PART IV.

A PICKAXE AND A SPADE.

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XV.

THE SMALL, SLIGHT MAN.

TWO months had passed and the first snow was whitening the streets of

Hamilton. It was falling thick on Carberry hill, up which Clarke Unwin

was plodding early one evening on a visit to the Earle cottage.

His errand was one of importance. A crisis was approaching in his

affairs and he was determined to settle, once and for all, whether poor

Polly’s money was to be sacrificed to her father’s increasing demands,

or whether she could safely be allowed to follow her own wishes and give

five thousand dollars of it to the lover whose future fortunes seemed to

depend upon his possession of this amount.

Ephraim Earle had told her with something like a curse that he should

expect from her this very sum on the first of the month, but if this

demand were satisfied then Clarke’s own hopes must go, for his friends

in the Cleveland works were fast becoming impatient, and Mr. Wright had

written only two days before that if the amount demanded from him was

not forthcoming in a fortnight, they would be obliged to listen to the

overtures of a certain capitalist who was only waiting for Clarke’s

withdrawal to place his own nephew in the desired place.

Clarke Unwin had not visited the Earle cottage since Ephraim took up his

abode in it. Polly had refused to go there, and he himself felt no call

to intrude upon a man who was personally disagreeable to him, and whom

he could not but regard as a tyrant to the sweet girl whose life had

been all sunshine till this man came into it with his preposterous

demands and insatiable desire for money.

On this day, however, he had received her permission to present her case

to her father and see what could be done with him. Perhaps when that

father came to know her need he would find that he did not want the

money as much as he made out; at all events the attempt was worth

trying, and thus it was that Clarke braved the storm on this October

night to interview a man he hated.

As he approached the brow of the hill he heard a noise of mingled

laughter and singing, and glancing from under his umbrella he perceived

that the various windows of the cottage were brilliantly lighted. The

sight gave him a shock. “He is having one of his chess and checker

orgies,” he commented to himself, and demurred at intruding himself at a

time so unfavorable. But the remembrance of his mother and Polly,

sitting together in anxious expectation of the good effects of his

visit, determined him to proceed; and triumphing over his own disgust,

he worked his way as rapidly as possible, and soon stood knee-deep in

the snow that was piled up before the cottage door. The wind was blowing

from the north and it struck him squarely as he raised his hand to the

knocker, but though it bit into his skin, he paused a moment to listen

to the final strains of old Cheeseborough’s voice, as he sang with rare

sweetness a quaint old English ballad.

When it was over Clarke knocked. A sudden pushing back of chairs over a

bare floor announced that his summons had been heard, and presently he

had the satisfaction of seeing the door open and the figure of Mr. Earle

standing before him. Clarke did not wait to be addressed.

“I am Clarke Unwin,” he announced. “May I be allowed the pleasure of a

few minutes’ conversation with you?”

“A _few_ minutes,” emphasized the other, drawing back with almost too

free an air of hospitable welcome. “I hope you will not limit yourself

to a _few_ minutes, my boy; we have too good company here for that.” And

without waiting for any demur on the part of his more than unwilling

guest, he flung open a door at the right, and ushered him, greatly

against his will, into the large parlor where Clarke had last stood with

Polly at his side.

Just now it was filled with the choicest of the convivial spirits in

town, most of whom had been playing checkers or chess and smoking till

not a face present was fully visible. Yet Clarke, in the one quick

glance he threw about him, recognized most if not all of the persons

present—Horton by his oaths, which rang out with more or less

good-natured emphasis with every play he made, and the three cronies in

the corner by various characteristics well known in Hamilton, where

these men passed for “the three disgraces.”

One person only was a perfect stranger to Clarke, but him he scarcely

noticed, so intent was he on his errand and the desire he had of

speaking to Mr. Earle alone.

“Hurrah! Come! Here’s Clarke Unwin!” shouted a voice from the depths of

the smoky pall. “Brought your flute with you? Nobody comes here without

some means of entertaining the company.”

“Off with your coat; there’s snow sticking to it! Uh! You’ve robbed the

room of all the heat there was in it,” grumbled old Cheeseborough, whose

fretfulness nobody minded because of the good nature that underlay it.

“Freedom Hall, this!” whispered Earle, still with that over-officious

air Clarke had noticed in him at the doorway. “Sit with your coat on, or

sit with it off; anything to suit yourself; only one thing we insist

on—you must take a good glass-full of this piping hot cider before you

speak a word. So much for good fellowship. Afterward you shall do as you

please.”

“I have not come for enjoyment, but business,” put in Clarke, waving the

glass aside and looking with some intentness into the face of the man

upon whose present disposition depended so much of his own happiness and

that of the young girl he had taken to his heart.

Earle, who had a secret pride in his own personal appearance which, now

that he was in good physical condition, was not without a certain broad

handsomeness, strutted back a pace and surveyed Clarke with interest.

“You are looking,” said he, “to see how I compare with that picture over

your head. Well, as I take it, that picture, though painted sixteen

years ago, does not do me justice. What do you think?”

Clarke, somewhat taken aback, as much by the smile which accompanied

these words, as by the words themselves, hesitated for a moment and then

boldly said:

“What you have gained in worldly knowledge and intercourse with men you

have lost in that set purpose which gives character to the physiognomy

and fills all its traits with individuality. In that face on the wall I

see the inventor, but in yours, as it now confronts me, the——”

“Well, what?”

“The centre of this very delightful group,” finished Clarke, suavely.

It was said with a bow which included the whole assembly. Earle laughed

and one or two about him frowned, but Clarke, heeding nobody, asked if

he could not have a moment’s conversation with his host in the hall.

Earle, with a side glance directed, as Clarke thought, toward the one

slight man in the corner whose face was unfamiliar to him, shook his

head at this suggestion and blurted out: “That’s against the rules. When

the Hail-Fellow-Well-Met Society comes together it is as one body. What

is whispered in one corner is supposed to be heard in the next. Out with

your business then, here. I have no secrets and can scarcely suppose you

to have.”

If this was meant to frighten Clarke off it did not succeed. He

determined to speak, and speak as he was commanded right there and then.

“Well,” said he, “since you force me to take the town into our

confidence, I will. Your daughter——”

“Ah,” quoth Earle, genially, “she has remembered, then, that she has a

father. She sends me her love, probably. Dear girl, how kind of her on

this wintry night!”

“She sends you her respects,” Clarke corrected, frankly, “and wants to

know if you insist upon having the last few dollars that she possesses.”

“Oh, what taste!” broke in the father, somewhat disconcerted. “I did

think you would have better judgment than to discuss money matters in a

social gathering like this. But since you have introduced the topic you

may say to my dutiful little girl that since I have only asked for such

sums as she is perfectly able to part with, I shall certainly expect her

to recognize my claim upon her without hesitation or demur. Have you

anything more to say, Mr. Unwin?”

Clarke, whose eye had wandered to the stranger in the corner, felt no

desire to back out of the struggle, unpleasing as this publicity was. He

therefore answered with a determined nod, and with a few whispered words

which caused a slight decrease in the air of bravado with which his host

regarded him.

“You persist,” that individual remarked, “notwithstanding the rules I

have had the honor of quoting to you? I should not have expected it of

you, Mr. Unwin; but since your time is short, as you say, and the

subject must be discussed, what do you advise, gentlemen? Shall I listen

to the plea of this outsider—outsider as regards this meeting, I mean,

not as regards my feelings toward him as a father—and break our rules by

taking him into another room, or shall I risk a blush or two for my

charming little daughter’s perversity, and hear him out in your very

good company and perhaps, under your equally good and worthy advice?”

“Hear him here!” piped up Cheeseborough, whose wits were somewhat

befuddled by something stronger than cider.

“No, no, shame!” shouted Emmons. “Polly is a good girl and we have no

business meddling with her affairs. Let them have their talk upstairs. I

can find enough here to interest me.”

“Yes, yes, there’s the game! Let’s finish the game! Such interruptions

are enough to spoil all nice calculations.”

“You were making for the king row.”

“Checkmate in three moves!”

“Here! fill up my glass first!”

“I declare if my pipe hasn’t gone out!”

Clarke, who heard these various exclamations without heeding them,

glanced at Earle for his decision, but Earle’s eye was on the man in the

farthest corner.

“Well, we’ll go upstairs!” he announced shortly wheeling about and

leading the way into the hall. Clarke followed and was about to close

the door behind him when a slim figure intervened between him and the

door, and the stranger he had previously noticed glided into the hall.

“Who’s this?” he asked, noticing that this man showed every sign of

accompanying them.

“A friend,” retorted Earle, “one of the devoted kind who sticks closer

than a brother.”

Clarke, astonished, surveyed the thin young man who waited at the foot

of the stairs and remarked nonchalantly, “I do not know him.” Earle,

with a shrug of the shoulders, went upstairs.

“You may have the opportunity later,” he dryly remarked; “at present,

try and fix your attention on me.” They proceeded to the inventor’s

workroom, where they found a light already burning.

