She had
-several dresses, gifts from her generous friends in New
-York, much handsomer than Hetty had ever possessed; and
-mother and daughter were near enough of a size to make
-any dress in the collection fit either.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty, having her choice, selected a mazarine blue satin,
-trimmed with deep flounces of Spanish lace, which very
-well suited her fair, rosy face and sunny brown hair. Jennie
-chose a ruby silk, trimmed with fringe of the same color,
-which well set off her rich brunette complexion, dark eyes
-and dark hair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On ordinary occasions of neighborly visiting for so short
-a distance as that between the parsonage and the Hall the
-curate and his wife and daughter would have walked, but
-with such—to them—grand toilets, the two women required
-a carriage, which now, with his improved prospects, Mr.
-Campbell could well afford.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So a passing boy was called from the road and dispatched
-to the Red Fox to engage Nahum with his mare “Miss
-Nancy,” and the nondescript vehicle called by the proprietor
-a “fly,” by the curate a “carryall,” and by the village boys
-a “shandy-ray-dan.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At precisely six o’clock this imposing conveyance was at
-the gate of the parsonage waiting for the parson and his
-party.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at Haymore Hall, preparations were completed
-for the reception of the most incompatible company
-that ever could be gathered together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Let us take a look at the people in the house and at the
-guests they were expecting</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First, as to the inmates, there were Ran and Judy—Mr.
-and Mrs. Randolph Hay—their solicitor, Mr. Will Walling;
-their brother, young Michael Man; the hunter, Samson
-Longman, and the old miner, Andrew Quin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three last-mentioned men—Man, Longman and Quin—could
-all swear to the identity of the squire in possession
-as the real Mr. Randolph Hay, and to the fraudulent claimant
-as an adventurer known to them by the name of Geoffrey
-Delamere and the nickname of Gentleman Geff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To this party was coming Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and
-their daughter, Mrs. Montgomery, who could all testify to
-the identity of the same fraudulent claimant and bigamous
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>bridegroom, as an ex-captain of foot in her majesty’s service,
-whom they had known and who had married Jennie
-Campbell under his real name of Kightly Montgomery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And also Mr. and Mrs. John Legg, who could certainly
-point out the deceived “bride,” the so-called Mrs. Randolph
-Hay, once called Miss Lamia Leegh, as their daughter,
-Lydia Legg, and the clerical impostor, the Rev. Cassius
-Leegh, as their son Clay Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All these hosts and guests would make up the receiving
-party who, at eight o’clock that evening, would be waiting
-to welcome Gentleman Geff, his lady and her brother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At six o’clock the resident party in the Hall were gathered
-in the drawing-room in full evening dress, waiting for
-their guests.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy wore her wedding dress of cream-colored silk,
-trimmed with duchess lace, but without the veil or orange
-flowers, and with pearl jewelry instead. It was the prettiest,
-if not the only proper dress for the occasion that she possessed,
-her wardrobe being but a schoolgirl’s outfit.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran also wore his wedding suit, because—but will this
-be believed of the young squire of Haymore?—it was the
-only dress suit with which the careless young fellow had as
-yet thought to provide himself!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman wore, also, each his “marriage
-garment,” which had been provided for Ran’s and
-Judy’s wedding, and for the like reason—that they had no
-others for full dress occasions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling, being the dude of dudes in society, had a
-choice among a score of evening suits, so much alike that
-none but a connoisseur could have seen any difference between
-them. He wore one of these.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sort of ser’ous time, Mr. Walling,” said old Dandy, who
-found himself seated next to Mr. Will near the great open
-fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t see why it should be for you, Mr. Quin,” said Will
-Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No? Don’t ee, now? Well, I allus did hate a furse.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Fuss? Why, there will not be any.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran, Judy, Mike and Longman, who were standing in
-the front bay window looking out upon the drive and chatting
-together, now came sauntering up to the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>“What is the matter with Dandy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is afraid there will be a ‘furse,’” gravely replied
-Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran burst out laughing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Before the peals of his mirth subsided, heavy, rumbling,
-tumbling wheels were heard on the drive, and the “shandy-ray-dan”
-drew up before the Hall door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The mirthful group composed themselves to receive their
-first guests.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The door was opened by a footman, who announced:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell, Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Montgomery.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the party from the parsonage entered the drawing-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy went to meet them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell?” said Ran interrogatively as he
-offered his hand to the curate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell bowed assent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to see you, sir. Mrs. Campbell, I presume?
-And Mrs. Montgomery, also? Ladies, I am very
-happy to make your acquaintance. Permit me to present
-you to Mrs. Hay,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And when this and all the other introductions were over
-and they were seated near the great open fire that the chill
-of the December evening made so welcome as well as so
-necessary, Mrs. Campbell, observing Judy’s painful, blushing
-shyness, and attributing it all only to her extreme youth
-and inexperience, and not at all to the conscious ignorance
-that she did not expect in the young bride, addressed conversation
-to her and tried to draw her out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Judy blushed and fidgeted and answered only in
-monosyllables. She was so absurdly afraid of falling into
-that dialect which some of her friends thought one of the
-quaintest, sweetest charms about her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You have lived most of your life in America?” said
-Mrs. Campbell, rather as stating a fact than putting a
-question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am,” breathed Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have never seen America, but my daughter here spent
-several months over there, and I think she was very much
-pleased with the country and the people—eh, Jennie?”
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>inquired Mrs. Campbell with the intention of drawing Mrs.
-Montgomery into the conversation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I was, indeed. Everybody was so kind to me,” replied
-the young woman so heartily that Judy felt immediately
-drawn toward her, and thenceforth the intercourse of
-the three became easier.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, to promote a good, social understanding,
-also contrived to introduce the subject of mining in the gold
-fields of California. And here all his companions were, so
-to speak, at home. Every one, except the curate’s party, had
-something to contribute of instruction upon this matter.
-Even Judy forgot her fear of falling into dialect, and was
-led to speak freely of home life in the mining camps and
-woman’s work and mission there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The whole company was on a full flow of conversation
-when the butler opened the door and announced dinner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran immediately arose, offered his arm to Mrs. Campbell,
-and begged Mr. Campbell to take in Mrs. Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Will Walling, with one of his most lady-killing
-glances, offered his arm to Mrs. Montgomery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And they all went to the dining-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But neither in the drawing-room nor at the dinner table
-was the slightest allusion made to the real motive of their
-gathering.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>An hour later, when the whole party had returned to the
-drawing-room and the talk had wandered from the silver
-mines of Colorado to those of Siberia, a footman entered
-the room and spoke to his master apart, and in a low voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Two persons to see Mr. Andrew Quin?’ Show them in
-here, Basset. Or, stay!—Mr. Quin!” exclaimed Ran, turning
-to his old friend.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy came up in a moment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here are two people inquiring for you. They may come
-upon private business with you. I don’t know, of course.
-So, shall they come in here, or should you prefer to meet
-them first?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I know who they are! They are my niece and
-nevvy from Hantz. I’ll go and meet them!” said Dandy in
-a delighted tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And then bring them in here and introduce them to
-me,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Dandy followed the footman out into the hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>There he found a tall, thin, gray-haired man clothed in
-an ulster from head to heel, holding in his left hand a warm
-cap, and on his right arm a stout, rosy, handsome woman in
-a black velvet bonnet and a gray plaid shawl that nearly
-covered the whole of her black silk dress.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You—you—you are—my niece—Julia Quin—as was?”
-inquired old Dandy, moving doubtfully toward the smiling
-woman and holding out his hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed; that is, you are Uncle Andrew,” the visitor
-exclaimed, taking the offered hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, to be sure I am!” he cried, drawing her up and
-kissing her heartily. “And would you believe it, my wench,
-but this is the first time I have kissed a ’oman for more
-than twenty years! And now interdooce me to your hubby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is hardly need; he knows who you are! Shake
-hands long o’ your nephy,” she answered, laughing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The two men simultaneously advanced and met.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir,” said John
-Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So am I yours,” answered Dandy, cordially, if a little
-incoherently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you didn’t know me, Juley, did you, now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not by sight, Uncle Andrew. You have changed some,”
-replied Mrs. Legg, smiling and showing all her fine teeth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So have you! So have you! And a deal more ’n I
-have! I left you a tall, slim, fair wench under twenty, and
-I find you a broad, stout, rosy woman over forty. If that
-ain’t a change I’d like to know what a change is!” said
-Dandy triumphantly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, your change! When you left us to seek your fortune
-in the gold fields of California you were a stout, broad-shouldered,
-red-faced and red-headed man of forty. Now
-you are a thin, pale, silver-haired old gentleman over sixty,”
-retorted Julia, artfully mingling flattery with truth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, that is so; that is so,” meekly assented old Dandy;
-and then, meditatively, he added: “And I like it to be so.
-I like to think a good deal of my body wasting away in the
-sweet, sunshiny air while still I am able to walk about in
-it; so as when, I leave it there’ll be only skin and bone to
-lay in the ground—or very little more.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Uncle Dandy, don’t talk that a way! You can’t be
-much over sixty, and you may live to be over eighty or
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>ninety—that is twenty or thirty years for you to live in
-this world.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What for?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘What for?’ Why—why, to be a comfort to your dear
-niece who loves you,” replied Mrs. Legg, not consciously
-hypocritical, but self-deceived into the notion that she was
-sincere.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” grunted Dandy in a tone which left his niece in
-doubt whether he disbelieved her or not.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Suddenly the old man, feeling himself fatigued by standing
-a few minutes, remembered that he had impolitely, even
-if unintentionally, kept his relatives in the same position.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, excuse me! Take seats! take seats!” he said, waving
-his hands wildly around the hall among the oaken and
-leather-cushioned chairs with which it was furnished.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. and Mrs. Legg seated themselves on two of the
-nearest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy drew a third up before then and dropped into it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You’ll come home ’long of us and stop for good, Uncle
-Andrew, I hope,” said Mrs. Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Before the old man could reply Mr. Legg took up the
-word.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, we should be proud to have you a member of
-our family for the rest of your life! And may it be a long
-and happy one!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do thank ye, niece and nephy! I do, indeed! But I
-don’t know ’bout going home ’long of you now! You see,
-I’m stopping here ’long o’ my young friend, Mr. Randolph
-Hay, and wisiting of him, am sort o’ at his orders——”
-began Dandy, but his niece interrupted him hastily, almost
-indignantly, with:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You don’t mean to say, Uncle Andrew Quin, that while
-ever you have got a ’fectionate niece and nephy ready to
-share their last crust ’long o’ you as you have gone at your
-age and tuk service at the Hall?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lord! No, wench! What are ye talking on? Didn’t I
-tell ’ee that Mr. Randolph Hay was a friend of mine? And
-didn’t I tell ’ee I was a-visiting on him? What be ye
-a-thinking on?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, then, what did you mean by being at his orders?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! just to give my testimony onto a certain matter in
-case of need. And I say I can’t give you any answer to your
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>invitation until I see how things be gwine to turn out at
-the Hall!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! how long will that be?” demanded Mrs. Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Maybe a few hours, if it don’t go into court; maybe a
-few centuries if it do. And in the last case, I sha’n’t be here
-so long.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Uncle Dandy, you speak in riddles.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I must do that at the present moment, my dear. But in
-a few hours, or a few centuries, if you haven’t guessed them
-in that time, I will give you the answers to them riddles.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Uncle Andrew, we thought by your sending a telegram
-to us to ‘come at once,’ that you were very ill.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my wench, I thank you and him for coming so
-very prompt. I do, indeed! So much prompter than I
-could expect! Really, I didn’t think you would get here
-until some time to-morrow. But I’m glad and thankful as
-you’re here to-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you are not ill, Uncle Dandy. You are very well,
-thank the Lord!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I never said I was ill, Juley. I said I wasn’t able to
-travel. No more I ain’t. And no more I wasn’t. I’m a
-feeble old man, wench.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tut! tut! ‘Feeble old man,’ indeed! You are a ‘fine
-old English gentleman,’ as the song says. And now you
-have come home to old England so well off and so well-looking
-you will be getting married and putting some
-blooming young aunt-in-law over our heads!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Blooming young’ fiddlesticks!” giggled old Dandy, not
-displeased at the words of his niece.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But what made you telegraph us in such hot haste?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“’Cause, after being away so long and coming so far, I
-got into a sort of fever to see my kin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And we were in a fever to see you, you dear uncle, from
-the moment we got your dispatch. And we thank you now
-for sending it, although it did frighten us nearly to death
-on your account.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Isn’t it strange you should have cared so much for an
-old uncle you hadn’t seen nor heerd tell on for twenty years
-or more?” demanded Dandy with a twinkle in his eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Strange or not, it was so. But is it stranger than that
-you should have cared so much for me as to send a telegram
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>and be in a fever to see me? Come, Uncle Dandy! You
-know ‘blood is thicker than water.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is so! Yes, that is so!” muttered the old man
-meditatively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, Julia! I think that we must go. You see, Mr.
-Quin——Or may I call you Uncle Quin?” inquired John
-Legg, interrupting his own speech.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Uncle Quin, Uncle Andrew, Uncle Dandy—whichever
-you please,” cordially replied the old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, Uncle Quin, I must tell you that we are very glad
-to find you in such good health. We are sorry, though, that
-you cannot go home with us at once. We shall have to return
-to Medge to-morrow. To-night, however, we shall
-have to find quarters in the village here, and will see you
-again in the morning before we leave. Shall we say good-night
-now?” said John Legg, offering his hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, stay! stop! I forgot! Mr. Randolph Hay wishes
-to see you both—wants to make your acquaintance—and
-made me promise to bring you into the drawing-room.
-Come!” said Dandy, taking the offered hand of his nephew
-and trying to draw him toward a door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg hesitated, looked at his wife, and then inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who’s in there?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Squire and wife, and brother-in-law and lawyer, parson
-and wife and daughter, and a backwoodsman—all plain people
-as you needn’t be afraid on; I ain’t.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We would rather not go in. We are not exactly dressed
-for company, right off a railway journey, and a very long
-one at that, as we are. Can’t you step in and persuade the
-young squire to come out and speak to us? You can tell
-him how it is.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I’ll go and try,” said Dandy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he returned to the drawing-room, went up to Ran,
-and whispered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Hay, my niece and nephy be plain folk and a bit
-shy. They want to pay their respects to you, but don’t like
-to face the company in the drawing-room. Will you please
-come and speak to them in the hall?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly,” replied Ran, rising; and then turning to his
-friends he added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am called out for a moment. Will you excuse me?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>Smiles and nods from every one answered him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He followed Dandy to the hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Randolph Hay, sir,” said the old man with solemn
-formality, “will you have the goodness to allow me to interdooce
-to your honor my niece and nephy, Juley and John
-Legg?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia stood up and dropped her rustic, housemaid’s courtesy.
-John took off his hat and bowed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran held out a hand to each, saying cordially:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to see you. Your uncle is one of my
-oldest and most esteemed friends; so that any friends of his
-own shall always be most heartily welcome. You are just
-from Hantz?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Straight, sir. Arrived by the train that reached Chuxton
-at six o’clock this evening,” answered John Legg.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIII<br> <span class='large'>ANOTHER ARRIVAL</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Now that was the train by which Ran had expected
-Gentleman Geff and his suit, and this was about an hour
-beyond the time when they were due at Haymore. So his
-next question was the inevitable one:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did any other passengers leave that train for Haymore?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then John Legg stopped to laugh a little before he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! yes, sir. There were two gentlemen and a lady. I
-didn’t see their faces nor hear their names, but they seemed
-to belong to some seat in the neighborhood, for the tallest
-of the gentlemen seemed to have expected the family carriage
-to be there on the spot to meet the party. And when
-he found that it was not, well, sir, I don’t think as in all my
-long life I ever heard such a vast amount and choice variety
-of cursing.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Gentleman Geff all over!” muttered Dandy to himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What became of them?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t know, sir. We left him there cursing land and
-water, sun, moon and stars, so to speak, and threatening the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>destruction of the earth, or words to that effect, if his carriage
-and servants failed to appear within the next five
-minutes. We walked to the Tawny Lion Inn and secured
-the only conveyance to be found and came on here while the
-gentleman waited for his coach and four, or whatever it
-might have been.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And is waiting there still, probably, and will have to
-wait until your ‘conveyance’ returns.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, that will not be long. Julia and myself are
-about to say good-night,” said John Legg respectfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Good-night,’ indeed! By no means! What do you
-mean? Come two hundred miles or so to see your uncle
-here at Haymore Hall, and after an hour’s visit say good-night?
-Not at all! You and Mrs. Legg will, I hope, give
-us the pleasure of remaining with us during your stay in
-Yorkshire,” said Ran heartily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, sir, and we thank you very much,
-but——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg paused and looked at his wife, who did not
-help him by a word or a glance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I will take no denial. Where shall I send for your
-luggage?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We have nothing but hand-bags, sir, and they are in the
-carryall outside. You see, we came directly from the Chuxton
-station to this house, and have all we carried in the
-vehicle with us. We intended to return in it, and to put up
-at the Red Fox Inn in your village here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you will do no such thing. You will get your hand-bags
-out of the carriage, send it back to Chuxton—where
-the swearing gentleman is waiting, swearing harder than
-ever, no doubt—and you will remain here with us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you say, Juley?” said John Legg, appealing to
-his wife. “Come, woman, can’t you help a fellow a little?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you say, Uncle Dandy?” inquired Julia, appealing
-in turn to her old relative.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You stop here! Both on you stop! You take Mr. Hay
-at his word! Ran Hay means every word that he speaks.
-If he says he wants you to stop here he does want you to
-stop here! And as he does, you ought to do it to please him
-as well as yourselves, which you will be sure to do, I know.
-That’s all I have got to say!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While Dandy was speaking and his niece and nephew
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>listening, Ran beckoned a footman to follow him, and
-stepped out of the front door and went up to the driver of
-the carryall, who stood by the horses’ heads, clapping his
-thickly gloved hands and stamping his heavily shod feet to
-keep warm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You came from Chuxton?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, and been waiting here for more’n an hour for
-the parties I fotch, and myself near frozen, spite of my piles
-of clothes and——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Charles,” said Hay, turning his head and speaking in a
-low voice to the footman, “go in and get a large mug of
-strong ale and bring it out to this man.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The footman vanished on his errand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The driver continued as if he had not been interrupted:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Horses like to catch their death of cold, spite o’ two
-heavy blankets apiece laid o’ top of them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am sorry I can do nothing for your horses, but if you
-think any of the grooms might, just let them do it,” said
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, sir. There can’t nobody do nothing for ’em here.
-And nothing will help them but a brisk trot back to Chuxton
-and a warm mash and good bed when they get there.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The footman came out with a pewter quart measure of
-strong, foaming ale and handed it to the driver.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The latter took it with a “thanky” to the server and a
-bow to the master, and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. This saves my life. Here’s to a long
-and happy one for you and yours. Is the party inside ready
-to go back, if you please, sir?” inquired the driver after he
-had taken one long draught of the ale and stopped to draw
-a deep sigh of satisfaction.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They are not going back. Charles, get the bags and
-other effects out of the carriage and carry them into the
-house.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The footman obeyed, loading himself with two heavy
-bags, two rugs and a large umbrella, and took them into
-the hall while the driver was taking his second long pull at
-the ale.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How much is your fare?” inquired Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The man stopped to recover breath with another devout
-inhalation of enjoyment, and then answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ten shillings, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>Ran took out his purse and gave the man half a sovereign
-and half a crown.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir,” said the driver, touching his hat, not
-for the fare, but for the “tip.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he took the blankets off his horses, folded and put
-them under his box and mounted to his seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You had better drive as fast as you can, not only for
-the sake of warming the blood of the horses, but for that
-of cooling the temper of the gentleman who is waiting for
-you with his party at the station.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Another fare to-night, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, so I hear from the people you have just brought.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then the master won’t only have to find fresh horses,
-but a fresh driver, sir; for I’m just dead beat. Any more
-commands, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not any.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-night, then, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The driver took up his “ribbons” and started his horses
-in a brisk trot.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran turned to re-enter the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was met by John Legg running out bareheaded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What’s the matter?” demanded Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The man has gone off without his fare.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, go in the house—you will catch your death of
-cold; but you can’t stop him now. He is through the lodge
-gates by this time,” said Ran, playfully taking John Legg
-by the shoulders and turning him “right face forward” to
-the ascending steps.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They re-entered the house together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg had already taken off her heavy shawl and
-bonnet, and had arranged her hair before the hall mirror,
-and stood in her neat plain dress, with fresh <i><span lang="fr">crêpe lis</span></i> ruches—which
-she had taken from the flap pocket outside her bag—around
-neck and wrists, and her only ornaments a gold
-watch and chain and a set of pearls, consisting of brooch
-and earrings, which had been her husband’s wedding present
-to herself and which she always carried about her when
-traveling for fear, if left at home, they might be stolen.
-These she had now taken from her pocket and put on.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Altogether she was quite presentable in that drawing-room.
-And as, with all, she was a “comely” matron, her
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>husband looked upon her with pardonable pride as well as
-love.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But while furtively glancing at his wife he was putting
-off his ulster and speaking to his host all at the same time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I hadn’t a notion what you were about,” he was saying,
-“until your man came in loaded down with our luggage. As
-soon as I saw that and found out what you had done I
-hurried out to pay the fare, but the carryall had gone.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is all right,” said Ran. “Come in now and let me
-introduce you to my friends.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please, Mr. Hay, let me brush his hair and put a clean
-collar and bosom on him first. I won’t be two minutes,”
-pleaded Mrs. Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran yielded, and the man’s toilet was made in the hall,
-as the woman’s had been a few minutes previous.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Ran took Mrs. Legg on his arm and led the way
-into the drawing-room, followed by old Dandy and John
-Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hay presented his new visitor first to his wife and then
-to all his guests. And the plain pair, it is almost needless
-to say, were as cordially received by the cultured people
-from the English rectory as they were by the border men
-from the Californian mining camp.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When this little ripple in the circle had subsided all settled
-again into small groups.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The four women found themselves temporarily together,
-and fell to talking of the weather, servants, children and
-the approaching Christmas holidays.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell and her daughter sat one on each side of
-Julia and made much of her. No word from Hetty or Jennie
-revealed the fact that Mrs. John Legg had once been in
-their service.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Julia made no secret of it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I was housekeeper at the rectory of Medge, ma’am, in
-the old lady’s time, three years before his reverence was
-married.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She means in my grandmother’s days,” put in Mr.
-Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And for eighteen years afterward; making twenty-one
-years in all that I lived with the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell.
-I held that child, Miss Jennie—Mrs. Montgomery
-that now is—on my lap when she wasn’t twenty-four hours
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>old. And nursed her and took care of her from the time
-of her birth until that of her marriage,” said Julia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Jennie, who was holding her hand, raised and
-pressed it to her own breast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; and I have lived with them ever since, up to the
-time when they left to come up here to Yorkshire. Then
-I took Mr. Legg’s offer and married him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I hope you have been very happy,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am as happy, dear, as I can be parted from you all.
-We came to Haymore to see Uncle Dandy. And we intended
-to go to-morrow and see you. We little expected to
-find you here. I haven’t seen his reverence since the day he
-married John and me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That was the last ceremony he ever performed in Medge
-parish church,” said Mrs. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While they talked in this manner of strictly personal and
-domestic matters, the rector himself was one of a group
-gathered around Mr. Will Walling, who was another Gulliver
-or Munchausen for telling fabulous adventures of
-which he himself was the hero.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The inevitable subject of mining had suggested to Mr.
-Will the story of the horrors of penal serviture in the silver
-mines of the Ural Mountains, and he was telling it as if the
-false charge, the secret conviction, the exile, the journey,
-the life in the mines, the escape and flight through the snow
-and ice of Siberia, and all the attendant awful sufferings
-had been in his own personal experience. And all his audience
-listened with the fullest faith and deepest interest—that
-is, all except two—Ran, who had heard the story told
-before to-night, and John Legg, who had very recently read
-it in a dilapidated old volume bought for threepence at a
-second-hand book stand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran was bored, and could hardly repress the rudeness of
-a yawn; and he saw, besides, that John Legg looked incredulous
-and sarcastic.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he thought of the party of sinners who were by this
-time on their way to Haymore and to judgment. And then
-that their coming would bring pain and shame to more than
-one of that party. But all—even poor Jennie—had been
-prepared for the event except John Legg. Then it occurred
-to him that he must warn the poor father of the shock that
-might otherwise overwhelm him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>He stopped and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, will you favor me with a few minutes’ conversation
-in the library?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Surely, sir,” replied the greengrocer with alacrity as
-he arose to accompany his host.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Friends, will you excuse us for a few moments?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, if we must,” replied Will Walling, answering for
-the company; “but, really, you know, it is a shame to go
-before you have heard the end of the story.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I have heard you tell it many times,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; but Mr. Legg hasn’t.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I have done better than that. I have been through
-it. Why, man, I was the very Enokoff who helped Wallingski
-to make good his flight across the frontier. Only my
-real name was not Enokoff, but Legginoff, or Legenough, if
-you like it better,” said the greengrocer as he followed Ran
-from the drawing-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling started, but could make nothing of the
-answer; yet to his circle of listeners he said in explanation:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Too bad of Hay to have anticipated me and told that old
-fellow the end of the story while they were pretending to
-listen.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Ran had led his companion to the library,
-where both sat down on a leathern armchair, on opposite
-sides of a narrow table, on which they leaned their arms,
-facing each other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, then, sir, I am at your service,” said Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you smoke?” inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Only occasionally; when I need a sedative and philosophy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Exactly. I smoke semi-occasionally for the same reasons.
-Will you take an exceptionally fine cigar now? It is
-an Isabella Regina.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran produced a case and matches. They lighted their
-weeds and began to smoke.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran let a few minutes elapse to allow the sedative to take
-some effect upon his guest, and then broke the subject for
-which he had brought the old man there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, I hope you will pardon me for asking a question
-that may seem to be an unpardonable liberty,” he said
-in a low voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>“Ask me what you please, sir. I am sure it will not be an
-offensive liberty, since you could not possibly take one,”
-gravely replied the old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, when did you hear from your son and your
-daughter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have no son or daughter, sir. The young man and
-woman to whom you may allude forsook our humble way of
-life as soon as we had finished educating them above their
-position, each taking his or her way. Yet I am often sorry
-for them and anxious about them, for they were once my
-children, though they discard and despise me, for I know
-that for that very reason they must come to grief and shame
-in this world as well as in the next, if they do not repent
-and reform. For, look you, Mr. Hay, I am an old man, and
-all my long life I have noticed this one thing—that a man
-may break every commandment in the decalogue, except
-one, and he may escape punishment in this world, whatever
-becomes of him in the next. I say he may, and he often
-does. But if he breaks the Fifth Commandment—called
-the Commandment with Promise—his punishment, or his
-discipline of pain and failure, comes in this world. However,
-upon repentance, he may be forgiven in the next.
-This is the fruit of my observation and experience of men.
-I cannot answer for those of other people.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, Mr. Legg, I fear your opinion is about to be sustained
-in the fate of the young people. They are both about
-to come to grief; and I am glad for the girl’s sake that you
-are here to-night, for I am sure you would stand by your
-daughter in her trouble,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The old man stared at the earnest young speaker and
-then said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So it was for this, Mr. Hay, that you made old Andrew
-Quin bring me here by telegraph.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! Heaven knows I had nothing whatever to do with
-bringing you to Haymore. That was entirely Mr. Quin’s
-own idea.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then it was old Andrew that worked to bring about my
-visit here in the interest of my undutiful daughter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! Again you are wrong. Andrew Quin knew nothing
-whatever of your chance of meeting your son or daughter
-at Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then the present crisis is accidental.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>“Providential, rather.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I stand corrected. Where are these people now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They are on their way to this house. They will be here
-in one hour from this time.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My wretched son and daughter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, Mr. Legg. Your son and daughter, and the man
-that she believes to be her husband.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The man that she believes to be her husband! Believes
-only! Heaven and earth! has she fallen as low as that?”
-groaned the father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not knowingly. Not guiltily. Neither state, church
-nor society will hold her guilty of a deep wrong that she
-has suffered, not committed. Hers was not an elopement.
-Not a clandestine marriage. Her courtship was open. Her
-engagements approved by all her friends. Her wedding
-was public, and the reception that followed was the social
-event of the season.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yet the man is not her husband?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How so?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because he was and had been a married man for two
-years previous to his meeting with your daughter. Because
-he was and is a bigamist. More than that, he is a forger,
-a perjurer, a swindler, a highway robber and a midnight
-assassin!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Great Heaven! Great Heaven!” groaned the wretched
-father, covering his face with his hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In a word, this man may be called the champion criminal
-of his age,” continued Ran, unmercifully “piling up
-the agonies.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And how is it that he is at large?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because his crimes have only recently been brought to
-light.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And this man has betrayed my poor girl!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It was not her fault.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes—ah, me!—it was. Her pride, beauty and ambition
-have brought her to ruin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! You may still help and save her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I doubt it. But tell me all about it,” said poor John
-Legg, sinking back in his chair and covering his working
-features with his open palms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran began and told the whole story of the connection of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>Gentleman Geff, Lamia Leegh, Jennie Campbell and himself,
-comprised within the last year.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And in the room there,” he concluded, “gathered to
-meet and confound the great criminal are the witnesses of
-his crimes, the testifiers to his identity, and, more terrible
-than all, his victims, raised as it were from the dead against
-him. Among them Jennie Montgomery, the daughter of
-James Campbell, the girl who was nursed and brought up
-for sixteen years by your good wife, and who was married,
-then deserted, and finally stabbed by that felon. Among
-them, too, myself, Ran Hay, the friend who shared his
-cabin and his crust—nay, his heart and soul—with him,
-and yet whom he shot down from behind at midnight in the
-Black Woods of California. Among them, too, will be the
-wronged father of that unhappy girl——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! no! No! no! Oh, Mr. Hay! I cannot be present
-at that scene! The sight of me would add to her suffering.
-No! When it is all over, and the man who has spoiled her
-life has been exposed, then take care of her for a few hours
-and afterward let her know of her father; that, however his
-heart may have been hardened against his vain, haughty,
-disdainful daughter, it is softened by his humbled, grieved
-and suffering child. Let her know that her father’s arms
-and her father’s home are ever opened to his daughter. But
-I cannot see her to-night, Mr. Hay. I am very grateful to
-you, sir. I understand you now. But please leave me and
-send Julia to me. She knows how to deal with me better
-than any one else.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will do so at once. And, Mr. Legg, please use this
-house and the servants just as if they were entirely your
-own. Call for anything you may like, and do exactly as you
-choose,” said Ran as he took the old man’s hand, pressed it
-kindly, and left the library.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then John Legg dropped his head upon his folded arms
-on the table and burst into tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Other arms were soon around him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He looked up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia stood there.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He told her all in fewer words than Ran had taken to
-tell the story.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She drew a chair and sat down beside him, took his hand
-and held it while she said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>“Well, don’t cry no more. The girl has had her lesson;
-but the shame of her marriage is not hern or ourn. We will
-take her home and give her love and comfort and peace, if
-we cannot give her happiness. I will be as true and tender
-a mother to her as if she were my own hurt child. And
-her own mother looking down from heaven will see no cause
-to blame me. At Medge her story need never be known.
-She will be the Liddy Legg of her youth. She went for to
-be a governess in a rich American family—she has come
-home now for good. That is true, and it’s all of the truth
-that need be known at Medge. The writing between the
-lines need not be read there. And there is Uncle Dandy,
-who is just as kind as he is rich. He will surely be good to
-the poor gal.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Suddenly Julia paused and fell into deep thought.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While she had been comforting her husband in his sorrow
-over his miserable daughter her own better nature was
-aroused, and when finally she had occasion to allude to her
-old uncle she felt ashamed of the selfish and avaricious
-spirit that had inspired her to run after him for his imaginary
-wealth and to covet its inheritance, and she secretly
-resolved to try, with the Lord’s help, to put away the evil
-influence and think of the old relative as a lonely old man
-whose age and infirmities it should be not only her duty but
-her pleasure to cherish and support.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then the spirit of avarice departed for the time
-being, at least; for a devil cannot endure the presence of an
-angel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While this change was silently passing within her she
-still held her husband’s hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length she spoke again, slightly varying the subject.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What about the boy?” she inquired, referring to his son.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The man, you mean; for he is twenty-eight years old.
-I don’t know! I hope he will never get a pulpit, for I know
-this much, that he is totally unfit for one; yes, and the
-bishops, whose boots he is always licking in the hope of
-preferment, know it, too! He got the promise of the living
-here at Haymore from the fraudulent claimant who has
-ruined us all, or tried to do so; but that goes for nothing
-at all, for Mr. Randolph Hay has already given it to the
-Rev. Mr. Campbell, a good man and worthy minister. So
-my vagabond will also have to meet with humiliating disappointment
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>along with his felonious patron and wretched
-sister.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Think no more on it, except to do the best you can and
-leave the rest to the Lord,” said Julia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this moment the door opened and a footman entered
-with a large tray laden with tea, bread and butter, game
-pie, cakes, sweetmeats and other edibles. He put it down
-on the tables between the two people and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My mistress thought, sir, that you might like refreshments
-after your journey. And would you prefer a bottle
-of wine, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, thank you; nothing more whatever. You need not
-wait,” replied Mr. Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The man touched his forehead and left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy had remembered what Ran, with all his goodness of
-heart, had forgotten.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But, then, it is almost always Eve, and seldom or never
-Adam, who is</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“On hospitable thoughts intent,”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>in the way of feeding at least.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia poured out tea for her husband and filled his plate
-with game pie and bread and butter, and made him eat and
-drink and set him a good example in that agreeable duty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the meantime the company in the drawing-room were
-getting a little weary of waiting.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Hay had contrived to draw the curate aside, where
-they could settle the affair of the living. It was but a short
-conference, for Mr. Campbell was glad and grateful to accept
-it. At the end of their talk the minister said very
-sincerely:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The utmost that I dared to hope for was the curacy
-under the new rector, whoever he should be! But the living!
-It is more than I ever dreamed of or deserved! Yet
-will I, with the Lord’s help, do my utmost for the parish.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What Ran might have replied was cut short with some
-sudden violence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First by the heavy rumbling and tumbling of some clumsy
-carryall over the rough drive as it drew up to the front of
-the Hall and stopped; then by loud and angry tones of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>voice; then by a resounding peal of knocks on the door
-which seemed to reverberate through the entire building.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The arrival was an embodied storm that threatened to
-dash in the entire front of the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the library John Legg sprang up and bolted the door
-against the uproar, and then sat down by his trembling
-wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the drawing-room all was excitement and expectation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s him!” exclaimed old Dandy, with his few spikes of
-white hair rising on end around his bald crown. “It’s him!
-Straight from the pit of fire and brimstone, and possessed
-of the devil and all his demons!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the hall the frightened footmen hastened to throw
-open the front door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff burst in, cursing and swearing in the
-most appalling manner, and threatening every one in his
-house with instant discharge, death and destruction, for having
-kept him waiting at Chuxton so many hours and not
-having sent his coach and four and mounted servants to
-meet him!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So, raving like a madman whose frenzy is heightened by
-<i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>, he broke into the drawing-room in the midst
-of the assembled company.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran Hay arose and advanced down the room to meet him.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIV<br> <span class='large'>AT BAY</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Randolph Hay advanced to meet the violent intruder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was still raging and threatening.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How do you do, Mr. Geoffrey Delamere?” coolly inquired
-Ran, calling the man of many aliases by the name by
-which he had known him in California.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stopped suddenly and drew himself up
-with drunken arrogance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the quiet, low-voiced, well-dressed young gentleman
-who stood before him, with clear, pale complexion, neatly
-trimmed hair and mustache, who wore light kid gloves, and
-had a rosebud in his buttonhole, he did not recognize the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>rough, rollicking, sunburned and shock-headed lad who had
-befriended him at Grizzly Gulch, and whom he himself had
-shot down, robbed and left for dead, to be devoured by
-wolves in the Black Woods of the gold State, and whose
-name and inheritance he had stolen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who in thunder and lightning are you, you villain?
-And what the fire and brimstone are you doing here, in
-my house, you rascal?” he fiercely demanded, and without
-waiting for an answer he fell to cursing and swearing in the
-most furious manner, ending with: “If you don’t get out
-of this in double-quick I’ll have you kicked out of doors and
-into the horse pond, you scoundrel!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Perhaps if you give yourself the trouble to look up in
-my face you may recognize me, as well as my right to be
-here,” said Ran calmly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stared.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You should remember me. It has not been so long;
-only since the second of last April that we parted company
-in the Black Woods of California,” continued Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the criminal’s face blanched, his jaw fell, his eyes
-started, he stared with growing horror for a moment, then
-reeled, and must have fallen but that he was caught in the
-strong arms of Longman, who supported him to a high-backed
-armchair and sat him down in it, where he seemed
-to fall into a state of stupefaction. The awful shock of this
-meeting had not sobered him—he was too far gone in drunkenness
-for that; but it had reduced him to a state of imbecility.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Mr. Cassius Leegh, who had been engaged
-outside doing all the duties of his patron, seeing to the
-luggage, paying off the carryall, and even taking care of his
-sister, now strutted into the room with the lady on his arm,
-his head thrown back, his nose in the air, and altogether
-with a fine manner of scorn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was not so drunk as his patron; he was only drunk
-enough to be a very great man, indeed; but not to be a very
-violent one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the meaning of this irregularity?” he loftily
-demanded. “We did not expect company!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We did,” said Ran with a touch of humor in his tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray, who are you, sir?” demanded Leegh, throwing up
-his head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>“Ask your companion there,” replied Ran with a wave of
-his hand toward the panic-stricken object in the armchair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hay!” exclaimed Leegh, turning to his patron. “What
-in the dev—what on earth does all this mean? Who are all
-these people?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff opened his mouth, gasped, rolled his eyes
-and sank into silence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Can’t you speak, man? What the dev—what is the matter
-with you? And what is all this infer—this confusion
-about?” angrily demanded Leegh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff gasped two or three times, rolled his eyes
-frightfully and replied:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is the day of judgment! And the dead—the murdered
-dead—have risen to bear witness against me!—have
-left their graves to cry ‘blood for blood’!” he shrieked; and
-then his eyes stared and became fixed, his jaw fell and his
-face blanched.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poor idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Leegh in extreme disgust.
-“I never saw his so drunk as this. If he goes it at this
-pace he will soon come to the end of life. I find I must take
-command here and clear the house. Have I your authority
-to act for you, sister?” he inquired in a whisper of the
-woman on his arm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes—yes,” she faltered faintly; “but take me first to a
-chair or sofa. I feel as if about to faint. Oh, what does is
-all mean?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It means that our friend here,” he replied, pointing to
-the collapsed criminal in the chair, “has delirium tremens.
-And ‘has ’em bad,’ as the old costermonger used to say of
-his cousin,” he added as he placed his sister in a large,
-cushioned armchair, into which she sank exhausted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he glanced over the scene, taking stock of the company
-preparatory to his work of clearing the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nearest to him, on his right hand, stood the young colossus,
-Samson Longman, leaning over the chair of poor old
-Dandy, who sat with his bald head dropped and his withered
-face hidden in the palms of his hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These two men were both strangers to Mr. Leegh, who
-did not feel inclined to commence his work of expulsion
-with the giant or his immediate protégé.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A little further off, on his left, stood a group of three—Ran,
-Mike and Will Walling—talking together. These
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>were also strangers to Mr. Leegh, who did not feel disposed
-to begin with them either.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Still further off, straight before him, at the other end of
-the room, was another group, each individual of which he
-recognized. These were the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell,
-and their daughter, Jennie, whom he had often visited at
-their parsonage in Medge; and to Mr. Campbell he had but
-lately written, as the reader may remember, warning him
-to leave the rectory, to which he himself—Leegh—had been
-appointed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here, then, was his opportunity. He would begin with
-these.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector—as we must call him now, since his induction
-into the Haymore living by Mr. Randolph Hay—was seated
-on a corner sofa with his wife and daughter, the latter sitting
-between her father and her mother, with her distressed
-face hidden in that mother’s bosom. Yet Leegh had instinctively
-recognized her as well as her parents.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He went up, nodded to Mr. Campbell and offered his
-hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector bowed in return, but did not take Leegh’s
-hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am surprised to see you here this evening, sir. How
-do you do, Mrs. Campbell? I hope Miss Jennie is quite
-well,” said Leegh in an offhand way, not choosing to notice
-the rector’s coolness, not knowing or suspecting that he was
-the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am here at the invitation of Mr. Randolph Hay,” said
-Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My daughter is quite well, thank you, Mr. Leegh,” said
-Mrs. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Both the husband and the wife answering his careless
-greeting simultaneously.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear of Miss Jennie’s good health. She is
-only tired, then, perhaps, or sleepy? Did you say you were
-here at the invitation of the squire, Mr. Campbell?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir; of Mr. Randolph Hay,” calmly replied the
-rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then he must have been even drun—I mean, more incomprehensible
-than he is now. Pray, did he also invite all
-these other people I see here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>“I think not. He did not invite you, or your sister, or
-Capt. Montgomery,” replied Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Didn’t invite me or my sister! Why, my sister is his
-wife, man, and I am his brother-in-law! And he brought
-us down with him to-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think not,” said the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You think not! Why, here we are, anyway.  Here am<a id='t235'></a>
-I. There is my sister in that armchair, somewhat prostrated
-and disgusted, to be sure. And there is her husband on that
-high-back throne, somewhat ‘disguised,’ as one might say.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think you are mistaken in all that you have said,”
-quietly remarked Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think that everybody in the room, except myself, is
-drunk or demented, or most likely both!” exclaimed Leegh,
-losing his temper and now speaking recklessly, for he was
-not yet quite sober.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell made no reply to these words.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you be good enough to explain yourself?” rudely
-demanded Leegh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have no explanation to make about myself. For any
-other questions you would like to ask I must refer you to
-Mr. Randolph Hay himself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is in a fine condition to answer questions, is he not,
-now? Look at him!” said Leegh, pointing to the abject
-creature in the chair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector looked and sighed to see the human wreck.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, then, will you explain?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; I must still refer you to Mr. Randolph Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Confound your insolence!” between his grinding teeth.
-And then, aloud: “You got my letter, I presume?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Warning me to vacate the rectory?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course. What else should I have written to you
-about?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I got your letter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I hope you are ready to go. Because I shall certainly
-enter into possession on the first of January,” said
-Leegh rudely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The rectory is even now quite ready for the new incumbent.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear it, though I shall not care to take possession
-until the first of January. And now, Mr. Campbell,
-excuse me for reminding you that the hour is late, and suggesting
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>that, as this is the evening of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
-Hay’s arrival, it would be in good form for visitors
-to retire.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you: but I must speak to my host and hostess
-first.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this moment Judy came up from some obscure part of
-the big room in which she had been lurking like a frightened
-kitten.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell made room for her, and Judy sat down
-beside her friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who is this young lady? Will you introduce me to
-her?” said Leegh with one of his lady-killing smiles.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Excuse me, sir. I would rather not do so,” said Mr.
-Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then turning to Judy, who had looked up with surprise
-and pity, for she could not bear to see any one pained
-or mortified, he added in explanation:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, my dear; I cannot do it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then, with a smothered imprecation, Leegh turned on his
-heel and sauntered down the room to rejoin his sister, and
-feeling as if he were in a very weird and ugly dream.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the meanwhile, however, Ran, Mike and Will Walling
-had been taking counsel together, and often glancing
-from the stupefied figure of Gentleman Geff, who still sat
-with blanched face, dropped jaw and starting eyes, staring
-into vacancy, to that of Lamia Leegh, who reclined on her
-chair with closed eyes and in a half-fainting condition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length Ran from the pity of his heart said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Walling, I cannot bear to expose that poor woman to
-the awful humiliation of hearing the whole of that fellow’s
-villainies exposed. I will go into the library and persuade
-her poor father to receive her in there and save her from
-this trial. And do you go to her and break the news of Mr.
-Legg’s presence in the house. You need tell her no more
-as yet. The worst need not be told until later.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, I will do as you say. There is her precious
-brother talking to Mr. Campbell. I wonder what he is saying,”
-said Will Walling as he went up and stood beside the
-chair of Lamia Leegh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She never moved or opened her eyes. She did not seem
-to have perceived his presence. He wished to address her,
-but hardly knew what name to call her. If he should call
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>her by her real name, or even by the name she bore in New
-York before her marriage, it would startle and offend her.
-It would seem a deliberate insult. If he should call her by
-Ran’s name it would be by a false one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The last alternative, however, was the one on which he
-decided to act. It could do no harm, he thought, to humor
-her delusion by calling her by the name she honestly supposed
-to be hers by right of marriage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He laid his hand lightly on the back of her chair, stooped,
-and said softly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mrs. Hay!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She started, opened her eyes, sat up and gazed at him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have startled you. I am sorry,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Walling! You here! In England! At Haymore!”
-she exclaimed, gazing at him as if she could not turn away
-her eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, as you see!” he answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And we did not know you were coming. At least, I did
-not. And, oh! what brought you here? I don’t mean to be
-rude, though the question seems a rude one.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a most natural one. I came—for a change,” replied
-Will Walling evasively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And when did you arrive?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In England? Tuesday.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And when did you come to Haymore?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Late last night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You came straight here, then, expecting to find us at
-home, and found no one to receive you—except the servants,
-of course. I hope they made you comfortable. And,
-of course they told you that we were to be home to-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course, thank you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am so glad you are here. And, oh, Mr. Walling, since
-you are here, will you please to tell me who all these strangers
-are and why they are here, and what, oh! what has reduced
-my husband to that condition? He looks as if he
-were struck with idiocy,” said Lamia with ill-concealed
-scorn and hatred.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling thought within himself that she would have
-little to suffer from wounded affections, whatever she might
-have to endure from humbled pride. Still, he pitied her,
-and answered gently:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That group on the sofa, to whom your brother is speaking,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>consists of the Rev. Mr. Campbell, his wife and daughter,
-who are quite old friends of Mr. Leegh.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia had never heard the name of Jennie Montgomery’s
-parents. She scrutinized the group, and then remarked:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That girl who is leaning on the elder woman’s shoulder
-reminds me strongly of some one whom I have seen somewhere,
-but I cannot remember where, for I cannot quite see
-her clearly at this distance. And who are the other people
-in the room?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They are all friends of Mr. Randolph Hay who knew
-him in California, before he came into his estate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, how interesting! And they came here to see him?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, and to give him a reception in his own house,” said
-Will Walling, not quite truly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, how interesting! And, Mr. Walling, who is that
-pretty young woman who has just gone up to the clergyman’s
-party?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Some friend of the family. Here comes your brother.
-He has just left the group. And before he comes, my dear
-Mrs. Hay, I must tell you that there are others, or rather,
-there is one other person in this house in whom you are
-more intimately interested than in all the rest,” said Will
-Walling very gravely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia looked a little disturbed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who can that be?” she inquired in a low, faltering
-voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Can you not surmise? Think what near relatives you
-have living.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I—have no near relatives living—except my brother,
-and—my father.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your father is here, longing to see his only daughter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My father here? What has he come for?” demanded this
-Goneril in so sharp a tone of displeasure and annoyance
-that Will Walling lost all pity for her and spoke near his
-purpose when he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is waiting here in fatherly love and compassion, to
-be a shelter to his only daughter in the hour of her utmost
-need.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia turned deadly pale and sick. The words of the
-lawyer, taken together with the awful exclamation of her
-husband before he fell into his stupor, warned her that
-some terrible revelation was at hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>“Oh! this is some horrid nightmare!” she muttered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this crisis the sauntering and unsteady steps of Mr.
-Leegh brought him up to his sister’s side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now!” he exclaimed, “what is all this? And who
-the dev—deuce—mischief are you, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cassius!” cried Lamia in great excitement. “This
-is Mr. Walling, of the firm of Walling &#38; Walling, New
-York, of whom you have heard us speak. There is something
-dreadful the matter that has gathered all these people
-here. He tells me that our father is here also——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The old man! What is the—what has brought him
-here?” demanded Leegh in as sharp a tone as his sister
-had used.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will Walling was as much disgusted with the one as with
-the other. He answered the question:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your father is here, Mr. Leegh, to succor his daughter
-in her distress. Presently I shall ask you, her brother, to
-lead her to your father’s presence.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is my husband. My beast of a husband! What has
-he been doing! Oh, Heaven! I heard him say something
-about murder, and I thought it was only his drunken raving.
-Has he committed murder, then, and will he be
-hanged? If so, I will never show my face in England or
-New York again!” exclaimed Lamia, losing all decent self-control
-and becoming hysterical, not from anxious affection,
-but from alarmed pride.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Compose yourself, madam. There is no murder on his
-hands. There is nothing but what you may get over in the
-peace of your father’s house,” said Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why cannot you tell me what it is, then?” demanded
-Lamia, breaking into sobs and tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! why the mischief can’t you speak out?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because I gave my word not to do so. Because, in any
-case, I would not do so. Because it is not even proper that
-I should. And, finally, because it is best that your sister
-should hear what she must from her father.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a nightmare! A horrid, hideous nightmare!” cried
-Lamia, sobbing violently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When are we to hear this news, whatever it may be—this
-mystery, this calamity—from the old gentleman?”
-roughly demanded Leegh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When the gentleman who is with him now comes out to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>tell us that your father is ready to receive you,” replied
-Will Walling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By ——! Upon my honor, you are very cool, sir,”
-sneered Leegh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a nightmare! A ghastly, deadly nightmare!”
-wailed Lamia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It it the day of doom, and the quick and the dead rise
-in judgment!” groaned a deep, hollow voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was that of Gentleman Geff. His rolling eyes had
-fallen upon a group composed of Mike, Dandy and Longman,
-and he sat staring in horror upon them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That drunken idiot ought to be carried up to bed,
-Lamia,” said Leegh in strong disgust.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will not have him touched,” replied the woman, with
-a shudder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the meantime Randolph Hay had crossed the hall and
-turned the knob of the library door. He found it locked.
-Then he rapped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who is there?” inquired the quavering voice of John
-Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is I, your friend, Hay,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The door was instantly opened by Julia Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please excuse us and come in, Mr. Hay. We only locked
-the door to keep that terrible man from bursting in upon
-us,” said Julia apologetically.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite right,” replied Ran, good-humoredly, as he entered
-the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He found John Legg still sitting at the narrow table
-from which the little supper had not yet been removed. The
-poor man looked pale, haggard, anxious and many years
-older than he had seemed a few hours before.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran also took the precaution to lock the door before he
-came and seated himself at the table opposite John Legg.
-Julia drew a chair to the side of her husband, sat down
-and took his hands in hers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You look troubled, Mr. Hay. You have something more
-to tell me about my poor girl, and you shrink from telling
-it. But speak out, sir. I can bear it,” said John Legg,
-with stoical resignation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, indeed, my friend, it is nothing more that I have
-to communicate of her; at least, nothing ill. I came in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>here only, to plead for a little change in our plans,” said
-Ran soothingly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is it, dear sir? Your kind will should be our
-law.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By no means!” earnestly exclaimed Ran. “But the
-change I wished to make is this: You remember that you
-proposed to keep out of your daughter’s way until she
-should have heard the worst that she must hear of her real
-position?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes. I shrank, and still shrink, from adding to her
-pain and mortification by my presence,” sighed the unhappy
-father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, my dear Mr. Legg, consider for one moment. She
-has not yet heard the humiliating facts, but it is absolutely
-necessary that she should hear them to-night. Now is it
-not better that she should hear them from your lips than
-from mine or from my lawyer’s? Would she not suffer less
-to have the truth told her gently here, in private, by the lips
-of her father, than out there, in public, by the lips of a
-stranger?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While Ran spoke John Legg sat with his gray head bowed
-upon his hands in deep, sorrowful reflection, and when Ran
-ceased to speak the poor father made no reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you think about this, Mr. Legg?” gently persisted
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know! I don’t know!” moaned the old man in
-a heartbroken tone. “What do you say, Julia?” he piteously
-inquired, raising his head and appealing to his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She took his hand again, and looking tenderly in his troubled
-face, answered gravely:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think, John, indeed, I think, that you had better do
-as Mr. Hay advises. It would be dreadful for that poor
-girl to hear of her misfortune facing all those people in
-there! And you know the man who betrayed her and committed
-countless other crimes must be exposed in public
-and then expelled from the house.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia Legg spoke as she thought, but, in fact, Ran had no
-intention of turning the wretch in question out of doors in
-this freezing winter night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Julia, my dear, I have such confidence in your judgment
-that I will do as you say,” replied John Legg in a
-low voice. Then turning to Ran, he said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>“Mr. Hay, I am deeply grateful to you for all the aid
-and comfort and counsel you give me. You may, sir, if
-you please, bring or send my poor child to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will do so at once,” said Ran, and he arose and left
-the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I will stand by you through all, John. I will be
-as good a mother to your unhappy girl as I am a true wife
-to you,” said Julia, still holding his hand in hers.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXV<br> <span class='large'>FATHER AND DAUGHTER</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>And so they waited in suspense for a few moments until
-the door opened and Mr. Leegh entered, as usual, with his
-head thrown back, his nose in the air, and his sister on his
-arm. His head was bowed upon her breast, and her face
-was pale and her eyes red and swollen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg arose and went to meet her with trembling
-nerves and outstretched arms. He was but a little over
-fifty years of age, yet for the last few hours he looked to be
-over seventy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, dear Lyddy! My own poor child!” he said,
-drawing her to his breast and holding her there, while he
-put out his hand to his son and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How do you do, Clay?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am well, sir, thank you. How do you do yourself?”
-inquired the dutiful son in an offhand, nonchalant manner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As you see me, Clay. Not very well,” replied the
-grieved father, as he sank into a large cushioned chair that
-his wife had pushed up to him, and drew his daughter down
-upon his lap with her head against his shoulder, where she
-lay sobbing her soul forth in pride and anger—not in love
-or sorrow. She had not spoken one word as yet since she
-entered the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Clay Legg, as we must henceforth call him, because
-it is his only right name, threw himself into another armchair
-and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am told, sir, that you have something to communicate
-to us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>“Yes, I have, Clay. Do not cry so. Lyddy, my dear. I
-will stand by you. Your father will stand by his daughter,
-and love her and comfort her, and shelter and protect her
-against all the world,” he said, turning away from his insolent
-son and bending over his wildly hysterical daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, sir,” said Mr. Clay Legg, “since you have something
-to communicate, hadn’t you better communicate it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” replied his father, with a sigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But first,” exclaimed Clay Legg, “here is a stranger
-present. Are we to discuss private family affairs before a
-stranger? And who is that person, anyway?” he demanded,
-jerking his thumb in the direction of Mrs. Legg, who had
-retired to a short distance and where she sat down.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I ought to beg her pardon! For the moment I forgot.
-Julia, my love, will you step this way?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg came promptly at her husband’s request, and
-stood before the group.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear Julia, this young man here is my son, Clay,
-whom you have never seen before. Clay, this is Mrs. Legg,
-my wife, your new mother. I hope you will be the best of
-friends!” pleaded the husband and father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, I hope so, too!” earnestly responded the new
-wife, as she held out her hand with hearty good will to her
-stepson.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He drew himself up stiffly and bowed, ignoring her
-offered hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg noticed his manner and frowned with pain,
-not anger, and to cover the awkwardness, said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And this weeping girl on my bosom is my daughter,
-Lydia! She cannot speak to you yet, my dear. She has
-not even spoken to me, her father, whom she has not seen
-before for the last three years! But she will be better presently,
-and then I feel sure that you and she at least will be
-good friends.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed, John! I know we shall!” heartily responded
-Julia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now sit down, my dear, and make yourself comfortable.
-You already know that I have a painful revelation to make
-to my son and daughter here; but as the misfortune to be
-spoken of was caused by no conscious complicity of theirs,
-it should not cause either of them too much grief, I think.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>“No, indeed! It was not their fault, so they should not
-mourn over it,” warmly assented Julia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“See here, sir! Are you going to discuss private family
-matters in the presence of this person?” demanded Clay
-Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘This person,’ sir, is my beloved wife. I have no secrets
-from her. She already knows as much as I do myself, and
-as much as I have to tell you,” replied John Legg, speaking
-for the first time with some severity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tell me one thing, if you please, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is that?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Am I personally concerned in what you are about to
-communicate in the presence of a stranger?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, not personally—not at all interested except through
-your sister.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then that is her concern. If she choose——” And he
-turned on his heel and left his sentence unfinished.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You had better let me go, John, dear, if the young
-people object to my presence during this interview,” said
-Julia gently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My daughter, do you object to my wife’s presence here
-while I make the revelation of which she knows the whole
-nature?” whispered John Legg to the agonized girl on his
-bosom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! why should I object to anything? I know—before
-you tell me—that your dreadful news—concerns some crime
-of my wretched husband! If not a murder, that would
-hang him, then a forgery or some other felony that will
-send him to penal servitude, and will, in any case, be known
-all over England to-morrow. Let whom you like hear the
-horrid story,” replied the woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When she first began to speak she gasped and panted,
-but as she went on she gained more command over her voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia Legg was full of pity for this ungracious creature,
-and she came and knelt down beside her husband’s chair,
-and took his daughter’s hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring
-softly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Believe me, oh! believe me! I will do all in my power
-to lighten any trouble you may have, and to make you comfortable
-and contented, if not happy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia—as we must continue to call her because that is
-the name by which the reader has known her from the first—Lamia
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>drew her hand away from the kindly hands that
-clasped it, and Julia Legg, with a sigh, arose and resumed
-her seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My own dear daughter, before I tell you anything more
-I must remind you again that in my heart and in my home
-you have a haven of peace and love, of rest and safety from
-all the storms of life. Do you not know and feel this, my
-daughter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes; you are my father, and that is understood,”
-she answered coldly, as if a parent’s boundless love, pity
-and forgiveness were such mere matters of course that they
-needed no recognition. “But I wish you would tell me at
-once, and be done with it. What has my miserable husband,
-Randolph Hay, done?” she demanded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg sighed deeply. He did not think “how
-sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless
-child,” because he had never seen the lines, but he sighed
-more than once as he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In the first place, my daughter, your miserable husband,
-as you call him, is not Randolph Hay, and has not a shadow
-of a right to that name or to the estate of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia started up and looked her father in the face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who and what is he, then?” she fiercely demanded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An adventurer with many aliases; a fraudulent claimant
-of the Haymore estates, who has sustained his false position
-by robbery, forgery and perjury, but who has been recently
-detected, and who is about to be exposed and punished.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am not surprised! I am not surprised! I expected
-something like this! I did! I did! Tell me, does Mr.
-Will Walling know anything about it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He knows all about it. His business in England is to
-bring that man to justice.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia sprang from her father’s arms, throwing him suddenly
-back by the violence of her motion, and began to
-walk wildly up and down the floor, exclaiming and gesticulating
-like a maniac, and thinking only of herself and of
-her own interests, and of no one and nothing else under the
-sun.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To bring me to this! Oh, the villain! the villain! But
-I will have nothing more to do with him! I will never
-speak to him again! I will never look on his face again!
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>Do you hear me, papa?” she cried, suddenly pausing, with
-flashing eyes, before her father’s chair. “Do you hear me,
-I say? I will never live with that felon again—never speak
-to him—never look at him!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My child, you are quite right in your resolution. It
-would be wrong and even criminal in you to do otherwise,”
-said John Legg, gently drawing his daughter into his arms
-again and adding sorrowfully, “for I have something more
-to tell you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You could not tell me anything more shameful than
-you have already told me! Even if you should prove that
-that villain had been a murderer, as well as a robber, forger
-and perjurer, it would not be worse, since hanging is no
-more disgraceful than penal servitude. To be the wife of
-a felon—the wife of a convict! But I will not be! I will
-be separated by law! I will be divorced!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This she repeated over so often and with so much excitement
-that at last her father said to her:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My poor child, you will not need to appeal to the law.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” she demanded, impressed by the
-solemnity of his manner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will not require a divorce,” he replied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is just, in effect, what you said before. Why will
-I not require a divorce? The man is not dead, nor going
-to die! He will not commit suicide. No, indeed, trust him
-for that! He is too great a coward! And he is in no
-danger of being hanged. How, then, should you say that
-I will not require a divorce, since death is not likely to relieve
-me of my felon husband—ugh!” she exclaimed in
-strong disgust.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, the man has never been your husband,” he
-said slowly and distinctly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What?” she cried, aghast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The man has never been your husband!” he repeated
-firmly and solemnly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are mad! We are all mad together, I think!
-What—under—heaven—do you mean?” she cried, staring at him
-with starting eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This man, under his true name of Kightly Montgomery,
-married Jennie Campbell, the daughter of the curate of
-Medge, in Hantz, more than two years before he ever saw
-your face. His wife is living now. She is in the drawing-room
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>across the hall. My wife Julia here knows all about
-this first marriage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While John Legg spoke his daughter stared as if her
-eyes would have started from out their sockets. Then suddenly
-she sprang up and rushed across the room to the side
-where her brother sat with one leg crossed over the other,
-his head thrown back, and his hands clasped above it, his
-face wearing a cynical expression.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She paused before him, her eyes flaming.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cassius!” she said in a voice half choked with raging
-hatred and longing revenge. “Cassius, do you hear what
-papa has said? Do you hear that your sister has been deceived,
-betrayed by the basest of dastards and criminals!
-Cassius, kill that man! kill him! kill him! kill him!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Clay Legg burst into a low, cynical laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t let us be tragic, whatever we are, Lyddy. It is a
-pity you have been such a fool as to be so easily taken in.
-A greater pity that you should have brought discredit on
-your family. But you are not the first woman who has ever
-been fooled and laughed at. But as for me getting into a
-broil with the fellow on your account—no, thank you! It
-would be unbecoming to the cloth, and get me into trouble
-with the bishop. And as to killing him! Do you really
-think I propose to do murder and get myself hanged for
-your folly? No, thank you, I say again! You had better
-go and hide yourself down in the greengrocer’s shop at
-Medge along with papa and stepmamma, while I shall leave
-the country where my sister’s conduct has made it impossible
-for me to hold up my head and look honorable men in
-the face.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While this brutal brother spoke his sister stood before
-him pallid, staring and biting her lip until the blood flowed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Shame on you, dastard, to speak to the unhappy girl in
-such a manner! Leave the room, sir!” said John Legg,
-rising and opening the library door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I did not want to come in here at first, and I am very
-glad to get out,” retorted Clay Legg, with an insulting
-laugh, as he walked off.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg shut the door after him and then turned to
-his miserable daughter. She had thrown herself down on
-a sofa, where she lay with her face in her hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>He kneeled beside her and laid his hand on her head,
-murmuring softly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You must content yourself with our love and our poor
-home. These are yours forever. You have tried other love
-and found it fail you. Paternal love never fails,” he continued,
-and while he spoke he did not cease to smooth and
-caress her head with his hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And to think,” she moaned in a muffled voice, with her
-face downward and hidden with her hands; “to think it
-was his deserted wife that I shopped for in the last days
-before my marriage with him—that it was his deserted wife
-with her child—his child—that came over in the same
-steamer with him and myself on our bridal trip! Ah! now
-I know why he got off the ship at Queenstown! It was to
-get out of her sight and to avoid encountering her father
-who was to meet her at Liverpool. She was his lawful wife,
-and knew it, and she knew then that I was—what was I?—what
-am I? Oh! I shall go mad! mad! mad!” she shrieked,
-flinging off her fathers hand, springing from the sofa,
-clasping her head between her palms and walking wildly
-up and down the floor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, dear child, don’t go on like this! Come and
-sit down. Try to compose yourself,” pleaded poor John
-Legg, walking after his daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, hold your tongue! Let me alone! Don’t I know
-what you are thinking in your heart all this time? You are
-saying to yourself that this is just what you always expected!
-Just what I deserved! You are glad of it in your
-heart! Glad to see me punished! Glad to see me mortified!”
-she cried fiercely, angry with her father because she
-was angry with herself, her betrayer and all the world.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear Lyddy! My darling girl! I know you are not
-accountable for what you say now. I blame you for nothing,
-child, not even for your words. I could not have the
-cruelty to do it. But try to compose yourself and believe
-that we love you and will serve you and comfort you!
-Lyddy, my daughter, we cannot offer you the wealth and
-grandeur and luxuries that you have been lately used to,
-but, my dear, a safe home and solid comforts, and peaceful
-days and family affection you shall not lack, my girl—you
-shall never lack,” pleaded her father; and while he
-spoke he followed her up and down with outstretched arms
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>ready to infold her, up and down, pleading with her, turning
-when she turned until at length she whirled around
-upon him and hissed at him through her set teeth, her hard
-words dropping like leaden bullets from the mold:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will—you—mind—your—own—business? I am of
-age! I thought I was Mrs. Randolph Hay, of Haymore!
-Lady of the manor here! I entered this house as its lawful
-mistress! For what? To find myself deceived, betrayed,
-entrapped! Now what am I! Something that must not
-even be named to respectable ears like yours!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my dear child! To me you are my wronged and
-blameless daughter! Well, rave on! I cannot help it,
-though it cuts my heart like a sword! Maybe it relieves you
-to talk like this. But presently I hope you will take thought
-and come home with me to be comforted,” pleaded John Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia burst into a cruel, sarcastic laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The greengrocer’s house on Market Street, Medge, of
-course, would be a perfect paradise to me! I can imagine
-the back parlor full of the fragrance of onions, leeks and
-other garden stuff from the shop, and enlivened with the
-music of the bell every time a customer opened the door!
-Not any for me, please! I may go on the stage, or on the
-street—why should I care where I go, what I do, or how I
-end—after this—so that I enjoy the pride of life in my
-prime?” she demanded, looking at the plain, good man before
-her with a cruel, sarcastic sneer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He held out his arm to her, with a prayer in every look
-and gesture. He even ventured to lay his hand on her in
-tender compassion, but she broke away from him and resumed
-her wild walk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he sank into an armchair beside him—he could follow
-her no further—and dropped his head upon his hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His wife Julia came to his side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She has longed to go to him while he was following and
-pleading with his daughter, and getting nothing from her
-but insult for love. She had longed to lead him away from
-the ungracious and unseemly strife with evil and to say to
-him: “Leave the thankless and reckless woman to herself
-to recover her senses, if she ever had any, and come with
-me and rest.” But—she was a stepmother only to the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>willful girl, and she must not interfere between father and
-daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But now that he sat alone in the collapse of despair after
-fruitless effort, bowed down, down with sorrow and wounded
-affection, she came to him, put her hand on his shoulder,
-laid her cheek lightly on his gray head and murmured
-words of comfort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You have been very, very patient with her, dear, and
-you were so right! She has had a terrible blow to her
-pride, such as even the best of women could not bear with
-patience. How then should she?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cruel words from one’s child, my dear! Cruel words!”
-said the suffering father, shaking his head without lifting it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She was crazed by grief and shame. She did not mean
-what she said. She did not even know what she said—did
-not know it rightly, I mean! When she comes to her senses,
-John, she will be more sorry and ashamed of her conduct to
-you than she is now of her downfall, and she will be grateful
-for your love and Christ-like patience with her. Her
-present mood is hysteria—frenzy! Give her time!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She threatened to go on the stage or on the street!” exclaimed
-John, uttering the last three words with a deep
-groan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She does rave worse than any other hysterical woman I
-ever heard, to be sure, for, as a rule, they only threaten to
-‘go mad’ or to ‘kill’; but it is all raving! there’s nothing in
-it! You have been very patient and forbearing with your
-willful and provoking girl in this time of her suffering and
-excitement. Continue to be so, and you will have your reward
-in her penitence and affection. Believe it, dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’” quoted John Legg.
-“Come and draw a chair and sit by me, Julia, my dear.
-Your presence alone is very calming, even when you do not
-speak, though your words are always good and comforting
-and your voice sweet and pleasant.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia Legg seated herself beside her husband and took his
-hand in hers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia, having exhausted herself by her fury, fell down
-again upon the sofa and buried her face in the cushions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And now in the silence that ensued John Legg became
-conscious of a growing disturbance in the drawing-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This might have been going on some time unnoticed by
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>the three persons in the library, who were absorbed in their
-own trouble; but now the disturbance on the opposite side
-of the hall was too evident to be ignored.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sound of angry voices, hurrying steps and struggling
-forms reached their ears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia started up from her sofa and sat with her head
-bent forward, staring in the direction of the noise and
-listening intently, with a look of demoniacal satisfaction
-and expectancy on her face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Julia cowered and clung for protection to the husband
-whom she herself had just been comforting.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He patted her head to reassure her, and then said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, let me go, dear, and see what is the matter in
-there,” gently trying to release himself from her clasp.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, no!” cried Julia, clinging closer than before.
-“Pray, don’t leave us, John! Don’t go into that room!
-Something dreadful is going on there.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At that moment a piercing shriek rang through the air,
-followed by a heavy fall that shook the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I cannot stand this! Julia, I cannot stand it! I tell you
-I must run and prevent mischief if I can!” he urged
-earnestly, trying to free himself from her strong arms, but
-finding that he could not do so without using force and
-violence that must hurt her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The confusion arose to uproar. A loud crash shivered on
-the floor, and a peal of fiendish laughter resounded through
-the building, and a woman’s agonized cry went up to heaven
-for help!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Lamia, sitting on the sofa, leaning forward, listening intently,
-now broke into a low, demoniacal chuckle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Julia!” exclaimed John Legg, breathing hard through
-excitement. “I hate to hurt you, but I must prevent murder.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he wrenched her arms from around his neck, threw
-her back in the armchair and rushed from the library to the
-drawing-room.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVI<br> <span class='large'>A TERRIBLE SCENE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>We must now explain the cause of the parlor storm. It
-came on in this way:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>All the guests of Haymore Hall—with the exception of
-the Legg family in the library—were still assembled in the
-drawing-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Campbell party, father, mother and daughter, still
-occupied the obscure sofa against the rear wall of the back
-division.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy and Will Walling were seated near, talking with
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dandy, Mike and Longman were standing on the rug before
-the fire, exchanging confidences on the affairs of the
-evening.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff reclined, stupidly staring, on a divan in
-the recess of the front bay window, and occasionally drew
-from his pocket a large flask, which, with trembling hands,
-he uncorked and put to his lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran walked about from one group of friends to another,
-trying to seem at ease, but too surely in a state of intense
-anxiety.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently he took heart of grace and went up to the group
-on the sofa, touched the Rev. James Campbell on the shoulder
-and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come with me, please, reverend sir; I wish to consult
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector arose and drew the arm of his host within his
-own and walked away with him. They did not leave the
-drawing-room, but went slowly up and down its length for
-the first few minutes in silence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran did not seem to know how to open the subject he had
-on his mind. So it was the rector, after all, who, probably
-divining the nature of his friend’s difficulty, was the first
-to speak and to speak to the point.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The hour is late, and something should be done with
-that——” He paused, unwilling to use the words that
-arose to his lips, and he indicated the inebriate by a movement
-of his thumb.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Ran, “that is what puzzles me. It was of
-that I wished to talk with you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go on then! Let me have your views. It is late, as I
-remarked before, and I should have taken my wife and
-daughter home an hour ago, but that I did not wish to leave
-you until something should be settled in regard to this
-man.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>“But you will not leave us to-night? Rooms have already
-been prepared for you!” exclaimed Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear young friend, I thank you heartily, for myself
-and my womenkind, but we must return to the rectory to-night.
-My daughter has left her young babe there,” replied
-the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But it is so late.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the distance is so short.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do oblige us by staying, Mr. Campbell.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear Mr. Hay, don’t you see it is impossible, much as
-I thank you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I am sorry. So will Judy be.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now about the disposition of this—Montgomery?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” sighed Randolph Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you intend to do?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not know, sir. I want you to tell me, if you please.
-I might send for a constable to take him to the lockup
-house, as they call it here; but I do not like to do that. I
-might send him in a carriage to the village tavern, but I
-think he would drink himself to death there; or I might
-give him a bed here for the present, and indeed this is what
-I would rather do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Eh—what? Keep the fellow here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“For the present, yes.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And in the name of common sense—why?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, to keep him out of harm’s way.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My good young friend, you did well to take counsel with
-me. You would have done well to take counsel of any sane
-man on such a subject.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, what do you mean?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I begin to suspect that you need a trustee for your
-estate and a guardian for your person!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t understand you!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Listen, then! That fellow deserves to go to prison. He
-might be sent to the village inn. But, my friend, he must
-not be allowed to spend so much as one night under your
-roof. To let him do so would be an act of insanity.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“For more reasons than one. In the first place, he is the
-fraudulent claimant of your name and estate, though his
-claim will not bear an instant of light, a ray of truth, let
-in upon it; yet your allowing him to remain in the house
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>to which he came as its pretended master, would seem, to
-him at least, to be giving some color to his pretensions. Do
-you see?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I see what you mean, but I am not afraid of anything
-he, poor wretch, may think or say or do. Is there any other
-reason why he should not be sheltered here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes—not so strong a reason, to be sure; but a most
-decent one.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is a bigamist. He came here bringing a cruelly deceived,
-falsely married woman, who was never, therefore,
-wife or bride. She, not ‘Mrs.’ anybody, but Miss Legg, is
-here in your house under the charge of her parents, who are
-your guests. Therefore it would be unseemly—to use the
-mildest term—for him to remain under the same roof. Do
-you see now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, I see. How oblique one’s vision is at times,
-however. Well, Mr. Campbell, you have told me what I
-must not do with him; will you now tell me what I may?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly. If your merciful spirit shrinks from passing
-him over into the hands of the law, you can have him put
-into a carriage and taken to the village inn—‘The Red Fox,’
-Giles Scroggins, host.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will do so, and hold myself responsible for his expenses
-there,” said Randolph Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then both men looked toward the divan in the front
-bay window, on which lolled Gentleman Geff, very drunk
-and getting drunker every instant, for he now had the big
-flask turned up to his mouth, with his head thrown so far
-back that he was evidently draining the last drop of its contents.
-When he had done so, he made a futile attempt to restore
-the empty flask to his pocket, but instead let it fall to
-the floor, while he dropped back into his lolling position.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was at this moment that Clay Legg strode into the
-drawing-room, fresh from his humiliating interview with
-his father, smarting under the disclosure of his sister’s dishonor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He strode past all the guests in his way, and straight up
-to the side of his late friend and patron, Gentleman Geff,
-struck his hand heavily on the drunkard’s shoulder, shook
-him roughly and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>“Do you know, you brute! you devil! what is before
-you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff opened his heavy red eyes and stared in
-a deep stupor, through which fury began to kindle slowly,
-like flame from under a thick smoke.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Answer me, you beast!” demanded Legg, with another
-and rougher shake of the wretch under his grasp. “Do you
-know what is before you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No! nor care!” roared the madman, with a perfect
-stream of profanity and obscenity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then listen to me!” said Legg, when at length the torrent
-from Tartarus was stayed. “What is before you is
-first a trial for bigamy, with fourteen years of penal serviture,
-with hard labor, bread and water, ball and chain, dark
-cell and frequent flogging thrown in!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff answered this by a glare of hatred and
-defiance and another inundation from the River of Styx.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Legg waited until that flood was exhausted and then
-added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nor is that all! For when your first term of penal servitude
-shall be served out, another indictment will await you
-for conspiracy, perjury, forgery and fraud, by which you
-sought to gain possession of the Haymore estate, and another
-fourteen years, at least, of imprisonment, hard labor,
-stripes, chains and the rest!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again Gentleman Geff opened his lips in a way that made
-his mouth seem the opening of the pit of fire and brimstone
-for the blasting curses that issued from it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And again Legg waited in sarcastic silence until the
-smoke and flame had sunk down, and then he added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you should live through your second term you will
-have served twenty-eight years and you will be near sixty
-years of age—a very hoary-headed sinner, indeed! And yet,
-at the end of that time, the United States will want you on
-a charge of highway robbery and attempted murder, and
-will get you under the international extradition treaty.
-And you will pass the remainder of your guilty life in an
-American prison, where not only are the strong and rebellious
-criminals compelled to labor, but the aged, the
-infirm, and the invalids are scourged and driven to hard
-work, until they drop dead (if all tales be true). ‘Do you
-like the picture?’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>A blast of fury, profanity and indecency, more diabolical
-than all that bad preceded it, stormed from the mouth of
-the madman, and raved like a whirlwind around the ears of
-the listener.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When this had died of its own frenzy, Legg spoke again
-and for the last time.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do you know, you fiend, who are here? I will tell you!
-The witnesses who will convict you of every crime known
-to mankind. There on the sofa, at the opposite end of this
-room, a little in the shadow, sits your wife, Jennie Montgomery,
-whom you married, deserted and afterward stabbed,
-and left for dead in the streets in New York. There she
-sits between her mother and father, all three bent on prosecuting
-you to the full extent of the law! Look attentively
-and you will see them! There, talking with Lawyer
-Walling, is Randolph Hay, your benefactor, who saved you
-from starving and shared his hut with you in the mining
-camp of Grizzly Gulch, and whom you robbed, tried to murder
-and left for dead in the Black Woods of California so
-that you might claim his name and place with impunity!
-He will be compelled to prosecute you! And across the
-hall, in the library with her father, is the woman you deceived
-into a false marriage. She will prosecute you with
-all the vim, venom and virulence of a proud, outraged and
-revengeful woman. That is, if she does not prefer to execute
-you with her own hands.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Clay Legg should have known the dangerous wild beast
-he was goading to madness, yet he went on with a strange
-fatuity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had followed with his eyes the index of
-Clay Legg to the distant sofa, on which sat the wronged
-wife, Jennie Montgomery, between her father and her
-mother. He had slowly but surely recognized her, stared
-at her in stupid dismay until he was again stung to fury
-by the insulting words of Clay Legg, when he turned his
-kindling eyes on the face of the man who was drawing such
-a degrading picture of his fate. It seemed then that it
-only needed the cessation of the sound of the speaker’s voice
-to break the spell that held the demoniac; for no sooner had
-it ceased than he sprang to his feet with a terrible roar
-and hurled himself toward Legg.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the latter saw his peril with the speed of lightning
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>and fled away, leaving others to brave the storm he himself
-had raised.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In an instant the maniac was raging in the midst of “the
-goodlie company,” and all was fear, panic and confusion.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Little Mike, unhappily, was nearest to the madman and
-first to attempt to pacify him. But the demon caught up a
-heavy astral lamp from the table nearest to him and shivered
-it upon the head of the willing peacemaker, who fell
-like a slaughtered sheep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy’s shrieks of agony rang out upon the air, and
-brought the terrified servants to the drawing-room doors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The demoniac sprang upon the table and seized a heavy
-chair, which he whirled around his head, threatening all
-who approached.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Longman sprang upon the table and threw
-themselves upon him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was at this moment that John Legg, startled by the
-screams of the women, entered the drawing-room, through
-the side door leading from the hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yes, it was pandemonium that met the horror-stricken
-eyes of the man. Can I possibly show you the scene as he
-beheld it?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As he stood in the doorway, on his left, near the bay
-window in the upper end of the room, high on the table
-stood the athletic form of the demoniac, raging and foaming,
-cursing and threatening in the frenzy of <i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>,
-swinging aloft the heavy chair which he whirled around
-his head with the swiftness and velocity of a windmill. On
-the same table stood Samson Longman and Randolph Hay,
-struggling to master the maniac, who seemed possessed of
-the strength of seven devils.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the floor, near the middle of the room, lay Michael
-Man, stunned by a wound in his head, prostrate and insensible.
-Near him were scattered the fragments of the astral
-lamp that had evidently been the instrument by which his
-skull had been fractured. Beside him sat Judith Hay, with
-his wounded head on her lap. She was weeping and wailing,
-giving full vent to her grief and horror after the manner
-of her warm-hearted, impulsive race. Beside him on
-the opposite side knelt the Rev. Mr. Campbell, with a bowl
-of water and a napkin, washing the blood from the cut.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Away back in the lower end of the long room, on a shady
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>sofa, sat Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, Jennie Montgomery,
-clasped in each other’s arms, with their heads hidden
-on each other’s shoulders, too much shocked, horror-stricken,
-terrified to help, to speak or even to move. From
-under the same sofa peered the pallid face and staring eyes
-of Dandy Quin, who had evidently sought that lowly refuge
-“as the safest place at the crack of doom” for a poor little
-old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Neither Clay Legg nor Will Walling were to be seen anywhere.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All this, which has required some time to describe, was
-taken in at one view by John Legg. And for one instant
-he stood in doubt where first to offer help; whether to jump—but
-no; honest John’s jumping days were over—whether
-to scramble up on the table and help to subdue the maniac
-possessed of a legion of devils, or to kneel down by the side
-of the minister to serve if he could the wounded man. In
-another moment the doubt was decided for him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran succeeded in getting both his hands around the
-throat of the demoniac, which he held as in the grip of
-death, while Longman wrenched and twisted the heavy,
-murderous missile from his hands and dropped it on the
-floor and then closed with him in a conquering clasp. But
-it took all his strength, as well as all of Ran’s, to hold the
-infuriate, now that his arms were free.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Feeling sure that the maniac was conquered, John Legg
-turned his attention from the scene of conquest on the
-table to the scene of suffering on the carpet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is the young man dangerously wounded?” he inquired
-in a low tone of Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We hope not. We hope this may be only a scalp wound.
-But it will be impossible to tell until there is a surgical examination,”
-replied the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Has a doctor been sent for?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; Mr. Walling has gone out to dispatch a servant for
-Mr. Hobbs, the village practitioner.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, me poor Mike!” cried Judy, breaking afresh into
-sobs and tears and dialect. “Me poor, dear, darlint bhoy!
-Sure he was born to have the head av him broke. Sure, it’s
-not the first time, though it’s the worst. But, afther all,
-it is not so bad broke as me own dear Ran’s was, be the
-same token, and be the hands av that same murthering thaif
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>av the wurruld! Oh! wirra! wirra! It was not enough
-that he kilt me dear Ran intirely, but now he must kill me
-poor Mike!” wailed Judy until her words were drowned in
-a flood of tears.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell gazed in astonishment for a moment. In
-this wild Irish girl, giving full swing to her emotions and
-her brogue, he could scarcely recognize the quiet gentlewoman
-he had known now for some hours as Mrs. Randolph
-Hay. But he quickly recovered himself, and atoned for his
-involuntary rudeness by withdrawing his gaze and offering
-the gentlest words of consolation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the meantime the struggle on the table was continued
-in grim silence. The opponents saving all their wind for
-their strife until, as they swayed back and forth, the equilibrium
-of the board was overbalanced, and table and men
-fell together to the floor with a loud crash that called forth
-shrieks from the women.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>For one moment the three men rolled together in a knot
-on the carpet, and the next Gentleman Geff lay flat on his
-back, with Longman’s knees on his chest and hands around
-his throat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ran!” exclaimed the hunter, “take my handkerchief out
-of my coat pocket and tie the feet of this wild beast!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran immediately tried to obey. He drew the large red
-bandanna from Longman’s pocket, found it strong enough
-for its purpose, and went around and took hold of the feet
-of the prostrate madman, but he immediately received a
-shower of kicks upon his chest that knocked him breathless.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Seeing that, Longman raised his voice again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, come here! We haven’t got a man to deal
-with, but a devil, and a rum-maddened devil at that!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Legg immediately rushed to the rescue.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Have you got a scarf or a handkerchief? A good strong
-one. All right! Tie this brute’s fore paws together while
-I hold him down. Samson, my namesake, what amazing
-strength rum and madness gives a brute!” panted Longman,
-when he had finished his labor and arose to his feet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The conquered demoniac lay bound and gagged on the
-floor, his murderous limbs helpless, his blasphemous tongue
-speechless. Yet still he writhed, tossed and floundered like
-some huge, stranded sea monster.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The distressed group gathered around Michael Man were
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>obliged to wait in quietness for the arrival of the doctor,
-for they dared not even move the wounded man lest they
-should do him a fatal injury.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs came at last, and being a country practitioner,
-he brought his medicine chest as well as his surgical case
-with him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was a tall, lank, red-haired young Yorkshireman,
-fresh from the London colleges, who had lately succeeded to
-the practice of his father, an aged, retired physician of the
-place.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He found two patients to be treated, one in as dire need
-as the other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But after hearing a brief account of the occurrence from
-Mr. Randolph Hay, he gave his first services to the youth,
-Michael Man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The bleeding wound in his head was of itself bringing
-back the consciousness of the wounded lad.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs knelt by his side and made a careful examination
-of his injuries, and then he told the anxious friends
-that they were not dangerous, only a deep scalp wound and
-a very slight fracture of the skull.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He washed and dressed the wound there on the spot, and
-then directed that the youth should be taken to his room,
-undressed and put to bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A narrow mattress was brought by two menservants, who
-laid it on the carpet, lifted the wounded youth tenderly, laid
-him on it and so bore him out of the drawing-room and up
-the grand staircase to his chamber on the third floor, followed
-by Dr. Hobbs and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By the time Michael Man was carefully undressed and
-comfortably settled in bed he recovered his faculties sufficiently
-to recognize the situation and speak to those around
-him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t ye be frighted, Judy, darlint,” he murmured
-feebly to his pallid, distressed sister, who was bending anxiously
-over him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sure, and I’m not, Mike, dear. Yourself will be all
-right soon,” she replied, putting much constraint upon herself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Troth, and I’m all right now. So the redskins did come
-and attack the fort, afther all. But the colonel was aquil
-to the blackguards,” he added.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>And then the doctor perceived that he was becoming delirious,
-and he administered a sedative. When the patient
-had grown quiet again the doctor left him, with his sister
-Judy sitting by his bed, and went downstairs to the drawing-room
-to attend to the other case waiting for his treatment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There he found the demoniac still lying on the floor,
-bound hand and foot. Longman, Dandy and Mr. Campbell
-were standing around him. They had taken the gag from
-his mouth, but he was breathing heavily. He had suffered
-the usual reaction in <i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>, from violent frenzy to
-deep coma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The men around him made way for the young doctor,
-who knelt down beside him, looked into his face, felt his
-pulse and his heart, and even lifted the heavy, half-closed
-lids of his swollen eyes. Then he rose and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think you may unbind him with safety now; he will
-not be in a condition to assault any one or do any harm for
-many days to come, if he ever should.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At this moment Ran re-entered the drawing-room and reported
-Mike as sleeping quietly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then, in the kindness of his heart toward his fallen foe,
-he stooped and examined the condition of Gentleman Geff,
-whom Longman had just unbound and straightened out,
-and who was now lying relaxed and limp on the carpet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Mr. Campbell,” said Ran, standing up, “you see
-that we have no alternative than to put this poor wretch to
-bed in the house here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not so,” said the rector. Then turning to the doctor,
-he inquired: “Will it be safe to remove this man immediately
-to my house—to the rectory, that is? The distance
-is short, you know.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will be perfectly safe, sir,” replied the physician.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, Mr. Hay, I shall be much obliged to you for the
-use of a spring wagon or cart and a mattress with pillows
-and proper covering to convey this man to the rectory,”
-said Mr. Campbell, turning to his host.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, my dear sir, do you think of what you are about
-to do?” demanded Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; my duty.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But your daughter?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She need never see or speak to him or be troubled by
-him. Jennie is a very sensible, practical young woman;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>always was so, like her dear mother. And her misfortunes—the
-result of her one act of imprudence—have made her
-even more so. Jennie will be no hindrance.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why should you take so much trouble, make such
-a sacrifice, assume such a responsibility as to carry this
-stupefied madman to your quiet house?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because, as I said before, it is my duty. I am a minister
-of the merciful Gospel, however much below that sacred
-calling, and must set an example of charity—practice some
-little of what I preach. The man is my daughter’s husband,
-however unworthy of her; my own son-in-law, however discreditable
-to me; and I must do my duty by him, however
-disagreeable to us all. My dear wife and daughter will give
-no trouble. There will be no scenes, no hysterics. They
-are good, true, strong women, and will sustain me in my
-action. But they need not go near the man. Longman, his
-mother and myself can take care of him. And now, my
-friend, will you order the conveyance?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With a sigh and a gesture of deprecation, Ran went out
-to give the necessary directions.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There had been some delay caused by this discussion; but
-it did not matter to the unworthy subject of it; he was lying
-on the carpet in a dead stupor, and for himself was as well
-there as anywhere else: so there was no hurry.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In less than half an hour a light spring cart, such as is
-used by expressmen, was brought around from the stables.
-It was drawn by two horses and furnished with comfortable
-bedding, and to this receptacle Gentleman Geff was conveyed
-in the arms of four men.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector and the doctor rode on the seat with the driver,
-and they took the road to the rectory.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, declining all Mr. and
-Mrs. Hay’s pressing invitations, set out in one of the Hall
-carriages for their home. Longman rode on the box with
-the coachman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling, old Dandy and the Legg family were the
-only remaining guests at the Hall, and these declined to retire
-to bed.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVII<br> <span class='large'>CLEARING SKIES</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>It was of no use to go to bed. The sun was rising.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy, leaving Mike fast asleep, came downstairs, summoned
-the housekeeper and gave directions for an early and
-ample breakfast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she went into the library to look after the Leggs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She found Lamia lying on the sofa with her face buried
-in the cushions. She lay perfectly still, so that she might
-be asleep, ashamed or only sulky.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg lay back in her easy-chair, fast asleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg sat in the great leathern armchair, with his
-hands clasped upon his knees and his chin bent upon his
-chest; he was awake, as deep sighs showed him to be.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Clay Legg was nowhere to be seen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy was so calm and reassured now that, without once
-falling into dialect, she addressed herself to the old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, there have been bedrooms at the disposal of
-yourself and family all last night. I hope the servant,
-whose duty it was to do so, has not failed to let you know
-this or to offer to show you to your apartments?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, madam, thank you. No one has failed to execute
-your hospitable orders; but who could go to bed in such a
-night as has been passed? No, madam; just as soon as my
-wife and daughter are a little rested we shall bid you good-by
-and take our leave of your hospitable home.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am sorry that such is your resolution; but as soon as
-Mrs. and Miss Legg shall awaken I hope you will ring a
-bell and a servant shall show you to your rooms, where, at
-least, you may have the refreshment of the toilet service before
-breakfast,” concluded Judy, pleased with her victory
-over the brogue.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, madam, and we will avail ourselves
-of your offer,” said John Legg, with a bow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy smiled and left the library.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No sooner had the door closed behind her than Lamia
-reared her head like a serpent from the sofa and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, then, ring the bell now. I am awake, at any
-rate, and I should like a bath and then breakfast to my
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>room. I shall not go down to the breakfast table to face
-a sneering pack of hypocrites.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Legg sighed and rang the bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The commotion waked up Mrs. Legg, who yawned, rubbed
-her eyes and looked about her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where are we? What place is this? How came we
-here?” she muttered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then she suddenly recollected the situation and circumstances
-and added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s well I’m strong. John Legg, how have you stood
-it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“As well as man could, Julia, I hope. But here is a
-young woman come to show us to our rooms, where we can
-wash our faces before breakfast,” he added, as a housemaid
-appeared at the door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three arose and prepared to follow the girl, who led
-them up the first flight of stairs to one of the best suites of
-rooms in the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When John Legg and Julia Legg had made their simple
-and hasty toilet, they went downstairs and into the drawing-room,
-where they found Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay, Mr.
-Will Walling and Dandy Quin awaiting them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They greeted the party, and then John Legg apologized
-for the absence of his daughter as best he could.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy excused herself for a moment and went out immediately
-to speak to the housekeeper and order an excellent
-breakfast sent up to Miss Legg in her room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she returned to her guests and conducted them to
-the breakfast parlor, where the morning meal was already
-laid.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After breakfast Mr. and Mrs. Legg took leave, and with
-old Dandy, who wept at parting with his friends, and with
-their daughter, closely veiled and silent, left Haymore Hall
-in a carriage proffered by Ran and drove to Chuxton, where
-they took the train for London, en route for Medge.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Clay Legg had not been seen since he had fled from before
-the face of the frenzied Gentleman Geff. He was afterward
-heard of in Wales, as a hanger-on to his father-in-law, under
-whose protection his wife and children had lived for some
-time past.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Michael Man’s good constitution, excellent health and
-temperate habits were all so much in his favor that in a
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>few days he began to get well, and before the week was out
-he came downstairs and joined the family at their meals.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector came over every day to inquire after Mike and
-to bring reports of Gentleman Geff, who was at death’s door
-with brain fever and not expected to recover. Longman,
-the colossus, was established in the sick-room as his constant
-attendant. Elspeth remained at the rectory for the
-present. She would not leave the family under present circumstances.
-Meanwhile Randolph Hay had given orders to
-his bailiff, Prowt, to have the gamekeeper’s cottage put in
-complete repair and refurnished for the Longmans.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Christmas came, and the young couple at the Hall sent
-invitations to their few intimate friends to come and spend
-the sacred festival with them. They were loyal to the humblest
-among these. They really invited not only Mr. and
-Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Montgomery and Dr. Hobbs, but
-old Dandy from Medge and Longman and Elspeth from the
-rectory. Will Walling and Michael Man were still staying
-in the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The young doctor, the rector and his wife and daughter
-accepted the invitation, but Elspeth and Longman declined
-it on the ground that she would have to stay at home to
-mind the baby and he to attend to the sick man; but these
-were not the only reasons; they both felt that their presence,
-as even Christmas guests at the Hall, would be a social solecism;
-for as Elspeth said to her son:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“These generous young people from the woods of a foreign
-country don’t know what they are a-doing of when
-they invite you and me to dinner, Samson! It might do
-well enough in the mines of the backwoods. But here!
-Why, bless ’em, if they go on in this way not a single soul
-among the country families will have a thing to do with
-’em, if they are the lord and lady of the manor! But they’ll
-find out better.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman fully agreed with his mother, and so he wrote
-his excuses for both.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Old Dandy Quin also wrote from Medge and begged to
-be excused on two pleas: the first that he was not able to
-make the long journey from one end of England to the
-other twice in ten days; and the second was that he wanted
-to eat his Christmas dinner with his new-found relatives.
-He added the information that he did not mean to carry out
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>his first intention of buying an annuity with his savings,
-but that he should go into partnership with his nephew, and
-that in the spring they should move into a larger house and
-increase their business.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He concluded with a piece of news that made Ran, Judy
-and Mike break into one of their shouting Grizzly Gulch
-laughs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He wrote that poor Miss Lyddy Legg—and just think of
-the queenly and beautiful Lamia Leegh being called “poor
-Miss Lyddy Legg!”—was very broken-hearted, though she
-need not be, for it was not her fault that she had been
-taken in by a false marriage; and that everybody was as
-kind to her as kind could be, and that he himself—Dandy
-Quin—had so much respect and sympathy for her that he
-offered to marry her out of hand and make an honest woman
-of her and leave her all his property at his death! but that
-the poor, misguided and demented young woman, who did
-not know what was for her own good, had refused him with
-scorn and insolence. There!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Think of the vain and haughty Lamia Leegh receiving an
-offer of marriage from Dandy Quin!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Notwithstanding, or perhaps because of these “regrets,”
-Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay enjoyed their Christmas with
-the few friends who gathered around them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the morning they walked to the village church in company
-with Will Walling and Mike. They heard a good
-Christmas sermon from the Rev. Mr. Campbell and listened
-to some really fine music from the organ and grand anthems
-from the choristers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the service they shook hands with the rector and
-his wife and daughter and with Elspeth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman was at the rectory keeping guard over the dying
-man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That evening Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay entertained at
-dinner the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Montgomery,
-Dr. Hobbs, Mr. Will Walling and Mr. Michael Man. And
-the festival passed off pleasantly, nor did Judy, nor even
-Mike, once fall into dialect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the Christmas holidays were over, Mr. Will Walling,
-having seen his friend and client, Mr. Randolph Hay,
-in quiet and undisputed possession of Haymore, prepared
-to take leave of the Hall and return to New York.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>A few days before his expected departure he called Ran
-and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, what are your plans?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We shall not leave Haymore until the spring,” replied
-Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, give me half an hour in the library alone with
-you. I have something to talk about.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran followed his guest to the room of books and gave
-him a chair and took another.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then, however, instead of seating himself, Mr. Will Walling
-went to one of the book shelves and took down a large,
-heavy volume bound in red cloth and gold.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This,” he said, as he laid it on the table and turned over
-the leaves, “is the last year’s edition of ‘Burke’s Landed
-Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?” carelessly inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And this,” continued the lawyer, as he paused at an
-open page, “is the genealogy of the Hays, of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well?” again inquired Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I want you to look at it with me. I don’t wish to bore
-you to go over the whole history, with its marriages, births
-and deaths, but only to notice this fact that runs through
-the whole, from your first known ancestor, Arthur Hei, who
-married Edda, a daughter of Seebold, Earl of Northumberland,
-down to your grandfather, the late squire, who married
-Gentil, daughter of Pharoah Cooper, of Esling. Moor,
-Yorkshire.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She was a gypsy, and the child of a gypsy,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; still she is set down here as the daughter of a certain
-somebody. All your ‘forebyes’ have married the daughters
-of certain somebodies, from dukes down to gypsies.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, but what does all this talk tend to?” demanded
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To this: It is too late for your name as Squire of Haymore
-to appear in this year’s edition of the ‘Landed
-Gentry’; the volume is probably already issued. But before
-long the <em>Herald College</em> will be getting up next year’s edition,
-and you will receive letters or messengers inquiring for
-authentic statistics concerning your succession, marriage
-and so on.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, they can have them,” said Ran indifferently.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>“Yes, but I am afraid there will be some awkwardness for
-you on one point.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Which point?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That of your marriage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How should that be?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, in this way—listen. The items of entry in your
-case will be something like this:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Hay, Randolph; born July 15, 184—; succeeded his
-grandfather as tenth squire, March 1, 186—,’ (for you know
-that your succession will date from the day of his death);
-‘married December 2, 186—, Judith, daughter of ——’
-Whom? There’s where the awkwardness would come in.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I would say simply—Judith Man,” replied Ran Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well—Judith Man, daughter of—whom? The
-<em>Herald’s College</em> are very precise in these matters. You
-will have to find a father for her.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. Walling! If you were not my friend and my guest,
-I should be very angry with you. My sweet wife is a child
-of the Heavenly Father! but for an earthly parent of either
-sex I do not know where to look.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Look here then, Hay, to me. I didn’t mention the difficulty
-without having a remedy for it. I am a childless
-widower, as you know. And though it would be straining
-a point of probability to represent a man of thirty-seven
-as the lawful father of a woman of nineteen, still I would
-like to adopt your wife as my daughter, that she may be
-entered in the Red Book as Judith, daughter of William
-Walling, Esq., attorney-at-law, New York City. Come,
-Hay, my friend, you know I mean the best by you and by
-her. Now what do you say to accepting me as your father-in-law?”
-inquired Will Walling, with a laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Randolph Hay paused before he replied. He was more
-pained than pleased. Yet he appreciated the lawyer’s good
-intentions, and was grateful for them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you from my heart, Mr. Walling, for your intended
-kindness; and I feel grieved that I cannot accept
-your gracious proposal, since not to do so must seem so very
-ungracious as well as ungrateful to a friend whom I love
-and esteem as much as I do you. And yet I cannot accept
-it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why not?” inquired the lawyer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>“I—do not know. I cannot tell. I have a feeling against
-it which I am unable to define or analyze.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I am not. I know the cause of your reluctance. It
-is because it would not be strictly true. That is it. You
-need not answer, Ran, my boy. But you must allow me to
-tell you that you are a little too scrupulous for a practical
-world, though I do not like you the less on that account,”
-said Will Walling, with his usual little laugh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I hope my scruples, as you call them, will not affect
-our friendship?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have just told you that they will not. There, let the
-matter drop!” concluded the lawyer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy never heard of the offer Mr. Will Walling had made
-to adopt her as his daughter for the sake of giving her a
-good antenuptial position, nor did she ever guess that there
-would be any awkwardness in the record of her marriage
-in the Hay, of Haymore, item of “The Landed Gentry of
-Great Britain and Ireland.” She was not troubled on that
-subject.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All the affairs of the Hays were so satisfactorily settled
-now that the young couple were only waiting for the departure
-of Will Walling to leave Haymore for London,
-where they might live in retirement in that great city until
-they should have fitted themselves to mingle with the more
-critical of their Yorkshire neighbors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Early in the new year pleasant letters came from America.
-They were from Cleve and Palma Stuart, and brought
-news of the change of fortune that would take them to the
-mountain farm of West Virginia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy were pleased, yet puzzled.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should have thought, if they left New York, they
-would have gone to that fine plantation in Mississippi,” said
-Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So should I, and not to what must be a poor farm on
-the mountain,” added Ran. And then turning to Walling,
-he added:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see you will have to take the documents, putting
-Palma in possession of the property I have made over to
-her, all the way to West Virginia.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will do that with pleasure. I have never yet seen
-the Alleghany Mountains,” replied Will Walling, who was
-always ready to travel over any new ground.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>It was nearly the first of February that Will Walling at
-length reluctantly made up his mind to take leave of his
-friends at Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In bidding them farewell he said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I cannot help regretting that you would not accept me
-for your father-in-law, Hay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran only laughed in reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What did he mean by asking you to be his father-in-law?”
-inquired Judy, after the dogcart that was taking Will
-Walling to the station had rolled away from the door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, only his nonsense. You know, of course, that, as I
-have no mother nor he any daughter, he could never have
-been my father-in-law,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So Judy never suspected how it was.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But before many months Judy and Mike were claimed by
-a father with a pedigree which the most heathenish worshiper
-of rank might have been proud to acknowledge.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVIII<br> <span class='large'>HOPE AND LIFE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>“Poley, dear darling, will you go with Cleve and me to
-West Virginia to live?” exclaimed Palma, running into the
-cabinet kitchen of her flat, where good Mrs. Pole was busy
-over the fire, baking those very muffins in which she so excelled.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve had gone out to change the bonanza check to pay
-the rent and to give up the flat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Poley paused, with a spoonful of batter held in her hand,
-halfway between the bowl on the table and the muffin rings
-in the pan on the range.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is that you said, my dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma repeated her question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will I go with you to Vest Wirginny? That’s the furrin
-nation we was to war with, ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Pole,
-going on to fill her muffin rings.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention the war, Poley. I cannot bear to talk
-of it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>“Well, I won’t. But that Vest Wirginny—where is it?
-In New Orleenes?” inquired Mrs. Pole, whose ideas of
-geography were so vague that she once asked Palma if
-Africa was in the United States. And Palma, to spare the
-good woman’s self-esteem, answered that Africans, or their
-descendants, had been in America for a couple of centuries.
-Whereupon Mrs. Pole had added that, of course, she knew
-that America was in the United States. Palma had not set
-her right, but ruminated in her own mind on the fact of the
-future when our national New Jerusalem would not make a
-part of the Western continent, but the Western continent
-would be only a part of the grand republic of the planet
-Earth. But this is a digression. Now to return.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“West Virginia is much nearer than New Orleans,” replied
-Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole filled the last of her muffin rings and set the
-pan containing them on the range before she spoke again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you and Mr. Stuart be going there to live, ma’am,
-you say?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, yes—and very soon, too.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole put the bowl of batter in the cupboard, covered
-it over with a clean napkin and sat down, “to save her
-back,” while her muffins were baking.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“For good?” she inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed, for good in every sense of the word, I do
-hope and believe. I will tell you all about it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole jumped up and ran into her little bedroom adjoining
-the kitchen, and brought out a small, low-backed
-rocker, saying to her little lady:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There! Sit ye down while you talk. You have often
-enough told me to ‘spare my back’ whenever I could lawfully
-do so. And now I tell you to spare your own.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma laughed and dropped into her chair, and when
-Mrs. Pole had looked at her muffins and seen that they were
-doing well, and taken her own seat on a cane chair, Palma
-began:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will tell it to you as Cleve told it to me, for it is like
-a story, Poley. Here goes!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Once upon a time there was an old man—a very rich
-old man—who lived in an old stone house at the foot of a
-mountain, called Wolfscliff, and the woods that clothed the
-side of the mountain were called Wolfswalk, because, when
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>the land was surveyed and the first house was built there
-was neither sleep by night nor safety by day, for the wolves.
-They carried off hens and geese and sheep and calves, and—horror
-to relate!—even the little negro babies. This was
-how the place received its name. The wolves were worse
-than the Indians. They could neither be fought off nor
-bought off, but had gradually to die off, like the Indians.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So the name came down the generations to the time of
-Jeremiah Cleve, the old man with whom my story commenced,
-and who lived in an old stone farmhouse in the
-woods at the foot of the mountain—a house many times
-larger than the log cabin of his first American ancestor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This Jeremiah had married an heiress in his own neighborhood,
-and so had doubled his fortune.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They had three sons.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“John, the eldest, was, according to the law of primogeniture
-then prevailing in Virginia, heir to the landed estate
-of his father. This John, when he was but twenty years
-of age, became engaged to be married to the beautiful
-daughter of the man who owned the nearest plantation to
-Wolfswalk. It was a long engagement, on account of the
-young fiancée’s extreme youth; but just when they were
-going to be married, when he was twenty-five and she was
-eighteen, she caught a severe cold while out sleighing with
-him, and died within a week of inflammation of the lungs.
-She was buried in her bridal dress, on her wedding day. It
-is said that on her deathbed he solemnly vowed himself to
-her, lover and husband, for time and eternity. That was
-seventy years ago, and he has kept his faith. He is now a
-lonely old man of ninety-five, the solitary master of Wolfscliff,
-waiting for the Lord to call him to join his bride in
-heaven.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The younger sons, Charles and James, were, by the
-terms of the marriage settlements of their parents, co-heirs
-of their mother’s estate; and if there had been ten, they
-would have all been equal co-heirs, and each portion small;
-as there were but two, each portion was considerable.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Charles was the first of the family to marry. He wedded
-a young woman of family and fortune, and went to live on
-his mother’s plantation. They had two sons. When these
-boys were old enough to be sent to college their mother
-sickened and died of typhoid fever, how contracted no one
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>ever could tell. Their father never married. His house
-was well managed by a capable young mulatto woman, who
-made it homelike to the boys when they came there to spend
-the vacation. At length, when the young men were relatively
-twenty-two and twenty-four years old, their father
-also died, and the young men lived on the farm like true
-brothers until the Civil War broke out, when they entered
-the Southern army. Ah! poor, dear, brave boys! One fell
-at Fredericksburg, the other at Cold Harbor. Truly ‘The
-glory of this world passeth away.’</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I come now to the youngest of old Jeremiah’s sons—James,
-who was Cleve’s grandfather—his mother’s father.
-He had a passion for the military life, and he entered the
-army. When he had gained his commission as second lieutenant
-of infantry, he married Molly Jefferson, a relation
-of the illustrious Thomas.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By this time the aged couple, Jeremiah and Josephine
-Cleve, had passed on to a higher life, and John, their eldest
-son, a man passed middle age, reigned at Wolfscliff in their
-stead.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“John, a lonely man, invited the young couple to make
-their permanent home with him, and they did so until the
-Mexican War broke out, when the young lieutenant had to
-follow Gen. Scott to Mexico. His young wife would gladly
-have accompanied him ‘even to the battlefield,’ but she was
-then nursing her first—and only—child, a baby girl not a
-month old, when the young husband and father went away
-to the war, from which he never came back again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The tidings of his death in the battle of Chepultepec
-came to Wolfscliff as a death blow to the youthful widow.
-She pined and died within the year, leaving her infant
-daughter, Cara, to the charge, yes, rather to the heart of
-John Cleve. He brought up and educated the orphan and,
-when she was grown, went out into the world for her sake.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In a winter they passed in Washington they met young
-Mr. Stuart, of the Cypresses, Mississippi. A mutual attachment
-between the young people was approved by John
-Cleve. And the next summer Mr. Stuart, of Mississippi,
-and Miss Cleve, of Virginia, were married at Wolfscliff.
-They went on an extended wedding tour which filled up all
-the summer and autumn months, and only returned to the
-husband’s home in Mississippi in time for the Christmas
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>holidays, when they were joined by John Cleve, of Wolfscliff,
-who came at their—not invitation only, but prayer—to
-spend the winter with them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That was his first and last visit—not that he had not
-enjoyed it, nor that he ceased to love his dear niece, but
-that after her marriage he grew more and more of a recluse,
-a student and a dreamer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And she visited him all the more frequently that she
-could not induce him to leave his home. Instead of going
-to a gay summer resort when she migrated to the North
-every summer, she would go to Wolfscliff, until at length,
-when years passed and children came every year, and sickened
-every year, and she had to take them to the seaside,
-her annual visits to Wolfscliff were discontinued.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cleve, the youngest child, and the only one who survived
-his parents, was taken to Wolfscliff when he was
-about three years old. That was the first and last time he
-ever saw his grand-uncle. Of the tragic fate of Cleve’s
-father and mother you have heard me tell, Poley.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” answered Mrs. Pole; “they were fatally hurt
-on the wreck of the <em>Lucy Lee</em>, I remember.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And after that, do you know that the aged John Cleve,
-of Wolfscliff, who sank deeper and deeper into solitary study
-and reverie, utterly lost sight of his grand-nephew, whom
-he was contented to think of as at school under the supervision
-of his guardian, Judge Barrn, or at college, or traveling
-in Europe, or on his Mississippi plantation, not knowing
-that the latter was a charred and blasted ruin and desert
-until the death, in battle, of his last nephew left him without
-an heir bearing the name of Cleve. Then he instituted
-inquiries for his grand-nephew, Cleve Stuart, but without
-the least effect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Accident at last revealed Cleve’s residence in New
-York. Mr. Sam Walling went to Washington on legal business
-and fell in with a Mr. Steele, of Wolfswalk, the nearest
-town to Wolfscliff, and, in the course of conversation, mentioned
-the sage of Wolfscliff and his vain quest for his
-nephew and heir, Cleve Stuart. Then Mr. Walling gave
-information, and the West Virginian went back to the
-mountains with the news the hermit was pining to hear.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“John Cleve immediately wrote the letter inviting Mr.
-Stuart and myself to come and make our home with him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>“And you are going?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I told you so. Will you come with us?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To the end of the world. To the jumping-off place.
-And even there, if you should take the leap in the dark, I’ll
-jump down after you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dear Poley, I am so glad!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And why should I stay behind? And why should I not
-go? I have nieces and cousins here, to be sure; but they
-are all doing well. And though I love them, I think I love
-you more, for you do seem more like a child of my own than
-any of them do; and you seem to want me more than they
-can.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do want you more, Poley, darling. And Cleve is so
-anxious for you to go with us for me. Though I am now in
-excellent health, he seems to think I require a nurse to look
-after me as much as if I were a sick baby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And so you be, my dear, for this present time, and will
-be for some time to come,” Mrs. Pole replied, nodding
-wisely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I am so glad you will come, Poley, dear. And listen.
-When I get settled at Wolfscliff next summer you can invite
-any of your relations, or all of them, as many as the
-house will hold, to come and stay with you. It will be such
-a pleasant, healthful change for them, from the crowded
-city to the fine, open mountains.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It would be heaven for them to see it only for a day.
-Why, we all went up the North River and saw the hills only
-from the deck of the steamer, and they thought that was
-paradise, and longed to be in it. What would they say to
-staying a week among the mountains?” exclaimed Poley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then they shall come. They shall all come,” responded
-Palma delightedly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, my dear child, what would the old gentleman say?”
-demurred Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley, you don’t know the Southern people. Neither
-do I, for that matter, except upon Cleve’s showing. But I
-am sure I can guarantee you and yours a welcome at Wolfscliff.
-And mind, we won’t have to send to market for meat,
-poultry and vegetables, nor to the grocer’s for flour, and
-meal, and lard, and eggs, and such things. Nearly everything,
-except tea and sugar, pepper and salt, and such, are
-produced on the farm, and cost next to nothing,” said
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>Palma, speaking as she believed and proving how little she
-knew of the cost of labor or the worth of time on a farm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Mrs. Pole, who was as ignorant of such a life as was
-her youthful friend, received every statement in good faith,
-and anticipated good days to come.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She looked once more at her muffins, made the tea, and
-then went into the parlor to set the table for luncheon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma went into her bedroom to overhaul trunks and
-bureau drawers, to see what she could make of her scant
-wardrobe, in view of appearing among strangers in West
-Virginia. She had but three suits—the superb velvet dress
-given her by Mrs. Walling, which she thought could only
-be worn on grand occasions, and must be quite useless in
-the mountain farmhouse; the well-worn crimson cashmere
-now on her back, and in its very last days; the fine India
-muslin, now fairly embroidered, not with unnecessary fancy
-work, but with needful darns. These were all the dresses
-Palma owned, if we except the old, faded blue gingham
-wrapper in which Cleve had first found her in her garret.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I must get Poley to sponge and press the crimson cashmere,
-and then that will do to travel in, and with care it
-may last the rest of the winter,” she said patiently, as she
-locked her trunk and her bureau drawers and returned to
-her little parlor, where she sat down to work on a doll’s
-dress, or what might have passed for such.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While thus engaged she sang a sweet nursery song that
-was a reminiscence of her own infancy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently Cleve came in, smiling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, dear,” he said, “I have paid the rent and given up
-the rooms, though I had to pay another month’s rent in
-lieu of a month’s warning; and I have settled every other
-outstanding bill except the milkman’s. I could not find
-man or bill if I tried, I suppose.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; there is no bill. We buy tickets, and pay cash, and
-we have seven tickets left.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then the man can have the benefit, for we go away to-day.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“From the city?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; from the flat. We will go to a hotel to-night, and
-go to Washington to-morrow, en route for West Virginia.
-Can you pack up in that time?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I can pack up in an hour,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>As she spoke the hall boy knocked and entered the room,
-showing in a man with a bundle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! that is all right, thank you—that will do,” said
-Stuart as the man set down the box and went away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is my new business suit for winter wear in the mountain
-farmhouse. What do you think of it, Palma?” he inquired,
-cutting the twine and unpacking the box and shaking
-out a suit of brown beaver cloth, consisting of double-breasted
-coat, vest and pantaloons.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! I think it is excellent. Such a rich, deep color, and
-such soft, thick, warm material,” said the young wife appreciatingly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, so it is—all that,” added Mrs. Pole, who was setting
-the tea urn on the table. “But, la! what a blessing it
-is that women’s clothes grows on ’em, like feathers do on
-to a bird, so they never has no trouble nor expense to buy
-any.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart dropped his suit on the floor and looked at his
-wife in dismay, noticed her faded, shabby cashmere dress,
-and became contrite for his thoughtlessness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lunch is ready, ma’am,” and hurried out of the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t mind Poley, Cleve, dear. She is full of queer sayings,
-you know,” said Palma conciliatingly. “Come now,
-and sit down to luncheon. Here are some of her nice muffins.”
-And she took her seat at the table and began to pour
-out the tea.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have been an idiot, and a very selfish idiot at that!
-providing myself with a first-rate suit of clothes, and even
-displaying them to your admiration, without once remembering
-that you also would require raiment. I am obliged
-to the woman for bringing me to my senses,” said Stuart
-as he took his seat opposite his wife and helped himself to
-a muffin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nonsense, Cleve! I have got a tongue in my head, and
-if I had wanted anything would have asked you for it without
-hesitation,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I fear you would not have recognized any want, my
-dear; and I fear it is true that some men are so thoughtless
-that they act as if women’s clothes grew on them like the
-petals of a flower, and cost neither money nor effort to renew.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>But I see now. Yes, dear rose of my life, I see your
-petals are fading.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No more was said until after luncheon, when Cleve put a
-fifty-dollar note in Palma’s hand and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go out and get what is necessary for your comfort, my
-dear; and take some lady friend with you, for I fear you
-have very little experience in shopping.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Cleve,” replied Palma, laughing; “but I
-shall take Poley. She will be a better judge of what I need
-than any of our fine lady friends.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, perhaps you are right,” admitted Stuart, and the
-discussion ended.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole had cleared away the table and taken her
-own luncheon Palma invited her to go on a shopping expedition;
-and they put on their bonnets and outer garments
-and started. Palma’s was only the plush jacket that belonged
-to her cashmere suit, and she shivered so much as
-she walked that Mrs. Pole said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The very first thing that you must buy must be a heavy
-cloth coat. You can get one for twenty dollars. I should
-prefer a Scotch plaid shawl, but young people don’t wear
-such things now, only neat-fitting coats, or sacques, or dolmans.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They went down on Broadway and into store after store,
-trying where they could find at once the cheapest and the
-best.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length Palma was suited with a close-fitting heavy
-cloth coat that not only satisfied herself but also Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, then, as you like it so well, keep it on, child, and
-have your plush jacket done up in a parcel and I will take
-it home,” said the good woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And this was done.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But then they went to the suit department, where Palma
-selected an olive-green pressed flannel dress for herself, and
-had to take off her coat to try it on. Then she bought a
-beaver bonnet and a leather hand-bag, and her shopping was
-complete.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, who had saved up the wages she had received,
-bought a very heavy tartan shawl, two pairs of thick yarn
-stockings, a pair of stout goat-skin boots, a pair of warm
-woolen gloves, and a thick green berege veil, and felt herself
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>provided for defense against the winter on the mountain
-farm.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they reached home they found Stuart waiting for
-them. He said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray do not trouble to get dinner this evening, as we
-can dine at the hotel where we are to spend the night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad of that, on Poley’s account for she is
-very tired. She insisted on bringing home all our purchases
-herself, and just look how she has loaded herself
-down!” said Palma, laughing, though, in fact, the two
-heaviest items of the purchases, namely, Palma’s beaver
-cloth coat and Poley’s tartan shawl, were worn home on the
-shoulders of the respective owners.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I must beg you to pack up as soon as possible, and
-I will help you, if you will show me how,” he answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That would be an awful hindrance, sir! Just let me
-get my breath for a minute and I’ll be all right. I am not
-tired one bit. And we’ll get through the packing in a jiffy!
-It’s very easy to move when there’s no furnitur’, and nothing
-but one’s clothes and things to pack,” said Mrs. Pole,
-sitting down on the first chair, dropping her bundles on the
-floor, and untying the broad plaid ribbon strings of her big
-black straw bonnet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She kept her word, for in five minutes she was on her feet
-again, and in less than an hour the trunks were packed,
-locked and strapped.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart wrote the labels and pasted them on the tops, and
-they stood ready for the expressman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the three put on their outer garments and turned to
-leave their flat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma paused and looked back half regretfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-by, pretty little home,” she said. “We have been
-very happy in you, but you must not mind our going away.
-We shall have to go away from our bodies some of these
-days! But I hope you will have very pleasant tenants always.
-Good-by.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart did not laugh at her, but Mrs. Pole did, and said
-as they went to the elevator:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If I didn’t know you as well as I do, child, I should
-really sometimes think you were crazy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! don’t you know there is a soul in places and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>in things, as well as there is in all other living creatures?”
-she answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole did not reply, but thought within herself: “I
-do suppose as there be some of the sensiblest people crazy
-in spots.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They went down in the elevator; and what a misfit of
-words there is in that sentence!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They found the janitor waiting in the office to see them
-off. Mr. Stuart gave him the key of the vacated apartments,
-and they all shook hands with him and left, with the request
-that he would see to the delivery of their trunks to the
-expressman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then they walked down the street to the corner of the
-avenue where the cars passed. Mr. Stuart hailed the first
-down one, and they boarded it. They rode about the length
-of twenty blocks, got off and walked across town to Broadway,
-and entered the office of the hotel that Stuart had
-chosen for their sojourning place that night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were easily provided with rooms.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Palma had taken off her bonnet in her chamber
-Mrs. Pole, who still stood up in her street costume, said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, if you please, I must leave you for a little
-while.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What, Poley dear! Is there any more shopping to do?
-Have you forgotten anything?” demanded Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, my child! But as we are to start to-morrow morning
-I must go and take leave of my kinfolks to-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! And they live away downtown somewhere!
-And—you can never go alone!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why not, child? I have been used to go alone all about
-the city all the days of my life, even when I was a young
-woman, and nothing ever happened to me, or even threatened
-to happen to me! And if nothing didn’t in my youth,
-nothing ain’t like to do it in my age! Don’t be uneasy,
-child! I’ll be back by ten o’clock, and one o’ my nephies
-will see me here safe.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But won’t you wait until after dinner? Cleve says they
-keep a sumptuous table here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I hope you will get the good of it, my dear, but
-as for me, I must hurry away. I’ll make up for missing of
-my dinner by eating a hearty supper when I come back.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Take care, you must not risk a return of those horrid
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>nights you had at Lull’s, you know,” said Palma, with a
-sudden recollection of the sleep-walking and magpie-hiding
-propensities that had been features of those disturbed
-nights, though features that happily Mrs. Pole had never
-suspected.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, don’t you be afraid! It was the cold, heavy pastry
-that did it at Lull’s! There was no basket beggars to
-carry off the cold pie crusts and puddin’s, and me and the
-girls used to eat ’em all up at night to keep ’em from being
-wasted on. And I never heard of their hurting anybody but
-me, either. But don’t you be afraid. I shall eat nothing
-but the very best of nutericious and digesterable food, like
-stewed oysters and sich.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, Poley. Eat what you will, so it shall agree
-with you. And now don’t fail to invite your relations in
-my name as well as in your own to come to Wolfscliff to
-see you next summer.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, ma’am, for reminding me again. Now I
-know you are in airnest and I’ll be sure to invite them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Poley, I am always in earnest.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To be sure, I know you are, ma’am, dear child,” answered
-Mrs. Pole, divided in her style of address, between
-her respect for her mistress and her tenderness of her pet.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then again she took leave and went out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve came out and escorted Palma down to dinner,
-where the many and slow courses occupied them for more
-than an hour.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At ten o’clock Poley punctually made her appearance,
-and ate a hearty supper of stewed oysters and brown stout
-with her nephew.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At eleven o’clock the whole party retired to rest.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIX<br> <span class='large'>TO THE MOUNTAIN FARM</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>They rose early in the morning, breakfasted and drove
-down to Cortlandt Street ferry to take the boat for Jersey
-City.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They caught the eight-thirty train in good time and without
-hurry.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>Stuart found their baggage all right, waiting for them,
-checked it to Washington, and then entered with his companions
-into the ladies’ car, and the express train started on
-its Southern flight. Their journey was quick, pleasant and
-uneventful.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Early in the evening of that day they reached Washington.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Leaving their trunks in the baggage room at the depot,
-and taking only their hand-bags, they went to one of the
-best hotels, where they dined and engaged rooms for the
-night and the next day.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was Palma’s first sight of the capital of her country,
-and Cleve determined to linger a few hours to show her the
-public buildings.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next morning Stuart engaged a hack and took his
-two companions for a long, circuitous drive, which should
-include visits to the White House, the State, War, Navy and
-Treasury Departments and the Capitol. But these visits
-were necessarily short. There was no time to pay their respects
-to the President in the Executive Mansion, or to
-listen to the debates in the Senate Chamber or in the House
-of Representatives, or to the cases in the Supreme Court.
-They had to get back to lunch and then to take the train for
-West Virginia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Two o’clock in the afternoon found them again seated in
-the cars and flying westward.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Up to this hour the day had been clear and mild, but
-now the sky began to cloud over, and when they reached
-Alexandria the snow began to fall, and as they left the old
-town behind them and the short winter afternoon drew to a
-close, the storm thickened, if that could be called a storm
-in which there was no wind, but a cataclysm of snow falling
-directly, silently and continuously upon the earth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Strange scenes were traced on the window panes without,
-weird, beautiful, fantastic scenes—cities, palaces, gardens,
-trees—all drawn in frosted silver. They fascinated the imagination
-of Palma, who was never tired of gazing and
-dreaming. Little or nothing could be seen through the
-storm of the country over which they were flying.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They reached Oaklands, on the Alleghanies, late at night.
-They had taken through tickets to the end of their railway
-journey, and the train was going on that night; yet, as the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>storm continued, they determined to lay over until the next
-morning. Leaving their trunks on the baggage car to go on
-to their destination, they took their hand-bags and walked
-through the thickly falling snow to the hotel, where they
-were comforted by clean rooms, glorious hickory wood fires,
-and a delicious supper of venison steaks, broiled ham, buckwheat
-cakes, hot rolls, tea, coffee, and rich cream, and butter,
-and honey such as is seldom found anywhere.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It had been a fatiguing day, and as they could see nothing
-of the country for the snowstorm, they all went to bed and
-slept the sleep of the just.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next morning they rose to a new life.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The storm had ceased. The sky was clear, and the sun
-was shining over a splendid, a magnificent, a dazzling world
-of mountains, valleys, fields and forests, all arrayed in white
-and decked with diamonds.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! Cleve,” cried Palma, looking out from the upper
-window of her bedroom, “does it seem possible that only
-yesterday we were in a crowded city, not two hundred miles
-away, and that now we find ourselves in this magnificent
-scene? Why, Cleve, yesterday seems to be a thousand years
-behind, and this to be another planet!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her rhapsodies were interrupted by the breakfast bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And for all answer Cleve smiled, drew her arm within his
-own and led her down to the breakfast table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There were some few other wayfarers present in the
-room, and these men were standing around the great, roaring
-wood fire and talking politics or crops. But they soon
-left their position and sat down at the board. Mrs. Pole was
-there, too, ready to join her friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did you ever dream of such a world as this, Poley?”
