CHAPTER IX.

Alice Montgomery’s health steadily drooped as the weeks went by and

brought no sign from her husband in reply to her loving message, and

when at length she received the letter written by her husband on leaving

the monastery its utter hopelessness served only to add to her misery

and to further undermine her health.

“We must take our poor darling south for the winter,” said the old

grandmother to her husband, “or we shall lose her,” and her sad-eyed

partner sighed acquiescence.

For Alice, the spring of her life seemed broken, and look which way she

would, the horizon seemed dark and hopeless.

Her brother’s malady showed no signs of improvement; he went about

pursued by a thousand phantasmal monetary cares--a craze of his brain

for which no remedy could be provided, and which was only kept within

bounds by his habit of spending long hours daily in signing imaginary

checks in payment of inextinguishable loans.

In the late autumn an incident happened to him which accomplished what

his medical advisers had considered to be well-nigh impossible in the

ordinary course of nature.

While hanging a picture for his sister one day, the step-ladder on which

he stood gave way, and precipitated him through a large pane of thick

plate-glass. The sharp edges of the glass cut his face and neck severely

and the result was a most terrible and alarming hemorrhage, which was

only stopped after such a loss of blood as imperiled for a time the

sufferer’s life.

This loss, however, served to ease and finally to entirely remove the

pressure upon his brain resulting from his bullet wound, and when he

came back to consciousness from the long fainting spells which succeeded

the loss of blood, he inquired feebly of his sister, where he was, and

whether she knew who the man was who had shot him.

His life, from the moment George Montgomery’s bullet had struck him

until now, was a complete blank.

When Alice Montgomery learned from her brother’s lips what had taken

place between him and her husband on the night of the quarrel, she,

gentle soul, had no blame for the latter, although she loaded herself

with bitter reproaches.

“My poor husband; what _must_ he have thought to see me meeting and

kissing another man surreptitiously, when he believed I had no male

relative living excepting the one in this house!”

Her husband’s letter had prepared her for her brother’s confession, but

the details, as furnished by the latter, showed that the crime had been

the result of but a momentary frenzy of jealousy which, as a woman, she

could readily forgive.

When she took her first walk out of doors with her invalid brother, the

last shock of autumn had stripped the trees and covered the sward with a

dense matting of leaves which the colored gardener was leisurely

removing with a large rake.

For a while the two stopped to speak to the old servitor, and then the

latter resumed his work.

Suddenly Alice sprang with a cry from her brother’s side and seized the

gardener’s rake.

“Stop! I saw something flash in the light just where your rake is.”

Softly she turned over the crumpled mass and there, at last, lying on a

withered chestnut leaf, and round and clear as the first day it was

made, lay the wedding-ring lost on that fateful morning, so many weary

months ago.

Hidden in the dense green of the turf during the summer season, it had

become exposed by the withering of the grass, only to be presently

covered by the falling leaves.

First glancing at the initials and date cut on the inside of the hoop to

see that there was no chance of a mistake, Alice pressed the ring again

and again to her lips, cooing and murmuring glad words of love to

herself the while.

“This is my wedding-ring,” she exclaimed to her greatly astonished

brother, “which I lost on the day of your--your first accident, and all

my trouble, I am sure, resulted from that loss. Now its recovery seems

like an omen of good luck. Oh, I wonder where on the face of the world

my dear husband is! I want to send him a message to tell him that all

will be right if he will only come back.” And then as the apparent

hopelessness of his return came back to her mind, the bright light died

out of her eyes, and she resumed the walk with her brother in silence.

At the same hour George Montgomery learned for the first time from his

dying comrade’s lips about the message which his wife had sent him by

cable: “Come back; all is well.”

He had no words of reproach for the man who had atoned for the harm

which he had done by sacrificing his life for him, but even in the midst

of his great and new-found happiness, he groaned to think what dire

complications the want of a reply to that message might have entailed.

The Indian had towed the boat to the shores of the beautiful Lake

Rosalie, in whose wonderful hammocks that branch of the Seminole tribe

which still clung to the Grand Mico, Tallahassee, had long built their

wigwams.

The Indians bore the wounded man gently up the bluff on a deer-skin

litter, and laid him on a soft couch of prepared Spanish moss, or old

man’s beard, as it is sometimes called.

Over the sick man’s couch a great live oak flung its protecting shade,

high above and impermeable to either sun or rain. On all sides the same

gigantic trees with their dense evergreen foliage, towered to the skies,

their vast limbs festooned with the long draperies of the flowing

Spanish moss. A wide open space lay within a vast forest of these

trees. The space was large enough for the encampment of an army, and as

the mighty span of the live oak branches enabled them to overlap far

overhead, the whole looked like some vast cathedral ornamented with

delicate fretwork and bathed in a soft and appropriate religious gloom.

To the left of the wounded man lay beautiful Lake Rosalie, across whose

broad bosom a refreshing breeze swept which fanned his fevered brow.

To his right, and far within the natural retreat, stood a cluster of

wigwams, in whose entrances could be seen groups of squaws of all ages

curiously regarding the new arrivals.

After a proper interval had elapsed, the aged Chief Tallahassee, came

forward from his tent to greet George Montgomery. The chief was a man of

commanding and exceedingly dignified appearance. He was evidently in

nowise forgetful of the glories of the tribe of which he was head, even

although that tribe should have dwindled down to a mere handful.

The braves who stood by his side were men of gigantic stature, and the

Czar of all the Russias owns not warrior more true, or courtiers more

obedient or of superior address.

The turbaned heads, clear aquiline features, and long wavy hair served

to distinguish this race from all others on the continent of America.

Beside their intellectual faces and stalwart frames, the cunning and

ferocious Apache, with his meaner physique, shifty eye and animal

profile, looked as the hyena looks beside the royal-looking lion.

George Montgomery despatched a letter to his wife, availing himself of

the services of an Indian to reach the nearest postal point.

Allowing an interval of ten days to elapse, the same Indian returned by

his direction for a reply.

None, however, came either that week or the next, and after the third

week the Indian went back no more, and the gloom returned to George

Montgomery’s brow.

He would fain have sped northward himself to investigate the cause of

this silence, but his dying friend still lingered, and as his end drew

near he seemed more eagerly to crave the other’s society.

“George--it will not be long--wait and close my eyes, and say a

Christian prayer over my grave.”

And George, in sore trouble, waited.

At length it was clear that the end was at hand and poor De Leon begged

his friend not to leave his side that day. As George sat by the other’s

couch his ear caught now and then the utterances of delirium of his

dying comrade.

“George! they are coming, and will soon be here. If they come before the

sun sinks behind Lake Rosalie, I shall die happy.”

Then he slumbered, and George’s head sank on his breast in sad and heavy

meditation.

“See! they are coming!” suddenly cried De Leon, rousing from his stupor

and startling the various members of the tribe within sound.

George glanced anxiously at his friend, who was now struggling to a

sitting position, and pointing across the lake.

“Look! look!” continued the dying man, “they have come in time.”

As Montgomery’s eyes followed the other’s hand, he saw, far in the

distance, a small steam-boat crossing the lake. He leaped to his feet

and then sat down, bitterly adding aloud, “Why should I excite myself,

it is probably a party of surveyors.”

An hour later, George Montgomery and Alice, his wife, stood hand in hand

by the death-bed of De Leon, and the latter’s dying eyes seemed only to

have waited for this, for when they saw the happy reunion, they smiled a

last benediction and then closed forever.

The meeting between husband and wife, inexpressible as it was in words,

was a profound surprise to both. Mrs. Montgomery had gone South at her

grandmother’s request, and George’s first letter was still following

her. During their stay in Florida the old lady heard that Chief

Tallahassee was camped near Lake Rosalie, and she conceived the

brilliant idea of visiting her former friend, and, at the same time,

lending some additional interest to her grand-daughter’s life.

With some difficulty she had secured the use of a small steam-yacht,

with what result the reader already knows.

Tallahassee and two of his braves were absent when the boat arrived.

When the former silently entered the camp, rifle in hand, he found

himself suddenly face to face with Mrs. Montgomery and the elder lady.

As he saw Alice, a wonderful light leapt to his eyes, and in the soft

Seminole tongue he murmured: “It is the Water-Lily come back,” and he

stooped and kissed the fair young hand which hung by her side.

“Ah, no, Tallahassee,” exclaimed the elder lady, with a rising mist in

her eyes and a quiver in her voice which showed that she forgave the

present neglect for the sake of the old and faithful memory,

“Water-lilies fade as even great warriors fade. I am the friend whose

husband you saved at Homosassa, and this new Water-Lily is my

grand-daughter.”

Tallahassee recognized his error, and his eyes had a soft and tender

light in them, as he scanned the aged though still beautiful lineaments

of the woman he had known and loved so many years ago. Then he gently

took her hand and raised it to his lips, saying tenderly as he did so,

“The Water-Lily blooms afresh every spring, but Tallahassee, the

Seminole, fades and dies.”

* * * * *

That night, as the full-orbed moon shone on the waters of Lake Rosalie,

Alice explained fully what had only been whispered when they met. Her

brother, she told her husband, had recovered, and no one save

themselves knew who had wounded him. He, on his part, explained that

some one else had received the message she had sent to Madrid begging

him to return; but the name of the man who had received it, he did not

divulge, so that in mingling her tears with those of her husband over De

Leon’s lonely grave by Lake Rosalie, there was no bitterness from the

thought of wrong done by the dead.