“Sit down!” commanded Earle, with something of the authority which his

years, if not his prospective attitude toward the young man warranted.

But he did not sit himself, nor did the friend who had followed him

upstairs and who now hovered about somewhere in the background. “It will

take Emmons just ten minutes to perfect the ‘mate’ he has threatened,”

observed Earle as they faced each other. “Can you finish your talk in as

short a time? For I must be down there before they start a fresh game.”

“Five minutes should suffice me,” returned Clarke, “but you may need a

longer time for argument. Shall I state just what our situation is as

regards this money you want from Polly?”

“If you will be so good!”

“With that man listening in the doorway?”

“With that man listening in the doorway.”

“Polly has no money to spare, Mr. Earle. Of the twenty thousand left her

you have already had ten——”

“For my just debts, Mr. Unwin.”

“For your just debts, granted, Mr. Earle, but those debts were not

incurred for her benefit, nor have you ever deigned to particularize to

her just what they were.”

“I would not burden her young mind.”

“No, it has been enough for you to burden her purse.”

“I should have burdened her conscience had I neglected to ask for her

assistance.”

“And will you now, by declining to take away her last hope, allow her

the means of retrieving the fortune of which you have so nearly robbed

her?”

“Her hopes? Her means? I think you are speaking for yourself, sir.”

“In speaking for myself, I speak for her; our interests are identical.”

“You flatter yourself; Miss Earle is not yet your wife.”

“Would you come between us?”

“God forbid! I am willing that Polly, as you call her, should marry whom

she will—when I am dead.”

“Or when you have robbed her of every cent she owns.”

“Oh, what language! I marvel you have not more delicacy of expression,

Mr. Unwin. Your father was noted for his refinement.”

“He had not to deal with—” the word was almost out, but Clarke

restrained himself—“with a man who could forsake his motherless child in

her tender years, only to expect unbounded sacrifices from her when she

has attained maturity.”

“I expect no more than she will be glad to grant. Maida has pride—so

have you. You would neither of you like to see her father in jail.”

Clarke bounded to his feet.

“We do not imprison men here for debt,” he cried.

“No, but you do for theft.”

The word, so much worse than any he was prepared for, turned Clarke

pale. He looked to right and left and shrank as he caught the eye of the

slim watcher in the hall beyond.

“You surely are not a criminal,” he whispered. “That man——”

“Never mind that man. Our ten minutes are fast flying by and you do not

yet seem to see that I cannot afford to relinquish my hold on Polly.”

“Do you mean that your debts——”

“Were incurred in private? Certainly, and under circumstances which

place me in a dilemma of no very pleasing nature. If they are not all

paid by the first of next month, I shall have to subject my very

conscientious little daughter to the obloquy of visiting her father in

prison. It is a shame, but such is the injustice of men.”

“You have stolen then?”

“Too harsh a word, Clarke. I have borrowed money for the purpose of

perfecting my experiments. The experiments have failed, and the

money—well, the man from whom I borrowed it will have it, that is all.

He is strict in his views, notwithstanding his long forbearance.”

“Who is this man? I should like to talk to him. That fellow behind you

is surely not he?”

“Oh, no; he is only a detective.”

“A detective!”

“Who likes my table and bed so well he never knows when he has had

enough of either.”

“Shameful!” sprang from Clarke’s set lips, as his eyes flew first to the

watchful but nonchalant figure in the hall, and then to the tall,

commanding form of the man who could accept his degrading situation with

such an air of mingled sarcasm and resignation.

“And you are the man to whom the French government sent her badge of

honor!”

“The same, Clarke,” tapping his breast.

“And you dare to call Polly your child; dare to return to Hamilton with

this disgrace upon you, to make her life a hell and——”

“Maida is my child; and as for this disgrace, as you call it, it will be

easy enough for her to elude that; a certain check drawn on her bank and

signed by her name will do it.”

“I should like to be sure of that,” returned Clarke, springing back into

the hall and confronting the man who stood there. “If you are a

detective,” said he, “you are here in the interest of the man whom Mr.

Earle has robbed?”

The slight young man, in no wise disconcerted, smiled politely, but with

an air of quiet astonishment directed mainly toward Ephraim Earle.

“I am here in the interest of Brown, Shepherd, & Co., certainly,” said

he. “But I have uttered no such word as robbed, nor will, unless the

first of the month shows Mr. Earle’s indebtedness to them unpaid.”

“I see. In what city does Brown, Shepherd, & Co. do business?”

“In New York, sir.”

“Merchants, lawyers, bankers, or what?”

“Bankers.”

“Oh, I remember; in Nassau street?”

“Just so.”

Mr. Earle, who had taken up a cigar from his table while this short

colloquy took place, stepped forward.

“A very strict firm, thorough, and not much given to showing mercy, eh?”

“Not much,” smiled the man.

“You see!” gesticulated Mr. Earle, turning to Clarke with a significant

smile.

Clarke, with a sudden heartsick sense of what this all meant to him,

assumed a stern air.

“Mr. Earle,” said he, “I must entreat that you come at once and present

this matter to Polly. She ought to know particulars, that she may judge

whether or not she will sacrifice her fortune to save you from the

disgrace you have incurred.”

“What, now, with my house full of guests? Impossible. The affair will

keep till to-morrow. I will be down to-morrow and tell her anything you

wish.”

“She cannot wait till to-morrow. I must send the letter to-morrow which

decides my future.”

“That’s unfortunate; but you can send your letter all the same. I know

what her decision will be.”

Clarke felt that he knew too, but would not admit it to himself.

“I have said my say,” he remarked. “Either you will let her know your

precise position to-night, or I will take it upon myself to ask her for

the money for my own uses. She will not deny me, if I press her, any

more than she will probably deny you. So take your choice. I am going

back to the friends below.”

Earle, who had not expected such condign treatment from one whom he had

hitherto regarded as a boy, glanced at the detective, and, with the

characteristic shrug he had picked up in foreign countries, cried out in

somewhat smothered tones, in which caution struggled oddly with his

natural bravado:

“Well, we’ll compromise. I cannot leave the H. F. W. M.; but I’ll tell

you what I will do. I’ll write out the situation for my daughter, and

you shall carry the paper with you. Won’t that do, considering the

circumstances, eh?”

Clarke, to whom this man’s character was a perfect anomaly, murmured a

hesitating consent and hurried down into the room below. Earle followed

him, and, entering with frank jocularity, in striking contrast with the

other’s dejected appearance, he cheerfully called out:

“Well, I’ve convinced the boy, somewhat, against his will, I own, that a

few thousands spent on the invention I have now on hand will bring in a

much larger fortune to Maida than that I have perhaps rather recklessly

expended. It was just so when I was perfecting my first invention, don’t

you remember? Every dollar I spent on it was begrudged me, and yet see

what an outcome there was to it at last.”

“Yes, yes; but where is all that money now?” queried old Cheeseborough,

wagging his iron gray head. “Nobody here ever saw a dollar of it, and I

have heard people say they don’t believe you ever got it.”

“Would you bring up the saddest hours of my life?” asked Earle, with a

sudden cloud on his brow. “I got the money, but—” he stopped, shook

himself and changed his tone for one of cheerful command. “Here, you!

Start a fresh game, Emmons. I see that your checkmate is good. I’ve got

to write a letter. Who will bet that I won’t get my six pages done

before Hale will succeed in getting three men into the king row?”

“I will!”

“Put down your dollar then!”

“There it is.”

“And there’s mine, with a condition to boot. I’ll write the letter _in

this room_, and give Cheeseborough another chance at a song, if you say

so.”

“Done! Fire away, old man; here goes my first move!”

“And here my first word.”

And, to Clarke’s mingled surprise and disgust, Earle threw himself down

before a table, took up a pen and began to write. Cheeseborough piped up

with his thin, sweet voice something between a dirge and a chant, and

Horton went on with his oaths.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVI.

THE LETTER.

WHEN Ephraim Earle had taken up his abode in the cottage on the hill,

Mrs. Unwin had moved into a small house on a side street in the lower

part of the town. In the cozy parlor of this same house, she was now

sitting with Polly, waiting for her son’s return.

He had been gone a couple of hours, and both Mrs. Unwin and Polly were

listening anxiously for the sound of his step on the porch. Polly, with

the impatience of youth, was flitting about the room and pressing her

face continually against the icy panes of the window, in a vain endeavor

to look out; but Mrs. Unwin, to whom care had become a constant

companion during these last months, was satisfied to remain by the fire,

gazing into the burning logs and dreaming of one whose face had never

vanished from her inner sight since that fatal evening she had seen it

smile again upon her as in the days of her early youth. Yes, she was

thinking of him while Polly was babbling of Clarke; thinking of the last

sentence he had uttered to her, and thinking also of the vague reports

that had come to her from day to day, of his increased peculiarities and

the marked change to be observed in his appearance. Her heart was

pleading for another sight of him, while her ear was ostensibly turned

toward Polly, who was alternately complaining of the weather and

wondering what they should do if her father insisted upon having the

money, right or wrong. Suddenly she felt two arms around her neck, and

rousing herself, looked down at Polly, who in her restlessness had

fallen on her knees before her and was studying her face with two bright

and very inquiring eyes.