-whispered Palma as the three sat down in a row, Palma
-being in the middle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, never in all my life! I never even ’magined as there
-could be such a place as this! And, oh! ain’t it cold,
-neither?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cold, but such a fine, pure, healthy cold. And the hot
-coffee will warm you, Poley.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The breakfast was in many respects a repetition of the
-supper, and in all respects equal to it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Seems to me I eat twice as much at every meal as I
-ever eat before in my life, and yet I feel hungry in an hour
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>after I have finished. I do believe if I was to live up in
-these regions I should have such an appetite I should think
-of nothing but eating and drinking from morning till night,
-and dreaming of nothing but eating and drinking from
-night till morning!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I wonder how long that would last?” queried Palma,
-but Mrs. Pole did not answer. She had turned her attention
-the the venison steaks.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as breakfast was over the three put on their outer
-garments and walked through the main street of the mountain
-town to the railway station, where they had to wait
-for nearly half an hour for the Eastern train to come in.
-Then they took their seats on board of it, and were once
-more flying westward through the magnificent mountain
-world in its splendid winter garb of ice and snow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All day long our travelers reveled in the glorious panorama
-that flew past the windows of their car, until night
-closed in and hid the scene from their vision.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was quite dark when they reached the little way station
-of Wolfswalk, where they left the train, which stopped
-half a minute and then sped on westward.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was too dark for our party to see anything but the few
-glimmering lights at the station and in the stable yard of
-the village tavern on the opposite side of the road, and the
-ghostly forms of the mountains looming through the obscurity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is now seven o’clock, and we are three miles from
-Wolfscliff Hall. I shouldn’t wonder if we have to spend
-the night at the inn here,” said Cleve Stuart as he drew the
-arm of his wife within his own and prepared to cross the
-country road, or village street, as you may prefer to call it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If the inn is anything like that of Oaklands I shall not
-be very sorry. Come on, Poley. Keep close behind us,”
-said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“’Scuse me, marster; is you Marse Cleve Stuart?” inquired
-a voice from the darkness at his elbow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes. Who are you?” demanded Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“’Sias, sah, old Marse John Clebe’s man f’om Wolfskif;
-yas, sah, dat’s me,” replied the invisible.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you have been sent to meet us, eh? Come in here.
-Let us take a look at one another,” said Cleve with a laugh,
-as he led the way into the lighted station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>The negro was a man of middle age, tall, stout, strong
-and very black, and clothed in a warm suit of thick, heavy
-homespun cloth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You have been sent to meet us?” again suggested
-Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah! along wid de ox cart, to fetch you an’—de
-ladies, do’ I did’n know as dere wasn’t no more’n one lady;
-but, laws! de more de better, I say, marster, and my name’s
-’Sias, old Marse John Clebe’s man f’m Wolfskif Hall—yas,
-sah.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did you say you had brought the ox cart for us?” inquired
-Stuart in some dismay as he thought of his dainty
-wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah! I has fetched the ox cart, wid Baron an’
-Markiss yoked on, an’ dey is de best beasts on de plantation,
-kind and gentle as new milk, ’specially Baron, to fetch you
-an’ de ladies and de luggage, all at de same time, an’ dere’s
-a-plenty o’ hay for de ladies to sit on jes’ as clean an’ as
-dry n’s sweet as wiolits.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But was there no carriage in my uncle’s stables?” inquired
-Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Plenty. But, Lor’, marster, dey was one an’ all so ole
-an’ rusty, an’ flip-floppy, an’ ramshakelly, dat dey couldn’t
-be trusted on good roads in good wedder by daylight, let
-alone bad roads in bad wedder by night. An’ wot is
-true ob de kerridges mought be said ob de hosses, likewise.
-Dey wouldn’ be sho-futted on sich roads in sich wedder at
-night. De ox cart is de mos’ safes’ an’ de oxes is de mos’
-sho-futtedes’. An’ yo’ wouldn’ like to hab de ladies’ necks
-broke for de sake ob pomps an’ wanities in kerridges!
-Would yo’ now?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve laughed, but Palma put in her word:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, I’m delighted! It is so new! such fun! to
-ride on the hay in an ox cart! It seems so of a piece with
-all our strange experiences! Yes! this is some new planet!
-Not our old familiar earth!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How did you happen to be here to meet us? We are a
-day and a half behind time,” inquired Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ole Marse John Clebe, ob Wolfskif Hall—an’ I am his
-own man ’Sias, wot nebber would ’mancipate him in de ole
-ages ob his onnerrubble life fur all de President an’
-Con’gess might say—telled me to come yere to meet yer an’
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>stay for de las’ train till you ’rove, an’ dis is de mos’ secondes’
-day as I hab been yere to meet yo’! An’ now, young
-marse, ef yo’ll listen to me, yo’ll put de ladies in de cart an’
-we’ll jog off.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right, ’Sias. Show us the way to the chariot,”
-laughed Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The negro set his lantern down in a chair, took from it a
-bit of candle, which he lighted by a match and replaced,
-and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now I shows the way, young marster,” and walked out
-of the station, followed by Stuart, Palma and Poley.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He led them to the lower end of the platform near which
-the ox cart stood, with its floor thickly carpeted with layers
-of hay, and with its yoke of oxen standing and pawing in
-the cold night air. Their heads were turned away from the
-town, as if all ready for their jog across the country.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart put Palma upon the cart, and she settled herself
-in the hay with childish delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he helped Mrs. Pole to a seat beside her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, Marse Glebe, ef yo’ will jes’ git up dar on
-dat bench, in front ob de two ladies, yo’ll obleege dis compinny!
-’Caze, yo’ see, I’s got to walk at the head ob de
-creeturs to keep ’em straight on to de road.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is that necessary?” inquired Stuart as he climbed to his
-place and settled himself comfortably.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘N’essary?’” exclaimed ’Sias. “Why, la, bress yer soul,
-Marse Clebe! dere’s places ’long dis road w’ere ef dis yere
-nigh beast was to make a misstep, we’d all go ober down
-free fo’ hunderd feet to the rocks below. No, sah! I’s
-gwine walk at dis creetur’s head and carry my lantern, too,”
-concluded ’Sias as the oxen moved slowly and heavily onward
-as was their manner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The lantern might have been, and probably was, a help
-to the vision of ’Sias and so to the safety of his party, but
-it could show only a small section of the road immediately
-under the feet of the conductor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nothing could be seen of the surrounding country except
-that it consisted of densely wooded mountains, whose skeleton
-trees were faintly outlined against the ground of snow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the
-travelers in the cart could see, to their horror, that they
-were plodding along a rough and narrow road between a
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>high rise of rocks on their right and a deep fall on their
-left; but the cautious negro guide with his lantern walked
-by the heads of the oxen between them and the precipice,
-keeping them out of the terrible danger. For an hour their
-way lay along this road, and then began slowly to descend
-a gradual slope, and finally turned to the right and entered
-a thick wood.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>’Sias heaved a deep sigh of relief and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Peoples sez, w’en dey gits out’n dif’culty an’ danger, as
-dey’s ‘out’n de woods.’ But, la! I allers feels as if I wasn’t
-safe until I was offen dat dar debbil’s shelf, up dar, an’ got
-down yere in dese woods.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How far are we from the house, ’Sias?” inquired Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On’y ’bout a mile, young marster. Get dere werry soon
-now. Dis yere is all ole Marse John Clebe’s lan’.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! is it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah. An’ dis woods usen to be called Wolfswalk
-in de ollen times, I’s heern says, ‘cause dar was mos’ as
-many wolfs as trees, an’ de station ober yonder was just
-named arter dese yer woods, an’ dats de trufe for a fac’.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They jogged through the dark, mysterious-looking woods
-for some time in silence, Palma only once murmuring:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is like a dream, or a scene in a fairy tale. I feel as
-if we should come upon something soon—an ogre’s castle,
-an enchanted beauty’s palace, or something. Don’t wake
-me up, please, anybody.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What they did come upon very soon was a glimmering
-light, that seemed to shoot here and there through the thick,
-leafless trees like a firefly, had it been summer instead of
-winter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s a lamp in de big hall; it shines right froo de fanlight
-ober de front do’, an’ it seems to flit about so ’caze
-sometimes de trees sho’ it an’ sometimes dey doan’t,” ’Sias
-explained. And as he spoke the ox cart slowly and clumsily
-drew up before a large, oblong building of the simplest and
-plainest style of architecture common among the wealthier
-class of that region at the time the house was planned.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Though the travelers could not, at that time of night,
-discern its features, yet this seems the best time for their
-historian to describe it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The house was built in the rude, strong, plain style of the
-best old colonial mansions, of rough-hewn gray rocks of
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>every variegated shade of red, blue, green, yellow, purple
-and orange, which gave a mosaic aspect to the walls. It was
-an oblong double house, with a broad double door, having
-two long windows on each side of the first floor, and five
-windows on the second floor, surmounted by a steep roof,
-with five dormer windows, and buttressed by four huge
-chimneys, two at each gable end. There were many old oak,
-elm and chestnut trees around the dwelling, and there were
-smaller houses, of rude construction, in the rear.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the ox cart stopped before the door Stuart got off
-his seat and lifted down his wife and her attendant. He
-tucked Palma’s hand under his arm and led her up the few
-steps that went up to the front door. That door was open
-and full of light from a large lamp that hung from the
-ceiling of the spacious hall, and within the door stood the
-master of the house to welcome his coming relatives.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was a man of middle height—the thinnest, whitest,
-most shadowy living man they had ever seen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are welcome to Wolfscliff, my dears,” he said, giving
-a hand each to Palma and to Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We are very glad to see you, uncle,” said the two in
-one breath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And this lady?” said the old-fashioned gentleman, with
-native courtesy as he held out his hand to Mrs. Pole, of
-whom he had just caught sight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Our friend, Mrs. Pole, who never leaves Palma, uncle,”
-explained Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! I am glad to see you, ma’am,” said Mr. Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. I am only Mrs. Cleve Stuart’s housekeeper
-and attendant,” said Mrs. Pole, who would not consent
-to seem a half an inch above her real social position.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! And a very trusted and esteemed friend, also, I
-have no doubt,” replied the old gentleman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She is, indeed, sir, like a mother to my delicate Palma,”
-assented Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad she consented to accompany you here,”
-said Mr. Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the moment they stood there talking Palma took in
-with her eyes the whole of the spacious hall. It ran from
-front to back through the middle of the house, with double
-doors at each end, four doors on either side and a broad
-staircase going up from the midst. A hat rack and half a
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>dozen heavy oak chairs were the only furniture. There was
-no carpet on the polished oak floor, no pictures on the
-paneled wall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the parlor, or would you prefer, first,
-to go to your rooms?” inquired the old gentleman, opening
-a door on his right.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Which would you rather do, Palma?” inquired Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, go into the parlor! You see, uncle, we have not
-come through dust, but through snow, and we are as clean
-as when we had washed this morning,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The old man led the way into a large, square room, with
-paneled walls, polished floor, heavy walnut chairs and
-tables, and a broad, open fireplace, with brass andirons, on
-which was piled about an eighth of a cord of blazing hickory
-logs. Around this was a brass fender; above it, on the wall,
-a handsome carved oak mantelpiece surmounted by a broad
-mirror, and down before it on the floor a rich old Turkey
-rug. Two large armchairs stood in each chimney corner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, my dears, and you, ma’am, make yourselves comfortable
-and be quite at home. Supper will be ready in a
-few minutes,” said Mr. Cleve as he sank into one of the
-armchairs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Palma saw how fragile he really was—his transparent
-face was as white as ashes, his thin hair and thin
-whiskers were like floss of silver, his hands were the longest,
-thinnest, fairest hands ever seen. He was clothed in a dark
-blue dressing-gown which he folded double over his knees,
-and the bald spot on the top of his head was covered with
-a much worn old blue velvet skullcap. His aspect suggested
-frost, cobweb, chrysalis. Only his deep-set, soft brown eyes
-shone warm and bright with the fire of life, light and love
-from the true soul, so slightly held by the fragile frame
-and almost ready to fly.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXX<br> <span class='large'>THE MOUNTAIN HOME</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Mr. Cleve stretched out his hand and pulled the bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>An elderly colored woman came in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Serve the supper in here, Polly. The dining-room is
-too cold, I think,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>“Yes, marster,” the woman replied and went out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is in the northwest angle of the house, and has four
-large windows—two north and two west—which shake and
-rattle, and let in the wind when it blows, as it does now,
-from that quarter; and also sends the smoke in volumes
-down the chimney. So I think it will be more comfortable
-for us to eat supper here,” Mr. Cleve explained as he bent
-forward and spread his thin, fair hands to the fire.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am sure there could not be a pleasanter room than
-this,” said Palma from her low rocker as she basked in
-the warm glow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah-h-h!” added Stuart with a sigh of deep satisfaction
-as he rubbed his hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The woman soon came back with faded felt crumb cloth
-in her arms, which she went on to lay down on the shining
-oak floor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She was followed by a colored girl with the table damask
-in her hands. Between them they set the table, adorning it
-with rare old china and antique silver. And then a good
-supper, in honor of the new arrivals, as well as in consideration
-of the weary and hungry travelers. There was tea,
-coffee and chocolate, milk, cream and butter, rolls, waffles
-and cakes, ham, poultry and game, eggs, cheese and fruit—variety,
-without superabundance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Cleve arose and invited his relatives to take their
-seats, and himself led Palma to the head of the table, saying
-pleasantly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is your place henceforth, my child—a place that
-has not been filled since my dear niece, your husband’s
-mother, married and left me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma raised and kissed the pale hand that led her, and
-then sat down before the tea tray.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The old gentleman sat opposite to her at the foot, Stuart
-on the right and Mrs. Pole on the left side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The venerable master of the house asked the blessing, and
-the feast began. The two colored women waited on the
-table—the elder one stood beside Palma to hand the cups;
-the younger beside Mr. Cleve, to pass the plates. Varied
-and appetizing as was the supper, the host partook but
-daintily, contenting himself with a cup of cocoa and a
-wafer. But Cleve and Palma had healthy young appetites,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>and so delighted the hearts of the waiting women with their
-appreciation of the good things set before them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the meal was over and the table cleared of the service
-the elder woman set a lamp upon it; then brought the
-family Bible and laid it open where the place was kept by
-her master’s spectacles as a book mark.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear children, let us draw near to Our
-Father,” said the patriarch. And once more they gathered
-around the table, on this occasion for worship.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>John Cleve read the first chapter of the Sermon on the
-Mount; then made a pause, that all might reflect on the
-divine lesson; next led in the evening thanksgiving and
-prayer, offering up on this occasion especially grateful acknowledgments
-for the dear children sent to be a comfort
-to his declining days, and prayers for their spiritual and
-eternal welfare. Then he pronounced the benediction, and
-the evening service was over.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as they arose from their knees the elder colored
-woman, whom her master had called Polly, came up to
-Palma and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Please, ma’am, if you would like to go to your room now
-I am ready to wait on you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you. I should like to retire,” replied wearied
-Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An’ de oder lady, likewise,” added the woman, nodding
-toward Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I’m sure she would. She is even more fatigued
-than I am—than either of us,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“W’ich it is her age-able years, ma’am, of coorse. She
-can’t be as young as she used to be,” said the woman
-gravely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Probably not,” admitted Palma with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The waiting woman lighted two short sperm candles, in
-short brackets, and, with one in each hand, prepared to
-lead the way.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Shall we bid you good-night, uncle, dear?” inquired
-Palma, going to the side of his easy-chair and bending over
-him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You may, my dear, and your friend; but I must have
-ten minutes’ talk with your husband here before I let him
-go. I will not keep him longer than that,” replied the old
-gentleman benignly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>“Good-night, then, uncle, dear,” she said, raising his delicate
-hands to her lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“God bless you, my love,” he responded, drawing her to
-him and leaving a kiss on her forehead.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-night, sir,” said Mrs. Pole with a formal bow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-night, ma’am,” replied Mr. Cleve, lifting his
-skullcap and bending his head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma and Poley followed the colored woman out of the
-parlor into the big, bare hall, up the broad stairs to the
-upper hall, which was quite as big and as bare.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was bitterly cold. With a heavily wooded country, with
-forests of pine, oak, cedar, hickory, chestnut, poplar and
-other timber, on the slopes and in the valleys, and with
-mines of coal among the rocks and caverns, it seemed yet
-impossible to keep a country house of that region warm in
-winter. You might keep certain rooms within it warm,
-but not the halls and passages, not the whole house, for the
-reason that they had no system of furnaces, registers, heat
-pipes and so forth; but then they were considered all the
-more wholesome on that account.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nevertheless, Palma shivered and shook as with an ague
-when she stepped upon the upper landing of the second
-floor hall. It was almost exactly like the hall below; four
-bedroom doors flanked it on each side, and there was a large
-window at each end, corresponding to the front and back
-door of the under one.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Polly led them about halfway up the hall toward the front
-of the house, and paused before a door on the right hand,
-about midway, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here is yer room, ma’am, and the most comfortablest
-one in the whole house, ’ceps ’tis ole marster’s, which is
-downstairs, on t’other side ob de hall, behine de parlor, an’
-befo’ de kitchen, and ‘tween ’em bofe, is sort o’ fended an’
-warmed, and purtected by bofe sides habbin’ ob a big fire
-into it, bofe day an’ night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She opened a door and showed them into a spacious chamber,
-warmed and lighted by a great fire of hickory logs in
-the ample chimney, which was directly opposite the door by
-which they had entered. Tall brass andirons supported the
-blazing logs, an antique brass fender and crossed fire-irons
-secured the rich Turkey rug and the polished oak floor
-from danger by falling brands or flying sparks; a carved
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>oak mantelshelf surmounted the fireplace and supported an
-oblong mirror, with a tall silver candlestick at each end.
-There was a high window on each side of the fireplace, but
-both were closed now, sash and shutter, and the snowy
-dimity curtains were dropped. At the end of the room
-nearest the front of the house stood a large, four-post bedstead,
-with high-tented tester, from which hung full, white
-dimity curtains festooned and looped from ceiling to floor.
-Beside this white “marquee” lay a small Turkey rug.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A chest of drawers, a walnut press, a corner washstand
-and two easy-chairs draped with white dimity completed
-the furniture.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That little door, ma’am,” said Polly, pointing to one in
-the wall opposite the foot of the bed, though a good distance
-from it, “leads into a d’essin’-yoom, where you can
-also keep yer extry clothes and fings as yer wouldn’t like to
-clutter up yer bedroom wid.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you,” said Palma, dropping into one of the easy-chairs
-and beginning to unbutton her own boots.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Wait, ma’am. Let me. Please let me. I’ll just show
-this lady here to her yoom, and then come and take off your
-shoes for you!” exclaimed Polly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she put one of her candles on the chest of drawers,
-and retaining the other, turned to Mrs. Pole and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, please I’ll take yer to your yoom. It’s
-just across the hall yere, right opposide to dis.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thanky,” replied Mrs. Pole. “I’ll go and find out
-where it is, and much obleeged to you. But then, dear, I
-will come back and stay long o’ you until Mr. Stuart comes
-up.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite right, Poley, dear,” replied Palma, who by this
-time had got her boots off and her slippers out of her hand-bag
-and onto her feet, and was sitting before the fire with
-her toes on the top of the fender.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Polly took Mrs. Pole across the hall to the opposite room,
-which as to size, windows and fireplace, was exactly like
-that of Palma’s, except that it had a northern instead of
-a southern aspect, and was, therefore, somewhat colder. It
-was also upholstered in curtain calico instead of white dimity,
-and had a picture of the Washington family, instead of
-a handsome mirror over the mantelpiece. But there was a
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>fine fire burning which filled the room with light and
-warmth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, if yer want anything as I can get
-you——” began Polly; but Mrs. Pole interrupted and dismissed
-her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; thank you. Good-night,” she said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Polly left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Pretty soon Mrs. Pole recrossed the hall and re-entered
-Palma’s apartment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Has the colored woman gone at last?” she inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, Poley. But what is the matter, dear? I do believe
-you are jealous of that poor creature,” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, I am not; but I don’t like to be waited on and
-fussed over so much. I don’t myself! It is all wrong and
-on false grounds. They treat me here just as if I was a
-lady and——” began Mrs. Pole, but she in her turn was
-interrupted by Palma, who said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poley, dear, they treat you as a respectable woman, and
-as they treat all respectable women—that is, all respectable
-white women. You are to be our housekeeper and, as such,
-one of the family. Don’t ‘kick against the pricks,’ Poley,
-dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I kick against anything? If you knew the stiffness of
-my joints through sitting so long in the cars you wouldn’t
-be talking of me and kicking in the same breath,” said
-Mrs. Pole with an injured air.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ringing steps, attended by shuffling feet, were heard coming
-along the hall, and then the voice of Cleve Stuart saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will do, ’Sias! Thank you. Good-night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the shuffling feet went back and the ringing steps
-came on, and the door opened and Cleve Stuart entered
-the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, good-night, dearie, I’m gone. Good-night, Mr.
-Stuart,” said Mrs. Pole. And rising from the second easy-chair
-into which she had thrown herself she nodded and left
-them, regardless of Stuart’s good-natured protestations that
-she must not let him drive her away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All our tired travelers “slept the sleep of the just” that
-night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As for Palma, she knew nothing from the time her head
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>touched her pillow until she opened her eyes the next
-morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The room was dark, or lighted only by the red glow of
-the hickory wood fire, and it was silent but for an occasional
-crackle of some brand that was not of hickory, but of some
-more resinous wood that had found its way in among the
-harder sort.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart was not by her side, nor anywhere in the room.
-Evidently he had got up and dressed and left while she still
-slept soundly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma crept out of bed and crossed the floor to open the
-window, but as she did so the chamber door was opened
-and the younger of the two negro women came in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Mornin’, ma’am,” she said brightly, smiling and showing
-her teeth. “I was jes’ waitin’ outside o’ de do’ fo’ yo’
-to wake up, to come in an’ wait on yo’.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You must have good ears,” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Middlin’. But w’en I heerd de planks in de flo’ creak,
-den I knowed yo’ was walkin’ across. I did brung up a
-pitcher o’ hot water fo’ yo’ an’ put it on de ha’rf—dar it is,
-ma’am,” said the girl, and she stooped and took up the
-pitcher and carried it over to the washstand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Tell me your name,” said Palma softly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Hatty, ma’am,” replied the girl, smiling brightly. And
-when she smiled it was with a brilliancy unequaled in
-Palma’s experience of faces. Hatty’s face was of the pure
-African type. There was not a drop of Caucasian blood in
-her veins; but she was of the finest African type, with fine
-crinkling, silky, black hair, with glowing black eyes, so
-large, soft and shining that, with varying phases they might
-be called black diamonds, black stars, or—when half closed
-with smiles or laughter, and veiled with their long, thick,
-curled, black lashes—sunlit, reed-shaded pools. Her nose
-was flat; her lips large and red, and her teeth white as
-ivory. And when she laughed she seemed to be a natural
-spring of mirth all by herself. And she was almost always
-laughing, often silently. Few could look on the happy face
-of the child without smiling in response.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, then, Hatty, I am afraid I am late. I hope I have
-not kept anybody waiting.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The girl, who had gone to open the windows, turned and
-answered shortly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>“Oh, Lor’, no, ma’am! De birds deirselves—w’ich it is
-de snowbirds, I mean—ain’t been long up, an’ de sun hese’f
-hasn’ showed ’bove de mount’in, dough he’s riz. See,
-ma’am!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She had drawn back the curtains and pulled up the shade,
-and now she threw open the shutters.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma came to the window and looked out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Oh! what a glorious sight! Yet, to be graphic, I must
-compare great things to small, or at least illustrate the
-former by the latter. The house from which she looked
-seemed now to be situated in the bottom of a vast, deep,
-bowl-shaped valley, its colors now, in midwinter, dark green,
-with gleams of snow-white, the whole canopied by deep
-blue, flushed in the east by opal shades of rose, gold, violet,
-and emerald. The mountains loomed all around in a circle
-of irregular peaks, all thickly covered with pines, cedars,
-spruce and other evergreen trees, which grew closest at the
-base and thinnest near the tops, which were mostly bare,
-and now, in December, covered, with snow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Looking from the front window of her room Palma could
-see but half the circle—the eastern half, made beautiful now
-by the rising sun. The sun had not yet come in sight; but
-even as Palma gazed he suddenly sparkled up from behind
-the cliffs, gilding all the opal hues of morning with dazzling
-splendor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, what a happiness to live in a home like this!” she
-said to herself; “how good one ought to be to become half
-worthy of it! Oh, my! oh, my!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She heard voices speaking below her window. In the
-clearness of the atmosphere she recognized them as her husband’s
-and his uncle’s.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The former was saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, they are not a bit afraid of you! They seem to
-know you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! they do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the speakers became silent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It’s ole marse, a-feedin’ ob de snowbirds,” Hatty explained.
-“Ole marse is jes’ a angel, ma’am! He’s good to
-eberybody an’ eberyfing.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You love your master very much, then, Hatty?” said
-Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Lub him? Dat ain’t no word for it! ’Cause, yo’ see,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>ma’am, I lubs so many bodies an’ so many fings, too, even
-down to red ribbins an’ cakes! But I puffickly ’dores ole
-marse!” said the girl, smiling until her eyes closed and all
-the lines of her features were horizontal.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma had gone to the washstand, where now the sound
-of splashing water prevented the hearing of any talk. Then,
-while she was drying her face and neck, she said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Run, Hatty, and take my traveling dress from the hook
-in the closet, and carry it out and shake it, and brush it,
-and bring it back to me. I won’t take time now to unpack
-my trunks to get another.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Almost before she ceased to speak the girl, glad to serve
-her, had darted into the closet, seized the dress, and was
-running off with it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By the time Palma had dried her skin and dressed her
-hair Hatty was back with the dark blue flannel suit, looking
-as fresh as when it came out of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s establishment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as Palma finished her toilet she hurried downstairs
-and was met at the foot by the aged master of the
-house, who had just come in from his bird feeding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He wore a faded, dark blue dressing-gown, thickly
-wadded, and wrapped closely about his fragile form. He
-looked, if possible, fairer, frailer and more of a mere chrysalis
-than ever.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear,” he said. “You have slept
-well, I know, and have risen to a beautiful day.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear uncle, and opened my eyes upon a beautiful
-scene! Ah! what a happiness it is to live in such a lovely
-place! How much I thank you for bringing us to such a
-heavenly place!” said Palma, taking and kissing the pale
-hand that he had laid in silent blessing on her head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How much I thank you for coming, dear child!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank us for coming into paradise?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not paradise even in summer, when it is almost a
-Garden of Eden in the dip of the mountains! But I hope
-it will be a very happy home to you and yours. Remember
-that you are mistress here, of a house that has not had a
-mistress for more than thirty years, when my dear niece,
-your husband’s mother, married and left it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, but I am your servant, uncle—your servant and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>daughter, whose duty and delight will be to wait on you and
-minister to your comfort,” murmured Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Breakfast is ready, ma’am,” said Polly, the elderly negro
-woman, opening the parlor door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear,” said Mr. Cleve, drawing Palma’s arm
-within his own and leading her to the room, where the table
-was waiting and a splendid fire was burning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where is Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Pole?” inquired Palma,
-looking around.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go find them, Hatty,” ordered the master. But as he
-spoke Cleve entered the room by the side door and laughingly
-greeted his wife with the ironical question whether
-she was really “up for all day?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You should have waked me,” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, no, he should not. I hold with the Koran and
-‘never awaken a sleeper’ unless, indeed, the occasion is sufficiently
-important, which it was not this morning,” said
-Mr. Cleve as they all sat down to breakfast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole came in, convoyed by Hatty, who had found
-her upstairs setting Palma’s room in order, and had taken
-upon herself to instruct the good old woman that “age-able
-ole white ladies didn’t make up no beds when there was
-colored young girls to do it for ’em.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole had greeted the company and taken her
-seat the master of the house asked the blessing and breakfast
-went on.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the morning meal was ended and the table cleared
-away Mr. Cleve said to Palma:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, when you feel disposed call Polly to
-show you all over the house. And you will make any alterations
-you see fit, choose any rooms that you may prefer
-for your private apartments, and make a list of any furniture
-or household utensils that you may need or may
-like, and they shall be bought. There is a good sleigh in the
-carriage house. If you would like to take a drive, send
-Hatty to the stables to tell Josias to clean it out and harness
-the horses. Do whatever you like, my child.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, dear uncle. I wish I knew what you would
-like, and that I would do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I would like you to be happy, my child.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, then; thank you, uncle, I will,” exclaimed
-Palma with a light laugh as she danced out of the room
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>and tripped upstairs to her own chamber to begin the work
-of unpacking and putting away her own and her husband’s
-wardrobe, in which she was to be assisted by Mrs. Pole,
-who soon entered the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Never in her life had Palma been so happy, so lighthearted,
-so contented with the present, so careless of the future.
-Even in her bridal days, sickness and the shadow of
-death had been about her and had sobered, if it had not
-darkened her delight. But now every cloud was lifted; the
-present was full of joy, the future full of glad promise, and
-her own soul overflowing with thankfulness to the Lord.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole was almost equally enchanted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, we have both reached a haven of peace and
-safety that is like a heavenly rest. Let us be good and
-obedient children to our Father and Lord. That is all we
-can do to show our gratitude,” said Palma, who was kneeling
-by the side of her great sea trunk, taking out clothing
-piece by piece and handing them to her attendant, who was
-standing before the bureau and who folded each article in
-turn and put it away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Darling,” answered Mrs. Pole, “I do not think as ever
-I did such a good and altogether profitable day’s work as I
-did that precious day when I found you too ill to get out
-of bed and not a single soul to take care of you; and when
-I said to myself as the week’s washing at Wilton’s would
-have to go with my week’s wages into the bargin, and to-morrow
-would have to take thought for itself, according to
-Scripture, for once, for I was bound to stop long o’ you
-an’ nuss you. Lor’, child! I haven’t too often walked by
-faith instead o’ by sight, but I did it that once, and lo and
-behold! what’s come outen it! We have never parted from
-that day to this, and here I am in my old age not only
-comfortable, but luxurious pervided for.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You ‘cast your bread upon the waters and after many
-days it has returned to you,’” said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, please the Lord, for the futur’ I do mean to try
-to be a better woman,” said Mrs. Pole very earnestly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When their task was completed and everything was in
-order, Palma dropped into an easy-chair, drew a deep
-breath, and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, it is but eleven o’clock, and there are three
-hours before Uncle Cleve’s early dinner at two, so, if you
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>like, we will send for Aunt Polly—all the colored women
-who are past their youth are aunts, you know; everybody’s
-aunts, Cleve says—we will send for Aunt Polly and get her
-to show us all over our new little kingdom, this big, old
-house—its dining-room, kitchen and pantry, its storerooms,
-china and linen closets, its chambers, attics and cuddies, and
-all. Will you come, Poley, dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you tired to death and out of breath now? No,
-my dear. No. You must not exert yourself one bit more
-to-day. Now mind what I tell you, honey. It is for your
-good and Its!” replied Mrs. Pole, with a solemn warning
-shake of her head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, Poley, I will obey you. Cleve and uncle are
-shut up in the parlor, talking business, I suppose, so I will
-sit here and sew until dinner time, or until I am called,”
-said Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole got up and went to the shelf in the closet and
-returned with Palma’s workbasket, in which her sewing
-was already neatly arranged, and set it down on the floor
-beside its owner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Palma selected a tiny, half-finished garment that
-might have fitted a medium doll, and began to sew some lace
-edging on it. And soon, in the gayety of her heart, she
-began to sing at her work.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole got her own basket of infirm socks and stockings
-and began to darn.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXI<br> <span class='large'>UNCLE AND NEPHEW</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>While they were so occupied Mr. Cleve had closed the
-parlor door, shutting himself in with his nephew for a long
-talk over their past and present lives and future arrangements—though
-the earthly future of the aged man would
-necessarily be very brief.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The old gentleman wished rather to hear than to talk,
-and so he only briefly reverted to the main events of his
-own life—his early disappointment in love when his betrothed
-bride was taken ill and died a few days before their
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>intended marriage, and was buried in her bridal dress on
-her wedding day.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yet, no; she was not buried, only her left-off body was
-buried. She lived! Oh! how vividly! how blessedly! how
-potently she lives! And I shall soon see her again! After
-seventy years, my boy! after seventy years! But what are
-they, in view of the life everlasting?” said the aged man in
-conclusion of this reminiscence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart made no reply, but pressed his uncle’s hand
-in reverential silence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the old man spoke of the nephews who had borne
-his own name and expected to inherit his estate, but who
-had both died, unmarried, of wounds received in battle.
-Then he spoke of his long, vain search of his niece’s son,
-Cleve Stuart, and of the chance by which he found him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, my boy, that I have found you, let me say
-that I find you all that I could wish, and your young wife—charming!
-But tell me about her, Cleve. Who is she?” he
-inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Palma is the daughter of the late James Jordan Hay
-and the granddaughter of the late John Hayward Hay, of
-Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, England,”
-replied Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why—indeed! I knew the old squire. When I went to
-Europe in my young manhood I reached England in the
-autumn, and through a letter of introduction got an invitation
-to Mr. Storr’s, of Hoxton, where I stayed for the
-Melton hunts and met Mr. Hay, of Haymore. Yes, the
-Hays, of Haymore, are an ancient, historical, almost, I
-might say, an illustrious family. I congratulate you, my
-boy, but more on the personal merit of your young wife than
-on her family connections. Who represents the house now
-at Haymore? Which of the three lads I found there?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart, as briefly as possible, gave him the later family
-history.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What a fatality! All these fine boys to pass away in
-early manhood! And the son of Cuthbert, the second
-brother, you say, inherits the manor. I remember Cuthbert
-well. He was intended for the church. They called him
-Cuddie. Now, tell me how you came to meet Palma. She
-was the daughter of the youngest brother, James, you say.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; and after the death of her parents she was adopted
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>by Judge and Mrs. Barrn, who were my guardians. I met
-Palma in their house when I first went there to live, and so
-knew her from her infancy up. I won her pure affection
-then, and never afterward lost it, thank Heaven.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“An excellent knowledge and a blessed beginning. Now,
-tell me how it was you lost your Mississippi plantation.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have not lost it. It is legally mine, but of no more
-use to me than would be so many acres of waste land in
-the<a id='t302'></a> Sahara. The land is, indeed, a desert, and the buildings a
-mass of charred ruins.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Through the war?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course. Mansion house, stables, barns, mills,
-negroes’ quarters fired and burned to the ground; stock all
-driven off; negroes conscripted. The place is a ruin and a
-wilderness; it would take many thousand dollars to reclaim
-it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The old man sighed, but made no reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Stuart told him frankly of the desperate straits to
-which he had been reduced at the time when his uncle’s
-letter came to him so opportunely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Cleve was shocked.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If I had known! If I had only known!” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But in all his narrative Stuart never mentioned the name
-or existence of either Lamia Leegh or Gentleman Geff. It
-was bad enough, he thought, to trouble the old gentleman’s
-calm spirit with the tale of want; but it would have been
-far worse to have darkened and depressed it with the story
-of falsehood and treachery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The early dinner bell brought the family together, and
-around the table were only happy faces. All the painful
-past was for the time forgotten.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The afternoon was beautiful.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The large old sleigh was brushed out, lined with buffalo
-skins and blankets, and brought around to the front door by
-two swift horses. And the four—Mr. Cleve, Mrs. Pole,
-Stuart and Palma—took a ride; the first pair seated on the
-back seat, the second on the front seat, and Josias, the
-coachman, on the box.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They took the road that skirted the base of the mountains,
-on the inside, and went in a circle around the plantation.
-On this road, under the shelter of the mountains,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>stood the negroes’ quarters—log huts, large and small, from
-one room to two, three or even four, according to the necessities
-of the occupants. The men and boys were all away at
-such farm work as the season permitted, and the women
-were engaged in washing, ironing, cooking, or carding and
-spinning wool. Their open doors showed their occupations,
-and showed also the bright pine wood fires that so warmed
-their huts as to permit these open doors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sleigh passed too swiftly for the party in it to return
-half the nods and smiles with which their passage was
-greeted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Uncle,” said Palma, “you appear to me like a patriarch
-of old living among his tribe.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear child, with this exception—the patriarchs
-were men of large families, with many sons and daughters,
-and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, and innumerable
-grandchildren and great-grandchildren to the third and
-fourth generation, to rise up and call them blessed. And
-I—have none.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! uncle, dear, you have us. We love you; indeed, we
-do. And we will serve you as tenderly and devotedly as
-any children could.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know it, my dear; I know it. And I thank the Lord
-for sending you to me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I thank the Lord that you let us come. And, oh!
-uncle, I wish we could multiply ourselves into a tribe of
-many generations to serve and bless you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All in good time, my little love; all in good time,” said
-the old man with a twinkle in his glowing brown eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The three miles’ circuit of the road was completed, and
-they reached the house just as the winter sun was winking
-out of sight behind the western peak.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The first day the ground will admit of walking I shall
-go on foot to make the acquaintance of all your interesting
-people, Uncle Cleve. I liked the glimpses I got of them as
-we flew by,” said Palma as she gave her hand to her husband
-and sprang out of the sleigh.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, my child, so you shall,” replied the old man as he
-in his turn alighted with the assistance of both Stuart and
-Palma. “So you shall, my dear. And there are some few
-neighbors and some distant relatives of ours with whom you
-must soon make acquaintance.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>“Who are they, uncle, dear?” inquired Palma as she entered
-the house on the old man’s arm, followed by Stuart
-and Mrs. Pole, while ’Sias drove the sleigh around to the
-stables.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will tell you presently, dear,” replied Mr. Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the hall Palma laid off her fur cloak and hood and
-gave them to Hatty to take upstairs. Stuart helped his
-uncle off with his overcoat and muffler.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they had all returned to the oak parlor, where the
-great fire had been replenished, and were seated around the
-hearth enjoying the glow, and while Polly was passing in
-and out setting the tea table, Mr. Cleve said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“We have no very near relations left in this world. We
-who sit here are the nearest of kin to each other. Still, you
-know, Virginians are as clannish as highlanders.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed. I remember that much of my beloved
-mother. No matter how distant the relationship or how
-humble or even unworthy the individual, my dear mother
-always held sacred the claims of kindred. My poor father,
-who was not so clannish, used to laugh at her a little and
-ask:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Why do you not take in all the human race at once,
-since all are Sons and daughters of our first parents, and
-brothers and sisters of ourselves?’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, he was right,” commented the old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But excuse me for interrupting you, uncle. You were
-speaking of our kindred in this country, and we are anxious
-to hear of them.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, my boy, there are the Gordons, of Gordondell;
-they are our third cousins, and live about seven miles south
-of this on the Staunton road. They are a large family of
-three generations, living in one house; but they are all
-Gordons. Then there are the Bells, of the Elms; only two,
-a bachelor brother and maiden sister, living on their little
-place just beyond Wolfswalk. And the Clydes, my dears,
-who live in the village, and keep a general store. There is
-a young father and mother and half a dozen children. That
-is all. They are all more or less injured by the war, and
-are poor, and—some of them—somewhat embittered by
-their losses; but they are our kindred, and we must have
-them all here to meet you in the coming Christmas holidays.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>“Tea is on the table, ma’am,” said Polly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the party left the fireside and gathered around the
-table.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sleigh ride had given them all fine appetites, and
-they enjoyed their repast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After it was over, and the evening worship was offered
-up, the little family separated and retired to rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so ended the first day at Wolfscliff; the first, also,
-of many happy days.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The cousins did not wait to be invited. The news of the
-new arrival at the Hall was soon spread through the neighborhood
-by the negroes, and neighbors and relatives lost no
-time in calling on the young pair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And yet these were not so truly calls as visits, for when
-any one came to the house they arrived in the morning to
-stay all day and take dinner and tea. They expected this,
-and it was also expected of them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The very first to come were the Gordons, who arrived
-early in the morning a few days before Christmas. They
-came in a big ox cart, and filled it. There was old Mr. and
-Mrs. Gordon, an ancient couple nearly ninety years of age,
-bowed, shriveled and white-haired, yet, withal, right merry;
-and their bachelor brother and maiden sister, Mr. Tommy
-and Miss Nancy Gordon, as aged and as merry as themselves;
-then there was the son and daughter, Col. and Mrs.
-George Gordon, both stout, rosy and full of the enjoyment
-of this life, and their middle-aged bachelor brother and
-maiden sister, Mr. Henry and Miss Rebecca Gordon. And
-there were seven young men and three young women between
-the ages of fifteen and twenty-seven. But, really, it
-would take up too much time and space to tell you all their
-names and ages and characters. They were a happy, rollicking
-set of young people.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They had not been much hurt either in mind, body or
-estate by the war, and were neither depressed nor embittered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then came the two old folks from the Elms. And, finally,
-the Clydes, from the village.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And besides these, neighbors came; old families who had
-been in the land, as the Cleves had, from the first settlement
-by the English—the Hills, the Ords, and the Balls—all
-of whom lived within ten miles of Wolfscliff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>And all of these kinsfolks and neighbors were warmly
-welcomed at Wolfscliff, and well liked by Cleve and Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Christmas brought its usual festivities at the home, but
-also a snowstorm that commenced on the morning of Christmas
-Eve and continued all day and all night and all the
-next day, covering the ground two feet deep, and toward
-the close of the second day, when the wind rose, drifting in
-places several yards deep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This made it impossible for the families at Wolfscliff to
-leave the house; but Mr. Cleve held service in the large
-drawing-room, where all his people from the plantation, as
-well as the members of his household, were collected.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And when the service was over Christmas gifts were distributed,
-mostly in articles of clothing, to the servants. To
-Palma he gave a casket of pearls and rubies that had been
-his mother’s; to Stuart he gave a fine horse, with new saddle
-and bridle, that he had within a few days past purchased
-from a neighbor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve and Palma gave to him an olive-green velveteen
-dressing-grown and skullcap to match, which they had purchased
-for this very purpose; and to the servants each they
-gave a piece of gold coin, having nothing else to offer them.
-And then the congregation dispersed joyfully.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The snowstorm continued, with a high wind. The contemplated
-dinner party for the twenty-seventh had to be
-given up. The state of the road made travel impossible for
-several days.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One of the first expeditions abroad was made by Josias,
-who, mounted on a stout mule, tried to reach the post office
-at Wolfswalk. It took him all day to go and come, but he
-succeeded, and late in the evening brought back letters and
-parcels that had been forwarded from New York to the
-Stuarts—letters and parcels that bore the London and the
-Haymore postmarks. The first were from the London solicitors
-of the Hays, of Haymore, and contained the information
-that certain railway, mining and manufacturing
-shares had been transferred from the name of Randolph
-Hay to that of Palma Hay Stuart, and were at her disposal,
-and included the bonds—for, after all, self-indulgent Will
-Walling had decided not to take the long journey to the
-mountains of Virginia in the midst of winter, but to forward
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>the documents by mail, and without even an explanatory
-letter from himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think you will have no trouble in finding the funds for
-the reclamation of your Mississippi estate,” said John Cleve
-with a smile as he received the information which Stuart
-seemed proud and glad to give him. “Your wife’s cousin
-is a noble, generous fellow. Whom did he marry?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart was for a moment dumfounded by the question.
-He had not so far risen above conventionality as not
-to feel much embarrassment in replying.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Miss Judith Man, of California,” answered Palma, on
-seeing that Stuart had found nothing to say.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! Who was she?” next inquired Mr. Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The best, the noblest, the loveliest girl I ever met with
-in my life!” warmly responded Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! that is well, very well! Of what family was she?”
-persevered the old gentleman, who was completely unconscious
-of the embarrassment his questions were causing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I really do not know, uncle, dear,” answered Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not think we ever inquired,” replied Stuart, speaking
-at last.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! well, it does not matter, so that she is a good, true
-girl, worthy of the noble young fellow,” said Mr. Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She is all that, uncle,” said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma and Stuart then opened their letters. They were
-from Ran and Judy, telling them of their arrival at Haymore,
-their reception of Gentleman Geff and his “lady,”
-and, indeed, of all the events that transpired in the first few
-days of their stay at the Hall, and of which our readers
-are already informed; making no mention of the transfer
-of stocks from Ran to Palma; but renewing and pressing
-their invitation that the Stuarts would visit them in England
-during the next summer. Of course, Ran and Judy at
-the time of writing their letter had not heard of Cleve and
-Palma’s removal to West Virginia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma was so little a worshiper of Mammon that she was
-much more delighted with the faithful affection revealed in
-these letters than with the accession of fortune that accompanied
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She flew upstairs to answer them. She was earnest in her
-thanks for Ran’s magnanimity in giving her so noble a
-share in their grandfather’s fortune; but she was even more
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>earnest in her appreciation of Judy’s friendship and their
-mutual invitation to herself and Cleve. She had, however,
-to explain why neither of them could take advantage of the
-offered opportunity of visiting their friends in England, by
-telling them of her own and her husband’s change of residence
-and new-found happiness in the country home of
-their aged uncle, and of the impossibility that they should
-leave him while his presence on earth should be spared to
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart also answered Ran’s letters in very much
-the same strain, giving the same thanks with much deprecation,
-and offering the same explanations.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These letters were all taken to the post office the next
-morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In another week the weather moderated and the snow
-melted. But traveling was, if possible, more difficult than
-before, for the roads were sloughs of mud.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But within doors, at Wolfscliff, all was pleasant, comfortable
-and happy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Only Mrs. Pole complained of having too little to do.
-But her special grievance did not last very long, for——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the morning of the fourteenth of February Palma
-Stuart received from Above, in trust for earth and heaven,
-a most precious valentine, in the form of a pair of twins,
-a fine boy and girl. And no more grateful and delighted
-mother dwelling on the “footstool” that day raised her
-heart in prayer and thanksgiving to the Throne.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No prouder father lived than Stuart, no happier uncle
-than John Cleve, nor more important nurse than Mary
-Pole. She had enough to do now, both day and night, to
-nurse mother and babes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the very first visit Stuart was allowed to make at the
-bedside of his wife, when he had kissed her with deep feeling,
-and had admired the twins to his heart’s content, she
-said to him:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Cleve, dear, of course our boy must be named John
-Cleve, after dear uncle and yourself. But our little girl?
-Will you please ask uncle if he will let us call her Clarice,
-after his own dear angel love?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well thought of, darling. I know he will be pleased.
-I will ask him as soon as I go downstairs,” warmly responded
-Cleve Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>“And you must go now, sir, if you please. She must be
-quiet and go to sleep if she can,” said Mrs. Pole from the
-eminence of her new authority.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart meekly bowed his head and obeyed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The result of Palma’s proposal was this: Early in the afternoon,
-when she had had a good sleep, had awakened and
-taken refreshment, and was resting in peace and bliss, the
-old gentleman came quietly into the room, sat down beside
-her, and said softly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you, my dear. May the Lord bless you, and
-may He bless your dear babes—little Clarice and John.”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXII<br> <span class='large'>AN EARTHLY PARADISE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Spring opens early on the southwestern section of Virginia,
-and leaves, flowers and birds come soon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma and her babies were out with the violets and the
-bluebirds. And no one could have more enjoyed the beautiful
-weather in this glorious scene than the city-bred girl.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Even in April, the cup-shaped vale, shut in by green-wooded
-mountains, seemed a Garden of Eden, or the fairy
-“Valley of Calm Delights.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart had taken to agricultural life as to his native element,
-and often declared his delight in it, and expressed his
-wonder how he, the descendant of a hundred generations of
-farmers, could have been contented to live in a city.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Directly after breakfast every morning he mounted his
-horse and rode out afield to look after the laborers. Certainly,
-much of the theory and practice of farming he had
-to learn from his uncle; but he was an apt pupil. So apt,
-he said to Palma, that his learning seemed to him more
-like the recollection of forgotten knowledge than the acquisition
-of new ideas.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma, for her part, loved to put her two babies in the
-double perambulator that had been brought from the nearest
-town for their use, and, attended by Hatty, wheel them
-out to the road that ran around the vale and was dotted with
-the log huts and little gardens of the negroes on the side
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>next to the mountain. This was like a royal progress.
-Everywhere the young mother and children were greeted
-with joy by the colored women and girls in the cabins.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On week days none but women and children could be
-found there; all the men were afield.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Sunday they would all, or nearly all, go to church;
-and it was a strange thing that a little community, numbering
-less than one hundred, men, women and children all
-counted, should include so many religious sects; for here
-were to be found Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
-Methodists and Baptists. I think that was all; for of finer
-sub-divisions of doctrine or opinion they knew nothing, and
-a more Christian community than the people of this plantation,
-notwithstanding their sectarian differences, could scarcely
-be found anywhere. And this was owing, in a great
-measure, to the teachings and example of their master—a
-pure Christian.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was accustomed to say to them:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By whatever sectarian name you choose to call yourselves
-matters little; be Christian. ‘The disciples were called
-Christians first at Antioch.’ ‘For there is no other name
-under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved
-but that of Christ.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Old ’Sias being asked one day by a stranger as to his
-religious faith and experience answered that he was Christian,
-and his law of life was love of God and his neighbor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The people loved their master well. Not one left him
-when emancipation was proclaimed. Even the young men,
-who longed to see life, would not leave old master while he
-should live on earth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Old Cleve was the friend, teacher and patriarch of his
-people.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Never in his life, however, had the old man been so
-happy as at present. The society of Stuart, Palma and their
-babies opened new springs of joy in his heart and home.
-He loved to spend hours reclining in his easy-chair on the
-piazza, with the young mother seated near him and the
-infants in their pretty basket cradle beside her, while Mrs.
-Pole would be looking after household affairs within, and
-Stuart would be supervising agricultural matters afield.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The twins were little more than two months old when
-John Cleve saw, or thought he saw, a growing likeness between
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>the tiny Clarice and the angel for whom she was
-named. As for him, he was waiting the call to come and
-rejoin his own Clarice in one of the many mansions of our
-Father’s house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nor was the summons long delayed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a lovely morning in May.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The vale was more like than ever to a Garden of Eden.
-It was a chalice full of bloom, fragrance and music lifted
-up in offering to Heaven.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart was absent on horseback, riding from field to field,
-overlooking the workmen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All the other members of the family were gathered on the
-front porch.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, with a pair of shears in her hands, was walking
-about the place, carefully clipping a few dead leaves from
-the rose vines that climbed about the pillars. She had taken
-to gardening with as much enthusiasm as Stuart had taken
-to farming.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma sat on a little, low chair, busy with her needlework.
-At her feet stood the pretty basket cradle in which
-lay the twin babes, sleeping.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Near them sat John Cleve, reclining in a large resting-chair.
-His hands were folded before him, and he was
-gazing out upon the scene with a face illumined by reverence
-and serene rapture. Not a word had he spoken since
-the babies went to sleep. Now he murmured:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! the beauty and the glory of Thy sunlit earth and
-heavens, our Father.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The words seemed to issue involuntarily from the lips of
-the speaker in the midst of the deep silence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh! the loveliness of Thy celestial angels!” he murmured
-in a lower and a slower tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma looked up from her sewing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He did not speak again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She turned around to look at him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had sunk back in his chair and shrunken together.
-His hands lay folded on his knees, his head bowed on his
-chest, and his silver hair shining in the morning sunlight.
-His face could not possibly be whiter than it had always
-been since she had known him, but something else in his
-aspect startled and alarmed her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>She sprang up and went to him, bent over him, and laid
-her hand on his shoulder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Uncle! Uncle!” she said softly but eagerly, anxiously—“Uncle!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t distress—yourself, dear—it is all right—bless
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These were his last words. His whole slight frame seemed
-to collapse and shrink closer together, his head sank lower,
-his hands slipped apart and dropped down by his sides.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole, startled by some sound, hurried to the
-spot, she found Palma in a panic of grief and amazement
-too deep for utterance, standing over the lifeless body of
-the good old man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole in great emergencies had but little self-possession.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She threw up her hands in horror, and then ran wildly
-in and out of the house, shrieking:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Polly! Hatty! ’Sias!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And as the frightened servants came running at her call,
-the women from the kitchen, the man from the lawn, they
-found the young mistress down on the floor at the feet of
-the dead master, with her hands clasped around his knees
-and her head bowed upon them, sobbing as if her heart
-must break. Tears had come and broken the trance of
-sorrow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Run for the doctor! Run for Mr. Stuart! Run all of
-you!” cried Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the servants ran in all directions to spread the news
-or to bring efficient help.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole went to Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Get up, my dear child! Let me help you up.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Don’t—don’t,” gasped Palma in a smothered tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, come with me,” persisted the woman, taking hold
-of her arm and trying to lift her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Leave me! Leave me!” cried the mourner, clinging the
-closer to her dead, and continuing obdurate to all entreaty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart, found and summoned by ’Sias, soon came
-galloping up to the house, threw himself off his horse and
-hurried up on the porch.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One look of awe, sorrow and reverence to the changed
-face of his uncle showed him what had happened. Then he
-looked on his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>“Make her get up, sir. Do make her get up. I can’t
-get her to move from that!” sobbed Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When did this happen?” inquired Stuart in a low tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not twenty minutes ago, I reckon, though I’m not sure.
-It was as quick as lightning. One moment he was talking
-bright and cheerful, and the next moment he was gone like
-a flash! Oh! make her get up, sir. She will kill herself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Palma, dear, you must let me take you in,” he said, laying
-his hand gently on the bowed head of his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But sobs were her only reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Palma, we will have to take him in and lay him on his
-bed. Come with me first.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But she only wept and sobbed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With gentle force he took her arms from around the dead,
-lifted her, bore her into the parlor, laid her on the sofa and
-called Polly to attend her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He returned to the porch, told Mrs. Pole to look after the
-babies and leave everything else to him, and called the grief-stricken
-’Sias to help him to carry the dead into the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a very light weight for so tall and broad-shouldered
-a man, but, then, it was but little more than skin and
-bone, a human chrysalis.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They bore it to the chamber in the rear of the parlor on
-the ground floor, that had been John Cleve’s sleeping-room.
-Here they laid it on the bed to await the arrival of the
-family physician. The latter could do no good, but all the
-same he must come.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Not until afternoon could the busy country doctor, whose
-practice extended over many miles, be found and brought to
-Wolfscliff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was conducted by Stuart to the room of death.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A death from old age, pure and simple,” was the verdict
-of science.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did you ever see a body more thoroughly consumed by
-the life of the spirit? I have known Mr. Cleve all my life,
-as my father and my grandfather knew him before me, and
-I never knew of, or heard of, his having a day’s illness,”
-concluded Dr. Osborne as they sat together beside the bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He was a saint prepared for heaven,” reverently replied
-the young man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then they arose, and standing on each side of the bed,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>drew the sheet up over the calm, cold face and left the room
-together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor went away, kindly offering to transact any
-business that was now required for the family and for the
-deceased at Wolfswalk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart went to inquire about the condition of his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Polly had put her to bed, and Mrs. Pole had laid her
-sleeping infants in with her, the one on her right side and
-the other on her left. They were the best sedatives, for the
-tender mother was obliged to control herself for fear of
-disturbing them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, now as quiet and decorous as in the morning
-she had been noisy and turbulent, sat in a large easy-chair,
-watching the three.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As Stuart softly opened the door she raised her finger
-in warning, and then silently arose and went to him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“She has just fallen asleep herself. I wouldn’t speak to
-her now, if I was you. She is sleeping very quiet,” she
-said in a low tone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank Heaven! Take care of her, Mrs. Pole,” murmured
-Cleve in a low tone as he withdrew.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole closed the door and went back to resume her
-watch.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Three days later the mortal body of John Cleve, of Wolfscliff,
-was borne to the family burial ground on the plateau
-on one of the hills that looked up to the sky. It was followed
-by a great concourse of people, consisting of kindred,
-friends, servants and neighbors from far and near.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The services were concluded there, with these few words
-of such divine love and truth that I quote them here for the
-comfort they may give to all sorrowing souls who grieve
-because they think, and think wrongly, that they have laid
-their loved ones in the grave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘And now, having performed the last service of love to
-our dear brother by laying his body in the earth from which
-it came, we leave it there, as he has left it, to follow him
-by faith to his eternal home.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Will my readers note the use of the pronouns there?
-There is deep meaning in that.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the obsequies, life went on very calmly at Wolfscliff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>Stuart and Palma wrote every week to their friends in
-England, and quite as often got letters from them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again Ran and Judy urged Stuart and Palma to come
-and visit them, as there was nothing now to keep the latter
-at Wolfscliff. They wrote that they had given up their plan
-of leaving Haymore Hall to study in London. That the
-attractions of the country and the home were so great that
-they could not tear themselves away from it. That they
-had formed attachments not only to the place, but to the
-people. That they should remain there, and that the Rev.
-James Campbell had undertaken to direct their studies, and
-they expected to derive quite as much—if not more—benefit
-from his instructions as they could from professional
-teachers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The correspondence resulted in a promise from the
-Stuarts to run over to England after the wheat harvest
-should be gathered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was while Stuart was thinking of setting a certain day
-for their embarkation and purchasing their tickets that a
-strange visitor arrived at Wolfscliff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was a glorious day in the latter part of June.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart was afield, looking after the wheat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma was seated on the front piazza, with her babies
-placed face to face in their cradle on her right hand, and
-her workbasket, overflowing with work, on her left.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She was singing to herself in a low key when she heard
-the sound of wheels on the gravel walk.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Looking up, she saw the hack from the Wolfshead tavern,
-at Wolfswalk, approaching. It drew up before the porch.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The coachman got off his box and went to the carriage
-door and opened it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A gentleman got out—a tall, thin man of about forty
-years of age, with dark, reddish-brown hair and beard.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma laid aside her work and stood up to receive the
-visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He came up the steps of the piazza, stopped, raised his
-hat, and as he looked at the childlike young matron before
-him, said with some hesitation:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mrs.—Stuart? Have I the honor of speaking to Mrs.
-Stuart?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is my name, sir,” replied Palma politely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>He bowed and handed her a card, on which she read:
-“The O’Melaghlin, Carrick Arghalee, Antrim, Ireland.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the house, sir? Mr. Stuart is not
-here at present, but he is not far off, and I will send for
-him at once,” said Palma, leading the way into the hall
-and touching a call-bell as she passed a stand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, madam,” said the stranger, following her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She conducted him into the drawing-room, gave him a
-seat and turned to speak to Hatty, who had come in answer
-to the bell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ask Mrs. Pole, please, to go to the children on the
-piazza. Then send ’Sias to look for Mr. Stuart, to tell him
-that there is a gentleman here waiting to see him, and give
-him this card,” said Palma, putting the slip of pasteboard
-into the girl’s hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is ’Sias for to gib dis to young marster?” inquired
-Hatty, dubiously.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, certainly. Go away now and do your errands. Go
-to Mrs. Pole first,” said the anxious young mother. And
-then she sat down near the front window, through which,
-from time to time, she could glance out and see that no
-harm should come to the babies until the arrival of her relief
-sentinel, Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma was not very well versed in the ways of the world,
-yet she felt it incumbent on her to entertain the stranger,
-but she did not exactly know how to do it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are recently from Ireland. I have some very dear
-friends of that country. Indeed, my nearest kinsman married
-a young girl of that nation.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes; I am aware of that fact. Mr. Randolph Hay married
-Miss Judith Man—that brings me here to-day. But
-as for myself, I have not seen Ireland for twenty-one years,”
-said the stranger.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma looked up in surprise.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have been in California, Colorado, Australia, Tasmania,
-Cape Colony—everywhere else but in my native
-land,” continued the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma looked up inquiringly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I came last from California,” concluded the
-stranger.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma suddenly remembered that it was rude to stare in
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>silence at any one, especially at a visitor in one’s own house;
-so she dropped her eyes and said demurely:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am glad you knew Judith Man, Mrs. Randolph Hay,
-of Haymore, my cousin by marriage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I don’t know her at all. All the same, she is my daughter—my
-only daughter—and I hope to find her soon, with
-your assistance, and to make her acquaintance. It is for
-that purpose that I am here,” said the stranger.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now Palma stared in right good earnest, without once
-thinking whether she was rude or not. Moreover, she committed
-another breach of good manners—she echoed his
-words:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your daughter!” she exclaimed in astonishment and incredulity.
-“I never did hear of such a thing!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Perhaps not,” said the visitor, laughing good-humoredly;
-“but it is true, nevertheless. And, besides, there
-are a great many million</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘More things in heaven and earth’</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>than you ever did hear of, or ever will hear of, my dear
-young lady.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I beg your pardon, sir; but indeed I was so taken by surprise!”
-said Palma, apologetically, and with a pretty blush.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not at all!” exclaimed the stranger, rather irrelevantly.
-“Say no more about it; but tell me something of my son
-and my daughter. You said nothing about my son, yet I
-have been told that they are both equally and intimately
-well known to you and to your excellent husband. What
-are these young people like, madam, if you please?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mike and Judy? They are both lovely! Just lovely!”
-warmly responded Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is exceedingly complimentary, and would be highly
-satisfactory, only it is not quite exact enough. A rose is
-lovely, so is a pearl, so is a fawn, so is a baby.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes!” exclaimed the young mother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So many things are lovely, you see, that to say they are
-lovely gives me no clear idea of them. Be more precise,
-dear lady.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, then, they are so good, so sweet—but I think I had
-better show you their photographs,” said Palma, with sudden
-inspiration.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>“The very thing!” exclaimed the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma sprang up and ran like an eager child to the other
-end of the drawing-room and to an <em>etagere</em> that stood in
-the corner, and took from it a large-paged but thin photograph
-album, with which she returned to her visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This book,” she said, “contains only the pictures of our
-dearest friends. There are not more than thirty-three pictures
-in the collection; but then there are in some cases
-several of each person. I will show you Mike’s and Judy’s.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No!” exclaimed the visitor. “Pray let me have the
-book and see if I can find them for myself. I have never
-seen them. You are naturally amazed to hear me say that,
-but you shall know the reason of the fact in good time,”
-said The O’Melaghlin, as he received the book from Palma,
-who, having placed it in his hands, resumed her seat,
-watched him as he turned over the leaves, and speculated
-with much interest whether he would be able to identify the
-pictures of his son and daughter, whom he had never seen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Presently his face lighted up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here they are!” he exclaimed, pointing to the open
-pages that presented full-length cabinet photographs of
-Mike and Judy—the former being on the left-hand page
-and the latter on the right.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, you are right,” replied Palma in surprise; “but
-how could you tell?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because this,” he replied, laying his finger on Judy’s
-picture, “is a perfect likeness of my dear lost Moira; and
-this,” he added, indicating Mike’s, “is as like her as a youth
-can be like his mother.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They are faithful likenesses of the twin brother and
-sister,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now tell me, my dear young lady, about my boy and
-girl.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your daughter, I have said, is sweet and good and very
-dear to us all who know her. To say that she is married
-to one of the wealthiest land owners of one of the oldest
-families in Yorkshire would be true, but it would not be
-so much as to say that her husband is one of the best, the
-truest, the most generous and most magnanimous of men.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your praise is enthusiastic, therefore extravagant.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It could not be. Ask Judy herself.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ask a young woman still in love! She would be a very
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>impartial witness, no doubt,” laughed The O’Melaghlin.
-“But now about my boy?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is altogether worthy of his sister and his brother-in-law.
-I could not say any more for him than that.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Which is to say that he is good, true and brave.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, he is all that.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But his objects in life?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To be of the best use to any whom he may serve; and
-the better to do this, he wishes to get a good education.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite right! And he is young enough still to go to
-college, not being quite twenty years of age.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I am so glad for his sake that you have come forward;
-because Michael has that spirit of independence that
-he shrinks from being indebted to his good brother-in-law
-for his college fees.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Quite right is that also. He is a true O’Melaghlin, and
-I am proud of him! And now, my dear young lady, you
-may be wondering how I discovered yourself and your husband
-and your connection—happy connection for them—with
-my children.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It has been equally happy for us, sir, indeed. Michael
-and Judith are among our most esteemed friends.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear you say so, dear madam.”</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIII<br> <span class='large'>THE KINGLY O’MELAGHLINS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>At this moment Cleve Stuart so quietly entered the room
-that Palma was not aware of his entrance until he stood
-before her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Mr. O’Melaghlin—Mr. Stuart,” she said, presenting the
-gentlemen to each other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The visitor arose and both bowed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I bring a letter of introduction for you, sir, from the
-Messrs. Walling, of New York,” said The O’Melaghlin,
-drawing from his breast a neat, open envelope and handing
-it to Mr. Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve took it with a bow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On the envelope, besides the superscription—“To Cleve
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>Stuart, Esq., Wolfscliff, W. V.,”—there was written between
-brackets, in the corner: “To introduce The O’Melaghlin,
-Carrick Arghalee, Antrim.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now, the use of the definite article as the prefix of a
-man’s surname had been a puzzle to Palma, and even a surprise
-to Cleve, though he remembered that in the north of
-Ireland, as well as in Scotland, it was affected by certain
-heads of families among the landed gentry of ancient lineage,
-and considered to outrank either plain “Mr.” or
-“Squire.” O’Melaghlin, therefore, must be recognized as
-The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With your permission,” said Stuart, with a bow, as he
-opened the letter, which was as follows—and rather more
-than sarcastic in its peculiar style, as Cleve thought when
-he read it, though he hoped and believed that the bearer
-of the letter had not—if he had read the words—perceived
-the sarcasm:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Office of Walling &#38; Walling</span>, Att’ys, Etc.</div>
-      <div class='line in16'>“New York, May 8, 187—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Cleve Stuart, Esq.</span>, Wolfscliff, W. V.: I have the great
-honor to present—you—to The O’Melaghlin, of Carrick Arghalee,
-Antrim, Ireland.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“The O’Melaghlin is of the most ancient Irish, royal
-lineage, being directly descended from the O’Melaghlins,
-monarchs of Meath, whose kingdom was ravaged by Henry
-the Second, A. D. 1173, and given to one of his thievish
-followers, a disreputable carpet-bagger, called Hugh de
-Lacy.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“The O’Melaghlin hails now from Antrim because his
-ancestor, Patricious O’Melaghlin, in the reign of Edward
-the First, 1285, married Mona, sole child and heiress of
-Fergus of Arghalee, and subsequently became lord of Carrick
-Arghalee, in right of his wife. From this illustrious
-pair, representing a royal and a noble family united, The
-O’Melaghlin is directly descended.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“It would be highly impertinent in so humble an individual
-as myself to write of this gentleman’s merits and accomplishments.
-Should he honor you with his acquaintance,
-you will discover them for yourself. You will also hear
-from him in what manner you can have the distinction of
-serving him.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>“With compliments and congratulations to yourself and
-Mrs. Stuart on the present proud occasion, I remain, your
-faithful servant,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>William Walling</span>.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will Walling is a scamp, and merits a kicking for his
-impudence,” was Stuart’s half-earnest, half-jesting mental
-criticism on this letter and its writer. He thought he knew
-the reason for Will Walling’s sneers; he thought it was more
-than likely that The O’Melaghlin had repelled the genial
-Will and “kept him at a distance.” He folded the letter,
-put it in his pocket, and once more offered his hand to the
-visitor, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to see you here, sir, and shall be very
-much pleased if I can serve you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you, Wolfscliff!” exclaimed The O’Melaghlin,
-giving his host his territorial title as if they had been in Antrim.
-“I thank you, sir. You have given me the hand of
-a friend, and although you may not at this moment recall
-the fact, you have given me the hand of a kinsman! Yes,
-sir, I am proud to say of a kinsman!” and he gave that
-hand a grip that crippled it for a week.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A kinsman, O’Melaghlin!” exclaimed Cleve—he would
-have given great offense if he had addressed his guest as
-Mr. O’Melaghlin—“I am very much flattered, but I do not
-understand!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, then, Wolfscliff, is not your family name Stuart?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And have you not a lawful right to that name?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Undoubtedly.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And do you not spell it S-t-u-a-r-t?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then you are my kinsman on the distaff side! Yes,
-there is but one root of the tree of Stuart, and that is the
-old royal root that grew fast in Scottish ground, and every
-one who lawfully bears the name of Stuart is a leaf of that
-same tree.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Granted,” said Cleve, with perhaps a faint leaven of sinful
-pride, “granted that my ancestor seven generations back
-was Charles Stuart, called the Young Pretender, how should
-that make us kinsmen?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am afraid, young Wolfscliff, that you do not keep yourself
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>well posted up in your family genealogy,” said The
-O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed I do not,” replied Stuart, with a laugh. “I fear
-I know little or nothing with certainty of my family on
-either side the house previous to their emigration to America.
-Why, O’Melaghlin, do you know if I could become a
-candidate for the highest office in this country, and knew
-who was my grandfather, it would be a grave objection to
-me in the minds of this democratic and republican people—unless,
-indeed, I could prove that he was a tramp, a
-gypsy, or, at the very best, a day laborer!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin stroked his long, rusty red beard and
-slowly shook his head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The human race is going to ruin,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But will you kindly explain how it is that we are of kin,
-sir?” said Palma hesitatingly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Surely, my dear young lady—surely. The facts are
-these: From prehistoric ages, in the dark before the dawn
-of time or of its record, to which the memory of mankind
-goeth not back. The O’Melaghlins were monarchs of
-Munster.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And lived in caves, and dressed in skins, and when a
-young king wanted a wife he walked into the next kingdom
-with his club on his shoulders, knocked down the first young
-girl he saw and brought her away on his back. Was it not
-so?” archly suggested Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Faith! I think you are right, ma’am. Since the
-O’Melaghlins go back to the darkest of days, they must
-have had the manners of the same,” said the chieftain, good-humoredly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, please go on. I will try not to interrupt you
-again.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlins were monarchs of Meath for unnumbered
-generations before the Christian era, and for eleven
-centuries and a half after. Somewhere about the year 1160
-Henry the Second—bad luck to the beast!—made the conquest
-of Ireland, ravaged the kingdom of Meath, and gave
-the land to a thieving carpet-bagger of his own, Hugh de
-Lacy by name. Ah! but The O’Melaghlins, turned out of
-their own, made short work of the usurper and murdered
-him in his stolen castle of Thrim. It was of no avail. His
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>successors came after him, backed up by the power of the
-Saxon. The O’Melaghlins were scattered far and wide.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“One of the tragedies of history,” said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“True for you, O’Wolfscliff! The next memorable apoch
-in the history of that r’yal family fell in the reign of
-Edward the First, in the year 1270, more than a century
-after the conquest of Meath. Then the young head of the
-family—The O’Melaghlin of that apoch—married the Lady
-Mona, sole child and heiress of Fergus of Arghalee, surnamed
-the Tiger, and in due time, in right of his wife, succeeded
-to the chieftainship and became The O’Melaghlin of
-Carrick Arghalee! That, sir and madam, was the first step
-taken toward a union with the r’yal house of Scotland, from
-which you, sir, descinded.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>(The chieftain, when interested or excited, sometimes
-slipped into dialect.)</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed!” exclaimed Stuart, rather mystified, for he did
-not as yet see the road to the royal alliance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now then,” continued The O’Melaghlin, “that marriage
-was the first step, as I said. Nearly two centuries passed
-before the second step was taken. But then, centuries don’t
-count for much with old historic families whose origin is
-only lost in the ancient, prehistoric ages. It was in the year
-1380, in the reign of Robert the Second, King of Scotland,
-that Randolph of Arghalee married the Lady Grauch,
-daughter of the Earl of Fife, who was the second son of the
-reigning monarch. D’ye moind, that’s where the r’yal blood
-comes in, and our kinship, more betoken! So shake hands
-upon it, Wolfscliff.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart good-humoredly put out his hand, already half
-crippled by O’Melaghlin’s first clasp, and received a second
-crushing grip.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now will you kindly inform me how I can be of
-service to you?” inquired the host.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir, certainly. I wish to find my children,
-Michael and Judith. I was told by Mr. Walling that you
-would be able to give me their exact address, which he said
-was in London somewhere, but he could not tell where.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While The O’Melaghlin spoke Stuart stared and Palma
-laughed. She felt a child’s delight at his astonishment in
-discovering that The O’Melaghlin was the father of Michael
-Man and Judith Hay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>“Oh!” said the visitor, “you are surprised, sure, to hear
-me say this, but they are my children, for all that I have
-never set eyes on them in my life. It was not my fault,
-but the fate made by circumstances, that kept us apart. It
-is a painful story, sir, that I may tell you later at your convenience.
-Now I wish to ask you where, in all the great
-wilderness of London, I may find my children.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Nowhere in London. They are not there. They have
-changed their plans, and will remain for some time to come
-at Haymore Hall.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Surely I thought they were going to London for private
-tuition.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They can obtain that better, perhaps, at Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ay?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Perhaps, O’Melaghlin, you would like to see your daughter’s
-last letter to my wife,” kindly suggested Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ay, that I would, if Mrs. Stuart has no objections, and
-it is very kind of you to offer to show it to me, and I thank
-you, Wolfscliff,” heartily responded the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And before he had finished speaking Palma had darted
-away in search of her letter box. She soon returned with
-it, sat down, placed it on her lap, opened it and took out
-a bundle of letters, from which she selected one to hand it to
-the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He quickly snatched it, and with an almost greedy look,
-so eager was the father to read the words of his unknown
-daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He “devoured” the contents of that letter, though none
-of its words could speak of him, who was equally unknown
-to his daughter, and although they only told of household
-and neighborhood news, and of their changed plans in regard
-to the scene of their studies and the person of their
-tutor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he had dwelt on the letter as long as possible he
-returned it to its owner with manifest reluctance and cast
-covetous glances at the pile of letters from which it had
-been drawn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Would you like to read all your daughter’s letters?
-You can, of course, if you wish it, sir,” said Palma kindly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, madam, if you would be so good as to let me do
-so,” gratefully replied the father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here they are, then, about twenty of them in all, and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>they are long letters. Take them and read them at your
-leisure. Now there is the dinner bell. You will join us, I
-hope.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, my dear madam; but I am just off a long
-journey, and hardly presentable in a sitting-room, much less
-at a dinner table,” said The O’Melaghlin, glancing down
-at his dusty garments.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, never mind. We are plain country people,” said
-Palma, with a smile; for having lived in a crowded city all
-her life, with the exception of one short season at “Lull’s,”
-she took pride in thinking of herself as a country woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you would like to go to a room to brush off a little,
-I should be pleased to show you the way,” said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Wolfscliff, I think I would if it will not
-delay your dinner or spoil your soup. Now speak frankly.
-There should be candor among kinsmen.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It will spoil nothing,” put in Palma, knowing that
-Cleve could not answer that question, “so, Mr. Stuart,
-please show The O’Melaghlin to the oak room.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve turned with a bow to his guest and led the way
-out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma rang the bell and gave orders that the soup should
-be kept back for fifteen minutes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In due time The O’Melaghlin reappeared in the drawing-room,
-and the small party went in to dinner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the course of that meal Stuart said to Palma:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear, The O’Melaghlin has kindly promised to remain
-with us a few days, and has sent back his chaise to the
-Wolfshead to fetch his baggage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very much pleased to hear this,” said Palma, turning
-with a bright smile to the visitor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Thank you, madam! You may wonder, perhaps, why
-I should have chosen to travel all the way down from New
-York to West Virginia to get from you the London address
-of my children, when I might have written to you and got
-it by return mail.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; indeed, I never once thought of it in that manner.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, I may as well tell you how it was. When I learned
-from Mr. Walling that my children were in London, I determined
-to go there as soon as possible. And knowing what
-a rush there is across the big pond at this season of the year,
-I went to get my passage secured in the first available
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>steamer. But, bless you! though I went to every office of
-ocean steamers in New York, and wrote to every one in
-Boston, I could get no sort of a passage in any one for the
-next six weeks. The first one I could engage was for the
-first of July, in the steamer <em>Leviathan</em> for Southampton.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why! Are you going by the <em>Leviathan</em>? We are going
-by that ship!” impulsively exclaimed Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are!” cried The O’Melaghlin, appealing to Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed we are!” responded the latter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Delight upon delight! That is almost too good to be
-true! Well, I am overjoyed to hear this! Now to resume
-my explanation why I came to you instead of writing:
-Finding that I had three weeks upon my hands I said to
-myself: ‘I will not write to get meager news. I will go
-down to West Virginia and see these near connections of my
-unknown children, and I will talk with them and get from
-them every detail of my son’s and daughter’s lives and characters.’
-And so here I am.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now that you are here, O’Melaghlin, we hope that
-you will stay with us until the day comes when we must
-all leave Wolfscliff for New York to embark on our voyage,”
-said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The visitor turned and looked inquiringly on the lady’s
-face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, do, Mr. O’Melaghlin. We should be so happy
-to have you!” she exclaimed, in response to that mute appeal.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You do me much honor, sir and madam. And to be
-frank with you, there is nothing on my part to prevent
-my acceptance and enjoyment of your kindness and hospitality,”
-replied The O’Melaghlin in modest words, but with
-a pompous manner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma then withdrew and left the two men over their
-claret, and went to put her babies to bed. When this sweet
-duty was done she returned to the drawing-room, where she
-was soon joined by Stuart and O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And there, later in the evening, the latter told his story.
-It was the common story of a race of men and a fine estate
-falling into decadence from generation to generation. This
-The O’Melaghlin, in telling the tale, attributed to the misfortunes
-of the family, and the persecutions of the Saxon.
-But to those who could read between the lines, even of his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>version, it was self-evident that the downfall of the house
-was due to the vice and folly of its representatives.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Few men in the position of The O’Melaghlin would tell
-such a story with perfect frankness. Certainly he did not
-so tell his. And therefore it seems necessary, in the interests
-of truth, that it should be told by me.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With the exception of those absurd traditions of the prehistoric
-period of which no one can know anything, the
-proud family record of The O’Melaghlins, previous to their
-degradation, was in the main true, as every student of Irish
-history knows. But for a century past The O’Melaghlins
-of Arghalee had been fast livers, hard drinkers and reckless
-sinners. In every generation, every succeeding heir had
-come into his patrimony poorer in purse, prouder in spirit,
-and weaker in will to resist evil than any of his predecessors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length, about twenty-five years before the period of
-which I write, young Michael O’Melaghlin, at the age of
-twenty-one, came into the remnant of the grand old estate,
-consisting then of the half-ruined castle of Arghalee and
-a few acres of sterile land immediately around it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was the last of his family, and would have been alone
-in the world but that he loved and was beloved by a good
-and beautiful girl, well born, like himself; an orphan, like
-himself; poor, like himself, and even poorer, since she had
-not so much as a ruinous house and an acre of ground.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Moira MacDuinheld lived with distant relatives in the
-neighborhood of Arghalee.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were not kind to her; they grudged her the cost of
-her maintenance; and when young Michael O’Melaghlin
-came courting her, they encouraged his suit that they might
-get rid of their burden; and they let him marry her, although
-they knew they were delivering her to poverty and
-privation, if to nothing worse.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Michael then married Moira with the full consent of her
-kindred, and took her home to his dilapidated, rat-infested,
-raven-haunted, storm-beaten old donjon keep, which was all
-that was left of the castle of Arghalee.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But soon the young pair began to suffer the bitterest
-pangs of poverty. We cannot go into detail here. Let it
-be sufficient to say that often they had not enough to eat,
-even of the plainest food. But, although “poverty had come
-in at the door, love did not fly out of the window,” for they
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>loved each other more faithfully, because more pitifully,
-for all their privations and sufferings. And here comes in
-the insanity of pride. Both Michael and Moira were strong,
-healthy, able-bodied young people, and could each have obtained
-work in the neighborhood; Michael as a farm laborer,
-if nothing more—and he could have done little more, for
-he had but very little education, and Moira might have become
-a laundress—a trade easily acquired. But for an
-O’Melaghlin—a descendant of the ancient monarchs of
-Meath—to work! No! In the narrow, one-idea mind of
-the impoverished chieftain it was more noble to starve and
-to see his young wife starve, or to accept alms, and deem the
-bestower to be highly honored in being permitted to
-minister to the needs of The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But hunger is a mighty factor in the affairs of life. It
-is said to have civilized the world. At least it exercised
-a very powerful influence upon these two healthy young
-people, who were almost always hungry, seldom having
-enough of oatmeal or potatoes on any day to satisfy their
-robust appetites. And when they had suffered this hunger
-for several months, and saw nothing but hunger in all the
-future, The O’Melaghlin suddenly resolved to sell all the
-remainder of his land, except one acre upon which his
-ruined tower stood—the oldest, as it was also the only part
-of the great castle now in existence—and with the money
-he might get for them go with his young wife to the gold
-fields of California. There, in the far-off foreign land,
-where he would not be known, he would seek for the gold
-that should restore the fortunes of his family. Upon whomsoever
-the gold fever fastens it fills with a furore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gold was The O’Melaghlin’s thought by day and his
-dream by night. Gold seeking, he persuaded himself, was
-not work—or at least it was not work for hire; and, besides,
-he would be a stranger in a strange land; and no one at
-home here in Antrim should ever be able to say that The
-O’Melaghlin had ever soiled his hands or blotted his
-‘scutcheon with labor!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He sold four acres of his land for little more than enough
-money to take himself and his wife, by way of Glasgow,
-to San Francisco. He was offered nearly twice as much
-money if he would sell the remaining acre with the ancient
-tower upon it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>But at the proposal The O’Melaghlin grew furious and
-insolent.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What! Sell the very donjon keep, the last stronghold of
-The O’Melaghlins of Arghalee? Many a time had the
-Saxons besieged the castle, and sometimes they had taken
-the outworks, but never the donjon keep. And now he
-would see their island scuttled in the midst and sunk between
-its four seas, like the rotten old craft that it was, before
-he would sell his tower and the last acre of ground on
-which it stood.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Though why this jeremiad should have been uttered
-against “the Saxon,” when it was an Irishman and a near
-relative who wanted to buy his old owl roost, no one but
-The O’Melaghlin himself could have explained.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His dream was to realize a fabulous fortune from the
-gold fields and come back and restore the tower, rebuild the
-castle and repurchase all the land sold by his forefathers
-for generations past. To do all this would require a vast
-fortune; but would he not make that fortune?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Heaven and earth! Did not many a common bit of
-human clay without family or name of the least value make
-a large fortune in the gold fields? When, then, The O’Melaghlin
-stooped to seek the ore, would not the earth open
-wide her bosom of uncounted treasures and lavish gold upon
-him?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin never doubted for an instant that she
-would.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So in due time The O’Melaghlin and his wife sailed from
-Glasgow, bound for San Francisco.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They went in the first cabin of the <em>Golden Glory</em>. Do
-you think The O’Melaghlin would take second place in any
-circumstances? No, he would die first!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they reached San Francisco he took a room for
-himself and wife at one of the very best hotels, which was
-also, of course, one of the most expensive in the city.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He gave his name to the office clerk as:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlin,” which that hurried and distracted
-individual incontinently put down as:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>T. O. Mannikin.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIV<br> <span class='large'>PARENTAGE OF MIKE AND JUDY</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>The young pair had been in the city only a few days
-when, after diligent inquiries in all possible directions,
-O’Melaghlin heard a rumor of a rich new field of gold in the
-Black Rock Ridges, some fifty miles from the city, and of
-a party of adventurers about forming to start for that point.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>O’Melaghlin determined to join that expedition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His young wife, Moira, was much too delicate just at this
-time to accompany him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He left her at the hotel with nearly all the little money
-he had to bear her expenses during his absence, which he
-promised should be as short as possible.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He said he would come back to see her about the time
-she might be able to return with him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he went away, and Moira remained at the hotel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It seemed a cruel act so to leave a young wife, who was
-expecting within four or five weeks to become a mother;
-but The O’Melaghlin had the gold fever in its most malignant
-form, and had even infected her with the fell disease.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She also had feverish and delirious hallucinations concerning
-the imaginary golden days that were dawning upon
-them, of which, indeed, her present elegant and luxurious
-surroundings in this palace hotel seemed a prophecy and a
-foretaste. Never in her life had Moira seen, dreamed or
-imagined such magnificence as this public house presented
-to her. And to make such a superb style of living their
-own for life was worth some present sacrifice of each other’s
-society for a little while. So she willingly let her husband
-depart with the gold-seekers, and whenever she felt very
-lonesome without him she just shut her eyes and called up
-the inward vision of the gorgeous future.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yet there were moods in which she grew too deeply impressed
-to look beyond the immediate, impending trial,
-bringing certain pain and danger and possible death before
-giving her, if it should ever give her, the crown of a woman’s
-life—maternity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She had made some few pleasant acquaintances among
-the ladies who were boarding at the hotel, and who were
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>charmed by the artless and confiding manners of this beautiful
-wild Irish girl—or child-woman. And when they discovered
-her fears they laughed her into courage again,
-telling her that such dark forebodings as hers were quite
-an indispensable part of the program, and every mother
-among them all had been through it. And they spoke the
-truth, as every doctor knows.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But this hotel was a house patronized by travelers and
-transient boarders only.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ladies who had made Moira’s acquaintance and become
-her friends one after another went their way, and she
-was left alone.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>True, others came. Every day they came and went.
-Some stayed a few hours; some stayed a few days. Among
-these were women who would have been very kind to the
-lonely young stranger if they had had the chance. But
-they had not. They never saw her, or saw to notice her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>With her increasing infirmities, the young wife, when
-daily expecting to become a mother, grew very shy and
-timid. She seldom went down into the ladies’ parlor—that
-neutral ground upon which acquaintances are sometimes
-made, and even friendships occasionally formed; and when
-she did go for a little change, she would conceal herself
-between the curtain and sash of some front window, and so,
-hidden from the company, look out upon the brilliant life
-of Sacramento Street until the utter weariness that now
-so frequently overcame her strength compelled her to creep
-away to the repose of her own private apartment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Toward the last of her life she gave up entirely going
-to the ladies’ parlor, and confined her walk to the stairs
-and halls between her bedchamber and the public dining-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This walk was her only exercise, her only change of scene,
-and she continued it daily to the last day of her life.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She made no new acquaintances in place of those who
-had gone away. She had no friend except an humble one
-in the chambermaid who attended to her room. In many
-respects she was worse off in this elegant and luxurious
-house than she would have been in the rudest log cabin of
-a mining camp, for here, though she had everything else,
-she lacked what she would have got there—human companionship
-and sympathy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>Often she longed—wildly longed—to see or hear from her
-husband, but knew that it was impossible for her to do so.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yet she had one great stay and comfort—her Christian
-faith. She was devoutly religious and spent much time in
-her room in reading the Bible, or some book of devotion,
-or in prayer, or in singing in a low tone some favorite hymn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So the time passed until about six weeks after The
-O’Melaghlin had gone away to seek his fortune, when there
-came a change. She fell too ill to go down to dinner that
-evening.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The friendly chambermaid, who volunteered to bring her
-a cup of tea, also offered to spend the night with her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Moira gratefully accepted these services.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Before midnight the girl had to call the night watchman
-and get him to send a messenger out for the nearest physician,
-who came promptly in answer to the call.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Moira saw the sun rise once more for the last time. Then
-she died, leaving behind her a pair of healthy twins—a boy
-and a girl.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her death was so sudden, so unexpected, that it seemed as
-if a bright, strong torch had been instantly inverted and
-extinguished.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then there was a commotion and a sensation in the hotel.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Where was the husband of the dead woman, the father of
-the motherless babes?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The office book was searched to see who was the party
-who had taken Room 777 seven weeks previous, and the
-register showed the name of T. O. Mannikin and wife, Ogly,
-Ireland. This was the manner in which the hurried clerk
-of the hotel had heard and entered the name and address
-of The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The attendant physician gave his certificate as to the
-natural cause of death, so that there was no need of a
-coroner’s inquest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But there had to be a thorough search made through the
-effects of the dead woman for clews to friends or relatives,
-who should be notified of her decease.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nothing was found; not a letter, not even a line of writing
-except those of the receipts, for she had paid punctually
-every week up to the Saturday before her fatal illness. The
-poor young pair had no correspondents anywhere.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nor was there any money found. Her very last dollar
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>had been paid away for her last week’s board, and there
-was nothing left to satisfy the claims of the doctor or the
-nurse, to pay the funeral expenses or to provide for the
-orphan twins.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no end of gossip in the house. Dress, fashion,
-operas, even mining stocks were temporarily forgotten in
-the discussion of this sad and strange event. It was then
-decided among the worldly wise that the name Mannikin
-was only an assumed one, that the husband had deserted the
-wife, or more probably, the destroyer had abandoned his
-prey.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Human nature, sinful as it is called, is nowhere quite
-heartless.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A purse was made up among the people of the house to
-defray the expenses of the young stranger’s funeral. And
-on the fifth day after her death her remains were laid in the
-Lone Mountain Cemetery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The motherless babes were taken in charge by the
-monthly nurse, a Mrs. Mally, who, in a fit of benevolence
-that did not last long, adopted them and carried them to
-her own home.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The personal effects of the poor dead young mother,
-which were not of much value indeed, but which might have
-been detained by the proprietors of the hotel for the last
-few days of unpaid board, were given by them into the
-keeping of Nurse Mally, either for the benefit of the babes
-or of any claimant who might prove to have the best right
-to them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As for the ministering physician, like most of the men of
-his humane profession, he waived all claim to remuneration
-for his services.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally soon found the pursuit of her own regular
-calling and the care of the orphaned infants too much for
-her “nerves.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Sin is the outcome of so many causes—hereditary, taint,
-faulty training, temptation and opportunity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally was affected by all these. She slowly made
-up her mind to keep the dead mother’s wardrobe, trinkets
-and books and to dispose of the babies. She would not hurt
-them; not for the world! But she would put them in a
-haven where, in truth, they would be much better taken care
-of than by any poor, hard-working woman like herself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>So one evening she dressed them in their very best clothes
-and gave them each a dose of paregoric, not enough to endanger
-their little lives—she knew her business too well for
-that—but to put them into a deep sleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When it was dark she got a large market basket with a
-strong handle, folded a clean cradle blanket and laid it in
-the bottom of it, took another little blanket and laid it in
-loose so that its edges came up over those of the receptacle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then she wrapped the sleeping babies up carefully, put
-them in the bottom, laid comfortably at each end with their
-feet passing each other in the middle, covered them over
-with the double folds of the upper blanket, and so done up
-like a pastry cook’s turn-over pie, she took them in the
-basket on her arm and carried them out into the dimly
-lighted back streets and off into the country to the infant
-asylum of the Holy Maternity. She had not far to go.
-When she reached the gate, which stood always open for
-the reception of such piteous little human waifs as infant
-outcasts, she went in and up to the gable end of the
-building, where stood the cage to receive the poor, naked,
-fatherless, motherless human birdlings. It was a large oriel
-window, about breast high from the ground.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She rang the bell at the side of the window. It swung
-open and around, bearing attached on its inner side a soft,
-warm nest, or small cradle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally took the sleeping infants from the basket, one
-by one, and placed them in the nest, tucked them snugly
-in, put the two cradle blankets, folded, over them, and
-then rang the bell again. The window-sash with the nest
-swung round and inward, and so the abandoned babes were
-received within the sheltering arm of the “Holy Maternity,”
-and no questions asked. We know the rest of their lives
-so far as they have yet lived.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally went home with her empty basket, and that
-night missed the babes so much that she wept with contrition
-and loneliness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day she hunted up every article of infant wear
-belonging to the twins, washed and ironed all that was
-soiled, then packed them into the basket, and when night
-came she went once more to the asylum and rang at the
-receiving window. Again the nest swung outward, and she
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>put into it, no baby, but a quantity of babies’ clothing, then
-rang the bell again and the offering was swung inward.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then Mrs. Mally went home with the empty basket, relieved.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>During all this time The O’Melaghlin lay ill of a long,
-lingering fever in the mining camp under the shadow of the
-great Black Rock Ridges.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had not been utterly unsuccessful during the first days
-of trial before he succumbed to the fierce onset of his disease.
-He was as kindly cared for by his companions as circumstances
-would permit. He had no orthodox medical attendance.
-A Mexican Indian, an herb doctress, came and
-nursed him. Her simple ministrations, with the aid of pure
-air, pure water, nature and a good constitution, saved his
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But his great mental trouble of anxiety to see or hear
-from his young wife, left alone in the city hotel, tended to
-retard his recovery, which was very tedious.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His mates had prospered in their search for gold. The
-mine promised to hold out, and not run out as so many did.
-So, finding that the sick man’s anxiety to see his young
-wife far outweighed his craving for the gold mine, they
-made up a liberal purse among themselves to send him on
-his way rejoicing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as he was able to walk he set out on foot from
-the mining camp. He was accompanied half a day’s journey
-by a couple of his companions, who brought him as far
-as a friendly Indian’s hut and there bade him good-by, leaving
-him to rest for the afternoon and spend the night, while
-they retraced their steps to the mining camp.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Early the next morning The O’Melaghlin resumed his
-journey and dragged himself by slow stages of ten or fifteen
-miles a day, stopping at night in miner’s, hunter’s or Indian’s
-hut, according as either offered shelter near the close
-of evening.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so at length he reached the city late one autumn
-night, and went straight to the hotel where he had left his
-young wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There he learned that she had been dead and buried for
-more than a month past, and that the twins to which she
-had given birth were in the care of the professional nurse,
-Mrs. Mandy Mally, of Cyprus Lane.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>But he scarcely heard this last item of intelligence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The shock of the first fatal news, coming as it did after
-the wasting of his long illness and the weariness of his long
-tramp, quite overwhelmed The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He fell senseless to the floor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was taken up and sent to the casual ward of a public
-hospital, where he suffered a severe relapse that confined
-him to his bed for many weeks.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Upon his second recovery, as soon as he was discharged
-from the hospital he went in search of the monthly nurse
-who had taken charge of poor Moira’s babes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He found the woman in a very small house in a very
-narrow back street.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She looked scared when she was confronted with the
-father of the children whom she had sent away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But she soon recovered her self-control. She told him
-how she had disposed of the children, and excused herself
-by calling his attention to the poverty of herself, her house
-and her surroundings, and to the necessity of her going out
-to work.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin accepted all her apologies. He did not
-blame her in the least. He thought it best for the children
-to be under the care of the Sisterhood of the Holy Maternity;
-and he told her so.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He left the nurse, and went out to find some cheap lodgings
-where he could hide himself and his misery for a few
-days until he should be able to come to some understanding
-with himself and strike out some plan for the future.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He wished to go and see his children at the asylum, and
-yet he dreaded the trial; he could not get up resolution to do
-so. They had been the cause—though the innocent one—of
-their mother’s death, and so he shrank from looking upon
-their infant faces.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Besides, the pride of The O’Melaghlin winced at the
-thought of going and facing the Sisters of that house and
-owning himself the father of those destitute infants, without
-either taking them away at once or making some provision
-for their support in the institution; and he could neither
-take charge of them himself nor provide for them anywhere.
-He was at this time too bitterly poor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No, he said to himself, he could do no better for the
-children than to leave them there in that safe, happy and
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>Christian home. He would keep track of them, he told
-himself, and if ever he should be able he would take them
-away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And without ever having looked upon the faces of his
-children he left California for Australia, shipping himself
-as a man before the mast on a large merchantman bound
-from San Francisco to Sydney.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>I must hasten over the remainder of The O’Melaghlin’s
-story.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>From the day of his embarkation for Australia he became
-a wanderer over the face of the earth, chiefly among the
-mines. His gold fever, suspended for a time by his grief
-for the loss of his wife, revived with tenfold force, so that
-“the last state of that man was worse than the first.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He visited Australia, Tasmania, the Sandwich Islands,
-New Zealand, Cape Colony and other places, but finally
-returned to Australia, where at last he found fortune.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By the mere accident of idly poking his staff in the
-ground one day while sitting down to rest, on his way
-through the bush, he struck ore—rich gold—that turned
-out one of the greatest mines in that region.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It would be tedious to tell all the processes by which he
-realized a colossal fortune, or by what slow degrees he returned
-to the worthy ambition of his youth to restore the
-fortunes of his family by repurchasing, at any advance of
-price, their lost land, and rebuilding, at any cost, their
-ruined castle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he had renewed his resolution to do all this, he first
-thought of getting married to perpetuate the house of
-O’Melaghlin—although at this period of his life he was not
-at all a marrying man, preferring “the free, unhoused condition”
-of a bachelor. Then suddenly he recalled to mind
-his deserted and almost forgotten children. If these were
-living he had a son and a daughter to carry down his name
-to the future; for should his son be dead and his girl living,
-whoever should marry the heiress of The O’Melaghlin must
-take the name of O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So, should either of his long neglected children be living,
-he need not be driven to get married at all—which would
-be a great relief.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He settled up all his affairs in Australia and sailed for
-California.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>When he reached San Francisco he went immediately to
-the asylum where his children had been received.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>I need not follow the father in every step of the weary
-search he had in tracing them from the asylum to their
-places of apprenticeship; from these places—with the aid of
-skilful detectives—to the mining camp of Grizzly Gulch,
-from that to the fort and thence to New York.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In New York, from the Wallings, he heard the most satisfactory
-news of both, but especially of the daughter, who, he
-was told, had married a wealthy young Englishman of
-ancient family and of large landed estate, and who had
-gone to England with her husband, taking her brother
-along with them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling could not give the inquiring father the address
-of the young people, whom he believed to be somewhere
-in London, living quietly, and pursuing their studies
-to make up for their long neglected education.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he referred The O’Melaghlin to Mr. Cleve Stuart, of
-Wolfscliff, West Virginia, who would be able to satisfy him
-on every point.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin, having nearly four weeks of time on
-hand before the sailing of the steamer, which was the first
-on which he could secure a passage to Liverpool, resolved,
-instead of writing for information from Mr. Stuart, to go
-down to Wolfscliff and have a personal interview with the
-parties who had been intimate with his son and daughter,
-and who would be able to give him every particular of their
-character, personal appearance and history.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And so, as has been seen, he came to Wolfscliff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin was deeply pleased with every circumstance
-of his reception there; with the cordial welcome of
-the young master and mistress of the house, with the discovery
-which he honestly thought he had made of a worthy
-kinsman in the person of Cleve Stuart, a descendant, as
-O’Melaghlin himself claimed to be, on his mother’s side, of
-the royal house of Scotland.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But more than all was he pleased with the account he
-heard from his host and hostess of his long neglected son
-and daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will be hearing from these young people every week,
-will ye not, Wolfscliff?” he inquired that evening, after having
-finished his story.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>“My wife hears from her cousin Judith by almost every
-English mail,” answered Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you’ll be getting a letter in a day or so?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, most likely.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, of course, answering it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course! That is, my wife will! As I hinted before,
-the correspondence of the two families is kept up by Palma
-and Judith.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! So then you are the scribe, Mistress Stuart?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” answered Palma, smiling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And you are thinking, ma’am, what a grand piece of
-news you will have to tell your friend in your very next
-letter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed, I am thinking of just such a delight!” exclaimed
-Palma, her eyes fairly dancing with anticipation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I am almost sorry to debar you from such a pleasure,
-ma’am, but I must beseech you not to make known my
-existence to my son and daughter until we meet them in
-England face to face,” said O’Melaghlin solemnly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh!” exclaimed Palma, with a look of great disappointment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have good reasons for my request, and I will tell them
-to you. Your husband, my friend Wolfscliff there, will understand
-them. I wish to be introduced to the young ones
-simply as The O’Melaghlin. They have probably never
-heard that name before in all their lives. They can never
-suspect its connection with themselves——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do I understand you really, O’Melaghlin? Do you wish
-to be presented as a stranger to your own son and daughter?”
-inquired Stuart in perplexity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is just exactly what I do wish,” replied the Irishman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But why?” inquired Stuart, while Palma looked the
-same question with great, dilated eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In the first place, I wish to make a quiet observation of
-them while yet they consider me a mere ordinary, uninteresting
-stranger, with whom they can be at perfect ease, and
-show themselves as they really are with perfect freedom.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But don’t you suppose they could do that with their own
-father, knowing him to be their father who had come to
-seek them out, to find them, to make up to them—and to
-himself as well—for their long separation from him—don’t
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>you suppose they could feel at ease and act with freedom
-in the presence of such a father?” demanded Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, I don’t!” emphatically retorted The O’Melaghlin.
-“Under the circumstances, I don’t believe they could either
-feel easy or behave naturally. They would be so surprised,
-so amazed——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But if they were carefully prepared for the meeting
-beforehand,” suggested Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I doubt if you could prepare them for so strange a meeting.
-But granting that you could, still they would be so
-filled with wonder and curiosity, so anxious to do their duty,
-so eager to make a good impression, that, as I said before,
-it would be impossible for them to feel comfortably or behave
-naturally. No, you must present me to your friends,
-Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay, simply as your kinsman, The
-O’Melaghlin of Arghalee. You may write and ask permission
-to bring your kinsman to Haymore Hall,” concluded
-the chieftain.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It would not be necessary to ask permission. Indeed, it
-would hurt my friend Ran for me to do so. He would have
-us all treat his house as our own and bring whom we
-pleased, without ceremony, taking much more than his permission
-for granted, even taking his delight to welcome any
-of our friends, for granted,” replied Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah, then, sure he is a whole-souled, great-hearted fellow,
-this husband of my Judy! This son-in-law of my own!
-And I shall be proud to make his acquaintance. Troth,
-he should have been an Irishman!” warmly exclaimed
-The O’Melaghlin. “And now,” he added, turning suddenly
-around to Palma, “do you understand, ma’am, why I wish
-to meet my son and daughter as a stranger, and to observe
-them for a whole day or an evening before making myself
-known to them?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Perfectly, Mr. O’Melaghlin. And I think you are quite
-right,” warmly responded Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you, ma’am, for your indorsement of my judgment.
-And now, my dear young lady, will you oblige me in
-one small matter?” he gravely inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“In anything, great or small, that lies within my power,
-Mr. O’Melaghlin,” smiled Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, my dear young lady, will you graciously drop the
-‘mister’ before my name?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>Palma looked up in questioning surprise.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will explain, my dear madam. The O’Melaghlins have
-been The O’Melaghlins from time immemorial, as I had
-the honor to tell you before. They were monarchs of Meath
-for many centuries; but they were never ‘mister,’ like any
-ordinary Smith, Jones, or Brown, or Anybody. So, my fair
-kinswoman, you will please to oblige me by dropping that
-little prefix to my old historic name.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But, Mr.—I beg pardon. But, sir, if I must not call you
-‘mister,’ how shall I address you or speak of you?” inquired
-the bewildered young woman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Simply as O’Melaghlin, or The O’Melaghlin. My dear,
-how would you speak of or address Julius Cæsar, Marc Antony,
-or Alexander the Great? Would you say ‘Mr.’ Julius
-Cæsar? ‘Mr.’ Marc Antony? No, you would not. And
-no more should you say Mr. O’Melaghlin. There are family
-names, my dear lady, that outrank not only the little prefix
-of ‘mister,’ but all titles, and such a name is that of The
-O’Melaghlin,” solemnly concluded the chieftain.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, O’Melaghlin,” laughed Palma, “I will hereafter
-always remember to call you O’Melaghlin, though, indeed,
-it will make me feel like a very fast young woman,
-and just as if I had a jockey cap on my head and a cigar
-in my mouth.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I wish to be enlightened,” said Stuart, with a smile.
-“You call me ‘Wolfscliff.’ Why, upon the same principle,
-do you not call yourself Arghalee?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The chieftain drew himself up with a royal air and replied
-majestically:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because, sir, The O’Melaghlin ranks the territorial title
-of Arghalee, as it ranks every other title!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Does not the royal name of Stuart rank Wolfscliff?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It would; but there are thousands of Stuarts, and you
-are only one of them, and derive your individual distinction
-from your manor. You are Stuart, of Wolfscliff. There
-is but one O’Melaghlin. I am The O’Melaghlin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And your son?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is Michael O’Melaghlin. When he succeeds me he
-will be The O’Melaghlin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I see!” said Stuart, with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But I doubt if he did see.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXV<br> <span class='large'>AN ANGEL’S WORK</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>The nest day Palma had a final and decisive talk with
-Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In such high esteem was this good woman held by the
-young Stuarts that they regarded her almost as a mother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the question of going to England that summer was
-first mooted, the alternative was placed before Mrs. Pole,
-and the choice given, her to accompany the young pair on
-their voyage and foreign tour or to remain at Wolfscliff in
-charge of the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the woman, on her part, had entreated Mr. and Mrs.
-Stuart to tell her which they would prefer to have her do.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To which they replied that they wished her to do just as
-she pleased.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This morning Palma came into the nursery, where Mrs.
-Pole sat beside the cradle, watching the sleeping babies,
-while she sewed on some plain needlework.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>How for the last fortnight Mrs. Pole had been halting
-between two opinions, divided between the affections for
-Cleve and Palma and their children, that drew to go with
-them, and her dread of the long voyage and love of quiet
-that bound her to her home. Therefore, she wished them to
-make the decision for her that she was incapable of making
-for herself. And they would not.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But within a day or two it had been “borne in” upon the
-mind of Poley that, although Mr. and Mrs. Stuart really
-wished her to do as she pleased in this matter of going or
-staying, yet that they would be better satisfied that she
-should please to stay at Wolfscliff to take care of the house
-than to go to Europe with them. Mrs. Pole and her young
-friends were really secretly of one mind in this matter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So when Palma sat down beside her she was prepared to
-meet the question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poley, dear, it is really time now that you should make
-up your mind as to what you are going to do about going
-to Europe with us or staying here. Because, if you should
-decide to go with us, Poley, dear, we must begin at once
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>to look out for some good and reliable woman to come and
-take care of the house while we are away.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, my dear child, you needn’t trouble yourself to look
-out for nobody. If it is all the same to you, I will my own
-self stay here and look after the place while you are gone.
-Will that suit you, ma’am?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Perfectly, Poley, dear. We would rather leave you in
-charge of our home than any one else, if you are satisfied
-to stay.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I am, dearie. I’m over elderly to be sailing on the
-high seas, and nothing but my love for you all would ever
-a-made me think of such a thing. And now, as I find I
-can serve you better by staying here than going ’long o’ you,
-why, ’deed, I’d heap liefer stay here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then it is all right, Poley. And now tell me, when
-did you hear from your niece?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jane Morgan, you mean, ma’am?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Of course, Jane Morgan. I did not know you had any
-other niece.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No more I hadn’t, ma’am. Well, I heard from her ’bout
-two weeks ago. He have been out of work near all the latter
-part o’ the winter, and they’ve been a-having of a very hard
-time, ma’am, and that is a fact, with all the mouves they’ve
-got to feed, too.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How many children have they, Poley?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Six, ma’am. The oldest nine years old, and the youngest
-nine months. And he out of work so long, poor fellow!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You should have told me, Poley.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What for, ma’am? You couldn’t have helped it. I sent
-’em a good part of my wages, and that kept ’em a-going.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poley, do you remember that I told you your niece
-should come here and bring all her babies this summer to
-see you and to get the benefit of this pure mountain air?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, ma’am, indeed I do remember!” exclaimed Mrs.
-Pole, brightening up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And have you written to your niece about it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, ma’am. As you never mentioned the subject
-again after that first time, I didn’t know but what you had
-forgotten it or changed your mind.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! How could you? Well, now, look here.
-Write to your niece and tell her to come and bring all her
-children down here to spend the summer with you while we
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>are gone to Europe. And I hope they will come, Poley. It
-would do the little children so much good. And, oh! is Mr.
-Morgan out of work now, Poley?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He was two weeks ago, ma’am, with no prospect of getting
-any.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is his trade?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is a carpenter and builder, ma’am?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, then I do think we shall be able to do a good thing
-for him. Such a good thing for him!” exclaimed Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole looked up in mute surprise and inquiry.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, this is it. You know there is ever so much carpenter’s
-work wanting to be done on the place. I have heard
-Cleve talking about it. The barn is to be almost rebuilt, and
-the house here wants repairs. Cleve thought of getting a
-carpenter down from Staunton. But now, you see, I shall
-just ask him to send for Mr. Morgan. And then they can
-all come down here—husband, wife and children! Won’t
-that be glorious, Poley? And he will not lose his time, and
-they will not be under expenses!” cried Palma in delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That will be very fine indeed, ma’am, if so be it can
-be managed,” replied Mrs. Pole.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then she began to compute how much it would cost
-to bring Joseph and Jane Morgan and their family from
-New York to West Virginia, and to count up her own
-savings from her wages.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I can do it,” she said to herself. “I can do it! And
-they can pay me afterward as they get on, and if they don’t
-they needn’t bother about it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma went straight to Cleve and unfolded her views.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You see, dear,” she said, after she had duly introduced
-the subject, “I did give Poley leave to ask her niece and
-the children to come down here and stay with her while we
-should be away in Europe; for, oh! only think how much
-good it will do those poor little children! And now since
-the husband and father is a carpenter and a skilled workman,
-as Poley says he is, what could happen better for all
-parties? You can engage him to do the work here that is
-so much wanted. And it will be such a good thing for him
-and his family as well as for us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My dear quixotic Palma, your benevolence carries you
-into wild extravagance, I fear,” said Stuart, with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I was only thinking of the poor man—a skilled mechanic,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>too, out of employment—and of his poor, overtasked
-wife and their poor little children. I know it is an unusual
-thing to do to bring down a whole family when one only
-wants a carpenter. But then, you see, the circumstances are
-also unusual, and——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And the little woman who plans the arrangements is not
-only unusual, but—phenomenal!” Stuart said, interrupting
-her, with a smile.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, listen to me, dear, and be serious, for I am.
-I said the circumstances were unusual, and so they are.
-We are going to Europe, and this old house among the hills
-would be nearly empty while we are gone, and Mrs. Pole
-would be alone except for the negro servants on the place
-unless we should let her have some one to stay with her.
-Now these people are her nearest relations. I promised
-her that they should come and visit her. They are in bitter
-want of all that the change would bring them—and, oh,
-dear me, Cleve!” she suddenly broke off, “we are not living
-in this world all for ourselves! And don’t you think it
-would be a sin, and we should be worse than the dog in the
-manger to leave this big old house among the hills almost
-empty when we go away instead of opening it to that poor,
-half-starved and half-stifled tenement family whose children
-would here have fresh air, pure water and good food, and
-who would get health and strength and delight in this beautiful
-place?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, Palma, dear, you talk to me as if I had to be
-argued into consenting to this arrangement. It is enough,
-love, that you wish to have it made,” said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is very kind of you, Cleve; but I wished to convince,
-not to coax you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A distinction without a difference in this case, dear.
-Well, I will see to this.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The only hesitation Stuart felt was as to the character of
-the man Morgan, of whom neither Palma nor himself knew
-anything. But Mrs. Pole did know, and Stuart resolved to
-have a talk with the woman, in whose honesty and judgment
-he had equal and entire confidence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Later in the day he questioned Mrs. Pole, and when she
-assured Mr. Stuart that “he”—she always referred to her
-nephew-in-law by the pronoun instead of his name—“he”
-was honest, temperate and industrious as a man could be,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>and his only fault was carelessness about saving money
-when he had it, though he never wasted it on himself, but
-on the young ones, even to the extravagance of an excursion
-sometimes. But for that, “he” was as good and trusty a
-man as ever wore shoe leather.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Upon this information Stuart acted, and wrote a letter
-to Mr. Morgan offering him work for the summer, with
-good wages and his expenses paid to West Virginia if he
-should accept the terms. This business letter inclosed two
-others, one from Palma to Mrs. Morgan, explaining circumstances
-and asking her as a favor to come with Mr. Morgan
-and bring all their children and stay at Wolfscliff with Mrs.
-Pole for the whole summer and part of the autumn, while
-Mr. Stuart and she (the writer) should be in Europe. The
-last letter was from Mrs. Pole to her niece, imploring her
-not to be “backward” in accepting the lady’s invitation,
-which was made in good faith and in the earnest desire to
-do them service.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These letters, inclosed in one envelope, were sent off by
-that day’s mail.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Within seven days the answer came. One from Morgan
-to Mr. Stuart, gratefully accepting the liberal terms offered
-him; one from Jane Morgan to Mrs. Stuart, overflowing
-with delight and thankfulness, and telling the lady, what
-Palma appreciated best of all, that her children were “fairly
-standing on their heads in delight at the thought of their
-going into the country,” and one from the niece to her aunt,
-breathing of gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts for
-this blessing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart sent on his check to Morgan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole began active preparations for the reception of
-her niece and the children.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The large bedroom on the ground floor which had once
-been the private apartment of old Mr. Cleve, and two
-smaller rooms in the rear of that were fitted up for the
-family.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because,” said Palma, “these rooms all open upon the
-back porch and the end porch, and will be so convenient for
-the little children to run in and out without danger of falling
-from any height or hurting themselves.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole was ready to cry with the feeling of the young
-woman’s tender, thoughtful kindness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>Palma was busy also with her own preparations. It was
-no very easy matter to pack trunks for her husband, her
-children and herself for a voyage to Europe. It would
-have been a much harder task but that Cleve continually
-reminded her that she really needed to take no more than
-they might require on their voyage.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“To carry clothes to Europe is to ‘carry coals to Newcastle,’”
-he said, quoting an old proverb.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hatty, to her great delight, was selected from all the
-other servants to go with them as lady’s maid and children’s
-nurse.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The last week of their stay at Wolfscliff came. And the
-program for that week was all laid out.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Sunday they all went to church together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart gave a dinner
-party at Wolfscliff in honor of their guest, The O’Melaghlin,
-and for which the invitations had been given out several
-days previous. This was a great success. All the family
-connections of the Stuarts and the Cleves were on hand, and
-The O’Melaghlin was in great force, notwithstanding, or
-perhaps just because, he had taken a great deal more wine
-than was good for him. But in this respect he was kept well
-in countenance by the elders of that dinner table; for up to
-this time the total abstinence movement had not reached
-that neighborhood, where the heads of old families kept up
-the convivial habits of their forefathers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Tuesday, by appointment, Mr. Stuart sent the large
-carryall and also the ox cart to Wolfswalk to meet the Morgans,
-who were expected to arrive that afternoon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After their dispatch the whole household of Wolfscliff
-was in a state of expectancy much more delightful at the
-anticipation of meeting the poor workman’s family of small
-children who would be in such ecstasies at their visit than
-they would have been in looking forward to the arrival of
-the most distinguished party this country could afford.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But it was quite late at night when the two lumbering
-vehicles drew up before the door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin had retired to rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart had remained in the drawing-room under silent
-protest, until Palma entreated, exhorted and commanded,
-using all the forms of the potential mood in order to make
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>him go to bed. Then he laughed and yielded, and Palma
-and Mrs. Pole “stayed up” to receive the travelers.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They had a nice supper, also, ready for them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So when they heard the wheels grate on the pebbles before
-the house both rushed out of the room just in time to
-see old ’Sias, who alone of all the servants shared their
-watch, unbolt and unbar the great double front door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the door was opened and the large party filed in.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma withdrew to the background to let Mrs. Pole offer
-the first greetings to her relatives. First came Joe, with
-one child fast asleep on his shoulder, and another, half
-asleep, holding his hand by his side.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then came Jane, with the baby in her arms and two
-little girls clinging to her skirts, and the eldest boy close
-behind her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole received them one by one, kissing them in tears
-of joy, and with disconnected, inarticulate words of welcome.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the midst of this little hubbub the carryall and ox
-cart were heard to start again and roll away in the direction
-of the barnyard.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole presented them all, one by one, to Palma, who
-received each with great kindness, and took the baby to hold
-in her arms, while its mother, father and all the other children
-followed Mrs. Pole into the bedrooms to take off their
-wraps and wash for supper.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then came the comfortable supper and the chat that accompanied
-it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Palma felt fully compensated for her “quixotism.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When they all bade her good-night and went to their
-rooms on the ground floor Palma felt too joyful to retire;
-so she stayed up talking to Mrs. Pole until midnight, and
-then—even then—when she retired to bed, she was too happy
-to sleep—too happy in the thought of the happiness she
-witnessed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next morning must have reconciled a more hard-headed
-man that Cleve Stuart to the quixotism of his wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The lawn resounded with the shouts and laughter of the
-little children, who might have thought, if young children
-ever think, that they had died in their tenement house and
-waked up in heaven.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Stuart was as much pleased with the frank, honest face
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>and manner of Joseph Morgan as Palma was with the true,
-tender, motherly countenance and conversation of Jane
-Morgan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Thursday  morning the Stuarts, with The O’Melaghlin
-and their servants, started for New York, en route for England.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They reached the city on Friday morning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They spent the day in making calls on the Wallings and
-other friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Saturday the whole party sailed for Liverpool.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVI<br> <span class='large'>GENTLEMAN GEFF’S FATE</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Gentleman Geff was in a profound stupor when he was
-taken to the rectory and put to bed in the best chamber of
-the house—the parlor bedroom on the ground floor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He continued in this state for several days, faithfully
-watched by Elspeth and Longman, and frequently visited
-by Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and daily attended by Dr.
-Hobbs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie shrank from even going to look at him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he recognized no one, noticed nothing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Medicine and highly concentrated nourishment were
-regularly administered to him by his nurses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>These he sometimes swallowed instinctively, mechanically,
-and at other times choked over, and had to be raised in
-bed and have his throat relieved and his mouth wiped like
-a helpless baby; but all unconsciously on his part. He
-never knew, or seemed to know, what he himself was suffering,
-or other people were doing.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His spirit was away, away.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Where?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In Hades, most probably, judging from his antecedents.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will he die in this stupor, or come out of it, do you
-think, sir?” inquired the rector of the doctor one morning
-as the two men stood by the bedside of the patient.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs never “shook his head;” doctors never do
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>such stupidly disheartening things over a case, however
-serious—story writers to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This physician also had the courage to confess that he
-was not omniscient, for he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not know.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But if he should come out of this stupor, will he be
-likely to live?” inquired the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do not know,” again replied the doctor. “I shall be
-better able to judge when he recovers consciousness, if he
-should ever recover it.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the physician wrote his prescriptions and instructions
-for the treatment of the ill man and retired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Not one word of this talk entered the consciousness of
-Gentleman Geff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Nine days he lay in this condition, and then there passed
-over him a change.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He seemed to himself to be groping feebly out of nothingness
-into vague consciousness of horror; but what the
-horror was, or what he himself was, he did not even think.
-The first effort to do so sent him back into the state from
-which he had come.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After a few hours he came again out of utter oblivion
-into some faint consciousness of himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But who was he? Where was he?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All was dark and still around him. Then came faint intelligence,
-with imperfect memory, which mingled dreams
-with distorted facts. He remembered faintly what he would
-have called “a row,” but where, or under what circumstances,
-he could not find; he thought it was a drunken
-brawl over cards in a gambling saloon, and some one had
-crushed in his brain and killed him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yes, that was it! He had been killed last night in a
-drunken brawl over cards, in a gambling saloon, and now
-he had come to life——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Where?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In that dark lower world, without sun, moon or stars;
-without air, water or vegetation; that world of horror and
-despair of which he had heard in childhood, but in which he
-had never believed, and where he must wait with thieves
-and murderers and miscreants like himself until the general
-judgment day; and after that——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>What?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>The eternal life of torture in the lake of fire and brimstone
-in which he had never believed, either in its literal or
-in its metaphorical meaning.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And now he was too utterly debilitated in mind and body
-to know or to feel anything very clearly or deeply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He relapsed into unconsciousness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he came to himself the next time he was able to
-think with a little more clearness, and to recollect with
-more correctness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He remembered now that it was at Haymore Hall the
-“row” had occurred, in which he still believed he had been
-knocked down and had succumbed to his injuries, and had
-now waked up in the world of darkness, horror and despair,
-to wait for his final doom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His final doom?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He moaned in his helplessness, not altogether from fear
-of future hell, but from a feeling of present thirst, intolerable
-even as the rich man suffered when he cried to
-Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water
-and cool his parched tongue.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he had moaned a second time he felt the approach
-of some huge, dark form. It stood by him, it bent over him,
-put out a strong arm under his shoulders and lifted him,
-and placed a glassful of a refreshing beverage to his lips.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He drank and breathed more freely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ah! how delicious it was!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The attendant replaced his head on the pillow, smoothed
-his bedclothes and withdrew to take away the glass.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In a moment he came back, bent over the still half-comatose
-man and inquired softly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How do you feel, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I—I—I—feel——” muttered Gentleman Geff, and
-then swooned into the slumber of weakness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Some one silently opened the door and came in. It was
-the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How is your patient, Longman?” he inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Sir, he has just swallowed more liquid than he has since
-he has been ill; and he has spoken for the first time,” replied
-the nurse.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Coherently?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What did he say?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>“Well, not much. I asked him how he felt, as an experiment,
-you see, sir, and to find out whether he could understand
-anything; and he did understand, for he began to
-tell me, and he dropped off to sleep. You see he is sleeping
-naturally, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I see. Well, Longman, it is one o’clock. Go to
-bed. I will relieve your watch,” said the rector, sinking
-into the large easy-chair beside the patient.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman made some resistance to this proposal, but Mr.
-Campbell was firm, and sent off the wearied nurse to take
-his much needed rest.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The ill man rested well for some hours, and then moaned
-in his sleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The watcher gave him a cooling and strengthening beverage,
-just as Longman had done, and the patient sank again
-into sleep, muttering:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I can’t be in hell, after all, for in hell no one comes
-from heaven to put a cool——” Then his words became
-inaudible until he dropped into unconsciousness with the
-last word—“purgatory”—on his failing tongue.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All the remainder of the night he slept well, only occasionally
-muttering in his sleep:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not in hell, after all—only in purgatory—not such a
-bad place.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the morning when the doctor came to make his daily
-visit he found the ill man sleeping quietly and Mr. Campbell
-and Longman sitting by his bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He examined the patient’s pulse and temperature without
-waking him, and then took the two watchers’ report.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Took nourishment with a relish and spoke consciously—both
-good signs, excellent signs! but I can say no more at
-present.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor wrote out the formulas for the day and took
-leave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All that day Gentleman Geff remained in the same condition
-without a sign of further improvement. All the following
-night Longman had a repetition of the experience
-of the preceding night. At dawn his mother, Elspeth, relieved
-him and sent him to bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the family breakfast Mr. Campbell came in and
-sent Elspeth out to get her own coffee and muffins. The
-sick-room was still kept very dark by the doctor’s orders.
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>Darkness, he said, was the best sedative for nerves and
-brain in the condition of Capt. Montgomery.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the sick man showed by moaning and moving uneasily
-that he was awake, the rector took some beef tea
-that was kept hot over a spirit lamp, poured it into an invalid’s
-feeding-glass and administered it to the patient.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff sucked it in with a relish, and then sank
-back on his pillow with a sigh of satisfaction.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Mr. Campbell had put away the cup and returned
-to his seat by the bedside he was startled by hearing the
-patient inquire:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Who the devil are you, I wonder?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He answered calmly, however:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“One whom you should know, Capt. Montgomery. I am
-James Campbell, rector of——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he was interrupted by an exclamation from Gentleman
-Geff.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The devil you say! The curate of Medge in purgatory!
-a parson in purgatory! When did your reverence die?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector paused a few moments before he replied, and
-then he spoke very quietly:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am not dead, nor likely to die; nor are you in purgatory
-as you seem to think.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What! are you living?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I thank Heaven.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And—I living also?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes! And I say thank Heaven for you also.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where are we, then?” questioned the man in a quavering
-voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But before the rector could answer his question, and even
-while the question was on his lips, Gentleman Geff had
-fainted into forgetfulness.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In his struggling soul, striving back to consciousness from
-his long stupor, the wretched man had been the victim of
-three several hallucinations.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>First, that he was dead and buried, and while in that
-state he made no sign.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Second, that he was in hell, and then his wail for water and
-the drink that was given him dispelled the illusion,
-which was replaced by the fancy that he was in purgatory.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Now the meeting with the living James Campbell had
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>cured him of that delusion also, and left him to one more
-natural but not the less painful.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When next he awoke from temporary oblivion his brain
-was clearer and his memory more accurate than either had
-yet been since his illness; still, both were somewhat clouded,
-so that they mixed up time and space, and dreams and realities
-in weird phantasmagoria.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>For instance, he remembered every detail of the two murders
-he thought he had committed, but not an item of the
-meeting with his two intended victims living to accuse him,
-not of murder, but of attempted murder.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And without reflecting, or being now able to reflect, that
-he could not possibly be hung in England for murders committed
-in America, he now thought that he was in the condemned
-cell of an English prison, waiting for speedy execution;
-that the huge giant who loomed through the shadows
-of the prison was his death watch, and that James Campbell
-had come to him in his clerical capacity to prepare him for
-death.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I will not allow him to worm any confession out of
-me. I have been convicted on the frailest circumstantial
-evidence, and they dare not hang me at the last. I will
-have nothing to do with the parson. I won’t even know
-him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was the most coherent thought that Gentleman Geff
-had formed since he sank into stupor in the drawing-room
-of Haymore Hall. But the instinct of self-preservation is
-a wonderful stimulant to the brain.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So when James Campbell came next to him he turned
-his face to the wall and would not notice him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When Longman came and gave him food and asked how
-he felt he answered:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I want to see my lawyer. Send him here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman, who had been directed to humor all his whims,
-replied:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Very well, sir. He shall be summoned immediately.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And don’t let that parson come near me again. I hate
-parsons. And if he thinks he is going to nag me into confessing
-crimes I never even dreamed of committing he must
-be a much bigger fool than ever I took him to be. Send my
-lawyer to me, do you hear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right, sir.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>“Well, then, why the devil don’t you do it? You needn’t
-keep such an infernal sharp lookout on me. I am not going
-to commit suicide, I tell you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman laughed and left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff turned with his face to the wall and tried
-to remember the details of his supposed trial—what the
-lawyers had said, what “his honor” said, how he, the prisoner
-at the bar, had behaved; and then, failing to remember
-anything of what had never occurred, his diseased brain
-took to imagining a whole drama, in which he formed the
-central figure.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor came in the same morning, felt his pulse and
-asked him how he had slept.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“None the better for you and your quackeries,” was the
-reply. “And if I am supposed to be sick enough to have a
-physician, why the devil am I not sent to a hospital, and
-not kept in this wretched hole?” he added, still believing
-himself to be in the condemned cell of the Chuxton jail.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, don’t they treat you well here?” pleasantly inquired
-Dr. Hobbs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Gentleman Geff disdained to reply and turned his
-face to the wall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor rose to take leave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think the man is getting along very well; much better
-than I ever thought that he would.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think he is an ungrateful beast!” exclaimed Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, you must not judge him harshly. His head is not
-clear yet. He does not know friends from foes,” replied the
-doctor, who knew nothing whatever of Gentleman Geff’s
-criminal career, so well had the secret been kept by those
-who possessed it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman did not answer in words; but his grim silence
-was sufficiently expressive.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now you may let a little more light in the room
-and give him a more varied diet,” was the parting instruction
-of the physician.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>As soon as the latter had gone and the door closed behind
-him Longman returned to the bedside of his charge.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was sleeping, or seemed to be so.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman went and opened the shutters of one window,
-but drew down the white linen shade and let fall the white
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>lace curtains. This filled the chamber with a soft, subdued
-light.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman was getting to be an experienced nurse, and
-knew that it would not be well to startle the patient, who
-had lived so long in shadows, with too bright a light.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When he had arranged the room to his satisfaction he resumed
-his seat at the bedside, and fell into the reflection
-that, notwithstanding all the unbelief and hardness of heart
-that degrade this age of the world, there were still some
-good Christian people who lived by the golden rule.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the midst of these reflections he was startled by seeing
-Gentleman Geff turn over to the front of the bed and stare
-out through the opening of his festooned white curtains.