* * * * *

As George replaced on his wife’s hand the ring which had been lost,

their eyes met in a long eloquent glance, misty with happy tears. “I

will take good care not to take it off again, darling,--that is what you

mean, is it not?--for I am sure that whatever others may say, _we_ will

always believe that it is very unlucky either to take off or lose one’s

wedding-ring.”

THE LEGEND OF THE RED MOSS RAPIDS.

“Is this the spot where the knight of the old legend was killed,

Rowell?”

“Yes, dear, he died on these sharp, spear-pointed rocks, and the old

folks living around here who remember the particulars as they were

handed down through long generations, say that the rocks assumed that

shape and the moss for the first time put on that peculiar blood tint

after the murder. Imagination, no doubt; still the combination is

certainly a very weird one.”

“Suppose you tell me the legend, dear, while we sit on this sloping

bank; but, first of all, let me ask, was not the knight who was killed

an ancestor of yours?”

“Our family is descended from his brother, Sir Gawain Erfert, whose

likeness you saw in the picture gallery.”

“What! that strange, stern-looking knight in mail with his hand resting

on the cross handle of his sword?”

“Yes, dear, he was the real founder of our family.”

“And now for the legend, dear,” said the fair Hilda, a beautiful girl of

nineteen with large, dark, sympathetic eyes, and a smile whose

brightness lit up all the shaded landscape.

Still, Rowell hesitated, and his naturally serious, almost sombre, air,

took on more than a touch of gloom.

The two were betrothed lovers, and their wedding was fixed for the

following June. Their engagement had suffered from none of the

vicissitudes which are supposed to imperil the course of true love. This

was largely owing to the depth of their mutual attachment, but it was

also due in no small degree to the perfect compatibility of their

natures. She was all sweetness and gentleness; he all calmness and

strength, with apparently none of the usual masculine waywardness which

is more prone to cloud than to illuminate the lover’s horizon.

“I am waiting, sir,” expostulated the gentle Hilda, nestling much

closer to his side than was necessary to a successful hearing.

“Do you really want to hear that unhappy legend, dear?” replied Rowell.

“It is a miserable story, and the consequences of what took place here

so long ago have left a poison in our family tree which has showed

itself in every generation since, in some painful way. Ever since that

time, when the Knight Templar died on these rocks, five hundred years

ago, some wretched blunder, like an echo of the old one, has occurred

time and again to cloud each generation with misery and self-reproach;

and caused the family to be known throughout the whole North Country as

the “Gloomy Erferts.” When I tell you the story, which is shown by the

old chronicles to be a dismally true one in every detail, and in that

respect different from many other Border Legends, you may, perhaps, not

care to become a member of such an ill-starred house. The risk, dear,

seems to me to be quite considerable,” and the smile with which Rowell

looked into the eyes of his _fiancée_ had infinitely more of wistfulness

and pathos in it than was good to see in one so young.

“Oh, Rowell, do you think me a child! Our marriage is now so near that

I consider myself one of the family already; and you would not hide my

own family’s secrets from me would you?”

To Rowell, the warm pressure of the locked hands, the arch, lovelit

glance, and the magnetism of the beautiful girl-woman at his side were

irresistible; and taking the dainty head between his hands he kissed the

upturned face again and again--eyes, hair, lips--in a burst of passion

which left the fair Hilda’s cheeks all aglow, and her eyes eloquent with

a struggle between rebellion and rapture.

“Now, to business, sir, if you have got over your outbreak of lunacy,”

resumed the still blushing Hilda, as she regained possession of herself,

and moved, with much pretence of distance, a foot away.

Rowell, seeing there was no escape, took up the recital of the legend,

but there was a protest in his tones, which roused a look of

remonstrance in his listener.

“When the second Crusade failed,” began Rowell, “among the surviving

English knights who drifted slowly back to their homes, across Europe,

enfeebled by wounds and the pestilential climate in which they had

endured such untold hardships in their efforts to rescue the Holy City

from the Infidel, there was a Knight Templar who for special valor in

rescuing the person of the Preceptor as well as the sacred standard of

his Order after their capture by the Saracens, was, at his request,

absolved from his vows of celibacy by the Grand Master.

“This meant a retirement from the sacred Order, and as the latter’s

rules recognized no form of withdrawal, or absolution from its vows save

by death, the elaborate ceremonial customary on the death of a great

knight was observed and the Knight Templar obtained his freedom only

after the due performance of his funeral obsequies. The fame and

position of these knights and of their spiritual order was so great that

it is difficult to imagine any knight craving release.

“The explanation of the strange request, however, was to be found in the

fact that this knight, after taking his vows, had met and had fallen

hopelessly in love with a beautiful woman, the Lady Erminie Athelrade,

and the love was fully reciprocated.

“A mutual confession of attachment had taken place, and the knight left

with the apparently hopeless task before him of earning absolution from

his vows by some unparalleled service to the Order. Failing success--and

fulfilment of their desires had seemed beyond earthly possibilities--their

only hope lay in some future reward for their constancy, beyond the

grave, for the knight was of stainless character and would rather have

suffered death a thousand times at the hands of the Paynim hosts than

have betrayed his vows. So the knight had left England for the Holy

Land, breathing the sentiment which found voice hundreds of years later:

‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.’

“You will now understand with what feelings the knight--now no longer a

Templar, but simply Sir Julian Erfert--found himself, wounded and

war-beaten, it is true, but still alive, back in his native country; in

the same little island as the woman he worshipped, whose image, glowing

in his heart like a holy flame, had inspired him to deeds which had

thrilled Christendom and beggared all knightly possibilities.

“Sir Julian, I ought to say, had one confidant of his passion, his elder

brother, Sir Rowell.

“When Sir Julian arrived in England, no one would have recognized in the

battered knight, innocent of followers, the former princely Templar,

whose splendor of apparel and of retinue had elicited so much applause

when he left to join the Crusaders five years before.

“It was late one summer afternoon, in early June, when Sir Julian rode

up to the Castle of Barronby, where he had left the Lady Erminie in the

care of her guardian, the Earl of Wolston, a man, the knight now

recollected with a chill of apprehension, notorious for his grasping and

ambitious nature.

“Sir Julian had had no tidings of the lady since he had left, and he had

sent her no love message, ever mindful of the fact that it would be

death to the fair reputation of any dame to have her name breathed by a

Templar, or to have it known that she was interested in his welfare. He

had sent her word of the accomplishment of his release, but whether or

not his message had perished by the way in those perilous times he could

not tell. He had forwarded a letter to his brother, too, and so there he

was at last under the shadow of Castle Barronby’s walls, with his heart

throbbing as it had never beat even when a dozen Saracen blades were at

his throat and the gleam of his Red Cross banner was lost among the

tossing crescents of the Infidel host.

“As he gathered rein for an instant in an open glade, a foot soldier,

unarmed and with his head-casque gone, tottered into the opening and

fell with a moan into the heavy grass. On seeing this strange sight, the

knight dismounted and stooped over the soldier, who was evidently badly

wounded.

“After he had unlaced the fainting man’s jerkin the soldier opened his

eyes, and seeing Sir Julian, strove to rise, while his hollow voice

struggled for utterance.

“‘Sir Knight, go tell the Earl, the Lady Athelrade has been carried off

and her guard killed.’

“‘How many, and which way did they go?’ briefly inquired the knight.

“‘Full half a score spearmen and a knight whose crest I could not see.

They went by Swivel’s Moss, on the Umber Road,’ and he said no more but

fell back dead.

“The knight gave no glance to the castle, but he looked to his saddle

girths, untied the mace at his saddle-bow, loosened the heavy sword in

its sheath, and swung into the saddle humming softly a quaint eastern

air which made his gallant charger crane back his ears to hear, and

took all the fatigue out of his weary limbs. ‘This is like the old

times, Salado,’ said the knight softly to his Arab, and the horse leapt

at the words.

“The knight looked young again. ‘This is as my soul desired to win her,

at the sword’s point. Heaven is good. And here is Swivel’s Moss, and

there lies the Umber Road. Now, Salado!’

“Half an hour more and the Mivern Rapids could be heard. A few minutes

later and the glint of helmets came to the rider through the trees. ‘We

shall catch them at the ford, Salado,’ and the words gave new life to

the willing Arab, who came of a fighting race, and to whom fighting was

the very breath of life. ‘Ten to one, Salado, dare we venture?’ and the

knight laughed softly to himself, and the flying steed shook his sides

as if he too chuckled at the thought.

“A minute more, and the knight found himself face to face with the

abductors, who, hearing pursuit, had gathered themselves into line on

the edge of the ford.

“Yes, there they were, fully half a score and a knight with visor down,

and without a crest, in command, and on the further side a female

figure on horseback being hurried on in advance, on either side of her

a well-armed soldier.

“‘Surrender the lady,’ shouted the knight through the bars of his visor.

“‘To whom?’ came back the haughty inquiry.

“‘To her friend and Earl Wolston.’

“The strange knight laughed.

“‘Tell the Earl,’ he said, ‘the lady is a willing fugitive, and will not

return.’