“How can you sit still,” the young girl asked, “when so much depends

upon the message Clarke will bring back?” Mrs. Unwin smiled, but not as

youth smiles, either in sorrow or in joy, and Polly, moved by that

smile, though she little understood it, exclaimed impetuously:

“Oh, you are so placid, so serene! Were you always so, dear Mrs. Unwin?

Have you never felt angry or impatient when you were kept waiting or

things did not go to your liking?”

The sweet face that was under Polly’s steady gaze flushed for an instant

and the patient eyes grew moist. “I have had my troubles,” admitted Mrs.

Unwin, “and sometimes I have not been as patient with them as I should.

But we learn forbearance with time, and now——”

“Now you are an angel,” broke in Polly.

“Ah!” was Mrs. Unwin’s short reply, as she stroked the curly head

nestling in her lap.

“Clarke says that whatever happens I must be brave,” babbled the

forlorn-hearted little girl from under that caressing hand. “That

poverty is not so dreadful, and that in time he will win his way without

help from any one. But Oh, Mrs. Unwin, to think I might be the means of

giving him the very start he needs, and then to be held back by one—Dear

Mrs. Unwin, do you think it wicked to hate?”

The question was so sudden, and the vision of the girl’s uplifted head

with its flashing eyes and flushed cheeks so startling, that Mrs. Unwin

hesitated for a moment, not knowing exactly what to say. But Polly,

carried away now by a new emotion, did not wait for any answer.

“Because I am afraid I really hate him. Why has he come into our lives

just when we don’t want him; and why does he take from us everything we

have? If he loved me I could bear it possibly, but he don’t even love

me; and then—and then—he lives in such a way and spends his money so

recklessly! Don’t you think it is wrong, Mrs. Unwin, and that I would be

almost justified in not giving him everything he asks for?”

“I should not give him this last five thousand, unless he can show you

that his need is very great. No one will blame you; you have been only

too generous.”

“I know, I know, and I am sure you are right, but notwithstanding that,

something assures me that I shall do just what he wishes me to. I cannot

refuse him—I do not know why, perhaps because he _is_ my father.”

Mrs. Unwin, whose face had assumed a look of resolution as Polly said

this, impulsively stooped and inquired with marked emphasis, “Then you

feel—you really feel at last, that he is your father? You have no doubt;

no lurking sensation of revolt as if you were sacrificing yourself to an

interloper?”

Polly’s head sank on her clasped hands, and she seemed to weigh her

answer before replying; then she responded with almost an angry

suddenness.

“I wish I could feel he is not what he pretends to be, but the

villainous impostor Dr. Izard considers him. But I cannot. No, no, I

have no such excuse for my antipathy toward him.”

Mrs. Unwin leaned back, and her countenance resumed its dreamy

expression.

“Then I shall not advise you,” said she. “You must follow the dictates

of your own conscience.”

Polly rose and ran again to the window, this time with a cry of joy. “He

is coming! Clarke is coming! I hear the gate click,” and she bounded

impatiently toward the door.

In a few minutes she returned with her lover; he had a letter in his

hand and he was contemplating her with saddened eyes.

“You will need courage, dear, to read this,” said he. “It is from your

father and it puts his case before you very clearly—too clearly,

perhaps. Your estimate of him was not far from correct, Polly. The story

of his past life is not one you can read without shame and humiliation.”

“I knew it! I saw it in his face the first time I looked at him. I saw

it before. I saw it in his picture. O Clarke, I shrink even from his

writing; must I read this letter?”

“I think you should; I think you should know just what threatens us if

you refuse him the money.”

Polly took the letter.

“You have read it?” she inquired.

But Clarke shook his head.

“I know the nature of its contents, but I did not wait to read the

letter. He wrote it in a roomful of men, under a wager——” Clarke paused;

why hurt her with these details? “But what does that matter? It is the

facts you want. Come, screw up your courage, dear; or stay, let me read

it to you.”

She gave him the letter and he read to her these words:

DEAR MAIDA: You wish to know why I want another five thousand

dollars after having received a good ten thousand from you already.

Well, I am going to tell you. I have two passions, one for

mechanical invention and one—I must be candid or this letter will

fail in its object—for wild and unlimited pleasure. When I was young

I had not enough money to indulge in but one of these instincts, but

on the day I saw twenty thousand dollars in my hand, my other

passion, long suppressed, awoke, and notwithstanding the fact that

your mother lay dying in the house, I resolved to leave the town

where I was known as soon as she was decently buried, for as I said

to myself, the possession of twenty thousand dollars means the

making of a fortune in Monte Carlo, and a maddening good time of it

meanwhile.

But twenty thousand dollars do not always bring a fortune, even in

Monte Carlo. I lost as well as won and though I had the good time I

had anticipated I was not much richer at the end of five years than

I was before my first invention was perfected. And then came a

struggle. My good times grew fewer and I was forced to change my

name more than once as I drifted from France to Italy and from Italy

to Germany, seeking to reinstate myself, but being dreadfully

hampered by my taste for the luxuries of life and the companionship

of men who were sufficiently good-natured, but not always honest or

sincere. At last I awoke to the necessity of action. I had an

idea—one that had been floating in my head ever since the perfection

of my first invention, and I realized that if I could but develop it

practically I was sure to win a greater sum than that I had earned

by my first efforts. But to do this it would take money—considerable

money, and I had none. Now how could I remedy this defect? I knew

but one way—by play. So I began to play for keeps, that is for a

capital, denying myself this time and forgetting for once the

delights that can be got out of a thousand francs. I saved, actually

saved, and becoming strangely prosperous the moment I set a distinct

purpose before my eyes, I won and won till I had a decided nest-egg

laid up in the leathern bag which I secretly wore tied about my

waist. But though this looked well, it did not satisfy me. I wanted

thousands and I had but hundreds; so I took a partner who was not

above a trick or two and—well, you do not understand these

things—but matters went very smoothly with me after this, so

smoothly that possibly I might have allowed myself one little

glimpse into my old paradise if I had had a little more confidence

in my own discretion and had not been afraid of the charms of a spot

that swallows a man, neck and crop, if he once plunges his head into

it. So for a few months more, I remained firm and grew steadily

rich, till the day came when by an enormous streak of luck I became

the owner of the very amount I had calculated it would take to put

into operation my new invention.

I was in St. Petersburg when this happened, and for five hours I sat

in my garret chamber feasting my eyes upon the money I had acquired,

and shutting my ears to every sound from without that summoned me to

the one short hour of wild enjoyment I had certainly earned. Then I

put the money back into my bag, took the frugal supper I had

prepared and went to bed with the determination of rising early and

devoting the early hours of the morning to drawing my first plans.

But in that sleep _I forgot the essential idea upon which the whole

thing rested_. It went from me as utterly as if it had been wiped

out. In vain I prodded my memory and called upon all the powers of

earth and air to assist me in my dreadful dilemma. I no more knew

where to place the lines I had for years seen clearly before me than

if I had never conceived the thing or seen it a completed object in

my mind’s eye. Success had dampened my wits, or in the long struggle

with my second passion I had lost my hold upon the first. The money

necessary to elucidate the idea was mine, but I had lost the idea!

The situation was maddening.

Fearing the results of this unexpected disappointment upon my

already weakened self-control, I fled to my partner, who was a good

fellow in the main, and begged him to take and keep for a week my

leather bag with its valuable contents, adding that he was not to

give it back to me till the seven days were up, even if I entreated

him for it on my knees. He promised, and greatly relieved I left him

for a stroll through the streets. You see I hoped to regain my idea

before the week was out. But alas for the weakness of human nature!

Instead of keeping my mind upon work, I spent my time in gorgeous

rooms hung with mirrors in which was reflected every lovely thing I

worshipped. I heard music, and—but why enlarge the vista further?

Not having any goal for my energy, I fell, and when I got my money

back, I lived another five years of boundless luxury.

When the last dollar went, I fell sick. I was in New York now,

calling myself Harold Deane, and I boarded in a humble

boarding-house in Varick street where there was one kind woman who

looked after me without asking whether I had any money to pay for my

keep. I sent fifty dollars to that woman out of the first money you

gave me, my dear. Pardon the digression. I merely wished to show you

that I am not without gratitude. When I recovered from my delirium

and lifted up my head again in this wicked, fascinating world, my

mind was clear as a bell and I saw, all in a minute, the machine

again, line for line, whose action was to transform trade and make

me a millionaire. Though I was too weak to sit up, I called out for

pencil and paper, and at the risk of being thought crazy, scrawled a

rude outline of the thing I had lost so long from my consciousness

and which I held now by such uncertain tenure that I feared to lose

it again, if I let the moment go by. This I put under my pillow. But

when I awoke from the sleep which followed, the drawing was gone,

destroyed by the good woman who thought it the mad scrawling of a

delirious man. But this loss did not trouble me at this time, for

the image remained clear in my mind and I was no longer afraid of

losing it.