-His eyes took in the soft, dim outlines of a moonlight-looking
-room, though it was now really midday, and the
-white window shade and the white lace curtains produced
-the lunar effect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>By this soft effulgence he saw that the room was very
-spacious, and had four lace-curtained windows, and a lovely
-lace-draped dressing-table, soft, white, dimity-covered chairs
-and sofa, and pretty Turkey rugs upon a polished yellow
-oak floor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The richly carved marble mantelpiece, with its large
-mirror, Sèvres vases and terra cotta statuettes, and the polished
-steel stove, with its glowing but flameless fire of hard
-coal, was hidden from his sight by a tall Japan screen.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Everything in the apartment bespoke wealth, culture and
-luxury.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stared until his eyes stood out from their
-sockets. Then he muttered to himself:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This is not a prison cell, nor yet any hospital ward; yet
-this man sitting here must be the same Giant Despair who
-was with me in jail. There can’t be two of that size in the
-same country.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman stood up and stooped over him, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Can I do anything for you, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, it is you! I thought there couldn’t be two of you
-in the same century, on the same planet.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What can I do for you, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Confound you! you can explain things, I suppose. You
-can tell we where the devil I am now!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You are at the rectory of Haymore parish, sir, where
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>you were brought on the night of that unfortunate”—Longman
-paused a moment for an inoffensive word, and then
-added—“disturbance at Haymore Hall.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Disturbance—at Haymore Hall!” muttered the criminal,
-growing pale as ashes and sinking back upon his pillow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No revelation yet had struck him so heavily as this. And
-it brought back a more exact memory, though not yet a perfect
-one, of the recent past.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman hurried to the other end of the room and returned
-with a powerful restorative.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He held Gentleman Geff up on his left arm while he put
-the draught to his lips with his right hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The criminal drained the last drop, and then sank down
-upon his pillow, while Longman withdrew his arm and replaced
-the empty glass.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff did not speak again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was possessed of a fear of talking, lest he should
-“commit” himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he now reflected the more, though his deductions
-were still confused.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No wonder I could not remember the details of my trial—a
-trial that never occurred, but was only a dream of
-fever. But all the same, if it has not yet come off, it is to
-come, unless I go!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He laughed a little to himself at this poor joke, and then
-he tried to recall the incidents of that “disturbance” at
-Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he could not think consecutively for many minutes
-before his thoughts became entangled, and dreams were
-mingled with realities, and false inferences deduced from
-the union.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I remember now,” he said to himself, “something about
-that row at Haymore Hall, though my illness must have
-made some things seem vague to me on first recovering my
-senses. But I remember now!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Even as he spoke the words and tried to marshal the facts
-in their proper sequence, memory and imagination fled, and
-left his mind a vacuum again.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Some hours later, after Longman had given him a bowl
-of strong beef tea and a glass of fine old port wine, his
-mental faculties rallied again, though feebly, and he
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>thought he could form a correct theory; he would not try to
-get help in doing this by asking any question. He was too
-much afraid of compromising himself in some way.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do recall now,” he told himself, “the cause of that
-row at Haymore Hall. Let me see——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I had just arrived with my wife and my brother-in-law
-at Haymore, to take possession, when I was met by officers
-with a warrant for my arrest on the charge of murder——</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How was that, now? Let’s see—oh, yes! I was arrested
-upon a warrant, issued under the extradition treaty
-with the United States, charged with the murder of Randolph
-Hay in California, and of Jennie Montgomery in
-New York——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here the wretched man paused, shuddered and covered
-his face with his hands. The horror of his crime overcame
-him, as it had so often done, when it drove him to seek
-oblivion in strong drink, and finally made him  a drunkard.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was some time before he could resume his line of
-thought.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know,” he mused at length, “that I denied the charge
-and resisted the arrest, and that there was a fight. One of
-the officers clubbed me—on the head—and I fell like an
-ox, and knew no more. When I came to myself I was
-lying here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He paused again, and seemed to labor to understand his
-present position.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How came I to be here?” he inquired of himself; and
-after a few minutes exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I know! I see it all now! I had given the living
-of Haymore to my brother-in-law, Cassius Leegh—the
-scoundrel! When I was brained by the club of that constable,
-of course I was more a dead than a living man, and
-in no condition to be carted off ten miles to the Chuxton
-jail! So I was placed under arrest and brought here in
-charge of constables. And here I am in my brother-in-law’s
-rectory, guarded by officers, and particularly by that
-Giant Gerion, who never leaves me, night or day—set fire
-to him!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff moaned and groaned and tossed until
-Longman brought him a glass of milk punch, which seemed
-to soothe him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he resumed his self-communings:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>“I wonder, since I am in his rectory, which was also my
-gift to him, why I never see Cassius Leegh? And I wonder
-where his sister, my bogus wife, is? And, more than all,
-I wonder now—what brings James Campbell here?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He paused in distress, and then moaned to himself:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I give it up! I give it up! It is all past me! ‘Chaos
-has come again.’ But one thing is clear, even in chaos—that
-is, I must escape from this house. I must not wait to
-be taken to jail, as I should be as soon as the doctor has
-pronounced me well enough to be removed.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He thought as intensely as he was capable of thinking,
-and then suddenly formed a plan.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will not get well enough to be removed while I stay
-here, and I will escape from the house at the first opportunity.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>From this day the patient became a puzzle to his physician
-as well as to his attendants. He did not seem to gain
-in strength, but to grow weaker and more helpless every
-day; notwithstanding that his appetite was good. At night
-he was restless and delirious.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I confess that this case perplexes me,” Dr. Hobbs admitted
-to Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But the case grew out of a misunderstanding between the
-patient and his attendants.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff, not quite in his right mind yet, believed
-himself to be under arrest with the prospect of a prison, a
-trial and conviction before him; whereas there was no intention
-on any one’s part of even making an accusation
-against him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His physician and watchers, not knowing the delusion
-under which he silently and fearfully suffered, could not
-suspect him of playing a part to prolong his sojourn at the
-rectory and postpone his transfer to the prison.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This state of things continued for a week. There had
-been in this time two opportunities for Gentleman Geff to
-escape—for, after all, he was not watched as a criminal, but
-only as an invalid. There had been two occasions on which
-he had been left alone for an hour or two; but on both
-these the weather had been terrific with wind, snow and
-sleet, and he waited for weather and opportunity both to
-favor him together.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But one morning, after he had eaten a good breakfast,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>lain back on his pillow, and pretended to fall into a stupor,
-as usual, when the doctor was expected, something occurred
-that frightened him and hurried his operations.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor came, accompanied on this occasion by Mr.
-Campbell, who did not often intrude his unwelcome presence
-into the sick-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor leaned over the bed and inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How are you, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There was no response.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The doctor then laid his hand gently on the man’s shoulder
-to enforce his attention and inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“How are you, sir?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Still there was no answer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then the doctor examined his pulse, temperature and
-respiration, and even lifted the eyelids and looked at the
-eyes.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he turned to Mr. Campbell and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I feel like giving up the case. I honestly confess I can
-make nothing of it. The man’s appetite, digestion and assimilation
-are excellent. His pulse is strong, his temperature
-normal, his respiration perfect, and yet he seems too
-weak to leave his bed, and he falls into delirium or stupor
-day and night.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray do not give up the case, doctor. If there is any
-one you would like to have called in consultation now——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector paused.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, yes, sir, there is. Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby, the
-great authority on the diseases of the brain and nervous
-system. And to get him from London to the North Riding
-of Yorkshire would cost at least two hundred pounds, even
-should his engagements permit him to come.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Never mind what it costs, we will send for him. The
-young squire has specially enjoined me to spare no expense,
-as he insists on footing all the bills. Give me Sir Ichabod
-Ingoldsby’s address. I will telegraph him at once. If his
-engagements will permit he may be here this afternoon.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Scarcely this afternoon. He will have to make arrangements.
-Besides, he always travels in the middle of the night
-to save time. If all should go well we may see him to-morrow
-morning. Here is his address,” said Dr. Hobbs,
-and he tore a leaf from his tablets and handed it to the rector.
-Then both gentlemen left the room.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVII<br> <span class='large'>A FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Gentleman Geff had heard every word spoken by the
-doctor and the rector. He dared not wait the inspection of
-the skilled London specialist, the great court physician,
-who would be sure to detect the deception so successfully
-imposed upon the simple country practitioner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The eminent Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby might arrive the next
-morning. Then he—Montgomery—must escape this very
-day or night, let the weather be what it might. Any risk
-rather than the certainty of detection and of all the horrors
-that must follow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the weather was simply awful—“Ragnarok”—“the
-darkness of the gods.” The snow had fallen all the preceding
-night and all that day. Although there were four windows
-in the sick-room, and all the shutters were open, yet
-such was the obscurity that the lamps had been lighted.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was not alone until evening, when Longman,
-having served an excellent supper to his charge and
-left the latter comfortably laid back on his pillow, in what
-the nurse supposed to be a safe and sound sleep, withdrew
-from the room to take his meal and refresh himself by a
-walk up and down the covered front piazza, and no one took
-the watcher’s place.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was Gentleman Geff’s golden opportunity, not to be
-lost.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He got out of bed on tiptoes and went and bolted the
-door.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he went to the closet to search for clothes to put on,
-if perchance he might find any.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He found his own suit that had been taken off him on the
-night he was brought to the rectory and put to bed, and in
-the pocket of his coat his <i><span lang="fr">portemonnaie</span></i>, well filled as it had
-been.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They were all there, even to his boots, his socks, his ulster
-and his hat. He began to dress himself in great haste, but
-suddenly grew very tired, for though not nearly so weak as
-he pretended to be, he was not strong.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He went to the buffet, where he knew Longman kept his
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>wine and medicine, and found a bottle of good old port. He
-unstopped it, put the mouth to his lips and took a long
-draught, then a deep breath and another long draught, repeated
-the process, and—thought he would take the bottle
-along with him in his flight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He finished dressing himself without further fatigue, put
-the bottle of wine in the pocket of his ulster, and went to
-the window overlooking the back garden of the rectory.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Escape from the room was safe and easy, as this was the
-parlor chamber on the ground floor of the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The window opened, but with a sudden thought he turned
-back and put out the lights and locked as well as bolted the
-door. These precautions he thought were necessary to delay
-the discovery of his flight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he went back to the window and stepped through it,
-closing it behind him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Where now?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>To the Chuxton railway station and on to London, to
-lose himself in that great wilderness of human beings until
-he could take ship to some foreign country with which there
-was no extradition treaty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But what a night it was! Dark as pitch but for the spectral
-light of the snow. The snow was still falling heavily
-as ever, but the wind had risen in mighty strength and was
-driving not only the falling but the fallen snow into drifts.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>If he had but a lantern! But that was an impossible convenience
-to him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He drew the bottle from his pocket, took another long
-draught from it, replaced it, and set out through “night and
-storm and darkness” and bitterest cold on his flight for life.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>More by instinct or accident than by light and knowledge
-he found his way around the back wall of the rectory garden
-to that country road which ran in front of the church, the
-rectory and Haymore Park, and crossed the highroad at
-about a mile distant.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The snow fell thicker and faster, the wind rose higher and
-stronger, and the night grew colder and darker.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He plunged onward through the deepening snow, sometimes
-almost smothered in the drifts, and requiring all the
-strength he could muster to struggle out of them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He lost his way, as it was inevitable he should. Even
-had it been day, instead of the darkest night that ever fell
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>upon the earth, the highroad could not have been distinguished
-from the meadows except by certain tall landmarks.
-Now it was impossible to distinguish it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff knew that he had lost his way, had hopelessly
-lost it, yet he floundered on through the black chaos
-on the chance of coming to some place where he could find
-shelter from the bitter cold, the beating wind, the bottomless
-drifts and the tempest of driving snow that seemed to
-be turned to a shower of ice spikes and stung like the sting
-of wasps.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On and on he floundered and struggled, not daring to
-stop, for to stop would be to die.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Again and again he applied himself to his bottle until
-it was empty. Then he let it fall, for indeed his numbed
-hands could scarcely hold it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He grew weaker and weaker; his limbs seemed too heavy
-to lift, especially through deep snow; his brain grew dizzy,
-his mind confused. He tried to keep his senses and his feet;
-he felt that if he sank to the ground it must be into his
-grave.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At length the crisis came; his brain reeled, his limbs gave
-way, he lost consciousness and fell to the earth.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at the rectory, Longman took his supper with
-his mother in their warm, bright sitting-room adjoining the
-kitchen, everything around them looking so much more
-comfortable in contrast to the storm raging without.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I pity any poor wayfarer abroad to-night,” said Elspeth
-as she took the steaming coffee pot from the hob of the
-glowing grate and set it on the table, little guessing that
-the poor wretch they had been taking care of for two months
-was just setting out to brave it at its worst.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, this is bad enough, but it is nothing at all to the
-awful storms among the Sierra Nevadas,” said Longman as
-he sat down to the table and took the cup of coffee his
-mother had poured out for him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And on her expressing her surprise and wonder, he began
-to entertain her with marrow-freezing stories of overwhelmed
-trains of emigrant wagons and buried villages of
-settlers among the snow mountains.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This delayed him at the supper table so much longer
-than usual that he had but little time to take his “constitutional”
-on the covered front piazza.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span>So after a turn or two up and down he went into the
-house and up to the door of the sick-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He turned the knob and pushed the door, but found it
-was locked within.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What whim is this, I wonder?” he said. “I hope the
-London doctor will order the beast to an idiot asylum. I
-suppose they wouldn’t take him in with the apes at the Zoo.
-Captain! Capt. Montgomery!” he exclaimed, rapping
-loudly.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Not a sound from within.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he went around to the back piazza and looked
-through the windows.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All as dark as pitch in the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What’s up now, I wonder?” he asked himself, and then
-went back to the door and tried once more by rapping and
-calling to bring some response from the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But now the noise reached the rector, who was seated at
-his desk in his study writing his sermon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He laid down his pen and came into the hall, where he
-found Longman still hammering and calling.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What is the matter now, Longman?” inquired the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“This door is fastened from within, sir, and I can neither
-get into the room nor make him hear me,” replied the man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Of course, unreasonable as it was to try the experiment in
-which the giant had failed, the rector said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let me try!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman gave way.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector rapped a little cannonade upon the door and
-shouted:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Capt. Montgomery!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He might as well have shouted:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jupiter Tonnerres!” to the snowstorm for any good
-effect.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Shall I burst the door open, sir?” inquired Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I wonder what the fellow is up to now!” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Heaven knows!” sighed the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will I break the door open, sir?” again asked Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, you may bring me a common table knife with the
-thinnest blade you can find, and come with me to the back
-piazza.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>They left the door, and a few minutes later met under
-the very window by which the fugitive had made his escape,
-after re-closing the shutters that fastened with a spring
-catch behind him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now with this knife I know how to loosen the catches,”
-said the rector; and he laid the blade of the knife flat on the
-stone sill, slipped it under the catch, and so opened the
-shutters. Then he slipped the knife between the upper and
-lower sash of the window and turned the button and so
-raised the sash.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is a very badly secured window in case of burglars,”
-remarked Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, but you see there are no burglars around Haymore.
-However, I do intend to have a bolt put on these shutters,”
-said the rector, and he stepped through the window into
-the room, closely followed by Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All was dark as pitch but for the dull glow of the coal
-fire in the grate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They knew it was utterly useless to call, yet both at the
-same moment cried out:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Capt. Montgomery! Where are you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No answer came.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Longman took a match from the safe on the mantelpiece,
-kindled it at the fire and lighted the astral.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The room was illuminated in an instant, and every nook
-and cranny clearly visible. Yet no sign of the missing man.
-Longman hastened to the bed, from which he drew the curtains.
-It was vacant.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He has run away, sir. The fraud, who pretended to be
-so helpless that he couldn’t hold a glass to his lips, has been
-playing it on us all this time, as I suspected him of doing
-all along, and now he has run away!” said Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I think not. Why should he deceive us? Why
-should he run off? No one was going to harm him,” said
-the rector, still peering around the room as if he expected to
-find Gentleman Geff in some nook or corner.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He mightn’t have felt so sure of that, sir. A guilty
-conscience, you know.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I cannot think but what he has gone off in a fit of violent
-mania.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, in that case, he would have gone in his night
-clothes, just as he jumped out of bed; but here are the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>empty shelves and pegs, with every article of his wearing
-apparel gone,” said Longman, coming out of the closet
-which he had been examining. “And why should he take
-pains to lock and bolt the door, and put out the light so as
-to retard the discovery of his flight as long as possible?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I don’t know. Lunatics are well known to be very
-cunning. But, Longman, he must be instantly followed and
-found, if possible. Oh, heavens! Think of the man being
-out on such a night as this! He will surely perish,” said
-the rector. And he hurriedly unfastened the door, rushed
-out into the passage, took his storm cloak from the rack
-and his hat from its peg, and while he nervously prepared
-himself to brave the tempest he called out again to the
-hunter:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Longman! For Heaven’s sake get on your coat and
-find a lantern and come with me. There is no one but you
-and me to go in search of this wretched man, whom we must
-not leave to perish in the snow.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Almost as soon as the rector had ceased to speak, Longman
-was by his side, prepared for the expedition.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He must have escaped by that back window, which is
-the only one that will close with springs. We must search
-the road leading for the back gate of the garden. Come,”
-said the rector, going before with the lighted lantern, which
-he had taken from the hand of Longman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They issued through the rear door, passed through the
-garden and out of the rear gate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Holding the lantern near the ground the rector moved
-slowly and carefully through the white chaos.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The searchers had not groped many yards from the rectory
-gate when Mr. Campbell saw something black upon
-the white ground.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He stooped to examine it, and cried out:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Here he is, Longman; but whether dear or alive, poor
-wretch, I do not know. Come and help me to lift him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He has not been lying here five minutes, or he would
-be covered with snow. So he may not be dead.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Yes, they had found the body of Gentleman Geff within
-fifty yards of the rectory wall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Through the dark night and blinding snow and distracting
-wind he had lost his reckoning and wandered in a circle
-until he had fallen down where they found him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>They lifted him up and bore him into the rectory to his
-own room, undressed him, wrapped him in blankets, and
-put him to bed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was in the deep sleep that precedes death by freezing.
-He only partially awoke while they were working over him;
-but he did not speak.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They gave him warm spiced brandy and water, which he
-swallowed mechanically.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All night long they watched and worked over him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>In the morning, when James Campbell left the sick-room
-to make his toilet before going to breakfast, he left Gentleman
-Geff in what seemed a good sleep.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But, while he sat at table explaining to his wife and
-daughter why he had been out of his room all night, Longman
-suddenly burst in upon them and said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come in, for Heaven’s sake! He is taken with a hemorrhage
-that I think will carry him off!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Longman, run and fetch Dr. Hobbs. Mrs. Campbell
-and myself will attend to Montgomery.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The hunter fled out of the front door to fetch the physician,
-while Mr. and Mrs. Campbell rushed to the help of
-the sufferer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was an appalling spectacle!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The blood driven by the freezing cold to the lungs had
-congested there, and notwithstanding all the means that
-had been taken to restore his consciousness and save his
-life, though these means had been thus far successful, yet
-the congestion of the lungs had increased until it burst an
-artery and the hemorrhage followed. It was not fatal all at
-once, for Mr. and Mrs. Campbell called all their skill and
-experience into service and succeeded in stopping the flow
-before the arrival of the doctor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When the latter came to the bedside of the patient he
-found him laid back on his bed, as pale as death, as weak as
-a new-born infant, and scarcely breathing, his pulse scarcely
-beating.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs approved all the rector had done, and then
-inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Did you get an answer from Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, by telegram. He cannot leave London at this
-crisis.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, it does not matter now. This is a case that any
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>country doctor or any old woman might understand and
-treat.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What do you think of his chance of life?” whispered the
-rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a poorer one than he has yet had,” replied the doctor,
-looking at the pallid, wizen face, that seemed to have
-shrunken to half its size since his terrible loss of blood.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hetty cried for pity.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If he has any relatives they should be informed, for I do
-not think he will ever rise from that bed again,” said Dr.
-Hobbs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I know of none, except the Earl of Engelmeed and the
-Viscount Stoors—his uncle and his cousin. I will write to
-the earl to-day,” said Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Engelmeed, of Engelwode, in Cumberland? That is
-where typhoid fever is raging so fiercely,” remarked Dr.
-Hobbs.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Here followed some talk of that pestilence, and finally
-the doctor arose and took his leave, promising to return in
-the afternoon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell wrote to the Earl of Engelmeed, advising
-him of his nephew’s dangerous illness, and posted the letter
-that forenoon.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Two days later he got a reply, not from the earl, but
-from the latter’s steward, announcing the death of the Viscount
-Stoors and the extreme illness of Lord Engelmeed,
-whose death was hourly expected.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Over this letter the rector fell into deep thought.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he put on his coat and hat, and taking the letter
-with him, walked over to Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He was shown into the library, where he found Ran
-reading.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, Mr. Hay. Will you let me look at your
-‘Burke’s Peerage’ for a moment?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Certainly. How do you do, Mr. Campbell? And how
-is your family—and your patient?” inquired Ran as he
-arose and shook hands with the rector, and then went to the
-bookcase and took down the “Peerage.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The family is well. The invalid very low. I received
-a letter from the steward of Engelwode this morning, in answer
-to the one I wrote to the earl, informing me of the
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>death of the Viscount Stoors and the extreme illness of
-Lord Engelmeed, whose demise was then hourly expected.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Indeed! Had they taken the fever?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes. It was madness for them to remain at Engelwode
-during its prevalence. It is from hearing of these occurrences
-that I wish to consult Burke. I think that since the
-death of Lord Stoors, our wretch, Montgomery, is heir presumptive
-to the title and estate,” said the rector as he took
-the heavy red volume from the hands of the young squire,
-laid it on the library table, and sat down to examine it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran resumed his seat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is as I thought. There is no other son. And Kightly
-Montgomery, as the eldest son of the next brother, the late
-Gen. Montgomery, is heir presumptive to the earldom, and
-may even now be Earl of Engelmeed. Think of it!” exclaimed
-the rector as he closed the book. “Wealth and rank,
-for which the wretched man periled his soul and fatally
-wrecked his life to obtain feloniously, now come to him
-lawfully and honorably, but on his deathbed!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, it is terrible. If he had but waited! Now it seems
-the iron of fate—this useless accession to fortune!” sighed
-Ran.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVIII<br> <span class='large'>WINDING UP</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Ran and Judy had planned to go to London in the
-spring, to live in retirement and to pursue their studies under
-private tutors. But as the season opened in all its
-beauty they became so enchanted with their delightful
-country home that they could not bear the thought of leaving
-it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Couldn’t we have a resident tutor?” inquired Ran with
-some hesitation as he and Judy were discussing the question
-one morning, seated on a rustic bench under an old oak
-tree in their lovely lawn.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘A resident tutor?’” repeated Judy dubiously.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, such as the gentry have for their children.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“For their children,’ of course, but not for grown people;
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>not for themselves. No, Ran, dear, we could not have
-a resident tutor for you and me. That would set the servants
-to talking and the neighbors to gossiping; and they
-would wonder where we had been brought up, perhaps laugh
-at us, perhaps scorn us. I should not mind it for myself,
-Ran, but I should mind it a great deal for you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“That is not the way I feel, Judy, dear, for I do not care
-a fig what they say of me, but I could not bear to have them
-criticise you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So, you see, Ran, we could not have a resident tutor.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I suppose we shall have to go and hide ourselves in
-London to pursue our studies, Judy, dear.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said the young woman with a deep sigh, “but
-mightn’t we put off going until winter? Oh, it is so hard
-to leave this lovely place in the glory of the spring.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Judy, love, time is passing quickly, and our education is
-very backward.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Especially mine,” sighed Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But I tell you what I will do!” exclaimed Ran with sudden
-inspiration. “I will confide the whole matter to Mr.
-Campbell, and take counsel with him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The very thing! And, oh, Ran!” exclaimed Judy, catching
-inspiration in her turn, “might he not become our
-tutor? Give us an hour three or four times a week?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran fell into thought, but did not reply.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I have so often heard of clergymen taking pupils. Even
-taking them in their houses. But he need not do that.
-Could he not come to us or let us go to him a few times
-every week?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I declare, Judy, darling, that is a splendid idea of yours,
-and I will ask him, and if he should consent to do as we
-wish, why, then, we need not bother ourselves about going to
-London to hide ourselves and look for teachers!” exclaimed
-Ran in delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And then there need be no gossip. No one need know
-what brings the rector to our library or takes us to his
-study,” concluded Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will go and see Mr. Campbell at once,” exclaimed Ran,
-with boyish eagerness, as he sprang up, seized his hat from
-the ground and set off in a brisk walk for the rectory.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But he met the rector full tilt at the lodge gate, as Mr.
-Campbell was on his way to make a call at the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>They both burst out laughing as they came into collision,
-and the minister took Ran’s arm, turned him about and
-walked with him back to the rustic seat where Judy sat.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She rose to welcome the visitor and to make room for
-him beside her on the bench.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, ma’am,” he said, lifting his hat and taking
-the offered seat. “We have lovely weather just now. It
-must be lovely even in London. In fact, there is always delightful
-weather in London during May, when the season
-is at its height. Do you leave for town soon?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, I hope not. I never, never, never wish to leave
-for town,” said Judy, with a genuine pout.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am sure I wish you never would,” laughed Mr. Campbell.
-“But I thought you were daily expecting to start,”
-he added, turning to Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“So we have been; but we have postponed our departure
-from day to day, from reluctance to leave the country,” replied
-the young man.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But the height of the season will soon be over. The
-weather will grow warm and London intolerable. Much
-as I should desire for my own sake to detain you here, I
-should advise you not to delay your departure.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But we don’t want to go at all! And we were not going
-for the sake of the season, anyhow. And it depends on you,
-Mr. Campbell, whether we go or not!” exclaimed Judy, taking
-the initiative and breaking right into the midst of the
-matter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“On me, Mrs. Hay!” inquired Mr. Campbell, with a puzzled
-air.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ran, tell him!” commanded Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then Randolph Hay confided to James Campbell the
-story of his own and Judy’s neglected education, and their
-plans for remedying their defects, and ended by diffidently
-proposing that the minister should, if he pleased, become
-the director of their studies.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I fear that my petition is a most presumptuous one, sir;
-but I hope and trust that you will not consider it offensive.
-If so, I pray you to pardon me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My young friend, on the contrary, your proposal is both
-flattering and agreeable. I shall gladly and gratefully undertake
-the task for which circumstances as well as, I hope,
-college training, have fitted me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span>“I thank you with all my heart, Mr. Campbell. You
-have made everything smooth and pleasant for us,” heartily
-responded Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy caught the minister’s hand, pressed it between both
-hers, and so expressed her gratitude.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Later all the details of the engagement were arranged between
-the minister and his pupils.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>On Ran’s pressing entreaty, Mr. Campbell consented to
-stay and dine with them that day. And it was during his
-visit that the evening mail brought them foreign letters
-from Cleve Stuart, with the news of his Uncle John Cleve’s
-death.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“A good man gone to his rest,” was the comment of the
-clergyman.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The news of death—even of the death of a stranger whom
-we only knew by report—always casts a shadow, for a longer
-or a shorter time, over the circle into which it is brought.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Bright Judy was the first to smile and dispel the cloud.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, Mr. Campbell, it is so well that you have consented
-to take pity on us, for under present circumstances
-we could not leave Haymore,” she said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The minister raised his brows interrogatively.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Because we must write and ask our friends to come and
-spend the summer with us here.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah! I understand,” said the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your patient lingers longer than any of us expected,”
-remarked Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes,” replied Mr. Campbell, “his tenacity of life is
-really wonderful, poor soul!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he arose and bade his hosts good-night.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff lay slowly sinking at the rectory of Haymore.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The cold contracted on that fatal winter night of his attempted
-flight had settled on his lungs, and in the deeply
-inflamed condition of the whole system from alcoholism,
-had fastened with fatal tenacity upon his system.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But with the change in the seat of the disease—which,
-while it slowly destroyed his lungs, completely relieved his
-brain—his mental faculties were perfectly restored, with
-clear recollection of all that had transpired, so that he knew
-his antecedents and his present surroundings quite as well
-as our readers do. He knew also that he had no reason to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>fear prosecution. His only fear—a secret one—was of
-death, “and after death the judgment.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He had not been prosecuted for any of his felonies, which,
-indeed, were surrounded by such circumstances as admitted
-of their being ignored rather than compounded.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All the documents by which he had seemed to secure a
-merely nominal possession of the Haymore estate concerned
-the name of Randolph Hay, and for all the law or the public
-knew, or need know, that name had been claimed only by
-its real owner, the gentleman now in peaceable possession
-of the Haymore estate, and never by the impostor who had
-tried to take it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>So there was no legal obligation upon any one to bring a
-criminal prosecution for fraud and forgery upon the dying
-malefactor.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And as to his heavier crimes of bigamy, robbery and attempted
-murder which had been committed in the United
-States, there was not the least likelihood that his surrender
-under the extradition treaty would ever be demanded by
-that government to answer for them before an American
-tribunal.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All whom he had so deeply injured, or tried to injure,
-had freely forgiven him—all, that is to say, except Lamia
-Leegh, who in her bitter humiliation was incapable of forgiving
-him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector had to strive and pray for grace before he
-could pardon the man who had wronged his daughter. But
-after this grace was given, James Campbell spent many
-hours beside the bed of the dying man, reading to him,
-praying with him, persuading him to repentance, exhorting
-him to faith.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was despairing, and at times defiant in
-his despair.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You needn’t talk to me, Mr. Campbell. I am as the
-devil made me. As I ‘have sown’ I ‘must reap.’ If there
-is anything that can give me satisfaction now, it is that,
-after all, I have no blood on my conscience. Bad as you
-may think me, I was never cut out for a murderer. No,
-nor for a drunkard. Circumstances, temptation, opportunity—these
-make destiny. I took to drink to drown remorse.
-I was a fool for feeling it. Bah! how can a creature
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>of destiny be responsible for anything he does? Yet I am
-glad there is no blood on my hands.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell had spoken to Jennie, asking her if she
-could not overcome her repugnance so far as to go in and
-speak to Montgomery, now that he was in his senses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But Jennie shuddered, as she replied:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Papa, he has never even asked to see me, and I am glad
-he has not. I have forgiven him. Indeed, indeed I have!
-And I pray for him. Indeed, indeed I do! Not only night
-and morning, at the regular prayers, but through the day,
-whenever I think of him, I pray for him earnestly, fervently.
-I do! But, papa, I cannot even endure the thought
-of seeing him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then, my child, you have not truly forgiven him. You
-must pray for yourself, dear—for the gift of the grace of
-charity,” gravely replied the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No, Gentleman Geff had never asked to see his wife or
-child: never even referred to either. Mr. Campbell was not
-sure that the man knew they were in the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But one morning, when the rector was sitting beside him,
-Montgomery suddenly said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I think it is a confounded shame that a sick man cannot
-be permitted to see his wife and child.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you can be permitted to see them. Do you wish to
-do so?” gently inquired the minister.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I should think I did. I have never even set eyes on the
-boy, and he must be about nine months old by this time.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your child is not a boy, but a girl,” said the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Now there! I did not even know the sex of my own
-child, who is nearly a year old, and has been under the same
-roof with me for several weeks. And this a Christian household!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“If you feel equal to the interview, I will go and call
-my daughter now and ask her to come and bring the little
-girl.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No. Let her come alone the first time. One at a time
-is all I can stand.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>James Campbell went down to the back parlor, where he
-found his wife and daughter seated at their needlework.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my darling,” he said, gently laying his hand upon
-her head, “Montgomery has just asked to see you. Will
-you come to him?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span>“Oh, papa! I cannot! I cannot!” she replied, with a
-shiver.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not come to a dying—yes, I must say it,” he added,
-after a painful hesitation—“husband, when he sends for
-you?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He has forfeited that name, papa,” very firmly replied
-the wronged wife.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But you must forgive him, my child.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I do forgive him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, then, you must come with me to him.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, I cannot! Indeed I cannot!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then you do not forgive him, although he is dying?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is he dying, papa?” she inquired in a pitiful voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not this moment, my dear. But Dr. Hobbs declares
-that he cannot live many days in any case, and may not live
-an hour if another hemorrhage should come on. Will you
-come with me, my dear?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, I cannot!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, how can you be so hard-hearted?” demanded
-her mother, now entering into the conversation for the first
-time. “I am ashamed of you, and afraid for you lest you
-be punished. After the man is dead and gone, and you can
-never be kind to him again, you will be sorry. Go, at least,
-and speak to him if you only stay one minute.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, Jennie,” said her father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then the young woman arose and followed the
-clergyman to the sick-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She entered that room under protest; but when she saw
-the ghastly, death-stricken face, the skeleton hand stretched
-out to her, the hollow, sunken, unearthly eyes fixed upon
-her, she uttered a low cry of horror and pity, and sank down
-on her knees beside the bed, took his hand and dropped
-her face upon it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector turned and left the room, closing the door
-after him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, there, don’t cry! What is the use? Jennie, I am
-sorry that I ever hurt you in any way. That is what I
-wanted to say to you, and that is why I sent for you,” he
-said, speaking in a rather faint and faltering voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She did not reply, but sobbed in silence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Jennie, did you hear what I said to you?” he inquired.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I heard,” she sighed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>“Well, I said I was sorry I hurt you. Well, Jennie?” he
-asked, and then paused as if expecting some definite answer.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I, too, am sorry that you hurt me, or anybody else, or
-yourself worse than all, Kightly. I am very sorry, and I
-pray to the Lord for you daily, almost hourly. Do you pray
-for yourself, Kightly?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, I don’t! What would be the use? ‘God is not
-mocked.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“But ‘He is full of compassion,’ Kightly. He——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, that will do!” said the sick man, interrupting
-her. “You know nothing about it! Go now. I have said
-what I sent for you to say to you. Now go, please. I can’t
-stand much of this sort of thing,” he muttered in a weak,
-petulant voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I will come again to you when you want me, Kightly,”
-she said, rising.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“All right. And bring the youngster—but not to-day.
-There, there—go along with you,” said the man, turning his
-face to the wall and closing his eyes. Jennie left the room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The next day she took the baby in to see its father.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>She sat down in a chair beside the bed, and sat the baby
-on the top of the bed near its father’s head.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And there she watched it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The man showed but very little interest in his child.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thought, of course, it was a boy,” he said; “but, poor
-little devil, it is better that it should be a girl, for I have
-no money to leave it, but being a girl, it can marry some
-of these days and live on some other fellow’s money. Take
-it away now, Jennie. I can’t stand much of it,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the mortified young mother took away the dazed and
-depressed baby and afterward said to her own mamma:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I never knew Essie to behave so stupidly. You might
-have thought she was a little idiot.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Poor baby! The dark room and the haggard man subdued
-her spirits. It is a wonder she had not cried,” replied
-the grandmother.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very glad she did not—that would have made him
-worse,” said Jennie.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After this the sinking man declined daily.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie spent hours at his bedside, often having the baby
-with her when he could bear it.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>Mrs. Campbell had been a daily visitor and an occasional
-nurse from the time he was first brought to the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mrs. Longman never left him except for necessary rest
-and refreshment.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The gamekeeper’s cottage was ready for occupancy, but
-neither the mother nor the son would leave the suffering
-sinner to take possession of its comforts and emoluments.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Ran heartily excused them both under the circumstances
-and paid the man’s salary.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had never been told of the death of his
-cousin, the Viscount Stoors. It was thought by his attendants
-that the news of the decease of a relative that left
-him, the dying sinner, heir presumptive of an earldom,
-would be, if not too sorrowful, certainly too startling, too
-exciting for the safety of an invalid, whose pulse must not
-be hurried in the slightest degree lest it should bring on a
-hemorrhage that must carry off the patient.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>One day, about this time, Montgomery rallied, and
-seemed so much better that the doctor allowed him to sit
-up in bed, propped by pillows.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell sat by him, reading aloud the morning’s
-paper, when Longman came in bringing a letter, which he
-placed in the hands of the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was in a deep, black-bordered envelope, sealed with a
-broad black seal and directed to</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Rev. James Campbell</span>,</div>
-      <div class='line in8'>Haymore Rectory,</div>
-      <div class='line in16'>Haymore, Yorkshire.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Excuse me!” he said, and stepped quickly to the furthest
-window lest the sick man should see the herald of death.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He opened and read the letter, which was from Abel
-Stout, the steward of Engelwode, and was as follows:</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Engelwode Castle</span>,</div>
-      <div class='line in8'>“May 28, 187—.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Rev. and Dear Sir</span>: It is my painful duty to announce
-to you the decease of Charles-George-Francis-Henry, tenth
-earl of Engelmeed, who expired at one-fifteen this A. M.,
-and of the succession of Capt. the Hon. Kightly Montgomery
-as eleventh earl. I inclose a letter, which I beg you
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>to be so kind as to hand to his lordship, if my lord is still
-in your house, or to forward to his address if he should have
-left, as the presence of his lordship here is imperatively
-necessary. I have the honor to remain, reverend sir,</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“Your obedient servant,</div>
-      <div class='line in4'>“<span class='sc'>Abel Stout</span>.”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>The inclosed letter was superscribed very formally in full
-title to</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-r'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>The Right Honorable</div>
-      <div class='line in4'><span class='sc'>The Earl of Engelmeed</span>.</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c009'>James Campbell stared at this superscription and then
-glanced at the wreck on the bed, who now bore the dignity
-of an earldom.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He could not hesitate to deliver this letter, however it
-might affect his patient. He must deliver it! He had no
-choice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But what a shock! what a revelation! what a mockery it
-would now be to him!—to him who had sinned for wealth
-and rank, who had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage
-and found the dish—poisoned!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The Earl of Engelmeed was dead. His son and heir-apparent
-had died before him, and now—their next of kin,
-their worthless relative, Kightly Montgomery, the penniless
-adventurer, who had been driven by greed of gold and love
-of luxury to crime and to death—the sinful, dying Kightly
-Montgomery, was now master of Engelwode, with a rent roll
-of twenty thousand pounds a year!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ah, if he had only been good and true, he would have
-lived to enjoy the old title and the rich estate—more honors
-than he could possibly have gained by all his crimes, even
-though each one of them had been a complete success!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But now, what a cruel mockery of fate!</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, reflecting on all these matters, felt really
-sorry for the wretched criminal, to whom the unexpected
-news of his succession to the earldom, coming to him in his
-last hours, must truly seem the bitterest irony of fortune.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You have bad news there,” said the dying man, glancing
-at the broad, black-edged envelope.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I fear so. It comes from Engelwode, in Cumberland,
-where you have relatives, I think,” replied the rector
-gravely.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>“Oh, yes, relatives!” sneered the new earl, who did not
-even suspect that he was one.</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“‘A little more than kin, and less than kind.’</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>There is no love lost between us, believe me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Hearing this, the rector did not consider it necessary to
-be very cautious in breaking this news. Nevertheless, he
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let me give you your restorative before we say anything
-more about the letter.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And he arose and poured out the draught, some powerful
-tonic, compounded of beef, coca and brandy, and administered
-it. Then he replaced the glass on the table and
-said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The letter is for you, my lord.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What the devil do you mean?” demanded the new earl.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you take the letter and look at it? Have you light
-enough? Shall I draw up the shades?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No,” said the patient, taking the letter and squinting
-at it. “This is for my uncle, not for me. Though how it
-should have come here I can’t imagine.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Your lordship’s uncle, the late earl, is dead, my lord,”
-quietly replied the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dead!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dead! But there is Stoors.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He died before his father. But read your letter, my
-lord,” said the rector, purposely ringing the changes on the
-title that he would have too much good taste to bestow on
-the heir of an earldom under ordinary circumstances, but
-on this impenitent sinner, on this unpunished felon, on this
-dying peer, he lavished the honor with unction in the very
-bitterness of irony.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Read your letter, my lord.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I cannot! Oh, this is too terrible!” groaned the dying
-earl, covering his face with his hands.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Did he mean, or did the rector for one moment believe
-that he meant, the sudden death of his relatives, so near
-together, was too terrible?</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>No, indeed. The man meant, and the rector knew that
-he meant, to receive this rich and august inheritance just at
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_380'>380</span>the hour of death was indeed “too terrible”—was insupportable.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Poor wretch! he burst into tears and sobbed aloud, dropping
-back on his pillow and turning his face to the wall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pray try to be calm, my lord. This emotion will do
-you a mischief,” pleaded Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Go and bring my wife and child to me. Let me tell
-them the news,” he exclaimed, and then burst into the most
-sarcastic peal of laughter the rector thought he had ever
-heard. He left the room and went to find his daughter,
-whom he came upon, as usual, seated beside her mother and
-engaged in needlework over the baby’s cradle.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear. Montgomery wants you. Bring the
-little one along with you. And, Hetty, dear, you had better
-come also,” he said.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Both women looked up anxiously, half expecting that this
-was their final summons to the sick-room; that now “the
-end of earth” for Kightly Montgomery was at hand.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is anything the matter, Jim?” inquired Hetty, while
-Jennie’s eyes asked the same question.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“News of Montgomery’s relatives in Cumberland, that is
-all,” replied the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What news?” demanded Hetty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He prefers to announce it in person.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Dear me! How mysterious we are! Come on, Jennie!”
-said Mrs. Campbell, taking her husband’s arm and
-leading the way.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie picked up her baby and followed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They entered the sick-room.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The sick man held out his hand to his wife, saying:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Come here, Jennie, my girl! You are Countess of
-Engelmeed! Did you know it? And that doll in your
-arms is Lady Esther Montgomery!—for a few hours only
-while I draw the breath of life. Afterward you will only
-be countess dowager, while she will be countess in her own
-right. For the earldom of Engelmeed is not a male feoff
-exclusively, but failing the male line which fails in me, will
-‘fall to the distaff,’ as represented by that rag baby of yours.
-So I think—you are com——” He paused in sudden pain
-and prostration.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Do not speak again for the present, my lord. You will
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>hurt yourself. Rest a while,” said the rector, while Jennie
-looked at her mother in helpless dismay.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He is delirious again, my dear,” whispered Mrs. Campbell
-in reply to that look.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Stoop down——” muttered the dying man in a low,
-faint, husky voice.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie bent over him to catch his failing words.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will be—compensated—for all—you have gone
-through—by being made—a countess—you ought——”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>His voice suddenly ceased. A spasm of pain traversed
-his face.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“My lord! my lord! Have mercy on yourself and keep
-still,” pleaded the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was too late. A wild look flew into the eyes of the
-dying man and fixed them on the rector’s face. A torrent
-of blood gushed from his mouth. Gentleman Geff had
-spoken his last words, and in a very few minutes he had
-drawn his last breath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Jennie threw herself sobbing into the arms of her father.
-She was too young to have much self-control, but whether
-now she wept from grief, horror or compassion, or all three
-combined, she could not herself have told.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Her father took her babe to his bosom and led her to her
-own room, where he made her lie down on her bed and
-placed the child beside her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The rector went to his study and wrote a letter to the
-steward at Engelwode, telling him what had happened.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Then he walked over to Haymore Hall to carry the news
-to Mr. Randolph Hay and to confer with him on what was
-next to be done.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy were both shocked and grieved at the fate
-of their enemy—their enemy, however, only in so far as he
-tried to wrong them primarily with the wish to benefit himself
-rather than to injure them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The remains should be taken to Engelwode Castle and
-placed in the family vault, of course,” said the rector. “And
-as the last earl died without having had time to make a
-will between his succession and his death, my granddaughter,
-the little countess, will be a ward in chancery.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And no doubt the lord chancellor will constitute you,
-sir, the guardian of her person and a trustee of her estate,”
-added Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span>“Perhaps—most likely, indeed; in which case they will
-associate some other reliable man with me in the onerous
-charge. And I should like you to be that man, Hay,”
-pleaded the parson.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“With pleasure; if the lord chancellor will appoint me,”
-answered Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Is Jennie much distressed, sir?” inquired Judy, sympathetically.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam. She is very much agitated.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“May I go to her? Could I do her any good?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I feel sure you could. I should feel very grateful to
-you.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy hurried into the house and got her wraps, and
-came out to join the rector in his walk homeward.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At the rectory door they were met by Mrs. Campbell, who,
-after very gravely saluting Judy and thanking her for coming,
-turned to the rector and inquired:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What was all that the wretched man was rambling
-about in his last hour? Was there any foundation of truth
-in it?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It was all truth, Hetty, from foundation rock—to carry
-out your simile—to capping stone; and baby Essie is now
-Countess of Engelmeed in her own right and a ward in
-chancery.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Well, well, well! She doesn’t know it—Jennie, I mean,
-of course. She thinks he was out of his head.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I saw she did; but it is true,” said the rector, as
-they entered the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A week later the remains of the last Earl of Engelmeed
-were laid in the vault of his forefathers, amid all</p>
-
-<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
-  <div class='linegroup'>
-    <div class='group'>
-      <div class='line'>“The pride, pomp and circumstance”</div>
-    </div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c011'>of  funeral parade.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After the ceremonies the rector, with his wife, daughter
-and grandchild, returned to the rectory, where they were
-all to live during the minority of the infant countess.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy came back to their beloved home, but had
-scarcely got settled there when they received letters announcing
-the speedy arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart,
-with their children and a friend—Mr. O’Melaghlin, of
-Arghalee, in Antrim.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>“I wonder who he is,” pondered Ran, as he took the letter
-over to the rectory to show it to Mr. Campbell.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, I know the name and the place, but not the man.
-I have been to Arghalee. All except the very ground on
-which the ancient castle stands, and which the impoverished
-O’Melaghlin would not sell under any stress of fortune,
-forms a part of the duke’s estate. The castle is one of the
-show places of the neighborhood; not for its parks, plantations
-or picture galleries, by any means—for there are none—but
-for the great antiquity of the ruins. The owner was
-supposed to be traveling abroad. He is The O’Melaghlin
-in question, of course. The guidebook to the ancient castle
-shows the family to be lineal descendants from Roderick
-O’Melaghlin, monarch of Meath, and more remotely from
-Konn, a somewhat mythical king of prehistoric Ireland.
-So, you see, you will have an illustrious guest, though he
-may be as poor as ‘Job’s turkey.’”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No; the letter says he has made an immense fortune in
-the gold mines of Australia, and is coming back to live on
-his estate.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“When do you expect them?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“By the next steamer—for this letter was written from
-New York the day before they were to start.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Ah!” said the rector.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And Ran, having communicated his good news, went
-home to his Judy.</p>
-
-<div class='chapter'>
-  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIX<br> <span class='large'>“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL”</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>Meanwhile, Cleve, Palma, their children, servant, and,
-last and loftiest, The O’Melaghlin were coming over as fast
-as wind and steam could bring them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>They had unusually fine weather for the whole trip. They
-made some very pleasant acquaintances, and formed some
-very fast friendships among their fellow passengers, with
-whom they were all very popular.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The eccentricities of The O’Melaghlin were endless
-sources of amusement to the passengers as to our own
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span>party, to whom they were also causes of frequent annoyance.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>For instance, O’Melaghlin always addressed Mr. Cleve
-Stuart as “Wolfscliff.” And not infrequently, when he
-had had too much wine for dinner, the chieftain would hail
-his friend from across the table as “O’Wolfscliff,” or speak
-of him to another person as “The O’Wolfscliff.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Besides this, he would reiterate, in season and out of season,
-his injunction that Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart should
-preserve, inviolate, the secret of his relationship to Mike
-and Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Moind ye don’t let on to them,” he repeated. “I am
-to be inthrodooced as a frind of your own, claiming, in
-right of you, the hospitality of Misther and Misthress Randolph
-Hay. And I am to have a week or tin days to observe
-me childer before they suspect me. That will lave me find
-them out as they are widout pritinces. Do ye moind?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” Stuart would reply, heartily tired, yet half
-amused at the man’s persistence.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And yerself will not brathe a syllable that will lave
-them suspict I’m anything to themselves, Misthress
-Stuart?” he persevered, turning to Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not a syllable, O’Melaghlin,” she answered.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This funny persecution ceased for the time, to be renewed
-as soon as they landed at Liverpool, and continued all the
-way from that city to York, and from there to Chuxton.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Not a hint, not a breath, not a look, to bethray to the
-childer that they behold in me the father of them, and a
-discindint of the ancient kings of Meath,” he said, as the
-train drew into the Chuxton station.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“‘Not a hint, not a breath, not a look’ from us shall
-betray your secret, O’Melaghlin,” Cleve assured him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“No, indeed,” Palma added.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Be the powers, if ye bethray me, I nivir spake to aither
-of yez again.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There,” said Stuart, as they all rose to leave the train,
-“there is Mr. Randolph Hay himself come in the barouche
-to meet us.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Where?” demanded The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, on the other side of the road. That gentleman
-in the open carriage with the fine bays and the footman in
-russet livery,” replied Cleve, pointing to the “turnout.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span>“Be the club of Konn! That foine fellow the son-in-law
-of meself!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The gintleman that married me Judy when she was a
-nady orphan, and he didn’t suspict she could be the daughter
-of a hundred kings?”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The very same.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Let me at him!” exclaimed The O’Melaghlin, pushing
-to the front and passing through the crowd on the platform
-to the side of the barouche, just as Ran got down from his
-seat to welcome his friends.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I’m The O’Melaghlin, Misther Hay. And it’s proud I
-am to make the acquaintance of ye. You’re a noble man,
-that ye are—that ye are. Wolfscliff is behoind. I could not
-wait for him to inthrodooce you. But I’m The O’Melaghlin,
-and you are Misther Hay!” he exclaimed, seizing the hand
-of Ran and shaking it to nearly dislocation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran was somewhat dismayed, not knowing how to account
-for this overwhelming salute that almost deprived
-him of the power to respond, and say:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to meet you, Mr. O’Melaghlin.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Misther?” repeated the chief, prompt to take exception
-to such a common title applied to himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But fortunately Stuart came up, shook hands with Ran
-and then presented Palma, who was warmly welcomed by
-her cousin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And now, Wolfscliff, will ye be afther inthrodoocing
-Misther Hay to meself?” demanded Ran’s father-in-law.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Pardon, I thought you had,” said Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Divil a bit could I do that same to his intilligince,” replied
-the other.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Then I will have that honor,” laughed Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And assuming the courtly dignity of a lord chamberlain
-at a royal reception, he bowed to the descendant of Irish
-kings, and with a wave of his hand, to indicate the inferior
-person, said:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlin, of Arghalee, I have the honor to present
-to you, sir, Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Ran bowed very solemnly, conscious now that he stood
-in the presence of an “eccentric.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And, sure, meself fales honored in the relationship—I
-mane the acquaintanceship,” graciously replied The O’Melaghlin,
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>feeling, however, that he had almost betrayed himself.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will you take seats in the carriage now? My servants
-are here with the break and a van to bring your people and
-luggage,” said Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Cleve bowed and handed Palma to a back seat, and The
-O’Melaghlin to a place beside her. Then he took a front
-seat, where Ran joined him, and the barouche started for
-Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The drive through the beautiful country, now in the
-glory of early summer, charmed both Cleve and Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“It is a boundless Garden of Eden!” exclaimed the latter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But beauty and glory in nature was quite lost on The
-O’Melaghlin, who employed the time in descanting to his
-son-in-law upon the ancient royalty and grandeur of the
-O’Melaghlins until the carriage turned into the park gate,
-where Longman stood to welcome them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There, that was a foine sivin-footer—that retainer of
-yours, Haymore. Jist such min me ancestor, Roderick
-O’Melaghlin, last monarch of Meath, had for his bodyguard,
-armed with spears and battle-axes, iviry man of them,” said
-the chieftain, as the carriage rolled up the avenue toward
-the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>When it drew up in front of the Hall, there stood Mike
-and Judy, the beautiful young pair, as much alike in their
-dark loveliness as twin brother and sister could possibly be.
-Both in evening dress; Mike in the conventional black
-swallowtail and patent leathers, with a sprig of shamrock
-in his buttonhole in honor of the visitor. Judy in a dark
-blue satin dress, trained, and with low body and short
-sleeves, showing the plump neck and round arms, which
-were now dimly veiled with fine lace and adorned with the
-Haymore diamonds in honor of the guests.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Behind them stood an array of servants.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“There is your son and daughter, O’Melaghlin,” whispered
-Palma in the ear of the chief, as he sat beside her.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He looked out and saw the beautiful pair, with their
-lovely faces lighted up now with the joy of expectancy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“What! thim? You don’t mane thim!” he exclaimed,
-gazing at them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes, I do. They are Mike and Judy.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Och! let me at thim—the angels!—the beauties! They
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>are both the imidge of their mother, me sainted Moira!
-Let me at thim!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And with a bound The O’Melaghlin was out of the
-barouche and tearing up the stairs to the presence of his
-astonished children.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Forgotten were all his plans of secrecy and covert observation.
-The father’s pride and joy in the Irishman’s warm
-heart overbore all resolutions, and he fell upon his son and
-daughter with ravenous delight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And so ye are me own childer—me Mike and me Judy!
-And the jewels that ye are!” he exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But it was Judy he clasped to his breast and covered with
-kisses.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike! Mike! save me!” exclaimed the frightened
-and distressed daughter.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Will ye be afther kapin’ yer hands to yerself?” exclaimed
-Mike, who thought the stranger was a maniac, and
-tried to separate him from the terrified victim. But Mike
-was no match for The O’Melaghlin.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Aisy! aisy!” exclaimed the chieftain. “It’s jealous ye
-are of me affection for the sister av ye! But your turn will
-come nixt, me bhoy!”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Fortunately Ran, to whom Cleve had hastily communicated
-the now open secret, came hurrying up the stairs, leaving
-Stuart and Palma for the moment in the barouche.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Stop! stop! Mike, my lad! The gentleman is your
-father. Yes, dear Judy, your father. Do not be afraid of
-him,” he exclaimed, coming to the rescue with the explanation.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yis, darlint Judy, it’s the fayther av ye that’s pressin’
-ye to this throbbin’ heart av him! It’s the fayther av ye,
-me foine Mike, that will make ye the lawful heir av the
-oldest name and richest estate in ould Ireland! Yis, I
-meant to have kept that same a secret till I had watched
-the natures av ye both for a wake or two, but me affections
-were too much for me.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>While he spoke he was kissing Judy, patting Mike on the
-shoulder or embracing them both and holding them together
-to his breast.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At last, quite overcome by his emotion, he sank down
-upon the top step and covered his face with his hands to
-<span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span>hide the tears that might have seemed a reproach to the
-descendant of the warlike monarchs of Meath.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike and Judy raised him up with tender care and led
-him into the hall and thence into the drawing-room, while
-the old butler, without waiting orders, went and brought a
-tray with a decanter of brandy and a glass.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin saw the elixir of life and revived at the
-sight.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Ran returned to the barouche to conduct
-Stuart and Palma to the house.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“He made me and my wife swear by all the saints in
-Christendom that we would not betray his secret until he
-himself should give us leave, and lo! he has blurted it out
-himself,” laughed Stuart.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Yes. He seems a very eccentric person, this unexpected
-father-in-law of mine. Yet I like what I have seen
-of him,” replied Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“You will like him better. The longer you know him
-the more you will esteem him. And if you will consider
-the eccentricities of his fate and fortune, you will understand
-and forgive the eccentricities of his character,” replied
-Cleve.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And then they followed their host into the house and into
-the drawing-room, where they found The O’Melaghlin
-seated on a sofa between his son and daughter, with his left
-arm around Judy’s waist, and in his right hand a wineglass
-of brandy which he sipped at intervals, while Mike held the
-decanter ready to replenish the glass when necessary.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>But as soon as Ran came in with the Stuarts The O’Melaghlin
-gave the glass to Judy to hold and went to meet
-them.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>He seized the hand of Ran, and shaking it again cruelly
-and almost to dislocation, exclaimed:</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Me son-in-law! Me brave, good, thrue bhoy! I have
-not yet greeted ye, nor wilcomed ye as me son-in-law! But
-now I will do it, with the highest praise mortal man could
-give ye. I will say: Haymore, sir, ye are worthy to be the
-husband of me daughter Judy and the daughter of a thousand
-kings.”</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“I thank you, sir. I am sure that is the highest praise
-you could give me. I hope it is true,” gallantly replied
-Ran.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>Servants were at hand to show the guests to their apartments.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Mike did the honors to his father, and accompanied him
-to the apartments prepared for him.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>Judy attended Palma to the beautiful suit of rooms that
-had been fitted up for Mr. and Mrs. Stuart and their
-children.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>There Judy for the first time made acquaintance with
-Palma’s lovely children, whom she found already on the
-nursery cot, asleep and attended by the faithful Hatty.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“Why, when did these beauties come? Why have I not
-seen them before?” demanded Judy.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“They came in the second carriage with Hatty and Josias.
-I would trust them with those two as confidently as with
-myself and their father,” replied Palma.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>“And I was so taken by surprise at the sudden meeting
-with my father that I forgot even to inquire after the
-darlings! I beg your little pardons!” said Judy, kneeling
-by the side of the children’s cot and kissing their sleeping
-faces.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>At dinner the newly arrived visitors met the Rev. Mr. and
-Mrs. Campbell, who had been invited to meet them. Jennie—the
-Countess Dowager of Engelmeed—being in deep
-mourning for her husband, did not go out or receive visitors.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>A week of idleness on the part of all the family followed
-at Haymore Hall.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>After that questions of importance were taken up.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>It was decided that The O’Melaghlin, with Mr. and Mrs.
-Hay and Mr. and Mrs. Stuart and Mike, should set out on
-an excursion to Arghalee Castle and find lodging at
-Arghalee Arms, and from that vantage point investigate
-the ancient ruins and see what could be done toward the
-successful restoration of the castle, also open negotiations
-with the duke’s legal steward if possible to repurchase all
-the land that had once constituted the Arghalee estate.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>All this was happily effected in the course of a few
-months—for The O’Melaghlin stopped at nothing in his
-eager desire to restore the ancient magnificence and splendor
-of his house; and so he paid twice the worth of the
-land to get it back, and fabulous sums to the antiquaries
-and architects to restore the castle and the chapel in all
-their pristine strength and glory.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>The Stuarts remained at Haymore until the last of the
-summer and then bade affectionate adieus to the Hays and
-returned to Virginia.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>This was the first of many visits, which the Hays often
-returned.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That autumn Mike was entered as Michael O’Melaghlin,
-master of Arghalee, in one of the best preparatory colleges
-in Glasgow.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>That winter, when “Burke’s Landed Gentry” appeared,
-under the name of Hay it contained this item:</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Hay, Randolph, born January 1, 185—, succeeded his
-father March 1, 187—, married December 2, 187—, Judith,
-only daughter of Michael, The O’Melaghlin, Chief of
-Arghalee, Antrim.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And the anxious soul of Will Walling, when he received
-a copy of the book with the marked passage, was entirely
-satisfied.</p>
-
-<p class='c009'>And New Year’s Day brought Ran and Judy a New
-Year’s gift, in the form of a son and heir, which filled the
-hearts of the parents with bliss.</p>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c014'>
-    <div><span class='small'>THE END</span></div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c002'>
-</div>
-
-<div class='chapter ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div>BURT’S SERIES <em>of</em> STANDARD FICTION.</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class='c008'>RICHELIEU. A tale of France in the reign of King Louis XIII. By G. P.
-R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>In 1829 Mr. James published his first romance, “Richelieu,” and was
-recognized at once as one of the masters of the craft.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>In this book he laid the story during those later days of the great cardinal’s
-life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it was
-yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which
-overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity.
-One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar’s conspiracy;
-the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery
-resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight into the statecraft
-of that day than can be had even by an exhaustive study of history.
-It is a powerful romance of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling
-and absorbing interest has never been excelled.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>A COLONIAL FREE-LANCE. A story of American Colonial Times. By
-Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>A book that appeals to Americans as a vivid picture of Revolutionary
-scenes. The story is a strong one, a thrilling one. It causes the true
-American to flush with excitement, to devour chapter after chapter, until
-the eyes smart, and it fairly smokes with patriotism. The love story is a
-singularly charming idyl.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>THE TOWER OF LONDON. A Historical Romance of the Times of Lady
-Jane Grey and Mary Tudor. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with
-four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>This romance of the “Tower of London” depicts the Tower as palace,
-prison and fortress, with many historical associations. The era is the
-middle of the sixteenth century.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The story is divided into two parts, one dealing with Lady Jane Grey,
-and the other with Mary Tudor as Queen, introducing other notable characters
-of the era. Throughout the story holds the interest of the reader
-in the midst of intrigue and conspiracy, extending considerably over a
-half a century.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A Romance of the American Revolution.
-By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Mr. Hotchkiss has etched in burning words a story of Yankee bravery,
-and true love that thrills from beginning to end, with the spirit of the
-Revolution. The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking a
-part in the exciting scenes described. His whole story is so absorbing
-that you will sit up far into the night to finish it. As a love romance
-it is charming.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>GARTHOWEN. A story of a Welsh Homestead. By Allen Raine. Cloth,
-12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“This is a little idyl of humble life and enduring love, laid bare before
-us, very real and pure, which in its telling shows us some strong points of
-Welsh character—the pride, the hasty temper, the quick dying out of wrath.... We call this a well-written story. Interesting alike through its
-romance and its glimpses into another life than ours. A delightful and
-clever picture of Welsh village life. The result is excellent.”—Detroit Free
-Press.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>MIFANWY. The story of a Welsh Singer. By Allan Raine. Cloth,
-12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“This is a love story, simple, tender and pretty as one would care to
-read. The action throughout is brisk and pleasing; the characters, it is apparent
-at once, are as true to life as though the author had known them
-all personally. Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that
-touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome, no matter how
-often the lights and shadows of love are introduced. It rings true, and
-does not tax the imagination.”—Boston Herald.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>DARNLEY. A Romance of the times of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey.
-By G. P. R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis.
-Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>As a historical romance “Darnley” is a book that can be taken up
-pleasurably again and again, for there is about it that subtle charm which
-those who are strangers to the works of G. P. R. James have claimed was
-only to be imparted by Dumas.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>If there was nothing more about the work to attract especial attention,
-the account of the meeting of the kings on the historic “field of the cloth of
-gold” would entitle the story to the most favorable consideration of every
-reader.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>There is really but little pure romance in this story, for the author has
-taken care to imagine love passages only between those whom history has
-credited with having entertained the tender passion one for another, and
-he succeeds in making such lovers as all the world must love.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>WINDSOR CASTLE. A Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII.
-Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth,
-12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>“Windsor Castle” is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne
-Boleyn. “Bluff King Hal,” although a well-loved monarch, was none too
-good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts,
-none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage
-to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King’s love was as brief as it
-was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him,
-and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room for her successor.
-This romance is one of extreme interest to all readers.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>HORSESHOE ROBINSON. A tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina
-in 1780. By John P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J.
-Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Among the old favorites in the field of what is known as historical fiction,
-there are none which appeal to a larger number of Americans than
-Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which depicts
-with fidelity to the facts the heroic efforts of the colonists in South Carolina
-to defend their homes against the brutal oppression of the British
-under such leaders as Cornwallis and Tarleton.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The reader is charmed with the story of love which forms the thread
-of the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning those
-times. The picture of the manifold sufferings of the people, is never overdrawn,
-but painted faithfully and honestly by one who spared neither
-time nor labor in his efforts to present in this charming love story all that
-price in blood and tears which the Carolinians paid as their share in the
-winning of the republic.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Take it all in all, “Horseshoe Robinson” is a work which should be
-found on every book-shelf, not only because it is a most entertaining
-story, but because of the wealth of valuable information concerning the
-colonists which it contains. That it has been brought out once more, well
-illustrated, is something which will give pleasure to thousands who have
-long desired an opportunity to read the story again, and to the many who
-have tried vainly in these latter days to procure a copy that they might
-read it for the first time.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>THE PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND. A story of the Coast of Maine. By
-Harriet Beecher Stowe. Cloth, 12mo. Illustrated. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Written prior to 1862, “The Pearl of Orr’s Island” is ever new; a book
-filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each
-time one reads them. One sees the “sea like an unbroken mirror all
-around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr’s Island,” and straightway
-comes “the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild
-angry howl of some savage animal.”</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Who can read of the beginning of that sweet life, named Mara, which
-came into this world under the very shadow of the Death angel’s wings,
-without having an intense desire to know how the premature bud blossomed?
-Again and again one lingers over the descriptions of the character
-of that baby boy Moses, who came through the tempest, amid the
-angry billows, pillowed on his dead mother’s breast.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>There is no more faithful portrayal of New England life than that
-which Mrs. Stowe gives in “The Pearl of Orr’s Island.”</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER. A Romance of the Early Settlers in the
-Ohio Valley. By Zane Grey. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>A book rather out of the ordinary is this “Spirit of the Border.” The
-main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian missionaries
-in the Ohio Valley. Incidentally the reader is given details of the
-frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the wilderness for the planting
-of this great nation. Chief among these, as a matter of course, is
-Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and at the same time the most
-admirable of all the brave men who spent their lives battling with the
-savage foe, that others might dwell in comparative security.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian “Village
-of Peace” are given at some length, and with minute description. The
-efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have been
-before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders of the
-several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be of interest to
-the student.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid word-pictures
-of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings of the beauties
-of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by it,
-perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly braved
-every privation and danger that the westward progress of the star of empire
-might be the more certain and rapid. A love story, simple and tender,
-runs through the book.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>CAPTAIN BRAND, OF THE SCHOONER CENTIPEDE. By Lieut.
-Henry A. Wise, U.S.N. (Harry Gringo). Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations
-by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The re-publication of this story will please those lovers of sea yarns
-who delight in so much of the salty flavor of the ocean as can come through
-the medium of a printed page, for never has a story of the sea and those
-“who go down in ships” been written by one more familiar with the scenes
-depicted.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The one book of this gifted author which is best remembered, and which
-will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is “Captain Brand,”
-who, as the author states on his title page, was a “pirate of eminence in
-the West Indies.” As a sea story pure and simple, “Captain Brand” has
-never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual
-embellishments of blood and thunder, it has no equal.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>NICK OF THE WOODS. A story of the Early Settlers of Kentucky. By
-Robert Montgomery Bird. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>This most popular novel and thrilling story of early frontier life in
-Kentucky was originally published in the year 1837. The novel, long out of
-print, had in its day a phenomenal sale, for its realistic presentation of
-Indian and frontier life in the early days of settlement in the South, narrated
-in the tale with all the art of a practiced writer. A very charming
-love romance runs through the story. This new and tasteful edition of
-“Nick of the Woods” will be certain to make many new admirers for
-this enchanting story from Dr. Bird’s clever and versatile pen.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>GUY FAWKES. A Romance of the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison
-Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank.
-Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The “Gunpowder Plot” was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament,
-the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England,
-was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of
-extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In
-their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded
-to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested,
-and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other prisoners with
-royal vigor. A very intense love story runs through the entire romance.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>TICONDEROGA: A Story of Early Frontier Life in the Mohawk Valley.
-By G. P. R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four page illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The setting of the story is decidedly more picturesque than any ever
-evolved by Cooper: The frontier of New York State, where dwelt an English
-gentleman, driven from his native home by grief over the loss of his wife,
-with a son and daughter. Thither, brought by the exigencies of war, comes
-an English officer, who is readily recognised as that Lord Howe who met his
-death at Ticonderoga. As a most natural sequence, even amid the hostile
-demonstrations of both French and Indians, Lord Howe and the young girl
-find time to make most deliciously sweet love, and the son of the recluse has
-already lost his heart to the daughter of a great sachem, a dusky maiden
-whose warrior-father has surrounded her with all the comforts of a civilized
-life.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The character of Captain Brooks, who voluntarily decides to sacrifice his
-own life in order to save the son of the Englishman, is not among the least
-of the attractions of this story, which holds the attention of the reader even
-to the last page. The tribal laws and folk lore of the different tribes of
-Indians known as the “Five Nations,” with which the story is interspersed,
-shows that the author gave no small amount of study to the work in question,
-and nowhere else is it shown more plainly than by the skilful manner in
-which he has interwoven with his plot the “blood” law, which demands a
-life for a life, whether it be that of the murderer or one of his race.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>A more charming story of mingled love and adventure has never been
-written than “Ticonderoga.”</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>ROB OF THE BOWL: A Story of the Early Days of Maryland. By John
-P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four page illustrations by J. Watson Davis.
-Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>It was while he was a member of Congress from Maryland that the
-noted statesman wrote this story regarding the early history of his native
-State, and while some critics are inclined to consider “Horse Shoe Robinson”
-as the best of his works, it is certain that “Rob of the Bowl” stands at the
-head of the list as a literary production and an authentic exposition of the
-manners and customs during Lord Baltimore’s rule. The greater portion of
-the action takes place in St. Mary’s—the original capital of the State.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>As a series of pictures of early colonial life in Maryland, “Rob of the
-Bowl” has no equal, and the book, having been written by one who had
-exceptional facilities for gathering material concerning the individual members
-of the settlements in and about St. Mary’s, is a most valuable addition
-to the history of the State.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The story is full of splendid action, with a charming love story, and a
-plot that never loosens the grip of its interest to its last page.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>BY BERWEN BANKS. By Allen Raine.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>It is a tender and beautiful romance of the idyllic. A charming picture
-of life in a Welsh seaside village. It is something of a prose-poem, true,
-tender and graceful.</p>
-
-<p class='c008'>IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A romance of the American Revolution.
-By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
-Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
-
-<p class='c013'>The story opens in the month of April, 1775, with the provincial troops
-hurrying to the defense of Lexington and Concord. Mr. Hotchkiss has etched
-in burning words a story of Yankee bravery and true love that thrills from
-beginning to end with the spirit of the Revolution. The heart beats quickly,
-and we feel ourselves taking a part in the exciting scenes described. You
-lay the book aside with the feeling that you have seen a gloriously true
-picture of the Revolution. His whole story is so absorbing that you will sit
-up far into the night to finish it. As a love romance it is charming.</p>
-
-<div class='pbb'>
- <hr class='pb c002'>
-</div>
-<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
-
-<div class='chapter ph2'>
-
-<div class='nf-center-c0'>
-<div class='nf-center c003'>
-    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
-  </div>
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
- <ol class='ol_1 c014'>
-    <li>P. <a href='#t235'>235</a>, “Here am” inserted for illegible characters. 7 characters because 
-    capital H and lower m are each nearly 2 characters wide.  Barely visible in original 
-    edition and reprint—defective typeface in original.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>P. <a href='#t302'>302</a>, changed “in Sahara” to “in the Sahara”.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
-
-    </li>
-    <li>Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
-    </li>
-  </ol>
-
-</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR WHOSE SAKE? ***</div>
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+  <body>   
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69809 ***</div>
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='titlepage'>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c001'><em>FOR WHOSE SAKE?</em><br> <span class='xlarge'><span class='sc'>A Sequel to “Why Did He Wed Her?”</span></span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><span class='large'>By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH</span></div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='small'>Author of</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>“Lilith,” “The Unloved Wife,” “Em,” “Em’s Husband,” “Ishmael,” “Self-Raised,” Etc.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_title.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>A. L. BURT COMPANY</div>
+    <div>PUBLISHERS      :: ::      NEW YORK</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='border'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>Popular Books</div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='large'>By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH</span></div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='small'>In Handsome Cloth Binding</span></div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='large'>Price      60 Cents per Volume</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class='c004'>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>CAPITOLA’S PERIL</div>
+      <div class='line'>CRUEL AS THE GRAVE</div>
+      <div class='line'>“EM”</div>
+      <div class='line'>EM’S HUSBAND</div>
+      <div class='line'>FOR WHOSE SAKE</div>
+      <div class='line'>ISHMAEL</div>
+      <div class='line'>LILITH</div>
+      <div class='line'>THE BRIDE’S FATE</div>
+      <div class='line'>THE CHANGED BRIDES</div>
+      <div class='line'>THE HIDDEN HAND</div>
+      <div class='line'>THE UNLOVED WIFE</div>
+      <div class='line'>TRIED FOR HER LIFE</div>
+      <div class='line'>SELF-RAISED</div>
+      <div class='line'>WHY DID HE WED HER</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='c005'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c006'>
+    <div>For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS</div>
+    <div>52 Duane Street      New York</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>Copyright, 1884</div>
+    <div>By ROBERT BONNER</div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='sc'>For Whose Sake</span></div>
+    <div class='c002'>Printed by special arrangement with</div>
+    <div>STREET &#38; SMITH</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>FOR WHOSE SAKE?</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER I<br> <span class='large'>A STARTLING RENCONTRE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Two travelers on board the ocean steamer <em>Scorpio</em>,
+bound from New York to Liverpool, were Gentleman Geff
+and his queenly bride.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was in blissful ignorance that his forsaken wife and
+her infant were on the same ship.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The wife whom he believed to be in her pauper grave in
+potter’s field, and the child of whose birth he had never
+heard!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was riding on the topmost wave of success
+and popularity. He had paid a high price for his fortune,
+but he told himself continually that the fortune was
+worth all he had given for it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Certainly there were two awful pictures that would present
+themselves to his mental vision with terrible distinctness
+and persistent regularity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The first was of a deep wood, in the dead of night, and a
+young man’s ghastly face turned up to the starlight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The other was of a silent city street, in the dark hours before
+day, and a girl’s form prone upon the pavement, with a
+dark stream creeping from a wound in her side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were moments when the murderer would have
+given all that he had gained by his crimes to wake up and
+find that they had all been “the phantasmagoria of a midnight
+dream”; that he was not the counterfeit Randolph
+Hay, Esquire, of Haymore, with a rent roll of twenty
+thousand pounds sterling a year, and an income from invested
+funds of twice as much, and with two atrocious
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>murders on his soul, but simply the poor devil of an adventurer
+who lived by his wits, and was known to the miners
+as Gentleman Geff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At such times he would drink deeply of brandy, and
+under its influence find all his views change. He would
+philosophize about life, fortune, destiny, necessity, and try
+to persuade himself that he had been more sinned against
+than sinning. He then felt sure that, if he had been born
+to wealth, he would have been a philanthropist of the highest
+order, a benefactor to the whole human race; would have
+founded churches, and sent out missionaries; would have
+established hospitals and asylums, and erected model tenement
+houses for the poor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ah! how good and great a man he would have proved
+himself if he had only been born to vast wealth! But he
+had been born to genteel poverty. Fate had been unkind.
+It was all the fault of fate, he argued.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In this exaltation he would go into the gentlemen’s
+saloon, sit down at one of the gaming tables, and stake,
+and win or lose, large sums of money; and so, in the feverish
+mental and physical excitement of drinking and gambling,
+he would seek to drive away remorse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Often he would drink himself into a state of maudlin
+sentimentality, and in that state reel into the stateroom
+occupied by himself and his bride. He was really more “in
+love” with Lamia Leegh than he had ever been with any
+woman in his long career of “lady-killing.” He had married
+her for love, although it was the Turk’s love.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Lamia did not love him in the least. She had married
+him for rank, money and position. She had begun by
+liking him, then enduring him, and now she ended by detesting
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Some poor girls marry old men for money; some marry
+ugly men or withered men for the same cause; but to marry
+a drunkard for that, or for any cause; to be obliged to live
+with the beast; to be unable to escape from him; to see him
+day and night; to smell his nauseous breath—it is horrible,
+abhorrent, abominable!” she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yet she never dared to let her disgust and abhorrence appear
+to its object. She was too politic to offend him, for—he
+held the purse strings. There had been no settlements—nothing
+of the sort—notwithstanding all the talk about
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>them with Will Walling. For every dollar she would receive
+she must depend on her husband.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Cashmere shawls and sable furs and solitaire diamonds
+that she longed for, if she should get them at all,
+must be got from him, and she knew she would get them,
+and everything else she might want, so long as he should
+possess his fortune and she retain his favor. So she veiled
+her dislike under a show of affection, and she even made
+for herself a rule and set for herself a task, so that he might
+never find out her real feelings toward him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The more disgusted she might really be, the more enamored
+she would pretend to be.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was surely a very hard way of earning diamonds
+and the rest, but, like Gentleman Geff, she told herself that
+they were worth it; and she thought so.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Their fellow passengers all knew them to be a newly married
+pair; for there happened to be a few New York
+“society” people on the ship, who had heard all about the
+grand wedding at Peter Vansitart’s, and they had spread
+the news in the first cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Their fellow voyagers also believed them to be a very
+happy couple; though ladies sometimes whispered together
+that he certainly did look rather dissipated; and gentlemen
+remarked to each other that it was a pity he drank so hard
+and played so high. It was a bad beginning at his age, and
+if it should continue Haymore fortunes could scarcely
+“stand the racket.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But notwithstanding these drawbacks, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
+Hay were very popular among their fellow voyagers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The weather continued good for the first week.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bride and groom were daily to be seen on deck—well
+wrapped up, for the fine October days were cold on midocean.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yet though they were every day on deck, they had never
+yet encountered Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>How was that? And where was Jennie?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie Montgomery was in her stateroom, so prostrated
+by seasickness that she was scarcely able to take care of her
+child. She had never once left her room even to go into the
+ladies’ saloon, but passed her time between her lower berth
+and her broad sofa.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stewardess Hopkins became interested in poor little
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>Jennie and her baby—“one as much of a baby as t’other,”
+she had said to one of the stateroom stewards—and so she
+showed them kindness from a heartfelt sympathy, such as
+no fee could have purchased.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the eighth day out, Mrs. Hopkins was in the room
+with the young mother and child, when Jennie, looking
+gratefully at the stewardess, said, with tears in her eyes:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mrs. Hopkins, I do thank you with all my heart,
+but feel so deeply that that is not enough. I shall never,
+never be able to repay you for all your goodness to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t talk in that way, my dear,” replied the stewardess,
+in self-depreciation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If it were not for you, I believe that I and baby should
+both die on the sea.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, dear. ‘The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn
+lamb,’ and if I hadn’t been here He would have provided
+some one else for you. But now, dear, I do really think you
+ought to try and exert yourself to go up on deck. Here
+we are a week at sea, and you have had no enjoyment of the
+voyage at all. Don’t you think, now that the baby has gone
+to sleep, and is safe to be quiet for two or three hours, you
+could let me wrap you up warm and help you up on deck?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should like to do so, but I am not able; indeed I am
+not. I am as weak as a rat.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Rats are remarkably strong for their size, my dear, for
+they’re all muscle. And as for you being weak, it is only a
+nervous fancy, caused by your seasickness. But you’re over
+that now. And if you will only let me help you up on deck,
+why, every step you take and every breath you breathe will
+give you new life and strength,” persisted the stewardess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I will go.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie stood up, holding by the edge of the upper berth
+for support, while the stewardess prepared her to go up on
+deck.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And when last of all Jennie was well wrapped up in her
+fur-lined cloak, Mrs. Hopkins led and supported her to the
+stairs, and took her carefully up to the deck, and found her
+a sheltered seat on the lee side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sit here,” she said, “and every breath of this fresh air
+you breathe will give you new life.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And having tucked a rug well around the feet of her
+charge, the stewardess left Jennie to herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>Jennie looked around her. There were very few people
+within the range of her vision, only the man at the wheel
+and two or three deck hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was the luncheon hour, and nearly all the passengers
+who were not in their staterooms had gone to the dining
+saloon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Jennie looked abroad over the boundless expanse of
+dazzling blue sea, leaping and sparkling under the light of
+a radiant blue sky. It was splendid, glorious, but blinding
+to vision just out of the shadows of the stateroom and cabin,
+and so Jennie closed her eyes to recover them, and sat with
+them closed for some moments. At this hour it was very
+quiet on deck. Only the sounds of the ship’s movements
+were heard. Jennie, with her tired eyes shut, sat there in
+calm content.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am going mad! I am going mad! It has taken
+shape at last—or is this—delirium tremens? I—must not—drink
+so much!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a low, husky, shuddering voice that uttered these
+strange words in Jennie’s hearing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She opened her eyes at the sound, looked up and saw——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery, her husband, within a few feet of
+her, staring in horror upon her, while he supported himself
+in a collapsed state against the bulwarks of the ship. The
+face that confronted her was ashen, ghastly, awe-stricken,
+yet defiant, as with the impotent revolt of a demon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie returned his glare with a gaze of amazement and
+perplexity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so they remained spellbound, staring at each other,
+without moving or speaking, for perhaps a full minute.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie was the first to recover herself. A moment’s reflection
+enabled her to understand the situation—that
+Kightly Montgomery, under his new name and with his
+new wife, was her fellow passenger on the <em>Scorpio</em>. This
+was clear enough to her now.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She was also the first to break the spell of silence, though
+it cost her an effort to do so, and her voice quivered, and
+she lowered her eyes as she said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You seem to take me for an optical illusion.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He still glared at her without answering.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am no ‘illusion,’” she continued, more steadily, gaining
+more self-control every moment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>“If not—what—in the devil—are you?” he gasped at
+length, terrified, yet aggressive.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am your wife; but shall never claim, or wish to claim,
+the position,” she replied, still keeping her eyes down to
+avoid the pain of seeing his face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are—I do not—I thought——How——” he began,
+in utter confusion of mind, and with his eyes starting
+from the intensity of his stare.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go away, please, and collect yourself. Do not fear me.
+I shall not trouble you. But pray, go now, and do not come
+near me or speak to me again,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I thought—you were dead!” he blurted out, with
+brutal bluntness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie reflected for a moment. Why should he have
+thought that she was dead, even though he had tried to kill
+her, and had indeed left her for dead? Then she concluded
+that he must have fled from the city immediately after having
+committed the crime by which he had intended to rid
+himself of her forever; but she made no reply to his remark.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why have you followed me here?” he demanded, trying
+to cover his intense anxiety with an air of bravado.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I did not follow you. I did not know that you were to
+be on this boat. How should I have known it? And why
+should I have followed you?” she calmly inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How is it—that you are here, then?” he questioned, his
+voice still shaking, his eyes staring, his form supported
+against the bulwarks of the ship.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am going home to my father’s house. When I got
+well in the Samaritan Hospital a few good women of means
+clubbed together and raised the funds to give me an outfit
+and pay my passage to England. They engaged for me one
+of the best staterooms in the ladies’ cabin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How is it—that I have never seen you—or suspected
+your presence on the ship before? Have you been hiding
+from me?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; I have already told you that I did not know you
+were on board. You have not seen me because I have been
+seasick in my stateroom. This is my first day on deck.
+And now will you please to go away and leave me?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Presently. By Jove, Jennie, you take things very
+coolly!” he exclaimed, drawing a handkerchief from his
+breast pocket and wiping his forehead, on which beads of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>perspiration stood out. “What do you intend to do?” he
+suddenly demanded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nothing to trouble you while you are on this ship. I do
+not wish to see, or speak to, or even to know you here again,
+and I will not.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I—well—I thank you for so much grace. But what will
+you do after you shall have reached England?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I shall tell my father the whole story—of which he has
+no suspicion now—and I shall place myself in his hands for
+direction, and do whatever he counsels me to do. He was
+my guard and guide all my life until I threw off his safe
+authority and followed you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pity!” muttered Gentleman Geff to himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now,” said Jennie, “once more, and for the third
+time, I beg you to leave me. Let this distressing and most
+improper interview come to an end at once. I think it is
+both sinful and shameful, in view of the past and the
+present, for you to speak to me, or even to look at me. Perhaps
+I am doing wrong in keeping quiet. Perhaps I ought
+to denounce you to the captain and officers of this ship.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That would be quite useless, my girl,” exclaimed Gentleman
+Geff, daring to speak contemptuously for the first time
+during the interview, yet still quaking between the conflicting
+passions of terror and defiance; “you could not prove
+anything against me here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Probably not; and my interference would not only be
+useless, but worse than useless; it would make an ugly scandal,
+and create a great disturbance. No, I will do nothing
+until I take counsel with my father. But let me give you
+this warning: My father is to meet me at Liverpool. Do
+not let him see you then! And now, Capt. Montgomery,
+if you do not leave me, I shall be obliged to go to my room,”
+Jennie concluded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff turned away. It was time, for people
+were leaving the dining saloon and coming up on deck.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Several people—men, women and children—passed
+Jennie on their way forward; nearly every one of these
+glanced at Jennie with more or less interest; for hers was
+a new face. Now, in the beginning of a sea voyage nearly
+all the passengers are strangers to each other. But after
+eight days, when every one on board is known to the other
+by sight, a new face is an event. And this face was fair,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>pensive and interesting, and it belonged to a young woman
+who seemed to be quite alone on board.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Among those who passed was a superbly beautiful woman,
+whose Juno-like form was wrapped in a rich fur-lined cloak,
+the hood of which was drawn over her lovely head, partly
+concealing the glory of her red, gold-hued hair, and half
+shading the radiance of her blond and blooming complexion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This goddess did something more than glance at the
+pretty, pale, childlike form reclining there. She stopped
+and gazed at her for a moment, and then, when Jennie
+lowered her eyes, the goddess passed on.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the stream of passengers had all gone forward
+Jennie drew a sigh of relief and composed herself to rest
+and to think over the sudden, overwhelming interview
+which had just passed between herself and her husband.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie was troubled, not in her affections—for if Kightly
+Montgomery had not succeeded in slaying her, he had certainly
+managed to kill her love for him—but in her conscience.
+Was she right in letting him go on in his course
+of evil? Ought she not to stop it? But could she, even if
+she tried? And she shrank from trying. For if she should
+succeed in exposing him, what a terrible mortification it
+would be to that unfortunate young lady whom he had
+feloniously married; who was reported to be as religious
+and charitable as she was beautiful and accomplished; who,
+even in the busy week before her wedding day, had given
+time to go out shopping for her—Jennie’s—outfit; and
+whom it was now too late to save, since she had been living
+with her supposed husband for a week.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To expose him now, and here, would be to degrade her
+before all the ship’s passengers, so that all who now admired,
+honored or envied her, would soon pity and avoid
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie could not bring an “unoffending” fellow creature
+to that pass; and if her forbearance was a sin, she hoped
+the Lord would pardon her for His sake who pitied the
+sinful woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While Jennie was “wrestling” so in the spirit, the stewardess
+came up and put her baby in her arms, smiling, and
+saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As I was passing by your stateroom I just looked in to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>see if all was right, and then I saw this little thing lying
+wide awake and crowing to herself as good as pie. And I
+thought I would wrap her up and bring her to you for a
+breath of this good, fresh air, which, if it was doing you
+good, wouldn’t do her harm. Was I right?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, Mrs. Hopkins. And I thank you so much,”
+said Jennie, as she stooped and kissed the babe that lay
+upon her lap; but Mrs. Hopkins had already gone about
+her business.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie smiled and cooed to the little one, enjoying its
+presence, and rejoicing that Kightly Montgomery was gone
+from her side and was not likely to return. She had purposely
+avoided speaking of the child to him. She was glad
+that he had not once inquired about it. She had almost a
+superstitious dread of his seeing, touching or even knowing
+of the babe, for fear that his evil nature might, in some
+moral, physical or, perhaps, occult way, bring harm to the
+little innocent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She was still bending over the babe, when a soft, sweet,
+melodious voice addressed her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pardon me, you are Mrs. Montgomery, are you not?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie looked up. The goddess had come back. Jennie
+did not know her, but she answered quietly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am Mrs. Randolph Hay; and that I had heard of you
+and become interested in you must be my excuse for intruding
+my acquaintance on you,” added the beauty, with a
+bewitching smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie flushed, paled, trembled and cast down her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This, then, was Lamia Leegh, the unfortunate young lady
+whom Kightly Montgomery had married!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie felt sorry for her, standing there in all the pride
+and pomp of her beauty and wealth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, madam,” was all that she could find
+to say, in a low tone, with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The goddess thought the little woman overpowered by
+her own grandeur, smiled condescendingly, and said complacently:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What a pretty baby you have! Girl or a boy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Girl, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is right. I love girl babies. What is her name?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She is not christened yet.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>“How old is she?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Two months on the third of this month, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! She is well grown for that age. I need not ask
+if she has good health. She looks so well.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, madam. Thank Heaven!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is the first time you have been on deck, I think?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Suffered from seasickness, I fear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam, until this morning.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! very sad to have missed all this beautiful voyage.
+An exceptionally fine voyage. I have crossed many times,
+but have never experienced so fine a voyage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie did not reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, then, seasickness is a great benefit to some constitutions.
+I hope that it will have been so in your case.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Still Jennie did not answer, except by a bow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you quite recovered?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite, ma’am, thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yet you feel weak?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will pass away. You are traveling quite alone, I
+believe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, if I or Mr. Randolph Hay can be of any service
+to you, I hope you will call on us. I, and I am sure Mr.
+Hay also, would be very much pleased to serve you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you, madam, very much, but my dear father
+will meet me at Liverpool, so that I shall not need assistance.
+But equally I thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie would have said more had she been able. She
+would have acknowledged the services or the supposed services
+the lady had performed for her before they had ever
+met; but her tongue “clove to the roof of her mouth,” so
+to speak. It was all she could do to utter the perfunctory
+words she had spoken, and these without raising her eyes to
+the face of the goddess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Randolph Hay bowed graciously, and passed on
+toward the cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poor thing!” breathed Jennie, with deep pity; “poor,
+poor thing! She, so proud, so stately, so beautiful, to be
+cast down to the dust! Oh, no! Heaven pardon me, but
+I must spare him for her sake! I will do nothing until I
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>see my father, and then I must tell him all, and be guided
+by his counsels.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So then Jennie stooped and kissed her baby and felt at
+peace with all the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia Leegh was not one to hide her “light under a
+bushel.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Before many hours had passed every one had heard the
+pathetic story of the English curate’s young daughter, who
+had been married, deserted and months afterward half
+murdered by her husband; how she had been taken to the
+Samaritan Hospital, where she became a mother; how certain
+charitable ladies had become so interested in her case
+that they had made up a fund to give her and her child an
+outfit and send them home to her father, and how she was
+on this very ship.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Without claiming all the credit in so many words, Lamia
+Leegh had left the impression on the minds of her hearers
+that she herself had been the principal, if not the only, benefactress
+of Jennie Montgomery, and she won applause for
+her benevolence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Kightly Montgomery left his wife seated on the
+deck it was with a feeling of relief to get out of her presence.
+He hurried to his stateroom, looked around, and
+felt more relief to find that his deceived bride was absent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He kept a private stock of strong old brandy in a case.
+He opened a bottle, poured out half a goblet full, and drank
+it at a draught.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he felt better still.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She will keep her word,” he said to himself. “If she
+had intended to give me away, she would have done so before
+this. Any man would have denounced another under
+such circumstances. But these women are inexplicable. I
+wonder if her child was born alive? I wonder if it is living,
+and if she has it with her, or if she has placed it in some
+asylum? Impossible to say. She volunteers no information
+on the subject, and I certainly cannot question her
+about it. She wishes me to avoid her. I am quite willing
+to oblige her in that particular. I very much do not wish
+to see her again. No, nor her father! I must not meet the
+dominie, under present complications. It would be awkward.
+I shall shirk that <i><span lang="fr">rencontre</span></i> by getting off the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>steamer at Queenstown and taking the mail route to London
+via Kingstown and Holyhead. That will do!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He filled and drank another half goblet of brandy, and
+then sat staring at his boots.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Lamia Leegh entered the stateroom. He
+looked up at her stupidly. His face was flushed, his eyes
+were fishy. The air was full of the smell of brandy. She
+knew that he had been drinking to intoxication; but she
+cared too little for him and too much for herself to notice
+this. He might drink himself to death, if he pleased, without
+any interference from her, so that he supplied her with
+plenty of money while he lived and left her a rich dower
+when he should die.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So, without seeming to notice his state, she sat down on
+the sofa by him and said, very pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You remember hearing me speak of that interesting
+young woman from the Samaritan Hospital for whom we
+furnished an outfit and engaged a stateroom in this cabin
+to send her home to her people?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What young woman? Ah! yes, I believe I do. What of
+her?” he drawled, with assumed indifference.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have just seen her and her child——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Child?” he echoed involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; I told you she had a child, you remember.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Aw—no—I didn’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes. Such a pretty little girl baby! They have
+been shut up in their stateroom for a week on account of
+the mother’s seasickness. She is out on deck to-day for the
+first time. When I saw a new face there I thought it was
+hers, but was not certain, so I passed her by. But a little
+later, when I saw the stewardess place a young infant in
+her arms, then I felt almost certain, and I went up and
+spoke to her. A prodigal daughter, I fear she is, but a most
+interesting one, and her father is to meet her at Liverpool
+and——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lamia,” interrupted the man, “suppose we drop the
+subject. I am not at all interested in your charity girl.”
+He yawned with a bored air.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, very well; what shall we talk about? The end of
+the voyage? Well, I heard the captain say that we shall
+be at Queenstown to-morrow morning.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And we shall get off at Queenstown; do you hear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>“At Queenstown? But why, when our tickets are for
+Liverpool?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because I will it to be so!” said the man, in the sullen
+wilfulness of intoxication.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, very well! Quite right! So be it!” replied Lamia,
+with contemptuous submission.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the discussion ended.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She loosened her dress and laid herself down on the
+lower berth to take an afternoon nap.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He sat on the sofa, with the brandy bottle before him,
+and drank and drank and drank.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That evening Gentleman Geff was much too drunk to go
+into the dining saloon, yet with the fatuity of drunkenness
+he insisted on doing so, and he reeled out of his stateroom
+and through the cabin and up the stairs. But had it
+not been for Lamia’s strong support he could never have
+reached his seat at their table. Lamia was like Burns’
+Nanny:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“A handsome jaud and strang,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>and she succeeded in setting him safe in his seat, where he
+sat bloated, blear-eyed, and luckily stupid, instead of hilarious
+or quarrelsome. Every one at table noticed his condition,
+and—</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What a pity! What a pity!” was thought or whispered
+by one or another.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a severe ordeal for Lamia, yet the trial was softened
+by the thought that all the sympathies of the company
+were with her, all the condemnation for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She was glad at last when she succeeded in drawing him
+away from the table to the privacy of their stateroom, where
+he fell upon the sofa and sank into the heavy sleep of intoxication.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia felt too bitterly humiliated to return to the saloon
+or go on deck, so she remained in the stateroom, reading a
+French book until it was time to retire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she turned into her berth, leaving the stupefied
+inebriate to sleep off the fumes of his brandy, lying on the
+sofa dressed as he was.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie Montgomery sat on deck with her baby on her
+knees until the fading day and the freshening breeze warned
+her to seek shelter in the cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>Then she took her child to her stateroom, where soon
+after both were rocked to sleep by the rolling of the ship.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a dark night, partly overclouded, and with but
+few stars shining.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A few passengers, all men, remained on deck to catch the
+first glimpse of land. Before midnight the man on the
+lookout made Cape Clear Lighthouse, and the ship ran
+along the coast of Ireland.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER II<br> <span class='large'>FATHER AND DAUGHTER</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Jennie slept late that morning, and was finally awakened
+by the cessation of the motion to which she had been accustomed
+day and night for the last nine days.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She started up and looked out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ship was at anchor in the fine cove of Cork, and the
+window of her stateroom commanded the harbor. She knew
+there was a crowd of people on deck, but she felt no disposition
+to join them; so after she had washed and
+dressed her child and herself she sat down and waited until
+the kind stewardess brought her some breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, here we are at Queenstown,” said the good woman,
+as she set down the breakfast tray.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you for bringing my breakfast, Mrs. Hopkins.
+How long will we remain here?” inquired Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Only a few hours. The bride and groom—Mr. and Mrs.
+Randolph Hay, you know—have got off. I know they took
+their tickets for Liverpool, and here they have got off at
+Queenstown. Now they will go to London by way of Holyhead.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah,” said Jennie, only because she felt that she must say
+something.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very queer, I call it, for gentlemen and ladies to sacrifice
+their passage money in that way. But when people have
+more money than they know what to do with they do fling
+a good deal away, that’s certain.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie began to drink her coffee to avoid the necessity of
+speaking. She did not think it was queer that the pair
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>should have left the steamer at Queenstown, for she understood
+very well that Kightly Montgomery dared not face her
+father at Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Are they really off, Mrs. Hopkins?” she inquired at last.
+“Are you sure they have actually gone?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Went ashore in the boat half an hour ago. Took all
+their baggage from the stateroom, but left that which is in
+the hold—big trunks that must go to Liverpool, where they
+will claim them at the custom house, when they themselves
+get there by the mail route,” replied the stewardess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was a great relief to Jennie. To know that Kightly
+Montgomery was really gone from the steamer, not to
+return, gave her a sense of freedom and security which she
+had not experienced since she had discovered his baleful
+presence on board. She felt now that she could go freely on
+the deck and take her child there, and enjoy all the delights
+of the voyage across the channel and up the Mersey, without
+the fear of meeting him or his deceived bride.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not think, Mrs. Hopkins, that I shall trouble any
+one to bring my meals to me here after this. I shall go to
+the public table,” she said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It would be much better for you, my dear,” the stewardess
+replied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now that I have finished breakfast, I will take baby
+and go up on deck.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will be better for you, too, my dear. Let me help
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no. I am quite well and ever so much stronger than
+I was yesterday. Besides, the ship is quite still, so you see
+I can walk steadily and carry baby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the stewardess resolutely took the child from the
+arms of the young mother and carried it up before her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The deck was a crowded and busy scene. All the passengers
+were up there, gazing out upon the beautiful
+scenery. But crowded as it was, the people were nearly all
+standing, so it was easy for the stewardess to find a good
+seat for the mother, to whom, when comfortably arranged,
+she gave the child.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her fellow passengers took but little notice of Jennie
+now; they were too much interested in other matters. She
+sat there and enjoyed the scene until the ship got under
+way again and stood out for the mouth of the Mersey.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>This last day on board Jennie enjoyed the voyage very
+much. She spent nearly the whole day on deck, and left it
+with reluctance at night to retire to her stateroom. That
+night she could scarcely sleep for the excitement of anticipating
+her meeting with her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nevertheless, she was up and out on deck early the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were near the mouth of the Mersey. As soon as she
+had breakfasted she packed up all her effects, so as to be
+ready to go on shore as soon as the ship should land.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she sat on deck to watch the shores until at last
+the steamer drew near to the great English seaport and
+came to anchor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A steam tender from the piers was rapidly approaching
+the <em>Scorpio</em>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A great crowd of people were on board the tender, apparently
+coming to meet friends on the <em>Scorpio</em>.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Many field glasses were in active use in the hands of voyagers
+trying to make out the persons of their friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie had no glass, but as she stood bending forward,
+straining her eyes to see, a gentleman near her said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you take my glass?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She thanked him, and took it, adjusted the lenses to her
+sight, and held the instrument up to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A cry of joy had nearly broken from her lips. She saw
+her father standing on the deck of the coming tender, looking
+well and happy. He, too, had a glass, and was using it.
+She saw that he had seen her; he took off his hat and
+waved it to her. She waved her hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The tender was drawing very near, and now came a general
+waving of handkerchiefs in salutation from the passengers
+on both steamers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In another minute the tender was alongside, the gangplank
+thrown down, and the rush of friends to meet each
+other made a joyous confusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie found herself in her father’s arms, scarcely knowing
+how she got there in such a crowd and confusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My daughter! my daughter! welcome! welcome! welcome!
+welcome to my heart!” the father cried, in a breaking,
+choking voice, as he pressed her fondly to his breast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My own beloved father! Oh, thank the Lord—thank
+the Lord, that I see you again! And my mother!—my
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>darling mother!—how is she?” cried Jennie, sobbing for
+joy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my dearest, well, thank Heaven! Sends fondest
+love to you, my child, and waits your return with a joyful
+heart.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! how have I deserved this love and tenderness, this
+divine compassion and forgiveness? Oh! my father, I
+ought to fall—not on your neck—but at your feet, and say—what
+I feel! what I feel!—‘Father, I have sinned against
+Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be
+called thy child.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hush! my darling, hush! We will talk later. Let us go
+away from here as soon as possible. Where is your babe,
+Jennie?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In my stateroom, dear father, fast asleep. Will you
+come down with me and see her?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The father and daughter struggled through the pressing
+crowd, and made their way slowly and with difficulty down
+into the cabin, which was now all “upside down” with
+ladies and ladies’ maids, and gentlemen and valets, stewards
+and stewardesses, getting together their “traps” and making
+ready to go on shore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie took her father directly to her stateroom, where
+the pretty babe lay sleeping on the lower berth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie lifted the babe and placed it in her father’s arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister received the child, raised his eyes, and
+solemnly invoked God’s blessing on it, then stooped and
+pressed a kiss upon its brow. Finally he returned the babe
+to its mother, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Wrap her up, my dear. We must hurry, or we shall
+miss the first return trip of the tender and have to wait for
+the second, which would cause us to lose our train.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie quickly folded the baby in the warm white cloak
+and hood which had been given her by the Duncan children.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now I will take her again and carry her for you. Do
+you take up your hand-bag and parasol. I will speak to
+have the other things brought after us,” said Mr. Campbell,
+as he led the way to the deck, carrying the babe, and followed
+by his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The passengers had all left the steamer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Men were carrying baggage on board the tender. Mr.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>Campbell spoke to one of them, directing him to the stateroom
+of his daughter. Then, holding the babe on one arm,
+he gave the other to Jennie, and led her across the gangplank
+and on board the tender, where by this time all the
+passengers were gathered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In a few minutes the tender put off from the ship and
+steamed to the piers, where she soon arrived. The passengers
+swarmed out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell called a cab, put his daughter and her
+child into it, followed them and gave the order: To the
+Lime Street Railway Station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they reached the place the minister stopped the
+cab, got out and took the babe from her mother’s arms,
+and led the way into a second-class waiting-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will stay here, my dear,” he said, “while I go back
+to the custom house and get your baggage through. You
+will not mind?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, dearest father. I shall not mind anything, except
+missing the sight of your dear face, even for a minute.
+It seems to me as if I should never bear to lose sight of you
+again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I shall come back as soon as possible, my dear,” said the
+minister; and he found for her a comfortable seat, placed
+the baby in her arms, and so left her in the waiting-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie sat there without feeling the time pass wearily,
+after all; her mind was too full of delightful anticipations
+of homegoing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nearly an hour passed, and then her father came hurrying
+in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is all done, my dear. Your trunks are rescued from
+the custom house and deposited on the train, and now we
+have five minutes left in which to take some refreshments,
+if you would like,” he said cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I want nothing, dear papa, for I have not very long since
+breakfasted. But you?” she inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear; nothing for me. And now, my dear child, I
+have at length found breathing space in this hurry and confusion
+to ask about your husband. You did not name him
+at all in your letter, from which I argued ill; and if there
+had been time, I should have written to you for some explanation;
+but I knew that you were then to sail in a few
+days, and that you would reach Liverpool before my letter
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>could get to New York. Now, my dear, I must ask you
+some very serious questions.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How is it that you, the daughter of a clergyman of the
+Church of England, and the wife of an ex-captain in her
+majesty’s army, should have been confined in the charity
+ward of a public hospital?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie shuddered, but did not answer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How was it that you had to be indebted to alms for your
+outfit and passage to this country? Why did you not mention
+your husband’s name in your letter to me? Why are
+you here alone? Where is your husband? Tell me, child.
+Do not fear or hesitate to tell your father everything,” he
+said, tenderly taking her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, your goodness goes to my heart. He has left
+me, papa,” she said, and then suddenly lifting her soft, dark
+eyes, full of truth and candor, to meet her father’s pitying
+gaze, she added: “But do not mind that, dear papa. I do
+not. The best thing he ever did for me was to leave me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear, it was, indeed. I am not saying this
+from pride or bravado, but because it is the very truth itself,
+that the best thing he ever did for me was to leave me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You do not care for him, then?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And yet, my child, he is your husband still,” said the
+minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Unhappily, yes; but he has left me. It is the kindest
+act of his life toward me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you never wish to see him again, Jennie?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never, nor to hear of him. I am happy now in a quiet
+way. I wish for nothing better on earth than to live in a
+quiet way at the darling little parsonage with you and dearest
+mamma and my blessed baby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Suddenly into the pathos and gravity of Jennie’s face
+came a ripple of humor as she spoke of her child and looked
+at her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Rev. James Campbell was certainly the youngest
+grandfather in England, if not in Europe. He was really
+but thirty-eight years old, and might have been taken for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>a mere boy, for he was of medium height and of slight and
+elegant form, with a shapely head, pure, clean-cut classic
+features, a clear, fair complexion and dark chestnut hair,
+parted in the middle, cut rather short and slightly curling.
+He wore neither beard nor mustache. His dress was a
+clerical suit of black cloth of the cheapest quality and somewhat
+threadbare; but it perfectly fitted his faultless figure;
+but his linen collar and cuffs were spotless even after a
+railway journey in the second-class cars and his gloves were
+neatly mended.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Altogether he looked very young and even boyish, as we
+said, though he was in middle life and a grandfather.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But for the close resemblance between the father and
+daughter, their fellow passengers in the waiting-room must
+have taken them for a married pair, and “o’er young to
+marry also.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But about this man, Jennie,” he said, seeing that she
+paused. “Where is he now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In Ireland, I believe, papa. It is a long story I have to
+tell when we get home. And—here is our train.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The whistle sounded, and the minister took his grandchild
+from his daughter and carried it, followed by its
+mother, to their seats in one of the second-class carriages.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER III<br> <span class='large'>HER WELCOME HOME</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The curate and his daughter found themselves in a
+crowded carriage of the second class, on the Great Northern
+express train from Liverpool to Glasgow. I say crowded,
+for though no one was standing up, yet many of the passengers
+had well-grown children on their laps.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell and Jennie took the last two vacant seats.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Give me the baby now, papa dear,” said the little
+mother, holding opt her arms, as soon as she had settled
+herself in her seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear, the child is sleeping. If she wakes and frets,
+I will hand her over to you; otherwise I will hold her to
+rest you,” replied her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>Their fellow travelers turned and looked at the young
+grandfather and the youthful mother, and very naturally
+drew false conclusions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were mostly of the class who listen, comment and
+observe.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s easy to see that is a young married pair, with their
+first child,” whispered a fat, florid country woman, with one
+baby sitting on her knees and two on the floor at her feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He won’t be quite so fond of loading himself down with,
+the kids when there’s a dozen of ’em, maybe,” replied her
+companion, a stout, brown woman with a burden of two
+heavy bundles and a basket on and about her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister and his daughter heard every word of this
+whispered colloquy with slight smiles of amusement; but
+it warned them that they could not indulge in any very
+confidential discourse there, where every whispered word could
+be so distinctly heard.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All further explanations would have to be postponed until
+they should reach Medge Parsonage. And that was a hundred
+miles off as yet. Nothing but the commonplaces of
+conversation could pass between them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Are you quite comfortable, my dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You don’t feel the draught from that window?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, papa dear.” Etcetera.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie took particular pains to call her young father
+“papa” whenever she spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But that did not enlighten their companions as to the
+true relations between the two. They thought it only one
+more silly affectation of the youthful parents. Many vain
+young mothers called their husbands “papa” for baby, as
+many proud young fathers called their wives “mamma” also
+for baby.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So merely trivial talk passed between the father and
+daughter until the train blew the steam whistle and
+“slowed” into the first station after leaving Liverpool,
+stopped ten seconds and sped on again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie had not seen her native country for two years, and
+she looked out at the vanishing station almost with the curiosity
+of a stranger, and then exclaimed with a look of astonishment:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, papa! That was Huton!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>“Well, my dear!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie looked at her father in amazement.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, my dear?” inquired the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Matter? Why, papa, matter enough. We have certainly
+taken the wrong train. Huton is on the Great Northern,
+and not the South Eastern Railroad. This is not the
+way to Medge.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, dear, we are not going to Medge.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not going to Medge?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, my dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie stared.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I also have something to tell you which I have reserved
+until now,” said the minister gravely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is it, papa? Oh, what is it?” demanded the
+young girl in sudden alarm. “You said my dear mother
+was quite well. If she were in heaven, you might say with
+truth she was quite well; but oh! how could I bear it! Oh,
+how could I bear it! Is she quite well in this world?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite well, here on earth, my dear. Compose yourself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then what is it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nothing to alarm you, Jennie.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where are we going?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, where
+I have a curacy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To Hay—— And you never told me!” said Jennie,
+aghast with astonishment. All her life, until her hasty
+marriage, two years before, she had lived with her parents
+at Medge. She considered them as fixtures to that spot.
+She would as soon have expected the old parish church
+and graveyard to be plucked up by the roots from Medge
+and transplanted to Haymore as to have her father and
+mother removed from the first to the last named place.
+“‘Haymore!’” she said to herself—“‘Haymore!’ Surely
+that was the name of the manor to which Kightly Montgomery
+had fallen heir. And in Yorkshire, too. It must be
+the same place! She and her father were going there!
+And—Kightly Montgomery, under his new name, and with
+his new bride, was also going there. The first as the lord
+of the manor, the second as pastor of the parish. What
+was to be done? They must surely meet, and then?”
+Jennie was dumfounded from consternation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>“Why, what ails you, Jennie, my child?” inquired her
+father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She found her tongue at last, and said, because she did
+not know what else to say:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You never told me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I explained that I reserved the information for our
+meeting,” gently replied the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How long have you been at Haymore?” was her next
+question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“About twelve weeks. Not quite three months. But
+don’t look so horrified, my dear. If I had changed my
+religion, instead of having changed my parish, you could
+scarcely seem more confounded,” said the curate, with a
+little laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa dear, what made you leave dear old Medge?”
+she dolefully inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Necessity, Jennie. My old rector died——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! Good old Dr. Twomby! Has he gone?” exclaimed
+Jennie in a tone of grief.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear—full of years and honors. It would be impious
+to mourn the departure of so sainted a man. His
+successor was a young Oxonian, who gave me warning and
+put in a classmate of his own as his curate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what made you go so far—quite from the south to
+the north of England?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Again necessity, my dear. I was out of employment,
+and your mother and myself were living in cheap lodgings
+in the village, when I received a letter from Dr. Orton—an
+old friend of my father, who had heard of my misfortune—inviting
+me to come with my wife to Haymore and take
+his parish and occupy his parsonage for a year, during
+which he was ordered by his physician to travel for his
+health. I gratefully accepted the offer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And how do you like it, papa?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very much, my dear. The rectory is a beautiful old
+house, very conveniently fitted with all modern improvements
+and very comfortably furnished. The house is covered
+with ivy and the porches with climbing plants. There
+is a luxuriant old garden, full of flowers and herbs and
+all kinds of fruits and vegetables that our climate will grow,
+and there is a lawn with old oak trees.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>“How lovely!” impulsively exclaimed Jennie. But then
+her face fell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, it is lovely,” assented the minister, who had not
+noticed the change in his child’s countenance. “And I like
+it so well that I shall grieve to leave it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, but you are sure of it for a twelvemonth!” exclaimed
+Jennie, eager to please her father, yet again stopping
+short at the sudden memory of what must meet him
+at Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, my dear. I am not sure of the place for a
+month even. Orton has heart disease, and, though he may
+live for months or years, he may drop dead at any moment.
+He may be dead now. And in such a case, you see, the
+very same thing that happened to me at Medge would
+happen again at Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How, papa?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If Orton should die, his successor would turn me adrift,
+to put in my place some friend of his own.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who has the appointing of the incumbent? The bishop
+of the diocese or some nobleman?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Neither. The living is attached to Haymore Manor, and
+is in the gift of the new squire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the gift of the new squire, and that squire Kightly
+Montgomery under a new name!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The thought of this complication turned Jennie pale. In
+her dismay and confusion, she could settle upon but one
+course—the course she had thought of all along—to tell her
+father everything; every single fact she knew concerning
+Kightly Montgomery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister was now watching her curiously, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To cover her distress, she asked the first question that
+came into her head, and not an irrelevant one:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Were the terms favorable upon which you agreed to
+take this parish for a year, papa?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, yes, I suppose so. The living is worth six hundred
+pounds a year, and Orton gives me two hundred, with
+the use of the rectory.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you do all the work for one-third of the salary?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear; and I am very glad to do it. And there
+are hundreds of capable clergymen in England who would
+be glad to do it for one-sixth of the salary.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Mr. Campbell suddenly became conscious that he
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>was talking too freely of private matters in a crowded car.
+He looked about him. But every one seemed too sleepy to
+attend to him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The woman with the three babies was sound asleep, as
+was her brood, and the group reminded the curate of a fat,
+cozy pussy cat and her kittens.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The woman with the bundles was nodding, catching herself,
+gripping her parcels and nodding again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were the nearest passengers to the curate and his
+daughter, and had evidently not been listening to the conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The express had been running on a long while without
+stopping, but now, about noon, the steam horn shrieked
+again and the train drew into the station of a large
+manufacturing town, stopped two minutes and roared on again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The swift motion of the train, that sent nearly all the
+grown people to nodding and all the children to sleep,
+seemed to have so overpowered the nerves of Jennie’s young
+baby as to steep it into a deep stupor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The little mother at length grew anxious.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t you think baby sleeps too soundly, papa?” she
+inquired uneasily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, my dear! She is all right. She will sleep
+until we get home and then wake up as bright as a daisy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ten minutes for refreshments!” shouted the guard at
+the window, as he climbed along on the outside of the carriage,
+while the train drew into the station of another large
+town.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you get out, Jennie?” inquired her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No papa dear, I would much rather not,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then take the baby while I go,” he said, carefully
+placing the little one on her lap within her arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, what shall I bring you, dear?” he next inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A cup of tea and a biscuit, papa, nothing more,” replied
+Jennie, who remembered the slender purse of the curate,
+who could ill afford the journey to Liverpool and back with
+his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She had ten pounds left of her own, but did not dare to
+offer them to her father, whose very poverty made him sensitive.
+She meant, however, when she should reach the parsonage,
+to put that little fund, through her mother’s agency,
+into the general household expenses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>Mr. Campbell left the carriage and went across to the
+refreshment rooms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie’s fellow passengers of the second class did not
+leave their seats, but took out luncheon baskets, and soon the
+air was full of the sound of popping ginger beer or ale or
+porter bottles, while bread and cheese and beef were laid out
+on laps covered with brown wrapping paper for a tablecloth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The woman with the babies and the woman with the bundles,
+who sat opposite to Jennie and seemed to be friends,
+drew the cork of brown stout—one holding the bottle, and
+the other pulling the screw with all her might.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the mother filled a little thick glass tumbler with
+the foaming porter and held it to Jennie, saying kindly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Drink it, dearie. It’ll do ’ee good; ’specially as ye’re
+nussing a young babe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie, touched by the kindness, smiled her sweetest and
+thanked her neighbor, explaining that her heart was weak
+and that she could not bear strong porter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I hope your good man will bring ’ee some light
+wine,” replied the woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The gentleman with me is my father,” said Jennie, glad
+to make this explanation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your fey—— And the grandfeyther o’ the bairn?”
+exclaimed the woman, opening her eyes with astonishment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, it’s wonderful! He didn’t look a day over twenty-five.
+Do he, now, M’riah?” she said, appealing to her companion
+of the bundles.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He don’t that,” replied the latter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But here the three babies became clamorous for something
+to eat, and the two women turned their attention to
+them. And though this party had been nibbling cake or
+candy, more or less, during the whole journey, as is too
+much the custom of their class, yet now they all ate as if
+they had fasted since breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell reappeared with a little tray in his hand,
+on which was arranged a cup of tea, a small plate of cream
+toast, and another plate with the wing of a roast chicken,
+which he placed on the vacant seat, while he relieved Jennie
+of her sleeping babe.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, dear papa, to think that you should remember my
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>taste for milk toast and chicken, and bring them to me!
+This is killing the fatted calf, indeed,” said Jennie gratefully
+as she took the tray upon her lap.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell then sat down on the vacant seat with the
+baby in his arms; but he made no reply except by a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The train started.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, dear,” said Jennie, “we are carrying off the crockery
+ware!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all,” replied the father. “The return train will
+bring them back and leave them at this station. Such is the
+arrangement.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then my mind is easy. Did you get anything to eat,
+papa dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes; a slice of cold beef and a cup of coffee while
+they were fixing up your tray.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am glad,” said Jennie; and she gave her attention to
+her tray, and exhibited such a healthy appetite that not a
+crumb or a drop was left when she finished her meal and
+put the little service under the seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The train rushed on, nor stopped again until nearly sunset,
+when it ran in at the station of York.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here the father and daughter got off to take a branch line
+to Chuxton, the nearest railway station to Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Willingly would the curate have stayed here overnight to
+show his daughter the great cathedral city, which she had
+never seen, had not two good reasons prevented—first, his
+poverty, which could not bear the expense; secondly, the
+anxiety of the wife and mother at home to see her long-absent
+daughter, which, he knew, could not tolerate the delay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Some day we will return to see this ancient city, my
+dear; but to-day we must hurry home to your mother,” he
+said as he led her into the waiting-room to stay till their
+train should be ready to start.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There the “little angel” awoke in no angelic temper, but
+impatient to be nursed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie took her into the dressing-room, where she attended
+to all her needs, and presently brought her back
+smiling and good-natured to the arms of her grandfather.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I foresee what an idol the grandmother will make of
+this little one,” he said as he received her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The idea of calling my pretty young mamma a grandmother!
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>It is well she is not a woman of fashion, or she
+would be disgusted,” said Jennie, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As it is, she will be delighted,” said her father, looking
+curiously at his child. He was very pleasantly disappointed
+in Jennie. He had feared to meet in her a heartbroken
+woman—a forsaken wife, whom none of her “old blessings”
+of father and mother, home and family affection, could possibly
+console—and he found a daughter who had let go the
+unfaithful husband and comforted herself with her unoffending
+babe, and meant even to enjoy herself with her
+parents at the parsonage in the performance of every filial,
+maternal and domestic duty. And that this disposition was
+not forced, but was natural, might be seen and heard in her
+contented countenance and frequent laugh. Even now, if
+the thought would recur that the curate’s temporary parish
+lay in the manor of Haymore, and the reigning or pretending
+squire was Kightly Montgomery, still, upon later reflection,
+she felt so much confidence in the wisdom and
+goodness of her father that she dismissed all dread of any
+fatal or even serious result of his meeting with her husband.
+And for one circumstance Jennie felt glad and grateful,
+namely, for the change of residence from Medge, where
+everybody had known her from childhood, and might, therefore,
+wonder and ask questions why the curate’s married
+daughter should return home to live without her husband—since
+it was clear from her dress that she was not a
+widow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No such wonder could be excited at Haymore; no such
+questions asked. The people were strangers. They had
+taken their temporary pastor upon well-merited trust, and
+his family history was unknown to them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As for the other matter connected with Kightly Montgomery,
+she would tell her father everything, and he would
+know what to do.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery, she knew, never by any chance entered
+a church, so her father would never see him there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As for the curate, when she should have told him who
+the new squire really was, it was unlikely that Mr. Campbell
+would feel disposed to make a clerical call at the manor
+house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Under the divine Providence she would leave everything
+to her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>While the father and daughter were still chatting pleasantly
+together a door was flung open and a voice was heard
+announcing:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Train for Chuxton.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my child,” said Mr. Campbell, rising with the
+baby on his arms and crossing the room, followed by Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They went out to the train and entered the second-class
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In five minutes, after they were comfortably seated, the
+train was off, speeding away from the old cathedral city in
+a northerly direction across the moors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sun had not yet set, though it was on the edge of the
+horizon. Jennie fixed her eyes on the vastness of the brown
+moor that stretched, or rather rolled, away in all directions
+to meet the horizon. It reminded her of the sea. It seemed
+a boundless ocean, enchanted into stillness; for not a breath
+of air disturbed the motionless heather, and not a hamlet or
+a farmhouse broke the illusion. No doubt there were farms
+and villages not far off, but they were in the hollows, out
+of sight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Jennie turned from the window to look at her
+baby. The little one was fast asleep again; so was the
+curate, who had been traveling all night and all day, for
+twenty-four hours. He had his arms so securely wound
+around the sleeping child that Jennie forbore to take it
+away, lest she should disturb their rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sun set; twilight faded; yet the train sped on over
+the moor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Jennie observed twinkling lights before her
+that seemed to be on the edge of the horizon. As the train
+sped on toward those lights she recognized them as belonging
+to a station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the steam horn shrieked and waked up all the passengers,
+and the guide shouted:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Chuxton!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here we are, my dear,” said the curate, waking up as
+the train stopped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were but few passengers who got out here, and
+there were all sorts of conveyances waiting for them, from
+donkey carts to fine coaches.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How far are we from Haymore, papa?” inquired Jennie
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>as her father led her from the train to the waiting-room
+of the station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ten miles, my dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is there a stagecoach to Haymore?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, my dear, but I took the precaution to engage the
+fly from the Red Fox to meet us here for this train. If it
+has not come yet—and I do not see it—it will be here soon.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How much expense I put you to, dear papa!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tut, tut! there is a time to spend! Whether there is
+a time to save or not, while there is the least need anywhere
+of spending, I really do not know! There’s the fly
+now!” exclaimed the curate, at the sound of wheels, suddenly
+breaking off in his discourse and going to the door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Nahum, you are on time, I see!” said Mr. Campbell,
+speaking cheerfully to some one in the outer darkness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ay, bound to be, sir, when your reverence had bespoken
+the kerridge,” answered a buoyant voice from the shades.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear! But, Nahum, perhaps the mule wants
+food and water?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not she, sir! She had her oats and her water and her
+mug of ale! You’d no believe, sir, how that lass loves ale!
+So, with your leave, I’ll e’en give her another mug of that
+same, whiles she rests five minutes. No longer, your reverence.
+No longer, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite right. Let us know when you are ready.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate sat down by his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In something less than five minutes the voice of the hostler
+was heard, calling:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right now, sir. Miss Nancy and me is at your service,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Miss Nancy?” inquired Jennie as she arose and took
+her father’s arm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This mule, of course. Nahum is an oddity! His avocations
+are multiform. He is coachman, groom, hostler and
+handy man generally at the Red Fox,” Mr. Campbell explained
+as he took his daughter out to the carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was not a “fly” at all, though they called it so; it was
+a strong, snug carryall, covered all over with a black tarpaulin,
+except the front, which was open. It was drawn by a
+stout mule.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell put his daughter and her child in the sheltered
+back seat and placed himself beside the coachman in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>the front. And the carryall rolled away over the murky
+moor until it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But “Miss Nancy” knew the road, and, if she had not
+known it, her driver did. So they went on in safety.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER IV<br> <span class='large'>STARTLING NEWS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Nahum opened conversation with Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The last of the workmen have left to-day, sir,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The workmen? Oh, the decorators and upholsterers
+who were fitting up Haymore Hold for the young squire and
+his bride.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. All is finished in the very latest style, and
+with all the modernest improvements. And they do say as
+there is not a place in the North Riding aquil to it for
+magnificence and splendiferousness! They do that!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, when are the young pair expected?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That I can’t jest tell you, sir. But Mr. Isaiah Prowt,
+the bailiff, do say as he is to receive a week’s notice of their
+arrival, so as to have the triumphanting arches put up all
+along the road leading into the village and the avenue from
+the park gate to the hall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will make a fine display, Nahum, but an expensive
+one. However, I suppose it will give pleasure to the
+people.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will that, your reverence. And that is not all! They
+are to have tents and markees and pavilions all over the
+lawn, and a great outdoor gala for all the tenants, and even
+the villagers who are not tenants, and for the whole neighborhood;
+in fact, men, women, and children, sir, are to be
+feasted on the fat of the land, and have dances and games,
+and all that, all day long, and at night fireworks! All at
+the young squire’s expense.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will be a boon to the village, where there is never
+even a market day or a fair.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will that, sir. Why, the people have gone stark, staring
+mad over the very thought of it, though they don’t the
+least know when it is to come off. But they are looking
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>forrid to it. For, as you say, sir, they never have anything
+here. Chuxton is the market town, and the fairs go
+there on market day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So they never have a public fête unless it is given by the
+lord of the manor on the occasion of a marriage, or a coming
+of age in the family?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And never then, up to this toime. Such a day as this
+coming on has never been seen at Haymore in the memory
+of man. The old squires never did nothing like it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No? Why was that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, they kept themselves aloof. They never thought
+about their tenants, except to keep them pretty strict and
+punctuous in the payment of the rents. Otherwise they
+looked down on them as dirt underneath of their feet.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let us hope, from the present signs, that the new squire
+will be more genial and benevolent.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He will that, sir. You may depend upon it. And no
+doubt he will have the old church repaired. And you’ll do
+your part to welcome the bridal pair. You’ll have the
+parish school children drilled to stand aich side the road by
+which they come and sing songs and throw flowers? And
+you’ll have the bellringers to ring out joyful peals of
+music?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, certainly, with all my heart. It falls in the
+way of my office to see that the parish school children and
+the bellringers take their part and do their duties properly
+in the ceremonial reception of the bridal couple,” cordially
+responded Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No more was said just then.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie was aghast. She had not thought that Kightly
+Montgomery would bring his deceived bride, who was not a
+lawful wife, to England so soon after his <i><span lang="fr">rencontre</span></i> with herself
+on shipboard. When he had left the steamer at Queenstown,
+to avoid meeting her father at Liverpool, she had
+supposed that he would go to the continent for his bridal
+tour, and return later to England. But instead of doing so
+he had written a letter from Queenstown, on the morning
+of his arrival there, to announce his intention of coming to
+Haymore. This letter he must have posted on the same
+morning, so that it came over land and sea by the shorter
+route of the Irish mail, and reached its destination at Haymore
+before she, by the longer way of the channel, arrived
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>at Liverpool. But why did he think of coming to Haymore
+at this time?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A little reflection told her why. She tried to put herself
+in Kightly Montgomery’s place and think out his motives.