“Sir Julian made no response, but Salado felt the touch--no more--of a

gilded spur and shot forward like an arrow from a bow. The men-at-arms

were stout and willing, but three of them fell from their seats like

dummies before the whirl of that demoniac mace; and the gallant Arab

fought no less willingly and mangled the opposing steeds. The odds were

terrible, but such odds were familiar, and the solitary warrior was not

without his chances. He had almost cleared a path, and even in the

frenzy of fight his brain was troubled to know why the lady made no

sign. Another horseman overthrown, and he stood face to face with the

leader, exchanged with him ringing blows, which could be heard far above

the roar of the rapids, on whose edge they fought. Once more the spur

touched Salado, and the mace beat down the leader’s guard. Victory was

in sight, almost, when, alas! the gallant Arab’s foot sank in the ooze

of the river, and his suddenly arrested movement threw horse and rider

into the shallow torrent. Sir Julian struggled to extricate himself and

to rise to his feet, but half a dozen spears hemmed him in and drank his

blood through the rifts in his armor made by the pointed rocks. The

struggle of his horse carried him beneath the current, the surging flood

filled his closed casque, and a long and last good-night fell, in his

native land, on the knight who had survived all the dangers of the

terrible Crusade. No, at least not yet, the leader knight, now

unhelmeted, directed his spearmen to raise the dying knight and carry

him to shore. But a javelin of rock between his shoulder-plates held him

fast while he was bleeding to death from spear thrusts.

“When his helmet was unbarred he regained the consciousness temporarily

lost, and his dying eyes wandered from the faces of the men around him

to that of their leader. The sight of the latter seemed to trouble him,

and he strove feebly to clear his eyes from the spray of the water and

the mist of approaching death. ‘My brother, can it be?’ he murmured

hoarsely.

“But why prolong the dismal story. It was his brother, Sir Rowell, who

had carried out the abduction of the lady. He had heard that the Earl

was about to wed the Lady Erminie to his nephew for the sake of her

lands, and having received his brother’s message from the Holy Land and

communicated its contents to the lady, an abduction was arranged as the

only possible means of preventing a forced marriage. He had intended

that his wife, the Lady Rowell, should give safe sanctuary to Erminie

until Julian returned, when the two long-parted lovers should be united.

“The knight died in the arms of the lady he loved. Her lips consoled

him--dying--for life’s disappointment. ‘Wait for me,’ were the last

words he heard on earth, and his waiting was short, for as his eyes

closed in death she drew the dagger from his belt and with it liberated

her own soul, so that it could--not follow--but accompany him. They were

buried together, and they left behind them the saddest man in all the

world, my ancestor, Sir Rowell, whose terrible share in that fatal

mistake--innocent enough in all conscience--has left all his

descendants a heritage of penance, showing that Nature, like man, never

forgets or forgives a blunder, or rather that she fails to discriminate

between a crime and a blunder, and punishes or rewards only according to

results.

“The tragedy of the rapids has been repeated in our family time and

again down through the intervening centuries, not as tragedies perhaps,

but as unhappy blunders--echo-like repetition of the first--such as have

worked untold miseries to all the race.

“Now, darling, that I have told you the true legend of the Red Moss

Rapids, do you still wish to marry into so dismal a family?”

“Yes, yes, more than ever; before it was simply a pleasure, now it is

also a duty.”

“In what way, dearest?”

“Ah, that is my secret, sir, only to be revealed on our wedding day;

but, tell me, was there no sequel to that terrible tragedy?”

“Well, my ancestor, who was the innocent cause of the slaying of Sir

Julian, said on his death-bed that in the far distance he foresaw a time

when the shadow consequent on his fatal error would be lifted from our

house, but it would only happen when some descendant of the Athelrade

family, who should be ignorant of all the circumstances, had of her own

free will revived the traditions of the celebrated Order of the

Templars.

“It was thought that grief had to some extent crazed the old knight’s

brain, and that in the long trances which he was subject to prior to his

death his burning desire to right the wrong he had inadvertently

done--which had grown to be a perfect monomania with him--had put

strange fancies into his head, and that as he imagined the misfortune

which fell on our house had come through the slight done to the Order of

the Templars by his brother’s retirement from it, even under proper

dispensation, he grew in time to believe that peace could only come to

the house again through some member of the Athelrade family (Lady

Athelrade being the person who, so to speak, tempted Sir Julian) doing

what I have stated.”

“Dear me,” remarked the fair Hilda, “how those fine old knights used to

worry about things; just fancy any soldier of the present day

distressing himself on his death-bed about an unlucky accident for which

he was in no way to blame, and torturing his last moments with the

forecast of what was going to happen three hundred years later.”

“Yes, it does seem strange,” returned her companion, “that these knights

who seemed in many respects so much more cruel and bloodthirsty than men

of the present day, should yet have had worries and anxieties which even

the most delicate and nervous lady of the nineteenth century would

despise. They were a strange medley, those knights of old, steeping

Europe in blood for a mere idea, and dying cheerfully themselves if in

their final departure they could but kiss a lock of some fair creature

some thousands of miles away, whom they adored. Oh, enthusiasm is a

great, an immeasurably great force. Tallyrand says: ‘_Point de

zèle--point de zèle_,’ but his clarion-trumpeted cry of ‘No zeal, no

zeal,’ is a vast mistake I think.

“His maxim may be all right for statesmen and diplomatists, but when the

zealot dies from off the earth, one of Nature’s grandest forces will

disappear.”

* * * * *

“Thank you, dear, that was quite an interesting little homily,” archly

ventured Hilda, as she wooed her lover back to present and more

attractive pursuits by placing her lovely arms round his neck. “Now,

suppose you tell me, my hero, what you will give me if I can erase all

that dark inky stain from your family escutcheon, in addition to

providing you with a brand-new bride?”

“Well, _cara-mia_, I am afraid it is not to be done; what you term the

ink stain has been there too long. My little sweetheart, who cannot find

acidity enough for her daily life, and is imposed upon all the time on

that account, certainly cannot evolve any acid strong enough to clear

away a stain which has grown deeper with the centuries. No, dearest, if

you insist upon marrying me after my recent disclosure, I am afraid you

will find that the ill-fate will follow us, and that our union will be

indeed for woe as well for weal.”

“Fie upon you, sir, for such gloomy thoughts; they are unworthy of my

future husband, and I protest against them. Yes, sir,--in this way,” and

her rosy lips stole upwards to his after a fashion that effectually

erased everything but Paradise from his mind.

* * * * *

The wedding-day must have been Hymen’s own selection. The morning broke

bright and clear with that dewy freshness in the air only to be found

in Merrie England.

“Happy the bride the sun shines on,” a hundred pair of loving lips

murmured in joyous congratulation to the dainty white-robed figure

crowned with orange blossoms.

Surely never since time began did wedding-bells sound so merrily and so

sweetly on the palpitating air as on that morning when the proud and

happy Rowell led the fair Hilda from the altar. Forgotten were all

ill-fated ancestry and gloomy legends. The past rolled itself up hastily

and convulsively, as a roll of long-kept musty vellum bounds back into

its old-time shape, and only the happy, glorious, untranslateable

present remained. Words of gracious congratulation fell in showers on

the ears of the blissful pair as sweet June flowers fell beneath their

feet; but they scarcely heard or saw, so much greater was the joyous

tumult in their happy blissful hearts.

* * * * *

“Hilda, my darling,” inquired the happy husband when his breath had come

back to him, and they were seated behind a pair of high-stepping horses

on their way to the railway station, with suspicious traces of rice

still visible on their travelling attire, “I noticed you signed your

name in the marriage register as Hilda Athelrade Erfert of Temple

Newsam!”

“Yes, dearest, and you want to know how I come to use the name of

Athelrade? Well, dear, I am a descendant of the Athelrade family. And O,

my darling, I must confess something else now--_my secret_. I am also

the owner of Temple Newsam--the innocent restorer of the tombs of the

Knight Templars, foretold by your ancestor, and O, sweetheart, last and

best of all, the destroyer of your family curse, as well as, I hope, the

founder of your own particular and individual happiness.”

TWO NINETY-DAY OPTIONS.

“It is a most wretched business, and I wish I were well out of it.”

As these words fell from the speaker’s lips his strong right hand smote

the portals in front of him, and Delmonico’s heavy glass doors swung

violently back in response to the vigor of his touch.

Carried away by the force of his feelings, he swung into the restaurant

with the full vigor of his mountain stride, and more as if he were a

detective in expectation of surprising a gang of coiners than an

innocent visitor in quest of congenial society and wholesome fare.

To speak the truth, Douglas Gaskell, a native of Scotland, and mining

expert by profession, thought himself in very hard luck indeed this

bright summer evening. Not even the hum of cheerful life around him

could overcome his despondency or soften the bitter reflections which

gnawed at his heart.

And as he reviewed the situation later on under the soothing influences

of his cigar and coffee, he still reassured himself that he had most

excellent grounds for repining, if not indeed for despairing altogether.

Glancing backward a few months he saw himself returning to his native

land after many long years of self-denial and hardship in the mining

districts of India and South Africa, with enfeebled health, a few

hundred pounds, a good reputation for honesty in a business of some

temptations, and a ripe experience in mining matters.