But again I had no money, and confident that in this country and in

my present condition it would be useless for me to seek it in the

old way, I cast about in my mind how to obtain it by work. Reason

pointed out but one course. To get into some large business or

banking establishment, and after winning the confidence of the

moneyed men I would thus meet, to reveal my idea and obtain their

backing. But this was no easy matter for a poor wretch like me. My

life had left its imprints on my face, and I had neither means nor

friends. But I had something else that stood me in good stead. I had

audacity and I had wit, together with a sound business instinct as

regards figures. And so in time I was successful and was taken into

the banking house of Brown, Shepherd, & Co. in Nassau street.

Again I had an incentive toward thrift. For three months I worked

for their good-will, and after that for the good of my purse. This

latter phrase may not be plain to you, but when you consider the

possibilities opened by a banking house to enrich a man accustomed

to use his wits,—possibilities so much greater than those afforded

by the selfish consideration of a few capitalists with whom one in

my position comes in contact,—you can understand me more readily. At

the end of that time I had fifteen thousand dollars laid away; and

the company did not even know that they had sustained any loss.

Well, I meant to repay them when I realized my fortune, but—luck has

been against me, you know—the sight of the money was too much for me

one night, and I forgot everything in a wild spree which lasted just

one week.

When it was over and I came to myself I found that I had again

forgotten the essential part of my invention, and that the money,

which I always carried in the old bag about my waist and which I had

never lost sight of before, was also gone, leaving me destitute of

everything but the clothes I wore. I was desperate then and thought

of killing myself, but I hated blood and have a horror of poison, so

I delayed, expecting to go back to the banking house as soon as my

appearance would warrant it. But I never went. I received from some

unknown friend a warning that my absence had provoked inquiry, and

that my reappearance in Nassau street would be the signal for my

arrest, so I not only kept away from that part of the city, but left

the town as soon as I had money to do so, wandering as far west as

Chicago and sinking lower and lower as the weeks went by, till my

old trouble gripped me again and I found myself in a hospital, given

up for dead. The name by which I was entered there was Simeon

Halleck, but I had worn a dozen during my lifetime.

I was regarded by those around me as a stray and by myself as a lost

man, when suddenly one night, no matter how, I learned, my little

daughter, that you, whose existence I had almost forgotten, was not

only alive and well, but likely to become the inheritor of a pretty

fortune. At this I plucked up courage, conquered my disease and came

out of the hospital a well man. Having been known as Simeon Halleck,

it was necessary for me now, in order to present myself as Ephraim

Earle, to lose my old identity before I assumed my new,—or rather, I

should say, my real one. How I did this would not interest you, so I

will pass on to the day when, with my beard grown a foot, I ventured

into this town and began to look around to see whether there was any

place left for me in the hearts of my old friends or in the

affections of my child. I found, as I thought—was it rightly?—that I

would receive a decent welcome if I returned, and so after a proper

length of time I re-entered Hamilton, this time shaven and shorn,

and boldly announced my claims and relations to yourself.

The results of this action I am reaping to-day, but while I am happy

and cared for, I do not find myself in a position to enjoy the full

benefits of my position from the facts, now to be explained, that

the police of New York are sharper than I thought, and when I went

to Boston, after my first trip to this town, I found myself

confronted by an agent of Brown, Shepherd, & Co. They had discovered

my theft and threatened me with a term in state prison. My dear, I

knew that no daughter with a fortune of twenty thousand dollars

would wish to see her father suffer from such disgrace, so I made a

clean breast of it and told him all my hopes, and promised if the

firm I had robbed would give me three months of freedom I would

restore them every penny I had taken from them. As they could hope

for nothing if they landed me in jail, they readily acceded to my

request, and I came to Hamilton followed by a detective, and with

the task before me of obtaining fifteen thousand dollars from you in

three months. Ten of these you have cheerfully given me, but you

cavil at the last five.

Will you cavil any longer when you realize that by denying them to

me you will land me in prison and brand your future children with

the disgrace of a convict grandfather? I would say more, but the

time allotted me for writing this letter is about up. Answer it as

you will, but remember that however you may writhe under the yoke,

you are blood of my blood and your honor can never be disassociated

from mine in this world or the next.

Your loving father,

EPHRAIM EARLE.

P. S. I have Brown, Shepherd, & Co.’s written promise that with the

payment of this last five thousand, all proceedings against me shall

be entirely stopped, and that neither as a firm nor as individuals

will they remember that Ephraim Earle and Simeon Halleck are one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVII.

MIDNIGHT AT THE OLD IZARD PLACE.

CLARKE knew when he began to read this letter what effect it was likely

to have on his own prospects, but he was little prepared for the change

it was destined to make in Polly. She, who at its commencement had been

merely an apprehensive child, became a wan and stricken woman before the

final words were reached; her girlish face, with its irresistible

dimples, altering under her emotions till little of her old expression

was left. Her words, when she could speak, showed what the recoil of her

whole nature had been from the depths of depravity thus heartlessly

revealed to her.

“Oh, what wickedness!” she cried. “I did not know that such things could

be! Certainly I never heard anything like it before. Do you wonder that

I have always felt stifled in his presence?”

Mrs. Unwin and Clarke tried to comfort her, but she seemed to be

possessed of but one idea. “Take me home!” she cried; “let me think it

out alone. I am a disgrace to you here; he is a thief and I am the

daughter of a thief. Until every cent that he has taken is returned, I

am a participator in his crime and not worthy to look you in the face.”

They tried to prove to her the fallacy of this reasoning, but she would

not be convinced. “Take me home!” she again repeated; and Clarke out of

pure consideration complied with her request. She was still living with

the Fishers, but when they reached the humble doorstep which had been

witness to many a tender parting and loving embrace, Polly gave her

lover a strange look, and hardly lingered long enough to hear his final

words of encouragement and hope.

“I will see you to-morrow,” she murmured, “but I can say no more

to-night—no, not one word”; and with something of the childish petulance

of her earlier years she partially closed the door upon him, and then

was half sorry for it, when she heard the deep sigh that escaped him as

he plunged back into the snow that lay piled up between the house and

the gate.

“I am wicked,” she muttered, half to herself, half to him; “come back!”

but the words were lost in the chilly wind, and in another moment he had

reached the street and was gone. Had he looked back he would not have

disappeared so suddenly, for Polly, as soon as she thought herself

alone, suddenly pushed open the door, peered out and, with a momentary

hesitation, slipped out again into the street.

The snow had ceased falling, the moon had come out and was lighting up

the great trees that lined either side of the road. Polly cast one look

down the splendid but deserted vista, and then with the thoughtless

daring which had always signalized her, began running down the street

towards that end of the town where the road turns up towards the

churchyard. She was guided by but one thought, the necessity of seeing

Dr. Izard before she slept. The thickness of the snow beneath her feet

impeded her steps and made the journey seem long to her panting

eagerness. She met nobody, but she thought nothing of that, nor did she

note that the lights were out in the various houses she passed. Her mind

was so full of her purpose that the only fear of which she was conscious

was that she would find the doctor away or deaf to her summons. When the

tavern was passed and the shadow of the church reached, she drew a deep

breath. Only a few steps more and she would be passing the gateposts in

front of the Izard mansion. But how still everything was! She seemed to

realize it now, and was struck by the temerity of her action, as the

desolate waste of the churchyard opened up before her and she heard,

pealing loud above her head, the notes of the great church-clock

striking eleven!

But she knew that the doctor never retired before twelve, and the need

she felt of an immediate consultation with one who had known her father

in his youth, buoyed her up, and dashing on with a shudder, she turned

the corner and came abreast with the house she was bound for. But here

something which she saw, first dazed, then confounded her. The house was

lighted! The Izard house, which had been vacated for years! Had the

doctor found a tenant then without her knowledge, or, led by some

incomprehensible freak, had he lighted it up himself?

While she was gazing and wondering, almost forgetting her own purpose in

her astonishment at this unwonted sight, there rose a sudden wild halloo

behind her, followed by the shouts of drunken voices and the sound of

advancing footsteps. The visitors at her father’s cottage had reached

the main street, and, seeing the lighted mansion, were as much struck by

its unwonted appearance as she had been, and were coming down the road

for a nearer inspection.

Alarmed now in good earnest, and by a more natural fear than that which

had first agitated her, she looked around for a spot to hide in, and,

finding none, plunged towards the house itself. What she expected to

gain by this move she hardly knew; but once on the porch, and in the

shadows of the great pillars supporting it, she felt easier; and, though

she knew this laughing, careless crowd would soon be upon her, she felt

the nearness of the life within to be a safeguard, and, stretching out

her hand toward the front door, she was amazed to find it yield to her

touch.