+Then she understood.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery knew certainly that Jennie had
+gone home to her father’s, but he believed, erroneously, that
+she had gone to him in his old parish at Medge, in Hantz,
+where the curate had lived and preached for twenty years
+past, and where he was likely to continue to minister for
+forty years to come.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nearly the whole length of England lay between Medge,
+on the south coast of Hantz, and Haymore, in the North
+Riding of Yorkshire. He might, therefore, go safely to his
+manor house without fear of being troubled by Jennie or
+her people. He could not dream, of course, that the Rev.
+James Campbell had left Medge to become the pastor of the
+parish of Haymore, where his daughter would be with him;
+else he would as soon have rushed into a burning furnace
+as to come to Yorkshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So far Jennie reasoned out correctly the meaning of
+Kightly Montgomery’s course. But there was more cause
+for his false sense of security than she knew anything about.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Kightly Montgomery had not the least idea that Jennie,
+by putting odds and ends of facts and probabilities together,
+had made herself acquainted with his fraudulent claim to
+the name of Hay, and to the inheritance of Haymore. He
+thought she knew nothing beyond the fact of his second
+marriage, not even the name under which he married, and
+that, therefore, she could not know how or where to seek
+him, even if she were disposed to do so, which he utterly
+disbelieved. With his wronged wife at the extreme south of
+England, and in ignorance of his present name and residence,
+he felt perfectly safe in coming to Haymore in the
+north, to gratify his pride and vanity by a triumphant
+entry, with his queenly and beautiful bride, into the village
+and on to the manor house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He little dreamed of the dread Nemesis awaiting him
+there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my darling, why are you so silent?” inquired
+Mr. Campbell, breaking in upon his daughter’s reverie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have been listening, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“But you have not heard anything for the last half hour.
+We have not been talking.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I listened with a great deal of interest while you did
+talk, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you have heard that in a few days, perhaps, we
+are going to have grand doings at Haymore to welcome the
+young squire and his bride.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear, I heard all that.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you think of it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think it will be a very exciting time,” evasively replied
+the young woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my dear, you speak so faintly. Are you tired?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa dear—rather tired.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Take courage, then, for we are near home, where the
+mother is waiting to welcome us with a bright fire and a
+nice tea table,” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa. Don’t mind me, dear. It is a healthful
+weariness that will make me sleep all the better,” replied
+Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the last words were fairly jolted out of her mouth,
+for the carryall was now ascending a very steep hill.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate turned his head again to speak to his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We are entering the village, dear, and the church and
+parsonage are at this end. You can see nothing from where
+you sit behind there. If you could you would see a stony
+road, with paving stones set sharp edge up to make a hold
+for horses’ hoofs, otherwise they could scarcely climb it
+And you would see high stone walls on each side of the road,
+with plantations behind them. These walls, my dear, inclose
+Haymore Park, through a portion of which this road
+runs. On the top of the hill is Haymore Old Church and
+Rectory. There is our home at present. There is an old
+graveyard around the church, and an old garden around
+the rectory. All this is at the entrance of the village, which
+stretches on both sides of the road over the hill and down
+the declivity. All around the manor, the church and the
+village roll the everlasting moors from the center to the
+circumference. There, my dear, you have a picture of our
+home, though you cannot see it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I see it in my mind’s eye, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>All this time the mule was toiling slowly, painfully up
+the steep ascent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie, straining her eyes to look forward, saw nothing
+for a while but the black forms of her father and the driver
+against the darkness, but presently fitful lights glanced in
+sight and disappeared. After a while they grew more steady
+and stationary, and Jennie recognized</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The lights in the village,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>though they were still distant before her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here we are,” said the curate blithely as the panting
+mule drew up before a gate in a wall, all covered with ivy
+or some other creeping plant, Jennie could not see what.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Beyond the gate and the wall was the front of a two-story,
+double stone house, like the wall, all covered with
+creeping vines, but with a bright firelight and lamplight
+gleaming redly from the windows of the lower room on the
+right-hand side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate lifted his daughter and her child from the
+carryall and opened the gate that led between two low stone
+walls, also covered with green creepers, up to the steps of
+the long porch before the house. But some one in the house
+had heard the sound of wheels, for the front door was flung
+open, a small, slender woman rushed out and threw herself,
+sobbing, into the arms of Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my darling! my darling! my darling!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, mother! mother! mother!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That was all they could say, as they clasped each other,
+sobbing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell went on before them into the house, carrying
+the baby out of the night air.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come in, come in, come in! Oh, welcome home, my
+child! my child!” sobbed the mother, as, with her arm
+around the waist of her daughter, she supported her into the
+house, through the hall and into that warm, bright room,
+where a sea coal fire was blazing in the grate, and a chandelier
+hung from the ceiling just over a dainty white cloth
+that covered the tea table, on which a pretty china service
+was arranged.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The parlor was furnished entirely in crimson—carpet,
+curtains, chair and sofa covers were all crimson, which, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>the lamplight and firelight, gave a very warm, bright glow
+to the room, which the travelers had seen from the carryall
+without.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie was placed in an easy-chair, and her fur-lined
+cloak and beaver hat taken off her by gentle mother hands.
+Even in that sacred moment of meeting, the feminine instinct
+caused the curate’s wife to hold up and admire the
+rich cloak and hat that had been given Jennie by her New
+York friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You haven’t looked at baby, mother dear,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! so I haven’t! How could I forget!” exclaimed the
+young grandmother; and down went cloak and hat, disregarded,
+on the floor, while she turned to look for the little
+queen who was destined to ascend the throne of the household.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, smiling at this impetuosity, placed the infant
+in her arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then—but I will spare my readers the rhapsodies
+that ensued.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, everything else was forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Nahum, the driver, remembered he had to collect his
+fare, and so “made bold” to walk into the curate’s house,
+and stand, hat in hand, at the parlor door. As he stood in
+the full glare of the light, he appeared a little, sturdy,
+muscular man, with a strange mixture of complexion; for
+while his skin was swarthy and his short hair, stubby beard
+and heavy eyebrows were as black as jet, his eyes were light
+blue. But the most characteristic feature in his remarkable
+face was his nose, which was large and turned up so that
+his nostrils described a semicircle upward. It was a “mocking
+nose,” of the most distinct type. He wore a suit of
+coarse blue tweed, and carried a battered felt hat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Nahum!” exclaimed the curate on catching sight
+of him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please, your reverence, it is eight shillings, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! Ah! Yes!” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the price was paid and the driver dismissed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Esther Campbell and her recovered daughter were now
+seated close together on the crimson sofa, which was drawn
+up on one side of the blazing fire. Esther had her grandchild
+on her lap and her right arm around Jennie’s waist,
+while Jennie’s head rested on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>“Come, Hetty, my love, we want our tea,” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell put the baby in its mother’s arms and
+rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A Yorkshire woman of middle age, dressed in a blue
+cheviot cloth skirt and a gay striped sack of many colors,
+came in with the tea urn and put it on the table. She was
+a stranger to Jennie, but she courtesied to the “master’s”
+daughter, who returned her greeting with a smile and bow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is our old servant, mamma?” inquired Jennie
+when the new one had left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Julia? She married the greengrocer and left us
+just before we left Medge.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Julia was forty years old at least!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear, and the greengrocer was a widower of fifty
+with all his children grown up, married and settled.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A good match for Julia, then!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Excellent.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Yorkshire woman re-entered the room, bringing in a
+tray on which was arranged hot muffins, dried toast, broiled
+chicken and fried ham, all of which she placed on the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is our daughter, Mrs. Montgomery, whom we have
+been expecting to see for so long a time, Elspeth,” said Mrs.
+Campbell, speaking from her own genial nature and overflowing
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth courtesied again and smiled, but said nothing;
+she was rather shy. She took the baby, however, when the
+curate and his wife and daughter sat down to the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Esther Campbell looked a young, fair and pretty woman
+as she presided over the tea urn. She was really thirty-five
+years old, but did not look more than twenty-three. But,
+then, she had always had excellent health, few family cares
+and no sorrows, except in the marriage of her daughter, and
+even that was a light one compared to what that wayward
+daughter was made to suffer. She was a woman of medium
+height and slender form, for she had escaped the malady of
+fat to which women of middle age or those approaching
+middle age are subjected. Her figure was girlish, her features
+were delicate, her complexion very fair, with a faint
+rose hue over cheeks and chin. Her hair was brown, bright
+and curly. She wore her only Sunday’s dress, a dark green
+silk with a little lace at the throat and wrists. It was put on
+in honor of her daughter’s return.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>The party of three waited on themselves and each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When all were served Hetty Campbell would most eagerly
+have asked her daughter:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is your husband?” but that she feared something
+was very wrong with him and dared not question Jennie on
+this subject in the presence of the new servant.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie had a healthy young appetite, and ate heartily, to
+the great comfort of her mother, who joyously watched her
+plate and kept it well supplied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you like this place, mamma?” inquired Jennie at
+length.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear, on many accounts I like it very much.
+Of course we felt a natural regret at leaving a home where
+we had lived so long that we seemed grown into it, like a
+cluster of oysters in their shells, which to shuck out is death.
+But as it was not our own act there was no compunction;
+and as it was inevitable, there had to be resignation. We
+are happy here, my dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the old friends—the people papa has christened and
+married and comforted and instructed for twenty years!
+For he was there before you were married, mamma.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, it was hard to leave them. But the knowledge that
+we must submit to the inevitable strengthened us even for
+that.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And how do you like the people here, mamma?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very much, indeed. They are exceedingly kind.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth having set the baby in its mother’s lap, and left
+the room to take a new supply of hot muffins from the oven,
+Jennie lowered her voice and inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And the one humble woman among the people with
+whom we are in daily intercourse, and on whom so much
+of our comfort must depend, mamma?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You mean our new servant?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course. Is she a worthy successor to Julia?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A most worthy one. Elspeth—the widow Longman—has
+not always been in service. She has had reverses and
+great sorrows—the loss of her husband while she was still
+a young woman with an infant boy, a boy whom she spoiled
+as only a widowed mother can spoil an only child. He grew
+up, so it is said, not really wicked or worthless, but idle,
+wilful, headstrong, and fond of pleasure and of roving.
+One day the poor mother lost her temper, under some great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>provocation, and told him he was the one grief and trial of
+her life, or words to that effect. He took his hat and walked
+out of the house. She thought he had only gone to the barn
+or to the village, and her burst of grief and anger being
+over, she prepared that evening an extra good supper for
+her boy, that they might make up their misunderstanding.
+But, though she waited long and anxiously, he did not come,
+nor has he ever come, nor has she ever heard one word of
+him since that day when he walked out of the house in
+sullen wrath.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, how dreadful! how dreadful!” exclaimed Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; it nearly killed her. The farm, with no one to
+look after it, went to rack and ruin. She was compelled to
+sell off all the stock to pay the rent, and then to give up
+the lease and go into service. That is Elspeth’s sad little
+story,” said Mrs. Campbell, hurriedly concluding as she
+saw the subject of her discourse re-entering the room with
+the plate of hot muffins in hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But no one wanted any more.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate gave thanks and they arose from the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The mother and daughter reseated themselves on the
+crimson sofa in the glow of the fire, Hetty Campbell took
+the baby on her lap, and the fondling and idolizing recommenced,
+and might have continued all night, but that
+James Campbell wisely put an end to the play.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come!” he said. “I have been traveling night and day
+for twenty-four hours, and am well worn out. So is Jennie,
+though she has only traveled one day by rail. So we had
+better go straight to bed. Listen, Hetty: I have had our
+daughter all day long to myself. You take her to your
+bosom to-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh?” exclaimed his wife, not understanding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you sleep with Jennie and the precious baby to-night.
+That will make you all very happy, though I am not
+so sure about the baby. Only don’t talk all night. Put off
+all mutual explanations until the morning,” the curate explained.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie sprang to her father and embraced him, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa! how good of you!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty, with the baby in her arms, came up on the other
+side, kissed him, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>“How kindly thoughtful of you, dear Jim!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate laughed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There! there! I shall not break my heart for your absence
+this one night, Hetty, my dear. I shall sleep too
+soundly. And the arrangement is on no account to be a
+perpetual one.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth, having cleared away the tea table, was called in,
+and the evening worship was offered earlier than usual.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell in the course of his devotions prayed for
+the safe return of the poor widow’s son. This he had always
+done morning and evening since Elspeth had been living
+with the family.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a great comfort to the poor mother, who one day
+said to Mrs. Campbell:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No minister ever prayed for my poor lad to come back
+before. Now the minister prays for him, I know he will
+come. I see it a’ as plain as if my eyes were opened; the
+maister’s prayer goes straight up to the Throne; the Lord
+receives it, and sends its spirit straight down to my boy’s
+heart, wherever he may be on the footstool; and he will feel
+it a-drawing and a-drawing of him until he turns his steps
+homeward. I know it! And, oh! mem, the one that kept
+me from going crazy with the trouble was the thought that
+go where he would, he wouldn’t get out of the Lord’s world;
+and if I didn’t know where he was, the Lord did; and if I
+couldn’t see him, the Lord could. So I prayed for him, and
+by the Lord’s help kept up.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the prayers were over the little family circle separated.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth went back to her kitchen to wash up her dishes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie kissed the husband and father good-night
+and went up to a spacious, white-draped chamber
+which was over the parlor, and where a fine sea coal fire
+was burning; and there they went to rest.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER V<br> <span class='large'>IN THE SILVER MOON MINING CAMP</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It was the close of a dark November day. Heavy mists
+hung over the gulch and settled upon the mountain stream
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>that ran between high banks at its bottom, and upon the
+miners’ huts that dotted either side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The men had returned from their work and many of
+them were seeking rest and refreshment in the shed dignified
+with the name of saloon, where they paid very high
+prices for very bad whisky, and won or lost money with very
+grimy cards.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One excuse for them was this—the camp was a new one,
+far out of civilization. It had been called into existence by
+the hue and cry of a new and grand discovery of ore in a
+mine which the discoverers christened the Silver Moon. It
+was formed mostly of men who had been unsuccessful in
+other mines. And there was not a woman in it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Three men sat on the ground in the rudest of rude stone
+huts, built up irregularly of small fragments of rocks, and
+roofed with slender logs. There was neither door, window
+nor chimney, but there was an opening in front, protected
+by a buffalo hide—to keep the heat in, and there was a hole
+in the roof to let the smoke out. The floor was the solid
+earth, and the fire was built against the wall. There was
+scarcely any furniture to be seen, only a heap of coarse
+blankets in one corner, and an iron pot and a few tin cups
+and plates in another.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy’s well-ordered hut at Grizzly was a little palace
+compared to this squalid shelter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three men sitting on the earth floor, before the fire,
+which afforded the only light in the place, were unkempt,
+unwashed and altogether about the roughest-looking savages
+since the prehistoric ages. Yet they were three as different
+men as could be found anywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The first was perhaps the very tallest man ever seen outside
+of a show, grandly proportioned, with a fine head, fine
+face, clear, blue eyes, and yellow hair that flowed to his
+shoulders, and a yellow beard that fell to his bosom. He
+was clothed in a buckskin coat trimmed with fur, now much
+the worse for wear, and buckskin leggings and buffalo-hide
+boots. In a word, this Hercules was our old friend, Samson
+Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The second was a medium-sized and elderly man, with a
+thin, red face, red beard and a bald head. He was clothed
+in a coarse, gray shirt, duck trousers, a nondescript jacket,
+and many wrappings of sackcloth and sage grass around his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>feet and ankles, by way of boots. He was our old acquaintance,
+Andrew Quin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The third was a slight yet muscular youth, with clear,
+bright complexion, dark gray eyes and dark brown hair, a
+mocking nose and a laughing mouth. He wore a coarse, red
+flannel shirt, duck trousers, tucked into hide boots, a knit-woolen
+blouse, and battered felt hat. Of course, he was
+young Michael Man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All three of the men lived together like friends in this
+hut. This evening they were all very grave, not to say
+gloomy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Old Dandy Quin, sitting flat upon the ground and engaged
+in unwinding the strips of sacking from his tired
+feet, was the first to break a silence that had continued some
+time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’m gettin’ tired of this yere,” he grumbled. “Here
+we’ve been more’n two months working like mules, and
+never got a gleam o’ this yere moonlight. It’s moon-calves
+we are, all on us. Ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his
+gun we’d ’a’ starved! that’s what we would—’a’ starved!
+We never had no luck nowhere! Leastways, I never had!
+I’ve been nigh twenty years slaving in the mines, digging in
+the bowels of the yeth, working hard and living harder, and
+running like a luny after a jack-o’-lantern, from one grand
+discov’ry to another, but never got no more but hard work
+and harder living out of any on ’em, and now I’m sixty
+years old come next Martinmas, and I’m gettin’ tired on
+it,” he concluded, flinging his rags aside and caressing his
+poor feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dandy, ye poor ould craychur, haven’t ye pit a cint itself,
+nowhere?” questioned Mike in a sympathetic tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, jest eleven hund’ed dollar in the savings bank at
+Sacramento, and that I hev saved up, dollar be dollar, in
+the last twenty years, a-working hard an’ the—Regiment hard, and
+a-starving and a-stinting of meself to do it! And since here
+we have come to this Silver Moon Mine it hev been all loss
+and no gain! And as I said before, we’d ’a’ starved to
+death ef it hadn’t been for Longman and his gun. And now
+he is going back on us!” concluded Dandy in an injured
+tone and with a look of reproach at the giant.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should be sorry to do that,” said Longman, stroking
+his long, yellow beard. “But, Dandy, why won’t you go
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>with me? I will gladly take you. You are alone here and
+growing old. Have you no natural longings to see your
+native country? Come! come along with me!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why can’t you stay here? How do you know but to-morrow
+the stroke of a pick may strike a vein of solid
+silver running down to the very middle of the earth?” demanded
+Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, that’s it! Delusive hope has been the will-o’-the-wisp
+that has led you on from post to pillar for twenty years
+of unsuccess.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, after working twenty years for almost nothing,
+you wouldn’t have a man miss the chance of turning up a
+fortune with the very next stroke of his pick—a fortune
+that would pay him for all he has suffered—would you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, certainly not, if such luck were probable. But,
+Dandy, my friend, your pick has never struck a vein, and I
+think it never will. Be sensible. Draw your money from
+the savings bank, and come home to England with me.
+That sum will be a fortune to you in England, and set you
+up in any light business you may like; or buy you a small
+annuity, sufficient for your comforts for the rest of your
+life. Think of it, Dandy,” said Longman, with kindly interest
+in the lonely man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What makes you so hot-foot all of a sudden to go back
+to England?” demanded Dandy. “A great, strapping, very
+strapping young fellow like you to leave the grand field of
+enterprise to go back to England?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman sighed and asked in his turn:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What brought you here, Dandy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I s’pose it was the goold.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ay, man, the gold—the gold fever. I have nothing to
+say against it, because it has, on the whole, enriched and
+blessed the world; or, at least, I hope and believe so. But
+you, to come out here to the gold country at forty years of
+age, and to spend twenty years of life as hard as the life of
+a convict, in the pursuit of an ignis-fatuus that always
+eluded you, still under the delusion that the next stroke of
+your pick may discover a vein, is to have lost so much of
+your life! Think of what I have said, Dandy, and redeem
+and enjoy the rest.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’ll think of it, Maister Longman. But ye hevn’t answered
+my question. What brought yerself out? Not the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>goold fever, I’ll be bound. I hev never seed ye handle a
+pick or shool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, not the gold fever. I was never fond of digging or
+delving, or any sort of hard work. That was my ruin,
+Dandy,” said Longman with a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ruin!” exclaimed old Andrew, looking at the speaker
+from head to foot. “Well, then, ye are the foinest spacimin
+of a well-presarved ruin as ever I seed in my loife.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My hatred of steady work made me an outcast from my
+home and an exile from my country, Dandy,” gravely replied
+the hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A great, tall, strong fellow like you to be lazy!” exclaimed
+Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, not lazy; but averse to steady, hard, confining
+work,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An’ for that same did the feyther of ye turn ye adrift,
+me poor Sam?” inquired Mike, striking into the talk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, not my father—he was dead; but my mother did.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your mither! Hivenly mither av us all!” exclaimed
+Mike, stupidly staring at the hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I deserved it, Michael,” said the hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Och, thin, tell us all and about it, Sam, dear,” said
+Mike sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Longman briefly told his little story.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see, my father was a small farmer at Chuxton, in
+the North Riding of Yorkshire. I do not remember him,
+though I hope some day to make his acquaintance in the
+upper world. He left this one when I was a very young
+child—the first and only child,” he began.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow?’ Ye’ll be
+looked after, Sam, be the Lord Himsilf, or ilse all the
+howly fathers have taiched me is not true,” put in Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Our neighbors used to say that my mother spoiled me.
+I have often heard them say it to her before my face when
+I was a bairn.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, no doobt, they telled the truth,” exclaimed Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what would the mither say to that?” inquired
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She would only draw me to her side and kiss me, to
+comfort me for the mortification of hearing such words.
+But you were right, Dandy. The neighbors did tell the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>truth. My poor, widowed young mother did spoil her only
+child in her excessive fondness for him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, it was naterel,” admitted Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I grew up a very idle and headstrong boy, fonder of consorting
+with gamekeepers, and even with poachers, than of
+working on our farm. I think if I could have been taken
+on as an assistant by some gamekeeper, who would have
+given me plenty to do among guns and game, I might have
+been contented to stay at home; but I could get no such
+place. Besides, my work was badly wanted on the farm.
+We were not able to hire laborers. My mother, myself and
+one boy were expected to do everything; but I neglected my
+part,” said Longman with a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No one made any reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mother bore with me very patiently for all the years I
+was growing; but by the time I was twenty years old, and
+as strong and tall for that age as if I had been twenty-five
+instead, and when the farm had been growing from bad to
+worse for years, my poor mother frequently lost her temper
+and scolded me—scolded me, a man, whom she had never
+scolded as a boy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, faith, ye desarved it, hinny,” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know I did. But one thing I can remember with
+satisfaction: bad as I was, I never gave my mother what
+she would have called ‘the back answer.’ I never in my
+life spoke an undutiful word to my mother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good for ye, Sam!” exclaimed Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When her words were very sharp and bitter, and I could
+stand them no longer, I used to take my hat and walk out,
+and never come back till night. And she—poor mother!—she
+would have a nice, hot supper waiting for her prodigal
+son, with some extra luxury that she could ill afford added
+to the feast.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An’ she was a good craychur, be that same token,” exclaimed
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, she was good—very good—but I tired her beyond
+her patience. One day the crisis came; the rent was behindhand;
+the bailiff was threatening; there seemed danger of
+an eviction. Then my mother, in her grief and anger,
+turned on me, said that if it had not been for my worthlessness
+the farm would have been prosperous. She had said
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>that so often before that the words had lost all significance
+to me. But she ended in saying this:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘If it hadn’t been for you, Samson, I shouldn’t ha’ been
+brought to this disgrace and poverty. The cost of keeping
+you in idleness would have paid an able-bodied farm laborer,
+who would have kept the place in order. And now I tell
+you, if you can’t work here, you had better go and find employment
+somewhere else to suit you.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Faix, it was harrd on ye,” said Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It was, though she did not mean it. She was half crazy
+with the trouble that I might have warded off from her.
+But, boys,” added Longman solemnly, “her words fell on
+me stinging, burning, smarting, humiliating as a lash laid
+on a naked back. Without a word I took up my hat and
+walked out of the house, as I had often done before on other
+but less bitter occasions; only this time I did not return.
+That was five years ago. I have never seen my mother
+since.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A solemn silence fell on the trio.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently old Dandy inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An’ where did ye go thin? Ye couldn’t hev hed mooch
+money in yer pocket, if there was none to pay the rint.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, I had not a shilling. I walked into Chuxton, sold
+my silver watch for all it would bring, and then took a
+third-class ticket in the cheap parliamentary train to London,
+shipped as an able-bodied seaman on board the <em>Auro</em>,
+bound from St. Katherine’s Docks to the Golden Gate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So it was for goold ye kem, after all,” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all. I never went near the mines in search of
+gold. I drew my pay at ’Frisco, bought a couple of guns,
+a lot of ammunition, some boots, and struck into the wilderness,
+where there was plenty of game and no game laws.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An’ how hev ye thriven? Ye see, I niver knowed ye
+afore we met in the woods last summer,” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have done well. I have been an industrious hunter.
+I have supplied forts, post agencies, miners’ camps and
+military caravans with game. I have saved more money
+than you have, Dandy; and I am going home to old England—on
+a visit, mind you, not to stay—I wouldn’t stay
+there on any terms, unless some one would make me head
+keeper on some estate where there is plenty of game. Even
+that would be a poor substitute for the grand, free life of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>the hunter in these wilds. But, Mike, why do you look at
+me in that strange way?” Longman inquired of the Irish
+boy, who had been sitting with his elbows on his knees, and
+his head held between the palms of his hands, gazing silently
+and steadfastly into the face of the hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis, I’m lookin’ at ye; I’m observin’ ye, Misther Longman.
+That’s so! That’s a fact there’s no denyin’,” replied
+Mike, without removing his gaze, which was becoming embarrassing,
+if not offensive, to the good-natured hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why? What’s the matter?” demanded Longman,
+shifting his position so as to get out of the range of Mike’s
+eyes’ fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matther? Och! he ax what is the matther!
+Haven’t ye just telled us how ye ran away fram yer poor
+withowed mither in her throuble, an’ nivir wint back to ax
+how she windded through it? An’ ye ax me what’s the matther?”
+exclaimed Mike with much excitement.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, Mike, she turned me out of doors.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, she didn’t, Misther Longman. Not aven on your
+own showin’, which was like to be in your own favor. She
+upbreeded you for idleness an’ neglect av dooty. An’ she
+was right! An’ she told yer if ye couldn’t worruk on the
+farrm ye’d betther go and worruk somewheres else. An’ she
+was right again, so she was.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, she was right; and I took her at her word and left
+to work somewhere else.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis; an’ ye were the vagabond av the worruld for doin’
+that same, Misther Longman. Sure ye knew she nivir
+meant it, an’ yez leaving must ha’ broke her heart, and yez
+her onliest one in the worruld.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What would you have had me to do, Mike?” inquired
+Longman very patiently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What wad I hev had ye to do, is it? Why, to hev gone
+to worruk on the farm and mindded yer ways from that
+hour, and hed the rint reddy on pay day. That’s what I
+wud hev had ye to do, Misther Longman. I nivir hed a
+mither; me and me twin swishter, Judy, was orphint childer—born
+so—and nivir knowed a mither. But if I hed hed a
+mither, and she had got mad at me and put me out av the
+front door, I’d ’a’ kem in at the back one. I wud nivir hev
+deserted me own mither—nivir! But I nivir hed a mither,
+and thim as has blessings nivir vally thim. I’m spaking me
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>mind, Misther Longman, and ye may dooble me oop and
+fling me over the bank and brek me neck at the bottom of the
+gulch if ye like, for ye’re twice as big and strong as meself,
+but I’m bound to spake me mind!” exclaimed the Irish boy
+excitedly, digging his hands in his trousers pockets and
+straightening himself up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Give me your hand, Mike. You are a brave, true young
+fellow, and all that you say is right. Now, then, I must tell
+you that I have not neglected my mother. I wrote to her
+before I sailed from London, telling her where I was going.
+I also wrote to her from ’Frisco. I have written to her
+from every available point where I have taken up my abode.
+But I have never had an answer to any letter. She must
+have discarded me, and perhaps married again, for she was
+a comely woman, only thirty-eight years old, when I left
+her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did it nivir occur till ye that the letthers might be lost
+in a wild, onsartin part uv the worruld like this?” inquired
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I have thought of that. And lately—I don’t know
+why—the thought has grown upon me that my poor mother
+may be lonely and pining for her prodigal son. I cannot
+get rid of that thought. It haunts me day and night. That
+is why I have made up my mind to go home and make
+friends with my mother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As if she ivir was anything else but frinds wi’ ye, Sam,
+darlint!” broke in Mike. He had stopped calling his comrade
+“Misther Longman.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I didn’t mean that exactly. I meant to make it all up
+with her, and to her, if I could. To give her all the money
+I have saved, to make her comfortable for life; and then
+come back to the free woods and the free game.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Less ye could win to a keeper’s place in the owld counthry,”
+put in Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; but that’s a dream,” laughed Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Aven so, it’s a dhrame that may kem as thrue as me own
+swishter Judy’s dhrame about her swateharrt that brought
+her all through the Black Woods to find him at last.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t in the least see how my dream—which was not
+even a dream, but a passing thought of a bare possibility—can
+come true,” laughed Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>“Then I’ll tell you!” exclaimed Mike. “Ye know Ran,
+whose life ye saved?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, of course!” exclaimed Longman in surprise at the
+vain question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I only wanted to mind ye of him. Ye know he
+has kum into a great estate?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course, I have heard that, too.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, thin. He’s going to live on it. And if ye be
+in England, and wanting av a keeper’s place, what more
+natural than Misther Hay should pit you over his own kivvirs?
+You thet saved his life!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, of course, the estate has a gamekeeper already.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tare an’ ’ounds, man, and supposin’ an’ if it has!
+Misther Hay wud kape two keepers before he’d lave you
+out’n the cold!” indignantly exclaimed Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know he would do all he possibly could for any of us.
+But it is time enough to think of all that when we get to
+England,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And are you bent on going, Mr. Longman?” inquired
+Andrew Quin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Bent on’ it, Dandy? I can’t help it. Something is
+drawing me. I feel it all the time.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On a visit?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On a visit for the present.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I go with you, sir, and come back with you, if I
+feel like it—though it is giving up the chance of a grand
+future.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But it is making reasonably sure of enjoying the rest of
+your days, Dandy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, mates, if you’ll both be laving, it’s meself that will
+go wid you. The ould fort will be right on our road, and
+I can shtop there to see me swishter Judy, and then I’ll go
+back to Grizzly. Grizzly ain’t no great shakes; but for a
+steady-going old mining camp, that will nivir promise to
+mek a man a millingnaire, nor yet starve him to death, but
+sorter keep him a-going on fair hopes and fair profits, why,
+thin, give me ould Grizzly!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good for you, Mike, my bold boy! We shall be glad to
+have your company, even as far as the fort, if no further,”
+said Longman, clapping his young comrade on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, now, boys,” said Andrew, “I hev hed twenty years’
+experience in these regions, where both of you are, relatively
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>speaking, newcomers. And I tell you, airly as it is in the
+season, there’s snow not far off, and if so be we are bound to
+start, we had better be off to-morrow. What do you say?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’m riddy,” said Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you, Mr. Longman?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I agree with you.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in4'>“‘Laugh those who can! Weep those who may!</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>Southward we march by break of day!’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VI<br> <span class='large'>AT THE FORT</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It was a glorious November morning, not yet cold in the
+latitude of the fort. Though there was a large wood fire in
+the sitting-room of the colonel’s quarters, the front windows
+were open, admitting the fresh air as well as the bright sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The colonel’s wife sat in her sewing-chair beside her
+work-stand at some little distance from the open window
+and nearer the fire, engaged in making a frock for one of
+her younger girls.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy sat at the window with a book in her hand, dividing
+her attention between the open page and the open view.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no one else in the room. The colonel and his
+eldest son, “Jim,” were at the adjutant’s office. All the
+younger children were in the schoolroom under the charge
+of their eldest sister, “Betty,” who was their teacher.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy had been three months separated from her brother,
+and from her betrothed, and under the exclusive care of
+Mrs. Moseley. Quick, witty, imitative and anxious to improve,
+Judy had made rapid advances. She had recovered
+all the half-forgotten book knowledge taught her at the convent
+school, and had progressed considerably beyond that.
+Hearing only good English spoken about her, she had
+gradually dropped her sweet dialect, which both Col. Moseley
+and Mr. Jim declared to be a lost charm, and only occasionally,
+under emotion or excitement, she would suddenly
+fall into it again. She was also better dressed than formerly;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>though again the colonel and his son declared not so
+picturesquely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley had judiciously expended a portion of the
+money left by Mike for the benefit of his sister, and her
+short, red skirt and black jacket had given place to a brown
+dress with white cuffs and collars, exchanged on Sundays
+for a fine, dark blue one with embroidered frills.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The mail came twice a week to the fort, and every mail
+brought Judy two or more letters from Ran; for he wrote
+nearly every day. The desire to answer all Ran’s letters was
+a great spur to improvement in Judy, who, showing all her
+compositions to Mrs. Moseley, begging her to correct the
+spelling, grammar and punctuation, and then carefully
+studying these corrections before making the clean copy that
+finally went to her betrothed, made greater progress in
+her education than she could have accomplished under any
+other circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran kept her advised of everything that happened to him,
+and his latest communications assured her that his cause
+was going on swimmingly, though, of course, there were,
+necessarily, “law’s delays.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To corroborate this, Mrs. Moseley received occasional letters
+from her old schoolmate, Mrs. Samuel Walling, who
+gave her chapter after chapter of what she called this romance
+in real life; how much the hero of it was admired
+by all to whom she had introduced him; how from his dark
+beauty and grace he was dubbed the Oriental Prince; how
+he was taken up by every one in society except the Vansitarts,
+who, in the interests of their late governess and
+favorite, and with idiotic obstinacy, disallowed a claim that
+every one else was forced to admit; last of all, how young
+Randolph Hay had discovered a lovely cousin, and sole surviving
+relative, in Palma Hay Stuart, the only child of his
+late Uncle James Jordan Hay, and the wife of Cleve Stuart,
+a man of fortune from Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Much of this information—all of it, in fact, except that
+which concerned his “lionizing”—Ran had faithfully imparted
+to Judy. And she rejoiced in his present prosperity
+and future prospects.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy had but one source of anxiety—her Brother Mike!
+Three letters she had received from him since he took leave
+of her in September; but these had reached her at intervals
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>of a week or ten days apart, and since the last of these
+three, two months had passed and she had heard nothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were times when she grew very much distressed,
+and felt almost sure that the party of adventurers to which
+Mike belonged had been massacred.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On this splendid November morning Judy, sitting at the
+window, with her grammar in hand, was more than usually
+downcast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First, there was the news that had come to her from her
+betrothed, that he was to sail for England about the first of
+December with Mr. Will Walling, to go through certain
+forms, preliminary to taking possession of the Hay estate
+and ousting the present usurper; his absence must be indefinite;
+but he would return as soon as possible—he hoped
+in two months’ time at the furthest. That news depressed
+the girl very much; but that was not all. The mail that
+brought Ran’s letter brought none from Mike. It was at
+least her twentieth disappointment, but she felt it as bitterly
+as if it had been her first.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, Judy?” at length inquired the colonel’s
+wife, noticing the dejected countenance of her
+protégée.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, it’s about Mike! I am sure the Indians
+must have—— Oh, ma’am, I can’t spake it!” the girl answered,
+breaking off with a sob.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My poor child, there is really no cause for such keen
+anxiety. Your brother and his party have gone far beyond
+the mail route in their search for silver. He cannot send
+a letter to you from his present camp, except by the chance
+of some one returning toward the mail routes. Be patient
+and hopeful, Judy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do try, ma’am; but it is awful to lose one’s brother in
+such a—void!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is no void in which any creature can be lost,
+Judy; for the Creator is everywhere, and He is our Father
+as well, and none of His children can stray out of His presence.
+It must be dreadful to have any beloved one disappear
+mysteriously, but it is certain that the Lord knows
+where he or she is, and will take care of His child, living
+or dead!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I believe that, ma’am,” said Judy, trying to rally her
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>She returned to the study of her book; but her thoughts
+were too distracted for concentration, and her eyes wandered
+from the page to the open window. The great gates of the
+fort were directly in front of the colonel’s quarters and
+about a hundred yards distant.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Judy, looking out toward them, dropped her
+book, started up and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why! What!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then she stopped and gazed through the window.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is it, my child?” inquired the lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A strange officer, ma’am, and several strange soldiers
+coming in at the gate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley laid down her work and came and joined
+Judy at the window.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A small troop of horsemen, about ten men in all, with
+an officer at their head, marched through the gate, wheeled
+to the right, and rode up to the adjutant’s quarters, where
+they all dismounted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The officer, attended by an orderly, went into the office.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The men remained outside, standing by their horses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What does it mean, ma’am, do you think?” inquired
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know. It may be some small reinforcement on
+their way to some other fort. We shall hear when the
+colonel comes in.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As the lady spoke the orderly came out of the adjutant’s
+office and spoke to the dismounted men, who immediately
+dispersed, leading their horses away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The two women stood a few minutes longer at the window,
+and then, as there was nothing more to be learned by
+looking out, each returned to her employment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Even after that, Judy continued to glance from her lesson
+in syntax, through the open window that commanded the
+great gates and a broad sweep of the fort grounds; but
+nothing occurred to reward her vigilance or satisfy her
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length she grew tired of watching, and gave her undivided
+attention to her lesson.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Two hours passed, and the colonel might have been seen
+coming from the adjutant’s office to his own quarters, with
+a brisk step and a radiant face, with full twenty years taken
+off his fifty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>“Good news, Dolly, my dear!” he said, bursting into the
+sitting-room. “Good news! Dispatches from Washington.
+Call all the children together to hear the good news.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go, Judy, dear, and bring them,” exclaimed Mrs. Moseley
+in eager anticipation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy flew to do her bidding, and soon the room was filled
+with the progeny of the military patriarch.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where’s Jim?” demanded the colonel, looking around.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here I am, father,” said the eldest son, entering the
+room at that moment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And Betty?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here, father, behind you. So close to you that you can’t
+see me!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And Baby Lu?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Right there between your feet, father. If you look down
+you will see her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hadn’t you better call the roll, dad? Then you will be
+sure that we are all here!” cried Master Clin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hold your tongue, you young scamp, and listen!” exclaimed
+the colonel, laughing. Then turning to his wife
+gravely, almost tearfully, he said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dolly, my dear, it has come at last! It has been a long
+time coming. I have got my promotion and six months’
+leave!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley jumped from her chair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Moses! Moses! I am so glad! So thankful! I
+never expected it in our lifetime—never! I looked that we
+should live and die among the frontier forts, with no change
+but from one to another. Oh, thank Heaven! Thank
+Heaven!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Maj. Lawson will succeed me in command here. Capt.
+King, who brought the dispatches, remains here with the
+ten new recruits who are to take the places of as many of
+our soldiers whose terms of service are drawing to a close.
+There, children, there is my good news. Now be off with
+you and rollic over it!” he added, turning to the young
+people.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! father dear, are we really going East? Really
+going to the cities and to civilization?” breathlessly demanded
+Betty, thinking this news much too good, too wonderful
+to be true.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>And the faces of all the other children eagerly seconded
+their elder sister’s question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Really and truly, my dear ones. And my pleasure in
+going is immeasurably heightened by the joy the anticipation
+of the change gives you all. Now run away; I wish to
+speak to your mother,” he said, smiling on them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tell us one thing, dad, do!” said Master Clinton.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, what is it, my boy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When are we going?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In a very few days. I cannot tell you yet what day.
+Now run away.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The boy scampered off, and his army of brothers and
+sisters followed him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy also would have left the room, but Mrs. Moseley
+stopped her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Stay, my dear girl. We only sent the children away that
+they might give vent to their joy in the open air, as you hear
+them doing. Now, Moses!” said the lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear, it is only this: King will dine with us
+to-day, and I have invited Lawson, and Hill, and Perry to
+meet him. Is it too late to make some suitable addition to
+our family spread?” anxiously inquired the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! no, not if we put back the dinner an hour. There
+is a fine haunch of venison, a buffalo tongue, and a bunch
+of prairie fowl that I have just bought from an Indian.
+And then I will open my preserve jars in honor of the occasion,
+though I did not intend to touch them until Christmas.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are a tower of strength, Dolly, my dear, but we
+shall not be here at Christmas. Now I have something to
+do over at the office. I will be back with King a little
+while before dinner,” concluded the colonel as he left the
+room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matter, Judy? You look very grave, my
+dear,” said Mrs. Moseley, who was at last at leisure to observe
+her protégée.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am!” said the girl in a broken voice, being almost
+in tears; “oh, dear, ma’am, it is not that I am not glad
+and thankful for the good fortune that has come to you and
+the dear colonel and the childer——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Children, Judy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>“Yes, ma’am, children, to be sure, only sometimes I do
+forget.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, you were saying——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am, I was saying I am glad and thankful to
+the Lord and all the saints for the blessing and the prosperity
+that have come to you; but, but, but——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But what, Judy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The girl did not answer, but burst into tears and sobbed
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy! Judy! Judy! What is all this? Are you crying
+because you are doubtful of what is to become of you?”
+tenderly inquired the lady, laying her hand on the girl’s
+curly, dark hair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s the parting with yeez a’, ma’am! And the thought
+what will I do at all, at all, when ye lave this! Oh, sure
+it is a silfish wretch that I am to be graiving for meself,
+instid of rejoicing with yeez!” wept the girl, backsliding
+hopelessly into her dialect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy, dear, do you think we would leave you behind?
+No, dear, not one of us would think of such a cruel thing.
+We must take you with us, Judy, my poor child!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, sure and it’s a hivinly angel av goodness ye
+are and always was, and meself always said it. And I’d go
+with you, willing, and glad, and grateful, only there’s me
+poor Mike. If Mike should write to me, or come to see
+me, what wud he do not to find me?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My girl, we would leave word with the adjutant to forward
+any letters that might come for you, and if your
+brother should appear in person, to tell him where you were
+to be found. There! will that do? And remember we are
+going to New York, and you will see Ran before he sails
+for England. Come, now! will that do?” archly inquired
+the colonel’s wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yis, ma’am! Yis, sure!” exclaimed Judy, her eyes
+sparkling through her tears. “And sure meself will be
+the thankful craychur!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Creature, Judy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So it is! Creature, ma’am, thank you, and I will learn
+after a while.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley then left the sitting-room and went to the
+kitchen to give directions to the soldier’s wife who filled the
+place of her cook.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>Judy laid aside her book and began to put the room in
+order for the visitors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Punctually at about fifteen minutes before the dinner
+hour the colonel came in with Capt. King, a fine, tall, stalwart-looking
+man with dark complexion, black hair and
+mustache, and about thirty-five years of age. He introduced
+the strangers to Mrs. Moseley, who received him
+cordially, and to “Miss Man,” who only bowed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were soon joined by the major, the adjutant and
+the surgeon, and then all went in to dinner. Judy scarcely
+opened her lips in speech during the meal, for fear of falling
+into her dialect. The impromptu dinner party passed
+off very successfully, and the evening passed gayly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day being Tuesday, preparations for leaving
+the fort were commenced by the colonel and his family.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They fixed the ensuing Monday for their departure.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley, in the midst of her packing, found time
+to write to her friend, Augusta Walling, announcing their
+return to the East, and asking her to find a large furnished
+house suitable to their large family and moderate income,
+somewhere in an inexpensive suburb of New York, and to
+have it ready for them to enter on their arrival, to save the
+cost of going to a hotel with their numerous party.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Every one was happy except Judy, who was grieving to
+go away without having heard from her missing brother,
+even though she was going where she would be sure to meet
+her betrothed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With distressful anxiety she watched for the one remaining
+mail that would come in before they would leave the
+fort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Thursday, the next mail day, came and brought her letters
+from Ran, telling her of the progress of his business
+and the passing of his time, and that he had at length
+secured apartments in the same building with his cousins,
+and had left his hotel to establish himself there until he
+should sail for England.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy was satisfied so far as her lover was concerned; but
+she was so bitterly disappointed and distressed at not getting
+any news of her brother by this last mail that she felt
+as if her last hope for him had died out, almost as if she
+might mourn him as dead, and she went away to her own
+tiny room to have her cry out by herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>Then she wrote a long letter addressed to her brother, in
+which she explained to him the necessity of leaving the
+fort with the colonel’s family, and begging him to write to
+her or come and see her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This she placed in the adjutant’s hands, begging him to
+give it to Mike if he should come to the fort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By Friday night all the preparations for departure were
+completed. It had been a heavy week’s work to get ready a
+family of fifteen for a removal and a long journey, but the
+task was finished at last, and the colonel said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We may now take two Sabbaths’ rest, the Jewish and
+the Christian, before setting out on our pilgrimage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And that night the whole family went to bed tired enough
+to enjoy the two days’ rest to come.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day—Saturday—was a beautiful day, clear,
+and bright, and mild. Fine fires were burning in all the
+fireplaces, but all the windows were open.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley was distributing to the few soldiers’ wives
+that were in the camp many household articles that she
+would not want. Also she was receiving informal visits
+from officers’ wives, who were sorry to have her leave the
+fort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy, having nothing on earth to do, was walking up
+and down on the piazza of the colonel’s quarters, thinking
+of her brother, Mike, and his too probable fate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On this day, people were coming in and going out of
+the fort gates continually; but Judy took no notice of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently there came through the gates another troop—not
+a troop of horse as on the preceding Monday, but a
+very small troop on foot, consisting of some half a dozen
+of the most ragged, dirty, forlorn and Heaven-forsaken
+looking tramps that Christian eyes ever beheld.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy, pacing up and down the piazza, never saw them.
+She was muttering to herself:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know he is dead, but I shall never know how he died,
+or where he died, or how much he might have suffered
+before he died. And this will be a sorrow to me worse than
+death itself! A life-long sorrow that even me darlint Ran
+can nivir comfort me for.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A familiar voice called in her ear, a hard hand clapped
+her on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>She sprang as if she had been shot, gazed for an instant
+as if she had gone mad, and then, with a great cry, flung
+herself in her brother’s arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike was worn out with his wearisome tramp, so he sat
+down on one of the wooden benches, drew his sister on
+his knees, and held her to his bosom, where she lay sobbing
+in a great paroxysm of emotion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her cry had brought Mrs. Moseley and several other
+members of the family to the door. They saw Mike sitting
+there with his sister’s face hidden on his bosom. Mike
+lifted his old rag of a hat to the lady, who smiled and returned
+into the house with all who had followed her to the
+door. She would not disturb such a joyful meeting. She
+was as much delighted as surprised that it had come so
+opportunely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was some time before Judy was composed enough to
+speak. And even then her first utterances were incoherent
+ejaculations of thankfulness, delight and affection. At
+length she said, falling into her old dialect:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s an answer to prayer! It’s a blissing come down
+from the Mither av Hivin. Oh, sure me harrt was breaking
+in me brest to lave this, an’ yoursilf away, and me unbeknownst
+of whativir hed become av ye!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Wheriver were ye going, Judy?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, sure ye didn’t know! How should ye?” she said.
+And then she told him the situation, and inquired, in her
+turn, how it was that he came so happily to see her, before
+her departure.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That Silver Moon Mine was jist the most misfortunate
+ventur’ as ivir was made! Iviry one of the bhoys as went
+from Grizzly have come back, hed to, ilse we wud ha’ perished
+in the snow there, this winter. What a differint climit
+this is! Why, it’s almost like simmir here compared to
+there. So we’s all going back to slow and sure old Grizzly.
+All, lasteways, ixcipt Longman and Dandy, who are going
+back to the ould counthry.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike, are you going back to Grizzly?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis, sure! Where ilse wud I go?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike, don’t let us be parted! Go with me to New
+York! Ran is going to England about the first of December;
+wouldn’t you like to see him once more before he
+goes?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>Mike hesitated, then he said slowly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure, and I wud like to go with ye, Judy, and I wud
+like to see Ran, but——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, don’t say but, Mike. Draw out the bit of money ye
+left in the savings bank at ’Frisco, and come with us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis, but what the divil will I do before I get to ’Frisco
+without a cint av money or a dacint suit av clothes?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh—I’ll—I’ll—I’ll spake to the colonel’s leddy!” said
+Judy, springing up impulsively and running into the house
+to lay the case before her benefactress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley was all sympathy and kindness, and soon
+devised a plan by which Mike should have an outfit and
+transportation to San Francisco, where he might draw his
+savings from the bank, and repay all advances.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That day and the next, through the kindness of the colonel
+and his officers, the footsore, starved and wearied
+tramps were fed and rested at the fort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Monday the determined miners went on their way to
+Grizzly, well provided with food and drink for their journey
+through the woods.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At the same time a train of ambulances and army
+wagons, containing the colonel and his numerous family,
+the discharged soldiers, with Longman, Mike, Dandy and
+much goods, filed out of the fort gates and took the road to
+St. Agnetta, where they were all to take the train to San
+Francisco, en route for New York.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VII<br> <span class='large'>A GLAD SURPRISE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“I have found them, ma’am! I have found them! And
+they are charming—charming!” exclaimed Ran Hay with
+boyish exultation, bursting into Mrs. Samuel Walling’s parlor
+with the freedom of an inmate on the morning succeeding
+his meeting with Cleve and Palma Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sit down, you excitable fellow, and tell me whom you
+have found. Is it Sir John Franklin and his crew, or is it
+Mr. Livingstone?” inquired the lady, rising and giving her
+hand to the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>“Neither, ma’am; though I would give my life to find
+either if it were possible. But I have found my own dear
+cousins!” replied Ran, dropping into a chair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your Uncle James Jordan’s children? Those whom you
+advertised for?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“His daughter, ma’am; his sole surviving child, Palma,
+and her husband, Cleve Stuart, who is the only son and sole
+heir of the late John Stuart, a rich planter of Mississippi.
+They are a charming young couple, only a few months married.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cleve Stuart?” said Mrs. Walling, musing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, I know him! He used to be a devoted admirer of
+Lamia Leegh. We all thought that it would certainly be
+a match. But I fancy she discarded him in favor of the
+wealthier suitor, your treacherous traveling companion,
+Gentleman Geff, the rival claimant of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If she did she made a miserable mistake. But I do not
+think she did. I don’t believe she ever had the chance. I
+cannot fancy Stuart ever having been enslaved by any
+woman before his lovely wife, to whom he is perfectly devoted!”
+replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! well, I may have been mistaken. He was very
+much in society. So was Miss Leegh. They were frequently
+together. But tell me how you found them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Through that advertisement, of course.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, I know. But how?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Stuart answered my advertisement by coming in
+person to my hotel; finding me out, he left a note with his
+address, asking me to call there. I got that note when I
+came in, and immediately started out to see my cousins. I
+found them in an elegant little flat, their rooms almost as
+charming as themselves. I spent the afternoon with them,
+dined with them, went to the theater with them, supped
+with them, and only left them in the ‘wee sma’ hours’ of
+the morning. And I could not sleep for happiness in the
+thought of having found my kindred, and such delightful
+kindred! Then as soon as possible this morning I came to
+tell you the good news.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to hear it, Mr. Hay! I have lost sight
+of Mr. Stuart for the last six months.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is just as long as they have been married. They
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>were married on the first of May last, and spent the whole
+season at some place up the Hudson, and have only been in
+town for a few weeks. And I do not think she knows a
+soul here!” said Ran with a pleading look in his soft, dark
+eyes that said as plainly as words could have spoken:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Won’t you please to take the dear little one under your
+wing?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling replied just as if he had spoken his plea.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, certainly, I will call on Mrs. Stuart with great
+pleasure if you will give me her address.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When? Oh, when?” demanded Ran with more eagerness
+than politeness. And then suddenly remembering
+himself he said: “Oh, I beg pardon.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, any time—this week, to-morrow, to-day, if you
+like. Yes, to-day, it will be just as convenient as any other
+day. Will you escort me, Mr. Hay?” said the lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, with the greatest pleasure and gratitude, ma’am.
+You are very kind.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling touched a bell, which brought a servant to
+the room. She ordered her carriage to be brought to
+the door, and then turning to young Hay, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you will remain here until I put on my bonnet and
+wraps I will not keep you long.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran rose and bowed, and Mrs. Walling left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Twenty minutes later Ran handed the lady into her carriage,
+entered after her, and gave the order:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To the Alto Flats.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The truth is that Mrs. Samuel Walling was impelled by
+curiosity as well as by neighborly kindness in thus promptly
+going to call on Mrs. Cleve Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A half hour’s drive brought them to the flats.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Leaving Mrs. Walling in the carriage, but taking her
+card, he entered the office of the house and gave it, with his
+own, to the janitor’s boy, who took them upstairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In five minutes the boy came down and reported that
+Mrs. Cleve Stuart was at home, and would the gentleman
+and lady come up?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran returned to the carriage, assisted Mrs. Walling to
+alight, and conducted her into the house; they entered the
+elevator and were soon “landed” at the door of the private
+hall leading into the Stuarts’ suite of apartments.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The boy opened the parlor door and they entered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>Palma, neatly dressed in her well-worn, best suit of crimson
+cashmere, with its narrow, white frills at throat and
+wrists, and her curly, black hair lightly shading her forehead,
+arose from her chair and came forward with shy grace
+to receive her visitors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is Mrs. Samuel Walling, dear Cousin Palma. She
+does me the honor to be my good friend. Mrs. Walling, my
+cousin, Mrs. Cleve Stuart,” said Ran, going through the introduction
+as well as he could.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma put out her hand shyly, half in doubt whether she
+should do so or not, and murmured:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to see you, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Mrs. Walling took her hand with a frank and cordial
+smile and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am delighted to know you! I should have recognized
+you without an introduction, anywhere, from your likeness
+to your cousin here! Why, you might be twins.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In a few minutes the three friends were seated and talking
+as freely as if they had known each other all their lives.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Evidently the two women were mutually pleased with
+each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While they conversed Cleve Stuart came in from his
+daily, fruitless quest after employment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He looked surprised and pleased to see Mrs. Walling with
+his wife, and warmly shook hands with her, expressing his
+satisfaction at meeting her again after so long an interval
+of time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It was your own fault, Mr. Stuart. You should have
+sent an old friend your wedding cards,” said the lady,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We had none, madam. My little girl was an invalid,
+and our wedding was a very quiet one at Lull’s, where I had
+taken her for a change of air,” replied Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will not excuse you, sir. On your return to the city
+with your sweet, young wife, you should have sent me your
+address, that I might have called sooner. I hold that you
+have deprived me of some weeks’ enjoyment I should otherwise
+have had in the acquaintance of Mrs. Cleve Stuart.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I have no more to say, dear madam, but to throw
+myself upon your mercy,” replied Stuart as he seated himself
+near the group.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never mind, my dear,” said Mrs. Walling, turning to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>Palma, “we must make up for lost time by becoming at
+once very intimate friends. Now, will you come and take
+tea with me to-morrow at six o’clock? Not a fashionable
+tea, dear child, at which hundreds of people sip Oolong or
+Gunpowder out of dolls’ china cups, but a real unfashionable
+tea party of ten or a dozen intimate friends, who assemble
+at ‘early candle-light,’ and sit comfortably down to
+a long table—a custom of my grandmother’s that I loved
+in my childhood, and brought with me from old Maryland
+to this city, and indulge in whenever I can with some of my
+friends. Will you come, you and Mr. Stuart, dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With much pleasure, thank you, ma’am,” replied Palma,
+speaking for both.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I want you to meet my friend, Mrs. Duncan, and one
+or two other good people.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you very much, madam,” said Palma shyly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She will be glad to make friends among your friends,
+Mrs. Walling, for she is almost a stranger here,” added
+Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then, to-morrow afternoon, at six o’clock,”
+concluded the lady, and she arose to take her leave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran shook hands with his cousins and escorted Mrs. Walling
+back to her carriage, and would have bid her good-by
+at the door, but that the lady said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come in here, Mr. Hay. I want to have more talk
+with you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran obeyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they were seated and were well on their way along
+the avenue Mrs. Walling said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have heard from our friends at the fort but once since
+your arrival, Mr. Hay! The letter of introduction you
+brought is the last, except a card, I have had from Mrs.
+Moseley, and never has so long an interval passed without
+hearing from her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you answered her last letter, dear madam?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course I did, immediately, and have written one or
+two since. Have you heard from them, Mr. Hay?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not for two weeks! And I should be very anxious if I
+did not know that they must have written. The mails in
+that unsettled region are very irregular, often delayed and
+sometimes lost. That condition of affairs out there explains
+an apparent silence that might otherwise make me
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>seriously anxious. We shall get letters by and by, Mrs.
+Walling, for every mail is not lost.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I hope they got my letters.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They must have received every one, though we have got
+none,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the carriage drew up before the Walling house and
+Ran had helped the lady to alight and escorted her to her
+own door, he would have taken leave, but she insisted that
+he should enter with her and remain for dinner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There he spent the evening, after dinner taking a hand
+in a rubber of whist with Mrs. Walling and the two Messrs.
+Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That same night Mr. Samuel Walling left by the late
+train for Washington to see the British minister. He expected
+to be back in three days.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next morning Mrs. Walling sent out her few invitations
+to intimate friends for her entertainment. It was
+only under certain conditions that the lady could indulge
+in the practical reminiscence of her childhood, represented
+by this old-fashioned tea party, which, when it occurred,
+always superseded the late dinner; and the first of these
+conditions was the absence of her husband, who could never
+give up a dinner for a tea, no matter how abundantly the
+table for the latter might be spread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling’s journey to Washington furnished her opportunity
+on this occasion. So, early in the morning, she
+sent out about half a dozen little cocked-hat notes of invitation
+to some of her old friends not among the most
+fashionable of her acquaintances. And all who were disengaged
+accepted at once. Among these was good little Mrs.
+Duncan, and old Mrs. Murphy, and Miss Christiansen—all
+pleasant people.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At six o’clock her guests began to arrive—only eight in
+number, including the hostess. Six of these were ladies,
+the only gentlemen present being Mr. Cleve Stuart, Mr.
+Randolph Hay and Mr. Roger Duncan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The elegant and luxurious “tea” was as abundant and
+varied as any dinner need be, and much more dainty than
+any dinner can be. It was not a full dress party, nor a
+ceremonious occasion; so both before and after tea there
+was some card playing and much gossip.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Stuart and Mr. Duncan, with Miss Christiansen and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>Mrs. Murphy, sat down to a rubber of whist. Mrs. Walling,
+Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Stuart and Mr. Hay sat near each other
+in a group and gossiped with all their might and main.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan was the principal talker; and after telling
+many a spicy but harmless bit of news, she took up the story
+of her protégée, Jennie Montgomery, and soon interested all
+her hearers in it. The facts were new to them all except
+to herself and Mrs. Murphy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What puzzled me about the young thing was this: That
+while she had lost every particle of respect and affection for
+her would-be murderer, she persisted in shielding him from
+justice. Now, I can understand a woman shielding a criminal
+whom she has loved, and still loves; but I cannot
+understand her protecting an assassin who has aimed at
+her life, and whom she fears and abhors!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Palma’s eyes began to sparkle. She had her little
+story to tell, too. And she wanted to tell it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you know,” she said, as soon as she could slip into
+the busy conversation—“do you know that my husband was
+arrested by mistake for Capt. Kightly Montgomery, and
+held for a murderous assault, until he could prove his identity
+by competent witnesses?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ladies, startled by this information, made little, low
+exclamations of surprise.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your husband was one of the witnesses, Mrs. Walling,”
+continued Palma, pleased with herself that she could contribute
+some little item of interest to the conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! I think I remember hearing something about
+some one being arrested by mistake, charged with something
+or other, and Mr. Walling being called as a witness to prove
+the accused to be some other than the man wanted; but,
+really, now, there are so many sensational items in the daily
+papers that one shoves the other from the memory. So it
+was Mr. Cleve Stuart, was it? Pleasant for him,” said
+Mrs. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And it was really your husband, Mrs. Stuart, who was
+taken to the woman’s ward of the hospital to be identified
+by Jennie Montgomery! I heard all about it at the time,
+but I had forgotten the name of the gentleman who had
+been arrested by mistake,” said Mrs. Duncan, taking a good
+look at Stuart, who was in a fine light for the view, seated
+at the card table immediately under a chandelier. “And
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>there certainly is a very striking likeness between him and
+the miniature of the young woman’s murderous husband,”
+she concluded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then all the other ladies turned and gazed at Stuart,
+who was blissfully unconscious of the severe scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But though there is a striking likeness, there is also a
+very great difference,” resumed Mrs. Duncan. “But you
+can see for yourselves. By the merest chance I have that
+miniature in my pocket.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, do let us see it, dear Mrs. Duncan, do!” pleaded
+Palma, eager to behold the likeness that had led to her
+husband’s false arrest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear; but first let me tell you how I happen to
+have it in my possession, and also to have it with me here.
+Mrs. Montgomery spent the last ten days of her stay in the
+city in my house. The miniature which had been found in
+her possession when the police searched her room, and had
+been used in the vain effort to trace her assailant, was at
+length restored to her. And to show how entirely she had
+ceased to care for the man who tried to murder her, she
+actually forgot his picture, and left it behind in her bureau
+drawer. I never chanced to find it until this morning; and
+as I was coming out, I thought I would do it up and send it
+out to her by mail. So I put it in a small box, directed and
+sealed it and put it in my pocket with the intention of
+posting it, and then—forgot all about it until now. Now
+you shall see it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She drew a small pasteboard box from her pocket, broke
+the seals, opened it and took out a small morocco case, which
+she also opened and handed to Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is a slight resemblance. Only a very slight one.
+I do not see how any one could mistake this sinister-looking
+face for a miniature of Mr. Stuart. Now, do you, Mrs.
+Walling?” said Palma with an aggrieved air as she passed
+the picture to her friend and hostess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is a very wonderful likeness to my eyes, my dear,
+in features, hair, complexion and all—except expression.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And expression is everything. I see scarcely any likeness
+myself,” persisted Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you allow me to look at it?” Ran inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling placed it in his hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>“Now, do you see any likeness between that ill face and
+Cleve’s?” inquired Palma, appealing to her cousin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not the least!” exclaimed Ran on the first cursory
+glance at the miniature. Then holding it closer and gazing
+more attentively he exclaimed suddenly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, I know this fellow! It is Gentleman Geff, as he
+appeared when he first came to Grizzly, before he shaved his
+mustache off and let his beard grow! It’s Gentleman Geff!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Gentleman Geff!’” echoed all the ladies, except Mrs.
+Walling, who took the picture and gazed at it in silence for
+a moment, and then, returning it, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! I see now! So it is! Though the full beard
+made so great a difference that even the likeness did not
+occur to me. Excuse me one moment, friends. I will return
+directly.” And she hastily left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran could scarcely get over his astonishment at his discovery.
+Gentleman Geff, the very fine dude who had seemed
+too dainty for any of the rudenesses of life, yet who had
+treacherously shot him in the woods, robbed him of his
+documents, and possessed himself of his estates, was also
+the man who had attempted the murder of his own wife and
+feloniously married another woman!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But who is Gentleman Geff?” inquired Palma, Mrs.
+Duncan and Miss Christiansen, in a breath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please wait a little, ladies, until the return of Mrs.
+Walling. Perhaps she will inform you, or allow me to tell
+you, who he is,” said Ran respectfully, and even deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling returned with what might be called Mr.
+Walling’s professional photograph album in her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She opened it at a certain page and pointed out a face
+and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look at that and compare it with the miniature, and
+then tell me if the two are not likenesses of the same person,
+notwithstanding the difference made by the mustache on
+one face and the full beard on the other.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She had handed the two pictures first to Palma, who
+gazed for a moment, and then nodded assent, and passed
+them around to her companions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But who is the man?” inquired Mrs. Duncan, while
+Palma and Miss Christiansen seconded the question by their
+eager looks.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>“Friends, he was one of Messrs. Wallings’ clients, but is
+so no longer. He has managed to deceive two astute lawyers,
+to impose upon society, to get hold of a name and an
+estate that does not belong to him, and to marry the most
+beautiful woman in the country and take her off to Europe
+in triumph, while his own deserted wife and child, whom
+he believed he had safely disposed of by murder, sailed with
+him in the same ship, unsuspected by him, unsuspicious,
+also, it seems, of her faithless, murderous husband’s presence
+there. He is an adventurer of many aliases, a gambler,
+a forger, a swindler, a perjurer, a bigamist and an assassin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling paused a moment to look upon her shocked
+audience, and then continued:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is the man. What his name is I cannot tell you.
+We knew him as Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore. You
+have all heard of him under that name, and the <i><span lang="fr">éclat</span></i> of the
+splendid festivities at the Vansitart mansion on the occasion
+of his marriage with Miss Leegh has scarcely died away.
+Jennie Montgomery knew him as Capt. Kightly Montgomery;
+my young friend, Mr. Hay, knew him as Geoffrey
+Delamere, Esq.; and gamblers of Grizzly Gulch as Gentleman
+Geff.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She paused again to mark the effect of her words.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But no one spoke; the women were shocked into silence
+and pallor. At length, however, Ran murmured:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is too horrible!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You know that the man whom society has been lionizing
+for the last six months is a fraudulent claimant of the Haymore
+estate; you should also know that this gentleman here,
+whom I introduced to you as simply Mr. Hay, is really the
+true Randolph Hay, of Haymore, and a few weeks at
+furthest will see him invested with his manor.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan and Miss Christiansen both turned to congratulate
+Ran, who laughed and blushed like a girl at the
+honor due him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Four by honors and six by tricks, and we have beat the
+rubber!” exclaimed Mr. Roger Duncan, rising in triumph
+from the whist table and breaking in upon the gravity of
+the circle collected around the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No one of that circle thought of speaking to the others
+of their discovery through the miniature and photograph.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And soon the company broke up.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER VIII<br> <span class='large'>UNEXPECTED ARRIVALS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>From this day forth the life of Cleve and Palma
+changed. They made friends and went much into company
+through the introductions of Mrs. Walling. They were
+young and innocently fond of gayety, and they were led on
+by Ran, who was liberally supplied with money advanced
+by his solicitors, and who, from being a daily visitor at
+their apartments, had at last taken up his abode under the
+same roof for the sake of being nearer to them until he
+should sail for England, accompanied by Mr. William Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Unfortunately, neither Randolph Hay nor the Wallings
+suspected the impoverished condition of their new friends,
+else they would not have tempted or led the young pair
+into a way of life so much above their means.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As it was, their scanty little fund had to be drawn upon
+for such additions to Palma’s toilet, and even to Cleve’s, in
+the way of nice boots and fresh gloves, that seemed really
+indispensable to them when they went out in the evening.
+Had Palma even suspected their own poverty she would not
+have gone anywhere if it cost money to go there. But,
+unsuspicious as she was, believing, as she did, that her husband
+was in very easy circumstances, she went out a great
+deal; and Cleve, seeing how much she enjoyed society, had
+not the heart to check her enjoyment by telling her the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Only gloves and boots and car fare her pleasures cost
+them. She had two dresses, the crimson cashmere, much
+worn, but carefully preserved, and often cleaned and repaired
+for continual use by the careful hands of Mrs. Pole.
+This was her dress for dinners and afternoon teas. Her
+white India muslin—her confirmation robe, and afterward
+her wedding suit—was now her only evening dress. Neither
+of these were at all stylish, but they were neat and clean;
+and then her boots and gloves were perfectly fitting, fresh
+and faultless.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Every day Cleve went forth to seek employment, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>every night returned disappointed to find himself poorer by
+the day’s expenditures than he had been the day before.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Everything was going out and nothing coming in; and
+yet he shrank from saying to Palma:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We cannot afford another pair of new gloves even,
+dear,” or to do anything but smile in her face when she
+would only ask him to go with her to a lunch party at Mrs.
+Duncan’s, or to a five-o’clock tea at Miss Christiansen’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If Ran had only known their straits as he bounded daily
+up and down the stairs, too full of life and energy to avail
+himself of the elevator, how gladly, how joyously, would he
+have poured into his cousin’s lap wealth from his own abundant
+means, nor ever dreamed of offering offense in proffering
+what he himself, in their reversed circumstances,
+would have been frankly willing to receive from them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he knew nothing, suspected nothing, of their poverty;
+and even if he had known, and had offered to give
+assistance, Cleve Stuart, in his spirit of pride or independence,
+would have refused it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran held firmly to his purpose of giving his cousin a fair
+share of their grandfather’s estate, as soon as he himself
+should be put in lawful possession, which was only a question
+of a few weeks’ time; but he said nothing more about
+it to either Palma or Cleve. He thought they understood
+his intentions, and believed in them, and that it would be
+in bad taste to refer to them again. Besides, he did not
+suspect how dark the future looked to one of them at least,
+and what a source of anxiety it was.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What the young pair really thought of their cousin’s offer
+to share, was just this—that it had been made, not from a
+delicate sense of justice that would stand the test of time
+and opportunity, but from a sudden impulse of generosity
+that might yield to cool afterthought. Neither of them
+placed much reliance on the offer, especially as they had
+repudiated it at the time, and Ran had never renewed it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The day for young Hay’s departure for England was at
+length fixed. He was to sail on the second of December.
+It had been first suggested that Mr. Samuel Walling should
+attend him to England, and introduce him personally to the
+London solicitors of the Hays of Haymore; but, as usual,
+Mr. Will put in his plea of overwork, brain exhaustion,
+want of change, and so on, and, as usual, his claim was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>allowed, and it was decided that he should accompany the
+young heir.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The aged priest, Father Pedro de Leon, having under
+oath testified to the identity of Randolph Hay, had bidden
+an affectionate good-by to his pupil and returned to his
+flock in San Francisco.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was remarkable that while Mr. Sam Walling, the head
+of the firm of Walling &#38; Walling, took all the heaviest responsibilities,
+did all the hardest work, seldom left his desk
+during the office hours, and never left the city except on
+business, Mr. Will, the junior partner, required all the
+relaxation in frequent visits to Newport and Saratoga during
+the summer months, and Washington and even Savannah
+during the winter season. And now it seemed absolutely
+necessary that Mr. Will should have a sea voyage to restore
+the shaken equilibrium of his overtasked mind and body.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That’s just it!” Mrs. Walling said one day to Ran when
+speaking of the trip to England. “Our firm, as a firm, is
+always full of work, yet manages to have a good deal of
+play also; only Sam takes the work and Will the play.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As the month of November drew to a close and the day
+of his departure came near, Ran grew more and more uneasy.
+He had not heard a word from Judy for more than
+three weeks, though in that time he had written so many
+letters; nor had Mrs. Walling lately heard from Mrs. Moseley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran was not of a temperament to borrow trouble. Quite
+the contrary; he always looked on the bright side. He was
+willing to make every allowance for the well-known uncertainty
+of the mails in those unsettled regions guarded by
+the frontier forts; but still it seemed strange and alarming
+that for a month past no mail had come safely through
+contingent dangers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His greatest anxiety now was that he should have to sail
+for Europe without having heard from Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He confided his trouble to Cleve and Palma, with whom
+he now spent every evening whenever they were at home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One evening, about a week before he was to sail, he was
+sitting with Cleve and Palma in their tiny parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve had been reading aloud, but laid down his book on
+the entrance of Ran. Palma was knitting a woolen wristlet,
+the last of four pair that she had been making for Cleve and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>Mrs. Pole, and she continued to knit after greeting her
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran brought a chair to the little table at which the other
+two sat, threw himself into it, sighed and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is Saturday night, the twenty-fifth, and in one
+week from to-day, on Saturday, the second of December, I
+must sail for England.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, Cousin Randolph, I know. And I am very sorry it
+should be necessary that you should have to go—very. But
+you will soon return,” sympathetically replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is about Judy,” frankly exclaimed Ran. “I have not
+had a letter from her for nearly a month.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you yourself have told us of the uncertainty of the
+mails.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, and that might have been an explanation, and
+therefore a kind of comfort, for failing to get a single letter
+in time. But when three or four that I should have got
+have failed to come, it is strange and alarming.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Neither Cleve nor Palma found anything to answer to
+this. They knew and felt that it was both “strange and
+alarming.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let us hope that you will get a letter within a few
+days,” at length ventured Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, you may get one even to-morrow,” hopefully exclaimed
+Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! And I may have to sail for England in the
+most agonizing anxiety as to Judy’s fate!” said Ran with
+a profound sigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But there is no reason for such an intense anxiety. She
+is in excellent hands,” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! but when I came away there was a talk of the intended
+rising of the Indians! Good Heaven! the fort may
+have been stormed and all hands massacred for all I know!”
+exclaimed the youth, growing pallid at the very thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Randolph!” cried Palma in horror.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nothing of that sort could have happened without our
+having heard of it before this. The authorities at Washington
+would have received the news, and it would have been
+in all the papers. Some survivor would have escaped to the
+nearest telegraph station and sent the message flying to
+Washington,” said Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes—certainly. But I never thought of that! It is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>a real relief to me! I hope I may get a letter before I go!
+If I do not, and could have my own way, I would sacrifice
+the passage and wait here until I could hear from Judy.
+But Mr. Walling says it is absolutely necessary that I
+should go no later certainly than the day set for sailing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But if a letter should come we will immediately send it
+after you,” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, cousin, dear; I know that you will do all
+that you can. Well, I have learned one lesson from all
+this,” said Ran so solemnly that both his companions looked
+up inquiringly, and Palma asked:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is it, Cousin Randolph?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is this: If Heaven ever should bring my dear Judy
+and myself together again I will never part with her—no,
+never while we both shall live! Nothing shall ever part us
+again except the will of Heaven!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But how about school and college that was to have prepared
+you both for the sphere of life to which you are
+called?” Palma inquired with some little amusement.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother that! It was all the nonsense about ‘the
+sphere of life to which we are called’ that parted Judy and
+me! And it shall never part us again! We will go to
+school and college, but we need not part and live in school
+and college. We will marry and go to housekeeping in some
+city where there are educational advantages. I will attend
+the college courses. Judy shall have teachers at home.
+And so we will live until we are polished up bright enough
+to show ourselves to my grandfather’s neighbors and tenants
+at Haymore. Then we will settle there for good, and no one
+will ever know that the successors of Squire Hay were first
+of all a pair of little ragamuffins and ignoramuses from a
+California mining camp! Yes, that is what I will do, and
+no prudence, and no policy, and no consideration for ‘that
+sphere of life to which we are called,’ nor for anything
+else but Judy herself, shall influence me! When we meet
+again we shall be married out of hand and nothing but
+death shall part us! When we meet again! But when will
+that be? Ah, me!” sighed poor Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There came a rap at the door, and the “boy” put in his
+head and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The lady and ge’men would come up, sir, which they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>said there wasn’t no call to send up no card,” then withdrew
+his head and ran away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three cousins looked up to see a tall, martial-looking
+man with a gray mustache, and clothed in a military overcoat
+and fatigue cap, enter the room with a slender, graceful
+girl, in a long gray cloth ulster and a little gray plush
+hat, hanging on his arm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three companions stared for a moment, and then
+Ran sprang up, overturning his chair in his haste, and
+rushed toward them, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley! Judy! Oh, Judy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And in another instant Judy was pressed to his heart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, introduce us to your friends, Mr. Hay,” said the
+colonel, taking off his cap and bowing to the lady and gentleman,
+who had risen to their feet to receive the unknown
+and unexpected guests.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, pardon me,” exclaimed Ran, raising Judy, drawing
+her arm through his own and taking her up to his cousins.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, this is Miss Judith Man, my betrothed.
+Judy, darling, these are my Cousin Palma and her
+husband,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was to be thought that the young girl would have made
+her quaint, parish school courtesy; but she did not. She
+bowed, blushed and smiled very prettily. Cleve Stuart
+shook hands with her and said that he was very glad to see
+her. But Palma drew the girl to her bosom and kissed her,
+with a few murmured words of welcome.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Ran presented:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley, Mrs. Stuart, Mr. Stuart.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And all shook hands in the old-time, cordial manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And when all were seated, Col. Moseley in Ran’s vacated
+chair at the little table with Cleve and Palma, and Ran
+and Judy, side by side, on the little sofa near them, there
+came the natural question from Stuart:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When did you reach New York, colonel?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“At noon to-day,” replied Moseley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“At noon to-day, and I see nothing of Judy until eight
+o’clock this evening!” exclaimed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Patience, my dear fellow; I had to find you before I
+could bring her. I arrived, with a large party, at noon, as
+I said; took them all to an old-fashioned hotel downtown,
+where the prices are not quite ruinous; left them all there,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>and went to hunt up you at your hotel, found that you had
+left it, but could not find out where you had gone; went
+back to own place and dined with my family; after dinner
+went out to hunt up the Wallings, with the view of finding
+you, and also of finding the furnished house I had commissioned
+Walling to engage for me; looked in at the office first,
+but found no one there but the janitor cleaning up; office
+hours were over; Mr. Samuel Walling gone home to his
+dinner; got his address; went to the house; found Mr. and
+Mrs. Samuel Walling, who were as much amazed at seeing
+me as if I had been a ghost risen from the dead. In fact,
+they had not got my letter of advice, and, consequently, had
+not engaged any furnished house for my tribe. However,
+they insisted on making it all right for us. They told me
+where to find you, Hay; and then when I said I must go
+back to the hotel to pick up Judy, Mrs. Walling insisted on
+going with me to see her old schoolmate and dear friend,
+and she went with me. Well, in brief, when she met my
+wife, nothing would do but she must take her and all the
+girls home to her own house to stay until we can find a
+home for ourselves. I and the boys remain at the hotel.
+Judy is to join Mrs. Moseley and the girls at the Wallings’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, Judy is to do nothing of the sort. Judy is
+to stay here with me. I am her natural protector under the
+circumstances,” said little Palma, drawing herself up with
+an assumption of matronly dignity that was very amusing
+to the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, my dear lady. It shall be as you please, or
+as Miss Judith pleases; only, I do not know how I shall
+face Mesdames Walling and Moseley without taking her to
+them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will write a note and relieve you of responsibility in
+the matter,” exclaimed Palma, rising and going toward a
+little writing-desk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you have not consulted Miss Judith,” said the
+colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I know she will stay with us,” exclaimed Palma,
+going toward the girl and putting her arms around her
+neck and murmuring:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will stay with us, will you not, dear Judy? I may
+call you Judy, may I not? I have known you as Judy, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>loved you as Judy, before I ever saw you. Shall I call you
+Judy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure and ye may, ma’am!” exclaimed the girl with
+cordial impetuosity; but then, catching herself up suddenly,
+she blushed and added softly: “If you please, ma’am, I
+should like you to call me so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma smiled, kissed her forehead, and then went to her
+tiny desk and wrote the note to Mrs. Moseley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The colonel had but little time to stay, and soon arose to
+say good-night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By the way,” he said, “I had almost forgotten. I am
+the bearer of an invitation for you all to come and dine with
+us at Mrs. Walling’s to-morrow, at seven.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma looked at her husband, understood his eyes, and
+answered for both:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Love to Mrs. Walling, and we will go with much
+pleasure.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley shook hands all around, like the plain, old-fashioned
+soldier that he was, and then went away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There remained Ran and Judy, sitting on the sofa, and
+Cleve and Palma at the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lovers were comparing notes, giving in their experience
+of the time while they were separated, speaking in
+subdued tones that presently sank so low as to be quite inaudible
+to any other ears than their own; so it might be
+surmised that Ran was imparting to Judy his new scheme
+of life for the future.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The married pair at the table with the truest politeness
+ignored the presence of the just reunited lovers, and took
+up their occupations that had been interrupted by the visitors.
+Cleve opened his book and resumed his reading, but
+now in a lower tone, quite audible to Palma, but not disturbing
+to Ran or Judy. He was reading Marmion, the scene
+of the meeting between the pilgrim and the abbess on the
+balcony. But Palma, knitting mechanically, could not
+listen. She was seized with a terrible anxiety that filled her
+mind and crowded out everything else. She had, from the
+impulse of a warm heart, invited Judy to stay, and Judy
+was staying.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But where on the face of the earth was she to put Judy?
+They had in their doll’s house of a flat but four tiny rooms—parlor,
+kitchen and two bedrooms. What was to be done?
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>How could she listen to the story the abbess was telling the
+pilgrim, and the minutes passing so rapidly, and bedtime
+coming on, and no bed to put her invited guest in? And
+there was Cleve utterly unconscious of her dilemma, although
+he knew as well as she did the extent—or rather
+limits—of their accommodation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve finished the canto and closed the book in complacent
+ignorance that Palma had not heard a word of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The clock on the mantel struck eleven. It was a cheap
+clock and it struck loudly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran arose to bid good-night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I really ought to beg your pardon for keeping you up.
+But you will excuse me for this once,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, certainly! Certainly! Don’t go yet. We shall
+not retire for hours. Oh, pray! pray! don’t go yet!” pleaded
+Palma with her curly hair fairly stiffening itself on end;
+for, when Ran had left, what, in the name of Heaven, was
+she to do with Judy? Take the girl in with herself and
+Cleve? Or lay her over Mrs. Pole on that narrow slab of a
+cot that could not hold two side by side?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma had got into a terrible dilemma which she feared,
+by the creepy coldness of her scalp, was going to turn her
+hair white!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She would have been very much relieved if—after the old-fashioned
+New England style—the betrothed lovers should
+sit up all night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, do, do, do stay longer!” she still pleaded, looking
+beseechingly at Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Ran was looking at his sweetheart, and replied
+gravely:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are very kind! Too kind! And I thank you so
+much! But, even for Judy’s sake, I ought to go. She is
+very tired from her long journey. Good-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he turned to go, Judy following him to the door of
+the parlor, where, of course, they lingered over their adieus.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Stuart got a chance to speak apart with Palma. He
+looked into her dismayed face and broke into a little, low
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! what in the name of goodness shall I do?” she exclaimed,
+clasping her hands and gazing appealingly up into
+his face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he pitied her evident distress and answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>“Why, dear, you will have to share your own bed with
+Miss Judy and give me a rug on the sofa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her face brightened.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve!” she exclaimed, “you are an angel of light in
+a cutaway coat! You have saved my life—or reason!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then suddenly growing grave she added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the little sofa is so short, and you are so long!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now don’t look so distressed, dear. The inconvenience
+is nothing at all. And it is only for one night. To-morrow
+I will see the janitor and try to get a room for our little
+friend contiguous to our own, so that she may remain with
+us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart spoke of incurring this additional expense with apparent
+cheerfulness, although his small funds were nearly
+exhausted, and his efforts to procure employment were quite
+fruitless.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he said no more then, for Ran, who had lingered at
+the door over his last words with Judy, now kissed her
+good-night and went away, and the girl rejoined her friends
+in the little parlor.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER IX<br> <span class='large'>PALMA’S NEW FRIEND</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“I will leave you for half an hour to make your arrangements,”
+said Stuart to his wife; and he left the room
+and went downstairs and out upon the sidewalk to take
+the air.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy had thrown herself into an easy-chair and stretched
+out her feet to the bright little fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma pushed the small sofa back against the wall, and
+then went into the bedroom, from which she brought a cushion
+and a rug. When she had arranged the sofa into a
+couch she turned and looked at her guest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy was nodding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma went and laid her hand on the sleeper’s shoulder
+and gently aroused her, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Whenever you wish to retire, dear, your room is ready.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! sure, I thank ye, ma’am. Any time as shutes yourself
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>will shute me,” replied Judy with a wide gape, waking
+up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, then,” said Palma, and she led the sleepy and
+half-bewildered girl into the pretty little bedchamber, where
+she had laid out a dainty night dress for her guest. Judy
+waked up fully in the process of disrobing, and then her
+hostess said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To-morrow you shall have a better accommodation, but
+to-night you will share my room. I hope you won’t
+mind it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Och, no, ma’am. Sure and haven’t I been used to pigging
+in itself?” began Judy brightly, but she suddenly
+checked herself and amended her phraseology—“I mean,
+ma’am, I have been accustomed to close quarters in the
+mining camp, and this is a palace compared to any place I
+have ever seen before.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a pretty little doll’s house as one could wish, for
+dolls,” replied Palma with a laugh. “Not quite spacious
+enough, however, for one who loves space.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Which side am I to sleep on, ma’am?” inquired the girl
+when she was ready for bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Any side you wish, dear. But, Judy, please don’t call
+me ‘ma’am.’ If you do I shall be obliged to call you ‘miss,’
+and I should not like that, and I do not think you would
+like it, either.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Fegs and I wouldn’t! Oh! that is to say, no, ma’am,
+I should not. I should feel it to be cold and unkind of you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then, Judy dear, do as you would be done
+by.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will, ma’am,” said the girl, getting into bed and lying
+down on the side next to the wall and squeezing herself
+against it to take up as little room as possible, “and indeed,
+ma’am, since it displeases you, I will try to remember—never—to
+call—you ma’am—again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The last word was scarcely audible, for as soon as Judy’s
+head dropped on the pillow her eyes closed and she fell
+fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma returned to the parlor, drew the easy-chair to the
+fire, and seated herself to wait for Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He came in at length and dropped himself into the larger
+easy-chair by Palma’s side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy is fast asleep. She dropped asleep first in this
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>chair here, and afterward, when I got her to bed, she fell
+asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow,” Palma told
+him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you?” inquired Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am not at all sleepy. I feel too much elated by
+the arrival of all these people. I wonder what Mrs. Pole
+will think when she finds out that we have a visitor staying
+with us?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Doesn’t she know, Palma?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, no, Cleve. She went to bed before the colonel
+left us, and how could she know that the girl remained behind?
+And I wonder what she will say?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Palma, I think she will disapprove.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you don’t, Cleve?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all, dear. I am glad you took the girl in. We
+will find a room for her to-morrow.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The clock struck twelve, yet still the young couple sat
+talking to each other like a pair of lovers loath to say good-night,
+as any young “courting couple” could possibly be;
+for, in fact, they were now sweethearts. Palma, we know,
+had always loved Cleve; but only since their marriage had
+Cleve been growing every day more in love with his wife.
+So they sat and talked, or sat in silence over the fire, until
+the clock struck two.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, you must really go to bed, even if you are
+not sleepy,” said Stuart, rising and standing up, as much
+as to say, “Here I shall stand until you go.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You turn me out, then?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I turn you out!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma stood on tiptoes to kiss him good-night. He lifted
+her in his arms and kissed her again and again, and then
+set her down, and she vanished through the damask portières
+into the little bedroom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart threw off his coat and lay down on the sofa. It
+was a short sofa with a low back and two arms. Cleve’s
+head lay upon one arm and his legs dangled over the other.
+The discomfort of the position would have kept him from
+sleep even if the apartment had been quiet, which it was
+not.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma’s entrance had waked Judy. The girl had had
+three hours’ sound sleep and had waked up refreshed in
+mind and body, delighted to find herself in such a rare,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>beautiful little room and with such a lovely companion.
+She felt no inclination to sleep more just then—but to talk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A kindly yet indiscreet question from Palma set her
+tongue going, and she talked on and never stopped until she
+had told her whole story.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As there was nothing but the red damask portières that
+separated the little chamber from the little parlor, Stuart
+heard the whole of that story; he could not help hearing it.
+Once or twice he hemmed to let the narrator know that he
+was awake and listening; but that made no difference to
+Judy. She had no secrets. “All the birds of the air” were
+welcome to hear her history. It was near daylight when
+at length she had talked herself to sleep. As for Palma, she
+had dozed through the narrative, though Judy had not suspected
+it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With the first glinting of the rising sun’s rays through
+the slats of the parlor blinds, Stuart gladly arose from his
+uncomfortable couch and went into the little bathroom to
+make his morning toilet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he had finished it, in returning to the parlor he
+passed by the open door and saw that Mrs. Pole had risen,
+tidied up her kitchen and got breakfast well under way.
+He stepped in to tell her about their guest and send her
+into the parlor to set the room to rights. Then he went
+downstairs to take the air on the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole passed into the parlor to hoist the window, replenish
+the fire, and restore the place to order before setting
+the breakfast table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her movements awoke the two sleepers in the next room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They arose laughing and talking, dressed themselves
+quickly and came out into the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole turned from the window she was just closing
+to look at the stranger.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma laughingly introduced the two.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is our friend, Miss Judith Man, Poley. And,
+Judy, darling, this is our dear Mrs. Pole, who is like a second
+mother to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The elder woman wiped her clean hands on her clean
+apron, and then gave the stranger a close clasp and a warm
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, dear, you can go and look after the breakfast,
+and we will set the table. Miss Judith is quite at home
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>with us, and knows as much about housekeeping as we do,”
+said Palma brightly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole made no objection, but left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Palma—and Judy following her example—began
+to take the books off the center table and pile them in a
+corner. Then they folded the table cover and laid it upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma went to the prettiest little doll’s corner cupboard
+that ever was seen, opened a drawer in the lower part of it,
+and took out a white damask cloth which she spread upon
+the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she handed out the china, piece by piece, which
+Judy took and arranged on the cloth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see, dear, what a little casket we live in,” said
+Palma when the table was ready and the cupboard closed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure, darlint, ye are a precious jewel yerself, and where
+would ye be stored but in a casket itself?” demanded Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Stuart came up from below and greeted the
+two young women cordially.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole brought in the breakfast and they sat down to
+the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were scarcely seated when Ran entered, shook hands
+all around, and took the fourth place at the table, which had
+been prepared for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The conversation grew lively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When shall we see Mike?” inquired Ran at length.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! to-day, I hope,” replied Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Does he know where to find us?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He didn’t yesterday! No more did we! And he wint
+with his friends—friends to a chape—cheap boarding-house
+before the colonel found you out. But sure he will know
+where we are by this time! The colonel will have told
+him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While they were yet speaking in walked the colonel with
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All the company arose from the table to receive them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Mike closed hands cordially at once, while the
+colonel was shaking hands with Stuart, Palma, and Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Ran introduced Mike to his cousins, who received
+him heartily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, now, won’t you both sit down and take some
+breakfast with us?” inquired Stuart and Palma in a breath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>“Oh, thank you! I just got up from my breakfast to
+bring Man here,” said the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And meself finished before I wint to his honor,” said
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But do not let us disturb you. Pray, go on with your
+own breakfast,” said Col. Moseley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, we have done!” replied Stuart, while Palma rang
+the bell for Mrs. Pole to come and take away the service.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A few minutes later they were all seated in the little parlor,
+which the company of six nearly filled.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And how is the misthress this morning, sir?” inquired
+Judy of the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! she has quite recovered from her fatigue and has
+gone house-hunting with Mrs. Walling.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And the childher?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! well and delighted with the great city,” replied
+Col. Moseley; and as Judy asked no more questions he
+turned to Ran and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I find that you have had very little difficulty in prevailing
+on the Messrs. Walling to recognize your rights, Hay!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“None whatever, sir; thanks to your strong letter!” replied
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thanks to your strong proofs, rather. Who could withstand
+such overwhelming evidence? But, Hay, in none of
+your letters did you tell us who the rival claimant was, although
+I asked you to do so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I never got your letter containing such a request, sir,
+or I should have complied with it. The reason why I never
+volunteered the information was because the subject was a
+painful one. And, by the way, has not Mr. or Mrs. Walling
+told you who that impostor was?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No. I have not had five minutes’ private conversation
+with them yet. Mrs. Walling may have told my wife by this
+time.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, colonel, the claimant was, not my Uncle James’
+son, as I suspected, but a fraudulent adventurer whom we
+have known as Gentleman Geff.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Gentleman Geff! Why, I thought he had been quite
+killed by the same parties that half killed you, and that his
+bones were buried in the old fort cemetery!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So did I. So did we all. But we were mistaken. The
+body buried in the cemetery for Gentleman Geff’s was not
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>his, but that of some poor victim of border ruffianism, whose
+identification we shall, perhaps, never discover, and Gentleman
+Geff is alive and flourishing in stolen plumes on the
+continent of Europe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tell me all about it!” exclaimed the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Ran went over the story of Gentleman Geff’s crimes,
+already so well known to our readers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley listened with grave interest; Mike with
+open-mouthed wonder, Judy in stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not know why one should ever be surprised at anything
+that happens,” mused the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Bedad, meself is only shurprised that I nivir had the
+sinse to shuspect it,” remarked Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And he that particular about his clane linen! Sure, I
+nivir less would have belaived it av sich a jintleman!”
+sighed Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is the scoundrel now?” inquired the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Somewhere in Europe on his bridal tour,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On his bridal tour?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then he told the story of Gentleman Geff’s felonious
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A fine account he will have to settle!” exclaimed the
+colonel. “Two assaults, with intent to kill, one bigamy,
+divers forgeries and perjuries, to say nothing of the fraudulent
+claim of a name and estate to which he has no right.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I shall not take a single step toward prosecuting him,”
+said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! you won’t! By the way, do you really sail on
+Saturday?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, colonel, really. And, moreover, I mean to take
+Judy with me. Yes, indeed, sir. She is more than wealth,
+and rank, and culture, and every other worldly good.
+Sooner than part again, with half a sphere between us, we
+will get married first and go to school afterward,” said
+Ran, taking Judy’s hand within his own and keeping a close
+hold of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Whe-ew! And what does Miss Judy say to that?” inquired
+the colonel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure, thin, sir,” began Judy—but her face flamed and
+she mended her speech—“indeed, sir, I have consented to do
+as Ran wishes. Why should I not? Absence has tried us.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>He has graived—suffered, that is. And as for myself, sir,
+there was many a time when I could have started to walk
+clear across the continent to go to him just as I walked
+through the wilderness to find him when he was wounded,
+only it would not have been—been—right, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And so you mean really to marry this young fellow and
+go to Europe with him?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis—yes, if you please, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you said out there at the fort that you would not do
+it until—something or other, I have forgotten what.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Until he had seen something of the world, sir, to be sure
+of his own mind—that is what I mint—meant. And now
+it is not as if Ran and myself had only met lately at a party
+and took a sudden fancy to each other. We have known
+each other for years.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, sir,” said Ran, “you must not think that we have
+given up the plan of education; for we have not. I have
+talked it over with my Cousin Cleve here, and settled upon
+a plan, to which Judy has agreed. We will marry, as I
+said, before we sail for England. After we have visited
+Haymore we will go to London, as being the place of places
+where we can live in the strictest retirement, unknown and
+untroubled, until education shall have fitted us to mingle
+with society. After which we will go and settle at Haymore.
+This is the best plan I can think of to keep us
+united. And I will not entertain any plan that is to part
+this dear, true girl from me, even for a season.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Bravo, my boy! Even if I had a right to set up any
+opposition to your wishes, I should not do it. And what is
+to be done with Mike?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mike is my brother,” replied Ran. “He shall share with
+me in any way he likes. He shall go to England and live
+with us if he likes. Or stay here, and enter into any business
+that he may choose and be fit for.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Col. Moseley looked at Ran, and thought him the most
+unselfish, the most unworldly individual he had ever seen in
+all the days of his life.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so Ran was.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The colonel soon took leave, expressing his pleasure in
+the prospect of meeting his friends at Mr. Samuel Walling’s
+that evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, young man, that I have shown you the way to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>your sister’s abiding-place, you will not need my guidance
+any longer. Good-day to you,” he said to Mike as he left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-day, and many thanks for your shivility, sir,” returned
+Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It occurred to Ran then that perhaps Mike, in the simplicity
+of his heart, was staying longer than was convenient
+in the narrow quarters of his cousins; so very soon he
+asked him:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where are Longman and old Dandy staying? I should
+like to see them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, they are at Markiss’, away down on Water Street.
+They’d be proud to see you, Ran. Come with me, and I
+will take ye straight to them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was exactly what Ran wished. He arose and bade
+the two young women good-morning, and left the house
+with his friend.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma and Judy began to think of making preparations
+for the family dinner party at Mrs. Walling’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma took out her crimson cashmere dress and gave it
+to Mrs. Pole to be brushed and shaken, sponged and pressed,
+and looked over her small stock of lace and gloves.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy looked down on her own brown traveling dress and
+said ruefully:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This will never do to wear this evening. I have got a
+pretty dark blue French merino; but it is in my trunk at
+the hotel, and sure it might as well be in Aigypt—Egypt,
+that is.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Col. Moseley will be sure to send the trunk to you,” suggested
+Palma. And even while she spoke a noise was heard
+outside and a knock came to the door, and the janitor entered
+the parlor, followed by a porter with the girl’s trunk
+on his shoulders. When he put it down on the floor Stuart
+paid and discharged him, and shortly after left the house
+on his daily hopeless search for employment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That evening Stuart, Palma, Hay, Judith, Col. and Mrs.
+Moseley, Mr. James and Miss Betty Moseley met at dinner
+at Mr. Samuel Walling’s. A happier party never gathered
+around a table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After dinner the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room,
+leaving the gentlemen to their wine.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>In the drawing-room Mrs. Moseley introduced the subject
+of Ran and Judy’s proposed marriage. She said to Judy:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, we are all friends here—intimate friends, indeed—so
+it is quite proper that I should speak plainly. My
+young favorite, Mr. Hay, has taken counsel with me concerning
+his wish to marry you and take you to Europe with
+him. Am I right in supposing that this is your wish also?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis—yes, madam,” replied Judy, modestly lowering her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, dear, are you willing that Mrs. Stuart and myself
+should make all the arrangements for you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should be very grateful to you, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look here! I am not going to be left out in the cold!”
+exclaimed Augusta Walling, laughing and joining the circle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course you are not! How should you be, when we
+are hoping that the wedding breakfast will be served right
+here in your house on Saturday morning next?” said Mrs.
+Moseley, well knowing that she might take a much greater
+liberty than that with her old schoolmate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will be perfectly delightful!” exclaimed Mrs.
+Walling. “I adore a wedding breakfast at home, and never
+expected to enjoy one until my own daughter, now at
+Vassar, grows up and gets married. Miss Judith, shall this
+be so? Will you place yourself in my hands?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure and”—brightly exclaimed Judy, and then she
+stopped suddenly, blushed and amended her speech—“I
+should be glad and grateful, ma’am,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Mrs. Walling turned to Palma, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you will give me back your guest in time? You
+are rather too young a matron to chaperon a bride-elect,”
+she added with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As you and my cousins please, dear Mrs. Walling. I
+should myself be very happy to serve them, but I will not
+stand in the way of another who can do so much better,”
+replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That’s a dear, unselfish angel!” exclaimed Mrs. Walling.
+And then the four women formed themselves into a committee
+of ways and means, and discussed wedding breakfasts,
+trousseaus and so forth, treating Judy with as much
+freedom, tenderness and liberality as if she had been their
+own child, until the gentlemen came in and the subject was
+dropped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>The evening passed so pleasantly that it was late when
+the party broke up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart, Palma, Ran and Judy returned to their flat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart had not been able to find a room for Judy. All
+the rooms were in suites. One more night he had to sleep as
+well as he could on the short sofa, while Judy shared
+Palma’s bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the next day, toward the afternoon, Mrs. Walling
+came for Judy, to take her to the Walling home to make
+preparations for her marriage on Saturday.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Moseleys,” she said, “have secured a fine old manor
+house at Fort Washington, about fifteen minutes by rail
+from New York. It is completely furnished and in perfect
+readiness for occupation. The family are in Europe, and
+the house has been left in the care of an agent, who has
+just kept it in perfect order. They leave us to-night; so
+you see we have room for a score of young girls, if we could
+find them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma made no objection to the departure of Judy, but
+kissed her an affectionate good-by; and Mrs. Walling took
+the girl and the girl’s little trunk away with her in the
+luxurious family carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Ran forsook the Stuarts and spent that evening with
+the Wallings, returning quite late to his suite of rooms on
+their flat. But, under the circumstances, his cousins forgave
+him.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER X<br> <span class='large'>A WEDDING AND OTHER INCIDENTS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Stuart and Palma were both very glad and very grateful
+that Mrs. Walling had undertaken all the responsibilities
+of their cousin’s wedding. They knew that her means
+were ample, and that Walling &#38; Walling were advancing,
+and would continue to advance, any sum that Randolph or
+Judith might require for their personal preparations. They
+knew also that Mrs. Walling was sincerely delighted with
+the idea of the wedding celebration at her own house;
+whereas, had it been settled to come off at the Stuarts’
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>apartments, Stuart, from impecuniosity, and Palma, from
+inexperience, would have been very much embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling was in her element selecting a proper trousseau
+and outfit for Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She came in her carriage every morning to take Palma
+out shopping with her and Judy. Mrs. Moseley could not
+accompany the party; not because she was a little way out
+of town, for the cars ran all the time and would have
+brought her in in fifteen minutes, but because she was “up
+to her eyes in business” settling her large family in their
+new home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So Mrs. Walling, Palma, and Judy went out together
+every day, until all the shopping was completed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy’s outfit was a very complete but not a very costly
+one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You know, dear,” Mrs. Walling explained to Palma,
+“that our little friend is not going at all into society for two
+or three years to come. The young pair will live very quietly
+somewhere, to advance their education, before they show
+themselves to their neighbors at Haymore; and so she will
+really need little more than a schoolgirl’s ‘kist.’ Her wedding
+dress, of course, must be a pretty one, and her traveling
+dress must be very nice, but the others plain and simple
+and inexpensive.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma agreed to the prudence of all this. And Judy
+said never a word. She left her affairs entirely in the hands
+of her two friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While the lady shopped for Judy she shopped for herself
+as well. But, after a day or two, she could not but notice
+that Palma bought nothing; that she let all the tempting
+goods, so pretty and so cheap, pass under her admiring eyes
+unpurchased.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matter with the young one?” inquired Augusta
+of herself. “Doesn’t she care for dress at all?” Then
+she remembered that she had never seen Mrs. Stuart in but
+two dresses, and very inexpensive ones at that, namely, an
+India muslin, sometimes, in her evenings at home, and a
+fine crimson cashmere for visiting. And then it occurred
+to Augusta Walling that the Stuarts might be in straitened
+circumstances; and her heart was touched with sympathy
+for the beautiful young woman who saw so many
+attractive articles of adornment pass under her eyes or be
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>bought by others without being able to buy one of them.
+And she wondered how she might make Palma a pretty
+present without giving offense.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I hate the rôle of a pretended benefactress. I should
+shrink from such an imputation. Lovely little creature!
+how elegant she would look in a ruby velvet, with duchess
+lace! And she shall have it! Yes, that she shall! And I
+will take the risk of being snubbed and stood in a corner for
+my impertinence.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The outcome of the lady’s resolution was this: After she
+had set down Palma at the Stuarts’ apartments, and taken
+Judy home to the Walling house, she set out on a second
+shopping expedition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The same night, while Stuart was taking his usual walk
+up and down the pavement before the house, and Palma sat
+in her little room stitching fresh edges on frayed collars and
+cuffs, one of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s young ladies arrived at
+the apartment home, followed by a boy with a large bandbox,
+and asked for Mrs. Cleve Stuart. She was brought up
+in the elevator and ushered into the presence of Palma, who
+arose to receive the unexpected visitor, staring a little. The
+stranger merely nodded to the lady, then, without any preface,
+she took the bandbox from the boy, set it on a chair,
+untied, unwrapped and opened it, and took from it a glorious
+suit of dark, bright blue damassé velvet, trimmed with
+satin, and spread it over a chair, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If it is convenient, I would like to have you try it on
+now, ma’am, so that I may make any alterations that may
+be necessary before I leave.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I——” began the wondering Palma, when she was
+suddenly interrupted by the dressmaker exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I beg your pardon! I forgot!” And she handed a
+note addressed to Mrs. Cleve Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma took it in perplexity, opened it, and read:</p>
+<p class='c012'>“Beauty to the beautiful! To Palma Stuart, with the
+true love of Augusta Walling.”</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>Palma was touched, melted, delighted all at once. She
+had never had, nor ever expected to have, so superb a dress.
+She was but a child in some things. She could not speak
+for surprise, gratitude and embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>But the matter-of-fact young woman from the suit department
+of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s went on to say:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We were very sorry that we had not a ruby velvet made
+up, but the lady who gave us your order said that there
+would be no time to make up one, and she selected this;
+and I really think, madam, that this shade of mazarine blue
+will be quite as becoming to your brunette style as garnet
+or ruby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is beautiful! It could not be more beautiful!” exclaimed
+Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you try it on now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma arose and the dressmaker helped to relieve her of
+her cashmere dress and induct her into the velvet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But slight alteration was necessary—the front breadth
+shortened, the sleeves shortened, the side seams of the waist
+taken in—that was all.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young dressmaker laid off her hat and her wraps, and
+took from her little hand-bag needle, sewing silk, scissors
+and thimble, and sat down to work.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Palma, having nothing else to occupy herself with
+while the dressmaker sat there, began idly to rummage
+among the silver tissue paper in the bottom of the big bandbox,
+and there she found another box—a smaller one—which
+she took out to examine. It had her name on it. She
+opened the box and found a fichu and pocket handkerchief
+of duchess lace, a pair of the finest white kid gloves, a lovely
+fan, and a little turban of velvet and satin to match her
+dress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The dressmaker soon finished her task, folded the dress,
+returned it to the box, and took her leave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Palma started up, like the delighted child that she
+was, opened the box again, took out the elegant dress,
+spread it all over the sofa to display its beauties to the best
+advantage, and called in Mrs. Pole to admire it; and when
+that good woman had risen to as much enthusiasm as she
+was capable of—for a suit—and returned to her own dominions,
+Palma still left it there, that Stuart might be regaled
+with the vision when he should come in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Cleve did come in and was shown the present and
+the note that came with it he looked rather grave; he did
+not like presents, would much rather that his pretty little
+wife had continued to wear her shabby red cashmere, rather
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>than be indebted to any one for a sapphire velvet; but it
+was too late to prevent her acceptance of it now, so he quickly
+cleared his brow and admired the dress to her heart’s content.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On that same evening Ran was, as usual, spending the
+hour with Mrs. Walling and Judy. There was no other
+company. Ran had a secret source of distress, and it was
+this—his humble, faithful friends down at Markiss’ Hotel,
+in the lower part of the city. They certainly did not belong
+to the Walling “set.” Conventionally, they were a long,
+long way below that set; yet Ran wanted them to be present
+both at his wedding and at the wedding breakfast, and
+that wedding was to be celebrated at one of the most “fashionable”
+churches in the city; and that wedding breakfast
+was to be given at Mrs. Walling’s. How could Ran ask
+that very fine lady to invite his humble friends? And,
+on the other hand, how could he slight those faithful
+friends? Mike, his brother-in-law expectant, must come, of
+course; that was to be taken for granted, and then Longman,
+who had rescued him on the night when he was shot,
+and who had actually saved his life—Longman ought certainly
+to come. And, finally, poor old Andrew Quin ought
+not to be left—the only one—“out in the cold.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While Ran was turning these matters over in his mind
+he was not noticing what Mrs. Walling was doing. That
+good lady sat at a small writing-desk busy with note paper
+and envelopes. Presently she said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Randolph, dear, give me the address of those good
+friends of yours.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Friends, madam!” exclaimed Ran, the more taken by
+surprise that he had been just thinking of them. It seemed
+to him that the lady must have read his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, those old friends of yours who came on with Judy
+and the Moseleys and are boarding somewhere down in the
+city while waiting for their steamer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! yes, madam! You mean Samson Longman and
+Andrew Quin? They are with Michael at Markiss’ on
+Water Street. I do not know the number.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is not necessary. I am sending them invitations
+to the wedding and the breakfast; for though, of course,
+such a hasty affair as this is will not admit of much ceremony
+and elaboration, yet they must be present. There will
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>be the Moseleys, the Stuarts, ourselves and your friends
+from Markiss’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should tell you beforehand that those friends of mine
+come from a mining camp, and though good and true as
+men can be, they are rough and plain.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear boy, I have told you who is coming, and
+so you may know that these friends will meet no one in our
+house who will be so silly as to look down upon them for
+being rough and plain. Really, Ran, dear, it ought not to
+be necessary for me to say this,” concluded the lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>For all answer, Randolph Hay went to her side, raised
+her hand and pressed it to his lips with reverential tenderness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy looked up in her face with eyes full of tears and
+murmured:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Lord in heaven bless you, sweet and lovely lady!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling smiled deprecatingly at this effusiveness
+and patted Judy gently on the head. Then she turned to her
+writing-desk and wrote her informal notes. These were the
+only invitations the lady had written. The few others to the
+members of the two families more immediately concerned
+had been verbal ones.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When she had finished directing the envelopes she handed
+them over to Ran, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The letter box is directly on your way home; will you
+mind dropping them in?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will take charge of them with pleasure,” said Ran, and
+as the hour was late he arose, said good-night and left the
+house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Ran did not drop the notes in a letter box. He
+walked over to Sixth Avenue, hailed a car, boarded it and
+rode down as far as that car would take him, then got out
+and walked to Markiss’; for he was anxious that his friends
+should get their bids as soon as possible. He found Mike,
+Longman, and Dandy all sitting smoking in the grimy back
+parlor behind Markiss’ bar.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He entered and sat down among them. There happened
+to be no other guests in the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, boys, did you think I had forgotten you?” inquired
+Ran, really remorseful for not having sought them
+out before.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>“If we did we excused you, under the circumstances,”
+replied Longman, speaking for the rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I suppose Mike has told you that I am to marry his
+sister on Saturday morning—that is, the day after to-morrow?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ay! trust Mike for that!” cried old Dandy with a
+little giggle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I have come to-night to bring you invitations to
+be present at the ceremony in the church and afterward at
+the breakfast at the house. And, boys, you must be sure
+to come.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And where am I to get the widding garment proper for
+the occasion? Sure, there’s no time to be cutted and fitted
+and made dacint to appear in sich grand company, though I
+thank the lady all the same,” said Andrew Quin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Dandy! Don’t you know that you are in New
+York, where you can be fitted out for a wedding or a funeral
+or an Arctic expedition in five minutes—more or less?”
+laughed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; it’s more or less, I’ll allow. But I do reckon I can
+get a ready-made suit of clothes raisonable enough here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly you can! But you must let me see to that,
+Dandy. I will be down here again to-morrow. And, lest
+I should forget to tell you, I must do so now. On Saturday
+morning you must let Mike bring you to the church. He
+knows where it is.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right, Misther Hay,” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, Longman, you have not promised, but you will
+come, I am sure. My friends uptown wish to make the acquaintance
+of the Nimrod who saved my life.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mr. Hay!” laughed the giant deprecatingly. “But
+I shall be proud to come to your wedding,” he added.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Ran bade them good-night and went home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day—Friday—was the last before the wedding
+and the sailing. There were yet a few articles to be purchased,
+and so Mrs. Walling got ready to go on her usual
+morning shopping round. She asked Judy to put on her
+hat to go with her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She did not intend to call for Palma on this occasion; a
+feeling of delicacy withheld her from going into the way of
+her thanks.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But while the carriage was standing at the door, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>while Mrs. Walling was waiting in the parlor for Judy to
+join her, Mrs. Cleve Stuart was announced and entered the
+room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma went straight up to Mrs. Walling with outstretched
+hands and glowing eyes and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How shall I thank you for the rich, beautiful dress—the
+soft, lovely, caressing dress—that folds me around with
+the feeling of a friend’s embrace—your embrace?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>For answer the lady drew the speaker to her bosom and
+kissed her, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I want you to know,” continued Palma, “that I feel
+more comfort in this than I should if I had bought it myself
+out of boundless riches.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again Mrs. Walling kissed her, laughing this time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Every time I put it on I shall feel your love around
+me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The elder lady pressed both the younger one’s hands and
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We are going out to try to find a suitable sea cloak for
+Judy. We must find an extra heavy one. It will be terribly
+cold crossing the ocean at this season. They will be on the
+banks of Newfoundland in the first days of December.
+Will you go with us?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With pleasure,” said Palma. And as Judy now entered
+the room, ready dressed for the drive, they arose to go out.
+But just at that moment Mrs. Duncan was announced and
+came in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Both Mrs. Walling and Palma received her as cordially
+as if she had not interrupted their departure. Mrs. Walling
+then introduced:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My young friend, Miss Judith Man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How do you do, my dear? I am glad to see you,” said
+the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy bowed and smiled.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are going out. Don’t let me detain you. I was on
+my way down to Fourteenth Street to do a little shopping
+and just dropped in here to tell you a piece of news; but
+I can take another opportunity,” Mrs. Duncan explained.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no! Pray do not! We should die of suspense!
+Pray, sit right down and open your budget. Our errand
+can wait as well as yours. It is only shopping. And when
+you are ready for yours you would oblige us by taking the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>fourth seat in our carriage, so that we can go together,”
+Mrs. Walling pleaded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan laid down her muff and shopping bag and
+seated herself in one of the luxurious armchairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling rang a bell and gave an order:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Bring coffee into this room.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And presently the four women had tiny china cups in
+their hands, sipping hot and fragrant Mocha, three of them
+listening while the fourth told her news.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is about Jennie Montgomery, the true wife of the
+counterfeit Randolph Hay——” began the speaker.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! yes!” eagerly exclaimed Mrs. Walling and Palma
+in a breath, while Judy looked up in eager curiosity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You know, without any one’s planning—unless fate be
+some one—that Jennie and her child were passengers on the
+same steamship, and even in the same cabin, with her fraudulent
+husband and his false bride?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! yes!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I said when I discovered that complication that those
+elements were as explosive as dynamite. Neither could
+have expected the presence of the other on the steamer, and
+so I was really anxious to hear what happened when Miss
+Leegh and her ‘bridegroom’ met his lawful wife and child
+on the ship, on the ocean, whence neither could escape without
+jumping into the sea.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, have you heard?” impatiently demanded Mrs.
+Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; I have just received a long letter from Jennie,
+dated November 15th. She had been at home four weeks
+before she found time to write to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And——” breathlessly exclaimed Mrs. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She met her husband on the deck of the steamer. She
+was as much astonished as he was confounded. But I had
+better read her letter to you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the visitor drew a thickly packed envelope, with a
+foreign stamp, from her pocket, and read the pages describing
+Jennie’s voyage, her meeting with her husband and Miss
+Leegh on the <em>Scorpio</em>, and her arrival at home in her
+father’s new vicarage, as these events are already known to
+our readers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To think of Jennie’s self-control and forbearance!”
+concluded Mrs. Duncan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>“And to think of Lamia Leegh’s insolence in trying to
+patronize her, the real wife of her own ‘brevet’ bridegroom!”
+exclaimed Mrs. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And to think of the man’s assurance in carrying off matters
+with such a high hand!” remarked Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Och, sure, and himself had always the impidince av the
+divil, had Gintleman Geff!” exclaimed Judy, surprised into
+her dialect; then, suddenly aware of her “backsliding,” she
+clapped her hand to her mouth a minute too late and looked
+frightened; but as she saw that neither of her friends were
+in the least disturbed she felt relieved, while the visitor
+evidently thought that the brogue had been humorously assumed
+for the occasion, for she replied in kind:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ay, has he—the thaif av the worruld!” Then, turning
+to Mrs. Walling, she continued: “What an active fate there
+seems to be at work here! Did you see the significance of
+the latter part of Jennie’s letter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course; her father has left Medge, in the south
+of England, and is in temporary charge of Haymore vicarage,
+in the north of England,” replied Mrs. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And our Gentleman Geff of the many wives and aliases,
+in trying to escape his one real wife and avoid her father
+by getting off the steamer at Queenstown will unwittingly
+rush into their power again the moment he sets foot within
+his stolen estate at Haymore. Now, if his lawful wife had
+been anybody else there might be a chance for a show of
+fight. But the daughter of the Vicar of Haymore!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Walling, drawing her breath hard.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie writes of the great preparations they are making
+at Haymore to receive the usurping squire, who is now expected
+to arrive with a large party of invited friends for
+the Christmas holidays, little knowing that he will there
+meet his lawful wife and her avenging, priestly father.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And confront the lawful heir of Haymore with the more
+terrible family solicitors,” laughed Mrs. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then Mr. Randolph Hay is really going over at once to
+take possession of his estates?” inquired the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; he sails on Saturday; but not alone—he takes his
+wife with him. He will be married on Saturday morning
+and embark in the afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, indeed! That is news. I had heard no rumor of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>his being engaged, or even attentive to any of our girls.
+Who is she?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My young friend here,” replied Mrs. Walling, pointing
+to Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Duncan jumped up and kissed the girl with effusions
+and congratulations.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy blushed and smiled and bowed, but did not venture
+to speak again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The wedding is to be quiet. We don’t want a second
+edition of the ‘princely nuptials’ of ‘Mr. Randolph Hay’
+and Miss Lamia Leegh. They, we think, have done enough
+in that way ‘for the honor of the family.’ Our wedding
+must be very plain. There are ‘no cards.’ I will not say
+there will also be ‘no cake, no nothing.’ So, as you are interested,
+if you will drop in, ‘promiscuously,’ at the ‘Little
+Church Around the Corner’ about ten o’clock to-morrow
+morning, you will witness one of the happiest, though not
+one of the grandest, weddings on record.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I shall do myself that pleasure without a doubt,” replied
+Mrs. Duncan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then she arose and took up her muff and hand-bag to
+intimate that she was ready to go.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the four ladies entered the close carriage that was
+waiting at the door and went on their shopping expedition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was perfectly successful, even to the sea cloak, a heavy
+cloth one, reaching from head to heel, having long sleeves
+and hood, and lined throughout with fur.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They took Mrs. Duncan to her door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is one thing I would rather see than the wedding,”
+said Mrs. Duncan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what is that?” inquired Augusta Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The circus at Haymore Court when Mr. Randolph Hay
+and his wife arrive there and meet Gentleman Geff and
+Miss Lamia Leegh.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XI<br> <span class='large'>A BLITHE BRIDAL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It was a splendid winter morning. The snow, which had
+fallen thickly during the night, was now frozen hard on the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>ground, the housetops and the trees, and sparkled like
+frosted silver sprinkled with diamond dust in the dazzling
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling’s household was astir. They were to have
+an early family breakfast before dressing to go to church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling and her young protégée met in the breakfast
+room. Judy was pale and nervous.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear. Do you see that the clouds
+have gone with the night? A good omen for you, according
+to the folklore—‘Blessed is the bride that the sun shines
+on,’” said the lady as she drew the girl to her bosom and
+pressed a kiss on her brow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, I have prayed the Lord to bless the day for
+Ran’s sake, but my heart misgives me, ma’am,” sighed
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is very natural, but in your case very unreasonable,
+my child. I never knew nuptials more promising for future
+happiness than are yours and Randolph’s.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, but, ma’am, am I a fit wife for a gentleman?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not for every gentleman; for there are not so many
+gentlemen who would be as worthy of you as Randolph Hay
+is. But why should you think that you are not fit for him?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, I am only a poor, ignorant girl, and, with
+all the pains you and Mrs. Moseley have taken with me, I
+have not been able to improve much. Only yesterday I forgot
+my manners before the strange lady.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You mean that you fell for a moment into the sweet dialect
+of your childhood? That did no harm, Judy. And,
+besides, when you go to London you will soon drop it altogether.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We are to live in retirement, to be sure, until we are
+both trained for society, I know. But still, for all that, I
+fear I am doing Ran a wrong to marry him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look here, Judy! You and Randolph were engaged to
+be married to each other, I think, while you were both in
+the miners’ camp—you a miner’s sister; Ran a miner and
+the partner of your brother. You, neither of you, dreamed
+of any higher position or better fortune than luck in the
+mines might bring you. Is it not so?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. Now suppose that it had been to you,
+instead of to Randolph, that the unexpected fortune had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>come? Suppose that some nobleman of high rank and
+wealth had suddenly come forward and claimed you as his
+lost child and heiress, would you then have broken off with
+poor Ran, because he was only a poor miner?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! No! No!” cried Judy with flashing eyes and rising
+excitement. “I nivir could a bin such a baste av the
+wurruld!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she suddenly stopped and clapped her hands to her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But if Randolph had taken it into his head that he, a
+poor miner, was no fit husband for you under your changed
+circumstances, what would you have done?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should have broken me harrt entirely!” exclaimed
+Judy, falling again into dialect, as she always did when
+strongly moved.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And yet you can talk about not being a fit wife for
+Randolph, just because, since his engagement to you, he
+has come into a fortune. My dear, you should consider
+your betrothal so sacred that no change of fortune could be
+able to affect it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I see it, ma’am! I see it! And I will say no more
+about it,” said Judy, smiling through her timid tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now we will have breakfast,” said Mrs. Walling,
+rising and ringing the bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The tray was brought in at one door, while Mr. Walling
+came in at the other, and the three sat down to breakfast,
+the master of the house merely greeting the guest with a
+kindly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear,” as he took his seat at the
+table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as breakfast was finished they separated to dress
+for church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I would like, also, to give my reader a glimpse of the
+young bridegroom-expectant on this the morning of his
+wedding day, in his temporary home in the apartment house
+occupied by Stuart and Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three young people breakfasted together in the little,
+elegant parlor of the Stuarts’ suite of rooms, Mrs. Pole
+waiting on them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran’s face shone with joy that he could not hide; Cleve’s
+and Palma’s were bright with sympathetic smiles.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran had entreated Mike Man to come and share his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>rooms at these flats until the wedding day and the embarkation
+for Europe, but Mike had steadily refused, declaring
+that, well as he loved his brother-in-law, he would be out of
+place among Ran’s fine friends, and that he would feel more
+at home “along wid Samson and Dandy.” Mike had decided
+to accompany these old friends to Europe, in the second
+cabin of the same steamer on which Ran had taken a
+stateroom in the first cabin for himself and his bride. These
+three miners were going home to the old country to settle
+there. Different motives actuated the three. Old Dandy
+wished to spend his declining years among old friends.
+Longman wanted to return to his aged and widowed mother.
+Mike could not stay behind all his friends, and must go with
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What each was to do on the other side of the ocean was
+not very clear, even to themselves. Each had a little money
+saved up. Dandy thought he would sink his savings in a
+life annuity. Longman hoped to get a gamekeeper’s place
+on some estate. Mike wanted to go to school for a little
+while. He was really nineteen years old, but so small and
+slender that he might easily have passed for a schoolboy.
+But he meant to keep near his mining “pards,” so as not to
+“inthrude” on Ran and Judy and their fine friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Vainly had faithful Ran combated this resolution. Mike
+had been firm, and Ran had to yield the point.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now, as Ran sat at table with Stuart and Palma, the
+latter said to him:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You and Judy will be married as Cleve and myself
+were—without bridesmaid or groomsman.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Ran; “but it is not my fault or Judy’s. I
+wanted Judy’s brother, my old partner, Mike Man, to be
+my groomsman, which would have been right enough; but
+Mike stoutly refused. If Mike had consented to stand up
+with me, then Judy might have had a bridesmaid in one of
+the Moseley young ladies. But, no; Mike was as stubborn
+as a mule. To be sure, I know that Mr. Jim Moseley and
+Miss Betty Moseley would have kindly stood up with us,
+but Judy said no; and so we must stand up alone.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is just as well. And now, my dear,” said Palma,
+rising from her seat with a pretty little matronly air of
+authority, “as you have finished your breakfast, you had
+better go and dress yourself. Your carriage was ordered
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>at half-past nine, I think. When you have finished, come
+to me that I may put the last touches on your toilet—twirl
+the curls and mustache, and pin the boutonnière, as you
+have no valet. Though, I suppose, you will set up some
+Monsieur Frangipanni as your personal attendant and
+dresser.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Cousin Palma. Never! Never! I should
+be too much in awe of such a grand dignitary,” said Ran,
+laughing, as he left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What a happy dog he is, my dear,” exclaimed Stuart to
+his wife as they also retired to dress for the wedding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at this same hour, in an upper room at
+Markiss’ Hotel on Water Street, another scene of preparation
+was going on.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Samson Longman, Andrew Quin, and Michael Man were
+dressing for the wedding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three men were fresh from the bath and the barber.
+Longman had his hair cut and his fine, flowing beard
+dressed, and, with his strong, regular features and his clear,
+blue eyes, looked a very handsome colossus, indeed. He wore
+a fashionable dress suit of black cloth, with a vest of black
+satin, a small white tie, a tea rose in his buttonhole, white
+kid gloves and patent leather boots.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He looked every inch a gentleman, as he really was.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy had had his red hair and side whiskers trimmed
+and dressed. He also wore a dress suit of exactly the same
+style of Longman’s, even to the little details of the white
+tie, tea rose, kid gloves and patent leathers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike, with his short, dark, curly hair neatly arranged, his
+fresh face, innocent of beard or mustache, and his slight
+figure in a dress suit proper to the occasion, looked like
+a boy got up for a birthday party, or a freshman ready for
+his first college exhibition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, Mike! Stop admiring yourself and hurry up.
+Dandy, come! It is nine o’clock, and time to start if we
+are to reach the church and get seated in time to see the
+wedding party come in,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh, Lorrd! But me courage has sunk down into the
+bottom av me boots! What would ail me to be pushing
+meself amongst gentlefolk, anyway?” exclaimed the nervous
+old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because it is my own Ran and Judy’s wedding, sure,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>and you are invited. And they would feel hurt by your
+absence,” replied Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh, Lorrd, I wouldn’t mind the church so much. Sure,
+ivirybody’s free to go into a church. But it’s the breakfast.