Then, in his retrospect, amid the hum of cheerful humanity around him,

he saw the fairest face in Scotland smiling on him; he saw an obdurate

old Scottish laird, who utterly refused to let his daughter be engaged

to a “penniless mining fellow;” and after a long siege by soft,

persistent womanhood’s irresistible arms, he saw the grim old borderer

yield so far as to say that if he, Gaskell, could satisfy him, before he

started for Norway in July, that he had means to maintain his daughter

suitably, he would then be willing to consider the propriety of an

engagement, on the clear, mutual understanding, however, that Gaskell

must sheer off for good if he were unable to satisfy the old man within

the three months which he allowed him.

This had been a most despairing decision to the mining expert, who

termed it the offer of “A ninety-day option on the woman I love, with

impossible conditions, and the wreck of two lives as a forfeit.” But

Madge, the lady of his heart’s affections, had declared everything was

possible of achievement to true love within three months; and how his

stern face softened as he recalled the bright, hopeful loyal look with

which she had dispatched him to London to take counsel with her uncle,

her dead mother’s favorite brother.

He remembered how the uncle had obtained him a commission to examine an

American gold mine, as a step towards finding, on his own account, while

in the mining districts of the United States, some good property

suitable for the British market.

“If you find such a mine,” he had said, “I will do my best to place it

for you, and you can honestly add $100,000 to its price as discoverer,

if it is large enough, and provided the terms on which you obtain the

control will justify it. That is the only way that occurs to me in which

you can honestly comply with the old curmudgeon’s absurd conditions

within the time.”

The face of the silent and absorbed man grew dark as he recalled how, in

the execution of his commission, he had arrived in New York only to

learn that the property he came to examine had been withdrawn from the

market.

The fact was that the gentleman who had offered the property in London,

and who had accompanied him across the ocean to introduce him to the

proprietors, had taken his measure accurately during the voyage, and had

reported to his colleagues and joint owners that he was quite satisfied

that Gaskell could not be tampered with, but would insist upon making a

thorough examination, such as must inevitably disclose the worthlessness

of the property. The owners were simply a gang of unscrupulous

adventurers, who had thought to avail themselves of the existing craze

for American mining properties.

It was the announcement of the withdrawal of the property which had

plunged Douglas Gaskell into the depths of despondency in which this

narrative finds him.

As his retrospection ended he sat lost in thought, and barely conscious

of the ebb and flow of the city’s gilded youth, and the men of affairs

who throng Delmonico’s in ever-increasing numbers.

He was all unconsciously being very closely observed by three gentlemen

seated at a distant table. Mr. Oswald, who had accompanied him across

from England; Hector Marble and Hamilton Gilbey, all “speculators” in

other people’s money. They were, in fact, the owners of the withdrawn

mine. Mr. Gilbey broke the silence at their table. “It is just as easy

to make a large haul as a small one,” he said. “We must manage to fix

something up for this Scotch expert who is sitting over there looking so

glum. He is disappointed at our withdrawal of this mine, and is, I

imagine, ready for a fresh suggestion. Now I have been casting about for

something to suit him, and I think I have discovered it at last.”

The three drew their chairs closer together than strictly honest men

found it necessary to do in Delmonico’s, and the champagne in their

glasses grew flat, and their cigars went out, while the one expounded

and the two received and approved one of the choicest plans which

villainy has ever concocted in connection with international syndicate

or corporate business.

The proposition laid by Mr. Gilbey before his colleagues with much

graphic force and a wealth of luminous illustration began with the

preamble, They must have money. The Scotchman sitting near by suggested

a means of getting it; he was only useful in connection with mines; he

could not be fooled as to the quality of a mine, therefore he must be

fooled in some other way, as they could not promptly get the control of

any honest mine on terms which would be acceptable to the syndicate and

profitable to them. That was the argument, and it was considered as

being to the point. The proposition was as follows: Gilbey knew of a

mine called “The Gold Queen” in California, which had at one time

embraced a great number of claims and covered quite an extent of

territory. This mine became quite a valuable property, and a dispute

having arisen as to the ownership of one-half of it, the property was

finally divided between the two litigants by decision of the Court of

Appeals. Both properties retained the title of “Gold Queen,” and

openings had been made in both about 700 yards apart. The workings in

one mine had proved enormously successful, and that mine could not be

purchased. The other had resulted in failure, and very little, if any,

labor was now being expended on it.

Mr. Gilbey’s suggestion was that the “Gold Queen” mine, which had proved

a failure, should be optioned to the English syndicate, and that while

its survey should be correctly given on the option, steps should be

taken to get Mr. Gaskell to examine the good mine, under the belief that

he was inspecting the one optioned to his syndicate. “Although you can’t

deceive him as to the existence of paying ore in a mine,” continued

Gilbey, “you can readily confuse him as to the identity of the property

he is examining, more especially if he is simply a mineralogist and not

a surveyor as well.”

“I know the manager of the ‘Gold Queen’ now in operation--number one let

us call it--and I can guarantee that he will see this business through

if we divide with him. Number one is well known to be well worth a large

sum of money, and it won’t do for us to offer the other property at less

than half a million. The owner of the latter is willing to give me a

four months’ option on it at $15,000.”

Their plans being matured, the illustrious pair were presently

introduced to Mr. Gaskell as the owners of the mine which had been

withdrawn. They had exerted themselves, they said, to find him a

property of equal promise, and had at last, after much trouble,

succeeded in obtaining for him an option on the “Gold Queen.”

Mr. Gaskell had notified Madge’s uncle of his first disappointment by

cable, and two hours after meeting Gilbey’s partners he walked across

Madison Square and sent another cablegram intimating that he had heard

of another property, and was about to go West to examine it at his own

expense.

* * * * *

Two days later Mr. Gaskell left for San Francisco, where, on his

arrival, he met the manager of the “Gold Queen” No. 1, who had received

a telegram from Mr. Gilbey to go to San Francisco to receive an

important letter, which letter he had carefully read and very cordially

approved.

The days which followed had many anxious moments for the three

speculators in New York.

“I do most devoutly hope this business won’t land us in State’s prison,”

murmured the less courageous Marble.

“What nonsense. We have not made any incriminating statement in

writing.”

“True, but you forget your letter to the manager of the mine. Won’t that

show conspiracy?”

“That is all right,” was Gilbey’s airy rejoinder; “the manager is under

my thumb.”

“By the way,” continued the tranquil Gilbey, “did you notice that

Gaskell had the ninety days’ option which you gave him made to himself

personally, and not as representing the syndicate?”

“Yes,” replied Oswald, “I noticed it. He would not take the

responsibility of spending the syndicate’s money in making

investigations which the members had not ordered. If he approves the

property he will recommend it to his syndicate.”

A soft, sweet, childlike smile crept over the faces of the precious

three as they separated.

* * * * *

A fortnight later Mr. Gilbey presented to his delighted associates the

following dispatch from Gaskell, dated San Francisco:

“I approve of the mine optioned, subject to some amendment in

price, and start East to-night.

“DOUGLAS GASKELL.”

When Mr. Gaskell returned to New York he said he had made a very careful

examination of the mine, and would be willing to accept an option for it

if the price were fixed at $250,000 instead of double that sum. The

radical curtailment of their figures somewhat dampened the ardor of the

three confederates, but finally the price was fixed at $325,000 cash,

with many protests on the part of Messrs. Marble and Gilbey. Mr. Oswald

had throughout taken only such interest in the matter as a friend might

manifest. His name did not occur on any of the papers given Mr. Gaskell,

and on this occasion as on the others, he took little part in the

arrangements.

In due time the purchase money was paid over, and Messrs. Marble &

Gilbey, each with $100,000 to his credit, decided that they would seize

the opportunity to satisfy a long-felt ambition to explore Southern

America, not in the least--they were careful to assure the cynical

Oswald--because they were fearful as to what view the cold judicial eye

of the law might take of their action in connection with the mine they

had sold.

Mr. Oswald, who, as stated, had purposely kept in the background, and in

consequence contented himself with a smaller share of the profits,

remained in New York.

* * * * *

Six months later Messrs. Gilbey and Marble were in the city of Mexico,

wearied beyond the power of words with the vaunted charms of that

country, and anxious only to be once more within sight of New York. Many

a time they echoed the sentiment of the city wanderer at which we smile

so often, “I would rather be a lamp-post on Broadway than a king

anywhere else.”

But respite was at hand. A letter to Mr. Oswald, making apparently

casual inquiry as to whether he had heard anything further of the “Gold

Queen” sale, elicited the following characteristic reply:

“If you are cooping yourselves up in the city of Mexico because you are

afraid to return on account of any troublesome developments in the ‘Gold

Queen’ business, you may as well come back at once. The Englishmen have

not discovered their blunder, and I do not think they ever will. I have

a good story to tell you which is worth your while to come 3,000 miles

to hear. Meet me at dinner on the 8th, usual time and place, and I’ll

tell you the story. There’s no place like home!”

Within three hours the two speculators were on the way to New York.

When the second bottle of champagne had been opened at Mr. Oswald’s

dinner the host lit a cigar, saying he supposed they were dying to hear

his story.

The lips of the two twitched a little, and a hardly perceptible pallor

indicated a passing nervousness.