Under most circumstances this would have frightened her away, or, at

least, would have awakened in her the instinct of alarm; but now the

illuminated hall, dimly to be seen through the crack she had made,

seemed to offer her a refuge, and she rushed in, closing and locking the

door behind her. Instantly the desolation of these long disused rooms

settled upon her, and she peered down the hall in terror, dreading and

half hoping to see some one, she did not care whom, stalk from some of

the several rooms on either side. But no one came, and the seeming lack

of life in the spaces about her soon grew more terrifying than any

appearance of man or woman would have been. The light which lured her

into this desolate structure came from a lamp standing on a small table

at the rear of the hall, and presently she found herself insensibly

approaching it, having recognized it as one she had often seen in the

doctor’s study.

But when she had stepped as far as the circular landing opening under

the stairs, and noted the little winding staircase leading down from it

into the space below, some faint recognition of the fact that this was

the way to the doctor’s study came over her, and, advancing breathlessly

on tiptoe to the railing which guarded this spot, she looked down into

the well beneath, and was startled at the gust of wind which met her

there, with all the chill of the outside air in it. Was the famous green

door below open, and did this wind come from the graveyard?

She was conscious that she had no right to advance a step farther, and

yet she knew that she must find the doctor, if only to throw herself

upon his protection. So, with many a qualm and sinking of the heart, she

caught up the lamp from the table near by and descended the short

spiral, rightfully thinking that it would be wiser to thus flash upon

the doctor in a blaze of light rather than to take him by surprise in

the darkness. Finding the green door open, as she had expected, she

tried to raise her voice and utter the doctor’s name, but articulation

failed her. There was something so weird in her position that her usual

recklessness failed to support her, and she had hardly the courage to

glance into the room before which she stood, though instinct had already

told her it was empty.

The wind which had met her at the top of the staircase increased as she

descended, and while she was drawing in her breath before it, the light

went out in her hand and she was left standing half in and half out of

the doctor’s study in a condition of helplessness and terror. But this

misfortune, while it abashed her, was of decided benefit in the end. For

no sooner was this light out than she was met with the glimmering rays

of a lantern, shining in from the graveyard without, and knowing this to

be an indication of the doctor’s whereabouts, she set down the lamp and

was advancing with some trepidation toward the door when her ears caught

a sound—the most dreadful that could be heard in that place—that of a

spade being forced into the icy ground.

Instantly her heart became the prey of a thousand sickening emotions.

What was the doctor doing? Digging a grave? Impossible. And yet what

else would make a sound like this? Even her usually bold spirit was

startled and she shrank at the thought, wishing for Clarke, for her

father, for any one to support her and take her out of the horrible,

moonlighted spot where homes were being made for the dead in the dark of

night.

She could not retreat and she dared not advance, yet she felt that she

must settle her doubts by one glimpse of what was going on. Approaching

the window she peeped out and saw—Merciful heavens, was that the

doctor?—that wild figure clad in a long wool garment which swept to his

heels, and digging with such frenzy and purpose that the snow flew from

his spade in clouds? She was so absorbed in the sight that it was a

moment before she saw that it was her mother’s grave he was unearthing

and that he was doing this in his sleep. But when she fully realized the

awful fact she uttered a low cry of irrepressible dismay, and no longer

fearing anything but this unearthly figure she had chanced upon in the

moonlight, she dashed from the spot and fled up the highway, never

resting foot or stopping to breathe till she found herself in her own

room at home.

Dr. Izard was mad and she alone knew the frightful secret.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVIII.

A DECISION.

WHEN Dr. Izard rose the next morning it was with a feeling of lassitude

and oppression that surprised him. He had received no calls from

patients the evening before, nor had he retired any later than usual.

Then why this strained and nervous feeling, as if he had not slept? The

snow that had fallen so heavily the day before had cleared the air, and

the dazzle of sunshine finding its way into his unusually darkened den

prepared him for the brilliant scene without. It was not in that

direction, however, he first looked, for he was no sooner on his feet

than he noticed that the green door which he always kept shut and

padlocked was open, and that in the hall beyond a spade was standing,

from the lower edge of which a small stream of water had run, staining

the floor where it rested.

What did it mean, and what was the explanation of the dark stains like

wet mould on the skirt of the long wool garment that he wore? He looked

from one to the other, and the hair rose on his forehead. Summoning up

all his courage he staggered to the window and drawing the curtain back

with icy fingers, glanced out. Some vandal had been in the graveyard;

one of the graves had been desecrated and the snow and mould lay

scattered about. As he saw it he realized who the vandal had been, and

though no cry left his lips, his whole body stiffened till it seemed

akin to the one he had so nearly disinterred in the night. When life and

feeling again pervaded his frame he sank into a chair near the window

and these words fell from his lips: “My doom is upon me. I cannot escape

it. The will of God be done.”

The next instant he was on his feet. He dressed himself in haste,

shuddering as he bundled up the stained night-robe and thrust it into

the blazing fire of the stove. Then he caught up the spade, and opening

the outside door stepped into the glittering sunshine. As he did so he

noticed two things, equally calculated to daunt and surprise him. The

first was the double row of his own footsteps running to and fro between

the step and the heap of dirt and snow beside the monument; and the

other, an equally plain track of footsteps extending from the place

where he stood to the gate on his left. The former were easily

explainable, but the latter were a mystery; for if they had been made by

some nocturnal visitor, why were they all directed toward the highway?

Had not the person making them come as well as gone? Puzzled and no

little moved by this mystery, he nevertheless did not pause in the work

he had set for himself.

Crossing in haste to the monument, he began throwing back the icy

particles of earth he had dug up in the night. Though he shuddered with

something more than cold as he did so, he did not desist till he had

packed the snow upon the mould and left the grave looking somewhat

decent. A sleigh or two shot by on the open thoroughfare without while

he was engaged in this work, and each time as he heard the bells he

started in painful emotion, though he did not raise his head nor desist

from his labor. When all was done he came slowly back, and pausing

before the second line of footsteps he examined them more carefully.

It was a woman’s tread or that of a child, and it came from his own

door. Greatly troubled he rushed into the track they had made and

trampled it fiercely out. When he reached the gate he stepped into the

highway. The steps had passed up the street. But what were these he now

perceived in the inclosure beyond the picket fence, going straight to

the house and stopping before the front door? They came from the street

also, and they pointed inward and not outward. Was he the victim of some

temporary hallucination, or had a woman entered the house by the

never-opened front door and come out through his office? It seemed

incredible, impossible, but bounding up the steps he tried the door, not

knowing what he might have done in the night. He found it locked as

usual and drew back confounded, muttering again with stony lips, “My

ways are thickening, and the end is not far off.”

When he returned again to his office it was to replace the spade in the

spot from which he had evidently taken it. This was up the spiral

staircase, in a small shed adjoining the large rear hall, and as he

traversed the path he had unconsciously trodden twice in the night, he

tried to recall what he had done under the influence of the horrible

nightmare which had left behind it such visible evidences of suffering.

But his consciousness was blank regarding those hours, and it was with a

crushing sense of secret and overhanging doom that he prepared for his

daily work, which happily or unhappily for him promised to be more

exacting than usual.

A dozen persons visited his office that morning, and each person as he

came glanced over at the monument and its disturbed grave. _Had any

whisper of the desecration which had there taken place found way to the

village?_ The doctor quailed at the thought, but his manner gave no sign

of his inner emotion. He was even more punctilious than usual in his

attention to the wants of his visitors, and did not give them by so much

as a glance of his eye an opportunity for question or gossip. At eleven

o’clock he went out. There was a very sick child at the other end of the

town and he could reach it only by passing the Fisher cottage. It had

been taken ill at daybreak and word had been brought him by a passing

neighbor. He had hopes, though he hardly acknowledged them to himself,

that some explanation of the footsteps which disturbed him would be

found in the sickness of this child. But when he reached the Fisher

house the sight of Polly’s disturbed face, peering from the parlor

window, assured him that the cause of his trouble lay deeper than he had

hitherto feared. The discovery was a great shock to him, and as he went

on his way he asked himself why he had not stopped and talked to the

girl and found out whether she had been to his house or not the night

before, and if so, what she had seen.

But that he did not dare to do this was apparent even to himself; for

after he had prescribed for his little patient he found himself taking

another road home, a road which led him through frozen fields of

untrodden snow, rather than run the risk of encountering Polly’s face

again, with those new marks upon it of aversion and fear. When he

re-entered his own gate it was with bowed head and shrunken form. His

short walk through the village, with the discovery he had imagined

himself to have made, cost him ten years of his youth. On his table

there lay a letter. When he saw it a flush crossed his cheek and his

form unconsciously assumed its wonted air of dignity and pride. It was

from _her_ and the room seemed to lose something of its habitual gloom

from its presence. But its tenor made him grow pale again. The letter

read as follows:

DEAR FRIEND: Clarke has tried every available means to avoid the

result we feared, but as you will see from the inclosed letter from

Ephraim Earle, Polly has but one course before her, and that is to

give her father what he demands. She has so decided to-day, and if

you see no way of interfering, the money will be paid over by nine

o’clock to-morrow morning. This means years of struggle for Clarke.

You bade us not to apply to you till every other hope failed. We

have reached that point. Faithfully yours,

GRACE UNWIN.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIX.

TO-MORROW.