+Sure, an’ I nivir sat down to the table wid gentlefolks in
+all my life, and wouldn’t know more’n the babe just born
+how to behave myself, Lorrd! and if all tales be thrue,
+gentlefolks’ ways at table is that diffunt from our’n!”
+sighed Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I suppose they eat, and drink, and talk, and laugh pretty
+much as other people do. Take courage, Dandy, old man.
+Just look at yourself in the glass! Why, you might be a
+Wall Street millionaire, or a college professor, or a United
+States Senator, to look at you,” laughed Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know!” exclaimed Dandy with a self-satisfied smirk
+after glancing at the mirror. “Sure, ‘fine feathers make
+fine birds!’ And it is not how I look, at all, at all, but how
+I’m to behave, what I’m to say, and what I’m to do. That’s
+what bothers me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, bosh! You needn’t do anything nor say anything
+unless you like to. As for behaving, just watch other people
+and behave as they do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, that’s a first-rate idea o’ your’n, Longman—first-rate.
+And I’ll jist be guided by that. I’ll watch the gentry,
+and behave jist as they do, and thin I can’t do amiss!”
+exclaimed Dandy, brightening up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A very dangerous rule, with many unsuspected exceptions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now put on your overcoats and draw your woolen
+mittens over your white kids, and come along, you two, or
+we shall be late,” said Longman, who had already put on
+all his outer garments and stood ready to march.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the three men were quite ready they went downstairs
+together, walked over to the Fourth Avenue cars,
+boarded one and rode uptown; got out at Blank Street, and
+walked to the church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no sign about the building to indicate a wedding
+for that morning. The doors were closed, and there
+was not a carriage nor a human being near the sacred
+building.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The truth is that the Wallings and all concerned in the
+affair had kept the intended wedding not only out of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>papers but out of all gossiping circles. They did not want
+to have a sensational supplement to the magnificent pageantry
+of the grand Hay-Leegh wedding. And their reticence
+had even extended to a firm refusal to indorse any
+journalistic report of the appearance of the rightful claimant
+to the Haymore estate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t you think we hev bin afther making a mistake in
+the place, Mr. Longman?” inquired Dandy, looking mistrustingly
+up to the closed and silent building.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; we’re the first that’s come, that’s all. Walk in.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so saying he led the way, opening first the great
+black walnut outer door and then the red cloth inner door
+and entering the church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There they found the sexton, who asked them for cards.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman produced the three informal notes written by
+Mrs. Walling, and the sexton, after looking at them, marshaled
+the three men up the aisle, between empty pews, to
+seats near the altar, where they sat down.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they had become accustomed to the “dim religious
+light” of the interior, they perceived that they themselves
+were the only persons in the church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see that we are early,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, sure, thin, I’m not sorry. I can compose the
+narves av me,” replied Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They drew off their overcoats, folded them, and put them
+under the seats, shoved their silk hats after the coats, and
+then took off their woolen mitts, rolled them up, and put
+them in their pockets, and posed themselves for the scene
+expected.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently the door opened and quite a large party entered,
+and were led by the sexton to the front row of pews
+before the chancel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s the bowld Col. Moseley and his tribe, sure,” said
+Mike in a low voice to his companions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy looked up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was the tribe, indeed. The colonel, his wife and ten of
+his girls and boys. The two youngest children had been
+left at home on account of their tender age. The colonel’s
+wife wore her Sunday suit of brown satin, with a brown
+velvet bonnet and a rich old India shawl that had been an
+heirloom in her family, having come down to her from her
+great-grandmother. Her many daughters wore plain cardinal-red
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>or navy-blue dresses, with plush coats and felt
+hats to match.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Next entered a single pair, unknown to Longman and
+Dandy, but not to us. They were Mr. and Mrs. Cleve
+Stuart. Palma wore her lovely suit of navy-blue demassée
+velvet, with turban to match.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were provided with seats to the left of the Moseleys.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A few minutes after them came a lady alone. She was
+Mrs. Duncan, in a plum-colored satin dress and a sealskin
+coat and cap.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Finally, just as the organ began to peal forth a magnificent
+wedding march, streamed in two processions from two
+opposite points.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First, out from the vestry door came two white-robed
+clergymen, with open books in their hands, followed by the
+bridegroom, in evening dress, with a white rose in his buttonhole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, thin, see till our broth av a b’hoy! Sure, don’t his
+face shine like the morning starr itself?” whispered Dandy
+to his companion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman looked and saw Ran, with his brow radiant with
+frank happiness which he did not think of suppressing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Whish! Look down the aisle itself! There comes me
+swate swishter! Och! what an angel!” murmured Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman looked and smiled.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy turned his head and caught his breath. He had
+never in all his life seen anything half so lovely as little
+Judy in her bridal array. And yet her dress was simple
+enough. She wore a plain white silk, trained; a white tulle
+overskirt, looped with sprays of orange buds; a white tulle
+veil, fastened above her curly, black hair with sprigs of
+orange buds; and on her neck and arms a set of pearls given
+her by Ran. Her eyes were cast down until their long,
+sweeping, black lashes lay on her slightly flushed oval
+cheeks. She came slowly, leaning on the arm of Samuel
+Walling, who was to give her away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No doubt her brother would have been asked to perform
+this service, but that he was under age. And, besides, he
+would have shrunk from the honor of taking so conspicuous
+a part in the ceremony, since he would not even officiate
+as groomsman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Behind them came Mrs. Samuel Walling, in a superb suit
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>of ruby brocaded velvet, with turban to match. She was
+leaning on the arm of her brother-in-law, Mr. William
+Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The two clergymen advanced to the altar railing with
+open books in their hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bridegroom met the bride and took her hand; both
+bowed to the officiating ministers, and then knelt down on
+the hassocks before the altar.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Their immediate friends drew around them. The company
+in the pews stood up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike bent eagerly, breathlessly forward.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ceremony began. It continued amid a breathless silence,
+unbroken except by the voices of the officiating ministers
+and responses of the kneeling pair before them, and
+the short reply of the “church father” in bestowing “this
+woman” upon “this man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the benediction was pronounced friends crowded
+around the newly wedded young pair with congratulations
+that were not merely conventional, but earnest, heartfelt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike crept out of his pew, glided easily through the
+crowd, and stood before his sister and brother-in-law, mute,
+unable to speak, still looking like a very shy schoolboy at
+his college exhibition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Ran seized his hand and shook it heartily, and held
+it fast while he said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mike—dear boy—we were always brothers in heart, and
+now we are brothers in reality! Are you not going to embrace
+your sister? She is not less your sister because she
+is my wife, but more so, for she has married your bosom’s
+everlasting brother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike then turned to Judy, who opened her arms and
+folded him to her heart in a warm embrace.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman and Dandy hung back for a little while, and
+then the old man stood up and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I can’t stand it at all, at all! Sure, I must go and spake
+to the darlints!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And out of the pew he went, and up to the chancel, where
+“fine” friends were still surrounding the young pair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They made way for the eager old man as he pushed
+through the group and confronted Ran and Judy, offering
+each a hand and crying with emotion:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’ve come to wish ye the blissing av the Lord and all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>His holy saints, me brave bhoy and gurrul—I mane Misther
+and Misthress Randolph Hay av Hayti!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy took each a hand of the old miner and
+said something inarticulate in kindly thanks. Then, seeing
+Longman standing behind and towering above Dandy, Ran
+held up his hand and the colossus came forward and offered
+his congratulations, which both Ran and Judy received
+with much hearty feeling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not forget, Longman, that I never should have
+lived to see this happy day but for you,” said Ran, warmly
+pressing his hands, while Judy’s smile expressed all that she
+also would have said if she could have spoken.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my young friends,” said Mr. Samuel Walling,
+approaching the group, “we must not keep the reverend
+gentlemen waiting; we must go into the vestry room and
+sign the register.” And he drew Judy’s arm within his
+own and carried her off, followed by Ran and the rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When this form was completed the small company left
+the church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were but two carriages waiting before the door.
+One was Mrs. Walling’s, in which she had brought the bride
+to the church; the other was Ran’s, in which he was going to
+take his wife back.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Walling stood until she had seen Ran hand Judy
+into the clarence and take his seat beside her, when she
+turned to William Walling and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well! I would like to give you a seat back to the house;
+but I want to take in Mr. and Mrs. Stuart. Go up in the
+street car—that is a good fellow! And while you are at it
+see after those poor fellows from the mines. Get them into
+the same car with yourself, so that they won’t miss their
+way.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right!” exclaimed good-humored Mr. Will. “Where
+are the bears?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There they are!” she said, nodding toward the three
+men coming from the church door. “Go and introduce
+yourself to them, and then you will be capable of bringing
+them up to the house and presenting them to your brother
+and myself. They are great friends of Ran, you know. One
+of them saved his life! They came with the colonel’s family
+and Judy from California. Now be off!” added the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>lady as she saw her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stuart, approaching,
+and went to meet them, saying to Palma:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, I have been waiting for you to come out. I
+have two vacant places in my carriage. I should be much
+pleased if you and Mr. Stuart would take them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you very much. You are very kind,” said
+Palma, accepting the offer as frankly as it was given.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart bowed—there was nothing left for him to say or
+do. The “ladies” had made the arrangement! That was
+enough for the Southern gentleman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They entered the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Walling
+and were driven rapidly uptown.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The colonel’s large family crowded into a street car.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling, Longman and Dandy found seats in another
+car.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so the wedding guests went their way to the Walling
+house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Arrived there, the ladies and children, only nine in all,
+were shown into an upper room to lay off their bonnets and
+wraps and add bouquets and white kid gloves to their
+toilets.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The gentlemen, ten in all, were shown into another room
+for light changes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And after half an hour’s performances they all filed
+down to the drawing-room, where they found their host
+and hostess, and the bride and groom, waiting to receive
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here also the wedding presents were on view for a short
+time, before being packed and dispatched to the steamer,
+which was to be effected while the company should be at
+table. There was a silver tea service from Mr. and Mrs.
+Walling; a silver salver from Mr. Will; a gold watch and
+chain from Col. and Mrs. Moseley; a box of fine handkerchiefs
+from Cleve and Palma Stuart—this was the same
+box that had been given by Cleve to Palma months before,
+but not a handkerchief had been disturbed, and having
+nothing else to give she gave it now, with Cleve’s consent.
+There was a gold chain and cross from Mike; a pretty hand-bag
+from Longman, a workbox from Dandy, and various
+dainty trifles, mostly of their own manufacture, from the
+Moseley girls and boys.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>A little later the butler slid back the rolling portières and
+announced breakfast, which was laid in a long rear room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The wedding party—host and hostess, bride and groom,
+and guests, filed in and seated themselves at the table—nine
+on each side, host and hostess at the head and foot. Ran
+and Judy sat on the right side of Mrs. Walling, Col. and
+Mrs. Moseley on her left. Below Judy sat Mr. and Mrs.
+Cleve Stuart. Below Mrs. Moseley sat Mr. William Walling
+and Mrs. Duncan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman sat on Mr. Walling’s right hand, and Dandy
+on his left. Other guests, chiefly the young people of the
+colonel’s family, filled all the other seats. Mike sat halfway
+up on the right side of the board.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Two waiters, in black dress suits, white satin waistcoats
+and kid gloves, served the guests.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Tea, coffee or chocolate was offered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy took tea—in what a little, fragile eggshell of a
+cup! How different from the massive, yellow bowl from
+which he used to gulp great draughts of that rare luxury, or
+something made up to imitate it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was afraid to touch this chrysalis for fear he should
+crush it. He left it on the table before him, and following
+Longman’s given rule, watched to see how other people
+handled their cups; as a matter of detail, he watched Col.
+Moseley, who stood, in his estimation, for the most perfect
+gentleman he knew.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By this precaution he avoided the mistake of pouring
+his tea into his saucer, which otherwise he would surely
+have done; for what on earth else were saucers made for
+anyhow?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently came around the boned turkey and the chicken
+salad.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy chose the salad. But where was the knife with
+which to shovel the delicious compounds into his capacious
+mouth? Clearly the waiter had neglected his duty in providing
+a knife, for there was nothing beside his plate but
+a silver instrument with four fine prongs. In despair he
+looked in the direction of his model, the colonel, and saw
+that gentleman eating with the silver thing, holding it in
+his right hand. All the others round the table were doing
+the same thing!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Old Dandy shook his head, saying within himself:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>“Sure, and I don’t like these newfangled ways; they
+ain’t Irish, nor ’Merican, nor they ain’t natural, nuther!
+But it’s a baste I am to be finding fault at Ran’s wedding,
+so it is.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then Dandy ate his salad as well as he could with
+his unaccustomed instrument.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The fest went on, and delicacy after delicacy was served.
+Plates were often changed, dishes were changed. Tea, coffee
+and chocolate gave place to tokay, champagne and
+johanisberg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy, following what he considered a safe rule, but
+which was soon proved to be anything else but safe, did as
+he saw other people do, and got through the feast very
+creditably until at length Col. Moseley arose in his place
+and called the attention of the company in a neat little
+speech, which he concluded with:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to
+propose the health of the bride and groom.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Up jumped Dandy to do as other people—notably his
+model colonel did, and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Me, too, ladies and gintlemin! I purpose the good
+health of the bride and groom!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Consternation fell for a moment on the company, but the
+colonel had suffered more than one “surprise” in the course
+of his military life, and he was equal to the occasion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir, in the name of our friends,” he said
+gravely, bowing to Dandy. “Then, gentlemen, fill up your
+glasses.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The toast was honored. And no one felt more satisfied
+with himself and with all the world than did Dandy Quin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Other toasts were offered and equally honored, Dandy
+taking a conspicuous part in every one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was twelve o’clock when the guests sat down to the
+table. It was two when they arose and withdrew to the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Judy went upstairs to change her light bridal dress
+for the heavy green cloth suit that was to defend her from
+the wintry winds of the open sea.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At her earnest request no one was to go down to the
+steamer to see them off.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because I shall behave badly. I know I shall. I shall
+cry. And it is so awful to cry in public!” said Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>All her effects had been packed and sent on the steamer,
+except the one little trunk into which her last belongings
+were to go, and which was to be put into the carriage with
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So as soon as she was dressed for the departure—cloth
+suit, fur-lined cloak, beaver poke and all—she came down,
+into the drawing-room, where all her friends were assembled,
+and there she bade them all good-by. She kissed,
+embraced and wept over her friends, one after the other;
+but when she came to Mrs. Moseley she clung to her as if
+she could never leave her, weeping as if her heart would
+break.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At last it was that tender lady herself who gently unwound
+the girl’s arms from around her neck, and stooping,
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look at Ran, dear. See how distressed he is. He must
+not see you grieve so!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy hastily wiped her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Moseley beckoned Ran, who came forward and received
+the girl from the lady’s arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Ran, dear,” sobbed Judy, falling into her dialect,
+“don’t ye moind me crying. Sure it’s a cowld-harrted craychur
+I’d be not to graive, parting with the loikes av her, a
+rale highborn leddy as has ben sich a mother to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My own dear Judy!” whispered Ran. And that was
+all he could say.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike had taken leave of all his friends and had gone
+on before. But there were two more whom Judy thought
+she must bid good-by to.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is Misther Longman and Uncle Dandy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here we are, Misthress Hay!” answered old Dandy
+from the hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I must bid ye good-by, dear frinds!” said Judy,
+holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nivir a bit of it, hinny. Sure we’re all in the same boat!
+That is, the same stamer! We go wid ye across the say!
+On’v ye’s go in the grand first cabin, and we go in the
+second. Our duds went on board this morning, and Mike’s
+gone down to the tovvurn to pay our score. And, sure, he’ll
+join us on the stamer!” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I knew Mike was to go with us, but didn’t know
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>you were. I am so glad you are going with us!” exclaimed
+Judy, drying her last tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Ran was hurrying her into the carriage that was to
+take them to the steamer. When he had placed her in her
+seat he returned to speak to the two men.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Since you are going in the same ship, ride down with
+us. There are two vacant seats in our carriage,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Couldn’t think of such a thing!” exclaimed Longman,
+laughing. “What! intrude on a bride and groom! We appreciate
+your magnanimity and thank you mightily, but we
+couldn’t think of it!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And though Ran urged his invitation, Longman steadily
+refused it, much to Dandy’s disgust, who would willingly
+have enjoyed the luxury of a ride in that elegant clarence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We will go down in the horse cars and get there before
+you. You’ll find us on deck when you arrive. Come,
+Dandy!” said Longman, and raising his felt wide awake, he
+walked away, carrying off his unwilling little old friend.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran entered the carriage and gave the order to the coachman.
+And they started for the steamer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A half-hour’s drive brought them to the crowded pier,
+and five minutes’ struggle through the confusion transferred
+them to the deck of the <em>Boadicea</em>, where they found Will
+Walling, Mike, Longman, and Dandy waiting for them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No more partings here, dear Judy. Here are meetings!”
+said Ran with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>An hour later the <em>Boadicea</em> sailed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At that same moment Mrs. Duncan, taking leave of Mrs.
+Walling, repeated her words:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! won’t there be a circus when Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
+Hay confront Gentleman Geff and Miss Leegh at
+Haymore! How I would like to be there!”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XII<br> <span class='large'>DARKEST BEFORE DAY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Stuart took his wife home from the wedding breakfast.
+It was four o’clock, and the wintry sun was low on the
+western horizon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>Mrs. Pole had a good fire burning in the little grate when
+they entered the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“See, Poley! I have brought you a piece of the wedding
+cake to dream on, you know!” said Palma, offering a pretty
+little box done up in silver paper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, my dear! My dreaming days are long past! long
+past!” sighed the old woman, as, nevertheless, she took the
+box.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What a prosaic old fogy you are, Poley, to be sure. For
+that matter all our dreaming days are over after we are
+married, I reckon.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, honey, until we begin to dream for our children.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma blushed and sank into sudden silence. She was
+beginning to dream sweet dreams of motherhood, but that
+was her own precious secret, she imagined, not suspecting
+that Mrs. Pole knew as much about it as she did herself, and
+perhaps more. To cover her confusion she laughed and
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Poley, if you do not care to dream on the cake
+yourself you can give it to some young friends of yours, to
+one of your many cousins or nieces; they will be glad to
+have it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she threw off her turban and her wraps, drew off
+her gloves and sank into an easy-chair before the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“After all, it is good to be quiet at home, is it not, Cleve?
+I love this little snuggery of ours. We can live very happily
+here until next May, and then flit to the woods and
+mountains again. I think I like our simple way of life.
+Cleve, quite as well, if not better, than if you spent all
+the revenues of your Mississippi plantation in living in the
+grand style of some of our friends. What do you think,
+Cleve?” she inquired, stretching out her pretty feet to the
+grateful warmth of the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He did not answer in words—he could not; he laid his
+hand tenderly on her curly, black hair and turned slowly
+away and went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma received the caress as a full assent to all that she
+had said, and smiled to herself as she gazed into the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart went downstairs and out upon the sidewalk,
+and paced up and down before the house. This was his
+nightly promenade ground, where he came to smoke his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>cigar. But this evening he had no cigar, nor even the
+wherewithal to get one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yes, it had come to this—Cleve Stuart was absolutely
+penniless. He had paid out his last dime on the horse cars
+that brought himself and his wife from the wedding breakfast.
+This was Saturday, the second of December. On
+Monday, the fourth, their month’s rent would be due, and
+there was not a penny to meet it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What should he do?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If all his remaining earthly possessions were pawned they
+would not bring money enough to meet the demand of their
+landlord.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nor could he hope for any forbearance from that quarter.
+The terms of the contract were strict, and amounted, in
+brief, to this: “Pay or go.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nor could he bring himself to the shame, not to say the
+dishonesty, of trying to borrow money which he could foresee
+no way of paying.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was the pass to which his marriage with Palma had
+brought him! Did he regret his marriage?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No,” he said to himself, “though I proposed to her, first
+of all, under the diabolical influence of the beautiful fiend
+who had me in her power, and for mercenary purposes that
+were to serve us, the two conspirators, yet for one redeeming
+event I do thank Providence—and that is that I discovered
+Palma to be penniless as well as invalided before I
+married her. Then I kept faith with her; I married her; I
+saved her precious life, and I have grown to know her and
+to love her above all things on earth. And to whatever
+straits I may be reduced, and however much I may suffer,
+I will, so far as possible, shield my beloved one from knowing
+them or sharing them. But in the meantime what in
+the name of Heaven am I to do? And what is to become
+of her? Men in such straits as mine have been driven, are
+daily driven, to commit suicide. We read such cases in
+almost every paper, and often with the concluding comment:
+‘No motive could be discovered for the desperate
+deed.’ I suppose, now, if I were to be so lost to a sense of
+justice as to end my trouble with a shot to-night, it would
+be said to-morrow: ‘He had just come from a wedding
+breakfast, where he appeared among the happiest of the
+guests. No motive can be surmised for his desperate deed.’
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>As if men paraded their perplexities to all and sundry, in
+season and out of season, and wore their motives and intentions
+pinned on their sleeves—especially such motives and
+intentions. Pah! nothing could drive me to such a deed.
+I must live and brave my fate, trusting in Heaven, doing
+my duty! But all the same, sweet little Palma, if it were
+Heaven’s will, I think it would be well if you and I should
+fall asleep to-night and never awake again in this world!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So deep, so painful, so absorbing was his reverie that he
+did not perceive the approach of the postman, who ran
+against him in the dark, begged his pardon and passed on
+until he reached the main entrance of the apartment house,
+went in, came out, and hurried on again out of sight up
+the street.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart had scarcely noticed him, beyond muttering, “Not
+at all,” when the other had said, “Beg pardon, sir.” And
+now he thought no more of the incident, but continued his
+walk for an hour, as if by wearying his body he might
+relieve his mind.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently, thinking that this was their dinner hour,
+though he had little appetite for dinner just now, he turned
+and entered the hall. He did not ring up the elevator, but
+he walked heavily up the five flights of stairs. It was a
+mental relief to fatigue himself to faintness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He entered the little parlor and found not dinner, but
+the tea table spread.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma was sitting behind the urn and waiting for him.
+The fire was very bright, the parlor very snug, and the little
+wife very happy. If this could only continue!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thought, after a wedding feast at two o’clock, that tea
+would be better than dinner at six. So I told Poley. Do
+you mind, Cleve?” inquired Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear; indeed, I prefer tea; it will be more refreshing,”
+he replied, trying to overcome the heaviness of his
+soul so that it should not appear in his look or tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And Poley has made some of her delicious, light, puffy
+muffins. I never saw any so nice anywhere as she can make.
+I tell you, Cleve, dear, if our riches should suddenly ‘take
+unto themselves wings and fly away,’ Poley and I would
+open a bake shop with a specialty of these tea muffins.
+Poley should make them. I would stand behind the counter
+and sell them and you should keep the accounts, and we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>should all three make our fortunes and divide the profits,”
+said Palma as she poured out the delicate Japan tea.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart smiled as he took a cup from her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I forgot to tell you. There’s a letter for you! It
+came while you were out. I put it on the corner of the
+mantelpiece. Will you look at it now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear; I know what it is. It is only the bill for the
+month’s rent. The landlord always sends it on the third of
+the month, and as the third comes on Sunday this time, he
+has sent it on Saturday, a day earlier.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Try a muffin, Cleve. You don’t know how nice they
+are.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He took one to please her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she chatted on about the wedding they had just
+attended, and the young pair who had just sailed for
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They are so anxious that we shall go and visit them at
+Haymore as soon as they shall be settled there, Cleve. And,
+indeed, I did promise to use all my influence with you to
+persuade you to take me over next summer. Why, Cleve, it
+would be ever so much pleasanter than to go to Lull’s again,
+even! And yet I used to think Lull’s was just Paradise!
+What do you think, Cleve?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think, my dear one, that it would be very delightful
+to spend the summer with our friends at Haymore. As
+much as I have traveled, I have never been in Yorkshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then you think we may go?” eagerly demanded Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Providence permitting, yes, my dear,” he replied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She perceived no evasion in this answer. Indeed, the
+phrase was her own habitual formula whenever she fully
+intended to do any certain thing, “Providence permitting.”
+She took his words for consent and answered gleefully:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will be something to look forward to during the
+winter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart smiled. Ah! how hard to keep up that cheerful
+countenance and light tone when his heart was so heavy
+and his mind so dark.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They lingered long at the tea table, because Palma was
+full of life and of the enjoyment of all life’s blessings, in
+possession and in anticipation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they arose at last and the table was cleared of the
+tea service, and the books and magazines replaced on it,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>Palma took her workbasket and Cleve a book, and she
+sewed at mending gloves, he read aloud “The Annals of a
+Quiet Neighborhood.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The letter on the mantelpiece, confidently believed to be
+the rent bill, was not looked at, or even thought of. There
+it lay, and was fated to lay, until Monday morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young pair retired at their usual hour; but only
+Palma slept. The vulture of anxiety, gnawing at his heart,
+kept Stuart wide awake.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Sunday dawned clear, bright and beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young couple arose and breakfasted and went to
+church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They walked all the way, not because Cleve had not a
+dime to pay car fare—though he had not—but because
+Palma never wished to tax the horses on the Sabbath day
+except in cases of absolute necessity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because,” she urged, “the merciful command of the
+Lord provides for the rest of the beast as well as of the man,
+and these horses work hard enough all the week to rest on
+Sunday.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Stuart had always yielded to her scruples in this
+respect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The organ was pealing forth a fine voluntary when they
+entered the church and took their seats. The music ceased
+and the service began. Palma entered into it with all the
+loving devotion of her heart and soul. Cleve could not concentrate
+his thoughts on worship, though he tried to do so.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After a little while, in due course, the first hymn was
+given out, and the first line fell like a trumpet blast, calling
+the Christian soul to hope and courage:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Give to the winds thy fears!</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Hope and be undismayed!</div>
+      <div class='line'>God hears thy sighs and sees thy tears,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>God shall lift up thy head.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The words thrilled him, aroused him; all the black shadows
+of grief, shame, despair and desperation, which had
+bowed and cowed his spirit with the sense of helplessness
+and humiliation, rolled away as before a rising sun. It
+seemed wonderful, miraculous, a memory of divine intervention
+that never left him in all his after life. He had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>always worshiped God as the supreme ruler of the universe;
+but never had known Him as the Heavenly Father. But
+from this hour he knew, or rather he felt, that “the God of
+the universe, the God of the race, was the God of the individual
+man,” the giver of life, the giver of heaven, the giver
+of the daily bread as well.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sermon which followed was from the text: “Are not
+two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall
+not fall on the ground without your Father.... Fear
+not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sermon that followed was almost worthy of the
+text, not quite, for no man’s nor angel’s words can add to
+the Word of the Lord; but it was faithfully, lovingly and
+practically applied, and it did good service.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At the end of the worship Stuart, as well as Palma, came
+out into the sunlight refreshed and comforted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That morning Stuart, in his dark mood, had shrunk from
+the exertion of going to church. What would be the use?
+he had thought in his secret heart; and he had tried to
+excuse himself to Palma, but she, from a feeling of duty,
+had persuaded him to go.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now as they walked uptown through the sunny air he
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad we went to church to-day, dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So am I. We got our daily bread, our heavenly manna
+there, did we not?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They reached home and found their pleasant little parlor
+aglow with the bright fire in the grate, and inviting with
+the neatly spread table and the simple midday meal of the
+Sabbath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole had also been to church at a much nearer point,
+and had got home before them in good time to lay the cloth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dinner over, they spent the afternoon in reading.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They had an early tea, and then went out to church for
+the evening service, walking there and back again. They
+reached home after ten o’clock, for the way was long. They
+were revived in spirit and wholesomely fatigued in body, so
+that they soon retired to rest and slept well. Even Stuart
+slept, though he believed that this night ended their last
+day in their pretty home, and that the next morning would
+send them adrift, bereft of all their effects, except the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>clothes they wore, and Heaven only knew whither! But—they
+would be in their Father’s world! No one could turn
+them out of that. So they slept in peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I have been particular in describing these last two days
+of Stuart’s and Palma’s experience, for they were ever after
+memorable in their lives.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Monday morning they arose early, as usual. It had
+been Stuart’s daily custom to go out after breakfast in
+search of employment. He had continued this under all
+discouragements.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yet this morning he stayed at home to see the landlord’s
+collector, who always arrived the day after the bill had come
+by mail. As the bill had arrived on Saturday, and the collector
+could not come on Sunday, he would certainly put in
+an appearance on Monday, and Palma must not be left
+alone to receive him—under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma took her knitting—a pair of mittens for Mrs. Pole—and
+sat down to work near the window, from which she
+could look below upon the housetops and above to the glorious
+December sky.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart took a book and threw himself into a rocking-chair
+by the table, but he did not read. He was waiting—for
+what? He did not know.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The door opened and “the boy” came in, silently laid a
+letter on the table, and went out again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart took it up and opened it. Palma looked up from
+her work.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why—this is the rent bill. I thought it came Saturday.
+Where is that letter that came?” Stuart inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll get it for you,”
+said Palma; and she arose and handed him the letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He took it and gazed at it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know the handwriting at all,” he said meditatively,
+“and it is postmarked ‘Wolfswalk, West Virginia.’
+I should think it was intended for some one else, if my
+name was not such an uncommon one, and certainly there is
+no one else in this house that bears it.” And he turned it
+over and over and scrutinized it after the strange manner of
+people who receive a mysterious letter and play with their
+own curiosity by delaying to open it. At length he broke
+the envelope and unfolded the letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First of all he turned to the signature, which was at the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>bottom of the fourth page, so that he did not happen to
+open the sheet and find what lay between the leaves.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘John Cleve!’” he exclaimed. “Why, dear Palma, this
+is from my old bachelor great-uncle, who, I thought, had
+been gathered to his fathers ages ago. He must be at least
+eighty years old.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, read it to me! I never knew you had an
+uncle,” said Palma, dropping her work and coming and
+leaning over the back of his chair so that she could look at
+the open letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve read as follows:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Wolfswalk, West Virginia</span>,</div>
+      <div class='line in12'>“November 25, 186—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>My Dear Grand-nephew</span>: You will be surprised to
+get a letter from me, of whom you can have but little
+memory, as you have not seen me since you were a babe of
+three years old, when your dear mother—my dear and only
+niece—brought you to my house.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“Since her lamented death, in Mississippi, I had completely
+lost sight of you, thinking of you as in the hands of
+competent guardians during your minority, and of leading
+a prosperous life as an active planter on your estate since
+your majority. I thought of writing to you, but neglected
+to do so. How families do get separated in this world, to
+be sure, neglecting each other, forgetting each other, like
+aliens!</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“Several circumstances have occurred to bring you
+forcibly to my mind of late. First, the fact that my two
+grand-nephews, Frank and James, sole descendants of my
+only nephew, Charles, fell on the field of Cold Harbor,
+fighting for their native State. They died unmarried.
+This leaves you my sole heir.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“As soon as I learned this fact I wrote to you in Mississippi,
+but failed to get a letter from you. I wrote to the
+postmaster of your post office there, and learned from him
+that you had been an absentee from home for many years.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“Then I thought of advertising for you, but so hated the
+plan that I delayed putting it in execution.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“At length chance favored me and gave the information I
+desired. A neighbor of mine went off on a business trip and
+was in Washington City last week, and met there a friend
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>of yours—a Mr. Walling, of New York. By the merest
+accident your name came up—neither of the gentlemen
+knowing of how much importance it was to me—and Fairfax
+heard that you were in New York City, and, in fact,
+much about you which it is not necessary to repeat here, but
+all of which he told me. Therefore, I write you this letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“And now, since you are not bound down to your Mississippi
+plantation, and since you are my sole heir, and I am
+old and feeble, and cannot last long, I ask you to be a
+good boy, and a dutiful nephew, and to come and bring your
+wife and live with me on the farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“I have not suffered, as so many have, by the war. It
+did not sweep over my land, but gave it a rather wide berth.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“My negroes have remained with me at fair wages, but
+whether they do fair work is something else.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“I have an overseer to look after the negroes, but, my boy,
+I require some one to look after the overseer. Will you
+come?</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“As breaking up and traveling is always expensive, and
+as I do not know your financial condition, I inclose a check
+for five hundred dollars, merely as an advance to my heir.
+Give my love to your wife. Let me hear from you as soon
+as possible, and believe me, my dear Cleve, now and ever,
+your affectionate grand-uncle,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>John Cleve</span>.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank God!” fervently ejaculated Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But where is the check?” curiously inquired Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart opened the leaves of the letter again, then his face
+fell and he murmured:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My uncle must have forgotten to put it in!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No,” said Palma, “here it is!” And she picked it up
+from the carpet, to which it had slipped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank God!” said Stuart again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, I am glad, very glad, that you have heard from
+your uncle. But you, Cleve! I have never in all my life
+seen you so strongly moved. What is it all about?” exclaimed
+Palma, amazed at his extreme agitation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My darling, when this providential letter came we were
+on the brink of ruin!” he answered, telling her the truth
+at last.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Ruin!’ You! Cleve Stuart!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>“Yes, my beloved.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But your vast wealth?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A fond imagination of yours.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And your rich Mississippi plantation?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A blasted wilderness.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve! Cleve! How have we lived?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By the gradual disposal of all my useless effects.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve! Cleve!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The last dime was spent on Saturday, dear, and this
+morning I looked for nothing else but a distrain for rent
+and ejection from these premises.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you never told me! You never told me!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why should I have distressed you, dear one?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I could have worked, Cleve. But I didn’t know!
+I didn’t know! I thought you were rich. And I thought,
+sometimes, that you were too prudent, too saving, especially
+when you did not get a dress coat to go to Ran’s wedding.
+And all the time you were poor, and struggling on the very
+brink of ruin! Oh, Cleve!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never mind, dear heart, we are ready for the landlord,
+or for any other demand. Tell me, darling, shall you like
+to go to this mountain farmhouse in West Virginia, and
+keep house for the old man, and be mistress, doctress,
+teacher and everything, to his horde of darkies?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes—a thousand times, yes! I shall
+be delighted, Cleve!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. As it all depended upon you, I will
+answer the old man’s letter and accept his offer; then go out
+and change this check.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, no; first of all, dear Cleve,” said Palma, gravely,
+“let us kneel and return thanks to our Heavenly Father
+that we are saved.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIII<br> <span class='large'>SAFE AT HOME</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>We left Jennie Montgomery sleeping in her mother’s
+arms, with her babe safe beside them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie would have talked all night till broad daylight;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>but her mother, knowing how tired the young traveler must
+be, discouraged all conversation by pretending to be sleepy,
+by replying only in monosyllables, or even answering at
+random, until at length the talker herself gave up in despair,
+grew tired, then stupid, and then fell fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The consequence of her exhausted strength and her long
+vigil was that she slept long and deeply and late into the
+next morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When at last she awoke she found herself alone in the
+room, with the morning sunlight stealing through the slats
+of the window shutters, and gilding bright lines on the
+white window curtains and on the light gray ground of the
+carpet and the light gray color of the walls. She saw all
+this through the festooned white curtains at the foot of her
+bed. She raised herself up, and then she saw something
+through the same opening—a bright little coal fire burning
+in the grate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her mother was gone and her baby was gone. Evidently
+Jennie had slept so soundly that she had not heard their
+uprising and departure, and she had continued to sleep on
+until she knew not what hour of the day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She thought she would get up and dress herself quietly
+before any one should discover that she was awake.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She slipped out of bed, and the first thing that she saw
+was her large sea trunk, that had been packed with undiscovered
+treasure of clothing by the benevolent women
+who had taken such a warm interest in her welfare, and who
+had given her an outfit as well as a first-class passage home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The key of her trunk was in her <i><span lang="fr">portemonnaie</span></i>, in the
+pocket of her traveling dress. She got it out, unstrapped
+and unlocked the treasure chest, and lifted the lid.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But just then she heard the voice of her baby crowing
+loudly in response to another cooing voice that she recognized
+as her mother’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were having a grand circus together in the parlor,
+that young grandmother and the baby.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie snatched up the first garment fitting to wear from
+the top of the trunk, and then dropped the lid and hastily
+washed and dressed herself, putting on a pretty blue cashmere
+princess wrapper, trimmed with blue satin ribbons.
+Then, while still buttoning up, she hastily opened the dividing
+door and entered the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>Her mother was there, sitting in a low rocker, holding
+the baby across her lap. Beside her, on the hob of the grate,
+stood the bowl of “infant food” from which she had been
+feeding the child.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no one else in the room, nor did there need to
+be to make it very lively there, for the baby was crowing
+with all the strength of her lungs, while laughing up in the
+pretty, smiling face, with the cooing voice, bending over
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma, darling! why didn’t you wake me?” exclaimed
+Jennie, coming up before Mrs. Campbell perceived
+her presence in the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Jennie! Up and dressed, my pet? Why didn’t
+you ring for some one to help you?” inquired the mother
+in her turn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You haven’t answered my question yet, and told me why
+you did not wake me when you got up and dressed baby,”
+said Jennie as she stooped and kissed her mother and the
+child.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I was so well satisfied to see you sleeping off your fatigue
+that I would not have disturbed you for a great deal,” said
+Mrs. Campbell, returning her daughter’s caress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, now, the reason I didn’t ring for any one was because
+I didn’t want any one. And when I heard you and
+baby in such earnest conversation, I hurried with my dressing
+and came in. I thought baby would be hungry.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She was hungry; but I sent to the chemist and got this
+‘infant food’ for her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! she never was fed with that before!” exclaimed
+Jennie, in some doubt of its good effects.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t be afraid, my dear. It is used in all the royal
+nurseries. See, the royal arms are on the label,” said the
+lady.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course, mamma, darling, if you give it, it is all right.
+I think your judgment quite as good as that of all the royal
+family put together.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tut! tut! my pet! Your visit to America must have
+turned you into a republican. But what a lovely wrapper
+you have got on, Jennie!” she said, perhaps to turn the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is it not? And I have got another one just like it in
+mauve, which has never been on my back, and which you
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>must have, dear mamma. Those angel women in New York
+have given me that huge trunk full of beautiful clothing,
+and I shall never wear one-half of it out, but my greatest
+pleasure in it will be to divide it with you, my dear, darling,
+beautiful mamma.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie!” was all the curate’s wife found to say to
+that, for she did not mean to take any of her daughter’s
+pretty clothes, if she could help it, nor did she want to vex
+the girl by refusing them just then.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is papa?” inquired Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Gone out to make some sick calls; he will be home by
+noon. But here I am chatting away and forgetting that you
+have had no breakfast. We breakfasted two hours ago!”
+laughed Mrs. Campbell as she put her hand out to the bell
+rope and rang.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth Longman came in, smiled and nodded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, ma’am,” to Jennie, and then went to
+work to lay the cloth for her breakfast. It was soon spread
+upon the table—good coffee, rich cream, muffins, fresh
+butter, grilled ham and poached eggs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell gave the baby to Elspeth and sat down to
+pour out the coffee for her prodigal daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, mamma! You remember our old feeling, yours and
+mine, that a draught poured out by beloved hands has the
+power of life-giving to the spirit as well as to the body,”
+said Jennie as she received the cup from her mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And the same may be said of work gifts, my dear.
+Your little Shetland veil that you knit for me years ago,
+always seemed full as it could hold of your dear love, and
+its touch on my face like your caress,” replied Mrs. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While they sat at table Elspeth Longman stood at one of
+the windows with the baby in her arms, tapping on the
+panes to make the child look out on the blue sky and the
+evergreen trees.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I shall stop calling baby ‘Baby’ now, mamma. She is
+going to be named after you—Esther. It is too grown up
+a name to call a little baby in common. And we can’t call
+her Hetty, because that is your pet name. Now what shall
+we call her for short?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Essy,” replied the young grandmother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Essy, then, it shall be. Mind, Mrs. Longman. Our
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>baby is to the christened Esther, after mamma, and we are
+to call her Essy for short.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, ma’am; it is a pretty name,” said the woman
+at the window.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And we will have her christened on Sunday, mamma.
+We must wait for Sunday, because I remember papa’s preference
+for christening babies on Sunday, unless there should
+be some pressing necessity to perform the ceremony on a
+week day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There’s grandpa!” exclaimed Elspeth to the baby, tapping
+on the window. And the next instant, the Rev. James
+Campbell—otherwise familiarly and affectionately in his
+own family called “Jimmy”—entered the house and walked
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He kissed his daughter good-morning, and then took his
+stand on the rug, with his back to the fire, looking so grave
+that his wife grew anxious, but forbore to question him in
+the presence of their newly returned daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And perhaps, after all,” she reflected, “it is nothing
+very personal. He may have just returned from the deathbed
+of a parishioner. Such scenes always affect him, more
+for the sake of those left behind than for the departed, for
+he has too much faith to fret after the freed soul.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While Mrs. Campbell was turning these thoughts over in
+her mind, and Mr. Campbell was standing in silence on the
+rug, Jennie finished her breakfast and arose and took her
+crowing baby from the arms of Elspeth, that the latter
+might clear off the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When this was done, and the woman had left the room,
+and Jennie had put her baby to sleep in the pretty berceaunette
+that had been provided by her mother that very
+morning, and the father, mother and daughter were seated
+around the fire, both these women with needlework in their
+hands, the curate said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, if you will, you may give us the explanation
+you promised. Hetty!” he said, suddenly turning to
+his wife, “did she tell you anything last night?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not a word. I would not let her talk. I made her go
+to sleep.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That was right. Well, we know from her letter that
+she, daughter of a minister of the church of England,
+though a very humble one, and the wife of an ex-officer in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>her majesty’s service, though a most unworthy one—that
+she, a lady by birth and by marriage, was brought to such
+extremity as to be confined in the pauper ward of a public
+hospital, and to depend on private charity for her outfit and
+passage home to us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thanks be to the Lord that we have her and her child
+safe and sound in mind and body, however they came to
+us!” fervently exclaimed Hetty Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I say we know all this from our child’s letter. But we
+do not know why all this should have happened in this way;
+nor why she never mentioned her husband’s name in her
+letter; nor why she comes to us with her child alone; nor
+why, when I asked her for an explanation, she replied to
+me that the kindest act he ever did for her was—to leave
+her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my Jennie! Oh, my dear Jennie!” exclaimed
+Hetty in a tone of pain.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma; it is true. The kindest thing he ever did
+for me was to leave me. I am not heartbroken over it. I
+have nothing, not the least thing, to reproach myself with
+in all my conduct toward him. Mamma, when I made
+Capt. Kightly Montgomery’s acquaintance I</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘Foregathered wi’ the de’il.’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jennie—my daughter!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is hard fact, mamma, as you will know when you
+have heard the story I am going to tell you. Is there any
+danger of any one coming in?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear. There is no one in the house besides ourselves
+except Elspeth, and as this is baking day she is very
+busy in the kitchen, and will not come in here unless she
+should be called,” said Hetty. Nevertheless, she got up and
+turned the keys in both doors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, then, my dear,” she said as she resumed her seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a long story, and a painful one; yet, for every reason,
+I feel that I must tell you the whole of it without
+reservation, because I shall have to seek your counsel and
+be guided by it as to my future course,” said Jennie, turning
+to her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; tell every word you know,” replied Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Jennie told the whole horrible story—of her secret
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>marriage—of which her parents had heard before—of the
+many devices by which her husband had kept her away
+from her parents, even after they had received her penitent
+letter, and forgiven her, and invited her and her bridegroom
+to visit them; of their wanderings through Europe, stopping
+at the great gambling centers; of his abandonment of her;
+or her pursuit of him over land and sea; of their meeting at
+night in the streets of New York, just when he was on the
+eve of marriage with another woman; of his fright at her
+appearance, his instant repudiation of her, and their bitter
+altercation, which ended in his stabbing her and leaving her
+for dead on the sidewalk of the deserted street,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“In the dead waste and middle of the night.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this point of the story Mrs. Campbell screamed and
+flung her hands up to her eyes as if to shut out the horrible
+vision her imagination had conjured up from the words of
+Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then there followed a pause in the narrative until Hetty
+had recovered herself. Meanwhile the curate sat in grim
+silence, like a man who resolves but does not mean to speak.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was Jennie who broke the spell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is the very worst, mamma. I have nothing to tell
+worse than this—no, nor half as bad—and you see that it
+did not kill me. And now what I have to tell you is mostly
+a pleasant experience; for when I recovered consciousness,
+which was after many hours, I found myself on a nice, white
+bed in a pleasant room, with the sweetest, kindest woman’s
+face, like an angel’s face, bending over me, and my new-born
+baby lying beside me. Yes; my wound had been in the
+flesh of my left breast, shocking me into a swoon, but not
+fatal—as he had supposed it to be—and not even dangerous.
+Under some anæsthetic—I suppose, though I do not know—my
+wound had been dressed, and my baby born, and I
+awoke in such a heaven of peace and good will, with my
+precious baby by my side, and with angels of mercy all
+about me, that, mamma, every vestige of anger against my
+husband for all his wrongs to me vanished from my bosom;
+although there remained a shrinking from the thought of
+ever meeting him again, and a horror of him that I feel can
+never be overcome in this life. As soon as I was well enough
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>to bear the ordeal I was questioned as to my assailant; but
+I would not tell who he was. The police searched my room
+on Vevay Street, and found his miniature; but it happened
+to be the one which had been taken when he was in the
+army, in his regimental uniform, and with his military
+mustache, and it bore his monogram, K. M. They brought
+it to me, but I would have nothing to say to it; nor was it
+available to trace Montgomery, for he now wore a citizen’s
+dress, had grown a full, long beard, and he bore another
+name—a name supported by documentary and direct evidence—a
+name which it will surprise you to hear—but let
+that pass for the present.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why not tell us now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Wait, mamma, dear. I am following the narrative as
+the facts came to my knowledge. The miniature was photographed
+and distributed to aid in the identification and
+arrest of the suspected party. It did not lead to Montgomery’s
+arrest, but to that of an unlucky gentleman who
+bore some resemblance to the photograph, especially in the
+matter of the martial mustache. This hapless person was
+brought before me for identification. The likeness struck
+even me at first, and startled me into a compromising exclamation;
+but a second glance assured me that I had never
+seen the man before in my life; and I told them so. They
+did not believe me. And afterward it took the evidence of
+several substantial citizens to convince the magistrate before
+whom he was brought that the accused man was quite a distinct
+individual from Capt. Kightly Montgomery, my supposed
+assailant. I say my supposed assailant, dear mamma;
+for they could not know him for such, since I would not
+give him up to justice; for I wish him no harm, though I
+never want to see him in this world.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never!” breathed Hetty with all a mother’s intense
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I told you in my letter of the great goodness of those
+angel women in New York to me, and how, as soon as I
+was able to leave the hospital, one of them, dear Mrs. Duncan,
+took me home to her own house, where she cared for
+me and my baby as—as you do, sweet mamma.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“God bless them!” exclaimed Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I stayed with her while the ladies were preparing my
+outfit, and until I took passage on the <em>Scorpio</em>.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>“And you saw no more of that——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The conscientious minister hesitated at a word that any
+other man, under the circumstances, would have pronounced
+with vim.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie understood him, and answered promptly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, dear papa. I saw no more of him until I was eight
+days out at sea. Then we came face to face on deck.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Face to face on deck!’” exclaimed Hetty in dismay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Face to face on deck!’ Then he was actually coming
+over on the same ship with yourself?” said the curate, losing
+much of his self-control.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa. Yes, mamma. He was coming over on the
+same ship with myself. Coming over under his new name,
+with his new, deceived bride. They had been married with
+the greatest <i><span lang="fr">éclat</span></i> in one of the most wealthy and fashionable
+houses in New York. And they were on their wedding
+tour.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Jennie gave a detailed account of the meeting between
+the recreant husband and the wronged wife on board
+the <em>Scorpio</em>. She described his fright, awe, horror on meeting
+one whom he believed to be in a pauper’s grave in potter’s
+field, with the stigma of suicide on her name, and then
+his slow acceptance of the fact that it was herself in the
+body, and not an optical illusion created by <i><span lang="la">delirium tremens</span></i>,
+that was there before him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I had not dreamed of meeting him there, or anywhere
+else on earth,” said Jennie; “but when I saw him before
+me, so unexpectedly, I was calmer than he was. I bade him
+leave me and avoid me, and told him that I should not
+trouble him while we were, unfortunately, on the ship together,
+but that I should tell you my whole story and take
+your advice as to my future course.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You did wisely so far,” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I told him you were to meet me at Liverpool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He had taken tickets for Liverpool, but he got off, with
+his party, at Queenstown.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” breathed the curate, “that was prudently done.
+But now, my child, tell me the alias under which this man
+is now traveling, and which you said would surprise us very
+much?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dear papa, first of all, will you please to tell me how
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>much you learned of Kightly Montgomery’s true history
+when you undertook to investigate the antecedents of the
+young officer who had run off with your daughter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear. There was no mystery about him. I
+went to the colonel of his regiment, and learned that he
+was the son of the late General the Honorable Arthur Montgomery,
+who was so distinguished in the Indian war, the
+grandson of the late and the nephew of the present Earl of
+Engelmeed, and a disgrace to his ancestry and relatives;
+and that he had held a commission in the—Regiment of
+Foot, but had been court-martialed and dismissed the service
+for ‘conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you are sure that he is really Kightly Montgomery—that
+that is his real name?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As sure as that James Campbell is my own,” said the
+curate. “And now, will you tell me what name he passed
+under in America, and why he dropped his own?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, papa; the name under which he passed in New
+York; the name under which he claims the richest estate in
+Yorkshire; the name under which he married Miss Lamia
+Leegh, of New York; the name under which he sailed in
+the <em>Scorpio</em> for Liverpool, is——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes? Well?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Great Heaven, Jennie!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good Lord, Jennie!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These exclamations burst simultaneously from the lips of
+Jimmy and Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma! Yes, papa! It is true as truth. Your
+landlord and patron, the new Squire of Haymore, for whose
+home-coming with his bride all these gorgeous preparations
+have been made, is no other than my husband, your son-in-law,
+ex-captain of Foot, Kightly Montgomery, who metaphorically
+fled from before your face by landing at Queenstown,
+to avoid meeting you at Liverpool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Hetty! Hetty!” said the curate, appealing to his
+wife, “what is this world coming to?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To judgment one of these days, Jimmy, according to
+your own preaching! ‘Reck your own read,’ Jimmy. And
+take comfort, as I do, that whatever has been, or is, or is to
+be, we have our darling daughter and her babe safe at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>home!” paid Hetty, closing her arm around Jennie’s waist
+and squeezing her fondly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what a complication! The scoundrel—Heaven
+forgive me, the word slipped out!—the man slunk off the
+steamer at Queenstown for fear of meeting me at Liverpool,
+and now he is walking unaware into my very arms!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I don’t believe that your arms will fold him in a
+very fond embrace!” exclaimed Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If they had but the strength I fear it would be in the
+grizzly bear’s hug, or the boa constrictor’s crush!” exclaimed
+the curate, gasping.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the mad audacity of his coming here, where you
+are! I don’t understand it,” said Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, he does not dream that I am here! How
+should he? He thinks that we are all at Medge, on the
+south coast, with the length of England between us and
+Haymore!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So! I forgot that! What shall you do, Jimmy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nothing at present; but wait for his coming; then I
+will confront him and expose him to the lady he has deceived
+and feloniously married. Meanwhile, Hetty and
+Jennie, my dears, breathe not a word of this secret to any
+one, whoever he or she may be. The effrontery of the man
+in calling himself Randolph Hay, and claiming the Haymore
+estates, is nothing less than insanity! And the credulity
+of lawyers in allowing his claim is past belief!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, but, my dear father, he had piles and piles of documents,
+and no end of direct testimony besides! I heard all
+about Mr. Randolph Hay’s appearance and claim to the
+Haymore estates, and his engagement to Miss Leegh from
+Mrs. Duncan, before I ever discovered that the claimant
+and bridegroom-elect were identical with my own recreant
+husband.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Forged or stolen documents, Jennie. And suborned and
+perjured witnesses! That is the story of his claim, Jennie.
+But breathe not a word to any one of this affair! Let the
+tenants and the villagers go on with their preparations for
+a grand fête. Let Capt. Kightly Montgomery and his bride
+come on in triumph to enjoy it! The higher the flight the
+heavier the fall for him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the poor lady! She was one of those who helped
+me, papa.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>“I am sorry for her! But, even for her sake, the man
+should be exposed and punished. She must not live with
+him in sin!” said the curate. Then, after a pause, “I cannot
+comprehend how he dares to come to England! One
+would think that he would be afraid of being recognized. It
+is true that he believes this family to be on the south coast.
+True, also, that he knows the regiment to which he lately
+belonged to be in India, so that there is no danger of his
+meeting with any of his late fellow officers, but still it is
+always possible that he may be recognized and exposed.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, you do not know what a change the full beard,
+and a difference in the parting of his hair, has made in
+him,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, besides, did we not hear that the new squire does
+not intend to reside in England for some years to come?
+Did not some one say that he was only coming here to make
+a sort of triumphal entry upon his paternal land, and then,
+after liberally treating all his tenants and the villagers, he
+was to leave on extended travels?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! yes! I believe we did hear something of the
+sort. I suppose the fellow thinks he can safely come here
+with his bride to gratify his pride and vanity, by exhibiting
+her and himself in a triumphal entry, after the manner of
+royal personages! I dare say he thinks himself secure in
+doing that. But he does not know the Nemesis that is waiting
+for him! He does not dream that he will exchange triumph
+for shame, luxury for torture, and Haymore Hall and
+fox-hunting for Portsmouth Isle and penal servitude!” exclaimed
+the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then rising, he said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I must go and write my sermon. And this has given me
+some new ideas for it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And when he left the room Hetty and Jennie both knew
+that the sermon in question would be likely to deal more
+with the terrors of the law than with the mercies of the
+Lord.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIV<br> <span class='large'>COMING EVENTS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The autumn days passed calmly at the parsonage of Haymore.
+The curate had his own care, but he kept it to himself.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>On that morning succeeding Jennie’s arrival, when
+Hetty had observed traces of unusual disturbance on the
+brow of her Jimmy and had ascribed it to the effect of
+some distressing deathbed scene of some parishioner
+and therefore had forborne to question him, the cause of the
+curate’s uneasiness was just this: He had, by that morning’s
+mail, received a letter from his rector at Cannes,
+speaking hopelessly of his own illness and predicting an
+early and fatal issue.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>James Campbell would not disturb his wife and daughter
+with this news, though it troubled him deeply and for more
+reasons than one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the first place, he felt a warm affection for the venerable
+rector who had been his father’s classmate at Oxford,
+and who had remembered him when he could do him a
+service and put him into his present position.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the second place, should the rector die soon, his successor
+would be appointed by the Squire of Haymore and
+would naturally dismiss him, James Campbell, from his
+curacy. And he and his family would have to go forth in
+the world, homeless, moneyless and almost friendless, in
+midwinter. What prospect lay before the three but destitution
+and indebtedness—practically, first, to go into the
+cheapest lodgings they could find; then to go into debt for
+their daily food as long as he might be able to get credit.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And after that—what?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He did not know.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of course, he would try to get work again—another curacy,
+or a tutorship, or a secretaryship. But Jimmy knew
+by all his past experience and observation how difficult, how
+almost impossible it was for a man in his position, once out
+of employment, ever to get in again. If he could only know
+who was to be the successor of his dying rector, he might,
+at a proper time, try to gain his favor to be made his curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Well—he thought—“while he preacheth to others he
+must not himself be a castaway.” As Hetty had told him,
+he must “reck his own read.” He must do the best he could
+and leave the result to divine Providence. If he could only
+hold his present position. What a commodious house he had
+for his dear ones! What an affluent garden! What a
+spacious glebe! What a lovely home, taken altogether!
+What a paradisal one for his family! If he could only retain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>it by any amount of work—by doing double duty, tenfold
+duty in the parish! He would not shrink from any
+labor, any hardship, to retain this refuge for his beloved
+ones, he thought. Then his conscience reproached him—he
+was thinking too much of his own, too little of his parish;
+and besides, the idea of remaining in this sweet home was
+but a dream, for if even the successor of his dying rector
+should favor him so far as to retain him in the curacy, he
+could not continue to reside in the rectory—where, of
+course, the new rector would take up his abode—but would
+have to find a small house in the village suitable to his small
+salary as a curate. But even this last favor was highly improbable.
+The new rector would have some young clerical
+friend whom he would take as his curate. They always did,
+he remembered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is there much sickness or suffering in the parish, Jimmy?” Hetty
+asked one day when they happened to be alone
+in the parlor together, Jennie being in her bedroom with
+her baby, and Elspeth in the kitchen over her cooking.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sickness? Why, no! Why do you ask?” inquired the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is there any distress, then?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, no! They are all unusually well just now, and
+very hilarious over the prospect of the arrival of their new
+squire and his bride and all the high jinks of their reception.
+Why did you ask such questions, Hetty?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because, Jimmy, you always look as solemn as a
+hearse!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do I? Well, in view of coming events, I cannot be expected
+to look very merry, can I, Hetty?” he inquired,
+rather evasively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You refer to the expected arrival of the fraudulent
+claimant and bigamous husband, and your duty to strike
+him down,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘Even in his pitch of pride.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>But I don’t see why that should make you look so solemn.
+And Jennie home, too! And the dear baby! Oh, Jimmy,
+if you cannot appreciate the blessings around you and be
+grateful and happy in the midst of them, the Lord help
+you! though He certainly has a discouraging job of you,
+just now!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>“I preach to my people and weary them, no doubt. You
+preach to me and—avenge them!” laughed the Reverend
+James.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I am glad to see you laugh, even if it is at my
+expense,” said Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What are you two quarreling about?” inquired Jennie,
+who had put her baby to sleep and now entered the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As to which is the best preacher, your mother of myself,”
+answered the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma! out and out! I have often wished I could
+hear her in the pulpit!” laughed Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That settles it! Hetty, you have gained the point!”
+said the Rev. James, as he strolled out of the parlor into
+his study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His wife’s words had not been without their effect. He
+was just now surrounded with such bright blessings, living
+in such an atmosphere of love, peace, health, comfort, and
+happiness that nothing could be added to their blessedness;
+yet their very perfection troubled him, lest they should not
+be permanent. He could not enjoy this blessed time, because
+next month or next year might bring a change which
+might be for the worse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Why, what base thanklessness and faithlessness was this!
+While he “preached to others” he was himself “a castaway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he resolved that he would reform all this. He would
+take no anxious care for the future. He would do the best
+he could and leave the rest to the Lord.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>From that day he presented a more cheerful aspect to his
+family.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The leading parishioners began to call on his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Partly from hearsay and partly from inference, they had
+got a mixed opinion about the status of the young woman.
+She was the wife—so they Lad heard—of one Capt. Kightly
+Montgomery, son of the late General the Honorable Arthur
+Montgomery, and grandson of the late and nephew of the
+present Earl of Engelwing; that the captain was now, of
+course, with his regiment in India, and that his young wife
+had come home with her infant on a long visit to her father,
+because the climate of India was so fatal to young children
+of European parentage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>Under these mingled impressions of truth and error they
+called to pay their respects to their pastor’s daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>From the village there came Mrs. and the Misses Leach,
+the doctor’s wife and daughters; Mrs. Drum, the lawyer’s
+mother, and the Misses Lesmore, the draper’s sisters, and
+several widows and maidens living on their annuities. From
+the country came Lady Nutt, of Nuttwood, the widow of a
+civil engineer who had been knighted for some special merit
+by the queen; the three Misses Frobisher, “ladies of a certain
+age,” co-heiresses of Frobisher Frowns, a queer and
+gloomy mansion on the moor, which stood against a bank
+crowned with dark evergreen trees that bent over the roof
+of the house, like towering brows on a human face—thence
+I suppose the quaint if not forbidding name.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were all. Others of the county gentry belonging to
+that neighborhood were absentees.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie as well as her mother was much pleased with the
+hearty, homely, cordial manners of these Yorkshire country
+people. But the better she liked the more she dreaded them!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, mamma!” she said, “I fear they cannot know my
+real position here! They cannot know that I am a forsaken
+wife! Why, yesterday old Lady Nutt patted my head and
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘I can feel for you, my dear. I had a niece in the H. E.
+I. C.’s service, and she had to come home with her young
+children and leave them here with their grandmother while
+she went back to him. Do you intend to stay here with your
+child, or leave it here with your parents and join the captain
+in India?’</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma, in all innocence the dear old lady asked
+me that question! And my cheeks burned like fire as I answered
+her the truth and said, ‘I intend to stay here with
+my baby, my lady.’ She said, ‘That is right,’ and kissed me
+and went away before you came in.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She is a good old soul,” was Hetty’s only comment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, mamma, but you have missed the point I wished to
+make. It is so embarrassing to have people call on me and
+make remarks that I must either correct by telling them
+plainly how I am situated, or else that I must pass unnoticed,
+as if they were true, and so, as it were, silently indorse
+a false view.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, I don’t see how you can help yourself. You
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>cannot blow a trumpet before you proclaiming to all and
+sundry the wickedness of your husband in deserting you,
+his lawful wife, and marrying, feloniously, another woman!
+You cannot even tell that to your visitors in confidence. It
+would not become you to do so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, mamma, dear, I cannot; but some day some visitor
+will innocently ask me some straightforward, plain question,
+which will require an answer, involving a confession
+of my real position. Oh! what shall I do in such a case?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear child, wait until that day comes and that question
+is asked. That will be time enough to worry about it.
+Jennie! the secret of peace is the practice of faith. Do your
+present duty, bear your present burden, enjoy your present
+blessings, and leave the future to the Lord. You have nothing
+to do with it. For you it has not even an existence,”
+said Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Early in December news came in a letter from Mr. Randolph
+Hay, in Paris, to his bailiff, Mr. John Prowt, announcing
+the return of the squire, with his wife and a party
+of friends, to spend the Christmas holidays at the Hall.
+The house was to be made ready for them by the fifteenth of
+the month.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again all the estate, all the village and all the surrounding
+country were agog with anticipations of the free festivities
+that should glorify the triumphal entry of the new
+squire upon his paternal estate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Every one who came to call at the rectory talked of nothing
+but the expected event.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the next Sunday morning the Rev. Mr. Campbell
+preached an awful warning from the text:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
+before a fall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And in the afternoon he preached a similar jeremiad
+from another text:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading
+himself like a green bay tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yet he passed away, and lo! he was not; yea, I sought
+him, but he could not be found.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the course of the week there came dire news to the
+parish. A telegram from his attendant physician in Cannes
+announced to Mr. Campbell the death of his rector, the
+Rev. Dr. Orton, and added that his body would be brought
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>to the rectory to be interred under the chancel of the Haymore
+church.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Rev. James Campbell had been prepared for this
+blow for many weeks, or at least he thought he had been so;
+yet when it fell it nearly overwhelmed him. He was grieved
+for the loss of his friend and he was perplexed for his
+household. At first he did not know what to do at all. He
+was not a man of resources. Should he immediately vacate
+the rectory with his family, and go to the village tavern,
+horrid, beery place, with a bar and taproom, or should he
+seek lodgings in the village, dreadful, little, stuffy rooms, in
+such a place, or should he remain at the rectory until the
+arrival of the family with the remains of the deceased?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At the church he must remain, of course; but at the rectory
+when the family of the late rector were returning with
+his remains.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The family of the late rector, by the way, consisted of an
+aged widow and a maiden daughter, both of whom were
+with him at Cannes, and two unmarried sons, one a professor
+at Oxford, and the other a popular preacher in London.
+The curate consulted his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Telegraph the widow and know her will before you take
+any step,” was Hetty’s advice, and Jimmy acted upon it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In a few hours came a courteous answer from Miss Orton,
+saying, in effect, that Mr. Campbell was by no means to disturb
+himself or his family. That the delicate condition of
+the widow’s health must prevent her from leaving a sunny
+climate for a frosty one at this severe season; that the
+daughter would stay with her mother; that the remains of
+the deceased rector would be accompanied by his two sons,
+and taken directly from the train to the chancel of the
+church, where the second funeral services would be held on
+Friday, at 4 P. M. (the first having been held at Cannes),
+immediately after which the sons would leave for London
+and Oxford. So the curate’s family need not be disturbed
+in the rectory until the appointment of the new rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Until the appointment of the new rector!’ How long
+reprieve would that be?” inquired the curate. And then he
+blamed himself for his selfishness in thinking so much of
+his own and his family’s interests, when he should be thinking
+only of his departed friend.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Friday morning the parish church at Haymore was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>decked in solemn funeral array to receive the remains of its
+rector. The pulpit, altar and chancel were draped with
+crape. Places of business and schools were all closed for
+the day, and all the parishioners filled the church, many in
+deep mourning, and all the others with some badge of
+mourning on their dresses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The wife and daughter of the curate sat in the rectory
+pew. There, later, they were joined by the two sons of the
+deceased rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate, in full vestments, waited the arrival of the
+casket, and, book in hand, went to meet it at the church
+door, through which, upon a bier of ebony, covered with a
+pall of black velvet, it was borne by six bearers, and marshaled
+it up the aisle and before the chancel, repeating the
+sublime words of our Lord:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am the resurrection and the life. He that liveth and
+believeth on me shall never die. And he that believeth on
+me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the bier, with the casket, was set down before the
+altar, and the chief mourners—the two sons of the deceased,
+who had followed it—had taken their seats in the rectory
+pew, then the funeral services, conducted by the curate,
+went on to their solemn ending.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At the close the parishoniers came out of their pews in
+an orderly manner, and passing on from the right to the left
+before the casket, took their last look at the mask of their
+deceased pastor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At last the door of the crypt below the chancel was
+opened, and the pallbearers bore the casket down the narrow
+stairs and laid it in the leaden coffin and lifted it to the
+stone niche prepared to receive it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the “dust to dust” was spoken, and the minister
+came up again, went to the altar, pronounced the benediction,
+and so dismissed the congregation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As the two sons of the late rector came out of their pew
+they met and shook hands with the curate, but declined his
+invitation to the rectory, saying that they were about to
+return immediately to Cannes, to remain with their widowed
+mother for the few days in which they would absent
+themselves from their professional duties.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So they took leave of the curate and his wife and daughter,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>entered a carriage that was waiting, and drove off to
+their train.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate, leaving his parishioners talking together in
+groups in the churchyard, while the sexton was closing up
+the church, followed his wife and daughter through the gate
+in the wall that divided that cemetery from the rectory
+grounds.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He went directly to his study to compose himself before
+joining his wife and daughter in the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But what he found there did not tend to his composure.
+A letter, with a Paris postmark, was lying on the table. He
+dropped into a chair and took it. At first he thought it
+must be from Kightly Montgomery, whom he knew to be
+flourishing in Paris under the name of Randolph Hay; but
+a moment’s reflection assured him that the false claimant
+was not likely to know of the accident of James Campbell’s
+temporary charge of the Haymore parish.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He opened the letter, glanced at the signature, and saw
+that it was not a stranger’s, and then read as follows:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Paris</span>, December 13, 187—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Reverend and Dear Sir</span>: I learned with extreme grief
+a few days ago of the lamented death of the late honored
+rector of Haymore. I immediately came over to the city to
+see my brother-in-law, Mr. Hay, and apply to him for the
+living which is in his gift. He has been pleased to bestow
+it on me. My induction will date from the first of January
+next. I do not wish to inconvenience you, but I should be
+obliged if you could vacate the rectory in time to have the
+house prepared for my reception. Mr. Randolph Hay and
+his wife will be going to Haymore Hall for the Christmas
+holidays with a party of friends, of which, at his invitation,
+I have the happiness to make one. We shall, therefore, soon
+meet at Haymore. With best respects to Mrs. Campbell, I
+remain, dear sir, very truly yours,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Cassius Leegh</span>.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my beloved helpless ones! What will become of you
+now?” moaned the curate, covering his eyes.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XV<br> <span class='large'>THE CURATE’S TROUBLE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>After brooding over this disastrous letter for a long
+hour the curate summoned enough courage to arise and go
+to his wife and take counsel with her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was, indeed, a trouble that he dared not keep from
+her, even to spare her from anxiety; for it was absolutely
+necessary that they should take immediate measures for removal
+from the rectory and settlement in lodgings somewhere
+in the town before the arrival of the new incumbent;
+or, so at least it seemed to the curate in his dismayed state
+of mind.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He went directly into the back parlor, where the fire was
+burning cheerfully in the grate, the tea table was set, and
+Hetty resting in her low rocking-chair on the rug.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is Jennie?” inquired the curate, dropping into
+another chair beside his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In her bedroom, putting her baby to sleep,” replied
+Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I am glad the child is not here just now. I have
+bad news to tell you, my dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh? Bad news? What is it, Jimmy? But, dear me,
+don’t look so dreadfully cast down! It cannot be such awfully
+bad news, since you, I, Jennie and the baby are all
+safe and sound in the house. But what, then, is your bad
+news?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have lost my position here, and we shall have to leave
+the rectory,” replied Mr. Campbell in a tone of despair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let me take a look at you?” said his wife, rising, giving
+him her hand, helping him to his feet, and surveying him
+all around. “Well, I don’t see that you have lost a limb, or
+any mental or bodily faculty, that you need look so woebegone!
+As for losing your position, of course you lost that
+when the old rector died; and as for leaving the rectory, we
+all knew that we should have to do that.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, but not so soon. We shall have to vacate by the
+first of January.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, that gives us plenty of time to choose new lodgings.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>I would not ‘fash my beard’ about that, if I were
+you, Jimmy! But why must we move by that time?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because my successor, or rather Dr. Orton’s successor,
+is appointed.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Already!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, already.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Upon my word, there has been but little time lost! And
+you have received notice to quit?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, in a letter from the new incumbent, which I found
+lying on my study table when I came in from the church.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who is he, then?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Who is he?’ That is the very worst of all. Do you
+remember that fellow, Cassius Leegh, who used to come to
+Medge parsonage long ago and fasten on us for weeks?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should think so!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He was the son of a small shopkeeper in the borough,
+London, studied for the ministry as a matter of pride and
+ambition; but, morally and spiritually, as unfit for the pulpit
+as a man can well be! I do not know how he has contrived
+to get himself inducted into this living, except upon
+the basis that he and the new squire are birds of a feather!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Stop!” exclaimed Hetty as a sudden light dawned on
+her mind—“I understand it all perfectly now! Don’t you
+know that this man, this so-called new squire of Haymore,
+married in New York a young lady by the name of Leegh?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I paid no attention to the name of the lady,” replied
+the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, naturally I did, being a woman, you know. And
+the bride’s name was Leegh! And surely you have heard
+Cassius Leegh speak of his beautiful sister Lamia, who was
+taken up by a wealthy New York family?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why—yes—certainly!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is it, then. This man Leegh, no doubt, sought out
+his brother-in-law and put in his plea for the living, even
+before Dr. Orton was dead, and so he has secured it, and
+lost no time in warning you out. But I wonder if he happened
+to mention your name to the ‘squire,’ for if so, the
+said squire, finding out that you were here, would scarcely
+venture to set foot within the place until you should be
+gone.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No,” said Mr. Campbell emphatically; “knowing the
+man as well as I do, I can say most positively that he has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>never mentioned my name to his patron, or even alluded to
+the fact that the late Dr. Orton left a temporary substitute
+to fill his pulpit, when he himself went away for his health,
+lest, you see, the knowledge of this fact should cause the
+squire to take more time in appointing Dr. Orton’s successor.
+Don’t you see?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes. To leave the absent squire to believe that the parish
+of Haymore was entirely destitute of a pastor, would, of
+course, hasten the patron, who wishes the good opinion of
+his people, to appoint an incumbent, and the most natural
+thing would be to appoint his brother-in-law. I wish he
+were a better man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So do I, with all my heart!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well! we are in Heaven’s hands. And as we must clear
+out by the first of January, and get into new lodgings somewhere
+or other, I will go out the first thing after breakfast
+to-morrow morning to look them up,” said Hetty cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lodgings in this town!” ruefully grunted the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They needn’t be in this town. There are, no doubt,
+plenty of farmhouses in the surrounding country where we
+may get them very cheap, and very wholesome and pleasant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; but how are we to pay, even for the cheapest?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jimmy Campbell! You a minister of the gospel, and
+have no more faith than to ask such a question! If you
+have lost your position here, and if we must leave the pleasant
+rectory, still we are three able-bodied people, who, if
+we do the best we can, and work at any honest thing our
+hands may find to do, will be helped by the Lord, and will
+do very well and pay our way.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Hetty, my dear, you have had no experience in a
+bitter struggle with the world!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If I have not, it is well, perhaps, that I should have.
+And I am ready to engage in the struggle, though I do not
+see why it need be a bitter one, but just a healthful one.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You have a healthful nature, dear, that is certain. As
+for me, I sometimes think I am falling weak in body and
+in mind,” sighed the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, no, dear Jimmy; not weak, only overworked and
+weary. Why, you have not had a vacation for eighteen
+years, to my certain knowledge. So long a strain might
+have made an idiot or a ‘damp, unpleasant corpse’ of any
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>man less strong and brave than yourself,” said the wife with
+affectionate fervor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It helps me to see your faith in me, dear,” he sighed as
+he took her hand and pressed it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As for me, Jimmy, I am glad that you will be obliged
+to rest for a few weeks or months. Don’t doubt. You must
+rest. It is our turn now. Mine and Jennie’s. We must
+work.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You! What in this world could you do?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A good many things. We—Jennie and I—could teach
+English and French, music and drawing, to young ladies, or
+A B C’s to little children. Failing that, we could take in
+dressmaking or plain sewing. Failing that, I could go out
+as sick nurse, and Jennie could do up fine laces.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hetty, you talk wildly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all. Unless you preach wildly. I am only
+going to put into practice what you preach. You tell the
+artisans and agricultural laborers that work is worship.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I would not mind your teaching——” slowly began the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course you would not,” promptly assented his wife;
+“and I should prefer it. Teaching is, conventionally, considered
+a very ‘genteel’ occupation for a poor lady. And
+for that, and a few other unworthy reasons, I would rather
+teach than do anything else. But if I cannot get teaching to
+do I hope I am Christian enough to take whatever work I
+can get, whether it should be dressmaking, plain sewing,
+sick nursing, or—washing and ironing. There! Even
+that! I am ashamed of myself for even preferring a ‘genteel’
+occupation to an humble one which is equally useful.
+But I won’t let my feelings govern me in this; and so sure
+as you have to leave your situation here, you shall take a rest
+after twenty years’ hard labor, and Jennie and I will go to
+work at whatever we can get to do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hetty, you amaze and distract me! You do, indeed!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look here, Jim. I have not kept my eyes shut all my
+life, and this is what I have seen—many unsuccessful professional
+‘gentlemen and ladies,’ who have not talent enough
+to climb where ‘there is more room higher up,’ or even to
+keep their footing on the level where they were born, but
+yet who will struggle, slip, flounder, suffer and sin where
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>they are rather than take a step ‘lower down,’ as they would
+consider it, but where there is also ‘more room.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t quite follow you, Hetty.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is what I mean: Take an illustration. A man
+may be an unsuccessful lawyer, but his knowledge of law
+would make him so much better a clerk that his chances of
+employment in that capacity would be much greater than
+those of other competitors. Another man may fail as a minister,
+but he might make all the better schoolmaster. A
+woman may fail as a teacher, but succeed as a nurse. And
+what I would both inculcate and practice is this: That
+when man or woman fails in the line of life they have been
+born into or chosen for themselves, and when they have
+neither the power to rise above the level or to keep their
+footing upon it, let them not give up in despair or struggle
+in vain, but step frankly down to an humbler and honester
+position. There is always some work of some sort to be got.
+He who said ‘Six days shalt thou labor’ will give work to
+every hand willing to take it, though it may not be the kind
+of work their pride would like best. As for me and my
+daughter, whatever our ‘hands find to do, we will do it with
+our might,’ whether we like it or not.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, my dear, do you really not care about leaving this
+beautiful home?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Under the circumstances, I should not care to stay, even
+if we could. Should you? Reflect. The new squire will be
+here in a few days. You will have to denounce him as an
+impostor, a fraudulent claimant, a bigamous bridegroom.
+But it would take time to prove these charges. Could you
+stay in the parish and preach in the church during that
+time with any sort of peace to us all? No. Better
+that we should go away, and the sooner we go the
+better.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, I shall easily prove the fellow to be a bigamist;
+but as his crime was committed in the United States
+of America, I cannot prosecute him for it here in England.
+Neither can I prove him to be a fraudulent claimant. I
+have been turning that matter over in my mind, and I do
+not even know that he is one.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What!” exclaimed Hetty with wide-open eyes. “You
+do not know him to be a fraudulent claimant when you
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>know that his name is Kightly Montgomery, and that he
+calls himself Randolph Hay?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“See here, my love. I know nothing of the conditions of
+inheritance that rule this estate. I know nothing of the
+history of the family or their intermarriages with other
+families. How should I, coming here a stranger from the
+south of England?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should think it could not require much experience to
+teach you that when a man’s name is Kightly Montgomery
+and he calls himself Randolph Hay, he is a liar, swindler
+and an impostor.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But consider, dear, he may he next of kin and heir-at-law,
+and his name now have been legally changed as the
+condition of his inheritance. His mother or his grandmother
+may have been born a daughter of Hay, of Haymore.
+The estate may have ‘fallen to the distaff,’ as it is called—that
+is, to the female line, and so the heir through that line
+might be obliged to take the family name as the condition
+of his heirship. Now do you see?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I see what you mean. But your theory has so
+many ‘mays’ that it won’t do. As for me, I prefer to think
+the villain a fraudulent claimant as well as a bigamous
+bridegroom.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were interrupted by a ring at the doorbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell went to answer it. It was his custom always,
+when at home, to do so, to save the steps of the rectory’s
+one elderly servant-woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was a hanging lamp in the little hall between the
+parlor and the study that gave but a subdued light. They
+had no gas, and oil was dear, and economy necessary.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell opened the door, expecting to see no one
+but the little old sexton. He saw, instead, the tallest and
+finest looking athlete he had ever seen in or out of a circus;
+but he could not distinguish his features.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell?” said the stranger interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is my name. What can I do for you?” inquired
+the curate, who, now that his eyes had got used to the obscurity,
+saw that the collossus was clothed from head to heel
+in an outlandish costume of dressed buckskin trimmed with
+fur, and that his stature was heightened, and his face
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>shortened by the tall fur cap he wore pulled low down over
+his forehead and ears, for the night was cold.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My name is Longman—Samson Longman, at your service,
+sir. I have been directed by the people at Chuxton to
+come to you, sir, for information concerning one Elizabeth
+Longman, widow——” The speaker’s voice trembled and
+broke.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your mother!” said the curate gravely. “She is well
+and happy as she can be, without the son she is always
+pining for and praying for.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Heaven be praised for that! And may the Lord forgive
+me. Where is she, sir, if you please?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With us here in the house, our cherished housekeeper,
+almost our mother——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank the Lord! Can I see her, sir, now, at once? I
+have come a long way to ask her forgiveness at last, and to
+stay with her forever.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come into my study. We must prepare her for the sight
+of her son, for although she seems to be always expecting
+you, yet the sudden meeting might be too much for her,”
+said the curate as he closed the front door after the entrance
+of his visitor and led the way into the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Mr. Longman, sit down here at my desk and write
+a letter to your mother. It need be only a line or so, to
+give me the means of breaking the glad tidings safely to
+her ears,” said Mr. Campbell as he turned up the light of
+the study lamp and placed a chair for the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman obeyed like a child, and sat down and wrote his
+letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will that do?” he inquired as he put the sheet of paper
+into the curate’s hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! that will do very well. Now put it into an envelope
+and seal and direct it regularly,” said the curate
+when he had read and returned the letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again Longman obeyed like a child, and when he had
+sealed the letter, arose and placed it in the hands of the
+curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Resume your seat and wait for my return,” said Mr.
+Campbell as he left the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He went first into the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty was still sitting there alone. Jennie was still with
+her baby in the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>“Who was that, Jim? A man come to serve you with a
+writ of eviction?” inquired Hetty mischievously.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hardly, my dear. But I am sure you will be happy to
+hear who it was.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who was it, then?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Elspeth Longman’s prodigal son returned.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh-h-h, Jim!” exclaimed Hetty, jumping up, her face
+perfectly radiant with benevolent delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear. And now, if you please, I will take you to
+see him in the study, where you can talk to him while I go
+and break these ‘glad tidings of great joy’ to the poor, long-suffering
+mother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! I would love to go! What is the boy like?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Boy?’ ‘Like?’ He is like the Apollo Belvedere, or
+like the Colossus of Rhodes. A superb, a stupendous fellow.
+But all dressed in hides like a North American Indian, or
+a prehistoric Norseman. But come and see!” said Mr.
+Campbell, leading the way to the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty followed, now half anxious, half afraid to see the
+savage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As they entered Longman, seeing the lady, arose, bowed
+and handed a chair with so much ease, dignity and grace
+that Mrs. Campbell was surprised, pleased and reassured.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Longman, this lady is my wife. She will entertain
+you while I go to your mother,” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman bowed more profoundly than before, and murmured
+something to the effect that he was most honored
+and grateful to be permitted to make the lady’s acquaintance;
+but the hunter was always shy in the society of gentlewomen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Mr. Campbell, knowing that Hetty could give the
+prodigal son more satisfactory information about his mother
+in five minutes than any other creature could in five years,
+went out and left them together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He passed through the parlor and opened the kitchen
+door. He saw Elspeth sitting before the stove, knitting,
+while she waited for her muffins to bake.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the parlor for a moment? I wish to
+speak to you, Mrs. Longman,” said the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir,” replied the woman, rising and untying her
+kitchen apron, which she took off and hung over the back
+of her chair. Then she went into the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>“Take Mrs. Campbell’s rocking-chair while we talk. Save
+your back whenever you can, Mrs. Longman.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, sir, it better becomes me to stand in your reverence’s
+presence.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray, sit down. No, but I insist upon it. I have something
+to say to you which cannot be said in a minute.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The widow sighed profoundly and sank into the easy-chair.
+She thought she knew what was coming. Without
+the least intention of eavesdropping, she had heard enough
+of the conversation that had that evening passed between
+the minister and his wife—and which, by the way, had never
+been intended to be concealed—to know that they expected
+to leave the rectory under such reverse of fortune as would
+compel them to use the closest economy in their domestic
+arrangements.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Therefore Elspeth thought that she had been summoned
+to the parlor to receive her “warning” or her discharge.
+And she felt not so sorry for herself in the prospect of losing
+a good home as for the curate and his wife on having to
+dispense with her services. She was turning over in her
+meek mind the question of how, without seeming presumptuous,
+she could offer to remain with them and serve them
+without wages, just so long as her strength and also her
+clothes and shoes should last, and if they could afford to
+keep her even on such easy terms as her board and lodging.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell broke gently in upon her troubled thoughts
+by asking her:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you ever received any letter from your son since
+he has been away, Mrs. Longman?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not one, sir, though I feel sure in my mind that he has
+writ to me, maybe many letters, and they have all gone
+astray; and then what hurts me worst of all is that he may
+think I must have got some of his letters and as I was too
+mad at him and too unforgiving to answer any of them.
+And I don’t even know where to write to tell him any
+better.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But when at last you meet, face to face, then you can
+tell him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, sir. And I know that we shall meet again. He
+who raised the widow’s son from his bier will hear the poor
+old widowed mother’s prayer, and bring her boy back.
+Though it seems long! Oh, it seems long! But all the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>while it comforts me to think that if I don’t know where he
+is, the Lord does! If I can’t see him, the Lord can! And
+I may pray to the Lord for my boy and He will hear me!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How old are you, Mrs. Longman?” was the curate’s next
+seemingly irrelevant question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Forty-three, sir; will be forty-four on the thirty-first of
+December. But I must look full sixty, my hair is so white,
+and my face so thin and wrinkly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, you have good health, and you Yorkshire people
+are long-lived. You may live forty years longer yet—forty
+happy years with your son.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, minister! what does your reverence mean? Have
+you heard anything? Have you got anything to tell me?”
+inquired the mother, startled by something in the curate’s
+tone or look, and speaking with repressed eagerness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, something has come. Have you anybody who
+would be likely to write a letter to you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nobody in the world, sir, except my boy, and I have
+never had a letter from him, as I told you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, a letter has come for you. I did not give it at
+first, for fear it might startle you. I think it must be from
+your son.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, give it to me, sir, please!—now, this moment!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate handed the letter. The woman seized it, held
+it under the light of the lamp and devoured the superscription
+with ravenous eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! It is his writing! It is his own! Oh, thank
+the Lord! Oh, thank the Lord!” she cried, falling on her
+knees and sinking her head in the cushion of the chair.
+But she soon arose and drew her spectacles from her pocket
+and opened the letter and tried to read it; but the words ran
+together in dark lines before her disturbed vision, and she
+could not decipher them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, sir, be so kind! Read it for me! Please do!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With pleasure,” said Mr. Campbell. And he took the
+letter, and omitting date, read as follows:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘<span class='sc'>My Beloved Mother</span>——’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The darling boy!” ejaculated Elspeth in rapture.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘I have crossed the sea and come back to England——’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is in England! In England! Oh, thank Heaven!
+Thank Heaven! Go on, sir! Please go on!” impatiently
+exclaimed Elspeth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>The curate smiled at her impetuosity and continued:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘To see your dear face again, and to beg your forgiveness,
+which I know you will grant me, though I know I do
+not deserve it——’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, hear the noble fellow! Taking all the blame on
+himself, though I was more in fault nor him! But go on,
+sir! Pray go on!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘I long to be with you, to stay with you all the rest of
+our lives; to work for you, and to try to make you happy
+and comfortable, and so atone for all the trouble I have
+caused you——’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! the grand son! the noble boy! He will stay with
+me all the rest of my life! Oh, that will be joyful!” exclaimed
+Elspeth, clapping her hands and breaking into a
+camp meeting revival hymn, very appropriate, it is true:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘Oh! that will be joyful!</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Joyful! Joyful! Joyful!</div>
+      <div class='line'>Oh! that will be joyful,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To meet and part no more!’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will be like heaven, sir! like heaven! to have my boy
+with me all the rest of my life! But do go on, sir! Forgive
+a poor mother’s impatience, and read me what else he
+says!” she cried, ready to turn from rapture to tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is not much more,” said Mr. Campbell. “Only
+this:</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“‘Please, dearest mother, if you can pardon me, let me
+know when I can come to see you. And believe me your
+sincerely penitent and evermore loving and dutiful son,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘<span class='sc'>Sam</span>.’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“Oh! the darling of darlings! the angel of angels! Oh,
+please, dear minister, write for me directly, for I never can
+hold a pen in the hand that is trembling for joy and blessedness
+and gratitude, and tell him to come immediately. But,
+no! I will go to him! Where is he? I’ll get the Red Fox
+carryall and start for the station immediately. Truly,
+where shall I go? Tell me, minister, dear! Look at the
+letter! Where is it dated from?” she eagerly demanded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will not have far to go. He is in this village,” said
+Mr. Campbell, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>“In this village! Oh! then he is at the Red Fox! Let
+me get my bonnet and cloak!” she cried, rising to her feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is nearer to you than that,” said the minister. Then
+he drew the woman’s arm within his own and led her into
+the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mother!” exclaimed Longman, starting up and striding
+toward her with outstretched arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my darling! my darling!” cried Elspeth, and she
+fell fainting on his bosom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So much for the careful breaking of the news.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But she did not swoon to unconsciousness. She almost
+immediately recovered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Longman seated her in the large armchair, and
+placed himself on the hassock at her feet. She put her arms
+over his shaggy head and smiled through her tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come!” said Hetty, laughing. “You and I are <i><span lang="fr">de trop</span></i>
+in a room with such a pair of lovers as these!” And she
+slipped her hand through her husband’s arm and dragged
+him from the room without the reunited pair—so absorbed
+in their meeting—seeing them go.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVI<br> <span class='large'>THE SQUIRE’S ARRIVAL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Hetty drew her husband back into the cozy parlor, where
+they found Jennie waiting alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I have put the baby to sleep at last! Little witch!
+she wanted to laugh and crow and kick all night. Such a
+time as I had getting her quiet! But where have you two
+been? You look—just as if you had come from a circus!”
+said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So we have! or rather from a domestic drama!” exclaimed
+Hetty, laughing; and then she told her daughter all
+about the sudden return of Samson Longman, and the joy
+of his mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie listened in sympathetic delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, my dear, you may come in the kitchen and
+help me to bring in the tea. Elspeth has forgotten that
+there is any such thing as tea in the world. And who can
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>blame her!” exclaimed Hetty as she left the room attended
+by her daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was, indeed, nearly an hour beyond their usual tea
+time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The tea was drawn too much, and the muffins were baked
+too dry; nevertheless, father, mother, and daughter enjoyed
+the refreshment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was a good-sized dining-room in the rear of the
+house on the other side of the hall, but for reasons of economy
+it was not used in cold weather, as it would require another
+fire, the meals being served in the family sitting-room
+or parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now, however, as soon as the curate and his family arose
+from the tea, his wife said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jimmy, we must be kind. The kindlings and coal are
+all laid in the grate of the back room ready for lighting a
+fire when required. Do, dear, go and start it; and Jennie
+and I will clear off this tea table, and set another in there
+for Elspeth and her big boy to take their tea comfortably;
+for it is not every day that a prodigal son returns.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you just know how it is yourselves, don’t you, papa
+and mamma?” inquired the prodigal daughter, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, we do; and I will go right off and do as you wish,”
+exclaimed the curate merrily as he left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie went eagerly to work, and soon cleared
+away their own table, and then went and set one in the
+dining-room, where the curate had already kindled a good
+fire in the grate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty brought out from all the treasures of pantry and
+cupboard, and in addition to the substantial fare of cold
+beef and ham, cheese, bread and butter, she laid out cake,
+honey and sweetmeats.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When all this was done she made a large pot of fresh tea
+and set it to draw. Finally she returned to the parlor and
+sat down with her husband and daughter in pleasant expectancy
+for developments from the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She had not to wait long. Very soon came Elspeth into
+the parlor, her eyes shining with happiness, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, Samson—that is my boy—would like
+to thank you and say good-evening before he goes away.”
+Then noticing for the first time that the tea table had been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>cleared away, she started with a little look of dismay, and
+before anybody could speak again, she said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I am so sorry! I clean forgot! I——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t say another word, dear woman. It is all right—quite
+right. Jennie and I did all that was necessary, and
+took pleasure in doing it. And as for your boy saying
+good-night and going away before he has broken bread with
+you, that cannot be permitted on any account. There!
+take him into the dining-room, where you will find a fine
+fire, and a tea table, and a pot of tea simmering on the hob.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, but you are too good!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nonsense! I’m delighted—we are all delighted! And,
+Elspeth, when you have had your tea, bring your boy in to
+us while you go upstairs and make him up a bed in the little
+spare room next to your own. Do you hear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, ma’am, you are too good! Whatever shall I do to
+repay your kindness!” exclaimed the grateful creature, with
+eyes full of tears, as she lifted Hetty’s hand and pressed it
+to her lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do just as she tells you, Mrs. Longman. And say to
+your son that we should be pleased to have him remain
+here with you until after Christmas. He shall be most cordially
+welcome to us all,” added Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“God bless you, sir, for your great kindness; for indeed
+it will be a great joy to me to have my boy under the very
+same roof with me for a few days, now that he has come
+back,” said Elspeth, her wintry face in an April aspect of
+smiles and tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, of course, it is a delight to us to be able to contribute
+to your happiness, you know,” said Mr. Campbell
+cheerily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth dropped her old-fashioned courtesy and went out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And very soon the three remaining in the parlor heard
+the mother and her son going down the passage to the rear
+dining-room that was behind the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty and Jennie took their needlework, and Mr. Campbell
+picked up the morning paper, which no one had had
+time to look at all day long, and began to read to them
+items of news.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So an hour passed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The reunited mother and son lingered long in the dining-room,
+but at length they came out and entered the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>Longman went at once up to Mr. Campbell and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sir, I thank you very much for the hospitality you have
+so kindly proffered me, and which, for my mother’s sake,
+I am very happy to accept.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention it, Mr. Longman. Have a seat. This
+is my daughter, Mrs. Montgomery,” said the curate, rising
+and handing a chair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman bowed profoundly to the young lady, and then
+dropped into his seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Elspeth was speaking to Mrs. Campbell:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Which room did you say, ma’am, he might have?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Any vacant one you please. The little room next to
+your own you might prefer, perhaps,” returned Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am, I would, thanky, ma’am,” said Elspeth, and
+she left the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When did you reach England, Mr. Longman?” inquired
+Hetty, to make conversation and set the embarrassed colossus
+at his ease.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Only about twenty-four hours since, ma’am. And I
+had the honor of traveling in company with the new Squire
+of Haymore and his bride, expected by the people in this
+neighborhood,” replied Longman, looking down on his own
+folded hands, so that he failed to see the effect of his words;
+for Mr. Campbell started, Hetty gasped, and Jennie turned
+pale.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the conversation that followed was all at cross-purposes,
+for Longman came to speak of Randolph Hay, the
+only true Squire of Haymore, and his wife, Judith, and of
+their crossing the Atlantic Ocean together; while the curate
+and his family spoke of Kightly Montgomery, the fraudulent
+claimant, and his deceived bride, Lamia Leegh, and of
+their crossing the English Channel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Squire of Haymore and his lady are in England,
+then?” was the remark with which the curate reopened the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. I had the honor of coming over in the same
+steamer with them. We landed yesterday.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you left them in London?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Beg pardon, sir, no. We traveled from London together.
+We reached Chuxton this afternoon about sunset. We had
+to wait there for a conveyance hither, and while we waited,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and their party took
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>luncheon, I went in search of my dear mother, expecting to
+find her there where I had left her, but I heard instead that
+she was living at the rectory with your family. So then I
+told Mr. Randolph Hay, and he very kindly offered me a
+seat in his carriage, and so brought me on here. I rode to
+the Hall with them, and there left them and walked on
+here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And do you mean to say that the squire and his lady
+are now really at the Hall?” demanded the astonished curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, as I said, or should have said, they arrived
+to-night a little after dusk.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But,” continued the deeply perplexed curate, “I don’t
+understand. The squire and—his lady were to have sent a
+telegram from London announcing their approach, and
+were expected to make quite a triumphal entry by daylight,
+amid the ringing of bells and singing of children, and flinging
+of flowers, and all the parade and pageantry that this
+season would permit. Prowt, the bailiff, has had his orders
+to be in readiness for weeks past, and for days has been
+waiting a telegram.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know how that is, sir. I know that Mr. and
+Mrs. Randolph Hay came home very quietly indeed,” replied
+Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But was it not a great surprise, not to say shock, to the
+servants at the Hall? And were they at all ready for the
+squire and—his lady?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think so, sir. I know Mr. Randolph Hay sent a dispatch
+to the housekeeper at the Hall, with instructions to
+have rooms aired and fires built, dinner prepared, and everything
+in readiness to receive himself and his wife this evening.
+I know it, sir, for I carried the dispatch to the telegraph
+office myself,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The people will be very much disappointed at missing
+the pageantry,” remarked the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not think Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay cared for
+display. I am a little surprised that it should have been
+thought of in connection with them,” said Longman, reflectively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, man alive, it was by the squire’s own orders, without
+the slightest suggestion from anybody here!” laughed
+the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>“It was not like him. A more modest and unpretending
+gentleman I do not know anywhere in this world!” persisted
+Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate repressed an inclination to utter a long, low
+whistle; but he did say to himself: “So much for the blindness
+of prejudice.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I have just thought of it! I will tell you why I
+think the triumphal entry was abandoned!” exclaimed
+Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why?” inquired her husband.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, on account of the death of the rector.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! to be sure! that was it; though it was a more
+gracious thought than I should have given the man credit
+for,” added Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this moment Elspeth came in, smiling. She had been
+absent much longer than they had expected her to be; for
+she had not only prepared the little spare bedroom for her
+son, but she had washed up all her dishes and done all her
+usual evening work. She carried a lighted candle in a low,
+broad brass candlestick. She courtesied to the ladies and
+gentleman, as was her custom, and then she said to her boy:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, Sam, the room the kind master has given you
+is all ready, and I will show it to you if you will come.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Longman arose, bade good-night to his hosts, and
+turned to leave the room, when Mr. Campbell said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But perhaps you would like to join us in our evening
+service.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman bowed in silence, and resumed his seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Elspeth brightly. “Every night and morning
+since I have been in this house has the minister prayed
+for my wandering boy’s return, and now that he has come
+we will give thanks.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie arose and got the Bible and prayer book and laid
+them before her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the evening service began.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the course of it Mr. Campbell did return “earnest and
+hearty thanks” for the restoration of the widow’s son, and
+prayed that all wanderers from the spiritual fold of the
+Lord might likewise be brought back.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the service was over, Elspeth, after bidding good-night
+to her friends, took up her candle and showed her boy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>the way to his bedroom. And soon after the minister and
+his wife and daughter retired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day was one of those benign autumn days that
+sometimes revisit us even late in December, to encourage
+and help us through the winter. The sky was radiantly
+clear and the sun dazzlingly bright. The many evergreen
+trees around the parsonage had something like the fresh
+verdure of early spring upon them. It was a day that any
+healthy person might have enjoyed the outdoor air without
+much extra clothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After breakfast Longman went over to the Hall to see
+his friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, standing together at the door,
+watched him walking down the walled road that led to the
+park gates.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is astonishing,” said the curate, “that so honest a
+man as Longman should have such a respect for that villain
+Montgomery as he appears to have.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I suppose the young fellow has never seen the villain’s
+cloven foot, and men have no intuitions to guide them as
+we have, you know,” replied Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then, though the splendor of the day invited them to
+remain outdoors, they went inside, each to his or her own
+work.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister went to his study to work on his next Sunday
+morning’s sermon. Hetty to her linen closet to look
+over her stores for mending. Jennie, well wrapped up, to
+take her baby, also warmly clad, through the garden walks.
+Elspeth to her kitchen to wash up the breakfast service.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister, however, had scarcely got under way with
+his manuscripts before the doorbell rang, and he sprang up
+to answer it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Prowt, the bailiff of Haymore, stood there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Could I speak to your reverence a moment, sir?” he
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly. Come in,” replied Mr. Campbell, and led the
+visitor into the study.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, minister,” said the bailiff, as soon as they were
+both seated at the writing-table near the window, “it has
+come at last. I have got a dispatch from the squire, announcing
+his immediate arrival with his bride and his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>brother-in-law, though not with the expected party of
+friends.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The curate started, and then passed his hand across his
+forehead, as if to clear away a cloud of perplexity. Had
+not Longman told him that the squire and his lady had
+arrived the night before? And he could not have made a
+mistake, because he came with them, and left them at the
+Hall. And now the bailiff tells him that he has received a
+dispatch, announcing the immediate arrival of the squire
+and his party. What did all this mean? At length an explanation
+suggested itself, and he spoke upon it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Has not that dispatch been delayed? Should it not have
+come yesterday?” he inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, sir! It was dated this morning, and came an
+hour ago!” exclaimed the bailiff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you got it about you? Would you mind letting
+me see it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here it is, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bailiff drew the paper from his vest pocket and put
+it into the hands of the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell opened it and read:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Langham’s Hotel, London</span>,</div>
+      <div class='line in12'>“December 15, 18—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To Mr. John Prowt</span>, Haymore Lodge, Haymore,
+Yorkshire: I shall arrive with my wife and brother-in-law,
+the Rev. Cassius Leegh, by the one-thirty train, at Chuxton.
+Send one comfortable carriage to meet us.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Randolph H. Hay.</span>”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell returned the slip of paper to the bailiff and
+fell into silence. He could make nothing of it. He was
+dumfounded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So you see it is all right, sir,” said the bailiff. “I shall
+send the open barouche, as the day is so fine, and with two
+footmen, besides the coachman. I suppose they will enter
+this town about half-past two o’clock.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well,” said the dazed curate, “what do you wish me
+to do?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you would give orders to the bell ringers, sir, to be at
+their post, and also have the parish school children drawn
+up each side the road leading to the park gate——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>“It is rather an unfavorable season—December—for
+children to be parading outdoors,” suggested the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course, sir, the kids can’t wear the white frocks and
+pink sashes and wreaths of flowers on their bare heads, as
+they could have done three months ago; but they can wear
+their picturesque winter uniform of red cloaks and hoods,
+and black woolen stockings and gloves; and as the weather
+is so remarkably fine, and the hour just after noon, in the
+warmest part of the day, I do not think the exposure will
+hurt them. Do you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“N-oo! I do not suppose it will.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then will you kindly see to it, sir, that they are drawn
+up in proper array, to sing their songs of welcome and throw
+their flowers before the bridal pair?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where will they get flowers at this season of the year?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh!—a—from the conservatories of the Hall, if from
+no other place. I will see that they are sent over to the
+schoolroom. I think, also, that many of the cottagers have
+a few late flowers in their gardens, such as chrysanthemums
+and dahlias and——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And do you think, Mr. Prowt, that because a newly married
+pair happens to be happy and prosperous, that living
+and blooming flowers should be torn from their warm conservatories
+and sunny gardens, to be thrown down in the
+dirt to perish under carriage wheels, in their honor? I
+don’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, minister, I never heard of such an objection!”
+said the astonished bailiff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, you hear it now. And it might be well for you to
+think of it. The custom is a barbarous one, suitable only
+to prehistoric savages.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bailiff stared.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, Mr. Prowt, I wish to say this to you—with
+the kindest feelings toward yourself, and with sincere regret
+that I must disappoint you—that I cannot and will
+not allow the church bells to be rung, or the parish children
+to parade, or any single movement to be made in honor
+of this incoming bridal pair which it is in my power to
+prevent,” said the minister, all the more firmly because so
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>The bailiff stared in silence, too astonished to speak for
+a minute. Then he demanded:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why, in the name of Heaven, reverend sir, would
+you put such an affront upon the new squire and his bride?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I put no affront upon them. I simply decline to show
+them any honor whatever, or to allow any one under my
+authority to do so,” emphatically responded the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But this is most amazing, sir. Why, if you please, do
+you refuse to honor them?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because I cannot and must not.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yet, about three months ago, when there was first a talk
+of the new squire bringing home his bride, there was no one
+more interested than yourself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is true. But since that date circumstances have
+come to my knowledge that have changed all my views, and
+must change all my actions, toward the incoming squire and
+his—lady; circumstances that quite justify me in my present
+course of conduct.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“May I ask your reverence what those circumstances
+are?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not yet, Prowt. I cannot tell you. To-morrow or next
+day the whole parish may know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I am perplexed. But, reverend sir, I must at least
+do my duty, and go over to the Hall to give directions there
+for the proper reception of the new squire, and send the
+carriage and servants to meet them. It is nine o’clock now,
+and they really ought to be off. I hope you do not blame
+me, sir, for doing my part.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly not. You must do your duty by your employer,”
+said Mr. Campbell kindly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, sir,” said the bailiff, taking up his hat
+to go.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-day, Mr. Prowt,” replied the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Even when the visitor was gone and the curate was alone
+he could not return to his manuscript sermon. It was impossible
+to concentrate his thoughts on the subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, well,” he said at last, “I shall have to take out one
+of my old Medge sermons for Sunday morning. It will be
+new to these parishioners at least.” And then he closed his
+desk, sat back in his armchair and gave himself up to the
+problem that was disturbing his mind.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>The dispatch from the squire lay on the table before him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bailiff had inadvertently left it behind him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell took it up, again read it carefully, and
+again passed his hand slowly over his forehead to clear away
+the thick cloud of confusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The situation seemed inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no doubt that this dispatch, dated this morning,
+signed Randolph Hay, and announcing the arrival of
+the squire and of his wife and brother-in-law on this day,
+was a perfectly genuine article and a very hard fact.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no doubt, either, that another Randolph Hay,
+with his wife and friends, had arrived at Haymore Hall in
+company with the indubitable traveling companion and eyewitness
+who had reported the fact to the minister’s family.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now what on earth did it all mean?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One Squire of Haymore and his wife at Haymore Hall,
+and another Squire of Haymore and his—lady on their way
+there!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Would the two parties meet to-day, and if so, what then?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The only possible theory of the situation, as it presented
+itself to the minister’s mind, was this, upon which he finally
+settled—that the Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay who had arrived
+on the preceding evening and were now at the Hall
+were the real lord and lady of the manor, and that the so-called
+Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay who were expected to arrive
+to-day were the fraudulent claimants whom he had taken
+them to be.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had not breathed a syllable of the first arrival to the
+bailiff, preferring to keep the matter to himself until he
+should see Samson Longman, who had walked over that
+morning to Haymore Hall, but would return to the rectory
+by midday.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the backwoodsman came in a little sooner than he
+had been expected. He came at once to the study door and
+rapped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell bade him enter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman’s face was radiant with merriment, and in his
+hand he carried a letter, which he fondled playfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Longman, you have been to see your friends at
+the Hall?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please sit down and tell me all about it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>Longman settled himself in the largest leather chair, put
+his fur cap down on the floor beside him and fondled his
+letter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You found the young squire and his wife quite well
+after their journey?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite well, sir. And also very much delighted with
+their new home, which they saw for the first time by daylight
+this morning.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Longman, you are sparkling all over with repressed
+amusement. What is the matter with you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Anticipation of an entertainment at the Hall to-day,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think I understand. Do your friends know that there
+is another Mr. Randolph Hay and his—lady expected at the
+Hall to-day?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, sir,” exclaimed the giant, now bursting into a
+storm of laughter, which had to have its full vent before he
+could go on with his words. “Yes, sir. The bailiff came
+there an hour ago, full of importance, to announce the fact.
+He was somewhat amazed to find the young squire and his
+wife already in possession. But they are quite ready for
+the reception of the newcomers, sir, and that is the entertainment
+I anticipate. Here, sir, is a letter the young
+squire has intrusted to me to hand you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister took the missive, broke the seal and read:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Haymore Hall</span>, December 15, 18—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To the Rev. James Campbell</span>, Reverend and Dear
+Sir: Although I have not the honor of your personal acquaintance,
+yet I have heard enough of you to engage my
+sympathies and compel my respect. Therefore, I hope that
+you will forgive me for asking you to do me the favor to
+come this evening to the Hall to discuss with me the subject
+of the living of Haymore, which it is my privilege and
+pleasure to offer you, in the hope that you may do me the
+honor to accept it. May I presume, also, to ask you to waive
+ceremony, and bring your wife and daughter with you on
+this occasion? I have a special reason for this request,
+which, when you shall have heard from me, you will find
+to be perfectly satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“I have the honor to be, reverend sir,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Very respectfully yours,       <span class='sc'>Randolph Hay</span>.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>The curate rushed out of the study and into the room
+where his wife sat sewing in an avalanche of infirm linen
+and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hetty, we need never leave the rectory! I have got the
+Haymore living! Read that, and thank the Lord!”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVII<br> <span class='large'>A MEMORABLE JOURNEY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Yes, it was true! Randolph Hay, the rightful heir, was
+in full possession of Haymore. He had also entered into
+his estate with much more ease than could have been anticipated
+either by himself, his friends or his lawyers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To explain how this happened, a brief summary of events
+is necessary.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It will be remembered that Ran Hay, with his young
+bride, Judy, and a small party of friends, sailed on November
+the 29th from New York by the steamship <em>Boadicea</em>,
+hound for Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran, Judy and Will Walling had staterooms in the first
+cabin; Mike, Dandy and Longman had berths in the second
+cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This arrangement, on the part of the three last mentioned,
+was much against the will of Ran, who would gladly
+have provided his brother-in-law and his two friends with
+the best accommodations the ship afforded, but that from
+very delicacy of feeling toward them he could not offer to
+do so. Besides, he knew that all three of these men had
+money enough to pay for a first-class passage each, had
+they desired it, but that for prudential reasons Dandy and
+Longman did not choose to squander their savings in that
+needless manner, and that Mike cast in his lot with his two
+friends; and so their little party voyaged in the plain but
+clean and wholesome second cabin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There could not, however, be much communication between
+the three in the first cabin and the three in the second,
+though they met occasionally on the common ground of the
+forward deck.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here Ran had long talks with his friends, and learned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>much more of the past history of Dandy and Longman than
+he had ever known before.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here, Judy, wrapped from head to heel in her heavy
+fur cloak, would often join them, for the weather continued
+fine. “Wonderful!—just wonderful!” was the verdict of all
+the ship’s passengers; the oldest “salt” declaring that never,
+at this season of the year, had he known such weather in
+crossing the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not one of our party suffered from seasickness. The only
+effect the voyage seemed to have upon them was an increase
+of health, vigor and appetite.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Their ship was rather a slow one, that was all.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a splendid winter morning about the seventh day
+out. The sky, of a clear, deep blue, without a single cloud,
+and on fire with a sun too dazzling to be seen, overhung a
+sea whose waves were like molten sapphires. The ship, with
+all her snowy sails spread and filled, was flying on before a
+fresh, fair wind.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the forward deck, grouped together, were Ran, Judy,
+Mike, Dandy and Longman. The hunter had been telling
+his story for the first time to Ran and Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And so you are from Chuxton! Is not that a strange
+coincidence? Haymore Hall and hamlet is in the neighborhood
+of Chuxton, I think,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“About ten miles off, sir. Chuxton is the nearest market
+town and railway station to Haymore,” replied Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my dear fellow, as you say you would never have
+left your native country if you could have obtained employment
+to suit you——” Ran said in a modest and hesitating
+way.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Among guns and game,” Longman interjected with a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Exactly—’among guns and game?—I do earnestly hope
+that it may be in my way to suit you. Longman, I know
+nearly nothing of my patrimonial estate, but I have heard
+my father say that there was no such place for game in all
+the North Riding. I hope and trust and pray,” added Ran,
+with boyish earnestness, “that I may be able to make you
+head gamekeeper at Haymore without injustice to others.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I would not take another man’s place to his hurt, sir,”
+said the hunter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know that, good fellow. Nor would I offer you such
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>an effront. But it will hurt no one to make you an extra
+keeper at a good salary.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, now, Longman! D’ye moind that? Isn’t it jist
+what I was afther tilling ye!” exclaimed Mike. “Didn’t I
+say if Ran, or bigging his honor’s pardin, Misther Hay,
+hadn’t a place riddy made to shute ye, he’d crayate one?
+D’ye moind?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Something like that,” replied the hunter, laughing.
+“But I really do not wish Mr. Hay to make a place for
+me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Friends,” said the young squire, “we will leave that
+question until we get to Haymore. But in the meantime
+don’t distress me by calling me Mr.—anybody! I am Ran
+to all my old companions.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ouns! But whatever would the gintry round Haymore
+be thinking to hear the squire called be his Christian name,
+with divil a handle to it, be the loikes av us?” demanded
+Mike, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not care what they think! They will soon know
+that I and my Judy and my friends came from the mining
+camps in the backwoods and mountains of North America,
+and that they must not expect more polish from us or more
+politeness than neighborly, loving kindness inspires. And
+now, Dandy, old friend, what do you intend to do when we
+all reach England?” inquired Ran of the old man, who
+seemed to have been left out, or to have withdrawn himself
+from the conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, I don’t know, sir! I hevn’t a living soul
+belonging to me in the old country except it is my brother’s
+orphan child, my niece, Julia Quin. When I left England
+she was a good-looking young wench, some seventeen years
+old, and was at service in a parson’s family down in Hantz.
+She’ll be married by this time, I reckon, with no end of
+kids! But, anyways, I’ll look her up, sir, if she is to be
+found.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you ever heard from her since you left England?”
+inquired Judy, breaking into the conversation the first time
+for the last half hour, and interested the moment another
+woman was brought upon the tapis.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lor’, no, Miss Judy!—which I beg your pardon. Mistress
+Hay; but I do be forgetting sometimes. Neither me
+nor mine was ever any great hand at letter writing. And
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>she was doing well at the vicarage, I knowed. And I was
+wandering about, seeking of my fortin, which I never yet
+found, though I might have found it the very next blow of
+my pick, for aught I know, if I had had the parsaverance
+to stay, which I couldn’t have after the boys here left, and
+so for twenty years I haven’t heard a word of my niece. She
+may be dead, poor wench; for death is no respecter of
+persons, though she was a fine, strapping, strong wench,
+too. Yes, that is so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I hope not. I hope she is alive and well for your sake.
+Where did you say you left her at service?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“At the vicarage, ma’am, in my native town, ma’am.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what town was that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Medge, ma’am. In Hantz, on the south coast, where I
+was born and riz.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy had started at the first mention of Medge. Now
+she hastily inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What was the name of the vicar?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“One Rev. Mr. Campbell, ma’am; the Rev. Mr. James
+Campbell. He came from Scotland, horridonally; but settled
+into the south coast of England. Yes, that was so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By this time Ran was listening with the deepest interest
+to the words of old Dandy, but leaving Judy to sustain the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Quin, we know who he is,” she gayly exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you know, ma’am? Indeed, and how, if you please?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Quin, it is too long a story to tell you how
+now; and besides, it concerns other people that I would
+rather not talk about; but this I can tell you, that the Rev.
+Mr. Campbell is not now at Medge, but——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is he then, ma’am, if you please to tell me that
+I may know where to seek for him? For I shall go to him
+first of all to ask after my niece.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is quite at the opposite end of England. He is at
+Haymore Rectory, where we are all going.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Lord be good to us! Is that so?” exclaimed Dandy
+joyfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, yes! And now, Mr. Quin, if you wish to hear
+news of your niece, Julia, you will have to go all the way
+to Haymore with us. And I am so glad that we will not be
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>separated. It will be so pleasant for us all to go together
+to Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, Dandy, old boy, and you must stop with me, you
+know, until you find your niece,” added Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And will I see the Rev. Mr. James Campbell himself?”
+inquired Quin in some doubt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course you will. And as servants don’t change places
+as often in the old country as they do in the new, it is more
+than likely you will find your niece at the rectory, unless she
+is married,” said Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Or—dead, poor wench!” added Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, indeed. She’s not dead! I’m certain of it,” exclaimed
+Judy, with good-natured but inexcusable presumption.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’ll take that for a prophecy, anyways, ma’am, and believe
+into it. Yes, that is so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you will come with us to Haymore, Dandy?” said
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you kindly, sir; I will.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray, Mr. Quin, stop calling me sir. You are an old
+man and I am a young one, almost a boy, and it is not fitting
+for you to call me sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Hay, I was brought up into the Church of England,
+and teached to be content with that station of life into
+which the Lord had called me; likewise, to respect my
+pastors and masters, and to honor my sooperioors. And
+twenty years’ wandering among the mines haven’t made me
+forget them airly lessons, nor yet my good manners, sir,”
+said Dandy, with a ceremonious bow, as he lifted his fur
+cap from his bald head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy, can’t you bring them to reason?” inquired Ran,
+with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sorrow a worrd they’ll listen to meself!” exclaimed
+Judy, backsliding into dialect, as she frequently did.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, do as you please, or I’ll make you!” laughed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And from that hour it was understood that the whole
+party should keep together until they should reach Haymore,
+instead of separating at Liverpool, as had been first
+intended.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The weather continued very fine, though very cold.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the morning of the tenth they reached Queenstown.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There Mr. Walling went on shore and telegraphed to his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>London correspondents, Messrs. Sothoron &#38; Drummond,
+Attorneys-at-Law, Lincoln’s Inns Fields, that his client, Mr.
+Randolph Hay, and himself would be in London on the
+afternoon of the twelfth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The run from Queenstown to Liverpool was as fine as any
+preceding part of the voyage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They reached port in the early dawn of the morning
+on the twelfth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Without lingering longer in the city than was necessary
+to get their baggage through the customhouse and fortify
+themselves with a substantial early breakfast at the
+“Queen’s,” they took the first mail train for London, where
+they arrived in the middle of the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Will Walling, an experienced traveler, who had been
+in London several times before, became the guide of the
+party, and took them from Euston Square down to Morley’s
+Hotel, Trafalgar Square, where they secured a comfortable
+suite of apartments on the second floor front.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman went to find cheaper quarters.
+Again Ran would gladly have entertained them at Morley’s,
+but could not offer to do so without affronting their spirit
+of independence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Even Mike, to whom Ran ventured an invitation, declined
+his brother-in-law’s hospitality, and cast in his lot with his
+two old mining friends. But he promised to look in again
+in the evening to let Ran and Judy know where he and his
+companions had found quarters.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After a hasty dinner in the private parlor of the Hays,
+Mr. Will Walling left the young pair still over their dessert
+and went out and called a cab and drove to Lincoln’s Inns
+Fields to call on Messrs. Sothoron &#38; Drummond.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They had been the solicitors of the Hays, of Haymore,
+for many years, and were, of course, deeply interested in
+all that concerned them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Much correspondence had already passed between the
+London and New York firms, bearing on the recent appearance
+of the undoubted lawful heir of Haymore in opposition
+to the fraudulent pretender, so that there was already a
+perfect understanding of the case established between them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was now a little after business hours, but Mr. Will
+Walling felt sure that, having received his dispatch announcing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>his visit, one or both members of the firm would
+remain at their office to receive him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In fact, he found both gentlemen there. The case was
+considered much too important to admit of neglect or indifference,
+and being after office hours, they were quite at
+leisure to give their whole attention to the business in hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling spent four hours with Messrs. Sothoron &#38;
+Drummond, and together the three gentlemen went through
+the mass of documents, all together constituting indisputable,
+immovable proof of Randolph Hay’s identity as the
+only lawful heir of Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I will not weary my reader with any of the lawyers’ talk,
+but hasten on to its results.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was nearly nine o’clock when the three gentlemen, having
+brought their interview to an end, left the office together
+and separated, to seek their several destinations—Sothoron
+to his home on Clapham Common, Drummond to his club
+on Regent Street, and Walling to his friends at Morley’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Will found Ran and Judy seated at the front window
+of their parlor, in which the gas had been turned down low
+to enable them to see out into the street, for they were
+gazing down on the panorama of the night scene on Trafalgar
+Square.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Will, as he entered the room,
+flung his hat across the floor and dropped into a large easy-chair
+near the two young people, “are you ready to set out
+for Yorkshire and Haymore by the first mail train to-morrow
+morning?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” inquired Ran, looking around,
+rather startled by the abrupt entrance and action of his
+lawyer, while Judy also wheeled her chair and raised her
+eyes inquiringly to the first speaker.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Just what I asked. Are you ready to start for Haymore
+Hall by the first train to-morrow morning?” repeated
+Mr. Will.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the use of your asking that, Walling, when
+you know there is ever such a law fight to go through first.
+And even after I have won my suit, as of course I shall win
+it, there must be writs of ejectment, and the Lord knows
+what all, before we can get that villain out of my house:
+for ‘possession is nine points of the law,’ you know, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>you may depend he will contest the tenth point to the bitter
+end,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all!” heartily exclaimed Will Walling; “there
+will be no fight. The fellow will not fight; he’ll fly. And
+though ‘possession is nine points of the law,’ he has never
+had possession. What do you think of that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think your words are more incomprehensible than
+ever. I do not understand them in the least,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nor do I,” added Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, then, listen, both of you. I have been three or
+four or more hours closeted with Sothoron &#38; Drummond.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And we have been over, together, all the documentary
+proofs of your identity as Randolph Hay, the only lawful
+heir of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, every document connected with the case has your
+name, that is, Randolph Hay, as the heir and now the owner
+of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you, and you only, are Randolph Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Undoubtedly. But there is another who has taken my
+name and estates.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He has taken your name and stolen and squandered a
+good deal of your money during the last few months; there
+is no doubt about that. Nor will you ever get a penny of
+that lost money back; there is no hope of that. These
+moneys he has obtained by fraud from your bailiff, John
+Prowt, of Haymore, and from your family solicitors, Sothoron
+&#38; Drummond, at Lincoln’s Inns Fields. But, my dear
+sir, for all that, he has never been in possession of your
+estate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why not, when——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But he is not Randolph Hay, in whose name all the
+documents are made out.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But he is at Haymore Hall now. And it will require a
+legal process to get him out, for he will fight every inch of
+the ground.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all! He is not at Haymore Hall, nor has he ever
+been there. His fraudulent presence is not known there. If
+he were there now, or ever had been there, or if his person
+were known there under his stolen name of Randolph Hay,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>then, I grant you, in that case we might have to meet some
+trouble and confusion, yet not much. And as it is, we shall
+have no trouble at all.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But this is strange. How is it that he has never been
+to Haymore?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because, it seems, he prefers to squander the revenues
+of the estate in Paris. But let me tell you what I have
+this afternoon learned of the fellow from Messrs. Sothoron
+&#38; Drummond.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, pray do,” said Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It seems, then, that when he first brought his—lady over
+here, he intended to go to Haymore, and even had grand
+preparations made there for their reception; but from some
+caprice, he changed his mind and went to Paris, where he
+has been with his—lady ever since, squandering money just
+as if he knew it did not belong to him, and deferring his
+return from time to time, and drawing large sums from—your
+bankers.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“From what I know of Gentleman Geff, I should think it
+hard to draw him from the saloons of Paris to the seclusion
+of a Yorkshire country house,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; but now it seems he is really coming with a party
+of friends to spend Christmas at Haymore Hall. He has
+sent down orders for the house to be prepared to receive
+himself and—lady and guests by the fifteenth. Now then,
+the servants at the Hall are preparing to receive Mr. and
+Mrs. Randolph Hay, whom they have never seen. Now
+you and your wife are Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, what do you advise?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, man alive, your course is as plain as daylight.
+You and your wife take the first train to-morrow and speed
+to Yorkshire and to Haymore Hall, where you will arrive
+early in the evening, where you will, no doubt, find everything
+ready for you and be joyfully received by your servants.
+To be sure, you will arrive rather earlier than you
+were expected; but that will not matter much, especially as
+it will give you time to get well rested before you will be
+called upon to receive Gentleman Geff and his distinguished
+party.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, that will be the most delicious fun!” exclaimed
+Judy, clapping her hands with glee; “and we will have,
+besides Ran and myself, Mike, Dandy and Longman all
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>drawn up in a line to welcome him. He will think all
+Grizzly Gulch has come to Haymore Hall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“For his guilty soul it would seem</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>said Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There would be an awful row,” exclaimed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all. There would be a surprise, a panic and a
+flight. That is, if you let the villain go. I am not sure
+that you ought not to have a warrant and an officer ready
+to arrest him. Or rather, I am sure that you ought.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I would rather not, if he will leave quietly,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you must make no terms with a criminal. That
+would be ‘compounding a felony,’ a serious offense against
+English law.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, is it settled? Shall we go to-morrow morning?”
+inquired Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear; certainly,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I will go down to the office and find a Bradshaw
+and see about our train,” said Mr. Will, picking up his hat
+and hurrying out of the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had scarcely disappeared when the door opened and
+Mike, Dandy and Longman entered the parlor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy ran forward to welcome them, while Ran turned
+up the gas.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We have been sitting in the dark to watch the scene in
+the square below,” Judy explained.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, boys, have you found comfortable quarters?” inquired
+Ran, as soon as they were all seated.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Illigant; and chape enough, too, be the same token, close
+by in the Strand; a very ginteel, dooble-bidded bidroom.
+Longman, being av a giant fit for a circus, do hev one bid
+all to himsilf. And Dandy and me, being av little fellows,
+do have the ithir to oursilves,” Mike explained.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While they were still talking Mr. Will Walling returned
+to the room with a Bradshaw in his hand. He greeted the
+three visitors pleasantly, dropped into a chair and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, there is a train that leaves Euston Square Station
+at six in the morning and reaches Chuxton at three in the
+afternoon. After that there is no other parliamentary train
+until twelve noon, which would make it nine in the evening
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>when it stops at Chuxton, and would be too late to go on
+to Haymore the same night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, then, we will leave by the earlier train, if Judy has
+no objection,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I? Why, I never minded getting up early!” exclaimed
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you say, boys?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The sooner the better for us, sir,” replied Dandy, speaking
+for the rest, who promptly assented.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then, as the hour was late, the visitors bade good-night,
+and the party left behind separated and retired to
+rest, to be ready for their early rising.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XVIII<br> <span class='large'>AT HAYMORE HALL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The whole party were up in the double darkness of a
+London winter morning before sunrise. They dressed and
+breakfasted by gaslight, and then entered a large carriage
+and drove to Euston Square Railway Station, where they
+were met by Mike, Dandy and Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Had you not better telegraph to your housekeeper before
+we start to let her know that we shall certainly be at
+Haymore to-night so that there may be no mistake, and
+she will be sure to have beds aired, fires built and dinner
+ready for us when we get there?” suggested Mr. Walling,
+who was always directly on the lookout for his own personal
+comforts, and, incidentally, for those of others.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran immediately acted on the suggestion, saying, when
+he rejoined his friends after sending the dispatch:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She will think the message comes from the other fellow
+in Paris and that he is in London on his way to Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She will think, or rather she will see, that the telegram
+comes from Mr. Randolph Hay, and that will be enough,”
+replied Mr. Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When the other fellow comes on the fifteenth with his
+friends and finds us in possession——Well! I can’t help
+anticipating a rink, a circus, a hippodrome, a spectacular
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>drama, an earthquake, a conflagration and the day of judgment
+all rolled into one!” said Randolph, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And there will be nothing of the sort. Only at most a
+panic and a total rout. Come, we must take our seats,” exclaimed
+Will Walling, as he led the way to the waiting train,
+where a guide showed them into the middle compartment
+of a first-class carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman had taken tickets for the
+second class.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now is it not too bad that Ran cannot get our friends
+in here with us, Mr. Walling?” demanded Judy, as she
+settled herself in the luxurious corner front seat of their
+compartment and noticed that there were just six seats.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear Judy,” muttered Ran, “your brother and his
+companions are able to take these three vacant seats with
+us if they please, but for prudential and very praiseworthy
+reasons they choose to economize and take the second class.