“When the Scotchman got to the mine,” Oswald began, “the manager took

him to ‘Gold Queen’ No. 1, as you (or as we) arranged. He remained under

ground forty-eight hours. The manager was cautioned not to lose sight of

him for a moment, but he gave in after thirty-six hours and went home to

bed, as the Scot looked like spending a week in the bowels of the earth.

When the manager returned, twelve hours later, he found Gaskell just

coming to the surface. In reply to his inquiry he said he had completed

his investigation and would take some rest. Whether this was merely a

blind to put the manager off his guard, or whether he changed his mind,

I don’t know, but after he had seen the other descend the mine, and had

had some breakfast, he took the map which you gave him out of his valise

and proceeded very carefully to compare it--first, with the boundaries

of the No. 1 mine, which some loafing miner pointed out to him at his

request, and then with the map of the same mine hanging in the company’s

office, and which the manager had stupidly omitted to remove.

“As nearly as can be computed, it took that fellow just about five

minutes to detect the trick. Of course this is mere guess-work, for the

man himself was as silent as a clam. The profundity of his silence when

he unravelled our tangled plots aroused my admiration.

“After he learned the game, he placidly descended Mine No. 2, the one of

which he really held the option. He remained in that mine just sixteen

hours, and all that time the manager concluded he was in bed and asleep.

I’m sure I don’t know why, except on the assumption that a man must

sleep sometime.

“With the assistance of an old Mexican miner, who practically lives

down in that mine, in one of the shafts, he thoroughly explored the

mine, more especially at that part which is in a straight line with the

rich vein of No. 1.

“He had to all appearances some queer theory about that vein, for he and

the old Mexican worked for more than twelve hours cutting in its

direction. The result of these efforts was (it was ascertained after the

purchase) that while the Mexican slept Gaskell struck a continuation of

the vein belonging to No. 1. Having satisfied himself that he had struck

the true vein and after taking out several specimens of the ore, he

carefully covered up his ‘find,’ awoke the old man and returned to the

surface.

“You will understand the discovery Gaskell had made when I tell you that

from the vein in No. 1 to where it was identified in No. 2 is just 700

yards, of which 550 run through the land of No. 2, so that 11.14 of the

great vein belong to the mine that Gaskell bought.

“Well, gentlemen, Gaskell sold that mine to his syndicate--it was his

own venture--for $750,000, half cash, half stock, and his syndicate sold

it to the public for $1,500,000. The new company has already taken

$500,000 out of the mine in four months’ working, with the prospect of

taking out twenty times as much in the next two years. The Scotsman’s

profit of $325,000 taken in stock is now worth $1,000,000 in the

market.”

Marble and his associates gazed at each other fixedly for a minute, and

although their eyes spoke volumes, no word was uttered. The situation

was altogether too deep for words. With one impulse they rose in grim

silence from the table. “I find the air in this room suffocating,”

finally ejaculated Gilbey, “let us go.”

As the now silent trio passed into the vestibule in making their exit to

Fifth Avenue, Oswald shattered his preternatural calm by ejaculating:

“Great Jupiter!” The exclamation was not surprising, for there, coming

toward them, was Mr. Gaskell, the man they had done their best to

swindle, and his bride, the beautiful and queenly Madge. For a moment a

wavering in the ranks of the three was perceptible, and just the

suspicion of a desire to stampede, but the expression on the expert’s

face reassured them.

“My dear,” he said, addressing his wife, “let me present to you some

friends of mine who once rendered me a very great service--somewhat

inadvertently it is true”--(a faint shiver shook the three)--“but

nevertheless a genuine service. They helped me to win what I wanted most

on earth,” and his eyes rested fondly on his wife.

Mrs. Gaskell commented to her husband afterward on the strange, shy

modesty which almost prevented the three gentlemen from meeting her

gaze, and his smiling reply was, “They couldn’t stand the battery,

dear.”

After the three friends had escaped into the street from the (to them)

terrible situation, Oswald, probably for the first time in his life,

wore a crestfallen air. “Boys,” he said, “he carries too many guns for

us all round. Just think of it, he has never even mentioned to her

the--to put it mildly--somewhat peculiar part we took in the mining

deal.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you can always tell by the expression in a woman’s eyes, when

you are presented to her, how her husband has been in the habit of

speaking about you to her. I would rather have faced a hair-trigger

revolver than those great gray eyes if she had known our game.”

Mr. Gaskell has taken other ninety-day options since his marriage, and

some of them have proved very valuable, but he never expects to find one

to equal that marvellous pair by which he won both fortune and bride in

1888.

A STRANGE STORY.

MR. JOHNSTONE’S INFIRMITY.

“Felix Johnstone! What a name, mamma! There is a great want of tone

about it. Don’t you think so? I’m sure I hope the man is presentable,

but you know how careless and unobservant Dick is.”

The speaker, Maud Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, a lovely girl of some twenty

summers, sat, pen in hand, and with her pretty brows all a-pucker, in

her mamma’s boudoir, scanning the list of names of intended guests of

Ormsby Hall during the ensuing shooting season.

“My dear,” replied her stately and abundant mamma in a tone which

settled the matter, “he is as rich as Crœsus, and even if he should

prove eccentric, why he is an Australian, and you know everything is

excused in a ‘Colonial;’ especially,” resumed the dame after a brief

pause and with more than her usual drawl--“especially if he is very

wealthy.”

Maud was too young for an argument of this kind to have any weight with

her, but she only shrugged her well-poised shoulders by way of protest,

and presently the letter of invitation for the Twelfth of August, when

grouse shooting commenced, was on its way to Mr. Felix Johnstone.

The person whose name set the dainty Maud’s teeth on edge was a

stoutly-built, well-preserved gentleman of some forty years, the greater

part of whose life had been spent at the Antipodes, where, if he had not

acquired much of the polish demanded by polite society, he had,

nevertheless, secured a goodly supply of that excellent substitute for

it--gold.

When Mr. Felix Johnstone reached the Hall, in response to the

invitation, he found that the bulk of the other visitors had already

arrived, and to a great extent “sorted” themselves, as he termed it;

that is to say, that the males and females had, for the most part,

settled upon their friendships for the period of their stay at Ormsby

Hall.

This arrangement left the late arrival somewhat out in the cold. It is

true that his friend Dick did his best to make him feel at home, but,

as the old Squire, Colonel Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, was somewhat gouty, most

of his duties as host devolved upon his son, who had in consequence but

little time to devote to any particular guest.

“Jarvis,” said Mr. Johnstone to his valet the morning after his arrival,

“you’ll have to keep me posted in things. You know that’s what you’re

here for. Captain Fitzwaring recommended you as being the best man he

knew, and Dick--I mean the Captain--knows a good man, if anybody does.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Jarvis with more of embarrassment than his usually

immovable face was wont to show.

“What shall you wear this morning, sir?” inquired the valet, as if

anxious to turn the conversation.

“Well, I thought a frock coat and that pair of lavender trousers, which

Poole sent in before I left London, and a white waistcoat, would about

suit this kind of weather and the style of society hereabouts--these

and--of course patent leather shoes.”

It could hardly have happened in so well-trained a servant, and yet

surely it was the ghost of a smile which his master saw flitting across

Jarvis’ face.

“Eh! What is it, Jarvis?” inquired Mr. Johnstone sharply, “wont these

do?”

“Well, sir,” replied the valet with much deference, “most gentlemen wear

knickerbockers and lacing boots in the morning when they are going

shooting. I thought, perhaps, this velvet jacket and these corduroy

trousers, and woollen stockings or gaiters--”

“What, these great coarse things? Why, I was better dressed than that in

the ‘Bush!’--still,” noticing a certain relentlessness of aspect

creeping over the well-trained servant’s face, “if I must, I must; only

it seems to me that there’s a great fondness here for showing one’s

legs. I’m sure the way these flunkies aired their white silk stockings

and great calves last night before the ladies was hardly decent. By the

way, Jarvis, do you know any of the gentlemen staying here? If you do,

just fire away and tell me all about them while I’m dressing myself like

a--like a navvy!”

“Well, sir, there’s Mr. Granby just walking across the lawn. He is a

celebrated barrister, made his reputation as a junior counsel in the

Tichborne case; he is likely to get a judgeship out in Bombay soon,

they say. The gentleman with him is Mr. Softleigh, editor of the Morning

Whisper, a very fashionable paper. That dark-browed swarthy man with the

piercing eyes, just lighting his cigar, is Hugo Swinton, the African

traveler who had the terrible fight with the great gorilla now in the

Zoo. The man waiting for him is Captain Bottomly, of the Guards, who

reformed the British square when the Soudanese broke it at--somewhere in

Egypt. They say he has six spear wounds in his body.”

“But, I say, Lord! Who is that pompous individual dressed in black--the

one with the clean shaven face and port-winey complexion?”

“That, sir, is the Bishop of Oldchester,” replied Jarvis, with a touch

of remonstrance in his tone.

“Well; and even he puts his chubby old calves on exhibition. Is he going

shooting too?”

“No, sir,” replied Jarvis, with quite an air, as if there were limits to

this kind of thing. “All the Bishops wear black tight fitting cloth

gaiters; it is their Episcopal dress.”

“O, I see; well now, who is that very elegant young gentleman with the

cane, bowing to the ladies in the pony carriage?”

