“A philosopher tells us that free from all care
Is the man who is penniless, homeless and bare;
Unbound by ties of relation or friend,
No position to hold, no rights to defend;
From all common anxieties thus being freed
Having nothing to lose, he is happy indeed.
He may wander at ease through the busiest streets,
With a smile at the care-worried crowd that he meets,
And in thoughts on his neighbors’ possessions regale,
With naught to perplex him, by no trouble assailed;
Of all doubt or depression his mind must be clear--
Having nothing to lose, he has nothing to fear.”
The landlord of the Greenville Hotel faithfully kept his promise in
revealing to no one the secret which his late guest desired him to
keep. And in due time, three days later, the false Mr. John Dinsmore
returned to the village, and after partaking of one meal at the hotel,
for which he paid liberally from a large roll of bills, he set out at
once on foot for Blackheath Hall, which lay on the outskirts of the
town.
For once fate had been exceedingly kind to the daring adventurer--his
hasty letter to the doctor in Newport had come in the nick of time. In
John Dinsmore’s haste away from the place where he had so nearly lost
his life he had accidentally left behind him a satchel which contained
all of his valuable papers. These were handed to the doctor by the
nurse at whose cottage the sick man had been stopping.
He was just on the point of advertising it--not knowing where his
patient was bound for when he left--when two things happened at one and
the same time: the total wreck of the train on which he was believed
to have been a passenger; and the second, the receipt of the letter,
in which Raymond Challoner laid his daring scheme of the winning of a
fortune--if he had his co-operation--before him, offering him a goodly
share of the Dinsmore millions if he would but help him to obtain them.
The doctor was poor; everything had been going against him of late, and
he needed money badly. The battle between his will and his conscience
was sharp but decisive--his will had won.
Lest he should change his mind, the doctor had shipped the satchel
containing John Dinsmore’s important papers to Challoner, at New
Orleans, in accordance with his request, and eagerly awaited results,
for he had misgivings as to how it would turn out.
Armed with the needed credentials, the fraudulent Dinsmore proceeded
at once to present himself to the New Orleans lawyer who had the
settlement of the Dinsmore estate in charge.
It was no easy ordeal to pass muster with the astute old man of law,
but Challoner accomplished it.
The important documents he brought with him for that gentleman’s
inspection proved satisfactory upon examination, leaving no room
for doubt--there being a letter among them from the deceased George
Dinsmore, written fully twenty-five years before to his nephew--for the
postmarked envelope bore that date--stating if he grew up to be a good
boy he should one day inherit Blackheath Hall, to which he was invited
on a visit.
The old lawyer did not fancy the young heir particularly--there was
something about him that seemed to grate harshly upon him.
“If I mistake not, I saw him betting at the races when I went there to
find an important witness yesterday,” he ruminated, “and if that is the
kind of life he leads, poor George Dinsmore’s wealth will flow like
water through those white, slim, idle hands of his.
“There is but one formula necessary now to be gone through with ere
the fortune can be made over to you, Mr. Dinsmore,” remarked the old
lawyer, with a grim smile, “and that is to wed the--Miss Jess,” he
said, hurriedly, changing the words that had been almost on his lips.
“If I do not like the young girl, I shall not marry her--not for
all the fortunes that were ever made!” cried the false Dinsmore,
dramatically, and the lawyer liked him the better for that dash of
spirit.
“The estate is a fine one, young man, and it would be a pity for you
not to inherit it, as you are next of kin to the deceased Mr. Dinsmore.
It was a great mistake, in my opinion, to tie it up as he did.”
Armed with the lawyer’s letters of introduction, it was an easy matter
for the daring, fraudulent heir to gain an entrance to Blackheath Hall.
Mrs. Bryson, the old housekeeper, looked with unfeigned astonishment at
the handsome young man who soon afterward presented himself at the hall
as Mr. John Dinsmore.
“I--I beg your pardon for staring at you so hard,” she said,
apologetically, as she bade him enter; “you are changed so much from
the boy that it is hard to look at you and believe you to be one and
the same. Your eyes were quite blue as a boy, I remember; now they are
positively black--and you look so very young. The years have rested
lightly on you, sir; I should scarcely take you for two-and-twenty, let
alone thirty, which you must surely be.”