+I could not offer them a worse offense than invite them
+to take these seats at my expense.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I do think there is a great deal of false pride in
+the world,” Judy pouted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So there is, darling; but we cannot cure it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a wonder their high mightinesses consent to go
+with you to Haymore and be your guests there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is a different affair.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t see that it is.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But they do,” laughed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The train started, and the conversation dropped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was still in the darkness before day that they left the
+station and sped off into the open country, where the world
+was scarcely beginning to wake up. In London the world
+seems never to go to sleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our three travelers had had but little rest in the last
+twenty-four hours; and so, between the darkness of the
+hour, the motion of the train and their own weariness, they
+dozed off into dreamland, where they lingered some hours,
+until they were called back by the sudden stopping of the
+train, for an instant only, for before they were fully awake
+it was off again, flying northward as if pursued by the
+furies.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy shook herself up and looked out of the window on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>her right hand to see the eastern horizon red with the coming
+of the wintry sun above the moorland.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At noon they reached Liverpool, where they left their
+seats, got lunch and then changed their train for the Great
+Northern for York.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Late in the afternoon they entered the great cathedral
+city, where again they left their seats, took tea and a little
+later took train for Chuxton.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was nearly sunset when they came to the end of their
+railway journey at the little market town.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no carriage waiting to take them to Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then it occurred to Ran for the first time that by
+some strange oversight no carriage had been ordered by him
+or his attorney to come from the Hall to meet them at the
+station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were several vehicles around the place, but all
+seemed to be engaged by other parties.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Our friends walked together to the Tawny Lion Tavern,
+where Ran ordered refreshment and inquired for a conveyance
+to Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Tawny Lion boasted but one—a large carryall drawn
+by two stout horses—but that was then engaged, and would
+not be available to our travelers for perhaps two hours.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were passed by Ran and Judy, after they had finished
+their meal, in sauntering about the quaint, old-fashioned
+town and making acquaintance with its streets and
+houses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here’s where we shall have to come to do our country
+shopping, you know, darling,” said Ran; “for I have been
+told that there is but one general shop at Haymore, where,
+though they keep everything to sell, from a second-hand
+pulpit to a soup dish, you can get nothing very good.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I shall encourage the home trade, and deal at Haymore
+all the same,” replied Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Mr. Will Walling spent his time of waiting
+over the fire in the inn parlor, with a bottle of port wine
+and a stack of cigars on the table beside him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Longman, accompanied by his shadows, Dandy and
+Mike, walked out in the direction of the Old Heath Farm
+to make inquiries about his mother, and, naturally, the
+nearer he came to the scene of his boyhood’s home the keener
+and the more intense became his anxiety. It had never
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>seemed to him that his buxom, healthy, hearty mother
+could have sickened and died; nor had it seemed more than,
+barely possible that she might have married again. He
+rather hoped to find her where he had left her five years
+before, living on the farm. Still, as he turned from the
+Chuxton highroad and went into a narrow lane, overhung
+by the branches of the leafless trees that grew on each side
+the path leading to the farmhouse, all the dread possibilities
+of life seemed to threaten him ahead. He could not now
+speak of his feelings. He hurried on. The giant was as
+weak as a child when he passed through the farm yard and
+went up to the house. A man was approaching from another
+direction.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman leaned against the side of the house for support
+as he faltered forth a question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh?” demanded the farmer, looking fixedly at the
+stranger, as if he suspected him of being top heavy through
+too much drink. “Is it the Widow Longman ye’re asking
+about? No, she dun not bide here now. She hasn’t been
+here for these five years past.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Another faint, almost inaudible question from the weak
+giant, which the farmer had to bend his quick, sharp ear to
+hear at all.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is she living, do you arsk? Oh, ay, she’s living good
+enough. She’s keeping house for the parson at the rectory,
+Haymore, about ten miles to the norrard of this.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank the Lord!” ejaculated Longman, lifting his cap,
+almost overcome by the sudden collapse of highly strung
+nerves.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“See here, my man, what’s the matter with you? You
+look to be used up! I thought it was drink when I first
+saw you. But now I see it isn’t. You look to be faint for
+want of drink, not heavy from too much of it. Come in
+now and take a mug o’ beer, home brewed. ’Twill do ye
+good,” urged the farmer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, thank you. No, really. You are very kind, but
+I must get on,” said Longman, rising, and now that his
+tension of anxiety was relieved, gaining life with every
+breath he drew.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I wouldn’t wonder now if you was that son o’ hern who
+went to sea long years ago and never was heerd on since?”
+said the farmer, calling after him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>“Yes, I am her son, and I am going to Haymore now to
+find her. Thank you, and good-day to you,” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’m dogged glad on it! One widdy’s heart will sing
+for joy this night, anyhow! Well, good-day, and good
+luck to you, my lad!” were the last words of the kind-hearted
+farmer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Longman rejoined his two friends, who he had left
+waiting for him at the farm gate, his happy face told the
+“glad tidings” before his tongue could speak them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hooray! It’s good news ye’re afther hearing!” cried
+Mike, throwing up his cap and catching it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I thank the Lord!” replied Longman reverently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then, as they walked down the lane and out upon
+the highroad leading to Chuxton, Longman told them all
+that he had heard from the farmer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So she’s housekeeper at the rectory itself! That’s where
+your niece, Miss Julia, will be at service, Mr. Quin!” exclaimed
+Mike; “that is, if she’s not married,” he added.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Or dead, poor wench!” sighed old Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother that! Nobody’s dead, or going to die just
+yet, is there, Samson, man?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I hope not, Mike.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Anyways, we shall hear when we get to Haymore. Yes,
+that is so,” said Dandy, with an air of resignation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was not nearly so anxious to hear from his niece as
+Longman had been to get news of his mother. He did not,
+indeed, care much about her now, whatever he might come
+to care after he should have renewed his acquaintance with
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they reached Chuxton and turned into the street
+leading to the “Tawny Lion,” they saw the huge carryall
+drawn up before the door, with a crowd of idlers, mostly
+boys, gathered around it to see it start.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman and his companions went into the parlor, where
+they found the Hays and Will Walling waiting for them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why have you stayed for us, Mr. Hay? This is really
+too kind!” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Kind to myself, friend! I did not want to go without
+you. Even if I had, Judy would not have allowed it. I
+see by your face that you have good news of your mother.
+I congratulate you,” said Ran, offering his hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, thank Heaven!” replied the hunter. And then
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>in a few words, as they walked to the carryall, he told all
+he heard at the farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is splendid!” exclaimed Judy with enthusiasm,
+as she was lifted into the carryall by Ran and placed in the
+sheltered back seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dandy must sit back there with you, darling. He is
+old, and then the drive over the moor will be a very cold
+one. You won’t mind it, will you, Judy?” he inquired, as
+he settled her among the cushions and tucked her fur cloak
+well around her feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, no, of course not. Especially if you will sit right
+in front of me so I can lean my head forward on your
+shoulder sometimes,” Judy replied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Ran helped Dandy in and made him sit by Judy.
+The others followed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Will Walling sat immediately in front of Judy
+and Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike and Longman on the third seat forward. The
+driver, a stout Yorkshireman, on the box.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The strong draught horses started at a moderate pace,
+such as might well be kept up during the whole journey
+across the moor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a dark, cold night, and the two glass lanterns,
+fixtures, on each side above the driver’s seat, did little better
+than make “darkness visible.” But the road was as safe
+as a road by night could be, and the horses knew it as well
+as they knew the way to their own cribs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Two hours of jog trot, safe and steady driving brought
+them to a great mass of dense shadows, like black mountains
+and forests against a dark gray northern sky.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The driver drew up his horses before this mystery and
+announced that they had reached the great wall of Haymore
+Park.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How far from the lodge gates?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“About half a mile, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Drive on then.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you please, Mr. Hay, I would like to leave the carryall
+at the point nearest Haymore hamlet and rectory,” said
+Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course! Of course! Naturally you must hasten first
+of all to your dear mother. But remember, friend, you are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>my guest at the Hall, and bring your mother also if you
+can persuade her to come,” heartily responded Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, do, Mr. Longman. And I will go to see your
+mother just as soon as ever I can,” warmly added Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you both very much,” replied Longman, but he
+gave no promise.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Remember, Longman, that you saved my life. But for
+you—under the Divine Providence,” said Ran, reverently
+lifting his hat, “I should not be here now.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, nor I, either, for that matter,” added Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We both owe you a debt that we can never repay, Longman,”
+said Ran, with emotion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never, except in love and gratitude. And we would
+like to put ‘a body’ in our sentiments to make them ‘felt,’
+Mr. Longman. You will come and stay with us at the
+house, will you not?” pleaded Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You make too much of my service, a service that any
+man worthy of the name would have done for any other.
+I do not know what my plain old mother would say to
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am plain myself,” said Judy; “a child of the people.
+Less than that, for I never knew father or mother—a child
+of the planet only! My only worth is being the wife of my
+dear Ran here!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam, you are the wife of Mr. Randolph Hay, of
+Haymore. You are the lady of the manor. And in this
+country a social abyss divides you and yours from me and
+mine as deep, as impassable as that ‘great gulf’ that lay between
+Dives and Lazarus,” said Longman solemnly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is not so! It shall not be so! I will not have it!
+Nothing but the will of Heaven shall divide us from our
+dear friends!” said Judy passionately.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No!” added Ran with earnest emphasis. “No social
+gulf shall separate us, Longman, dear old boy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here we be at the lodge gates, sir. And this is the
+nearest point we pass to the rectory. We turn in here to go
+by the elm avenue up to the Hall. And the road continues
+right straight on under the park wall up to the rectory and
+the church, which is on the other side of the road,” the
+driver explained, drawing up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Longman, I should like you to go on to the house
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>and dine with us, but I know it would be wrong to ask
+you,” said Ran, as the hunter got up to leave the carryall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will see you early in the morning, sir,” said the giant.
+And then he shook hands all around, jumped from the
+carryall and strode on up the road to the rectory on that
+visit to his mother which we have already described.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A woman came out of the porter’s lodge on the right-hand
+side, swung open both broad leaves of the gate and stood
+courtesying as the carryall rolled through.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The old porter’s daughter—a worthy dame,” said the
+driver, in answer to a question from Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The carriage rolled on through an avenue shaded by great
+oaks, whose branches, however, were now bare. In the
+turns of this drive they caught glimpses of the house
+through the trees, with lights sparkling here and there from
+the many windows into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After several sweeping turns the avenue passed in front
+of the house, and the carriage drew up before a huge, oblong
+gray building, with turrets at each corner, bay windows on
+the first floor and balconies above.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As the carriage stopped the hall door was flung wide,
+and several men and women servants appeared in the
+lighted hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The butler stood in the door. Two footmen came down
+the steps to attend their master and mistress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran lifted Judy from the carriage, whispering:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Welcome home, my darling,” and led her up the steps
+and into the hall, followed by his friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The butler, with a low bow, made way for them to pass.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The housekeeper, a very aged woman, dressed in a brown
+satin gown and a lace cap, came forward to meet them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Welcome home, sir and madam. We have waited for
+you long, and greet you gladly,” she said in a tone of exaggerated
+reverence and with a deep courtesy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran held out his frank hand, and Judy said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Mrs.—Mrs.——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Basset, madam, and been in the family all my life, as
+mother and father were before me. Your old butler, sir,
+is my son, getting older every day, but not yet past service,
+either of us, I thank Heaven. Will you go to your room
+now, madam?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>“Yes, if you please,” said Judy. “I would like to take
+off my bonnet and cloak.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Basset looked all around, and then said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not think that your maid has come in yet. Shall
+I send one of the men out to hurry her? I suppose she is
+busy with the parcels in the carriage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I—I—I—have no maid—yet,” replied Judy, blushing
+deeply, for she was rather afraid of this fine ruin of an old-time
+housekeeper, even though the aged woman was evidently
+falling a little into her second childhood.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I see! I beg your pardon, ma’am. You will be
+waiting to take some good girl from the estate. That has
+been the way with the ladies of Hay from time immemorial.”
+She paused suddenly in her babble and looked
+fixedly, though still very respectfully, at Mr. Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now Ran was just a little sensitive about his personal
+appearance. He was not a handsome, soldierly blond, but
+a beautiful, dark brunette; graceful as a leopard, sinuous
+as a serpent. He was in the habit of humorously stigmatizing
+himself as “a little nigger.” So when the aged housekeeper
+regarded him with her wistful gaze, he thought she
+was saying to herself, how little like he was to any of the
+Hays. He laughed a little and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You do not find much resemblance in me to my tall and
+fair forefathers, Mrs. Basset.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sir,” she replied solemnly, “you are the living image
+of your honored grandmother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young man burst out laughing, and was joined by
+Mike and Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But their mirth ceased as the aged housekeeper added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She died at twenty-three years old. She was the best,
+the brightest and the most beautiful being that my eyes
+ever beheld! And, yes, she died at twenty-three years old!
+And you are her living image, as nearly as it is possible
+for a gentleman to be. That was the reason why I looked
+at you so, sir. I beg your pardon; I forgot myself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t speak of it, Mrs. Basset,” said Ran kindly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. You can see the portrait in the picture
+gallery to-morrow and judge for yourself—or even to-night
+if you will,” said the housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you; not to-night; we are too tired. To-morrow
+you shall show us over the whole house, if you will.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>“That I will with pride and pleasure, sir. And now,
+madam, shall I attend you to your room?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, yes, please,” said Judy; and she followed
+her conductress up the broad staircase to a vast upper hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The housekeeper opened a door near the head of the
+stairs and admitted her charge into a spacious, sumptuous
+bedchamber, upholstered in ebony and old gold, and in
+which burned a fine open coal fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The aged woman, much against Judy’s will, insisted upon
+waiting upon her; took off her heavy cloak and hat and
+hung them in the wardrobe, drew a luxurious easy-chair to
+the fire and seated her in it, and hovered around her with
+affectionate attentions until Mr. Hay came in, when, with
+one of her quaint courtesies, she withdrew from the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again Ran took Judy in his arms, folded her to his heart,
+kissed her fondly and welcomed her home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And to-morrow, my darling, we shall have to prepare
+to welcome Gentleman Geff and his—lady. I shall send in
+the morning for Mr. Campbell and his daughter, that the
+villain may be confronted with his wronged wife, as well as
+his betrayed friend,” said Ran, as he gave his arm to Judy
+to take her down to the dining-room, where dinner waited.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XIX<br> <span class='large'>WAITING THE ISSUE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>In the morning Ran and Judy woke up to look, for the
+first time, by daylight on their new home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran opened the windows and let in the light of the
+December day upon their bedchamber, a vast, peaceful,
+slumberous room, upholstered throughout in olive green
+and gold, and looking out upon a park, full of sunny glades
+and shady groves, even now in winter when the light of day
+shone down on burnished dry grass in the glades and evergreen
+trees in the groves.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young couple, though lord and lady of the Manor
+of Haymore, had as yet neither valet nor maid. So Ran
+rang no bell, but from a hodful of coal at the chimney
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>corner, with his own hand, replenished the fire in the grate
+and then went to make his toilet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy lay still, with her eyes looking through the large
+windows on two sides of the spacious chamber, out upon the
+sunny and shady park until Ran had finished dressing and
+left the room. Then she arose and took her bath and opened
+her large sea trunk to find a dress suitable for her morning
+wear.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She finally selected a plain suit of dark gray velveteen,
+with crimped linen ruffles at the throat and wrists. She
+put it on and went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the hall below she found the wide doors open in front,
+admitting the winter sunshine, and a great coal fire burning
+in the broad fireplace in the back; and between the two,
+near the front of the stairs, Ran, Will Walling, Mike and
+Dandy standing in conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy was the spokesman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I did think,” he was saying, “that Longman would
+have come back last night to bring me news of Julie. But,
+Lord, I do suppose he got so wrapped up into his mother
+that he clean forgot me and mine, or else, maybe, he could
+not well get away.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That was it, Dandy,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Same time, if, as how I had thought it might be so,
+myself would have gone to the rectory with him. And ’deed
+I’d agone, anyhow, only I didn’t like to be intruding into
+a strange place.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I can’t understand,” said Will Walling, speaking for the
+first time, “how you fortune-seekers can bear to stay away
+for years from your native country without hearing a word
+from any of your friends at home, and then, when you make
+up your mind to return, and once set foot in your native
+land, you straightway get into a fever of anxiety and impatience
+to meet them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No more do I, but so it is!” confessed Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis,” added Mike. “Sure it was the very same wid
+Mister Longman himself when he was gitting nigh onto the
+ould farrum where he left his mother. It is curious.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see, if I only knowed she were alive and well,”
+said Dandy apologetically.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, you may be sure of that,” cheerfully exclaimed Ran,
+“but I don’t think she is at the rectory.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>“Why don’t you then, sir?” inquired Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because if she had been Longman would have seen her
+and told her about you, and she would certainly have run
+over last night or early this morning to see you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So she would! So she would! And yet I dunno—I
+dunno! Even darters in these days ain’t none too dutiful
+to feythers, let alone nieces to uncles, ’specially when they’ve
+been parted twenty years,” said Dandy, shaking his bald
+head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t think she is at the rectory, or, under the circumstances,
+she would have run over here to see you,” said
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I dunno! I dunno!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is most likely she is married and away.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Or dead and buried, poor wench,” sighed Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, come, don’t be so downhearted. Longman will
+be here soon. He promised to come early this morning,
+and no doubt he will bring good news of your niece. Now
+here is Judy, and we will go in to our breakfast,” concluded
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy, stepping from the bottom stair to the hall floor,
+greeted Will Walling, Mike and Dandy with a cordial good-morning
+and led the way to the breakfast room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was just under the bedchamber Judy had left, and
+had the same outlook from windows on the east and north
+of sunny glades, of burnished dry grass and shady groves
+of Scotch firs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The table was laid for five, and the old butler was in attendance;
+not that His Importance, Mr. Basset, the butler,
+ever waited at any other meal except dinner, and then only
+at the sideboard; but on this particular occasion of the first
+breakfast of the bridal pair at Haymore he thought proper
+to volunteer his attendance in their honor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The consequence was that Mike, Dandy and even Judy
+were almost afraid to speak, lest they should expose their
+ignorance of high life to this imposing personage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The five sat down to table under the cloud of the butler’s
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But soon the fragrant Mocha, the luscious waffles and the
+savory venison steaks and other appetizing edibles combined
+to dispel the gloom and enliven their spirits.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>After breakfast Judy sent for the housekeeper, and
+claimed her promise to show them through the building.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Basset was only too willing to oblige. The five
+friends, led by their conductress, went first up the grand
+staircase that led from the lower to the upper halls on every
+floor to the top of the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We had better go to the top first, ma’am, while we are
+fresh, else we might find the stairs hard to climb,” said
+Mrs. Basset.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Judy, as she knew that the old woman spoke chiefly
+in the interests of her own infirmities, answered promptly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You know best, Mrs. Basset. Suit yourself, and you
+will suit us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They went upstairs to the low-ceiled rooms under the
+roof, which Mrs. Basset described as servants’ bedrooms—storerooms
+for furniture out of season, boxes, etc.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then to the next below, all extra bedrooms, and to the
+next below that, all family suites of apartments; and down
+to the next, on which were the long drawing and the ballroom,
+which, with the broad hall between them, took up
+the whole flat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lastly, they came down to the first floor, on which were
+the long dining-room, the breakfast room, the parlor, the
+library and the picture gallery, which was the last place
+to be inspected.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The family portraits were arranged in chronological order,
+beginning with the Saxon ancestor of the eighth century,
+who, with rudest arms and in rudest clothing, resisted
+the first invasion of the Danes, and whose “counterfeit presentment”
+here was probably but the work of the rough
+artist’s imagination, executed, or rather perpetrated, at a
+much later date.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then in regular order came the barons who had rallied
+around Hereward in his last desperate stand against the
+usurper, William of Normandy; the iron-clad knights who
+had followed Richard of the Lion heart to the Holy Land;
+the barons who had taken up arms in support of the House
+of York against that of Lancaster; the plumed cavaliers
+who had insanely flocked with all their retainers to the
+standard of the Stuarts in every mad attempt of that unhappy
+family to regain their lost throne; periwig-pated
+courtiers of the Georgian dynasty; and, lastly, the swallowtail
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>coated and patent leather booted gentlemen of the Victorian
+age, as represented by the late squire and his three
+sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ladies of the chiefs were all there, too, each by the
+side of her “lord,” and dressed in costume of her time, or
+in what was supposed to be such, for there is little doubt
+that many of the earlier portraits were merely fancy pictures.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Before the group of the late squire and his family Judy
+suddenly caught her breath and clasped her hands and stood
+stock-still, gazing on the full-length picture of a beautiful
+dark girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is like, isn’t it now, ma’am?” inquired the housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Like! Why, the picture might be taken for his portrait
+if it were not for the dress!” exclaimed Judy, gazing at her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is still more like my Cousin Palma,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, so it is,” assented Judy; “and does not need
+change of dress to make it perfect. The hair of that lady
+in the picture is worn exactly as Palma wears hers, and
+that costume of dark blue is not unlike the dress Palma
+wore to our wedding in color and make.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is indeed a wonderful likeness to Mrs. Stuart,” remarked
+Mr. Walling. “Who is the lady?” he demanded,
+turning to the housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The last Mrs. Hay, of Haymore, the grandmother of
+the young squire here. She died at the age of twenty-three,
+leaving three boys, of one, two and three years of
+age—to give the figures in round numbers,” replied Mrs.
+Basset.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know she was the wife of the late squire; but
+whose daughter was she?” persisted Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The housekeeper was silent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Faix, Misther Walling, is it in the coorthoose ye are,
+with Misthress Basset intil the witness box, that ye would
+be cross-examining herself?” demanded Mike.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling turned a deprecating, apologetic glance
+upon Ran, who quietly replied:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She was the daughter of a gypsy chief. Her name was
+Gentyl Tuinquer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Will. Then, feeling rather uncomfortable,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>he added, to cover his confusion. “How beautiful
+she must have been!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And how much more beautiful she must be now!” exclaimed
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lawyer stared at her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Up there in heaven, I mean; for, of course, she is in
+heaven, for you may see by her face how good she is,” added
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The housekeeper sighed. All the ladies of the long line
+of Hays had been “angel born” before this gypsy girl from
+the tents came into the family. And though the woman
+could not help loving the memory of the lovely young creature,
+she equally could not help suffering in her own pride
+at any mention of the gypsy birth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran kissed the hand of the pictured lady and then turned
+with his party to leave the gallery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On stepping out into the hall a footman met him, and
+with a respectful salute said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, there is—a—person waiting to see
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A person? Who? What sort of a person?” demanded
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A foreign-looking tall man, sir; might be a Patagonian,
+only he can speak English.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Show him in here.” And with these words Ran crossed
+the hall and entered a morning parlor on the same floor.
+Then looking back he saw that, though his footman had
+gone on his errand, his friends lingered in the hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come in, all of you. It is only Longman. You will
+all want to see him, especially will Mr. Quin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do want to see him. Yes, that is so,” assented Dandy,
+as they all followed Ran into the parlor, where they found
+quite a variety of comfortable chairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were scarcely seated when Longman entered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran sprang up and met him; but Dandy pushed between
+them, his round, bald head, as well as his face, glowing red
+with excitement as he demanded:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you seen my Juley? Is she well and happy? Is
+she still in the service of the minister?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She is well and happy, but no longer in service anywhere.
+She is married to John Legg, the greengrocer of
+your native village, Medge. So I have not had the pleasure
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>of making her acquaintance,” Longman replied, with a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Lord above us! Well, I did sort of hope she was an
+old-maid woman as would have been a housekeeper and a
+daughter to myself in my old days. Well, and now she is
+married, and, I do dare say, with a baker’s dozen of children.
+Yes, that is so,” said Dandy, with a heavy sigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, but it isn’t so. She only married a few months ago,
+when she was over forty years old, and John Legg, the
+widower, who took her for his second wife, over fifty; so
+she has no baker’s dozen of children as yet.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I’s warrant he has a house full o’ young uns for
+her to be stepmother to! And that will be a heap worse
+than if the wench had a score of her own! It is as bad as
+if I had found her dead! Yes, that is so,” sighed Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, it isn’t so. You are all out again. John Legg has
+no children at home. He has a son and daughter, and gave
+them both a grand education above his means, and to repay
+him they did all they could to break his heart. They had
+worldly ambitions above their state, and despised the calling
+of their father. The son took ‘holy orders,’ not for the love
+of the Lord or the neighbor, but for love of self and the
+world. He became a professional preacher only, not a minister
+of religion. Mr. Hay,” said the speaker, suddenly
+turning toward Ran, “I shall presently have something to
+say to you in reference to this man, in which you have an
+especial interest.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Longman. I will remember to remind you
+of it,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now will you please go on telling me about the family
+my niece married into?” said Dandy impatiently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly!” smiled Longman, good-humoredly. “The
+son utterly ignores his father and hangs on the skirts of
+influential people; but as yet has had but little success.
+The daughter went out as a governess, less it seems to be
+of service to children than to seek her own fortune, through
+her beauty, among the rich and noble. She also ignores
+her father. Both these hopefuls are ‘married and settled,’
+to use the common phrase. And the newly-wedded, middle-aged
+couple are alone.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And what could have tempted my gal to agone and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>married of a old widdyman, whose son and darter had
+showed sich bad blood?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, to get out of service, perhaps; to have a house
+and home and a good husband, whom she could love, in
+this John Legg.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t memorize the name of no John Legg at Medge,
+though, to be sure, I have been away from them parts for
+twenty years—yes, that is so!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, you can’t remember him. He was not a Medge
+man. He came from the borough in London about two
+years ago. After his wife died, broken-hearted, it is said,
+by the conduct of his children, he sold out his business in
+London and came down to Medge, where he had a married
+sister and many nieces and nephews, his only relatives, except
+his undutiful son and daughter. He had enough to
+live on in retirement, but could not enjoy himself in idleness.
+So he took the first chance to go into business again.
+It happened that the only greengrocer in the place, an aged
+man, wanted to sell out and go to live with his married
+daughter, who was the wife of a farmer in the neighborhood.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“More fool he!” exclaimed Dandy. “I saw the play of
+‘Lear’ once.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But there was a <em>Cordelia</em> in it, you know, Dandy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; go on.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“John Legg bought out the old greengrocer, shop, stock,
+house, furniture and good will. The rectory people dealt
+with him, as why not when he was the only greengrocer in
+the village? And so he made the acquaintance of their
+servant, Julia Quin, and soon proposed to marry her, and
+as she did not wish to leave Medge and go with the rector
+and his wife to Haymore, she accepted honest John Legg.
+And I hear that they make a very comfortable couple.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How do you know all this here you are a-telling me of
+so confident like?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because in your interests I made very minute inquiries
+into all the circumstances, and Mr. Campbell was so good as
+to give me all the particulars,” replied Longman. “And,
+Dandy, will you let me speak to my other friends—they
+are waiting, you see?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sartinly, Mr. Longman. Who’s a-hindering on you?
+I myself am going into the town to send a telescope message
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>to my niece,” replied the old man, and with a low bow,
+intended for all the company, he turned and left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran hastily shook hands with Longman, then leaving
+him with the others, hurried out after his old friend, whom
+he found on the drive.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dandy! Dandy, I say! Please stop!” he called.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Mr. Hay, what’s your will, sir?” the old fellow
+demanded, turning to face his host.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You must not walk into the village. Take the dogcart.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, Mr. Hay, sir; but——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will have my way. Come down with me to the stables.
+I have not seen them yet. But I know there is a dogcart,
+because Mr. Walling, who is always wide awake, took a
+drive in it this morning to get an appetite for his breakfast
+before we were up,” said Ran, as he turned into a footpath
+leading through the grounds to the rear of the hall, far behind
+which were the stables.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy followed him, if the truth is to be told, not unwilling
+to spare his old limbs by riding instead of walking
+to the village.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The stable yard occupied full a square quarter acre of
+ground, walled in by massive stone buildings, consisting of
+stables proper, carriage houses, harness rooms, coachman’s
+and groom’s quarters and kennels.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was full of activity on this morning; for all the fourlegged
+creatures there, horses and hounds, seemed spoiling
+for a run, and were venting their impatience of restraint—the
+horses by neighing and kicking and the hounds by howling
+and scratching.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yo’ ought to have a good hunting party of gentlemen
+down here for a few weeks, sir, to take the devil out of the
+brutes,” said the old head groom, touching his hat to his
+master.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All in good time—a——Tell me your name.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hobbs, sir, at your sarvice.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Hobbs, if you have a steady-going horse, have
+him put to a dogcart, and find a careful boy to drive Mr.
+Quin to the village.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. Old Dick will be the hoss and Young Sandy
+the driver. I’ll go and give the order.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The groom went across the yard on his errand, while Ran
+and Dandy walked off to the kennels to look at the dogs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>“Not one on ’em to be compared to your Tip or my Lion,
+Mr. Hay, in my poor opinion!” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“These cannot excel ours in courage, or affection, or
+fidelity, I am sure,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And both men gave deep sighs to the memory of the faithful
+creatures they had been compelled by circumstances to
+leave behind them at the fort, where, it is true, the two dogs
+were sure of the kindest treatment from their new owners—Surgeon
+Hill, who had adopted Tip, and Adjutant Rose,
+who had taken Lion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you think we will ever see them again, Mr. Hay?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I do. In this world or the next.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The next! Mr. Hay, sir!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why not? I believe the creature that once lives, lives
+forever. Especially the creature capable of love, courage,
+fidelity and self-sacrifice, as so many of the quadrupeds are,
+must be immortal.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What Dandy would have said in reply was arrested on his
+lips by the approach of the dogcart, driven by one of the
+under-grooms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran helped his old friend upon the seat, tucked the rug
+well over his knees and then inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where do you wish to go?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To the telescope office in the village.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Drive this gentleman to the telegraph office,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Beg pardon, sir; but there is no telegraph office in the
+village, and none nearer than Chuxton,” said the young
+groom, touching his hat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! Chuxton is ten miles off! Where we left the train
+last night you know, Mr. Quin,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I know! Well, let him drive me there, then! That
+is if you can spare the carriage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course I can! All day, if you want it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“’Cause, you see, I don’t feel aquil to traveling all the
+way back to the south of England, after having come all
+the way up to the north, and I do want to see my niece very
+bad. And I mean to send a telescope as will be sartin to
+fetch her. Yes, that is so.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. Drive to Chuxton telegraph office, and
+then wherever Mr. Quin wishes to go. You are at his
+orders.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>The boy took the reins and drove off, and Ran turned
+again to question the old groom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Has there been much sport about here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“None at all, sir. Since the young squire were killed, the
+old squire never had no heart for nothing as long as he
+lived.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! How are the preserves?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, the game is increasing and multiplying to
+that degree for the want of sporting gents among ’em to
+thin ’em out, that for once in a way poachers is a blessing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poachers! Why, what is the gamekeeper about, to permit
+poachers to trespass?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, there ain’t no gamekeeper here, nor likewise
+been none since the old squire died. The last gamekeeper
+went off to Australia to seek his fortune.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank Heaven!” breathed Ran with fervency, not loud
+but deep, that now he could put his friend in office without
+hurting any one’s feelings.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see, it was this a way, sir. When Kirby went to
+foreign parts, the old squire was too ill to be bothered about
+his successor, and after he died the place was left without
+one. But surely, sir, Mr. Prowt wrote to you about all
+these matters, for he sartinly told me as you had wrote back
+how you would wait till you come down here in person to
+see the place before you would appoint aither gamekeeper
+or coachman.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What! has the coachman gone too?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Surely, sir, Mr. Prowt wrote and told you that, too! He
+left to better himself, so he said—took sarvice along of the
+Duke of Ambleton.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What wages do you get as groom here, Hobbs?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Head groom, sir, and twenty pund a year and my keep,
+and bin in the famberly, man and boy, fifty years, and hope
+to continuate in it for fifty more, I was gwine to say, but
+anyways as long as I can work, and that will be as long as I
+live, for I’d scorn to retire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Excellent, Hobbs. Have you a family?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Wife, sir, keeping house for me in the cottage there,”
+said the old man, pointing to a little stone cottage built in
+the wall next the stable, “and one son, sir—boy that driv
+the dogcart. Steady lad, sir, though his feyther says it; and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>one darter, sir, upper housemaid at the Hall—good girl,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are blessed in your family, Hobbs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thanks be to Heaven, sir!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, then, you said your wages as head groom were
+twenty pound a year. How much did the coachman get?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Just twice as much, sir, forty pound a year, and a good
+sound house over his head, and his livery and his beer. And
+left all that, sir, for ten pund more, and gold lace on his
+coat, and the honor of driving a duke. May the de’il fly
+away with him!—begging your pardon, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention it,” laughed Ran. “But you would not
+have left Haymore under the same circumstances?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Me!—why, sir, I never had the chance, so what would
+be the use of boasting? But, indeed, I don’t think I would.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hobbs, can you drive?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“None better in the world, sir, though I say it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then you shall be my coachman at the same wages that
+your predecessor now gets from his new master,” said Ran,
+smiling benignly down on the stupefied face of the man
+before him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, sir! sir! but this is too much, too much for poor
+me! Such a permotion as to be coachman! I can hardly
+believe it, sir! I can’t, indeed! And at a rise of wages,
+too! I can’t hardly believe it!” droned Hobbs, fairly dazed
+by his good fortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go and tell your wife, then. And begin to see about
+your livery, and fix up the coachman’s cottage—at my cost,
+Hobbs. All that will help you to believe it. Good-day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With these words the gracious young master left the
+stable yard and walked back to the Hall, happy in the feeling
+of having made others so, yet grave and thoughtful in
+the recognition of his responsibilities for all who were dependent
+on him.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XX<br> <span class='large'>THE NEW RECTOR</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>When Ran entered the morning room, where he had left
+his friends, he found them all there, but now gathered in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>a wide circle around the glowing sea coal fire in the large
+open grate, listening to Longman, who was giving a detailed
+account of his visit to the rectory and his evening with his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran drew a chair, sat down among them and made one
+of the audience.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the speaker had finished his story Ran turned to
+him and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Longman, if you are ready you may tell me what
+you meant when you said that you had something to report
+in reference to that undutiful son of worthy John Legg,”
+said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir. He has taken ‘holy orders,’ the more effectually
+to serve the devil, I fear. And he has been appointed
+by his brother-in-law to the living of Haymore parish,
+worth six hundred pounds, besides the rectory and glebe—all
+of which is in your gift, Mr. Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed! And who the mischief is the gentleman’s
+brother-in-law?” demanded Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who but the fraudulent claimant of Haymore? Gentleman
+Geff, or whatever his real name may be?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” exclaimed Ran, drawing his breath hard. “The
+plot seems to thicken! So the deceived wife of our Gentleman
+Geff, the young lady upon whom we have all wasted
+so much sympathy, is really no other than the pretty adventuress
+who left her father to seek her fortune! But I
+think we heard of her as Lamia Leegh.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well,” said Longman, “it would appear that when
+brother and sister left honest John Legg, their shopkeeping
+father, they must have changed the spelling of their names
+from plain Legg to mystic Leegh. The latter has a more
+aristocratic sound, you know. At any rate, their name was
+Legg; yet you heard of the girl as Leegh, and certainly the
+letter of the man to Mr. Campbell was signed Leegh—Cassius
+Leegh.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What did the fellow write to Mr. Campbell about?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, to warn him to leave the rectory, as he himself had
+been appointed to the living and should enter upon his office
+in January, after which he should not require the assistance
+of a curate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed!” again exclaimed Ran. “I think the fraudulent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>claimant is giving away the Haymore patronage in a
+very reckless way!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman laughed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let us see now how the case stands. The plot thickens
+so fast that it requires a little clearing. The Rev. Mr.
+Campbell was called to Haymore to fill the pulpit of the
+late Dr. Orton during the absence of the latter at Cannes,
+and remains in the office at a low salary until a rector is
+appointed to the living. And my substitute, the fraudulent
+claimant, has appointed his unworthy brother-in-law, who
+has warned the good curate to leave. Have I stated the
+case correctly?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite so,” said Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then. And we expect the three worthies,
+Gentleman Geff, Miss Legg and the Rev. Mr. Legg, calling
+themselves Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and the Rev. Cassius
+Leegh, all in full feather, here this evening! We must
+be prepared for them. Gentleman Geff must be confronted
+with the wife he deserted and the friend he assassinated.
+Oh, that Miss Legg might be met by her forsaken father!
+That is barely possible if John Legg should take the train
+for Chuxton immediately on the receipt of Dandy’s telegram,
+and come with his wife! And the Rev. Mr. Leegh
+shall be received by—the rector of Haymore! But that last
+item necessitates prompt action. Longman, come into the
+library with me, will you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The hunter arose and followed Ran upstairs and into the
+library, where they sat down at a table on which stood pen,
+ink and paper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Longman,” said Ran, “would it suit you to be gamekeeper
+of Haymore?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Mr. Hay, it would make me the happiest man on
+earth! But I really would not wish you to give me the
+place at another man’s expense.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never fear; it will be at no man’s expense in the sense
+you mean. There has been no gamekeeper at Haymore for
+a year past. The last one left to seek his fortune in Australia,
+and no successor has yet been appointed. The place
+is yours if you will have it. Indeed, you would please me
+much by taking it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, then, I will take it, sir, with many thanks,”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>exclaimed the hunter warmly, his whole face glowing with
+the sincere delight he felt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then that is settled. Get the keys from the bailiff and
+examine the cottage and have it fitted up for yourself and
+your mother in the most comfortable manner and send the
+bills to the bailiff.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will, Mr. Hay. You have made me very happy, for
+my mother’s sake as well as my own. We both owe you
+hearty thanks!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t speak of thanks again, Longman. The man who
+saved my life can never owe me thanks for anything that I
+may have the happiness of doing for him. Now to speak
+of another matter. Will you kindly take a letter for me to
+the Rev. Mr. Campbell?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly, sir, with great pleasure.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Take a book, then, or amuse yourself in any way you
+please, while I write it,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman arose and roamed about before the bookcases,
+reading the titles of the imprisoned volumes until he was
+tired of the amusement. None of the books attracted him.
+He was not a bookman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have finished my letter now, Longman, if you are
+ready to take it,” said Ran, folding and sealing the note in
+which he had invited Mr. Campbell to come with his wife
+and daughter to dine with himself and Mrs. Hay that evening
+and confer about the reverend gentleman’s appointment
+to the living of Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am quite ready, sir,” said Longman, and he took the
+letter and put it in his breast pocket and left the library.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had scarcely gone when a footman entered and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you please, sir, the bailiff, Mr. Prowt, is here, asking
+to see you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let him come in here,” said Ran with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A moment later the bailiff entered, took off his hat, bowed
+profoundly to the young squire, and stood waiting.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Take a seat, Mr. Prowt, if you please. You wished to
+see me, I am told,” said Ran pleasantly, though hardly able
+to control the smile that lurked in the corners of his eyes
+and lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir,” replied the bailiff, sitting down and placing
+his hat on the floor between his feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?” inquired Ran after an awkward pause.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>“Well, squire, if there is anything amiss I hope you will
+excuse it. I really did not expect you down last evening,
+and made no preparations to meet you. I am told by the
+head groom that there was no carriage sent to the station at
+Chuxton.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It does not matter in the least, Mr. Prowt,” said Ran
+with a boyish twinkle in his eyes that he could not suppress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, begging your pardon, squire, but it matters
+very much. I wish to set myself right with you, sir. I wish
+to tell you that it was all the neglect and carelessness of
+them telegraph people in Chuxton not forwarding your dispatch
+in time. You must, in course, sent it yesterday morning
+to announce your arrival in the evening, but I never got
+it until this blessed morning, when I thought that it was
+this evening you were coming. And I did not know any
+better until I came over here and stopped at the stable to
+tell Hobbs to be sure to send the chariot to meet you. And
+he told me that you were already here—that you had arrived
+last night. I don’t think I ever was so knocked over
+in my life. And no one to meet you! And no ceremonies
+befitting the reception of the Squire of Haymore and his
+bride!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is all right. Don’t trouble yourself,” said Ran, now
+laughing outright. “Come and dine with me this evening.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Prowt stared for a moment before answering. Never in
+the memory of man had a bailiff been invited to dine with a
+squire of Haymore. Then he reflected that the young heir
+had been found in America, and that America was a very
+democratic and republican part of the world, and that would
+account for the free and easy ways of the new squire. Only
+the bailiff was afraid Mr. Hay might be going to ask the
+butler and the head groom to dine with him, also; and that
+the bailiff could not stand. If he had never dined with the
+squire, neither had he ever dined with butler or groom.
+While he hesitated, Ran, misunderstanding his perplexity,
+said kindly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An informal dinner, Prowt. Only the clergyman and
+his wife and daughter, my solicitor, my brother-in-law, two
+friends from America, Mrs. Hay and myself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Prowt drew a deep sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir,” he said. “You do me great honor.
+When shall I bring my books for your examination?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>“Not this week, Prowt. This is Thursday. No business
+until Monday.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Just as you please, sir,” said the bailiff, picking up his
+hat and rising.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And without more words he bowed himself out of the
+library.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran went downstairs and rejoined his friends in the
+morning room, and entertained them with an account of his
+interview with the bailiff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My chief reason for asking him to dinner,” concluded
+the young man, “was that he might be present this evening
+to assist us in receiving Mr. and Mrs. Gentleman Geff and
+their esteemed brother and brother-in-law.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this moment the luncheon bell rang, and the whole
+party went across the hall to the small dining-room.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXI<br> <span class='large'>TWO SCENES</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Could any member of the party gathered at Haymore
+Hall have been gifted with clairvoyance, he or she might
+have witnessed in succession two scenes on that morning of
+December the 15th, distant, indeed, in space, but near in
+interest to the household.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The first scene was in a greengrocer’s shop in Holly
+Street, Medge.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A tall, spare, gray-haired and grave-looking man, of fifty
+years or upward, stood behind his counter waiting for
+morning customers, for it was still early.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A blue-coated telegraph boy hurried in, put a blue envelope
+in his hand, and laid an open book on the counter,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A dispatch, Mr. Legg; please sign.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The astonished John Legg, who had never received a
+telegram in the half century of his whole life, and now
+feared that this one must herald some well-merited misfortune
+to his unloving and undutiful but beloved son or
+daughter, nervously scrawled his name in the boy’s book
+and tore open the envelope and read:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>“<span class='sc'>Haymore, Chuxton, Yorkshire</span>,</div>
+      <div class='line in16'>December 15, 18—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>To Mr. John Legg</span>, Medge, Hantz: I have just come
+from America; want to see my niece; am not able to travel.
+Let her come to me immediately. It will be to her advantage.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Andrew Quin.</span>”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>With a gasp of relief that this message was no herald of
+misfortune, but rather possibly of good fortune, honest John
+hurried with it into the back parlor, where his wife—a red-cheeked,
+blue-eyed, brown-haired, buxom woman of forty or
+more—sat sewing, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here, Juley! Read this! What does it mean? Who is
+Andrew Quin?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he thrust the dispatch into her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her eyes devoured it, and then she answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, it is from my dear old Uncle Dandy. He went
+out to the gold fields in California about twenty years ago,
+and we have never heard from him since. And now he has
+just come back, and rich as Croesus, of course! And I am
+the only relation he has in the whole world! And he wants
+to see me. And he isn’t able to travel. And he may be at
+death’s door, poor, dear old fellow. John Legg, when does
+the next northbound train stop here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, I believe there’s a parliamentary stops here at—let
+me see—nine o’clock,” answered the greengrocer, slowly
+collecting his ideas, that had been scattered by the intense
+excitement of his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then we must go by it!” exclaimed Mrs. Legg, jumping
+to her feet and beginning immediately to lock up cupboards
+and set back chairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What!” cried John Legg, aghast at this impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We must go by it, or he may be dead before we get
+there, and his hospital left to fortunes!” exclaimed Julia in
+such trepidation that she reversed her words and never perceived
+that she did so, nor, in his bewilderment, did John.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But we haven’t half an hour to get ready in!” he
+pleaded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We must get ready in less time!” cried Mrs. Legg,
+turning to run up the stairs that led from one corner of
+the back room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What’ll I do about the shop?” called John in dismay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>“Leave it to the boy a day or two,” replied Julia from
+the head of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Everything will go to rack and ruin!” cried the greengrocer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“John Legg!” demanded his wife, rushing down the
+stairs fully equipped for the journey with bonnet and big
+shawl, an umbrella and bag in hand—“do you mean for the
+sake of a paltry, two-penny-ha’-penny shop, not worth fifty
+pounds, to risk an immense fortune, that will make you a
+millionaire, or a silver or a gold king, or a brown answer
+(bonanza?), or something of the sort?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ my dear,”
+said the man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jedehiah Judkins, come here and bring your master’s
+overcoat! And, Jed, do you mind the shop well while we
+are gone, and get Widow Willet’s Bob to come and help
+you, and I’ll pay him and give you half a sovereign if we
+find all right when we come back Saturday night,” said
+Mrs. Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The boy, who had just come in with his empty basket
+from delivering vegetables about the town, hastened with
+big eyes into the back room to obey his mistress’ orders.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg submitted. He always did. Julia went about
+fastening doors and windows, and lastly raking out and
+covering up the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then leaving only the key of the front door with “the
+boy,” the pair left the house and hurried to the station,
+where they were just in time to buy their tickets and jump
+into a second-class carriage. And before John Legg had
+time to recover his routed and dispersed mental faculties
+they were whirled halfway to London.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are the most energetic woman I ever saw in my
+life, Julia!” he said, trying to understand the situation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Need to be when there is a brown answer fortune, and
+a silver kingdom, if not a gold one, in the question—yes,
+and a dear, dying uncle, too!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I wonder if the boy will remember to take that celery to
+the vicarage when the market gardener brings it this afternoon?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, bother the celery, and the vicar, too! Think of the
+silver and gold kingdom—and—yes, of course, the poor,
+dear, dying uncle!” said Julia. And onward they flew
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>northward toward Yorkshire, unconscious that they were
+destined to take a part in a very memorable drama to be
+enacted at Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The other scene connected with the same drama, and
+which the clairvoyant might have looked in upon, was the
+elegant private parlor at Langham’s Hotel, where the counterfeit
+Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay and the Rev. Mr.
+Cassius Leegh sat at an early breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The personal appearance of Gentleman Geff and his
+“lady” are familiar to our readers. That of the Rev. Cassius
+Leegh may be described. He resembled his sister.
+Nature had given him a very handsome form and face, but
+sin had marred both.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On this morning both men looked bad; their faces were
+pallid, their eyes red, their hands shaky, their voices husky,
+their nerves “shattered,” their tempers—infernal!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had plunged into the gulf of dissipation
+to drown remorse. And the last two months of lawless
+deviltry in the French capital had made of him a mental
+and physical wreck.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His “reverend” brother-in-law was not far above him in
+the path that leads down to perdition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Gentleman Geff was as well as serene, and as beautiful
+as it was possible for her to be under her adverse circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But then, being the woman that she was, she had much
+to console her. She had come from Paris enriched with
+Indian shawls, velvet and satin dresses, laces and jewels
+which might have been the envy of a duchess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She wore her traveling suit of navy-blue poplin, for they
+were to take an early train for Yorkshire immediately after
+breakfast. She performed her duties as hostess at breakfast
+with perfect self-possession, though often under great
+provocation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When you are settled at the rectory you will, of course,
+bring down Mrs. Leegh and the children. I am quite longing
+to make the acquaintance of my sweet sister-in-law and
+her little ones,” said Lamia softly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know,” sulkily replied her brother. “It’s a bad
+time—in midwinter—to move children from the mild climate
+of Somerset to the severe one of York.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look here!” angrily and despotically exclaimed Gentleman
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>Geff. “I won’t have it! You’ve got to bring ’em,
+climate or no climate, or you’re no parson for my parish!
+It was well enough when you were rollicking and carousing
+’round Paris to leave your wife and kids with your father-in-law
+in Somerset, but when you’re settled in Haymore
+rectory you have got to have ’em with you. It would be
+deuced disreputable to have you, the pastor of a parish,
+living in one place and your wife and children in another.
+And I don’t want any reverend reprobates around me, I can
+tell you that much!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You shall have no cause to complain, Mr. Hay,” replied
+Cassius Leegh, controlling his temper and speaking coolly,
+though his blood was boiling with rage at the insult, for
+which he would have liked to knock his “patron” down.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think it is time to go.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff arose, muttering curses at all and sundry
+persons and things, flung his pocketbook at Mr. Leegh and
+told him to go down to the office and settle the bill and
+order a cab.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Half an hour later Gentleman Geff and his companions
+were seated in a compartment of a first-class carriage, flying
+northward as fast as the mail train could carry them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>My gentleman’s valet and my lady’s maid traveled by the
+second class of the same train.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff made himself as disagreeable to his fellow
+travelers as shattered nerves and bad temper could drive him
+to be, and as the hours passed he became so unendurable as
+to tax to the utmost the forbearance of his victims, who rejoiced
+when the day of torture drew to a close and their
+train steamed into the station at Chuxton and stopped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They all go out and stood on the platform. The train
+started again and steamed northward. Gentleman Geff
+looked around for his state carriage and four. There was
+none visible. He began to curse and swear.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come into the waiting-room, dearest,” said Lamia
+sweetly. “No doubt your carriage will be here in a few
+moments.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It should be here now, waiting. I’ll be —— ——!”
+(with a terrible oath) “if I don’t discharge every —— ——
+of them as soon as I get to Haymore!” he added as he led
+the way into the building and sat down, not to please Lamia,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>but to rest himself, for bodily weakness was one other of
+the bad effects of his intemperance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were but two other passengers besides Gentleman
+Geff’s party who got out at Chuxton.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were a middle-aged couple, who walked arm in arm
+to the Tawny Lion Tavern, engaged the only carriage there,
+and drove on to Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were, of course, Mr. and Mrs. John Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff and his friends waited and waited, the
+maid or the valet going out at intervals to see if the carriage
+from Haymore Hall had come, or was coming, Gentleman
+Geff cursing and swearing freely in the interim.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At last he burst out with a fearful oath, adding:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We can’t wait here all night, Leegh—and be —— to
+you! Be off with yourself to the Black Lion, or the Brown
+Bear, whatever the beastly tavern is called, and see if you
+can get a fly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Rev. Cassius, glad enough to get out of sight and
+hearing of his worthy brother-in-law and patron, hurried
+off to the Tawny Lion, and made such haste that he soon returned
+with the fly, which had already taken Mr. and Mrs.
+John Legg to Haymore Hall and had just come back to
+the inn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With many threats, sealed by terrific oaths, of extirpation
+of all the domestic establishment at the Hall, Gentleman
+Geff entered the carriage with his party and drove off to
+meet Nemesis at Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXII<br> <span class='large'>AN ARRIVAL AT HAYMORE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>When the curate burst into his wife’s sitting-room with
+the joyful news that he was to be the Vicar of Haymore,
+his impetuous delight was not inspired by family affection
+alone, although he was deeply sensible of the benefits his beloved
+ones would derive from the commodious house and
+grounds and the liberal income attached to the living; but
+he was relieved and satisfied to know that his new flock, in
+whom he had already become interested, would not be
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>turned over to the wolf in sheep’s clothing he knew Cassius
+Leegh to be.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell received his news with a stare of stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” she inquired at length.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I mean that Mr. Randolph Hay—the real Mr. Randolph
+Hay—the real Squire of Haymore—has offered me the living
+of Haymore, which is in his gift, and has invited me to
+dine with him this evening to talk over the affair, and
+begged me to waive ceremony and bring my wife and daughter
+with me to meet his wife and friends. And this he asks
+as a particular favor, for particular reasons which shall be
+explained when we meet, he adds. Of course I shall go, and
+you will both accompany me,” he concluded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course we will,” readily responded Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Jennie in dismay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What are you afraid of, my dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nothing. But, oh, papa, if I might only remain at
+home!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, dear, would you disoblige a man who is about
+to confer a great benefit upon you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not for the world, papa. I will go if you think my failure
+to do so would displease Mr. Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not think it would ‘displease’ him in the sense of
+angering him, my dear; for, by Longman’s account, he is
+one of the most amiable and considerate of men; but I do
+think, from the tone of his note, that it would disappoint
+him, for evidently he has a very strong motive for wanting
+our presence at Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then certainly I will go. But have you any idea, papa,
+what that motive can be?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think I have, my dear. You know that he who is now
+in possession is the rightful squire. But surely you have
+not forgotten that the fraudulent claimant has been daily
+expected for a week past.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh!” exclaimed Hetty and Jennie in a breath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, he is certainly on his way to the Hall this afternoon,
+and without a suspicion that the rightful owner of
+Haymore is in possession.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jim!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>These exclamations broke simultaneously from the lips
+of mother and daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my dear ones; the felon, when he shall enter the
+Hall to take possession, as he will think, of his stolen estate,
+will be confronted by the friend he treacherously assassinated
+and plundered and left for dead to be devoured by the
+wolves of the Black Woods in California, eight months ago.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Jim!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a terrible story, my dear ones, as Longman has told
+it. But retribution is at hand.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And do you think, Jim, that Mr. Hay also wants the
+bigamist to be confronted by his forsaken wife?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear, I think he does.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa! papa!” cried Jennie, turning pale.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, you met the man on the steamer when you
+were alone and you were not afraid of him. If you meet
+him at Haymore you will be on my arm,” said the curate in
+a reassuring tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And on your arm I shall fear nothing, papa, dear! And
+now I will not distress you any more by my nervous fancies.
+I will go, papa, and behave as well as I can.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is my good, brave girl!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And—I know—Mrs. Longman will take good care of
+baby while we are gone,” said Jennie in a tone of confidence,
+but with a look of doubt.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course she will! There can be no mistake there!
+She will take better care of little Essie than you or I could
+with our best endeavors. ‘Why?’—do you ask?—because
+she is an experienced nurse and a conscientious woman—and
+a tender mother! Are those reasons enough?” demanded
+Hetty, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie nodded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The proposed visit to Haymore Hall had for its suspected
+object a very grave and important matter. Yet these two
+women began immediately to think of the trifling items—what
+they should wear!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It is always so! Whether a woman is to be married or
+executed, her toilet seems to be an affair of the most serious
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mary Stuart’s dress was as artistically arranged for the
+block as ever it had been for her bridals.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>Jennie’s big trunk was unlocked and invaded. She had
+several dresses, gifts from her generous friends in New
+York, much handsomer than Hetty had ever possessed; and
+mother and daughter were near enough of a size to make
+any dress in the collection fit either.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty, having her choice, selected a mazarine blue satin,
+trimmed with deep flounces of Spanish lace, which very
+well suited her fair, rosy face and sunny brown hair. Jennie
+chose a ruby silk, trimmed with fringe of the same color,
+which well set off her rich brunette complexion, dark eyes
+and dark hair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On ordinary occasions of neighborly visiting for so short
+a distance as that between the parsonage and the Hall the
+curate and his wife and daughter would have walked, but
+with such—to them—grand toilets, the two women required
+a carriage, which now, with his improved prospects, Mr.
+Campbell could well afford.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So a passing boy was called from the road and dispatched
+to the Red Fox to engage Nahum with his mare “Miss
+Nancy,” and the nondescript vehicle called by the proprietor
+a “fly,” by the curate a “carryall,” and by the village boys
+a “shandy-ray-dan.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At precisely six o’clock this imposing conveyance was at
+the gate of the parsonage waiting for the parson and his
+party.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at Haymore Hall, preparations were completed
+for the reception of the most incompatible company
+that ever could be gathered together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Let us take a look at the people in the house and at the
+guests they were expecting</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First, as to the inmates, there were Ran and Judy—Mr.
+and Mrs. Randolph Hay—their solicitor, Mr. Will Walling;
+their brother, young Michael Man; the hunter, Samson
+Longman, and the old miner, Andrew Quin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three last-mentioned men—Man, Longman and Quin—could
+all swear to the identity of the squire in possession
+as the real Mr. Randolph Hay, and to the fraudulent claimant
+as an adventurer known to them by the name of Geoffrey
+Delamere and the nickname of Gentleman Geff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To this party was coming Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and
+their daughter, Mrs. Montgomery, who could all testify to
+the identity of the same fraudulent claimant and bigamous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>bridegroom, as an ex-captain of foot in her majesty’s service,
+whom they had known and who had married Jennie
+Campbell under his real name of Kightly Montgomery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And also Mr. and Mrs. John Legg, who could certainly
+point out the deceived “bride,” the so-called Mrs. Randolph
+Hay, once called Miss Lamia Leegh, as their daughter,
+Lydia Legg, and the clerical impostor, the Rev. Cassius
+Leegh, as their son Clay Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All these hosts and guests would make up the receiving
+party who, at eight o’clock that evening, would be waiting
+to welcome Gentleman Geff, his lady and her brother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At six o’clock the resident party in the Hall were gathered
+in the drawing-room in full evening dress, waiting for
+their guests.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy wore her wedding dress of cream-colored silk,
+trimmed with duchess lace, but without the veil or orange
+flowers, and with pearl jewelry instead. It was the prettiest,
+if not the only proper dress for the occasion that she possessed,
+her wardrobe being but a schoolgirl’s outfit.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran also wore his wedding suit, because—but will this
+be believed of the young squire of Haymore?—it was the
+only dress suit with which the careless young fellow had as
+yet thought to provide himself!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike, Dandy and Longman wore, also, each his “marriage
+garment,” which had been provided for Ran’s and
+Judy’s wedding, and for the like reason—that they had no
+others for full dress occasions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling, being the dude of dudes in society, had a
+choice among a score of evening suits, so much alike that
+none but a connoisseur could have seen any difference between
+them. He wore one of these.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sort of ser’ous time, Mr. Walling,” said old Dandy, who
+found himself seated next to Mr. Will near the great open
+fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t see why it should be for you, Mr. Quin,” said Will
+Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No? Don’t ee, now? Well, I allus did hate a furse.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Fuss? Why, there will not be any.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran, Judy, Mike and Longman, who were standing in
+the front bay window looking out upon the drive and chatting
+together, now came sauntering up to the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>“What is the matter with Dandy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is afraid there will be a ‘furse,’” gravely replied
+Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Before the peals of his mirth subsided, heavy, rumbling,
+tumbling wheels were heard on the drive, and the “shandy-ray-dan”
+drew up before the Hall door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The mirthful group composed themselves to receive their
+first guests.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The door was opened by a footman, who announced:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell, Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Montgomery.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the party from the parsonage entered the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy went to meet them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The Rev. Mr. Campbell?” said Ran interrogatively as he
+offered his hand to the curate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell bowed assent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to see you, sir. Mrs. Campbell, I presume?
+And Mrs. Montgomery, also? Ladies, I am very
+happy to make your acquaintance. Permit me to present
+you to Mrs. Hay,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And when this and all the other introductions were over
+and they were seated near the great open fire that the chill
+of the December evening made so welcome as well as so
+necessary, Mrs. Campbell, observing Judy’s painful, blushing
+shyness, and attributing it all only to her extreme youth
+and inexperience, and not at all to the conscious ignorance
+that she did not expect in the young bride, addressed conversation
+to her and tried to draw her out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Judy blushed and fidgeted and answered only in
+monosyllables. She was so absurdly afraid of falling into
+that dialect which some of her friends thought one of the
+quaintest, sweetest charms about her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You have lived most of your life in America?” said
+Mrs. Campbell, rather as stating a fact than putting a
+question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, ma’am,” breathed Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have never seen America, but my daughter here spent
+several months over there, and I think she was very much
+pleased with the country and the people—eh, Jennie?”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>inquired Mrs. Campbell with the intention of drawing Mrs.
+Montgomery into the conversation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I was, indeed. Everybody was so kind to me,” replied
+the young woman so heartily that Judy felt immediately
+drawn toward her, and thenceforth the intercourse of
+the three became easier.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, to promote a good, social understanding,
+also contrived to introduce the subject of mining in the gold
+fields of California. And here all his companions were, so
+to speak, at home. Every one, except the curate’s party, had
+something to contribute of instruction upon this matter.
+Even Judy forgot her fear of falling into dialect, and was
+led to speak freely of home life in the mining camps and
+woman’s work and mission there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The whole company was on a full flow of conversation
+when the butler opened the door and announced dinner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran immediately arose, offered his arm to Mrs. Campbell,
+and begged Mr. Campbell to take in Mrs. Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Will Walling, with one of his most lady-killing
+glances, offered his arm to Mrs. Montgomery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And they all went to the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But neither in the drawing-room nor at the dinner table
+was the slightest allusion made to the real motive of their
+gathering.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>An hour later, when the whole party had returned to the
+drawing-room and the talk had wandered from the silver
+mines of Colorado to those of Siberia, a footman entered
+the room and spoke to his master apart, and in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Two persons to see Mr. Andrew Quin?’ Show them in
+here, Basset. Or, stay!—Mr. Quin!” exclaimed Ran, turning
+to his old friend.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy came up in a moment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here are two people inquiring for you. They may come
+upon private business with you. I don’t know, of course.
+So, shall they come in here, or should you prefer to meet
+them first?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I know who they are! They are my niece and
+nevvy from Hantz. I’ll go and meet them!” said Dandy in
+a delighted tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And then bring them in here and introduce them to
+me,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Dandy followed the footman out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>There he found a tall, thin, gray-haired man clothed in
+an ulster from head to heel, holding in his left hand a warm
+cap, and on his right arm a stout, rosy, handsome woman in
+a black velvet bonnet and a gray plaid shawl that nearly
+covered the whole of her black silk dress.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You—you—you are—my niece—Julia Quin—as was?”
+inquired old Dandy, moving doubtfully toward the smiling
+woman and holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed; that is, you are Uncle Andrew,” the visitor
+exclaimed, taking the offered hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, to be sure I am!” he cried, drawing her up and
+kissing her heartily. “And would you believe it, my wench,
+but this is the first time I have kissed a ’oman for more
+than twenty years! And now interdooce me to your hubby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is hardly need; he knows who you are! Shake
+hands long o’ your nephy,” she answered, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The two men simultaneously advanced and met.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir,” said John
+Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So am I yours,” answered Dandy, cordially, if a little
+incoherently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you didn’t know me, Juley, did you, now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not by sight, Uncle Andrew. You have changed some,”
+replied Mrs. Legg, smiling and showing all her fine teeth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So have you! So have you! And a deal more ’n I
+have! I left you a tall, slim, fair wench under twenty, and
+I find you a broad, stout, rosy woman over forty. If that
+ain’t a change I’d like to know what a change is!” said
+Dandy triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, your change! When you left us to seek your fortune
+in the gold fields of California you were a stout, broad-shouldered,
+red-faced and red-headed man of forty. Now
+you are a thin, pale, silver-haired old gentleman over sixty,”
+retorted Julia, artfully mingling flattery with truth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, that is so; that is so,” meekly assented old Dandy;
+and then, meditatively, he added: “And I like it to be so.
+I like to think a good deal of my body wasting away in the
+sweet, sunshiny air while still I am able to walk about in
+it; so as when, I leave it there’ll be only skin and bone to
+lay in the ground—or very little more.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Uncle Dandy, don’t talk that a way! You can’t be
+much over sixty, and you may live to be over eighty or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>ninety—that is twenty or thirty years for you to live in
+this world.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What for?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘What for?’ Why—why, to be a comfort to your dear
+niece who loves you,” replied Mrs. Legg, not consciously
+hypocritical, but self-deceived into the notion that she was
+sincere.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” grunted Dandy in a tone which left his niece in
+doubt whether he disbelieved her or not.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Suddenly the old man, feeling himself fatigued by standing
+a few minutes, remembered that he had impolitely, even
+if unintentionally, kept his relatives in the same position.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, excuse me! Take seats! take seats!” he said, waving
+his hands wildly around the hall among the oaken and
+leather-cushioned chairs with which it was furnished.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. and Mrs. Legg seated themselves on two of the
+nearest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy drew a third up before then and dropped into it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You’ll come home ’long of us and stop for good, Uncle
+Andrew, I hope,” said Mrs. Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Before the old man could reply Mr. Legg took up the
+word.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, we should be proud to have you a member of
+our family for the rest of your life! And may it be a long
+and happy one!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do thank ye, niece and nephy! I do, indeed! But I
+don’t know ’bout going home ’long of you now! You see,
+I’m stopping here ’long o’ my young friend, Mr. Randolph
+Hay, and wisiting of him, am sort o’ at his orders——”
+began Dandy, but his niece interrupted him hastily, almost
+indignantly, with:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You don’t mean to say, Uncle Andrew Quin, that while
+ever you have got a ’fectionate niece and nephy ready to
+share their last crust ’long o’ you as you have gone at your
+age and tuk service at the Hall?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lord! No, wench! What are ye talking on? Didn’t I
+tell ’ee that Mr. Randolph Hay was a friend of mine? And
+didn’t I tell ’ee I was a-visiting on him? What be ye
+a-thinking on?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, then, what did you mean by being at his orders?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! just to give my testimony onto a certain matter in
+case of need. And I say I can’t give you any answer to your
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>invitation until I see how things be gwine to turn out at
+the Hall!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! how long will that be?” demanded Mrs. Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Maybe a few hours, if it don’t go into court; maybe a
+few centuries if it do. And in the last case, I sha’n’t be here
+so long.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Uncle Dandy, you speak in riddles.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I must do that at the present moment, my dear. But in
+a few hours, or a few centuries, if you haven’t guessed them
+in that time, I will give you the answers to them riddles.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Uncle Andrew, we thought by your sending a telegram
+to us to ‘come at once,’ that you were very ill.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my wench, I thank you and him for coming so
+very prompt. I do, indeed! So much prompter than I
+could expect! Really, I didn’t think you would get here
+until some time to-morrow. But I’m glad and thankful as
+you’re here to-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you are not ill, Uncle Dandy. You are very well,
+thank the Lord!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I never said I was ill, Juley. I said I wasn’t able to
+travel. No more I ain’t. And no more I wasn’t. I’m a
+feeble old man, wench.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tut! tut! ‘Feeble old man,’ indeed! You are a ‘fine
+old English gentleman,’ as the song says. And now you
+have come home to old England so well off and so well-looking
+you will be getting married and putting some
+blooming young aunt-in-law over our heads!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Blooming young’ fiddlesticks!” giggled old Dandy, not
+displeased at the words of his niece.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But what made you telegraph us in such hot haste?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“’Cause, after being away so long and coming so far, I
+got into a sort of fever to see my kin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And we were in a fever to see you, you dear uncle, from
+the moment we got your dispatch. And we thank you now
+for sending it, although it did frighten us nearly to death
+on your account.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Isn’t it strange you should have cared so much for an
+old uncle you hadn’t seen nor heerd tell on for twenty years
+or more?” demanded Dandy with a twinkle in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Strange or not, it was so. But is it stranger than that
+you should have cared so much for me as to send a telegram
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>and be in a fever to see me? Come, Uncle Dandy! You
+know ‘blood is thicker than water.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is so! Yes, that is so!” muttered the old man
+meditatively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, Julia! I think that we must go. You see, Mr.
+Quin——Or may I call you Uncle Quin?” inquired John
+Legg, interrupting his own speech.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Uncle Quin, Uncle Andrew, Uncle Dandy—whichever
+you please,” cordially replied the old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, Uncle Quin, I must tell you that we are very glad
+to find you in such good health. We are sorry, though, that
+you cannot go home with us at once. We shall have to return
+to Medge to-morrow. To-night, however, we shall
+have to find quarters in the village here, and will see you
+again in the morning before we leave. Shall we say good-night
+now?” said John Legg, offering his hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, stay! stop! I forgot! Mr. Randolph Hay wishes
+to see you both—wants to make your acquaintance—and
+made me promise to bring you into the drawing-room.
+Come!” said Dandy, taking the offered hand of his nephew
+and trying to draw him toward a door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg hesitated, looked at his wife, and then inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who’s in there?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Squire and wife, and brother-in-law and lawyer, parson
+and wife and daughter, and a backwoodsman—all plain people
+as you needn’t be afraid on; I ain’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We would rather not go in. We are not exactly dressed
+for company, right off a railway journey, and a very long
+one at that, as we are. Can’t you step in and persuade the
+young squire to come out and speak to us? You can tell
+him how it is.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I’ll go and try,” said Dandy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he returned to the drawing-room, went up to Ran,
+and whispered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Hay, my niece and nephy be plain folk and a bit
+shy. They want to pay their respects to you, but don’t like
+to face the company in the drawing-room. Will you please
+come and speak to them in the hall?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly,” replied Ran, rising; and then turning to his
+friends he added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am called out for a moment. Will you excuse me?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>Smiles and nods from every one answered him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He followed Dandy to the hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Randolph Hay, sir,” said the old man with solemn
+formality, “will you have the goodness to allow me to interdooce
+to your honor my niece and nephy, Juley and John
+Legg?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia stood up and dropped her rustic, housemaid’s courtesy.
+John took off his hat and bowed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran held out a hand to each, saying cordially:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad to see you. Your uncle is one of my
+oldest and most esteemed friends; so that any friends of his
+own shall always be most heartily welcome. You are just
+from Hantz?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Straight, sir. Arrived by the train that reached Chuxton
+at six o’clock this evening,” answered John Legg.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIII<br> <span class='large'>ANOTHER ARRIVAL</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Now that was the train by which Ran had expected
+Gentleman Geff and his suit, and this was about an hour
+beyond the time when they were due at Haymore. So his
+next question was the inevitable one:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did any other passengers leave that train for Haymore?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then John Legg stopped to laugh a little before he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! yes, sir. There were two gentlemen and a lady. I
+didn’t see their faces nor hear their names, but they seemed
+to belong to some seat in the neighborhood, for the tallest
+of the gentlemen seemed to have expected the family carriage
+to be there on the spot to meet the party. And when
+he found that it was not, well, sir, I don’t think as in all my
+long life I ever heard such a vast amount and choice variety
+of cursing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Gentleman Geff all over!” muttered Dandy to himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What became of them?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t know, sir. We left him there cursing land and
+water, sun, moon and stars, so to speak, and threatening the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>destruction of the earth, or words to that effect, if his carriage
+and servants failed to appear within the next five
+minutes. We walked to the Tawny Lion Inn and secured
+the only conveyance to be found and came on here while the
+gentleman waited for his coach and four, or whatever it
+might have been.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And is waiting there still, probably, and will have to
+wait until your ‘conveyance’ returns.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, sir, that will not be long. Julia and myself are
+about to say good-night,” said John Legg respectfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Good-night,’ indeed! By no means! What do you
+mean? Come two hundred miles or so to see your uncle
+here at Haymore Hall, and after an hour’s visit say good-night?
+Not at all! You and Mrs. Legg will, I hope, give
+us the pleasure of remaining with us during your stay in
+Yorkshire,” said Ran heartily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, sir, and we thank you very much,
+but——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg paused and looked at his wife, who did not
+help him by a word or a glance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I will take no denial. Where shall I send for your
+luggage?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We have nothing but hand-bags, sir, and they are in the
+carryall outside. You see, we came directly from the Chuxton
+station to this house, and have all we carried in the
+vehicle with us. We intended to return in it, and to put up
+at the Red Fox Inn in your village here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you will do no such thing. You will get your hand-bags
+out of the carriage, send it back to Chuxton—where
+the swearing gentleman is waiting, swearing harder than
+ever, no doubt—and you will remain here with us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you say, Juley?” said John Legg, appealing to
+his wife. “Come, woman, can’t you help a fellow a little?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you say, Uncle Dandy?” inquired Julia, appealing
+in turn to her old relative.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You stop here! Both on you stop! You take Mr. Hay
+at his word! Ran Hay means every word that he speaks.
+If he says he wants you to stop here he does want you to
+stop here! And as he does, you ought to do it to please him
+as well as yourselves, which you will be sure to do, I know.
+That’s all I have got to say!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While Dandy was speaking and his niece and nephew
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>listening, Ran beckoned a footman to follow him, and
+stepped out of the front door and went up to the driver of
+the carryall, who stood by the horses’ heads, clapping his
+thickly gloved hands and stamping his heavily shod feet to
+keep warm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You came from Chuxton?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, and been waiting here for more’n an hour for
+the parties I fotch, and myself near frozen, spite of my piles
+of clothes and——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Charles,” said Hay, turning his head and speaking in a
+low voice to the footman, “go in and get a large mug of
+strong ale and bring it out to this man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The footman vanished on his errand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The driver continued as if he had not been interrupted:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Horses like to catch their death of cold, spite o’ two
+heavy blankets apiece laid o’ top of them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am sorry I can do nothing for your horses, but if you
+think any of the grooms might, just let them do it,” said
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, sir. There can’t nobody do nothing for ’em here.
+And nothing will help them but a brisk trot back to Chuxton
+and a warm mash and good bed when they get there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The footman came out with a pewter quart measure of
+strong, foaming ale and handed it to the driver.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The latter took it with a “thanky” to the server and a
+bow to the master, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. This saves my life. Here’s to a long
+and happy one for you and yours. Is the party inside ready
+to go back, if you please, sir?” inquired the driver after he
+had taken one long draught of the ale and stopped to draw
+a deep sigh of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They are not going back. Charles, get the bags and
+other effects out of the carriage and carry them into the
+house.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The footman obeyed, loading himself with two heavy
+bags, two rugs and a large umbrella, and took them into
+the hall while the driver was taking his second long pull at
+the ale.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How much is your fare?” inquired Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The man stopped to recover breath with another devout
+inhalation of enjoyment, and then answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ten shillings, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>Ran took out his purse and gave the man half a sovereign
+and half a crown.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir,” said the driver, touching his hat, not
+for the fare, but for the “tip.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he took the blankets off his horses, folded and put
+them under his box and mounted to his seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You had better drive as fast as you can, not only for
+the sake of warming the blood of the horses, but for that
+of cooling the temper of the gentleman who is waiting for
+you with his party at the station.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Another fare to-night, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, so I hear from the people you have just brought.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then the master won’t only have to find fresh horses,
+but a fresh driver, sir; for I’m just dead beat. Any more
+commands, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not any.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-night, then, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The driver took up his “ribbons” and started his horses
+in a brisk trot.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran turned to re-enter the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was met by John Legg running out bareheaded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What’s the matter?” demanded Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The man has gone off without his fare.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, go in the house—you will catch your death of
+cold; but you can’t stop him now. He is through the lodge
+gates by this time,” said Ran, playfully taking John Legg
+by the shoulders and turning him “right face forward” to
+the ascending steps.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They re-entered the house together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg had already taken off her heavy shawl and
+bonnet, and had arranged her hair before the hall mirror,
+and stood in her neat plain dress, with fresh <i><span lang="fr">crêpe lis</span></i> ruches—which
+she had taken from the flap pocket outside her bag—around
+neck and wrists, and her only ornaments a gold
+watch and chain and a set of pearls, consisting of brooch
+and earrings, which had been her husband’s wedding present
+to herself and which she always carried about her when
+traveling for fear, if left at home, they might be stolen.
+These she had now taken from her pocket and put on.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Altogether she was quite presentable in that drawing-room.
+And as, with all, she was a “comely” matron, her
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>husband looked upon her with pardonable pride as well as
+love.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But while furtively glancing at his wife he was putting
+off his ulster and speaking to his host all at the same time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I hadn’t a notion what you were about,” he was saying,
+“until your man came in loaded down with our luggage. As
+soon as I saw that and found out what you had done I
+hurried out to pay the fare, but the carryall had gone.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is all right,” said Ran. “Come in now and let me
+introduce you to my friends.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please, Mr. Hay, let me brush his hair and put a clean
+collar and bosom on him first. I won’t be two minutes,”
+pleaded Mrs. Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran yielded, and the man’s toilet was made in the hall,
+as the woman’s had been a few minutes previous.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Ran took Mrs. Legg on his arm and led the way
+into the drawing-room, followed by old Dandy and John
+Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hay presented his new visitor first to his wife and then
+to all his guests. And the plain pair, it is almost needless
+to say, were as cordially received by the cultured people
+from the English rectory as they were by the border men
+from the Californian mining camp.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When this little ripple in the circle had subsided all settled
+again into small groups.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The four women found themselves temporarily together,
+and fell to talking of the weather, servants, children and
+the approaching Christmas holidays.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell and her daughter sat one on each side of
+Julia and made much of her. No word from Hetty or Jennie
+revealed the fact that Mrs. John Legg had once been in
+their service.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Julia made no secret of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I was housekeeper at the rectory of Medge, ma’am, in
+the old lady’s time, three years before his reverence was
+married.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She means in my grandmother’s days,” put in Mr.
+Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And for eighteen years afterward; making twenty-one
+years in all that I lived with the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell.
+I held that child, Miss Jennie—Mrs. Montgomery
+that now is—on my lap when she wasn’t twenty-four hours
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>old. And nursed her and took care of her from the time
+of her birth until that of her marriage,” said Julia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Jennie, who was holding her hand, raised and
+pressed it to her own breast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; and I have lived with them ever since, up to the
+time when they left to come up here to Yorkshire. Then
+I took Mr. Legg’s offer and married him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I hope you have been very happy,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am as happy, dear, as I can be parted from you all.
+We came to Haymore to see Uncle Dandy. And we intended
+to go to-morrow and see you. We little expected to
+find you here. I haven’t seen his reverence since the day he
+married John and me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That was the last ceremony he ever performed in Medge
+parish church,” said Mrs. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While they talked in this manner of strictly personal and
+domestic matters, the rector himself was one of a group
+gathered around Mr. Will Walling, who was another Gulliver
+or Munchausen for telling fabulous adventures of
+which he himself was the hero.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The inevitable subject of mining had suggested to Mr.
+Will the story of the horrors of penal serviture in the silver
+mines of the Ural Mountains, and he was telling it as if the
+false charge, the secret conviction, the exile, the journey,
+the life in the mines, the escape and flight through the snow
+and ice of Siberia, and all the attendant awful sufferings
+had been in his own personal experience. And all his audience
+listened with the fullest faith and deepest interest—that
+is, all except two—Ran, who had heard the story told
+before to-night, and John Legg, who had very recently read
+it in a dilapidated old volume bought for threepence at a
+second-hand book stand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran was bored, and could hardly repress the rudeness of
+a yawn; and he saw, besides, that John Legg looked incredulous
+and sarcastic.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he thought of the party of sinners who were by this
+time on their way to Haymore and to judgment. And then
+that their coming would bring pain and shame to more than
+one of that party. But all—even poor Jennie—had been
+prepared for the event except John Legg. Then it occurred
+to him that he must warn the poor father of the shock that
+might otherwise overwhelm him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>He stopped and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, will you favor me with a few minutes’ conversation
+in the library?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Surely, sir,” replied the greengrocer with alacrity as
+he arose to accompany his host.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Friends, will you excuse us for a few moments?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, if we must,” replied Will Walling, answering for
+the company; “but, really, you know, it is a shame to go
+before you have heard the end of the story.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I have heard you tell it many times,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; but Mr. Legg hasn’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I have done better than that. I have been through
+it. Why, man, I was the very Enokoff who helped Wallingski
+to make good his flight across the frontier. Only my
+real name was not Enokoff, but Legginoff, or Legenough, if
+you like it better,” said the greengrocer as he followed Ran
+from the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling started, but could make nothing of the
+answer; yet to his circle of listeners he said in explanation:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Too bad of Hay to have anticipated me and told that old
+fellow the end of the story while they were pretending to
+listen.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Ran had led his companion to the library,
+where both sat down on a leathern armchair, on opposite
+sides of a narrow table, on which they leaned their arms,
+facing each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, then, sir, I am at your service,” said Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you smoke?” inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Only occasionally; when I need a sedative and philosophy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Exactly. I smoke semi-occasionally for the same reasons.
+Will you take an exceptionally fine cigar now? It is
+an Isabella Regina.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran produced a case and matches. They lighted their
+weeds and began to smoke.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran let a few minutes elapse to allow the sedative to take
+some effect upon his guest, and then broke the subject for
+which he had brought the old man there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, I hope you will pardon me for asking a question
+that may seem to be an unpardonable liberty,” he said
+in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>“Ask me what you please, sir. I am sure it will not be an
+offensive liberty, since you could not possibly take one,”
+gravely replied the old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, when did you hear from your son and your
+daughter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have no son or daughter, sir. The young man and
+woman to whom you may allude forsook our humble way of
+life as soon as we had finished educating them above their
+position, each taking his or her way. Yet I am often sorry
+for them and anxious about them, for they were once my
+children, though they discard and despise me, for I know
+that for that very reason they must come to grief and shame
+in this world as well as in the next, if they do not repent
+and reform. For, look you, Mr. Hay, I am an old man, and
+all my long life I have noticed this one thing—that a man
+may break every commandment in the decalogue, except
+one, and he may escape punishment in this world, whatever
+becomes of him in the next. I say he may, and he often
+does. But if he breaks the Fifth Commandment—called
+the Commandment with Promise—his punishment, or his
+discipline of pain and failure, comes in this world. However,
+upon repentance, he may be forgiven in the next.
+This is the fruit of my observation and experience of men.
+I cannot answer for those of other people.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, Mr. Legg, I fear your opinion is about to be sustained
+in the fate of the young people. They are both about
+to come to grief; and I am glad for the girl’s sake that you
+are here to-night, for I am sure you would stand by your
+daughter in her trouble,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The old man stared at the earnest young speaker and
+then said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So it was for this, Mr. Hay, that you made old Andrew
+Quin bring me here by telegraph.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! Heaven knows I had nothing whatever to do with
+bringing you to Haymore. That was entirely Mr. Quin’s
+own idea.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then it was old Andrew that worked to bring about my
+visit here in the interest of my undutiful daughter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! Again you are wrong. Andrew Quin knew nothing
+whatever of your chance of meeting your son or daughter
+at Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then the present crisis is accidental.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>“Providential, rather.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I stand corrected. Where are these people now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They are on their way to this house. They will be here
+in one hour from this time.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My wretched son and daughter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, Mr. Legg. Your son and daughter, and the man
+that she believes to be her husband.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The man that she believes to be her husband! Believes
+only! Heaven and earth! has she fallen as low as that?”
+groaned the father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not knowingly. Not guiltily. Neither state, church
+nor society will hold her guilty of a deep wrong that she
+has suffered, not committed. Hers was not an elopement.
+Not a clandestine marriage. Her courtship was open. Her
+engagements approved by all her friends. Her wedding
+was public, and the reception that followed was the social
+event of the season.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yet the man is not her husband?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How so?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because he was and had been a married man for two
+years previous to his meeting with your daughter. Because
+he was and is a bigamist. More than that, he is a forger,
+a perjurer, a swindler, a highway robber and a midnight
+assassin!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Great Heaven! Great Heaven!” groaned the wretched
+father, covering his face with his hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In a word, this man may be called the champion criminal
+of his age,” continued Ran, unmercifully “piling up
+the agonies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And how is it that he is at large?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because his crimes have only recently been brought to
+light.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And this man has betrayed my poor girl!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It was not her fault.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes—ah, me!—it was. Her pride, beauty and ambition
+have brought her to ruin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! You may still help and save her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I doubt it. But tell me all about it,” said poor John
+Legg, sinking back in his chair and covering his working
+features with his open palms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran began and told the whole story of the connection of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>Gentleman Geff, Lamia Leegh, Jennie Campbell and himself,
+comprised within the last year.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And in the room there,” he concluded, “gathered to
+meet and confound the great criminal are the witnesses of
+his crimes, the testifiers to his identity, and, more terrible
+than all, his victims, raised as it were from the dead against
+him. Among them Jennie Montgomery, the daughter of
+James Campbell, the girl who was nursed and brought up
+for sixteen years by your good wife, and who was married,
+then deserted, and finally stabbed by that felon. Among
+them, too, myself, Ran Hay, the friend who shared his
+cabin and his crust—nay, his heart and soul—with him,
+and yet whom he shot down from behind at midnight in the
+Black Woods of California. Among them, too, will be the
+wronged father of that unhappy girl——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! no! No! no! Oh, Mr. Hay! I cannot be present
+at that scene! The sight of me would add to her suffering.
+No! When it is all over, and the man who has spoiled her
+life has been exposed, then take care of her for a few hours
+and afterward let her know of her father; that, however his
+heart may have been hardened against his vain, haughty,
+disdainful daughter, it is softened by his humbled, grieved
+and suffering child. Let her know that her father’s arms
+and her father’s home are ever opened to his daughter. But
+I cannot see her to-night, Mr. Hay. I am very grateful to
+you, sir. I understand you now. But please leave me and
+send Julia to me. She knows how to deal with me better
+than any one else.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will do so at once. And, Mr. Legg, please use this
+house and the servants just as if they were entirely your
+own. Call for anything you may like, and do exactly as you
+choose,” said Ran as he took the old man’s hand, pressed it
+kindly, and left the library.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then John Legg dropped his head upon his folded arms
+on the table and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Other arms were soon around him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He looked up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia stood there.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He told her all in fewer words than Ran had taken to
+tell the story.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She drew a chair and sat down beside him, took his hand
+and held it while she said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>“Well, don’t cry no more. The girl has had her lesson;
+but the shame of her marriage is not hern or ourn. We will
+take her home and give her love and comfort and peace, if
+we cannot give her happiness. I will be as true and tender
+a mother to her as if she were my own hurt child. And
+her own mother looking down from heaven will see no cause
+to blame me. At Medge her story need never be known.
+She will be the Liddy Legg of her youth. She went for to
+be a governess in a rich American family—she has come
+home now for good. That is true, and it’s all of the truth
+that need be known at Medge. The writing between the
+lines need not be read there. And there is Uncle Dandy,
+who is just as kind as he is rich. He will surely be good to
+the poor gal.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Suddenly Julia paused and fell into deep thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While she had been comforting her husband in his sorrow
+over his miserable daughter her own better nature was
+aroused, and when finally she had occasion to allude to her
+old uncle she felt ashamed of the selfish and avaricious
+spirit that had inspired her to run after him for his imaginary
+wealth and to covet its inheritance, and she secretly
+resolved to try, with the Lord’s help, to put away the evil
+influence and think of the old relative as a lonely old man
+whose age and infirmities it should be not only her duty but
+her pleasure to cherish and support.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then the spirit of avarice departed for the time
+being, at least; for a devil cannot endure the presence of an
+angel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While this change was silently passing within her she
+still held her husband’s hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length she spoke again, slightly varying the subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What about the boy?” she inquired, referring to his son.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The man, you mean; for he is twenty-eight years old.
+I don’t know! I hope he will never get a pulpit, for I know
+this much, that he is totally unfit for one; yes, and the
+bishops, whose boots he is always licking in the hope of
+preferment, know it, too! He got the promise of the living
+here at Haymore from the fraudulent claimant who has
+ruined us all, or tried to do so; but that goes for nothing
+at all, for Mr. Randolph Hay has already given it to the
+Rev. Mr. Campbell, a good man and worthy minister. So
+my vagabond will also have to meet with humiliating disappointment
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>along with his felonious patron and wretched
+sister.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Think no more on it, except to do the best you can and
+leave the rest to the Lord,” said Julia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this moment the door opened and a footman entered
+with a large tray laden with tea, bread and butter, game
+pie, cakes, sweetmeats and other edibles. He put it down
+on the tables between the two people and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My mistress thought, sir, that you might like refreshments
+after your journey. And would you prefer a bottle
+of wine, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, thank you; nothing more whatever. You need not
+wait,” replied Mr. Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The man touched his forehead and left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy had remembered what Ran, with all his goodness of
+heart, had forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But, then, it is almost always Eve, and seldom or never
+Adam, who is</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“On hospitable thoughts intent,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>in the way of feeding at least.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia poured out tea for her husband and filled his plate
+with game pie and bread and butter, and made him eat and
+drink and set him a good example in that agreeable duty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the meantime the company in the drawing-room were
+getting a little weary of waiting.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Hay had contrived to draw the curate aside, where
+they could settle the affair of the living. It was but a short
+conference, for Mr. Campbell was glad and grateful to accept
+it. At the end of their talk the minister said very
+sincerely:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The utmost that I dared to hope for was the curacy
+under the new rector, whoever he should be! But the living!
+It is more than I ever dreamed of or deserved! Yet
+will I, with the Lord’s help, do my utmost for the parish.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What Ran might have replied was cut short with some
+sudden violence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First by the heavy rumbling and tumbling of some clumsy
+carryall over the rough drive as it drew up to the front of
+the Hall and stopped; then by loud and angry tones of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>voice; then by a resounding peal of knocks on the door
+which seemed to reverberate through the entire building.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The arrival was an embodied storm that threatened to
+dash in the entire front of the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the library John Legg sprang up and bolted the door
+against the uproar, and then sat down by his trembling
+wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the drawing-room all was excitement and expectation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s him!” exclaimed old Dandy, with his few spikes of
+white hair rising on end around his bald crown. “It’s him!
+Straight from the pit of fire and brimstone, and possessed
+of the devil and all his demons!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the hall the frightened footmen hastened to throw
+open the front door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff burst in, cursing and swearing in the
+most appalling manner, and threatening every one in his
+house with instant discharge, death and destruction, for having
+kept him waiting at Chuxton so many hours and not
+having sent his coach and four and mounted servants to
+meet him!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So, raving like a madman whose frenzy is heightened by
+<i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>, he broke into the drawing-room in the midst
+of the assembled company.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran Hay arose and advanced down the room to meet him.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIV<br> <span class='large'>AT BAY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Randolph Hay advanced to meet the violent intruder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was still raging and threatening.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How do you do, Mr. Geoffrey Delamere?” coolly inquired
+Ran, calling the man of many aliases by the name by
+which he had known him in California.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stopped suddenly and drew himself up
+with drunken arrogance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the quiet, low-voiced, well-dressed young gentleman
+who stood before him, with clear, pale complexion, neatly
+trimmed hair and mustache, who wore light kid gloves, and
+had a rosebud in his buttonhole, he did not recognize the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>rough, rollicking, sunburned and shock-headed lad who had
+befriended him at Grizzly Gulch, and whom he himself had
+shot down, robbed and left for dead, to be devoured by
+wolves in the Black Woods of the gold State, and whose
+name and inheritance he had stolen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who in thunder and lightning are you, you villain?
+And what the fire and brimstone are you doing here, in
+my house, you rascal?” he fiercely demanded, and without
+waiting for an answer he fell to cursing and swearing in the
+most furious manner, ending with: “If you don’t get out
+of this in double-quick I’ll have you kicked out of doors and
+into the horse pond, you scoundrel!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Perhaps if you give yourself the trouble to look up in
+my face you may recognize me, as well as my right to be
+here,” said Ran calmly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stared.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You should remember me. It has not been so long;
+only since the second of last April that we parted company
+in the Black Woods of California,” continued Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the criminal’s face blanched, his jaw fell, his eyes
+started, he stared with growing horror for a moment, then
+reeled, and must have fallen but that he was caught in the
+strong arms of Longman, who supported him to a high-backed
+armchair and sat him down in it, where he seemed
+to fall into a state of stupefaction. The awful shock of this
+meeting had not sobered him—he was too far gone in drunkenness
+for that; but it had reduced him to a state of imbecility.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Mr. Cassius Leegh, who had been engaged
+outside doing all the duties of his patron, seeing to the
+luggage, paying off the carryall, and even taking care of his
+sister, now strutted into the room with the lady on his arm,
+his head thrown back, his nose in the air, and altogether
+with a fine manner of scorn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was not so drunk as his patron; he was only drunk
+enough to be a very great man, indeed; but not to be a very
+violent one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the meaning of this irregularity?” he loftily
+demanded. “We did not expect company!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We did,” said Ran with a touch of humor in his tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray, who are you, sir?” demanded Leegh, throwing up
+his head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>“Ask your companion there,” replied Ran with a wave of
+his hand toward the panic-stricken object in the armchair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hay!” exclaimed Leegh, turning to his patron. “What
+in the dev—what on earth does all this mean? Who are all
+these people?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff opened his mouth, gasped, rolled his eyes
+and sank into silence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Can’t you speak, man? What the dev—what is the matter
+with you? And what is all this infer—this confusion
+about?” angrily demanded Leegh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff gasped two or three times, rolled his eyes
+frightfully and replied:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is the day of judgment! And the dead—the murdered
+dead—have risen to bear witness against me!—have
+left their graves to cry ‘blood for blood’!” he shrieked; and
+then his eyes stared and became fixed, his jaw fell and his
+face blanched.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poor idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Leegh in extreme disgust.
+“I never saw his so drunk as this. If he goes it at this
+pace he will soon come to the end of life. I find I must take
+command here and clear the house. Have I your authority
+to act for you, sister?” he inquired in a whisper of the
+woman on his arm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes—yes,” she faltered faintly; “but take me first to a
+chair or sofa. I feel as if about to faint. Oh, what does is
+all mean?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It means that our friend here,” he replied, pointing to
+the collapsed criminal in the chair, “has delirium tremens.
+And ‘has ’em bad,’ as the old costermonger used to say of
+his cousin,” he added as he placed his sister in a large,
+cushioned armchair, into which she sank exhausted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he glanced over the scene, taking stock of the company
+preparatory to his work of clearing the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nearest to him, on his right hand, stood the young colossus,
+Samson Longman, leaning over the chair of poor old
+Dandy, who sat with his bald head dropped and his withered
+face hidden in the palms of his hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These two men were both strangers to Mr. Leegh, who
+did not feel inclined to commence his work of expulsion
+with the giant or his immediate protégé.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A little further off, on his left, stood a group of three—Ran,
+Mike and Will Walling—talking together. These
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>were also strangers to Mr. Leegh, who did not feel disposed
+to begin with them either.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Still further off, straight before him, at the other end of
+the room, was another group, each individual of which he
+recognized. These were the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell,
+and their daughter, Jennie, whom he had often visited at
+their parsonage in Medge; and to Mr. Campbell he had but
+lately written, as the reader may remember, warning him
+to leave the rectory, to which he himself—Leegh—had been
+appointed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here, then, was his opportunity. He would begin with
+these.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector—as we must call him now, since his induction
+into the Haymore living by Mr. Randolph Hay—was seated
+on a corner sofa with his wife and daughter, the latter sitting
+between her father and her mother, with her distressed
+face hidden in that mother’s bosom. Yet Leegh had instinctively
+recognized her as well as her parents.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He went up, nodded to Mr. Campbell and offered his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector bowed in return, but did not take Leegh’s
+hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am surprised to see you here this evening, sir. How
+do you do, Mrs. Campbell? I hope Miss Jennie is quite
+well,” said Leegh in an offhand way, not choosing to notice
+the rector’s coolness, not knowing or suspecting that he was
+the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am here at the invitation of Mr. Randolph Hay,” said
+Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My daughter is quite well, thank you, Mr. Leegh,” said
+Mrs. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Both the husband and the wife answering his careless
+greeting simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear of Miss Jennie’s good health. She is
+only tired, then, perhaps, or sleepy? Did you say you were
+here at the invitation of the squire, Mr. Campbell?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir; of Mr. Randolph Hay,” calmly replied the
+rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then he must have been even drun—I mean, more incomprehensible
+than he is now. Pray, did he also invite all
+these other people I see here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>“I think not. He did not invite you, or your sister, or
+Capt. Montgomery,” replied Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Didn’t invite me or my sister! Why, my sister is his
+wife, man, and I am his brother-in-law! And he brought
+us down with him to-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think not,” said the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You think not! Why, here we are, anyway.  Here am<a id='t235'></a>
+I. There is my sister in that armchair, somewhat prostrated
+and disgusted, to be sure. And there is her husband on that
+high-back throne, somewhat ‘disguised,’ as one might say.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think you are mistaken in all that you have said,”
+quietly remarked Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think that everybody in the room, except myself, is
+drunk or demented, or most likely both!” exclaimed Leegh,
+losing his temper and now speaking recklessly, for he was
+not yet quite sober.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell made no reply to these words.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you be good enough to explain yourself?” rudely
+demanded Leegh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have no explanation to make about myself. For any
+other questions you would like to ask I must refer you to
+Mr. Randolph Hay himself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is in a fine condition to answer questions, is he not,
+now? Look at him!” said Leegh, pointing to the abject
+creature in the chair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector looked and sighed to see the human wreck.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, then, will you explain?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; I must still refer you to Mr. Randolph Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Confound your insolence!” between his grinding teeth.
+And then, aloud: “You got my letter, I presume?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Warning me to vacate the rectory?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course. What else should I have written to you
+about?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I got your letter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I hope you are ready to go. Because I shall certainly
+enter into possession on the first of January,” said
+Leegh rudely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The rectory is even now quite ready for the new incumbent.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear it, though I shall not care to take possession
+until the first of January. And now, Mr. Campbell,
+excuse me for reminding you that the hour is late, and suggesting
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>that, as this is the evening of Mr. and Mrs. Randolph
+Hay’s arrival, it would be in good form for visitors
+to retire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you: but I must speak to my host and hostess
+first.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this moment Judy came up from some obscure part of
+the big room in which she had been lurking like a frightened
+kitten.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell made room for her, and Judy sat down
+beside her friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who is this young lady? Will you introduce me to
+her?” said Leegh with one of his lady-killing smiles.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Excuse me, sir. I would rather not do so,” said Mr.
+Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then turning to Judy, who had looked up with surprise
+and pity, for she could not bear to see any one pained
+or mortified, he added in explanation:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, my dear; I cannot do it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then, with a smothered imprecation, Leegh turned on his
+heel and sauntered down the room to rejoin his sister, and
+feeling as if he were in a very weird and ugly dream.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the meanwhile, however, Ran, Mike and Will Walling
+had been taking counsel together, and often glancing
+from the stupefied figure of Gentleman Geff, who still sat
+with blanched face, dropped jaw and starting eyes, staring
+into vacancy, to that of Lamia Leegh, who reclined on her
+chair with closed eyes and in a half-fainting condition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length Ran from the pity of his heart said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Walling, I cannot bear to expose that poor woman to
+the awful humiliation of hearing the whole of that fellow’s
+villainies exposed. I will go into the library and persuade
+her poor father to receive her in there and save her from
+this trial. And do you go to her and break the news of Mr.
+Legg’s presence in the house. You need tell her no more
+as yet. The worst need not be told until later.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, I will do as you say. There is her precious
+brother talking to Mr. Campbell. I wonder what he is saying,”
+said Will Walling as he went up and stood beside the
+chair of Lamia Leegh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She never moved or opened her eyes. She did not seem
+to have perceived his presence. He wished to address her,
+but hardly knew what name to call her. If he should call
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>her by her real name, or even by the name she bore in New
+York before her marriage, it would startle and offend her.
+It would seem a deliberate insult. If he should call her by
+Ran’s name it would be by a false one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The last alternative, however, was the one on which he
+decided to act. It could do no harm, he thought, to humor
+her delusion by calling her by the name she honestly supposed
+to be hers by right of marriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He laid his hand lightly on the back of her chair, stooped,
+and said softly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mrs. Hay!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She started, opened her eyes, sat up and gazed at him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have startled you. I am sorry,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Walling! You here! In England! At Haymore!”
+she exclaimed, gazing at him as if she could not turn away
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, as you see!” he answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And we did not know you were coming. At least, I did
+not. And, oh! what brought you here? I don’t mean to be
+rude, though the question seems a rude one.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a most natural one. I came—for a change,” replied
+Will Walling evasively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And when did you arrive?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In England? Tuesday.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And when did you come to Haymore?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Late last night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You came straight here, then, expecting to find us at
+home, and found no one to receive you—except the servants,
+of course. I hope they made you comfortable. And,
+of course they told you that we were to be home to-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course, thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am so glad you are here. And, oh, Mr. Walling, since
+you are here, will you please to tell me who all these strangers
+are and why they are here, and what, oh! what has reduced
+my husband to that condition? He looks as if he
+were struck with idiocy,” said Lamia with ill-concealed
+scorn and hatred.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling thought within himself that she would have
+little to suffer from wounded affections, whatever she might
+have to endure from humbled pride. Still, he pitied her,
+and answered gently:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That group on the sofa, to whom your brother is speaking,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>consists of the Rev. Mr. Campbell, his wife and daughter,
+who are quite old friends of Mr. Leegh.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia had never heard the name of Jennie Montgomery’s
+parents. She scrutinized the group, and then remarked:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That girl who is leaning on the elder woman’s shoulder
+reminds me strongly of some one whom I have seen somewhere,
+but I cannot remember where, for I cannot quite see
+her clearly at this distance. And who are the other people
+in the room?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They are all friends of Mr. Randolph Hay who knew
+him in California, before he came into his estate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, how interesting! And they came here to see him?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, and to give him a reception in his own house,” said
+Will Walling, not quite truly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, how interesting! And, Mr. Walling, who is that
+pretty young woman who has just gone up to the clergyman’s
+party?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Some friend of the family. Here comes your brother.
+He has just left the group. And before he comes, my dear
+Mrs. Hay, I must tell you that there are others, or rather,
+there is one other person in this house in whom you are
+more intimately interested than in all the rest,” said Will
+Walling very gravely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia looked a little disturbed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who can that be?” she inquired in a low, faltering
+voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Can you not surmise? Think what near relatives you
+have living.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I—have no near relatives living—except my brother,
+and—my father.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your father is here, longing to see his only daughter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My father here? What has he come for?” demanded this
+Goneril in so sharp a tone of displeasure and annoyance
+that Will Walling lost all pity for her and spoke near his
+purpose when he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is waiting here in fatherly love and compassion, to
+be a shelter to his only daughter in the hour of her utmost
+need.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia turned deadly pale and sick. The words of the
+lawyer, taken together with the awful exclamation of her
+husband before he fell into his stupor, warned her that
+some terrible revelation was at hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>“Oh! this is some horrid nightmare!” she muttered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this crisis the sauntering and unsteady steps of Mr.
+Leegh brought him up to his sister’s side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now!” he exclaimed, “what is all this? And who
+the dev—deuce—mischief are you, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cassius!” cried Lamia in great excitement. “This
+is Mr. Walling, of the firm of Walling &#38; Walling, New
+York, of whom you have heard us speak. There is something
+dreadful the matter that has gathered all these people
+here. He tells me that our father is here also——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The old man! What is the—what has brought him
+here?” demanded Leegh in as sharp a tone as his sister
+had used.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will Walling was as much disgusted with the one as with
+the other. He answered the question:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your father is here, Mr. Leegh, to succor his daughter
+in her distress. Presently I shall ask you, her brother, to
+lead her to your father’s presence.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is my husband. My beast of a husband! What has
+he been doing! Oh, Heaven! I heard him say something
+about murder, and I thought it was only his drunken raving.
+Has he committed murder, then, and will he be
+hanged? If so, I will never show my face in England or
+New York again!” exclaimed Lamia, losing all decent self-control
+and becoming hysterical, not from anxious affection,
+but from alarmed pride.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Compose yourself, madam. There is no murder on his
+hands. There is nothing but what you may get over in the
+peace of your father’s house,” said Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why cannot you tell me what it is, then?” demanded
+Lamia, breaking into sobs and tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! why the mischief can’t you speak out?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because I gave my word not to do so. Because, in any
+case, I would not do so. Because it is not even proper that
+I should. And, finally, because it is best that your sister
+should hear what she must from her father.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a nightmare! A horrid, hideous nightmare!” cried
+Lamia, sobbing violently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When are we to hear this news, whatever it may be—this
+mystery, this calamity—from the old gentleman?”
+roughly demanded Leegh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When the gentleman who is with him now comes out to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>tell us that your father is ready to receive you,” replied
+Will Walling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By ——! Upon my honor, you are very cool, sir,”
+sneered Leegh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a nightmare! A ghastly, deadly nightmare!”
+wailed Lamia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It it the day of doom, and the quick and the dead rise
+in judgment!” groaned a deep, hollow voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was that of Gentleman Geff. His rolling eyes had
+fallen upon a group composed of Mike, Dandy and Longman,
+and he sat staring in horror upon them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That drunken idiot ought to be carried up to bed,
+Lamia,” said Leegh in strong disgust.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will not have him touched,” replied the woman, with
+a shudder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the meantime Randolph Hay had crossed the hall and
+turned the knob of the library door. He found it locked.
+Then he rapped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who is there?” inquired the quavering voice of John
+Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is I, your friend, Hay,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The door was instantly opened by Julia Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please excuse us and come in, Mr. Hay. We only locked
+the door to keep that terrible man from bursting in upon
+us,” said Julia apologetically.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite right,” replied Ran, good-humoredly, as he entered
+the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He found John Legg still sitting at the narrow table
+from which the little supper had not yet been removed. The
+poor man looked pale, haggard, anxious and many years
+older than he had seemed a few hours before.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran also took the precaution to lock the door before he
+came and seated himself at the table opposite John Legg.
+Julia drew a chair to the side of her husband, sat down
+and took his hands in hers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You look troubled, Mr. Hay. You have something more
+to tell me about my poor girl, and you shrink from telling
+it. But speak out, sir. I can bear it,” said John Legg,
+with stoical resignation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, indeed, my friend, it is nothing more that I have
+to communicate of her; at least, nothing ill. I came in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>here only, to plead for a little change in our plans,” said
+Ran soothingly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is it, dear sir? Your kind will should be our
+law.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By no means!” earnestly exclaimed Ran. “But the
+change I wished to make is this: You remember that you
+proposed to keep out of your daughter’s way until she
+should have heard the worst that she must hear of her real
+position?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes. I shrank, and still shrink, from adding to her
+pain and mortification by my presence,” sighed the unhappy
+father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, my dear Mr. Legg, consider for one moment. She
+has not yet heard the humiliating facts, but it is absolutely
+necessary that she should hear them to-night. Now is it
+not better that she should hear them from your lips than
+from mine or from my lawyer’s? Would she not suffer less
+to have the truth told her gently here, in private, by the lips
+of her father, than out there, in public, by the lips of a
+stranger?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While Ran spoke John Legg sat with his gray head bowed
+upon his hands in deep, sorrowful reflection, and when Ran
+ceased to speak the poor father made no reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you think about this, Mr. Legg?” gently persisted
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know! I don’t know!” moaned the old man in
+a heartbroken tone. “What do you say, Julia?” he piteously
+inquired, raising his head and appealing to his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She took his hand again, and looking tenderly in his troubled
+face, answered gravely:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think, John, indeed, I think, that you had better do
+as Mr. Hay advises. It would be dreadful for that poor
+girl to hear of her misfortune facing all those people in
+there! And you know the man who betrayed her and committed
+countless other crimes must be exposed in public
+and then expelled from the house.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia Legg spoke as she thought, but, in fact, Ran had no
+intention of turning the wretch in question out of doors in
+this freezing winter night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Julia, my dear, I have such confidence in your judgment
+that I will do as you say,” replied John Legg in a
+low voice. Then turning to Ran, he said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>“Mr. Hay, I am deeply grateful to you for all the aid
+and comfort and counsel you give me. You may, sir, if
+you please, bring or send my poor child to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will do so at once,” said Ran, and he arose and left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I will stand by you through all, John. I will be
+as good a mother to your unhappy girl as I am a true wife
+to you,” said Julia, still holding his hand in hers.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXV<br> <span class='large'>FATHER AND DAUGHTER</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>And so they waited in suspense for a few moments until
+the door opened and Mr. Leegh entered, as usual, with his
+head thrown back, his nose in the air, and his sister on his
+arm. His head was bowed upon her breast, and her face
+was pale and her eyes red and swollen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg arose and went to meet her with trembling
+nerves and outstretched arms. He was but a little over
+fifty years of age, yet for the last few hours he looked to be
+over seventy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, dear Lyddy! My own poor child!” he said,
+drawing her to his breast and holding her there, while he
+put out his hand to his son and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How do you do, Clay?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am well, sir, thank you. How do you do yourself?”
+inquired the dutiful son in an offhand, nonchalant manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As you see me, Clay. Not very well,” replied the
+grieved father, as he sank into a large cushioned chair that
+his wife had pushed up to him, and drew his daughter down
+upon his lap with her head against his shoulder, where she
+lay sobbing her soul forth in pride and anger—not in love
+or sorrow. She had not spoken one word as yet since she
+entered the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Clay Legg, as we must henceforth call him, because
+it is his only right name, threw himself into another armchair
+and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am told, sir, that you have something to communicate
+to us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>“Yes, I have, Clay. Do not cry so. Lyddy, my dear. I
+will stand by you. Your father will stand by his daughter,
+and love her and comfort her, and shelter and protect her
+against all the world,” he said, turning away from his insolent
+son and bending over his wildly hysterical daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, sir,” said Mr. Clay Legg, “since you have something
+to communicate, hadn’t you better communicate it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” replied his father, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But first,” exclaimed Clay Legg, “here is a stranger
+present. Are we to discuss private family affairs before a
+stranger? And who is that person, anyway?” he demanded,
+jerking his thumb in the direction of Mrs. Legg, who had
+retired to a short distance and where she sat down.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I ought to beg her pardon! For the moment I forgot.
+Julia, my love, will you step this way?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg came promptly at her husband’s request, and
+stood before the group.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear Julia, this young man here is my son, Clay,
+whom you have never seen before. Clay, this is Mrs. Legg,
+my wife, your new mother. I hope you will be the best of
+friends!” pleaded the husband and father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, I hope so, too!” earnestly responded the new
+wife, as she held out her hand with hearty good will to her
+stepson.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He drew himself up stiffly and bowed, ignoring her
+offered hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg noticed his manner and frowned with pain,
+not anger, and to cover the awkwardness, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And this weeping girl on my bosom is my daughter,
+Lydia! She cannot speak to you yet, my dear. She has
+not even spoken to me, her father, whom she has not seen
+before for the last three years! But she will be better presently,
+and then I feel sure that you and she at least will be
+good friends.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed, John! I know we shall!” heartily responded
+Julia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now sit down, my dear, and make yourself comfortable.
+You already know that I have a painful revelation to make
+to my son and daughter here; but as the misfortune to be
+spoken of was caused by no conscious complicity of theirs,
+it should not cause either of them too much grief, I think.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>“No, indeed! It was not their fault, so they should not
+mourn over it,” warmly assented Julia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“See here, sir! Are you going to discuss private family
+matters in the presence of this person?” demanded Clay
+Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘This person,’ sir, is my beloved wife. I have no secrets
+from her. She already knows as much as I do myself, and
+as much as I have to tell you,” replied John Legg, speaking
+for the first time with some severity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tell me one thing, if you please, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is that?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Am I personally concerned in what you are about to
+communicate in the presence of a stranger?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, not personally—not at all interested except through
+your sister.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then that is her concern. If she choose——” And he
+turned on his heel and left his sentence unfinished.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You had better let me go, John, dear, if the young
+people object to my presence during this interview,” said
+Julia gently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My daughter, do you object to my wife’s presence here
+while I make the revelation of which she knows the whole
+nature?” whispered John Legg to the agonized girl on his
+bosom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! why should I object to anything? I know—before
+you tell me—that your dreadful news—concerns some crime
+of my wretched husband! If not a murder, that would
+hang him, then a forgery or some other felony that will
+send him to penal servitude, and will, in any case, be known
+all over England to-morrow. Let whom you like hear the
+horrid story,” replied the woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When she first began to speak she gasped and panted,
+but as she went on she gained more command over her voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia Legg was full of pity for this ungracious creature,
+and she came and knelt down beside her husband’s chair,
+and took his daughter’s hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring
+softly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Believe me, oh! believe me! I will do all in my power
+to lighten any trouble you may have, and to make you comfortable
+and contented, if not happy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia—as we must continue to call her because that is
+the name by which the reader has known her from the first—Lamia
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>drew her hand away from the kindly hands that
+clasped it, and Julia Legg, with a sigh, arose and resumed
+her seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My own dear daughter, before I tell you anything more
+I must remind you again that in my heart and in my home
+you have a haven of peace and love, of rest and safety from
+all the storms of life. Do you not know and feel this, my
+daughter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes; you are my father, and that is understood,”
+she answered coldly, as if a parent’s boundless love, pity
+and forgiveness were such mere matters of course that they
+needed no recognition. “But I wish you would tell me at
+once, and be done with it. What has my miserable husband,
+Randolph Hay, done?” she demanded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg sighed deeply. He did not think “how
+sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless
+child,” because he had never seen the lines, but he sighed
+more than once as he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In the first place, my daughter, your miserable husband,
+as you call him, is not Randolph Hay, and has not a shadow
+of a right to that name or to the estate of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia started up and looked her father in the face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who and what is he, then?” she fiercely demanded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An adventurer with many aliases; a fraudulent claimant
+of the Haymore estates, who has sustained his false position
+by robbery, forgery and perjury, but who has been recently
+detected, and who is about to be exposed and punished.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am not surprised! I am not surprised! I expected
+something like this! I did! I did! Tell me, does Mr.
+Will Walling know anything about it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He knows all about it. His business in England is to
+bring that man to justice.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia sprang from her father’s arms, throwing him suddenly
+back by the violence of her motion, and began to
+walk wildly up and down the floor, exclaiming and gesticulating
+like a maniac, and thinking only of herself and of
+her own interests, and of no one and nothing else under the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To bring me to this! Oh, the villain! the villain! But
+I will have nothing more to do with him! I will never
+speak to him again! I will never look on his face again!
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>Do you hear me, papa?” she cried, suddenly pausing, with
+flashing eyes, before her father’s chair. “Do you hear me,
+I say? I will never live with that felon again—never speak
+to him—never look at him!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My child, you are quite right in your resolution. It
+would be wrong and even criminal in you to do otherwise,”
+said John Legg, gently drawing his daughter into his arms
+again and adding sorrowfully, “for I have something more
+to tell you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You could not tell me anything more shameful than
+you have already told me! Even if you should prove that
+that villain had been a murderer, as well as a robber, forger
+and perjurer, it would not be worse, since hanging is no
+more disgraceful than penal servitude. To be the wife of
+a felon—the wife of a convict! But I will not be! I will
+be separated by law! I will be divorced!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This she repeated over so often and with so much excitement
+that at last her father said to her:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My poor child, you will not need to appeal to the law.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you mean?” she demanded, impressed by the
+solemnity of his manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will not require a divorce,” he replied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is just, in effect, what you said before. Why will
+I not require a divorce? The man is not dead, nor going
+to die! He will not commit suicide. No, indeed, trust him
+for that! He is too great a coward! And he is in no
+danger of being hanged. How, then, should you say that
+I will not require a divorce, since death is not likely to relieve
+me of my felon husband—ugh!” she exclaimed in
+strong disgust.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, the man has never been your husband,” he
+said slowly and distinctly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What?” she cried, aghast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The man has never been your husband!” he repeated
+firmly and solemnly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are mad! We are all mad together, I think!
+What—under—heaven—do you mean?” she cried, staring at him
+with starting eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This man, under his true name of Kightly Montgomery,
+married Jennie Campbell, the daughter of the curate of
+Medge, in Hantz, more than two years before he ever saw
+your face. His wife is living now. She is in the drawing-room
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>across the hall. My wife Julia here knows all about
+this first marriage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While John Legg spoke his daughter stared as if her
+eyes would have started from out their sockets. Then suddenly
+she sprang up and rushed across the room to the side
+where her brother sat with one leg crossed over the other,
+his head thrown back, and his hands clasped above it, his
+face wearing a cynical expression.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She paused before him, her eyes flaming.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cassius!” she said in a voice half choked with raging
+hatred and longing revenge. “Cassius, do you hear what
+papa has said? Do you hear that your sister has been deceived,
+betrayed by the basest of dastards and criminals!
+Cassius, kill that man! kill him! kill him! kill him!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Clay Legg burst into a low, cynical laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t let us be tragic, whatever we are, Lyddy. It is a
+pity you have been such a fool as to be so easily taken in.
+A greater pity that you should have brought discredit on
+your family. But you are not the first woman who has ever
+been fooled and laughed at. But as for me getting into a
+broil with the fellow on your account—no, thank you! It
+would be unbecoming to the cloth, and get me into trouble
+with the bishop. And as to killing him! Do you really
+think I propose to do murder and get myself hanged for
+your folly? No, thank you, I say again! You had better
+go and hide yourself down in the greengrocer’s shop at
+Medge along with papa and stepmamma, while I shall leave
+the country where my sister’s conduct has made it impossible
+for me to hold up my head and look honorable men in
+the face.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While this brutal brother spoke his sister stood before
+him pallid, staring and biting her lip until the blood flowed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Shame on you, dastard, to speak to the unhappy girl in
+such a manner! Leave the room, sir!” said John Legg,
+rising and opening the library door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I did not want to come in here at first, and I am very
+glad to get out,” retorted Clay Legg, with an insulting
+laugh, as he walked off.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg shut the door after him and then turned to
+his miserable daughter. She had thrown herself down on
+a sofa, where she lay with her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>He kneeled beside her and laid his hand on her head,
+murmuring softly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You must content yourself with our love and our poor
+home. These are yours forever. You have tried other love
+and found it fail you. Paternal love never fails,” he continued,
+and while he spoke he did not cease to smooth and
+caress her head with his hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And to think,” she moaned in a muffled voice, with her
+face downward and hidden with her hands; “to think it
+was his deserted wife that I shopped for in the last days
+before my marriage with him—that it was his deserted wife
+with her child—his child—that came over in the same
+steamer with him and myself on our bridal trip! Ah! now
+I know why he got off the ship at Queenstown! It was to
+get out of her sight and to avoid encountering her father
+who was to meet her at Liverpool. She was his lawful wife,
+and knew it, and she knew then that I was—what was I?—what
+am I? Oh! I shall go mad! mad! mad!” she shrieked,
+flinging off her fathers hand, springing from the sofa,
+clasping her head between her palms and walking wildly
+up and down the floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, dear child, don’t go on like this! Come and
+sit down. Try to compose yourself,” pleaded poor John
+Legg, walking after his daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, hold your tongue! Let me alone! Don’t I know
+what you are thinking in your heart all this time? You are
+saying to yourself that this is just what you always expected!
+Just what I deserved! You are glad of it in your
+heart! Glad to see me punished! Glad to see me mortified!”
+she cried fiercely, angry with her father because she
+was angry with herself, her betrayer and all the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear Lyddy! My darling girl! I know you are not
+accountable for what you say now. I blame you for nothing,
+child, not even for your words. I could not have the
+cruelty to do it. But try to compose yourself and believe
+that we love you and will serve you and comfort you!
+Lyddy, my daughter, we cannot offer you the wealth and
+grandeur and luxuries that you have been lately used to,
+but, my dear, a safe home and solid comforts, and peaceful
+days and family affection you shall not lack, my girl—you
+shall never lack,” pleaded her father; and while he
+spoke he followed her up and down with outstretched arms
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>ready to infold her, up and down, pleading with her, turning
+when she turned until at length she whirled around
+upon him and hissed at him through her set teeth, her hard
+words dropping like leaden bullets from the mold:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will—you—mind—your—own—business? I am of
+age! I thought I was Mrs. Randolph Hay, of Haymore!
+Lady of the manor here! I entered this house as its lawful
+mistress! For what? To find myself deceived, betrayed,
+entrapped! Now what am I! Something that must not
+even be named to respectable ears like yours!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my dear child! To me you are my wronged and
+blameless daughter! Well, rave on! I cannot help it,
+though it cuts my heart like a sword! Maybe it relieves you
+to talk like this. But presently I hope you will take thought
+and come home with me to be comforted,” pleaded John Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia burst into a cruel, sarcastic laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The greengrocer’s house on Market Street, Medge, of
+course, would be a perfect paradise to me! I can imagine
+the back parlor full of the fragrance of onions, leeks and
+other garden stuff from the shop, and enlivened with the
+music of the bell every time a customer opened the door!
+Not any for me, please! I may go on the stage, or on the
+street—why should I care where I go, what I do, or how I
+end—after this—so that I enjoy the pride of life in my
+prime?” she demanded, looking at the plain, good man before
+her with a cruel, sarcastic sneer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He held out his arm to her, with a prayer in every look
+and gesture. He even ventured to lay his hand on her in
+tender compassion, but she broke away from him and resumed
+her wild walk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he sank into an armchair beside him—he could follow
+her no further—and dropped his head upon his hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His wife Julia came to his side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She has longed to go to him while he was following and
+pleading with his daughter, and getting nothing from her
+but insult for love. She had longed to lead him away from
+the ungracious and unseemly strife with evil and to say to
+him: “Leave the thankless and reckless woman to herself
+to recover her senses, if she ever had any, and come with
+me and rest.” But—she was a stepmother only to the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>willful girl, and she must not interfere between father and
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But now that he sat alone in the collapse of despair after
+fruitless effort, bowed down, down with sorrow and wounded
+affection, she came to him, put her hand on his shoulder,
+laid her cheek lightly on his gray head and murmured
+words of comfort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You have been very, very patient with her, dear, and
+you were so right! She has had a terrible blow to her
+pride, such as even the best of women could not bear with
+patience. How then should she?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cruel words from one’s child, my dear! Cruel words!”
+said the suffering father, shaking his head without lifting it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She was crazed by grief and shame. She did not mean
+what she said. She did not even know what she said—did
+not know it rightly, I mean! When she comes to her senses,
+John, she will be more sorry and ashamed of her conduct to
+you than she is now of her downfall, and she will be grateful
+for your love and Christ-like patience with her. Her
+present mood is hysteria—frenzy! Give her time!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She threatened to go on the stage or on the street!” exclaimed
+John, uttering the last three words with a deep
+groan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She does rave worse than any other hysterical woman I
+ever heard, to be sure, for, as a rule, they only threaten to
+‘go mad’ or to ‘kill’; but it is all raving! there’s nothing in
+it! You have been very patient and forbearing with your
+willful and provoking girl in this time of her suffering and
+excitement. Continue to be so, and you will have your reward
+in her penitence and affection. Believe it, dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’” quoted John Legg.
+“Come and draw a chair and sit by me, Julia, my dear.
+Your presence alone is very calming, even when you do not
+speak, though your words are always good and comforting
+and your voice sweet and pleasant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia Legg seated herself beside her husband and took his
+hand in hers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia, having exhausted herself by her fury, fell down
+again upon the sofa and buried her face in the cushions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And now in the silence that ensued John Legg became
+conscious of a growing disturbance in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This might have been going on some time unnoticed by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>the three persons in the library, who were absorbed in their
+own trouble; but now the disturbance on the opposite side
+of the hall was too evident to be ignored.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sound of angry voices, hurrying steps and struggling
+forms reached their ears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia started up from her sofa and sat with her head
+bent forward, staring in the direction of the noise and
+listening intently, with a look of demoniacal satisfaction
+and expectancy on her face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Julia cowered and clung for protection to the husband
+whom she herself had just been comforting.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He patted her head to reassure her, and then said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, let me go, dear, and see what is the matter in
+there,” gently trying to release himself from her clasp.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, no!” cried Julia, clinging closer than before.
+“Pray, don’t leave us, John! Don’t go into that room!
+Something dreadful is going on there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At that moment a piercing shriek rang through the air,
+followed by a heavy fall that shook the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I cannot stand this! Julia, I cannot stand it! I tell you
+I must run and prevent mischief if I can!” he urged
+earnestly, trying to free himself from her strong arms, but
+finding that he could not do so without using force and
+violence that must hurt her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The confusion arose to uproar. A loud crash shivered on
+the floor, and a peal of fiendish laughter resounded through
+the building, and a woman’s agonized cry went up to heaven
+for help!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Lamia, sitting on the sofa, leaning forward, listening intently,
+now broke into a low, demoniacal chuckle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Julia!” exclaimed John Legg, breathing hard through
+excitement. “I hate to hurt you, but I must prevent murder.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he wrenched her arms from around his neck, threw
+her back in the armchair and rushed from the library to the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVI<br> <span class='large'>A TERRIBLE SCENE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>We must now explain the cause of the parlor storm. It
+came on in this way:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>All the guests of Haymore Hall—with the exception of
+the Legg family in the library—were still assembled in the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Campbell party, father, mother and daughter, still
+occupied the obscure sofa against the rear wall of the back
+division.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy and Will Walling were seated near, talking with
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dandy, Mike and Longman were standing on the rug before
+the fire, exchanging confidences on the affairs of the
+evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff reclined, stupidly staring, on a divan in
+the recess of the front bay window, and occasionally drew
+from his pocket a large flask, which, with trembling hands,
+he uncorked and put to his lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran walked about from one group of friends to another,
+trying to seem at ease, but too surely in a state of intense
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently he took heart of grace and went up to the group
+on the sofa, touched the Rev. James Campbell on the shoulder
+and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come with me, please, reverend sir; I wish to consult
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector arose and drew the arm of his host within his
+own and walked away with him. They did not leave the
+drawing-room, but went slowly up and down its length for
+the first few minutes in silence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran did not seem to know how to open the subject he had
+on his mind. So it was the rector, after all, who, probably
+divining the nature of his friend’s difficulty, was the first
+to speak and to speak to the point.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The hour is late, and something should be done with
+that——” He paused, unwilling to use the words that
+arose to his lips, and he indicated the inebriate by a movement
+of his thumb.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said Ran, “that is what puzzles me. It was of
+that I wished to talk with you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go on then! Let me have your views. It is late, as I
+remarked before, and I should have taken my wife and
+daughter home an hour ago, but that I did not wish to leave
+you until something should be settled in regard to this
+man.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>“But you will not leave us to-night? Rooms have already
+been prepared for you!” exclaimed Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear young friend, I thank you heartily, for myself
+and my womenkind, but we must return to the rectory to-night.