“That is a Mr. Elphinstone Howard. I have never seen him before, but

they tell me he belongs to one of the County families in the North

somewhere. He is not very well acquainted with the gentry around here

yet, as he has been brought up abroad where his father was retrenching.

He saved Colonel Fitzwaring’s life in Florence by stopping a run-away

horse, and with that introduction the family took him up and introduced

him to English society.”

“Well, Jarvis, all of these men seem to be celebrated for something

excepting myself. Can you tell me how such a common-place person as I am

comes to be here?”

Jarvis did not like to tell Mr. Johnstone that his great wealth was his

recommendation, so he evaded the question by inquiring which of his guns

he would use that day.

“Oh, bother the guns,” was the response, “I don’t want to kill anything

this beautiful morning. Here, Jarvis, quick!” he called suddenly from

the window, “who is that lady driving the ponies?”

“That, sir, is the Lady Evelyn Beeton, daughter of the late Earl of

Kingswood.”

“Is she very poor, Jarvis?” inquired Mr. Johnstone, after a substantial

sigh indicative of dampened hopes at hearing the lady’s title.

“No, sir, she is reported to be quite wealthy, as she succeeded to the

old Earl’s property, excepting the estates which, being entailed in the

male line, passed to his nephew.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, Jarvis, deuced sorry, for that is the only woman

I could ever have loved. Funny thing to tell you, isn’t it, but then you

are in a way my confidential adviser in this strange, God-forsaken

country, and I know you would never split on me, for if you did, Jarvis,

I would break your blessed neck to a certainty.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the complaisant Jarvis, by way of acknowledging the

other’s kind intentions.

“No, sir,” resumed Mr. Felix Johnstone with a burst of enthusiasm, “I’m

not one of these men who have all their life long been trailing their

hearts through the streets and highways for every thoughtless miss to

trample on; my heart is a virgin field to be harvested only by one woman

in this world, and if she won’t have it so, then, Jarvis, the grain has

got to rot on the ground, that’s all. Now, Jarvis, there is something

about the lady’s voice and look which stirs me like a trumpet. I sat

opposite her at dinner last night, and the mistakes I made in

consequence are something awful to contemplate. You see, Jarvis, she is

not too young. She is, I imagine, about thirty----”

“She is thirty-two, sir,” respectfully corrected Jarvis, closing a

Burke’s Peerage at which he had been glancing.

“Well, now, it strikes me, my friend,” retorted his master, with a flush

on his brow, “that you are infernally precise about the Lady Evelyn

Beeton’s age. May I take the liberty of inquiring, sir, how you came to

know it exactly--just to a hair, as it were?”

There was fire in the master’s eye, but the well-trained valet answered

with stoical calm. “Her ladyship’s age is in the Peerage; sir, I thought

it might interest you to know.”

The answer was mollifying, but the little outburst called for a lull in

the conversation, and Mr. Johnstone, now fully dressed, stood in silence

looking out at the window, while the valet busied himself about his

master’s effects with unruffled brow.

“She has such a high-bred and refined air, and such a soft and musical

voice, and her eyes, what wonderful color and expression! And then the

figure, so graceful, and yet so rounded. She ought to be a queen, and

there I’m only a common Australian squatter and digger.”

Such was the murmuring monotone which rolled musically from the massive

throat of Felix Johnstone by the window.

“Well--I’m--consumed,” he suddenly shouted, “if that jackanapes Howard

hasn’t got into the pony chaise beside her! My hat, Jarvis, quick!”

But soon he reined his fury’s pace. “After all, it is no business of

mine,” he resumed, “besides, what could an uncultivated clod like me

have in common with a noble refined lady like that! Now if she were only

poor or in need of a friend, and,” warming to his work, “in danger of

her life, there would be some show for me, but as it is, my case is

simply hopeless,” with which moody reflections Mr. Johnstone slowly

wended his way downstairs to a late breakfast.

He found Miss Maud, the daughter of the house, presiding at the

breakfast table, with that radiant look and well groomed air peculiar to

English country girls, and by and by, when they were left alone, he

managed to turn the conversation to the object of his adoration.

“We think all the world of her,” remarked his companion. “She is one of

nature’s true noble-women. She gave up the best years of her life to her

invalid father, and now I suppose she will never marry.”

“Why it seems to me,” quickly replied Johnstone, “that young fellow

Howard is paying her marked attention. And he is quite young and very

good-looking.”

This sentence bore so dismal a tone that Miss Maud looked up, and after

regarding the speaker with a demure glance, she arose from the table

simultaneously with her _vis-à-vis_, and thereby terminated the morning

meal.

As she saw Mr. Johnstone standing on the steps a few minutes later, in a

listless attitude uncommon in so stalwart and well-knit a figure, she

remarked to herself, “and so you are caught, my handsome but

unsophisticated Antipodian.”

That evening at dinner an accident occurred which, for a time, assumed

the dimensions of a calamity. Colonel Ponsonby-Fitzwaring, it must be

stated, was lord lieutenant of the county in which he lived, and

although he bore no title he occupied a position and lived in a style

unsurpassed by any titled magnate within a hundred miles. Dinners at the

Hall under his _régime_ assumed the importance of State festivals, and

the order of procedence was as carefully observed as at any court

ceremony.

At eight o’clock, when the dining-room’s stately doors were thrown wide

open, it was accordingly a brilliant procession which Colonel

Fitzwaring--albeit still somewhat shaky from the gout--headed with the

worthy Bishop’s lady on his arm. Mrs. Penelope Broadbent was proud of

her revered husband, and she was, subject to no deductions, proud, also,

of herself. She was a lady of magnificent quantities, and if none of her

numerous admirers used the word “stately” in describing her, it was

probably because her wealth of proportion was other than perpendicular.

If a great and artistic photographer had had to choose as to the best

means of getting a really accurate and comprehensive likeness of Mrs.

Penelope Broadbent, it is probable that he would have decided on a

bird’s-eye view as having many points of advantage.

The lady, although of somewhat ardent complexion, affected the most

delicate conceivable shades of dress, probably by the way of contrast.

The latter was certainly sufficiently startling. On this particular

evening the dress which sheltered and adorned, without qualifying, the

tropical super-abundance of the bishop’s greater half, was a delicate

primrose satin, and it shimmered and billowed in the softened light like

waves of embodied chastity, while above it rose and fell a tossing wave

of glittering jewels, the Broadbent historic gems, the envy, it was

said, of Royalty itself.

The Bishop’s lady, as became her rank, sat at the right hand of the

host, while her benign and dignified lord sat next to the hostess at the

bottom of the table.

How it came about will probably never be known with absolute accuracy,

but just as a staid and dignified footman was about to hand a plate of

turtle soup to Mrs. Broadbent, the gentleman on her right--our friend

Mr. Felix Johnstone--was observed to be searching wildly for his

handkerchief. Alas! unfamiliarity with the geography of pockets in dress

clothes, and a hazy recollection that a table napkin should never be

placed to the nose, and the result was that Mr. Johnstone’s sneeze--a

thing known and dreaded along a hundred miles of Australian coast--burst

upon the dinner-table like the crack of doom. So weird, so awful, so

unspeakable, and ear-splitting a sneeze had surely never been heard

since the world began!

The footman, on Mr. Johnstone’s left, utterly demoralized, dropped his

plate of soup where he stood, by the chair of the Bishop’s wife, and the

contents, rich, dark, tenacious, fell on the ripe, warm shoulders of the

shrieking, half-scalded victim, and rolled in an oily river down the

palpitating, outraged bosom, and all athwart the delicate, primrose

tinted garment.

The scene now beggared description. Mr. Felix Johnstone, also

bespattered by the waiter’s munificence, for which he was devoutly

grateful, as it gave him an excuse for leaving the table, walked to the

door as if he expected to be hanged outside. As he bowed himself out

with a calm born of the supremest desperation, three glances were

daguerreotyped on his brain--the flaming visage of the Bishop burning

with a look of very unapostolic rage; the amused and cynical smile of

Mr. Elphinstone Howard (“I’ve seen you before, where?” flashed the

thought and inquiry through the unhappy one’s brain), and last, a look

of distress and commiseration directed toward him by Lady Evelyn. That

last glance was one of resuscitation in its effects, and was painful, as

such always are.

“O the pity of it!” the unhappy man murmured. “But for this awful

occurrence she might have grown to care for me, but no woman ever

forgave a man for making himself so ridiculous.”

“Jarvis,” he shouted as he entered his rooms, “bring me Bradshaw’s

Railway Guide.”

“Yes, sir, I see you have had an accident, won’t you change your

clothes, sir, before you return to the dining-room?”

“Jarvis, you are an idiot, do I look like a man who is about to return

to a dining-room? I want you to find me the earliest train that starts

for the North Pole, and if you don’t catch it, you’ll catch something

else; that, I can promise you.”

Jarvis was a discreet servant of vast experience, and the train which he

did look up, found its terminus in Euston Square, London.

“There is no train to-night, sir,” was all he said, as he closed his

Bradshaw.

An hour later Dick, the son and heir of the family, entered his friend’s

room, and after carefully closing the door and seeing Jarvis out of the

way, he sat down opposite his friend and gave himself up to great and

unrestrained laughter--laughing until the tears ran down his cheeks and

until he rolled off his chair through weakness.