“You are inclined to be complimentary, my dear madam,” remarked the
young man, with a covert sneer in his tone and a curl of his lips which
the black mustache, luckily for him, covered. “I try to take good care
of myself, and do not dissipate, which may, in a measure, account for
my youthful appearance, as you are pleased to term it; but, as to
changing the color of my eyes, that, my dear madam, would be quite
beyond my humble power. I would say that your memory has been playing
you a trick if you ever imagined them blue.”
Mrs. Bryson was certainly bewildered. She must certainly have been
laboring under a most decided blunder in believing them blue all these
years, she told herself.
“Come right in, sir,” she said, holding the great oaken door wide open
for him. “Welcome to Blackheath Hall.”
Mr. Dinsmore lost no time in accepting her invitation, and looked
around in considerable satisfaction at the handsome suite of rooms
which had been prepared for him.
“What an unlucky dog my rival was to kick the bucket and leave all
this good fortune behind him,” he thought, as he gazed about him; “but
still, what was his loss is my gain.”
“I will inform Miss Jess that you are here, sir,” remarked the
housekeeper, with a courtesy, as she turned and left the room. Like
all women, she was attracted to him because of his singularly handsome
face, and she was wondering what the fastidious young gentleman would
think when he beheld the incorrigible Jess--who was a child of nature
still, though she had done her utmost during the last few days to
revolutionize the girl’s appearance.
The thin pink and white mull dress, with its soft, fluttering pink
ribbons, became her dark, gypsyish beauty as nothing else could have
done, but Jess declared that she would a thousand times over wear her
brown linsey gown, that bade defiance to briar and bush as she sprang
like a wild deer through them.
Mrs. Bryson had had a severe and trying ordeal in bending the will of
Jess to her own, in submitting to the transformation; but at last the
good woman accomplished her purpose, and when at last the young girl
stood before her, gowned as a young girl should be, she could not
repress her exclamation of great satisfaction.
“If your manners but correspond with your looks, Jess,” she said, “you
would be simply irresistible, and would be sure to capture the heir for
a husband.”
“It seems that my tastes and inclinations in the matter are not to be
considered at all!” cried the girl, with flashing eyes; “he is to come
here and look me over quite the same as though I was a filly he wished
to purchase, and if I suit, he will take me; if not, he will coolly
refuse to conclude the bargain.”
“My dear--my dear--do not look upon the matter in such a horribly
straightforward light--of course, he must be pleased with you to want
to marry you--and----”
“I don’t want to marry your Mr. John Dinsmore! I hate him!” cried Jess,
stamping her tiny little foot angrily.
“How can you say that you hate him when you have not even seen him,
child?” argued the old housekeeper.
“But I have seen him,” replied the girl, with a toss of her jetty
curls; “I was in the hay field when he came along the road, and I had a
very good look at him.”
Jess did not add that she was surprised beyond all words to behold in
him the ill-tempered stranger with whom she had had the encounter a few
days before.
She wisely refrained from mentioning anything concerning the affair
to Mrs. Bryson, in anticipation of the scolding she would be sure to
receive. Perhaps Mr. John Dinsmore would fail to recognize in her the
assailant who had given him a little of his own medicine for abusing
the old horse that was fairly staggering under him.
“There isn’t a young girl in all Louisiana who would not be delighted
to stand in your shoes,” declared the old housekeeper, energetically;
“he is well worth the winning, and as handsome as a prince. And
remember, besides all that, your benefactor, Mr. Dinsmore, who kept
this roof over your head for so many years, set his heart and soul upon
your fancying each other.”
“Would they be glad to stand in the slippers I am wearing at the
present time, as well as in my shoes?” queried Jess, with a flippant
laugh. “And as to the last part of your remark, Mrs. Bryson, a girl
can’t like a young man simply because he has been picked out for her
by somebody who has no idea of her likes and dislikes. Kissing goes by
favor, you know.”
“You would exasperate a saint, girl,” cried the housekeeper, “do not
fly in the face of your good fortune, but make the most of such a grand
opportunity of winning a handsome young husband, and a fine fortune, at
one and the same time.”