+My daughter has left her young babe there,” replied
+the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But it is so late.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the distance is so short.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do oblige us by staying, Mr. Campbell.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear Mr. Hay, don’t you see it is impossible, much as
+I thank you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I am sorry. So will Judy be.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now about the disposition of this—Montgomery?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” sighed Randolph Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you intend to do?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not know, sir. I want you to tell me, if you please.
+I might send for a constable to take him to the lockup
+house, as they call it here; but I do not like to do that. I
+might send him in a carriage to the village tavern, but I
+think he would drink himself to death there; or I might
+give him a bed here for the present, and indeed this is what
+I would rather do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Eh—what? Keep the fellow here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“For the present, yes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And in the name of common sense—why?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, to keep him out of harm’s way.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My good young friend, you did well to take counsel with
+me. You would have done well to take counsel of any sane
+man on such a subject.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, what do you mean?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I begin to suspect that you need a trustee for your
+estate and a guardian for your person!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t understand you!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Listen, then! That fellow deserves to go to prison. He
+might be sent to the village inn. But, my friend, he must
+not be allowed to spend so much as one night under your
+roof. To let him do so would be an act of insanity.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“For more reasons than one. In the first place, he is the
+fraudulent claimant of your name and estate, though his
+claim will not bear an instant of light, a ray of truth, let
+in upon it; yet your allowing him to remain in the house
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>to which he came as its pretended master, would seem, to
+him at least, to be giving some color to his pretensions. Do
+you see?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I see what you mean, but I am not afraid of anything
+he, poor wretch, may think or say or do. Is there any other
+reason why he should not be sheltered here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes—not so strong a reason, to be sure; but a most
+decent one.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is a bigamist. He came here bringing a cruelly deceived,
+falsely married woman, who was never, therefore,
+wife or bride. She, not ‘Mrs.’ anybody, but Miss Legg, is
+here in your house under the charge of her parents, who are
+your guests. Therefore it would be unseemly—to use the
+mildest term—for him to remain under the same roof. Do
+you see now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, I see. How oblique one’s vision is at times,
+however. Well, Mr. Campbell, you have told me what I
+must not do with him; will you now tell me what I may?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly. If your merciful spirit shrinks from passing
+him over into the hands of the law, you can have him put
+into a carriage and taken to the village inn—‘The Red Fox,’
+Giles Scroggins, host.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will do so, and hold myself responsible for his expenses
+there,” said Randolph Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then both men looked toward the divan in the front
+bay window, on which lolled Gentleman Geff, very drunk
+and getting drunker every instant, for he now had the big
+flask turned up to his mouth, with his head thrown so far
+back that he was evidently draining the last drop of its contents.
+When he had done so, he made a futile attempt to restore
+the empty flask to his pocket, but instead let it fall to
+the floor, while he dropped back into his lolling position.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was at this moment that Clay Legg strode into the
+drawing-room, fresh from his humiliating interview with
+his father, smarting under the disclosure of his sister’s dishonor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He strode past all the guests in his way, and straight up
+to the side of his late friend and patron, Gentleman Geff,
+struck his hand heavily on the drunkard’s shoulder, shook
+him roughly and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>“Do you know, you brute! you devil! what is before
+you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff opened his heavy red eyes and stared in
+a deep stupor, through which fury began to kindle slowly,
+like flame from under a thick smoke.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Answer me, you beast!” demanded Legg, with another
+and rougher shake of the wretch under his grasp. “Do you
+know what is before you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No! nor care!” roared the madman, with a perfect
+stream of profanity and obscenity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then listen to me!” said Legg, when at length the torrent
+from Tartarus was stayed. “What is before you is
+first a trial for bigamy, with fourteen years of penal serviture,
+with hard labor, bread and water, ball and chain, dark
+cell and frequent flogging thrown in!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff answered this by a glare of hatred and
+defiance and another inundation from the River of Styx.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Legg waited until that flood was exhausted and then
+added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nor is that all! For when your first term of penal servitude
+shall be served out, another indictment will await you
+for conspiracy, perjury, forgery and fraud, by which you
+sought to gain possession of the Haymore estate, and another
+fourteen years, at least, of imprisonment, hard labor,
+stripes, chains and the rest!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again Gentleman Geff opened his lips in a way that made
+his mouth seem the opening of the pit of fire and brimstone
+for the blasting curses that issued from it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And again Legg waited in sarcastic silence until the
+smoke and flame had sunk down, and then he added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you should live through your second term you will
+have served twenty-eight years and you will be near sixty
+years of age—a very hoary-headed sinner, indeed! And yet,
+at the end of that time, the United States will want you on
+a charge of highway robbery and attempted murder, and
+will get you under the international extradition treaty.
+And you will pass the remainder of your guilty life in an
+American prison, where not only are the strong and rebellious
+criminals compelled to labor, but the aged, the
+infirm, and the invalids are scourged and driven to hard
+work, until they drop dead (if all tales be true). ‘Do you
+like the picture?’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>A blast of fury, profanity and indecency, more diabolical
+than all that bad preceded it, stormed from the mouth of
+the madman, and raved like a whirlwind around the ears of
+the listener.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When this had died of its own frenzy, Legg spoke again
+and for the last time.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do you know, you fiend, who are here? I will tell you!
+The witnesses who will convict you of every crime known
+to mankind. There on the sofa, at the opposite end of this
+room, a little in the shadow, sits your wife, Jennie Montgomery,
+whom you married, deserted and afterward stabbed,
+and left for dead in the streets in New York. There she
+sits between her mother and father, all three bent on prosecuting
+you to the full extent of the law! Look attentively
+and you will see them! There, talking with Lawyer
+Walling, is Randolph Hay, your benefactor, who saved you
+from starving and shared his hut with you in the mining
+camp of Grizzly Gulch, and whom you robbed, tried to murder
+and left for dead in the Black Woods of California so
+that you might claim his name and place with impunity!
+He will be compelled to prosecute you! And across the
+hall, in the library with her father, is the woman you deceived
+into a false marriage. She will prosecute you with
+all the vim, venom and virulence of a proud, outraged and
+revengeful woman. That is, if she does not prefer to execute
+you with her own hands.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Clay Legg should have known the dangerous wild beast
+he was goading to madness, yet he went on with a strange
+fatuity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had followed with his eyes the index of
+Clay Legg to the distant sofa, on which sat the wronged
+wife, Jennie Montgomery, between her father and her
+mother. He had slowly but surely recognized her, stared
+at her in stupid dismay until he was again stung to fury
+by the insulting words of Clay Legg, when he turned his
+kindling eyes on the face of the man who was drawing such
+a degrading picture of his fate. It seemed then that it
+only needed the cessation of the sound of the speaker’s voice
+to break the spell that held the demoniac; for no sooner had
+it ceased than he sprang to his feet with a terrible roar
+and hurled himself toward Legg.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the latter saw his peril with the speed of lightning
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>and fled away, leaving others to brave the storm he himself
+had raised.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In an instant the maniac was raging in the midst of “the
+goodlie company,” and all was fear, panic and confusion.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Little Mike, unhappily, was nearest to the madman and
+first to attempt to pacify him. But the demon caught up a
+heavy astral lamp from the table nearest to him and shivered
+it upon the head of the willing peacemaker, who fell
+like a slaughtered sheep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy’s shrieks of agony rang out upon the air, and
+brought the terrified servants to the drawing-room doors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The demoniac sprang upon the table and seized a heavy
+chair, which he whirled around his head, threatening all
+who approached.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Longman sprang upon the table and threw
+themselves upon him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was at this moment that John Legg, startled by the
+screams of the women, entered the drawing-room, through
+the side door leading from the hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yes, it was pandemonium that met the horror-stricken
+eyes of the man. Can I possibly show you the scene as he
+beheld it?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As he stood in the doorway, on his left, near the bay
+window in the upper end of the room, high on the table
+stood the athletic form of the demoniac, raging and foaming,
+cursing and threatening in the frenzy of <i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>,
+swinging aloft the heavy chair which he whirled around
+his head with the swiftness and velocity of a windmill. On
+the same table stood Samson Longman and Randolph Hay,
+struggling to master the maniac, who seemed possessed of
+the strength of seven devils.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the floor, near the middle of the room, lay Michael
+Man, stunned by a wound in his head, prostrate and insensible.
+Near him were scattered the fragments of the astral
+lamp that had evidently been the instrument by which his
+skull had been fractured. Beside him sat Judith Hay, with
+his wounded head on her lap. She was weeping and wailing,
+giving full vent to her grief and horror after the manner
+of her warm-hearted, impulsive race. Beside him on
+the opposite side knelt the Rev. Mr. Campbell, with a bowl
+of water and a napkin, washing the blood from the cut.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Away back in the lower end of the long room, on a shady
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>sofa, sat Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, Jennie Montgomery,
+clasped in each other’s arms, with their heads hidden
+on each other’s shoulders, too much shocked, horror-stricken,
+terrified to help, to speak or even to move. From
+under the same sofa peered the pallid face and staring eyes
+of Dandy Quin, who had evidently sought that lowly refuge
+“as the safest place at the crack of doom” for a poor little
+old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Neither Clay Legg nor Will Walling were to be seen anywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All this, which has required some time to describe, was
+taken in at one view by John Legg. And for one instant
+he stood in doubt where first to offer help; whether to jump—but
+no; honest John’s jumping days were over—whether
+to scramble up on the table and help to subdue the maniac
+possessed of a legion of devils, or to kneel down by the side
+of the minister to serve if he could the wounded man. In
+another moment the doubt was decided for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran succeeded in getting both his hands around the
+throat of the demoniac, which he held as in the grip of
+death, while Longman wrenched and twisted the heavy,
+murderous missile from his hands and dropped it on the
+floor and then closed with him in a conquering clasp. But
+it took all his strength, as well as all of Ran’s, to hold the
+infuriate, now that his arms were free.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Feeling sure that the maniac was conquered, John Legg
+turned his attention from the scene of conquest on the
+table to the scene of suffering on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is the young man dangerously wounded?” he inquired
+in a low tone of Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We hope not. We hope this may be only a scalp wound.
+But it will be impossible to tell until there is a surgical examination,”
+replied the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Has a doctor been sent for?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; Mr. Walling has gone out to dispatch a servant for
+Mr. Hobbs, the village practitioner.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, me poor Mike!” cried Judy, breaking afresh into
+sobs and tears and dialect. “Me poor, dear, darlint bhoy!
+Sure he was born to have the head av him broke. Sure, it’s
+not the first time, though it’s the worst. But, afther all,
+it is not so bad broke as me own dear Ran’s was, be the
+same token, and be the hands av that same murthering thaif
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>av the wurruld! Oh! wirra! wirra! It was not enough
+that he kilt me dear Ran intirely, but now he must kill me
+poor Mike!” wailed Judy until her words were drowned in
+a flood of tears.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell gazed in astonishment for a moment. In
+this wild Irish girl, giving full swing to her emotions and
+her brogue, he could scarcely recognize the quiet gentlewoman
+he had known now for some hours as Mrs. Randolph
+Hay. But he quickly recovered himself, and atoned for his
+involuntary rudeness by withdrawing his gaze and offering
+the gentlest words of consolation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the meantime the struggle on the table was continued
+in grim silence. The opponents saving all their wind for
+their strife until, as they swayed back and forth, the equilibrium
+of the board was overbalanced, and table and men
+fell together to the floor with a loud crash that called forth
+shrieks from the women.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>For one moment the three men rolled together in a knot
+on the carpet, and the next Gentleman Geff lay flat on his
+back, with Longman’s knees on his chest and hands around
+his throat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ran!” exclaimed the hunter, “take my handkerchief out
+of my coat pocket and tie the feet of this wild beast!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran immediately tried to obey. He drew the large red
+bandanna from Longman’s pocket, found it strong enough
+for its purpose, and went around and took hold of the feet
+of the prostrate madman, but he immediately received a
+shower of kicks upon his chest that knocked him breathless.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Seeing that, Longman raised his voice again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, come here! We haven’t got a man to deal
+with, but a devil, and a rum-maddened devil at that!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Legg immediately rushed to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Have you got a scarf or a handkerchief? A good strong
+one. All right! Tie this brute’s fore paws together while
+I hold him down. Samson, my namesake, what amazing
+strength rum and madness gives a brute!” panted Longman,
+when he had finished his labor and arose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The conquered demoniac lay bound and gagged on the
+floor, his murderous limbs helpless, his blasphemous tongue
+speechless. Yet still he writhed, tossed and floundered like
+some huge, stranded sea monster.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The distressed group gathered around Michael Man were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>obliged to wait in quietness for the arrival of the doctor,
+for they dared not even move the wounded man lest they
+should do him a fatal injury.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs came at last, and being a country practitioner,
+he brought his medicine chest as well as his surgical case
+with him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was a tall, lank, red-haired young Yorkshireman,
+fresh from the London colleges, who had lately succeeded to
+the practice of his father, an aged, retired physician of the
+place.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He found two patients to be treated, one in as dire need
+as the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But after hearing a brief account of the occurrence from
+Mr. Randolph Hay, he gave his first services to the youth,
+Michael Man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The bleeding wound in his head was of itself bringing
+back the consciousness of the wounded lad.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs knelt by his side and made a careful examination
+of his injuries, and then he told the anxious friends
+that they were not dangerous, only a deep scalp wound and
+a very slight fracture of the skull.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He washed and dressed the wound there on the spot, and
+then directed that the youth should be taken to his room,
+undressed and put to bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A narrow mattress was brought by two menservants, who
+laid it on the carpet, lifted the wounded youth tenderly, laid
+him on it and so bore him out of the drawing-room and up
+the grand staircase to his chamber on the third floor, followed
+by Dr. Hobbs and Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By the time Michael Man was carefully undressed and
+comfortably settled in bed he recovered his faculties sufficiently
+to recognize the situation and speak to those around
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t ye be frighted, Judy, darlint,” he murmured
+feebly to his pallid, distressed sister, who was bending anxiously
+over him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sure, and I’m not, Mike, dear. Yourself will be all
+right soon,” she replied, putting much constraint upon herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Troth, and I’m all right now. So the redskins did come
+and attack the fort, afther all. But the colonel was aquil
+to the blackguards,” he added.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>And then the doctor perceived that he was becoming delirious,
+and he administered a sedative. When the patient
+had grown quiet again the doctor left him, with his sister
+Judy sitting by his bed, and went downstairs to the drawing-room
+to attend to the other case waiting for his treatment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There he found the demoniac still lying on the floor,
+bound hand and foot. Longman, Dandy and Mr. Campbell
+were standing around him. They had taken the gag from
+his mouth, but he was breathing heavily. He had suffered
+the usual reaction in <i><span lang="la">mania a potu</span></i>, from violent frenzy to
+deep coma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The men around him made way for the young doctor,
+who knelt down beside him, looked into his face, felt his
+pulse and his heart, and even lifted the heavy, half-closed
+lids of his swollen eyes. Then he rose and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think you may unbind him with safety now; he will
+not be in a condition to assault any one or do any harm for
+many days to come, if he ever should.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At this moment Ran re-entered the drawing-room and reported
+Mike as sleeping quietly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then, in the kindness of his heart toward his fallen foe,
+he stooped and examined the condition of Gentleman Geff,
+whom Longman had just unbound and straightened out,
+and who was now lying relaxed and limp on the carpet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Mr. Campbell,” said Ran, standing up, “you see
+that we have no alternative than to put this poor wretch to
+bed in the house here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not so,” said the rector. Then turning to the doctor,
+he inquired: “Will it be safe to remove this man immediately
+to my house—to the rectory, that is? The distance
+is short, you know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will be perfectly safe, sir,” replied the physician.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, Mr. Hay, I shall be much obliged to you for the
+use of a spring wagon or cart and a mattress with pillows
+and proper covering to convey this man to the rectory,”
+said Mr. Campbell, turning to his host.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, my dear sir, do you think of what you are about
+to do?” demanded Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; my duty.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But your daughter?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She need never see or speak to him or be troubled by
+him. Jennie is a very sensible, practical young woman;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>always was so, like her dear mother. And her misfortunes—the
+result of her one act of imprudence—have made her
+even more so. Jennie will be no hindrance.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why should you take so much trouble, make such
+a sacrifice, assume such a responsibility as to carry this
+stupefied madman to your quiet house?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because, as I said before, it is my duty. I am a minister
+of the merciful Gospel, however much below that sacred
+calling, and must set an example of charity—practice some
+little of what I preach. The man is my daughter’s husband,
+however unworthy of her; my own son-in-law, however discreditable
+to me; and I must do my duty by him, however
+disagreeable to us all. My dear wife and daughter will give
+no trouble. There will be no scenes, no hysterics. They
+are good, true, strong women, and will sustain me in my
+action. But they need not go near the man. Longman, his
+mother and myself can take care of him. And now, my
+friend, will you order the conveyance?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With a sigh and a gesture of deprecation, Ran went out
+to give the necessary directions.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There had been some delay caused by this discussion; but
+it did not matter to the unworthy subject of it; he was lying
+on the carpet in a dead stupor, and for himself was as well
+there as anywhere else: so there was no hurry.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In less than half an hour a light spring cart, such as is
+used by expressmen, was brought around from the stables.
+It was drawn by two horses and furnished with comfortable
+bedding, and to this receptacle Gentleman Geff was conveyed
+in the arms of four men.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector and the doctor rode on the seat with the driver,
+and they took the road to the rectory.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Campbell and her daughter, declining all Mr. and
+Mrs. Hay’s pressing invitations, set out in one of the Hall
+carriages for their home. Longman rode on the box with
+the coachman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling, old Dandy and the Legg family were the
+only remaining guests at the Hall, and these declined to retire
+to bed.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVII<br> <span class='large'>CLEARING SKIES</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>It was of no use to go to bed. The sun was rising.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy, leaving Mike fast asleep, came downstairs, summoned
+the housekeeper and gave directions for an early and
+ample breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she went into the library to look after the Leggs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She found Lamia lying on the sofa with her face buried
+in the cushions. She lay perfectly still, so that she might
+be asleep, ashamed or only sulky.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Legg lay back in her easy-chair, fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg sat in the great leathern armchair, with his
+hands clasped upon his knees and his chin bent upon his
+chest; he was awake, as deep sighs showed him to be.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Clay Legg was nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy was so calm and reassured now that, without once
+falling into dialect, she addressed herself to the old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Legg, there have been bedrooms at the disposal of
+yourself and family all last night. I hope the servant,
+whose duty it was to do so, has not failed to let you know
+this or to offer to show you to your apartments?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, madam, thank you. No one has failed to execute
+your hospitable orders; but who could go to bed in such a
+night as has been passed? No, madam; just as soon as my
+wife and daughter are a little rested we shall bid you good-by
+and take our leave of your hospitable home.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am sorry that such is your resolution; but as soon as
+Mrs. and Miss Legg shall awaken I hope you will ring a
+bell and a servant shall show you to your rooms, where, at
+least, you may have the refreshment of the toilet service before
+breakfast,” concluded Judy, pleased with her victory
+over the brogue.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are very kind, madam, and we will avail ourselves
+of your offer,” said John Legg, with a bow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy smiled and left the library.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No sooner had the door closed behind her than Lamia
+reared her head like a serpent from the sofa and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, then, ring the bell now. I am awake, at any
+rate, and I should like a bath and then breakfast to my
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>room. I shall not go down to the breakfast table to face
+a sneering pack of hypocrites.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Legg sighed and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The commotion waked up Mrs. Legg, who yawned, rubbed
+her eyes and looked about her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where are we? What place is this? How came we
+here?” she muttered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then she suddenly recollected the situation and circumstances
+and added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s well I’m strong. John Legg, how have you stood
+it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“As well as man could, Julia, I hope. But here is a
+young woman come to show us to our rooms, where we can
+wash our faces before breakfast,” he added, as a housemaid
+appeared at the door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three arose and prepared to follow the girl, who led
+them up the first flight of stairs to one of the best suites of
+rooms in the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When John Legg and Julia Legg had made their simple
+and hasty toilet, they went downstairs and into the drawing-room,
+where they found Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay, Mr.
+Will Walling and Dandy Quin awaiting them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They greeted the party, and then John Legg apologized
+for the absence of his daughter as best he could.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy excused herself for a moment and went out immediately
+to speak to the housekeeper and order an excellent
+breakfast sent up to Miss Legg in her room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she returned to her guests and conducted them to
+the breakfast parlor, where the morning meal was already
+laid.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After breakfast Mr. and Mrs. Legg took leave, and with
+old Dandy, who wept at parting with his friends, and with
+their daughter, closely veiled and silent, left Haymore Hall
+in a carriage proffered by Ran and drove to Chuxton, where
+they took the train for London, en route for Medge.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Clay Legg had not been seen since he had fled from before
+the face of the frenzied Gentleman Geff. He was afterward
+heard of in Wales, as a hanger-on to his father-in-law, under
+whose protection his wife and children had lived for some
+time past.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Michael Man’s good constitution, excellent health and
+temperate habits were all so much in his favor that in a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>few days he began to get well, and before the week was out
+he came downstairs and joined the family at their meals.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector came over every day to inquire after Mike and
+to bring reports of Gentleman Geff, who was at death’s door
+with brain fever and not expected to recover. Longman,
+the colossus, was established in the sick-room as his constant
+attendant. Elspeth remained at the rectory for the
+present. She would not leave the family under present circumstances.
+Meanwhile Randolph Hay had given orders to
+his bailiff, Prowt, to have the gamekeeper’s cottage put in
+complete repair and refurnished for the Longmans.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Christmas came, and the young couple at the Hall sent
+invitations to their few intimate friends to come and spend
+the sacred festival with them. They were loyal to the humblest
+among these. They really invited not only Mr. and
+Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Montgomery and Dr. Hobbs, but
+old Dandy from Medge and Longman and Elspeth from the
+rectory. Will Walling and Michael Man were still staying
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The young doctor, the rector and his wife and daughter
+accepted the invitation, but Elspeth and Longman declined
+it on the ground that she would have to stay at home to
+mind the baby and he to attend to the sick man; but these
+were not the only reasons; they both felt that their presence,
+as even Christmas guests at the Hall, would be a social solecism;
+for as Elspeth said to her son:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“These generous young people from the woods of a foreign
+country don’t know what they are a-doing of when
+they invite you and me to dinner, Samson! It might do
+well enough in the mines of the backwoods. But here!
+Why, bless ’em, if they go on in this way not a single soul
+among the country families will have a thing to do with
+’em, if they are the lord and lady of the manor! But they’ll
+find out better.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman fully agreed with his mother, and so he wrote
+his excuses for both.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Old Dandy Quin also wrote from Medge and begged to
+be excused on two pleas: the first that he was not able to
+make the long journey from one end of England to the
+other twice in ten days; and the second was that he wanted
+to eat his Christmas dinner with his new-found relatives.
+He added the information that he did not mean to carry out
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>his first intention of buying an annuity with his savings,
+but that he should go into partnership with his nephew, and
+that in the spring they should move into a larger house and
+increase their business.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He concluded with a piece of news that made Ran, Judy
+and Mike break into one of their shouting Grizzly Gulch
+laughs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He wrote that poor Miss Lyddy Legg—and just think of
+the queenly and beautiful Lamia Leegh being called “poor
+Miss Lyddy Legg!”—was very broken-hearted, though she
+need not be, for it was not her fault that she had been
+taken in by a false marriage; and that everybody was as
+kind to her as kind could be, and that he himself—Dandy
+Quin—had so much respect and sympathy for her that he
+offered to marry her out of hand and make an honest woman
+of her and leave her all his property at his death! but that
+the poor, misguided and demented young woman, who did
+not know what was for her own good, had refused him with
+scorn and insolence. There!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Think of the vain and haughty Lamia Leegh receiving an
+offer of marriage from Dandy Quin!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Notwithstanding, or perhaps because of these “regrets,”
+Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay enjoyed their Christmas with
+the few friends who gathered around them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the morning they walked to the village church in company
+with Will Walling and Mike. They heard a good
+Christmas sermon from the Rev. Mr. Campbell and listened
+to some really fine music from the organ and grand anthems
+from the choristers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the service they shook hands with the rector and
+his wife and daughter and with Elspeth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman was at the rectory keeping guard over the dying
+man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That evening Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay entertained at
+dinner the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Montgomery,
+Dr. Hobbs, Mr. Will Walling and Mr. Michael Man. And
+the festival passed off pleasantly, nor did Judy, nor even
+Mike, once fall into dialect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the Christmas holidays were over, Mr. Will Walling,
+having seen his friend and client, Mr. Randolph Hay,
+in quiet and undisputed possession of Haymore, prepared
+to take leave of the Hall and return to New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>A few days before his expected departure he called Ran
+and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, what are your plans?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We shall not leave Haymore until the spring,” replied
+Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, give me half an hour in the library alone with
+you. I have something to talk about.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran followed his guest to the room of books and gave
+him a chair and took another.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then, however, instead of seating himself, Mr. Will Walling
+went to one of the book shelves and took down a large,
+heavy volume bound in red cloth and gold.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This,” he said, as he laid it on the table and turned over
+the leaves, “is the last year’s edition of ‘Burke’s Landed
+Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?” carelessly inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And this,” continued the lawyer, as he paused at an
+open page, “is the genealogy of the Hays, of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well?” again inquired Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I want you to look at it with me. I don’t wish to bore
+you to go over the whole history, with its marriages, births
+and deaths, but only to notice this fact that runs through
+the whole, from your first known ancestor, Arthur Hei, who
+married Edda, a daughter of Seebold, Earl of Northumberland,
+down to your grandfather, the late squire, who married
+Gentil, daughter of Pharoah Cooper, of Esling. Moor,
+Yorkshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She was a gypsy, and the child of a gypsy,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; still she is set down here as the daughter of a certain
+somebody. All your ‘forebyes’ have married the daughters
+of certain somebodies, from dukes down to gypsies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, but what does all this talk tend to?” demanded
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To this: It is too late for your name as Squire of Haymore
+to appear in this year’s edition of the ‘Landed
+Gentry’; the volume is probably already issued. But before
+long the <em>Herald College</em> will be getting up next year’s edition,
+and you will receive letters or messengers inquiring for
+authentic statistics concerning your succession, marriage
+and so on.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, they can have them,” said Ran indifferently.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>“Yes, but I am afraid there will be some awkwardness for
+you on one point.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Which point?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That of your marriage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How should that be?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, in this way—listen. The items of entry in your
+case will be something like this:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Hay, Randolph; born July 15, 184—; succeeded his
+grandfather as tenth squire, March 1, 186—,’ (for you know
+that your succession will date from the day of his death);
+‘married December 2, 186—, Judith, daughter of ——’
+Whom? There’s where the awkwardness would come in.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I would say simply—Judith Man,” replied Ran Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well—Judith Man, daughter of—whom? The
+<em>Herald’s College</em> are very precise in these matters. You
+will have to find a father for her.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. Walling! If you were not my friend and my guest,
+I should be very angry with you. My sweet wife is a child
+of the Heavenly Father! but for an earthly parent of either
+sex I do not know where to look.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Look here then, Hay, to me. I didn’t mention the difficulty
+without having a remedy for it. I am a childless
+widower, as you know. And though it would be straining
+a point of probability to represent a man of thirty-seven
+as the lawful father of a woman of nineteen, still I would
+like to adopt your wife as my daughter, that she may be
+entered in the Red Book as Judith, daughter of William
+Walling, Esq., attorney-at-law, New York City. Come,
+Hay, my friend, you know I mean the best by you and by
+her. Now what do you say to accepting me as your father-in-law?”
+inquired Will Walling, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Randolph Hay paused before he replied. He was more
+pained than pleased. Yet he appreciated the lawyer’s good
+intentions, and was grateful for them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you from my heart, Mr. Walling, for your intended
+kindness; and I feel grieved that I cannot accept
+your gracious proposal, since not to do so must seem so very
+ungracious as well as ungrateful to a friend whom I love
+and esteem as much as I do you. And yet I cannot accept
+it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why not?” inquired the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>“I—do not know. I cannot tell. I have a feeling against
+it which I am unable to define or analyze.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I am not. I know the cause of your reluctance. It
+is because it would not be strictly true. That is it. You
+need not answer, Ran, my boy. But you must allow me to
+tell you that you are a little too scrupulous for a practical
+world, though I do not like you the less on that account,”
+said Will Walling, with his usual little laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I hope my scruples, as you call them, will not affect
+our friendship?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have just told you that they will not. There, let the
+matter drop!” concluded the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy never heard of the offer Mr. Will Walling had made
+to adopt her as his daughter for the sake of giving her a
+good antenuptial position, nor did she ever guess that there
+would be any awkwardness in the record of her marriage
+in the Hay, of Haymore, item of “The Landed Gentry of
+Great Britain and Ireland.” She was not troubled on that
+subject.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All the affairs of the Hays were so satisfactorily settled
+now that the young couple were only waiting for the departure
+of Will Walling to leave Haymore for London,
+where they might live in retirement in that great city until
+they should have fitted themselves to mingle with the more
+critical of their Yorkshire neighbors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Early in the new year pleasant letters came from America.
+They were from Cleve and Palma Stuart, and brought
+news of the change of fortune that would take them to the
+mountain farm of West Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy were pleased, yet puzzled.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should have thought, if they left New York, they
+would have gone to that fine plantation in Mississippi,” said
+Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So should I, and not to what must be a poor farm on
+the mountain,” added Ran. And then turning to Walling,
+he added:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see you will have to take the documents, putting
+Palma in possession of the property I have made over to
+her, all the way to West Virginia.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will do that with pleasure. I have never yet seen
+the Alleghany Mountains,” replied Will Walling, who was
+always ready to travel over any new ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>It was nearly the first of February that Will Walling at
+length reluctantly made up his mind to take leave of his
+friends at Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In bidding them farewell he said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I cannot help regretting that you would not accept me
+for your father-in-law, Hay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran only laughed in reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What did he mean by asking you to be his father-in-law?”
+inquired Judy, after the dogcart that was taking Will
+Walling to the station had rolled away from the door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, only his nonsense. You know, of course, that, as I
+have no mother nor he any daughter, he could never have
+been my father-in-law,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So Judy never suspected how it was.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But before many months Judy and Mike were claimed by
+a father with a pedigree which the most heathenish worshiper
+of rank might have been proud to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXVIII<br> <span class='large'>HOPE AND LIFE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>“Poley, dear darling, will you go with Cleve and me to
+West Virginia to live?” exclaimed Palma, running into the
+cabinet kitchen of her flat, where good Mrs. Pole was busy
+over the fire, baking those very muffins in which she so excelled.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve had gone out to change the bonanza check to pay
+the rent and to give up the flat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Poley paused, with a spoonful of batter held in her hand,
+halfway between the bowl on the table and the muffin rings
+in the pan on the range.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is that you said, my dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma repeated her question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will I go with you to Vest Wirginny? That’s the furrin
+nation we was to war with, ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Pole,
+going on to fill her muffin rings.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t mention the war, Poley. I cannot bear to talk
+of it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>“Well, I won’t. But that Vest Wirginny—where is it?
+In New Orleenes?” inquired Mrs. Pole, whose ideas of
+geography were so vague that she once asked Palma if
+Africa was in the United States. And Palma, to spare the
+good woman’s self-esteem, answered that Africans, or their
+descendants, had been in America for a couple of centuries.
+Whereupon Mrs. Pole had added that, of course, she knew
+that America was in the United States. Palma had not set
+her right, but ruminated in her own mind on the fact of the
+future when our national New Jerusalem would not make a
+part of the Western continent, but the Western continent
+would be only a part of the grand republic of the planet
+Earth. But this is a digression. Now to return.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“West Virginia is much nearer than New Orleans,” replied
+Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole filled the last of her muffin rings and set the
+pan containing them on the range before she spoke again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you and Mr. Stuart be going there to live, ma’am,
+you say?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, yes—and very soon, too.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole put the bowl of batter in the cupboard, covered
+it over with a clean napkin and sat down, “to save her
+back,” while her muffins were baking.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“For good?” she inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed, for good in every sense of the word, I do
+hope and believe. I will tell you all about it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole jumped up and ran into her little bedroom adjoining
+the kitchen, and brought out a small, low-backed
+rocker, saying to her little lady:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There! Sit ye down while you talk. You have often
+enough told me to ‘spare my back’ whenever I could lawfully
+do so. And now I tell you to spare your own.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma laughed and dropped into her chair, and when
+Mrs. Pole had looked at her muffins and seen that they were
+doing well, and taken her own seat on a cane chair, Palma
+began:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will tell it to you as Cleve told it to me, for it is like
+a story, Poley. Here goes!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Once upon a time there was an old man—a very rich
+old man—who lived in an old stone house at the foot of a
+mountain, called Wolfscliff, and the woods that clothed the
+side of the mountain were called Wolfswalk, because, when
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>the land was surveyed and the first house was built there
+was neither sleep by night nor safety by day, for the wolves.
+They carried off hens and geese and sheep and calves, and—horror
+to relate!—even the little negro babies. This was
+how the place received its name. The wolves were worse
+than the Indians. They could neither be fought off nor
+bought off, but had gradually to die off, like the Indians.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So the name came down the generations to the time of
+Jeremiah Cleve, the old man with whom my story commenced,
+and who lived in an old stone farmhouse in the
+woods at the foot of the mountain—a house many times
+larger than the log cabin of his first American ancestor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This Jeremiah had married an heiress in his own neighborhood,
+and so had doubled his fortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They had three sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“John, the eldest, was, according to the law of primogeniture
+then prevailing in Virginia, heir to the landed estate
+of his father. This John, when he was but twenty years
+of age, became engaged to be married to the beautiful
+daughter of the man who owned the nearest plantation to
+Wolfswalk. It was a long engagement, on account of the
+young fiancée’s extreme youth; but just when they were
+going to be married, when he was twenty-five and she was
+eighteen, she caught a severe cold while out sleighing with
+him, and died within a week of inflammation of the lungs.
+She was buried in her bridal dress, on her wedding day. It
+is said that on her deathbed he solemnly vowed himself to
+her, lover and husband, for time and eternity. That was
+seventy years ago, and he has kept his faith. He is now a
+lonely old man of ninety-five, the solitary master of Wolfscliff,
+waiting for the Lord to call him to join his bride in
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The younger sons, Charles and James, were, by the
+terms of the marriage settlements of their parents, co-heirs
+of their mother’s estate; and if there had been ten, they
+would have all been equal co-heirs, and each portion small;
+as there were but two, each portion was considerable.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Charles was the first of the family to marry. He wedded
+a young woman of family and fortune, and went to live on
+his mother’s plantation. They had two sons. When these
+boys were old enough to be sent to college their mother
+sickened and died of typhoid fever, how contracted no one
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>ever could tell. Their father never married. His house
+was well managed by a capable young mulatto woman, who
+made it homelike to the boys when they came there to spend
+the vacation. At length, when the young men were relatively
+twenty-two and twenty-four years old, their father
+also died, and the young men lived on the farm like true
+brothers until the Civil War broke out, when they entered
+the Southern army. Ah! poor, dear, brave boys! One fell
+at Fredericksburg, the other at Cold Harbor. Truly ‘The
+glory of this world passeth away.’</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I come now to the youngest of old Jeremiah’s sons—James,
+who was Cleve’s grandfather—his mother’s father.
+He had a passion for the military life, and he entered the
+army. When he had gained his commission as second lieutenant
+of infantry, he married Molly Jefferson, a relation
+of the illustrious Thomas.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By this time the aged couple, Jeremiah and Josephine
+Cleve, had passed on to a higher life, and John, their eldest
+son, a man passed middle age, reigned at Wolfscliff in their
+stead.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“John, a lonely man, invited the young couple to make
+their permanent home with him, and they did so until the
+Mexican War broke out, when the young lieutenant had to
+follow Gen. Scott to Mexico. His young wife would gladly
+have accompanied him ‘even to the battlefield,’ but she was
+then nursing her first—and only—child, a baby girl not a
+month old, when the young husband and father went away
+to the war, from which he never came back again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The tidings of his death in the battle of Chepultepec
+came to Wolfscliff as a death blow to the youthful widow.
+She pined and died within the year, leaving her infant
+daughter, Cara, to the charge, yes, rather to the heart of
+John Cleve. He brought up and educated the orphan and,
+when she was grown, went out into the world for her sake.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In a winter they passed in Washington they met young
+Mr. Stuart, of the Cypresses, Mississippi. A mutual attachment
+between the young people was approved by John
+Cleve. And the next summer Mr. Stuart, of Mississippi,
+and Miss Cleve, of Virginia, were married at Wolfscliff.
+They went on an extended wedding tour which filled up all
+the summer and autumn months, and only returned to the
+husband’s home in Mississippi in time for the Christmas
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>holidays, when they were joined by John Cleve, of Wolfscliff,
+who came at their—not invitation only, but prayer—to
+spend the winter with them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That was his first and last visit—not that he had not
+enjoyed it, nor that he ceased to love his dear niece, but
+that after her marriage he grew more and more of a recluse,
+a student and a dreamer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And she visited him all the more frequently that she
+could not induce him to leave his home. Instead of going
+to a gay summer resort when she migrated to the North
+every summer, she would go to Wolfscliff, until at length,
+when years passed and children came every year, and sickened
+every year, and she had to take them to the seaside,
+her annual visits to Wolfscliff were discontinued.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cleve, the youngest child, and the only one who survived
+his parents, was taken to Wolfscliff when he was
+about three years old. That was the first and last time he
+ever saw his grand-uncle. Of the tragic fate of Cleve’s
+father and mother you have heard me tell, Poley.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” answered Mrs. Pole; “they were fatally hurt
+on the wreck of the <em>Lucy Lee</em>, I remember.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And after that, do you know that the aged John Cleve,
+of Wolfscliff, who sank deeper and deeper into solitary study
+and reverie, utterly lost sight of his grand-nephew, whom
+he was contented to think of as at school under the supervision
+of his guardian, Judge Barrn, or at college, or traveling
+in Europe, or on his Mississippi plantation, not knowing
+that the latter was a charred and blasted ruin and desert
+until the death, in battle, of his last nephew left him without
+an heir bearing the name of Cleve. Then he instituted
+inquiries for his grand-nephew, Cleve Stuart, but without
+the least effect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Accident at last revealed Cleve’s residence in New
+York. Mr. Sam Walling went to Washington on legal business
+and fell in with a Mr. Steele, of Wolfswalk, the nearest
+town to Wolfscliff, and, in the course of conversation, mentioned
+the sage of Wolfscliff and his vain quest for his
+nephew and heir, Cleve Stuart. Then Mr. Walling gave
+information, and the West Virginian went back to the
+mountains with the news the hermit was pining to hear.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“John Cleve immediately wrote the letter inviting Mr.
+Stuart and myself to come and make our home with him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>“And you are going?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I told you so. Will you come with us?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To the end of the world. To the jumping-off place.
+And even there, if you should take the leap in the dark, I’ll
+jump down after you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dear Poley, I am so glad!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And why should I stay behind? And why should I not
+go? I have nieces and cousins here, to be sure; but they
+are all doing well. And though I love them, I think I love
+you more, for you do seem more like a child of my own than
+any of them do; and you seem to want me more than they
+can.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do want you more, Poley, darling. And Cleve is so
+anxious for you to go with us for me. Though I am now in
+excellent health, he seems to think I require a nurse to look
+after me as much as if I were a sick baby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And so you be, my dear, for this present time, and will
+be for some time to come,” Mrs. Pole replied, nodding
+wisely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I am so glad you will come, Poley, dear. And listen.
+When I get settled at Wolfscliff next summer you can invite
+any of your relations, or all of them, as many as the
+house will hold, to come and stay with you. It will be such
+a pleasant, healthful change for them, from the crowded
+city to the fine, open mountains.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It would be heaven for them to see it only for a day.
+Why, we all went up the North River and saw the hills only
+from the deck of the steamer, and they thought that was
+paradise, and longed to be in it. What would they say to
+staying a week among the mountains?” exclaimed Poley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then they shall come. They shall all come,” responded
+Palma delightedly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, my dear child, what would the old gentleman say?”
+demurred Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley, you don’t know the Southern people. Neither
+do I, for that matter, except upon Cleve’s showing. But I
+am sure I can guarantee you and yours a welcome at Wolfscliff.
+And mind, we won’t have to send to market for meat,
+poultry and vegetables, nor to the grocer’s for flour, and
+meal, and lard, and eggs, and such things. Nearly everything,
+except tea and sugar, pepper and salt, and such, are
+produced on the farm, and cost next to nothing,” said
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>Palma, speaking as she believed and proving how little she
+knew of the cost of labor or the worth of time on a farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Mrs. Pole, who was as ignorant of such a life as was
+her youthful friend, received every statement in good faith,
+and anticipated good days to come.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She looked once more at her muffins, made the tea, and
+then went into the parlor to set the table for luncheon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma went into her bedroom to overhaul trunks and
+bureau drawers, to see what she could make of her scant
+wardrobe, in view of appearing among strangers in West
+Virginia. She had but three suits—the superb velvet dress
+given her by Mrs. Walling, which she thought could only
+be worn on grand occasions, and must be quite useless in
+the mountain farmhouse; the well-worn crimson cashmere
+now on her back, and in its very last days; the fine India
+muslin, now fairly embroidered, not with unnecessary fancy
+work, but with needful darns. These were all the dresses
+Palma owned, if we except the old, faded blue gingham
+wrapper in which Cleve had first found her in her garret.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I must get Poley to sponge and press the crimson cashmere,
+and then that will do to travel in, and with care it
+may last the rest of the winter,” she said patiently, as she
+locked her trunk and her bureau drawers and returned to
+her little parlor, where she sat down to work on a doll’s
+dress, or what might have passed for such.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While thus engaged she sang a sweet nursery song that
+was a reminiscence of her own infancy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently Cleve came in, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, dear,” he said, “I have paid the rent and given up
+the rooms, though I had to pay another month’s rent in
+lieu of a month’s warning; and I have settled every other
+outstanding bill except the milkman’s. I could not find
+man or bill if I tried, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; there is no bill. We buy tickets, and pay cash, and
+we have seven tickets left.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then the man can have the benefit, for we go away to-day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“From the city?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; from the flat. We will go to a hotel to-night, and
+go to Washington to-morrow, en route for West Virginia.
+Can you pack up in that time?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I can pack up in an hour,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>As she spoke the hall boy knocked and entered the room,
+showing in a man with a bundle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! that is all right, thank you—that will do,” said
+Stuart as the man set down the box and went away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is my new business suit for winter wear in the mountain
+farmhouse. What do you think of it, Palma?” he inquired,
+cutting the twine and unpacking the box and shaking
+out a suit of brown beaver cloth, consisting of double-breasted
+coat, vest and pantaloons.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! I think it is excellent. Such a rich, deep color, and
+such soft, thick, warm material,” said the young wife appreciatingly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, so it is—all that,” added Mrs. Pole, who was setting
+the tea urn on the table. “But, la! what a blessing it
+is that women’s clothes grows on ’em, like feathers do on
+to a bird, so they never has no trouble nor expense to buy
+any.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart dropped his suit on the floor and looked at his
+wife in dismay, noticed her faded, shabby cashmere dress,
+and became contrite for his thoughtlessness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lunch is ready, ma’am,” and hurried out of the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t mind Poley, Cleve, dear. She is full of queer sayings,
+you know,” said Palma conciliatingly. “Come now,
+and sit down to luncheon. Here are some of her nice muffins.”
+And she took her seat at the table and began to pour
+out the tea.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have been an idiot, and a very selfish idiot at that!
+providing myself with a first-rate suit of clothes, and even
+displaying them to your admiration, without once remembering
+that you also would require raiment. I am obliged
+to the woman for bringing me to my senses,” said Stuart
+as he took his seat opposite his wife and helped himself to
+a muffin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nonsense, Cleve! I have got a tongue in my head, and
+if I had wanted anything would have asked you for it without
+hesitation,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I fear you would not have recognized any want, my
+dear; and I fear it is true that some men are so thoughtless
+that they act as if women’s clothes grew on them like the
+petals of a flower, and cost neither money nor effort to renew.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>But I see now. Yes, dear rose of my life, I see your
+petals are fading.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No more was said until after luncheon, when Cleve put a
+fifty-dollar note in Palma’s hand and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go out and get what is necessary for your comfort, my
+dear; and take some lady friend with you, for I fear you
+have very little experience in shopping.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Cleve,” replied Palma, laughing; “but I
+shall take Poley. She will be a better judge of what I need
+than any of our fine lady friends.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, perhaps you are right,” admitted Stuart, and the
+discussion ended.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole had cleared away the table and taken her
+own luncheon Palma invited her to go on a shopping expedition;
+and they put on their bonnets and outer garments
+and started. Palma’s was only the plush jacket that belonged
+to her cashmere suit, and she shivered so much as
+she walked that Mrs. Pole said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The very first thing that you must buy must be a heavy
+cloth coat. You can get one for twenty dollars. I should
+prefer a Scotch plaid shawl, but young people don’t wear
+such things now, only neat-fitting coats, or sacques, or dolmans.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They went down on Broadway and into store after store,
+trying where they could find at once the cheapest and the
+best.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length Palma was suited with a close-fitting heavy
+cloth coat that not only satisfied herself but also Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, then, as you like it so well, keep it on, child, and
+have your plush jacket done up in a parcel and I will take
+it home,” said the good woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And this was done.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But then they went to the suit department, where Palma
+selected an olive-green pressed flannel dress for herself, and
+had to take off her coat to try it on. Then she bought a
+beaver bonnet and a leather hand-bag, and her shopping was
+complete.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, who had saved up the wages she had received,
+bought a very heavy tartan shawl, two pairs of thick yarn
+stockings, a pair of stout goat-skin boots, a pair of warm
+woolen gloves, and a thick green berege veil, and felt herself
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>provided for defense against the winter on the mountain
+farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they reached home they found Stuart waiting for
+them. He said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray do not trouble to get dinner this evening, as we
+can dine at the hotel where we are to spend the night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad of that, on Poley’s account for she is
+very tired. She insisted on bringing home all our purchases
+herself, and just look how she has loaded herself
+down!” said Palma, laughing, though, in fact, the two
+heaviest items of the purchases, namely, Palma’s beaver
+cloth coat and Poley’s tartan shawl, were worn home on the
+shoulders of the respective owners.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I must beg you to pack up as soon as possible, and
+I will help you, if you will show me how,” he answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That would be an awful hindrance, sir! Just let me
+get my breath for a minute and I’ll be all right. I am not
+tired one bit. And we’ll get through the packing in a jiffy!
+It’s very easy to move when there’s no furnitur’, and nothing
+but one’s clothes and things to pack,” said Mrs. Pole,
+sitting down on the first chair, dropping her bundles on the
+floor, and untying the broad plaid ribbon strings of her big
+black straw bonnet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She kept her word, for in five minutes she was on her feet
+again, and in less than an hour the trunks were packed,
+locked and strapped.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart wrote the labels and pasted them on the tops, and
+they stood ready for the expressman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the three put on their outer garments and turned to
+leave their flat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma paused and looked back half regretfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-by, pretty little home,” she said. “We have been
+very happy in you, but you must not mind our going away.
+We shall have to go away from our bodies some of these
+days! But I hope you will have very pleasant tenants always.
+Good-by.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart did not laugh at her, but Mrs. Pole did, and said
+as they went to the elevator:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If I didn’t know you as well as I do, child, I should
+really sometimes think you were crazy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! don’t you know there is a soul in places and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>in things, as well as there is in all other living creatures?”
+she answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole did not reply, but thought within herself: “I
+do suppose as there be some of the sensiblest people crazy
+in spots.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They went down in the elevator; and what a misfit of
+words there is in that sentence!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They found the janitor waiting in the office to see them
+off. Mr. Stuart gave him the key of the vacated apartments,
+and they all shook hands with him and left, with the request
+that he would see to the delivery of their trunks to the
+expressman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then they walked down the street to the corner of the
+avenue where the cars passed. Mr. Stuart hailed the first
+down one, and they boarded it. They rode about the length
+of twenty blocks, got off and walked across town to Broadway,
+and entered the office of the hotel that Stuart had
+chosen for their sojourning place that night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were easily provided with rooms.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Palma had taken off her bonnet in her chamber
+Mrs. Pole, who still stood up in her street costume, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, if you please, I must leave you for a little
+while.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What, Poley dear! Is there any more shopping to do?
+Have you forgotten anything?” demanded Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, my child! But as we are to start to-morrow morning
+I must go and take leave of my kinfolks to-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! And they live away downtown somewhere!
+And—you can never go alone!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why not, child? I have been used to go alone all about
+the city all the days of my life, even when I was a young
+woman, and nothing ever happened to me, or even threatened
+to happen to me! And if nothing didn’t in my youth,
+nothing ain’t like to do it in my age! Don’t be uneasy,
+child! I’ll be back by ten o’clock, and one o’ my nephies
+will see me here safe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But won’t you wait until after dinner? Cleve says they
+keep a sumptuous table here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I hope you will get the good of it, my dear, but
+as for me, I must hurry away. I’ll make up for missing of
+my dinner by eating a hearty supper when I come back.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Take care, you must not risk a return of those horrid
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>nights you had at Lull’s, you know,” said Palma, with a
+sudden recollection of the sleep-walking and magpie-hiding
+propensities that had been features of those disturbed
+nights, though features that happily Mrs. Pole had never
+suspected.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, don’t you be afraid! It was the cold, heavy pastry
+that did it at Lull’s! There was no basket beggars to
+carry off the cold pie crusts and puddin’s, and me and the
+girls used to eat ’em all up at night to keep ’em from being
+wasted on. And I never heard of their hurting anybody but
+me, either. But don’t you be afraid. I shall eat nothing
+but the very best of nutericious and digesterable food, like
+stewed oysters and sich.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, Poley. Eat what you will, so it shall agree
+with you. And now don’t fail to invite your relations in
+my name as well as in your own to come to Wolfscliff to
+see you next summer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, ma’am, for reminding me again. Now I
+know you are in airnest and I’ll be sure to invite them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Poley, I am always in earnest.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To be sure, I know you are, ma’am, dear child,” answered
+Mrs. Pole, divided in her style of address, between
+her respect for her mistress and her tenderness of her pet.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then again she took leave and went out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve came out and escorted Palma down to dinner,
+where the many and slow courses occupied them for more
+than an hour.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At ten o’clock Poley punctually made her appearance,
+and ate a hearty supper of stewed oysters and brown stout
+with her nephew.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At eleven o’clock the whole party retired to rest.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXIX<br> <span class='large'>TO THE MOUNTAIN FARM</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>They rose early in the morning, breakfasted and drove
+down to Cortlandt Street ferry to take the boat for Jersey
+City.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They caught the eight-thirty train in good time and without
+hurry.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>Stuart found their baggage all right, waiting for them,
+checked it to Washington, and then entered with his companions
+into the ladies’ car, and the express train started on
+its Southern flight. Their journey was quick, pleasant and
+uneventful.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Early in the evening of that day they reached Washington.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Leaving their trunks in the baggage room at the depot,
+and taking only their hand-bags, they went to one of the
+best hotels, where they dined and engaged rooms for the
+night and the next day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was Palma’s first sight of the capital of her country,
+and Cleve determined to linger a few hours to show her the
+public buildings.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next morning Stuart engaged a hack and took his
+two companions for a long, circuitous drive, which should
+include visits to the White House, the State, War, Navy and
+Treasury Departments and the Capitol. But these visits
+were necessarily short. There was no time to pay their respects
+to the President in the Executive Mansion, or to
+listen to the debates in the Senate Chamber or in the House
+of Representatives, or to the cases in the Supreme Court.
+They had to get back to lunch and then to take the train for
+West Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Two o’clock in the afternoon found them again seated in
+the cars and flying westward.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Up to this hour the day had been clear and mild, but
+now the sky began to cloud over, and when they reached
+Alexandria the snow began to fall, and as they left the old
+town behind them and the short winter afternoon drew to a
+close, the storm thickened, if that could be called a storm
+in which there was no wind, but a cataclysm of snow falling
+directly, silently and continuously upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Strange scenes were traced on the window panes without,
+weird, beautiful, fantastic scenes—cities, palaces, gardens,
+trees—all drawn in frosted silver. They fascinated the imagination
+of Palma, who was never tired of gazing and
+dreaming. Little or nothing could be seen through the
+storm of the country over which they were flying.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They reached Oaklands, on the Alleghanies, late at night.
+They had taken through tickets to the end of their railway
+journey, and the train was going on that night; yet, as the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>storm continued, they determined to lay over until the next
+morning. Leaving their trunks on the baggage car to go on
+to their destination, they took their hand-bags and walked
+through the thickly falling snow to the hotel, where they
+were comforted by clean rooms, glorious hickory wood fires,
+and a delicious supper of venison steaks, broiled ham, buckwheat
+cakes, hot rolls, tea, coffee, and rich cream, and butter,
+and honey such as is seldom found anywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It had been a fatiguing day, and as they could see nothing
+of the country for the snowstorm, they all went to bed and
+slept the sleep of the just.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next morning they rose to a new life.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The storm had ceased. The sky was clear, and the sun
+was shining over a splendid, a magnificent, a dazzling world
+of mountains, valleys, fields and forests, all arrayed in white
+and decked with diamonds.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! Cleve,” cried Palma, looking out from the upper
+window of her bedroom, “does it seem possible that only
+yesterday we were in a crowded city, not two hundred miles
+away, and that now we find ourselves in this magnificent
+scene? Why, Cleve, yesterday seems to be a thousand years
+behind, and this to be another planet!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her rhapsodies were interrupted by the breakfast bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And for all answer Cleve smiled, drew her arm within his
+own and led her down to the breakfast table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There were some few other wayfarers present in the
+room, and these men were standing around the great, roaring
+wood fire and talking politics or crops. But they soon
+left their position and sat down at the board. Mrs. Pole was
+there, too, ready to join her friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did you ever dream of such a world as this, Poley?”
+whispered Palma as the three sat down in a row, Palma
+being in the middle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, never in all my life! I never even ’magined as there
+could be such a place as this! And, oh! ain’t it cold,
+neither?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cold, but such a fine, pure, healthy cold. And the hot
+coffee will warm you, Poley.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The breakfast was in many respects a repetition of the
+supper, and in all respects equal to it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Seems to me I eat twice as much at every meal as I
+ever eat before in my life, and yet I feel hungry in an hour
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>after I have finished. I do believe if I was to live up in
+these regions I should have such an appetite I should think
+of nothing but eating and drinking from morning till night,
+and dreaming of nothing but eating and drinking from
+night till morning!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I wonder how long that would last?” queried Palma,
+but Mrs. Pole did not answer. She had turned her attention
+the the venison steaks.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as breakfast was over the three put on their outer
+garments and walked through the main street of the mountain
+town to the railway station, where they had to wait
+for nearly half an hour for the Eastern train to come in.
+Then they took their seats on board of it, and were once
+more flying westward through the magnificent mountain
+world in its splendid winter garb of ice and snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All day long our travelers reveled in the glorious panorama
+that flew past the windows of their car, until night
+closed in and hid the scene from their vision.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was quite dark when they reached the little way station
+of Wolfswalk, where they left the train, which stopped
+half a minute and then sped on westward.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was too dark for our party to see anything but the few
+glimmering lights at the station and in the stable yard of
+the village tavern on the opposite side of the road, and the
+ghostly forms of the mountains looming through the obscurity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is now seven o’clock, and we are three miles from
+Wolfscliff Hall. I shouldn’t wonder if we have to spend
+the night at the inn here,” said Cleve Stuart as he drew the
+arm of his wife within his own and prepared to cross the
+country road, or village street, as you may prefer to call it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If the inn is anything like that of Oaklands I shall not
+be very sorry. Come on, Poley. Keep close behind us,”
+said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“’Scuse me, marster; is you Marse Cleve Stuart?” inquired
+a voice from the darkness at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes. Who are you?” demanded Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“’Sias, sah, old Marse John Clebe’s man f’om Wolfskif;
+yas, sah, dat’s me,” replied the invisible.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you have been sent to meet us, eh? Come in here.
+Let us take a look at one another,” said Cleve with a laugh,
+as he led the way into the lighted station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>The negro was a man of middle age, tall, stout, strong
+and very black, and clothed in a warm suit of thick, heavy
+homespun cloth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You have been sent to meet us?” again suggested
+Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah! along wid de ox cart, to fetch you an’—de
+ladies, do’ I did’n know as dere wasn’t no more’n one lady;
+but, laws! de more de better, I say, marster, and my name’s
+’Sias, old Marse John Clebe’s man f’m Wolfskif Hall—yas,
+sah.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did you say you had brought the ox cart for us?” inquired
+Stuart in some dismay as he thought of his dainty
+wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah! I has fetched the ox cart, wid Baron an’
+Markiss yoked on, an’ dey is de best beasts on de plantation,
+kind and gentle as new milk, ’specially Baron, to fetch you
+an’ de ladies and de luggage, all at de same time, an’ dere’s
+a-plenty o’ hay for de ladies to sit on jes’ as clean an’ as
+dry n’s sweet as wiolits.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But was there no carriage in my uncle’s stables?” inquired
+Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Plenty. But, Lor’, marster, dey was one an’ all so ole
+an’ rusty, an’ flip-floppy, an’ ramshakelly, dat dey couldn’t
+be trusted on good roads in good wedder by daylight, let
+alone bad roads in bad wedder by night. An’ wot is
+true ob de kerridges mought be said ob de hosses, likewise.
+Dey wouldn’ be sho-futted on sich roads in sich wedder at
+night. De ox cart is de mos’ safes’ an’ de oxes is de mos’
+sho-futtedes’. An’ yo’ wouldn’ like to hab de ladies’ necks
+broke for de sake ob pomps an’ wanities in kerridges!
+Would yo’ now?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve laughed, but Palma put in her word:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, I’m delighted! It is so new! such fun! to
+ride on the hay in an ox cart! It seems so of a piece with
+all our strange experiences! Yes! this is some new planet!
+Not our old familiar earth!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How did you happen to be here to meet us? We are a
+day and a half behind time,” inquired Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ole Marse John Clebe, ob Wolfskif Hall—an’ I am his
+own man ’Sias, wot nebber would ’mancipate him in de ole
+ages ob his onnerrubble life fur all de President an’
+Con’gess might say—telled me to come yere to meet yer an’
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>stay for de las’ train till you ’rove, an’ dis is de mos’ secondes’
+day as I hab been yere to meet yo’! An’ now, young
+marse, ef yo’ll listen to me, yo’ll put de ladies in de cart an’
+we’ll jog off.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right, ’Sias. Show us the way to the chariot,”
+laughed Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The negro set his lantern down in a chair, took from it a
+bit of candle, which he lighted by a match and replaced,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now I shows the way, young marster,” and walked out
+of the station, followed by Stuart, Palma and Poley.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He led them to the lower end of the platform near which
+the ox cart stood, with its floor thickly carpeted with layers
+of hay, and with its yoke of oxen standing and pawing in
+the cold night air. Their heads were turned away from the
+town, as if all ready for their jog across the country.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart put Palma upon the cart, and she settled herself
+in the hay with childish delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he helped Mrs. Pole to a seat beside her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, Marse Glebe, ef yo’ will jes’ git up dar on
+dat bench, in front ob de two ladies, yo’ll obleege dis compinny!
+’Caze, yo’ see, I’s got to walk at the head ob de
+creeturs to keep ’em straight on to de road.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is that necessary?” inquired Stuart as he climbed to his
+place and settled himself comfortably.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘N’essary?’” exclaimed ’Sias. “Why, la, bress yer soul,
+Marse Clebe! dere’s places ’long dis road w’ere ef dis yere
+nigh beast was to make a misstep, we’d all go ober down
+free fo’ hunderd feet to the rocks below. No, sah! I’s
+gwine walk at dis creetur’s head and carry my lantern, too,”
+concluded ’Sias as the oxen moved slowly and heavily onward
+as was their manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lantern might have been, and probably was, a help
+to the vision of ’Sias and so to the safety of his party, but
+it could show only a small section of the road immediately
+under the feet of the conductor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nothing could be seen of the surrounding country except
+that it consisted of densely wooded mountains, whose skeleton
+trees were faintly outlined against the ground of snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the
+travelers in the cart could see, to their horror, that they
+were plodding along a rough and narrow road between a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>high rise of rocks on their right and a deep fall on their
+left; but the cautious negro guide with his lantern walked
+by the heads of the oxen between them and the precipice,
+keeping them out of the terrible danger. For an hour their
+way lay along this road, and then began slowly to descend
+a gradual slope, and finally turned to the right and entered
+a thick wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>’Sias heaved a deep sigh of relief and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Peoples sez, w’en dey gits out’n dif’culty an’ danger, as
+dey’s ‘out’n de woods.’ But, la! I allers feels as if I wasn’t
+safe until I was offen dat dar debbil’s shelf, up dar, an’ got
+down yere in dese woods.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How far are we from the house, ’Sias?” inquired Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On’y ’bout a mile, young marster. Get dere werry soon
+now. Dis yere is all ole Marse John Clebe’s lan’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! is it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yas, sah. An’ dis woods usen to be called Wolfswalk
+in de ollen times, I’s heern says, ‘cause dar was mos’ as
+many wolfs as trees, an’ de station ober yonder was just
+named arter dese yer woods, an’ dats de trufe for a fac’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They jogged through the dark, mysterious-looking woods
+for some time in silence, Palma only once murmuring:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is like a dream, or a scene in a fairy tale. I feel as
+if we should come upon something soon—an ogre’s castle,
+an enchanted beauty’s palace, or something. Don’t wake
+me up, please, anybody.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What they did come upon very soon was a glimmering
+light, that seemed to shoot here and there through the thick,
+leafless trees like a firefly, had it been summer instead of
+winter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s a lamp in de big hall; it shines right froo de fanlight
+ober de front do’, an’ it seems to flit about so ’caze
+sometimes de trees sho’ it an’ sometimes dey doan’t,” ’Sias
+explained. And as he spoke the ox cart slowly and clumsily
+drew up before a large, oblong building of the simplest and
+plainest style of architecture common among the wealthier
+class of that region at the time the house was planned.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Though the travelers could not, at that time of night,
+discern its features, yet this seems the best time for their
+historian to describe it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The house was built in the rude, strong, plain style of the
+best old colonial mansions, of rough-hewn gray rocks of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>every variegated shade of red, blue, green, yellow, purple
+and orange, which gave a mosaic aspect to the walls. It was
+an oblong double house, with a broad double door, having
+two long windows on each side of the first floor, and five
+windows on the second floor, surmounted by a steep roof,
+with five dormer windows, and buttressed by four huge
+chimneys, two at each gable end. There were many old oak,
+elm and chestnut trees around the dwelling, and there were
+smaller houses, of rude construction, in the rear.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the ox cart stopped before the door Stuart got off
+his seat and lifted down his wife and her attendant. He
+tucked Palma’s hand under his arm and led her up the few
+steps that went up to the front door. That door was open
+and full of light from a large lamp that hung from the
+ceiling of the spacious hall, and within the door stood the
+master of the house to welcome his coming relatives.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was a man of middle height—the thinnest, whitest,
+most shadowy living man they had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are welcome to Wolfscliff, my dears,” he said, giving
+a hand each to Palma and to Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We are very glad to see you, uncle,” said the two in
+one breath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And this lady?” said the old-fashioned gentleman, with
+native courtesy as he held out his hand to Mrs. Pole, of
+whom he had just caught sight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Our friend, Mrs. Pole, who never leaves Palma, uncle,”
+explained Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! I am glad to see you, ma’am,” said Mr. Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir. I am only Mrs. Cleve Stuart’s housekeeper
+and attendant,” said Mrs. Pole, who would not consent
+to seem a half an inch above her real social position.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! And a very trusted and esteemed friend, also, I
+have no doubt,” replied the old gentleman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She is, indeed, sir, like a mother to my delicate Palma,”
+assented Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad she consented to accompany you here,”
+said Mr. Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the moment they stood there talking Palma took in
+with her eyes the whole of the spacious hall. It ran from
+front to back through the middle of the house, with double
+doors at each end, four doors on either side and a broad
+staircase going up from the midst. A hat rack and half a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>dozen heavy oak chairs were the only furniture. There was
+no carpet on the polished oak floor, no pictures on the
+paneled wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the parlor, or would you prefer, first,
+to go to your rooms?” inquired the old gentleman, opening
+a door on his right.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Which would you rather do, Palma?” inquired Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, go into the parlor! You see, uncle, we have not
+come through dust, but through snow, and we are as clean
+as when we had washed this morning,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The old man led the way into a large, square room, with
+paneled walls, polished floor, heavy walnut chairs and
+tables, and a broad, open fireplace, with brass andirons, on
+which was piled about an eighth of a cord of blazing hickory
+logs. Around this was a brass fender; above it, on the wall,
+a handsome carved oak mantelpiece surmounted by a broad
+mirror, and down before it on the floor a rich old Turkey
+rug. Two large armchairs stood in each chimney corner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, my dears, and you, ma’am, make yourselves comfortable
+and be quite at home. Supper will be ready in a
+few minutes,” said Mr. Cleve as he sank into one of the
+armchairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Palma saw how fragile he really was—his transparent
+face was as white as ashes, his thin hair and thin
+whiskers were like floss of silver, his hands were the longest,
+thinnest, fairest hands ever seen. He was clothed in a dark
+blue dressing-gown which he folded double over his knees,
+and the bald spot on the top of his head was covered with
+a much worn old blue velvet skullcap. His aspect suggested
+frost, cobweb, chrysalis. Only his deep-set, soft brown eyes
+shone warm and bright with the fire of life, light and love
+from the true soul, so slightly held by the fragile frame
+and almost ready to fly.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXX<br> <span class='large'>THE MOUNTAIN HOME</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Mr. Cleve stretched out his hand and pulled the bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>An elderly colored woman came in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Serve the supper in here, Polly. The dining-room is
+too cold, I think,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>“Yes, marster,” the woman replied and went out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is in the northwest angle of the house, and has four
+large windows—two north and two west—which shake and
+rattle, and let in the wind when it blows, as it does now,
+from that quarter; and also sends the smoke in volumes
+down the chimney. So I think it will be more comfortable
+for us to eat supper here,” Mr. Cleve explained as he bent
+forward and spread his thin, fair hands to the fire.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am sure there could not be a pleasanter room than
+this,” said Palma from her low rocker as she basked in
+the warm glow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah-h-h!” added Stuart with a sigh of deep satisfaction
+as he rubbed his hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The woman soon came back with faded felt crumb cloth
+in her arms, which she went on to lay down on the shining
+oak floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She was followed by a colored girl with the table damask
+in her hands. Between them they set the table, adorning it
+with rare old china and antique silver. And then a good
+supper, in honor of the new arrivals, as well as in consideration
+of the weary and hungry travelers. There was tea,
+coffee and chocolate, milk, cream and butter, rolls, waffles
+and cakes, ham, poultry and game, eggs, cheese and fruit—variety,
+without superabundance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Cleve arose and invited his relatives to take their
+seats, and himself led Palma to the head of the table, saying
+pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is your place henceforth, my child—a place that
+has not been filled since my dear niece, your husband’s
+mother, married and left me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma raised and kissed the pale hand that led her, and
+then sat down before the tea tray.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The old gentleman sat opposite to her at the foot, Stuart
+on the right and Mrs. Pole on the left side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The venerable master of the house asked the blessing, and
+the feast began. The two colored women waited on the
+table—the elder one stood beside Palma to hand the cups;
+the younger beside Mr. Cleve, to pass the plates. Varied
+and appetizing as was the supper, the host partook but
+daintily, contenting himself with a cup of cocoa and a
+wafer. But Cleve and Palma had healthy young appetites,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>and so delighted the hearts of the waiting women with their
+appreciation of the good things set before them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the meal was over and the table cleared of the service
+the elder woman set a lamp upon it; then brought the
+family Bible and laid it open where the place was kept by
+her master’s spectacles as a book mark.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear children, let us draw near to Our
+Father,” said the patriarch. And once more they gathered
+around the table, on this occasion for worship.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>John Cleve read the first chapter of the Sermon on the
+Mount; then made a pause, that all might reflect on the
+divine lesson; next led in the evening thanksgiving and
+prayer, offering up on this occasion especially grateful acknowledgments
+for the dear children sent to be a comfort
+to his declining days, and prayers for their spiritual and
+eternal welfare. Then he pronounced the benediction, and
+the evening service was over.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as they arose from their knees the elder colored
+woman, whom her master had called Polly, came up to
+Palma and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Please, ma’am, if you would like to go to your room now
+I am ready to wait on you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you. I should like to retire,” replied wearied
+Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An’ de oder lady, likewise,” added the woman, nodding
+toward Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I’m sure she would. She is even more fatigued
+than I am—than either of us,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“W’ich it is her age-able years, ma’am, of coorse. She
+can’t be as young as she used to be,” said the woman
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Probably not,” admitted Palma with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The waiting woman lighted two short sperm candles, in
+short brackets, and, with one in each hand, prepared to
+lead the way.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Shall we bid you good-night, uncle, dear?” inquired
+Palma, going to the side of his easy-chair and bending over
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You may, my dear, and your friend; but I must have
+ten minutes’ talk with your husband here before I let him
+go. I will not keep him longer than that,” replied the old
+gentleman benignly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>“Good-night, then, uncle, dear,” she said, raising his delicate
+hands to her lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“God bless you, my love,” he responded, drawing her to
+him and leaving a kiss on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-night, sir,” said Mrs. Pole with a formal bow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-night, ma’am,” replied Mr. Cleve, lifting his
+skullcap and bending his head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma and Poley followed the colored woman out of the
+parlor into the big, bare hall, up the broad stairs to the
+upper hall, which was quite as big and as bare.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was bitterly cold. With a heavily wooded country, with
+forests of pine, oak, cedar, hickory, chestnut, poplar and
+other timber, on the slopes and in the valleys, and with
+mines of coal among the rocks and caverns, it seemed yet
+impossible to keep a country house of that region warm in
+winter. You might keep certain rooms within it warm,
+but not the halls and passages, not the whole house, for the
+reason that they had no system of furnaces, registers, heat
+pipes and so forth; but then they were considered all the
+more wholesome on that account.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nevertheless, Palma shivered and shook as with an ague
+when she stepped upon the upper landing of the second
+floor hall. It was almost exactly like the hall below; four
+bedroom doors flanked it on each side, and there was a large
+window at each end, corresponding to the front and back
+door of the under one.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Polly led them about halfway up the hall toward the front
+of the house, and paused before a door on the right hand,
+about midway, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here is yer room, ma’am, and the most comfortablest
+one in the whole house, ’ceps ’tis ole marster’s, which is
+downstairs, on t’other side ob de hall, behine de parlor, an’
+befo’ de kitchen, and ‘tween ’em bofe, is sort o’ fended an’
+warmed, and purtected by bofe sides habbin’ ob a big fire
+into it, bofe day an’ night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She opened a door and showed them into a spacious chamber,
+warmed and lighted by a great fire of hickory logs in
+the ample chimney, which was directly opposite the door by
+which they had entered. Tall brass andirons supported the
+blazing logs, an antique brass fender and crossed fire-irons
+secured the rich Turkey rug and the polished oak floor
+from danger by falling brands or flying sparks; a carved
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>oak mantelshelf surmounted the fireplace and supported an
+oblong mirror, with a tall silver candlestick at each end.
+There was a high window on each side of the fireplace, but
+both were closed now, sash and shutter, and the snowy
+dimity curtains were dropped. At the end of the room
+nearest the front of the house stood a large, four-post bedstead,
+with high-tented tester, from which hung full, white
+dimity curtains festooned and looped from ceiling to floor.
+Beside this white “marquee” lay a small Turkey rug.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A chest of drawers, a walnut press, a corner washstand
+and two easy-chairs draped with white dimity completed
+the furniture.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That little door, ma’am,” said Polly, pointing to one in
+the wall opposite the foot of the bed, though a good distance
+from it, “leads into a d’essin’-yoom, where you can
+also keep yer extry clothes and fings as yer wouldn’t like to
+clutter up yer bedroom wid.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you,” said Palma, dropping into one of the easy-chairs
+and beginning to unbutton her own boots.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Wait, ma’am. Let me. Please let me. I’ll just show
+this lady here to her yoom, and then come and take off your
+shoes for you!” exclaimed Polly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she put one of her candles on the chest of drawers,
+and retaining the other, turned to Mrs. Pole and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, please I’ll take yer to your yoom. It’s
+just across the hall yere, right opposide to dis.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thanky,” replied Mrs. Pole. “I’ll go and find out
+where it is, and much obleeged to you. But then, dear, I
+will come back and stay long o’ you until Mr. Stuart comes
+up.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite right, Poley, dear,” replied Palma, who by this
+time had got her boots off and her slippers out of her hand-bag
+and onto her feet, and was sitting before the fire with
+her toes on the top of the fender.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Polly took Mrs. Pole across the hall to the opposite room,
+which as to size, windows and fireplace, was exactly like
+that of Palma’s, except that it had a northern instead of
+a southern aspect, and was, therefore, somewhat colder. It
+was also upholstered in curtain calico instead of white dimity,
+and had a picture of the Washington family, instead of
+a handsome mirror over the mantelpiece. But there was a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>fine fire burning which filled the room with light and
+warmth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, ma’am, if yer want anything as I can get
+you——” began Polly; but Mrs. Pole interrupted and dismissed
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; thank you. Good-night,” she said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Polly left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Pretty soon Mrs. Pole recrossed the hall and re-entered
+Palma’s apartment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Has the colored woman gone at last?” she inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, Poley. But what is the matter, dear? I do believe
+you are jealous of that poor creature,” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, I am not; but I don’t like to be waited on and
+fussed over so much. I don’t myself! It is all wrong and
+on false grounds. They treat me here just as if I was a
+lady and——” began Mrs. Pole, but she in her turn was
+interrupted by Palma, who said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poley, dear, they treat you as a respectable woman, and
+as they treat all respectable women—that is, all respectable
+white women. You are to be our housekeeper and, as such,
+one of the family. Don’t ‘kick against the pricks,’ Poley,
+dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I kick against anything? If you knew the stiffness of
+my joints through sitting so long in the cars you wouldn’t
+be talking of me and kicking in the same breath,” said
+Mrs. Pole with an injured air.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ringing steps, attended by shuffling feet, were heard coming
+along the hall, and then the voice of Cleve Stuart saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will do, ’Sias! Thank you. Good-night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the shuffling feet went back and the ringing steps
+came on, and the door opened and Cleve Stuart entered
+the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, good-night, dearie, I’m gone. Good-night, Mr.
+Stuart,” said Mrs. Pole. And rising from the second easy-chair
+into which she had thrown herself she nodded and left
+them, regardless of Stuart’s good-natured protestations that
+she must not let him drive her away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All our tired travelers “slept the sleep of the just” that
+night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As for Palma, she knew nothing from the time her head
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>touched her pillow until she opened her eyes the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The room was dark, or lighted only by the red glow of
+the hickory wood fire, and it was silent but for an occasional
+crackle of some brand that was not of hickory, but of some
+more resinous wood that had found its way in among the
+harder sort.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart was not by her side, nor anywhere in the room.
+Evidently he had got up and dressed and left while she still
+slept soundly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma crept out of bed and crossed the floor to open the
+window, but as she did so the chamber door was opened
+and the younger of the two negro women came in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Mornin’, ma’am,” she said brightly, smiling and showing
+her teeth. “I was jes’ waitin’ outside o’ de do’ fo’ yo’
+to wake up, to come in an’ wait on yo’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You must have good ears,” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Middlin’. But w’en I heerd de planks in de flo’ creak,
+den I knowed yo’ was walkin’ across. I did brung up a
+pitcher o’ hot water fo’ yo’ an’ put it on de ha’rf—dar it is,
+ma’am,” said the girl, and she stooped and took up the
+pitcher and carried it over to the washstand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Tell me your name,” said Palma softly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Hatty, ma’am,” replied the girl, smiling brightly. And
+when she smiled it was with a brilliancy unequaled in
+Palma’s experience of faces. Hatty’s face was of the pure
+African type. There was not a drop of Caucasian blood in
+her veins; but she was of the finest African type, with fine
+crinkling, silky, black hair, with glowing black eyes, so
+large, soft and shining that, with varying phases they might
+be called black diamonds, black stars, or—when half closed
+with smiles or laughter, and veiled with their long, thick,
+curled, black lashes—sunlit, reed-shaded pools. Her nose
+was flat; her lips large and red, and her teeth white as
+ivory. And when she laughed she seemed to be a natural
+spring of mirth all by herself. And she was almost always
+laughing, often silently. Few could look on the happy face
+of the child without smiling in response.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, then, Hatty, I am afraid I am late. I hope I have
+not kept anybody waiting.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The girl, who had gone to open the windows, turned and
+answered shortly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>“Oh, Lor’, no, ma’am! De birds deirselves—w’ich it is
+de snowbirds, I mean—ain’t been long up, an’ de sun hese’f
+hasn’ showed ’bove de mount’in, dough he’s riz. See,
+ma’am!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She had drawn back the curtains and pulled up the shade,
+and now she threw open the shutters.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma came to the window and looked out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Oh! what a glorious sight! Yet, to be graphic, I must
+compare great things to small, or at least illustrate the
+former by the latter. The house from which she looked
+seemed now to be situated in the bottom of a vast, deep,
+bowl-shaped valley, its colors now, in midwinter, dark green,
+with gleams of snow-white, the whole canopied by deep
+blue, flushed in the east by opal shades of rose, gold, violet,
+and emerald. The mountains loomed all around in a circle
+of irregular peaks, all thickly covered with pines, cedars,
+spruce and other evergreen trees, which grew closest at the
+base and thinnest near the tops, which were mostly bare,
+and now, in December, covered, with snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Looking from the front window of her room Palma could
+see but half the circle—the eastern half, made beautiful now
+by the rising sun. The sun had not yet come in sight; but
+even as Palma gazed he suddenly sparkled up from behind
+the cliffs, gilding all the opal hues of morning with dazzling
+splendor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, what a happiness to live in a home like this!” she
+said to herself; “how good one ought to be to become half
+worthy of it! Oh, my! oh, my!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She heard voices speaking below her window. In the
+clearness of the atmosphere she recognized them as her husband’s
+and his uncle’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The former was saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, they are not a bit afraid of you! They seem to
+know you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes! they do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the speakers became silent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It’s ole marse, a-feedin’ ob de snowbirds,” Hatty explained.
+“Ole marse is jes’ a angel, ma’am! He’s good to
+eberybody an’ eberyfing.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You love your master very much, then, Hatty?” said
+Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Lub him? Dat ain’t no word for it! ’Cause, yo’ see,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>ma’am, I lubs so many bodies an’ so many fings, too, even
+down to red ribbins an’ cakes! But I puffickly ’dores ole
+marse!” said the girl, smiling until her eyes closed and all
+the lines of her features were horizontal.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma had gone to the washstand, where now the sound
+of splashing water prevented the hearing of any talk. Then,
+while she was drying her face and neck, she said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Run, Hatty, and take my traveling dress from the hook
+in the closet, and carry it out and shake it, and brush it,
+and bring it back to me. I won’t take time now to unpack
+my trunks to get another.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Almost before she ceased to speak the girl, glad to serve
+her, had darted into the closet, seized the dress, and was
+running off with it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By the time Palma had dried her skin and dressed her
+hair Hatty was back with the dark blue flannel suit, looking
+as fresh as when it came out of Lovelace &#38; Silkman’s establishment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as Palma finished her toilet she hurried downstairs
+and was met at the foot by the aged master of the
+house, who had just come in from his bird feeding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He wore a faded, dark blue dressing-gown, thickly
+wadded, and wrapped closely about his fragile form. He
+looked, if possible, fairer, frailer and more of a mere chrysalis
+than ever.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, my dear,” he said. “You have slept
+well, I know, and have risen to a beautiful day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear uncle, and opened my eyes upon a beautiful
+scene! Ah! what a happiness it is to live in such a lovely
+place! How much I thank you for bringing us to such a
+heavenly place!” said Palma, taking and kissing the pale
+hand that he had laid in silent blessing on her head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How much I thank you for coming, dear child!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank us for coming into paradise?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not paradise even in summer, when it is almost a
+Garden of Eden in the dip of the mountains! But I hope
+it will be a very happy home to you and yours. Remember
+that you are mistress here, of a house that has not had a
+mistress for more than thirty years, when my dear niece,
+your husband’s mother, married and left it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, but I am your servant, uncle—your servant and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>daughter, whose duty and delight will be to wait on you and
+minister to your comfort,” murmured Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Breakfast is ready, ma’am,” said Polly, the elderly negro
+woman, opening the parlor door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear,” said Mr. Cleve, drawing Palma’s arm
+within his own and leading her to the room, where the table
+was waiting and a splendid fire was burning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where is Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Pole?” inquired Palma,
+looking around.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go find them, Hatty,” ordered the master. But as he
+spoke Cleve entered the room by the side door and laughingly
+greeted his wife with the ironical question whether
+she was really “up for all day?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You should have waked me,” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, no, he should not. I hold with the Koran and
+‘never awaken a sleeper’ unless, indeed, the occasion is sufficiently
+important, which it was not this morning,” said
+Mr. Cleve as they all sat down to breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole came in, convoyed by Hatty, who had found
+her upstairs setting Palma’s room in order, and had taken
+upon herself to instruct the good old woman that “age-able
+ole white ladies didn’t make up no beds when there was
+colored young girls to do it for ’em.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole had greeted the company and taken her
+seat the master of the house asked the blessing and breakfast
+went on.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the morning meal was ended and the table cleared
+away Mr. Cleve said to Palma:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, my dear, when you feel disposed call Polly to
+show you all over the house. And you will make any alterations
+you see fit, choose any rooms that you may prefer
+for your private apartments, and make a list of any furniture
+or household utensils that you may need or may
+like, and they shall be bought. There is a good sleigh in the
+carriage house. If you would like to take a drive, send
+Hatty to the stables to tell Josias to clean it out and harness
+the horses. Do whatever you like, my child.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, dear uncle. I wish I knew what you would
+like, and that I would do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I would like you to be happy, my child.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, then; thank you, uncle, I will,” exclaimed
+Palma with a light laugh as she danced out of the room
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>and tripped upstairs to her own chamber to begin the work
+of unpacking and putting away her own and her husband’s
+wardrobe, in which she was to be assisted by Mrs. Pole,
+who soon entered the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Never in her life had Palma been so happy, so lighthearted,
+so contented with the present, so careless of the future.
+Even in her bridal days, sickness and the shadow of
+death had been about her and had sobered, if it had not
+darkened her delight. But now every cloud was lifted; the
+present was full of joy, the future full of glad promise, and
+her own soul overflowing with thankfulness to the Lord.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole was almost equally enchanted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, we have both reached a haven of peace and
+safety that is like a heavenly rest. Let us be good and
+obedient children to our Father and Lord. That is all we
+can do to show our gratitude,” said Palma, who was kneeling
+by the side of her great sea trunk, taking out clothing
+piece by piece and handing them to her attendant, who was
+standing before the bureau and who folded each article in
+turn and put it away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Darling,” answered Mrs. Pole, “I do not think as ever
+I did such a good and altogether profitable day’s work as I
+did that precious day when I found you too ill to get out
+of bed and not a single soul to take care of you; and when
+I said to myself as the week’s washing at Wilton’s would
+have to go with my week’s wages into the bargin, and to-morrow
+would have to take thought for itself, according to
+Scripture, for once, for I was bound to stop long o’ you
+an’ nuss you. Lor’, child! I haven’t too often walked by
+faith instead o’ by sight, but I did it that once, and lo and
+behold! what’s come outen it! We have never parted from
+that day to this, and here I am in my old age not only
+comfortable, but luxurious pervided for.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You ‘cast your bread upon the waters and after many
+days it has returned to you,’” said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, please the Lord, for the futur’ I do mean to try
+to be a better woman,” said Mrs. Pole very earnestly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When their task was completed and everything was in
+order, Palma dropped into an easy-chair, drew a deep
+breath, and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now, Poley, it is but eleven o’clock, and there are three
+hours before Uncle Cleve’s early dinner at two, so, if you
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>like, we will send for Aunt Polly—all the colored women
+who are past their youth are aunts, you know; everybody’s
+aunts, Cleve says—we will send for Aunt Polly and get her
+to show us all over our new little kingdom, this big, old
+house—its dining-room, kitchen and pantry, its storerooms,
+china and linen closets, its chambers, attics and cuddies, and
+all. Will you come, Poley, dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you tired to death and out of breath now? No,
+my dear. No. You must not exert yourself one bit more
+to-day. Now mind what I tell you, honey. It is for your
+good and Its!” replied Mrs. Pole, with a solemn warning
+shake of her head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, Poley, I will obey you. Cleve and uncle are
+shut up in the parlor, talking business, I suppose, so I will
+sit here and sew until dinner time, or until I am called,”
+said Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole got up and went to the shelf in the closet and
+returned with Palma’s workbasket, in which her sewing
+was already neatly arranged, and set it down on the floor
+beside its owner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Palma selected a tiny, half-finished garment that
+might have fitted a medium doll, and began to sew some lace
+edging on it. And soon, in the gayety of her heart, she
+began to sing at her work.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole got her own basket of infirm socks and stockings
+and began to darn.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXI<br> <span class='large'>UNCLE AND NEPHEW</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>While they were so occupied Mr. Cleve had closed the
+parlor door, shutting himself in with his nephew for a long
+talk over their past and present lives and future arrangements—though
+the earthly future of the aged man would
+necessarily be very brief.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The old gentleman wished rather to hear than to talk,
+and so he only briefly reverted to the main events of his
+own life—his early disappointment in love when his betrothed
+bride was taken ill and died a few days before their
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>intended marriage, and was buried in her bridal dress on
+her wedding day.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yet, no; she was not buried, only her left-off body was
+buried. She lived! Oh! how vividly! how blessedly! how
+potently she lives! And I shall soon see her again! After
+seventy years, my boy! after seventy years! But what are
+they, in view of the life everlasting?” said the aged man in
+conclusion of this reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart made no reply, but pressed his uncle’s hand
+in reverential silence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the old man spoke of the nephews who had borne
+his own name and expected to inherit his estate, but who
+had both died, unmarried, of wounds received in battle.
+Then he spoke of his long, vain search of his niece’s son,
+Cleve Stuart, and of the chance by which he found him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, my boy, that I have found you, let me say
+that I find you all that I could wish, and your young wife—charming!
+But tell me about her, Cleve. Who is she?” he
+inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Palma is the daughter of the late James Jordan Hay
+and the granddaughter of the late John Hayward Hay, of
+Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, England,”
+replied Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why—indeed! I knew the old squire. When I went to
+Europe in my young manhood I reached England in the
+autumn, and through a letter of introduction got an invitation
+to Mr. Storr’s, of Hoxton, where I stayed for the
+Melton hunts and met Mr. Hay, of Haymore. Yes, the
+Hays, of Haymore, are an ancient, historical, almost, I
+might say, an illustrious family. I congratulate you, my
+boy, but more on the personal merit of your young wife than
+on her family connections. Who represents the house now
+at Haymore? Which of the three lads I found there?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart, as briefly as possible, gave him the later family
+history.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What a fatality! All these fine boys to pass away in
+early manhood! And the son of Cuthbert, the second
+brother, you say, inherits the manor. I remember Cuthbert
+well. He was intended for the church. They called him
+Cuddie. Now, tell me how you came to meet Palma. She
+was the daughter of the youngest brother, James, you say.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; and after the death of her parents she was adopted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>by Judge and Mrs. Barrn, who were my guardians. I met
+Palma in their house when I first went there to live, and so
+knew her from her infancy up. I won her pure affection
+then, and never afterward lost it, thank Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“An excellent knowledge and a blessed beginning. Now,
+tell me how it was you lost your Mississippi plantation.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have not lost it. It is legally mine, but of no more
+use to me than would be so many acres of waste land in
+the<a id='t302'></a> Sahara. The land is, indeed, a desert, and the buildings a
+mass of charred ruins.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Through the war?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, of course. Mansion house, stables, barns, mills,
+negroes’ quarters fired and burned to the ground; stock all
+driven off; negroes conscripted. The place is a ruin and a
+wilderness; it would take many thousand dollars to reclaim
+it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The old man sighed, but made no reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Stuart told him frankly of the desperate straits to
+which he had been reduced at the time when his uncle’s
+letter came to him so opportunely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Cleve was shocked.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If I had known! If I had only known!” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But in all his narrative Stuart never mentioned the name
+or existence of either Lamia Leegh or Gentleman Geff. It
+was bad enough, he thought, to trouble the old gentleman’s
+calm spirit with the tale of want; but it would have been
+far worse to have darkened and depressed it with the story
+of falsehood and treachery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The early dinner bell brought the family together, and
+around the table were only happy faces. All the painful
+past was for the time forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The afternoon was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The large old sleigh was brushed out, lined with buffalo
+skins and blankets, and brought around to the front door by
+two swift horses. And the four—Mr. Cleve, Mrs. Pole,
+Stuart and Palma—took a ride; the first pair seated on the
+back seat, the second on the front seat, and Josias, the
+coachman, on the box.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They took the road that skirted the base of the mountains,
+on the inside, and went in a circle around the plantation.
+On this road, under the shelter of the mountains,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>stood the negroes’ quarters—log huts, large and small, from
+one room to two, three or even four, according to the necessities
+of the occupants. The men and boys were all away at
+such farm work as the season permitted, and the women
+were engaged in washing, ironing, cooking, or carding and
+spinning wool. Their open doors showed their occupations,
+and showed also the bright pine wood fires that so warmed
+their huts as to permit these open doors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sleigh passed too swiftly for the party in it to return
+half the nods and smiles with which their passage was
+greeted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Uncle,” said Palma, “you appear to me like a patriarch
+of old living among his tribe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, dear child, with this exception—the patriarchs
+were men of large families, with many sons and daughters,
+and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, and innumerable
+grandchildren and great-grandchildren to the third and
+fourth generation, to rise up and call them blessed. And
+I—have none.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! uncle, dear, you have us. We love you; indeed, we
+do. And we will serve you as tenderly and devotedly as
+any children could.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know it, my dear; I know it. And I thank the Lord
+for sending you to me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I thank the Lord that you let us come. And, oh!
+uncle, I wish we could multiply ourselves into a tribe of
+many generations to serve and bless you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All in good time, my little love; all in good time,” said
+the old man with a twinkle in his glowing brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The three miles’ circuit of the road was completed, and
+they reached the house just as the winter sun was winking
+out of sight behind the western peak.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The first day the ground will admit of walking I shall
+go on foot to make the acquaintance of all your interesting
+people, Uncle Cleve. I liked the glimpses I got of them as
+we flew by,” said Palma as she gave her hand to her husband
+and sprang out of the sleigh.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, my child, so you shall,” replied the old man as he
+in his turn alighted with the assistance of both Stuart and
+Palma. “So you shall, my dear. And there are some few
+neighbors and some distant relatives of ours with whom you
+must soon make acquaintance.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>“Who are they, uncle, dear?” inquired Palma as she entered
+the house on the old man’s arm, followed by Stuart
+and Mrs. Pole, while ’Sias drove the sleigh around to the
+stables.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will tell you presently, dear,” replied Mr. Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the hall Palma laid off her fur cloak and hood and
+gave them to Hatty to take upstairs. Stuart helped his
+uncle off with his overcoat and muffler.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they had all returned to the oak parlor, where the
+great fire had been replenished, and were seated around the
+hearth enjoying the glow, and while Polly was passing in
+and out setting the tea table, Mr. Cleve said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“We have no very near relations left in this world. We
+who sit here are the nearest of kin to each other. Still, you
+know, Virginians are as clannish as highlanders.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed. I remember that much of my beloved
+mother. No matter how distant the relationship or how
+humble or even unworthy the individual, my dear mother
+always held sacred the claims of kindred. My poor father,
+who was not so clannish, used to laugh at her a little and
+ask:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Why do you not take in all the human race at once,
+since all are Sons and daughters of our first parents, and
+brothers and sisters of ourselves?’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, he was right,” commented the old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But excuse me for interrupting you, uncle. You were
+speaking of our kindred in this country, and we are anxious
+to hear of them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, my boy, there are the Gordons, of Gordondell;
+they are our third cousins, and live about seven miles south
+of this on the Staunton road. They are a large family of
+three generations, living in one house; but they are all
+Gordons. Then there are the Bells, of the Elms; only two,
+a bachelor brother and maiden sister, living on their little
+place just beyond Wolfswalk. And the Clydes, my dears,
+who live in the village, and keep a general store. There is
+a young father and mother and half a dozen children. That
+is all. They are all more or less injured by the war, and
+are poor, and—some of them—somewhat embittered by
+their losses; but they are our kindred, and we must have
+them all here to meet you in the coming Christmas holidays.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>“Tea is on the table, ma’am,” said Polly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the party left the fireside and gathered around the
+table.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sleigh ride had given them all fine appetites, and
+they enjoyed their repast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After it was over, and the evening worship was offered
+up, the little family separated and retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so ended the first day at Wolfscliff; the first, also,
+of many happy days.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The cousins did not wait to be invited. The news of the
+new arrival at the Hall was soon spread through the neighborhood
+by the negroes, and neighbors and relatives lost no
+time in calling on the young pair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And yet these were not so truly calls as visits, for when
+any one came to the house they arrived in the morning to
+stay all day and take dinner and tea. They expected this,
+and it was also expected of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The very first to come were the Gordons, who arrived
+early in the morning a few days before Christmas. They
+came in a big ox cart, and filled it. There was old Mr. and
+Mrs. Gordon, an ancient couple nearly ninety years of age,
+bowed, shriveled and white-haired, yet, withal, right merry;
+and their bachelor brother and maiden sister, Mr. Tommy
+and Miss Nancy Gordon, as aged and as merry as themselves;
+then there was the son and daughter, Col. and Mrs.
+George Gordon, both stout, rosy and full of the enjoyment
+of this life, and their middle-aged bachelor brother and
+maiden sister, Mr. Henry and Miss Rebecca Gordon. And
+there were seven young men and three young women between
+the ages of fifteen and twenty-seven. But, really, it
+would take up too much time and space to tell you all their
+names and ages and characters. They were a happy, rollicking
+set of young people.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They had not been much hurt either in mind, body or
+estate by the war, and were neither depressed nor embittered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then came the two old folks from the Elms. And, finally,
+the Clydes, from the village.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And besides these, neighbors came; old families who had
+been in the land, as the Cleves had, from the first settlement
+by the English—the Hills, the Ords, and the Balls—all
+of whom lived within ten miles of Wolfscliff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>And all of these kinsfolks and neighbors were warmly
+welcomed at Wolfscliff, and well liked by Cleve and Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Christmas brought its usual festivities at the home, but
+also a snowstorm that commenced on the morning of Christmas
+Eve and continued all day and all night and all the
+next day, covering the ground two feet deep, and toward
+the close of the second day, when the wind rose, drifting in
+places several yards deep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This made it impossible for the families at Wolfscliff to
+leave the house; but Mr. Cleve held service in the large
+drawing-room, where all his people from the plantation, as
+well as the members of his household, were collected.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And when the service was over Christmas gifts were distributed,
+mostly in articles of clothing, to the servants. To
+Palma he gave a casket of pearls and rubies that had been
+his mother’s; to Stuart he gave a fine horse, with new saddle
+and bridle, that he had within a few days past purchased
+from a neighbor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve and Palma gave to him an olive-green velveteen
+dressing-grown and skullcap to match, which they had purchased
+for this very purpose; and to the servants each they
+gave a piece of gold coin, having nothing else to offer them.
+And then the congregation dispersed joyfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The snowstorm continued, with a high wind. The contemplated
+dinner party for the twenty-seventh had to be
+given up. The state of the road made travel impossible for
+several days.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One of the first expeditions abroad was made by Josias,
+who, mounted on a stout mule, tried to reach the post office
+at Wolfswalk. It took him all day to go and come, but he
+succeeded, and late in the evening brought back letters and
+parcels that had been forwarded from New York to the
+Stuarts—letters and parcels that bore the London and the
+Haymore postmarks. The first were from the London solicitors
+of the Hays, of Haymore, and contained the information
+that certain railway, mining and manufacturing
+shares had been transferred from the name of Randolph
+Hay to that of Palma Hay Stuart, and were at her disposal,
+and included the bonds—for, after all, self-indulgent Will
+Walling had decided not to take the long journey to the
+mountains of Virginia in the midst of winter, but to forward
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>the documents by mail, and without even an explanatory
+letter from himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think you will have no trouble in finding the funds for
+the reclamation of your Mississippi estate,” said John Cleve
+with a smile as he received the information which Stuart
+seemed proud and glad to give him. “Your wife’s cousin
+is a noble, generous fellow. Whom did he marry?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart was for a moment dumfounded by the question.
+He had not so far risen above conventionality as not
+to feel much embarrassment in replying.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Miss Judith Man, of California,” answered Palma, on
+seeing that Stuart had found nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! Who was she?” next inquired Mr. Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The best, the noblest, the loveliest girl I ever met with
+in my life!” warmly responded Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! that is well, very well! Of what family was she?”
+persevered the old gentleman, who was completely unconscious
+of the embarrassment his questions were causing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I really do not know, uncle, dear,” answered Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not think we ever inquired,” replied Stuart, speaking
+at last.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! well, it does not matter, so that she is a good, true
+girl, worthy of the noble young fellow,” said Mr. Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She is all that, uncle,” said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma and Stuart then opened their letters. They were
+from Ran and Judy, telling them of their arrival at Haymore,
+their reception of Gentleman Geff and his “lady,”
+and, indeed, of all the events that transpired in the first few
+days of their stay at the Hall, and of which our readers
+are already informed; making no mention of the transfer
+of stocks from Ran to Palma; but renewing and pressing
+their invitation that the Stuarts would visit them in England
+during the next summer. Of course, Ran and Judy at
+the time of writing their letter had not heard of Cleve and
+Palma’s removal to West Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma was so little a worshiper of Mammon that she was
+much more delighted with the faithful affection revealed in
+these letters than with the accession of fortune that accompanied
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She flew upstairs to answer them. She was earnest in her
+thanks for Ran’s magnanimity in giving her so noble a
+share in their grandfather’s fortune; but she was even more
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>earnest in her appreciation of Judy’s friendship and their
+mutual invitation to herself and Cleve. She had, however,
+to explain why neither of them could take advantage of the
+offered opportunity of visiting their friends in England, by
+telling them of her own and her husband’s change of residence
+and new-found happiness in the country home of
+their aged uncle, and of the impossibility that they should
+leave him while his presence on earth should be spared to
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart also answered Ran’s letters in very much
+the same strain, giving the same thanks with much deprecation,
+and offering the same explanations.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These letters were all taken to the post office the next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In another week the weather moderated and the snow
+melted. But traveling was, if possible, more difficult than
+before, for the roads were sloughs of mud.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But within doors, at Wolfscliff, all was pleasant, comfortable
+and happy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Only Mrs. Pole complained of having too little to do.
+But her special grievance did not last very long, for——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the morning of the fourteenth of February Palma
+Stuart received from Above, in trust for earth and heaven,
+a most precious valentine, in the form of a pair of twins,
+a fine boy and girl. And no more grateful and delighted
+mother dwelling on the “footstool” that day raised her
+heart in prayer and thanksgiving to the Throne.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No prouder father lived than Stuart, no happier uncle
+than John Cleve, nor more important nurse than Mary
+Pole. She had enough to do now, both day and night, to
+nurse mother and babes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the very first visit Stuart was allowed to make at the
+bedside of his wife, when he had kissed her with deep feeling,
+and had admired the twins to his heart’s content, she
+said to him:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Cleve, dear, of course our boy must be named John
+Cleve, after dear uncle and yourself. But our little girl?
+Will you please ask uncle if he will let us call her Clarice,
+after his own dear angel love?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well thought of, darling. I know he will be pleased.
+I will ask him as soon as I go downstairs,” warmly responded
+Cleve Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>“And you must go now, sir, if you please. She must be
+quiet and go to sleep if she can,” said Mrs. Pole from the
+eminence of her new authority.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart meekly bowed his head and obeyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The result of Palma’s proposal was this: Early in the afternoon,
+when she had had a good sleep, had awakened and
+taken refreshment, and was resting in peace and bliss, the
+old gentleman came quietly into the room, sat down beside
+her, and said softly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you, my dear. May the Lord bless you, and
+may He bless your dear babes—little Clarice and John.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXII<br> <span class='large'>AN EARTHLY PARADISE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Spring opens early on the southwestern section of Virginia,
+and leaves, flowers and birds come soon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma and her babies were out with the violets and the
+bluebirds. And no one could have more enjoyed the beautiful
+weather in this glorious scene than the city-bred girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Even in April, the cup-shaped vale, shut in by green-wooded
+mountains, seemed a Garden of Eden, or the fairy
+“Valley of Calm Delights.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart had taken to agricultural life as to his native element,
+and often declared his delight in it, and expressed his
+wonder how he, the descendant of a hundred generations of
+farmers, could have been contented to live in a city.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Directly after breakfast every morning he mounted his
+horse and rode out afield to look after the laborers. Certainly,
+much of the theory and practice of farming he had
+to learn from his uncle; but he was an apt pupil. So apt,
+he said to Palma, that his learning seemed to him more
+like the recollection of forgotten knowledge than the acquisition
+of new ideas.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma, for her part, loved to put her two babies in the
+double perambulator that had been brought from the nearest
+town for their use, and, attended by Hatty, wheel them
+out to the road that ran around the vale and was dotted with
+the log huts and little gardens of the negroes on the side
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>next to the mountain. This was like a royal progress.
+Everywhere the young mother and children were greeted
+with joy by the colored women and girls in the cabins.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On week days none but women and children could be
+found there; all the men were afield.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Sunday they would all, or nearly all, go to church;
+and it was a strange thing that a little community, numbering
+less than one hundred, men, women and children all
+counted, should include so many religious sects; for here
+were to be found Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
+Methodists and Baptists. I think that was all; for of finer
+sub-divisions of doctrine or opinion they knew nothing, and
+a more Christian community than the people of this plantation,
+notwithstanding their sectarian differences, could scarcely
+be found anywhere. And this was owing, in a great
+measure, to the teachings and example of their master—a
+pure Christian.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was accustomed to say to them:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By whatever sectarian name you choose to call yourselves
+matters little; be Christian. ‘The disciples were called
+Christians first at Antioch.’ ‘For there is no other name
+under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved
+but that of Christ.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Old ’Sias being asked one day by a stranger as to his
+religious faith and experience answered that he was Christian,
+and his law of life was love of God and his neighbor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The people loved their master well. Not one left him
+when emancipation was proclaimed. Even the young men,
+who longed to see life, would not leave old master while he
+should live on earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Old Cleve was the friend, teacher and patriarch of his
+people.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Never in his life, however, had the old man been so
+happy as at present. The society of Stuart, Palma and their
+babies opened new springs of joy in his heart and home.
+He loved to spend hours reclining in his easy-chair on the
+piazza, with the young mother seated near him and the
+infants in their pretty basket cradle beside her, while Mrs.
+Pole would be looking after household affairs within, and
+Stuart would be supervising agricultural matters afield.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The twins were little more than two months old when
+John Cleve saw, or thought he saw, a growing likeness between
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>the tiny Clarice and the angel for whom she was
+named. As for him, he was waiting the call to come and
+rejoin his own Clarice in one of the many mansions of our
+Father’s house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nor was the summons long delayed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a lovely morning in May.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The vale was more like than ever to a Garden of Eden.
+It was a chalice full of bloom, fragrance and music lifted
+up in offering to Heaven.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart was absent on horseback, riding from field to field,
+overlooking the workmen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All the other members of the family were gathered on the
+front porch.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, with a pair of shears in her hands, was walking
+about the place, carefully clipping a few dead leaves from
+the rose vines that climbed about the pillars. She had taken
+to gardening with as much enthusiasm as Stuart had taken
+to farming.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma sat on a little, low chair, busy with her needlework.
+At her feet stood the pretty basket cradle in which
+lay the twin babes, sleeping.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Near them sat John Cleve, reclining in a large resting-chair.
+His hands were folded before him, and he was
+gazing out upon the scene with a face illumined by reverence
+and serene rapture. Not a word had he spoken since
+the babies went to sleep. Now he murmured:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! the beauty and the glory of Thy sunlit earth and
+heavens, our Father.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The words seemed to issue involuntarily from the lips of
+the speaker in the midst of the deep silence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh! the loveliness of Thy celestial angels!” he murmured
+in a lower and a slower tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma looked up from her sewing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He did not speak again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She turned around to look at him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had sunk back in his chair and shrunken together.
+His hands lay folded on his knees, his head bowed on his
+chest, and his silver hair shining in the morning sunlight.
+His face could not possibly be whiter than it had always
+been since she had known him, but something else in his
+aspect startled and alarmed her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>She sprang up and went to him, bent over him, and laid
+her hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Uncle! Uncle!” she said softly but eagerly, anxiously—“Uncle!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t distress—yourself, dear—it is all right—bless
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These were his last words. His whole slight frame seemed
+to collapse and shrink closer together, his head sank lower,
+his hands slipped apart and dropped down by his sides.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Mrs. Pole, startled by some sound, hurried to the
+spot, she found Palma in a panic of grief and amazement
+too deep for utterance, standing over the lifeless body of
+the good old man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole in great emergencies had but little self-possession.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She threw up her hands in horror, and then ran wildly
+in and out of the house, shrieking:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Polly! Hatty! ’Sias!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And as the frightened servants came running at her call,
+the women from the kitchen, the man from the lawn, they
+found the young mistress down on the floor at the feet of
+the dead master, with her hands clasped around his knees
+and her head bowed upon them, sobbing as if her heart
+must break. Tears had come and broken the trance of
+sorrow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Run for the doctor! Run for Mr. Stuart! Run all of
+you!” cried Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the servants ran in all directions to spread the news
+or to bring efficient help.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole went to Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Get up, my dear child! Let me help you up.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Don’t—don’t,” gasped Palma in a smothered tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, come with me,” persisted the woman, taking hold
+of her arm and trying to lift her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Leave me! Leave me!” cried the mourner, clinging the
+closer to her dead, and continuing obdurate to all entreaty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve Stuart, found and summoned by ’Sias, soon came
+galloping up to the house, threw himself off his horse and
+hurried up on the porch.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One look of awe, sorrow and reverence to the changed
+face of his uncle showed him what had happened. Then he
+looked on his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>“Make her get up, sir. Do make her get up. I can’t
+get her to move from that!” sobbed Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When did this happen?” inquired Stuart in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not twenty minutes ago, I reckon, though I’m not sure.
+It was as quick as lightning. One moment he was talking
+bright and cheerful, and the next moment he was gone like
+a flash! Oh! make her get up, sir. She will kill herself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Palma, dear, you must let me take you in,” he said, laying
+his hand gently on the bowed head of his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But sobs were her only reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Palma, we will have to take him in and lay him on his
+bed. Come with me first.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But she only wept and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With gentle force he took her arms from around the dead,
+lifted her, bore her into the parlor, laid her on the sofa and
+called Polly to attend her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He returned to the porch, told Mrs. Pole to look after the
+babies and leave everything else to him, and called the grief-stricken
+’Sias to help him to carry the dead into the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a very light weight for so tall and broad-shouldered
+a man, but, then, it was but little more than skin and
+bone, a human chrysalis.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They bore it to the chamber in the rear of the parlor on
+the ground floor, that had been John Cleve’s sleeping-room.
+Here they laid it on the bed to await the arrival of the
+family physician. The latter could do no good, but all the
+same he must come.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not until afternoon could the busy country doctor, whose
+practice extended over many miles, be found and brought to
+Wolfscliff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was conducted by Stuart to the room of death.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A death from old age, pure and simple,” was the verdict
+of science.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did you ever see a body more thoroughly consumed by
+the life of the spirit? I have known Mr. Cleve all my life,
+as my father and my grandfather knew him before me, and
+I never knew of, or heard of, his having a day’s illness,”
+concluded Dr. Osborne as they sat together beside the bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He was a saint prepared for heaven,” reverently replied
+the young man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then they arose, and standing on each side of the bed,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>drew the sheet up over the calm, cold face and left the room
+together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor went away, kindly offering to transact any
+business that was now required for the family and for the
+deceased at Wolfswalk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart went to inquire about the condition of his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Polly had put her to bed, and Mrs. Pole had laid her
+sleeping infants in with her, the one on her right side and
+the other on her left. They were the best sedatives, for the
+tender mother was obliged to control herself for fear of
+disturbing them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole, now as quiet and decorous as in the morning
+she had been noisy and turbulent, sat in a large easy-chair,
+watching the three.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As Stuart softly opened the door she raised her finger
+in warning, and then silently arose and went to him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“She has just fallen asleep herself. I wouldn’t speak to
+her now, if I was you. She is sleeping very quiet,” she
+said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank Heaven! Take care of her, Mrs. Pole,” murmured
+Cleve in a low tone as he withdrew.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole closed the door and went back to resume her
+watch.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Three days later the mortal body of John Cleve, of Wolfscliff,
+was borne to the family burial ground on the plateau
+on one of the hills that looked up to the sky. It was followed
+by a great concourse of people, consisting of kindred,
+friends, servants and neighbors from far and near.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The services were concluded there, with these few words
+of such divine love and truth that I quote them here for the
+comfort they may give to all sorrowing souls who grieve
+because they think, and think wrongly, that they have laid
+their loved ones in the grave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘And now, having performed the last service of love to
+our dear brother by laying his body in the earth from which
+it came, we leave it there, as he has left it, to follow him
+by faith to his eternal home.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Will my readers note the use of the pronouns there?
+There is deep meaning in that.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the obsequies, life went on very calmly at Wolfscliff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>Stuart and Palma wrote every week to their friends in
+England, and quite as often got letters from them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again Ran and Judy urged Stuart and Palma to come
+and visit them, as there was nothing now to keep the latter
+at Wolfscliff. They wrote that they had given up their plan
+of leaving Haymore Hall to study in London. That the
+attractions of the country and the home were so great that
+they could not tear themselves away from it. That they
+had formed attachments not only to the place, but to the
+people. That they should remain there, and that the Rev.
+James Campbell had undertaken to direct their studies, and
+they expected to derive quite as much—if not more—benefit
+from his instructions as they could from professional
+teachers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The correspondence resulted in a promise from the
+Stuarts to run over to England after the wheat harvest
+should be gathered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was while Stuart was thinking of setting a certain day
+for their embarkation and purchasing their tickets that a
+strange visitor arrived at Wolfscliff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was a glorious day in the latter part of June.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart was afield, looking after the wheat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma was seated on the front piazza, with her babies
+placed face to face in their cradle on her right hand, and
+her workbasket, overflowing with work, on her left.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She was singing to herself in a low key when she heard
+the sound of wheels on the gravel walk.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Looking up, she saw the hack from the Wolfshead tavern,
+at Wolfswalk, approaching. It drew up before the porch.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The coachman got off his box and went to the carriage
+door and opened it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A gentleman got out—a tall, thin man of about forty
+years of age, with dark, reddish-brown hair and beard.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma laid aside her work and stood up to receive the
+visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He came up the steps of the piazza, stopped, raised his
+hat, and as he looked at the childlike young matron before
+him, said with some hesitation:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mrs.—Stuart? Have I the honor of speaking to Mrs.
+Stuart?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is my name, sir,” replied Palma politely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>He bowed and handed her a card, on which she read:
+“The O’Melaghlin, Carrick Arghalee, Antrim, Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you come into the house, sir? Mr. Stuart is not
+here at present, but he is not far off, and I will send for
+him at once,” said Palma, leading the way into the hall
+and touching a call-bell as she passed a stand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, madam,” said the stranger, following her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She conducted him into the drawing-room, gave him a
+seat and turned to speak to Hatty, who had come in answer
+to the bell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ask Mrs. Pole, please, to go to the children on the
+piazza. Then send ’Sias to look for Mr. Stuart, to tell him
+that there is a gentleman here waiting to see him, and give
+him this card,” said Palma, putting the slip of pasteboard
+into the girl’s hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is ’Sias for to gib dis to young marster?” inquired
+Hatty, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, certainly. Go away now and do your errands. Go
+to Mrs. Pole first,” said the anxious young mother. And
+then she sat down near the front window, through which,
+from time to time, she could glance out and see that no
+harm should come to the babies until the arrival of her relief
+sentinel, Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma was not very well versed in the ways of the world,
+yet she felt it incumbent on her to entertain the stranger,
+but she did not exactly know how to do it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are recently from Ireland. I have some very dear
+friends of that country. Indeed, my nearest kinsman married
+a young girl of that nation.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes; I am aware of that fact. Mr. Randolph Hay married
+Miss Judith Man—that brings me here to-day. But
+as for myself, I have not seen Ireland for twenty-one years,”
+said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma looked up in surprise.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have been in California, Colorado, Australia, Tasmania,
+Cape Colony—everywhere else but in my native
+land,” continued the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma looked up inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I came last from California,” concluded the
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma suddenly remembered that it was rude to stare in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>silence at any one, especially at a visitor in one’s own house;
+so she dropped her eyes and said demurely:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am glad you knew Judith Man, Mrs. Randolph Hay,
+of Haymore, my cousin by marriage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I don’t know her at all. All the same, she is my daughter—my
+only daughter—and I hope to find her soon, with
+your assistance, and to make her acquaintance. It is for
+that purpose that I am here,” said the stranger.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now Palma stared in right good earnest, without once
+thinking whether she was rude or not. Moreover, she committed
+another breach of good manners—she echoed his
+words:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your daughter!” she exclaimed in astonishment and incredulity.
+“I never did hear of such a thing!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Perhaps not,” said the visitor, laughing good-humoredly;
+“but it is true, nevertheless. And, besides, there
+are a great many million</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘More things in heaven and earth’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>than you ever did hear of, or ever will hear of, my dear
+young lady.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I beg your pardon, sir; but indeed I was so taken by surprise!”
+said Palma, apologetically, and with a pretty blush.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not at all!” exclaimed the stranger, rather irrelevantly.
+“Say no more about it; but tell me something of my son
+and my daughter. You said nothing about my son, yet I
+have been told that they are both equally and intimately
+well known to you and to your excellent husband. What
+are these young people like, madam, if you please?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mike and Judy? They are both lovely! Just lovely!”
+warmly responded Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is exceedingly complimentary, and would be highly
+satisfactory, only it is not quite exact enough. A rose is
+lovely, so is a pearl, so is a fawn, so is a baby.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes!” exclaimed the young mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So many things are lovely, you see, that to say they are
+lovely gives me no clear idea of them. Be more precise,
+dear lady.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, then, they are so good, so sweet—but I think I had
+better show you their photographs,” said Palma, with sudden
+inspiration.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>“The very thing!” exclaimed the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma sprang up and ran like an eager child to the other
+end of the drawing-room and to an <em>etagere</em> that stood in
+the corner, and took from it a large-paged but thin photograph
+album, with which she returned to her visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This book,” she said, “contains only the pictures of our
+dearest friends. There are not more than thirty-three pictures
+in the collection; but then there are in some cases
+several of each person. I will show you Mike’s and Judy’s.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No!” exclaimed the visitor. “Pray let me have the
+book and see if I can find them for myself. I have never
+seen them. You are naturally amazed to hear me say that,
+but you shall know the reason of the fact in good time,”
+said The O’Melaghlin, as he received the book from Palma,
+who, having placed it in his hands, resumed her seat,
+watched him as he turned over the leaves, and speculated
+with much interest whether he would be able to identify the
+pictures of his son and daughter, whom he had never seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Presently his face lighted up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here they are!” he exclaimed, pointing to the open
+pages that presented full-length cabinet photographs of
+Mike and Judy—the former being on the left-hand page
+and the latter on the right.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, you are right,” replied Palma in surprise; “but
+how could you tell?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because this,” he replied, laying his finger on Judy’s
+picture, “is a perfect likeness of my dear lost Moira; and
+this,” he added, indicating Mike’s, “is as like her as a youth
+can be like his mother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They are faithful likenesses of the twin brother and
+sister,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now tell me, my dear young lady, about my boy and
+girl.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your daughter, I have said, is sweet and good and very
+dear to us all who know her. To say that she is married
+to one of the wealthiest land owners of one of the oldest
+families in Yorkshire would be true, but it would not be
+so much as to say that her husband is one of the best, the
+truest, the most generous and most magnanimous of men.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your praise is enthusiastic, therefore extravagant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It could not be. Ask Judy herself.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ask a young woman still in love! She would be a very
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>impartial witness, no doubt,” laughed The O’Melaghlin.
+“But now about my boy?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is altogether worthy of his sister and his brother-in-law.
+I could not say any more for him than that.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Which is to say that he is good, true and brave.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, he is all that.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But his objects in life?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To be of the best use to any whom he may serve; and
+the better to do this, he wishes to get a good education.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite right! And he is young enough still to go to
+college, not being quite twenty years of age.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I am so glad for his sake that you have come forward;
+because Michael has that spirit of independence that
+he shrinks from being indebted to his good brother-in-law
+for his college fees.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Quite right is that also. He is a true O’Melaghlin, and
+I am proud of him! And now, my dear young lady, you
+may be wondering how I discovered yourself and your husband
+and your connection—happy connection for them—with
+my children.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It has been equally happy for us, sir, indeed. Michael
+and Judith are among our most esteemed friends.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am glad to hear you say so, dear madam.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIII<br> <span class='large'>THE KINGLY O’MELAGHLINS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>At this moment Cleve Stuart so quietly entered the room
+that Palma was not aware of his entrance until he stood
+before her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Mr. O’Melaghlin—Mr. Stuart,” she said, presenting the
+gentlemen to each other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The visitor arose and both bowed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I bring a letter of introduction for you, sir, from the
+Messrs. Walling, of New York,” said The O’Melaghlin,
+drawing from his breast a neat, open envelope and handing
+it to Mr. Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve took it with a bow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On the envelope, besides the superscription—“To Cleve
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>Stuart, Esq., Wolfscliff, W. V.,”—there was written between
+brackets, in the corner: “To introduce The O’Melaghlin,
+Carrick Arghalee, Antrim.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now, the use of the definite article as the prefix of a
+man’s surname had been a puzzle to Palma, and even a surprise
+to Cleve, though he remembered that in the north of
+Ireland, as well as in Scotland, it was affected by certain
+heads of families among the landed gentry of ancient lineage,
+and considered to outrank either plain “Mr.” or
+“Squire.” O’Melaghlin, therefore, must be recognized as
+The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With your permission,” said Stuart, with a bow, as he
+opened the letter, which was as follows—and rather more
+than sarcastic in its peculiar style, as Cleve thought when
+he read it, though he hoped and believed that the bearer
+of the letter had not—if he had read the words—perceived
+the sarcasm:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Office of Walling &#38; Walling</span>, Att’ys, Etc.</div>
+      <div class='line in16'>“New York, May 8, 187—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Cleve Stuart, Esq.</span>, Wolfscliff, W. V.: I have the great
+honor to present—you—to The O’Melaghlin, of Carrick Arghalee,
+Antrim, Ireland.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“The O’Melaghlin is of the most ancient Irish, royal
+lineage, being directly descended from the O’Melaghlins,
+monarchs of Meath, whose kingdom was ravaged by Henry
+the Second, A. D. 1173, and given to one of his thievish
+followers, a disreputable carpet-bagger, called Hugh de
+Lacy.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“The O’Melaghlin hails now from Antrim because his
+ancestor, Patricious O’Melaghlin, in the reign of Edward
+the First, 1285, married Mona, sole child and heiress of
+Fergus of Arghalee, and subsequently became lord of Carrick
+Arghalee, in right of his wife. From this illustrious
+pair, representing a royal and a noble family united, The
+O’Melaghlin is directly descended.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“It would be highly impertinent in so humble an individual
+as myself to write of this gentleman’s merits and accomplishments.
+Should he honor you with his acquaintance,
+you will discover them for yourself. You will also hear
+from him in what manner you can have the distinction of
+serving him.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>“With compliments and congratulations to yourself and
+Mrs. Stuart on the present proud occasion, I remain, your
+faithful servant,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>William Walling</span>.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will Walling is a scamp, and merits a kicking for his
+impudence,” was Stuart’s half-earnest, half-jesting mental
+criticism on this letter and its writer. He thought he knew
+the reason for Will Walling’s sneers; he thought it was more
+than likely that The O’Melaghlin had repelled the genial
+Will and “kept him at a distance.” He folded the letter,
+put it in his pocket, and once more offered his hand to the
+visitor, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to see you here, sir, and shall be very
+much pleased if I can serve you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you, Wolfscliff!” exclaimed The O’Melaghlin,
+giving his host his territorial title as if they had been in Antrim.
+“I thank you, sir. You have given me the hand of
+a friend, and although you may not at this moment recall
+the fact, you have given me the hand of a kinsman! Yes,
+sir, I am proud to say of a kinsman!” and he gave that
+hand a grip that crippled it for a week.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A kinsman, O’Melaghlin!” exclaimed Cleve—he would
+have given great offense if he had addressed his guest as
+Mr. O’Melaghlin—“I am very much flattered, but I do not
+understand!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, then, Wolfscliff, is not your family name Stuart?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And have you not a lawful right to that name?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Undoubtedly.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And do you not spell it S-t-u-a-r-t?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then you are my kinsman on the distaff side! Yes,
+there is but one root of the tree of Stuart, and that is the
+old royal root that grew fast in Scottish ground, and every
+one who lawfully bears the name of Stuart is a leaf of that
+same tree.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Granted,” said Cleve, with perhaps a faint leaven of sinful
+pride, “granted that my ancestor seven generations back
+was Charles Stuart, called the Young Pretender, how should
+that make us kinsmen?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am afraid, young Wolfscliff, that you do not keep yourself
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>well posted up in your family genealogy,” said The
+O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed I do not,” replied Stuart, with a laugh. “I fear
+I know little or nothing with certainty of my family on
+either side the house previous to their emigration to America.
+Why, O’Melaghlin, do you know if I could become a
+candidate for the highest office in this country, and knew
+who was my grandfather, it would be a grave objection to
+me in the minds of this democratic and republican people—unless,
+indeed, I could prove that he was a tramp, a
+gypsy, or, at the very best, a day laborer!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin stroked his long, rusty red beard and
+slowly shook his head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The human race is going to ruin,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But will you kindly explain how it is that we are of kin,
+sir?” said Palma hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Surely, my dear young lady—surely. The facts are
+these: From prehistoric ages, in the dark before the dawn
+of time or of its record, to which the memory of mankind
+goeth not back. The O’Melaghlins were monarchs of
+Munster.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And lived in caves, and dressed in skins, and when a
+young king wanted a wife he walked into the next kingdom
+with his club on his shoulders, knocked down the first young
+girl he saw and brought her away on his back. Was it not
+so?” archly suggested Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Faith! I think you are right, ma’am. Since the
+O’Melaghlins go back to the darkest of days, they must
+have had the manners of the same,” said the chieftain, good-humoredly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, please go on. I will try not to interrupt you
+again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlins were monarchs of Meath for unnumbered
+generations before the Christian era, and for eleven
+centuries and a half after. Somewhere about the year 1160
+Henry the Second—bad luck to the beast!—made the conquest
+of Ireland, ravaged the kingdom of Meath, and gave
+the land to a thieving carpet-bagger of his own, Hugh de
+Lacy by name. Ah! but The O’Melaghlins, turned out of
+their own, made short work of the usurper and murdered
+him in his stolen castle of Thrim. It was of no avail. His
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>successors came after him, backed up by the power of the
+Saxon. The O’Melaghlins were scattered far and wide.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“One of the tragedies of history,” said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“True for you, O’Wolfscliff! The next memorable apoch
+in the history of that r’yal family fell in the reign of
+Edward the First, in the year 1270, more than a century
+after the conquest of Meath. Then the young head of the
+family—The O’Melaghlin of that apoch—married the Lady
+Mona, sole child and heiress of Fergus of Arghalee, surnamed
+the Tiger, and in due time, in right of his wife, succeeded
+to the chieftainship and became The O’Melaghlin of
+Carrick Arghalee! That, sir and madam, was the first step
+taken toward a union with the r’yal house of Scotland, from
+which you, sir, descinded.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>(The chieftain, when interested or excited, sometimes
+slipped into dialect.)</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed!” exclaimed Stuart, rather mystified, for he did
+not as yet see the road to the royal alliance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now then,” continued The O’Melaghlin, “that marriage
+was the first step, as I said. Nearly two centuries passed
+before the second step was taken. But then, centuries don’t
+count for much with old historic families whose origin is
+only lost in the ancient, prehistoric ages. It was in the year
+1380, in the reign of Robert the Second, King of Scotland,
+that Randolph of Arghalee married the Lady Grauch,
+daughter of the Earl of Fife, who was the second son of the
+reigning monarch. D’ye moind, that’s where the r’yal blood
+comes in, and our kinship, more betoken! So shake hands
+upon it, Wolfscliff.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart good-humoredly put out his hand, already half
+crippled by O’Melaghlin’s first clasp, and received a second
+crushing grip.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now will you kindly inform me how I can be of
+service to you?” inquired the host.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, sir, certainly. I wish to find my children,
+Michael and Judith. I was told by Mr. Walling that you
+would be able to give me their exact address, which he said
+was in London somewhere, but he could not tell where.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While The O’Melaghlin spoke Stuart stared and Palma
+laughed. She felt a child’s delight at his astonishment in
+discovering that The O’Melaghlin was the father of Michael
+Man and Judith Hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>“Oh!” said the visitor, “you are surprised, sure, to hear
+me say this, but they are my children, for all that I have
+never set eyes on them in my life. It was not my fault,
+but the fate made by circumstances, that kept us apart. It
+is a painful story, sir, that I may tell you later at your convenience.