“The sight of that old girl!” he exclaimed irreverently between his

paroxysms, “will last me till I die. She was clothed with soup as with a

garment, and had more on than I ever saw her wear before at table. By

Jove, Johnstone, you have rendered yourself immortal.”

“That’s right, old man, laugh your fill; but all the same, the thing has

done for me. I shall leave here in the morning.”

“Now look here,” returned Dick with an approach to gravity in his

manner; “that is precisely the very thing you must not do. My brain is

small, but what there is of it is clear, and I know just what is going

to happen. By to-morrow morning every one concerned in the accident, and

most of all the Bishop and his wife, will be anxious to have the whole

thing forgotten, and everything placed on its old footing. That is their

only chance of escaping being made the laughing-stock of every county

meeting within a hundred miles. Fancy it’s getting wind that you had run

away because you had been the means of having the Bishop’s wife

smothered with turtle soup while in a very _décolléte_ condition! Why,

people would say it was judgment on the exuberant old dame. No, old

chap, stay where you are and I’ll guarantee you absolution both from

Bishop and dame.”

The other sat in silence for a while, and presently Dick continued, “By

the way, if it is not too delicate a question, was there any special

cause for that unique sneeze, and is that about your usual figure?”

The other winced for a moment, and then slowly answered, “That sneeze is

my infirmity, but it does not spring from a cold. Ever since my earliest

recollection the smell of musk has caused me to sneeze in just that way,

and I noticed the scent of that perfume at table just before the attack

came on. I was told in Australia that a very slight operation on the

nostril, if skillfully performed, would cure the tendency to sneeze, and

I thought I would try some specialist in London, but it is so long

since I had one of the spasms that I imagined I was outgrowing them.”

Mr. Johnstone’s reception the following day bore out his friend’s

prophecy. The Bishop and his wife were cordial in the extreme and by

common consent the unwelcome subject was tabooed. Indeed the affair was

overshadowed by an occurrence of a much more serious character.

Mrs. Broadbent’s jewels, to which reference has already been made, were

discovered to have been stolen during the night. The shock which

followed the announcement was intensified by the discovery that other

jewels were missing. The stolen gems had been locked in a despatch box

which was kept in the dressing-room adjoining the Bishop’s bedroom, and

in the morning the box was found open and rifled of its contents. As the

diamonds taken were of immense value it was deemed advisable to send to

Scotland Yard for a London detective, and a telegram had been received

promising the arrival of the detective the following morning.

In the closer companionship which crime always induces among the

innocent within its orbit, Mr. Felix Johnstone found opportunities of

conversation with the Lady Evelyn Beeton, and it is a pleasure to note

that the lady found many solid attractions in the Colonist. He was

different from the men of her acquaintance--more natural, more manly,

less frivolous--in a word altogether more acceptable as a companion than

her more polished friends.

In the result our hero sought his couch that night with very different

feelings from those with which he had encountered it the previous night.

“About the North Pole, sir?” Jarvis had inquired, and his master’s reply

was, “Jarvis, if you mention that vegetable or mineral again, you’ll

lose your place. You leave that pole alone!”

And presently he slept the sleep of the just.

It was probably 2 A.M. when the door of Mr. Felix Johnstone’s bedroom

opened softly and a male figure stole in on tiptoe. The light burned low

in a night lamp, but that did not embarrass the intruder, who carried a

dark lantern of his own. The sleeper’s face was turned from the door,

and his breathing was deep and regular. Poising himself on his tiptoes,

as if ready either to advance or fly, the intruder paused for a moment

and regarded the sleeper attentively. Apparently the scrutiny was

satisfactory, for the burglar now advanced noiselessly in his list

slippers to a stout portmanteau, and as he laid his hand on the lock he

murmured, “I know him of old; he always carries heaps of money with

him.” The better to facilitate his operations he laid a jewelry case,

which he was carrying in his hand, on the dressing-table, while he took

a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket. With the keys a cambric

handkerchief was drawn out, and instantly the room was filled with a

pungent odor of musk. The subdued jingle of the keys, or some other

influence, troubled the sleeper, who moved uneasily. Warily the burglar

stooped over him with the aromatic handkerchief, which he had just

picked up, in his hand. Instantly the closed eyes opened wide, and ere

the burglar could even move his hand there burst on the silence of the

night that stupendous and unearthly sneeze. It had seemed terrible

beyond measure in the crowded noisy room; but here, in the midnight

silence, its intensity and immensity baffled all description.

Instantly Johnstone, now fully awake, bounded to his feet, and being

nearer to the door than the burglar, he shut and locked it, and turned

to confront the intruder, who in his affright and surprise had turned

the light of his dark lantern on the room and on himself. “Whew!”

exclaimed the astonished Australian, who recognized in the man before

him not only the elegant Howard Elphinstone whose face had puzzled him

long, but also Red Winthrop, a notorious Melbourne burglar, whom he had

once been the means of “sending up” for a term of years.

“Don’t you think you have tempted your luck once too often, Red

Winthrop?” inquired Johnstone grimly, as he faced the other with the bed

between them.

The other’s eyes gave a dangerous gleam, but he said nothing. He only

shook his wrist sharply, and a long bowie-knife lay in his palm. But for

an instant, however. The next moment it flew with unerring aim at the

other’s throat. Perhaps Johnstone should have been more on his guard,

still his quick eye noted the danger, although not in time altogether to

avert it. The willing blade hewed a deep rut along the side of the jaw,

missing the jugular vein by a hair’s breadth, and passing on went

straight through a pier glass and stuck quivering in the wood at the

back of the glass. As the latter shivered, Johnstone, unmindful of his

wound, called out “Seven years’ bad luck for you, Winthrop,” and

vaulting across the bed he closed with the ex-convict, whom, after a

short but sharp struggle, he succeeded in tying, hands and feet.

Meanwhile the whole household, aroused by the unearthly noise, was

pounding at the door. When the latter was opened, a combined scream

burst from the assembled guests. Johnstone was standing over the

ex-convict in a pool of his own blood, which stained the white

bed-clothes and even the walls of the room.

Little more will suffice. The casket left on Mr. Johnstone’s table

contained the Lady Evelyn’s diamonds stolen that night. In the

prisoner’s rooms were found Mrs. Broadbent’s jewels intact, and also

those stolen from the other visitors.

Mr. Johnstone was in danger for some time from the excessive loss of

blood, and when finally he managed to leave his room he did so, not only

to find himself a general hero to all the folks at the Hall, but a very

especial and particular kind of a hero to a certain Lady Evelyn Beeton.

When in process of time the mutual admiration between these two was

crystallized in a happy union, the worthy Bishop tied the knot with an

unction as ripe and gracious as ever the church sanctioned, while madame

beamed on the alliance with a radiant effulgence which eclipsed and

dwarfed all the surrounding objects.

Shortly after the recovery of our Australian friend he testified against

Red Winthrop, and as that talented gentleman received his sentence of

seven years’ transportation, Mr. Johnstone dryly remarked, “You

shouldn’t break looking-glasses, Winthrop; I told you it meant seven

years’ bad luck.”

It is only right to add that although our friend the Australian had

sneezed himself back into favor after sneezing himself out of it, he

rightly felt that so fateful a blast was a dangerous and uncertain

possession, and, after a time, he took competent advice on the subject

with the result that he now no longer dreads the musk odor which used to

be his _bête noir_.

TWO CHRISTMAS EVES.

The swirling, eddying wind drove with a silent, ghostly fury up the

deserted High Street of Upper Medlock one winter’s evening in 1884,

carrying with it into every crevice and corner, in its wild pirouette,

great waves of heavy inch-square snowflakes.

“Oh, what lovely weather for Christmas time,” exclaimed Mrs. Cargill as

she stood by her husband’s side looking out of the deep, broad,

comfortable bow-window of their house on the rioting tempest in white

outside.

“Do you know,” she continued, nestling so close to her husband’s side

that he had to put his arm round her dainty little waist to maintain his

equilibrium, “do you know, that a storm like this makes me think our new

home doubly comfortable and beautiful. You see it is the first real home

that I was ever able to call my very own or yours, dear, which is quite

the same thing, is it not?” and she looked up into her husband’s face

with bright, happy eyes.

By way of reply her husband imprinted a warm kiss on the tempting lips

so near to his own, and his arm tightened lovingly round the slender

form.

“For shame, sir, kissing me at the window, I’m sure Mr. Strangely over

the way at the banks saw you; it is too public even in a snow-storm.”

But the husband dropped the arm which imprisoned her waist, and turned

from the window with a sigh which only a strong effort kept from

changing into a groan of despair.

“Ben!” exclaimed the anxious voice of his wife as she heard the sigh,

“there is something wrong with you, tell me what it is, darling.”

“No, dear, there is nothing wrong; I was standing in an awkward position

that was all,” and with this love-framed fiction the husband stroked his

wife’s glossy brown hair, and looked tenderly into her eyes. But there

was a shade of wistfulness in his own which the wife’s keen gaze noted

with apprehension, and with womanly persistence she pressed her point.

At last, and not altogether unwillingly, for the load was a heavy one

for a single heart to bear, the husband unbosomed his trouble, as, half

an hour later, they sat round the bright fire, with the bleak storm

barred and curtained out.