POLLY had spent an unhappy day. Her secret—for so she termed her

discovery of the night before—weighed heavily upon her, and yet she felt

it was impossible to part with it, even to Clarke. Some instinct of

loyalty to the doctor who had been almost a parent to her influenced her

to silence, though she was naturally outspoken and given to leaning on

those she loved. She was sitting in the parlor, her back to the window.

She had seen the doctor pass once that day and she did not want to meet

his eye again. Fear had taken the place of reverence, and confidence had

given way to distrust.

Suddenly she heard a door open, and rose up startled, for the sound was

in the front hall and the family were all in the kitchen. Could it be

Clarke returning, or her father, or—she had not time to push her

conjectures further, for at this point the door of the room in which she

stood swung quickly open and in the gap she saw Dr. Izard, with a face

so pale that it reminded her of the glimpse she had caught of him the

previous night. But there was purpose instead of the blank look of

somnambulism in his eyes, and that purpose was directed toward her.

“Polly,” he said, not advancing, but holding her fascinated in her place

by the intensity of his look, “do not allow yourself to be constrained

to sign any check to-day. To-morrow you will no longer consider it your

duty.” And before she could answer or signify her assent he was gone,

and the front door had shut after him. The deep breath which escaped her

lips showed what that one moment of terror had been to her. Springing to

the window she looked out and started as she saw him take the direction

of Carberry hill.

“He is going to see my father,” she murmured, and moved by a new terror

she seized her hat and coat, and ran, rather than walked, to Mrs.

Unwin’s cottage. “Where is Clarke?” was her breathless demand as she

rushed impetuously into the house. “Dr. Izard is on his way to Carberry

hill and I am afraid, or rather I know, there is going to be trouble

between him and my father.”

“Then Clarke will prevent it. Dr. Izard sent him word an hour ago to

meet him there at five o’clock, and he has been gone from the house just

five minutes.”

“Oh, what is going to happen? I must see; I must go. They do not know

Dr. Izard as well as I do.” And without waiting to explain her somewhat

enigmatical sentence she dashed from the house and took her way up

Carberry hill.

It was the first time she had been there since she was surprised at her

father’s door by that father’s fatal and unexpected return; and had it

not been for the excitement under which she was laboring, her limbs

would have faltered and her whole soul quailed at the prospect. But love

lent her wings, and a certain dogged persistence in duty which underlay

the natural effervescence of her spirits kept her to her task, and so

before she realized it she was at the top of that haunted hill and on

the doorstep of the house which was even more repellent to her now than

when the moss hung from the eaves and the seal of desolation lay upon

the door.

Hearing from within the voices that she knew, she waited to give no

summons, but opened the door and passed in. Three men were in the

hall—Dr. Izard, Ephraim Earle, and Clarke—and from the faces they turned

toward her she judged that she was not a minute too soon.

“Polly!” leaped simultaneously from the lips of her lover and from those

of Dr. Izard. But the one spoke in a sort of tender surprise and the

other with a mixture of anger and constraint.

“Do not mind me,” she said. “I saw you coming here, and I felt that I

ought to be present.” And the determination in her face startled those

who had always regarded her as a petted child. Her father, who was the

only person there who seemed at all at his ease, smiled and gave her a

sarcastic bow.

“This is the first time you have honored me,” he observed, and pushed a

chair slightly forward. “Women are proverbially fond of controversy; why

deny this very young girl, the privilege of hearing our little talk?”

The doctor, who perhaps saw more in this intrusion than the others,

hesitated for a moment, with his brows lowered over his uneasy eyes,

then he waved his hand as if dismissing a subject of no importance, and

without saying yea or nay to the appeal which had just been made to him,

he cried out in a set and desperate voice:

“I have borne with this impostor long enough. I do not know who you

are,” he continued, pointing imperatively at the man before him, “but

that you are not Ephraim Earle is certain. Therefore you shall no longer

enjoy Ephraim Earle’s rights or profit by the money which was given to

Polly for a very different purpose.”

Earle, thus attacked, first raised his brows and then smiled suavely.

“You would force an issue then,” he cried. “Very well, I’m ready. Why am

I not Ephraim Earle, Dr. Izard? You assert the fact, but that is not

proving it. When we were young men together you were not wont to stop at

assertion.”

“We were never young men together. You are a stranger to the town, a

stranger to me. The letter which you wrote may deceive Polly, may

deceive Clarke, may deceive every one else who reads, but it does not

deceive me. What is this new invention you failed to project? Tell us on

the spot or I will brand you as a wholesale deceiver up and down the

town.”

“I——” the man stammered, his bold effrontery failing him for the moment.

“Have you forgotten it _again_?” sneered the doctor, seeming to grow

taller and broader as his antagonist dwindled. “I expected you would

hide behind that excuse. It is a convenient one. You _have_ forgotten

it; well, we will let that pass and you shall tell me instead why your

first one failed to operate the first time you tried it.”

“I will not,” shouted Earle, driven apparently to bay. “That it did fail

you remember and so do I, but after fourteen years devoted to other

subjects I am not going to try and pick up those old threads again and

explain to you every step by which I won success at last.”

“But I will wait,” suggested the doctor. “You shall not be hurried;

there is nothing more important to be done in town just now.”

“Isn’t there? I think there is, Dr. Izard. You have shown yourself my

enemy ever since I came to Hamilton; but for reasons that were

satisfactory to me I have let it pass, as you have let my so-called

imposture pass. I did not wish to stir up old grievances; but you attack

me and must expect to be yourself attacked. Of what complaint did Huldah

Earle die? Answer me that! Or I will brand _you_ for a——”

“Hush!” The word sprang from Clarke, who had seen the doctor cower, as

if some awful weight were about to be heaved upon him. “Weigh your

words, Mr. Earle; for if you utter an untrue one you shall be brought to

dearly rue it.”

“I will weigh them,” answered the other, growing taller in his turn as

the doctor shrank before him; “weigh them in the balance of this

respected man’s innocence. Look at his whitening cheek, his trembling

form! If he could mention the complaint which carried my wife away in

the flower of her youth, do you think he would hesitate and turn pale

before her child? Or perhaps _he_ has forgotten; it is fourteen years

ago, and as I have taken refuge in that excuse, why not he?”

“O God!” burst from Polly’s lips; “what horror is this?”

But the doctor, goaded by this last sting, had roused himself. “I have

not forgotten,” said he. “I forget nothing; not even the slight

discoloration which always disfigured Ephraim Earle’s left eye, and

which is absent from yours. But I do not know the exact cause of Mrs.

Earle’s death. I never knew. If you were her husband, you would remember

that I several times declared I was working in the dark, and even after

she was dead acknowledged myself to have failed in my diagnosis, and

wished you had called down physicians from Boston.”

“Oh, I remember; but I was not deceived then by your humility, nor am I

deceived by it now, I will have her body dug up. I will—”

“Oh, no! no!” shrieked Polly, thrusting out her hands before her eyes.

“I—cannot—bear—this. I—I do not think the doctor can bear this. Look at

him! He is not sane! He——”

“Hush, Polly! I am sane enough,” came from the doctor with a sternness

which was but the result of his overpowering emotion. “If I show

agitation it is because dreadful memories have been awakened and because

I must yet press hard against this most audacious man. Fellow! where do

you think the money came from which you have been expending so freely to

keep yourself out of jail?”

“Ah! that is another small mystery with which I have thought it best not

to concern myself.”

But even while speaking he drew back, and a change passed over his bold

countenance. Looking at the doctor with a strange and lingering gaze, he

darted to a small rack at the end of the hall, and, tearing down a cloak

and an old slouch hat, he thrust the one upon the doctor’s head and the

other about his shrinking shoulders. Then he drew back and surveyed him.

Suddenly he struck his forehead, and a triumphant smile, which was not

without an evil glare in it, lit up his features.

“Of course!” he cried, “I might have known it! You are the fellow who

visited the Chicago hospital that night and who——”

“And you are No. Thirteen!” was the quick response; “the man given over

for dead! Oh, I see how you came to be here. Rascal! Villain!”

“Doctor, allow me to return the compliment. Why did you use such

subterfuges to transfer a fortune into my daughter’s hands? Was it from

a good motive or because you felt yourself guilty of her parent’s death,

and so sought to make amends without awakening suspicion?”

“I should have whispered _ten_ thousand dollars into your ear instead of

one,” muttered the doctor, lost in contemplation of the other’s

duplicity.

“I would have given no more sign for ten than for one,” answered Earle.

“Remember, I had just heard of an unknown sum bequeathed to my daughter,

and the larger the hush money offered the greater would the fortune have

appeared.”

Clarke, to whom these words were well nigh unintelligible, consulted

Polly’s countenance, and seemed to question what she thought of them.

But she was gazing at the doctor, wonder and repugnance in all her

looks.

“Oh, do you mean that even this money is not all my own? That it is not

the gift of a stranger, but has come, in some incomprehensible way, from

_him_?”

The doctor, stung by her tone, turned toward her, saw the slender finger

pointing accusingly at him, and drooped his head with a gesture of

despair.