+Now I wish to ask you where, in all the great
+wilderness of London, I may find my children.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Nowhere in London. They are not there. They have
+changed their plans, and will remain for some time to come
+at Haymore Hall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Surely I thought they were going to London for private
+tuition.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They can obtain that better, perhaps, at Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ay?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Perhaps, O’Melaghlin, you would like to see your daughter’s
+last letter to my wife,” kindly suggested Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ay, that I would, if Mrs. Stuart has no objections, and
+it is very kind of you to offer to show it to me, and I thank
+you, Wolfscliff,” heartily responded the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And before he had finished speaking Palma had darted
+away in search of her letter box. She soon returned with
+it, sat down, placed it on her lap, opened it and took out
+a bundle of letters, from which she selected one to hand it to
+the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He quickly snatched it, and with an almost greedy look,
+so eager was the father to read the words of his unknown
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He “devoured” the contents of that letter, though none
+of its words could speak of him, who was equally unknown
+to his daughter, and although they only told of household
+and neighborhood news, and of their changed plans in regard
+to the scene of their studies and the person of their
+tutor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he had dwelt on the letter as long as possible he
+returned it to its owner with manifest reluctance and cast
+covetous glances at the pile of letters from which it had
+been drawn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Would you like to read all your daughter’s letters?
+You can, of course, if you wish it, sir,” said Palma kindly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, madam, if you would be so good as to let me do
+so,” gratefully replied the father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here they are, then, about twenty of them in all, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>they are long letters. Take them and read them at your
+leisure. Now there is the dinner bell. You will join us, I
+hope.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, my dear madam; but I am just off a long
+journey, and hardly presentable in a sitting-room, much less
+at a dinner table,” said The O’Melaghlin, glancing down
+at his dusty garments.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, never mind. We are plain country people,” said
+Palma, with a smile; for having lived in a crowded city all
+her life, with the exception of one short season at “Lull’s,”
+she took pride in thinking of herself as a country woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you would like to go to a room to brush off a little,
+I should be pleased to show you the way,” said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, Wolfscliff, I think I would if it will not
+delay your dinner or spoil your soup. Now speak frankly.
+There should be candor among kinsmen.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It will spoil nothing,” put in Palma, knowing that
+Cleve could not answer that question, “so, Mr. Stuart,
+please show The O’Melaghlin to the oak room.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve turned with a bow to his guest and led the way
+out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma rang the bell and gave orders that the soup should
+be kept back for fifteen minutes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In due time The O’Melaghlin reappeared in the drawing-room,
+and the small party went in to dinner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the course of that meal Stuart said to Palma:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear, The O’Melaghlin has kindly promised to remain
+with us a few days, and has sent back his chaise to the
+Wolfshead to fetch his baggage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very much pleased to hear this,” said Palma, turning
+with a bright smile to the visitor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Thank you, madam! You may wonder, perhaps, why
+I should have chosen to travel all the way down from New
+York to West Virginia to get from you the London address
+of my children, when I might have written to you and got
+it by return mail.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; indeed, I never once thought of it in that manner.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, I may as well tell you how it was. When I learned
+from Mr. Walling that my children were in London, I determined
+to go there as soon as possible. And knowing what
+a rush there is across the big pond at this season of the year,
+I went to get my passage secured in the first available
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>steamer. But, bless you! though I went to every office of
+ocean steamers in New York, and wrote to every one in
+Boston, I could get no sort of a passage in any one for the
+next six weeks. The first one I could engage was for the
+first of July, in the steamer <em>Leviathan</em> for Southampton.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why! Are you going by the <em>Leviathan</em>? We are going
+by that ship!” impulsively exclaimed Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are!” cried The O’Melaghlin, appealing to Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed we are!” responded the latter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Delight upon delight! That is almost too good to be
+true! Well, I am overjoyed to hear this! Now to resume
+my explanation why I came to you instead of writing:
+Finding that I had three weeks upon my hands I said to
+myself: ‘I will not write to get meager news. I will go
+down to West Virginia and see these near connections of my
+unknown children, and I will talk with them and get from
+them every detail of my son’s and daughter’s lives and characters.’
+And so here I am.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now that you are here, O’Melaghlin, we hope that
+you will stay with us until the day comes when we must
+all leave Wolfscliff for New York to embark on our voyage,”
+said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The visitor turned and looked inquiringly on the lady’s
+face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, do, Mr. O’Melaghlin. We should be so happy
+to have you!” she exclaimed, in response to that mute appeal.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You do me much honor, sir and madam. And to be
+frank with you, there is nothing on my part to prevent
+my acceptance and enjoyment of your kindness and hospitality,”
+replied The O’Melaghlin in modest words, but with
+a pompous manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma then withdrew and left the two men over their
+claret, and went to put her babies to bed. When this sweet
+duty was done she returned to the drawing-room, where she
+was soon joined by Stuart and O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And there, later in the evening, the latter told his story.
+It was the common story of a race of men and a fine estate
+falling into decadence from generation to generation. This
+The O’Melaghlin, in telling the tale, attributed to the misfortunes
+of the family, and the persecutions of the Saxon.
+But to those who could read between the lines, even of his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>version, it was self-evident that the downfall of the house
+was due to the vice and folly of its representatives.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Few men in the position of The O’Melaghlin would tell
+such a story with perfect frankness. Certainly he did not
+so tell his. And therefore it seems necessary, in the interests
+of truth, that it should be told by me.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With the exception of those absurd traditions of the prehistoric
+period of which no one can know anything, the
+proud family record of The O’Melaghlins, previous to their
+degradation, was in the main true, as every student of Irish
+history knows. But for a century past The O’Melaghlins
+of Arghalee had been fast livers, hard drinkers and reckless
+sinners. In every generation, every succeeding heir had
+come into his patrimony poorer in purse, prouder in spirit,
+and weaker in will to resist evil than any of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length, about twenty-five years before the period of
+which I write, young Michael O’Melaghlin, at the age of
+twenty-one, came into the remnant of the grand old estate,
+consisting then of the half-ruined castle of Arghalee and
+a few acres of sterile land immediately around it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was the last of his family, and would have been alone
+in the world but that he loved and was beloved by a good
+and beautiful girl, well born, like himself; an orphan, like
+himself; poor, like himself, and even poorer, since she had
+not so much as a ruinous house and an acre of ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Moira MacDuinheld lived with distant relatives in the
+neighborhood of Arghalee.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were not kind to her; they grudged her the cost of
+her maintenance; and when young Michael O’Melaghlin
+came courting her, they encouraged his suit that they might
+get rid of their burden; and they let him marry her, although
+they knew they were delivering her to poverty and
+privation, if to nothing worse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Michael then married Moira with the full consent of her
+kindred, and took her home to his dilapidated, rat-infested,
+raven-haunted, storm-beaten old donjon keep, which was all
+that was left of the castle of Arghalee.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But soon the young pair began to suffer the bitterest
+pangs of poverty. We cannot go into detail here. Let it
+be sufficient to say that often they had not enough to eat,
+even of the plainest food. But, although “poverty had come
+in at the door, love did not fly out of the window,” for they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>loved each other more faithfully, because more pitifully,
+for all their privations and sufferings. And here comes in
+the insanity of pride. Both Michael and Moira were strong,
+healthy, able-bodied young people, and could each have obtained
+work in the neighborhood; Michael as a farm laborer,
+if nothing more—and he could have done little more, for
+he had but very little education, and Moira might have become
+a laundress—a trade easily acquired. But for an
+O’Melaghlin—a descendant of the ancient monarchs of
+Meath—to work! No! In the narrow, one-idea mind of
+the impoverished chieftain it was more noble to starve and
+to see his young wife starve, or to accept alms, and deem the
+bestower to be highly honored in being permitted to
+minister to the needs of The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But hunger is a mighty factor in the affairs of life. It
+is said to have civilized the world. At least it exercised
+a very powerful influence upon these two healthy young
+people, who were almost always hungry, seldom having
+enough of oatmeal or potatoes on any day to satisfy their
+robust appetites. And when they had suffered this hunger
+for several months, and saw nothing but hunger in all the
+future, The O’Melaghlin suddenly resolved to sell all the
+remainder of his land, except one acre upon which his
+ruined tower stood—the oldest, as it was also the only part
+of the great castle now in existence—and with the money
+he might get for them go with his young wife to the gold
+fields of California. There, in the far-off foreign land,
+where he would not be known, he would seek for the gold
+that should restore the fortunes of his family. Upon whomsoever
+the gold fever fastens it fills with a furore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gold was The O’Melaghlin’s thought by day and his
+dream by night. Gold seeking, he persuaded himself, was
+not work—or at least it was not work for hire; and, besides,
+he would be a stranger in a strange land; and no one at
+home here in Antrim should ever be able to say that The
+O’Melaghlin had ever soiled his hands or blotted his
+‘scutcheon with labor!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He sold four acres of his land for little more than enough
+money to take himself and his wife, by way of Glasgow,
+to San Francisco. He was offered nearly twice as much
+money if he would sell the remaining acre with the ancient
+tower upon it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>But at the proposal The O’Melaghlin grew furious and
+insolent.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What! Sell the very donjon keep, the last stronghold of
+The O’Melaghlins of Arghalee? Many a time had the
+Saxons besieged the castle, and sometimes they had taken
+the outworks, but never the donjon keep. And now he
+would see their island scuttled in the midst and sunk between
+its four seas, like the rotten old craft that it was, before
+he would sell his tower and the last acre of ground on
+which it stood.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Though why this jeremiad should have been uttered
+against “the Saxon,” when it was an Irishman and a near
+relative who wanted to buy his old owl roost, no one but
+The O’Melaghlin himself could have explained.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His dream was to realize a fabulous fortune from the
+gold fields and come back and restore the tower, rebuild the
+castle and repurchase all the land sold by his forefathers
+for generations past. To do all this would require a vast
+fortune; but would he not make that fortune?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Heaven and earth! Did not many a common bit of
+human clay without family or name of the least value make
+a large fortune in the gold fields? When, then, The O’Melaghlin
+stooped to seek the ore, would not the earth open
+wide her bosom of uncounted treasures and lavish gold upon
+him?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin never doubted for an instant that she
+would.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So in due time The O’Melaghlin and his wife sailed from
+Glasgow, bound for San Francisco.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They went in the first cabin of the <em>Golden Glory</em>. Do
+you think The O’Melaghlin would take second place in any
+circumstances? No, he would die first!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they reached San Francisco he took a room for
+himself and wife at one of the very best hotels, which was
+also, of course, one of the most expensive in the city.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He gave his name to the office clerk as:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlin,” which that hurried and distracted
+individual incontinently put down as:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>T. O. Mannikin.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIV<br> <span class='large'>PARENTAGE OF MIKE AND JUDY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The young pair had been in the city only a few days
+when, after diligent inquiries in all possible directions,
+O’Melaghlin heard a rumor of a rich new field of gold in the
+Black Rock Ridges, some fifty miles from the city, and of
+a party of adventurers about forming to start for that point.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>O’Melaghlin determined to join that expedition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His young wife, Moira, was much too delicate just at this
+time to accompany him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He left her at the hotel with nearly all the little money
+he had to bear her expenses during his absence, which he
+promised should be as short as possible.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He said he would come back to see her about the time
+she might be able to return with him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he went away, and Moira remained at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It seemed a cruel act so to leave a young wife, who was
+expecting within four or five weeks to become a mother;
+but The O’Melaghlin had the gold fever in its most malignant
+form, and had even infected her with the fell disease.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She also had feverish and delirious hallucinations concerning
+the imaginary golden days that were dawning upon
+them, of which, indeed, her present elegant and luxurious
+surroundings in this palace hotel seemed a prophecy and a
+foretaste. Never in her life had Moira seen, dreamed or
+imagined such magnificence as this public house presented
+to her. And to make such a superb style of living their
+own for life was worth some present sacrifice of each other’s
+society for a little while. So she willingly let her husband
+depart with the gold-seekers, and whenever she felt very
+lonesome without him she just shut her eyes and called up
+the inward vision of the gorgeous future.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yet there were moods in which she grew too deeply impressed
+to look beyond the immediate, impending trial,
+bringing certain pain and danger and possible death before
+giving her, if it should ever give her, the crown of a woman’s
+life—maternity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She had made some few pleasant acquaintances among
+the ladies who were boarding at the hotel, and who were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>charmed by the artless and confiding manners of this beautiful
+wild Irish girl—or child-woman. And when they discovered
+her fears they laughed her into courage again,
+telling her that such dark forebodings as hers were quite
+an indispensable part of the program, and every mother
+among them all had been through it. And they spoke the
+truth, as every doctor knows.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But this hotel was a house patronized by travelers and
+transient boarders only.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ladies who had made Moira’s acquaintance and become
+her friends one after another went their way, and she
+was left alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>True, others came. Every day they came and went.
+Some stayed a few hours; some stayed a few days. Among
+these were women who would have been very kind to the
+lonely young stranger if they had had the chance. But
+they had not. They never saw her, or saw to notice her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>With her increasing infirmities, the young wife, when
+daily expecting to become a mother, grew very shy and
+timid. She seldom went down into the ladies’ parlor—that
+neutral ground upon which acquaintances are sometimes
+made, and even friendships occasionally formed; and when
+she did go for a little change, she would conceal herself
+between the curtain and sash of some front window, and so,
+hidden from the company, look out upon the brilliant life
+of Sacramento Street until the utter weariness that now
+so frequently overcame her strength compelled her to creep
+away to the repose of her own private apartment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Toward the last of her life she gave up entirely going
+to the ladies’ parlor, and confined her walk to the stairs
+and halls between her bedchamber and the public dining-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This walk was her only exercise, her only change of scene,
+and she continued it daily to the last day of her life.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She made no new acquaintances in place of those who
+had gone away. She had no friend except an humble one
+in the chambermaid who attended to her room. In many
+respects she was worse off in this elegant and luxurious
+house than she would have been in the rudest log cabin of
+a mining camp, for here, though she had everything else,
+she lacked what she would have got there—human companionship
+and sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>Often she longed—wildly longed—to see or hear from her
+husband, but knew that it was impossible for her to do so.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yet she had one great stay and comfort—her Christian
+faith. She was devoutly religious and spent much time in
+her room in reading the Bible, or some book of devotion,
+or in prayer, or in singing in a low tone some favorite hymn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So the time passed until about six weeks after The
+O’Melaghlin had gone away to seek his fortune, when there
+came a change. She fell too ill to go down to dinner that
+evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The friendly chambermaid, who volunteered to bring her
+a cup of tea, also offered to spend the night with her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Moira gratefully accepted these services.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Before midnight the girl had to call the night watchman
+and get him to send a messenger out for the nearest physician,
+who came promptly in answer to the call.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Moira saw the sun rise once more for the last time. Then
+she died, leaving behind her a pair of healthy twins—a boy
+and a girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her death was so sudden, so unexpected, that it seemed as
+if a bright, strong torch had been instantly inverted and
+extinguished.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then there was a commotion and a sensation in the hotel.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Where was the husband of the dead woman, the father of
+the motherless babes?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The office book was searched to see who was the party
+who had taken Room 777 seven weeks previous, and the
+register showed the name of T. O. Mannikin and wife, Ogly,
+Ireland. This was the manner in which the hurried clerk
+of the hotel had heard and entered the name and address
+of The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The attendant physician gave his certificate as to the
+natural cause of death, so that there was no need of a
+coroner’s inquest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But there had to be a thorough search made through the
+effects of the dead woman for clews to friends or relatives,
+who should be notified of her decease.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nothing was found; not a letter, not even a line of writing
+except those of the receipts, for she had paid punctually
+every week up to the Saturday before her fatal illness. The
+poor young pair had no correspondents anywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nor was there any money found. Her very last dollar
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>had been paid away for her last week’s board, and there
+was nothing left to satisfy the claims of the doctor or the
+nurse, to pay the funeral expenses or to provide for the
+orphan twins.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no end of gossip in the house. Dress, fashion,
+operas, even mining stocks were temporarily forgotten in
+the discussion of this sad and strange event. It was then
+decided among the worldly wise that the name Mannikin
+was only an assumed one, that the husband had deserted the
+wife, or more probably, the destroyer had abandoned his
+prey.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Human nature, sinful as it is called, is nowhere quite
+heartless.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A purse was made up among the people of the house to
+defray the expenses of the young stranger’s funeral. And
+on the fifth day after her death her remains were laid in the
+Lone Mountain Cemetery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The motherless babes were taken in charge by the
+monthly nurse, a Mrs. Mally, who, in a fit of benevolence
+that did not last long, adopted them and carried them to
+her own home.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The personal effects of the poor dead young mother,
+which were not of much value indeed, but which might have
+been detained by the proprietors of the hotel for the last
+few days of unpaid board, were given by them into the
+keeping of Nurse Mally, either for the benefit of the babes
+or of any claimant who might prove to have the best right
+to them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As for the ministering physician, like most of the men of
+his humane profession, he waived all claim to remuneration
+for his services.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally soon found the pursuit of her own regular
+calling and the care of the orphaned infants too much for
+her “nerves.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Sin is the outcome of so many causes—hereditary, taint,
+faulty training, temptation and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally was affected by all these. She slowly made
+up her mind to keep the dead mother’s wardrobe, trinkets
+and books and to dispose of the babies. She would not hurt
+them; not for the world! But she would put them in a
+haven where, in truth, they would be much better taken care
+of than by any poor, hard-working woman like herself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>So one evening she dressed them in their very best clothes
+and gave them each a dose of paregoric, not enough to endanger
+their little lives—she knew her business too well for
+that—but to put them into a deep sleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When it was dark she got a large market basket with a
+strong handle, folded a clean cradle blanket and laid it in
+the bottom of it, took another little blanket and laid it in
+loose so that its edges came up over those of the receptacle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then she wrapped the sleeping babies up carefully, put
+them in the bottom, laid comfortably at each end with their
+feet passing each other in the middle, covered them over
+with the double folds of the upper blanket, and so done up
+like a pastry cook’s turn-over pie, she took them in the
+basket on her arm and carried them out into the dimly
+lighted back streets and off into the country to the infant
+asylum of the Holy Maternity. She had not far to go.
+When she reached the gate, which stood always open for
+the reception of such piteous little human waifs as infant
+outcasts, she went in and up to the gable end of the
+building, where stood the cage to receive the poor, naked,
+fatherless, motherless human birdlings. It was a large oriel
+window, about breast high from the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She rang the bell at the side of the window. It swung
+open and around, bearing attached on its inner side a soft,
+warm nest, or small cradle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally took the sleeping infants from the basket, one
+by one, and placed them in the nest, tucked them snugly
+in, put the two cradle blankets, folded, over them, and
+then rang the bell again. The window-sash with the nest
+swung round and inward, and so the abandoned babes were
+received within the sheltering arm of the “Holy Maternity,”
+and no questions asked. We know the rest of their lives
+so far as they have yet lived.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Mally went home with her empty basket, and that
+night missed the babes so much that she wept with contrition
+and loneliness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day she hunted up every article of infant wear
+belonging to the twins, washed and ironed all that was
+soiled, then packed them into the basket, and when night
+came she went once more to the asylum and rang at the
+receiving window. Again the nest swung outward, and she
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>put into it, no baby, but a quantity of babies’ clothing, then
+rang the bell again and the offering was swung inward.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then Mrs. Mally went home with the empty basket, relieved.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>During all this time The O’Melaghlin lay ill of a long,
+lingering fever in the mining camp under the shadow of the
+great Black Rock Ridges.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had not been utterly unsuccessful during the first days
+of trial before he succumbed to the fierce onset of his disease.
+He was as kindly cared for by his companions as circumstances
+would permit. He had no orthodox medical attendance.
+A Mexican Indian, an herb doctress, came and
+nursed him. Her simple ministrations, with the aid of pure
+air, pure water, nature and a good constitution, saved his
+life.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But his great mental trouble of anxiety to see or hear
+from his young wife, left alone in the city hotel, tended to
+retard his recovery, which was very tedious.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His mates had prospered in their search for gold. The
+mine promised to hold out, and not run out as so many did.
+So, finding that the sick man’s anxiety to see his young
+wife far outweighed his craving for the gold mine, they
+made up a liberal purse among themselves to send him on
+his way rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as he was able to walk he set out on foot from
+the mining camp. He was accompanied half a day’s journey
+by a couple of his companions, who brought him as far
+as a friendly Indian’s hut and there bade him good-by, leaving
+him to rest for the afternoon and spend the night, while
+they retraced their steps to the mining camp.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Early the next morning The O’Melaghlin resumed his
+journey and dragged himself by slow stages of ten or fifteen
+miles a day, stopping at night in miner’s, hunter’s or Indian’s
+hut, according as either offered shelter near the close
+of evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so at length he reached the city late one autumn
+night, and went straight to the hotel where he had left his
+young wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There he learned that she had been dead and buried for
+more than a month past, and that the twins to which she
+had given birth were in the care of the professional nurse,
+Mrs. Mandy Mally, of Cyprus Lane.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>But he scarcely heard this last item of intelligence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The shock of the first fatal news, coming as it did after
+the wasting of his long illness and the weariness of his long
+tramp, quite overwhelmed The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He fell senseless to the floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was taken up and sent to the casual ward of a public
+hospital, where he suffered a severe relapse that confined
+him to his bed for many weeks.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Upon his second recovery, as soon as he was discharged
+from the hospital he went in search of the monthly nurse
+who had taken charge of poor Moira’s babes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He found the woman in a very small house in a very
+narrow back street.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She looked scared when she was confronted with the
+father of the children whom she had sent away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But she soon recovered her self-control. She told him
+how she had disposed of the children, and excused herself
+by calling his attention to the poverty of herself, her house
+and her surroundings, and to the necessity of her going out
+to work.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin accepted all her apologies. He did not
+blame her in the least. He thought it best for the children
+to be under the care of the Sisterhood of the Holy Maternity;
+and he told her so.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He left the nurse, and went out to find some cheap lodgings
+where he could hide himself and his misery for a few
+days until he should be able to come to some understanding
+with himself and strike out some plan for the future.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He wished to go and see his children at the asylum, and
+yet he dreaded the trial; he could not get up resolution to do
+so. They had been the cause—though the innocent one—of
+their mother’s death, and so he shrank from looking upon
+their infant faces.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Besides, the pride of The O’Melaghlin winced at the
+thought of going and facing the Sisters of that house and
+owning himself the father of those destitute infants, without
+either taking them away at once or making some provision
+for their support in the institution; and he could neither
+take charge of them himself nor provide for them anywhere.
+He was at this time too bitterly poor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No, he said to himself, he could do no better for the
+children than to leave them there in that safe, happy and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>Christian home. He would keep track of them, he told
+himself, and if ever he should be able he would take them
+away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And without ever having looked upon the faces of his
+children he left California for Australia, shipping himself
+as a man before the mast on a large merchantman bound
+from San Francisco to Sydney.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I must hasten over the remainder of The O’Melaghlin’s
+story.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>From the day of his embarkation for Australia he became
+a wanderer over the face of the earth, chiefly among the
+mines. His gold fever, suspended for a time by his grief
+for the loss of his wife, revived with tenfold force, so that
+“the last state of that man was worse than the first.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He visited Australia, Tasmania, the Sandwich Islands,
+New Zealand, Cape Colony and other places, but finally
+returned to Australia, where at last he found fortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By the mere accident of idly poking his staff in the
+ground one day while sitting down to rest, on his way
+through the bush, he struck ore—rich gold—that turned
+out one of the greatest mines in that region.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It would be tedious to tell all the processes by which he
+realized a colossal fortune, or by what slow degrees he returned
+to the worthy ambition of his youth to restore the
+fortunes of his family by repurchasing, at any advance of
+price, their lost land, and rebuilding, at any cost, their
+ruined castle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he had renewed his resolution to do all this, he first
+thought of getting married to perpetuate the house of
+O’Melaghlin—although at this period of his life he was not
+at all a marrying man, preferring “the free, unhoused condition”
+of a bachelor. Then suddenly he recalled to mind
+his deserted and almost forgotten children. If these were
+living he had a son and a daughter to carry down his name
+to the future; for should his son be dead and his girl living,
+whoever should marry the heiress of The O’Melaghlin must
+take the name of O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So, should either of his long neglected children be living,
+he need not be driven to get married at all—which would
+be a great relief.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He settled up all his affairs in Australia and sailed for
+California.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>When he reached San Francisco he went immediately to
+the asylum where his children had been received.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>I need not follow the father in every step of the weary
+search he had in tracing them from the asylum to their
+places of apprenticeship; from these places—with the aid of
+skilful detectives—to the mining camp of Grizzly Gulch,
+from that to the fort and thence to New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In New York, from the Wallings, he heard the most satisfactory
+news of both, but especially of the daughter, who, he
+was told, had married a wealthy young Englishman of
+ancient family and of large landed estate, and who had
+gone to England with her husband, taking her brother
+along with them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Walling could not give the inquiring father the address
+of the young people, whom he believed to be somewhere
+in London, living quietly, and pursuing their studies
+to make up for their long neglected education.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he referred The O’Melaghlin to Mr. Cleve Stuart, of
+Wolfscliff, West Virginia, who would be able to satisfy him
+on every point.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin, having nearly four weeks of time on
+hand before the sailing of the steamer, which was the first
+on which he could secure a passage to Liverpool, resolved,
+instead of writing for information from Mr. Stuart, to go
+down to Wolfscliff and have a personal interview with the
+parties who had been intimate with his son and daughter,
+and who would be able to give him every particular of their
+character, personal appearance and history.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And so, as has been seen, he came to Wolfscliff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin was deeply pleased with every circumstance
+of his reception there; with the cordial welcome of
+the young master and mistress of the house, with the discovery
+which he honestly thought he had made of a worthy
+kinsman in the person of Cleve Stuart, a descendant, as
+O’Melaghlin himself claimed to be, on his mother’s side, of
+the royal house of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But more than all was he pleased with the account he
+heard from his host and hostess of his long neglected son
+and daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will be hearing from these young people every week,
+will ye not, Wolfscliff?” he inquired that evening, after having
+finished his story.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>“My wife hears from her cousin Judith by almost every
+English mail,” answered Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you’ll be getting a letter in a day or so?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, most likely.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, of course, answering it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course! That is, my wife will! As I hinted before,
+the correspondence of the two families is kept up by Palma
+and Judith.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! So then you are the scribe, Mistress Stuart?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” answered Palma, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And you are thinking, ma’am, what a grand piece of
+news you will have to tell your friend in your very next
+letter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed, I am thinking of just such a delight!” exclaimed
+Palma, her eyes fairly dancing with anticipation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I am almost sorry to debar you from such a pleasure,
+ma’am, but I must beseech you not to make known my
+existence to my son and daughter until we meet them in
+England face to face,” said O’Melaghlin solemnly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh!” exclaimed Palma, with a look of great disappointment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have good reasons for my request, and I will tell them
+to you. Your husband, my friend Wolfscliff there, will understand
+them. I wish to be introduced to the young ones
+simply as The O’Melaghlin. They have probably never
+heard that name before in all their lives. They can never
+suspect its connection with themselves——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do I understand you really, O’Melaghlin? Do you wish
+to be presented as a stranger to your own son and daughter?”
+inquired Stuart in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is just exactly what I do wish,” replied the Irishman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But why?” inquired Stuart, while Palma looked the
+same question with great, dilated eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In the first place, I wish to make a quiet observation of
+them while yet they consider me a mere ordinary, uninteresting
+stranger, with whom they can be at perfect ease, and
+show themselves as they really are with perfect freedom.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But don’t you suppose they could do that with their own
+father, knowing him to be their father who had come to
+seek them out, to find them, to make up to them—and to
+himself as well—for their long separation from him—don’t
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>you suppose they could feel at ease and act with freedom
+in the presence of such a father?” demanded Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, I don’t!” emphatically retorted The O’Melaghlin.
+“Under the circumstances, I don’t believe they could either
+feel easy or behave naturally. They would be so surprised,
+so amazed——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But if they were carefully prepared for the meeting
+beforehand,” suggested Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I doubt if you could prepare them for so strange a meeting.
+But granting that you could, still they would be so
+filled with wonder and curiosity, so anxious to do their duty,
+so eager to make a good impression, that, as I said before,
+it would be impossible for them to feel comfortably or behave
+naturally. No, you must present me to your friends,
+Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay, simply as your kinsman, The
+O’Melaghlin of Arghalee. You may write and ask permission
+to bring your kinsman to Haymore Hall,” concluded
+the chieftain.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It would not be necessary to ask permission. Indeed, it
+would hurt my friend Ran for me to do so. He would have
+us all treat his house as our own and bring whom we
+pleased, without ceremony, taking much more than his permission
+for granted, even taking his delight to welcome any
+of our friends, for granted,” replied Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah, then, sure he is a whole-souled, great-hearted fellow,
+this husband of my Judy! This son-in-law of my own!
+And I shall be proud to make his acquaintance. Troth,
+he should have been an Irishman!” warmly exclaimed
+The O’Melaghlin. “And now,” he added, turning suddenly
+around to Palma, “do you understand, ma’am, why I wish
+to meet my son and daughter as a stranger, and to observe
+them for a whole day or an evening before making myself
+known to them?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Perfectly, Mr. O’Melaghlin. And I think you are quite
+right,” warmly responded Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you, ma’am, for your indorsement of my judgment.
+And now, my dear young lady, will you oblige me in
+one small matter?” he gravely inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“In anything, great or small, that lies within my power,
+Mr. O’Melaghlin,” smiled Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, my dear young lady, will you graciously drop the
+‘mister’ before my name?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>Palma looked up in questioning surprise.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will explain, my dear madam. The O’Melaghlins have
+been The O’Melaghlins from time immemorial, as I had
+the honor to tell you before. They were monarchs of Meath
+for many centuries; but they were never ‘mister,’ like any
+ordinary Smith, Jones, or Brown, or Anybody. So, my fair
+kinswoman, you will please to oblige me by dropping that
+little prefix to my old historic name.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But, Mr.—I beg pardon. But, sir, if I must not call you
+‘mister,’ how shall I address you or speak of you?” inquired
+the bewildered young woman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Simply as O’Melaghlin, or The O’Melaghlin. My dear,
+how would you speak of or address Julius Cæsar, Marc Antony,
+or Alexander the Great? Would you say ‘Mr.’ Julius
+Cæsar? ‘Mr.’ Marc Antony? No, you would not. And
+no more should you say Mr. O’Melaghlin. There are family
+names, my dear lady, that outrank not only the little prefix
+of ‘mister,’ but all titles, and such a name is that of The
+O’Melaghlin,” solemnly concluded the chieftain.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, O’Melaghlin,” laughed Palma, “I will hereafter
+always remember to call you O’Melaghlin, though, indeed,
+it will make me feel like a very fast young woman,
+and just as if I had a jockey cap on my head and a cigar
+in my mouth.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I wish to be enlightened,” said Stuart, with a smile.
+“You call me ‘Wolfscliff.’ Why, upon the same principle,
+do you not call yourself Arghalee?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The chieftain drew himself up with a royal air and replied
+majestically:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because, sir, The O’Melaghlin ranks the territorial title
+of Arghalee, as it ranks every other title!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Does not the royal name of Stuart rank Wolfscliff?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It would; but there are thousands of Stuarts, and you
+are only one of them, and derive your individual distinction
+from your manor. You are Stuart, of Wolfscliff. There
+is but one O’Melaghlin. I am The O’Melaghlin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And your son?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is Michael O’Melaghlin. When he succeeds me he
+will be The O’Melaghlin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I see!” said Stuart, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But I doubt if he did see.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXV<br> <span class='large'>AN ANGEL’S WORK</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>The nest day Palma had a final and decisive talk with
+Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In such high esteem was this good woman held by the
+young Stuarts that they regarded her almost as a mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the question of going to England that summer was
+first mooted, the alternative was placed before Mrs. Pole,
+and the choice given, her to accompany the young pair on
+their voyage and foreign tour or to remain at Wolfscliff in
+charge of the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the woman, on her part, had entreated Mr. and Mrs.
+Stuart to tell her which they would prefer to have her do.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To which they replied that they wished her to do just as
+she pleased.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This morning Palma came into the nursery, where Mrs.
+Pole sat beside the cradle, watching the sleeping babies,
+while she sewed on some plain needlework.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>How for the last fortnight Mrs. Pole had been halting
+between two opinions, divided between the affections for
+Cleve and Palma and their children, that drew to go with
+them, and her dread of the long voyage and love of quiet
+that bound her to her home. Therefore, she wished them to
+make the decision for her that she was incapable of making
+for herself. And they would not.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But within a day or two it had been “borne in” upon the
+mind of Poley that, although Mr. and Mrs. Stuart really
+wished her to do as she pleased in this matter of going or
+staying, yet that they would be better satisfied that she
+should please to stay at Wolfscliff to take care of the house
+than to go to Europe with them. Mrs. Pole and her young
+friends were really secretly of one mind in this matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So when Palma sat down beside her she was prepared to
+meet the question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poley, dear, it is really time now that you should make
+up your mind as to what you are going to do about going
+to Europe with us or staying here. Because, if you should
+decide to go with us, Poley, dear, we must begin at once
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>to look out for some good and reliable woman to come and
+take care of the house while we are away.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, my dear child, you needn’t trouble yourself to look
+out for nobody. If it is all the same to you, I will my own
+self stay here and look after the place while you are gone.
+Will that suit you, ma’am?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Perfectly, Poley, dear. We would rather leave you in
+charge of our home than any one else, if you are satisfied
+to stay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I am, dearie. I’m over elderly to be sailing on the
+high seas, and nothing but my love for you all would ever
+a-made me think of such a thing. And now, as I find I
+can serve you better by staying here than going ’long o’ you,
+why, ’deed, I’d heap liefer stay here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then it is all right, Poley. And now tell me, when
+did you hear from your niece?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jane Morgan, you mean, ma’am?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Of course, Jane Morgan. I did not know you had any
+other niece.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No more I hadn’t, ma’am. Well, I heard from her ’bout
+two weeks ago. He have been out of work near all the latter
+part o’ the winter, and they’ve been a-having of a very hard
+time, ma’am, and that is a fact, with all the mouves they’ve
+got to feed, too.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How many children have they, Poley?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Six, ma’am. The oldest nine years old, and the youngest
+nine months. And he out of work so long, poor fellow!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You should have told me, Poley.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What for, ma’am? You couldn’t have helped it. I sent
+’em a good part of my wages, and that kept ’em a-going.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poley, do you remember that I told you your niece
+should come here and bring all her babies this summer to
+see you and to get the benefit of this pure mountain air?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes, ma’am, indeed I do remember!” exclaimed Mrs.
+Pole, brightening up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And have you written to your niece about it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, no, ma’am. As you never mentioned the subject
+again after that first time, I didn’t know but what you had
+forgotten it or changed your mind.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Poley! How could you? Well, now, look here.
+Write to your niece and tell her to come and bring all her
+children down here to spend the summer with you while we
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>are gone to Europe. And I hope they will come, Poley. It
+would do the little children so much good. And, oh! is Mr.
+Morgan out of work now, Poley?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He was two weeks ago, ma’am, with no prospect of getting
+any.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is his trade?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is a carpenter and builder, ma’am?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, then I do think we shall be able to do a good thing
+for him. Such a good thing for him!” exclaimed Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole looked up in mute surprise and inquiry.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, this is it. You know there is ever so much carpenter’s
+work wanting to be done on the place. I have heard
+Cleve talking about it. The barn is to be almost rebuilt, and
+the house here wants repairs. Cleve thought of getting a
+carpenter down from Staunton. But now, you see, I shall
+just ask him to send for Mr. Morgan. And then they can
+all come down here—husband, wife and children! Won’t
+that be glorious, Poley? And he will not lose his time, and
+they will not be under expenses!” cried Palma in delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That will be very fine indeed, ma’am, if so be it can
+be managed,” replied Mrs. Pole.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then she began to compute how much it would cost
+to bring Joseph and Jane Morgan and their family from
+New York to West Virginia, and to count up her own
+savings from her wages.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I can do it,” she said to herself. “I can do it! And
+they can pay me afterward as they get on, and if they don’t
+they needn’t bother about it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma went straight to Cleve and unfolded her views.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You see, dear,” she said, after she had duly introduced
+the subject, “I did give Poley leave to ask her niece and
+the children to come down here and stay with her while we
+should be away in Europe; for, oh! only think how much
+good it will do those poor little children! And now since
+the husband and father is a carpenter and a skilled workman,
+as Poley says he is, what could happen better for all
+parties? You can engage him to do the work here that is
+so much wanted. And it will be such a good thing for him
+and his family as well as for us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My dear quixotic Palma, your benevolence carries you
+into wild extravagance, I fear,” said Stuart, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I was only thinking of the poor man—a skilled mechanic,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>too, out of employment—and of his poor, overtasked
+wife and their poor little children. I know it is an unusual
+thing to do to bring down a whole family when one only
+wants a carpenter. But then, you see, the circumstances are
+also unusual, and——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And the little woman who plans the arrangements is not
+only unusual, but—phenomenal!” Stuart said, interrupting
+her, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Cleve, listen to me, dear, and be serious, for I am.
+I said the circumstances were unusual, and so they are.
+We are going to Europe, and this old house among the hills
+would be nearly empty while we are gone, and Mrs. Pole
+would be alone except for the negro servants on the place
+unless we should let her have some one to stay with her.
+Now these people are her nearest relations. I promised
+her that they should come and visit her. They are in bitter
+want of all that the change would bring them—and, oh,
+dear me, Cleve!” she suddenly broke off, “we are not living
+in this world all for ourselves! And don’t you think it
+would be a sin, and we should be worse than the dog in the
+manger to leave this big old house among the hills almost
+empty when we go away instead of opening it to that poor,
+half-starved and half-stifled tenement family whose children
+would here have fresh air, pure water and good food, and
+who would get health and strength and delight in this beautiful
+place?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, Palma, dear, you talk to me as if I had to be
+argued into consenting to this arrangement. It is enough,
+love, that you wish to have it made,” said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is very kind of you, Cleve; but I wished to convince,
+not to coax you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A distinction without a difference in this case, dear.
+Well, I will see to this.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The only hesitation Stuart felt was as to the character of
+the man Morgan, of whom neither Palma nor himself knew
+anything. But Mrs. Pole did know, and Stuart resolved to
+have a talk with the woman, in whose honesty and judgment
+he had equal and entire confidence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Later in the day he questioned Mrs. Pole, and when she
+assured Mr. Stuart that “he”—she always referred to her
+nephew-in-law by the pronoun instead of his name—“he”
+was honest, temperate and industrious as a man could be,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>and his only fault was carelessness about saving money
+when he had it, though he never wasted it on himself, but
+on the young ones, even to the extravagance of an excursion
+sometimes. But for that, “he” was as good and trusty a
+man as ever wore shoe leather.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Upon this information Stuart acted, and wrote a letter
+to Mr. Morgan offering him work for the summer, with
+good wages and his expenses paid to West Virginia if he
+should accept the terms. This business letter inclosed two
+others, one from Palma to Mrs. Morgan, explaining circumstances
+and asking her as a favor to come with Mr. Morgan
+and bring all their children and stay at Wolfscliff with Mrs.
+Pole for the whole summer and part of the autumn, while
+Mr. Stuart and she (the writer) should be in Europe. The
+last letter was from Mrs. Pole to her niece, imploring her
+not to be “backward” in accepting the lady’s invitation,
+which was made in good faith and in the earnest desire to
+do them service.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These letters, inclosed in one envelope, were sent off by
+that day’s mail.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Within seven days the answer came. One from Morgan
+to Mr. Stuart, gratefully accepting the liberal terms offered
+him; one from Jane Morgan to Mrs. Stuart, overflowing
+with delight and thankfulness, and telling the lady, what
+Palma appreciated best of all, that her children were “fairly
+standing on their heads in delight at the thought of their
+going into the country,” and one from the niece to her aunt,
+breathing of gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts for
+this blessing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart sent on his check to Morgan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole began active preparations for the reception of
+her niece and the children.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The large bedroom on the ground floor which had once
+been the private apartment of old Mr. Cleve, and two
+smaller rooms in the rear of that were fitted up for the
+family.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because,” said Palma, “these rooms all open upon the
+back porch and the end porch, and will be so convenient for
+the little children to run in and out without danger of falling
+from any height or hurting themselves.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole was ready to cry with the feeling of the young
+woman’s tender, thoughtful kindness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>Palma was busy also with her own preparations. It was
+no very easy matter to pack trunks for her husband, her
+children and herself for a voyage to Europe. It would
+have been a much harder task but that Cleve continually
+reminded her that she really needed to take no more than
+they might require on their voyage.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“To carry clothes to Europe is to ‘carry coals to Newcastle,’”
+he said, quoting an old proverb.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hatty, to her great delight, was selected from all the
+other servants to go with them as lady’s maid and children’s
+nurse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The last week of their stay at Wolfscliff came. And the
+program for that week was all laid out.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Sunday they all went to church together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart gave a dinner
+party at Wolfscliff in honor of their guest, The O’Melaghlin,
+and for which the invitations had been given out several
+days previous. This was a great success. All the family
+connections of the Stuarts and the Cleves were on hand, and
+The O’Melaghlin was in great force, notwithstanding, or
+perhaps just because, he had taken a great deal more wine
+than was good for him. But in this respect he was kept well
+in countenance by the elders of that dinner table; for up to
+this time the total abstinence movement had not reached
+that neighborhood, where the heads of old families kept up
+the convivial habits of their forefathers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Tuesday, by appointment, Mr. Stuart sent the large
+carryall and also the ox cart to Wolfswalk to meet the Morgans,
+who were expected to arrive that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After their dispatch the whole household of Wolfscliff
+was in a state of expectancy much more delightful at the
+anticipation of meeting the poor workman’s family of small
+children who would be in such ecstasies at their visit than
+they would have been in looking forward to the arrival of
+the most distinguished party this country could afford.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But it was quite late at night when the two lumbering
+vehicles drew up before the door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin had retired to rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart had remained in the drawing-room under silent
+protest, until Palma entreated, exhorted and commanded,
+using all the forms of the potential mood in order to make
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>him go to bed. Then he laughed and yielded, and Palma
+and Mrs. Pole “stayed up” to receive the travelers.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They had a nice supper, also, ready for them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So when they heard the wheels grate on the pebbles before
+the house both rushed out of the room just in time to
+see old ’Sias, who alone of all the servants shared their
+watch, unbolt and unbar the great double front door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the door was opened and the large party filed in.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma withdrew to the background to let Mrs. Pole offer
+the first greetings to her relatives. First came Joe, with
+one child fast asleep on his shoulder, and another, half
+asleep, holding his hand by his side.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then came Jane, with the baby in her arms and two
+little girls clinging to her skirts, and the eldest boy close
+behind her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole received them one by one, kissing them in tears
+of joy, and with disconnected, inarticulate words of welcome.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the midst of this little hubbub the carryall and ox
+cart were heard to start again and roll away in the direction
+of the barnyard.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Pole presented them all, one by one, to Palma, who
+received each with great kindness, and took the baby to hold
+in her arms, while its mother, father and all the other children
+followed Mrs. Pole into the bedrooms to take off their
+wraps and wash for supper.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then came the comfortable supper and the chat that accompanied
+it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Palma felt fully compensated for her “quixotism.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When they all bade her good-night and went to their
+rooms on the ground floor Palma felt too joyful to retire;
+so she stayed up talking to Mrs. Pole until midnight, and
+then—even then—when she retired to bed, she was too happy
+to sleep—too happy in the thought of the happiness she
+witnessed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next morning must have reconciled a more hard-headed
+man that Cleve Stuart to the quixotism of his wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The lawn resounded with the shouts and laughter of the
+little children, who might have thought, if young children
+ever think, that they had died in their tenement house and
+waked up in heaven.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Stuart was as much pleased with the frank, honest face
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>and manner of Joseph Morgan as Palma was with the true,
+tender, motherly countenance and conversation of Jane
+Morgan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Thursday  morning the Stuarts, with The O’Melaghlin
+and their servants, started for New York, en route for England.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They reached the city on Friday morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They spent the day in making calls on the Wallings and
+other friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Saturday the whole party sailed for Liverpool.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVI<br> <span class='large'>GENTLEMAN GEFF’S FATE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Gentleman Geff was in a profound stupor when he was
+taken to the rectory and put to bed in the best chamber of
+the house—the parlor bedroom on the ground floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He continued in this state for several days, faithfully
+watched by Elspeth and Longman, and frequently visited
+by Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and daily attended by Dr.
+Hobbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie shrank from even going to look at him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he recognized no one, noticed nothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Medicine and highly concentrated nourishment were
+regularly administered to him by his nurses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>These he sometimes swallowed instinctively, mechanically,
+and at other times choked over, and had to be raised in
+bed and have his throat relieved and his mouth wiped like
+a helpless baby; but all unconsciously on his part. He
+never knew, or seemed to know, what he himself was suffering,
+or other people were doing.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His spirit was away, away.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Where?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In Hades, most probably, judging from his antecedents.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will he die in this stupor, or come out of it, do you
+think, sir?” inquired the rector of the doctor one morning
+as the two men stood by the bedside of the patient.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs never “shook his head;” doctors never do
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>such stupidly disheartening things over a case, however
+serious—story writers to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This physician also had the courage to confess that he
+was not omniscient, for he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But if he should come out of this stupor, will he be
+likely to live?” inquired the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do not know,” again replied the doctor. “I shall be
+better able to judge when he recovers consciousness, if he
+should ever recover it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the physician wrote his prescriptions and instructions
+for the treatment of the ill man and retired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not one word of this talk entered the consciousness of
+Gentleman Geff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Nine days he lay in this condition, and then there passed
+over him a change.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He seemed to himself to be groping feebly out of nothingness
+into vague consciousness of horror; but what the
+horror was, or what he himself was, he did not even think.
+The first effort to do so sent him back into the state from
+which he had come.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After a few hours he came again out of utter oblivion
+into some faint consciousness of himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But who was he? Where was he?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All was dark and still around him. Then came faint intelligence,
+with imperfect memory, which mingled dreams
+with distorted facts. He remembered faintly what he would
+have called “a row,” but where, or under what circumstances,
+he could not find; he thought it was a drunken
+brawl over cards in a gambling saloon, and some one had
+crushed in his brain and killed him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yes, that was it! He had been killed last night in a
+drunken brawl over cards, in a gambling saloon, and now
+he had come to life——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Where?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In that dark lower world, without sun, moon or stars;
+without air, water or vegetation; that world of horror and
+despair of which he had heard in childhood, but in which he
+had never believed, and where he must wait with thieves
+and murderers and miscreants like himself until the general
+judgment day; and after that——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>What?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>The eternal life of torture in the lake of fire and brimstone
+in which he had never believed, either in its literal or
+in its metaphorical meaning.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And now he was too utterly debilitated in mind and body
+to know or to feel anything very clearly or deeply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He relapsed into unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he came to himself the next time he was able to
+think with a little more clearness, and to recollect with
+more correctness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He remembered now that it was at Haymore Hall the
+“row” had occurred, in which he still believed he had been
+knocked down and had succumbed to his injuries, and had
+now waked up in the world of darkness, horror and despair,
+to wait for his final doom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His final doom?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He moaned in his helplessness, not altogether from fear
+of future hell, but from a feeling of present thirst, intolerable
+even as the rich man suffered when he cried to
+Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water
+and cool his parched tongue.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he had moaned a second time he felt the approach
+of some huge, dark form. It stood by him, it bent over him,
+put out a strong arm under his shoulders and lifted him,
+and placed a glassful of a refreshing beverage to his lips.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He drank and breathed more freely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ah! how delicious it was!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The attendant replaced his head on the pillow, smoothed
+his bedclothes and withdrew to take away the glass.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In a moment he came back, bent over the still half-comatose
+man and inquired softly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How do you feel, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I—I—I—feel——” muttered Gentleman Geff, and
+then swooned into the slumber of weakness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Some one silently opened the door and came in. It was
+the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How is your patient, Longman?” he inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Sir, he has just swallowed more liquid than he has since
+he has been ill; and he has spoken for the first time,” replied
+the nurse.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Coherently?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What did he say?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>“Well, not much. I asked him how he felt, as an experiment,
+you see, sir, and to find out whether he could understand
+anything; and he did understand, for he began to
+tell me, and he dropped off to sleep. You see he is sleeping
+naturally, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I see. Well, Longman, it is one o’clock. Go to
+bed. I will relieve your watch,” said the rector, sinking
+into the large easy-chair beside the patient.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman made some resistance to this proposal, but Mr.
+Campbell was firm, and sent off the wearied nurse to take
+his much needed rest.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The ill man rested well for some hours, and then moaned
+in his sleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The watcher gave him a cooling and strengthening beverage,
+just as Longman had done, and the patient sank again
+into sleep, muttering:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I can’t be in hell, after all, for in hell no one comes
+from heaven to put a cool——” Then his words became
+inaudible until he dropped into unconsciousness with the
+last word—“purgatory”—on his failing tongue.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All the remainder of the night he slept well, only occasionally
+muttering in his sleep:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not in hell, after all—only in purgatory—not such a
+bad place.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the morning when the doctor came to make his daily
+visit he found the ill man sleeping quietly and Mr. Campbell
+and Longman sitting by his bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He examined the patient’s pulse and temperature without
+waking him, and then took the two watchers’ report.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Took nourishment with a relish and spoke consciously—both
+good signs, excellent signs! but I can say no more at
+present.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor wrote out the formulas for the day and took
+leave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All that day Gentleman Geff remained in the same condition
+without a sign of further improvement. All the following
+night Longman had a repetition of the experience
+of the preceding night. At dawn his mother, Elspeth, relieved
+him and sent him to bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the family breakfast Mr. Campbell came in and
+sent Elspeth out to get her own coffee and muffins. The
+sick-room was still kept very dark by the doctor’s orders.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>Darkness, he said, was the best sedative for nerves and
+brain in the condition of Capt. Montgomery.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the sick man showed by moaning and moving uneasily
+that he was awake, the rector took some beef tea
+that was kept hot over a spirit lamp, poured it into an invalid’s
+feeding-glass and administered it to the patient.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff sucked it in with a relish, and then sank
+back on his pillow with a sigh of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Mr. Campbell had put away the cup and returned
+to his seat by the bedside he was startled by hearing the
+patient inquire:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Who the devil are you, I wonder?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He answered calmly, however:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“One whom you should know, Capt. Montgomery. I am
+James Campbell, rector of——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he was interrupted by an exclamation from Gentleman
+Geff.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The devil you say! The curate of Medge in purgatory!
+a parson in purgatory! When did your reverence die?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector paused a few moments before he replied, and
+then he spoke very quietly:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am not dead, nor likely to die; nor are you in purgatory
+as you seem to think.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What! are you living?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I thank Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And—I living also?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes! And I say thank Heaven for you also.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where are we, then?” questioned the man in a quavering
+voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But before the rector could answer his question, and even
+while the question was on his lips, Gentleman Geff had
+fainted into forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In his struggling soul, striving back to consciousness from
+his long stupor, the wretched man had been the victim of
+three several hallucinations.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>First, that he was dead and buried, and while in that
+state he made no sign.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Second, that he was in hell, and then his wail for water and
+the drink that was given him dispelled the illusion,
+which was replaced by the fancy that he was in purgatory.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Now the meeting with the living James Campbell had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>cured him of that delusion also, and left him to one more
+natural but not the less painful.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When next he awoke from temporary oblivion his brain
+was clearer and his memory more accurate than either had
+yet been since his illness; still, both were somewhat clouded,
+so that they mixed up time and space, and dreams and realities
+in weird phantasmagoria.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>For instance, he remembered every detail of the two murders
+he thought he had committed, but not an item of the
+meeting with his two intended victims living to accuse him,
+not of murder, but of attempted murder.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And without reflecting, or being now able to reflect, that
+he could not possibly be hung in England for murders committed
+in America, he now thought that he was in the condemned
+cell of an English prison, waiting for speedy execution;
+that the huge giant who loomed through the shadows
+of the prison was his death watch, and that James Campbell
+had come to him in his clerical capacity to prepare him for
+death.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I will not allow him to worm any confession out of
+me. I have been convicted on the frailest circumstantial
+evidence, and they dare not hang me at the last. I will
+have nothing to do with the parson. I won’t even know
+him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was the most coherent thought that Gentleman Geff
+had formed since he sank into stupor in the drawing-room
+of Haymore Hall. But the instinct of self-preservation is
+a wonderful stimulant to the brain.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So when James Campbell came next to him he turned
+his face to the wall and would not notice him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When Longman came and gave him food and asked how
+he felt he answered:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I want to see my lawyer. Send him here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman, who had been directed to humor all his whims,
+replied:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Very well, sir. He shall be summoned immediately.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And don’t let that parson come near me again. I hate
+parsons. And if he thinks he is going to nag me into confessing
+crimes I never even dreamed of committing he must
+be a much bigger fool than ever I took him to be. Send my
+lawyer to me, do you hear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right, sir.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>“Well, then, why the devil don’t you do it? You needn’t
+keep such an infernal sharp lookout on me. I am not going
+to commit suicide, I tell you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman laughed and left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff turned with his face to the wall and tried
+to remember the details of his supposed trial—what the
+lawyers had said, what “his honor” said, how he, the prisoner
+at the bar, had behaved; and then, failing to remember
+anything of what had never occurred, his diseased brain
+took to imagining a whole drama, in which he formed the
+central figure.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor came in the same morning, felt his pulse and
+asked him how he had slept.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“None the better for you and your quackeries,” was the
+reply. “And if I am supposed to be sick enough to have a
+physician, why the devil am I not sent to a hospital, and
+not kept in this wretched hole?” he added, still believing
+himself to be in the condemned cell of the Chuxton jail.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, don’t they treat you well here?” pleasantly inquired
+Dr. Hobbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Gentleman Geff disdained to reply and turned his
+face to the wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor rose to take leave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think the man is getting along very well; much better
+than I ever thought that he would.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think he is an ungrateful beast!” exclaimed Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, you must not judge him harshly. His head is not
+clear yet. He does not know friends from foes,” replied the
+doctor, who knew nothing whatever of Gentleman Geff’s
+criminal career, so well had the secret been kept by those
+who possessed it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman did not answer in words; but his grim silence
+was sufficiently expressive.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now you may let a little more light in the room
+and give him a more varied diet,” was the parting instruction
+of the physician.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>As soon as the latter had gone and the door closed behind
+him Longman returned to the bedside of his charge.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was sleeping, or seemed to be so.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman went and opened the shutters of one window,
+but drew down the white linen shade and let fall the white
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>lace curtains. This filled the chamber with a soft, subdued
+light.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman was getting to be an experienced nurse, and
+knew that it would not be well to startle the patient, who
+had lived so long in shadows, with too bright a light.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When he had arranged the room to his satisfaction he resumed
+his seat at the bedside, and fell into the reflection
+that, notwithstanding all the unbelief and hardness of heart
+that degrade this age of the world, there were still some
+good Christian people who lived by the golden rule.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the midst of these reflections he was startled by seeing
+Gentleman Geff turn over to the front of the bed and stare
+out through the opening of his festooned white curtains.
+His eyes took in the soft, dim outlines of a moonlight-looking
+room, though it was now really midday, and the
+white window shade and the white lace curtains produced
+the lunar effect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>By this soft effulgence he saw that the room was very
+spacious, and had four lace-curtained windows, and a lovely
+lace-draped dressing-table, soft, white, dimity-covered chairs
+and sofa, and pretty Turkey rugs upon a polished yellow
+oak floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The richly carved marble mantelpiece, with its large
+mirror, Sèvres vases and terra cotta statuettes, and the polished
+steel stove, with its glowing but flameless fire of hard
+coal, was hidden from his sight by a tall Japan screen.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Everything in the apartment bespoke wealth, culture and
+luxury.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff stared until his eyes stood out from their
+sockets. Then he muttered to himself:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This is not a prison cell, nor yet any hospital ward; yet
+this man sitting here must be the same Giant Despair who
+was with me in jail. There can’t be two of that size in the
+same country.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman stood up and stooped over him, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Can I do anything for you, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, it is you! I thought there couldn’t be two of you
+in the same century, on the same planet.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What can I do for you, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Confound you! you can explain things, I suppose. You
+can tell we where the devil I am now!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You are at the rectory of Haymore parish, sir, where
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>you were brought on the night of that unfortunate”—Longman
+paused a moment for an inoffensive word, and then
+added—“disturbance at Haymore Hall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Disturbance—at Haymore Hall!” muttered the criminal,
+growing pale as ashes and sinking back upon his pillow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No revelation yet had struck him so heavily as this. And
+it brought back a more exact memory, though not yet a perfect
+one, of the recent past.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman hurried to the other end of the room and returned
+with a powerful restorative.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He held Gentleman Geff up on his left arm while he put
+the draught to his lips with his right hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The criminal drained the last drop, and then sank down
+upon his pillow, while Longman withdrew his arm and replaced
+the empty glass.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff did not speak again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was possessed of a fear of talking, lest he should
+“commit” himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he now reflected the more, though his deductions
+were still confused.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No wonder I could not remember the details of my trial—a
+trial that never occurred, but was only a dream of
+fever. But all the same, if it has not yet come off, it is to
+come, unless I go!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He laughed a little to himself at this poor joke, and then
+he tried to recall the incidents of that “disturbance” at
+Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he could not think consecutively for many minutes
+before his thoughts became entangled, and dreams were
+mingled with realities, and false inferences deduced from
+the union.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I remember now,” he said to himself, “something about
+that row at Haymore Hall, though my illness must have
+made some things seem vague to me on first recovering my
+senses. But I remember now!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Even as he spoke the words and tried to marshal the facts
+in their proper sequence, memory and imagination fled, and
+left his mind a vacuum again.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Some hours later, after Longman had given him a bowl
+of strong beef tea and a glass of fine old port wine, his
+mental faculties rallied again, though feebly, and he
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>thought he could form a correct theory; he would not try to
+get help in doing this by asking any question. He was too
+much afraid of compromising himself in some way.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do recall now,” he told himself, “the cause of that
+row at Haymore Hall. Let me see——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I had just arrived with my wife and my brother-in-law
+at Haymore, to take possession, when I was met by officers
+with a warrant for my arrest on the charge of murder——</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How was that, now? Let’s see—oh, yes! I was arrested
+upon a warrant, issued under the extradition treaty
+with the United States, charged with the murder of Randolph
+Hay in California, and of Jennie Montgomery in
+New York——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here the wretched man paused, shuddered and covered
+his face with his hands. The horror of his crime overcame
+him, as it had so often done, when it drove him to seek
+oblivion in strong drink, and finally made him  a drunkard.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was some time before he could resume his line of
+thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know,” he mused at length, “that I denied the charge
+and resisted the arrest, and that there was a fight. One of
+the officers clubbed me—on the head—and I fell like an
+ox, and knew no more. When I came to myself I was
+lying here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He paused again, and seemed to labor to understand his
+present position.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How came I to be here?” he inquired of himself; and
+after a few minutes exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I know! I see it all now! I had given the living
+of Haymore to my brother-in-law, Cassius Leegh—the
+scoundrel! When I was brained by the club of that constable,
+of course I was more a dead than a living man, and
+in no condition to be carted off ten miles to the Chuxton
+jail! So I was placed under arrest and brought here in
+charge of constables. And here I am in my brother-in-law’s
+rectory, guarded by officers, and particularly by that
+Giant Gerion, who never leaves me, night or day—set fire
+to him!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff moaned and groaned and tossed until
+Longman brought him a glass of milk punch, which seemed
+to soothe him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he resumed his self-communings:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>“I wonder, since I am in his rectory, which was also my
+gift to him, why I never see Cassius Leegh? And I wonder
+where his sister, my bogus wife, is? And, more than all,
+I wonder now—what brings James Campbell here?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He paused in distress, and then moaned to himself:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I give it up! I give it up! It is all past me! ‘Chaos
+has come again.’ But one thing is clear, even in chaos—that
+is, I must escape from this house. I must not wait to
+be taken to jail, as I should be as soon as the doctor has
+pronounced me well enough to be removed.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He thought as intensely as he was capable of thinking,
+and then suddenly formed a plan.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will not get well enough to be removed while I stay
+here, and I will escape from the house at the first opportunity.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>From this day the patient became a puzzle to his physician
+as well as to his attendants. He did not seem to gain
+in strength, but to grow weaker and more helpless every
+day; notwithstanding that his appetite was good. At night
+he was restless and delirious.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I confess that this case perplexes me,” Dr. Hobbs admitted
+to Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But the case grew out of a misunderstanding between the
+patient and his attendants.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff, not quite in his right mind yet, believed
+himself to be under arrest with the prospect of a prison, a
+trial and conviction before him; whereas there was no intention
+on any one’s part of even making an accusation
+against him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His physician and watchers, not knowing the delusion
+under which he silently and fearfully suffered, could not
+suspect him of playing a part to prolong his sojourn at the
+rectory and postpone his transfer to the prison.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This state of things continued for a week. There had
+been in this time two opportunities for Gentleman Geff to
+escape—for, after all, he was not watched as a criminal, but
+only as an invalid. There had been two occasions on which
+he had been left alone for an hour or two; but on both
+these the weather had been terrific with wind, snow and
+sleet, and he waited for weather and opportunity both to
+favor him together.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But one morning, after he had eaten a good breakfast,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>lain back on his pillow, and pretended to fall into a stupor,
+as usual, when the doctor was expected, something occurred
+that frightened him and hurried his operations.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor came, accompanied on this occasion by Mr.
+Campbell, who did not often intrude his unwelcome presence
+into the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor leaned over the bed and inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How are you, Capt. Montgomery?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There was no response.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The doctor then laid his hand gently on the man’s shoulder
+to enforce his attention and inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“How are you, sir?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Still there was no answer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then the doctor examined his pulse, temperature and
+respiration, and even lifted the eyelids and looked at the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he turned to Mr. Campbell and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I feel like giving up the case. I honestly confess I can
+make nothing of it. The man’s appetite, digestion and assimilation
+are excellent. His pulse is strong, his temperature
+normal, his respiration perfect, and yet he seems too
+weak to leave his bed, and he falls into delirium or stupor
+day and night.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray do not give up the case, doctor. If there is any
+one you would like to have called in consultation now——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector paused.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, yes, sir, there is. Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby, the
+great authority on the diseases of the brain and nervous
+system. And to get him from London to the North Riding
+of Yorkshire would cost at least two hundred pounds, even
+should his engagements permit him to come.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Never mind what it costs, we will send for him. The
+young squire has specially enjoined me to spare no expense,
+as he insists on footing all the bills. Give me Sir Ichabod
+Ingoldsby’s address. I will telegraph him at once. If his
+engagements will permit he may be here this afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Scarcely this afternoon. He will have to make arrangements.
+Besides, he always travels in the middle of the night
+to save time. If all should go well we may see him to-morrow
+morning. Here is his address,” said Dr. Hobbs,
+and he tore a leaf from his tablets and handed it to the rector.
+Then both gentlemen left the room.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVII<br> <span class='large'>A FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Gentleman Geff had heard every word spoken by the
+doctor and the rector. He dared not wait the inspection of
+the skilled London specialist, the great court physician,
+who would be sure to detect the deception so successfully
+imposed upon the simple country practitioner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The eminent Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby might arrive the next
+morning. Then he—Montgomery—must escape this very
+day or night, let the weather be what it might. Any risk
+rather than the certainty of detection and of all the horrors
+that must follow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the weather was simply awful—“Ragnarok”—“the
+darkness of the gods.” The snow had fallen all the preceding
+night and all that day. Although there were four windows
+in the sick-room, and all the shutters were open, yet
+such was the obscurity that the lamps had been lighted.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was not alone until evening, when Longman,
+having served an excellent supper to his charge and
+left the latter comfortably laid back on his pillow, in what
+the nurse supposed to be a safe and sound sleep, withdrew
+from the room to take his meal and refresh himself by a
+walk up and down the covered front piazza, and no one took
+the watcher’s place.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was Gentleman Geff’s golden opportunity, not to be
+lost.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He got out of bed on tiptoes and went and bolted the
+door.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he went to the closet to search for clothes to put on,
+if perchance he might find any.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He found his own suit that had been taken off him on the
+night he was brought to the rectory and put to bed, and in
+the pocket of his coat his <i><span lang="fr">portemonnaie</span></i>, well filled as it had
+been.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They were all there, even to his boots, his socks, his ulster
+and his hat. He began to dress himself in great haste, but
+suddenly grew very tired, for though not nearly so weak as
+he pretended to be, he was not strong.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He went to the buffet, where he knew Longman kept his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>wine and medicine, and found a bottle of good old port. He
+unstopped it, put the mouth to his lips and took a long
+draught, then a deep breath and another long draught, repeated
+the process, and—thought he would take the bottle
+along with him in his flight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He finished dressing himself without further fatigue, put
+the bottle of wine in the pocket of his ulster, and went to
+the window overlooking the back garden of the rectory.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Escape from the room was safe and easy, as this was the
+parlor chamber on the ground floor of the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The window opened, but with a sudden thought he turned
+back and put out the lights and locked as well as bolted the
+door. These precautions he thought were necessary to delay
+the discovery of his flight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he went back to the window and stepped through it,
+closing it behind him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Where now?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>To the Chuxton railway station and on to London, to
+lose himself in that great wilderness of human beings until
+he could take ship to some foreign country with which there
+was no extradition treaty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But what a night it was! Dark as pitch but for the spectral
+light of the snow. The snow was still falling heavily
+as ever, but the wind had risen in mighty strength and was
+driving not only the falling but the fallen snow into drifts.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>If he had but a lantern! But that was an impossible convenience
+to him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He drew the bottle from his pocket, took another long
+draught from it, replaced it, and set out through “night and
+storm and darkness” and bitterest cold on his flight for life.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>More by instinct or accident than by light and knowledge
+he found his way around the back wall of the rectory garden
+to that country road which ran in front of the church, the
+rectory and Haymore Park, and crossed the highroad at
+about a mile distant.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The snow fell thicker and faster, the wind rose higher and
+stronger, and the night grew colder and darker.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He plunged onward through the deepening snow, sometimes
+almost smothered in the drifts, and requiring all the
+strength he could muster to struggle out of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He lost his way, as it was inevitable he should. Even
+had it been day, instead of the darkest night that ever fell
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>upon the earth, the highroad could not have been distinguished
+from the meadows except by certain tall landmarks.
+Now it was impossible to distinguish it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff knew that he had lost his way, had hopelessly
+lost it, yet he floundered on through the black chaos
+on the chance of coming to some place where he could find
+shelter from the bitter cold, the beating wind, the bottomless
+drifts and the tempest of driving snow that seemed to
+be turned to a shower of ice spikes and stung like the sting
+of wasps.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On and on he floundered and struggled, not daring to
+stop, for to stop would be to die.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Again and again he applied himself to his bottle until
+it was empty. Then he let it fall, for indeed his numbed
+hands could scarcely hold it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He grew weaker and weaker; his limbs seemed too heavy
+to lift, especially through deep snow; his brain grew dizzy,
+his mind confused. He tried to keep his senses and his feet;
+he felt that if he sank to the ground it must be into his
+grave.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At length the crisis came; his brain reeled, his limbs gave
+way, he lost consciousness and fell to the earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile, at the rectory, Longman took his supper with
+his mother in their warm, bright sitting-room adjoining the
+kitchen, everything around them looking so much more
+comfortable in contrast to the storm raging without.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I pity any poor wayfarer abroad to-night,” said Elspeth
+as she took the steaming coffee pot from the hob of the
+glowing grate and set it on the table, little guessing that
+the poor wretch they had been taking care of for two months
+was just setting out to brave it at its worst.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, this is bad enough, but it is nothing at all to the
+awful storms among the Sierra Nevadas,” said Longman as
+he sat down to the table and took the cup of coffee his
+mother had poured out for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And on her expressing her surprise and wonder, he began
+to entertain her with marrow-freezing stories of overwhelmed
+trains of emigrant wagons and buried villages of
+settlers among the snow mountains.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This delayed him at the supper table so much longer
+than usual that he had but little time to take his “constitutional”
+on the covered front piazza.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span>So after a turn or two up and down he went into the
+house and up to the door of the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He turned the knob and pushed the door, but found it
+was locked within.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What whim is this, I wonder?” he said. “I hope the
+London doctor will order the beast to an idiot asylum. I
+suppose they wouldn’t take him in with the apes at the Zoo.
+Captain! Capt. Montgomery!” he exclaimed, rapping
+loudly.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Not a sound from within.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he went around to the back piazza and looked
+through the windows.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All as dark as pitch in the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What’s up now, I wonder?” he asked himself, and then
+went back to the door and tried once more by rapping and
+calling to bring some response from the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But now the noise reached the rector, who was seated at
+his desk in his study writing his sermon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He laid down his pen and came into the hall, where he
+found Longman still hammering and calling.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What is the matter now, Longman?” inquired the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“This door is fastened from within, sir, and I can neither
+get into the room nor make him hear me,” replied the man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Of course, unreasonable as it was to try the experiment in
+which the giant had failed, the rector said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let me try!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman gave way.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector rapped a little cannonade upon the door and
+shouted:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Capt. Montgomery!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He might as well have shouted:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jupiter Tonnerres!” to the snowstorm for any good
+effect.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Shall I burst the door open, sir?” inquired Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I wonder what the fellow is up to now!” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Heaven knows!” sighed the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will I break the door open, sir?” again asked Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, you may bring me a common table knife with the
+thinnest blade you can find, and come with me to the back
+piazza.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>They left the door, and a few minutes later met under
+the very window by which the fugitive had made his escape,
+after re-closing the shutters that fastened with a spring
+catch behind him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now with this knife I know how to loosen the catches,”
+said the rector; and he laid the blade of the knife flat on the
+stone sill, slipped it under the catch, and so opened the
+shutters. Then he slipped the knife between the upper and
+lower sash of the window and turned the button and so
+raised the sash.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is a very badly secured window in case of burglars,”
+remarked Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, but you see there are no burglars around Haymore.
+However, I do intend to have a bolt put on these shutters,”
+said the rector, and he stepped through the window into
+the room, closely followed by Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All was dark as pitch but for the dull glow of the coal
+fire in the grate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They knew it was utterly useless to call, yet both at the
+same moment cried out:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Capt. Montgomery! Where are you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No answer came.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Longman took a match from the safe on the mantelpiece,
+kindled it at the fire and lighted the astral.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The room was illuminated in an instant, and every nook
+and cranny clearly visible. Yet no sign of the missing man.
+Longman hastened to the bed, from which he drew the curtains.
+It was vacant.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He has run away, sir. The fraud, who pretended to be
+so helpless that he couldn’t hold a glass to his lips, has been
+playing it on us all this time, as I suspected him of doing
+all along, and now he has run away!” said Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I think not. Why should he deceive us? Why
+should he run off? No one was going to harm him,” said
+the rector, still peering around the room as if he expected to
+find Gentleman Geff in some nook or corner.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He mightn’t have felt so sure of that, sir. A guilty
+conscience, you know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I cannot think but what he has gone off in a fit of violent
+mania.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, in that case, he would have gone in his night
+clothes, just as he jumped out of bed; but here are the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>empty shelves and pegs, with every article of his wearing
+apparel gone,” said Longman, coming out of the closet
+which he had been examining. “And why should he take
+pains to lock and bolt the door, and put out the light so as
+to retard the discovery of his flight as long as possible?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I don’t know. Lunatics are well known to be very
+cunning. But, Longman, he must be instantly followed and
+found, if possible. Oh, heavens! Think of the man being
+out on such a night as this! He will surely perish,” said
+the rector. And he hurriedly unfastened the door, rushed
+out into the passage, took his storm cloak from the rack
+and his hat from its peg, and while he nervously prepared
+himself to brave the tempest he called out again to the
+hunter:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Longman! For Heaven’s sake get on your coat and
+find a lantern and come with me. There is no one but you
+and me to go in search of this wretched man, whom we must
+not leave to perish in the snow.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Almost as soon as the rector had ceased to speak, Longman
+was by his side, prepared for the expedition.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He must have escaped by that back window, which is
+the only one that will close with springs. We must search
+the road leading for the back gate of the garden. Come,”
+said the rector, going before with the lighted lantern, which
+he had taken from the hand of Longman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They issued through the rear door, passed through the
+garden and out of the rear gate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Holding the lantern near the ground the rector moved
+slowly and carefully through the white chaos.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The searchers had not groped many yards from the rectory
+gate when Mr. Campbell saw something black upon
+the white ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He stooped to examine it, and cried out:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Here he is, Longman; but whether dear or alive, poor
+wretch, I do not know. Come and help me to lift him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He has not been lying here five minutes, or he would
+be covered with snow. So he may not be dead.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Yes, they had found the body of Gentleman Geff within
+fifty yards of the rectory wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Through the dark night and blinding snow and distracting
+wind he had lost his reckoning and wandered in a circle
+until he had fallen down where they found him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>They lifted him up and bore him into the rectory to his
+own room, undressed him, wrapped him in blankets, and
+put him to bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was in the deep sleep that precedes death by freezing.
+He only partially awoke while they were working over him;
+but he did not speak.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They gave him warm spiced brandy and water, which he
+swallowed mechanically.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All night long they watched and worked over him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>In the morning, when James Campbell left the sick-room
+to make his toilet before going to breakfast, he left Gentleman
+Geff in what seemed a good sleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But, while he sat at table explaining to his wife and
+daughter why he had been out of his room all night, Longman
+suddenly burst in upon them and said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come in, for Heaven’s sake! He is taken with a hemorrhage
+that I think will carry him off!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Longman, run and fetch Dr. Hobbs. Mrs. Campbell
+and myself will attend to Montgomery.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The hunter fled out of the front door to fetch the physician,
+while Mr. and Mrs. Campbell rushed to the help of
+the sufferer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was an appalling spectacle!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The blood driven by the freezing cold to the lungs had
+congested there, and notwithstanding all the means that
+had been taken to restore his consciousness and save his
+life, though these means had been thus far successful, yet
+the congestion of the lungs had increased until it burst an
+artery and the hemorrhage followed. It was not fatal all at
+once, for Mr. and Mrs. Campbell called all their skill and
+experience into service and succeeded in stopping the flow
+before the arrival of the doctor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When the latter came to the bedside of the patient he
+found him laid back on his bed, as pale as death, as weak as
+a new-born infant, and scarcely breathing, his pulse scarcely
+beating.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Dr. Hobbs approved all the rector had done, and then
+inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Did you get an answer from Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, by telegram. He cannot leave London at this
+crisis.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, it does not matter now. This is a case that any
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>country doctor or any old woman might understand and
+treat.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What do you think of his chance of life?” whispered the
+rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a poorer one than he has yet had,” replied the doctor,
+looking at the pallid, wizen face, that seemed to have
+shrunken to half its size since his terrible loss of blood.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hetty cried for pity.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If he has any relatives they should be informed, for I do
+not think he will ever rise from that bed again,” said Dr.
+Hobbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I know of none, except the Earl of Engelmeed and the
+Viscount Stoors—his uncle and his cousin. I will write to
+the earl to-day,” said Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Engelmeed, of Engelwode, in Cumberland? That is
+where typhoid fever is raging so fiercely,” remarked Dr.
+Hobbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Here followed some talk of that pestilence, and finally
+the doctor arose and took his leave, promising to return in
+the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell wrote to the Earl of Engelmeed, advising
+him of his nephew’s dangerous illness, and posted the letter
+that forenoon.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Two days later he got a reply, not from the earl, but
+from the latter’s steward, announcing the death of the Viscount
+Stoors and the extreme illness of Lord Engelmeed,
+whose death was hourly expected.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Over this letter the rector fell into deep thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he put on his coat and hat, and taking the letter
+with him, walked over to Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He was shown into the library, where he found Ran
+reading.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, Mr. Hay. Will you let me look at your
+‘Burke’s Peerage’ for a moment?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Certainly. How do you do, Mr. Campbell? And how
+is your family—and your patient?” inquired Ran as he
+arose and shook hands with the rector, and then went to the
+bookcase and took down the “Peerage.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The family is well. The invalid very low. I received
+a letter from the steward of Engelwode this morning, in answer
+to the one I wrote to the earl, informing me of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>death of the Viscount Stoors and the extreme illness of
+Lord Engelmeed, whose demise was then hourly expected.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Indeed! Had they taken the fever?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes. It was madness for them to remain at Engelwode
+during its prevalence. It is from hearing of these occurrences
+that I wish to consult Burke. I think that since the
+death of Lord Stoors, our wretch, Montgomery, is heir presumptive
+to the title and estate,” said the rector as he took
+the heavy red volume from the hands of the young squire,
+laid it on the library table, and sat down to examine it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran resumed his seat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is as I thought. There is no other son. And Kightly
+Montgomery, as the eldest son of the next brother, the late
+Gen. Montgomery, is heir presumptive to the earldom, and
+may even now be Earl of Engelmeed. Think of it!” exclaimed
+the rector as he closed the book. “Wealth and rank,
+for which the wretched man periled his soul and fatally
+wrecked his life to obtain feloniously, now come to him
+lawfully and honorably, but on his deathbed!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, it is terrible. If he had but waited! Now it seems
+the iron of fate—this useless accession to fortune!” sighed
+Ran.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXVIII<br> <span class='large'>WINDING UP</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Ran and Judy had planned to go to London in the
+spring, to live in retirement and to pursue their studies under
+private tutors. But as the season opened in all its
+beauty they became so enchanted with their delightful
+country home that they could not bear the thought of leaving
+it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Couldn’t we have a resident tutor?” inquired Ran with
+some hesitation as he and Judy were discussing the question
+one morning, seated on a rustic bench under an old oak
+tree in their lovely lawn.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘A resident tutor?’” repeated Judy dubiously.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, such as the gentry have for their children.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“For their children,’ of course, but not for grown people;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>not for themselves. No, Ran, dear, we could not have
+a resident tutor for you and me. That would set the servants
+to talking and the neighbors to gossiping; and they
+would wonder where we had been brought up, perhaps laugh
+at us, perhaps scorn us. I should not mind it for myself,
+Ran, but I should mind it a great deal for you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“That is not the way I feel, Judy, dear, for I do not care
+a fig what they say of me, but I could not bear to have them
+criticise you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So, you see, Ran, we could not have a resident tutor.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I suppose we shall have to go and hide ourselves in
+London to pursue our studies, Judy, dear.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said the young woman with a deep sigh, “but
+mightn’t we put off going until winter? Oh, it is so hard
+to leave this lovely place in the glory of the spring.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Judy, love, time is passing quickly, and our education is
+very backward.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Especially mine,” sighed Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But I tell you what I will do!” exclaimed Ran with sudden
+inspiration. “I will confide the whole matter to Mr.
+Campbell, and take counsel with him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The very thing! And, oh, Ran!” exclaimed Judy, catching
+inspiration in her turn, “might he not become our
+tutor? Give us an hour three or four times a week?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran fell into thought, but did not reply.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I have so often heard of clergymen taking pupils. Even
+taking them in their houses. But he need not do that.
+Could he not come to us or let us go to him a few times
+every week?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I declare, Judy, darling, that is a splendid idea of yours,
+and I will ask him, and if he should consent to do as we
+wish, why, then, we need not bother ourselves about going to
+London to hide ourselves and look for teachers!” exclaimed
+Ran in delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And then there need be no gossip. No one need know
+what brings the rector to our library or takes us to his
+study,” concluded Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will go and see Mr. Campbell at once,” exclaimed Ran,
+with boyish eagerness, as he sprang up, seized his hat from
+the ground and set off in a brisk walk for the rectory.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But he met the rector full tilt at the lodge gate, as Mr.
+Campbell was on his way to make a call at the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>They both burst out laughing as they came into collision,
+and the minister took Ran’s arm, turned him about and
+walked with him back to the rustic seat where Judy sat.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She rose to welcome the visitor and to make room for
+him beside her on the bench.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Good-morning, ma’am,” he said, lifting his hat and taking
+the offered seat. “We have lovely weather just now. It
+must be lovely even in London. In fact, there is always delightful
+weather in London during May, when the season
+is at its height. Do you leave for town soon?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, I hope not. I never, never, never wish to leave
+for town,” said Judy, with a genuine pout.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am sure I wish you never would,” laughed Mr. Campbell.
+“But I thought you were daily expecting to start,”
+he added, turning to Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“So we have been; but we have postponed our departure
+from day to day, from reluctance to leave the country,” replied
+the young man.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But the height of the season will soon be over. The
+weather will grow warm and London intolerable. Much
+as I should desire for my own sake to detain you here, I
+should advise you not to delay your departure.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But we don’t want to go at all! And we were not going
+for the sake of the season, anyhow. And it depends on you,
+Mr. Campbell, whether we go or not!” exclaimed Judy, taking
+the initiative and breaking right into the midst of the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“On me, Mrs. Hay!” inquired Mr. Campbell, with a puzzled
+air.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ran, tell him!” commanded Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then Randolph Hay confided to James Campbell the
+story of his own and Judy’s neglected education, and their
+plans for remedying their defects, and ended by diffidently
+proposing that the minister should, if he pleased, become
+the director of their studies.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I fear that my petition is a most presumptuous one, sir;
+but I hope and trust that you will not consider it offensive.
+If so, I pray you to pardon me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My young friend, on the contrary, your proposal is both
+flattering and agreeable. I shall gladly and gratefully undertake
+the task for which circumstances as well as, I hope,
+college training, have fitted me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span>“I thank you with all my heart, Mr. Campbell. You
+have made everything smooth and pleasant for us,” heartily
+responded Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy caught the minister’s hand, pressed it between both
+hers, and so expressed her gratitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Later all the details of the engagement were arranged between
+the minister and his pupils.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>On Ran’s pressing entreaty, Mr. Campbell consented to
+stay and dine with them that day. And it was during his
+visit that the evening mail brought them foreign letters
+from Cleve Stuart, with the news of his Uncle John Cleve’s
+death.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“A good man gone to his rest,” was the comment of the
+clergyman.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The news of death—even of the death of a stranger whom
+we only knew by report—always casts a shadow, for a longer
+or a shorter time, over the circle into which it is brought.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Bright Judy was the first to smile and dispel the cloud.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, Mr. Campbell, it is so well that you have consented
+to take pity on us, for under present circumstances
+we could not leave Haymore,” she said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The minister raised his brows interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Because we must write and ask our friends to come and
+spend the summer with us here.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah! I understand,” said the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your patient lingers longer than any of us expected,”
+remarked Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes,” replied Mr. Campbell, “his tenacity of life is
+really wonderful, poor soul!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he arose and bade his hosts good-night.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff lay slowly sinking at the rectory of Haymore.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The cold contracted on that fatal winter night of his attempted
+flight had settled on his lungs, and in the deeply
+inflamed condition of the whole system from alcoholism,
+had fastened with fatal tenacity upon his system.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But with the change in the seat of the disease—which,
+while it slowly destroyed his lungs, completely relieved his
+brain—his mental faculties were perfectly restored, with
+clear recollection of all that had transpired, so that he knew
+his antecedents and his present surroundings quite as well
+as our readers do. He knew also that he had no reason to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>fear prosecution. His only fear—a secret one—was of
+death, “and after death the judgment.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He had not been prosecuted for any of his felonies, which,
+indeed, were surrounded by such circumstances as admitted
+of their being ignored rather than compounded.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All the documents by which he had seemed to secure a
+merely nominal possession of the Haymore estate concerned
+the name of Randolph Hay, and for all the law or the public
+knew, or need know, that name had been claimed only by
+its real owner, the gentleman now in peaceable possession
+of the Haymore estate, and never by the impostor who had
+tried to take it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>So there was no legal obligation upon any one to bring a
+criminal prosecution for fraud and forgery upon the dying
+malefactor.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And as to his heavier crimes of bigamy, robbery and attempted
+murder which had been committed in the United
+States, there was not the least likelihood that his surrender
+under the extradition treaty would ever be demanded by
+that government to answer for them before an American
+tribunal.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All whom he had so deeply injured, or tried to injure,
+had freely forgiven him—all, that is to say, except Lamia
+Leegh, who in her bitter humiliation was incapable of forgiving
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector had to strive and pray for grace before he
+could pardon the man who had wronged his daughter. But
+after this grace was given, James Campbell spent many
+hours beside the bed of the dying man, reading to him,
+praying with him, persuading him to repentance, exhorting
+him to faith.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff was despairing, and at times defiant in
+his despair.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You needn’t talk to me, Mr. Campbell. I am as the
+devil made me. As I ‘have sown’ I ‘must reap.’ If there
+is anything that can give me satisfaction now, it is that,
+after all, I have no blood on my conscience. Bad as you
+may think me, I was never cut out for a murderer. No,
+nor for a drunkard. Circumstances, temptation, opportunity—these
+make destiny. I took to drink to drown remorse.
+I was a fool for feeling it. Bah! how can a creature
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>of destiny be responsible for anything he does? Yet I am
+glad there is no blood on my hands.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell had spoken to Jennie, asking her if she
+could not overcome her repugnance so far as to go in and
+speak to Montgomery, now that he was in his senses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But Jennie shuddered, as she replied:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Papa, he has never even asked to see me, and I am glad
+he has not. I have forgiven him. Indeed, indeed I have!
+And I pray for him. Indeed, indeed I do! Not only night
+and morning, at the regular prayers, but through the day,
+whenever I think of him, I pray for him earnestly, fervently.
+I do! But, papa, I cannot even endure the thought
+of seeing him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then, my child, you have not truly forgiven him. You
+must pray for yourself, dear—for the gift of the grace of
+charity,” gravely replied the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No, Gentleman Geff had never asked to see his wife or
+child: never even referred to either. Mr. Campbell was not
+sure that the man knew they were in the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But one morning, when the rector was sitting beside him,
+Montgomery suddenly said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I think it is a confounded shame that a sick man cannot
+be permitted to see his wife and child.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you can be permitted to see them. Do you wish to
+do so?” gently inquired the minister.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I should think I did. I have never even set eyes on the
+boy, and he must be about nine months old by this time.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your child is not a boy, but a girl,” said the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Now there! I did not even know the sex of my own
+child, who is nearly a year old, and has been under the same
+roof with me for several weeks. And this a Christian household!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“If you feel equal to the interview, I will go and call
+my daughter now and ask her to come and bring the little
+girl.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No. Let her come alone the first time. One at a time
+is all I can stand.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>James Campbell went down to the back parlor, where he
+found his wife and daughter seated at their needlework.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, my darling,” he said, gently laying his hand upon
+her head, “Montgomery has just asked to see you. Will
+you come to him?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span>“Oh, papa! I cannot! I cannot!” she replied, with a
+shiver.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not come to a dying—yes, I must say it,” he added,
+after a painful hesitation—“husband, when he sends for
+you?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He has forfeited that name, papa,” very firmly replied
+the wronged wife.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But you must forgive him, my child.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I do forgive him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, then, you must come with me to him.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, I cannot! Indeed I cannot!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then you do not forgive him, although he is dying?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is he dying, papa?” she inquired in a pitiful voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not this moment, my dear. But Dr. Hobbs declares
+that he cannot live many days in any case, and may not live
+an hour if another hemorrhage should come on. Will you
+come with me, my dear?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, papa, I cannot!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, how can you be so hard-hearted?” demanded
+her mother, now entering into the conversation for the first
+time. “I am ashamed of you, and afraid for you lest you
+be punished. After the man is dead and gone, and you can
+never be kind to him again, you will be sorry. Go, at least,
+and speak to him if you only stay one minute.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, Jennie,” said her father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then the young woman arose and followed the
+clergyman to the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She entered that room under protest; but when she saw
+the ghastly, death-stricken face, the skeleton hand stretched
+out to her, the hollow, sunken, unearthly eyes fixed upon
+her, she uttered a low cry of horror and pity, and sank down
+on her knees beside the bed, took his hand and dropped
+her face upon it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector turned and left the room, closing the door
+after him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, there, don’t cry! What is the use? Jennie, I am
+sorry that I ever hurt you in any way. That is what I
+wanted to say to you, and that is why I sent for you,” he
+said, speaking in a rather faint and faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She did not reply, but sobbed in silence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Jennie, did you hear what I said to you?” he inquired.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I heard,” she sighed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>“Well, I said I was sorry I hurt you. Well, Jennie?” he
+asked, and then paused as if expecting some definite answer.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I, too, am sorry that you hurt me, or anybody else, or
+yourself worse than all, Kightly. I am very sorry, and I
+pray to the Lord for you daily, almost hourly. Do you pray
+for yourself, Kightly?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, I don’t! What would be the use? ‘God is not
+mocked.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“But ‘He is full of compassion,’ Kightly. He——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, that will do!” said the sick man, interrupting
+her. “You know nothing about it! Go now. I have said
+what I sent for you to say to you. Now go, please. I can’t
+stand much of this sort of thing,” he muttered in a weak,
+petulant voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I will come again to you when you want me, Kightly,”
+she said, rising.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“All right. And bring the youngster—but not to-day.
+There, there—go along with you,” said the man, turning his
+face to the wall and closing his eyes. Jennie left the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The next day she took the baby in to see its father.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>She sat down in a chair beside the bed, and sat the baby
+on the top of the bed near its father’s head.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And there she watched it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The man showed but very little interest in his child.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thought, of course, it was a boy,” he said; “but, poor
+little devil, it is better that it should be a girl, for I have
+no money to leave it, but being a girl, it can marry some
+of these days and live on some other fellow’s money. Take
+it away now, Jennie. I can’t stand much of it,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the mortified young mother took away the dazed and
+depressed baby and afterward said to her own mamma:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I never knew Essie to behave so stupidly. You might
+have thought she was a little idiot.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Poor baby! The dark room and the haggard man subdued
+her spirits. It is a wonder she had not cried,” replied
+the grandmother.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very glad she did not—that would have made him
+worse,” said Jennie.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After this the sinking man declined daily.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie spent hours at his bedside, often having the baby
+with her when he could bear it.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>Mrs. Campbell had been a daily visitor and an occasional
+nurse from the time he was first brought to the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mrs. Longman never left him except for necessary rest
+and refreshment.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The gamekeeper’s cottage was ready for occupancy, but
+neither the mother nor the son would leave the suffering
+sinner to take possession of its comforts and emoluments.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Ran heartily excused them both under the circumstances
+and paid the man’s salary.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Gentleman Geff had never been told of the death of his
+cousin, the Viscount Stoors. It was thought by his attendants
+that the news of the decease of a relative that left
+him, the dying sinner, heir presumptive of an earldom,
+would be, if not too sorrowful, certainly too startling, too
+exciting for the safety of an invalid, whose pulse must not
+be hurried in the slightest degree lest it should bring on a
+hemorrhage that must carry off the patient.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>One day, about this time, Montgomery rallied, and
+seemed so much better that the doctor allowed him to sit
+up in bed, propped by pillows.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell sat by him, reading aloud the morning’s
+paper, when Longman came in bringing a letter, which he
+placed in the hands of the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was in a deep, black-bordered envelope, sealed with a
+broad black seal and directed to</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Rev. James Campbell</span>,</div>
+      <div class='line in8'>Haymore Rectory,</div>
+      <div class='line in16'>Haymore, Yorkshire.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Excuse me!” he said, and stepped quickly to the furthest
+window lest the sick man should see the herald of death.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He opened and read the letter, which was from Abel
+Stout, the steward of Engelwode, and was as follows:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“<span class='sc'>Engelwode Castle</span>,</div>
+      <div class='line in8'>“May 28, 187—.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Rev. and Dear Sir</span>: It is my painful duty to announce
+to you the decease of Charles-George-Francis-Henry, tenth
+earl of Engelmeed, who expired at one-fifteen this A. M.,
+and of the succession of Capt. the Hon. Kightly Montgomery
+as eleventh earl. I inclose a letter, which I beg you
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>to be so kind as to hand to his lordship, if my lord is still
+in your house, or to forward to his address if he should have
+left, as the presence of his lordship here is imperatively
+necessary. I have the honor to remain, reverend sir,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c006'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Your obedient servant,</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>“<span class='sc'>Abel Stout</span>.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>The inclosed letter was superscribed very formally in full
+title to</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>The Right Honorable</div>
+      <div class='line in4'><span class='sc'>The Earl of Engelmeed</span>.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c009'>James Campbell stared at this superscription and then
+glanced at the wreck on the bed, who now bore the dignity
+of an earldom.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He could not hesitate to deliver this letter, however it
+might affect his patient. He must deliver it! He had no
+choice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But what a shock! what a revelation! what a mockery it
+would now be to him!—to him who had sinned for wealth
+and rank, who had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage
+and found the dish—poisoned!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The Earl of Engelmeed was dead. His son and heir-apparent
+had died before him, and now—their next of kin,
+their worthless relative, Kightly Montgomery, the penniless
+adventurer, who had been driven by greed of gold and love
+of luxury to crime and to death—the sinful, dying Kightly
+Montgomery, was now master of Engelwode, with a rent roll
+of twenty thousand pounds a year!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ah, if he had only been good and true, he would have
+lived to enjoy the old title and the rich estate—more honors
+than he could possibly have gained by all his crimes, even
+though each one of them had been a complete success!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But now, what a cruel mockery of fate!</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mr. Campbell, reflecting on all these matters, felt really
+sorry for the wretched criminal, to whom the unexpected
+news of his succession to the earldom, coming to him in his
+last hours, must truly seem the bitterest irony of fortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You have bad news there,” said the dying man, glancing
+at the broad, black-edged envelope.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I fear so. It comes from Engelwode, in Cumberland,
+where you have relatives, I think,” replied the rector
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>“Oh, yes, relatives!” sneered the new earl, who did not
+even suspect that he was one.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“‘A little more than kin, and less than kind.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is no love lost between us, believe me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Hearing this, the rector did not consider it necessary to
+be very cautious in breaking this news. Nevertheless, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let me give you your restorative before we say anything
+more about the letter.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And he arose and poured out the draught, some powerful
+tonic, compounded of beef, coca and brandy, and administered
+it. Then he replaced the glass on the table and
+said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The letter is for you, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What the devil do you mean?” demanded the new earl.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you take the letter and look at it? Have you light
+enough? Shall I draw up the shades?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No,” said the patient, taking the letter and squinting
+at it. “This is for my uncle, not for me. Though how it
+should have come here I can’t imagine.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Your lordship’s uncle, the late earl, is dead, my lord,”
+quietly replied the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dead!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dead! But there is Stoors.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He died before his father. But read your letter, my
+lord,” said the rector, purposely ringing the changes on the
+title that he would have too much good taste to bestow on
+the heir of an earldom under ordinary circumstances, but
+on this impenitent sinner, on this unpunished felon, on this
+dying peer, he lavished the honor with unction in the very
+bitterness of irony.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Read your letter, my lord.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I cannot! Oh, this is too terrible!” groaned the dying
+earl, covering his face with his hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Did he mean, or did the rector for one moment believe
+that he meant, the sudden death of his relatives, so near
+together, was too terrible?</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>No, indeed. The man meant, and the rector knew that
+he meant, to receive this rich and august inheritance just at
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_380'>380</span>the hour of death was indeed “too terrible”—was insupportable.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Poor wretch! he burst into tears and sobbed aloud, dropping
+back on his pillow and turning his face to the wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pray try to be calm, my lord. This emotion will do
+you a mischief,” pleaded Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Go and bring my wife and child to me. Let me tell
+them the news,” he exclaimed, and then burst into the most
+sarcastic peal of laughter the rector thought he had ever
+heard. He left the room and went to find his daughter,
+whom he came upon, as usual, seated beside her mother and
+engaged in needlework over the baby’s cradle.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come, my dear. Montgomery wants you. Bring the
+little one along with you. And, Hetty, dear, you had better
+come also,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Both women looked up anxiously, half expecting that this
+was their final summons to the sick-room; that now “the
+end of earth” for Kightly Montgomery was at hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is anything the matter, Jim?” inquired Hetty, while
+Jennie’s eyes asked the same question.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“News of Montgomery’s relatives in Cumberland, that is
+all,” replied the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What news?” demanded Hetty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He prefers to announce it in person.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Dear me! How mysterious we are! Come on, Jennie!”
+said Mrs. Campbell, taking her husband’s arm and
+leading the way.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie picked up her baby and followed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They entered the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The sick man held out his hand to his wife, saying:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Come here, Jennie, my girl! You are Countess of
+Engelmeed! Did you know it? And that doll in your
+arms is Lady Esther Montgomery!—for a few hours only
+while I draw the breath of life. Afterward you will only
+be countess dowager, while she will be countess in her own
+right. For the earldom of Engelmeed is not a male feoff
+exclusively, but failing the male line which fails in me, will
+‘fall to the distaff,’ as represented by that rag baby of yours.
+So I think—you are com——” He paused in sudden pain
+and prostration.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Do not speak again for the present, my lord. You will
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>hurt yourself. Rest a while,” said the rector, while Jennie
+looked at her mother in helpless dismay.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He is delirious again, my dear,” whispered Mrs. Campbell
+in reply to that look.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Stoop down——” muttered the dying man in a low,
+faint, husky voice.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie bent over him to catch his failing words.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will be—compensated—for all—you have gone
+through—by being made—a countess—you ought——”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>His voice suddenly ceased. A spasm of pain traversed
+his face.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“My lord! my lord! Have mercy on yourself and keep
+still,” pleaded the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was too late. A wild look flew into the eyes of the
+dying man and fixed them on the rector’s face. A torrent
+of blood gushed from his mouth. Gentleman Geff had
+spoken his last words, and in a very few minutes he had
+drawn his last breath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Jennie threw herself sobbing into the arms of her father.
+She was too young to have much self-control, but whether
+now she wept from grief, horror or compassion, or all three
+combined, she could not herself have told.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Her father took her babe to his bosom and led her to her
+own room, where he made her lie down on her bed and
+placed the child beside her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The rector went to his study and wrote a letter to the
+steward at Engelwode, telling him what had happened.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Then he walked over to Haymore Hall to carry the news
+to Mr. Randolph Hay and to confer with him on what was
+next to be done.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy were both shocked and grieved at the fate
+of their enemy—their enemy, however, only in so far as he
+tried to wrong them primarily with the wish to benefit himself
+rather than to injure them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The remains should be taken to Engelwode Castle and
+placed in the family vault, of course,” said the rector. “And
+as the last earl died without having had time to make a
+will between his succession and his death, my granddaughter,
+the little countess, will be a ward in chancery.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And no doubt the lord chancellor will constitute you,
+sir, the guardian of her person and a trustee of her estate,”
+added Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span>“Perhaps—most likely, indeed; in which case they will
+associate some other reliable man with me in the onerous
+charge. And I should like you to be that man, Hay,”
+pleaded the parson.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“With pleasure; if the lord chancellor will appoint me,”
+answered Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Is Jennie much distressed, sir?” inquired Judy, sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, madam. She is very much agitated.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“May I go to her? Could I do her any good?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I feel sure you could. I should feel very grateful to
+you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy hurried into the house and got her wraps, and
+came out to join the rector in his walk homeward.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At the rectory door they were met by Mrs. Campbell, who,
+after very gravely saluting Judy and thanking her for coming,
+turned to the rector and inquired:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What was all that the wretched man was rambling
+about in his last hour? Was there any foundation of truth
+in it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It was all truth, Hetty, from foundation rock—to carry
+out your simile—to capping stone; and baby Essie is now
+Countess of Engelmeed in her own right and a ward in
+chancery.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Well, well, well! She doesn’t know it—Jennie, I mean,
+of course. She thinks he was out of his head.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I saw she did; but it is true,” said the rector, as
+they entered the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A week later the remains of the last Earl of Engelmeed
+were laid in the vault of his forefathers, amid all</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c010'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The pride, pomp and circumstance”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>of  funeral parade.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After the ceremonies the rector, with his wife, daughter
+and grandchild, returned to the rectory, where they were
+all to live during the minority of the infant countess.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran and Judy came back to their beloved home, but had
+scarcely got settled there when they received letters announcing
+the speedy arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart,
+with their children and a friend—Mr. O’Melaghlin, of
+Arghalee, in Antrim.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>“I wonder who he is,” pondered Ran, as he took the letter
+over to the rectory to show it to Mr. Campbell.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, I know the name and the place, but not the man.
+I have been to Arghalee. All except the very ground on
+which the ancient castle stands, and which the impoverished
+O’Melaghlin would not sell under any stress of fortune,
+forms a part of the duke’s estate. The castle is one of the
+show places of the neighborhood; not for its parks, plantations
+or picture galleries, by any means—for there are none—but
+for the great antiquity of the ruins. The owner was
+supposed to be traveling abroad. He is The O’Melaghlin
+in question, of course. The guidebook to the ancient castle
+shows the family to be lineal descendants from Roderick
+O’Melaghlin, monarch of Meath, and more remotely from
+Konn, a somewhat mythical king of prehistoric Ireland.
+So, you see, you will have an illustrious guest, though he
+may be as poor as ‘Job’s turkey.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No; the letter says he has made an immense fortune in
+the gold mines of Australia, and is coming back to live on
+his estate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“When do you expect them?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“By the next steamer—for this letter was written from
+New York the day before they were to start.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Ah!” said the rector.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And Ran, having communicated his good news, went
+home to his Judy.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c007'>CHAPTER XXXIX<br> <span class='large'>“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL”</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>Meanwhile, Cleve, Palma, their children, servant, and,
+last and loftiest, The O’Melaghlin were coming over as fast
+as wind and steam could bring them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>They had unusually fine weather for the whole trip. They
+made some very pleasant acquaintances, and formed some
+very fast friendships among their fellow passengers, with
+whom they were all very popular.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The eccentricities of The O’Melaghlin were endless
+sources of amusement to the passengers as to our own
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span>party, to whom they were also causes of frequent annoyance.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>For instance, O’Melaghlin always addressed Mr. Cleve
+Stuart as “Wolfscliff.” And not infrequently, when he
+had had too much wine for dinner, the chieftain would hail
+his friend from across the table as “O’Wolfscliff,” or speak
+of him to another person as “The O’Wolfscliff.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Besides this, he would reiterate, in season and out of season,
+his injunction that Mr. and Mrs. Cleve Stuart should
+preserve, inviolate, the secret of his relationship to Mike
+and Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Moind ye don’t let on to them,” he repeated. “I am
+to be inthrodooced as a frind of your own, claiming, in
+right of you, the hospitality of Misther and Misthress Randolph
+Hay. And I am to have a week or tin days to observe
+me childer before they suspect me. That will lave me find
+them out as they are widout pritinces. Do ye moind?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, yes,” Stuart would reply, heartily tired, yet half
+amused at the man’s persistence.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And yerself will not brathe a syllable that will lave
+them suspict I’m anything to themselves, Misthress
+Stuart?” he persevered, turning to Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not a syllable, O’Melaghlin,” she answered.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This funny persecution ceased for the time, to be renewed
+as soon as they landed at Liverpool, and continued all the
+way from that city to York, and from there to Chuxton.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Not a hint, not a breath, not a look, to bethray to the
+childer that they behold in me the father of them, and a
+discindint of the ancient kings of Meath,” he said, as the
+train drew into the Chuxton station.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“‘Not a hint, not a breath, not a look’ from us shall
+betray your secret, O’Melaghlin,” Cleve assured him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“No, indeed,” Palma added.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Be the powers, if ye bethray me, I nivir spake to aither
+of yez again.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There,” said Stuart, as they all rose to leave the train,
+“there is Mr. Randolph Hay himself come in the barouche
+to meet us.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Where?” demanded The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, on the other side of the road. That gentleman
+in the open carriage with the fine bays and the footman in
+russet livery,” replied Cleve, pointing to the “turnout.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span>“Be the club of Konn! That foine fellow the son-in-law
+of meself!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, indeed!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The gintleman that married me Judy when she was a
+nady orphan, and he didn’t suspict she could be the daughter
+of a hundred kings?”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The very same.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Let me at him!” exclaimed The O’Melaghlin, pushing
+to the front and passing through the crowd on the platform
+to the side of the barouche, just as Ran got down from his
+seat to welcome his friends.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I’m The O’Melaghlin, Misther Hay. And it’s proud I
+am to make the acquaintance of ye. You’re a noble man,
+that ye are—that ye are. Wolfscliff is behoind. I could not
+wait for him to inthrodooce you. But I’m The O’Melaghlin,
+and you are Misther Hay!” he exclaimed, seizing the hand
+of Ran and shaking it to nearly dislocation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran was somewhat dismayed, not knowing how to account
+for this overwhelming salute that almost deprived
+him of the power to respond, and say:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I am very happy to meet you, Mr. O’Melaghlin.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Misther?” repeated the chief, prompt to take exception
+to such a common title applied to himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But fortunately Stuart came up, shook hands with Ran
+and then presented Palma, who was warmly welcomed by
+her cousin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And now, Wolfscliff, will ye be afther inthrodoocing
+Misther Hay to meself?” demanded Ran’s father-in-law.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Pardon, I thought you had,” said Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Divil a bit could I do that same to his intilligince,” replied
+the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Then I will have that honor,” laughed Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And assuming the courtly dignity of a lord chamberlain
+at a royal reception, he bowed to the descendant of Irish
+kings, and with a wave of his hand, to indicate the inferior
+person, said:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“The O’Melaghlin, of Arghalee, I have the honor to present
+to you, sir, Mr. Randolph Hay, of Haymore.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Ran bowed very solemnly, conscious now that he stood
+in the presence of an “eccentric.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And, sure, meself fales honored in the relationship—I
+mane the acquaintanceship,” graciously replied The O’Melaghlin,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>feeling, however, that he had almost betrayed himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will you take seats in the carriage now? My servants
+are here with the break and a van to bring your people and
+luggage,” said Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Cleve bowed and handed Palma to a back seat, and The
+O’Melaghlin to a place beside her. Then he took a front
+seat, where Ran joined him, and the barouche started for
+Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The drive through the beautiful country, now in the
+glory of early summer, charmed both Cleve and Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“It is a boundless Garden of Eden!” exclaimed the latter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But beauty and glory in nature was quite lost on The
+O’Melaghlin, who employed the time in descanting to his
+son-in-law upon the ancient royalty and grandeur of the
+O’Melaghlins until the carriage turned into the park gate,
+where Longman stood to welcome them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There, that was a foine sivin-footer—that retainer of
+yours, Haymore. Jist such min me ancestor, Roderick
+O’Melaghlin, last monarch of Meath, had for his bodyguard,
+armed with spears and battle-axes, iviry man of them,” said
+the chieftain, as the carriage rolled up the avenue toward
+the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>When it drew up in front of the Hall, there stood Mike
+and Judy, the beautiful young pair, as much alike in their
+dark loveliness as twin brother and sister could possibly be.
+Both in evening dress; Mike in the conventional black
+swallowtail and patent leathers, with a sprig of shamrock
+in his buttonhole in honor of the visitor. Judy in a dark
+blue satin dress, trained, and with low body and short
+sleeves, showing the plump neck and round arms, which
+were now dimly veiled with fine lace and adorned with the
+Haymore diamonds in honor of the guests.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Behind them stood an array of servants.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“There is your son and daughter, O’Melaghlin,” whispered
+Palma in the ear of the chief, as he sat beside her.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He looked out and saw the beautiful pair, with their
+lovely faces lighted up now with the joy of expectancy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“What! thim? You don’t mane thim!” he exclaimed,
+gazing at them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes, I do. They are Mike and Judy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Och! let me at thim—the angels!—the beauties! They
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>are both the imidge of their mother, me sainted Moira!
+Let me at thim!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And with a bound The O’Melaghlin was out of the
+barouche and tearing up the stairs to the presence of his
+astonished children.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Forgotten were all his plans of secrecy and covert observation.
+The father’s pride and joy in the Irishman’s warm
+heart overbore all resolutions, and he fell upon his son and
+daughter with ravenous delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And so ye are me own childer—me Mike and me Judy!
+And the jewels that ye are!” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But it was Judy he clasped to his breast and covered with
+kisses.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Oh, Mike! Mike! save me!” exclaimed the frightened
+and distressed daughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Will ye be afther kapin’ yer hands to yerself?” exclaimed
+Mike, who thought the stranger was a maniac, and
+tried to separate him from the terrified victim. But Mike
+was no match for The O’Melaghlin.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Aisy! aisy!” exclaimed the chieftain. “It’s jealous ye
+are of me affection for the sister av ye! But your turn will
+come nixt, me bhoy!”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Fortunately Ran, to whom Cleve had hastily communicated
+the now open secret, came hurrying up the stairs, leaving
+Stuart and Palma for the moment in the barouche.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Stop! stop! Mike, my lad! The gentleman is your
+father. Yes, dear Judy, your father. Do not be afraid of
+him,” he exclaimed, coming to the rescue with the explanation.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yis, darlint Judy, it’s the fayther av ye that’s pressin’
+ye to this throbbin’ heart av him! It’s the fayther av ye,
+me foine Mike, that will make ye the lawful heir av the
+oldest name and richest estate in ould Ireland! Yis, I
+meant to have kept that same a secret till I had watched
+the natures av ye both for a wake or two, but me affections
+were too much for me.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>While he spoke he was kissing Judy, patting Mike on the
+shoulder or embracing them both and holding them together
+to his breast.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At last, quite overcome by his emotion, he sank down
+upon the top step and covered his face with his hands to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span>hide the tears that might have seemed a reproach to the
+descendant of the warlike monarchs of Meath.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike and Judy raised him up with tender care and led
+him into the hall and thence into the drawing-room, while
+the old butler, without waiting orders, went and brought a
+tray with a decanter of brandy and a glass.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>The O’Melaghlin saw the elixir of life and revived at the
+sight.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Meanwhile Ran returned to the barouche to conduct
+Stuart and Palma to the house.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“He made me and my wife swear by all the saints in
+Christendom that we would not betray his secret until he
+himself should give us leave, and lo! he has blurted it out
+himself,” laughed Stuart.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Yes. He seems a very eccentric person, this unexpected
+father-in-law of mine. Yet I like what I have seen
+of him,” replied Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“You will like him better. The longer you know him
+the more you will esteem him. And if you will consider
+the eccentricities of his fate and fortune, you will understand
+and forgive the eccentricities of his character,” replied
+Cleve.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And then they followed their host into the house and into
+the drawing-room, where they found The O’Melaghlin
+seated on a sofa between his son and daughter, with his left
+arm around Judy’s waist, and in his right hand a wineglass
+of brandy which he sipped at intervals, while Mike held the
+decanter ready to replenish the glass when necessary.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>But as soon as Ran came in with the Stuarts The O’Melaghlin
+gave the glass to Judy to hold and went to meet
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>He seized the hand of Ran, and shaking it again cruelly
+and almost to dislocation, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Me son-in-law! Me brave, good, thrue bhoy! I have
+not yet greeted ye, nor wilcomed ye as me son-in-law! But
+now I will do it, with the highest praise mortal man could
+give ye. I will say: Haymore, sir, ye are worthy to be the
+husband of me daughter Judy and the daughter of a thousand
+kings.”</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“I thank you, sir. I am sure that is the highest praise
+you could give me. I hope it is true,” gallantly replied
+Ran.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>Servants were at hand to show the guests to their apartments.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Mike did the honors to his father, and accompanied him
+to the apartments prepared for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>Judy attended Palma to the beautiful suit of rooms that
+had been fitted up for Mr. and Mrs. Stuart and their
+children.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>There Judy for the first time made acquaintance with
+Palma’s lovely children, whom she found already on the
+nursery cot, asleep and attended by the faithful Hatty.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“Why, when did these beauties come? Why have I not
+seen them before?” demanded Judy.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“They came in the second carriage with Hatty and Josias.
+I would trust them with those two as confidently as with
+myself and their father,” replied Palma.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>“And I was so taken by surprise at the sudden meeting
+with my father that I forgot even to inquire after the
+darlings! I beg your little pardons!” said Judy, kneeling
+by the side of the children’s cot and kissing their sleeping
+faces.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>At dinner the newly arrived visitors met the Rev. Mr. and
+Mrs. Campbell, who had been invited to meet them. Jennie—the
+Countess Dowager of Engelmeed—being in deep
+mourning for her husband, did not go out or receive visitors.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>A week of idleness on the part of all the family followed
+at Haymore Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>After that questions of importance were taken up.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>It was decided that The O’Melaghlin, with Mr. and Mrs.
+Hay and Mr. and Mrs. Stuart and Mike, should set out on
+an excursion to Arghalee Castle and find lodging at
+Arghalee Arms, and from that vantage point investigate
+the ancient ruins and see what could be done toward the
+successful restoration of the castle, also open negotiations
+with the duke’s legal steward if possible to repurchase all
+the land that had once constituted the Arghalee estate.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>All this was happily effected in the course of a few
+months—for The O’Melaghlin stopped at nothing in his
+eager desire to restore the ancient magnificence and splendor
+of his house; and so he paid twice the worth of the
+land to get it back, and fabulous sums to the antiquaries
+and architects to restore the castle and the chapel in all
+their pristine strength and glory.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>The Stuarts remained at Haymore until the last of the
+summer and then bade affectionate adieus to the Hays and
+returned to Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>This was the first of many visits, which the Hays often
+returned.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That autumn Mike was entered as Michael O’Melaghlin,
+master of Arghalee, in one of the best preparatory colleges
+in Glasgow.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>That winter, when “Burke’s Landed Gentry” appeared,
+under the name of Hay it contained this item:</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Hay, Randolph, born January 1, 185—, succeeded his
+father March 1, 187—, married December 2, 187—, Judith,
+only daughter of Michael, The O’Melaghlin, Chief of
+Arghalee, Antrim.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And the anxious soul of Will Walling, when he received
+a copy of the book with the marked passage, was entirely
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p class='c009'>And New Year’s Day brought Ran and Judy a New
+Year’s gift, in the form of a son and heir, which filled the
+hearts of the parents with bliss.</p>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c014'>
+    <div><span class='small'>THE END</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c002'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>BURT’S SERIES <em>of</em> STANDARD FICTION.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'>RICHELIEU. A tale of France in the reign of King Louis XIII. By G. P.
+R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>In 1829 Mr. James published his first romance, “Richelieu,” and was
+recognized at once as one of the masters of the craft.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>In this book he laid the story during those later days of the great cardinal’s
+life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it was
+yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which
+overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity.
+One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar’s conspiracy;
+the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery
+resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight into the statecraft
+of that day than can be had even by an exhaustive study of history.
+It is a powerful romance of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling
+and absorbing interest has never been excelled.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>A COLONIAL FREE-LANCE. A story of American Colonial Times. By
+Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>A book that appeals to Americans as a vivid picture of Revolutionary
+scenes. The story is a strong one, a thrilling one. It causes the true
+American to flush with excitement, to devour chapter after chapter, until
+the eyes smart, and it fairly smokes with patriotism. The love story is a
+singularly charming idyl.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>THE TOWER OF LONDON. A Historical Romance of the Times of Lady
+Jane Grey and Mary Tudor. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with
+four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>This romance of the “Tower of London” depicts the Tower as palace,
+prison and fortress, with many historical associations. The era is the
+middle of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The story is divided into two parts, one dealing with Lady Jane Grey,
+and the other with Mary Tudor as Queen, introducing other notable characters
+of the era. Throughout the story holds the interest of the reader
+in the midst of intrigue and conspiracy, extending considerably over a
+half a century.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A Romance of the American Revolution.
+By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Mr. Hotchkiss has etched in burning words a story of Yankee bravery,
+and true love that thrills from beginning to end, with the spirit of the
+Revolution. The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking a
+part in the exciting scenes described. His whole story is so absorbing
+that you will sit up far into the night to finish it. As a love romance
+it is charming.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>GARTHOWEN. A story of a Welsh Homestead. By Allen Raine. Cloth,
+12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“This is a little idyl of humble life and enduring love, laid bare before
+us, very real and pure, which in its telling shows us some strong points of
+Welsh character—the pride, the hasty temper, the quick dying out of wrath.... We call this a well-written story. Interesting alike through its
+romance and its glimpses into another life than ours. A delightful and
+clever picture of Welsh village life. The result is excellent.”—Detroit Free
+Press.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>MIFANWY. The story of a Welsh Singer. By Allan Raine. Cloth,
+12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“This is a love story, simple, tender and pretty as one would care to
+read. The action throughout is brisk and pleasing; the characters, it is apparent
+at once, are as true to life as though the author had known them
+all personally. Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that
+touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome, no matter how
+often the lights and shadows of love are introduced. It rings true, and
+does not tax the imagination.”—Boston Herald.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>DARNLEY. A Romance of the times of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey.
+By G. P. R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis.
+Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>As a historical romance “Darnley” is a book that can be taken up
+pleasurably again and again, for there is about it that subtle charm which
+those who are strangers to the works of G. P. R. James have claimed was
+only to be imparted by Dumas.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>If there was nothing more about the work to attract especial attention,
+the account of the meeting of the kings on the historic “field of the cloth of
+gold” would entitle the story to the most favorable consideration of every
+reader.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>There is really but little pure romance in this story, for the author has
+taken care to imagine love passages only between those whom history has
+credited with having entertained the tender passion one for another, and
+he succeeds in making such lovers as all the world must love.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>WINDSOR CASTLE. A Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII.
+Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth,
+12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>“Windsor Castle” is the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne
+Boleyn. “Bluff King Hal,” although a well-loved monarch, was none too
+good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts,
+none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage
+to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King’s love was as brief as it
+was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen, attracted him,
+and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room for her successor.
+This romance is one of extreme interest to all readers.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>HORSESHOE ROBINSON. A tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina
+in 1780. By John P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J.
+Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Among the old favorites in the field of what is known as historical fiction,
+there are none which appeal to a larger number of Americans than
+Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which depicts
+with fidelity to the facts the heroic efforts of the colonists in South Carolina
+to defend their homes against the brutal oppression of the British
+under such leaders as Cornwallis and Tarleton.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The reader is charmed with the story of love which forms the thread
+of the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning those
+times. The picture of the manifold sufferings of the people, is never overdrawn,
+but painted faithfully and honestly by one who spared neither
+time nor labor in his efforts to present in this charming love story all that
+price in blood and tears which the Carolinians paid as their share in the
+winning of the republic.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Take it all in all, “Horseshoe Robinson” is a work which should be
+found on every book-shelf, not only because it is a most entertaining
+story, but because of the wealth of valuable information concerning the
+colonists which it contains. That it has been brought out once more, well
+illustrated, is something which will give pleasure to thousands who have
+long desired an opportunity to read the story again, and to the many who
+have tried vainly in these latter days to procure a copy that they might
+read it for the first time.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>THE PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND. A story of the Coast of Maine. By
+Harriet Beecher Stowe. Cloth, 12mo. Illustrated. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Written prior to 1862, “The Pearl of Orr’s Island” is ever new; a book
+filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew each
+time one reads them. One sees the “sea like an unbroken mirror all
+around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr’s Island,” and straightway
+comes “the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild
+angry howl of some savage animal.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Who can read of the beginning of that sweet life, named Mara, which
+came into this world under the very shadow of the Death angel’s wings,
+without having an intense desire to know how the premature bud blossomed?
+Again and again one lingers over the descriptions of the character
+of that baby boy Moses, who came through the tempest, amid the
+angry billows, pillowed on his dead mother’s breast.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>There is no more faithful portrayal of New England life than that
+which Mrs. Stowe gives in “The Pearl of Orr’s Island.”</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER. A Romance of the Early Settlers in the
+Ohio Valley. By Zane Grey. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>A book rather out of the ordinary is this “Spirit of the Border.” The
+main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian missionaries
+in the Ohio Valley. Incidentally the reader is given details of the
+frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the wilderness for the planting
+of this great nation. Chief among these, as a matter of course, is
+Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and at the same time the most
+admirable of all the brave men who spent their lives battling with the
+savage foe, that others might dwell in comparative security.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian “Village
+of Peace” are given at some length, and with minute description. The
+efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have been
+before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders of the
+several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be of interest to
+the student.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid word-pictures
+of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings of the beauties
+of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by it,
+perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly braved
+every privation and danger that the westward progress of the star of empire
+might be the more certain and rapid. A love story, simple and tender,
+runs through the book.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>CAPTAIN BRAND, OF THE SCHOONER CENTIPEDE. By Lieut.
+Henry A. Wise, U.S.N. (Harry Gringo). Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations
+by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The re-publication of this story will please those lovers of sea yarns
+who delight in so much of the salty flavor of the ocean as can come through
+the medium of a printed page, for never has a story of the sea and those
+“who go down in ships” been written by one more familiar with the scenes
+depicted.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The one book of this gifted author which is best remembered, and which
+will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is “Captain Brand,”
+who, as the author states on his title page, was a “pirate of eminence in
+the West Indies.” As a sea story pure and simple, “Captain Brand” has
+never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual
+embellishments of blood and thunder, it has no equal.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>NICK OF THE WOODS. A story of the Early Settlers of Kentucky. By
+Robert Montgomery Bird. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>This most popular novel and thrilling story of early frontier life in
+Kentucky was originally published in the year 1837. The novel, long out of
+print, had in its day a phenomenal sale, for its realistic presentation of
+Indian and frontier life in the early days of settlement in the South, narrated
+in the tale with all the art of a practiced writer. A very charming
+love romance runs through the story. This new and tasteful edition of
+“Nick of the Woods” will be certain to make many new admirers for
+this enchanting story from Dr. Bird’s clever and versatile pen.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>GUY FAWKES. A Romance of the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison
+Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank.
+Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The “Gunpowder Plot” was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament,
+the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England,
+was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of
+extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In
+their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded
+to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested,
+and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other prisoners with
+royal vigor. A very intense love story runs through the entire romance.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>TICONDEROGA: A Story of Early Frontier Life in the Mohawk Valley.
+By G. P. R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four page illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The setting of the story is decidedly more picturesque than any ever
+evolved by Cooper: The frontier of New York State, where dwelt an English
+gentleman, driven from his native home by grief over the loss of his wife,
+with a son and daughter. Thither, brought by the exigencies of war, comes
+an English officer, who is readily recognised as that Lord Howe who met his
+death at Ticonderoga. As a most natural sequence, even amid the hostile
+demonstrations of both French and Indians, Lord Howe and the young girl
+find time to make most deliciously sweet love, and the son of the recluse has
+already lost his heart to the daughter of a great sachem, a dusky maiden
+whose warrior-father has surrounded her with all the comforts of a civilized
+life.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The character of Captain Brooks, who voluntarily decides to sacrifice his
+own life in order to save the son of the Englishman, is not among the least
+of the attractions of this story, which holds the attention of the reader even
+to the last page. The tribal laws and folk lore of the different tribes of
+Indians known as the “Five Nations,” with which the story is interspersed,
+shows that the author gave no small amount of study to the work in question,
+and nowhere else is it shown more plainly than by the skilful manner in
+which he has interwoven with his plot the “blood” law, which demands a
+life for a life, whether it be that of the murderer or one of his race.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>A more charming story of mingled love and adventure has never been
+written than “Ticonderoga.”</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>ROB OF THE BOWL: A Story of the Early Days of Maryland. By John
+P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four page illustrations by J. Watson Davis.
+Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>It was while he was a member of Congress from Maryland that the
+noted statesman wrote this story regarding the early history of his native
+State, and while some critics are inclined to consider “Horse Shoe Robinson”
+as the best of his works, it is certain that “Rob of the Bowl” stands at the
+head of the list as a literary production and an authentic exposition of the
+manners and customs during Lord Baltimore’s rule. The greater portion of
+the action takes place in St. Mary’s—the original capital of the State.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>As a series of pictures of early colonial life in Maryland, “Rob of the
+Bowl” has no equal, and the book, having been written by one who had
+exceptional facilities for gathering material concerning the individual members
+of the settlements in and about St. Mary’s, is a most valuable addition
+to the history of the State.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The story is full of splendid action, with a charming love story, and a
+plot that never loosens the grip of its interest to its last page.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>BY BERWEN BANKS. By Allen Raine.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>It is a tender and beautiful romance of the idyllic. A charming picture
+of life in a Welsh seaside village. It is something of a prose-poem, true,
+tender and graceful.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A romance of the American Revolution.
+By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
+Davis. Price, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>The story opens in the month of April, 1775, with the provincial troops
+hurrying to the defense of Lexington and Concord. Mr. Hotchkiss has etched
+in burning words a story of Yankee bravery and true love that thrills from
+beginning to end with the spirit of the Revolution. The heart beats quickly,
+and we feel ourselves taking a part in the exciting scenes described. You
+lay the book aside with the feeling that you have seen a gloriously true
+picture of the Revolution. His whole story is so absorbing that you will sit
+up far into the night to finish it. As a love romance it is charming.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c002'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c003'>
+    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+ <ol class='ol_1 c014'>
+    <li>P. <a href='#t235'>235</a>, “Here am” inserted for illegible characters. 7 characters because 
+    capital H and lower m are each nearly 2 characters wide.  Barely visible in original 
+    edition and reprint—defective typeface in original.
+
+    </li>
+    <li>P. <a href='#t302'>302</a>, changed “in Sahara” to “in the Sahara”.
+
+    </li>
+    <li>Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
+
+    </li>
+    <li>Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
+    </li>
+  </ol>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69809 ***</div>
+  </body>
+  <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57c_GHS_H5 on 2023-01-15 16:04:51 GMT -->
+</html>
author	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-25 09:46:24 -0800
committer	nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org>	2025-01-25 09:46:24 -0800
commit	dc2bd03b34e9a63a2ac8666041f948027749dd2b (patch)
tree	2c9084c00c543cbee2165f9671157e0aebb752bd /69809-h
parent	3bcd86a9571b267a8fd810002b3360b096e7e1f0 (diff)