“JUSTICE SHALL BE DONE.”
And so it was that the world woke up the next morning and read the
story.
The newsboys cried their papers on the streets.
“All about the broken-off wedding at Trinity!”
“All about the great sensation--the woman with a past!”
“Terrible scandal in high life!”
“Read about the Southern vendetta and the double tragedy, and the
pretty girl that went mad for love!”
It was the last that attracted the attention of a loutish fellow
gawking about on a street corner so that he bought a newspaper and
retired into a cheap restaurant to discuss it with his breakfast.
And as he read his eyes began to bulge and his chin to drop, so that
his large mouth gaped half open long before he muttered:
“By gum! I knows ’em all, every one! It’s Doc Ludington, Pat Groves and
them, for I seen little Eva last week with a big, handsome man they
said she was ’gaged to marry this week! Now what for did that sneakin’
Pat want to come and spile sport for, by gum! Ain’t she done devilment
enuff already with her joking?”
His brow grew dark as he remembered the wretchedness he had endured in
keeping the twins’ miserable secret of Hallowe’en night.
He began to vaguely wonder if it had been necessary, if he might not
have fared better confessing the truth and staying at home?
His thoughts flew to Doctor Ludington and the night he had succored him
from misery and starvation.
“What’s that he said, I wonder, about doing good deeds and finding
comfort in ’em? I might a-done a good deed oncet if I’d told the truth,
and saved people from thinking bad about poor little Eva! I told a lie,
and the mischief keeps going on and on, and spreading away out here in
New York. I wisht now I never had of done it!”
With his chin sunk on the breast of his warm new overcoat, he mused
upon the past and all the cruel events that had followed upon his
falsehood.
Two men were talking earnestly near him over a little table, and he
overheard one saying to the other:
“It’s never too late to mend! I’m going to turn over a new leaf!”
“By gum, so will I!” ejaculated Dan Ellis, and he got up and paid for
his meal and hurried out upon the sidewalk.
“If I’ve lost that pasteboard thing he give me, I s’pose I’ll never
find him!” he muttered, searching his pocket for Doctor Ludington’s
card.
“Hooray, here ’tis, and I’m off! I’ll see if it makes a poor, homesick
chap feel good to do the right thing by the man that saved his life,”
he said, setting off at almost a run for the hospital.
Arrived there, it was not so easy to find the young doctor, or at least
to gain admittance to him.
“He’s shut up in his room, after staying up all night with a dying
man!” an attendant told him.
“I only want him a minit!”
“He gave orders he would not be disturbed for anything. He is not
feeling well.”
“I reckon not, if he read the papers this morning, poor chap!” muttered
Dan; then aloud:
“He’ll see me, and be glad enough of it, though I am tough-looking, I
know. Please, sir, go and tell him hit’s Dan Ellis, from West Virginny,
on a matter of life and death!”
The man said afterward that the message took effect as quick as a dose
of the doctor’s own medicine. He said he wanted Dan brought to him at
once.
Very ill and wretched he looked, lying back in his armchair with the
morning papers all about him.
“Ah, Dan, so it was you I ran into that night? I’ve puzzled over you
since, knowing your face so well, though your name eluded me. Well,
what can I do for you this time?” he asked kindly.
“It’s me as kin help you this time, doc!” cried Dan, and blundered into
a full confession of his wrongdoing at the instigation of the twins.
The doctor’s pale face grew radiant with a holy joy. He put self aside
and thought only of Eva.
“If you will come with me to Mr. Hamilton’s Dan, and tell this story,
you may restore little Eva’s happiness,” he cried eagerly.
“I’m in your hands, doc. Do anything you like with me!” was the glad
reply.
In a few minutes they were in a carriage on their way.
After some difficulty with Reggie’s valet, they gained admittance to
him, and made their business known.
What a moment for Reginald Hamilton! Doubt changed to certainty, sorrow
to joy, despair to hope.
“If she will only forgive me!” he cried hopefully, but Doctor Ludington
could not tell him what to expect. He only said:
“If I have any influence I will use it for you. But go now and beguile
Patty Groves some way to Fifth Avenue, and I will meet you there with
Dan. Justice shall be done at last, and little Eva’s fair name righted
before the world, while the shame of the falsehood that marred her life
shall fall on Patty Groves, where it belongs!”