“Does it lose its value,” he asked, “because it represents the labor and

privations of twenty busy years?”

“Does it represent anything else?” she protested. “Why should you give

money to me?”

“I cannot answer; not here. To-morrow at your mother’s grave I will.

Come yourself, let your neighbors come, only see that one person is kept

away. Years ago I loved Grace Hasbrouck, and I would not have her the

witness of my shame. Keep her away, Clarke! My task would be too

difficult were she there.”

Clarke, to whom this avowal was a revelation, stammered and bowed his

head. Mr. Earle softly smiled.

“Then you avow—” he began.

But the doctor turned upon him and thundered, “I avow nothing. I merely

wish to prove to this town that you are an impostor, and I will do it

to-morrow at seven at Huldah Earle’s grave. You are a bold man and a

quick one, and have learned your lesson well. But there is one thing

before which you must succumb and that is the presence of the true

Ephraim Earle.”

“And you will produce him?”

“I will produce him.”

“And in such haste?”

“Yes, in such haste.”

There was something so astounding in this threat and in the resolve with

which it was uttered that not only Clarke Unwin recoiled, but the hardy

adventurer himself showed momentary signs of quailing. But he quickly

recovered himself, and glancing at Polly, who stood clinging to Clarke,

white as a wraith in her terror and amazement, cried aloud: “Now I know

you for a madman. Being Ephraim Earle myself, and innocent of any deeper

crime than the one I have frankly acknowledged to you, I can afford to

meet my double, even at my poor wife’s grave. Doubtless he will be a

very good semblance of myself, and my only wonder is that the doctor has

not produced him sooner.”

“Laugh, laugh!” repeated the doctor, in a terrible voice, “for to-morrow

you will be in prison.” And stalking by them all, he proceeded to the

door, where he paused to say in a voice whose solemn tones rang long in

their ears, “Remember! to-morrow morning at seven in the churchyard.”

And he was gone.

A silence which even the dazed adventurer dared not break followed this

startling exit. Then Polly, in a quivering voice, murmured below her

breath, “He is mad! I knew it before I came here. Pray Heaven that he

has not been made so by crime.”

At these words, so unexpected and so welcome to the man whose position

had been thus violently threatened, Earle lifted his head and cast a

reassured look about him.

“Stick to that, my daughter,” he muttered, “stick to that; it is the

only explanation of his conduct;” and walking down the hall he added in

a subdued tone, as he passed the hitherto unnoticed figure of a man

standing in the rear passage, “I will still have the five thousand

dollars! Nothing that this madman can do will hinder that.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XX.

DR. IZARD’S LAST DAY IN HAMILTON.

IT was fortunate that there was no serious sickness in Hamilton that

night, for the new physician was out of town and Dr. Izard inaccessible.

Ever since nightfall there had been a rush of people to the latter’s

gate, the news having already spread far and wide that the doctor had

lately shown signs of mania, during which he had invited the whole town

to come to the cemetery the following morning, there to witness, they

scarcely knew what, but something strange, something which would turn

the public mind against Ephraim Earle, whom he had once before, as all

remembered, accused of being an impostor. But they found the gate

padlocked, and so were obliged to content themselves with hanging over

the cemetery wall and catching what glimpses they could of the doctor’s

light which shone clear but inhospitable from his open window. Not till

the great clock struck twelve did the curious crowd separate and

straggle away to their respective homes.

Meanwhile what was the doctor doing? We, who have penetrated more than

once into his silent room, will do it once again and for the last time.

We shall not see much. The doctor, whose face shows change, but not so

much as one would expect, sits at his table writing. The name of Grace

is at the top of the page over which he bends, and the words are few

beneath, but they seem to be written with his heart’s blood; for in

signing them he gives vent to one irrepressible sob—he the man whose

sternly contained soul had awed his fellow-men for years and held all

men and women and children back from him, as if his nature lacked

sympathy for anything either weak or small. The night was far advanced

when he folded this letter, directed it, and laid it face up on his

desk. But though he must have been weary, he cast no glance at the

settle in the dim corner of the room, but began to arrange his effects,

clear his drawers, and put in order his shelves, as if preparing for the

curiosity of other eyes than those which had hitherto rested so

carelessly upon them.

There was a fire lighted in the stove, and into this he thrust some

papers and one or two insignificant objects which it seemed a strong

effort to part from. As the blaze leaped up he cringed and partially

turned away his head, but soon he was again amongst his belongings,

touching some with a loving hand, others with a careless one, till the

church clock, striking two, proclaimed that time was passing hurriedly.

At this reminder he dropped the book he had taken up and passed to the

green door. It was locked, as usual, but he speedily undid the

fastenings, and carrying a lamp with him, stepped through the opening

and up the spiral staircase. One of the steps creaked as he pressed it,

and he sighed as he heard the familiar sound, possibly because he did

not expect to hear it again. When in the hall he set down the lamp, but

soon took it up again and began visiting the rooms. They had always been

well looked after, and were neither unsightly nor neglected in

appearance, but they seemed to have a painful significance for him as he

looked, lamp in hand, from the open doorways. In this one his mother had

stood as a bride, with her young friends around her, most of whom were

laid away in the graveyard, which was never long absent from his

thoughts. How he had loved to hear her tell about that night, and the

dress which she wore, and the compliments she received, and how it was

the happiest night of her life, till he came—her little child—to make

every night joyful. Ah, if she could have foreseen—if she had lived! But

God was good and took her, and he of all his family was left to meet the

doomful hour alone. In the room he now entered he had played as a boy,

such merry plays, for he was a restless child and had a voice like a

bell rung in the sunshine. Was that golden-haired, jovial little being

who ran up and down these floors like mad and shouted till the walls

rung again, the earnest of himself as he appeared at this hour

shuddering in the midnight darkness through the empty spaces of this

great house? And this little nook here, the dearest and most sacred of

all in his eyes—could he bear to look at it with this crushing weight

upon his heart and the prospect of to-morrow looming up in ghostly

proportions before him, darkening every spot at which he gazed?

Yes, yes; for here all that there has ever been of sweetness in his

miserable life, all that there is of hope in that great world to come,

centres and makes a holy air about him. Here _she_ sat one day, one

memorable, glorious day, with the sunshine playing on her hair and that

sweet surprise in her look which told him more plainly than the

faltering yes on her tongue that his presumptuous love was returned, and

that life henceforth promised to be a paradise to him. Ah, ah, and he

had not been satisfied! He must needs be a great physician too, greater

than any of those about him, greater than the great lights of Boston and

New York, and so—But away with such thoughts; it is not morning yet and

this night shall be given up to sweeter memories and more sacred

farewells.

Stooping he knelt where she had sat, and put his hands together as in

childhood’s days and prayed, perhaps for the first time in years; prayed

as if his mother was overhearing him. Did he pray alone? Was not she

praying too in that shabby little room of hers, so unworthy of her

beauty and yet so hallowed by her resignation and her love?

Ah, yes, she was praying there to-night, but what would she be doing

there to-morrow? He uttered a cry as the thought stung him, and

springing passionately to his feet went on and on, avoiding but one

place in the whole house and that was where a little door led down to

the cellar, at the side of the spiral staircase. When all was done he

paused and said his last farewell. Who would walk these lonely halls

after he had vanished from them? Upon whom would these mirrors look and

in whose hearts would the mystery of this place next impress itself?

There was no prophet present to lift the veil, and dropping his chin on

his breast the doctor descended the stairs and betook himself again to

his desolate den.

The stars were shining brightly over the graveyard as he reseated

himself at his desk. There were no signs of advancing morning yet, and

he could dream, dream yet that he was young again and that Grace’s voice

was in his ear and her tender touch on his arm, and that life was all

innocence and hope, and that yon loud resounding clock, too loud for

guilty men, rang with some other sound than that of death, doom, and

retribution.

Letting his head fall forward in his hands he sat while the dreary hours

moved on, but when the clock struck six he raised his forehead and

facing the churchyard waited for the first coming streaks of light. And

sitting so and waiting so we get our last glimpse of him before the

hubbub and turmoil of the day set in, with the curious gaping crowd on

the highway and the group among the graves, asking why the doctor had

not come out, and why the sexton was the first to appear on the scene,

and why he bore a pickaxe and a spade and looked as solemn as if he were

going to dig a grave for the dead.

Seven o’clock had not struck, but Ephraim Earle was there, and Clarke

and little Polly, crouching in terror behind her mother’s tomb; and a

physician was there too, summoned from Wells by Earle, some said, that

there might be a competent person on hand to look after the doctor

should he prove to be, as more than one person intimated, the madman he

appeared; and Dr. Sunderland was there, the good minister; and Mr.

Crouse, who had had Polly’s matters in charge, and every one but the

true Ephraim Earle, whom the doctor had promised to produce.

But then it was not yet seven and Dr. Izard had said seven; and when the

hour did at last strike then every peering eye and straining ear became

instantly aware that his door had opened and that he stood on the

doorstep cold and silent, but _alone_.