“You remember,” he began, “how your rejected admirer, Banker Strangely,

returned good for evil, as we thought, by giving me an opportunity of

going into the Longfellow mining deal with him, by which he said we both

would make an enormous fortune.”

Mrs. Cargill nodded her head by way of reply, but kept silent. Her

woman’s wit already saw trouble ahead, but she anticipated it by no

word.

“Well,” her husband resumed, “you advised me not to have anything to do

with the banker or his scheme; and, dear, you were so positive about it

that when Strangely over-persuaded me by explaining that your objection

arose only from a dislike to him, I felt averse to confessing what I had

done until the money should have been made and I could bring it in my

hand to you. You will recollect, dear,” almost pleaded the husband by

way of excuse as he looked into the loving, patient eyes before him, “we

were not very well off, and,” with a moist tenderness in his eyes, “I

wanted so badly to have a pretty cage for the bonny bird I had just

caught.”

The hand on his own pressed it gently, and there was a soft mist rising

in the corner of the brown eyes, but the mouth was set and firm.

“Tell me, dear.”

The words fell from her lips, and they almost startled the husband, they

sounded so unlike her usual soft, flute-like notes.

“Well,” resumed the husband almost desperately, “the sum I was to put in

was $10,000, which was just $5,000 more than I could command at the

time. I told Strangely that, and he said he would let me have the other

$5,000, on my note of hand, which, he said, could be paid out of the

profits of the mine, which was then doing remarkably well. I hesitated

about giving the note, but Strangely showed me a letter from the owner

of the mine, a man named George Williams, of Denver, which stated that

the preceding month’s profit had been $1,500 nett, and he thought that

figure would be maintained and considerably increased. Well, if that was

true--and Strangely vouched for Williams’ honesty--I could easily meet

the note which he asked me to give, out of the profits, more especially

as the banker said he would agree to let all the profits be put aside

for that purpose, and would not himself draw anything until the note I

was asked to give was paid.

“That same letter of Williams which I speak of showed me that since

Strangely had paid $1,000 down to bind the purchase, he (Williams) had

received an offer of $35,000 for the mine, which was $10,000 more than

we were going to pay for it.

“So to cut a long and miserable story short, I gave the banker my note

six months ago, and the purchase of the mine was completed, I

contributing $10,000 and Strangely paying $15,000. Since that time we

have had the hardest kind of luck with the mine. First of all the

manager left; then the mine was flooded; then some of the wooden

supports gave way, and one of the shafts was closed, and the end of it

all is that we have not received a single cent from the mine since we

took it over, and my note for $5,000 is due to-morrow, and all the money

I have or can control is $200. Was there ever such hard luck?”

For a time the two sat in silence hand in hand, he, just a little bit

averse to forcing a premature expression, she, with her soft velvety

eyes staring unseeingly into the blazing coals, miles deep in thought.

Presently she spoke, and her voice was sweet and even, but there was an

icy air about it, as if the breath which uttered it partook of the chill

of the dismal night outside.

“And Mr. Strangely, won’t he enable you to meet that note or let it

stand over, or renew it?” There was a suspicion of contempt in the last

words, but not contempt for the person she was addressing.

“No, dear, Strangely has been telling me all the month that he is very

short himself and that his directors will insist on the note being paid

when due. He says that they have made some losses lately and are in

quite a bad mood over them.”

“Well, dear, but if you _cannot_ meet the note, what will they do then?”

“They will protest my note, get a judgment against me, and sell my

property.

“What! this house--our home!” almost screamed his wife, as she sprang to

her feet, her indignant eyes all ablaze and giving back flame for flame

with the leaping sea-coal fire.

“Yes, darling,” murmured the weary, heart-broken man, “everything down

even to the baby’s cradle.”

“O, but they _cannot_ do it,” replied the wife, her bright head high in

the air, and her eyes full of a lovely defiance. “Ben,” she resumed with

a pitiful attempt at a cheery smile, “they cannot sell _you_, can they?”

“No, sweetheart,” replied Ben with a duplicate of the same wintery

heartbreaking mirth in his tone.

“Then never mind, my darling, love will find a way out of the

difficulty. My poor, poor dear, to think that you have been bearing this

burden all alone for these long, miserable months while I was so

blindly, so foolishly happy. And, oh me! to think of a note falling due

on Christmas eve; that must have been Mr. Strangely’s doing that, to

spoil our Christmas, now wasn’t it dear?”

“Well, I tried to put it off till January, but he said he could not make

the note for more than six months, although he could renew it. Now, of

course, he says he cannot renew it.”

“Just so, Ben, dear; do you not remember it was last Christmas eve Mr.

Strangely proposed, and I declined his suit? Does not this seem like

what you call getting even with us, darling, just a little like that,

eh? He is a vindictive, jealous man, and he has tried to ruin you, that

is all, love; that mine was a complete fraud, just his way of wrecking

_you_. Depend on it, I am right. Did you send anyone to examine the

mine? Do you know positively that he put $15,000 into it? No, my own

honest, unsuspicious husband, I see you did not. Well, be assured it is

as I say, and although he has spoilt our Christmas eve, he will not

spoil our lives or our love. A woman always gets a keen insight into the

character of the man who loves her; that is, provided she does not love

him. When she returns his love, she is blind and can see none of his

faults. I saw a good deal of Mr. Strangely, and I always disliked him,

even when he was expressing the greatest devotion to myself; he is a

bad, unprincipled man. That is probably not just what the commercial

agencies say about him, but I know I am nearer the truth than they are.”

At this moment a ring was heard at the outer bell, and Mrs. Cargill rose

hastily to her feet exclaiming--“Oh, that must be my brother Wilfred. I

forgot to tell you that I had a dispatch from him this afternoon saying

that he had arrived in New York from Denver, and would be here by this

evening to spend his Christmas with us. I have not seen Wilfred for more

than five years, and am so glad he is come. He is awfully cheerful, and

will keep us from moping, and he is so lucky to everybody but himself,

poor boy. He is quite poor, and yet he has been the means of making many

people rich. He always seems to bring me good luck; and have you not

seen people, dear, who were, on the contrary, what is called

‘ill-fated,’ who were always trying to do people good, and always

harming them quite badly. No!--oh I have, time and again; and don’t you

remember, in Bulwer Lytton’s ‘Harold,’ the ill-fated Haco, who is always

trying to do the king good with the most disastrous results, and is

finally the means of his death? Oh, I am so glad Will has come, and he

is such a good hypnotizer too;” and so the dear little wife rattled on

inconsequently, as if eager to drive out all miserable thoughts from her

husband’s mind. But with all her semblance of cheerfulness there was a

certain hardness of outline about the rounded cheek and chin which was

not noticeable before, and seemed out of place in one so young.

Presently her brother Wilfred was ushered into the room, and introduced

to her husband. When the first hearty welcomes were over and the evening

meal had been discussed, Wilfred entertained his host and hostess with a

graphic account of his experiences in the far West. These exhausted, his

sister inquired of him how he had prospered in his affairs.

“About the same as usual,” was his response. “Still a bachelor and

likely so to remain, for I am never more than $500 ahead of the world. I

take my pleasure as it comes, and don’t hoard up so that I may have it

when I am older and less able to enjoy it.”

The new-comer was a man of the most acute perceptions, and he soon

became aware of a heaviness or constraint in the social atmosphere which

pained him more almost than words could tell. “Great heavens,” he

murmured to himself, “I hope my sister Nell has not made an unhappy

match; yet I cannot imagine Ben to be an unkind man. There is more here

than meets the eye. I must get it out of him; it won’t do to receive any

confidences from her, if I am to make any use of them.” He looked so

abstracted in his musings that his sister, brightening up forcibly,

said, “Why, Will, you are positively dull; are you busy hypnotizing

someone now in the distance?”

“No,” replied the brother with a smile, “the fact is I am a kind of

wild, unregenerate creature whose habits get away with him at times,

having no wife to regulate them, and I am craving for a cigar with all

the force of a weak and vicious nature. If you have a den where I can

tame this wild beast within me--for I smoke weeds of the vilest

strength--I will come back in an hour clothed and in my right mind.”

This was but a ruse to enable him to be alone with his brother-in-law,

so that he might, if possible, induce or force a confession from him as

to the cause of the domestic cloud. “Give me an hour with Auld Nick,”

growled Wilfred to himself, “and I would wring the inside combination of

the doors of Hades out of him.”

When the two men emerged an hour later from the cozy smoking-room,

Wilfred knew all the facts of the domestic tribulation, and beyond an

appearance of occasional absent-mindedness, bore the confession

cheerily.

“What about Dick Strangely, who was formerly teller in the bank over

the way, and one of your numerous and most persistent admirers, Nell?”

he inquired.

“Why,” hurriedly remarked his brother-in-law, “did I not tell you that

he was president of the bank over the way who held my note.”

“No, you certainly did not. Now Nell, your good husband has told me all

about his trouble, and I want your opinion about it. You used to be

pretty clear-headed; perhaps, however, I ought to have said pretty _and_

clear-headed.”

“And so he occupies the flat over the bank, does he?” was the inquiry

which followed his sister’s opinion expressed in womanly fashion, but

with a sense and directness which caused the listener to weigh well

every word that fell from her lips.