“Where is the true Ephraim Earle you talked about? You promised to bring

him here! Let us see him,” shouted a voice, and the whole crowd that was

pushing and elbowing its way into the graveyard echoed as with one

voice: “Let us see him! let us see him!”

The doctor, perfectly unmoved, stepped down from the threshold and came

toward them quietly, but with a strange command in his manner. “I shall

keep my word,” said he, and turned to the sexton. “Dig!” he cried, and

pointed to a grave at his feet.

“Wretch! madman!” screamed Earle, “would you desecrate my wife’s grave?

What do you mean by such a command?”

“You threatened to do this yourself but yesterday,” the doctor returned,

“and why do you hesitate to have it done by me?” And he again cried to

the hesitating sexton, “Dig!” and the man, understanding nothing, but

driven to his work by the doctor’s fierce eye and unfaltering lip, set

himself to the task.

“Oh, what is he going to show us? Do not, do not let him go on,” moaned

Polly. “I own this man to be my father; why do you let this terror go on

before our eyes?”

“This man whom you are ready to own as your father has called me the

murderer of his wife,” retorted the doctor. “I can only refute it by

showing him the contents of this grave. Go on!” he commanded, with an

imperative gesture to the sexton, “or I will take the spade in my own

hands.”

“Ah, he has done that once before!” muttered Polly. “He is mad! Do you

not see it in his eyes?”

The doctor, whose face had the aspect of marble, but who otherwise was

quite like himself in his best and most imposing mood, turned upon Polly

as she said this, and smiled as only the broken-hearted can smile when

confronted by a pitiful jest.

“Is there a physician here?” he demanded. “Ah, I see Dr. Brotherton. You

are in good time, I assure you, doctor. Feel my pulse and lay your hand

on my heart, and answer if you think I have my wits about me and know

what I say when I declare that only by investigating this grave can the

truth be known.”

“I do not need to do either, doctor. I know a sane man when I see him,

and I must acknowledge that there are few saner than you.”

A flush for the first time crept into Ephraim Earle’s hardy cheek; he

shifted restlessly on his feet, and his eyes fell with something like

secret terror upon the hole that was fast widening at his feet.

“I believe you two are in league,” he cried; “but if Dr. Izard can prove

himself innocent of the charges I have made against him, why, he is

welcome to do so, even at the cost of my most sacred feelings.”

“When you strike the coffin, let me know,” said the doctor to the

sexton. At these words a dreadful hush settled over the whole

assemblage, in which nothing could be heard but the sound of the spade.

Suddenly the sexton, who was by this time deep in the hole he was

making, looked up.

“I have reached it,” he said.

The doctor drew in his breath and turned livid for a moment, then he

cast a strange look away from them all across the deserted town, and

seeming to gather strength from something he saw there, he motioned the

sexton to continue, while he said aloud and with steady emphasis:

“This man who confronts you at my side is not Ephraim Earle, because

Ephraim Earle lies buried here!” and scarcely waiting for the anxious

cries of astonishment evoked by these words to subside, he went rapidly

on to say: “Fourteen years ago he died by my hand on this spot and was

buried by me in this grave. God forgive me that I have kept this deed a

secret from you so long.”

The tumult which took place at this avowal was appalling. Men and women

pushed and struggled till the foremost nearly fell into the grave. Polly

shrieked and fell back into the arms of Clarke, while he who had been

called Earle shrank all at once together and looked like the impostor he

was. Dr. Izard alone retained his self-possession, the self-possession

of despair.

“Listen,” he now cried, awing that tumultuous mass into silence by the

resonant tones of his voice and the gesture which he made toward the now

plainly-to-be-seen coffin. “It was not a predetermined murder. I was

young, ambitious, absorbed in my profession and eager to distinguish

myself. His wife’s case was a strange one. It baffled me; it baffled

others. I could see no reason for the symptoms she showed, nor for the

death she died. You know the truth; to sound the difficulty and make

myself strong against another such a case was but the natural wish of so

young and ambitious a man; but when I asked Ephraim for the privilege of

an autopsy he denied it to me with words that stung and inflamed me till

what had been a natural instinct became an overmastering passion, and I

determined that I would know the truth concerning her complaint if I had

to resort to illegal and perhaps unjustifiable means. Her grave—you are

standing by it—was made near, very near my office, and when the mound

was cleared and the mourners had departed, my way looked so plain before

me that I do not think I so much as hesitated at the decision I had

formed, dreadful as it may seem to you now. When midnight came,—and it

was a dismal night, the blackest of the year,—I stole out into this spot

and began my unhallowed work. I had no light, but I needed none, and

strange as it may seem, I reached the coffin-lid in an hour, and

stooping down began to wrench it open, when suddenly I heard a step,

then a murmur and then a short, fierce cry. The husband had suspected me

and was there to guard his dead.

“Leaping from the grave, I confronted him and a short, wild struggle

ensued. He had thrown himself upon me in anger, and I, with the natural

instinct of self-preservation, raised my spade and struck him, how

surely I did not know at the moment. But when silence followed the

struggle and a heavy fall shook the ground at my feet, I began to

realize what I had done, and throwing myself upon the prostrate body, I

laid my hand upon the heart and my cheek to the fast-chilling lips. No

action in the one, no breath upon the other; Ephraim Earle was dead, and

I, his murderer, stood with his body at my feet beside his wife’s

wide-opened grave.

“I had never known terror till that hour, but as I rose to my feet,

comprehending as it were in an instant all that lay before me if his

dead body was found at my door, the subtleness of the criminal entered

into me, and springing back into the grave I tore poor Huldah’s corpse

from its last resting place, thrust her husband’s scarce cold body into

her coffin, and pushed down the lid. Then I shovelled in the earth, and

when all was done, I carried her poor remains into the house and buried

them beneath the cellar floor, where they are still lying. And now you

know my crime and now you know my punishment. Three months ago this man

came into town and announced himself as Ephraim Earle, and marking the

havoc he has made with the happiness of our innocent Polly, I have felt

myself driven step by step to make this dreadful avowal. Now look into

this grave for yourselves, and see if all that I have told you is not

true.”

And they did look, and though I need not tell you what they saw, there

was no more talk in Hamilton of any lack of sanity on Dr. Izard’s part,

nor did any man or woman there-after speak again of the adventurer by

the name of Ephraim Earle.

When the first horror was over and people could look about them once

more, the doctor’s voice was heard for the last time.

“When this man—who, as you see, would like to escape from this place,

but cannot—came with his bravado into town, I told Polly that before she

accepted his assertions as true, she should exact from him some

irrefutable proof of his identity, and mentioned the medal that had been

given to her father by the French government. This was because the medal

had not been found after his disappearance, and I thought it must have

been upon his person when he was thrust into the grave. But to my horror

and amazement, this fellow was able to produce it,—where found or how

discovered by him I cannot tell. But he has never given evidence of

having the money which accompanied the medal. Search, then, my friends,

and see if it cannot be found among this dust, and if it can, give it to

Polly, whom I have in vain endeavored to recompense for this loss, which

was involuntary on my part and which has always been to me the most

unendurable feature of my crime.”

A cry of surprise, a shout of almost incredulous joy, followed this

suggestion, and Mr. Crouse held up to sight a discolored, almost

indistinguishable pocketbook, which some one had the courage to pull out

of the coffin. Then another voice, more solemn and methodical than any

which had yet spoken, called out: “Let us kneel and give thanks to God,

who remembers the fatherless and restores to the orphan her rightful

patrimony.”

But another voice, shriller and more imperative still, put a stop to

this act of devotion.

“Dr. Izard has confessed his sins, and now let the impostor confess his.

Who are you, man, and how happens it that you know all our ways and the

whole history of this town?” And Lawyer Crouse shook the would-be Earle

by the arm and would not let him go till he answered.

“I am—” the old bravado came back, and the fellow for a moment looked

quite reckless and handsome. “Ask Tilly Unwin who I am,” he suddenly

shouted, breaking into a great laugh. “Don’t you remember Bill Prescott,

all you graybeards? You used to hustle with me once for a chance at her

side at singing school and dance; but you won’t hustle any longer, I am

ready to swear; the lady’s beauty is not what it was.” And with this

unseemly jest he whirled about on one heel and gave his arm to a slim,

light-complexion young man whom few had noticed, but who at no time had

stepped far away from his side.

The cry of “Phil! It is Phil, the scape-grace who was said to be dead a

dozen years ago,” followed him out of the yard; but he heeded nobody,

his game was over, and his last card, a black one, had been played.

And Dr. Izard? When they thought of him again, he was gone; whither, no

one knew, nor did it enter into the heart of any one there to follow

him. One person, a heavily draped woman, who had not entered the

graveyard, but who had stood far down the street during all that

dreadful hour, thought she saw his slight form pass between her and the

dismal banks of the river; but she never rightly knew, for in her mind’s

eye he was always before her, and this vision of his bowed head and

shrunken form may have been, like the rest, a phantom of her own

creation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

● Transcriber’s note:

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only

when a predominant form was found in this book.